Unfazed

Will no one rid us of this turbulent weather? It rains every weekend now. That’s our new climate here in Maryland. It seems that we just have to learn to live with it. 

We’re one week away from MDW, but nothing seems further away than summer. Yesterday, Saturday, it rained almost all day long with very brief breaks that promised some a lightening of the sky and a few dry minutes but then ended abruptly with more rain. The temperature remained in the dismal low 60s. It’s Sunday morning now and the forecast called for a reasonably nice May day. It’s not raining at least but it’s not sunny either and if I had to guess I’d say that it’ll probably rain again. It’s gloomy, is what it is, and everything feels damp. 

One nice thing is that everything is very very green. The grass is lush and our shrubs and flowers are wildly in bloom. Yesterday, I was looking out my kitchen window at the riot of growth, and I saw what looked like a turkey parading across the front lawn. But it was a vulture. I wanted to chase it away but I know what these vile creatures do when confronted with anything resembling a threat, and I wanted no part of this. Thankfully, it flew away on its own, obviating the need for any action on my part. 

But plenty of other things do require action on my part. Right now, I am fighting my way through a very long list of medical appointments and administrative tasks, two of my very least favorite things. It’s Tuesday now, a beautiful summer-is-coming day. I have a mammogram appointment this afternoon. Last week, my new doctor ordered a series of routine tests and screenings, all of which I had been avoiding. The mammogram was the first on the list, and it was the very last thing that I was planning to do. But they didn’t wait around for me to call and make the appointment because they’d have been waiting around for a while. They called me, catching me unawares, and next thing I knew I had a mammogram appointment. I hung up the phone feeling a little resentful, a little shanghaied, but I also acknowledged the wisdom of their approach because I’d have avoided a mammogram like it was a carrion bird on my front lawn. I even thought of canceling the appointment because I still have to take my car in to get it fixed, but the car can wait, I guess. 

It’s Wednesday now, another beautiful day. My son came in from swim practice at 7 this morning, just as I was getting ready to leave for work, and he said that he got a “whiff of summer” when he got out of his car. It really does smell like summer now. It feels like summer too. The mammogram was fine and I scheduled my car repair and reserved a rental car. I packaged up some items that needed to go in the mail, and I activated my new debit card and cut up and disposed of the old one. So much progress! Buoyed by this unexpected little burst of get-things-done energy, I decided to tackle Verizon, too, always one of my least-favorite things to do. My lifetime record in fights vs. Verizon is a whole other topic about which I might write because I won this round. 

*****

It’s Thursday now and it turns out that the mammogram might not have been fine. They called me yesterday and I have to go back for a second look. There’s a “shadow,” a term that apparently covers everything from scar tissue to cancer, and the only way to find out is to get another mammogram. 

I am surprisingly unfazed by this, considering my well-documented tendency to lose my damn mind over every little thing. In fact, the only thing that really bothers me right now is that I have to fit yet another thing into my schedule for next week. Not only do I have another appointment, but I have to add something back to my to-do list. I had “get mammogram” on that list and when I came home from the appointment, I crossed that item off with a rather triumphant and smug little flourish, and that attitude came back to bite me in the ass, didn’t it? Did I mention that medical appointments and administrative tasks were among my least favorite things? Well having to re-do a task that I thought I was done with is even worse. That’s the thing that bothers me most about this unexpected callback. 

*****

It’s Friday now, Friday of Memorial Day weekend, in fact. It looks like summer and it feels like summer and other than the possibility of a terrible diagnosis next Thursday, I have no problems that summer can’t solve. 

Again with the cavalier attitude. Will I never learn? 

I’m actually not cavalier about this at all. I’m kind of worried, but strangely far less worried than I would expect to be. There's really nothing I can do right now except to rejoice in the return of summer and put one foot in front of the other. It’s a three-day weekend, and other than catching up on the minutes from the last neighborhood association meeting, I can’t check off a single to-do list item until after the weekend. Until next week, everything is fine. After next week, it’s all in God’s hands. 

He-Man Woman-Hater's Club

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

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

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

*****

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

Crash

In the 25 years I’ve lived in Maryland, I’ve been rear-ended four times. The fourth time was yesterday, on my way home from work. I was at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Hathaway Drive, the first car at the light, just waiting patiently for the light to turn green so that I could make the left turn onto northbound Georgia. 

The intersection is a slightly hairy one. One lane is a left turn only lane, and the other is for right turns and traffic proceeding directly across Georgia. The opposite intersection is the same way, and neither has a left turn arrow, which means that when you’re turning left, you have to wait until the oncoming traffic crosses Georgia. Unless you’re the lady who was right behind me, who saw the green light and just hit the gas and slammed into me. 

It was rather disconcerting to say the very least. It felt like quite an impact, forceful, and the crash noise was fairly loud too.My car is damaged and it needs to be fixed, but the damage is much less than I would have expected considering what the impact felt like. 

*****

The next morning as we were waiting for the start of our daily meeting, I told my coworkers that I had been in a minor accident the previous night. Everyone was concerned and sympathetic. Then another coworker shared his own most recent road mishap. He is a cyclist, and when a driver blew past him screaming “Get off the road,” he decided to approach the person at the next stoplight to explain that he has exactly the same right to use the public thoroughfare as any motorist. This was a risky course of action; much safer for a man then a woman, but people are crazy and if a crazy person has a gun, then it won’t much matter if you’re a man or a woman. 

As it turns out, the angry motorist did have a weapon - a set of Hello Kitty brass knuckles. As my coworker tells it, the youngish (early 30s) woman brandished the brass knuckles, and said - with a straight face - “Do you want to mess with me? Do you want some of this?” He laughed aloud, as anyone would. Do I want some of this? What is “this”? Hello Kitty swag? Because obviously, yes please - who WOULDN’T want some of that? 

Hello Kitty brass knuckles - why does this exist? 

*****

My little fender bender, which I know was minor though it didn’t feel minor at the time, was already an additional measure of fuel for what seems to be a growing case of agoraphobia. And now, of course, the bears are back. It’s May, and for the fourth or fifth year in a row, Montgomery County has seen an uptick in bear sightings. And not just in the quasi-rural north and western ends of the county, either - bear sightings were reported in Rockville and Silver Spring. Last year, we had a bear on the Navy base although you’d think that if a bear was considering enlisting, he’d go right for the Army. They’re already experts at land navigation, bears are, and so he’d nail that part of basic training. These bear visits, once considered rare and anomalous, are now apparently just a fact of life in the DMV.  My newsfeeds are filled with stories about suburban bears (and urban, because there’s a bear in NW, too), complete with commentary from experts telling us to learn to coexist with bears because they’re here to stay. They live here now. They’re our neighbors. So now I’m scared to drive anywhere (more so than even usual) and I’m also scared to walk anywhere. But of course, I’ll still do both. 

*****

There are so many situations in which a Y chromosome would come in handy, and none more so than dealing with an auto body shop. I have to get the car fixed, and I planned to take it to the same shop that fixed my old car after my son’s accident in 2021. I called them this morning, thinking that it would be smart to ask them to look at the car, figure out what needs to be done and how long it will take and what parts they’ll need; and then let them order those parts, and come back when they’re ready to do the work. That is good thinking, right? I thought so. But apparently not. Apparently, that’s dumb girl thinking.

“Oh no,” he said. “You can’t bring it in today. We don’t have any openings until the 20th. And we’ll probably have to order parts, so it would just be sitting here.” 

Hmm, I thought. Is that not exactly what I said? I think that’s exactly what I said, and I politely pointed this out. 

“Yes,” he said patiently. “But I mean if we order parts, and then we take everything apart and find that we need MORE parts.” 

The damage is minor, and there’s nothing to take apart - just replace the bumper, pull out a little dent on the back door, and paint. Easy peasy. My husband said the same thing when I relayed the conversation to him. I hadn’t bothered to push back on the body shop guy.  “I should have called them myself,” he said. Even men admit this now. Even men acknowledge that a woman isn’t going to get a straight answer from anyone in the automotive profession. 

Don’t @ me. It is what it is. 

*****

I have an appointment with the body shop now. I’m still a little nervous at stoplights (I keep looking in my rearview mirror to make sure that the car coming up behind me is slowing down enough to stop short of my bumper) and my head and shoulders don’t hurt anymore. All’s well that ends well as far as that goes. I have no idea what I’ll do if (when) the bear shows up in my neighborhood or on the walking track at work. Brass knuckles, I guess. Hoping the bears won’t want some of that. 

Things to remember

Muriel Spark wrote many of my favorite novels, including Memento Mori, which is about a loosely connected group of elderly people in postwar London. The old people, who are mostly but not all upper class, begin to receive anonymous telephone calls in which a caller asks for them by name, politely says “Remember you must die,” and then hangs up. The police become involved, and the investigator, a Chief Inspector who is rather old himself, finds that each person describes the caller differently, and so he doesn’t know if he’s looking for a young or old person, a man or a woman, English or European or American. 

While some of the victims are upset by the calls, others are unbothered. The message is after all not threatening (the caller never threatens to hasten the listener’s death, only points out that it will happen one day) and ultimately true - true for everyone, not just old people. But of course, it’s an easier message to accept for some than others. If you have regrets - real regrets, not minor ones - then old age is when you have to accept that you might not have enough time to make amends or to do that thing that you always wish you’d done. But that’s the way it is. A human lifespan is finite. Everyone must die, and we need to remember this and live accordingly. We need the occasional memento mori. 

*****

I first read Memento Mori when I was in my late 20s. At that time, I’d have described the novel's characters, who mostly range in age from 75 to 85, as very, very old people. The characters are all quite different, each with their own quirks and foibles, but one thing they have in common is that most of them do and say whatever they want, having reached the age at which people are no longer supposed to care about what others think about them. I recall the phrase  “potent distillations of themselves” to describe old people who don’t so much change as they grow older; they just become more fully and obviously the people they have always been. 

My mother is now a potent distillation of herself. And that is all I have to say about that. 

Except for this: Just because you can get away with doing or saying whatever you want under the guise of old age, it doesn’t follow that you should. Even in TV sitcoms, brutal outspokenness or oblivious-to-the-feelings-of-others behavior has very limited comic appeal. In real life, it’s not funny at all. 

This is something that I’m writing down, so that I can remember it when I’m old.  

Consequences

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

Game 82

I thought that I didn’t care if the Capitals made the playoffs or not. The season was an uneven one at best, with an 8-game losing streak toward the end; and I thought it was fine to just let this one end quietly, and then hope for better next year. Alex Ovechkin is getting so close to breaking Wayne Gretsky’s all-time scoring record, and that makes every game fun to watch even if you don’t expect many wins. 

But then the season got down to game 82, and a very last-ditch chance for the last wildcard playoff spot. Last night’s game was do or almost-certainly die against the Flyers. Had they lost to the Flyers, there were still a few complicated “if Detroit and Pittsburgh lose” scenarios that might have opened the door to the last playoff spot, but the best thing was for them to win in any way - regulation, overtime, or shootout. And they did, against a team that was also down to the wire and also fighting to get into the playoffs. 

*****

Does anyone else agree that John Tortorella was absolutely born to coach the Philadelphia Flyers? I can’t imagine that guy doing anything other than coaching a Philadelphia sports team. Maybe he can take over the 76ers or the Eagles, too. 

*****

I’m not going to say that the game was fun to watch because it absolutely was not, especially the last period. It was stressful. It was a wracking of nerves that a person my age should not subject herself to. But all’s well that ends well. We get four more games now. The online haters are already predicting that the Rangers will sweep us in four and maybe they will. But maybe they won’t. Anything can happen in the playoffs, as the 2023 Boston Bruins can tell you. Let’s go Caps. 

Low speed

I’m WFH today even though it’s Thursday because I don’t feel well and if I was a normal and reasonable person I’d be in bed or at least on the couch napping and watching Netflix or something but instead I’m at my desk because I feel duty-bound not to take a whole sick day. I have a lot of work to do. 

MSNBC is on as background noise. I turn it off every so often but then I hear weird noises from the attic or the walls or the refrigerator, which sounds like it’s committing axe murder every time it drops a load of ice, and so then I turn it back on so that I don’t freak out at all the weird noises. Whatever is causing those weird noises is still going on, to be sure; but if I can’t hear it, then I don’t worry about it. 

OJ Simpson’s face was the first thing I saw when I turned the TV back on and I wondered for a moment if he’d confessed to the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, or if he’d been arrested again for some unrelated offense. I was actually shocked when I saw the chyron. He was 76 - not that old but not so young that his death should come as a shock. But it did come as a shock. 

A few years ago, the subject of the OJ Simpson trial came up in our house. I think it was because my husband was watching the "American Crime Story" dramatization. I told my kids, who were probably 17 and 14 at the time, that it was just not possible for me to convey exactly how big a deal the OJ arrest and trial were in 1994 and 1995; how completely that story dominated the cultural conversation. “Imagine,” I said, “if Tom Brady or LeBron James or Aaron Judge was suspected of murder, and then they tried to escape into Canada or Mexico with a posse of police cars chasing them. That’s how big a deal it was.” I think they got it, but it’s also one of those things that you had to experience first-hand. It’s a Gen X thing. These kids wouldn’t understand. 

And that’s all I have to say about OJ except that I hope that the Goldman and Brown families have found some measure of comfort and solace. I hope that OJ reconciled with God before he died. I hope that all the dead rest in peace. 

All She Lost

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

*****

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

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

*****

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

Burying the lede

I feel like I write quite often about looming government shutdowns. There’s a lot of shutdown-averted-at-the-last-minute content on this blog, and I have to say that it’s not my favorite topic. I’m posting about continuing resolutions almost as much as I post about handbags and books and irrational fears. It’s turning into Politico around here. I need to return to my regular beat. 

Friday was a rather heavy news day even without the stupid “will they or won’t they fund the government, which is literally their only fucking job” drama. I was home working that day, and listening to and checking the news all day long, because a shutdown would have put me temporarily out of work. Any other day, shutdown brinkmanship would have been the top news story on every broadcast and site, but between Kate Middleton’s cancer announcement and the terrorist attack in Russia, the Capitol Hill crisis was pretty much an afterthought. 

*****

I’m not sure why none of the online conspiracy theorists seemed to even consider the possibility that the Princess of Wales, who had just undergone major abdominal surgery, might have had cancer. It was the first thing I thought of. Of course, I hoped that I was wrong. But when she disappeared from view for a few weeks, the Internet in its dubious wisdom imagined everything from a bad haircut to marital turmoil to plastic surgery gone wrong. I’m not a royalist, and I couldn’t care less about the Princess’s hair or the state of her marriage to the future King, but I am very sorry for her, as I would be sorry for any seriously ill mother of three young children (and for the record, even if she was laying low because of bad hair or a fight with her husband, it would be nobody’s business). I hope she recovers quickly and regains full health. 

And speaking of conspiracy theories, I know that ISIS claimed responsibility for Friday’s horrendous mass murder in Russia. But the timing is a little suspicious, isn’t it? Ever since I read Anna Politkovskaya’s A Russian Diary, which contains much of the reporting that got her killed, I immediately suspect a Putin-led or at least a Putin-enabled plot any time there’s violence or even a natural disaster in Russia. I believe Politkovskaya’s theory (and I think many experts believe it too) that the 1999 apartment bombings in Russian cities were not the work of Chechen terrorists, but a Putin-engineered false flag operation that gave him the excuse he needed to escalate his war in Chechnya. Putin has a whole network of violent criminal gangs to carry out his orders, and he’s not above working with ISIS, either. I’m not sure why he would have chosen ISIS rather than one of his usual gangs of thugs, but maybe he’s planning something in the Middle East again. Maybe he actually believes that he can fight wars in Ukraine and Syria at the same time. I’m sorry for all of the victims, no matter who is responsible, but I’m pretty sure that ISIS didn’t act alone. 

*****

The shutdown, as you probably know, was averted. I went back to work on Monday morning, as I always do; and had a pretty good day at work, as I almost always do. I’m very lucky. I like my job, which is neither dangerous nor physically demanding. I’m not in a war zone or in a refugee camp. And I wasn’t on the Baltimore Key Bridge (we have a DC Key Bridge too) last night, unlike those unfortunate construction workers. That must have been terrifying. It was terrifying to watch on TV, especially if you’ve driven back and forth across that bridge many times, as I have. Seeing the video of the bridge just dropping like Lincoln Logs into the Patapsco River, I thought that January 6, 2021 was the last time I’d watched a news broadcast with that much “what the hell is happening” disbelief and shock. It’s still hard to believe - a boat crashes into a bridge, and the whole thing just collapses, in seconds. A major local landmark is just gone. It’s Tuesday now and it’s another big national news day; but in Maryland, the bridge is all we’re talking about. 

Equinox

It’s March 19, the first day of Spring. I don’t recall a Spring Day 1 earlier than March 21, but the vernal equinox comes when it comes. It’s a Leap Year, so maybe that plays into the early-ish start of the season. I’m not going to delve too deeply into this. This is math and science, which are not my departments. I like to stay in my lane. 

*****

And it’s a beautiful beautiful day, though 20 degrees colder than I would like. Our neighborhood, gray and drab just a few short weeks ago, is a riot of color; cherry blossoms and daffodils and forsythia and flowering pear and tulips and irises coming out all over the place. The grass is green, thanks to a warm spell a few weeks ago. It’s lovely. 

That's my mailbox, hiding in the forsythia
that is in turn shaded by a cherry tree

We are very lucky, we here in my little neighborhood. Our streets are lined with cherry trees, hundreds of them. We don’t have to go anywhere near the Tidal Basin if we don’t want to. I do love to see the original cherry trees with the monuments sparkling behind them, but the Tidal Basin is a scene this week. It’s no place for the faint of heart. I’ma stay right here and look at my own cherry trees. I can see them right from my kitchen window. 

*****

WTOP is our local news radio station. Like most other news radio stations, WTOP covers the same stories all day long, repeating the same program every 30 minutes with slight updates as information changes, especially concerning the all-important traffic and weather. Like everyone else in the DMV, I’m obsessed with traffic reports, so I listen to WTOP a lot when I’m in my car. 

Cherry trees bloom in multiple stages - eight I think. The cycle begins when the very first signs of blossoms begin to appear to the much-anticipated peak bloom. That whole cycle, from early signs through peak bloom, takes about two weeks. Somewhere between March 1 and March 10, the first signs appear, and then WTOP reporters are on 24-hour cherry blossom watch. As the cherry blossoms mature, WTOP devotes at least 5 minutes of every 30 to cherry blossom updates. It’s a big local story; even bigger this year because the National Park Service just announced its plans to cut down 150 cherry trees ahead of a project to shore up the seawall around the Tidal Basin (don’t worry, there are about 4,000 trees around the Basin, so the 150 won’t make a hugely visible difference). 

The National Park Service shares predictions on peak bloom (surprisingly specific - not “sometime in the third week of March” but “1 PM on March 22”) and then updates their forecast based on expected weather conditions. An early warm spell will speed up the process but will also speed up the end of the blooming period; whereas a cold snap that follows an early period of warmth, will extend the peak period by a few days. That is where we are now. We had a few warm days last week, and peak bloom occurred very early. But then it got quite cold, and the blooms are holding on nicely. Everywhere I go, people are discussing the cherry blossom forecasts - either first-hand reports from their own Tidal Basin visits, or second-hand updates from the live feeds or WTOP. It’s the talk of the town. Everyone in DC is a botanist in March. 

*****

I got my hair cut on Tuesday night (my hair lady had just been to the Tidal Basin the previous day) and rejoiced in the still-present daylight as I drove home at 6:15 PM. A wave of nostalgia hit me - hit me hard - as I caught a glimpse of a Rockville High School kid getting out of a minivan, backpack on one shoulder and softball gear bag on the other. Was it just a year ago that I was still a Rockville baseball mom? On that very day a year earlier, I thought, I was probably on my way home from a baseball scrimmage. It was cold on Tuesday, so I looked on the bright side. I loved high school baseball but at least I don’t have to spend two hours sitting in a camp chair wrapped in a blanket on a 40-degree windy March day. And then I noticed the signs advertising Rockville’s annual mulch sale, an all-hands-on-deck volunteer effort that takes up a whole Saturday, a Saturday that is invariably rainy or cold (it snowed on our first mulch sale day in 2016). I miss being a high school parent. I miss band concerts and swim meets and baseball games. But I don’t miss mulch sale. Mulch sale can go fuck itself. 

*****

Well, that was rude. But you know what I mean. 

*****

It’s Friday now, still cold but bright fresh spring-y cold, which is the best kind, I guess. The Washington Capitals just got in on the cherry blossom action, releasing a new sky-blue jersey festooned with cherry blossoms. They’re late to this game. The Nationals and the Wizards have had cherry blossom gear for several years now. We’ll see what these jerseys look like tonight, when we attend what is likely to be our last Capitals game for the season. Hockey is a winter sport unless your team is in the playoffs, and the Capitals are not going to go very far in the playoffs if they make it at all, which isn’t likely. 

For years, the Capitals were a playoffs mainstay. They only won the Stanley Cup once, in 2018, but you could pretty much always depend on them to at least reach the post-season. But nothing is permanent. Gray early March gives way to screaming pink and  yellow late March and then just as you get used to the forsythias and the cherry blossoms; just when you start to think that all this beauty is yours to keep, it’s gone. If you remember nothing else that late March in the DMV teaches us, remember that everything is fleeting. 

Wouldn't it be nice to keep walking under these
trees all summer long?
They'll only look like this for a few more days. 

Wearing of the green

Five years ago today, I landed in Dublin at 5 in the morning. It was St. Patrick's Day, my first time in Ireland. I didn't expect to love the place but I did, pretty much the minute I got in the taxi and rode into the center of town as the sky began to brighten. It turned into a bright and sunny and cold holiday Sunday. We spent the late morning and early afternoon having brunch in the hotel restaurant, mingling with happy Irish families enjoying a three-day weekend. I dragged my mother to the parade, and then returned her to the hotel where my sister and her friend were already sleeping after the all-night flight; and I wandered the city by myself for a few hours until I was literally too tired to take another step. Another taxi took me back to the hotel, where my sister’s friend and I sat in the bar and had a drink and made friends with an already-drunk Irishwoman named Orla who was just getting started on her holiday drinking. Later that evening, we would wave goodbye to poor Orla as the Garda escorted her out of the bar, whose staff had had quite enough of Orla’s shenanigans. 

Dublin quays, March 17, 2019

****

It's Sunday today too. We'll probably not go to any Irish pubs or restaurants to celebrate. They will be too crowded. In Dublin, the crowds are the point; but of course, inconvenience in a foreign country is an adventure. Inconvenience close to home is just inconvenient. 

I'm wearing green, at least. A green cardigan (one of exactly three green garments in my wardrobe if you don’t count t-shirts) with a white shirt, and claddagh earrings. When I was young, I purposely avoided wearing anything green or Irish-themed on St. Patrick's Day or any time in March. Now, I like St. Patrick's Day. It'd be nice to be in Dublin right now. I hope Orla is having a nice holiday. 

Burn Book

Could I have chosen a more different book from Middlemarch than Kara Swisher’s Burn Book? Possibly. But Kara Swisher is a very big departure from George Eliot, and 21st century Silicon Valley is a long way from 19th century England. It’s a very different reading experience. I’m a little whipsawed right now. A little confused. 

If you spend any time reading online book discussions, then you’ll know that Burn Book is mildly controversial. I haven’t gotten to this part yet, but apparently Kara Swisher is pretty hard on Elon Musk and the social media book commenters complain that she was once as taken in by Elon as she is now critical. 

I’m not wading into that discussion; first of all because no good ever comes out of an online argument about books or anything else, and because I haven’t been following Kara Swisher for years as many of these Threads commenters appear to have been, so I can’t comment on her early coverage of Elon Musk. 

*****

I’ve read some of Kara Swisher’s work here and there over the years, but not much because until recently, I didn’t have much interest in her journalistic beat, which is the internet and social media and all of the technology that powers pretty much everything. I’ve also seen her on TV, mostly in short commentary sound bites. She is not just a writer and thinker, she’s also a mover and shaker and a bit of a personality - brash, confident, even pugnacious. And so predictably, lots of people, especially lots of men, don’t like her for the usual reasons that people don’t like opinionated women who say what they want to say without worrying if men will think that they’re shrill or aggressive or unfeminine or God forbid angry. Kara Swisher doesn't care. 

And really, it’s not just opinionated and outspoken women - lots of people don’t like women at all, full stop. And that’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately, I have some things to say about it but maybe another time. 

Or maybe now. Misogyny in tech is pretty much a byword - even people who “don’t believe in glass ceilings” (lol Nikki Haley) acknowledge that the technology sector is notoriously hostile toward anyone who is missing a Y chromosome. And Kara Swisher is not afraid to call them on their misogynist bullshit. She could stay quiet about it, and remain as the only girl in the room, the only girl who plays on the boys’ team while all the other girls are relegated to the sidelines, jumping up and down and waving pom poms. She could be the cool girl. But she calls out the misogyny because she doesn't care if the boys like her or not. 

*****

Kara Swisher started reporting on the Internet and everything arising from it, from e-commerce to chat rooms and email and social media, in the 90s, when lots of people - even smart people - thought that it was all just a fad that was going to go away. She saw things that other people didn’t see, although I’m sure that there’s some truth in some of the online criticisms of the book. In some places, she comes across as a boastful know-it-all. I think that most of the time, she really did and does know it all when it comes to tech, but I get just a slight sense of 20/20 hindsight in a few stories. She claims that she knew certain things or predicted certain outcomes before they materialized. For example, she tells us that she once told a then-unknown Jeff Bezos that the early Amazon was not so much a tech company as a retailer with a very good logistics operation. If she really said that at that time, then that was a brilliant observation. Ultimately, as Kara Swisher explains it, Jeff Bezos used technology as a tool to transform the essentially non-technical business of selling merchandise and Steve Jobs, whom Swisher admires very much, transformed technology itself. The question I have is, is there really a moral difference between those two accomplishments? I’m not so sure. 

*****

I like the very casual, immediate style of the writing in Burn Book. Swisher is very much at ease with internet slang (she probably invented most of it). In one of the few passages that is truly a memoir-like observation about herself, she writes that she has always been brash and confident and impervious to others’ criticism - “it’s hard to neg me,” as she puts it. This is, by the way, a trait that I would love to claim for myself, but I cannot because I am exactly the opposite. She also uses the word “grok” quite frequently - once would have been enough, but I guess it’s just one of her everyday words. I had never seen or heard either “neg” or “grok” in writing or conversation, but it was easy enough to infer from context. There's also lots of tech-savvy bravado - "Who emails?" she writes. Everyone, Kara. Everyone still emails. 

*****

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the afternoon working on a presentation about AI in medical education. I know pretty much nothing about AI but that's not going to stop me from making a slide deck about it. I’ll make a slide deck about absolutely anything. I’ll write about absolutely anything. Give me a topic. One time when I was writing a speech, my smart-aleck son asked me why I didn’t just use ChatGPT. I don't need ChatGPT, I told him. I am ChatGPT. 

Or maybe ChatGPT is me. Maybe I didn’t write this at all. Maybe all I wrote is an AI prompt: “Crank out a half-baked, scattershot review of Kara Swisher’s Burn Book, and throw in some random non-sequiturs.” 

I might try that, actually. Let’s see what happens. Let’s see how this shakes out. 

*****

In all seriousness, I learned a tiny bit about AI as I worked on this slide deck, and I’m going to learn more. This is one of Kara Swisher’s key messages. AI is here to stay, and we should, collectively, figure out a way to control it before it controls us. We can’t make the same mistakes that we made with the World Wide Web and social media. When the young geniuses who are inventing new technologies by the minute promise us that we don’t need to bother our pretty little heads with annoyances like regulation and oversight because everything is under control and they have our best interests at heart, we have to not believe them because nothing is under control and they absolutely do not have our best interests at heart. Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook and Satya Nadella do not have our best interests at heart. Elon Musk REALLY doesn’t have our best interests at heart. 

Middlemarching

It was a beautiful day yesterday, unseasonably spring-y and mild. I went for a walk at lunchtime, two quick turns around the track, exchanging greetings with a few medical students running in their PT gear. 

After a few days of deliberately slow reading, I finally finished Middlemarch. It was just as I had hoped for Mary and Fred, and even Dorothea and Will ended up together, against considerable odds. Happy endings all around, and you had to keep reading until the very very end. 

I thought about Middlemarch yesterday as I made my second pass around the track. When Dorothea refused a carriage from Middlemarch back to Lowick, how long a walk would it have been? A mile? Five miles? A few meters? I hoped she would have had a balmy early spring day for her walk, no matter how long or short. 

*****

I loved Middlemarch, and I love Dorothea Brooke, who is almost perfect, almost too good to be true, but not quite, thanks to her impulsive and slightly megalomanic nature. Dorothea is virtuous, generous, kind, selfless, idealistic, uninterested in material wealth and comfort; and of course, she’s beautiful. But she is also inflexible (even rigid) and convinced of her own moral superiority. But maybe these aren’t even flaws - Dorothea really is morally superior to most of her fellow Middlemarchers so why should she not be sure of herself? And why should she be flexible on the question of truth versus falsehood? Some things are not up for debate. 

*****

I’m in the middle of minor but troublesome controversies on two separate fronts (paid work and volunteer work), and I find myself wondering WWDD? What would Dorothea do? I’m pretty sure that I’m right in both of these debates, neither of which involve matters of great importance, but both of which will have measurable impact on my work. It’s kind of a long story (that’s the only kind I know how to tell) but it boils down to this: I have to convince one person to do something, and I have to convince another person not to do something. This is all I can say. Dorothea would use all of the tools at her disposal - her social status, her wealth, her youth and beauty, her impeccable reputation - to convince others to do her bidding. Dorothea and I don’t have much in common except the impeccable reputation, but I’m also pretty good at talking people around and convincing them to see things my way, even without the benefit of beauty and wealth. I’ll report back. 

*****

One down, one to go. I managed to quiet one of these teapot tempests, and although I didn’t get exactly what I needed, I did get a clear path forward. The second one is a little more sticky. I might ignore it until it goes away. This is exactly the opposite of what Dorothea would do but as we have already established, Dorothea is not just a paragon of virtue; she is also an impulsive megalomaniac with a messiah complex. As much as I love Dorothea, it’s not always a good idea to follow her lead. It’s not always a good idea to do what she would do. It wasn’t even a good idea for her to do what she would do. I mean, everyone told her not to marry Mr. Casaubon, and she didn’t listen, and we all saw how that turned out, didn’t we? I admire Dorothea very much, but she’s not a role model for middle-aged, middle class ladies in the 21st century. 

*****

My first problem is pretty much solved now, and the second one seems much less bothersome than it did two days ago. Dorothea would have attacked it head on and maybe she’d have solved it but maybe she’d have made it worse. We don’t know, because Dorothea isn’t real and even if she was, she’d be long dead. I acted on my first instinct, which was to pretend that the whole situation didn’t exist and you know what? I’m pretty sure it DOESN’T exist, at least not anymore. My plan worked. I was right. 

And it’s Friday now, a beautiful sunny afternoon. Our daffodils are out now, and I’m starting to see a few crocuses and tulips, too. The cherry blossoms are in the very earliest bloom stages and everything looks bright and fresh and hopeful. Dorothea and I would agree, I’m sure, that today is a perfect day for a spring-is-around-the-corner walk around the neighborhood. I’m finished solving problems for today. I have some flowers to look at.