Photojournalism

When I was a  young person in the 1980s, I was a big fan of Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair. It was very glamorous and sophisticated, showing a world of beauty and luxury populated by brilliant and talented and interesting people. That world was mostly in New York, but VF also took us to London and LA and Paris and St. Bart’s and Aspen. I knew that I would never live in this rarefied world, but that was what made it so appealing. It was like reading fairy tales. I bought each new issue as soon as it hit the newsstand, and read it from the front of the front cover to the back of the back cover, including the masthead and the editor’s notes and the ads. 

It’s honestly been years - decades - since I’ve read Vanity Fair, but the entire internet was talking about the Susie Wiles interviews, and I had to read the article, so I subscribed. The subscription, a holiday special, was cheap:  $12 for a year, renewing at $36 a year. I’d have paid more than that just to read the Susie Wiles article and see Christopher Anderson’s incredible photos. 

The brilliant thing about this article (it’s really two articles; parts 1 and 2) is that it absolutely does not read as hostile or even especially critical of Wiles or even Trump. Chris Whipple just lets Susie Wiles speak for herself, and what she says is far worse than anyone could have written about her or her colleagues. Ms. Wiles comes across as polite and friendly and perfectly at ease with herself. She probably never thought for a single moment that she couldn’t charm a seasoned reporter into printing a puff piece about her. She probably also never thought for a moment that a reporter and photographer might be smarter than anyone in the White House. Either Chris Whipple and Christopher Anderson are geniuses, or the core of the White House senior staff and the Secretary of State are all idiots. How could Susie Wiles have spoken so freely and not realized that the resulting article would not show her or her boss in a good light? How could Marco Rubio and JD Vance and Stephen Miller and Karoline Leavitt have posed for that photographer and not realized that he wasn’t there to make them look pretty? 

The whole crusty crew are in damage control mode now, but the damage is done, and I’m here for it. I don’t feel sorry for Susie Wiles or for any of the rest of them, not even a tiny bit. For all the chaos and misery and destruction they’ve wrought, an unflattering feature story and some stark photos are the very least they deserve. I’m glad that the White House had a bad day yesterday. And I’m really glad that there are still some journalists out there. 

Waving at a squirrel

It’s the middle of December, 7:30 in the morning, and quite cold - cold for everywhere, but especially cold for Maryland. Something is wrong with our furnace, so it’s cold inside and out, but I have a space heater blowing right at me, so I’m fine. The rest of the house feels like a postwar bedsit in London, but my little spot is fine, even cozy. 

I’m looking out the window, watching a fat little squirrel who appears to be watching me, too. He’s very still, and his little paws are resting on his very round belly, and he’s just staring. This fat little squirrel (no fat-shaming, it’s December and a squirrel should be fat) has a rotund, dark brown and light brown mottled body - an unusual phenotype. He also has a very fluffy tail. I want to open the blinds all the way to see him more clearly but then I’d scare him away. 

After a few minutes, the fat little squirrel climbed down the fence on his own. I guess he realized that he wasn’t getting any food from me, and that he’d have to go out and find his own breakfast. I hope he found some good birdseed on the ground. The birds get everything handed to them, and they’re wasteful with the seeds. 

*****

We thought that the furnace was fixed yesterday. Someone came and fixed it and left with more money than he had when he came in, and it did work for a few hours, but then it stopped. The furnace guy is coming back to figure out what he might have missed. It was cold in most of the house last night, but we had a fire in the family room and a space heater in the kitchen, and we were very comfortable. It’s cold outside, so I do hope we can get the furnace fixed but if not, I think we can live without it for a bit. 

*****

It’s Friday now, 13 days before Christmas. I have a lot to do but I have already done quite a bit. My tree is up and decorated, and I wrapped all of the presents that I have already bought. I still have some shopping to do but I won’t have a huge pile of parcels to wrap on Christmas Eve. 

Yesterday, my mother turned 81. I tend to get into full Christmas gear on my mother’s birthday, December 11, exactly two weeks out. When we were children, we started the Christmas countdown on the 11th. It’s the same length of time now as then, but a countdown to a long-anticipated celebration is a different thing from a countdown to a hard deadline. When you’re a grown-up, Christmas is a deadline. It shows up on December 25 whether we’re ready or not. 

*****

It’s Saturday now, 9:15 AM and I have a plan for today. Two pounds of butter are sitting on the kitchen counter, and everyone has been warned not to put the butter back in the refrigerator. That butter is exactly where I want it. I also have flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, vanilla extract, eggs, and four bags of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips. 

Yes, that’s right - it’s Cookie Day, bitches!

Please excuse me. You’re not bitches at all. You’re lovely people. I just like to say “It’s Cookie Day, bitches!” Laughing at my own jokes is one of my coping strategies. I’m easily amused. That’s why I’m such a delight. 

Yes, Cookie Day is coming a week earlier than usual. I mean, it seems like Potato Day was just yesterday. But my son will be home next weekend after a weeklong swim team training trip in Florida, and he wants us to do something together as a family, and I also have Christmas parties to attend, and so I moved Cookie Day up a week so that I can be social next weekend. I know from experience that I can’t handle cookies and parties in one weekend. So today, I’ll make the cookies and freeze them. As always, I’m not looking forward to cookie baking at all - AT ALL - but I’ll be happy not to be spending next weekend in the kitchen. 

*****

It’s Sunday morning, clear and sunny and very cold, and it snowed a bit overnight, so it’s sparkly and bright outside. Even better, my freezer is stocked with hundreds of cookies that I made yesterday. We have cookies for days. We have cookies to serve guests and we have cookies to give as gifts. 

It was an all-day thing, making those cookies, a task that combines two of the things that I like least: Disorder and tedium. Making cookie dough is tedious, and rolling out the little balls of dough and laying them out on cookie sheets and putting them into the oven and taking them out and laying them out on the cooling racks while monitoring the next batch in the oven is mind-numbingly tedious. The only thing that keeps me from lapsing into a coma when I’m making cookies is the heart-palpitating anxiety of being surrounded by a mess and not being able to do anything about it. It’s hard to express just how happy I was to slide the last batch of cookies into a freezer bag, a happiness surpassed only by finally getting my kitchen clean. I’ll still find little bits of cookie dough or tiny spills of flour for the next few days, but it looks clean in there, and I don’t have to make cookies again for another year if I don’t want to. And I won’t want to. 

*****

It’s ten days until Christmas now. I am not 100 percent ready but I’m so much more ready now than I was at this time last week. Most of my shopping is done and everything I’ve purchased so far is wrapped and under a tree that is fully decorated. Between the tree and the other decorations inside and out, the house looks very festive, if a little cluttered. Christmas is the only time that I like a little clutter. I grew up in a tiny rowhouse in Philadelphia in the 70s and 80s. In December, we covered every surface in those little houses with Christmas swag. Watch the original Run-DMC “Christmas in Hollis” video if you want to see what working class inner city homes looked like at Christmas time back in the day. 

*****

There’s just over a week until Christmas now, and just over two weeks until this year comes to an end. I’ve learned the hard way during the past few years not to get snotty with my sendoff to the outgoing year because its replacement will invariably barge in with a bad attitude and a surplus “hold my beer” energy. At least I’m not one of those deluded people out here saying that there’s nowhere to go but up; that 2026 can’t possibly be any worse than 2025. We’re nowhere near hitting bottom. 2026 could absolutely be worse than 2025. So I’m going to keep it respectful. 

I saw the fat little squirrel again today. He’s a distinctive-looking squirrel, so I’m reasonably sure that it’s the same one. No Christmas for squirrels, but he’s still getting ready. He’s burying nuts and eating everything in sight. Between his considerable fat stores and his buried treasure, he’ll be more than able to withstand the winter. And that’s all it is to him, just winter. He won’t observe the passage from one year to the next. He’s lucky because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. But I’m luckier because I can hope. After all, 2026 could also be absolutely better than 2025. It should certainly try. 

Drift into Christmas

It snowed yesterday, for the first time this winter. I went to work early in the very gray December morning, driving very carefully on streets that were beginning to ice over amid just sub-freezing temperatures. It was rather gloomy but nice. Peaceful. I made it to work in plenty of time. 

December 5, which was yesterday, is early for snow in Maryland, but it’s not crazy early, and it wasn’t a lot of snow. It’s clear and cold and bright this morning and there’s a pretty coating of snow on everything. It looks Christmassy. 

For the last few weeks, I’ve been drifting through the days. To look at me, you wouldn’t know that anything was off, but everything is off. I’m only halfway here. But it’s Christmastime, and I have Christmastime things to do. It’s Saturday morning and I have a whole day ahead of me to shop for presents and decorate the tree that’s sitting in my living room and maybe watch a Christmas movie. 

*****

I grew up in Philadelphia in the 70s and 80s, and the radio was our constant companion. We listened to the radio in the car, of course. But we also listened to the radio at home. I had a clock radio alarm clock, and I listened in my room all the time. We turned the kitchen radio on first thing in the morning, and we brought it outside so that we could listen on the front stoop. WMGK and WDAS and WMMR and WIOQ and WXPN were our soundtrack. 

Riding in the back seats of our parents’ cars, we started waiting for the first Christmas song of the season right around Thanksgiving. Hearing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (The Jackson 5 or Bruce Springsteen) or the Carpenters’ “Merry Christmas Darling” or even the barking dogs Jingle Bells song for the first time was a highlight of the year. 

Now I listen to Sirius in the car. I listen to Spotify when I’m walking. I don’t hear commercial radio very often anymore, but on Friday morning, I was listening to a local station, and Elton John’s “Step into Christmas” started playing just as I was about to drive onto the base. The star on the top of the Walter Reed tower was twinkling and the snow was falling. It looked like Christmas; and just for a moment, it felt like Christmas. 

*****

I shopped on Saturday. I’m not finished, not by any means, but I made a huge dent in my list. Then, in uncharacteristic fashion, I got to work wrapping very soon after I got home. The dining room table is piled high with wrapped gifts, because the tree still isn’t decorated, so I can’t put the presents under the tree just yet. We’ll get to the tree in a day or so. Everyone is busy. 

It’s only Monday now, a very still and silent and cold white-gray December Monday, but I’m already planning for this weekend’s holiday tasks. More shopping, more wrapping, and cookies. I could happily skip all of this, but my family loves Christmas, and there’s something to be said for doing something just because it makes other people happy - even (especially) if it’s a thing you don’t really want to do. I’m not in a Christmas mood yet. But I’m going to fake it until I make it. 

Holidays, official and unofficial

Thanksgiving Week has commenced. I worked today (Monday) and I’ll work tomorrow, and then I’ll be off for the rest of the week, give or take. I’ll probably work a little bit here and there. We’ll see.

My son comes home on Wednesday, which is lovely. Wednesday is also potato day; or should I say, Potato Day. That should be a thing; just like the British have Boxing Day on the day after Christmas, we should have Potato Day on the day before Thanksgiving. No one in their right mind is trying to cook the turkey AND mash 10 pounds of potatoes all in one day, and that’s why it’s so important to have Potato Day, when you make your mashed potatoes and refrigerate them overnight in big baking dishes for reheating on Thanksgiving. Plus, I’m all in for multi-day holidays. This country has been through some shit this year. We need a few extra days off here and there. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now, and I’m writing during a quick lunch break. This is my last day in the office until next week. We went to the Capitals game last night, and the vibe was peak holiday week - and the Capitals won. After work today, I will make what I hope will be my last Thanksgiving grocery shopping trip. But probably not. I’ll probably be back at the grocery store tomorrow. 

My turkey has been thawing in the refrigerator since Sunday. It still feels frozen but it has two more days. I’ll take it out and sit it on the counter for a little while tomorrow - just long enough to accelerate the thawing process but not long enough to admit the salmonella germs. 

I keep thinking about throwing something new into the Thanksgiving dinner mix, but I don’t think I have the creative energy. Fortunately, nobody wants anything new. My Thanksgiving dinner is very popular. My people like it just the way I’ve always made it, and I give the people what they want. 

I’m going to decompress for a bit tonight. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Potato Day magic doesn’t happen on its own. The Great Potato doesn’t come down the chimney with giant bowls of mashed potatoes. It’s me. I’m the magic. I’m the Great Potato 

*****

Today is Potato Day, the Great Potato’s day to shine! It’s still early, and so I’m thinking about potatoes but I haven’t yet begun to peel and boil and mash and whip, but I’ll get started very soon. 

Right now, I’m sitting on the couch, half-watching “Julie and Julia,” a movie I’ve seen at least five times. Old movies as background are a treasured Potato Day tradition. I can tell you this with authority, since I invented this holiday. 

My sister and I used to talk about how much we wanted an edited version of “Julie and Julia” containing only the Julia scenes. No disrespect to Amy Adams, who is wonderful, but I used to think that Julie Powell was pretty insufferable in this movie. This is odd, because the movie is based on her own book. Then the real Julie Powell died a few years ago at age 49, and I felt bad about my antipathy toward the movie Julie Powell, and I gave her another chance. And she’s fine - not as much fun as Julia, but Julia led a charmed life in postwar Paris and it was pretty easy for her to be a fun person. 

*****

Potato Day, now established as an official holiday, was quite successful. The Great Potato rose  out of the potato field and brought giant dishes of mashed potatoes to the most sincere Thanksgiving dinner tables, and there’s no more sincere Thanksgiving dinner table than mine. The Great Potato decides which Thanksgiving dinner tables are the most sincere and since I am the Great Potato, I naturally chose my own table, which radiates sincerity. 

Now it’s Thanksgiving. It’s 9:30 AM and I’m about to prep the turkey for the oven, where it will remain for the next five hours or so. Stuffing is prepped, and mashed potatoes are ready to pop back into the oven. There will be peas, corn, salad, Korean side dishes including kimchi, gravy, rolls, and canned jellied cranberry sauce, the best kind. I’ll report back later. It’s time to get going. That turkey’s not going to put itself in the oven. 

*****

By the way: Unlike the Julie/Julia Project, the blog that inspired “Julie and Julia,” this is absolutely not a food blog. I write about cooking at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and maybe Easter. And maybe sometimes when I’m looking for a way to avoid making dinner. That’s all. That’s the extent of the food content that you will find here. 

*****

The day after Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s 9:30 AM again, and I’m drinking coffee and hanging around the house, one of my favorite things to do. It’s cold today, cold and very bright and clear. Everything looks sunny and clean. 

Dinner was perfect, except that the turkey yielded very little in the way of leftovers. But it’s enough for the best of all sandwiches, the turkey on toast with mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. I guess I’ll make shepherd’s pie with the rest of the mashed potatoes. Or maybe I won’t because it’s the day after Thanksgiving and I’d like to stay out of the kitchen. 

Thanksgiving was a Trump-free day, until almost the end of the day when I picked up my phone and saw that Sarah Beckstrom had died from her wounds. 20 years old. My family are all here, safe and happy, and a family in West Virginia is making plans to bury their beautiful 20-year-old daughter. There’s nothing that this man can’t destroy. Literally nothing. 

*****

I don’t take a whole day to rest very often. Almost never, really. But that’s what I did yesterday. Other than a cold winter walk, I didn’t really leave the house. Other than the usual housework and laundry and daily odds and ends, I didn’t do anything productive. I finished one Nancy Mitford novel and am halfway through another. I watched football with my husband and son. We watched the Capitals win their third straight game. We ate leftovers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I managed to avoid the sight and sound of Donald J. Trump. It’ll be another year before I do that again, but that’s what made the day special. It was a 14/10 day - highly recommended. 

It’s Saturday morning now, 9:30 again, and I’m looking out the window at a clear bright sunny day that looks and feels just like yesterday. My son and I are going to put up some Christmas decorations today - not the tree, because it’s far too early, just indoor decorations and house lights. We have some hand-painted wooden Christmas signs. We have snowmen and cardinals and snow globes and a Nativity set and lots of other assorted Christmas trinkets. We don’t overdo it. The overall effect is Christmassy, cozy, and charming if I do say so myself. 

*****

And now it’s Sunday. After days of intense clear cold sunshine, it’s gray and gloomy and raining. It’s supposed to snow. We’ll see. 

Yesterday was a get-things-done day. I ran errands, cooked, cleaned, did laundry - I did it all.  And my son and I decorated the house for Christmas. We used to do this in mid-December but in 2020, my sons wanted to decorate early so we did everything on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, and we’ve continued to do that. No tree yet - it’s too early - but all of the other Christmas decorations are up inside and our Christmas lights are up outside. It’s nice to have a full month of Christmas vibe. And it is a vibe. I’m still not super enthusiastic about Christmas, but I’m also not dreading it. So that’s something. 

Meanwhile, today feels like a little bit of a letdown. It’s gloomy and grim outside, and I have to do some work for our neighborhood association, and my son goes back to school today. But it’s OK. He’ll be home again in a few weeks, and I’ll power through my meeting notes and RFP, and it’s cozy at home. Tomorrow is December 1, the beginning of the end of this year. I’m sorry that Thanksgiving weekend is over, but I won’t miss the Year of Our Lord 2025. 

Pre-holiday

It's Wednesday morning and I'm at the help desk waiting for my computer. It's not working so good. Yes, Google Docs, I know that that should read “not working so well,” but I’m taking poetic license. Work with me.

I'm the only customer here. There are four IT specialists - three enlisted people and one civilian - and they're all looking at my computer. Apparently it's an interesting case. I'm just glad it didn't start behaving normally when I arrived, just to make me look bad. They do that, you know. 

Another customer just rolled up to the help desk counter so now my computer is being attended to by three IT people. I think they're trying to decide if I need a new battery, or a new computer, or something else. A new computer is kind of more trouble than it's worth, especially since it won't really be new, it'll be just a refurbished standard issue Dell laptop much like the one I already have. I don’t need the latest and greatest, bro. I’m not out here writing code. 

And look at that - a new battery it is. I'm waiting for the very nice Army E-3 to finish testing my new battery and then I'll be back in business. 

*****

I don’t even know what else to write about so I’m just going to type. It looks like my favorite part of November has come to an early end. It was gloomy and damp all day today, with no sign of the sun, and tomorrow will be more of the same. By the time this rainy period passes, I’m afraid that we’ll have made the transition to winter. The holidays are bearing down on me, and I am not ready. I’m not even close to ready. I haven’t done my shopping, I don’t have rock-solid plans in place, and I’d just as soon not do anything at all for Christmas but that is unfortunately not an option. I think I have to take care of my mom for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and that’s fine. Someone has to do it, and it might as well be me. 

And it just occurred to me that the dumb computer is probably not the only thing that needs a new battery. I should go back to the help desk. 

*****

Or maybe I should just take a day off. That's what I'm doing now. It's Friday morning and I'm in the car on my way to George Mason University for day 3 of the Patriot Invitational, a mid season meet with maybe 10 teams swimming. It's a D1 meet, so Marymount will probably finish last but they're doing really well. My son's medley relay finished 9th of 16 on Wednesday night, and they broke their own program record. This morning is the 100 breast prelims. 100 breast is my son's best event. It's his bread and butter. It's the moneymaker. 

*****

Thanks to unusually horrendous traffic our 45 minute drive to George Mason took an hour and 20 minutes. We arrived just in time to see the heat immediately after my son's heat, with their times still on the scoreboard. Five minutes would have made the difference. But at least we got to see him, and we'll see him again tonight because he qualified for finals. Meanwhile a Friday off is turning out to be just the thing. 

*****

We made it back to George Mason in plenty of time for finals. My son had a great race. He swam his second best time and then beat his record time in his 400 medley relay split. The 400 relay, with a first year swimmer leading off in the backstroke, finished .07 off the program record. They'll get it next time. 

Meanwhile this month gets more and more bonkers by the minute. MTG is a riddle wrapped in an enigma and the Trump Mamdani meeting absolutely did my head in. I still can't figure out what to make of it. Did Trump's doctors change his meds? Is he trolling JD Vance and Stephen Miller? One thing that seems certain is that Zohran Mamdani is a generational political talent with absolutely extraordinary people skills. I saw the last few minutes of the meeting on TV and the first few minutes of the post-event coverage just before we left for finals, and Nicolle Wallace and her guests were losing their minds. I’m still flummoxed by the whole thing but one thing that's certain is that the Internet always wins. The memes arising from this absolutely unhinged meeting are top notch. 

Niche swim parent humor. I cracked myself up with this. 

*****

Saturday was the last day of the Patriot, and Marymount got second to last place - a very good outcome for the only D3 team at this meet. Marymount finished the 400 free relay, the last event of the weekend, in 9th place (they were seeded 14th) with a program record time. After a late dinner at an Irish pub in Fairfax, we came home and fell into bed, exhausted. It’s Sunday now, and I now have a kitchen full of Thanksgiving groceries. One holiday at a time. That’s how I’ll get through this season. Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Year’s, and then the second half of the swim season starts. That’s the real fun. 

Powerwash

I cleaned a lot last weekend. My house was pretty clean already but there were a few grotty little corners that needed some muscle, elbow grease, and Dawn Powerwash. I hadn’t planned to deep clean but once I cleaned out a bathroom cabinet and hung clean shower curtains, more enhanced cleaning ideas occurred to me, and I ran with them. There’s no way to deep clean one little spot and then just stop. Once that bag of potato chips is open, I’m going to keep eating. The result of all this extra effort is a house that looks almost exactly the same as it did before, but a little cleaner and neater. The kitchen cabinets are less cluttered and better organized. The inside of the oven and the top of the refrigerator are clean. Everything in the freezer is identifiable. And everything just feels better. It was a lot of work, but the return was worth the effort. 

Thanksgiving is in just about two weeks. I started my grocery shopping, so I have all the non-perishable things that I’ll need. The perishable items will need to wait until closer to the date. I have at least two more Thanksgiving grocery shopping trips to go. At least. 

And I have to figure out Christmas, which shouldn’t be a thing that I have to figure out because it happens on the very same day every year, but here we are. I might be hosting my mother for the week between Christmas and New Year’s or I might not. I might work on the day after Thanksgiving or I might not. Thanks to a stupid Commanders game, we might be moving the whole Christmas celebration to Christmas Eve. We might travel here or there if my mother doesn’t come, but I don’t know either way yet. Things are uncertain, which is my least favorite way for things to be. 

*****

But at least the shutdown is over. I’m not going to wade into the politics of which Democrats voted with the Republicans. The whole thing was the Republicans’ fault, and they were never going to act in good faith about Obamacare subsidies or anything else. Of course, we were just a few days away from air travel breaking down altogether just ahead of the holidays, which would have forced the Republicans to the table. But that’s just more misery on top of the misery that they have already caused. We all know that rich people unable to board an airplane is a national emergency like no other, but it’s not just rich people who want to fly home for Thanksgiving. I don’t care if Ivanka and Jared can’t fly to Palm Beach, but I do care about my friends and neighbors and colleagues hoping to visit their families for the holidays. As much as I wanted the Democrats to hold the line, I’m glad that there’s a chance that air travel will be back to normal before Thanksgiving week. 

*****

“Back to normal” lol. I’m hilarious. It’s Friday now and the President is crashing out all over the internet, which is rife with rumors and speculation that he’s going to resign (he’s not) or that the Republicans are going to use his well-documented poor health as the perfect excuse to use the 25th Amendment to yank him out of what remains of the White House and install JD Vance in his place (that one is plausible). 

Meanwhile, I have to go to a gala tonight, which is the very last thing I want to do on this lovely November-y Friday. I’m not a gala person. I don’t like to dress up. I do it when I have to, but I don’t like it. 

The gala is a charity event. An old friend of my husband is one of the organizers, and we’re going as a favor to him. He’s not one of my favorite people, and he wouldn’t be even if he wasn’t a big MAGA but he is a big MAGA and this party is going to be MAGA central, a thing that should not even exist in the DMV. Oh, and would you like to know what the charity is? It’s an organization that supports victims of human trafficking. You cannot - CANNOT - make this stuff up. Maybe I’ll report back on this event later. Or maybe I’ll forget all about it when I deep clean my brain to rid it of everything I saw on the news this week. That is a cleaning job for you right there. There’s not enough Dawn Powerwash in the world. 

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.