Another day without a cell-phone, so another day with no Wordle or Mini, another day not knowing what's going on with my wife, children and friends, and another day without as much dicking around looking at the weather and the Times headlines-- and it's fitting I don't have a phone, since my Shakespeare class has just begun-- Shakespeare didn't have a phone and he got a hell of a lot of writing accomplished-- but, though the Black Death was always lurking around, Shakespeare didn't have to wear a mask-- and I found out today that reading Shakespeare in a mask is difficult, as he uses a lot of sibilance, rhythm, and loud phrasing so the actors can project his lines-- which leads to a moist and gross mask . . . so I'm looking forward to the end of the mask mandate, which should expire March 7 and we can rip our masks off and burn them and show our stupid faces to the masses (although I try to eat and drink as much as possible in class, so that I don't have to wear mine).
Ups and Downs
Weird day yesterday, hard to characterize . . . got to school, kind of tired from the snowboarding trip, and found a mysterious envelope in my box; I opened it and found a book called There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster-- Who Profits and Who Pays the Price and the author was one of my old students-- Jessie Singer-- and she wrote me a lovely note inside that said:
I have no doubt that without your encouragement and support, I would not be a writer today.
Thank you for being the spark, for helping me see myself, and for convincing me I had this in me.
With Forever gratitude--
Jessie Singer
and I would have taken a picture of the note but I threw my phone in the wash and it's dead, so I need to get a replacement phone ASAP . . . I also went to the wrong duty yesterday at school-- I forgot that it was an A day and went to cafeteria duty and wondered where all the regular folk were-- but Stacey texted me and told me I was in the wrong spot . . . and then Alex and I went to the gym and did some backwards walking and pulling for our knees-- Stacey has also embraced the kneesovertoes guy and she even bought a cheap treadmill to walk backwards on (and his book!) so there will be more of that in the near future . . . anyway, I need to research a new phone and figure out how to survive this week, I'm sure it will be an adventure.
Elk Mountain Rescue Episode
My son Alex and I went on a two-day/one-night snowboarding jaunt up to Elk Mountain and while it was VERY cold on Sunday, it was sunny and the snow was surprisingly good (if a bit hard and fast for my taste) and we ran into some other surprises as well . . .
apparently the lifts aren't in the best shape at Elk Mountain-- the only quad was not running and the two person lift right next to us broke down and everyone onboard had to be rescued-- and Alex and I were very impressed with how fast the rescue crew got everyone off the lift (I've never seen anything like this before) but this may have been because they were well-practiced, as the same thing happened last week;
we stayed on the cheap at a nearby Holiday Inn, which was clean, functional and pretty much at the center of an I-81 truck stop-- there was a Denny's and a Burger King and a couple of fireworks joints and a Flying J . . . and the Italian joint with some wild Google review rejoinders that we wanted to patronize was closed on Sundays and Mondays, as were many of the nearby restaurants-- Elk Mountain is in the middle of nowhere, it barely looks like an area with a ski resort-- so we had to go to a local dive to get some food and beer, The Queen of Hearts Bar and Grill, which turned out to be a perfect place to kill a few hours before we crashed and got some good sleep in preparation for another day on the slopes; we played some pool,
there was some great reading material in the bathroom . . .
and we had some delicious cheesesteaks (she toasted the rolls!) and we avoided getting placed on the "Barred" list . . . and while my legs are sore from trying to keep up with a 17 year old on the slopes, I avoided major injury, so a good trip all around-- it's really great to have a kid who likes to snowboard and is old enough to drive you home from the bar.
Riots, Anarchists, and Babe Ruth
Denis LeHane's historical novel The Given Day covers a period of history I knew next-to-nothing about: the Boston police strike of 1919 . . . and he weaves in tales of race and baseball (Babe Ruth is a character!) and unions and anarchists and nationalism and radical political rhetoric, and there is also the backdrop of the Spanish influenza; it's a page turner written in his typical hard-boiled vivid style, but it's all hung on a framework of history that I had never been taught . . . the conflict of workers and the burgeoning unions versus the nationalistic anti-Bolshevik stance of the upper class; things get quite wild and it all ends with the impending Volstead Act and Prohibition . . . but there's a great scene in the days before the act is to go into effect, when everyone is drinking like mad, celebrating the end of a decade and the beginning of the Roaring Twenties-- this coincides when Babe Ruth is traded to the Yankees and the soldiers have returned from WWI . . . LeHane depicts a wild and literally explosive moment in history, with some entertaining characters to boot.
Even Yet More Also Tennis Notes
The first thing to note is that I shouldn't have four beers at the Grove and eat a bunch of pizza on Friday afternoon when I have to play tennis on Saturday morning at 7 AM, but I still held my own against Rey, who might be the best player in the league this year-- he beat me 8-6 but I was involved in every game . . . Rey has a variety of big serves-- a killer kick serve, a flat serve, and a spin serve-- and he nails them, so you've got to really punch it back deep; he can also hit winners from the baseline and doesn't have any real weak spots . . . which makes sense since he told me he plays six or seven days a week; I had some success going to the net but I need to keep my eye on the ball and not worry about where my opponent is and I need to hit the ball deeper every time with spin, until I can get closer to the net and punch something flat and low; I had some success with my two-hander by getting my hands down near my left thigh to start the swing and really firing my hips through but I still need to be more aggressive with my forehand, just let loose, keep my eye on it and hit it.
"Pops" Drains a Hook Shot
Yesterday, my older son Alex and I went to the Y to shoot some hoops and we ended up playing in a three-on-three game with some good players (one guy had played point guard for Brookdale Community College) and Alex was the youngest player-- but because he's grown so much and his arms are so long, he was able to hold his own-- and I was the oldest player by a long way, but (finally) my long range three-pointer started to fall and I was also able to utilize my hook shot a few times-- which is probably why they were calling me "Pops" . . . as in, "Nice shot, Pops" and "Did you used to play ball back in the day, Pops?" . . . and while when I was a teenager I never really imagined my life at age 51, I can't really complain too much (although I was pretty sore once we were through, we played for almost two hours . . . but if I start doing all these weird knee and foot exercises, maybe I'll be less sore after I play).
Yuck
I was excited to take Lola down to the park yesterday afternoon-- she loves to run around in the snow and it was unseasonably warm, but-- unfortunately-- the warmth brought the fucking geese back and they had managed to dig up some grass at the base of the sled hill, so they were camped out there, nibbling and shitting-- so that portion of the walk annoyed me: Lola ate some goose crap and I had to steer her around the poop field, around the bend and closer to the river . . . and then she was off leash and running around in the snow, having a blast (while I was walking backward in the deep snow, bulletproofing my knees) but then I noticed she had found something interesting in a plastic bag . . . and it was a rotisserie chicken and she was able to eat a wing before I got it out of her mouth . . . which made me wonder: who leaves a fucking rotisserie chicken in a bag by a bench in the snow in the park?
A New Direction?
So apparently-- in order to bulletproof my old knees-- I'm going to have walk backwards, while dragging a weighted sled-- and I'm down for this, so I'm going to try to assemble something in the next few days so I can get to it (I learned this from Ben Patrick, the knees-over-toes guy, on a recent episode of Joe Rogan).
Sports are Entertaining (to a point)
Yesterday was quite a day for sports: I got up at 5:00 AM to watch the epic Nadal/Medvedev Australian Open Match, but I had to interrupt my viewing to go play indoor soccer (I managed to avoid learning who won) and so I finished watching the match at 11:00 AM and then I took the dog on an epic snow hike through the park then watched some of the USA/Canada Men's soccer match -- the US team got scored on early-- and then I went on a strange bar crawl with Connell and Alec . . . we wanted to watch the Kansas City/Cincinnati game but there were no seats to be had at Hooters and no seats to be had at Arooga's, so we kept visiting bars but not drinking any beer, until we finally found a table at The Grove in Milltown-- everyone must have been stir crazy from the cold and COVID and the storm-- and we had some wings and met Rob and Dan and watched the US lose and the Bengals win (and we learned about the various Bengals cheers and found out that the lady at the table next to us was not a football fan but she found it interesting that everyone was cheering for her . . . because her last name was Bengals) and then I returned home and put on the Rams/49ers game for a bit . . . and then I shut it off and went and read my book, because that was enough sports for one day.
Nadal Hangs Tough Down Under
I played indoor soccer for 90 minutes this morning and my Fitbit registered just under 11,000 steps (4.8 miles) which is the perfect amount of exercise for an old man-- and this made me wonder how many steps Medvedev and Nadal clocked in their five hours and twenty-four-minute epic battle in Australia . . . and I also wonder how sore Nadal's knees will be tomorrow.
Station Eleven on a Wintry Day is Best
Watching Station Eleven during a blustery snow day is a treat-- when you go out to shovel snow and clean off the cars and walk the dog in the park and then are able to come back inside to a warm house, you can really appreciate how good you have it, especially when Jeevan gets mauled by a wolf in the snow and nearly freezes to death (and wakes up with an amputated leg in a housewares store populated by pregnant women who are all going to give birth on the same day and they think he's a doctor) and I highly recommend watching this show in any weather (although winter is best) and you should also read the novel; the show is episodic and unstuck in time, which allows for weird and artsy moments and lots of characters who you will never meet again, and it is beautifully filmed and acted, a real treat-- it lives up to the motto: survival is insufficient.
Sam Harris is Funny?
Joe Rogan seems to be taking a lot of flak from the media right now, and when you talk for three or four hours with someone, there's always an odd quotation to cherry-pick and vilify . . . but the weirdest moment so far in his new episode with Jordan Peterson the only thing that I found off-base is that they both claimed fellow podcaster Sam Harris is very funny and could be a stand-up comedian.
Yan Can Cook (and So Can Dave)
I thought I disliked cooking but it turns out I like to cook if the rest of the family goes to the gym and I can drink, etc. and listen to whatever music I want (at whatever volume I want) and have over two hours to prepare a simple meal (tacos) and then I like cooking.
Two Good Podcasts
I didn't really explain yesterday's post title (Dave Eschews the Metaverse) but basically, I listened to this podcast and decided that I want to do things in the regular universe as much as possible (and avoid doing anything in the metaverse) but then I listened to this podcast and remembered that there's plenty of fucked up shit going on in the regular universe as well.
Dave Eschews the Metaverse
Even More Tennis Notes
I played Bud today in the tennis league and beat him fairly handily (although it was 2-2 at the start, I won 11-5 and went ahead 9-3 at one point) but I never had a very good rhythm in the match: Bud is a hard-hitting flat-ball player so it's really hard to get into a groove-- I couldn't hit my two-handed backhand at all . . . I didn't have time to set up and instead had to use a slashing cut shot, which I tried to hit deep or angled and often I was just trying to get my forehand back-- he puts a ton of pace on the ball but also hits a bunch of unforced errors-- I hit a few winners, as I've been working on hitting it low when I approach the net (and I should have gotten to the net more, I definitely had success there) but, unfortunately, the best strategy against a guy like this is to play like a pusher, which is annoying, but it works-- Bud has a big serve, which I really just tried to get back-- we were on the singles only court, which is weird and I hit a few serves out of the side net (which drove Bud crazy . . . he couldn't believe I fished them out of there) and basically I just got the ball back until he hit a winner or made an error . . . I was serving okay to the ad side, but I was all screwed up serving to the deuce side, by toss wasn't falling into the court and I was losing balance and toppling to my left (which Bud kindly pointed out to me) but this makes three wins in a row, which isn't easy in this league . . . we'll see if the streak will continue (but I'm certainly no Amy Schneider).
Thought Leader or Public Intellectual? You Be The Judge
My friend and colleague Liz showed me an intriguing video this morning and it was perfect for class: we've been reading an excerpt by Anand Giridharadas about the decline of public intellectuals and the ascendance of thought leaders, especially in the world of corporate conferences and TED talks . . . but this guy Reggie Watts might be the post-modern hybrid that destroys the dichotomy.
Lessons from The Extended Mind
I recently listened to Ezra Klein interview Annie Murphy Paul and her ideas were so inspirational and invigorating that I read her new book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain; here are a few of the many lessons about thinking, learning, and our brains that she develops and supports with copious scientific research;
1) we often use misguided metaphors to describe our brain-- it's not a muscle that grows stronger with exercise (Lumosity does not work) nor is it a computer that works the same in any environment . . . we are more like magpies, building from whatever is available in our environment;
2) we learn better when we are moving, not when we are still . . . as Thoreau said, "methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow" and we need to incorporate this idea into the classroom and the office;
3) whenever possible, it's good to offload information into the world-- smart people don't memorize everything, nor do they work "in their head," as Richard Feynman points out in the book-- the writing the math down IS the work . . . we should put as much information as we can into writing and charts and gestures and other people;
4) we need to make data into something real in order to understand it, into an artifact-- we need to make the abstract into something concrete;
5) it is good to alter our physical state before, during and after learning-- this helps us remember and it helps us create;
6) we need to reembody complex ideas-- argue about them, teach them, and speak about them in real time . . . when a teacher lectures the class, emphatically gesturing, asking pertinent questions, and directing all dialogue, the person learning the most about the subject IS the teacher-- learners need to to do these things;
7) you remember things better when they are associated with props, places, and memory palaces;
8) groups need to possess bonds and "groupiness" to function-- they can't be arbitrary and they don't work like a "hive mind" . . . groups work best when different people are expert in different disciplines and can combine and pool knowledge;
9) physical space is really important to how much work gets done-- open offices don't work all that well, people need a mix of a place to call their own, an area that is social, and an area where they can complain-- and complaining to peers really helps with productivity-- it allows lots of problems to get ironed out;
10) a lot of these lessons are things that make sense, but teachers and bosses forget when deadlines loom-- learners need to teach what they want to remember, discuss it, debate it, move around with, contextualize it, etcetera . . . and our brains are VERY dependent on surroundings-- you can have all the grit you want, but if you don't have the time, space, people, and variety of movement and extensions to think properly, you are going to struggle to learn . . . this means learning takes more time, it doesn't work very well over a screen, and it can be more fun and compelling at every level of learning; this is a great book and I highly recommend it for educators everywhere.
Congrats, Dave!
Congratulations are in order: I walked into the English Office this morning and was greeted by a four-pack of incredibly tempting cupcakes from House of Cupcakes and I spent the day trying NOT to eat them, and-- miraculously-- I did not eat them (including a long stretch during my lunch period when they were within an arm's reach and I had to exert some iron willpower because I was eating, of all things, the exact opposite of a cupcake: beet salad).
Mystery Solved!
My wife complained about how close the Mazda was parked to the house . . . but upon reflection, she realized that SHE PARKED IT THERE.
Book of Mormon . . . Finally!
My wife and I finally saw The Book of Mormon-- the tickets were a fiftieth birthday present but then the pandemic hit, so I took us nearly two years to see the show-- and despite the weather, we covered a lot of ground in the city yesterday; we took the train in and then walked down to the Rubin Museum, which is chock-full of Indian, Himalayan, Tibetan and Bhutanese religious art . . . it's an aesthetically pleasing meditative multi-story space (unless some lady doesn't read the directions and bangs the water-gong with all her strength, instead of gently tapping it, which knocked me right the fuck out of my hypnotic state) and then we walked back uptown and it was COLD so we stopped for a drink at Hellcat Annie's Tap Room-- a cozy pub with an excellent selection of local beers-- and so I broke the rule I had made earlier in the day and had two beers-- I wasn't going to drink any beer because I didn't want to have to pee or feel bloated once I was stuffed into one of the narrow Broadway theater seats but it was early; then we made our way up to Tacuba Cantina Mexicana, and we had a fantastic meal-- I hard chorizo and octopus tacos and some Mezcal de Leyandas-- both delicious-- and then we went to The Book of Mormon and our seats were good and unobstructed (some douchebag a couple rows over wore his lumpy ski-hat the entire play . . . I can't believe the person behind him didn't let him have it) and the play was ridiculously funny and --surprise! . . . set in Uganda?-- and featured a chubby young Mormon missionary that is pretty much a nicer and more sincere version South Park's Cartman brought to life . . . and while the play might not be totally accurate about Mormonism, it's not totally accurate about anything-- it's just profane and funny-- I'm glad I knew nothing about it, I was often surprised and always laughing and when the play let out, we knew if we wanted to catch the fast train, the 9:56 PM, we would have to book it down to Penn Station, which we did, despite the snow, slush and rain and we made the fast train, got out 20,000 steps-- which always seems to happen when you go to NYC-- and, bonus, Alex picked us up from the train station and we were home before 11 PM . . . which is pretty amazing, to see a 7:00 PM play on 49th Street and be back in Highland Park less than four hours later.
Longmire Does Philly?
In the third Longmire novel, Kindness Goes Unpunished, Craig Johnson inserts Sheriff Longmire, Henry Standing Bear, and Dog into Vic Moretti's world-- downtown Philadelphia; the usual violence, debilitating injuries, and Western-style detective work ensue-- with a healthy dose of Native American lore and trickery-- and, despite the urban setting, there will be some horses.
The Usual Saturday Tennis Notes
I beat my buddy Cob 12-3 today in the 7 AM Tennis League for the Insane, Obsessive and Otherwise Mentally Ill and here are my notes, reflections, and takeaways:
1) I was a bit nervous because my wife and I finally ate at Tasty Moment, a crowded and authentic Chinese place featuring Szechuan, Nanjing, and Yangzhou Chinese food . . . and the spicy crawfish with noodles was SPICY and the peppercorn fish was delicious but had an odd spice to it that made your lips numb . . . so i was a bit worried this morning that I might have intestinal issues during the early morning match, but I was ok;
2) I chewed gum the entire match, even though the racquet club prohibits this;
3) it was the first time I ever played on Court 7, which is in the far corner and has no doubles lines-- that's visually a little weird but I actually think I liked it-- less distraction from green areas you CAN'T hit into;
4) I really focused on hitting shots from deep on the baseline 3-6 feet over the net with lots of topspin . . . and I focused on hitting shallower shots when I was moving forward LOW . . . hit it high when you are deep and hit it low when you are moving in is a basic strategy that really helps me;
5) Cob and I had some epically long rallies-- 30 or 40 shots?-- and i was really patient and kept hitting the ball crosscourt over the low part of the net . . . it seems the most common error at this level is trying to go down the line off cross court shots and hitting the net-- you can go down the line when the ball is up the middle, but if it's crosscourt, be defensive and hit it diagonal and deep;
6) I actually starting pointing my elbow, whipping my arm and pronating-- so I hit some solid flat serves (and even a few on the T aces . . . which I need to do more often)
7) I didn't get to the net enough . . . although Cob hit a few beautiful lobs when I did . . . I finished an overhead or two but I'm still not sure how much I should be getting to the net;
8) I was hitting my two-handed backhand fairly well-- deep and with some topspin, but I'm not sure how much my wrists should be involved in the stroke-- I need to keep experimenting;
9) the key to my forehand is the left hand, it has to come back with the racquet and I need to catch the racquet with my left hand on the follow through . . . this ensures that I get a good turn (but not too much of a turn-- it helps to keep the racquet on the same side of your body on the pull back and follow through) and that and I need to always get a wide base and drive through it.
Escobar's Cocaine Hippos?
Today I learned something new-- and serendipitously complementary to the book I finished yesterday: Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar kept (among other exotic animals) four hippos on his estate . . . and while the elephants and zebras and giraffes were relocated after his death, the hippos remained . . . and they bred; now there are more than one hundred hippos in the vicinity Escobar's property-- in the nearby lakes and rivers-- and they are big dangerous animals that also-- according to some folks-- cause some environmental destruction-- they defecate too much in the water, which can cause algal blooms; they eat too many of the aquatic plants which makes it harder to catch fish; and they are a menace to fishermen and those who swim in the lakes and river . . . but other folks like the hippos, whether because they are charismatic megafauna (and great for tourism) or because they might fill an ecological niche that has been vacant since humans came to the Americas and hunted and killed most of the large herbivorous mammals . . . listen to "The Debate About Pablo Escobar's Hippos" for more information on this ginormous issue.
Bad Gulls Bad Gulls Whatcha Gonna Do?
Mary Roach's new book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law tackles man vs. nature in a legal, humanistic sense-- what is to be done when nature encroaches upon civilization?-- and the book begins in dramatic fashion, with charismatic megafauna: hungry bears in Aspen, killer leopards in the Himalayas, rampaging elephants in India, stealthy cougars in California . . . and these stories are exciting and dramatic and involve tracking and hunting and shooting and running and hiding and a fabulous live-and-let-live attitude from a shopkeeper about a grain-pilfering elephant in India . . .
"We just say, 'Namaste and please go away'"
and then the book takes a horticultural turn, detailing the dangers of killer trees and poisonous beans, and then there's the story of the albatrosses of the Midway and the epic (and ultimately futile) battle the U.S. Military fought against these birds because they were causing air collisions . . . and it is ultimately this futility that is pervasive in the book-- after all the hunting, trapping, scaring, and poisoning humans do to ride their homes and neighborhoods and field and airstrips of "pests," generally nothing works . . . the book ends with the mundane, stoats eating eggs and indigenous wildlife in New Zealand and the lowly mouse . . . and while the book is gross all the way through lots of defecating and vomiting and descriptions of how traps and poisons do their work-- this is certainly gallows humor, I had to put the book down several times when I made the bad choice of reading it while I ate . . . but it ends philosophically-- what do we owe these creatures? what makes a pest? can we actually preserve a habitat? can we rid an area of a certain animal? what happens if we do? do these animals actually do enough damage to warrant the campaigns against them? what is the most humane way to kill an animal?
and the book ends with some hope-- a farmer who keeps a few barn cats and barn owls to make sure the mouse population doesn't go through the roof but realizes that mice are going to eat a bit of his grain and it's not enough to start a land war . . . and Mary Roach takes the same approach with a roof rat that lives near her house-- instead of trapping and killing it, she blocks the way it was getting into her attic and calls it a day . . . a great read, detailed and dense and full of memorable characters that work in fields that don't get much press.
Dave is Killing It, Fruitwise
I'm killing it today, healthwise . . . I've already been to the gym-- where I played some basketball-- and I'm also killing it fruitwise, I've had an apple, an orange, and two kiwis.
Winter Gets Wintrier
It's frigid today-- so cold that Lola dragged me home from her walk-- after she did her business, she was like LET'S GO . . . WE COULD DIE OUT HERE! . . . so it was a good day to have remote school, and it was a good day for a drive-by COVID test for my son Alex . . . the pharmacist came out and handed him the nasal swab and he swabbed his nasal passages in the comfort of our heated car.
Winter Has Come . . .
Catherine tested negative for COVID . . . so she has the cold that I had; meanwhile, I am still on remote school, which feels oddly disembodied but I went to the Piscataway YMCA today on my long off period and it was great-- I shot baskets, watched old people play pickleball, and rowed on the upper level-- which has a great open-windowed view-- but the cold has settled in, Lola and I marched over to the dog park and the ground was frozen and icy, so while I don't like remote school, it will be nice to stay inside and bundled up tomorrow . . . perhaps remote school has its time and place, the dead of winter.
Longmire Heads South of the Border
In Craig Johnson's fifteenth Longmire novel, Depth of Winter, Sheriff Longmire's moral compass spins all out of whack when he heads south from his normal milieu of Wyoming deep into narco territory of Mexico, in order to rescue his kidnapped daughter-- this is more of an action novel, with a ragtag band of folks-- including a Tarahumara runner/sniper-- heading into very dangerous territory on an impossible mission and while Longmire uses the stock of his M-16 to knock out a fair number of bad guys, he's eventually got to do some shooting and killing, and it ain't pretty (and neither is he . . . like every Longmire book, by the end of the novel, he's a complete disaster).
Dave Beats the Guys Who Beat the Guy . . .
I beat Wayne this morning in the early morning tennis league 12 - 4 . . . he's a good player, especially at the net, but he made some unforced errors and double-faulted a couple of times . . . last week Wayne beat the champion of the league-- but apparently HE had an off day last week . . . so apparently anything can happen when you play tennis at 7 AM and I'm attributing my victory to the fact that I got to drive my wife's car, which has seat warmers (and though I had a resounding win, Wayne had the shot of the day . . . I hit a deep topspin shot which drove him to the curtain, and he basically struck his return while running into the aforementioned curtain and he somehow hit a perfect drop shot from back there, which just cleared the net and then spun back a bit, well out of my reach).
Thus Endeth the Streak . . .
Thus endeth the Wordle streak and thus begins the Wordle slump . . . and it's appropriate that the first Wordle I missed was the word "slump" . . . I put "slurp" instead . . . but there's always tomorrow.
You Can't Fight City Hall
You have to wear a mask while you work out at the East Brunswick Planet Fitness but you don't have to wear one at the Edison branch . . . and it turns out this is a town ordinance.
You Think Wordle is Hard?
My friend and I have all been enjoying Wordle-- give it a try, it's all the rage-- but the boys and I stumbled on an even more difficult game: find the good basketball . . . and though all three of us looked in the sporting equipment spot, none of us were able to find the ball-- so we took the lousy ball to the YMCA and shot around (wearing masks!) and then came home and accused my wife of hiding the ball somewhere obscure . . . whereupon she quickly solved the puzzle and found the basketball and called us all idiots-- can YOU find the basketball in this picture?
Why Online School Crushes Your Mind
Ezra Klein's interview with Annie Murphy Paul explains why I hate online school so much-- Paul's new book "The Extended Mind" dismantles the "computer model" of the human brain; computers are neat-- wherever you put them, as long as it's not too hot, they compute the same answer . . . your computer can be by a window, among lots of smart people in a coffee shop, on the floor of an industrial slaughterhouse, whatever . . . it will compute-- but our minds are extensions of what is around-- other people, a lovely landscape, white noise, an open office, gunfire, etc.-- and that totally influences our thoughts-- and being alone in a room staring at tiny muted icons of students on a screen destroys whatever creative groove I might occasionally find myself in . . . we are not designed to sit still (although school and work are often systemically based on this supposition) and we need a lot of tricks and stimulus and motivation to concentrate for any length of time . . . which is exactly what school is for: group work and making posters and switching classes and writing on the board . . . and-- for em-- pacing around, reading stuff aloud-- that's what I like to do (I did realize this finally, and put my computer on the counter and then paced a bit while I read something, and the students rejoiced but it's not the same) and while our classrooms need to reflect these ideas more, so that kids can learn better, online school doesn't reflect this at all . . . it's a mess and I hope we are back next Monday.
Here We Go Again?
The world is getting weird yet again because of the pandemic; yesterday I was tailgating at the Jets/Tampa game . . . partying with tens of thousands of (mainly unmasked) people, watching Tom Brady shatter dreams once again (he threw a game winning touchdown with 15 seconds left) but today I will be teaching on a computer, as my school has gone virtual (mainly due to lack of staffing, apparently not only do loads of students have COVID, but also loads of teachers and bus drivers and nurses, etc.)
Dave's Book List for 2021
1. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
2. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes To a Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib
3. Mooncop by Tom Gaul
4. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
5. Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
6. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
7. Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill (with Jake Rosen)
8. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
9. Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
10. A Children's Bible by Lydia MilletFinal Pub Night of 2021
The final Thursday pub night of 2021 was oddly reminiscent of a pub night a year ago-- but there were some notable changes; we started at Ashley's for some smoked cheese and liquor-- he's got some glass contraption that you stick stuff under and it gets all smoky and Ashley-- who works in healthcare and was once nervous about the consequences of COVID, has now given up worrying-- his daughter just had it but Colleen and him didn't contract it from her and then we went to Steakhouse 85 for drinks and burgers and despite the record-setting COVID numbers, the place was packed and then we headed to Dan's for a fire and the release of another paper lantern balloon . . . something we did a year ago when we were in full lockdown and the bars and restaurants were not open (indoors) and I think we're calling it a day on this pandemic in New Jersey, the Omicron variants seems pretty harmless and most of the state is testing positive for it (or have been exposed multiple times) so I am hoping we can take out masks off and move on with out lives.
Four Bridge Day . . .
Yesterday my wife and I walked to the train station to catch an 8 AM train to Newark-- so we crossed the bridge over the Raritan to the train to the PATH to the Oculus-- and we went to the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit at Pier 36-- very immersive and very psychedelic, certainly dose yourself a bit with the drug of your choice before you go in-- and then walked across the Manhattan Bridge into DUMBO-- and the Manhattan Bridge was empty save for a couple fo diehard runners and we had great views of the city and Brooklyn-- and then went to Evil Twin Brewery for some delicious beers and ate lunch at another branch of the Westville Diner-- excellent vegetarian fare-- and then we saw lots and lots of people taking some iconic photos of the Manhattan Bridge and we walked back to the Oculus across the Brooklyn Bridge-- holy shit! what a difference from the Manhattan Bridge-- packed with throngs of people-- and they let you climb up over traffic?-- and people REALLY like taking pictures on the Brooklyn Bridge . . . and then back through the Oculus, back on the PATH and it would have been a perfect public transport day except there was an old dude on the single lane escalator and we were sprinting up it for the train and he was not walking and he wouldn't let us pass him until it was too late and the train pulled away as we got up the steps . . . so we had to wait a few minutes for the next one and then we walked back across the Raritan Bridge and collapsed.
Too Much of a Good Thing = Not a Good Thing
My wife wouldn't let me have any of the salad dressing in her Trader Joe's salad dressing packet because she wanted the rest for when she used the rest of that particular salad mix so she suggested that I use the blue cheese dressing but I informed her I had already put actual crumbled blue cheese on my salad and that I couldn't put blue cheese dressing on top of crumbled blue cheese, as that would be akin to wearing a Pixies shirt to a Pixies concert, very gauche.
In The Afterlife, You Could Be Headed for Digital Strife
I just finished Neal Stephenson's newish novel Fall, or Dodge in Hell and I read a good 750 pages and then I finally had to do some skimming before I read the final couple of chapters; the book tackles the subject of eternal digital life-- folks get their entire connectome-- or synapse map-- scanned right when they die and then upload this into an increasingly complex virtual reality-- but Stephenson deals with this in both a very realistic fashion-- the quality of your digital afterlife is really going to depend on how much computing power is available-- and in an entirely fantastic fashion: the digital afterlife grows in Biblical and surreal stops and starts, as the processes learn to control and traverse the land they create-- and some digital processes have more power than others . . . it's a giant mess of a book, with lots of wild ideas and a lot of words and a lot of descriptions and a lot of sub-plots and while I'm glad I read it, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who isn't a Neal Stephenson junkie.
Socks: Are They Conscious?
After some mild trepidation and complaint, the boys and I agreed to my wife's project: we poured out all three sock drawers onto the floor and while we watched Friday Night Lights, we paired up socks; disposed of threadbare socks, and traded socks . . . and-- for now-- all the socks are in their proper places . . . for now.
A Wonderful Boxing Day
Some people love the holidays and some people love the day after the holidays-- and I fall into the latter category; I went to the dog park early this morning, then Cat and I headed to Hacklebarney Park for a hike-- but we left the dog home so we could stop for a leisurely lunch . . . and we left the kids at home as well, because they were sleeping late (Alex went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and then stayed up very late last night building his Lego Seinfeld set) and so after our hike, we stopped in Somerville at the Village Brewery for a beer-- and I had the fried chicken banh mi sandwich and it was absurdly good and then we stopped and watched the boys playing tennis-- they were at Johnson Park-- and I was very happy that they were playing together without fighting and then I turned on the Giants-- bad idea-- and then Ian called me and asked if I wanted to play tennis because they DID end up fighting-- which always happens-- but I took a nap first and then I went out and hit with Ian under the lights-- it was still fifty degrees and when we were leaving, Alex and his buddy were pulling up to the courts to play and we have leftovers from Xmas Eve for dinner so no one has to cook so it's a very successful Boxing Day.
Happy Hyper-capitalist Environmental Destruction Day!
Although we consumed some wrapping paper and exchanged a few materialistic gifts this morning, my wife pointed out that one of our Xmas presents is environmentally conscious and we will use less plastic: a home-seltzer maker . . . so we won't go through so many bottles of seltzer; we also had a lovely Xmas Eve here with my parents and cousins and a few of my older son Alex's friends--but my brother and Amy and Amy's kids were laid up at Amy's house, quarantined, because Marc has COVID for a second time-- he's not very sick but still-- he's very annoyed-- and my friend Connell tested positive for a second time as well . . . so hopefully we'll avoid the virus for the winter break but who knows?
Winter Break!
An oddly festive school day considering New Jersey clocked over 15,000 positive COVID tests (including my brother, second time) as there was some lovely choral singing and orchestral music in the terminal hallway-- we all crowded together (masked) to listen and then a bunch of folks from the English department headed out to the Grove for a very early Happy Hour, including a very very pregnant Allie, and there was much talk of stretch marks and post-birth sepsis and umbilical strangulation and other exciting female topics and then we went on our merry way.
Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Worse . . .
School is pretty weird right now: I'm getting paid to cover classes almost every day because there's a staffing shortage due to covid and quarantines; we're missing a lot of students; my union rep handed me a N95 mask because I have "cafeteria duty" where I hang out with 700 unmasked students (I've yet to use it though, I can't breathe in those things) and now-- because a teacher died in a locked bathroom in a nearby district-- they've removed the locks from the inside of the two faculty bathrooms on our hall, so that they can be opened from the outside with a key-- and if 500 kids are walking down the hall it's going to be hard to hear someone knock, so the teachers are worried about being exposed to the masses.
Moderna! Summer is Winter in Florida
I was all for Pfizer when I got my first two shots, but yesterday I got a Moderna booster and I'm not suffering any side effects (besides a sore arm) and it turns out Moderna seems to fight off the Omicron variant-- so I'll switch teams to Moderna!-- because who cares, really, unless you bought some stock . . . also, Florida has really low case numbers right now and New Jersey is through the roof-- this could be because in Florida, summer is kind of like winter up here-- everyone congregates inside (in Florida because it's so hot . . . and right now in Florida, you can do everything outside, it's balmy, while we're congregating inside because of the cold) so perhaps some scientist needs to investigate this.
Dave Thumbs His Thumb at Resolutions
Aside from my usual New Year's Resolution: doing more of the same, I'm going to add a bonus resolution-- I'm going to try to text all year using my left thumb instead of my right thumb . . . yes, I'm a one-thumb texter (and I believe it's hurting my score on the mini) so I'm going to switch thumbs and then perhaps next year, I'll be able to text fluidly with both thumbs.
Pandemic Stuff
Michael Lewis's new book The Premonition: A Pandemic Story is not satisfying reading but it's sure as hell informative and interesting-- it's not satisfying because there's no end to this story in sight, and our country was ill-prepared, ill-informed, and barely organized in its response to the COVID pandemic; you'll learn why certain things went the way they did and you'll also learn that there isn't a "cabal of people at the top controlling this entire thing"-- which is what an old guy at a wake told me last Sunday-- because all the decisions came from the bottom up-- often from state and county employees referred to as "L6" because apparently, the answer to big problems doesn't come from top administrators-- you've got to go six levels down until anyone knows how to actually do anything . . . one piece of logic I learned was that when that first person died of COVID at the end of February, it was all over . . . because COVID kills about a helf of one percent of people and it takes a while to die from it, so that meant that 200 people had COVID 3-4 weeks before that person died-- so the genie was way out of the bottle, there was no reason to close the borders, the virus was rampant, no one had been contact traced and the rest was history . . . if this isn't enough, Sam Harris just did a major take on the lessons of the pandemic, and here are some highlights from the book:
The CDC was avoiding controversy
Charity could see that the CDC’s strategy was politically shrewd. People were far less likely to blame a health officer for what she didn’t do than what she did. Sins of commission got you fired. Sins of omission you could get away with, but they left people dead.
In a pandemic, you've got to utilize utilitarian thinking
Ahead on the tracks, you spot five people. Do nothing and the train will run them over and kill them. But you have an option! You can flip a switch and send the train onto a siding, on which, unfortunately, there stands a man named Carl. Do nothing and you kill five people; flip the switch and you kill Carl. Most college freshmen elect to kill Carl and then, wham, th professor hits them with the follow-up. Carl has five healthy organs that can be harvested and used to save the lives of five people in need of them. All you need to do is shoot Carl in the back of the head. Would you do that, too? If not, explain the contradiction . . .
All Thinking is Flawed
He found a book called Human Error, by a British psychologist aptly named James Reason. “It was like reading the owner’s manual of the human mind,”
Carter poked fun at the way Richard walked around saying important-sounding things, like “All models are wrong; some of them are useful,” but he felt the alchemy in their interactions.
Richard viewed models as a check on human judgment and as an aid to the human imagination. Carter viewed them more as flashlights. They allowed him to see what was inside a room that, until now, had been pitch-black.
My Job is a Hot Zone
“I couldn’t design a system better for transmitting disease than our school system,” he said after his visit. To illustrate this point he created a picture, of a 2,600-square-foot home, but with the same population density as an American school, then turned it into a slide. “The Spacing of People, If Homes Were Like Schools,” read the top. The inside of the typical American single-family home suddenly looked a lot like a refugee prison, or the DMV on a bad day. “There is nowhere, anywhere, as socially dense as school classrooms, school hallways, school buses,” said Carter.
You Need to React Quickly
“Public Health Interventions and Epidemic Intensity during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic,” the piece revealed, for the first time, the life-or-death importance of timing in the outcomes of 1918.
Cities that intervened immediately after the arrival of the virus experienced far less disease and death.
Charity Dean Came From Another Planet: rural Oregon
They told me I should be at the fiftieth percentile of my class. No better.” After the next semester, when her grades remained high, the church elders sent her a letter instructing her to drop out of medical school and return to Junction City.
It Could Have Been Worse
So little about it was known that a trained pathologist had stared at a picture of it and mistaken it for human immune cells. It had been detected only a few dozen times since its discovery—once in a dead four-year-old girl. No one knew what it ate when it wasn’t eating the brains of mandrills or humans. Asked to explain what he’d found, Joe would only say, “Balamuthia is an amoeba and it eats your brain, and there is no cure.”
Politics Played a Role
But then, on April 9, 2018, Trump hired John Bolton as his national security adviser, and the next day, Bolton fired Tom Bossert, and demoted or fired everyone on the biological threat team. From that moment on, the Trump White House lived by the tacit rule last observed by the Reagan administration: the only serious threat to the American way of life came from other nation-states. The Bush and Obama administrations’ concern with other kinds of threats was banished to the basement.
Sometimes You've Got to Light a Fire to Escape
“Escape fire,” was what they’d call it. The event so captivated the writer Norman Maclean, best known for his only other book, A River Runs Through It,
In fire you could see lessons for fighting a raging disease. He jotted them down:
You cannot wait for the smoke to clear: once you can see things clearly it is already too late. You can’t outrun an epidemic: by the time you start to run it is already upon you. Identify what is important and drop everything that is not. Figure out the equivalent of an escape fire.
It Wasn't Just in Italy
On March 1, it announced that the United States would screen people arriving from other countries for symptoms of the virus. “I wouldn’t waste a moment of time on travel restrictions or travel screening,” Carter wrote. “We have nearly as much disease here in the US as the countries in Europe.”
Most of Us (Including Me) Had No Clue
Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of homeland security and a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force. “He said, ‘Charity, you need to push these things through. You’re the only one who can do this.’ ” She was taken aback by his insistence. “He wasn’t pleading with me to do the right thing. He was yelling at me. He was basically implying that the White House is not going to do the right thing. The White House is not going to protect the country. So California needs to take the lead.”
Charity Dean realized just how lost and desperate the people at the top were.
half of 1 percent of the people who get the disease die, you can surmise that for every death, there are 199 people already walking around with it. That first death—which California already had experienced—was telling you that you had two hundred cases a month earlier.
In Park’s time with the federal government, he’d dealt with one technology crisis after another. He’d noticed a pattern that he’d first identified in the private sector: in any large organization, the solution to any crisis was usually found not in the officially important people at the top but in some obscure employee far down the organization’s chart. It told you something about big organizations, and the L6s buried inside them, that they were able to turn Charity Dean into a person in need of excavation.
Sometimes You Need the Government to Take the Lead
Far more often than not, some promising avenue of research would die as a failed company. He hated that; he hated the way financial ambition interfered with science and progress.
The absence of federal leadership had triggered a wild free-for-all in the market for pandemic supplies. In this market, Americans vied with Americans for stuff made mainly by the Chinese. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, flew in a planeload of materials from China to the UCSFmedical center with boxes of functional, though less than ideal, nasal swabs on board.
American government, circa April 2020, was just how different appearances on the outside could be from the understanding on the inside. Inside California state government, inside even the Trump administration, there was some logic to everything that happened;
“The greatest trick the CDC ever pulled was convincing the world containment wasn’t possible,” she said. “Our dignity was lost in not even trying to contain it.” She wondered if perhaps they had undergone a process similar to her own—a descent, which
You have this burden of maintaining optics. It’s all optics.”
He finally more or less gave up on the state. “There was something deeply dysfunctional about how the government worked that I never fully grasped,” Joe would later say. “There’s no one driving the bus.” And the CDC—well, the CDC was its own mystery.
Her conclusion had pained her some. Once she’d become a public-health officer, she’d imagined an entire career in public service. Now she did not believe that the American government, at this moment in its history, would ever do what needed doing. Disease prevention was a public good, but the public wasn’t going to provide anything like enough of it. From the point of view of American culture, the trouble with disease prevention was that there was no money in it. She needed to find a way to make it pay.
Happy Media Manipulation Day!
600 kids were out at my school today (and it was the same percentage of kids out in Highland Park, my own children reported) due to some TikTok meme promising school shootings today . . . despite the fact that New Jersey has the lowest rate of school shootings of any state in the nation; they should call it antisocial media (but at least order has returned on the illness front, Lola is pooping solid again and I got a negative result for my Covid test).
Chinese Democracy?
A Chinese algorithm is proving to be excellent at school shooter terrorism . . . and many of us have let it happen, we opened the door with open arms, installed TikTok on our phones, and let our children do the same.
Covid Ruins Sick Days
I was really tired two days ago and went to bed at 7 PM and then I felt lousy yesterday and it turned out I had a 101.5 fever-- so I slept in the basement, in case I had covid, and I scheduled a PCR test for 9 AM this morning and then I woke up this morning and my fever is gone and I feel fine-- but I still went for the test and stayed home from school because that's what you're supposed to do now . . . but the imminent threat of covid certainly ruins what used to be a regular sick day (and the dog is sick as well, she puked all over the house two days ago and had diarrhea yesterday on the kitchen bench cushions-- so they are in the trash-- and now she's on rice and water and she got me up at 3 AM last night to go out . . . so maybe we have the same virus . . . is that possible?)
Do Animals Understand BEEP!
I was driving up South Adelaide Avenue early this morning-- it's a narrow street and it was still very dark-- and a deer darted from the shadows directly in front of my car and I reacted exactly as if someone had cut in front of me without using their blinker . . . I slammed on my brakes and beeped . . . BEEP! and then I realized how ridiculous it was to beep at a hoofed ruminant (but it did work-- the deer got out of the way and we didn't have a collision).
Weddings and Funerals . . .
Some people know how to wear a suit and a tie, but I am not one of those people (I have a thick neck or something).
Dave Revises His Expectations Mid-match
Today was my first match of the winter tennis league at the racquet club-- I'm playing in the A division, and most of those matches begin at 7:00 AM-- and I had to play an agile and skilled 29 year old this morning, but he made a few errors early on and I was serving well, so I went up 2-1 on him and I thought to myself you can do this but then he started getting to all my shots and running around any forehand that I didn't hit very deep and hitting an inside out diagonal forehand that pretty much angled off the side of the court (on my backhand side!) and I thought to myself there's no way in hell you can do this but it was still a fun match and we got a lot of exercise very early in the morning and I learned that I've got to hit the ball very deep on young players.
Rutgers! Gum!
I forgot my loose, breathable fabric mask at home today (it's drying on the handle of our exercise bike) so I had to grab a leaf-covered disposable garbage mask from the floor of my minivan and now I'm trapped inside this thing with tequila breath while I teach because we went out last night after the incredible Rutgers basketball victory over Purdue-- the first time Rutgers has beaten a number one team-- but luckily I have lot of gum (sorry Connell).
Silence!
The Feeling Is Mutual
While I was on my way to one of the few water fountains in operation in the school building-- most are closed down because of Covid-- I passed by a foods teacher who I rarely see . . . and we were wearing masks (of course) and she said, "I feel like we're living in an alternate universe" and though it was a transitionless non sequitur, I knew just what she meant.
It's Still Tuesday . . .
What Monday is to Garfield, Tuesday is to me . . . and despite having some good ideas at work, crushing the mini, covering a class for extra dough, and exercising at the gym for 90 minutes-- the entire time Ian was at tennis-- I'm still feeling disoriented and ready to surrender to the week . . . it doesn't matter how much I get done on a Tuesday, it's a drop in the bucket, an exercise in futility, a weak attempt at conquering an insurmountable amount of time . . . I'm going up to shower and read my book, certain that this week will never end (and when it does, I'll be attending a funeral for my Uncle Mike, a great guy who had the decency to pass away on a Sunday, not a Tuesday).
Cat and Ed Defile the Buddha
You can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can't take the Jersey out of the girl (or Ed) so despite my warnings of bad karma, there was some classless abuse of the Three Legged Buddha at Storm King . . . and if you haven't been there, it's epic-- Grounds for Sculpture on steroids . . . Jersey's version is 42 acres but Storm King is 500 acres of trails and lakes and an incredible variety of sculptures, set in a valley and on the side of a mountain-- we went for Cat's birthday, and a dozen of us stayed up in New Paltz in a big Air BnB right by the Rail Trail-- Cat looks a bit hazy in the photo below because she over-served herself tequila Friday night, but she recovered and we were able to bike around the enormous sculpture park and enjoy a good dinner Saturday night-- a great 50th Birthday weekend.
Sad Day (Hard to Recover After a Dart Like This)
It's going to be a sad Outer Banks Fishing Trip this year . . . as our main man Johnny G. passed away today-- I hope he's sleeping soundly in the big hammock in the sky (not on a picnic table in the courtyard of The Weeping Radish, unnoticed for several hours-- so that when he returned and no one batted an eye, he said, "What! Nobody even missed me?!") and this was a theme with him, as he went missing at Cat's Fortieth and OBFT XXV . . . anyway, whether it was playing poker or darts, shooting the shit about sci-fi, or our annual ride together from Norfolk to the Outer Banks, I always enjoyed spending quality time with Johnny and I know he will be sorely missed by the whole gang (he's to my right in the old photo-- I'm the one who looks like he's wearing a toupee . . . I used to have such thick luxurious hair) and I will never forget his favorite good-natured darting heckle, done in his gravelly voice: "it's hard to recover from a dart like that . . ."
Sexual Selection Defeats Survival of the Fittest
My wife turned fifty today and she received a pair of lovely diamond earrings . . . and this bowerbird mating video explains why this happened-- if you need a full explanation, listen to this Radiolab podcast.
Dave Reads Fifty Before Cat Turns Fifty
My wife is turning fifty tomorrow-- quite a milestone-- but more significantly, I just finished my fiftieth book of the year The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-centered Planet by John Green. . . and judging by the number of passages I highlighted on my Kindle, it's a good one-- here are the highlights, with some fragmented commentary:
there's a lot of stuff on understanding the vastness of time . . .
Complex organisms tend to have shorter temporal ranges than simple ones . . .
When you measure time in Halleys rather than years, history starts to look different. As the comet visited us in 1986, my dad brought home a personal computer—the first in our neighborhood. One Halley earlier, the first movie adaptation of Frankenstein was released. The Halley before that, Charles Darwin was aboard the HMS Beagle. The Halley before that, the United States wasn’t a country.
Put another way: In 2021, we are five human lifetimes removed from the building of the Taj Mahal, and two lifetimes removed from the abolition of slavery in the United States. History, like human life, is at once incredibly fast and agonizingly slow.
John Green, who is very literary, actually missed an easy allusion here-- see if you know what I'm talking about:
Eventually, in what may have been the most entitled moment of my life, I called and requested a room change because the ceaseless tinkling of the Gatsby Suite’s massive crystal chandelier was disturbing my sleep. As I made that call, I could feel the eyes of Fitzgerald staring down at me.
he should have referred to the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg on the billboard over the valley of ashes-- as they were the eyes of God, staring at the corrupt and immoral wasteland of America . . .
on imagery
We’ve long known that images are unreliable—Kafka wrote that “nothing is as deceptive as a photograph"
on the stupid geese in the park . . .
Like us, the success of their species has affected their habitats: A single Canada goose can produce up to one hundred pounds of excrement per year, which has led to unsafe E. coli levels in lakes and ponds where they gather.
on the lawns which we mow, water, fertilize and manicure:
In the daily grind of a human life, there’s a lawn to mow, soccer practices to drive to, a mortgage to pay. And so I go on living the way I feel like people always have, the way that seems like the right way, or even the only way. I mow the lawn of Poa pratensis as if lawns are natural, when in fact we didn’t invent the suburban American lawn until one hundred and sixty years ago. And I drive to soccer practice, even though that was impossible one hundred and sixty years ago—not only because there were no cars, but also because soccer hadn’t been invented. And I pay the mortgage, even though mortgages as we understand them today weren’t widely available until the 1930s. So much of what feels inevitably, inescapably human to me is in fact very, very new, including the everywhereness of the Canada goose.
on the past and the future
And I suspect that our choices will seem unforgivable and even unfathomable to the people reading those history books. “It is fortunate,” Charles Dudley Warner wrote more than a century ago, “that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.”
something that might be true (but would make me uncomfortable)
Taylor Lorenz tweeted that office air-conditioning systems are sexist, a blog in the Atlantic wrote, “To think the temperature in a building is sexist is absurd.” But it’s not absurd. What’s absurd is reducing workplace productivity by using precious fossil fuels to excessively cool an office building so that men wearing ornamental jackets will feel more comfortable.
a sports essay that made me cry
Dudek’s spaghetti legs, and this will end, and the light-soaked days are coming. I give Jerzy Dudek’sperformance on May 25, 2005 five stars.
and another sporting essay that made me cry-- this one on the yips-- I am a sucker for sports . . .
And then one day in 2007—six years removed from the wild pitch that took away his control forever—the St.Louis Cardinals called Rick Ankiel back to the major leagues as an outfielder. When Ankiel went to bat for the first time, the game had to be paused because the crowd’s standing ovation was so long and so loud. Rick Ankiel hit a home run in that game.
Two days later, he hit two more home runs. His throws from the outfield were phenomenally accurate—among the best in baseball. He would go on to play as a center fielder in the major leagues for six more years. Today, the most recent player to have won over ten games as a pitcher and hit over fifty home runs as a hitter is Rick Ankiel. I give the yips one and a half stars.
more on lawns . . .
more land and more water are devoted to the cultivation of lawn grass in the United States than to corn and wheat combined. There are around 163,000 square kilometers of lawn in the U.S., greater than the size of Ohio,or the entire nation of Italy. Almost one-third of all residential water use in the U.S.—clean, drinkable water—is dedicated to lawns. To thrive, Kentucky bluegrass often requires fertilizer an pesticides and complex irrigation systems, all of which we offer up to the plant in abundance, even though it cannot be eaten by humans or used for anything except walking and playing on. The U.S.’s most abundant and labor-intensive crop is pure, unadulterated ornamentation.
Green writes about my favorite literary term, the pathetic fallacy!
There’s a phrase in literary analysis for our habit of ascribing human emotions to the nonhuman: the pathetic fallacy, which is often used to reflect the inner life of characters through the outer world, as when Keats in “Ode on Melancholy” writes of a “weeping cloud,” or Shakespeare in Julius Caesar refers to “threatening clouds.”
and he writes about my favorite poem . . .
There’s an Emily Dickinson poem that begins, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” It’s one of the only poems I’ve managed to commit to memory. It ends like this:
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge, And
Finished knowing - then -
and he writes about America's proclivity for large balls of stuff, like the largest ball of paint, which started as a baseball:
“My intention was to paint maybe a thousand coats on it and then maybe cut it in half and see what it looked like. But then it got to the size where it looked kinda neat, and all my family said keep painting it.” Carmichael also invited friends and family over to paint the ball, and eventually strangers started showing up, and Mike would have them paint it, too. Now, over forty years later, there are more than twenty-six thousand layers of paint on that baseball. It weighs two and a half tons.
and he describes a photo I'd like to know more about and a novel based on the photo . . .
Richard Powers’s novel Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
Dave Might Survive
I am the worst at being sick-- but now that I'm feeling better it all seems kind of silly; the Thanksgiving break started off well-- we saw a great Beatles cover-band at Pino's on Wednesday night, then on Thursday Ian and I played two sets of tennis-- and I can usually only make it through one set (Ian beat me 6-4 and 6-3 and he claims I will never beat him in a set again and he put a pound of quality chocolate on the line) and then we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at my parents and then Friday I got a BRUTAL massage from an old Asian lady (after I went to the gym) and then I played tennis with Ian later in the day-- though it was cold-- and then we went to the Rutgers women's soccer game that night and it was freezing and the game went into overtime RU won!) and the next day I felt kind of crappy-- glassy eyes and fatigue-- and then Saturday night I hung out at my parents' place with my dad and my cousins while the ladies went to a fancy Italian restaurant in Robbinsville-- and by the time the ladies got back, I was feeling really lousy, and I spent the night freezing cold and then burning hot-- with some stomach issues-- and I felt awful all day today (and I even went for a Covid test) but now my joints are no longer sore and my stomach doesn't hurt and I just might live . . . of course, I might not live-- and I've been reading John Green's new book (The Anthropocene Reviewed) which can make you into an obsessive hypochondriac (but in a fun way) and his chapter on the plague is pretty grim . . . but this doesn't seem like the plague (but only time will tell . . . and while the plague had some terrible suppurating and devastating symptoms, nothing is worse than glassy eyes).
Something For Which We Can All be Thankful
I just finished the third book in Ben H. Winters' Last Policeman Trilogy (Word of Trouble) and while I will offer no spoilers, I will say that the books remain mystery novels until the end-- the milieu might be apocalyptic but the thrust and theme of the novels are solving crimes, seeking truth, and answering questions-- and this Thanksgiving, I am thankful that a giant-civilization-ending asteroid is not headed for the earth any time in the near future (as far as we know).
If You're Wondering Why There's a Teacher Shortage . . .
This morning during first period I got the weird silvery aura in my right eye that happens sometimes when I look at a screen too much-- and I'm always looking at a screen these days, since they took away the printers and we migrated all our texts and work to Canvas: our digital learning platform-- and now our periods are 84 minutes long, instead of 42 minutes (because someone thought that was a good idea) so I was in for the long haul with this hazy eye (and oncoming headache) so I put on my blue-blocker screen glasses-- which I never use because I have to wear a mask and when I wear a mask and glasses, I fog up (probably because I wear a modified, very breathable, fake mask that barely touches my face) and after a second 84 minute period the silvery aura faded (I did some stuff where the kids wrote on the whiteboard, so I could avoid looking at a screen) and even writing this sentence is hurting my eyes a bit so I'm going to end it here.
Tragedy of the Viscid Variety
It's the end of an era, a cataclysmically tragic truncation of the most royal jelly . . . Birnn Chocolate-- our delicious town chocolate factory, a Highland Park institution-- no longer makes raspberry jellies-- the only raspberry jellies worth eating (because the jelly is homemade, firm and not that sweet) and they are discontinued due to lack of demand, and judging by the rather unconcerned reaction of old lady Birnn to my horror and lamentation at the loss of the jellies, I don't think they are coming back any time soon.
Don't Think About This . . .
If all the money spent on lobbying and campaign finance actually went toward infrastructure and scientific progress, we'd be living in an equally distributed sci-fi future.
Required Listening (Whether You Go Online or Not)
Whether or not you care for Joe Rogan-- and I love the guy, I think he's smart and curious and funny and knows how to let people talk-- but that doesn't matter, you need to listen to episode #1736 with Tristan Harris (of The Social Dilemma) and Daniel Schmacktenberger . . . and it doesn't matter if you go on social media like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, or whether-- like me-- the extent of your social media consumption is two blogs . . . here are some of the things they discuss:
the arms war between apps and beautification filters . . . if one app implements a filter then other apps have to follow;
the fact that China and Russia don't have to wage a ground war or an air war or a nuclear war, because they are stalling our progress from within, by creating polarization and political cynicism and obstructionism and they are doing it with troll farms-- the top fifteen Christian sites are troll farms, spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation and radicalizing folks-- and you don't even have to invite them on Facebook, if they invite you, then you will see their stuff in your feed;
this could even lead to stochastic terrorism . . . and awesome term that could be a punk band name-- it's really hard to get one particular person to commit an act of terrorism-- say Lee Harvey Oswald-- but it's easy to flood a country of 330 million with incendiary misinformation and eventually produce a Kyle Rittenhouse or whoever else, just through chucking shit at the dartboard and hoping some of it hits;
there tend to be two huge gutters that the bowling bowl of the internet is heading towards-- Orwellian autocratic dystopia and chaotic Huxleyian democratic catastrophe . . . Taiwan might be some middle ground;
China regulates its internet MUCH more than we do-- social media for those under 14 shuts down from 10 PM to 6 AM, if you game too long you will receive a reminder to get up, the scroll is not infinite, the TikTok algorithm promotes engineering, etcetera;
the fact that the CCP is providing the programming for American youth is scary . . .
according to Harris and Schmacktenberger, the problem is that we have "paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology" and they think the government needs to step in because the corporations have direct access to democracy, unlike an oil company that has to at least go through lobbyists;
Rogan believes the government isn't invested enough and it will have to come from individuals educating themselves and inoculating themselves against the evils of these platforms-- but he fully admits that unhappy people seek dopamine and purpose on the internet . . .
Harris wants to measure the success of a country not through GDP-- which goes up during times of addiction and war-- but through LACK of addiction;
Harris and Schmacktenberger are trying to imagine a new internet that nudges us in other directions than social media and the hyper stimulus for unreal dating, info, debate, gaming, connection;