I Want to Say One Word to You: Shame
My town has banned plastic bags and while this feels like a good thing, there are actually a number of problems with this small step toward sustainability-- when plastic bags are banned, sales of heavy trash bags go up, and producing paper bags and canvas totes may be even worse for the environment than manufacturing those little lightweight plastic bags-- but I will say this about the ban: it's got me thinking and feeling shame . . . yesterday on my way home from acupuncture, I stopped at the grocery store to grab some seltzer (I'm trying to drink less beer and I like my tequila with a splash of lime seltzer) and I forgot to bring one of our reusable reusable canvas tote bags, so I had to ask for a paper bag-- shame!-- and then I took a look at what I was buying and it was flavored bubbly water . . . inside plastic-- shame!-- and just before I stopped at Stop & Shop, I went through the Dunkin' Donuts drive-thru and got an iced coffee-- normally I go inside and refill my reusable cup, but it was raining and I was lazy, so my coffee came in a plastic cup with the Yankees logo on it (Made for Pinstripe Pride) accompanied by a plastic straw -- shame upon shame!-- and while it's going to be tough to change all these little habits, the first step is recognizing them (and realizing that if I were more of a man, I wouldn't need to cut my tequila with flavored bubbly water).
Trump's Re-election Rally: A Reality Check for Liberals
I was very wrong when I thought that Donald Trump-- laughingstock and punchline, bankrupt buffoon-- could never be elected president; I tried to understand, I read this George Saunders piece and lots of other stuff, but now I realize that a lot of this reporting was biased, reported by folks that didn't take Trump seriously; now we know the truth, and though it took xenophobia, Russian meddling, fake news, conspiracy theories, character assassination and some outright racism, Trump figured out how to win . . . and he very well may win again; The Daily covered Trump's Re-election Rally and they didn't cherry-pick the gaffes and bumbling, instead they played masterful clips of Trump playing the crowd, making them feel special, making them feel like Trump is their way inside a corrupt system-- and then they talked to Trump supporters-- and not the insane, angry folk-- they talked to calm, rational people who love his agenda, people who want a wall, people who don't like immigrants, people who don't want gun reform or abortion, people who love the fact that Trump is appointing pro-life and conservative judges, people who don't believe a word of the "liberal fake-news media" . . . people who bought William Barr's pre-spin on the Mueller Report, people who are informed, but informed by totally different sources than I generally peruse (despite the fact that The Week tries to cover the liberal and conservative perspective, they don't go deep and weird enough on the conservative side) and so I feel very indebted to the New York Times for painting a more accurate picture of a Trump rally, he is a force to contend with and his supporters believe in Trump and believe in what he stands for . . . I find this shocking, but if you go 17:45 seconds in, when Trump has the audience cheer for what slogan and theme he should promote in this election, you can see why these people love him, his populism, his eschewing of political correctness, and his ability to say what people want to hear-- whether it's true or not-- so while I'm rooting for intellect over rhetoric, for Elizabeth Warren's thought out plans, her statistics and logic and ideas, I'm probably very stupid for rooting for this, for thinking that brains can defeat Trump's emotional brawn . . . anyway, listen to the podcast and tell me what you think.
First World Solutions . . .
If there were some sort of Emmy or Tony for HVAC guys, I would award it to Steve Maruscsak Heating & Cooling-- not only did they come in with the lowest bid (and highly recommended) to install a ductless mini-split, but they also sorted out an insane mess of electrical problems (which caused some electronic problems) and got our AC up and running today; in other good news, our dog was well-behaved around the guys while they finished the install, and our son is feeling better and his bloodwork seems to be okay-- although they are still checking for Lyme's . . . which makes me nervous, because it was Lyme's diseases that canceled this Costa Rica trip last year- our old dog Sirius came down with a bad case, which ruined his kidneys and eventually killed him-- but he had another tick disease on top of that one and Ian's symptoms sound more like a virus or bad growing pains . . . so let me end this rambling nonsense and get back to brushing up on my (nonexistent) Spanish.
When It Rains, It Pours (But We've Got Good Sewers)
A day full of First World Problems: torrential downpours, a sick child, a visit to the doctor, a visit to the blood lab, a broken ductless mini-split, a visit to the orthodontist, baffled HVAC guys, faulty wiring from the last ductless mini-split install, a school cooking project, a broken color printer, a visit to the bicycle repair shop, a canceled orthodontist appointment because of a sick child, worries about a sick child and an imminent soccer tournament and an imminent Costa Rican vacation, blood lab results (negative on most everything bad but still checking for Lyme's and mono) but the hope is that tomorrow will bring some First World Solutions . . . a SIM card to fix the ductless mini-split, and perhaps a flu diagnosis and some drugs to fix the sore child, my wife has a color printer at work, etc.
The 70's: I Lived Through Them But Don't Remember Much
David Frum's book How We Got Here: The 70's . . . The Decade That Brought You Modern Life-- For Better or Worse takes a "conservative" look at the decade when the radical ideas of the '60s completely permeated American life, but it's an older brand of conservatism, one of "pragmatism, character, reciprocity, stoicism, manliness, hardness, vengeance, strictness, and responsibility"-- not the new corrupt, Machiavellian Trump/McConnell version-- so Frum acknowledges that great progress was made in many areas of human rights and expressiveness, but he also takes a hard look at the costs; Frum begins by running through the crime, the corruption, the many many scandals-- Watergate was the tip if the iceberg-- and the secrets: the Pentagon Papers, the revelations about JFK (wiretapping MLK) and Lyndon Johnson (starting the Vietnam War over the Tonkin incident) and Nixon, of course-- and the many many more from Tuskegee to plots with the Mafia and CIA to overthrow Castro, and J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA working without oversight, the FBI monitoring many many Americans-- often at the president's behest-- scandal upon scandal, crime upon crime-- this is when 60 Minutes was the number one program and for good reason . . . it made me realize that I grew up in the hangover of this tumultuous decade, the Reagan years-- so I missed out on all the fun, the sex and drugs and new age lingo, the superstition and narcissism and disco-- my generation got AIDS and video games and Reaganomics-- but we also got free markets and deregulation (for good and bad) and missed out on crime and terrorism and gas-lines and horrible inflation and general paranoia . . . Frum blames the turmoil of the 1970's, the terrorism, the smashing of values, the conflict of a demilitarized children vs. their militarized parents, on three things-- the Vietnam War, desegregation, and inflation . . . and while he acknowledges that many things in America were worse in the past-- the racism, redlining, the homogeneous society, the lack of economic creativity, the treatment of the environment-- he also takes the pragmatic conservative position that family and employment, and things like loyalty and conformity gave a purpose to many poor and embattled people, and that assimilation instead of fragmentation, while oppressing diversity, does help with order .. . the 70's was when modern America emerged, technological, diverse, environmentally conscious, litigious, regulated, rights-oriented . . . and while the pendulum may have occasionally swung back, the 70's moved the nexus and so "the past never returns, no matter how lovely it was-- but onward, away from the follies and triumphs of the 1970s and toward something new: new vices, new virtues, new sins-- and new progress."
Dave Endorses Elizabeth Warren!
Last presidential election, I was so frightened by a Donald Trump Presidency that I broke from my normal silliness of always voting for the Green Party and endorsed Hillary Clinton-- I listened to a great interview with her on The Weeds and tried my best to contrast her policies with Trump; I wrote all this down and I'm certain my thoughts had absolutely no effect on the election or anyone's voting choice-- if you're reading this, I'm probably preaching to the choir, and the few people I know that did vote for Trump did so because they loathed Hillary Clinton and couldn't separate the person from the policy; now The Weeds has done an in depth interview with Elizabeth Warren and I really like everything she says: she wants to fight corruption and lobbying; she wants to tax the biggest fortunes in the country and use the money for childcare and college debt and early childhood education and the opioid crisis; she truly believes that there is an enormous wealth gap and that a thinner and thinner slice of the population is being represented by political power; she is critical of Wall Street speculation; she promises to stop mining and frakking on federal lands and believes that climate change is something needs to be addressed; she believes in the power of government agencies-- the agencies that Trump has crippled and gutted-- such as the EPA and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency she is interested in Medicare for all; she does not lean Democratic Socialist, in fact she identifies herself as a Democratic Capitalist-- which makes me happy-- Warren believes in the power of markets as long as there are clear rules and arbiters; but Warren does not believe markets belong in public education and healthcare; she has ideas about zoning and redlining and housing; she's a nerd (her book recommendation is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty . . . which I enjoyed but never finished, it's voluminous) and basically I thought she was super-smart, well-spoken, has a real purpose and plan, and reflects the ideas and values that I respect and that should work for the vast majority of Americans . . . of course, I thought the same thing about Hillary Clinton's policies, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm giving her my full endorsement and not going to bother learning about any of the other twenty-three Democratic candidates (and I suggest you do the same . . . and I wish I could just blithely vote for the Green Party, but that ship has sailed).
Bless these Beanbags
Yesterday was the end of the year picnic (my partner and I performed well in the annual corn-hole tourney-- we double lost in the finals because it was double elimination and we hadn't lost all afternoon . . . we had previously beaten this team 21-0 but we choked with it all on the line . . . perhaps it was all the donated Victory beer or maybe it was divine retribution for dropping my partner from last year-- Chantal-- and picking up Kristyn-- a sporty softball coach from another department, causing everyone in my department to root against me) and now we're off to my cousin's ordination . . . so perhaps next year, if we make to the finals again, I can pray and the Big Man will give some extra consideration.
Fourteen Years of Home Ownership and Ian
My younger son turned fourteen today and his birthday also commemorates the approximate purchase of our current home-- and what a fourteenth year of home ownership it's been; this year we had to replace our washer/dryer, our dishwasher, our ductless mini-split air-conditioner, the ceiling tiles in the basement, and our dog . . . and speaking of dogs, I had a miraculous revelation on the way back from Ian's birthday dinner at Shanghai Dumpling (which was a miracle in itself: no wait!) and this revelation occurred while we were discussing our eventual return from our trip to Costa Rica and just how insanely happy our dog will be upon this return-- if and when we do actually return-- and so I told Ian about my favorite moment in the Odyssey, when Odysseus returns home in disguise after being gone for twenty-years of epic adventures and he runs into his dog Argos, who was obviously a pup when he left Ithaca, and-- despite the disguise-- Argos recognizes his master and dies of happiness . . . and it always struck me as odd that a dog would live for 20+ years, as that's highly unlikely, but I just recognized that this is an ancient Greek dog, and so it was probably not bred very much, unlike our genetically stunted purebreds of present times, so it was closer to a wolf than a dog and had a much longer lifespan.
An Ominous Jazz Heuristic
My rule-of-thumb for jazz is this: if there are lyrics, it probably sucks . . . and this holds true for a song I heard on WBGO this afternoon, Rosemary Clooney singing "If Swing Goes, I Go Too" . . . on top of the lousy lyrics, this song has the added irony of negating itself, the song actually wills itself out of existence-- making it all the more odd that WBGO continues to play it-- because Clooney claims that she can live without breakfast and polkas and soap operas, but if swing music falls out of favor, then she'll just up and die, which she did-- swing music faded (aside from a brief revival spearheaded by the Squirrel Nut Zippers) and Clooney lived up to her promise and kicked the bucket in time with her favorite music, she lived from 1928 until 2002-- and this is a grim reminder of just how ephemeral pop music is, the sounds you just can't imagine living without-- whether it's The Cure or Black Flag or The Beach Boys or Hector Berlioz-- they will soon pass from favor, then be regarded as antiquated, and finally disappear from the public consciousness entirely.
If You Haven't Seen HBO's Chernobyl, I Sentence Thee To The Exclusion Zone
Everyone in my office is talking about the HBO show Chernobyl, and while I tried to avoid it-- I watched a few minutes of the first episode and found it unbearably grim-- the tidal wave of acclaim and the fact that my kids were interested in a historical docudrama swayed me; I ended it up loving it, of course-- especially the scene where the filthy miners all touch the clean and dapper Ministry of Coal, and my kids love the show as well, or I should say that they love to yell at the show-- which is understandable, as folks informed and uninformed alike are behaving so cavalierly around enormous amounts of radiation and, equally frustrating, the Russian government is more concerned with information control, propaganda, and secrecy than the welfare of it's own people (the Russians are not particularly happy with this portrayal) and while I generally can't stomach watching medical disasters, this show is so good that I've gotten inured to all the melting skin-- it's a little like The Walking Dead in that regard-- and my family even survived (and partly enjoyed) the episode that mainly concerned itself with animal control, i.e. the packs of radioactive dogs that needed to be shot and disposed of (during that section, instead of yelling at the screen, my kids yelled at our dog, commanding her not to watch, lest she be traumatized).
Dave is Not a Vet (But He Played One This Morning)
Lola sprained her wrist chasing squirrels this morning-- or that's what I arrived at after a thorough inspection of her front leg and paw . . . at least I think it's her wrist . . . it's on her front left leg, so it's probably her wrist, not her ankle-- it bends like a wrist-- and it would make sense that dogs have two wrists and two ankles, that's the way it looks . . . but some quadrupeds have four wrists-- monkeys?-- and some have four ankles: rhinos?
Trump: Ahead of the Curve on this One
While I'm generally loath to admit our Colander-in-chief has any sort of strategic vision for our country, I think he might be ahead of the curve on Weaponized Interdependence; this is the down-side to globalization and both economists and politicians -- especially Trump-- are starting to explore the ramifications and tactics of an interdependent world, a world where countries were pushed by globally competitive free-markets and institutions like the IMF and the World Bank to specialize in what they could produce as efficiently and cheaply as possible and sell it on the world market-- this was supposed to limit warfare-- countries that trade together don't want to blow each other up-- but now countries are recognizing that belligerence can be enacted by disrupting supply chains, enacting tariffs, and banning certain technologies . . . a nice example of this is the battle between the U.S. and China over Huawei cell phone chipsets . . . I don't fully understand this battle, all I know is it sounds petty, detrimental to consumers and workers, and a black mark on diplomacy . . . but Trump seems to have a real handle on this tactic, so kudos to him.
Tupperware Tetris
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My Older Son Was of Use
Yesterday, with the help of my older son, I replaced the hydraulic hatch supports on my Toyota van-- there was only one moment of panic, when Alex did something weird to the ball joint-socket . . . but he was able to hold up the tailgate-- which is quite heavy-- and I was able to pry the hinges loose with a flat-head screwdriver and slip the balls in the sockets and now the back hatch of my van is no longer a death-trap dull guillotine.
O Woe is Me . . . But You've Got to Be Cruel to Be Kind
We were in Act IV of Hamlet today, right after Hamlet blindly slaughters Polonius, chops up his body, and scatters the pieces in the castle-- Hamlet is then confronted about this grisly situation, and he glibly explains to King Claudius that "Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots," and so I played the bit of The Lion King when Mufasa explains to Simba about the whole "Circle of Life" and asked what Mufasa skips-- it's all the decay and decomposition-- and we got to talking about maggots for a moment and I told them a college tale about when my buddy Rob put a half-eaten roast beef sandwich on a filthy table, threw a newspaper over it, and there it remained . . . and two weeks later, when I picked up the newspaper-- looking for the crossword puzzle-- instead of a roll full of roast beef, there was now a roll full of writhing maggots; one of the students said, "They grew there because of the meat, right?" and a few other students seemed to agree with this hypothesis, so I had to stop the presses, press pause on the teaching of literature, and start teaching science-- luckily, another student had paid attention in Bio class and explained to the class that the Theory of Spontaneous Generation had been refuted in the 19th century and that we now know that mice don't magically spring from bales of hay and maggots are the larval form of flies.
O Woe is Me . . . But You've Got to Be Cruel to Be Kind
We were in Act IV of Hamlet today, right after Hamlet blindly slaughters Polonius, chops up his body, and scatters the pieces in the castle-- Hamlet is then confronted about this grisly situation, and he glibly explains to King Claudius that "Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots," and so I played the bit of The Lion King when Mufasa explains to Simba about the whole "Circle of Life" and asked what Mufasa skips-- it's all the decay and decomposition-- and we got to talking about maggots for a moment and I told them a college tale about when my buddy Rob put a half-eaten roast beef sandwich on a filthy table, threw a newspaper over it, and there it remained . . . and two weeks later, when I picked up the newspaper-- looking for the crossword puzzle-- instead of a roll full of roast beef, there was now a roll full of writhing maggots; one of the students said, "They grew there because of the meat, right?" and a few other students seemed to agree with this hypothesis, so I had to stop the presses, press pause on the teaching of literature, and start teaching science-- luckily, another student had paid attention in Bio class and explained to the class that the Theory of Spontaneous Generation had been refuted in the 19th century and that we now know that mice don't magically spring from bales of hay and maggots are the larval form of flies.
Dave Reads a Book and Is Annoying About It (Volume 2,435)
It only took me two days to read James Clear's book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones . . . oddly, while I was reading the book, I kept feeling that I should get up off the couch and start implementing his methods to improve my life . . . I will do a longer post on his philosophy and methodology and how I immediately started utilizing his ideas, but I'm too tired to do so right now because we had a lovely but exhausting "non-instructional" day at my high school to celebrate the Relay for Life cancer walk-- there was volleyball and frisbee and corn-hole and football and spike-ball and kickball and plenty of walking around the track in the sun, but before the outdoor events began we had to do some goofy icebreaker activities in our morning classes: a rock paper scissors tournament (I lost) and a discussion exercise in which you had to write an open-ended question on a notecard and swap with people; the James Clear book was on my mind and I was feeling particularly annoying and didactic, so my question was: If you did not spend all your free-time on your cell-phone, what amazing abilities would you possess?
Serendipitous Mechanical Failure
Our ductless mini-split died the other day, but I'm considering lack of AC on our ground floor "practice" for our forthcoming trip to Costa Rica-- I've probably got such a good mindset because:
#1) we're lucky enough to be going on a trip to Costa Rica;
#2) our ductless mini-split is 21 years old;
#3) the weather has been unusually decent;
#4) I'm also enjoying the lack of AC in my classroom at school . . . I thought it would be the opposite, because all my colleagues in the English Department teach on the second floor and they finally received AC window units this year, so I thought I would be insanely jealous and angry, but their air-conditioners aren't working all that well: they are loud and the filters are already filthy and my buddy Kevin is claiming he got sick from yelling over top of his and breathing in the dirt-ridden air . . . so I'm happy -- for the time being-- opening the windows and adjusting to the warm weather (which isn't particularly warm yet).
#1) we're lucky enough to be going on a trip to Costa Rica;
#2) our ductless mini-split is 21 years old;
#3) the weather has been unusually decent;
#4) I'm also enjoying the lack of AC in my classroom at school . . . I thought it would be the opposite, because all my colleagues in the English Department teach on the second floor and they finally received AC window units this year, so I thought I would be insanely jealous and angry, but their air-conditioners aren't working all that well: they are loud and the filters are already filthy and my buddy Kevin is claiming he got sick from yelling over top of his and breathing in the dirt-ridden air . . . so I'm happy -- for the time being-- opening the windows and adjusting to the warm weather (which isn't particularly warm yet).
What's Wrong With Wearing a Visor?
A visor keeps the sun out of your eyes AND lets your head breathe . . . so why all the disdain?
I Finished . . . Where is My Parade?
I'm hoping to write a longer review of this literary adventure over at Park the Bus, but I'd still like to formally announce that I have finished reading Death's End, the mega-epic conclusion of Cixin Liu's sci-fi trilogy that began with The Three Body Problem . . . this was some challenging reading for me-- while I love reading about science, I'm certainly not science-minded . . . I got straight D's in chemistry-- the series actually begins historically, with the news of an impending alien invasion, told from a Chinese point of view during the Cultural Revolution but by the end of book Liu is delving deep into quantum physics; in book two-- The Dark Forest-- the narrative forays into the game theory of diplomatic tactics in the wider universe (which is not pretty) and book three-- Death's End-- is a tour-de-force of both style and imagination (there are a sequence of lush and symbolic fairy tales nested in the middle of the novel, plenty of hard sci-fi, memorable characters and conflict, and-- finally-- a wild and surreal meta-physical journey to the end of time and space) and while this is aspirational reading and it took me a long time to finish, I still recommend the series (but sadly, confetti did NOT shoot out of the book when I completed the final page).
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