First Contact: International Edition

You're about to order some Bangin' Shrimp at your local Ruby Tuesday's when the old ladies in the booth next to you rip off their wrinkled faces, revealing that aliens live among us. You tell your server you're going to need a moment, stare into their big wet reptilian eyes and-- depending on where you born and how you were raised-- select one of the following options:

1. Approach them with sincere and open armed curiosity.
2. Run! And contact all the authorities . . . the FBI, CIA, KGB, MSS, Mossad, PETA, etc.
3. Drop to your knees and pledge obeisance to your new overlords.
4. Apprehend the undocumented interlopers and relocate them to an internment camp.

Clarification: Zombies vs. Aliens

The zombie apocalypse has a universal quality to it. It doesn't matter where you were born or how you were raised. We all know how it will go down. Around the globe, little bands of survivors will wander around, scavenging food and bashing brains.

But with aliens, it's up in the air. First contact narratives reflect the collective subconscious of the culture that creates them. Alex Graham's renowned "Kindly take us to your President" New Yorker cartoon from 1953 depicts a simpler time and a more trusting America. If the aliens weren't talking to a horse, then they'd be making a reasonable request.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a moderate conservative who continued the New Deal, expanded Social Security, funded NASA, opposed McCarthyism, integrated schools, and built the Interstate Highway System. The joke wasn't on the President, it was on the aliens. They were asking a horse! That horse doesn't know President Eisenhower! Today, the caption would be very different (perhaps the horse would reply, "He's not my President" or "Sure, he loves fake news!" or something equally bi-partisan).

"Kindly take us to your President!"

I recently digested three excellent first contact stories, each from a different cultural perspective:

1. Representing the liberal American democratic techno-state: Hank Green's novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. Hooray for the liberal American democratic techno-state! If you're reading this blog then I'm assuming you are extremely familiar with this cultural milieu and the human rights/political stance inherent within it.
2. Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem hails from China; the story begins during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and heads into what is probably uncharted ideological, political, and philosophical ground for most Westerners.
3. District 9 is a 2009 South African sci-fi movie directed by Neill Blomkamp. It's streaming on Netflix right now . . . if you haven't seen it, watch it. It's awesome.

The arc of each of these three earthlings-meet-aliens narratives reveals just as much about the culture of the humans making first contact as it does about the desires of the aliens. All three present the same scenario: humans learn that they not alone in the universe, nor are they at the top of the technological totem-pole. They also learn that the aliens possess thoughts and emotions that might be slightly inscrutable to human reason. How folks handle an existential bombshell like this depends on their culture. And how authors portray how folks handle an existential bombshell like this depends on what culture the author is from. It's far more philosophical than a zombie apocalypse. The zombie apocalypse is pragmatic, which is why people love to imagine it. Food, shelter, weapons, and watching loved ones transform into slobbering ghouls. First contact is profound (at least Stanley Kubrick thought so . . . he thought it was so profound that it's almost impossible to watch 2001 in its entirety unless you're in an altered state . . . that's what you get when you make a first contact film in 1968).

What happened to the plot?

An Aside: Real Science Fiction vs. The Other Stuff

Before we dive in, I'd like to assert that District 9, The Three-Body Problem, and An Absolutely Remarkable Thing are "real" science-fiction (by my definition anyway). This is important. It means these stories go beyond the human, beyond character. This is normally a terrible idea. Characters are what makes stories great (e.g. Shakespeare and J.K. Rowling, both of whom used derivative plot elements to get the ball rolling, but excelled at creating fantastic characters). Plots are a dime a dozen. So real science-fiction is a risk because the setting has to become more than a plot device. It has to become the focus.

Certainly, sci-fi has some tried and tested working elements; it's usually speculative and contains themes of technology and alternative history, but more importantly-- the great risk of real science-fiction-- is that the setting is the main character. There might be actual characters, but you don't care about them as much as the setting. Brave New World is the perfect example. No one cares what happens to Bernard and Lenina, or even John the Savage. We're entranced by the world. There was no reason to make sequels to The Matrix. I refuse to watch them. I don't give two shits about Neo and Trinity. The real love story in that movie is between the alternate apocalyptic reality and the matrix. That dynamic is far more fascinating than the fact that Keanu Reeves is "the one." Cypher's choice is the sci-fi version of Sophie's choice. Which world does he love more? Ursula LeGuin's The Ones That Walk Away from Omelas is the extreme version of this principle, the story that tests the boundaries of convention. There is no character but the setting: Omelas.

So Star Wars does not qualify as "real" science-fiction. You could make it a Western and the themes would remain the same. Fathers and sons, good and evil, darkness and light. Horses instead of Tauntauns. Tonto instead of Chewbacca. E.T. is barely sci-fi. E.T. himself is more of a religious figure, and the story is about how individuals-- his child disciples and the others-- relate to him.

One more stick and it's perfect . . .

Close Encounters starts to grapple with how the government and the world would handle first contact, but it's more the story of the disintegration of a family because one of the members experiences an incredible event and that alienates him from his wife and family (we watched it a few weeks ago and my son Ian said he would help me if I started building a giant dirt and brick mountain in the living room, instead of splitting town with mom).

District 9, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, and The Three-Body Problem are different. You might enjoy and root for some of the people involved, but these characters all pale in comparison to the detail and attention given to the worlds in each.

Let's Relocate to District 9

Just scrawl on the dotted line.

You might argue that District 9 is character driven (at least the second half). Wikus begins as a tragically bureaucratic anti-hero out of a Kafka novel who transforms into an actual warrior-hero (and there's even a bit of intergalactic romance at the very end) but truth be told, the real stars of the film are the South African government bureaucracy, the prawn relocation camps which have gradually devolved into metaphorical apartheid slums, the forcible relocations, the alien biotech, and Multinational United (the insidious quasi-governmental weapons manufacturer/mercenary task force the government hires to move the prawns). The impact of the film comes from the world and the message it delivers: your culture will steer how you treat aliens. If you are prone to apartheid and relocation, you will use these tactics on the newcomers. And once they are ensconced in that system, it will be hard to treat them as citizens of the universe.

An Absolutely American Thing

If you live in a polarized country where half of the nation is concerned with identity politics and the other half wants to wall off and defend the country from any change in identity, then this is going to be a major influence on how immigrants from the stars are treated. Especially if this country is essentially democratic, and the citizens possess freedom of speech and unlimited internet access.

This is the world of Hank Green's new novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. He tackles first contact from an emergent bottom-up viral media stand-point. Because this process is relatively democratic and unstructured, it inevitably pits the liberals against the conservatives. People think how they want to think, and then have the the capability to express this on a grand stage. They choose sides.

April and "Carl"

At the start of the story, sixty-four hulking alien statues miraculously appear in urban areas across the globe. Late one night, April May and her art school buddy Andy stumble upon the New York statue and film an empathetic and welcoming YouTube video, in which they name the statue "Carl." The video (and the nickname) goes viral. April May becomes the self-deprecating, self-aware, and self-consciously-famous narrator of our first-contact-experience. Not only is April May special, she's extra-special. Extra-terrestrially special. She's also emerged as the most important person on earth. The alien visitors chose her and so did the internet, and then-- at least for most of the story-- she uses her special status to stay several steps ahead of the government, her fans, and a political faction called the Defenders. She is constrained by nothing. In District 9 and The Three-Body Problem, all roads lead to authority. And authority controls decisions and destiny. But not in America. We don't need no stinking badges!

Meanwhile, things get very binary between the liberals, who want band together as one human species and solve all the puzzles the alien force has presented (in a shared Dream) and the Defenders, who are xenophobic and pragmatic and defensive. It's a bit of a political caricature of America, but it works, especially since this book is probably geared for precocious YA readers. We get democracy of thought at its best and worst. Individuals making decisions that have real impact. It's such an American perspective. The enemies of global cooperation are a large amorphous binary faction and from this mentality emerges some awful individual action. Terrorism. It's a simple way to view the world. There's us and them, the liberal and the conservatives . . . and even individual conservatives might have some good ideas, but some of them get carried away and take things too far and try to take matters into their own hands. It's a tale of individual fame and knowledge, and how that can get amplified by feedback loops and viral media. This is what Green gets best . . . and so the science and technology and viral nature of ideas and fame in our world is just as strange and speculative as the world of the shared alien Dream. They are both portrayed in loving detail, and make up for the fact that April May is a mildly annoying representative of the the liberal American democratic techno-state.

I also love that April May's trusty sidekick is Robin, the personal assistant/handler assigned to her by her ruthless publicity agent, Jennifer Putnam. April May and Robin, modern superheroes endowed with the power of millions of YouTube followers and the aegis of robots from space. America: we are an absurd society, a silly superpower.

Life is More Than Humanity

In stark contrast to Hank Green's ode to the power of individuality, we have Cixin Liu's depiction of China. The novel begins during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. A physicist is being beaten to death because he inserted Einstein's Theory of Relativity into his physics curriculum. The current regime regards Einstein as an American Imperialist who helped build the atom bomb, and so not only is Einstein the person anathema, but his ideas are heretical as well. He did not fit properly into the Revolutionary Ideology, and so both the idea and the individual bearing the idea are quashed. In this society, you are defined not as an individual, but by which government (or anti-government) faction you belong to.

In this top-down system, it's not possible for an individual viewpoint to go viral. April May is not possible. In fact, it's not even possible for disembodied ideas to go viral. The top-down influence can oppress and dismantle actual ideas. We first see this with the government and the various intelligence agencies, but then we learn that the alien forces also have the power to destroy ideas and impede science. Liu sees this in Chinese history, and assumes that aliens would use the same strategy. The aliens do not choose an individual, ergo there is no April May. They examine systems. Democracy of thought does not win out in this world. Killings are utilitarian and without empathy. They are done with a cost/benefit ratio in mind, whether it's a spouse, a rival, or someone who possesses information . . . computation trumps individuality. Some factions even consider the entire human race expendable for the greater good. Ideology creates morality, and individual morality is rare.

It's difficult or impossible to operate outside this top-down sphere. The only one who has some success is the hardboiled detective Shi Qiang (who goes by the nickname Da Shi). He's earned his individuality though, by brutal and pragmatic success within the police/counter-terrorism force. He's proven himself indispensable.

Thank God for Da Shi. He's the only way into the novel for someone like me. I'm not Chinese, so understanding this totally ideological, utilitarian perspective is a stretch (although I enjoyed the historical/political parts of the book immensely . . . they are just as strange as the sci-fi portions). And, I regret to admit, that I'm not that interested in the stars. Black holes, three-body star systems, light speed . . . I should be more curious, but I'm not. I'm interested in other life forms, but the vast expanse of space leaves me cold. I'm not profound enough to contemplate it. I like when creatures move around, procreate, evolve, eat each other and have sex.

So Da Shi is a breath of fresh air. Here's some archetypal Da Shi dialogue. He's talking to nanotechnologist Wang Miao. Miao has been experiencing some hallucinatory events involving the background radiation of the universe that is making him question the fundamental laws of physics.



"You're saying the universe was . . . was winking at you?" Da Shi asked, as he slurped down strips of tripe like noodles.

"That's a very appropriate metaphor."

"Bullshit."

"Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance."

"More bullshit. Come, drink!"

Wang finished another shot. Now the world was spinning around him, and only the tripe-chomping Shi Qiang across from him remained stable. He said, "Da Shi, have you ever . . . considered certain ultimate philosophical questions? For example, where does Man come from? Where does Man go? Where does the universe come from? Where does it go? Et cetera."

"Nope."

"Never?"

"Never."

"You must see the stars. Aren't you awed and curious?"

"I never look at the sky at night."

"How is that possible? I thought you worked the night shift?"

"Buddy, when I work at night, if I look up at the sky, the suspect is going to escape . . . to be honest, even if I were to look at the stars in the sky, I wouldn't be thinking about your philosophical questions. I have too much to worry about! I gotta pay the mortgage, save for the kid's college, and handle the endless stream of cases . . . I'm a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass . . ."

                                                                          The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu)

I love the fact that Da Shi lives in this very hardcore-sci-fi novel. He's a reminder that when the aliens come, most of us are going to have to go on living our lives. Business as usual. So how we treat the aliens will be constrained by the limits of our culture. I can't imagine that we'll treat them any better than we treat our own citizens with opposing political views, that we'll treat them any better than those who try to immigrate to our country without permission, or that we'll treat them better the members of our society who propose controversial ideas. We'll probably treat them worse than those people . . . because, when the aliens come, most of us will root for the home team (but not everyone . . . if you read The Three-Body Problem, you'll run into the Adventists, who think the human race might be expendable).

If you don't feel like reading Cixin Liu's trilogy, you could simply wait for Amazon to make the series. Supposedly, they're thinking about plunking a billion dollars down for the rights. I hope they get it done before the aliens actually arrive.

I Am More Than My Big Firm Round Ones

Those of you who know me might be surprised to hear this, but I know what it's like to be objectified. To be eye-balled, given the once-over. I understand this is an unusual statement when it comes from a hirsute middle-aged man with more hair on his back than on his head, but it's true. I'm often characterized solely by my big firm gravity-defying round ones. Their size and symmetry appraised and lauded.

God forbid I show them off in public.

Hello? My face is up here!

Just because I'm well endowed doesn't give you the license to gawk and ogle.

Or does it?

I'll admit I find the attention flattering, but it's also awkward and weird. I want to cry out:

I'm more than a pair of fabulous fleshy protrusions!

I'm an accomplished Scrabble player, an avid reader of non-fiction and a fan of the surrealist paintings of Max Ernst!

There's a brain in here!

I'm more than a pair of stunning calves.

And while it might not be exactly analogous to the comments a voluptuous woman endures when she walks past an urban construction site, it's in the same ballpark. So, ladies, I get it. I know what it feels like to be a hot, sexy nubile babe at a sausage hang. I can empathize.

I'll admit there are some situations where unsolicited calf-commentary makes a certain sense. At sporting functions, for instance. Last week at Wednesday night pick-up basketball, a dude remarked that I have the "calves of a powerlifter." Total non sequitur. We were not on the subject of calf-raises or calf-injuries or calf-tattoos. He just had to say it. While it was slightly off-topic, it was not completely out-of-the-blue. When you match-up on defense in pick-up basketball, you first engage in a frank discussion about the physical attributes of the opposing team. You then coordinate your team's height, weight, speed, and strength. You're allowed to be candid. So perhaps my calves were just part of the scouting report. My son Alex informs me that some of the soccer players I've coached are intimidated by my giant calves. I sort of get this. The muscle tone in my calves is epic, and I'm sure it's due to coaching and playing soccer. So it's kind of germane. And I can understand when my acupuncturist comments on them. She's working on them. Sticking needles into them to try to get the giant knots out.

But I also get calf compliments at work. This is partly my fault for parading around in shorts in a professional environment, but I like to exercise when I'm on the clock (it's like I'm being paid to work out . . . you're tax dollars at work). So I'm not claiming harassment here; I recognize that I'm flaunting my naked calves in the workplace and that there may be consequences. And I know I'm a lucky guy: Johnny Drama would be green with envy. There's no question that women young and old find my calves irresistible. So when they get a peek at them, they're compelled to say something. I get this. I feel the same way when I see a shapely woman, especially if she's showing some cleavage. It's a hard topic not to discuss. I refrain, of course, because it's 2019, but the impulse is there.

I would also like to assure everyone that I do not have calf implants. I would never be so shallow.

My calves are real. And they're spectacular.

I've obviously got to end this post in the same manner as Boogie Nights. I've got to show you the goods.

Here they are:

It's more difficult than you think to take a selfie of both calves. I used a mirror.

Feel free to comment, but remember: I'm more than just a pair of awesome calves . . . I've also got great pecs!


You wouldn't believe how much I can bench. But you tell first . . .

New Paltz with No Kids: A Study in Words and Photos

Just after Christmas, my parents took our two boys to Florida with them. This afforded me, my wife, and our dog Lola a chance to take a kid-free vacation in the Hudson Valley. My kids got to relax and live it up with their grandparents in Naples. Their trip looked like this:

This is NOT their story. Theirs is a story of balmy weather, good eating, and luxurious living. They had a wonderful time and my wife and I are much obliged to Grammy and Poppy. But it's boring stuff.

This post is about what to do in New Paltz if you're lucky enough to go without your kids. In December. In all sorts of weather. In a tiny cabin. With a dog. And a sick wife. Not only will I regale you with my eloquent prose, but I'm also going to include a visual feast for the eyes: digital photos! I will save the best shot for last: during a chance wildlife encounter, I actually had the wherewithal to snap a picture with my cellular phone. I generally forget that my phone has this capability, but now I'm emboldened. Now I'm a photographer (as well as an expert at indoor plant installations . . . but that's for another post).

Two days after Christmas, we dropped the kids at my parents and headed to New Paltz for our romantic getaway. The dog traveled in the crate, which turned out to be a godsend. Lola normally pukes on longish car-rides-- which is not very romantic. She had recently puked directly into our tennis-ball hopper. The hopper contained at least forty-five tennis balls. Tennis balls have a radius of 1.25 inches, so if you multiply that by 4π then you get nearly twenty inches of surface area per tennis ball. There was dog vomit on most of the balls, hundreds of inches of vomit covered surface area. Really gross. But in her crate, she lay down and slept. Vomit-free trip. Very romantic.

While we were traveling northbound on Route 1, we saw something kind of sexy on a Sonic sign (if you're into carnivorous bestiality).

This is not the actual sign we saw, but apparently Sonic restaurants across the nation use this obscenely anthropomorphic/cannibalistic haiku as a marketing gimmick. The chicken strips in central Jersey go for $5.99.

Two hours after we imagined a pullet performing at a gentleman's club and then promptly being thrown into the deep fryer, my wife and I arrived at our cozy and dog-friendly Airbnb cabin on the Rail Trail, less than a mile outside of downtown New Paltz. The location couldn't have been better. You could hike the Rail Trail for miles into the wilderness, or you could go the opposite direction and stroll into town, passing through scenically historic Huguenot Street. We unpacked and got ready to begin our (moderately) romantic kid-free vacation. Moderately romantic because-- unfortunately-- my wife was recovering from strep throat and also had a nasty cold (and accompanying cough). Phlegm makes things a little less romantic than lack of phlegm. But despite this, to her credit, she never complained once . . . she just blew her nose a lot.

Our little cabin

It was a beautiful afternoon.We took the dog for a long hike down the Rail Trail and then pondered where we should go for an early dinner.

My wife looked over her handwritten list of great things to do around New Paltz, provided by her friend Kristen. Kristin highly recommended an Irish bar/restaurant called Garvan's. We checked the map and learned that while downtown New Paltz was nearly a mile from our cabin, Garvan's was only a few hundred yards. It was just across the Rail Trail, by the golf course. We were walking distance to a bar! On a vacation without the kids! Pretty sweet. And it had a fantastic happy hour.

Garvan's is in an old building near the club house of the New Paltz Golf Course. It's the most Irish place I've ever been (I've never been to Ireland). The owner-- Garvan-- was very friendly and very Irish. Thus I decided to go with the Guinness. It tasted especially good, which I mentioned to the bartender. It was the end of his shift, so he might have been a little more brusque than normal, but he basically told me that it had better taste good, since Garvan's was one of the few places in the country where Guinness had installed the tap, so the blend of nitrous oxide and CO2 was perfect. Okay, I said, that explains that. What else could I say?

Catherine went with a half and half (also known as a snakebite or a poor man's black velvet). It consists of half cider and half Guinness. We also had the beet and jicama salad, some truffle fries, and some sliders. And some fish and chips. Very Irish and very delicious. The place is awesome, especially for happy hour.

Then we walked back to the cabin, walked the dog, and watched Derry Girls. If you haven't seen it yet, Derry Girls is the perfect show to watch after going to an Irish bar. It's an Irish Netflix comedy; essentially Mean Girls meets Adrian McKinty's "Troubles Trilogy." Catholic school girls (and one boy) amidst the political/religious conflict in Northern Ireland. In the '90's. It's fabulous. (Also, I'm good buddies with Adrian McKinty, so I don't use him in an analogy unless I'm dead serious . . . check the comments).

The bed was a bit soft and there was some coughing and snoring from my wife's side of it, but I had consumed enough Guinness to sleep through the sniffling.

The next morning, I walked the dog down the Rail Trail again (while my wife slept). And I realized that while the location of the cabin was great, the cabin itself was not perfect. It was clean, and it was cheap, but it was cozy. I am a solidly built American male, so when I say the cabin was "cozy," I actually mean claustrophobically small. Normally when we travel, we make some coffee and grab a light breakfast at home, then do something active, eat lunch out, and then-- at least a few times-- we cook dinner back at the ranch. This is the most economical way to do it. Lunch is the cheapest meal to eat out. It's also nice to get back to home base for dinner. You can drink as many local beers as you desire, without worrying about driving under the influence in a new locale. And going out for breakfast is just stupid. Pay for eggs? I can make eggs.

This photo makes the kitchen look bigger than it actually is.

On this trip, our normal schedule got turned on its head. The first morning, I tried to make some coffee, but I kept banging into things in the kitchen. The kitchen was too small to make coffee in. I made an executive decision and told my wife we were going to the Mudd Puddle for coffee and breakfast. She readily agreed. She loves to go out for breakfast but recognizes that going out for breakfast defies all my logic and reason. Lunch food is better than breakfast food. I hate to eat before I do some exercise. If you eat breakfast out, then you're not hungry for lunch. If you eat breakfast out, then you're not ready to snowboard, ski, hike, run, etc. It's completely insane to eat breakfast out. But my claustrophobia (and the lack of children) overrode that decision.

We had been to New Paltz once before-- with the kids-- and remembered that the Mudd Puddle had the best coffee in the universe. While we would never bring the kids to a local coffee shop for breakfast-- the place was too small and slow and local-- we realized that we did not have the kids with us. We could bring our books and read while we drank coffee.

So we went to the Mudd Puddle, got coffee, read our books, and I ate a James Special sandwich, which involves eggs, bourbon-soaked bacon, balsamic caramelized onions, and some kind of homemade bread. It was wild! It was crazy! We were eating food before doing exercise. The sandwich was the best thing ever. I had one every morning for the rest of the trip.

Then the rains came. We beat a hasty retreat back to our tiny cabin. Catherine, still nursing her cold, fell fast asleep. I took the dog for a long walk down the Rail Trail in the rain. It was gross. Hugeonot Street was historical and scenic, but I was full from breakfast. It's hard to appreciate 17th century architecture when your is stomach is full and your socks are damp. I got back and we watched "Bandersnatch" on Netflix. It was fun to choose but the plot was only okay.

It was pouring. The kids were sending us pictures. Ian caught a lizard. They were lounging around the pool. What the fuck were we going to do? The cabin was tiny and it was raining cats and dogs. Once again, it took a moment to realize that we didn't have to amuse the kids. They were in Florida. We took a ride to the Yard Owl Brewery. It was run by James, the guy who owned the Mudd Puddle. The beer had to be good.

It was. But playing Bananagrams in a small craft brewery on the Hudson Valley Rail Trail with my beautiful (but phlegmy) wife was even better than the beer, though. Very relaxing. Time seemed to stand still. And you could blame it on her illness, but I kicked her ass three times in a row (which doesn't usually happen).

The best beer at the Yard Owl was the Chouette D'or. It was divine! Divine I say! And that means a lot, because I hate eating, drinking, and enunciating anything French. The Owlet was also tasty (and very cute). We also had a cheese plate with red onion relish. The red onion relish is to die for. To die for! And it doesn't have a French name.

Catherine also liked the local cider.

The next day the rains let up. We went hiking in the morning on one of the trails in the Mohonk Preserve. We wanted to see the Mohonk Testimonial Gatehouse up close. It was built in 1908 and apparently, it was in a 1985 horror movie called The Stuff.

The Mohonk trails are beautifully maintained, but there is a $15 dollar fee daily fee per hiker. Fuck that! We trespassed.

After going for a hike, we headed over to Mid Hudson Sporting Clays to shoot some shotguns.

This was harder than I imagined. Catherine was pretty good, but I kept picking my head up. Also, Steve-- our instructor-- gave me a "man's gun." A 12 gauge. Catherine got to use the 20 gauge. Every time I picked my head up to watch the shot fly, the gun kicked and hit me in the cheek. This hurt like hell. We shot fifty rounds. Forty of them whacked me in the cheek. Ouch. If you look closely at the picture, my cheek is swollen. I would have not made it very far in the Wild West. Clint Eastwood would have shot me while I was rubbing my swollen cheek.

Over the next few days we did more of the same (aside from the shooting). We visited Catherine's favorite cider house: Bad Seed. They had a lot of interesting ciders on tap. There was also a wild double birthday party going on in there. A gaggle of women in their mid-fifties dressed in 70's style clothing. Apparently, this is what you do around New Paltz. Drive out to breweries and cider houses and have a good time. They are spacious places. You can bring kids and dogs. It's a sweet set-up.

Here's a shot of historic Huguenot Street. If you look closely, you can see that I am balder than I think I am. If you look very closely, you'll see my dog's anus.

One morning we drove out to Lake Minnewaska and hiked from Awosting Falls up to the cliffs around the lake. It's a spectacular place.

Here's a shot of Awosting Falls. The falls were really running because of all the rain.

There were a couple of other excellent spots. Arrowood Farm-Brewery is scenic and has great beer. Another big open space that is dog and kid-friendly. The Main Street Bistro serves vegetarian food good enough to make me a vegetarian (at least for a little while, later in the day I couldn't pass up short rib sliders at Garvan's). We had one fancy meal at a place called A Tavola and it was worth it (and I hate expensive restaurants). Then we went to the Denizen Theater and saw a play called "Adaptive Radiation." The play was very experimental, as was the performance space. It's called intimate black box theater and it's cozy. By cozy, I mean claustrophobically small. We were right on top of the four actors; the stage and seats were in a sort of an alley set-up: the seats rose up on either side of the stage, so you were staring at half of the audience (I enjoyed seeing their reactions to all the weirdness in the play). The play was more professional than I thought, and it was also louder than I thought. I also think that theater should happen before dinner. As I pointed out, The Denizen Theater was a cozy space, and I had just drank quite a few Molly IPAs and eaten a heavy meal. There was certainly something brewing in my belly, and a brisk walk in the air would have been more appropriate than sitting very still in a small black room in close proximity to a bunch of strangers. I managed to curtail any flatulence, but it wasn't easy. I had to sit very still.

And now, as promised, I'll show you the pièce de résistance . . . some stunning wildlife photography. I was out walking with the dog at dusk, on the Rail Trail, and I felt a presence. Something looming over me. It was an owl! A very appropriate animal, since we had been to the Yard Owl Brewery (where Cat bought an owl hat). And the owl is the Highland Park mascot (Highland Park is the town in which I live and coach).

Because of all this heaping significance, I actually remembered to pull my cell phone out and snap a photo. A few people who saw the photo were curious as to my equipment: I used an LG Harmony phone to take this picture. It costs twenty dollars when you sign up for Cricket. I don't think I had it on the highest resolution. Here is the photo. It's a keeper!

Let me zoom in. This is the stuff of National Geographic.

A vivid memory from a fantastic trip.

We had a smooth ride back to Jersey, hosted a small New Year's Party/game night, and picked up the kids at the Trenton airport on New Year's Day. The kids were fat, happy, and tired. Alex had gained 8 pounds and Ian had put on 5.

Once we got home from New Paltz, the dog seemed pretty depressed but then when Ian walked in the house she went totally bananas. It was like a miniature version of the end of the Odyssey; Odysseus returns home after his twenty-year voyage and his dog Argus sees him and gets so excited that he dies. Lola did not die (nor did she pee in the house) but she was pretty damned excited to have the kids back (and so were Cat and I . . . especially because they had followed our instructions and watched Derry Girls, so we had a lot to discuss).

A Case For Reading Novels (With Some Help from Steven Johnson andGeorge Eliot)

Two roads diverge in a yellow wood . . . which one do you take?

You have time to ponder. You're not being chased by a lion, tiger, or bear. So do you choose the road less traveled by? Or head down the well trodden one? Either way, your choice will make all the difference.

Steven Johnson discusses these life-altering moments in his new book Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most. He thinks we are woefully unprepared for these kinds of choices. He's probably right. We read "The Road Not Taken" in my Creative Writing class, and then we discuss times when we made these kinds of decisions. We all readily concede that once you journey down a particular fork in the road, you probably won't backtrack and take another path, but I don't advise them prescriptively on how to navigate these crucial moments. Instead, I present them with a literary example. We read it, discuss it, and run through the variables and options. It turns out-- according to Steven Johnson-- that this may be the best tactic imaginable.

Aunt Belle's Two Roads

I use an example from a book of anecdotes and recipes called Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. It's not fiction, but for folks in suburban New Jersey in 2019, it might as well be. It's damn close to a time travel story. If you haven't guessed, Mildred Armstrong Kalish is very old. She's 96. Coincidentally, my grandmother also goes by Mildred (though her Christian name is Carmella) and she's also 96.

When Mildred was a child, Aunt Belle tells her a story.

Once, before Aunt Belle died, I got up enough courage to ask her a very personal question.

"Aunt Belle, how come you never got married?"

She looked at me for a long time. She was standing by the kitchen stove, her delicate hands clasping and unclasping the stove handle, and she told me the following story:

"Well, I did have one beau. He told Art (her brother and my grandpa) to tell me Barkis is willin' and that he would be over Saturday night. Well, that made me so mad! I thought he had a lot of nerve asking me to marry him through Art like that! So when he came over Saturday night I wouldn't take his hat; I wouldn't take his coat. I wouldn't ask him to sit down. I treated him just as cold. I treated him so bad he never came back."

She stood absolutely still for a long time; then she continued:

"I'm kind of sorry I was so cold to him; he went and married Abbie Cross, made her a good home and was a good husband to her. They had a nice family."

She remained contemplative for a while and then continued, "It's been kind of lonesome sometimes."

Talk about roads not taken.
                   


Aunt Belle obviously regrets her decision. She made it out of spite, and-- by choosing a moment of indignant retribution over a lifetime of possible happiness/contentedness -- she impulsively inverts Pascal's famous wager. After we read this, I remind my students that they are lucky to live in a densely populated area, where they will have plenty of opportunities for courtship and marriage. They probably won't have to resort to marrying a first cousin (which is apparently legal in New Jersey) but in Depression-era Iowa the pickin's were slim.

We're Talking About Practice

Big decisions are tough. We don't get enough practice. Most people only get married once . . . or twice . . . but rarely thrice. The same goes for buying a home. I got lucky with my marriage, but we all know the divorce rates; marriage is a coin-flip. Buying a home is similar (and often simultaneous). If I had more practice with home buying, I would have checked out the concrete more thoroughly. I would have been more annoyed by the basement crawl space. I would have found the roof suspect. I would have known just what an ordeal it is to redo a kitchen. But I knew none of this, and simply liked the location and the deck. Next time . . . if there is one, I will be more discerning.

I learned an easy technique to help with this decision-making-dilemma on The Art of Manliness (Podcast #465: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead) The guest, Warren Berger, suggests imagining yourself in the new scenario-- whether it be a new house, a new marriage, a new location, a new wife, a new job. Really vividly imagine this new life. And then ask yourself: would you go back to your old life? Would you make the switch in reverse?

Or perhaps you could follow the advice of way-finding guru Dave Evans and do some "odyssey planning." This involves imagining three possible lives that you could genuinely live and sincerely considering all of them. Recognizing that there is no "one true path" for you to tread so you can engage in all the possibilities.

Many times we get hung up on the small details and anxiety of change, and fail to think about the consequences of the actual decision. Aunt Belle got hung up on the way Art asked her to marry, but she never imagined married life with Art and compared this long-term scenario to spinster-life on a farm in Depression-era Iowa. If she had done that, she might have overlooked Art's graceless go-between proposal and thought more about the big picture.

Advice for the President

The most notable thing about Steven Johnson's Farsighted is that he lauds the power of literary novels to help us imagine and simulate these big decisions. Johnson also has more typical fare in the book: the history of weather forecasting and the theoretical, strategic, and tactical planning of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But his main example is George Eliot's Middlemarch.

I'm an English teacher, and I often wonder if my job is bullshit. Do kids really need to read Beowulf? The answer might be no. Lately, the Language Arts curriculum has been moving toward more practical coursework, non-fiction texts, and synthesis essays. I see the value in this. But the Johnson book validates the traditional inclination of English class: reading novels. The ideas he presents feel groundbreaking and pushing them on both my students and my colleagues. Sometimes we need a reminder of why it's worth it to read literature with kids. While there is a myriad of reasons to do this, Johnson makes the compelling case that people faced with big decisions should hone their skills by reading literary fiction. I'll explain why later in the post, but someone should pass this advice along to our fearless leader, Donald Trump. According to this list, Trump is not a fan of fiction, literary or otherwise.

Victorian Spoilers Ahead!

Johnson made Middlemarch sound so intriguing-- despite the fact that it's a 900 page Victorian novel-- that I decided to read it in tandem with Farsighted. This was no easy task, and while I recommend Middlemarch, I definitely had to use the internet to understand several parts. It's often dense. The sentences are beautiful, but often long and wandering. I'm guessing you're not going to read it (and the synopsis in Farsighted will suffice) but I still should warn you that there will be spoilers ahead.

Many years ago, my friend and colleague Dan saw me reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I was five hundred pages in.

"Why are you reading that?" he asked me. "She's just going to throw herself in front of a train."

"What? Why did you tell me that!"

"Everyone knows that," he said.

I did not know that.

When in Doubt, Wait and Think Anew

The biggest decision (among many big decisions) in Middlemarch is whether recently widowed Dorothea Casaubon should follow the codicil in her dead husband's will and lose her fortune, or ignore the codicil and marry the man she truly loves . . . a man her dead husband despised. Mary Anne Evans doesn't make it easy. She details all the forces that might weigh on a life decision of this magnitude. Johnson explains charts these forces:


At its core, Dorothea's choice is simply binary: Should she marry Ladislaw or not? But Eliot allows us to see the rich web of influence and consequences that surrounds that decision. A full spectrum map of the novel would look something like this:

MIND → FAMILY → CAREER → COMMUNITY → ECONOMY → TECHNOLOGY → HISTORY

In Middlemarch, each of these levels plays a defining role in the story.

Johnson then points out the difference in scope between Middlemarch and a more narrowly bound (but still wonderful) literary novel like Pride and Prejudice. We get insight into the personal lives of the characters in Pride and Prejudice, but we are "limited to the upper realm of the scale diagram: the emotional connections between the two lovers, and the apparent approval or disapproval of their immediate family and a handful of neighbors." Mary Anne Evans goes all the way. Things get so complicated that all we can do is what Dorothea does: "wait and think anew."

Great novels don't give us prescriptions for what to do in complex situations. They are not morality plays or fables. There is no set of invariable rules. Once again, Johnson explains this better than I can:

Great novels-- or at least novels that are not didactic in their moralizing-- give us something fundamentally similar to what we get out of simulations of war games or ensemble forecasts: they let us experience parallel lives, and see the complexity of those experiences in vivid detail. They let us see the choice in all its intricacies. They map all the thread-like pressures; they chart the impact pathways as the choice ripples through families, communities, and the wider society. They give us practice, not prepackaged instructions.


It's a lot easier to read literary novels than it is to amass the experiences within them. My buddy Whitney recently reflected on these moments in a numerically epic post . . . he's lived a life that might encompass several novels, and so he's got more moments like this under his belt than most folks. Most of us don't get this much practice, and Johnson suggests that the next best thing is to ingest fiction, things that never happened.

Just the Fiction, Ma'am

Why fiction? Why not stick to the facts? We could spend out lives in the world of reality, watching documentaries and reading non-fiction, and never want for compelling stories. Why involve ourselves in lives and worlds and decisions that don't exist? Johnson takes a guess: "Stories exercise and rehearse the facility for juggling different frames of truth, in part, because they themselves occupy a complicated position on the map of truth and falsehood, and in part because stories often involve us observing other (fictional) beings going through their own juggling act."

Glitch in the Matrix?

We can run our limited perspective through many other minds and fictional lives, hypothesizing both about the reality of truthfulness of that world and the reality and truthfulness of the decision making within it. It's why I love Middlemarch and Brothers Karamazov and it's why I think the TV show Ozark -- though it's well acted, set in an interesting location, and looks like quality work-- might be totally stupid. Something is off with the simulation. There's a glitch in the matrix. There's something foggy floating in the suspension of disbelief.

The new novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, by Hank Green, handles this in an incredibly in-your-face manner. While the book is ostensibly a first-contact, robots-from-space sci-fi story, the irony is that the weirdest, most alien technology is actually the social-media-verse created by the humans. April May, the heroically awkward anti-hero, has to navigate her viral first contact fame and make several big decisions about the arc of her life. The novel inhabits the same space maturity-wise as the works by John Green, the author's brother. The story is sophisticated enough for adults to enjoy it, but the portrayal of politics and the dialogue can be a little schlocky. And the ending devolves into more of a Ready Player One puzzle-fest. While the book is probably more suited for a an advanced young-adult reader, I still like how it tackles decision-making . . . it literally exemplifies Johnson's reason for reading fiction. Here's how April May breaks down her first big moment:

Option 1 (the sane option):

I could detach from all this as much as possible. Stop doing TV things, definitely do not meet a strange science girl at Walmart in Southern California to buy smoke detectors, never do anything on the internet again, pay off my loans. Buy a big house with a gate with the licensing revenue that would, no doubt, if this were real, keep flowing for the entire rest of my life, and have dinner parties with clever people until I died.

Option 2 (the not-sane option):

Keep doing TV, spice up my Twitter and my Instagram and have opinions. Basically, use the platform that I was given by random chance to have a voice and maybe make a difference. What kind of difference? I had no idea, but I did know another chance wasn't going to come along . . . ever.

Hank Green

Don't Be Shallow and Pedantic

I'm going to let Steven Johnson finish this post off, with an especially long passage that I really think you should read. I made my students read it, and I gave it to a number of English teachers in my department. It's a great explanation of why we should spend time reading novels . . . literary novels. What designates a "literary" novel is another question for another post, but for now we can use the same benchmark that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart used to recognize hard-core pornography. He said he couldn't easily define it but, "I know it when I see it." The same goes for literature. As long as it's not "shallow and pedantic," then I think anything goes.

The novel is a better tool for simulating decision-making than a movie or TV show. Images move too fast and we never get to truly inhabit the interior of a character's mind. A novel allows for turning back and contemplation. It allows you to stop and hypothesize whenever you like. It's literally your world. Netflix tried to emulate a bit of this contemplative freedom with the choose-your-own-adventure Black Mirror episode "Bandersnatch", and while it was fun to make the choices, the story felt a bit contrived, and you never felt the threads and pressures that George Eliot portrays with such accuracy. You just picked a path so you could see what happened. The stakes were low. But when you invest in a challenging novel, and really live inside it, then profound things might happen.

This is the other reason novel reading turns out to enhance our decision-making skills . . . many studies have confirmed that a lifelong habit of reading literary fiction correlates strongly with an enhanced theory of mind skills. We don't know if other-minded people are drawn to literary fiction, or if the act of reading actually improves their ability to build those mental models. Most likely, it is a bit of both. But whatever the causal relationship, it is clear that one of the defining experiences of reading literary novels involves the immersion in an alternate subjectivity . . . The novel is an empathy machine. We can imagine all sorts of half-truths and hypotheticals: what-she-will-think-if-this-happens, what-he-thinks-I'm-feeling. Reading literary novels trains the mind for that kind of analysis. You can't run a thousand parallel simulations of your own life, the way meteorologists do, but you can read a thousand novels over the course of that life. It's true that the stories that unfold in those novels do not directly mirror the stories in our own lives. Most of us will never confront a choice between our late husband's estate and the matrimonial bliss with our radical lover. But the point of reading this kind of literary fiction is not to acquire a ready-made formula for your own hard choices. If you are contemplating a move to the suburbs, Middlemarch does not tell you what to do. No form of outside advice-- whether it takes the form of a novel or a cognitive science study or pop-psychology paperback-- can tell you what to do on these kinds of situations, because these situations contain, by definition, their own unique configuration of threadlike pressures. What the novel--along with some of the other forms of mapping and simulating that we have explored-- does teach you to do is to see the situation with what Eliot called "a keen vision and feeling," and keep you from the tendency to "walk about well wadded with stupidity." The novel doesn't give you answers. But it does make you better at following the threads . . . more than any other creative form, novels give us an opportunity to simulate and rehearse the hard choices of life before we actually make one ourselves. They give us an unrivaled vista into the interior life of someone wrestling with a complex, multi-layered choice, even if the choice happens to be a fictional one . . . the path of a human life, changing and being changed by the world around it.

Steven Johnson