It was immeasurably important to me to have a role model who was a woman. Besides showing me what the architecture of writing nonfiction could be, Joan Didion made me feel it was possible to have the life and career I dreamed of. A Tweet by Susan Orlean who defines herself as Writer, writer, writer. Oh, I also write.

There is much in Didion one might disagree with personally, politically, aesthetically. I will never love the Doors. But I remain grateful for the day I picked up “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and realized that a woman could speak without hedging her bets, without hemming and hawing, without making nice, without poeticisms, without sounding pleasant or sweet, without deference, and even without doubt. It must be hard for a young woman today to imagine the sheer scope of things that women of my generation feared women couldn’t do—but, believe me, writing with authority was one of them. Zadie Smith in The New Yorker.

I didn’t know that Joan Didion was such a giant, I think I thought she was a fringe player, maybe nothing more than a cult favorite, so I was surprised at the number of people, especially women, especially women writers, who were inspired by her. She made her living by writing and I – then ensconced even more in my white male bubble than I am today- didn’t understand how hard it was for a woman to make a living writing fifty years ago. I loved her writing but I didn’t always love what she wrote. It often made me uncomfortable.

Didion was a true Californian, a fifth-generation Californian – one set of her ancestors was actually part of the Donner Party until they left the main group, near the Humbold sink, to go north, taking the Oregon Trail in the fall of 1846 – and she was pretty haughty about it, but she didn’t see the same California that I did. She saw a darker California, a California that I didn’t want to acknowledge, that didn’t match the fantasy that I still hold on to so tightly. Still, the way she wrote, that was a revelation to me.

Democracy was the first Didion book I read and I loved it’s take on politics, but Slouching Towards Bethlehem was the second and, while I won’t say I hated it, I sure was bothered by the pictures of a California I didn’t want to exist. When she writes about a young woman from San Bernardino, who killed her husband, This is the California where it is possible to live and die without ever eating an artichoke, without ever meeting a Catholic or a Jew. This is the California where it is easy to Dial-A-Devotion, but hard to buy a book … the country of the teased hair and the Capris and the girls for whom all life’s promise comes down to a waltz-length white wedding dress and the birth of a Kimberly or a Sherry or a Debbi and a Tijuana divorce and a return to hairdressers’ school. “We were just crazy kids,” they say without regret, and look to the future. The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past, it seems so nasty, so petty and even today, I don’t want it to be true and am so afraid that it is a spot-on description of inland California.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been reading excerpts – highlights if you will – of her writing and I keep being reminded of why I liked her so much when I first read Democracy, and then Play it As It Lays which starts with a paragraph that, somehow, has been tattooed on my brain. Maybe that is the best place to end this post, with a typical Joan Didion paragraph in which everything is wrong – what does it even mean? Why does she say she would not ask about snakes and then ask about snakes? what is she trying to say? and where the hell are the question marks at the end of the questions? – and the paragraph is perfect. So ominous, we have no idea what is happening, but we know that it’s not going to end well. What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask. Another example, one that springs to mind because Mrs. Burstein saw a pigmy rattler in the artichoke garden this morning and has been intractable ever since: I never ask about snakes. Why should Shalimar attract snakes. Why should a coral snake need two glands of neurotoxic poison to survive, while a king snake, so similarly marked, needs none. Where is the Darwinian logic there. You might ask that. I never would, not anymore.

…or Happy Holidays., if you prefer, and Happy Solstice. With Love, Michele and Steve

They sort of gave the race to Verstappen, on the other hand, he did have a better season and probably should be champion. From an email from me to Linda Melton.

Max Verstappen is the new Formula One Champion after winning the last race, on the last lap, in Abu Dhabi. Without going into the gritty details, Michael Masi, the FIA Formula One Race Director, let five cars that were between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, but were one lap down and would hold Verstappen up, get out of the way so that Verstappen on new, soft tires, could have a free shot at Hamilton on old, hard, tires. It was a one-off decision, similar to the Supreme Court ruling that Bush the Younger had won Florida in 2000, and Mercedes is appealing to the FIA – Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile – International Court of Appeal.

I think it was a bad decision on the Race Director’s part and a controversial way to end a race but it would be even more controversial if the Championship changed on a court ruling so I’m in favor of just getting on with it. When things like this happen, I’m always in favor of just getting on with it. It makes me realize that I’m not anywhere as competitive as somebody like Toto Wolff, the Mercedes Team Principal. On the other hand, the rumor is that Hamilton, to no avail, has asked the team to drop the appeal and he is super competitive.

While Mercedes is appealing, the earth continues to spin on its axis, every day becoming a less hospitable place to live. A major tornado plowed through Kentucky killing scores of people and leaving more than 1,000 families homeless- a “once in a lifetime event” that will probably happen again, sooner rather than later- a major ice-sheet in Antarctica is breaking up unexpectedly quickly threatening to raise sea level sooner than predicted, the temperature topped out at 127.9°F in Kuwait last year, a new but not welcome, record – it is 68°F today, BTW – two major hurricanes slammed into Honduras killing a hundred people, to scratch the surface; It all makes thinking about who won an auto race seem pretty trivial.

As the Earth heats, our country’s political life goes on: among other things, the House Committee investigating January 6th is releasing information that indicates the White House and several members of Congress knew about and participated in the Insurrection, Covid deaths in the U.S. have passed 800,000 and a new variety is scaring almost everybody else, Derek Chauvin has pleaded guilty to violating George Floyd’s civil rights during a Federal hearing, and over at Fox News, they are complaining that a mural that shows black revolutionaries is in the background of the swearing-in ceremony of the new Chief of Police. The strife and controversy over who won the Championship seem petty. But Next Year! Next year, Hamilton will win.

I’m passing on this Tweet by Peter Sagal because I think he may be right. (Link to post or click on Obama’s Secret Weapon In The South here or below).

his behaviour in combat with Hamilton, which earned him two separate time penalties, was unflinchingly fierce in its intensity and at times it felt as though Max, requiring Hamilton to run into difficulty in order to secure the title, was trying to provoke or lure Lewis into trouble. Oliver Harden on the Planet F1 website.

“I respect him as a driver, but the rest…nothing,” Jos Verstappen, Max Verstappen’s father talking about Lewis Hamilton to the Daily Mail

Wow! What a crazy race last Sunday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was. Lewis Hamilton won from the pole position but it was way more difficult than that, and way more fun, and nerve-racking. Now, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen are tied in championship points with only one race left, so winner takes all. Sort of: Max has won more races than Lewis, so, if there is an accident and neither one of them finishes the next race, Max wins.

A couple of years ago, before Lewis Hamilton won his seventh title, somebody asked Martin Brundle, a former F1 driver but then a color guy – or pundit – on Sky Sports, who he thought was the best driver, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumaker, or Lewis Hamilton. Brundle said, Hamilton because he never drives dirty like Shumy or Senna.

There is a scene in Downton Abby – this is the same subject, trust me – at a luncheon for Rose’s wedding to Atticus Aldridge, that has stuck with me. The Crawley clan has already met the parents of Rose’s fiancé, the Aldridges, but the Aldridges have not met Rose’s parents and everybody is on their best behavior. Rose’s mother, Susan MacClare, the Lady Flintshire, who we already know is a boorish bigot, asks if the Aldridges are “even one bit English” and then asks Rachel Aldridge if she “finds it difficult these days to get staff?” and Rachel Aldridge answers, “Not really….but then we’re Jewish so we pay well.”

The implication in Rachel’s answer – maybe more than an implication – is that she, and her husband, pay well because they are Jewish. They do not want to be thought of as tightwads because it not only reflects on them, it reflects on all Jewish people. Rose’s mother, Susan doesn’t have that problem. If Susan is an asshole, it doesn’t reflect on White people, nobody says that all White people are assholes because Susan is. If Robert Crawley, or Lord Grantham for that matter, doesn’t pay his staff enough, it doesn’t reflect on other White people, but that is a privilege that the Aldridges do not have.

In the Formula One race last weekend, Max Verstappen ended up getting three reprimands. Two of the reprimands involved adding time penalties to Max’s total time, and one of them was for brake-checking Lewis. Brake-checking is when a driver hits the brakes to force a tailgater to back away. It is a dangerous and illegal move and very very dangerous while racing in a car without brake lights. Max had just passed Lewis by going off the track which is not legal and had been told by Race Control to “Give the position back.” But Lewis had not yet been told and was right behind Max when, in the middle of a straightaway, braked suddenly and decelerated at 2.7 G. As an aside, if you jam the brakes on in a decent sports car with anti-lock breaks, you can stop at about 1.25 G. End aside. Max’s braking was hard enough, so that Lewis, right behind him, ran into Max, damaging Lewis’s front wing. Often, hitting another car with a front wing is enough to knock the wing off but, somehow, the impact only knocked an endplate off of Lewis’ car. It was impetuous, even childish, maybe even thuggish, as they were going over a hundred miles an hour and Max was fined with a ten-second penalty but, that’s it. Because of Max, nobody says that all White people are thugs, very few people even say that Max is a thug. Nobody said that thuggery is typical of White people but Lewis Hamilton does not have that privilege any more than Rebeca Aldridge.

Both of these drivers want to win the Championship and the next race, at the Yas Marina Circut in Abu Dhabi this coming Sunday, should be very close. Lewis Hamilton has been here before and he has won the last three races, so he has the better odds. Unless Max crashes them both out. That Max may try a crash if he is losing looks more likely than it did a year ago, still, my money is on Lewis.