Taylor Swift and Thomas Cromwell: Beach Week 2025

It's Beach Week!

Right now, it's Saturday August 9. It's 1157 and the car is packed and my husband is in the house doing his last minute checks, and we'll be on the road by 1202. 

The forecast for this week looks solid. It's quite hot today, bright and sunny, and it feels beachy even here in Silver Spring. The crape myrtle are at peak color, and Stone Harbor will be in wild full bloom too. 

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My sister is already in Stone Harbor. They arrive on Saturday morning even though you can't check in until 3. My sister in-law and her family are about 90 minutes ahead of us. My friend and her family have not left yet because she has a few canine and feline patients this morning. She owns her own practice. She's basically a 21st century James Herriot. But even a veterinarian needs a vacation. 

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We have a roof carrier, which I hate, and it's making an unsettling amount of noise right now. That's probably the only thing that's bothering me right now. There needs to be something. I'm not comfortable when I don't have something to worry about. 

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Traffic is dreadful as usual on 95 on a Saturday in August. But we just crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge and we're in New Jersey. We're listening to the Springsteen channel on Sirius XM as fitting, and Rosalita’s daddy is just about to miss his chance to get his daughter in a fine romance. 

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It's Sunday morning now. Five minutes ago, a flock of seagulls were squawking and screeching over my head and now they're gone. It was so loud I couldn't hear myself thinking. 

Now it's quiet and calm, with the only noise coming from the fishing boats on the bay a few feet from our deck, and a few Sunday morning bikers and runners and dog walkers. A lone seagull is perched on the roof on the house across the courtyard, and he appears to be watching me. I'm drinking coffee, and maybe he's hoping I'll bring breakfast out on the deck. Maybe a muffin or some toast or an egg sandwich. But I don't eat anything in the morning so that bird is out of luck unless he wants a nice cup of Cafe Bustelo. 

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Our rental condo is very basic, but nice. If I face west on my deck, I can see the bay. If I face east, I can see the pool. We're two blocks from the beach but they're densely built blocks so I'd have to climb up on the roof to see the ocean. But two water views is pretty good, and I'll get to look at the ocean all afternoon. 

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The weather is perfect here. The vibe, however, is unsettled. The Jersey Shore has always leaned MAGA but that element was quiet for a few years. Last year, I hardly saw any Trump signs or flags on the island - it was such a marked difference from 2016 and 2020 that I really thought that Kamala could win. Would win, I should say. 

It feels different now. And it's not as simple as flags and signs and red hats. I still haven't seen much of that. But the vibe is definitely off. Something doesn’t feel right. 

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Still, it was a perfect beach day yesterday, with 75 degree ocean water. I love swimming in the ocean, and I barely got in at all last year because we were here during a freak cold snap with ocean water temps in the mid 60s, very unusual for August. It was the talk of the town. But yesterday was perfect for ocean swimming. I used to love PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster books, and I remembered a line from a letter from Jeeves to Bertie during a rare seaside holiday from the gentleman’s personal gentleman: “I had an exceedingly enjoyable bathe yesterday.” We, too, had an exceedingly enjoyable bathe yesterday - several in fact. 

It’s Monday now. The sun is out and the sky is pale blue and gold but it’s also quite cloudy so the sunlight is filtered. I haven’t looked at news coverage - online or on TV - since Saturday, but today, I’m anxiously monitoring the news. 47 is about to “federalize” the District of Columbia, and I dread the idea of the National Guard on the streets of DC. Martial law is not out of the realm of possibility, either. Whatever is in the Epstein files, it must be really bad, because DC is as safe as any other place. I am there all the time, and I never feel threatened or even uncomfortable, except when the Capitals lose to Pittsburgh and Penguins fans occupy the steps of the National Portrait Gallery. It’s all very wrong, and very upsetting, and it doesn’t feel right to be here looking at the bay and watching seagulls while all of this is happening or about to happen. 

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And it happened. 

It's Tuesday morning now. It's overcast and the water in the bay is the same pearly silvery gray as the sky. I love sunny beach days but I really love watching the bay and hearing the seagulls on an overcast morning. 

I texted my friends who work at CBO and the State Department to see if they were OK. My CBO friend was WFH but my State Department friend was in her office in Foggy Bottom, watching Guardsmen arrive. We're planning a girls trip to Baghdad because if DC is twice as violent as Baghdad then Baghdad must be the safest place on God's green earth. The whole thing would be funny if it wasn't a complete and utter outrage.  

Meanwhile here in Stone Harbor, if you didn't know what was happening, you really would not know what was happening. I guess that could be a good thing. 

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It’s Wednesday now. No matter what is happening in the world, Beach Week always passes with blinding speed. Wednesday is the day when we start to reckon with the passage of (vacation) time. We need to figure out what we want to do and where we want to go before the end of the week, which is coming sooner than we think. 

I texted a friend and colleague yesterday. We’re working on a project together, and I had an idea that I wanted to share with her before I forgot about it. I told her that it felt weird and wrong to be on vacation this week, with everything that’s going on, and she texted back that vacationing and resting and enjoying life are radical acts of rebellion in a world that wants us always busy and productive. True to a certain extent, I suppose, but my guilt feelings about vacation have nothing to do with work ethic or productivity. It just feels solipsistic to be out here swimming and biking and collecting shells with all of this (gesturing wildly at everything) going on. It feels like radical rebellion is the radical act of rebellion that’s called for in these circumstances. 

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It’s Thursday now, another near-perfect day in this near-perfect week, weather-wise. I’m sick with what I suspect is a mild case of COVID, which is apparently making an uninvited and unwelcome comeback. What else, 2025? Lay it on us. 

No, don’t. Never mind. Forget I said that. 

Yesterday morning, my younger son and his girlfriend, who was spending a few days with us, and I walked to 96th Street, the shopping and restaurant hub of Stone Harbor. The area between 95th and 99th Streets, a few blocks north and south and east and west, is filled with cute little boutiques and coffee shops and restaurants and ice cream places and everything else you’d expect to see in an upscale beach town like Stone Harbor. 

We had a particular destination - Coffee Talk, a coffee house on 97th Street famous for having hosted a very young Taylor Swift during her very early performing days. Taylor’s family vacationed in Stone Harbor, and the young Taylor sang and played her guitar at several local establishments. Coffee Talk, a retro 90s coffee house filled with art and comfortable couches and mismatched rugs, might be the only one of Taylor’s original venues that is still doing business, and there is - of course - a little display of Taylor photos and memorabilia. My son’s girlfriend, a huge Taylor Swift fan, wanted to visit and have coffee and drink in the Taylor vibes, and it was lovely. The kids enjoyed their pastries and drinks. I enjoyed their company and the retro atmosphere (authentic, since the place was actually established in 1995) and of course, a very sweet frozen mocha that was like having a milkshake for breakfast. And then later, social media was abuzz with talk of Taylor’s new album and her appearance on Travis Kelce’s podcast, so Taylor just dominated the conversation yesterday. Well, better Taylor than some other people I can think of. 

After an hour or so of visiting little stores and looking at clothing and trinkets, we started our walk back home, stopping first at my beloved Barrier Island Books on 95th. I overheard a man asking the bookseller if she had anything by Hilary Mantel and because Stone Harbor is a friendly place, I chimed in. “She’s one of my favorite authors.” 

“Mine too,” said the man. “Trying to sell my granddaughter on her,” he said, indicating a young woman who was browsing. “What’s your favorite?” he asked me.

“I love all of her writing,” I said, “and I might like her essays as much as her fiction. But the Wolf Hall trilogy is one of the best things I’ve ever read. It got me through the summer of 2020.” 

“See that?” he said, inclining his head in my direction to his laughing granddaughter. “Unsolicited testimonial.” 

“OK,” she said. “I’ll try her.” The bookseller found copies of Bring up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light, but not Wolf Hall. The granddaughter said that she was familiar with Henrician and Elizabethan history, making it easily possible for her to enjoy the last two books in the trilogy without reading the first. They walked out with hardback copies of both books. Maybe I’ll run into them again, and I can ask the granddaughter what she thinks. 

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It’s Friday now, our last full day at the beach. A brief thunderstorm yesterday afternoon was the only flaw in a week of near-perfect beach weather. And it didn’t start until about 4 PM, not long before we’d have been leaving the beach anyway; and it was over by 7:30. 

The ocean water has been warm and delightful, if you don’t mind a lot of seaweed, and I don’t. I swam in the ocean every day this week and then swam in the pool right after the beach. And then there’s the lovely late afternoon beach siesta time when the rest of my household naps for a bit, and I enjoy the quiet alone time. First I spend a few minutes on basic housekeeping, and then I sit on the deck reading my book while my hair dries. I discovered yet another mid-20th century British woman author this week, and I’ll tell you all about her very soon. Right now, I’m reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I have never read before, and which seems very relevant right now. Now every time I look at Kristi Noem or Pete Hegseth, I’m going to wonder if there’s a painting in an attic somewhere. 

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Well that was quick. 

It's Saturday morning now. We were up at 7 and out of our beach condo at 915 and now we're on the road back to Maryland. I'll miss the beach and the lovely bay views from our deck but I'm happy to be going home. I miss home. I even miss work but I won't be back until Tuesday. I've always wanted to tack on an extra day at the end of a vacation and I'm doing it this time. It'll be good to have a summer day. 

There's not much summer left. My son returns to school a week from today. Labor Day weekend is in two weeks. Meteorological summer still has a month but I mark the end of the summer season by the pool schedule and the start of the school year. 

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Other than the bookends of the occupation of DC and the shameful Trump - Putin “summit" in Alaska, I haven't paid any attention to current events this week. Our beach condo had 3 TVs and I didn't even know how to turn them on. I didn't stream, scroll, or read any news coverage on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. I read Elizabeth Caddell, David Sedaris, and Oscar Wilde. I watched bits of movies and shows and baseball and football games with my husband and sons. It was nice not to see his face or hear his voice for a few days. A nice break. 

We're on Route 55 N right now, somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, with Springsteen keeping us company.  God willing we'll be home by 1. There's lots of work to do after a week away and I'm not going to slow down until everything is unpacked, washed, organized, and stowed neatly away.  It's nice to get away but there's no place like home.

Fighting the Power

I’m going to a protest today. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing that down, right? Maybe I shouldn’t be advertising my opposition to this regime. But a protest is a public thing, so here I am. If they want to come get me, they can.

What should I write on my cardboard sign, I’m wondering? Deport Elon? Trump is a Chump? Impeach 47? Any of those will work. I’m not going to waste time trying to be clever. I’m going with Impeach 47 on one side, and Deport Elon on the other. The simpler, the better.

The weather is uncertain today. It will be warmer than usual, which is great from my perspective; and it might rain. Or it might not. I have to figure out what to wear now, which should not be a problem. A person with as many clothes as I have should not have any trouble assembling an outfit for pretty much any occasion, from work to social gatherings to fighting fascism.

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Well that was a blast. I arrived at the protest about 10 minutes late. I’d expected to join a scrappy little group of 25 or maybe 50 at most. But there were at least 300 people on our side of Georgia Avenue and the crowd overflowed to the other side of the street. The protestors were mostly older and mostly white, but we had some young people, too, including some children. I had a delightful conversation with a 9-year-old girl who proudly showed me the colorful signs she’d made for herself and her mother.

A few of the older people out on the street yesterday were really old. Walker and wheelchair and cane old. Their various infirmities didn’t stop them from joining the crowds and holding up their signs, and they seemed absolutely delighted to be out. A lady in a wheelchair held up a beautifully hand-lettered sign that read “Hail to the Chief,” with the H and the C crossed out and replaced with a J and a T. Another older woman, tiny and wiry and energetic - the kind of lady who will be mall-walking circles around the rest of us when she’s 100 - had hand-painted signs for herself and her husband. Her sign was an angry polar bear with the caption “Welcome to Greenland - Come and Get Us.” I don’t remember what her husband’s sign looked like, but both were works of art, and the woman’s husband told everyone who would listen that his wife is an artist and that she made their signs. They were both adorable. As was a lady with a walker, flanked by her daughters, who said “Will we be on Rachel Maddow? We have to watch on Monday!”

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The weather was really ideal - just slightly cool with a tiny bit of mist. The sun peeked out every so often but it was mostly overcast. A few of the organizers walked a patrol, making sure that people had water if they needed it, and reminding everyone to stay on the sidewalk on very busy Georgia Avenue. Traffic was heavy, as it always is on Georgia Avenue, and at least 80 percent of drivers honked and waved in support. A few people seemed oblivious, while others stared studiously ahead without looking to the right, which was really funny when the light changed and those people were stuck at the red light trying to pretend that nothing was happening, nothing at all. One person flipped us off as he sped by, and the crowd laughed and cheered. Altogether a perfect afternoon, and I plan to do it again at the soonest opportunity. Meanwhile, I’ll await my direct deposit from Mr. Soros. The economy is in freefall right now, and every penny counts. And of course, I'll watch Rachel tomorrow. Maybe we'll all be on TV.

The prehistoric elephant site

I joined Mastodon last week. I’m on some random server on the “fediverse” and the place is both completely different from Twitter and oddly familiar. More experienced users (it’s been around for a few years but most people never heard of it until the genius billionaire took over Twitter) are likening migration to Mastodon as a move to a new city - it seems overwhelming at first, but just take your time and explore and you’ll be at home in no time. And I do feel quite at home there now, but it’s not like a new city at all. It’s more like a countryside filled with villages, most rather charming but some less so, versus the sprawling monolithic metropolis that is Twitter. 

It took me some time to set up my account. I couldn’t upload photos for my profile avatar and header, which I first thought was user error but then came to understand was a result of latency arising from a huge influx of traffic on the Mastodon servers. There are a lot of people moving although I take issue with new Mastodon arrivals calling themselves “refugees” from the Twitter warzone. Given the number of actual refugees fleeing terrible places and clamoring to enter new places that mostly want nothing to do with them, this metaphor seems rather stupid and solipsistic. So I guess it tracks. 

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I joined Twitter in 2008. I was, uncharacteristically, a relatively early adopter. I say “uncharacteristically” because I’m usually the very last to pick up on a trend. I’m the one chasing the bandwagon long after it departs and moves on to pick up the early adopters of the next hot trend. But I was right on time with Twitter. Not the leading edge necessarily, but not late to the party either. 

At first, I really liked Twitter. I had a blog (still have it, as  you can see), and I used to have quite a few readers. They followed me on Twitter, I followed them back, I followed their friends and followers, and they followed mine, and we all shared our writing and posted pithy little jokes and comments. When I started on the hellsite, Twitter still supported only 140-character posts. I don’t remember when I saw my first thread; maybe around 2010 or so? You couldn’t post pictures or videos, and I don’t remember that there were any ads, either. The whole point of it was “what are you doing?” - 140 characters all about what you’re doing at that moment. Watching a movie? Walking around Manhattan during a snowstorm? Boarding a plane? Eating a snack? Getting married? Changing a baby’s diaper? Robbing a bank? Going to work? Going home from work? Any or all of it, from the mundane to the dramatic, was Twitter-worthy. Just write a very short and ideally funny or touching or thoughtful comment about what you’re doing at that moment, post it, and wait for people to react. And of course, read and react to everyone else’s funny, touching, or thoughtful observations about their daily lives. 

I tweeted on and off for a few years, and even made some friends. Then at some point, the combination of work, school (I was an adult student then, God help me), young children, PTA, swim team and baseball and school concerts and compulsive housekeeping made blogging and tweeting completely unsustainable, and so I stopped, pretty much cold turkey. I started blogging again, sporadically, in 2015 or so, but I didn’t go anywhere near Twitter again until years later.

Right in the middle of the pandemic year of our Lord 2020, with too much time on my hands, I installed the app on my phone (I didn’t even have a smartphone when I first joined Twitter in 2008 - practically no one did), logged back in, and found that I barely recognized the place. I avoided Trump, of course, but he still dominated the discourse - it was also an election year and most people on Twitter were reacting to him in one way or another. And a few huge accounts with tens of thousands of followers controlled everything else. Comment threads were either orgies of OMG-you’re-so-amazing fandom or delete-your-account pile-ons, sometimes (often) over the most innocuous things. It was entertaining sometimes but it wasn’t congenial. It wasn’t good for anyone’s mental health. 

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Just before I stepped away from Twitter for the first time, in 2013 or so, a mutual invited me to an “Elf” Twitter watch party. The host made up a hashtag for the watch party, asked everyone to start the movie at 8 PM, watch with family and friends, and live tweet their comments and jokes and reactions, using the party hashtag. 

It was HILARIOUS. The group was mostly (but not all) mothers with young and school-age children, so many of the tweets were about our kids' comments and reactions to the movie. During the breakfast scene, my youngest, who was 7 or 8 (so this must have been around 2012), said “He’s going to get dia-beet-ee-us.” My sons tried to recreate the Santa and Buddy fight scene. My older son took a flying leap at the tree to put a star on top. I tweeted about all of this, to the great amusement of the party attendees. During the mailroom scene, I tweeted “That’s the oldest-looking 26-year-old I’ve ever seen. Sunscreen. Antioxidants. SOMETHING.” About 35 people liked and commented on that tweet - probably my best tweet ever in terms of sheer numbers.

The thing about 2013 is that it wasn’t that long ago. Less than a decade. Of course, Donald Trump existed - he was very famous and had been for years. And I’m sure that he was on Twitter then, too - I think that the whole Barack Obama “birther” controversy started on Twitter. But no serious person took him seriously. You could follow him and read his stupid tweets if you liked that sort of thing but most of us on Twitter were there for fun. Most of us were there to try to make each other laugh while we watched “Elf” with our kids. Those were the days, I tell you what. 

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Mastodon is a quieter place, at least so far. It kind of reminds me of old Twitter. No one knows anyone, not yet, and you have to make connections organically. You have to find people and listen to them and talk to them. I use it the way I used to use Twitter. A funny thing will occur to me and I’ll post it. I’ll see something interesting or beautiful, and I’ll share it. I follow people who interest or amuse me. 

During my first few days on the site, the few political posts that I saw seemed jarringly out of place. Mehdi Hasan was yelling just as loud on Mastodon as he does on Twitter. But most people seem to get the difference between the two sites. This is not to say that people shouldn’t post about politics. People should post about whatever interests them, and the people who tell other people not to post about politics because it harshes their vibe should just calm the heck down. Filter out the terms you don’t want to see and just look at your cat photos. It’s fine. 

What I mean about the difference between the two places has to do with the tone. The tone is different. There’s not as much flamethrowing. There’s not as much trolling for reaction. There’s not as much anger for its own sake. You can’t see how many boosts (the Mastodon equivalent of an RT) a post has received unless you actually click on the post. You can’t see how many favorites (likes) it’s received at all, unless it’s your own post. There is really zero incentive for bandwagon-jumping or piling on. There’s no reward for sycophants or haters. 

There are definitely many things that I will miss about Twitter. Viral inside jokes can be really fun. It’s fun to get the joke, and then come up with another joke that amplifies and improves on the original joke, and then to see everyone’s reactions, and to be part of the party as every funny person on the internet jumps in and tries to one-up everyone else. Twitter is also really good at creating communities of shared interest around topics both really broad and really idiosyncratically narrow. 

But there are many other things that I will absolutely not miss. I won’t miss the bullies and their hangers-on. I won’t miss stupid people who disingenuously misinterpret every tweet or comment to find offense where none exists. I won’t miss the sad people who shamelessly beg for followers. I won’t miss “follow me, blue crew!”

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I went to the Capitals game on the night before Thanksgiving. It had been a busy few days and I was tired like tired has never been. I even thought about giving my ticket to one of my kids and just staying home but I really wanted to go to the game. 

Earlier that day, a Mastodon mutual had posted a hilariously silly thread about how much tea he drinks and how much he loves to drink tea and how he was going to stop posting that very minute and go drink more tea. I guess you had to be there. Anyway, I remembered that thread as I drove home from work in very light pre Thanksgiving traffic and thought that a cup of tea and a few minutes in front of my kitchen window watching a late November sunset would be just the thing to put me right. And it was, and 20 minutes later I was on the Red Line on my way to Capital One Arena. I posted a few pictures and comments on the game, and a few Capitals fans found me, and now I have a few more mutuals based on a shared interest. Yesterday, I watched “Elf” with my now-grown children, and I posted running commentary, cracking myself up the whole time. Last night, I connected with a few more new people, and we shared status updates on the massive power outage in Montgomery County (more about that later). 

No billionaires, no crypto, no Draft Kings, and no venture capital. It’s too soon to know for sure, but I think that Mastodon might be the new place to be. Look me up if you happen to be around there. 

Hilary Mantel: (parenthetical) Author of the Year, 2020

If I were to create a dashboard or a visualization of my reading history for 2020 (in theory, I mean--I will spare you in reality), then it would be all about Hilary Mantel. I read six of her books last year: Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light (the Wolf Hall/Henry VIII/Thomas Cromwell trilogy); AND Giving Up the Ghost, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, and Mantel Pieces. I wrote about the Wolf Hall books several times. I feel like I know Thomas Cromwell. I don’t want to hang out with him or anything, but I know him. 

After I tore through the Wolf Hall trilogy, I read Giving Up the Ghost.  Then I wanted to read another novel, so I read Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, which was loosely based on Hilary Mantel’s own experience as an expatriate living in Jeddah. She wrote somewhere else, perhaps in an essay, that the day she left Saudi Arabia was one of the happiest of her life. And if her life there was anything like the eight months depicted in this book, then I don’t blame her. 

Eight Months reminds me very much of a Muriel Spark novel. This is very high praise, coming from me. Hilary Mantel reminds me of Muriel Spark in general; but specifically, Eight Months reminds me of the novels The Hothouse by the East River and The Takeover, and the story “The Go-Away Bird.” Eight Months is a first-person narrative told by Frances, the young wife of an engineer hired to work on a major building project in Jeddah in the early 1980s. Frances is a modern Englishwoman who struggles to adjust to her position as a woman in Saudi Arabia. She is also a person who is constitutionally unable to keep her feelings to herself, and unable to see things except as they are. She lacks the ability to deceive herself or to talk herself into accepting the unacceptable. Events occur and situations develop that a less observant person would fail to notice and a more astute and cynical person might notice but decline to acknowledge. But Frances is not capable of failing to notice; and having noticed, failing to act. People like Frances tend to struggle in places and times when the truth is not particularly valued. And I don't know that Hilary Mantel intended the book to be allegorical, but I think it is. I'll leave you to decide what it's an allegory for. 

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My last Mantel for 2020 was Mantel Pieces, a collection of essays and reviews. And reviews of reviews, if that’s a thing; and it is, if Hilary Mantel says it is. This collection includes what was apparently a famous essay about the bodies of royal women; both in general and in particular; and especially Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge. The press coverage about this essay focused more on Kate Middleton herself and far less on what Hilary Mantel actually wrote about her, which was a little bit about Kate Middleton herself and a lot more about how famous women’s bodies are assessed and critiqued and generally treated as public property.  Hilary Mantel doesn’t suffer fools or foolishness; but she also has no patience for criticism that is cruel for cruelty’s sake. I don’t know how better to describe this than that she takes a jaundiced eye toward jaundiced eyes. Having now read Hilary Mantel’s fiction, autobiography, and essays, I am naming her as my author of the year for 2020. This is an honor that conveys absolutely no prestige or financial reward, but I do congratulate Ms. Mantel anyway. A win is a win.

Consumer affairs

Not long ago, I made a list of things to write about. In typical fashion, I later consulted the list and found that I couldn't read my own handwriting. I figured most of them out, but there are still two ideas that I can't read and can't remember. They might be great ideas. I might never know. 

One item on my list was very clear and easy to read: "(Well-known tech company) sons of bitches." For me, this topic is a perennial, an evergreen classic. But in this case, I was thinking about a particular incident and not just the general son-of-a-bitchiness that this company is known for. 

Well of course. I'll be happy to tell you all about it. Pull up a chair. 

We had a 12 GB data plan, shared among myself, my two teenage sons (15 and 19) and my mother-in-law, who wouldn’t know mobile data if it introduced itself to her in Korean. So the 12 GB was really split three ways. I usually used less than 2 GB per month, and my younger son usually used between two and three. My older son is the mobile data hog. We would occasionally receive end-of-the-month you’re-almost-out-of-data warnings, and the little report that accompanied the message always revealed him as the culprit. But we never got those messages any sooner than three days before the end of the billing cycle; and we never actually exceeded the data allowance after receiving the warning. 

Last month, we got the running-out-of-data warning much earlier in the billing cycle than normal. According to the wireless company (sons of bitches), we were almost out of data, with ten days remaining in the billing cycle. I didn’t see how this was possible. It really wasn't possible, in fact. Nobody goes anywhere. My son works a few shifts a week, and I work completely from home. I go grocery shopping once a week. We have WiFi at home. No one is out in the world often enough or for long enough to use up more mobile data than we ever did in what I now think of as the before time. 

Do you know what I neglected to mention? I neglected to mention that my husband had talked me into automated billing, because it saves about $30 a month. Even for $30 a month, which is $360 a year, I resisted the idea of allowing this company access to my checking account. I don't trust automated billing from any company but I especially don't trust these particular sons of bitches. But I gave in because $30 is $30 and whatever. 

Of course, we went over the limit for the month; and of course, they charged me $15 for the privilege of using an extra GB. And then we used up the extra GB in one day, and they charged me another $15.

Let's review, shall we? Pre-corona, when everyone was leaving the house and going to work and school and sports practices and anywhere else you can think of, 12 GB per month was enough. And then I caved in and agreed to automated billing. And then 1 GB per day was suddenly not quite enough for people who now spend 80 percent of their time at home. 

Coincidence? Sure. That seems reasonable. 

In the old days, I would have relished a fight with them. In 2009, for example, unhappy with their response to my complaints about frequent mysterious overcharges, I wrote a detailed letter to the Maryland Attorney General, and for weeks after, I received phone calls and letters from their executives, all falling all over themselves asking what they could do to address my concerns. As it turns out, the company was under investigation for a pattern of over-billing very similar to what I had been experiencing, and they were trying to stay on their very best behavior. It was rather satisfying. 

But now? I just don’t have the old stick-it-to-the-man fire that used to drive my dealings with large corporations. Other than a little bit of spirited back and forth with an agent, I didn’t put up much resistance at all. I upgraded to an unlimited data plan, and claimed a small victory when they graciously agreed to credit back the two days’ worth of $15 overage charges, and that was the end of that. 

As always, I will very carefully monitor my wireless bill; and as always, I will rant and rave at the next crypto-fascist big business abuse. But it’ll all be for show. There’s too much else to worry about; too much going on in the world. I just can’t muster the appropriate level of outrage anymore. 

But really--$15 a day? Sons of bitches. SONS of BITCHES. 

Like we're running out of time

I always used to feel that holiday weekends pass by too quickly. And when July 4 rolled around, I always lamented the speed of summer’s passage. Halfway over, I would think--where has the summer gone?

But It’s day 3 of the Independence Day holiday weekend and it seems that this weekend started weeks ago, and it feels like this summer will never end. We’ve come to a sad pass when I of all people am ready for summer to end.

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I watched Hamilton last night and it lived up to the hype times ten. I’m no fan of musical theater, but Hamilton is magnificent. And Elizabeth has survived smallpox and is still managing to withstand pressure to marry. It is strangely reassuring to read about the 16th century and the periodic summer outbreaks of disease that would suspend festivals and gatherings and postpone the Queen’s summer progress. We’re not the only ones, right? But of course in the intervening 500 years, we should have learned enough to know better. Still, it’s reassuring to know that life eventually returned to normal or whatever passed for normal in Tudor England. Like we’re so much more advanced now. Ha.

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Why do I write like I’m running out of time? Day and night like I’m running out of time. Hamilton is in my head now. It’s Monday morning and I might work today or I might not. I don’t have to work day and night like I’m running out of time. We’re all running out of time. I’m not sorry that the holiday weekend is over but I’m sorry that I have to return to the year 2020. But it’s halfway over now, and maybe 2021 will be better. I don’t want to say that it can only go up from here because that would be tempting fate. But I’m optimistic, or at least hopeful. Those are two very different things. I’m going to work for a little while. I have things to accomplish and I’m running out of time. We’re all running out of time.

Old news

It’s Friday, July 3, already blazing hot at 11 AM, with the kind of dense, still, tropical humidity that makes it a real summer day. I’m trying to make the best of a summer that isn’t like any other summer. Last year, on this very day, I spent the day preparing for my son’s graduation party, which we held on July 4th because why not? For the past dozen years or so, I’ve spent part of every Saturday in June and part of July at a graduation party, but  I haven’t been to a single graduation party this summer.

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Still, it’s a three-day weekend. I can watch “Hamilton” on Disney Plus. I can reserve a lane and swim for an hour. I can read about Elizabeth I. I don’t have to meet with anyone via WebEx, Teams, or Zoom. And of course, I can do this.

When I started with this idea that I would write every day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year no matter what, it almost immediately became the proverbial millstone around my neck. My whole schedule, my whole to-do list, and now I have to do this, too? And of course, being me, I allowed daily writing  to become a compulsion-driven source of stress and anxiety. But three or so years in (I don’t know, actually--maybe it’s been longer), and this is almost always the easiest part of my day. I almost never struggle to find something to write about because I can write about anything or nothing.

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Independence Day, July 4.  It's 9:30 AM and I am the only one awake in the house. I'm reading all about a scandal involving people at the very highest levels of power. There are a lot of steps to retrace and a lot of witnesses to question and a lot of correspondence to scrutinize and a lot of people who need to answer for what they knew and when they knew it.

Lady Amy Dudley probably died of natural causes or suicide but we can't rule out murder for hire commissioned by her husband Robert. Queen Elizabeth I will probably have to lay low for a bit and cool things off with Lord Robert, unless she wants to end up back in the Tower, watching someone else take the throne.

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My son and I have a swim lane at noon today. Later on, we'll eat hamburgers and fresh watermelon and strawberries, and I'll immerse myself in more tales of power struggles turned deadly. And when Aaron Burr finally shoots Alexander Hamilton, I'll return to Elizabethan England, there to remain until at least Monday. It's Independence Day 2020 but I don't plan to follow events beyond the 18th century until next week at the earliest.

I told you that I could write about anything or nothing. If you kept reading after that, then you can’t say that you weren’t warned. Caveat emptor, and Happy Independence Day.

Tudors and others

When I was reading the Wolf Hall trilogy, I felt sure that I’d rather be burned than beheaded. That’s not a non-sequitur; there was a lot of heretic-burning and traitor-beheading during the time of Henry VIII. Either, of course, would be better than quartering, but women were not subject to quartering, so at least there was that. But I burned my hand today while I was making popcorn and it hurt like a mother and I think it would probably be better to suffer the axe. God willing, I’ll never find out for sure.

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?

Right now, I’m reading Anna Whitelock’s Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen. Mary is just one of the many Wolf Hall characters whom I need to know better, and I foresee months of reading about Tudors and Cromwells and sundry other royals and courtiers. I’m pretty excited about this.

Queen Mary, sometimes called Bloody Mary, was Henry VIII’s daughter. Like almost every other woman in his orbit, and not a few men, she suffered terribly at his hands. Henry demanded absolute devotion and loyalty from everyone around him, and he offered none in return.

Henry reminds me of someone. I’ll have to rack my brains for a few minutes to figure out who. It’s right on the tip of my tongue.

Anyway, this is so far a very sympathetic portrayal of Mary. I’m still on her early life, when she was stripped of her title of Princess and declared a bastard. I’ll still think of her as Princess Mary, though, because Henry can’t throw me in the Tower. As a defrocked Princess, she was powerless; but I understand that she did quite a bit of heretic-burning in her own right during her short reign as Queen. I’ll find out all about it soon enough. For now, I feel sorry for the poor girl.

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I’m still reading. Henry is finally dead and good riddance; but his son Edward VI, Mary’s half-brother, is making her life almost as difficult as it was when her father was alive. To save herself from charges of treason and heresy, Mary submitted to Henry’s assertion of authority over the Church, but she’s not about to knuckle under to her teenage brother and his Protestant gangster friends. It’s about to get interesting in Tudor England.

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Poor Mary died alone at age 42, and I don’t excuse her for one moment for the terrible things she did as Queen. Lady Jane Gray was used by her power-hungry relatives and Mary could have just banished the poor girl to a convent. She probably would have gone quietly. And I am no admirer of Thomas Cranmer, but that was nothing more than revenge. Even though Cranmer recanted his recantation at the last minute, Mary couldn’t have known that he was going to do that. And of course, she burned 300 other heretics, too, despite all evidence that the threat of burning was not likely to deter anyone from heresy. Mary herself faced death threats for years and she didn’t back down an inch. She should have known.

But still, it’s hard not to feel sadness and pity for a woman so alone, who suffered ill health and phantom pregnancies, who was humiliated and threatened and all but imprisoned by her own father, and whose love for the man she married was not returned. Crown or no crown, it was just about impossible to be a woman in the 16th century. Wealthy widowhood was your best hope.

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I took a short break from the Tudors to read something else (I’ll write about it later, maybe), but now I’m back for more with Alison Weir’s biography of Mary’s much more famous sister, Elizabeth I. I know very little about Elizabeth other than what I have seen in the movies. I read a biography of Mary Queen of Scots when I was a teenager; and between my sympathy for the Scottish Mary and my Catholic upbringing, I’ve always been inclined to think of Elizabeth as a villain. But she suffered, too. It must have been alternately terrifying and dreadfully sad to know that your father ordered the execution of your mother on very likely trumped-up grounds (who does Henry remind me of? Who?) Anne Boleyn was no angel, of course. Given the chance, she might very well have killed Katherine of Aragon and Princess Mary; and I’m sure that she made life miserable for everyone who offended or irritated her. But just because she was a  mean bitch who probably thought about killing her husband's ex-wife doesn’t mean that she should have lost her head.

Henry VIII was the worst. He reminds me of someone. I just can’t put my finger on it. Meanwhile, I have some reading to do.

Pilgrimage of Mice

It’s 12:35 PM, Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. In a normal year today would be one of my favorite days of the year but this is not a normal year and today is a little sad.

On a normal Memorial Day weekend Saturday,  my kids would already be at the pool, there to remain until 9 PM. My older son would be working his first lifeguard shift of the summer. And now that I remember, my younger son would maybe be working his first lifeguard shift ever. He was supposed to get his certification in March, but his class was cancelled just like everything else. I’d be doing some swim team work, then a little bit of housework, and then I too would be packing my swim bag and heading to the pool to see my friends and celebrate summer, my all-too-short favorite season.

But it’s still summer. I’m still wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The windows are open and the breeze is blowing, and the sun is streaming in and it’s a three-day weekend. Maybe I’ll have a drink later. Maybe I’ll have a drink now. There’s nothing stopping me.

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It’s Sunday morning now, late Sunday morning heading toward Sunday afternoon. It seems less summery today. There’s no sun. Well, there’s obviously a sun because the earth is not pitch-dark and frozen over, but it's not blazing overhead.

I didn’t do very much yesterday other than reading and walking and hanging around. We all hung around, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a day. A holiday weekend always feels like a pause in regular life and so it doesn’t really bother me that nothing is normal now. Talk to me on Tuesday. I won’t be so sanguine.

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It's Monday now, Memorial Day. When I wrote this yesterday, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but my company’s proposal manager solved the problem for me, and I spent most of Sunday afternoon and part of the early evening rewriting past performance content. The section that I had to rewrite wasn’t badly written, it was just all wrong from a just-the-facts standpoint. So I fixed it. When I finally finished, I was cross-eyed and tired, and missing Thomas Cromwell and the Tudors; so I poured a glass of wine and rejoined Henry VIII and his courtiers as they discussed how to handle Robert Aske and the rest of the Pilgrims. Right now, Henry is promising safe conduct to Aske if he’ll just come to Windsor to negotiate. And I don’t have a direct line to Aske but if I did, I’d advise him not to fall into that trap because it’s not going to end well for him.

But 16th century gentlemen didn’t take advice from women, especially women of common origins, so he’s on his own. He can take his chances with Henry and the Lord Privy Seal. Maybe if he’s lucky, the execution will be a quick beheading with a sharp axe.

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Do you want to know who doesn’t get safe-conduct; not from York to London and not from Antwerp to Calais and DEFINITELY NOT from my house to my backyard or anywhere else? Mice, that’s who. Yes, the little fuckers are back and I do not grant them diplomatic immunity and I will not offer a pardon, not even if they pledge loyalty and recant their grievous heresies.

It’s probably just one mouse, actually. We saw evidence of its presence on Saturday, and then my son saw the actual creature, IN MY HOUSE, on Saturday night. It was very small, he said, so it might even be a vole. Did I not give them fair warning? Did I not state expressly and without qualification that this warning would be their only warning? They probably failed to read my blog that day, but as in Henry’s time, ignorance of the law is not an excuse. The mouse or mice or vole or voles are condemned as surely as Robert Aske and all of the rest of the rebels and eventually Thomas Cromwell himself. I might lure them to engage in peace talks, dangling false promises of clemency, but once they’re on my territory, their fate is in my hands.

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So yes, Memorial Day has come and gone, and it’s officially summer, and we’re still on lockdown, and someone has to pay. I’m going to post notices around the house, to give them one last warning. It’s them against me, and I don’t like their chances.

Defensor

16th-century Augustinian monks and English kings really knew how to sling insults.  I can only imagine the Twitter war between Henry VIII and Martin Luther had social media existed. Damnable and vile pestilence. #fideidefensor, #heretic.