2/21/2025

Posted on 02/21/2025 by chick
  • It’s been really cold lately, and there’s a lot of ice on the driveway. As Marshall was leaving this morning, I said, “Bye, kiddo. Watch out for ice!” As I closed the door behind him, it occurred to me to wonder if there were other moms out there saying the same thing to their kids, only not because they were worried about slippery surfaces, but rather immigration enforcement (ICE).
  • Today I got two vaccines: Covid and flu. I debated whether it was worth getting them this late in the season, and I especially hesitated over the Covid shot. But though “flu season” only lasts through May, viruses circulate year-round, and I’d rather not have a nasty bout with either of these two. Like a lot of people, I worry about the potential side-effects of the Covid shot. I thought it over, though, and decided that I worry about the potential side-effects of Covid more.
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What to Do about You-Know-Who

Posted on 02/20/2025 by chick

Neil Gaiman’s name also came up at work recently, but not in a good way. We’re no longer allowed to reference him in our publications. Having read about the accusations against him, I not only approve that decision, but I’m half-tempted to erase him from my personal life by throwing away all my Neil Gaiman books. A few other people that I’ve talked to have considered doing the same.

My hubby, on the other hand, argued that my opinions about the author shouldn’t matter. He said, “You shouldn’t look beyond the book.” I applaud his pithy wording. In theory, I agree with him and have said similar, less-pithy things myself.

But, these days, thanks to the Internet and social media, we learn more about authors than we ever could in the past, and we begin to think that we know them. It’s only a one-sided connection, those of us who are sane and non-stalkery agree, but that doesn’t change how we feel. If those people then do something truly awful (that is, outside of the normal range of human failings), we can’t help but take it personally. Rowling was a hero–a single mother who saved herself from poverty and brought forth one of the most wonderful children’s series ever written. Gaiman was also a hero–a staunch feminist, champion of books and literacy, the man who wrote The Graveyard Book, a remarkable tale with the power to break a reader’s heart and put it back together again.

The thing is, I haven’t been able to enjoy Harry Potter much since finding out how mean J.K. Rowling can be, and her meanness is a small thing compared to Gaiman’s alleged sins. I believe there is a chance that I could divorce my feelings about her from her books someday. I hope I’ll be able to manage that. Otherwise her books will have been wasting precious space on my shelves for years.

As for Gaiman, though I might be able to forget the details from the article, I doubt I’ll ever forget the absolute disgust and sense of betrayal that I felt while reading about them. But, for now, I’m also leaving his books on my shelf. Future Me will have to decide whether she can stomach rereading them. If she can’t, she’ll know what to do with them.

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Regrets and Resemblances

Posted on 02/19/2025 by chick

Hoagy Carmichael, whose name came up at work recently, was a songwriter, very successful, particularly in the ’30s and ’40s. He wrote hundreds of songs, including the music for “Heart and Soul,” “Georgia on My Mind,” and “Stardust.”

According to Wikipedia, in his late life he once said, “I’m a bit disappointed in myself. I know I could have accomplished a hell of a lot more. . . . I could write anything any time I wanted to. But I let other things get in the way.” It seems crazy to me that he thought so, given how much he had done, but I read it as a warning. I dread having similar feelings someday, when it’s too late to do anything about it. If that’s something that I truly hope to avoid, then now is the time to take action.

Also–and this was the most surprising thing that I learned about him–Ian Fleming compared James Bond’s appearance to Hoagy Carmichael’s in two novels. So if you ever want to know what 007 really looks like, you need search no further than that Wikipedia article, which contains his picture. I wish sometimes that I’d had access to this kind of information when I was younger. It could have made the study of history and historical figures a lot more interesting!

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Sleep? What’s That?

Posted on 02/18/2025 by chick

It took a while, but sleep deprivation finally caught up on me again. I had kept myself as well-rested as possible during the summer, but summer doesn’t last forever. Before I knew it, the new school year had begun. Getting up at 6:20 a.m. nearly every weekday since, and lucky if I don’t lie awake for hours before, I’m now thoroughly exhausted, making me easily distracted, confused, and prone to crying, not to mention slow to understand and learn. Fantastic.

But there is one bright side to getting up so early in the morning: it makes the day seem vast. I start work as soon as Marshall leaves for school. Consequently I finish my work in the early afternoon, and there’s oodles of time left over for other things. As a lifelong fan of the “wee hours,” at first I could only resent the loss of that time. Now I understand that it has a daylight counterpart which, though not as good for creative pursuits or pondering the deep mysteries of the universe, nevertheless has its uses.

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Informative

Posted on 02/17/2025 by chick

Last year I read an NPR article about new DNA evidence of the victims of Pompeii. Over the years certain assumptions had been made about the victims based on their proximity to one another, their jewelry, etc. The DNA now proves those assumptions to be false. For example, a pair of bodies thought to be a mother and her child were actually a man and a biologically unrelated child. Not only is this interesting, just because Pompeii itself is fascinating, but it’s a lesson in not jumping to conclusions. Notable quote from the article:

Instead of establishing new narratives that might also misrepresent these people’s experiences, the genetic results encourage reflection on the dangers of making up stories about gender and family relationships in past societies based on present-day expectations.

David Reich, Harvard genetics professor
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Reading Report: Mid-February 2025

Posted on 02/16/2025 by chick

I finished my second book for the year, The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. In this mystery set in England, four senior citizens living in a retirement village investigate a series of local murders. I would tell you more of the details, but I just don’t have the energy for it. Suffice it to say that the four main characters (Elizabeth, Ibrahim, Ron, and Joyce) are delightful, and the structure of the book (short chapters interspersed with diary entries from one of the main characters) makes the story super easy to dip in and out of. Loved it. A Netflix adaptation is said to be coming soon

Currently reading: Cartographers by Peng Shepherd. On the cover, a blurb from The Washington Post describes it as “An enjoyable, fast-paced, (and fantastical) thriller. . . . It’s brilliant.” Twenty pages in, it’s looking good, though the author is playing coy, alluding to the main character’s 7-years-prior fall from grace without having yet explained what happened. If she keeps that up much longer, I’m gonna get pissed.

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How the Turns Have Tabled

Posted on 02/15/2025 by chick
  • Livia told me that free verse is bad poetry, and I tried to persuade her to the contrary. This was a strange argument for me to have, because just a few years ago I would have agreed with her. Now I find myself arguing in favor of the same style of poetry I once despised. Life surprises.
  • Later, she and I were chatting about something else that had completely changed, and she started to say “How the tables have turned” but she caught herself halfway through and said instead, “How the turns have tabled.” “Whew!” I replied. “For a minute I thought you were going to say it the wrong way!” We had a good chuckle over that.
  • On a more serious note, reversals happen all the time. It’s important to learn how to live with change and disappointment, and to laugh at them where we can. I recently had to absorb some bad news. An occurrence I’d long anticipated, and which had finally appeared on the horizon, will unfortunately not be happening any time soon. Something’s gone wrong, and others will have to sort it out. So I settle in for another long wait, and life goes on. At least I have two great kids and a husband to crack me up every day.
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Nostalgia

Posted on 02/13/2025 by chick

My music teacher, attempting to translate the title of a musical work, asked me, “How’s your German?” I replied, “If it wasn’t in `Hogan’s Heroes,’ I don’t know it.” I meant that as a joke, of course, but it was also close to the truth. I did learn a certain amount of German from that show, and life hasn’t afforded many other opportunities to pick up the language.

Anyway, that conversation got me thinking nostalgically about Hogan’s Heroes. It wasn’t my kind of show when I was a kid, but my brother liked it, and we only had one TV, so I ended up watching it fairly frequently. I doubt that I really got the humor then. Now, having recently streamed the first few episodes of the show, I’m impressed by how funny it is. It has held up well. The lead actor–Bob Crane–turned out to have been a bad person in real life, but he died a long time ago, and it’s hard to hold any strong feelings against him. Plus, the real “hero” of the show was Werner Klemperer. Crane may have had natural appeal, but without Klemperer’s blundering Klink, the show would have been dead in the water. And John Banner’s character, Sergeant “I know nothing!” Schultz, was and probably always will be the one that I remember most fondly.

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Because Duh

Posted on 02/12/2025 by chick

It’s been a cold winter so far. We had one cold snap so deep that the temperature was hovering around 0 when the kids were headed out to the bus stop. They don’t normally wear coats, let alone hats, gloves, scarves, or boots. I let that slide most of the time. Parents have to pick their battles, and this issue usually doesn’t seem worth the fight. I figure if the kids want to be cold, that’s their problem. But, on those several frigid mornings, I tried in vain to talk the kids into wearing any winter wear, even if it were only gloves. They absolutely refused. “It’s not that cold,” they said.

It was that cold, however, and as a mom, all I could think about were freak situations in which they’d need warm gear and didn’t have it. Like, say the bus broke down and there was no heat, or there was a fire alarm at school that forced the kids outside. I know such things aren’t likely, but I also know that it’s good to have a jacket when the temperature is below freezing.

When I mention this to other people, they say, “We were probably the same way when we were kids.” Were we, though? I definitely didn’t do everything my parents suggested I should, but I’m pretty sure I wore a jacket when it was that cold outside, because duh.

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Thoughts from September 2024

Posted on 02/11/2025 by chick

I watched the original Planet of the Apes movie with Marshall recently. As a child, it was one of my favorite films, so it seemed like it would be a great movie to share with him. Watching it with an adult’s eye, the movie is awfully slow at times, bogged down with talk of theology, philosophy, and politics–things that a kid, even a teenager, probably wouldn’t much care about. (As an adult, I find them more interesting, but I know there was a time in my life when I would have found them extremely boring and/or over my head.)

And of course the special effects (largely, people in ape costumes) would not impress a modern viewer. Still, I knew there was that big payoff waiting at the end, but I began to wonder if he would even make it that far. That kid, he kept saying things like, “Is Taylor sure he’s not on Earth? How likely is it that apelike creatures would evolve somewhere else?” So, I don’t know if the movie had already been spoiled for him by the Internet, or if he was just too smart for the movie, but I doubt the ending came as any big surprise.

Oh, well. Shortly after, he and I and my husband watched Godzilla Minus One. The movie was new to all of us, but we all saw the ending coming a mile away. So maybe we’re just good that way.

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