Essay questions

 

Here's another half-baked review of a book that I read about a year ago. I started writing about this book before I even finished it. I finished the book a year ago. I finished writing about it 5 minutes ago. 

*****

I'm not really up to date on 21st century literary criticism, probably because I’m about 70 years behind on my reading. That is why I had to look up the word “autofiction” recently. It turns out that it’s just a new word for a pretty old literary genre, the roman a clef written in the first person. Although I guess it’s somewhat different because in some autofiction, the reader isn’t quite sure if she’s reading a novel based on the writer’s life, or a memoir sprinkled with fictional details. The question arose when I read Lauren Oyler’s essay collection, No Judgment. 

*****

Before I started on the book, I did some very quick and cursory research on Lauren Oyler. My research stopped with a Reddit thread about a Goodreads controversy. Needless to say, I didn’t actually read the thread so I don’t even know what the controversy was, although I suspect that it has something to do with review bombing and author pushback on review bombing, which seems to be what happens on Goodreads. Engaging with Goodreads reviewers doesn’t seem any wiser than trolling the comments on Elon’s latest Twitter post (note once again that I wrote most of this a year ago - and I still refuse to call it X - suck it, Elon). Not a good use of time. Anyone, no one review bombs mid 20th century literature, and dead authors don’t push back on bad-faith 2-star reviews, so Goodreads has really never been a factor in my what-to-read decisions. I’d have read this book no matter what the Goodreads community had to say about it or the author, but I’ll never know because at least for now, I’m smart enough to stay out of that internet neighborhood. “Very online” people are always ready to ruin everything for everyone, and I’m not going to let them influence my TBR list. 

*****

Do you remember Gawker? Do you remember the lawsuit that put an end to Gawker? I’m not going to write about it here and if you decide to look it up you might see some things that you don’t want to see. Hulk Hogan figures prominently. Fair warning. Anyway, Gawker was one of many self-important full-of-themselves gossip and snark sites of the early 21st century, but it was sort of uniquely important to the mid 10s information and misinformation and gossip ecosystem that Oyler writes about in “Embarrassment, Panic, Job Loss, Opprobrium, Etc.” 

Oyler makes interesting and thoughtful points about gossip power structures. Regarding the “whisper networks” that were always in the news during the 2017 - 2018 sexual harassment reckoning, she correctly points out that such networks only benefit those whose friendships and connections earn them an invitation to the network. If you’re not an insider, you won’t only not know what the network is talking about; you won’t even know it exists.

Word gets out, though, as the person who created and shared the infamous “Shitty Media Men” Google Doc learned. She claimed that her list of creepy and predatory men was meant to be private, just a shared resource among friends. But of course she published it on the internet, and there is no such thing as privacy on the internet. You can make your accounts private, you can make posts visible only to friends or friends of friends, you can disable comments or sharing - you can lock everything down as much as it can be locked down and if just one careless or vindictive person takes a screenshot and shares it, your “private” content is visible to pretty much the entire world. The only way to keep anything private on the internet is to just not put anything on the internet. After three decades of the World Wide Web and two decades of social media, people still don’t understand this - still!

*****

Every time I read a book written by an author born after 1980 or so, I have to look up at least one or two words. Autofiction, I inferred from context, but looked it up to confirm. And now I know what a polycule is. This is knowledge that I don’t necessarily mind having but could also have done equally well without. 

*****

In “My Perfect Opinions,” Oyler tackles the ubiquitous star rating system, tracing it back to its roots in the Guide Michelin. She points out the utter meaninglessness of a system that is supposed to be incremental but that in reality punishes any product or service or service provider rated less than perfect. Four out of five stars should be a solid rating, but it’s a kiss of death for an Instacart shopper, an Uber driver, or a writer whose work falls into the hands of the “Goodreads community.” 

Oyler’s larger question about Goodreads, and about the internet in general, is whether it’s good or bad that “normal” people, non-famous people who aren’t artists or academics or professional critics now have a great deal of influence on platforms such as Goodreads? Oyler, a Harvard graduate and acclaimed author still in her thirties, comes across as unapologetically elite, and she makes her disdain for Goodreads quite clear, though not for the reason you might think. She doesn’t seem to have any objection to the idea of an everyday reader commenting on a book, but she does object to the algorithm-driven influence economy that allows certain Goodreads reviewers and social media personalities to amass huge followings, simply because they’re good at stirring up controversy. She is not wrong. 

*****

I don’t like a lot of things that white women in their 50s are supposed to like and because I am the way I am, I always second guess myself. Why don’t I like gardening, I think to myself - I SHOULD like gardening because I certainly like to look at pretty flowers and eat tomatoes right off the vine. But I hate digging in dirt, and so my husband does the gardening. I don’t like to talk about diet and exercise. I don’t like most romantic comedies and I really don’t like serial dramas about “powerful women” unless the powerful women are hard-bitten British DCIs solving murders in the Midlands or the Yorkshire Dales or something. I don’t like Lululemon (mostly because none of it fits me but I also just don’t like it) or Tory Burch (except for my beloved black TB tote bag). People keep telling me that I have to read Lessons in Chemistry, making me that much more certain that I’d hate it and that much more determined not to read it. My hatred of pumpkin fucking spice and its autumnal works and pomps is well documented. And I really have never liked or trusted Brene Brown.

Still, I felt bad about not liking her, and I wondered if it was just me. I’m too cynical, I would think when I’d hear other women talking about how great Brene Brown is, and how everyone should read her books and listen to her TED talks and follow her advice. I tried to keep an open mind, but something was off, and my Brene antipathy persisted, though I kept it to myself because openly declaring that you hate Brene Brown is a good way to get yourself canceled if you’re a 59-year old white woman from the suburbs. 

So thanks, Lauren Oyler. Now I have critical - even scholarly - support for my anti-Brene position. To paraphrase Oyler, “vulnerable” and “vulnerability” have entered the realm of meaninglessness, having been overused and misused to the point of absurdity. And the idea of “wholeheartedness” as a state to which we should all aspire is shallow at best and kind of mean and shitty at worst - mean and shitty because it feeds into the woman-hating internet culture that encourages women to be “healthy” (thin), “happy” (never ever angry or anxious or sad), and “balanced” (rich). I’m tired of it, and I’m tired of the smart and powerful people who enable it, knowingly or unknowingly. 

*****

I enjoyed this book very much, even though I didn’t know what Lauren Oyler was talking about half the time. And that is fine because she’s just smarter than me. I like to listen to smart people. 

Sometimes reading should be easy and enjoyable; no thinking required. But not always. Sometimes, it’s good to have to reread a sentence or a paragraph; to ask yourself “wait, what? What is she saying here?” You can’t spend all your time reading the madcap adventures of zany British aristocrats and their servants in the idyllic Years Between the Wars. I do love a good essay collection, and this one is very good. Not Zadie Smith good, of course, but that would be an unreasonably high bar for a first essay collection. But very good. 9/10. Would recommend. 

(parenthetical) Author of the Year 2024

For the last few days, I’ve been working on my book list from 2024, which I’ll post any day now. I’m just now noticing how much of last year’s reading was all about dictators, genocides, and gulags. It was not intentional, but most of my 2024 reading was a gosh-darn prep course for the Year of Our Lord 2025. But Margery Sharp, my Author of the Year for 2024, is an absolute delight; or rather, she was - she died quite a few years ago. Margery Sharp is probably best known as the author of the children’s book The Rescuers, which I loved (loved the 1970s Disney movie, too), but she also wrote many charming, lighthearted comic novels for adults. I read four of them last year: 

• Something Light
• The Nutmeg Tree
• The Flowering Thorn
• Cluny Brown

I can’t tell you how much I loved these books, especially the last two. I’ve only scratched the surface of Margery Sharp’s considerable output, and I’ll revisit her again this year when I need a break from (gesturing wildly at everything) all of this. Margery Sharp is my Author of the Year for 2024. 

Prophet Song

I’ve always been preoccupied with violent political upheaval and its totalitarian aftermath because I'm a ray of sunshine who wakes up every morning looking for a good time. But until 2015 or so, this was just an abstract preoccupation, grounded in neither real experience nor any expectation that anything really bad could ever happen here. For the past ten years, I’ve been expecting and bracing myself for the end of democracy and the liberal civil order in America, and it turns out that I wasn’t wrong, because what the fuck. 

Anyway, speaking of dystopian nightmares, I wrote this review of Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song early last year, and just forgot to finish and publish it, so here it is. 

*****

Why yes, I did just read yet another terrifying dystopian novel, even though I don’t need any author’s help with imagining the worst case scenario for world events. In my mind, the worst case scenario is always the most likely. The worst case scenario is my default setting.  

The novel is Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, winner of the 2023 Man Booker Award. Set in a present-day or near future Ireland ruled by a totalitarian regime, it depicts the complete breakdown of social order in the wake of an armed uprising that sparks a civil war. The novel’s protagonist, a scientist and mother of four named Eilish, grows ever more desperate as she struggles to keep her children (including an infant) safe and alive after her husband is detained by the regime, and her teenage sons disappear. Eilish loses her job just as the political situation drives runaway inflation, and she spends her days scouring Dublin for food and supplies, seeking news of her husband and sons, and caring for her elderly father who is in the early stages of dementia and refuses to cooperate in his own care. 

This book is so many things, but I’ll start with one. It’s a character study of a woman pushed past the point of reasonable endurance, each terrible thing piling up until it’s all just about too heavy to bear. With her husband detained and held incommunicado, her teenage children sad and terrified and angry all at once, a new baby demanding all of the things that new babies demand, and her father growing more confused and obstreperous each day, Eilish very likely thinks that things can’t get worse, but of course things can always get worse, and they do. Things get so much worse, and Eilish keeps getting up in the morning and keeps putting one foot in front of the other and keeps doing everything and anything she needs to do to protect her family. 

There’s a very popular social media meme, which goes something like “whatever you think you would have done during the Third Reich just look at what you’re doing now about (A, B, or C crime against humanity) because you’re doing what you would have done.” Glib and smug and reductive like most serious memes, but not altogether wrong, either. Prophet Song asks that question: What would you do - what would any of us do - in impossible circumstances? Would you resist and risk arrest, torture, disappearance, loss of everything you have? Would you collaborate with the oppressors to save yourself or your family? Would you just keep your head down and try to just survive and get through the days until things get better? Maybe things won’t get better. 

The way we spend our time and our money and our energy and our social capital in normal, peaceful times doesn’t even resemble how we’d spend those resources in times of chaos and disorder. Every day I buy things or use things or even throw things away, because it’s a time of plenty and I don’t have to really think too hard about fulfilling needs vs. wants. Yes, I know that this is not the case for everyone, and Prophet Song certainly touches on poverty and injustice - the point is that a time of plenty is just that - a time, a passing event, a temporary condition. In America, our time of plenty has lasted for a relatively long time and has benefited a relatively large number of people - but it could all go away, and when or if it does, things would go downhill with astonishing speed. 

*****

At one point in the novel, Eilish thinks for a moment about the past, about times when other people and other countries were suffering through war, civil strife, oppression, famine - and she remembers how she herself would give a passing thought to those  who were suffering, but then she’d forget about them and get on with her day. She recalls a conversation with her sister in Canada, who says that the world is watching Ireland, and that the terror and oppression won’t stand because the international community won’t tolerate it. Eilish knows better. She knows that the rest of the world will give a passing thought or two to the suffering Irish people, and then they’ll move on. No one is coming to help. If Eilish is to save herself and her family, she has to do it on her own.

*****

When Eilish brings her children on to the smugglers' boat that will spirit the family out of Ireland and on to who knows where, she knows that the world is about to care even less about them than it does about the rest of Ireland. She knows what happens as soon as people leave their country to escape war or violence or starvation or all of the above. She knows that they are no longer citizens but migrants, at the mercy of whatever country might deign to take them in; or more likely, whatever country they can sneak into under cover of darkness. In one desperate moment, Eilish and her family are transformed, no longer people but illegal invaders, part of a faceless herd of poor and dirty and traumatized refugees. Whatever place they go to will try its best to keep them out. 

*****

No longer a prosperous and secure citizen of a safe and peaceful country, Eilish seems to wonder about her past thoughts and prayers for the poor and oppressed around the world. Do they mean anything? Did it make any difference at all that she at least thought about her suffering fellow humans, even if only for a moment? Is anyone in the world thinking about her and praying for her, and does it matter if they are or not?  Is it any help at all to pray or hope or even feel for the people of Israel, Ukraine, Gaza, Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, Central America, etc.? Most of us don’t have the skills or the wherewithal to actually do anything practical to help people in a war zone or a famine. We can send some money to whatever reputable organization might be able to help alleviate the suffering a little bit. Maybe we can call our representatives in Congress and demand that our government send aid. Or we can pray, or send positive thoughts (same thing). Most of the time it’s all we can do and it’s not much. But it’s not nothing. 

*****

Why Ireland? Well, Lynch is Irish, first of all, so he knows the country and can write about it convincingly. If you’ve been to Ireland in the last ten years or so, and don’t know much about its history, then you might think that it’s the least likely place to descend into cruelty and violence. Lynch knows better. Ireland has a very recent history of bloody violence. Last year, I started listening to The Troubles podcast; and then I picked it up again this year. If you think that Prophet Song’s descriptions of torture and mayhem are exaggerated, then listen to the episodes about Dessie O’Hare or Freddie “Stakeknife” Scappaticci or the Shankill Butchers. Hair-raising. Paul Lynch knows that the Irish are capable of cruelty and violence, and not because of the Troubles, but because human beings are and always have been cruel and violent.

*****

I manage my boss's Twitter account. Yes I know it's called X now but I'll call it whatever I want. I'll call it Herbert or Fred but I'm not calling it X. Anyway I spent five minutes on that aptly nicknamed hellsite this morning, and it was hair-raising. Some jerk - well he's a fairly well known jerk not just a random jerk but I’m not going to identify him - posted his observations about Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin and while it was not shocking at all that this particular jerk had nothing but good things to say about Putin, it was absolutely shocking to scroll the comments and see how many people love Putin.  Americans are out here rootin’ for Putin. It’s bananas. 

*****

That’s where I left off last year, right around this time. Trump was fully in the race for the Republican nomination, and I knew that he had about a 90 percent chance of winning it and then at least a 50 percent chance of winning the White House again. I knew this, but I don’t think I really accepted that it could actually happen because I was truly shocked on November 5. Anyway, if you haven’t read Prophet Song, I recommend it very very highly. It is grim and terrifying and infuriating, but also beautiful - not just beautiful writing but beautiful in the way that truth always is beautiful. 

Champions 2025

It’s Super Bowl weekend! Not football because that’s over and who cares. No, it’s day 1 of the Atlantic East Conference swimming championship meet at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. A multi-day swim meet with morning and evening sessions is our idea of fun, and we need some fun up in here, I tell you what. 

*****

The weather for this weekend is all over the place, as is typical for Maryland at this time of year or any other. I’ll see your crazy ass in Hell, Maryland weather. We had a snowstorm yesterday and it was bitterly cold. We teleworked, all of us; and I didn’t leave the house even one time. Today it’s about 20 degrees warmer and the snow is melting rapidly. It was very foggy when we woke up this morning; foggy and dim and gray-green and soft. Now it’s just sort of gray and dim, but clearing. 

Marymount won the championship last year, and we hope for a repeat on the men’s side. The women, having lost four of their best swimmers thanks to graduation last year, are very unlikely to repeat. They might even end up in third place. The coaches’ poll has St. Mary’s winning both the men’s and women’s meet, but Marymount soundly defeated St. Mary’s in regular season dual meet competition. Of course, dual meets in January are a very different thing from conference meets in February. The bottom line? We’ll see. We will just see. 

*****

We are off to a very strong start. The Marymount men's 200 medley and 800 freestyle relays flipped the psych sheet, winning both events despite their second place seeding. My son's relay, the 200 medley, also broke their own team record as well as the meet and conference records for that event. It was exciting. 

It's Friday morning now, clear and sunny and 20 degrees colder than I would prefer but I will take the sunshine. We're in the stands at the Michael P O'Brien Athletics and Recreation Center at St Mary's College, waiting for prelims to begin. The mood is festive. It's a little mini vacation for college swim parents, here and at conference meets all over the country, and we're going to have fun. The vibe, as the kids say, is immaculate, and we're going to keep it that way. 

*****

It's Saturday morning and we're crowded back into the stands at MPOARC waiting for prelims. It's 100 breast day. 100 breast is my son's marquee event and he's seeded third but he's been swimming really well and anything could happen. The Marymount boys are ahead by about 30 points. It's good to have the lead but that is a very tight margin in a championship meet. No one is running away with this today. It's going to come down to the last day. 

My phone, on which I am writing right now, has been blowing up all weekend. Signal groups, Marymount parents GroupMe chats, texts from friends and family - out of control. I’m a little bit disoriented as I whipsaw back and forth between panicked updates from friends hearing from fellow feds abruptly fired on Friday to where are we meeting for happy hour messages on the GroupMe to updates on my mom's health from my sisters and brother. There's a lot happening. This weekend is going to be memorable for more reasons than swimming. 

*****

It's Sunday now, the 4th and final day of AEC Championships. Tomorrow will feel like the day after Christmas when I was 6. It's been such a fun weekend and I'll be sad that it's over. A few days of cheering and screaming and parents happy hour and hotel chilling was a welcome break from all of this. You know what “all of this" means, I assume (gesturing wildly at everything).

And my son is now officially the greatest 100 breaststroker in Marymount history. He won both prelims and finals yesterday, and broke the program record with his finals swim, winning his first individual championship gold. A short time later, he and his relay teammates beat a heavily favored St. Mary's relay team to take the program and conference records in the 400 medley relay. The boys have a solid but not insurmountable lead heading into Day 4. Everyone needs to bring it today. They need to bring it and then leave it in the pool. 

Our girls will not be able to overcome a huge St Mary's lead today but yesterday they were one point away from falling to third place, and today, they are almost assured of a solid second place finish thanks to some absolutely heroic swims, including a 400 medley relay that completely over achieved, grabbing an unexpected program record in the process. 

People have just been lovely, too. Everyone we have encountered this weekend, from our fellow parents to the hotel staff to the cashiers at the Lexington Park Wawa, has been delightful. The immaculate vibes prevailed wherever we went. 

The greatest 100 breaststroke swimmer
in Marymount University history.

*****

At last year's meet, I noticed a beautiful Black woman, always dressed in yellow, taking photos at the meet. One day, she wore a knife-pleated knee-length yellow skirt with sparkling clean white tennis shoes. 9 out of 10 women could not pull off that look, but this woman did. She looked immaculate, stylish, comfortable, and completely at ease. The same woman was back on deck with her camera this year, and she wore that skirt twice. On Sunday, she wore a sleeveless yellow mock-neck blouse with yellow pants and flip-flops (it’s hot in a natatorium, especially during a meet). She must work for the Conference or perhaps for the athletic department at St. Mary’s, because parents are not allowed on the deck during a meet. There are no best-dressed awards at a college swim championship but if there were, this woman would have run away with it. 10/10. No notes. 

*****

It rained all day Saturday, and although the weather forecast called for a full day of rain on Sunday, the rain ended by about 12, and the rest of the day was clear and sunny and unexpectedly warm though very windy. The wind forced bridge closures on Sunday afternoon, leaving Virginia parents scrambling for alternate routes home, since the 301 bridge across the Potomac was one of the closed bridges. Our Google Maps route home forced a small detour to avoid the Governor Thomas Johnson Bridge, a scary high bridge that connects Calvert and St. Mary’s County across the Patuxent River. That bridge freaks me out in the best conditions, so I’m glad we didn’t have to drive across it amid 40 mph winds. 

We arrived early for the last final session, which started at 4 rather than 6 to allow sufficient time for the 1650 finals and the awards ceremony after the last event. Rather than sit in the bleachers for an hour, we took a little walk across campus, past a lovely little pond and down to the banks of the St. Mary’s River, where the campus’s more picturesque buildings are situated. We sat on Adirondack chairs and watched the water for a few minutes, and then walked back to the aquatic center, arriving 10 minutes before 4. 

The bleachers at the SMCM aquatic center run the whole length of the facility, from the practice/warmup pools to the competition pool by the windows. For the sake of fairness, the team seating assignments rotate every day, and we had already had our day in the good seats at the competition pool. So it was a very nice surprise when a small group of Immaculata parents waved us over to that section, which was theirs for the day, and offered it to us, since IU had no chance of winning or even placing in the top 3. We accepted with gratitude. 

*****

One of our swimmers has a brother who is a first-year swimmer at a very high-profile D1 program. He was a repeat Virginia state champion in several events, and qualified for Olympic Trials last year. His mother, with the benefit of her experience as a D1 parent, led us in cheers before every event that included a Marymount swimmer. We also met at the team hotel every afternoon to cheer for the swimmers as they boarded the bus back to the aquatic center for finals. We wore Marymount lanyards with our swimmers’ photos. Everyone was decked out in blue. We were a force to be reckoned with. By Saturday, several other teams’ parents groups had organized themselves into cheering squads too. The swimmers pretended to be embarrassed by the whole thing, but they loved it. Who doesn’t love a hype squad? Who doesn’t want their own cheering section? 

*****

The aquatic center has huge windows at the starting end, which made the good seats generously shared by IU even better. When the meet started at 4, the sun was streaming in, and the sky turned pink and gold as twilight approached. It was dark by the time the Marymount boys won the last relay, putting them in first place. The girls finished as runners-up - a very good result for a very small team. Everybody brought it. 

After the meet ended, we hung around with all of the other celebrating St. Mary’s and Marymount parents, taking photos of our kids and their friends with their medals and the Conference championship plaques. We got family photos in front of the AEC backdrop. We stepped out of the way of the coaches’ Gatorade soakings. We watched and laughed as the kids jumped back into the pool and their fully dressed coaches took off their shoes and jumped in after them. (Marymount Assistant Coach: “Has it been this cold all weekend? No wonder you all swam fast.”) Finally, it was time for the team to pack up and board the bus, and so we said our last goodbyes and headed home. 

Normally, I don’t mind returning to the routine after a vacation or long weekend, but things are not really normal right now, are they? It was a 4-day weekend for me, because I took a vacation day for Friday and Monday was a blessed and desperately needed holiday. Federal government employees and contractors never needed a holiday more. We're traumatized. That was the plan. They wrote it down. Musk and the DOGEbags are trying to ruin everything, but they haven’t come after college swim meets yet. We can still have some nice things, at least for now. 

Gesturing wildly at everything

Is anyone else having a hard time concentrating on anything except *waves arms, gesturing wildly at everything*? It’s not just me, right? 

*****

It’s February 5, 2025. We’re now on, as far as I know, day 5 of Elon Musk’s hostile and illegal takeover of the government. Democratic elected officials are finally on the streets, just in time because just one more performative outrage post on social media would have pushed me right past the limits of reason. What they are starting to do is good, but it’s not enough. Senators and Congresspeople are still online posting about having been denied entry to USAID headquarters and the Treasury building. They cannot stand for this. They must try to force their way in, and let the American people see a foreign-born unelected cartoon villain centibillionaire order the arrest of their democratically elected representatives. That’s what it has come to. It’s been just 16 days, and on the 53-day Hitler timeline, we’re just shy of a third of the way to the end of American democracy. Any day now, the Republicans will pass their own Enabling Act. Any day now, we’ll have our own Reichstag fire. 

*****

It’s February 6 now, and oddly enough I’m calmer today even though I’m not sleeping much, and I’m consuming news coverage like it’s cocaine, and Elon Musk has not yet been denaturalized and deported. Today is the “Fork in the Road” deadline for all of my Federal colleagues and friends, and I don’t know one single person who intends to accept this suspect “buyout” offer. Meanwhile, I am running into people who voted for Trump - including a few who I didn’t expect would have voted for him, but what do I know - who are now wringing their hands and claiming that they “didn’t vote for this,” except that I am sorry to say that yes you did, yes you MFing did vote for exactly this, all of this, and I don’t understand how you can pretend otherwise. They told us what they were planning to do. It’s all written down. Plus, everyone knew how much money Elon was spending on Trump’s campaign and since he’s not known as a philanthropist, it stands to reason that he expected a pretty big return on his investment, and he’s getting it. That’s the best $250M that anyone ever spent, really. 

*****

It’s Friday now. My son came home from school last night. He felt sick and feverish and went to the student health clinic with what turned out to be a 103-degree fever. A few tests later, and he had a flu diagnosis, some meds, and an order to stay away from his classes and activities for the next few days. My older son picked him up at school last night, and he slept on the couch in front of the Capitals game until about 10:30 PM, and then went to bed, where he remained until 9 this morning. It’s very hard to convince that child (who is now 20 and I know he’s not a child, but he’s my child) to rest and avoid activity. He is a perpetual motion machine. The AEC Championship is less than a week away and I know he’s quite anxious about missing workouts. I want him to do well in the meet, and hope he’ll recover his strength in time to do that, but as long as he’s healthy then I don’t really care how fast he swims. Meanwhile he’s not getting in a pool until at least Monday. I will stand on that business. 

*****

It’s Saturday morning, February 8. Thankfully, my son is starting to feel better. Of course, he is plotting his return to the pool even as we speak. I might not win this battle. 

The sky is lead gray and although I haven’t been outside yet, I can tell it’s cold. We’re expecting a winter storm today. We’re expecting another winter storm on Tuesday. Remember a few weeks ago when I said that I was starting to like winter, just a tiny little bit? Yeah, that’s off now. I’m done with this weather. This weather is for polar bears and penguins and ice fishing enthusiasts from International Falls, MN. It’s not for middle-aged ladies from the DMV. 

I have a lot of work to do, at work and on the volunteer front. I’m going to do some of it today because I’m not going out in the freezing rain and because getting some things done will make me feel like I have some control over something. 

*****

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. Fly Eagles Fly. I don’t care very much about football, but Philadelphia is my hometown and I want an Eagles win for my family at home. And of course, I want Harrison Butker’s team to lose. We’ll watch the game, of course, because we always watch the Super Bowl. I hope that the whole stadium boos Donald Trump, who is expected to attend because what’s a better way to cut government costs than to send the President and several hundred Secret Service agents to the most high-risk high-profile event in American life? Very efficient. 

Of course I know that Trump is planning to attend the Super Bowl because I’ve been following every detail of everything that’s been happening. My no Trump on weekends rule is out the window. I’m checking my phone every five minutes. When I wake up in the small hours assuming I was asleep to begin with, I check my phone to see what might have happened, what news might have broken. It’s not good. It’s not healthy. 

*****

Fly Eagles Fly! I’m much happier about this win than I have any right to be. My mom and aunts and uncles and siblings and nephews and cousins are very happy today, and I’m happy for them. There was a pool - one of those little square things - at the Super Bowl party that I attended, and I won $100. And the TV crew kept their cameras away from Trump except for that one stupid shot of him saluting the flag (imagine me rolling my eyes here). I didn’t even know he left at halftime until after the game. I hope he left in a huff. I hope he was pissy and grouchy about the stupid Chiefs losing. 

Yes, that’s petty. Our pettiness will sustain us as a people until 2029. 

My son is 100 percent better now. Other than some lingering raspiness in his voice, he’s back to normal and will be back at school and back in the pool this week. And the last time the Eagles won the Super Bowl, the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup. I know that correlation is not the same as causation, but I’m still taking it as a harbinger. And it was nice to be with people last night. It was nice to be with my friends. It’s nice to feel like we are all in this *gesturing wildly at everything* together. 

Meanwhile, I’m going to splurge with that $100. Maybe a sweater. Maybe some new books. Maybe a dozen eggs. Anything goes. Anything is possible. 

Self-help

Every year right around this time - this time being the end of January slash beginning of February - I realize that it’s time to finish and publish my book list. This year is a little chaotic to say the very least. There’s a lot going on. And so not only have I not finished my book list, I have not even started it. In fact, I’m already writing about books I’m reading in 2025. 

I’ll get around to the 2024 book list, any day now. Meanwhile let’s talk about The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. This is a self-help book; and to say that self-help is not a genre that I typically read would be an understatement. I never read self-help books. What was I thinking? 

*****

Well, I’ll tell you. I saw a CNN interview with Mel Robbins, and there was something about her, about the way she explained her “Let Them” theory that was compelling to me, and so I got the book. And there is nothing wrong with this theory - in fact it’s quite helpful - but I got pretty much everything I needed out of that 2-minute interview. BLUF (that’s bottom line up front): If people are doing things that bother you, that are bad for them, that are counterproductive - LET THEM. And of course there’s more, too - there’s a “Let me” component, too. Let them do what they’re going to do, and let me choose how I’m going to react to their actions. 

That’s pretty much it. An essay would have sufficed. It didn’t require a whole book. More than the length, though, I had a hard time with the writing. There’s a lot of jargon and social media speak, a lot of “holding space.” The last straw was an extended discussion of Robbins’ ABC method for resolving disagreements and improving interpersonal communication. The “A” stands for Apologize and Ask Open-Ended Questions. I can’t remember what the B and C stand for and I’m not going to look it up. And I’m absolutely not going to sit and ask someone a million “How does that make you feel” questions. Yes, that’s what Mel Robbins recommends, and no it is not good advice unless you are talking to idiots who wouldn’t be capable of seeing right through this tactic. No one wants to be manipulated, and no one wants to be psychoanalyzed by an amateur. 

*****

Just like I never read self-help, I also almost never abandon a book without finishing it but I made an exception in this case - I got about two thirds of the way through and then realized that I didn’t have to finish reading it if I didn’t want to, and I didn’t want to. Mel Robbins is a good speaker and communicator, and if you’re interested in her advice (and notwithstanding the ABC nonsense, some of her advice is quite good) then I would recommend that you listen to her podcast. I might do that, actually - I am looking for a new podcast. But I won’t be reading - or writing about - any more self-help books this year. Or maybe ever. 

Proverbial forks in proverbial roads

My gosh this month has been a lot. A lot. A LOT. It’s January 30 now. Yesterday, all of the feds where I work received the infamous “Fork in the Road” email. I hope that no one falls for that because I don’t know nothing about nothing but I do know that responding “RESIGN” to a spam email sent from an illegal server is not a good way to exit a job, federal or otherwise. There is absolutely no way that OPM or the personnel directorates in all of the Executive Branch agencies are prepared to manage a mass spur-of-the-moment exodus. Most people seem to understand this, though. I know a lot of federal employees, and I mean A LOT of federal employees, and I’m pretty sure that no one is falling for this. 

*****

Last night, a passenger jet and an Army helicopter crashed in mid-air over the freezing Potomac River. First responders worked all night and were not able to rescue anyone. At this point, it’s a recovery effort. 

*****

As everyone knows now, no one survived that terrible crash. It’s Friday January 31 and they’re still pulling bodies out of the Potomac River. I love living in the DMV - I always have - but it’s hard this week. It’s a dark time in Washington DC and environs. 

*****

I normally telework on Tuesdays and Fridays. Soon, I will have to say that I used to telework on Tuesdays and Fridays because we have to return to full-time in-office work at the end of February. As a contractor, I will not be eligible for a parking pass, so I’ll have to take Metro to work. Metro fare and parking are about $3500/year. I live six miles from the base, but the commute will take an hour each way, at least. I’m looking at all of my expenses and all of the ways that I spend my time and planning to make the adjustments that will - I hope - make the commute time and the expense and the loss of telecommuting privileges sustainable. Almost everyone I know is dealing with similar challenges, and we’ll get through it. There are worse things. 

*****

I won’t even bother addressing Trump’s response to the crash because what else would we expect from him? Decency? Compassion? Concern? He’s capable of none of these things and his comments about DEI hires were really the least shocking thing I’ve seen or heard all week. But JD Vance and Pete Hegseth and Sean Duffy standing in front of microphones and cameras straight-faced claiming that ending DEI initiatives is all about hiring the most qualified people - that is quite another thing. I would love to hear any of these tiny little men explain exactly how they are the MOST QUALIFIED PEOPLE for the jobs they currently hold. 

*****

It’s Saturday morning now. It rained all day yesterday and after a morning trying to power through a bad headache, I took the afternoon off. It won’t be long before Elon Musk decides that sick leave is socialism, and so I might as well use a few hours of it while I still can. 

For four hours, I did almost nothing. I moved from my desk to the couch, and I watched “Vera” on BritBox, and I drifted in and out of sleep in a kind of twilight state. By 4:30, I felt better, so I got up and started doing things. Doing things always helps. And now it’s a beautiful mild sunny Saturday morning. The dirty weeks-old snow has finally melted and the ground is clear for the first time in weeks. January is finally over. Spring is around the proverbial corner and even Donald Trump can’t stop the cherry blossoms and the forsythia and the daffodils from blooming. 

*****

Write a letter

Here's the text of a letter that I wrote to my Senators (Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen) and Representative (Jamie Raskin). Please feel free to use any or all of it to write to your own elected representatives. Note that suggestion #7 applies only to Senators. 

*****

Dear Representative X or Senator Y,

I am writing about allegations, reported by Reuters, that Elon Musk and his henchmen are hacking into Treasury payment systems and OPM and GSA databases. Please share concrete information about what you and other Democratic elected officials intend to do about it. If you need suggestions: 

1. Hold daily news conferences
2. Sue the Administration
3. Sue DOGE
4. Sue Elon Musk
5. Work with law enforcement to set up an anonymous tip line
6. If you receive credible information on criminal activity, arrest Musk and his goons
7. USE THE FILIBUSTER to stonewall everything the Republicans try to do until they start standing up to Trump. Do you think they'll still love the filibuster when you're using it against them? Let's find out, shall we? 

I have a million more ideas! I'm all ideas, all the time. 

In closing, PLEASE DO SOMETHING. Save the country. Like right now. Start today, February 1. 

Thanks so much!

Name and City