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New story: THE WITCHES OF HARMONY

I am drawn to foreign locations. Some of you know that I’m an avid, lifelong student of foreign languages.

At the same time, travel involves many unknowns. There is a lot that can go wrong… especially if you encounter supernatural entities at your destination.

That’s the idea behind my Terrifying Travels series.

The most recent addition to the series is THE WITCHES OF HARMONY, which involves restless 17th-century spirits in the fictional Greater Boston town of Harmony, Massachusetts. Check it out on Amazon.

Amazon book description:

Some business trips are better left unbooked.

Bill Preston has spent years traveling the country for his job, working trade shows in convention centers from one coast to the other. So when he’s assigned to an industrial expo in Harmony, Massachusetts, he expects another routine week on the road.

Then a coworker warns him about Harmony.

He won’t say exactly what happened there. Only that he never wants to go back.

Bill soon discovers that Harmony is a picture-perfect New England town with a history no one wants to discuss. There are whispered stories about witches who escaped the Salem trials—only to meet a more terrible fate in Harmony.

There are warnings not to go outside after dark.

And there are things in Harmony that only certain people can see.

Bill considers himself a rational man. He doesn’t believe in witches, ghosts, or ancient curses.

But something in Harmony has noticed him.

And before this business trip is over, Bill may discover that some places never escape their past.

The Witches of Harmony is a supernatural horror tale of haunted history, business travel, and a New England town with a secret it has been keeping for more than three hundred years.

Don’t Stop for Gas in Zombie Country: a short story

There are still plenty of places in Ohio where you can get off the interstate and, within twenty minutes, find yourself on a narrow country road surrounded by woods, fields, old houses, and small towns.

Those are the places I often have in mind when I write horror.

I’ve always thought that familiar, ordinary settings make some of the best settings for supernatural fiction. An abandoned castle is already creepy. So is a ruined monastery at midnight. The writer doesn’t have to do much work to convince you that something frightening might happen there.

But what about the gas station you’ve passed dozens of times? Or an old country graveyard beside a two-lane road? What about a patch of woods that looks perfectly harmless at four o’clock in the afternoon—but considerably less inviting as the sun begins to go down?

That’s the territory of “Don’t Stop for Gas in Zombie Country,” the short horror story in the video above.

The setup is deliberately simple: an ordinary trip through the Ohio countryside, an inconvenient need for gasoline, and a small rural gas station.

Then things begin to go wrong.

This is also the kind of story I’ve been exploring in my Uncanny Ohio series: macabre tales built around Ohio places, local history, forgotten corners, and the unsettling possibility that the ordinary landscape around us may contain things we don’t quite understand.

The current stories in the series include Involuntary Deeds, Family Secrets, and The Woman in Crosley Tower, and Eleven Miles of Night.

All three are available at Amazon and can also be read through Kindle Unlimited.

But for now, you don’t need a Kindle. Just watch the video above.

And the next time you’re driving through the Ohio countryside late in the day, you might want to keep an eye on the gas gauge.

-ET

The demand side of the porn equation?

Yet another story about a woman who was fired from her day job, after it was discovered that she had a lucrative side hustle as a suburban porn maker.

Heather Boyd, a married, 37-year-old mother of four, made adult content under the pseudonym “Hella Hot Wife.” When her entrepreneurial side hustle came to light, she was fired from her CNA job.

Please note: I am not “outing” Boyd. She has volunteered to appear on an upcoming TLC special entitled “Double Lives of Suburban Wives”. The show will feature interviews with married women who balance ordinary jobs and/or motherhood with autoporning on websites like OnlyFans.

Nor am I here to judge. At least—I’m not here to judge the women who do this.

I do, however, have some genuine questions about the almost exclusively male, demand side of this equation. The “easy money” of OnlyFans has been overhyped in recent years. (The average online adult content creator makes only about $180 per month.) But there is no doubt that some of these women are making huge sums. There is also no doubt that millions of men around the world are tuning in, credit cards in one hand and something else in the other.

This is what I don’t understand. I could understand the demand side, perhaps, if these OnlyFans models were engaged in the world’s oldest profession, providing in-person sexual favors for a fee. But these women are not doing “sex work,” as is so often alleged. What they are doing is better described as “titillation work.”

This is Lucy removing the football just before Charlie Brown can kick the football. It’s a grand tease, men sending digital dollars to women who are hopelessly beyond their reach. Are there really that many desperate, onanistic men in the world? Apparently so.

I would never assert that I am “entitled” to sex with any woman, including the aforementioned Heather Boyd. But if I can’t have it, please don’t wave it in my face. I would gain no satisfaction from having a sexual experience dangled before me on a computer screen—especially for a fee. The male enablers of the OnlyFans boom are sad cases, indeed.

-ET

Shariah law fails Economics 101

One of the nice things about the pre-internet world was that the foolishness of teenagers and young adults was usually restricted to small audiences. But now we have Gen Z social media influencers. Canyon Mimbs is a 22-year-old convert to Islam who wants to tell the world what he knows–or thinks he knows.

Theology is not my bailiwick. Like Elizabeth I, I do not seek to make windows into men’s souls. But economics is another matter.

Young Mr. Mimbs advocates for shariah law in the USA. Well, why not? Half of Gen Z is joining the DSA, if you believe the internet. There are any number of reasons why shariah law would be incompatible with our American system, but in this post, I’ll focus on one: shariah’s prohibition on interest. Continue reading “Shariah law fails Economics 101”

Caveat emptor and toy soldiers in the 1970s

If you were a comics-reading kid in the 1970s, then you likely remember this full-page Lucky Products ad from the period.

100-pc toy soldier set!

Made of durable plastic!

Each with its own base!

And all of this for a mere $1.75 (roughly $9 to $15 in today’s money, depending on the year).

Many young boys, including some of my friends, ordered the toy soldier sets. They were inevitably disappointed by what they received in the mail, five to six weeks later. While there were a hundred toy soldiers, they were so tiny as to require tweezers to move around. A kid could not really play with such things in any meaningful way.

Was Lucky Products engaged in fraud? Not really. But this was what we might have called a sharp practice. The company deliberately excluded any mention of the sizes of the toy soldiers. And they certainly weren’t going to include any scale photographs in their ads.

Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. Although I enjoyed playing with toy soldiers as a kid and I saw the Lucky Products ad many times, I was never seriously tempted to send away for this set.

My innate skepticism had already set in by an early age. Part of that no doubt was characteristic of my generation. But I have always been an extremely wary buyer. If something sounds too good to be true, then it usually is. I intuitively grasped that even at the age of nine.

-ET

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health and the question of guilt

Lindsay Clancy is the Massachusetts woman who killed her three children. In any normal society, this would make her an instant pariah.

But this is Massachusetts we’re talking about. Child killing is all the rage in Massachusetts, where abortion was recently made legal until birth. Even as Lindsay Clancy is on trial, her exoneration has become a “cause” among progressive feminist factions of the Bay State. Hundreds of supporters, overwhelmingly women, recently rallied outside the courthouse in support of Clancy—who strangled her young children to death with exercise bands.

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health at the time of the murders is the crux of the debate—and the trial. Here are the basic arguments for the two sides: Continue reading “Lindsay Clancy’s mental health and the question of guilt”

The excesses of dog culture

Consider this recent story from Arizona:

“Woman nearly loses arm in attack by foster dog she saved from euthanasia”

I will freely admit that the excesses of 21st-century dog culture are trying my patience. I just don’t get it.

During my growing up years (the 1970s and 1980s), dog ownership was relatively rare, and most people understood that dogs were potentially dangerous animals.

In the past few decades, dog adoration has become something of a secular cult that crosses both demographic and political lines. People now anthropomorphize dogs and even want to take them in restaurants. In my suburban neighborhood, entitled dog owners form a daily procession with their pooping, barking, nipping beasts.

I actually like dogs (though I don’t understand the current, cultish devotion to them). But we need to return to common sense and moderation where dogs are concerned—especially the dangerous breeds.

-ET

The University of Cincinnati and my fiction

I attended the University of Cincinnati between the summer of 1987 and the early summer of 1991, and it is there that I earned my degree in economics. I arrived at UC in a circuitous fashion, and against my better judgment.

I started at Northern Kentucky University in the fall of 1986. NKU was just across the river from where my parents lived. (I was a commuter student throughout my college years.)

NKU provided an extremely pleasant educational experience—at least in those days. NKU had small classes, attentive professors, and a comfortable suburban/semi-rural environment. Oh, and parking was a breeze, too—no small matter when you’re a commuter student.

And of course, I was too foolish to know a good situation when I had it.

I can partly blame the 1980s. Those were placid, commonsense times, especially when compared to the chaotic cesspool that is the American culture of today.

A common trope in teen movies of the 1980s is the bored suburban/small-town teen whose life is so calm and satisfactory that he spends the first part of the movie waiting around for something exciting to happen. You can observe this trope in Risky Business, The Last American Virgin, Footloose, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

As a student at Northern Kentucky University in the 1986-87 academic year, I knew that the University of Cincinnati was an edgier, more tumultuous environment.

To begin with, UC was more than three times as large as NKU. UC was located in the inner city. UC was more “diverse.” (This was not a term that we used in the 1980s, but we understood the concept.)

UC—in the words of one of my friends—was also “a pain in the ass.” The daily commute was twice as long. Parking was a nightmare. Classes were frequently large, and so overenrolled that you might not get in.

I found the inner-city environment to be wretched rather than stimulating. On my drive home in the afternoons, I occasionally passed streetwalkers and drug deals in progress. The area around UC—both then and now—is a high-crime area. The campus itself was safe enough, but students were sometimes assaulted and robbed in the off-campus perimeter.

I briefly contemplated a return to NKU. But by the time I realized that I had made a mistake in coming to UC, I was already stuck there.

This was because of the way that NKU and UC allotted credits. At that time, NKU was on a semester system and UC was on a quarter system. As a result, NKU credits had a high exchange rate when transferred to UC’s system; but when transferring in the opposite direction, you would invariably lose credits.

So I finished my degree at the University of Cincinnati. The experience was far from a total loss, and not only because I earned a four-year degree. At the age of nineteen, I really had spent all of my life in sheltered, suburban, and (let’s be blunt about this) all-white environments. My years at the University of Cincinnati taught me to thrive beyond those confines—a skill that would serve me well in future years, when I entered some much rougher environments.

My time at UC also gave me a sense of gratitude—for the many unearned blessings that had been given to me by a mere accident of birth. These realizations brought both maturity and humility.

Looking back on it all almost 40 years later, I regard my years at UC as beneficial ones. I was there between the ages of 19 and 22. These are the young-adult formative years. It should not be surprising, then, that the University of Cincinnati shows up in my fiction. Below are the major and cameo appearances of the University of Cincinnati in my novels and short stories:

No Sure Thing

Set in 1988, this young adult novel includes many scenes on or around the UC campus of the late 1980s. While I have taken some liberties regarding professors’ names, etc., No Sure Thing provides an authentic look at the UC of the late Reagan era.

The Woman in Crosley Tower

This dark fantasy/light horror parallel worlds novella is set on the University of Cincinnati campus in the summer of 1987. In this story, one of the university’s actual buildings is the heart of the supernatural setting.

Eleven Miles of Night

This horror novel is set in 2013 and is not primarily about the University of Cincinnati. Two UC students, however, are major characters. There are multiple scenes set on campus.

Hay Moon and Other Stories

At least one story in my first short story collection, “Gaia Cried Out,” takes place partly on the UC campus.

***

I am not nostalgic about the University of Cincinnati in the conventional sense. I do not attend alumni events. Nor do I attend UC’s football or basketball games.

The university is, however, often my go-to location when I need a campus setting, especially one set in the 1980s. Thirty-five years have passed since I was last a student at the University of Cincinnati, and I’m still writing about it. UC will probably appear again in future stories.

-ET

21st-century obesity rates vs the buckle-down culture of the 1980s

@kwbogen

Also whyte supremacy. All bodies are good bodies but let’s not pretend we aren’t all being sold something. Exclusivity creates a marketplace.

♬ original sound – kwbogen

K.W. Bogen, an author/influencer, declares in a public video that the commonly cited male preference for thin/fit women is a conspiracy of corporations and white supremacy.

Because isn’t everything a conspiracy of corporations and white supremacy nowadays? No doubt the patriarchy had a hand in it all, as well.

Ms. Bogen then goes on to show us her figure (about which I will refrain from comment). She asserts that thinness is “really, really difficult to achieve” without “starving oneself” or taking drugs. (I assume she is referring to Ozempic, though I can’t be certain.)

First things first. Many men do prefer thin, fit women. A smaller percentage prefer women who are “pleasingly plump”. A very small percentage actively seek out heavyset women. (This last group of men is rare; but they do exist.)

But what men like is not the central issue here. On that point, at least, I think Ms. Bogen and I may be in agreement—though for entirely different reasons. Continue reading “21st-century obesity rates vs the buckle-down culture of the 1980s”

Nightclub height requirements for men, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

The other day my Facebook feed informed me that a nightclub in Brixton, London held a party earlier this year to which men under the height of 6 feet were barred from entry. The event was called “Land of the Giants.”

And they were serious about the height requirement. Men—and only men—were measured at the door.

The event sold out, but social media opinions were divided. Supporters argued that this was really no different from height filters on popular dating apps. Opponents assailed the height requirement as exclusionary.

I am 5’10” tall. I therefore would have been turned away at the door. Perhaps I should be upset about this. (That’s obviously what Facebook’s algorithm was hoping for.) But I don’t do much clubbing in Brixton, London. (I live in Ohio, after all.) And at my current age of 58, well… I guess I don’t regard this as a personally pressing matter.

The height requirement is tacky. But if a woman really must have a man capable of playing guard on a professional basketball team… “Who am I to judge?” as the late Pope Francis once said.

As sexual beings, we are entitled to like what we like, so long as we confine our liking to consenting adults. Women are entitled to fetishize height. Men are equally entitled to fetishize youth, thinness, and thigh gaps.

The question is not what we are entitled to do, but—perhaps—what we should do. Continue reading “Nightclub height requirements for men, and the Law of Unintended Consequences”

Frank Beard and memories of ZZ Top

I was among that first generation of adolescents to discover MTV in the early 1980s. If you were 14 years old in 1982, as I was, MTV was really great stuff.

The ZZ Top videos were among the best. The music itself was catchy. But ZZ Top’s MTV videos often portrayed short stories, often with fantasy elements.

Among the most memorable of these was “Legs” (1983). “Legs” is essentially a miniature fairy tale, set in 1980s America. The video also features cameo appearances by two Playboy Playmates—Jeana Tomasino and Kymberly Herrin. What could be more 80s than that?

But the members of the band, by then men in their early middle age, also provided a distinctive visual trademark to every ZZ Top production.

ZZ Top was a three-man band from Houston, Texas. They had no pretensions of being glam rockers. The guitarist and bassist, Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill, both sported long beards that made them look like refugees from the Texas Hill Country of some prior decade.

Frank Beard, the drummer, was ironically the only member of the band who did not have a beard. Frank Beard passed away yesterday at the age of 77.

***

My research tells me that Beard was preceded in death by Dusty Hill in 2021. (Hill was 72.)

I’m not going to pretend that either death was a personal loss. But these two men, though strangers, contributed significantly to the pop culture tapestry of my formative years. That pop culture was, on the whole, more upbeat and vibrant than the one we are forced to endure today.

I’m glad that the marketplace rewarded both Beard and Hill for their musical prowess while they were still alive. ZZ Top peaked in popularity decades ago. But their music videos have aged well and are still available on YouTube.

Frank Beard, 77. R.I.P.

-ET

Rush, Rolling Stone, and the Anika Nilles clarification

Most of us never expected Rush to tour again. And then it happened. The band’s 2026 Fifty Something tour has met with wide acclaim.

This has resulted in Rush getting more attention than it got during its heyday. One such accolade is the appearance of the band’s two surviving founders—Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee—on the cover of Rolling Stone.

I understand that this represents something of a milestone, even for a band that has been famous for decades. I have never cared a hoot about Rolling Stone magazine; but I am a longtime fan of Rush.

According to the backstory I have read on the internet, Rush was previously persona non grata at Rolling Stone magazine, for either musical or (perhaps) political reasons.

Since this was apparently such a big deal among Rush fans, the Rolling Stone cover did make the rounds on social media. That meant comments, of course.

Among the most persistent comments I saw in such threads were remarks like, “Where is Anika?” or “Anika Nilles should have been on the cover, too.” Continue reading “Rush, Rolling Stone, and the Anika Nilles clarification”

Aging rockers and what they can teach us

I was a teenager in the 1980s, and I’m still a fan of the popular music of that era. This summer a number of the rock acts that I grew up with have gone on tour. That’s rather amazing when you think about it. Four decades have passed since I was listening to these same musicians as a suburban teen. I just turned 58, and most of these musicians are now well into their seventies.

This is a phenomenon worth examining not merely for nostalgia’s sake, but for what it can teach us about aging and longevity.

Let’s start with Rush. Rush was founded in 1968, the year I was born. The band had its commercial breakout a few years after that in the mid-1970s, when I was in primary school. I was a huge fan of Rush during their second heyday of the mid-1980s. (Rush remains my all-time favorite band.)

Following the death of Neil Peart in 2020, Rush hired the comparatively youthful (43) Anika Nilles to fill in as their drummer. But guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee are 72 and 73, respectively.

I watched footage of Rush’s 2026 tour on YouTube and other social media platforms. I’ll begin with the now obligatory observation that yes, Anika Nilles is an amazing drummer, and as good a fill-in for Neil Peart as could reasonably have been expected. But Alex and Geddy seem to have lost little in recent decades. Rush’s music, we should not forget, is technically demanding to perform live. But these two septuagenarians are performing as well as they ever did.

There was, of course, one fly in the ointment. A few concert dates had to be postponed because Geddy Lee was suffering from acute laryngitis and bronchitis. Another thing about touring with a rock band: life on the road is physically demanding—no matter what music you’re playing.

As a counterexample, there is David Lee Roth, the former frontman of Van Halen. At age 71, Roth is a shadow of his former self. He canceled his tour this summer without completing it for unspecified reasons. The most probable reasons, however, were weak ticket sales and negative fan reactions.

David Lee Roth received a lot of criticism for his almost painful-to-watch performances. But David Lee Roth has reached an age when most men are traditionally sedentary grandfathers. We also have to remember that during his salad days he set the bar very high. Anyone who recalls Van Halen’s performances from the 1970s and 1980s will also recall his onstage gymnastics. It simply isn’t possible for a man in his seventies to measure up to that.

Somewhere in the middle are AC/DC and Def Leppard.

Def Leppard’s lead singer, Joe Elliott, is 67 years old. He is no longer the trim, energetic young man who captivated MTV audiences in the 1980s. His voice is still serviceable, but there’s no doubt that time has taken its toll.

All of the vintage members of AC/DC, on the other hand, are now in their seventies. The lead singer, Brian Johnson, was born in 1947. That makes him one year younger than my father—and I’m pushing 60. It is still fun to watch AC/DC perform live. But once again, time has left its mark.

I reiterate: playing live rock and roll on stage in a major commercial venue is both physically and mentally demanding. Most of the population could never do it, regardless of age.

What can we learn from the above examples? First of all, the definition of old has definitely changed. If you take care of yourself both physically and mentally, you can keep going for a long, long time.

But that doesn’t mean that any of us is about to become immortal—or that time no longer counts. No matter how well you take care of yourself, it’s impossible to be at 75 what you were at 35. That’s simply the constraints of time and human biology, which get us all in the end. 

-ET

**View THE WOMAN IN CROSLEY TOWER on Amazon**

When every other email is a scam

This morning I received an email from a co-chair of Warner Bros. Entertainment. In the subject line of the email, she informed me that she wanted to option the movie rights to one of my books.

The immediate problem? The book won’t be released for another month. It is currently listed on Amazon as a preorder. I haven’t sent out review or ARC copies. Nor do I use so-called “beta readers.” So unless the co-chair of Warner Bros. Entertainment somehow gained access to my personal files, there is no way she could have read the book in question.

The email also came from a Gmail account. Gmail accounts have unfortunately become synonymous with this kind of scam email in recent years. I say “unfortunately” because in the past, Gmail was regarded as one of the more reputable email services.

Scam emails are nothing new on the internet, of course. As far back as the late 1990s, many of us would receive scam emails claiming to represent the Nigerian lottery. All we had to do was forward our banking information so that the lottery officials in Lagos could deposit the amount that we’d won. So easy!

But AI enables internet scammers to personalize their messages. Authors—most of whom have their contact information online—have become salient targets. A scammer can set up an AI agent that scrapes book descriptions from the internet. Then the same AI can craft and send emails that seem semi-legitimate.

I was (very) briefly fooled by one such scam earlier this year. I received a Gmail message from an author in one of the genres in which I write. He claimed to have read one of my books and greatly admired it. In this case the book had been out for a while and found some readership. That was the first element of believability.

The scammer also did not purport to be Stephen King, John Grisham, or another celebrity author well known to the general public. The impersonated author had received some media attention in the United Kingdom, but would generally be unknown to American audiences or people who are not avid readers.

The email, moreover, seemed genuine. The content of the message suggested that its originator had indeed read one of my books and was at least familiar with the basics of the theme and plot.

What did I do? I replied. I thanked the author for having read my book and taking the time to send me an email. I made a vague promise to check out one of his books. I assumed that would be the end of the matter.

But then I received a reply only hours later. The slightly famous author wanted to know details about my writing process. How did I come up with my brilliant ideas, and develop them so beautifully?

At this point, my built-in BS detector went off. On a hunch, I checked the author’s website. The author maintained a blog and his most recent post indicated that someone had been impersonating him and sending out fake emails in his name. So that was that.

When authors are targeted, such frauds are usually long plays. The aim is to gain trust, and then convince the dupe to spend a large sum of money on a specious PR agency or promotional scam—which will inevitably be based in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or South Asia.

How many authors are fooled by such scams? Well, I replied to one such email once. Spend a week in any writing forum on Facebook, and you’ll spot a post by at least one individual who declares—breathlessly and not nearly dubiously enough—that John Grisham or Stephen King has emailed them to ask them what they’re working on. I suspect that most would-be victims smell a rat before sending money. But phishing scams in general still have a success rate of 2.7 to 5 percent, according to recent statistics.

Once again, it is important to keep in mind how AI has changed the nature of scamming. It is no longer necessary for tricksters to rely on lowest-common-denominator contrivances like overseas lottery claims. A clever scammer can now personalize a phishing scam for each one of us. And with AI, he can do that at scale.

This new landscape of online fraud has affected my behavior. I don’t give my personal email address out to anyone new anymore under any circumstances. When I absolutely must give out an email address as a consumer, I use one of several throwaway accounts that I have developed and set up solely for such purposes.

The email address on my author website likewise is a throwaway account that I use as a buffer. If I determine that an email sent to this account is legitimate, I will then reply via my regular author email address. (Note: I did not reach this stage of trust with the aforementioned scammer who claimed to be the British author.)

And I haven’t even mentioned the most pernicious email scam of all. There are millions of AI agents on the internet that are trying to break into our personal email accounts every minute of every day. Their aim is to use our email accounts to gain access to our banking information. Or—in lieu of that—to use our email accounts to send out more scam emails to more unwary souls.

Which brings us to email marketing. During the initial internet boom of twenty-five years ago, an entire cottage industry developed around email marketing. The B2B and B2C online marketing spaces are filled with claims that email marketing is still just as profitable as it was in 2001 or 2005.

The writing and publishing world is filled with vendors and consultants whose business models are based on email marketing. “Build your mailing list!” they declare, as they attempt to sell you a system for luring potential readers through a labyrinthine email funnel.

If you’re selling or marketing anything legitimately, an email list is probably still worth having and maintaining. But it’s also important to realize that the online environment has changed since 2001 or 2005. I know many adults who have eliminated email entirely, relying instead on their smartphones and text messages (game-changing innovations that did not exist in 2001 or 2005) for all online communications.

When every other email message is a scam, we’re all just a lot more wary of email.

-ET

On turning 58

I write this post upon turning 58. To be precise, my 58th birthday is August 9.

This birthday marks a peculiar milestone. I have now reached an age at which I can remember my grandfather.

I passed this milestone with my father decades ago. My parents are only twenty-two years my senior, so I can remember my father at the age of twenty-nine.

But my grandfather? My grandfather was a World War II veteran who experienced the Great Depression. He was truly from a different time.

And yet… my grandfather, born in October 1921, turned 58 in October 1979. I was in the sixth grade then; but I remember late 1979 quite well.

***

This is the point where many people would suggest that fifty or perhaps even sixty (since I’m very close to that milestone too) is the new thirty—or perhaps the new forty. I’ll spare you such bravado. 60 is not the new 30 or the new 40. 60 is 60. And 58 is 58.

That said, I’m relatively fortunate insofar as my health. I’m a lifelong runner and weightlifter, and I’m in reasonably good shape. I’m not going to say that I don’t feel my age at all. But I feel it, I suspect, less than the average man my age.

***

The real problem with reaching this age is not that one feels old, but that the world feels old. I miss times that were more to my liking (even if they were less technologically convenient). I miss many people who are no longer here.

We all eventually reach the stage where the past becomes more important than the future. I suppose I have reached that point. This doesn’t imply a death wish, a state of despair, or a complete indifference to the present or the future.

It does, however, mean that I’ve become a temporal foreigner. I can operate in this era—for the most part—but if I had my choice… I would be somewhere else. Or sometime else.

I suspect that this is part of the normal process of aging. An indifference to the future prepares one for the inevitable day when one will no longer be part of the present. At 58, my journey is more than halfway over. I don’t expect to live to age 116, after all.

I’d like to stretch it out just a little bit longer. But whether that “little bit longer” means three years or 30 years, I’m already grateful. I’ve been blessed with a very good life—better than most.

Wherever you find yourself on your journey, I wish you happy trails, even though it’s my birthday we’re talking about. That’s another thing about being this old. Birthdays are kind of old hat now, too.

-ET