Not quite beyond the Thunderdome

Maybe I should read just one book at a time. This is what I’m thinking as I make my way through Little Dorrit, with side forays into His Very Best (a biography of President Jimmy Carter) and Soetsu Yanagi’s The Beauty of Everyday Things. If I just stuck to one book at a time, I’d finish each one sooner. But I’d probably read the same number of books. Who knows.

*****

Well, you can tell that AI didn’t write that paragraph, right? My job involves writing, a lot of it, and so people ask me all the time if I use AI assistants. The answer is the most emphatic “no” (note that in conversation, it’s just a simple, polite “no,” and the emphasis is only in my mind). Once when I was working at home, with several Google Docs open in front of me, one of my sons said “Mom, maybe you should try ChatGPT.” I scoffed, “I don’t need ChatGPT. I AM ChatGPT.”  As I tell my friends, writing is one of the few things that I’m good at, and I’m not going to give it up to a robot. If I can’t be bothered to write something, then why should anyone bother to read it?

*****

But that’s probably the point, right? Who needs writers with their quirks and their obscure references and their goofy jokes, when AI can churn out all the flawless “content” you would ever need? And really, who needs to read in the first place? If you need instructions, ChatGPT and Gemini can read them to you. If you need news and updates, there’s the TV and the radio and online newsfeeds with audio and video content. If you want entertainment, you can stream it. It is not out of the realm of possibility to imagine a future - and not a distant, centuries from now future, but a future that most of us will be alive for - in which most people can neither read nor write. Imagine the public interest ad campaign: RIS - Reading is Superfluous. 

Full disclosure: I wake up in the morning waiting for the hammer to fall. The worst case scenario is my default setting. Keeping that in mind, feel free to take my predictions with huge crusty grains of salt. On the other hand,  think about it - people don’t memorize telephone numbers anymore - everything is stored in the electronic memory of our phones. Lots of people don’t know how to multiply or divide (or even add or subtract) large numbers. If you buy a coffee that costs $3.78, chances are that the cashier will not know how to count back change from a $20 bill. These are all things that most people could do just a few decades ago. It’s not unreasonable to think that reading and writing could become the next archaic skills. 

*****

You have probably seen this headline or some variation thereof: “Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei tells CNN's Anderson Cooper that "we do need to raise the alarm" on the rise of AI and how it could cause mass unemployment” (CNN.com). Anthropic, the company of which Mr. Amodei is the CEO, is an AI startup. Gosh, if only he had some kind of influence. If only he were in a position to, you know, DO SOMETHING about possible mass unemployment arising from the technology that he is making and selling. 

I saw a few seconds of an interview with this guy, who sat in front of a TV camera and claimed with a straight face that “This will affect me, too.” How, exactly? By “affect,” do you mean “benefit?” This man is 42 years old, with a PhD from Princeton. According to Beyonce’s internet, his net worth is $1.2 billion. Call me obtuse (and you would not be the first person to do so) but I can’t see how an established highly educated billionaire executive entrepreneur will be “affected” by AI displacing actual humans the way that a 23-year-old working class recent graduate - like my son and lots of his friends - will be “affected.” Dario Amodei made his money, God bless him, and he will be just fine. His family will be just fine. All of his friends in the Finance and Tech Billionaire Bro Club will be just fine. And we all know that that’s all that matters. 

*****

It’s not for nothing that Trump keeps reminiscing about the late 19th century, which he considers America’s “golden age.” Before the meddling progressive social reformers started interfering, ruthless rich men could exploit the poor and powerless with absolute impunity. The rules were made and enforced to keep most people poor and to allow the rich to grab and hoard as much as they possibly could. Trump and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and all of the other MAGA henchpeople would very much like to restore that system, and they’re doing a fine job. Their plan is coming together, and I pity the fool who thinks that Project 2025 and DOGE have anything to do with anything except turning America back into a vassal state. At least we got some libraries and parks and museums out of the last gang of robber barons. This krusty krew is giving us nothing except Twitter* memes and penis-shaped rocket ships full of pop stars and talk show hosts. 

*****

If you saw Sen Joni Ernst’s glib little “we’re all going to die” response to constituents who expressed worry about losing Medicare and Medicaid and then also saw her infamous non-apology filmed in a graveyard no less and you thought “Wow, she’s abysmally stupid,” then you might have missed the point. Even if she was the most brilliant political mind in America, she could still roll her eyes at her constituents at a 7:30 AM “town hall,” and mock their fears, and then dial the callous sarcasm up to 11 on TikTok, and her prospects for reelection would not be affected one tiny bit. Even if everyone in Iowa is furious at her, Sen. Ernst knows that she is accountable to no one except Donald Trump and Elon Musk (he’s not going anywhere and I’m not falling for his pretend outrage over the “Big Beautiful Bill”) and Stephen Miller and Russell Vought and maybe Mike Johnson. These are the people who are going to make it very difficult to unseat Republicans in future elections, and as long as Senator Ernst and her Republican colleagues vote the MAGA party line, then they can mock their constituents or ignore them altogether. They don’t even have to pretend to care about “the people” anymore. 

*****

This is all getting out of control, and by “this” I mean this rambling little blog post. It’s time to wrap it up. So I’ll finish where I started - with Dickens, Japanese pottery, and malaise. I’m almost finished with Little Dorrit. Mr. Dorrit’s fortunes, having reversed, are about to reverse again, and he won’t be the only one heading back to debtors’ prison, a thing that is due to make a comeback any day now. Meanwhile, Soetsu Yanagi was absolutely poetic on the subject of useful and beautiful artisanal objects, and blithely dismissive of the hopes and aspirations of the humble craftspeople who make them. And if we’d all listened to Jimmy Carter (and if he had picked anyone at all other than Paul Volcker as Fed Chairman) then we’d all probably be a lot better off today. Three books that have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and yet they are all strangely relevant to the Year of Our Lord 2025. Welcome to the Thunderdome. This place sucks. 

*****

*I know that Twitter is officially X now. But I’ll call it whatever I want. 

On Freedom

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

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

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

*****

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

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

*****

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

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

*****

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

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

Secondhand Time

I’m back to reading something serious now, after my side foray into a silly satirical murder novel. Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets is an as-told-to history of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, and it is just devastating. I’m about two thirds of the way through it, and I can’t stop thinking about how much the Russian people have suffered and lost; and how much suffering and loss they have inflicted. Russia has been an experimental laboratory for all of the worst economic and government systems that humankind has dreamed up - Tsarism and serfdom, Soviet communism, unbridled dog-eat-dog capitalism combined with totalitarian dictatorship - the Russians have endured it all, with pretty much the same results - a very small group of ruling elites live in relative safety and comfort and a vast underclass spend their entire lives struggling to keep body and soul together. 

*****

In Secondhand Time, people who lived under Soviet rule tell their stories of life under Soviet communism and life in the immediate aftermath of its collapse. The stories are mostly hair-raising and heartbreaking. And almost everyone is a victim, and not a perpetrator. Only one or two of the storytellers admit or even touch on the truth, which is that Stalin didn’t kill millions of people on his own. He had help. People arrested, interrogated, tortured, imprisoned, exiled their fellow citizens, and then they collected their paychecks and went home. Many of those people themselves then ended up in interrogation cells or on trains to Siberia - or dead. It seems relevant to me that no one was safe, even the people who thought that they were in Stalin’s good graces. It seems that some people should look at history, and not just in Stalinist Russia but in the United States from 2017 to now, to see how loyal a dictator is to those who are loyal to him. A personality cult is a dreadful thing. 

*****

One of the reasons why I stress about politics is because I know how much of my identity and my worldview are tied up with my American-ness. I have no idea who I am, nor where I fit in the world if I’m not an American. And I think about how being an American means something more than being born or choosing to live within the physical borders of the United States. And I also think about how fragile it all is, how easily a shared national identity with shared ideas and beliefs, even among people who disagree, can just disappear. 

This is what happened in Russia, not once but twice in one century. The country that Russians knew in 1910 was completely transformed by 1920, and everything that people believed was no longer true. The country that Russians knew in 1988 or so was completely gone by 1998, and people my age, who had grown up immersed in Soviet communism and who believed in the dignity of the worker were all of a sudden in a country that glorified cut-throat capitalism, where no one cared about politics and everyone cared about real estate and expensive cars and designer clothing. It all happened so fast, leaving a whole generation completely disoriented and alienated from their country and even from their own children who didn’t share their frame of reference. As one woman told the author, the Russia of her youth had been a country in which people boasted about their working class roots, where it was a point of great pride to be the child or grandchild of a miner or steelworker or collective farmer. In the new Russia of extravagantly wealthy oligarchs, noble ancestry came back into fashion and people started looking for their familial connections to Tsars and Grand Dukes. 

*****

Almost all of these stories are those of regular working people, not the famous or powerful, which makes the book that much more interesting to me. Maybe Alexievich wasn’t able to make connections with prominent people to ask them to tell their stories. Or maybe she did ask, and was refused. Or maybe she just prefers ordinary people. “It never ceases to amaze me how interesting everyday life really is,” she writes. This is true everywhere, I think. I never get tired of looking at people doing their work or driving their cars or just hanging around. I never get tired of routine everyday life and mundane everyday things. 

*****

Some of Alexievich’s storytellers are furiously angry at their fellow Russians, especially their children and grandchildren who no longer respect the generation that fought the Nazis and put cosmonauts in space. But some are less willing to judge their countrymen and women too harshly for their sudden shallow preoccupation with possessions. As one woman says, ”The people have suffered enough…now they go shopping…They like everything colorful because it all used to be so gray and ugly.” The longing for beauty in a country of scarcity is a repeated theme. In one story, a woman tells about how her sister had learned to knit well enough that she could sell some things to the relatively wealthy people in their village. The girls were hungry all the time and when a customer paid for her shawl, she went out and cut some flowers from her garden and gave them to the girls as a present. The woman says that this unexpected gift of flowers was a turning point for her, a moment when she realized that maybe other people could see her as something other than a dirty, scrawny street urchin, and that maybe she was meant for better things. Because someone saw her as capable of appreciating beauty, maybe that meant that she was worthy of it. It’s a beautiful and hopeful moment in a book filled with dreadful, despair-inducing stories. 

*****

Toward the end of Secondhand Time, Alexievich interviews one of the “winners” of the post-Soviet Russian economy. A single woman in her 40s with one daughter born of a liaison with an older married man, she is proud of her wealth and success and openly contemptuous of the new capitalism’s many victims. “I hate people who grew up in poverty,” she says, “their pauper’s mentality; money means so much to them, you can’t trust them.” She boasts of being a predator, a “huntress,” completely self-reliant and free of entanglements with any other humans other than her beloved daughter. It’s all very Ayn Rand-ian, and it’s easy to hate this woman but it’s also easy to see the fear that drives every word she says. “I don’t like the poor, the insulted and humiliated,” she says. No one is safe in the brutally exploitative new Russia, and she knows that if she lets down her guard for one second, she could find herself among them, among the ranks of the poor, insulted, and humiliated. 

Humiliation is another consistent theme throughout these stories. It seems that the Russians who lost everything during the early post-Soviet years felt shame even more than anger at their sudden change in circumstances. A scientist ends up cleaning bathrooms in the Metro, or an engineer finds herself selling odds and ends at a makeshift kiosk, and their biggest fear is that they’ll run into someone they know, even though so many Russians were in the same boat. They all seem able to live with the material deprivation and uncertainty about their futures, but the loss of status is unbearable. 

*****

I wasn’t sure where I was going with this, because as much as I read about Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, I still don’t know a darn thing, certainly not enough to write anything coherent. But one thing I know is that a bad system is always propped up by lies. I thought about this as I watched the Vice Presidential debate. “The rules were that you weren’t going to fact check” (translation: “I was told that I would be able to lie with impunity”) was the big takeaway for me. Yes I know that all politicians lie or exaggerate or stretch the truth or shape the truth to fit their agendas blah blah blah. And I know that the lines are now blurred between truth and lies because of the 24-hour news cycle and social media and AI blah blah blah. But there’s a difference between a person who tells a lie and a person who doesn’t understand or care about the truth. And you can spread lies with or without the aid of the internet. Stalin did an excellent job of making people believe that up was down and right was wrong, using only the technology available in 1937. 

*****

Secondhand Time is on the NYT and Guardian lists of the best books of the 21st century, and deservedly so. It’s unlike anything else written about post-Soviet Russia, and it’s a beautiful book. But I’m very glad I’m finished with these stories of collapse and upheaval and lawlessness and desperation. For now, at least. 

Very secure...

I had to change a password yesterday. It’s a password for a system that I use daily so I’ll remember the new password after a few days of daily log-ins, but I just hate to change a familiar password. It's a disruption. It throws me off my game. 

The system rejected my first attempt to create a new password because it recognized it as an old password. “We’ve seen that password too many times before” the pop-up message read. Who’s “we,” I thought? Who’s seen it too many times? Not me, I tell you what. I’m very happy with that password. I like it just fine. In fact, it’s one of my very favorite passwords, which is why I keep trying to recycle it. Here’s an idea, Mr. Enterprise Solution: Suppose you let me decide when I’m tired of my password? 

The system didn’t like my second attempt either. “Choose something harder to guess.” Harder for whom, genius? If it’s hard for some hacker in the Caucasus to guess then it’s going to be dang-near impossible for me unless I write it down, and if I have learned anything in decades of yearly cybersecurity training, it’s that writing a password down is not a good idea. 

I finally came up with a new password that was acceptable to the very discerning password approving software or whatever it is, and bonus: The new password is hilarious. I cracked myself up with that password. I’m still laughing. I'm going to laugh my silly head off every time I log in now. 

Then I remembered that I had done the very same thing a few years ago in another enterprise system, and I laughed and laughed until the next day when I couldn’t remember the number and special character combination that accompanied my hilariously funny password, and I had to start all over. Determined not to let this happen again, I wrote down a hint for the new password (which is pure comedy gold I assure you). This is what it’s come to. I need a password for my password. It's a great system. Very secure. Very mindful. 

Vacation reading (with meandering and spoilers)

I’m always trying to stay ahead of the book list, because one day, I’ll publish it in January. It’ll happen. Maybe even next year. 

I read four books during my recent vacation; or rather, I read 3.5 books because I didn’t finish the fourth one until later. I always read a lot during my vacation, because I can. Thanks to the temporary loss of my Kindle, happily recovered a few days later, I read Murder on the Orient Express, the only book on the beach condo’s bookshelf that didn’t actively repel me, and it was delightful. I might read a few more Agatha Christies, just for fun. I have no interest in American murder mysteries, but British murder mysteries are a different thing altogether. 

On the first and second days of our vacation, I read Anne Applebaum’s newest book, Autocracy Inc.. It’s a short and very well researched explanation of autocratic governments in the 21st century, which are far more concerned with accumulating and keeping wealth for the autocrats and their friends and families and henchpeople than with any particular political ideology. Ideologically, as Applebaum explains, autocrats are all over the place, from the far left of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro to the far right of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But ideology is secondary to money in an autocratic regime, which exists to hold on to its power and to further enrich itself. With money comes a firmer grasp on power, and the power enables further accumulation of money. In the autocratic countries that are still within the traditional world political order, the autocrats become wealthy by legitimate means in markets manipulated and regulated to favor their interests. In pariah countries, the money is outright stolen, or gained through criminal enterprises - drugs, human trafficking, arms sales. 

One of the biggest differences between dictatorships in the 21st and 20th centuries, as Applebaum writes, is not so much the utter disregard for truth as the lack of concern about world opinion that seems to be a defining characteristic of 21st century autocrats. As she reminds us, dictators used to at least lie about their motives and to try to convince the world that their people were better off than the citizens of free countries. Now, not only do dictators do whatever they want - steal, kill, stifle the media, rewrite election laws to solidify their grip on power - they don’t care what anyone thinks, at home or abroad. They don’t care about their “position on the world stage,” if that even means anything anymore. 

Just as I was wondering if there was any hope at all in a world in which the powerful can operate with near total impunity, Applebaum also reminded me that we do still have ways to save our own democracy, and to pressure the dictators to change their behavior. Laws that punish individuals and companies that do business with autocratic thugs, and enforcement of existing laws and sanctions, can make a huge difference. Anne Applebaum has been writing about dictators for a long time, and although she is realistic and clear-eyed about our tenuous grasp on freedom and democracy, she’s also optimistic. 

*****

I wanted to read a companion piece to Autocracy, Inc., so I downloaded Twilight of Democracy. And then I lost my Kindle for a few days, and had to turn my attention to a murder on a luxury train from Istanbul to Paris in the years leading up to World War II. Murder on the Orient Express is one of the best-selling novels of all time, and I was familiar with the basic premise but I had no idea how it was going to turn out, although I did have some guesses, which turned out to be partly correct. And just as I was about to read the final whodunit chapter, my Kindle appeared in the cushions of a chair in which I had not even sat, and so two mysteries were solved in the same day. I learned exactly who killed the vile Mr. Ratchett, and then I started another Anne Applebaum book. 

Anne Applebaum wrote Twilight of Democracy amid the craziness that was 2020. The book begins and ends with parties, at the beginning of the then-new 21st century and the end of the pandemic, if it ever actually ended, because I know at least 10 people who have had COVID this summer but I digress. 

2020 seems like a long time ago, and like yesterday, simultaneously. One of the defining features of that year was the way in which so many people just lost their minds, and apparently, this was not unique to America, though it was probably worse here thanks to you know who. In Poland, the collective mind-losing seems to have started earlier. Applebaum writes about family divisions and broken friendships resulting from politics, and pinpoints those divisions to conspiracy theories around the Smolensk plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski. I won’t even try to recount the details but to boil it down to oversimplified basics, conspiracy theorists claimed that the plane was deliberately targeted by assassins, aided and abetted by Kaczynski’s political opponents. I don’t know a thing about modern Poland, but I know all about once-reasonable people adopting conspiracy theories as truth, and defending their beliefs with religious fervor, and turning their politics into a cult. 

*****

The years since 2017, and more so the years since 2020 have been a challenging time for the idea of truth. We might have expected that advanced technology would make it harder for people to tell lies and get away with it, and in some ways that is true. You can’t really fake a resume anymore. You can’t claim to be a Harvard graduate or an Olympian or a war hero unless you actually are one. Factual claims about one’s life and background are very easily proven and disproven, thanks to the Internet. 

But of course it’s very easy to fake evidence to support a false claim that someone said or did something, and it’s also very easy to alter evidence so that it “proves” whatever claim you want to make or supports whatever “truth” you want people to believe. Even smart people can be easily fooled by clever deep fakes and sophisticated image manipulation. Stupid people are even more easily fooled.

By the way, I’m not saying which one I am, because it varies. Sometimes I’m brilliant and sometimes I’m a fucking moron. Just keeping it real, because I always keep it real.

*****

I remember reading some Christian apologetics essay that points out a key reason to believe in the claims of the faith, that reason being that the early Christians and many martyrs since have gone to their deaths rather than recant their faith. The argument here is that a person might be willing to die for a belief that isn’t true, but they won’t do so knowingly. People won’t risk their lives for a lie that they know to be a lie. It’s a pretty solid argument, but I don’t think it holds up given the bloody history of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st. 

Although maybe it does hold up. Taking Nazis and Communists, for example, because the 20th century is always my default frame of reference - many millions, of course, genuinely believed in these causes and died accordingly. But others, I would suggest, government officials and military officers and politicians, supported Hitler or Stalin for reasons of convenience, and believed, incorrectly, that their positions in the government or the party or the upper echelons of society, would protect them from the wrath of the despots. Some believed that they could play both sides against the middle, faking devotion to the Nazi or Soviet cause while simultaneously exploiting the true believers and protecting their own power and their own self interest. The gulags and concentration camps were populated with plenty of those people, lots of whom went to their deaths having once supported lies that they knew to be lies and only realizing their mistake when it was too late. 

*****

Yes, I know that Trump hasn’t sent anyone to a concentration camp. Yet. But the Hitler and Stalin analogies are still apt here because they illustrate the phenomenon by which certain unprincipled or cowardly people convince themselves that they can get in bed with the devil and still wake up clean and safe and well-rested. And no matter how many times they see those who have gone before suffer the rude awakening find-out moment after the reckless fucking around, they believe that they are different, that they will be fine as long as they are useful and loyal. In the FAFO lifecycle, the FA phase is always a lot more fun than the inevitable FO phase. That’s free advice to JD Vance, who probably won’t heed until it’s too late. Hey JD, give Mike Pence a call. He can fill you in. Maybe he can hook you up with a competent barber, too. 

*****

See what happens? I was supposed to be talking about books, but I got distracted. Don't say you weren't warned, though, because the disclaimer is right there in the title. Caveat emptor. 

But let’s get back to the vacation reading: Two non-fiction books, two novels. One classic novel, one contemporary novel. A few weeks before our vacation, I bought a Kindle copy of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow because antisemitic “pro-Palestine” (scare quotes intentional) influencers mounted a boycott campaign against its author, Gabrielle Zevin, for no discernible reason other than that she is Jewish. Having bought it, I had to read it, and I’m glad I did, because it’s very good. I went in not knowing a thing about it, and I was very surprised to find a novel about video game designers so absorbing, because this is a topic in which I have absolutely no interest. But of course, the video game industry is just a setting, a way for Zevin to tell a story about two brilliant young people and their decades-long on-and-off friendship, and their place in the time in which they lived, that being the waning days of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. I’m not finished with this book yet but I have an idea of how it’s going to turn out, and I have a further idea that it will end very differently from how I want it to end, because I always want a happy ending. 

SPOILER ALERT. Not a happy ending. But the tragedy was foreseeable, and so we don’t have another Ian McEwan Atonement situation on our hands. I’m not mad at Gabrielle Zevin. Ian McEwan, on the other hand, remains on my list. I can't stay on message to save my life, but I can hold a grudge until the end of time. 

He-Man Woman-Hater's Club

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at Mass minding my own business when the priest, a priest whom I have always liked, decided that “Catholic marriages would be so happy if you women could stop being bitches for five hot minutes” was a good theme for a homily. I am exaggerating, of course, but only slightly. He scolded us, all of the Catholic married women sitting quietly in our pews, for never letting things go, for throwing things in our husbands’ faces that happened years ago. “Maybe he forgot to pay a bill,” he said, by way of example. “Or maybe he forgot a birthday. Or maybe he cheated. Love is forgiving - if he’s doing his best, you should forgive him and move on.” 

Yes, let’s do that shall we? Let’s be more forgiving. And let’s agree that a married man who is having sex with another woman is “doing his best.” Let’s also agree that forgetting a birthday or forgetting to take out the trash are offenses of exactly the same magnitude as infidelity; and that we women, bitches that we are, will react in exactly the same way to all three. And let’s further agree that it is the women, and only the women, who make mistakes in a marriage. The men always do their best and their best should always be good enough. Got it. Thanks, Father. 

*****

I was just about over this routine Sunday morning misogyny, and then my news feeds started to fill up with stories about an NFL kicker named Harrison Butker, who was the commencement speaker at a small Catholic college. 

First of all, I won’t make fun of this guy's name (although my gosh silver platter amirite?) but I will make fun of his smug pious Catholic punchable bearded millennial face. What is it with young traddy men and their glossy beards? Are you emulating Jesus? Because I'm pretty sure that He didn't spend much time grooming and trimming His beard, nor cutting and styling His hair. 

But really, Mr. Butker, that's none of my business. It's your face. You grow whatever you want on it. And that applies to everything else in your life that doesn't hurt anyone else. You want a million kids? Great. Enjoy, and I wish nothing but good health and happiness for as many children as you have. Mrs. Butker wants to stay at home and take care of you and the children, and forgo a paycheck and a career? Good for her. As long as she is happy and the children are well cared for, then I applaud her decision and wish her only the best. I know many brilliant SAHMs. I was one myself for a short while. 

The whole “you do you” thing breaks down for me a bit in your public utterances about what women other than your wife should do, and how people other than yourself should live. Let’s discuss, shall we? 

*****

First, though, a quick digression. Who decided that a person who kicks a ball for a living is qualified to speak at a college commencement? I understand that Mr. Butker is among the very best at this particular job, but it IS a very particular job, with skills that don’t really translate to any other endeavor of life. What is it that conservatives on the Fox News always like to say? “Stick to dribbling?” Let’s adapt that advice for Harrison Butker. Stick to kicking.

And let’s further digress. Who at Benedictine College, an apparently very religious Catholic institution, decided that a representative of the NFL was the best person to speak to Catholic life and morality? Is anyone at Benedictine familiar with the National Football League’s relationship with organized professional gambling? Is the learned administration of that institution aware that domestic violence and scantily clad cheerleaders are the NFL’s main exports vis a vis women? Is there NO ONE ELSE who could come speak to your graduates? 

But fine, let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that the very selection of Harrison Butker was not problematic in and of itself. Let’s assume that it’s perfectly reasonable to invite a guy who kicks a ball for a living (nothing else - no throwing, no catching, no running - just kicking) and who represents a famously greedy and corrupt organization to address the graduates of Benedictine College, a college whose student population is over half female. Would it not then be reasonable to expect Mr. Butker to deliver a simple commencement speech, which is supposed to be about the graduates and their accomplishments and their futures, and not about the speaker and his stupid hot takes on a “woman’s vocation?” 

*****

This is the part that really bothers me most; or rather, it would bother me most if I was in that audience as a graduate or a parent. That speech was disrespectful and downright rude. Instead of allowing these young women five damn seconds to enjoy their accomplishments and their moment in the sun, this MF-er saw his opportunity to record a Newsmax audition tape, and he went all in. Watch the video and you can just see how proud of himself he is, out there owning the libs. “Bouta go viral in five, four, three, two, one...the feminists are going to lose their minds.” Yes the speech was misogynist and homophobic and hateful but it was also predictable, boring, and tiresome. And rude - just plain rude. 

*****

I almost hate to post this now, a week later. This bearded little ball-kicker has dominated the discourse for days, and he’s had just about enough attention, as far as I’m concerned. We are now in the backlash to the backlash stage, with the usual suspects screaming as loudly as they can about this tiny tiny tiny little man’s “First Amendment rights” as though the First Amendment is some guarantee that the world owes you a platform for all of your dumb-ass opinions and as though anyone who disagrees with you and says so is somehow infringing on your freedom. 

And at this point, what else is there to say? OK, just a few more things. First of all, wife and mother is a vocation, but so is husband and father. Why is it that only a husband and father can “fulfill his vocation” while also using his God-given talents and making money and generally contributing to the life of the world, and a wife and mother can’t? 

And one other question for Mr. Butker: Did Mrs. Butker’s life really only begin when she married you? Because I thought it began at conception. 

*****

I’m a Catholic - a faithful, believing, Rosary-praying, Mass-going Catholic. And I know that Jesus loves women. I just wish that Catholic men did, too. 

All She Lost

My life is pretty good. It’s pretty good objectively, and it’s also really good compared to the lives of many many many - most - people in the world. Five seconds’ exposure to news coverage or even social media is enough to confirm this. 

But I don’t take my good fortune for granted. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m very well aware that a natural disaster or a terrorist attack (real or engineered) or a financial collapse (real or engineered) could upend my whole life. We could go from relative security and comfort to abject poverty in the blink of an eye. We could end up refugees. Anyone could. Sometimes when I’m feeling cynical or pessimistic (even more so than usual, that is), I think about how little power most of us have, and how few of the people who do have real power actually care about the rest of us. 

*****

A few weeks ago, I heard an NPR (I forget which program) interview with Dalal Mawad, author of All She Lost, a book about women’s experiences following the 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut. I was ashamed to realize that I barely remembered this explosion, which killed hundreds and caused a ripple effect of political and economic consequences that devastated an already-falling-apart country. 2020 was a hard year for everyone, but this was a pretty major and memorable event that I should have recalled immediately. There's no excuse for that kind of solipsism. I’m the worst sometimes. 

Anyway, I bought the book that day. It’s a series of stories based on the author’s first-person interviews with women who lost children, husbands, parents, siblings, friends, homes - who lost everything in the explosion - and who are now four years later still trying to figure out how to go on. It’s a very simple and beautiful book, but not easy to read. The book is short and the individual women’s chapters are short, but it still took me over a week to get through. 

One of the central themes that Mawad returns to over and over is the consequences of a failed state, which Lebanon essentially is now. What happens, she asks (and answers) when there are no functioning institutions; no real government to enact new laws or to enforce existing ones. One of the main functions of a good government is to protect the weak from the rampages of the strong. What happens when the weak and the strong are left to fight it out among themselves? 

Mawad knows what happens. So do I. Given the opportunity, the strong will always crush the weak - always and everywhere, without exception, without fail, 100 percent of the time. 

*****

Last week, I celebrated the failure of Ted Leonsis, whom I once rather liked but whom I now consider to be nothing more than a greedy billionaire sports owner just like the rest of them, to move my beloved Capitals from Capital One Arena in Washington DC (hence the “Washington” in Washington Capitals, Ted) to a yet-to-be-constructed multi-billion dollar retail and entertainment complex in Alexandria, VA, a place that looks close enough to DC when you’re looking at a map but that is really  kind of a nightmare to get to from Silver Spring, even if you’re taking Metro (Note: I love Metro, but I hate changing trains. If it’s not on the Red Line, it’s dead to me.) There are of course lots of Capitals fans in Virginia but it seems that most of them, except for their stupid Trumpity Trumpster of a governor, also didn’t want the team to move. Northern Virginia is already insanely congested and it certainly isn’t in any need of economic development projects. Leonsis, who had explicitly promised never to move the Capitals or the Wizards out of Washington, just wanted a new arena and like most billionaires in this country, he wanted other people to pay for what he wanted. For weeks, local media shared Leonsis talking points about how public financing of a project that will yield massive private profit is really good for everyone. This is the standard argument every time some greedy billionaire sports owner (that phrase is redundant) wants a local or state government to pay for a new arena from which he and his team will reap all of the profits. I haven’t run across a single convincing variation of this utter nonsense, and there are many variations. 

Anyway, because he’s accustomed to getting what he wants, Leonsis was blithely confident and sure that everything would go according to his plan. But it didn’t, to my great satisfaction. Of course, he ended up getting lots of money from the District of Columbia, which has more than enough other places to spend tax dollars, to stay put, and I think that he was playing both sides against one another. But I also think that the absolute refusal of Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates to allow a vote on the bill to fund the Alexandria boondoggle was real and not a show, and I applaud those Delegates. 

The news about the Capitals’ decision to remain in DC was reported the day after the freighter Dali collided with the Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge, which seconds later collapsed into the Patapsco River. The ship had managed to signal mayday soon enough that MDOT was able to close the bridge to traffic, but six people - construction workers - still died. 

What does an explosion in Lebanon have to do with a bridge in Baltimore? What does a warehouse full of ammonium nitrate have to do with the future home of the Washington Capitals? I don’t know, except that the more I think about it, the more these things seem related. In a functioning state controlled by an of-the-people, by-the-people, and (most importantly) for-the-people government, a billionaire shouldn’t get to hold a state and a city hostage to his demands for money and tax breaks so that he can build a new arena or refurbish an existing one, both projects that he can well afford to pay for out of his own coffers. In that same functioning state, bridges shouldn’t tumble into the water. 

*****

My son had a few days off at Easter, which was lovely. I took a few days off as well, and I drove to his school on Thursday to pick him up. His college is in Arlington, VA, not far from home. But again, the map is deceptive when you live in the DMV. If you’re not from here, you’d think that our house to Marymount University would be a 20 minute trip. It’s not remotely like that in real life. The drive there always takes an hour, though it’s usually a pretty easy and pleasant hour. I don’t love the Beltway but I can handle it - I’ve been driving it for years. Then you take the Cabin John Parkway to the Clara Barton Parkway (I can never tell the difference between the two but they’re very picturesque) and then the Chain Bridge to Glebe Road in Arlington. 

The Chain Bridge is really not a scary bridge at all, but it’s old and it spans the Potomac near the rapids at Great Falls, which is not a place where you’d want your car to plunge into the water. I was holding my breath as I drove across that bridge. But it was fine. I got to Arlington in one piece, and then took an alternate route home because the George Washington Parkway is still under construction and it’s a road of terror. 

And that’s enough about the condition of roads and bridges in the DMV. This isn’t a traffic report. IYKYK. 

*****

As I mentioned last week, pretty much everyone in Maryland is still shaken following the Key Bridge collapse. Baltimoreans are especially shaken, particularly the ones who drove back and forth across that bridge (which was kind of a terrifying bridge to begin with) every day and know that but for the grace of God, their cars could have been on that bridge that night. I was definitely thinking about the Key Bridge as I white-knuckled my way across the Potomac last Thursday. But that’s not all I was thinking about. I was thinking about who’s in charge; who do we trust to make sure that bridges remain intact and above rather than in the bodies of water they span? What’s stored in all of those warehouses in nearby ports and industrial parks? Who’s making sure that they’re not filled with toxic chemicals or unexploded grenades or cages full of snakes that Samuel L. Jackson will eventually have to fight, one by one? What happens if a large employer decides that they’re going to pick up stakes and go to another state or another country where labor is cheap and regulations are few and far between? Who’s going to stop them? Who is looking after the proverbial little guy?

We are far from a failed state. I know this. But it’s no longer reasonable to think that we could never be one. 

*****

The sad thing about All She Lost, the thing I keep thinking about now that I’m finished with the book, is that four years later, most of these women seem to have nearly given up hope. The ones who do seem a tiny bit hopeful are the ones who have moved away from Lebanon. The author herself took her daughter and moved to Paris, leaving her husband behind to try to rebuild his family’s business. All of the women, whether they stayed or went abroad, seem to agree that a normal, reasonably happy, reasonably safe life is no longer possible in Lebanon. They’re not talking about rebuilding or transforming their country. They don’t have the energy to fight anymore. They haven’t moved on because how can you move on? 

Honestly

Months ago, when the uproar about Spotify and stupid Joe whatever-his-name-is and his stupid podcast still seemed worthy of attention, I started writing something about it. The thing that I was writing started out as a sort of on-the-one-hand and then on-the-other-hand acknowledgement that what’s-his-name’s approach to COVID information is stupid at best and dangerous at worst and then a further acknowledgement that artists have every right to remove their music from the platform because that’s how the First Amendment works. That’s what it’s for. 

But then I was also going to write about how I was not planning to cancel my own personal Spotify subscription just because they give a platform to one stupid chucklehead. After all, there’s no law against stupid, and even chuckleheads have First Amendment rights. But then I found out that The What’s-His-Name Experience showcased the n-word in SEVENTY episodes and that what’s-his-name and one of his stupid dudebro guests yukked it up about sexually harassing and abusing women and then it was no longer a First Amendment issue; it was just an issue of simple human decency and my responsibility not to support a company that gives a huge platform to this kind of message and this kind of messenger. So I had to cancel stupid Spotify (and I really liked stupid Spotify) and also re-write a substantial portion of a thing that I had already written. I don’t have time for this nonsense, you know what I mean? 

But since we are on the subject of problematic podcasts and stupid nonsense, let’s talk about Bari Weiss. Yeah, Bari Weiss, I know. I used to sometimes listen to Bari’s podcast “Honestly,” including part of the episode that preceded her infamous appearance on the Bill Maher show. I didn’t actually see the TV appearance because I don’t have HBO and because I just can’t stand Bill Maher. Well, I didn’t see the entire show, but I did see the now famous “I’m done with COVID” clip that made Bari Weiss the Karen of the Week. That was ages ago, of course. I'm always behind. Don't come here looking for breaking news. 

Anyway, this isn’t really about the “done with COVID” moment, which is now largely overcome by events. It’s about another episode of “Honestly,” in which Bari and her psychologist guest complained about the word “trauma.” Shall I summarize this episode for you? Here’s the gist: These young people on the TikTok and the Twitter! They break a nail and it’s “trauma!” Hothouse flowers! Snowflakes! What do they know from trauma? The Holocaust, there’s some trauma for you! 

For God’s sake. 

Well, let’s back up a second. Part of me is OK with objecting to the clinical use of the word “trauma” in any way other than how it is defined in whatever medical textbook is regarded as the authoritative source. That was the position of Bari’s psychologist guest whose name I cannot remember and do not feel like looking up. His point, a valid one, is that misusing a clinical term that has a specific and agreed-upon definition muddles the term and leads to confusion and lack of clarity in treatment and research. 

And this objection would apply to the conversational everyday use of the word, too. How many times do I tell people that words mean something, and that it’s important to try to choose words carefully? All the time, I tell you, ALL THE TIME. 

So the word “trauma” means something, and if we want to know what it means, we can just  look at a dictionary. Here is how Merriam-Webster defines the word “trauma”: “(in psychiatry) An experience that produces psychological injury or pain, or the injury so caused.” That is pretty broad, is it not? All kinds of experiences, especially experiences of young people, especially the experiences of young people since March 2020, could easily fall under the heading of “trauma.” Who is Bari Weiss or anyone, really, to decide what qualifies as “trauma” to a person who is suffering? Is it not enough to know that someone is suffering, and to just show some damn compassion? 

The whole idea of Bari and her guest questioning the validity of other people’s feelings annoyed me. I was so annoyed, actually, that I almost turned off the show. Then I second-guessed myself. I thought that maybe I was being harsh and unfair. I decided to listen for a few more minutes. And that’s when I heard the mobile therapy app commercial, narrated by Bari herself. It wasn’t the existence of the commercial or the product that it was advertising  that bothered me. I bet that mobile therapy apps are very helpful. But then in her lovely and reassuring speaking voice, Bari listed all of the different issues that the app could help with. Depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, addiction issues, compulsive behavior, stress, and (wait for it), trauma. 

Something tells me that therapists who provide services through a mobile app probably have a pretty broad definition of the word “trauma;” a definition that would contradict the very thesis of the show, namely that young people should stop calling every little problem a “trauma.”  Did Bari Weiss consider this inconsistency as she narrated the commercial? I’m sure that she recorded it earlier and that it was intended for general use on her podcast, so perhaps the contradiction never occurred to her. Perhaps she recorded that commercial months earlier and then never gave it another thought. I do stuff all the time and forget about it moments later. So it’s possible. 

On the other hand, Bari Weiss is a smart person, and her podcast is professionally produced, presumably by lots of other smart people. Did NO ONE on her staff catch this? Did no one notice that this commercial might belie the premise of the whole episode? Did no one consider that there might be a disconnect? Or did they all notice it and think about it and talk about it among themselves and ultimately decide that there wasn’t a disconnect? I don’t know. I’m overthinking this, as I tend to do. The worst interpretation is that Bari Weiss and her producers are completely aware of the inconsistency of selling “Honestly” listeners a service that helps with “trauma,” while hosting a discussion in which Bari scoffs at the very idea that any 21st century middle-class educated American even knows what trauma is. Middle class educated Americans are probably the people most likely to use a mobile therapy app and they are definitely the only people listening to Bari Weiss. 

*****

For pundits and opinion writers and commentators and thought leaders, self-appointed or otherwise, integrity is key. Integrity matters almost more than rightness; or at least it matters as much as rightness. Say (almost) whatever you want, as long as it’s not obviously hateful or ridiculous, even if it’s wrong, and as long as it comes from a place of integrity, I will still respect you. I don’t always agree with Bari Weiss, but I always considered her a person who wrote and spoke from a place of integrity. The “trauma” episode made me question this. I seriously question the integrity of a person who produces a whole podcast episode that mocks and criticizes people who think of themselves as traumatized, sponsored by an advertiser selling a service targeted at those very people. 

My objection to this episode goes beyond the obvious contradiction between its content and the advertising that supports it. The whole discussion smacked of bad faith conservative outrage-baiting about snowflakery and safe spaces and emotional support animals. It came across as though Bari Weiss or some smart young person who works for her searched Twitter and TikTok for trending topics and keywords, and decided “Hey! Here’s an idea! This will drive engagement! This will push some buttons!” I’m just tired of it. I’m tired of phony outrage and concern trolling. I’m tired of performative petty throw-down gotcha one-liners substituting for thoughtful commentary. 

*****

So why was I listening to Bari Weiss anyway? That is a reasonable question. I admire her bravery and honesty on some topics, especially the landmine-strewn field of gender theory. She is a great writer who was hounded off the NYT’s editorial board and while we’re talking about stuff that I am tired of, I am profoundly tired of seeing fanatics left and right allowed to control the discourse. I’m tired of ratio-ing and subtweeting and I’m REALLY tired of book banning and curriculum control and dishonest equivalence between obviously unequal ideas. 

Still, I’m of two minds about Bari Weiss. There's a part of me that wants to defend her, just because I’m even more sick of the Internet He-Man Woman Haters’ Club. Call me a radical feminist if you want, but my spidey senses tell me that the real reason for the strong reaction to Bari’s Bill Maher appearance had little to do with COVID and lots to do with the very existence of women speaking out about anything with our high-pitched feminine voices and our overly emotional demeanor. The word “shrill” made frequent appearances in the furious anti-Bari tweets during this little kerfuffle. Omicron panic made it easy for the haters to hide their misogyny behind a veneer of public health self-righteousness and faux outrage on behalf of service workers and public school teachers and students and beleaguered healthcare workers. But you know what they say on the Internet: We see you. I see you. 

*****

I started writing this weeks ago, obviously. But after watching Senators Cruz and Hawley and Cotton and Blackburn posing and posturing through the two days of hearings for Judge Jackson, the topic of phony political outrage trolling with a side of misogyny seemed relevant again. I’m no admirer of Senator Ben Sasse but the man earned a tiny place in my stone-cold heart for referring to the Senators’ antics as “jackassery,” especially since that remark immediately followed Cruz’s “questioning.” Well done, Senator. You’ll never get my vote for anything, ever, but you might have a little bit of my respect. 

*****

I haven’t listened to “Honestly” since the “trauma” episode. I haven’t found a new podcast home yet; but even when I do, I probably won’t listen to Bari again. It’s not ideological, although I do disagree with much of what she has to say. I just don’t want to consume any more of the tiresome content rolling off the fake outrage industrial complex’s assembly line. It’s an integrity thing. 

Nomadland and "Nomadland" (SPOILERS AHEAD--Don't say you weren't warned!)

When I was young, meaning 10 or so, I began to worry about how people survived in the world. Yes, that was me, Little Miss Sunshine, skipping merrily along through my carefree, happy childhood. Age 10 or so was when I came to realize that adults had to work every day, AND that no one’s job was safe. People could lose their jobs or their money at any time, through their own fault or through the caprice of forces beyond their control. This was a sobering realization. It didn’t seem fair that people could be thrown into poverty for any reason or no reason, and that a person or a family might go hungry just because the economy no longer needed a certain set of skills or because a person made a mistake or grew too old or sick to work. Like all ten-year-olds, I was preoccupied with fairness, and this seemed very unfair. More than unfair, it seemed cruel. It still seems cruel. 

This was what I thought about as I read Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. I saw the movie first. “Surviving America” might seem hyperbolic or inflammatory to a settled middle-class American raised on the myth that all you have to do is work hard and do the right thing and be a solid citizen, and you’ll be rewarded with a dignified and comfortable life. But for most of us who do enjoy a middle-class life with a house and a car and decent healthcare and Wi-Fi and easy access to consumer goods, good luck is a big component of our so-called success. I work for a living, and so does my husband. We both work pretty hard, actually. But even the most casual observation of the last 20 years or so of American life makes clear that hard work is no guarantee at all that we will stay as secure and comfortable as we are. One lost contract, one serious illness, one bad investment, and the whole operation could fall to pieces. 

*****

Nomadland's true-life nomads live in RVs, trailers, vans, and even cars. Like the itinerant farm workers of John Steinbeck’s Depression novels, they wander from job to job, spending the summer working as campsite hosts in national parks, and the fall months working 10-hour shifts in Amazon warehouses. They harvest sugar beets and they operate rides at carnivals and amusement parks. They prefer the term “houseless” to “homeless.” One of Bruder’s nomads is a man named Bob Wells, who created a website that teaches people how to live in a vehicle. He considers vehicle-dwelling as both a lifeboat  for those who slip through the cracks of middle-class security, and a form of rebellion against middle-class norms. Rather than think of themselves as homeless vagrants, Bruder writes, nomads become “conscientious objectors to the system that had failed them.” 

Wells likens the illusion of middle-class security to “The Matrix,” explaining that people on his side of the illusion, the people who fell out of the middle class, have suffered a “radical pounding,” an event that opened their eyes and forced them to abandon the illusion and accept the reality that most of us don’t want to accept, that we’re all just one big medical bill or one lost job away from losing what we think of as our place in the world. “At one time,” he says, “there was a social contract that if you played by the rules...everything would be fine. That’s no longer true today. You can do everything right...and still end up broke, alone, and homeless.” For most of us, Wells points out, downward mobility is now just as likely as upward mobility. 

*****

A determined, resolute optimism is characteristic of the nomad, vehicle-dwelling subculture. Many of the people Bruder writes about are relentlessly upbeat, afraid that if they drop the smiling veneer, they will become objects of pity. Media coverage of people who live this way tends to stick to this script, too. As Bruder writes, articles and broadcasts on nomad workers, or “workampers” makes “workamping sound like a sunny lifestyle, or even a quirky hobby, rather than a survival strategy.” The nomads themselves like to perpetuate this image. Bruder writes of nomads who speak in “cheery platitudes” when describing their very difficult lives. They urge her not to write about them as “Americans in crisis,” and they are proud of their “no whiners” ethic. 

*****

Among Nomadland’s real-life characters, Linda May is the most prominently featured and the most endearing. Linda May has been through some things. She spent a good part of her early and middle adulthood doing what she was supposed to do; going to work and taking care of her home and her family and paying her bills. And then a series of misfortunes forced her to move in with her adult children, who were also struggling to pay their bills. And then she decided to buy a mobile home and hit the road. A veteran of Amazon warehouse work, sugar beet harvesting, and camp hosting (among other jobs), she is the exemplar of the workamper lifestyle, and of its smiling, no-nonsense, no-complaining philosophy. In her case, the cheerfulness is not forced or faked. She is a naturally optimistic and resilient person, perhaps as ideally suited to life as a nomad as anyone can be. But reading between the lines, it’s clear that this life is hard even for a hardy soul like Linda May. 

*****

Every time I read a memoir or a true-life story, I imagine myself living that life. Everyone does that, right? Well, I do. And I know without even thinking hard that I wouldn’t last one day on the road with Linda May and Swankie Wheels and Bob Wells. It’s not the lack of material comforts that would bother me so much. I do enjoy comforts and luxuries, but I think that I could live, and pretty happily, without lots of the material comforts and things that I have. It’s the moving from place to place, and the driving a heavy and unwieldy vehicle through rough desert terrain and up and down treacherous mountain roads, and the unexpected breakdowns and flat tires that would do me in. And then there’s the work. Don’t get me started about the work. I know my physical limitations, and I’m pretty sure that a week working in an Amazon fulfillment center or harvesting sugar beets would just about kill me. And I’m not as old as Linda or Swankie. Respect. 

**** 

Like lots of other fortunate, employed, middle-class people, I spent a lot of money during the pandemic. In my defense, I donated a lot of money, too--about $5,000 so far, to food banks and diaper banks and disaster relief and other emergency causes. But I also bought a lot of unnecessary handbags, and a ton of clothes to wear to places where I no longer go, and a lot of books, and another streaming service subscription. 

I thought about all of these things, the momentary enjoyment of opening the packages and looking at my new purchases, as I read about Linda May and all of the other nomads who thought that they were fine, money-wise, until a combination of events and circumstances left them near-destitute, near-homeless, near-the-edge-of-the-proverbial cliff. Many of the itinerants whose stories appear in Nomadland thought that they were on solid middle-class American-dream ground, and that the lives that they took for granted were secure, and that homelessness and poverty were things that happened to other, less careful people. And then they found themselves on the street; or on the road, as it were, working long and physically exhausting hours for low pay. It could and did happen to them. It could happen to anyone. It could happen to me. 

*****

For five minutes after I finished reading Nomadland, I thought “that’s it. No more spending. No more takeout food, and no more books that don’t come from the library, and no more jackets, and absolutely no gosh-dang handbags ever again.” And I knew that this resolve would last no more than a week, because I know myself better than that. But I also looked around my house, my cheerful, colorful, but slightly shabby old house, and I decided that the worn-out family room couch has at least another five years of useful life, and the ugly-but-serviceable tile in the master bathroom is just fine, and the old-fashioned not-at-all modern kitchen is still a perfectly good place to store, cook, and eat food and so it’s all going to stay just the way it is for the foreseeable future. 

And I’m also going to think twice before I buy unnecessary stuff, and not just because I don’t want to spend myself into penury. It’s because there’s too much stuff; not just here in my house, but in the world. And there’s a huge human cost to producing and shipping and storing and selling and delivering all of that stuff to people like me. And because what do I do with all of that stuff if things hit the fan, and I have to hit the road or move myself and my family into a tiny apartment? We could have an estate sale, I suppose, but there’s no guarantee that anyone else would want all of our stuff. And sometimes, when I look in a closet or a drawer, it all feels like a burden. It feels like we’re carrying all of this stuff with us, all the time, even when we’re not home. And it’s heavy. 

*****

Nomadland the book and “Nomadland” the movie are very different, and it almost doesn’t matter if you read the book first or watch the movie first and read the book afterward, as I did. Oh, but HUGE SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t watched the movie: 

SWANKIE DIDN’T ACTUALLY DIE! The book came out several years before the movie was made, of course, and I thought that perhaps Swankie had become ill during the filming, and that the producers wrote her death into the story. But this event was fictional. 

Even though many of the characters (including Swankie, Bob Wells, and Linda May,) are real people, played by themselves, much of the movie is fictionalized, including Frances McDormand’s entire character, Fern; and Fern’s sort-of boyfriend, played by David Strathairn. I don’t think the movie would have worked as well otherwise. I suppose it could have been a documentary, and Linda May and Swankie Wheels are more than engaging enough to center a whole movie around, but the addition of fictional characters allowed the filmmakers to tell the story as the story of a life and not the story of a lifestyle. Does that make sense? It’s the best I can do, other than to advise everyone to watch “Nomadland,” the most beautiful movie I’ve seen in a long time, and to read the book, and to think about the people who pack our Amazon orders and harvest our food and work seasonal jobs at resorts and amusement parks and ski resorts, and who deserve a decent paycheck and a decent place to live, whether it's stationary or mobile. 

Verdict

It’s Tuesday afternoon, almost evening. I was trying to finish writing something about a book that I just finished. It’s a pretty long post, and it just needs a conclusion, but I just ran flat out of words. I’ll try again tomorrow. 

Although it’s Tuesday, it’s the first day of the work week because yesterday was the Presidents’ Day holiday, which for some reason is under fire on Twitter. Apparently, there is a movement afoot to get rid of the Presidents’ Day holiday and replace it with an Election Day holiday. I am all for Election Day as a national holiday, but February cries out for a three-day weekend. Call it whatever you want, Twitter activists, just don’t take it away. 

Anyway, I needed the extra day this weekend, after an entire Saturday glued to the impeachment trial. Every TV in the house was on and tuned to MSNBC, and I watched on and off all day, from multiple different rooms in the house. When the defense wrapped up its ridiculous closing argument and my own Congressman, Rep. Jamie Raskin, gave the closing remarks and the thing went to a vote, we all sat still in front of the TV to await the verdict; even my younger son, who is completely uninterested in politics. 

I was cynical about the vote, and sure that I knew what the outcome would be. Still, I have to admit that when Senator Burr and then Senator Cassidy voted “guilty,” I allowed myself a brief moment of optimism. I thought that it might--just might--be possible that 17 Senators would vote to convict. But I knew what was going to happen. When it did, I was disappointed but not surprised. 

And then Schumer spoke, and I barely listened. And then McConnell spoke, and holy shit. It’s been three days now, so the initial shock has worn off. But it really was a shock. I was genuinely gaping-mouth shocked as I watched and listened live to Mitch McConnell finally, after four years, telling the truth about Donald Trump. 

Back to Twitter (from which I think I need a break). The political commentators, professional and amateur, whom I follow on Twitter are divided on the seven Republican guilty votes. One camp says that it’s too little, too late (true) and that most of the seven are either retiring or safe from primary challenges, for now. The other camp concedes the too little, too late point but argues that we should give them credit for doing the right thing, no matter what calculations might have informed their decisions. I’m in that camp. I don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good, and if we can get seven Republicans to do a good thing when it counts, then I will take it. And now, of course, all seven are under attack from their state party organizations and the pro-Trump media. There’s that terrible “cancel culture,” at it again. 

*****

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. I usually give something up for Lent; and that thing is usually sweets. And I’ll probably do that. But I think I need to walk away from politics again, at least for a few weeks. Maybe I’ll alternate days; a day with no media consumption, and then a day with no sugar. And forty days with no Trump. 

Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl (2020 book review)

 As I mentioned in my last post, I'm trying to publish my 2020 book list, but it's getting too long, so I have to break out a few of the reviews into separate posts, to which I will link. So here is one. 

*****

“There’s nothing original about my story, and that’s the point.” This is the opening line of the third or fourth chapter of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl, a rape memoir. There’s nothing original about the story because women get raped all the time, as I know from personal experience; but the author’s approach to telling her story is quite original. 

At 19, Jeannie Vanasco was raped by a close high school friend. Almost 20 years after the attack, she contacted her rapist and told him that she was going to write a book about the rape. Surprisingly, he agreed to talk with her; and in a series of recorded conversations, he admitted to the rape, apologized, and tried to explain himself. She transcribed her recordings of their calls and then examined her own part in the conversations, while also looking back at the broader context of the event and the years that followed - - another sexual assault, her father's death, her hospitalization for bipolar episodes. 

*****

One of the most compelling questions to come out of the #metoo movement and the 2020 racial justice reckoning is this: Can a good person commit a terrible act and then remain a good person, or resume being a good person, after a period of contrition? I think that the answer is yes. Another question: Does one terrible act make a person permanently bad and beyond redemption? I think that the answer is no. These are very big questions, which Vanasco tries to answer in this book. The call transcripts make the attacker (whom she calls Mark) if not necessarily sympathetic, then at least not an evil, irredeemable person. He accepts responsibility for his actions and seems sincere in his sorrow and regret. He's also a little manipulative, which Vanasco recognizes but doesn't really address otherwise. 

The book also explores the idea of gender performance, which is a term that I had never seen before or heard before. It's a useful expression. Vanasco's friends and therapist describe her sympathy for her former friend and her tendency to excuse or absolve him from full responsibility as gender performance. So I suppose that a woman's natural tendency to consider the feelings of others is a tendency that we are meant to root out and destroy. But who decides these things? What is the underlying assumption? That women should emulate men in every way, even in our thoughts and feelings? This seems the very opposite of feminism to me. 

When the police arrested the man who raped me, he confessed almost immediately: and he pled guilty at his arraignment, so there was never a trial. I testified at his sentencing hearing. I watched as the bailiff led him away in shackles to serve a long prison sentence. As far as I know, he’s still in prison. When he becomes eligible for parole, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is supposed to contact me and seek my input regarding the parole decision. And if I think this man is contrite and unlikely to re-offend, then I will be inclined to support parole for him. I don’t know that this inclination could be described as forgiveness. Any forgiveness that I extend to the man who raped me would be conditional; the condition being that he never contact me in any way, ever again. But even if I don’t completely forgive him, I’d be willing to give him a chance to be a decent person again. Just because I don’t ever want to see someone again, doesn’t mean that they’re beyond all hope of redemption. 

*****

Last year, probably about a month before the pandemic hit, I attended a meeting where a very smart woman presented on a pretty complex technical topic. Population in the room was about 70 percent male and 30 percent female. I knew exactly what was going to happen; and voila! It happened!

Five or six of the men peppered the presenter with technical questions of varying degrees of complexity. She handled herself beautifully, and answered all of their questions very capably (at least in my layperson’s view--it could all have been bullshit and I wouldn’t have known the difference). And the thing is that none of the men were even remotely disrespectful to the woman. In fact, every single question seemed sincere (if long and windy) and every single questioner seemed to respect this woman’s professional expertise. It’s just that she was really smart, and the men were terrified that a smart woman might leave the room without knowing that they were smart, too. 

Anyway, this is neither here nor there. It’s just the kind of thing you think about when you’re reading a rape memoir and the author constantly second-guesses her own emotions, and subjects herself to “gender performance” critiques from everyone and their brother. Women aren't the only people who "perform their gender." And it’s OK to forgive, or to at least give a person another chance, even if they don't deserve it. Especially if they don't deserve it

. 

What about another thing...

Because I was curious, I spent a few minutes on Saturday morning watching Newsmax’s coverage of the January 6 insurrection, which I am calling an insurrection because it was an insurrection (and a bloody one), and not a protest, as Newsmax characterized it. Here is a (probably partial) list of things that they did not cover, and images that they did not share: 

• Guy wearing Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt and more than one guy wearing 6MWE shirts (look that up)
• Vandals smashing windows
• Nancy Pelosi’s ransacked office
• Puddles of urine and piles of worse in the corridors of the Capitol 
• A noose hanging from a balcony
• Confederate flags literally everywhere
• Guy carrying zip ties
• People chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”

I share this partial list as a public service, in case Newsmax or OAN might be your primary source of news. They’re not telling the full story. 

*****

One thing that was particularly telling about the Newsmax story was its reliance on “at least” and “what about” logic. When your argument begins with the words “at least” or “what about,” you’re probably already on shaky factual and rhetorical ground. So I won’t bother with my counter “at least” and “what about” list. 

But it’s pretty fucking long. 

*****

Donald Trump, soon to be former President and hopefully soon to be current inmate, is very very upset that he can’t tweet, and notably less upset at the deaths of at least five people whose blood is on his hands. Did you hear about what the President said to Mike Pence when he called him in the Capitol bunker to make sure that he and his family were safe? Nothing. He said nothing because he didn’t actually call. He also didn’t call the family of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. I guess he’s too busy calling lawyers to see if he can pardon himself. I guess that some "blue lives" matter less than others. 

*****

Are you outraged that Big Tech can “silence the President?” Well, maybe you should be. And if you are, maybe you should think about Republican tax and regulatory policy since the mid 20th century. It seems asinine, does it not, to spend decades cutting regulations, cutting taxes, refusing to enforce anti-trust legislation, and fighting labor unions; and then to cry sad sad snowflake tears about out-of-control corporate power? What exactly did you think would happen? “Let’s not ever tax billionaires! They are job creators!” They’re creating jobs, all right. Considering the current pace of growth of the wealth of Jeff Bezos and the rest of that gang, there will be in ten years or so a very small group of men who will have as much money or more than the U.S. Government. And then they’ll employ everyone, and they’ll own everyone. 

The people who are whining about Big Tech’s suppression of free speech didn’t mind corporate excess, back when major corporations (oil companies, banks, agricultural conglomerates) tended to support Republican politicians and policies. It’s a problem now that a corporate sector that makes what we used to call “big business” look like a Mom and Pop shop tends to support Democratic politicians and policies. And it will only end when people come to the realization that unlimited corporate power is ALWAYS a problem, no matter what its political leanings happen to be. 

But meanwhile, do please spare me the “free speech” complaints about social media companies and publishers that are now exercising their own First Amendment rights not to publish or host ideas that they find abhorrent. To paraphrase a widely shared tweet, think of Twitter as a Christian bakery and think of Donald J. Trump as a gay wedding cake. 

*****

And another thing: He’s still the President, at least for now. He still has some outlets for mass communication, should he need to speak directly to the American people. If he’s solely dependent on Twitter, then that’s his fault, not Twitter’s. 

And still another thing: Too bad for you, Ivanka and Don Jr. and Kellyanne and Kayleigh and Mike Pompeo and Stephen Miller and all of the rest of you who thought that you could just hold on for a few more weeks and then sign multi-million dollar book and media and lecture tour deals. No one will hire you now. “Big Tech” and “the Mainstream Media” are going to “silence your conservative voices” and you have one person to thank for that. You might have to keep working for a living. Sad. Very sad. 

Or maybe not. Maybe Newsmax or OAN will hire the whole sorry lot of you. Maybe you can build a new alternative reality media universe, where you can host your own content and publish your own books and broadcast your own news coverage. I guess that’s your First Amendment right, and Godspeed to you. But the truth will always remain the truth, no matter what.

Written record

So I finished with the kitchen and the results were so satisfying that I decided to continue with the cabinets and the closets in the rest of the house. 

Yes, as a matter of fact, that is my idea of fun. 

Anyway, if you haven’t ever thought about how much the world has changed in the last 25 years or so, then try cleaning out a cabinet full of old pictures and documents. There’s a cabinet in our foyer that for the fifteen years we’ve lived in this house has served as a catch-all for all of the random stuff that we accumulate but aren’t quite ready to discard. Yesterday, I emptied the cabinet, clearing away all of the random stuff that I am now quite ready to discard. Then I started opening boxes and I fell down a rabbit hole into the mid 1990s. 

I had my first email account in the late 90s, probably 1998 or so. Before that, I wrote letters, long handwritten letters to everyone and anyone. I didn’t realize quite how many letters I used to write until I started going through the letters that I received throughout the 80s and mid-90s. I didn’t even remember some of my correspondents’ names, but we must have known one another well enough to write. I read through pages and pages of detailed personal letters from friends and acquaintances from all over the place, and they were conversational and full of life and color, and many of them were long, multiple typed or handwritten pages long. I must have written letters at least as long and detailed.

As the sheer volume made manifestly clear, we had plenty of time to write letters, and not just because most of us were young and still single and childless. There were fewer immediate demands on our time and attention. A few pioneering friends had mobile phones (I got my first one in 1998) but they were communication devices only, used for short conversations (because you didn’t want to exceed your minutes) or for the briefest and most rudimentary text messages. Social media did not exist and if you wanted to create a website, you had to have some serious coding skills. Letter-writing was more than a way to keep in touch. It was a means of self-expression, a creative outlet for people who liked to document their lives and relationships, to tell stories, or just to make their friends laugh. We do all of these things online now, which is just fine, but it’s all very dispersed. If you’re on multiple platforms, and you’re blogging and emailing and texting, then you have to figure out how to consolidate and preserve all of your correspondence, unless you want it to be lost in the internet ether.

*****

So right now, I have a few minutes free before I join my first (virtual, of course) neighborhood association board meeting. When I won my election in a landslide, my first thought was not “Victory!” but rather “What have I done? What have I gotten myself into?” I’m about to find out. 

My son is watching a sports show, one of what seems like ten million different daily highlight/commentary/prediction shows on cable. There’s only so much actual sport that these shows can cover in their 15 daily hours of broadcast time, give or take, so they have to cover events and occurrences outside the proverbial arena. And that’s why I’m half-watching a story about yet another stupid idiot saying yet another stupid thing on the internet and I just have to wonder when everyone’s just going to reach saturation point with social media dumbassery. We say that we’re sick of Twitter and all the rest of it, but the news remains well-populated with stories about Facebook dust-ups and drunk Tweets and TikTok fails. 

*****

I wrote all of the preceding a day or so before January 6, which brought a whole new dimension to the conversation about social media toxicity. My favorite part of that whole awful day was imagining Donald Trump desperate to tweet and furious that he couldn’t. The second best part was imagining all of his supporters up in arms about big tech “silencing conservative voices.”  Republicans spent the better part of the last 50 years or so resisting every attempt to limit corporate power and now they're very very sad because out-of-control corporate power is biting them in the ass.

Speaking of Twitter, I reactivated my long-dormant account but I’ll probably de-activate it again. There’s really nothing that I can say in 140-character form that won’t have been said sooner or better, and I don’t feel any compelling need to have my voice heard amid the chaos. It’s a useful outlet, though. If I can post my stupid comments in a place where no one follows me, with no hashtags that make them discoverable, then I can get them out of my head, because there’s only so much room in there. 

*****

On September 11, 2011, my oldest son was an infant, less than three months old. I was still home on maternity leave, and I worried a little bit about what effect my constant news consumption might have on his developing brain. I’d wake up to nurse him, and turn on MSNBC before I even picked him up from his bassinet. I was constantly on edge, constantly anxious about what might be happening, what might come next. After a week or so, when additional attacks no longer seemed likely, I got a grip. I turned off the TV and the radio, and I focused on daily life. I nursed my son in the quiet dark, and I sang him silly songs as I changed his diaper, and I prepared to hand him over to my mother-in-law when I returned to work. 

It’s almost 20 years later. Not only am I back on Twitter, I’m also back on MSNBC and WashingtonPost.com. After months of avoiding politics and current events as possible, I'm obsessed with news again. I can’t look away. Which cowardly cabinet secretary will “resign in protest” next? (Note: Rats who desert a sinking ship are doing it to save themselves, not the ship. They are still rats.) Will there be anyone left to invoke the 25th Amendment? Will the House impeach this weekend? Will the Senate convict? Will the mobs descend again? 

*****

It’s Saturday morning now. I woke up repeatedly last night. At 5:15 or so, I thought I was up for the day. But I stayed in bed, thinking that I’d just try to rest my eyes for a few minutes. And then a weird sound intruded on my (un)consciousness, becoming louder and more insistent until I finally realized that it was my 7 AM alarm. I’d forgotten to turn it off. 

But back to last Saturday. I kept most of the letters I went through during my cabinet-cleaning marathon, but I discarded a few. Not everything is worthy of preservation for posterity. Not every thought needs to be shared in writing. They’re not all gems. This is what I will try to remember when I start tapping out 140 characters worth of pithy, incisive commentary. And I won’t be on Twitter for long, but I still have a few things to say. I’m sure you can’t wait.

Of the People, For the People, By the People (God willing)

Last night, I attended my first meeting of my neighborhood association’s Board, as a newly elected Board member. The President, who is also my friend, laid out the rules, called the meeting to order, and led us through a long list of agenda items, on which we duly commented, debated, and voted. It was democracy in action, writ small. 

*****

I suppose you know where this is going. I’m not even really surprised by today’s events, though I am really, really sad. Really sad. I can go all day if anyone wants to debate about Trump. I can easily point out that the President was pretty quick to condemn violent protests last summer, and that he seems quite a bit less interested in “law and order” now that it’s his supporters who are breaking the law. And I can drop a cheap shot as well as the next person, notably that it’s manifestly clear now why Trump loves Confederate generals so much, because they are losers and traitors just like he is. But what does that help? What good does it do?  

*****

Our association Board meets once a month. Sometimes, members of the community attend the meeting and share comments about matters of concern. Most of the time, these concerns are non-controversial--someone thinks that the tennis courts need to be resurfaced, or that we need to open another lap lane in the pool. Sometimes, comments address more serious matters, and things get contentious. That’s politics, I guess. It’s contentious. It’s a constant struggle, each side making arguments and counterarguments and hoping to convince just enough people that their position will prevail. 

That’s how it started today in the House chamber, too; contentious debate between two sides arguing opposite positions, and then the armed insurgents stormed the barricades and put an end to the debate. But only for now. According to NBC News, the Senate will reconvene in a minute or so. Democracy in action, writ large; at least, I hope so. I hope so. I'm praying for our country. I'm praying for all of us. 

Friends old and new

It always happens, doesn’t it? You think you want something and then when you get it, you don’t want it anymore. Not that I am ever happy to see the end of summer, but one thing that I thought I was looking forward to was not wearing shorts and a t-shirt every darn day. And then I woke up this morning, a sunny Saturday with temperatures in the 40s (in SEPTEMBER!) and I put on jeans and a top and a sweater, and I felt like I’d been stuffed into a straitjacket, bound up like a mummy in clothes that restricted my freedom of movement in a way that I am no longer accustomed to. 

It’s later in the day now, and a little warmer than this morning. It’s not t-shirt and shorts warmer but with leggings, a short-sleeved t-shirt, and a ¼ zip pullover thing, I am quite comfortable. I’m going to walk with my friend. More writing later. 

*****

It’s Sunday morning now, November cold but brilliantly sunny, almost blinding. I walked with my friend and her dog yesterday. My friend is younger and more energetic than I am, and her dog is more energetic than either of us. I like walking with them, because they make me walk faster and farther than I would on my own. We walk together pretty often, and we usually resume our ongoing conversation from whatever point we left off at the end of the last walk. We talk about work, or books and movies and politics, or family. Yesterday, my friend told me that she’d spoken to her mother a few days earlier. “We had lunch at Panera today,” her mother told her. “It was a treat, but quite a bit more food than we expected, so we’re just going to have a snack for dinner.” 

“There it is,” my friend said. “My parents are an insurance commercial.” 

*****

I don’t think much about what I wear when I’m with my close friends. They’re my friends. They know me. They know what I look like. But when I see newer friends, I take more trouble with my clothes and overall appearance. Earlier in the day on Saturday, I had an appointment with a church acquaintance. We work together in a volunteer group that helps new mothers in need, and we were to meet a new client together. So I wanted to look nice, to make a good first impression. This woman is stylish, in an affluent outdoorsy suburban woman way, and she always looks well-dressed and put-together, and I wanted to look well-dressed and put-together too. Or rather, I wanted her to think of me as well-dressed and well put-together. 

*****

Back in late July and early August, I started searching for a barn jacket. Something or someone put me in mind of a barn jacket, like the J. Crew ones that were so popular in the early ‘90s. I have no idea if they’re making a comeback or not, or if this was just one of my short-lived style whims. I looked high and low for exactly the right barn jacket. I couldn’t decide between vintage or new, between red or a dark tan, between canvas with a leather or corduroy collar or lightweight quilted nylon. Eventually, I lost interest because after all, it was still summer and I don’t like thinking about fall clothes in the summer; and because really, I’m not a barn jacket person. I don’t have a barn. I like going outside, but I’m not outdoorsy. I have never been on a horse in my entire life and God willing, I never will be. Nothing against horses, of course. They’re beautiful creatures. I just don’t want to go anywhere near one. I finally got a nice insulated canvas utility jacket with patch pockets and a hood; and I hung it in my closet thinking that I’d get to wear it sometime late in October. And then it was 45 degrees on a Saturday morning in the middle of September and I was glad that I had that jacket. 

*****

Back to my church friend. I’ve known her to say hello to, as my mother always said, for a few years, but we have never really interacted other than to greet one another at church or at kids’ sports practices (our sons ran cross-country together a long time ago). She called me a little while before we were to meet, to let me know that she was running late, and as I listened to her voice, I realized that I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t recognize her telephone voice right away, and her speech patterns and conversational style were not familiar to me. As we spoke, I wondered if we’ll remain friendly acquaintances, or if we’ll eventually become friends.

****

While we’re on the topic of jackets, is there really that much of a difference between a barn jacket and a utility jacket? In terms of function, not so much. Both are generally boxy or relaxed fit canvas jackets, with plenty of spacious pockets to warm your hands or hold your things. Both generally come in rather muted, drab colors. They might be insulated or not. Appearances aside, though, there’s a philosophical difference between a utility jacket and a barn jacket. They say different things about the wearer. The utility jacket is city mouse, and the barn jacket is its country cousin. The utility jacket goes to the museum or to Starbucks, and the barn jacket goes to the stables or to a fall festival. They might have different taste in movies. They might be on opposite political sides. 

*****

My church friend and I finished our task, and we spent a few minutes chatting before continuing on with our day.  We ended up talking about politics (more and more my least favorite subject) and I learned that she is a reluctant but unwavering Trump supporter, because she believes that he is the better option for pro-life voters. I disagree vehemently, but I understand her position. She’s not enthusiastic about Trump, and I’m not enthusiastic about Biden, but on November 3, we’re going to cancel out one another’s votes. 

I’m reading back over this now, and I think that I intended the jackets to serve as a metaphor. One jacket is an acquaintance, and the other is a friend. They don’t look that different until you really start to examine them closely. And it’s not a bad metaphor, is it?  A person might need a barn jacket AND a utility jacket. It depends on the occasion. And a person needs friends and acquaintances. I still don’t know if my church friend and I are going to be real friends or not, but I have not ruled it out and I don’t think she has either. That’s a good sign, I think. Some of us are still willing to reach across the ever-widening political divide to make a friend on the other side. It's not a bad idea to try on a different jacket now and then.