Dominoes, New York, Hamilton, Virginia

I'm telling y'all what. The men are falling like dominoes. If this rate keeps up, we'll be a matriarchal country sooner than not. (Hear, hear). Who's next? Santa? It's disgusting. And yet what might chafe most is the fact that while many men are (finally) paying for their gross misdeeds, a sick perp who happens to be "president" has not. Is not. Is now saying maybe that "Grab 'em by the pussy" tape wasn't true. Y'all know where this is going. 

America is in the deepest of shit. No other way to put it. From the tax "plan" to assaults on healthcare. reproductive rights, and the media; from the anti-science jokers burning the EPA and our environment in a coal-fired oven to the lifting of regulations on murdering elephants and shipping their heads back to the US (yeah, I know that one's on hold, but please) so small-d**ked men can feel manly; from an education secretary who is stunningly ignorant about education to a slimy guy with an even slimier wife who like to fondle OUR money, we are screwed. The poor will get poorer, all but the wealthiest will get unhealthier and less educated, our reputation is plummeting down the toilet, our air and water will become increasingly sick, and the divisions between "red" and "blue" will become more and more petrified.

In other news, New York. I just love New York, and that is grand because I'm going twice in the next month. Yee-howdy!

Tomorrow, I'm pulling Jack from school early, so that he and I can get to the Big Apple in time for his birthday present: Hamilton. His birthday was in July, but because Hamilton, this is the soonest I could get tickets. It works out beautifully because he has no school on Friday which buys us a whole extra day in the city, AND New York at Christmastime is hard to beat.

We're going to see the Rockefeller Center tree and get dessert after the show tomorrow night and on Friday we plan to spend hours (literally) sciencing our faces off at the Hayden Planetarium and Natural History Museum. God, we'll just be rolling in facts. From this country's founding to what we now know about space and avian flight and human senses, I look forward to coating ourselves in a thick crust of truth. Ooh, mama, we'll be breaded cutlet bulwarks against the stupidity tainting the land. 

Then to meet a friend and then to dinner at The Spotted Pig. On Saturday, we're having brunch with one of my favorite people and fitting in all last-minute desires before hopping our bus home at 4. 

It is going to be grand. 

Also, my niece. Is she not divine?? 

A loss and a meal and a niece

It's been pouring brickbats all day. Early on it felt cozy, but, in concert with having fallen back with (the most horrible event foisted on us twice yearly) Daylight Savings and thus being plunged into darkness at approximately 3pm (legit, I offered Oliver dinner at 2:57p today AND felt as if I were doing so late), and some heartbreaking news this afternoon and the looming anniversary of election day 2017, well, it's been a grim evening. 

When I was very young -two years out of college- I moved to New York with a broken heart, big dreams, no money, and a job I'd talked my way into and was not remotely prepared for. You will not be surprised to know that the job didn't last, not least because my boss was an abusive alcoholic who enjoyed hitting on all of the waifish women he'd lured into the company.

Desperate, I reached out to a former University of Chicago colleague who now worked at Columbia. She put me in touch with the admissions director and long story short, I was offered a job. Bliss.

I moved into the lower level of 212 Hamilton Hall and became officemates with Terry. Next door, if I remember correctly, resided Peter.

Peter V. Johnson, a bespectacled man who always wore a suit, bow tie, and proper pocket square. Who laughed at my skim, no-whip gingerbread lattes, who offered me friendship and mentorship and made me fight, in the best and smartest ways, for the applicants I really thought warranted admission.

He'd attended Earlham, was married to a vibrant woman and had a vibrant daughter. He'd been at Columbia for years.

He called me Slim and I called him Peeves (an ellision of P. V. J.). I distinctly remember several colleagues saying, "Not sure he'd let anyone else call him that."

When we moved to temporary quarters because 212 Hamilton began its renovation, Peter and I shared an office. Never, before or since, have I enjoyed sharing office space quite that much. I can still hear Peter's raspy chuckle, can still recall the way we sat in stupor as we watched the Towers fall on 9/11.

Once we'd moved into our shiny new space, no one shared an office, but Peter's corner spot was a primary hangout. How many times did I sit for hours a day, six days a week, arguing for certain applicants, ordering another container of Strokos tuna salad, marking my docket, losing track of time in there?

Those hours are some of my fondest professional memories. And now Peter is gone. And my heart is so sad.

For all of these reasons, none of these reasons, reasons beyond today, I found myself nesting like a fool this evening. Ol was driving me batshit, Jack and his pal were doing just enough homework to stay within the limits of acceptable, and all I could think to do was cook and provide.

What was meant to be the ingredients for at least two days of meals turned into a one-night feast that will, hopefully, sustain us through the weekend. That said, the steak is gone. I am not yet buying enough to sate the appetites of growing boys. But there is a huge pot of soup (ribollita; absent leafy greens per a shopping mistake and freezer overestimation but alas), a vat of potatoes, half a round of the best cornbread ever, and there is love and thought and memory in it all.

red chili cornbread

flank steak tagliata a'sear

steak at rest

Five days ago, on my nephew's 3rd birthday, his little sister was born. A day later, she was named Virginia. She is such a darling beauty, and I can't wait to meet her.

Today, Virginia went blue (go Northam), and I have to think that in the cycle of loss and birth and life and death is, always, love. And hope. I know Peter would have been pleased with the gubernatorial outcomes of today, and I thank little Virginia for any part her happy birth played.

sweet Virginia, five days old

Disgrace

I’m no stranger to descriptive language or emotion, but the past two days have plunged me into a depth I’ve visited just several times since that horrible excuse for a human became “president.”

Certainly November 9 was wretched, as was Inauguration Day, Charlottesville, the complete theft of a Supreme Court seat, and repeated healthcare debacles.

But something about Evil Yam’s impotent responses to hurricanes Harvey and Irma followed by his vastly stupid and offensive Twitter tantrums against those athletes who chose to take a knee compounded by his appalling invalidation of the suffering of Americans in Puerto Rico and the USVI in the wake of Maria plus his asinine verbal cock-fight with “little Rocket Man” in which actual nuclear weapons are at play all topped off by the horrific and largely preventable massacre in Las Vegas has hellfired me down to the abyss.

That our idiot “leader” finally got his ass to Puerto Rico where he threw rolls of paper towels to desperate citizens like they were eager parade groupies during Mardi Gras, told everyone how minimal their damage was because “only sixteen” have died (arguable and not substantiated), accused Puerto Rico of fucking with our budget, and then said the few hours he spent on the island were “really, really lovely” as if he’d just gotten a goddamn mani-pedi at a slightly nicer-than-usual place is all stunningly deplorable.

So is the fact that he offered Las Vegas his “warmest condolences.” What does that even mean? Did Las Vegas’s guppy just die? Or did more than 500 people just get gunned down by a crazy guy with twenty assault rifles hiding like a coward psycho on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay?  

Its the latter, people. 

Plus, can you even imagine how different the “lone wolf” narrative would be if Paddock were black or Muslim? I cannot even. There are more white domestic terrorists in this country than any others. And guns are their primary weapon. Accept it. 

“Thoughts and prayers” without action are now officially offensive.  

Today I noted on Facebook that more Americans have died from guns since 1968 than in all wars in which America has fought. Ever.  

A relative of mine replied, “I don't know if these numbers are accurate but I personally will mow down with my AK-47 anyone who ever tries to take my guns.”

There are no words for how disgusted, furious, embarrassed, and stunned I was and continue to be by such coarse, tone-deaf, selfish, shameful machismo. I am mortified and grossed out and that guy isn’t a singular example of too many people in this country. 

We, the US, are in the direst of straits.  I am utterly stunned by how quickly trump’s poison has courses through the country’s vascular system. The weaknesses were there, no doubt, but wow.

Eight months in and we are ravaged.  

Oh, and did you hear the one about the Republicans trying to pass a bill to make silencers available to everyone? They’re dying to protect hunters’ ears but I could swear hunters already have easy access to ear protection. You know who doesn’t have protection? People being fired at by an asshole hiding 32 floors above them. Know how they were warned? Because of the fucking sound of the constant gun shots (oh, because that great white American also had access to a neat toy that turned his semi-automatic guns into fully automatic ones. Isn’t that swell? And then he killed himself like a pansy-ass coward so I guess the state of his ears didn’t much matter in the end.)

Oh, and did you also see that today the House passed a bill to ban all abortions after 20 weeks? Only victims of rape get an exemption and even that is a maybe. These guys making all these decisions about women’s bodies totally get it. I mean, they as strangers absolutely know how I might feel if raped or with an unplanned child. And being pro-gun, their pro-life decrees ring SO sincere.

I have almost no hope for this country. It is letting down almost all of its citizens and the world. It is a disgrace.