Those “Grandma Memories” are so good! I agree that it beyond the time to cancel our political soap opera! Honestly, at 79 years old, I’ve had enough of Trump & his MAGA friends! I don’t always agree with the Biden people, but the choice between the two is an easy one for me! I’ve been reading your posts on a free account, but now I’m a paid subscriber! You must continue your work!
Time to cancel our political soap opera has been weighing heavy on me today. Seeing it written down has reinforced it. The political soap opera in Canada is just as bad as it is in the USA. MapleMAGA is working to destroy our democracy as is MAGA in the US. I hope to lighten my heart by shutting it out of my home as shutting it down takes a lot more than just me. Thank you, Sarah.
Beautiful, I really really loved this one. Reading about when "Kimberly took off her wig on Melrose Place or Dylan chose Kelly over Brenda on 90210" oh my goodness did that bring back memories.
I also enjoyed watching stories with my grandmother, who raised me. In our case though, she wasn't a soaps fan, it was mostly Perry Mason, Murder, She Wrote, Matlock and of course Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!
But still. Stories.
I've been writing my own stories, especially for myself, for ages now, keeping a journal since I was nine, and I'm grateful for it. It's therapy and compassion and love.
Thanks for continuing to share your stories with us, Sarah, cheers.
I watched As the World Turns with my grandma. While she watched she stayed on the phone with her sister across town who watched the soap on a competing channel. While they both watched they talked about the characters as if their scripted stories were as compelling as their own lives. My grandma would say “this is deep” about a particularly difficult plot point and I would marvel at her big and generous heart. I refuse to become cynical. I’m alive because of the Missouri welfare system from decades ago when people like my grandma who had little gladly paid taxes to keep other people’s chi,drew fed and housed. I will not give up on that ideal. Never.
I loved Guiding Light in the 80's when i got home from school - Reva Shane! I loved her! She seemed complex and intriguing amongst the cutout people and wierdness of it all. Then I moved to NYC and I saw the actress who played her a number of times because she lived in the same apartment building as my friend. I loved seeing her in person - felt like I was pulled back to another dimension. Thank you for your articles - I think your really funny and I lol atleast a couple times each article. I like this side of you. Long time follower on the twit too--- I'm hanging on for you and a few others I follow. I tunnel vision through the noise. When I say, "Sarah said.... (fill in the blank)" - my husband and 16 year old know who I talking about. <3
What memories, so vividly shown and expressed. Can visualize you both mesmerized by the black and white TV. Mine were near and far, magic at times, confounding at others. Family. See a sign at a restaurant "we treat you like family", I may turn away.... We are watching the heels and the baby faces perform their dance macabre. And we get today's version of Andrew Weiseman of Mueller fame. Same poop, different diaper. Have tuned them out, much like the old story lines of WWE.
We get Smerconish going on how dare AP call Iowa for Trump. Really? Everyone knew that result months ago. Then upset that MSNBC didn't air his speech that night. Yep, really important stuff, Michael. How about discussing Project 2025 of the Heritage Foundation? Seems no one wants to touch that one regardless of network. Or Trump's own Project 45?, crafted by Stephen Miller and Bannon and Company. Iowa reporters never broached those subjects with candidates.
What about asking Haley about her record as board member of Boeing? The Lever and DC Report did.
And who talks of Gaza anymore? What if it was your/their child under the rubble? Since Mehdi was fired...I mean let go...no one talks of Gaza children? Genocide?
And lastly, we have private equity firms taking over anesthesiology groups in cities, charging you more and reducing options. Article by a Kirk R. Jackson in The Dallas Morning News last year. Works at the Baylor College of Medicine. In a few weeks, the paper will be sent to Iowa for $27 a week postage. Was paying $600 a year. With this and other increases, will go to over $1400 a year. Count me cancelled. Thank you Biden and DeJoy.
Thank you again Sarah for the picture you once again painted. Should be in the Louvre!
I’m having a hard time watching America wither away. I can’t pinpoint when we lost rule of law - i don’t know if we ever had it. Certainly the Black folks have never had it.
Mine is apparently going to be the 32nd comment on your latest magnificent truth-telling, soul-healing essay, and I just want to echo and repeat and reinforce what everyone said in the previous thirty-one appreciative and thoughtful comments!!! I am also sending you much love and bucketloads of gratitude from chilly central Maine, where "Grey's Anatomy" now fills in, for me, for decades of clinging to the now long-lost "All My Children".... Thank you, Sarah! Please don't ever leave us!
I so enjoy your writing. Having lived in Missouri all my life I appreciate your observations about the old home state. Considering Trump, a grifter, liar, sexual predator, con man, enabled by power mongers, religious fanatics, and other enablers: now add to that his obvious mental decline...he may become President again, and as he continues to show blatantly apparent cognitive collapse, see who props him up, who is really running things, and see who will react against his and his followers assault on our decency and intelligence.
Another enjoyable read and some great lines and advice ...it is all a soap opera, a very bad one. Loved this “Stop assuming justice will be served but keep demanding it, whether or not you believe your demands will be met, so you do not lose the moral standards wedded to expectation”. Lovely picture and story of you and your Grandma. 🙏🏻
You describe my childhood relationship to the soaps almost to a tee, except for me it was the sixties, and was much younger. When you mentioned being slow enough to watch and do household chores, I immediately saw my mother performing that very ritual. Vacuum cleaner moving back and forth, her eyes fixed on the tube. Luckily for me, there were no VCRs and I was outside digging forts and hunting horned toads.
And yes, we are all part of the same captive audience, and it’s all downright evil.
My God, Sarah, this all feels like -... Way back when I picked up Jane Mayer's book in an airport, THAT was like discovering the benefit of bifocals - mildly nauseating in accommodating the clearer view of the world, but better for being less surprised. And now, your ever more pungent observations are still more refracting of the crooked light that's coming our way. In a word, thanks for your continuing to relentlessly dig in. Your writing, coincidentally is recently similar to another guy who suddenly saw the machine in a different light: Paul Kingsnorth, who's lately been writing about his visits to ancient Irish holy wells.
Me? I'm recently remembering the 1964 visit to our home by my Dad's old Seabee best friend, who, after the war, went home to build what became the biggest photo shop in Dallas. At the table after dinner, over a couple bottles of beer, he told my father, with twelve-year-old me at rapt attention, about how the year before he was the fellow who developed Mr. Zapruder's 8mm movie film, surrounded by sturdy men in dark suits with sidearms. "I saw the frame where the first round hid JFK in the back of the head, and then the frame where the second round hit him in the forehead and scattered his brains across the trunk. I know what the Warren Commission said, but I also know what I saw." I found and read the Warren Commission report at the library, and was changed by the fact that grownups could tell such whoppers and make such excuses.
I was also hopeful, that in the '70's we'd make everything better, and more fair, and more equitable. Hasn't turned out that way.
I appreciate your writing ability and the tenor of your work. Glad to have found it.
This is why I love your writing:
"my grandma and I would settle in under a brown and orange chevron blanket "
When I went off to college, way too many years ago, my mother knitted me one that I still have, 45 years later. The image brought back great memories.
"The reason they are scripted is because America is a mafia state".
Boom, reality hits.
You write as life actually is and that is both comforting and friggin frightening.
There you go again, killing us softly with your words.
Yes, indeed. She is scary, and so right.
Those “Grandma Memories” are so good! I agree that it beyond the time to cancel our political soap opera! Honestly, at 79 years old, I’ve had enough of Trump & his MAGA friends! I don’t always agree with the Biden people, but the choice between the two is an easy one for me! I’ve been reading your posts on a free account, but now I’m a paid subscriber! You must continue your work!
Thank you very much!
It’s my privilege!
Time to cancel our political soap opera has been weighing heavy on me today. Seeing it written down has reinforced it. The political soap opera in Canada is just as bad as it is in the USA. MapleMAGA is working to destroy our democracy as is MAGA in the US. I hope to lighten my heart by shutting it out of my home as shutting it down takes a lot more than just me. Thank you, Sarah.
••••🇺🇸 VOTE BLUE 🇺🇸••••
It may be your last chance.
Sadly, that’s the darn truth! Dictators don’t allow free elections!
BINGO! Restated…
🚨Not voting Democrat in 2024 is a vote for a repugnant quisling GOP dictator.
I had to look it up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling
Beautiful, I really really loved this one. Reading about when "Kimberly took off her wig on Melrose Place or Dylan chose Kelly over Brenda on 90210" oh my goodness did that bring back memories.
I also enjoyed watching stories with my grandmother, who raised me. In our case though, she wasn't a soaps fan, it was mostly Perry Mason, Murder, She Wrote, Matlock and of course Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!
But still. Stories.
I've been writing my own stories, especially for myself, for ages now, keeping a journal since I was nine, and I'm grateful for it. It's therapy and compassion and love.
Thanks for continuing to share your stories with us, Sarah, cheers.
I watched As the World Turns with my grandma. While she watched she stayed on the phone with her sister across town who watched the soap on a competing channel. While they both watched they talked about the characters as if their scripted stories were as compelling as their own lives. My grandma would say “this is deep” about a particularly difficult plot point and I would marvel at her big and generous heart. I refuse to become cynical. I’m alive because of the Missouri welfare system from decades ago when people like my grandma who had little gladly paid taxes to keep other people’s chi,drew fed and housed. I will not give up on that ideal. Never.
How you make poetry , useful poetry, of and about this world continues to amaze me. Much love to you, Sarah.
I loved Guiding Light in the 80's when i got home from school - Reva Shane! I loved her! She seemed complex and intriguing amongst the cutout people and wierdness of it all. Then I moved to NYC and I saw the actress who played her a number of times because she lived in the same apartment building as my friend. I loved seeing her in person - felt like I was pulled back to another dimension. Thank you for your articles - I think your really funny and I lol atleast a couple times each article. I like this side of you. Long time follower on the twit too--- I'm hanging on for you and a few others I follow. I tunnel vision through the noise. When I say, "Sarah said.... (fill in the blank)" - my husband and 16 year old know who I talking about. <3
Thank you!
What memories, so vividly shown and expressed. Can visualize you both mesmerized by the black and white TV. Mine were near and far, magic at times, confounding at others. Family. See a sign at a restaurant "we treat you like family", I may turn away.... We are watching the heels and the baby faces perform their dance macabre. And we get today's version of Andrew Weiseman of Mueller fame. Same poop, different diaper. Have tuned them out, much like the old story lines of WWE.
We get Smerconish going on how dare AP call Iowa for Trump. Really? Everyone knew that result months ago. Then upset that MSNBC didn't air his speech that night. Yep, really important stuff, Michael. How about discussing Project 2025 of the Heritage Foundation? Seems no one wants to touch that one regardless of network. Or Trump's own Project 45?, crafted by Stephen Miller and Bannon and Company. Iowa reporters never broached those subjects with candidates.
What about asking Haley about her record as board member of Boeing? The Lever and DC Report did.
And who talks of Gaza anymore? What if it was your/their child under the rubble? Since Mehdi was fired...I mean let go...no one talks of Gaza children? Genocide?
And lastly, we have private equity firms taking over anesthesiology groups in cities, charging you more and reducing options. Article by a Kirk R. Jackson in The Dallas Morning News last year. Works at the Baylor College of Medicine. In a few weeks, the paper will be sent to Iowa for $27 a week postage. Was paying $600 a year. With this and other increases, will go to over $1400 a year. Count me cancelled. Thank you Biden and DeJoy.
Thank you again Sarah for the picture you once again painted. Should be in the Louvre!
Thank you for this.
I’m having a hard time watching America wither away. I can’t pinpoint when we lost rule of law - i don’t know if we ever had it. Certainly the Black folks have never had it.
I cannot just give up. I don’t know how.
But I don’t see a way out either. DOJ is broken.
I love the photos that you post at the end of each article. The one of you and your Grandmother is 💯❤️❤️❤️.
Mine is apparently going to be the 32nd comment on your latest magnificent truth-telling, soul-healing essay, and I just want to echo and repeat and reinforce what everyone said in the previous thirty-one appreciative and thoughtful comments!!! I am also sending you much love and bucketloads of gratitude from chilly central Maine, where "Grey's Anatomy" now fills in, for me, for decades of clinging to the now long-lost "All My Children".... Thank you, Sarah! Please don't ever leave us!
Thank you! I appreciate this comment both as a writer and a fellow Grey's fan! Very excited to see Izzie return at the Emmys lol
Well now, of course, I love you even more than before, lol!
I so enjoy your writing. Having lived in Missouri all my life I appreciate your observations about the old home state. Considering Trump, a grifter, liar, sexual predator, con man, enabled by power mongers, religious fanatics, and other enablers: now add to that his obvious mental decline...he may become President again, and as he continues to show blatantly apparent cognitive collapse, see who props him up, who is really running things, and see who will react against his and his followers assault on our decency and intelligence.
Thank you. Thank you always.
Another enjoyable read and some great lines and advice ...it is all a soap opera, a very bad one. Loved this “Stop assuming justice will be served but keep demanding it, whether or not you believe your demands will be met, so you do not lose the moral standards wedded to expectation”. Lovely picture and story of you and your Grandma. 🙏🏻
You describe my childhood relationship to the soaps almost to a tee, except for me it was the sixties, and was much younger. When you mentioned being slow enough to watch and do household chores, I immediately saw my mother performing that very ritual. Vacuum cleaner moving back and forth, her eyes fixed on the tube. Luckily for me, there were no VCRs and I was outside digging forts and hunting horned toads.
And yes, we are all part of the same captive audience, and it’s all downright evil.
Excellent as always. Thanks.
My God, Sarah, this all feels like -... Way back when I picked up Jane Mayer's book in an airport, THAT was like discovering the benefit of bifocals - mildly nauseating in accommodating the clearer view of the world, but better for being less surprised. And now, your ever more pungent observations are still more refracting of the crooked light that's coming our way. In a word, thanks for your continuing to relentlessly dig in. Your writing, coincidentally is recently similar to another guy who suddenly saw the machine in a different light: Paul Kingsnorth, who's lately been writing about his visits to ancient Irish holy wells.
Me? I'm recently remembering the 1964 visit to our home by my Dad's old Seabee best friend, who, after the war, went home to build what became the biggest photo shop in Dallas. At the table after dinner, over a couple bottles of beer, he told my father, with twelve-year-old me at rapt attention, about how the year before he was the fellow who developed Mr. Zapruder's 8mm movie film, surrounded by sturdy men in dark suits with sidearms. "I saw the frame where the first round hid JFK in the back of the head, and then the frame where the second round hit him in the forehead and scattered his brains across the trunk. I know what the Warren Commission said, but I also know what I saw." I found and read the Warren Commission report at the library, and was changed by the fact that grownups could tell such whoppers and make such excuses.
I was also hopeful, that in the '70's we'd make everything better, and more fair, and more equitable. Hasn't turned out that way.
I appreciate your writing ability and the tenor of your work. Glad to have found it.
Tim. Just up the Hill from Lock 15