Ringing in the new year, like it or not

It’s January 1, 2026! I have no idea what this brand-new year will bring but 2025 has left the building and no one will miss it. 

New Year’s Eve was a rather nice day. We went to the Capitals game, which started at 12:30 PM, meaning that we arrived and left in full daylight. We were home by 4 PM, just as the daylight began to fade. We ate soup that I had made the previous day, and then my sons began preparing for their New Year’s Eve get-together. My younger son’s girlfriend arrived right from work, at 5:30 PM, and spent an hour lounging and reading and decompressing in the spare bedroom. I love that she feels at home here. 

With my husband working a special NYE detail, and my kids entertaining friends, I went to my neighbor’s house. I had just taken my own quiet decompression hour in my bedroom, where I could have happily remained for the rest of the night. But I didn’t. I got dressed and set out into the cold, clear, still darkness for the short walk down the street. 

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My neighbor is also one of my best friends, but we're not as close as we once were. She is a Trump supporter. She would probably say that she's not a Trump supporter just because she voted for him three times, but that is the very definition of a Trump supporter. She's never worn a red hat nor displayed a Trump sign on her front lawn (which would be unwise in Silver Spring) but on the few occasions when we've had it out about Trump, she has defended him and his minions with vigor. 

We had a fight last January over Elon’s Nazi salute, which she denied was a Nazi salute, and by way of owning the lib (me) she waved a meme in my face, a photo collage of prominent Democrats with raised right arms. I pointed out that anyone who is waving goodbye or hailing a taxi or raising a hand to speak in a classroom could be photographed at the moment that their right hand was raised over their head, and that I was basing my correct opinion that Elon’s gesture was a Nazi salute on video footage and not a fluke of a still photo. And then I pointed out that right wing influencers would not feel compelled to make such a meme and that she would not feel compelled to show it to me if they and she didn't know perfectly well that it was a Nazi salute. That’s when she stormed out of my house. 

We made up very soon after - within the hour. But it was with the tacit understanding that we could no longer talk about politics in general or about Trump in particular at all. And what with Trump chaos completely dominating the news and what with my unhealthy but entirely reasonable preoccupation with said news, it’s a little hard to have a real conversation with her without stepping on a landmine. 

There are still a few Trumpity Trumpsters in my family, too. And I keep hoping, as I keep hoping with my friend, that he’ll finally go too far and that one day, they’ll all say “that’s it, that’s enough, I’m out.” I thought that maybe the East Wing demolition would do it, but they were ready with “well what about Obama’s basketball court” because of course those two things are exactly the same. I thought that the Epstein files release would maybe do it but “you know that there are Democrats in the Epstein files too” which is so easy to rebut because of course there are Democrats in the Epstein files and I’d happily see them all in jail. 

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But back to New Year’s Eve. It was fine. My friend had two new cats, both 6-month-old kittens from a rescue, and they are absolutely delightful. Playing with kittens is a great way to spend an evening, not to mention a perfect landmine avoidance tactic. So the evening was fine. I went home at 11. 

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It’s January 4 now, and apparently, we are going to “run” Venezuela even though we don’t seem to be able to run the country we already have. And once again, I fell into the same trap that’s ensnared me every year for really the last decade. I say “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out” to the outgoing year, only to have the incoming year say “Hold my beer” as it barges its way in here. I remember wondering, when I was young, what it would have been like to live through 1939. I might find out now. I just wish the United States was still the good guy, or at least not the bad guy. But there’s always a bright side; always a silver lining. Maybe this will be the thing that finally breaks the Trumpity Trumpster spell. But I won’t get my hopes up. Maybe after he actually stands in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoots someone. 

Cookie crumbs

We’re all out of cookies. It’s December 27, and all of the cookies are gone - eaten or given away. The cookies usually hold out through closer to the New Year, but this year they barely made it through Christmas. Cookies were really the only thing holding me together at the tail end of 2025. I guess I’ll have to resort to drink or hard drugs. 

I have to go to Philadelphia in a little while. Well, I don’t have to but I’m going; or rather, we are going. We’re staying overnight at my sister’s house. We’ll have dinner and open presents and sit around an outdoor fire. It’s always a lovely time, so I’m not sure why I’m dreading it but I am absolutely dreading it. I want to stay home. I want to sit around my own fire and look out my own window. One thing, though. My sister will have cookies. I’ll drive 100 miles for cookies sooner than baking more cookies, that’s for sure. 

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It actually was a wonderful time. Nothing exciting, just family and Christmas movies and football on the basement TV and food and drink and presents. And cookies. I think I'm pretty much cookied out. I think I want to eat salad and apples and poached chicken for the next month or so. 

We're on our way back home now.  It's 11 AM and we're heading south on Pennsylvania 202 toward Route 1. It's a bit colder here than at home and there's still a light frosting of snow on the road shoulder and the bare trees. It's cold and still and the sky is leaden and heavy looking, like it might snow again. 

We didn't do many Christmas things this year. No lights, no concerts, not many parties, not much of anything. I'm a little sorry about that but I'm not going to ruminate. A new year is just a few days away. The last few years have taught me not to tempt fate by gloating over the end of the old year but I'm optimistic in the most cautious and circumspect way. A new year is a new start, no matter what it might bring. 

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The internet says we’re all supposed to choose a word for 2026, a word meant to inspire and guide us. I couldn’t boil anything down to a single word (and five minutes reading this blog should make that perfectly clear) but maybe I should come up with a phrase or a sentence. 

This is normally where the jokes would come in, where I’d sit here and crack myself up writing funny sentences that would sum up my state of mind as we careen into 2026. But I won’t, for two reasons. First, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not going to ask for trouble from the incoming year because I’ve done that and look what happened. Last year, I was all “See ya, 2024, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” and 2025 came in all “Hold my beer.” I won’t make that mistake again. 

Secondly, it’s really not a bad idea to start a new year by writing down my intentions, which is different from making resolutions. A resolution is a promise or a plan to do or not do a particular thing in the new year. A new year’s intention is broader - less specific, a guiding principle rather than a to-do (or to-don’t) list. I have a few days to think about this. I’ll report back. 

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Maybe intention is the actual word for me. One of the many (so many) bad things about 2025 is living in constant survival mode in which I just drift from one thing to the next. I don’t plan things, I don’t look forward to things - I do each task as it arises, and I go where I need to go or where I’m invited, but nothing is fixed. I’ve even stopped writing things down. Nothing is intentional. Intention, or maybe intentionality, would be a good thing to have again. 

Purpose is another good word; related to but not the same thing as intention. Purpose is higher level. Purpose is the driving principle and intention is the way you go about your daily routine so that you accomplish your purpose. I’m not saying that I don’t have a purpose but I’ve lost sight of it. 

And then there’s energy. I used to have it and I don’t anymore; or rather, I have less energy. I have sporadic, intermittent energy. I miss consistent energy. I miss consistently purposeful, intentional, energetic days. 

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It’s the last day of the year. The Christmas tree is coming down in a day or so - I know that it’s supposed to stay up until January 6, but the Christmas clutter is just about to lose its charm, and it’s time to get my house back in order, in more ways than one. And 2025 is finally coming to an end, and even though I know 2026 could well be worse, I’m going to claim victory for making it through 2025. And that’s another word for 2026. Victory. 

It's Christmas time in the suburbs

It’s December 21 and it finally feels like Christmas, despite the dreadful and/or ridiculous events of this month. Last Thursday morning, someone asked me if I watched the President’s speech. Did I watch a crazy old man sundowning on live TV? Is that what you’re asking me? No. No I did not. And I won’t be watching the Patriot Games or the WWE fight on what remains of the White House lawn, and I absolutely won’t be calling it anything but the Kennedy Center, ever. I don’t even include the name “Reagan” when I mention National Airport, and that happened decades ago. 

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And now it’s December 23, or Christmas Adam because tomorrow is Christmas Eve and Adam came before Eve. The stupid renaming of the Kennedy Center is old news, supplanted by the even stupider news about a new class of battleships named after Trump. We’re five minutes from going to war with Venezuela and Denmark is threatening to detain our “Envoy to Greenland” as soon as he sets foot on that island. The stupidity persists, but so do I.

But enough of that. It’s Christmas now. I’ll be working on and off throughout the holidays, but on no particular schedule, and more off than on. 

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December 24, Christmas Eve. I have things to do, Christmas prep things, but apparently I am not doing them. I’m sitting here writing about having things to do. 

I think I finally understand why all of this is getting to me. It’s not because of the President and his henchmen and women. As bad as they are, I’d still feel hopeful if there seemed to be any possibility of any kind of consequence at all for any of them. I guess it could still happen, but they keep pushing the envelope of being absolute shit, and they still seem to have a vise grip on their supporters, including people I love but don’t want to see or talk to right now. People who used to know the difference between truth and lies, and who used to think that difference was important. That’s why it’s getting to me. As they say on social media, I hate this timeline. 

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That was fun, wasn’t it? Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals. Yes, it’s December 25. Cinnamon rolls and bacon are in the oven, the Christmas tree lights are sparkling, and all is calm and bright for now. It’s 8:30 and the rest of my family are sleeping but not for long. Several members of the family are spending part of Christmas Day at the Commanders game at what used to be known as FedEx Field. I don’t know what it’s called now, and I don’t care. I’ll call it whatever I want. I’ll call it Twitter Stadium. I’ll call it Kennedy Center Arena. I’ll call it Kamala Harris Field. Anyway, they’re all going to have to get out of bed soon so that we can open Christmas presents and eat cinnamon rolls and be the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse. It’s fine, they’re leaving the game early so we can have Christmas dinner. I thought for a moment about making my famous exploding turkey, but I decided to go with the traditional ham instead. 

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And it was a beautiful Christmas. A houseful of people whom I love opened presents and snacked on cookies and ate a lovely Christmas dinner and watched Christmas movies, surrounded by twinkly lights and pretty decorations. I made all of that happen, starting at 8 AM with bacon and eggs and cinnamon rolls and continuing on to about 9 PM with the last of the cleanup. Sometimes I worry that I’m too self-involved and solipsistic. And I am, I guess. But not on holidays. On holidays, I do everything for everyone, and then I watch everyone appreciate my work, and then I collapse a little bit, in a good way. I’m still tired, so today is a day of rest. A few more days, and we’ll have a new year. Not a moment too soon. 

If it's not documented...

It’s December 18, so not only is it almost time for Christmas, it’s time to start my new day planner. I love my little pocket day planner with its crisp white paper and gold leaf edged pages and world maps. I especially love the maps, which are absolutely useless for navigating but they're pretty. 

I usually track everything in my day planner. I have weekly to-do lists, a book list, a very unsophisticated spending and saving tracker, and almost daily records of small daily details. Except that recently, I haven't been tracking anything, so the last few  weeks of pages are pretty much empty. 

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I worked for a biotech company a long time ago. We manufactured diagnostic devices and reagents; and when I say “we," of course I mean the company and not me. But I also mean that we the company actually manufactured those things, right onsite. The company had about 400 employees in administration, operations, finance, sales and marketing, R&D, and manufacturing. Manufacturing and QA/QC were the biggest combined departments. This is apropos of nothing, except that it was only about 25 years ago, and the world has changed so much in that short time. I can’t imagine a company like this existing today. It was like working at a small paper company in Scranton.  I have so many stories about that job. One day, I’ll write them all down. 

Well, here’s one. The reagent manufacturing labs and manufacturing floor operated under what is called Good Laboratory Practices and Good Manufacturing Practices - GLP and GMP. These are official terms, which is why they are capitalized. And not being a scientist or a manufacturing engineer or a QA/QC professional, I’m not going to explain in any more detail except to say that the terms refer to a series of rules and procedures governing absolutely everything that happens in a GLP lab and a GMP manufacturing facility. Everything is written down, step by step - both before and after the fact. 

Our QA/QC director used to talk about accurate and complete documentation all the time. “If it’s not documented, it didn’t happen,” she would say. It was her catch phrase. She was so well known for that saying that it spread company-wide, and we said it about everything. 

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Wait, maybe this is why I’ve been lax with my planner - if I didn’t write 2025 down, then it didn’t happen. 

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What I like to say is that if it’s not documented, it won’t happen. I used to be the secretary for our kids’ summer swim team, and one of my responsibilities was to write the weekly email updates. In the first half of those updates, I would recap the most recent meets - because if it’s not documented, it didn’t happen. In the second half, I would let everyone know what was happening in the coming week: Spirit wear and suit order deadlines, Wednesday night B meet, Saturday morning A meet, Friday night pasta party, social events - summer swimming is a lot, and if it’s not documented, it won’t happen. Sometimes, I felt like I was writing things into being, as though the act of writing a thing out was what actually made that thing happen.

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I have two planner options for 2026: a Gallery Leather pocket size planner similar to the ones I’ve had for the past few years, or a very pretty Rifle Paper Company planner that my son gave me. The Gallery Leather has my beloved maps, and it also has a good number of extra pages for my additional notes and lists. I don’t love the color, though. I ordered what I thought was hot pink, but it turns out to be just pink, somewhere between bubble gum and carnation. The Rifle Paper one is prettier and it’s a gift from my son, but it’s an odd size and it only has five or six extra pages and no maps.  I have a week to decide between them. The recent documentation lapse is not the only thing that is making me feel unmoored, but it’s definitely a factor. The rest of this year is a wash, documentation-wise, but I’m going to start fresh in 2026. 

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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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 

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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.

*****