New thing suggestions……
Well, I have to say for my 40th I did get many gifts….mostly from people who spent so much time and energy putting something special together for my special day. My Brother Ron was one of them. Many of the home made videos I received were of pictures of good times and memories past. My brother on the other hand, thought that this might be a good time to rethink what NEW things I could do now that I am 40. I could not help but share these brilliant ideas, and add it as a NEW THING for this day. I DO plan on trying some of these, and I hope you enjoy this short 3 minute video as much as I did 
Not to mention the acting skills of his colleages far surpassed anything I have ever attempted to do here in Hollywood.
Here is to NEW THINGSs my older brother suggests I do, now that I am in my 5th (as my OTHER brother John corrected me) decade
Hope you had a great birthday! Number 40? Wow, I can’t believe that! Pam and I just returned from Florida last Monday. We saw your mother, Marchiene, and she looks great and gave a very inspirational message at the Coptic Conference in Sarasota! More importantly I actually played 18 holes of golf. Watch out John! Hope you have a great day!
Love.
Pete Wehle and Pam Chappell
Nice to hear Joe Zawinul’s composition “Birdland” underpinning your brother’s video. Zawinul
died a few years ago, in his seventies, still thinking just like that music sounds and beyond, still leading new bands in which all the sidemen were always in their twenties. It brings to mind a story I’ve heard: one of his youthful bandmates asked him, during an off day on the road, if he wanted to go to check out a local museum and absorb some culture. “—- that,” said Zawinul, insouciantly. “I AM ‘culture.’”
Age is a chance to not be old.
Two separate other thoughts: that was such a nice thing for your brother to put together for
you.
And: Barnes and Noble online sells an exquisite 1962 recording of the pianist Gary Graffman playing Prokofiev’s first and third piano concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Symphony–eight bucks, I think.
Listening to it could be a “new thing” for you.
If you do sit down and listen to it, all the way through, with no distractions–I mean, make
it an event–I think you will see that music recorded almost 50 years ago, and written many years before that, does not have to be “old.”
I’ve listened it to it many times over the years, just as I describe.
And afterwards, I always feel younger.
L,PM