0:15

Pushkin. According

0:20

to survey, seventy one percent of Republicans

0:23

and fifty five percent of Democrats now

0:25

regard the opposition party as a force

0:27

leading to national decline. In

0:31

a world gone haywire, sometimes

0:34

art is the only thing that can make

0:36

sense of it all. Survey after survey

0:38

has shown that Republicans and Democrats now

0:41

view each other not simply as wrong, but

0:43

as malevolent. This

0:46

is the Chronicles of Now, where we ask

0:48

writers to dream up short stories inspired

0:50

by the news. I'm Ashley Ford.

0:53

This family ordinarily does not talk about

0:55

politics, but this campaign in election

0:58

were different, and that's adding

1:00

a whole other, thick, viscous layer

1:02

of stress. Polarization

1:05

is nothing new in America, and in

1:07

twenty twenty, between pandemic,

1:09

the recession, and the coming election,

1:12

things are getting really tense

1:14

out there. Even the simple gesture wearing

1:17

a mosque has become passes on marriages

1:19

where partners don't share well

1:22

the same political views. There

1:24

is some treacherous times. We

1:27

are a country divided,

1:30

and oftentimes that division can

1:32

be seen within one family. That's

1:35

j Courtney Sullivan. She's

1:37

the author of five novels, and her

1:39

latest Friends and Strangers just

1:41

hit the New York Times bestseller List.

1:44

I'm always interested in how are

1:46

the bigger political

1:49

and world events sort of playing out

1:51

in the lives of everyday people. When

1:54

she turned her attention to America's polarization,

1:57

her way into the topic was through birds.

2:01

Scientists are out with a stark

2:03

new warning about the disappearance of

2:05

billions of birds in the US and

2:08

Canada nine, which

2:10

works out to almost three billion birds

2:12

in less than fifty years. Scientists

2:15

say habitat reduction, pesticides,

2:18

and cats are the likely culprits

2:21

us. In other words, but

2:23

like all news today, your take on

2:26

the missing birds likely depends

2:28

on where you heard about it, Fox

2:30

or CNN, the New York Times,

2:32

or the Daily Caller Rachel Maddow

2:35

or Tucker Carlson, which got Courtney

2:37

thinking, you can't know what

2:39

you are not seeing, And I don't

2:41

think many people in this country are

2:44

getting the full picture, including

2:47

people in our own families. My

3:01

oldest, clearest memory dates

3:03

back to the summer my sister and I turn

3:05

mine and our mother brought

3:08

down her mother's copy of the Birds of

3:10

North America. It

3:13

was not some child's plaything, but

3:16

a guide for serious adult enthusiasts,

3:19

beautiful with hand painted

3:22

watercolor illustrations. The

3:26

book was a bribe, and we knew it.

3:29

It could be ours mine and my sisters

3:32

if we promised not to fight. Door

3:37

and I could never get along. We

3:40

shared the room with the pink wallpaper at

3:42

the top of the stairs, and

3:45

in that room we bickered, we hollered.

3:48

She tore out a chunk of my hair, and

3:50

I put a pillow over her face while she slept.

3:55

But our grandmother's book intrigued us

3:57

into behaving, at least for a time.

4:01

We wrote our names inside, right

4:03

under the spot where she had done the same. She

4:07

died before we were born. Our

4:10

mother had told us how she loved the

4:12

birds, the way they flew free,

4:15

darting around cows in their pens

4:17

and pastures, lounging

4:19

on fence posts, asking nothing

4:21

of her. Whenever

4:24

our mother saw a cardinal through the kitchen

4:26

window, she'd say it was her mother

4:28

stopping by to say hello. Dora

4:33

and I memorize the birds of North

4:36

America like a book of prayers. Starlings

4:39

and sparrows and robins,

4:42

blue jays, blackbirds, and warblers.

4:45

By September we knew them all

4:47

on site ever

4:50

since. Birds are what we have

4:52

in common, birds

4:55

and not much else. My

5:02

sister and I have never lived more than three

5:04

miles apart, but we've

5:06

gone whole years without speaking.

5:10

Dora started watching what she calls the news

5:12

after Harold died. Among

5:15

the things, she now believes that

5:17

there is a floor at Mercy Hospital

5:19

just for Mexicans where they get

5:21

their treatment for free,

5:23

that Hillary Clinton runs a sex trafficking

5:26

ring out of a pizza shop in Washington,

5:28

DC, That people

5:31

all over this country are somehow aborting

5:34

babies after they're born. Last

5:39

Thanksgiving, she told some whopper

5:41

and I said that's not true, and

5:43

she said it is. I saw it on the

5:46

news and I said, that's

5:48

not the news, it's propaganda for

5:50

people who don't know how to think. She

5:53

walked right out of my house, then

5:55

came back in to get the pie she'd brought, and

5:57

walked out again. I

6:03

initiated the truce stop

6:06

talking about it, so we don't have to

6:08

stop talking king altogether. But

6:11

even polite conversation, if you make

6:13

it long enough, comes back around

6:15

to the question of how to be a person

6:17

in this world. I

6:20

called Dora this morning when I saw the headline,

6:23

three billion fewer birds on this

6:26

continent now than fifty years ago,

6:28

three billion. Reading

6:31

it felt like reaching the end of a mystery

6:34

novel and looking back at the clues you

6:36

missed. Anyone

6:45

who has lived long enough will tell you it

6:47

isn't like it used to be. Remember

6:51

the bats, how

6:53

they swooped down at sunset? Dora

6:56

and I have asked one another, Remember

7:00

bird's song in springtime, so

7:03

loud you had to cover your ears to think.

7:08

Remember when a flow of crows flying

7:10

overhead would dark in the afternoon

7:12

sky.

7:19

Of course, Dora was horrified when I

7:21

told her about the three billion birds. But

7:23

when I mentioned, not for the first time,

7:26

the little Swedish girl demanding that

7:28

we fix it all now, or else the legacy

7:30

we leave will be destruction. Dora

7:33

said, why do you make everything

7:35

political? Some things just are

7:40

I hung up on her. I

7:42

won't be the one to smooth things over this time

7:44

either. The

7:51

city of Des Moines used to be just that,

7:54

beyond it, farmland punctuated

7:57

it every here and there by, a tiny town. Now

8:00

the space between places is full

8:02

of big box stores and big identical

8:05

houses. Either on. My grandson

8:07

and his wife live in I

8:10

can never remember which driveway is theirs.

8:13

There are no trees anywhere. The

8:16

lawns are an unnatural

8:18

chemical green cuts

8:21

short like military haircuts.

8:24

My grandson's wife sends pictures

8:26

of deer and wild turkeys

8:28

wandering lost down the street. I

8:32

can't miss what you've never seen. Maybe

8:35

that's why they're not as angry as they should

8:37

be. Makes me want

8:39

to chain myself to a bulldozer

8:41

before they can plow under one more field.

8:46

Old age has turned me into a radical. Some

8:52

afternoons, the Cardinal

8:55

alights on a tree branch outside

8:57

my kitchen window. It

8:59

reminds me of my grandmother, my

9:02

mother on a

9:04

good day, Dora too. What

9:10

will happen when the proof that any

9:12

of us was ever here only

9:15

exists between the pages of an old

9:17

book, the provenance

9:20

of which no one alive can recall.

9:24

Then later on not

9:27

even that

9:36

that was proof. By j Courtney Sullivan,

9:39

the narrator with Cindy Catz

9:42

Hi Courtney Hi Ashley. The

9:44

first thing I want to say, honestly, it is just

9:47

damn girl. You start with a story

9:49

about sisters bonding over birds, but

9:51

it very quickly morphs into a story about

9:54

political polarization. And then

9:56

you work in our own oblivion

9:59

right there at the end, and it's about

10:01

two pages. I'm still recovering.

10:03

Ah, thank you. One

10:06

of the things that I love about

10:08

this story is that the sisters you know, never

10:10

really did get along, yeah by

10:13

growing up in the same environment except

10:16

for this bond over

10:18

birds, and their political

10:20

differences actually seem to

10:22

have a lot more to do with the media. Dora

10:25

consumes, how much

10:27

blame do you put on media

10:30

for our extreme political

10:32

polarization in this country? Right

10:34

now? I want to be

10:37

fair, you know, fair and balanced, as Fox

10:39

News would say, And I actually listen to

10:41

a lot of conservative talk radio

10:44

and I watch Fox News even though

10:46

it's probably going to take years off my life,

10:48

because I want to see what are both sides

10:50

saying and what are people hearing.

10:52

But I really believe this, not just

10:55

because I am a left leaning

10:57

individual, but I truly think that Fox

10:59

News has created so much damage

11:02

to this culture and continues to do

11:04

so. And I have conservative

11:07

people in my own life whom I love,

11:09

who are very smart, well educated

11:11

people, and they are still

11:14

kind of reciting talking points

11:16

that they hear on Fox News, and it's

11:19

terrifying to me. One

11:21

of the things that I

11:23

loved about this story, you know, beyond

11:25

the sisters and their relationship, is

11:27

the mention of birds. I'll be honest, I'm a bird

11:30

person, but are you a fellow

11:32

bird person? When this

11:35

news story came out about three

11:37

billion fewer birds for

11:40

some reason, I was reading the news

11:42

stories, but I also was reading

11:45

the comments. They say, never read

11:47

the comments, but when you didn't write it, you can. And

11:50

I was really amazed

11:52

because there were so many commenters

11:55

telling stories about

11:57

the birds of their youth, and

12:00

one detail in particular, which

12:02

I think ended up in the story. You

12:04

know, someone said, remember when the

12:06

sky would just be darkened by

12:09

a flock of birds going overhead? And

12:11

I thought, I've no, I don't remember that. This

12:14

person is obviously much older than I am. I never

12:16

I never saw that. But I think this idea

12:19

that we can't miss what we don't know

12:21

exists, we can't miss what we've never seen,

12:24

is very scary when it comes to issues

12:27

of animals and the planet in

12:29

general. You know, you can't fight

12:31

against what you don't know as a problem.

12:34

Right when I wrote it, I was living in Brooklyn,

12:36

and I guess birds weren't a huge part

12:38

of my life. And we've since moved to

12:41

the Albany, New York area, which is

12:44

very green, and we have so many birds

12:46

in our yards. Once you start seeing them and

12:48

seeing the variety, it makes

12:50

you wonder, you know, what more

12:52

there might have been to see. It's

12:55

immeasurable. I think what we

12:58

lose just by not knowing

13:00

it was there for us, yes, and

13:02

not knowing it was there for us to enjoy.

13:05

Yes. The sisters seem

13:07

to have suffered a permanent sure

13:09

in this story, like we don't

13:11

know if they're ever going to talk to each other

13:14

again, but don't we

13:16

need to be talking to the doors of the

13:18

world? Like that is the position

13:20

of quite a few people, is that if

13:22

we give up on the doras we lose

13:25

everything. Do you think it's too late

13:27

for that? Are we too divide

13:29

it to come back together? I guess I

13:31

probably have kind of a pessimistic

13:33

take on this, you know. I do often see

13:37

this sentiment expressed maybe

13:39

on Twitter, and you know, the sense of like,

13:42

if you have these conservative

13:44

people in your life, you must

13:46

convince them. And it's

13:49

really difficult because personally I have

13:51

those people in my life, and if

13:53

you said to my conservative uncle, don't

13:55

talk to Courtney anymore unless she agrees to vote

13:58

for Trump. I'm never going to He's never

14:00

going to convince me. It's really

14:02

hard because I want to believe

14:04

that we can talk our way to agreement

14:06

on a lot of these things. But honestly,

14:08

I don't believe it. I mean, and that

14:10

doesn't mean that there aren't important

14:13

conversations to be had. You know, in my

14:15

own family, even there are people

14:17

who are conservative, but they're young, much

14:19

younger than I am, and they are

14:21

reasonable, and I see hope there.

14:24

I see hope in having conversations with

14:26

them, because even though they identify

14:28

as conservative, there's so much common

14:30

ground and they're not okay with

14:32

what's happening in this country

14:34

in a lot of ways. So to

14:36

my mind, yes, there are conversations

14:39

to be had, there's common ground to be found,

14:41

and there are a lot of people who we

14:43

shouldn't like, let go of or

14:46

just say forget it. We're never going to get there. But

14:48

there are also a lot of people who are just

14:50

there. They're fully baked, and I don't think we're going

14:52

to get them, unfortunately, much as they will

14:55

never get us. We like the

14:57

truth. I dare on the Chronicles of Now.

15:01

We enjoy good Courtney,

15:03

thank you so much for that story, and thank

15:06

you for coming on the Chronicles of Now. I've really

15:08

enjoyed this common versation me too, thank

15:10

you for having me. You

15:12

can read my full interview with Jay Courtney

15:15

Sullivan on our website Chronicles

15:17

dot Fm, where you can also

15:19

read the story you just heard and

15:21

other short fiction torn from today's

15:24

headlines. Our sound designer

15:26

and composer is Bart Warshaw, our

15:28

producer is Curtis Fox, and our associate

15:31

producer is Emily Rostick. Tyler

15:33

Cabott is the executive producer and founder

15:36

of Chronicles of NAP for Pushkin

15:38

Industries. Our executive producer

15:40

is Leetel Malaud. Special thanks

15:42

to Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliori,

15:45

Heather Faine, and Eric Sandler

15:48

for the Chronicles of Now podcast. I'm

15:50

Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening.