Fred N. Zackon – 50th Reunion Essay

Fred N. Zackon

1 Central Place

Newburyport, MA 01950

fredzackon@gmail.com

978-766-0098

Child(ren): Leah (1993), Aaron( 1995)

College: Trumbull

Often enough it’s all a mash-up to me, so this report is unstoried. I’ve lived for eight years now in the fine seaside town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Though single, I have armfuls of treasured friendships. I write a little, I dance some, I’m a long-time gym rat, I deep dive the news, and I luxuriate in reading discourses on the sciences, speculative philosophy, and the transformations roiling our world. The Internet owns me. I am Buddhish, if not -ist. I still like a good joke, and I can tell a few.

Marriage came late, for as in most things, I dallied. My ex was and is lovely and gracious, but after many difficult years, the marriage broke. I was thereupon visited by delirium involving a woman. Along the way, I stopped drinking; that was a good thing. My daughter, 24, a pediatric nurse, is preparing for NP studies. My 22-year-old son is training as a professional Thai kickboxer. I am unspeakably grateful for the love we three share for each other. We’ve been through a lot.

I designed rehabilitation programs for addicts and criminal offenders and came to know well countless of those souls. I wrote curricula for both treatment staff and recovering populations. I consulted in Asia and Africa via the UN. I wrote the major product of an NIH grant at the Harvard School of Public Health. And I was the House Director of a residential treatment program, where I was the only non-addict, the only white person, and of course, the littlest guy. My career was filled with large-hearted and remarkable people, high and low, and near and far.

Throughout my professional career, I exploited opportunities to innovate. And to hold close and think deeply about the stuff we’re all made of. My sustaining ambition was to create treatment models and tools that could make a difference for recovering people. Some of my stuff, I’d say, was good work.

Well, OK—a thought about Yale. It was marvelous for sure, dense with revelations richer than I could manage. In fact, it overpowered me. Its many wonders, mainly the human ones—perhaps including you, kind reader—evoked not only new modes and depths of joy, awe, and affection, but also a painful humbling and all kinds of confusion. It’s been the work of the years since to grow from all that into whatever the hell I am now. Yet most days, at least a little, I am still back there.

And this: A student of consciousness, I have a novel hypothesis about its ontology (known to devotees of body/mind studies as Chalmers’ “hard problem”). I regard my essay exploring that hypothesis as my proudest intellectual achievement. Finding the right readership for it is a current preoccupation. Just sayin’.

Peace, love, and joy to all.