Honor Roll

Sigh. I don’t know. You want to look at some owls for a bit? Owl faces in order, or maybe the 100 greatest owl pictures you’ll ever see? Or maybe just Mr. Bean.

I’ve been avoiding the internet in general (social media in particular), choosing instead to spend my time off the computer and out in the garden. Pulling weeds, clearing beds, you can see the difference you’re making. There’s no name-calling, no Drumpf, Shillary, or Bernie Bros. No Stanford apologists or bathroom boycotts. No 4-4 courts, no gun deaths, and no making it about all lives.

Every fourth year, the rhetoric escalates. Every fourth year, it becomes unbearable as the stakes have never been higher (which is what we said four years ago, and four years before that). And it does feel like the stakes have never been higher, but for just a little while, I need to check out. I worry about each of my children, but the other night I wept for a daughter that will feel as unsafe in parking garages as I do. Another girl who will grow up to carry her car keys between her fingers.

My biggest comfort right now is in knowing that the fact that we talk about these problems means that we have the will to end them, but the distance from here to there is so far.

Onward, to lighter things (comparatively).

• The Brooklyn Bridge is a marvel, built in the late 1800s when one in four bridges failed. How was it made?

• Cindy Sherman and a look at aging.

• Sometimes, the ugly duckling doesn’t grow up to be a swan. “What if you just stay a duck?”

• Successfully negotiating for $15,000 more than the initial offer.

• Why ‘her’? (Pronouns matter.)