More Ice
Yesterday, my son Alex and his buddy Gary walked down near the river to play on the ice (not on the frozen river itself, which is forbidden for obvious reasons-- I'm not that negligent of a parent-- but there are large frozen puddles near the river that my kids love to play on) and when I went to check on them, the two of them were playing ice hockey-- literally-- they were using sticks they found to play hockey with a puck made from a large chunk of ice; I didn't bother to tell them how funny I found this, as I didn't want to interrupt their game (which they played for a really long time . . . I had to walk back there to remind Gary he had to get home, and I'm thinking this is one of those rare and priceless kid memories that I'm going to need to recall when future teenager Alex does something obscenely obnoxious).
Chem for Dogs
I'm not very strong in my comprehension of chemistry (in fact, I'm downright stupid when it comes to chemistry, as anyone who has taken a chem class with me can attest) and so I'm not going to try to explain why this happens (if you're curious, read this) but apparently, not only does salt melt ice, but it also lowers the temperature of the ice as it melts-- somehow the salt uses energy from the water to cause the melting, and when you take away energy, then things get colder . . . but the interesting part of this equation is that I learned this from my dog . . . the other day when it was very, very cold and I was walking him down at the park, he started bobbing up and down like he had Parkinson's, but then I noticed that he was walking on three legs-- he was holding one paw in the air, and I took a look at the paw and it wasn't injured so I just chalked it up to weirdness and in a moment he stopped, but when I brought this up at the dog park, everyone seemed to understand this principle about salt and ice and they all gladly told me about it (I talked to multiple people about this phenomenon, at different times, and everyone I talked to cited the fact that when you make ice cream, you use salt to lower the temperature of the cream . . . does everyone who owns a dog also make homemade ice cream?) and so my first solution to this problem was untenable: for a few days I carried my dog across the street to the park-- because all the salt collects on that patch of pavement-- but my dog is fairly heavy and I walk him a lot, so that got old quick . . . instead, I bought him some Musher's Secret paw wax and that did the trick . . . and now I can proudly say that my dog taught me more about chemistry than that old bat I had in high school.
When Someone Makes Soup, You Eat It
When your wife slaves all day over a batch of home-made chicken soup, then come dinner, you eat the soup (I made the mistake of making a few tacos with the leftover chicken, instead of partaking in the home-made soup, and she was really pissed at me).
This is My Best Effort
My son Alex passed his stomach virus to Ian and me, and while the really gross part is over, my body is so sore and worn-out that all I can do is sleep and pet the dog.
You Can Pick You Nose But You Can't Pick Your Kids
While my son Alex still habitually picks his nose and eats it-- which disgusts me to no end-- I am also proud to say that he can now execute another, more elegant pick-- the pick-and-roll, which he performed perfectly with his buddy Luke in a basketball scrimmage the other day . . . this was one of my proudest moments as a dad (it competes with watching him proficiently snowboard) because, let's face it, as your kids get older, you're not going to have much influence over their behavior, morals, and/or attitude-- you might get them to say "please" and "thank you" but the rest is a combination of genes and peer influence (read the groundbreaking book by Judith Harris on this topic: The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do) . . and so if all the kids are getting cell-phones implanted in their buttocks, then you're probably not going to convince your kid to do otherwise-- and if you join the party, then you'll just be a weird old wannabe hipster with a cell-phone implanted in your buttocks, so there's just no way to keep up with them . . . really the only way you can have some sort of permanent influence on your children is if you teach them a specific skill, especially if that skill will have a influence on their life in the future . . . I didn't learn to snowboard until I was twenty-two and I didn't learn the pick-and-roll until after that (I was developmentally challenged as a basketball player) and, despite learning them late, both these skills have had a great influence on my life: snowboarding became one of my favorite sports and encouraged me to travel to a lot of places I never would have gone, and I still play pick-up basketball to keep in shape, so seeing my son learn these things at age ten makes me very happy.
January > Teetotaling
I think all of us living in the Northern Hemisphere will agree that January is a terrible time for resolutions-- especially ones that involving eating and drinking less; it's cold and dark and one of the best ways to dispel the winter blues is with delicious food, delicious food preparation, social gatherings, and plenty of booze . . . and so I am proposing we switch New Year's Resolution Season to the first day of spring-- people tend to have plenty of resolve then and there's actually stuff to get done (spring cleaning, home improvement projects, gardening and landscaping, getting in shape for bikini season, etcetera) while in the winter, there's no need to lose weight-- you're wearing layers of clothing-- and there's a whole lot less that needs to be done . . . so let's save the dieting and teetotaling for some time in the future and face the facts: January and February are for eating and drinking until you have a smooth, soft layer of insulation covering your body that will protect you from the cold and the wind.
The Wild Fern: Seventeen Stars Out of Five
Fans of The Dave know that I tend to be fairly binary with my reviews-- things are either "the best in the world" or "the worst thing ever" and that may be because I don't have a very good memory; I tend to live inside each moment, like an incredibly focused Buddhist yogi, discarding the past and ignoring the future . . . but despite this ability/impairment, I'm asking you to take this review very very seriously: if you ever find yourself in Vermont, on Route 100, a bit north of Killington Mountain, then you need to visit The Wild Fern and you need to eat whatever the owner/cook/waitress/hostess Heather has prepared for the day-- if you catch breakfast, it might be the best bagel you've ever tasted (with local eggs and bacon) or a delicate and airy New Orleans style donut with Nutella-- and if you go for dinner, then you need to try everything: the burger (local beef, homemade English muffin, Vermont cheese) is juicy and delicious; the pizza is fantastic; and the roast pork and sauerkraut is one of the best things I've ever eaten (and I hate roast pork and sauerkraut!) but the food is only half the deal; there's usually live music (Heather's boyfriend is local musician Rick Redington and she plays the bass in his band-- Redington performed when we ate dinner there, he's an incredible guitarist/singer and seems like a very nice guy) and the place has some sort of local post-hippie vibe that's only possible in a rural place that's still spitting distance to civilization (The Wild Fern is in the middle of nowhere, but it's still only thirty minutes from the semi-bustle of Rutland) and while there's not much seating-- the place is a shack-- Heather will take your order, tell you her life story, lend you her vintage Guild guitar (if I could always play a guitar while I while I waited for my food, I'd never complain about slow service) and explain just how she makes her amazing food (and as an added perk, the "Luv Bus" is parked in the lot outside-- it's the touring bus for Rock Redington & The Luv and it's the perfect finishing touch of verisimilitude for the scene).
Meaner Girls
If you're a fan of Mean Girls (and if you're not a fan of Mean Girls, then you'd better become one) then you'll love Liane Moriarty's new novel Big Little Lies . . . it's the story of what happens when the mean girls grow up and become mean moms; the story is set in Australia and centers around a seemingly lovely beachside elementary school, and from the first pages you know that someone has died horribly (but you don't know who) and that you're going to keep turning pages until you find out: Moriarty is a sharp, precise, and incisive writer-- she moves adeptly from satire to serious to slapstick, from plot point to plot twist; the dialogue is by turns funny and dramatic, and even though this would probably be labelled chick-lit, the dark underbelly of the story kept me up late into the night: not only will you want to find out who died and how, but you'll want to keep reading just to enjoy her keen and clever voice: five trivia nights out of a possible five.
Those Clever Teenagers and Their Electronic Devices
Not sure if this goes into the category of "something I should have known . . . but didn't because I'm old and/or stupid" or if it's a genuinely new and hip life-hack . . . but I learned in class on Tuesday that kids get fairly creative when they want to amplify the sound from their cell phone: one student said she puts her phone in the sink when she showers so she can hear her music over the running water-- and, according to RadioShack, a sink is a legit amplifier-- and another girl explained to us that "you can put your phone in your mouth if you need more people to hear it" which I deemed absurd and unhygienic, but she replied "it's my phone"; I couldn't find anything on-line about the efficiency of the mouth/phone combo amp and I don't think I'm going to try it, so you'll have to do that experiment on your own; another girl said she put her phone inside a big (unlit) candle to get some amplification, and everyone in the class knew the trick of putting your phone in a cup to make the sound louder; coincidentally, the first time I ever saw/heard this "phone in the cup" trick was over winter break, when my friend Rob (who is in his forties) put his phone in an empty coffee mug so that I could hear a song he recorded better . . . and I'm wondering if he learned this move from a youngster or if he figured it out himself-- so I will have to do some further research and report back to you.
At Least I'm Being Reasonable
I wrote a fairly lame post the other day for Gheorghe:The Blog in which I listed and discussed some of the "logic" I use when instructing my children how to behave-- and since writing the post, I have meditated deeply on the issue (and plagiarized a few ideas from the comments) and now I've produced a more comprehensive list . . . if you've got any other good ones, leave them in the comments and I will do the honor of stealing them from you:
1) because I said so;
2) because kids are starving in Bangladesh/China/India/Cleveland;
3) because that's disgusting;
4) because if you don't get it done, mom will go nuts on you;
5) because that's incredibly stupid and if you're going to do that, you need to wear a helmet;
6) because we love you;
7) because you're spoiled and need to suffer;
8) because our family is a team and we need to cooperate;
9) because you never see your mother and me behave like that;
10) because you're damaging our family's reputation;
11) because you don't know good music;
12) because in the Old West, if you cheated at cards, they shot you;
13) because stress kills, and you're killing me;
14) because people who know how to do math actually get jobs and move out of the house;
15) because if you don't get enough sleep, you're atrocious;
16) because you don't belong indoors, so get the hell outside;
17) because that's what you need to do if you own a dog;
18) because screens have ambient light that keeps you awake when you need sleep;
19) because I need a nap;
20) because if you don't wash your hands, shower and eat your fish and vegetables then you'll get scurvy/goiter/Lyme's disease and/or Ebola and your gums will bleed and you'll grow a football sized lump on your neck and your blood will be full of parasites and your eyes will explode.
1) because I said so;
2) because kids are starving in Bangladesh/China/India/Cleveland;
3) because that's disgusting;
4) because if you don't get it done, mom will go nuts on you;
5) because that's incredibly stupid and if you're going to do that, you need to wear a helmet;
6) because we love you;
7) because you're spoiled and need to suffer;
8) because our family is a team and we need to cooperate;
9) because you never see your mother and me behave like that;
10) because you're damaging our family's reputation;
11) because you don't know good music;
12) because in the Old West, if you cheated at cards, they shot you;
13) because stress kills, and you're killing me;
14) because people who know how to do math actually get jobs and move out of the house;
15) because if you don't get enough sleep, you're atrocious;
16) because you don't belong indoors, so get the hell outside;
17) because that's what you need to do if you own a dog;
18) because screens have ambient light that keeps you awake when you need sleep;
19) because I need a nap;
20) because if you don't wash your hands, shower and eat your fish and vegetables then you'll get scurvy/goiter/Lyme's disease and/or Ebola and your gums will bleed and you'll grow a football sized lump on your neck and your blood will be full of parasites and your eyes will explode.
Did Ajim Suck Out Michael Rockefeller's Brains?
This is the essential question at the heart of Carl Hoffman's book Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art . . . and unlike Serial, this journalistic journey down the rabbit-hole of time delivers a fairly definitive answer to the mystery of what happened to Michael Rockefeller in 1961-- although you're going to have to wait until the last page of the book to get it-- but along the way Hoffman raises plenty of other issues about colonialism and otherness, cultural relativism and morality, the motivations and rituals of subsistence cultures, revenge and balance, the value and acquisition of primitive art, and what connects and separates human culture (think headhunting, chairs and sewage) and while much of this might be anthropological abstraction or a maze of historical detail (I still can't figure out exactly what went down between the Asmat villages of Otsjanep and Omadesep) the narrative is held together by the lurking shadow in the New Guinea swamp, the ultimate taboo: cannibalism . . . and this pervades the story and the Asmat culture-- these are people without access to protein, warriors who believe in a spirit world as much as in the dense, green and watery reality of their actual home, and they are complex people, who have had to deal with an upheaval to their culture, in the form of mysterious white men-- who are generally all-powerful, possessing guns and flying vehicles, white men who made them feel guilt and regret for their sacred rituals-- and while they now profess that they are reformed of their headhunting habits, there are still those living in the villages, elders, who have tasted human flesh, and fifty years ago, when they had the chance to strike at a weak and vulnerable white-man-- not long after they suffered a massacre at the hands of a Dutch colonial-- then the case that Hoffman presents makes perfect sense.
There's Something Perfect About This (Unlike Driving a Motorcycle on the Turnpike)
There's something beautiful and appropriate about this progression: Highroads Harley Davidson in Highland Park closed down a few years ago, and now the building is a dealership for wheelchair vans.
Mnemosyne Demands a Sacrifice
My wife has to remember a wealth of information on a daily basis-- she has a lot of responsibility at her job and in our community, and she's also the reason our hectically scheduled household operates smoothly . . . and this doesn't end when we go on vacation: she's the primary packer and planner (I'm the chief researcher) so she's bound to forget a thing or two . . . but never has she forgotten three things on one trip, until now-- and I'm not relishing this in any way, shape or form, but I'd still like to record it, in a most unbiased and objective manner, for posterity-- not only that, this event does harken back to the humble beginnings of this blog; so . . . without any gloating . . . here's the list:
1) at the start of our trip, my wife forgot her prescription sunglasses, but we were only a few minutes down the road, so we turned back and got them;
2) while my wife was paying the check at the much recommended Wild Fern restaurant, she put down the iPad on the counter and left it there-- she didn't realize this until we were fifteen minutes away-- but we turned back and luckily it was still there (Heather, the owner/chef/waitress of The Wild Fern knew the house we were renting and said she was going to return it to us there if we didn't come back so we were safe either way);
3) when we were leaving the rented house in Stockbridge, my wife forgot her ceramic-travel coffee mug inside the house, but we had already locked up and left the key inside, so we had to chalk that one up to as a sacrifice to Mnemosyne.
1) at the start of our trip, my wife forgot her prescription sunglasses, but we were only a few minutes down the road, so we turned back and got them;
2) while my wife was paying the check at the much recommended Wild Fern restaurant, she put down the iPad on the counter and left it there-- she didn't realize this until we were fifteen minutes away-- but we turned back and luckily it was still there (Heather, the owner/chef/waitress of The Wild Fern knew the house we were renting and said she was going to return it to us there if we didn't come back so we were safe either way);
3) when we were leaving the rented house in Stockbridge, my wife forgot her ceramic-travel coffee mug inside the house, but we had already locked up and left the key inside, so we had to chalk that one up to as a sacrifice to Mnemosyne.
You CAN Tune a Fish!
For those of you who need one more miracle to make it through the holiday season, this will do it for you: this event is described in The Acts of Peter, which is one of the apocryphal acts of the apostles of Jesus and it reminds me of the movie Chronicle, in which some teenage boys gain superpowers and do typical teenage stuff with their powers . . . so here Peter sees a smoked tuna hanging in a window and wants to show some people what the name of Jesus can do, so he resurrects the tuna and throws it into a (conveniently located) nearby fish pond and the tuna swims for hours on end, and people feed it bread and rejoice (this is in The Acts of Peter 5 . . . this book also features a talking dog).
Vacations With Kids Are Not Really Vacations
Another phenomenal Vermont vacation, full of snowboarding, skiing, great local food/beer, and plenty of anxiety (not only anxiety from supervising my children on the mountain, but also in our rented house-- a beautifully converted barn in Stockbridge which contains a couple of spiral stair-cases, which seem excellent in theory-- but spiral staircases with smooth and worn wooden risers are death-traps if you're wearing socks-- I slipped and fell hard-- and while my kids are getting better and better at navigating the mountain, they are also getting good enough to hurt themselves-- Alex whacked his head when he caught an edge snowboarding, but he was wearing a helmet so he only suffered a bump on his head and a bruise on his face, but no concussion, and Ian twisted his knee when a little kid cut in front of him) and after three days straight of riding-- longer days than usual because we met our friends on the mountain and peer pressure really motivates kids to keep on keeping on-- so after three long days, we finally took one off to relax, but we also promised my son Alex that we would play Settlers of Catan on this day off, and not just regular Settlers of Catan, but the new very-advanced "Cities and Knights" add-on that he got for Christmas, and it took four hours to finish the game (which I won!) but we took a break in the middle of the game for some sledding (Alex befriended some friendly Stockbridge locals) and then a trip to Rochester, Vermont to eat lunch at the Rochester Cafe and Country Store, which I highly recommend: the town is scenic, surrounded by mountain peaks, and the food and raspberry/peach pie at the cafe is super-delicious . . . and I hate pie; while I'm at it, I'll also recommend my favorite local beers from the trip: Rock Art American Red Ale and Alesmith IPA (and it's VERY important to have good beer on hand when you're playing a four hour board game with children).
Read My Lips: No New Resolutions
I'm going to be honest here: the only New Year's Resolution I ever followed through on was in 2011, when I resolved to eat more tacos (but I can't even be sure that I ate more tacos than usual, because in any given year, I eat a lot of tacos-- the experiment/resolution lacked a control year-- and, empirically speaking, the only thing I actually accomplished was to count the number of tacos I ate that year) and the rest of my resolutions have been ironic or farfetched, and so this year I resolve to do nothing other than do more of the same-- just a little bit better: I'm going to eat a little healthier, drink a little less in quantity-- but make up for it in quality, exercise a little more, lose my temper less, appreciate my wife more, coach a little more creatively, teach a little more effectively, record music more consistently, practice my guitar more diligently, tuck my elbow straighter when I shoot a basketball, take the dog on longer walks, find slightly better books to read, play a few more board games with my kids, cook dinner a few more times than I did last year, and-- finally-- and this is the biggest one on the list, and the wholesale change that I'm making in 2015 . . . read my lips for this one: no more pleated pants (for the most part, I have switched to flat-front pants, but I still had a few remnant pairs of pleated pants-- from the '90's?-- in my wardrobe and once in a while I would wear them, to the dismay of my wife and colleagues . . . but I donated them all last week, so I'm locked in to this particular resolution, which I'm sure is a good thing).
Dave Has a Miraculous Post-Christmas Vision!
When your mind strays outside the established box-walls, then you will certainly suffer disdain and criticism, even from those who profess to love you . . . but you must carry on, bravely, faithfully, into the pale; so let it be know that upon the 26th day of the twelfth month of the Year, 2014, the day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ (or maybe not, but that's a whole other historical conundrum) I was delivered a post-Christmas vision in the form of a mini-van packing strategy: instead of building upwards in the back section of the van, the way I would normally stacketh our belongings, leaving a small "cavern" for the dog-- instead of this precarious and vision-obstructive pile of luggage, I would buildeth horizontally and create a "floor" of luggage, coolers, equipment, instruments, and victuals and I would layeth the dog's bed and a blanket on this "floor" of stuff and then the dog would have much space in which to cavort and frolic and the driver would also be able to see out the rear of the van . . . and when I announced this vision to my wife, she said unto me, "I don't want the dog lying on my bag!" and I pronounced to her that I would bury her bag deep in the "floor" of mine own construction, under a blanket so that our dog would not lieth on her bag (despite the fact that our dog is liething all over everything in our house) but then when she saw my handiwork, she pronounced it good and renounced her doubt in my vision (for this particular incident) and the family did rejoice (until we were fifteen minutes down the road and my wife announced she forgot her sunglasses, so we had to turn around and get them . . . which raises an interesting philosophical question: how far down the road do you have to go before you don't turn around and go back for sunglasses?)
A Book For People Who Thought "The Road" Was Too Depressing
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, adds nothing new to the apocalypse trope-- in fact, I think she keeps it simple on purpose: a killer virus wipes out the bulk of humanity-- but the book is deserving of all the accolades (National Book Award Finalist, Amazon Sci-fi Book of the Year) and then some . . . it's vivid and completely gripping from page one, it's beautifully written, and there are scenes of great violence and decay-- of course-- but unlike Cormac McCarthy's The Road, there are also moments of beauty and poetry and hope . . . it's The Walking Dead if the zombies were replaced by actors, musicians, and prophets; while it's not a super-idealistic noble-savage view of humanity, it's also not an illustration of Hobbes Leviathan . . . it's somewhere in between: more "literary" than hard sci-fi, but still a perfectly imagined world and I highly recommend it (especially, as an English teacher and a musician, because this book gives me hope that I might have some small but valuable role in a post-apocalyptic environment . . . "survival is insufficient").
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