Years ago, in a fitness class I took with my colleagues, the instructor, who was petite and preternaturally bendy, would demonstrate a floor exercise she wanted us all to do. She’d then look at me, tall and decidedly unbendy, and say to no one in particular: “If this is
This is my neighborhood on Bainbridge Island, a 35-minute ferry ride from Seattle. There has been a collection of Trump signs in this yard non-stop for nearly a decade, since well before the 2016 election. One especially large sign, which has disappeared in recent weeks, was festooned with
I’m working on a difficult post about a drama unfolding in my neighborhood: the guy who’s had Trump signs out non-stop since 2015 is now getting his fence tagged with “Nazi” in black spray paint. Some of you know that after 30 years in the private sector,
Imagine if every Democrat had attended last night’s joint address to Congress wearing the same shirt that President Zelensky wore to the Oval Office last Friday: a black, long-sleeve top with the Ukrainian trident, the tryzub, in grey. It was available—on Amazon, funnily enough. (That Jeff Bezos—
If I’m going to stick to my original plan to publish only once every two weeks, things are going to have to calm the f*** down. Shouting matches in the Oval Office are the complete opposite. My point on Tuesday was that the wrong people—regular citizens who are
It is hard to know how to be in the world right now. On the one hand, we are all painfully aware—in part because everyone has been sent this link—that Hitler dismantled a democracy in 53 days. And that the ensuing horrors were made possible by one thing:
On Inauguration Day, I launched this newsletter to join with kindred spirits1 in facing the daunting question, “What now?” Since then, I’ve had a surprising number of people sign up to chat with me. I usually start these video calls with the same three questions: 1. How worried are
When my mother died in 2018, it was, among other things, just so out of character. I mention this because when someone that reliably present, and that attached to living, suddenly ceases to be, it takes that vexing Mary Oliver line—“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
Hello and thank you for subscribing. In launching this newsletter, I didn’t know if I’d be writing to anyone. When I decided last week to leave Facebook after 18 years of nurturing a wide web of relationships there, I figured I’d be writing from the proverbial wilderness—
WHAT NOW will launch on January 20, 2025. Please subscribe so that we can continue talking. (I already do plenty of talking to myself.) Note: originally published on Substack, January 13, 2025