Crazy Stable

I don't know why I was so shocked to learn that Irving Kristol had died; he was 89, after all, and when I took his seminar at NYU in 1978, he was already the urbane "godfather of neoconservatism" on that Esquire cover, a moniker that would recur in his obituaries.

I don't remember what the seminar was called; it was basically, "Irving Explains It All For You." It was heady stuff for a wonky girl from Queens who had gotten her first subscription to Bill Buckley's National Review at 16. And, as that magazine cover attests, it was a heady time to be a young conservative; the Reagan ascendancy wasn't even a glow on the horizon yet, so we got to feel fresh and transgressive amid the stagnating sludge of the Counterculture.

And God, were my NYU years sludgy...an academic nadir for that institution, and a bitter contrast to the electrifying, cafeteria-table-pounding intellectual foment that formed Kristol into a Trotskyist back in the 1930s at CUNY. His subsequent ideological journey to the Right made this Brooklyn boy a fascinating contrast to the patrician Buckley, and the seminar was (aside from the nitty-gritty vocational training I found in NYU's undergraduate Journalism department) a rare highlight of my confused and lonely college career.

I remember little of what Irving explained so lucidly (although I seem to recall grasping some central concept of Hegel's for a few precious moments). What mattered was Irving--good-naturedly world-weary, pacing up and down and deconstructing the modern world between appreciative drags on an ever-present cigarette. One day, I scrambled off the creaky old Main Building elevator, late for class, to find him smoking in the hallway while the other dozen students slumped, fidgeting, around our conference table. "Ah," he said with no apparent irritation, "you're here. We can begin." That moment meant more to me than my diploma.

After graduation, (and soon after his Esquire cover hit the newsstands), Kristol floored me by offering me a coveted position as an indentured editorial servant at his legendary journal, The Public Interest. (For a glimpse of what I missed, go here.) I wavered, but signed on instead with a crappy travel magazine; I was young, and the prospect of junkets beat out the promise of being groomed for a think tank. That, and I was scared to death. I declined the offer with a note containing this poem, because Kristol had such a deadpan and I fancied trying to crack him up:

Irving, dear Irving

I find you unnerving,

I fear I'll incite

Your contempt.

Your intellect causes

My wonder unswerving,

For my own puny mind

Is unkempt!

He wrote a gracious reply to my "absolutely lovely" note, and acknowledged that my choice of globe-hopping was understandable. (As it turned out, the best junket I got was a weekend in Honolulu.) I'd go on to do some writing for the Right, but not for The Public Interest; I knew when I was out of my depth.

And depth is what I mourn this week. Having lost Buckley and now Kristol, I feel like a conservative version of Norma Desmond, wistful not for "faces, then" but for minds. I don't recognize what passes for "the Right" anymore; vulgarians like Limbaugh and demagogues like O'Reilly have expanded like a gas into the void they left behind. Kristol, Buckley and the like were jousters, not jesters; they relished take-no-prisoners debate, but could graciously engage an adversary afterward. (One summer, I did typing for National Review and was stunned to read Buckley's warm, convivial correspondence, including invitations to ski in Gstaad, with some of his bitterest ideological foes.)

And, despite the fossilized sound of "paleo"-conservative or the trendy sound of "neo," these guys were capable of ambivalence and nuance, of actually holding more than one idea in play at once. Kristol famously mustered only "two cheers" for conservatism; he espoused the civic virtues that flowed from religion but hinted at a personal agnosticism. Having forged (and fought) some of the foundational ideas of the twentieth century--ideas that could and did matter deeply--the Godfather Generation has been eclipsed by a bunch of frat boys. The ideas still matter, but it's harder than ever to hear them under the ranting and infantile name-calling.

Irving, Happy New Year; you are missed.

Eight years ago today, the molten sun of September shone on my little girl as she skipped off to her second day of first grade in Brooklyn.  An hour later, everything changed—forever, it seemed.

This morning, in wind and rain, my daughter took a city bus on an hour's trip to her new high school. Flushed with anticipation, she scarcely remembered that it was 9/11, but then, she hardly remembers the day itself or its ghastly aftermath. She recalls feeding an Oreo to a pigeon atop the towers a month before they fell. She faintly recalls bringing sandwiches to a firehouse in Williamsburg for the rescuers, their faces caked with grime and sweat as they lay exhausted on the sidewalk.  She remembers that I looked serious and sad when I picked her up from school.

But when we look out our "park-viewing window" tonight at the Towers of Light, we will see them rise over a city that feels as full of promise and peril as it ever was—no more, no less. No loss in my life, not even that of my parents, has struck me with the surreal resilience of the grieving process as has this, our collective recovery. And yet, the other day, mulling the not-so-distant prospect of retirement planning, I realized that That Day had indeed left one permanent mark on my character:

I find it hard to imagine living anywhere else but New York City.

I was pleased to see Daughter take a copy of this prayer out of her backpack today, distributed by the religion teacher at her new Catholic high school. As a child, I loved its fierce romance; now, as a mother, I just pray it straight.

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Image: Madonna with the serpent, Caravaggio, via ChristusRex.org.

It's time for one last lazy weekend before we are called forth on the Quest.

Several quests, actually. Daughter will journey into high school, which we hope will be more Rivendell than Mordor. But this fall, the forces of darkness and redemption will be coming right here to our door, and in fact will be ripping the roof off our house.

Yes, the CrazyStable is finally getting its new roof, although it remains to be seen whether or not the budget--a Frodo-scaled lump of cash with big intentions--will extend far enough to replace our rotting cedar-shingle siding (with new cedar, not vinyl or aluminum)...much less to fix the remaining interior ruins. We're taking bids now, from a colorful cast of characters. So far, all the bids exceed the original downpayment on the entire house, but we expected that.

What's really daunting is the collateral damage that will inevitably result from a crew of guys, even a good crew, tearing off up to five layers of roof shingles right down to the joists. A roofing jobsite looks like Saruman'a Orc factory at full throttle. Plants are trampled outside in a hail of debris and four-inch nails; inside, dust sifts out of every pore and mysterious cracks appear. Worst of all, men will keep coming up to me and saying things like "Ma'am? You wanna come see something here?" which is contractor-ese for "Hit up your ATM with an armored car and a steamer trunk."

After years of listening resignedly to the plonk...plonk...plonk of rainwater in the pans in our laundry room during every downpour, it's unnerving to finally face this massive expenditure to make it right. Part of me wants to just ditch the job and spend the money on travel. (Hey, the house apparently survived for decades with no gutters or leaders; even with continuing water damage, it would probably remain standing at least until we retired.) For the cost of this roof, the three of us could see London, Paris and Rome. Damn you, CrazyStable.

(And no, we can't just patch it; been there and done that.)

We will not do the Grand Tour; we will get a new roof. We will try to hire the best team we can get to go up there and make things right. There will be dumpsters, and nails will rain from the sky. But for just this one more weekend, we will relax and try not to think about it.