Inertia…or action?

By Caitlin Kelly

Sidewalk closed, use other sidewalk…

 

From The New York Times:

Habits are powerful. We persist with many of them because we tend to give undue emphasis to the present. Trying something new can be painful: I might not like what I get and must forgo something I already enjoy. That cost is immediate, while any benefits — even if they are large — will be enjoyed in a future that feels abstract and distant. Yes, I want to know what else my favorite restaurant does well, but today I just want my favorite dish.

Overconfidence also holds us back. I am unduly certain in my guesses of what the alternatives will be like, even though I haven’t tried them.

Finally, many so-called choices are not really choices at all.

I finally hit bottom on two issues this week, and finally acted to try and deal with them, instead of just stewing and whining.

I live in a town north of New York City, whose main street is increasingly jammed with traffic, including 18-wheel trucks. Pedestrians have been struck and injured while in the crosswalks, which is illegal.

It’s getting worse and worse and worse.

The other day, I watched, enraged, as two drivers, in broad daylight, once more drove right through the crosswalk as I was crossing — and saw me looking right at them.

I gave them both the middle finger and went directly to the police station where I filed an official request for how many summons they issued in 2017 for this violation. (My guess? Fewer than a dozen.)

To my delighted surprise, the chief of police called me the next day and we discussed the 60 (!) summons they’d issued and how to potentially reduce the problem. I was so glad I’d done something.

I also called a friend in Canada to ask his advice and help potentially finding me and my husband full-time staff jobs there — because Canadian residents don’t have to pay for healthcare.

That alone would save us $2,000 every month.

I left Canada in 1988 and have no burning desire to re-patriate; we don’t want to sell our New York apartment and can’t rent it under co-op rules, which is a huge deterrent.

We love our town and region and would miss our life here.

I can return to Canada as a citizen, and we have yet to discover whether Jose has the right to live there with me, let alone work.

But we’re now so burdened with health insurance costs that are rising and rising and rising, and despite all our hard work, we feel increasingly frustrated and angry with our financial struggle.

We’re both full-time freelancers, living in a one bedroom apartment.

There’s no fat to cut.

 

Even if we choose to stay in New York, and we might, (and might have to), I already feel better for:

1) admitting these issues are driving me to my wits’ end rather than just bottling it up, as usual;

2) asking for help, which I’m always reluctant to do;

3) talking frankly with my husband about how badly this stress is affecting us individually and our marriage.

 

I was inspired by a New York Times column with the wise words:

 

Fury isn’t strategy

 

For me, 2018 is going to be a year of strategy and action.

 

How about you?

Gifts that arrive unwrapped

By Caitlin Kelly

 

 

They’re the ones that matter the most:

 

— Fierce, reciprocated, welcome hugs

— A genuine smile from a stranger on the bus

— A hand-written letter from a friend

— A yearly Christmas card from someone you’ve yet to meet face to face (Thanks, Leah!)

— A warm welcome back to a church we hadn’t attended in 18 months

— Standing in a bookstore line back in Toronto when a handsome guy in a leather jacket recognizes me, a dear friend (and Grade 12 prom date!) I hadn’t seen since high school

— Another sunrise over the Hudson River

— Another sunset

— Continued good health

— Freelance clients who even say thank you and pay well and promptly for our skills

— Neighbors we like who like us

— Taking care of a friend’s dog so gentle and loving I miss him already

 

— More than 19,000 followers for Broadside, from Iceland to Yemen, Malaysia to Romania.

Thank you for being here, for reading and commenting and returning.

Your attention is a great gift!

Wherever you are and whoever you’re with, I hope you have a calm, lovely holiday season!

 

One is the loneliest number (sometimes!)

By Caitlin Kelly

 

 

These few weeks can be a tough time for many people — thanks to social media and the mass media, we’re barraged with endless images of group cheer: parties, family togetherness, piles of presents under a decorated Christmas tree.

My husband and I now work as full-time freelancers, which means no office holiday parties for us, no matter how much profit our skills have added to many others’ bottom line. Even if you actually hate office parties, it’s important to have some social face time with the people you work with to help build those relationships.

The holidays can also be a time of intense loneliness — no matter how many people you know, if there’s no deep, growing intimacy with any of them, you might as well know no one.

For several friends, this year marks their first as a widow, and for one, her first in a nursing home far away from her home city, friends and lovely apartment.

From The New York Times:

People can feel lonely even when surrounded by lots of people, especially if the relationships are not emotionally rewarding. In fact, Dr. Carla Perissinotto and colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco reported in 2012 that most lonely individuals are married, live with others and are not clinically depressed.

“Being unmarried is a significant risk,” Dr. Holt-Lunstad said, “but not all marriages are happy ones. We have to consider the quality of relationships, not simply their existence or quantity.”

As Dr. Nancy J. Donovan, a geriatric psychiatrist and researcher in neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in an interview, “There is a correlation between loneliness and social interaction, but not in everyone. It may be simplistic to suggest to people who are lonely that they should try to interact more with others.”

I’ve struggled with loneliness for years since moving to the United States — despite having made good friends quickly in Toronto, Montreal and Paris.

I’m happiest deep in lively, long face to face conversation on a wide range of subjects, not merely texting.

I’m also just not much of a “joiner”, maybe because — being a professional observer as a journalist — I’m more at ease one-on-one, not in a group. And because I have to market my skills all the time to make a living,  the effort to get out and forge new friendships just really feels like more work.

I hate that very American thing of “Heyyyyyyy!” that’s outwardly “real friendly” — but often comes with no curiosity to go deeper and to nurture a more solid and enduring emotional and intellectual connection. In a culture focused, it seems, so relentlessly on economic survival, many “friendships” here (certainly in New York) are purely transactional — after you’ve each exhausted one another’s professional or social utility, that’s it.

True friendship can also withstand less-sunny moments.

I recently spent an afternoon with a new-ish friend, (we met in June 2016), and I was snappish that day.

I was in terrible pain, between my arthritic knee and damaged right ankle.  A bitterly cold wind whipped through the canyons of downtown New York, where we met near the World Trade Center, a place that brings up too many awful 9/11 memories, so an area I usually avoid.

And the place we chose to meet was costly, noisy — and closed early, ruining our plans for a long, relaxed lunch.

I apologized the next day, fearful my horrible mood had hurt our friendship.

Thankfully, it had not.

 

Hoping that each of you — wherever you are this holiday season — are enjoying it with loved ones!

 

And, if you’ve got extra space in your home and at your holiday table, be sure to include someone who might be lonely, but too shy or proud to ask for an invitation.

Where do your deepest roots lie?

By Caitlin Kelly

That most Canadian of foods…

 

If — like me — you’ve left behind the country where you were born and raised, let alone if you’ve moved many times domestically and/or internationally — you can end up feeling rootless.

I have three young female friends, ages 26 to 33, whose lives look like a game of Where’s Waldo? moving between Guam and Virginia and Luxembourg and Baltimore and Brussels and more, each thanks to their father’s work.

I also belong to a far-flung tribe of fellow journalists, web mavens and photographers, who are — to name only a few of them — in Madrid, Colombia, Berlin, London, Mexico City, California and Kabul, either permanently or on assignment.

I was born in Vancouver, lived in London ages two to five, Toronto five to 30, (with stints in Paris, Montreal and Cuernavaca, Mexico in those years), then New Hampshire and then, finally, New York, a suburban town north of Manhattan.

Montreal

Despite living for decades in the U.S., I’m still, in some ways, not very American, clinging to some of my Canadian roots in terms of my political values, (the collective over the individual, single-payer healthcare, stronger unions) and also in shared cultural references that only fellow Canadians — here or there — can appreciate.

What is it that roots us deeply into a place?

What is it that keeps us there, for years, or a lifetime?

Toronto, Ontario

 

Is it family?

Work?

Friends?

A political climate that best suits us?

A place — for me, Paris, where a year-long fellowship launched my career in earnest — that forever, and for the better, changed your trajectory?

Here’s a powerful and heartbreaking story about elderly Venezuelans — some born there, some who’ve lived there for decades after immigrating — now having to start a new life somewhere else, and to leave behind a country they love, but one in utter chaos.

 

Our apartment building in Cuernavaca, Mexico where I lived at 14

 

Marriages end.

Children grow up and leave.

Our parents die — freeing us to move anywhere. To live anywhere. To root anywhere.

One of my Paris faves…

 

I’m headed back up to Canada for the third time in four months tomorrow, a 12-hour train ride. It’s a lot of travel in a short time, the first time, to Montreal, for work, but the second and third for pleasure, and to see friends.

I’ll be dog and house-sitting for a friend, someone I met when she worked in New York at the Canadian consulate and with whom I’ve stayed in touch.

I’ll mourn the deep cuts in my hometown newspaper and former employer, The Globe & Mail, and its weird new re-design.

I’ll savor some Canadian treats like butter tarts, (sort of like mincemeat, but better.)

I’ll ride the Red Rocket, aka the streetcar.

I’ll visit with friends I’ve known for decades, renewing deep ties and hearing their news.

Then I’ll get back on the train and head south again — for a brief few minutes suspended between my two countries on the bridge over the Niagara River, its spume just barely visible — and return to the United States.

It’s recently become a place I’m deeply ambivalent about, with rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, relentless gun violence, climate change denial and an administration determined to damage the lives of all but the wealthy.

My life is now neatly bisected, divided into two exact halves, between the nation of my birth and upbringing and the place I chose to move.

I wonder more and more these days about whether it’s time to uproot.

 

Where are your deepest roots and why?

Can you show me some I.D.?

By Caitlin Kelly

 

We live in a lanyard culture.

Everyone’s got some sort of laminated badge hanging from a chain or a ribbon or clipped to their belt.

As a self-employed writer, my business cards, in two styles, and my website (which I had professionally designed for me) help to identify me to potential coaching students and clients.

 

But, as 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman wrote, I — like all of us — contain multitudes.

 

 

I’m a wife

I’m Canadian

I’m an immigrant/expatriate

I’m an athlete

I’m a collector of antique and vintage objects

 

I’m a photographer

I’m an obsessive listener of radio

I’m nominally Episcopalian/Anglican, although I haven’t attended church regularly now for almost two years

I’m a feminist

I’m heterosexual

I’m socially liberal

I’m a Francophile

 

Budapest

 

 

I’m a traveler

I’m a mentor

I’m a teacher/coach

 

I didn’t even think (?!) to include my race (Caucasian) or gender (cis-female) because, to me, they’re not worth mentioning….which in itself is a sign of privilege.

I get it!

Nor do I mention my age because it’s a quick and unpleasant way to pigeonhole and minimize me and my value in a culture that fetishizes and rewards youth. I don’t identify with my age group at all, even if perhaps I should.

My husband, American-born, is Hispanic and, while he speaks no Spanish — nor, as friends once asked me, does he wear a guayabera or dance salsa (!) — he likely identifies most as a photographer and photo editor.

We have no children, so the default roles of parents/grandparents are not ours.

I’m endlessly fascinated by how people identify themselves, and which identities they choose to foreground and which they choose to hide or deemphasize.

We live in a time of competing and loudly shouted identities, when intersectional feminism often gets angry and frustrating, as women try (and often fail) to comprehend one another’s challenges.

We live in a time of extraordinary income inequality, where identifying with a particular socioeconomic class can be relatively meaningless when there are millionaires who consider themselves “poor” in comparison to those with billions. Those who who fly only first class looking longingly at those who only fly private.

We live in a time of deep political division, where civil conversations stop dead, or never even start, so identifying yourself with one camp or another can be dangerous.

 

How do you define yourself?

 

What are your primary identities and why?

 

Have they changed?

It’s the holidays! Why not set a pretty table?

By Caitlin Kelly

Five of these for $10 at our local thrift shop

 

I love to entertain!

And I’m a total sucker for a beautifully laid table, as the French call it, l’art de la table.

If you’ve ever been to France or Italy especially, you’ve probably enjoyed some gorgeous table settings, even in inexpensive restaurants, thanks to lovely colors in seating, table-tops, floor tile and thoughtful lighting.

The last thing you want is bright glaring overhead light.

The idea is to set a mood, to eat and drink slowly, to enjoy a leisurely meal.

Creating a pretty table isn’t as difficult, scary or expensive as you might assume but it takes a little planning, some digging around for lovely, affordable items and having the confidence to put them all together.

Details matter: iron textiles. Polish metals. Make sure your glassware is clean, not pitted or cracked.

(Those of you with very small children, especially boys, may snicker and leave at this point!)

I’ve been amassing tableware and linens for decades now, and have a good collection of antique china and porcelain, including brown transferware, a sort of poor man’s china popular in the 19th century, which also comes in pink, purple, red and black.

I use mismatched but heavy silver-plate cutlery, found at flea markets, and keep it well-polished.

New tablecloths aren’t always easy to find, and tend to be expensive, but flea markets and consignment shops have plenty of them.

I sometimes just buy a few yards of nice fabric and hem it myself by hand.

 

Summer breakfast on our New York balcony

 

Fresh flowers — a must!

 

For new things, I like: Mothology, Anthropologie, Pottery Barn, Wisteria, Horchow, Crate & Barrel, Ballard Designs.

But I mostly haunt flea markets in every city and have found some great/affordable/quality old things at antiques fairs, consignment shops and inside group antiques malls.

 

To create a pretty table, for the holidays  — or ongoing — here are some things you might want to collect (or rent):

 

— linen or cotton napkins

— tall candles aka tapers, maybe mixed with unscented votives

— candlesticks or candle-holders, brass, glass, wood, crystal, silver

— a centerpiece of fruit or flowers or vegetation; (no fragrant flowers or arrangements too tall to see over)

— a couple of handsome serving platters and large serving bowls

— a large fabric tablecloth to soften and add color and texture or a long, wide fabric runner

— clean and well-polished cutlery, (what Americans call flatware)

— matching glassware (one for water, one for wine)

— salt and pepper and butter in their own servers/dishes

— a nice jug for serving cold water

 

No open containers!

 

Here are some of my own photos, for inspiration:

 

Restaurant Alexandre, Montreal. Marble table-top ringed with polished brass and cheerful striped bistro chairs

 

So sorry I couldn’t get these home safely from Venice!

 

I found the tablecloth in Prince Edward County, Ontario. The cup and saucer are early 19th century, English

 

A collection of candlesticks — three from Mexico (pewter) and one silver-plate found at a flea market

 

A vintage tablecloth scored in Maine

 

We love to have dinner on our balcony, a pleasure we eagerly await all year long

 

 

A table set for one of our dinner parties

The tribe meets — what journalism is really about

By Caitlin Kelly

 

St. Mary’s Episcopal church, Arlington, Virginia, where the memorial service was held for Wallace McNamee, his childhood church.

Photo by Cathaleen Curtis, director of photography, the Buffalo News.

 

I’ve been a journalist since my first year at University of Toronto, and published in national magazines and newspapers since my third year there.

It’s my life — if you’re curious, here’s some of my work.

It’s a life that makes intellectual, physical and emotional demands specific to the business.

We, at our best, share a clear (rarely explicitly discussed) set of values that resonate for those working in nations with a free press — albeit also under the heavy hand of free-market capitalism that makes even the very best job temporary.

If you’ve worked in any form of hard news journalism especially, whether photo, video, digital, print, television or broadcast, you share with thousands of colleagues worldwide the same challenges and experiences:

— balancing the need for speed, to beat every possible competitor, with the need to be 100% accurate

— discerning the many lies and omissions and distortions fed to us by the powerful into a report that, we hope, will help our audiences better make sense of their world, whether climate change, new legislation, economic issues

— working with very few resources (low pay, no assistants or secretaries or researchers)

— entering a cut-throat world where there’s always someone younger and cheaper ready to grab our hard-won spot

— knowing your value is only as great as your last story, not the prizes, awards and fellowships you’ve also collected

— having to persuade scared, dubious, wary sources to share with us their data and images to help us tell our stories thoroughly

— sometimes working in conditions that are dangerous, or merely extremely uncomfortable (heat/rain/conflict zones/war zones/the aftermath of natural disasters)

It all creates a bond that runs deep and strong, knowing that everyone in the same room gets it.

 

We recognize it immediately in one another, members of a far-flung tribe. 

 

We tend to share characteristics: we’re self-reliant, funny, wary of draaaaaama, able to put strangers at ease quickly, brave, badasses, typically pretty humble, (because we all know someone who’s done similar work much better/sooner than we have!), willing to challenge any form of authority to get the story — and incessantly curious about the world, even after decades of examining it closely.

That can make meeting someone new, even one much younger or older, staff or freelance, editor or shooter or writer, as comfortable as meeting a familiar friend.

I’m the veteran of three major daily newspapers, the Globe & Mail (Canada’s national daily), the Montreal Gazette and the New York Daily News, and have written television news and thousands of articles for everyone from Reuters and bbc.com to Marie Claire.

And every day, like my colleagues, I now watch in dismay as our industry keeps firing people like me — people who know what we’re doing, people readers and viewers rely on.

In the past few weeks alone, Ontario towns lost 33 regional newspapers as they were closed down for good, and new owners fired the entire staff of the L.A. Weekly, a respected newspaper — instead asking its readers to offer unpaid work.

Seriously?

 

Wallace McNamee; photo by David Hume Kennerly

 

Last weekend, more than 200 veterans of our business, many of them white-haired, gathered in a church in Arlington, Virginia, for a memorial service for Wallace McNamee, one of American photojournalism’s greats.

If you’ve been looking at news photos, in any medium, you’ve seen his work; his, like many of them, were the eyes recording history: elections, assassinations, pop culture, war.

My husband, a career photographer and photo editor at The New York Times for 31 years, knew and worked alongside McNamee in D.C., as did many of the men and women there — some editors, some competitors, all of us gathered to share their love and respect.

Colleagues and friends arrived, as we did, from far away, former awed interns now running the nation’s largest photo agencies and choosing images for its most influential publications.

Two photographers I’d never met both told me the same thing about Wally: “I was the new kid in town. I didn’t know anything and he showed me the ropes.”

Not the typical image of the sharp-elbowed, conscience-free “journalist” you may be more accustomed to.

If you maintain the skewed, ignorant and toxic notion that “all news is fake”, I wish you’d been there in that small white church, sharing the crowded pews, to witness what, at its best, our business really is about.

 

Two winter days in D.C.

By Caitlin Kelly

I’ve been coming to Washington since I was a child, since some cousins lived nearby whose father was a member of the U.S. Foreign Service.

I finally saw the inside of the White House in the year 2000 thanks to my husband, who served eight years in the White House Press Corps as a New York Times photographer — and even got us into the Oval Office for a quick peek.

Here’s a list of 8 semi-tourist-y things to do, there, written by a travel writer.

As usual, I was a very bad tourist so my post won’t extol all the usual sights, but some more personal pleasures.

We started our Saturday at a D.C. legend, the bookstore Politics & Prose, which is a treasure!

We could have spent hundreds of dollars and many hours there; I was researching the competition for a potential book idea and picked up a great present for Jose. I loved dropping my pile at the information desk where they laid atop it a bookmark “Customer Shopping” to make sure they didn’t get re-shelved. The staff was plentiful and helpful, and we picked up Christmas cards as well.

 

Then I dropped into Goodwood, one of my favorite stores anywhere; picture a smaller, hipper indie version of the American chain Anthropologie, with a mix of well-priced vintage lighting, decorative accessories and furniture with great new clothing, shoes, jewelry and accessories.

They had a pair of gggggggorgeous camel colored Prada knee-high boots for $165. If only they’d been my size! I scored a pair of burgundy patterned tights, another present for Jose, a black mohair sweater and a silk jacket. Splurge!

The store has been in business for 33 years, a huge accomplishment on its own. It’s on U Street NW in an neighborhood that has massively gentrified — head around the corner and a few blocks down 14th street to Ted’s Bulletin for a fun, fab lunch.

 

We met old friends for lunch at yet another D.C. institution, Clyde’s, and settled into a deep, comfortable booth to catch up — three photographers and a writer made for plenty of good stories and industry gossip. The service was excellent, the food delicious and the cocktails perfect. The interior, filled with paintings and enormous palm trees and dark wooden blinds filtering the November sunshine, offered a calm and pretty respite from holiday crowds.

 

 

On Sunday I went by Metro and bus to Georgetown, an elegant and historic enclave filled with narrow townhouses and herringbone brick sidewalks. Here’s a list of 16 things to do in Georgetown — including (!) seeing the steep staircase featured in the terrifying film The Exorcist.

 

 

I ate lunch, enjoyed a terrific gin & tonic, and wandered.

The best shopping? There are many great options, but check out  The Opportunity Shop at the corner of P Street and Wisconsin Avenue, with two floors crammed with consignment goods. Because D.C. is a town full of affluent and well-traveled people, the merch is amazing and prices reasonable — everything from a fuchsia silk Moroccan caftan ($85) to Asian pottery to sterling silver cutlery to Waterford crystal to prints and rugs.

Best of all, the proceeds go to support 5,000 needy children in and around the city.

 

 

The area’s side streets are stunning, house after house from the early 1800s; in 1967 the neighborhood was designated a National Historic Landmark district and it was founded in 1751. If you love architecture as much as I do, make time to walk slowly and enjoy!

 

 

I climbed steep 32d. street to Dumbarton Oaks, a stunning mansion that was once a private home and is now a small museum with an eclectic mix of pre-Columbian art and textiles, Byzantine art and textiles, ancient books and a legendarily lovely garden. Like much of D.C.’s attractions, admission is free.

I went to see a small show of paintings of women, and loved most the Degas oil of two of his relatives, two women singing to one another, on a visit to New Orleans.

It was a perfect weekend!

 

 

Have you been to D.C.?

 

Do you have a favorite spot there?