Hello beloved readers, subscribers and followers! Welcome back to my weekly presentation of Crone Life, all about getting older and maybe even wiser. I’m 64 years old, a librarian, and I live in the mid-Hudson Valley, triangulated between my first 22 years in rural Connecticut and my 35 years as a New Yorker (the city, that is).
Nobody knows what’s happening next, but we fear it isn’t good.
I myself am in an uncertain situation, personally speaking. I do think it will turn out to be OK, but the possibility that it won't keeps me up at night. This is just in the short run of course–in the short run things probably will be fine. They usually are.
I am assuming most people currently feel this way. Most Americans, for sure. We are citizens in the hands of an angry idiot who doesn't mean well. I haven’t had this feeling since the 2001 W. Bush era, when it became obvious to me that the people in charge didn’t know what they were doing. I suppose it was possible that they knew things I didn’t, but this does not seem true in retrospect.
It might seem that the current administration has a plan. Some of them anyway. The Project 2025-ers certainly have a goal in mind. I’m sure serious things are happening behind the curtain. In front of the curtain, we have on-again-off-again tariffs, blatant insider trading cues, furtive deportations, and bonkers executive orders for which we don’t know the purpose. There are some sources trying to make it all make sense. Others are just throwing their hands up in the air and declaring it all stupid and meaningless. We will never return to a rational world!
As a lifelong American, I am so embarrassed that it’s turning out this way. SO EMBARRASSED! I can remember the Apollo Moon landing. I was almost 9 years old and on a family cross-country trip. We were in South Dakota, at the Badlands National Park, driving through a torrential rainstorm that melted the landscape around us, listening to the radio. And when the Eagle was about to land, my dad pulled over and we listened as the world changed, humans landed on another planet, and the rain stopped. The sun never did come out though. And then we drove straight to a cheap motel somewhere nearby, while I tried to sleep on a lumpy mattress and my dad was glued to the black and white images showing live on TV. Not that landing on the Moon was the best goal ever, but at least it was achieved.
One of the great negatives of the rise of social media is of course the spread of misinformation and disinformation. Nobody knows what a reliable source is any more. As a librarian, I know that information found online can be untrustworthy. Most of the free stuff available is exactly that. To really know what’s happening, you need a subscription or a pass. But most people are scrambling for a living or engrossed online and don’t have the time or the inclination to go to their local library. I have seen a lot of research on how patrons are afraid to ask questions because they don’t want librarians to think they are stupid and ignorant. I myself do not wish that either, but I also know that librarians love to help people. I myself love to help people. Go to your local library!
If I act on the belief that people want to help, it has generally proven to be true. Whenever I’ve asked for help or information, I’ve received it. Eventually. My recent experience with doctors and hospitals and insurance bureaucracy, while frustrating, has also followed this pattern. Every time it seems to be coming to a dead end, someone pops up with a suggestion on how to make it better, how to submit another appeal, and we are slowly inching forward. But it’s damned frustrating. I can endure it because on the whole, things are ok in other areas of my life. They aren’t perfect. It’s easy to fall into the conviction that it’s all swirling down the drain, but in reality–I have a place to live, enough food to eat, I can take showers, my immediate and extended family is fine, and my car got fixed. Just because I feel precarious doesn’t mean I am.
I’m trying to use my experience in life and my knowledge of history to make sense of it all. I know it’s boring for me to be this rational about everything. It’s so easy to go full apocalyptic mode, and indeed, there are plenty of apparently persuasive reasons to do so. I’m not even saying you shouldn’t. Your house burned down! You have cancer! You have every right to feel terrible. You’re being assaulted from all sides, plus the government is in the hands of idiots and maniacs.
Even though I was raised to cower before personal disaster, I don’t really know any other way to be except logical and optimistic. At least this is the end game for me. I might pass through a stage of existential terror and the conviction that everything’s going to shit, but I usually come out of it with a plan in place and a reasonable belief I will be ok, if only on a personal scale. Suffering can be borne. I have borne it. Even when I didn’t want to.
That is not to say it doesn’t feel terrible. But we need to learn how to distinguish between feelings and facts.
On the shoulders of giants
My shoulder surgery finally seems to be scheduled for the last week in April. Rather than spend the next weeks wallowing in anxiety, I decided to go through my notes from 2017, when I tripped on the sidewalk and broke my nose and both wrists mere weeks before we sold our Brooklyn house and moved to the Hudson Valley. The plan is to turn those notes into at least 4 separate newsletter posts, which should take me through to the end of compulsory sling-wearing and arm immobilization at the end of May.
I’ve been threatening to do this for a while. I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seats.
News from Veronica
She knows she’s not supposed to be on the freshly disinfected kitchen counter.
Goodbye for now. Please do all the things—click the heart, share, subscribe, restack—if you are so inclined. Leave a comment! Send me a message! No, don’t do that, I’ll probably delete it out of terror. But comments are good.
I am so glad you are still writing and can share your travails and triumphs with honesty, humor and grace. Keep documenting, we do care. Going through aging myself I can say it ain't like the old days, that's for sure!
- Peter Engel
I am so sorry you have to have shoulder surgery. I would be incredibly anxious too. I assume you’ll take time off from work - and of course can’t drive or use your hand. Is your deck set up for resting, reading and drinking wine? Charlie loves the counter too - sigh.