Hands Across America
Thursday, January 29, 2026 6:07 PST
Seattle, WA
My roommates and I have found a new show: Modern Family. For one I’ve fully caught up to the Rookie, though I now enjoy my weekly hour of Tuesday-evening-season-8 time, and it’s a pretty funny, lighthearted show about an objectively weird family situation. For instance, when Manny has a crush on Haley, he really has a crush on his mother’s husband’s granddaughter. (In some ways, he has a crush on his daughter.)
Anyway, today Jay mentioned an event that his ex-wife dragged him to in 1986: Hands Across America. This reminds me of my Mt. Stuart post, by the way, but bear with me… apparently people did enjoy that one. So, I did some research using Wikipedia.
It was a fundraiser for charity which wanted a “continuous human chain of people holding hands across the contiguous United States.” Imagine sending your friend in Texas a sandwich from Seattle. Logistically, that wouldn’t likely work at all – there’d have been so many people sending each other stuff – but it would be cool. It didn’t really work, though. Not necessarily on the charity front, because they raised $15 million, which apparently the organizers were underwhelmed by (??). But populations are concentrated. No one wants to be alone, in life and in holding hands with strangers. It worked out to getting 200,000 people in New York City alone when they only needed 30,000 in the whole state. On the other hand, Arizona needed 650k and “only” got around 200k.
I found it interesting because it just feels like classic humanity, pre-Internet at least. I remember how, while Charles Lindbergh and others were trying to fly around the world (itself a sign of immense boredom, to my modern self), people would drive long distances just to watch them take off and land. Read that in Bill Bryson’s “One Summer: America, 1927” which is a really funny book. Actually, I have that copy on my bookshelf, courtesy of a now-distant friend and my turning 19 years old. I should finish it soon… and call that friend.
And I am most surprised, for some reason, that no one was injured and no drama happened during all this. The event generally “flopped”, but that was about all. There were probably big headlines, but not for Jimmy Carter dying –I’ve been missing that man a lot recently—or Trump doing something questionable, just for 5 million people holding hands.
So, we have unity and we have simple pleasures. What else do we really need in life? I for one hate when writers write pithy rhetorical questions like this, but I digress. Philosophically, I am on this planet to be loved and to love, to enjoy the pain and happiness in every day. Today was a rather painful day, but yesterday was a very very happy one, and that’s just how it goes. I realize I have to live through them all. I don’t know, I’m not feeling very John Green metaphorical right now, which is fine, it’ll come back to me some day. Not fully believing what I’m writing in this particular moment.
I think that’s an important note, actually: consistency in identity is not a thing!! Normally I think I am very much “one thing at a time and keep all my attention on that one thing.” There’s time for everything, and everything deserves to be enjoyed and fully experienced, and I think multitasking is a sign of the social order prioritizing money and dividends over the very wonderful human act of being alive.
But I say that after a whole day of being in my apartment, which while decently big, feels small rather quickly. I did a whole lot of nothing, and it wasn’t even enjoyable nothing, it was anxious nothing. I feel restless and irritable and also a whole host of other emotions related to personal circumstance! Ironically, after writing all of that, I am feeling a little better but it may be coincidental.
We are so wonderfully complex that our thoughts and feelings change with just one tiny event to throw them off, and that is okay. Right now, to me, it feels like everything is nothing and nothing is everything (Skyrizi reference, wow I watch too much Hulu) but this too will pass. Whether I have a good day or a bad day, the sun will set at the end of it.
I should go make dinner soon because it’s now 6:47 pm, but I must admit I am enjoying writing again. I have started and stopped a lot of blogs because I lose the spirit three paragraphs in, but if I push through that, it ends up being fine.
I have been celebrating personal successes recently, in three or four new opportunities (!!) and probably more that I’m forgetting. I got some really great books: some new Zadie Smith essays, which gravity loves to throw on my floor constantly. And then a pretty heart wrenching memoir by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, notable from the Epstein trials, Crux by Gabriel Tallent and Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah.
I also want to shout out From Bash to Z Shell: Conquering the Command Line. I admittedly haven’t really used it, but it would be a big help if I did! Ugh, I can’t even say that I have no time; I just don’t use what I have well. (But isn’t that what I was talking about? Why do we need to be efficient and productive constantly?) Anyway, I am increasingly using both Github and zsh, and it’s really so fun!
I’ve been cooking a good amount this week. I made Joanne Lee Molinaro’s potato pancakes, except not vegan because veganism and I are battling it out currently, blog post forthcoming, so I used regular milk for the batter. I also made my roommate’s struggle meal: noodles in a peanut butter/soy sauce/rice vinegar sauce, plus some veggies. I finally admit that I’m terrible at cooking, but I enjoy it and am trying to get better. Blog post about that too, I hope.
No running or exercise recently, hope to change that tomorrow. I also have a painting to finish, plus two to begin. Tons of blogs to write, new saxophone music to learn (plus band charts—we’re playing Johann de Meij’s Lord of the Rings!), getting better at Python. Could always redo a puzzle with a good podcast.
But usually I try to chase after the homework and studying and summer internship applications and research commitments, realizing everything would be better if I didn’t procrastinate, fall asleep, and do it all over again.
One day, though, I’ll miss this. I hope.