A Sense of Style

Many years ago--forty to be precise--I was living in Cambridge, MA. I didn't like Cambridge, but one of the great redeeming features about living in the Boston area was reading George Frazier in the Boston Globe.

Frazier was a columnist whose writing was lively, acerbic and highly opinionated.  He wrote about all sorts of things, but whatever he wrote about he was always, in one way or another, searching for a sense of style.  By that he meant not simply what a person wore--though this was very important to him--but the way a person lived as well.  He had his heroes--Fred Astaire, being one. There was a man who embodied all that Frazier admired and loved.

Frazier's writing could be abrasive.  But it was always 100% entertaining.  He never disappointed.

He also wrote a column for Esquire Magazine.  I am thinking about that as I feel grateful for just being alive.  I know some of these posts have been dark.  Life can be dark.  And will be.  But overall, I'll turn to a cliche: It's great to be alive.

In this particular column in Esquire, Frazier was writing, once again, about a sense of style.  He put forth several examples, mostly about African-Americans, and then he concluded the column with a brief encounter he had with Duke Ellington. 
                                                                    

Frazier wrote, "There was a night when, as I stood with Duke Ellington outside the Hickory House, I looked up at the sky and said, 'I hope it's a good day tomorrow. I want to wake up early.'

"'Any day I wake up,' said Ellington, 'is a good day.'

"And that was style," George Frazier wrote.

That's exactly how I feel, dark thoughts or not.  Any day I wake up is a good day.

Oh Diana!

In the late 1970s, I belonged to the Midtown Squash Club in New York City.  It was a great little club.

One of the members was Diana Nyad.

She wasn't Diana with a capital D then, but she was getting there.  She was an amazing athlete to watch.  In incredible shape with a fierce drive and whiplash power in her stroke. I loved to watch her play.  Everyone knew her.   

But we didn't know what she would become.  A world-class squash player? An Olympic athlete of some kind?  The first woman to summit Everest?  All I know is that she put me in awe.

Through the years I heard about her from time to time.  I don't recall under what circumstances.  But then she began this Cuba to Florida swim, trying and trying.  She came front and center into the news.

I saw that she was on Twitter, so in the spring of 2012 I contacted her and told her I used to watch her play squash years go and that I loved watching her.  She replied.  "1970's huh?  Time sure flies."  We exchanged, oh, maybe five or six tweets.  It was such a treat to be "talking to her."

And now she's done it.  She tried and tried and if at first she didn't succeed, she did.

                                                           

And what did she say when she emerged from the water after 50-some hours in the ocean swimming?

"You're never too old to pursue your dreams."

She's sixty-four!