Subway Ride

Dear Kid, 

Thanks so much for your email. I’m happy that you and Dalia are housed together in Bunk 1; glad Ava is fun and good at teaching wet-hair-towel-wrapping techniques; and very sorry about the food and the mattresses. Last night when I was having dinner (chicken caesar salad) I was remembering that you and I would normally be eating kale pasta (it was Monday), and I missed you. That said, I’m glad you’re at Wricampia and glad you can spend time writing and glad you have electives like boating and the graphic novel and glad you can be with Dalia and glad you can make new friends like Ava. 

Not much of note has happened in the 24 or so hours since your green bus left for the Poconos from the Upper West Side. So I’m going to write about a subway ride I took this weekend that I found diverting. 

I rode a southbound Q from Atlantic Yards/Barclays Center to Cortelyou Road. It was early Saturday evening, around 6:30 p.m. I stood at the platform spot we use on Tuesday and Thursday mornings to get to your bus stop at the Cortelyou library branch, entering a car near the wooden platform benches (one facing the southbound trains, one facing the northbound) so that we can exit near the Cortelyou station stairwell. The car was crowded enough so that I had to stand but empty enough to offer plenty of choices; I held a pole at the midway point of a long bench (with space for four on each side of the pole), facing the car’s rear. Directly in my eye line, at the pole near the doors, stood a mom and her two boys, maybe 8 and 6. The mom -- African-American, in her 30s, I guessed, thick-set, with delicate features that sagged with fatigue -- gripped in one hand a large shopping bag and the handle bars of two scooters, bending a bit to keep their wheels on the ground; her other hand held the center pole. Another shopping bag, filled with clothes or sporting goods or groceries, I couldn’t tell, slumped on the ground, its contents set to topple. The subway made the easing sound that indicates imminent take-off. “Hold on,” the mom instructed the younger boy, whose tight afro featured on each side delicate spirals cut with a razor. The boy stumbled back, almost into me, before catching his balance. “You need to hold on,” his mother said. His older brother (thinner, more athletic) said, “You fell!” pointing with his left hand and keeping his right hand cocked on his hip, swaggering. “You almost fell down!” The younger boy said something I didn’t catch. When the mom said to the older boy, “You need to hold on, too,” he took a minute, turning his hips toward her, left arm dangling, right arm cocked, a stance that said: What are you going to do about it? I couldn’t see his mom’s face, but, a second later, when the boy’s right hand darted from his hip to the pole that he held tight for the rest of the ride, I imagined her expression. 

At that point my attention swerved to a group of four on the bench to my left. On the far end, sitting nearest the doors, a man in his 30s (dark mop of hair, stubble shadowing his jawline, dark soft round eyes) roused himself from what may have been a nap when a man sitting at the center pole (similar age, taller, thin, with narrow dark eyes and a hawk-like nose and similarly dark tousled hair) leaned over the two people between them to say hello. They began to banter in a language I couldn’t catch. They were clearly chummy but not intimate -- I guessed friends from the neighborhood. Tall Guy leaned over, stretched a long arm to share a soft handshake with Soft-Eyes Guy, then introduced the man to his left: a square-shouldered, thick-torsoed man with razor-short hair who spent the ride leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, a posture he barely budged to exchange greetings and a much firmer handshake with Soft-Eyes. Tall Guy and Soft-Eyes continued a chat that lasted the rest of my ride, interrupted by an occasional grunt or quick comment from Stocky Guy. I was trying to catch their language (Italian?) but was distracted by the person sitting between Stocky Guy and Soft-Eyes: a woman, a generation older (late 50s? early 60s?), who wore a square-cut gray dress with a drab pattern that perhaps came from a 1960s Sears catalog or a picked-over department store in the former Soviet Bloc. She had no obvious make-up, wavy gray curls cut sensibly short, and a doughy face marked with small, sharp brown eyes. On almost no evidence, I guessed she was Soft Eyes’ mother; they sat close, and his left arm occasionally touched her as he gesticulated. But she was never introduced, and she never acknowledged either Soft Eyes nor the two gentlemen to her right; during the entire conversation she stared straight ahead. (Russian: that was the language they were speaking.) At first I thought the woman’s stare was blank, and I wondered if she were somehow mentally incapacitated, until I saw her eyes dart to a conversation near the doors and realized she wasn’t missing a thing.

I followed her gaze to the 6-year-old, trying to tell his mother something. I heard him utter a single phrase at least six times in rapid succession: “And then I saw...” It came out “AndthenIsaw/AndthenIsaw/AndthenIsaw/AndthenIsaw/ AndthenIsaw/AndthenIsaw...,” like a record with a scratch forcing the needle back to its starting point. The mother, still and calm as a pond, said, “Take your time. Stephen. You have all the time you need.” Stephen inhaled, started over, and moved right past it: “And then I saw another boy jump off the stairs...” 

I felt moved to say something to the mother, along the lines of: “I really appreciate the way you parent these boys.” But I imagined how that exchange might play out: “What are you doing listening to a private conversation?” And who was I to provide her with approbation? Why did she need a strange 53-year-old man telling her he thought she was doing a great job? At the same time I felt sad to stay silent, as if it were a loss -- a flaw in our American society, somehow -- that I couldn’t easily share with this fellow traveler my admiration. 

Just then a couple ran onto the car, barely beating the closing doors. They were in their late teens or early 20s, both laughing, full of energy and the promise of a summer night. The young man (boy, really) had short blond curls and a sharp-cut, sheeny suit; the young woman (younger than he, I thought) had long straight blond hair, a tight-fitting sleeveless light-blue dress cut mid-thigh, and a diaphanous orange scarf that fluttered behind with her flowing hair. Large-eyed, out of breath, they flowed past the mother and her boys, past the Russians, past me, up the car, seeking seats. The entire car’s energy shifted; even the people whose eyes didn’t follow them (and most everyone’s did, including the two young boys’ and the Russian mother’s) felt their rush of arrival, felt the wake of their heedless youth, felt, I calculated, envious or pitying or irked or regretful. I felt none of those things. I felt happy to be on the Q, happy to be among a crowd of Brooklynites, happy to be alive and alert to the ceaseless carnival of a summer Saturday night in the city. 

And then I darned near missed my stop. 

I love you, Kid! Hope your first full day of Wricampia has been a blast. 

Love,

Daddy

Peter's Owl

One morning last month while on vacation near the Finger Lakes, I walked. I decided against taking my sister’s dog and to walk unencumbered. The property I’d rented with my brood (sister, mother, daughter) sat on 60 acres crossed by dozens of trails. After days of walking with a dog and an 86-year-old and a 9-year-old, striding at my own pace was a pleasure. I headed east on a trailhead we’d passed the previous day, which turned out to be marked with a “1” on dozens of thin squares of yellow-painted tin nailed to tree trunks about 8 feet above a path muddied by summer rains through a thin tree canopy. I turned briefly south on a trail marked Yellow 6 (yellow trails could be used by mountain bikes), then west on Blue Trail 1 (more thickly forested, more tree roots, no bikes, less mud). I saw no one. 

As my body found a rhythm my brain traveled to Scotland, to last summer, to the Borders Abbeys Way, where over six days I walked 90-odd miles near the northern English border in a loop between towns featuring abbey ruins from the 11th-14th centuries. A travel company took my suitcase each day from town to town, leaving me with a daypack, a thin trail guide, and detailed topographical maps. Trails were marked with a symbol (a capital A smashed atop a capital W), with what proved to be long stretches between signs. I was alone and encountered almost no one on the hilly trails, which ran mostly across rocky fields dotted with sheep (who enjoy expansive areas to roam) and an occasional farmhouse and patches of second- or third-growth trees; I crossed paved roads only when nearing a town. The travel company’s suggested gear included one item I had neglected to purchase: a whistle. If I broke an ankle I could have been overnight in a field, where farmers (on the evidence) seldom walk. I wore excellent boots, for which I was grateful at least hourly. My week-long circuit ran roughly clockwise (southwest, northwest, northeast, southeast). Each day’s trek ended in a new town and a new hotel or B&B. I carried rain gear, though it rained significantly but once. I lost the trail every day. I had no one to blame but myself: no spouse, no child, no sibling, no parent, no friend, no place but inward to take my excoriating anger. The experience felt fresh. 

The first day, scheduled for 18 miles, I misread an ambiguous trail marker, failed to cross a stile, and walked more than two miles off course. Borders Abbeys Way was crisscrossed with a half-dozen and more trails maintained by various groups, some national, some regional, some local. Junctions came marked by a mishmash of signs, or no signs at all; mistaking a trail was easier than falling down. After a fruitless half-hour seeking my conjoined A/W, with my ears detecting what I decided was a highway, I turned around and walked back two minutes before deciding I’d been right originally, turning back until hearing again what was most certainly a highway, at which point, in a moment that felt absurdly like defeat, Self-Preservation triumphed over Foolish Stolidity and I broke out the day’s topographical map. The sizable hill to my right should, I realized, have been on my left. Shit.

The wrong path had led mostly downhill through a rough trail along the fenced edge of a sheep field. I realized I could triangulate and cut off a sizable chunk of path by taking a route at a traverse angle. If I kept in sight a cell tower two hills over, I calculated, I’d return to my A/W trail. This required hopping the fence and walking through a field of what looked like high grass. I set out with renewed energy. (Map skills!) My vigor lasted two minutes, as the field proved to be hip-high gorse, untilled for years, studded with viciously-thorned vines, and pocked with stones and pits and slick mud that harbored, it turned out, black flies. The day was warm; I had already sweated through two cotton shirts. Head bent to the next step, dodging thorns, swatting a ceaseless buzzing menace, I launched a stream of ever-more-imaginative curses. The cell tower seemed to get no closer. My knees and shoulders throbbed. It was nearly noon; once I regained my path I still had nine or 10 miles to walk. My body hadn’t worked this strenuously in a decade. What the hell was I doing? Who was I kidding, thinking I could enjoy a carefree stroll in a foreign land over the course of days by myself? I had no whistle. My phone had no bars. My body could lie in this field for days. Death by twisted knee. Death by starvation. Death by stupidity. Forty-five minutes later, sweat drenched, joints aching, bloody handed, light headed, I stumbled to the field’s edge, climbed a fence, and rejoined a smooth track, where two minutes later I saw an A/W sign and surged with unalloyed rage. Fucking arrow at the last stile had pointed almost perpendicular instead of up. Who the fuck had marked these trails? Ten minutes later, pounding downhill alongside a tree stand, it started to sprinkle. Jesus H. Jehoshaphat. Then I heard a bird call. Could it be? No. Could it be Peter’s owl? 

My friend Peter and I had spent the previous week in Edinburgh and points north enjoying plays and parks and good restaurants and other urban pleasures. At our last meal, discussing the separate journeys upon which we were to embark the next morning, Peter, who knows me better than anyone, wondered how I’d fare walking solo. I confessed to fear. “At your lowest moment,” he said, “when you’re tired and broken and filled with self-loathing, I’ll send you a message.” I knew where this was headed. Peter knew that in middle-school I, the youngest of four, had rebelled against my siblings, had demanded they stop calling me “baby,” an insult that had rankled for years. My 12-year-old self had spent a weekend family therapy session sobbing over my plight; at weekend’s end, I swore that no one would ever call me “baby” again. (When my sister did the following month I smacked her across the face; when my brother did a couple of weeks later, I jumped off a ladder and flailed at him until my dad pulled me off.) For years now Peter, when he sees my self-pitying worst, has gently mocked me in falsetto singsong: “Baby! Baaaay-bee!” Drunk at our final Scotland dinner I said, “You’ll send a message through a bird or something.” Peter laughed. “Exactly. I’ll send an owl. And you know what my owl will say.” We said it together, in an accent approximating falsetto owl: “Bay-beee! Baay-beeeeeee!” We laughed so long a waiter came to ask if we needed anything or just the check. 

Now, trudging downhill along a stand of trees, miles from my destination, wet, aching, bitten, Peter’s call arrived. It couldn’t be. Was it a mourning dove? I stopped. “Bay-bee!” Surely I hallucinated. Again, clearer: “Bay-beeeee!” Unbelievable. Peter’s owl! I breathed in, then laughed out loud. I shucked my pack, drank water, donned my rain jacket. I listened: no bird. I read my guidebook. Only three miles until a tiny town with a pub that promised a late lunch. Then six miles after that. I was not roughing it, not trekking the Outback or Andean peaks or the Alaskan wilderness. I was walking between tumblers of Scotch. New rule: Pride wastes time. Seeking help signals no defeat. Go too long without a trail sign, break out the fucking map. 

Fucking Peter. 

Scenes From A Summer Vacation In The Finger Lakes

Ithacans treat a good restaurant, in this case Mexican, the way New Yorkers treat Governor’s Island on a gorgeous summer weekend: happy to go themselves, proud to show it off. Ithacans also eat early. Our quartet -- lazy day behind us featuring a 3-mile walk from our cabin to a wetlands/bird sanctuary (watching a great blue heron, its feet lifting, its wings unfolding, is a window into pre-human time) and a narrowly-avoided thunderstorm viewed from the cabin porch and two naps (for the adults) and two writing sessions (for the 9-year-old) and a very late lunch -- must wait 20 minutes for a table at 6 p.m. on a Monday night. My sister (the Aunt) and mother (the Grandma) stroll on the commons while my daughter (the Kid) and I (the Dad) play tag. Back on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant: 

Dad (nodding at restaurant across the street): We’re missing a chance to get oysters. 

Grandma: Do you like oysters? 

Dad: I do. I mean, I won’t knock over small children to get them, but, yeah. 

Aunt: What food would you knock over small children to eat? 

Dad: Hmmmm. Maybe a caramel sundae? 

Kid: You’d knock over small children to eat a caramel sundae? 

Dad: Only if it were the last one. 

Kid: You’re terrible. 

Dad: Why should they get it? 

Kid: I would push you into the street to stop you. 

Aunt: That’s more serious. He could get hit by a car. 

Kid: He’s trampling children! 

Dad: Yeah, but they’re only going to get a little bruised. And kids heal fast. 

Kid: Knocking you into the street is not worse. 

Dad: Despite the risk of my serious injury, or even death. 

Kid: Yes. 

Dad: You feel the punishment is commensurate. 

Kid: Commensurate. 

Dad: Roughly equal. 

Kid: I do. 

Dad: That seems harsh. 

Kid: You’re terrible.

Families come to this Mexican joint. A sobbing 4-year-old boy exits in the arms of a sympathetic, obdurate grandfather, fat tears rolling down the boy’s fat cheeks; his 3-year-old butterfly-barretted sister trails, chipper, hand-holding her mother who stops to chat to a table dining al fresco, the girl charming, twirling, blowing kisses. We can hear her brother’s wails from a half-block away. I’m certain the sister has outraged his sense of justice. I hate her. 

Our quartet is seated next to a vacated table above a floor littered with crayons and lettuce and chips and tomatoes and tortillas. 

Grandma: I’ll bet that was that little boy’s table. 

Aunt: No, Mom. We just saw that table walking out. Those two kids with the gorgeous parents. 

Kid: Those kids looked happy. 

Dad: Not only bad kids make messes, Mom. 

Grandma: I didn’t say the boy was bad! You know how I feel about people calling quiet babies “good babies!” As if all other babies were somehow not. 

Dad: Yes, Mom. We all know how you feel about that. 

Grandma: Well, it makes me angry. 

Two summers ago, 7-year-old Kid ate nothing at this restaurant but plain chips; now she orders a quesadilla and chips and guacamole: progress. Our house margaritas arrive. I run my finger on the outside of the glass, offer it to the child.

Kid: [shakes head]

Dad: It’s pure salt. Do you know how they prepare a margarita? 

Kid: [shakes head]

Dad: Before any liquid, before any ice cube, touches the glass, they turn it over and rub the rim in salt, with this twisty motion. Look at these fat grains. [To Grandma] The Kid would knock down small children to eat a fingerful of salt. 

Kid: I would not! 

Dad: But this salt comes from a glass that contains alcohol. Even though it’s from the outside rim and itself has never touched alcohol. 

Grandma: You don’t like alcohol? 

Kid: No! 

Dad: The Kid will not carry from the table to the kitchen any glass that has been drained of all alcoholic contents, since it once contained alcohol. 

Kid: That’s because waiters who are under 21 cannot serve alcohol in restaurants. They can’t carry the glasses. 

Aunt: They can carry empty glasses. And that’s only in a public business with a license to serve alcohol. Parents can serve children alcohol in their homes. 

Kid: Children cannot drink alcohol.

Aunt: Sure they can. In a private residence. 

Kid: Not children! 

Aunt [lists all the arguments the Kid’s parents have marshaled on multiple previous occasions, summing up with]: Besides, who’s going to stop them? 

Dad [cupping hands before mouth]: Sir, ma’am, come out with your hands up! Put the wine glasses down! Hands where we can see them! 

Kid: Dad! 

Dad: We certainly carried our share growing up. Wine glasses. Beer steins. Gin-and-tonic glasses. Whiskey tumblers. Full. Empty. 

Grandma: I just wanted the dishes done. 

Dad: And you wanted a drink. 

Grandma: Did you kids ever sneak drinks? 

Aunt and Dad: Never. 

Aunt: I don’t think any of us liked the taste. 

Dad: You know who used to like the taste? This one. 

Kid: Dad! 

Dad: When you were about 2, for about a year. You wanted anything we were drinking. Beer. Wine. Whiskey. We had to put limits on it. One sip per parent. 

Kid: You should have been arrested. 

Dad: And deprived you of your loving parents? 

Kid: Yes. 

Dad: You weren’t always such a purist. 

The food arrives: chicken enchiladas with green sauce for Aunt, chorizo enchiladas with green sauce for Dad, chicken taco salad for Grandma. The Kid has eaten four-fifths of the guac and wolfs her quesadilla. 

Kid: What flavor could you live without? Salt, sweet, sour, bitter. 

Grandma: I guess bitter. 

Aunt: You could live without coffee? Dark chocolate? 

Grandma: Well, chocolate yes. Not coffee. [Pause] This is a hard question.  

Dad: Maybe salt. The foods I’m not thrilled about are things like olives, pickles. I could live never eating another brined thing. I don’t like aggressive salting. 

Aunt: But no salt? You’d hate it. Everything would be bland.

Dad [to the Kid]: What about you? You hate spicy. 

Kid: That’s not one of the basic four. 

Dad: Shouldn’t it be a basic five? 

Kid: It’s not. I hate sour. You know those Sour Patch candies? I hate those. 

Dad: But that’s sour on steroids. A little sour? A squeeze of lime juice? 

Kid: I hate it. 

Aunt: I can’t do it. I won’t reject a basic flavor. 

Kid: But if you had to. 

Aunt: I refuse. Getting rid of one would throw everything off. 

Dad: What’s that one flavor that comes from the perfect balance of the other four? 

Kid: Umami! 

Dad: I thought that was a kind of sushi. Eel. 

Aunt: That’s unagi. 

Dad: Those Japanese have a different word for everything. 

Kid: Dad.

Grandma: I notice none of us has said anything about eliminating sweet. 

Dad: That’s because we’re not insane. [to Aunt] Have we remembered the name of that ice cream place? 

Aunt: Let me text Randy C. 

Dad: Randy C. knows Ithaca? 

Aunt: Randy C. knows restaurants in every city in the world. 

Kid: The whole world? Africa? China? Idaho? 

Aunt: I was being hyperbolic. But he knows a lot. We were in Paris and he sent a list of places we should try; a few of them overlapped our list, and we tried a couple of others and they were amazing. He and his wife both love to travel and they both love to eat. 

Grandma: A life well lived. 

Dad: Did he go to Cornell? Ithaca seems obscure. 

Aunt: He did. Here it is! [turns phone to show picture of the Purity Ice Cream sign] 

Dad: God bless Randy C. 

Aunt: [Reading] We’re supposed to order black raspberry with chocolate sprinkles. 

Kid: I hate sprinkles. 

Dad: Oh, I know. 

Kid: Eating sprinkles is like eating bits of road tar. 

Dad: You do not have to order sprinkles. 

Kid: Do I have to order black raspberry? 

Dad: You can order anything you like. 

Kid: Do they have mint chip? 

Dad: I am shocked that you want to order mint chip. 

Kid: Dad. 

Grandma: Your grandpa loved mint chip, too. 

Dad: You’re a chip off the old block. 

Kid: Dad. Do they have it? 

Dad: I would be shocked if they don’t. But there’s only one way to find out. 

[All exit]

Ping Pong

Michael had just beat Tom: thin, white-haired, sweet-spirited. They had returned to the half-circle of chairs near the fire pit discussing their game. 

“What sport?” I asked. 

“Ping pong,” Michael said. “You play?” 

I do. 

“Want to play a game?” 

I did. 

We set off, leaving the fire pit and the patio and the indefatigably stick-chasing German shepherd, Susan, past the fresh-spring pond on the property’s southern border to where a table stood amid clouds of mosquitoes. The table, flecked with tree detritus and insect wings, was perched on a mildly sloping patch of muddy lawn fronting a narrow street a few miles north of Route 28. Guests flowed naturally from the street to the patio and fire pit near the kitchen door, past the outdoor shower and north-facing octagonal wing with its first-floor bathroom crammed with paintings and paint cans and cartons and sharp-edged metal advertisements for departed circuses and brands of soda pop and a walnut roll-top desk and a wheeled walnut slat-backed office chair which held the toilet paper roll and with uncurtained windows through which patio denizens could peer and with a second-floor I didn’t see -- the master bedroom, I’d guess. If the house had a front door I never saw it. 

“World’s greatest bathroom,” I said to Jon: tall, with wide eyes and a sharp nose that reminded me of middle-aged Philip Roth and thinning hair curling sloppily down his neck and a host’s way of placidly affirming all his guests said. 

“Come use it any time,” Jon said. 

“I might,” I said. “It’s worth the trip.” 

Michael and I warmed up, he lobbing shots with an underhanded waist-level flick. A vulnerable backhand, I guessed. Our pace quickened. He could hit but showed no evidence of being able to slam.

We started. I made mistakes, acclimatizing. He made mistakes, too. I kept score out loud. We talked: California, San Francisco, the Central Valley, my childhood home. I edged ahead. His serve. 

“Nine-six,” Michael said.  

“Six-nine,” I said. “I’m up.”

“I had seven,” he said.

“No,” I said. “It was 8-6, and you hit into the net.” 

“Right,” he said. “Nine-six.” 

“Six-nine,” I said. “It’s your serve.” 

“Right,” he said. “Too much wine. Too much pot.” 

“I get it,” I said. “I just got here.”

We talked less. I kept score. I started to hit the ball where I wanted. 

“Twelve-seventeen? Really?” he asked. He blew out his cheeks. I won the next point, then the next two. He won three. I closed it out. 

“You’re good,” he said. “You’re the best I’ve played today.”

“Let’s go again,” I said. “Switch sides.” 

“I’m pretty tired,” he said. “OK.” 

I asked questions: his seven grammar schools in three years, back and forth, Minnesota, France, Minnesota, France. Our mutual love of Montreal. His daughter graduating from college, maybe McGill? A joint degree in something: human engineering? My game got sharper, his fell apart. I ended with a couple of forehand slams: 21-3. 

“Wow,” he said. “I’m done.” 

We walked back to the fire pit. 

“You beat Michael?” someone asked. “21-3?”

“The first game was close,” I said.

“If you beat Michael, you’re the king,” someone said. 

“I’ve had too much to drink,” Michael said. 

“Have you played a lot?” someone asked. 

Our house in Stockton had a table we unfolded on the back patio. My father played us left-handed until we beat him once; then he switched to his right hand. By the time I was 12 I could consistently beat him and my brother, four years older. 

“In high school we went to my brother’s friend’s house,” I said. “We’d smoke pot and drink beer and play for hours. He always had on Bob Marley and Little Feat. Rastaman vibrations. If you’ll be my dixie chicken, I’ll be your Tennessee lamb.”

“I like that,” said Chris. Chris, who made art of some kind, had a black cowboy hat, a shaven head, and a handlebar mustache curled with precision. “I’ll be your Tennessee lamb.” 

Peter asked, “Have you ever beaten me?” 

I laughed. I had come with Peter, my friend of 30-odd years. The hosts, Becky and Jon, knew Riley, Peter’s partner of six months. Riley had recently moved in with Peter. This weekend was partly about me getting to know Riley. I liked him. Riley had convinced me to ignore pending obligations and stay for the party: “You’ll have fun. Very cool people. A lot of artists, people doing interesting things. Kids running around. Wine, beer, pot. Good food. Very relaxed. Come.” 

Peter can beat me at Scrabble at least half the time. He’s stronger; we wrestled once, in college, to my humiliation. We’ve never played ping pong. 

“I’m sure I’ve never beaten you,” I said. “Should I try?”

At the table, a father (Brad? Tall, wispy beard, relaxed vibe) was playing his teenaged daughter. We strolled back to the pond, where Peter joined Riley with a bucket of soap and a rope contraption making impressively large bubbles. I chatted -- about journalism, the inescapable Trump -- with another soft-voiced man and a spirited French woman (not Valerie -- Valere?). Valere was with Michael. The party’s heterosexual component was all soft-spoken middle-aged men and their more vivacious partners.

Brad lost to his daughter, who didn’t want to play a stranger. Peter and I began knocking it around. Play intensified. I had forgotten the depth of his competitive spirit. He won a string of rallies. “Let’s play a game,” I said. It was close for a while, then I pulled away: 21-13, or something. 

We went back to the fire pit. A half-dozen kids from 9 to 14 sat on the ground making S’mores. 

“I kicked his ass,” Peter said. 

“Really?” someone asked. Peter shook his head.

A man (Alan? Maybe from the Pacific islands? A broad face, punctuated with thick black-framed glasses) said he’d lost to Michael but that Michael had already played several games. 

“Exactly,” Peter said, in mock dudgeon. “Totally unfair. You can’t come in cold and win under those conditions.” 

“Plus I was on the low side.” 

“Don’t forget the cross breeze,” I said. “The way the light was glinting off the pond. And the mosquitoes are way worse on the far end.” 

Peter laughed. Alan smiled thinly.

Dinner: pulled pork, fresh bread, cheeses, a couple of potato salads, green salad, carrot salad. I was ravenous. The pork was terrific. 

Riley introduced Peter and me to our co-host Becky: raven hair flecked with grey, dark eyes attractively lined, no makeup, whiskey voice. She was a costume designer. She and Chris had a space (not exactly a gallery, not exactly a performance space) in the East Village whose name I was expected to recognize, where Riley had shown up and instantly connected with both. Everything with Riley was contingent, serendipitous. He had done work in their space, maybe painting. Maybe he lived there. I couldn’t figure out anything. 

“I make commercials for money,” Becky said. “Everything else I do for other reasons.” 

“For art,” I suggested.

“For love,” Riley said. 

Becky had a great laugh. I decided she would be relaxed but brook no bullshit: exactly the energy I sought. I decided to wander before my need became too naked.

I played another game against another tall, calm male (Richard?). It wasn’t close. 

The late May sky, overcast all day, darkened. Chris’s partner, Anthony, roamed the grounds barefoot picking up kindling to stoke the fire. Desserts: a chocolate torte, Becky’s pineapple-upside-down cake. 

“My dad’s favorite,” I said. “This is amazing.” 

“Caramelized fruit and cake,” Becky said. “The perfect dessert.” 

I found Peter and Riley inside, Peter lying on a pillowed window bench looking beat. I decided to take the 8 o’clock bus from Phoenicia. We could leave at 7:40, Jon said. I decided to use Peter’s one-hitter for the road and went searching for a lighter.

I didn’t want to ask anyone but had no choice. On the patio, in a group of five men on two chaise lounges, Chris handed me a heavy silver lighter studded with turquoise and red stones I couldn’t identify. The one-hitter was tiny, the flame near my eyes. I focused, inhaled. The one-hitter was awkward; should I offer it?

“You beat Michael,” said Anthony, languid on a lounge chair with Tom. 

“I think he was high,” I said. 

Sitting beside Chris, Michael -- had he been there the whole time? -- said, “I get tired more easily. I’m older. I’ve had to focus a lot at work -- on the computer, but focusing for hours, where I can’t fuck around. I’ll be glad when this job is over.” 

The wind shifted, blowing wood smoke. The pause was awkward maybe only in my head. I asked what Michael did but got distracted by how the etched lines around his mouth moved in concert with those between his brows. His affect was less exhaustion than anger.

The party fringes stirred. A couple of nice men came to hug goodbye. 

“I have to take off,” I said. 

Chris said quietly, “Can I have my lighter back?” 

As I hastened Anthony said, “Your precious lighter!” 

Chris had inherited it from his uncle, having admired it for years. The uncle, his father’s brother, lived in the desert southwest: an important figure in Chris’s life. He didn’t know where his uncle had got it.

“You would have tackled me before I got 10 feet,” I said. 

Beneath cowboy hat and tinted glasses Chris’s face was unreadable. 

“Great to meet you all,” I said. 

In a cluster near the kitchen stood Becky. 

“You throw a great party,” I said.  

She touched my arm. 

“Come back for more ping pong. I played myself out against the kids earlier. But I hear you’re the guy to beat.” 

“Oh, you know,” I said, looking down. “People talk.” 

“No,” she said, serious. “Fuck that.” I looked up. “You’re the best player here. Own it.” 

We looked at each other. I was in high school, she my coach.  

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s true. Anyone who wants to win has to come through me.” 

Did I step forward and hug her? I know I said, in earnest, “Thank you.” 

“And when you come back,” Becky said, “I’ll kick your ass.” 

“The fuck you will,” I said. “Go fuck yourself.” 

Laughter floated with the wood smoke as I turned. Her words echoed: through a walk to the car and a hard hug for Riley; a 15-minute car run down the hill and a harder hug for Peter; a 5-minute sidewalk wait for the Trailways; a chat with the driver (six days a week and double shifts Fridays and Sundays, 5 kids between 18 and 6, new wife, strict rules on screen time); a stop in Woodstock that picked up Al, a Brooklyn streetwise petty crook returning from a Sunday drum circle who told stories nonstop; a 50-minute wait for the 9:30 p.m. southbound from Kingston featuring a walk to the 24-hour CVS to replace forgotten glasses (“Real glasses or readers?” Peter had texted, four words that, I decided, sum up too much of middle-aged existence); two more southbound hours beside Al, who worked on the fringes with Wise Guys none of whom I knew and who shared his dark chocolate and who had written a screen play now a movie for which he had a laminated postcard with his name credited three times and who asked, as the bus wheezed through the Lincoln Tunnel, “So where would you rank my stuff? On a scale of 1-10?” and who seemed pleased with the honestly given grade of 8; through a Times Square platform wait for a southbound C and a slow haul to Brooklyn and a misbegotten transfer to a G at Hoyt-Schermerhorn; through that night and the next morning and the days and weeks and months that followed. “Fuck that. Own it.” They dripped through accumulating layers of work and tedium and depression, continuing, with surprisingly little diminishment, to make my spirit percolate.

Clearly, I need to play more ping pong. 

An Uncle Tom memory

My Uncle Tom died this week. My father’s younger brother, he was the sixth of seven siblings and the last of them to survive. Following a lingering illness, his death came as a relief, and as an occasion for reminiscence.

Perhaps because he never married, or perhaps because he lived for years in his parents’ home caring for his aging mother, it seemed to me that Uncle Tom held more strongly than his siblings qualities that I perceived as quintessentially “McCormick.” Among these were generosity; a sense of purpose and duty, including to family; and an ethical core unwavering in its sense of right and wrong. Uncle Tom was kind, friendly, and a font of engaging stories; he remembered every birthday; he took nieces and nephews on extravagant trips (including my brother and me to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal). We always enjoyed his visits. But, like all McCormicks, his judgments could be sharp. And he harbored a steeliness that could edge into severity, which at times cowed me.

One Uncle Tom memory holds a distinguished place in my trove of family lore. Its taproot, as with any Uncle Tom story, is kindness and generosity: he flew across the country, along with my parents and my mother’s stepsister, Sheila Dowd, to celebrate my college graduation, in the Hudson Valley of New York, in 1988.

After the ceremony, that quartet of adults took a friend and me on a week-long trip through upstate New York and New England. We rented a van. My father and Uncle Tom handled the driving and sat in front; my mother and Aunt Sheila consulted maps and sat in the middle seats; and my friend and I sat in the back: a congenial group.

One day featured a long drive through New Hampshire and a good distance into Maine. As was typical, Mom and Aunt Sheila maintained a lively conversation, sparked by observations from guidebooks that littered the middle seats. We stopped for an early lunch, then began a long trek up I-95 to our next hotel, with Uncle Tom at the wheel. At some point, the two women agreed, we should break up the afternoon by stopping at a local tourist destination. They busied themselves researching possibilities. I can’t recall what they selected: a maritime museum, a gallery, a Victorian mansion. But it was right off the interstate, and we could stretch our legs for 20 minutes. It was coming up, in just three or four exits. Uncle Tom drove on, silent. Aunt Sheila read aloud one guidebook’s description; Mom read another’s. Now it was just one exit away. We barreled along. The exit approached. “Here it is!” Aunt Sheila said. Uncle Tom kept his foot on the accelerator. Mom leaned forward. “It’s this exit, Tom,” she said. Uncle Tom said nothing, aimed the van straight ahead, and sped past. “We need to -- ah, well,” Aunt Sheila said, craning to glimpse the road not taken, then slumping in her seat. My friend and I looked at each other, eyes wide. My mother and Aunt Sheila formed a formidable pair; I couldn’t recall anyone ignoring them in quite this way. And Uncle Tom was usually so solicitous. No one spoke. Then, perhaps five miles up the road, Uncle Tom announced, “We’re going to get to the hotel, and we’re going to have a drink!” Which, an hour or so later, is precisely what we did. We checked into the hotel; Uncle Tom or Dad pulled a bottle of Irish from a suitcase; I filled the ice bucket; somebody brought out the mixed nuts; and we all sat in the hotel suite and had a drink. Sitting in a padded chair, holding his sweating plastic cup, Uncle Tom let out a long exhale and said, “Aaah, baby!” with what seemed particular satisfaction.

I took a solo trip in Scotland last summer, walking for a week across the southern lowlands, sleeping each night in a different town. In the mornings I stopped often, taking pictures, admiring scenery. But after lunch as the sun lowered and I grew weary and my destination beckoned I would up my pace and pause less, pulled by visions of the Scotch I would soon sip at the local pub. Uncle Tom, I realized, knew of what he spoke: We’re going to get to the hotel, and we’re going to have a drink. Each evening I drank a silent toast in his honor.

Gratification Delayed; or, Why Last Night’s Mets Game Matters

Over a lifetime, I’ve pruned my sports watching. As a boy in the 1970s in a sports-obsessed household I watched everything U.S. TV networks offered and read my weekly Sports Illustrated as if it would save my soul. The 1972 Munich Olympics cost me innocence -- the killing of Israeli athletes and the officials’ theft of the gold-medal men’s basketball game (which, to be honest, affected my 8-year-old self far more deeply) made me forever skeptical of nostrums about “fair play” and “character.” In my teens I gave up college football and most college basketball, sickened by the NCAA’s Avery Brundage-level hypocrisy about the “student athlete” while a cadre of men in suits made millions. Hockey was never part of my Northern California sports culture. In my 20s I gave up the NBA regular season -- my team, the Golden State Warriors, was generally awful, and little mattered until Playoff Theatre. (I have good company; LeBron James said last week, “I’m not one to get caught up in the regular season.”) I stopped watching tennis, a sport that has never figured out its calendar. (Now a New Yorker, I do buy an annual grounds-pass for a day at the U.S. Open.) The Seoul Summer Olympics in 1988 were my last, killed by NBC’s soap opera treatment. (If I could attend a Games alongside a knowledgable companion with a nose for competition -- say, Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe -- I’d go.) My dad and brother loved golf, but I never got the bug and at some pre-Tiger point realized its country-club culture was irredeemable. In my 30s I won a March Madness pool, decided the winnings weren’t worth the work, and shut down my last vestige of college spectation. In my 40s I weaned myself from the NFL: the league’s corporatized greed put too many bales on the camel, the tipping bale being its tobacco-industry-like treatment of players with brain injuries; I felt like a Roman enjoying the spectacle of lions ripping apart criminals and Christians. 

Baseball remains. It suffers from the problems afflicting all major U.S. sports: rich-boy owners reminiscent of Russian oligarchs; league officials unable to rein the oligarchs in; an addict’s relationship to TV money; casually cruel treatment of its athletes (see: steroid use); routine disregard of its fans. Too often the game’s poohbahs are short-sighted to the point of idiocy. The 1994 lockout and World Series cancellation put at least two stakes in my heart. (That then-Commissioner Bud Selig won recent election to the Hall of Fame sickens me.)

But each spring, the games impel me to push open my crypt. A key reason: the regular-season grind of 162 games matters. Granted, it matters far less than it used to. The 10-team playoff format evens the field; a 106-win behemoth may well fail to show its edge over an 85-win wild card entrant over five or seven games. But daily ball from April to September, the unspooling of a hundred stories (the aging star, the fireballing phenom, the flawed middle-infield defense, the inexplicable pinch-hitting prowess, the absence of a capable lefty in the bullpen, a string of late-inning comebacks), make for a winnowing process that rewards close attention. The game’s narrative richness allows me to enjoy a sparsely-attended September tussle between also-rans. (Growing up in the ‘70s as a San Francisco Giants fan, I got a lot of practice.) Watching good teams play meaningful games is a bonus.

Regular-season integrity partially explains the one spectator sport I’ve added as an adult: English Premier League football. The structural imbalance between the league's dregs and its Rich Six (Tottenham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea) is offset by its perfect schedule (each team plays each foe twice, once at home and once away); its race not just for a title but for the four top spots to qualify for the enriching European Champions League; and the simultaneous race to avoid a bottom-three finish that will “relegate” a team to a lower division (to be replaced by the top-3 finishers in the division below). When each game matters, great theatre results. 

All of this is meant to explain my response to an idiotic idea being bandied about by the Major League Baseball Commissioner’s office. To cut game times (a commissioner obsession that has already resulted in a wrong-headed rule allowing automatic intentional walks), the league is pondering the contamination of extra innings. The rule was used at last month’s World Baseball Classic tournament: once you reach the 11th inning, each team starts with a runner (the batter who made the last out of the 10th) on second base. This of course promotes scoring, hastens a game’s conclusion, and sends impatient fans to the parking lot and to bed. 

As a counterargument, allow me to present a single piece of evidence: last night’s Mets-Marlins 16-inning, 5-hour-and-38-minute, Einstein-On-The-Beach epic. The 9-inning preliminary was crammed with event: a Marcell Ozuna 1st-inning grand slam; an immediate tying Mets riposte, highlighted by a bases-clearing triple by catcher Travis d’Arnaud; a trio of middle-inning Mets solo homers, two by Yoenis Cespedes; an answering 4-run Marlins rally, ending with d'Arnaud body slammed but holding on to a Jay Bruce throw to cut down a runner at the plate; a Mets’ bid thwarted in the 7th when Cespedes ran past a coach’s stop sign, declined to slide, and got thrown out at the plate himself; and, an inning later, a tying 2-out rally (d’Arnaud single, pinch-hitter Michael Conforto double): Mets 8, Marlins 8.  

Then, as so often happens in baseball’s multi-act dramas, the Peckinpah reel turned into a Bergman retrospective: aimlessness, exhaustion, gathering darkness. After 10 innings the strapping 28-year-old d’Arnaud, wracked by four hours of squatting and pitch calling and ball blocking, needed help to descend the dugout stairs. Ninety more minutes passed. Innings 9 through 15 featured a parade of feckless at-bats, with no Mets and a lone Marlin reaching as far as second base. Amid the gloom came sparkles of light: Mets reliever Josh Smoker, barely hanging on to his roster spot, pitched three spotless innings; righty Hansel Robles, promised a night off after pitching in three straight games, told Manager Terry Collins he could go and trotted out to pitch a clean 15th. (It was either him, Collins said later, or backup catcher Rene Rivera.) 

Leading off the 16th, d’Arnaud deposited a 1-0 fastball into the left field stands for his fourth hit, third run, and fourth RBI: the game of his life. Robles trudged back out and walked the leadoff batter. Dangerous Giancarlo Stanton lined out to right. Dangerous Justin Bour struck out. Manager Collins then faced a choice: pitch to the dangerous Marcel Ozuna (two walks and two hits in seven plate appearances, including the grand slam, and 16 RBIs in the season’s nine games)? Or walk him intentionally and face, in Miami’s jury-rigged and depleted lineup, Adam Conley, a starting pitcher with 9 hits in 61 career at-bats (.138), no extra base hits and 32 strikeouts? Miami had no alternatives. Collins spun the wheel and instructed Robles to face Ozuna with only breaking pitches, preferably off the plate. Robles proceeded to throw a non-sliding slider that hung over the plate; Ozuna crushed it 400 feet, where it dropped to earth 8 feet in front of the center field fence, into the glove of Juan Lagares. Mets 9, Marlins 8. Had ‘em all the way. 

In the scope of any baseball season, a win in the season’s 10th game is of little note. But, come what may, any recap of the 2017 Mets will feature d’Arnaud’s weary legs trotting home in the 16th (“I think the excitement and adrenaline of the home run helped”), Robles’ dangling arm, Collins’ decision. And then: how will the teams bounce back? What will happen to the Mets bullpen should their starters falter over the weekend? How will they muddle through this series, and the next, and the next? Will any of it matter in their drive for an unprecedented third-straight playoff appearance? None of this would come to mind had Michael Conforto and then A.J. Ellis started the 11th inning standing undeservedly on second base. 

Is your average fan likely to stay in her seat or on his couch for five-and-a-half hours and 16 innings? Of course not. But baseball, by definition, is about gratification delayed. (Sometimes for as long as 108 years.) This isn’t to say all change is bad. Cut game times by enforcing existing rules (on time between pitches, say) and limiting mound visits. (See the Arizona Diamondbacks for a team that turns every game to a late-inning slog, with catchers often running to the mound several times in one at-bat.) But the sport is not in crisis; certainly its owners’ wallets have never been fatter. Why damage its integrity to chase misguided notions of what fans want? Why not allow its stories to unfold, then celebrate them? Why not teach a new generation of fans to appreciate its long haul? 

"The Underground Railroad"

In the week that it won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, I finished Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad." Whitehead tackles a massive social ill -- the devastation of the nation's soul wrought by American slavery and American racism -- by charting its effects on individuals. The story is gripping, its fictions (an actual railroad beneath the soil; a state-by-state response to slavery's impending demise that is bone-chillingly believable) as instructive as its grounding in historical research. The strength of its plot and its characters, including the unforgettable slave hunter Ridgeway, makes it clear why producers are turning it into a mini-series.

The book also offers quieter pleasures. I found myself moved by a pair of late-book passages. Cora, the protagonist, who has found harbor in an Indiana settlement for runaway slaves and other diasporic Africans, listens to a visiting poet and is left cold: "Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world." 

Then, on the very next page, a friend gives her a gift of a new almanac, a form of book foundational to her haphazard education. "She grabbed his hand. The almanac had a strange, soapy smell and made a cracking noise like fire as she turned the pages. She'd never been the first person to open a book."

Cora's fierce will to be educated, and the quiet description of her love for the book as physical object, left me wondering if, a generation or so hence, her descendants would find a more peaceful place to open themselves to the passions (of poetry, of prayer) that Cora must find "regrettable." In the midst of the novel's unsparing vision, the scene demonstrates a cultural indomitability that's as close as Whitehead skirts to hope.

"Maggie's Farm"

Scene: G train. This morning's commute to the 9-year-old's writing class.

Kid: Who do you think's the worst person in the song? I think the dad. He puts out his cigar in your face. And you try to escape through his window, but it's made out of bricks.

Dad: I always thought the mom. Pa's the muscle, but Ma's the brains of the operation. Plus she's sanctimonious -- all that "man and God and law" talk.

Kid: The brother at least hands you money.

Dad: Yeah, but that's just to lure you in. He's a functionary for the farm. Every evil system needs functionaries.

Pause.

Kid: I know who's the worst.

Dad: Who?

Kid: Maggie.

Dad: But we never hear about Maggie. She's the hole in the song's donut. Why is she the worst?

Kid: It's her farm.

Happy Warriors

In January 2009 each day’s paper, each swipe of the president’s pen, seemed to bring hopeful news. Wars winding down. Guantanamo closing. State Department abortion gag orders rescinded. Smart, sane cabinet appointees. Competence and caring throughout the executive branch. OK, economic appointees disappointed liberals hoping to decrease the power of  and hold to account Wall Street bankers. But overall, what refreshing changes! Springtime in Washington! 

Now it’s January 2017, and my social media feeds are filled with despair from the sort of people who hit U.S. streets Saturday in the large Women’s March protests. Among the concerns (in addition to those against a half-dozen or more cabinet appointees): 

Pulling out of international trade agreements threatens U.S. leadership in the world. The White House is trying to gag federal workers. The notion of civil service itself is under assault -- not surprising, given that Newt Gingrich, among others, has touted the G.O.P.’s desire to end the practice of civil service. (The 19th-century good-government policy holds that those working on the people’s behalf should be shielded from political winds as they do their jobs.) 

Meanwhile, members of Trump’s inner circle leak news of their boss’s instability like flowing spigots -- entertaining, perhaps, though I again wonder if such leaks feed a reality-TV narrative that serves to distract from actual policy.

And, back in the losers' locker room: how can Democrats resurrect political relevance? 

In any event, it’s clear that the Trump Administration intends to wage war not only with the press but with factual information itself. Example: If unemployment is not 4.7 percent and perhaps not countable at all, that makes possible the 2020 “Morning In America Redux” campaign, since things will certainly have gotten rosier since the 2016 days of 42 percent unemployment and American carnage.

Bloomberg columnist Tyler Cohen distinguishes between what a friend calls "bullshit" (political shading, diplomatically nuanced truths, doublespeak, deceptive rhetoric) and the sorts of bald-faced lies in which the Trump Administration has to date trafficked. Cohen opines that the usefulness of lies is manifold: to serve as a loyalty test for new underlings; to damage the credibility of those underlings and thus tie them closer to the leader; and to help push through policy changes fast, gambling that long-term credibility damage is negligible or irrelevant.

Academic Dawn Gilpin points out that the lies paint a picture needed to justify future policies. Millions of illegal voters? Runaway violence in Chicago? Unchecked immigration? Bloated government staffs? Rising abortion rates? "Politicized" scientific research on climate change? "None of these claims are true," Gilpin writes, "but they have to be said to lay the groundwork for specific actions."

Though mostly predictable since Nov. 9, this news flood has depressed or enraged a sizable number of Americans. My friends on the Trumpian side have noted lefties’ dismay with derision, glee, and bafflement. A friend with whom I sparred on Facebook wrote: “I understand the discomfort that you all feel. I felt that same way eight years ago. But you know what? I refused to allow myself to ride the roller coaster of depression like some of my friends. Take a wait-and-see attitude. Verbally protest that which concerns you. But for heavens sake, relax! I love all of my friends too much to see them in self-imposed agony.”

His comment led me to alter my outlook before hitting the Manhattan streets on Saturday. Without lessening my determination to be counted among those opposing the new administration’s plans, I decided to do so joyously. What surprised me about the event was how many marchers shared high spirits. No violence, little anger, lots of patience among people densely packed for hours. The crowds expressed not irritation but solidarity: Look how many of us there are! From where I marched folks were friendly, ebullient, wry, steadfast: Not in our names. We stand for another way. This is what democracy looks like. 

Such energy is almost absent on my gloomy social media feeds. So in the spirit of the happy warrior, I humbly ask concerned leftists and centrists to consider the following examples of engaging with those with whom we disagree. 

For starters, deep perspective matters. The indispensable press critic Jay Rosen demonstrates that understanding the political views of opponents helps him withstand the daily social media storm. 

Jeff Tweedy, boss of the rock band Wilco, spiritedly invites trolls into his tribe: “Sure, we live in a bubble. I'd love for more of you to share our bubble though! It's awesome! In our bubble I know cops and rappers and grocery store cashiers and artists and garbage collectors...so many decent people that don't really care that much about people being different than they are. ... I grew up in what I think might be something like your bubble. You should at least try this one! Come on in!” 

Most instructive: this piece from a Venezuelan reflecting on lessons of fighting a populist authoritarian, Hugo Chavez. My inadequate summary: 1). Chavez labeled his enemies in ways similar to the G.O.P.‘s war against “coastal elites.” 2). The goal of political engagement with the leader’s followers needs to be “Don’t feed polarization. Disarm it.” 3). Don’t try to force the leader out through non-democratic means, which only feed his message of populism and polarization. (“See how the elites hate me/us?”) 4). Find counterarguments that demonstrate to the leader’s enemies that we all in fact belong to the same tribe. Show that you’re human, that you share some of their concerns. 

When I responded Saturday morning to my Facebook friend, I agreed with his suggestion to relax. I noted that I was “not in agony; I'm concerned about the future of our nation, including the ability of all to march and protest and speak freely. That's why I'm out today.” 

His response: “We agree on more items than we probably realize. Including being concerned about the future of our nation. March on brother! Be safe out there. Peace!”

The New Regime

David Remnick, now editor of The New Yorker magazine, from 1988-92 covered Moscow for The Washington Post, where he won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award for his work documenting the breakup of the Soviet empire. A fellow American correspondent arrived in Moscow midway through Remnick’s tenure and wondered at the famously indefatigable reporter’s behavior at press conferences and other public events. Remnick would uniformly attend; but, standing or sitting at the back of the room while the luminaries made their presentations, his notebook would stay in his pocket. What the hell is the guy doing?, the reporter thought. It took a couple of months to realize that Remnick had done all his reporting in advance, knew that the dog-and-pony shows were news free, and that he attended merely to confirm what he had already learned. 

Remnick exemplifies expert foreign correspondence; American news organizations gladly allow their coverage of foreign lands, including those controlled by authoritarian regimes, to reflect news of moment rather than pomp, noise, and circuses. The best U.S. business coverage, too, routinely ignores the official product rollouts (save Apple’s) and finds news behind the scenes. But coverage of American political institutions has operated on different principles. Certainly the Fourth Estate trails a long history of brilliant political investigations that have uncovered corruption from Tammany Hall to Abu Ghraib. But the press has also long assumed that coverage of daily political events, Capitol Hill hearings and White House news briefings and Pentagon pressers, requires energy and industry. “Holding the powerful to account,” rationalize the press poobahs. While every campaign season U.S. news organizations investigate candidate backgrounds and analyze policy implications, at least since Theodore White’s heyday in the 1960s daily “horse race” coverage has dominated, especially on television. Who’s up? What’s the latest poll say? Who won the last 24 hours? 

The age of Donald Trump requires us as a political body to examine our first principles. For the news media, this needs to include such fundamental questions as, What is purpose of our coverage? How can we best inform the American people about what our leaders are doing in our names? It’s clear that the Trump administration will require creative responses; so far, I’m less than sanguine about the press's choices. 

Saturday, the first full day of the Trump Administration, featured the first White House briefing by press secretary (and Dickensian Name Of The Week nominee) Sean Spicer. Watch it (the stream starts 1:33:28), if only to witness the extent of Spicer’s righteous imperiousness. He took no questions but delivered an excoriation of press behavior of the past 24 hours. Interestingly, Spicer started by pointing out that a reporter had incorrectly tweeted that Trumpians had removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., from its public place in the White House. (The Time magazine reporter later tweeted an apology, saying that security staff had blocked his view of the bust.) One tweet featuring a modest mistake by one reporter over a matter of little consequence would have warranted public mention by no past White House. But Spicer and Trump play by different rules. In the absence of an immediate political campaign, the media represent Trump’s prime adversary; on Saturday the President called his relationship with the press a “running war.” His main strategy: full-on propaganda blitz. Stories the White House dislikes are to be branded “fake news”; press errors are to be relentlessly documented in the service of tarnishing the entire Fourth Estate; and the press itself is to be branded a self-interested opposition party whose disclosures are meaningless because motivated only by hatred of the President. Each day will offer a chance for power to be defended aggressively and the adversary weakened. 

To this campaign truth, of course, is irrelevant. Spicer filled his presentation with mischaracterizations, half-truths, and falsehoods. Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway later characterized these as “alternative facts.” We’re all just self-interested players batting around balls of information, Trumpians say; you’ve got your data, we’ve got ours. Nothing is true, and so nothing matters, except power. One can describe Trump as a master media manipulator. Or one can say that such manipulations are child’s play so long as the manipulator has no shame. 

The immediate response of (to take one example) The New York Times was amusing to read. Its main story on Spicer’s performance prominently labeled several of his claims falsehoods. (This would have been standard practice under no previous administration.) Since Spicer’s lies had concerned the number of Trumpian inaugural attendees, it also ran a story citing two "crowd scientists," a field of whose existence I had heretofore remained ignorant. 

Longer-term, I wonder if chasing such stories, even with journalistic relish (which is to say a relish for accuracy), contributes to distracting us from matters of more moment. Perhaps the news organizations have no choice: Trump's confrontational, Roger Ailes-style disinformation campaign may demand immediate response. Certainly Spicer will leap each day to the tune of his master, and following news in the Trumpian era will surely mean being tied to the president's desiccated ego. The spectacle would be comic were it less consequential.

Conservative analyst Eric Erickson (creator of Red State, now at The Resurgent, no fan of Trump) fills this post with invective against the press. But he points out that actual news transpired Saturday while the media wallowed in Spicer’s mire: the White House vetting likely candidates to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat. 

So I wonder if we would better adopt to Trump’s performances a Remnickian pose. (Jay Rosen, an NYU professor of journalism who is tracking our new era with insight, has started a hashtag to define what he thinks should be the Fourth Estate’s response: “send the interns.”) Trump will never tire of these machinations, will never run out of bright, shiny objects to toss. Will media magpies tire of fluttering about in response? 

A friend and former Washington Post reporter posted on Facebook this weekend that she has hesitated comparing Trump to despotic governments she’d covered, or of comparing his media strategy to those of foreign Ministries of Information. “But it is familiar,” she wrote. 

The time of hesitating is past. The Ministry of Information is here.