At work, my colleagues sometimes refer to me as "Delayed Reaction Dave" because I don't process things quickly and I rarely see the future ramifications of new logistical, curricular, or contractual changes . . . so while everyone in the department is getting all worked up, because they CAN see the problems in the foreseeable future, I'll be like: "What's the big deal?" . . . but they know I'm going to get all pissed off later on, when the change actually takes effect-- for example, the new 82 minute periods . . . they are abominable and WAY too long, but several years ago when we discussed the hypothetical new schedule I was like, "that sounds fine, whatever . . ." and the same with teaching six periods and four preps-- it sounded fine in theory, last year when I agreed to do it, but now that I'm doing it, I'm complaining a lot and like "never again"-- so it seems I'm the same way with COVID . . . it took me way too long to actually contract it, and now that I've recovered, I've lost my sense of smell . . . and this seems utterly insane-- I've lost twenty percent of my senses-- but of course lots of people have experienced this throughout the pandemic but I just never really thought about it-- but when I walked outside yesterday morning with the dog, it felt like I was in a dream, not fully awake or even fully human-- I couldn't smell the grass or the flowers in my wife's garden or the damp morning air or the ragweed pollen . . . and here are some of the other things I smelled yesterday that produced no noticeable scent:
my coffee, Lola's poop, a bottle of red wine vinegar, a bottle of apple cider vinegar, an orange, grapes-- and they tasted like crisp balls of water-- hand sanitizer, and my tennis shoes . . .
so this is very fucking weird and now I can now empathize with all the people that told me about this during the course of the pandemic-- suddenly having no sense of smell really does dislodge you from reality.
The last thing of note that happened to me was this:
Saturday morning, when I was bending over to scoop and bag my dog's poop, a bird shit on my head. Bird crap splattered all over my headphones and my hat.
I was dealing with shit from above and below.
This week, instead of getting shit on, I'm going to get some shit done. My van needs fixin', the dog needs to go to the vet, I need to get an antibody test, and I'd like to close an account at the Credit Union.
I'll tally up my getting-shit-done-rate at the end of the week.
I was really looking forward to doing some athletics on this three day weekend. Indoor soccer on Sunday, indoor tennis on Monday, and then the weather was supposed to warm-up so I figured I could rollerblade or bike with the dog Monday afternoon. Best laid plans.
Valentine's Day preceded these best laid plans, however. Good thing. My cold finally dissipated Friday and my wife surprised me with a one day Valentine's celebration and vacation. She booked a room at the Heldridge in New Brunswick and got tickets to see Bret Ernst at the Stress Factory. We walked in, went to Clydz for Happy Hour and drank some martinis, attended the show-- which was packed-- and then had a beer at The Ale House while watching a rerun of the first Deontay Taylor/Tyler Fury fight. And then we didn't have to trek home, we stumbled right over to our room. Perfect night. The kids and Lola manned the fort back in Highland Park.. We even swam in the hotel pool in the morning (it was cold).
Sunday morning, I was excited that the weekend was not nearly over and headed to indoor soccer. I had played well the week before, even in the midst of a disgusting cold, so I thought I would really feel great this Sunday. Twenty minutes in, something happened to my calf. A little tweak. I stopped immediately. I've been through this before. I limped off, went home, took naproxen, and elevated it. Dammit.
This morning, I wrapped my calf up and went to the racket club with Ian. I was moving slow, but able to hit. I finally bought a new racket: an arm friendly Yonex Ezone 98. Wow. What a difference. So much power and it doesn't hurt my shoulder (very much). I can serve again and hit my one-handed cut back-hand. But I can't sprint. If it's not one thing, it's another. It was still fun (and mainly, we worked on Ian's serve-- which is a mess right now). I guess this is the way athletics are going to be for me here on in. I'm almost fifty.
When I got home, the weather had really warmed up. I decided to take Lola for a bike ride, but when I wheeled the bike out of the bike shed, I rolled it through some poop. We all know what to do when we step in dog poop, but having a bike tire slathered in the stuff is a different animal altogether. I attached Lola to the bike, hopped on, and went about the proper method: first I rode very slowly on the grass-- if you bike too fast with a poop tire the rotation of the tire will fling the poop right into your face. Then I found some mud puddles and went through those-- again, slowly-- and then, before I spattered myself with poop water, I rode through a sandy area to coat the tires. Then, when I got to the dog park, I wiped away the excess poop with a stick.
This was probably my best athletic performance all weekend.
Once upon a time in America, horror and war movies often implemented the Black Dude Dies First trope. But times have changed, for the better. Audiences won't stand for that racist bullshit. You can't go killing off Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman or Will Smith just because they're black. While this is absolutely a good thing, someone has to pick up the slack in these kinds of movies. Someone has to die in these movies.
So who suffers?
My family doesn't watch many scary movies because my older son Alex is a sniveling coward. Catherine, Ian and I like them, so it's always a treat when we get to hunker down and put one on. I'm definitely not a horror movie aficionado though. Usually when I mention a horror movie I've seen to someone who really likes horror movies-- usually one of my students-- she'll be like: "That's not scary!"
I get scared by pretty much anything (especially Blair Witch and Paranormal Activities).
The other night, Alex elected to go upstairs and pirate some Star Wars spin-off series called The Mandalorian (which sounds like a citrus fruit) so Catherine, Ian and I watched The Babadook.
It's really scary!
Terrifying.
It's the story of a mom who is possessed by the physical disembodiment of her tragic grief. And her super-creepy kid. And an even creepier children's book. There are some mean Australian moms, too-- a macabre Liane Moriarty milieu. It's well acted and vivid, and-- in the end-- profound about death and loss. A good scare and a good film.
My only complaint is the use of the dog.
There's all kinds of creepy shit happening around this house. Doors opening and closing, odd figures lurking in the shadows, sleepless nights, etc. Most of the time, the dog is nowhere to be found. That's not how dogs are. They are investigative. They take up a lot of space. They are always underfoot. And whenever there's something weird happening, your dog is there. Loyal, curious, and wanting to be involved. But not this dog. Not Bugsy. Bugsy is rarely in the scene, and never when the shit is going down. And the boy and the mom aren't actively bringing the dog into the room when things get scary.
One of the main reasons to have a dog is to ward off ghosts and demons. There's no better feeling than going to sleep on the same floor as a trusty canine. If a burglar, or -- far worse-- a shadowy death-creature arisen from repressed bereavement, comes a-knocking, your dog is going to get after it. Or at least bark and run around in circles.
Not only does Bugsy not act like a dog, there's also no accurate portrayal of dog ownership. No walking and feeding the dog, no picking up its poop and all that.
Soon enough, you realize why the dog is in the movie.
To die.
It's not that sad, because the dog hasn't been a main character. It's not like what happens in I Am Legend. That's tragic.
The death of the dog in The Babadook is more perfunctory. And inevitable. The dog is the new black dude. I guess that's progress, but instead of being racist, the movie is speciesist.
Ian and I also had this complaint about another horror movie we loved, The Conjuring. Early in the movie, Sadie the family dog refuses to enter the new house . . . because she knows the house is haunted. At this point, the family should up and leave. Trust your dog! But instead, they leash her outside the house and enter.
When they check on her in the next morning, she's dead.
As if this isn't awful enough, they barely mention her death the rest of the movie. I actually think they wrote the dog into the script after the movie was finished and then added the scene in post-production, just so they could have an early death.
If this were my family, and we spent a night in a spooky new house-- a house that our dog refused to enter-- and then the next morning our dog was dead, that's all we'd be talking about. We'd be broken up and upset and angry and investigative. Every time something weird happened in the house, we'd be bringing up Sadie and how she died and how she wasn't around the protect us. That would be THE topic of conversation.
I know it's tough to use children and animals in movies. Horror movies often employ both. The kids are great in both The Conjuring and The Babadook. And neither movie kills off any black dudes. That's great. But now it's time to show respect for our four-legged friends. They require a lot of work. They take up a lot of space. They investigate everything. And they will protect you from the supernatural like nobody's business.
This past weekend, I was up at 3 AM three nights in a row. Each night was a different adventure. While it makes for good content, this is not a streak I want to continue.
3 am Adventure #1 -- Friday Night
Friday night, my son Alex was over on Busch Campus at Rutgers with his fellow members of the Highland Park Rocket Propulsion Lab. They got some kind of a grant and use the Rutgers facilities: the 3-D printer and the modeling software and the soldering equipment. These are really smart kids (who also play tennis-- that's how Alex met them). And something went wrong with Arduino mini (a piece of electronic equipment). The wires weren't grounded and they fried the circuit board.
So when Catherine and I got home from dinner with friends at 11 PM, Alex wasn't home yet. We texted and he said that they were trying to fix the circuit board and needed to stay later.
I reminded him that he had Model UN at 8 am at Franklin High School. He had to be up at 7 am. Then I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up at 2:30 am. Alex had not come in. I texted him. Things were not going well. He said they might not get done until 4 or 5 in the morning.
This was absurd. I told him he needed some sleep before his Model UN event and drove over to Busch Campus to find him. It wasn't easy. He had to run down the road to flag down the van. And-- though we didn't know it at the time-- we were near the spot where a Rutgers employee had been bitten by a coyote! Just one night previous (at 4 am).
I was so sleepy I missed the exit for Highland Park. Alex managed to get up and put on his coat and tie for Model UN the next morning. Impressive.
3 am Adventure #2 -- Saturday Night
Saturday afternoon, I attended the Rutgers/Ohio State game with my buddy Alec. We drank some beer before the game and then we drank some beer during the game. Then when I got home from the game I ate some of my wife's delicious Thai coconut curry chicken soup (and drank another beer). A little bit later I made a rash decision and decided to have ice cream, with a healthy dollop of whipped cream on top. This is not a combination of food my stomach can handle.
So this one was my fault. I was up at 3 am Saturday night with gas. I fell back to sleep, but couldn't really sleep late because of my son's Model UN event.
3 am Adventure 3# -- Sunday Night
Sunday afternoon, I took my son Alex to the Edison skate park. I brought the dog, so I could walk her while Alex skated. The adjacent fields were covered with goose poop and Lola ingested some. Yuck.
At three in the morning Sunday night (Monday morning?) we heard that distinctive retching sound of a vomiting dog. Lola was puking on the landing at the top of the stairs. Pretty minimal. Probably because of the goose poop. I got her outside and Catherine cleaned up the mess. We put down a towel in case she threw up again.
Thirty minutes later, she did just that. It was just a tiny bit, and she did it on the towel. I waited for a moment, to see if she was going to throw up more (since she was doing it on the towel). Catherine rushed by me, her thought being "get the dog outside." In her mad rush in the darkness, she flung her arm at my face. Her fingernail cut the inside of my nostril. Ouch! She drew blood!
Ian and Alex slept through all of this.
The next morning, I tried to find the spot where Lola defecated in the yard at 3 am. I hate leaving dog poop in the yard, because it always comes back to haunt you. I couldn't find the poop-- because I had stepped in it. I took off my clogs and left them outside.
Then, on the way back from walking her to the park, I tried to find the remainder of the poop and I stepped in it again. Luckily, we got some rain so it was easy to wipe my shoes clean on the wet grass.
During the school day, I learned that a cut inside your nostril really hurts. It hurts when you sniffle, it hurts when you rub your nose, and it especially hurts when you eat spicy food (like the leftover Thai coconut chicken soup that I had for lunch).
Anyway, I am hoping to end this streak tonight. Wish me luck.
I normally don't mind Mondays-- my existential woes usually come to a head on Tuesdays-- but this morning I felt Garfield's curse bearing down on me. I walked down to the park with the dog at 5:45 AM, wearing my Oofos plantar fasciitis clogs because I strained my calf playing soccer on Sunday (probably due to the excessive heat, and some dehydration from drinking too much tequila Saturday night).
Lola was off-leash, as she always is at that time of the morning, but a couple of joggers and another person walking a large white dog came down the hill-- at 5:45 AM! On a Monday! The audacity.
So I had to put Lola back on the leash, and I didn't get a chance to pick up her poop, and while I was searching for her poop in the darkness, I stepped in it. Firmly. With my absolutely vital plantar fasciitis clogs. So now they're sitting out in the sun on the back porch, and I'll have to clean them when I get home.
While I was walking back up the hill, scuffling in the grass trying to remove the dog poop, I saw Garfield, in my mind's eye, laughing at me-- because I thought I was above his "Monday blues" humor. But he got his, and so did Monday.
Sometimes life has no narrative arc. Things don't connect. There is no theme. This was one of those weeks. Stuff certainly happened, but with no particular pattern. It was existential and absurd. Moving at times, but also fragmented and ridiculous.
The week began wonderfully. It snowed Sunday night into Monday and school was canceled. My nemesis-- the goose poop in Donaldson Park-- was covered by a thick blanket of the white stuff. So I bundled up and headed down the hill to the river with our dog Lola. She enjoyed the snow enormously. It was early enough that no other dogs were around, so she was off-leash, sprinting and bounding and bouncing through the snow. She's only a little over a year, and it didn't snow much this winter, so this was a real treat. We wandered to the far corner of the park, where someone had built a snowman. Lola had never seen a snowman before and she did NOT like it. She charged toward it, stopped twenty feet away, barked like mad, and then retreated.
She did this several times. She though the snowman was alive and possibly dangerous.
To assuage her anxiety, I walked over to the snowman and stood next to it.
"Look, Lola it's fine . . . it's not alive . . . it's a snowman!"
I patted the snowman's head, to show her it was inanimate. Lola took a couple tentative steps in our direction, so I continued the patting. But I patted a bit too hard (I was wearing gloves so it was hard to judge the force of my patting). The head fell off the snowman. Decapitated.
Lola yelped and ran like hell.
The next day it was back to the grind. I had to finish grading the college writing essays, enter grades into the computer for progress reports and start teaching The Crucible (which I hadn't read in years). My seniors were acting like seniors and my sophomores were acting like sophomores. The winter doldrums.
But then one of my students inspired me. She told a story I'm sure I'll repeat for the rest of my teaching days. This student is a super-swimmer. She got a full ride to Rutgers for swimming. Her day goes like this: she gets up at 4 AM and swims hundred and hundreds of laps, goes home, does her homework, and then she swims some more in the evening. 10,000 meters a day. I barely drive that much.
She brought her computer to my desk and showed me a preliminary thesis for her final paper. I told her it looked pretty good. She said she had thought of it that morning, at 5 AM, while she was swimming. I told her that it was awesome. Great use of her time. What else are you going to think about while you swim back and forth?
So she was swimming away, thinking about horizontal and vertical identity traits and how they connect to feedback loops and algorithms and the dynamic between natural and sexual selection, and then she had an idea. But she was worried she would forget about it. So she got out of the pool and went over to the whiteboard, where they write the times and workouts for the swimmers, and she started writing.
"You got out of the pool and starting writing your thesis?"
"I didn't want to forget my idea!"
"Did the coach and the other kids think you were insane?"
"Pretty much."
When practice was over, she took a picture of the whiteboard with her phone, thus preserving her idea. I was really impressed with her. I congratulated her on her dedication and resourcefulness. It was one of those moments when you feel great about being a teacher. You realize that some kids are actually thinking about stuff from class outside of class, getting smarter on their own time. And the image of her dripping wet in her racing suit, writing a complicated synthesis thesis on a whiteboard next to a pool full of elite swimmers doing laps, it's something out of Good Will Hunting or A Beautiful Mind. There's a mad scientist quality to it.
The next day, Wednesday, my phone started blowing up during class. Calls and texts. It was Phil-- the guy I coach with-- and he had bad news. One of our player's father had passed away from pancreatic cancer. Franco had been in remission for many many years, but the cancer returned and in a matter of weeks, it was all over. I coach his son on the middle school team and the travel team and so I had gotten to know the family a bit-- Franco was a real beloved figure in town. He was a major advocate for pancreatic cancer awareness, and after he survived the first bout, he went to seminary school. He then served as a chaplain at the Reformed Church up the street from my house.
They were having a vigil in his honor at his church that night, and I wanted to bring my younger son and a couple other soccer players from the team. I was getting organized to go pick them up when my older son Alex walked into the house. He had just returned from tennis practice, tired and scattered. I tried to explain the situation.
"You know Noah? From Ian's soccer team?"
"What? No . . . maybe? I don't know."
"Well, his dad passed away, Ian and I are going to the vigil. You're going to have to make yourself dinner. There's taco meat in the fridge. Okay? We're leaving and then I'm driving Ian and Ben to soccer practice. Mommy's at Zumba. Okay?"
Alex looked at me and said, "Today at practice, Chun Lee gave me this Mexican candy and I ate too much and it was really SALTY!"
"What? Alex, look at me. A man died! We are going to a vigil! I can't talk about Chun Lee's Mexican candy right now."
Last week, after visiting the dog park, I tried to walk home along the river. It was damn near impassable. The grass and the path were strewn with goose poop. Disgusting for me, and a health hazard for my dog. She loves to eat the stuff, and it's laden with bacteria and parasites. The last time she chowed down on it, she threw up all over my van. Yuck.
This was the last straw for me. The geese never shit on the river path. There are a few areas in Donaldson Park that are consistently covered in fecal matter (and they are easy enough to avoid) but this winter-- perhaps because we never got solid snow cover-- the entire park was littered with the stuff. Every sporting field, every paved path . . . from the grassy meadows to the muddy banks. Poop poop poop poop. The only spot in the park not covered with goose poop was the dog park. But I couldn't walk through the other sections of the park to get to the dog park. There was too much shit. So I had to take the street along the park and cut into the park on the trail just past the public works building and the diesel fuel tank. This route is not scenic at all. It's damn near tragic. I live next to Donaldson Park so I can walk around in Donaldson Park.
My New "Scenic Route" to the Dog Park
I generally managed to keep Lola from eating goose poop on my way back from the river, but it was not pleasant or relaxing. So I was pretty irate when I got home. I had been through a scatological minefield, and I was certainly suffering from PTSD: Post Traumatic Shit Disorder. I was fired up. But instead of my usual complaining into the void, I decided to do something: I would write an email to the powers that be. I cranked out a couple paragraphs of crackpot commentary to the county parks director. I was vivid. I was livid. I was graphic. I was gross. I mentioned bacteria and parasites. I recalled that there used to be a guy that would come in and scare the geese away. He would set off fireworks and place silhouettes of dogs in the fields. What happened to that guy? Donaldson Park needed that guy! My tone was polite but frustrated. What other tone is there when you're dealing with goose-shit?
Here's what I got back. I was very pleased with the prompt reply (and properly indignant about the causes of the excessive poop).
A Prompt Clarification on the Shit Storm
Mr. Pellicane,
Thank you for your message regarding Canada goose numbers at Donaldson Park. The County currently contracts with the Wildlife Services Division of the USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services for Canada goose management on all County properties. This include harassment and egg treatments. They cover over two dozen sites throughout the County. With our proximity to water, open space and mild winters, controlling geese is always a challenge.
The biggest problem we are having this year is with the somewhat milder winter. Many geese that pushed southward last year, simply did not this year. Additionally, with the federal government shutdown for 35 days in December and January, all contracts were suspended. Harassment during this time was minimal – only what our staff could get to.
We are certainly behind on behavior modification and it is apparent in many of our parks. Our USDA tech is back on the job (for now, anyway) however, we are playing catch up across the County. I have asked for increased visits to Donaldson Park over the next week and if there is not another shutdown, continued aggressive harassment for the next few. This should hopefully help alleviate some of the pressure on Donaldson Park from the geese.
Thank you,
Rick Lear
Director
Office of Parks and Recreation
Department of Infrastructure Management
Let's Assign Some Blame!
Trump! This was Trump poop. Caused by his government shutdown. And even better, Rick Lear alluded to Trump's arch-nemesis. He didn't call it by name (perhaps, like the EPA, he's forbidden). But when he refers to the "mild winter," we all know what he's talking about. Climate change! So I had stepped in Donald Trump's shit, caused by something he refuses to believe in, the Chinese hoax. I couldn't have been happier. English teachers love irony.
The biggest problem we are having this year is with the somewhat milder winter. Many geese that pushed southward last year, simply did not this year. Additionally, with the federal government shutdown for 35 days in December and January, all contracts were suspended.
Rick Lear
I was also happy because getting upset about Trump shit is fun. This is because Trump is temporary. His ideas are outdated. He's a throwback, a dinosaur, soon to be extinct. A last gasp. In fact, despite the bipartisan quagmire and the incorrigible stupidity and corruption of the Trump administration, I'm feeling pretty good about the world, goose poop and all. This is mainly because I'm nearly done with Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. It's also because my wife is doing a lot of Zumba and looking great (but that's besides the point).
Pinker uses an avalanche of charts and statistics to remind us that we are living in the best of times. And this is because of th enlightenment values mentioned in the title: science, reason, secular humanism, liberal democratic ideas. The world has never been less violent, more healthy, more prosperous, safer, and more liberal. Despite what the naysayers prophesy, more people have rights than ever before, less people are at war than ever before, knowledge is more accessible, and democracy is on the rise. While there are challenges, we keep coming up with solutions. And the two existential threats-- the things that worry Pinker the most-- the environment (including global warming) and nuclear war . . . both of these things are improving. Slowly, but they are definitely improving. As countries grow richer, they do a better job preserving the environment; they reforest and recycle and use less fossil fuels and look for alternate energy sources. And we are slowly whittling down the number of nuclear weapons on earth. That number may never reach zero, but it doesn't have to. As long as we accept and understand the challenges, there are solutions on the horizon.
The Robots Are NOT Coming
Pinker also dispels some of the ridiculous notions that cause folks unnecessary anxiety: artificial intelligence experts don't fear the singularity. AI is not going to rebel and replace us. It's too hard to make a semi-conductor. It's too hard to make anything. It takes teams and teams of people and many highly technical factories and lots of resources. And we humans control all that. We are the kings of meat-space. And most of this perceived conflict is online. This is also the reason we probably don't have to fear technological nightmare scenarios caused by lone wolf lunatics. It takes too many smart people to create technology that advanced. Your computer may get a virus (but nothing as serious as Y2K) but you need a team of specialists to make a nuclear bomb or a super-virus, and it's hard to assemble that many people down with destroying the human race.
This is why rational people don't fear Donald Trump. He's not the face of the 21st century, he's a wart that will soon dry up. And fall off. He's an old wart.
Pinker does acknowledge that Trump will have an effect-- especially if we let him-- on some of these precious enlightenment ideals that have served us so well. He's an impediment to "life and health" because of his anti-vaxxer rhetoric and his role in dismantling our healthcare system. He's a threat to worldwide wealth because of his idiotic zero-sum notions about trade. Countries that are tied together economically cooperate. They don't go to war. He's certainly not helping economic inequality, nor is he a boon to safety, on the job or otherwise. He hates regulations, which often spur progress and make business seek solutions to problems (such as car crashes, plane crashes, poisoning, tanker leaks, lead levels, mileage restrictions, etc). He's not particularly keen on democracy and seems to have a penchant for dictatorial strongmen. He's no fan of equal rights, and his speeches and Tweets often have an undercurrent of xenophobia and racism. And he's a liar liar pants on fire. So he's not an ambassador or advocate to the wonders of available and accurate knowledge.
The Glass Is Half Full? So Lame . . .
Optimism is not cool. Pinker is an utter nerd. It's more fun to obsess over Trump and predict the end of civility, the end of civilization. Trump is certainly a shitshow, and Michael Lewis does a nice job illustrating some of the consequences of his incomptetence. And he's an environmental disaster. But we are progressing despite him. You need proof? Listen to Adam Ruins Everything Episode 1, where Adam talks at length with the Los Angeles DOT Seleta Reynolds. Streetcars, bike lanes, public transport, walkable neighborhoods and plazas . . . in the car capital of the country. In LA? Sounds like a hippie's dream and a conservative's nightmare. But this progressive vision is happening, despite Trump, and with federal funding. There are difficulties, of course, but when you hear this dedicated and intelligent government employee explaining that the market won't solve these problems of morals and values, it's really heartening. She's also really funny.
Pinker is an atheistic utilitarian who may not have enough feelings about anything to move the stalwarts on the left or the right. He glosses over some pretty bad shit. But that's because he's looking at the numbers, not at the emotions. Not at identity politics or anything particularly political. He's in the same corner as President Obama, who wrote a miniature version of the Pinker book for Wired Magazine. It's an essay called "Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive." It's not nearly as fun as visions of rusted out towns full of drug-addled opiate addicts (not the whole story) and porous unwalled borders which allow terrorists, criminals and rapists to pour into our nation. Statistically supported optimism can't match Chinese bandits stealing our intellectual property, black people who don't know their proper place (let's make America Great Again! And Institutionally Racist!) and liberal socialists who want to empower the government so that it controls every aspect of our lives. The end of times. That's what gets the clicks.
But I'm siding with Rick Lear. He's going to be around long after Trump is gone, directing county parks and rec infrastructure, fighting the good fight against the geese. He'll suffer mild winters and government shutdowns, deal with cranky emails, and continue to make this country greater than it's ever been. I have faith that he's going to make my local park greater. He's going to get rid of those geese (and their shit).
I believe.
Pinker's incremental pragmaticism does have it's problems. Robert Gordon, in his comprehensive work The Rise and Fall of American Growth claims that we've captured all the technological "low hanging fruit" and that advances will be tiny and slow for a long time. And Charles C. Mann provides a much more balanced picture in his new book, The Wizard and Prophet. Pinker is a fan of Norman Borlaug, the agricultural engineer who founded the Green Revolution, but there are those scientists who don't believe technology will bail us out of every dilemma. We might need old-fashioned conservation to preserve our way of life. Mann uses ecologist William Vogt to represent this perspective. It's one worth noting.
Pinker is also not very romantic. There's no room for honor and zealotry and fanaticism and mysticism and martyrdom and certain types of selfless ascetic heroism in his philosophy. He's no Hamlet, who says to his buddy Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." But Hamlet has seen a spirit, his father's spirit. The time is out of joint. Something is rotten. That's not so in Pinker's secular, statistical view of progress. Society will be less varied, but I have to admit, I don't really care. I won't miss the zealous fanatical whirling mystical martyrs one bit.
If you step in dog poop in the yard (while looking for dog poop in the yard) then old slushy snow piles are a great way to clean your shoes (preferably your neighbor's old slushy snow pile).
If you step in dog poop in the yard (while looking for dog poop in the yard) then old slushy snow piles are a great way to clean your shoes (preferably your neighbor's old slushy snow pile).
We are settling in to the reality of having a puppy in the house . . . she raced outside this morning to do her business and I went to pick it up with a plastic bag but when I grabbed the poop, despite wearing a bag on my hand, it felt a bit more moist and visceral than I remembered . . . and then I realized the bag had a hole in it and I had reached through the hole and grabbed the poop with my bare hand . . . yuck . . . then Catherine came home at lunch to more poop on the rug and some chewing of our kitchen stool . .. but Lola has already learned to sit and come and she's walking on the leash fairly well, so she's moving along (and I got up at 5 AM this morning to walk her and train her and then got a late start to work and totally forgot that I promised to drive a colleague who lives in my town and has a car in the shop; I was so focused on puppy training that I didn't remember that I was supposed to pick him up until I pulled into the school lot-- I called him to apologize and he told me he grabbed an Uber . . . but I did remember to drive him home, so I did him exactly 50% of the promised favor: which is still failing).
So here's the big follow-up to the first post ever commented on by an acclaimed author on Sentence of Dave . . . I've noticed that whenever I go into the yard with the good intention of cleaning up the dog poop, while I am searching for the dog poop so that I can bag it and dispose of it, I always end up stepping in dog poop . . . this happens 100% of the time-- including this afternoon-- and if it happens 100% of the time, then I believe this makes it a scientific law: Poopy's Law.
Even when I've made a clean fecal grab and knotted the neck in an airtight fashion, if I hold a full dog poop disposal bag right up to my nose, I can still smell the poop inside the bag-- the poop smell somehow penetrates the plastic . . . but this seems to defy the laws of olfactory physics: anyone out there know why this is so?
I went for a run with the dog this morning on the towpath (the narrow park between the Raritan River and the Delaware and Raritan Canal) and I learned several valuable lessons:
1) if you are several miles out on the towpath, and your dog poops, and you bag the poop and then put a plastic bag filled with poop in your pocket (because the canal is a watershed, so you don't want to leave poop near it) and you then run several miles, you'll forget you have poop in your pocket (it cools down) and you'll eventually stick your hand in your pocket to see what's in there-- luckily I tied the bag shut, so I didn't end up with a hand full of poop (although I did smell the bag, in the name of science, and despite the fact that the poop is sequestered inside plastic, it still smells like poop);
2) it's not worth parking in the tiny Landing Lane lot, right next to the towpath, because it's an extremely sharp turn out of the lot and there is always traffic on the other side of the road . . . I cut it a little too sharp and caught the lip of the guard rail and tore a hole in my van . . . I'm going to attempt to fix this hole with some auto body repair tape-- ten bucks on Amazon-- which leads us to lesson number three . . .
3) I am a terrible car owner-- fans of this blog know the stories of my infamous Jeep Cherokee, and I am doling out the same kind of abuse to my Toyota Sienna . . . when it comes to cars, I just can't have nice things.
When I walk my dog, I carry extra poop-bags in case I find some stray poop, which I bag and toss-- dog poop contains lots of gross bacteria and it contaminates the watershed-- and this is an easy-to-execute good deed, as it doesn't involve old people, children, or hospitals . . . but when I told my class about this altruistic habit of mine, they were appalled:
"You shouldn't touch random poop!"
"You don't know where that poop is from!"
"That could be human poop!"
and though the last admonition did make me second guess my behavior, I told them that despite this, I would continue to bag random poop-- because I was skilled at turning the bag inside out and grabbing the poop and there was no way that I was going to get any of it on my hands . . . two days later, I was walking Sirius on the tow road, the path between the Raritan River and the canal (which is a major watershed) and I came across a pile of random poop, and I had just bagged my own dog's poop so I was already in possession of one bag of (warm) poop-- which I placed on the ground, still open, and I bagged the random poop-- which certainly could have been human poop, I'm no scatologist-- and then I decided that I should put the random poop into the bag with my dog's poop, to consolidate the poop, and things got messy and I got some of the random poop on my hand and finger-- yuck!-- and I could hear those cautionary high school voices ringing in my ears while I washed my hands in the freezing cold water that runs over a rock spillway, from the canal to the river . . . but despite this disgustingly ironic turn of events, I vow to continue bagging poop wherever I find it, especially when it's near a watershed or a place where children play (though I will be more careful and never try consolidate bags of poop again).
Yesterday afternoon, I was walking my dog and he pooped for a second time-- but I did not have a second bag-- and so I sheepishly left the poop where it lay, but I am a responsible dog-owner and I hate it when other people don't clean up after their dogs, so I made note of where I was: Third Avenue across from a brick building, I walked the dog home, and then I got on my bike (armed with a plastic poop bag) and rode my bike back to the scene of the misdemeanor . . . but there's a lot of brick buildings on Third Avenue and I didn't take exact note of the cross street nor did I register exactly where he pooped . . . so I parked my bike against a tree and began my quest for poop . . . and while I knew I was doing the right thing, and I knew I was being a good person, I certainly don't think it appeared that way to the people walking and driving past . . . in fact, I think I looked downright weird, plastic bag open, searching the ground from corner to corner . . . and so from here on in, I'm always going to carry two bags when I walk the dog (a lesson I should have learned long ago).
Open the poop bag when you are in the house, before you venture out in the the cold with your dog, because it's very difficult to pry open one of those little bags when your fingers are numb (and I would have said pre-open the bag before you walk the dog, except that George Carlin would roll over in his grave if I used the prefix "pre" in that manner).
In the English office last week, a novice runner asked a question that had never occurred to me: "When you go out for a run, when do you start running?" and it turns out that many people have "starting points," such as the end of the driveway, where they begin and end their run . . . I tend to start running as I am going out the door, I jog down the steps and cut across the lawn . . . and maybe this is because of all the preparation I do before the run-- iPod, sunglasses, hands-free-dog leash/belt, poop bag, hat, orthotic inserts, etcetera . . . so that by the time I get out the door, I am impatient and fully "in the mode," but now I know that this isn't always the case . . . when and where do you start running when you go out for a run?
