Happenings in the village

*****

Thanks to constant distractions and distractibility (two different things, I assure you), I have been reading Middlemarch for weeks. But unlike other times when it has taken me a long time to finish a book, I’m not in any hurry to get to the end. I’m completely absorbed in the goings on in Middlemarch and Lowick Manor and environs. Mr. Casaubon is dead, good riddance, and I have no idea what Dorothea will do now in her wealthy widowhood. Dr. Lydgate is up to his neck in debt, while his beautiful and spoiled wife Rosamond keeps spending money. Mary and Fred, who have always loved each other, have finally acknowledged this fact to one another, but this is no guarantee that things will turn out happily for them. And Mr. Brooke is standing for Parliament, but he’s not very good on the hustings, and I don’t like his chances. 

*****

My gosh, Rosamond. Mind your own business, girl. Handle your own problems - you have about 99 of them right now, and the codicil on the vile Mr. Casaubon’s will is not one.  

*****

OK, enough of what’s happening in Middlemarch. Let’s discuss what’s happening in Silver Spring. It’s Saturday morning, bright and sunny but cold. The cold isn’t bothering me, though, because I can see the light at the end of the proverbial winter tunnel. I actually mean this literally. I worked until almost 5 yesterday and thanks to a 5:52 sunset time, I still had plenty of time to go for a walk. It’s still going to be cold for a while (until after Memorial Day if the last few years are any predictor) but at least it’s not dark at 4:45 anymore. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I lost at Wordle today, just a day short of tying my all-time consecutive win streak of 103. My win percentage remains at 99% but now I have to start over on the consecutive game streak. Today is day 1. I’ll get it this time. 

*****

I have no idea how things are going to shake out for the widowed Dorothea Brooke Casaubon and her late husband’s distant cousin Will Ladislaw. If I were to make a prediction, I’d guess that Mary Garth and Fred Vincy are heading toward a happy ending, but Dorothea and Will will go their separate ways, each of them never knowing for sure if the other feels the same way about them. They are both highly principled - rigidly so - and brilliant but impetuous people who seem brave and fearless in most situations, but neither of them can bring themselves to declare their feelings until they’re sure that the other person feels the same. Someone has to say something first. Someone has to take the risk. I hope that one of them will speak up before it’s too late but I’m not optimistic. I think there’s only going to be one really happy love story at the end of this thing. 

*****

It’s Tuesday afternoon now, and I’m just finishing work for the day. I had planned on a walk but it’s gloomy and damp right now, and it’s going to rain any minute. That’s all true of course but what’s also true is that I’d rather read than walk right now. Middlemarch awaits, and now I’m really slowing it down. According to my Kindle “location in book” indicator, I’m about 85 percent finished and I’m already sad about having to leave it behind. I do have some other excellent reading lined up (including two books that I just bought right this minute because writing this paragraph reminded me that I wanted those books - this post just cost me $25) but no matter how good they might be, they won’t be as good as Middlemarch. 

*****

It was Zadie Smith who inspired me to read Middlemarch but it was Martin Amis who said that it was the best English language novel ever published. George Eliot was very obviously influenced by Jane Austen - her sharp but kind, witty but profound observations of human flaws and failings (and virtues and brilliance) were very Austen-like. But Middlemarch is modern in a way that no Austen novel really is. Her imagined world of competitive materialism, politics and punditry, careerism and ambition was very much of the 20th century (George Eliot died in 1880) and her analysis of the complex inner lives of her characters, especially the women but the men too, was way ahead of Freud and Jung and the rest of the early modern psychologists. George Eliot saw the future. 

LIke most 19th century novels, Middlemarch proceeds at its own pace and that pace is slow. But that doesn’t mean that things don’t happen. Even when I read just a page or two, something is going on on that page that is indispensable to the story, even if the thing that’s going on is happening exclusively inside a character’s head. Especially then, really. No words are wasted. Nothing is extraneous. And I know that I’m missing or forgetting details from the early chapters, but that just means that I’ll discover new things the next time. I can see myself re-reading Middlemarch, a little bit at a time and over and over again, for the rest of my reading life. Martin Amis was right. It’s just that good. 

Champions

I’m almost finished writing my 2023 book list. Any day now! I might even publish it tomorrow. Maybe Wednesday. I’m this close. 

It’s Monday, the day after the Super Bowl. Taylor Swift, the inevitable Chiefs’ win, so-so commercials, and Usher on roller skates. I watched with friends, so the company was the best thing. But now we’re gearing up for the really important sporting event. This weekend, Marymount Swimming will try to defend its men’s and women’s titles at the NCAA Division III Atlantic East Conference Championship. A four-day college swimming extravaganza is about 100 times more fun than a six-hour football game. We can’t wait. 

*****

The psych sheet came out yesterday, and it’s just as we expected - our son is expected to do well, but he’s not seeded first in anything. This is a good thing - top seed in a championship meet is a lot of pressure. 

*****

And I finally finished my 2023 book list, a few days earlier than last year. It’s a nice feeling - freeing. Freedom from what, I don’t know, because no one pays me to write incompetent book reviews of books published years ago, and no one is banging on my door demanding my next review, and any deadline associated with this thing (the deadline was President’s Day FYI) is completely self-imposed, but self-imposed deadlines are the most stringent, are they not? I am my own harshest taskmaster. I should quit before I fire myself. 

With the books out of the way, all I need to do now is overpack for a three-night road trip, and then arrive at my hotel and realize that I brought all the wrong things. Well, that is what I usually do but I’m not doing it this time. I know exactly what we’ll be doing all day each day, and I know exactly what clothes to bring. It’ll be fine. It’s a swim meet, for crying out loud. 

*****

It’s Thursday morning now. I’m working for part of the day today, and then we’ll get on the road for the not-too-long but not-too-short drive to St. Mary’s City. It’s a little colder than I’d like but it’s clear and bright and a perfect day for a road trip. Our original plan was to travel on Friday, skipping the Thursday night and Friday morning sessions. Thursday night, we assumed, would be distance events, and the morning sessions are all prelims. But it turns out that Thursday night is a relay session and we are all about relays. So I’m taking a vacation day on Friday and we’re making this a three-night trip. I’m packed now. Yes, I’m packing a bunch of stuff that I probably won’t need but I don’t care. I’d rather have it and not need it than the reverse, and since this is a road trip and I don’t need to worry about airline luggage rules, I’m going to just bring everything and not stress about it. I wish I could travel without overpacking but packing light is just a habit, not a virtue. And now I can change my clothes if I want to. 

*****

It's 9:30 on Friday morning and ordinarily, I would be at my desk at home, writing a newsletter or making slides for a presentation or something. But it's day 2 of the AEC championship, so I'm in the stands at the St. Mary's College of Maryland pool, waiting for warm-ups to end, and the morning prelim session to begin. The only thing better than a swim meet is a multi day swim meet, and the only thing better than a multi day swim meet is a multi day swim meet whose morning prelim sessions begin at 10. 

Last night's relay session was a blast. The boys medley took second place in a close and exciting race and even though they didn't win, they held their second place seeding and broke the team record. Not bad for two sophomores and two freshmen. If they stick together they will be hard to beat next year. 

And it was kind of a perfect day. A beautiful drive, fast swimming and close finishes, a bomb playlist, a dinner that I didn't have to cook and then an evening of chill in a basic but clean hotel room. It was a good time. It was a whole vibe. 

*****

It's 7:30 on Saturday morning, my favorite time when I'm staying in a hotel. My husband is still asleep and I'm sitting with wet hair and hotel room coffee enjoying the quiet in the room and the traffic noise outside. Soon enough it'll be time to get in gear but there's no rush. The morning prelim session doesn't start until 10. 

The boys had a very good day yesterday. They didn't win every event or even close but what they did do was to swim fast enough in the prelims that the finals were stacked with Saints and when you finish in 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the finals, the points add up. They're ahead by a solid margin today but it's not over. There's still two whole days of competition. 

We went to Solomon's Island yesterday during the break between the prelims and finals. I had never been there even though it's a noted Maryland point of interest. That is always the way, isn't it? You miss all the interesting places that are right in your own backyard. 

The weather was just right for an outdoor afternoon. Clear and bright, February chilly but not cold, breezy but not windy - just right. We walked along the waterfront and looked at boats and had lunch in a dockside seafood restaurant and visited a local shop owned by an elderly couple who noticed my husband's Marymount swimming hoodie and told us all about their own son, now in his 50s, who was also a high school and college swimmer. That's Maryland. Any room containing Maryland parents will include at least one person who will tell you all about their child's swimming career. These are my people.

It was supposed to snow overnight, and I think it did at home, but Southern Maryland just got some rain. The morning started cloudy and gray and now the clouds are blowing away, yielding to the sunshine. We just pulled into the parking lot at MPOARC. It's time to go. It's time for another great day of swimming. 

*****

It's Sunday morning now, the fourth and final day of AEC Championships, and I'm a little sad to see it end. It's been the most fun weekend. My son finished third in the 100 Breaststroke final last night, and then his 400 medley relay swam a conference record time, but St. Mary's 400 medley was a little faster. And that's fine because they still came away with silver medals and a program record for the event. Two silvers and a bronze in his first conference championship is not too shabby. He has one more race today. More importantly, the Marymount boys are in a very good position this morning, points wise. That's all I'll say about that. 

The campus of St Mary's College of Maryland is really beautiful. Most of the buildings are red brick with slate roofs, connected by diagonal brick walkways across grassy quadrangles, some with pergolas over the entrances and some covered with new ivy. The campus is situated on the Chesapeake Bay, surrounded by pine forests, and studded with tiny nooks of natural beauty. The architecture is reminiscent of classic American Ivy League college campuses but more modern and welcoming and democratic. There's no mystique, no air of privilege or exclusion. It's just a beautiful place. 

But it's cold here, too. We're staying in Lexington Park, ten minutes away, and it's always so much colder here because of the wind from the bay. It's relentless, that wind. 

*****

A college championship swim meet lasts for four or five days and if you’re lucky enough to be able to attend for the entire meet, then you’re going to make some new friends. It’s like that one wedding where you became instant friends with everyone, and maybe you don’t see them again or keep in touch with them regularly, but you think of them fondly. The connection remains. We have been making friends with Marymount parents throughout the year because we are within two hours’ driving distance of most of the meet venues. But we have swimmers from Florida, North and South Carolina, Minnesota, New York, Washington State - all over. And so some of the parents at Conferences were seeing their first Marymount meet of the season, and meeting other parents for the first time. We ran into some of them in our hotel, easily identifiable in the coffee line with their bright blue Marymount shirts and hoodies. Others we met in the natatorium, or in local restaurants for lunch or dinner. We also made friends with rival team family members, including a lovely Cabrini grandmother whose senior granddaughter was swimming in her last-ever meet. She told us that she was rooting for Marymount, except in her granddaughter’s events, since Cabrini had no chance to win the meet. 

*****

Disappointment is part and parcel of every athlete’s life, and my son had a hard reminder of that fact thanks to a rough prelim in the 200 breaststroke. He swam a great time, but two others who were seeded to finish behind him swam their best ever times, leaving him in fifth place rather than third. He was crushed. But disappointment is a set-up for a comeback and he came back strong in the final. All five of the top qualifiers swam best-ever times again, and my son dropped enough from his previous personal best to finish back in the top three. His final medal count was two silvers and two bronzes. 

And that was great, but it wasn't the best thing. The best thing is that both the boys and the girls finished first to win the entire meet, and we got to watch the celebration, 40 happy swimmers crowding onto the podium, posing with their medals and their brand-new t-shirts and hats. The celebration almost went sideways when one of the boys who ambushed the head coach with a Gatorade cooler full of ice water slipped on the ice and banged his head on the way down, but he’s fine, thankfully. Soaked from the ice water bath, the head coach jumped into the pool, followed by the assistant coaches, and followed by the rest of the team. We parents stayed on the deck, taking photos and hugging and saying our goodbyes. 

*****

Last year, the Rockville High School boys’ swim team won the Maryland Public Secondary School Class 3A state championship. Four of the eight boys who represented Rockville in the state meet were seniors, and all four seniors went on to swim in college. Three of the four colleges (Marymount, Catholic University, and Stevens Institute) won their conference championships last week, and the fourth (Indiana, the only D1 of the four) will swim in the Big Ten conference championship next week. They could win, making it four for four. I’m strangely invested in this now, and I’m very much hoping that at least some of the meet will be broadcast on TV in between basketball games. I don’t care about March Madness but I’m an Indiana fan  for now, until after the Big Ten men’s swimming championship is over. Swim fast, Hoosiers. Swim fast. 

Bibliography 2023

I bought my first Kindle in 2016. I’d had a Barnes and Noble Nook and loved having an e-reader but more and more I found that books that I wanted were available only on Kindle so I finally caved to Amazon. Almost every book I’ve read since 2016 has been in Kindle format, including almost every book on this list except Mrs. Obama’s (hardback, a Christmas present from my son). 

Say what you want about Amazon, but Kindle e-readers are awesome - compact and light, easy to use, dependable, and nice to hold and carry. I’ve had at least three phones since 2016, and I had to replace a 3-year-old Chromebook last year, but the Kindle kept on keeping on, until just a few months ago. It wasn’t charging consistently, it didn’t hold a charge, and sometimes I had a hard time connecting to wi-fi networks away from home. So when my husband asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for the newest Kindle and asked him to pay the extra $20 for the ad-free version. The new Kindle was wrapped up under the tree on Christmas morning, and it’s so pretty - a light green color that looks beautiful with the case, even lighter and quicker than the old one, and it charges on a USB-C cable so I can use the same charger for all of my devices. And it has all of the advantages of the old one, too. It fits in almost every handbag I own, so I can read wherever I am. This year, I read wherever I was - in between baseball game innings, waiting for swim meets to begin, in the dentist’s office, on the beach, in planes, trains, and automobiles. Here are all (most) of the books I read in 2023. 

The Light We Carry - Michelle Obama. 

Child 44 and The Secret Speech - Tom Rob Smith. I read these early last year and was thinking about them and all of my other reading about the horrors of Soviet totalitarianism under Stalin when I heard the news that Alexei Navalny is imprisoned in a penal colony inside the Arctic Circle. I hope he survives. I hope he outlives Putin. 

On Beauty, Intimations, and Changing My Mind - Zadie Smith. Zadie Smith is my 2023 Author of the Year. I know she's excited about this. 

The Country Girls (trilogy) - Edna O’Brien. This was the beginning and end of my foray into the literary work of Edna O'Brien. 

An Unsuitable Attachment, Some Tame Gazelle, A Glass of Blessings, and Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym. I can’t get enough of Barbara Pym, but I’ve read almost all of her work and sadly, there won’t be any more. Zadie Smith was my Author of the Year, but Barbara Pym earns Honorable Mention. 

Snobbery, The American Version - Joseph Epstein. Since 2020 or so, my social media feeds have been full of influencers urging women to jettison any and all unpleasant tasks and responsibilities and interactions. I have very mixed feelings about this trend. On the one hand, it's certainly true that most of us are doing things that we don't really need to do, and that don't really bring value to anyone. If ironing or canning preserves or maintaining your roots makes you miserable, don't do those things. They're unnecessary. Superfluous. On the other hand, there are many necessary and important things that we have to do, whether we want to or not. Doing things you don't want to do is part of adulthood. But listening to music you don't like or finishing a book you hate are not necessary or important things and you should feel free to turn off the radio or close the book rather than waste one more moment of your mild, precious life (see what I did there), and you shouldn't feel bad about this. Snobbery was one of the few (and the only one in 2023) books that I have started and deliberately didn’t finish, and I have absolutely no regrets about that decision. 

Wrinkles - Charles Simmons. Absolutely bananas. I have no recollection of how this ended up in my library, nor any recollection of plot details. I read it mostly at night, as I was falling asleep, which added to the story's bizarre and dreamlike quality. And it was not good. I did not enjoy it. And that is all I have to say about this ridiculous book. 

Red Notice and Freezing Order - Bill Browder. I still worry that the Russians will get Bill Browder one way or another. If Trump ends up in the White House again, he'll probably wrap the poor man up and ship him to Moscow as a gift to Putin. Maybe Canada will offer asylum.  

Here are three extremely dissimilar books that I happened to read one after the other, and wrote about in one post, right here. 

• Two Souls Indivisible - James Hirsch
• Against Memoir - Michelle Tea
• American Prometheus - Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. Definitely a job for two authors. 

Enough - Cassidy Hutchinson. I was thinking about what I wrote about this book this morning, as I watched news coverage of Nikki Haley's outraged reaction to Donald Trump's "where's her husband" taunts at one of his stupid Klan rallies. Mr. Haley is of course a National Guardsman who is currently deployed and although Ms. Haley's outrage is justified, I must also point out to her (because I'm sure she's reading this) that he's the same Donald Trump now that he's always been, just with fewer marbles and more loose screws, and he's spewing the same kind of garbage and vitriol as ever, and you supported him then, and what's the difference now? Don't pretend that you know who he is now but you didn't know who he was then. You're too smart for that. 

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. I managed, as a white woman who studied English at an East Coast university in the 1980s AND who attended high school at an all-girls institution, to avoid The Bell Jar. It was never assigned in a class, and I never thought of reading it on my own. I probably thought, at some point, that I should try to read The Bell Jar one day; I should put that book on my list. The thing is that I’m 58 now, and it’s definitely time to recognize that things I haven’t done, places I haven’t gone, books I haven’t read may well remain undone, unvisited, unread. I don’t have forever. I won’t get around to everything. So I read The Bell Jar, and have very little to say about it except that it’s probably not ideal reading for a person already in the throes of a mental health crisis, and except that even a person who is legitimately mentally ill can also be a jerk. Those things can coexist, and they do in the person of Esther Greenwood, The Bell Jar’s protagonist, who is spoiled and petulant and often pointlessly cruel. It’s hard to root for her but oddly, you do root for her. Annoying protagonist aside, I’m still glad I read the book (although I definitely won’t read it again - once was enough). I’m fascinated with these relics of mid 20th century exceptionalist postwar America, the time in which I was born and raised and that I thought was as solid and immovable as the ground beneath my feet and that I now know was fleeting and temporary. And it is filled with carelessly beautiful writing. And it’s a classic, I suppose, and so there’s one more of them that I can cross off my list. 

Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe. I read this in 2019, but I read it again this year. I was in Cleveland and had just finished reading a book, but I couldn’t download a new book because my old Kindle wouldn’t connect to any non-home Wi-Fi network. I never mind re-reading a book that I love, and I had also just returned from Belfast, so it was the perfect time to read this, with the memory of the Falls Road and the Divis Tower fresh in my mind. 

Howards’ End - E.M. Forster. This really counts as another Zadie Smith book because I wouldn’t have thought to read it had Zadie Smith not urged me to do so. Last year, when I read Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty, I learned (maybe from the introduction or maybe from a review, I don’t remember) that On Beauty is a modern-day retelling of Howards’ End. Zadie Smith is out here writing fan fiction, and I’m all for it.  But I read Howards End months after I finished On Beauty, and so had forgotten completely that it was it was based on Howards End and so when I reached the part when Mrs. Wilcox invites Margaret Shlegel to visit, I had a moment of literary deja vu, and then I remembered why that scene seemed so familiar. Thanks to Zadie’s E.M. Forster essay in Changing My Mind, I’ll be reading a lot more E.M. Forster next year. I'm also smack in the middle of Middlemarch, which is great, because of course it is, because Zadie Smith says so. Zadie Smith has convinced me to read Philip Roth, E.M. Forster, George Eliot, and who knows who else? When it comes to books, I do whatever Nora Ephron and Zadie Smith tell me to do. Neither Nora nor Zadie have ever steered me wrong when it comes to literary recommendations.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing - Matthew Perry. 

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen - Mary McGrory 

Ex-Wife - Ursula Parrott. Ex-Wife was a bestseller in 1929 and then it disappeared into literary obscurity. Then the internet discovered it and all of a sudden, my newsfeeds were filled with think pieces about this book and its modern-day relevance. I can imagine how shocking it might have been to an early 20th century audience (lots of adultery and domestic abuse). And I can also see why it was a bestseller. It’s a page-turner, and it depicts a life of freedom and glamour and independence - and yes, loneliness and grief and despair - that would have been unfamiliar to most women of that time. I wouldn’t call it a great novel but it’s certainly a worthwhile read especially if you’re interested in early 20th century New York (and who isn’t). I think I’d be interested in reading a biography of Ursula Parrott. Maybe I’ll do that this year. Check back with me around February 2025. 

Oath and Honor - Liz Cheney. As with Cassidy Hutchinson’s book, I pre-ordered this and read it the moment it showed up in my library. And as when I read Cassidy Hutchinson’s book, I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know (I followed the J6 hearings pretty closely) but I wanted to read a personal perspective from someone who lived the investigation and the hearings day in and day out. No matter what you think of Liz Cheney’s politics (I disagree with her about almost everything), she’s an American hero, and I hope she remains in public life in some capacity.

Every Day is a Gift - Senator Tammy Duckworth. I read this for work - my boss was introducing Senator Duckworth at an event, and I was drafting remarks for him. I read her book so that I’d know something about her other than that she is a Democratic senator from Illinois. I ended up reading this in about a day, during my early summer bout with COVID. Senator Duckworth has an amazing and inspiring story, and she tells it very well. I recommended the book to a very conservative friend who likes military biographies and memoirs, and she was impressed. Tammy Duckworth is a uniquely American figure, the child of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother; born in Thailand and raised there and in Malaysia and Singapore and Hawaii. She spent her early childhood in comfort and security; and then when her father lost his highly paid job as a property manager, the family fell abruptly into poverty. An excellent student and athlete, the young Tammy joined the Army for the secure pay, benefits, and tuition assistance; and then she found that she was born to be a soldier. She would likely have remained in the Army, ascending to high rank, had she not lost her legs in the attack on her helicopter in Iraq in 2004. 

I didn’t set out to read a series of  of heroic American women's memoirs, but I did set out to read a lot of Zadie Smith and Barbara Pym. Everything else on this list is random, just a bunch of books that found their way into my Kindle queue. There’s a nice serendipity to just reading what’s available and in front of you. It’s like listening to old-fashioned radio. You never know when you’ll hear that one song that you’ll want to sing along to forever. 

*****

A few days ago I saw a social media post that said something about how it doesn’t matter if you read a paragraph, a page, or a book every day - as long as you’re reading something, you can call yourself a reader. By the way, this also applies to writing. Sometimes I write three sentences and sometimes I write two or three pages in one sitting, but I write every single day and that makes me a writer. Anyway, even though I don’t need validation from social media strangers (or at least that’s what I tell myself), this message was strangely comforting - some days, I’m so distracted (by scrolling inspirational social media content, for example) or so busy that I only read a few pages, and I wonder if I’ll get through more than a handful of books this year. A handful of books would be fine if they’re the right books. I think I read somewhere around 30 books last year - yes, I could just count but I’m pretty sure that I read at least one or two that I forgot to write down. I just finished my fourth book of 2024 (it was a long one) so I’m not quite on the 30 per year pace for this year but who cares. That’s just fewer books for which I have to write meandering and incoherent reviews for next year’s book post. See you in 2025. 

Carrying light

We are about to begin the second week of February. This is when I always decide that it’s time to finish my book list for the prior year, but I still have to finish writing about a few books. I started writing about Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry early last year, just as I finished it, and then I started writing about other things and I forgot all about it. 

Note: My whole life could be accurately summed up in sentences that go exactly like that last one: “I started doing (ABC) and then I started doing (XYZ) and I forgot all about (ABC).” 

****

Last year (meaning 2022), we went to Florida for a few days right after Christmas. We went for just four nights, and flew home on New Year’s Day 2023. This was not a trip planned by me and I wasn’t on board with the idea at first because first of all, Florida; and secondly, I don’t really love traveling during the holidays other than a quick overnight to Philadelphia.  

Not only was I not on board with the trip, I actually really dreaded it. It was Florida during Christmas week, so I expected a worst-case scenario of flight cancellations and missed connections and being stranded in an airport or forced to rent a car and drive home from somewhere far below the Mason-Dixon line. I also really like being at home during the Christmas holidays, and I didn’t want to give that up. But my husband convinced us that we should get away and that we’d have a good time, and so we drove home from an overnight visit to Philadelphia, packed our bags, and the next morning, a friend drove us to Glenmont Metro, where we got on a train to Reagan National Airport. 

It was on the Metro ride that I started to feel a little bit better about the trip. For once in my life, I hadn’t overpacked (taking Metro to the airport is a very effective overpacking deterrent) and it had been terribly cold for a few days, so I was happy about getting out of the cold, if nothing else. The flight took off on time and landed on time, and we had no trouble summoning an Uber. And then we walked out of the terminal at Tampa airport and stepped into the Florida sunshine, and I was so happy to be there; happy with my whole body. Traffic from the airport to our hotel was dreadful (Tampa is no joke) but I didn’t care because I had never been there before and it was nice to see new sights. 

The next morning, far from home and work and school with no household chores or other responsibilities, we left the hotel and just walked around Clearwater Beach, getting the lay of the land, visiting shops and strolling on the beach and stopping wherever we liked to see a sight or to have a drink and a snack or to buy a silly souvenir. We put our feet in the chilly Gulf of Mexico, collected shells, and just sat around in the sun. When we returned to our hotel, we swam in the pool and I sat on a lounge chair wrapped up in towels and a hoodie, and I read like there was no tomorrow. That was a good vacation. 

The last book that I read during the trip was Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry, and it appears on my 2023 list because I finished it on New Year’s Day on the plane ride home.  It was my 2022 - 2023 crossover book, and the only book that I read last year that was on actual pages between actual covers (ir was a Christmas present from my son). 

I hardly remember a thing about the book itself, except for some funny stories about Michelle Obama’s older brother. It was vacation reading and I experience vacation books differently from books that I read during odd moments of everyday life. Vacation reading has a dreamlike quality - vacations are the only time when I read like I used to read when I was young, as though the book and I are the only things that existed. Thinking back on it now, the whole trip had a dreamlike quality; a few sun-drenched days when I really truly didn’t think about anything that I needed to do. I just swam and walked and slept and ate and read in Florida’s winter warmth and sunshine. A few days in the sunshine can get you through the darkest time of year. It’s like a light you can carry through the winter.  

Fast Car

 “Who the heck is that?” 

“Get the hell out of here. You know who that is.” 

“Hand to God I have no idea.”

That was my husband and me; him learning that the elderly hippie with the cane is Joni Mitchell and me learning that my husband managed to reach his mid 50s having never heard of Joni Mitchell. He wasn’t kidding. My husband is Korean and his parents only ever listened to classical music at home, and so he has no clue about any American music recorded before 1980 or so. I sang a little bit of “Big Yellow Taxi” for him, and now he knows that Counting Crows didn’t invent that song. 

*****

Yes, I watched the Grammys last night. I never watch the Grammys but apparently, I have become a Swifty; and I had to see Taylor perform. I didn’t see her perform (and I haven’t read recaps so I don’t know if she did) but I did see her accept one of her Grammys. And as much as I love Taylor now, she was not the highlight of the show. She wasn’t even close. 

“Fast Car” has been one of my favorite songs from the moment I first heard it in 1988. It stopped me in my tracks - it was so different from anything else on the radio in that Madonna and Michael Jackson dominated era. I never get tired of hearing “Fast Car.” That song never gets old. 

I’m not a country music fan and by that I mean that I actively dislike most non-Johnny Cash non-Patsy Cline country music. Don’t @ me. And so no one was more surprised than me when I heard Luke Combs’ cover of “Fast Car” and liked it immediately. I liked the cover for itself and I loved Luke Combs because he so obviously loves Tracy Chapman and he was so happy to have revived her song for a new generation of listeners. 

It’s so rare that you get to see a perfect performance - filled with love and joy but also musically flawless, but that is what Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs did last night. Combs was obviously in awe that he was on the Grammy stage, singing with Tracy Chapman, who beamed at him throughout like a proud mother. Everything is trash right now; only it isn’t, not when you get to see Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs sing “Fast Car.” 100/10. No notes. 

Zadie Smith, Author of the Year

I’m still working on my 2023 book list. Any day now. Meanwhile, I am delighted to announce that Zadie Smith is my Author of the Year for 2023. It was between Ms. Smith and my beloved Barbara Pym but Zadie Smith wins because she managed to convince me that I needed to read Philip Roth (an author I had assiduously avoided until recently) and EM Forster, and that I need to revisit Kafka and David Foster Wallace. In fact, I’m smack in the middle of Middlemarch right now because of Zadie Smith; and once again, she didn’t steer me wrong. Let’s not get started on how I managed to obtain a degree in English without ever having read Middlemarch. 

And where the heck are Dorothea Brooke and Mr. Casaubon? The first few chapters were all about Dorothea, and then she up and married Mr. Casaubon, and I haven’t heard another thing about her. That marriage isn’t going to work out, I’m afraid. Do not @ me with your spoilers. 

But I digress.  

*****

So not only is Zadie Smith wonderful to read all on her own, she has also furnished me with at least another year’s worth of reading material (not to mention some excellent TV and movie recommendations). Barbara Pym, on the other hand, has only managed to convince me to read more Barbara Pym, a thing that will soon (sadly) be no longer possible, as Ms. Pym is deceased. I’m hoping that there are a few intrepid literary scholars out there busily searching for secret Barbara Pym manuscripts. 

I read three Zadie Smith books in 2023: the novel On Beauty, and the essay collections Intimations and Changing My Mind. I floated through the early essays in Changing My Mind, just skimming and landing on an idea or an image here or there, but not really processing anything. Smith punches far above my intellectual weight when it comes to philosophy and literary criticism, and I have to read carefully to really understand what she’s saying about critical theory. Maybe I’ll re-read those essays because even on that topic, one of my least favorite, she makes me reconsider ideas that I once thought were wrong or silly. 

But on the subject of movies and comedy and her relationship with her father, she has me from the first word, and she doesn’t let go. A great essayist is both a great teacher and great company, and Zadie Smith is absolutely a great essayist. Her mind ranges over everything from writing and literature and philosophy and history to the joys of bad movies and TV, and every time I read her, I learn something or I discover a new writer or artist or musician, or something that didn’t seem possible before all of a sudden seems possible. She changes my mind. 

*****

Back in the village of Middlemarch, I'm wondering what the newly arrived Mr. Lydgate is going to do now that Dorothea is off the market, marriage-wise. He's going to need a wife - there's no way that the village is going to allow an eligible young doctor to remain single; and there are any number of possibilities. He could fall in love with the silly but beautiful Rosamond Vincy; or he could take notice of the plain but brilliant Mary Garth, for whom he would have competition in the form of Rosamond's layabout brother Fred. He could marry Celia, the other Brooke sister, just as beautiful but less complicated than Dorothea. Or Mr. Casaubon could die, leaving Dorothea a widow and thus available. 

No, DO NOT tell me. 

*****

Of course, Zadie Smith loves David Foster Wallace, another of my favorite deceased authors, God rest his soul. Commenting on Foster, she reminds us that reading is sometimes hard; that sometimes, we have to put some effort and thought and imagination into interpreting the ideas on the page, rather than just passively allowing our eyes to glide over the words. Read it again, and it’ll be a little clearer. Read it some more, and it will reveal new meanings. Keep trying, keep digging, and you might find a treasure that you would have missed by just skimming. She was writing about Brief Interviews with Hideous Men but she could have been writing directly to me, urging me to re-read her own essays. Maybe I’ll do that. 

I did start re-reading DFW, beginning with The Broom of the System, probably his most accessible fiction and one of my favorite books of all time. I even posted about it, but will not link it here because I read it in January and so it’s on the 2024 reading list. There are rules. Yes, they are completely arbitrary rules that I made up out of nothing but that doesn’t mean that I won’t enforce them. Meanwhile, congratulations to Zadie Smith, (parenthetical) Author of the Year. This title comes with zero dollars in prize money and confers absolutely no prestige or privilege upon its holder, but Ms. Smith does hold bragging rights until 2025. 

Bay Bridge

“Such a feat of engineering.” That's me to my husband, commenting on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, both because that's a true statement and because I needed to say something to distract myself from the panic that rose as the bridge span peaked several hundred feet high over the cold water of the Chesapeake Bay. It's a very long bridge; very long and very high. 

And beautiful too. It's an astonishingly beautiful day, sunny and nearly 70 degrees less than a week after we saw high temperatures in the 20s. Maryland weather, man. I'll see your crazy ass in hell. 

As the warm air hit the cold water it created a shroud of mist that almost completely hid a tanker steaming through the bay, and only the tops of the steel girder towers were visible from Sandy Point as we approached the bridge. It's one of the loveliest places in Maryland. 

We're on our way to Salisbury for Marymount’s last regular season meet of the season. Saints vs. Seagulls at 3, and I don't like our chances. Salisbury is hot right now, but we don't care.  Win or lose, we're in those stands. 

*****

It's Saturday now, 10:30 AM, and we're driving through Delaware, a Google Maps detour that adds at least an hour to the drive. Roadwork, apparently. We won't cross the Bay Bridge today. 

Marymount lost to Salisbury, by a pretty wide margin, but it was still a good, fast, exciting meet with lots of great swims, including a pool record for one of our girls. The boys medley relay also finished with a time fast enough to beat the previous pool record in the event but the Salisbury A relay finished first with an even faster time. Most of the races were close, and although it can't be denied that Salisbury went in with a considerable advantage because they practice in a meter pool every day, it also can't be denied that they are just a really good team. That was the last regular season meet, and the boys finished 7-2 overall, and 7-0 in conference meets. On to the championship, 3 weeks from now. 

It's a foggy and gray drive across the Delmarva peninsula. The sun made an early appearance and for a few minutes it looked as though it would burn the fog away and leave us with a clear day but the sun is gone now and we're driving through the fog, with just a few feet of road visible before us. It's rather nice. Atmospheric. 

*****

The sun did come out, just a few minutes after I wrote this. And then we turned on a news radio station and learned that Google Maps detoured us not because of roadwork but because of a horrendous accident on the Bay Bridge, a 43-car pile up that sent dozens of people to the hospital and shut down the westbound span of the bridge for most of the day. If we'd left 30 minutes earlier, we'd have been on the bridge just as the accident happened. Thank God no one was killed, but I bet there are a bunch of people who are never going to cross that bridge again. It took almost four hours to get home via the Delaware detour around the Chesapeake Bay. 

It's Sunday now and I just left a watch party for the Ravens-Chiefs game. It seems that a lot of men have a lot of feelings about Taylor Swift “distracting” Travis Kelce, a highly paid professional who should be able to do his job no matter who is watching in the stands. Meanwhile, the stupid Chiefs are going to the stupid Super Bowl again, so I guess they learned to play through the distraction. Both the Chiefs and the NFL should be writing thank you notes to Taylor Swift, who made football interesting to many people who’d never have watched otherwise. Football needs Taylor a lot more than Taylor needs football. 

I don’t need football at all. I do need Division 3 college swimming, but I’ll have to live without it for a few weeks - no competition for the next few weekends, until the conference championship, a 3-day D3 swim-palooza. I’m looking forward to it, but it will be nice to have a few free Saturdays in the interim. We’ll also travel overnight for this one but we’ll stay on the western side of the bay. One foggy bridge crossing was enough for a while. 

Enough

I followed Cassidy Hutchinson’s January 6 Committee testimony very closely, and I believed every word she said, but I still felt compelled to buy and read Enough the moment it was published. They got me with the promise of “brand-new revelations,”, and the book does offer quite a few previously unknown-to-me details about life in the Trump White House, including the allegation  that Rudy Giuliani groped Ms. Hutchinson (an allegation that I believe to be 100 percent truthful). 

However, I was more interested in the behind-the-scenes story of how Cassidy Hutchinson came to testify before the J6 Committee, and what the experience was like. She writes about it in vivid and moving detail; everything from the desperate search for an attorney who would represent her either pro bono or at a reduced fee, to her first “I don’t recall” sessions with the Committee and her decision to ask for a second chance to tell the whole truth, to the security arrangements, including a move from Washington DC to Atlanta. 

Cassidy Hutchinson grew up very working class, with a very difficult and borderline-abusive father. With very little help from her family, she got through college and found her way to Capitol Hill and then the White House, fulfilling her childhood dream of living in Washington DC and becoming part of the political power structure. Not only do I believe that she told the truth about January 6, I also believe that she genuinely believed that she could make a difference within the Trump Administration. She’s only 27 now. She was barely past adolescence when she began working on Capitol Hill and not much older when she joined the White House. She is different from the cynical enablers - the Chris Christies and Mitch McConnells and Mike Pences and Nikki Haleys - who knew from DAY ONE who this man was, and who chose to support him anyway, because he was the surest conduit to power for them. And now that there’s no reasonable way for them to ignore what he is, they pretend that they didn’t know. But they knew. They all knew. I’ll never forgive the Republican party. 

And this is why I don’t write book reviews. I can’t stay on topic for five seconds because the topic is supposed to be this book, and not the fact that Donald Trump was the worst President in U.S. history, and that he was and is a vile and contemptible person. Enough was very good, and I recommend it, as both an expose of the Trump Administration, and a personal story of a bright young person forced to choose between her ideals and her ambition. 

Punctuation

I'm trying to finish all of my book notes from 2023. We're exactly three weeks into 2024, and I'm already writing about books that I am reading this year, even though I haven't finished with last year yet. So typical. So me. 

Last September, I read Mary McGrory's Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. If you like literary memoirs, especially of the small town girl in NYC variety (and why would you not), then the first few chapters of this are great, almost reminiscent of Helene Hanff, and this is very very high praise. In the early chapters, McGrory writes about her early life in Ohio (where she was the first woman to drive a milk delivery truck, which is no easy job anywhere, especially Ohio in winter) and her move to New York City, where she joined the New Yorker as a copy editor, a job she would hold for decades.  I don't know if it's possible now for a young person from a working-class background to show up in Manhattan, find a poorly paid literary job, and then build a life full of books and friends and adventure and fun. America has gotten better than it was when I was young, in so many ways, but some things have changed for the worse. Some things have been lost and won't be found again. 

Anyway, the rest of the book is fine, too - it just turns out that I don’t care as much as I thought I did about correct usage of the serial comma (I agree, though, that we in the United States should refer to it as the serial comma and not the Oxford comma) or the distinction between the relative pronouns which and that, or even appropriate case vis a vis “between you and me” (correct) vs. “between you and I” (incorrect). Or that is to say, I do care, but I don’t care enough to do anything other than to always use the serial comma and enforce its use when I’m in charge of style decisions, always use a comma before which when the word begins a non-restrictive clause, and always know the difference between the subject and the object. I’m no longer inclined to correct other people’s grammar and usage unless I’m asked to do so professionally (this actually happens fairly often). 

McGrory, though, does not come across as dictatorial or pedantic when she makes her case for correct use and style. And her stories - about style debates at the New Yorker (whose house style is odd to say the least) and her relationships with quirky editorial staff and her encounters with famous writers - are entertaining and good-humored. She writes with love and affection but also honesty about New York in the 1970s as it was for a young person pursuing a literary career and a literary life. I’d have enjoyed more of that and more of the stories of the inner workings of the New Yorker, and maybe less of the arguments in favor of the serial comma and against incorrect use of “me” in a phrase that calls for a subjective pronoun, but maybe that’s because I am already on board with these positions, as I suspect anyone would be who chose to read the work of a self-professed comma queen. We’re the choir, is what I am saying. There’s no need to preach to us. Technically, “between you and I” is not grammatically correct but it’s not unclear and it doesn’t bother me when other people say it. Age has mellowed me, I suppose. 

Journalism

It’s Friday, a WFH day, and I’m not particularly productive right now. I have several big projects to tackle and I have to panic for a bit, and beat down my adult ADD, before I can really make progress. I wish I wasn’t like this but I am. It’s a holiday weekend, so I plan to get some things done to clear some space in my head. If you’re going to declutter, then you might as well start with the messiest place. My house is pretty neat; and now that Christmas is over, it’s pretty free of clutter, too. My brain, however, is like an episode of “Hoarders.” I might not be able to dig out on my own. 

*****

One of the things I hope to do this weekend - maybe not finish but at least work on - is my 2023 book list. I’ve already written about a book that I read in 2024, so I’m out of order as usual, but I am making progress on finishing the 2023 list and maybe I’ll publish it in January not February. 

It’s Saturday morning. We’re leaving for a swim meet in a little while (Marymount @ Gallaudet) but right now I’m just enjoying the three-day-weekend Saturday morning vibe. I love my job but there’s nothing better than a holiday weekend. It’s even better than vacation because a paid holiday is just a pure, unearned gift. Marymount hosted Catholic last night, our first evening meet as a Marymount swim family, and the boys’ team’s first loss of the season. But it was close and competitive and a lovely way to spend a Friday night, sitting in the Rose Bente Lee Center pool as the late winter afternoon faded into twilight. 

And see, there’s the problem right there. If I’m ever going to finish that book list, I need to write about books, not swimming. 

*****

“... what they had wanted all these years was not for concrete things to happen but for abstract possibilities to remain available.” This is Lea Ypi, writing about her parents’ ambivalence about Albania’s first post-Communist election. I’m reading Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, her very extraordinary memoir of her life as a child and teenager in late Communist and post-Communist Albania, a country about which I know practically nothing. Ypi’s family kept secrets about their “biography,” including the fact that her great-grandfather was one of the country’s last pre-Communist Prime Ministers. When Communist rule ended, Ypi had to relearn her own family’s history, and re-examine everything she knew and believed and thought that her family believed. How does a young person, already whipsawed by adolescent confusion, regain her bearings when she finds that the country, the belief system, and the family that she thought she knew turn out not to be a sturdy structure with a rock-solid foundation but a rickety makeshift shack held together with spit and glue and lies? Who are you if your family isn’t who you thought they were? What are you if your country no longer exists?

******

And what are you if you can’t seem to get up off the couch? It’s Monday now, MLK Day so I’m off although I did plan to do some work today to make up for a planned short Friday. But it’s 10:30 and although I have showered and done some housework, I’m nowhere near my desk. I can’t seem to pull myself off the couch right now, physically or mentally. It’s very cold, and snowing lightly. I don’t have to leave the house today and I probably won’t. MSNBC is on as background noise in my family room, the warmest room in the house. 

Oh my gosh what is wrong with me and what am I doing? It’s 10:45 now and I’m wearing pajama pants and a hoodie, curled up on my couch, my hair still wet from the shower and absolutely no plans or ideas or energy or inspiration for this gift of a day off that I don’t want to waste but am in fact actually wasting. I need to pull myself together. Or maybe I just have to accept that today is one of those proverbial days, filled with lots of abstract possibilities. I just don’t seem to have the energy to make any of those possibilities concrete. 

*****

I’m back at work now. It’s Tuesday, a day on which I almost always work from home, and everyone else is working from home today too thanks to the unexpected snow accumulation. Why unexpected, I don’t know, because the forecast was clear, and it is January, but it’s been so long since we have had actual winter weather that I didn’t think that a real snowstorm was possible. I thought the forecast was just weather-industrial complex hype. I thought it was just another media narrative. 

We only got maybe five inches or so, but this is the DC suburbs of Maryland, not Buffalo. We’re famous for freaking out at the smallest accumulation of snow. I haven’t left my house since Sunday but I’m sure that if I ventured out to a grocery store today, I’d find shelves stripped bare. Thankfully I didn’t run out of milk or toilet paper because I’m always ready for the worst case scenario. Rain, snow, whatever - I seldom run out of anything. 

And speaking of the worst case scenario, yesterday was also Iowa caucus day and of course Trump won by a landslide. Not that Haley or DeSantis are anything other than repugnant to me, but the idea of another Trump presidency,  which is a very real possibility, fills me with something close to despair. I just can’t bear the thought of looking at his face and hearing his voice every day for four more years. I dread the rest of this election season. I used to love election years, too. Sad!

*****

But I’ll tell you what. An entire childhood and youth obsessed with political repression and dictatorships had its upside. I’m prepared. No matter how much I hate what might be happening a few miles from my front door in Washington, I am prepared to live my life and do my work and go on with my daily existence without regard to politics. Unless it gets really bad and they start rounding up dissidents and I end up in a detention camp. 

And this is why I shouldn’t be reading political memoirs, or doomscrolling my newsfeeds, or listening to MSNBC all the gosh darn livelong day. I should probably just go outside except that it’s literally 12 degrees out there, which is absolute nonsense. This weather is trash. This weather is for penguins and polar bears and ice fishermen. 

*****

Have you seen “The Holdovers?” A friend and I had planned to see it in a theater, back in November or early December; and what with the round of one damn thing after another that constitutes life for middle aged ladies, we ended up postponing our plans multiple times and ultimately missing the short theatrical run. And then we had to cancel three consecutive planned dates to watch it at my house. One damn thing after another, I tell you. Last Saturday, I realized that my husband had to work in the evening, and my friend’s husband was going to be glued to an NFL playoff game, so we made a last-minute plan to watch the movie together with another friend, and we were all free, and no one got sick and no one had a last-minute work obligation or family emergency, and we actually got to sit down with wine and popcorn and watch the movie. 

I don’t know why, but I can’t get enough of movies and books about exclusive boarding schools and colleges - preferably in New England in the middle of the 20th century, but any story about a boarding school or prestigious college will do. The Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, Prep, The Secret History, Brideshead Revisited, “Rushmore,” even “The Dead Poets Society” - I love them all.  I also adore Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (absolutely hilarious in “Only Murders in the Building”) - and so I knew going in that I’d love “The Holdovers.” And I did. It is hilariously funny, but also heartbreakingly sad, with its little band of outcast characters stumbling through a cold and gray holiday season full of empty days, loneliness, and grief. And the cold and gray and emptiness are sweet and human and really beautiful. It’s a beautiful, perfect little movie. I hope it wins everything. I can’t wait to watch it again. 

*****

It’s Friday again, and in my original plan, I’d have been driving to Fredericksburg for a late afternoon meet between Marymount and University of Mary Washington; but there’s another winter storm, and the college swimming powers that be cancelled the meet. It’s just as well. The idea of my son and all of his teammates riding on snowy roads in a charter bus was making me very anxious, and although I had been looking forward to the meet, I wasn’t looking forward to the drive. I’m hopeful that tomorrow’s meet at St. Mary’s of Maryland will proceed as planned. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been writing this for a whole week and I’m still looking for the unifying theme that will give me an excuse to paste the whole mess into my blog editor and press publish. Didn’t I say something about brain decluttering? Not only have I not decluttered my own brain, but now I’ve dropped a whole bunch of junk off in yours. Sorry. 

****

At the end of Free, Lea Ypi shares some of her teenage journal entries from the year 1997, a violent and chaotic year in Albania. It was my favorite part of the book, just a person thinking and feeling and writing it all down knowing that it’s possible that someone might read her journal one day but that it’s just as possible that no one ever will. And that is my unifying theme, for this post and for every word that I write on this blog. Sometimes people read this stuff, which is lovely; and sometimes they don’t, which is fine. I write because it’s the only way that I can begin to make sense of things. I write because I have to. 

Regulation

It seems that I am not the only person who struggles with anxiety. My newsfeeds are filled with advice from experts real and self-proclaimed on how to regulate my stress response, activate my parasympathetic nervous system, stimulate my vagus nerve (what?), drop my shoulders while engaging my core and practicing breathwork, and just calm the heck down. I don’t do any of this. I look out the window instead. 

If we ever left this house, the view outside my office window is one thing that I would really miss. And it’s not a particularly spectacular view. It’s just pretty - a large number and variety of trees on both sides of the fence between my neighbor’s house and mine, the hanging birdfeeders and the visiting birds, and the sky, which is wintery pale bright blue today, with a few fluffy pink-edged clouds. There are many window views that are more beautiful but few that are more soothing. 

*****

I wrote that yesterday, which was a rather bad day. Today is much better. It's Friday afternoon and I'm in the stands at the Rose Bente Lee Center pool at Marymount University, watching the first meet of the second half of the 23-24 season. Marymount is hosting Randolph Macon and my son's medley relay just scored its first victory of 2024. As the B relay they should have finished second but someone forgot to tell them that. 

The women's 1000 yard freestyle is just finishing up, and the men will follow. Distance events are not my jam but I certainly admire the athletes in a better them than me kind of way. 

*****

We’re midway through the meet now, and the swimmers are warming up for the second half. It's a close, competitive meet, fun to watch. I think we're winning but I'm not sure. But we're not running away with it. Marymount completely dominated its early season opponents, so much so that it was almost like watching an intramural meet. Winning is great and all but I'd rather see a real race. I like a good old fashioned duel in the pool. 

*****

Saturday morning, cold and very pale gray. It’s January 6, and we’re waiting for the threatened or promised winter weather that was supposed to begin this morning. So far, it’s nothing but January cold and a silvery gray sky that looks very soon-to-snowish. The rest of the house is asleep, and I’m back in front of my window, watching the birds enjoy breakfast at the just-refilled feeder. The seed mix that comes out of that big Costco bag must be delicious because it’s a scene out there, bird-wise. It’s a bird party. I could sit in front of this window all day. 

Yesterday’s meet finished in a split decision - a win for the men and a loss for the women. My son won one of his individual events, too. Today, I’ll work for a bit to catch up. I had had some vague idea that I’d try to work for a bit during the distance events at the meet yesterday but that was just silly. But I don’t mind working today. Yesterday was almost a day off. It felt very Saturday-ish. And the weather today is dreadful, so I’m not going anywhere unless I have to. 

*****

Saturday was a gloomy gloomy day. Not unpleasantly gloomy, just weather gloomy, with an ice storm vibe. It wasn’t quite cold enough for ice, but almost. I got my hair cut in the morning and then came home and worked and did housework and read my book (The Broom of the System) and watched a movie (“Leave the World Behind”) and hung around the house, now pretty much completely clear of all signs of Christmas except for a few boxes of chocolate that still remain in the kitchen. It’s sunny and bright today and the place feels wide open. The day feels wide open. It’s Sunday and I don’t have any particular plans other than to get out of the house. An indoor day is nice once in a while but one is enough. 

*****

Have you seen “Leave the World Behind”? It’s a disaster movie, kind of, but we never really find out what causes the disaster - a foreign attack, a cyber event, an environmental catastrophe - but the world goes haywire just as an affluent Manhattan family begins its impromptu vacation in a beautiful rental house in the Hamptons. The owners of the house, a Black man (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter, show up in the middle of the night after escaping from chaos in the city, and the tenants (Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke) must decide whether or not to trust them, having never actually met them face to face. Things get increasingly chaotic and terrifying - strange animal encounters, and self-driving cars going haywire, and a mysterious illness that strikes one of the vacationers’ children - and the two families are forced to overcome their mutual suspicion and mistrust, given that they appear to be the only people remaining, except for an angry, armed survivalist played very well by Kevin Bacon. 

Most of the action takes place in and around the beach house, and with the very small cast (the two families and Kevin Bacon) it has a closed-off, quasi-theatrical feel. But it’s still realistic, and scary. I liked the movie very much, even though dystopian disaster movies are the last thing I should be watching right now given my pretty fragile grip on reason. Julia Roberts is especially good as the everywoman wife and mother who is angry at the world and racked with guilt over her own ill temper and bad disposition. She shares the movie’s best scene (in my view) with the very talented My’hala Herrold as Mahershala Ali’s done-with-these-damn-white-people daughter. Surrounded by a pack of wild deer and other animals who appear to be poised to attack (and I keep telling you that the deer are going to turn predator), the two women stick together, face down the animals, and ultimately scare them away. They hold hands, clinging to one another as they realize - to both their relief and dismay -  that they need one another, and that even though people are the worst, it’s far worse to be without them. 

*****

I like to re-read books sometimes, especially at times like now when my mental health is not great. I hadn’t thought about The Broom of the System - or David Foster Wallace in general - in years, but Zadie Smith reminded me to revisit Wallace, and The Broom of the System was my favorite book for a short time during my twenties. I wanted to see if it held up. 

Wallace wrote The Broom of the System, his first novel, when he was in his 20s and it created quite a stir - critics recognized Wallace as a genius right away. I think it was popular too - my friends and I all read it, at least. What still works - the book is still very funny, hilariously so; and very imaginative. Wallace juxtaposed the real (Cleveland, Ohio; Amherst College, Gerber baby food, Bob Newhart) and the imagined (the Great Ohio Desert, Stonecipheco Baby Foods, the Reverend Hart Lee Sykes) seamlessly, and creates a world that is both absurd and believable, and that the reader recognizes and understands almost immediately. The dialogue is hilarious, and the characters are flawed and neurotic (or downright crazy) and interesting. 

The book still holds up, for the most part, though of course I saw it very differently as an almost-old woman as I am now vs. a very young woman (maybe 22) when I first read it. I really loved Lenore Beadsman, the main character, when I was in my 20s. She was different from every other female character in books and movies and TV. She was quirky and fiercely independent. She was not glamorous or fashionable but she was obviously beautiful, being the object of desire for at least four of the novel’s male characters. She was, of course, an early Manic Pixie Dream Girl, which explains why I loved her so much. Even before we had a name for her, young women in their 20s were (and remain) very susceptible to the allure of the MPDG. She’s not like all the other girls. 

*****

I started writing this a week ago, in the midst of an anxiety spiral that has mostly passed. Writing about it and then thinking about other things - like swim meets and books and movies - helps me to get a grip and to calm down a little. It helps me to regulate my nervous system, as the influencers like to say. Of course, who am I to need regulating? I’m not walking on a beach or digging in a peaceful green garden but I’m also not fighting for my life in the middle of a war or disaster. I’m not facing down a pack of attack deer (I promise you, they will be a thing very soon). I’m not lost in the middle of the Great Ohio Desert, handcuffed to a madman (Wallace reference, IYKYK). Everything is fine. Everything is grand. Reading and writing are all I really have any business doing anyway. 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

“One never knows at Christmas time, does one?” That is Miranda’s mother in the Christmas episode of the first season of “Miranda,” commenting on the dateless and timeless quality of the week between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s December 28 in my life, a fact that I can only cite because I looked at the date on the bottom of my computer screen. Absent that reminder, I would have had no idea of the date. And I think it’s Thursday. 

And I’m pretty sure that I forgot to write anything yesterday, too. So that’s two days out of 365 in the year 2023 when I failed to write any words. And it’s fine. There are enough of my words out here; a few days missed production won’t make a difference. 

It’s been a weird, though not unpleasant Christmas break. We didn’t really go places as we normally do because my husband is sick with the flu, and it rained for two days straight. We’ve been watching movies and sports. We’ve been eating cookies. We ventured out to the bookstore and the grocery store. It’s been low-key but kind of nice. 

*****

Have you seen “Saltburn”? Starting at the end of the year, I try to catch up with movies that will likely garner major award nominations, and Christmas vacation is the perfect time to do this. “Saltburn,” which is expected to be an awards contender, is streaming now so I watched it. 

Much has been made of “Saltburn.” It’s violent, sexually transgressive, mean-spirited, sharply critical of British upper class social snobbery, and full of beautiful people wearing beautiful clothing in beautiful settings; so naturally, critics have praised it rather lavishly. 

Spoiler alert: “Saltburn” starts with a scholarship student at Oxford, a student named Oliver Quick whom we are at first supposed to believe is a poor and clueless outsider, completely out of his depth among his aristocratic classmates, unable to cope socially in a world of money and privilege. We’re supposed to feel sorry for Oliver, scorned and ostracized by Oxford’s elite, who grew up with an arcane and complex code of etiquette with which he is totally unfamiliar. Poor lonesome Oliver longs to belong, and he falls in love with the upper class in general and with one person in particular, the beautiful and charismatic Felix, who is the center of everything, the most inside of the insiders. 

Does this sound familiar? It will if you saw “The Talented Mr. Ripley” or if you read Brideshead Revisited, both of which tell the stories of middle-class outsiders invited into the inner circles of the rich; and both of which are far more interesting and nuanced than the stylish and misanthropic and hateful “Saltburn.” Of course, nothing is what it seems in “Saltburn,” and the series of tragedies that follow Oliver’s invitation to join Felix and his family at Saltburn, their country estate, are not chance occurrences. You’ll have to watch it if you want to find out what actually happens and how. Or you could just read the Wikipedia plot summary, which might be a better idea than sitting through this movie. I did that after I watched the movie. This is how I learned that the movie was filmed in a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the more conventional 16:9. I’m sure that there was an artistic reason behind that technical decision, but I didn’t notice it when I was watching the movie, but I don’t tend to notice details like that. I’m not a critic. 

Barry Keoghan is mentioned in all of the critics’ “best of” lists and is sure to receive many nominations for his performance as Oliver. But he left me cold, as did the entire movie. Even Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike, whom I normally adore, are wasted here. “Saltburn” is a two thumbs down for me, but what do I know, other than the difference between right and wrong?

*****

Thursday was the first nice day all week, so we drove to Harper’s Ferry for the afternoon. West Virginia sounds so dreadfully far away but on a good traffic day, Harper’s Ferry is a one-hour drive, even when I’m driving. Harper’s Ferry is a little gem of a town, rich with history, architecturally very interesting (especially the WPA-era train tunnel), and surrounded by stunning natural beauty. It sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, and at the intersection of the Appalachian and C&O Trails, with the Blue Ridge Mountains as a natural backdrop. You can hike or stroll or bike or canoe or poke around in little shops and get your National Parks passport stamped, all in just an afternoon. We had a lovely time there, basking in the unseasonable warmth and clear bright late December sunshine and clean mountain air; and we were home before dark. 

*****

I had to work on Friday, oddly enough. At least one person needs to be in the office during business hours (why, I don’t know) and Friday was my turn, so I left my house at 7 and breezed on to the base at 7:25. There’s always an upside of working on December 29. The streets were near-empty. And the office was near-empty, too. I worked in fits and starts, finally hitting a groove at about noon, with a burst of energy and concentration and inspiration that allowed me to finish a project that’s been hanging over my head for a bit. At 2:30, the only other person on the floor stopped by my desk to wish me a happy new year. “Don’t stay too late,” he said. It had already been unnaturally quiet on the floor, but now that I knew for sure that I was the only person left on the floor (and likely the only person left in the building) the quiet was a bit eerie. I finished my work listening to holiday-week NPR on my headphones and then packed up at 4 and walked across the empty brick courtyard for the last time in 2023. By 5 o’clock, I was home in cozy sweats, back in holiday mode. 

*****

After one pretty bad movie, I watched a pretty good movie. Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” which was slightly controversial because of the prosthetic nose that Cooper wore to play Leonard Bernstein. I suppose I can see both sides of this little uproar, but the movie is really quite good. Cooper manages the macro and the micro very well; the micro being the story of Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montelegre (Carey Mulligan in an absolutely lovely performance) and the macro being the whole American century that made a life like Leonard Bernstein’s possible. The movie is beautiful to look at and listen to, with outstanding performances from the entire cast, especially Mulligan. 

*****

So it’s late December (well it’s January now) and what would late December in the post-COVID era be if at least one member of the household wasn’t stricken by a hideous upper respiratory infection? Three of the four of us were sick to varying degrees, with one person going down just as another began to recover. A bunch of COVID tests, dozens of oranges, a bottle of zinc tablets, two urgent care visits, Tamiflu, amoxicillin, and a partridge in a pear tree. Everyone’s fine now. For now. 

****

Clutter is delightful for exactly two weeks of the year, and not one second more. From about December 19 to about January 3 or so, our house is full of presents wrapped and unwrapped, treats homemade and store-bought, Christmas decorations and knick-knacks and trinkets, wrapping and baking supplies, and a big fat Griswold family Christmas tree that takes up half the living room. And it’s lovely but when it’s over, it’s over. It’s January 3 now, and it’s over. Two days ago, my house felt sparkly and magical and cozy all at once, and today it feels like a very special episode of “Hoarders.” It’s time to break it down. 

I’m always a tiny bit sad when I start taking down the Christmas decorations, but once all the Christmas stuff is packed away and all of our pictures and paintings and books and objects are back in their proper places, freshly dusted, the house seems calm and peaceful and welcoming again. The tree will stay until January 7. Its exit will clear a ton of physical and metaphorical space for a new season and a new year. The past few years have taught me not to tempt fate with hilariously snide “don’t let the door hit you in the ass” messages to the departing old year. I don’t want to encourage “Hold my beer” energy from 2024, know what I mean? I'll just leave you by saying Happy New Year. 

(Christmas) Adam and Eve

It was overcast and gray when I woke up this morning, and Christmas cold - 25 degrees according to my weather app. I was on the couch in my sister's living room, where I'd gone to escape my husband's snoring. It was cozy there. There was a light on over the stove and the outside Christmas lights twinkled from the front window. I piled on some blankets and propped myself up on some pillows and read my book until I fell back to sleep. My sister's dog, who loves me, had followed me downstairs, and he slept on the floor next to my couch. 

When I sat up, the dog popped his head up and lazily wagged his tail. He knew that I was going to take him out for a walk but he wasn't in a hurry and neither was I. I let him outside, made some coffee, plugged in the Christmas tree, and wrapped myself back up in a blanket. It was 7 am on December 23 - Christmas Adam. 

*****

We usually visit my family after Christmas, but schedules were booked, and December 22 and 23 were the only available options. So we drove up yesterday afternoon, arriving in mid-afternoon after a surprisingly trouble free drive. Temperatures were in the mid-50s when we left our house in Maryland and we dressed accordingly, and were rudely surprised when we got out of the car in my sister’s driveway, where it was 35 degrees at 3 PM. Fortunately for me, I had a winter jacket in the back of my car so I was quite comfortable in the still cold December afternoon as I took my sister’s dog for a walk. We walked around the silent streets, and then a school bus rolled in and discharged its passengers, a joyful, screaming gaggle of elementary schoolers arriving home for Christmas vacation. Later, we had dinner at a favorite restaurant, and then sat around an outdoor fire, wrapped in parkas and blankets. 

*****

It’s Christmas Eve now, the day after Christmas Adam, because Adam came before Eve. We spent the morning and early afternoon yesterday at my sister’s house, exchanging gifts and eating brunch and cookies. After one last dog walk, we drove back home, arriving just at twilight, the perfect time of day in December. Tomorrow is Christmas and winter is just beginning but the days will get a little longer each day now. It’s peaceful here. I hope it will soon be peaceful everywhere.