I WAS GOING to write about being scammed last Friday by someone calling from a number that my phone ID'ed as our bank, who was impersonating someone from our bank's fraud department, who then proceeded to lie to me for fifteen minutes, persuasively enough to get me to give him the last six digits of my debit card number and change my pin number, thus enabling him to withdraw $200.00 from our account (thank god that's all he withdrew), and how as soon as I hung up the phone (it took me forever just to get off the phone with him), I knew I'd been scammed but it was too late. I promptly called our bank's real fraud department, canceled my card, and reported the false charge, but at that point whoever "Mike Hicks" (the name he gave me when I asked) really is had made $200.00 for fifteen minutes of "work."

I was thinking I would use this as a way to talk about the hostile US government takeover more generally but better writers than I are already doing that and I'm pretty sure that's not what you're expecting to read when you read Mushroom Head anyway. I was also thinking of mentioning the total breakdown of trust that is the precursor to full-blown totalitarianism and how after telling my sister about my experience of being defrauded of $200.00 and how it felt like this kind of thing will now be more common she said that in countries with "soft" dictators like Belarus everything seems relatively normal until you find yourself needing to do something crucial, like, say, file an insurance claim, only to learn that you aren't really insured for that one thing and in fact you now owe a staggering sum that you can never repay and now you may even have to do jail time, that only then do you realize just how corrupted the system has become, how it's not at all what it appears to be, that is, a safety net, and that you have been scammed, but by then it's too late, you already gave them your information and they made $200.00 for fifteen minutes of "work."

In other news, I went to Pittsburgh last week for a quick overnight trip to see the Gertrude Abercrombie exhibition. The Carnegie Museum of Art is so elegant and has so many outstanding works of art. These are just a few that jumped out of me, but there were so many more, and the installation was truly inspired, with lots of fascinating juxtapositions.

Three Things That Kept Me Going This Week

1. History's Youngest Heroes. This is a great podcast to listen to with kids because it is richly informative and not at all patronizing. The episode on Audrey Hepburn was revelatory. I knew she'd been active in the Dutch resistance but didn't really know to what extent until we listened to this show. I had never been much of a Hepburn fan but this show completely changed my mind about her. They interviewed her son, a graphic designer who lives in Italy, and what he says about her experience of WWII is absolutely chilling. We also listened to the episode on Hans and Sophie Scholl. Yes, there is a theme to our choices.
2. Beyond Saturday Night: Five Minutes. I had studiously avoided the SNL anniversary hullabaloo but we're always looking for things we can watch as a family that aren't cartoons and I'd heard about this show and thought Michaela might enjoy it, since she likes the SNL sketches we show her from time to time. She loved the show and now we're watching the entire series of short documentaries. The cowbell one was pretty good too. "Five Minutes" does feature one sketch with Pete Davidson and several other SNL stars in which some Monty Python–style bloodletting occurs which was mildly disturbing for Michaela but absolutely hilarious to me and Chad.
3. I'm becoming a teensy bit obsessed with Amna Nawaz from PBS Newshour. She is so beautiful and stylish. (Girlfriend rocks those jewel tones.) And she is an incredible journalist. See her tough interview with conservative commentator Michael Knowles a few days ago.

That's it from me, Mushroom Heads. I hope you have a good week. Try not to doomscroll too much.

And happy boycott day!

Claire

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