Ken Trainor

Is love arduous work — or is it an art? Psychologist/philosopher Erich Fromm focused on the latter in his 1956 classic, The Art of Loving, one of the books that formed the foundation of much of what I believe about life and living (the others were Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and I and Thou by Martin Buber).

Daffodils have declared an early spring, their tendril shoots rising from unfrozen soil, their version of holding a finger to the wind, to gauge whether it’s safe to emerge. Snow drops are already up and flowered, but they seem to withstand anything the late-winter throws at them. Robins scour the softened soil in Scoville Park for worms, but that’s no marker of spring; they spend the winter here now. Just another sign of climate change.

On my way to meeting a friend at Whirlwind Coffee last Thursday morning, I had misgivings. Maybe I should have stayed home and focused on the talk about my book, the one about finding “True Community,” which I was presenting that afternoon at the Brookdale Senior Living facility. Instead it became my talk as I walked east on Pleasant Street, and spotted a crowd of people on the corner of Euclid and Pleasant and another a block further on Wesley.

Last week, I traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles to see Chicago (the musical). That wasn’t all we did, and it wasn’t my reason for being there. I visit L.A. every year to reconvene with friends because, once in a while, you need more than phone calls and email. We touch base and reach a level of sharing that only happens face to face with plenty of time spent leisuring in interesting spaces. It’s fun and fulfilling. We’ve been doing it for a dozen years.

When I think about Marc Blesoff, what springs to mind is the world’s largest Jewish leprechaun. Possibly the world’s only Jewish leprechaun. Marc, who writes the Conscious Aging column in our Viewpoints section each month, celebrated his 75th birthday last week at ComedyPlex on Lake Street. It tells you a lot about Marc that he would celebrate at a comedy club, but it fits. Living three-quarters of a century is an achievement worth celebrating. Doing so with your sense of humor intact and without losing your exuberance for living is an even greater achievement, but that’s Marc, whose purpose in life (at this stage) is to give aging a good name.

I saw all 10 of the Best Picture nominees this year, just as I did last year. I’m a film buff, so I watch a lot of movies, many of them more than once. Some I never tire of — films I would want to have if marooned on an island (like Cast Away, which almost made my list).

As of Sunday, a lovely star magnolia was in full bloom, brilliant white against the orange brick backdrop of the building across the street. It has been a long winter/spring hybrid season these last three months, and the flowers have done their best, emerging into a roller-coaster ride of fluctuating temperatures. But this fragile tree bided time, paced its blossoming, and seems to be none the worse for wear.

While people were yelling at each other in Oak Park Village Hall last Tuesday night during the village board meeting, an audience in Lund Auditorium at Dominican University were treated to a clinic on civil discourse titled, “Two Dads Defending Democracy,” sponsored by Growing Community Media and moderated by Sheila Solomon, a member of GCM’s board of directors, who brought her calm demeanor to the proceedings, just in case it got out of hand.

The new film, Civil War is not light viewing, but it’s a film every American (and all Americans are the right “kind of American”) should see — in the same way most Americans watched the TV film The Day After in 1983, which changed attitudes about nuclear brinkmanship.

Early light invades my bedroom. It’s mid-May and light rules. I wake to the insistent recital of a robin perched somewhere outside my window — on the adjacent leafy maple perhaps or maybe the black locust across the street, its bark waiting to be bathed by the rising sun, its branches on the verge of flowering with heavenly fragrance.