Burying the lede

I feel like I write quite often about looming government shutdowns. There’s a lot of shutdown-averted-at-the-last-minute content on this blog, and I have to say that it’s not my favorite topic. I’m posting about continuing resolutions almost as much as I post about handbags and books and irrational fears. It’s turning into Politico around here. I need to return to my regular beat. 

Friday was a rather heavy news day even without the stupid “will they or won’t they fund the government, which is literally their only fucking job” drama. I was home working that day, and listening to and checking the news all day long, because a shutdown would have put me temporarily out of work. Any other day, shutdown brinkmanship would have been the top news story on every broadcast and site, but between Kate Middleton’s cancer announcement and the terrorist attack in Russia, the Capitol Hill crisis was pretty much an afterthought. 

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I’m not sure why none of the online conspiracy theorists seemed to even consider the possibility that the Princess of Wales, who had just undergone major abdominal surgery, might have had cancer. It was the first thing I thought of. Of course, I hoped that I was wrong. But when she disappeared from view for a few weeks, the Internet in its dubious wisdom imagined everything from a bad haircut to marital turmoil to plastic surgery gone wrong. I’m not a royalist, and I couldn’t care less about the Princess’s hair or the state of her marriage to the future King, but I am very sorry for her, as I would be sorry for any seriously ill mother of three young children (and for the record, even if she was laying low because of bad hair or a fight with her husband, it would be nobody’s business). I hope she recovers quickly and regains full health. 

And speaking of conspiracy theories, I know that ISIS claimed responsibility for Friday’s horrendous mass murder in Russia. But the timing is a little suspicious, isn’t it? Ever since I read Anna Politkovskaya’s A Russian Diary, which contains much of the reporting that got her killed, I immediately suspect a Putin-led or at least a Putin-enabled plot any time there’s violence or even a natural disaster in Russia. I believe Politkovskaya’s theory (and I think many experts believe it too) that the 1999 apartment bombings in Russian cities were not the work of Chechen terrorists, but a Putin-engineered false flag operation that gave him the excuse he needed to escalate his war in Chechnya. Putin has a whole network of violent criminal gangs to carry out his orders, and he’s not above working with ISIS, either. I’m not sure why he would have chosen ISIS rather than one of his usual gangs of thugs, but maybe he’s planning something in the Middle East again. Maybe he actually believes that he can fight wars in Ukraine and Syria at the same time. I’m sorry for all of the victims, no matter who is responsible, but I’m pretty sure that ISIS didn’t act alone. 

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The shutdown, as you probably know, was averted. I went back to work on Monday morning, as I always do; and had a pretty good day at work, as I almost always do. I’m very lucky. I like my job, which is neither dangerous nor physically demanding. I’m not in a war zone or in a refugee camp. And I wasn’t on the Baltimore Key Bridge (we have a DC Key Bridge too) last night, unlike those unfortunate construction workers. That must have been terrifying. It was terrifying to watch on TV, especially if you’ve driven back and forth across that bridge many times, as I have. Seeing the video of the bridge just dropping like Lincoln Logs into the Patapsco River, I thought that January 6, 2021 was the last time I’d watched a news broadcast with that much “what the hell is happening” disbelief and shock. It’s still hard to believe - a boat crashes into a bridge, and the whole thing just collapses, in seconds. A major local landmark is just gone. It’s Tuesday now and it’s another big national news day; but in Maryland, the bridge is all we’re talking about. 

Equinox

It’s March 19, the first day of Spring. I don’t recall a Spring Day 1 earlier than March 21, but the vernal equinox comes when it comes. It’s a Leap Year, so maybe that plays into the early-ish start of the season. I’m not going to delve too deeply into this. This is math and science, which are not my departments. I like to stay in my lane. 

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And it’s a beautiful beautiful day, though 20 degrees colder than I would like. Our neighborhood, gray and drab just a few short weeks ago, is a riot of color; cherry blossoms and daffodils and forsythia and flowering pear and tulips and irises coming out all over the place. The grass is green, thanks to a warm spell a few weeks ago. It’s lovely. 

That's my mailbox, hiding in the forsythia
that is in turn shaded by a cherry tree

We are very lucky, we here in my little neighborhood. Our streets are lined with cherry trees, hundreds of them. We don’t have to go anywhere near the Tidal Basin if we don’t want to. I do love to see the original cherry trees with the monuments sparkling behind them, but the Tidal Basin is a scene this week. It’s no place for the faint of heart. I’ma stay right here and look at my own cherry trees. I can see them right from my kitchen window. 

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WTOP is our local news radio station. Like most other news radio stations, WTOP covers the same stories all day long, repeating the same program every 30 minutes with slight updates as information changes, especially concerning the all-important traffic and weather. Like everyone else in the DMV, I’m obsessed with traffic reports, so I listen to WTOP a lot when I’m in my car. 

Cherry trees bloom in multiple stages - eight I think. The cycle begins when the very first signs of blossoms begin to appear to the much-anticipated peak bloom. That whole cycle, from early signs through peak bloom, takes about two weeks. Somewhere between March 1 and March 10, the first signs appear, and then WTOP reporters are on 24-hour cherry blossom watch. As the cherry blossoms mature, WTOP devotes at least 5 minutes of every 30 to cherry blossom updates. It’s a big local story; even bigger this year because the National Park Service just announced its plans to cut down 150 cherry trees ahead of a project to shore up the seawall around the Tidal Basin (don’t worry, there are about 4,000 trees around the Basin, so the 150 won’t make a hugely visible difference). 

The National Park Service shares predictions on peak bloom (surprisingly specific - not “sometime in the third week of March” but “1 PM on March 22”) and then updates their forecast based on expected weather conditions. An early warm spell will speed up the process but will also speed up the end of the blooming period; whereas a cold snap that follows an early period of warmth, will extend the peak period by a few days. That is where we are now. We had a few warm days last week, and peak bloom occurred very early. But then it got quite cold, and the blooms are holding on nicely. Everywhere I go, people are discussing the cherry blossom forecasts - either first-hand reports from their own Tidal Basin visits, or second-hand updates from the live feeds or WTOP. It’s the talk of the town. Everyone in DC is a botanist in March. 

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I got my hair cut on Tuesday night (my hair lady had just been to the Tidal Basin the previous day) and rejoiced in the still-present daylight as I drove home at 6:15 PM. A wave of nostalgia hit me - hit me hard - as I caught a glimpse of a Rockville High School kid getting out of a minivan, backpack on one shoulder and softball gear bag on the other. Was it just a year ago that I was still a Rockville baseball mom? On that very day a year earlier, I thought, I was probably on my way home from a baseball scrimmage. It was cold on Tuesday, so I looked on the bright side. I loved high school baseball but at least I don’t have to spend two hours sitting in a camp chair wrapped in a blanket on a 40-degree windy March day. And then I noticed the signs advertising Rockville’s annual mulch sale, an all-hands-on-deck volunteer effort that takes up a whole Saturday, a Saturday that is invariably rainy or cold (it snowed on our first mulch sale day in 2016). I miss being a high school parent. I miss band concerts and swim meets and baseball games. But I don’t miss mulch sale. Mulch sale can go fuck itself. 

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Well, that was rude. But you know what I mean. 

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It’s Friday now, still cold but bright fresh spring-y cold, which is the best kind, I guess. The Washington Capitals just got in on the cherry blossom action, releasing a new sky-blue jersey festooned with cherry blossoms. They’re late to this game. The Nationals and the Wizards have had cherry blossom gear for several years now. We’ll see what these jerseys look like tonight, when we attend what is likely to be our last Capitals game for the season. Hockey is a winter sport unless your team is in the playoffs, and the Capitals are not going to go very far in the playoffs if they make it at all, which isn’t likely. 

For years, the Capitals were a playoffs mainstay. They only won the Stanley Cup once, in 2018, but you could pretty much always depend on them to at least reach the post-season. But nothing is permanent. Gray early March gives way to screaming pink and  yellow late March and then just as you get used to the forsythias and the cherry blossoms; just when you start to think that all this beauty is yours to keep, it’s gone. If you remember nothing else that late March in the DMV teaches us, remember that everything is fleeting. 

Wouldn't it be nice to keep walking under these
trees all summer long?
They'll only look like this for a few more days. 

Wearing of the green

Five years ago today, I landed in Dublin at 5 in the morning. It was St. Patrick's Day, my first time in Ireland. I didn't expect to love the place but I did, pretty much the minute I got in the taxi and rode into the center of town as the sky began to brighten. It turned into a bright and sunny and cold holiday Sunday. We spent the late morning and early afternoon having brunch in the hotel restaurant, mingling with happy Irish families enjoying a three-day weekend. I dragged my mother to the parade, and then returned her to the hotel where my sister and her friend were already sleeping after the all-night flight; and I wandered the city by myself for a few hours until I was literally too tired to take another step. Another taxi took me back to the hotel, where my sister’s friend and I sat in the bar and had a drink and made friends with an already-drunk Irishwoman named Orla who was just getting started on her holiday drinking. Later that evening, we would wave goodbye to poor Orla as the Garda escorted her out of the bar, whose staff had had quite enough of Orla’s shenanigans. 

Dublin quays, March 17, 2019

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It's Sunday today too. We'll probably not go to any Irish pubs or restaurants to celebrate. They will be too crowded. In Dublin, the crowds are the point; but of course, inconvenience in a foreign country is an adventure. Inconvenience close to home is just inconvenient. 

I'm wearing green, at least. A green cardigan (one of exactly three green garments in my wardrobe if you don’t count t-shirts) with a white shirt, and claddagh earrings. When I was young, I purposely avoided wearing anything green or Irish-themed on St. Patrick's Day or any time in March. Now, I like St. Patrick's Day. It'd be nice to be in Dublin right now. I hope Orla is having a nice holiday. 

Burn Book

Could I have chosen a more different book from Middlemarch than Kara Swisher’s Burn Book? Possibly. But Kara Swisher is a very big departure from George Eliot, and 21st century Silicon Valley is a long way from 19th century England. It’s a very different reading experience. I’m a little whipsawed right now. A little confused. 

If you spend any time reading online book discussions, then you’ll know that Burn Book is mildly controversial. I haven’t gotten to this part yet, but apparently Kara Swisher is pretty hard on Elon Musk and the social media book commenters complain that she was once as taken in by Elon as she is now critical. 

I’m not wading into that discussion; first of all because no good ever comes out of an online argument about books or anything else, and because I haven’t been following Kara Swisher for years as many of these Threads commenters appear to have been, so I can’t comment on her early coverage of Elon Musk. 

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I’ve read some of Kara Swisher’s work here and there over the years, but not much because until recently, I didn’t have much interest in her journalistic beat, which is the internet and social media and all of the technology that powers pretty much everything. I’ve also seen her on TV, mostly in short commentary sound bites. She is not just a writer and thinker, she’s also a mover and shaker and a bit of a personality - brash, confident, even pugnacious. And so predictably, lots of people, especially lots of men, don’t like her for the usual reasons that people don’t like opinionated women who say what they want to say without worrying if men will think that they’re shrill or aggressive or unfeminine or God forbid angry. Kara Swisher doesn't care. 

And really, it’s not just opinionated and outspoken women - lots of people don’t like women at all, full stop. And that’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately, I have some things to say about it but maybe another time. 

Or maybe now. Misogyny in tech is pretty much a byword - even people who “don’t believe in glass ceilings” (lol Nikki Haley) acknowledge that the technology sector is notoriously hostile toward anyone who is missing a Y chromosome. And Kara Swisher is not afraid to call them on their misogynist bullshit. She could stay quiet about it, and remain as the only girl in the room, the only girl who plays on the boys’ team while all the other girls are relegated to the sidelines, jumping up and down and waving pom poms. She could be the cool girl. But she calls out the misogyny because she doesn't care if the boys like her or not. 

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Kara Swisher started reporting on the Internet and everything arising from it, from e-commerce to chat rooms and email and social media, in the 90s, when lots of people - even smart people - thought that it was all just a fad that was going to go away. She saw things that other people didn’t see, although I’m sure that there’s some truth in some of the online criticisms of the book. In some places, she comes across as a boastful know-it-all. I think that most of the time, she really did and does know it all when it comes to tech, but I get just a slight sense of 20/20 hindsight in a few stories. She claims that she knew certain things or predicted certain outcomes before they materialized. For example, she tells us that she once told a then-unknown Jeff Bezos that the early Amazon was not so much a tech company as a retailer with a very good logistics operation. If she really said that at that time, then that was a brilliant observation. Ultimately, as Kara Swisher explains it, Jeff Bezos used technology as a tool to transform the essentially non-technical business of selling merchandise and Steve Jobs, whom Swisher admires very much, transformed technology itself. The question I have is, is there really a moral difference between those two accomplishments? I’m not so sure. 

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I like the very casual, immediate style of the writing in Burn Book. Swisher is very much at ease with internet slang (she probably invented most of it). In one of the few passages that is truly a memoir-like observation about herself, she writes that she has always been brash and confident and impervious to others’ criticism - “it’s hard to neg me,” as she puts it. This is, by the way, a trait that I would love to claim for myself, but I cannot because I am exactly the opposite. She also uses the word “grok” quite frequently - once would have been enough, but I guess it’s just one of her everyday words. I had never seen or heard either “neg” or “grok” in writing or conversation, but it was easy enough to infer from context. There's also lots of tech-savvy bravado - "Who emails?" she writes. Everyone, Kara. Everyone still emails. 

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Yesterday, I spent a good part of the afternoon working on a presentation about AI in medical education. I know pretty much nothing about AI but that's not going to stop me from making a slide deck about it. I’ll make a slide deck about absolutely anything. I’ll write about absolutely anything. Give me a topic. One time when I was writing a speech, my smart-aleck son asked me why I didn’t just use ChatGPT. I don't need ChatGPT, I told him. I am ChatGPT. 

Or maybe ChatGPT is me. Maybe I didn’t write this at all. Maybe all I wrote is an AI prompt: “Crank out a half-baked, scattershot review of Kara Swisher’s Burn Book, and throw in some random non-sequiturs.” 

I might try that, actually. Let’s see what happens. Let’s see how this shakes out. 

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In all seriousness, I learned a tiny bit about AI as I worked on this slide deck, and I’m going to learn more. This is one of Kara Swisher’s key messages. AI is here to stay, and we should, collectively, figure out a way to control it before it controls us. We can’t make the same mistakes that we made with the World Wide Web and social media. When the young geniuses who are inventing new technologies by the minute promise us that we don’t need to bother our pretty little heads with annoyances like regulation and oversight because everything is under control and they have our best interests at heart, we have to not believe them because nothing is under control and they absolutely do not have our best interests at heart. Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook and Satya Nadella do not have our best interests at heart. Elon Musk REALLY doesn’t have our best interests at heart. 

Middlemarching

It was a beautiful day yesterday, unseasonably spring-y and mild. I went for a walk at lunchtime, two quick turns around the track, exchanging greetings with a few medical students running in their PT gear. 

After a few days of deliberately slow reading, I finally finished Middlemarch. It was just as I had hoped for Mary and Fred, and even Dorothea and Will ended up together, against considerable odds. Happy endings all around, and you had to keep reading until the very very end. 

I thought about Middlemarch yesterday as I made my second pass around the track. When Dorothea refused a carriage from Middlemarch back to Lowick, how long a walk would it have been? A mile? Five miles? A few meters? I hoped she would have had a balmy early spring day for her walk, no matter how long or short. 

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I loved Middlemarch, and I love Dorothea Brooke, who is almost perfect, almost too good to be true, but not quite, thanks to her impulsive and slightly megalomanic nature. Dorothea is virtuous, generous, kind, selfless, idealistic, uninterested in material wealth and comfort; and of course, she’s beautiful. But she is also inflexible (even rigid) and convinced of her own moral superiority. But maybe these aren’t even flaws - Dorothea really is morally superior to most of her fellow Middlemarchers so why should she not be sure of herself? And why should she be flexible on the question of truth versus falsehood? Some things are not up for debate. 

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I’m in the middle of minor but troublesome controversies on two separate fronts (paid work and volunteer work), and I find myself wondering WWDD? What would Dorothea do? I’m pretty sure that I’m right in both of these debates, neither of which involve matters of great importance, but both of which will have measurable impact on my work. It’s kind of a long story (that’s the only kind I know how to tell) but it boils down to this: I have to convince one person to do something, and I have to convince another person not to do something. This is all I can say. Dorothea would use all of the tools at her disposal - her social status, her wealth, her youth and beauty, her impeccable reputation - to convince others to do her bidding. Dorothea and I don’t have much in common except the impeccable reputation, but I’m also pretty good at talking people around and convincing them to see things my way, even without the benefit of beauty and wealth. I’ll report back. 

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One down, one to go. I managed to quiet one of these teapot tempests, and although I didn’t get exactly what I needed, I did get a clear path forward. The second one is a little more sticky. I might ignore it until it goes away. This is exactly the opposite of what Dorothea would do but as we have already established, Dorothea is not just a paragon of virtue; she is also an impulsive megalomaniac with a messiah complex. As much as I love Dorothea, it’s not always a good idea to follow her lead. It’s not always a good idea to do what she would do. It wasn’t even a good idea for her to do what she would do. I mean, everyone told her not to marry Mr. Casaubon, and she didn’t listen, and we all saw how that turned out, didn’t we? I admire Dorothea very much, but she’s not a role model for middle-aged, middle class ladies in the 21st century. 

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My first problem is pretty much solved now, and the second one seems much less bothersome than it did two days ago. Dorothea would have attacked it head on and maybe she’d have solved it but maybe she’d have made it worse. We don’t know, because Dorothea isn’t real and even if she was, she’d be long dead. I acted on my first instinct, which was to pretend that the whole situation didn’t exist and you know what? I’m pretty sure it DOESN’T exist, at least not anymore. My plan worked. I was right. 

And it’s Friday now, a beautiful sunny afternoon. Our daffodils are out now, and I’m starting to see a few crocuses and tulips, too. The cherry blossoms are in the very earliest bloom stages and everything looks bright and fresh and hopeful. Dorothea and I would agree, I’m sure, that today is a perfect day for a spring-is-around-the-corner walk around the neighborhood. I’m finished solving problems for today. I have some flowers to look at. 

Documentary footage

If I had my way, my home would be free of all “smart home” technology. The so-called smart thermostat (about which I have much to say - stay tuned) would be replaced with a good old-fashioned Honeywell. My appliances would keep silent - especially the refrigerator, which if it’s so smart would know that you have to keep the door open in order to wipe down the shelves, but instead chimes at me relentlessly as soon as the door is open for more than five seconds. We’d get rid of the Google Home smart speaker and just Google things the old-fashioned way, with a phone or a computer. And the cameras. My gosh, the cameras. 

Of all the technological innovations that have wormed their way into my house, I hate video surveillance cameras the most. Yes I know that they have their uses. I know that police can solve crimes with the aid of Ring or Arlo video footage. They can even prevent crimes. In 2018, my husband got an Arlo alert at 12:30 AM on a Sunday night. A person unknown to us had rung the doorbell several times and receiving no answer, had wandered around to the backyard, where video showed him peering into the patio doors and the back windows. We were in Montreal, hundreds of miles from home, and so we had no way to do anything to prevent this person from breaking in. It was some comfort that we were all together and that if the man did break in, he couldn’t hurt anyone. But we also didn’t want to return home to a ransacked house. When the man returned to the front door again, my husband used the remote communication feature to say “Can I help you? Do you need something?” The man didn’t respond, but he did go away. My husband called a few police colleagues and gave them the entry codes so that they could check the house and perhaps arrest any burglars who might attempt to ransack the joint. They visited every day for the whole time we were away, but the burglar never returned, that night or for the rest of the week. 

The point here is that I do acknowledge the value of this technology. I’m pretty sure that our late night visitor was casing the place, and I think it’s very likely that he’d have broken in if my husband hadn’t scared him off. I understand why we have cameras. I concede that they are useful and even necessary. But they’re also extremely intrusive and downright creepy. I don’t want to be captured on video as I go about my daily business. I don’t want to be watched even if technically, I am watching myself. 

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But maybe those cameras are more useful than I thought. Last Tuesday, I was working at my desk at home and when I looked out the window, I saw a black and white cat sitting calmly on top of my six-foot-high backyard fence (I also hate that fence but it came with the house). How, I wondered, did that cat get there? There’s nothing close enough to the fence for a cat to climb on, and yet there he was, placid and content, lord of all he surveyed. 

I got up to get my phone so I could get a picture and when I came back, he was gone. I looked out another window to see if he was in the backyard, and there he was, sitting calmly on top of the back fence. In a span of thirty seconds then, this super-agile cat had scaled or jumped two fences, and positioned himself on top of two fence posts, all while taking the time to strike photo-ready poses. I wished I had gotten a photo, but I didn’t, and I thought that was the end of it. 

I went about the rest of my day and didn’t think about that cat again, until my husband texted me late in the day. He had gotten Arlo video of the whole sequence of events: Cat approaches backyard gate and finding it closed, backs up a few feet and leaps, landing neatly on top of the gate and then stepping over a few feet to position himself on the fence post, which is where I came in. Cat then leaps down from the first fence post, darts across the backyard, and scales the next fence in just two quick moves, landing exactly on the fence post this time, a perfect vantage point from which to look for birds or rodents or other moving objects upon which to pounce. It was very entertaining. And that wasn’t all. Later that day, I watched video of a squirrel scheming and planning a way to get himself from the top of the fence to a birdfeeder suspended from a tree. Other squirrels have successfully breached this birdfeeder, but not this one. His frustration was apparent, and I felt sorry for him. 

In a third video, a small gathering of birds enjoyed Costco’s proprietary birdseed blend from that same feeder. I wondered if they’d been roosting in nearby trees, waiting first for the cat and then the squirrel to go away. 

You know, I really should just set up a squirrel feeder. I see no reason for this unwarranted and unjust preference for birds over squirrels. Squirrels need to eat, too. Squirrels have rights.

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When it comes to decorating and furnishing decisions, I usually get my way. My husband is a pretty selfless person, and he defers to my (obviously superior) judgment on aesthetics and design. On the subject of smart technology, though, he will not budge. He LOVES the stupid Google Nest thermostat, which I hate. He loves the Google Home smart speaker, and never misses an opportunity to ask it a question. I think we have more cameras than we need, but I don’t mention this because if I do, it just reminds him that there are still blind spots around the house and that he’s been meaning to install even more cameras. I choose the battles that I can win, and I’ll win 95 percent of them, but even before the Montreal incident, which occurred in 2018, the cameras were a lost cause. I have reconciled myself to their presence. I’m learning to live with them. 

And I might even be learning to embrace them, a tiny tiny bit.