Mansfield Park

I read Mansfield Park for the first time this summer. I like Jane Austen as well as the next reader but I’m not a fanatic. I have never even read Pride and Prejudice, but I have read Emma, Persuasion (my favorite), and Sense and Sensibility. When it comes to Victorian fiction, I prefer Dickens and George Eliot. Jane Austen isn’t Victorian, of course, but she was a big influence on Dickens and Eliot and many other 19th century English writers. 

But back to our story. Mansfield Park’s protagonist Fanny Price arrives at the titular Mansfield Park as a young girl, adopted by her rich aunt and uncle as an act of charity. At first she is miserable, and completely overwhelmed by her wealthy relatives’ lavish lifestyle and their sophisticated manners. The oldest girl of a large and impoverished family, Fanny is shy and timid and sweet-natured and she misses her parents and her brothers and sisters. Her spoiled and privileged girl cousins Maria and Julia are disdainful toward poorly dressed and poorly educated Fanny. Their own beautiful clothes and accomplishments and horsemanship they believe to be the product of their natural superiority, and nothing to do with their wealth and privilege. 

Fast forward to a few years later: Fanny, of course, turns out to be the most beautiful of the girls and she ends up attracting the rich and handsome and high-born young man coveted by Maria and Julia. Does this sound familiar? Fanny isn’t exactly mistreated - not as a servant would have been - but as a young girl, she is kept firmly in her place. Her aunt and uncle Lady and Lord Bertram treat her with distant kindness, congratulating themselves on their generosity; but Fanny’s Aunt Norris never misses an opportunity to remind her that she’s not the equal of her privileged cousins, and that she must always remain humble and grateful. Fanny’s clothes are not quite as nice as her cousins’ and her room is without a fire. She is permitted to ride a family horse when it is available in contrast with her cousins who all have their own horses. The Wikipedia entry for Cinderella lists dozens of books, stories, plays, ballets, and other works of art inspired by the original Cinderella story, but it does not mention Mansfield Park. But I’m sure that Jane Austen was thinking about Cinderella or Rhodopis when she wrote the character of Fanny Price. There’s even a ball. 

*****

I liked Mansfield Park a lot. Fanny is a less-than-perfect heroine, which is kind of a nice change from Dickens, whose Agnes Wickfield and Amy Dorrit are such paragons of virtue that it’s hard to love them. I admire Agnes and Amy (especially Agnes) but I don’t think I could be friends with them. Fanny Price is also mostly a virtuous heroine, at least in some respects. She remains true to her principles, refusing to participate in the amateur theatricals, which she knows that her absent uncle would not approve of. She will not consider marrying her rich and handsome and accomplished suitor because she doesn’t love him and because she suspects (correctly) that he is morally corrupt. 

But Fanny also has some faults - some endearing and some considerably less so. Occasionally, she gives way to feelings of resentment against her spoiled cousins - quite understandable. She is jealous of Mary Crawford, another rich and beautiful girl (and the sister of Henry Crawford, the man who loves Fanny) - not because of Mary’s  wealth and beauty but because Fanny’s beloved cousin Edmund worships her. Later, Fanny realizes that Mary shares her brother’s squishy morals, and she tries to convince herself that she’d seen this flaw in Mary all along, but the reader knows better. When Fanny returns to Portsmouth to visit her parents and siblings, we see that Mansfield has spoiled her completely. The child Fanny had been terribly homesick for her family and her home in Portsmouth; but at 18, Fanny is ashamed of her parents’ poverty and lack of refinement, and she longs for the beauty and grandeur of Mansfield Park. This too is understandable, since Mansfield had become her home, but Fanny’s inner dialogue shows us that she believes that her childhood home is beneath her and that she belongs at Mansfield. Not only has she forgotten that she is a product of the humble house in Portsmouth, she is also blithely unconcerned about the source of her uncle’s great wealth, which is a sugar plantation in Trinidad. Lord Bertram is a slaveholder; and even Fanny and Edmund, the moral hearts of the story, don’t give a thought to the enslaved people who work to maintain the lifestyle of Mansfield Park. 

*****

I won’t give away the ending. There were just enough twists and turns that I wasn’t sure how everything would shake out until almost the very end. Jane Austen was a great storyteller, and I have to wonder what contemporary readers thought of her subtle commentary on wealth inequality and social hierarchies and privilege. She was way ahead of her time. Jane Austen was reminding rich people to check their privilege long before anyone knew that privilege was a thing that should be checked. 

Full House

My mom is here for the week. With my sons also at home for the summer, it’s a full house. I’m working from home for the entire week because I don’t like to leave my mom alone. She’s not too steady on her feet and when she gets stiff, she has a hard time getting up on her own. I fuss over her a lot when she’s here, and she doesn’t seem to mind. I think she likes it, really. 

We’ve been doing this - having her stay here for a week at a time -  for about two years now, and there’s a routine. My mom arrives on Sunday, late morning or early afternoon. My brother, who drives her here, stays for about five minutes and then he hits the road for the return trip. My mom stows all of her stuff, ⅔ of which she will not use, in the spare bedroom. I sit with her on the patio when it’s nice and in the family room when it’s not, and I keep her company while she watches her favorite TV shows. I make breakfast and lunch. Sometimes I make dinner and sometimes we go out and sometimes we pick up dinner to go. In the spring and fall and winter, I take about 45 minutes during the day to walk. In the summer, I run out to the pool to swim laps. We spend the evening together, and then I go to bed at about 11. My mom stays up late. I usually wake up at around 2, and find her sound asleep in a chair, and I make her go to bed. 

*****

I have a friend who asks me where my husband is every time I appear in public without him, which is to say all the time. My husband works a lot, and he often works at odd times so I often go places without him. Every time, my friend asks me where he is. 

With my mom here, not only am I constantly asked about my husband every time he’s not in the house; I am also expected to account for the whereabouts of the other members of the household at all hours of the day and night. My sons are 24 and almost 21. The older one has graduated from college, and still lives at home (and is welcome to continue living here for as long as he likes). The younger one is home for the summer, and is coaching two different swim teams while also doing a part-time internship with a minor league baseball team. Both of these boys - men - are employed and busy and free to come and go as they please. They tell me where they’re going and when they’ll be back and when they plan to be away all night, but I don’t give my mom the full report. I just tell her “Don’t worry about them, they’re fine,” and she says “I just like to make sure that everyone is safe.” 

You know all those stories that GenX people tell about running wild all day and night, and not being allowed in the house during the day, and drinking out of the neighbors’ hoses? Yeah, all of that is true, and it’s hilarious that my mother is more worried about the safety of my grown sons much more than she ever worried about me when I was still an actual child. 

*****

On Tuesday evening, I took my mom shopping at Kohl’s. She has mobility issues, and trudging around a department store is difficult for her but I know her tastes and her sizes very well, and we have had a great deal of shopping success when I act as her personal shopper. I find her a chair, she sits down, I ask what type of thing she’s looking for, and I run around and bring stuff back for her to look at. When she was here in May, she got a skirt, two t-shirts, two cardigans, and a rain jacket - all picked by me. Yesterday, she was looking for loungewear, undergarments, and socks. Kohl’s had a wheelchair available, so I put her in the wheelchair so that she could see the entire store. We found everything she wanted, and she had a good time except for my near collision with a clothing rack. You can’t look away to say hello to a neighbor while you’re pushing a wheelchair or it will veer off course. Lesson learned. 

*****

It was stormy on Wednesday night. It was stormy on Tuesday night, too, but those storms passed through quickly, and Wednesday’s storms lingered throughout the night. A great deal of rain has fallen here in the last few days, but it’s more humid now, not less. Maryland’s climate has already changed. It’s tropical here now. We’re like Florida with a little bit more winter and a lot less fascism. 

My mom kept looking out the windows on Wednesday night. “Are your cushions OK?” she’d ask. “Do you need to put your furniture away? Is stuff going to blow away?” A crash of thunder, and she’d say “Where are the boys? Are they out driving in this? They’re not out driving in this, are they?” It’s absolutely hilarious that I am the one out here saying “Don’t worry about it. Everything is fine. Everyone is fine.” “Don’t worry about it” is not my line. We’re in Opposite World. We’re in an alternate timeline. 

*****

Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori, one of my favorite novels, is about a group of very old people in postwar Britain who receive anonymous notes and phone calls from a series of mysterious strangers. The messengers and the medium vary but the message is always the same “Remember you must die.” I won’t give away the plot other than to say that there’s a murder, but the murder has nothing to do with the anonymous messages, which are reminders, not threats. We all must die, so the memento mori “Remember you must die” is just the plain truth. 

I don’t have the book in front of me so I’ll paraphrase except for the phrase “potent distillations” - the characters have all reached the age at which they no longer try to subdue their personalities. The filter is gone. They have become “potent distillations” of themselves, more intensified and concentrated versions of the people they have always been, for better or for worse. 

This is just a random literary observation, apropos of absolutely nothing. 

*****

It’s Saturday morning now. My mom is leaving tomorrow. I’m not sure what we’ll do today. With her limited mobility, my mom can’t walk long distances or really any distance at all. She’d like to go to a flea market and although I would not normally choose to visit a flea market, I certainly wouldn’t mind doing that. There are a few flea markets and farmers’ markets in the area but finding parking literally next to the venue with little or no walking required would be challenging. We’ll see. 

My mom is sitting next to me right now. She doesn’t know that I’m writing about her. LOL. My poor sister spent the entire week cleaning her hoarder house, and not only is my mother messaging a Facebook contact right now about purchasing even more Byers Choice carolers (IYKYK and if you don’t then count your fucking blessings) but she will spend the next week complaining about the house because she likes her clutter the way it is. And if she lived by herself and could take care of herself then it wouldn’t be any of our business. But my sister lives with her and takes care of her and the clutter and mess drive her insane. I don’t know how she does it. And now I’m thinking that a flea market is exactly where my mother doesn’t need to go because she doesn’t need to buy any more junk. We’ll find a farmer’s market instead. 

*****

It’s Sunday afternoon now. I took my mom home this morning; or rather, I took her to the Maryland House and handed her off to my brother, who took her home to Philadelphia. I’m always sad when she goes home, even though she drives me crazy and her visits leave me exhausted. But it will be nice to have my house in order again. She’s just as messy here as she is at home. I will not miss seeing mom stuff on every flat surface in the house. 

We did end up going to a farmer’s market yesterday, which was rather difficult given the heat and lack of shade and lack of close-by parking. But we managed. We took our time walking from my car to the market, and I was able to borrow a chair from a kind vendor so that she could sit for a few minutes, and she seemed to have a good time. We had lunch in one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants; and when we finally got home and out of the sun, my mom napped on the couch in the dark cool family room with “Father Brown” on TV in the background. She’s not low-maintenance but she doesn’t ask for much when it comes to entertainment, either - a farmer’s market and lunch and a couple of quick errands is a nice busy day for her. 

I’m hoping to swim today but the weather is unsettled. I experienced at least 10 weather events on my way to and from the Maryland House today; a total of about 3.5 hours round trip. Maybe things will settle down a bit. But meanwhile, I’m going to catch up on laundry and get my house back in order and get ready for a new week. My mom’s next visit will probably be in September. I’ll provide a full report. 

I think it was the Fourth of July

I was six years old when Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” was a top 40 radio hit. I loved that song. I still do. Eighties “Power of Love” Chicago is trash, but 70s “Saturday in the Park” Chicago is awesome. That’s a pop music hill that I will die on. 

When I was little, I always wondered about the “I think it was the Fourth of July” part. You think it was the Fourth of July? How would you not KNOW? How would you not remember that it was the Fourth of July? July 4th was a big deal in working class 1970s Philadelphia. Our street of tiny rowhouses got very little through traffic; and on the Fourth of July, my uncles set up the barbecue grill right on the sidewalk outside their side yard gate, and they strung a badminton net from their porch to the high stoop across the street. My dad and my uncles grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and my mom and my aunts made potato salad and macaroni salad and the freezer was full of red, white, and blue popsicles. There was a parade through the neighborhood. The parade ended around noon, and the party started soon after, and went well into the evening. We never had real fireworks but we did have sparklers and those little cracky things that you throw down onto the sidewalk. Everyone had flags and bunting on display. July 4th was an occasion. It was an event. It was a legitimate holiday. 

*****

My kids also grew up celebrating the Fourth. Our neighborhood has a little parade with kids on their decorated bikes and scooters; and the neighborhood civic association holds games and a magic show at the pool. The magician, who has been performing in our neighborhood for 20 years or more, used to look like a young Bill Murray. Now he just looks like Bill Murray. Members can bring guests to the pool for free, and it’s the most crazy crowded day of the year. You can’t even find a deck chair. It’s pretty great. 

I still went to the pool on Friday. There was still a parade. The kids still played games and watched the magic show. People still hung flags and bunting. I cut up a watermelon and made some hamburgers. I even made macaroni salad. But it was just July 4th, it wasn’t the Fourth of July. 

*****

I’m not surprised at all at how much damage the Trump regime has done in just six months. They told us what they were going to do and now they’re doing it. In 2020, I told everyone who would listen that the second Trump term would be far worse than the first. And then when he lost (and he did lose), I thought that January 6 would finally put an end to MAGA and that no matter what happened, at least we wouldn’t have another Trump presidency. Anyway, I was right about one thing - the second term is far worse than the first. Even Joe Rogan is starting to wonder aloud if Trump might - just might - be a fascist. Yeah, Joe, he is. Thanks for figuring that out about a year too late. 

*****

America has never been perfect (not even close) and spoiler alert, it never will be. But Trump and his gang are gleefully destroying everything that’s good and deliberately exacerbating everything that’s bad, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. But I think it will get better. I’m not giving up. The Fourth of July will be back. 

Troubles and Calamities

I just finished reading Leslie Gray Streeter’s Family and Other Calamities, a very funny novel. The author is a Baltimore journalist whose work I follow on social media, and I pre-ordered the book. I like to pre-order books - I buy them and forget about them and then a month later, there’s a nice surprise in my Kindle queue. 

Right after I finished Family, I read Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses, a novel set in Belfast in 1975. Kennedy herself describes it as a story of “star-crossed lovers” during the Troubles, and that’s as good a description as any other. Trespasses is astonishingly good; and even though I guessed exactly what was going to happen and exactly who would be revealed as responsible about halfway through, it was still page-turningly suspenseful until the end. 

When I started reading Trespasses, I knew right away that I’d have to read more of Louise Kennedy’s work, and then I found that she has only published one other book, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. Louise Kennedy is almost exactly my age, and she spent most of her life working as a chef, with side forays into writing. It’s rare for someone to publish a first novel when they’re in their mid 50s, but Penelope Fitzgerald didn’t publish a book until she was 58, and she was absolutely brilliant. 

****

Family and Other Calamities and Trespasses are two very different books, with a few things in common. Family is kind of a semi-serious comic novel, very funny, with underlying serious themes and a screwball comedy vibe. It’s a beach read with a brain. Trespasses is heavier - tragic and heartbreaking. But there’s a very strong connection between the two. Both novels feature women protagonists whose lives are completely altered by rash youthful decisions that open chasms between the before and the after. In Family, the protagonist runs away from her youthful mistake and only acknowledges many years later that running away might have been a mistake. But we know from the beginning that something happened in the past, and that we'll find out soon enough what it was. This is a comic novel, so the loose ends are tied up and the ending is happy and the people who deserve a comeuppance get it. Trespasses doesn’t really touch the chasm between youth and late middle age until the very end when we revisit Cushla, the young protagonist, who is now a middle-aged woman reckoning with the past, like the rest of 21st century Northern Ireland. And despite the tragedy, there’s also a happier-than-expected - or at least hopeful - ending. 

One more similarity - both of these authors have published two books, in two different genres. Kennedy’s earlier book is a volume of short stories, while Streeter’s is a memoir of the time following her husband’s untimely death, aptly titled Black Widow because she is a Black woman whose husband died. Both of these books are now in my Kindle queue. I will report back later. 

Cruel Summer

On Saturday morning, I was standing on a pool deck waiting for a race to begin as Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” blared from the announcing table’s sound system, and it felt like 2012 again. 

2012 was a nice summer. The company that I was working for at the time eliminated our entire division in the middle of June, leaving me unemployed; and if you have school age swim team kids, summer is a good time to be unemployed. My kids were 11 and almost 8. We went to swim practice twice a day, with meets on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings. We went to the library every week, and we went to museums and the County airport, where we watched planes take off and land while eating grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries at the airport lunch counter. We did a lot of hanging around. Kids that age are great company and a lot of fun to hang around with. The hanging around part is what I remember best about that summer. 

My sons are 24 and almost 21 now, but now it’s their cousins’ turn to continue the summer swim team tradition, which means that I still get to go to summer swim meets, but I don’t have to show up early, nor stay late, nor judge stroke and turn infractions. My nephew is 12 and my niece is 8, and they are both very good swimmers. They’re also very good company. 

*****

Today is July 1. July is the real heart of summer, especially in Maryland and the rest of the Mid-Atlantic states. In Maryland, school ends in June, and it starts in August, making July the only month untouched by school unless you count the back-to-school advertising that begins on July 4. 

Last night, I left work at 5. It’s a holiday week, and traffic was blessedly light, and I resolved to go swimming the moment I got home so that I could avoid the threatened thunderstorm. I arrived home just before 5:30 and I was in the pool swimming laps by 5:45. The swim team was on its annual Hersheypark trip, and so the pool was not as crowded as it normally would have been at 5:45 PM, and the air was muggy and hot, and the water was just barely cool. The sun was shining brightly, but a few clouds looked threatening, and the atmosphere felt volatile, like a storm could break open at any minute. A little rain fell, even as the sun was still shining on the water - ideal swimming conditions. Then I came home and pulled some tomatoes off the plants in our garden and sliced them up for salad. The house was peaceful, and the cool of the water stayed with me for hours. It was as perfect a summer evening as I could have asked for. 

*****

Or it would have been. Today is July 2. The new budget bill, the one that’s going to take food away from hungry children, passed the Senate yesterday, right around the time that DHS and their henchmen in Florida cut the ribbon on a brand-new concentration camp in the Everglades. The place, which they’re gleefully calling “Alligator Alcatraz” but which I will only refer to as the Ochopee Concentration Camp, has already flooded on its second day of operation. So that’s fortunate, I suppose - the people imprisoned there will die of dysentery or typhoid or malaria rather than being eaten by alligators or strangled by pythons. A somewhat cruel fate instead of a hideously cruel fate.

And that’s the thing that’s bothering me - that's what's wrong. It’s the cruelty of right now, not the nostalgia for a relatively peaceful time over a decade ago. Even garden tomatoes can’t make this right. Even a swim can’t wash away the sadness. For the first time in my life, I have problems that summer cannot solve. 

Just a girl

It’s been a long week. It’s Saturday now. I worked only four days this week, and work was the least of my worries. The four-day workweek was not because of a holiday but because I was out on Monday for my cousin’s funeral. Just a few days ago, but it seems like ages. 

The funeral was very sad. I’m not especially close to my aunt anymore (thanks Fox News). The man I still refer to as my uncle, who was always exceptionally kind to me when I was a child, is no longer married to my aunt. She remarried many years ago to a man who is pleasant and polite, but also a Trump worshipper, and so I generally avoid conversation with him because there’s nothing you can say about anything that he can’t run through the MAGA filter and throw right back at you. It’s not worth it. 

But my aunt is still my aunt and my Godmother (and she still introduces me as her Godchild) and I still love her. And even if I didn’t, how could I possibly not feel compassion for a 78-year-old woman who just lost her only daughter. At 78, a person must feel that no matter what else goes wrong, at least you’ve passed the danger of outliving a child. Having witnessed it several times, I can confidently say that the saddest thing in the world is watching parents bury their children, no matter the age. 

*****

My cousin was a girly girl. She loved boy bands and makeup and hairstyling and fashion. She didn’t like sports. It’s always easy for men and boys and some women, too, to mock and ridicule girls like her, and my cousin endured quite a bit of that kind of “humor” from her brother and her uncles and cousins. Even in his eulogy, her brother (also my cousin, obviously) joked about her clothes and her ineptitude at softball and her NKOTB fandom. And he loved his sister, and could barely get through his remarks without breaking down, but making fun of a girl because she’s a girl is just part of the language among working class Catholics. Misogyny is both born and bred in our families. The men and boys ridicule us for having two X chromosomes and we have two possible ways to respond: You can get upset, knowing that absolutely no one will defend you and that they will in fact very likely yell at you to “get a sense of humor;” or you can laugh along to show what a “good sport” you are. 

*****

When I was young, I wished that I was the good sport type of girl, the cool girl who rolls with the punches and doesn’t get mad at her sexist classmates and brother and cousins and uncles and dad and grandfather (yeah, it was pretty much everywhere). But I was not a cool girl, and I’m glad now that I wasn’t. I’m glad I got upset every time someone said that I ran like a girl or threw a ball like a girl. I’m glad that I got mad when my brother didn’t have to help with dishes or cooking or laundry or cleaning because “he’s a boy.” I’m glad that I got furious at every boy who pulled up my skirt or snapped my bra strap. I’m glad I knew that none of that was OK. And guess what? The cool girls knew it too. And they were raging the whole time - they just didn’t want anyone to know. 

*****

When she was young, my cousin tried to be a cool girl. We were not contemporaries, really - I am 12 years older - but I saw her often enough when she was a teenager and young woman to know that she wanted to come across as casually cool and nonchalant, like a girl who didn’t care about her hair or her makeup or her reputation. I was old enough to tell her not to pretend to be something she wasn’t, but I didn’t tell her that. Nothing would have been less helpful. No teenage girl wants to hear that she just needs to “be herself.” She’d have bristled at the very idea that she wasn’t 100 percent authentic and real. But as she got older, she became more like herself - feminine in a girly way, vulnerable, even needy. She was the kind of girl and the kind of woman that people describe as “a bit much.” She never married and didn’t have serious relationships, and most people would think that she didn’t have much of a life. Maybe she didn’t. She struggled with drugs and alcohol and was often unhappy. But she had friends. She loved her friends and their children, and she loved animals, and she loved music and fashion and movies and TV and pretty things. I hope she’s at peace now. 

Cousins

It’s Saturday now, a legit hot sunny summer morning in June after weeks of weather better suited for April than June. Two years ago, 9 AM on a Saturday morning in June would have found me on the pool deck with a whistle or stopwatch around my neck, but instead I’m on my patio listening to the cheering and the whistles and the Colorado starter as I sit in my pajamas writing. The pool is just a little more than a block from my house. Other people always told me that you could hear the noise from the meets for a several block radius, and they were right. 

*****

Last week - a week ago today - my cousin died. She was 47. She never married and she never had children, and she had a lot of problems, sadly. She had a hard time with other people - she wasn’t mean or anything - far from it, really. She just didn’t know how to navigate the world. Lots of people are like that, and I wish we could make more room for them. I wish we could all be kinder and more accepting. 

My cousin also had a lot of health problems, some related to mental illness and substance misuse, but not all. She struggled a lot this last year or so. She was hospitalized last year for a bit, and when she got out, I sent her a letter and an Ulta gift card. Her mother, my aunt on my mother’s side, called me to tell me that I could not have picked a better thing to send her because she loves cosmetics and fancy skin care but doesn’t often have the extra money to buy them. I was glad I could make her happy for a little bit. 

I saw her a few months later at my mother’s 80th birthday party. She did not look well, and she was oddly clingy with me. It was almost as if we were children again, me the 14-year-old oldest grandchild and she the two-year-old youngest of the grandchild crew, toddling around after me wherever I went. I stayed with her and brought her snacks and drinks and listened to her complaints about her job and her excited chatter about concerts she was planning to attend. And even though there was something very obviously off about her demeanor, I was glad she still felt comfortable hanging around with me and I enjoyed listening to her. That was the last time I saw her, and I’m glad I spent time with her. I’m glad she had a good time at the party. I hope she’s at peace now. 

*****

I can hear shouts of “GO! GO! GOOOOOOO!” from here. That’s my son cheering for his swimmers. He sounds like a 20-year-old male version of me at a swim meet. And now it’s go time for me. 

*****

Given what happened last week and especially given what happened last night, Saturday was an oddly peaceful day. I dropped into the neighborhood swim meet to see my son coaching his kids, and to say hi to my swim parent friends, and then I went to yet another swim meet, to see my 12-year-old nephew and my 8-year-old niece. They both crushed it - my niece won her freestyle event with an All-Stars qualifying time, and my nephew also did very well. When I ran over to congratulate him after his 50 breaststroke race, he said “I didn’t know you were coming, but I could hear you yelling GOOOOOO!” “You swim like Evan,” I said. This is high praise from me, and high praise to a boy who idolizes his older cousin. 

*****

My younger cousin’s funeral is tomorrow. We’ll go to New Jersey in the morning and come back in the afternoon. We thought about going for a few days but we decided against it. If anything happens, I want to be close to home. 

Mystery

It’s Thursday, which is normally the day when I grocery shop for my crazy old lady. I’ve been doing her shopping for five years now, almost always on Thursday nights. I call her on Wednesday night, I get her list, and then I shop on Thursday after work. But not this week, and not for the last few weeks. 

About a month ago, when I couldn’t reach her on the phone, I walked to her house and banged on the door. I knew she wouldn’t come to the door (I have never actually seen her) - I wanted to just hear her yell back that she was OK. But she didn’t. I called her again, and she didn’t answer and so I called the police to do a wellness check. A short time later, my phone rang. A young police officer told me that the lady had been taken to the hospital a few days earlier following a 911 call from another neighbor. My mom was with me that week, so I didn’t go to visit her right away but when my mom left, I called the hospital to ask about her. She wasn’t there, and they - of course - would not give me any information about whether she’d been there at all, if she’d been discharged, sent to rehab, died, whatever. 

So I called her again, and I stopped at her house and banged on the door and yelled again. Nothing. I’ve continued to call and stop by, at least once a week; and yesterday, I noticed that the grass had been cut. Her house is falling apart, but one thing she always did was to have someone cut the grass once or twice a month, and they’re obviously still doing it. And I am pretty sure she’s not dead because I have checked the obituaries many times. My guess is that she is in a rehab or assisted living facility somewhere - this is what I hope, anyway. We have called a few local places but we haven’t found her. 

*****

The thing is that if she was in a rehab or assisted living place, she would probably call me - I would hope she would, anyway. She has my number, and she probably has it memorized because she uses an old-fashioned landline, so she probably doesn’t have speed dial (a great convenience, but I do miss having tons of phone numbers just memorized). Knowing with some degree of certainty that she’s still alive, and that as recently as six weeks ago she was reasonably lucid (crazy, but lucid), I am thinking about two possibilities. One, she’s injured or sick enough that she doesn’t feel well enough to call me, or she just simply can’t. Another is that she’s mad at me, and doesn’t want to speak to me. 

It sounds ridiculous (and it would be ridiculous) that this lady would be mad at the person who literally kept her alive for the last five years, but she’s a bit of a character, as I have previously established. Last year, when she started to experience health issues, she called me complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath. I told her that I was going to hang up and call 911, and that I could ride with her to the hospital if she wanted a companion. She was furious at the very suggestion. I should have known, apparently, that someone with her (imaginary) condition and sensitivities would be unable to endure even five minutes in a hospital surrounded by machines and radioactive isotopes and Purell. The Purell was a bigger concern than the radioactive isotopes. She was outraged at my ignorance. 

Fear of hospitals is not uncommon among older people and I definitely understand not wanting to get in an ambulance, but I didn’t really see an alternative. I have no medical training whatsoever, and so the emergency room is my only suggestion when someone complains of classic heart attack symptoms. At this point, I was a little upset too, because she all but accused me of trying to kill her. 

She called me again the next day and asked me if I knew of a neighbor who is a nurse. She was thinking about a specific person, and the description did not ring a bell, so I couldn’t supply the name. She asked me to look in the neighborhood directory, which no longer exists, although I do have an old copy. I told her that I’d look when I got home, and that I’d call her back. I didn’t tell her that if we did find a nurse in the neighborhood who was willing to visit, that she would immediately call 911 if she suspected a heart attack. 

It was the day after that when I called and visited and then called the police. Piecing together what I know, I guess that she did finally find the nurse’s name and number, and that she (the nurse) was the neighbor who called the ambulance. Maybe she blames me for that - maybe she thinks that this nursing neighbor and I were plotting to Shanghai her to the hospital. Maybe the nurse denied having made the call. Or maybe my old lady is really sick or otherwise debilitated and not able to call. Or maybe she’s in good hands and doesn’t need to call me because she doesn’t need me anymore. Whatever it is, it would be nice to know what happened. It would be nice to know if she’s OK. 

Hydrotherapy

Last week, a plane crashed in India, killing over 200 people. Then the Department of Homeland Security handcuffed and body slammed a US Senator who dared to ask the Secretary a question. And then Israel started dropping bombs on Iran.  In a year of really not good weeks, last week was an especially not good week. 

On Thursday night, I also got to swim for the first time this summer. Between unseasonable stupid cold and nonstop rain and one damn thing after another, I hadn’t been in the water even once since the pool opened. I tried to swim on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend but the water was North Atlantic in April cold. I wouldn’t have swum in that water unless I was assured of access to a floating door. 

The water was pretty much perfect. Swim practice was just finishing up and I got the one open lane. My son was coaching the 8-and-under girls as they practiced their breaststroke. I could hear him reminding them to pull toward their chests, not their hips. “Much better this time! Two hand touch, don’t forget! You guys got this!”  It was still midday bright at 6:30 PM, and the sun was still shining on the water and the trees were still rustling in the breeze and the lifeguards were still blowing their whistles and yelling “WALK!” at the swim team kids as they finished practice and headed toward the showers. I swam back and forth at my usual uneven pace, and felt totally free. For 45 minutes, it was like every other perfect summer evening. 

*****

I bought some new super thick Sharpies and made a new sign - Impeach 47 on the front and Abolish ICE on the back - for the No Kings protest on Saturday morning. At the top of that sign, I also wrote “Give me your huddled masses…” If my sons had been home on Friday night, I’d have asked them to draw a Statue of Liberty on my sign, because they can draw and I cannot. But my hand-lettering skills are solid, and the sign was good. 

And I got to swim again on Friday night. The weather was very uncertain all afternoon, and I knew it was going to rain - I just didn’t know when. I wanted to beat the storm so I finished work at 4:55 and I was in the pool at 5:08. The 8U kids were practicing their races for Saturday’s meet. “Remember,” my son yelled - “you’re going to sprint. Gwen, Jovie, Gianluca, David, Ada - eyes on me. What does ‘sprint’ mean?” Five little faces looked up and five little voices yelled back in unison: “Go as fast as you can!” My son is a good swimmer, and he’s a really good coach. 

The water was colder than I expected, but I didn’t dilly-dally. I got in and swam my laps as the sky got darker and the wind picked up, and I heard lifeguards calling back and forth to one another. “Was that thunder?” “No, it’s like half an hour away.” Pool lifeguards live by the radar, and they can predict a thunderstorm as well as any TV forecaster. 

*****

The protest was well-attended and energetic. Two drivers passing by flipped us off, and a few others stared resolutely ahead pretending that they didn’t see hundreds of people lining both sides of Georgia Avenue, but I would say about 90 percent of the people driving by honked and cheered and waved in approval. Truck drivers and bus drivers and police officers and a USPS driver who honked and waved got big rounds of applause in return. I ran into a few other alumni swim parents, and we all talked about our old summer Saturday mornings on the pool deck and our new summer Saturday mornings fighting fascism. This isn’t what any of us expected to be doing in our post-Dolphins era, but we’re still swim parents and swim parents do what needs to be done. 

I came home on Saturday buoyed with stick-it-to-the-man energy, and then got some rather terrible news that I’ll probably write about later. Remember December 31, 2020 when we were all “See ya, 2020, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” just so blithely sure that whatever happened next, it would have to be an improvement over 2020? LOL! Hilarious. 

*****

Well, when I say “we” were sure that things had nowhere to go but up after the shit show we fondly recall as the year 2020, I mean other people. I was hopeful, even cautiously optimistic, but I’m always prepared for even worse than the worst. I’m always waiting for the hammer to fall. You should hang out with me some time, because I’m really fun. 

But I’m alive and I have my family and my friends and my health, and pretty much everything else is icing on the cake. Including the unexpected Saturday afternoon weather break that allowed me to swim for the third straight day. The water had gotten a bit colder again after the Friday night rain, but it was the good, bracing kind of cold, the kind that shocks you just enough that you don’t really think about anything other than staying in motion. A few minutes of not thinking was exactly what I needed. It was nice to feel free and weightless for a little while. It’s nice to know that there are still little bright spots here and there, as long as you know where to look. 

Best ever

It’s Sunday and I’m in the Philadelphia suburbs, at my sister's house. We drove up yesterday and we're going home today after my nephew's graduation lunch. I’m not sure why they decided to have a lunch gathering on Sunday afternoon rather than a party on Saturday night but it's not my business. I show up when and where I'm invited. 

It's a beautiful summery soft June day. My weather app predicted unseasonably cool temperatures today but it's really quite warm. Weather predictions are just guesses at this point. Who needs NOAA, right? We'll get what we get, weather-wise, and we won't get upset. 

Case in point: It was peak June grad party weather two hours ago when I started writing this and now it's cool, gray, and drizzling. But who cares. We're going to be inside in a restaurant, anyway. 

Two of my nephews, along with my older son, have June birthdays, so between birthday parties and grad parties, we've been spending at least one June weekend here every year for the last 25 years. June makes me nostalgic for grad parties and birthday parties and pool days, even as these events are happening. Nostalgia in advance, I suppose. 

*****

My sister's black lab is 13 now. I walk the silly boy every time I visit, and I'm pretty sure I'm his favorite non-resident human. His name is Duke. When I arrive at their house, Duke always greets me with great enthusiasm, and then heads directly to the closet where his leash is kept, tail wagging in happy anticipation. And I seldom disappoint him. 

Duke was sleeping when I arrived yesterday, and we were all having dinner when he woke up, and then it was dark and so we didn’t get to take a walk. He didn’t complain, but he shot me reproachful looks throughout the evening. I’m not angry, he seemed to say - I’m just terribly disappointed. 

But the sun came out for a bit on Sunday morning and we didn’t have to be anywhere until 1 PM, so I came downstairs and went right for the closet, and Duke was just beside himself with excitement. A walk! I will see stuff and smell stuff and stroll about the neighborhood as if I owned the place! Get me out there! Let’s go, Aunt Claire - let’s GOOOOO! 

My sister had warned me the night before that we wouldn’t get far. Duke has pretty bad arthritis and is worn out after a block or two. But the thing is that he doesn’t remember this from one walk to the next. I’m sure he feels the discomfort in his joints but I don’t think he makes a connection between that discomfort and the inability to go far when he’s out and about. Every walk is new to him. When he sits still for a moment waiting for a human to attach the leash, you can just tell that Duke is planning for the longest, sniffiest, best walk ever. 

We went two blocks before Duke started to lead me around the corner to head home, and although I could tell he was tired, he didn’t seem to mind. He enjoyed that short little 15-minute walk around his neighborhood as much as he’d have enjoyed a two-hour hike in the woods. It was his best walk ever, until his next walk. 

Isn’t he lucky? They age, dogs do, just like we do, but they don’t worry about it because they don’t know it’s coming. They don’t lament their lost youth because they don’t remember it. There’s always a treat in the offing, even if they just had a treat five minutes ago, because they don’t worry about their weight and they don’t know that their humans do worry about their weight. Every minute carries with it the possibility of a treat or a nice scratch or a rousing game of fetch or a nice long walk. Every walk is always going to be the best one ever. 

*****

We went to the party right on time. It was a sit-down luncheon in a private room in a very nice restaurant, with balloons and decorations in my nephew’s school colors and a graduation photo on a big poster board with Sharpies for everyone’s signatures and well wishes. The elegant setting and the cool rainy weather were probably better suited to an 80th birthday party than a high school graduation, but apparently, my nephew didn’t really want any kind of party at all, so this was a compromise. And it was lovely. 

My nephew is going to Temple University. I also went to Temple (though I graduated from UMUC) and I’m delighted that we’ll have another Owl in the family. I gave him $200 as a graduation gift, and told him to spend it on anything he wants. My sister-in-law, a sensible person, suggested that he deposit $100 in his savings and keep the other $100 to spend, which is a perfectly reasonable compromise. I’m like every other doting aunt - I hope he buys something nice for himself. 

This June party was very different from the sun-soaked lively outdoor parties of my children’s and older nephews’ childhoods, but it was memorable in its own way. Every summer party is the best one ever. 

Spat

“And you know what else? That WAS a Nazi salute!”

That’s the tweet that I was waiting for as I watched the Trump - Musk alliance breaking down in real time on Thursday. The online reaction from my corner of the social media universe was mostly pure glee, but colored with a bit of skepticism. Some people seemed to think that the whole thing was an act, but I don’t know - it got very personal. And if Trump is not all over the Epstein files (of course he is) then he can just order the DOJ to release everything to clear his name. He hasn’t done that yet, has he?

I’m hoping that this fight will end in a resounding loss for both of them. If Elon goes nuclear and admits that he manipulated the election then even the most Trumpy Congressmen and Senators and Supreme Court Justices would have no choice but to proceed with a full investigation and hand recount. I’m pretty sure that they’d then figure out how to manipulate the vote count and reveal that - surprise! -  Trump still won. But then they would proceed to a 25th Amendment removal from office so that JD Vance can take over and complete the Curtis Yarvin/Peter Thiel tech bro fascist takeover of the United States. 

Meanwhile, there’s not enough popcorn in the world for this show. Maybe Ye will record an Elon diss track. Maybe Elon will secretly buy Truth Social and then kick Trump off it. Maybe The Real Housewives of DOGE will be the next Bravo series. 2025 is, as they say on the internet, the worst timeline ever - but this part is golden. This part is hilarious. 

Not quite beyond the Thunderdome

Maybe I should read just one book at a time. This is what I’m thinking as I make my way through Little Dorrit, with side forays into His Very Best (a biography of President Jimmy Carter) and Soetsu Yanagi’s The Beauty of Everyday Things. If I just stuck to one book at a time, I’d finish each one sooner. But I’d probably read the same number of books. Who knows.

*****

Well, you can tell that AI didn’t write that paragraph, right? My job involves writing, a lot of it, and so people ask me all the time if I use AI assistants. The answer is the most emphatic “no” (note that in conversation, it’s just a simple, polite “no,” and the emphasis is only in my mind). Once when I was working at home, with several Google Docs open in front of me, one of my sons said “Mom, maybe you should try ChatGPT.” I scoffed, “I don’t need ChatGPT. I AM ChatGPT.”  As I tell my friends, writing is one of the few things that I’m good at, and I’m not going to give it up to a robot. If I can’t be bothered to write something, then why should anyone bother to read it?

*****

But that’s probably the point, right? Who needs writers with their quirks and their obscure references and their goofy jokes, when AI can churn out all the flawless “content” you would ever need? And really, who needs to read in the first place? If you need instructions, ChatGPT and Gemini can read them to you. If you need news and updates, there’s the TV and the radio and online newsfeeds with audio and video content. If you want entertainment, you can stream it. It is not out of the realm of possibility to imagine a future - and not a distant, centuries from now future, but a future that most of us will be alive for - in which most people can neither read nor write. Imagine the public interest ad campaign: RIS - Reading is Superfluous. 

Full disclosure: I wake up in the morning waiting for the hammer to fall. The worst case scenario is my default setting. Keeping that in mind, feel free to take my predictions with huge crusty grains of salt. On the other hand,  think about it - people don’t memorize telephone numbers anymore - everything is stored in the electronic memory of our phones. Lots of people don’t know how to multiply or divide (or even add or subtract) large numbers. If you buy a coffee that costs $3.78, chances are that the cashier will not know how to count back change from a $20 bill. These are all things that most people could do just a few decades ago. It’s not unreasonable to think that reading and writing could become the next archaic skills. 

*****

You have probably seen this headline or some variation thereof: “Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei tells CNN's Anderson Cooper that "we do need to raise the alarm" on the rise of AI and how it could cause mass unemployment” (CNN.com). Anthropic, the company of which Mr. Amodei is the CEO, is an AI startup. Gosh, if only he had some kind of influence. If only he were in a position to, you know, DO SOMETHING about possible mass unemployment arising from the technology that he is making and selling. 

I saw a few seconds of an interview with this guy, who sat in front of a TV camera and claimed with a straight face that “This will affect me, too.” How, exactly? By “affect,” do you mean “benefit?” This man is 42 years old, with a PhD from Princeton. According to Beyonce’s internet, his net worth is $1.2 billion. Call me obtuse (and you would not be the first person to do so) but I can’t see how an established highly educated billionaire executive entrepreneur will be “affected” by AI displacing actual humans the way that a 23-year-old working class recent graduate - like my son and lots of his friends - will be “affected.” Dario Amodei made his money, God bless him, and he will be just fine. His family will be just fine. All of his friends in the Finance and Tech Billionaire Bro Club will be just fine. And we all know that that’s all that matters. 

*****

It’s not for nothing that Trump keeps reminiscing about the late 19th century, which he considers America’s “golden age.” Before the meddling progressive social reformers started interfering, ruthless rich men could exploit the poor and powerless with absolute impunity. The rules were made and enforced to keep most people poor and to allow the rich to grab and hoard as much as they possibly could. Trump and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and all of the other MAGA henchpeople would very much like to restore that system, and they’re doing a fine job. Their plan is coming together, and I pity the fool who thinks that Project 2025 and DOGE have anything to do with anything except turning America back into a vassal state. At least we got some libraries and parks and museums out of the last gang of robber barons. This krusty krew is giving us nothing except Twitter* memes and rocket ships full of pop stars and talk show hosts. 

*****

If you saw Sen Joni Ernst’s glib little “we’re all going to die” response to constituents who expressed worry about losing Medicare and Medicaid and then also saw her infamous non-apology filmed in a graveyard no less and you thought “Wow, she’s abysmally stupid,” then you might have missed the point. Even if she was the most brilliant political mind in America, she could still roll her eyes at her constituents at a 7:30 AM “town hall,” and mock their fears, and then dial the callous sarcasm up to 11 on TikTok, and her prospects for reelection would not be affected one tiny bit. Even if everyone in Iowa is furious at her, Sen. Ernst knows that she is accountable to no one except Donald Trump and Elon Musk (he’s not going anywhere and I’m not falling for his pretend outrage over the “Big Beautiful Bill”) and Stephen Miller and Russell Vought and maybe Mike Johnson. These are the people who are going to make it very difficult to unseat Republicans in future elections, and as long as Senator Ernst and her Republican colleagues vote the MAGA party line, then they can mock their constituents or ignore them altogether. They don’t even have to pretend to care about “the people” anymore. 

*****

This is all getting out of control, and by “this” I mean this rambling little blog post. It’s time to wrap it up. So I’ll finish where I started - with Dickens, Japanese pottery, and malaise. I’m almost finished with Little Dorrit. Mr. Dorrit’s fortunes, having reversed, are about to reverse again, and he won’t be the only one heading back to debtors’ prison, a thing that is due to make a comeback any day now. Meanwhile, Soetsu Yanagi was absolutely poetic on the subject of useful and beautiful artisanal objects, and blithely dismissive of the hopes and aspirations of the humble craftspeople who make them. And if we’d all listened to Jimmy Carter (and if he had picked anyone at all other than Paul Volcker as Fed Chairman) then we’d all probably be a lot better off today. Three books that have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and yet they are all strangely relevant to the Year of Our Lord 2025. Welcome to the Thunderdome. This place sucks. 

*****

*I know that Twitter is officially X now. But I’ll call it whatever I want. 

The Deer Hunter

On Memorial Day weekend, I watched “The Deer Hunter” for the first time. It took all weekend to finish the three-plus hours. When I first started watching it, I got through the first 45 minutes, and I was too depressed to continue - and at that point, no one had even gone to Vietnam. The thing is that I remember working class industrial life in the middle of the 20th century, and I don’t want to relive it, and I don’t romanticize it. And neither does the movie, really - but when your blue collar first-generation Americans are played by young Christopher Walken and young Robert DeNiro and young Meryl Streep there can’t not be a little bit of a romantic glow about the whole thing. 

Having started it, though, I wanted to finish, so I decided to watch it a little at a time throughout the weekend. This is a good way to watch a movie that you feel that you should watch but that is not particularly entertaining. “The Deer Hunter” is not really entertaining - but it’s pretty good and even beautiful in spots.  

For example, on the day after Steven and Angela’s wedding (the opening scene), the five friends go deer hunting together (the title is not an obscure 1970s metaphor). They drive through the western Pennsylvania mountains in a grimy old white Cadillac still festooned with “just married” pink streamers, winding through an otherwise pristine mountain road framed by rusted guardrails, and they stop to eat lunch beside a clear mountain lake. The landscape is completely unspoiled except for the paved road; and the contrast between the gorgeous mountain backdrop and the friends’ goofy horseplay and their makeshift picnic lunch of white bread and cold cuts is beautiful and real. 

I liked the characters’ names, too: Mikey and Steve and Nick and Linda and especially Angela and Stosh. If you grew up working class and Catholic in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh in the 1970s, your parents knew people named Angela and Stosh. Maybe your parents were Angela and Stosh. And although DeNiro and Streep and Walken are unrealistically glamorous for industrial western Pennsylvania, John Cazale as Stosh and Rutanya Alda (no relation) as Angela and George Dzundza as John and John Savage as Steven resemble the young adults I remember from that time - beautiful and imperfect and full of life. The actors were all wonderful. 

*****

One of my criticisms of “The Deer Hunter” is one that several contemporaneous critics apparently shared. These guys were just too old for Vietnam. Men aged 18 to 26 were subject to the draft during the Vietnam War, and “The Deer Hunter” doesn’t even try to depict its characters as younger than late 20s or early 30s. They are all grown men working in a steel mill. Christopher Walken, who was 35 when the movie was released, could possibly have passed for 26 in the right light, but none of the others looked a day younger than 32 or so. So they wouldn’t have been drafted. 

And it seems unlikely that grown, employed men would have volunteered - Steven especially, who marries the pregnant Angela and then ships out practically the next day. True, she’s pregnant by another man, but if you want to punish your fiancee for being unfaithful, it would seem that cancelling the wedding would be the prudent course of action. Marrying her and then going off to war seems like kind of a self-own. 

The timeline is also off. It’s supposed to begin in 1968. Would the men have remained in Vietnam for five years? Because “Midnight Train to Georgia” is clearly playing in the nightclub scene, and that song came out in 1973. Other than career military, I didn’t think that we kept men in Vietnam for more than a year at a time. On the other hand, Robert DeNiro’s Mikey would certainly not have made Staff Sergeant in just a year - and how did he get to be a Green Beret? And when he finally came home, why was he swanning around Clairton, Pennsylvania in his full uniform? Did he not own any other clothes? 

These are all little things, of course, but little things can make the difference between suspending disbelief and immersing yourself in the story, and sitting on your couch with your phone looking up details like when was “Midnight Train” released, and how long does it take to get from E-1 to E-5, and is there a Russian Orthodox church in Clairton, PA? (There is not - that scene was filmed in Ohio). There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot that doesn’t add up. 

And there are bigger things, too. I expected a racist portrayal of the Vietnamese (the movie was made in 1978) but lots of military scholars have chimed in on the Russian roulette theme, with universal agreement that this never happened. The Viet Cong did plenty of other dreadful things to American prisoners so it’s not like there wasn’t ample material for a movie about the horrors of the war in Vietnam. And how on earth could Mikey return to Vietnam to rescue Nick, and then get out without a hair out of place AFTER the fall of Saigon? As Miss Eggy says, “The HELL?”

*****

All the racism and sexism and what-the-hell historical inaccuracy aside, I ended up enjoying “The Deer Hunter” as a beautifully acted relic of the middle of the American 20th century. I might even watch it again. But not right away.