Ineffective coping strategies

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

*****

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

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

*****

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

*****

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

*****

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

*****

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

Demon Copperhead

I finally finished my 2024 book list, and then of course found two more books that I read but forgot to add to my list. Whatever, bro. The past is past, and I’m not revisiting that list. 

I did, however, come up with a new way to organize my 2025 list, and to keep track of what I’m writing about as I write about it. I'm very pleased with this new system; very proud of myself. 

*****

Right now, I’m reading two books: Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver) and Lovely One (Ketanji Brown Jackson). Why two? Well, it’s because the latter is a hardcover actual book, and so I read it when and where I have good light. The former is on my Kindle so I read it in bed. It’s a good system, though I don’t think I could come up with two more different voices than Justice Jackson and Damon Fields aka Demon Copperhead, the first-person narrator of the eponymous novel. Sometimes it’s a little confusing to switch between the two.

Demon is as good as everyone says it is. I’ve read Dickens’ David Copperfield, which inspired Demon Copperhead, at least 8 times, and although I might normally take a dim view of fan fiction (“might” means “definitely would”), I found that fan fiction in the hands of someone like Zadie Smith (her 2005 novel On Beauty is based on E.M. Forster’s Howards End) or Barbara Kingsolver can be an art form all on its own, and I am thoroughly absorbed. I’m only about 10 percent into the book, but I already wish the very worst on the vile Stoner, Demon’s evil redneck Mr. Murdstone stepfather. 

*****

I wrote that a week or so ago, and then some other things came up, and now I’m back. I’m about 60 percent of the way through Demon, and I’m officially a fan of fan fiction. Stoner is out of the picture for now, and although he hasn’t yet gotten the comeuppance that he so richly deserves, I have faith that the comeuppance is imminent, and I eagerly await this evil man’s downfall. Of course, it will probably come at the expense of some other poor beautiful abused woman (girl, really), just as Mr. Murdstone married another very young woman after driving David’s poor mother to an early grave. 

As you have probably guessed, part of the fun of reading Demon Copperhead is the roman a clef exercise of figuring out who’s who. This is not hard for me, because I’ve read David Copperfield so gosh darn many times. There are a few characters who don’t have counterparts in the original, but most of Demon’s main characters are directly inspired by David Copperfield’s, and it’s pretty easy to identify everyone. The plot is also quite similar but modernized - Demon, like David, is orphaned young and ends up in rather terrible foster care situations until both boys are rescued by older relatives. But Demon takes place in rural Lee County (a real place) in western Virginia during the early part of the 21st century, and the characters’ lives are dominated not only by rigid social and economic structures, but by the then-new opioid epidemic. For the most part, the same people die but in very different circumstances. 

The first-person voices of the main characters are also very different. David “Trotwood” Copperfield is a proper Victorian. Damon “Demon Copperhead” Fields is a rough-edged and girl-crazy high school football player who is bluntly frank about sex and drugs and rural working class life. Dickens’ contemporary readers would have been shocked, but I don’t think that Dickens himself would have been.

*****

I’m almost at the end now. I’m still waiting for Stoner to get his just desserts, but it looks like the vile U-Haul Pyles (Uriah Heep) is about to get what’s coming to him, and that’s just as good. No additional spoilers, except to say that I think I know what’s going to happen to Angus and Dori and Fast Forward and the Armstrongs and Emmy and Hammer Kelly - for better or for worse - because I know what happened to the original characters who inspired them. And there’s still several chapters to go, so I’m not giving up on proper retribution for Stoner, either. I’m either going to speed through the final chapters right this minute, or I’m going to stretch this out for the rest of the week. And then I’m going to read David Copperfield again. It’s been a while. 

Fighting the Power

I’m going to a protest today. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing that down, right? Maybe I shouldn’t be advertising my opposition to this regime. But a protest is a public thing, so here I am. If they want to come get me, they can.

What should I write on my cardboard sign, I’m wondering? Deport Elon? Trump is a Chump? Impeach 47? Any of those will work. I’m not going to waste time trying to be clever. I’m going with Impeach 47 on one side, and Deport Elon on the other. The simpler, the better.

The weather is uncertain today. It will be warmer than usual, which is great from my perspective; and it might rain. Or it might not. I have to figure out what to wear now, which should not be a problem. A person with as many clothes as I have should not have any trouble assembling an outfit for pretty much any occasion, from work to social gatherings to fighting fascism.

*****

Well that was a blast. I arrived at the protest about 10 minutes late. I’d expected to join a scrappy little group of 25 or maybe 50 at most. But there were at least 300 people on our side of Georgia Avenue and the crowd overflowed to the other side of the street. The protestors were mostly older and mostly white, but we had some young people, too, including some children. I had a delightful conversation with a 9-year-old girl who proudly showed me the colorful signs she’d made for herself and her mother.

A few of the older people out on the street yesterday were really old. Walker and wheelchair and cane old. Their various infirmities didn’t stop them from joining the crowds and holding up their signs, and they seemed absolutely delighted to be out. A lady in a wheelchair held up a beautifully hand-lettered sign that read “Hail to the Chief,” with the H and the C crossed out and replaced with a J and a T. Another older woman, tiny and wiry and energetic - the kind of lady who will be mall-walking circles around the rest of us when she’s 100 - had hand-painted signs for herself and her husband. Her sign was an angry polar bear with the caption “Welcome to Greenland - Come and Get Us.” I don’t remember what her husband’s sign looked like, but both were works of art, and the woman’s husband told everyone who would listen that his wife is an artist and that she made their signs. They were both adorable. As was a lady with a walker, flanked by her daughters, who said “Will we be on Rachel Maddow? We have to watch on Monday!”

*****

The weather was really ideal - just slightly cool with a tiny bit of mist. The sun peeked out every so often but it was mostly overcast. A few of the organizers walked a patrol, making sure that people had water if they needed it, and reminding everyone to stay on the sidewalk on very busy Georgia Avenue. Traffic was heavy, as it always is on Georgia Avenue, and at least 80 percent of drivers honked and waved in support. A few people seemed oblivious, while others stared studiously ahead without looking to the right, which was really funny when the light changed and those people were stuck at the red light trying to pretend that nothing was happening, nothing at all. One person flipped us off as he sped by, and the crowd laughed and cheered. Altogether a perfect afternoon, and I plan to do it again at the soonest opportunity. Meanwhile, I’ll await my direct deposit from Mr. Soros. The economy is in freefall right now, and every penny counts. And of course, I'll watch Rachel tomorrow. Maybe we'll all be on TV.

Childhood nostalgia

I went back to see my mom on Friday and Saturday last week. As I drove through the Main Line on Saturday morning on my way from my sister's house to the rehab facility, which is just down the street from Haverford College, I thought about similar beautiful Saturday mornings throughout my children’s school years. During those years, at 9:30 on a Saturday morning, I’d have been at a swim meet or a track meet or a baseball game or on my way to one of those things. I loved that time, but I don’t miss it as much as I did the first year after my youngest graduated. And of course we still have college swimming, which is the greatest.

But I still miss it a little bit. I drove past the Haverford YMCA, wondering if they have a swim team, and if there was a meet going on. I pulled up to the Wawa to pick up my mom’s coffee and I listened in on the coffee station conversations - parents had just dropped kids off at lacrosse and baseball practices, or were on their way to games and picking up coffee and snacks for the morning. Some of them were harried younger parents, still figuring out how to manage spring sports along with everything else. The senior parents, the ones whose kids are in their last year or two of high school, seemed happy and a little smug. I remember that feeling during my younger son’s senior year and his last summer of summer swimming - I was happy and a little smug and also a little sad that it was all ending. I thought about saying something, just joining the conversation for a few minutes, but I decided not to. I paid for our coffees and was on my way.

*****
My mom was up and about when I arrived; or as close to as up and about as she can be right now. She had already had breakfast and was dressed for the day, and she seemed ready to do something. Her spirits were high, which was nice to see. I told her that I’d seen a “Deport Elon Musk” sign, with an Uncle Sam illustration, on the front lawn of a very nice Main Line house. “Good for them,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get one too. As far as I’m concerned, all the other immigrants can stay, but they need to send that Elon back to South Africa.” Damn right, Mom.

The nurse said that my mom was well enough to go out, so we went out - lunch at a nice little neighborhood spot called Angelo’s Cafe, and book shopping at Barnes and Noble. My mom had crepes for lunch because why shouldn’t she, and she bought a gardening magazine and two illustrated Philadelphia history books. She sat and read her books while I shopped a bit to spend a gift card that had been burning a hole in my pocket. The walk back to the car wore her out a bit, and we headed back to the Quadrangle. She was tired enough that she needed the wheelchair for the trip back to her room, but she had a good time. We sat looking at our new books together, and my mom showed me photos of the places that she remembered from her Philadelphia childhood and mine. 

No no no

"They're tryna make me go to rehab 

I say no no no"

Amy Winehouse (may she rest in peace)

*****

The Quadrangle is a somewhat fancy senior living community with a rehab facility and a memory care unit in the middle of Haverford, PA, a somewhat fancy neighborhood in the middle of the fancy Philadelphia Main Line suburbs. Haverford College is right up the street. It's a Tuesday afternoon, and I'm here with my mom in the room in the rehab facility, where she was admitted yesterday. She's less than happy about this whole situation but there's not much we can do about that. She needs professional care, at least for a few weeks. 

My mom has a ton of health issues but the big problems now are a very painful hip injury and lymphedema that keeps worsening because she doesn't move enough because of the pain. She had symptoms of an infection on Sunday so my brother took her to the hospital, and they kept her overnight. We brought her here yesterday. Rather, an ambulance brought her here, and my sister and I followed in my car. And now she's here, and hopefully on the road to recovering her strength and mobility. 

She was at my house a few weeks ago, and I could see that she wasn't well. Mobility has been a problem for her for a long time but she had a much harder time than usual getting up and around, getting in and out of the car, walking between the car and wherever we went, which wasn't very far. I took her for a haircut, as I always do, and she almost had to skip the wash, because she couldn't get comfortably settled in the chair. But she finally got her hair washed and cut and then we met my husband for dinner. Had he not been there, I would not have been able to get her back in the car to go home. So it was a situation 

*****

There are a lot of things I don't miss about Philadelphia but there are some things that I do miss, especially food. The DMV has its own special food culture, of course, and it's pretty great, but different. And of all the things I miss, I miss Wawa, the greatest convenience store on Earth. 

Yes it is. No I don't want to hear about Bucee’s or Sheetz or some weird Midwestern gas station that offers strangely good pizza. I said what I said. 

Wawa hazelnut coffee tastes like my young adulthood in Philadelphia. I'm drinking some right now in my mom's room at the rehab. She seems a bit more reconciled to her situation, but she hates the coffee here and wanted a Wawa coffee. I'd have been happy to oblige in any case, but it was also a great opportunity to get my own Wawa coffee. 

You pour your own coffee at Wawa, and then you add milk and sugar or whatever you want, and then you pay at the register. The coffee station is always busy but it's large enough that there's plenty of room for everyone. And I do mean everyone. The Wawa coffee station at 845 in the morning is a town square. At least five other people were making their coffee as I made cups for my mom and me. REM’s “Man on the Moon" was playing on the radio, and I sang along. I do happen to believe that they put a man on the moon. 

*****

I drove back home on Wednesday, late afternoon, so that I could get home before dark. My night driving is not good. And my daytime driving isn’t much to brag about either but I have to say that I had no trouble on this trip - no unwarranted panic, no major wrong turns, no car trouble, no fear, really. I drove to Philadelphia on Monday, and then drove all over the Main Line and Chester County on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then drove back home, and didn’t have a single bad moment other than some sun glare on Tuesday night. I felt free and at ease, much as I used to when driving. I quite enjoyed myself. 

Traffic in the Philadelphia suburbs can be heavy at times, but the volume and the driver aggression don’t compare to the Thunderdome that is driving in the DMV. Pennsylvania’s roads, on the other hand, are just silly. If you have ever driven in the Main Line suburbs of Montgomery and Chester and Delaware County, you will know what I mean. The term “rolling countryside” was invented to describe this topography, and the narrow two-lane roads bob up and down and back and forth, twisting and winding over blind hills and through little one lane bridges over creeks and railroad crossings. And it all came back to me - how to navigate those winding roads, and how to crest those little hills and bridges without being able to see what’s coming from the other side and most of all how to drive up and down Green Lane in Philadelphia. IYKYK. It wasn’t just OK. It was fun. 

Of course, the perfect weather was a big help. Green Lane would not have been fun in the rain, I tell you what. Wednesday was technically the last day of winter, and it was glorious - warm enough to wear a skirt without stockings, warm enough to leave my jacket in the car, warm enough that I remembered what it’s like not to be cold for five minutes. When I left my house on Monday afternoon, our forsythia had just started to bloom the tiniest bit. Now they’re in almost full bloom. Our cherry trees are budding now. In a few days, they’ll be bursting with pink blooms, and we’ll have a few days of forsythia/cherry blossom overlap. 

*****

OK, that is enough of the weather and traffic. Back to my mama. On Tuesday, we saw the chief occupational therapist, who did an evaluation and explained how the OT and PT would work. She asked my mom what she hoped to accomplish, and my mom snapped right back “To get out of here.” The OT did not take the bait. “Yes,” she said, “of course. We know you don’t want to live here forever. But what do you want to DO when you get home? How do you want to FEEL?” 

That gave her pause, just for the briefest moment. From her brief hospital stay last weekend through her arrival and intake at the rehab facility through the first day of adjusting to the routine and schedule, she was completely resistant to everything. She didn’t need to be in the hospital (she did), she didn’t need rehab or PT or OT or any of it (she does) and she was perfectly fine on her own at home (no she absolutely is not). But when the OT director looked at my mother, completely serious and earnest, and asked that simple question - I could see her attitude changing, just a tiny bit. Seeing an opportunity, I chimed in, reminding her about our trip to Ireland, and our beach vacations, and the shopping and lunch excursions that she loves so much. “If you do the therapy,” I said, “and I mean REALLY work at it, then you can do all of those things again.” 

She didn’t say anything. But when the OT came to collect her on Wednesday, she went without complaint, and when I asked her how it was, she said “not too bad.” The activities director invited her to come hear a DJ who spins oldies on Wednesday afternoons, and she went. And the PT came to get her as soon as she returned from the DJ’s performance, and she didn’t even try to talk her way out of it. 

My mom actually did agree to do physical therapy last year. It was not successful. This was partly because she resisted it at every turn, and didn’t do any of the follow-up exercises. And it was partly because she cancelled more appointments than she actually kept. I’d call her to ask her how her PT went. And she’d say “Oh, I missed the appointment, and now I’m playing phone tag with the guy.” 

Translation: “I cancelled the appointment. The guy is calling me to reschedule and I’m dead-ass ghosting him.” I had to explain to my mother, more than once, that “phone tag” describes a situation in which BOTH parties are attempting to reach one another. Hence the word “tag.” If only one person is calling, and the other person is avoiding the call, then there’s no game. No tag can occur. 

*****

Anyway, it’s been almost a week now, and although she is not likely to admit it, I think she’s enjoying herself just a tiny bit. And she will get daily therapy whether she likes it or not because they come to her, and there’s no place to hide. She’ll be in the care facility for two to three more weeks and will then have home therapy and a visiting nurse. She’ll spend weeks at my house and weeks at my sister’s house to give her a change of scenery and to give my youngest sister, who lives with her at home, a break from taking care of her. 

I’ll be there again next week. Stay tuned for updates, including full reports on traffic and weather conditions on the Main Line. 

Bibliography 2024

I’m about five months into a semi boycott of Amazon. Bezos kowtowing to Trump is only one reason for my disdain for Amazon. I don’t like the way they treat workers.I don’t like that Bezos brags about wanting Amazon employees to be “terrified” because terror is supposed to spark creativity and innovation or some stupid shit. I don’t like that Amazon is one of the biggest recipients of corporate welfare among US businesses (right up there with Walmart and McDonald’s). I don’t like Amazon’s impact on the environment, and its phony climate pledge greenwashing attempts. And I don’t like centibillionaires. I don’t think it should be possible for one person to grab and hoard that much wealth. 

I still shop on Amazon - and then I go to other merchants to actually buy what I need. There’s something very satisfying in using Amazon to do the research and then giving the money to another business, and I don’t even mind paying more. In fact, I LIKE paying more, just to make a point. I’m that petty. 

*****

But I do still have a Kindle, and so I haven’t yet broken with Amazon altogether. I’d go back to a Barnes and Noble Nook, but Kindle books are not compatible with Nook hardware because of course they’re not. I have too many Kindle books to abandon the technology altogether. So Jeff Bezos will still get a little bit of my money. When I figure out a way to remedy this situation, I will. Meanwhile, this was a very long and meandering way to introduce my 2024 book list. I read almost all of these books on my Kindle. 

Enough. Cassidy Hutchinson. This book exists, and yet Donald Trump is President, once again. No good deed goes unpunished. SMDH.  

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. Lea Ypi. I wrote about this one here but fair warning - this post is kind of a mishmash of random stuff (much like this entire blog) and you have to dig for the part about the book. Caveat emptor, readers. 

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. Mary McGrory. The best parts of this book, about McGrory’s New York literary life in the middle of the 20th century, are Helene Hanff-good. The rest of it is pretty good too, especially if you really care about correct use of “you and I” vs. “you and me” and if you have strong feelings about the serial comma. I do care, of course, but not enough to read whole chapters of exegesis explaining why it’s “Between you and me” and not “between you and I;” and not enough to listen to anyone’s impassioned arguments in favor of the serial comma. I am already on board, is the thing. It’s preaching to the proverbial choir. No need to sell me on the serial comma, Mary - I am already fully invested. 

Middlemarch. George Eliot. I have an actual degree in English - summa cum laude! - and yet I had never read Middlemarch. But when both Zadie Smith and Martin Amis tell me that I need to read something, I read it. Zadie Smith, especially, is never wrong. I loved Middlemarch so much that I wrote about it at least twice, here and here. I might read it again very soon. Check this list again next year. 

The Broom of the System. David Foster Wallace. I wrote about this one right here in yet another rambling word salad covering books, movies, college swimming, anxiety, and social media health influencers. This book was very important to me when I was young, and although small parts of it do not hold up, most of it has really stood the proverbial test of time, and I loved reading it again. Maybe I’ll read Infinite Jest again. 

Prophet Song. Paul Lynch. If you’re already terrified that the United States is on a collision course with totalitarianism then this book will absolutely not reassure you. It is a great novel - but also grim and terrifying and much more realistic than most dystopian novels. Forewarned is forearmed, right? 

Burn Book. Kara Swisher. I’m especially proud of the very last line of this little review, which I wrote nearly a year ago. It holds up, and so does Burn Book. BTW, if you don’t follow Kara on social media, you absolutely should. 

All She Lost. Dalal Mawad. 

Answered Prayers. Truman Capote. I just searched my Google Docs, thinking that I had written something about this somewhere, but I didn’t. I did find something that I wrote when I was still in school; and 11 years later, I stand by my undergraduate assertion that In Cold Blood is the greatest true crime story ever written. I read Answered Prayers after watching “The Swans,” the Hulu miniseries based on the book and the post-publication fallout. I felt sorry for poor lonely Truman, but I don’t blame Babe Paley and the rest of the Swans for cutting him off. You can’t sell your friends out in exchange for money and fame and expect to keep those friends. 

The Big Myth. Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes. Last year, I attended a lecture by the great Dr. Donald Berwick, who recommended this book. A short synopsis: The “myth” is the spurious idea that the free market is the only thing that can accomplish anything of value and that we should let it run free like it’s a wild fawn in the woods. For a long time, politicians (mostly Republican but plenty of Democrats, too) were completely taken in by this myth, and our economic and tax and regulatory policy were all based on free market fundamentalism. And now that wealth is ever more concentrated at the top, and the middle class is shrinking while people on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale seem to keep getting poorer and most people can’t afford to buy a house unless they have generous and well-to-do parents and the country’s infrastructure is literally falling apart, it’s become clear, at least to some of us, that unregulated capitalism is just the slippery slope to failed-state status.Authors Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes point out that at one time, not that long ago, most people supported the liberal order established after the Depression and WWII, and that it took a very sophisticated, well-planned propaganda campaign to convince people that government oversight and regulation were bad and that the “invisible hand of the market” (invisible because it does not exist) was capable of fulfilling every human need and solving every problem. This propaganda campaign, which took the form of everything from TV programs to textbooks for every educational level from elementary to college, was so successful that by the early 1980s or so, most people believed Ronald Reagan’s famous “Government IS the problem” line. And that is why I blame Ronald Reagan as much as I blame Mitch McConnell for the sad state of affairs that is America in February 2025. It’s not just a big myth. It’s a big fat lie. 

The Zone of Interest. Martin Amis. A rare case in which I saw the movie first and then read the book on which it was based. This is a fictionalized story about Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife and children, and their idyllic life in a lovely home with a tennis court and a pool and beautiful gardens and household staff and a death camp in the backyard. Both the movie and the book are just astonishingly good. 

Coming Home. Brittney Griner. I keep reading these Putin-is-evil books, even though I’m on board with this thesis and have been for some time now, and don’t need any further convincing. I didn’t realize until I read this that Britney Griner was the Angel Reese or Caitlin Clark of her time. I’ve never paid much attention to college basketball, men’s or women’s, and so I didn’t know that Griner was the number one pick of her draft year and the greatest player in Baylor WBB history. I’m not the only American who didn’t know much about Brittney Griner until her imprisonment in Russia - she acknowledges that most Americans had no idea who she was. But women’s professional basketball is extremely popular in Russia, and she was LeBron-famous there. The book is very good, and I’m very happy that Ms. Griner is safely back in the US. But of course, I’m sure that Trump would have gotten her out, too, now that Russia is our BFF. 

We Were the Lucky Ones. Georgia Hunter. As an adult, Georgia Hunter discovered that she was the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. She wrote this novel based on her own family’s near-unbelievable story of courage, endurance, and plain luck. Not that many Polish Jewish families survived the war nearly intact, but Hunter’s family did, despite being scattered all over the world, both during the war and after. It’s a good, though not great book. And the Hulu miniseries based on the book is quite good. 

If You Can’t Take the Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury. Geraldine DeRuiter. This is a book of essays about food and cooking. I don’t normally read books about food or cooking but then I came across some social media discussion about the NYT’s rather negative review of this book, and that review and the resulting online pushback made me want to read it. NYT book and music and media critics need frequent reminders that most of us don’t care what they think. Anyway, I liked this book, which is not really about food and cooking. Or rather, it’s ostensibly about food and cooking, and it is, on the surface; but it’s really about misogyny in the restaurant business (and everywhere else), with side forays into family trauma and secrets, and a little bit of travel. Anyway, it’s very good. DeRuiter, known on social media as The Everywhereist, really knows how to write her way around the perimeter of a thing, and to keep going, spiraling inward until she gets to the root. I’d definitely read more of DeRuiter’s work. I might even read this one again. 

No Judgment. Lauren Oyler. In 20 years, Lauren Oyler will be as good an essayist as Zadie Smith. She should quote me on this, because it’s the highest praise she will ever receive in her literary career. 

Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry and The Hero of this Book. Elizabeth McCracken. “American wiseacre” is now on my list of phrases that I wish I had coined. 

Autocracy Inc and The Twilight of Democracy. Anne Applebaum. Yes, as a matter of fact, this IS my idea of vacation reading. 

*****

Murder on the Orient-Express. Agatha Christie. Speaking of vacation reading,  I needed something to read when my Kindle went missing for a few days during our vacation, and

this was on the bookshelf at the beach house we rented. That bookshelf was filled with Tom Clancy and Mitch Albom and Danielle Steel and who knows what else, and so Agatha Christie was the only reasonable choice. And it was absolutely delightful. I’d never actually read any Agatha Christie before, but I was aware that Murder on the Orient-Express is one of the best-selling novels of all time (maybe THE best-selling novel of all time) and I enjoyed knowing that I was one of millions of people who have spent an August afternoon at the beach with Hercule Poirot figuring out who murdered the vile Mr. Ratchett. SPOILER ALERT: It was everyone. If you need a break from all of this (gesturing wildly at everything) you could do a lot worse than to spend a day with Agatha Christie or Margery Sharp or Muriel Spark or Barbara Pym or Nancy Mitford or P.D. James or really any British female novelist of the early to mid 20th century. 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.  Gabrielle Zevin. As I wrote earlier,  I was very surprised to find a novel about video game designers so absorbing, because this is a topic in which I have absolutely no interest. Zevin uses the video game industry and its fast-paced (and toxic) culture to tell a story about two brilliant young people and their decades-long on-and-off friendship, and their place in the time in which they lived, that being the waning days of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. When I read fiction, I always want a happy ending. I wouldn’t describe the ending of Tomorrow as happy in any way, but it was fitting. 

Girl, Maladjusted and The Social Climber’s Handbook. Molly Jong-Fast. Memoir and murder - two very different books by the same author. 

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. Svetlana Alexievich. When I read this, I asked myself what the American version of this book might be like; what stories we would tell journalists and historians about the American Century and the end of the United States. At the time, I was just being dramatic. Now this is a perfectly legitimate question. 

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Alison Bechdel. Not long ago, I read a self-help book that wasn’t very good. I wrote about it, and about the fact that I never read self-help except for this one time. Maybe if I’d chosen a good self-help book, I’d be open to more from the genre, but self-help is dead to me now. Graphic novels are another thing that I never read, except that I did read this one, and it’s very good (not really a novel though, more of a memoir) and I might occasionally read more graphic novels, except not often because the print is usually too small and they don’t work particularly well on e-readers. I bought and read the actual paperback book because I liked the way it looked. 

*****

It’s March 2025 now, and I’m almost finished writing this list of books that I read in 2024! Any day now! I should just power through and finish this thing right now but the tedium is getting to me. All these links. All these titles to italicize. All of this writing about stuff that I already wrote about. I’m literally dead from boredom. 

*****

OK, back to work. 

*****

Patriot. Alexei Navalny. We were at my son’s first college conference championship meet early last year when Alexei Navalny’s death was first reported. We had all watched “Navalny" together, and I bought the book soon after his death but didn’t get around to reading it until later in the year. Putin was so afraid of a peaceful political opponent that he hounded him literally to death. Navalny was so unafraid of Putin that he doubled down on his opposition to the regime every time he got out of prison. He was so unafraid that he walked away from freedom and safety in Germany, returning to certain imprisonment and eventual death in Russia. Similar extraordinary courage will soon be required in the United States. I hope that I’m up to it. I hope we all are. 

On Tyranny and On Freedom. Timothy Snyder. I read On Freedom right after I finished On Tyranny, which was the book of the moment right after the 2024 election, when On Tyranny’s first rule, “Do not obey in advance,” was all over social media. I think that Snyder wrote On Freedom before On Tyranny, but you can read them in the opposite order, as I did. You can read one or the other, though I definitely recommend reading both. 

*****

I’m finally at the end! Democracy Awakening (Heather Cox Richardson) is the last book I finished in 2024 - I started another book right after this, but I didn’t finish it until 2025 and so consistent with my customary practice, I will include it on my 2025 reading list. 

Caveat emptor: The post linked to the words Democracy Awakening discusses the book only very briefly. It discusses pretty much everything else at considerable length. 

I started reading Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American newsletter probably early last year. And when I say “read,” I mean that I skimmed it, and sometimes just looked at the first paragraph. Now I read that newsletter from top to bottom every single day. When the topic of all of this (gesturing wildly at everything) comes up in conversation, almost invariably someone will ask me (or I will ask them) “Do you read Heather Cox Richardson?” As much as I love Rachel Maddow and Timothy Snyder and Sherilynn Ifill and so many other pro-democracy writers and thinkers in the traditional media and online, I think that Heather Cox Richardson is the best of the best. As they say on social media, protect HCR at all costs. 

*****

And that is it! A year of reading; roughly 80% dictators and political upheaval and 20% everything else. No wonder I’m stressed out. It’s only about 25 books, a low for me, but I think I read a few more books that I forgot to track. And it’s not a contest, anyway. 2025 is going to skew a little bit more toward fiction, I think. I studied for 2025 last year. I knew there would be a test.  

A few days in the Shrieking 20s

I hate being sick. I hate being sick any time but especially on a beautiful early spring Saturday. I was supposed to go to a protest today. Instead, I’m on my couch in my pajamas with fever, chills, and stomach cramps. 

This just happened this morning. I felt fine yesterday and last night. We went to the Capitals game and sat with 30,000 of our closest friends watching the Capitals come back from a 2-0 first period deficit to win 5-2 against Detroit. We were surrounded by Detroit fans who left the arena dejected and disappointed. I hope they didn’t also leave with norovirus or whatever it is that has me laid out this morning. 

*****

Capital One Arena was almost full. Alex Ovechkin is ten goals away from passing Wayne Gretzky as the top NHL goal scorer of all time, and everyone wants to be there for every goal. Alex didn’t score last night, but everyone else did. 

Metro was oddly quiet for a Friday game night. We had a car almost to ourselves and the ride from Glenmont to Judiciary was very quick. When we emerged from the Metro at Judiciary (the coolest Metro exit, with the National Building Museum filling your view as you ride the escalator up to the street), we noticed how quiet the neighborhood was. A few people were out, but most of them looked like they were on their way home from work rather than on their way out for a fun Friday evening.  We got a table at the Irish Channel almost immediately - unheard of for a Friday night, especially when the Capitals are playing. The atmosphere in the Channel was subdued - not quiet, exactly, but not raucous and celebratory. Subdued. The whole town is subdued. 

*****

It’s Sunday morning and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. I feel much better this morning; drained and unusually tired (this is the new normal) but no longer sick. It’s such a relief. One of the things I hate most about being sick is my own particular big baby whiny reaction to being sick. Halfway through a day of COVID or flu or a stomach bug, I’m resigning myself to a life of infirmity, certain that I’ll never feel well again. It’s ridiculous. God help me if I ever have to deal with a real health problem. I’ll be absolutely insufferable. 

It’s almost 10 o’clock. It feels earlier, of course, because today is the first day of Daylight Savings Time. One hour of sleep in exchange for six months of later daylight? I’ll take it. That’s the deal of the century. 

I’m going to do something today. I don’t know what. Something. It’s going to be a busy week at work, which is normally my favorite kind of week at work but everything is upside down now and we’re spending all our time just responding to ridiculous edicts and Executive Orders and waiting for the hammer to fall. This is not as much fun as it sounds, I tell you what. And this week is going to be especially interesting because the CR that’s currently funding the government runs out in five days and who knows what they’re doing to avert a shutdown. I’ll work Monday through Friday and if they haven’t come to an agreement on a CR by Friday afternoon, I’ll follow the news until midnight to see if I’ll be working after next weekend. Exciting. Bracing. We live on the edge in this town. 

*****

What’s better than a secret tunnel? Well, some things but not that many, I tell you, not that many. I’ve worked at Naval Support Activity Bethesda for three years now, but I’ve always driven to work and so until this morning, I never knew that there was a tunnel under Rockville Pike connecting Medical Center Metro on the NIH side of the street to NSAB on the other. My husband drove me to work this morning since parking enforcement is now in full effect, and I don’t have a parking pass. You can’t really drop someone off right at the base without causing a huge traffic jam, so I told him to drop me off at the Metro station, and I would either take the shuttle or walk. 

I know that there’s a shuttle between the Metro and the University. I see people boarding it every afternoon. But I have no idea where on the other side it picks up and drops off, and the parking and drop-off at Medical Center Metro is big and confusing, so I decided to just walk, because it was a nice morning. And just as I was thinking that I hoped that I wouldn’t get hit by a car crossing the very busy Rockville Pike, I noticed the signs for the underpass to NSAB. Genius! I breezed through the little tunnel and up the stairs on the other side, emerging just at the turnstiles at Gate 3. From there it’s a little bit of a walk past the hospital annex buildings - all told just about 1.4 miles from the Metro Kiss and Ride to my desk in Building D. The sun had just come up (we work early) and it was still chilly so I kept a brisk pace. It was a nice way to start the day - energizing. Still, I need to figure out where to get that shuttle because that walk won’t be fun and delightful if it’s raining or really cold. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now. I should be working and I am kind of working but I cannot concentrate and so I am taking a break to write about why I cannot concentrate, which is basically all of this (gesturing wildly at everything). Well, all of this but specifically the continuing resolution vote in the House, upon which my immediate work future depends. I know that they’re voting today and I just heard a few minutes of stupid Mike Johnson claiming simultaneously that he has the votes to pass the CR but that if it doesn’t pass, it’s the Democrats’ fault. Which one, Mr. Speaker? It can’t be both. And if you really had the votes, then why did you need to hold a press conference? You could have just held a vote, you know? 

I will be furloughed if the government shuts down. But I do not want to see one single Democrat vote for this funding package. Their only job right now is to resist Musk and Trump and Vance and Johnson and their evil plan to turn the US into a Russia-style dictatorship and oligarchy. I need my paycheck but I don’t need it more than I need a free country. 

Still, I wish they’d get this over with one way or another. I really can’t concentrate. 

*****

One of the reasons for this post and others like it is to document my life, especially right now. I’m sure my blog will be very useful to future historians researching the lives of middle-aged DMV suburban ladies in the Screaming 20s. Or the Shrieking 20s. I can’t decide which is better. The internet will figure that out. 

But I must admit that the real reason for this post to have gone on for days is that I still - STILL - need to finish my 2024 book post, not to mention my neighborhood association meeting minutes, and this is a way to avoid doing those things. So I’m going to wrap this up now. The book post is next. Who knows, maybe I’ll have plenty of time next week. Maybe I’ll have all the time in the world. 

Fake spring

It's Sunday morning, and I'm in the backseat of my own car. My husband is driving and my mom is riding shotgun because she needs the legroom. She spent the week with me. It was nice to have her even though it's very hard to work and keep up with everything while I'm taking care of her. I'm tired. 

*****

It was almost 60 degrees here yesterday, and it won't get out of the 30s today. Walking outside this morning was a punch in the face. But really, everything is a punch in the face right now. We should all have black eyes and fat lips. 

*****

One night last week (and I mean week before last, even before my mom got here) I was sitting on the couch at 8 pm, struggling to stay awake. It had been a long day but I've never been as tired as I've been since January 20. I've always wondered how dictators grab control so quickly - it's always so quick - and how they hold on for so long. Now I'm beginning to understand that it's more than just fear that keeps people from fighting back. It's exhaustion. The chaos wears people out. 

*****

And I came to that realization almost 2 weeks before the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Vance and President Zelenskyy. We are no longer on the right side of the good vs. evil divide. We are no longer the world's defender of freedom and democracy and human rights. It's been two days and I still don't have my head around this yet. God willing, I never will, because this is not something that I should get used to and eventually come to accept.   

*****

I went to work very early on Monday morning. Now that the feds are back in the office 100 percent of the time, the parking garage, which was never really big enough to accommodate everyone who drives to work here, fills up early. As a contractor, I will actually be teleworking more now because we’re not eligible for parking passes, and my boss is a good person who doesn’t want us to have to deal with public transportation or other cobbled-together transportation schemes. For the foreseeable future, I’ll be in the office on Mondays only. I have mixed feelings about this. It’s nice not to have to rush most mornings, and it’s nice not to worry too much about what I’m wearing, but I really like my job and I really like the energy of the campus and the base, and I didn’t really like 100 percent telework the last time I did it. It feels similar, actually. It feels like I’m hunkering down at home as disaster unfolds outside my front door. Little did I know that 2020 would end up feeling like the gosh-darn good old days. 

*****

I watched the Oscars until about 10 PM on Sunday night, so I missed the big awards. The Oscar telecast gets more boring every year; and in past years, I’ve complained about Hollywood and its “courage” in speaking out on issues that pretty much everyone in the room agrees on. Last night, I’d have appreciated seeing some real courage, but I was sorely disappointed. Other than my new favorite actor Kieran Culkin (I really loved A Real Pain), who acknowledged Jeremy Strong’s performance in The Apprentice in rather a pointed way; and the beautiful Zoe Saldana, who talked about her immigrant grandmother, most people obeyed the Academy’s “don’t talk politics” rule. This would have been the year to disregard that rule and to speak the brave truths that movie people are always willing to speak when they’re pretty much guaranteed no consequences other than a round of applause. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now. I’m about to start work on a beautiful sunny fake spring day in the DMV. I don’t fall for fake spring anymore, and I'm not getting my hopes up even thought the temperature is going to reach about 60 degrees today. That happened last week, too, and then it was freezing on Sunday. Delightful, Maryland weather is - so whimsically quirky. 

I was on the fence about whether or not to subject myself to the President’s address to Congress tonight and then I remembered that I have a neighborhood association meeting and since I have to take notes, I won’t be able to listen in on the speech while I’m on the Zoom call. It’s just as well. Ain’t no good gonna come out of that speech, and I’ll read all about it afterward. 

******

Well, I don’t know why I did that to myself. The neighborhood association meeting wrapped up 30 minutes early (God I love when that happens) and so I was finished in plenty of time to watch the speech, and I did watch it - partly out of a sense of civic responsibility, and partly out of sheer morbid curiosity. What’s he gonna do, I thought? Announce that we’re leaving the UN and NATO? Declare martial law? Appoint Andrew Tate as Secretary of the Department of Protecting Women Whether the Women Like it or Not? Anything is possible, I thought. Anything could happen. 

It was pretty much just the usual Trump lies and bluster, though, with the added excitement of Rep Al Green’s ejection from the chamber (the rest of the Democrats should have marched out with him) and the surprising news that Melania Trump is somehow a patron saint of foster children, and the President’s inadvertent admission that Elon Musk is in fact the head of DOGE right after he declared straight-faced that the era of unelected bureaucrats is over. They’re still going to get away with doing whatever they want to do, of course, but I hope that the Trump lawyers who backed up Trump’s earlier claims that Elon isn’t really in charge of anything - in court, under oath - are charged with perjury. The rest of this spectacle just made me tired - even more tired than I already was. 

Meanwhile, I’m planning to attend my first-ever protest on Saturday. It’s supposed to be sunny that day, with temperatures in the low 50s - perfect weather to recover my energy. Perfect weather to fight the power.