New England Patriots 2010 Season Recap

A week after the Patriots 2010 season ended sooner than I had hoped or thought, I am finally able to comment on it. That’s not bad, considering I’m still not fully over the loss to the Giants in the 2007 Super Bowl.

If we go back to before the season, there was lots of talk about the Patriots, none of it very positive. Having been thrashed by the Ravens at home in the first round of the playoffs, there were more than just whispers of trouble in Foxboro. Among the complaints heard:
• Bill Belichick is no longer a genius, or else he’s no longer the only one. He can’t draft without Scott Pioli, can’t coach without good coordinators, makes bad decisions (4th and 2), and loses every challenge (or else doesn’t challenge when he should).
• Tom Brady is too comfortable with his swanky life and sexy wife. He’s lost his passion for the game, doesn’t work as hard, and isn’t with the team enough.
• The offense is one-dimensional, lacking a running game, and Wes Welker may never be the player he once was before his ACL injury last year.
• The defense has lost too many veteran stars to be an effective unit. We need someone like Jason Taylor to bring leadership and toughness to the team.
• Bob Kraft is a cheap son of a bitch who won’t open his prodigious pockets to make the team better. He expects players to take a vow of poverty for the privilege of playing in front of Myra.

Then draft day comes and counter to every prediction by all the so-called experts (who also predicted a 2007 Super Bowl win), the Pats draft Devin McCourty, a cornerback who also has special teams skills. Fans and pundits are beside themselves in disbelief. Where have you gone, Scott Pioli?

(Oh, by the way, McCourty made the Pro Bowl and is a leading candidate for Rookie of the Year. His seven interceptions made a sorry secondary already depleted by the loss of Leigh Bodden to a season-ending injury competitive again.)

Then Kevin Faulk, one of the best all-around players in the NFL, let alone the Patriots, a tough, versatile back with an uncanny knack for turning 3rd and 8 into 1st and 10, went down with a season-ending injury. Matt Cassel had proven that even Tom Brady was not irreplaceable, but how do you substitute for everything that Kevin Faulk does so well?

(Does the name Danny Woodhead ring a bell?)

Randy Moss, the fastest mouth in the league, a deep (throat) threat unlike any the Patriots had had in the Brady era, finally talked his way out of Foxboro. Talk radio bemoaned the move, another proof point in the argument that Belichick had lost his marbles and intended to lose a bunch of games as well.

(Welcome back, Deion Branch. Hello, eight-game winning streak.)

Meanwhile, just as Tom Brady was once fourth on the depth chart, the Patriots regained a consistent running game this year, thanks to fourth-string running back BenJarvis Green-Ellis, who understood as Laurence Maroney never did that to gain yardage you need to run forwards.

(Duh. And thanks anyway, Fred Taylor, who only lost 15 games due to turf toe. When last seen, Taylor was recuperating somewhere with Jacoby Ellsbury.)

Against all odds, this Patriots team that no one but me believed in at the beginning – and even through the first quarter – of the season, went 14-2, beating some of the toughest teams in both conferences. The offense was frighteningly effective, the defense surprisingly opportunistic, and the special teams survived the loss of its star kicker to, yes, a season-ending injury and made a number of very special plays. We also managed to come up with one of our best punters ever, even after a mid-season change in long snapper.

So what happened against the Jets last week? Well, if you look back at the three total losses this year – two against the Jets, one against the Browns – one thing is apparent: the Patriots don’t lose close games. When they lose, they get their ass kicked. To beat the Patriots, you have to hope the Patriots don’t show up. Or else you have hit them in the mouth so hard they lose their will to fight.

That, I think, is what happened. Of all the teams in the NFL, the Jets and Browns are the two teams that the Patriots players should have been willing to die on the field to beat. The Patriots hate the Browns’ coach, and hate the Jets, period. Allowing those two teams to beat you – to beat your coach – is almost unforgivable. The games with the greatest emotional baggage attached to them are the ones the Patriots played worst in. Why is that?

I have no answer, other than to suppose that the Patriots don’t deal much in emotion. While this was a season in which Brady’s fiery demeanor on the field drew praise from fans and jeers from the Jets, in general the Patriots are more about finesse than ferocity. And the one thing that throws a finesse team off its stride is being punched in the mouth by an opponent that is playing on pure emotion. The Jets and the Browns took it to the Patriots this year, and the Patriots were lost when they realized Brady wasn’t going to have 20 minutes to find an open receiver.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about the Patriot Way and I support Belichick’s decision to bench Wes Welker at the start of the Jets game because of his foot-laden press conference. But just because you’re not supposed to talk trash doesn’t mean you can’t flash some mojo. Tedy Bruschi had mojo to spare and he was an ideal Patriot. Look at how the Steelers played the Jets yesterday. It was as if Mark Sanchez was there to take food out of their children’s mouths. They played angry – and well.

After the Jets game, the radio experts had everything figured out. The young defense was exposed. We missed Randy Moss. Bah. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s that sports talk show hosts know NOTHING. The fact is, sports is a human enterprise and past performance is only slightly indicative of future performance. Any given Sunday, a good team will lose to a bad team because someone didn’t sleep well the night before, or someone else is playing for a contract, or someone plays the game of his life while someone else plays the worst game of his life. If prognosticating were easy, lots of people would make lots of money betting on sports. It’s the human factor that beats any odds. The Patriots lost because they played like shit. Which happens. Period.

So what’s my verdict on the Patriots’ season? An unqualified success. It was not just a successful but also an exciting, surprising, and inspiring season. Good players went down, and good players rose up to take their place. Fourteen times, they came up with amazing ways to win. The 16-0 season was fun but it lacked drama. I knew before each game that the Patriots would emerge on top. The Matt Cassel year was in some ways more exciting because you didn’t know what would happen. This year, we blew out the scariest teams on the schedule and proved that the franchise wasn’t dead, Belichick was still a genius, and Brady was, is, and ever will be the best quarterback of all time. Even though it was nice to think that this year would bring another bone-chilling victory parade, we enjoyed four months of brilliant football.

One thing’s for sure: you’ll never find me saying, “wait ‘til next year.” That’s because I can’t wait for next year, when this defense has a year under its belt, when Belichick turns his piles of good draft picks into promising players, and when we get another chance to extend our second season. In fact, assuming the owners and players come to an agreement, “next year” begins this September. So thank you New England Patriots for a great year – let’s keep it going this fall.

My Annus Horribilis

In many ways, the high point of my year happened as late as Wednesday, December 29, because it was on that date that I fully unloaded my toiletry kit. You see, I became separated from my wife in mid-July. She told me, “Either you leave or the kids and I will leave.” Not wanting to displace my two wonderful girls, I left. And for the next five months I served varying tenures in friends’ guest rooms and couches. There are many tales to be told by unpacking that one simple sentence, but suffice to say that I was taken in by good and generous friends, who enabled me to have a roof over my head at night and a hot shower in the morning.

I essentially lived out of a Rubbermaid container during that time, carrying a seasonal selection of my wardrobe along with my toiletry bag wherever I was staying. I was home often to spend time with my kids and was able to replenish, replace, and launder my clothing. But I had never fully unpacked my toiletry bag. I took out my toothbrush and toothpaste, my shaving cream and razor, my comb, cotton swabs, and deodorant as I used them, but they always went right back in the bag.

Ultimately, I reached a point where I had exhausted my supply of free beds and couches to sleep on, and despite the fact that I could ill afford an apartment in greater Boston while also still responsible for all the expenses associated with the home I was no longer welcome to live in, I realized I had to find my own apartment. I needed the stability and certainty of knowing I had a place to go, and I needed my own space – needed to reclaim my right to privacy. So I started looking.

I looked at standalone units, rooms to let, ad shared situations, until finally I found a two-room studio three miles from my house, reasonable rent, all utilities included. I spent my first night here on Wednesday, December 29 and while I had no furniture (I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor), I went into the bathroom and, after a good scrubbing of all the surfaces, unpacked my toiletry bag.

It seemed not to be a big deal until I actually did it. And then it occurred to me that I was holding an empty toiletry bag that I had to store, as opposed to carry around with me. My deodorant had its own place where it wasn’t in anyone’s way and didn’t have to be moved or removed. Unexpectedly, emptying my toiletry bag became a new definition of “Home” for me.

And so it is that as 2010 ends, I chart a new beginning – uncertain, as all new beginnings are, but with some hope. This has been, after all, my annus horribilis: my horrible year. It was a year that found me squirming whenever a friend’s Facebook status included the phrase “Life is good.” You’d be surprised how many times that phrase is used in people’s Facebook status updates. I’m glad that my friends’ lives are good, don’t get me wrong, but that is a phrase I have never had occasion to use. I don’t even know what it would feel like to put that out there. For me, life is often slow torture. It’s often hopeless. It sometimes even feels futile. There are good moments in my life, but they are snapshots, frozen in time, with no sustaining resonance. A fun time with friends or my children lasts only until the next fight with my wife or phone call from a creditor.

In a year like this, acts of kindness and generosity stand out like a beacon in the storm. I have been very fortunate. At my job, the people I work for and with have been very understanding and sympathetic. I often gets calls or emails from friends and family “just checking in” to see how I’m doing. Those friends who gave me shelter obviously have had an impact. I’ve been taken to dinner, had drinks bought for me, and gotten far more free advice than I ever could have afforded and know I never can repay. It has been made very clear to me who my friends are, how many I have, how wonderful they are, and how lost I’d be without them. Following a holiday season when I received no presents, facing a New Year’s Eve when I will share no midnight kiss, it is clear that they were the gifts and blessings I needed most and am so grateful to have gotten.

One gift that I know awaits me at some point in 2011 is my divorce. It will be bittersweet, I’m sure, but that legal act will finally cut the tether that has kept me moored to the ground. At this point, after this year, I feel there’s no place for me to go but up. And while January 1, 2011, is in many ways just another square on a man-made instrument for demarcating time, for me it is a sloughing off of dead skin, a rebirth of sorts, or at least a chance for positive change.

So may it be for me, so may it be for all of us.

A Show of Hands

Many years ago, I came across a quote that I found very interesting. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find it since, even on the semi-reliable Internet (see my previous post on the dangers of Googling quotes). But I remember it pretty well. It went more or less like this: “I knew I had become a man when I looked down and saw at the end of my arms my father’s hands.” I liked the visual impression I got from this quote, of a man, a young man, who one day realizes that his hands have grown to resemble those of his father. A father’s hands, traditionally if not stereotypically, are large and strong, the palms rough with work, the fingers thick like cigars, black hairs growing around the knuckles, yet somehow the encouraging pats stay longer in the memory than the angry spankings.

My own father’s hands are like that. Not huge, but slab-fingered, and with clean, perfectly shaped nails. Yet when I look down past my wrists, it’s not my father’s hands I see but my mother’s. They are smallish for my height, my pinkies narrow for a man (to my perspective, anyway), my thumbs almost hourglass-shaped (“Wallins thumbs,” my mother would say, referring to a genetic characteristic of one side of her family). My hands looks and feel fairly dainty. Too hairy to be a woman’s hands, but not the romantic ideal of a man’s hands. They are bigger than my mother’s, but far from being fists of steel.

My parents knew an artist, the Expressionist painter Hyman Bloom. I met him a couple of times and found him to be a quiet, quirky person. But I’ll never forget what my mother once said about him, that he had beautiful hands, an artist’s hands. I tried to remember what his hands looked like. I recalled that his fingers were long and thin, feminine even. Was that the ideal for an artist?

After graduating from the Jeremiah E. Burke High School for Girls in Dorchester – the same high school Donna Summer later went to (by then it was co-ed) – where she did so poorly in math that she was encouraged to take art classes instead of continuing to waste the math teacher’s time, my mother went to the Massachusetts College of Art. All through her life, until she became ill with a neurological disorder that made it difficult and then impossible for her to use her hands, she would doodle her art school exercises on scrap paper, making ovals and drawing this same female figure with a tiny waist, pursed mouth, and fluffy hair. She never worked as a professional artist but she did paint professionally. She practiced an art now nearly dead, that of coloring black-and-white photographs with oil paints.

She worked for a photographer who would take the portraits and if the client wanted them colored, he gave my mother the prints and the coloring requests. She set up a tiny studio in what had been a bathroom on the first floor of our house. I used to love watching her because she painted in a way I’d never seen anyone paint before. She had rolls of cotton and boxes of toothpicks. She would tear off small bits of the cotton and twist them tightly around one end of a toothpick, making a delicate cotton swab that she used to convey precise details, such as the white dot of light in a person’s iris.

She would mix the oils in just the right combinations, then apply the colors to the print and wipe them with a cotton ball, leaving a sort of pastel tone that screamed the 1950s and 1960s. I would sometimes think she was being sloppy with the paint but they always looked perfect when she was done. She had done many of our own photos and they are treasured mementos of her skill. Once, she was at somebody’s house socially and saw their wedding photo on the wall. She was certain she had painted it years before; sure enough, when it was removed from its frame, my mother’s initials were on the back.


(This photo taken with my phone doesn’t provide a true sense for the shadings my mother applied to this portrait of me when I was maybe three years old, but lacking a scanner it’s the best I can do.)

I’ve lately been curious about this lost art of hand-coloring photographs. It was apparently quite the fad decades ago but is rarely seen today. In fact, just the mention of it seems to bring to mind the cheesy colorization of black-and-white movies that has to stand as Ted Turner’s most idiotic venture. But a well-done hand-colored photograph has a very real charm about it, and as black-and-white photography has been making a comeback, so perhaps will hand-coloring.

Searching the Internet, an unavoidable and often successful task, I found a number of people offering their hand-coloring services. One, a former professional illustrator named Mary Ann Erickson, had some useful information on her home page:

Hand-colored photos are, for the most part, a lost art form. The technique of painting on black and white photos originated back in the day before color photography existed and flourished for many years. When I was an illustrator in New York City during the 1970s-1990s this art form made a comeback as its own stylistic look. The development of amazing computer programs like Photoshop generally put an end to the art of painting directly on photographs.

I decided to write to her to ask if she had more information about the history of hand-coloring. Here is what she wrote to me:

Hi Jason
Thanks for getting in touch. I was an illustrator in NYC for a number of years and took up hand coloring because I knew a bunch of art directors who wanted that look - before Photoshop obviously! Basically hand coloring was used to tint photos before color photography was invented. Then it hung around as more of an artform and a look that was unique after that. I think it must have allowed the photographers to manipulate the images more than they could in the darkroom as well - sort of a retouching tool. Again, computers and Photoshop have changed everything, but I still think there's a place in the world for a beautifully colored photograph - they become paintings! Anything done digitally will have a quality of its own, but it never will be something that's been painted by hand.

The coloring on my mother’s portraits is quite a bit subtler and more natural than Ms. Erickson’s work, but I like how they both take the realism of objective photography to another level of visual intrigue. I didn’t ask Ms. Erickson what her hands looked like, but at the same time I wouldn’t describe my mother’s hands as “beautiful hands, an artist’s hands.” They were good at what they did, whether it was painting, cooking, or soothing. It was the heart and mind behind her hands that was important, and I guess that makes me feel better about my hands, too.

Don't believe everything you read on the web - except for this post

Recently, I began writing an essay on the subject of immortality. Along the way from draft one to draft two, an interesting tangent announced itself willing to be sacrificed. Not wishing it to be lost forever, I am placing it here, though a little context is required.

Part of my argument on the subject of immortality is that while the ability to live physically for eternity may be impossible (I discuss reincarnation as a form of immortality; rather than a single uninterrupted, unending life, perhaps a series of discrete existences could also qualify), a person's life in memory - his words, deeds, and impact on his family, community, nation, and the world - can live on long after that physical life is quenched. Not surprisingly, I used Abraham Lincoln as an example.

To bolster my case, I looked up a number of Lincoln quotes I knew that I felt were pertinent. I also, as you'll read below, did a general Google search for "Lincoln" and "immortality" to see what I might find. As it turned out, I discovered just how unreliable Web searches could be. To wit:

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The democratization of the gathering and dissemination of information, which is the ultimate outgrowth of the World Wide Web, often results in greater access but lesser accuracy. For example, there are many sites on the web that exist specifically as compendiums of quotes on a range of subjects. Speakers, writers, and owners of other web pages often scour these sites for appropriate pearls of wisdom, but there many quotes that are incorrectly sourced and misattributed – fake pearls, if you will. There is a tendency, however, to believe that something that has been published online must be accurate, but in fact there is no central standards body that is charged with ensuring that anything on the web is true.

Because it is so easy to copy, paste, and spread misinformation on the web, there are those who may be gaining a false immortality, or who may be getting credit for something they never said or did. Lincoln, again, provides an example. For this essay, I Googled “Lincoln” and “immortality.” I found thousands of results featuring the following quote, attributed to him:

“Surely God would not have created such a being as man … to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.”

In most instances, there was no attribution as to the specific date, letter, or speech in which this quote first appeared. That made me suspicious because Lincoln’s words have been so painstakingly documented by generations of historians. The only attribution I could find was that it was part of the text that Lincoln’s animatronic double spoke in the old Walt Disney World exhibit, “The Hall of Presidents.” While many of Lincoln’s lines are authentic (the full original script has been transcribed at http://waltdatedworld.bravepages.com/id223.htm), the particular quote in question, which dramatically concludes the presentation, doesn’t “feel” like Lincoln, and the knowledge that Disney was involved further casts doubt on its accuracy.

Finally, I consulted the acknowledged official source of Lincoln’s words, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (a searchable online version of which appears at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln). I searched the word “immortality” and only two results were delivered (italics mine):

Eulogy of Henry Clay, July 6, 1852: “And in our last internal discord, when this Union trembled to its center—in old age, he left the shades of private life and gave the death blow to fraternal strife, with the vigor of his earlier years in a series of Senatorial efforts, which in themselves would bring immortality, by challenging comparison with the efforts of any statesman in any age.”

Second Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, February 11, 1859: “As Plato had for the immortality of the soul, so Young America has ‘a pleasing hope—a fond desire—a longing after’ territory.”

This leads me to conclude that Lincoln himself, the Lincoln who actually lived as opposed to the robotic tourist attraction that may in our world be the ultimate price of immortality, never did say – and probably didn’t believe – that “man was created for immortality,” even though the consensus of the online world is that he did.

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Given what I discovered, I would caution anyone doing a web search for quotes to be very careful and check offline sources for confirmation that the quote is accurately stated and attributed.

Jim Nabors, Carl Yastrzemski, Abraham Lincoln, and Me

I am a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox, yet I was only four years old during their magical 1967 season, when they competed through to the seventh game of the World Series after having finished the previous season in last place. Therefore, I have no first-hand memories of the team nicknamed the Cardiac Kids, or their remarkable season, dubbed the Impossible Dream. Yet as I came of age and followed the team more closely, my hero became Carl Yastrzemski, who had the most incredible year in that most improbable season. Leading the major league in home runs, runs batted in, and batting average, he remains 43 years later the last player to win the Triple Crown.

But the crux of this story begins closer to the time of the Impossible Dream, and at its core is the song of the same name, which was the show-stopper of Man of La Mancha, the musical version of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. I suppose it makes sense to go back briefly to the very beginning. By chance, I was born on February 12, 1963 – the 154th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. My family made a rather big deal over this coincidence, as if it were a positive omen of some kind. Perhaps no relative of mine was more instrumental in drumming the connection into my psyche than my Uncle Arnold, a teacher who shared a birthday with the far less notable Millard Fillmore. He would grill me on the Gettysburg Address, asking me to correct his intentional mistakes (“Four score and 11 years ago,” “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or subtract.”).

So, suffice to say, I quickly became, and remain to this day, a certifiable Lincoln nut. Fast forward to 1967. Shortly after the unhappy conclusion of the World Series – which the Red Sox lost to the St. Louis Cardinals (though they finally got their revenge in 2004) – on November 3, to be exact, a new episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. aired. It was episode number 99 of the series, which was in its fourth season. The episode was titled “The Show Must Go On.” In it, the cast is in Washington, DC, to perform a show. Gomer (played by Jim Nabors) is supposed to sing but he develops severe stage fright and loses his voice. Sgt. Carter, naturally, loses his temper. Gomer walks distraught through the nation’s capital, eventually finding himself at the Lincoln Memorial. He enters and striking close-ups of the Lincoln statue are shown. Gomer walks to the left, where, carved into the marble wall, are the words of the Gettysburg Address. He begins to read them in a raspy voice, which gradually – magically – begins to regain its full strength and sonority. He is cured at Lincoln Lourdes! The show does indeed go on, and Gomer performs – what else? – “The Impossible Dream” (a big hit in real life for Nabors).


As I was too young to experience the 1967 Red Sox season first hand, I was also unable to experience first-run episodes of Gomer Pyle. However, I know I was still of single-digit age when I first watched the episode in re-runs. I was transfixed. Around that time, maybe later, I got an album with broadcast highlights of the Red Sox’ 1967 season. It was titled The Impossible Dream and featured an instrumental arrangement of the tune, along with a groovy little ditty about my hero’s heroics that year, called “Yaz Song.”

Thanks to photographic evidence, I know that I first visited Washington, DC in 1971, when I was eight years old. I recall clearly how I felt ascending the seemingly endless stairs leading to the temple. My heart was beating wildly. I was somewhat fearful of seeing the huge statue up close. I must have seen the episode of Gomer Pyle by then, for I was in awe of its apparent power. My father took a photograph of me looking up at the statue. My face is not seen but it is not unreasonable to assume that my mouth was fully agape. I have returned to the Memorial several times since then, most recently in 2005, when I took a photograph of my oldest daughter – then-eight, like me when I first visited DC – melodramatically recreating my pose from 34 years before.

Just about everyone who knows me well knows that I’m a Lincoln nut and that Yaz is my all-time #1 sports hero. In fact, I hope to meet Yaz next week when he does a public signing. But there are not many people who know that I have Jim Nabors on my iPod. Fewer would even care to know the reason why. I don’t mind. I know Jim Nabors is not what you might call hip. But I can’t help it. To this day, when I hear him singing that song, I truly feel like I can reach the unreachable star.

Tales From Typographic Oceans

My first job out of college was doing public relations for a producer of computer industry trade shows. I was there for two years and got to visit Atlanta and Las Vegas multiple times, as well as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Tampa. But I wasn’t all that interested in the computer industry and so I left in search of new opportunities. After 10 months without a job, I was ready to do just about anything. During this span of time being unemployed, I was devastated by the end of a four-year relationship and I met the woman I would eventually marry and divorce.

It was at that point (1988) that I got hired by a company called Bitstream, which was the first independent digital typefoundry. What that means is that they made digital fonts that anyone can use on any computer or printer. That seems obvious now, but back then it was a matter of a U.S. patent for an artificial intelligence-based scaling technology, while a package of four typefaces (usually the roman, italic, bold, and bold italic of a single design) sold at retail for $200.

This was when the term WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) was in vogue; it meant that the type you saw on your screen looked very much like the type on the document you printed. Again, we take that for granted today, but back then it was pretty exciting. That capability and the democratization of type (meaning it was no longer the exclusive domain of professional printers and publishers) led to the emergence of desktop publishing.

As part of Bitstream’s marketing communications team, I had to know how to use this stuff and when I realized how easy it was to make a pretty professional-looking document I realized I could do something I’d long thought of doing: publishing my own music newsletter.

The reason I wanted to do a music newsletter is because I’ve always loved talking about music. I was sort of expert in various groups and genres, was always an avid liner note reader who could make connections between producers and studios, and loved comparing and contrasting different musicians and albums. My friends and I were all like this, and I thought it would be cool to create a vehicle that would broaden the discussion among like-minded people across the country.

At the time, I was a subscriber to a Todd Rundgren fanzine, which was well-done in terms of content (having had the cooperation of Rundgren’s management) but hard on the eyes. I wanted to do something that looked nicer and hoped that the content would work itself out. But first I had to figure out what group or genre I wanted the newsletter (personally I despise the term fanzine) to focus on. It didn’t take all that long, as I pretty much knew I wanted to talk about progressive rock, that cerebral form of music that grew out of late-‘60s psychedelia and whose heyday lasted until the backlash of mid- to late-‘70s punk and new wave.

The latter styles brought rock music back to the basics after the progressives blended classical motifs and impressionistic lyrics in a complex stew of unusual time signatures, expansive instrumentation (multiple keyboards, mellotrons and moogs, double-necked guitars, and Taurus bass pedals were standard, and flute, violin, cello, and vibraphone were in some groups’ arsenals as well), side-long songs (one album by Yes, Tales From Topographic Oceans, was a two-record set with only four songs, while Jethro Tull and Nektar both put out albums where a single composition spanned both sides of a record), and the dreaded concept album.


Being so cerebral, progressive rock was a natural for prompting musical discussion. However, I thought for a while as to whether I wanted to key on my favorite progressive group, Gentle Giant, or the prog genre as a whole. Ultimately, I decided that Giant was too obscure (this was pre-Internet and I didn’t have a way to know just how many Giant fans there are in the world). Also, Giant ended in 1980 and few of its members were particularly active so it seemed like the content well would soon run dry. So I decided to focus on progressive rock, but I named the newsletter after a Gentle Giant composition, On Reflection.

To lay out the newsletter, I used a long-defunct application called PageMaker. I learned on the job how to design a publication, prepare images for printing, and amass content. I was lucky in that former Yes members had just announced out of the blue that they would be forming a new band with the law-firm name of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (Bruford had done even better work with two successive lineups of King Crimson after leaving Yes in 1972). So between that, a manifesto of what I wanted to accomplish with the newsletter, and a few album reviews, I had much of the first issue composed in fairly short order.

The next challenge was to promote it. I elected to start small with a single 1/16-page ad in Goldmine magazine, the primary publication of record collectors. From one ad I got numerous queries. I decided that I would send an issue to all respondents with an offer to subscribe. Over the next few issues, subscriptions grew and I was surprised to get subscribers from Europe and Japan. I don’t recall how many readers I had at the newsletter’s peak but it was well beyond my poor management and financial skills, and within a few short years On Reflection went belly up.

When all was said and done, On Reflection ran monthly from February 1989 to March 1992. Nineteen months later, I married a woman who despises progressive rock.

I was sad yet relieved that my venture had failed. The fact is, towards the end I was getting kind of sick of the genre, the problem being that I had been bound to focus on one style of music, listening to new recordings sent to me of neo-progressive bands who sounded just like 1973-era Genesis or Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Though I was desperate to explore jazz and ethnic music more deeply, I felt constrained by the needs and expectations of my subscribers to maintain a narrow musical focus – ironic, given the expansive scope of the genre.

Yet in many ways it was a very positive experience for me. It was my first entrepreneurial venture, it gave me a chance to write about a subject I was passionate about, I met some interesting people, and I had the opportunity to interview a few prog musicians, including the lovely Annie Haslam from Renaissance (she began the phone interview by saying she had just stepped out of the shower, and I nearly fainted), the iconoclastic Daevid Allen from Gong, and the ambitious Derek Shulman from Gentle Giant, who at the time was president of Atco Records and is still an industry executive and entrepreneur.

Today, I still enjoy progressive rock, and have even reviewed CDs for Progression magazine, which essentially is the reincarnation of On Reflection, it having risen from the ashes by a former subscriber with minor assistance from me in the beginning. However, I now have the freedom to listen to whatever I want whenever I want, so I certainly don’t miss those days spent traversing typographic oceans around the dark side of the moon, venturing close to the edge and lying down on Broadway.

Matthew Carter and Me

Note: This is an expanded version of a piece I recently wrote for the AIGA Boston blog.

In a previous post from 2008, I wrote about how my rather humble profession of copywriting has enabled me to come face to face with some truly brilliant individuals, such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web; and Robert Langer, a chemical engineer whose name is frequently bandied about in Nobel conversations. Some of the people I’ve been honored to meet, interview, or work with may be considered geniuses, but one just became a genius in fact: world-renowned type designer Matthew Carter, who was just awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as “the genius grant.”

Matthew was part of a small group of ambitious and visionary people who left Linotype to found Bitstream Inc. in 1981 as the world’s first independent digital type foundry. Prior to Bitstream, customers bought type from their equipment vendor. For example, Linotype fonts worked only on Linotype machines. Bitstream’s founders applied both actual and artificial intelligence in creating digital fonts that could work on any platform.


I worked at Bitstream from July 1988 to May 1992. It was, for me, a truly transformational experience. I entered a young public relations professional with just one prior job on my resume; I left an experienced copywriter with a sure sense of what I wanted to do in my career. I entered not knowing much at all about type; I left being able to identify the fonts on almost any restaurant menu. I entered not yet having met anyone in the working world I truly admired and who inspired me. I left knowing Matthew Carter.

My first year or so, I didn’t have much interaction with Matthew. He was just this imposing figure who strode slowly on his long legs, usually on the design floor, among the creatives. Tall, thin, with a proud, elegant face and long, straight silver hair – the only affectation being his ubiquitous ponytail – he spoke with a proper English accent and it seemed that if only he had a cape and a cane he could have sprung directly from literature.

It was when I became Bitstream’s copywriter (the company being entrepreneurial at the time, all I had to do was ask) that I started getting to know Matthew better. He would explain the particulars of different typefaces for me. I would interview him for articles that I had been assigned to ghost-write for him. I would prepare materials for events at which he was invited to speak. With every interaction, I came to respect his deep intelligence, to enjoy his warm and patient manner, and to revel in my good fortune that I could learn from a world-renowned master.


I recall one time when Matthew had been invited to address a group – perhaps the Type Directors Club – at a dinner; he would be giving the after-dinner remarks and in the invitation I was asked to write, I worded it just that way. When I gave the copy to Matthew to review, the only change he made was to cross out “after-dinner” and in its place he wrote “postprandial” – a word I’d never heard before. “What does postprandial mean?” I asked. “After dinner” was his nonjudgmental response. If you ever have the choice between being an English major or being English, I’d suggest you choose the latter.

My proudest moment came when the Marketing Communications department in which I worked was saddled with a hopelessly dull and creatively constrained advertising concept imposed on us by the Vice President of Marketing. No matter what we did with it, it was bland and uninspiring – as were the results. The VP decided she would take the advertising out of house. We were all pretty peeved about this, and I asked that we at least be given the chance to come up with something new ourselves. This was granted, and I proceeded to develop a series of ads promoting our typeface families, with headlines like “At Bitstream, the Futura Is Now”, as well as an image ad featuring a photo of Matthew and the headline, “Introducing Bitstream’s most important face.” The VP presented them in a meeting with the other execs, mentioned that I had created them, and later told me that Matthew responded to them by saying, “He’s a bit of a dark horse, isn’t he?”

The department kept the ad work.

I departed Bitstream voluntarily after having survived three layoffs. I went to a company that Bitstream’s VP of Sales had left for some months earlier. I was laid off after three months. I then spent a largely unsatisfying year as a communications specialist for a specialty chemical company, the only highlight being the opportunity to work with another brilliant person, the company’s chairman, Samuel Bodman, who had been the #2 guy at Fidelity and later served as U.S. Energy Secretary under George W. Bush, for whom I wrote speeches.

Needing to nurture my soul, I took a pay cut to work for public broadcasting powerhouse WGBH. I was there for four-and-a-half years. One night in the mid-1990s, WGBH was presenting an Ornette Coleman concert. I was excited to go and through a contact was able to procure comp tickets. In the lobby prior to the show, I saw a tall, slim, silver-haired man wearing cowboy boots. No question about it, it was Matthew Carter. Turns out he’s a big jazz fan, as if he didn’t have enough qualities to recommend him.

It was a good dozen years before I saw him again, on Friday, September 24, 2010, at Cambridge Public Library, when he became the sixth recipient of the AIGA Boston Fellow Award at a gala event. I am the chapter’s director of communications and had the honor of heading up the committee that organized that well-deserved recognition. It was a wonderfully successful evening, and four days later came the news that Matthew had won the MacArthur.


I don’t know when or whether ever I will see Matthew again, but I certainly hope I do and before long. His work so far precedes him that his mere presence is inspiring. Being around very smart or very talented people is like being around very beautiful people. It’s a given that you won’t quite measure up, but there’s a glow you receive from them that elicits a sense that you’re better off for having been in their orbit. I first sensed that with Matthew when I was 25; now that I am 47, I realize how fortunate I was, and how fortunate I still am that I have access to greatness to serve as inspiration and perhaps a measuring stick. I’ll never gain direct access to the rarified air that Matthew, Tim Berners-Lee, and the others occupy, but my front-row seats provide quite a nice view.