Coming Up For Air

This week I read William Manchester's Controversy and Other Essays in Journalism 1950-1975 . It is hampered by a ponderous title and his need to unload publicly an otherwise understandable literary grudge against Jacqueline Kennedy. Still, his dealings with those of superior stuff and status do yield some insight for the rest of us. "Rich families," he diagnosis evenhandedly after intimate involvement with the Kennedys and others, "are not happier, but they have a clear concept of the source of happiness and unhappiness. Unlike the rest of us, they cannot blame whatever disarray there is in their personal lives on the lack of ways and means." The outsized power Manchester sees given to blame and resentment, even as he yields to some of it himself, is worth considering as we come up for air. Such embittering or defensive forces are even at work in the privileged environs of the idealized Oval Office on The West Wing . With enough wealth that the President is sur...

Looking back on them once I am employed, one of these moments would be known as the one in which I spotted The Job Lead. One of them will glow as the one in which I reviewed the job requirements that just seem to make perfect sense, in retrospect. One of them will stand above her peers as the moment in which I massaged to the verbiage of the description of my next job into my cover letter and resume in a way that made the employer's seeker-sorting algorithms sing. One of the phone calls answered with resolved cheerfulness will forever after be known as the one in which I got The Interview, and her more honored sibling, likely, the one in which I was offered The Job. Writing about the days and weeks as they go by, however, such illumination and inspiration is difficult to discern. Both scrunching myself into the requirements of an entry-level customer service position and stretching myself to pass inspection for a supervisory position a little beyond what my career has thus far enta...

I'm still making my way through Frasier 's run. During season eight and continuing in season nine, the writers are occasionally able to mix in forays into the depths of their characters along with witty repartee and engaging slapstick. To their credit, the romance between the title character's psychiatrist brother Niles and his in-home physical therapist which has been building throughout the series brings complications of its own. Daphne is so consumed with whether she can live up to eight or nine years of being idealized in the mind of Niles that she develops an eating disorder. This is more than the stuff of television, exaggerated for effect, I'm learning. Katharine Graham's father firmly established the Washington Post . She grew up accustomed to the newspaper business and was educated in elite institutions. Still, her autobiography and my other mental food for the week, Personal History, shows a woman with doubts very similar to Daphne's. Both lost their ...

I'm watching my way through Frasier . I'm in the eighth season of the classic sitcom, so it's not surprising that it should make its way into my thinking as I come up for air for the week. This setup that remains with me is when the two psychiatrist brothers Frasier and Niles come across the actor who introduced them to their lifelong love of William Shakespeare by performing at their middle school. Incensed that the actor is performing in a science fiction series they believe is beneath him, they hatched a plan to allow him to inspire others the way he has inspired them. They invest time and money to give others the opportunity to be similarly inspired by this actor who has meant so much to them. The only problem is, he is terrible. Reviewing the videotape from their more refined perspective of middle age, Frasier and Niles realize he always was. They come to terms with the fact that it was their impressionable immaturity, and the Shakespearean material with which the act...