Floating Along in the Kitchen Cabinet of Jeff Sessions, Plus a Good Read

In 2013, we took a cruise up the Inside Passage of Alaska, seven languid days of being waited on and seeing some truly beautiful scenery.

 In our usual mode of Antisocials at Sea, we talked to almost no other passengers, but kept to ourselves, which was just fine.  Shipboard socializing isn't our thing (although we make exceptions for Aussies and Brits, especially the ones we meet in bars).

 The Anti-Socials at Sea

But one morning as the ship cruised the Tracy Arm Fjord, which is startlingly beautiful, dotted with floating blue chunks of ice, we chatted with a pleasant American couple with accents that betrayed them as Southerners.  They seemed smart and funny, with a winning irreverence, and eventually they invited us to join them at lunch on a terrace where we could watch the action.

 The pale blue ice of the Tracy Arm Fjord

Everything went along fine  until the end of the meal, when the husband mentioned that he was in the kitchen cabinet of Senator Jeff Sessions.

"He goes to our church," added the wife, by way of explanation.  That would be a church in Mobile, Alabama, where they live.

I thought, Wait, that's one of those awful southern senators I shout at every time he appears on TV.  Wow.  

They went on to say that Sessions was "such a nice guy," and so principled that he wouldn't let the husband, a chemical industry consultant,  pay for a cab the two of them shared,  because it might look like a conflict of interest.

At this point, I assumed another layer of social insulation.   We wound up saying good-by very cordially, but we never chatted with them again.  Later, Jerry asked me why I thought they'd brought up an association with a Republican senator.  They knew we lived in Berkeley.  Hadn't they ever heard about Berkeley as a bastion of liberalism? 

 The Ashland Place Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama, attended by Jeff Sessions and our cruise-mates

Now that Sessions has been nominated to be Attorney General and he's all over the news, I'm learning that he's even worse than I thought, the epitome of a rigid, old-time southern stalwart, with a history of opposing civil rights (and gay marriage and abortion rights).

"You won't find a nicer guy," protested a friend of his who was interviewed on NPR this morning.  "He's courteous and respectful."

"Of whom?" I shouted at the radio.

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I just galloped through a novel I read about in The New Yorker, and I recommend it highly:  The Spare Room by the Australian writer Helen Garner.   A woman in her sixties invites a terminally ill friend to stay with her for three weeks.  The narrator's empathy, anger, and exhaustion are beautifully articulated, I thought.

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For anyone thinking buying the  hand cream I recommended recently:  It's much cheaper on Amazon.   My nails are still doing well.

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Thanks to everyone who sent e-mails or called about my post on atrial fibrillation.  It was heartening to hear how many people live for many years with this affliction.

So much of life is figuring out how to manage it (meaning: life). This diagnosis threw me for a couple of weeks, but I think I'm making peace with it now.