Here's a link to the article about Poland I mentioned last month: https://theamericanscholar.org/polish-lessons/
Going into the weekend I had never heard of Katy Tur. But watching CBS Sunday Morning, I saw a story on her and her new memoir, which is about her life as the child of news reporters. I also learned that she is married to Tony Dokoupil, an anchor on CBS Mornings. This seemed a little odd, that the network was doing a story on the wife of one of its employees. The memoir, I should add, includes revelations about her abusive father who, in later life, transitioned as a woman.
Then in the afternoon, I picked up the New York Times Book Review and found that the weekly By the Book interview was with Katy Tur. When asked what contemporary writers she admired, she mentioned, among others, Tony Dokoupil.
This morning I turned on CBS Mornings, with Gayle King, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil, thinking the first two might mention to the third the Sunday appearances of his wife, maybe even razz him a little about them. No, King said they would have a story about her.
I keep thinking of my drive last Friday along the back roads of Lancaster County. Young men in suspenders drove horse-drawn plows; cresting one hill I saw a team of seven. Women in long dresses hoed in their gardens (two young ones with bare feet). By a stream, a thick-bearded man walked hand-in-hand with his daughter on one side and his son on the other. A tent appeared, and I asked the young man mending the fence if they were getting ready for a picnic. “Fishing derby,” he told me, and I wished him good luck. Then I passed a boy driving a cart pulled by a pony. Everything was suffused in the golden light of early evening, and I thought how far away the rest of the world seemed: the war in Ukraine, the stock market crisis. It didn’t occur to me then to include mass shootings.
It’s inexplicable, considering recent history, that this country allows for the easy purchase of firearms. But we also have to wonder what it is about this country that produces so many people who wish to use them indiscriminately.