I lose subscribers every time I write about Gaza, so if you’ve been thinking about unsubscribing because I write about Gaza, you should probably go ahead and do it. I would rather you stay, and I’ll be sorry to lose you, but I respect that you need to do what you need to do, and I hope you respect that I need to do what I need to do.
I’m on the longest vacation I’ve taken in recent memory, and I’m pretty checked out of the world, but every morning I still look at Al Jazeera’s Gaza live feed, where the still horrifying usual has been going on for several hours by the time I wake up, and every evening I still look at the NYT homepage, where Israeli and American politicians still spout their horrifying usual, and every day I am still astounded that this horrifying madness goes on and on, even though I should know better by now.
It’s been a great vacation, but on Tuesday things went a little haywire. We arrived in Nova Scotia by ferry in the early afternoon and made it to Cape Breton National Park around 6, ready to hike the Skyline Trail at sunset. First we stopped at the Visitor Center to get a map, because I always want a real map (and they have indeed come in handy this vacation).
The helpful, friendly woman at the counter (Canadians are indeed uniformly helpful and friendly) gave us a map, showed us the trail, and told us we needed to go hike it immediately, because at 4:00 that afternoon, the province of Nova Scotia had banned hiking, effective the next day. (The hiking ban is part of a complete ban on people going into the woods - all woods, public and private - that will last until October 15. The aim of the ban is to prevent fires because Nova Scotia is in bad drought and fire is general all over Canada.1)
We thanked the helpful, friendly woman, rushed out of the visitor center, made it to the trailhead, found a parking space (the lot closes when it is full, so we were stressed), hiked the Skyline Trail, and saw a beautiful sunset. Then we went back to our bed and breakfast, where I had left my phone because the battery had run out, which it keeps doing as we drive through bits of Canada with no service, and on my phone was a message that Chris had died.
Chris was a teacher I worked with for eight years, when I was the literacy consultant at the school where he was a special ed history teacher. He was the absolute best, just a superb teacher and excellent person. I haven’t seen him since my work at that school ended, but I still talk about him often because he and his teaching partner, also named Chris, are my exemplar nonpareil of a successful special education inclusion classroom.2 Chris was only 48, living his excellent life, and apparently died of a heart attack. I was very sad and also upset that I couldn’t go to his wake because I would still be in Nova Scotia.
The next day, yesterday, we pivoted from hiking in Cape Breton to doing other things in Cape Breton, which included high-level Lucy Maud Montgomery discourse, guitars, pastries (butter tart to die for), a third of the Cabot Trail, a lot of scenic overlooks, many plaques, a Buddhist monastery, oysters and mussels, geology, and kayaking a deserted bay that we shared only with one hundred zillion moon jellies and a couple on paddleboards with a dog and toddler.
Just as we were about to head back to our bed and breakfast, I looked at the map (on my phone) and saw that we were 14 minutes from Cabots Landing Provincial Park, where in 1497 John Cabot ostensibly landed in what became North America. In our initial discussions of how to spend the day, we had been split between history (Fort Louisburg3) and animals (whale watching) which were in opposite directions, so we couldn’t do both. We chose whale watching, but every no-longer-able-to-hike visitor to Cape Breton was driving the same roads we were, and too many of them had made it to whale watching before us, so there were no more spaces on the boats. But we had gotten animals with the moon jellies, and if we got a bit of history with John Cabot, we would have everything!
Well, we got everything and more, for just beyond the three John Cabot plaques and the John Cabot bust, we found what had to be the most beautiful beach in all of Nova Scotia. My husband went to the washroom (we are Canadian now), so I spent a bit of time walking on the beach alone, feeling so fortunate to have serendipitously ended up at this beach, to have spontaneously created our nice day, to be on such a long, satisfying vacation.
Then I though about Chris.
Then I thought about how I shouldn’t have so many friends dying. I’m not 80 or 90. I’m 61 and my friends are dying of things they shouldn’t be dying from: cancer, heart attacks, unknown deadly illnesses.4 And yet, I can easily count my friends who have recently died. I can luxuriate in my memories of Corinna and Joshua and now Chris.
Then I though about Gaza, where so many people have lost incomprehensible numbers of relatives, friends, colleagues, classmates, neighbors - all dead of things they shouldn’t have died from, each as specific to those who have lost them as the friends I have lost are to me - and I wondered how they could possibly navigate those losses.
Then I though about the Holocaust, where so many Jews lost incomprehensible numbers of relatives, friends, colleagues, classmates, neighbors - all dead of things they shouldn’t have died from, each as specific to those who lost them as the friends I have lost are to me - and the ways they had navigated those losses.
Then I though about how we, my people, Jews, went from suffering such losses to perpetrating such losses in less than 80 years.
And then I couldn’t think anymore because even though I know how we got here, I still can’t fathom how we got here.
Because we still deserve nice things…
There are so many reasons to love Kylie Kelce.5 She is inimitably herself. She gives no fucks. She knows where she stands, and she is not afraid to show it. She rolls her eyes at her husband. She is a hardcore girl mom. She is the Queen of Delco. She still coaches high school field hockey - at least she did last year. She will not dress up for anything unless she wants to (she did ok at the Milan fashion shows). She refuses to wear Chiefs gear. But most of all, fame and fortune dropped into her lap (thanks, Tinder), and she is doing the most she can with them.
But today in particular, we deserve Kylie Kelce because she is hosting Ms. Rachel on her podcast. We stan.6
Did you know that on Tuesday, when Nova Scotia banned hiking, there were 747 fires burning in Canada, 507 of them out of control? Did you know that Manitoba is fire central? Did you know that the air quality in Toronto, Chicago, and Detroit was the worst in the world earlier this week? I’m thinking you might know all that by now because Chicago and Detroit. I’m sure you know it well if you are Canadian. We knew it because our younger daughter is in Vermont where the fire-borne air quality has been bad on and off all summer, but we knew it even more when we got to Canada last weekend and the blue skies turned white with smoke. As we were driving to Cape Breton, I was looking at all the trees and thinking how terrible fire would be. So even though our Cape Breton plan was hiking, I was happy to pivot if it would reduce the fire likelihood.
This either means something to you or it doesn’t, and it’s fine either way, but if it doesn’t, please take my word that it’s a great thing.
I’m still a little sad about Fort Louisburg, about which both sets of our breakfast companions - a delightful Nova Scotian father and son on their annual motorcycle trip and a boring older couple from Colorado Springs - rhapsodized.
I felt the same way in my 20s, when I lost a shocking number of friends to things they shouldn’t have been dying from - AIDs, car accidents, avalanches. Yet like today, it was a terrible but fathomable number of deaths.
If you’ve never heard of Kylie Kelce, you could do worse than to watch Kelce, which is nominally about her husband, but you don’t get him without her, so even if you have no interest in Jason Kelce, the Eagles, or football, it’s still worth it for Kylie. And, yes, I arrived at Kylie the same way as everyone else (Taylor—>Travis—>Jason—>Kylie), and I am not ashamed.
This nice thing was brought to you by my younger daughter.
The losses are unfathomably impossibly wrong -- the near and dear ones that are too soon, the horrific ones afar that are too close to other horrors that we'd hope revealed a different way to be than this. And yet, vacation is so good and important and wonderful. How can it all be so?
So much loss on so many scales. I'm so sorry for your recent loss and also for the needless and horrifying deaths in Gaza. But vacations!