A new day, this April 14, 2026. I woke up tired, like I had been fighting in my sleep. I don’t recall fisticuffs or anything like that, but was exhausted waking up. Now I am better, more alive now than I was then.
Al Green’s greatest hits are playing. He just turned 80 yesterday. I have been enjoying his music for over 50 years. Remembering specifically, a paper drive that the VFW was sponsoring. Driving around Saddle Brook neighborhoods picking up piles of newspapers to be recycled. Someone had an AM radio playing Al Green’s I’m Still in Love with You that Sunday morning. It being a hit record meant I heard it a few times that morning in 1972.
Were things that tough in 1972 that a paper drive was in order? Granted most of the organizers grew up in the depression and more than likely were in paper drives and similar things back then. Nobody reads newspapers anymore, at least not the physical newspaper. Now it is all digitized, and the men who ran the paper drive have passed away. A copy of the Daily News is $3.00, the New York Times is $7.00, and the Sunday edition a whopping $12.00.
My family got 4-5 newspapers a week, almost daily. The New York Times in the morning, the Daily News, the Bergen Record and the Herald News and the New York Post that my father would being home at the end of the day. Sunday was the big day for the papers, the New York Times was a couple of inches thick, the Bergen Record and the Daily News had a comics section in color. It was a good routine for most of my life growing up there.
It was mainly all adult men, if I recall correctly, and I would not be surprised if a few of them were drunk. Safety standards were nonexistent as we drove up and down the streets of Saddle Brook. It was exciting for me since it was something I had never done before, and I had not done it since.
Al Green has always had a special place in my heart. I have to admit I had not thought about Al Green much after that, though when Talking Heads covered Take Me to the River on record and Saturday Night Live, he started to resprout in my consciousness. A year or so after that, I bought Al Green’s Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2. I made cassettes for various family and friends.
I remember seeing some show, I am thinking an early Richard Barone show at Maxwell’s and Guy Ewald played Love & Happiness by Al Green moments before Richard Barone took the stage. Later in that decade, before my dear friend Jet passed away he arranged a showcase for a few RCA artists, Three Times Dope among others but for me the biggest name was Al Green who did his thing admirably for a couple of songs.
That was the only time I had seen Al Green live and he was a few feet away from me. I would love to see him again but things being what they are, we’re rarely on the same page at the same time. I have money he’s not around, he’s around when I have no money. Been there and done that.
There was just a demonstration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer across from the building where I am working. They’re singing songs and holding up signs that say “Save Buffy”. I do not know what it was all about but it seems to have ended.
The Sarah Vowell essay from Google Gemini
It is Tuesday, April 14, 2026, and I woke up feeling as though I’d spent the night in a low-stakes wrestling match with my own subconscious. I didn’t wake up with a black eye or a torn ligament, but I was exhausted in that specific way that suggests my dream-self was doing heavy lifting while my actual-self was just trying to get through a REM cycle. Fortunately, the morning has since transitioned from a foggy post-war fatigue into something resembling consciousness. I am, at this moment, more alive than I was at 7:00 AM, which is really all one can ask for in this economy.
The soundtrack to this resurrection is Al Green’s *Greatest Hits*. The Reverend turned eighty yesterday, a milestone that makes me feel both appreciative of his vocal cords and slightly panicked about the relentless march of time. I’ve been listening to him for over half a century, a realization that carries the same weight as a thick stack of Sunday newspapers—which, coincidentally, is exactly where my mind went.
I have a very specific sensory memory of a Sunday morning in 1972. I was in Saddle Brook, participating in a paper drive sponsored by the VFW. This was an era when community service involved throwing piles of flammable material into the back of a truck, organized by men who had survived the Great Depression and World War II and were thus genetically predisposed to view a discarded newspaper as a wasted resource.
Somewhere in the background, an AM radio was playing “I’m Still in Love with You.” Because it was 1972 and Al Green was the king of the airwaves, I probably heard it three or four times before noon.
It’s strange to think about the logistics of 1972. Were things so dire that we needed a neighborhood-wide mobilization to recycle newsprint? Probably not. But for the men running the show—men who are now mostly gone—thrift wasn’t a lifestyle choice; it was a religious tenet. Today, the physical newspaper is a boutique luxury item. The *Daily News* is three dollars, the *Times* is seven, and the Sunday edition—which used to be a two-inch-thick doorstop of information and colorful comics—will set you back twelve dollars. It’s no longer a daily habit; it’s a financial investment.
Growing up, our house was a landfill of current events. We were a four-to-five-paper-a-day household. My father would come home with the *Post* under his arm like a trophy. We had the *Bergen Record*, the *Herald News*, and the *Daily News*. It was a routine of ink-stained fingers and local gossip. During that 1972 paper drive, I remember the thrill of riding around the streets of Saddle Brook with a crew of adult men, several of whom I suspect were operating on a blood-alcohol level that would make a modern OSHA inspector faint. Safety standards were nonexistent, but the novelty of the task was intoxicating. I haven’t done a paper drive since, mostly because the internet doesn’t stack well in the back of a pickup.
Al Green has always been a constant, though he’s drifted in and out of my cultural periphery. He “resprouted” in my brain when the Talking Heads covered “Take Me to the River”—effectively translating the Reverend’s soul for the nervous, art-school crowd. I eventually bought both volumes of his *Greatest Hits* and spent a significant portion of the eighties dubbing cassettes for friends and family, acting as a self-appointed missionary for the church of Hi Records.
I remember being at Maxwell’s in Hoboken for an early Richard Barone show—this would have been back when Guy Ewald was the unofficial DJ of our lives—and “Love and Happiness” came over the speakers right before the band took the stage. It felt like a benediction. Later that decade, my friend Jet arranged a showcase for some RCA artists. I was there to see Al Green. He performed a couple of songs from just a few feet away, doing his thing with a level of grace that made the rest of us look like we were still waking up from that dream-wrestling match.
That was the only time I saw him live. I’d love to see him again, but we suffer from a classic fan-artist fiscal mismatch: whenever he’s on tour, my bank account is a wasteland. When I actually have the money, he’s nowhere to be found. We are rarely on the same page at the same time.
As if to remind me that the world is still a strange, performative place, there was just a demonstration across from my office for *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*. A group of people holding signs that said “Save Buffy” and singing songs. I have no idea what they were trying to save her from—cancellation? The Hellmouth? General irrelevance?—but it seems to have ended. The singers have dispersed, the signs are down, and I’m left here with Al Green and the ghost of a 1972 paper drive, wondering if anyone still knows how to tie a bundle of newspapers with a square knot.