The best, etc., of 2020

I ended last year’s “Best of, etc.” with a strangely quaint optimism: “here’s hoping for a 2020 that doesn’t suck.”

Cute.

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To be fair, no one saw the cornonavirus coming. But even without the pandemic, I had no real reason to assume that 2020 would be any better than 2019, given the tiny hands at the helm of state. Indeed, for the first three years of the current administration, we had day after day after week after month of feeling like we must have hit bottom, only to discover there is no bottom. We can descend beyond our imagination.

And, of course, COVID was gasoline on the already raging dumpster fire of our political landscape.

That said: here is this year’s relatively unorganized sampling of 2020, as I experienced it.

A position of privilege

Though I spend a lot of time stressing and complaining about the challenges I’ve been facing this year — and all that is real — the bottom line is that I am grateful to have found myself in a job that has been relatively unscathed by the pandemic. Sure, rebuilding my course from scratch was hard — for me, as instructor, and for many of my students.  But at least I was able work, unlike many people whose businesses, especially small businesses, have been struggling, or outright failing, in the face of the virus.

It burns me up that Congress — and let’s be clear, this is primarily a GOP problem — has been so reluctant to offer support to those suffering businesses and their employees. Other countries have figured it out, jumping in quickly with a range of government subsidies, while the GOP has dragged its feet over (for example) increased unemployment benefits because people are lazy and won’t go back to work (which should be the point of the exercise, no?). And when we did good things — offering loans to help businesses stay afloat — over half of the money went to large corporations, many of whom did not use the money to support workers. Etc.

So I  recognize that I am fortunate to have a job that allows me to continue working without being placed in the precarious — in many cases dangerous — position that many find themselves.

But it goes deeper than that. I’m not simply fortunate to have “chosen” a relatively safe profession. I’m fortunate that I was in a position to choose that profession in the first place. It’s the culmination of an endless list of things I did not choose, things beyond my control: where I was born, where I grew up, what schools I attended and what teachers I encountered, what resources my family had when we hit a stretch of poverty, who hired me, who kept me hired when I went back to school, and so on — all filtered through the fact that I’m a straight, white male.

Most enjoyable (re)read

Perhaps in response to the uncertainty of our times, a third of the books I read this year were re-reads. Most of those were Reacher novels. Call it intellectual comfort food: the outsider comes in, fixes an extraordinarily bad situation in an extraordinarily violent manner, and then moves on.

Why would that be attractive in 2020, I wonder?

But the most enjoyable book I re-read — well, it was an audiobook, so re-listened-to? — was a quirky little Lovecraftian novel by Peter Clines called 14.  I read it five years ago on the advice of student, even though it sounded like the type of thing I wouldn’t like much. Turns out I enjoyed myself from beginning to end — Clines put together a fun ensemble of characters, and he’s a master of slowly doling out little bits of information, creating a slow burn of suspense.

And it was just as fun the second time. While I knew what was coming — for once, I hadn’t forgotten any of the plot points — I had fun seeing how Clines had crafted the novel. It wasn’t quite the same thing as re-watching The Sixth Sense, but it was in that ball park.

I’ve since learned that Clines has written several other books in this same Lovecraftian universe. I’ve already read one, The Fold; it wasn’t quite as good as 14, but it was good enough that I’ll re-read it as a way to launch myself into the rest of the series.

My biggest disappointment

This uncomfortably echoes last year’s runner up for “biggest challenge,” mainly because I articulated a lesson that I didn’t heed heed this year.

For years, I ran an unusual “freshman comp” course. Instead of the usual “read an article, write an essay” structure (that’s oversimplified, by the way — my colleagues are far more creative than that), I ran my class more like an anthropology course: I had students do primary research about a local subculture of their choice. A lot of great things came out of that course. At worst, students were able to write about a topic that they had chosen, presumably because they were interested in it; at best, though, students found their projects to be life changing.

And when I say “life changing,” I’m not exaggerating:

• One student changed her entire life plan because she discovered that she would not, in fact, enjoy a career helping addicts and alcoholics, as she’d expected. She’d thought that her experience as the child of addicts would create empathy, but discovered that the trauma was simply too raw. (After her graduation ceremony, she crossed the campus to find me and thank me for saving her four years.)

• Another student chose to study migrant farm workers because her father had left her and the rest of her family in Mexico to work as a migrant farm worker in the United States — and then died shortly after he managed to bring the family into the states. She was angry with him, and with the job that had stolen him from her for so many years. But she chose to study the workers to get a better sense of what her father had gone through to support them. In the end, she told us in her presentation, she came to understand and appreciate her father’s sacrifice. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the classroom.

Anyway… the pandemic put the kabosh on that project — participant-observation is impossible if you can’t participate — so I had to rebuild my course from the ground up, over the course of the semester. Building the parachute while falling, and all that.

And for some reason, I figured I’d be able to crank out a new module (complete with videos!) every week, even though, as I wrote last year:

In the end, there was no way that I could keep up with both creating video and, oh, say, grading. I had to abandon making videos for the last third or so of the course just to get caught up with feedback to the students. The failure was as predictable as it was disappointing.

My failure was, again, as predictable as it was disappointing. Lesson learned?

Most delightful music discovery

Every once in awhile, I stumble across a song that I just can’t get enough of. And by “can’t get enough,” I mean that I play it over and over and over…. Not great for anyone who has to live with me, but I yam what I yam.

The latest example of this: “The Trappings,” by Goat Rodeo — specifically, the version that appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (originally performed on Goat Rodeo’s NPR Tiny Desk (Home) Concert).

[Updated 1/7/23: Originally, I linked to a video that has since been marked private. Below is the full Tiny Desk performance, cued up to play “The Trappings.” But you might check out the whole video—they’re really cool.]

I don’t know what it is about the song, but I’ve already watched it at least a dozen times while writing this up. Maybe it’s the joy on Yo-Yo Ma’s face. Maybe it’s when the double bass player brings in his bow. Maybe it’s just their precision. Whatever it is, I can’t get enough.

The video even got me to start learning the mandolin, back in August — something I’ll need to pick up again now that the semester is over.

(I will just add that the title of their second album is brilliant: “Not Our First Goat Rodeo.”)

Most read blog entry

In last year’s “Best, etc.” post, I listed my friend Curtis Holtzen as “the friend I’m most proud of.” His book, The God Who Trusts, had just been published, and I was impressed.

This year, the review of that book (What I’m reading: Wm. Curtis Holtzen’s The God Who Trusts) turned out to be my most read post for 2020.

I’d like to say that this review was read more than any other post — over twice as many times! — simply because I published it in early January, and it had all year to accumulate views. But, in fact, none of my other posts received as much attention overall as this review received in its first month.

The person I’m most proud of

My brother Joshua Kemble just got the first installment of his graphic memoir, Two Stories, published by a real, honest-to-god comics publisher. It arrived, an actual ink-on-paper book, just the other day.

I’ve been following him as he’s plugged away at the project, a bit each night, while juggling a full-time job, a long commute (pre-pandemic, at least), and a family. And I’m still following as he has started up on the next installment.

(Interested in watching a graphic work unfold? Check him out on his Facebook or Twitter.)

The media critic I most admire

I’ve been pleased to see members of the news media finally coming to terms with their failure in the face of rampant disinformation, nutso conspiracy theories, shameless bullshit, and bald-faced lies. I doubt that it will last, frankly; the well-worn habits of the industry have probably settled into ruts, and when the emergency is less evident, most journalists will likely settle back into business as usual.

But if I could get reporters and anchors, etc., to listen to one person, it would be Jay Rosen, Professor of Journalism at NYU.

He has written about the press for a long time, critiquing attitudes (and the practices that arise from them) like the “view from nowhere,” the “savvy style,” “he said, she said” objectivity (so-called), and so on.

And Trump’s propagandist style — to “flood the zone with shit,” as Steve Bannon put it ¹ — has put intense pressure on all these practices. The press is close to breaking. Who knows, it may even be broken.

Just one example: from the beginning, Rosen has challenged the press’s belief that they need to attend every word that drops from the mouth of the president or the press secretary. “In the theater of resentment where you play such a crucial part,” he wrote four years ago, “relinquish that part.”

As things have gotten worse, his analysis has become even more precise. When press secretary Kayleigh McEnany materializes before the press, Rosen often tweets out a reminder about the real purpose of this theater of resentment. Here, for example, he tweets that reminder in response to a sort of victory lap by the press, when Jim Acosta received praise for saying what most journalists would love to say:

Rosen’s point is that — no matter how clever the jab, no matter how viral — even a gotcha moment like this reinforces the problem. It plays into the administration’s propaganda.

What makes Rosen so interesting to me, though, is that, along with his critiques, he provides lots of tentative answers — not hubristic, “here’s what you should do” answers; but tentative (though well-reasoned), “maybe you could try this” answers. (Many of them are laid out and explored at his blog, Pressthink. If you’re interested, check it out — especially “The Board.”)

If I were the head of a newsroom, he’d be required reading.

Most nostalgic purchase(s)

“Nostalgia” might be too strong a word for it, since the show only ended a decade or so ago. But for some reason, I was thinking about how much I used to enjoy Tiki Bar TV, one of the earliest web series.

I loved that show — short, quirky episodes that were, for a long time, shot in one of the cast members’ apartment, each episode ending with an appropriate-to-the-story cocktail recipe (someday I will run through them to see which ones I like).

So I went and re-watched the whole collection of episodes (I’m sensing a theme, here) — they’re all collected on their website, even if everyone has moved on.

And I bought myself a T-shirt and a coffee mug in memoriam. Fun!

Also: Lala!

Looking forward

Last year, I hoped for a 2020 that didn’t suck; “I don’t think I can handle another 2019,” I wrote. I didn’t expect 2020 to say, “Hold my beer.”

But this year, I feel I can genuinely hope for a better 2021. Trump won’t disappear, alas, though if we’re lucky he’ll find his ass in prison. More important, Trumpism, and the magical thinking that surrounds it, probably isn’t going anywhere. My blood pressure will likely rise at incessant cries of a stolen election or Bill Gates’ plans to implant trackers in us through vaccines. And all this will do real, lasting damage.

But I believe there’s just enough sanity in the country that we’ll be able to get past this pandemic, at least. Maybe we’ll find the political will to address police violence and gun violence and climate change.

And maybe we’ll even heal a bit — though I’m going to admit that forgiveness and civility aren’t that high on my list of priorities this year.

Cheers?

1. Michael Lewis reported this in a 2018 Bloomberg article, “Has Anyone Seen the President?” (though the link is behind a paywall)