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The Hello Project

The Hello Project

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It’s called the Hello Project, I think, although I can’t seem to learn much about it online. I heard about it last night at book group. People are paired with their political opposites and have phone conversations, a Rust Belt conservative with an East Coast liberal. It’s a way to share views and bridge the great divide.

What I can’t stop thinking about it, though, is how it’s come to this. Why do we require such artificial means to such natural ends: honest sharing of views, speaking without censure? Why do so few of us know people from the Other Side?

Is it because we live in boxes and zip codes and echo chambers? Because we’re angry and afraid? Some of these, to be sure, but probably much more: fissures widening so slowly and inexorably that we haven’t realized they were there until they’ve become almost too big to bridge.

I’m glad there’s a Hello Project. But I’m sorry we need it. It’s as if we cut down all the trees in a forest and then planted saplings in their wake. Yes, I’d be glad for the saplings, but I would mourn the old trees, so strong and true.

Radical Love

Radical Love

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Usually on Valentine’s Day I write about personal love. And I’m certainly thinking of it today, feeling grateful for my family and friends, all those I hold dear. But these are extraordinary times, and they call for the most radical and extreme of actions.

They call for love.

“If we are stretching to live wiser and not just smarter,” says Krista Tippett in her book Becoming Wise, “we will aspire to learn what love means, how it arises and deepens, how it withers and revives, what it looks like as a private good but also a common good.”

Tippett, the host of NPR’s “On Being,” describes the love shown by 1960s civil rights workers, their belief in the “beloved community” that meant they were fighting for equality with courtesy and kindness.  “This was love as a way of being, not a feeling, which transcended grievance and painstakingly transformed violence,” Tippett writes.

Though her book was published just last year, it already seems to hail from another era, a time when were not yet as deeply divided as we are now. Tippett doesn’t address the division as much as she would had she been writing a year later, but reading her book makes me think about how much further we’d be if treated each other with courtesy and kindness.

Maybe love is what we need, love translated into forbearance and understanding, into biting our tongues and holding our applause. Divisiveness got us into this mess. Maybe love can get us out.

Framing It

Framing It

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In today’s Washington Post, a column by Margaret Sullivan called “Old Rules of Journalism Don’t Apply” covers the firing of a Marketplace columnist, a transgender man who posted on Medium that journalists, especially minority journalists, must rethink objectivity in the Trump era.

I think the firing was legitimate because the post clearly violated one of Marketplace’s written guidelines, but the columnist raises an important point. We have our jobs and we have our morals. What happens if the two are on a collision course?

This blog is hardly Marketplace or the Washington Post, and it’s almost always apolitical. But I’ve been wrestling with how much to talk about What’s Going On. These are unusual times, so political posts may creep in a little more than they used to.

But I hope not too much. Because as frightening and upending as things have become (at least in the politically super-charged air of the nation’s capital), I still believe that perspective and empathy are our greatest weapons (along with family, friends, humor and chocolate). And perspective and empathy are what I’m after here.

Perspective

Perspective

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The peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of our nation. That will happen in less two hours — and about 36 miles from where I’m sitting.

It’s not the transfer of power that I was hoping for, but that’s not the point. It’s a transfer, and it’s happening. After it’s complete, we can move forward, doing what we must to protect the nation, which has weathered wars and riots and a near-fatal split. 
I remind myself that eight years ago others were as worried and disappointed as I am now. I might think I have more cause for concern (and I do!), but I imagine those folks would disagree with me. 
Perspective — I’m working on it today. And I will be for quite some time.
Happy Birthday, Copper!

Happy Birthday, Copper!

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Ten years ago today we threw caution to the winds and bought a puppy. He was a whirling dervish of an animal, full of life, completely unhinged.  One of his first antics was to jump over the back of the couch and land on my mother’s lap when she was visiting for Christmas. Mom, who was a little shy of dogs, was holding a glass of red wine at the time.

Copper was Claire’s Christmas present in 2006. Claire had been dreaming of dogs and pestering us for one for years — but she would be off to college in two-and-a-half years.

Yes, I know. What were we thinking? Here we were, almost in the clear — and then … not.

The child gate went up at the bottom of the stairs. The doors to bathrooms were kept closed so he couldn’t rifle through the trash. Shoes, socks and anything else chewable had to be stowed away.

Of course, you know how this story ends. It’s the oldest cliche in the books: Dog arrives, steals hearts, never lets them go.

And that’s exactly what happened — so much so that no one really wants to talk about his birthday or how many years we’ve had him because, well, we can’t imagine life without him now.

Nutcracker, Redux

Nutcracker, Redux

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Suzanne took me to the Nutcracker at Kennedy Center yesterday, and what a Nutcracker it was! A fizzy, funny production with tumbling sprites, flying Drosselmeyer and a stunning pas de deux.  There was enough of the traditional ballet to suit purists but enough site gags (a leaning cake, two harem dancers fighting over their man and silly prancing poodles) to keep the audience guessing — and laughing.

When Suzanne and I went to the Nutcracker years ago, I would be in the audience and she would be on stage in a progression of roles — mirliton, polichinelle, party child — as her ballet skills improved.  We reminisced about those days, about personalities in the ballet studio, including the earnest Mr. Ben, husband of the studio owner, who was pressed into service each Christmas as leading man and whose lifts looked ever more shaky as the years wore on.

And there were stories behind this production, too; we just didn’t know them. We were, instead, caught up in the illusion, a gasp as the curtain rises, a sigh as it descends.

(Above: The Nutcracker’s original performance in 1892.)

The Morning After

The Morning After

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This is no “morning in America.” This is more the way you feel when you learn that someone you love has been hurting more than you possibly thought they were. Why didn’t you tell me, I feel like saying. How could things have been this bad, to produce this end?

But they were telling me, telling us, and we wouldn’t, couldn’t listen. Because listening across party lines is not something we do much anymore.

The great rift exposed by this election has been a long time coming, and it will take a while to repair. I’m not a politician, but it seems to me that the best way — maybe the only way — out of this is to pull together. Unfortunately, the campaign has eroded our ability to do the very thing we need to do for our recovery.

In my office now there is much gallows humor, talk of relocating to Canada or some tropical isle. It’s a good time to leave for Indonesia and Myanmar (which I do on Friday). But I’ll be back soon. How much will this have sunk in by then? How inured will we be to this new reality?

Ghost Land

Ghost Land

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The streets are deserted, the high-occupancy vehicle restrictions lifted, and I am abroad in a Ghost Land. The buildings are still here, the air system hums as it always does. But gone are the suits on the eleventh floor, the officers in camouflague gear, and most of all, the bustle of a busy work ‘hood.

We are suspended in our glass house while wind whips the yellowing trees and stirs the Potomac into ripples and eddies. We are here where the coffee machine punctuates the silence and voices I’ve grown to recognize call from distant corners.

When you work in a company town, you accept the company rhythms. But today, I’m cutting against the grain. It’s Monday, it’s Columbus Day, I’m in the office.

After Labor Day

After Labor Day

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How quickly one gets used to the unregulated life. Even though last week’s wedding preparations kept me crazy busy I was able to complete the tasks on my own time and in my own way. The work world demands a regimentation I’ve taken great pains to avoid.

It’s why I became a teacher after college graduation. I figured out that I could stand nine highly regulated months if I could have three highly unregulated ones to make up for it.

Today I feel the back-to-work burden in my soul. Maybe it’s because I’m still half-exhausted from the wedding. Or maybe it’s because on the day after Labor Day, the traditional back-to-school day, regimentation is in the very air we breathe.

Since I just completed a major project it feels like this should be at the beginning of relaxation not the end of it.  But when the work engrosses, these feelings pass. And it will. I just have to give it time.

The Wedding

The Wedding

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I didn’t give a toast on Saturday night. But this is what I would have said if I did. I would have riffed on the saying “it takes a village to make a child.” I would have said that it also takes a village to make a wedding. Everything from the rehearsal dinner on Friday to the dog watching and wedding photography on Saturday was provided by friends or friends of friends.

The marriage itself, of course, is up to the two people involved. But a community has now witnessed Suzanne and Appolinaire’s vows. And I could feel the love and support of that community swell up behind me as I sat in the front row watching my daughters, all three of them, walk down the aisle of mulch that we laid only a few weeks ago (again, with the help of family and friends). That love and support is like money in the bank for the young couple, something they can draw on through years of life together.

There is much to say about all of this. Too much. My heart is full right now.

But while the tent is still up (the rental company comes for it today) and the magic is still fresh, let me just say that the backyard will be forever transformed by the presence of those we love who came (some from as far away as Paris) to celebrate with us. Dear family, neighbors who watched Suzanne grow up, friends from high school and college and work and childrearing. Appolinaire’s best man Fidel, who grew up in a village not far from him and speaks the same mother tongue.

The big events of life rise up like tall peaks through the fog of daily living. You plan for them, work for them and often wonder if they’re worth the effort. But once they happen (and even as they’re happening if you’re lucky, in moments or snatches of moments), you know they’re worth every penny, every hour. Because they stop time; they define and sanctify the everyday.

The wedding is behind us now. But it’s all around us, too. And it always will be.