Pastime

I'm at my son's baseball game, one of the last few games of the season and one of the last few games of my son's high school career. I arrived midway through the 5th inning with Rockville up 6-2. It's the top of the 8th now. 

It's a fun game. The weather is perfect and the teams are evenly matched in on-field and dugout trash talk talent. They're all very funny. They affect a growly deep voice and they shout things like "He's a very healthy boy!" And "Where's the ball? Right field can't see so good!" The idea seems to be to say the most innocuous and inoffensive things possible, in a tone and timbre suitable for the vilest insults. My son is very good at this. It's very amusing. 

*****

The play of the game belongs to a Richard Montgomery outfielder, who just made an insane running, diving catch. A sick catch, as the young people say. A filthy play. The batter tipped his helmet to the fielder who had robbed him of at least a double, and the Rockville dugout applauded. Respect. 

*****

The game is over now. Rockville held the lead and everyone is going home happy. I'm sitting in the bright late afternoon sunshine waiting for my son to pack up his gear and say goodnight to his team. I haven't looked at a schedule but I think they have five games left. 

Book snob

I’m reading Snobbery: The American Version, Joseph Epstein’s very long (well, it seems long) book about the history of snobs and snobbery and snobbishness in America. I don’t know how I ended up with this. It was published in 2002, which was pretty much centuries ago in terms of social commentary. 

Epstein approaches the subject from a (not the, but a) classic American snobby perspective. He’s an academic and writer (and kind of a jerk) who can’t conceal his disdain for most aspects of American life, including democracy and egalitarian social structures, both of which he tries to convince us contribute to snobbery - in other words, the more “classless” a society considers itself, the more prevalent snobbery will be in that society. And maybe he’s right although he doesn’t really make a convincing case, but even if he is right, I think I can live with a few snobs as the price of democracy so the point is moot. 

I have been slogging - slogging, I tell you - through this book for several days now. I’m only about a third of the way through and at this rate I’ll throw off my whole reading schedule for spring.  But I feel compelled to finish it. I have no idea why.  

*****

During the pandemic, I used to order groceries through Instacart. I was a very good tipper so my groceries were always delivered quickly and correctly. Then I started to feel bad about making other people do my shopping - even though I was tipping very well - and it also just cost too much money. But last week, Instacart sent me a postcard with a $20 off promo code. So now I’m waiting for my grocery delivery, with a $20 tip courtesy of Instacart. I feel like a plutocrat, sitting in luxury while others perform my household tasks. 

If you’ve ever used Instacart, then you know that the app offers suggestions - sometimes helpful, sometimes less so - for additional things that you might need to buy. Today’s suggestions included items for my “charcuterie board,” including Ritz-style crackers and a processed cheese spread. I could hear Epstein’s voice in my head, expounding on the connection between taste and snobbery. Do snobs shop at Aldi? Does Instacart snobbishly assume that Aldi shoppers are so lacking in sophistication that we don’t know the difference between charcuterie and an after-school snack? I feel like he could easily take a simple thing like a grocery order and dissect it and examine it 25 different ways, and both explain why a person’s grocery order ranks them as an educated professional or a plebe AND why such distinctions are inherently contrived and artificial but he’s still going to write about them. 

*****

I finally gave up on this absolutely insufferable book when I reached the chapter on college snobbery, a subject about which I know a few things, being the parent of a college student and a high school senior. Epstein, a scholar and college professor, is actually in a position to offer some real insight on the subject of Americans’ obsession with the “right” schools, but he’s too lazy to bother, and instead spends pages sneering at Ivy League pretension with no attempt to examine or illuminate the topic. I don’t often abandon a book less than halfway through but I have limited time on earth and I find myself unwilling to spend any of it thinking about Joseph Epstein’s analysis (lack of) of American snobbery. I feel good about this decision. 

*****

Except that now I'm reading something else that's almost as terrible, but not quite. It's a novel, a much quicker read, and I'm almost finished, so I'll just suck it up and read it until the end. In the future, I'll be a little more selective. I'm a bit of a book snob. 

Squirrel snacks

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m just wrapping up my work week. I worked from home today, with the windows open, feeling the balmy breeze and listening to the birdsong. 

My husband hung a new bird feeder in the side yard, right in front of my office window. We’ve had a hummingbird feeder in that same tree for some time, and I have to think that the sugar water that’s been in there for some time and that I am pretty sure has not been changed for at least a month is fully fermented now. Maybe that’s why I never see any birds at that feeder - it’s a nighttime spot now. But the new feeder is very popular. Every time I looked out the window today, I saw at least one or two birds enjoying a seedy snack. That is what I call entertainment. 

Even more entertaining than the birds was the determined squirrel who ran along the x and y axes of the fences between my yard and the neighbor’s, with a few forays into the tree branches just above the feeder, sniffing and stretching and examining the thing from all angles, trying to figure out how to reach the feeder and snag some seed for himself. 

A few minutes later, I saw the squirrel again. He was on the ground, vacuuming up some seed that had dropped from the feeder. And that seed was delicious, I’m sure, because a minute later, the squirrel had climbed the fence again and was scheming and planning its route to the feeder. He sat on the fence (literally) for a few minutes; wondering, I think, if he had a chance at the feeder. It hangs about a foot or so from one side of the fence and at least two feet or more from the other side. The drop from the tree branch where it’s suspended is about 18 inches. All of these distances are longer than the squirrel’s body, excluding the tail, but he’s stretchy and agile and unafraid to climb, even upside down. And that’s what he did. He got up on a branch and calculated the shortest distance between the branch and the feeder, and then stretched himself far enough to grab onto the hanger. And then he made his move, a half stretch and half jump that landed him upside down and just able to sniff under the lid of the feeder. But not enough to actually get any seed. 

Did you think I was kidding? 

I felt sorry for him. All that planning and scheming, all that work - and he came so close. SO CLOSE! Do squirrels feel frustration, I wondered - was he furious? Was he cursing our stupid bird feeder and and our stupid trees and fences? Did he stamp his little squirrel foot or punch the top of the feeder with his tiny squirrel fist? That’s what I would have done, of course. But the squirrel seemed to maintain his equanimity. He sniffed for a few minutes and then climbed back up into the tree, giving up for the time being. 

Later, my husband drilled a hole into an old frisbee and attached it to the feeder to serve as an anti-squirrel barrier. It’ll probably work. The squirrel couldn’t get past a single obstacle between himself and the seed, let alone two. Some seed will fall out of the feeder, dropped by the careless birds who can have as much as they want, as often as they want, so maybe that’s the best the squirrel can hope for. But I’m rooting for him. Why should the birds get everything handed to them? 

Everybody agrees

I have so many drafts in various stages of completion or lack of, so what am I doing writing something new? Writing a new essay is like buying a new jacket. I have too many of both. I need to just wear what I have. 

But even though I have a ton of jackets (so many jackets), I can always find a hole in my jacket wardrobe, some jacket use case that I cannot address with existing resources. And because I tend to write about the same things over and over again (books, swimming, handbags; and of course, jackets) there are also lots of everyday life situations about which I have not ever written so much as a word. 

Like songs. I write about music a little bit here and there, but not very often. And one day last week as I listened to my new favorite song for the fourth consecutive time, I thought that I should write about falling in love with a song. 

Songs usually have to sneak up on me. I like to sing along with music, and so I tend to listen to songs that I already know and love. There are a lot of them, and it’s a pretty odd collection. Eclectic as it is, though, my favorite songs list is well established. It’s a comfortable little clique. It’s not easy for a new song to break in. 

But it happens. Sometimes, I fall in love with an old song that I’d never thought much about when it was a new song. A few years ago, for example, I happened upon the Richie Havens recording of “Here Comes the Sun,” and it became an instant top ten favorite song for me. I can listen to that song any time. Just a few days ago, I was driving home from work and heard the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” a song that was on the radio all the time when I was a little girl, and it threw me for a loop. That song is so great, and so radically different from the Temptations’ earlier work. That ominous bass line, the gradual build-up, the syncopated hand-clapping, the alternating solo vocals (especially the falsetto) - it’s all so brilliant. Seeing that my own papa was also a rolling stone, I didn’t like that song at all when I was young. Even at age 7 or so, I knew all about men who spent most of their time chasin’ women and drinkin’. I didn’t need to hear the Temptations sing about it. When I heard it last week, it didn’t seem like a throwback. It seemed brand-new

Other songs grow on me. When I was young, I worked for a self-important, pretentious little chain of stores. This little company was so full of itself that we, the ignorant and provincial staff, were not allowed to change the music selection dictated by the “creative director.” (But we did it anyway, all the time). I could tell you some stories about that place, but I won’t, because it still exists and it’s still full of itself. I have to admit, though, that if it weren’t for that stupid store and its stupid artsy pretension, I might never have heard Erasure and The Sundays. Erasure, in particular, drew me in slowly but surely. It’s been almost 30 years, but “Hallowed Ground” and “Heart of Stone” remain among my very favorite songs ever. 

*****

“At teatime, everybody agrees,” OR “at tee time, everybody agrees?”

It could be either, right? I drink a lot of tea and so in my life, any time could be teatime. And I wouldn’t set foot on a golf course unless you paid me, and you’d have to pay me a lot. So for my purposes, it would always be the former. But I looked it up, just to be sure.

*****

Then there are those songs that take many years - decades, even - to worm their way into my affections. I am not an Eric Clapton fan, and will pretty much fling myself at the radio to turn off “Lay Down, Sally.” But “Promises,” which was on the radio all the time when I was a little girl, and which I ignored because it wasn’t the Carpenters or John Denver or Fleetwood Mac or Olivia Newton-John, is actually a great song. After forty or so years, I’m a “Promises” fan, and will always stop what I’m doing to sing along with that song. Same for Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Southern Cross,” and Chicago’s “Searching.” Actually, I’ve come to love almost all 1970s Chicago, almost as much as I hate 1980s Chicago. This is a point of contention between my husband and me. He likes the garbage Peter Cetera “Glory of Love” years. There is no accounting for taste. 

*****

And speaking of the 80s - throughout that whole decade, I avoided hair band metal. Everything from Van Halen to Def Leppard to Whitesnake - especially Whitesnake. What kind of name is that, anyway? I hated all of those bands and all of their music. Until suddenly, I didn’t. Sometime around 2007 or so, I was driving somewhere with my then-little children, who were strapped in their car seats in the back seat of my Honda, and Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” came on the radio. And instead of reflexively hitting a preset button to switch to something else - anything else - I turned it up a little and sang along. I still sing along with that song. That song is awesome. Van Halen, Guns n Roses, even Def Leppard - I love them all now. Not every song, and not all the time, but 80s hair metal has finally, after 40 years, earned a place in my stone cold heart. 

*****

But the best thing is when I fall in love with a brand-new song when it’s still actually brand-new and not just new to me. When you turn on a radio and hear a song that you’ve never heard before and it just speaks to you, it feels like the world is wide open. It feels like anything is possible. 

It begins with a catchy melody, the kind that gets into your head so quickly that you’re singing along the second time you hear the chorus. Then a lyric, a turn of phrase that speaks to you for whatever reason - it’s funny, it’s beautiful or relatable, or maybe a little of all of those things. There’s that moment when the right melody and the right lyrics hit me at just the right time, and I know that a never-before-heard song will instantly be my jam. This is what happened to me the first time I heard Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero.” The first time, I tell you!

“I have this thing where I grow older but just never wiser.” Yes, Taylor - I know exactly what you mean, because I have that very same thing! Witness - remember when I said that I have too many jackets? Well I do but I just bought another one. Older but never wiser. 

The house dance beat and that opening line drew me in, and then the hook: “It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.” Oh my gosh, it totally is - you have no idea. 

The lyrics so beautifully capture the rueful self-awareness (it takes real self-awareness to admit to your own “narcissism disguised as altruism”), the growing dismay as a still-young but maturing woman realizes that she is no longer the ingenue, no longer the “sexy baby.” She cleverly uses a young woman’s language (“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem”) even as she skips ahead 30 years to imagine herself as a rich old woman with a scheming, murderous daughter-in-law. It’s a brilliant song, and only Taylor Swift could have written it; not because there are no other brilliant songwriters but because it’s about her own particular peculiar preoccupations, which she’s unafraid to admit to and even sing about. It’s about her life, past, present, and future - the girl who was once the sexy baby pop star and who is now the “monster on the hill,” a star so big that she has distant admirers rather than friends; a woman so rich that someone is probably already scheming to separate her from her money - maybe a crooked agent or accountant or manager, or maybe a greedy future daughter-in-law. 

I liked Taylor Swift very much already, but this is the song that made me love her. Her earlier music, while often lyrically and musically brilliant, always seemed to belong exclusively to the young. I could hum along with “Blank Space” or “We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together” but I couldn’t claim them as my own. I’m way past the break up with a bad boyfriend stage, and I was never the romantic drama girl, never a nightmare dressed like a daydream. But the woman who will stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror? The person whose depression works the graveyard shift? Yeah, that’s me. I’m the problem. It’s me. Taylor knows. 

Current(ish) events

It’s been a while since I wrote about a book (really it’s been a while since I wrote about anything other than high school swimming and the cluttered inside of my own brain). It’s the day after the Trump indictment and I’m reading Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler: A Memoir. It seems appropriate. 

Defying Hitler is very much unlike any other first-person account of life in Nazi Germany that I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of them. Haffner (born Raimund Pretzel) was just one of many educated, middle-class Germans who were first disgusted and then horrified by the Nazis; but unlike many of his compatriots, he not only left Germany, but spent much of his life afterward thinking and writing and speaking about what happened in Germany, and why, and what could and should have been done to stop the Nazis.  

*****

Jumping ahead a bit, Haffner escaped the Nazis and went to England, where he was promptly clapped into an enemy alien internment camp in Devon. He was eventually moved to the Isle of Man. In England, Haffner wrote about Nazi Germany, emphasizing not just crimes against Jews and political opponents, but what he saw as flaws in the German character that made Germans particularly susceptible to Nazism. Not just the things that we usually associate with “German-ness,” like discipline and organization and hyper-competence, but attraction to what Haffner calls “comradeship.” 

You would think that “comradeship” would be a good thing, wouldn’t you? But it’s not, not as Haffner describes it. Writing about his experience in a compulsory training camp for aspiring lawyers, he explains that by militarizing everything (including preparing for the German equivalent of the bar exam), the Nazis exploited the feeling of ride-or-die camaraderie experienced only by soldiers in battle. He further asserts that this experience - this comradeship under fire that exempts individuals from all individual responsibility and independence - is good and in fact indispensable in war, but inherently evil and corrupting in all other circumstances. Reflecting on his own experience in a Nazi training camp, Haffner writes that after a few weeks of training in quasi-military conditions, he and his comrades were no longer educated young men, but an “unthinking, indifferent, irresponsible mass.”

I’d never heard of Haffner until I found this book but according to the afterword written by his son, Oliver Pretzel, he was very prolific and very well known in both England and Germany, especially in the immediate post-war years. The manuscript for Defying Hitler was found among Haffner’s papers after his death, and his son published it, minus two missing sections, in 2000. It became an immediate best seller, much to Pretzel’s surprise. As Pretzel suggests, its success was partly attributable to its focus on answering, and not just asking the question “How could this have happened?” Haffner breaks it down in practical and philosophical terms, explaining exactly how and why a movement that was not universally popular and that was in fact repellent to many Germans, could still completely upend and destroy the country in practically no time. It is instructive and maddening and terrifying. 

*****

In less than 24 hours, the former President of the United States will face arraignment in a courtroom in New York City. As much as I loathe him and as much as I hated everything about his misbegotten presidency, I’m not looking forward to this, neither the arraignment itself nor the likely chaotic and violent aftermath. I think that Donald Trump is more than willing to upend and destroy the country to save himself or to enrich himself at the expense of his foolish supporters. 

*****

No, Trump isn’t Hitler, and 2023 America is not 1933 Germany. But it feels like everything could change in an instant, and if feels like we could all, a year from now, be asking ourselves how it happened, how it could possibly have happened, and so fast, too.