Bibliography, 2016

Although I hate winter like nobody's business, I do love the last few days of December and the first few days of January.  It still feels like Christmas; even better than Christmas because the pre-Christmas stress frenzy is over. Everything seems new and anything seems possible as the old year ends and a new one begins.  I went walking early this morning in clear still coldness slightly warmed by thin pale yellow sunlight, feeling optimistic about 2017.

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It's the end of the year, so it's time to post my "what I read this year" list. I read a lot in 2016; I didn't even realize how much until I went back and looked at my list.  Here it is:

The Takeover. Muriel Spark. Apparently, Muriel Spark wrote this, and all of her novels, on 72-page notebooks purchased from James Thin, a now-defunct bookshop and stationers in Edinburgh.  I don't know why this idea appeals to me so much, because I hate to hand-write anything.  I cry like a baby when I have to write a check (after complaining for at least ten minutes about not being able to pay whatever bill I'm paying electronically.) And that whole observation has nothing to do with this book, because I only vaguely remember it, because it was the first book I read this year.  This was one of only maybe two or three Muriel Spark novels that I hadn't already read (and I've read some of them, including Memento Mori, The Girls of Slender Means, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Loitering with Intent, multiple times.) It's about a rich English woman living in Italy in the early 1970s, who is gradually robbed of everything she owns by a tenant who refuses to be evicted. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's the bare-bones plot summary.  It's not her best (read any of the other ones mentioned here if you haven't read Muriel Spark before), but it's still Muriel Spark, and so it wasn't a bad start to 2016.

Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Roz Chast.  This was one of my favorites of the year, by far.  I really love Roz Chast, and I bought this book in hardback, brand-new at Barnes and Noble.  It didn't disappoint. Although it's about one of the saddest subjects imaginable, the long decline and eventual death of Chast's elderly parents, it's strangely uplifting and hopeful.  Not as funny, obviously, as her other work, but when it's funny, it's high-larious.  And the book itself is beautiful.  Highly recommended.

The Beginning of Spring. Penelope Fitzgerald. I wrote a little bit about this one here. I just love Penelope Fitzgerald.

What's Wrong with the World? G.K. Chesterton. I'm a Catholic and a reader and writer, so I'm supposed to love Chesterton, but there's something about him that's not quite right.  His overpraise of women and our supposed exalted status, reigning as queens and supreme rulers of the home, blah blah blah, always reads as patronizing to me.  He's OK.  I can take him in small doses. I definitely prefer C.S. Lewis.

A Charmed Life, Mary McCarthy. I started reading this believing, for some reason, that it was a memoir or autobiography.  Even as I read the very novelistic description of Martha and John Sinnott and their marriage and home and life together, I thought that McCarthy was employing some sort of literary device, and that at any moment, she'd reveal that the Sinnotts were her grandparents or some other figures of importance in her early life.  It soon became evident that the book is really a novel.  I confirmed my suspicion by looking at the cover (in fairness to me, it's an e-book, so I had never actually looked at the cover when I started reading it), which reads "A Charmed Life (A Novel by Mary McCarthy.)" Not nearly as good as The Group, but probably none of her other novels are.

Our Man in Havana. Graham Greene. Another Catholic novelist.  That's four out of the first six.  Not an intentional theme for 2016 or anything.  This is a great novel; it's kind of Waugh-like in some respects-- a little more forgiving of humanity than Waugh, but it would be hard to find a writer who isn't. Very funny.

The Bean Trees. Barbara Kingsolver. I read The Poisonwood Bible years ago, and thought it was great.  This one was good, too, though I don't remember much about it, nine months or so later.

The Fountain Overflows. Rebecca West.  I wrote about this one here (same post as the one about The Beginning of Spring.)  If you can read only one Rebecca West book, then read Black Lamb and Gray Falcon, one of the best English-language books ever written. But all of her novels are great, too.

Local Girls. Alice Hoffman.  I bought this at a Friends of the Library used book sale.  I didn't know at the time that Hoffman wrote the novel on which the movie "Practical Magic" is based; had I known, I wouldn't have touched this or any of her books with a barge pole.  So I'm glad I didn't know, because I actually liked this very much.

The Mind of the Maker.  Dorothy L. Sayers.  Another Catholic.  Truthfully, I have never warmed to Sayers.  I find the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries tiresome, and I don't know why, because I love early 20th century English society novels.  Well, I love Wodehouse, and maybe I expect every other English society novel to be Wodehousian.  Anyway, this is not a novel; it's a Christian apologetics book.  I read it at night, over the course of a few weeks, and didn't absorb as much as I'd have liked because I was always exhausted when I was reading it, and I kept falling asleep--I think I started reading it when I was still adjusting to being back at work full-time.  I will probably re-read it.

A Separate Peace. John Knowles. I had to read this in high school.  Who didn't? I always felt a little guilty for not liking it.  I was an aspiring English major, and I thought that it was my duty and responsibility to appreciate whatever was officially considered good literature.  So I read it again, to either validate or overturn my earlier judgement.  Verdict: Neutral.  I appreciated it more than I did in high school, but I can think of 50 better 20th century American books that I'd make high school kids read before this one.

If You Lived Here, You'd be Home Now. Claire LaZebnik.  This is what I'm going to call a "Put Up or Shut Up" novel.  I liked it a lot, but I was also sure, after I finished reading it, that I could do a little better.  But I haven't. So that's the difference between what used to be called mid-list novelists like Claire LaZebnik and me.  She has actually finished a book and published it, and I have not.  80% of life is showing up, or something like that.

The Opposite of Loneliness.  Marina Keegan. She would probably have been a very fine writer if she hadn't died so tragically young.

The Americans: The Democratic Experience.  Daniel Boorstin. A bit of a slog, to be honest.   I love to read history, but this is my second Boorstin, and he's just not my thing.  Still, I learned a bit about everyday American life in the early to mid 20th century that I didn't know before, so it wasn't a waste.

A Woman in Jerusalem. A.B. Yehoshua. This was quite good, except for one annoying quirk.  The main character is the human resources manager of a large commercial bakery in Jerusalem, who is charged with investigating the circumstances surrounding the murder of one of his employees, a Russian emigre woman.  The writer insists on referring to the character only as "the resource manager;" the reader never knows his name. Although thinking back on it, I guess this was effective in some way; he's a man adrift, estranged from his wife, on rocky terms with his mother, with whom he lives; and not particularly secure in his job. Maybe he feels like a nonentity, and so that's how the reader is meant to see him.  Worth reading, and I plan to look for more of Yehoshua's work this year.

Away. Amy Bloom.  Astonishingly good.  The opposite of the "Put Up or Shut Up" novel, because no matter how hard I worked, I could never write anything like this.  Another story about another Russian Jewish woman far from home; this one alive, having barely escaped a pogrom that killed her entire family.  When she learns that the little girl whom she believed dead is actually alive, she goes back to Russia from New York to find her--only in the wrong direction, traveling on foot and by train across the U.S. and Canada, into Alaska (pre-statehood; this takes place in 1924) and eventually to Siberia. It's not spoiling the ending to say that it ends much more happily than anyone would ever expect, though not perfectly so.

Rocking Horse Catholic. Caryll Houselander.  So titled because Houselander converted with her family when she was a very young child--so not a cradle Catholic, but a rocking horse Catholic.  I learned about her from Heather King.  Both are brilliant.

Red Scarf Girl. Ji-Li Jiang.  As I noted last year, I like an occasional lighthearted and refreshing visit to the Cultural Revolution whenever I need a break from Stalin's purges.  Maybe this summer, I'll do some beach reading about Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.  Party on, Wayne.

The Rothschilds.  I mentioned this one here.  Don't ask me to distinguish one Rothschild from another.  I read every page, but immediately suffered total non-recall.  Who knows how I managed to finish college.  Oh right, it took me over 25 years.

Monkeys. Susan Minot. Another one that I read a very long time ago, when it was first published in 1987.  I re-read it for the same reason that I re-read A Separate Peace: to see if I'd been right the first time.  Still great. 1 1/2 for 2.

Falling in Place. Ann Beattie. Selfishness and family breakdown in 1970s Connecticut. Very good, but depressing.

A Train of Powder. Rebecca West. I already wrote about this one, too, here.

Someone Will Be with You Shortly: Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life. Lisa Kogan. Filler reading; neither here nor there.

Rosewater. Maziar Bahari. Apparently, I'm not happy unless I'm living vicariously under a brutally repressive regime. Good to be prepared, I suppose.

Reading Lolita in Tehran. Azar Nafisi.  See above.  The fun never ends.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I have no idea what kind of critical reception this received when it was published, but I loved it. Apparently, she published a follow-up, Textbook, in 2016, which should appear on my What I Read in 2017 list, about a year or so from now.  Stay tuned.

With or Without You. Domenica Ruta.  I wrote about this one here. Domenica Ruta is a master of a very specialized art.  She can make squalor, loneliness, addiction, depression, and even monotony interesting and compelling. Not glamorous or appealing, but compelling.

Letters from America. Alistair Cooke. I read Memories of the Good and the Great a year or so ago, and so I picked this up at the previously mentioned library book sale.  Cooke was the BBC's American correspondent, and this contains some entertaining observations about American life and politics from a British observer, but the casual mid-century racism and sexism were kind of disturbing.

Trump: A Theory of Assholes. Aaron James.  My son bought this one. Truthfully, I didn't actually finish it.  The dry academic examination of the science of assholery was funny for the first chapter, but it lost me after that.  I just wanted to include it on my list, because Trump/Asshole.

7 Women. Eric Metaxas. A little disappointing.  I loved Bonhoeffer, and have a generally high opinion of Metaxas and his work (note how neatly I bypassed the need to use the possessive with a name that ends in "S"? Because I hate that.  I also hate when any number smaller than ten appears in print in numeric form, especially as the first word of a sentence or phrase. But that's probably just me.)  The Corrie Ten Boom chapter was especially disappointing, because I have read The Hiding Place at least 20 times; I have also read Tramp for the Lord,  and I didn't learn one single thing about Corrie Ten Boom after reading the Metaxas chapter (see, I did it again) that I didn't already know.

Every Exquisite Thing. Matthew Quick. No idea what prompted me to read this.  It's a misfit outsider teen romance novel.  If you've seen "The Fault in Our Stars" or "Paper Towns," then you've read this book.

Yes, Please.  Amy Poehler.  I like Amy Poehler (especially "Parks and Recreation," one of my favorite-ever TV shows), so when I saw her book offered as a $2.99 daily deal, I bought it and read it.  It's not that it was bad or anything.  I like memoirs in general, especially memoirs written by people whose lives are radically different from mine.  So I'm not sure what bothered me about this book.  Maybe she was just trying too hard.  Lots of mentions of New York City, Back in the Day--she even writes about "a Lou Reed sighting...like the first robin in spring."  Take a deep breath, Wannabe Nostalgic Baby Boomer, you're not even as old as me, for crying out loud.  I was waiting for a Woodstock story next, or maybe an eyewitness account of the Rolling Stones show at Altamont.  Sheesh.  Overall, though, it was fine.  Who am I to judge?  I wouldn't recognize Lou Reed if he made my latte at Starbucks.

Ship of Fools.  Katherine Anne Porter.  A German passenger ship brings a group of expat Germans, along with a handful of Americans and others, back to Germany from Mexico.  I wrote about this one here. 1933 Germany seems very relevant right now, but I've been thinking that for a long time now; before Donald Trump even rode down that escalator, in fact.

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Once again, a kind of crazy catch-all list.  Right now, I'm reading two more memoirs: Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run (in hardback; excellent Christmas present from my husband), and Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone.  Both are great so far, but I won't finish either until 2017.  Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve in Silver Spring

I saw two things yesterday: the video for "Christmas in Hollis,"  and an article about "hygge," which was apparently a contender for most hated word of 2016.  I had never even heard that word before, but I usually only become aware of cultural trends when they're already in everyone else's rear view mirror.

I'd never actually seen the Run-DMC video, even though I was young in the 80s, when the song debuted.  We lived in Philadelphia, which was the last major city to get cable TV.  MTV used to air almost nothing but music videos, but I didn't see most of them, because we didn't have cable. 

The family home depicted in the video looked a lot like the house that I grew up in looked at Christmas.  Small, even a little cramped; clean, but cluttered looking; and not temporary clutter, but the settled and lived-in clutter of thick carpet,  slightly mismatched, slightly oversized furniture and wallpaper, and surfaces covered with knick-knacks and framed pictures  Add in a Christmas tree that's bigger than the couch, presents, plates of cookies and dishes of candy, and a Nativity scene, and you have quite the cozy and abundant little Christmas scene.  

But not hygge.  Because hygge is not just warmth and happiness and home and hearth. It's  an aesthetic; one that doesn't include Hummel figurines and fake Christmas trees with glass ornaments and boxes of Russell Stover Christmas candy.  Hygge depends on uncluttered surfaces, warm but minimalist Scandinavian furniture, hardwood floors, and a wood-burning fire.  A hygge Christmas scene would include cashmere Fair Isle socks and real mistletoe and holly.  It definitely would not include "Christmas Vacation" playing on a big TV or a framed Currier and Ives print.  Homemade cookies and mulled cider: Hygge. Chips and dip in knock-off Spode Christmas dishes: Not hygge. 

I could make fun of this artificially authentic aesthetic all day long, but there's no denying its appeal.  I mock Real Simple magazine, but secretly covet the perfectly organized softly watercolored rooms that shine from its photo spreads.  I love stacks of perfectly folded color drenched blankets, stored on polished blond wood shelves.  I imagine a kitchen where a single handmade ceramic bowl, holding a few perfect ripe pears, sits alone on a gleaming countertop. But I'm also a little nostalgic for a less demanding aesthetic; a little more comfortable, and a little less austere. 

This being 2016 (almost over, thank God), the whole idea is further complicated by politics, because according to some cultural observers, only upper middle class privileged white people would ever aspire to anything as bourgeois and impractical as cozy home comfort or beautiful surroundings.  I'm too lazy right now to really break this down; I'll just say that the only thing that bores me more than identity politics is tiresome privilege narratives. When the revolution comes, I'm going to end up in a re-education camp. 

As usual, I'm trying to write this while I do fifteen other things (it's Christmas Eve; I'm busy) so I'm not sure how I'm going to bring this winding and pointless train into the station.  We're home now.  My house, not quite mid-century Scandinavian serenity, but not quite Christmas in Hollis sensory overload, is clean and decorated.  Most of the presents are wrapped, and the kitchen is pretty well-stocked with treats.  We're not around the fire, though; we're around the TV watching the Redskins.  Christmas Eve Mass at 6 pm.  Not quite hygge, maybe, but we'll take it.  Merry Christmas. 

Put a bird on it

There's a lady in my neighborhood who writes lovely little pieces for the neighborhood newsletter, describing local nature and wildlife, especially birds.  She's a good, if slightly flowery, writer; and her knowledge of flora and fauna (again, especially birds) is pretty impressive.  When the newsletter arrives in my inbox, I almost always stop what I'm doing to read the latest about the neighborhood's animal residents.

*****

I grew up in the city. We lived in Philadelphia, in a working-class city neighborhood of brick-front rowhouses with stoops that provided a two-step buffer zone between the street and your living room.  Our whole lives depended on man-made infrastructure--the electrical grid and the sewer system and the narrow surface streets over which trucks rumbled, carrying food and supplies.  Dropped in the middle of the wilderness, the average 1970s inner-city Philadelphian would look around for a corner store and, failing to find one, would crouch under a tree and wait impatiently for a bus or a search-and-rescue team (all the time thinking to himself “What—not even a park bench?  What am I paying taxes for?”) I read a lot—the Little House books and the Anne of Green Gables series were favorites—and I couldn’t imagine how life was even possible under nineteenth-century conditions.  “What do you mean, Marilla made Anne a dress?  Made it out of what? Leaves?” I would think to myself.  I knew that Laura Ingalls and Anne Shirley didn’t have indoor plumbing, but I didn’t allow myself to think too hard about the implications of that particular lack.  It was too much to contemplate. 

My parents noticed that all of us were completely urbanized and unable to cope with nature in any form.  They’d make half-hearted attempts to get us into the wild, taking us to feed the ducks at Valley Green or forcing us all to walk “back the creek” on nice days, but no one was fooled.  A five-minute observation of my parents in any outdoor setting was enough to demonstrate that they weren’t any better prepared to cope with the stern demands of nature than we were. We were city people. That’s all there was to it. 

I've lived in suburban or beach towns for over 20 years now, so I've learned a bit.  Nature isn't quite as shrouded in mystery as it once was, but I probably still don't know quite as much as I should.  Our neighborhood was built by the Levitt company in the late 1960s, so we're lucky enough to be surrounded by tons of mature shade trees of many beautiful varieties, but I can't distinguish one from another.  We have lots of wildlife, too, but nothing exotic.  Deer, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, occasional raccoons or chipmunks--even I can tell them apart.

The birds, though, are a whole other thing.  I know pigeons from starlings; and I know robins from bluejays.  A duck couldn't fool me by claiming to be a goose.  I'm pretty sure that buzzard is just a synonym for vulture; and in any event, I know to stay the hell away from them.  But that's the extent of my knowledge of the avian world, and as far as I'm concerned, it's as much as I need.

*****

It's been pretty cold here.  If you're reading this in Minnesota or North Dakota, then go ahead and roll your eyes.  I know that this is nothing compared to where you live.  But a high temperature in the 20s is very cold where I live.  Yesterday, it was no more than 15 degrees outside when I heard a bird singing, chirpy and cheerful, right outside my bedroom window.  I'd been up for some time already, so I wasn't annoyed with the bird, just puzzled.  Who are you, little bird, I wondered; and why on earth haven't you flown south yet? Aren't you all supposed to fly south?

Or maybe it was a cardinal, I thought, not knowing for sure whether or not cardinals actually sing.  My limited knowledge of cardinals was gained from viewing painted ceramic plates and mugs and salt and pepper shakers that depict snowy nature scenes, always populated by a lone cardinal.  It just occurred to me as I heard the birdsong: Do cardinals really like cold weather, or do bad artists just like to paint them against snow and pine trees, for Christmas-y contrast? White, green, and red--what could be more wintery and holidayish?

I'm a curious person, usually.  If I run across an unfamiliar word, I look it up.  When kids ask questions to which I don't have good answers, I do some research.  But it never (and I mean never) occurs to me to take a picture of an unfamiliar shrub and then try to find out what kind of shrub it might be.  I know that there are hundreds (probably thousands) of varieties of birds, and although I've always liked birds, I've never been inspired to try to learn all of their names and particular physical characteristics.  They all have wings; most of them fly.  That's enough knowledge for me.

*****

Still. Chirpy birdsong on an Arctic winter day? (Shut up, Alaska and Michigan.) I couldn't see the bird, so I asked Google if cardinals sing, and as it turns out, they do.  And their song sounds very much like the song that I heard outside my icy-cold window.  

*****

And that's likely as far as my nature study will go.  I have limited brain capacity. If I'm going to maintain my wide renown for being an endless fount of useless historical, cultural, and entertainment trivia; an ironclad authority on punctuation, and an outstanding speller, then I can't start using valuable brain cells on wildlife research.  Something has to give, you know?

C is for cookie

I had an idea for something to write, but I can't remember it now.  Maybe it was brilliant.  I'll wait around to see if it comes back to me.

*****

Nothing yet.

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This weekend is the first truly cold weekend we've had in some time, and surprisingly, I'm not 100% miserable.  I even went running* this morning.  No wind at all--still, overcast, and cold--it felt like Christmas.  

*****

Speaking of Christmas, I'm very well-prepared this year.  Ahead of schedule, in fact.  But next weekend is cookie-making weekend, and I'm not looking forward to it AT ALL.  The handful of readers of this blog might remember that I shared my feelings about Christmas cookie baking here, and about baking in general here.

Some people, I'm sure, look forward to baking Christmas cookies.  Some people treasure the pre-Christmas cookie-baking ritual.  Some people, I'm given to understand, even bake cookies for non-Christmas occasions, just because they like cookies; and apparently, they don't know how else to obtain them.

I told my 15-year-old son that I might take a picture of in-progress cookie-baking, and post it on Instagram-- hashtag #cookietimemotherfuckers. He says that that would be "cringey."

"What about #bitchbetterhavemycookies?"

"MOM."

Well, I thought it was funny.

*****

I still didn't remember the idea, but I have a better one now, and I wrote it down, so I won't forget it.  It's a non-blog idea, but I'll be back here sometime next week.  Maybe I'll live-blog cookie day. #ormaybethecookieswilljustbakethemselves.

* In the interests of full disclosure, "Running" = "Walking interspersed with jogging in short, uneven bursts."

Respect my authori-tay

I had to referee a high school swim meet earlier today, and I was a little rusty.  And by a little rusty, I mean that I actually Googled "high school swim meet referee when do you blow the whistle." It's not that I didn't know what to do, it's just that I didn't exactly remember exactly what to do exactly when.  I had a pretty good overall idea, but the sequence was a little fuzzy, and I was a bit vague on details.  Details like when to blow the whistle.  It had been a while, but in very uncharacteristic fashion, I decided not to worry about it.  It's like riding a bike, I reasoned to myself.

(That would be a funny comparison, if I could then immediately describe some hideous bicycle accident that I'd had at some point, but I'm pretty solid on a bike. I've fallen down while walking in or around my house three times in the last year, but no bicycle accidents to speak of.  Unless you count the time that I got hit by a car when I was riding my bike.  But that was a long time ago.  And it wasn't my fault.)

Just to be on the safe side, I downloaded the 2016-2017 edition of the high school swimming rule book, and it provided lots of helpful reminders of stuff that I already knew pretty well.  Nothing, though, about exactly when to blow the whistle.  I decided to wing it, even though that approach doesn't usually work out too well for me.  But all's well that ends well.  I walked into the aquatic center, put on the whistle, grabbed a clipboard, and it all came back to me.  Like riding a bike.

Party politics

We have a party every year, on the night before Thanksgiving. It's not even a party, really, more of a get-together. Food and drinks and a fire bowl and music, and people coming and going, and most of us talking about how we can't believe that the holidays are upon us, and that soon enough, we'll be saying that we can't believe that it's summer already.

I have friends whose beliefs span the whole political spectrum, so if nothing else, then I guess that the conversation at this year's party might be a little more lively than usual. I'm wondering if I need to post "No Politics" signs around the house that night, just to keep things from getting out of hand.

My Trump-supporting friends voted for him either because they had such serious reservations about Hillary that they felt that they had no choice, or because the Democratic party is anathema to their pro-life beliefs.  I sympathize with their concerns about Hillary Clinton; and as a pro-life person, I also share their dislike of the Democratic party.  

HOWEVER:

1. The Republicans are no better. They controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House from 2001 to 2007, and what they accomplished on the abortion issue can be filed under N for not a damn thing.  They’ll have full control of the Executive and Legislative branches again beginning in January, making it put up or shut up time for the GOP.  Personally, I no longer believe that politics is the way to approach this (or most other issues), which is why I don’t worry much about party affiliation when I vote.  The idea of abortion as a human right is a monstrous lie, and unless we can change the culture and help people to see the truth about abortion, then no lawmaker or judge can make even the slightest difference.  What does make a difference is a genuine understanding of the dignity and worth of every single human life, and that makes it hard for me to understand how people believe that Donald Trump is the person to advance the cause, but I suppose we'll see.
2. Yes, friends who voted for Trump, I will concede that he has been gracious in victory.  I’ll also point out that it’s very very easy to be gracious in victory.  Graciousness in defeat is a whole other thing, and nothing that Mr. Trump has said or done suggests that he’s even remotely capable of losing with dignity.  I have no plans to demonstrate on the streets to protest the results of a fairly contested election.  Democracy is a bitch sometimes.  But please don’t make me laugh with ridiculous assertions that Trump supporters wouldn’t have done the exact same thing if he hadn’t won.  Trump would have cried like a big orange baby about rigged systems and biased liberal media, and angry Trump supporters would be demanding recounts and threatening revolt or civil war or worse.  Spare me.
3. The draining of the swamp appears to be underway.  News reports suggest that Trump’s cabinet picks will include Rudy Giuliani as Attorney General,  Newt Gingrich as Secretary of State, Sen. Jeff Sessions as Secretary of Defense, and a retired Goldman Sachs executive as Secretary of the Treasury.  Maybe the President-elect forgot to mention that he was planning to replace the swamp with a cesspool.  P.S. You keep saying "Blind Trust." I do not think that this means what you think it means.

ON THE OTHER HAND:

1. To anyone who has posted or shared the horrible meme of four or five former First Ladies in dignified and regal attire, juxtaposed with a nude shot of poor Melania Trump, which was probably taken under duress when she was 18 or 19 years old: Have the rules on “slut-shaming” changed?  Is it now OK to slut-shame, as long as the slut in question is affiliated with the wrong political party, or married to the wrong man?  Talk among yourselves and get back to me on that.  Meanwhile, if you share or post that meme or anything like it, for the purpose of shaming or degrading Melania Trump for her youthful indiscretions, then I will immediately recognize you for the misogynist that you are, and I will decline to take anything you say seriously, ever again.  
2. If you’re calling for Democrats and other Trump-resisters to treat Trump with exactly the same obstructionism and lack of respect that Republicans heaped on Barack Obama, then just stop it with the Michelle Obama “they go low and we go high” quotes.  That’s exactly the opposite of “going high.”
3. Not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist or a hateful hating hater filled with hatred. The "Love Trumps Hate" rhetoric is just silliness. And by the way, "hate" is a verb. It should be "Love Trumps Hatred." I get that the former sounds better. But it's just wrong.

See how fair that is? Three each. Now enough of the politics. It's party time.

I'll have the usual

Oh my gosh, what has happened to me?  Do you know what I did yesterday?  I bought scented pinecones (scented pinecones!) and a scented grapevine wreath.  And then I went to Michael's and bought a shitload of scrapbooking supplies.

Well, no, I didn't.  Not the scrapbooking stuff, anyway, because come on.  But I did buy the wreath and the pinecones.  Scented.  Orange/clove/cinnamon scented, to be exact. So now I have a bowl full of pinecones on my dining room table, and a rustic pile of tree branches nailed to my kitchen wall.  Bonus irony points: I can't even smell them anymore. What the hell?

*****

I almost never abandon a book once I start to read it, but I made an exception this week.  I started reading another book of ostensibly hilarious life observations by another funny blogger, and I gave up on it almost immediately. I can only take a limited number of jokes about menopause and spandex and the various physical infirmities and indignities of middle-age before I lose my patience.  And that limited number is apparently zero, because I didn't even finish page 2.

I'm reading Ship of Fools instead.  I've read Ship of Fools at least a dozen times, and it holds up very well after 50 or so years (not 50 years of me reading it because that would have made me quite the prodigy, but 50+ years since its publication.)  If you happen to be feeling a little too warmhearted and optimistic about humanity, then just read a few chapters of Ship of Fools; you'll get over it pretty quickly.  Katherine Anne Porter is just like Jane Austen; that is, if Jane Austen had hated everyone and everything.  But oddly enough, a few pages of Ship of Fools puts me in a much better frame of mind, because I don't know anyone as awful as the passengers of the Vera.

*****
If you'd prefer to get your jaundiced view of mankind in a movie theater, rather than a book, then consider seeing The Girl on the Train.  I'd complain about the way the movie portrays women (crazy/desperate/pathetic OR manipulative/sneaky/promiscuous) but the men come off so much worse (controlling/violent/predatory) that it's almost a feminist manifesto on film.   Anyway, it was very entertaining, and because I never (and I mean NEVER) watch or read psychological thrillers, I didn't really see the ending coming, although I suppose it should have been obvious even to an idiot.  Emily Blunt is such a marvelous actress that she makes even a sort of predictable (for smarter people than me) suspense thriller a great movie experience.

*****

So I never buy things like scented pinecones and grapevine wreaths, and I never go to mystery/thriller movies, and I never stop reading a book until I finish it, and I never vote early.  Except in this very unusual and extraordinary November, when I apparently do all of the above.  Who knows what I'll do next.  Maybe I'll join Pinterest.  Maybe I'll go to Disney World every year, and post a "days 'til my next Disney trip" countdown on Facebook.  Maybe I'll run a marathon.  Apparently, anything is possible.

Locker room confidential

Well, that was super fun.

The black, bleak, near-despair mood that dragged me toward the abyss last week is not a new thing for me.  In the past, these episodes were sporadic, and few enough and far-between enough that I could just live with them.  They were like pests, like annoying little mosquitoes that buzzed around every so often.  The bites were unpleasant, but the itching was only temporary.

Last week, however, was a whole 'nother thing.  It was darker and bleaker and lasted much longer than usual, until I thought that I'd fallen into a pit that would become my new home.  And then all of a sudden, it was over, and I'm pretty much myself again.

*****

So enough of that.

I can't vote for him, but now I quote him all the time.  I'm as appalled (though not surprised) as anyone about Donald Trump's now-infamous locker-room bus ride, but "move on (blank) like a bitch" has become my favorite new expression.  If there's a hamper full of dirty clothes, then I'm going to move on that laundry like a bitch.  If it's Monday morning and there's work piled up on my desk...well, you get the idea.  I can go all day.

*****

I'd like a word with the Washington Nationals third-base coach.

*****

I just finished reading Domenica Ruta's With or Without You.  I love to read memoirs.  I'm not sure why, but other people's addictions or depression or suffering of any sort are riveting, even glamorous.  I couldn't write a memoir.  First of all, I'd lose interest in the subject no more than three paragraphs in; secondly, I just don't want to share so much of myself.  I like to think that this is because I don't want to hurt anyone, and I suppose that's partly true.  Really, though, I just don't have the nerve.  There are so many things that I just don't want to talk about, ever, and those are exactly the things that would make for interesting literary suffering.  I guess I'll stick to blogging.

*****

Seriously.  You waved Jayson Werth home?  He can't run worth a damn to begin with.  Unless the ball was actually already across the fence, then he should have gotten an emphatic stop sign.

*****

I don't blame Werth, though.  He moved on home plate like a bitch, but he just couldn't get there.

*****

I TOLD you I could go all day.

*****

So, for example, if I were to write a memoir, I might want to include something that happened when I was ten. At that time, I lived with my family on a narrow one-sided street of brick rowhouses in Philadelphia.  One-sided, because the street was a cross street between two steep hills, and just below our street was a sheer drop to a parking lot on Terrace Street, a block away.  Our side of the street was separated from the drop to the parking lot by a high brick wall that ran almost the length of the other side of the street.  My aunts' and uncles' (yes, more than one aunt and uncle) house was the only house on that side of the street, at the end of the wall. The Polish Falcons (look it up) was at the other end of the brick wall.

One summer evening, I was at the Falcons' end of the street, hitting a tennis ball against the wall.  I was the only child in the neighborhood who liked tennis, and so I often played by myself, just lobbing the ball back and forth against the wall.  When a car would turn onto the street (a rare occurrence), I'd step on to the sidewalk to allow it to pass.  The driver of this particular car said "excuse me, Miss?" and when I turned around, he waved me toward him.  I was ten, and it wouldn't have occurred to me not to obey a grown-up's summons.  "Can you tell me where (a street, I think, but I can't remember.  I also can't remember what color or make the car was.  See?  I'd be terrible at memoir-writing) is?"

The man was naked from the waist down, and he began to masturbate as soon as he noticed my shocked reaction to the first adult penis I'd ever seen.  I looked away, and saw that my parents and my aunts and uncles were outside on the porch (theirs was the only house on the street that had a porch, and most of the neighborhood congregated there on nice summer nights), and all of them were looking down the street to see who I was talking to.  The man noticed them too; he threw the car into reverse and sped away, just as my parents and aunts and uncles started running down the street toward me.

I don't remember anyone asking me exactly what happened.  They all seemed to know.  They hustled me up the street to the house, and a few minutes later, a uniformed police officer was asking me what the man looked like, and what kind of shirt he was wearing, and what did I remember about his car.  No one asked me what he did or said; just as well, as I'd have been far too embarrassed to describe or repeat what I'd seen and heard.  I never saw the man again, and I never heard another word about it.

*****

Or, maybe I'd write about something else, much more frightening, that happened to me when I was 12.  I was walking home from somewhere (the library, maybe) with my sister, who was 11 at the time.  We heard running footsteps behind us, and although I heard running footsteps behind me and in front of me all the time, I was scared this time.  And rightly so, as it turned out.  A young man, or maybe just a teenage boy, grabbed me from behind, thrust his hand between my legs, and roughly fondled me.  "Hey," he whispered, licking my ear.  "Can I fuck you?"

I'd heard that word before, but not used as a verb.  After a minute (probably less), he shoved me away and ran off, almost as fast as he'd grabbed me in the first place. Maybe he hadn't noticed my sister at first, and then all of a sudden realized that he couldn't stop her from running for help while he raped me.  Or maybe he hadn't planned to rape me at all; maybe he just liked to scare little girls.  My sister and I ran home.  I didn't cry, and she didn't ask me if I was OK.  Not because she didn't care, but because neither of us were prepared to accept that what had just happened to me, and what she had just seen and heard, was actually real.  We never told anyone about it, and we have never spoken about it.

*****

Or maybe I'd write about the time when someone actually did rape me.  In the middle of the night.  In my own apartment, where I'd been asleep at 3 in the morning, but then a man whom I'd never seen before was sitting on top of me, and one of his dirty hands was covering my mouth, and the other one was holding a knife that he'd taken out of my kitchen drawer against my throat, and then I wasn't asleep anymore.  This time, I had to tell lots of people what happened, in detail and at considerable length.  The man was arrested two days later.  He confessed, and so I didn't have to testify at a trial.  I went to his sentencing hearing and watched the bailiffs take him away in shackles to serve his 25-year prison sentence.  He has about 6 more years to go.  Time flies.

*****

These things all happened, but long ago.  If I were to tell about them now, how would people react?  Would my timing be considered suspicious?  Would people ask me why I'm coming out of the woodwork now, all of a sudden, after all this time?  Or would these stories only be suspect if the man who exposed himself to a child, or the one who grabbed a young girl and molested her on the street, or the one who violently raped a woman in the middle of the night, were later to become famous?  Would I be a victim still, or just another opportunist, another delusional woman seeking attention at the expense of a powerful man?

*****

I wonder sometimes if the depressive episodes (I wish I could find some memoir-like way to make them evocative or even funny) have anything to do with the sexual assaults.  Who knows?  I think that genetics are just as much to blame.  Meanwhile, I'll still joke about Donald Trump, but I believe every single one of the women who say that he touched them or grabbed them or kissed them when they didn't want to be kissed.  And absent a brilliant write-in idea, I'll probably end up reluctantly voting for Hillary Clinton, but I also believe all of the women who say that Bill Clinton raped them, or molested them, or harassed them.  They don't have to explain why they're telling their stories now, after all this time.  They don't need a reason.  If something happened to you, you can talk about it or not.  You can keep it to yourself if you want to. You can call the cops; or you can write about it in a beautiful, moving, hilarious memoir; or you can tell one friend and make her swear not to tell anyone; or you can call up CNN and get a fucking camera crew in your living room.  You can do any or all of that the next day, or a week later, or 18 years and some odd months later.

*****
It's Sunday night, and the usual post-dinner clean-up awaits.  I'm about to move on that kitchen like a bitch.

If you can't say anything nice, then get a blog

I can't do anything now.  I can't write, I can't think, I can't sleep.  Those are comma splices, and I just don't care.  What am I supposed to do, replace them with semicolons?  Add conjunctions?  No.  You're smart people, all three of you who read this drivel.  You'll figure out what I mean; and you'll know, of course, that I know that a comma splice is bad, because I just called myself out.  

*****

I have to cook dinner soon.  It feels like I just cleaned up from lunch.  I'll reread this post.  Maybe it will prompt an attitude adjustment.  

Didn't work.  I still don't want to cook.  I don't even want to eat. 

*****

This is temporary, right?  It always passes.  Today, it doesn't feel like it's going to pass. 

*****

I have a house full of people, just when I need a house full of no people, so that I can have five minutes of silence and privacy, so that I can just cry and get the hell over this.  Sometimes it's nice to have the house where all of the kids gather.  Today is not one of those days.  

*****

Well, that was a ray of sunshine, wasn't it?  Stop by again; I can tell you all about my second bout with PPD.  At least my punctuation is improving. 

Witness for the prosecution

As soon as someone says "Not to be rude, but...," then what follows is guaranteed to be rude. Likewise, someone who says "This is going to sound terrible, but..." is almost certainly going to say something terrible.

Newsflash to the European lady in the room full of Americans, who complained at length about Americans who don't travel, don't speak languages other than English, and don't seem interested in cultures other than their own: The "not to be rude" qualifier was wasted on us, because we still think you're rude.  Bonus irony points, considering the setting, which was a lecture on Anne Frank's legacy and the relevance of Holocaust literature in the world today, thus begging the question: "Holocaust--Did that happen THERE or HERE?"

*****

I was sitting in front of this computer on Sunday, thinking at least I’m typing something.  At least I opened the file.  I seem to have a little time on Sunday afternoons, so that will be writing time.  And maybe sometimes I can write for a little while on a weeknight, or on Saturday, though Saturdays are busy. 

Right now, I don’t know what to do next with the novel that I've been pounding away at for almost a year.  I think that what I’ll do now is take all of the parts that I like best, and then resave them as something else.  Another novel maybe, or a story.  I feel sure that I shouldn’t give up, so I won’t, but it’s hard to keep going.  I guess it’s supposed to be hard.  If it wasn’t hard,  as Jimmy Dugan said, then everyone would do it. 

*****

I have mentioned before that I hate to abandon a book that I'm reading, even if I've lost interest in it.  And surprisingly enough, Rebecca West is the culprit again.  I'm reading A Train of Powder, which is, or I thought it was, a first-hand account of the Nuremberg Trials.  Actually, only the first chapter covered Nuremberg, and I was all agog as I read that chapter.  The part I'm reading now, though, covers a famous murder case of the early 1950s, and the exhaustive forensic detail is causing my eyes to glaze over.  I have no interest in true-crime stories, even as told by Rebecca West.

In a far more gripping earlier chapter, about the postwar Allied occupation of Germany and the Berlin Airlift, West sympathizes with the women of Berlin, many of whom were widowed or left behind by husbands who were still missing (or imprisoned in Russia.)   She describes the lot of women who are compelled to work all day in an office or a factory; and then to come home to clean, cook, and care for children, as "penal servitude."  Absurd hyperbole, I thought for a moment, or the hothouse flower perspective of the upper middle class daughter of intellectuals and artists. Then I thought about it a little more.

The women West was writing about were living and working in a war-ravaged city, with bombed-out streets and buildings, frequent blackouts, limited and erratic water supply, and shortages of everything, including food, clothing, and medicine.  They didn't have cars; and buses and trains, when they were running, were dirty and overcrowded.  Even walking the often long distances to their workplaces was made hard by bomb-damaged roadways and worn-out shoes.  Home wasn't much better.   Even under the best of circumstances, cleaning and cooking and caring for children can be hard. If you're trying to cook with practically no food or fuel, however; or you're trying to clean a partially bombed-out hovel without water or cleaning materials, then it's brutally hard.

But who cares, right? They got what they deserved, those Germans.  They started a war, causing untold suffering for millions of victims, so why should anyone worry about their suffering?  Rebecca West hated Soviet Communism, unlike many other writers and artists at the time, and she was often criticized for having what was perceived as a reactionary outlook.  I'm sure that this relatively sympathetic portrayal of postwar Germans didn't earn her any additional fans among the intelligentsia.  One part of me thinks that maybe they would have had a point.  As I read West's description of the brave and pragmatic German women of Berlin, I wondered why on earth her sympathy didn't seem to extend to the Germans' many victims, including the Soviets, who suffered badly at the hands of the Nazis.  

*****
Rebecca West never ceases to surprise me.  Just when I thought that I really couldn't stand to read one more word about the corpse of Mr. Setty, and whether or not Mr. Hume had murdered and dismembered him, the chapter opens way up and becomes an examination of life and death and truth and falsehood, and I'm all agog again.  Now we're back at Nuremberg. The Germans, apparently, were upset to learn that the Nuremberg defendants would be jailed for the duration of the trial.  Their judicial system, pre- and post-Nazi, of course, treated criminal defendants as truly innocent until convicted, which meant that they lived at home and enjoyed total freedom during their trials.  More irony. Germans, whose country had just emerged from the most lawless period of its history and all of European history, were now so attached to the rule of law and the rights of the accused, that they seemed more civilized than the Americans and English and French and Russians who sat in judgement.

*****

From Rebecca West, another note to the European lady: Europeans are extremely civilized, except when they're not--exactly like Americans.  Exactly like every other group of people, ever.

Monday Night Football

I met some football players last week.  Real football players, whose names would impress you if you were even a casual fan, especially of the Washington Redskins.  My small company's CEO is a huge fan, and a member of the Redskins Charitable Foundation's board. Knowing that my husband is also a huge fan, he offered me tickets to the annual luncheon.  We ate lunch with Josh Norman (look him up) and my husband took selfies with some of his favorite players.

The players were, surprisingly, rather nice, normal people.  Mr. Norman was a delight, and Kirk Cousins, Ryan Kerrigan, and Chris Baker were also very nice.  I used to think that professional athletes in general, and football players in particular, must all be arrogant, standoffish, and conceited.  The Redskins players, however, were very approachable and friendly.  They chatted with fans, patiently posed for selfies, and signed memorabilia and programs for everyone who asked.

(True story: My 11-year-old son, looking at the program, asked me "Why does it say 'lunch-ee-awn'?" "It's 'luncheon'," I said. "And you need to read more."
"What?" he said scornfully.  "That's not a word."
"It is a word," I said. "And not a 50-cent word, either.  Not an SAT word.  Just a common, frequently used word."
"Oh," he said.  "Hmm.")

*****

A few days ago, Lena Dunham sparked a huge controversy (by "huge controversy" I mean a bunch of people spluttering in outrage on Twitter) when she complained to Amy Schumer that Odell Beckham had ignored her at the Met Gala.  (And I really can't believe that I just wrote that sentence. What is this, Gawker?  Sheesh.) Apparently, Ms. Dunham felt that Mr. Beckham had looked at her, deemed her unattractive, and then dismissed her accordingly.

There's a lot going on here.  Mr. Beckham was, according to the many reports, scrolling through his phone during dinner, which on its own is just simple bad manners.  But Ms. Dunham also claimed that the phone preoccupation was the result of Mr. Beckham's lack of sexual interest in a woman who isn't conventionally attractive. (Note: I think she's rather pretty, but I'm in the minority on this, I suppose.)

If the complaint is actually that this man wasn't attracted to this woman, then that would mean that men who prefer conventionally beautiful women (like most men) are somehow to be faulted for that.  According to SJWs who are all over this case, however, the real issue is that Lena Dunham, being a white woman, feels somehow entitled to sexual attention from black men, no matter who they are.

What if neither interpretation is correct?  What if one particular person, Odell Beckham, just didn't feel like talking to one other particular person, Lena Dunham, at a particular moment?  OR, what if  one particular person, Lena Dunham, misinterpreted polite indifference from another particular person, Odell Beckham (phone-scrolling at the dinner table notwithstanding) as a negative judgement regarding her appearance, because she was feeling unattractive on that particular day?

*****
It's Monday night, and I'm watching the Redskins play the Steelers.   I've actually met some of the players, and now I feel invested.  I'm rooting for Josh Norman, Kirk Cousins, Ryan Kerrigan, and Chris Baker in particular. They wouldn't remember me, of course, but I remember them, and now I can't see them as White Men or Black Men or NFL Players or representatives of any other identity group.  They're people who I met and smiled at and shook hands with and ate lunch with. No two are alike. HTTR.

Aht for Aht's Sake

I'm not very good at mobile blogging,  so I don't do it very often. Chances are,  if you're reading something here,  I wrote it on a proper keyboard, on a real computer.

Another thing that I'm not especially good at is travel writing. Every time I leave town,   I start to write a travelogue, which I never finish. I think it was Flannery O'Connor who said that a talent for writing is not necessarily a talent for writing anything. Or maybe it wasn't Flannery O'Connor. Maybe it was everyone who ever picked up a pen or sat in front of a keyboard. Anyway, it's completely true.

So I'm no good at mobile blogging and I'm no good at travel writing, and I've also been in one of my periodic funks. I prayed for help with that last part, and then we spent part of our last day in Boston at the amazing Museum of Fine Arts, and the funk has lifted. We're driving home tomorrow. For now, enjoy some art, for its own sake.

Tomayto, tomahto

Maybe I've mentioned this once or twice.  I have a mild but pronounced case of adult ADD, and sometimes I have a hard time focusing and maintaining concentration.  I don't remember how I learned about it, but I just started using a time management system called Pomodoro (named, apparently, after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer that the method's inventor once used to time work sessions.)  It's very simple.  You set the Pomodoro timer (now a mobile app, of course, although Luddites can still purchase the tomato timer, assuming that a Luddite would use a mass-produced plastic mechanical timer), and you stay focused on your task until the timer runs out, in 25 minutes.  You then take a five-minute break, during which you can do anything you want.  Each 25-minute work period is called, of course, a Pomodoro.

It works pretty well.  The idea is that you can do anything, even if it's boring or tedious, for 25 minutes, especially when you know that there's an end in sight.  Sometimes, I find that I'm motivated to work faster to see how much I can accomplish during a single Pomodoro.  Other times, it's enough to just get through the Pomodoro without checking my phone, looking for something in my bag, getting up to get water, or whatever else I often do to avoid doing what I should be doing.  Either way, I'm more productive.

*****

I'm not running a Pomodoro now, so whatever I'm writing here will likely be written in 30-second increments, interrupted by phone checks, the laundry timer, or what-the-hell-is-that-on-the-floor.  I guess I should use Pomodoro for personal writing, too.  I'm still working on my novel, and it's not going well.  The less said the better.  Except that I'm this close to just throwing the whole thing away and starting over, but I'm determined to continue.  For what purpose and to what end, I have no idea.  Maybe I just want to finish what I started, but that's what sent me back to school after an over 20-year absence, and look how that turned out.

Well, it actually turned out pretty well, in that I graduated, and summa cum laude, but it was an ordeal that I wouldn't care to repeat. And yet, I appear to be doing exactly that.

*****

I can't decide which is less fun: writing the book that I'm writing, or reading the one that I'm reading.  I'm still slogging through the book about the Rothschilds, which has become considerably less interesting, but I feel compelled to finish it.  Between the in-progress writing and the in-progress reading, the party never stops.  It's like Purgatory for English majors.

*****

Another summer swim season is over, and the now-familiar paradox is in effect: That which I couldn't wait to come to an end has actually come to an end, and I miss it.  I love summer swim team, but it's overwhelming, especially if you have a full-time real job in addition to your 10 or so swim team mom jobs.  But it's so much fun, and I'm sad almost the minute it ends.  Except the 6:30 Saturday morning part, of course.  I won't miss that part at all.

*****

With summer swimming over,  the end of summer itself is, sadly, not far behind.  The weather has been shifting slightly.  The temperature has dropped just a little each day for the past few days, and the humidity, dense and heavy last week, has evaporated.  It's almost dark now, at 8:20 PM.  It's still quite warm and pleasant, but it's a September kind of warm and pleasant.

*****

I still haven't used my Pomodoro timer for personal writing.  And maybe that's why this post has taken three days to finish.  But the novel took a very slight turn for the better today, even without the aid of a tomato.  I'll take it, for now.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic: The Holy Roman Empire--Neither holy, nor Roman. Discuss.

I have reached a novel-writing impasse.  I had to skip a chapter and start an altogether-new one, completely out of sequence, because I just can't figure out what's supposed to happen at the end of the last one. I don't know what that means.  I'm going to just keep writing stuff.  It'll turn itself into a novel.  That happens all the time, I'm sure.

*****
Sometimes, you think you know who's calling, so you answer the phone with a funny greeting.  And sometimes, the person on the other end is not the person you expected.  And then you feel silly.

That was just a general observation about something that happens sometimes.  Not a dear-diary entry about something that I actually DID.

*****

Random questions, addressed to no one in particular, and certainly not to anyone in my household:

1. Is the concrete floor of the not air conditioned and not especially clean garage the best place to store a watermelon?  Or any other food?

2. When you cook something with a cookie sheet, should you then clean the cookie sheet, or return it quietly to the oven, crumby and just slightly crusty?

3. If you have an extra $5,000 hanging around, because the Brinks truck is always backing up to your house and dropping stacks of cash in the driveway, is expensive jewelry not just as good an investment as a 36-year-old Mercedes convertible with a rust spot on the hood?

Purely rhetorical questions.

*****

But even rhetorical questions can be answered, right? In a purely rhetorical sense?

1. No.  Come on.
2. What the hell? I mean, COME ON.
3. Come on, man.

*****

I'm reading a book about the Rothschilds.  As much as I love history, I am terrible on details, especially details about European dynasties, and ESPECIALLY Hanoverian and Saxonian and Prussian kings and princes and electors and Thanes of Cawdor and whoever else ruled those itty-bitty Germanic roosts.  And there were a lot of Rothschilds, too, who were fond of a few family names that were handed down from generation to generation.  I'm going to keep reading, because it's interesting, but don't ask me details about which Rothschild advised which Wilhelm of Fill-in-the-Blank German hamlet, because it's all a little fuzzy.

*****
Sometimes, if you just stand in front of your computer and write about whatever pops into your mind, you'll clear all of the mental cobwebs,  and the resulting moment of crystal clarity will lead you to the solution to your writing problem.  And sometimes, you'll just end up with a pile of old cars, overripe fruit, inadvertent reverse prank calls, and Hohenzollerns.

Fireflies

I said that I'd write something this week, so here I am.  It's a so-much-to-do week, the kind that I can only manage with the aid of a list. And I know that the only way that I'll write anything is to make writing a to-do list item, that I can cross off my list with great satisfaction.  So there's the list, and here I am.

The fireflies are back. I walked through my neighborhood tonight, just a short time before twilight.  The sun had gone almost all the way down, and so it was hot, but not blazing hot without the sun overhead.  The air was heavy and close and humid, and there wasn't so much as a slight breeze.  I could hear everything; cars and lawnmowers and crickets and children shouting about fireflies.  We called them lightning bugs where I grew up, but here, they are fireflies.  The fireflies had disappeared for some time, or so I thought.  For 15 years, give or take, I didn't see any fireflies, nor did I hear a word about them.  Then suddenly, 10 years or so ago, they were back.  Had they really disappeared, or did I just not notice them until I had a five-year-old boy?  The five-year-old boy is 15 now, worried about his upcoming lifeguard's exam, and asking when he can get his learner's permit.  He probably won't notice a firefly again until he has his own five-year-old boy.

*****
So today was even hotter and more densely humid than yesterday.  After an interminably long evening swim meet, I made an ill-advised decision to allow a sleepover tonight.  Who knows what I was thinking.

No, really.  That was a question.  Who knows what I was thinking? Anyone? Anyone?

Fortunately, the sleepover includes only this boy, who is such a frequent guest that he might as well live here.  No special guest accommodations or preparations are necessary.  The boys are now cozily parked on the L-shaped sectional couch, which is covered with sheets and stacked with as many pillows and blankets as they can fit while still leaving room for their 11-year-old bodies.  Multiple swims today have left them tired enough to thwart their plans to stay up late to watch Batman vs. Superman.  I'm pretty sure that they'll be asleep no more than an hour into the movie.

*****

The boys fell asleep, as expected, about an hour into the movie, but then my son woke me up at 2:30, complaining that he couldn't sleep.  When I got up with him to see if it was too hot or cold or if any other adjustments to the sleeping arrangements would help, I found that the porch light shines so brightly in the family room that it was all but daylight in there.  A person with reasonably sharp vision could easily have read a book.  With the light out, he fell asleep again in no time. I left for work this morning as a sleeping pile of boys were just beginning to stir.  School is out, but morning swim practice is on.

*****

I'm married to a police officer, so it's been a difficult week.  Awakened by light, literal or figurative, I often wish that I could just go back to sleep.  Friends and others, well-meaning or otherwise, ask me how my husband is, what he's thinking, what I'm thinking.  What do I say? Black lives matter? Blue lives matter? All lives matter, during a week when it feels as if life itself is disposable, isn't valued, doesn't matter?  I don't know.  I just know that it's summer, and for only a short time.  Swim meets, and sleepovers, and fireflies, and movie-watching on the couch--who knows how much longer it will all last?

Boys of summer

I have a bunch of half-finished drafts about nothing in particular; whatever I happened to be thinking at the moment  ended up in writing, only to be abandoned in draft limbo.  Eventually, I'll finish and publish some of those half-finished posts, but the rest of them will languish, never to see the light of day.  Those that I actually publish will mystify my reading public, because by the time I get around to finishing them, they'll no longer be relevant.

Anyway, it's been several weeks since I've posted anything, and I just felt like writing something other than my novel, which I'm still working on.  Since I can only work on it for a few minutes a day, it's going very slowly, but I haven't lost interest yet, so I suppose that's a sign that I should continue.  I have another fiction idea, but it will have to wait, likely for a long time.  I can read two books at once, but I can only write one at a time.

This was one of the weirdest springs ever, with March-like weather right through the third week of May.  And then, just like that, it was summer.  Saturday of Memorial Day weekend showed up bright and sunny and hot, and the pool opened, and everyone emerged from hibernation all at once.  It's really summer now, and it feels like it's always been summer and it always will be.

*****
When I run out of things to write about, I can always write about these two boys:

What up, ladies? 

Some backtracking is necessary.  A few days ago, my husband impulsively bought the car that's partially pictured here.  It's a 1980 Mercedes 450 SL convertible.  Apparently, money does grow on trees, and the mid-life crisis-driven purchase of red convertibles is a common real-world occurrence, and not just  a sitcom plot.  It could be worse, I suppose.  And I have to admit that the car is beautiful, even though I'm afraid to drive it.

But back to the boys.  They are my 11-year-old son, in the driver's seat, and his best friend.  They have been friends since they were four, and they never tire of each other, even during the summer, when most days they meet at 8:30 AM for swim practice, and then spend the entire day together, until well into the evening, and then  pick up where they left off at the next morning's swim practice.  When they're not driving without a license, they're making a commercial for a product they invented ("But it's a scam, Mom.  Because our product is terrible.") or making goalie pads out of foam rubber and cardboard, or waterskiing on land (boy on rollerblades attached via bungee cord to boy driving motorized electric scooter) or debating the relative merits of the Beastie Boys' discography.  I have little to offer that is as entertaining as a conversation between these two.  And listening to them makes me feel like it's always been summer, and it always will be.

Curiouser and curiouser

Do you get credit for courage if you bravely approach and walk past what you believe to be a snake, which then turns out not to be a snake?  I was walking this evening, and saw what looked very much like a snake, coiled up in the middle of the road.  I walked toward it, intending to pass it as widely as possible, but to pass it nonetheless. It turned out to be a pair of baseball or golf gloves.  Don't ask me why they looked like a snake; just trust me that they did.  Had they been a snake, they would have bitten me.

*****

Strange things happen sometimes.  Today, a coworker who almost always brings Starbucks to work was instead drinking a homemade smoothie from a reusable travel tumbler.  Another coworker, who usually drinks a homemade smoothie every morning, was instead drinking takeout coffee from Dunkin' Donuts.  The first coworker almost always wears pants; today, she wore a skirt.  I almost always wear skirts; today, I wore pants.  What kind of through-the-looking-glass rabbit hole did I fall into, I wondered.  The rest of the day proceeded without incident, however.  Until the snake.

*****

It's May 18; Memorial Day is just over a week away.  So right now, I'm sitting on my couch wearing a sweater, as a fire crackles away in the fireplace.  The weeks of cold and rain have affected more than my mood; I feel like I have lost track of time and seasons, and am permanently anchored in some London-like place where it's always cool and misty and gray.   People do things that are just slightly off, just slightly out of character.  Things look like other things.  I boldly approach a snake and walk right past it.  Yes, it was an imaginary snake, but I didn't know that at the time.

Cutting edge technology and young Luddites

Two 11-year-old boys are sitting on my family room floor; they have a card game spread out on a small, round, low-to-the-floor Japanese style wooden table.  The Capitals are playing, but the boys aren't paying attention to the game, although one of them is an avid fan—he’s even wearing an Ovechkin jersey.  The boys, best friends since they were 4, are convinced that something weird is happening, because they keep rolling dice in combinations that add up to six, or drawing combinations of cards that also add up to six.  I’m tempted to ask them if they know that President Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln and President Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, but that might be too much for them.  The Penguins just scored; cards and dice are forgotten for now.

*****

I can’t decide if I should buy a new phone or not.  My phone is fine.  But I want a new one.  I keep shopping for new phones; I’ve even had phones in my shopping cart, but I never actually complete the transaction.  Other things we need, I think; other things to spend money on.  Still, the phone keeps calling me (see what I did there?) 

*****

While I shop for the latest and presumably greatest mobile device, I spend Saturday evening with two young boys who love everything old.  They went through a typewriter phase a few years ago; now, they use giant Clinton-era camcorders to document their adventures.  Like Snapchat for the Stone Age. They disagree on which is the best Beastie Boys song; my son's friend favors "Fight for Your Right," while my son holds out for "Paul Revere."  Both of the boys agree that "Sabotage" is far inferior to their favorites.  "I liked their old stuff so much better," my son says.  

Now, during the intermission between the second and third periods of the game, the boys are watching old Harlem Globetrotters videos on an iPod, but they need a larger screen to do Meadowlark Lemon justice.  They want to borrow this computer, so that's all for now.  Let's go Caps.