politics Archives - Ann Hedreen, Writer Teacher Filmmaker | The Restless Nest Blog

Honesty: Good or Bad?

Ann Hedreen2021-08-30T07:51:38-07:00Categories: faith and doubt, featured posts, health & medicine, hiking, nature, politics, Uncategorized, women's rights, writing|Tags: Afghanistan, Haiti, honesty, writing|

“DISARM!” declares the pink post-it in the back of my journal. It’s been there for a few weeks now, and I can’t seem to throw it away. The note dates from a getaway spent with friends at a borrowed beach cottage. We thought we might be expected to set the alarm at night, and I thought I might be the first one to open the door in the morning. So I put post-its on the door, the coffeepot, and my journal. But then we didn’t set the alarm. We opted instead for open windows and fresh marine air. The word, however, stayed with me. Because I am badly in need of dis-arming. This summer, I have set all kinds of alarms against, well, feeling. Because there’s just too damn much to feel. And for me, along with feeling goes writing anywhere except in my journal. Because when I sit down to write with intent to share, as I am right now, I come up against that timeworn question that is the title of this post. Honesty: good or bad? I’m not talking here about truth versus lies. I’m talking about being honest about how you feel. About expressing your real feelings versus repressing them. Honesty is good, when I write about how sweet it has felt this summer to be at the beach or in the mountains or forests with family or with friends. Is honesty bad when I write about how worried I am about every place I love, as temperatures spike and wildfires rage [...]

Pandemic Patience

Ann Hedreen2021-03-29T14:48:19-07:00Categories: featured posts, gun control, health & medicine, human rights, journalism, midlife, politics, Seattle, urban life|Tags: Ambrose Bierce, Moderna, pandemic, patience, Seattle, Seattle Fire Department, The Devil's Dictionary, Vaccine|

“Patience,” wrote an early master of social media, is “a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.” How absolutely true, I thought. Despair. But minor. Disguised—but poorly, in my own case—as a virtue. This timely quip dates back more than a century, to when the dashing Civil War veteran and writer Ambrose Bierce published his “Devil’s Dictionary,” a collection of satiric definitions he had penned, over several decades, for newspapers and magazines. I was rummaging on Google for a bit of standard etymology for the word “patience” (“from the Latin patientia, the quality of suffering or enduring”) when Bierce’s one-liner popped up. So very descriptive of where many of us are right now, isn’t it? In the past year, there has been unbelievable suffering. And endurance. But in November, we learned two huge things about 2021: 1) We would soon have a new president (although we didn’t yet know how many people were in deep denial about that) and 2) We would all be vaccinated. Eventually. But definitely in 2021. Ever since, the worldwide call to action has been for patience. Sadly, I do not have a great track record when it comes to patience. But surely that won’t be a problem, I thought, back in December. Because I’m turning 64 in January! And then when the initial vaccination phases were broadly outlined, and the number “65” was in bold type everywhere, I thought: That’s okay. I can be patient. Because after they vaccinate all the 65-year-olds, they’ll give me a call, right? My big, [...]

365 Days

Ann Hedreen2021-01-18T18:12:50-08:00Categories: creative aging, featured posts, feminism, human rights, midlife, politics, Seattle, travel, Uncategorized, urban life, women's rights|Tags: covid-19, inauguration, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Oakland, pandemic, Raphael Warnock|

365 days ago, I celebrated my 63rd birthday in California with close friends. We marched in the 2020 Oakland women’s march, shouting with and talking to many total strangers, and admiring everyone’s signs. We dined out at a brewpub for lunch and an Italian restaurant for dinner. There was a stop for oysters somewhere in there too. In case we might still be hungry, my friends had hidden a selection of fancy birthday desserts in the back of the fridge. Wow. Though I had just returned from a long trip to Mexico, I thought nothing of hopping a flight from Seattle to Oakland for that weekend. My husband had been sick with a strange and terrible flu through the last several days of the trip. There were a few days he couldn’t get out of bed. Not like him, at all. There were other days he couldn’t stop coughing. He was finally on the mend, but we had both been shocked by how hard this illness hit him. I know what you’re thinking. And… we’ll never know, though he recently donated blood and the Covid-19 antibody test came back negative. But back to my 2020 birthday weekend. I’d really like to dwell on it some more. There was a long afternoon at the SF MoMA. There was another afternoon of walking all over the UC Berkeley Campus. There was talk, so much talk: my friends and I worried together about whether Trump could be defeated, and if so, which candidate had the best chance. Harris? Warren? [...]

Birds, Ballots, Barrett

Ann Hedreen2021-03-31T11:06:16-07:00Categories: faith and doubt, featured posts, feminism, hiking, memoir, nature, politics, reading, Uncategorized, women's rights|Tags: Amy Coney Barrett, birders, birding, East Anglia, Helen Macdonald, SCOTUS|

I once visited a bird hide (or blind, as we call them in North America) in the wet, windswept fens of East Anglia, far to the northeast of London. That is all. Please forgive me, birders of the world; I remember nothing, at least nothing that has to do with birds. I was 19, and a newly arrived exchange student at the University of East Anglia, whose concrete, mid-1960s buildings resemble oversized bird hides. UEA is on the outskirts of Norwich, which is still the lively market town it was when William the Conqueror built his castle there a thousand years ago. I loved Norwich, but I was always game for an excursion. Bird-watching: why not? That faded memory tugged at me through all 458 pages of Helen Macdonald’s book of essays, Vesper Flights. My acquaintance with the young man who invited me to the bird hide was so fleeting that I can only remember a bit of what he looked like: droopy mustache, watch cap, wellies. A sweet smile. Not actually a UEA student; I met him at a party. When I told my cross-the-hall friend Bridget about his invitation, she decided she and her boyfriend Chris would go birding too. They would drive me, and we would meet my new friend there. So off we went in Chris’ Morris Mini, across the low-slung fens, to a long, equally low-slung wooden shack that blended right into the landscape, which of course was the point. My birder friend waved at us. “Hi!” I shouted happily. He [...]

A Kind of September

Ann Hedreen2020-10-01T15:35:06-07:00Categories: featured posts, hiking, politics, quiet, urban life|Tags: Biden, covid-19, debate, grief, Harris, owl photo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump, Washington Park Arboretum, wildfire smoke|

On the first day of September, 2020, I turned my head at just the right moment and saw an owl, still as a portrait, on a branch over a teardrop of a pond in the Arboretum. It was noon. The owl was enjoying the shade, and did not care to move, even after a whispering clutch of onlookers gathered to snap photos on their phones. We were mesmerized by the owl’s patient gaze; by its obliviousness to our restless human need to marvel at its composure. It seemed a good omen of a kind of September: when we could try to remember, as in the old song, when life was slow and oh, so mellow. But no: if the owl was an omen, that was not its message. Seems to me a screaming blue-jay would have been a better harbinger of the fires, floods, pestilence, grief, corruption and mud-slinging that lay in store for us, way back on September 1. On the other hand: maybe the owl in the Arboretum was the right omen for the job. Maybe the owl’s message was: Don’t flail. Find your branch, and stay still like me. We’ll ride this month out, together. Easy for me to say. I did not have to evacuate a home that was about to burn or flood. I did not have to rush to the ER, short of breath. I do not anticipate having my vote rejected. In September 2020, my job turned out to be an owl’s job after all: stay still. Shut out the [...]

Pandemic Mountain

Ann Hedreen2020-08-30T16:45:22-07:00Categories: featured posts, hiking, politics, Uncategorized|Tags: backpacking, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mt. Baker, pandemic|

In the middle of this pandemic summer, in a tent on a ridge just a stone’s throw from Mt. Baker, my husband and I woke in the wee hours to the sound of two young voices, chatting away, getting closer and louder every second. We could see their headlamps bobbing like a pair of fireflies as they hiked towards us, up the steep trail known as the Railroad Grade route to the Mt. Baker climbers’ basecamp. Our tent was just a few feet off the trail. We’d left the rainfly off: on this silky July night, we needed nothing between us and the starry sky but the tent’s inner mosquito-net shell. We hadn’t seen anyone else for hours. But here they came at 1:40 a.m., these two young men, hiking with headlamps, ready to climb Mt. Baker. They must’ve left the trailhead around midnight. They were nearly on top of us when they finally saw our tent and lowered their voices a little. We pretended to be asleep. They walked on by. We watched their lights bob out of sight. It took us both a while to get back to sleep. But there had been something so happy and cozy about their camaraderie, in the wee hours, that I felt lucky to have heard it. I don’t remember a word they said, only that they were animated and buoyant, as if their packs full of climbing gear weighed nothing. As if they were waterskiing uphill. It was like hearing voices from the past: from that innocent [...]

Emotional Truth: Teaching Memoir in the Time of Trump

Ann Hedreen2020-02-29T10:33:18-08:00Categories: arts, brain, Creative, creative aging, featured posts, memoir, politics, writing|Tags: Anne Frank, coronavirus, covid-19, emotional truth, fake news, glioblastoma, Hemingway, Julian of Norwich, Leap Year, memoir, Seattle Central College, Solomon Northup, teaching memoir writing, Trump|

Sixteen years ago, on Leap Year Day, my mathematically gifted brother left this world. Felled by glioblastoma, he did not have much choice in the timing of his death. But he did have a flair for drama, and it may have pleased him to give a parting nod to the beauty of numbers. The fact is that he died on February 29, 2004. The emotional truth is that he died not on any old dreary winter day, but on a numerically elegant date that only happens every four years. We memoir writers like to talk about seeking, and writing, the emotional truth. It’s an intuitive concept; more what you feel than what you think. Yes, you tell yourself, when you feel you’ve got it right: what I’ve written is what happened, and why it mattered. Or no, you sigh as you stare at the words on the screen: no, I’m not telling it right. I’m holding back. Or telling the wrong story. Or writing around the heart of the matter, instead of into it. Here’s a famous example of emotional truth, from Ernest Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast: “I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again,” Hemingway wrote, of a woman who walked in to the café where he was writing; a woman he still remembered three decades later. “You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.” When I teach memoir [...]

Being Mortal in the Time of Trump

therestlessnest2019-11-07T12:07:12-08:00Categories: creative aging, faith and doubt, featured posts, gun control, hiking, human rights, immigration, politics, Uncategorized|Tags: Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, Death, end-of-life, Maggie O'Farrell, Mt Rainier National Park, Seattle Central College, What Matters Most?, Xu Xi|

What matters most? That question has been like a three-word anthem for me this month, as I re-read Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. The small Seattle church I attend is having a summer book club, of sorts, which consists of reading Being Mortal and getting together in small groups to talk about it over dinner. The group I was in kept coming back to that question: what matters most? In Being Mortal, Gawande talks about a patient who decided that for him, life would continue to be worth living as long as he could enjoy chocolate ice cream and watching football on TV. Another patient, who knew her time was limited, wanted to be able to continue to give piano lessons as long as she could. But what really matters most—behind the scenes of those two and pretty much all of Gawande’s examples—is being with the people you love. Being able to love and be loved. That’s what matters most. The other day, I was feeling a sort of low-grade emotional fever, triggered by Not Accomplishing Enough Work-Wise while wishing I could Just Go Swimming. My malaise was compounded by that other virus I can’t seem to kick: Creeping Despair. I decided to wallow. Just for a few minutes. So I opened Facebook. And there was the most delightful post from an old friend, describing how much fun she’d had hiking in Mt. Rainier National Park with her adult son. There were photos and captions loaded with mutual affection. [...]

This Large Light

therestlessnest2019-11-07T14:46:38-08:00Categories: faith and doubt, gun control, human rights, politics, Seattle, urban life|Tags: Greensboro, Intelligent Trees, Jay Inslee, Pittsburgh, Temple de Hirsch Sinai, Tree of Life, Vote Forward|

Driving west up Union, we could see taillights stretching ahead in a long, slow column. We crossed 23rd Avenue, turned onto a side street and parked. As we walked uphill towards Seattle’s storied Temple de Hirsch Sinai, my husband and I fell in step with a few others, then a few dozen. And then suddenly we were part of a stream of a few thousand, or more. Volunteers directed us to the ends of the long lines that circled the temple block in every direction. The quiet was palpable. The announcement soon went out that the synagogue, which holds 2,000 people, was full. Police blocked off the street in front and encouraged the hundreds of us who couldn’t get in to gather outside. Loudspeakers were set up. Someone began to strum a guitar and lead us in song. I stood behind a tall man in a fedora with a voice like a deep, clear bell and tried to pick up a few of the Hebrew words. One of the rabbis came out and spoke to us. He told us God’s tears were mixing with ours, as we stood together in remembrance of the eleven people murdered two days ago at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. He talked of planting a new Tree of Life, where love can—no, must, he said—have the last word. I thought of a film I saw this weekend, at the Friday Harbor Film Festival, that was all about how trees communicate with each other, underground; how the roots of wholly [...]

Anger Management

therestlessnest2019-11-07T14:47:28-08:00Categories: feminism, journalism, politics, travel, women's rights|Tags: #IBelieveChristine, #MeToo, #SupremeCourt, Kavanaugh|

His calendar? Does anyone really think a 17-year-old boy would put a drinking party at the home of a friend whose parents would definitely not be present on his calendar? Thanks a lot, New York Times News Alert. Just when I was getting my anger under control, just when I was beginning to believe I might be able to think about something besides the upcoming Brett Kavanaugh hearing in which he will reiterate to us that he categorically denies Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault—now this: Kavanaugh’s 1982 calendar, which features “basketball games, movie outings, football workouts and college interviews. A few parties are mentioned, but include names of friends other than those identified by Dr. Blasey.” I’m aware that I’ve been on a low simmer for a solid week; that this would not be a good time for me to have my blood pressure checked. But I thought I was managing my anger, until the news alert about the calendar. And that was before the latest news about a second allegation from a college classmate. One night about 41 years ago, I made a mistake and missed a train. I was in Geneva, and I missed the last train to Paris. I was 19, and traveling on a ridiculous budget. I had no Swiss francs left and no credit card. It was nearly midnight. A 30-something American in an expensive trench coat offered to take me to his parents’ home, where I could sleep in the guest bedroom. I sized him up [...]

Seeking Shade

therestlessnest2019-11-07T14:37:29-08:00Categories: creative aging, faith and doubt, human rights, immigration, nature, politics, Seattle|Tags: Atlantic Street Center, distraction, Full LIfe Care, memoir writing, Operation Nightwatch, Safe Crossings Foundation, Seattle Arts & Lectures, Seattle Central College, Seattle tree canopy, writing|

There is a toxic, orange glare emanating from the White House. We’ve got to seek shade wherever we can. As I hopscotched from one patch of shade to the next during our most recent heat wave, feeling grateful for Seattle’s generous canopy of trees, I thought: this is what we’re all doing now. Seeking shade from that poisonous glare. It’s a matter of spiritual and psychological survival. My own shade-seeking, Summer of 2018 mantra is this: “I am NOT going to let Donald Trump prevent me from writing my book.” Easier said than done, in the summer of 2018. But I’m doing it: I’m writing; I’m fitting in an hour or two a day, more when I can, less when work takes precedence or it’s time for a hiking break. Writers, here’s my advice: close your email and your browser. Silence your phone. Set a timer for an hour. Checking your email, texts and news once an hour is enough. My own recent favorite reads And readers: show yourself some kindness. Tear your bleary eyes away from the news alerts and the OpEds and read a novel or a memoir or a short story or a non-political essay. Feel your breathing change and your shoulders relax as you settle in. Parents and grandparents: read stories to your kids. The book I am writing is about faith and doubt: the fervent faith of my youth, the twenty-year break I took from religion, the meaning I’ve found in accepting that doubt is where my faith now [...]

Reinvention II

therestlessnest2019-11-07T14:48:43-08:00Categories: creative aging, politics, women's rights|Tags: Dick's Sporting Goods, Edward Stack, gun control, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, NRA, Parkland|

It’s only been two weeks. And as I write, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida have finished their first full day of classes since February 14, 2018: a Valentine's Day that may have started sweetly, for some, but ended, for all, in horror. And now, like it or not, they are engaging in that classic American project: reinvention. Two years ago, I wrote a Restless Nest post about reinvention that now reads like a runic record of ancient times. It’s about reinvention as practiced by people my age; the kind that is motivated by benign milestones like career changes, downsizing, upsizing, retirement. It was written in that naïve era when we all assumed Hillary Clinton would be our next president; when we never would have dreamed that political vigilance would soon require an unprecedented amount of our time and attention. Fourteen students and three adults from Marjory Stoneman Douglas will never have those kinds of opportunities for reinvention. Or political vigilance. But their surviving classmates are wasting no time. Two weeks ago, they were kids. Now, they are mourners and activists. And they are unafraid to say what needs to be said about gun violence and the complicity of the National Rifle Association and all the politicians the NRA grooms as its well-paid pawns. They are unafraid to reinvent themselves and their lives in honor of the friends they lost. And look at the effect they’re having: in statehouses, in Washington, D.C., in the offices of corporate CEOs, including, as of [...]

State of the Union: Flashback

therestlessnest2019-11-07T14:49:23-08:00Categories: memoir, politics, Seattle|Tags: Chevy Chase, Gerald Ford, Joe Kennedy III, Nixon resignation, Richard Nixon, Saturday Night Live, State of the Union, Watergate|

I had a flashback during the approximately 30 minutes I could bear to watch of the State of the Union address. In the summer of 1974, which for me was the summer between high school and college, I was working the front counter at Kazdal’s Deli on University Way in Seattle. Kazdal’s (which later became the Lock, Stock and Bagel) was more of a lunch spot than a dinner restaurant. So just before 6 p.m. on August 9, the place was pretty quiet. Suddenly, someone burst in our door and asked if we had a TV. “Nixon’s about to resign!” he said. No, we didn’t have a TV. “But the Continental does,” said the cook, who had come running in from the kitchen. “Let’s get over there.” The Continental was the Greek restaurant across the street. The cook dashed on over. I looked around—not a customer in the place—grabbed the keys, locked the front door and followed him. I was about halfway across when a cop on a motorcycle roared up to me. “Get back on the sidewalk, Miss. I’m writing you a ticket for jaywalking.” “But Officer, don’t you know? Nixon’s resigning right now and I have to get to the Continental to see it on TV!” The policeman was unmoved. He took down my name and address and gave me my ticket, watching me as I ran up to the crosswalk, waited for the light to change, and ran into the Continental, just in time to catch Nixon weirdly yammering on to the American [...]

After 2017: Wound Care

therestlessnest2019-11-07T14:50:14-08:00Categories: human rights, immigration, journalism, memoir, midlife, Occupy, politics, Seattle, Uncategorized, women's rights|Tags: #notmypresident, #resist, Alabama, Be the change, Doug Jones, It's a Wonderful Life, women's march 2017, women's march 2018|

One year ago—before the Inauguration, before the women’s marches, before everything else that has happened since—I attended a New Year’s Eve get-together at which everyone made a prediction for 2017. Mine was that the next (“hopefully great”) Democratic presidential candidate, “someone we haven’t even thought of yet,” would emerge by the end of this year. Others predicted that Trump would be impeached. Or that his first Supreme Court nominee would somehow be blocked. Some guests offered more general forecasts: “the pendulum will swing;” “people will come to their senses.” My husband vowed that we would see the “total cratering” of the Republican Party. His prediction may have come closest to the mark. And though my own hope was misplaced—I think we’re still not even close to identifying the next Democratic candidate for president—I do believe the pendulum is swinging, and many people are coming to their senses. They just may not be the same people we had hoped would come to their senses. The people who are coming to their senses are not the people who voted for Trump. We now understand that most of them (a minority of Americans, let’s not forget) are very unlikely to change their minds. The people who are coming to their senses are us. By which I mean the whole big crazy quilt of the Left. Or “The Resistance,” as Trump now likes to call us, in air quotes, thinking that it’s a scathing put-down. To which I say: Congratulations, Everyone! We’ve made enough noise this year to get our own [...]

American Infection

therestlessnest2019-11-07T14:50:44-08:00Categories: economics, health & medicine, human rights, immigration, politics, Seattle, Uncategorized|Tags: antibiotics, Cantwell, democracy, foot surgery, Manka Dhingra, Murray, tax bill, Trump, Tukwila, Zak Idan|

Sometimes we writers search too hard for the perfect metaphor. Sometimes, it’s right under our nose—or, in my case, right under my blue, Velcro-strapped boot. Infection: that’s what Trump is, I thought this morning, as I took my nineteenth of the twenty Amoxicillin tablets we brought home from the pharmacy ten days ago. Trump has infected our vigorous, 241-year-old democracy. And like so many infections, this one is fire-engine red and spreading, unchecked and unmedicated. Meanwhile, the patient is hot with fever one day and shaking with chills the next. Nothing tastes right. Muscles ache. Vaguely flu-like feelings abound. Waves of determination to soldier through—we’ll get over this!—are followed by languorous apathy: let’s just give up. Speaking as one who tried to ignore an infection for several days, I can tell you it is not a strategy that works. After foot surgery on November 6, I assumed the three incisions on my right foot were healing up nicely under all those bandages, just the way they had on my left foot, last May. And they probably were, for the first several days. But then something somehow went wrong along one of those neat lines of stitches. At that point my foot was in a plastic cast, so I couldn’t see it. And for reasons I cannot explain, I chose to believe that feeling like my foot was on fire was probably “normal,” that fever and chills were a “part" of healing, and that I would magically “get over it.” Wrong, wrong, wrong. Thank God for antibiotics. [...]

No Ordinary Time

therestlessnest2019-11-07T14:53:51-08:00Categories: feminism, human rights, midlife, politics, war, women's rights|Tags: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR, justice, military, No Ordinary Time, Scaramucci, transgender|

“This is no ordinary time,” Eleanor Roosevelt told the Democratic Convention of 1940, “and no time for weighing anything except what we can best do for the country as a whole.” No Ordinary Time: Doris Kearns Goodwin chose that phrase to be the title of her 1994 book, subtitled Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Eleanor’s words have a different ring in 2017, don’t they? This is a year that feels like no ordinary time in ways that she would likely find—dismaying. Discouraging. Despicable. Or maybe not: because Eleanor knew, almost better than anyone in her day, that every step forward toward justice for all was inevitably followed by an ugly backlash. She and her husband regularly received vicious hate-mail from segregationists, sexists, and xenophobes of all kinds. For two months, No Ordinary Time sat on my coffee table, all 636 pages of it (759, counting the end-notes and index). My father had dropped it off. He was sure I would find it as compelling as he had. I resisted. It looked so—daunting. But it only took a page or two for Goodwin’s writing to hook me and hold me. This is a book that is both a detail-rich history lesson and a gripping summer page-turner. Reading it, I realized just how little I know about the history of World War II and about the president and first lady who steered us through those years of drama and tragedy. It is not a hagiography: Goodwin calls out, in particular, the [...]

The Long Game

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:23:32-08:00Categories: hiking, human rights, journalism, politics, Seattle, women's rights|Tags: ACLU, foot surgery, health care, immigration, progressive comeback, Senator Al Franken|

It was the hottest evening of the year. So far. I rested my post-surgical, boot-encased foot on my husband’s leg as we sat with a group of like-minded, anxious Seattle progressives and listened to the ACLU’s state communications director answer questions. “What should we do?” was what we wanted Doug Honig to tell us. Meaning: about Trump? During his presidency? What should we do? How can we help? Honig’s advice, which I’m paraphrasing and which he delivered with more nuance, was essentially this: Try to stop obsessing about Trump. This isn’t about Trump, this is about the Republican plan to remake our country. The Republicans have deep pockets and many loyal foot soldiers and they are in this for the long game. And so we need to be, too. What does that mean? It means supporting local, state and national politicians and candidates who stand for compassion, not cruelty. It means raising our voices in defense of the Affordable Care Act, immigrants’ rights, our national parks and monuments, clean air, clean water, and everything else we care about that is threatened not just by Trump’s vicious, bullying twitter feed but by his clever cabinet appointees and his allies on Capitol Hill, who love love love that he is providing constant, highly distracting cover while they pursue their draconian agenda. Stay in, people, for the long game. “There’s a part for you to play in the next great progressive comeback story,” Senator Al Franken writes in his new memoir, Al Franken: Giant of the Senate. “But only [...]

In Real Time

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:27:56-08:00Categories: economics, hiking, memoir, midlife, politics, travel|Tags: Brexit, China, Condé Nast Traveler, France, Iceland, In Real Time, Korea, United Kingdom|

Home. I’m home. The #TravelBinge2017 Tourist has Halted. However: she lives on inside me, and she has given my brain a much-needed adjustment. I don’t much like the word “tourist.” “Traveler” is the word I’ve always preferred, with its hints of Martha Gellhorn and Graham Greene. But in the eyes of the Chinese, Korean, French, English and Icelandic people who tolerated me tromping through their countries this past month, I was not fancy or special. I was a tourist. And that’s OK. No one would mistake me for a native in any of these nations, except perhaps Iceland. And being a tourist is not what it used to be. Or it doesn’t have to be what it used to be. You can break free of the pack, even in China, even without speaking Chinese. People are ridiculously busy in China these days, but if you flag them down, they’ll help you buy train tickets, or get off at the right stop, or order dumplings. And sometimes, if they want to practice their English, they’ll flag you down. Outside Guangzhou--a city of 12 million in southern China that appears to be adding a skyscraper a day--my friend Lindsay and I were hiking up Baiyun Mountain when two young law students, Carry and Pelly (their “English names”) asked if they could walk and talk with us. It was a national holiday: Tomb Sweeping Day, when Chinese families gather to clean and decorate the graves of their ancestors. Carry and Pelly, both 21, came from a [...]

Love in the time of Chaos

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:28:53-08:00Categories: brain, dementia, politics, Uncategorized, writing|Tags: Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's Association, ban, Claddagh rings, Her Beautiful Brain, immigration, International Rescue Committee|

What is so fascinating, in this new and disorienting era in which we’re now living, are the connections that form amidst the chaos. Last week, I was in Olympia for Alzheimer’s Advocacy Day. What a day of connections: of hearing and sharing stories; of witnessing the love that motivates families living with Alzheimer’s to go to the state capitol and talk to their representatives, even in this chaotic season when so many other causes cry out for their attention. If you—or your husband, wife, mother, father, friend—are living with Alzheimer’s, you are accustomed to a baseline level of chaos. But when there’s a sense that chaos has been unleashed in the world on a larger scale, too, life can feel very—untethered. My mother’s Alzheimer’s disease began to rapidly accelerate in the summer and fall of 2001. She was quite unaware of the events of September 11. This may have been a blessing for her, but to us it was alarming. The country was in chaos. Our mother’s brain was in chaos. How to care for her, whether and where to move her, were the urgent questions that crowded our minds, even as we worried about war and terrorist threats. And then there was the daunting and dismaying challenge of explaining it all to our children—explaining not only what was happening in our country, but what was happening to their grandmother’s brain. Our hearts were breaking for her, and for the world, all at the same chaotic time. “Let love reign,” is the symbolic message of the [...]

My Mother Was Here

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:30:19-08:00Categories: family, memoir, midlife, parenting, politics, Uncategorized|

This post is really about my mother-in-law, who died January 12 at the age of 86. She was sweeter and more selfless than I'll ever be. You might say she was the kind of person our new president pretends to understand, but does not and never will, because his heart is several sizes too small. But I'm going to let her son, my husband Rustin, take it from here: My mom, Donna Thompson, never thought of herself first. Even in the last month of her life while in the hospital, she’d offer her lunch to me or my wife (or her grandkids, Nick and Claire, pictured with her here) before taking a bite. Sometimes her unselfishness was exasperating. “Mom, it’s okay to take care of yourself,” I’d implore, but she was too stubborn to take my advice. Mom would be the first to tell you she was just an ordinary person. She’d say she never did anything special or remarkable her whole life. She never flew on an airplane, never traveled farther than Disneyland to the south or Mt. Rushmore to the east. She drove the same car the last 35 years of her life, lived on nothing more than a pension and social security since she was 65, and she never owned a credit card. She worked hard for every penny she ever had. Mom drove a Franklin Pierce district school bus for 28 years, working overtime at sporting events, and she picked raspberries and drove the berry-picking bus in the summers. In [...]

Stay Hungry

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:31:01-08:00Categories: economics, education, faith and doubt, feminism, human rights, immigration, journalism, politics, Seattle, Uncategorized, urban life, women's rights|Tags: #Election2016, 2017, New Year's resolutions|

2016 was a hungry, hungry year. Month after month, we hungered for justice and peace and hope, and we just kept getting hungrier. We thought November 8 might take the edge off; might give us a little encouraging broth for the journey. But no. Now we’re more famished than ever. And it’s very easy to feel like the best solution might be to simply curl up in a fetal position and hoard what little energy we have left. But we can’t, can we? We owe it to ourselves, our children, our neighbors down the street and around the world, to stay hungry. To feel that driving bite in the gut, that ache, that howling growl that demands attention. We are going to be offered pablum and junk food and we’ll be tempted to take it. We’ll be told to eat this, calm down, stop your bellyaching. But we can’t. We’ve got to stay hungry. Yes, 2016 feels like the Worst Year Ever. But as one friend brooded on Facebook, what on earth makes us think 2017 is going to better? Lest you think my only goal here is to write the most depressing post in Restless Nest history, I offer this morsel of optimism. Here’s what could be better about 2017, if we all stay hungry: this could be the year that we all do more than we ever have to make the world a better place. Instead of giving money to presidential candidates, we can give it to the people who are in the trenches, [...]

At the Edge of the World

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:31:55-08:00Categories: brain, dementia, feminism, politics, Uncategorized, women's rights, writing|Tags: #Election2016, #vigilance, Alzheimer's research, Alzimpact, children's defense fund, Heather Wood Rudúlph, Hillary Clinton, Nicholas Kristof, Rebecca Solnit|

This is where I am: on the sandy, foamy, whitecapped edge of America. Last time I visited this beach, I wrote about the epidemic of earthquake fear then sweeping the Northwest, following the July 2015 publication of Kathryn Schulz’s New Yorker article, “The Really Big One.” Maybe it’s just as well to be out on the wide-open Washington coast when the big one hits, I speculated. It would all be over pretty quick: one big, obliterating tidal wave. Boom. And here I am again, feeling like the Big One did just hit us. It didn’t wipe us out. Yet. But it shook us to our core; challenged assumptions we’d held for months; changed the way we see ourselves and everyone else. Now we’re all rummaging through our psychic wreckage for salvageable scraps of energy, optimism, drive. We’re sorting useful anger from destructive anger. We’re demanding of ourselves that we learn to understand the people we quite recently referred to as Haters. We’re exhorting each other to eat, sleep, exercise, hug and read about a hundred articles a day. I have been reading a lot, and I’m sure you have too. Here are a few post-election essays I’ve found really useful: Dame Magazine's Don’t Tell Me to Calm Down, by Heather Wood Rudúlph ; Rebecca Solnit’s essay in The Guardian, Don't Call Clinton a Weak Candidate, and, for when you’re ready to stop keening and take constructive action, New York Times' columnist Nicholas Kristof’s A 12-Step Program for Responding to President-elect Trump. But I’ve also been thinking often of Hillary [...]

#Election2016: Countdown

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:32:29-08:00Categories: family, feminism, human rights, politics, Uncategorized, women's rights|Tags: #Election2016, Donald Trump, Finland, Hillary Clinton, immigration, Somalia, voting, Wellesley College|

It has never, ever felt so good to seal and stamp an envelope as it did after I filled out my ballot last week. Sure, I miss the old ritual of going to my local polling place, but sitting down and getting it done at home, good and early, felt great. Especially this year. Of course, especially this year. And now I’m going to tell you a few of the people I voted for. I voted for the third graders I tutor in an afterschool program. One of them told me last week he was “so scared Donald Trump was going to win.” The others all chimed in. “We’re scared too!” “I hate Trump!” All of them are from refugee families; most come from Somalia. I wondered what they’ve been hearing at home. Can you imagine how horrifying it is to watch this election unfold, if you’re a refugee from anywhere—but especially from a Muslim country? I also voted for another refugee: Henry Grundstrom, my great-grandfather, who, according to his naturalization papers, “foreswore his allegiance to the Czar of Russia” to become a United States citizen in 1898. Henry was from Finland, then under the Czar’s thumb. If he had stayed, he would have faced conscription into the Czar’s army. What would he have thought of allegations that Russian hackers could be trying to influence this election? I voted for Viktor Warila, my other Finnish great-grandfather, who staked a homestead claim in Montana in 1910 and raised six children on the windswept bench lands between [...]

Imperfectionism: a manifesto

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:33:14-08:00Categories: feminism, politics, women's rights|Tags: chocolate chip cookies, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, perfectionism, Presidential debates|

Here’s what gave me joy during the first presidential debate: Hillary Clinton’s smile. Sure, she might’ve practiced in front of the mirror, and I don’t fault her for that. As she told Donald Trump, she believes in preparing, both for the debates and for being president. But what her smile signaled so effectively was something else, something I would call her new imperfectionism. It’s no wonder she looked so joyful: if you’re Hillary Clinton, it must be a great relief to have moved beyond the futile grind of flat-out perfectionism. And I think we women can all learn from her. I’m not arguing that she was not brilliant that night. She was. But her tone, her ease, and best of all that bemused, transcendent smile told me that not only is she confident and ready to govern, she is now beyond inured to the type of male posturing in which Donald Trump invests all of his strategic energy. This is an important trait in a first female president. It is one she has honed over the decades, especially as Secretary of State. While Trump has been sharpening his negotiating skills by belittling tenants, employees, contractors, and beauty pageant winners, Clinton has been steadily building her ability to hold her own with hard-to-handle men, from her husband to five-star generals to heads of state. Remember when she was first lady, and she baked those cookies just to show she could? That was perfectionist Hillary, responding to a media pile-on that was all about how uncomfortable the country [...]

How Trump Made Me Love My Day Job

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:33:47-08:00Categories: dementia, economics, film, health & medicine, human rights, politics, Seattle|Tags: 2016 Presidential Election, Donald Trump, immigration, Mary's Place, poverty, work|

As I write, Donald Trump supporters are lining up outside a stadium about thirty miles north of here for a rally that begins many hours from now. This is confusing to me. Lining up for Trump? Who are they? Yesterday, my husband and I met an immigrant family of nine and talked to them about how a local non-profit is helping them through their grief over the death of their baby girl. Last week, we visited an Adult Day Health Center that serves people who have dementia or have suffered brain trauma. We talked to a woman in her fifties whose face lit up with joy as she described how the time she spent at the center had given her the courage to go back to work after a stroke. The week before that, we interviewed a Seattle teacher who found an affordable apartment for herself and her son, with the help of a housing non-profit. This is our day job: making short films for non-profits to help them raise money and spread the word about what they do. August is always a busy time for us, as our clients get ready for their fall events. We feel very lucky that we get to do this work for a living. That we get to hear, and tell, stories about people helping people. Stories that debunk, over and over again, the American myth of rugged individualism; that show how much we Americans can do, when we pay attention to one another’s needs. When we are able [...]