Jane Roper's Blog, page 2

Six upsides of an empty nest—I hope

This post is NOT POLITICAL! Hooray. I mean, Jesus, we all need a break from this shitshow, amiright? No fake executive orders, no Russian propaganda, no rainforest saving. Just life.

Back in September, I wrote about my feelings of melancholy around it being the last year of our twin offspring being home with us. The last back to school photo. The last open house night at school. The last carving pumpkins for Halloween, and decorating the Christmas tree together. The last, the last, the last.

But then, in December, a wonderful thing happened, and both kids got into their colleges of choice. (Both of which happen to be less than two hours away! Bonus!) And suddenly I didn’t feel quite so melancholy, because I was so happy and excited for them. I still am.

And then, a few weeks ago, I had a dream that one of the kids accidentally got pregnant. In this dream, she couldn’t make up her mind about whether or not to keep the baby until it was too late, so, well, she was going to have the baby. For some reason, she was still planning to go college anyway, while my husband and I took care of said baby. And in my dream, I was like OH HELL NO, this is not how I want to spend the first few years of being an empty nester.

It’s not empty yet!! Photo by Pixabay

I was so delighted when I woke up to the reality that my daughter is, as far as I know, a very un-pregnant high school senior, and that I will not be a full-time grandmother-cum-mother next year.

In a roundabout way, this dream cemented for me the fact that, as much as I am dreading and pre-grieving the fact that my children are abandoning me leaving for school next year, there are a few aspects of their departure that I am (grudgingly) looking forward to—many of which a baby would make more difficult.

I’ve been keeping a mental list of these in my head, which I return to each time I start feeling morose and lachrymose and in need of a mimos(a) about the kids’ impending flight.

Here are a few items presently on it:

I can put the red pepper flakes in the recipes that call for them. I’ve been thinking about this one for quite some time. I’m kind of a wimp when it comes to spicy things, which I blame on my pasty Anglo/Irish/German ancestry. But my kids are SUPER wimps. So I’ve always gone super easy on the heat in my cooking (I am the family chef), eliminating or majorly reducing any scary spicy things called for in recipes. But next year I’m going to ratchet it up, goshdarnit! Bring on the red pepper flakes! The cayenne! The jalapeños! (Or, no, not the jalapeños; the other, slightly less spicy ones. Let’s not go crazy now.) In fact, I can bring on all KINDS of flavors that the kids probably wouldn’t like. I’ll make recipes with things like mushrooms and zucchini and anchovies and, um…I don’t know. Bear meat! Squid Ink! Gorgonzola cheese! BWAH HA HAHAH HAH! It’s gonna be great.

On that note…Supersize Shopping will become a thing of the past. With two teenagers in our midst, we go through large quantities of food. And toilet paper. I look forward to not having to be constantly restocking our supply of yogurt, bananas, toilet paper, pasta, frozen waffles, fake meat for the vegetarian child, toilet paper, peanut butter, granola bars, apples, Annie’s Mac & Cheese, toilet paper, and toilet paper. (Note: I think one of our children, not saying who, uses way too much toilet paper.) I like to think that, instead, I will become the sort of shopper who only ever uses a hand basket, not a cart. I will not plan meals ahead for the whole week, but shop for fresh ingredients every few days, like a European or other non-American person. I will frequently be seen with a baguette under my arm. And maybe a voluminous scarf wrapped just so around my neck.

If you’re looking for the toilet paper, it’s under the cart. This photo taken at the Chelsea Market Basket, naturally.

“We can travel more.” I’m putting this in quotes, because it’s something people (including us) like to say when they talk about being empty nesters as if the only thing holding them back from spontaneously jetting off to Jamaica or Thailand or the Swiss Alps all those years was the kids. As if it didn’t have anything to do with, um, NOT HAVING THE MONEY to do such things, even for just two people. We may be buying less yogurt and toilet paper once the kids leave home, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to save us so much money that spendy weekends in Manhattan or jaunts to Bonaire are in our future. Hell, I don’t even know where Bonaire is. (Plus, um, paying for college?) Still, in theory, we will be able to do more traveling, and that’s a nice thought. The mister and I did lots of it, very well and happily, in our pre-parenting days. So, even if we just end up taking the occasional spontaneous, low-budget jaunt—an overnight at the Days Inn outside of Albany, say, or a day trip to Sturbridge Village—I know it will be excellent.

Back in the day. Florence / Albany - same difference.

Special guest contribution from the mister: Our house will be cleaner. Right. So, my husband is a neatnik (and the chief everyday cleaner-upper) and is constantly tormented by the kids’ messes and clutter—especially their shoes, which have a habit of spreading across the front hall like algae. (I confess, my shoes are often part of the bloom as well.) He is also, understandably, annoyed by the fact that they frequently “forget” to put their dishes in the dishwasher—and when they do, it looks like they sorta just tossed them in, like beanbags. Beanbags covered with food residue. Personally, I don’t mind the mess and clutter that much. It comes with the parenting territory, and it’s been part of our life for 18 years. It’s evidence of the kids’ presence in our life, and think I’ll miss it when it’s gone. I tell my husband that he probably will, too, but he doesn’t believe me. I’ll keep you posted.

I will be able to focus. Like, really focus. A twin mom friend of mine, also a writer, said that this was one of the things that struck her when her kids left for college: she was able to get into the kind of deep, focused state in her writing that she used to before she became a mother. As my two kiddos have gotten older / quieter / less inclined to yell “MaMUH!!” up the stairs when I’m trying to work, I’ve certainly gotten back more writing time for myself. But the psychological static of parenting is always still there in the background, and can intrude at any minute—keeping track of schedules, figuring out the logistics of cars and rides and activities, signing permission slips, thinking up red-pepper-flake-free dinners to make every damned night. Maybe it will be nice to have less of all that bouncing around in my head. Maybe I’ll reach new heights of erudition, wit, and word count. Maybe I’ll take up meditation. Maybe I’ll even finally finish The Brothers Karamazov. (Haha. Probably not.)

Last and least: I will always be able to find the duct tape. Because it will always be exactly where I left it.

OK, give it to me, empty nesters: What are the upsides of not having kids at home? Fellow almost-empty-nesters: What are you looking forward to? How are you coping with the anticipatory grief? Do you want to come over for a marginally spicy dinner next year sometime? Please advise. And thanks as always for reading.

All posts on this non-bear-meat (for now) Substack are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you enjoy my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription (As little as $4.16666 a month! Cheap!) or buying my book. Thank you.

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It's the rainforest all over again

Dude, I am failing SO miserably at moderating my consumption of news and social media. I was hoping things would not get quite so dire, quite so fast. But they are.

I really want to get back to writing about things like middle-age spread and Tyler, my annoying ChatGPT intern, and husbandly grocery shopping exploits. Things of that nature. But I can’t. Not yet. Case in point: Remember I wrote a love letter to my fave supermarket, the Market Basket in Chelsea? The grand pageant of humanity from around the world? The wonderful employees? Yeah, those employees are too scared to go to work now, because they’re afraid of ICE raids.

So, here’s a post about the rainforest. And why I am, yet again, having flashbacks to the late 80s as I watch the horrors of the Trump / Musk regime unfold. With a special appearance by my bad high school bangs!

As you may or may not recall, in the late 80s/early 90s the Terrible Thing We Must Stop du jour was the destruction of the rainforest. It was all over pop culture, in fashion, in food products. Remember Ben & Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch ice cream? And that little seal with a frog on it to show that products were Rainforest Alliance certified?

This rainforest mania was all going on right as I was waking up to the wider world, going off to Soviet Summer camps on peace exchanges and whatnot. The year after that trip, I spent the summer at The Worldpeace Camp in Maine (which my parents co-owned), where a big part of the programming was learning about various ways to Make A Difference (tm).

At one point, there was a presentation on the destruction of the rainforest. It included a viewing of this extremely cringe “Rainforest Rap” video, complete with white dude in one of those unfortunate tan safari hats that were briefly ubiquitous in the 80s, trying to sound like a rapper. Maybe you, too, were subjected to it as a teenager or middle schooler. (I still periodically get the refrain stuck in my head: “The RAINforest! The tropical RAINforest!”) And maybe you had one of those hats. (I did!)

Fig. 1 “Rapper”

Cheesy video aside, when I learned that a football-field-sized swatch of rainforest was being destroyed every 78 seconds and a species was going extinct every few months, I felt a full-body sense of panic. Why wasn’t anyone stopping this? What could we do? What could I do??

The only advice the adults (WHO WERE NOT STOPPING IT!!) seemed to have was to not to buy palm oil products, beef from south America, or teak, mahogany or rosewood furniture. Very actionable advice for a teenager. (Flash forward to me narrowing a suspicious eye at my parents’ dining room set. Those chairs aren’t teak, are they, Mom? MOM?)

But I wasn’t content to just stand around scrutinizing furniture and eating sustainably grown brazil nuts or whatever while the biosphere burned. And the rainforest was only the half of it: There were landfills overflowing, spotted owl habitats being destroyed by logging, a hole in the ozone layer getting bigger all the time.

It was killing me not to do anything. Why wasn’t EVERYBODY doing something?? What was the matter with people?? (A FOOTBALL FIELD EVERY 78 SECONDS!)

When I got back to school that Fall, a friend and I promptly founded an environmental club. Our group single-handedly set up and administered a paper recycling program, sold “shares” of a cloud forest preserve in Costa Rica, picked up litter, planted seedlings, and a made signs telling people to recycle their soda cans and boycott Burger King and Just Say No to palm oil. (I may be making up the Just Say No part, but very possibly not. It was 1989.)

My bangs may be hair-sprayed within an inch of their life, but NOT with the aerosol kind!

We worked very hard, and kept very busy. It felt good to be doing something—lots of thing! But did any of it actually Make A Difference in the grand scheme of things? I don’t know. (In spite of the fact that I am quoted in the above newspaper story as saying “I feel we are making a difference.”)

Maybe we diverted a few thousand pounds of worksheets and notebook paper from the landfill. Maybe one of my classmates, ten years later, while setting up their wedding registry at Crate and Barrel heard a little voice in their head whisper No! Not the rosewood salad bowl!

But here we are decades later and the rainforest is still being destroyed at an alarming rate, the planet is warming, and the oceans and air and even our bodies are full of plastic, etc.

And still. I feel like I had no choice to do what I did in high school. It was an almost physical compulsion.

I’m feeling the same thing now, as I watch the Mad King and his tech bro Rasputin take a sledgehammer to our government and institutions, issue Orwellian decrees and executive orders (mine are much better), and spew one batshit crazy, fascist idea after another. It’s as heartbreaking and anxiety-inducing as those football-field-sized swaths of rainforest destruction, times a thousand.

And, once again, I can’t not do something.

So I’ve been trying to take action. (This time with better bangs.) I’m making calls and sharing news about actions people can take. I went to a protest in Boston last week—one of those 50 states / 50 capitals / 1 day marches things—and will probably do it again.

Luckily, there are a lot of other panicky WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!! types out there just like me, flooding the phone lines of congress, showing up at demonstrations, writing letters, making donations. Other people are finding their own ways to fight against authoritarianism, inhumanity, and bigotry, whether through art or community involvement or (God love ‘em) trying to get through to their Trump-loving friends and family.

Will any of it, in the end, make a difference? I don’t honestly know. Sometimes it just feels futile. Like avoiding palm oil and teak.

But it doesn’t matter. We have to do it anyway.

If you can’t be silly while you protest, the fascists win.

Finally, I’ve got a bit of fun news to share: My novel The Society of Shame advanced to become a finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor!! I can’t decide if I’m more excited about the honor or the fact that I get to dress up all fancy and go to an award show in NYC. You can check out all this year’s Thurber Prize finalist and semi-finalist books (and buy them, if you like!) right here.

As always, thank you for reading. Stay strong out there. And remember: Just Say No to Fascism. And mahogany.

All posts on this Rainforest Alliance uncertified Substack are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you enjoy my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription (As little as $4.16666 a month! Cheap!) or buying my book. Thank you!

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I've got a few executive orders of my own

I had a fun, personal, non-political post all queued up for this week. But I couldn’t make myself hit the “publish” button. It just didn’t feel appropriate in light of the historically awful occasion of the recent presidential transition, and the truckload of shit that that guy (sorry, I can’t even write his name) has already dumped on our country with a few strokes of his pen.

I didn’t watch the inauguration, and I have been trying to consume news in small bits. But it’s hard to avoid it completely unless you hide under a rock—and it’s extremely frigid outside, so I don’t feel like doing that. Also, I have a bad cold.

It’s also hard to avoid when you find out that one of that guy’s executive orders directly affects people you love. We have dear friends whose kids are trans, or who are trans themselves, and one of our own kids is genderqueer. But according to the new regime, a person’s sex is “fixed and immutable” and either male or female, period. (Never mind that this completely ignores the medical and biological fact that some people are born intersex, or with an extra chromosome.)

So, even if you’re a trans woman who has undergone top and bottom surgery and who has lived as a woman for decades, sorry, you’ve got to put “male” on your passport. And if you’re a nonbinary person with female anatomy and/or chromosomes, you’re female. No more option to use an “X” on your Real ID, as our kiddo does. Are you a trans man, complete with facial and body hair and a flat chest, who nobody would ever, ever mistake for a woman? If you’re charged with a felony, you’ll be going to a women’s prison and denied your hormone replacement therapy. Enjoy.

Will these things be enforced in every instance? It doesn’t fucking matter. It’s a state-sanctioned invalidation of people’s identity—a forced tethering of trans people to the sex they were born into (assuming it’s either male or female; if you’re intersex, you’re nothing I guess?) in the eyes of the government. Identifying as a gender other than your birth sex is now considered “gender ideology,” which sounds like a term straight out of Soviet Russia.

It’s ugly and dehumanizing and as I read the order my heart just kept sinking and sinking.

You can be sure that our family will be standing up for the rights, freedoms, and dignity of trans people whenever and wherever necessary. In the meantime, however, I’ve decided that it would be therapeutic for me to channel my anger around this and other executive orders to issue some of my own. I urge you to do the same if you are so inclined.

If the president can go around arbitrarily changing universally-used names—like changing Mount Denali, as it has been officially called in Alaska since 1970 and federally since 2015, back to Mount McKinley, or renaming The Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of America (snort laugh)—then so can I. Therefore, “Water” shall henceforth be known as “Buttered toast.” (Because being told to have eight pieces of buttered toast a day sounds much nicer than being told to have eight glasses of water, doesn’t it?) “Buttered toast,” meanwhile, shall be called “David.”

As previously mentioned, calling yourself a gender other than the one matching the sex you were born into is now invalid from a federal standpoint. Along those same lines, if you began your life as a fan of a Boston/New England sports team (Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, Bruins) you may NOT identify as a fan of any New York sports team (Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Giants, Jets, Rangers). You may, however, change your fan identity to match teams in other US markets. Exception: Celtics fans may not transition to Lakers fans. Even if they do, they will not be recognized as such.

Speaking of which: Connecticut shall henceforth no longer be considered part of New England. Let’s be honest; for most of us, it never really was.

The president has declared a national emergency at the southern border because apparently it is “overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans, including America.” I don’t know who this America is that they’re talking about in the last clause (America Ferrera?), but I’m sorry for her suffering. But while illegal immigration is certainly a serious problem, I think Trump and his pals are exaggerating the effects just a leeeeetle bit. (“This invasion has caused widespread chaos and suffering in our country over the last 4 years.” OK….)

I, on the other hand, shall use my self-declared powers to address an issue I feel is actually much more harmful to America and Americans, including America Ferrera: I hereby declare a national emergency because people are spending too much time on their phones. It is isolating them from their fellow humans, leading them down rabbit holes of dis/misinformation and idiocy, and keeping them from engaging in more edifying and important activities such as reading books, daydreaming and contemplating, looking at their children, and not walking into telephone poles. To carry out this order there shall be created a task force of people in need of employment who will be paid a fair living wage to go around and gently remind folks that there’s more to life than screens, and hey, maybe try to cut back by, say, 30 minutes a day for starters. Or even just 15. Like, next time you’re waiting for the bus, or standing in line at the grocery store, try reading a magazine or chatting with a stranger instead of scrolling through TikTok or playing Candy Crush. Could you try that, and let’s see how it goes? Awesome. Have a great day!

If you drop toilet paper on the floor of a public restroom, you must pick it up. Honestly, it’s sad that I have to make this an executive order, but apparently I do, because some of you people are disgusting.

Well, that about covers it for now. Like I said, I’ve got a bad cold, and all this order issuing is tiring, especially since I don’t get to do it while crowds of fawning billionaires applaud me. All I’ve got is my cat, and even he isn’t really tuned in. Dude spends way too much time on his phone.

Nevertheless, in the coming days and weeks of my administration, I may be issuing additional executive orders in the interest of saving America from its shameful decline. Never again will citizens be held hostage by the tyrannical demands of woke radicals who insist on things like buttered toast being called buttered toast instead of David, or who think they can just start wearing a Yankees cap and somehow magically not be a Red Sox fan. And there will, hopefully, be much less toilet paper on the floors of public restrooms.

It’s the beginning of a new golden age.

By executive order, all posts on this Substack are free and publicly available. But writing is how I make my living, so if you enjoy my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription (As little as $4.16666 a month! Cheap!), buying my book, or using this link when you buy any and all books, so I get a little somethin-somethin’ on the back end, and so independent bookstores get your bucks instead of Bezos. Thank you!

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Soviet summer camp, Trump voters, and me

A few months ago, I wrote about two of the three realizations/resolutions I came to in the wake of the presidential election regarding how I want to move through this next Trumpian epoch.

One of those realizations is that I need to be very judicious about how much political content I consume. So if you feel the same, and don’t want to read this post—which is political—I get it! Here, read something fun and apolitical instead! Or check out some of my latest book recommendations! See you next time!

Great. Hi, those of you who stayed. Thank you for indulging me.

I put off writing about this realization because it’s messy and complicated and multifaceted and because it’s taken me a while to fully articulate it to myself. I’m still trying to articulate it, I guess. Here goes.

Let’s start with an anecdote, because those are always fun.

In the summer of 1988, I went on a goodwill trip to the Soviet Union, in its twilight, in memory of Samantha Smith. She was the ten-year-old girl from Maine who wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov expressing her fears of nuclear war, and confusion over what she perceived to be the goal of the Soviet government. (And died tragically in a plane crash just a few years later.) An excerpt from her letter:

Why do you want to conquer the world or at least our country? God made the world for us to share and take care of. Not to fight over or have one group of people own it all. Please lets do what he wanted and have everybody be happy too.

Andropov replied, and extended an invitation to Samantha and her family to visit the Soviet Union to see that “In the Soviet Union, everyone is for peace and friendship among peoples.”

Me with the statue of Sam in Augusta, ME. Too bad it’s black and white, otherwise you’d be able to tell that my shirt is PEACH! The color of the mid/late 80s.

I spent a month at one of the places Samantha Smith visited on her tour: A Young Pioneer summer camp in Ukraine, on the shores of the Black Sea, called Artek. It was beautiful and extremely foreign-feeling and the kids we met there were absolutely lovely: welcoming, funny, playful. They were intrigued by our little group of Americans, and eager to ask us, in their very minimal English, if we liked Michael Jackson and say words like “Mickey Mouse” and “McDonalds.” The counselors were equally kind, if slightly less obsessed with random bits of American culture.

Half the time, we didn’t know what was going on. We let ourselves be shuttled from activity to activity—taking hikes and field trips, playing Sniper (a more aggressive form of dodgeball), singing songs, working in the dining hall, learning dances, competing in the Artek Olympics. I tried to qualify for the 100-meter sprint, but I was up against some serious, State-supported athletes, wearing the only sneakers I’d brought—a pair of white Keds (obviously). So instead, I was assigned to something translated to me as “The Jolly Games.” This consisted of various absurd relay races, many of which involved hula hoops. Sure, OK, great! Said 14-year old me.

But amidst all the wholesome fun, we never forgot that we were in an autocratic country. There were loudspeakers throughout the camp that periodically broadcast patriotic music and exhortations, and everywhere there were statues and mosaics of Lenin, hammers and sickles, and various scenes of communist bliss. (Happy children in their Young Pioneer uniforms! Beautiful factories! Amber waves of grain!).

I’m fourth from the left in the front row, between Olga #3 (Olga seemed to be the Jennifer of the USSR at that time) and Silva. We Yanks had our own “uniforms” consisting of T-shirts, navy shorts, and classic western-style blue and white bandanas. U-S-A!

The pièce de resistance and focal area of the camp was the amphitheater—again, Lenin everywhere—which was the site for morning calisthenics (in too-tight t-shirts and shorts that had probably been in circulation since the late 70s), performances, games, dances, and many, many patriotic rallies and ceremonies.

It was those rallies where the cognitive dissonance kicked in: All these kids who, an hour before, we were having seaweed fights with on the beach, were now in their dress uniforms, saluting and marching and carrying flags, celebrating the virtues of a country that we—GenXers growing up on movies where the Russians were the enemies and music videos where nuclear war was 99 balloons away—were pretty sure was the “evil empire.”

It was difficult to wrap one’s brace-faced, badly permed head around.

And then there the speeches—so many speeches!—usually delivered by fellow campers. We had an interpreter, Masha, assigned to our delegation, who translated things for us—mostly information about activities, or instructions from our counselors. (Russian friends who grew up in the USSR have since told me that Masha was almost definitely KGB.) But she stayed relatively quiet during the speeches.

We got the gist of them; they seemed to be mostly about the glory of communism and the beauty of the fatherland, the desire for peace and friendship throughout the world, blah blah blah. At one point, during a particularly fiery oration by a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve, I asked Masha to translate in more detail. She smiled a little sheepishly. “You don’t want to hear this,” she said. “He is saying criticism about the United States. About Vietnam and imperialism and such.”

Now, I didn’t know much about geopolitics at the tender age of fourteen. But what I’d gathered about the Vietnam War was that 1.) In retrospect, most people agreed it was fruitless war that the US should never have waded into 2.) It was about preventing the spread of communism / Soviet influence, not about us being imperialists.*

Also, screw that kid! I knew that America had its faults and had made some mistakes, but we were the good guys! We totally saved Europe (including Russia!) in World War II! We had freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the freedom to protest! And Michael Jackson! And jeans! (Which many a camper wanted to buy off of us.) Didn’t they all secretly want to be us?

Maybe some of them did. But no doubt many bought into the officially sanctioned Soviet narrative—that America was a land of greed, depravity, and imperialism, and the USSR was the place to be. (And pay no attention to your neighbor who was shipped off to a gulag for saying something against the government. And don’t ask why so many writers and intellectuals and Jews try to defect.)

But after the speeches and ceremonies were through, it was right back to seaweed fights on the beach and Sniper games in the square. Back to giggling in broken English about which boys were cute. Back to “do you like the Beatles?” (“Girl” and “Michelle” were big hits on the Artek speakers. Maybe because the melodies are vaguely Russian-sounding?)

I took a lot of lessons away from my brief sojourn in the USSR. The biggest one was the classic “We are all much more alike than we realize.” But close behind was: Damn. People around the world are living in vastly different realities depending on stories they’ve been told—by their government, their religion, their culture, their statues in the square.

I was fascinated and flabbergasted by how we humans could have so much in common and yet see things so completely differently. In fact, I can probably trace my choice to major in cultural anthropology in college back to that trip. Maybe even my interest in writing fiction. I’m drawn to the challenge of trying to see the world through other eyes. And I like to think that the practice makes me a more empathetic person than I would be otherwise.

Here’s the thing, though: That sort of fascination with varying worldviews is easy in the abstract, when you’re not living side by side with folks whose lens on the world is so drastically different from your own. It’s a lot harder when you’re sharing a country with them. (Much less an immediate family—something I fortunately don’t have to deal with.)

The first time Trump won, the big wake-up call for me—and for a lot of liberals—was just how many people were willing to overlook, excuse, rationalize (and, in some cases, outright embrace) Trump’s racism, sexism, bullying, anti-democratic impulses, and, um, tenuous relationship with the truth.

For many folks, those things weren’t dealbreakers if it meant that their taxes might be lower or abortion rights would be rolled back further or that, quite simply, a Democrat would not be in the White House.

What I found harder to swallow this time around is that this is still the case—even after eight years of seeing what Trump is all about. I mean, the guy tried to overturn the results of an election, for God’s sake. Yet millions of Americans still think he was a better choice than Kamala Harris.

But while some liberals are quick to say that it’s because all of those millions of Americans are stupid / racist / misogynistic, I think that’s a vast (and unfair) oversimplification—not to mention one that makes Trump supporters dig in their heels.

I very much related to what George Saunders wrote in a recent Substack post:

I am trying to maintain two ideas at once: 1) Most people who voted for Trump are nice people. (I know this because many close friends and family members voted for him and, well, more than half of voters did), and 2) Our democracy really may be in peril. Trump has repeatedly said things to indicate this and people who worked closely with him the first time have said this.

So, what I’m trying to figure out is: how do the people who voted for Trump, some of whom I love, not see what I see in him? And, also, importantly: what am I not seeing, about the way the world looks to them? I'm not saying that the way they see it is right – I feel very strongly otherwise - but I am saying, or accepting that, yes, it really does look that way to them.

Me too.

But there’s another part of the story that Saunders doesn’t get into, and it’s the part I’m more tuned into this time around, because I’m more aware of how integral it is to Trump’s success: millions of very nice, smart Americans are living in a narrative that is at odds with actual, empirical truth. They are seeing a sanitized, carefully curated version of Trump, and a distorted view of reality.

If your response to this is “yeah, no kidding” please feel free to skip to the paragraph below the picture of Chris Pine.

Here are some facts: Crime is not increasing in America. Rather, crime rates continue to decrease steadily. Undocumented immigrants are no less likely than the general population to commit crimes—in fact they’re less likely to do so. (Related: Haitian immigrants in Illinois are not eating cats and dogs. Sorry, I don’t have proof, but trust me.) Yes, people did die during the January 6 insurrection and its immediate aftermath. Vaccines do not cause autism. Gender affirming surgeries are almost never performed on minors. The climate is definitely changing due to human activity. Also, Chris Pine is way hotter than Chris Pratt or Chris Hemsworth.

All of the above, except maybe the Chris part, would come as news to millions of Americans. Is it because they’re all stupid and gullible? Some of them probably are. (As are some non-Trump supporters.) But I don’t think most liberals, particularly those of us ensconced in our blue state, NPR-listening, New York Times reading bubbles, realize just how influential right-wing news, propaganda, and misinformation are in this country.

Huge numbers of people now get the bulk of their information online and/or places like Fox News and Newsmax. Many Trump voters get their information chiefly from friends and family, and/or don’t follow traditional news sources. The less attention people pay to political news, the more likely they were to vote for Trump in 2024. And among Trump voters who *do* follow political news, Fox is their #1 source. (Fox is also the #1 cable “news” network nationwide.)

Are there lies and misinformation coming from the left? Sure. But not nearly to the same extent or with the same reach. Meanwhile, it’s right-wing platforms that have the backing of billionaires, and right-wing media companies that have been buying up (and then often getting rid of) local and regional newspapers for years.

The right is, of course, also getting lots of help from our adversaries in Russia and elsewhere. More than once I’ve wondered if some kid I ran through hula hoops with during the Jolly Games or cleared dishes alongside in the dining hall is working in a troll farm somewhere, posting right-wing memes and picking fights with people on X.

The hottest of the Chrises.

So, here’s the upshot (finally!): While there are many people who voted for Trump for reasons I find abhorrent, and while I will always struggle to understand how so many people can overlook the repugnant things he says, the fascist-y things he pledges to do, and his overall character and temperament, I have also internalized the fact that millions of my fellow citizens are simply not seeing the same Trump, or the same world, that I am seeing. So, I can’t necessarily judge their choice to vote for him by the same criteria I’m using to vote against him.

And I don’t want to go through the next four or forty years feeling angry at and disdainful of millions of my fellow citizens. It’s just too toxic—emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

To be clear: This is not a “can’t we all just get along?” post. I can’t “just get along” with people whose values are fundamentally different from my own on certain issues. And I have no desire to “get along” with the extremists and unabashed bigots. As for the wealthy people and broligarchs who know exactly who Trump is but only care about their portfolios and their bottom lines—fuck those people.

I’m talking about the good and intelligent folks who are being manipulated, cut off from truths that might change the way they see things.

It’s worth reading this recent Substack post from the wonderful Rebecca Makkai, who is currently working on a novel set in 1938. An excerpt (boldface mine):

Something I’ve had to accept, in researching and writing this book, is that many of the people who fell for fascism in the 1930s were neither inherently evil nor idiots. They were deeply misinformed, and therefore manipulable.

One reason it’s so, so important for us to realize this: Otherwise, people who know themselves not to be evil, and not to be idiots, will assume they are too good and too smart to fall for the manipulations of narcissistic leaders. Many good and smart people saw through Hitler, but many good and smart people also fell for it all.

The internet helps us live in tiny information villages. It feeds people a far greater quantity of propaganda than was available in 1930s Europe. And as anyone who’s ever tried to get through to a conspiracy-believing uncle on Facebook can attest, it’s nearly impossible to convince someone that what they’ve been reading online isn’t true.

One reason people were so susceptible to propaganda in the 1930s was that it was based in unprecedented advances in both communications technologies (radio, film, cheaply produced printed material and posters) and advertising. Otherwise intelligent people were not equipped to filter out information as potentially manipulative. Similar things have happened in the past 20 years: Older generations used to taking TV news and official-looking printed matter as legitimate do not have the framework for understanding Fox News as propaganda. Younger people have a hard time resisting internet wormholes because we have not, as a species, figured out ways to resist the manipulations of overwhelming bias confirmation.**

To campaign online, to debate online, to try to spread facts online, is to pit ourselves against a tide of so much misinformation that we don’t stand a chance.

She goes on to offer some suggestions as to how those of us who see the danger of Trumpism to our country might fight back against that tide of propaganda and misinformation. I confess, I’m not too optimistic about our chances of victory. But here’s hoping.

In the meantime, I’ll be here continuing to focus on the causes that matter to me; on making and consuming art; on taking political news in small doses; and, finally, on remembering that the real enemy is not really the people who support Trump (not most of them, anyway); it’s Trump himself, and the false narratives and craven corporate interests that have ushered him into power.

I’ll be thinking about about all those sweet, seaweed-slinging, Michael-Jackson-loving Soviet kids I met in ‘88 who had been told all their lives by an oppressive, autocratic government that America was a capitalist hellscape, and the Soviets were the ones who were all about peace, friendship, and understanding.

Those Soviet kids were my friends. They were lovely. And we were all much more alike than we’d realized.

All posts on this non-imperialist Substack are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you enjoy my writing, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription ($5/month! Cheap!), buying my book, or using this link when you buy any and all books, so I get a little somethin-somethin’ on the back end, and so independent bookstores get your bucks instead of Bezos. Thank you!

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* There are certainly arguments to be made that the U.S. is a wee bit imperialist. I didn’t know as much about that at 14. Nevertheless.

** This bias confirmation stuff definitely happens on the left, too. It’s hard not to silo onesself, given the way algorithms work. (Algorithms that are, of course, designed to maximize engagement and therefore revenue.)

The doctors are younger than me now

Happy almost new year, friends! At this point in the holiday season I am, as usually, completely sated by and slightly sick of sweets, cheese, wine, and butter-as-main-ingredient foods. But my house remains replete with them, and a few more parties loom. I’ll be the one in the corner sipping seltzer and picking at the veggie plate. Haha just kidding. That ain’t me, babe. (Aside: anyone else see the new Bob Dylan movie? I thought it was quite good. So did my husband.)

But I ramble. What I came here to say is that as I look ahead at the coming year, I do it as someone who feels—maybe for the first time?—solidly and incontrovertibly middle-aged. And I’m feeling increasingly OK with that.

What’s that you say? That at age 49 + 1 I have already been middle-aged for several years now? Yes, yes, fine. But I’m talking feelings, not chronology. And I feel, for whatever reason, that I’ve crossed some rubicon where I’m finally accepting and settling into this new phase of life, rather than gaping at it in disbelief from a slight distance.

This is not to say that I’m content with every aspect of this transition. For example, yesterday, when I picked up my phone to take a picture of something, the camera was on the selfie setting, and I was looking down at it, which one should never do when one’s camera is on the selfie setting, and it was so terrifying—all the sagging and pooling and rippling—that I felt like stuffing myself into a trash bag and jumping out the window. (That’s an All Fours reference. And, no, it’s not actually true. I adore being alive. Nevertheless, it was a disturbing sight, and one I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to, especially as things continue to…slide.)

I have, however, gotten used to things like the fact that when I go to the doctor’s office, as I’ve had to do a number of times over the past year for various small ailments and routine tests, most of the docs look to me like they should be medical students (or, like, high school students?) not full-fledged MDs.

They’ve started using phrases like “as we get older…” and “as we age…” when they talk to me about things happening in/to my body, and the screenings I should be getting. As we age, our vision changes. As we age, our cholesterol tends to creep up. As we age, we become faced with the looming spectre of our mortality. As we age, we occassionally incur knee injuries simply by standing up.

Obviously, the we, when uttered by a perky twenty- or thirty-something teeming with collagen, is not about “us” but “me”—the lady with the crow’s feet who doesn’t think boba tea is all that. Is this phrasing something they learn in med school? With your patients over 45, be sure to use the first person plural when talking about the terrible things befalling / about to befall them!

The other day, when I went for a routine dental appointment, I had a hygienist assigned to me who I initially thought was somebody’s kid, perhaps in the office for “bring your teen to work day.” He used the phrase “as we age” in reference to my receding gums, which I found particularly absurd (and slighly adorable) given that the boy’s brain probably hasn’t finished developing yet.

At least the ladies who shove my boobs into the mammogram machine once a year still tend to be older than me. For whatever reason, I find this comforting. The one I had last time went on and on about her grandkids. That’s the kind of cancer detection small talk I like. Some whippersnapper talking about, say, the bachelorette party she went to over the weekend, would just piss me off. Overall, though, I’m OK with the idea of people younger than me ministering to my aging bod. I trust them. Mostly.

But the other, bigger reason I’m feeling particularly middle aged of late is that…drumroll please…our teenage wonder twins recently found that they both got into the colleges of their dreams—Wesleyan and RISD, respectively. Then, just this past weekend, they had the audacity to turn eighteen.

And suddenly, it all feels much more real: we are about to become empty nesters, with adult kids. And while this makes me extremely sad on one level, I am also so SO happy for them with regard to their college news—happier than I anticipated I would be—and excited for the adventures they’ll soon be embarking upon.

It’s a huge relief, too, to have the college thing out of the way. I can better focus on important middle-aged activities like doing acrostics, maximizing my CVS coupon/Extra Bucks savings, and clicking on neck cream ads on Instagram.

Bigger picture: I’m starting to feel a little more positive about what could be ahead for me in this next phase of life, terrifying accidental selfies notwithstanding.

I hope that all of you out there, middle-aged and otherwise, are feeling good about what awaits you in 2025. It’s gonna be a rough year on the political front for many of us, no doubt, but I’m hopeful that we can counterbalance that by focusing on what’s good and real and soul-sustaining.

As we age, it’s increasingly important.

Thanks as always for reading, and happy new year.

All posts on this here Substack are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you like what you read, and/or are a reincarnated Medici, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription ($5/month! Cheap!), buying my book, or using this link when you buy books so I get a little somethin-somethin’ on the back end, and so independent bookstores get your bucks instead of Bezos. Thank you!

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P.S. My husband, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Alastair Moock (sorry, hon, had to brag a little), just started a Substack, Letters from a Moock, to share his (excellent) writing on things like music, movies, politics, basketball and other assorted topics. Check out his inaugural post on the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

P.P.S. When I Googled “Letters from a Moock” to see if it came up in the results, the AI preamble said“"Letters from a moock" refers to a fictional collection of letters written from the perspective of a "moock," which is a playful, made-up creature that is essentially a cross between a cow and a moose, essentially combining the characteristics of both animals - large, gentle, and potentially a bit clumsy, with a penchant for grazing and living in a woodland setting.” The AI then offers up a series of ideas about what such a collection might look like, including: “The moock might describe its life in a forest or pasture, detailing interactions with other animals, the changing seasons, and the challenges of finding food.” Note that this is not an accurate description of either my husband or what he intends to write about. But props to AI for creativity. Now fuck off and stop trying to replace artists and writers.

Isn’t he cute? But neither moose nor cow-like.

Books to give YOURSELF for the holidays

So, I was originally planning to write about my third post-election realization about how I want to move through the next four (or more) years in Trumpamerica. But it’s a complex topic, and I’m still working through how to express it. So I’m gonna hold off on it for now, and do a post about something way easier and more fun: BOOKS!!

One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving and Christmas when I was a kid and young adult—pretty much right up to the point I had the damned kids—was reading. I relished having those days off from school or work to devour a good book. And when it was a fresh new one I’d gotten as a Christmas present? Hoo mama. That was the best.

The author and her brother, circa 1985. I make that exact same face now when I receive books as gifts, except my teeth are better. I still have the same haircut, too.

But do I do that now? Over the recent Thanksgiving weekend, did I allow myself the luxury of sitting around reading for an hour or two on Friday or Saturday? Because that surely would be a nice thing to do, especially after hosting and cooking for ten people, no?

No! Of course I didn’t! Because there were dishes to be put away, and emails to get caught up on, and I had to squeeze in a run after all that pie and cheese and wine. Meanwhile, the shower in the upstairs bathroom was in desperate need of a good scrubbing, and oh god, look at all those smudges around the light switches and doorknobs.

Somehow, in between all the doing, I also managed to squeeze in some mini-breaks for social media scrolling and posting, and doing the NYT Spelling Bee puzzle. But did I take an hour to kick back on the window seat on the stairs with a cup of tea and a blanket and the excellent novel I’m currently reading? (The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone, by Randy Susan Meyers.)

No. No, I did not. And I should have!! So I am vowing, right here and now, to take time to read on at least some of days I’m taking off before and after Christmas this year, and on Thanksgiving weekends in the years to come. And no, I don’t mean 30 minutes of reading right before bed, which I do most nights anyway. I’m talking good old-fashioned pre-house-and-kids-and-internet daytime reading.

I hereby order you (in bold type) to do the same. But not only that: I want you to buy yourself a book for the holidays. Or take one out of the library if you prefer. But, no, seriously. If you can swing it, buy yourself a damned book for the holidays this season.

Buy yourself that book that you’ve been wanting to read, or that spoke to you from one of the ten zillion best-of-the-year lists currently being published. You’re even allowed to take a break from the book you’re currently reading (if there is one) to read your shiny new holiday book if you like! I grant thee permission!

Buy the book at a bookstore if you can, because going to / supporting bookstores is awesome. But if you want to buy online, buy them by here, not the other place, so you can support local bookstores, ethical business practices, sustainability, and, well, me (I get a teeny kickback if you use this link, and any of the links below).

Not sure what to read? WELL. If you’re a fan of novels, I’ve got five delicious recommendations, complete with my signature non-star rating system. These are all books that I read this past year and thoroughly enjoyed. Click on any title to buy. And please feel free to add your own book recs. in the comments!

TLDR: Here’s the list on Bookshop.org, along with a few other recent favorites.

Night Watching by Tracy Sierra

On one level, Night Watching is just an excellent thriller: An intruder comes into a woman’s secluded home in the middle of a snowstorm and she has to hide in a crawlspace with her children, then make a daring escape. There’s menace and mystery and psychological complexity and all that good stuff.

On another level, though, it’s about how women are often not believed—or are written off as crazy or deluded or “under stress”—when they report violence or violation. This book will drive you bonkers, in a good way, and keep you guessing. The perfect read if you’re snowed (or rained) in.

Rating: One disturbing-looking weapon, ten billion snowflakes, and a hashtag: #BelieveWomen

The Husbands, by Holly Gramazio

This one was quick and funny and original. A 30something woman named Lauren comes home one night to find a husband (her husband, apparently) in her apartment that she has no recollection of ever meeting, let alone marrying. When he goes into the attic to get something, the person who comes back down the ladder is a different husband altogether—again, a total stranger.

Over the course of the book hundreds (thousands?) of husbands appear and disappear as Lauren tries to figure out what the hell is going on and considers what makes marriages work (or not), the role of fate versus choice when it comes to love, and whether it’s worth waiting for the “perfect” partner, or accepting that perhaps nobody really is.

Rating: Infinite penises

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There is so much story packed into this book! It’s bout two young Nigerians, Ifemelu and Obinze, who are very much in love, but choose different paths after university: She goes to America, where she discovers that being Black there is an entirely different reality from being Black in Nigeria (where “being Black” is next to irrelevant). Obinze, meanwhile, heads for London, undocumented and living on the fringes.

To be honest, I didn’t love this book, but I think it’s in part because I read it in fits and starts, during a rather stressful stretch of life (including a certain election). Some of the befuddled white American characters come off as caricatures, and it felt a bit long to me. BUT it has really stayed with me and I expect it will continue to—it was funny and sad and gorgeously written and I appreciated what it revealed about Nigerian culture and class and the experience of being an African abroad.

Rating: Three hours sitting in a salon, two passports, and one home-cooked meal.

The River, by Peter Heller

Peter Heller, hello!! I am so glad to have rediscovered you! I read Heller’s book The Dog Stars ages ago, being a MAJOR sucker for a good post-apocalypic or dystopian read, but for some reason it took me more than a decade to check out another one of his books. I’m so glad I did. The River is a combination thriller and wilderness survival tale with a tender male friendship at its heart.

Two college students, Wynn and Jack, set off on a long paddling trip in the Canadian wilderness that quickly turns perilous. There’s a wildfire, a possible murder, and some shady drunk fishermen, among other things. And, as in any good wilderness adventure, they lose a good chunk of their gear and food at one point, and have to figure out how to survive without it. I can’t get enough of that shit, man. (And if you can’t either, I highly recommend another kickass wilderness thriller, The River at Night, by Erica Ferencik.)

Rating: A whole lotta granola bars

Big Swiss, by Jen Beagin

Friends, I think this was my favorite book I read this year. It’s is messy and sexy and hilarious and completely wackadoo. A forty-something, emotionally stunted woman named Greta with a traumatic past that she’s never really dealt with lives in a ramshackle, bee-filled house in a Hudson Valley town with her bohemian roommate and transcribes therapy sessions for a sex therapist who calls himself Om. She ends up becoming obsessed with and then having a passionate and extremely erotic affair with one of his clients, a repressed, married woman that Greta refers to as “Big Swiss”—who has no idea that Greta has heard recordings of her therapy sessions.

This is definitely a love-it-or-hate-it kind of book. To quote one Goodreads reviewer: “my favorite genre is literary fiction about messed up women doing crazy sh*t.” YES! If you’re not into that kind of thing, don’t pick this one up. Or All Fours, either — another one of my favorite reads this year. I didn’t include it here because it is already on EVERY list. (And maybe don’t read my book. Or the next one I’m writing. Ha!)

Rating: Two donkeys, a spanking, and a great many bees

Bonus Book List: Hey, I know these people!

I’m part of a wonderful community of writers here in the Boston area, some of whom are dear friends. A bunch of my writer pals had novels or story collections come out in 2024, some of which I’ve read, and some of which I am dying to. I put together a list of them on Bookshop. (Most but not all are pictured in the graphic below, which is generated randomly each time you visit the page.) Boston writer friends, if I missed your book, I’m sorry! Let me know and I’ll add you!

BTW, I really appreciated the fact that after my last blog post a few folks upgraded to paid subscriptions. As someone who makes their living as a writer (and would, frankly, love to spend less time on corporate copywriting and more time on fiction / humor / essay writing) I am truly grateful. But I love my free subscribers too, and am so glad you are here! It’s all good!

Happy holidays. Now go buy yourself a book.

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It's different this time around.

Good morning, America, how are you?

As for me, other than the fact that the condition of my middle-aged neck continues to deteriorate, my right eye is occasionally doing weird, janky vision things, and 76 million people think Trump will make a swell president, I’m doing pretty well.

I almost wrote a post here just a few days after that very bad election—you know the one—but I’m glad I didn’t.

Almost two weeks on, I’ve had some time to reflect, and go through various fluctuations of dismay / anger / disbelief / sorrow / nostalgia / frustration etc. (I am still going through them, mind you.) And three things have become pretty clear to me in the process, in terms of how I plan move through this next era in the American experiment.

First realization: I refuse to carry all of this around with me all the time.

This one came on pretty quickly—even in those first miserable 24 hours, when I was still feeling shaky and nauseated, unable to move at full speed. (Literally! Grief throws my body for a big ole loop.) And it was this: I cannot and will not let the crazy and chaos and destructiveness of the Trump 2.0 government—which is already in process, with his clown car of cabinet nominees—dominate my focus for the next four or eight or forty years.

The first time Trump was in office, I spent way too much time following the news, doomscrolling, and posting on social media. This time—forget it. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older and wiser or more jaded or what. Maybe it’s just because this MAGA-infested version of American politics has been going on for eight years now, and I’m just fucking tired.

In any case, I’m less like this:

And more like this:

My time and energy are precious commodities, and I would much rather use them to read, write, be outdoors, make and eat good food, spend time with my friends and family, and engage with my community than gape in horror at Trumpster fires. (Get it? Like dumpster fires, but with Trump? Never mind.) Bette Davis wouldn’t waste her time perseverating on that bullshit, and neither shall I.

But I’m also aware that my ability to make this choice is a privilege that may not be afforded to those who could be directly affected by the policies and zeitgeist of a Trump administration: Immigrants. People of color. LGBTQ folks. Women being refused the medical care they need. People who need healthcare or food assistance that might get axed by that billionaire fuckwad Musk.

So I do not intend to put my head in the sand and turn completely inward. I will continue (and step-up, I hope) the volunteering and activism I do on a local level. I will keep donating to important causes, particularly the ones I feel will help protect civil liberties, the environment, and the most vulnerable people in our society. I will even keep writing those damned get-out-the-vote postcards if I must. (I must.)

But I will not let myself be completely consumed by all the things I cannot control. To that end, I’m cutting my news and hot-take and punditry consumption waaaaay back, and trying to limit social media, too.

Speaking of which: I swear, if I read another OH MY GOD, LOOK WHAT THEY’VE DONE NOW!! post in my feeds, I’m gonna freaking lose it. (Note that I did a lot of posting along these lines during Trump 1.0.) I get the need to vent and commiserate, but at some point it becomes self indulgent. And, if you’ve been paying attention for the last eight years, none of what’s happening, or about to happen, should come as a surprise. So next time you’re tempted to tell the world that you’re aghast, maybe fire off a donation to the ACLU (or your organization of choice) or put in a call to your senator instead. Volunteer at a local food pantry. Smile at a stranger. And then go read a good book.

On that note, here comes….

Realization number two: Art, baby. Art.

This isn’t actually a new realization. It’s the same sentiment I posted the day after the election in 2016.

But I feel it even more strongly now. Because in the very worst of times, art—by which I mean poetry, prose, visual art, theater, film, music, magic, dance, and, OK, fine, puppetry—has the power to move, inspire, challenge, educate, distract, disturb (puppets), delight, and remind us how amazing human beings can be.

This is why there’s a traveling Shakespeare troupe roaming a post-apocalyptic America in Station Eleven. It’s why my great uncle tap-danced and did magic for his fellow GIs in the Pacific Theater during World War II. It’s why, two days after the election, I brushed myself off and got back to work on my novel.

My Uncle Jack was totally hot. He also totally would have voted for Trump.

Art also slings tiny bridges across the chasm between peoples’s worldviews and political persuasions. Admittedly, this can be confounding; like, how is it possible that the person standing next to me in the museum admiring the fierce beauty of a Van Gogh could also vote for a guy who says Haitian immigrants eat dogs and cats, mocks disabled reporters, calls neo-nazis “fine people,” and tried to overturn an election? It’s hard to get one’s head around. And yet…and yet…there it is. We contain multitudes. And maybe finding common ground through art can, in some small way, help us heal as a nation. Maybe.

At the risk of sounding completely obnoxious, I will add that as a writer I feel called this time around in a way I didn’t before—as do a lot of other creators I know and love. I feel called not just to keep telling stories, both fictional and true, but to vigorously champion other people’s stories. (Just not, you know, that guy’s stories.)

This quote from Toni Morrison, which has been making its way around the internets among writers sums it up:

I also love the way one of my favorite Substackers, Lyz Lenz, put it.

Find the stories and the storytellers you want to support. Find the places making the art that you love and that crystallize a vision for a better place. Be rabid about the world you want and help to make it. I’ll be out there doing my best to do it too.

Same, girl. Same.

This brings me to a new realization: That I should save realization three for another post. Because that was a really good note to end on (of course now I’ve ruined it) and this post is already long enough. Also, some of you—you know who you are—you may need time to recover from the mention of puppets.

Take good care of yourselves and each other. And thanks more than ever for reading.

Finally, a message from your author: All posts on Jane’s Calamity are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If my work is meaningful or comforting or entertaining to you, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription (it’s less than $5 a month, Cheap!). Or, hey, buy my book! And thank you.

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Me doing my best Fraulein Maria impression near the hilltop where The Sound of Music was filmed. Through all the tumult and the strife, how can I keep from singing? (And twirling)

5 fun things to take your mind off the election

I got up this morning with every intention of getting in a few good hours of writing, but I couldn’t for the life of me concentrate. I’d write a few words or sentences and then take a break to Google stupid things like “who will win the election?” and then scary things like “civil unrest if Trump loses?” (I’m afraid it’s nearly guaranteed.)

Then, to take my mind off that, I’d do something fun like scrounging around on eBay for a discontinued Bare Minerals foundation stick that I love. (I found one! And in the right color! Hurray for consumerism, rescuing me in my time of need!)

I managed to get a little day job work in, and a quick run, but now the day is basically over. After I’m done with this Substack, I’m going to do some phone banking for the Democrats.

My pal Jenna Blum and I made calls on Saturday, and it was not nearly as scary as I feared it would be, in part because we were mostly calling people who had registered for Harris/Walz rallies, to confirm that they were attending. It’s actually kind of therapeutic to make these calls, because so many people are so lovely, and so fired up to vote. And you feel like you’re doing something at least. (My efforts even managed to guilt/inspire my grumpy husband to pick up a shift.)

jenna_blum A post shared by @jenna_blum

It’s not too late to make calls yourself. (You can even do it on Election Day.) You’ll be calling likely Democratic voters, not trying to convince Republicans not to vote for fascism. I mean, for Trump. You can even just do a few calls and bail if you hate it.

But this post is not (entirely) an exhortation to volunteer last minute. In the interest of providing a bit of diversion at this most anxious time (there’s a meme going around likening it to waiting for a biopsy to come back), I thought I’d pull together a few fun sources of distraction, at the risk of revealing what a total cheeseball I am.

A Majestic Dragon

Back in the early 2000s, in case you missed it— maybe because you were too busy trying to figure out how to use your Blackberry or wondering if the new “Facebook” thing would catch on—there was a truly weird and wonderful short animation series online called Homestar Runner. One of the recurring segments featured a character named StrongBad answering his fan emails. The most legendary one is the one where he teaches viewers (and others) how to draw a dragon. But not just any dragon: Trogdor the Burninator. Guard your thatched roof cottages—and ballot boxes—because he’s on his way.

Iguana vs. Snakes

Before Snoop Dogg was hanging out at the olympics talking about dressage and getting stoned with Martha Stewart, he was occasionally hosting the “Plizzanet Earth” segment on the Jimmy Kimmel show. This episode, featuring a shit-ton of snakes, makes me laugh every time. And almost never makes me think that the snakes vaguely resemble an angry mob of the sort that might storm a government building if their candidate loses.

Denise, the receptionist in Heaven

Former Miss New York Taryn Delanie Smith makes videos where she plays Denise, the receptionist in heaven, and they are a damned delight. Follow her on Instagram (or TikTok if that’s your thing — it’s not mine because I am old) and go way down this charming rabbit hole. Mostly the videos are funny, but sometimes she does special request ones for people who have lost loved ones and they are sad and sweet and lovely. She almost makes you forget that there are millions of people who are OK voting for a convicted sex criminal who jokes about shooting journalists and political rivals and calls undocumented immigrants “monsters” and “vermin,” because they think somehow his winning will make eggs cheaper.

taryndelaniesmith A post shared by @taryndelaniesmith

An America-themed joke:

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln, who?

What, you’ve never heard of me?

I’m not sure if this joke is actually funny, but it’s a family favorite. Whatever you do, don’t try to imagine the look of horror that would appear on Abraham Lincoln’s long, bearded face if he read a transcript of any given rally speech by Donald Trump and was then told that this man had not only been president once, but might well become president again.

Decorative Gourds

One of the scenes in my novel-in-progress that I did manage to work on a little bit today involves a cornucopia full of decorative gourds. I had to work gourds into my book somehow, because what kind of motherfucker doesn’t like them? Take a minute to read the original decorative gourd masterpiece—even if you’ve read it a thousand times before.

And then, if you feel just a little too cheerful after that, hop over to my former blogging home and read the parody I did of the piece six Novembers ago, right around the time of the Bret Kavanaugh hearings and midterm elections, It’s Smash the Patriarchy Season, Motherfuckers. Don’t worry. It’s no longer relevant at ALL! Nope. Not a bit.

Welp. I may not have completely succeeded in the whole distract and divert thing, for you or myself, but it was worth a try.

And now, I’m off to make calls.

See you on the other side, my friends.

All posts on Jane’s Calamity are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you enjoy my strange brand of Substacking, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Or, hey, buy my book!

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Peeing outside: The secret to productivity?

Hoo boy! It’s been a minute. The last few weeks have been jam-packed—a jaunt to the Writer’s Digest Conference in Cincinnati to teach sessions on memoir and humorous fiction, a ton of day job work, and lots of family stuff (our twin kiddos are in the thick of college applications; also, there have been funerals)—and as a result, I haven’t been able to find time to write here, let alone work on my novel in progress.

But now that I can finally catch my breath, I’m back here on the ‘Stack, and back to plucking away at my novel. I got a HUGE burst of momentum on that second item at the beginning of the month, when I had the great pleasure of spending five nights at an Airbnb in Western Massachusett for a solo retreat. This is the first time since my last retreat in June—the one among the woodland creatures and men on boats with their dicks out—that I’ve gotten away to write. As usual, it was incredibly productive.

When I got home, one of my kiddos wanted to know what, exactly, I *did* while I was out there. Like, did I literally just write all day?

So, this post is for that beloved child. And, because I only have so much longer to embarrass my children at close proximity, I’m going to make it as cringe as possible by including details about the bathroom situation. Then I’m going to share the post on Instagram, where several of her friends follow me. And maybe I’ll text a link to her boyfriend. And email it to some of her teachers. BWAH HA HA!! Slay.

Note that the below is sort of an amalgam of the four full days I spent on retreat, all of which were quite similar. To set the scene, here is the picture of the amazing Airbnb I stayed in—a little cottage tucked away on the property of a farm. No cell phone signal, no wifi, just beauty and quiet.

7:00 am — Wake up! Did you think I would laze around in bed, given that I have all day to write? Certainly not. Time is of the essence! However, I do take a little time to gaze out the window of the sleeping loft at the beautiful, misty meadow outside in hopes of seeing a deer or fox or something bounding bucolically across it. No luck.

7:10 — Decision point: There is no bathroom in the cottage (but there is a little kitchen area with a sink, so my tooth brushing and face washing needs are covered). Do I A.) I throw on a jacket and flip flops and make the walk down to the barn where the bathroom is, or B.) take advantage of the great outdoors? There is a lovely mist rising from the meadow, and also I am lazy. The answer is B.

7: 30 — I’ve got my coffee and toast with peanut butter and I’m sitting at the table in front of the giant window overlooking the meadow, still hoping to see some charismatic fauna. Seeing none, I return to the acrostic I’ve been working on. A better person than me would probably be freewriting in a notebook to get their creative juices flowing. But me, I’m trying to remember the name of Demi Moore’s co-star in The Scarlet Letter.

8:00 — OK, enough of that. I open up my laptop, open Scrivener, and re-read a scene I wrote the the day before to get things rolling.

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8:01 — Fuck. This is terrible. Cut and paste the entire thing into my “Deleted but not forgotten” folder.

9:00 — Having rewritten the scene I just deleted, I realize that the original version was actually better. Copy and paste it back into the document and keep writing. Now we’re cookin’ with gas!

10:30 — I’ve had a lot of coffee by now. Time to visit the meadow again. Actually, wait. Let’s take the walk to the bathroom.

10:35 — I can get wifi in the bathroom, and the texts come pinging in:

Mom, can I take the car tonight to go to Santa Fe Burrito with my friends? (Child, I am in Western Mass. Ask your father.)

etc.

Sorry to text, I know you’re on PTO - are you free to go over the website copy w. the client at 10:00 am Monday?

I resist the urge to look up Demi Moore’s co-star.

10:45 — Back at the table, internet-free, thank God.

10:50 — Go back to an earlier chapter of the book and fill in some new details about my main character that I just figured out.

10:51 — This book is so bad. WTF am I even doing? Stand up and stretch and make an cranky sort of groan of despair/creakiness.

10:52 — Ooh, is that a deer? Right there at the edge of the—oh. No. It’s just a fallen tree.

12:04 — Word count: 1,823. About three times what I normally write on your average weekday, and it’s not even noon. Hot damn!! Maybe I actually will finish this first draft within a few months!

12:15 - Back in the bathroom with the wifi, I start looking at my calendar and figure out when I can do another retreat. Start searching for Airbnbs.

12:45 - Avocado toast with lox, a Green Cola, baby carrots, a clementine, and some more acrostic-ing. I’ve got G_______A_ now. Gina…? George…? Dammit.

1:00 - Reading counts as work when you’re a writer! Grab my book from the sleeping loft, lie down on the couch with the sun coming through the window, planning to read for a nice long…..zzzzzzzzz.

2:30 — I’m woken up by the sound of something scrambling around underneath the cottage. Squirrels? Baby foxes? I hope it’s baby foxes! I go outside and peek underneath the cottage, but there are no baby foxes.

I change into running gear, then hit the country roads for a long run/walk. It is gorgeous out here. Fields and woods and brooks and farms and old houses and even older cemetaries. Tons of apple orchards. Occasional artsiness/hippiness (sculptures and prayer flags and whatnot) interspersed with occasional Trumpiness (Trump flags and signs denigrating liberals and whatnot). Still no good wildlife. But cows. And lots of birds. While I’m walking, I figure out how to solve a chronology issue in the book that I’ve been wrestling with. I almost always make writing breakthroughs, whether tiny or enormous, while I’m walking or hiking. Note that both of these activities also may involve peeing outside. COINCIDENCE?

4:30 — Back at the cottage. Sit back down, ready to bang out another few hundred words, maybe even a thousand, if I can. Late afternoon is when I get my second burst of writing momentum. I read the note I left to myself in the open document before I broke for lunch: Next, write the scene where she tells her brother what’s going on.

4:33 — Ugh. I don’t want to write that scene. Does this mean that it’s not what the next scene should be? If you’re bored, doesn’t that mean your reader will be bored, too? Yes, maybe instead I should—ooh! Is that a deer?? No. It is not a deer. It is the same fallen tree I thought was a deer before.

5:00 - Hello, meadow, my old friend. I’ve come to crouch in you again.

5:45 — I’ve figured out how to make the brother conversation scene not boring—basically by adding funny dialogue to entertain myself—and it’s going swimmingly. You know what would be nice right about now? A nice big glass of sauv. blanc and some Skinny-pop cheddar popcorn, that’s what.

7:15 — Quittin’ time! Eat some of the rotisserie chicken in the fridge, along with a salad from one of those handy kits where the dressing has more sugar than your average cupcake. Final word count for the day: 2,301—but that doesn’t include all the stuff I wrote and then relegated to the Deleted But Not Forgotten folder, or the backfilling and revising I did in older chapters.

Feel briefly wistful and frustrated. Why can’t I manage to be even half as productive at home? Should I get up at 4 am instead of 6:30 am? Should I erect a little writing shed in my yard? Pee exclusively in the woods behind our house? Or should I leave my family take up permanent residence in this cottage, if the owners are amenable? (I might want to add a bathroom if I did that.)

7:30 ish - Lie on the couch and watch one of the movies I wisely downloaded before I left home. Maybe eat a little bit o’ chocolate.

9:45 - Get in jammies and ascend to the sleeping loft, planning to read for a good solid hour, but konk out after twenty minutes.

12:42 am — Be woken up by whatever animal(s) are squeaking and scrabbling around under the cottage (I’m still hoping it’s baby foxes, but I will never know for sure) and then lie there for a while trying to talk my bladder out of being full, as if somehow I can avoid doing the thing I must do next: down the ladder, and out into the meadow once more. Since we’re out in the country, the sky is very dark and brimming with stars. If there was a bathroom in the cottage, I might never have seen them. Or heard the owls hooting in the woods.

7:00 am — Wakey wakey! As I lounge in bed for a few minutes, contemplating my good fortune, considering once again whether to use the bathroom or the meadow, and hoping for wildlife, it finally comes to me: Demi Moore’s co-star in The Scarlet Letter was Gary Oldman.

Let the day begin.

All posts on Jane’s Calamity are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you enjoy my strange brand of Substacking, and/or if you’d like to help me pay for my Airbnb writing/peeing retreats, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Or, hey, buy my book!

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P.S. I recently got the very exciting news that The Society of Shame is a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize in American Humor in Writing. What an honor to be in such talented company! Speaking of which: I loved meeting a previous Thurber Prize winner, the wonderful Steven Rowley, (The Guncle, The Celebrants, Lily and the Octopus) at the Writer’s Digest conference last week. Naturally, we reveled in our hilariousness together at sunset, as one does.

P.P.S. To my kids and, really, all of you: Sorry about all the peeing stuff. It won’t happen again.

Zen and the Art of Market Basket

I am not a fan of crowded and chaotic situations. Being herded through customs or security checkpoints at airports, exiting or entering shows and sporting events, attempting to get a table at a restaurant with a large group of people and no reservation—these things all make me feel like I can’t quite get enough oxygen in my lungs and temporarily hate being human.

But the older I get, the better I find I am at remaining patient, detached, and even serene in these situations. I think it’s because I’ve gotten much better over time at accepting my absolute powerlessness in the face of…well, pretty much everything.

I also have a practice—a workout routine, if you will—to help me strengthen my ability to remain placid in the midst of chaos and the unrelenting crush of humanity:

I shop at the Chelsea, Massachusetts Market Basket.

If you don’t live in eastern New England, then you may not have had the singular experience of grocery shopping at a Market Basket. (Or, DeMoula’s, if you’re old school.) And that experience is, in a word, crowded.

This is mainly because Market Basket is much, much cheaper than the other supermarkets around—Stop & Shop, Shaw’s, Star, Hannaford, Trader Joe’s*, etc.—and has incredible selection and availability. You can get all of your standard American supermarket fare—like, all of it: a dozen brands of tomato sauce, twenty different kinds of yogurt, seven-thousand kinds of breakfast cereal—as well as some of the bougie stuff—Bob’s Red Mill organic quinoa, Annie’s overpriced mac and cheese, Jeff and whoever’s free-range eggs, etc. Plus baked goods, prepared foods, and generic products galore.

Each Market Basket store also carries an immense selection of items that cater to the local immigrant populations. Do you need taro? Beef or pork feet? Chinese mustard greens? Haitian soup mix? A very particular type of cheese from El Salvador? Market Basket is the place for you. (Void in New Hampshire locations.)

This entire display case is dairy products from Latin America. Technically they’re cow feet.

But with all this selection and such fabulous prices ($2.50 for Wheat Thins! CAN YOU EVEN?) you’re going to have to navigate your way around lots of other people and their shopping carts. You’re also going to have to get around the staff constantly restocking the shelves. It’s nearly impossible to find a Market Basket aisle that doesn’t have at least one employee unpacking boxes. And speaking of aisles, in some store locations they are maddeningly narrow. (I’m looking at you, Somerville.)

When I was younger and less enlightened—like, three years ago—I used to avoid Market Basket like the plague. I could not deal with the traffic jams and sensory overload. I was willing to pay a little more for the more refined shopping experience that is Stop & Shop. But with inflation and price gouging sending grocery prices sky high, I started occasionally venturing to Market Baskets, albeit with gritted teeth and a racing pulse. I would leaving feel drained.

It was my good pal Marah who helped me change my entire attitude toward the Market Basket shopping experience. She was and is a big fan of the (immense) Chelsea Market Basket, which is near the rock gym where we climb together. She told me that her secret to survival is to go in with the right frame of mind, knowing that, yes, it will be crowded and congested and overwhelming, and choosing to accept that fact and just be present, letting it all wash over you as you appreciate the grand pageant of humanity.

The grand pageant of humanity!

Indeed, that is the beauty of the Chelsea, Massachusetts Market Basket. (And many other locations. Void in New Hampshire.) You will see people of every size, shape, race, class, age, and ethnicity. You will see women in hijabs and/or Patagonia fleece and men in dashikis and/or Vietnam Veteran caps. You will see people from every Spanish-speaking country in the world, with the possible exception of Spain. (Two-thirds of the population of Chelsea is of Latin American origin.)

As you make your way through the store, you will see old people, young people, babies, children, and beings you suspect are not of this realm. You will see people who are completely oblivious to everyone around them, who park their cart dead-center in the middle of one of the aisle and completely block the flow of traffic while they stand scrutinizing the vast Goya bean selection. You will see people who do not share your notion of what constitutes an appropriate amount of personal space. You might even see someone taking pictures of the Beef Feet.

You will also encounter people who seem to be truly enjoying themselves. Or who are at least more or less neutrally content. People who are definitely not freaking the fuck out at the sheer chaos of it all.

One of those people COULD BE YOU! Like my wise friend said, the secret at Market Basket is to accept what is and focus on the wonder of it all: the people, the bounty, and the mulitcultural miracle that is America.

Also, while you’re there, be sure to appreciate the the well-oiled machine that is the Market Basket workforce: Efficient, polite, spiffy. The boys and men are all required to wear ties, the women at the registers are paragons of productivity, and the checkout lines move at an impressive clip. If anyone loathes their job, they hide it well. (The company is, apparently, very good to its employees well, which probably has something to do with their overall pleasantness; in fact, ten years ago, Market Basket employees throughout the region went on strike when the Board of Directors tried to oust the beloved CEO.)

The other secret to Market Basket survival is to keep your breath steady and for God’s sake keep things in perspective—especially in the produce section. Navigating this part of a Market Basket (any Market Basket, even in New Hampshire) is kind of like being in a game of Pac Man, but if there were leafy greens and twenty times as many ghosts. But not ghosts that want to kill you; just ghosts that have a tendency to get between you and the cilantro—which is their goddamned right. You just have to wait your turn. Breathe. It’s all good.

The produce section. Deep breaths.

Same goes when you’re trying to maneuver between carts in a crowded aisle. Let yourself be bemused by the craziness of it all! Smile! Nine times out of ten, the person you’re doing the you-go-no-you-go cart dance with, or who you almost plow into coming out of the toilet paper aisle, will smile back. Tensions dissipate. Cultural differences melt away. The outside world in all its strife and division is gone. There is nothing but this vast food wonderland, and all of us here being human together, trying to get past the employee restocking the Maruchan Instant Lunch.

It’s all going to be OK.

I’ve puzzled over this sign many times, trying to figure out what, exactly, “Ethnic Foods” means in this context. Also: I had no idea there was a substantial Bosnian community in Chelsea, but apparently there is? Or maybe Bosnian groceries are just particularly awesome and I’ve been missing out. Must try some next time.

So there you have it. I never would have thought I would come to appreciate (and enjoy) my Market Basket forays as much as I do, and I certainly didn’t think they would become a quasi-spiritual practice. But I honestly think they are helping me become a better person. Or, at least, a more patient and even-keeled one. Most of the time.

See you in the produce section.

All posts on Jane’s Calamity are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you enjoy my strange brand of Substacking, and/or if you’d like to support my Market Basket habit, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Or, hey, buy my book!

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P.S. I am not alone in my love of Market Basket. It’s sort of a thing in the Greater Boston Area and beyond. See below from a January post from Boston.com (I’m guilty of the seventh item, clearly) and check out the People of Market Basket Facebook page for some excellent local flavor, including Massholes arguing about politics in the comments.

P.P.S. Here’s another post about me attempting (but in this case failing at) mindfulness, and why I’d be a terrible Buddhist monk.

*Trader Joe’s is not a real supermarket.