Cuckoo for Creatives

Back to school night - Twain biography - Remembering my uncle

I wrote this at the beginning of the school year, right around the time I joined Substack.

My uncle had just passed away — he was a creative, professionally, and would likely appreciate a lot of what I’m doing here — and what you’re doing here, too.

He would’ve loved this place.

Suffice it to say, he was a good dude.

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We recently went to back-to-school night for the 4th graders, and we learned the curriculum and intentions for the school year.

We learned that 4th grade is the year when students learn to write structured essays, which I figured entailed the intersection of seemingly disconnected storylines woven into a meandering, if occasionally artful, narrative, but apparently the accepted way to write is to just take three bullet points and talk about them in sequence, effectively stating a notion then repeating that notion and then repeating it again just in case you didn’t get the gist the first few times you read through the impossibly tedious essay.

Have fun with that, kids!

We also learned that the best study setup for a kid is with a desk, a chair, a snack and an analog clock in sight.

The digital clock doesn’t surface the sense of progress, though in the classroom they made use of both an analog and digital clock to different means.

Gamification works.

These teachers think of almost everything.

I continued to peruse the classroom looking for a third type of clock, perhaps the most important of all, but even after looking high and low, I didn’t see one.

For those special moments of the day, or for the most special of days…

Where does the teacher keep the cuckoo clock?

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I recently finished the Twain biography by Ron Chernow, which did not bat a thousand (in fact, it missed by quite a bit), but I finished it anyway.

Twain’s course from being born a southerner to becoming a mostly evolved northerner was the winning narrative for me – in part to show how people change over time and how perspectives are formed, developed, then decay.

We live in a time where the snapshot is given credence over the big picture, which eliminates most of the meaning one could derive from anyone’s or any story’s journey.

In 2025, there is no moral to the story, no lesson to form, no understanding of the whole.

There’s a soundbyte. And then another soundbyte.

Then we draw a linear regression line through the bullet points of whatever soundbytes got through and voila, we have a belief, or a normalized belief, whether it makes sense to have it or not.

(Whether linear regression was the appropriate method to apply for the dataset or not.)

It isn’t clear whether we’re aware of what’s happening to us, or of what we’re losing.

Giving ourselves the space to feel ambiguity is how we learn:

The people we were aren’t the people we are.

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I liked my uncle.

His name was Ron and for as long as I knew him he had a long black ponytail and basically no hair on top, which he somehow made stylish and/or I have no taste when it comes to men’s hairstyles and you should make your own decision on whether this could possibly be fashionable.

I thought it worked.

Ron was probably around from nearly the beginning, from blobby to baby to toddler, but I don’t start remembering much until reaching “child.”

What I do remember is a warm, funny, man, an advertising creative, holding court for friends & family on Jewish holidays, a showrunner who knew how to get the room laughing, singing, and through the end of a ceremony festively and with no complaints.

The Carmel household was a warm one.

On occasion, we played tennis, which Ron was clearly good at, and he knew how to hit spin shots well and tortured us kids with unpredictable bounces.

Another slice, another one-sided laugh.

Very funny, Uncle Ron.

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When I was a tween, my uncle & I went to a women’s exhibition match in downtown Baltimore to see Martina Navratilova and Pam Shriver, among other stalwarts of the day. I took photos.

The match was a hit.

On the way back, Ron drove the wrong way down a one-way street and we were in some danger as we attempted to navigate traffic – I was mortified.

We made it through okay, but I made a mental note of it.

Something about this episode didn’t feel right.

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As I left town for college, I saw & talked with my family less.

New people showed up.

Junior year, my mother called to tell me that there’d been an accident on a Maryland highway and that my uncle’s car had jumped a median and that he had been transported via helicopter to the hospital and that there was a 50% chance he wouldn’t survive the crash and if he did he may not be the same afterwards.

I stood frozen.

I asked for my aunt’s phone number, which my mother gave me, and I mulled over what to do with it.

I’d just read Tuesdays With Morrie, which had a passage in it that I will never forget (in fact, it’s the only item from the book that I can remember), about how some friends & family were in their corner when his wife had cancer, and some seemed to fall away – and how important it was for the strength of one’s bond to surface during a challenging time.

Time went by, but Morrie couldn’t forgive those who couldn’t show up.

The sting never went away, nor the memory that caused it.

I knew I was supposed to call.

I dialed my aunt, and was just about to finish typing in her number, but again I froze, and I stayed frozen.

What was I going to say?

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Uncle Ron made it through.

While there seemed to be hardships related to the accident that persisted, he was still very noticeably my uncle.

Their immediate family seemed to rally as a group and have ultimately “won out” in this lifetime, overcoming and conquering many obstacles in their path.

Ron wasn’t entirely the same, but he was still funny & creative & kind. He helped at school & camp and was an active grandparent and he made connections.

And most importantly, he was still alive.

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What makes Mark Twain memorable is what he wrote and how his messages and approach changed over time.

How cultures changed over time because of these stories, because of who he was.

The Chernow biography is mostly about the minutia around Twain’s life, rather than about the life’s output, or any truly memorable moment, which misses the point of what would make a Twain biography interesting.

In Chernow’s JP Morgan biography, most of the details add to what are obviously important events in the history of the global economy. When the markets faltered, Morgan was there to straighten things out. That person mattered, and the details connected.

With Mark Twain, he had a family, traveled some, and married, and speculated some (badly), and was bad at business and he and his family were sick a lot and he published a fair amount and etc. and etc. but did any moment matter?

Likely yes, but we have to guess what, if, and when.

Swing and a miss.

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I’ve been away from home for 30 years, and while I’d seen my uncle and extended family on occasion I didn’t see him/them often.

I’m the one who got away.

The notable exception was our wedding weekend a decade back, which was well-attended by family and friends.

The couple who seemed to enjoy themselves the most (outside of the two getting married) – who seemed most comfortable in their skins, who were always laughing and smiling were my aunt and uncle, who took to San Francisco like they were still school kids.

They attended all of our out-of-towner and in-towner events, and weeks later sent a note of appreciation on the spirit of Dayenu: e.g., if you only had a wedding and a dinner, it would’ve been sufficient; if you’d only had the bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge, it would’ve been sufficient.

It was a real joy to see them both happy and healthy and enjoying life so freely.

Wherever it is we want to get in life, they’d made it there.

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A few weeks back, my dad called and told me my uncle was in hospice.

On a recent morning, I walked out from my bedroom, and saw a ray of light streaming in through our family room window onto the couch.

Something was up.

A moment later, my dad texted me that Ron had just passed away.

I sat down on the couch where the sun was shining and just took the energy in.

Moments passed, and I was transported 40 years back, to a Passover dinner in a warm & wholesome house, full of family and other nuts you had to crack (e.g. Brazil), cuckoo clocks that would cluck in unison at ill-advised times (is any moment safe?), and a zany raconteur clearly competing to see whether he could own up to the theme of this crazy, loving, environment, which he never failed to do.

If you had only been my uncle, that would’ve been sufficient.

Be free.