One of the HuffPo's few guidelines for blogging is: No vague headlines. Nothing cute, and nothing "literary," along the lines of, e.g., The Narrow Road to the Deep North, or A Time of Gifts (much less The Departure Lounge). No, the headlines should be sharp and topical: Sotomayor Must Go. Sotomayor Must Stay. It's very sound advice, businesslike and sound.I haven't blogged for weeks. I can't find the right headline. God knows there has been plenty to blog about. Consider the relationship between the Chinese and American currencies - my notorious preoccupation, the despair of my friends and loved ones. It has been a truly awesome month (or so). There was Geithner at the Council on Foreign Relations, allowing as how he thought it might not be such a bad idea if the renminbi were to become a bit more reserve-currency-ish. The dollar actually started slipping as he spoke, and his interlocutor had to pitch him a chance ("one final question, in effect, on behalf of the market") to modify his remarks - and within minutes the dollar stabilized. A few weeks later, I saw Philip Zelikow, in the same venue, saying much the same thing. But he's not in power, and the ice had already been well broken on the whole maybe-the-dollar-shouldn't-be-so-important front, so the dollar didn't slide. I've been having trouble focusing on this kind of thing, though, because my mother is dying. The oncologist said about a month ago that he just didn't see much point in further treatment. "What you can do" was gone and all that was left was...what you have left. She is without pain and without energy. Finality is coming.Scott Rosenberg has written a wonderful book called Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters." It comes out in July. Because I am a very important media person publishers send me "uncorrected proofs" (how 20th century is that?). Rosenberg makes a pretty big distinction between old-media types and public figures, on one hand, and regular people on the other hand. This of course reflects much of the debate about blogging: whether it enables too many people to write useless things, pretending to an authority they haven't earned, and generally clogging the tubes; and whether it frees the populace from the tyranny of the MSM and its extraordinary self-importance. Rosenberg handles this crude stuff very subtly, though, and with a fine sense of the history of blogging. It hardly seems possible that blogging has got itself a history already. But Rosenberg is convincing; and there is a very particular thrill to reading about Evan Williams, Nick Denton and Josh Marshall as sort of the Franklin, Hamilton and Madison of the Blogging Republic. On second thought, maybe Denton is more like Aaron Burr.I can't find where I stand in journalist-v.-blogger. "For some wide population of bloggers," Rosenberg writes, "there is ample reason to keep writing about a troubled marriage or a cancer diagnosis or a death in the family, regardless of how many ethical dilemmas must be traversed, or how trivial or amateurish their labors are judged. Maybe their writing provides some diversion or insight or solace. Maybe it leaves them feeling a little less lonely. Surely an activity able to accomplish that ought to be granted an exemption from condescension." It won't surprise you to learn that this passage jumped out at me, at first because it hit my exact situation vis-à-vis cancer diagnoses, then because I realized I was suddenly one of "them," the left-a-little-less-lonely, the not-to-be-condescended-to. Another situational circumstance. No longer Journalist, merely blogger - by virtue of my subject.One of the many curiosities of professional journalism is that you're rewarded best to write about those things that it is relatively easy for you to write about. The things that are difficult for you to write about - or difficult for you to write about well - you will probably end up writing about only for yourself. This is not precisely the same as journalist-v.-blogger. But it does mean that when the professional journalist enters onto the level playing field of writing about, say, the mortal illness of a parent, the professional loses his accumulated authority. He loses his status and quite possibly also his social utility.Not two weeks ago I was thrilled to learn about the China-Brazil agreement on using their respective currencies to clear some very large bilateral deals. Take that, greenback! And then there was China's whole proposal about IMF Special Drawing Rights needing a rebalancing in a renminbi-ish direction. I thought I should blog, because I didn't think Americans were getting enough information and explanation on these topics, even with Brad Setser's consistently excellent blogging. (I don't know that everyone who should be able to understand Setser's blogactually would; this is the democrat in me, the information-wants-to-be-comprehensible person who once naturally gravitated toward journalism, in the pre-Web world. Does anyone under 40 still think of journalism as straight-talking and democratic?) The China-Brazil deal was fascinating but I did not blog about it. I also considered blogging about celebrities I was talking to at parties and dinners, because I had a particularly glittering few weeks, celebrity-wise (tech, MSM, politics). This might have helped my status somehow. But I didn't blog about that either.I took the family out West to see mom, presumably for the last time. Among the medical people there was a certain amount of talk about her leaving, but I felt the opposite, or almost the opposite. Where she was going was a mystery. She didn't know herself. (Her refusal to believe in an afterlife was something that struck me as a child. I never forgot it. We were quite a Christian family and it didn't seem too Christian.) Mom was not going anywhere. She was staying, in the carton of her life. It was we who were leaving her. Was that what we had left to do?One night during our visit my son, Ben, was poking away at the piano. He figured out a version of "Little Chaveleh," from Fiddler on the Roof. Both our children love that movie and have gotten to know many of the lyrics. Chaveleh, you'll recall, was Tevye's third daughter, the one who falls in love with the Christian, Fyedka, and marries him, thus turning Tevye's Jewish life inside out. Tevye's repudiation of her is the great shock of the story, not least because it is preceded by Tevye's singing of this short, lovely song. "Little Bird, Little Chaveleh/ I don't understand what's happening today/ Everything is all a blur/ All I can see is a happy child." Ben was playing it, prettily, while I sat alone on the front porch, pulling on a cigar that was rolled too tightly, drinking plenty of red wine, and listening to the cars go by on the road. Ben, who turned 10 this month, has a light approach to the piano and to music; it was like him to figure out a melody, give it some chords and make a tune. Very different from my mom - whom he hardly knows - who had taken lessons as a girl and would periodically plant herself in front of the keyboard as a young mother and try to finish one or another Bach piece she had played better years before. It seemed such an exercise in frustration. I never quite understood why she persisted, though it was consistent with her often astonishing inability to give up.The screen door slams and Ben wanders out into the dusk. It's almost night. He's singing the Chaveleh song to himself and twirling around underneath the big rustly tree that has the rope swing on it. I suppose he's thinking of some Chaveleh or other. I'll stay quiet in the shadows. I don't want to embarrass him or disturb whatever fancy is in his head. I drink some more and think about my mother. Ben sings in his high voice. There are three yellow finches in the dead vine on the arbor between here and the road. Their brightness stands out against the dark vine. Then they flutter up, as the light drops, and speed away in a group.
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We drove back down to Seattle and the airport. Coincidentally, a touring company was bringing "Fiddler on the Roof" to Puget Sound later in the year, and my father was hoping to go. Two tickets; we'll see. They'd always liked the movie. What's more, the man playing Tevye was none other than Topol. I'd heard about this - the show had been in Newark already - and I could hardly believe it. Topol had not looked all that great when the film was made, in 1971. Perhaps it was just the makeup; he was only 36 (and three years younger than my parents). Still: Topol, again? There was something bizarre and heartbreaking about it. Time was getting scrambled. Alongside the highway heading south there was a great big electronic billboard advertising the show and the lights flashed, "TOPOL TOPOL TOPOL," as we hurried away.