Wintering: A Week in January

It's 1:30 in the morning, and I can't sleep and I'm tired of reading about WWI so I'm going to write for a few minutes. I don't think writing will make me sleepy but I write every day, and this will count as Sunday’s daily writing, because it is Sunday now. If I can’t sleep, I might as well check something off my to-do list. 

Today was a very cold day, but clear and bright. I ran around doing Saturday things and came home at about 3:30 when the sky was pink and gold mixed with blue and you could see for miles through the bare winter trees. We had a fire during the evening and I was as content as a cat. I might be turning into a winter person. I might actually like January. 

Among other Saturday errands, I stopped at the mall.  The mall feels wistful on the weekend after New Year's. Teenagers wandered around, some with parents making returns and some with friends, all of them not quite believing that their long-awaited Christmas vacation was over. I remember that feeling, and I felt a little sorry for them. Stores were a jumble of leftover Christmas merchandise with a few early spring “resort” items here and there - expensive bathing suits next to picked-over piles of cashmere sweaters and scarves. I was looking for one particular thing, which I didn’t find, and I left the mall empty-handed, which was fine. When it comes to shopping, if it’s not a book, a handbag, or a jacket, it’s pretty much dead to me. 

*****

Yesterday was Monday, which turned out to be a snow day, so the Christmas vacation wasn’t quite over yet, at least for the private school kids. Public school kids in Maryland returned to class last Thursday, and now after a two-day return to the normal routine, they’re now enjoying a second straight snow day. And they should. Children need snow days as much as they need school. 

I teleworked yesterday and today.  Monday is normally an office day for me. I telework on Tuesdays and Fridays. But the federal government closed offices in the DMV, meaning total telework for those whose jobs are telework-capable. Between vacation and holidays and snow days, I haven’t been in the office in two weeks. I’ll be back tomorrow and then out again on Thursday for the Carter holiday and Friday to travel to a swim meet. At some point, I’m going to have to work for a full week. It’s probably going to kill me.

Yesterday was also January 6. The House certified the election of TFG, and Vice President Harris presided over the session and announced the results. The whole thing took less than an hour. No one stormed the capital. No one tried to overturn the results or introduce new slates of electors. The transfer of power was peaceful, even if the criminal to whom the power was transferred is not. My social media feeds were full of Democrats calling on VP Harris to “do something,” to “fight.” She did do something. She did her job, with more grace and courage and dignity than her critics could ever fathom. She is fighting, just not the way that some people think she should fight. Standing in front of the House chamber and fulfilling her Constitutional duty with a smile on her face is fighting. Addressing the press immediately afterward and pointing out the contrast between 2021 and 2025 is fighting. And maintaining her poise and grace in the face of an unforgivable snub from a racist moron Senate spouse is fighting. Kamala Harris did everything a human can be expected to do and more, and the country got it wrong. She doesn’t owe us any more than she’s already given. 

*****

It’s still Tuesday. I’m watching the arrival of Jimmy Carter’s casket at the Capitol building, and I’m wondering why on earth Ted Cruz and John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh and Mike Johnson feel that they need to be there. Not one of them is worthy to occupy the same space with President Carter, even when he’s dead. And as for Mike Johnson standing in front of a podium and spouting a bunch of stupid platitudes so that he can look like a statesman on TV - well, let’s just say that if contempt of Congress is a crime then I’m going to jail because contempt doesn’t even begin to cover it. 

Anyway. 

The bitter cold continued today, Wednesday, my first day back in the office in over two weeks. I learn stuff about myself all the time and one of the things that I learned today is that while I’m pretty good at driving in bad conditions, I shouldn’t be doing so in the dark, so the next time I have an 0730 meeting on an icy day in January, I’ll attend remotely, and then drive to the office afterward when the sun is up. 

*****

The sun is brilliant on very cold January days, especially when there's snow on the ground. We're in the car now on our way to Randolph Macon University for the first meet of the second half of the season. It's very cold and very windy and - I can't emphasize this enough - very very bright. I am not driving, thankfully, because the glare is intense, even with my sunglasses. 

It's a holiday for me because of the state funeral for President Carter. I worked a little bit and watched funeral coverage, switching channels when necessary to avoid annoying commentary. Several broadcasters seemed impressed with Karen Pence’s refusal to greet the Trumps when they arrived. I was not impressed. I was amused, of course, but not impressed. Karen Pence had no problem with Donald Trump’s lying and bigotry and hatefulness until the hatred was directed toward her family. I don't bear any ill will toward her but she also doesn't get the you go girl fist bump either. 

*****

This post keeps going off the rails, doesn't it? It's not the only thing. The rails are slippery. There was a snowstorm, you know?

*****

It was so nice to be back at the pool last night. Randolph Macon is a nice little college, with a beautiful campus; and the recreation building where the pool is located is very modern but the pool itself is less than impressive. Portable bleachers that looked very unsturdy and felt even more unsturdy were the only accommodation for spectators and when we stood for the national anthem, I expected the whole thing to tumble to the floor leaving a pile of banged-up parents. The structure held up, though, and we walked out of the place in one piece. My son came away with a relay win and two second place individual finishes, and the boys won by five points, a very narrow margin of victory in a swim meet. 

I think I've adjusted to the cold, too, at least temporarily. We had a short walk from the car to the pool last night and I didn't feel like I was going to freeze to death so that was nice. The pool was extremely warm, too warm even for me, and I love a warm natatorium in January. It was almost a relief to get back outside after the meet. What is even happening to me?

*****

We're in the road again. It's quite early Saturday morning and we're heading to Scranton PA for another meet. It snowed again last night and it's very cold so the roads are a little dodgy but not terrible. It's still snowing a little bit. The sky is almost solid lead gray but there's a tiny patch of white gold. The sky should clear soon, and God willing and the creek don't rise, we should be in Scranton in time for the medley relay. 

*****

The sun is out now and it's a beautiful January morning. We just stopped for gas and coffee and we're driving through central Pennsylvania with about two more hours to go. The coffee is very good. 

And Scranton is a long drive from Silver Spring. We're on Route 81 N heading toward State College and Allentown and Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, the most 20th century of American towns. The commercial districts and industrial parks have given way to wintry woods and everything is gray and brown and white with a little bit of evergreen. 

*****

It's 9:35 on Sunday morning and we just checked out of the Scranton Hilton. It's a 4-hour drive home. It's cold and overcast with intermittent sun breaks, and the roads are clear. 

Scranton is the hometown of President Biden. You drive into the city from Route 81 right on to President Biden Expressway. From President Biden Expressway, you can turn on to Biden St., which we did. The American Century is everywhere in downtown Scranton. The old Lackawanna Railroad station, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is now a hotel that was featured in an episode of The Office. Downtown also boasts quite a few nicely restored early 20th century buildings, and while I wouldn't exactly call it lively, it's also not a ghost town. It's probably quite nice to hang out there on a Saturday night when it's not freezing cold and slushy. 

As you drive toward Marywood, downtown gives way to a residential district whose streets are lined with the kind of Victorian and Queen Anne houses that are usually described as stately. That neighborhood is in pretty good shape. During the early and mid 20th century, I'm sure that this was the home of Scranton's ruling class. Now I'm guessing that intrepid young professionals have purchased and renovated many of the houses. Despite the presence of a few properties here and there that have fallen into disrepair, it's a pretty charming neighborhood. 

***** 

We were two of the only three Marymount parents who made the long trip to Scranton, and almost all of my son's teammates stopped to thank us for coming and cheering for them before they got back on the bus for the long ride back to Virginia. And we thanked them too because it was a great meet. The boys and girls both won decisively, and the girls 200 breast, which my son's friend and teammate won by just out touching her closest competitor, was the race of the meet. My son came away with three first places (including a relay win) and an unexpected second in the freestyle sprint. It was a good week and a good weekend, even if it is January

Five years

• March 12, 2020: Corona Craziness
• November 7, 2020: President-Elect Biden
• January 6, 2021: Insurrection
• March 13, 2021: Day 365
• March 17, 2021: “Be careful ladies. It’s St. Patrick’s Day and everyone in Ireland is an asshole today.”
• April 19, 2022: First day at USU
• February 25, 2023: State Champions!
• November 6, 2024: That did not turn out as I had hoped. 

These are actual entries from my five-year one line a day journal, which I completed on December 31, 2024. The journal was a gift from my sister for Christmas 2019, and instead of just leaving it on my shelf to look pretty, which maybe a normal person would have done, I made it a point to write something in that journal every single day. And I did exactly that, every day for five years. Some of what I wrote in this journal no longer makes sense to me, and some of it is straight-up illegible because my handwriting is dreadful, but most of it is a truthful record of something that was happening in my life or in the world, or something that I was thinking about on that particular day, or something that made me laugh. 

*****

I used to have a really outstanding memory. I could recall with near perfect accuracy exactly what happened on a specific date a year ago or five years ago; and not just major occurrences but mundane trivial stuff like this was that day last year when we were all hyped up for sushi and then we showed up and found out that the restaurant was closed on Mondays, or this was the day in 2012 when I got that really terrible haircut. Even my husband - even my siblings! - acknowledged my superior memory. And I still remember most things pretty well but I'm not the failsafe memory machine that I once was. I need to keep records. I need to write stuff down. So if I didn't keep this five-year diary, I wouldn't have remembered the days when I recorded over 25,000 steps, or what day it was when when I got pulled over for driving on a Navy base in an unregistered car, or when it was that I dropped that jar of spaghetti sauce in the garage because I keep finding tiny little spots of sauce, years after I cleaned that mess up. 

*****

Just after Christmas, I was hanging around in a Barnes and Noble, and I almost bought a new one line a day journal. Let's do this again, I thought. But I already keep a planner and I already write this silly thing and how much more can I document my already pretty well documented life? I’m glad I have this little record of the five-year period from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2024 but it was a bit of a chore. I stuck with it for five years, and that was the point. On to the next thing. 

1915 and 2025

I just finished Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening, likely (pretty much certainly) the last book I will finish for 2024. I read her newsletter, Letters from an American, almost every day. She makes sense of everything; or rather, she clarifies everything because so much of what is happening and about to happen makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Democracy Awakening explains what Richardson calls the “liberal consensus,” the social welfare system that pulled us out of the Depression and made America free and prosperous in the post-war years; and then the gradual dismantling of that system beginning with Ronald Reagan and continuing through the first Trump administration. This book was published just a few months ago; so recently, in fact, that Richardson mentions Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and support Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. I don’t think she expected, when she finally published the book, that Trump would be re-elected, but here we are. 

*****

It’s January 1, 2025. Democracy Awakening was as expected the last book that I finished in 2024, though I did start a new book right after Christmas, which will be my 2024 - 2025 overlap book. The book Martin Gilbert’s The First World War: A Complete History, which is going to take me well into the second week of January, if not the third week. I don’t know enough about WWI, and you can’t know anything about the 20th century and beyond without knowing a good bit about what used to be called the Great War. I’m going all in. I’m going to try to read several books about the first half of the 20th century this year, especially the early decades. 2025 is going to be a long year anyway. 

*****

My son goes back to school tomorrow and the feeling of cozy holiday contentment will go with him. He’s close by and we’ll all be fine but it’s always so lovely having him home and always so hard to see him go again. But winter swim meets will make up for this. I’m technically off from work tomorrow but I’ll probably do some work after he leaves, just so that I’m not overwhelmed on Friday. We have two more paid holidays this January, one next week (the day of mourning for President Carter) and one on January 20 (which is both MLK Day and inauguration day). 

The holiday week is like a wrinkle in time; a passageway between the old and new years. When I was young, I worked in retail and that week was very busy for me. We worked until 7 or so on Christmas Eve and then we were right back at work at 7 AM on the day after Christmas, and we worked long days every day until New Year’s Day. Luckily for us, Nordstrom closed on New Year’s Day, but not every retail worker had that good fortune - in fact, most of the other stores and restaurants were wide open. Despite the work craziness, though, the week still felt different - holiday-ish and even peaceful amid the chaos. There were other compensations, too. Any holiday party or family get-together that you dreaded could be easily avoided with work as the convenient excuse. And when everyone else was bracing for the post-holiday re-entry to daily life, we were breathing a collective sigh of relief. But I don’t miss working through the holidays, and thanks to my time working in a department store, I never take holidays for granted. 

It’s January 2 now. I was going to just work today but I’m glad I decided to take one more day. I’m lucky I can take one more day. Tomorrow, I’ll be back at work. I don’t mind. I like work, and I like ordinary life. But this was supposed to be about a book, wasn’t it? And it is, kind of, because I’m reading about history, about the extraordinary events that interrupt and alter ordinary life until what was ordinary before becomes a memory. Martin Gilbert takes us through World War I in roughly chronological order, and I’ve made my way through about 20 percent of the book, which lands me in early 1915, a consequential year. 90 years later, we’re probably about to live through another very consequential year. Stay tuned; I’m sure you’ll be reading all about it.   

Fast away the old year is passing

It's December 28, right smack in the middle of the Christmas to New Year's week in which, as Miranda's mother observed, one never knows what day it is. I know because I looked at my phone. It's Saturday, too. It doesn't feel like Saturday. 

*****

We're in the car on our way back from our annual Christmas visit to Philadelphia. My mother turned 80 earlier this month so my siblings and I had a party for her. It was nice despite some very weird extended family vibes. The less said the better. 

Some of my family are Trumpy Trumpsters. I avoided them, not because I'm afraid to argue but because I don't want to give them the satisfaction. They can enjoy their little victory celebrations among themselves. Nobody's going to be celebrating after January 20, and the Trumpiest of the Trump voters are probably the most screwed. They played themselves. A massive self-own. 

*****

My sons and I went downtown on Thursday, the day after Christmas, to visit museums and eat lunch at the Elephant and Castle. It was a perfect Christmas vacation day, chilly and mild, silvery gray with little bits of sun breaking through here and there. The Capitol dome glowed, creamy and soft, just a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue. We could see the podium and stands under construction for Inauguration Day, and decided that we didn't need to see it at a closer distance. We've seen the pre-inauguration Capitol steps many times before and I'm sure it looks the same as it always does. 

*****

We arrived home at about 3. Or maybe it was 2 or 4. It was still light out, though damp and gloomy. The house seemed gloomy, too. My husband had turned the heat all the way down before we left, so it was cold; and with all of our bags and totes and the leftover food we brought home from the party, it seemed messy and cluttered, too. I was so tired that I wanted to just lie down for a while but then I’d have awakened to a dark and messy house. So I got to work. I unpacked my bags, and ordered the rest of my family to unpack their bags. I started the laundry and put the food away and wiped down the already clean kitchen countertops. I swept the mudroom that we’d just tracked through, and vacuumed the floors, especially the floor around the Christmas tree. I dusted. Within an hour, the house had warmed up and the lights on the tree twinkled and everything was cozy and pretty clean and neat. The remaining Christmas clutter looked picturesque and festive. When we first arrived home, I’d started to think that I was tired of Christmas - done with the holidays. But then I regrouped and my holiday spirit returned and I was ready to go through with our evening plan to visit our friends and their new grandson. An hour makes all the difference. And there’s nothing better than a baby. 

*****

Sunday was also a gloomy day, but unexpectedly warm. I had lots of plans for Sunday but plans change. After some early errands, I framed two new prints that my sisters gave me for Christmas. I wrote about whatever, and I took a walk and then looked at my phone and saw that President Carter had died. I turned on the TV and planted myself on the couch and remained there on and off for most of the rest of the day. 

I knew this was coming, of course. He was 100, and in poor health. But I'm still very sad. Jimmy Carter was my President. I remember the Nixon presidency very well but Jimmy Carter was the first Democratic president that I remember, and the first President that I really admired. 

I was in 6th grade in 1976, and was proud to vote for Governor Carter in our class's mock election (Carter won) and even prouder when he won the real election a few days later. I watched the Camp David signings live in my eighth grade classroom, on a TV that my teacher, Sister Bernice, had borrowed from the convent. I was home sick with the flu when two years later, President Carter sat in the limousine with President-elect Reagan on Inauguration Day, as TV news coverage alternated between the inauguration and the release of the hostages in Iran. At 15, I thought everyone older than 25 looked terribly old but even I could see the difference between 1977 Carter looking old like all adults and 1981 Carter looking old like a person who has been through some things. I would never have guessed how much longer he would have lived and how much he would have accomplished during those four decades. He was a truly great man. 

*****

It’s December 31, 2024. For the last few years, I’ve spent the last day of December making jokes about how the year that’s coming to an end should not let the door hit it in the ass on its way out, but I’m older and wiser now. I’m not going to insult 2024 just to encourage 2025 to do its worst because I’m already expecting the proverbial shit show and I’m not asking for more. I’m going to focus on the positive right now. It’s another beautiful day and we’re going to the Capitals game. We’re invited to a nice party tonight and although I’d be just as happy (happier) home in my pajamas, we’ll have a good time. My son has to go back to school on Thursday, but swim season picks up again next week, and we have already planned our swim meet road trips for January and February. The government didn’t shut down so I still have a steady paycheck. Everyone is healthy. Everyone is fine. That’s all I’m going to ask for, for now. Happy New Year. 

Christmas timeline

It’s Cookie Day, MFers!  

That’s just me cracking myself up. You’re all lovely people, not an MFer among you, I’m sure. 

It’s Saturday, December 21, a very cold but bright and sunny day. My younger son came home this morning at 9:15 or so. He brought one of his roommates, who is staying with us until Monday. The boys made an enormous breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and toast, and they’re going to hang out and watch college football while I make cookies. Right now they’re asleep on the couches in the family room. 

I think I’m finished my Christmas shopping. I still have at least two grocery store trips between now and Wednesday but that’s no big deal. I could go now, or I could start making cookies. I’d rather do almost anything than make cookies but I would also very much enjoy finishing the cookies early and being done with cookie making for the season, so I think I’ll do that first. At least I made the dough last night, so I’m ahead of this game. I’d be even more ahead if I was actually doing the thing right now instead of sitting on a couch next to the Christmas tree writing about eventually getting around to doing it, but then you wouldn’t have anything to read, would you? I’m a giver, is what I am, and at no time more so than Christmas time. 

*****

Cleaning up after making cookies takes almost as long as actually making the cookies. After you wash the bowls and spoons and cookie sheets, then you have to clean cookie dough and flour off the counters and walls and floors. You’ll find little clumps of cookie dough and little flour spills in the unlikeliest places - on refrigerator shelves and on the insides of cabinet doors and on the gosh darn air fryer - and I assure you that I did not air fry the cookies. 

I wonder if that would work. Note to self: Try to air fry some cookies next year, just to see what happens. 

*****

I did make the cookies early, and was so glad I did. By 3 PM, I had neatly packed boxes and bags of cookies, a full cookie jar, and a pretty clean kitchen. I’ll be finding stray flour spills and the odd chocolate chip here and there for the next few days, but you gotta break some eggs if you want to make an omelet. Or cookies. 

Yesterday was the shortest day of the year. After I finished the cookie clean-up, I ran to the grocery store and then took a walk with a friend and her dog. All three of us were bundled up and we were all quite comfortable despite the cold. I came home to an empty house just as the last light of the day was fading. I watched the December sunset with the Christmas tree twinkling and the darkness collecting. It was peaceful. 

*****

The rest of the weekend was rather hectic, as I expect much of this week to be. We had people in and out of the house all day on Saturday and Sunday. It was fun but on Sunday night, I had to shut down for a bit. Right now the house is a little bit messier than I’d like but curling up with a book and an old TV show and tea was a better idea than cleaning up the last few odds and ends from a weekend of visitors. Those little moments of wintry Christmas peace are precious, and I’ll have plenty of time to clean tonight. 

It’s Monday December 23 now. I worked for part of the day. I’d planned for a full workday but my colleagues were all working a half day, and their departure would have left only me in the entire half of the building where our office is located. So I went home and logged on for a bit and then called it a day. And now it’s officially Christmas vacation, until at least January 2 and possibly January 3. 

*****

I love Christmas Eve, and even more so when the President declares it a holiday and I don’t have to take a vacation day. I love having my kids home. I love having Christmas movies on in the background as I prep food for dinner tomorrow. And I love the sense of peace that descends right around 4:30 PM as the sun is about to go down and everything that you can do to prepare for the holiday is done and anything that isn’t done isn’t going to get done and it’s all fine. It’s not sunny today. The sky is pale gray, almost white, and it’s cold and still. It looks like snow, and it smells a little like snow, too. The green bean casserole and the macaroni and cheese are in the refrigerator now. Time to make the pineapple stuffing. I’ll finish by 2 and take a walk and then watch “The Holdovers” until it’s time to go to Mass. 

******

We went to Mass at 6 last night. Eventually, the church was standing room only but there were still seats when we arrived, ten minutes early. A child had just vomited in a pew near us and the little boy’s sisters and father were cleaning up the mess, with the help of an usher and some hardy parishioners. Other than that little flurry of hazmat clean-up activity, you’d never have known what happened. We came home and ate whatever was hanging around and then made popcorn and watched Christmas movies. It wasn’t as cold as it had been over the weekend but we still had a little fire because it was Christmas Eve. 

And now it’s Christmas and we just finished opening presents after our traditional Christmas breakfast of eggs and cinnamon rolls. My children are 23 and 20, and they’re happy to eat first and open presents afterward. I was up at 7, prepping dinner and making cinnamon rolls and bacon and listening to Christmas music. 15 years ago, we’d have been opening presents by 7. My children used to wake up at 5 on Christmas morning, and I would send them back to bed until 6:30, just on principle. Now I wait until 9:30 or so before I finally wake them up. It’s 11:15 now, so I’m going to put the ham in the oven. Maybe I’ll have some more coffee before I take a walk. It’s chilly but mild and pearly gray, a perfect midwinter day. Winter is starting to reel me in. It’s starting to win me over. The view out my window is overgrown evergreens and tall bare deciduous trees against a grayish white sky. Everything is still. Everything seems peaceful, right in this place and right at this moment. That’s all I can ask for, is this place and this moment. That’s all anyone can ask for. Merry Christmas. 

On Freedom (and truth)

I talked to my brother last week. We don’t talk that often, but we stay in touch via text and the occasional phone call. This phone call was about plans for my mom’s next visit here, but we ended up briefly discussing the election. “It doesn’t matter who’s president,” my brother said. “They’re all the same. Two wings on the same bird. That’s why we have the eagle as the national symbol.” 

My gosh, right? I restrained the urge to call him an idiot, because he’s not an idiot. He is a smart person who, like the rest of us, occasionally says idiotic things. This was one of the most idiotic things I’d ever heard. 

I could tell by his tone that this was his final word on the subject, so I just told him that I think he’s wrong and then changed the subject back to the original reason for his call. I’m sure that he hung up shaking his head and thinking that his sister is an idiot. It would not be the first time. 

*****

“‘Everything is shit.’ Cynicism about the system slips into nihilism that serves the system.” 

This is Timothy Snyder, in On Freedom. I wrote very briefly about this book in an earlier post, but I have a lot more to say about it. Snyder has the perfect word for my brother’s attitude, which many people share. The word is “notalitarianism.” While “totalitarianism claims to have the one truth that unites everything,” Snyder explains, “notalitarianism denies any truth or values…Notalitarianism is seductively snide. Believing in nothing is presented as intelligence.” Exactly. Every “it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same, voting is the opiate of the masses” cynic I’ve ever met is convinced that they are just too smart to fall for anyone’s propaganda. These are the same people who use the word “sheeple,” who say things like “Open your eyes,” and “Are you awake yet?” 

*****

Snyder understands that a reasonable standard of living is a prerequisite of freedom. People can’t be free if they don’t have a decent roof over their heads, nor any way to provide for their basic needs, nor any way to take care of themselves when they get sick. But that doesn’t mean that money necessarily confers freedom - it can only make it possible to eliminate the conditions that obstruct freedom. I thought about this as I watched “Black Doves” on Netflix, with its inconceivably rich villains who live in bunkers and spend all of their money and time and energy escaping justice, avoiding assassins, and protecting their ill-gotten wealth. I thought about it when I read yet another story about the crazy dude who spends $2 million a year and pretty much all of his time trying to live forever. Snyder argues, correctly, that immortality is the last thing a person should want, because it makes life meaningless: “Forever is the wrong time scale. Freedom requires a sense of time that extends into the future, through one life and into the next generation or two…” The world is full of rich people who are nowhere near free. 

Maybe because they completely lack any understanding of freedom, many of these same rich people reject the very idea that people have a God-given right to a decent life, and that freedom is impossible without food and shelter and education and healthcare. They oppose social safety nets and welfare state programs because they claim to want to break the cycle of “dependency,” as if any one of us was not dependent on the entire rest of the human race. They perpetuate the lies of trickle-down economics, the unfettered free market (Timothy Snyder points out that only humans, not markets, can be free), deregulation, tax cuts – and our economic system grows more and more unfair, and the inequality becomes worse and more unsustainable all the time. 

*****

Solidarity, as Snyder points out, is the key to real freedom, because a fair and just and decent and more equal economic system benefits all of us and makes us all equally free. Redistribution is good. But with such a vast divide between the very rich, who are growing more and more powerful; and the rest of us, solidarity becomes less and less possible. If you are a middle-class person - even upper middle class - then you have no solidarity with Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy or Mark Zuckerberg or any other greedy grasping billionaire, no matter what they tell you. Your solidarity is - or should be - with the people who pick up your trash, and harvest your produce, and generally do the work that makes life possible for the rest of us.

I don’t know, really, why this isn’t obvious, but it isn’t to a lot of people, who think that their natural alliance is with the rich and powerful. This is an aspirational delusion - if I align myself with the oligarchs, then they’ll see me as one of them, as part of their club, and then I’ll actually be part of their club. It’s shocking to me that working and middle class people still vote for and support deregulation and so-called “free market” policies that only benefit the richest and that have only ever benefited the richest. Snyder puts it best: “The notion that freedom is state inaction makes sense only for the tiny minority who can protect their families without a representative government.” Donald Trump and Elon Musk will be just fine no matter what happens, and they don’t care at all about the rest of us. 

Actually, it’s more than that they don’t care. They absolutely want to restore early Industrial Revolution pre-Progressive Era conditions. They want a tiny handful of people to have all the power and all the money, and they want the rest of us to work 80 hours a week for as little as they can get away with paying us. And they’re not going to give us anything in return, other than the bare subsistence minimum. At least the early 20th century robber barons had a tiny bit of conscience. They used some of their ill-gotten wealth to build parks and universities and hospitals. Andrew Carnegie was a rapacious capitalist but at least he left us some nice museums and libraries and concert halls. The new ruling class billionaires want the noblesse but not the oblige. They want the Gilded Age without any of the gilding. 

*****

It’s all pretty bleak, really. It’s December 20, and I should be in a holiday mood. Maybe tomorrow - my son comes home this weekend, and it’s also cookie weekend. I hate making cookies, but I like eating them, and I like watching the people I love eat them. But the only thing I’m thinking about now is that we are once again on the brink of a government shutdown and I once again have no idea if I’ll be working beyond today. I was going to take most of next week off anyway, but that’s not the point. The point is that a bunch of billionaire cartoon villains are running the country, and half of my fellow Americans voted for them. Oh, I know that Trump voters think that they didn’t vote for Elon Musk but they did. And if the government does shut down, Elon and his assistant Donald Trump and all of their little Republican henchmen in the House of Representatives will look right at the TV cameras and blame the Democrats, and people will believe them even though all you have to do is look at Mike Johnson’s smarmy little insincere smile to know that he doesn’t believe the words that are coming out of his own mouth. I’ll turn it over to Dr. Snyder once again: “Let the liars lie and the truth perish…Let the world end with a smirk.” 

*****

I love quoting “The Princess Bride.” What’s more fun than shaking your head at a kid who tells  you “I’m starving,” and saying “You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” What’s more fun than showing up at an event and writing “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” on the little name labels, right below the word “HELLO.” But my favorite Princess Bride quote is this: “I’ll tell you the truth. It’s up to you to live with it.” Timothy Snyder and Heather Cox Richarson and Sherilynn Ifill and Robert Reich and Eddie Glaude Jr and lots of others are out here telling the truth. And we might have to live with it but that doesn’t mean we have to accept it. We can’t stop the liars from lying, but we don’t have to let the truth perish. 

Christmas time in the city

It’s December 15 now. 10 in the morning, 35 degrees, gray and still and peaceful. It looks like snow. It feels like Christmas. 

We rode the Metro downtown last night, Red Line from Glenmont to Judiciary Square, which is a much better Metro stop than Gallery Place if you’re going to the Capitals game, as we were. That’s an insider tip from me to you. The Metro runs mostly above ground until Union Station, and the neighborhoods around the stations are lively hubs of apartment buildings and restaurants and bars and stores. Catholic University and Gallaudet University are along the route. Every time I take the Red Line to Judiciary, I think about selling my house after I retire, and then moving to a cute little city apartment right on the Red Line. Maybe I will. Anything can happen. 

We got on the train about about 5:30 last night, so it was already dark and quite cold. The sky was clear, and Christmas lights and Christmas trees sparkled in apartment windows. It’s the first time this year that I felt really Christmassy. We couldn’t get a seat at our beloved Irish Channel, so we had a quick dinner at the noodle and sushi place next door, and that was an excellent decision. The tiny restaurant with its decor of vintage album covers and twinkle lights was full of lovely young people on their way out for the evening, some on their way to the Capitals game, and the food was delicious. The Capitals won - again - and we ran for the train at Judiciary, crossing the platform after the station manager directed us to the wrong side. I guess we looked like Shady Grove people. The trains were single tracking after a terrible pedestrian strike at Gallery Place and that might have been the last train out of Judiciary before the real delays began. 

According to Metro, the woman who was struck was a “trespasser.” I’m not sure what that means - was she hiding out in a tunnel? She survived but is badly injured. I hope she’ll be OK. I hope the train operators will be OK. How dreadful for a train operator to hit someone, even if it wasn’t their fault. 

It’s Monday now. I couldn’t find any updates on the person’s condition this morning. I hope this means that she is recovering.

*****

I might have finished my Christmas shopping. I have a list, of course, because I have a list for everything, but I have not yet checked it twice. On Saturday, I was on my way to Barnes and Noble to get a few additional small gifts, and I was greeted by a horrifying sight.  A huge gaggle of vultures (I don’t know if gaggle is the right word for a gang of vultures but it’s onomatopoeic, because they make me gag) was feasting on the carcass of a deer. Vile. Utterly repulsive. The next day, the carcass was almost picked clean. It’s gone this morning, thankfully. Whatever I pay in tax dollars to Montgomery County and the state of Maryland, it’s worth it because when there’s a rotting carcass in your front yard or on your street, you can call someone, and they’ll come and take it away. 10/10. Would recommend - the efficient local government, that is, not the rotting carcass and definitely not the filthy vultures. 

*****

Still no update on the Metro accident victim. I’m sorry for her and I hope she’ll survive and recover, but I’m more sorry for the driver who hit her. I keep thinking about how traumatic that must be. 

I’m not sorry for that stupid deer, though, because we’re overrun with the silly creatures, and between unleashed pit bulls and deer gangs and acrobatic raccoons hanging on our bird feeders and disgusting vultures, I have just about had it with the wildlife in this neighborhood. I’ve managed to avoid suburban bears and coyotes, but it’s only a matter of time. 

*****

Christmas Eve is one week from today. I did forget one person, and now I have to figure out what to get for that person, and when I’ll have time to shop. Almost all of my other gifts are wrapped now, but it’s cookie time, too. And I have a lot of other things to do this week, too. And so I’m sitting here and writing about it all, because that’s always the best way to get things done. 

*****

It’s December 18, and the countdown has begun, and it’s time to finish this silly thing before it goes (completely) off the rails. Too late, I know. Less than one week from today, the getting ready for Christmas part of this timeline concludes, and the celebrating of Christmas part begins. Anything that isn’t done by about noon on December 24 just isn’t going to be done, and it’ll all be fine. It’s Christmas time in the city, and the suburbs, and the country, where all of the furry creatures should be spending their holidays. Merry Christmas. 

Early in the (December) morning

I'm not sure how I forgot to mention this in my Thanksgiving weekend dispatch but I finally broke my previous all time Wordle streak last weekend. I lost my last streak at 103, and it wasn't even because I lost a game. It was because I had forgotten to play. My new streak is 109, and my win percentage is 99%. I'm going for 200 and I don't even care if mentioning the streak is a jinx. The Wordle streak is a pretty low priority for me right now given the state of the world. But it's still nice to have.

*****

Like every other parent, I get nostalgic around the holidays. Ten years ago, I was nostalgic for little kid Christmas. Now I'm nostalgic for high school Christmas and December band concerts and winter swim meets on freezing cold days. At least we still have the swim meets. 

I'm writing this on my phone in my car. My youngest son is coming home to pick up his car and I'm waiting for his Metro train to arrive at Glenmont. I used to do a lot of writing in various parking lots at various aquatic centers and ball fields. Nostalgic.

*****

We have had a week of very cold and Christmassy weather, mostly bright and sunny but a few moments of leaden gray looks-like -snow skies. But it didn’t snow, at least not here, at least not yet. And I knew it wouldn’t. It didn’t smell like snow. 

My younger son was home for just a little while yesterday. He left with his car, which he needed for an event not accessible to public transport, and I finished a pretty darn productive work day. I didn’t check that many things off my ever-growing list, but the work that I did do was really good if I say so myself. Later, my older son introduced me to Connections, another NYT word game. I have played and lost twice now, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. 

It’s December 7, the day that continues to live in infamy. It’s also a Saturday in December, which means that I have places to go and things to do. Christmas doesn’t happen by itself, I tell you what. I’m going to go do some shopping. Somebody has to make the Christmas magic for which people later become nostalgic. That somebody is me. 

*****

December 8. Christmas is two weeks and a few days away. It’s Sunday and I might go to church but I might not. I have a lot to do. 

Christmas party season is underway. I went to a party last night and have two more to attend this week. I don’t love parties but I don’t hate them either. I like being around people and I like music and lights and party food. But the whole thing is also exhausting and I am always so happy to come home and decompress. It’s quite an effort to be a party person. It takes some recovery time. 

I’m getting the hang of Connections, too. It’s a sneaky and deceptive little game, but I now have a win streak: 1 of 1. My win percentage is still an abysmal 33% but I intend to improve that. 

*****

Every December, I have an anxiety dream in which I realize at 9 PM on Christmas Eve that I forgot to do any Christmas prep or shopping. The dream varies a little bit. Sometimes the panicked wake-up happens on Christmas morning. Sometimes it happens on the morning of Christmas Eve, leaving me with one day to shop, clean, decorate, and cook. I bet I could do that if I had to but I don’t plan to have to. I did some more shopping this weekend, and I bought a ham and some baking ingredients. The house is decorated inside and out. We even bought a tree yesterday, but that tree is going to remain unornamented until later this week. Maybe early next week. I might need to get my niece over here to help. If you need a Christmas tree decorated, you can’t ask for a better assistant than an 8-year-old girl with very strong opinions on Christmas decorating. She probably won’t even need me. In a year or two I can probably get her to make the cookies too. 

Meanwhile, my Connections streak is up to two now. I solved today’s puzzle without any errors, a perfect score. My win percentage is now all the way up to 50%. I have a lot to do during the holidays so I’m up with the sun. Connections is going to get up a little earlier in the morning if it wants to trick me. 

Free

In 2023, I watched “Navalny” with my family, just before it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. “Navalny” is the story of the near-deadly poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the independent investigation that proved Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement. As we now know, Navalny recovered from the poisoning in a hospital and rehab facility in Germany and then returned home to Russia knowing that he faced certain arrest and imprisonment. 

Patriot, Navalny’s memoir, picks up where “Navalny” left off. Navalny returns home to Russia, is promptly arrested, and spends the remaining years of his life in prison, battling escalating and ever more absurd criminal charges designed to justify his ongoing imprisonment. 

The book tells two different stories. In the first roughly half of Patriot, Navalny writes about his life as a free person - his childhood in an Army family, his education, his initial support of Boris Yeltsin and his eventual disillusionment with the post-Soviet regime in Russia, his marriage to Yulia, his early career as an anti-Putin dissident during the early years of the 21st century, and his first conviction. In the second half, he writes about his life in prison. 

Just as the criminal charges against Navalny accumulated, his prison conditions worsened. In the early days of his imprisonment, he is held in a normal Russian prison - terrible, but not unbearable. Navalny writes about the prison routine - exercise, meals, showers, reading, and work - and although he is lonely and isolated and sometimes fearful, he makes the best of his situation. As an inmate in a normal prison, he’s entitled to occasional visits, and is allowed to receive food parcels and other items. He accumulates so many books that he has a hard time moving them when he’s transferred to another prison. He spends his days reading and writing and maintaining his health as best he can. He finds ways to be happy. There is a particularly moving passage in which Navalny washes the dirty walls of a new cell, and then sits on his bed enjoying the results of his work, content for a moment. He’s surrounded by walls, but at least they’re clean and bright, and that is enough for that moment. 

*****

Alexei Navalny knew he was going to die in prison, and he jokes about how his eventual death will boost sales of the book that he’s writing a few words at a time, whenever he can get his hands on pen and paper. “The book’s author has been murdered by a villainous president; what more could the marketing department ask for?" He had to have been afraid, many times over, but he persisted in telling the truth. 

*****

Right now, I’m reading Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom. I read On Tyranny right after the election, just as its first rule, Do Not Obey in Advance, was gaining traction in the social media discourse. Sadly, lots of powerful people have been obeying in advance. Maybe Joe and Mika and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos need to read Dr. Snyder’s books. 

On Tyranny is very short - just a list of rules for dealing with the imposition of tyranny, with short explanations for each. On Freedom is a full-length book that examines the notion of freedom through the idea of kӧrper vs. lieb: the former is the German word for the physical body, and the latter means something like the soul, or the whole person. On Freedom is about the difference between what Snyder calls “negative freedom” or freedom from and “positive freedom,” which is freedom to - to live and learn and love and travel and be human and fully alive; to be a person and not just a body. 

This doesn’t mean that the body is not important. We’re all bodies with bodily needs and we all have to engage with the physical world. Alexei Navalny writes beautifully about the life of the body, even in prison - the joy of a shower and clean clothes, the pleasure of bread and butter and instant coffee with milk on Sundays during his early imprisonment when he was still allowed such luxuries. But just as a person can be limited and imprisoned by an unhealthy body, a healthy person can also be imprisoned by fear of the physical consequences of standing up to a tyrant. You could be beaten, thrown in jail, tortured, or even killed. Or you could just lose your job and then be forced to live in poverty and discomfort. No one wants this to happen to them. I’m sure that Alexei Navalny didn’t want any of what happened to him. But what kind of life do you have if you limit your speech and your actions and even your thoughts to appease a tyrant’s whims? You might be physically free in the most limited sense, but you’re not truly free unless you know what the truth is and you’re not afraid to speak it and live by it. 

*****

Alexei Navalny never stopped telling the truth, no matter how many times Putin and his henchmen threw him in jail or moved him to ever more harsh and restrictive facilities. He decided not to be afraid of anything, and that is his advice to all of us: Don’t be afraid of anything. In daily life, of course, I’m afraid of everything; or rather, I worry about everything. Thankfully, courage (as no one knows better than I) is not the same as fearlessness. Courage is doing what you have to do even when you’re afraid - especially when you’re afraid. I’ll never be fearless but I hope to be courageous. And I’ll never be as courageous as Alexei Navalny but I hope and intend to be courageous enough for any moment that demands it. I don’t want to lose my job or go to prison or suffer any of the other consequences of speaking out in times of injustice and tyranny. But I want to live like a free person more than I want to avoid suffering. 

My favorite holiday

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, making today, I suppose, Thanksgiving Eve. But to me, it is Potato Day. I’m serious about Thanksgiving mashed potatoes. I make them from scratch, and I make a lot of them. It’s a day-before endeavor, not a day-of thing. Thankfully, mashed potatoes lend themselves very well to advance preparation. What you want to do is make your mashed potatoes, spread them out in a baking dish, cover with aluminum foil, and refrigerate overnight. Then warm the dish up in the oven the next day. Perfect. 

If you’re cooking the entire Thanksgiving dinner, as I do, it’s definitely advisable to do some of the hard part in advance so you can do things other than cook on the day itself, like take a walk and watch movies and avoid the news and have your first glass of wine right around 3 PM. So today, I’ll peel carrots, tear up bread and chop onions and celery for stuffing (almost as important as the potatoes), and make ten pounds’ worth of mashed potatoes. Oh, and I’ll bark orders all day long. That is my favorite part. 

*****

My husband called me from work about 20 minutes after I wrote this. “I told you that the chimney sweep is coming, right?” Well chim chiminy chim chiminy chim chim cherroo no you absolutely did not, and why would you schedule a chimney sweep to come here on the day before gosh-darn Thanksgiving? Not only was the chimney sweep coming, but he was on his way when I was up to my neck in potatoes. Thankfully, the whole thing took less than half an hour, and the chimney sweep people were competent and capable and left no mess behind. But still. 

Today is Thanksgiving. The turkey has been in the oven since about 9:15 AM, and should be ready at about 3. The starting times for everything else are staggered and ideally everything should be ready at about the same time, but I fly by the seat of my pants on Thanksgiving and a lot is left to chance. It’ll all be fine. 

*****

Every holiday, I peruse the internet for new recipe ideas. I’ve made the same menu for Thanksgiving and Christmas, with slight variations, for decades now, and I think that people will get bored and that I should try something new. But then I get overwhelmed with indecision and I end up doing the same thing I always do, and everyone loves it. 

And everyone did love it. We had kind of a perfect Thanksgiving. Morning rain gave way to clouds with tiny little hints of sun, and my sons joined me on my annual turkey-is-in-the-oven walk around the neighborhood. The sun started really breaking through the cloud cover just as we turned the corner back on to our street, and the rest of the day was clear and bright but subdued - very Novemberish. We took the annual photo of the boys and their cousins with their grandmother with a backdrop of November trees and November sunlight and crunchy dead leaves. We hung around outside despite the cold, and watched football and Christmas movies, and ate like there was no tomorrow. I was so full of holiday chill that I took a nap before cleaning up, and that turned out to be a great decision because my husband and sons did 80 percent of the clean-up while I slept on the couch. See, I keep thinking that there must be a way to improve my holiday dinners, and sleeping on the couch is a huge improvement over cleaning up food and washing dishes, so maybe change is good sometimes. 

*****

It’s Saturday now, the last day of November. It’s hard to believe that we’re actually still in the same month that began with the 2024 election. I remember the first Saturday of November, walking from the Metro station to Gallaudet University for a swim meet, and thinking that this was it, the last weekend before we’d elect our first woman President and FINALLY put the Trump era behind us…that seems so long ago. 

Let’s not think about it, OK? Let’s think about Christmas. 

It’s very cold today, at least for here. A high temperature of 35 is cold anywhere, actually, but it’s really cold for Maryland in what is technically still autumn. We’re putting up our Christmas decorations. My son and I went out this morning and bought some extra lights and Command strips. I cleared away some pictures and decorative objects to make room for Christmas things, and I’m about halfway through placing all of the indoor decorations. My husband and sons are outside hanging lights. I took a break to eat the best sandwich that a person can eat: turkey, mashed potato, stuffing, cranberry sauce, white toast, salt and pepper and a little mayo. It was perfection. Thanksgiving dinner is an absolute shit ton of work but that sandwich is worth a day and a half in the kitchen. Later on, I’ll bundle up and walk that sandwich off. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. 

******

That’s nonsense of course, there is absolutely such a thing as bad weather, but my rather ugly puffy jacket kept me warm enough for a brisk walk with my friend and her dog and a big stick. There is a pitbull in the neighborhood who keeps getting loose, and he’s been spotted several times during the last few days, including by my friend and her dog, who had a very unpleasant encounter with this canine menace. I picked up a big stick just in case, but thankfully, we did not need it. 

Other than walking and cooking and cleaning and decorating and Christmas shopping and hanging out with my kids, I haven’t done much this weekend except to avoid the news. My no Trump on weekends policy is in full effect again. I’ve watched movies old and new: The Holdovers (a new holiday favorite), Wicked (a Wednesday night showing with my family - we loved it), Dead Poets Society (my youngest had never seen it), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (one of my favorites of the last few years), Saturday Night (we rented it - it was quite good and I might have more to say about it later) and of course bits and pieces of Elf and Christmas Vacation. The best way to spread Christmas cheer is to not think about Trump for a few days. We haven’t looked at news coverage in any form since Wednesday, and we are just about the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse. 

*****

It was an almost-perfect 5-day weekend. The Capitals are winning left and right, and the kids were home, and the house is decorated for Christmas, except for the tree. It’s too early for the tree. As always, I didn’t mind coming back to work this morning, even though it was freezing cold and dark when I woke up. I pulled out the wool and cashmere this weekend. We’re in for a week of actual winter weather and when high temperatures are expected to remain in the 30s, I dress for warmth. 

Santa Claus works one day a year, but I work every day. As we all know, Santa Claus is actually me and every other woman with a family, and now that we’re done making Thanksgiving happen, it’s time to turn our attention to Christmas. I’m making my lists and I’m checking them twice and then checking them again. My chimney is clean now but there won’t be any obese dudes sliding through it to deliver holiday magic. I’m the magic. It’s me. 

Meanwhile, I didn’t let the specter of the looming Trump presidency ruin our Thanksgiving and I’m not going to let it ruin Christmas either. It was a nice vacation but it’s time to get busy again. 

Pre-holiday

It’s Saturday morning, and Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. This means that it is time for my annual pre-holiday panic, and I feel it lurking, just below the surface, but it hasn’t fully emerged yet. My little anxiety cicada is going to stay underground for a few more days at least. 

I did start my Christmas shopping earlier this week. So that’s something. I’ll work on my Thanksgiving grocery shopping today or tomorrow or maybe a little of both. I don’t feel like cooking or decorating or baking or shopping or wrapping or any of it but I’m going to do it anyway because that’s what you do. You get up and you keep going. 

Still, I wish I had a plan for today. I can’t decide what to do first and so I’m afraid that I’ll dither and daydream, mired in indecision, until the day is half over. And then I’ll stress out about having wasted time when I have so much to do. 

Well, that last part at least I cannot blame on current events because that’s just how I am. 

OK, time to get going. 

*****

Saturday turned out to be a pretty darn good day all around - I got things done and I hung out with friends and family and I spent some time outside touching the grass (metaphorically of course because my hand never actually made contact with any grass). Today is Sunday, and it’s peak golden November. We have a dogwood tree in our backyard and I can see part of this tree framed by one of the family room windows. Its leaves are wine red, and the trees behind it in the  no-man’s land between our yard and our neighbor’s on the next block are in varying stages of autumn from golden to almost bare. Our redbud tree, framed by another family room window, is almost bare against a backdrop of a huge old evergreen tree, also in the no-man’s land. That tree should probably come down but it looks pretty in the pale golden November sun. It’s pretty out there, is what I’m saying. 

*****

It’s Wednesday now, just a week before Thanksgiving. There’s a large turkey sitting in the bottom of my freezer, and I set a reminder on my phone so that I remember to take that turkey out to defrost on Saturday. The turkey weighs just over 20 pounds and is frozen solid, so it will take at least five days to thaw completely once I move it to the refrigerator. If you have never cooked Thanksgiving dinner before, now you know - you can’t take the turkey out of the freezer the day of or even the night before unless you’re planning to eat frozen turkey. Don’t say that I'm not out here offering helpful hints. Follow me for more life hacks. 

I bought the turkey on Sunday, my first holiday grocery shopping trip. First of how many? I’m glad you asked. It’s usually three, but never fewer than two. I buy the turkey, frozen, on the first trip, along with some non-perishables and easy-to-store things like canned jellied cranberry sauce (do not @me) and tomato juice and butter and sugar. Then I go back on Monday or Tuesday of Thanksgiving week to buy vegetables and fruit and other perishables. And then I go back for anything I forget. 

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It always has been, and now even more so now that I’m a college student parent. It’s fun to go grocery shopping just before Thanksgiving, running into all of the other Rockville alumni moms who can’t wait for our kids to come home for a few days. That Safeway is going to be lit this week, I tell you what. 

*****

“Windows is getting ready to update. Don’t turn off your computer.” 

It’s Thursday morning and I should be working but I’m waiting for updates to install. For once in my life I decided to just install the updates as soon as I got the prompt, rather than snoozing it multiple times until the last and final “you must update NOW” prompt appears just as I’m trying to join a call or finish a project. So now I’m just waiting for the little progress wheel to count its way up from 11% to 37% to 100%. It’s on its third round now. No hurry, Windows. Take yer time. Let me tell you that I can “get ready” a lot faster than Windows. 

*****

My computer finished its update almost as soon as I typed that last sentence. It’s Friday morning now. I took the morning off and I’m on my way to George Mason University for the Patriot Invitational, Day 2. The only thing I love more than a college swim meet is a college swim meet that lasts three days. We’ll be back tonight for finals and tomorrow for prelims and possibly finals as well.  

The Patriot is a D1 meet, and Marymount is way out of its depth but no one cares - it’s fun to watch competition at this level, and everyone is in a holiday mood, despite the unceasing round of one damn thing after another that constitutes civic life in the United States right now. 

Meanwhile, golden November appears to be stepping aside unseasonably early and making way for leaden gray December. The weather is wintry today. We’re even supposed to get some snow. We’ll see. 

*****

65 degrees on Monday and snow on Friday. Welcome to November in Maryland. And Virginia, of course. It was snowing when we arrived at George Mason yesterday morning. A group of parents from Florida Atlantic University gathered in the parking lot, catching snowflakes and shooting video of the falling snow. It was like they’d never seen snow before. Maybe they hadn’t. 

We went from the chill of the parking lot to the indoor warmth of the aquatic center lobby to the intense sauna-like heat of the natatorium, removing layers as we went, and settling into our bleacher seats with all of the other parents in our college swim t-shirts and our psych sheets. The noise was deafening, and it got louder in the first heat of men’s 100 breaststroke, with me screaming “GOOOOOOOOOO!” all the way through my son’s best-ever swim that put him in third place in the university record book. 

*****

The brief winter preview ended and Saturday was a beautiful glowing November day. We drove back to George Mason in the morning, and Fairfax looked its best with November sunlight filtering through the almost-bare trees. We had plans to see a movie on Saturday night or to maybe get last minute-tickets to the Capitals game (glad we didn’t do that because we can’t beat the Devils) but then my son made finals again so we got to go back for the last session. 

We arrived early - 5:20 for a 6 PM start, and our son’s race wasn’t going to start until 7:20 or so. The section where we’d been sitting for the previous sessions had lots of unoccupied seats, but University of Richmond parents had “reserved” them with “U of Rich” signs handwritten on little scraps of paper. 

Contrary to popular online opinion, most sports parents are decent and reasonably cool people. But there are always exceptions, and the exceptions are usually rude and entitled enough to be memorable. I wanted to go and ostentatiously tear up their stupid little signs and then sit down in their reserved seats. My husband, however, wanted us to be nice. So we sat in the next session over, and when newcomers arrived and stood scanning the section for seats, I would rather loudly comment about how there appeared to be plenty of open seats over there but that someone seemed to have “reserved” them and I wondered who authorized this. My husband nudged me, but I felt like stirring things up a little. I don’t do this very often, but sometimes it’s necessary. 

I posted all of this on social media and lots of people weighed in. Two themes dominated: Swim parents are usually cool but some of them are the worst. And this behavior is very much on track for the University of Richmond. I didn’t know anything about U of R before this weekend but apparently the place is well known for a culture of spoiled and entitled behavior. People are still commenting. I struck a nerve. 

*****

It’s Sunday evening now, well over a week after I started writing this so it’s time to wrap it up. Thanksgiving is in five days, and the turkey has moved from the freezer to the refrigerator. 

Fun Home

After I finished reading Secondhand Time, I told myself that it was time for a break from “it’s 1939 all over again get ready for the hammer to fall” reading, and so I picked up a graphic novel. This is a complete departure for me. I really never read graphic novels or comics, but I had a Barnes and Noble gift card burning a hole in my pocket and had decided that I’d buy an actual book (I read most books on Kindle) and not a fancy notebook.(Of course, I bought a fancy notebook too, a very pretty one for only $10.) Anyway, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was sitting on a table of recent fiction, and it looked interesting and beautiful and I thought that it would look nice on my bookshelf next to Lynda Barry and Roz Chast and Jason Polan, even if I didn’t like reading it. 

But I did like reading it, very much. It took some time because when I started it, I was reading another book, and it takes twice as long to read a book when you’re reading two books at once. There is also a great deal to look at, a lot going on on each page, and you have to take your time to look at the text and the metatext and the illustrations. All of these elements work together to tell the story of Alison Bechdel’s father, who was obsessed with renovating old houses, including the house they lived in; and the rest of her family in the middle of the American century. 

Bruce Bechdel was a high school English teacher who also worked as a funeral director in his father’s funeral home, which the family nicknamed the Fun Home - hence the title, which works on many different levels. The funeral home was an oddly fun place for the Bechdel children, unlike their actual home, which was a showcase of their father’s aesthetic vision and so probably not the most homey and relaxing place to be. And Bruce Bechdel, the author’s father, lived a bit of a fun house mirror life - a respected citizen of the family’s small Pennsylvania town, he was also a closeted gay man with many secrets. 

Death is ever-present in Fun Home. The family spent a lot of time in a funeral home, a physical memento mori. And spoiler alert: Bruce Bechdel was hit by a truck and died of his injuries when Alison Bechdel was in college and just beginning to figure out the world and her place in it. His death was the dominant event of Alison Bechdel’s young adulthood, leaving many issues unresolved and many questions unanswered. 

Humans are impossibly complex, and so are human relationships, especially marriages and families. People deserve privacy; they deserve to have their little secrets, even from those closest to them. I believe that. But the secrets we keep from the people we love shouldn’t upend those people’s entire worlds when they are ultimately discovered, as secrets often are. It’s one thing not to tell your children about a wild adolescence or a disastrous early first marriage or whatever you did or didn’t do that affected you but not them. It’s quite another to have another life altogether separate and secret from that of your family, or to hide your essential identity from the people you are supposed to love and trust and who are supposed to love and trust you. 

Full disclosure - I still have a few pages to go, so I don’t yet know the whole story. But of course, neither does the author, and that’s the point. Spoiler alert 2 (you're smart, so you probably already guessed this one): Fun Home is more tragic than comic and therefor probably wasn’t the best choice for someone trying to read her way out of a doom spiral. But it is quite a beautiful book in both the visual and literary sense, and very much worth reading. And it really does look very pretty on my bookshelf.  

The course of human events

I want to write about something other than the Godforsaken election but I can’t seem to think about anything else so that’s what I’m going to write about. Maybe people will get sick of me and my vast reading public will abandon me. Whatever. Who cares. 

We went to a birthday party last Saturday. Almost every person at that party was a Trump supporter, and we wouldn’t even have gone except that the birthday person, who was turning 80, is very much not a Trump supporter. He and his lovely wife, an immigrant, spend their free time cooking for and collecting donations for various shelters. They’re among the best people I know, and I would not have missed their party. 

And they are the only reason that I was able to restrain myself when I witnessed a group of other partygoers nodding to one another and agreeing that it’s now time for “unity.” LOL! Yes, just like in 2020, right? It would be bad if a bunch of Democrats stormed the Capitol next January. It would be terrible if Harris voters spent the next four years screaming about voter fraud and stolen elections. Yeah, let’s all unify for the sake of unity. That’s a great fucking idea. 

*****

I keep waiting to no longer be absolutely furious that Grab ‘Em by the Pussy is going to be the President of the United States for a second time. 

Nope, still mad. Even madder than last week, actually. 

*****

Do you know what’s weird? What’s weird is how hard everyone is trying not to talk about politics in social settings, at least in my circles. Do we not want to offend each other? Are we all just trying to protect our own mental health? Are we afraid of what could happen in the future if people know what we believe, and how we voted? It could be any or all of those, but I’m afraid it’s that last one most of all. I’m afraid that we’re all complying in advance. I don’t want to comply in advance. 

*****

Is anyone else highly amused at the appointment of two guys to head the “Department of Government Efficiency?” Two guys in charge of one agency - does that seem efficient to you? Lol. You literally cannot make this shit up. What is entirely made up, however, is the fictional idea that Elon and Vivek can “shrink” the Federal government, when what they are actually going to do is expand the government in all kinds of new directions and then outsource most of the actual work to contractors. End result - fewer government employees (look, we “shrank” the government!) and a lot more government spending benefiting billionaires. If you remember 2008, you’ll remember a lot of Republicans screaming about “redistribution of wealth.” Everyone is about to learn what that really means. 

*****

Well this keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it; and by better of course I mean so much worse. It’s Thursday November 14, the day after the announcement of Tulsi Gabbard as keeper of the state secrets and Matt Fucking Gaetz as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. What’s next? I’m waiting for the appointments of George Santos as Director of the Government Accountability Office, Jared Kushner as Secretary of the Treasury, Tucker Carlson as FCC Chair, David Duke as EEOC Chair, and Kid Rock as Director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe Judge Jeannine for SCOTUS. Maybe the worst coal mine owner in all of West Virginia as the Secretary of Energy. Maybe the Papa John’s guy as the Secretary of Labor. Anything can happen. Sky's the limit. The proverbial guardrails are gone baby gone. 

*****

Do I need to step away for a bit? Probably. Will I? Probably not. 

I’m trying to figure out how to remain (comparatively) sane and reasonable without cutting myself off from all information. I feel strongly that I have no right to turn away from reality under the guise of “protecting my peace” or whatever. And I also just need to know what’s going on. On the other hand, it’s not unreasonable to try to hold on to my sanity and preserve my own mental health. 

I used to listen to NPR as background noise while I worked. On November 6, I started listening to classical music on WETA, and it’s quite lovely. I’m also going to reinstate the No Trump on Weekends policy that got me through the worst of the years 2017 to 2021. But I’m not going to turn away entirely. I didn’t vote for this mess but it’s still my country and I’m going to pay attention to the course of human events in America, political or otherwise.