Auto-didact

I finished the Evita book, and learned more than I needed to know about the Perons and the whole sorry history of 20th century South American dictatorships. After Evita died, Argentina's political climate shifted so abruptly that exile for Juan Peron alone wasn't enough. Evita's body was also exiled, hidden in a graveyard in Italy under a false name, where it remained for nearly 20 years. Eva and Juan Peron were both objectively terrible people, and yet they inspired fanatical devotion among millions of followers. It was an instructive read.

*****

Anyway, I'm working my way through the Excel course, and it's also very instructive. I'm learning a lot. For example, did you know that you can turn an Excel rectangle into a square, or an oval into a circle? I don't know why you can't just start with a square or a circle. That's a question for Bill Gates.

I am a person who writes and thinks in mostly words.  I look at a graph or a map or a diagram, and I have to methodically work my way through it before I can actually understand it. A quick glance at a picture doesn't help me to grasp an idea, unless I think backward step by step, relating each color or shape to the information that it represents.

I realize that this is just the opposite of what is supposed to happen and that many people find it very easy to absorb information when it's presented in a visual format. They're the same people who never get lost, and who can always cut the right-size sheet of wrapping paper just by looking at the gift they need to wrap. They're the people who always say that a picture is worth a thousand words. And maybe it is. But I like a thousand words.

But now that I'm learning more about how to use Excel, I'm seeing that a particular type of visual display can actually change the way you understand something, You'd think I'd have known this already, but I didn't. A histogram or a tree map or a pareto chart or a pie chart or a column and line chart all illuminate data in different ways. I thought that one chart vs. another was a stylistic choice--flats or high heels; a dress or a skirt and sweater. But it's more than that. It's more like the difference between wearing shoes and not wearing shoes-- you'll understand your feet differently shod or barefoot.

*****
With Evita and the crazy Peronistas out of my hair (and good riddance), I needed something new to read. So I'm reading Nora Ephron's Wallflower at the Orgy. It reminds me of what I thought my life was going to be when I was young.

The first essay is about the first generation of what were once called "foodies," and it made me remember a line from "When Harry Met Sally," when Carrie Fisher tells Bruno Kirby "Restaurants are to people in the 80s what theater was to people in the 60s;" and of course the reason that I remembered that line was that Nora Ephron wrote it.

Before this, I'd never read Nora Ephron's work. It's tempting to compare her with Joan Didion, and there are definitely parallels. But when you read Nora Ephron, you feel that she was fully immersed in and engaged with the world that she's writing about, the world of well-educated and attractive and stylish young people in New York City in the 1970s. She can claim to be a wallflower, just blending into the background, but there's nothing distant or disengaged about her writing.

Didion, on the other hand, remained at a cool and impenetrable distance and even though she was also fully immersed in a very rarefied and stylish world, she seemed removed from it somehow. But she is mercilessly honest about herself in her writing. I haven't read enough of Nora Ephron to know if she's as brave, but I'm looking forward to a visit to New York and Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s, when people believed that a regime like Peron's was a relic of another time and another place and could never happen here.  It should be instructive.

Reality and dreams

I saw an article online, which I now can't find, no matter how I search. It doesn't matter. The article was about a phone that's supposed to help you avoid smartphone-induced distraction and stress. More specifically, it's a phone that offers only a few apps, so you can remain in touch with family and friends, and avoid the constant intrusion of social media and the Internet. Of course, it's an adjunct to your real phone, and it works only when connected to the mother ship. So for just $400 or so, in addition to the $600 or so that you already paid for your smartphone, you can have a phone that keeps you away from your phone.

My favorite-ever phone was a Samsung slider phone with a perfect little QWERTY keyboard. It was small and neat, and a pretty red color. Like most messaging phones of that time (around 2009, so smartphones were around, but messaging phones were still widely used) it had an alarm clock and calculator and messaging and calling, and a low-resolution camera. You could even play games with it; not that I ever did, but I could have if I'd wanted to. No navigation, though; and no email, and no Google. So I don't know if I could go back. But it's nice to think about. It's nice to think about being out with friends and having a spirited and good-natured argument about which actor was in that one movie, or what year it was that some team ended a long drought to win a championship, without someone settling the question with a pocket full of Google.

*****
I worked from home on Friday. I had promised to review an SOP for a coworker, and while I was on a conference call, she texted me to ask me if I'd gotten a chance to look at it. I noticed the text, but I didn't respond right away because I was taking notes during the call. Or at least I thought that I hadn't responded. Because on Saturday, I was going to text her about something altogether different, when I noticed, to my horror, that I had actually responded to her request on Friday. "Nope." That was it. Not "Sorry, I forgot about it but I'll do it now." Not "Sorry, I won't have time today but I'll have it back to you first thing on Monday." Just "Nope."

I'm using third-party keyboard and messaging apps, which normally work pretty well. But the messaging app suggests responses that don't even resemble any words that I would ever write to anyone, ever. My normal workaround is to just ignore the suggestions and write my own texts, complete with fully spelled-out words and complete, correctly punctuated sentences. But now I have to make sure that I don't inadvertently hit send on an auto-response and make myself look like a jerk. 

*****
Later that weekend, I had a dream. I was in Taiwan with some coworkers, including the one to whom my phone was so rude. Yes, Taiwan. A third coworker was, for some reason not known to me, holding on to some valuables for us. We walked down the corridor of our hotel to ask our third coworker for our things, and then we noticed that we were on an airplane. The plane began to taxi, and it was too late for us to get off. "Where is this plane going?" I asked my coworker.

"Shanghai," she said, barely looking up from her Chinese-language newspaper.

"We don't want to go to Shanghai!" the first coworker and I exclaimed. But it was too late. The plane had already taken off.

It was a strangely realistic dream, the kind from which you awaken slightly panicked and disoriented, with your brain straddling reality and the dream world. Even as I thought about what to make for lunch that day, I also worried about what the Chinese authorities would do with me when I arrived in Shanghai with no travel documents. It wasn't until halfway through my coffee that I realized that I had dreamed about actually being Shanghaied.

*****
I changed high schools after my freshman year. At the time, it seemed like a big deal. Now, 35 years later, I sometimes forget that I went to the first high school. One of my old neighborhood friends invited me to a Facebook group for my old school's upcoming reunion, and although I have no plans to attend, it was nice that people remembered me.

When you look at the Facebook profiles of old friends and acquaintances, you compare. You see their lives (such as people represent their lives on social media), and you wonder how yours measures up. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you're not one of those people who looks in the mirror because you literally don't know what you look like. Maybe you don't worry at all about what other people think about you. Maybe you're pretty clear on the difference between your friends' and neighbors' social media images and their real selves. Maybe you don't wake up expecting to spend the rest of your life in a Chinese prison. Maybe you don't worry that your phone will go rogue and be insufferably snotty on your behalf.

*****
It's the end of the day and I am worried about the world. I'm worried about displaced and homeless people who can't find welcome anywhere in the world. I'm worried about pipe bombs. I'm worried about systematic devaluation of human life.

Mother Teresa said that if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. It's the end of the day, and I'm going to make some banana chocolate chip muffins that won't solve any crises or end any wars or cure any of my ever-growing number of neuroses and fears. They'll just be a nice breakfast treat for teenage boys on a cold morning. Love is the only thing that has ever changed anything and the only thing that ever will.

Testimony

I was at work last Thursday, so I didn't get to watch most of the Kavanaugh testimony. I listened on the radio on my way home. I believed her. I didn't believe him. That's probably all I have to say about that.

Last year when #metoo started as a movement, I thought a little bit about the line between inappropriate but overlookable behavior and real sexual assault. #metoo was just the beginning, as all of the millions of women who spoke up then are now sharing what happened in the aftermath, or what didn't, if they chose not to report.

I graduated from high school in 1983, just like Brett Kavanaugh. And I had a bad experience at a party. And I didn't say a thing about it. It wasn't as bad as what happened to Dr. Ford. The boy was just being a jerk, and he stopped when I told him to stop. Well, he stopped after the second or third time I told him to stop. The point is that I was angry and upset, but at no point did I feel threatened. But if something worse had happened, I promise you that I wouldn't have said a thing about it. In 1983, it was always the girl's fault. Always.

*****
So I believe her. And I don't believe him, not just because I believe her, but because it also appears that he lied about his college drinking, which was apparently anything but moderate according to classmates who have come forward since last Thursday. Even if you believe that Dr. Ford might have mistaken the identity of her attacker (and I don't; I believe that she's quite clear about who held her down and covered her mouth when she tried to scream), then it's still likely that he committed perjury.

There's no good ending to this, sadly. My guess (if I were a betting person, it would be my bet) is that he will be confirmed after a hasty and very limited FBI investigation that will unsurprisingly reveal absolutely nothing. This will be a bad outcome for everyone; for every woman who is convinced that women are systematically devalued, for the Senate as an institution, for the Supreme Court; and even for Judge Kavanaugh, who will serve his lifetime appointment with the proverbial asterisk next to his name.

*****
I was working from home on Friday, and I was watching as Senator Flake got up from his seat on the Republican side of the room, walked over to the Democratic side, and tapped Senator Coons on the shoulder. Later, I saw the video of his elevator confrontation with those two anguished women. And I looked at his face, and I saw real compassion, and something else, too--he seemed genuinely unsure how to proceed. He had already declared that he would vote to support Kavanaugh, and I think that those women gave him pause.

Yes, I know that it's not enough. I know that the White House has already placed constraints on the FBI investigation that will make it all but a waste of time. And I know that unless another bombshell drops this week, Flake will be among the Republicans voting to confirm. And I know that the Republican leadership under Mitch McConnell doesn't care--AT ALL--about doing what is right for the country, or even what is right for their own stupid party. They only care about winning each stupid street fight as it breaks out, and doing as much damage as possible in the process. But it still makes a difference to me that a Republican Senator listened to those two women instead of closing the elevator door. It makes a difference that he listened to them as if they mattered, and then tried to do something, however little. It's not enough, but it's something. I'll take something.

Let it snow

It's the last week of summer, at least for all practical purposes. I know that summer doesn't officially end in a meteorological sense until later in September, but when the pool closes and kids are back in school, then summer is over as far as I'm concerned. And I hate when summer is over. 

But I still have a week, so it's not over yet. There's a week left to swim, and to eat dinner at 9:30 PM, and to sleep a little later in the morning because I don't have to wake teenagers up. And summer reading--there's a week left of that, too. I read all the time, all year round, but I do tend to read more than usual in the summer. 

I finally finished Entering Ephesus. I hated the ending almost as much as I hated the ending of Atonement, for which I believe Ian McEwan still owes me an apology, so I'm happy to have it out of my hair. Now I'm reading Lina and Serge, a biography of Lina Prokofiev. Lina was married to Serge Prokofiev, the great Russian composer. Like so many other Russians of the early 20th century, she ran afoul of the Soviet police state and spent years in the gulag. So this one is right up my alley, obviously. 

Last night, I recommended that a friend read A Gentleman in Moscow, which another friend had recommended to me. Lina Prokofiev's story made me think of the Count, thought the books are completely different. A Gentleman is a novel, and the reader comes to know the protagonist very well. I'm only a few chapters into Lina's story, but it's already clear that I won't get to know her as well as I got to know the Count.  Coincidentally, both of these characters, one historical and one fictional, passed through the Metropol Hotel. Lina had a chance meeting there that would later lead to her imprisonment, while the Count's entire story takes place there. The Count's story ends happily. I hope that Lina's does, too. 

*****

The word "narrative" is an interesting one, isn't it? In the strictly literal sense, it just means story. And I love stories, true or fictional.  But like so many other words, "narrative" has more than one meaning, not to mention lots of icky political overtones. Just to be helpful, because I'm nothing if not helpful, I'm going to try to explain how to use this word, and how not to use it. 

Let's say that you're Kelli Ward, and you say something idiotic and indefensible. And reporters report what you said. Here's a helpful hint, Kelli Ward--the suffix "er" is often appended to the end of a verb, like "report," which then becomes a noun that describes the occupation of the person who performs the activity described by that verb. It's a lot to take in, I know. Long story short, reporters report. That's their job. 

When that reporter reports (again--that's her job!) on the terrible and inexcusable and whiny and sniveling thing that you said, that reporter is NOT "creating a narrative." She's reporting a story. Even when you say something stupid and ridiculous--ESPECIALLY when you say something stupid and ridiculous--it's newsworthy when you are running for Senate. So instead of being a crybaby little snowflake* bitch and whining about "the media" and "the left," you could (crazy, I know!) just APOLOGIZE and move the hell on.  By the way, saying that you're sorry that other people "might have misconstrued" your remarks isn't REALLY apologizing, but it's a step in the right direction. 

I hope that was helpful. And I wish you well in life, Dr. Ward, but I also sincerely hope that you lose today.

*****

Summer and winter, and politics and literature, and truth and fiction. That's a lot in one blog post! Until next week...

*****

*Another word note. I hate the word "snowflake" to describe anything other than the cold white product of December storm clouds. But it's worth pointing out that it's not only over-sensitive college students who might need a "safe space." 

Noblesse

It's 7:30 PM and I'm sitting up in my hotel room bed, in for the night. My sons and I will go swimming at 9:30 or so, but my feet are finished walking, and there's no chance that I'll leave this hotel tonight.

We walked to St. Joseph's Oratory today, 4 or so uphill miles from our hotel; and then returned to McGill University, and decided to walk to the top of Mont Royal, too. I recorded 26,000 steps today. That's not the real story, though (but 26,000! Impressive!). The real story is how amazingly beautiful the Oratory and Mont Royal Park are, and how much work and prayer went into the creation of both of these miraculous places.

*****
Most people know Frederick Law Olmsted as the designer of New York's Central Park, but apparently, he was also involved in the design of Mont Royal Park. According to Wikipedia, an economic crash in the mid 19th century prompted Montreal's city planners to abandon many of Olmsted's very ambitious plans for the park. This is astonishing to me, because it's still amazingly beautiful and welcoming, the type of public space that the great 19th century robber barons built with their vast fortunes. Using winding paths and wooden stairs built into the side of the mountain, visitors can either climb or hike to the top, where Chateau Mont Royal will welcome them with ice cream and cold drinks and overpriced souvenirs. (Buy an expensive t-shirt! It's not cheap to maintain a thing like Mont Royal!) Then, they can stand on the overlook, with all of magnificent Montreal spreading below, and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that comes with having climbed a mountain--even a relatively small one.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to take a panoramic picture.
Trust me, it's much more impressive in person. 

St. Joseph's is even more magnificent. You walk and walk and walk down Chemin de la Cote des Neiges, growing more and more certain that you have the wrong directions and that your GPS doesn't know what the hell it's talking about. And then, just as you approach Chemin Queen Mary, you see the very top of the dome emerging from the tree canopy.

OMG! There it is!

St. Joseph's was also built during the midst of an economic crisis. According to the $2 Visitor's Guide, construction was halted in 1931. Brother Andre was supposed to have ordered the construction company to place a statue of St. Joseph in the open structure. "If he wants a roof over his head, he'll make sure that the money is there." A few years later, construction was complete.

This is what it looks like today, as you approach on foot.

Mont Royal Park was built with the help of municipal funds and private donations from Canada's robber baron counterparts (descendants of Hudson Bay traders, I guess). And St. Joseph's was completed with the help of private funding from donors large and small (but probably mostly large). 

I don't like to indulge in class-warfare rhetoric. If you compare my life to the lives of most people who have ever lived for all of human history, then I'm the one percent, and I could do a lot better at noblesse oblige. On the other hand, it's hard to compare today's super rich (no Donald Trump, not including you, because no one expects anything from you) to the super rich of the 19th and early 20th centuries and not feel a little bit shortchanged. The Carnegies and the Mellons and the Vanderbilts endowed parks and hospitals and museums that were built to last forever. I guess it's still too early to say what the Buffets and the Gates and the Zuckerbergs will leave behind. If it's anything half as magnificent as Mont Royal Park and St. Joseph's Oratory, then I guess I can forgive them for Facebook and Windows Vista. 

9:00 now. I'm too tired to move, but swimming doesn't count as moving. More Montreal tomorrow, maybe. A bientot. 

Washed and clean

Tuesday: I intended to start writing yesterday morning, and then the morning got away from me. Yesterday was the first no-school day, so our morning routine has changed a bit, and I thought that I had more time than I actually did. It's always later than you think. Well, it's always later than I think, anyway.

So now it's 7:15 (AM). Cloudy, with silvery pale sunlight and dense humidity, and it feels like a morning at the beach. I’m keeping track of the time this morning. I’m on top of things.

And now it’s 9:15 PM. Today was a back-to-back meeting day. I'd planned to go outside and take a short walk between meetings, but a sudden heavy rainstorm derailed my plans. And then within ten minutes, the rain stopped, as suddenly as it had begun, giving way to intense, mad-dog-and-Englishmen noonday sun and the smell of ozone as the pavement dried. The air was dense; so humid that it was just short of condensation back into rain. The grass and trees and shrubs were jungle-green and dewy. You know how sometimes a garden or a lawn goes from lush and verdant to sloppy and overgrown, all in the space of minutes? The whole world looked like those few minutes. I walked in the sun as the rain dried. Fifteen minutes later, I was back in the office, and then the rain started again.

The rain stopped, again, and I finished work, came home, made dinner, and went swimming. The pool water has been warming gradually, from icy to chilly to tolerable to just right. All of this is to say that it feels like summer, finally.

***** 

I use spell-check, but only as a fail-safe for typos. My eyes aren’t what they used to be—when I was younger, no typo had a chance against me. I’ve noticed something with Word’s spell-check feature. When you spell-check a document, and spell-check doesn’t find any errors (this still happens fairly often—I’m pretty good), the pop-up reads “Spelling and grammar check is complete—You’re good to go!” Not only confirmation that the spell-check has done its job, but a congratulatory exclamation point. But when you run spell-check and ignore any of Word’s grammar or spelling recommendations, the pop-up reads “Spelling and grammar check is complete.” Full stop. It comes across as a little bitter,  a little truculent. No “good to go,” no exclamation point…it’s as if Word is washing its hands of you.

***** 

It's Wednesday now. I'm at a Wednesday night swim meet, with no job. Not as in unemployment, just no swim meet job. This is very rare for me; very rare indeed. Rumbling thunder cut the meet short, and there was a mad scramble to clean up the pool as quickly as possible before the rain started. A friend and I, both of us long-veteran swim parents, were walking toward the parking lot to stow our handbags so that we could come back to help clean up, and we saw the meet manager walking toward us.

“Let’s say ‘Good night, Lois—see you Saturday’ and keep walking, just to see what she says,” I said to my friend.

“Awesome,” she said. We executed perfectly, and then cackled like idiots when she fell for it. Then we all cleaned up together, and I thought about how lucky I was that I got to go home over an hour earlier than I expected; and even luckier to clean up a swim meet with these people, who I love and whose children I love; all during my beloved summer.

***** 

So as I mentioned once before, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And as I also mentioned that last time, I won't really compare the President to a stopped clock, because he's not right anywhere near twice a day. But he did the right thing today, so he deserves credit. It doesn’t matter that he did the right thing for the wrong reasons; it only matters that it was the right thing. Hopefully, most of the children will soon be reunited with their parents.

RAICES

No, but if you hum a few bars, I can try to play along

Wednesday, June 6: I was just going to write a sentence, which I'm not going to write, because you shouldn't put certain things in writing until they actually happen.

*****
Remember how I was singing along with "Evacuate the Dance Floor?" And then remember how that song was stuck in my head for a damn week afterward? No?

Well let me tell you all about it. I sang along to that song one too many times, and then it was stuck in my head for a damn week. And if that was the end of that story, then there'd be nothing else to say. But that is not, as it happens, the end of that story.

I'm extremely susceptible to the curse of the earworm; and sadly for me, the songs that get permanently lodged in my brain are not always songs that I like. "Evacuate the Dance Floor" and "Just Dance" and "Badlands"? Fine. "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Where do Broken Hearts Go?" and "We are Never (Ever Ever) Getting Back Together"? Not so much.

In fact, just hearing one or two bars of a bad song at the wrong time are an almost-certain predictor of an earworm that will last at least 24 hours, and often as long as a week. It's like the aura that some migraine sufferers experience. It's like that vaguely feverish malaise that within hours morphs into full-blown flu. By the time you recognize the symptoms, it's probably too late.

*****

Sunday, June 10: So now It’s a rainy and unseasonably cool Sunday afternoon, and I’m just a few miles north of Baltimore, driving southward on I-95 after an overnight trip to Philadelphia. As always, I feel duty-bound to point out that I’m not actually driving the car that’s conveying me home. And I’m not online, either. I could write on my phone, but I’ve never learned how to type fast on a smartphone. On a real keyboard, though, I can type like lightning. I can barely see my fingers--that's how fast they're moving.

I’m beginning to resign myself to the likelihood of a cool and rainy summer. My swimming friends and I have been steeling ourselves to the icy water, because we’re determined to swim and if we wait until the water warms up, we won’t get to swim until July. I’m learning to like the cold water, though I’d take warm over cold any day. But once you get used to it...

*****

Friday, June 15. You might have read or heard somewhere that the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup (this, of course, is the thing that I couldn't put in writing). My friends and family in Philadelphia, even the die-hard Flyers fans, all congratulated me last weekend, as if I’d scored the game-winning goal. The last time I lived in a championship city was 1980 (Phillies, World Series), and I'd forgotten how much fun it was to be part of a joyous collective celebration. And I'm really happy for Alexander Ovechkin, the world's greatest hockey player. I know that he's a Putin supporter, but how can you not love this face?

*****
Speaking of my favorite Russians, I finally finished with the Count. I haven't read any reviews of A Gentleman in Moscow, and I wonder if any critics commented on the relative lack of suffering in the book. After all, it's set in Russia, beginning in the 1920s all the way through the mid 1950s--Suffering Central. Without giving too much away, the main character, Count Alexander Rostov, was in 1922 placed under permanent house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel and remained there for over 30 years, eventually becoming the headwaiter of the Boyarsky, the hotel's renowned restaurant. Early in the novel, he is removed from his luxurious, expansive suite, and sent to a tiny room on an upper floor. He has an unpleasant encounter with a Bolsehvik aristocrat-hater.  Soviet-style bureaucracy encroaches on his beloved Boyarsky, even its famous wine cellar.

But no one starves, and no one ends up in a filthy cell in Sukhanova. A few major characters disappear, though, lost to the gulag; and the reader always feels the Stalinist menace hovering over the Metropol and threatening all of its occupants, including the Count and his adopted daughter. I might write more about him next week. Once again, Stalinism and all of its totalitarian relatives seem particularly relevant right now.

*****
Stalinist menace or not, the weather has finally turned and it feels like actual summer again. The Count wasn't beaten or starved or sent to Kolyma, but he was held indoors for 30 years, never stepping outside, even during the summer. And right now, on the southern border of the most fortunate country in the history of the world, there are hundreds of children, separated from their parents, and held indoors in prison-like conditions for most of the day.

I have no idea why some people, or some countries, or some times in history are marked for suffering. I'll probably never know why, at least not in this life. All I can do is to not forget the people who suffer, and try to think about them and pray for them when the sun is shining on the pool water in just the right way and all is well in my particular part of the world at this particular moment. 

Tired mountains and rally towels

It's week 4 or so on the government project, and I'm starting to understand the project and the organization. And I'm neck-deep in level setting and boots hitting the ground. As I wrote once before, business jargon isn't necessarily bad in and of itself. Sometimes, a business slang term colorfully and concisely expresses an idea not expressed in any other word or phrase.

When I first started at the government site, I was a little overwhelmed. There was a lot to take in. In one of many meetings during the first week, our government boss asked how we liked "drinking from the firehose." I have since heard lots of other people use the expression "firehose mode," so I guess she didn't coin the phrase, but I thought that it was a good, apt description of a person trying to take in a very large quantity of information in a very short time.

"Tiger team," on the other hand, is ridiculous. What can a team of tigers do for you other than protect their young and prey on large mammals? I'm pretty sure they don't have any other skills, though I wouldn't tell one that to its face. Pigs and dolphins are smarter. I can easily see why you'd want to avoid standing up a pig team, given that recruitment would be difficult, but everyone would want to join a dolphin team. OR--you could just use regular words, and call it a special projects team.

Or an A team! Because everyone loves it when a plan comes together.

*****
Ignore what I said last week. I totally want the Capitals to win the Stanley Cup.

Obviously, I'm delighted that they beat Columbus in the first round, but of course, now they have to try to get past Pittsburgh again, and if Thursday night's third period shit show was any indication, then the climb is Mount Everest-style uphill.

Meanwhile, I have an official complaint to lodge with Mr. Leonsis and the Capitals organization. We attended Game 1 of the Columbus series, and although that series turned out happily, the first game ended badly, with an overtime loss, notwithstanding an early game 2-goal lead. We had hoped, when we bought the not-at-all-cheap tickets, that the traditional Game 1 giveaway would be something good, like maybe a bobblehead, or a rally towel. Instead, we got light sticks. And when you picture that in your mind, don't think about a decent, self-respecting miniature flashlight kind of thing. Picture instead a styrofoam tube wrapped in cellophane (and there's two archaic words in one sentence). Because it was a styrofoam tube wrapped in cellophane, which Boeing unwisely allowed its logo to be imprinted upon.

Insult added to injury--the Penguins gave away t-shirts at their first-round Game 1. T-shirts, for Penguins fans! Those bitches have Stanley Cups out the proverbial yinyang and they get t-shirts!

Light sticks. Hmph. You can't cry into a light stick. Round 2 continues.

*****

This is my family in 2014, at the Pyongyang Platform at Dorasan Station. Dorasan Station is the northern terminus of a railway line that used to run the entire length of the Korean peninsula. It's less than a kilometer from the Demarcation Line at the Demilitarized Zone. The sign in the upper right corner reads: "When the Trans-Korea Railway (TKR), the Trans-Siberia Railway (TSR), and the Trans-China Railway (TCR) are connected in the future, Dorasan Station promises to emerge as the starting point of the Transcontinental Railroad." As my husband explained it to me, after he visited in 2008, the South Korean government maintains the station, though it's no longer operational, so that it's ready to transport passengers between Panmunjom and Pyongyang when the two Koreas reunite.

At the time, nothing seemed less likely than reunification. Now, I guess anything is possible. Maybe Trump deserves some credit (and now my hands hurt, from typing those words). Or maybe it's a case of Tired Mountain Syndrome.  Whatever. If one or the other or a combination of those two things represent the first step toward collapse of the worst regime on earth, then it's good news. I can't imagine how beautiful and energetic South Korea will be able to absorb and integrate the undereducated and impoverished North Korean people, but that's a problem for later. Hope springs eternal, for Korea, and Capitals fans during Round 2 against Pittsburgh, and for the rest of the whole world.

Birdwatching

It's Tuesday. Last night, I was watching the Capitals vs. Winnipeg with my sons, and I left the room just in time to miss the world's greatest hockey player's 600th lifetime goal. Disappointing, but I got to watch the replay, and it was almost as good as seeing it live.

As I watched the game, I was imagining, for some reason, a character who becomes a hockey fan late in life. After choosing his favorite team, he realizes that he also needs a least-favorite team, a hockey nemesis, as it were. This character is not based on me, of course, because I have the moral clarity to know that the only hockey nemesis that anyone ever needs is present in the form of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the most evil franchise in the worldwide history of professional sports. My character, lacking such moral clarity, chooses the Winnipeg Jets as his nemesis.

"Why Winnipeg?" his family and friends ask him. "What did Manitoba ever do to you?" He doesn't deign to justify his choice or explain his reasoning. He just glares at the TV as his team plays Winnipeg. "Fucking Winnipeg," he snarls, every time the Jets score. That eventually becomes his catchphrase: "Fucking Winnipeg."

*****
Who knows where that came from. Anyway, it's still Tuesday. Speaking of fans, I'm not a particular fan of Rex Tillerson, but he did call Donald Trump a fucking moron on a hot mic, and for that, he'll always have a place in my heart. Godspeed, Rex Tillerson.

*****
After I finished Slouching Towards Bethlehem, I read Havana, which is so far my least-favorite Joan Didion non-fiction. In some ways, it reads like a period piece, with its very Reagan-era preoccupation with Latin American revolutionary politics. Like lots of other literary intellectuals of the 20th century, Didion seems to have had a blind spot about Communism. I mean, I'm sure she's right about totalitarian ideological rigidity among the Cuban exile population in Miami in the 80s, but she doesn't say much about the conditions in Cuba that gave rise to their extremism. Like many other writers who wrote about Latin America in the 80s, she (rightly) condemns Somoza, but gives Castro a pass.

I couldn't decide what to read after Havana. I have a pretty large backlog on my Kindle, but nothing was calling out to me, so I decided to re-read The Thinking Reed, one of Rebecca West's best, and that's already a pretty high bar.  It's just as good as I remembered.  The book takes place in France in the years between the two world wars. One of the principal characters is an immensely wealthy French industrialist who, despite enormous success and power, completely lacks the inclination to abuse or take advantage of the poor or powerless. "Though his ties were with the strong and not with the weak, he would not have had a sparrow fall, anywhere in the world." I have noticed that not every rich and powerful person is like that.

The best part is that it's been so long since I've read it that I really don't remember how it ends. So I'm torn between wanting to rush through it to find out (again) what happens, and wanting to slow down a bit, so that it won't be over too soon.

*****
Thursday: Have you ever cleaned behind your refrigerator? If not, then I don't recommend it. Leave it alone. Nothing to see. The less said, the better.

It had been a long time since our kitchen had been painted, and so I talked my husband into doing it. The paint looks beautiful, but the kitchen is now in a horrifying state of disarray that makes me wonder, just for a minute, if the dingy walls maybe weren't so bad. I don't like disorder. And I have to pretty much leave it as it is for now, because he has to finish the job tomorrow. Horrifying. I'm hyperventilating just thinking about it.

*****
It's Saturday morning now. The kitchen is back in order, and you could eat off the floor behind the refrigerator. Well, you could, but I don't recommend it. I mean it's clean, but it's not perfect. It's still a floor. So don't eat off it. I'll give you a plate.

*****
And now it's Sunday, and I have just a few pages left of The Thinking Reed.  When it's over, the weekend will be over. More importantly, I'll need to find something else to read.  Too bad that Comey's book won't be out until next month. I continue to be torn between actually feeling sorry for Trump's unfortunate staff, enduing threats, insults, and firings via Twitter; and wondering what they expected when they chose to serve a bullying, vindictive, mean-spirited, draft-dodging, pants-on-fire lying coward.  By the time the Comey book is released, there will probably be at least two or three more firings. My money is on McMaster and Sessions, but it could be anyone, I suppose.

Putin just won re-election by a landslide; and somewhere, a sparrow is probably falling. If it's a Russian sparrow, the richest and most powerful man in that country is claiming innocence and feigning outrage that anyone could accuse him of shooting down a sparrow, even as he continues to hold the gun. If it's an American sparrow, it has been subjected to weeks of poking with sticks, as its eventual killer decides if it would be more fun to shoot it out of a tree, or to just set a cat loose on it. I'm losing the thread on this metaphor, so I'll end this episode of sparrows here. Until next week...

Clarinets, Guns, and Money

Wednesday: It's Ash Wednesday, which means Lent, which means no chocolate until Easter. Yes, I know; not quite the same as 40 days in the desert.

*****
And now it's Wednesday night. My older son had a concert at school tonight. Because this particular concert includes young musicians from the cluster of elementary and middle schools that feed into the high school, it's called the "cluster" concert. "Cluster" is descriptive in more ways than one, but that's a story for another day. Let's just say that it's a lot of kids making a lot of noise, not all of it musical.

The point of this concert is to show the progress that children can make if they continue to take music throughout their school careers. In Montgomery County, band programs start in fourth grade, and many of the students pick up an instrument or read a musical note for the very first time during their first band class. After just a few months, they can squeak out a tune in something close enough to unison that it can be performed in public. Again, "cluster" might not do this type of performance justice, but it's all part of the learning process. By middle school, they can play more complex pieces of music, with actual arrangements. By the time they reach high school, they are pretty decent musicians.

The cluster concerts begin with short performances (two or three songs) by the beginning groups, then move on to combined performances that include the advanced elementary and intermediate and advanced middle school bands. Then the high schoolers take the stage.

At my son's high school, the musicians perform in formal attire. The boys wear tuxedos, and the girls wear black dresses. After the younger musicians exit the stage, wearing dark pants or shorts with white polo shirts, the high school kids make a grand entrance, marching confidently into the auditorium, resplendent in black and white with instruments in hand. They usually get a big round of applause, which they obviously enjoy.

The concert was over in just an hour. I waited in the car as my son helped with clean-up, and then we came home and had a late dinner. Then we watched the news. In Parkland, Florida, children the same age as my son spent the afternoon hiding from a gunman.  They weren't holding musical instruments when they were marched in single file out of the school, hands in the air like criminals, leaving behind the bloody, lifeless bodies of 17 of their classmates. And I wondered, what would the blood have looked like on crisp white tuxedo shirts? 

Thursday:  As always, thank God for all of the fucking thoughts and prayers, because otherwise, you might think that our elected leaders aren't doing a damn thing about routine mass slaughter of schoolchildren. And it just doesn't seem possible that leaders of the greatest country on earth would sit by and do absolutely fucking nothing as the bodies continue to pile up.

"What about Chicago?" That's one of my favorite NRA/Fox News/talk radio rejoinders in the gun control debate. Yes, everyone knows that the city with the country's strictest gun laws is also terribly violent. But if we're going to play "what about?" then I can go all fucking day. What about Canada? What about Australia? What about the UK? What about Japan? What about South Korea? What about Western Europe? What about every other industrialized democracy, similar to the U.S. in so many ways, except that they regulate gun sales, and their children don't get gunned down in their classrooms. What about that? That's my response to "What about Chicago?" Oh, and fuck you, NRA. That too.

Maybe it's not the time. Maybe that's it. It's been almost 20 years since Columbine. 20 years of  "not the time." With 8 school shootings in 2018 (a rate of a little more than one per week), maybe the Twitter Thoughts and Prayers Brigade will let us know when the time is right to talk about doing something other than thinking and praying. Or maybe they'll wait until school shootings happen daily and no longer even merit news coverage.

Meanwhile, if you're wondering how much it costs to buy a Senator or a Representative, here's some comparison shopping information.

Green eggs and bullshit

So it looks like the shutdown might be over. I'm happy about this, because about 80% of my company was placed on furlough, so I'm glad they can come back to work without having lost too much income. Unlike government employees, who often receive back pay after shutdowns end, contractors are simply not paid when they're furloughed. Anyway, after this weekend of partisan posturing and spin, and opinions that diverge so wildly that it's hard to believe that people on the left and right are even talking about the same situation, I'm more than ever convinced that partisan politics is a scourge and a plague.

During the 2013 shutdown, as we all know now, Donald Trump criticized President Obama for failed leadership. He was right (because even a stopped clock is right twice a day), but the idea that the President is responsible when Congress and the White House can't keep the government open apparently no longer applies. In 2013, Democrats blamed Senator Ted Cruz for the shutdown, for the "Green Eggs and Ham" anti-Obamacare filibuster that shut down debate on the continuing resolution. They too were right, but oddly enough, the Democrats now have an entirely different opinion of a minority party shutting down the government over one pet issue. 

I'm in favor of broad legal protections for DACA immigrants. But it's not an issue that should have led to a government shutdown, even for a day. But more importantly, some things are right or wrong, no matter what party is involved. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have shown the slightest interest in actually representing the people who elected them. They don't deserve more loyalty than we owe to the truth or even common sense.  From now on, I will decline to take seriously any political observer, professional or amateur, who doesn't hold their own side to exactly the same standards that should apply to the other. Not in a box, and not with a fox. Not in a house, and not with a mouse. 

User Manual

I don't really make New Year's resolutions (though if I did, I'd probably get around to it about two weeks into the year). But this year, I did decide (not resolve--verb choice is everything, and to resolve is to de facto make a resolution, which I don't do) to try to force myself to learn new things.

If you hang around here at all, then maybe you're wondering "What on earth is she talking about? She doesn't seem to do anything other than write and read and drive kids around and compulsively clean her house, so she must be learning something from the reading part, at least." And you'd be right. But gaining knowledge (however useless) by reading a book and learning a practical skill are two entirely separate and distinct things. I do the former very well. I do the latter very badly.

For example, I'm writing this on the Chromebook that I bought a few months ago. There's a lot to love about this little mini-computer, including its light weight, compact size, semi-attractive design, and keyboard that is ideally suited to my hands. But there are many differences between working on this and working on a PC, and instead of taking a disciplined and orderly approach to learning how to use the Chromebook well, I'm doing it piecemeal, just looking up tricks and keyboard shortcuts when I need them (and promptly forgetting and having to look up the same tricks and shortcuts over and over again. Hello? Where is the delete key?)

Last year, my husband bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner for me, thinking that I'd rather have something lightweight and easy to maneuver. And it's a nice vacuum cleaner, which also looks interesting and colorful. But it's not well-designed, because I still can't figure out how to use the attachments. I tried one time and gave up. In my defense, it's a domestic appliance, and an obviously essential feature like the hand-held attachments should be so self-evidently easy to use that "figuring it out" shouldn't even enter into the equation. There's always a work-around; mine is making my husband attach them for me. Not perfect, but it gets the job done.

*****

If you're a member of the very broad demographic that includes suburban mothers ages 30-60, then you have probably read or heard about the Instant Pot. And you have probably asked friends about it, who have probably all told you that you MUST get one, immediately. But if you're me, you have ignored their advice, because one look at the picture of the Instant Pot suggests that it's a complicated little piece of machinery, and that even thinking about figuring out how to use it will stress you out.

What is this, the space shuttle?
I mean, that's a lot of buttons, right? 

So I resisted. Every time someone would tell me how life-changingly awesome the Instant Pot is, I'd think about buying one, but then I'd also think about having to figure out how to use it. But two weeks ago, I finally caved and ordered one from Amazon, and it arrived two days later.

I panicked for a moment when I arrived home from work and found the box waiting for me. Normally, I love packages, but I knew that I had to teach myself how to use the Instant Pot the minute I opened it, or it would sit on my kitchen counter, untouched, for months. Maybe years.So I left it in the box, just until the next day. And this is where this could easily have turned into a story about how, weeks later, the box remained unopened, a daily reminder of my practical incompetence and strong inclination toward procrastination, but I actually did open it the next day.

Almost immediately, I wished I hadn't. Aside from being packaged to within an inch of its life, it included accessories and an instruction manual and a recipe book and a "quick start" guide and spoons and measuring cups and various and sundry parts. On a list of things that provoke hyperventilating anxiety for me, complicated machinery ranks pretty near the top, but proliferation of stuff ranks even higher.

Here I was faced with a choice: Either breathe into a paper bag, gather my wits (such as they are), and figure it out; or gather up all of the parts and paper, throw it all back in the box, and run screaming from the house.

I went with Plan B.

The End.

*****

No, I'm kidding. First I got rid of the box, along with the forty pounds of styrofoam packing materials, plastic, and extraneous paper. Then I put the spoons and other plastic parts into the dishwasher. That left me with a reasonably manageable pile of stuff with which to tangle. I started with the diagram, making sure that I could identify all of the moving parts. Then I read through the rest of the instruction manual, until I felt confident that I knew, at least, how to tighten the lid properly (it's a pressure cooker, so you have to do that part right or it will blow up) and how to turn it on.

Armed with knowledge, I decided to try to poach a chicken breast. Success! A few days later, I cooked some rice, which also turned out fine.  So far, I've only used it those two times, but now I have several more recipes to try; and the hard part, as far as I'm concerned, is out of the way.

Me: 1. Instant Pot: 0.

*****
High on success, I decided (not resolved) to tackle one practical challenge per month for the rest of 2018, so that by December, I'd have a dozen new and useful skills. And then the timesheet debacle happened.

People who work for the Federal government, or for government contractors, make up another pretty broad demographic (especially here in the DMV, where we're probably half the population). Those of us who work for contractors are required to carefully record every minute of time that we work, and to make sure that our government customers are billed for all of the time that we spend on their projects, but not for one minute more. This is pretty straightforward if you're 100% overhead (so none of your time is billable to the Feds) or if you're 100% embedded with a particular customer (so all of your time is billable to that customer). It gets complicated for people like me, who work on several different government projects, in addition to overhead projects.

Well, it's complicated now, anyway. We used to use a very simple online system, and it took me no more than five minutes a day, tops, to record my time. And then we decided to upgrade to a very well-known "enterprise" (God help me) system that I won't name here, but it rhymes with "Smell Tek," because it stinks. I won't burden you with details (too late). But many people who are far smarter than I (another very broad demographic) were completely flummoxed by the ridiculous complexity that this system has imposed on the once-simple task of recording work time.

So I'm taking February off. Instant Pot cooking and timekeeping count as my new skills for January and February. Maybe in March, I'll show the Chromebook who's boss.

*****

It's Saturday morning now. I'm hopeful that the politicians will figure out how to reopen the government, but as always, both sides are far more concerned with getting power and keeping it than with actually representing the interests of the people who elected them. "Schumer Shutdown" has a satisfying Fox News alliterative ring to it, of course, but it's just too ridiculous to even suggest that anyone other than the party that controls the Legislative and Executive branches is responsible for this. I'm not a Chuck Schumer fan (I can't stand most of the Democratic leadership) but this is the only shutdown that has ever occurred under one-party control.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure that they'll figure it out today, because President Trump has a $100,000-a-person party tonight. By the way, good luck to all of those billionaires if they think they'll get a refund if Trump doesn't show up.

Children play in the dark

I haven't gotten around to writing my 2017 book list yet. It won't be as long as the ones from 2016 and 2015. I'm one book into 2018 now, having just finished Joan Didion's The White Album. This was my first for 2018, and my second Joan Didion  and I think that I like her non-fiction better, at least based on this limited selection. She's pretty prolific, so I'll probably read a few more. 

In "On the Morning After the Sixties," one of the last essays in The White Album, Didion writes about college life in the early 1950s, when she studied at Berkeley, and "the extent to which the narrative on which many of us grew up no longer applies." I remember reading, a long time ago, something about hand-washing wool sweaters and blocking them on Turkish towels. I think this might have been part of Jacqueline Kennedy's famous Prix de Paris essay, which I cannot find online (Joan Didion was also a Prix de Paris winner); or maybe it was advice from one of the characters in The Group. I didn't know what it meant to "block" a sweater; though I assumed that it meant simply to reshape it so that it dries neatly; and I also didn't know what was special about a Turkish towel versus any other variety. 

The point is that Joan Didion, born in the 1930s and educated in the 1950s, is a member of the last generation of American women who would have known how to block a sweater, and who would have been able to identify a towel as Turkish without looking at the label. 

I was thinking about this as I sat at a table at Chadwick's Restaurant in Audobon, PA, with my husband and sons and my sister and brother-in-law and nephews. It was December 28, a weeknight, still early enough in the holiday week that you can revel in several more days of leisured Christmas coziness, but late enough that you're already thinking about the return to work, and school, and daily routines.  Chadwick's is a nice place, so I found it odd that there wasn't a convenient coat rack to be found, and we had to hang our bulky coats and sweaters and scarves on the backs of our chairs. This would have annoyed Joan Didion, I thought; enough that she might even have written about the sad decline in standards that has made it perfectly acceptable for nice restaurants to offer paper napkins and paper packets of sugar and paper-wrapped straws, and no place to hang your coat. 

*****
The live musician was just starting a break when we arrived, so the restaurant played recorded music. In the Philadelphia suburbs, you can switch stations on your car radio all day long, and never hear anything recorded after 1985 or so, and the recorded music selection at Chadwick's did not vary from local custom. The first track we heard was England Dan and John Ford Coley's Light of the World. 

*****
You know, sometimes I lose the thread on these things. I start with an idea, but I forget details. And sometimes, I remember every detail, but have no idea why they're relevant. I think I had a point when I started this, but I can't remember to save my life what it was. Something about Chicago? But it's too late to abandon it now. I'm too far in. 

*****

Oh, I know why I was thinking about Chicago! It was the band Chicago, and not the city! Because of the Gateway Pharmacy. That's it. 

Yes, I see that I need to back things up a bit. I'll begin (yes, I know--too late) by saying that I'm not particularly nostalgic about most things. Time marches on, and all that. Things change. But like any other almost-old person, there are things about my childhood and youth that I miss. One of those things is old-fashioned neighborhood pharmacies. No, not the kind with the soda fountains, because I'm old, not ancient. I'm talking about the kind of neighborhood pharmacy where you could buy candy and gift items and greeting cards and perfume and I suppose you can buy all of that at Rite-Aid, but it's different.  The Gateway Pharmacy is like the 1978-1983 Tardis stop. And I'm not nostalgic for that particular period of time at all, but drugstores were definitely better then.  I didn't know that they still made Alyssa Ashley Musk, or Vitabath, or Fa, but apparently they do, and the shelves full of vintage toiletries aren't just nostalgia props. I thought about the extent to which so much of the narrative on which I grew up no longer applies, and smelled the Charlie tester, and sang along to Chicago's "Make Me Smile." 

*****
And once again, I don't remember how I was going to finish this now way-off-the-rails post. Joan Didion would probably be horrified at this rambling mess. I'm reading Fire and Fury now, because of course I'm reading Fire and Fury. And although I can't resist "stable genius" jokes (which are never going to get old), I'm actually sorrier for Trump now than I am angry at him, because I believe that he might be well on his way to losing his mind, and it's never funny to see the deterioration of a human person. But I'm plenty angry at the sycophants who are loyal to Trump at the expense of loyalty to right over wrong; and even angrier at the cynical politicians who are willing to use this falling-apart mess of a man as a tool toward their own ends.  The narrative on which I grew up no longer applies; and the narrative on which my children are growing up gets crazier every day.  And love is still the answer, and always was, and always will be. 

The Baby and the Bathwater

It's two months post-Weinstein now, and everyone seems to have came to a sort of simultaneous mass agreement to enforce zero tolerance on sexual harassment or misconduct. All of a sudden, any man (well, ALMOST any man) who has ever behaved or spoken inappropriately has to be punished, severely and possibly permanently. 

Like lots of other #metoo women, I have mixed feelings about this. Weinstein deserves his comeuppance (the word of the moment), and so do lots of other prominent men. With super high-profile people like Weinstein and Matt Lauer, the worst offense is not so much the wildly inappropriate or even illegal sexual behavior; it's the gross abuse of power. In those cases, the public downfall is more than deserved. (And it should have happened to Donald Trump. And it should have happened to Bill Clinton. And it's not too late.)

But there's the baby and there's the bathwater. I would like to drain the dirty bathwater, and then thoroughly scrub the tub, but I don't want to discard the baby. I like the baby. I like a lot of men who might, at some point during their personal or professional lives, have said or done something offensive or stupid. In fact, I love some of those men, and I don't want to see them--my friends, or my brothers, or my cousins, or my colleagues might be among them--cast into outer darkness forever. Should we judge the behavior of twenty or even five years ago by the standard of today? Because if so, then who among us will stand up to scrutiny? 

On the other hand (there's always another hand, isn't there? It's why we have two) I have extremely limited patience with the men who are now crying that they just don't know where the line is anymore. They just don't know how to behave! They don't know what they're allowed to do or say! Because it's not that hard. If you're not intimately involved with a woman, then she does not want you to touch most parts of her body. If you work with women, then they do not want to see naked pictures of you or anyone else, and they don't want to talk about sex, either. Because it's work. See? Pretty easy. 

The larger implications of this whole thing are just beginning to become clear. Or at least one specific thing is clear, and that's that the sex-soaked culture of the last 50 years, in which every aspect of entertainment, art, sports, music, politics, and pretty much every other field of human endeavor is permeated and dominated by sex, will have to change. If we're going to hold men (and women, of course) accountable for maintaining a level of decorum that excludes recreational sexual aggression, then we probably can't shove near-naked bodies in people's faces 24 hours a day anymore. 

On its own, that's a good thing. Even if I wasn't a Catholic, I wouldn't actually want to see sex scenes in every movie. I'm disgusted and bored by crude sexual humor on the radio and on TV. I cringe when I hear the lyrics of some of my children's favorite songs. I'm tired of seeing so-called cheerleaders dressed like pole dancers.* 

But the baby is still in the dirty bathwater, isn't he? Bari Weiss** said something about revolutions taking on a life of their own, quickly swallowing everyone in their path, devouring the guilty, the innocent, and the indifferent bystanders, and it's not unlikely that this revolution will have unintended consequences. Ideally, the culture will shift toward an idea of sexuality that acknowledges and respects human dignity. But if you have been on this blog for more than five minutes, then you know that I never expect the ideal outcome. The worst case scenario is my default option. I even have a tag. 

And what's the worst-case scenario? There are any number, but the one that I can see rising to the top is a new Puritanism that combines the very worst of radical feminist hatred of men and radical religious hatred of women, in a country so divided that you won't be sure which standard prevails from one county to the next. In this scenario, Roy Moore wins in Alabama and ten years later, he's part of the moderate wing of whatever new party replaces the Republican party; the moderate wing being the one that believes that a man should only beat the women he's related to, and that a man shouldn't marry a 14-year-old girl without her father's permission. Meanwhile, in what we now call the blue states, men will be fined or arrested for smiling at women they're not married to, and state-financed abortion up to forty weeks will be a basic civil right. 

Or maybe the whole thing will blow over, and everything will be back to normal, whatever that is, in six months. I don't think so, though. I think that a hard rain is going to fall. I think there's going to be a sea change. I'm praying that it's the right one. 

*****

*That's not so much an attack on NFL cheerleaders as a defense of pole dancers. Why should we consider a stripper a social undesirable; while NFL cheerleaders, who dress and behave in the same manner, are held up as examples of wholesome young womanhood? 

**By the way, I agree with a lot of Ms. Weiss's column, but I've never heard anyone say "Believe all women." There's a huge difference between "Believe women" and "Believe all women," always and everywhere, just because they're women. It's the baby and the bathwater again. Don't throw away the very reasonable "Believe women" because it sounds almost like "Believe ALL women." They are two different things. 

More writing and reading

FRIDAY: I have a new notebook, and I LOVE new notebooks. I don't really like to write by hand. Well, I don't like to compose by hand. This morning, I had to write a note for my son, who had been home sick from school on Thursday (the first day of school he's missed in three years of high school), and all I could think about was how agonizing it was to write a whole letter by hand, on paper, with a pen.

I'd rather clean a toilet. Not even kidding. I hate to write notes by hand, and don't get me started about checks. I'll complain for an hour if I have to write a check.

But as much as I hate to write some things by hand, I like to write things down. There's a difference.

So I love notebooks. My handwriting, as you'd expect of someone who doesn't like to write by hand, is not very good. But a new notebook is a new start, and I always make an effort, during the first few pages, to write neatly, date pages clearly, and keep my notes organized.

*****
I went to a conference today, and didn't think to bring a computer, so I took notes by hand. The notebook being new, the notes are clear and neatly organized, with headings and dates underlined in red. I'll actually be able to read them later, which is not always the case with my handwritten notes.

*****
The conference was quite good; much better than I expected, in fact (but the session that I'd looked forward to the most was the least interesting of the day).

As at any conference, the air was thick with business jargon. I used to react to corporate jargon of any kind, from touching base to reaching out to stakeholding to paradigm shifting, with utter disdain. I say "used to," but that's not to suggest that I now use business slang, or even that I approve of it, but I've grown more tolerant and less judgmental. I almost misspelled judgmental right there--I keep wanting to spell it with an "E." So who am I to judge?

See what I did there?

Anyway, the boots on the ground and the level setting aside, sometimes business jargon (or jargon in general) arises from a genuine creative impulse to express an idea better--more clearly, or more vividly. Words like "administrivia" or "generica" start out as rather clever ways to express ideas for which a single word does not exist. They only become jargon when overused or misused. 

But some corporate slang starts out silly and stays that way.  For example, if you're planning a meeting, and you need a record of everything that happens during the meeting, then what you need is a note-taker, and not a "content capture guru." I mean, really.

*****
SATURDAY: I'm thinking about buying a Microsoft Surface. I need a computer that travels, because even the best notebook can't do everything. My son has a Surface, and I'm writing this on it now, just to see if I like the keyboard. So far, so good. It's not quiet, like my keyboard. But it's accurate, and there's a satisfying clicking sound as I type. I type pretty fast, so the clicking is pretty fast. It's fun. I'll have to try it a few more times. It's fun now, but it might get annoying.

*****

Regarding David Horsey: Yes, I'm late to this party. Yes, I know that he has already taken a well-deserved collective Twitter beating. And yes, I know that he has already apologized. But I'm going to pile on anyway.

Few people dislike Donald Trump and his snotty, supercilious lying liar of a press secretary more than I do. But I'm heartily sick and tired of hearing and seeing women attacked because they're women. Clever little trick, Mr. Horsey, of contrasting Ms. Sanders' appearance with that of the leggy model types that Trump would be expected to prefer over a "chunky soccer mom" like Sarah Sanders as a way of letting us know that your mean and stupid little column was really an attack on Trump, and not on women, especially the kind of women who have the nerve to take up space and to act and dress and look like mothers. But everyone with a brain knows what you really meant.

As the Internet says, we see you. I see you. A misogynist by any other name, even that of a Trump-resisting crusading journalist supposedly calling out the President's sexism is still a misogynist. And congratulations, too, on bolstering the narrative about the biased media. When my conservative friends point out the rampant sexism and misogyny of the left, using you as an example, then I'm going to nod my head and agree with them. Because they see you too.  Jerk.

*****
SUNDAY: Chunky soccer/swim team/band moms don't have all day to hang around blogging, so I'm going to wrap it up. Some weeks I think about a million things, but this week, I thought a lot about words; about reading them and writing them and reacting to them. It's good that I have a new notebook.

I think it's going to be a long long time

Monday: I'm watching hockey again. OMG! No, that doesn't mean that I'm reconciled to the end of summer. But hockey is back! As Alexander Ovechkin told a reporter, the Capitals are not going to be suck this year. His English is so much better than my Russian.

Tuesday: I made it almost to the end of the day without encountering a single pirate, until I was on my way home. I was sitting at a stoplight, looked to my left, and saw four pirates in an SUV. I was this close. Sigh.

Meanwhile, if I'm Kim Jong Un, right about now I'm thinking "Rocket Man. Rocket Man! Damn straight! I'm ROCKET MAN, motherfuckers!" North Korean state media has probably been ordered to henceforth refer to Kim as "Rocket Man." They've probably already recorded a cover of the song, with Hangul lyrics about Rocket Man's birth at the peak of Mount Paekdu.

Rocket Man. Really. If you're trying to mock and insult someone, then don't call them something so obviously awesome. Rocket Man. Sheesh.

All this science--I don't understand. 

Wednesday: I'm writing a white paper, on a subject that I know woefully little about. So I'm doing research, and talking to experts, and it's coming along, I guess, but very slowly. I hate not knowing what I'm talking--or writing--about.

Actually, the whole day was kind of an exercise in humility. My 7th grader needed help with Algebra, which is another subject about which I know woefully little. I took exactly as much math as I had to, and not one bit more.

I'm pretty good at calculations; it's how to figure out what to calculate that is beyond me. I also can't remember order of operations. I couldn't explain (or apply) the distributive property to save my soul from Hell. I can usually solve for the value of X. I just can't do it in any rational sequence, and I can't explain or write down the process by which I arrive at the answer.  This didn't help my son at all. Algebra is about the journey and not the destination. Showing your work and all that. He's a smart boy, and he figured it out, no thanks to his mother.

Speaking of journeys and destinations, I would love to hear not only why Tom Price needs a private jet to travel around the country, but why he needs to travel around the country at all. What does an HHS Secretary do on the road, anyway? Is he on tour?

Friday: Good work, Mr. President! Focus on the important stuff. Rocket Man will come to his senses; and Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands will fix themselves. Or maybe Tom Price is working on that--THAT'S why he needs private jets! Of course! You just deal with anthem-kneeling NFL players (are any of them even doing that anymore? Is it still 2016?) and build a nice sliding glass patio door between here and Mexico.

I have friends who voted for Trump. Some of them have finally lost faith in him. Others are hanging on. They blame Twitter. "If only he'd stop tweeting," they say, "then he could make progress with his agenda." Eventually, I hope, more people will finally figure out that this is his agenda. Destroying everything good, and exacerbating everything bad, and sowing division and strife, and then sitting back and watching what happens--this is the WHOLE REASON for his existence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The off-the-wall inflammatory tweets, and campaign rally demagoguery: A feature, and not a bug.

Sunday: Enough about politics. I started with hockey, and I'll end it with hockey. We took my son and his friends to a Capitals pre-season game last night. Despite a 4-1 loss to Carolina, it was a good time.  If what I saw on the ice is any indicator, then the Capitals sadly are going to be suck this year, but even Trump can't ruin hockey.

Pax in terra

I'm mobile blogging right now,  southbound on I-95. No, I'm not driving. Punctuation is the hardest thing about writing on a phone. Punctuation and sudden stops.

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We're listening to a road trip mix now. I should probably turn on the radio to see if we've bombed Pyongyang yet, or if North Korean missiles are en route to Seattle,  or if the Klan has descended on Silver Spring. But I'd rather listen to Erasure.

"Weight of the World." How appropriate.

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We're about 45 minutes away from home now. It's hard to believe that I woke up at the beach this morning. 

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It's Sunday morning , and we're home, so I'm writing on a real keyboard. Anyway, about the beach. We alternate vacations--we visit a new city one year, and then spend a week at the beach the next. It would be nice to do both every year, of course, but we're lucky that we can go away every year, no matter where it is. 

A city vacation is different from a beach vacation because you don't really fall into a routine in a new city. At least, we don't. We fill up every day and night, determined to see as much of our new city as possible. At the beach, though, we establish a routine on day 1, and by day 3, it's like we've always lived in Avalon, and always will. 

One common element of the beach and the city vacations is the early-morning outings with my now 12-year-old son. He and I are both naturally early risers, and we like to go out and do things while the rest of the family sleeps. In the city, this usually means exploratory walks around whatever neighborhood we happen to be staying in, with a stop for coffee and breakfast, which we deliver to my husband and older son just as they're waking up. At the beach, it means morning bike rides. 

Taken on Tuesday morning. It rained all day on
Monday and rain seemed likely on Tuesday,
too. But it turned out to be a sunny day. 

We usually ride for a few miles; sometimes south to Stone Harbor and the shops on 96th Street; and sometimes north to the center of town in Avalon. Sometimes we go farther--to 122nd Street, and Stone Harbor Point; or to Townsend's Inlet, across the bridge from Sea Isle City. Seven Mile Island is as flat as a prairie, so even with wind resistance, a long ride is pretty easy and pleasant, if you like to ride. Not everyone does. My whole family goes to the beach (we stay in separate places) and my sister suggested to my nephew, also an early riser, that he should join us one morning. He scoffed. "What am I, Lance Armstrong? Do you know how far they go?" Not that far if you're a serious rider, but I guess pretty far on a beach cruiser in August. 

The water was perfect last week. Slightly rough surf and a bit of an undertow, but so warm that you could just walk in, and no jellyfish at all. I've never been to the Caribbean, but everyone who has been complains that it ruins them for the Atlantic Ocean on the northeastern coast of the United States. This means that I should never go to the Caribbean, because I never want to not want to swim in the Atlantic Ocean. 

This boy was exactly as I'd have expected him to be in the surf. Knocked down by a wave and scooped up by his father before the current could pull him under, he spluttered and struggled and yelled "Put me down! There's another one coming!" Surrounded by a gang of 9- or 10-year old boogie boarders, he stood his ground, yelling "You guys gotta get outta my way!" And they did, shaking their heads and wondering who the crazy little kid was. 

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During city vacations, it seems like the world continues to do what it does, and I'm just as attuned to current events as I am at home. I followed election and Olympics coverage in Chicago in 2012 and Boston in 2016; and in 2014, even South Korean news media was covering the events in Ferguson, MO. ("What's happening in your country?" our tour guide asked us.) At the beach, though, the only news I seem to hear concerns the weather and the water temperature and the movement of the tides.  Somewhere around Wednesday or Thursday, it started to emerge that war with North Korea might be a real and actual threat; and then on Saturday, we watched "white nationalists" and Klansmen and neo-Nazis converge on normally peaceful Charlottesville.  

And so, as we drove further south, over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, into Maryland, toward Baltimore and finally nearing the Capital Beltway, the world once again continued to do what it does, and it felt less like a day that had started at the beach. There's only one kind of peace that matters, anyway, and it doesn't come from the ocean. Not even from the ocean. It's Sunday afternoon now.