Otto was helping the rabbi up on the bimah and I, a newcomer to the congregation, whispered to a lady seated in front of me, “Who is that guy?”

“Oh, that’s Otto,” she said. “He’s rabbi Judy’s husband.”

His wife, my new rabbi, was whip-smart in that crunchy, Oberlin way, and from their knowing smiles at each other, I knew they were gloriously in love. My wife, a fellow Poindexter and Birky aficionado, immediately bonded with her. Otto was a regular Joe, and we hit it off as well. My wife and I were brand new to the neighborhood, after decades of Brooklyn, and this couple made us feel right at home. Which was great, for we knew no one.

I soon learned that Otto was a kibitzer in the kindly, but wincingly-bad, dad-joke way. Nevertheless, he was a gitte neshumah. A sweet soul, who never failed to ask about our well-being and slap my back in bonhomie.

When asked, Otto would say that he was in the “underground novelty business”. Alright, he was a Manhattan funeral director. His wife told me that he was in the war, ‘Nam, like a lot of guys in my new nabe. In fact, three guys on my apartment building floor alone are vets of Vietnam. Like Otto, they are the nicest guys you ever want to meet.

Otto handled Agent Orange. What I long-ago learned from the man-boys just back from their tour, back when I was a summer-job pup of a downtown “office boy” in the late 60s and early 70s, was that the soldiers were told that the powerful defoliant was harmless, totally safe, and that — given the oppressive jungle heat and humidity — it was ok to handle 55 gallon drums of it without gloves or other protective gear, and spray it out of their helicopters and C-123s. The idea was to defoliate the vegetation that gave cover to enemy soldiers, thus saving U.S. lives.

According to military.com, 300,000 U.S. soldiers died from exposure to Agent Orange, almost five times as many as the 58,000 who died in combat. Maybe you should Google “dioxin” if you want to learn more.

If you are lucky enough to live long, you come to grok this axiom: a large number of deaths is a statistic; a single death is a tragedy. Otto died of cancer from handling Monsanto’s chemical concoction. Today, July 16th, would have been his 74th birthday, according to Zuckerberg’s social media platform.

So easy would it be to veer off into rants about VA lies, political mendacity, and cancer care detail. Not today, for Otto was not into “woulda, coulda, shoulda.” Today, I prefer to think of a gentle giant of a Real New Yorker who had been through hell, found true love, gave kindness with a whole heart, and — OK — told some of the corniest jokes ever uttered on Planet Earth.

Happy birthday, Otto. I will never forget you.

It’s summer. It’s warm. TIme for fun in the sun, at the beach, the pool, at backyard bbq’s. Roll out those lazy hazy crazy days of summer. Those days of soda, and pretzels, and beer.

And I’m here stuck in a funk. Two-plus years of suspended animation took its toll. Physically, mentally, socially, economically, politically.

What did we lose? We lost family members, some dear, some reviled. But lots and lots of family and friends perished. The bodies piled up, like cordwood. And yet we (ok, I) hear comments from some along the lines of “oh, it really wasn’t that bad, was it?”

WELL WHAT FUCKING PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON????

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bodies-750-covid-19-victims-new-york-city-remain-refrigerated-n1266762

We lost our minds. Cooped up for days on end, working from home, learning at the kitchen table, eyes burning out looking at screens, a 24/7 drumbeat of death.

We lost our jobs. We lost contact with our friends. Sorry, Zoom. The thrill most definitely was gone after a few months of “please mute” and morons fumbling with “share screen”.

We lost civility. (Maybe we never had it? I don’t know anymore.) We lost the notion of national “shared experience” — these days, it’s all a zero-sum game, isn’t it? For me to win, you have to lose, and vice-versa.

Some of us still struggle with agoraphobia. I tense-up before any sort of social gathering. I’m so accustomed to a solipsistic existence. I reflexively reach for a mask before opening the front door, even to take out the trash. I’ve been to the movies a few times. They’ve been nearly empty. And yet I wonder: should I don my N95?

Oh, and then there are the residual physical issues. I can’t get into details, but I think we’ve all got our share.

So, yeah. What we lost? For me, the ability to give a flying eff about summer. Because variants are coming. And new serums are being readied. Because despite what we think/hope/pray/”believe”/hear, this is not gone and it’s not going away.

On July 15, the Brooklyn Writers Space (BWS) will cease to exist.

The Brooklyn Writers Space was a co-working townhouse for those who made their art with words. I lived in Brooklyn for 25 years and mostly wrote my stories, songs, and poems from a tiny bedroom in my apartment, a 1926 Candela-designed residence. Back in the day, it was “the maid’s room”, with a mini-bathroom and postage stamp-sized windows that faced south, towards Union Street. It was dark, dingy, and dirty.

That is to say, the space was miserable enough to encourage myriad excuses to interrupt my writing. Tidy the apartment. Start dinner. Walk the dog. Take a nap.

One day, a few years before I left Brooklyn, a new neighbor mentioned that he worked on his TV scripts at this new place on Garfield Place, to get away from apartment distractions. I called up Scott Adkins, who co-founded BWS with his wife, Erin Courtney. They were two playwrights who founded a safe place for other writers in the area. Scott and I met for a tour and I signed up immediately.

Members got a key, and access to a cubby with a power strip and desk lamp. The space had a “break room” with fridge and coffee machine. There was an area to lounge about, and a roof deck.

I would pack my laptop and my folders full of notes, and tell my wife, “OK, I’m going to the writing monastery.” I’d unlock the door, and a wave of good vibes would wash over my neurons. I’d find a cubby, plug in, and wait for the words to start flowing to my fingers.

Nothing.

But invariably, I’d hear the steady “click click click” of other writers banging away on their laptops and my competitive side would emerge. I’ll show YOU! I’d suddenly feel a rush of words and I’d start my story, or scene, or character backstories.

I’d return to my apartment mentally exhausted, and full of pride from the newfound productivity. There were no household distractions. Creativity wafted through the air, thicker than cigar smoke. I met other writers there, some of them famous. Several of them blurbed my first collection of short fiction, Home Front.

Scott organized group readings of BWS members at local venues. I worked up the nerve and volunteered to read at Union Hall.

The batting order that night had me reading my story right after the award-winning playwright Honor Molloy, who read with great proficiency and with a strong Irish dialect. I planned to read my story that night with dialect as well. I figured I was sunk.

Molloy killed. No surprise. She’s a master. I had to up my game. Good news. I, too, killed. Great applause. Great post-event feedback from the packed house. BWS did this for me. It helped me break through my self-doubt regarding my tales. My work resonated. My work belonged.

I kept writing.

After a few years, Brooklyn was no longer viable for us. We passed the baton to a new generation of residents and moved to a leafy quadrant of The Bronx. Thanks to BWS, the training wheels came off my writing. I no longer needed a dedicated space to find “the zone”. To this day, I simply look out the window of my home office and let my brain go off-leash. Et voila. The characters tell me what they want to say and I take dictation for them.

I don’t know why Scott and Erin decided to close BWS. Maybe their lives as gifted playwrights took them away from Brooklyn. Maybe the business model doesn’t work for local writers in a post-pandemic world.

All I know is that BWS introduced me to a gang of talented writers — and I’m still in touch with them to this very day. The space hot-wired my brain to the point where I’ve written Home Front, A Shoebox Full of Money, Robert’s Rules of Innovation (Book I and II), and where I’ve ghost-written three other books. Plus, I’m coming down the home stretch on my third short story collection, which should be ready for take-off in 2024.

Good luck to Scott and Erin, and to all the writers who harnessed the positive energy of BWS to sharpen their skills and share their stories with the world. It was a brilliant idea, and it midwifed a hell of a lot of super work. I’ll always fondly remember my long afternoons at the Writing Monastery. Good work, guys.