This is from George Saunders’ latest New Yorker piece, chronicling his days on the campaign trail talking with Trump supporters and protestors: The tragedy of the Trump movement is that one set of struggling people has been pitted against other groups of struggling people by someone who has known little struggle, at least in the material sense, and hence seems to have little empathy for...
Actually June and July. Just got back yesterday from the 10-day MFA residency at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Exhausting but fun. Montpelier is tiny. I went running almost every day — partly because I like to run, partly because the dorms are hot and the beds are punishing in the cruel-and-unusual kind of way. I’m pretty sure I covered every street in Montpelier by the second...
Recently Abbe and I went to the beach for the week. It was wonderfully and kind of terrifyingly remote. A good place to write, I hoped (although it was really a working vacation). Sometimes I think I’m a loon. Three years ago we went to the Outer Banks and I wrote one story (“Jellyfish”) and came up with the idea for another (“Grandfather Vampire”). They...
Others, more eloquent than I, have called out Donald Trump for invoking the “America First” slogan on the campaign trail. The slogan was a prominent cry among WW II isolationists, including Charles Lindberg, who (in particular) stoked anti-semitic rhetoric as an excuse for staying out of the war. I’m anti-war myself, on principle. But I get that there are times when we have a...
Reading tonight, in the Washington Post, about people in Denmark being prosecuted for giving rides to migrant asylum seekers. Just the latest in what seems to be an endless string of stories about European countries — mostly driven by far-right politicians who have seized control — turning away from those fleeing oppression in Syria and elsewhere. And obviously the stories...
From today’s Washington Post. The story, frightening enough if you’re not a big fan of gun ownership, is about a man in Colorado who brought a gun into a theater out of fear of a mass shooting, only to end up (apparently accidentally, but not fatally) shooting someone himself. Here’s part of the story: Fifteen minutes into the movie, Gallion’s gun somehow went off, police say...
Reading through the transcript of Obama’s speech today, in the wake of the executive actions his administration is taking to address gun violence. It’s a good speech, thoughtful, measured. I’m cynical (or just disheartened) enough that I don’t think it will matter much either way — at least not the speech itself. It could be that the executive actions will have a...
Waiting for the pet store to open this morning, I stopped in at the coffee shop next door. It’s an old building even though it’s only been a coffee shop for a few years, and so the shop has the look of a place that’s been around for years. Old linoleum floors, chipped paint on the walls, a little on the shabby side–nothing shiny, nothing new. It’s small but...
Just finished watching We Are the Best! with my 12-year-old. Subtitled Swedish film about three 13-year-old misfits who form a punk band in the early 80s, and — even though on the surface it’s about punk, and rebellion and anarchy — probably one of the sweetest movies I’ve seen in years. Fun to watch with Emma, who was game despite the subtitles. It helped that the...
As with every other show, Abbe and I are way behind on Mad Men. Catching up now that it’s over, but catching up quickly. Five seasons in, I’ve come to think that the show isn’t really about the 60s, or about identity, or about rapid social change. Or maybe it’s about all those things. But I think it’s really a show about growing old. Old enough, anyway, so you reach the point where you stop...