Letters from an American in Petrograd

I’m sick today. It’s Wednesday at noon and I’m not at work. I’m on my couch bundled up in a baggy sweater and soft pants, shivering a bit and hoping to regain my energy. I hate being sick but I have to admit that a sick day is a very nice thing to have, and I’m grateful that I can rest when I’m sick and not worry about my paycheck. It’s a privilege, although it certainly shouldn’t be. Everyone should be allowed to take a day when they need it. Everyone should be allowed to rest when they’re sick. 

*****

A day later, and I’m much better. No fever, no disgusting GI symptoms about which the less said the better, and I’m back to about 80 percent of my normal energy level. I did very little yesterday other than binge-watching “Shetland,” reading, sleeping, and watching and reading news coverage of the off-year election, which was so much better than last year’s catastrophe. Here in the DMV, we’re finally free of the “I’m speaking” lady - IYKYK. 

“Shetland” is my favorite down and out TV show. Most of the time, I don’t even care who committed the crime - I just like looking at the beautiful Shetland landscape and listening to the Scottish accents. And unlike many fans of the show, I like the Ruth Calder seasons just as much as the Jimmy Perez seasons. The newer seasons still have Tosh and Billy and Sandy and Cora, and they still have Shetland itself. “Shetland” is medicinal. I’m pretty sure that three episodes cured whatever it was that was ailing me. 

*****

Lest it seem that I spent a whole day watching BritBox, let me also tell you about what I was reading, or rather re-reading. I watched the movie “Reds” for the first time right after Diane Keaton died, and immediately put Ten Days that Shook the World on my TBR list. I read 10 Days in college, but I barely remembered it. And at the time, I also didn’t know anything about the Bolshevik Revolution or the early days of the Soviet Union. It’s not that I’m an expert now, of course, but I’ve read enough to know about Kamenev and Zinoviev and the other Old Bolsheviks, and to know what happened in the wake of the 10 days. 

Someone once said that journalism is the first draft of history. I don’t know if that’s true of all journalism, especially not now when we have “respected journalists” writing books about one President’s supposed senility and saying not a word about the obvious decline of the current President. But it’s certainly true of 10 Days that Shook the World. Reed was observing and reporting and even participating as the events of 1917 unfolded, and if you read it and think “I still don’t get what happened in this part,” then it’s probably because Reed himself didn’t always get what was happening; or rather, he knew exactly what was happening in front of him but he hadn’t yet pieced it together with what was happening throughout Petrograd and Moscow; and he hadn’t yet seen the aftermath that would make the importance of those ten days so much clearer. 

*****

John Reed’s writing is beautiful in some places and choppy and abrupt in others. I thought that Reed had written most of the book during or immediately following his time in Russia, but I learned that he was just taking notes in preparation for writing the book after he returned home to New York. The American authorities, who had long been watching Reed, confiscated his notes and materials as soon as he got off the boat and held them for seven months. When his papers were finally returned to him. Reed holed up in a friend’s house and wrote day and night for two weeks until the book was ready for the publisher. 

Ten Days that Shook the World was banned in the USSR under Stalin, even though it depicts most of the Bolshevik leaders as brave and principled, and even though John Reed’s pro-Communist sympathies are evident throughout the book. Lenin even wrote an introduction to the first edition. But Stalin was barely mentioned, and so Reed’s version of history conflicted with the Stalinist version in which Joseph Stalin was the most important figure of the Revolution, with only Lenin himself as an equal. 

*****

A week or so ago, Bari Weiss’s very silly internet publication, hilariously named The Free Press, ran an opinion piece on the historian Heather Cox Richardson. Full disclosure: I read HCR’s Letters from an American almost every day, and I admire her immensely. You will not read balanced and unbiased commentary on HCR on this blog. This is, as they say on social media, a Heather Cox Richardson stan account. 

Anyway, The Free Press writers, unsurprisingly, are not HCR fans. Writing about Letters from an American, which people will be reading decades from now, they whine “the history in her telling is never neutral. It is a morality tale in which Republicans play the villains; Democrats, the weary defenders of reason.” 

A second full disclosure: I didn’t read past that line, which was in the first paragraph. Life is too short for me to waste time reading a hit piece on my beloved HCR, not to mention reading the opinions of people who are too stupid to understand that history is never neutral, and there are not always two equal sides to every story. Knowing the difference between right and wrong and allowing that knowledge to inform her writing doesn’t make Heather Cox Richardson an opinion writer. Historians are supposed to interpret events, not just record them. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now, almost a week later, and I’m not working again because it’s Veterans’ Day and even though I’m not a veteran, I still get the day off. I do love a mid-week, no-reason-at-all holiday. I’m still reading Ten Days that Shook the World, a little bit at a time. It’s going to take me more than ten days to finish that book, if I actually do finish it. The debating and fighting and name-calling are wearing me out. I can’t imagine what the 2025 version of Ten Days will look like. Readers will need valium just to get through a chapter. 

Still, that’s what makes the book still interesting and compelling 108 years later. Red vs. White. Kerensky vs. Trotsky vs. Lenin. Mensheviks vs. Bolsheviks. Bolsheviks vs. everyone. It’s like a time capsule from 1917. It's like reading John Reed's blog - like "Letters from an American in Petrograd."" 

I heard it on the radio

Radio was a huge part of my Philadelphia childhood. The radio was always playing - in the house, in the car, on the front stoop - someone was always listening to music or news or Phillies baseball on the radio. We woke up to clock radio alarms, and turned on the kitchen radio first thing in the morning. Kids got little transistor radios as birthday or Christmas presents. We bought radio/cassette players and Walkman portable devices with our babysitting or part-time job money. I listened to the radio everywhere. 

My childhood and teenage radio favorites included pop music on WMGK or WIOQ, R&B and rap on the great WDAS, and my beloved New Wave on WXPN. I didn’t listen to classic rock radio that much, until around the mid-eighties. By that time, I was out of college (I hadn’t graduated - that would come much later - but I was out) and working as a proofreader and typefitter and layout artist for a small print production company that specialized in display ads for Yellow Pages directories. Yes, that’s right, I helped to make the Yellow Pages. 

I worked in a small room with 3 other people. We were all in our 20s, but I was the youngest, and the only one who hadn’t graduated yet. The job usually required a college degree for who knows what reason, but I crushed the proofreading and editing tests, and they hired me. John, the oldest of the four of us, was our supervisor. He was just around 27 or so but seemed much older - he wore a shirt and tie every day, and carried a briefcase, and was very gentlemanly and kind. The company, such as it was, was a bit of a sweatshop, and we complained about our higher-up bosses quite frequently, but we loved John and would have ridden at dawn to defend him. 

Steve and Ann were John’s other direct reports. We all got along very well, except for Steve’s music. He’d been there longer than Ann or I, and he had brought in his own radio, and John allowed him to listen to it while we worked, and so we listened to WMMR - Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and Kansas and Boston and the Rolling Stones and The Who and lots of other classic rock bands that had peaked in the 70s - all the livelong day. I wanted to fling myself against that radio every time WMMR played Jethro Tull or Lynyrd Skynyrd, which was pretty much every single day. 

Ann and I would complain good naturedly. “Can we find a station that plays music recorded in this decade?" we'd ask. "Like what?” he would fire back. "Devo? Madonna? Whitney Houston?” And yes, any of them would have been better than hearing “Aqualung" for the 500th time. But it was a losing battle, mostly because Ann and I were both born people pleasers and we just didn't bother to push back. 

Plus, some of the music was good, I had to admit. I'd loved Bruce Springsteen since I was 12 or so, and WMMR played him pretty often. But the best part of listening to WMMR during workday afternoons was Pierre Robert, the greatest DJ in the history of radio. That is not an opinion, it's a simple statement of fact. 

Pierre was very much not what you would have expected a Philadelphia DJ to be. He was a hippie Deadhead with long hair and a peaceful and joyful demeanor. He didn't care about sports. He didn't yell and swagger and brag. Even his catch phrases were different - “Great day in the morning" and “Greetings, good citizens." But people loved him. He stayed true to himself and became a Philadelphia legend. 

*****

When a Philadelphia local celebrity dies, as Pierre Robert did last week, the city goes into full mourning. I especially remember when Jim O'Brien, Pelle Lindbergh, and Roy Halladay died - coverage of their untimely deaths dominated all TV and radio broadcasts for days. I don't live in Philadelphia anymore and haven't for years, so I missed the media blitz, but I was still so sad about Pierre Robert. I texted back and forth with my siblings and cousins, and I listened to WMMR’s streaming broadcast at my desk just to feel connected to the Philadelphia diaspora mourning the voice of our youth. The WMMR broadcast team took calls from all over, and tributes poured in. In addition to being a great DJ, Pierre was a legendarily nice guy, and it was lovely hearing stories of his many kindnesses to fans and local musicians and colleagues. 

As it happened, I had already planned a short visit home for this weekend. My son had a swim meet near Philadelphia so we spent the night with my sister, and had dinner with my family. My brother said that he and his friends once set up a sound system on the street on bike race day (IYKYK) and an hour or so later, Pierre Robert himself walked by and said “Hey, nice set up! Mind if I take over for a bit?" “I wouldn't have recognized him," my brother said, “but I recognized his voice." Of course, they allowed him to take over, and he played music and chatted with the crowd for an hour. Stories like these are legion. The big joke on Philadelphia social media last Thursday went something like “I seem to have been the only person in the Delaware Valley who never met Pierre Robert.” Although my brother didn’t recognize him right away that day at the bike race, everyone in Philadelphia came to know Pierre’s face as well as his voice because he never said no to a selfie, and the internet contains hundreds of photos of his smiling, bearded face. 

*****

As much as I miss summer and as much as I hate a 5 PM sunset, I have to admit that the first few weeks of November are an evocative and beautiful time of year. At this point in my life, when I feel nostalgic, it’s usually something to do with my children - Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas, middle and high school band concerts, winter swim meets, holiday family outings to museums and Capitals games. But this year, golden early November is calling me back to my teenage and early adult years in Philadelphia. We had Wawa hazelnut coffee on our way to the swim meet on Saturday, and it tasted like walking from the City Hall subway station to my job at 16th and Chestnut on a beautiful late October morning in 1988, just another good citizen on a workday. It was a completely messed up, imperfect, chaotic, and beautiful time when my friends and I never had quite enough money but we always had enough money to go out on Friday night and we roamed around the streets of Philadelphia scuffing through leaves or stomping through snow and ice, like we owned the place because we did, and if it was afternoon, Pierre Robert’s voice was always in the background somewhere. RIP, Pierre Robert. 

Nobody's Girl

I bought Virginia Giuffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl, the day it was published. I was in the middle of a Nancy Mitford novel (I have much more to say about Nancy Mitford) so I didn’t get to it until a few days later. One big takeaway - Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were and are terrible, heartless people. Another big takeaway - there is just no way - NO WAY - that Jeffrey Epstein could have accumulated that much wealth based only on work or even only on investing. The man spent 24 hours a day fussing over his health and fitness routine, decorating his properties, getting massages, and - of course - raping people. He simply would not have had enough time to do any kind of meaningful, remunerative work. 

This leads, of course, to the biggest of questions: Where, then, did the money come from? How many people was he blackmailing, and for how much, and exactly how bad were their crimes that they’d pay that much money to cover them up? Because we all know that if it was just a matter of straight up sexual abuse of young women by rich or powerful men, they’d get away with it. Sure, there’d be a scandal, and lots of fuss and embarrassment, but it would all blow over, and the men in question would suffer nothing worse than cancellation, if that. Whatever is in those files is really really bad. 

***** 

But the overall takeaway is devastation. This story is devastating, and not just because of what Giuffre suffered at the hands of her father and his friends and the other men who abused her, and the resulting feelings of worthlessness and despair that made her easy prey for Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. 

It’s bad enough that this happened to Virginia Giuffre and Epstein’s other victims. What’s worse is that things like this tend to happen to girls and women who lack male protection - the ones who are “nobody’s girls.” We like to talk about how men need to protect the women they love. What we should be talking about is how we need to upend this entire patriarchal system that values women only as much as it values the men they’re associated with. What we should be doing is making abuse and harassment so unthinkable and unacceptable that single women and widows and orphans and all other women and girls can live in freedom and safety - even if they don’t have kind and benevolent male relatives and friends. 

RIP, Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

*****

Western medicine

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. I dreaded it because at my last appointment, my doctor gave me a list of things that I needed to do, and I had only done about half of them. But it was fine. And I am going to do the rest of the things, including get a stupid colonoscopy and get another stupid mammogram and bring my LDL cholesterol down to where it’s supposed to be, whatever that is. Fortunately, my HDL cholesterol number is exceptionally good (or so I am told) and my blood pressure is good, so I’m not in immediate danger. 

But like many other people, I have spent the last year stress eating, and now I not only have to lose the 12 pounds that I’d been trying to lose already, but I also have to evict those 12 pounds’ eight little friends. It’s very discouraging, and very tiresome to think about having to get through the next few months with a lot less bread and a lot fewer peanut M&Ms, but there are worse things. Like mammograms and colonoscopies. Sigh. 

*****

The medical system that my doctor is part of (no names but it rhymes with RedCar) likes to keep me informed. Since 11 AM yesterday, I have received no fewer than ten automated calls, with accompanying text messages. Notification that my prescription had been called in, a reminder to come in for my blood work, an invitation to schedule my next appointment, separate reminders to schedule my mammogram and colonoscopy, a reminder that my test results will be available in the patient portal, a request to complete a survey - it’s a lot. I’m this close to blocking their number altogether. 

On the other hand, I had forgotten about the new prescription not five minutes after I left the doctor’s office, and I’ve been putting off the colonoscopy for months now, so maybe I should shut up about the phone calls. 

*****

Oh, and the vaccines! One more reminder about my shingles shot, and I’m going full MAHA. I did get the flu shot yesterday and other than feeling a little fluish late in the day, I experienced no ill effects. It didn’t even hurt. I just need to get my COVID and shingles shots, and then I’ll have full immunity, not unlike some Presidents we know. COVID boosters take me out for an entire day and I’ve heard that the shingles vaccine is also brutal, so I’ll do them one at a time. Tylenol will help with the after-effects. I’m pretty sure I’m already on the spectrum somewhere, so it’ll be fine. 

*****

Yes, that’s very flippant, but my choices are flippancy or full despair and the former is far better. Wise cracks and an insufferably snide attitude are the only things holding me together right now. Our sarcasm will sustain us as a people. 

*****

My gosh, this autumn is flying by. It’s almost the end of October. I should be planning for the holidays but I can’t even plan dinner. I can’t even figure out what to put on my to-do list, much less check anything off my to-do list. This is how they get you. They flood the proverbial zone with so much shit - SO MUCH SHIT - that normal people get overwhelmed and we shut down and go into survival mode. 

*****

Every year, I write about the time of year I think of as golden November. Golden November starts at the end of October, with three or four weeks of perfect golden light, pale blue skies, and brilliant color on the trees. It’s a moment between the old year and the new, between the lively youthful riot of summer and early fall and the deep restful quiet of winter. It’s so beautiful and so fleeting that it almost makes you ache. It’s not a time for doomscrolling and compulsive news consumption, and it’s definitely not a time for survival mode.

It’s Saturday morning, clear and bright - golden. I don’t know what I should do today, but whatever it is it will have nothing to do with the medical establishment and absolutely fucking nothing to do with Donald J. Trump. 

*****

Saturday was a nice day, almost Trump-free. My friend hosted a ladies night fire pit gathering, which was lovely. Three of the women who attended are directly affected by the shutdown so it came up in discussion, as did the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, a thing that I still haven’t wrapped my head fully around. 

One person at the gathering is a Trump supporter. She wisely remained quiet for that part of the conversation. Another Trump supporter, a person I love very much, has been trying to convince me to “just stop thinking about all of this because you can’t do anything about it.” It’s interesting how the Venn diagram between “He IS your President now so get over it” people in January 2025 and “I just don’t do politics anymore, it’s all so negative” people in October 2025 is a closed circle. 

I can’t bring myself to cut people off completely - even people I just like - but I also can’t tolerate gaslighting. Don’t tell me “well you know that Democrats are on that list too,” because I am CERTAIN that the Epstein list includes some Democrats but I have no interest in protecting them. Don’t tell me “well, Obama built a basketball court” because a $50,000 basketball court approved by the Park Service and GSA just like every other change that every other President has made to the White House is absolutely not the same as the wholesale destruction of a whole wing of the building with no permits and no oversight. What’s next? The Capitol dome? The Statue of Liberty? It’s all fair game now, I guess. And they’re just buildings, I guess. 

*****

It's Monday morning and I'm back at the doctor's office, waiting for a blood draw. I didn't sleep last night; or at least, I slept very little, and I haven't had any coffee. It's very quiet here in the waiting room. They normally have the TV on and tuned to HGTV but I like the quiet better. The receptionist and the billing person are chatting about fall baseball (kids, not World Series) and almost everyone else is on their phones, including me. I do a lot of writing on my phone. 

The lady sitting across from me is reading on her Kindle. Sadly, I forgot to bring mine. It's very warm here, and I would just take a nap if it wouldn't be weird but it would be weird so I have to just wait. I'm hoping it won't be too much longer. I really need some coffee. 

*****

Well that was fun, wasn't it? I'm hilarious. I'm a riot. But every party has to end. And now, blood draw complete and coffee in hand, I'm going to wrap this one up before my reading public gets up off their couches, goes out their respective front doors, and walks directly into the sea. 

I think that I shall never see

I’m looking out my window right now, the corner window in our living room that has my favorite view of the trees in our neighbors’ yards, for several houses up the street. It’s a picture postcard October day. The sky is as blue as it gets without even a hint of a cloud and leaves are falling and the breeze is blowing through the branches and the gold and red and orange and green leaves are rustling. Someone is revving an engine somewhere; close enough that I can hear it but far enough away that the sound is faint. Otherwise, it’s very quiet. 

Two of the trees I’m looking at - an evergreen of some sort and a deciduous tree right next to it that looks like an oak - are extraordinarily tall. Sometimes they scare me. A high wind could take any of these big trees down, and someone’s house would go with them. It’s happened before. But mostly, I just love looking outside and seeing the sun stream through tree branches 30 feet high. This neighborhood is almost 60 years old, and those trees have been here since the beginning. Those trees are almost as old as me. 

*****

I sometimes wonder how I used to do all of the things I used to do. I worked part-time when my kids were young, but I returned to full-time work when my oldest started high school 10 years ago. I worked in the office every day, and then I came home and made dinner. I had several volunteer jobs. I went to every swim meet and every baseball game and every band concert. I was still in school during my part-time years, and my husband worked all the time, at odd hours. If I wasn’t working, I was cooking something or cleaning something or driving kids somewhere or teaching catechism or officiating at a swim meet. I was relentless. I was a force of nature. 

At 60, I’m still working full-time, and I expect to continue working for at least five more years. I HOPE to continue working for at least five more years. I like working in general, and I love my job. Working is easy. Working is a blessing. 

But nature and I have a different relationship now. I'm not so much of a force of it anymore. 

*****

It's Saturday afternoon now and we're driving home from the Eastern Shore after a swim meet at Salisbury. I'm riding shotgun now but I was the driver this morning and the Bay Bridge crossing was somewhat less terrifying than usual. It was clear but a bit overcast so there was no sun glare. It wasn't raining. It wasn't windy. Both spans were open so I didn't have to face oncoming cars. And traffic was light so I didn't have to worry about getting stuck at the top of the bridge. It was fine. 

Does that seem like a lot of fuss over a bridge? Maybe, but that bridge is four miles long and 200 feet high at its highest point, and everyone in Maryland is scared of it. There's actually a drive-over service for people who can't bring themselves to drive over the bridge themselves, and they do pretty good business. That bridge is no joke. 

*****

Leaves changing color and college swim meets and hockey - we went to our first Capitals game of the season, so it really is peak autumn. The Irish Channel on Friday night was a whole Capitals fan vibe, but it was a family of Wild fans getting up to leave who waved us over to grab their table. “We saw you come in before the other people waiting so we wanted to make sure you got a table,” the man said. We thanked him and he said "Hey, Minnesota nice, right?” 

"If you were Penguins fans,” I said, "you'd have looked us right in the eye as you ordered another round.”

“And if we were Rangers fans," he said, “we'd have stayed here all night just to spite you." We all laughed. 

My older son was with us, and there was another older couple with a young woman sitting in the booth directly across from us. The man and the older woman appeared to be in their 70s, and the young woman could have been any age from 24 or so (my son’s age) to late 30s. Everyone that age looks very young to me. She could have been the couple’s daughter or their granddaughter, depending on their age and hers, but I guessed that she was their daughter. The three of them had the self-contained family intimacy of late-in-life parents with their treasured only child. They weren’t dressed for the game, and the mother spoke with an Irish accent so I imagined that they were just out for a nice dinner and a few pints and some live music. They seemed lovely. 

Really, almost everyone in the Channel seemed lovely. Most of the patrons were Capitals fans, with a few Minnesota supporters in their green jerseys. I’m glad our jerseys aren’t green. The non-hockey crowd were dressed for a casual October Friday pub night - colorful sweaters and t-shirts and hoodies and well-worn jeans. Almost no one was in work clothes - so many people are furloughed right now that the Friday night happy hour felt much more like Saturday afternoon. It was much quieter in general than usual, and the Metro trains were practically empty, but the people who were out and about were in good spirits. And we didn’t see a single Guard member. 

*****

I missed the protest on Saturday, but I got to honk my horn and wave at the protestors in Salisbury. It had not occurred to me that there would be protestors in Salisbury, the largest town on the very red Eastern Shore, but I was delighted to see it. There were hundreds of people holding signs and wearing crazy costumes and funny hats and t-shirts, all smiling and friendly as they peacefully exercised their First Amendment rights. And then the next day, the President of the United States shared an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown and piloting a bomber with “King Trump” painted on the side, dropping tons of excrement on protestors. 

And I’m not even mad. I can’t muster even the slightest outrage over that gross video. Honestly, it was one of the most honest and forthright statements that has ever come out of this administration. Donald Trump hates America and most of its people, and if he could fly over American cities dropping actual shit bombs, he would absolutely do it. The White House social media team is just telling it like it is. They’re keeping it real. 

*****

October just started, and it’s already almost over. It’s time to figure out our Thanksgiving plans. It’s time to do my Christmas shopping. Everything seems up in the air right now, though. Everything is in flux, and I can’t decide what to do from one minute to the next. 

Still, it’s strangely comforting to know that the world is a mess because it always has been and it always will be. And it’s also beautiful and it always has been and always will be. It’s a week later now, and I’m back at my window. It’s another picture postcard October day. The trees are a little less green and a little more gold and orange and red than they were a week ago. They’re still rustling in the breeze and the sky is still clear blue. There’s not a shit bomb in sight, at least not now. 

Three Days that Did Not Shake the World

I do love a three-day weekend, even if it’s for a minor holiday - especially if it’s for a minor holiday, because I don’t have to shop or cook or decorate for Indigenous People’s Day. It’s just a nice little break. It’s a lovely Saturday morning, sunny and cool but not cold and very autumn-like. I’m still not reconciled to the end of summer, but I’ve been sitting outside for an hour, and nothing has bitten me, so I have to acknowledge that fall isn’t all bad. And I do like to wear sweaters. 

*****

I keep thinking about October 2024, the gosh-darn good old days, when I had 99 problems but Donald Trump being President wasn’t one. I never thought that he COULDN’T win but I did think that he WOULDN’T win. I was hopeful, even optimistic. I miss the October 2024 version of me. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, rainy and gloomy and very October-ish. It’s a soup-making day, so I’m going to make some soup. Yesterday turned out to be a rather nice day. I did my usual Saturday household tasks and errands, and we spent most of the afternoon hanging around outside in the absolutely perfect early fall weather. Then we went to the movies. 

*****

I’ve never read any of Thomas Pynchon’s novels, but I think I’ll read Vineland, which was apparently the inspiration for the movie we saw last night, “One Battle After Another.” That movie was insane (and insanely long), but very good. I’m sure that Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn will be nominated for all the big awards, but Regina Hall is the one who stood out for me. She’s only on screen for a short time, but her performance as the kind and courageous revolutionary Deandra was beautiful and memorable. DiCaprio was very good, too, as was Teyana Taylor as the revolutionary femme fatale Perfidia Beverly Hills. Sean Penn was Sean Penn. He’s fun to watch, if nothing else, and the rest of this cast was more than equal to his scenery chewing. 

*****

It’s Monday now, and I’m not working because it’s a holiday. Today is Indigenous People's Day, FKA Columbus Day. When my children were growing up, IPD was never a school holiday. Instead, it was open house day because so many Montgomery County parents work for the government in one way or another, so it was a good time for parents to visit their kids’ classrooms. My husband and I also always went out for a late morning breakfast on IPD. We'd eat eggs and toast and laugh about how mad our kids would be if they knew we were at the Tastee Diner without them. 

The Tastee Diner is gone now, may it rest in peace. Our kids are grown, but the IPD breakfast tradition continues at our beloved Silver Diner. Eggs and toast taste so much better with diner coffee in a thick white mug. 

*****

I went shopping yesterday. It was raining, and so the mall was as good a place to go as any other. I don't shop in actual stores very often, and maybe I should, because I left that mall empty handed, which is perfect because I don't need a darn thing. Nordstrom has some very nice clothes right now, and I tried things on but nothing inspired me, and so I went home with all my money. 

And I did make soup, and then found out that no one else was going to be home for dinner. This was also perfect because now I have a huge pot of soup and I don't have to cook anything tonight. Soup is always better the next day, anyway.

*****

My husband had to go to work after our late breakfast on Monday, and it was a gloomy wet day, perfect for hanging around the house and watching a movie, so that’s what I did. I had never seen “Reds” before, and so I watched it in honor of Diane Keaton. My feelings about this movie are complicated. First, it was quite brave of Warren Beatty to make a 3.5 hour epic about the Bolshevik Revolution, when “Doctor Zhivago” was not all that old in 1981, and comparisons were inevitable. BLUF: “Reds” is very good, but “Doctor Zhivago” is better. 

Things that I really liked about “Reds” - I loved all of the witnesses’ first-hand stories, but I cannot understand why Beatty didn’t identify them onscreen. Maybe they didn’t want to be identified. Once a radical, always a radical. I also loved the great acting (especially Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman), beautiful cinematography, and amazing dialogue. But of course, misogyny is always going to be one of the biggest stars of any movie made in 1981. Louise Bryant, played by Diane Keaton, comes across as whiny and entitled and a little boring. John Reed (Warren Beatty directed himself), on the other hand, comes across as selfless and heroic and charming. But Louise comes through at the end, so maybe the perceived misogyny is just my imagination. 

See? I’m gaslighting myself now. 

Warren Beatty as John Reed is one of those performances that makes me think that the actor wishes that they were the character. I thought the same thing as I watched Brad Pitt play Billy Beane in “Moneyball" (one of my favorite movies), and Morgan Freeman playing the President or the Speaker of the House in who knows how many different movies. Julia Roberts won an Oscar for “Erin Brockovich” because she wanted to be a tough working-class broad sticking it to the man. I can watch “Hidden Figures” any time because Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae played it as though they wanted to be Black female mathematicians at NASA in the Jim Crow south. I bet Warren Beatty still thinks it would have been cool to be an intrepid American reporter witnessing the Bolshevik Revolution first-hand. 

*****

I was sad on Monday night. I should have done more this weekend, I thought. I should have had people over, or gone hiking or done something memorable.  But I’m in survival mode right now, like the rest of non-MAGA America. At least I made soup, right? At least I went to the movies. The Capitals beat the Islanders and the Rangers. I read Nancy Mitford and added two more books (Vineland and 10 Days that Shook the World, which will be a re-read) to my TBR list. I took the money that I would have spent at the mall and donated it to our local food bank. It was a nice though not spectacular weekend; a quiet little interlude. Sometimes, that’s enough. 

Artifice

Have you heard about “work slop”? Work slop is AI-generated work product that looks really pretty and professional but is actually - wait for it - slop. LinkedIn is all abuzz about work slop. People are shocked - shocked! - that people who would use Gemini or ChatGPT to write their memos or their slide decks or their data tables would also not bother to check their work and to correct what doesn’t make sense. 

Not long ago, I was handed a pile of work slop. Someone asked me to edit a document and I realized just a few words into the first paragraph that I was reading something whose only human contribution was the initial AI prompt. I had to rewrite it completely. 

Part of me felt vindicated. AI thinks it can take my job, does it? Well until they come up with a generative AI application that can write like a human being who actually uses and understands the English (or any other) language, good luck to it. 

But I’m me, of course, so I immediately imagined a worst-case scenario. The WCS is my default setting. What if AI becomes so dominant that it no longer needs to try to mimic us, because we will be mimicking it? What if we all end up speaking and writing - and even thinking - in the language of AI-generated social media scripts and marketing collateral? 

*****

A few months ago, I read The Portrait of Dorian Gray for the first time. Dorian Gray was published in 1890, so we can’t say that preoccupation with the superficial and desire for an unnatural level of physical perfection are 21st century phenomena. Oscar Wilde recognized obsession with youth well over a hundred years ago. I wonder what he would have made of Kristi Noem or Martha Stewart or that crazy tech CEO dude who spends millions of dollars trying to stay young forever (unsuccessfully, I might add - he’s in his 40s, and he looks like he’s in his 40s - he could have achieved those results for free). 

I’m thinking about how AI would figure in a modern retelling of Dorian Gray. Maybe instead of a portrait, there’d be an AI double who would deteriorate with age while the real Dorian Gray built billion-dollar electricity-gobbling data centers and exploitative gig work platforms and sports betting empires and cryptocurrency exchanges. The forever-young Dorian Gray would have 1b followers on social media watching him hustle and grind and self-optimize, and wondering how he manages to never look older than 21. The AI Dorian Gray would look like Stephen Miller at age 80. Real Dorian would employ Blackwater mercenaries to guard the safe room where the holographic AI Dorian is projected on a wall, aging in real time. 

Look at me, out here writing fan fiction. 

*****

“Have you ever heard about the dot com bubble?” That was my 24-year-old son to me at dinner the other night. Yes, I had heard about it. I lived through it lol. My son believes that we’re sitting on top of an AI bubble, and he can’t wait for it to burst. He might be right. If enough people have to read and edit the kind of “writing” that I dealt with this week, and if enough people start to notice that their electricity and water bills are much higher than they should be, and if enough older people like me understand that AI is a big part of the reason why their new college graduates cannot find jobs, and if everyone finally realizes that the AI edgelords actually don’t have our best interests at heart, then the AI backlash could gain steam. 

I read somewhere that Microsoft “invested” in OpenAI by giving them “credits” for free use of Microsoft supercomputer labs. Microsoft then claimed those credit redemptions as “revenue.” If one company claiming an imaginary multi-billion dollar “investment” in another company and then calling that company’s use of its imaginary credits “revenue” isn’t the clearest ever example of fake accounting, then I don’t know anything about anything. And I don’t know anything about anything, really. The stock market and the futures markets and the currency markets have always been black boxes to me, completely incomprehensible. But I have a grasp of the basics, and one of the basics is that bubbles that burst are usually built on dodgy financial practices. 

*****

It’s all very grim, but despite my initial WCS projection, I am uncharacteristically optimistic, at least about this one thing. I think that people are going to push back, and we’re not going to let AI take over and do all of our thinking and creating for us. Other than a certain very creepy college professor, I don’t know anyone who actually wants to watch Tilly Norwood on screen. 

One day out of 107

Oh what a time to be alive in America. I’m reading 107 Days, Kamala Harris’s memoir of her 107-day presidential campaign and my gosh, I cannot believe that this all happened just a short year ago. Less than one short year, we are 70 percent down the road toward the fascism finish line, and the rest of the road is downhill and icy (in more ways than one). 

I was about to say that I can’t believe how bad it’s actually been, but I absolutely can and do believe it. I’ve been expecting the worst since 2015, pretty much since the day Trump came down that infamous escalator. Ten years later, he is still wreaking havoc and still riding escalators and every day is proof of the idea that you can be shocked and unsurprised all at once. Every day, I’m shocked by what these people are doing to this country, but I’m never surprised. 

*****

One of the many things that I find really humbling is that when I read books about recent history, I will realize as I’m reading that I remember little or nothing about episodes that were huge news just five or ten years ago. Same thing goes for biographies of contemporary figures, people I think I know a lot about - I find that I know pretty much nothing. But I read VP Harris’s earlier memoir, The Truths We Hold, just a few months ago, so I was pretty solid on her biographical details. As for the historical details of the 2024 campaign, I found that I remembered pretty much everything Kamala Harris describes almost exactly as she describes it, and as though it all happened yesterday. I mean, it DID happen yesterday, relatively speaking - it’s not even a year since the 2024 election. But it also seems like part of a bygone era. When I look back to the very recent time just before the 2024 election, it feels like I’m looking across a deep chasm, like we have crossed a line from the before time to now that we’ll never be able to cross back again. 

*****

107 Days is written in short diary-like chapters, titled for the number of days remaining until the election. Most of the entries have an in-the-moment or just after the moment quality. The book reads as though Kamala Harris still hasn’t really processed the events of the summer and fall of 2024, and she probably hasn’t. Most of us haven’t. Some critics have complained that she blames others for the campaign’s (few and far between) mistakes and for the “loss” to Trump, but that is nonsense. I think Kamala Harris was near-perfect in that campaign, but she made a few minor mistakes as anyone would, and it feels like she’s still beating herself up over those mistakes. 

A few takeaways: Tim Walz is great but she probably should have gone with Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro or even Pete Buttigieg even though he wasn’t on the short list. The Venn diagram of people who won’t vote for a Black woman and people who won’t vote for a gay man is a closed circle, so Buttigieg would not have harmed the ticket, and he is the smartest, sharpest politician in the United States. Mark Kelly is also brilliant, and he’s tougher than Walz. Kamala is 100 percent right that Tim Walz was far too nice to JD Vance during that debate; and that’s partly because he is a decent man who is nice to everyone but it’s more because (like a lot of politicians) he is still playing by the rules of two decades ago when we thought that “both sides” had the country’s best interests at heart. This is no longer the case. 

*****

My son had a swim meet at Gallaudet University the weekend before the election last year. Gallaudet has an absolutely terrible swim team but the Gallaudet meet is great. Some of their swimmers are completely new to the sport, and it’s amazing watching them compete. Last year, a Gallaudet swimmer who is almost 30 years old took over two minutes to swim the 100 freestyle. Both teams applauded enthusiastically as he finally finished, jubilant and exhausted. 

We walked from the NoMa-Gallaudet Metro stop to the Gallaudet aquatic center, just about a mile. It was a gorgeous autumn day. Harris-Walz signs were everywhere, right next to Halloween decorations that hadn’t been taken down yet. People were out walking and sitting on their front porches. People smiled and waved at us as we walked by, and we smiled and waved back. Marymount won the meet, of course, because a lot of high school teams would beat Gallaudet. The walk back to the Metro was just as lovely as the walk to Gallaudet, with the autumn sky turning pink and orange and purple and the leaves crunching underfoot on the tree-lined neighborhood streets. But that’s not why it was a perfect day. 

*****

107 Days does not end happily, as we all know. As much as I enjoyed this book, I did not enjoy reliving the night of November 6, 2024, when Kamala Harris and her team and all of her supporters watching the returns on TV realized with growing apprehension and eventual horror that Donald Trump had “won” the election and that we were facing a second Trump presidency. And everyone knew that the second Trump term would be far worse than the first, and everyone who knew that was right. 

When I think about how much has happened in just a few short months, I think back to that Saturday in November, walking the neighborhood streets from the Metro to Gallaudet and back and smiling back at all of the smiling, hopeful faces, and feeling not exactly sure but extremely optimistic about the prospect of Kamala Harris as our next President. It was a beautiful day. 

Deadline: A week in autumn

It's payday, and I didn't get paid. Well, actually, it appears that I did get paid; or rather that a direct deposit was generated for me, but the money never made it into my checking account. 

My bosses are looking into this, and I trust them. I trust our new Oracle payroll system a lot less; and my little local bank, which was just acquired by a large regional bank, I don’t trust at all. But no matter who is responsible for this little snafu, someone has my money, and I would like to have it back, especially since I fully expect to be furloughed in a few days. 

*****

But let's talk about the good news, shall we? College swimming kicks off today, and we're on our way to Durham NC for Marymount vs. Duke vs. Boston College. Duke and BC are both D1 teams so Marymount is the most under- of underdogs. But do not count them out. Those Saints have heart, I tell you what. 

*****

It's Saturday now and we're on our way home, a long drive on a very rainy day. The Saints finished last at Duke, as expected, but there were some good swims, especially from our freshmen in their first college meet. My son did well, a little off his best times, but very solid for the first meet of the season. His medley relay split was especially good, faster than both BC swimmers. 

And I got paid, too, thankfully. I'm spending money like a highly paid person with rock solid job security and not a care in the world, as opposed to what I am, which is a mid level individual contributor for a nonprofit quasi government foundation who is about to be placed on unpaid leave in literally days. I should be hanging on to every dollar. Instead I'm out here taking road trips and staying in hotels and having dinner and drinks in a bar at 930 on a Friday night. Reckless is what it is. 

*****

The paycheck issue was resolved, followed immediately by another minor financial issue - minor enough that it won’t really hurt me but involving enough money ($300) that I can’t just let it go. I’d tell you all about it here, but I won’t because it’s boring. But if I haven’t gotten the responsible corporation to give me back my $300 by the end of the week, then I might need to write about it in detail and at considerable length, just to assuage my feelings and to feel like I’m sticking it to the man. You have been duly warned. 

It’s Sunday morning now. It’s peaceful and quiet, though very messy, in my backyard - it rained hard all day yesterday and the patio is a little bit of a disaster. I’ll clean it up momentarily. Meanwhile, yesterday was just a very difficult day for many reasons that I also won’t write about here because the reasons are pretty much all in my head and you’ve probably seen just about enough of the inside of my head. I certainly have. Meanwhile, I’m probably going to be temporarily (one hopes) unemployed in 48 hours, so let me just go shopping. 

LOL. JK! 

Maybe. 

*****

It’s Monday morning now, and I would ordinarily be working right now but I am having technical issues that I am waiting for the service desk to resolve. 

Other than that, today is a better day. I did buy one little thing, a little thing that I don’t need but that also didn’t cost much money. I pulled myself out of yesterday’s funk with a whirlwind of housework and yard work and grocery shopping and cooking. And the aforementioned frivolous shopping, of course. Now I just have to worry about whether or not I’ll have a job after tomorrow, and that’s honestly the least of my worries given all of this (gesturing wildly, as usual, at everything). 

Meanwhile, I’m working from home today but it’s 8:40 and I still can’t connect to the network so I might have to go in. I’ll change into work-from-work clothes, and I’ll try again at 9, and then I’ll just go to the office. Honestly, I’m probably better off leaving the house today anyway. 

*****

I did end up going into the office. The VPN problem was universal, but the onsite network was fine. Even though I got a late start and even though I was distracted, checking for updates on budget negotiations approximately every five minutes, I powered through quite a bit of work. Then I went home and cleaned an already-clean house. And of course, I kept obsessively checking my phone for news updates, with MSNBC on the bedroom TV. 

I know, I know. I can’t do a gosh-darn thing about the budget or the appropriations bill or the continuing resolution or whatever the heck we are calling it today. At this point, the House Republicans are not even in Washington, which makes a shutdown at midnight tonight a near certainty. And I’m not all that worried about it from a financial perspective, because I have money in the bank, and I have a working spouse, and we’ll be fine. The uncertainty is challenging for me. I don’t like not knowing what I’ll be doing tomorrow. And if a shutdown goes on for longer than a few weeks, then I will have to start worrying about money. 

But not today. It’s Tuesday. It’s still September. If it happens, it happens, and everything will be fine. And now, I’m going to go touch grass or read a book or something. 

*****

Well, what do you know? The government did shut down, and I still went to work. I learned at about 6:30 on Tuesday night that I had been added to the essential personnel list (yes, even contractors can be essential personnel) and I reported for work as always. And because I work for a foundation and not directly for the military, I’ll be paid as usual. It’s a relief.

Oddly, traffic this morning was heavier than usual. The base looked much as it always does, which didn’t surprise me as much as the traffic, because NSAB is a medical center, so it operates as usual during government shutdowns. There are certain functions associated with my job that I cannot perform during the shutdown, but I’ll be covering for a few furloughed Federal employees, so I’ll be quite busy. I’m very grateful that I’m still working. If the shutdown drags on for weeks like the last Trump shutdown, then they’ll probably have to furlough me at some point, but in uncharacteristic fashion, I will worry about that if and when it happens. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. 

Chair parkour

A temporary infirmity is an inconvenient but helpful reminder to take care of ourselves and to be mindful of our limitations. It’s not that I’m out there running marathons or anything but I’m careless sometimes. I do stupid things like stand on rickety chairs to reach high shelves. I try to carry everything from the car to the house in one trip. I stand up too quickly and abruptly. 60-year-old ladies can’t do crazy things like that. We have to be careful.


Yes, this is a comment about a specific thing that happened, and not just general fitness and wellness advice, which I don’t provide because I am not qualified. Do NOT follow me for more fitness and nutrition advice.


Anyway, do you remember when your grandparents used to talk about hurting themselves by sleeping the wrong way or getting up out of a chair too fast? Yeah, they were not exaggerating. It turns out that you actually CAN hurt yourself by standing up too quickly, which is what I did a few days ago, and I’m still recovering.


I don’t even know exactly what happened. I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling just fine, and then later in the morning, I sat down and then stood up and all of a sudden my lower back was just a spasming knot of pain. I went about the rest of my day pretty much as usual, except that I moved more carefully than normal and I took frequent stretch breaks. I went to bed early. I took ibuprofen. But it was worse the next morning, bad enough that I took my first sick day in a year. I felt very guilty about this, and I have no idea why. My boss is very cool, and I know that no one faulted me for taking a day to rest, but there it is - you don’t have to be a Protestant to have Protestant work ethic guilt.


*****


The very nature of this injury is embarrassing. It’s literally an insult added to an injury. It’s indignity piled on top of infirmity. I can’t claim to have hurt myself moving furniture or playing tennis or skiing. I have to look people in the face and tell them that I’m recovering from a chair-sitting injury. Jesus. Old age can fuck off.


*****

It’s Sunday now, and my back still hurts but I’m recovering. I’m about 70 percent better, and I expect to be in full working order in a few days. A little more stretching, a little more rest, a few ibuprofen here and there, and I’ll be as right as rain, if rain is right. Who makes up these sayings, anyway? Now I just have to adjust to the unfortunate reality that standing up out of a chair is now as dangerous as parkour.

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym

I’m reading so slowly lately. It wasn’t that long ago that I plowed through a book, sometimes two books, in a week. Now I’m lucky to finish a book in two weeks. And it’s not because I’m so busy that I’m reading slowly. I’m just distracted. I can’t concentrate. All of this (gesturing wildly at everything) is a lot. But I did finally finish the book that I’ve been reading for the last two weeks: Paula Byrne’s The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, a literary biography of one of my very favorite authors. 

*****

I’m not sure why England in the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s is such a calming alternative to the present. Things were a lot in pre-war and wartime and postwar Britain, too. Maybe it’s because I know now that everything turned out OK; whereas I have no idea if things will turn out OK here in the United States in 2025. It’s an evolving story. It’s a fluid situation, as they say on the news. 

Also, I’m on the fence about literary biographies. I’m not sure it’s fair to an author to dig through her personal diaries and papers and then try to connect events in her life to events in her books. Or rather, it’s absolutely 100 percent fair because everything that’s in writing is discoverable - especially if the writer published it. And it’s also a reasonably accurate way to examine an author’s life. Most of Pym’s characters were based on herself and her friends, to varying degrees. That’s true of most fictional characters. We can only imagine so much. 

Muriel Spark, another of my favorite 20th century British authors, wrote a memoir called Curriculum Vitae. I read Muriel Spark for the first time when I was young - I found old hardcover copies of Memento Mori and The Girls of Slender Means at Lame Duck Books, a used bookstore in Philadelphia, and then I made a point of reading everything she wrote. I bought Curriculum Vitae the moment it was published in 1992, and read it in a day, and was then astonished to learn that critical reviews were mixed because critics felt that Spark was vague and selective in recounting the events of her life. Duh! Of course she was vague. Of course she was selective. We all tell others what we want them to know. 

So my objection to literary biographies (not that it stops me reading them obvs) has nothing to do with fairness or accuracy - it’s just that I don’t always get the point of writing about writers, period. I’d rather let them speak for themselves. 

*****

But back to Barbara Pym and her adventures.  BLUF: Barbara Pym was an interesting person who lived a rather complicated life. Something I never knew about Miss Pym (and would have preferred not to know) is that as a young woman, she was briefly infatuated with early Nazi Germany. She wasn’t the only one, of course; and unlike Diana and Unity Mitford, she soon saw the truth about the Nazis. Still, this was a shocking lapse in moral clarity for a writer with so much understanding of history and human nature. 

Barbara Pym was also unlucky in love, falling for one unsuitable man after another. She allowed men to treat her badly, and she was  a bit of a stalker. But she was intensely curious about other people in general, not just men with whom she was obsessed. What sometimes crossed the line into stalking often just started as people-watching. 

*****

Characters in the Pym novels set in the immediate postwar years through the early 1950s were preoccupied with economy; and so was Barbara Pym herself. Everything was in short supply, especially food and clothing; and housing was very scarce in London and the other cities where so many buildings had been damaged or reduced to rubble in the bombing raids. Pym and her sister, Hilary, both Oxford-educated upper middle class women who worked full-time (Barbara Pym had a job with an academic institute in addition to her writing, which made very little money during her lifetime), still had to borrow furniture for their first flat in London, and also had to be careful with their everyday expenditures on everything from clothing and food to electricity and heat. Pym’s diaries often mention prices and economizing measures. 

*****

Barbara Pym’s work fell out of favor during the late 50s and 60s, and after publishing six novels, she went a long time without publishing anything. And then just when she thought her career was over, she was back in fashion almost instantly following the appearance of a now-famous Times Literary Supplement issue dedicated to the most overrated and most underrated 20th century British authors. Pym was the only author to be mentioned twice as underrated - by Lord David Cecil and by Philip Larkin. Almost overnight, Barbara Pym was in demand again, with reissues of her previously published books and new interest in publishing previously rejected manuscripts. She won awards and was inducted into prestigious literary societies and appeared on TV and radio programs and was generally the toast of the English-speaking literary world. 

*****

Barbara Pym died of cancer in 1978. Her diaries and literary papers are held in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, where the young Barbara Pym read and wrote and studied and flirted and cried when she was a St. Hilda’s College undergraduate in the 1930s. She was one of the greatest English language novelists of the 20th century - because, and not in spite of her focus on the lives of ordinary women. Read Byrne’s biography of Pym, by all means - it’s very good writing about a really interesting person - but read her novels first. There are at least three Barbara Pym novels that I haven’t gotten to yet, and I intend to remedy this forthwith. 

60

I generally avoid video content on social media. I don’t bother with Instagram reels, and I don’t even have a TikTok account. I mute or unfollow people who post too many videos on Threads. But I make a few exceptions, and one of them is the We Do Not Care Club. 

If you’re a woman anywhere between the ages of 35 and 75 or so,  and you’re on the internet in any way at all, then you have probably heard of the WDNC Club. A Black woman in her 40s started posting videos of herself, just listing all of the things that she doesn’t care about anymore, and as other women shared their own IDNC stories and videos, the trend grew. The idea is simple - as mature women, we no longer have to care about what others think about our looks, our clothes, our families and homes, our dinner tables, our kids’ college plans, or anything else about our existence. I like these videos. They’re very funny. And these - middle-aged and older ladies who don’t care anymore - are my people. 

*****

On Tuesday morning, I woke up and realized: I’m 60 years old today! 60! An age that once seemed very old indeed and that now is just my age. 

*****

How does it feel to be 60? IDK, same as it feels to be 59, I guess - but definitely not the same as it feels to be 50. I’m much better at accepting people, including (especially) myself, as they are. 

*****

When I was young, I remember hearing from older women that attention from men, a thing that you take for granted if you’re a reasonably healthy average-looking young woman (as I was) is no longer a given once you’re older. “Invisible to men,” they would say. “Once you’re in your 40s, you’re invisible to men.” 

First of all, this is true. It happens in your 50s, really, not so much in your 40s - but it happens. By your late 50s, you’re pretty much invisible to most men except the men you know and live with and work with. The thing is, though, that this new invisibility, which young women are warned of as an impending disaster, is actually a blessing from the Lord Himself. Being invisible to strange men is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.  

*****

Ten years ago, I probably would have told you with a straight face that I didn’t care about what other people thought of me, but that would have been a lie and a pretty obese lie at that. I worried about everything when I was 50.  Now, I just worry about my kids and my husband and my mother and my work and my bills and the state of the world - but those are all important things. I only worry about important things. The things that I don’t worry about (that I flat-out don’t care about) far outnumber the things that I do worry about. It’s pretty nice. It’s good to be 60. 

911

It’s September 11. I'm working from home today, and even though it’s a really bad idea, I have news on in the background. 

Since it’s the 9/11 anniversary, the networks (alternating between MSNBC and CNN) covered the memorials at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, PA. But the murder of Charlie Kirk is dominating every broadcast. 

It feels like we crossed (yet another) Rubicon yesterday. I don’t know why. Certainly, political violence is nothing new; and people die at the hands of gun-toting maniacs all the time. And as of this writing, I can’t even be sure if it was political violence. The shooter is still at large. Charlie Kirk was an outspoken MAGA activist, but he wasn’t a politician or an elected official. I think it’s likely - probable - that Mr. Kirk was targeted for his political beliefs, but I don’t know this for sure. No one other than the killer knows for sure, though the usual people are out here blaming “violent rhetoric on the left” as if there’s no such thing as violent rhetoric on the right and as if people don’t die by gunfire every day, for all kinds of reasons but mostly for no reason at all. 

Charlie Kirk’s beliefs were abhorrent to me, but murder is always evil, 100 percent of the time, no exception. Gun violence is always bad, 100 percent of the time. Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be murdered. I’m sorry for his wife and his young children and his parents and everyone else who loved him. I’m even more sad and sorry for my country.