It’s Friday night, the first Friday night in months when I haven’t had anything to do, so I’m sitting on my couch and watching “In the Name of the Father,” a movie that I really can’t believe that I”ve never seen before. Just another night of The Troubles, here in Silver Spring, Maryland in 2019. Catch yourself on.
Did I mention before that I have too many handbags? I think I did. Well I also have too many products. Too many creams and lotions and serums and lotions and stupid too many lipsticks. Stupid. So now I have a project. I’m going to use everything up. I finished one lipstick today, and I’m at the very end of a container of facial cleanser. It’s very satisfying to dispose of the empty containers. It’s like crossing something off a list, and I do love to cross things off a list.
It’s 9 PM now. The movie’s over, and that’s enough for today, because the kitchen isn’t going to compulsively clean itself. It won’t take long. It’s not that dirty.
*****
So now it's Saturday and I'm at Nationals Park, waiting for the Nats game to begin. It's my first Nats game of the season. They're playing the Brewers. Game time in 35 minutes or so.
We're in section 109, just a few rows back from the field, on the shady side of the stadium. They're really good seats. I was a Phillies fan when I was young, and I used to dream about the day when I'd be able to afford seats like these. If this was a Phillies game circa 1984 or so, I'd be sitting in the 400 level of Veterans' Stadium. And we wouldn't be playing the Brewers because in those days (I love being old enough to say or write that without sounding ridiculous) the only inter-league play was during the World Series. But of course, this isn't an inter-league game anyway, because the Brewers are National League now. Time marches resolutely on.
*****
It's nice being here early. It's a bobblehead night and my husband insists that we arrive early on bobblehead nights. They might run out. So we have our Patrick Corbin bobbleheads, our drinks, and plenty of legroom. My 14-year-old son is standing at the rail, watching the pregame warm-up. He said that he wants to use his kid advantage to catch a player's eye and maybe get a ball. He's small for his age. But he's getting taller and he'll be 15 soon. Like most things, the kid advantage does not last forever. One day you're a cute little kid and the next day you're just another punk-ass teenager. The march of time continues.
*****
Sunday afternoon. I think I mentioned once before that when I go to a baseball game, it tends to be an eventful one. Last night was no exception. First of all, it was extraordinarily hot, even in the evening, even on the shady side of the stadium. I think I suffered a little bit of heatstroke, and I’m pretty heat-proof. The players must have really suffered, especially since the game went for 14 innings (we left after 9). The Nats lost 15-14. Not only was it a marathon game, but a fan sitting four rows in front of us got beaned by a foul ball. Rumor has it that his jaw is broken. I can’t find a story about it online because there have been so many foul ball vs. fan incidents at Nats Park this year that this one seems to have fallen off the radar. But it happened. I saw it and heard it.
We listened to more of the game on the way home, and then watched the end on TV, well after midnight. The Nats literally ran out of relief pitchers (and they don’t have that many to begin with). With a temperature of 85 degrees at midnight, it was a war of attrition more than anything else. That might be my last baseball game this year. It’s almost hockey season.
In other news, Operation Use it Up proceeds apace. Do you know how long it takes to use up a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker? Do you have any idea why a middle-aged lady even has a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker? I have two. I don’t know why. I don’t remember acquiring these articles, but there they are and I’m going to use them up if it’s the last thing I do. It might be the last thing I do.
*****
Monday
“What the hell are we fighting for?
Ah, just surrender and it won't hurt at all
You just got time to say your prayers
Yeah, while you're waiting for the hammer to, hammer to fall.”
--Queen, “Hammer to Fall”
It’s 8:45. I just cleaned up dinner. I made pork chops in orange juice, which I haven’t made since 2014. It wasn’t very good. I suppose this is why I haven’t made it for five years. Now I’m watching the end of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I love Queen. God rest Freddie Mercury’s soul.
How did I know that I made pork chops and orange juice in 2014? I’m glad you asked. It’s because I wrote about it, proving (if the entire paragraph about a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker wasn’t proof enough) that there’s no bit of ephemera that’s too trifling for me to document.
I’m about a quarter of the way through Postwar, and it’s instructive. I’m pretty solid on 20th century Europe, so I’m not learning anything new in terms of bare facts. But the blinding-speed cataclysm and upheaval that was Europe from 1914 to 1989 offers useful perspective for those of us who are shocked by how much American political life has changed in just the last three years. It’s helpful and bracingly terrifying to remember that things might well just be getting started; and that a year from now, 2019 might be the good old days.
I’m fun to be around, am I not?
*****
So now it’s Tuesday, one day later; and, this happened. Did I not predict this? Did I not tell you all that something like this was going to happen? Of course, I was thinking that it would happen in the next year or so, not the next 24 hours, but wasn’t that the point? “Blinding speed” was the phrase I used, in fact.
But that’s enough about the march of history. Let’s talk about the half-life of a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker. I’m pretty sure that this one Lipsmacker will take longer to finish than the Conte government was in power. It might outlast NATO and the entire postwar structure of Western Europe. It’s nice to know that some things were made to last. Did I mention that it’s a Starburst-flavored Lipsmacker? Does anyone have any insight whatsoever into why a woman who should be planning for her old age would buy such a thing? What was I thinking? And why do Italian people have all the luck? No heads of government are resigning on this side of the Atlantic, that’s for sure. Non รจ giusto.
*****
It’s Wednesday now and I haven’t seen or heard news all day. I’m going to assume for purposes of this blog that Western Europe is still standing and that no other world governments have fallen since yesterday.
Today I went with my older son to his college orientation. My younger son’s high school orientation is next week. Work is getting busy again, and the summer is drawing to an end. The last few weeks--quiet mornings, slow-paced workdays, evening swims, movies on the couch with my family, reading in bed--have been almost like a vacation. I wish it could last a little longer, but nothing lasts forever, not even a lip balm, and especially not summer.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Bookbag
I've been feeling the call of a new tote bag. If you hang around here at all, then you know that this is the last thing I need in the world, so I'm going to stop shopping for a few minutes and catch up on book reviews. I've been reading a lot.
*****
It's not that I need a bag, it's just that the bags that I have don't exactly fulfill all of my bag requirements. Some are too big, and some are too small. My current favorite work bag is almost big enough, but not quite; and it's an open top bag, with no zipper or closure at all. So I can fit a lot in there but then everyone can see everything I'm carrying. It's not ideal. And stuff falls out, too.
I guess I could carry less stuff.
Ridiculous. I'm not here to spout nonsense.
*****
One thing that I don't tend to carry around is books, because I read on a Kindle. I carry the Kindle just about everywhere, because you never know when you'll have a spare few minutes and it's always best to have something to read that has nothing to do with Donald Trump. But the Kindle doesn't take up very much space so it alone would not and could not justify purchase of a new bag of any sort.
*****
OK, so I just bought a tote bag. I can always return it. It might be the Holy Grail of tote bags and if I hadn't bought it, I'd never know, now would I? I'll report back later.
*****
Back to the books. Here are some short reviews of some recently read books:
Goodbye Mr. Chips, James Hilton. Did you read Lost Horizon when you were in high school? I did. I think I liked it, but my memory isn't what it was and I don't remember much about it other than Shangri-La. Attempts to create perfection on earth are always interesting fodder for literature, since they always end in disaster. Relentless tote bag hunt aside, however, this post isn't about perfection-seeking. It's about books. I loved Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I read it in the car on the way to the beach (it's very short, less than 100 pages), and the short break from work was the perfect time to think about how a person can accomplish the thing that they were put on Earth to accomplish, which is what this book is about more than anything else. A lovely book.
Frances and Bernard, Carlene Bauer. I liked this, though I was prepared and fully expecting to hate it. It's a true epistolary novel, 100 percent letters, mostly between the two title characters; and although I didn't accept the premise (the book was supposedly inspired by the friendship between Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell) for a hot second, I still liked the characters and the writing and the story very much. Bauer imagines Frances Reardon, the O'Connor character, as a working-class Philadelphian rather than a landowning southerner; but the Robert Lowell character is very much like I imagine the real Lowell probably was. The very idea that Flannery O'Connor would sleep with Robert Lowell or anyone else outside the confines of marriage is ridiculous (not offensive, just ridiculous). It's not clear why Bauer chose to relocate the Flannery character from Georgia to Philadelphia but not the Lowell character who was a Harvard-educated New Englander in the book as in real life. But the letters are beautiful and the story is compelling as long as you don't try to sustain any belief in the O'Connor-Lowell idea. I liked this well enough that I'm going to read Bauer's memoir, Not that Kind of Girl (a very popular memoir title, by the way).
*****
I had second thoughts about the first tote bag, so I bought a second tote bag. I'm not 100 percent sure about either of them, really. Print vs. solid, large vs. really large--so much to think about. At least one will go back, and possibly both of them.
*****
Back to the books.
Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe. My number one book of 2019 so far, in a year that includes Graham Greene, Joan Didion, and C.S. Lewis. I wrote a whole separate post on this, which I'll publish soon. It's missing something (the post, not the book). I'll figure it out.
Thatcher, Jacob Bannister. Believe it or not, this showed up in my daily cheap books newsletter the very day that I finished Say Nothing, so I read a biography of Margaret Thatcher right after a book about the IRA. This was very short and superficial, running from the IRA hunger strikes to the Falklands war to the coal miners' strike to the fall of the Berlin Wall in just a few quick chapters. I didn't learn much about Margaret Thatcher that I didn't already know, except that she started her career as a chemist. That was something new.
*****
Tote bag #1 arrived today. It's lovely and well-designed, and appears to be very durable. It's also absurdly too large. I could carry a microwave oven in that bag, with room left over for the popcorn. Ridiculous. So now it's a decision between tote bag #2, or returning to the drawing board. I do earnestly hope that tote bag #2 will work. I don't think I have the mental capacity to start this whole process over again.
Maybe I should carry less stuff.
*****
I'll Tell You in Person, Chloe Caldwell. This reminded me a little bit of Domenica Ruta's With or Without You, though Caldwell is much more matter-of-fact and less dramatic about her drug use and other high-risk behavior. That's neither praise nor criticism. I liked this book better than I expected to. Caldwell seems to be writing to try to shock women her mother's age, but she comes across as droll and rather sweet, not bratty and self-important. I'll watch Ms. Caldwell's career with considerable interest. If I ever run into her, I'll tell her to be more careful. That way, she'll know that she rattled at least one middle-aged lady.
*****
Tote bag # 2 arrived today. I think it's the one. It has a zipper, and everything fits--computer, notebooks, lunch, pencil case, cosmetic case, water bottle, empty coffee cup, and even an umbrella if I need one. It's a nice shade of pink that might show dirt too easily, but I can wash it; and I work in a Federal government office, not a coal mine, so how dirty is it going to get?. Mission accomplished.
*****
South and West, Joan Didion. I read this a while ago, and I don't remember a darn thing about it, except a part where Didion eats a grilled cheese sandwich. I haven't had a grilled cheese sandwich in years.
Educated, Tara Westover. This is another one that I read a few months ago, and I remember almost everything about it. It's an extraordinary story. I heard about it from my son (well, I heard about it from the entire world, but my son urged me to read it), so I knew the basic outline going in: Young girl grows up off the grid in a fundamentalist quasi-Mormon family with no birth certificate, Social Security number, or papers of any kind, never enters a classroom until age 17, and ends up with a Ph.D. from Cambridge. There's so much more to the story than that, so much that's unexpected, and Tara Westover's writing is beautiful, very stark and spare but vivid. Very highly recommended.
*****
Day 1 carrying the new tote bag. The bag fell off my car seat, as they do, and nothing fell out because everything was securely zipped inside. The red and white striped lining is cheerful and pretty, a nice contrast with the pink. And it's comfortable to carry, even at full capacity. Altogether a good purchase.
*****
Right now, I'm reading a very long history of postwar Europe, aptly titled Postwar. It's very good and very readable but it'll take me a few weeks to finish. I'll probably alternate between a chapter or two of Postwar and another shorter book. I have about ten in my queue right now. An embarrassment of riches. If only I had an embarrassment of time. Does that even make sense? You know what I mean.
*****
It's not that I need a bag, it's just that the bags that I have don't exactly fulfill all of my bag requirements. Some are too big, and some are too small. My current favorite work bag is almost big enough, but not quite; and it's an open top bag, with no zipper or closure at all. So I can fit a lot in there but then everyone can see everything I'm carrying. It's not ideal. And stuff falls out, too.
I guess I could carry less stuff.
Ridiculous. I'm not here to spout nonsense.
*****
One thing that I don't tend to carry around is books, because I read on a Kindle. I carry the Kindle just about everywhere, because you never know when you'll have a spare few minutes and it's always best to have something to read that has nothing to do with Donald Trump. But the Kindle doesn't take up very much space so it alone would not and could not justify purchase of a new bag of any sort.
*****
OK, so I just bought a tote bag. I can always return it. It might be the Holy Grail of tote bags and if I hadn't bought it, I'd never know, now would I? I'll report back later.
*****
Back to the books. Here are some short reviews of some recently read books:
Goodbye Mr. Chips, James Hilton. Did you read Lost Horizon when you were in high school? I did. I think I liked it, but my memory isn't what it was and I don't remember much about it other than Shangri-La. Attempts to create perfection on earth are always interesting fodder for literature, since they always end in disaster. Relentless tote bag hunt aside, however, this post isn't about perfection-seeking. It's about books. I loved Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I read it in the car on the way to the beach (it's very short, less than 100 pages), and the short break from work was the perfect time to think about how a person can accomplish the thing that they were put on Earth to accomplish, which is what this book is about more than anything else. A lovely book.
Frances and Bernard, Carlene Bauer. I liked this, though I was prepared and fully expecting to hate it. It's a true epistolary novel, 100 percent letters, mostly between the two title characters; and although I didn't accept the premise (the book was supposedly inspired by the friendship between Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell) for a hot second, I still liked the characters and the writing and the story very much. Bauer imagines Frances Reardon, the O'Connor character, as a working-class Philadelphian rather than a landowning southerner; but the Robert Lowell character is very much like I imagine the real Lowell probably was. The very idea that Flannery O'Connor would sleep with Robert Lowell or anyone else outside the confines of marriage is ridiculous (not offensive, just ridiculous). It's not clear why Bauer chose to relocate the Flannery character from Georgia to Philadelphia but not the Lowell character who was a Harvard-educated New Englander in the book as in real life. But the letters are beautiful and the story is compelling as long as you don't try to sustain any belief in the O'Connor-Lowell idea. I liked this well enough that I'm going to read Bauer's memoir, Not that Kind of Girl (a very popular memoir title, by the way).
*****
I had second thoughts about the first tote bag, so I bought a second tote bag. I'm not 100 percent sure about either of them, really. Print vs. solid, large vs. really large--so much to think about. At least one will go back, and possibly both of them.
*****
Back to the books.
Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe. My number one book of 2019 so far, in a year that includes Graham Greene, Joan Didion, and C.S. Lewis. I wrote a whole separate post on this, which I'll publish soon. It's missing something (the post, not the book). I'll figure it out.
Thatcher, Jacob Bannister. Believe it or not, this showed up in my daily cheap books newsletter the very day that I finished Say Nothing, so I read a biography of Margaret Thatcher right after a book about the IRA. This was very short and superficial, running from the IRA hunger strikes to the Falklands war to the coal miners' strike to the fall of the Berlin Wall in just a few quick chapters. I didn't learn much about Margaret Thatcher that I didn't already know, except that she started her career as a chemist. That was something new.
*****
Tote bag #1 arrived today. It's lovely and well-designed, and appears to be very durable. It's also absurdly too large. I could carry a microwave oven in that bag, with room left over for the popcorn. Ridiculous. So now it's a decision between tote bag #2, or returning to the drawing board. I do earnestly hope that tote bag #2 will work. I don't think I have the mental capacity to start this whole process over again.
Maybe I should carry less stuff.
*****
I'll Tell You in Person, Chloe Caldwell. This reminded me a little bit of Domenica Ruta's With or Without You, though Caldwell is much more matter-of-fact and less dramatic about her drug use and other high-risk behavior. That's neither praise nor criticism. I liked this book better than I expected to. Caldwell seems to be writing to try to shock women her mother's age, but she comes across as droll and rather sweet, not bratty and self-important. I'll watch Ms. Caldwell's career with considerable interest. If I ever run into her, I'll tell her to be more careful. That way, she'll know that she rattled at least one middle-aged lady.
*****
Tote bag # 2 arrived today. I think it's the one. It has a zipper, and everything fits--computer, notebooks, lunch, pencil case, cosmetic case, water bottle, empty coffee cup, and even an umbrella if I need one. It's a nice shade of pink that might show dirt too easily, but I can wash it; and I work in a Federal government office, not a coal mine, so how dirty is it going to get?. Mission accomplished.
*****
South and West, Joan Didion. I read this a while ago, and I don't remember a darn thing about it, except a part where Didion eats a grilled cheese sandwich. I haven't had a grilled cheese sandwich in years.
Educated, Tara Westover. This is another one that I read a few months ago, and I remember almost everything about it. It's an extraordinary story. I heard about it from my son (well, I heard about it from the entire world, but my son urged me to read it), so I knew the basic outline going in: Young girl grows up off the grid in a fundamentalist quasi-Mormon family with no birth certificate, Social Security number, or papers of any kind, never enters a classroom until age 17, and ends up with a Ph.D. from Cambridge. There's so much more to the story than that, so much that's unexpected, and Tara Westover's writing is beautiful, very stark and spare but vivid. Very highly recommended.
*****
Day 1 carrying the new tote bag. The bag fell off my car seat, as they do, and nothing fell out because everything was securely zipped inside. The red and white striped lining is cheerful and pretty, a nice contrast with the pink. And it's comfortable to carry, even at full capacity. Altogether a good purchase.
 |
| There it is. It's bigger than it looks. |
*****
Right now, I'm reading a very long history of postwar Europe, aptly titled Postwar. It's very good and very readable but it'll take me a few weeks to finish. I'll probably alternate between a chapter or two of Postwar and another shorter book. I have about ten in my queue right now. An embarrassment of riches. If only I had an embarrassment of time. Does that even make sense? You know what I mean.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
20-20, more or less
I don't really mind returning to work from vacation, though I do hate getting up on the first morning. I'm an early riser, but "rising" and "leaving the house" are two different things. One of my favorite things about vacation is that no matter how early you rise, you can take as long as you like to actually leave the house. But with that part out of the way, the re-entry into daily working life isn't bad at all. I have to admit that a few times during the morning, I found myself thinking about what I would have been doing at the same time last week, but by 2:30 or so, I was caught up on emails and fully abreast of developments that occurred during my absence and ready to just get back to work.
Do bats really swirl? I don't know. Whatever they do, I'd prefer not to see it or hear it.
Normally, my vacation would just be getting started this week. Various family schedule conflicts made it necessary to go a week earlier than I normally do. This means that we have just about a month of summer remaining. It still feels like the back stretch, though. It's 7:40 PM as I write this and although it's still light out, it's not middle-of-the-day, sun-is-shining light out. It's get out while you can before twilight falls and the bats start swirling light out. Two entirely different things.
Do bats really swirl? I don't know. Whatever they do, I'd prefer not to see it or hear it.
My son just called to let me know that the pool just reopened after thunder had forced it to close for 30 minutes, so I'm going to take advantage of the waning daylight and the warm water and end my day with a swim. I should get home just as the bats begin to swirl, if that's the right word for what bats do.
*****
It's Tuesday now, 6:17 PM. My plan was to swim as soon as I got home from work, and then cook dinner. But thunder forced me to alter my plans once again. I did some housework and prepped some vegetables and then I'll cook the food and hope that the thunder will stop so I can swim at 7 or so.
I'm watching local news right now, hoping to see the weather forecast. I know that I can just look at the radar online, but I never know what I'm looking at. I can see the big green spots (why green?) but I can never tell where and how fast they're moving. I'm not a meteorologist.
The anchorwoman's hair is bothering me, because it's doing something that my hair does. It's lopsided. One side looks just fine and the other side is crazy. I don't think that this is intentional. The weather woman, on the other hand, has perfect hair, but it's so straight and shiny that she must have spent 45 minutes beating it down with a flatiron. Ain't nobody got that kind of time, least of all me. I need to cook some food. The thunderstorm warning ends in fifteen minutes.
*****
OK, so I'm not the only person who can't read radar because that thunderstorm went on for the whole evening and the pool remained closed. I found other things to do.
No swimming today, either. I had some errands to run after work. For some reason, the normal after-work errand-running traffic was far worse than it usually is. I'm lucky that I have a very easy commute to work. I'd be a hideous, quaking mass of road rage if I had to spend more than 20 minutes each way on the road.
I usually write in Google Docs, but I just started using Writer, the Internet Typewriter, just to see what it's like. It's fun but I don't think I'll use it regularly. It's a little too bare bones. I'm not a Luddite. But I do like the typewriter sounds and the custom pink background. Maybe I'll use both. Google probably owns too much of my life anyway.
Sorry Google! Forget I said that! I didn't mean it! Don't erase me!
*****
Me after five minutes in the car: GOOOOO! Oh my GOD! GO! AAAAAUGH!
Yeah, I know. It's bad.
*****
It's Thursday now, and a work meeting that I had particularly dreaded went very well, and I accomplished a lot today, and I also got to go swimming after work. The water sparkled, clear and softly cool without even a slight edge of too-coldness.
Later, I vacuumed, because it was vacuuming day; and around here, we vacuum on vacuuming day, no matter what. By "we," I of course mean "I." About midway through the house, I heard a sound that could only mean that something was stuck in the intake, but I kept vacuuming, because maybe if I ignore that noise, it'll go away. That approach always works, right?
After a few more seconds, I couldn't ignore the noise anymore, so I pulled the plug and pulled a piece of string out of the vacuum cleaner and then finished up. And everything was fine. The End.
*****
No, not really the end, because now my eyesight is getting a tiny bit blurrier every day and I'm pretty sure that I have cataracts. And I'm thinking that if I just keep doing what I'm doing and ignore the cataracts, they'll probably go away.
I dread medical appointments. I marvel at people who just go to the doctor every time something is wrong, just like filling up the gas tank or picking up a gallon of milk. My mother-in-law, who is quite healthy, is like that. If she's even a little bit sick, she calls the doctor. My mother, on the other hand, won't go to a doctor unless she's bleeding from her eye sockets. That used to be my joke, anyway, until I just now pointed out to myself that I am walking around with what are very likely cataracts, and I'm doing absolutely zero about it. I hope I don't start bleeding from my eyes sockets. Then I'll probably have to go to the doctor.
*****
It's Tuesday now, 6:17 PM. My plan was to swim as soon as I got home from work, and then cook dinner. But thunder forced me to alter my plans once again. I did some housework and prepped some vegetables and then I'll cook the food and hope that the thunder will stop so I can swim at 7 or so.
I'm watching local news right now, hoping to see the weather forecast. I know that I can just look at the radar online, but I never know what I'm looking at. I can see the big green spots (why green?) but I can never tell where and how fast they're moving. I'm not a meteorologist.
The anchorwoman's hair is bothering me, because it's doing something that my hair does. It's lopsided. One side looks just fine and the other side is crazy. I don't think that this is intentional. The weather woman, on the other hand, has perfect hair, but it's so straight and shiny that she must have spent 45 minutes beating it down with a flatiron. Ain't nobody got that kind of time, least of all me. I need to cook some food. The thunderstorm warning ends in fifteen minutes.
*****
OK, so I'm not the only person who can't read radar because that thunderstorm went on for the whole evening and the pool remained closed. I found other things to do.
No swimming today, either. I had some errands to run after work. For some reason, the normal after-work errand-running traffic was far worse than it usually is. I'm lucky that I have a very easy commute to work. I'd be a hideous, quaking mass of road rage if I had to spend more than 20 minutes each way on the road.
I usually write in Google Docs, but I just started using Writer, the Internet Typewriter, just to see what it's like. It's fun but I don't think I'll use it regularly. It's a little too bare bones. I'm not a Luddite. But I do like the typewriter sounds and the custom pink background. Maybe I'll use both. Google probably owns too much of my life anyway.
Sorry Google! Forget I said that! I didn't mean it! Don't erase me!
Me after five minutes in the car: GOOOOO! Oh my GOD! GO! AAAAAUGH!
Yeah, I know. It's bad.
*****
It's Thursday now, and a work meeting that I had particularly dreaded went very well, and I accomplished a lot today, and I also got to go swimming after work. The water sparkled, clear and softly cool without even a slight edge of too-coldness.
Later, I vacuumed, because it was vacuuming day; and around here, we vacuum on vacuuming day, no matter what. By "we," I of course mean "I." About midway through the house, I heard a sound that could only mean that something was stuck in the intake, but I kept vacuuming, because maybe if I ignore that noise, it'll go away. That approach always works, right?
After a few more seconds, I couldn't ignore the noise anymore, so I pulled the plug and pulled a piece of string out of the vacuum cleaner and then finished up. And everything was fine. The End.
*****
No, not really the end, because now my eyesight is getting a tiny bit blurrier every day and I'm pretty sure that I have cataracts. And I'm thinking that if I just keep doing what I'm doing and ignore the cataracts, they'll probably go away.
I dread medical appointments. I marvel at people who just go to the doctor every time something is wrong, just like filling up the gas tank or picking up a gallon of milk. My mother-in-law, who is quite healthy, is like that. If she's even a little bit sick, she calls the doctor. My mother, on the other hand, won't go to a doctor unless she's bleeding from her eye sockets. That used to be my joke, anyway, until I just now pointed out to myself that I am walking around with what are very likely cataracts, and I'm doing absolutely zero about it. I hope I don't start bleeding from my eyes sockets. Then I'll probably have to go to the doctor.
*****
It's Friday night. I still haven't called the doctor, but I also didn't start bleeding from my eye sockets. I can see well enough to write, so as far as I'm concerned, it's not broke, and I ain't gonna fix it.
I worked in the office today rather than from home as I normally do on Friday. Our team spent the day gathered around a single conference table, working and talking but mostly talking. After work, I went to my three-year-old niece's birthday party; and from there, to a going-away party for a neighborhood kid who is leaving for his LDS mission. I had just enough time to drop off my work bag at home and see that the house was not in order, but I had to leave it that way.
So maybe it was the whole day surrounded by people, or maybe it was the stress of leaving the house in disarray, but by 9:30, I was 100 percent done and I had to leave the party that minute and not one minute later. And so I did.
*****
It's Saturday and I just read over what I read last night and if spelling and punctuation are any indication (they are the only indication), then my claim that I could see well enough to write was quite false. In my defense, I was writing late at night, in the dark, on my phone, and with my contact lenses out. But still.
My eyes are just fine today, and I don't have a thing to do other than read and write and swim and clean my house. No parties, no errands, no road rage, and absolutely no doctor's appointments. It's almost like another vacation.
*****
It's Saturday and I just read over what I read last night and if spelling and punctuation are any indication (they are the only indication), then my claim that I could see well enough to write was quite false. In my defense, I was writing late at night, in the dark, on my phone, and with my contact lenses out. But still.
My eyes are just fine today, and I don't have a thing to do other than read and write and swim and clean my house. No parties, no errands, no road rage, and absolutely no doctor's appointments. It's almost like another vacation.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
All I ever wanted
It's Saturday, the first day of our biennial beach trip, and I'm in my car, heading north on I-95, about an hour north of Baltimore. Traffic is quite heavy, as it always is on Saturdays in July and August. We're not the only people trying to get the heck out of town.
A beach trip is different from a city vacation. We don't have any exploring to do this week because we know Avalon, NJ inside and out. We won't really see anything new. We'll swim in the Atlantic Ocean and ride our bikes and eat at our usual restaurants. I'll read a lot.
*****
An hour and a half later and we're finally on the right side of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Now we're really on vacation. Another hour or so and we’ll finally cross my favorite little bridge onto Seven Mile Island.
*****
Sunday of beach week is like a holiday. Everyone is happy, except maybe a handful of island residents who are sick of tourists. Too bad for them. I'm smelling saltwater and Coppertone right now, and I'm brushing a fine coating of sand off my skin. It's blazing hot in the sun but it's cool and shady under the umbrella.
I was just in the middle of a conversation with my 18-year-old son, when he suddenly yelled "ice cream man!" and then took off running. We're close to the water and the tide might force us to shift the whole operation a few feet back.
And it did, very abruptly. We were all under our respective umbrellas, chatting with our assorted children, when a rush of saltwater soaked our towels and bags, with another wave hitting just as we pulled up stakes to move. We'll plan better tomorrow. For today, we cut the beach day short and split up, some of us to swim at the pool, some to ride bikes, and a few more who decided to take naps.
*****
So that’s a lot of people, you might be thinking, and you would not be wrong. When we take city vacations, it’s just my immediate family--husband and two sons, now teenagers. But beach week is come one, come all. Right now, in three separate locations within a five-block radius, we are on vacation with two sisters (one mine and one his), two brothers-in-law, three nephews, and one niece. My mother will arrive later today and will split up her time between my house and my sister’s.
It’s exhausting being the one person who has a connection with every single other person here. My phone, as they say on the Internet, blows up every morning and every evening as both sides of the family check to see what time we’re planning to make camp on the beach, and what time we’re going to have dinner and what that dinner will consist of. I’m popular.
*****
Avalon and Stone Harbor are two of the blondest and whitest places in the United States. There are maybe some sororities at universities in the southern states that contain more tan, beautiful blond girls than Avalon and Stone Harbor in July, but you would have a hard time finding any other place in the U.S. with a higher ratio of blond girls to members of every other demographic. And there are maybe some lacrosse teams or some country clubs where blond-haired, Sperry-wearing college-age boys represent a greater percentage of those present on any given day than 96th Street in Stone Harbor on a Saturday night in August, but if those country clubs and lacrosse teams are not in Connecticut or the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, then they’re in Stone Harbor or Avalon.
We were working class, so Avalon was not my beach town when I was growing up. We went to Wildwood. From 2009 to 2012, I worked for a small government contractor that eventually shut down (and that sentence sums up my entire working life from 2001 to 2015, by the way). One day in the lunchroom, I overheard a group of young interns discussing the then-new phenomenon that was MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” Shaking his head, one of the interns said “That show has to be scripted, because those people can’t possibly be real.” I laughed at his naivete. I knew that those people were real, and Wildwood, New Jersey is the reason why I knew that. So the contrast between my childhood beach experience of beaches crowded and noisy with competing transistor radios, and Greek luncheonettes and Italian-run pizzerias, and Morey’s Pier, and sleazy t-shirt and souvenir shops; and the preppy, moneyed gentility of Avalon and Stone Harbor is pretty stark.
Wealth and social status aside, though, it’s still New Jersey. People still listen to the radio on the beach; and just like in Philadelphia, if the radio isn’t tuned to a Phillies game, then it’s on a station that plays no music recorded after 1985 or so. There are at least 25 places where you can
get pizza that is actually worthy of the name. People who summer in $7 million beachfront estates in Avalon call soft ice cream “custard,” just like the people who save up all year to rent a third-floor apartment in Wildwood for a week. And there are t-shirt stores everywhere, even though they’re the kind of t-shirt stores that sell $95 hoodies and softly washed blue and gray t-shirts screen-printed with crossed paddles. The beach is the beach.
*****
Vacation privileges:
I just finished reading something that I liked so I have to find something new to read. It's only Tuesday and I would like to find a novel that with last through the rest of the week.
*****
It's Wednesday and I'm reading The End of the Affair. It's only my second Graham Greene, after Our Man in Havana, which I loved. I'm not sure why I didn't start reading him a long time ago but I will make up for lost time now. This book won't last me through the rest of the week. I'll probably finish it tomorrow.
I always get tired midway through our beach vacation. I love the beach, but it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of carrying back and forth. A lot of schlepping, because that’s a good onomatopoeic word. After a day on the beach and a sweaty trek home under the merciless sun, burdened by bags and towels and chairs and umbrellas, I’m as tired as a coal miner. By Wednesday, I feel like a camel, midway through a long and thirsty journey across a burning desert.
Then Thursday comes, and I realize that I’ll only wake up to the sound of seagulls three more times this year. Only two more full days at the beach; only two more days of bicycle runs to the corner grocery store to buy Jersey peaches and Jersey tomatoes and wine and ice cream and nothing else. Maybe a bagel.
*****
We spent today with friends from home who are staying in Wildwood, a few miles and a world away from Avalon. My friend told me that she feels conspicuous for her lack of tattoos and body piercings. They are new to the Jersey shore and chose Wildwood because of its proximity to Cape May. They’re having a good time, though, with three children who love the wide beach and the crazy colorful noisy boardwalk that smells like french fries and pizza and funnel cake.
Our friends arrived on our doorstep at 7:30 this morning. The male 60 percent of the family joined my brother-in-law’s annual crabbing trip, while the ladies stayed behind with me. We walked to the shops in Stone Harbor and had a smoothie and shopped at Hoy’s, and then we packed a picnic and headed to the beach. Despite cold water, we all enjoyed a swim, and then my friend’s delightful 10-year-old daughter entertained my six-year-old nephew and three-year-old niece, while their mother read her book, amazed at the normally shy three-year-old’s willingness to make a new friend. After an afternoon on the beach, the men rejoined us for a quick swim in the pool, and then we took turns taking five-minute showers before walking to my sister’s house (carrying the aforementioned wine and ice cream) for the annual crab feast that follows the annual crabbing trip. My friends returned to Wildwood at 9 PM or so, as the week’s first thunder began to rumble. It was a perfect day.
*****
It's Thursday now, and I woke this morning to cloudy gray skies. It wasn’t gloomy; it was actually rather nice. The ocean and the bay and the sky were all the same pearly color; perfect for seagull camouflage. Everything was quiet. A handful of other people were out on their bikes. We nodded to one another as we passed.
It’s a little past 10 now and the sun is out, so we’ll head to the beach soon. We’re hoping for warmer water. The water has gotten a little colder each day this week. Apparently, a rip current is to blame. That’s what the surfers say, anyway, and who am I to argue with them?
*****
And now it's Friday. This morning dawned just like yesterday, with pearl gray skies and slightly lighter pearl gray clouds and a pale yellow sun trying to break through but not quite succeeding.
I hadn't been shopping this week so my son and I rode our bikes to the shops. He and I have a long tradition of early morning excursions during vacation, while the rest of the family sleeps in. We didn't do this every day that time. He's almost 15 now and he likes to sleep. It was nice to have him back again. We found a little used book and print store where we bought a framed vintage postcard and beach tag. It sounds silly but it spoke to us. Then I bought a sweatshirt blanket and St. Christopher medals, and a fancy donut for my son.
As we browsed at Hoy's, my son's favorite childhood shopping destination, I noticed a lady in her 70s carrying a basket of toys and gifts. She perused a rack of beaded bracelets, pursing her lips and tilting her head to the side, trying to choose the best bracelets for her granddaughters or nieces. She finally made her selections and headed to the register to pay. I guessed that it was her last day, too.
*****
Saturday again, and we're on Route 47 North along with all of the other slightly sad people who are returning home from the shore.
I woke up early this morning, as I always do. After one last bike ride and one last walk on the beach, I came back to wake up the rest of the family to pack up our house. And now here we are, winding our way through the Pine Barrens to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
The End of the Affair actually did hold out until Friday. It's even better than Our Man in Havana. I'll write about it later. I just started the next book in my queue, a history of postwar Europe that will probably take weeks to read. No more novels for now.
I almost wish that I hadn't put my feet in the water this morning. But I can still go swimming later today. Beach week is over but summer is not.
A beach trip is different from a city vacation. We don't have any exploring to do this week because we know Avalon, NJ inside and out. We won't really see anything new. We'll swim in the Atlantic Ocean and ride our bikes and eat at our usual restaurants. I'll read a lot.
*****
An hour and a half later and we're finally on the right side of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Now we're really on vacation. Another hour or so and we’ll finally cross my favorite little bridge onto Seven Mile Island.
*****
 |
| Stone Harbor beach at 81st Street, 6:30 AM, Sunday July 28 |
Sunday of beach week is like a holiday. Everyone is happy, except maybe a handful of island residents who are sick of tourists. Too bad for them. I'm smelling saltwater and Coppertone right now, and I'm brushing a fine coating of sand off my skin. It's blazing hot in the sun but it's cool and shady under the umbrella.
I was just in the middle of a conversation with my 18-year-old son, when he suddenly yelled "ice cream man!" and then took off running. We're close to the water and the tide might force us to shift the whole operation a few feet back.
And it did, very abruptly. We were all under our respective umbrellas, chatting with our assorted children, when a rush of saltwater soaked our towels and bags, with another wave hitting just as we pulled up stakes to move. We'll plan better tomorrow. For today, we cut the beach day short and split up, some of us to swim at the pool, some to ride bikes, and a few more who decided to take naps.
*****
So that’s a lot of people, you might be thinking, and you would not be wrong. When we take city vacations, it’s just my immediate family--husband and two sons, now teenagers. But beach week is come one, come all. Right now, in three separate locations within a five-block radius, we are on vacation with two sisters (one mine and one his), two brothers-in-law, three nephews, and one niece. My mother will arrive later today and will split up her time between my house and my sister’s.
It’s exhausting being the one person who has a connection with every single other person here. My phone, as they say on the Internet, blows up every morning and every evening as both sides of the family check to see what time we’re planning to make camp on the beach, and what time we’re going to have dinner and what that dinner will consist of. I’m popular.
*****
Avalon and Stone Harbor are two of the blondest and whitest places in the United States. There are maybe some sororities at universities in the southern states that contain more tan, beautiful blond girls than Avalon and Stone Harbor in July, but you would have a hard time finding any other place in the U.S. with a higher ratio of blond girls to members of every other demographic. And there are maybe some lacrosse teams or some country clubs where blond-haired, Sperry-wearing college-age boys represent a greater percentage of those present on any given day than 96th Street in Stone Harbor on a Saturday night in August, but if those country clubs and lacrosse teams are not in Connecticut or the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, then they’re in Stone Harbor or Avalon.
We were working class, so Avalon was not my beach town when I was growing up. We went to Wildwood. From 2009 to 2012, I worked for a small government contractor that eventually shut down (and that sentence sums up my entire working life from 2001 to 2015, by the way). One day in the lunchroom, I overheard a group of young interns discussing the then-new phenomenon that was MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” Shaking his head, one of the interns said “That show has to be scripted, because those people can’t possibly be real.” I laughed at his naivete. I knew that those people were real, and Wildwood, New Jersey is the reason why I knew that. So the contrast between my childhood beach experience of beaches crowded and noisy with competing transistor radios, and Greek luncheonettes and Italian-run pizzerias, and Morey’s Pier, and sleazy t-shirt and souvenir shops; and the preppy, moneyed gentility of Avalon and Stone Harbor is pretty stark.
Wealth and social status aside, though, it’s still New Jersey. People still listen to the radio on the beach; and just like in Philadelphia, if the radio isn’t tuned to a Phillies game, then it’s on a station that plays no music recorded after 1985 or so. There are at least 25 places where you can
get pizza that is actually worthy of the name. People who summer in $7 million beachfront estates in Avalon call soft ice cream “custard,” just like the people who save up all year to rent a third-floor apartment in Wildwood for a week. And there are t-shirt stores everywhere, even though they’re the kind of t-shirt stores that sell $95 hoodies and softly washed blue and gray t-shirts screen-printed with crossed paddles. The beach is the beach.
*****
Vacation privileges:
- Two showers a day. More if I feel like it.
- Never wiping down the shower walls.
- Doing only the minimum housework necessary to avoid squalor.
- Not keeping up with the news. Trump probably tweeted something today but if he did, I don't know about it.
- Answering all questions with the words "I don't know."
- Answering all followup questions, which are almost always slight paraphrases of the original question, with the words "I really don't know."
- Reading as much as I want to.
I just finished reading something that I liked so I have to find something new to read. It's only Tuesday and I would like to find a novel that with last through the rest of the week.
 |
| The view from our deck, where I wrote most of this. |
*****
It's Wednesday and I'm reading The End of the Affair. It's only my second Graham Greene, after Our Man in Havana, which I loved. I'm not sure why I didn't start reading him a long time ago but I will make up for lost time now. This book won't last me through the rest of the week. I'll probably finish it tomorrow.
I always get tired midway through our beach vacation. I love the beach, but it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of carrying back and forth. A lot of schlepping, because that’s a good onomatopoeic word. After a day on the beach and a sweaty trek home under the merciless sun, burdened by bags and towels and chairs and umbrellas, I’m as tired as a coal miner. By Wednesday, I feel like a camel, midway through a long and thirsty journey across a burning desert.
Then Thursday comes, and I realize that I’ll only wake up to the sound of seagulls three more times this year. Only two more full days at the beach; only two more days of bicycle runs to the corner grocery store to buy Jersey peaches and Jersey tomatoes and wine and ice cream and nothing else. Maybe a bagel.
*****
We spent today with friends from home who are staying in Wildwood, a few miles and a world away from Avalon. My friend told me that she feels conspicuous for her lack of tattoos and body piercings. They are new to the Jersey shore and chose Wildwood because of its proximity to Cape May. They’re having a good time, though, with three children who love the wide beach and the crazy colorful noisy boardwalk that smells like french fries and pizza and funnel cake.
Our friends arrived on our doorstep at 7:30 this morning. The male 60 percent of the family joined my brother-in-law’s annual crabbing trip, while the ladies stayed behind with me. We walked to the shops in Stone Harbor and had a smoothie and shopped at Hoy’s, and then we packed a picnic and headed to the beach. Despite cold water, we all enjoyed a swim, and then my friend’s delightful 10-year-old daughter entertained my six-year-old nephew and three-year-old niece, while their mother read her book, amazed at the normally shy three-year-old’s willingness to make a new friend. After an afternoon on the beach, the men rejoined us for a quick swim in the pool, and then we took turns taking five-minute showers before walking to my sister’s house (carrying the aforementioned wine and ice cream) for the annual crab feast that follows the annual crabbing trip. My friends returned to Wildwood at 9 PM or so, as the week’s first thunder began to rumble. It was a perfect day.
*****
It's Thursday now, and I woke this morning to cloudy gray skies. It wasn’t gloomy; it was actually rather nice. The ocean and the bay and the sky were all the same pearly color; perfect for seagull camouflage. Everything was quiet. A handful of other people were out on their bikes. We nodded to one another as we passed.
It’s a little past 10 now and the sun is out, so we’ll head to the beach soon. We’re hoping for warmer water. The water has gotten a little colder each day this week. Apparently, a rip current is to blame. That’s what the surfers say, anyway, and who am I to argue with them?
*****
And now it's Friday. This morning dawned just like yesterday, with pearl gray skies and slightly lighter pearl gray clouds and a pale yellow sun trying to break through but not quite succeeding.
I hadn't been shopping this week so my son and I rode our bikes to the shops. He and I have a long tradition of early morning excursions during vacation, while the rest of the family sleeps in. We didn't do this every day that time. He's almost 15 now and he likes to sleep. It was nice to have him back again. We found a little used book and print store where we bought a framed vintage postcard and beach tag. It sounds silly but it spoke to us. Then I bought a sweatshirt blanket and St. Christopher medals, and a fancy donut for my son.
As we browsed at Hoy's, my son's favorite childhood shopping destination, I noticed a lady in her 70s carrying a basket of toys and gifts. She perused a rack of beaded bracelets, pursing her lips and tilting her head to the side, trying to choose the best bracelets for her granddaughters or nieces. She finally made her selections and headed to the register to pay. I guessed that it was her last day, too.
*****
Saturday again, and we're on Route 47 North along with all of the other slightly sad people who are returning home from the shore.
I woke up early this morning, as I always do. After one last bike ride and one last walk on the beach, I came back to wake up the rest of the family to pack up our house. And now here we are, winding our way through the Pine Barrens to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
 |
| It was a good shell-collecting week. This was the very last one. It had to end sometime. |
The End of the Affair actually did hold out until Friday. It's even better than Our Man in Havana. I'll write about it later. I just started the next book in my queue, a history of postwar Europe that will probably take weeks to read. No more novels for now.
I almost wish that I hadn't put my feet in the water this morning. But I can still go swimming later today. Beach week is over but summer is not.
Friday, July 26, 2019
Whatever it costs, I'll pay it
A few weeks ago, I was driving home from work and I had a flashback, a moment of deja vu. Although it was early June, I couldn't get my mind away from a late July day in 2008, when my children were little and the company where I had worked for a long time was about to shut down, after an extended post-acquisition period of attrition. I was among the last remaining employees. I was apprehensive but optimistic about the future. My children were old enough to get in and out of the car on their own but young enough to sit on the floor and play with Legos. There wasn't much left for me to do at work except wait for the whole thing to shut down. It was a pretty carefree time. And the crape myrtle was in full bloom.
*****
I drove home from work on Monday, thinking about lots of things, but mostly about why crape myrtle is spelled so oddly. It’s crape myrtle season again, and I have mixed feelings about this. And unorthodox spellings bother me, too, so I looked it up to find out what the hell. It was comforting to learn that others dislike the “crape” spelling and that apparently “crepe” is accepted usage now. Now, however, we have two different spellings of the same word, and this bothers me too.
But let’s get off the subject of spelling for a moment, even though it’s one of my favorite subjects. Crepe myrtle (I’m going with what I believe to be the better of the two spellings) trees are beautiful, big and colorful with a lovely shape; and crepe myrtle season is the very pinnacle of summer. So what’s not to love? Why the mixed feelings? It’s because once you reach the pinnacle, there’s nowhere to go but down. Crepe myrtles are the beginning of the end of summer.
*****
There’s always a turning point, every summer. There’s a day in late July or maybe very early August, when the haze lifts and the air cools and it’s just as hot in the sun as it ever is in summer, but the breeze has an edge that reminds you that fall is coming. This happened on Wednesday--Wednesday was the turning point. Summer will return for a bit--it always does--but after the turning point, it always feels like borrowed time.
Eleven summers since that long-ago crepe myrtle season that feels like last week, and they go faster every year. There are no dog days, no lazy days of summer. It always feels like summer is on loan and the balloon payment is due soon. And it is, because every minute of life is borrowed. The interest rate on summer is just higher.
*****
I drove home from work on Monday, thinking about lots of things, but mostly about why crape myrtle is spelled so oddly. It’s crape myrtle season again, and I have mixed feelings about this. And unorthodox spellings bother me, too, so I looked it up to find out what the hell. It was comforting to learn that others dislike the “crape” spelling and that apparently “crepe” is accepted usage now. Now, however, we have two different spellings of the same word, and this bothers me too.
But let’s get off the subject of spelling for a moment, even though it’s one of my favorite subjects. Crepe myrtle (I’m going with what I believe to be the better of the two spellings) trees are beautiful, big and colorful with a lovely shape; and crepe myrtle season is the very pinnacle of summer. So what’s not to love? Why the mixed feelings? It’s because once you reach the pinnacle, there’s nowhere to go but down. Crepe myrtles are the beginning of the end of summer.
 |
| This is a crepe myrtle tree in my front yard. I have no idea why this picture is so dark. It might be a Google Pixel planned obsolescence thing. Or I might have a dirty lens. Either possibility seems likely. |
*****
There’s always a turning point, every summer. There’s a day in late July or maybe very early August, when the haze lifts and the air cools and it’s just as hot in the sun as it ever is in summer, but the breeze has an edge that reminds you that fall is coming. This happened on Wednesday--Wednesday was the turning point. Summer will return for a bit--it always does--but after the turning point, it always feels like borrowed time.
Eleven summers since that long-ago crepe myrtle season that feels like last week, and they go faster every year. There are no dog days, no lazy days of summer. It always feels like summer is on loan and the balloon payment is due soon. And it is, because every minute of life is borrowed. The interest rate on summer is just higher.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
The broccoli shouldn't mess with me, is all
I came home today literally sick from anxiety. It's a long story. Sometimes someone kicks you when you're down. Sometimes, they kick you hard, with both feet, which are wearing steel-toed boots. And then they step on you, just to make sure you felt it.
And I felt it. So came home and I vacuumed like I had a grudge against the carpet, and then I chopped some vegetables like I was Inigo Montoya and the broccoli had killed my father and then I finished some work, the kind of work that you never really finish, and I was still sick. Shaking, sick to my stomach with a blinding headache and a lump in my throat, I put on a suit and went swimming in the almost too-warm pool. I was exhausted after 20 laps and I wanted to do 30, but I had to stop at 24.
I felt calmer afterward. Cooler, and tired enough that the anxiety seemed a little bit far away from me, as if I was observing it but not actually feeling it. But I remembered it.
*****
I had to work super-early this morning, and I thought I wouldn’t sleep but I did. I left the house before dawn and the sun came up very suddenly. One minute it was dark and the next moment I was shading my eyes against the sun. That wasn’t meant to be a metaphor, but I suppose it could have been because today was a better day. It’s not all OK now, but it’s better.
I take a picture of the Capitol every time I walk past it. I didn’t quite walk past it this morning (we drove instead of taking Metro), but I saw it down the street from HHS, and I took a picture of the creamy white dome shining against the pink-gold morning sky. A lot of stupid shit goes on in there, but it’s pretty and I suppose that’s all that counts in a picture.
*****
That was Monday and Tuesday talking. It’s Friday now. Things are looking up a little bit, but I can still see the abyss from here if I turn around and look behind me. So I won’t turn around or look behind me. Problem solved.
I’m working from home today and just finished some research, so I’m taking a break to write, and then I’ll stop writing to write some more, only it’ll be the writing that I get paid to do. Later on, I’ll read a few pages of a book that I’m almost finished. It’s tragic and terrible and bleak, but I’m rationing those pages because I’m not ready for it to end. Maybe right now I should think about reading something that isn’t tragic, terrible, and bleak. Maybe I should get out of the house. I’ll do that later.
*****
I finished the book and I miss it already. And now it’s Saturday, the hottest day of the summer so far--almost too hot for me. Almost. Summer swim season is almost over and the pool is almost too warm and I’ll be on vacation in almost a week.
It was a bad week, and I took the Lord’s name in vain more times than I care to think about, so before I go to the pool, I think I need to go to Confession. I need forgiveness and I need to forgive. That last part is harder. Confession starts at 4 and it’s 3:22 so it’s almost time to go. Until next week.
And I felt it. So came home and I vacuumed like I had a grudge against the carpet, and then I chopped some vegetables like I was Inigo Montoya and the broccoli had killed my father and then I finished some work, the kind of work that you never really finish, and I was still sick. Shaking, sick to my stomach with a blinding headache and a lump in my throat, I put on a suit and went swimming in the almost too-warm pool. I was exhausted after 20 laps and I wanted to do 30, but I had to stop at 24.
I felt calmer afterward. Cooler, and tired enough that the anxiety seemed a little bit far away from me, as if I was observing it but not actually feeling it. But I remembered it.
*****
I had to work super-early this morning, and I thought I wouldn’t sleep but I did. I left the house before dawn and the sun came up very suddenly. One minute it was dark and the next moment I was shading my eyes against the sun. That wasn’t meant to be a metaphor, but I suppose it could have been because today was a better day. It’s not all OK now, but it’s better.
I take a picture of the Capitol every time I walk past it. I didn’t quite walk past it this morning (we drove instead of taking Metro), but I saw it down the street from HHS, and I took a picture of the creamy white dome shining against the pink-gold morning sky. A lot of stupid shit goes on in there, but it’s pretty and I suppose that’s all that counts in a picture.
 |
| U.S. Capitol and U.S. Botanic Garden, from the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, 6:30 AM, July 16, 2019. My Google Pixel 2 takes OK pictures, but it didn't really capture the creamy shine of the dome glowing in the early sunlight |
*****
That was Monday and Tuesday talking. It’s Friday now. Things are looking up a little bit, but I can still see the abyss from here if I turn around and look behind me. So I won’t turn around or look behind me. Problem solved.
I’m working from home today and just finished some research, so I’m taking a break to write, and then I’ll stop writing to write some more, only it’ll be the writing that I get paid to do. Later on, I’ll read a few pages of a book that I’m almost finished. It’s tragic and terrible and bleak, but I’m rationing those pages because I’m not ready for it to end. Maybe right now I should think about reading something that isn’t tragic, terrible, and bleak. Maybe I should get out of the house. I’ll do that later.
*****
I finished the book and I miss it already. And now it’s Saturday, the hottest day of the summer so far--almost too hot for me. Almost. Summer swim season is almost over and the pool is almost too warm and I’ll be on vacation in almost a week.
It was a bad week, and I took the Lord’s name in vain more times than I care to think about, so before I go to the pool, I think I need to go to Confession. I need forgiveness and I need to forgive. That last part is harder. Confession starts at 4 and it’s 3:22 so it’s almost time to go. Until next week.
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Dead Language
I looked back at some old posts, and realized that I seem to write a lot about handbags. I don't know what that's about. I mean, what is there to say, really?
So let's talk about books instead, because you don't get enough of that around here. I just finished Motherfocloir: Dispatches from a Not So Dead Language, by Darach O'Seaghdha. I got this a long time ago, and forgot about it, but after my trip to Ireland, I was curious about the Irish language movement and remembered that I had this.
Apparently, there are fewer than 100,000 fluent, everyday Irish speakers in the whole of Ireland, north or south, with maybe a few hundred thousand more people around the world who speak or understand the language to varying degrees. It's a compulsory subject for most Irish schoolchildren and has been for some years, so maybe those numbers will grow. Even for the majority who don't speak Irish at all, it's still a fact of daily life in Ireland. Signs in most Irish towns are printed in two languages--Irish and English; and lots of official announcements--on trains, for example--are spoken in both languages, too. So if Irish ends up dying out, it won't be because Ireland didn't try to save it.
*****
Motherfocloir is hard to describe. The word focloir, by the way, means "dictionary" in Irish; and the title is meant to be a clever, attention-grabbing play on another long word beginning with "mother." Anyway, it's kind of a book about the language, with lots of vocabulary lists and definitions, broken up with commentary and observations about how the language has evolved and how language influences thought and culture. So I suppose it's something of a dictionary, but it's much more of an extended commentary about what language represents to a culture and how it influences the thoughts and ideas of each individual who speaks or writes in that language.
The Irish language is a political issue in Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, taxpayers question the wisdom of spending so much money and effort (signage, compulsory education) on a language that only a handful of people speak. In Northern Ireland, Irish is one of many bones of contention between Unionists (those who want Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom) and Nationalists (those who favor reunification with the southern counties and independence from the U.K., which makes the word "unionist" a little confusing). The 1998 Good Friday Agreement provides for some official support for the Irish language, but the Nationalists want to see more mandated official use of the language, rather than just the "if enough people want to speak and read and write in Irish then I guess we won't try to stop them" approach outlined in the Good Friday Agreement. Of course, this isn't the biggest problem that Northern Ireland has right now, with a messy Brexit becoming more and more likely.
*****
A few weeks after my trip, this article showed up in my newsfeed, and so I read it. The writer explains that the name gaeltacht--the Irish word for the Irish-speaking places in western Ireland--translates roughly as "the Irishness." And that's really how I would describe Motherfocloir, too. It's about the Irish language, but it's more about how the Irish language shapes the Irishness, and about whether or not a distinctive Irish identity would even exist without the language.
Maybe a person who speaks Irish is more Irish than a person who speaks only English. But that's a troublesome idea, especially for an American. My mother-in-law is a U.S. citizen, but after 46 years in the United States, she still hasn't really mastered English. She gets by, and she tries--she has taken classes on and off for years, and she does crossword and word search puzzles to help her to recognize more English words. But even though she can carry on a conversation, she'll never be really fluent in English. I think she feels less American because of that. There's an American frame of reference shaped by idiom and wordplay and jokes that she doesn't get. And I'm sure that she thinks in Korean. But she's American. It says so, right on her passport.
*****
Toward the end of Motherfocloir, O'Seaghdha cites C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters as a book that he enjoyed but disagreed with. I suppose lots of people, especially non-Christians, would disagree with The Screwtape Letters, but O'Seaghdha specifically complains about Lewis's "zero-sum take on Christianity and his bitter dismissal of romantic love," a criticism that made absolutely no sense to me. So now I'm re-reading Screwtape, and finding that although O'Seaghdha is dead wrong about Lewis's views on Christianity and romantic love, he's dead right when he writes that "Great writing is never just about one thing..." Motherfocloir, though not great (especially when you're comparing it with Screwtape or anything else that C.S. Lewis wrote) is very good. Mostly because it's not just about one thing.
So let's talk about books instead, because you don't get enough of that around here. I just finished Motherfocloir: Dispatches from a Not So Dead Language, by Darach O'Seaghdha. I got this a long time ago, and forgot about it, but after my trip to Ireland, I was curious about the Irish language movement and remembered that I had this.
Apparently, there are fewer than 100,000 fluent, everyday Irish speakers in the whole of Ireland, north or south, with maybe a few hundred thousand more people around the world who speak or understand the language to varying degrees. It's a compulsory subject for most Irish schoolchildren and has been for some years, so maybe those numbers will grow. Even for the majority who don't speak Irish at all, it's still a fact of daily life in Ireland. Signs in most Irish towns are printed in two languages--Irish and English; and lots of official announcements--on trains, for example--are spoken in both languages, too. So if Irish ends up dying out, it won't be because Ireland didn't try to save it.
*****
Motherfocloir is hard to describe. The word focloir, by the way, means "dictionary" in Irish; and the title is meant to be a clever, attention-grabbing play on another long word beginning with "mother." Anyway, it's kind of a book about the language, with lots of vocabulary lists and definitions, broken up with commentary and observations about how the language has evolved and how language influences thought and culture. So I suppose it's something of a dictionary, but it's much more of an extended commentary about what language represents to a culture and how it influences the thoughts and ideas of each individual who speaks or writes in that language.
The Irish language is a political issue in Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, taxpayers question the wisdom of spending so much money and effort (signage, compulsory education) on a language that only a handful of people speak. In Northern Ireland, Irish is one of many bones of contention between Unionists (those who want Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom) and Nationalists (those who favor reunification with the southern counties and independence from the U.K., which makes the word "unionist" a little confusing). The 1998 Good Friday Agreement provides for some official support for the Irish language, but the Nationalists want to see more mandated official use of the language, rather than just the "if enough people want to speak and read and write in Irish then I guess we won't try to stop them" approach outlined in the Good Friday Agreement. Of course, this isn't the biggest problem that Northern Ireland has right now, with a messy Brexit becoming more and more likely.
*****
A few weeks after my trip, this article showed up in my newsfeed, and so I read it. The writer explains that the name gaeltacht--the Irish word for the Irish-speaking places in western Ireland--translates roughly as "the Irishness." And that's really how I would describe Motherfocloir, too. It's about the Irish language, but it's more about how the Irish language shapes the Irishness, and about whether or not a distinctive Irish identity would even exist without the language.
Maybe a person who speaks Irish is more Irish than a person who speaks only English. But that's a troublesome idea, especially for an American. My mother-in-law is a U.S. citizen, but after 46 years in the United States, she still hasn't really mastered English. She gets by, and she tries--she has taken classes on and off for years, and she does crossword and word search puzzles to help her to recognize more English words. But even though she can carry on a conversation, she'll never be really fluent in English. I think she feels less American because of that. There's an American frame of reference shaped by idiom and wordplay and jokes that she doesn't get. And I'm sure that she thinks in Korean. But she's American. It says so, right on her passport.
*****
Toward the end of Motherfocloir, O'Seaghdha cites C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters as a book that he enjoyed but disagreed with. I suppose lots of people, especially non-Christians, would disagree with The Screwtape Letters, but O'Seaghdha specifically complains about Lewis's "zero-sum take on Christianity and his bitter dismissal of romantic love," a criticism that made absolutely no sense to me. So now I'm re-reading Screwtape, and finding that although O'Seaghdha is dead wrong about Lewis's views on Christianity and romantic love, he's dead right when he writes that "Great writing is never just about one thing..." Motherfocloir, though not great (especially when you're comparing it with Screwtape or anything else that C.S. Lewis wrote) is very good. Mostly because it's not just about one thing.
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Deadlines
The weather is uncertain just now. Very hot with a pretty clear blue sky but a stiff breeze and a threatening dull heaviness at the edges of the few clouds.
It's July 4th. My son's graduation party is today and I am hoping against hope that the threat of thunderstorms ("severe," of course) and flash flooding will not materialize, and that the party will remain outdoors and dry. But we are resourceful and adaptable; and we will party, rain or shine. Rain or shine.
*****
July 5th, and the party was a pretty near unqualified success. Not totally dry, but the rain was so much less, and so much less severe than it could or should have been, given the forecast. The thunder rumbled and threatened all afternoon, but by 5:30 or so, no one was paying any attention anymore. We had tents, and the tents kept everyone pretty dry during the intermittent sprinkles; and we had towels, and the towels dried the furniture when it got wet. It was so humid that chips from a freshly opened bag wilted, their crunch gone. I don’t even want to think about how dirty my floors were just 24 hours ago, and I came a little too close to running out of food. But everyone ate, and the house and yard are back in order now, and the party was a success. It’s sunny and bright today.
*****
It’s Saturday and I’m looking at my backlog of blog posts and half-finished Google Doc drafts, and realizing that I should finish and publish some of this stuff. I’ve read and written about a bunch of books and when you read my posts about them, you’ll know that the posts are not chronological and do not reflect the order in which I read the books. Right now, I’m reading Say Nothing; and when you’re reading that book it’s hard to do anything else. Every time I try to get out, it pulls me back in. I’ve been off from work since Wednesday, first getting ready for the party, and then having the party, and then cleaning up from the party. After a morning at a very hot swim meet, I wrote some swim team stuff, and then swam and read, and now I’m here doing this, “this” being writing about all of the other stuff. Sometimes I wonder why I do it--it’s just another thing to do, you know?
*****
And now it’s Sunday. After an earlier-than-usual Mass and a quick swim, I spent most of the afternoon fighting a PowerPoint presentation. I won, in case there was any question. PowerPoint is my bitch. I’m back to work tomorrow. The downtime is over, and now it’s three weeks of full-on round-the-clock work and summer swim team madness until our week at the beach and the bittersweet summer wind-down that is August. The days will get a tiny bit shorter, and the stores will be full of school supplies and football-watching snacks and clothes suitable for the crispness that fall people love to rhapsodize about on Instagram. But the pool will still be open, and the daylight will still last into the evening, and I’ll still be able to wear flip-flops all weekend long.
It’s 8 PM and I want to finish working but I have a deadline, and the deadline is tomorrow. But you know what? I actually set that deadline, which means that it’s pretty flexible. I'll get to all of the unfinished drafts eventually, and I'll finish the presentation pretty soon. For now, I think I’ll go read my book. Goodnight for now.
July 5th, and the party was a pretty near unqualified success. Not totally dry, but the rain was so much less, and so much less severe than it could or should have been, given the forecast. The thunder rumbled and threatened all afternoon, but by 5:30 or so, no one was paying any attention anymore. We had tents, and the tents kept everyone pretty dry during the intermittent sprinkles; and we had towels, and the towels dried the furniture when it got wet. It was so humid that chips from a freshly opened bag wilted, their crunch gone. I don’t even want to think about how dirty my floors were just 24 hours ago, and I came a little too close to running out of food. But everyone ate, and the house and yard are back in order now, and the party was a success. It’s sunny and bright today.
*****
It’s Saturday and I’m looking at my backlog of blog posts and half-finished Google Doc drafts, and realizing that I should finish and publish some of this stuff. I’ve read and written about a bunch of books and when you read my posts about them, you’ll know that the posts are not chronological and do not reflect the order in which I read the books. Right now, I’m reading Say Nothing; and when you’re reading that book it’s hard to do anything else. Every time I try to get out, it pulls me back in. I’ve been off from work since Wednesday, first getting ready for the party, and then having the party, and then cleaning up from the party. After a morning at a very hot swim meet, I wrote some swim team stuff, and then swam and read, and now I’m here doing this, “this” being writing about all of the other stuff. Sometimes I wonder why I do it--it’s just another thing to do, you know?
*****
And now it’s Sunday. After an earlier-than-usual Mass and a quick swim, I spent most of the afternoon fighting a PowerPoint presentation. I won, in case there was any question. PowerPoint is my bitch. I’m back to work tomorrow. The downtime is over, and now it’s three weeks of full-on round-the-clock work and summer swim team madness until our week at the beach and the bittersweet summer wind-down that is August. The days will get a tiny bit shorter, and the stores will be full of school supplies and football-watching snacks and clothes suitable for the crispness that fall people love to rhapsodize about on Instagram. But the pool will still be open, and the daylight will still last into the evening, and I’ll still be able to wear flip-flops all weekend long.
It’s 8 PM and I want to finish working but I have a deadline, and the deadline is tomorrow. But you know what? I actually set that deadline, which means that it’s pretty flexible. I'll get to all of the unfinished drafts eventually, and I'll finish the presentation pretty soon. For now, I think I’ll go read my book. Goodnight for now.
Thursday, June 27, 2019
Words to live by
It's late Saturday night and I'm staying overnight at my sister's house, following her son's (my nephew's) graduation party. My nephew also just graduated from high school. He and my son are three days apart in age.
It's 11:30 and I'd be asleep now, except that the room where I usually sleep when I'm here is very hot. The ceiling fan is insanely loud and the windows lack screens. I'd rather be too hot than wake up in the middle of the night to find bats swarming around my head.
*****
No bats last night. It's Sunday night now and I'm back in my own bed under my very quiet ceiling fan. I have a busy few weeks ahead and a few projects that I need to work out in my mind. The heat isn't the only thing that kept me awake last night. I keep writing things down and trying to organize my days and my thoughts, but I fear that things are getting away from me.
The biotech company where I used to work had a GLP (Good Lab Practices) laboratory, and they had a saying: “If it isn’t documented, then it didn’t happen.” It’s a good saying, and I have adapted it slightly or my own use: “If it isn’t documented, then it won’t happen.” I’m going to make a few lists, and take a few notes (and of course, I’m going to write about making the lists and taking the notes) and then maybe I’ll feel a little more in control.
*****
It’s Tuesday and I don’t feel any more under control than I did yesterday; and strangely, I do not care. This will not last. I’ll be in my normal low-grade panic state any day now, but I’ll enjoy the feeling of being a person who doesn’t care for as long as that feeling lasts.
On my way to Philadelphia on Saturday, I passed a country homestead on U.S. Route 1, just north of Belair, Maryland. The front yard had a flagpole, and the flagpole was flying a flag, and the flag read “Trump 2020: No more bullshit.”
I don't support the pre-colon part of that sentiment, of course, but I’m all for the post-colon part. “No more bullshit” is a credo that I can get behind. Between “No more bullshit” and “If it’s not documented, then it won’t happen,” I have now not one but two solid life philosophies.
*****
So now it's Wednesday and I am multi-tasking. I had a meeting at HHS headquarters today, and I'm on the Red Line on my way back to Twinbrook. It's hot and humid and sunny, an ideal Washington DC summer morning. My meeting was short and productive and after it was over, I needed a soda to fortify me for the one-mile walk back to Union Station. Federal Center is closer but I hate changing trains. If it's not on the Red Line, then it's dead to me.
And that's another excellent life philosophy.
I stopped at a street vendor, because I wanted a soda in a can, and because a DC street vendor on a summer day is one of my favorite things. I found a diet soda in the cooler and I ordered a giant soft pretzel. The Korean vendor smiled at me. "Five hundred dollars," he said, hand outstretched.
I handed him a ten. "Can I owe you the rest?"
He nodded. "I send you a bill."
"Thank you," I said. "The check is in the mail."
"Ha ha! Good one!"
I ate the entire pretzel, making the walk to Union Station a necessity.
*****
I found these giant rock sculptures on my way back to my office from Twinbrook Metro.
I have no idea what they mean, but that is part of their appeal. They might be someone else's guiding signposts. For my part, I will stick with "No more bullshit," "If it's not documented, then it didn't (or won't) happen," and "If it's not on the Red Line, then it's dead to me."
Oh, and the most important of all: "The check is in the mail."
It's 11:30 and I'd be asleep now, except that the room where I usually sleep when I'm here is very hot. The ceiling fan is insanely loud and the windows lack screens. I'd rather be too hot than wake up in the middle of the night to find bats swarming around my head.
*****
No bats last night. It's Sunday night now and I'm back in my own bed under my very quiet ceiling fan. I have a busy few weeks ahead and a few projects that I need to work out in my mind. The heat isn't the only thing that kept me awake last night. I keep writing things down and trying to organize my days and my thoughts, but I fear that things are getting away from me.
The biotech company where I used to work had a GLP (Good Lab Practices) laboratory, and they had a saying: “If it isn’t documented, then it didn’t happen.” It’s a good saying, and I have adapted it slightly or my own use: “If it isn’t documented, then it won’t happen.” I’m going to make a few lists, and take a few notes (and of course, I’m going to write about making the lists and taking the notes) and then maybe I’ll feel a little more in control.
*****
It’s Tuesday and I don’t feel any more under control than I did yesterday; and strangely, I do not care. This will not last. I’ll be in my normal low-grade panic state any day now, but I’ll enjoy the feeling of being a person who doesn’t care for as long as that feeling lasts.
On my way to Philadelphia on Saturday, I passed a country homestead on U.S. Route 1, just north of Belair, Maryland. The front yard had a flagpole, and the flagpole was flying a flag, and the flag read “Trump 2020: No more bullshit.”
I don't support the pre-colon part of that sentiment, of course, but I’m all for the post-colon part. “No more bullshit” is a credo that I can get behind. Between “No more bullshit” and “If it’s not documented, then it won’t happen,” I have now not one but two solid life philosophies.
*****
So now it's Wednesday and I am multi-tasking. I had a meeting at HHS headquarters today, and I'm on the Red Line on my way back to Twinbrook. It's hot and humid and sunny, an ideal Washington DC summer morning. My meeting was short and productive and after it was over, I needed a soda to fortify me for the one-mile walk back to Union Station. Federal Center is closer but I hate changing trains. If it's not on the Red Line, then it's dead to me.
And that's another excellent life philosophy.
 |
| I take pictures of the Capitol whenever I walk past it. |
I stopped at a street vendor, because I wanted a soda in a can, and because a DC street vendor on a summer day is one of my favorite things. I found a diet soda in the cooler and I ordered a giant soft pretzel. The Korean vendor smiled at me. "Five hundred dollars," he said, hand outstretched.
I handed him a ten. "Can I owe you the rest?"
He nodded. "I send you a bill."
"Thank you," I said. "The check is in the mail."
"Ha ha! Good one!"
I ate the entire pretzel, making the walk to Union Station a necessity.
*****
I found these giant rock sculptures on my way back to my office from Twinbrook Metro.
 |
| "Hereafter" is kind of poetic. "Starsailor" is just silly. But "Field Rush" might be my favorite. |
I have no idea what they mean, but that is part of their appeal. They might be someone else's guiding signposts. For my part, I will stick with "No more bullshit," "If it's not documented, then it didn't (or won't) happen," and "If it's not on the Red Line, then it's dead to me."
Oh, and the most important of all: "The check is in the mail."
Friday, June 21, 2019
Redeeming quality
On Monday, I was on LinkedIn, where a person who identifies himself as an author posted video of a stranger picking his nose on a subway train. I can think of no motive for doing something like this other than just shitty low-down meanness, but the so-called "author" claims that he wanted only to remind his fellow LinkedIn-ers that managing one's "brand" is a 24/7/365 endeavor, and that one can never be too careful in public, because someone is always watching, including jerks with cameras.
Let's set aside the remote possibility that this man wants to be known for his disgusting personal habits, and that public nose excavation would then be an integral aspect of his brand. Is there no other way to make your stupid and shallow little if-it-isn't-marketed-then-it-doesn't-exist point than to humiliate and degrade a person on the Internet? And it gets worse, because the post got a ton of attention. And according to my unscientific data analysis, reaction ran about 20% disgusted by the original poster's meanness and cruelty, and about 75% either neutral or amused. The remaining 5% of commenters actually took the poster at his word, and accepted his claim that the video was a public service announcement, meant only to illustrate the importance of brand management. Of course those people are stupid, and there's nothing you can do about stupid people.
*****
I won't pretend that I don't like social media. I do. I like staying in touch with family and friends whom I don't get to see often. I like posting pictures and writing funny captions and hashtags. (My hashtags are hilarious.) I like commenting and sharing and chatting.
But people are meant to be together, physically together. We're meant to see each other's faces and hear each other's voices. We're meant to connect, and not just electronically.
The loss of face-to-face interaction between people who are perfectly capable of meeting in person but who choose to engage with devices instead is a big problem, but it's not the only problem with Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and all of the rest of it. It's not even the biggest problem. Because of its remote and (sometimes) anonymous nature, social media has completely moved the line that people aren't supposed to cross. And the result is that in a pretty robust online debate on whether or not a person should have posted video of a stranger picking his nose, not one participant in that debate--not even among the right-thinking 20%--questioned the morality of secretly photographing a stranger in the first place.
*****
On Wednesday night, I checked in on Facebook. A neighborhood friend, who is confined to a wheelchair, posted a "feeling sad" status, and within moments a dozen people had posted "thinking of you" and "what can I do to help?" messages. Maybe it would have been better if we'd all rushed to her side. Her house is around the corner. But without Facebook, we probably wouldn't have known that she was sad and needed her friends.
Facebook has a lot of problems, but a thing that allows a lonely, disabled person to reach out and find immediate reassurance that there are people who love her and care about her can't be all bad. I saw my friend on Thursday night, and she was better. And that's what I'm sticking with. For every jackass who uses social media to bully and shame a harmless (gross, but harmless) stranger, there are ten good-hearted people who use it to cheer and comfort a person who's lonely or sick or sad. Social media is just like the people who created it. We suck sometimes, but we have our moments.
Let's set aside the remote possibility that this man wants to be known for his disgusting personal habits, and that public nose excavation would then be an integral aspect of his brand. Is there no other way to make your stupid and shallow little if-it-isn't-marketed-then-it-doesn't-exist point than to humiliate and degrade a person on the Internet? And it gets worse, because the post got a ton of attention. And according to my unscientific data analysis, reaction ran about 20% disgusted by the original poster's meanness and cruelty, and about 75% either neutral or amused. The remaining 5% of commenters actually took the poster at his word, and accepted his claim that the video was a public service announcement, meant only to illustrate the importance of brand management. Of course those people are stupid, and there's nothing you can do about stupid people.
*****
I won't pretend that I don't like social media. I do. I like staying in touch with family and friends whom I don't get to see often. I like posting pictures and writing funny captions and hashtags. (My hashtags are hilarious.) I like commenting and sharing and chatting.
But people are meant to be together, physically together. We're meant to see each other's faces and hear each other's voices. We're meant to connect, and not just electronically.
The loss of face-to-face interaction between people who are perfectly capable of meeting in person but who choose to engage with devices instead is a big problem, but it's not the only problem with Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and all of the rest of it. It's not even the biggest problem. Because of its remote and (sometimes) anonymous nature, social media has completely moved the line that people aren't supposed to cross. And the result is that in a pretty robust online debate on whether or not a person should have posted video of a stranger picking his nose, not one participant in that debate--not even among the right-thinking 20%--questioned the morality of secretly photographing a stranger in the first place.
*****
On Wednesday night, I checked in on Facebook. A neighborhood friend, who is confined to a wheelchair, posted a "feeling sad" status, and within moments a dozen people had posted "thinking of you" and "what can I do to help?" messages. Maybe it would have been better if we'd all rushed to her side. Her house is around the corner. But without Facebook, we probably wouldn't have known that she was sad and needed her friends.
Facebook has a lot of problems, but a thing that allows a lonely, disabled person to reach out and find immediate reassurance that there are people who love her and care about her can't be all bad. I saw my friend on Thursday night, and she was better. And that's what I'm sticking with. For every jackass who uses social media to bully and shame a harmless (gross, but harmless) stranger, there are ten good-hearted people who use it to cheer and comfort a person who's lonely or sick or sad. Social media is just like the people who created it. We suck sometimes, but we have our moments.
Monday, June 17, 2019
Boys and men
I'm waiting for my mother and my aunt right now. I forget sometimes how long it takes those ladies to get ready to leave the house for any reason, any reason at all. The upside is that I thought I wouldn't have time to write today, but here I am. I could crank out a whole essay in the time it takes them to get ready to go out for dinner, with time left over to copy edit. And that's how meta it gets around here. I can write about writing, and I can write about not having time to write, EVEN AS I AM WRITING. Meta.
*****
My mother and aunt live in Philadelphia. They came on Wednesday night, for my son's high school graduation, which happened on Thursday morning, at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington DC. 329 kids were high school seniors on Thursday morning, and now they're high school graduates.
I graduated from high school at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, a venue not unlike Constitution Hall. Our school was the only school in the city privileged to graduate there. Constitution Hall, on the other hand, is normally a serious concert venue, but it turns into a veritable graduation factory in June. The next class and their families were already streaming in as we edged our way out, barely moving on the jam-packed narrow sidewalk on D Street. Happy graduates and little children and parents and friends and elderly relatives with wheelchairs and canes in a claustrophobic crush of lunch-seeking people, and then finally the crowds thinned as we walked toward the parking garage on G Street. I needed a sweater, even in a dense crowd on a June morning in Washington DC.
This weather. What the hell?
*****
The graduation ceremony was lovely; just over two hours long, with funny remarks from the senior class president and a very moving farewell speech from the principal. I haven't been our principal's biggest fan. She's fine, I don't dislike her or anything. But she has always seemed to me the exemplar of a type that I call Administrator-Princesses. And I call them that because I'm a jerk and a smart-ass, and I have no idea what I'm talking about.
The graduation ceremony was lovely; just over two hours long, with funny remarks from the senior class president and a very moving farewell speech from the principal. I haven't been our principal's biggest fan. She's fine, I don't dislike her or anything. But she has always seemed to me the exemplar of a type that I call Administrator-Princesses. And I call them that because I'm a jerk and a smart-ass, and I have no idea what I'm talking about.
As you'd expect, she called out several of the graduates for outstanding achievements of one kind or another (including one of my son's swim teammates, who will study and swim at the U.S. Naval Academy). But she also gave heartfelt praise to several kids who struggled or made mistakes, but recovered and persevered and graduated by the skin of their teeth. Several kids had to work throughout the extended senior vacation to complete assignments or make up tests. One boy dropped out and then returned to finish, a year late. And one boy, as the principal put it, "took a very wrong turn" in his sophomore year, and made some very serious mistakes. With obvious emotion, she said that the day he came back and said that he wanted to turn his life around and finish high school "was one of the happiest days in my career as an educator," surpassed only by this day, when she got to see him walk down an aisle in a cap and gown. In every example, she made every listener feel the importance and the value of every single young person, some weighed down with medals and honor cords and stoles, and some with cap and gown and no accessories other than their beautiful smiles.
Not a dry eye, I tell you. And so don't listen to me when I dismiss people with my snide little names and funny funny categories. I'm a jerk; and most of the time, I don't know what I'm talking about.
*****
The next day, my eighth grader graduated from middle school, and so we did the whole thing again, on a slightly smaller scale. He received a President's Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement, signed by Donald J. Trump and Betsy DeVos. Well, the certificate with its shiny seal is nice.
The next day, my eighth grader graduated from middle school, and so we did the whole thing again, on a slightly smaller scale. He received a President's Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement, signed by Donald J. Trump and Betsy DeVos. Well, the certificate with its shiny seal is nice.
Anyway, the eighth grade class adviser gave a funny speech about how the kids entered middle school as sixth graders, making play cakes with EZ Bake Ovens, and then advanced to baking actual edible cakes with store-bought mix, and then developed advanced baking skills, crafting homemade cakes from real ingredients. It was a good metaphor.
It might have been better had he avoided the phrase "master bakers" in a room full of eighth graders.
Know your audience, is all.
*****
So that which I have both dreaded and looked forward to is over. Graduations, Confirmation, last concerts, last games, last high school swim meets--all over for now. One more child will enter high school in the fall, and we'll do the whole thing over again. For now, we'll have our usual summer of summer swim meets and Friday night pasta parties. The long years of school and the short weeks of summer and the games and concerts and birthdays and college applications all go by very fast.
*****
It's Monday now, the first day of what we call "real summer" around here, because school is well and truly out, and spring sports are finished, and the pool is open from noon to 9 everyday. And the weather is finally hot, or at least warm. My son will turn 18 tomorrow, and he received his Selective Service registration card today. No time wasted, and no time to think about the implications of that little paper card with his name and address and date of birth. For now, we're all safe at home in the summer. But just like high school, nothing lasts forever.
*****
It's Monday now, the first day of what we call "real summer" around here, because school is well and truly out, and spring sports are finished, and the pool is open from noon to 9 everyday. And the weather is finally hot, or at least warm. My son will turn 18 tomorrow, and he received his Selective Service registration card today. No time wasted, and no time to think about the implications of that little paper card with his name and address and date of birth. For now, we're all safe at home in the summer. But just like high school, nothing lasts forever.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Checklists and appointments
Donald Trump did something this weekend, I'm sure, but I have no idea what it was. I don't know what he said, or what he did, or what he tweeted, and I feel that I'm a better person for this lack of knowledge.
I decided not long ago that I'd avoid all news--especially political news--on the weekends. This weekend, I officiated at a swim meet, and went to a neighborhood kid's graduation party, and swam in a freezing cold pool, and cooked and ate and read and wrote, and didn't give a thought to the swamp on Pennsylvania Avenue just a few miles from my house.
*****
Now it's Monday, and it's June 10, I'm all caught up on news, and it's too cold to swim. But it's all right. My son graduates from high school on Thursday, and my younger son graduates from middle school on Friday, and people graduating means that summer has to return at some point.
*****
Oh, and I got a haircut, and it's a good haircut. It's maybe the best haircut I've ever had. Most people didn't even notice it, because it's not very different from my usual hairstyle, only it's cut really well.
I approached this haircut with considerable trepidation. My history vis-a-vis haircuts isn't good. But I was hating my hair and desperate to fix it so it would fall properly without fifteen minutes of struggle with a hairdryer and brush. Ain't nobody got time for that nonsense.
Half an hour after I walked into the new salon, I had hair that was half an inch shorter, but a hundred times better. The stylist, an older Iranian lady, gently suggested that I might consider some kind of color to camouflage the encroaching gray. She looked me up and down. "You're a very beautiful lady. Hair, skin, clothes, style, everything perfect," she said, with an up and down sweeping gesture. "Just a little bit of color, that's all."
I don't get "very beautiful" and "everything perfect" very often. This is how good this haircut is: I actually believed her.
*****
Well what the hell was that? Is this Glamour magazine? I mean, really.
It's Tuesday now, and it's still too cold to swim, and my hair is still pretty good, but don't worry--I won't be writing a sonnet about it or anything.
*****
The last few months have been just one long checklist, and I'm almost at the end.
Confirmation? Check.
Last middle school and high school band concerts? Check.
Last high school swim meet? Last middle school softball game? Check and check.
Awards nights? Potluck dinners? Prom? Graduation rehearsal? Check times four.
Graduation on Thursday, and middle school graduation on Friday. And then that's all there is. There isn't any more. It's a little sad. But at least my hair is OK.
I decided not long ago that I'd avoid all news--especially political news--on the weekends. This weekend, I officiated at a swim meet, and went to a neighborhood kid's graduation party, and swam in a freezing cold pool, and cooked and ate and read and wrote, and didn't give a thought to the swamp on Pennsylvania Avenue just a few miles from my house.
*****
Now it's Monday, and it's June 10, I'm all caught up on news, and it's too cold to swim. But it's all right. My son graduates from high school on Thursday, and my younger son graduates from middle school on Friday, and people graduating means that summer has to return at some point.
*****
Oh, and I got a haircut, and it's a good haircut. It's maybe the best haircut I've ever had. Most people didn't even notice it, because it's not very different from my usual hairstyle, only it's cut really well.
I approached this haircut with considerable trepidation. My history vis-a-vis haircuts isn't good. But I was hating my hair and desperate to fix it so it would fall properly without fifteen minutes of struggle with a hairdryer and brush. Ain't nobody got time for that nonsense.
Half an hour after I walked into the new salon, I had hair that was half an inch shorter, but a hundred times better. The stylist, an older Iranian lady, gently suggested that I might consider some kind of color to camouflage the encroaching gray. She looked me up and down. "You're a very beautiful lady. Hair, skin, clothes, style, everything perfect," she said, with an up and down sweeping gesture. "Just a little bit of color, that's all."
I don't get "very beautiful" and "everything perfect" very often. This is how good this haircut is: I actually believed her.
*****
Well what the hell was that? Is this Glamour magazine? I mean, really.
It's Tuesday now, and it's still too cold to swim, and my hair is still pretty good, but don't worry--I won't be writing a sonnet about it or anything.
*****
The last few months have been just one long checklist, and I'm almost at the end.
Confirmation? Check.
Last middle school and high school band concerts? Check.
Last high school swim meet? Last middle school softball game? Check and check.
Awards nights? Potluck dinners? Prom? Graduation rehearsal? Check times four.
Graduation on Thursday, and middle school graduation on Friday. And then that's all there is. There isn't any more. It's a little sad. But at least my hair is OK.
Friday, June 7, 2019
Vocabulary
Context is everything, especially where weather is concerned. If I had time to go swimming, I'd hate the weather right now. It's cool and overcast and a little breezy with a distant threat of rain. But since I'm sitting outside at a baseball game, the weather is perfect. Context.
It's the end of the school year, second in chaos only to the holidays to suburban parents of sports- and music-playing high school and middle school kids. There's a lot going on. There are overlaps and conflicts. There's a lot of takeout food. But it's all over in a week, and the clouds are warmed by a tiny bit of golden light and the air is fragrant and soft. Dinner will be souvlaki from our favorite Greek takeout place.
*****
"Worrying about your children is sanity." (Adam Sandler's whatever-his-name-is character in "Spanglish")
Wisdom can come from anywhere, even bad movies. At least I hope that this is wisdom. If it is, then I am certifiably sane.
I have two children. Two teenage sons. And so I worry. Worry, of course, is nature to me. Not second nature, just nature. But teenage sons are worrisome, no matter your disposition. My two are very different and so I worry about them in different ways, for different reasons. And at different times. I alternate my worry schedules.
So that's a good thing. Because I seldom have to worry about both of them at once. I'm not sure if they work together on this or not; but generally, when one of them has a problem, the other one is OK. And luckily for me, they're both usually OK. But I still worry, because that's my nature, and because I'm their mother. Sanity.
*****
Having children who are teenagers, one about to graduate from high school and one about to enter high school, is an exercise in contemporaneous nostalgia. Look that up, because I might have just invented it. Everything I do, and everything my children do, reminds me of something that they did or that we did together, a year ago or ten years ago. And in June, everything--the breeze off the pool deck and the sunlight on the water and the very air--everything reminds me of their ever-so-quickly-vanishing childhoods. This summer is just barely getting started, and it's happening right now, and I miss it already. Contemporaneous nostalgia.
It's the end of the school year, second in chaos only to the holidays to suburban parents of sports- and music-playing high school and middle school kids. There's a lot going on. There are overlaps and conflicts. There's a lot of takeout food. But it's all over in a week, and the clouds are warmed by a tiny bit of golden light and the air is fragrant and soft. Dinner will be souvlaki from our favorite Greek takeout place.
*****
"Worrying about your children is sanity." (Adam Sandler's whatever-his-name-is character in "Spanglish")
Wisdom can come from anywhere, even bad movies. At least I hope that this is wisdom. If it is, then I am certifiably sane.
I have two children. Two teenage sons. And so I worry. Worry, of course, is nature to me. Not second nature, just nature. But teenage sons are worrisome, no matter your disposition. My two are very different and so I worry about them in different ways, for different reasons. And at different times. I alternate my worry schedules.
So that's a good thing. Because I seldom have to worry about both of them at once. I'm not sure if they work together on this or not; but generally, when one of them has a problem, the other one is OK. And luckily for me, they're both usually OK. But I still worry, because that's my nature, and because I'm their mother. Sanity.
*****
Having children who are teenagers, one about to graduate from high school and one about to enter high school, is an exercise in contemporaneous nostalgia. Look that up, because I might have just invented it. Everything I do, and everything my children do, reminds me of something that they did or that we did together, a year ago or ten years ago. And in June, everything--the breeze off the pool deck and the sunlight on the water and the very air--everything reminds me of their ever-so-quickly-vanishing childhoods. This summer is just barely getting started, and it's happening right now, and I miss it already. Contemporaneous nostalgia.
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