‘With lightning telegrams...'

The Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was a big fan of telegrams. It was the height of communication technology at the time –- messages condensed down to their most efficient, poetic length and then zipped over wires at the speed of lightning (then delivered by a man riding about town on a bicycle, but nevermind). He was a man of his times. And so am I! I just joined Facebook -– apparently just a few minutes after it began its long downward slide into Friendster-dom (I’m guessing that New York mag profile is the highwater mark). As with Mayakovsky’s love of telegrams, I suspect social networking sites are an overexcited and ultimately useless misapplication of a useful technology. But never let it be said I didn’t try – and please don’t point out what Mayakovsky probably would have thought of Twitter.

Only a personal post...

It sounds ridiculous, but I try not to write too much about myself here. That is to say, I don’t like to get into anything about my personal life that is not perfectly obvious from a distance. But I feel it is time for one of those exceptions right now, mostly because I think it will explain a lot about why I’ve been so quiet these past few months, and will hopefully explain to my friends out there where I’ve been all these months.


Last June, my family and I came back from Moscow. It was a weird time, I remember sitting on that plane -- or more properly, running around in circles on that KLM Boeing-747 as Mila did laps for several hours -- full of all kinds of nervousness and anticipation. I didn’t have anything I was going back to, but something about being abroad and living in the big city made me appreciate our quiet country lives. Things would work out. But something came up. In the middle of adjusting to the culture shock, and moving to a new house, I got a job offer. In general, it is not a great idea to make major life decisions guided solely by fear.


But when I was offered a night editing job at the Eagle, my old haunt, I was terrified of refusing a regular paycheck when the economy was beginning to circle the drain. So I took the job, and I remember driving down to Pittsfield my first day, and then there is nothing but this whooshing sound. And here I am, months later, unsure about where the time went. Lots happened, of course -- Mila started daycare, we went to Poland -- but honestly, those details feel like detached dreams. My schedule at work was only nights, and most weekends. There was no set schedule, so the weeks all blurred into one mush of work. Because the job hours happened precisely and solely when we did not have access to childcare, my wife had to take care of Mila, significantly impacting her work as well. Our family life suffered because we were together rarely. I spent my time in Russia looking forward to being able to cook again, but now I had a job in which I couldn’t cook anymore. And the work itself was difficult. Years and years of budget cuts at American newspapers have whittled it down to a few incredibly busy jobs it is almost impossible to do well. Basically, you show up for work, grind away on a computer, look up and realize its time to go home and fall asleep. The closest analogy, I’m afraid to admit, was that summer in college I spent 12-hour shifts putting labels on shampoo bottles at a plastic molding factory.


So for the past few weeks, I’ve been in agony thinking about the future. It came about because this spring we have a lot of things on our schedule, and my work, in which I was parceled out a random batch of days two weeks ahead of time, made it frustrating to plan. I realized I was on a path that was wrong for my career, wrong for my wife’s career, wrong for my daughter’s childhood, and I stuck with it because I liked my co-workers, I liked the idea of having a career in newspaper journalism, and I liked the paycheck (though note: I did not like the amount of money it brought me. Newspapers work is appallingly badly paid). I went back and forth over and over again. I made up my mind and still agonized over whether it was the right thing to do. I ate badly, I lost sleep, I snapped at friends and strangers. And in the background, the steady, miserable backdrop of economic apocalypse. As the ship goes down, to step off it makes you feel perfectly insane. I’ve been pretty responsible though – no ill-advised mortgage, just ill-advised student loans. And there is the general malaise and agita of the future of newspapers (this year’s Internet meme must surely be “The Death of Newspapers” … but that’s another post!).


But what tipped me over the edge was the most mundane thing: a really, really bad boss that made none of it worthwhile. Maybe I’ll get into all that later; I haven’t decided yet. And then you had winter. Readjusting to a New England winter, especially a particularly nasty one like this, has been hard. In Moscow, you get central heating, crews of central Asian immigrants that keep the snow cleared. Here, where you are responsible for everything yourself, it feels like each little thing takes a greater toll on you. Every time you have to shovel the walkway, or pay a jaw-dropping bill for a heating oil delivery, seems to make things a little worse. But I try to remember all those things about how I felt on that plane slouching toward JFK International Airport. And after this months-long detour, I can look forward once again to the fear, uncertainty, and… spring!

I'm younger than that now

I was living in Washington eight years ago when Bush was inaugurated for his first term. It was one of the most upsetting and disturbing days I can remember, how down to the very details it was like a cinema director's impression of the forces of evil taking over the world. The freezing drizzle of that grey day, the dispirited protesters who gathered in Dupont Circle and sullenly marched toward some vague point near the parade route. Through the night, the city was full of coaches carrying hillbillies who thought it was very funny to wear cowboy boots with tuxedos from one ball to another. It was like a gang of fat Visigoths and their plastic-haired wives had taken over the capital.


I kept reminding myself that it wouldn't be that bad, that it couldn't be that bad. America is a land of political compromise and balance, after all. But for eight long years, it proved to be worse than anything anyone could have imagined. Each unspooling catastrophe and outrage was followed by something even worse.


I would very much like to be there today when it all comes to an end. Mostly for personal reasons, not really related to the moment -- that I had an up-close seat at the horror, I'd like to have a look at what I hope will be its exact opposite. But my life is different now. Much has happened in those eight years, and now here in Williamstown, with my family, my work, I have that "my back pages" feeling. In spite of everything Bush and his cronies did, I don't think it took anything away from the joy I felt at my wedding, or when I met my daughter.


And nothing Obama will do, for good or ill, will really change my world at a certain level either. Don't get me wrong. I can't think about this past election, and the gravity of this moment, without getting that feeling of words failing me, and with a rising flush of pride and joy that these American ideals are bright and true. But as Obama himself would be the first to tell you, these pretty thoughts are good and all, but not enough. As the Beatles put it, "the movement you need is on your shoulders."

Ulitsa Varvarka

Ulitsa Varvarka is one of the most interesting little streets in the heart of Moscow. To appreciate how much so, you probably have to have seen it when the Hotel Rossiya towered over it. It is the subject of the last of my freelance pieces from Russia, which appeared in the Boston Globe's Travel section on Sunday. Click here. (Above, a view of the Cathedral of the Sign, with the walls and towers of the Kremlin in the background. Below, the Old English Embassy, in front of the vast construction yard that was the Hotel Rossiya).

Election Day

(Mila with our family's ballot yesterday afternoon at our polling place at Williamstown Elementary School.)

How strange and cheesy this morning, to take out the trash and see the sun come up over Mount Greylock on a bright and mild beautiful morning and getting all choked up and misty about this "new morning" in America.

I realize the awesome historic power of the moment yesterday, but to me it felt kind of anti-climactic. After the drama and struggle of the primaries, and the long lead amid a great storm of bad news, as the opposition got nastier and nastier, the win felt more like a relief than something to celebrate. It was just too hard for too long to even consider the alternative.

A few quick thoughts:

• I've been looking at this election through the lens of the books I've been reading through it. When we first got back in June, I found at the top of one of our box of books my old copy of Norman Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago. It is impossible not to be amazed at the symbolism that Obama's celebration was in Grant Park, the very place where the Democratic Party's long, nasty civil war began during the 1968 Convention.
• I've also been reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and have been reading 2008 as a pleasantly bizarro 1972. There was the long, ugly fight against the Party bosses, building a rare coalition of people who are getting screwed by the way things are, then having to face down the latest edition of the Land of Mordor spew coming from the right. But unlike in 1972, this time our candidate did everything right.
• I admit that I first started checking in with Fox News out of schadenfreude. But to my surprise, while every other outlet was ruminating on the enormity of the moment, Fox News was doing a much better job of reporting on the important House and Senate races. Also, Fox had no holograms.
• Senator McCain's concession speech was dignified and moving, and a reflection of the man he probably is rather than the shrill caricature he became in the heat of the campaign. But the mob scene he was speaking to -- booing and hooting and shouting -- was an embarrassment. This stubborn group of hateful dead-enders will make the next few years very unpleasant.
• Not everything can go right all the time, but voters in California approving a referendum banning same-sex marriage is a pretty tough worm in this apple. On this great day when we have really overcome prejudice and hate, it is disgusting that Americans would vote to willfully rob their friends, neighbors and relatives of a fundamental civil right. That fight goes on, and we'll win.

Happy Halloween!

Cowgirl Mila at her preschool's Halloween parade yesterday on Spring Street.

A Maine moment

Mila and her mom at Pemaquid Point in Maine on Monday, Oct. 13.

Cold and heat

The "home heating season" at our house began last Friday, when Olga and I noticed as we ate our bagels at breakfast that we could actually see our breath. Heating oil prices being what they are, this is not a step taken lightly, but we have a lot going against us at our new place. It faces west, so it only gets a few hours of sunlight at the end of the day, and just to the east of us is a stand of huge fir and maple trees that cast a nice shade in the summer, but ensure we live in darkness and cave-like chill. We think a lot about the absurdity of all this. In Russia, no middle class family sits in their own home wrapped in blankets watching their breath turn to frost. And none of them risk bankrupting themselves to pay for heating fuel either. The old joke goes that in Russia your thermostat is you window: you open it to let the extra heat out. One of the positive legacies of socialism are home utilities. In most cities, every district has its own cogeneration plant that pipes steaming hot water to each apartment for heating and hot water service. It is massively inefficient, though it isn't an urgent public policy priority because Russia has the resources, and as with almost everything, the situation is dramatically different in the provinces. Half of the Siberian city of Kransoyarsk was without heat or hot water for several weeks last winter because one of their plants blew up. All that is very bad, but when I first heard this coming winter in New England referred to as a potential "frozen Katrina" -- with ordinary people freezing to death in their homes because they can't afford to heat themselves -- I began to wonder. Sure, the Russian way is built on faulty assumptions about its sustainability and disregards society's most vulnerable members, but isn't it the same here? Isn't our dependence on oil furnaces and getting by with paltry insulation a reflection of the mistaken belief that heating oil would always be cheap and abundant? and isn't LIHEAP such a pressing political issue around here because there are way too many people who are broken by the costs of heating? It seems like another subtle reminder that the way things are done here in the States isn't perfect. It also points out one of the most common and absurd stereotypes I've encountered here, in which people respond to our year in Moscow by joking that it must've been cold. Well, actually, no. America is cold. Every place I went in Russia was heated abundantly and comfortably, and when you go outside, you dress for it. Hats, gloves, scarves, thermal underwear. Russians know that you don't screw around with winter, and as a result, it isn't that bad. Compare this with here, where winter is a long slog of dull, low-level misery. Of wet and chills and once the holidays are over, a kind of sunlight-free existential despair. It is no wonder that so many northern retirees cite simply avoiding the winter as the reason they pulled up roots and moved South.

Two ways of looking at a cruise ship

Most of the work I've read by David Foster Wallace, who killed himself last week, has been his journalism and nonfiction. I never read his fiction, but of course was quite aware of his singular place in American arts and letters, especially in the 1990s. I've had friends whose opinions I respect both slam and praise him, and I think that in itself is a sort of accomplishment. But there is one thing about him that has never set well with me. In one of my magazine writing classes at Columbia, we were assigned to read Wallace's impressive January 1996 folio "Shipping Out," a long essay about the cruise ship industry and the nature of vacation, relaxation and modern American life. It was a big hit in class, as it should be because it is really very insightful and well-written. At the same time, in another class, we read some James Agee, and I was impressed enough to check out of Butler Library a volume of his collected journalism pieces. Included was a feature for Fortune magazine from September 1937 entitled "Havana Cruise," a long essay about the then-fledgling cruise industry. In subject matter and approach, these two articles are very very similar. I've never been able to square how a writer as well-read and knowledgeable -- not to mention as obsessively enamored with footnotes of all shapes and sizes -- failed to include at least a passing mention of Agee's work. I'm not suggesting there is any wrongdoing of any sort, I just can't figure it out. That said, the two articles are really very interesting in presenting what I would call the modernist and postmodernist approach to narrative journalism. With a caveat that I haven't really sat down and read through them in nearly ten years, I remember Agee's story is earnest, serious, obsessed with "breaking news" and the idea of the new. Wallace's is a bit more fun, full of jokes and asides, and seems more interested in hashing out ideas and experiences in an effort to connect seemingly random and inconsequential themes into some kind of bigger coherence. What they both share is a bit of self-indulgence (Agee's sometimes pretentious verbiage [too much Joyce]; Wallace's distractions into pop culture ephemera and jumping into rabbit-holes of his own whim) and an overwhelming sense of dread (especially well done in Agee's piece. He had a much better sense of drama). Both are excellent reads.

Regarding the politics of others

While abroad I was able to follow American politics pretty closely thanks to our wonderful wired modern world. But one of the great things about this past year is it has given me a little more perspective about how people look at one another's politics.

Consider the Sarah Palin nomination, which to me is probably the least funny thing to ever happen in American politics, but to the rest of the world is kinda amusing. In a column in the Telegraph last week, Mary Riddell lamented a bit jealously that UK conservatives weren't as colorful.

"We're playing personality politics without the personalities and, in that climate, woe betide any grey figure bold enough... to stick his eyebrows above the parapet.

"Can no Tory front-bencher conjure up a pregnant teenage daughter and a non-Etonian 'redneck' boyfriend?"

Crimmy, serious people debating serious issues about the nation and its future, without the reality television show bullsh*t? Sounds great to me.

When seen from the outside looking in, political life tends to flatten and simplify in distorting ways. On a serious note, it means that Americans refuse to acknowledge the political complexity and nuance of today's Russia in favor of a simple "the USSR is back!" narrative (which makes a dummy like Mikheil Saakashvili the inexplicable underdog freedom fighter). But on a personality level, it works the same way. We look at Nicolas Sarkozy, jet-setting with his hot new model/singer wife, or Silvio Berlusconi penning syrupy love songs with cruise ship lounge singers, and we ask ourselves how anybody could possibly take these people seriously. Well, here we have Sarah Palin, and I'm asking the same question (not two years ago, she was the mayor of a town smaller than Williamstown. Have you seen its "City Hall"?).