On Maryland, of all things
Yes, the state
And we’re back!
Housekeeping notes: Last week marked the 50 ET Write Home posts! It’s fitting, I think, that it was about Barbie, and also that it happened without me realizing it. Thank you to every subscriber who has been there since I started this thing, and also to all of you who have joined since then. If you’ve been enjoying this, I hope you’ll consider sending it to your favorite friend or worst enemy.
Also, I am very pleased to share that this Substack now has 600 subscribers! Thank you all so much! Nobody leave!
As always, if there is something you would like to see more or less of in this newsletter, please let me know. Only paid subscribers can comment on posts (talk around here is cheap, but not free), but all of you are welcome to email me with your thoughts. I just ask that you keep it polite and constructive.
And now onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
One last piece of Barbie content from me: I talked about Barbie (and Ken!) on the Smithsonian’s podcast.
I went on Deep State Radio to talk about developments in Israel and between American Jews.
Richard Brody really gets Barbie (and that Greta Gerwig is a genius).
I also enjoyed this review and this one.
I haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet but some have and they are quite upset..and not for the reasons you’d think!
A new Jhumpa Lahiri book is coming out on my third wedding anniversary. Nice of her to give me this.
UPS and the Teamsters reached a tentative deal to avoid a strike.
The Washington Post has a report on how the fight over books—and book bans—has reached public libraries.
From Spain, some rare good news.
I found the lyric video for the Mountain Goats’ new single, “Clean Slate,” very moving.
MY VIEWS ON…
…Maryland!
I have lived in Washington, DC for almost eight years. I like it here. It’s my home. Anti-Washington, DC people annoy me. Do I sometimes wish that I could live in New York, where my family is, or in Europe, where I would do things like drink tiny coffees and take my dog on the highly functional metro? I do. But I like DC. None of what follows should be taken as me saying that I did not like DC before last year.
Last year, however, I realized an added bonus of living in Washington, DC, which is this: It’s right next to the state of Maryland.
I knew this before, obviously. I had been, not infrequently, to the DC suburb part of Maryland. But starting last year we began taking little weekend trips to different parts of the state. We went to Solomons Island last Memorial Day and went to a state park and a little art museum and had dinner on a beach. In the late summer, we went to Garrett County and walked around the lake and watched the leaves turn red. This year, we rented a house by the Chesapeake Bay for Memorial Day. A five minute walk away was some of the best soft-shell crab I’ve ever had. I had it with a nice beer. I don’t even like beer, but this was good.
Last summer and this summer, we spent a weekend in Baltimore to go see a concert (Norah Jones and Elvis Costello, respectively). We also had some good food and went to see museums and walked by the harbor. This past weekend, we spent basically 24 hours in Annapolis and ate by the water and went into bookstores and admired the old red brick. Each time I think that this won’t possibly feel like a real vacation. It’s too close to home, the trip is too short, the things we’re doing are too unremarkable. But each time that’s exactly what it feels like.
This little essay isn’t really so much about the state of Maryland as it is appreciating where you are and the fun things available to you in your own backyard. But the state of Maryland is nice, too.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
From Haaretz: “Israeli lawmakers pass the Reasonableness Law aimed at curtailing the Supreme Court's authority to overturn government decisions that it deems as 'unreasonable' - a pivotal element in the Netanyahu coalition's judicial overhaul.”
Yasmeen Serhan at Time wrote about what this will mean for Palestinians.
Also Haaretz: “Israeli lawmakers from the United Torah Judaism party submitted on Tuesday a proposed Basic Law that would exempt Haredim from conscription by deeming Torah study a ‘critical service,’ a day after the Netanyahu-led government passed legislation that revokes the Supreme Court's authority to overturn government decisions deemed unreasonable.”
From JTA: “ Joel Rubin, who has had leading roles at a number of Jewish organizations, is entering a crowded Democratic congressional race in a Maryland district that stretches from Washington’s suburbs to the Pennsylvania border.”
This, also from JTA, is an interesting piece on legacy Jewish groups speaking out against the reforms. More interesting to me, however, is whether these same groups will settle into defending Israel from criticism even as other such pieces of legislation get passed.
Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld, in defending New Florida standards that teach that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught useful skills, decided to make a similar case about the Holocaust.
This comic about whether you grow up with other Jews or without other Jews and what it means for your identity was interesting to me and might be to some of you, too.
That’s it for now! Hope to see you back here soon.
-ET