Citizen Reader

I've got more to say about David Simon and The Corner, but I have to interrupt that thought to tell you that I am in the middle of Tom Mueller's Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud, and it is spectacular. More later.

I am not a Republican or a Democrat, but one of my pet peeves is when people lament to me what an American hero Barack Obama was and how much better off we were when he was the president. In the future, when they do that, I am going to read them this paragraph from Mueller's book:

"After years of endless war and institutionalized financial fraud had destabilized America, Barack Obama took office promising change, yet proceeded, through both acquiescence and action, to normalize the abuses Bush had introduced as wartime exigencies, and add a few of his own. He confirmed the de facto role of Wall Street as the rule of the US economy, and war as America's default condition. He staunchly defended Bush's torturers, kidnappers and other war criminals from prosecution, or even from opprobrium. He endorsed extralegal drone assassinations as an appropriate policy of a nation of laws, and mass surveillance of innocent US citizens as the right and the duty of the US government. And throughout, he attacked, relentlessly and vindictively, the few national security insiders (and several journalists) who questioned his betrayals of the Constitution and the people." (p. 838, large print edition.)

Boom. That's what I'm going to say when I have to offer proof for why I believe Obama was a terrible person, and Bush was a terrible person, and Clinton was a terrible person, and the first Bush was a terrible person, and so on and so forth, back to, I don't know, maybe Abraham Lincoln.

Awesome book, if you want to read a book and cry every time you're done reading a chapter.*

*Or, as Mr. CR says, "Reading more depressing nonfiction, are we? Of course you are."

Okay, I think I'm ready to talk about watching The Wire.

The Wire, which is an HBO television drama that aired over five seasons, from 2002 to 2008, was created and largely written by David Simon. It is one of those shows you constantly hear about, often in the same breath as The Sopranos and The Simpsons and Breaking Bad as some of the best TV ever made (or at least those are the TV shows you hear about from all the male TV critics, of whom there are more than female TV critics). For that reason, and also because I have a severe British television addiction problem, I never got around to watching it. I knew I would get there eventually, but I wasn't in any hurry.

So what tripped the wire in the fall of 2019 and made me think, hey, it's time to watch The Wire? I don't know, really. Back in 2017 I read David Simon's nonfiction True Crime masterpiece Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, and that knocked me over. It's a classic. And it briefly went through my mind then to watch The Wire, or even Homicide: Life on the Street (which was the TV show based on Simon's Homicide book). But again. Never got that far. What can I say? Freelance jobs needed to be done and CRjrs needed to be fed, taken to various enriching activities, and hosed down once in a while.

But last fall my littlest CRjr. went to school, meaning that I now had marginally more time during the day to work, and had a whole free hour of time (time I would have spent working in previous years) between 9 p.m., when the eldest goes to bed, and 10 p.m., when I go to bed. So Mr. CR and I, crazy kids that we are, decided to fill that hour with episodes of The Wire.

I don't think we're ever going to be quite the same.

Here's the deal. The Wire is about Baltimore. To say it is a show about cops and drug dealers misses so, SO much. Cops and drug dealers may be the majority of the characters, particularly in the show's first season, but The Wire, at its heart, is about Baltimore. It is about everything that is going wrong in Baltimore and has been going wrong in Baltimore for decades. But it's not even that narrow. The Wire explores so many characters and storylines and themes and tenets of basic human behavior that it's actually a show about America. But it's even bigger than that. The Wire is a show about people. The end. Everything is on showcase here: people you like, people you don't like, people being shitheads, people being pragmatic, people being sweethearts, people being weak, people starting out trying to do something good but ending up being shitheads, people being shitheads who in small moments try to do something good, people being hilarious, people being obnoxious, people being racist, people not being racist, people being really really dumb and people being really really smart. In its insistence on strong and complex characterization, The Wire is a lot like the very best of British TV: you never quite know what's going to happen. But then when it does, it makes total sense. And then, the next day when you're out living your life, you see someone doing something great or mean or stupid or hilarious, and you can think of a corresponding scene from The Wire that reminds you of what you're out in the world looking at.

If you can't tell, I loved this show a lot. I loved this show with the whole fiber of my introverted being that loves and needs television just a little bit more than the average well-adjusted extroverted person.

And then I went to Half Price Books and was lucky enough to find a copy of The Corner, also by David Simon. Then I read that while I watched The Wire and dear readers, then my mind was well and truly blown.

More to come.

So this is a humbling story, but it also made me laugh, so I thought you might enjoy it too.

I saw this headline today on the Interwebs:

Meet Annie Jump Cannon, Who Cataloged and Ranked Over 300,000 Stars By Their Hotness

And I clicked on it, because I thought, awesome, I totally want to see where all my fave British TV and movie stars rank on that list.

Really.

Now, in all fairness, I've trained my Yahoo to give me exclusively pop culture, TV, and British Royal Family news, so how this actual STAR-related science-y link got in there, I'm not sure. But there you have it. I'm an idiot. And a shallow idiot at that. This probably explains why I didn't get a very good grade in my high school physics class.

That is all. Enjoy your week, everyone.

I'm not sure where I heard about it, but I just picked up Helene Tursten's tiny little An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good, a collection of linked short stories about feisty octogenarian Maud.

It's dark and the protagonist Maud is mostly unlikable, but, God love her, you're not going to push her around. To tell you any more than that would be to include spoilers, and I'm not going to do that. But if you're looking for a quick, fun fiction read, you might want to try this one.

You can find a more comprehensive review here.

Huh. I'm tired and I'm not getting anything done. So far 2020 is looking a lot like 2019. Expected, but disappointing.

A quick word about 2019. Goodbye, Sucktastic Year. I learned a lot from you, I'll grant you, but I'm finding that learning experiences are not necessarily fun experiences. Here is what I learned: our bodies are weak and yet none of us are going to die at the right time, it's always going to be too soon or too late; I struggle to find solidarity with anyone because I seem constitutionally unable to get along with anyone who isn't my sibling or child; money is in fact the root of all evil and you can't win an argument with a stupid person and there are quite a few stupid people (nice though they may be otherwise) out there. Myself included.

That about sums up 2019.

But it wasn't all bad. I talked books and reading with some lovely online kindred spirits. (Thank you, dear readers.) I watched the CRjrs get a little bigger and navigate the world in ways I would never have expected. I laughed a lot, mostly ruefully, but also sometimes joyfully. I learned that although I make no money and it starts to look like I never will, I have numerous treasures that I am ridiculously grateful for and that I need to find ways to share. 

I learned something else*. Toward the end of the year I went to Half Price Books and bought a pile of books for nieces and nephews and myself and it felt really good. It was healing to touch books and stand among books and if you can swing it this year, please go to any actual physical place you can and buy books there. Increasingly I find I am a woman without a country. I feel lost when I go to church and when I pay attention to local politics and I have absolutely nothing in common with all the parents of the CRjrs' friends and I could give a flying fuck whether my alma mater's football team wins the Rose Bowl today. But when I stand among books I am home. I touch them and they touch me and they are a finite universe that I can understand, while they help me understand the infinite universe around me.

My hope for you in 2020 is that you surround yourself with books. May you feel at home there. Then come feel at home here and tell us what you've read, okay?

I wish you all a healthy and safe and peaceful new year.

*I also learned that "The Wire" is the best TV program ever. Ye Gods. It hurts me to love American television this much but if there was ever a series that could give any of the best Brit series a run for their money, it would be "The Wire." (Of course it's based on books: David Simon's Homicide and The Corner.**)

**One of the books I bought for myself at Half Price Books.