#a ten year old who thought they were the coolest high schoolers ever even

[evenstarfalls]

Young Justice is a good show in a lot of ways but chief among its virtues is that it briefly made Captain Marvel the team's supervising adult.

[astyle-alex]

[Fanfic] Museum Mishap | the BatFam

Heya! As we approach the End of 2020 (FINALLY), I’m realizing that this story is ridiculously close to reaching the milestone of 25k hits on Ao3. To celebrate, I’ll be posting the whole thing here on Tumblr!

(I would however, deeply appreciate it if y’all would pop over to view it on Ao3, briefly, so I can get the view counted as a hit and actually make it over the line for 25k in views before the close of 2020!)

Museum Mishap  |  Chapter 1/6

Fandom: the DC Universe, Batman & co. Pairings: Jay x Tim Characters: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson Rating: Gen Audiences Warnings: None

Total Word Count: 38,590

Summary:

Middle-School Tim Drake is on a field trip to the Science Museum, but with a WE exhibition of top-secret new technologies being staged in the basement, Tim separates from his classmates and breaks into the staff-only areas by using the skills he's developed over years of stalking Batman and Robin.

Current-Robin Jason Todd catches him in the act, but he's not there to confront Tim for trespassing or truancy - he's there because there's a rumor on the street that Tim Drake knows Batman's real name. And the rumor's gaining ground, quick, drawing in the wrong kind of attention.

When a Drug-Lord decides to take the rumor seriously enough to kidnap the little genius, Jason jumps into the crossfire. It all goes downhill from there. Fast.

(Jason is 14, Tim is 12)

Chapter 1 : Special Access

           A trip to Gotham’s History of Science and Technology Museum would’ve been exciting for even your average twelve year old – it was a day of school that didn’t feel like school, and it meant a chance to hang out, relatively unsupervised, with your friends all day instead of just the one or two classes you managed to luck into having together.

           Timothy Jackson Drake was not your average twelve year old, and a trip to the SciTech Muse was the kind of thing that made his enrollment in middle school entirely worth it. For starters, it was an entire day spent in the heart of the city surrounded by some of the coolest artifacts of science humans could craft.

           And to make things even better, the trip was an all-day, delayed opening affair, starting at 10am and ending at 6pm – which meant he’d actually been able to get enough sleep last night to be well-rested, a rarity in its own right with his particular extra-curriculars. Better yet, he’d been able to tell the Drake housekeeper / nanny that he’d be having dinner with his class so she could go home right at 6 without having to wait for him to get back so she could cook for him.

           That part wasn’t true, of course, but he had concrete evidence that had been legitimately published by the school to help back up his story. Mrs. Simz had her own kid, and was therefore harder to convince than some of the others Tim’s parents had hired, but that also meant she had more reason to hurry home when presented with a believable reason excusing it.

           Being a sixth-grader meant Tim couldn’t just stay in the heart of the city when the field trip was over, he was on a rollcall and the bus back to Gotham Academy wouldn’t leave without his name getting checked off. The high schoolers were allowed to take public transit home if they had a signed permission slip from their parents, but Tim had to wait a few more years before he could con his way into having such freedoms.

           Still, getting over to the West Side from where his school was in Coventry would be far easier than getting there from the Drake Estate way out in Bristol. The extra hour and a half he’d save himself in commuting time mean he would be able to grab some coffee and something to eat without having to rush to get in place for the nighttime adventure he’d planned.

           Beyond all that, the fact that the field trip was this week, meant there was a special exhibition from the cutting-edge tech division of Wayne Enterprises in the midst of being set up. All the main components were being staged in the museum's basement and the ones too big to steal were as close to unprotected as they would ever be – and Tim intended to take full advantage of that.

           He’d been summarily and repeatedly denied acceptance to the WayneTech summer camps as his parents owned one of the company's main competitors: Drake Industries. Apparently corporate espionage was a big enough problem that even ten year olds were suspect. Tim found it ridiculous that the one time he would’ve been entirely okay with having his abilities underestimated was the one time he wasn’t assumed to be just another dumb kid. Honestly, Tim was pretty sure that no one had actually read his application – the computer had probably scanned his ID and kicked his profile out of the running before it had even made it to a human that might care about his actual qualifications.

           Tim hadn’t figured out how to make a bulletproof fake identity profile – not yet, at least – And he certainly wasn’t going to get caught trying to gain illegal access to WE on a sub-par fake ID. Because there were all kinds of ways that would go poorly for him – between his parents possibly being disappointed in him enough to hire a live-in Nanny to the legal ramifications he’d face, even as a minor, it just wasn’t worth it.

           But the thought of getting an up-close look at the new tech WE was rolling out still made Tim's heart pound like he’d just downed a full pot of coffee. WE took a very different approach to developing their tech than DI – more of a ‘you know what would be cool? can we make that reasonable?’ philosophy than a ‘how do we solve this problem?’ sort of thing. Tim found the both the WE approach and their results utterly fascinating.

           Not that Tim had been allowed to play with much of DI's tech, being that his parents would hear about him attempting to gain unsupervised lab access, and promptly ground him, and anyone who might supervise treated him like a kid far too young to understand or unobtrusively observe the work going on inside the places he wanted to see.

           So, the fact that a spectacular spread of WE tech was set up in the basement of a rather glaringly unsecured staff only area in the very building Tim’s class was touring stood as an open invitation for Tim to investigate.

           An invitation that Tim took very seriously. He’d spent at least 18 hours over the past week examining the museum’s blueprints – courtesy of the Gotham City Hall Public Archives – And the rundown of the security, both in terms of the human guards and staff on-hand and the electronic countermeasures – via close examination of the extensive repertoire of ‘insider access’ videos on the museum’s own webpage. Tim would probably end up sending the museum an anonymous suggestion about adjusting that at some point, but he’d worry about that later.

           After he used it to his tech fantasy fulfillment advantage.

           For now, he simply slipped away from the unwatchful eyes of his teachers, stuck headphones in his ears, and carefully made his way – casually, calmly, and like he had no destination in mind – over to the hallway by the cafeteria near the east wing gift shop. The hallway that had restrooms and a staff-only door halfway down it. A door secured with a heavy-duty machine-lock, with a ten-digit keypad, but a door that was not alarmed.

           The human guards were always more focused on preventing shoplifters from stealing over-priced – for a good cause, but still over-priced – museum memorabilia than on the high-traffic restroom hall by the cafeteria. Using his headphones as an excuse to tap his fingers to keep count – while his eyes and most of his brainpower focused on evaluating targets – Tim tracked the museum employees on their lunch breaks and calculated the best option to use as his ticket backstage. He had some in mind, but he had contingencies for last-minute adjustment.

           Tim settled on a big guy whose name he’d read on staff profiles but had forgotten with the other useless information provided about his role in the marketing department. What Tim hadn’t forgotten about him was that his department’s office was right by the staff door he was eyeing – 4.5 meters down and to the left, to be exact – which meant that, even with his slow stride, he would be behind another door in the hallway approximately 17 seconds after the door Tim needed closed behind him.

           When Mr. Marketing got up and lumbered over to the trash, Tim sidled over towards an informational sign with a museum map. As Mr. Marketing passed him, Tim counted off 4 seconds before he turned around to follow. He slid his hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the u-shaped metallic magnet he'd had to smuggle in by jamming it into his mouth and using sleight of hand to pretend it was his retainer – Less than sanitary, but effective, and he’d taken an extra vitamin this morning as a precaution.

           Mr. Marketing punched in his code and pulled the door open to well over 90° before he lumbered through the gap. Tim kept his pace consistent; patient, he could be patient – even though it made his heart rate kick up uncomfortably as he put his faith in his calculations instead of in his feet. He reached the door with almost 6 inches of clearance left for him to slide his hand in and clip his magnet into place over the latch.

           The door closed as he withdrew his hand and kept walking, but it did not click.

           The machine lock whirred with an attempt to close, but its components struck the flat surface of his magnet and failed to properly secure the door. Had the door been alarmed, that would have drawn a lot of unwanted attention, but as it was Tim made it to the restroom with almost nothing noticeably amiss.

           The restroom was crowded enough that his entrance didn’t draw attention and he shut himself in one of the stalls to count off exactly 10 seconds. Then he washed his hands, acquired a paper towel that he did not immediately dispose of, and went to retrieve his magnet. The paper towel allowed him to grasp the handle without leaving fingerprints and he retrieved his magnet without incident – opening the door onto an empty hallway and promptly swerving right to access the unsecured stairwell he knew would be there.

           Tim had no way to hide himself from the singular security camera watching the hallway, but the area was so highly trafficked that he doubted any security guard had been monitoring closely enough to spot his detour. He would get in a ton of trouble if he was caught here – phone calls to his parents would be unavoidable and they’d likely be so angry at him they’d fly back from Spain a week early. But he’d almost certainly avoid any kind of legal consequences.

           Besides, he wasn’t going to get caught. He’d planned this too well for that.

           Tim made his way through the less convenient passageways in the museum’s basement until he reached the corner of the sub-basement where the WayneTech exhibit was being staged. It was, as he’d known it would be, isolated and completely vacant of staff.

           A smile split his face as the relief he felt in making it there successfully was quickly replaced by the buzz of unadulterated excitement. He set his backpack down carefully – mindful, as always, of his precious camera. Then he rolled up his sleeves as he stepped closer to the first machine he saw with the WE logo stamped proudly on its side.

           According to the signage prepped in the binder sitting next to the behemoth, it was a component of the quantum computer WayneTech was developing to facilitate physically interactive virtual realities. Tim bounced on his toes as he warred with himself – half wanting to read more about the technical specs and half wanting to dive right in and see it for himself.

           Tim made it through another two pages of engineering details before he gave up and literally tackled the machine to hoist himself up high enough to look inside via the glass panel built in for that specific purpose. There were at least a dozen windows in the casing and Tim wondered – for a brief moment of distraction from the tech itself as he clambered higher up its exterior – how the museum was going to work in ramps and such for visitors to get the best views. If he didn’t get arrested tonight or banned from the museum forever, he might have to come back to see it in its full glory.

           He’d finagled his way to the last protrusion from top and was marveling at the neat rows of complicated wiring laid out below him when something crucial changed: he discovered that he was not, in fact, alone.

           “Ya know, I don’t think you’re supposed to be down here.”

           Tim really wanted to pretend he didn’t yelp like a kicked puppy when the sudden voice scared him half out of his skin, but the basement echoed enough for him to know it would be ridiculous to think the newcomer hadn’t heard him. Tim ducked his head in shame as his ears burned red and he turned to face whoever had caught him with hunched shoulders and guilty hands raised in surrender.

           And then he spotted his accuser on the floor and froze.

           It was Jason Peter Todd.

           Jason Peter Todd – Bruce Wayne’s new ward and the new Robin. And also kinda Tim’s neighbor. Well, as far as the word ‘neighbor' applied when your respective estates were so big it took an hour to hike door to door. Tim’s brain got caught in a loop of wondering what the frack Jason Peter Todd, of all people, was doing at the museum on a Thursday afternoon. Was doing down here, in this particular sub-basement, on a Thursday afternoon.

           Tim had fully been expecting to see the new Robin today, but that was when he was in full costume and wasn’t supposed to be for at least ten more hours. And Tim had not – in any of his contingencies – planned for Robin to see him.

           “Uh, hi,” Tim floundered.

           “Hi,” returned the crime fighting teenager Tim idolized and had been planning to stalk through Coventry later today. There was a glint in his eyes as he stared up at Tim with a smirk.

           They stared at each other in silence for way longer than could possibly be considered reasonable and Tim's ears resumed to burn at that, and at the distinct realization he had no idea what to say next.

           Because what exactly are you supposed to say when Jason Peter Todd catches you red handed in an off-limits part of a museum? Sitting on top of a piece of cutting edge computer engineering that you had absolutely no right to touch?

           “You're Tim Drake, aren’t you,” Jason asked – in a way that was definitely not really a question and also made it clear that Jason was laughing at him. “We met last month at the charity gala. I’m Jason.”

           “I remember, Mr. Todd,” Tim spouted, falling back on the robotic safety net of manners his mother had drilled into him. “Um, what brings you here?”

           “It’s just ‘Jason’, kid.” He jerked his chin at the machine Tim clung to, continuing, “That shit’s WayneTech. B sent me over to make sure it’s got all the right bits with it.”

           Tim nodded like a puppet, trying not to drown in his horror as he realized what it meant that Jason had caught him. He was messing with tech that Batman owned. There were probably a hundred undetectable BatSecurity features on this thing. Robin had probably been sent to see if someone was trying to steal it when one of Batman’s invisible alarms had gone off.

           “How about you, kid,” Jason asked, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his cargo pants. He regarded Tim with openly amused parody as he asked, “What brings you here?”

           “Field trip,” Tim responded automatically.

           “Field trip?” Jason echoed with an incredulous chuckle.

           He stared at Tim for another long moment and Tim stared back, terrified and unblinking and too tongue tied to substantiate his claim.

           “Alright then,” Jason said eventually, with a one shoulder shrug inside his leather jacket. “So, you got yourself stuck up there or are you gonna come have lunch with me?”

           “Lunch?”

           “Yeah, ya know, food. You eat it,” Jason explained. “I know I could use some pizza.”

           Tim frowned – at the confirmation of the non-sequitur of lunch plans, not the various insults attached to it.

           Jason seemed to falter briefly. “You actually stuck up there, Tim?”

           “No,” Tim huffed, willing to admit he sounded slightly petulant about it.

           “Well then get your skinny ass down here,” Jason prompted – a beat too late in a way Tim didn’t quite understand. He blinked, trying to puzzle out what didn’t sit right, but Jason arched an eyebrow – in the way Tim had seen him do as Robin, magically managing the expression despite the mask – and Tim realized he was supposed to be doing something.

           He was already in enough trouble as it was, so Tim scrambled down the computer and found himself face to face with the second Robin. Or face to chest, as it were.

           Tim hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, so he knew he was a scrawny twelve, but he hadn’t thought Jason would be that much taller. Jason was only two years older and he was stocky to start with. It was different when he’d been in the suit he’d worn for the charity gala. In civvies he looked broad and strong, and he stood up straighter.

           Jason pulled one hand from his pocket and threw his arm around Tim’s shoulders – began dragging him towards the exit. Tim lunged for his backpack as they passed it and clutched it close to his chest as Jason continued to drag him back upstairs.

           They ended up in the west cafeteria, in a corner that Jason had clearly selected for it’s state of semi-privacy. It was crowded and public enough to make raised voices problematic, but private enough to discuss sensitive details without much worry of being over heard. And it was neutral ground, like Jason was trying to make Tim comfortable before hashing out exactly how much trouble he was in for touching Batman’s stuff without express permission.

           Jason had acquired a large pizza, dripping with extra cheese and a blanket of peperoni, and two double-thick paper plates – one of which he piled high with three slices and placed in front of Tim. He gave himself five slices and settled down to chat having somehow already inhaled half of a sixth.

           “So,” Jason started around a mouthful of food as Tim poked tentatively as his own serving, “Some people are saying you’ve got some sort of connection to the Batman.”

           Tim frowned, his gaze snapping up to evaluate Jason.

           He’d spoken quietly, conspiratorially – like he wanted in on a secret Tim had. Like he wasn’t about to threaten to hang Tim by his thumbs in the depths of Batman’s secret lair for the rest of the foreseeable future.

           Awareness that Jason didn’t know that Tim knew his vigilante identity sparked inside Tim’s brain. He might be able to get out of this. If Robin didn’t know then Tim was only in trouble for touching the quantum computer because Batman didn’t want anyone touching it, and Jason was limited in how he could exact vengeance because the wrong move would reveal his role as Robin. All Tim had to do was talk his way out of this.

           Tim could do that. Right?

           All he had to do was figure out how.

           “I’m sorry I touched the quantum computer,” he blurted.

           Probably not like that.

           Tim hunched down into his shoulders and poked again at his pizza to avoid eye contact with Jason. His ears began to burn again as he felt Jason staring at him.

           “Shit, kid,” Jason said, after swallowing his bite this time, “You’re not in trouble.”

           Tim’s finger paused mid-poke. “I’m not?”

           “Nah,” Jason promised. “Fuck the Man.”

           Tim blinked. “Then why are you talking to me?”

           Jason blinked. A sort of confused expression that was vaguely pitying flickered across his face. Then he reiterated, “’Cause I hear you know who the Batman is, ya know, under the cowl.”

           Okay. So, Jason didn’t know he knew, but he suspected.

           Tim could work with that. Probably.

           He took a bite of pizza purely to keep himself from blurting anymore unhelpful apologies and attempted to calculate the best response.

           “Nobody knows who Batman is,” Tim said eventually.

           “But you’re a fan, right?” Jason nodded at Tim sweater – at the big black and yellow R embroidered on the left-hand side of the red-wool knitwork. Mrs. Davis had made this sweater for him, before her kids had insisted that she retire from babysitting rich Gotham kids and go be a grandmother in the safety and comfort of their town in Florida. Mrs. Davis had been one of the very few people who had supported Tim’s moderately obsessive interest in Batman and Robin.

           She hadn’t really understood, but Tim missed her – missed being able to talk about it.

           “You’ve gotta have some theories,” Jason was saying, his voice persistent enough to pull Tim back out from inside his own head.

           “I don’t have any theories,” Tim said. And it was true enough. He’d had theories. But that was before. Now, he had evidence. Another bite of pizza kept him from saying that out loud.

           “Seriously? None?”

           Tim shrugged and counted the circles of peperoni left on his first slice. Nine more circles, fifteen more bites. His stomach was already wary of the food he was putting in it. If this interrogation lasted more than ten bites, Tim’s stomach would probably begin to protest.

           Adamantly.

           He peeked up at Jason. Who was somehow already finishing slice number three.

           “Then why’s the word on the street that you’ve got insider know-how on ole Batsy?”

           “I dunno,” Tim said with another shrug. Truthfully, the question was bothering him too.

           Tim had never been seen when he’d staked out a spot to catch the dynamic duo on patrol or in the midst of a big bust. Never. They would’ve confronted him then and there if they’d ever found him with a camera full of very clear photos of them in action.

           So, how did Robin know enough to suspect him?

           “Who’d you hear it from?”

           This time, Jason shrugged. “I dunno. People. But like seriously, you don’t have any fucking idea why someone would think you know Batman’s real name?”

           Tim shook his head silently. He wanted to save his pizza for the questions that really needed him to have something to do with his mouth other than blabbing out his secrets.

           “Huh.”

           Jason’s eyes were narrowed, not quite threateningly, but pressingly – like he wasn’t quite sure a threat would be appropriate, but he was certain that Tim wasn’t telling the truth. It was another look Tim had captured him using as Robin. A kind of gentled-down BatglareTM for Robin to use on uncooperative victims instead of how Batman used his on uncooperative criminals – because victims could be uncooperative for all kinds of non-criminal reasons.

           Tim suddenly understood why it was so effective.

           He squirmed in his seat and caved to the need to take another bite of pizza.

           But he wasn’t a victim. Was he?

           Suddenly, Robin’s presence at the museum seemed a lot more suspect. It made sense for Robin to be there because Tim had triggered some sort of invisible Batalarm on the quantum computer, but he’d gotten there way too quickly for that to have been what brought him to the museum initially. He’d’ve had to have already been inside the building.

           But why?

           Tim’s class had been scheduled for this museum trip over a month ago. He’d even talked about it briefly with Bruce Wayne himself at the charity gala he’d attended with his parents – that’s how he’d known about the WayneTech exhibition far enough in advance to plan effectively to sneak down to the basements.

           “When’d you start hearing that rumor?”

           Tim’s question was so sudden and loud in his own ears that he startled himself.

           He seemed to have startled Jason too – who was starting on pizza slice number five and appeared to have been in the middle of a sentence when Tim had jolted into questioning him.

           “Uh, about a week ago, I guess,” Jason explained. “Your name had come up a few times before that in regards to you being a fan, but it wasn’t too long ago that it changed to you having special access or some shit.”

           Tim nodded absently.

           Two weeks ago, there’d been a major drug bust in a neighborhood just over half a mile away from his school. Batman had been tipped off about the drug ring in the same way Tim had: kids who came to school high rode the bus home and the chalk marks on the benches at the stops used by the kids who were using weren’t terribly sophisticated code.

           Tim had snagged some really spectacular shots the night that bust went down.

           Several of Tim’s classmates had exhibited symptoms of withdrawal shortly after that. A few of those students – namely some who’d never seemed to be able to have a civil conversation or simply let Tim pass in silence – had stopped exhibiting those symptoms a few days later. Tim had assumed they’d found a new dealer.

           Maybe they’d needed to find something more valuable to trade too, to make up for getting their old dealer busted.

           Info on the Bat who’d busted them would be pretty valuable.

           Even just a lead on info would’ve been valuable. Tim had been outright stalking Batman and Robin for over a third of his entire lifespan, at this point, and only just recently figured out who Batman really was. And he was a verified genius who’d happenstantially acquired the right life experiences to recognize things like quadruple somersaults. Who’d circumstantially idolized and stalked two different costumed acrobats for several years before he realized they were actually the same person and begun to extrapolate from there.

           Nobody knew anything about Batman.

           A tip on someone who might, would be very valuable indeed.

           Tim was being interrogated by Robin because he was a victim. He just hadn’t been victimized quite yet.

           Tim dropped his pizza like it’d burned him and began to rifle through his backpack for the new cellphone his mother had bought him when school started. It was ‘so he could fit in with his peers’. It was too big to fit in his pocket and he’d never liked wearing a watch, so he’d had to dig to find it and figure out the time.

           It was 4:32pm.

           Shift change for the guards was in less than an hour and they were already definitely antsy for it. Most of the science staff were already heading home to beat the traffic, and most of the new guards wouldn’t be coming in for at least another twenty minutes.

           If Tim were going to lead a team to invade this place and capture an unwilling potential asset, he would do it in the next ten to fifteen minutes.

           “We have to get out of here.”

           Jason frowned, his confusion pronounced with wary unease. But he demonstrated a willingness to trust Tim at his word for no other reason than Tim wanted him to and clambered to his feet. He took his last slice of pizza with him though – and nabbed the two untouched pieces from Tim’s plate as he followed.

           “What’s wrong, Tim,” Jason asked, carefully nonchalant. His hands were full of pizza in the way Tim’s mouth had been to stop him from doing what he wanted to do when asked a stupid question he should’ve known better than to answer – Tim suspected that if Jason wasn’t holding onto the pizza he’d’ve grabbed Tim’s shoulder at this point.

           Tim didn’t know how to answer at all, let alone efficiently communicate what he’d deduced about their current situation. Especially not without revealing that he knew Jason was Robin and could guess why Robin was here talking to him to begin with.

           Jason was rapidly eating though the pizza that was keeping him from grabbing onto Tim’s arm to stop their not-so-subtle scramble towards the museum’s main exit. They made it to within sight of the doors before Jason had inhaled the last piece of crust, and Tim had probably ignored several unheard comments and questions about their rapid egress, when Jason finally lost the battle to avoid physical contact and wrapped his hand around Tim’s elbow.

           Tim swung around to face him as his inertia asserted dominance.

           “Timmy, what’s got you so spooked?” Jason asked. “C’mon. You can tell me. Anything. I won’t rat on you, even if it’s something bad. Lemme help.”

           “I can’t – it’s not – You don’t,” Tim could practically feel the whine building in his voice at all the false starts that his brain attempted to send through his mouth to make the act of communication happen. His brain apparently thought it worked something like magic.

           Tim was frustrated and embarrassed and still very acutely aware of the fact that they needed to get out of the building. Right now.

           And Jason was doing the Robin look, the other one – the one for the scared little bunnies of the victims they came across that needed to be soothed and calmed and promised that they had a friend somewhere in the cold cruel world. Tim knew why it worked – felt it working on him – and yet he was mortified that Robin thought it necessary.

           He wasn’t a bunny. He was an asset. Currently being targeted.

           Recentered, he focused and forced words to come out of his mouth intelligibly.

           “We have to get out of the building.”

           Jason had moved to holding onto both of Tim’s shoulders at some point – holding him steady, holding him still. He looked Tim right in the eye and asked gently, “Why?”

           The words got jammed up in Tim’s throat again and he squeaked.

           And then the museum’s windows exploded inward with a dramatic shower of glass and gunfire as more goons than Tim could count began to repel their way inside.

           Tim closed his eyes and winced at the bite of regret on how fracking close they’d been to getting out of this without any major complications.

           “That’s why,” he groaned.

-----

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[tibby]

Can you speak more on Steve Harrington's trauma? I've never seen anyone address it, seemingly dismissing his character as just a "dumb mom friend" or whatever...

sure! i’ll stick to the show with this, because even though i have a lot of thoughts wrt steve and his life and why he acts the way he does, it’s all personal interpretation and not actual canon (though would happily discuss those more anytime.)

before i get into any specifics with regards to what steve has been through during the show, i do want to discuss a little about what we can assume of his relationships pre-nancy, and pre-everything: 

canon doesn’t give us a lot to work with in regards to steve’s parents, but based on what we do know, it doesn’t seem good. we can assume that they’re somewhat neglectful and have an unhappy marriage, presumably featuring adultery. he only refers to his father as an asshole or a douchebag and seems reluctant to follow in his footsteps. it seems like he has a slightly better relationship with his mother, but we also don’t know much about her outside of her following his father on business trips because she doesn’t trust him. regardless of how people personally interpret how bad it is, at the very least, he seems lonely and uncomfortable with his family.

up until the final two episodes of season one, we know that steve is king of the school and uses this power to his advantage. but despite his clout, he doesn’t seem to have any actual friends outside of tommy h and carol (and nicole, i guess, but she appears in like three scenes and we don’t really know much about her.) and tommy and carol aren’t good people. it’s not just that they’re horrendous bullies to jonathan and nancy, but they’re not great to steve either, given how quickly tommy turns on him. how quickly he threatens him, and how scared steve is in that moment. and given that tommy participates in mocking steve with billy a year later, it clearly was never that healthy of a friendship. your only friendships being with toxic people who don’t care about you as a person is always going to be damaging, regardless of how “popular” you are.

(steve’s unpleasant family/friendships pre-nancy seem backed up by a quote from the duffers that i can’t read because it’s behind a paywall but is referenced in the wiki: “what kind of family life [Steve] comes from and maybe this girl Nancy is quiet and listens in a way that other people haven’t listened to him at this point.”)

which brings us to the show. steve finds someone, maybe the first person who’s ever really cared about him, the girl he really likes. and he’s protective of her and wants to be with her and ends up fucking up in the process (i maintain that steve had every reason to go after jonathan for the photos, but he was absolutely in the wrong for the slutshaming and the alleyway fight.) 

but the fight shifts something in him, makes him want to right his wrongs, so he finally dumps his toxic friends (one of whom physically threatens him in the process) and goes to apologise. and walks right into a monster trap.

steve gets no context as to what’s happening when the demogorgon shows up, doesn’t get any explanation from jonathan and nancy (not that they’re at fault for that, given the circumstances,) and is basically just confronted with the sudden knowledge that monsters are real. and he ends up saving nancy and jonathan from it.

in an ideal world, the trio would have helped each over with their trauma together and would’ve been friends and would’ve had more natural progressions of their relationships. i don’t like reducing nancy and jonathan’s traumas to Just the monster thing, but it’s how the show tends to handle it, and i really feel like steve’s own trauma with what happened that night should have been addressed even slightly, particularly in relation to the two of them.

(quick sidenote: my issue with the way the show handles jonathan/nancy and their “shared trauma” is a whole other thing, but i really don’t understand how the show can basically reduce it to the fact they fought a monster together, and then leave steve out of the equation entirely. i wouldn’t have an issue if the show actually looked into the trauma both jonathan and nancy have outside of the monster stuff, but since it refuses to develop that, it…bothers me that steve’s role in what happened and resulting trauma is shoved aside, and they both now just ignore his existence entirely.)

but the show didn’t do that, so let’s get into season two, and steve harrington’s very rough week:

gets dumped! it should be noted that i don’t blame nancy for the breakup, nor do i think she was a bad person who set out to harm him. she’s a confused seventeen year old girl dealing with the loss of her best friend, and i don’t think she deliberately led steve on for a year or knowingly lied to him about her feelings. but it’s still going to be hurtful when your significant other reveals that they didn’t love you, they only thought they did. and steve loved nancy, cared about her, took comfort in her - she was the first person to listen to him, to care about him, to like him for who he really was, not for the mask he put on. i wish they’d gotten a proper conversation about their relationship in either season two or three, particularly as the destruction of the high school fairytale (the relationship between the coolest guy in school and the girl next door) is an important element to both their characters. i know steve says that he’s over her in season three, but i still know that that’s an incredibly heartbreaking thing to go through, even if it wasn’t a relationship based on an illusion - the kids that they were before.

gets involved with more monster hunting stuff, this time with a bunch of bratty middle schoolers! overall, i think stranger things handles the collective trauma the entire gang have like…terribly. i find it weird that it’s been three seasons and the only time the party/the teens/jopper are ALL together is in the final two episodes when it’s Boss Battle time. and i know i shouldn’t expect much from a show which barely lets separate people handle their trauma, but i feel like…maybe they should all like, sit and talk and comfort each other? keep an eye on each other? i don’t know. i think the trauma steve has is trauma he would share with all the others, especially since season two properly involves him with all the monster stuff (plus fighting them is hard enough without also having to deal with his past experiences, a big head injury, and the lives of a bunch of thirteen year olds in his hands.)

gets beat up! again! this time it’s not deserved! i really don’t understand why the fandom acts like steve’s repeated injuries each season are a joke and not like…a genuine cause for medical concern within the universe. i get that it’s basically played for laughs in the show and this incident in particular is used to once again highlight how violent billy is. i don’t have much to elaborate on here but i feel like someone needs to check in on steve and all the head related trauma he’s suffered through in the past eighteen months.

and after all of that, steve is just…left on his own to deal with it. he gave up his friends for nancy, and they weren’t particularly good friends in the first place. nancy left him. he and jonathan don’t ever talk. all he has are the kids and it’s not as if he can really talk about his trauma with a bunch of fourteen year olds. out of all the main cast, he’s the one that has the least support when it comes to this. nancy and jonathan have each other. joyce and hopper have each other. the party has each other. the byers family has each other. el and hopper have each other. but steve doesn’t have the same support system, and there’s nothing to suggest in canon that he actually interacts with the other teens/adults.

steve’s left alone in general, really. he maintained somewhat of his social status following the events of st1/st2, since he mentions being prom king to robin, but does he really…have any friends his age? he lost tommy and carol when he chose nancy, and those two latched onto billy (who, again, is someone who hurt steve and who steve does not like.) he and nancy broke up, and considering he shared about ten words with her and jonathan in st3, it’s safe to assume he’s not really friendly with them. and we don’t ever see any acknowledgment that steve has friends his age, even if it’s just…normal people who don’t know about the monster stuff.

it’s not until he meets robin that he really finds someone he can talk about any of this with, and even then it just comes with more trauma. i feel like steve’s experiences tend to get played for laughs and i really got that vibe in season 3. steve was tortured and drugged. he took another beating, arguably his roughest one yet. he and robin both thought they were going to die down there. it’s not really handled at all within the show, but it’s a lot for someone to go through, especially when combined with the past year and a half of steve’s life.

anyway. i don’t think the show will ever actually address steve’s trauma (or anyone’s, really) which is sad because like the others, he’s been through a lot and i think some acknowledgement/discussion of it would further help his character development. but i guess that just isn’t as funny as writing him off as an idiot and a loser.

[sinesalvatorem]

On Not Forgetting

I basically remember my high school experience as being a lot of empty monotony punctuated by a few experiences that were incredibly valuable. One of the most valuable such experiences was when I was asked to participate in the National Memories Project.

The National Memories Project, like every other project I’ve ever been asked to participate in in high school, was clearly run by people almost as ADHD as me. There was an initial flurry of activity before the idea quietly died and the material we compiled never ended up on the radio. But, like, oh well. I am honestly not in a position to judge.

The basic idea of the project was to get bright young high schoolers to go around meeting senior citizens and asking them questions while having a (digital) tape recorder running. After we’d had our tape recorders for two weeks, we all met up to talk about what we’d gotten. Most of the other folks in my school had like ten minutes of recordings total from two people. When I asked why only that, they said it was because they hated being near old people, so they were only going to do the minimum effort.

Meanwhile, I had almost 6 hours.

While I will admit I often do things by half measures, I tend to do that first half really thoroughly. This legitimately seemed to me like a great idea and, while I had nothing against talking to the elderly, it basically hadn’t come up before. There was little overlap in social circles, after all.

My first problem was having no idea what to ask. I decided to settle on five questions to begin with: “What’s your name?”, “When were you born?”, “What was your life like growing up?”, “How have things changed since then?”, “If there was one thing you could restore, what would it be?”.

With these in mind, I went to visit and interview my grandmother. While I visited her home roughly once a week (until she passed away), I hadn’t really asked historical questions. I decided that I would ask her the questions I had, let her ramble as much as she liked, and then ask followup questions launching from anything she brought up. At the same time, I’d scribble notes on which questions were most informative and what I should ask other people when I interviewed them.

She spoke to me for almost two hours and, in that time, I gradually saw a vision of the past that I hadn’t gotten before. Furthermore, I got a framework for what to ask about, so that I could fill in more information when I asked other seniors. Finally, I got referrals from her, so that I would know which of her neighbours or friends or church members would be receptive to an interview.

I learned about the period preceding our independence. How the economic system was under British rule. How some of us went off to fight in the Second World War as part of the British Army. How shocked everyone was when the RAF landed here with the first airplane ever seen in our country.

I learned about the independence process. The context behind a lot of the terminology and in jokes I heard around me which referenced events during the independence process. What social and material conditions prompted the move toward independence and how different sectors of society reacted.

I learned about what various people thought of the Revolution. How they perceived life under Socialism and the goals of the Socialist movement. What they thought of the subsequent collapse and US invasion. Who they blamed for the collapse and whether they believed the later invasion was justified. Whether they preferred the current liberal democracy to our earlier system.

I learned about how various technological developments affected society. When radio first arrived during my grandparents’ childhood, and television arrived during my own parents’ childhood. How people used to crowd around the windows of the middle class folks in town to watch their TV, and how you used to have to walk a mile to the bank to make a phone call.

I learned about how civil society itself changed. About how Catholicism was the backbone of civil identity, which was shared by >90% of the population and almost universal in the working class. About the explosive growth of Protestant Churches that had pushed back Catholicism until it was barely over 50%. About how access to education expanded. From the days when poor kids went to school part time until leaving after sixth grade, to the present day, when the first two years of college cost the equivalent 40 US dollars per semester.

And, throughout, the small slices of life from each individual. The man who, as a boy, used to climb coconut trees to watch the sea whenever he was upset. The woman who, as a little girl, set up a stall in the marketplace where she pretended to sell rocks and napkins. The man who used to catch crayfish in the river and once screamed like a little girl when a massive frog jumped onto his head.

But it was particularly interesting to learn what they wanted to restore. They cared less about politics than I might have expected, and were mostly fine and dandy with things like gender equality and various immigrant groups. They instead wanted to restore things like the slower pace of life when you could just sit in a tree and watch the sea. They wanted the comradery that came from having twenty kids huddled around a window to watch a grainy television screen. They wanted the feeling of working toward a Great Project that they had during the independence process, or the later Socialist revolution.

But the most common complaint was that they wanted their grandchildren to talk to them the way they used to talk to their own grandparents. And, based on how happy all of these strangers were to have me listening to them, I knew that this was important to them.

I’ve occasionally seen people recommend that you read old books in order to better understand the perspectives of those people. That it is incredibly easy to forget today what seemed most obvious and essential yesterday.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions.

-C S Lewis

For the same reason, there’s much to be said for speaking to old people. While they are less of a snapshot of the old perspective - because their own thoughts have of course been developing all the time up to now - they are people who at least lived in the old perspective. If the past is a foreign country, they are the expats who used to call it home.

Furthermore, they’re also responsive and holistic in a way that old books are not. Historians like boring diaries because they record all sorts of things that wouldn’t have seemed interesting then, even if they’re surprising now.

Similarly, seniors are a repository of lots of information that isn’t especially filtered for “Was it interesting in its time?” They remember all sorts of random anecdotes about their lives that give a flavour of the times but would never have made it into a book that was aiming to be read in those times. After all, old books were written for the people of old times - not for posterity.

And they’re responsive in that they handle queries better than an old treatise might. When something in conversation activates your “Wait, you did what?” response, you can ask more questions to walk you down that road. You can get a much more varied survey of the historical frame of mind in much less time than if you read books linearly.

Of course, as someone with a special interest in history, I may be biased in thinking that this is the coolest thing ever. However, I also think it’s valuable. Knowing how people used to think helps you figure out how things got to where they are today. Seeing how different the past was can help you to understand how much change can happen when you look ahead. Seeing ideas you never considered before can help you to broaden your horizons. Also, like, learning things is fun.

So, if you agree with me on any of this, I encourage you to read old books, speak to old people, look through boring journals, and open yourself up to just how much of the past you might be missing from your current vantage point.

[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks – October 31

October 31, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

It drove his critics crazy that Obama was the coolest president we ever had and his summer 2019 playlist on Spotify simply confirms that reality. It has been on repeat for me. From Drake to Lizzo (God I love her) to Steely Dan to Raphael Saadiq to Sinatra (who I skip every time – I’m not buying the nostalgia), his carefully curated list reflects not only his infinite coolness, but the breadth of his interests and generosity of taste. I love the music, but I love even more the image of Michelle and him rocking out somewhere far from Washington’s madness, as much as I miss them both.

What I’m reading: 

I struggled with Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo for the first 50 pages, worried that she’d drag out every tired trope of Mid-Eastern society, but I fell for her main characters and their journey as refugees from Syria to England. Parts of this book were hard to read and very dark, because that is the plight of so many refugees and she doesn’t shy away from those realities and the enormous toll they take on displaced people. It’s a hard read, but there is light too – in resilience, in love, in friendships, the small tender gestures of people tossed together in a heartless world. Lefteri volunteered in Greek refugee programs, spent a lot of interviewing people, and the book feels true, and importantly, heartfelt.

What I’m watching:

Soap opera meets Shakespeare, deliciously malevolent and operatic, Succession has been our favorite series this season. Loosely based on the Murdochs and their media empire (don’t believe the denials), this was our must watch television on Sunday nights, filling the void left by Game of Thrones. The acting is over-the-top good, the frequent comedy dark, the writing brilliant, and the music superb. We found ourselves quoting lines after every episode. Like the hilarious; “You don’t hear much about syphilis these days. Very much the Myspace of STDs.” Watch it so we can talk about that season 2 finale.

Archive 

August 30, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but the New York Times new 1619 podcast is just terrific, as is the whole project, which observes the sale of the first enslaved human beings on our shores 400 years ago. The first episode, “The Fight for a True Democracy” is a remarkable overview (in a mere 44 minutes) of the centrality of racism and slavery in the American story over those 400 years. It should be mandatory listening in every high school in the country. I’m eager for the next episodes. Side note: I am addicted to The Daily podcast, which gives more color and detail to the NY Times stories I read in print (yes, print), and reminds me of how smart and thoughtful are those journalists who give us real news. We need them now more than ever.

What I’m reading: 

Colson Whitehead has done it again. The Nickel Boys, his new novel, is a worthy successor to his masterpiece The Underground Railroad, and because it is closer to our time, based on the real-life horrors of a Florida reform school, and written a time of resurgent White Supremacy, it hits even harder and with more urgency than its predecessor. Maybe because we can read Underground Railroad with a sense of “that was history,” but one can’t read Nickel Boys without the lurking feeling that such horrors persist today and the monsters that perpetrate such horrors walk among us. They often hold press conferences.

What I’m watching:

Queer Eye, the Netflix remake of the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy some ten years later, is wondrously entertaining, but it also feels adroitly aligned with our dysfunctional times. Episode three has a conversation with Karamo Brown, one of the fab five, and a Georgia small town cop (and Trump supporter) that feels unscripted and unexpected and reminds us of how little actual conversation seems to be taking place in our divided country. Oh, for more car rides such as the one they take in that moment, when a chasm is bridged, if only for a few minutes. Set in the South, it is often a refreshing and affirming response to what it means to be male at a time of toxic masculinity and the overdue catharsis and pain of the #MeToo movement. Did I mention? It’s really fun.

July 1, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

The National remains my favorite band and probably 50% of my listening time is a National album or playlist. Their new album I Am Easy To Find feels like a turning point record for the band, going from the moody, outsider introspection and doubt of lead singer Matt Berninger to something that feels more adult, sophisticated, and wiser. I might have titled it Women Help The Band Grow Up. Matt is no longer the center of The National’s universe and he frequently cedes the mic to the many women who accompany and often lead on the long, their longest, album. They include Gail Ann Dorsey (who sang with Bowie for a long time), who is amazing, and a number of the songs were written by Carin Besser, Berninger’s wife. I especially love the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the arrangements, and the sheer complexity and coherence of the work. It still amazes me when I meet someone who does not know The National. My heart breaks for them just a little.

What I’m reading: 

Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad through the lens of a captive Trojan queen, Briseis. As a reviewer in The Atlantic writes, it answers the question “What does war mean to women?” We know the answer and it has always been true, whether it is the casual and assumed rape of captive women in this ancient war story or the use of rape in modern day Congo, Syria, or any other conflict zone. Yet literature almost never gives voice to the women – almost always minor characters at best — and their unspeakable suffering. Barker does it here for Briseis, for Hector’s wife Andromache, and for the other women who understand that the death of their men is tragedy, but what they then endure is worse. Think of it ancient literature having its own #MeToo moment. The NY Times’ Geraldine Brooks did not much like the novel. I did. Very much.

What I’m watching: 

The BBC-HBO limited series Years and Years is breathtaking, scary, and absolutely familiar. It’s as if Black Mirrorand Children of Men had a baby and it precisely captures the zeitgeist, the current sense that the world is spinning out of control and things are coming at us too fast. It is a near future (Trump has been re-elected and Brexit has occurred finally)…not dystopia exactly, but damn close. The closing scene of last week’s first episode (there are 6 episodes and it’s on every Monday) shows nuclear war breaking out between China and the U.S. Yikes! The scope of this show is wide and there is a big, baggy feel to it – but I love the ambition even if I’m not looking forward to the nightmares.

May 19, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but I was really moved by this podcast of a Davis Brooks talk at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-brooks-quest-moral-life.  While I have long found myself distant from his political stance, he has come through a dark night of the soul and emerged with a wonderful clarity about calling, community, and not happiness (that most superficial of goals), but fulfillment and meaning, found in community and human kinship of many kinds. I immediately sent it to my kids.

What I’m reading: 

Susan Orlean’s wonderful The Library Book, a love song to libraries told through the story of the LA Central Library.  It brought back cherished memories of my many hours in beloved libraries — as a kid in the Waltham Public Library, a high schooler in the Farber Library at Brandeis (Lil Farber years later became a mentor of mine), and the cathedral-like Bapst Library at BC when I was a graduate student. Yes, I was a nerd. This is a love song to books certainly, but a reminder that libraries are so, so much more.  It is a reminder that libraries are less about a place or being a repository of information and, like America at its best, an idea and ideal. By the way, oh to write like her.

What I’m watching: 

What else? Game of Thrones, like any sensible human being. This last season is disappointing in many ways and the drop off in the writing post George R.R. Martin is as clear as was the drop off in the post-Sorkin West Wing. I would be willing to bet that if Martin has been writing the last season, Sansa and Tyrion would have committed suicide in the crypt. That said, we fans are deeply invested and even the flaws are giving us so much to discuss and debate. In that sense, the real gift of this last season is the enjoyment between episodes, like the old pre-streaming days when we all arrived at work after the latest episode of the Sopranos to discuss what we had all seen the night before. I will say this, the last two episodes — full of battle and gore – have been visually stunning. Whether the torches of the Dothraki being extinguished in the distance or Arya riding through rubble and flame on a white horse, rarely has the series ascended to such visual grandeur.

March 28, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

There is a lovely piece played in a scene from A Place Called Home that I tracked down. It’s Erik Satie’s 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1, played by the wonderful pianist Klára Körmendi. Satie composed this piece in 1888 and it was considered avant-garde and anti-Romantic. It’s minimalism and bit of dissonance sound fresh and contemporary to my ears and while not a huge Classical music fan, I’ve fallen in love with the Körmendi playlist on Spotify. When you need an alternative to hours of Cardi B.

What I’m reading: 

Just finished Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black. Starting on a slave plantation in Barbados, it is a picaresque novel that has elements of Jules Verne, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. Yes, it strains credulity and there are moments of “huh?”, but I loved it (disclosure: I was in the minority among my fellow book club members) and the first third is a searing depiction of slavery. It’s audacious, sprawling (from Barbados to the Arctic to London to Africa), and the writing, especially about nature, luminous. 

What I’m watching: 

A soap opera. Yes, I’d like to pretend it’s something else, but we are 31 episodes into the Australian drama A Place Called Home and we are so, so addicted. Like “It’s  AM, but can’t we watch just one more episode?” addicted. Despite all the secrets, cliff hangers, intrigue, and “did that just happen?” moments, the core ingredients of any good soap opera, APCH has superb acting, real heft in terms of subject matter (including homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual assault, and class), touches of our beloved Downton Abbey, and great cars. Beware. If you start, you won’t stop.

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we’ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also rereadbooks I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star.  The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018 

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a��Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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