In justifying his opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito wrote,
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
“Until the latter part of the 20th century,” he writes, “there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None.”
Fifty-years ago I wrote a short story about a deceased bachelor lawyer in San Francisco who wrote fiction secretly for 40-years. When his townhouse was cleared following his death, the executor discovered the manuscripts neatly stacked in a closet and contacted a publisher to determine if they had literary worth. He said yes, and when published they were celebrated as a national literary event.
I’ve always been interested in the distinction between the creative process and its end product. My character was reclusive but felt compelled to write. He noted in his journal that with the volume of literature, mostly unread, filling library shelves was overwhelming and he had no interest in adding to it.
I’ve never had a literary agent or an editor, but I developed a deep appreciation for the skill set after hearing Mary Norris, copy editor at the New Yorker, read from her book Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen several years ago. But there’s a film playing in theaters now that has expanded that appreciation exponentially.
Turn Every Page is a documentary that chronicles the fifty-year relationship of Robert Gottlieb, the editor-in-chief at Alfred A. Knopf Inc. and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Caro. The film is the result of a seven year-long project by Lizzie Gottlieb, Robert’s daughter and an accomplished film maker in her own right.
Al-Jezeera reported this an hour ago (February 19). That’s where the death count in southeast Turkey and the northwest corner of Syria stands today. Two weeks ago, a 7.8 earthquake devastated the area, opening cracks in the earth, taking down buildings and crushing everything below. It looks like 9/11 x 10 with rescue and recovery made even more difficult by a civil war, lack of access, blocked border crossings, snow, and freezing temperatures. Every day the death toll increases, but rescue teams are still uncovering live victims from beneath the piles of rebar and blocks of concrete left in the quake’s aftermath. One million living in UN-supplied tents on the Turkish side. Aid blocked to the Syrian side.
Two days until the end of my Dry January…
On Friday night a friend asked me why I wasn’t drinking at our granddaughter’s birthday celebration. I deflected. The answer is complicated but it’s about gratitude… and grace. Here’s the story.
Marilynn and I have “cocktail hour” almost every night. We’ve set that time aside to be together without an agenda. It’s our little ritual. We continued it during Dry January. M still had her glass of wine but I went dry. I’m looking forward to the taste of my first Rangpur Tanqueray martini on Wednesday (recipe on request), but I chose to observe Dry January as a reminder that alcohol almost killed me once and how grateful I am that it didn’t.
