Ineffective coping strategies

A few days ago I saw a social media post that read something like “I’m torn between saving for the apocalypse and saying ‘What the hell, the end is coming soon and I need a little treat.’” And that pretty much summed up the past three months for me. That feeling - that constant desire to buy something silly or have a second glass of wine or a third piece of chocolate, with the concurrent knowledge that I should save my money and that I should not stress eat my way through the day - was just so familiar. Yes, it’s March 2020, all over again. 

*****

Today was an unseasonably cold April day, following soon after a summery weather in late March. Maryland weather: You’re adorable. Whimsical. Delightfully quirky. And I’ll see you in Hell. 

But it’s not all bad. Everything is in bloom right now, so the view outside my window is pretty. The skies were bright and clear today and the bird and squirrel activity was exceedingly entertaining. But the spring 2020 vibes persist. 

*****

I look back at that time, five years ago (and yes, I am still shopping for my crazy old lady, who is now talking about sensitivity to electricity, which means that I am actually Jimmy McGill delivering groceries and supplies to Chuck) and I remember the constant anxiety, the constant worry about how this was all going to end - how bad would the pandemic get, would we all get sick, would our parents and families get sick, would the economy collapse, would all social and political structures collapse, would we be living in the Thunderdome? 

Every day of spring and summer 2020 was an exercise in maintaining some semblance of normality, keeping everyone sane, keeping everyone’s spirits up. And we were among the lucky ones. My husband and I kept our jobs, our kids were in high school and college so we weren’t trying to work and homeschool, and we all stayed relatively healthy. We did all get COVID eventually, but we all recovered. And Trump lost the election, which made it seem like everything would eventually be OK. And then we got the vaccines, and things started to open up, and things were OK, kind of, for a while. But the anxiety persisted. In just a few very short years, Trump came roaring back from electoral defeat, lawsuits, felony convictions, and won the next election. “Won” being a relative term. I have some thoughts about this. I have some questions. 

*****

Last October, I was very hopeful - I thought that Kamala could win and toward the end of the month, I thought she would win. But I never once thought that Trump couldn’t possibly return to the White House, that people would have learned - I always knew that he could make a comeback and I also knew that the second time would be much worse than the first. And I was right, and there is absolutely no satisfaction in being right. 

*****

But we were talking about 2020, weren’t we? It feels like it’s all coming back. I’m restless and distracted, all the time. I’m always in the middle of five to ten different tasks or activities, and I’m always buying some dumb thing that I don’t need. On my TV, a lot of British people are getting murdered in Northumberland, and a wily and irascible female detective in her 60s is solving those murders left and right.** I’m not sleeping well. I’m stressed out. Just like in 2020, I’m not only worried about what is happening right now - I’m also worried about what could happen. And when I worry about what could happen, I go big. The worst case scenario is my default setting. Always has been. 

*****

Take martial law, for example. I’m very unsettled by the persistent rumors that the President will declare martial law on April 20. I’m legitimately worried that this will happen, and I’m dreading the prospect of living under martial law, and my children living under martial law. 

On the other hand, it’ll be fun to mock Republican Members of Congress who will post about “marshall law” on social media. There’s always a bright side. Don’t let me down, MTG. Don’t let me down, James Comer. 

*****

The whimsical Maryland weather continues. Do you think that Trump’s tariff policy is unpredictable? Do you think that the financial markets are a whirlwind of uncertainty? Come visit Maryland in the spring. Stay a week, and experience eight different climates and 15 different seasons. 

*****

Here’s one thing that’s different about this year. The spring of 2020 and the transitional return-to-normal spring of 2021 seemed very very long. Schools here remained closed until after the summer of 2021, and I was working full-time from home, and the contrast between my normal spring of constant sports and activities and the languid pace of the COVID year made the time pass very slowly. But we’re running through this year at breakneck speed. I can’t even keep up. 

*****

Assuming that Trump remains in office for the full four years, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And I have to assume that he’s not going anywhere just yet, so I am going to have to learn how to live with the chaos without reacting to everything, and without panicking every five minutes, and without using shopping and chocolate and doomscrolling as coping strategies. I’ll let you know when I figure out how to do that. It’s probably not going to be today. 

*****

**”Vera,” of course, in case you’re not familiar. By the way, I’m quite sure that Vera is not supposed to be a fashion and style icon, but her whole look is flawless, as far as I’m concerned. Goals. I might need a trench coat. 

American Wiseacre

 I do love when I discover a new author - new to me, that is, because my “new” authors are often quite old if not dead. This one is very much alive, and not all that old, either. 

*****

After finishing a book of essays, I had planned to return to my now-beloved Margery Sharp but then I noticed Elizabeth McCracken’s Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry in my library, and decided to read it instead. I felt like reading another novel and didn’t realize until I started it that Here’s Your Hat is not a novel but a short story collection. Short stories are just as good, though. Apparently, I’m in my fiction era. 

Elizabeth McCracken was quite young when she wrote these stories, which are populated with quirky American archetypes - circus performers, aspiring Quiz Kids, old vaudevillians, clannish large families, con artists, even convicts. McCracken’s older characters - usually the parents and grandparents of the narrators (the stories are almost all told in the first-person) - remember the 1929 stock market crash and the Depression and World War II.

This collection was published in the early 90s, a time of modern attitudes and rapidly emerging technology and major social change and political upheaval. But McCracken’s frame of reference remains firmly rooted in the American 20th century, which most of us didn’t imagine would ever end. The 21st century isn’t even foreshadowed. Neither McCracken nor her characters seemed to have any idea of what was about to happen. I certainly didn’t. 1993 was a long time ago. 

*****

I don’t know if Elizabeth McCracken ever read Flannery O’Connor, but it seems very likely that she did. O’Connor’s influence is evident in these stories, most notably in the elegant and stylish and accomplished mothers who are ambitious for their daughters and the daughters who disappoint their mothers by being rough around the edges or unconventional or uninterested in marriage and children and social status. That’s another American archetype - the mismatched mother-daughter pairing of a no-nonsense, relentlessly upbeat, stylish and beautiful mother, and the daughter who rebels against all that perfection. Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher are the best real-life examples that pop into my mind, but there are many more. 

*****

During the first year of the pandemic, I watched “Better Call Saul,” an episode or two a day, with my then 16-year-old son. Almost every night, at the end of the virtual school and work day, with dinner cleaned up and the house in order, we’d sit down together for our daily BCS episode. My husband and older son soon began to watch with us, and we all looked forward to that daily distraction from the disaster that was the year 2020. 

As I have written before, Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman is a character who could not be imagined anywhere but in America in the 20th century. My sons are both as American as can be, but they are also young. “Who is Karnak?” they would ask. “What’s ‘Let’s Make a Deal’?” And I would explain. But it was more than TV and movie and other cultural references. Jimmy McGill was the embodiment of the brash, confident, almost reckless optimism of 20th century America, and there is no way to explain him to a person born in the 21st century. Sometimes, you literally have to be there. And I would explain that to them, too. I’d explain how when I was young, some things were very much as they are now, but other things were just so different that it was as if we’re living in another country altogether. I guess Elizabeth McCracken knows this now, too, 30 some years after she published these stories. 

*****

I started with McCracken’s earliest published work and just finished with her most recent novel, The Hero of this Book, described by one reviewer as a love letter to McCracken’s late mother. It’s a beautiful book, and defies categorization, though I suppose if I had to place it in a genre, it would fall under A for autofiction. The first-person narrator of this novel is a writer like McCracken remembering her brilliant, charismatic, beloved mother. The narrator's mother is disabled though she hates the word and refuses to yield to pressure to accept help, use a wheelchair, and stop moving. She understands that motion is life, and so she won’t stop moving. She walks slowly and she falls down regularly but she gets up and walks again, one slow and hesitant step after another

McCracken’s alter ego, a successful author, recalls her early work - stories about elderly confidence artists, circus performers, wannabe child prodigies, convicts - the stories of Here’s Your Hat. She continually breaks the fourth wall, addressing readers directly, challenging us to figure out what’s truth and what’s fiction. It’s the Epimenides paradox in fictional form - “All writers are liars. But I’m a writer. And I’m telling the truth.” McCracken even mentions the paradox, making the comparison explicit. She is the Cretan (not cretin lol) in this scenario. 

And McCracken’s brilliant, funny, beautiful, self-assured, and infuriating mother is the titular hero of this book. “An American wiseacre,” McCracken calls her. I can think of no higher praise and no better epitaph. 

Consequences

Have you ever heard of the Order of the Thistle? I saw a headline this morning noting that HRH King Charles has bestowed the Order of the Thistle on his youngest sibling Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh (yes, he inherited the title). I knew about the Order of the Garter and the Order of St. Michael and the tradition of chivalric societies whose only purpose seems to be to honor people who please the King or Queen in some way, but the Thistle was a new one for me. The Order of the Thistle honors Scottish people and honorary Scottish people like the Duke who have performed some extraordinary service to the monarchy. I don’t know very much about Prince Edward, but I’m sure that he has performed many extraordinary services to the Crown, not least of which is that he is not Prince Andrew. 

*****

I just finished watching “Scoop,” the Netflix movie about the BBC’s infamous BBC Prince Andrew interview, an event that I think hastened the inevitable end of the Royal Family. At the time that this interview took place (2019), the Queen was still relatively hale and hearty, and the senior Duke of Edinburgh was still alive though he had pretty much retired from public life. Although the Queen and Prince Philip were living on borrowed time, it seemed that the next generation, led by Prince Charles, would be ready to step in; and the younger senior Royals seemed happy and united and ready to serve the institution well into the future. 

I’m not an expert on the Royal Family. I’m not even that close an observer. And if the UK becomes a republic, there will be lots of things to blame - COVID, the unpopularity of Charles and Camilla, the turmoil surrounding Harry and Meghan; and of course, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, without whom the monarchy seems kind of pointless. But that interview would be a contributing factor because it threw into stark relief the outrageous impunity with which people of that class commit crimes and misdemeanors, and their absolute blank cluelessness about their behavior and its impact on others. I think that it marked the turning point for many Brits who were already ambivalent about the Royal Family and its place in British life. 

“Scoop” conveys the blank cluelessness part very well. Prince Andrew and his slavishly loyal Palace factotum come away from the disastrous interview all smiles, smug and secure and satisfied that the thing went very well, very well indeed. The viewer sees Andrew on the night of the broadcast, retiring to his private quarters to watch the interview, certain that it will be a triumph for him, that it will clear his name and restore his reputation with the British public and press, and that he’ll be able to return his focus to the important things, like a blowout 60th birthday party courtesy of the British taxpayer. Only when his phone begins to blow up with news feed updates and social media notifications and messages does he realize that he didn’t acquit himself quite as well as he thought, and that no one else seems to have noticed that he has a “tendency to be a bit too honorable.” 

A key aspect of this story, emphasized in the movie, is that the interview was the result of the work of three women - a BBC booker, producer, and anchorwoman. Two of the three women (a producer played by the amazing Romola Garai and the BBC anchorwoman played by the brilliant Gillian Anderson) are understood to be establishment figures, well educated and well connected, upper middle class at least. The third woman, Sam McAlister (played by the amazing and brilliant Billie Piper) was the driving force behind the interview, and if the movie hews closely to real life, she was the only working-class person among the three. Billie Piper’s Sam is brash and confident and fearless in the workplace but Piper allows us to see her insecurity, too. We see Sam at home with her school-age son and her mother, their down-to-earth unglamorous household a marked contrast to the Palace and probably also quite different from the households of Garai’s Esme Wren and Anderson’s Stella Maitlis, whose personal lives the movie does not really examine closely. 

It took three women to really clearly see how dreadful Andrew’s conduct was and to understand how important it was to hold him to account. By positioning Sam McAlister as the story’s heroine, the movie also suggests that only a working-class woman would be truly outraged at the impunity with which royals and aristocrats and just plain rich people hurt others and get away with it. Sam McAlister, portrayed by Billie Piper as plain-spoken, flamboyantly blond and label-obsessed (her Chanel pin is like a secondary character) has had enough of Eton and Harrow and Oxford and Cambridge and royals and their hangers-on and enablers, and she’s done waiting for someone to do something about it. By doggedly pursuing the Andrew interview, she not only lands the biggest story of the year for the BBC, she also brings about a small measure of justice for Epstein’s victims. 

Of course Andrew didn’t face criminal prosecution for knowingly participating in sex trafficking because let’s not get carried away here. I wonder how many British people, even if they’re not staunch royalists, would really even want to see a member of the Royal Family in the dock. That’s a question of change vs. revolution, which is quite a bit more than I want to go into right now. But he did face consequences. He lost many of his privileges and his Civil List income. And one of his victims sued him in civil court in the United States, and received a settlement in an undisclosed but presumably substantial amount. Maybe all of this is still not enough but for a person steeped in privilege and wealth and power for his whole life, the loss of those things must have been very hard, very hard indeed. Maybe it’s enough that Andrew had to experience the “find out” part of the proceedings in a very public fashion. 

Based on a True Story

Norm Macdonald on impostor syndrome: “They looked at me the way real vampires look at Count Chocula.” 

When Norm Macdonald died last year, I realized that I hadn’t thought about him for many years. I remember watching him on "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-90s, delivering "Weekend Update" jokes with his gleeful smirk. I thought he was hilarious, but I didn’t see any of his post-SNL work, so I suppose I can’t say that I was a particular fan. But I was very sad when he died, partly in the way that people my age are sad when prominent figures of our generation begin to die, but partly for his own sake. Norm Macdonald could make people laugh about anything. 

Not long after he died, I read his book, Based on a True Story, an almost completely made-up autobiography. I started this book with little idea of what to expect. He begins with stories of his childhood on a Canadian farm (I don’t think he even lived on a farm), listening to his father’s friends telling war stories. Macdonald writes about a trusted family friend who lures the 8-year-old Norm into a shack with the promise that he’ll see a trained squirrel. And then “he turned his gaze on me, and his eyes flashed black like the wing of a crow…and the inside of the shed went black. Then I heard the bolt. I forget what happened next.” 

I mean, holy shit. Holy shit. 

I did some cursory internet research, to see if Norm Macdonald had ever talked about anything like the horrendous trauma that he hints at in this incendiary device of a chapter ending, but I found nothing. Was he joking? Was he suggesting that this kind of thing happens to boys all the time, and then they just grow up and move on and get over it by living chaotic picaresque novel lives filled with blackout drinking, high-stakes gambling, and maritime adventure? I don’t know, but if I were to write a serious novel that included a sexual assault against a child (and I wouldn’t because I couldn’t), this is how I would write it; the child utterly blanking out the trauma and the reader left shocked and horrified and not sure if she has the stomach to keep reading, but ultimately compelled to do so. 

Feeling compelled, I kept reading, thinking the whole time, "only Norm Macdonald." Only Norm Macdonald could make up a fake ghostwritten autobiography filled with ridiculous and entirely untrue stories about seal hunting and amyl poppers and morphine cocktails and gambling addiction and prison rapes, and make almost all of it funny. Yes, including the prison rape part. Actually, especially the prison rape part. The part when he hints at child sexual assault was shocking and horrifying and not funny at all, but the prison rape part made me laugh so hard that I had to put the book down for a while and try to figure out just what the hell is wrong with me that I was doubled over laughing, laughing so hard that I started crying, over a prison rape story. Yes, it was a fake prison rape story, and I knew it was fake; but still, what is wrong with me? 

This is what everyone thinks, I guess, when we laugh at something humor-inappropriate like death or violence or illness or tragedy. What is wrong with me? That joke crossed the line, we think, and I’m still laughing. That was Norm Macdonald’s particular genius. He could cross the line, move the line a little bit further out, cross it again, and then move it right back where it belongs and bring you back with him to the other side, before you even knew what happened. 

After I finished the book, I watched a few minutes of his Netflix comedy special; just Norm Macdonald standing on a stage, beautiful and human in his ill- fitting suit and running shoes, tugging at his collar and wiping the sweat from his forehead and laughing his silly head off at his own jokes. There was something in the delivery, something in the gleeful smirk as he’s about to deliver a completely unexpected punchline, that reminded me of another favorite comedian, Dave Chappelle. About Dave Chappelle, I have a great deal to say, and I’ll do that another time. Here’s a preview: I finally watched “The Closer” months after Netflix released it, months of the usual complaints that Chappelle’s comedy constitutes violence against gay and transgender people. And having watched the show, I have to assume that the online outrage industrial complex hasn’t actually seen it because there’s no way that anyone could see it and still think that Dave Chappelle hates trans people or gay people or anyone else. 

*****

Dave Chappelle on suffering: "I'm not making fun of anyone's suffering. I know it's hard to be everybody." 2021 was a hard year. Almost everyone I know was managing some kind of crisis, some kind of trauma or grief or sadness. In 2021, it was hard to be everybody. 

Comedians have to understand pain and suffering and grief and everything else that isn’t really funny. Great comedians can see the truth better than everyone else around them, and they can always find something ridiculous to make fun of, no matter how serious life gets. When they are also brave enough to actually make the joke, to say the inappropriate, just-over-the-line offensive punchline that gets to the truth of our shared humanity, then they become almost transcendent.

It’s hard to be everybody. This is the reality of a fallen, imperfect world. It’s hard to be everybody, but Norm Macdonald knew that the pain of being everybody is also hilarious. RIP, Norm. 

Notes on Fran Lebowitz

• I started writing this almost a year ago. Now I am looking at the calendar and seeing that it’s 2022 and thus long past time to finish writing my book notes from 2021.
• As always, I refer to my book posts as “book notes” and not “book reviews” because who am I to review anything, and because I seldom stay on topic; and thus a book note could meander off in any and all directions. Consider yourself warned.
• Why bullet points? I don’t know. I don’t know.
• Anyway, the rest of these bullets are what I started writing about Fran Lebowitz back in early 2021.
• I’m always on trend, you know. I’m always doing the thing that’s the thing to do at any given moment. So of course, I watched “Pretend it’s a City,” the Netflix limited series of one-one-one conversations between Martin Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz. I hadn’t thought about Fran Lebowitz in absolutely forever, and it was delightful to make her acquaintance again.
• I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Scorsese. I do like some of his movies, especially “Goodfellas.” I also liked “The Departed” quite a bit; although I have to say, the rat scurrying along the balcony railing at the end was the sort of bludgeon-subtle imagery that I would expect from a high school film class. But “The Wolf of Wall Street” (in which Fran Lebowitz had a cameo, which I had forgotten all about) really bothered me. I get that the movie had to depict the excess and sexual license that Jordan Belfort and his Wall Street bros indulged in, but it could have done that without turning into a veritable porn film. I got the sense, watching the party scenes, that these were young, aspiring, vulnerable actresses who would have done anything to please Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, and I really hated them for taking advantage of that situation. Oh, and Leonardo, here’s another review for you: ”The Revenant” was stupid.
• But I digress. Leonardo still retains some goodwill from “The Departed” (and “Titanic,” I guess. Whatever.) and Scorsese redeemed himself with “Pretend it’s a City,” which was definitely my favorite streaming experience in a long time.
• One of my favorite parts of “Pretend it’s a City” was the scenes of Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz walking carefully through the Panorama of the City of New York, an enormous art installation that is just a giant 3-D map and architectural model of New York City, complete with streets, rivers, and scale models of every building in the city at the time of the Panorama’s construction in 1964. I read that the Panorama was updated in 1992, and that there have been a few additions since then, but no more comprehensive updates are planned, and so most of the buildings and streets will remain as they stood in 1992. Maeve Brennan would approve. I’m sure that most visitors to the Queens Museum are not allowed to traipse through the Panorama, but Martin Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz aren’t most visitors, and even they had to take off their shoes.
• When I was young, I really liked reading Fran Lebowitz’s columns and notes in “Interview.” Reading “Interview,” and reading anything written by Fran Lebowitz, seemed to me to be the pinnacle of New York cool in the 1980s, when I liked that sort of thing. But I had never read her books, so I joined the bandwagon of people who watched “Pretend it’s a City” and then immediately bought or borrowed The Fran Lebowitz Reader, a compilation of her humor and critical essays (actually two books of essays–Metropolitan Life and Social Studies).
• Not long ago, I discovered Poshmark, which is an online selling platform and application that is supposed to be focused on fashion. I say “supposed to” because people sell everything on Poshmark. I have seen toys and books and bobbleheads and antique hair dryers and wedding china and artwork and electronics and who knows what else on Poshmark. I shop on Poshmark because I like to buy pre-owned things, but even better than shopping is just looking through people’s listings and seeing a glimpse into their lives and their aesthetics. People write their own descriptions (sometimes hilarious) and take their own pictures, and it’s like a giant virtual estate sale catalog. I imagine the homes that these objects reside in, and the people who wear them or use them or carry them around. I never tire of seeing and reading about and thinking about people and the things they choose to own and use and live with.
• This is why my favorite essay from the Fran Lebowitz Reader was “The Frances Ann Lebowitz Collection,” because it’s hilarious and because it’s about this very subject. “Collection” is a send-up of a Sotheby’s-style auction catalog of Fran Lebowitz’s “estate,” with curatorial descriptions of her poor-person household junk, complete with badly framed poorly lit pictures, probably snapped with a Kodak Instamatic or some other relic of the pre-digital photography age. The pictures, especially the picture of a 1970s toaster oven and the picture of not one nor two but three Westclox alarm clocks, made me laugh out loud. Yes, it was partially a laugh of recognition, but those pictures and descriptions would be funny even to a person who didn’t grow up with a giant toaster oven on the kitchen counter and a Westclox alarm clock in every bedroom. Tune in again, and I’ll have posted my own Sotheby’s catalog page complete with poorly framed and badly lit pictures of books, Washington Capitals memorabilia, Fiestaware dishes, and Longchamp Le Pliage tote bags, along with droll descriptions. What did I tell you? That’s right, don’t come back here complaining that you weren’t warned.
• As I mentioned, I hadn’t read Fran Lebowitz in many years. I remembered some of these pieces, but others I had never read at all. People wonder why Fran Lebowitz hasn’t published a book in a long time, but it’s pretty clear why. Most of these essays will put you in mind of two things, assuming you’re familiar with both of those things: One is Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners. Like Miss Manners, Fran Lebowitz issues wittily dictatorial (or maybe dictatorially witty) pronouncements about how people should and should not behave, with liberal use of the impersonal pronoun. The other thing is blogs, circa 2007 or so. Many of Fran’s bulleted lists of what one may and may not do, or what one should and should not wear or read or buy, read very much like blog entries from that era. Many of those bloggers were probably inspired by Fran, in fact. But now everyone can write bulleted lists of their own quirky pet-peevy observations, and we all do, and no one is going to buy a book of the same for $27.95, not even one authored by Fran Lebowitz.
• A-ha! Now I remember why I wrote this as a bunch of bullet points. I’d forgotten. It’s been a year, for crying out loud.
• Reading old Fran Lebowitz is like watching a 1980s movie comedy. Some of these essays or at least parts of them, are as funny and relevant now as they were 30-plus years ago. Some bits, on the other hand; some whole essays, in fact, are more than a little “problematic,” as the young people say on the Twitter. Consider “Notes on ‘Trick,’” for example, an essay about lopsided relationships between rich older people (usually men, but not always) and beautiful but impecunious young people (both men and women). The beautiful young people, who are presumed to bring nothing to the relationship other than sexual attractiveness and availability, are called “tricks.” The main idea is that in entertainment or high fashion or high society circles, one person in any relationship is always a “trick.” This idea is meant to come across as witty and sophisticated in a jaded haute New York kind of way, and maybe that’s how it came across in the pre-Weinstein and pre-Epstein age. Now it reads as predatory and creepy. But to be fair, I’m sure that many of the relationships that inspired this essay were actually predatory and creepy. Fran doesn’t seem to acknowledge this, though. In fact, her sympathies seem to lie squarely with the non-trick half of the relationship; i.e., the person with the money and the power.
• So yes, I enjoyed “Pretend it’s a City” very much, and I was happy to rediscover some of Fran Lebowitz’s work. But if you ever needed a reminder that not everything stands the proverbial test of time, this book would be that reminder.

Dressed for the occasion

 

Like everyone else in the United States with a mobile device and a social media account (in other words, everyone except the former President), I joined the “Put Bernie Anywhere” fun this week. My effort appears below. I know, I thought it was hilarious, too. I wanted to put Bernie on my living room couch, too, but I know what will happen if I try that. I’ll spend two hours trying to tweak the photo and crop out the background to make sure that Bernie is positioned perfectly. And then I’ll notice some flaw; maybe a crooked picture on the wall, or a cushion that’s crushed at an odd angle, and all of a sudden, I’ll have spent an entire afternoon on an internet joke. But I digress. 

I am once again asking Bernie Sanders to get off my lawn.

*****

Jackets rank almost as highly as handbags on my obsession list. I think about jackets all the time. When I’m out walking or at Mass or at the grocery store (almost the only places I go right now), I notice other people’s jackets immediately. A jacket is almost like a portable home, like a turtle’s shell, for its wearer. Jackets have pockets to carry things, and a shell or insulation or both to protect against the cold and wet. With color and stylistic details, jackets combine with the wearer’s outfit and accessories to express something about that person, either intentionally or unintentionally. I never get tired of looking at people and their jackets. 

*****

Thanks to the damn ‘rona, I am now addicted to British murder mysteries and police procedural dramas. I can’t get enough of British police detectives getting in and out of cars, interviewing witnesses and suspects, checking their smartphones while they drive on the wrong side of the road, always wearing jackets. 

And by the way, stay the hell out of the UK. People are always getting murdered there. 

Female police detectives in British TV shows always rotate among at least three or four jackets, mostly utility-style jackets with lots of pockets, alternating occasionally with dressier, more formal jackets. Even before the pandemic made it necessary for me to work at home all the time, I was definitely a utility jacket person. My life is, then and now, a utility jacket life. But I do like to imagine myself in an Armani blazer or a Burberry trench; or maybe something even fancier, like a Chanel jacket or a perfectly fitted full-length dress coat. 

The point is that few jackets can do everything. I think sometimes that I’d like to have just one jacket that is suitable for all occasions and all weather conditions and all moods and all circumstances. I have at least a dozen jackets, and they cover most of my requirements, but not all.Maybe that’s why I keep shopping for jackets. 

*****

Bernie Sanders, however, seems to be perfectly satisfied with one jacket. I think the famous Inauguration Day jacket is a Columbia. I recognized the sleeve label. Columbia is the most utilitarian of American jacket brands. I have several Columbia jackets, and they are well-made, reasonably priced, and practical. A Columbia jacket keeps you warm when it’s cold and dry when it’s wet. They’re also not very stylish. You can’t have everything. 

My son and I talked about Bernie and his jacket and his crazy hand-knit mittens. The jacket, I suggested, was a gesture of solidarity. Bernie Sanders is not a poor man, but he understands the realities of poor and working-class life in the United States better than most politicians; and many poor and working-class people make do with one jacket or coat, for all conditions and occasions. People who criticized Bernie for failing to dress for the occasion are missing the point. He was representing a large percentage of Americans who, if invited to the Inauguration, would have had to wear whatever coat they happened to own, appropriate or not. 

That, however, is not why everyone loves this picture so much. First of all, it’s hilarious. As one internet joker put it, it looked like Bernie was stopping by the Inauguration, but it wasn’t his whole day. He just grabbed his Columbia jacket off the hook by the garage door, threw his keys in his pocket, and went out to run errands, including a quick stop at the Capitol to watch the swearing-in. No big deal. Whatever. 

But there’s more to it than that. Everything about that picture suggests a man who is completely comfortable with himself in every circumstance. He’s not thinking about himself at all, in fact. He’s in a particular moment, on a cold day, and his clothes and body language reflect practical preparation for the circumstances, and nothing more. He looks neither self-conscious about being too casually dressed, nor self-satisfied about refusing to adhere to traditional Inauguration Day dress standards. Except for warmth, he really doesn’t care about what he’s wearing. Who doesn’t aspire to that kind of insouciance? Who doesn’t want to be that cool? 

*****

That’s what I’m going to think about, next time I feel like I need just the right coat or shoes or dress or handbag for an occasion, if there ever is another occasion, if this pandemic ever ends. 

Still, if I ever attend an Inauguration, I’m going to buy a dressy coat. 

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.

In earnest

Monday, October 19. It’s Monday, late afternoon, and I’m finished work for the day; or rather, I’m all but finished. I’m waiting for the answer to a question. That answer might or might not come today, but there’s no point in wasting time, so I’ll kill this bird and then pick up the same stone again if I need to kill another one. 

Forgive the poor choice of figurative language. I’m not in the habit of killing birds, with stones or anything else. I am in the habit of doing two (or more) things at one time, an approach that yields mixed results. Multi-tasking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

Anyway, it was a fine day, except that I couldn’t do several of the tasks on my to-do list because I could not read my own appalling handwriting, which grows worse by the day. It’s what I call a problem, because it is a problem. Though I swore that I would never sit for another exam ever again, I’m studying for a certification exam, taking copious notes, and I don’t know how much use these notes will be when it comes time to review them. But the act of writing things down helps me to remember. Except, apparently, when it comes to my to-do list. I still can’t read three of the items that I wrote down on Friday, and I don’t remember what they might be. 

*****

Tuesday, October 20 (two weeks away from the biggest shit-show of an election in American history). It’s Tuesday now. I’m in the middle of at least half a dozen drafts, and I’ll finish them soon. But in addition to writing, I’m also reading P.D. James’ Time to Be in Earnest, a one-year diary of her life from 1997 to 1998, and this inspired me to return for a bit to the daily diary form of writing. Of course, a day in P.D. James’ life generally consisted of having lunch with former Prime Ministers, or delivering an endowed lecture, or meeting with her publisher to plan an international book tour; and mine right now consists of sitting around the house in sweatpants editing IT service catalog pages and creating PowerPoint presentations and wondering what to cook for dinner; but each life has its place, you know?

Oddly enough, I have never read any other of P.D. James’ books. I don’t know what attracted me to this one, but it’s very good. P.D. James happened to have been born at the right time (1920) and the right place (England) with the right talents and gifts to become the perfect first-hand witness to history and social change. The book is supposed to be a daily diary of just that one year, but she also writes quite a bit about her entire life; enough that this is almost an autobiography or memoir. Because the book covers a year that overlaps 1997 and 1998, James records her immediate reaction to the death and funeral of Princess Diana. I’ve watched “The Queen” about half a dozen times, and it’s very interesting to read an Englishwoman’s real-time impressions of the events depicted in the movie. I’m going to watch “The Queen” at least one more time; and I’m also going to read more P.D. James. It turns out that she also wrote The Children of Men, the movie version of which I have also seen about half a dozen times. 

Sweatpants and PowerPoint and half-finished essays and re-watching old-ish movies--I can’t imagine why Prime Ministers, former or present, aren’t lining up to get me on their luncheon calendars. But enough about lunch. I still need to figure out dinner. 

*****

Wednesday, October 21. A neighborhood friend has been posting daily updates on Instagram, with captions that always begin “Social Distancing: Day (number).” He passed Day 200 a few days ago. I didn’t look at a calendar to count and see if he started with March 14 as Day 1, as I would have. It’s enough to know that 200 days is too many days. 

Since March, we’ve had little pockets of normal life here and there, for which I’m grateful. But the abnormal has far outweighed the normal. I’m losing my social skills, and they weren't that great to begin with. I never know what to wear. I spend several minutes every morning puzzling out this question, accounting for weather and video calls and if I’m likely to leave the house and for what reason. And then I put on leggings and a sweater, or shorts and a t-shirt, and that’s what I wear for the rest of the day. 

I keep thinking that I want life to return to normal; that I want to be out in the world, busy from morning to night, and that I want to wear real clothes every day, and to take a bit more care with my appearance. But do I? Do I really? Every day, all 200-plus since March, seems to rob me of a tiny bit more of my energy and initiative. I walk every day, weather permitting; and I still have work. I still keep the house clean. I write every day, and I keep in touch with people. But if I’m honest, and I’m always honest, then I must admit that of all the things that call my name, my family room couch has the loudest and most compelling voice. If I did only what I wanted to do today, then I’d have spent the entire day on that couch, finishing P.D. James and re-watching “Miranda” and “Mary Tyler Moore” on Hulu. And sleeping, because I can’t sleep at night. It’s Day 200-whatever. 

*****

Thursday, October 22. Today is a better day. After a thick morning fog that hung on until nearly 10, the sun came out, and everything looked much cleaner and brighter than it did amid yesterday’s gloom. And yesterday got even worse after I wrote that entry, with pestilence on top of the plague; pestilence in the form of SNAKES. THREE OF THEM. 

I live in Maryland, in the Washington DC suburbs, not in Florida or Australia or the fucking Mekong delta and so I do not expect to have to dodge serpents when I take my daily walk. Yes, they were garter snakes (and one of them was definitely dead) but THREE snakes in one little 2.5 mile suburban stroll is at least two more than I would expect to see and absolutely three more than I ever want to see, because I never want to see any snakes, not even little ones, not even deceased ones. 

You and me both, Samuel L. Jackson. You and me both. 

Today is the the day of the last of the three presidential debates; and I can’t wait to not watch it. It’s also ten days until the start of NaNoWriMo, and I’m going to try that again this year, because what could go wrong. I have a character and (kind of) a plot and everything. It’s very tempting to start writing now, but other than writing down a few ideas (because I don’t want to forget), I am going to follow the rules. I’m going to begin writing on November 1 and I’m going to stop on November 30; and hopefully, I will end up with a 50,000-word novel. That’s 1667 words a day. I can write 1667 words a day on my head. I can’t vouch for the quality or coherence of the words, but I can write them; and if I’m following the rules (and I’m always following the rules) then that’s all I have to do. The editing comes later. P.D. James died in 2014, so she probably knew about NaNoWriMo. I don’t know what she might have thought about it. I suspect she would have disapproved, but I could very well be wrong. And she's not the boss of me anyway. 

*****

Friday, October 23. I am not a TGIF person, not as a rule. It’s not that I don’t love weekends and time off, because I do. But I also like work; and counting the days until Friday has always seemed tantamount to wishing away days of one’s life (one P.D. James book, and I’m already throwing around the impersonal pronoun like it’s dolla dolla bills in a hip-hop video), and that seems unwise. 

But this week? I think I hit the wall with the COVID-enforced WFH this week, and Friday couldn’t come a day too soon. Two days away from my computer and I’m sure that I’ll return to next week’s onslaught of virtual meetings and teleconferences with my customary good cheer, but I spent today teetering on the edge, and one more call would have pushed me right the hell over. 

I was going to continue writing this post for two more days, but I haven’t published anything since October 8 and I don’t want you all to forget about me, so I’m going to wrap up this little dear diary week today. I have a few more pages of P.D. James left; a few more days of 1998, when Microsoft Teams didn’t exist and Donald Trump was just a loud-mouthed real estate developer. A person should live in the present rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, but it’s hard sometimes, I tell you. It’s hard sometimes. 

Little Fires Everywhere. BURN.

Nora Ephron wrote or said something about how one of the worst things about getting older is that when you watch a movie or a TV show, you notice when period details are off, and it ruins the show for you. I knew exactly how she felt when I watched "Little Fires Everywhere."

LFE is a limited Hulu series based on Celeste Ng’s novel of the same title. I have not read the novel and probably won’t, now that I know how it ends. And also because I hated every minute of this terrible hot TV mess, though I did watch all eight episodes, so the joke is on me, I suppose.

Why did I hate this show so much? Well, let’s start with the period detail. It's so wrong in so many ways that I don’t have time to enumerate them all here. Suffice to say that you’ll need to do better than a few bars of “Tubthumping” before I will believe that the year is 1997. I was alive in 1997. I remember 1997. Frozen yogurt existed, but no one called it “froyo.” Cardigan sweaters existed, but not the open-front cascade-style cardigans that became all the rage in 2010 or so. I could list ten more examples, but I won't. And when LFE does get the period details right, it beats you over the head with them. Poor Sarita Choudhury probably sustained serious shoulder and neck damage from the weight of the 7-pound chunky David Yurman necklace that she wears in her first scene. It hurt me just to look at it.

The soundtrack is also a source of pain, with its terrible, terrible covers of angsty 90s girl singer-songwriter songs. I like Alanis as well as the next person, but I do not want to watch a self-important angry teenager perform “You Oughta Know” as a goshdarn violin solo. And “Uninvited” is apparently not slow and sad enough, because the wailing, agonized cover version on the LFE soundtrack is a mental health crisis set to music.

Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington are both fine actresses. In fact, it's their fault that I kept watching this drivel. “It has to get better,” I kept thinking. “Kerry and Reese won’t let me down.” Kerry and Reese: You let me down. I’m disappointed, ladies.

Obviously, Kerry and Reese are not solely to blame for the dreadfulness of LFE. Even with terrible material, their performances are reasonably good; even compelling in a few scenes. But they did serve as producers, so they bear at least some of the responsibility for clunky, obvious characterizations, completely lacking in subtlety. How do we know that Reese’s Elena is a raging, entitled bitch? Well, just look at that sleek blond grown-up Tracy Flick hair and those St. John ensembles and that French manicure, and that perfect Shaker Heights mansion with the insanely complicated family calendar hanging on the refrigerator. Of course she’s a raging, entitled bitch. And how do we know that Kerry’s Mia is an artist? She wears black clothes and chunky silver jewelry (not David Yurman chunky, though, or she'd never have the strength to lift her fucking paintbrush) and she listens to Velvet Underground and Nina Simone and she drives an old Chevy hatchback. Of course she’s an artist.


*****

Did you ever see “A League of Their Own?” If not, then stop reading this trash pile, and go and watch it. I’ll wait.


OK, so did you see the scene when the black spectator catches a ball, and Geena Davis’s Dottie smiles and motions to the woman to toss it back to her? And instead, the woman, who is excluded from participation in the all-white All American Girls’ Professional Baseball League, drills the ball 60 feet or so to Fredda Simpson’s Ellen Sue, who catches it and then rubs her hand, wincing a little. Ellen Sue and Dottie both give the woman a surprised smile and respectful nod; and she nods in return, satisfied that the players recognize her power. The whole scene takes about 15 seconds, and it says more about the injustice of racism and segregation than any 10,000-word polemic ever could.

“Little Fires Everywhere” is well-meaning. It has lots of true and important things to say about race and sex and privilege, about justice and injustice. It just doesn’t say them very well. It could have thrown a baseball; but instead, it wrote a 10,000-word polemic and then it shoved it down our throat, one compound-complex sentence at a time. Rather than trying to be Important and Relevant for eight hours, maybe it should have just gotten over itself and told us a story. I'm always all in for a story. 

Like we're running out of time

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

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

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

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

Old news

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Infamy

Yesterday was Monday, June 1, 2020. I worked a normal (what passes for normal) WFH day, went for a walk, prepped food for dinner, and then turned on the news. My husband and I watched live as tension grew between what appeared to be very peaceful protesters, and officers from the National Park Police, DC National Guard, MPD, and Arlington County Police.

The TV reporters, one of whom wore a gas mask, seemed bewildered more than anything else. They kept explaining that the protests were peaceful; that no one was rioting or breaking windows or even throwing anything. They were honestly curious, as were we, about why the mounted officers were trying to push the crowds back, and why people were beginning to panic a bit. When the teargas was released and the flash-bangs exploded, the reporters became agitated. All of this because the 7 PM curfew was approaching?

We watched the President’s short speech, in which he didn’t mention the reason for the protest, but threatened a crackdown and promised to protect the Second Amendment. And not for the first time in recent weeks, I thought about how the Bill of Rights contains ten amendments, but Donald Trump seems interested in only one.

Then we saw the President and his whole criminal gang walking toward St. John’s on Lafayette Square. And it slowly dawned on us that the teargas had nothing to do with the curfew and nothing to do with restoring order. The police and the National Guard teargassed peaceful protesters gathering in accordance with their free speech and free assembly rights because Donald Trump wanted to walk across the street.

It’s all too new to process now. Maybe this is the turning point, for better or worse. Maybe it’s just Trump upping the ante one more time to see how much more he can get away with. Or maybe he’s finally nearing his limit. Maybe starting now, even his supporters won’t be able to pretend that he’s not a weak and despicable coward. I hope for the latter. But June 1, 2020 is a day that will live in infamy, either way.

On the inside

Someday when all this is over, someone will conduct a forensic analysis of my best-selling coronavirus memoir, with Power BI visualizations to illustrate use frequency for certain words. “Netflix” will certainly be among my top twenty words.

Anyway, I was watching Netflix yesterday, during my daily break between work and compulsive housekeeping. I must be a huge snob because I never watch American political thrillers or crime procedural dramas, but I love this kind of crap when it has a British accent. I’ve never seen a single episode of “Law and Order” but I watched all three seasons of “Broadchurch” and I also watched a season of “Hinterland” because murder in Wales is even better than murder in England.

RIght now I’m midway through “Bodyguard.” Spoiler alert--I looked up a spoiler because I wanted to know how it all turns out. So I already know what happened, even though I’m only on episode three of six.

“Bodyguard” features Gina McKee as a high official of some British security service. She played the friend in the wheelchair in “Notting Hill,” a movie that I don’t particularly like or dislike, but have seen. Until “Bodyguard,” that was the only thing I’d ever seen her in. She looks much older now as of course she would and should because “Notting Hill” is an old movie now. Age aside, though, Ms. McKee is instantly recognizable and looks very much like she did in 1999--just older. Does that make sense? I find that people fall into two categories vis-a-vis aging: Some older people look completely different than their younger selves where others look just like older versions of the people they always were. I’d rather be the latter (I think), but only an observer who knew me then and knows me now can say for sure which category I fall into. I’m not a screen actress so there’s not much video or film evidence of my existence as a person in her thirties.

*****
My body is falling apart. Not really, I guess, but every day I find some minor thing that’s wrong that wasn’t wrong the day before. My left knee and my left shoulder are both messed up and in typical fashion, I’m ignoring the pain until it goes away on its own. I used to be able to do the stretch where you connect both hands behind your back, with one arm  high and the other low; and I can still do it with my left arm high and my right arm low but I can’t do the reverse. Not even close. I also can’t really do the one where you clasp your hands behind your back and then bend over as if to turn yourself inside out. I mean I can clasp my hands and I can bend over, but doing both at the same time is really so much harder than it used to be.

On the upside, I can bend over at the waist and place my hands palm-down on the floor and keep them there. I can still walk long distances. I haven’t been running for a few weeks because I’m afraid that I’ll injure myself and then be forced to divert valuable medical resources away from coronavirus victims. But I could probably run a little bit if I needed to.

*****
I haven’t gotten sick, thankfully. I’m trying to eat properly (a losing battle) and I’m exercising and drinking water and taking vitamins and forcing the rest of my family to do the same. But I still feel a lot more creaky and exhausted than normal. Why is this, I wonder? Wouldn’t you think that with more time on my hands because I’m not rushing here or there all the time, and I’m not spending time dressing up for work and making lunches and putting gas in the car and all of the other million time-consuming daily normal-life tasks, I’d be more rested and less stressed?. Well, that’s ridiculous; first of all, because I’m me and secondly because this isn’t a damn vacation, is it?

So maybe my body isn’t really falling apart, it’s just feeling the effects of this unnatural, uncertain, open-ended crisis. I look in the mirror every day; and other than the shaggy, still-longer-than-usual outgrowth of a self-inflicted haircut and several additional pounds, I don’t think I look much different than usual. But I feel a lot different. It feels different in here, inside my body.

*****

How did I get from British crime dramas on Netflix to creaky joints and hot-mess hair? Oh, how do I ever get from A to completely non sequitur B in these ridiculous posts? That’s a completely different subject; in fact, maybe I’ll write about it.

Oh, I remember! Gina McKee! I was thinking, as I watched “Bodyguard,” that even though she looks older, she doesn’t really look different, but she probably feels different. We can see that she’s the same Gina McKee who sat in the wheelchair in “Notting Hill.” It’s been almost 20 years since “Notting Hill;” and in 20 years, a lot of things happen in a person’s life and in her body and in her mind. Things change, and not only in a bad way. For every wrinkle, there’s probably a new insight or experience. Every gray hair corresponds with some deep sorrow or some hilarious joke. Only Gina McKee knows what it feels like to be in her body; but watching her performance, I got the sense that she's comfortable where she is.

*****
Or maybe she’s not. Maybe she has good days and bad days. Maybe sometimes she doesn’t mind looking older and maybe other times, it bothers her a lot. Anyway, that’s how I feel, so maybe I’m just projecting. What do I know about anything, anyway?

I do know one thing. I realized a few days ago that my recent pain and creakiness might be the fault of the hard wooden chair that I’ve been sitting in during the last six weeks of working from home. I got a better chair and I’m thinking that it will make all the difference. I’ll report back later. Meanwhile, I finished watching “Bodyguard.” As I said, I’d already found out how it ended, but not in detail, so I didn’t really know until I watched all the way through who among the police and intelligence agents would turn out to be a villain. Gina McKee’s character stayed on the right side of the law, which made me happy. I’d been rooting for her.

Terrible beauty

As I mentioned here, I read Say Nothing this summer. As I also mentioned to all three of you who eagerly await my critical opinion, I wrote a whole post about it. So here it is.

*****
I went to Ireland in March. In one of the many supreme ironies that make up my life, I cannot stop thinking about the place that I had absolutely no desire to visit in the first place. Like many Irish-Americans, I grew up with sentimental Irish-Catholic parents who overdid St. Patrick’s Day and hung Cead Mile Failte signs on the front door and had 26+6=1 bumper stickers on their cars. My mother still has that bumper sticker on her car. By the time I reached my twenties, I had developed a hard shell of dismissive cynicism about what I thought of as my so-called Irish roots. So, no, I didn’t want to go to Ireland; and I really didn’t want to go to Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, which is what we did. And then when I finally went, I loved the place and felt more at home there than in any place I’ve ever been. And I miss it and I can’t wait to go back. Oh, the irony.

So anyway, I have been reading more about Ireland, north and south, in sort of a piecemeal, whatever-looks-interesting way. In addition to being about Ireland, Say Nothing is also a critical-mass kind of book--I kept hearing about it until there was no longer any way to avoid it.

The author, Patrick Radden Keefe (who is American) appeared on the Chris Hayes show on MSNBC. I have been avoiding political media, especially TV, but one night as critical mass for this book was still building, I flipped past MSNBC only to flip right back when I noticed the words “Author of Say Nothing” on the lower third of the screen. Keefe was Hayes’s guest.

I had to turn the show off after just a few minutes of listening to these two American thought leaders recoiling in horror at the primitive Irish-Catholic way of life in which families simply accept as many children as they’re given without resort to contraception or other forms of family planning, as Jean McConville and her family apparently did. I don’t criticize anyone who wants to limit their family size. I have only two children and sometimes they’re two more than I can handle. And I would not want to live in Divis Flats or anything like it. But the materialistic worldview that believes that too many children and not enough comfort leads inevitably to misery is just so boring and tiresome.

But I digress. You should be used to that.

*****

If you had any doubt that race is a factor in how the world judges wrongdoing, then any history of the IRA should make you reconsider. If like me, you grew up in an Irish-Catholic neighborhood in a northeastern city of the United States - - Philadelphia in my case, but New York or Providence or (of course) Boston will do just as well - - then perhaps you had parents or grandparents who had a "yes but…" attitude toward the IRA. "Aren't they terrorists?" you might have asked. "Yes but…" insert excuse about religious persecution and civil rights.

And they had a point of course, to the extent that stops short of murder. Catholics in Northern Ireland endured ridiculous discrimination and persecution at the hands of the Protestant majority, who were empowered and enabled by the British. They had every right to be outraged. But the same Americans who despise Islamic terrorists excuse the IRA terrorists, who were just as murderous and just as fanatical, but also white and poetic and wryly funny and Aran sweater-clad and so just romantic enough that Irish-Americans could excuse or at least understand their cruelty and violence. If only al-Qaeda terrorists quoted Yeats or Joyce. If only ISIS looked good in cable knit.

*****
Extreme dedication to a political cause can overcome a person’s humanity. In communist countries, children were taught to betray their families in loyalty to the state. In the United States in 2019, people end friendships or stop speaking to parents and siblings who support Trump (or who don’t). In Northern Ireland in 1972, a mother of ten, a recent widow, was abducted from her home in front of her children, driven to a secret location, and then shot dead and buried in a shallow grave, because she was believed to have betrayed the IRA. Her body was found 30 years later. Her children grew up not knowing what had happened to her, wondering if she had disappeared, wondering if they’d ever see her alive again. What cause justifies a heartless cold-blooded murder without even the comfort of the dead body to bury and give certainty of the loved one’s death? How do the murderers live with the dreadful suffering of 10 orphaned children?

Gerry Adams is the main villain of Say Nothing, though not the only one. The book firmly dismisses Adams' claim that he was never an IRA member, and also partially blames him for the deaths of six of the 1981 hunger strikers. It also confirms Brendan Hughes' and Dolours Price's assertion that Adams alone ordered the abduction and murder of Jean McConville. Hughes and Price are treated with more understanding but their moral responsibility for the murder (and several other murders) is also clear. Other than Jean McConville and her poor children, Hughes is the saddest figure in the book. To his death, he defended the decision to kill McConville. He claimed to be certain that she was an informer, and like many other IRA soldiers, he believed that death was the only reasonable punishment for informers.

Apparently, no evidence exists that would prove that Jean McConville was an informer; and the circumstantial evidence--she was a widowed mother of 10 children, poorly educated, overwhelmed, not well-connected, not political--seems to suggest strongly that she wasn't. Brendan Hughes suffered from PTSD and alcoholism and remained a believer in the republican cause until he died. Maybe he really believed that Jean McConville was an informer and that she deserved to die. Or maybe he had to convince himself that she was, in order to live with the guilt of murdering her and leaving her 10 children to the tender mercies of the Northern Irish social welfare system.

Dolours Price was more complicated. Like Hughes, she rejected the Good Friday Agreement and condemned Gerry Adams and the other establishment figures who agreed to abandon the armed struggle. But she was motivated by something other than politics, too. She was proud of the hunger strike; proud of her determination and endurance. Keefe writes that Price “retained a ferocious pride in her own headlong personal history. When an American graduate student named Tara Keenan visited her in 2003, Price said, ‘I would like to think that what I did was to illustrate to the world the ability of any regular human being to push themselves to the limits and beyond, physically and mentally, because of some deeply felt belief.’”

In another life, Dolours Price might have been a great athlete or scholar or something else that requires extreme dedication and self-discipline. Of course, by participating in the murder of the widowed mother of ten children, she also pushed herself past the limits of human compassion and decency. The hunger strike ruined her body, and the flashbacks from the murders she committed ruined her mind and she died alone, addicted to drugs and alcohol. Maybe she found peace and reconciliation with God before she died. Maybe Brendan Hughes did, too. I hope so.

*****

"Now and in time to be
Wherever green is worn
All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born."

(W. B. Yeats, “Easter 1916”)

Yeats was an idiot, for lots of reasons other than this stupid poem. I can’t think about what happened to Jean McConville, nor the sad and broken-down later lives and deaths of Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes and reconcile the words “terrible” and “beauty.” There was no beauty in Jean McConville’s murder, no beauty in the abuse that her orphaned children endured, no beauty in the self-destruction of Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price and so many others who sacrificed their humanity to the Republican cause. It was only terrible. Terrible and a waste and not noble at all.

I have only been to Ireland once, 21 years after the Good Friday agreement. The country that I became acquainted with is peaceful and prosperous and happy, and that’s the only experience I have of Ireland. It's hard for me to reconcile the green and happy place that I loved at first sight with the dark maze of menace and secrets and violence and fear that was Northern Ireland in the 1970s.

There are grown people on both sides of the border who don't remember the Troubles, who only really know Ireland as it is now. But they have parents and grandparents who do remember the past, and who know that it could happen again. It’s happening again already.

*****
I finally finished the book. I was so absorbed in the story that it was hard to pull myself back to Maryland in 2019. And I found myself as angry with Gerry Adams as Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes were and more sympathetic toward Price and Hughes than any reasonable person should have been. Another day or so and I'd probably have burned a Union Jack and bought a 26+6=1 bumper sticker.

This is probably why I resisted going to Ireland for so long. There was always the danger that I would get attached. There was always the possibility that I'd go native.

*****
After I finished Say Nothing, I read Can You Ever Forgive Me? I’ll write about that later. Then I read Thatcher, a biography of one of the IRA’s  greatest nemeses.

Last week, I had to take a selfie. I was the employee of the week at my job (I went from employee of the year to employee of the week--how the mighty have fallen) and HR wanted to post a picture of me on the company social media accounts. I was working from home and no one else was around to take a picture of me, so I had to do it myself. It was a mess. I took one really, really good one--my hair looked amazing, and the light must have been just right because my face was clear and unlined and glowing. I could have passed for 35 in that picture. Unfortunately, I took it in front of the bathroom door, and I didn’t want to send a picture that had a toilet as a backdrop. So I took another one from another angle, and it was horrifying. I looked like Barbara Bush, God rest her soul.

*****

I ended up finding a picture of myself from 2018 that was not terribly flattering, but not hideous either. It kind of looked like I actually look. It was as close to the truth as a picture can get, And somewhere in between Margaret Thatcher and Dolours Price, there might be something close to the truth about the Northern Ireland and the Troubles.. I won’t actually get to that truth by reading two books, but it’s a start. One question that anyone who has ever studied Northern Ireland must ask is who can ever understand anything, ever? Who but God can ever know the whole truth?

Transatlantic

Friday, March 22. It's 2:17 PM Dublin time and who knows what time wherever I am 40,000 or so feet over the Atlantic Ocean. I'm very happy to be going home.

I should be writing this on my Chromebook, but the space bar isn't working. Because the WiFi isn't working either, I can't find a fix for the space bar. So I'm using Keep Notes to write. Necessity is the mother of invention.

I just finished a white wine mixed with Diet Coke, which is a surprisingly good combination. During drink service, the very nice young flight attendant asked me if I wanted one or two white wines and I foolishly and hastily said "just one." Poor decision making on my part. It's slightly turbulent and another wine or two would not be a bad idea. But it's all good. It's all good.

What is wrong with my space bar, anyway?

*****

I started to feel fluish on Tuesday or Wednesday and I ignored it, for two reasons. Reason one: I ignore all health issues less serious than bleeding from the eye sockets. Reason two: I didn't want to ruin the trip for everyone. But now the trip is pretty much over, so I can stop moving for a bit and just rest. 

Except that I'm 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.

We arrived at Terminal 2 of Dublin Airport just a little less than 3 hours before our flight, and we needed every minute of those hours. I can't express in words the relief of finally shedding all of the extra bags, then passing through both security checkpoints and just waiting at the gate.

Because my travel companion is temporarily disabled by a broken arm, we were granted the privilege of early boarding. In the future, anyone who wishes to travel with me will need to have some sort of injury or disability because it's quite an advantage to have the cabin almost to yourself. We were comfortably settled, with all of our belongings stowed and arranged, before anyone else was even allowed near the plane. And then we got to watch as our fellow travelers (in the literal sense) settled themselves and their belongings, with less time and a lot less room to move.

According to the in-flight map (which wasn't available on the flight over), we are somewhere south of Greenland. I'm listening to music now. I made a playlist, which includes some of the usual suspects (Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga); and a few outliers (The Ting Tings, Betty Who, Michael Jackson, Aaron Neville, Bill Withers). It's a good mix. I can't worry about anything when Aaron Neville is singing "People Get Ready."

*****

I never understand people who complain about airplane food. It's not that the food is so good, it's just that we're on an airplane over the ocean and it's a bit of a miracle that any hot food at all is available. I remembered that it was Friday so I asked for a vegetarian meal and a moment later, I was a bit character on a Seinfeld episode. Call me Vegetable Lasagna.

We're halfway through the flight now. Still south of Greenland, pointing toward Newfoundland. We still have a way to go but we're closer to the United States than Europe now.

We passed over Newfoundland a little while ago and we're approaching either Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island. The path on the map keeps shifting a bit so I'm not sure. Or maybe I just like the names of the Maritime Provinces. I was an Anne of Green Gables girl. Two more hours or so.

We passed right between them, actually, and now we're heading toward the East Coast of the United States, in a path that will take us right between Boston and Montreal. It's nice to be back in a place where people care about hockey.

*****

Saturday, March 23. The preceding was what you get when I'm stuck in a tiny chair with nothing to do except watch silly movies ("Crazy Rich Asians"--ridiculous) and good TV shows ("Derry Girls"--awesome), listen to music, read, and monitor the flight path. I didn't sleep, but I did get up and go to the bathroom 57 times. People probably think I'm a drug addict. I'm still sick, and I'm too tired to write anything more. It's nice to be home. 

I'm so sorry. I'm from Barcelona

t’s Tuesday afternoon, just after 1, and I’m on board an Irish Rail train bound for Cork. We’ll change trains in Mallow for our destination, Killarney. The train was scheduled to leave at 1 and it pulled away from the platform promptly at 1. Apparently, the trains here run on time.

Heuston Station is a huge, mid-19th century rail station in Dublin, right around the corner from the hotel where we stayed. Outside, it’s a pre-Gilded Age granite and sandstone landmark and inside it’s a typical modern commuter and distance rail station, filled with coffee shops and bookstores and newsstands and lots of people.

I’m going to look at a map of our route now. We are passing through what most Americans think of as typical Irish countryside with rolling hills and farmhouses and contented Irish cows. I might need to take a picture.

An hour and a half later, and we’re still proceeding placidly through the countryside. We’re in a four-seat cubby with the pairs of seats facing a table, and my mother and I are riding backward. Poor planning on my part, but it’s not uncomfortable. Our seatmates are two young American students, a boy and a petite, dark-haired girl with glasses, obviously a couple. They studied and complained about their workload for a while, and then the girl took a nap on the boy’s shoulder, as he alternated between scrolling his phone and looking up birds in a field guide. When the dark-haired girl woke up, he told her that he’d seen a particular type of sandpiper that he’d been hoping to see. She seemed happy for him.

The Irish countryside is really just as beautiful as everyone says it is. And now we’re in the insanely picturesque town of Killarney. It’s too picturesque, in fact. It feels like a Potemkin village. Our hotel is very quaint and charming, and if it was a person, I’d want to smack it.

When we arrived, the innkeeper (I have to assume that he is the innkeeper) was busy at some paperwork. He held up a “wait a moment” finger and said “I’ll be just a tick, ladies.” He didn’t look up. After 90 seconds or so, I said hello again and told him that we had a reservation for two nights.

"Of course ye do,” he said, still not looking up. “Name?”

I told him my name. “Ah,” he said. “Here we are. Two nights. Have ye any bags?” And we did, of course. Another staff member, possibly his wife, bustled over, smiling and welcoming. She showed us to our room with its polished wood floor and flowered wallpaper and crushed velvet sofas and toile drapes and 25 pillows on each bed, and we settled in.

A few minutes later, I remembered that I had VAT refund forms to mail, so I went back to the front desk and asked the innkeeper if he wouldn’t mind sending them along with his outgoing mail.

“Well, I could,” he said, “but ye’d probably feel a bit more secure if you posted it yourself, wouldn’t ye? There’s a shop across the street, and a post box just in front. Ye can’t miss it.”

Actually, you can miss it, because I did, never having seen an Irish mailbox. I carried the envelope back into the lobby, hoping he wouldn’t notice, but he did. “Ye didn’t find it?” he asked.

“No, but I’m sure I will,” I said.

He sighed. “Well give it here. I’ll post it for ye.” Well, that wasn’t hard, I thought. I heard him mutter to himself as I walked away, “Ye can see it from here. I don’t see how ye can miss it.”

"I mean, this is supposed to be a hotel, not a Burma railway!"

So it’s Day 3 on this beautiful green island. No matter that we’re staying at Fawlty Towers. We'll see the Ring of Kerry tomorrow, and then we'll sit in a pub and listen to music. As it turns out, the mailboxes are green.