Looking back, ahead and beyond
Resisting the aging process one Substack at a time
It’s true that I’ve been spending much of the final morning of 2025 catching up with the Ken Burns’ series on the American Revolution. I tried when it was on live but making it to 10 p.m. got to be tough. So I recorded it, meaning to get back to it. And as you can see, it has dazzling effects. (Thanks, Liz! Perfect timing!)
As Burns’ leads us past America’s great triumph at Saratoga, getting the entire British army to surrender - they even had the number of bayonets taken! -- Washington heads to Valley Forge, the war is far from over and even though Washington has screwed up a few times militarily, he finds a way to rope-a-dope and survive.
And I immediately remember something I read somewhere, maybe Gore Vidal, suggesting that as a nation, we were so lucky to have a George Washington, how he was EXACTLY what we needed at that moment in history. Then, when it appears things are about to go awry as the country is ripped apart over slavery (and NOT states rights), we get an Abraham Lincoln.
Then, as the economy flounders, we get Franklin Roosevelt, a born-into-wealth liberal Democrat — IMAGINE SOMEONE BORN INTO WEALTH BEING A DEMOCRAT!) to pull us out of the Great Depression and save the day.
Are we pushing our historical luck to ask for one more savior? What we got sure ain’t it. I’m a bit surprised that he hasn’t altered all American calendars to say “The Year 2026, brought to you by Donald J. Trump, your - and his - favorite President.”
On the last day of a year that was memorable for me in many ways — not all good — it’s a good time to look ahead to 2026, what you hope for, where we might be next year at this time and maybe even imagine your own life as 2027 rolls up before us.
I was very proud and excited over my Substack writing. It was enriching, the response was wonderful and while I don’t know for sure if I’m getting better, it felt like I was, which might be the same thing, after all. There wasn’t a single word that Herman Melville changed in “Moby Dick” when, years after he’d published it, American literary critics decided it was a masterpiece. Same thing happened to Mark Twain with “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” He was so pissed off that some of the critics laid lavish praise on James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales” that he took his knees, ankles, toes out from under him in an absolutely hilarious, relentless attack that is still fun to read. Unless you were somehow related to him.
And in listening to the Burns’ series, how he finds so many wonderfully expressive letters that help tell his story, just as he did with “The Civil War,” you wonder what future generations will do, since nobody writes letters anymore.
We send texts or emails or some poor soul decides to start up a Substack, ends up writing 575 posts on subjects ranging from World Championship Chess to baseball to The Female Brain to Roxy Music to Mark Twain’s courage in making Huck apologize to an African-American, the first time in our literature such an unthinkable thing happened. Or why Bob Dylan was annoyed enough with the future expert musicians The Band to take his skinny little ass to Nashville and stay up to 3 A.M. writing “Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands,” an entire album side. Or why fathers in my childhood were different from today’s Dads. Or how Kurt Vonnegut reminded us to enjoy those precious and fleeting moments when all of life seems to line up for us and we say “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
So I rightfully wonder if, say 10-15 years from now, if Substack will still be around and somebody will stumble something I wrote and like it. Or think about this character who, at 72, is still pumping out Substacks and books - one on Neil Young coming in 2026, starting on one on Springsteen soon? What’s his problem? Or is it his gift? Or curse?
Like all of my readers, I hope for good health in 2026, working on that. A positive, relentless attitude, “I’ve got stuff to do” because, for reasons I don’t and probably won’t ever understand, I still do. A daily reminder to appreciate those close to me, who genuinely care about me and let them know, show them, repeatedly how much they, in turn, mean to me. To be kind, to encourage, to look ahead, beyond even.
My son, though a confirmed if not practicing Catholic, attended a Baptist high school here in town and made some wonderful lifelong friends, played on the varsity baseball team as an eighth grader in the state title game and learned so much, the school’s Pastor at the time was a generous, at times, eloquent speaker, who was a big fan of my son and me, as it turned out. I happened to attend a high school baseball game where his son hit a big home run, I wrote about it and I think Pastor Ray mentioned it every time I saw him over the next 5 or 10 years.
But something he said at John’s final banquet stuck with me. He had spoken beautifully off-the-cuff about the lifelong memories and moments that we’ll carry with us through the rest of our journey here and that they will shape us as we will shape those who follow. And he closed with a bit of a joke or maybe a wish.
“If you go shopping over the holidays, say at Bed Bath and Beyond,” he said. “Get me something from the “Beyond” section.”
The pastor has moved on. So has the store. But that memory lingers. I wonder if we should all be thinking about “The Beyond” section, too.
John Nogowski, shown here in the Mark Twain House in Hartford with his “Teaching Huckleberry Finn” book, has written ten books, his most recent will be a look at Neil Young’s career, due in 2026. Earlier in 2025, he published his second baseball book, “Diamond Duels” - a look at baseball’s greatest historic matchups and previously had written “Last Time Out” about the MLB finale’s of 43 of the game’s greatest players. He’s written extensively on Bob Dylan in his Substack and in 2022, published the third edition of “Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography 1961-2022.” He’s also written about politics: “Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump” about his first job in Nashua, New Hampshire and a fateful newspaper-sponsored disastrous debate that changed the course of American history. All books are available on Amazon. “Diamond Duels” and “Last Time Out” are available locally. And Barnes & Noble has one copy of my Dylan book, if you’re interested. Thanks for reading me, friends. Happy New Year!
We have been stringing words together in order to leave something behind before we even got out of college, John.
What would make anyone think we, at the ripe old age of 70+ would not continue to do it?
For better or worse, we leave the words to posterity - that that's a lot more than many people do.
Happy New Year, My Dear. P
What a good life - and such good words about it. It’s both sunny and a bit snowy here in Philadelphia, I think as good a metaphor for what’s to come. My new years wish: May it be more sunny than snowy to all who gather here!