1. We had some hard rain today, punctuated by at least one thunderstorm. It was a good day to stay indoors. By this afternoon, I wanted a break from taking care of household stuff. So, I decided to plunge into the FX television series, The Americans. I vaguely remembered that at least a couple of New Yorker writers had reviewed this series positively and I thought -- maybe -- I'd had friends on Facebook who'd enjoyed it.
At the outset, The Americans is set in the early years of the Ronald Reagan presidency. Episodes take place in Washington, D. C. and Falls Church, VA. Its stories focus on two KGB agents, played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, who live in Falls Church with two children as suburban Americans, travel agents Elizabeth and Philip Jennings. Elizabeth and Philip have completely transformed their former Soviet selves into Americans and with this disguise unshakably in place, they work as spies.
If, over the last few years, you've come to recognize posts on social media that are fabricated by Russian "troll farms", you know that they ingeniously reflect certain characteristics of particular American mindsets. These posts are polarizing. They express fear, fear, to take one example, of the USA being taken over by people from outside the country. I first thought something was up with these posts about four years ago when Facebook friends of mine were posting and people on Twitter were retweeting apparent photographic evidence of a pro-Isis rally in Dearborn, MI, replete with apparent radical Islamists apparently waving the Isis flag. The language of the posts accompanying the pictures sounded genuinely American, especially the claims that went something like this: Here's what the mainstream media isn't telling you! Isis held this rally in Dearborn, MI after the shootings in San Bernardino. Wake up, America! And so on. The pictures were fabrications, the captions were written by Russians, but they seemed so American, especially as ways of frightening and polarizing people.
My point is that, to me, watching The Americans is like having the fabricated social media posts come to life in the fabricated characters of Elizabeth and Phillip. They have completely immersed themselves into suburban life in N. Virginia. When new neighbors move in, Elizabeth bakes brownies for them. They take their children to the mall. Phillip plays dumb Dad games with ice cream cones. Elizabeth makes meatloaf. They disguise themselves in multiple ways as multiple Americans in their spy work and every persona they create is spot on. Like the Russian trolls online, Elizabeth and Phillip have so completely immersed themselves in different aspects of the American character and play these characteristics so naturally that they are able to hide in plain sight.
Elizabeth and Phillip's marriage was arranged by the KGB back in the Soviet Union. So far, in the first season, episode story lines are divided between Phillip and Elizabeth's spy missions and the difficulties in their marriage -- is the fiction of their marriage dissolving and are they developing a genuinely intimate relationship? And if they are, contrary to the designs of their arrangement, becoming a genuinely married couple in spirit, as opposed to being married in name and appearance, how do they live with the feelings they are developing for each other vis a vis the underhanded and deceitful, often sexual, demands of their work as KGB agents?
The Americans is a hybrid domestic drama/spy thriller series. It's compelling. I'll keep watching it.
2. I thawed out a couple containers of crab stock I made back in February and added baby carrots, chopped red pepper, a handful of shrimp, and some chopped up halibut to the stock and cooked it slowly. I seasoned this developing soup with Old Bay seasoning, some garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Then I decided I wanted it to be creamier, so I added milk to it and the result was a pretty tasty fish soup or fish chowder, perfect for this cool June day. It would have been better with cauliflower (my potato substitute), but I didn't have any on hand and just didn't feel like going to the store.
3. Dan Armstrong wrote me a couple of emails today. One of them was his electrifying response to having just watched the movie, Moonlight, and built upon a conversation we had in Eugene back in May about the movie, Green Book, a movie I haven't watched yet. He also wrote a moving response to what I wrote about having coffee on Tuesday with Deborah and Scott. I'm going to keep much of what he wrote private, but I will say that he took the time to write very positively about my work as an instructor at LCC. I won't detail what he wrote here -- it's between us -- and what I will write in response is between us. But, I will say that as my life moves, day by day, farther and farther away from those nearly thirty-five years I was a college instructor, sometimes my teaching career seems like a mirage. Some days it feels like I dreamed it. It might be odd to write, but Dan's email was a reality check. My work at LCC (and the U of Oregon and Whitworth) did happen and, more often than not, went well.
Over the last couple of months, I've been immersing myself back into the world of Shakespeare through DVDs, things I've been reading, and podcasts. I have also had the opportunity to write, through correspondence with Scott Shirk, what I think it takes to write well. (Be awake!) The dive back into Shakespeare has been invigorating, but it has also brought to mind how incomplete my knowledge was when teaching Shakespeare and sometimes I wish I could get back in the game again knowing some of the things I know now.
But, then I think, whatever I did or didn't know, nothing was as important in my work as what I did to try to inspire my students' love. I cared about trying to help students have a mirthful experience with writing, to maybe even have moments when they enjoyed writing (or loved it), more than I cared about how what they learned might contribute to their academic success. I thought that experiencing an invigorating love of writing would, in the long run, help them succeed, maybe even more than the more measurable aspects of writing. Likewise, I think my literature courses gave students every opportunity to love poetry, novels, stories, movies, and plays. I couldn't measure this, but sometimes I experienced it. Sometimes students would tell me they loved the works we studied, that the literature was alive to them, helping them understand and even expand their inward lives and to regard others more compassionately.
A simple sentiment of George Eliot's character Will Ladislaw in her novel, Middlemarch, was always guiding my work: "The best piety is to enjoy -- when you can. You are doing the most then to save the earth's character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. It is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight -- in art or in anything else."
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