by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Nov 12, 2025 | Featured, Personal, Travel
There is nothing sadder than the moment that you realize you have missed the chance for an apology or an “I love you” that can’t be delivered because it’s too late.
At the end of my recent guided trip to Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina I had back-to-back realizations of long-lost opportunities to apologize and to say “I love you.”
I have previously written about the trip that my friends and I took a year and a half ago to witness the history of the nonviolent practices of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the effort to enforce the civil rights laws in the western part of the south.
The focus of this trip was to follow the American slave trade pretty much from its beginning at two of the entry points and places between — from its beginnings to its end. It was a powerful experience and an amazing trip because it shook me to my roots and changed my understanding.
There are people who pass through your life and then before you can truly understand the dignity of their life and the kindness which they showed you before they are gone. In my case, one was Florine and the other was Jane. Both were Black women.
There is a fair amount of written material that documents the slave trade in America but it only becomes real when you are standing in a slave cell in which human beings were held for extended periods of time before they were auctioned into slavery, and after they had withstood the travel, in which 20% of the cargo are lost by the end of that journey.
Ten percent died on the ship and the other 10% were the unruly who couldn’t be sold. Sharks followed these ships across the waters to their destination.
As usual, I had read the dates and about the places, but to walk into slave quarters or visit buildings which have been inhabited during whippings, and experience the culture of slavery made it all real for the first time.
Slave women were forced to be kept pregnant, because they were producing product and this product was valuable. When they were old enough, the children would be sold and be lost forever. At birth, they were given only a first name no last name. After emancipation, they often just assumed the last name of their owners.
Chewing cotton roots was known to be an abortive for female slaves who did not want to bring their children into a world of degradation, however, if a pregnant slave was caught chewing cotton roots, they would receive 36 lashes, which is an unthinkably cruel punishment, especially for a pregnant woman.
Whipping was also administered to punish both slaves and their educators if it was discovered that a slave was being taught to read or write or learned mathematics such as the multiplication tables.
Florine Burk took care of my little brother and I in the late 1950s when we were kids in Washington, DC. She was a heavyset African-American woman in her 50s who had grown up in the South and had gotten her education in a single room school.
She was a force.
She could sing the alphabet and the multiplication tables. She was an avid reader who never spoke about her politics but you could feel by her presence what she thought.
She loved and knew a whole lot about Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. My brother and I were required to memorize and recite the lineup for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
My brother and I loved her. She would hoist up her skirts and hit long fly balls in the backyard. If my brother or I hit a ball over the fence and through a neighbors window, she took our hand, walked us around the block, got us to knock on the door, made us promise that we would fix the window, and then she took us out to buy the glass and the caulking, and we would put in the window as she watched.
Eventually, we asked her to take us to a Washington Senators baseball game. She refused, and there was no doubt we were never gonna go with her to a Washington Senators baseball game.
Her reason, she said, was that Washington was “first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” She said she did not want us to witness bad baseball.
It was the 1950s, but it wasn’t her real reason and you could feel it, but I didn’t know what the real reason was until the last day of our recent trip.
Some things you have to learn late in life, and this trip taught me to look deeper into for Florine’s logic.
The morning before the end of the trip, I went online and researched the Washington Senators and found that they were one of the last teams in baseball to ever hire an African-American. They had drafted a black Cuban pitcher and identified him only as Cuban.
Florine knew her stuff. But this trip made me realize that I did not understand the depth of her character or what life must have felt like to her as a domestic raising white children in a brutally segregated city.
After she retired, she went to Los Angeles to be with family there. My brother and I wrote her birthday cards each year and sent her Christmas cards. After a few years, they would be returned to us unopened. I never told her face-to-face how much we loved her and respected her before she died.
That morning, I also realized the pain of a court clerk at the first trial I ever did in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City. I had been told that if you don’t know the judge or what to expect in the courtroom the first thing you do after you unpack is talk to the court clerk and try to make friends.
The court clerk was an entirely professional Black middle-aged woman who shook my hand and welcomed me to the courtroom when I offered my name and explained why I was there.
I put out my hand and said “I am Bob Bowie. What is your name?” She replied, “My name is Jane Bowie.”
She was instructive throughout the case and helped me when I asked my naïve questions. After the trial, I went over and thanked her and said how much I appreciated that we both had the same last name, and I had “a family friend in the court.” She smiled and laughed and patted me on the shoulder.
Over the next few years, I would see her on the streets around the courthouse and we would stop and talk. We became friends.
On this trip to South Carolina, we went to a museum that had only people‘s first names engraved in the walls at the entry room. I asked why were there only first names and the guide politely said during slavery, there were no last names, only afterward did many of the slaves just pick up the last name of the slave holder.
My family owned slaves in Prince Georges County. Much to my horror, I realized that Jane Bowie most likely came from an enslaved family that my family may have owned.
I was stunned and ashamed, but then I realized, and deeply respected, the kindness that she had offered me in the face of this country’s white supremacist history. Jane, like Florine, vanished 20 years ago and I never had the chance to recognize what she knew and the courage she had in dealing with me.
I fear that even in this generation, our children will look back and wonder how we could have looked the other way when immigrants came to this country and, as punishment, they were separated from their children when all they wanted was a chance to be free to raise them.
If you’ve ever had a blood transfusion, you never know whose blood it was. It was given as a gift from one human being to provide life for another. It’s a reminder of our common humanity, but we never quite live up to the obvious.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Oct 21, 2025 | Featured, Personal, Politics, Travel
This past weekend, I was reminded of this excerpt from my book, “The Older You Get the Shorter Your Stories Should Be” (page 169):
As the lions slowly approach, my fellow riders in the safari jeep become either “believers” that the jeep is safe territory or “nonbelievers” who, with every step of the lions, seem to be counting down the last seconds of their lives. They can’t move and the fear becomes palpable. The eyes are wide and the breathing becomes slightly labored.
On the other hand, the believers are happily photographing and silently adjusting their telescopic lenses. The lions grow closer and closer and, within 10 feet, three veer to the right and one veers to the left so that it will be behind us. Everyone in the jeep recognizes that they must keep their eyes on the three lions that will pass to our left within several feet of the jeep, but we will not be able to turn and watch the one lion that is moving behind us on our right.
The believers continue to happily photograph adjusting their telescopic lens to catch the reflection of the jeep in a lion’s eyes. The nonbelievers are breathing softly, their eyes closed, waiting for death.
After a few moments they were past us and we started the engine and continued our day.
(You can find the book on amazon or support local bookstores at bookshop.org.)
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Sep 9, 2025 | Featured, Humor, Politics
Last week Putin told a joke and the whole world laughed, except for America.
This was remarkable.
Have you noticed that there aren’t a lot of jokes in foreign policy? Jokes have to be told in the same language for both parties, which is hard in foreign policy.
(There are not a lot of jokes in boxing either. Different punch lines… sorry.)
So foreign policy jokes have to be not what you say, they have to be what you do .
A couple of weeks ago, Trump invited Putin (a spy during the Cold War who Trump admires and has assured us is his BFF) to meet as a guest of America in Alaska. He was given the red carpet treatment: gun salutes went off, he rode in the presidential limousine with his friend the American president, and received full and complete respect from the American military.
He had been invited by our president to negotiate the end of Putin’s takeover of Ukraine, a free country and ally of the United States.
Putin accepted this invitation, held a press conference upon arrival on American soil, then skipped the planned meetings and flew back home before lunch. Then he bombed the hell out of Ukraine.
Trump declared victory. Now that’s funny!
We are all safe because Trump will always get the last laugh. Ask him. He’ll tell you. I’ve never seen him laugh, but I’m sure he’s funny.
Several weeks later, Putin joined a parade in China with North Korea and some other Eagle Scouts of the totalitarian world to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the defeat of Japan, without inviting Trump.
But in the alternative, the world‘s antidemocratic countries invited India, the largest democracy in the world and an American trading partner upon whom Trump had recently artfully imposed 50% tariffs, which drove India into the arms of the totalitarian world leaders.
It’s hilarious because obviously Trump got the last laugh, showing off his well-known genius for “the Art of the Deal.”
It was kind of like a junior high school “mean girl” movie and Trump was the only girl not invited to the party. What really made the joke work was Trump made it look like his feelings had not been hurt. It was a perfect foreign policy joke because his actions spoke louder than words. He definitely got the last laugh.
I used to think he wasn’t subtle.
We have midterm elections coming up in a year, so guess why Trump brings in the military and plants them in Los Angeles, Chicago, and our nation’s capital, Washington DC. My guess is all the polling stations will be guarded by his police by the midterms, so we can happily celebrate our Constitution.
Why shouldn’t we believe the President of the United States? The economy must be safe even though the deficit has skyrocketed with his tax cuts for the rich, because he also has doubled his net worth over the last nine months since he was elected, so that he is now worth $5 billion.
Ya see? He’s one hell of a businessman and he’s also president of the United States. He must be an excellent straight-faced jokester because I’ve never seen him laugh.
His best jokes are often at our own expense. Nobody’s threatened and everyone seems to believe that the military buildup in our major cities isn’t really serious and, do we really even need those midterms anyway?
It’s the art of the joke.
Because Trump has been so funny, we should set up a joke in return and see how he responds.
Let’s get Congress to vote against funding the government in exchange for bringing back our democracy to make America truly great again.
Maybe that will give us all the last laugh.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Jun 17, 2025 | Featured, General, Humor, Law, Personal, Politics
When I started to practice law, Jimmy Carter was elected president. To avoid some unimaginable conflict of interest, he sold his family farm for peanuts. Since I retired from the practice of law 10 years ago, apparently the ethics have changed.
President Trump for his birthday last week gave himself a military parade, which which cost the American taxpayers approximately $25 million and tore up the streets of Washington.
Several news services have recently reported that since the early days of President Trump‘s reelection campaign he has made more than double his net worth, about $5.4 billion dollars.
In the past, I would’ve been horrified, but now my reaction is that it’s a shame I didn’t somehow make a bigger profit back when ethics prohibited me.
Back during those ethical times I would preach to the lawyers at my firm that the easiest way to check your professional ethics is to ask yourself if what you were about to do would be embarrassing if it would become a headline in the New York Times. If so, don’t do it.
President Trump has re-organized and turned upside down the professional ethics of the presidency and the ethics I was used to. Everything unethical or untrue that Trump has done now is routinely front page headlines on the New York Times, which nobody reads anymore.
I have gone back to thinking about how rich I would be if I’d taken on cases that I ultimately rejected long ago because of ethical concerns.
Consider the amount of money I could’ve made if I had taken that case long ago of two Hindu businessmen who came into the office and told me they wanted to incorporate (for personal liability reasons) an ongoing business that provided Hindu Americans a chance to bury their families in the Ganges River for about $5,000 per loved one.
They told me that the contract that they offered guaranteed that the loved ones ashes, with which they were entrusted, would be respectfully sent to the Ganges, a boat would be hired as well as a videographer to make a movie of the ceremony as the ashes were transported in a beautiful urn, and a man rowing the boat out in the Ganges would be filmed opening the container and emptying it so the ashes were visible as they were were gently poured into the river.
The $5,000 would be collected in exchange for the video of the ceremony.
I will admit I was intrigued by this novel, religious practice and I asked about the heavy cost of the procedure and the profit they were making per contract.
Without batting an eye both businessmen looked at me and said it was about 95% profit. I asked them how could they possibly make such a profit and they answered: “We send everyone the same video.”
If you’re using the same video and you are making a 95% profit you certainly don’t have to be greedy. You could include a beautiful hologram of the soul rising from the Ganges and fluttering off into reincarnation.
Also they completely missed the opportunity for relics, swag, and real cool T-shirts.
When you include the total Trump’s family and political friends have made in the “pay to play” access and favors, which have included the opportunity to show your personal love and respect by purchasing Trump bitcoin and Trump Bibles, and such gifts as an airplane from the government of Qatar, no wonder Trump wants a third term.
I was so stupid I refused to represent the two Hindu businessmen, even though they generously offered me a free burial in the Ganges.
I could also have befriended the President by referring him to another client who I rejected. For a while, “viatical contracts” were easy money. Several people had the idea at the same time. During the AIDS epidemic several entrepreneurs were going into hospitals or hospices and offering to buy life insurance policies at about 10% of their face value from those who would soon die. There’s nothing illegal about that, but for me it didn’t pass the smell test.
There is some justice in the world. Once effective HIV treatment became available, they were stuck continually paying for ongoing life insurance policies.
I suspect that the Trump family has already seen the future of medical profit as is evident from the appointment of Robert Kennedy, Jr. and the future of TMD (Trump Measles Deterrent). This is not a vaccine. it is free and called “The Trump Blessing,” which is administered over a Zoom call after you buy some of the remaining overstocked Bibles that will become collectors items soon.
I think the only benefit Jimmy Carter received from his presidency was a gift given by his brother: a couple of cans of Billy Beer.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | May 27, 2025 | Featured, Humor, Personal
Have you been following the economics of this country recently?
Guess who was invited to President Trump’s private event for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday and given a White House tour on Friday?
I wasn’t!
I called my friends, Peter, Belinda and Liza, to see if they had been part of this same oversight by the President.
Peter, Belinda and Liza and I were neighbors during our middle school years and have been friends ever since for over 60 years, and all of us were there from the beginning of cryptocurrency.
They weren’t invited either!
We concluded that this oversight by the President was not his fault and was due to only one possible interpretation.
Our President does not know a lot of American history or, to be a little more polite, he has not yet become aware of the true history of cryptocurrency.
As the rest of us already know, cryptocurrency was quietly created after Nixon took the country off the gold standard. Quite conveniently, it was the same time the first Topps baseball cards were issued in five-card packs with a card size slab of bubblegum included.
The retail cost was five cents per pack. A penny for each card and the bubblegum was free — age appropriate pre-pubescent genius marketing.
A half century before cryptocurrency entered the world stock market, Peter and I were both early investors in baseball cards, and then found another lucrative market in marble monopolies. We were early traders in pre-crypto middle school cards and marbles during recess.
Peter cornered the marble market so effectively that the marble market collapsed after he won all the marbles.
I tried to make a run on “big marbles” so I dressed up my little middle school self and went to pawn shops and antique stores looking for clear round door knobs.
Regrettably, no door knobs are completely round and thus valueless in the larger marble markets.
As a result — for the good of the market — Peter gave a written announcement handed out to the neighborhood that he would be emptying several boxes of marbles to the neighborhood market for free one late spring Saturday afternoon. It happened out of a second floor window with the driveway below. It was an early example of flooding the market.
Peter emptied five bankers boxes of multi currency marbles, including “puresy boulders” and several stunning “jumbo spirals.” The market was saved and Peter had made recess fun again.
Baseball cards back then were “to die for,” particularly if you had a complete set. Peter had a complete set of baseball cards for the years 1957, 1958, and 1959.
Even in middle school, you knew these people were serious people! Peter was a born collector and became a well known New York art dealer. Liza became a respected museum curator in Washington DC, and Belinda became a brilliant art writer and critic.
In the alternative, when I went off to college, my mother emptied my closets and threw away all of my marbles and baseball cards… and I became a lawyer.
At the same time as Trump’s cryptocurrency banquet and tour of the White House, his administration announced that they would be retiring the penny because it was not cost-effective to produce it anymore. They had determined that it took four cents to produce a penny. Think about the appreciated value of just one card, bought for a penny. Or even better, a complete set.
Ever since Nixon took us off the gold standard, our currency, stocks and bonds, like cryptocurrency, have no value other than the theoretical value according to the market.
However, with marbles and baseball cards, unlike cryptocurrency, there is the added component of artistic beauty. They are self valuing and hold a valuable historical record on the flip side of the picture — batting average and stolen bases and other stats.
Also, the bubble gum is great for the dental economy.
Hold onto your baseball cards and don’t lose your marbles!
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | May 20, 2025 | Featured, Personal, Travel
When Susan and I flew to Paris again this year for three weeks this spring, I had planned to watch the Bob Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown” on the flight that night, but I was too tired so I slept instead.
Paris was warming to its spring as we landed at Charles De Gaul airport and traveled into the heart of Paris to a beautiful flat with its view of the Seine from its fifth floor living room and bedroom windows on the Île Saint-Louis.
The six hour difference in the time between the East Coast of the United States and Paris delayed the news reports that poured into my cell phone at three in the afternoon Paris time as America woke up and went to work.
The distance and the time change diminished my obsession to keep up with America’s politics, but nothing could uncouple it from my daily concerns.
Over our three weeks, Susan and I committed to walk the city, but for longer trips to Montmartre or the outskirts of Paris to the Louis Vuitton Museum to see the huge new David Hockney exhibit, we took the Metro.
Each evening, we would go to one of the little restaurants on Île Saint-Louis and then climb the stairs or take the little elevator to the flat to read the news before bed.
Last year. we had taken three days off from Paris to go to the LaVar Valley to stay in a beautiful Château and visit the region’s medieval history. This year, we went to Normandy and, as I observed the beaches and cliffs, and finally the dramatic American cemetery, the pride I’ve always felt for America rekindled with my respect.
On the morning that we flew back in mid May, Paris was in full bloom as we got on the plane to fly into the upcoming day on our return to the United States.
I again committed to watch the Bob Dylan movie on our way home.
Even though it had been out for some time, I still had not seen it, but I knew enough from the reviews that it was about the transition from Dylan’s early folk years to the electric folk rock that Dylan made in 1965.
In the fall of 1965, I had started my first year at the Cambridge School of Weston, a progressive high school that knew something about learning disorders and thus was unlike the boarding schools and summer schools I had attended previously.
It was my second try at 11th grade. My new school was so very different in so many ways, but as my classmates wore sandals and blue jeans and played guitars out on the quad or went off to the ceramic studio and the wide range of classes offered, I attended my classes in a sport jacket, but eventually gave up on the tie.
I believed I was in transition to a better place and I believed that from the start. I was hoping that repeating the 11th grade would rekindle my love of learning in a new environment with a fresh start.
Within weeks of my first day, a sign-up sheet went up in the dining room, which offered tickets and a bus ride provided by the school to see Bob Dylan play in a Boston theater.
I signed up with about 15 of my fellow students and we got on a little bus to go down to the theater.
When we got to the venue in downtown Boston, we were told that it had been sold out almost immediately and, though we had paid for our tickets, no seats had been assigned for us.
The theater instantly took action and placed folding chairs in a semicircle on stage directly behind Bob Dylan.
The first half of the performance was all Bob Dylan singing his folk songs in front of an adoring audience with us directly behind him.
When the audience returned to their seats for the second half of the program, however, a rock ’n’ roll band was now set up to back up Dylan. We pushed our seats back further to accommodate the instruments and cables.
When Dylan entered, he was met with catcalls. I could not believe what was happening in front of me. I sat, self-conscious and a little bit frightened, as Dylan faced the catcalling audience.
Dylan played the first few songs with the electrical back up in the midst of the continuing catcalls.
Somewhere in the middle of one of those songs, a very loud voice broke through and yelled something like, “You sold out!”
Dylan stopped the performance. After a very awkward moment, the silence was broken by Dylan’s voice over the microphone:
“I don’t believe you!” he said, and there was a smattering of applause as he signaled to start the song again, resuming the concert.
As the movie portrayed the transition at the Newport Folk Festival from folk to folk rock, Dylan spoke those same lines to that hostile audience and I returned momentarily to being a teenager on the back of that stage. But I was proud to be there rather than surprised and frightened by the event.
As we landed at Dulles Airport in Washington DC, and returned to our political world, I felt reborn and re-nourished by the experience.
I had this very odd feeling that these juxtapositions had reawakened me to the messy but resilient democracy in which I have been fortunate to have lived and prospered.
Somehow, America, through its history, has been endlessly capable of being reborn, newly appreciative of what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution have provided for each generation.
Shortly thereafter, I laughed when the news reported that Harvard University had discovered in its archives an original copy of the Magna Carta, which had been presumed to be a copy, purchased in England for less than $30 after the Second World War. It turned out to be the thing itself.
It was a great trip to Paris, which taught me yet again how much I love this country.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Apr 16, 2025 | Featured, Humor, Personal, Politics, Travel
I’m not really worried about Trump taking over Harvard, so Susan and I are going to Paris this Saturday for a couple of weeks.
Why is everybody so upset? It seems like all the commentators have completely overlooked Trump’s leadership skills when he ran Trump University.
Trump has been very vocal about his business acumen and, by his own account, he ran the university brilliantly for the five years before its bankruptcy.
There was some unsubstantiated criticism about gold toilet seats, but he claimed he was always very hands-on and was good at keeping the overhead low.
For example, despite its name, Trump University was never an accredited university or college. It did not confer college credit, grant degrees, or grade its students.
Think about the savings on the cost of paper.
In contrast, the data from the 2023–24 academic year, 72% of Harvard University’s first-time, full-time undergraduates received financial aid. In the alternative, Trump University was apparently so popular, it never needed to offer scholarships. And Trump has already said that he wants to get rid of Harvard’s nonprofit status.
Really! So where is the art of the deal?
Harvard is not effectively selling its product! No. Harvard has been giving it away for free.
What is also great is that Trump has the experience to navigate these litigious times. In 2011, Trump University became the subject of an inquiry by the New York Attorney General’s office for illegal business practices, which resulted in a lawsuit filed in August, 2013. It was also the subject of two class actions in federal court. The lawsuits centered on allegations that Trump University defrauded its students by using misleading marketing practices and engaging in aggressive sales tactics.
Of course!
Everyone knows that Trump is a marketing genius! Okay, let’s get down to what Trump‘s real motives may be.
Both schools have one thing in common.
Neither school has a mascot.
Everybody knows that Trump is a master marketer. I think the hidden agenda will be that Trump will insist that Harvard finally adopt a formal mascot, befitting our country’s white Christian heritage: a Pilgrim, of course!
But even more importantly, this way he can get rid of that out of date logo “Veritas” and change it to “If you piss off a pilgrim, you’ll get yourself a witch trial.” Then he can raise money at halftime with a raffle where the winner gets whisked away for a lifetime in El Salvador.
Anyway, just like last year, Susan and I will be sending back Parisian commentary and pictures to celebrate our spring time and hopefully brighten yours. À bientôt!
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Mar 25, 2025 | Featured, Humor, Poetry
If you’re like me, the best memory you ever have had is an act of self-deception that you can’t remember. However, if you happen to stop forgetting for only a fraction of second it will be abrupt recollection.
It is like if you have ever accidentally slammed a door in your own face. It’s not easy to do, but you’ll remember it if you succeed.
On the first day of spring this year, I had one of those abrupt remembrances.
My New Year’s resolution this year is to get into better physical shape this spring. Unconsciously, of course, I have been getting less and less inclined the closer I get to springtime when I must start fulfilling my commitment to myself.
The truth is this New Year’s resolution has been the same New Year’s resolution I have made each year for over 20 years, but each previous spring I had successfully forgotten that years’s resolution.
Then I stumbled upon one of the sonnets in the book I wrote more than 20 years ago, entitled “Marathon Man.”
This year the door slammed in my face. Coincidentally, it occurred on the first day of spring last week, at a doctor’s appointment when I was told I must start exercising. I had forgotten that over 20 years ago I wrote “Marathon Man.” which made it much worse.
It starts:
The Marathon Man
“In a world of educated guesses
About one’s loves, integrity and health,
It is my custom to keep promises,
Even if they are only to myself.”
This is the perfect example of delusions of grandeur, which I had pleasantly forgotten into a magnificent memory of never committing to exercise, which is regrettably false.
As early as I can remember, I have consistently joked that I was so lazy I played goalie in all sports to avoid running laps. (The coach always shoots on the goalie while the rest of the team runs laps.)
But in my defense, technically being a goalie is not about the commitment to never exercise. It is a commitment not to exercise that I practiced religiously. I never committed to exercise. That’s entirely different.
Nonetheless, I’m highly competitive.
My memory is that I have saved myself from exercise to avoid injury so I will be ready for the senior Olympics when some doctor finally tells me I must exercise.
I have been told this before over 20 years ago when I was the marathon man but still as lazy and competitive as always.
Back then, I challenged a friend who is a very good runner to a 10 K race, but I got a 10-minute reduction of my time as a handicap to even the odds. For about three weeks before the race, I committed to run a mile around the high school track and, as a further commitment, I would eat four raw eggs poured out of a blender because I had seen “Rocky” the movie and Rocky did that.
It didn’t go well, which led to the delusion of grandeur in the form of a marathon. As is indicated in the third stanza:
“I trained on a treadmill, March to July.
Got my first runner’s high at 55.
Depleted my life‘s endorphin supply,
and blew out both knees and begged to die.“
So this time the doctor prescribed a certain number of steps as a target for each day. The doctor reminded me hopefully that it would also get me outdoors and into sunlight neither of which happened.
At the end of every day around midnight, before bed, I would find myself doing endless laps around the dining room table to meet my minimum requirement of steps.
Covid helped me along. My wife, who exercises regularly, proudly told me one evening her total steps and asked me about mine. I had decided to take the day off, so I happily worked and read pretty much all day. My total step count was around 50. Which probably is two trips to the bathroom and one to the kitchen.
Then I ran into this damn poem and I don’t feel good about getting ready for the senior Olympics. I feel my lethargy has not sufficiently ripened.
The sonnet ended with this final couplet:
“Oh yes, but the hell with all this fun;
Next year, for sure, I’ll be ready to run.”
— “An Accidental Diary: A Sonnet a Week for a Year” by Robert Bowie, Jr.
https://a.co/eg2uDCx
That was 20 years ago. No escaping it now. The door slammed in my face.
I guess I better go try to find my shoes.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Mar 18, 2025 | Featured, Humor, Personal, Travel
In Buddhism, there are instances of instant enlightenment brought by shock or surprise.
(I feel it is okay for me to comment on Buddhism and its wisdom as long as I admit to you that I know nothing about it.)
Nonetheless, I offer an example:
There are instances where a monk will slap a student of Buddhism to surprise them or shock them into enlightenment.
I have always worried about this experience of receiving shock and resultant enlightenment ever since I may have accidentally shocked some Buddhists out of their enlightenment.
It all occurred in the second floor men’s room of The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Many years ago, I took a morning plane to Boston dressed travel casual, with my blue suit, white shirt, tie, black socks and black lace-up shoes in my suitcase. I was to attend important meetings that afternoon in Cambridge.
When I got to The Charles Hotel in the early afternoon, I was informed my room was not ready. I had nowhere to change into my suit.
I was told the delay was because the Dalai Lama and his large entourage were staying at the hotel. The Dalai Lama was there to plant a tree in Harvard Yard with the Harvard president and then scheduled to go off to Foxborough to give a message to the masses in the football stadium. Apparently, the hotel was behind schedule because of these new guests.
Since I couldn’t get into my room, my only alternative was to go to the second floor men’s room of The Charles Hotel with my suitcase and haul it into the handicap stall of the public men’s room, where I would have enough room to change.
I put the suitcase on the toilet seat and began to disrobe and change into my business attire.
I hung my suit on the back of the stall door, unpacked my black shoes and pulled out my dark socks, and was starting to put on the white shirt when I heard the unexpected sound of chattering female voices exploding into the men’s room.
There seemed to be a great urgency and effort to bring in two people who were in wheelchairs. One, a very old woman and the other, a very old man. These voices were not in English.
I stood there, stunned with my suit pants in one hand and a black sock in the other and stood listening. It sounded like a kitchen in a busy restaurant.
I tried to peek through the crack in the door, but only saw a flurry of female activity. All I could make out was at least one person, perhaps more, had an urgent need to go to the bathroom.
I waited patiently with my sock and my pants, but nobody was leaving. It was as if everybody, male or female, had to urgently go to the bathroom.
I waited for nearly 10 minutes, but I was late for my meetings, so I had to make a decision about what to do.
I quickly dressed and repacked my suitcase. I decided to open the door and just march straight through this mob of people.
Given the circumstances, this was a very rude thing for me to do, but given the fact that I was in a men’s room, I felt entitled.
With my suitcase in one hand, I pushed open the door and confronted the group.
Instantly, there was stunned silence and, as if my mind were a flash camera, I had a mental picture of as many as 20 colorfully-dressed people staring at me with their mouths open.
There were people staring as they stopped washing their hands. There were people staring as they stopped midway through entering or exiting a stall. Everything was frozen.
Then there was a collective gasp. Not a shriek or anything, just a gasp. I tried to pretend I was invisible as I barreled toward the exit with a sea of bright colors parting on both sides.
I may have caused significant damage. Or, possibly, I shocked some of the entourage into a different vision of enlightenment.
First, it was clearly an emergency of some sort. Somebody had to really go to the bathroom badly and I fear it was an old person.
Second, these were elderly people in wheelchairs and I am not handicapped but I was in a handicap bathroom.
Third, and finally, I consider myself a very sensitive person but even if I had no empathy at all, one must consider reincarnation in all of this.
I offer no excuses. I think there may have been damage done to me, as well. I’m certain my karma is permanently shot. If there is reincarnation, I shudder to think what I will come back as.
So I’ve confessed it. I will also confess that I’m a believer in the “butterfly effect,” which is that every action causes a ripple across the universe.
If anything good comes from this, it is simply that I can warn you to be careful if you run into a similar situation.
You never know when a cosmic event will hit you.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Jan 21, 2025 | General
I am an American, who loves our country, but hates its present polarization. I have not written about politics over the last several months because I have been putting together and marketing my book “The Older You Get the Shorter Your Stories Should Be.” However, any chance at humor will break down my resolve to avoid politics and be politically incorrect.
Today I couldn’t resist the humorous head-on collision of President Trump being sworn in (without his hand on the Bible) at the same spot where almost 50 years ago, Jimmy Carter, a devote Christian, was sworn in as our 39th president. But it got more ironic after Donald Trump was sworn in where four years before he had led an insurrection to overthrow the election that he had lost and, within hours after being sworn in, signed an executive order releasing 1500 people convicted of the insurrection. It made me laugh to think of poor Jimmy rolling over face down, as he lay in state.
Of course, my observation was random this morning because I had been randomly leafing through the section of the book entitled “It Can’t Happen Here” and found, on page 159, “Back to the Future.”
What made me laugh and write this now was a feeling of claustrophobia, which made no sense. I know this is dark and perhaps inappropriate, but we still have to figure out how we can all laugh together again at the absurdity of all this irony.
—
Back to the Future
Last month I took a trip because I wanted to “feel” what it was like to live in WWII Germany and the Soviet Cold War occupation in Czechoslovakia and Poland.
I already knew the dates, places and times from textbooks, but it’s quite different to experience what it was like to have lived during those times.
Of course the trip would come alive in museums and, unexpectedly, it brought back for me a long lost feeling I had years ago when I was just a young boy. I had gotten lost off shore in Buzzards Bay in a small motorboat that was running out of gas on an outgoing tide in thick predawn fog.
It is odd how we learn through memories and association.
How odd that museums, which were about imprisonment, brought back the feeling of drifting out to sea, creating an odd claustrophobia without barriers other than an endless borderless fog.
The claustrophobia slowly kicked in when I visited Checkpoint Charlie, the famous heavily guarded passthrough in the Berlin Wall, which kept the East Germans imprisoned inside.
It started with a set of pictures of a boy who had scrambled to climb the wall in an effort to live in freedom, but the photos chronicled how he had died riddled with bullets, hanging from barbed razor wire near the top of the wall.
How odd that I could feel claustrophobic under wide-open skies?
A few days later, the claustrophobia increased in one of the East German museums that focused on the Nazi SS and their little gray bread trucks. These had no windows, just a sliding door on one side and three closet-sized cells so small that prisoners could not stand but only sit in a narrow chair, hands by their sides, while they were taken to a concentration camp somewhere outside of Berlin.
A few days later as we traveled toward Prague, we stopped at another prison that was three or four stories high with interrogation cells on the top floor. The inmates who would not answer were showed pictures of their family who would be killed if they continued to resist.
Putin had spent six months in the house across the street when he was in Soviet intelligence, attempting to flip the tortured inmates to become Soviet spies.
The claustrophobia wrapped around me in that silent building when I realized what it must have felt like day and night in there. It was missing the noise of slamming cell doors, the echoing screams and the smell of the single bucket in the corner, which acted as a bathroom in each cramped cell, with three to a single bed and no mattress.
I know now why the feeling I had on this trip was claustrophobic but I thought it was still an odd reaction to the history of the past until I realized I had lived my whole life free in a democracy.
All of a sudden, I felt imprisonment under borderless wide open skies as a psychological imprisonment which became unbearable.
All of a sudden, I could feel the last breath of the boy crucified and bleeding from razor wire on the top of a Berlin Wall as a reaction to my claustrophobia and his death.
Years ago, as I slowly ran out of gas in my little boat, I saw the outline of a cliff as the late morning fog broke. There were connected ladders and a climbing set of stairs. I beached the boat and climbed to the top of the cliff and knocked on the door of a little cottage overlooking the ocean.
A woman with the Sunday newspaper tucked under her arm answered the door. I breathlessly asked, “Where am I?” She looked at me quizzically and answered “Menemsha,” then paused, “Martha’s Vineyard,” and then paused again… “The United States of America.”
I remember feeling happy and alive.
—
My only hope is that we can end this polarization with the brilliance of our democracy as we go into the future.
