Sunday Sundries, 242

1. AOTW: Four-way stop--AOTW to the right of us--she arrived at the stop sign seconds before we did--she sits there, on her phone--I flash my lights--she notices--moves into the intersection (still on her phone)--I have my left signal on--I pull partway out into the intersection after she moves--suddenly she cuts right across my route, turning left--no signal--still on her phone--I say some bad words ...

2. I finished just one book this week, a memoir (and first book) by Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (Scribner, 2018). It was a a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018 (Nonfiction). I'd not heard of the book before we got a notice from the Hudson Library and Historical Society that she would be doing at talk on the evening of September 4. Decided to read the book--and go see/hear her.

Smarsh grew up in Kansas (I; in Oklahoma), but our lives could not have been much different. I grew up in a stable home, in a small town (Enid is the county seat of Garfield County), with educated parents. I didn't really have to work too hard as a kid--mow the lawn now and then, make my bed (now and then).

But Smarsh! Hers was a rugged rural life--a harsh one--with people struggling to put food on the table, clothes on their backs. She began helping out (in the fields, in the house) as soon as she was big enough to do so.

They were moving constantly (she was continually changing schools)--divorces, alcohol, despair, violence. But also a ferocious work ethic among the key adults in her life--including grandparents, stepfathers, other relatives.

She tells the stories of several generations of her family (she says her research/writing consumed fifteen years), but not in a strict, chronological way--more in a thematic one. And she comments throughout about the demonizing of the poor in our (sometimes) clueless culture--blaming them for their own poverty, even though family farming is always iffy, even though family members worked multiple jobs, etc. The absence of health care is another issue. And on and on.

She was lucky: She was bright; she paid attention, learning from the adults; she worked hard in school(s); she ended up with undergrad and graduate degrees, taught writing, taught at Harvard (!), and now speaks/writes about economic inequality.

There were problems with the book (so many characters--we needed a cast list!) and some repetitiveness.

But it remains a powerful story of challenged but determined people who worked their hardest to survive--and to give their kids a better chance than they had.

Looking forward to hearing what she has to say ...

3. It's great streaming the most recent season of Elementary on CBS. Although I don't always care for the plots, I do like Jonny Lee Miller as a contemporary Sherlock Holmes & Lucy Liu as his Dr. Watson.They operate as consultants to the NYPD.

(Link to some video.)

I saw online that this season is the last--too bad. And I'll probably cancel my CBS subscription: Elementary was the only thing we were watching!  I've loved Sherlockian stuff for decades--read all the stories when I was a teen.

4. I've written here before about my increasing inability to deal with tension in things we're streaming, and among the most tense is the recent season of Line of Duty, which we're streaming via Acorn (I think). Usually, I can manage only about ten minutes of an episode before my heart, brain, and cowardice combine to make me shift to something more ... pacific.

In this latest season, we're wondering if the captain (whom we've admired for numerous seasons) is in fact mobbed up. (The show deals with a police unit called AC-12 [anti-corruption], a unit that deals with crooked cops.)

I hope it settles down soon--or that I find a more effective way to mellow than changing apps.

5. This morning Joyce used the word piecemeal, and I wondered about its origin. Turns out it goes back to the 14th century, when -meal was a suffix that meant "measure or quantity taken one at a time," says the OED. So ... one piece/part at a time.

6. Last Word: a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

fauxhawk, n.

A hairstyle resembling a Mohawk (Mohawk n. 4), in which the hair is styled upwards in a strip running from the front to the back of the head but the sides of the head remain unshaven.

Origin: Formed within English, by blending. Etymons: faux adj., Mohawk n.

2000 Elle  Mar. 300/1 The pink 'faux hawk' hairdo..was little more than a bad shag in dire need of a strawberry rinse.

2001 Advertiser (Adelaide)  8 June 3/1 Australian men too scared to adopt the extreme look are opting for a toned-down version dubbed the ‘faux-hawk’.

2007 USA Today  6 Sept. d3 Bopping around in..a dark, slim-fitting shirt..was frontman Adam Levine, his hair sculpted into a subtle fauxhawk.

2012 Vancouver Province(Nexis) 12 Apr. a49 He is unlikely to dye his hair blond, streak it purple, sport cornrows or fauxhawks or mohawks.