JEFFREY BROWN: "Making Toast," that title characterizes so much of what you're recounting here, the life that really must go on.
ROGER ROSENBLATT: Just that. It started out simply as my activity. I get up very early in the morning, and I get the kids' breakfast ready. And then I make toast. And some kids like it in one way, and some of the kids like it another way. And I like it yet another way.
And I found that, over the course of the last couple of years, it became a metaphor for our continuing and our survival. It's a simple act. A friend of mine said, is it like the bread of life, the staff of life?
And I would like to think that I had meant that, but I didn't. I just meant that it was getting on with it.
From another recent NewsHour interview that really grabbed me, this time between Jeffrey Brown and Roger Rosenblatt, author of Making Toast. Rosenblatt uses that "making toast" to describe how life goes on for him and his wife, his son-in-law, and his grandchildren after his daughter has died. What struck me about him was his directness and openness, humanity and civility. Quite a bit to come through in a short interview.