Spenser Being Spenser

Robert B. Parker's fourth Spenser novel, Promised Land, is more about relationships than crime, and I should warn you: there's quite a bit of romance between Spenser and Susan Silverman (blech) which makes me think something terrible is going to happen to her later in the series, and-- far more fun-- we learn about Spenser's complicated connection to Hawk, a gangster adjacent black dude who Spenser knows from back in his boxing days . . . anyway, this isn't my favorite Spenser book, but it still has its moments; here are some highlights from my Kindle notes:

Spenser on radical feminism . . .

“No,” I said. “Annoyed, maybe, if you push me. But not at her, at all the silliness in the world. I’m sick of movements. I’m sick of people who think that a new system will take care of everything. I’m sick of people who put the cause ahead of the person. And I am sick of people, whatever sex, who dump the kids and run off: to work, to booze, to sex, to success. It’s irresponsible.”

Susan Silverman on Spenser . . .

“More than maybe,” Susan said. “It’s autonomy. You are the most autonomous person I’ve ever seen and you don’t let anything into that. Sometimes I think the muscle you’ve built is like a shield, like armor, and you keep yourself private and alone inside there. The integrity complete, unviolated, impervious, safe even from love.”

Spenser on human nature and belief . . .

Everyone gets contemptuous after a while of his clients. Teachers get scornful of students, doctors of patients,  bartenders of drinkers, salesmen of buyers, clerks of customers. But, Jesus, they were saps. The Promised Land.  Holy Christ.

Spenser and Pam on the city in the distance . . .

“What is it,” Pam Shepard said, “about a cluster of skyscrapers in the distance that makes you feel… What?…  Romantic? Melancholy? Excited? Excited probably.”

“Promise,” I said.

“Of what?”

“Of everything,” I said. “From a distance they promise everything, whatever you’re after. They look clean and  permanent against the sky like that. Up close you notice dog litter around the foundations.”

“Are you saying it’s not real? The look of the skyscrapers from a distance."

“No. It’s real enough, I think. But so is the dog litter and if you spend all your time looking at the spires you’re  going to step in it.”

“Into each life some shit must fall?”

“Ah,” I said, “you put it so much more gracefully than I.”

Spenser being Spenser . . .

Outside I bought two hot dogs and a bottle of cream soda from a street vendor and ate sitting by the fountain in  City Hall Plaza. A lot of women employed in the Government Center buildings were lunching also on the plaza and I ranked them in the order of general desirability. I was down to sixteenth when my lunch was finished and I had to go to work. I’d have ranked the top twenty-five in that time normally, but there was a three-way tie for seventh and I lost a great deal of time trying to resolve it.

The restaurant wasn’t very busy, more empty than full, and I glanced around to see if anyone was casing me. Or looked suspicious. No one was polishing a machine gun, no one was picking his teeth with a switchblade, no one was paying me any attention at all.

Spenser on Hawk . . .

“Why did you warn that black man?” Pam Shepard said, putting cream cheese on her bagel. She had skipped the hash and eggs, which showed you what she knew about breakfasts. The waitress came and poured more coffee in both our cups. “I don’t know. I’ve known him a long  time. He was a fighter when I was. We used to train together sometimes.” 

“But isn’t he one of them? I mean  isn’t he the, what, the muscle man, the enforcer, for those people?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Doesn’t that make a difference? I mean you just let him go.” 

“I’ve known him a long time,” I said.

Hawk on Spenser . . .

Hawk shrugged. “Me and your old man there are a lot alike. I told you that already. There ain’t all that many of us left, guys like old Spenser and me. He was gone there’d be one less. I’d have missed him. And I owed him  one from this morning.”

Great (Criminal) Minds Think Alike?

Yesterday, I found out that several Spotify users have plagiarized the name of my favorite playlist-- Tip Top Hip Hop-- and this made me feel both annoyed and vindicated; annoyed because when I ask Google to play it, sometimes it doesn't access my playlist, vindicated because my son Ian told me it was a stupid name, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so it's obviously NOT a stupid name . . . anyway, this led my son Alex and I to collaborate on an excellent Criminal Minds plot: folks are being murdered around the country and while there's no apparent connection, they are being killed with the same gun and the same M.O. and then Spencer figures it out, of course . . . all the people that have been brutally executed have playlists entitled "Tip Top Hip Hop" and the murderer wants to possess the one and only version of this playlist . . . which raises the question: do playlists live on when you head to the great-festival-seating-concert-in-the-sky?

Staunton . . . An Epic Day 2

Saturday morning, I walked Lola to Gypsy Hill Park. Like everything in Staunton, the park is very well maintained. But that doesn't mean they can get away with a pun like this:

In case you can't tell, on the swimming club grounds, there are hundreds of decorative deer. And a banner that reads:

Field of Deer . . . in Honor or in Memory of Our Dear Ones

Puns are not appropriate for sentiments like that.

The weather was crazy warm, so we headed out to hike Elliots Knob. At over 2400 feet, this mountain is one of the highest in Virginia. We didn't figure on doing all 8.5 miles-- the description said that would take at least five and a half hours-- but we wanted to at least see the waterfalls and a couple of good views of the valley.

Then we talked to an old guy with a couple of hunting dogs in a truck at the trailhead.  He said we'd have no problem making it to the top. I told Catherine I would consider going all the way, but if after two hours we were still walking uphill, I was heading down. That seemed reasonable.

Soon enough, we saw some waterfalls. This was when we were on the Falls Hollow Trail.

On and on we hiked, higher up the mountain and deeper into the woods. An animal poked its head onto the trail and Lola ran it off. I thought it looked like a small wild German Shepherd. Cat thought it might have been a large gray fox. 

Later on the hike, with the help of some locals, we learned that the animal was actually a coyote. In the Blue Ridge Mountains, coyotes look like this:

Lovely Blue Ridge Coyote

This coyote behaved like a proper wild animal and ran away when it saw humans and a dog. That's why we had trouble identifying it. We are used to Jersey coyotes, and they don't behave at all. They bite people and dogs alike, and they will stand their ground until the police shoot them.

They also look mangier . . .

Dirty Jersey Coyote

As we went up, the weather kept getting hotter and hotter. The trail widened and there were many views. Our mood was optimistic about making it to the top. I even took an artistic selfie of Cat and me.

Artistic selfie by Dave

Then we left the woods and hit the final stretch to the top: a gravel fire road which some folks we met described as "very steep." They advised us to take frequent breaks. The Falls Hollow trail through the woods was no longer navigable, so if we wanted to get to the fire tower at the top, we had to head up this road. We had only been hiking for an hour and twenty minutes, and though we were tired, I figured we would make it to the top in my two-hour window. So off we went.

Walking up the gravel fire road was brutal, but the top seemed so close. We just kept trudging away. Lola was fine. Four legs are better than two. We passed the two-hour mark, but we were so close that we kept going. It took us 2.5 hours to get to the tippy top. My legs hurt and I felt old.

Then I saw some actual old people at the base of the fire tower. They were making soup. It was inspirational. They said they came up in all kinds of weather. They were decked out in serious gear and had a lot of cooking equipment. They were having a grand time. We chatted with them for a while-- they had seen the production of Midsummer Nights Dream we were going to see-- and they taught us how to pronounce Staunton properly (don't say the "u"). They also convinced me to climb the fire tower-- I was done climbing but they said the view was worth it. Cat and I both did it and they were correct.

Whew

Going down the fire road was painful . . . way too steep, but once we got into the woods we flew down the rest of the way. We passed the young couple that started ahead of us, the girl was holding the small of her back as she walked and she said she was really feeling it.

We drove back to Staunton and stopped at Queen City Brewing, a brewpub with outdoor seating right by our place. We sat outside and had some delicious celebratory beers and talked to some locals. We learned that it's near impossible to buy any houses in central Staunton-- no one is selling-- and that if you do own one of those houses, you can't breathe on it the wrong way. Everything has to be historically accurate and such. We learned this from some retirees. They loved the town and the vibe.

Then we talked with a couple of Harley guys. They were youngish, wearing black leather, sported beards, and appeared to be tough motherfuckers. But one of them was quite chatty. He said he didn't know our politics and wouldn't hazard a guess-- which we found hysterical-- a couple hiking with a dog from New Jersey, excited to see a Shakespeare play should sound off some liberal alarms, but he forged ahead and started talking about how he didn't like the direction the town was going.

He was worried Staunton was going to enact some gun control laws that wouldn't allow AR-15s and handguns that could hold more than ten bullets. The surrounding counties had become "Second Amendment Sanctuaries,"-- an interesting play on that word-- but he was worried Staunton was going to become like Charlottesville. Liberal! We told him we didn't have much of a gun culture up in central New Jersey and we didn't really know the ins and outs of these laws. Sometimes it's best not to express your opinion.

Then we talked about the terrible state of I-81-- he was a truck driver-- and how he had lived in Baltimore for a while and it wasn't to his liking. His answer for most things-- crime in the cities, the deer population in New Jersey, coyotes, etc-- was more guns. But he was real nice about it. Through this entire discussion, his large bearded buddy said nothing. I think he mumbled something one time about what middle school he attended, but that was it. He just sat there and looked intimidating.

When we got in the car and started driving up the hill to our house, Cat and I parsed the whole weird interaction. Then we both said at once: "His friend was Silent Bob!"

Cat checked her phone and got a sad message. The play was canceled! The old couple on top of the mountain told us some of the cast was sick, and they were using understudies, so the sickness must have spread. We were disappointed, but also insanely tired and hungry. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. We went to Baja Bean Company for delicious and cheap Mexican food and then came home and watched a movie. While we missed watching with the kids, it was nice to select something without having a forty-five-minute debate, which is de rigueur for our house.

We watched Good Time, the movie by the same writers as Uncut Gems. Both highly recommended, if you can tolerate incredibly fast-paced bad decision making-- to the point where you want to bury your head in your hands and stop watching.

Everyone slept well-- including the dog-- after an epic day two in Staunton. Catherine actually got some sun on her chest it was so warm.

Feral Hogs!

Nothing gets me more excited than feral hogs. So when one of my favorite podcasts, Reply All, dedicated an entire episode to this subject, I was besides myself.

Feral hogs!

The episode was inspired by a Twitter event, as Reply All is ostensibly about the internet and all the weird stuff that happens there. I like to listen to Reply All (and read Wired) in order to get some simulacrum of internet life, without actually having to spend time there.

Willie McNabb made a feral hog based non sequitur reply to the typical gun control debate and Twitter went bananas. PJ Vogt called it an internet "snow day."

Vogt talks to McNabb and a number of other people involved in feral hog America, and he comes to the conclusion that the feral hog epidemic is one of the top ten problems in our country. The hogs are invasive, but old school invasive. The hogs brought over by Hernando Soto, and the Spanish released them into the forest, where they could fatten up and then be killed for food. A portable pork larder. But soon enough the hogs went wild. Hog wild. The rest is history. Feral hogs are incredibly fecund-- they can have litters of up to 14 every six months-- and they are incredibly destructive. They destroy crops and ponds and wildlife and forests. They are large-- normal wild porkers weigh up to 300 pounds, but there are occasionally hogs that are larger, much larger. They are also intelligent, and teach each other how to avoid traps and electric fences.

The paradoxical problem with the hogs is that while most states have loosened hunting laws so that they can be eradicated, this has worked in two directions. Some people tried to hunt the hogs out of existence, but others realized that they are really fun to kill. And so while farmers might be trying to rid their lands of hogs, other folks were just as quickly introducing hogs-- stocking their land with them so they could hunt. But feral hogs reproduce really fast, so the population is out of control. They are estimated at 6 million strong and their range is rapidly expanding.

Vogt talks to the guys that made this video, in order to promote hog eradication-- because of the millions of dollars of crop damage they are responsible for. But the video instead inspired people to hunt the hogs in more extreme and creative ways. You can shoot feral hogs from a helicopter.

Texas nearly started using a very dangerous poison-- Kaput-- to kill the hogs, but there was enough backlash to put a hold on this plan. Kaput kills hogs in an incredibly painful and disgusting manner, and then the flesh is tainted and the hog must be buried, or animals who eat the dead hog might also die.

This is a problem so weird and crazy that it's outside my liberal central Jersey mentality and morality. I'm not a hunter, I don't own a gun, I couldn't imagine shooting any large animal-- let alone dozens in a night-- and I can't imagine thousands of poisoned carcasses, toxic and bleeding from every orifice, littering the countryside. There's no obvious way to solve this problem. There probably needs to be a ban on hunting the hogs, so that people stop introducing them to new lands, but there's got to be a dispensation for farmers and such. Poison seems an awful alternative, unless a more precise agent could be developed. I just can't imagine dealing with this, which is why I don't live in Texas.

In the meantime, there's a weird part of me rooting for the hogs. They're truly American. Invasive, persistent, corpulent, destructive, environmentally obtuse, omnivorous, at home in the country and the suburbs, clever, and willing to use their right to assemble (in groups of 30 - 50).

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).

Donald Trump Stars in "Risky Business" Sequel (Michael Lewis and The Fifth Risk)

If you really want to hate Donald Trump-- but you don't want to get on your moral high horse and repeat a bunch of stuff everyone knows-- then the new Michael Lewis book The Fifth Risk is for you.

First let's state the obvious. There's no question that Trump is morally repugnant, a racist who hates folks from "shithole countries", a laughingstock and a pussy grabber; Trump used campaign money to pay off a porn star and he has a twisted infatuation with Vladimir Putin, a leader that meddled in our election and is rumored to kill journalists and political opponents. His toxic tweets undermine the mission of our government, his lies foment discord, and he believes he's above the rule of law. He struggled to condemn white supremacists and Nazis, and he had trouble praising the recently departed John McCain. He separated families at the border. He's not loyal to anyone (including U.S. intelligence agencies). He mismanaged a crisis in Puerto Rico, and his version of Yule Tide cheer is to shut down the government. He's a gross human. You can go on and on with this kind of character assessment/assassination, but where does it get you?

Michael Lewis does something different in his new, rather short and slightly fragmented book. Lewis gives us a number of factual, quotidian, and concrete reasons to hate Trump. While it might not be as groundbreaking and perfectly written as his classic works (e.g. Moneyball, The Blind Side, Flash Boys, and The Big Short) it's probably more important. First of all, it's timely (the book sprang from articles he wrote for Vanity Fair). It takes a fairly apolitical look at what's happening right now in several departments in the United States Government (The Department of Energy, The Depart of Commerce, The USDA, and the NOAA).

Do Conservatives Think Michael Lewis Is Part of the Liberal Media Conspiracy? Maybe Not?

The second reason the book might be bigly, hugely, and powerfully significant is that Michael Lewis is so well regarded-- both as a journalist and as a writer-- that conservatives might actually read this book. If they do, they will learn something: the American government is great. Not the bipartisan political side of the government, but the mundane departments within the government and the people within these departments. The people who do the things that markets will never do. The people that insure the safety of our electrical grid; the people that contain and monitor all the nuclear waste we've created; the people that collect data on weather and soil and oceans and tornadoes; the people that fight wildfires; the people that concern themselves with the nutrition and health of our impoverished children; the people that monitor the safety of our food and livestock.

Donald Trump, mainly through incompetence and corruption, has managed to severely undermine these departments. And Michael Lewis doesn't even write about the EPA. This might be for political reasons-- the EPA seems to strike a really nasty chord with many conservatives (mainly because many conservatives-- especially in the energy sector-- don't believe externalities should be monitored, they want to do as much damage to the environment as possible, especially if it helps them to make more money . . . and then, they espouse, someday in the dystopically flooded and polluted future, the market will magically clean things up). It's impossible to be apolitical when you start talking about Trump, Scott Pruitt and the dismantling of the EPA. It's egregious. I think Lewis wanted this book to be politically palatable so he avoided this truly hot button stuff. Or he's writing another book.

Anyway, here's what Lewis does explain. When you take over the government, you are legally required to prepare for the transition. You need to appoint 700 people to very important government positions. Many of these positions aren't particularly political. They are positions involved with health, disease preventions, pandemic readiness, data collection, wildfires and nuclear waste, and R & D project management. Trump has done an utterly abysmal job with these appointments. He's appointed business people with conflicts of interest, unqualified friends, Trump loyalists, and-- disturbingly, in hundreds of positions-- no one at all.

You need to read the book to get the full ramifications of this very measurable, very factual incompetence. Lewis doesn't need to get into Trump's character all that much. He simply portrays his brash idiocy in contrast with the professional dedication of these often brilliant, mission-driven government employees; these people who make America great despite Donald Trump. The people who keep our technologically depend infrastructure working. If you think you're some kind of Ron Swanson-esque rugged individualist, then get real. Our government employs 9000 people to keep a glacier sized underground mass of nuclear waste from poisoning the Columbia River. Your gun, your tools, and your wood stove can't protect you from that.

Here's are some highs (and lows) from the book.

The Unlikely Hero: Chris Christie . . .

I'm a public school teacher, so I hate Chris Christie as much as the next guy, but juxtapose Christie with Trump and Christie comes off looking like a gentleman and a professional. Christie took on the responsibility of convincing Trump that in the unlikely case that he won the election, he had to actually prepare to run the government. It was his legal responsibility to create a transition team, and the Obama administration had prepared the best government transition protocol in history (although Lewis commends the Bush administrations protocol as well). Trump-- who apparently had no victory speech written and didn't really believe he was going to win-- told Christie that he was "stealing my fucking money" because Christie used it for the transition team, which investigates potential appointees. Trump told Christie that if they won, they could leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition themselves. Then Trump fired Christie, probably because Christie prosecuted Jared Kushner's father in 2004.

Trump was quite determined to not learn anything about running the government, and also determined to not hire anyone who could help him with this task.

The Chief Risk Officer's Take on the Risky Business

John MacWilliams, DOE chief risk officer during the Obama administration, outlines the top five risks that government agencies monitor and maintain.

1. Theft, loss and/or detonation of a nuclear weapon
2. North Korea
3. Iran's nuclear program
4. Failure of the electrical grid (through disaster, attack, espionage, etc.)
5. ??????????

The fifth risk is the one we can't conceive. The unknown unknown. The problem with these risks from a cognitive perspective is that we can't accurately measure their probability. Trump's lack of appointments may increase the likelihood of a nuclear disaster from one in a million to one in 10,000. That's an exponentially huge increase, but most people will shrug their shoulders at it.

What's the difference? They're both big numbers.

Humans are awful at judging risk. We're more afraid of sharks than we are of french fries. And we have no heuristic method to add up all these small increases in risk and understanding the overall implications. But the truth of the matter, is that every day that goes by without some sort of major disaster in our infrastructure is a testament to our government.

MacWilliams explains the consequences of Trump's proposed budget cuts: ARPA-E loans, climate research, national labs, and the security our electrical grid will all suffer.

All the risks are science based. You can't gut the science. If you do, you are hurting the country. If you gut the core competency of the DOE, you gut the country.

This is the part of Trumpism that's most disturbing and difficult to conceive: the dismissal of science. I know it's tied in to the hatred of elites and Hillary Clinton, that trusting scientific results is somehow akin to trusting the government and the liberal media conspiracy and the deep state, that trusting science will grant the pointy-headed social engineers the power to tell people what to do and how to live. It's true that science may occasionally do these things. Science now tells us that smoking and soda and having a gun in the house are really bad for us, that factory farming is an environmental disaster, and that cows and coal are contributing to global warming. Economists tell us that immigrants are good for the economy. These are inconvenient truths. It's fun to smoke and drink soda and eat burgers and shoot guns and hate immigrants. So Trump supporters don't want to hear it and they cover their ears.

I also understand that science is bringing the robots and factory automation. Destroying traditional industry. It's also measuring the externalities that businesses don't want to deal with. And it's increasing the distance between the haves and the have-nots. The nerds are winning. The Trump supporters struck back at this. So I get it.

Big Pharma is big science, and Big Pharma certainly contributed to the opioid epidemic. Many people in this country feel they have no control over their life, and they are probably right to think this. They might be addicted to opiates, or in an area that has been left behind. Most American don't have one thousand dollars socked away in case of crisis. These same people have access to the internet and see everyone surpassing them, and wonder: what has science done for me? What has the government done for me?

These are the people that need to read this book.

Weirdest Trump Appointee: Brian Klippenstein

To head up the USDA transition team, Trump appointed one man: Brian Klippenstein. A really strange choice. Klippenstein ran an organization called Protect the Harvest, which basically "demonized institutions like the Humane Society." Klippenstein's group worried that if people got too concerned about animal welfare, we would stop eating animals.

Here's what Lewis has to say:

One of the USDA's many duties was to police conflicts between people and animals. It brought legal action against people who abused animals, and it maybe wasn't the ideal place to insert a man who was preternaturally unconcerned with their welfare.

After Klippensteins's appointment, data disappeared. This has been the case in several departments. The USDA suddenly purged all the animal abuse records. There was public outcry and some of the data has been re-posted, but the most important and specific stuff seems to have gone missing. And to access this data, which was public and accessible, you now need to submit a Freedom of Information Act request.

National Geographic reports:

The restored records represent a minuscule portion of the 17-year database, and they exclude thousands of inspection reports on puppy mills, private research facilities, and zoos that constitute the public record of commercial animal abuse. Since February 3, those reports have been accessible only by submitting a Freedom of Information Act request, a byzantine process that can take months or even years.

What the fuck?

Does Trump Understand Irony?

No way.

Here's an example:

But the more rural the American, the more dependent he is for his way of life on the U.S. government. And the more rural the American, the more likely he was to have voted for Donald Trump. So you might think that Trump, when he took office, would do everything he could to strengthen and grow the little box marked "Rural Development." That's not what happened.

Do rural Trump supporters understand irony? I hope so. Because they fucked themselves.

Does Barry Myers Understand Irony?

Probably less so than Trump. Or he's an amazing actor. No section of the book will make you angrier than "All the President's Data."

Barry Myers is the CEO of AccuWeather. AccuWeather is the Myers family business. Lewis explains that since the 1990s, Barry Myers (with a "straight face") has argued that the National Weather Service should be "with one exception, entirely forbidden from delivering any weather-related knowledge to any American who might otherwise wind up a paying customer of AccuWeather. The exception was when human life and property were at stake."

And even when human life is at stake, Myers is hesitant to let people rely on the National Weather Service.

This should piss you off. What should piss you off even more, is that AccuWeather bases all its forecasts on data it receives from the National Weather Service. Data it receives free of charge.

Rick Santorum, a recipient of Myers's family campaign contributions, tried to codify this inanity into law in Pennsylvania. Lewis starts to lose his generally objective tone:

Pause a moment and consider the audacity of that maneuver. A private company whose weather predictions were totally dependent on the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. taxpayer to gather the data necessary for those predictions, and on decades of intellectual weather work sponsored by the U.S. taxpayer, and on international data-sharing treaties made on behalf of the U.S. taxpayer, and on the very forecasts that the National Weather Service generated, was, in effect, trying to force the U.S. taxpayer to pay all over again for what the National Weather Service might be able to tell him or her for free.

The lesson here is to get your weather from weather.gov. That's what I do. No ads. Same information. Straight from the source. If the law Myers lobbied for would have passed in Pennsylvania, then the website would have been blocked there.

Barry Myers is the ultimate symbol of Trump's bizarre business forward political corruption. Everything about what it is to be a Trumpian conservative is rolled up into this appointment, and this part of the book-- while not quite as exciting as the possibility of a nuclear disaster-- is really educational and really really ire-inducing. Don't read it before operating a motor vehicle.

The Takeaway

The end of the book focuses on the people who collect and utilize data for the government, how incredibly valuable this data is for everyone-- citizens, researchers, scientists, and private businesses, and how a new conflict greater than bipartisan tomfoolery is jeopardizing the system.

The NOAA website used to have links to weather-forecast. Now those links have been buried. This is why:

The man Trump nominated to run NOAA thought that people who wanted a weather forecast should pay him for it. There was a rift in American life that was now coursing through American government. It wasn't between Democrats and Republicans. It was between the people who were in it for the mission, and the people who were in it for the money.

I'm a public school teacher. I'm in it for the mission. I generate a lot of good ideas every day, and so do my colleagues. I can't tell you enough how smart, dedicated and professional most of them are. We share these ideas with each other. There's no reason not to. We don't get paid more for having better ideas, but it feels good to have them. It feels good to be a better teacher. It increases your status in the eyes of your friends, colleagues, and students. America has grown so cynical that a good number of people don't believe that people like this exist any longer. They view the government as a stupid bloated nefarious system that begets and pays itself. This book might remind them otherwise.

Bring Back the Boom Box!

I am making my way through Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson's book The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life . . . the thesis is that not only is our rational mind a "slave to the passions" but that it is beneficial to not recognize this . . . we have a purposeful evolutionary blind spot in our brain that makes us not only hide our true motivations from others but also hide them from ourselves; Simler and Hanson claim that at the root of many of our seemingly altruistic and pure motives are much more self-serving ends, often to show our fitness to the opposite sex and society at large . . . you gave to charity to help the children, of course, but also to show that you have excess funds and are willing to use them to help the community at large . . . but admitting the latter is in poor taste; while you know that a consistent bedtime is great for your children's health, it also really nice to get the little buggers out of you and your wife's hair at the end of the day; you enjoy playing an instrument and don't mind the tedious practicing, but your skill and confidence is also signalling that you have extra time and energy and cognitive ability and manual dexterity to pursue something aesthetic in your spare time; you recently decided that gun control is a good thing and attended the march in Washington, but you also want to signal to your team just how much you despise Trump and the Republicans . . . the book is a light read (with no solutions to this hole in our cognition) but it will get you thinking about what people are possibly signalling with their actions; here are two things that came to my mind:

1) I've been really broken up about the loss of our dog-- I've been listless and cranky and out of sort since we put him down-- and we had off on Thursday for a "slush day" and I went for a run in the snow in Donaldson Park and this made me sad, because Sirius would always accompany me around the park when it snowed . . . and I recognized that part of this sadness was missing the companionship of my trusty pet and part of it is missing the signalling; when you walk or run or bike with a well-trained athletic dog, you are showing the world that you like animals, that you have a purpose, that you have spent much quality time with this happy creature-- and Sirius was especially well-behaved and friendly . . . in a very real sense, he would attract people (sometimes even good looking people of the opposite sex) because a friendly well-trained dog signals something very particular to the world that we often don't think about, especially if there's a routine about it . . . so I miss that signalling as much as I miss my dog, the hefty responsibility of having a dog is actually part of the attraction: you are saying, on top of my wife and kids and job and all that, I can also take care of an animal and train it properly and exercise with it and take it on adventures . . . and now if I take a walk in the park, I'm just a lonely middle-aged man out for a stroll;

2) I've had a number of people tell me they've essentially stopped listening to music-- they've moved to podcasts and audiobooks-- and I'm wondering if this is a result of cell-phones and headphones and air-conditioning and the ubiquity and accessibility of all content; there's much less communal listening because of digital technology; everybody has everything right inside their phone so you don't need to hang out with your friend who bought the newest CD and sit and listen with them . . . when you are listening communally, music is a real signal-- whether it be on a boom box or a car with all the windows open-- then you need to blast stuff for your tribe: hip hop or alternative or jazz or whatever-- and if people of your tribe are listening, then the signals can get really precise: alt-country is very different than hot country, the type of hip-hop indicates whether you are a wannabe gangsta or a cerebral proponent of multiculturalism  but there's much less of this now, people are ensconced in their own private sonic worlds, so they can listen to whatever music they want and no one will know but they can still signal to the outside world with their audio consumption, it's just more about the residue . . . I certainly like to listen to podcasts, but I also like the after-effect: I know some new stuff that might contribute to the next conversation I participate in . . . and an audiobook is similar, not as much fun to listen to in the moment, but the aftereffect is significant, you've read a book and can discuss this and review it and show off your cognitive ability and your allegiance to particular ideas and people . . . music is a much more powerful signal in the moment, when there's a number of people listening and I think it's sad that we've moved away from this, so the only solution is to buy some giant C batteries and bring back the boom box.

Bonus Sentence: You Can Never Pack Too Much

Despite some freezing rain and wacky conflicts between the GPS, Google Maps, and MapQuest, we made it to our Vermont AirBnB rental cabin in the woods without incident . . . and I suppose I shouldn't have questioned all the packing . . . I didn't think my kids needed to bring the semi-automatic Nerf machine-gun they won in a steal-a-gift on New Year's Eve, nor did I think they needed to bring the Star Wars themed bobble-head dolls, but they set up a nifty shooting gallery from the top bunk bed-- the idea is to knock down as many bobble-heads as you can with one clip of Nerf ammo, and they haven't bickered with each other in over an hour-- a world record-- so the moral is: if you've got a minivan, you might as well fill it up.

This is a really long sentence for a dumb joke

Geoffrey Canada's memoir and call to action Fist Stick Knife Gun is a vivid and intelligent account of life on the streets in the South Bronx by an African American man who grew up there in the '50 and '60s and then, after attending Bowdoin and Harvard, went back to try to curb the violence; much of the book is anecdotal, he explains the rules of the streets, and there is some game theory as well ... Canada explains that when he was a kid, you had to fight, but because of the absence of guns, there were some natural checks on violence -- once the pecking order was established, you knew who you could fight and who you couldn't fight . . . who was too big or too tough, who had friends that would come after you or a badass big brother . . . but the influx of guns changed all that, as "kids with guns see no limits on their power" and often only experience the limits of  firearms when they are dying . . . when Canada was a kid, you only pulled a weapon on kids from outside of the neighborhood . . . and it was serious business to brandish a knife, a broken bottle, or a car antennae, but the culture Canada is trying to change now, with his Harlem Children's Zone program, is one where "America is not number one or even in the top fifteen when it comes, to reading, math, and English . . . we're number one in locking up children" and the streets aren't safer, as a result of this, because we're also number one in possessing guns -- and, Canada points out, the gun industry realized in the 1980's that they could expand the handgun market "beyond white males" by making weapons with names that young people find "enticing, like Viper, and to appeal to their belief that bigger was better" and while this book was eye-opening and frightening, it was a far cry from my suburban youth, almost like a description of a different planet, so I am going to write my memoir of the mean cul-de-sacs of North Brunswick in the 1970s, but I can't come up with a properly dramatic title like Fist Stick Knife Gun . . . all I've got so far is Fish Sticks Nikes Gum.

Spearguns Aren't As Dangerous As You Think!

If you were wondering if it's okay to allow your children to play with spearguns, the answer is: go for it! . . . because even if your kid shoots himself right through the skull, he very may well survive, as Yasser Lopez did . . . so don't deny your children the fun and good times of spear-fishing . . . and I am definitely going to give my parents a piece of my mind, because every Christmas I put a spear-gun on the top of my list, and Santa never delivered one.

Swedish Mysteries

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo inspired me to read another Swedish detective story-- this one, called Sidetracked, by the world famous Henning Mankell, pits melancholy sleuth Kurt Wallander against a serial killer that murders his carefully chosen victims with an axe-- this sounds over the top, but the tone is more like The Wire, slow and careful . . . it took three hundred pages until someone fired a gun; my favorite mundane detail about Wallander is that he doesn't really like soccer, but he tries his best to find interest in the World Cup just to get along with his colleagues, but really he can't understand how people could be worried about such frivolity when there is evil lurking in his once provincial town: fourteen mopeds out of fifteen.

I Could Have Played The Dead Body

In my quest to see the movies everyone else has already seen (you may recall my failed attempt to watch Top Gun) I finished The Big Chill last night, and my favorite piece of trivia about the movie is this: when the guys battle the bats in the attic, Harold (Kevin Klein) hums the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark . . . another film written by Lawrence Kasdan (the second best piece of trivia: Kevin Costner played the dead body).

I've Seen The Top Chill, It Was Great . . .

On my quest to plug the gaps in my pop-culture erudition, I tried to watch Top Gun, but I only made it half-way through-- I reached my high-five limit-- and I was worried that I would never know why Maverick's dad died, but Wikipedia has an excellent and precise plot summary that is far more entertaining than the movie . . . and so now I have to decide--much like my students with every book I've ever assigned-- if I should actually watch The Big Chill or if I should just read the synopsis and fake it?

Tombstone . . . What the Fuck?

I just watched Tombstone, one of the movies all my friends had seen but me (now only Top Gun and The Big Chill remain) and it's like everyone is acting in a different genre of film: Kurt Russell and Dana Delany are in a cheesy 80's romantic comedy (and they don't even attempt to alter their diction); Sam Elliott is in a bona fide Western; Bill Paxton and Jason Priestly are in a made for TV movie; Powers Boothe is in a B grade slasher flick; Val Kilmer steals the show as Doc Holiday-- and he's in a super-freaky Tarantino-esque meta-Western; Charlton Heston is in The Ten Commandments; and the director had the audacity to start and end the film like a documentary, with some black and white footage and a voice-over, but he couples this with maudlin music, romanticized shots of thundering hoof-beats, Schwarzenegger-esque dialogue (Johnny Ringo says "Let's do this" and Kurt Russell replies, "See you in Hell") and there's also some of the most absurd gunfighting in cinema history-- what were George P. Cosmatos and the gang thinking?

Outer Banks Fishing Trip XV

Here are some things that happened during The Fifteenth Annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip that didn't happen during the other years:

 

1) stand-up paddle boarding;

2) no swimming flag for three days;

3) Lacey, the bartender at Tortuga's, joined in movie game II and sat down and had a beer with us AND texted Jeremy twice to see if we would meet her out, despite the fact that she was married . . .  apparently, to a good-looking but humorless guy;

4) Whitney invented the movie sound track game and scrolled from A to Z on his infinite Ipod; 

5) Cliff demonstrated his knowledge of Mary Poppins and Grease;

6) Rodell demonstrated his musical knowledge of Singles and Fast Times at Ridgemont High;

7) Squirrel demonstrated his musical knowledge of The Big Chill;

8) we learned that I have never seen Top Gun (but I have seen The Big Lewbowski and can identify the Cheers theme song in one note) and that Lacy has never seen Vacation 

9) Frisbeer is all about defense;

10) Kenny Bloom and Fish were in spitting distance but decided not to show;

this is all I can think of for now, remind me of anything else I forgot-- it's too bad no one has been jotting down what happened at OBFT for the first fourteen years-- or perhaps that's a good thing.