Author: ellen

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Reading wherever whenever however

(Since November, 2016, I have written few blog posts. The world is too much with me and it’s moving too fast. But I’m trying to find the quiet space.)

I got a smart phone, about a year and a half ago–yes, I was one of the last people on the planet not to have one–for one major reason: group text conversations with my daughters. As anticipated, in addition to that fun capability, I’ve found some things about it that I like. Also some I find annoying. But one of my favorite things was totally unexpected: I like to read books on my phone.

(We’re safely past the screen versus paper moment, right? Because I’m firmly on the side of both. Of course I am grateful for the screen option when I’m planning vacations and appreciate the liberty of not worrying about packing the books I want to read plus the backups in case any of those disappoint. And there are books, like poetry, I’d never choose to read onscreen. There are books I know I’d like to pass along to a friend or a daughter after I’m finished. And there are the ones I simply want to own, to put on my shelf. Maybe I won’t read them again, but I want to live among them. You know what I mean.)

Most of the time, whatever I’m reading on the page, I’ve also got something else on the screen. And by screen, I never mean Kindle, which lost me when, in an upgrade, ads replaced those silly drawings of authors where Emily Dickinson looked like someone in my high school yearbook. So, the phone.

And I’m not talking about quick little reads either. I’ve read The Forsyte Saga, all three books and two “interludes.” I’ve read Grant, the Ron Chernow tome I could barely lift in its 1104-page form. What’s best is that wherever I am with a few minutes to spare, my phone is probably there, too. Waiting in the dentist’s office, waiting for a friend to arrive for lunch, waiting while the prescription’s being filled, while the car’s being inspected. All those would-have-been-annoying moments suddenly become a chance to sneak in one more page or two. It’s almost like reading just one more chapter under the covers with a flashlight.

Maybe it’s almost the same thing, the secret moment—physically comfortable, intimate. The palm of your hand. The public setting and the stolen private moment when no matter who else is around, it’s just you and the story.

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Why are we angry at Susan Collins?

 

What’s with all the anger at Susan Collins? She probably won’t vote with the Democrats on Brett Kavanaugh nomination and for that she’s being maligned. I don’t get the anger. or the expectations: She’s. A. Republican.

Yes, she’s a woman and women have an extra stake in this. But she is a Republican and, as far as I know, she’s been a Republican all her public life, even if I and others don’t understand it. Why do we expect that a Republican senator would not vote like one just because she’s a woman? We don’t expect that from Ben Sasse or Bob Corker or other Republican men in the Senate who, from time to time show signs of independent thought. Republican women vote Republican, whether on the Senate floor or in the privacy of their local voting booth.  I personally wish they wouldn’t, but I also wish women didn’t have to get castigated for doing what they want to do.

(For all the people offering to donate to a challenger when Collins is up for re-election, how about sending a little of that love and money to Claire McCaskill, an actual Democrat who votes with the Democrats and is fighting for her political life in Missouri. And don’t forget to support Kamala Harris when she’s up again, after the disrespect she’s taking in the name of helping us know more about this man who’s been offered a lifetime appointment to the country’s highest court.)

And somehow it feels linked to yesterday’s U.S. Open women’s final, in which an unprecedented series of calls diminished a beautiful win by Naomi Osaka and was, unbelievably, business as usual for the tennis world’s treatment of one of their finest. Would this in your wildest dreams have happened in a men’s final?

 

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Sunday morning: starting the day, getting the news

It’s been my observation that, no matter how adventurous and flexible we are for lunch or dinner, most of us start our day with a habitual breakfast, a daily go-to. Or maybe one of two or three options. In fact, if you’re like me, you begin with a specific set of ritual activities: exercise (ok, not so much me), eat breakfast, check email, take in the morning news in our preferred format. And on a Sunday morning, when nothing much is planned, having two newspapers waiting for me feels luxurious.

Of course, there’s ritual to the reading, too, beginning with the New York Times’ Sunday Styles, where some of the day’s most profound questions are considered. Some, in fact,  have stayed with me over years. There was a correction, once, to a wedding announcement in which the bride’s alma mater, contrary to what had been printed, either was or was not Boston University. The memorable part, though was the fact that the correction appeared, as I remember, some 15 or 20 years after the original announcement. What could the backstory possibly have been?  I thought the Times was remiss in not addressing what they must have known would be the question in everyone’s minds.

What is sure to remain in my mind from this Sunday and last are examples of the kindnesses and cruelties, macro and micro, that we visit upon one another. Last week’s Vows (for non-devotees of Styles, the Vows feature is a lengthy item focused on a specific wedding) was a perfectly decent-sounding couple, looking happy and appropriately celebratory. In the tiny sidebar that lists date, place, etc., was the fact that only one parent of the couple attended: the bride’s father had died some years before and the groom’s parents, upset that he was marrying out of their religion, chose not to attend.

When I read that I thought, not only of that sadness and smallness, but of the huge joy of attending the recent weddings of a niece and of a nephew which were joyously so multi-ethnic that they may have spawned glass-breaking in some Latino weddings that followed.

One of my favorite parts of Styles is the Social Qs advice column by Philip Galanes, whose words are unfailingly kind and insightful. Sometimes snarky, sometimes funny, sometimes a little reprimanding, but always empathetic. This week there was a letter from a 16-year-old who had come out to her family and found them all to be totally supportive except for her younger brother. Reading it aloud to Dr. D., I cried a little over Galanes’ encouragement, wise counsel, and above all, kindness.

And today, the “Modern Love” essay was a remarkable study in humanity in the face of inhumanity. The author,  a young man from Yemen who was held in Guantanamo for nearly half his life, learned, from fellow prisoners and one fence-breaching iguana, how to be a loving person. Now free and living in Serbia, he hoped that what he had learned would allow him to be a respectful, considerate, generous husband and father at some point in his life. To read about someone who had his life derailed in such an extreme way who could still be committed to being a loving person….well, what other section of the paper could have had more important news today?

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Around the table

So I’ve been thinking about Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s non-meal at The Red Hen, and I’m not completely sure what I think except that thinking about it feels important.

On the one hand, of course, I appreciate The Red Hen’s staff’s discomfort around serving—“serving !”—someone who enables the current administration’s actions and the owner’s decision to honor that. On the other hand, Red Hen and Robert DiNiro and Samantha Bee, et al., what happened to going high even when they go lower than we ever could have imagined?

I am always ready to agree with Maxine Waters and I hear her exhortation to confront the aiders and abetters of the administration’s policies. But what does it mean in the current reality to confront and be an upstander? Is it possible to resist and not tear our civic fabric any further than it’s already been?  Even the word “resist,” with its echoes of capital R Resistance in the face of mid-twentieth century fascism throws down the challenge to not stand silent or look away in the presence of injustice.

What seems ironic in this incident is that it happened around a meal.  Around food,  one of the basic human needs, our most primal sign of recognizing another person’s need and offering to fill it.  Of course, Sanders speaks on behalf of denying the needs of others. She may have missed a meal, but she and those she enables won’t go hungry. They won’t be without shelter or other basic needs or even less basic creature comforts. It feels like a duty to let them know this is not all right with us. And each of us has to find our own way to confront, to  resist, to “upstand.”

But here is another thing—in the face of the dinner denied and the I don’t care jacket and the porn star and the lawyers and the indictments and the ankle bracelets and all the other distractions there is still governing going on that we and the media must not look away from.

So my take-away from the dinner story (my takeout?) is commitment to be an upstander at every opportunity. But also to focus not on each day’s ridiculous rabbit pulled from the hat  but on the real story of which road we’re being taken down.

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Finding comfort in the words of others

I have loved writing a blog….and I may again. But it’s been a long time with a lot of beginnings and no finished piece. I think you understand….about the world moving head-spinningly fast and, with it, our understanding of our new reality.

I find it increasingly painful to see our country move each day farther from what I have thought of as its best vision of itself. I’ve been trying to find a way to live now without feeling constant despair. I am grateful for the life I have and the people I love who are part of it., and I would like to stay in touch with those who have read my blog in the past and responded to it. So until I can bear to think my own thoughts here again, I offer the thoughts of others that give me comfort, beginning here with a poem by W. S. Merwin.

To Paula In Late Spring

Let me imagine that we will come again

when we want to and it will be spring

we will be no older than we ever were

the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud

through which the morning slowly comes to itself

and the ancient defenses against the dead

will be done with and left  to the dead at last

the light will be as it is now in the garden

that we have made here these years together

of our long evenings and astonishment

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In the eye of the beholder

A few years ago, while walking through the Radcliffe Quad, Dr. D. and I saw several piles of what seemed to be building or gardening supplies—earth and various kinds, sizes, and colors of gravel. We assumed a modest project was about to begin. But then we noticed a sign with the title and creator of what, it turned out, was an art installation.
It became a joke. We started noticing “art installations” everywhere—a quarry, a nursery, a building site. Who knew there was so much public art to be seen?
But then the joke turned a little. Why not an art installation? With all the hurrying and busyness, the thousand daily annoyances, worries, to-do’s, and random distractions, why not pause and take a different look at things we usually don’t give a second glance? A pile of rocks, their shapes random as a John Cage composition. A heap of dirt or a stack of bricks on their way to becoming a garden or a walkway. On their way to being transformed by effort and imagination.
I’ve seen art installations in parks that seem to tell us something like this—a field of feathers, a tiny doorway at the base of a tree, a group of sculpted ants picnicking beside the Muddy River—pointing to a new, unexpected way to see what surrounds us. Prodding g us not to let our assumptions or our busyness dull us to the possibility that there could be wonders to see around us.
And this, too–isn’t this what we do with all our heaped-up moments—try to shape them into something worth noticing?
Thank you, Radcliffe Quad and that art installation.


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The Occasional Recipe: 4th of July Lemonade Syrup

 I’ve definitely given this recipe before, but it seems the right moment to do it again.
As they say, when life—or in this case the political process—gives you lemons, well, you know.
Here we are, celebrating a moment that we look back on with a certain amount of reverence along with a large dose of 2017 reality.  We see clearly the compromises the FFs made as they stated boldly that all men are created equal, though we know they didn’t really mean all men any more than they meant those who held up the other half of the sky. A decent respect to the opinions of the current population requires that we balance gratitude for the wisdom our founders had with understanding of their flaws and of the flawed compromises they made.
For several years I’ve had the pleasure of being in a class at Temple Israel where we look at our ancient texts and create new midrash, or stories behind the stories, stories that tell other ways it might have happened. Always our teacher, Rabbi Elaine Zecher, tells us to start with two things—context and world view. That’s what we need to do with our Declaration of Independence, too, if we are to try to realize its most idealistic objectives.
Right now I am finding idealism hard to come by. I am dismayed and disheartened by what this country, or at least its leadership, is at this exact moment. But I’m going to try to make lemonade, and I offer you this recipe.
Lemonade Syrup
Combine and boil for 5 minutes:
            2 c. sugar
            1 c. water
            the rind of two lemons
                        I’ve always cut the rind into thin strips which I leave in the syrup, but
                        I’m also thinking zesting the rind would work, too, so I’m going to try that
                        next time.
Cool and add the juice of 6 lemons. Strain (optional) and refrigerate.
This recipe makes a pint of syrup. When you’re ready for a glass of lemonade, just add 2 Tbsp. of syrup to a glass of water.
Happy 4th of July. Gulp.


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Remembering the Ladies

We were in a hotel room in Austin when James Comey was testifying before Congress. We sat, mesmerized, but then realized our time in Austin was short and there would be coverage of Comey that we could catch up with later. So we went to the LBJ Library to learn, to remember, and to mourn the America we thought we lived in.
Of course, Vietnam, a war without popular support and without apparent rationale at any level, throws its shadow over the Johnson presidency. But, even with that, what he accomplished! Civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, Medicaid, the Office of Economic Opportunity, creation of HUD, the NEA, PBS, and VISTA, automobile safety, vocational education, and on and on—it’s an impressive list centered around education, the arts, civil rights, and what we now talk about as economic inequality. Basically whatever’s getting dismantled now can probably be traced back to then.
But what particularly grabbed me was an exhibit of pictures of each of the  country’s First Ladies. These pictures—either painted or photographed—were at some level “official” portraits, hung in official places and at some level selected and sanctioned enough so we can assume this is how each woman chose, or was comfortable with, being portrayed. It’s a fascinating collection. Here are my snap-shot impressions of some of the often surprisingly revealing portraits:
Martha Washington—looks as if she, like George, was conscious that “history has its eyes on (them)”. She looks dignified and–despite clothes that look ornate to us–modest and unpretentious.
Dolley’s got some cleavage!
Early 19th century Elizabeth Monroe’s portrait looks slightly 17thcentury Dutch, but her burgher husband would have to have been prosperous: she’s wearing black and crimson with ermine-trimmed sleeves. Angelica Van Buren also looks fortunate as she stands beside a bust of her husband.
By contrast Anna Harrison looks awful (terrible hat–call Aretha stat!) but she had good cause: her husband died 31 days after his inauguration. It’s said he died of pneumonia after catching a cold while giving the country’s longest inaugural address on a frigid March day without a hat, gloves, or overcoat. Anna, by contrast, was ill at home in Ohio and didn’t plan on moving to Washington until spring. Hmm.
John Tyler, of whom I know little, looks slightly unkempt, but both of his wives (at separate times) look kind of triumphant to be having official portraits done.
Sarah Polk looks moody in her Italian-Renaissance-looking portrait, while both Margaret Taylor and husband Zachary look like they come from hardy stock.
Jane Pierce looks as unembellished as her name. But Harriet Lane, James Buchanan’s niece appears ready to make the most of her time in the limelight, with flowers trailing from her hair to her waist. Mary Lincoln is a visual spoiler alert, looking sad, distracted, and haunted.
Frances Cleveland looks elegant, light falling on her amply exposed skin. Helen Taft looks imperious. Grace Coolidge, who, it turns out, taught at a school for the deaf, is stunning, posed in a red dress beside a white dog, a long gauzy wrap floating from her arm past trees to a distant White House.
Mamie Eisenhower’s portrait shocked me with its little girl pinkness—pink dress, pink gloves, pink bag—and a vague smile beneath those tiny bangs.
Jackie, too, was a surprise. In her portrait painted nearly a decade after she left the White House this most fashion-savvy of first ladies is wearing a long high-necked thing that looks like maybe a dressing gown for Dame Edna.
Lady Bird is also a surprise, radiant and beautiful as she looks directly at the camera. Pat Nixon, as one might expect, looks pained, sitting in her blue lace dress her hair a little too blond. And Rosalynn Carter, whom I think of as capable and outspoken, looks as if she’s made herself smaller for the picture with arms at her sides, hands in her lap, and a slightly upward look.
Barbara Bush looks In. Control.—confidant and at home—while Laura looks as if she’ll be glad to get back to Texas.
Hillary, looking very young, is posed between a chair and a small round able that holds a few items that could be White House mementos, slight poised between two worlds.
And Michelle—thoroughly modern Michelle with her strong bare arms and her decidedly non-matronly double strand of pearls—looks like tomorrow even though she is, sadly, yesterday.
The current First Lady’s portrait has not yet been hung.
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Writing about other people?

I just finished reading a book about Nora Ephron. It was by “her best friend” and it made me grateful that most of  my closest friends are not writers.
Nora Ephron was, to me, one of those women like Wendy Wasserstein, whom we don’t know personally and yet feel we know. We feel they know us, too, and we are certain we and they would be meeting regularly for lunch or trading recipes or book recommendations or names of hairdressers…if only we had ever met.
Or maybe not. The Nora in this book isn’t really the girlfriend with the crepey neck or the not-so-much bosom buddy. She isn’t the relatably imperfect Meg Ryan characters in the movies that touched us—she was, instead, the frighteningly accomplished director creating the films anddon’tyouforgetit. She was the uber-connected person who always knew how to do or where to buy everything, cook like a four-star chef, and charm everyone in sight. She was also apparently overbearing,  intimidating, and not inclined to let kindness get in the way of making a witty or brutally honest comment. I felt relieved to have never had her personally in my life. Just reading about her left me in despair at the puniness of my life and in need of major validation. She would not have been my girlfriend: she would not have noticed my existence.
And no reason she would have. And no reason to admire her enormous and pleasure-giving achievements any less.
But all these more human qualities laid out in print by the “best friend” gave me pause. The book did not really offer a glimpse into the friendship. I had no insight into the comfort they may have offered each other in the wake of dissolved marriages or advice they may have shared on nurturing children or careers. The whole fact of the friendship was, as they say in writing workshops, told not shown. But shown, though I am guessing unconsciously, was the writer’s small nastiness and glee at exposing Nora’s flaws.
And while I was reading this, I also happened to read a magazine essay so shocking in its ugliness that it was, like an unfolding accident, impossible to tear my eyes from. The author was “celebrating” her mother’s 75th birthday by presenting her with the harsh evidence of a traumatic family event both had stayed silent about for decades. In the course of the essay, small ungenerous details, clearly added in hostility, made the reader feel sympathy for the mother instead of for the author, as was very obviously intended.
We writers are always writing about other people for a variety of reasons. They are our own reasons and it might be useful for us to remember that what the reader takes in often says a bit about us, too.


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Barricades and snapshots

 Two days apart I walked past two lengths of police barricades and took two very different photographs.
On Saturday in New York, in a taxi going west on 44th Street, I passed blocks of barricades and a large law enforcement presence on 6th Avenue.  Is it a holiday? What’s today’s date? There must be a parade.  Later, walking along 6th, I saw the barricades being stacked and loaded onto trucks.
“What was the parade?” I asked a police officer.
“No parade. Protest,” he answered, telling me that this block, just a few away from Trump Tower, was the scene of protests every week now, though that day’s—coming as it did on April 15—was bigger than usual and was specifically directed at the President’s refusal to release his tax returns.
Back in Boston, in my neighborhood two blocks from the finish line of today’s Boston Marathon, there were barricades, too.  A little while ago, I went to watch. The elite runners had crossed the finish line, the late stragglers were still to come. The runners I saw—or almost saw as I stood on tiptoe and peered over the crowds—were running strong and in solid numbers. The announcer called out their names and home towns as they came in and we all were applauding. All of us spectators had passed through security lines and there could have been no one standing there unaware that this was exactly where the second bomb had gone off four years ago. There was a City of Boston sand truck across the intersection of Exeter and Newbury, blocking vehicle access to the race and the grand stands. There were police everywhere, and, of course, barricades.
The barricades will, if history prevails, be neatly stacked by evening and carted away tomorrow, to wait until they are needed for the next public gathering. The next public celebration, show of strength, show of determination, show of courage. The next show of public engagement. Yes, they are “crowd control”; yes, they “hold back” the crowd. And yet, the barricades in a way enable us to form ourselves into a group to send a message outward.  On Saturday in New York and other cities it was a message of defiance and determination. Today in Boston it was a message that honored human accomplishment and courage. Barricades, but not obstructions. Not barriers to a mass message sent.
Today I also took photos. I recently became the one of the last people in the world to buy an iPhone, and I took videos (!) of the cheering crowd and, holding the phone high, the heads of the runners. I captured the sounds of the cheers and of the announcer.
On Saturday, heading to the suburbs after my day in the city, I took a picture, too, not as celebratory. It was on the train, the back of the set in front of me: a graffiti swastika. The conductor, like the policeman on 6th Avenue, said this, too, has become a common occurrence recently.
“I think I know who’s responsible for this,” he said. “There was a blond fellow, strange hair style, lots of money in his pockets. I heard he got a new job in Washington.”
Back to the barricades.