So I’m about to see “Don’t Mess With the Zohan” in Stone Harbor, New Jersey and the previews aren’t coming attractions—they come later—but commercials: for Verizon, for Samsung (know what a “BlackBerry prayer” is?) and for the National Guard. The last one’s the keeper: It’s a video of Three Doors Down singing “Citizen Soldier,” and you can download it, free, on the National Guard website (you look).

Rock ‘n’ roll used to be about peace and love and good vibes. When did it become an ad for war? Katy, my older kid, tells me she’s heard the song before and doesn’t know if any other rock group does that kind of thing. (Be right back; I’ll check out the National Guard website). Yep, Google National Guard and Three Doors Down and “Citizen Soldier” come up. You also learn that Kid Rock, that scruffy subversive who married Pamela Anderson, has just cut a commercial for the Guard.

I’m not against readiness but I am against war. Any musician who sides with the latter is lame in my book. Going to the movies used to be about entering a world of pure entertainment, a world you could get away to. No more. When did marketing become so mercenary, political and malevolent?

“Zohan” was fun, by the way. Getting there wasn’t half of it.

It’s my last paid vacation. We’re in Stone Harbor on the Jersey shore for the second year in a row. The beach is beautiful, though the Atlantic is too cold for swimming; the weather has been mainly good, with enough sun. I’ve been doing a lot of work here, some of my last as a full-time editor for Lodging Hospitality. The key task is compressing my 10-day China trip into about four magazine pages. Glad to be doing it in a place where I can take a break and get some sun.

I’m looking forward to my last day of work Aug. 1. But I’m also apprehensive. I’ve been employed for nearly 40 years, so lacking an anchor is scary. I’m putting out feelers for part-time work now, though I have a salary cap my first year of retirement (a strange word; tell people about it and the association is ending, dying. No such plans for me). I’m looking to edit, write corporate PR, put together brochures, do travel journalism. Maybe even some serious consumer reporting; now that I’ll have time, my ambitions are beginning to reawaken.

I also am looking forward to the presidential campaign and plan to volunteer for Obama. What form that will take I’m not sureyet, but his campaign is engaging me like none has since Clinton 1, in 1992. Back in February, I said it was Obama time. Still is. I’ll do what I can to guarantee that.

Naturally, time is on my mind, with a big shift in how I spend it coming up. So is continuity; last week, I got a note and some writings from Jack Behar, former husband of Barbara Behar, a former student of my father’s. In the ‘90s, I recall coming across writings of my father’s—dirty writings, sexual fantasies , if not (I hope) factual accounts—involving Barbara, who died of cancer in 1993. Jack sent me a packet of his writings about that “affair,” apparently a matter of phone sex-plus. It made me squeamish; not only does it tarnish my father to me, it shines a light on my own secrets, obsessions, sexual fantasies. Tantalizing? Scary, too. I don’t know how I’ll respond to Jack yet, but I will. Business, it seems, is never finished.

We’re starting a week’s vacation June 21, returning to Stone Harbor, New Jersey for a sophomore sojourn. The place will be great; time for sand and sun and seafood—and tightening up. We’re driving; bought a luggage rack/box for Karen’s Scion xB, and expect to spend a few hundred on gas to and from. But it’s cheaper than flying. It’ll be my last paid vacation.

There’s some finality to what I’ll do in August: quit my full-time job. That’s known as deciding to retire, but “retire” has a false finality, because I’m not ending, just shifting. Because Lylah and Katy are less than 18  years old, I can collect Social Security for them for a few years; combined with my Social Security income, the household should do OK. If prices begin to level off.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to more time for myself. I still hope to travel, and to write. Though there’ll be an income cap in my first year, I’ll be able to make as much as I want after that, and I hope to do a lot more freelance work in corporate communications and hotel public relations.

On three other fronts: A 2004 BMW rammed into my own month-old Scion xB 10 days ago, wrecking the bumper and jamming the rear of the frame a bit, for $3,200 and change in repairs. The Beemer was totaled. We’ve been having some major auto issues, obviously, and the repair shop is doing well by us. The accident showed me how tough a little car my Scion is. The other front: Susan Green, whom I haven’t seen in at least 25 years, sent me a collection of essays/stories she and Susan Connell-Mettauer wrote. It’s way personal; it includes a few pieces about my relationship with the latter Susan, who died in late March. Weird reading my Susan’s writing about us 45 years ago. The narratives show me how I became such a flaming liberal; happens when punitive relatives frame you for fornication, a Massachusetts blue law of medieval, toxic cast.

Finally, the Obama-McCain campaign is on.  I’m writing this the day Hillary finally conceded and rediscovered her grace. About time; now it’s time for Obama, for the country to regain its balance—at least. Who knows? If he’s elected, the U.S. may even stumble upon a colorblind, positive groove. Here’s hoping.

I’m beginning to grasp a new kind of music, what I call heart music. It doesn’t fall into any particular category or niche; rather, it encompasses many. Two shows I saw recently stirred me so, all I could come up with was that description.

The first was on April 25 in New Orleans. I was there on a press trip, checking out a gang of Marriott hotels. Part of the PR effort involved Marriott giving the participating journalists a ticket to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest, an extravaganza that must have drawn over 50,000 to one great whoopdedoo on fairgrounds somewhere in that city. Marriott gave each of us $40, too. My job has its perks.

What knocked me out was a show by Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett’s band; delivering material off their fine “Raising Sand” album, the former leader of Led Zeppelin and bluegrass (and then some) virtuoso Krauss served up an hour and a half of heart music, including remakes of various Zep songs. Damn, was I moved. The kicker came toward the end, when Plant delivered a “When the Levee Breaks” as a ballsy affirmation of a city where Katrina broke the levees nearly three years ago. I’d toured New Orleans’ Ninth Ward the day before and seen what Katrina had done. Hearing Plant revitalize that Zep tune (itself a cover of a 1929 Memphis Minnie blues) was fantastic. Not only did it rock with point and passion, it signified Plant’s respect for a city that has contributed so much to this country’s musical character. The show was so good it seemed to stave off the rain that threatened throughout the set, breaking only for a few drops (Billy Joel capped the following day’s show, when it rained and rained and rained. Not sorry I missed that one).

The other heart music show was on Mother’s Day at the Allen Theatre in Cleveland. The Swell Season, featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova and members of the Frames, delivered great tunes of their own, classics-to-be from “Once,” the fine film they starred in, and, to bring down the house, a furious solo Hansard cover of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks.” Hansard has been around a while; Irglova’s a kid, and, clearly, his lover (wonder if Krauss is Plant’s?). Each can separately command a stage, and together make gorgeous music.

This is the kind of sound I hanker for. It makes the planet seem less desperate.

A few weeks ago, when I told my old friend Eric about how my old friend Jack was doing (maybe not so good), he wrote back sympathizing and told me Susan Connell-Mettauer had died. Susan Connell was my girlfriend in 1963; we danced to the Beatles, had a passionate affair, and were busted by her aunt because she didn’t want me, 20 then, screwing Susan, 16 then. Cambridge police put us into separate interrogation rooms (we didn’t know what each other was doing), got us to confess to the affair, and sentenced me to six months’ probation and Susan to a mental hospital. The charge was fornication, an old Massachusetts blue law. It sucked – the aunt, the law, the situation. It drove us apart, not immediately at first, but for decades.

About 15 years ago, I seem to recall through Eric, I got in touch with Susan again and saw her in Boston. She’d aged a lot; she’d been drinking and drugging and her liver was shaky. It was great to see her anyhow, and strange. It’s funny how your past circles back on you.

A few years later, I saw her again, introducing her to my wife and kids. It was an odd encounter, not a meeting of the minds so much as a meeting of generations. She seemed to have gotten stuck while I had moved on – and even then, I didn’t feel as if I could do anything for her. Then I heard she was married. She wrote, well and tough, publishing some stories online. Maybe two years ago, she told me her marriage was over and she had to move out of her house in Marblehead. She’d been trying to get over her hepatitis but couldn’t lock into the right regimen. She never did get work. I lost touch with her again.

Then came the news, from Eric to me, that she’d died March 26. He’d heard about it from Susan Green, an old friend of his in Burlington, where I, Eric and Susan used to hang out in the ‘70s. Susan Connell and Susan Green, I discovered, had been friends, semi-related through rock ‘n’ roll. After we were together, Susan married Lee Mason, a drummer who was in a ‘60s rock group in Boston called the Bagatelle. Susan Green, meanwhile, was associated with Willie Alexander (once of The Lost, later of Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band), a friend of Lee’s. So the network deepened and extended and I’m glad it’s held; I’ve been in touch with Susan Green about this and hope I can join her and other mourners of the late Susan Connell-Mettauer (expired March 26 before she could secure the liver transplant she needed), probably in Boston, where, it seems, it all began and still continues.

I miss Susan. I wish I could have helped her. That she died the way she did is very sad. That she didn’t live as rewardingly as her passion promised may even be sadder.