"Walking hand in hand with the one I love/Ooh, how I love the rainy days."

Neil and his Grandson sing. You can tell Neil is so proud of him! Looks like it they enjoyed it! pic.twitter.com/ur4rvKe7iN

— Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_The_Dr) March 3, 2026

At the time of his death (last week), Neil Sedaka was still married to that grandson's grandmother. They'd been married for 64 years. I thought Neil Sedaka was gay, but I see that he was one of those heterosexual men who seem gay to a lot of people. I think it's good for heterosexual men to see that it's fine to be... whatever it was that made people think Neil Sedaka was a gay man. 

Lovely grandparenting! 

"So there I was, moving from apathy to disbelief, holding the same plant my great-grandfather Sigmund [Freud] had nurtured nearly 100 years ago."

"A cutting grows up to be a perfect clone of the original – no matter how many times you pass on cuttings of the cuttings of the cuttings, they’re all genetically identical to the original shrub. Sigmund died before I ever met him, but I now owned a tiny part of his story. A biological heirloom that had lived alongside him and brought oxygen into his pioneering study – growing alongside his evolving ideas, laying down roots as he laid down theories...."

From "The strange tale of Sigmund Freud’s begonia/How the gift of a plant helped Emma Freud finally get to know her great-grandfather" (The Observer).

"It wasn’t planned. That wasn’t two coaches throwing guys over and saying 'This is happening' — none of that happened. That was as organic as it gets."

Said Jon Cooper, the coach for Canada, quoted in The London Times:

Here's the video at YouTube. Judge for yourself. Political theater? Is this about Trump — Trump and his tariffs and his fifty-oneness?

Meanwhile, Trump himself was at The Daytona 500 and — with his lovely tiny little granddaughter — the sports-related masculine political theater was not brutishly macho but nobly patriarchal:

ADDED: The oversized MAGA hat emphasizes the tininess of the granddaughter, and it made me think of this image of Elon Musk in a giant hat:

pic.twitter.com/nhRCtyA3wj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025

You can see the hat as it is — large — or you can perceive the optical illusion that Musk is a tiny person, a child. Musk famously tweeted: "I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man." And I've been thinking the love is a boy's love for the father he never had. Musk real father was — as Musk tells it — "a terrible human being" who has done "almost every evil thing you could possibly think of." The giant hat is a bid to be seen as a boy, to be loved by a father.

"This is unacceptable and disturbing. The DMV is taking swift action to recall these shocking plates..."

"We sincerely apologize that these personalized plates were not properly rejected during our review process. The use of hateful language is not only a clear violation of our policies but also a violation of our core values to proudly serve the public."

Wrote the California Department of Motor Vehicles, quoted in "Family that owns Tesla Cybertruck with ‘LOLOCT7’ plate says its meaning was misconstrued" (Washington Times).

"With the result of the 2024 election, my wife and her family are directing their understandable fury at my mother."

"My wife’s sister said, 'If she voted for Trump again, I’m completely done with her.' I expect that the next time they interact it will not be pretty. But my mother is a member of our family, and an invaluable caregiver to our children. She’s pleasant and kind in daily life and moved far from her home primarily for us and her grandkids. And she is my mother, after all. I’m torn...."

From a letter to the NYT Ethicist, in "My Mom Voted for Trump. Can We Let It Go? The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on how a family might proceed in the wake of a momentous presidential election."

"Torn"... presumably because Mother is so useful as a childcare provider. And what, if anything, are you doing for her?

"If I try to protect my mother from vitriol, would I be betraying myself, or my wife and her family, in order to preserve harmony and child care?"

"Harmony and child care"... what an absolute loser!

"Hospitals and shops catering to pets have become ubiquitous, while childbirth clinics have all but disappeared..."

"... as South Korea’s birthrate has become the lowest in the world. In parks and neighborhoods, strollers are more often than not carrying dogs. Online shopping malls say they sell more baby carriages for dogs than for babies.... 'Liam is like a child to me,' said Ms. Sim, 34, who does not plan to get married or have children. 'I love him the way my mom loved me. I eat old food in the refrigerator, saving the freshest chicken breast for Liam.' Her mother, Park Young-seon, 66, said she felt sad that many young women had chosen not to have babies. But she said she had come to accept Liam as 'my grandson.' On a recent weekend, the mother and daughter joined six other families who took their dogs on a picnic to Mireuksa, a Buddhist temple in central South Korea. So-called temple stays are a way for ordinary people to meditate and enjoy the monastic quiet. Now, some temples encourage families to bring their dogs along. All participants, human and canine, wear gray Buddhist vests and rosaries."

From "One of the World’s Loneliest Countries Finds Companionship in Dogs/They have become pampered family members in South Korea, which has the world’s lowest birthrate and where much of the population lives alone" (NYT).

"My son has all but cut connections with me.... A year or so ago when I was visiting, I had a DNA test swab with me..."

"... and asked [my granddaughter] to supply the saliva. The good news is, it turns out she is indeed my granddaughter, although unlike all the other grandkids, she looks nothing like any of the families on my side. She looks like a clone of her mother and a lot like her half brother from a different father. The results of this test leaked out via another family member, and there was a lot of anger by the mother that I doubted her faithfulness. I did apologize, although I really wanted to know the results. My apology was not accepted as good enough...."

From "Carolyn Hax: She doubted her grandkid’s paternity. So she picked up a DNA test. A letter writer insists on the truth of a grandchild’s paternity, and wonders if it must come at a cost with the child’s family" (WaPo).

That goes into The Annals of Unaccepted Apologies.

I wonder:

1. How often does it happen that someone secretly acquires a DNA sample from another person and gets it tested? It's always wrong, so there would not usually be confessions.

2. What tempted the grandmother to give in, not only to her unseemly curiosity, but to telling someone else what she did? Did she not realize how wrong she was? Did this other person participate in gossip about the child's paternity, motivating the grandmother to whip out her proof?

3. How often has it happened, across the great span of human existence, that family members have gazed upon the face of an innocent child and formed ideas about who, really, is the father? What evils, great and small, have they committed in the name of their suspicions?

4. Did Jesus Christ look "like a clone of [his] mother"? (I know: different sex. But still.)("With the facts in place, there is only one conclusion: Jesus was trans, as he would have been born as a genetic copy of Mary, but transitioned to male at some point.")

I know it's a puff piece, but I want to quote the first 2 paragraphs of this WaPo article about Joe Biden.

From "The private chats and chance encounters that shape Joe Biden’s thinking/After conversations with his grandchildren, fellow churchgoers and Delaware neighbors, the president brings their worries to the Oval Office" (WaPo):

In the early months of his presidency, as the pandemic dragged on with its stifling restrictions, President Biden often delivered a favorite monologue to aides: He was worried about young people’s mental health, he said. High school seniors were missing prom and graduation. He wanted to know how college students went on dates.

Specifically, Biden wondered how young people could “make love” under the circumstances, according to two aides who heard the president use that phrase multiple times during his first year in office. Biden’s fixation on loneliness among young people, the aides said, grew out of his near-daily conversations with his grandchildren.

Biden had a "favorite monologue" about teenagers "making love."

"In April, President Biden told a group of children that he had 'six grandchildren. And I’m crazy about them. And I speak to them every single day. Not a joke.'"

"But the president has not yet met or publicly mentioned his other grandchild. His White House has not answered questions about whether he will publicly acknowledge her now that the child support case is settled."

From "Hunter Biden’s Daughter and a Tale of Two Families/The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who has not yet met her father or her grandfather, is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright" (NYT).

5 out of 6 of the most popular comments over there are critical of President Biden: 

The possibility that "grandma" has become a slur, to be replaced by neologisms like "Gaga" and "Abba."

'It's denial!'

Sixties icon Twiggy has shared that she's rejected the term 'grandma' because it makes her feel old. New grandmothers are now referring to themselves as 'Gaga', 'Abba' & 'Glam Ma'.

But is there anything wrong with the term 'grandma’'? pic.twitter.com/gu0WxttqOV

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) May 30, 2023

"We asked more than 100 millennials and Gen Xers about their parents’ phone habits. Around half said their parents are good..."

"... about not being on their phones too much and being present in the moment.... The rest, however, are absorbed in their devices. They are playing Words with Friends, Candy Crush and card games, often with the volume turned up. They are looking at the news, checking sports scores, scrolling Facebook and texting. Some are even using them as actual phones. 'Phone calls are the worst,' says Richard Husk, a parent of two. 'They will take a 45-plus-minute phone call with some random golf buddy while I am over with the kids trying to visit with them.' Tyler McClure said his mom is on Facebook constantly and can’t do anything without her phone, while his dad 'Googles the things he’s watching on television as he watches television.'... Many people we spoke to said their parents enjoy reading things out loud from their phones, telling their families or anyone nearby about the weather, the headlines or viral stories that may or may not be true...."

From "Baby boomers can’t stop staring at their phones/Everyone struggles to put down their phones, but some families have had enough" (WaPo).

Reading the news and reading things out loud that you think ought to be shared – that's what my grandfather used to do. He was born in 1899, and the news was in the newspaper. Of course, there was only one copy of the newspaper in the house, and he was the one with the claim to the front section. He'd be sitting in his chair in the corner of the living room, newspaper open in front of his face, and he applied his own standards to what ought to be heard by the rest of us. No one ever considered that this might be some sort of old-man, out-of-it habit that the younger people should mobilize to fix!

And thank God if your aging parent has friends. How dare you characterize your father's friend as "random"? If someone is his friend, that person is not random. I think this Husk fellow ought to think about what he's doing when he's "over with the kids trying to visit with" his father. Maybe dad is trying to give Husk the clue that the visit has gone on too long. Are you there for a few hours, or are you visiting for days? I don't know, but I don't think you should disrespect your father in the newspaper like that.

I wish my father were still alive, spending too much time on the phone or not. And I would love to hear Pop (my grandfather) read selections from the Wilmington Morning News again.

"Ms. Thomas and her husband were foster parents for their two grandsons for nearly a year and a half...."

"The expense reimbursements, day care support and a $200-per-year stipend for each child had been a big help, but the imposing child welfare requirements — including monthly visits from social workers — made Ms. Thomas want to live with her grandsons like a normal family. In April she and her husband took guardianship of the boys, which relieved them of the foster care requirements, but the decision came at a cost: They lost the expense reimbursements and the day care support.... $2,700 per month in day care costs [is] more than her $2,300 monthly income...."

From the end of the NYT article "Can ‘Kinship Care’ Help the Child Welfare System? The White House Wants to Try/The Biden administration proposes spending $20 billion over a decade to help some of the most vulnerable families in the country, including relatives suddenly thrust into child rearing."

So the "child welfare requirements — including monthly visits from social worker" are so onerous, that the grandparents preferred to pay the expenses themselves and have the freedom and privacy given to guardians. How is the Biden administration going to help people in their position? I would think retired grandparents like the Thomases are less in need of reimbursement of day care costs than many parents who are taking care of their own children. 

I watch TikTok so you don't have to. And here are my 5 selections of the day:

1. A high school teacher says the kids roasted him for eating lunch "with no bev."

2. Everyone should live like a grandmother — 10 reasons!

3. What if it had been Ben Affleck slapping Jerry Seinfeld? — asks Michael Rapaport.

4. Maybe time is a landscape, and the dead are on the other side of a hill... or so Einstein seems to have written to a friend whose husband had died.

5. Four young brothers pitch barbershop quartet singing.

Biden is betting Americans don't care about Afghanistan and we'll blind ourselves to the ongoing catastrophe.

Looking at the "Most Read" list at The Washington Post this morning, I think he might win that bet.

How many Maryland workers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Grandma wants a hug. Covid's still percolating in the dumbosphere. And a lady lost a footrace. 

America curls up and gets cozy. That virus is going after Republicans who sorta deserve it. The birdies didn't deserve the murderous workers. Are we getting our snuggie-wuggles from the kiddies? Feeling better to know that the runner who didn't run in the Olympics probably wouldn't've won anyway? 

It's comfy to tsk at the Gramma who loves too much, the unvaccinated dead man, the Mississippians buying their medicine at the feed store, the workers who killed birds. 

It's manageable caring. Shed a tear for a bird and another bird! Keep it up, and Joe's bet is won.

"President Donald Trump on Friday broke his silence on a tell-all book that dives into the president's upbringing and family life..."

"... distancing himself from his author niece and calling her a 'mess.' 'Mary Trump, a seldom seen niece who knows little about me, says untruthful things about my wonderful parents (who couldn’t stand her!) and me, and violated her NDA,' Trump wrote on Twitter. 'She’s a mess! Many books have been written about me, some good, some bad. Both happily and sadly, there will be more to come!'... Speaking with CNN's Chris Cuomo hours after Trump's tweet, Mary Trump [said] that she and her grandmother were 'very close.' 'My grandfather didn't really have positive feelings for anybody except perhaps Donald'.... During the explosive interview with Maddow [on Thursday], Mary Trump said that she had heard the president and other members of their family use anti-Semitic language and a derogatory slur on Black people."

From "A seldom seen niece': Trump fires back at Mary Trump over tell-all book/The author, in turn, delivers a live rebuttal on cable television" (Politico).

I'd thought that Trump was going to keep silent about Mary Trump — that silence would be an eloquent way to suggest that he knows a lot about her — leaving us to imagine that she may have mental health problems or complicated grudges and that Trump is honoring his beloved dead brother by leaving his daughter in a special sacred circle of immunity from his otherwise free-wheeling attacks.

And maybe that was what he'd decided to do but he had to reverse his position after the Maddow interview, because the poison of the accusation of racist speech requires an immediate antidote.

But was that an effective antidote? It's a hell of a thing to say to someone — your grandparents couldn't stand you.

I know I discarded the racist-speech accusation immediately because it's just about individual words that were used — used or mentioned? — in private. I need at least sentences — not isolated words — to have any idea whether what was said was even bad.

Here's the Rachel Maddow segment:



By the way: "When you ask a normal, right-handed person about something he's supposed to have seen, if he looks upward and to his left, he's truly accessing his memory of the incident... However, if he looks upward and to his right, he's accessing his imagination, and he's inventing an answer." Mary Trump repeatedly looked up and to the right to "see" the answers to the questions she was asked. I don't know if she's right-handed.

"Because what if no one picks you for their bubble? And how do you decide who belongs in yours? How do you issue an invitation, or reject one?"

"What if your parents swear they’ve been following the rules and are dying to see their grandchildren, but you’re not ready to risk it because they’re Fox News viewers and who the hell knows what they think 'observant' even means? What if you’re desperate to hang out with your bestie, but she’s already committed to a guy she met three weeks ago on a dating app and wants to get to know in person? And again: What if no one picks you?... If the very thought of being picked last or going completely, utterly unchosen is giving you flashbacks to junior high where Michelle Goldman said that you couldn’t sit at her table in the cafeteria because all the seats were taken when clearly all the seats were not taken, I am right there with you. And would like to remind you that you are a successful, accomplished, beloved adult and also how many novels has Michelle published?"

Writes Jennifer Weiner in "The Quarantine Bubbles Are Coming and I, for One, Am Stressed/How do you decide who belongs in yours? What if you join and find it’s not working out? And what if you aren’t invited to one at all?" (NYT).

1. Jennifer Weiner has published 13 novels.

2. Is "observant" a standard term people are using to mean observing the rules about coronavirus? The most standard meaning of "observant" — used as shorthand — has to do with religion, meaning actually following the rules and not merely identifying with the culture of the religion.

3. There's an obsolete meaning of "observant" — "Deferential, respectful; considerately attentive; assiduous in service; obsequious" (OED). Mary Wollstonecraft used it in "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1791): Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers — in a word, better citizens."

4. Imagine extending the separation of grandchildren and grandparents for more months because your parents watch Fox News. It's not the politics, per se, but the Fox News as evidence that they're not fact-based, not connecting with science and the right experts.

5. Are you worried about the coming "bubbles" — these enclosed groups of households that are phasing out of one-household-only lockdowns? Is it obvious which other household you'd take on as part of your bubble or are you beset with other households who'd like to bubble-ize you?

6. What's the bigger bubble problem — being left outside of any good bubble like the high-schooler who can't find a table in the cafeteria or having too many people who want you in their bubble? I think the latter is the bigger problem, because you can always continue to shelter alone, and no one sees how alone you are. It's not like standing there in front of the whole school holding a tray, feeling unwanted, and getting rejections right in your face.

7. If you weren't one of the popular kids in high school, but you've become a pretty successful adult, how do you feel about the popular kids now? Do you think about them at all? Do you still agonize about whether you are popular? Or are you a popular adult?

8. If you are a popular adult, did you learn anything interesting from your time in seclusion? Have you changed what you want out of relationships, or are you just eager to get back to socializing?

9. If the seclusion for you was not that different from the way you were living before the virus, are you wistful seeing other people wonder and worry about their bubbles, or are you ready to see your lifestyle once again reserved for those who come about it only in ways that have nothing to do with the virus?

10. Do you want a bubble but not know how — or not have the nerve — to ask anyone to be in yours? What if all the people who you might ask feel the same way too? What if that's not so different from how you and they were living in non-virus times?

Tune in, turn on, drop out — with Hillary Clinton. Listen to the colors of your mind.

I'm reading Architectural Digest's Step Inside Bill and Hillary Clinton's Deeply Personal Washington, D.C., Home." Deeply personal? Is that even possible

Ms. Clinton’s mother, Dorothy Rodham, partnered with her daughter in selecting most of the furnishings and landing on just the right paint and patterns... “Both my mother and I love color, and you can see, we have a lot of color in the house that came from our collaboration.”... “I have to say, it was a very nice refuge from my life in the Senate,” says Ms. Clinton of the process. “I’d come home or I’d get sent color samples, or fabric swatches, or pictures of furniture, and it was a nice way to turn one part of my brain off and turn the other on.”

Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.

From the slideshow...

An anteroom ahead of the kitchen, this nook is used for informal meetings.... The space has a little desk that Ms. Rodham had used for correspondence and paying bills.

We're calling her "Ms. Rodham now? And I'm supposed to picture her sitting at a little desk paying her own bills and doing "correspondence"? What is it, the 19th century all of a sudden? Is she still selling the idea that she doesn't know anything about email? [ADDED: Sorry, "Ms. Rodham" must be the mother Dorothy.]

[The decorator Rosemarie] Howe experimented in order to find just the right red for these walls, something coral and not too blue. She landed on Benjamin Moore Bird of Paradise 1305. The painting over the love seat is by Virginia artist Barbara Ryan. “It was something I saw and admired so long ago,” says Ms. Clinton. “We’ve had it for many years. Someone who looked at it remarked and laughed: If you look at the cloud or smoke in the back, it looks like a comic profile of my husband. But that’s not why I bought it.”

Not why I bought it but I enjoy telling people the puff of nothingness in the background looks like my husband... who used to have a little nook next to the Oval Office for informal meetings.

I'm sorry! Am I going too deeply personal? All right then, I'll turn that part of my brain off and turn the other one on, the one that thinks somebody has some D.C. real estate to unload and a glitzy magazine to assist in reeling in a credulous buyer.

But listen to the color of your dreams/It is not living, it is not living/Or play the game "Existence" to the end/Of the beginning...

ADDED: Here at Meadhouse, the word "deeply" is considered deplorable. Read the 2014 post, "Deeply... it's such a poser word."

Said Meade... It made me wish I'd had a tag on the word "deeply" all along. It's a metaphor, creating an image of abstract concepts in space. Where are you when you are "deeply in love"? There are so many trite usages — deeply in love, deeply disappointed, deeply religious, thinking deeply, deeply troubled, deeply concerned, deeply offended, deeply regret — and "deeply" is deeply embedded in constitutional law doctrine with the phrase "deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition." But I'm interested in seeing how is "deeply" is deployed in various political and cultural statements, so I've searched this blog's archive, and here's the best of what I found....

There's a list of 12 items, and it deserves a new one, the unlucky 13th: "Step Inside Bill and Hillary Clinton's Deeply Personal Washington, D.C., Home." Interestingly enough, 2 of the items on the old list have Hillary:

5. Last May [2013[, Tina Brown said: "Now that Chelsea is pregnant, and life for Hillary can get so deeply familial and pleasant, she can have her glory-filled post-presidency now, without actually having to deal with the miseries of the office itself..."...

8. "Clinton’s interest in global women’s issues is deeply personal, a mission she adopted when her husband was in the White House after the stinging defeat of her health care policy forced her to take a lower profile." 

"Deeply" — in the Hillary Clinton context — seems like a cloud or puff of smoke in the shape of defeat.

"I was never thrilled about the actual name 'Dad,' which in American culture is someone who tells bad jokes and wears socks with sandals."

"He is Lord of the Grill and the Duke of Fix-it. He’s the best of the 'good guys,' but when it comes to the nitty-gritty of parenting, 'Mom' schedules the appointments, buys the clothes and makes the play dates. It is a common division of labor for most heterosexual couples: Moms do more.... I, with callused hands, spent a great deal of time with our children when they were infants. As an academic, I was grateful for long summers and even longer, Swedish-style paternity leaves. I took the kids to usual spots like parks and zoos, but we also went to places like Mommy and Me Yoga and baby swim lessons. I quickly learned that the daytime world of child care, even in New York City, is populated almost exclusively by mothers, nannies and children...."

Writes Kevin Noble Maillard (a lawprof) in "When Being a Good ‘Dad’ Gets You Promoted to ‘Mommy’" (NYT). His 3-year-old daughter calls him "Mommy." And his 5-year-old son had called both parents “mama” until he was "steer[ed]" toward "papa" and took to calling his father "Mimi."

Maillard — who knows of a 10-year-old boy who calls his father “Honey” — likes the idea of children being "creative" in what to call their parents. He contrasts that to grandparents, who choose what they are to be called.

Did you know grandparents have that privilege? I experienced that phenomenon in my childhood, when my paternal grandmother — who felt she was too youthful to be called "grandma" — got away with determining that she would be called "Mom" (and therefore that her husband was "Pop"). I grew up thinking of "Mom" and "Pop" as words for grandparents and never advanced from calling my mother "Mommy" to calling her "Mom." She simply became "Mother."

As for my father, he was, for me, for his entire life and beyond, "Daddy." I never got the slightest clue whether he started that or perpetuated it or whether he liked it or not. Maybe that was because it was a time in American culture when fathers didn't muse openly about how they felt about relationships.

Anyway, on the topic of grandparents claiming the power to name themselves, Maillard links to "Grandude? G-dawg? Nonny? Boomers Name Themselves" (NYT):

... I know a grandma who goes by Z. And one who has zero Italian ancestors but nonetheless dubbed herself Nonny, a variant on Nonna, because it felt distinctive. And a Brookline, Mass., woman named Suzanne Modigliani, whose daughter’s friends used to abbreviate that to SuMo. Now, she’s GranMo....

... Georgia Witkin’s “The Modern Grandparent’s Handbook” actually lists 251 grandparental names (I counted), divided by gender into three categories: Traditional, Trendy and Playful. I wouldn’t volunteer to be known as Sweetums, G-dawg, Faux Pa or Grandude, however playfully, but apparently some folks have....

Partly, it’s a boomer thing. Tradition didn’t always seem a good enough reason....

But here’s my deeper suspicion: However mightily my peers may pine for grandchildren and adore them when they arrive, some don’t want to acknowledge being old enough to be dubbed Grandpop or Granny...

Ha ha. Just like Mom in the 1940s! (I was born in 1951, but I was the third grandchild.)

My friend Ellen Edwards Villa sent her mother a “grandma” charm for her charm bracelet when her first grandchild was born. The gift came back by return mail. Her mother, a mere 69 at the time, objected that she wasn’t old enough to be a grandma. She insisted her grandchildren call her Sweetie Pie, instead, and they did.

Ha. When my first husband told his mother we were going to have a baby — her first grandchild — what he thought would be funny and nice was to call her on the phone and respond to her "hello" with "Hi, Grandma." She was not delighted but offended. Instead of talking about this wonderful new person approaching our world, the subject had to be the way she was not old.

Boomers always think it's about Boomers, but this thing of women insisting they are not old is old old old.

Which is why I prefer to say I am old.

"NINE members of the same family are among 17 killed in duck-boat tragedy, as survivors reveal how they were TRAPPED inside the boat as it sank and were 'sucked' under as they tried to swim away."

The Daily Mail reports.

Family confirmed the death of grandmother Leslie Dennison, who had been on the boat with her 12-year-old granddaughter Alicia... [Alicia] said she could feel Leslie pushing her up as the boat filled with water. 'She said her grandmother saved her,' he told the paper....

Harrowing footage taken by others on a different boat nearby showed their small vessel bobbing up and down in the water as water climbed up its sides. A severe storm warning was issued by local agencies at 6.30pm, 30 minutes before the boat got into trouble....

Into the depths of "Roseanne Gets the Chair" — Episode 3 of the "Roseanne" reboot.

It's seems like candy, a sitcom. You consume it, and it's gone. It's hard to even remember enough to talk about it. Maybe you can quote (or only paraphrase) a couple of lines — that's why we put marshmallows on yams? — and purport to know the "lesson" taught — parents need to set boundaries for their kids? — and retain a question to puzzle over — did Roseanne commit criminal child abuse on her granddaughter? 

But did you really see what happened?

I watched the show last night, and even had a conversation about it afterwards, but I didn't feel capable of writing about it without watching it again. So that's what I did, first thing this morning, when I got up at 5. I rewatched. And I did a lot of rewinding and thinking. I took notes — 5 pages of notes.

So what I'm going to do now is, essentially, "live-blog" my reading of my notes. That is, I'm going to post updates as I go. I plan to go really deep, which is why I'm using the the live-blog format, which I know seems (paradoxically) shallow. It will help me not get impatient with the length of what I want to say and to discover things that I'm sure are lying just beneath the surface, waiting to emerge. It is not candy. It is a Thanksgiving feast, with all the yams and marshmallows.