In addition to The System, I'm also been reading Muriel Spark's The Hothouse by the East River. I usually read e-books at night, in bed; and actual books in better light. Plus I like to read more than one book at a time.
Every time I think I've read everything that Muriel Spark ever wrote, I find one that I missed. I'd never heard of this one, and it was a relatively late novel for her (1973). I think that Spark was preoccupied with mental illness of a particular sort, and in some of her novels, the reader is never 100% sure if we're supposed to accept a character's version of reality or not. This is one of those. The main characters are a very wealthy couple living in a luxurious Upper East Side apartment in the early 1970s. The apartment is always overheated, and despite their wealth, the man and woman can't seem to do anything about the excessive heat except to open the windows, no matter the temperature outside.
The reader knows that both the husband and the wife worked for British intelligence during the Second World War, but we don't know what they did. We do know that they're haunted by the war, and that they have never adjusted to peace and the post-war world.
I've been reading this in bed, a few pages at a time, and the combination of real and surreal as I'm falling asleep has left me unsure about what is actually happening to the characters, especially the wife, who might or might not be dead. I'd forgotten how crazy Spark's novels can be. I'm glad I found this one.
*****
It's actually really cold now, legitimately winter-cold. I've learned that dreading cold is worse than actually living through it. Not that I like it, but I'm kind of reconciled to it; for now, at least. There's a little bit of snow, and the house is decorated for Christmas, and it's kind of cozy. Plus, I have new boots. No season that involves Christmas trees and new boots and Washington Capitals hockey can be all bad. It's not good, but it's not all bad.
*****
So I finished The Hothouse (still neck-deep in The System, too, God help me), and have moved on to Joan Didion's Play it as it Lays. I read one Joan Didion essay once and that's all. I'm always late to every bandwagon. I like the book so far, though I'm only one chapter in.
*****
It's December 15; Friday night and a week before Christmas vacation. Another high school swim meet tomorrow; and at some point between now and December 25, I must do the thing that I dread even more than winter. I complain about cookie-baking every year, and although the cookies stubbornly refuse to bake themselves, hope springs eternal.
Friday, December 15, 2017
Friday, December 8, 2017
Officiating
I have to referee a high school swim meet tomorrow. It's my first refereeing assignment this year, and I thought I took notes after last year's Google incident, but if I did, I can't find them. I've been through a lot of notebooks since last year. Anyway, this time, I'm supposed to help train a freshman parent, and I think I'll omit to mention that I once had to Google instructions on when to blow the whistle. I want him to feel that he's in competent hands. Ignorance is bliss. Do as I say, not as I do.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
The Baby and the Bathwater
It's two months post-Weinstein now, and everyone seems to have came to a sort of simultaneous mass agreement to enforce zero tolerance on sexual harassment or misconduct. All of a sudden, any man (well, ALMOST any man) who has ever behaved or spoken inappropriately has to be punished, severely and possibly permanently.
But the baby is still in the dirty bathwater, isn't he? Bari Weiss** said something about revolutions taking on a life of their own, quickly swallowing everyone in their path, devouring the guilty, the innocent, and the indifferent bystanders, and it's not unlikely that this revolution will have unintended consequences. Ideally, the culture will shift toward an idea of sexuality that acknowledges and respects human dignity. But if you have been on this blog for more than five minutes, then you know that I never expect the ideal outcome. The worst case scenario is my default option. I even have a tag.
Like lots of other #metoo women, I have mixed feelings about this. Weinstein deserves his comeuppance (the word of the moment), and so do lots of other prominent men. With super high-profile people like Weinstein and Matt Lauer, the worst offense is not so much the wildly inappropriate or even illegal sexual behavior; it's the gross abuse of power. In those cases, the public downfall is more than deserved. (And it should have happened to Donald Trump. And it should have happened to Bill Clinton. And it's not too late.)
But there's the baby and there's the bathwater. I would like to drain the dirty bathwater, and then thoroughly scrub the tub, but I don't want to discard the baby. I like the baby. I like a lot of men who might, at some point during their personal or professional lives, have said or done something offensive or stupid. In fact, I love some of those men, and I don't want to see them--my friends, or my brothers, or my cousins, or my colleagues might be among them--cast into outer darkness forever. Should we judge the behavior of twenty or even five years ago by the standard of today? Because if so, then who among us will stand up to scrutiny?
On the other hand (there's always another hand, isn't there? It's why we have two) I have extremely limited patience with the men who are now crying that they just don't know where the line is anymore. They just don't know how to behave! They don't know what they're allowed to do or say! Because it's not that hard. If you're not intimately involved with a woman, then she does not want you to touch most parts of her body. If you work with women, then they do not want to see naked pictures of you or anyone else, and they don't want to talk about sex, either. Because it's work. See? Pretty easy.
The larger implications of this whole thing are just beginning to become clear. Or at least one specific thing is clear, and that's that the sex-soaked culture of the last 50 years, in which every aspect of entertainment, art, sports, music, politics, and pretty much every other field of human endeavor is permeated and dominated by sex, will have to change. If we're going to hold men (and women, of course) accountable for maintaining a level of decorum that excludes recreational sexual aggression, then we probably can't shove near-naked bodies in people's faces 24 hours a day anymore.
On its own, that's a good thing. Even if I wasn't a Catholic, I wouldn't actually want to see sex scenes in every movie. I'm disgusted and bored by crude sexual humor on the radio and on TV. I cringe when I hear the lyrics of some of my children's favorite songs. I'm tired of seeing so-called cheerleaders dressed like pole dancers.*
But the baby is still in the dirty bathwater, isn't he? Bari Weiss** said something about revolutions taking on a life of their own, quickly swallowing everyone in their path, devouring the guilty, the innocent, and the indifferent bystanders, and it's not unlikely that this revolution will have unintended consequences. Ideally, the culture will shift toward an idea of sexuality that acknowledges and respects human dignity. But if you have been on this blog for more than five minutes, then you know that I never expect the ideal outcome. The worst case scenario is my default option. I even have a tag.
And what's the worst-case scenario? There are any number, but the one that I can see rising to the top is a new Puritanism that combines the very worst of radical feminist hatred of men and radical religious hatred of women, in a country so divided that you won't be sure which standard prevails from one county to the next. In this scenario, Roy Moore wins in Alabama and ten years later, he's part of the moderate wing of whatever new party replaces the Republican party; the moderate wing being the one that believes that a man should only beat the women he's related to, and that a man shouldn't marry a 14-year-old girl without her father's permission. Meanwhile, in what we now call the blue states, men will be fined or arrested for smiling at women they're not married to, and state-financed abortion up to forty weeks will be a basic civil right.
Or maybe the whole thing will blow over, and everything will be back to normal, whatever that is, in six months. I don't think so, though. I think that a hard rain is going to fall. I think there's going to be a sea change. I'm praying that it's the right one.
*****
*That's not so much an attack on NFL cheerleaders as a defense of pole dancers. Why should we consider a stripper a social undesirable; while NFL cheerleaders, who dress and behave in the same manner, are held up as examples of wholesome young womanhood?
**By the way, I agree with a lot of Ms. Weiss's column, but I've never heard anyone say "Believe all women." There's a huge difference between "Believe women" and "Believe all women," always and everywhere, just because they're women. It's the baby and the bathwater again. Don't throw away the very reasonable "Believe women" because it sounds almost like "Believe ALL women." They are two different things.
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Books and movies
So a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I bought a pile of books at the Friends of the Library book sale, one of my favorite semi-annual events, and I think I promised (threatened) to tell you all about the books that I bought. Here's the list.
Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters. I had never heard of either the book or the author, but the cover and the hand-drawn illustrations appealed to me. I read this one first. It's very, very sad, and funny in bits (though not "hilarious" as many of the blurbs exclaimed because spoiler alert, there's only so much humor that you can wring out of the life of a drug-addicted homeless man who suffered horrendous abuse as a child and eventually took his own life at age 34). It's a life backwards because the author begins with the present, and then works backward through Stuart's teenage and childhood years. Apparently, there was a movie, starring Tom Hardy, one of the last actors I'd expect to see in this role.
Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II, Strobe Talbott. Not sure if I'll ever get around to actually reading this, but I'll report back if I do.
Fortunes of War (The Levant Trilogy, Volume II), Olivia Manning. I normally won't watch a movie if I loved the book, but this is a rare case in which I saw the movie first. It was actually a Masterpiece Theater miniseries, starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson when they were still married. It was very good, and I always meant to read the book; or books, because it is a trilogy (not sure how I feel about starting with Volume II). Anyway, if it's half as good as The Cazalet Chronicles, then it's money well spent.
The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point, Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder. I'm actually reading this now. Despite the hilarious quaint nostalgia of the subtitle (and the whole premise of the book, if it comes to that), it's actually a very lively read. The aforementioned premise is that the American political system (kind of annoyingly referred to as The System throughout the book), which comprises politicians and elected officials, political appointees, journalists, lobbyists, and consultants, broke down into complete fragmentation and chaos during the Clinton/Gingrich years.
Adorable, right? If only the authors had known what was coming.* But they're right in many ways. I once had to write a paper about the Carter White House, and while I was researching the malaise speech, I ran across a Hugh Heclo essay that blamed Bill Clinton for the "permanent campaign" that has so damaged American politics. Clinton and Gingrich share the blame. Both of them paved the way for the swamp that Donald Trump has shockingly failed to drain.
Anywhere but Here, Mona Simpson. Oddly enough, this is the second book in the group that I have seen the movie version of, but have not yet read. I liked the movie.
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (1st ed.) I read the Nook version of this soon after it was published. I don't remember much of the plot, except that it opens with a terrorist attack in a museum, and then follows the protagonist around the world as he lives his life while concealing an immensely valuable painting that he took from the museum in the aftermath of the bombing. Although I don't remember many details, I do remember that it was astonishingly good. I might read it again, but even if I don't, I'm happy to have a hardcover copy, and a first edition, at that.
Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, Mikhail Gorbachev (1st ed.) Another first edition! I'm only a bibliophile in the sense that I really love to read books. I don't really care about their cash value as objects. But this one has huge historic significance, and it's exciting to have one of the first copies in print. I'll definitely read it, because the only thing better than reading about the Soviet Union is reading about the end of the Soviet Union. Another common element: This author, like Broder and Johnson, probably had no idea what was coming.
*****
*Case in point: I wrote that sentence on Tuesday night, before Trump weighed in on Matt Lauer and all but accused Joe Scarborough of committing a murder. The System is literally deteriorating by the day. Though they didn't know it at the time, Johnson and Broder were writing about the good old days.
Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters. I had never heard of either the book or the author, but the cover and the hand-drawn illustrations appealed to me. I read this one first. It's very, very sad, and funny in bits (though not "hilarious" as many of the blurbs exclaimed because spoiler alert, there's only so much humor that you can wring out of the life of a drug-addicted homeless man who suffered horrendous abuse as a child and eventually took his own life at age 34). It's a life backwards because the author begins with the present, and then works backward through Stuart's teenage and childhood years. Apparently, there was a movie, starring Tom Hardy, one of the last actors I'd expect to see in this role.
Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II, Strobe Talbott. Not sure if I'll ever get around to actually reading this, but I'll report back if I do.
Fortunes of War (The Levant Trilogy, Volume II), Olivia Manning. I normally won't watch a movie if I loved the book, but this is a rare case in which I saw the movie first. It was actually a Masterpiece Theater miniseries, starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson when they were still married. It was very good, and I always meant to read the book; or books, because it is a trilogy (not sure how I feel about starting with Volume II). Anyway, if it's half as good as The Cazalet Chronicles, then it's money well spent.
The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point, Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder. I'm actually reading this now. Despite the hilarious quaint nostalgia of the subtitle (and the whole premise of the book, if it comes to that), it's actually a very lively read. The aforementioned premise is that the American political system (kind of annoyingly referred to as The System throughout the book), which comprises politicians and elected officials, political appointees, journalists, lobbyists, and consultants, broke down into complete fragmentation and chaos during the Clinton/Gingrich years.
Adorable, right? If only the authors had known what was coming.* But they're right in many ways. I once had to write a paper about the Carter White House, and while I was researching the malaise speech, I ran across a Hugh Heclo essay that blamed Bill Clinton for the "permanent campaign" that has so damaged American politics. Clinton and Gingrich share the blame. Both of them paved the way for the swamp that Donald Trump has shockingly failed to drain.
Anywhere but Here, Mona Simpson. Oddly enough, this is the second book in the group that I have seen the movie version of, but have not yet read. I liked the movie.
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (1st ed.) I read the Nook version of this soon after it was published. I don't remember much of the plot, except that it opens with a terrorist attack in a museum, and then follows the protagonist around the world as he lives his life while concealing an immensely valuable painting that he took from the museum in the aftermath of the bombing. Although I don't remember many details, I do remember that it was astonishingly good. I might read it again, but even if I don't, I'm happy to have a hardcover copy, and a first edition, at that.
Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, Mikhail Gorbachev (1st ed.) Another first edition! I'm only a bibliophile in the sense that I really love to read books. I don't really care about their cash value as objects. But this one has huge historic significance, and it's exciting to have one of the first copies in print. I'll definitely read it, because the only thing better than reading about the Soviet Union is reading about the end of the Soviet Union. Another common element: This author, like Broder and Johnson, probably had no idea what was coming.
*****
*Case in point: I wrote that sentence on Tuesday night, before Trump weighed in on Matt Lauer and all but accused Joe Scarborough of committing a murder. The System is literally deteriorating by the day. Though they didn't know it at the time, Johnson and Broder were writing about the good old days.
Sunday, November 26, 2017
An incident
This was probably the 20th time that I've hosted Thanksgiving. Each year, it gets a little easier. I learn new tricks, and refine established processes, and make slight improvements. The dinner hasn't cooked itself yet, but hope springs eternal.
Everyone who mashes potatoes knows that Yukon Gold potatoes are best for mashing. Some potatoes are good for roasting, others for baking, others for frying; but Yukon Gold make the best mashed potatoes. They have a nice color, and they crumble very nicely when they're cooked, making them easy to mash and then whip.
And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. Thanks to the Internet, EVERYONE knows this; which means that sometimes it's hard to find YG potatoes during Thanksgiving week. I had to go to two stores; and in the second store, I had to dig to find one of the two remaining bags of YG among the piles of Russett and Idaho. Even if you don't have 20 years of hard-earned potato-mashing experience, you can ask Google what kind of potatoes you should mash, and because Google knows everything, it will tell you that you need Yukon Gold. This is why I can never find the boy peppers when I need them. There's no such thing as insider knowledge any more. The well-kept secret is no longer a secret. The cat is out of the proverbial bag.
But the potato hunt was worthwhile, because dinner was delicious.
*****
I'm not a particularly dramatic person. I prefer not to draw a lot of attention to myself, and I seldom show emotion in public. I'm not a scene-causer. Except on rare occasions.
Like today (today being the day after Thanksgiving).
My younger son and I were at Safeway, shopping for our annual neighborhood Thanksgiving get-together (normally held on the night before Thanksgiving, but this year, on Saturday, because we had hockey tickets for Wednesday night). We were crossing the parking lot, just behind a car, which I couldn't describe to you now. The car, to my horror, began to back up, forcing me to actually grab and stop it so that it wouldn't knock us down.
I started banging on the car, and the driver, an older man, cracked the window.
"What is wrong with you?" I screamed. "You almost ran over my son!"
"You came out of nowhere," he said.
"WHAT? That's your response? You almost run over my 11-year-old child, and we came out of nowhere? You're supposed to LOOK BEHIND YOU BEFORE YOU BACK UP! IDIOT!" I was angrier than I can remember being in I don't even know how long.
"I looked in the mirror," he protested, "but you and your son walked out right between the parked cars and I didn't see you..."
"BETWEEN THE PARKED CARS? It's a PARKING LOT! EVERYONE WALKS IN BETWEEN PARKED CARS!!! And you didn't look, or YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN US!" I smacked his car again a few times.
"Well, I certainly didn't intend to hit anyone," he said, a bit huffily.
I smacked his car a half-dozen more times (my hand actually still hurts). "APOLOGY ACCEPTED!" I screamed.
My older son would have joined the melee, and I'd have had to tell him to zip it, but my younger son just stood quietly, pretending to be an onlooker who was in no way related to the crazy car-smacking lady (really, my hand is going to be sore for several days). We walked into Safeway together, my son looking furtively around and hoping no one was looking at us; me still seething. "Idiot," I fumed. "Between the parked cars! It's a parking lot! He didn't even look!"
"By the way, Mom, I'm 13," my son pointed out.
"I know," I said. "I have no idea why I said that. I was so upset."
"I mean, I've been 13 for a while."
We walked into the store, and I turned around to grab a cart, just in time to see the man walk in. My son saw him too. "That's not him, Mom," he said.
"It's him," I said.
"Pretty sure it's not," he said nervously.
The man approached me. "I actually am very sorry," he said. "I'm a father and a grandfather, and I'd have hated to cause any harm to your child."
"I appreciate that," I said. "I know that you didn't do it on purpose, but it seemed that you were blaming us, and that combined with the adrenaline response made me react more emotionally than I normally do."
"I understand," he said. "I really do apologize."
"It's OK," I said. "No harm was done." (Not 100% true. It's Sunday morning now, and my hand still hurts a little.)
"Thank God," he said. Thank God, indeed. The rest of the errand-running proceeded without incident.
*****
So it's Sunday afternoon now, and a long weekend, marred only by the parking lot altercation, is coming to an end. Like most other things that are supposed to be fun, the holidays are a source of anxiety and panic for me. I always think that there's something that I should do better, or more of, to make the season perfect for my family. But despite last-minute misgivings, the party was a success, and my Christmas shopping is underway. My husband and sons are setting up the brand-new 65-inch TV that they just bought at Costco. The old 42-inch TV was just fine, but every few years, a new TV calls my husband and I can't do a damn thing to stop him from responding to the call. I'll be able to see the tape on Alexander Ovechkin's hockey stick now. It's just less than a month until Christmas.
Everyone who mashes potatoes knows that Yukon Gold potatoes are best for mashing. Some potatoes are good for roasting, others for baking, others for frying; but Yukon Gold make the best mashed potatoes. They have a nice color, and they crumble very nicely when they're cooked, making them easy to mash and then whip.
And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. Thanks to the Internet, EVERYONE knows this; which means that sometimes it's hard to find YG potatoes during Thanksgiving week. I had to go to two stores; and in the second store, I had to dig to find one of the two remaining bags of YG among the piles of Russett and Idaho. Even if you don't have 20 years of hard-earned potato-mashing experience, you can ask Google what kind of potatoes you should mash, and because Google knows everything, it will tell you that you need Yukon Gold. This is why I can never find the boy peppers when I need them. There's no such thing as insider knowledge any more. The well-kept secret is no longer a secret. The cat is out of the proverbial bag.
But the potato hunt was worthwhile, because dinner was delicious.
*****
I'm not a particularly dramatic person. I prefer not to draw a lot of attention to myself, and I seldom show emotion in public. I'm not a scene-causer. Except on rare occasions.
Like today (today being the day after Thanksgiving).
My younger son and I were at Safeway, shopping for our annual neighborhood Thanksgiving get-together (normally held on the night before Thanksgiving, but this year, on Saturday, because we had hockey tickets for Wednesday night). We were crossing the parking lot, just behind a car, which I couldn't describe to you now. The car, to my horror, began to back up, forcing me to actually grab and stop it so that it wouldn't knock us down.
I started banging on the car, and the driver, an older man, cracked the window.
"What is wrong with you?" I screamed. "You almost ran over my son!"
"You came out of nowhere," he said.
"WHAT? That's your response? You almost run over my 11-year-old child, and we came out of nowhere? You're supposed to LOOK BEHIND YOU BEFORE YOU BACK UP! IDIOT!" I was angrier than I can remember being in I don't even know how long.
"I looked in the mirror," he protested, "but you and your son walked out right between the parked cars and I didn't see you..."
"BETWEEN THE PARKED CARS? It's a PARKING LOT! EVERYONE WALKS IN BETWEEN PARKED CARS!!! And you didn't look, or YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN US!" I smacked his car again a few times.
"Well, I certainly didn't intend to hit anyone," he said, a bit huffily.
I smacked his car a half-dozen more times (my hand actually still hurts). "APOLOGY ACCEPTED!" I screamed.
My older son would have joined the melee, and I'd have had to tell him to zip it, but my younger son just stood quietly, pretending to be an onlooker who was in no way related to the crazy car-smacking lady (really, my hand is going to be sore for several days). We walked into Safeway together, my son looking furtively around and hoping no one was looking at us; me still seething. "Idiot," I fumed. "Between the parked cars! It's a parking lot! He didn't even look!"
"By the way, Mom, I'm 13," my son pointed out.
"I know," I said. "I have no idea why I said that. I was so upset."
"I mean, I've been 13 for a while."
We walked into the store, and I turned around to grab a cart, just in time to see the man walk in. My son saw him too. "That's not him, Mom," he said.
"It's him," I said.
"Pretty sure it's not," he said nervously.
The man approached me. "I actually am very sorry," he said. "I'm a father and a grandfather, and I'd have hated to cause any harm to your child."
"I appreciate that," I said. "I know that you didn't do it on purpose, but it seemed that you were blaming us, and that combined with the adrenaline response made me react more emotionally than I normally do."
"I understand," he said. "I really do apologize."
"It's OK," I said. "No harm was done." (Not 100% true. It's Sunday morning now, and my hand still hurts a little.)
"Thank God," he said. Thank God, indeed. The rest of the errand-running proceeded without incident.
*****
So it's Sunday afternoon now, and a long weekend, marred only by the parking lot altercation, is coming to an end. Like most other things that are supposed to be fun, the holidays are a source of anxiety and panic for me. I always think that there's something that I should do better, or more of, to make the season perfect for my family. But despite last-minute misgivings, the party was a success, and my Christmas shopping is underway. My husband and sons are setting up the brand-new 65-inch TV that they just bought at Costco. The old 42-inch TV was just fine, but every few years, a new TV calls my husband and I can't do a damn thing to stop him from responding to the call. I'll be able to see the tape on Alexander Ovechkin's hockey stick now. It's just less than a month until Christmas.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning
Depression is nothing if not predictable. Not so much in when it comes back as in that it always does seem to come back. I don't like to talk about it anymore, not to anyone, so I just write about it here, and wait for it to go away.
When I don't want to get out of bed, and I don't want to do any of the things that I need or like to do, I make myself do them anyway. It helps a little bit. It helps to go out walking on Sunday morning and find that Running Lady is out running, and that Bike Helmet Guy is out for his morning ride, and that my neighbor is out walking the World's Happiest Dog. I don't really even know most of these people, but we always say hello because we're neighbors, and we like to be outside on Sunday mornings, even when it's cold. And you can't feel completely bad after two minutes with the WHD.
Another thing that's predictable: It always feels like it will never go away, and like the fog will never lift, but it always does.
*****
My younger son is a planner. He likes to be prepared. You never know, for example, when you might need a mini survival kit packed in an Altoids tin, or a large notebook and pens in every color, or a rolled-up towel, so he usually just tries to bring everything with him, just in case. He loves to go on trips and outings, and planning and packing are his favorite part of every trip.
We have to rein him in sometimes. Deep in the weeds of gathering every possible thing that he could ever possibly need, and in figuring out the perfect system for organizing and carrying it all, he will forget that one small 13-year-old boy won't enjoy a trip to Hersheypark when he's carrying a forty-pound pack containing extra socks and gloves, a freezer pack to keep chocolate from melting, a flashlight, and a water bottle big enough to sustain an expedition through the Gobi Desert. "Put that back," we tell him. "There are no circumstances under which you'll need a scientific calculator. And your fielder's glove is too heavy to carry all day."
I haven't been to Hersheypark since I was 15 or so. My son sent me pictures (he was invited to join a friend's birthday trip), and it's nothing like what I remember. But he had fun, and he bought king-size candy for all of us: A Mr. Goodbar for my husband, Reese's Cups for my other son, and a four-piece Mounds for me. I still have three left. So things can't be all bad.
*****
And I think that's all for now.
When I don't want to get out of bed, and I don't want to do any of the things that I need or like to do, I make myself do them anyway. It helps a little bit. It helps to go out walking on Sunday morning and find that Running Lady is out running, and that Bike Helmet Guy is out for his morning ride, and that my neighbor is out walking the World's Happiest Dog. I don't really even know most of these people, but we always say hello because we're neighbors, and we like to be outside on Sunday mornings, even when it's cold. And you can't feel completely bad after two minutes with the WHD.
Another thing that's predictable: It always feels like it will never go away, and like the fog will never lift, but it always does.
*****
My younger son is a planner. He likes to be prepared. You never know, for example, when you might need a mini survival kit packed in an Altoids tin, or a large notebook and pens in every color, or a rolled-up towel, so he usually just tries to bring everything with him, just in case. He loves to go on trips and outings, and planning and packing are his favorite part of every trip.
We have to rein him in sometimes. Deep in the weeds of gathering every possible thing that he could ever possibly need, and in figuring out the perfect system for organizing and carrying it all, he will forget that one small 13-year-old boy won't enjoy a trip to Hersheypark when he's carrying a forty-pound pack containing extra socks and gloves, a freezer pack to keep chocolate from melting, a flashlight, and a water bottle big enough to sustain an expedition through the Gobi Desert. "Put that back," we tell him. "There are no circumstances under which you'll need a scientific calculator. And your fielder's glove is too heavy to carry all day."
I haven't been to Hersheypark since I was 15 or so. My son sent me pictures (he was invited to join a friend's birthday trip), and it's nothing like what I remember. But he had fun, and he bought king-size candy for all of us: A Mr. Goodbar for my husband, Reese's Cups for my other son, and a four-piece Mounds for me. I still have three left. So things can't be all bad.
*****
And I think that's all for now.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Seasonal
As I mentioned last week, I was thinking about buying a Surface. But I didn't want to spend so much money, so I decided to just stick with writing notes by hand or on my phone. I still wanted a smaller computer, though. Then I thought, a-ha! Chromebook! Much cheaper, and it will do everything I want it to do.
I came this close to buying one, and then I remembered that I have a 7-inch tablet that I hardly ever use. It didn't seem right to buy another piece of technology when I already have something that's only a few years old. I bought the tablet in 2014, but it already feels like a relic of the Obama years. If I pulled it out of my bag at at meeting, someone would probably tell me that 2010 called, and it wants its technology back. Seven years feels like a long time ago; and it's a generation, in terms of popular culture and technology. So maybe I'll just be the quirky person who likes antique technology, like a Polaroid camera or an IBM Selectric.
Or maybe not. I'm typing on this little on-screen keyboard, which I have to look at, because I can't touch-type without actual keys. I looked away just long enough to watch the Capitals score against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Anyway, it's not the best solution. The tablet, I mean. The Capitals beating the Penguins is always the best solution. The on-screen keyboard, though the predictive text feature is excellent, is still way too slow for me. I type pretty fast. The technology has to keep up.
Enough of that. I'm back on the PC now, typing fast, but thinking not quite so fast. I found a 10-inch Chromebook that's not the prettiest device, but it might be small enough to carry and large enough to actually be useful, so it's a possibility. The Capitals beat the Penguins 4-1.
*****
It's winter-cold now, after weeks of unseasonable warmth. I dread cold the way that other people dread root canal or an income tax audit. As a matter of fact, I've had a root canal, and it's not as bad as winter. But I had to do several outdoor things today, and it wasn't as bad as I expected. So maybe I'm getting tougher with age.
*****
After a short beta test, Twitter has officially doubled its character limit from 140 to 280. Obvious twice-as-long-Trump-tweet jokes aside, this is bad news for an entirely different reason. I'm very good at expressing an idea in 140 or fewer characters. Very good. This isn't a boast as much as an acknowledgement that I have very few real skills; this is one of them, and now it's no longer relevant. Spelling, total recall of useless facts, and snappy comebacks are all I have left.
*****
Despite the cold, I took an early-morning walk this morning, because I get so little outdoor time during the winter work week. The air was cold and still, and it smelled like snow. Now it's 3:45 on Sunday afternoon and the pale sunlight is already waning. I couldn't live in one of those Scandinavian towns that gets four hours of sunlight a day. Winter has its charms, though. The sunlight looks pretty, filtered through the almost-bare trees, and it's kind of cozy in here. I'll write my next post on the Chromebook that I just bought.
*****
It's winter-cold now, after weeks of unseasonable warmth. I dread cold the way that other people dread root canal or an income tax audit. As a matter of fact, I've had a root canal, and it's not as bad as winter. But I had to do several outdoor things today, and it wasn't as bad as I expected. So maybe I'm getting tougher with age.
*****
After a short beta test, Twitter has officially doubled its character limit from 140 to 280. Obvious twice-as-long-Trump-tweet jokes aside, this is bad news for an entirely different reason. I'm very good at expressing an idea in 140 or fewer characters. Very good. This isn't a boast as much as an acknowledgement that I have very few real skills; this is one of them, and now it's no longer relevant. Spelling, total recall of useless facts, and snappy comebacks are all I have left.
*****
Despite the cold, I took an early-morning walk this morning, because I get so little outdoor time during the winter work week. The air was cold and still, and it smelled like snow. Now it's 3:45 on Sunday afternoon and the pale sunlight is already waning. I couldn't live in one of those Scandinavian towns that gets four hours of sunlight a day. Winter has its charms, though. The sunlight looks pretty, filtered through the almost-bare trees, and it's kind of cozy in here. I'll write my next post on the Chromebook that I just bought.
Sunday, November 5, 2017
More writing and reading
FRIDAY: I have a new notebook, and I LOVE new notebooks. I don't really like to write by hand. Well, I don't like to compose by hand. This morning, I had to write a note for my son, who had been home sick from school on Thursday (the first day of school he's missed in three years of high school), and all I could think about was how agonizing it was to write a whole letter by hand, on paper, with a pen.
I'd rather clean a toilet. Not even kidding. I hate to write notes by hand, and don't get me started about checks. I'll complain for an hour if I have to write a check.
But as much as I hate to write some things by hand, I like to write things down. There's a difference.
So I love notebooks. My handwriting, as you'd expect of someone who doesn't like to write by hand, is not very good. But a new notebook is a new start, and I always make an effort, during the first few pages, to write neatly, date pages clearly, and keep my notes organized.
*****
I went to a conference today, and didn't think to bring a computer, so I took notes by hand. The notebook being new, the notes are clear and neatly organized, with headings and dates underlined in red. I'll actually be able to read them later, which is not always the case with my handwritten notes.
*****
The conference was quite good; much better than I expected, in fact (but the session that I'd looked forward to the most was the least interesting of the day).
As at any conference, the air was thick with business jargon. I used to react to corporate jargon of any kind, from touching base to reaching out to stakeholding to paradigm shifting, with utter disdain. I say "used to," but that's not to suggest that I now use business slang, or even that I approve of it, but I've grown more tolerant and less judgmental. I almost misspelled judgmental right there--I keep wanting to spell it with an "E." So who am I to judge?
See what I did there?
Anyway, the boots on the ground and the level setting aside, sometimes business jargon (or jargon in general) arises from a genuine creative impulse to express an idea better--more clearly, or more vividly. Words like "administrivia" or "generica" start out as rather clever ways to express ideas for which a single word does not exist. They only become jargon when overused or misused.
But some corporate slang starts out silly and stays that way. For example, if you're planning a meeting, and you need a record of everything that happens during the meeting, then what you need is a note-taker, and not a "content capture guru." I mean, really.
*****
SATURDAY: I'm thinking about buying a Microsoft Surface. I need a computer that travels, because even the best notebook can't do everything. My son has a Surface, and I'm writing this on it now, just to see if I like the keyboard. So far, so good. It's not quiet, like my keyboard. But it's accurate, and there's a satisfying clicking sound as I type. I type pretty fast, so the clicking is pretty fast. It's fun. I'll have to try it a few more times. It's fun now, but it might get annoying.
*****
Regarding David Horsey: Yes, I'm late to this party. Yes, I know that he has already taken a well-deserved collective Twitter beating. And yes, I know that he has already apologized. But I'm going to pile on anyway.
Few people dislike Donald Trump and his snotty, supercilious lying liar of a press secretary more than I do. But I'm heartily sick and tired of hearing and seeing women attacked because they're women. Clever little trick, Mr. Horsey, of contrasting Ms. Sanders' appearance with that of the leggy model types that Trump would be expected to prefer over a "chunky soccer mom" like Sarah Sanders as a way of letting us know that your mean and stupid little column was really an attack on Trump, and not on women, especially the kind of women who have the nerve to take up space and to act and dress and look like mothers. But everyone with a brain knows what you really meant.
As the Internet says, we see you. I see you. A misogynist by any other name, even that of a Trump-resisting crusading journalist supposedly calling out the President's sexism is still a misogynist. And congratulations, too, on bolstering the narrative about the biased media. When my conservative friends point out the rampant sexism and misogyny of the left, using you as an example, then I'm going to nod my head and agree with them. Because they see you too. Jerk.
*****
SUNDAY: Chunky soccer/swim team/band moms don't have all day to hang around blogging, so I'm going to wrap it up. Some weeks I think about a million things, but this week, I thought a lot about words; about reading them and writing them and reacting to them. It's good that I have a new notebook.
I'd rather clean a toilet. Not even kidding. I hate to write notes by hand, and don't get me started about checks. I'll complain for an hour if I have to write a check.
But as much as I hate to write some things by hand, I like to write things down. There's a difference.
So I love notebooks. My handwriting, as you'd expect of someone who doesn't like to write by hand, is not very good. But a new notebook is a new start, and I always make an effort, during the first few pages, to write neatly, date pages clearly, and keep my notes organized.
*****
I went to a conference today, and didn't think to bring a computer, so I took notes by hand. The notebook being new, the notes are clear and neatly organized, with headings and dates underlined in red. I'll actually be able to read them later, which is not always the case with my handwritten notes.
*****
The conference was quite good; much better than I expected, in fact (but the session that I'd looked forward to the most was the least interesting of the day).
As at any conference, the air was thick with business jargon. I used to react to corporate jargon of any kind, from touching base to reaching out to stakeholding to paradigm shifting, with utter disdain. I say "used to," but that's not to suggest that I now use business slang, or even that I approve of it, but I've grown more tolerant and less judgmental. I almost misspelled judgmental right there--I keep wanting to spell it with an "E." So who am I to judge?
See what I did there?
Anyway, the boots on the ground and the level setting aside, sometimes business jargon (or jargon in general) arises from a genuine creative impulse to express an idea better--more clearly, or more vividly. Words like "administrivia" or "generica" start out as rather clever ways to express ideas for which a single word does not exist. They only become jargon when overused or misused.
But some corporate slang starts out silly and stays that way. For example, if you're planning a meeting, and you need a record of everything that happens during the meeting, then what you need is a note-taker, and not a "content capture guru." I mean, really.
*****
SATURDAY: I'm thinking about buying a Microsoft Surface. I need a computer that travels, because even the best notebook can't do everything. My son has a Surface, and I'm writing this on it now, just to see if I like the keyboard. So far, so good. It's not quiet, like my keyboard. But it's accurate, and there's a satisfying clicking sound as I type. I type pretty fast, so the clicking is pretty fast. It's fun. I'll have to try it a few more times. It's fun now, but it might get annoying.
*****
Regarding David Horsey: Yes, I'm late to this party. Yes, I know that he has already taken a well-deserved collective Twitter beating. And yes, I know that he has already apologized. But I'm going to pile on anyway.
Few people dislike Donald Trump and his snotty, supercilious lying liar of a press secretary more than I do. But I'm heartily sick and tired of hearing and seeing women attacked because they're women. Clever little trick, Mr. Horsey, of contrasting Ms. Sanders' appearance with that of the leggy model types that Trump would be expected to prefer over a "chunky soccer mom" like Sarah Sanders as a way of letting us know that your mean and stupid little column was really an attack on Trump, and not on women, especially the kind of women who have the nerve to take up space and to act and dress and look like mothers. But everyone with a brain knows what you really meant.
As the Internet says, we see you. I see you. A misogynist by any other name, even that of a Trump-resisting crusading journalist supposedly calling out the President's sexism is still a misogynist. And congratulations, too, on bolstering the narrative about the biased media. When my conservative friends point out the rampant sexism and misogyny of the left, using you as an example, then I'm going to nod my head and agree with them. Because they see you too. Jerk.
*****
SUNDAY: Chunky soccer/swim team/band moms don't have all day to hang around blogging, so I'm going to wrap it up. Some weeks I think about a million things, but this week, I thought a lot about words; about reading them and writing them and reacting to them. It's good that I have a new notebook.
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Reading and writing
It's 8:30 on Tuesday night, and I'm already in my pajamas, which is quite unusual for me. I'm sick. Nothing life-threatening, just an ugly cold, but I feel horrible.
I used to be able to say, truthfully, that I never got sick. Because I used to never get sick. My immune system was pure cast iron. Or titanium. Whatever is more impenetrable. But this is the fourth time I've been sick this year. Apparently, my immune system is now made of something squishy or porous or otherwise not akin to titanium. It's more like a sieve, or a butterfly net. I'm a runny-nose mouth-breathing mess. I think I'll go to bed (after Rachel Maddow.)
*****
So it's Friday night now. What with the round of one damn thing after another that constitutes my life (not original--P.G. Wodehouse, I think), I don't even remember most of the rest of the week. I'm not as sick as I was, but not 100% yet either. One son is at a high school football game (his school is losing 49-6), and the other son and I are watching the Houston Astros beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series. We're rooting for Houston. We love Jose Altuve, and Houston needs a win.
My older son, now a junior in high school, is looking at colleges. He's never been a particularly good student, but he started to work harder last year, finishing the year with a 3.5 GPA, and he's working very hard this year, too, though his math and science grades are not good. He might start at the local community college, but he might start at a four-year university. Anyway, he's looking at possibilities. He's actually reading the letters he's starting to receive. We'll schedule visits next spring, because that's what people do.
A few weeks ago, I spent Sunday afternoon at a college admissions seminar for parents of students with learning disabilities. It was not especially helpful (apparently, grades are important; and colleges also consider extracurricular activities in admissions decisions). In my usual vague and scattered way of gathering information, I managed to learn that November through April of next year will be the critical window of time during which forms will be submitted, and checks will be written, and decisions will be made. That's plenty of time, so we'll figure it out.
*****
I joke sometimes about adult ADD, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's a real thing, because I do and it is and I have it. It's only through living with my son for 16 years that I was able to figure this out. He's lucky that it's a recognized thing now, and that he's been able to learn how to manage it when he's young. I manage it by doing 20 things at a time, and somehow getting them all done, eventually.
This doesn't always work. Yesterday, I sat with the art director at my company, watching video footage that we need to edit into a two-minute video (and don't get me started on how we're going to get that done on time, but that's a story for another day). I promised that I'd transcribe my notes and send them to him as soon as I got back to my desk.
It would be not quite accurate to say that I forgot all about it five minutes later, because I think that I forgot about it before the words were even out of my mouth. I went back to my desk and finished writing a newsletter, and then wrote some proposal stuff, and then skipped blithely home, without another thought about the video. Not another thought. It was as if the whole afternoon hadn't happened.
When I did finally remember the video, and the notes, it was about 4 o'clock this morning. I was going to get up and just write the notes right away, but I decided to go back to sleep and do in the morning (because 4 o'clock in the morning is the middle of the night). And I did. And that was the end of that.
But it doesn't always end well. I'm pretty sure, for example, that I was supposed to go to the doctor's last week, but I didn't write it down, and couldn't remember for sure if it was that week or the next (meaning the coming week) and no one called me, so I didn't go. I'll find out, I suppose. The forgetting of the things and the appointments is becoming more of a problem. I have to write things down, and set reminders on my phone for everything. And I often forget to do either. And so I forget to do the thing that I would have remembered had I written it down.
*****
Well, that could go on all day. It's Sunday now, and the pointless rambling has to come to an end at some point. Several weeks ago, I finally finished reading The Crisis Years, and I also read Martha Moody's Best Friends. I had never heard of her, but I liked the book. I don't have much other than that to say about it, other than than that the protagonist, a doctor (like Moody herself), realizes at some point during her mid 40s that she is just then beginning to understand life and how to live properly. As someone who finished college at age 48 (summa cum laude, but still), I found this idea very reassuring.
Right now, I'm reading This is NPR: The First Forty Years, which I'll finish in a day or so. Fortunately, I have lots of other things to read. I went to the library book sale (a semi-annual favorite thing to do) yesterday, and bought $5 worth of books, which in library book sale terms, is a shitload of books. List to follow.
I used to be able to say, truthfully, that I never got sick. Because I used to never get sick. My immune system was pure cast iron. Or titanium. Whatever is more impenetrable. But this is the fourth time I've been sick this year. Apparently, my immune system is now made of something squishy or porous or otherwise not akin to titanium. It's more like a sieve, or a butterfly net. I'm a runny-nose mouth-breathing mess. I think I'll go to bed (after Rachel Maddow.)
*****
So it's Friday night now. What with the round of one damn thing after another that constitutes my life (not original--P.G. Wodehouse, I think), I don't even remember most of the rest of the week. I'm not as sick as I was, but not 100% yet either. One son is at a high school football game (his school is losing 49-6), and the other son and I are watching the Houston Astros beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series. We're rooting for Houston. We love Jose Altuve, and Houston needs a win.
My older son, now a junior in high school, is looking at colleges. He's never been a particularly good student, but he started to work harder last year, finishing the year with a 3.5 GPA, and he's working very hard this year, too, though his math and science grades are not good. He might start at the local community college, but he might start at a four-year university. Anyway, he's looking at possibilities. He's actually reading the letters he's starting to receive. We'll schedule visits next spring, because that's what people do.
A few weeks ago, I spent Sunday afternoon at a college admissions seminar for parents of students with learning disabilities. It was not especially helpful (apparently, grades are important; and colleges also consider extracurricular activities in admissions decisions). In my usual vague and scattered way of gathering information, I managed to learn that November through April of next year will be the critical window of time during which forms will be submitted, and checks will be written, and decisions will be made. That's plenty of time, so we'll figure it out.
*****
I joke sometimes about adult ADD, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's a real thing, because I do and it is and I have it. It's only through living with my son for 16 years that I was able to figure this out. He's lucky that it's a recognized thing now, and that he's been able to learn how to manage it when he's young. I manage it by doing 20 things at a time, and somehow getting them all done, eventually.
This doesn't always work. Yesterday, I sat with the art director at my company, watching video footage that we need to edit into a two-minute video (and don't get me started on how we're going to get that done on time, but that's a story for another day). I promised that I'd transcribe my notes and send them to him as soon as I got back to my desk.
It would be not quite accurate to say that I forgot all about it five minutes later, because I think that I forgot about it before the words were even out of my mouth. I went back to my desk and finished writing a newsletter, and then wrote some proposal stuff, and then skipped blithely home, without another thought about the video. Not another thought. It was as if the whole afternoon hadn't happened.
When I did finally remember the video, and the notes, it was about 4 o'clock this morning. I was going to get up and just write the notes right away, but I decided to go back to sleep and do in the morning (because 4 o'clock in the morning is the middle of the night). And I did. And that was the end of that.
But it doesn't always end well. I'm pretty sure, for example, that I was supposed to go to the doctor's last week, but I didn't write it down, and couldn't remember for sure if it was that week or the next (meaning the coming week) and no one called me, so I didn't go. I'll find out, I suppose. The forgetting of the things and the appointments is becoming more of a problem. I have to write things down, and set reminders on my phone for everything. And I often forget to do either. And so I forget to do the thing that I would have remembered had I written it down.
*****
Well, that could go on all day. It's Sunday now, and the pointless rambling has to come to an end at some point. Several weeks ago, I finally finished reading The Crisis Years, and I also read Martha Moody's Best Friends. I had never heard of her, but I liked the book. I don't have much other than that to say about it, other than than that the protagonist, a doctor (like Moody herself), realizes at some point during her mid 40s that she is just then beginning to understand life and how to live properly. As someone who finished college at age 48 (summa cum laude, but still), I found this idea very reassuring.
Right now, I'm reading This is NPR: The First Forty Years, which I'll finish in a day or so. Fortunately, I have lots of other things to read. I went to the library book sale (a semi-annual favorite thing to do) yesterday, and bought $5 worth of books, which in library book sale terms, is a shitload of books. List to follow.
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Distraction
I have been following this week's political events more closely than I normally do. And I should have written things down as they occurred to me, because I can't for the life of me remember exactly what I wanted to say about McCain and Bush and Kelly and #metoo and all of the rest of it. I suppose that I'll just write through the weekend on and off, and I'll eventually get to a point. Or maybe I won't. You've been warned. Anyway, it's just been an interesting week, for lots of reasons. All of a sudden, I live in a world in which John McCain and George W. Bush are my heroes.
All day yesterday, I heard and read stories about John Kelly's "defense" of President Trump. And I suppose it was a defense, in the way that you might defend a friend who drunkenly drives onto someone's front lawn and takes out the mailbox and part of the porch, and you say "Hey, he didn't kill anyone!"
So anyway, I've been following the political news cycle this week. I even watched part of Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night. And I can't stand Lawrence O'Donnell. And he did exactly what I'd have expected. He extracted the tiniest thread that could tie Kelly's speech to racism and sexism, and he pulled as hard as he could, claiming that "empty barrel," which was really just a garden variety insulting and demeaning and unworthy of a White House Chief of Staff way to describe a Congresswoman, however grandstanding and cynical she is (and she is both), as an explicitly racist and sexist slur. So now we're expected to accept that old-time Ross Perot-style down-home aphorisms like "The empty barrel makes the most noise" are always and everywhere sexist or racist when used by a man to insult a woman, or by a white person to insult a person of color.
Even O'Donnell knows that this isn't true. On the other hand, I agreed with him just a tiny bit when he said that he doesn't remember the world that Kelly recalled, a world in which women were "sacred," because I don't really remember that world either. Kelly and O'Donnell are a little older than I am, but not that much. And it's also worthwhile to point out that a world in which women are "sacred" excludes the possibility of a White House Chief of Staff insulting a Congresswoman during a press briefing. It also, of course, excludes the possibility of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.
Apparently, there's video now that backs the Congresswoman's claim that Kelly lied about her remarks at the FBI dedication in Florida. I'm not going to watch it, because I really hate watching videos online. I'm also not going to watch it because 1. It might show that she's telling the truth 2. It might show that he's telling the truth, and 3. It doesn't really matter. Or it does matter, I suppose, but the larger issue, which is the total domination of political debate by mean-spirited one-up-manship and disingenuous fake outrage and bad faith and flat-out dishonesty on both (all) sides will not change one bit if I force myself to watch the video to figure out the truth of this particular little he-said she-said. It doesn't matter.
(And on the subject of he-said she-said, I guess that we've finally reached critical mass. If the questions are "how long does it take before people will believe women who say that they have suffered sexual harassment or worse?" and "how many women have to accuse a man before people believe that he actually is a sexual predator?" then the answers usually are "years and years" and "a shitload." But I say "critical mass," because the Weinstein scandal might actually change things a little bit. The timing could have been better, of course. A year ago, maybe a #metoo hashtag campaign could have changed the election results.)
So yes, Kelly "defended" Trump. He also pointed out--indirectly, but clearly--that Trump has never sacrificed anything for anyone, has nothing but contempt for women, and isn't smart or sensitive enough to understand well-meaning advice on how to talk to a grieving military widow (Hint: Maybe don't repeat the "he knew what he was getting into" part verbatim, with no additional context). With friends like that, I suppose Trump doesn't need any (more) enemies.
Masha Gessen suggests (the essay as a whole is a little extreme, as might be expected of a person born in the Soviet Union) that Kelly seems to have little respect for the vast majority of Americans who have never served in the military. One one hand, I understand Kelly's anger. It's a problem that we have been at war for 16 years now, and most of us live life every day without even thinking about the war(s) or the people who are fighting them, or their families. On the other hand, it's just stupid to suggest that the military is the only place where people sacrifice and serve and even risk their lives for the benefit of others, and John Kelly doesn't seem stupid to me, so I wonder what else he was getting at.
It's almost 6:30 on Sunday night now, and I never did come to the point, because I never figured out what it is. My son went to his high school's homecoming game on Friday night. He and a group of classmates made t-shirts, each with a single letter painted on the front, and they sat together to form "Class of 2019." My son was inordinately pleased to be wearing the "F." In two years, most of them will be freshmen in college, but some of them--maybe even my son--will be in uniform. That has nothing to do with everything that happened last week, except that it does, somehow. We still don't really know what happened to those four soldiers in Niger, do we?
All day yesterday, I heard and read stories about John Kelly's "defense" of President Trump. And I suppose it was a defense, in the way that you might defend a friend who drunkenly drives onto someone's front lawn and takes out the mailbox and part of the porch, and you say "Hey, he didn't kill anyone!"
So anyway, I've been following the political news cycle this week. I even watched part of Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night. And I can't stand Lawrence O'Donnell. And he did exactly what I'd have expected. He extracted the tiniest thread that could tie Kelly's speech to racism and sexism, and he pulled as hard as he could, claiming that "empty barrel," which was really just a garden variety insulting and demeaning and unworthy of a White House Chief of Staff way to describe a Congresswoman, however grandstanding and cynical she is (and she is both), as an explicitly racist and sexist slur. So now we're expected to accept that old-time Ross Perot-style down-home aphorisms like "The empty barrel makes the most noise" are always and everywhere sexist or racist when used by a man to insult a woman, or by a white person to insult a person of color.
Even O'Donnell knows that this isn't true. On the other hand, I agreed with him just a tiny bit when he said that he doesn't remember the world that Kelly recalled, a world in which women were "sacred," because I don't really remember that world either. Kelly and O'Donnell are a little older than I am, but not that much. And it's also worthwhile to point out that a world in which women are "sacred" excludes the possibility of a White House Chief of Staff insulting a Congresswoman during a press briefing. It also, of course, excludes the possibility of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.
Apparently, there's video now that backs the Congresswoman's claim that Kelly lied about her remarks at the FBI dedication in Florida. I'm not going to watch it, because I really hate watching videos online. I'm also not going to watch it because 1. It might show that she's telling the truth 2. It might show that he's telling the truth, and 3. It doesn't really matter. Or it does matter, I suppose, but the larger issue, which is the total domination of political debate by mean-spirited one-up-manship and disingenuous fake outrage and bad faith and flat-out dishonesty on both (all) sides will not change one bit if I force myself to watch the video to figure out the truth of this particular little he-said she-said. It doesn't matter.
(And on the subject of he-said she-said, I guess that we've finally reached critical mass. If the questions are "how long does it take before people will believe women who say that they have suffered sexual harassment or worse?" and "how many women have to accuse a man before people believe that he actually is a sexual predator?" then the answers usually are "years and years" and "a shitload." But I say "critical mass," because the Weinstein scandal might actually change things a little bit. The timing could have been better, of course. A year ago, maybe a #metoo hashtag campaign could have changed the election results.)
So yes, Kelly "defended" Trump. He also pointed out--indirectly, but clearly--that Trump has never sacrificed anything for anyone, has nothing but contempt for women, and isn't smart or sensitive enough to understand well-meaning advice on how to talk to a grieving military widow (Hint: Maybe don't repeat the "he knew what he was getting into" part verbatim, with no additional context). With friends like that, I suppose Trump doesn't need any (more) enemies.
Masha Gessen suggests (the essay as a whole is a little extreme, as might be expected of a person born in the Soviet Union) that Kelly seems to have little respect for the vast majority of Americans who have never served in the military. One one hand, I understand Kelly's anger. It's a problem that we have been at war for 16 years now, and most of us live life every day without even thinking about the war(s) or the people who are fighting them, or their families. On the other hand, it's just stupid to suggest that the military is the only place where people sacrifice and serve and even risk their lives for the benefit of others, and John Kelly doesn't seem stupid to me, so I wonder what else he was getting at.
It's almost 6:30 on Sunday night now, and I never did come to the point, because I never figured out what it is. My son went to his high school's homecoming game on Friday night. He and a group of classmates made t-shirts, each with a single letter painted on the front, and they sat together to form "Class of 2019." My son was inordinately pleased to be wearing the "F." In two years, most of them will be freshmen in college, but some of them--maybe even my son--will be in uniform. That has nothing to do with everything that happened last week, except that it does, somehow. We still don't really know what happened to those four soldiers in Niger, do we?
Sunday, October 15, 2017
KP
Last Saturday, I went to a family party in Philadelphia. It was the kind of party where you see people whom you haven't seen in many years, and everyone brings something, and there's far more food (both homemade and catered) and drink than anyone could ever consume.
The party was at the Philadelphia Canoe Club, a really lovely spot for a party. The building is over 100 years old, and the property, which includes an old stone building with porches and huge windows with deep windowsills, and grounds that slope gently down to the water, sits at the confluence of the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River.
When your cousin is the president of the club, then you can borrow a canoe or kayak. On a cold day, you can stay inside, where there's a huge fireplace, and walls decorated with antique paddles and photos of old club members, and high-water mark plaques commemorating the many times that the building has flooded during the last century or so.
So it was a nice party, but with a big mess to clean up at the end. The handful of us who remained got to work. It's kind of fun to clean up a big party mess. You start with the easy jobs; the low-hanging fruit--throw away half-eaten plates of food, collect empty cups and bottles, gather all of the decorations and centerpieces on to one table, so that you can clear the tablecloths and trash from the rest of the tables. You fold and stack the folding chairs. Then the real clean-up begins.
There were tons of dishes to wash and tons and tons of food to wrap and distribute. I really hate to wash dishes at home, but I don't mind it at someone else's house, or boathouse, as the case might be. And I really hate packing up leftover food. So I volunteered to wash the dishes.
The best thing about being the dishwasher in a large dinner cleanup operation is that the rest of the cleanup proceeds behind your back, and you have no idea what's going on. You stay focused on the dishes (and no one bothers you; if they do, you justly claim that your hands are full) and then when you turn around after 15 minutes or so, it's like the kitchen fairy has paid a visit. Platters full of half-eaten food have turned into tidy parcels of leftovers for people to take home; the dirty floor is neatly swept, and the counters are clean.
The party was a 30th birthday party, and the playlist was early 21st century nostalgia, chosen by people who have begun to realize that they are now old enough to reminisce about their youth. In between Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be," and Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love," and Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocket Full of Sunshine," I washed and rinsed and piled dishes on the huge drainboard.
A friend once commented that plastic wineglasses depressed her. I'm not sure why. We could have recycled the wineglasses, but whoever cleared the table piled them into the sink, so we were clearly meant to wash them, and so I did. They were molded to look like lead crystal, and that made me happy for some odd reason. Someone tried to make something plain and ordinary a little bit nicer. The 500 or so plastic glasses (oxymoronic, no?) that I washed and rinsed probably ended up in the trash, but the boxed wine tasted just fine, and the party was fun, and we left the Canoe Club just as we found it.
The party was at the Philadelphia Canoe Club, a really lovely spot for a party. The building is over 100 years old, and the property, which includes an old stone building with porches and huge windows with deep windowsills, and grounds that slope gently down to the water, sits at the confluence of the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River.
 |
| I like deep windowsills. |
When your cousin is the president of the club, then you can borrow a canoe or kayak. On a cold day, you can stay inside, where there's a huge fireplace, and walls decorated with antique paddles and photos of old club members, and high-water mark plaques commemorating the many times that the building has flooded during the last century or so.
 |
| Is this a kayak or a canoe? I have no idea. My 16-year-old son got the hang of it pretty quickly, and enjoyed a solo paddle around the confluence. |
So it was a nice party, but with a big mess to clean up at the end. The handful of us who remained got to work. It's kind of fun to clean up a big party mess. You start with the easy jobs; the low-hanging fruit--throw away half-eaten plates of food, collect empty cups and bottles, gather all of the decorations and centerpieces on to one table, so that you can clear the tablecloths and trash from the rest of the tables. You fold and stack the folding chairs. Then the real clean-up begins.
There were tons of dishes to wash and tons and tons of food to wrap and distribute. I really hate to wash dishes at home, but I don't mind it at someone else's house, or boathouse, as the case might be. And I really hate packing up leftover food. So I volunteered to wash the dishes.
The best thing about being the dishwasher in a large dinner cleanup operation is that the rest of the cleanup proceeds behind your back, and you have no idea what's going on. You stay focused on the dishes (and no one bothers you; if they do, you justly claim that your hands are full) and then when you turn around after 15 minutes or so, it's like the kitchen fairy has paid a visit. Platters full of half-eaten food have turned into tidy parcels of leftovers for people to take home; the dirty floor is neatly swept, and the counters are clean.
The party was a 30th birthday party, and the playlist was early 21st century nostalgia, chosen by people who have begun to realize that they are now old enough to reminisce about their youth. In between Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be," and Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love," and Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocket Full of Sunshine," I washed and rinsed and piled dishes on the huge drainboard.
A friend once commented that plastic wineglasses depressed her. I'm not sure why. We could have recycled the wineglasses, but whoever cleared the table piled them into the sink, so we were clearly meant to wash them, and so I did. They were molded to look like lead crystal, and that made me happy for some odd reason. Someone tried to make something plain and ordinary a little bit nicer. The 500 or so plastic glasses (oxymoronic, no?) that I washed and rinsed probably ended up in the trash, but the boxed wine tasted just fine, and the party was fun, and we left the Canoe Club just as we found it.
Monday, October 9, 2017
Goodbye, friend
I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want. It's to never see, smell, or hear of pumpkin spice anything, ever again. The pumpkin spice trend should have been over two years ago, but it seems to emerge stronger than ever, every damn October. I was shopping at my beloved Aldi last week, and was horrified to see a shelf full of pumpkin chipotle salsa. This is nothing more than a hate crime against corn chips.
*****
*****
So that was the beginning of my post for the week, which I started on Friday night as I was baking brownies for a party. I mentioned once, to one of my neighborhood friends, that I hate pumpkin spice everything with the sort of hatred that should probably be reserved for ISIS or white collar crime.
My friends, wise asses that they are, immediately launched a trolling campaign against me. For four years or so, starting right around Labor Day and continuing through Halloween, people have filled my social media feeds with pictures of pumpkin spice salsa, cream cheese, hand soap, and even toilet paper. People text me from Starbucks, asking if I want them to deliver a PSL. Someone once left a tiny pumpkin in my mailbox. People's kids are in on this. For four years, I have been left almost alone to defend decency and humanity against the forces of pumpkin evil.
My friends, wise asses that they are, immediately launched a trolling campaign against me. For four years or so, starting right around Labor Day and continuing through Halloween, people have filled my social media feeds with pictures of pumpkin spice salsa, cream cheese, hand soap, and even toilet paper. People text me from Starbucks, asking if I want them to deliver a PSL. Someone once left a tiny pumpkin in my mailbox. People's kids are in on this. For four years, I have been left almost alone to defend decency and humanity against the forces of pumpkin evil.
One of the ringleaders and instigators of this annual pumpkin spice gang warfare was a woman named Bernadette Bueno Minor. I first met Bern in 2010 or 2011 when she signed her kids up for our neighborhood swim team. The first thing I noticed about her was how beautiful she was, with shiny dark hair and a wide-open joyous smile that radiated fun and good humor. I liked her right away.
We were friends in the way that mothers become friends when their children are in sports or band or school together. We weren't really close but close enough that we cared about each other's kids and kept up with each other's family and personal news. And we just liked each other.
I didn't really have much in common with Bernadette. She was much younger and much more outgoing and social than I am. But she was also smart and good-natured and ridiculously funny, and so I was always happy to see her and hang out with her, even for a few minutes. One thing that we did have in common was that we really loved summer, and swim team, and the pool. Since I returned to work full time, I haven't hung out at the pool as much as I did when my kids were little and I worked part-time, but I usually go to swim and see my friends on Sunday afternoons. Bernadette, who also worked, was almost always there on Sundays, too, with her radio and her sunglasses and her shout-across-the-pool happy greeting every time a friend showed up.
I didn't really have much in common with Bernadette. She was much younger and much more outgoing and social than I am. But she was also smart and good-natured and ridiculously funny, and so I was always happy to see her and hang out with her, even for a few minutes. One thing that we did have in common was that we really loved summer, and swim team, and the pool. Since I returned to work full time, I haven't hung out at the pool as much as I did when my kids were little and I worked part-time, but I usually go to swim and see my friends on Sunday afternoons. Bernadette, who also worked, was almost always there on Sundays, too, with her radio and her sunglasses and her shout-across-the-pool happy greeting every time a friend showed up.
Bernadette's first bout with breast cancer was in 2014. It was summer and swim season was in full swing. She didn't make it to many meets that year, but when she was around, she was unfailingly cheerful and brave and full of good humor. I know how hard it must have been for her to lose her beautiful, long, thick hair, but she joked about it, and about all of the other things that she had to endure. We were all delighted to hear, a few months later, that she'd had her last treatment, and that she was expected to make a full recovery. Her hair grew back, and by the next summer, she looked a lot like herself.
This past summer, she and I were sitting together at a swim meet. It was a very hot morning; so hot that stroke and turn judges were rotating so that no one had to stand in the sun the whole time, and I had just finished my shift. "I feel guilty," she said to me. "I was supposed to time, but I was just too tired this morning, so I had to make someone else do it. If it's not cancer, it's MS, you know?"
Of course, I didn't know at all. I've never had any real health problems, and can't imagine that I'd have been as easygoing and lighthearted about an MS flare-up alone, let alone having to suffer MS and cancer in one lifetime.
By now, you might have guessed that this is a story that does not end happily. Sadly, Bern was wrong about her symptoms, as she told us a few weeks later. The exhaustion and malaise were not the result of an MS flare-up, but a recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive this time. And then just before Labor Day, right on schedule, she was trolling me about pumpkin spice Cheerios and spaghetti sauce (an actual thing, I give you my word).
She wasn't out much for the rest of the summer and early fall, but she'd post optimistic updates on Facebook, and her usual jokes and funny pictures. I saw her daughter (16 and just as beautiful as her mother) out in the neighborhood last Saturday, and she told me that Bern's radiation treatment had gone well, and that she was about to start chemo. She said that her mother was upbeat and optimistic, and that they were hopeful for a full recovery. So her death just a few days later came as a terrible shock.
Bernadette was a beautiful and spirited person, and I'm so sad to think that her children will have to grow up without her. I'm glad that I knew her. I'll think of her often, especially on hot summer Sundays, and pumpkin-spice filled fall days.
Of course, I didn't know at all. I've never had any real health problems, and can't imagine that I'd have been as easygoing and lighthearted about an MS flare-up alone, let alone having to suffer MS and cancer in one lifetime.
By now, you might have guessed that this is a story that does not end happily. Sadly, Bern was wrong about her symptoms, as she told us a few weeks later. The exhaustion and malaise were not the result of an MS flare-up, but a recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive this time. And then just before Labor Day, right on schedule, she was trolling me about pumpkin spice Cheerios and spaghetti sauce (an actual thing, I give you my word).
She wasn't out much for the rest of the summer and early fall, but she'd post optimistic updates on Facebook, and her usual jokes and funny pictures. I saw her daughter (16 and just as beautiful as her mother) out in the neighborhood last Saturday, and she told me that Bern's radiation treatment had gone well, and that she was about to start chemo. She said that her mother was upbeat and optimistic, and that they were hopeful for a full recovery. So her death just a few days later came as a terrible shock.
Bernadette was a beautiful and spirited person, and I'm so sad to think that her children will have to grow up without her. I'm glad that I knew her. I'll think of her often, especially on hot summer Sundays, and pumpkin-spice filled fall days.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
The Van Buren Boys
There was a lady who lived in a house around the corner from mine. A widow, she spent many hours in her garden, weeding and--well, I don't know what else. She always seemed to be weeding, crawling on her hands and knees inch by inch, finding weeds that were all but invisible to to everyone else. She had these trees--I'm not sure what kind they were (I'm terrible at identifying plants and trees), but she had them shaped, almost topiary-style, so that they resembled open umbrellas. She obviously loved those trees. Most of her weeding and manicuring was concentrated on the little beds at the base of the trees. She had a professional come to trim the trees themselves, so that they'd maintain their perfect umbrella shape.
The lady was very reserved. I started to work part-time, often from home, when my son was in 2nd grade. So on nice days, my other son (who was four at the time) and I used to walk to Bel Pre Elementary School to pick my older boy up after school, and we'd all walk home together. We tried a few times to say hello to the lady, thinking that maybe we'd make friends, but she'd just nod politely and then return to her weeding. I didn't mind. Not everyone is outgoing, and not everyone likes little children.
The lady died a few years ago. I'd heard that she was sick and had gone into hospice care, and a few months later, I saw a For Sale sign on her front lawn. The trees are gone. They were kind of hideous, so I don't blame the new owner for taking them down. Even the beds are gone, replaced by what look like little rock gardens. I don't miss the silly-looking trees, but it seems sad that there's nothing left on the property to remind neighbors of the lady who used to live there. I never knew her name.
*****
I don't really know what made me think of that. I was thinking about something earlier today; something that I thought I should write about. Now it's gone, just that quickly.
*****
So here's a little known trick, which I learned from a cooking blog. Male bell peppers are different from female bell peppers: the male ones have just three bumps on the bottom, while the females have four. Male bell peppers are better cooked; and they're less messy when you cut them up, because they don't have very many seeds inside. Female bell peppers are sweeter, so they're good in salads and vegetable trays. I usually look for the male ones, because I make a lot of stir-fry dishes.
So I was in the grocery store, looking for boys among the peppers, and an older lady (even older than me, I mean) stopped and looked at me, looked at the peppers, nodded, and looked at me again, smiling. Then she walked away without a word.
She knew that I knew about the peppers, and she wanted me to know that she knew that I knew. It was like a shibboleth. It was like a secret handshake. I felt like Kramer, accidentally flashing the Van Buren Boys' secret sign.
*****
Another grocery store story, and another nice old lady: My children were pretty well-behaved when they were little (and lucky for me, they still are). I often used to get compliments from strangers about how good my children were. But even good children have bad days.
We were in the grocery store again (because that's where I hang out). My older son was not quite 4, and my younger son was about 7 months old. The not-quite-4-year-old asked for something (probably a car; they still sell little cars at the grocery store) and when I said no, he flung himself onto the floor and commenced his second-ever (and last; he never did it again) public temper tantrum. I had to abandon an almost-full cart of groceries to get him out of the store and into the car. He was asleep before we even got out of the parking lot.
Anyway, as the tantrum progressed, I saw an old lady shuffling toward me, and I braced for what I was sure would be a world of judgement raining down on me. Instead, she looked at me and said "Honey, the years go by really fast. But some of the days are reeeeallly long." We didn't have hashtags in 2005, but that was a #truth moment if I ever heard one.
*****
My youngest son is 13 today, which means that I don't have any little boys anymore (and it also means that I live in the same house with two teenage boys). I remember things that happened, and I'm astonished to realize that they happened 8 or 10 or 15 years ago. Blinding speed, even amid some long days.
While it's nice to have older children, it's all going way too fast now. We have only a few more years of band concerts and swim meets and track meets and baseball games. When my children were little, I'd listen to older friends, parents of teenagers, and wonder why they were nostalgic in advance. Now I know. Now I know that all of the old ladies--in the grocery store, and weeding their gardens--were changing diapers five minutes ago, and now their children are grandparents, too.
Sometimes, though, things slow down for a few minutes. Sometimes, two teenagers decide to build something, and then I don't even mind stepping on a pile of Legos in my bare feet. The years go by really fast, and some of the days go by even faster.
The lady was very reserved. I started to work part-time, often from home, when my son was in 2nd grade. So on nice days, my other son (who was four at the time) and I used to walk to Bel Pre Elementary School to pick my older boy up after school, and we'd all walk home together. We tried a few times to say hello to the lady, thinking that maybe we'd make friends, but she'd just nod politely and then return to her weeding. I didn't mind. Not everyone is outgoing, and not everyone likes little children.
The lady died a few years ago. I'd heard that she was sick and had gone into hospice care, and a few months later, I saw a For Sale sign on her front lawn. The trees are gone. They were kind of hideous, so I don't blame the new owner for taking them down. Even the beds are gone, replaced by what look like little rock gardens. I don't miss the silly-looking trees, but it seems sad that there's nothing left on the property to remind neighbors of the lady who used to live there. I never knew her name.
*****
I don't really know what made me think of that. I was thinking about something earlier today; something that I thought I should write about. Now it's gone, just that quickly.
*****
So here's a little known trick, which I learned from a cooking blog. Male bell peppers are different from female bell peppers: the male ones have just three bumps on the bottom, while the females have four. Male bell peppers are better cooked; and they're less messy when you cut them up, because they don't have very many seeds inside. Female bell peppers are sweeter, so they're good in salads and vegetable trays. I usually look for the male ones, because I make a lot of stir-fry dishes.
So I was in the grocery store, looking for boys among the peppers, and an older lady (even older than me, I mean) stopped and looked at me, looked at the peppers, nodded, and looked at me again, smiling. Then she walked away without a word.
She knew that I knew about the peppers, and she wanted me to know that she knew that I knew. It was like a shibboleth. It was like a secret handshake. I felt like Kramer, accidentally flashing the Van Buren Boys' secret sign.
 |
| "Martin Van Buren was the eighth President! That's their sign!" |
*****
Another grocery store story, and another nice old lady: My children were pretty well-behaved when they were little (and lucky for me, they still are). I often used to get compliments from strangers about how good my children were. But even good children have bad days.
We were in the grocery store again (because that's where I hang out). My older son was not quite 4, and my younger son was about 7 months old. The not-quite-4-year-old asked for something (probably a car; they still sell little cars at the grocery store) and when I said no, he flung himself onto the floor and commenced his second-ever (and last; he never did it again) public temper tantrum. I had to abandon an almost-full cart of groceries to get him out of the store and into the car. He was asleep before we even got out of the parking lot.
Anyway, as the tantrum progressed, I saw an old lady shuffling toward me, and I braced for what I was sure would be a world of judgement raining down on me. Instead, she looked at me and said "Honey, the years go by really fast. But some of the days are reeeeallly long." We didn't have hashtags in 2005, but that was a #truth moment if I ever heard one.
*****
My youngest son is 13 today, which means that I don't have any little boys anymore (and it also means that I live in the same house with two teenage boys). I remember things that happened, and I'm astonished to realize that they happened 8 or 10 or 15 years ago. Blinding speed, even amid some long days.
While it's nice to have older children, it's all going way too fast now. We have only a few more years of band concerts and swim meets and track meets and baseball games. When my children were little, I'd listen to older friends, parents of teenagers, and wonder why they were nostalgic in advance. Now I know. Now I know that all of the old ladies--in the grocery store, and weeding their gardens--were changing diapers five minutes ago, and now their children are grandparents, too.
Sometimes, though, things slow down for a few minutes. Sometimes, two teenagers decide to build something, and then I don't even mind stepping on a pile of Legos in my bare feet. The years go by really fast, and some of the days go by even faster.
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