The Insider’s editor tells me that people still ask about the Grammarnator and that it might be fun to give readers a rundown on what I’ve been up to lately. That’s fun for me, certainly, but I’ll leave it to readers to decide if they really believe that all lives are inherently interesting.
Since leaving Concord High after 34 years in the English department, and The Insider after about a year as its nitpicker on grammar and usage, I put my movie knowledge to work behind the counter at Cinema 93, the perfect part-time job for someone who had created Concord High’s film study course back in 1971. I’ve known Barry Steelman, former owner of Cinema 93, since my reviewing days for the Monitor in the early 80s, and I was happy to join my store of film knowledge to his much larger one. Alas, for Concord but not for himself, since he is happily ensconced at Red River Theatres, Barry sold off his inventory and closed up shop in June of 2009.
I’ve been unemployed for 18 months, which hasn’t changed my domestic life, since, to my wife’s great pleasure, I’ve always done the shopping and cooking and washing of clothes.
The lack of a job – and the regular arrival of checks from the New Hampshire Retirement System and the Social Security Administration – has meant more time for travel, something nearly non-existent in my life before retirement. My wife and I take short jaunts to places like Portland, Maine, Newport, R.I., Montreal, and Hyde Park in London, and we spent 15 days in France in 2009, splitting our time between Paris and Provence, where the Roman ruins are something to behold. We are planning to return to Paris for a week next year.
On my own, and once with Chris MacLeod, who began his distinguished Concord High career the same year that I did, I have been to Civil War sites in seven states – and, of course, did lots of reading before setting out. This year I made two trips with Road Scholar (an educational travel company formerly called Elderhostel) and visited New York City to see opera at the Met, and Munich, Vienna and Prague last month, with a brief stopover in London on the way back.
To my surprise, I loved Munich most. It’s a great city for strolling that seemed more alive and less touristy than the others. And it had the English Garden, four times the size of Central Park and designed by Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, Concord’s very own Tory refugee.
I still see about 150 movies a year and read 60 to 70 books. The life of the mind, fortunately, goes on, and the body is certainly getting around. To retire may literally mean to pull back, but like many I know, I don’t think of myself as disengaged at all. I do a little volunteering at the library, work as a ward supervisor at elections, and will be teaching a short course on 50s movies at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in the spring. Life is good, and retirement is the best thing ever invented.
