Why Do We Love Subscriptions? Cooking School of the Airwaves, 1934

Certainty is a balm in uncertain times.

After I discovered the Libby app, my Audible credits piled up, month after month. Periodically I’d pause the subscription for three months—because to permanently cancel, they make you click infinity clicks. Are you sure you want to go? Click here. *click* But, seriously. Really-really? Click here. Repeat. And that gets me every time. So I never actually cancel, just pause. I mean, they do have exclusive dealios, Arthur Ransome’s books, for instance. And that’s not nothing.

But last week I did it. Canceled.

I had, embarrassingly, six credits piled up, and picking six books to buy before bye-bye took me forever and an age. Okay, an hour. But it felt like forever. Had to cross reference my Goodreads “want to read” list of 577 titles with narrator’s voices and price and whatnot. (The book, of course, has to cost more than the credit to be worth that click.)

What does Audible have to do with Cooking School of the Air, you wonder? Well. Last week an asshole yellow jacket flew into my studio specifically to attack. Two days later, I woke to find my arm was swollen up like Popeye’s. So I spent a day in bed, EpiPen at the ready, watching yet another manic pixie dream girl movie, napping, getting rid of Audible, and, my favorite comfort, reading vintage cookbooks.

This is a long way of introducing you to Frances Lee Barton, who, along with Betty Crocker, (a woman I totally did not think was real), appears to have perhaps been an actual person. I first met Frances when my grandmother sent me home from a summer visit to her home in Lorain, Ohio, with a pile of her unused kitchen things, including her ring-bound year of recipes.  

Evidently you could listen to Frances’s radio show every week, and then she’d send you recipes to put in your handy-dandy binder. And, evidently, my grandmother—or perhaps her mother, as a gift—signed her up for the year, for 25 cents.

During the last decades since the Frances binder came to my house, I have glanced through, reading a recipe here or there. But I didn’t really examine it until the fateful Popeye day last week. When I was younger, I found the idea, the font, the tone, the whole shebang… attractive. Appealing. But now that I’ve read Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan, I am suspicious of General Foods. You only get a whiff in 1934, but it’s there in nascent form, the sales pitch, the agenda, the paternalistic care for housewives, especially young brides “having so hectic a time,” that came to a fevered pitch after the war. Well. Once you see that fuckery, some of the ephemera-appeal wears off. 

“MINUTE TAPIOCA TO THE RESCUE!” 

Okay. Right.

Was my grandmother having “so hectic a time” in 1934? Did she need to be rescued by minute tapioca and the new Jello-O technology? Possibly? She was a young bride. But she was also competent. She had just given up teaching mathematics at the high school, because married women “weren’t allowed to take a job away from a man” — a fun fact she spit out, with venom. Somewhat frequently. 

So I wonder. How useful was Frances Lee Barton? Was it the content that attracted her? Or did the predictability of the radio show and the arrival of the week’s pamphlet in the mail give her comfort? Because subscription predictability sure comforts me, the thought of something new, a treasure, arriving as if by magic. Highlights for Children when I was a girl, Cooks Illustrated when I was a young mother, and even my milk delivery now—these deliveries are certain, and certainty is a balm in uncertain times. 

Well. Until that subscription becomes a burden, taunting, an automatic withdrawal from your bank account for something you cannot see. 

But the lure! As soon as I canceled Audible, I immediately cast a glance at Persephone Books. For a hot second…! I imagined how wonderful that would be. Then came to my senses.

My grandmother only subscribed for a year—25 cents in 1934 would be about $4.79 today, according to the Internets. She was a practical woman, and likely decided it was not worth the expense. She counted pennies, actual pennies, and was a frugal woman. And, you know, I suspect it was easier to unsubscribe to Cooking School of the Air than it was for me to save that $16.49 a month with Audible.

What was the appeal? She was not one to wax philosophical. But I wish I could ask her.

When your learning outcomes don’t match the syllabus. (Ouch.)

It was a particularly icy January thirty years ago when I arrived in Washington DC to begin my graduate studies at Wesley Theological Seminary. This was a few days before President George H. W. Bush announced Operation Desert Storm, and the campus was gripped by grief and rage. I regret to report that I stayed in my room to unpack the evening I was invited to join an interfaith service at the National Cathedral and a candlelight march to the White House for peace in Iraq. 

Against the war, the students presented a unified front. But inside, the campus was on fire. I was not there the first semester, but if memory serves, I believe it was radical feminist theologian Mary Daly who had been invited to speak the previous fall during orientation. I distinctly remember the topic of that presentation, the “Atonement as divine child abuse,” because it was too much for the community. The conservatives and liberals were at each other’s throats. It was a bloodbath. I was twenty-three, a naive dear-little-dumb-dumb, and I truly had no idea what was happening. The little I could comprehend of world and campus events had to be translated for me by a quirky classmate, Denise, and her boyfriend Leo, who—and I’m not making this up—was an actual Marxist.

I didn’t last long at Wesley. A few intense months later I transferred to Seattle University, after learning I was pregnant. I managed to stretch out that two-year degree over nine years, with breaks here and there to work and to have a second baby. But I finally finished all my coursework.

However, I never turned in a final, required paper. For a variety of reasons. Instead, I took a low-paying part-time job thinking it would buy me some time to hang with my boys and figure out what to do. Twenty years later, the boys were gone, but I was still in that job.

I began to plot my escape just over a year ago. By some miracle, or perhaps because they needed my money, in January 2020, the School of Theology and Ministry let me back in. If I just took three classes, they’d let me have the degree. 

And then, pandemic. The idea of Zoom school did not appeal to me, so I requested a deferral, but later relented. Finally, on January 6, another day that will live in infamy, I virtually attended my first graduate level class in twenty years, Theology, Ecumenism, Pluralism.

Returning to graduate studies after a two-decade hiatus is rough. A story for another day. And this is all introductory material, so let’s cut to the chase.

Early in the course we read a chapter from Ivone Gebara’s 1999 book, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. Even a most cursory glance at her Wiki page reveals that she’s an absolute badass. Her evidently controversial ideas seem perfectly reasonable to me, so I didn’t quite pick up on how threatening her Jesus might be to the Catholic Church.

In fact, the seemingly innocuous moment that struck me as scandalous was the line that begins, “I agree with Sallie McFague….”

At Wesley, we had read McFague’s Speaking in Parables, first published in 1975. I absolutely loathed that book. One of my most distinct divinity school memories—aside from that positive pregnancy test in the dorm bathroom, of course—is of sitting at my desk seething over what seemed to me to be utterly unrelated sentences. (We didn’t have “word salad” in our vocabulary then.) What the Hell even is this?

“I agree with Sallie McFague….”

Agree!

In an interview with Bill Moyers back in the late 80s, McFague said something along the lines of, or perhaps even exactly—religious language is “ordinary language which we use in extraordinary ways.” Even my dear-little-dumb-dumb self knew that this was not quite right. Or, that it was half-correct. My instinct was—and is now, but with an enormous dose of humility mixed in—to suggest that religious language is ordinary language that uses us in extraordinary ways. But to darling dummy me, with the arrogance particular to youth, McFague was obviously and simply wrongedy-wrong. Off with her head!

Also. As an undergraduate, I had read In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus in a class with Marcus Borg. Sometimes we minimally, partially understand a text, but are nonetheless captivated, used, shaped. The line I remember from Crossan—and “remember” is too flaccid a word—the line that moved me, shifted my world, was this: “We live in story like fish in the sea.”

(You might be cringing, knowing where I’m going with this.)

What did I know about Sallie McFague? Or John Dominc Crossan? Aside from their respective genders? Fuck all. That’s what I knew.

So when I read Gebara, “I agree with Sallie McFague….” That’s when I realized. 

Word salad notwithstanding, I assume my bias against McFague had to do with an internalized idea that women are not theologians. And Mary Daly had, it seemed to me, casually ripped the Wesley community apart. At twenty-three, I’d been thoroughly trained to not make waves and to dismiss any woman who did. While at the same time I dismissed McFague for not being radical enough, because she didn’t turn it on it’s head, the reciprocal power of religious language. 

Just before I read the Gebara article this year, I had read a novel, also by a woman, and I was surprised and struck by the sexism. When I puzzled over this with my pal Gwynne, she said, “The misogyny is baked in.” 

Baked into the culture, the air we breathe. It’s the story-sea we swim in.

So. Reviewing the syllabus, what do I know about Theology, Ecumenism, and Pluralism, after ten intense weeks? Fuck all. But my own baked in biases? More than I’d like.

“Quick! What’s the difference between exegesis and hermeneutics?”

Last night we welcomed a guest speaker in our Theology, Ecumenism & Pluralism class, the vice president of an international aid organization. He is Dutch and Indonesian, and in a lilting accent, finishing his introduction, he said, “That’s some of what I do. But if you ask my kids, they’ll say I look at email and drink coffee all day. Which is also true.”

Back in the olden days when I worked at a local church, my young son hated for me to leave at bedtime for evening meetings. “But I don’t even know what a meeting is! I just think about grownups sitting around a table and drinking coffee, talk-talk-talking!” Accurate.

A year into this pandemic, I do not miss meetings, but I do miss the table. Zoom gatherings are tiresome, and I would love to have met all my classmates in person. They are the best part of this finishing-the-master’s-degree project so far. Because of plague, there can be no shooting of shit before and after class, no beer, no coffee, no chats on the way to the bus stop or parking lot. Wouldn’t you want to know more about these people?:

  • A Korean nun who sits straight and tall wrapped in a pale blue shawl, her Zoom background a nighttime view of the Vatican. She apologizes for her poor English, yet is thoroughly engaging, thoughtful, and articulate. 
  • A young woman who was raised in a Pentecostal church and is now seeking ordination with the UCC. She has a master’s in philosophy and studied Russian literature as an undergrad, identifies as queer, and can use words like “ontological” and “Hegelian” in casual conversation, absolutely unironically.
  • An older Carmelite, a woman who has a PhD in something or other, and WOW does she have an orderly mind. I overheard her talking with another student during a break, and evidently she keeps track of her notes and our readings in an Excel document. (!!!) So when she occasionally wears her hair in long silver braids with a kerchief, which was a popular look in the 1970s–I find that endearing somehow. As if hard-core brainiacs shouldn’t be allowed to look like our babysitters of yore.

They are all brilliant. I watch and listen, wondering if it might not be time to rename this blog. For accuracy. And to avoid false advertising.

My pal Wayne recently confessed in an email, “I honestly don’t understand why you would want to go back to school and study theology. Quick! What’s the difference between exegesis and hermeneutics?” 

Good question. I just keep thinking of little Jeremiah. One summer when the boys were small, probably not long after my E complained about meetings and talking and coffee, several of us parents were sitting in the sunshine while the children played. Jeremiah had just gotten a fancy watch for his birthday.

“Wanna see my watch?”

Of course we did.

“Nice!”

“Hey, what time is it, buddy?”

He studied his wrist, then looked up, grinned, and cheerfully said, “No idea!” And then he scampered off.

He’s a firefighter now, and presumably knows how to tell time. Perhaps one day I’ll drop “hermeneutics” into casual conversation and keep a straight face while I’m at it. In our last paper, which was all bread and condiment and baloney, I actually wrote “in-breaking of the spirit,” in a bold and fruitless attempt to seem like I knew what I was talking about. I felt dirty. 

Sure, I’ve enjoyed this experiment. But it’s been a lot, all those infinity pages of reading each week. And I’m anxious to write agin, my own stuff, less baloney sandwich.

The violas and pansies and daffodils are blooming, and the plum blossoms will burst open any minute. The forget-me-nots, too. The new arbor and fence are up in the back garden, and it’s still light out at dinnertime. Just one class session left, and one paper, “A Coherent Theology of Unity for 2021”—No idea!—and then I can scamper into the garden. 

I can’t wait.

Otis the Miniature Donkey and The Cost of Consumer Culture

Like most of the rest of the United States, Washington is experiencing an exponential increase in covid cases. Yesterday, predictably, our governor announced sensible and needed restrictions. 

It happened that on the day last week that my county saw the first absolutely astronomical jump in cases, the email started rolling in—reservation requests for a summer conference in my little concert hall. Late May, five hundred teenagers? Sure. Great idea. 

It’s been a few years since I’ve worked the summer conferences, but those emails—that’s when it dawned on me then that there are aspects of “before,” of “normalcy,” that I simply want no part of. 

For some of us, the pandemic has offered a drastic reset. Mostly, the practical changes in my life have been manageable. These shifts are all related to financial constraints because of my significantly reduced income. For instance, except for two notable barbecues last summer (socially distanced, of course), every single meal I’ve consumed has been prepared in my own home, from scratch. Not including second breakfasts, that’s nearly 750 meals not purchased from the grocery deli or a small business. Which means that with every announcement of another restaurant closure, I feel a smidgen guilty.

So much money saved. Or, “saved.” Because if you don’t have those funds to begin with, are you really saving?

I don’t know how to calculate meal “savings,” but haircuts—that’s easy. I’ve taken the scissors to my bangs several times, but I haven’t had my hair professionally cut since February. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars saved. 

Until last February, about every seven or eight weeks for nearly two decades, Becky cut my hair. I think of her as a youngster, but she must be about forty now. Becky has two boys, I have two boys. I remember when she got married, becoming a wife and stepmother overnight. I remember her pregnancy and the birth of her first biological child. Like me, she had a wicked fast delivery—a few hours. So we bonded over that particular intensity, over the sometimes unkind or dismissive response from other mothers, as if there were some competition, the length of suffering offering a badge. Becky remembers my boys’ off to college, Seth earning his pilot’s license before learning to drive, Eli off to the Peace Corps…. All the milestones. We’ve followed the rough outline of each other’s lives with care and compassion.

Becky has a sweet nature and an extremely loud voice, so she always sounds like she’s yelling. I find this contrast fascinating and hilarious. She had been my haircut gal for at least ten years when—well, I forget what we were discussing.

“Back up,” I said. “Did you just say you have a miniature donkey?”

“OTIS!”

We had discussed our gardens and our chickens, but all those years, and I had no idea about Otis. 

But my favorite memory was the time I told her about the coat tree. She’d been stressed about the boy-related mess in her house, and boy-howdy, I was able to sympathize.

“One day I was vacuuming by the front door of our tiny house,” I told her. “Near the coat tree that was top heavy with too many coats on it. I was working around the pile of baby paraphernalia that needed to go to the Goodwill, carriers, jumpy seats, the infant car seat, a swing, and probably more. I jostled the tree as I worked and the whole thing fell on top of me.”

“NO!”

“I lost my mind. So I opened the front door and just started hurling the baby equipment out into the yard. It was so satisfying.”

“OH YES IT WAS.”

“Little Eli watched silently, perfectly still, his eyes following each item as it flew out the door.”

“OH, YEAH YOU DID! OUT THE DOOR! ABSOLUTELY.”


“And then I just left it all there.”

“NOPE. NOT PICKING THAT UP.”

“Later, when Ross came home through the back door, I was reading to Eli and nursing the baby, and I casually mentioned, ‘Oh, there are a few items in the front yard that will need to be donated.’” 

“OF COURSE. EVERYTHING WAS FINE. DOMESTIC BLISS. BECAUSE YOU GOT IT OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM.”

“I listened to his footsteps as he walked to the front of the house. And then I heard a quiet, surprised whisper, Ohmygosh.” 

“I AM DYING.”

“To his credit, he walked right back out to his truck, drove around front, loaded that stuff up, and I never saw it again.”

“GOOD MAN. GOOD MAN.”

Then I told her about how the next week we bought an antique wardrobe because the house doesn’t have a coat closet.

“You would never know, looking at that gorgeous 1930s birdseye maple stunner that it has this… story.”

“…OF PARENTAL RAGE.”

I’m not sure why I remembered Otis and parental rage last week, why I was able to summon up the exact timbre of Becky’s voice in my brain radio. Maybe it was when I was snipping away at my bangs. It occurred to me that I feel no virtue, saving all that money—that expense was obviously not only about the hair. Why is it that mixed in with those feelings of missing Becky and her stories, I also feel guilt? Why is it on us, the low-wage earners, to support small businesses? 

Another stimulus check may or may not be forthcoming, but there’s good news this morning about a vaccine. I’m skeptical about five hundred teenagers singing and celebrating in my concert hall next May, but I’d sure love an update about Otis and Becky and her boys.

I met a moon-gazing Viking. Risky and right.

Yesterday morning I left early for my run—with the time change, very early, indeed. Predictably, I saw none of the usual day-after-Halloween detritus, pumpkin guts or candy wrappers in the road or deflated spooks. It was cold and eerie-quiet.

A few blocks from home I saw a car idling about a block ahead. As I approached, I moved far to the left to avoid billowing steam and exhaust. But then the driver began to roll forward. I paused, waiting to see whether he planned to turn or proceed. By then I could see that the driver was a young ginger-bearded Viking. 

“I’m just looking at the moon,” he said, nodding west. 

I looked. There it hovered on the horizon, huge in the pale blue. 

And before I could say anything, he continued, “I’ve never seen a full moon in the morning!”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

He nodded, quietly gazing. I passed his car, and he remained a long while. Bless his heart.

But I immediately began to wonder. Should I have been more cautious? Was I in denial that this was a potentially dangerous situation? By proceeding directly up to that vehicle, was I an enormous ignoramus?

We’ve had ample opportunity lately to ponder the nature of denial, what with this rhetoric about not wearing a mask, about “living in fear.” Is wearing a seat belt “living in fear”? How about obeying traffic signals? It makes no sense. But I suppose if we’ve learned nothing else in the last four years, we should understand this: propaganda works.

And the whole point of gaslighting is to make you doubt your own spidey senses, doubt reality. After four years of gaslighting and fascist fuckery, how do we know exactly what the danger is? Are we overreacting? Under-reacting? On the eve of the election, I wonder: If we urge each other to vote, are we, as my friend Rose put it, “still subject to the fantasy” that we live “in a democratic republic”?

I keep reminding myself that it will be a good while before the election results are in, so it’s no use dying in advance. Meanwhile, I sign in for Zoom meetings, make phone calls, answer email, and proceed as if it’s an ordinary day. But we all seem to be het up, our spidey senses engaged. This afternoon I spoke to a former teacher and longtime colleague. I haven’t seen or talked with her for eight months, but, on automatic pilot, when she picked up the phone I opened with our usual shtick. “Dahling! How are you?”

But my heart wasn’t in it, and she could tell. “Oh,” she said, morosely, “probably about the same as you are.”

“Like you’ve had too much caffeine but you haven’t had any? Like you’re on high alert?”

“Or,” she said, “like I’m looking down the edge of a high cliff, deciding whether to jump.”

So. Basically same-same.

We made quick work of our business—we can’t fix the fascist fuckery, but we can arrange recording dates for her viola student. So it was a quick call, but hearing her voice was a comfort, and put me in mind of the compline service at St. Mark’s Cathedral, where she sang in the Cathedral Choir. (If they still meet, perhaps still does.) In college, I used to tune in on Sunday nights to hear the service on the radio. Back those olden days, the cantor had a posh British accent. It was a highly dramatic moment when he would intone the famous passage in his deep bass:

Brethren: Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist, steadfast in the faith. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us.

Now. Prayer itself does not comfort me, but the rhythms of the poetry do. I’ve always remembered that bit, have it by heart… as a roaring lion, walketh about. The idea that as we face the closing darkness, some dangers are real, but we do not have to be consumed, devoured—this also appeals to me. Sober vigilance seems a reasonable idea. And, to use religious language, that we who have resources are called to remain steadfast. Even-keeled.

And I keep thinking about that lovely moon and the would-be axe murder, the gentle Viking-looking fella who stopped to gaze and wonder.

Finding hope when quiet feels like stagnation.

“…right now, this seems to be a period of time when we’re almost caught in this sense of repetition each day, not knowing where we’re going. You know, there’s not the sense of forward momentum that we normally have in our lives. And I think that that feeling that I get playing [Philip] Glass’s music is almost a mirror to what we’re feeling right now.”

I found concert pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s interview last month so gently reassuring. Although, pre-pandemic Nicole would have made a joke about Philip Glass. I met him once when he gave a talk in my concert hall. Afterward, the wife of one of my colleagues said that she always tries to visualize an outline when she’s listening to a lecture so she can remember it later. “I realized about five minutes in—he’s not using any kind of outline. It’s just… whatever thought pops in his head.” Pre-pandemic, that sense of not knowing where we’re going or when we might get there, musically, was hilarious. 

Not funny anymore.

At the beginning of our Great Pause, it felt like a FREE DAY—something my younger son would shout when we would roll up to an intersection on our bikes only to find there were no cars, and we didn’t have to stop. FREE DAY, in our family lexicon, came to mean an unexpected bonus, something that moved us forward.

After stagnating for actual years, post-pulmonary embolism, I was ready for a FREE DAY, ready to move ahead, unhindered. And just before the pandemic, I was getting momentum—accepted into grad school and offered a part-time job that would get me out of my current situation and give me just enough income to pay the bills while I finished that degree and set myself up for the next step.

Last spring, early in the pandemic, I carried that momentum, redirected it. I toiled hours a day in the garden, reclaiming what had been lost. I felt alive. Outside was so much better than the dark sound booth. It was good.

And then the paychecks stopped coming. July and August were especially grim. Even if I did listen to music, Philip Glass would not have been a comfort. Riding my bicycle for hours, hoping to feel better—didn’t work. It was the waiting that killed me, waiting for my employer to make the choice we all knew was coming—to go with remote learning. The days repeated, not with comforting ritual, but stagnant, Glass-like. There was no sense of forward.

Then there was the waiting for any news whatsoever about my position. That came at the end of August, a full month after the decision to go remote. I’m down to sixteen hours a week. Sure, some incoming cash is better than none. And, yes, the learning curve was hellish—adapting to the change from live performance venue to recording studio. But I was comforted by Dr. Ahmad’s reassurance that “…the six-month mark in any sustained crisis is always difficult. We have all adjusted to this ‘new normal,’ but might now feel like we’re running out of steam. Yet, at best, we are only one third of the way through this marathon. How can we keep going?”

So I took her advice: “Right now, if you can meet your obligations and be kind to your loved ones, you get an A+.” I kept slogging away, trying to be kind, and after an adjustment period with this new work and only a few near-disasters, I’ve gotten some momentum. Bonus—six weeks into this new schedule, I’m loving having weekends for the first time in my entire adult working life.

Like everyone, I’m nervous about the election, about fascism, about collapse. And I am not a concert pianist, nor have I released an album during pandemic. But I submitted a FAFSA yesterday, and I’ve moved into my new little writing house, where I am typing right now. At a deep level, I sympathize with what Dinnerstein says at the end of her interview: “…it’s so surprising and also very reassuring for me because I thought that I was all dried out and doing nothing. And it turns out that something was happening to me when I wasn’t playing.”

And this is what I hope for all of us, as we wait for the election, that something is happening during this time, something quiet and beautiful.

Is it okay to be happy when the planet is unraveling?

“Increasingly I am feeling overwhelmed and unsure about how I can best live my life in the face of the catastrophe that is now upon us.”

Ross and I have had dinner together at my place every night since mid-April—nearly 200 dinners and counting. Our evenings have a pleasing predictability, the meals simple, the after-dinner chores and quiet downtime the same. On Tuesday, Ross pulled out the chair for the cat to move her from his spot to hers, per usual, and she was curled up, apparently content, per usual. Ross was telling me about a movie he’d watched, “It’s a little bit sad, but also funny. The mother is… well. I won’t tell you.” 

While we were talking, I recognized an odd feeling.

I was happy. Satisfied. That was pleasant. 

Ross generally arrives around five, but he had come over early. It was a sunshiny, warm day.

While I was in a Zoom meeting that lovely afternoon, Ross had cleaned out the chicken coop, mowed the lawn, and installed the second outlet in my new office, a finished shed out back in the area I’m reclaiming from the side sewer disaster of ‘19. 

As soon as I was done working, I went out to take a photo, naturally. Ross was finishing the outlet.

“Don’t take a picture of my butt, Nicole.” 

So I waited. Got the shot. Then he brought out the vacuum.

“I made a mess because someone painted right over the ground wire.” 

Whoopsie-doodle. I mopped. There are a few very fine dots from paint splatters, but they’ve been coming up with my fingernail. The outside is still unpainted, but the space is usable—the WiFi works and my Excellent Builder Guy swung by at lunch yesterday to install the heater.

That night at dinner, feeling content about small progress with the office shed and writing projects, I wondered, again, as I do almost daily, what ordinary people in Europe felt in the 1930s as war and genocide unravelled one country after another. Were they focused on household things, painting, as I had been all weekend? Were they delighting in the scent of overripe apples in the garden?  

As we hurtle toward the election, the news has been wild, every day a new horror—545 children separated at the border cannot be found. Among the many atrocities in the news, this one particularly haunts me. Then, too, I read Australian climate scientist Joëlle Gergis’s grief-filled wake-up call about planetary collapse. “Increasingly I am feeling overwhelmed and unsure about how I can best live my life in the face of the catastrophe that is now upon us.”

I think often of a book I listened to early in the pandemic while I cleared away years of neglect in the garden, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks. Again and again the narrator uses the word “disordered,” to describe a mind or the times. I seldom hear this word in real life. I know no one who uses it. But daily we hear, on the news, on social media, about this or that “unprecedented” event. “Disordered” seems appropriate, precise and accurate.

How can we live our best lives in the face of catastrophe? How can we construct some order when our government is infested with disordered minds? I don’t know. But I remember that when he was small, my son used to earnestly announce that he was doing his “little best.” Which is all we can do, our little best. So after dinner that night during our quiet evening routine, feeling a peculiar contentment, Ross watching YouTube videos about cameras, I filled out my ballot.

Please vote.

“Are you any good at it?”

Back in the olden days I was chatting one Sunday after church with a woman named Carolyn. She was the director of a nursing program at a nearby university, and when I was a student at the rival college across town, I babysat for her boys. I hadn’t seen her for a while, and she asked, like you do, what I was up to. I had just snagged what I thought was the perfect summer job. I was frankly so tickled to have any job at all, I was excited when I told her.

“I’m working for a family-owned small business selling patio furniture.”

She raised her eyebrows, smiling. I can’t quite recall what she said next, but it was something about my religion major coming in handy. And I distinctly recall what she said next: “Are you any good at it?”

You know those moments when you have such a profound realization of the obvious that years later you can recall every detail about the situation—what you were wearing, the light in the room, the distinct shape and color of a person’s eyes? That.

Because, no. Not good at it. Not at all.

I lost touch with her family when I left the church, but today at our outlet grocery store I thought about Carolyn.

In the time it took me to unload my loot onto the belt and pay, I had convinced two middle-aged ladies and the checker that they, too, should buy some JoJo’s Peanut Butter Delight bars.

“Are those any good?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I like the idea of that 6 grams of protein,” this lady said, peering over the top of her glasses to read the label.

“I kept them in a drawer at work. Before I was working from home,” I told the nice ladies. I always had a stash of snacks in the sound booth for desperate times. Which was every performance, basically.

The woman who had paid ahead of me put down her things. “There’s no line and I’m not in a hurry.” She went back to get a bag for herself.

“And it’s dark chocolate,” the checker noticed. “They say that’s good for you.”

“Yes,” said another woman, who turned around to gaze at the giant display of JoJo’s behind us.

I told them that Costco also sells them, but not this cheap.

“I do like dark chocolate.” The checker looked at her watch. Her break wasn’t for a while, so she consoled herself that they were unlikely to run out any time soon.

Since the onset of The Plague, I say hello to everyone when I’m out running or walking. But when I’m inside a store, masked, I don’t feel chatty. I want to get my stuff and get out. This behavior would shock my children. They still hate shopping with me because—”MOM. You talk to everyone!”

But I enjoyed that exchange. And I thought of Carolyn. Not because I felt like I’d been good at sales, but more because I’d sprinkled fairy dust, cut a swath of chocolate happiness through that line of weary shoppers. Well, resulting in sales, but whatever. I wonder if this is a white lady thing, or a pandemic thing or just a thing.

Sometimes we need permission from strangers to spend $4.99 on a delicious treat. And during the collapse of civilization, we can at least offer such like tiny comforts.

Deadly Nightshade and a Visit with Kaiser & the Russian Princess

Yesterday morning I cleared an absolutely magnificent patch of deadly nightshade. It had taken over where the side sewer excavation disrupted the soil last year. Next week an office shed goes in just there, so the nightshade had to go.

And while the side sewer excavation was devastating, having a view to the back alley from the house for the first time in twenty-five years meant that I saw all manner of persons. I’d no idea the alley was a pedestrian thoroughfare and party hub.

My favorite sighting is a beautiful older woman. She rips by on a motorized wheelchair scooter with a fat pug sitting upright at attention in her lap, like the figurehead of a tall ship. The first time I saw them, a dapper gentleman on a bicycle was riding along beside, in a suit jacket and tie. She was wearing a tall black hat that made me think of a Russian Princess.

(It might not be fur, but let’s say it is. I believe they are called an ushanka, although, this one did not have ear flaps.)

(She is not to be confused with the other Russian Princess, who attends all of dear Dr. Smith’s organ recitals on campus, driving down from Seattle and swooping into the chapel, her long dark cloak billowing behind her. Also in the hat.)

Anyway, yesterday while I was waging the nightshade war, they rolled by once and then a bit later, again. She stopped.

“I always see you working! You work so hard. Look at all you’ve done.”

I looked. It’s a hellscape out there. But better.

And because I always feel I need to apologize, I explained that I was grateful simply to be able to do the work, because the mortal peril really slowed me down and everything had gotten out of control. 

“But you look fabulous! You have a marvelous figure. Very trim!”

I was leaning on a pitchfork, confused and utterly delighted. I thanked her, but she continued, “Don’t overdo it! I’m a mom, so I can say that.”

“I won’t, I won’t. And, really, I’m fine now and happy to be able to finally tackle this mess.”

Her name is Trish. I was delighted to meet her, I said, because ever since that first time I saw her, in that gorgeous black hat, (she nodded), she became a legend in this household.

With a grin she said, “His name is Kaiser.” And lifting a paw, added, “The king!”

While we were chatting, a woman with cropped silver hair rode by on her bicycle. 

“That’s my daughter,” Trish said. 

“Oh, does she circle you on your outings?”

Trish laughed and said, “No. She goes where she wants, does what she wants. She’s probably thinking right now, My mother is talking that poor woman’s ear off.” 

Her daughter looked about sixty—older than I am. But my own children are the same—I shared that at some point my boys gave up going with. me to the grocery store. Because I talk to people.

We laughed. Eventually she rolled away.

Kaiser got me to thinking about the news that the RNC has opted out of a platform and instead supports an agenda that includes “Teach American Exceptionalism.” And if that doesn’t remind you of Germany in the 1930s, it should. And when a friend shared a link to the RNC resolution concerning a platform, one comment chilled me: “It’s so easy now to see how Hitler came to power.”

But it’s hard to see how digging out deadly plants does any good, ultimately, but it felt satisfying, in the way that bone-wearying work will do.

I thought for while, hot sun on my back, and then turned on my audiobook and kept digging.

college orientation 2020: no students, no parents, no bacon

For the last twenty years I’ve listened every August to our various deans address the parents of incoming students: First Year Issues. Essentially, the message was always this — “Go home now. Please.”

The first dean was dynamic and engaging. He’d been a theatre major, and his comedic timing was impeccable, balancing the serious with gentle humor. I think he is now the president of some tiny college in Kansas. Or Iowa, maybe. Someplace flat.

The second dean only lasted a year, and when she was asked about rape on campus, she began with, “We know it happens.”

WRONG ANSWER, lady.

The last guy, good man, simply could not pull off the jokes the way the first fella did, although he tried, with exactly the same jokes. Painful. And by the end of his time on campus, he had given up any pretense of subtlety. “We call this session First Year Issues, but what it really is….” *dramatic pause* And then, click, the next slide came up on the projector: PARENT THERAPY SESSION. Tissues had been placed all around the concert hall for the weeping.

If one of my son’s colleges had pulled this stunt, I would have immediately stood and left the building. Because fuck you.

This concern for parents starkly contrasted with my older son’s college initiation orientation schedule—which began with a 9am move in, continued with unpacking and lunch and a reception with the president, and ended at 3pm with “GOODBYE.” I guess out in the Midwest, we expect parents and students to be more stalwart, need less handholding.

Anyway.

Last year, I was astonished to see that the orientation schedule did not list a “parent session” in the venue I manage. The previous year, instead of a packed house, there were only a handful of parents. The university had changed up the entire orientation rigamarole, and as one of my colleagues said, giggling, “No one really has any idea what is going on right now.”

Last year, I was concerned that they’d ditched the family breakfast, too. I counted on that bacon. My pal Sarah would send a text to alert me the moment she spotted the enormous chafing dish. Last year, she assured me that we’d still get our bacon.

This year, orientation is virtual. (I think. Again and more so, no one really has any idea what is going on.) This year, classes begin in two weeks, and I wonder if I even still have a job. This year, I wonder if we’ll all make it to Christmas alive. Actual persons, I mean. We know for sure that by May next year, fewer colleges will be open.

The world is so changed, I almost miss the days when we could tell parents, “We’ll take care of your darlings. Go home.”

Almost.