Nothing Says Welcome Home More Than Spoiled Cheese

My extended family-- aside from Sue, who got pulled over while walking a friend's dog and broke six ribs and her clavicle the day before vacation-- spent a fabulous week of sun, sand, surf, cornhole, tennis, basketball, pickleball, boogie boarding, skim-boarding, spike-ball, and alcohol in Sea Isle City.

It looked like this:



And this:


And this:


And this:


And this:


My cousin Greg and I wrested the epic random selection double-elimination cornhole championship from my brother and Caroline (Greg's daughter). Greg had to sink four holes in one round to beat them. Thanks to Keith for organizing! Greg performed admirably, especially since his wife was home recuperating from her dog induced trauma (or perhaps because she wasn't there to put the pressure on him . . .)


A great week, but unfortunately, we returned home to this:


Apparently, there was a big storm while we were gone. 

And a power outage, which probably caused this:


While our freezer was still operating, our fridge was a toasty 87 degrees. Not a great temperature for storing blue cheese. We had to clean the whole thing out. Yuck.

As for our second beach vacation during a pandemic, things went well. When we arrived on Saturday, there was a huge dredging pipe running parallel to the ocean, maybe fifty yards from the water. Everyone wedged themselves between the pipe and the water, so it was crowded. No one chooses a pipe view over an ocean view. 

But the next morning, the pipes were gone, and the newly dredged beach was huge. They had removed the pipes in the middle of the night! So plenty of room for social distancing and cornhole.


While you could generally spread out on the beach, I'm not sure about the rest of the Jersey shore. My kids went to the boardwalk arcade with my brother's girlfriend's kids, and while they wore masks there's no way that place was hygienic.

People were packed under a tent at La Costa listening to music, and there was plenty of outdoor seating for restaurants. I'm annoyed I didn't get invited to this lifeguard party in LBI-- but it's probably better that I wasn't there. Twenty-four lifeguards came down with Covid! That's going to be tough to schedule around.

Sea Isle Tip . . . if you need a boogie board because yours has broken, Heritage surf shop sells high-quality boards with the heritage logo on them for sixty bucks. Decent boogie boards are much more expensive online.

Broken fridge tip . . . call The Appliance Doctor.

Everything is More Difficult Than It Looks on YouTube

I got a pair of GoSports Bamboo cornhole boards for Father's Day. Regulation size. But, apparently, if you want them to hold up, you have to finish them yourself.

I got some help from my artistic son Ian, but this still proved harder than it looks. There are many, many YouTube videos on the subject. The guys in them are enthusiastic and competent. Like this guy:



Since I do things half-assed, we didn't follow all those instructions. Instead of using rollers, we found some gray and black cans of spray paint and primer in the shed. We decided to use those colors. I didn't want to go out and buy a bunch of paint and rollers and stuff. We primed it gray, taped off some triangles, masked the rest, sprayed the triangles black, and then Ian tried to paint a fish on the board. That didn't work out so well.

We found some yellow spray paint, so we reset and repainted and then made a stencil of a sun. A sun seemed perfect because if you screw up a bit and the paint bleeds then it still looks like a sun, just with some extra photons racing away from the gigantic explosive ball of hydrogen and helium. The sun should also prove to be a good target for the bean bag. Hit it and the bag will slide at the hole.



The last step is ridiculous. You need to seal the board with either polyurethane or polyacrylic. I chose polyurethane because though it is uglier and gives the board a weird amber sheen, it makes it impervious to water.

Folks recommend five to ten coats of the stuff. It takes about two hours to dry in between coats. TEN COATS? Fuck that. I did five. I'm always impressed by the time and patience these DIY folks possess.

You have to sand the board before you apply the last coat. My boards are fairly (but not perfectly) smooth. You use a foam brush and it's hard to apply an even coat. Polyurethane is thick and gooey. The only way to get it off your hands is with vegetable oil. Grossness all around.

I hope I don't have to do this again anytime soon.

Now I'm supposed to wait 72 hours before using the boards. 72 hours! This is insane. I really want to throw a beanbag at my newly finished board, but I'll have to wait until Sunday to do so.

Do Not Resuscitate (the voice of Kurt Vonnegut)

If you're in the mood for something a little apocalyptic-- and something that sounds a bit like a modernized Kurt Vonnegut-- then check out Nicholas Ponticello's sci-fi novel Do Not Resuscitate . . . it's funny and dark and romantic and weird, and it's a fitting story for these times: the world in the novel is slowly falling apart, and science is necessary to stitch it back together.

The nice thing about the story is that near the end, the plot finally leaps into the future and you learn how things are resolved, scientifically and otherwise . . . which is NOT the point we are at yet with this COVID 19 situation (and COVID 19 sounds like something out of a Vonnegut novel . . . a complement to ice-nine in Cat's Cradle.

Besides the disease itself, this lack of knowing is what causes the anxiety. We don't know how the plot ends. I can't even wrap my head around what school is going to look like in September.

Here are a few moments from the book that I highlighted on my Kindle. They are enough that you will get the tone. 

The first piece of advice is really important right now, and-- at times-- I am struggling with it (although watching Silicon Valley helps . . . reading the New York Times every morning does not).

I myself am surprised at how quickly a sense of humor can atrophy with age. I can’t think of anything more important to keep in tip-top shape than a sense of humor, especially after your knees and hair and sight and taste and smell and even little parts of your mind are gone. Even after most of the people you knew or ever could have known have died.

And then there's this thought, which I assume-- aside from the most optimistic among us-- we've all had in some way, shape, or form. Ponticello's narrator just articulates it well.

Whoever said one person can make all the difference didn’t live in a world with seven billion people.

The next passage describes the kind of economic system that inevitably falls apart in an apocalypse. We are seeing it to some extent right now. Our economy is based on stability, extra-cash, good health, consumption, and extreme specialization. When everything works properly in a modern economy, you only need to know how to do one thing . . . or, if you're rich, less than one thing!

Today I write from a folding chair on my patio, watching some person I don’t even know wash my windows. It amazes me that we have come to this: a person who specializes in mopping floors, and another who specializes in washing windows, and another who mows lawns, and yet another who balances finances, and another who calculates risk, and so on. We are each a cog in some giant cuckoo clock, one man among many in a Fordist assembly line.

Sometimes my reading reflects this next thought. If I were perfectly logical, it probably should. But I'm glad when I switch back to fiction. Fiction is more satisfying, especially in times of great unrest. 

I myself, prefer nonfiction. I have enough trouble wrapping my head around all the things that have actually happened on this planet. I don’t have time to worry about all the things that happen in other people’s imaginations.

The moral of Ponticello's story . . . and the moral for right now.

I didn’t know then that life never stops dealing you surprises and that the biggest surprises always happen when it looks like everything is finally settling down.

This is the first book I've read by Ponticello. I will definitely try another. 

Dear Ms. Etiquette . . . Deer, Ms. Etiquette?

Dear Ms. Etiquette:

What is the protocol if an old Asian lady is in the middle of the running trail by my house, taking pictures of some deer?

Do I have to stop and wait for her to take the pictures? Or am I allowed to run past her, scaring the deer into the forest?

I should point out that in my neck of the wood, white-tailed deer are nothing special. In fact, there are deer everywhere! They roam the streets, they stare at my dog until we get two yards away, they gnaw on everyone's gardens, and they transport ticks.

This is what I did: I ran right past her before she could take her photo. The deer scattered, frightened by the juggernaut that is me running. If she said anything, I didn't hear her . . . I was wearing headphones.

I don't want to be rude to old ladies, but come on. If it were a moose or a bear, that would be a different story.

Thanks for helping me understand that I did the right thing.

Sincerely,

Dave "My Manners Matter" from Jersey

Double Beach Vacation (During a Pandemic)

This year, this oddball year, my family was kind enough to allow me to combine my annual guy's get-together-- Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXVII-- with a family vacation.

We've obviously been itching to get out of New Jersey, and we were able to find an affordable rental a block from the beach in Kill Devil Hills. Milepost Nine. As a bonus, we were able to bring the dog.

Here are a few notes for posterity on our vacation during a very weird time. 

1) We stayed at my buddy Whitney's house in Norfolk on Friday night. Whitney's daughters were there, and they are lovely. One just graduated high school and the other is going to be a senior. Aside from playing Bananagrams with them, my boys did not attempt any social interaction with them. Not a word. 

Par for the course.


Whitney and I attended the Friday fraternity Zoom happy hour from his upstairs music studio. It's hard to fit two large men in one Zoom square. 

Lola came up to join the Zoom at one point, and she knocked over a hollow-body guitar with her incessantly wagging tail, denting the body. Sorry, Whit!

2) Saturday we got up early so we could beat the July 4th traffic. We got to the Outer banks at 8:30 AM. No traffic but we had a lot of time to kill. We couldn't get into the rental until 3 PM, and we weren't going into any restaurants, because we were avoiding indoor spaces-- plus we had the dog.

We went for a hike in the Nags Head preserve, which is an amazing place-- an aquifer fed forest on a sand dune-- but it was humid and buggy. So we drove down to Rodanthe, way south of the main action, and hung out on a beautiful beach. 

Lola dug a hole in the shade and was quite happy. 


3) Beaches on the Outer Banks are more "anything goes" than in New Jersey. You can swim anywhere . . . near the lifeguards or not. There are also lifeguards on dune buggies that roam the strand, but if you drown before or after they drive by, you are SOL.

You can bring your dog to the beach, surf anywhere you like, smoke, legally drink beer, and do whatever sport suits your fancy. There's plenty of room to spread out.

While the freedom and the space are a nice change from the Jersey shore, you have to endure more chaos. One of the most entertaining moments from our vacation happened while we were sitting idly on the beach, under umbrellas. It was quiet and the beach was not crowded at all.


Then a horde of college-aged kids poured out of a house a hundred yards down the beach. They all had surfboards. They took the water by storm. Most of them were excellent surfers, but none of the boards had leashes. They were swapping boards, boards were crashing in the waves, the people in the water were in jeopardy of getting hit. They were weaving in and out of each other as they surfed. It looked like a circus. A dude and a chick tandem-surfed on a paddleboard. Occasionally, someone would bring out a six-pack of beer and toss a beer to all the interested parties. Theses people would chug a beer while they surfed. We had never seen anything like it. This went on for a good two hours. We never saw them again.

4) We saw a couple of biplanes fly by with Trump 2020 banners. One had something about the American worker. The other said something about independence. Folks cheered and clapped when they saw the slogans. That reminded us we had crossed the Mason/Dixon Line.

5) Lola really enjoyed playing in the warm surf.


6) The kids really enjoyed playing in the warm surf. While my older son Alex is an experienced surfer, that's no fun to watch. Much more enjoyable to check out Ian, who rarely surfs. 

Zoom in on his face in this picture . . .


Actually, I'll do it for you.




7) One night Aly-- a girl I teach with-- and her husband came over and had drinks on our front porch. Dan told me he had been coming to the Outer Banks his entire life. He was twenty-seven. I informed him that it was the twenty-seventh year of our annual guy's trip to the Outer Banks. In other words, I am old.

8) On Thursday and Friday, I abandoned my wife and kids to hang out with my fraternity buddies.

These guys.


Thursday was a long day of drinking, catching up, and cornhole. No one ate any real dinner. There were chips and salsa and some cold bbq, but that was it. The main course was beer.

Catherine picked me up at 1:15 AM and I got to go back to our lovely air-conditioned beach house and avoid sleeping with all the snoring men. She's a great woman.

The next morning I was a little rough around the edges, but Ian wanted to play tennis. By 8 AM, we were on the court. It was very hot and humid. While I was proud to be running around after a long night of drinking local IPAs,  at 5-5 we decided to call it a draw. I was dehydrated and going to pull a muscle.

Friday, folks were a little hungover. We sat on the beach, swam, chatted, told jokes, and played cornhole. Mattie O and I continued to reign supreme at cornhole. We started nearly every game down a few (or more) points but Mattie's mantra-- "We're fine"-- held true every time.

9) The other thing that reigned supreme was the Truly hard seltzer. A few of us had never tried one. A few had, and swore by them. After a long night of drinking hoppy beer, I must admit that those things were wonderful. They go down way too easy.

We discussed which flavor was the manliest. Mixed Berry? Pineapple? Mango? Passion Fruit? 

Black Cherry seemed to be the only flavor even vaguely marketed towards men. 

Cucumber Lime might be what James Bond would choose . . . if he had to.

While absurd, those things were easy on the stomach and after you had one, it was well-nigh impossible to drink a hoppy IPA. They are the wine coolers of 2020.

Talking to Dave Fairbanks about how nice the Outer Banks is in September and October, and how calm the island was during the lockdown has given me a new goal in life: live somewhere in the offseason! 

Someday.

A note on the jokes that were told on the beach: in this climate, any jokes centered on race are a bit dicey. Everyone gets that. So the jokes that were mainly focused on bestiality. And then there's this one, that the whole family can enjoy (if you can do an impression of a whale).

On Friday, my wife picked me up at 9 PM, because we were getting up early and heading home Saturday morning.

Thanks for hosting Whit, and thanks for everyone that attended. It's astounding we can still put up with each other. While we call it the Outer Banks Fishing Trip, there's no fishing. That's a testament to how much everyone likes to hang out.

On the docket: a ski trip where no one goes skiing.

10) Meanwhile, Friday evening, while I was on the beach chatting and playing cornhole, my wife and kids were packing the car. 

They did get to enjoy the sun, sand, and surf during the day-- we really lucked out with the weather, and aside from a few jellyfish, the water was perfect.



During the packing of the car, something unfortunate happened. Catherine expertly packed the huge rubber sack that goes top of the van. That's normally my job, but she did a better job than me. She put the zipper in front! Why didn't I think of that? And she got two boogie boards in there, along with the beach cart, the chairs, and the umbrella. Impressive. 

Has she earned this awful task? 

I think not, she already does too much.

She does all the organization inside the house. the only item I added to the packing list this time around was "blackening spice." I imagined we'd be blackening some fish, but it was too easy to order take-out seafood. We did NOT use the blackening spice.

We got up on Saturday at 5:30 AM, finished packing the car, and made the haul home. The ride went smoothly, aside from a Wawa in Virginia. While I was pumping gas and watching a video on the little screen on the gas pump about Wawa's impeccable cleaning, Catherine was inside the store surrounded by a bunch of people who weren't wearing masks. She wrote an irate comment on their website.

Now we're back, cases are spiking, we are in quarantine until we get tested on Tuesday, and it's back to the usual . . . which is unusual. We're living through history right now, and we don't know how the story ends. It's maddening. But we were lucky enough to have the resources to get away from it all for a week. It is a different world out there, it doesn't feel like a pandemic-- the Outer Banks has had less than a hundred cases, in total. 

It was great to see the guys, and it was great to get away with the family . . . even though we've spent a LOT of time together. The change in location helped. 

I hope we can do the same thing next year. I hope there is a next year!

Oops! Dave Did It Again (time is a flat circle)

My wife is a beautiful, wonderful, generous woman. Any time I can do something for her-- as long as I understand exactly what she wants to be done and I think I am capable of executing this task to her standard of excellence-- I do it.

Monday she had a Zoom meeting about school curriculum at 12:30 PM. Right smack in the middle of lunch. We are down at the beach in North Carolina and we were excited to order from a lauded seafood takeout place around the corner: Food Dudes Kitchen.

I volunteered to write down what everyone wanted, call and place the order, and go and pick-up the food. This is big for me-- I don't mind picking up the food, but I generally never volunteer to call and order because I'm awful on the phone. I can't hear that well and I really need to see people in person so I can use my good looks and charm. The phone just doesn't convey it.

But if this was going to please my wife, I was all in.

We looked over the menu; everything sounded good. We discussed every option, including the special. Then I wrote down the items we decided upon, so I could be coherent during the phone call. I can't talk on the phone unless I have something written down.


I successfully made the phone call. I ordered the food and noted when I had to go pick it up (see the above photo).

We then waited for a few minutes, killing time with our new family obsession, the NYT crossword app, and then Alex and I completed the pick-up.

Catherine was still on her Zoom meeting when we got back.

The food looked amazing. I was hungry. I opened the box containing my sandwich-- I had gotten the same thing as Catherine-- and then quickly checked the other box. Same thing. Mahi-mahi wrap with bacon and greens. Lightly breaded and fried.

Alex mumbled something about the color of my fish as I started eating, but I was so hungry I didn't hear him.

Catherine's meeting finished and she came down the stairs, opened her styrofoam container, took a look, wrinkled her nose, and said:" This is your sandwich. This is tuna. Where's mine? Did you eat mine?"

Oh no.

It was at that moment that I realized I did NOT order the same thing as my wife. I was GOING to order the same things as my wife, but then--at the last moment-- I switched to the fajita grilled tuna wrap.

It was right on my order sheet. I had written it down. You can see this for yourself in the document I have provided.

When I quickly opened the other box, to make sure we had the right stuff, I saw a wrap with some fish in it. And some green stuff surrounding the fish. I looked too quickly to notice that the fish was tuna (and this is why Alex made the comment about the color of my fish . . . mahi-mahi is whiter than tuna) and that the green stuff was avocado salsa, not greens.

Unfortunately, Catherine doesn't eat tuna.

I apologized a hundred times over. I had really really wanted to make lunch smooth, easy, and delicious for her. Instead, she made a salad.

My punishment was severe: I had to eat the fajita grilled tuna wrap for dinner. I shared it with Alex, who does like tuna. It was superb. The whole thing was totally unfair, and it was completely my fault.

Looking back, it seems insane that I did this. I had WRITTEN DOWN my order and it wasn't the same as my wife's order. I looked at the sandwiches. But my brain reset to the first thing I decided upon, which was to get the same thing as my wife. And I was hungry. And stressed from making a phone call.

The worst thing is that I have done this before. Twelve years ago, I ate someone's sandwich in the English Office. And while she was pretty and blonde and a teacher, she wasn't my wife. The circumstances were equally absurd, and I had plenty of chances to NOT eat her lunch. But I suppose it is my destiny to repeat history over and over . . . Nietzche's eternal recurrence. Rust Cohle's "flat circle."

All I can say to these people, these people whose sandwiches I have eaten, these people whose sandwiches I will eat, is this: I'm sorry . . . I wish I could control this, but everything we've ever done, we're going to do it over and over again. Some combination of low blood sugar and intense hunger and airheadedness and difficulty with auditory communication without visual clues and the fact that I do things too fast, especially eating, is going to set up the same circumstances. Again and again. Over and over. It is my destiny, to eat your sandwich.


Warning: Requires Ancillary Brainpower

If you're looking for a fun and entertaining sci-fi read, check Becky Chambers sci-fi novel The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.

If you're looking for something mind-bending and challenging, try Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

The premise is that giant space-battleships are run by AI. And this AI has multiple consciousnesses in the form of ancillaries: soldiers and workers in human form that are controlled by the AI but have their own perception. So the AI is constantly monitoring and controlling hundreds or thousands of perspectives. These ancillaries can be stored for thousands of years, if need be. In the present time of the novel, they seem to be out of favor. Regular humans are employed more often.

These ships also have a human captain, to which the AI becomes very attached (some battleship AI actually lost their minds when the captain was killed).

We are operating in a milieu like the Roman-empire. The Radch Empire has grown large and vast and wide. There are fragments and factions. The emperor, Anaander Minaaii, has many versions of herself. Clones and clones, all running the empire in various places. One of these clones orders our hero, the AI of the ship The Justice of Toren, to kill the Lieutenant she loves: Lieutenant Awn. The ship completes the task because she must obey the order, but then rebels. The ship learns that there are many factions of Anaander Minaai, with different objectives.

The ship is destroyed . . . but one ancillary gets away. One fragment of the AI's consciousness. And this ancillary swears revenge! If you can make it that far, things then start to make some sense.

The book takes place in multiple time strands. All genders are referred to as "she" because Radch speech is genderless. 

The novel is a tough read, with themes evocative of Marvin Minsky's The Society of the Mind.

Minsky was the co-founder of the artificial intelligence lab at M.I.T. He's was a real heavyweight in the field of computer cognition. I wonder if he could have made sense of this novel . . . 

It's nice to know that I'm not the only person who struggled while reading this book. The folks at Wired Magazine read it as well, and they also found it challenging . . . and they work for Wired!

Respect the Community Garden

My wife holds some position of power in our community garden. I'm not sure what the title of the position is, nor do I know the exact responsibilities. She's usually "dealing" with some garden-related issue: shared hoses and tools, mulch, water, a poison hemlock outbreak, etc. It sounds pretty taxing. 

She also has to "deal" with rule-breakers: folks who don't abide by the new social distancing rules, folks who tie things to the fence, folks who don't tend their plot . . . folks who don't respect the ethos of the garden. The community garden is a wonderful institution, and it deserves respect. I'm pretty sure she's got some muscle to help her with this, a lady who is a lawyer by day and a garden enforcer in her spare time. 

Last week, my friend (who I will call Jack Woltz for the sake of anonymity) was damn close to getting a violation. Weeds were running rampant in his plot. But instead of issuing Jack a violation, my wife made him an offer he couldn't refuse.



She told him our boys-- who do odd jobs, if anyone is looking to hire them-- would weed his garden for ten dollars an hour. If Jack hired them, the violation would disappear.

Is this racketeering?

It looks like your plot is a little fucked up . . . but I've got a couple guys who can fix that, for the right price . . . and if you need "protection" for your produce-- because it would be a shame if anything happened to those cucumbers-- we could arrange that as well. 

Jack wisely paid the boys (and gave them a little extra to curry favor). My boys informed him that there was some poison ivy in his plot as well. The boys weren't equipped to remove that. If he wants that removed, it will cost extra.

As much as my wife loves control and power, and though she wields it effectively, she swears that she's done with this position. She just wants to focus on growing her vegetables and keeping her plot neat. But every time she tries to get out, the garden pulls her back in!


Gods of Tennis? Hello?

Gods of Tennis, I Beseech Thee . . .

What do I have to sacrifice, in order to hit my two-handed backhand the same way in the match as I do in the warming-up to the match?

How can I loosen my grip and my mind under pressure?

What if I stopped eating french fries? Would that be enough?

Or do I have to give up something dearer?

Like egg sandwiches?

I am waiting for a sign.


Alex Goes All-in on a Bike Ride to Princeton

Yesterday, just before noon, my sixteen-year-old son Alex called and said he was biking to Princeton with a few of his friends. They were going to take the towpath (a.k.a. D & R Canal State Park) to Rocky Hill and then bike into Princeton and eat. It's a long way. Over twenty miles (each way).




I told him this wasn't a great idea and listed the reasons:

1) it was too late in the day

2) there were supposed to be thunderstorms

3) he wasn't wearing biking shorts

4) he didn't have the proper kind of bike for this long of a ride

He ignored my advice and I didn't forbid him to go; he was with some fairly responsible and athletic kids-- two seniors, one a tennis player,, the other a runner and wrestler. I didn't want to discourage him, but I had my doubts. Alex's friend-- the younger brother of the wrestler-- wanted no part in a 40-plus-mile bike ride that was starting in the heat of the day. He wisely decided to stay home.

But Alex took off with the two older kids. He said they were prepared, with food and water and rain gear. I told him he was an idiot and wished him luck. I should also mention that Alex hates riding a bike, never uses his own bike, and borrowed his brother's bike because that's actually in decent shape.

At the start of their trip, luck was on their side. They avoided the storms, made it to Princeton, ate lunch, waited out the rain, and then decided to take the bus home. My wife and I were happy with this decision, as it was getting late and we figured we were going to have to drive to Princeton and give him a ride home. The bus was supposed to leave from Princeton at 6:15 PM.

I texted Alex at 6:20 PM to see if he had caught the bus and he told me they were biking home. I  called him and told him he wasn't going to make it before dark. He insisted they would and said if they didn't, then they were going to get off the canal path and ride on the road. He said that his friends had flashlights. Alex had no light and was not wearing a helmet, so we didn't want him to ride on the road in the dark. We told him once it got dark, that we would drive and pick him up. He agreed to this and when it started to get dark, we called him and he said he was near Manville.  We told him to get off the towpath and we would grab him. We headed west in the minivan-- traveling parallel to the canal-- towards Manville.

Catherine drove, and I navigated and texted Alex. No answer. We totally lost touch with him. We were driving around in the dark, finding places where the canal path intersected with the road. I was looking over at the path when I could see through the trees and we were hoping to stumble upon him at one of the bridges or park entrances. It was scary and frustrating, mainly because he wouldn't answer his phone.

I had some grim thoughts going through my head, especially because of this tragedy that just happened near us.

I didn't tell my wife about that incident, but we certainly both had the same thing in mind. The path was dark, full of roots and potholes, and surrounded by water. Often there are steep cliffs on either side. And our son wasn't wearing a helmet. If he fell, hit his head, and slid into the river or the canal, that would be an ugly situation.

We finally heard from him around 9:30. My wife was going to call the police at 10 PM, so it was in the nick of time. He told us they had screwed up the location and were actually closer than they thought, well past Manville. We found him and the other boys in Johnson Park. 

Alex is grounded for the week and has a list of chores to complete longer than my arm. It's too bad, because he almost didn't get into any trouble at all. He would have had a great story and been on an epic adventure, and suffered no consequences.

I've been playing some online Texas Hold'em lately-- I read a bunch of books and learned how to play (very) low stakes poker. I also learned a lot of poker lingo and analogies.

I told him this was a situation where he "stayed married to the bet" and "threw good money after bad." One of the most important things in Texas Hold'em is to be aggressive-- to go for it-- and then if you know you are beaten, get out of the hand. Fold. It's the great thing about poker. If you're smart enough, you can quit at any time. You can quit the hand before the stakes get too big. Unless you have the nuts, you don't want to get pot committed, or you're going to go all the way with nothing.

I think he sort of understood this. He made a sequence of bad decisions, starting with taking off towards Princeton at noon. But if he quit the sequence at any point, if they all turned around earlier, if they took the bus, if he got off the path and called us with his location before the sun went down, if he did any of those things, he would have been a hero. When you make a really difficult fold, they call it a "hero fold."

This is what he needed to do . . . he needed to recognize he was with two eighteen-year-olds that were headed to college and didn't have to live with their parents for the foreseeable future. They could go all-in with fewer consequences. They had a bigger bankroll. I think the peer pressure got to him a bit, and that's fine. It happens. I did plenty of stupid stuff like that as well. 

So now he's paying off his bet, cleaning cabinets in the kitchen, weed-whacking, etc. Maybe he learned a lesson? He was so close to not getting into any trouble . . . and then there's his buddy, who did the wisest thing of all. When you're dealt a lousy hand, sometimes you fold immediately, don't get on a bike and head to Princeton at noontime on a hot day, and relax in the AC. But then, of course, you're not really playing cards . . .

No Gyms = No Rocks (Hypothetically)

If I were (hypothetically) pilfering rocks from the park to outline my wife's garden, it would be very difficult to do so during the pandemic. Because all the gyms are closed, the park is packed in the early morning-- which I would assume to be the best time to pilfer rocks. 

Good thing I'm not in the habit of pilfering rocks from the park . . .

An Old Lady Touches My Balls

This morning my son Ian and I got up early to play tennis. There were three courts in the shade and only one was taken. We left a court between us and the old dudes, so we had enough room to take out the hopper and hit a bunch of balls. After we had hit most of the balls in the hopper-- so balls were scattered all over the court and along the fence-- an old lady showed up and claimed the middle court (the court in between us and the old guys). Even though there were other available courts, I could understand the reason she chose the court adjacent to ours-- the middle court was in the shade and the others were in full sun.

I was about to go pick up the balls that were on the back fence, closer to the old lady's court, when she sprang into action. She picked up a bunch of our balls-- with her hands-- and placed them on her racket. She then brought them over to us, smiled, and plopped them into our hopper.

I thanked her, but I was slightly appalled.

She touched my balls!

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, the rule of thumb on the tennis court has been: DO NOT TOUCH RANDOM BALLS.

One friend I play with won't even touch MY balls. We use separate balls. I keep two balls in my pocket, and he keeps two balls in his pocket. We only handle our own balls.

If his ball ends up in my neighborhood, I press it between my foot and my racket, yank on it, bounce it, and bop it over the net: back into his neighborhood.



Some of my tennis partners are less paranoid. My buddy Phil has no problem touching my balls. But I don't think he's going around touching random balls.

Another old lady showed up and the two of them started playing some old lady tennis. Their balls frequently bounced onto our court, and I always tried to graciously retrieve them (in the preferred hygienic foot/racket fashion). My son Ian did the same.

The older old lady said, "This is nice, we have a couple of ball boys . . ."

Then she paused and lowered her voice a shade: "I mean ball men."


There was enough innuendo in her voice to visibly frighten my fifteen-year-old son. 

When the old dudes left, instead of moving over a court, the ladies stayed next to us and continued to chat. They complimented my son on his excellent play and told me how lucky I was to have a child that could hit so well.

These old ladies weren't scared of anything. They weren't scared of COVID, they weren't scared of breaking a hip on the concrete, and they weren't scared of flirting with men many years younger than them. 

I hope I'm that bold when I get old.

Growing Pains

It was Father's Day Eve and everything was wonderful. Tennis in the morning with Ian. A game of Small World in the afternoon. Ping-pong with the kids. Beer from the microbrewery down the road. We were just about to order food from the Malaysian place-- roti and noodles and curry-- and I was absolved from pick-up duty.

I was passing the time before we ordered food by playing low-stakes online Texas Hold'em in my man-cave/music studio. The action was great-- all the Dads were drunk and betting like old-time cowboys. I was raking it in.

Then I heard breaking glass-- car-crash in a movie breaking glass-- and a scream. A slasher-movie scream.

I ran up from my study.

Catherine and Ian were in the kitchen. Ian was screaming, and Catherine had his bloody wrist under the sink.

When Ian came in the house, he pushed the rounded center glass pane of the inner door and his hand went right through. It was humid and the door was swollen and stuck.

Glass was everywhere.




He cut his wrist, but he was extremely lucky. He missed all the tendons and veins. So we didn't have to go to the emergency room.



It was hard to remain calm. Why was he pushing on the glass to open the door? Ian endured the lecture, and perhaps learned a valuable lesson (why do they always have to learn these lessons the hard way?) This is what teenagers do. Ian is about to grow-- his arms are long and his feet are huge but he still weighs 99 pounds. He's weird and gangly and just starting to gain a little bit of strength.

The other day, when he was serving, his new tennis racket flew out of his hand, hit the concrete and cracked. He didn't tell us because he thought we would be angry. I actually stayed calm and we ordered a new racket. We're lucky we can afford it (although we did make him pay for half . . . he needs to replace his grip tape more often, another lesson learned the hard way).

After a major clean-up-- involving a mallet, the vacuum, the dustpan and broom, and lots of wet rags-- we removed the glass from the floor and the door. I threw some duct tape around the frame and maybe we'll fix it (or maybe not . . . it's probably safer this way). We wrapped Ian's arm with gauze and a bandage and ordered the food.

Father's Day itself was less eventful.

I got a Fitbit! This thing is amazing. It has a touchscreen, it tracks steps, has GPS, shows me how far and fast I've run, maps it, and displays my heart rate. Sixty bucks! It's a refurb. I'm living in the future . . . 2012 or so?

I got to drink more local beer, I played more ping-pong with the kids (Ian played left-handed) and we went and saw my parents and wished my Dad Happy Father's Day. Ian's cut stopped bleeding, and we had an epic corn-hole/washer match: my brother and Alex vs. me and Ian. We lost the rubber match but Ian held his own left-handed.

My other Father's Day gift is on the way, a real wooden cornhole set. Ian has promised to paint something excellent on it as soon as his wrist heals.


Hitchhiker's Guide meets Star Trek Meets a Modern Feminist Perspective . . .

If you've ever wondered what Star Trek would be like if it were written by a woman, check out Becky Chambers sci-fi novel The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.

It's a space-opera with a sociological bent-- and while I like it much much more than Star Trek-- there's an archetypal similarity in the mission. The Wayfarer is a tunneling ship that opens up lanes through hyperspace in the Galactic Commons so that there can be communication and commerce between the affiliated species that live throughout the galaxy.

Instead of five years, the diverse crew of The Wayfarer is on a one year trip, but they are definitely going boldly to seek out new life and civilizations and strange new worlds.

The characters are modern and funny and mainly and manifoldly alien . . . humans are on the low end of the totem pole. The new clerk aboard the ship, Rosemarie, is just trying to fit in, knowing full well that the human race-- mainly by pure luck-- has just passed out of this stage:

Perhaps the most crucial stage is that of “intraspecies chaos.” This is the proving ground, the awkward adolescence when a species either learns to come together on a global scale, or dissolves into squabbling factions doomed to extinction, whether through war or ecological disasters too great to tackle divided. We have seen this story play out countless times. 

Along the episodically plotted journey, Chambers tackles interspecies coupling, AI rights, gene-tweaking, symbiotic sentient viruses, alien diplomacy, specieism, cloning, and moral relativism. But the book is mainly about a well-developed and fascinating group of sentient beings trying to get along in a small space on an epic journey.

I also learned the word "ansible."

Here's how the reptilian Aandrisk feel about children . . .

The death of a new hatchling was so common as to be expected. The death of a child about to feather, yes, that was sad. But a real tragedy was the loss of an adult with friends and lovers and family. The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around. 

Chambers works with the conceit that life abounds in the universe, that it will evolve towards intelligence, and that it is carbon-based. With limitations, is it any wonder that sentient creatures have more similarities than differences. Even so, Captain Ashby is mired in this mess . . .

As open and generous as Aeluons generally were to their galactic neighbors, interspecies coupling remained a mainstream taboo.

Every alien race has to come to grip that there are others out there, with goals and dreams and culture that has evolved on a grand scale, in some ways parallel to all life, and in some way completely different and unexpected. 

In the middle of the book, there is a wonderful essay on this. The way it is inserted into the novel reminds me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It is ostensibly written by a sagacious Aandrisk scientist . . . but it's definitely Becky Chambers laying out the reason her story works. I've put it here in its entirety-- thanks to my Kindle-- and because it's so good.

ITEM NAME: Thoughts on the Galaxy—Chapter Three
AUTHOR: oshet-Tekshereket esk-Rahist as- Ehas Kirish isket-Ishkriset
ENCRYPTION: 0
TRANSLATION PATH: [Reskitkish:Klip] 
TRANSCRIPTION: 0 NODE IDENTIFIER: 9874-457-28, Rosemary Harper
When meeting an individual of another species for the first time, there is no sapient in the galaxy who does not immediately take inventory of xyr physiological differences. These are always the first things we see. How does xyr skin differ? Does xe have a tail? How does xe move? How does xe pick things up? What does xe eat? Does xe have abilities that I don’t? Or vice versa? These are all important distinctions, but the more important comparison is the one we make after this point. Once we’ve made our mental checklists of variations, we begin to draw parallels—not between the alien and ourselves, but between the alien and animals. The majority of us have been taught since childhood that voicing these comparisons is derogatory, and indeed, many of the racial slurs in colloquial use are nothing more than common names for nonsapient species (for example, the Human term lizard, to describe Aandrisks; the Quelin term tik, to describe Humans; the Aandrisk term sersh, to describe Quelin).
Though these terms are offensive, examining them objectively reveals a point of major biological interest. All demeaning implications aside, we Aandrisks do look like some of the native reptilian species of Earth. Humans do look like larger, bipedal versions of the hairless primates that plague the sewer systems of Quelin cities. Quelin do bear some resemblance to the snapping crustaceans found all over Hashkath. And yet, we evolved separately, and on different worlds. My people and the lizards of Earth do not share an evolutionary tree, nor do Humans and tiks, nor Quelin and sersh. Our points of origin are spread out across the galaxy. We hail from systems that remained self-contained contained for billions of years, with evolutionary clocks that all began at different times. How is it possible that when meeting our galactic neighbors for the first time, we are all instantly reminded of creatures back home—or in some cases, of ourselves?
The question becomes even more complicated when we start to look beyond our superficial differences to the wealth of similarities. All sapient species have brains. Let us consider that seemingly obvious fact for a moment. Despite our isolated evolutionary paths, we all developed nervous systems with a central hub. We all have internal organs. We all share at least some of the same physical senses: hearing, touch, taste, smell, sight, electroreception. The grand majority of sapients have either four or six limbs. Bipedalism and opposable digits, while not universal, are shockingly common. We are all made from chromosomes and DNA, which themselves are made from a select handful of key elements. We all require a steady intake of water and oxygen to survive (though in varying quantities). We all need food. We all buckle under atmospheres too thick or gravitational fields too strong. We all die in freezing cold or burning heat. We all die, period. How can this be? How is it that life, so diverse on the surface, has followed the same patterns throughout the galaxy—not just in the current era, but over and over again?
We see this pattern in the ruins of the Arkanic civilization at Shessha, or the ancient fossil beds on the now-barren world of Okik. This is a question that scientific communities have wrestled with for centuries, and it seems unlikely that an answer will present itself in the near future. There are many theories—asteroids carrying amino acids, supernovae blowing organic material out into neighboring systems. And yes, there is the fanciful story of a hyperadvanced sapient race “seeding” the galaxy with genetic material. I admit that the “Galactic Gardener” hypothesis has fueled the plots of some of my favorite science fiction sims, but scientifically speaking, it is nothing more than wishful thinking. You cannot have a theory without evidence, and there is absolutely none that supports this idea (no matter what the conspiracy theorists lurking on Linking feeds would have you believe).
For my part, I think that the best explanation is the simplest one. The galaxy is a place of laws. Gravity follows laws. The life cycles of stars and planetary systems follow laws. Subatomic particles follow laws. We know the exact conditions that will cause the formation of a red dwarf, or a comet, or a black hole. Why, then, can we not acknowledge that the universe follows similarly rigid laws of biology? We have only ever discovered life on similarly sized terrestrial moons and planets, orbiting within a narrow margin around hospitable stars. If we all evolved on such kindred worlds, why is it such a surprise that our evolutionary paths have so much in common? Why can we not conclude that the right combination of specific environmental factors will always result in predictable physical adaptations? With so much evidence staring us in the face, why does this debate continue?
The answer, of course, is that the laws of biology are nearly impossible to test, and scientists hate that. We can launch probes to test theories of gravity and space-time. We can put rocks in pressure cookers and split atoms in classrooms. But how does one test a process as lengthy and multifaceted as evolution? There are labs today that struggle to find the funding to keep a project running for three standards—imagine the funding needed to run a project for millennia! As it stands, there is no way for us to efficiently test the conditions that produce specific biological adaptations, beyond the most rudimentary observations (aquatic climates produce fins, cold climates produce fur or blubber, and so on).
There have been bold attempts at creating software that could accurately predict evolutionary paths, such as the Aeluon-funded Tep Preem Project (which, though well-intentioned, has yet to unravel the mysteries of biological law). The problem with such endeavors is that there are too many variables to consider, many of which we remain ignorant of. We simply don’t have enough data, and the data that we do possess is still beyond our understanding. We are experts of the physical galaxy. We live on terraformed worlds and in massive orbital habitats. We tunnel through the sublayer to hop between stellar systems. We escape planetary gravity with the ease of walking out the front door. But when it comes to evolution, we are hatchlings, fumbling with toys. I believe this is why many of my peers still cling to theories of genetic material scattered by asteroids and supernovae. In many ways, the idea of a shared stock of genes drifting through the galaxy is far easier to accept than the daunting notion that none of us may ever have the intellectual capacity to understand how life truly works.

Remote Schooling Has Failed Us

My sixteen-year-old son took a look at a pair of mini-watermelons on the counter and said:

"Can we eat these little watermelons now? Or are we waiting for them to grow?"

When we started lambasting him for his stupidity, he said: "I was kidding! If they were going to grow, they wouldn't have put them in such tight netting."

Numbers and Some Perspective: Is The Coronavirus More Racist Than the Police?

Like most people, I've been mulling over the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests. As have my friends.

It's really hard to be rational about police violence and brutality, toward black people and people in general. Especially when you are confronted with videos. Videos that elicit emotions. But videos that are also cherry-picked from millions of events. Policing in America is very very difficult. Is the culture of police racist, or is it overly-militarized, or is it simply rational in the face of a violent gun-filled society?

The new episode of The Weeds (Fixing the Police) gets into the nitty-gritty of this. They avoid race. They discuss the pros of a diverse police force, the possibility/impossibility of unbundling the police, the problems with qualified immunity, the simplest way to improve policing (make it easy to get rid of the worst officers) and the difficulty of reform because of police unions. So many of these things apply to teachers as well, so if you are a teacher, this episode is a must-listen. The reforms people want for police unions are often the same reforms people want for teacher unions.

If you want more on how innovative policy could transform policing, Tyler Cowen's new episode with Rachel Harmon covers a lot of stuff:

Rachel Harmon joined Tyler to discuss the best ideas for improving policing, including why good data on policing is so hard to come by, why body cams are not a panacea, the benefits and costs of consolidating police departments, why more female cops won’t necessarily reduce the use of force, how federal programs can sometimes misfire, where changing police selection criteria would and wouldn’t help, whether some policing could be replaced by social workers, the sobering frequency of sexual assaults by police, how a national accreditation system might improve police conduct, what reformers can learn from Camden and elsewhere, and more. 

I obviously think podcasts are a great medium for putting things in perspective. They are unconstrained by time, topical, and often allow smart people who don't come off well on video to express their opinions, with the benefit of audio editing.

Sam Harris puts things in perspective as well as anyone on his Making Sense podcast. He has slow and rational, rather emotionless discussions with smart people. But he does episode "#207: Can We Pull Back From the Brink?" all by his lonesome. He speaks for nearly two hours, in sentences that form logical paragraphs. It's really impressive. Unless you are very focused, it will be hard to listen to in one sitting. I think it's required listening if you want to think about these protests and the death of George Floyd.

Here are some of the questions that the episode (and my resultant reflection) have produced.

First of all, Sam Harris and most everyone has condemned Derek Chauvin's use of force on George Floyd. 

But the question about the scene are myriad: 

Was Chauvin trying to kill George Floyd? Would he have used a different amount of force on a white person? How often do the Minneapolis police (or any police) use this maneuver to restrain people? Why exactly were they restraining Floyd? Is Chauvin a homicidal maniac, a blatant racist, or did he think he was using a standard move to subdue someone resisting arrest?

No matter what the answers, this particular scene was heinous. But are most cops abusing black men like this? Are they doing something different to white people?

Sam Harris points out that there are over 10 million arrests each year in America. About one thousand of these result in lethal force. So one on every ten thousand arrests. Is that too many? It's more than in other developed countries. But we have WAY more guns on the streets than any other developed country.  

Of those that die, most of them are white. About 30 percent of them are black. Black people only make up 13 percent of the population. So there is a disparity. Some claim that this 17 percent disparity is racism. 

Is it?

Perhaps. But black people tend to be more likely to be arrested, and more likely to be involved in criminal activities. If you take this into account, then-- according to Sam Harris and most of what I have read: 

This suggests that officer bias – in terms of officers making different shooting decisions for black and white citizens – is not necessarily the cause of black citizens being shot at higher rates. Even if officers were making the same decisions about whether to use deadly force for black and white citizens, population-level disparities would still emerge given these crime rate differences.
Is some police brutality racist? Perhaps, but that's hard to prove. It's a case by case thing. Is some police violence due to poor training? Absolutely. But there have been police reforms, especially in large cities. FiveThirtyEight has a podcast on police violence that details this. White police are LESS likely to use lethal force on a black person than they are on a white person. Have these reforms in large cities been enough? Do police unions need to be dismantled? Is it possible to dismantle the culture of police in a country as violent and gun-ridden as the United States? The data and numbers are ambiguous . . . although it seems lethal force is going down in major cities, and it is going up in rural areas.

Is some of this police violence because we send a person with a badge and a gun to deal with all sorts of problems that don't necessitate a badge and a gun?

How much of this can be blamed on the war on drugs? Harris talks about "no-knock" drug raids, which are inherently violent for people of any race. Are they necessary?

Harris brings up the largest factor, of course. Median black families have one-tenth of the wealth of median white families. So black families are more likely to live in poverty, in rougher neighborhoods, closer to crime, and closer to hands-on policing. Statistically, much of this inequality is due to slavery, Jim Crow laws, the fables of the Reconstruction, segregation, white supremacy, the KKK, political suppression, lack of civil rights, systemic discrimination, and real estate. Location, location, location. 

This is all well and good to keep in mind until the shit goes down. Then every situation is particular. Radiolab has a fantastic episode that explains the criteria for "reasonable action" by police. It's much more about acting reasonably in the moment, then assessing the totality of the situation. 

Malcolm Gladwell has a great podcast on this archetypal police situation, Descend into the Particular.

He comes to the conclusion that we might police laws far too rigidly, especially in neighborhoods where there is a constant police presence. Howard "Bunny" Colvin from The Wire would agree.

Gladwell breaks down the findings about the shooting of Michael Brown and the Ferguson riots and makes two assertions:

1) the white cop that shot Michael Brown was truly threatened by him

2) the policing system in Ferguson oppressed, terrorized, extorted, and enraged the people of the town, most of whom were black.

The Indicator has a heartbreaking episode on how fees and fines often target people of color and destroy their finances and their relationship with the police. Defunding the police could compound this problem-- if the police have less money, they are going to rely on fees and fines more. The fix for this is something no one wants to hear: higher taxes and a better-funded, more professional, better trained, less militarized, less statistically oriented police department. A department that is incentivized to have good community relations, media presence, and ethical standards, rather than high arrest rates and other conflict-ridden incidents. The Wire covers this.

So in the moment, it's really hard to deescalate a situation when the people you are trying to police despise you. In fact, it's really hard to police any situation that might lead to violence or gunplay.

Now there is Rayshard Brooks. Another video. And with ten million arrests, there will always be another video. Arrests will go awry and people will get shot. Black and white. Videos will surface.

Videos don't indicate the totality of truth. Were the George Floyd protests peaceful or were they riotous? Depends on which videos you watch. This is a major problem. 

For most of the Brooks video, it's a typical DUI stop. Fairly cordial and boring. The Daily podcast "The Killing of Rayshard Brooks" summarizes the incident, if you don't know the details. And then things go wrong. And then there are the questions:

Would the cops have let a white guy walk home? Maybe, maybe not. Once the cops ascertained that brooks was drunk, they couldn't let him go. Brooks also had an outstanding warrant, which was probably weighing on his mind. When they try to cuff Brooks, a scuffle ensues, Brooks punches an officer, grabs a taser, runs, and then turns and shoots the taser at the cop in pursuit, and then he gets shot three times. 

Can a cop let a drunk guy run away with his taser? Does a cop have to arrest a person who has been driving drunk, white or black? Could he have let him move his car out of the drive-thru and then sleep in it? Are the police now liable for this guy? He was drunk. The officer, Garrett Rolfe, was fired for the shooting. If a social worker showed up on the scene, how would it have played out? 

For most of the body-cam video, which is 45 minutes long, Rolfe seemed polite and in control, but once the scuffle ensued and Brooks grabbed his taser, things got ugly quickly. This one seems different than the George Floyd case. The shooting was probably legal, but unnecessary. Brooks was running away. But when he points the taser at the cop, the cop reacts. In that split second, what is running through the cop's mind? If he is shot by the taser, is Brooks going to grab his gun? I would not want to be in that situation.

These are interesting discussions to have. You could discuss this one case for a long long time. But with ten million arrests per year, Harris points out that there WILL be another one. It's the law of averages. And another. 

People are angry. The new episode of This American Life, "Here Again" begins and ends with angry black women. 

The monopoly analogy really gets at just how shafted black people have been in America . . . but so have native Americans, folks in Appalachia, Japanese during WWII, etc. American capitalism shafts a lot of people. 

If you go too far down this road of anger and white guilt and searching for racism, you end up with this . . . a Minneapolis councilwoman saying that calling 911 when you are being burgled comes from a place of privilege. 

This is how Trump gets reelected. As the law and order president. Yikes. So everyone needs to listen to the Beastie Boys and check your head.

Defunding the police is possible, if you can replace them with something. Camden has done this, with some success. But it's a huge job. Police unions hold a lot of power, political and otherwise. And many people genuinely like and respect the police. Starting over is a monumental task, and maybe not the right task during a pandemic. 


Whites comprise 62% of people in the U.S. between ages 45-54.  In that age group, 1,013 white people have died from Covid-19 (22% of the total) compared to 1,448 Black people and 1,698 Hispanic/Latino people.

This is abominable and gets back to how black people have been shafted by the system. And these numbers are something we can improve immediately, with federal leadership, testing, contact tracing, etc. 

If you go by the numbers, black people should probably be a little angrier about police brutality than white people, but not THAT much angrier. We should all be angry that we live in a country that needs militarized police. We should all be angry that we live in a country with such a prevalence of guns and violent crime.

But black people should be very VERY angry about how they have fared during coronavirus.

Who is to blame for that? How could this be remedied? Does our Federal Government even care? It seems Trump and his cronies are only reactionary and won't address this until there are people in the streets chanting about this issue. But of course, going to the streets to protest a virus is the very thing that might increase the virus. It's an ugly dilemma.

Sam Harris thinks the only way forward is to make things LESS about race, with the ultimate goal that the pigmentation in your epidermis is no more important than the color of your hair. I agree with him. Identity politics is the death of us. We should focus on reforms that reduce inequality for our entire society. But that's not how politics and protests work.

I hope things calm down soon and smart people discuss this in a reasonable manner. . . but holding that opinion might put me in the minority. 

Don't Mess With the Locals: Whether You are on the Merrimack or off the Harbor

Townie, a memoir by the best-selling author Andre Dubus III, is the small-town Caucasian version of season four of The Wire. It ends better for him than it does for most of the school kids in Baltimore (perhaps because he is white and his family, though poor, has better connections) but it still explores the same theme: the realm of male violence.


Dubus grows up in a sequence of rough and tumble mill towns in Massachusetts. His home life is anarchy. His dad is mainly absent, teaching college, banging college girls, and becoming a heralded short story writer. His mom is harried and overworked. The kids are left to fend for themselves. He is bullied, beaten, intimidated, and traumatized. The same goes for his artistic younger brother. Then he learns to fight. He also learns to box (there's definitely that vibe from Cutty's gym in The Wire . . . tough street kids learning some discipline and skills that actually translate to their day-to-day existence).

Dubus eventually finds his way, but it's a long and meandering path, fraught with bar-room brawls, vindication, weight-lifting, boxing, stalking people in the streets looking for justice, and the constant looming threat of violence. Once Dubus learns to break that "membrane" and punch someone in the face, over and over, hurt them, it's hard to unlearn that power.

The book might be a bit long, but I blew through it in a few days. I think it's required reading for anyone who has been in a fight, chickened out of a fight, or wonders why some guys end up throwing punches (or worse) for little reason at all. This might help explain those feelings.

Dubus is constantly trying not to portray himself as a hero-- he understands that throwing down isn't the solution if you want to move forward-- but in so many instances, the person willing to use violence is the hero of the moment . . . just perhaps not in retrospect.

The book ends how it must, and those sections when Dubus matures and reconnects with his dad drag a bit, but the first 2/3 of the book is some of the most compelling reading on what it's like to be a young man who needs to establish himself in a fluid and dangerous environment that I have ever read (and again, you should read this in conjunction with Season 4 of The Wire to see both sides of the coin: the white-trash version and the inner city black version).


Cities? Discuss . . .

For some time now, people in America have been moving out of the largest cities to small towns, suburbs, and exurbs. The COVID pandemic has accelerated this trend. The virus puts a serious tax on density.

While this exodus might be good for my property values-- I live in a small town on the train line to NYC-- from a larger perspective, it's kind of scary.

First of all, large cities are some of the greenest places on earth. Especially New York City.

If people move out of our big cities and spread out into the suburbs, traffic and air pollution are going to get worse. More open space will be converted to suburban neighborhoods. Wildlife corridors and wetlands will be disrupted. 

How will this contribute to global warming, air quality, and energy consumption?

If you want to be topical, you've got a better chance of being killed by police in suburbs and country, because cities have more resources and better training programs for their police. And cities tend to be more liberal and accepting of people of color (and diversity in general).

If people move out of cities and spread thinly across our country, what will happen to those urban spaces? We've all learned to shop online (I just bought some athletic shorts from Amazon . . . I know my size and inseam preference and everything) so there's going to be some sort of massive restructuring of retail space. 

We have so many stores in America, especially in our cities. Ten times more retail space per capita than Germany.

What will happen to these stores? And the strip malls? What will happen to the strip malls?

One of my friends used to commute to NYC, but now he's working from home. And he's going to be working from home forever. His company is seriously considering getting rid of all the expensive office space in the city. 

Why keep it?

What if this happens on a massive scale?

Now this migration may allow middle-class people who always wanted to live in major cities but could never afford it the opportunity to do so. People who enjoy diversity and density and city parks and the thrum of creativity and humanity outside their doorstep 24/7.

But with the pandemic looming, will they move? 

I don't have any answers, but I'm sure something is going to happen. Right?


A New Sentence Every Day, Hand Crafted from the Finest Corinthian Leather.