REINVENTION AS WE AGE IS BASED ON CREATIVITY

Binnie Klein is a Renaissance woman. At 74 she has reinvented her life time and again, from poet to psychotherapist to memoirist to songwriter, with several steps in between. 

She picked up boxing as a sport when she was 55. The red gloves in the corner of the gym caught her eye, and a memoir followed in 2010.   

A surprise phone call in 2016  triggered memories of a long-ago love, heartbreak, and the radical politics of the 1960s. A six-part audio memoir ensued. 

In this episode, she talks with host Jane Trombley about creativity being the “sustaining thing,” the essential  “nutrient” for her well-being.

Binnie started writing poetry at age eight. Childhood piano lessons laid the foundation for playing the music of the 60s on a hand-me-down guitar. In her 20s her poetry won awards and fed into her interest in becoming a psychotherapist. She has maintained a private psychotherapy practice since 1984, 

Binnie began a music and interview show on FM radio (WPKN, Bridgeport Connecticut, WPKN.org) in 1975. She’s been a DJ there ever since. 

A few years ago, a 30-something Australian songwriter sent her some material requesting airplay. They started collaborating with Binnie’s poetry and released an album, Quiver,  in 2024.  

What’s next? There is a lot in the pot. Have a listen. 

P.S. Exciting News: Binnie invites you to the In These Trees and Tartie listening party April 27, 2025, at 6 PM/Eastern, celebrating their musical collaboration and debut CD. Binnie (AKA In These Trees) will be in a live chat from Connecticut, with Tartie (Tash Anderson) from Australia! To attend this FREE event, RSVP here.   Downloads and CDs are available.

 Show Notes: 

Binnie’s  Website

Binnie's Substack: Open Tuning

 WPKN Radio Program 

Book: Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind (SUNY Press, 2010)

Audio Memoir Ten Days in Newark, 2018

Album:  “The Quiver” 2024

Transcript

Binnie Klein: “I think given the common wisdom about what aging well is, I don't think I really am, because I've lost a lot, and so have many people.

Intro: This is Crow's Feet, a place where we ponder the question, are these our golden years, or does aging just suck? Well, yes, getting older is not for the faint-hearted, but aging also brings wisdom and humor, a finely tuned perspective on life. In our podcast, you'll meet writers and others rethinking our later years, people who inspire us to reimagine our future.

Jane Trombley: During her 70-odd years, Binnie Klein has reinvented herself over and over. Hers is a life in multiple acts woven together with what she calls her essential nutrient of creativity. 

Hi, I'm Jane Trombley, your host for today's episode of Crow's Feet, Life As We Age.

At eight, Binnie wrote her first poem. In her 20s, she was a published poet who then became a psychotherapist. At 55, she took up boxing.

She has hosted a music and interview FM radio show since the 70s.

Insert: Hi, this is A Miniature World, and I'm Binnie Klein here on radio station WPKN Bridgeport 89.5.

Jane: And in 2018, produced an audio series, Ten Days in Newark, based on her bittersweet coming of age experiences.

Binnie: After we hung up, I felt a bit overwhelmed. There were so many memories, and I also felt disappointed. It was as if I were 16 again and was expecting something.

Jane: Now, she's exploring a new creative outlet, but we'll get to that. Binnie is a true Renaissance woman.

Binnie, welcome to Crow's Feet!

We're delighted that you're willing to share with us your life, one that has embraced so much creativity. I first discovered your work in Oldster Magazine on Substack in which you wrote that creativity is the sustaining thing. Then you went on to say that “the drive to create, to express, to share is a nutrient that has always been essential for my well-being and managing the darkness.”

What can you tell us about that?

Binnie: There's like a little engine inside me, and it's always churning. And when it pushes me enough to produce something, I have a satisfying feeling that gives my life more meaning. Sometimes, I'll have a feeling of conviction that I have something to say.

As in, when I have always been writing poetry or essays, et cetera. And then when whatever seems to resonate with other people, it is exquisitely satisfying.

Jane: What was the first thing you recall writing?

Binnie: Maybe eight years old, I wrote this poem called Loneliness, and my father kept it in his bureau drawer for all of his life. Wasn't a particularly happy child. So, I think I put a lot of those darker feelings into my poetry.

Being praised for writing, like bringing home an essay from school that got an A was a way to light my parents up. So, I liked lighting them up. And it stayed with me.

But as you noted, it's gone through different forms. You know, from poetry to some short prose to essays. 

I have a Substack It's called Open Tuning. And I'm trying to sort of marshal some of my ideas towards that primarily. But now, the writing is going in a whole new direction. Songwriting.

Jane: There's so much to explore because you've had these fingers into so many pots as your life has evolved. Because it's very clear that music, sort of concurrent with writing, became a big thing in your life. Many of us growing up, coming of age in the 60s, remember that period to be the golden age of popular music.

Sort of central to that was the guitar. How did you reflect the glow of that music? Did you play an instrument?

Binnie: My father somehow came to acquire a baby grand piano. We were not wealthy. We never had a house. We grew up in a four-room apartment. But it was a used piano. It had some cigarette burns on it, but it was a piano.

And I was immediately very interested. And so I started taking lessons when I was maybe 11. And I just fell in love with it.

I went on to claim some of those very types of songs in 1960s and 70s, balladeers, and singers, songwriters, and protest songs that I could then play on the piano. I got the songbooks. And I was very influenced by this group of boys who were about four years older than me, about my sister's age.

And they taught me a huge amount. They would bring over a range of records, and I mean vinyl, from Mississippi John Hurt to The Beach Boys to Bob Dylan to John Baez. And eventually, they helped me get my first guitar.

But music has been much more of a throughline than I actually ever realized. Since 1975, I have been programming a radio show at a freeform station, WPKN. So learning about new music, mixing it together with older music, has just always been there.

And playing the piano, always been there. Being emotionally moved and resonating with music, and being soothed by music. And then winding up writing and putting together an album was still a surprise. 

Jane: I want to just circle back a little bit because you were writing out of college before you got into the DJ gig, and you were writing poetry from what I understand, and were you published? Were you able to eke out a living? 

Binnie: Yeah. I'm proud to say that around those years, which would be like my early 20s, when I was living in Manhattan, I published in like 30 plus journals and small magazines. I won some awards. I did some readings throughout the city and attended some workshops with some rather well-known poets and all that. Yeah..

Jane: Then what led into your study of psychology and becoming a therapist?

Binnie: Around 1975, I attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Very thrilled, gratified to have been admitted to this very prestigeous conference for fiction writers and poets. And you get individual sessions, they evaluate your manuscript, and you hang out in Middlebury, Vermont, and write and meet all kinds of people.

I was getting a little frustrated with the attempt to make the kind of connection that I needed to get a collection published. And suddenly, I started to get a little worried about making a living. And you know, most poets will tell you like, my God, how do you make a living writing poetry?

Most people said,” you should teach.” You know, a lot of my friends and peers went on to do some wonderful teaching at many, many fine colleges and universities. High schools. And it didn't appeal to me.

It was suggested to me by someone that was important to me, that I think about becoming a psychotherapist because I'd always had a very strong attachment to my dream life, poetry, and symbolism, and to reading Freud and Jung. And so I looked into ways to get a social work degree. And I applied to Smith, went to Smith, and the rest is history.

Jane: I was very curious about your study and then practice in psychotherapy kind of created a flame, but now I get it because they were really, in some ways, one in the same.

Binnie: I think there was, again, like the music, a sort of building connection. There's another piece, Jane, that I don't want to forget to mention, which is that, you know, I'm sort of fiercely autonomous about what I'm going to do with my time, so that I wanted to do private practice. Why?

Partly, I like that idea of sitting with one other person and talking about lives and insights and problems and dreams. And I could make my own hours, and I could build up this business and be basically self-employed.

Jane: And I see this pattern of Binnie, the poet and memoirist, the author, the DJ, the connecting with your listeners, your public, your patients through this thoughtful practice of therapy and dream exploration. It's very creative, it's very intertwined with sharing your knowledge and your experience and your insights.

Binnie: You know what I think it is? I think it's the intimacy. I really appreciate the unique intimacy that forms.

I'm an introvert who can extrovert really well. So obviously, when I'm on the radio, I can extrovert, I can give talks, poetry, et cetera. But most of the time, I am spending time alone.

Jane: The other really captivating part of your life's journey is when at 55, of all things, you start boxing.

Binnie: Oh, God. You know, so the American Association for Retired Persons newsletter comes in the mail, and you're shocked and you're mortified and you're depressed. But this particular newsletter was about a local boxing coach who was teaching middle-aged women to box. Before that newsletter comes in the mail, I was walking to my bird-feeder in the backyard every Monday. My ankle turned and I did it in the ground, and I broke my ankle and my foot, and it was really bad, and I crawled into the house. So, I got through that, you know, bones heel as it turns out. How remarkable. 

And then, I started doing more rehab than I needed to, because my thought was, I don't want to become one of those older ladies that is tentative about walking and stuff. So, I joined a gym, and I have a trainer, and I spotted some boxing gloves, and I said, “Would you teach me to box?”

And I start boxing, and I find that this is my sport, I love it. And I'm kickboxing, and we’re sparring, and so forth. At a certain point, this lovely young man said, “I've taken you as far as I can go.  Maybe you need a coach.” 

And then the newsletter comes with the picture of the late John Spehar, the former middleweight state champion who had a class called Aging Bulls. So I go meet him, and he's like this tough guy.

He looks like Bruce Willis, bald and strong, and I'm in the inner city a little bit, you know, in the gym. I'm just saying to him I would like you to teach me to box. He's like, oh, you want individual lessons?

And I'm like, yeah. So we sparred some, and he said, okay, we'll give it a try.

 But he was very, very skeptical about why this 55-year-old woman would want private boxing..

Anyway, we started up, and I just kept going. And then when he opened the gym, I kept going to the gym. And then people started to say, you need to write about this.

Jane: And you did.

Binnie: And I did. And that resulted in a very intense project called Blows to the Head, because what got me doubly interested, not just how I felt in my body, Jane, because I felt okay with my aggression, and I felt like I needed a place for it, and that it wasn't a dirty word.

Jane: So, I mean, what started out as sort of a physical rehab thing, then channeled into your creativity through the memoir, got channeled into your radio interview program, it's like these threads that create this very rich braid of life experiences in your late 50s and early 60s.

Binnie: Yes, true.

Jane: You wrote on Substack: “This creative drive nutrient, the creative drive was a nutrient that propelled you through dark times”

Binnie: I need to do something creative. And once I figure that out, the depression usually lifts. And I do think it is, for a lot of creative people, a vital nutrient, kind of like a vitamin.

Jane: You're listening to Crow's Feet, Life As We Age, with my guest, Binnie Klein. In a moment, we'll hear about her first teenage love affair and how she brushed up against the 60s radical movement.

Midbreak: If you like what you hear, please become a supporter. Click the link in the show notes or go to crowsfeetlifeasweage.com and find the Support Us button in the main menu. Thanks for becoming part of the Crow's Feet community.

Jane: Binnie, in 2018, you produced a six-part audio memoir about your teenage years: the first love and the first heartbreak that are nearly universal adolescent experiences. The series, called Ten Days in Newark, is so poignant, Binnie. The link is in the show notes.

It strikes me as a love letter to a time in your past and the sad event that sparked the project. 

Can you tell us a bit about that period? 

Binnie: I fell in love with a boy in Newark when I was 16. He went off to Goddard College. I was still in high school.

We spent ten days together one summer unchaperoned, in a friend's house, falling in love. And we were incredibly young. We didn't have very much inside of us, but we were very attached.

I think a lot of people have an early love that they don't speak of. People are not encouraged in our culture to talk about it. And he went to Goddard College and joined the Weathermen.

And for those who don't know, that was a radical political organization that was opposed to the war in Vietnam, and it now pro-civil rights. And it was a very intense group. It came out of a larger group called the Students for Democratic Society, which I was a member of.

And while my boyfriend went off and did that, and my two other best friends did too, I didn't have the courage because I knew there might be violence involved, and there was. And so I always felt like a bit of a poser. 

But you know, what happened in 2018, what I heard from that boyfriend, and he called to let me know that the friend who also joined Weatherman had died.

I was sparked to remember those 10 days, and I was driven, Jane, sort of like a detective, like, why have I always been haunted? And that's really the best word I can use.

By that, it wasn't just like people say like, oh, my high school years were so much fun. And, you know, this was like I didn't understand, and I didn't understand my incredible attachment to him after all the years and many, many years of marriage and stuff like that. And so he and I developed a phone relationship, and I began to reach out to the people that knew me when I was 16.

And I looked at some of the music, and I looked at some of my dreams, and I interviewed him and one other friend at that time in Weatherman. And I came to a place where I made some peace with that girl who I was haunted by. But I don't think it was really ever the end of the story”

Jane: But out of that came this creative experience and a rekindled friendship and a beautiful audio series called Ten Days in Newark. We'll put the link in the show notes. And a dark period through your creativity kind of came into flower.

Binnie: Jane, it was so dark. Because, you know, Mary Carr always struck me in her book Art of Memoir, urges writers not to go too deep into the past if it's going to cause some sort of break. And she was absolutely right.

I would spend nights trying to fall asleep, trying to recollect and bring to a kind of sensual place the sights and the sounds and memories. At any rate, point being, a lot of heartbreak. But what you said makes me feel glad that you feel like it led to something people could relate to.

Jane: Oh, I think so, because the emotions in that piece are so universal. They're the connective tissues of our lives, and there's nobody who escapes them.

Binnie: I think that's right. And I think everybody has sort of a “ten days in Newark.” Something they're haunted by, someone that they have unresolved feelings about, things like that.

Yeah. At one point, I thought of doing a project where I interviewed people about their ten days in Newark, and that just seemed like, whoa, wow, that's too huge. And then that effort connects with the album.

Jane: So in some grand design, your life has come full circle. You started out as an eight-year-old writing deeply felt poetry, and as your musical interests evolved, outcomes, more poetry, and this time, the poetry morphs into songwriting of all things.

Binnie: No one was more surprised than me.

Jane: Well, how did that happen? I mean, that's such a great story.

Binnie: 2019, a little bit before the pandemic, I hear from a musician in Australia, and as a DJ, as a free-form DJ, you get a lot of communication from musicians who would like to be heard on the radio, you know, not just looking for Spotify and YouTube and things like that. Radio is still cooking.

So I would get different stuff and, you know, listen to it if I could, play it if I liked it. So I get this email from a singer-songwriter in Australia named Tartie. Something about it made me go listen to her music, and I fell in love with her voice, and I played one of her songs on my show, Winter's Girl, which is on YouTube, part of the beautiful video.

And we developed some kind of very special friendship, very quickly. And I asked her if she would look at some of my poetry to see if they might be songs. And they had been written coming out of the Ten Days in Newark experiences, first love, first heartbreak. 

And so I sent her a few, and she had one in particular called Orchard. And she took it to her little studio and her keyboard, and set melody to it, sent a demo back to me and I was just blown away.  My goosebumps had goosebumps.

Musical chorus from Ochard: Won't you leave this Ochard….let all the fruits fall down.

And we were launched. It was just a collaboration I could never have expected. I wasn't satisfied to just experience that.

That drive, that little engine that never stops in me, made me get in touch with a producer that I know, David Baron, brilliant guy. I knew him from radio. And I said, would you give him a sense of this? And he's like, “This is great. Her voice is beautiful. I love the words. Let's produce it.”

He arranged it and we decided to put strings in. So we have a great cellist. And we did all of that remotely.

So she would send some stuff. He had some equipment where he and I could listen to her new tracks, if we made changes over Zoom or over the phone. I had more, and she kept sending back things that were very remarkable.

And each of the songs were produced until one day as I was driving away, he said, “I think we should do an album.” 

He knew, mind you, parenthetically, that I was not a musician. I was this odd entity. Tartie was a musician. He knew that. And a singer.

I'm the lyricist. So we made the album, and it's called The Quiver.

 Some of them I wrote the music and the lyrics. Some of them she wrote the music and the lyrics. And this amazing alchemy happened.

Jane: What I love about this story, not only did it come up with a wonderful album, and I will say that Orchard is my favorite, but I love the fact that this collaboration happens across continents and across decades. You're in your early 70s. Tartie is, what, 40?

Binnie: We never really discussed age, which was also so great. But yeah, we're 10,000 miles apart, and multiple decades apart. And we produced the album.

We didn't let that stand in our way.

Jane: That is the most remarkable and heartwarming and wonderful story about growing as we age, growing in sort of every dimension, working through challenges that life throws us, gaining insight, gaining wisdom, and making it all work, and never sort of losing our ability to connect with others. 

And I just find it so inspiring. The other thing that's inspiring is that it's brought up something else that I know is in the hopper.  Is there tea to spill on that?

Binnie: What I can tell you about what's next, the album has gotten incredible reviews. I am so grateful. Will it reach a million listeners on Spotify?  Absolutely not. But it's been played on like over 100 radio stations. I've done a lot of grassroots promotion.

I think I am at the moment most proud of all these efforts you and I have talked about. Okay. So what next?

Collaborators. I always thought of the group, which is called In These Trees. So it's In These Trees and Tartie, because this album is all sung by Tartie.

In These Trees would be like me, like that sort of AKA Binnie, and I'll find other people ultimately and do other things, other kinds of music maybe, whatever. I'll come up with melodies on my keyboard or my Yamaha piano, and then I'll step in with some poetry that is now marking into songs. 

For unknown reasons, I wrote this song about the late French feminist author Simone de Beauvoir.

Jane: Simone de Beauvoir, right?

 Binnie: de Beauvoir. Simone de Beauvoir. It has to do with her joy in hiking, you know, like not just the fineness of her mind, but her body.

It's a strange angle to come from about a major thinker. She wrote The Second Sex, and a whole series of memoirs. The hiking was ferociously important to her.

She felt like it balanced her, and it was the only way to quiet the thoughts that would come much too fast. There are some writers who have studied her actual hikes and made maps of them so that they could do those hikes. Hours and hours outside of Marseille and Paris She is not talked about as much in feminine circles anymore. That really bothers me too. So I wrote this song,

And so we need a female vocalist. I won't mention her name yet.

It's a beautiful, beautiful voice, only because it's not locked down, and we're working on an arrangement. I've changed some of the lyrics, so I am thrilled.

Jane: I think it's inarguable that you would be the definition of aging well because you have done it on your terms.

Binnie: I think I would push back against that in that given the common wisdom, I appreciate you saying that. It sounds like the nice thing to hear, but I think given the common wisdom about what aging well is, I don't think I really am, because I've lost a lot and so have many people. The pandemic, I am now working in a very different way.

I'm working at home, have an office, but I don't go through it. 

So the point is community is always something that comes up when people talk about aging well. And I actually, to be honest with you, don't feel like I have developed that.

I also don't have family around. So those things that seem to define the aging well, to be honest, I wish I had actually more of. I think what I've done well is to sort of keep hope alive.

You know what I mean? Like keep that engine of creativity going, so that if somebody says, oh, you're doing that at this age? I’m like, well, why not? 

Jane: This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for your wisdom, your inspiration, your insights into aging.

Binnie:  Jane, it's been wonderful to talk to you and realize that I'm aging well.

Jane: You are indeed. Cheers to us, Binnie.

Binnie: Oh, absolutely. Right on, baby.

Jane: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Crow's Feet, Life As We Age, with our guest, Binnie Klein. Check the episode notes for links to Binnie's many projects. This episode was produced by me, Jane Trombley, with support from Senior Editor and Founder, Nancy Peckkenham, Sound Designer, Rich Halton, Public Relations and Marketing Expert, Nancy Franklin, and Podcast Team members, Betsy Allen, Lee Bentch, Melinda Blau, Jean Feldhaisen, and Jan M. Flynn.

Outro: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Crow's Feet, Life As We Age. Don't miss any of our great stories. Subscribe to Crow's Feet wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to tell your friends and family to give a listen to and leave a rating or review.

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