The Great Gatsby was published 100 years ago today.

While it was a flop at first, it captured its era well. I’m not talking about jazz, but about the nativist, racist rhetoric it critiques through Tom Buchanan’s portrayal. In 1925, the KKK had a massive parade in D.C., and Tom is exactly who would have participated (and likely made his employees go too).

(I’m not claiming the most successful book of the year or author was racist, but it’s ironic that the best selling book of 1925 was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes…)

Whenever I think of The Great Gatsby, though, I remember reading it for Eighth Grade English. Staring at the book cover one day, I noticed that eyes had naked female forms.

When I alerted the teacher to my discovery, he panicked a bit, asking us to not tell our parents. In our puritanical town, he could have gotten into a lot of trouble.

In 1988, in the full flush of my puberty, I saw Val Kilmer in Willow.

My crush on him was immense. When my (now ex-) step-father got yet another black Great Dane, he named him Martigan, hoping to kinder my affection.

I was a nerd, and Real Genius spoke to me.

Loneliness + boredom + my (now ex-) step-father’s record collection made me a Doors fan.

When I live in Oxford in the summers, I trace Simon Templar’s steps from The Saint.

Goodnight, my sun, my moon, my starlit sky.

If you’re right about tariffs, you shouldn’t need to lie that they’re taxes paid by other countries.

If you’re right about abortion, you shouldn’t need to lie that liberals abort babies up to a year after they’re born.

If you’re right about immigrants, you shouldn’t need to lie that they’re eating our pets.

If you’re right about woke schools, you shouldn’t need to lie that they’re giving children sex change operations during recess.

If you’re right about science spending, you shouldn’t need to lie that we’re making transgender mice.

If you’re right about social security, you shouldn’t need to lie that dead people are getting payments.

If you’re right about the need for even more voting security, you shouldn’t need to lie about massive fraud.

If you’re right about foreign policy, you shouldn’t need to lie about which country started a war.

Oscars watched: 1

Oscars awards missed, due to Hulu fucking up: 2

Movies watched: 2 (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes & The Comeback Trail)

Times I dropped my phone in a play on the way to my seat, but an usher grabbed it and they got it back to me: 1

Books: 5 (Quietly Hostile; When the Moon Hits Your Eye; Eleanore of Avignon; To Shape a Dragon’s Breath; Life Hacks for a Little Alien)

Classes ended: 4

Classes started: 1 (two more start today)

Spring “Breaks”: 1

Seeing the author of Weathering at the Mondavi Center: 1

Gasping when I learned the author got death threats when she first published her research: 1

Seeing Soledad O’Brien at the Mondavi center: 1

Comedy performances with the club: 2

Comedy performances with my class: 1

Seeing Russell Howard, one of my absolute favorite UK comedians: 1

Abstracts submitted for a conference in Paris: 1

Meetings to help set up an Atwood conference in Spain: 1

Breathing tests: 1

Nerve burn tests: 1

St. Urho’s Days celebrated: 1

Plays: 2 (Jeeves and Wooster; Everything Beautiful Happens at Night)

Times I wanted to hem a pair of pajama pants and so I got out a little sewing machine I had bought for exactly times like these, but it outsmarted me, and I gave up after a couple of hours: 1

Times Snowball gave me a heart attack by briefly getting over the fence: 1

Hubby ER visits: 2

Cat ER visits: 1 (Thoth was hospitalized for two days)

Interviewers who said, “Give my best to your cat and your husband, in that order”: 1

New Recipes Tried: 3: (a Bolognese with Thai red curry paste; Katsu Curry; Chicken Florentine)

New Recipes Loved: 0

Catch ups with friends: 4

Days that Anubis was diagnosed with a heart murmur: 1

Times it was sunny, so I put on a new sun dress and then Snowball jumped on my lap and a little nail ripped the dress (this was predictable, so D’oh): 1

Days in which I thought we’d reached a new low in our country, worse than the day before: 31

(As I write this, I’m listening to Trump explain that he’s not kidding about serving a third term.)

What I’m watching: Doctor Who; Seth Meyers; John Oliver; The Daily Show; Call the Midwife; Slow Horses; Abbot Elementary; The Simpsons; Harley Quinn; The Pitt; Matlock; 30 Rock; Elsbeth.

What I’m listening to and reading: The New Yorker; Discover; The Smithsonian Magazine; National Geographic; Morning Edition; All Things Considered; Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me; This American Life; Savage Lovecast; New Music Friday; The Moth; American History Tellers; American Scandal; Fresh Air; This is History; Working it Out; Levar Burton Reads; Asimov’s; Sidedoor; Pretend

Today is the birthday of my father’s father, George Sims Norris, who resided on this earth from 1905-1980.

I have two memories of him. The first is just an image: I’m in a kitchen, looking at him–his belt line was about the same height as the kitchen counter; I wasn’t as tall as either yet.

The other is a memory of seeing Pinocchio and being afraid of the whale. My family says George took me to see that; the internet says it would have been December of 1978, when I was three.

It’s possible the kitchen and the movie happened on the same day. My parents split up when I was only a few months old, and my father and his family weren’t really part of my life after. My father and George both died in 1980.

He was originally a farmer from Tennessee, and I have evidence he registered for the WWII draft, but I don’t know if he served. He likely didn’t know what to make of his son, my father, a hippy, who was likely a surprise baby, born twenty years after his other child.

I’ve been trying to learn more about his life, but I only have this one picture.

I’ve been more successful with his ancestors, including the discovery that George’s parents were first cousins (his grandmothers were sisters).

I don’t know what led him to migrate to California, where my father was born, and then to Florida, where he’s buried, beside his wife, who died the year I was born.

My family didn’t talk about my father or his family much. I was an adult by the time I consciously knew his name was George, but I wish I had had his name in my mind when I was much younger. I could have pictured him getting out of bed to take me to a movie, just as Grandpa George got out of bed to accompany Charlie to the Chocolate Factory.

Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversaries celebrated: 1

Oscar nominees watched in preparation for the ceremony: 25 of the 35 (full length) & 11 of 15 (shorts)

Oscar nominees enjoyed: 14 (full length) & 7 (shorts)

Plays: 3 (Macbeth; The Importance of Being Earnest; English)

People behind me in the theatre who complained that English was actually about identity and culture, when she was hoping it would be about grammar: 1

New roombas: 1

Trips to the Indian grocery store in Sacramento, during which an Indian woman expressed happiness that I love Indian food & attempt to make it myself: 1

Days I was horrified/ashamed/terrified to be American: 28

Nights of good sleep: 0

Comedy performances with my students, on Valentine’s Day: 1

“Bad pick-up line” jokes I had to write for our performance slideshow: 1

Comedy performances that were just me for 1.5 hours: 1 (Chronic Pain: A Comedy)

Former students who flew in from Colorado to see the show and who brought flowers: 1

Outpatient procedures: 2 (on the same day)

Live Comedy shows attended: 2 (Maria Bamford & Mike E. Winfield)

Paintings by my (Grand)Daddy that found places on my walls: 3

Drawings and paintings by my (Grand)Daddy that are at the Paint Chip waiting for frames: 4

New restaurants in Sacramento tried: 2

Times I realized I had eggs about to go bad & I rushed to eat them all because it seemed very wrong to waste eggs right now: 1

New recipes tried: 4 (Air Fryer Chinese-style Lemon Chicken; Slow Cooker Lemon Chicken Thighs; Chicken Mulligatawny Soup; Air Fryer Meyer Lemon Chicken)

Campus Book Project Events hosted: 2

Guest speakers in my comedy class: 1

Guest speakers in my Health Science Writing Class: 1

Servings of lamb: 2

Pilgrimages to the oldest continuous Chinese restaurant in California (and possibly in the US) before it closes: 1

Times I was low-key stalked by a guy in an Amazon delivery vest: 1

What I’m watching: The West Wing; Sisi; Black Box Diaries; Seth Meyers; Elsbeth; Groundhog Day; Sugarcane; Memoir of a Snail; A Different Man; Flow; Doctor Who; SNL; Yellowjackets; Slow Horses; I’m Still Here; The Oscar Live Action Shorts; The Oscar Animated Shorts; Wicked; Anora; Harley Quinn; The Daily Show; Last Week Tonight with John Oliver; Wicked; Sing Sing; The Substance; I Am Ready, Warden; The Brutalist; Flow; I’m Still Here; Maria; The Girl with the Needle

Mason Locke Weems wrote a blockbuster biography of our first president: The Life of Washington. In one edition, he added a story about Washington chopping down a cherry tree and refusing to lie about it when caught.

The story was a lie.

Weems wanted schoolchildren to learn a lesson about honesty, so he lied.

I was taught that lie in elementary school.

I prefer George Bluth Sr’s way of teaching lessons and lying to children:

On this President’s Day, I’m ruminating about Presidents and lying and hypocrisy.

Each day, the news shows me Republicans railing against waste and fraud, while wasting our money with fraudulent claims.

An unelected appointee keeps committing crimes (e.g. accessing and sometimes sharing confidential information; impounding) with no oversight and then explains to reporters that he has to, because unelected employees were acting without oversight, despite the employees having had oversight (the overseers are fired).

The President signed an order to “protect women,” while threatening women’s right to vote, to serve in the military, to have agency over their own bodies, to not be discriminated against in hiring, to be seen as professionals instead of DEI hires, to have medical studies that include us, to have medical studies on problems unique to us…

At least Weems had good intentions.

Times I decided it was too much to wait to wrap everything up at the end of the year: 1

Nights I had gin and tonics with my brother, with a lemon twist provided by our great grandmother’s lemon tree, and, in reminiscing about childhood, discovered that I was mixing up a time we were robbed with a time we were almost murdered (but the man who was going to murder us was killed by his sister that night instead): 1

Times my (Grand)Daddy’s office had been dusted before he died 7 years ago: 0

Times I was able to breathe well when trying to find hardcopies of (Grand)Daddy’s autobio: 0

Parts of the autobio I was able to find: ~20

Parts of the autobio found that he wrote about taking me in when I was a toddler, which he’d let me read years ago: 0

Hearts broken: 1

Bottles of wine shared with my uncle: 1

Times my youngest relative almost took her very first steps, to me: 7

Times we found a weird newspaper clipping pile that made us wonder what (Grand)Daddy was up to: 1

Times we found porny things, meaning we knew what he was up to: 8

Times my cousin was trying to clean the wrap around porch, which had turned into a junkyard, & I heard my mother say, “Tessa, the dynamite box goes with the dynamite!”

Discovering which of my cousins’ kids will be the one to take over all of the ancestry stuff when I’m gone.

Steps onto the beach it took for my husband to realize why I’ve always been such a beach snob: 4

Servings of gulf fish: 5

Servings of fried okra: 3

Times I almost murdered my husband because he ate a serving of my gulf fish in the middle of the night and then threw away what would have been my fourth serving of okra: 1 (it’s one time, but it’s not over yet)

Relatives who wanted to make sure I knew it was my husband, not them, who betrayed me, since they know that fresh fish and fried okra is my favorite meal: 3

(Grand)Daddy’s paintings and drawings we found that we’d never seen before: ~24

Strange evidence of Florida weather encountered: 1

Eggs my mother boiled on a Monday morning, to be turned into deviled eggs: 12

Times a day, each day, that she would get up to go make the deviled eggs: 14

Deviled eggs made, by the time I left, 6.5 days after the eggs were boiled: 0

Times my cousin and Kelly and I complained that the well water back home didn’t taste like home anymore, which was terrible, because we love how our well water tasted, and then my mom’s partner said they replaced the corroded pipes, and Kelly and I realized maybe we love the taste of corroded pipes: 1

Extra suitcases appropriated so that I could bring back files, pictures to digitize, etc: 1

Flights to bring me back to California from a post-Christmas family visit in Florida: 3

Migraines: 4

Fall classes started: 4

Days taken completely down by a terrible cold/cough, which spread into pink eye and a nasty ear infection: 10

Health appointments (treatments) rescheduled or cancelled due to my illness: 7

Student comedy shows missed: 1

New recipes tried: 1 (Slow Cooker Parmesan Garlic Chicken and Potatoes)

Books finished: 5

Pages of Margaret Atwood Studies edited: 355

Day I picked to listen to my Chronic Pain: A Comedy video, since I need to revise it and perform it again next month: the 25th

Days I procrastinated & didn’t listen to it: 4

Presidents: 2

Presidents who shouldn’t have been allowed to take office after committing treason: 1

Days I’ve been able to listen to the news without wondering what new lows the other party and its leaders will sink to: 0

Severe close and extended family problems (mostly medical) that are stressing me the fuck out: 5

Miracles (when I realized I would need a new OSC for my Oxford course and then got a message from someone confessing she’d always wanted to do it): 1

Oxford AirBnBs, Stonehenge visits, and Wilton House visits booked for this summer’s Oxford class: 1 (each)

Times my car’s trunk wouldn’t open, and I was able to figure out that it’s because a reusable grocery bag’s handle got stuck in the mechanism, and I needed to fix it, but my car is a mini cooper, so it’s not really possible to get into the back seat, much less the trunk area, at least not without bruises, so I got bruises, but I fixed it: 1

What I’m watching: The West Wing*; Randy Feltface: Smug Druggles; Randy Feltface: Book of Randicus; Elsbeth; Futurama; The Conclave; Star Trek: Section 31; All Creatures Great and Small; Harley Quinn; Gladiator 2; St. Denis Medical; Your Friend, Nate Bargatze; Abbot Elementary; A Real Pain; Roy Wood Jr: Lonely Flowers; Vienna Blood; The Sticky; Seth Meyers; SNL; The Wild Robot; Jim Gaffigan: The Skinny

What I’m listening to: Various NPR shows, including This American Life & Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me; Savage Lovecast; Serial; Working it Out; Levar Burton Reads; Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend; American History Tellers; Radiolab; This is History

What I read every morning: Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From An American”

*I restarted The West Wing on 1/20. I said to myself, I’m going to skip that stressful season when Zoe’s kidnapped. I can’t handle it when the Republican Speaker of the House tries to ram his stuff through while he’s in charge. While I remembered it as a season, it’s two episodes. Two very traumatizing episodes.

Dear readers:

Please help me spread the word about my film class in Oxford this summer!

We tour film and tv sites (including the home of Bridgerton’s Duke of Hastings), learn from Dr. Liam Creighton (a filmmaker and scholar), and get a private tour of Stonehenge!

Enrollment is open now!

https://globallearning.ucdavis.edu/pathways/academics/studyabroad/sa/uk_oxford

My 1.5 min video about it: https://youtu.be/aEFHUiLR9Ac