I played tennis this morning with my buddy Cob and-- because of the extreme heat-- we were the only people on the courts playing singles . . . it may have been ill-advised, but we took plenty of breaks and we survived; Ian worked eight hours at the tennis camp; Alex worked eight hours life-guarding; and Catherine went to her garden and did maintenance there; I also grilled a bunch of hot peppers (on our outdoor gas grill) so we could freeze them: the combination of the heat, the sun, and the grill added up a an inferno on our back porch . . . so we're soldiering on in this weather but without the respite of A/C I would lose all my energy, my mind, and my ability to complete any tasks . . . I'm not sure how people are surviving who don't have it.
It's Hot
Stacey gave me a ride home in her jeep from our college writing workshop today (we got so much work done! I actually did some work in the summertime!) and riding in the jeep with the top down is generally a treat: the sun on my head, the breeze blowing through my (lack of) hair . . . but it was so hot today that it felt like we were driving in a pizza oven.
Sleep Comes and Goes
Everyone knows when you have a newborn in the house, you're going to be sleep deprived; soon enough they sleep through night and things are restful again . . . but what they don't tell you is that when they turn eighteen, you go through the same thing all over again-- but this time around, you're old and amazed at all the energy a human can have at 2:30 AM in the morning.
Dave Finishes Two Things
I just finished making Episode 5 of We Defy Augury: "The Foundling by Ann Leary: Eugenics on the Beach?" and I just finished reading Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy, which will definitely inspire another episode-- this is a book that turns policing and violent crime on its head-- it's about a particular murder of a policeman's son in South Central LA; the causes and misperceptions of gang violence; the kind of policing necessary to combat the high murder rates among black males; and the reasons murder rates in certain areas stay persistently high . . . tragic but highly recommended.
As Usual . . .
One of the recurring themes of this blog is that I think I am sore from doing some oddball exercise (this time: deadlifts) but then it turns out I have a virus-- this time it's a weird stomach bug that I got from my wife: no diarrhea, thank God, but bloating and burping and generally feeling a little run down and sick and glassy-eyed . . . hopefully it will be gone tomorrow (and it's definitely not a kidney stone, which I wondered about last night when I couldn't sleep because my stomach hurt).
Post Deadlift Blues
Ian and I had some fun doing trap bar deadlifts yesterday at the gym-- the trap bar makes deadlifts much easier to execute . . . which might not be such a good thing, now my entire body is sore.
Post Beach Blues
The day after a beach day is always a bit depressing-- it's so hot and dry in central Jersey right now- and while I did bike to the pool and swim a few laps, it's not the same as a foggy chilly breeze off the ocean . . . unfortunately, beach real estate is through-the-roof, perhaps because of this work-from-home thing that has freed rich people from living in urban centers . . . boo to that.
Bloodhound at the Beach?
A Beach Read . . . About Eugenics?
The Foundling, by Ann Leary, is billed as a summer beach read and it meets those specifications: while there's no sun or sand in the novel-- it's quite gothic-- it's definitely a vacation for your brain, especially the second half, which has a very compelling escape plot, reminiscent of Shawshank Redemption; the book is an easy read, on the one hand, especially for historical fiction (the setting in a woman's asylum in Pennsylvania in 1927, the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age) but on the other hand, the book brings up some difficult questions about eugenics, morality, who should be institutionalized, corruption, power authority, religion, woman's rights, and racism . . . but only in the first half of the novel-- then it just gets beachier and beachier.
Oddly Liberating
This morning my son Alex took the book bag with my phone in it and Ian took the car with my wallet in it so I had no phone or money so I took a nap.
Sharks and Lantern Flies Menace the East Coast
Yesterday, my wife went over our friends' house (Lynn and Connell) to help them plant some milkweed-- because apparently milkweed poisons spotted lantern-flies and Lynn and Connell have an epic spotted lantern-fly infestation, mainly because they live on a cliff right above the Raritan River . . . a great view of New Brunswick from their back deck but also plenty of tree-of-heaven, the weedy river bush that lantern-flies love-- so they were waging chemical and biological warfare, which involved climbing out onto the ledge above the cliff, clearing brush and small trees, and planting the milkweed-- and it was hot yesterday and they were all wearing long sleeves and pants to avoid poison ivy and I guess they were working for quite a while, sawing at trees and removing ivy and weeds and bushes and planting the milkweed, and Connell got out his little chainsaw to cut down one particular tree and clambered down onto the cliff, on a little ledge above the river, and my wife was working away and not paying attention to much else-- she was in the zone-- when Lynn, who was up above, yelled to her that Connell wasn't responding and she didn't know what was going on-- so Catherine climbed over to where Connell was sitting and he was lights out, pale as a ghost and unresponsive-- but luckily, we just took a First Aid course, so she didn't lose her shit . . . she shook him and talked to him until she finally got a response-- but she was ready to do some serious CPR-- and she directed Lynn, who was up top, to call 911 . . . the police were there in no time, and Connell came to and she ascertained that he hadn't eaten or drank anything that morning and then started working in heavy clothing in the hot sun-- so she made him drink some water (and poured some on him) and Lynn lowered him down some food and the police helped get him off the cliff-- Connell was annoyed that they had called 911 but Catherine was like, "there's no way I'm getting you off this cliff, if you fall, I'm not going to be able to catch you" and in the end he didn't have to go to the hospital-- it was just a case of heatstroke, but these lantern flies are a serious menace-- we've got civilians clambering around on cliffs with chainsaws getting heatstroke, so perhaps we've got to take Kent Brockman's attitude and welcome our new insect overlords . . . and then my parents told me there's sharks at the Jersey shore-- which I took with a grain of salt, until I looked online, and not only have there been shark sighting, but there was a giant great white just off the coast of Sea Isle City, the beach we are headed to in a couple weeks (but I will not forego my early morning run and swim-- if I'm going to die, then that's how it's going to happen).
Shuffling Around Harlem and Elsewhere
Colson Whitehead's new novel Harlem Shuffle is not as dark and profound as The Underground Railroad but it still explores race and place-- Ray Carney appears to be a straight furniture salesmen to most of the uptown denizens of Harlem-- but he's more crooked than the average person might think (but less crooked than his father and many of the hoods that abound in his neighborhood) and while there's no surreal time-traveling train, the structures of grift, corruption and power are quite different when he pops out of the subway downtown, where the white people are-- the book is a caper tale, a revenge story, an astute take on the duality of human nature, an evocative period piece, and a real page turner, definitely worth a read.
Summer sans Motor Vehicle
Relaxing summer so far: the kids take the cars to their various job so all that's left for me to do is pull my training sled up and down the hill by my house, work on my podcast, watch Wimbledon, bike to the pool, swim a few laps, pass out with a book in a lounge chair, then bike home (my wife seems to have a bunch of other stuff she's occupied with, but I try not to let it interrupt my focus).
Trip to Possumtown!
My wife and I took a road trip to the Possumtown Firehouse last night for what I thought was going to be a two hour CPR class-- I need to update my certificate for coaching-- but the course also included First Aid and the lady running the class was a bit disorganized and a bit tangential, so we were there from 6 PM until nearly 10 PM, learning about tourniquets and nosebleeds and impalements and all kinds of things that make me dizzy-- luckily there was a large couch in the very comfy Possumtown Volunteer Firehouse (the lady's dad was the chief) and this place really had small town firehouse character: a big TV and a kegerator and a soda machine that you could just open and take the soda out and a fish tank with some big fish in it (I watched these fish when the videos got too graphic about blood) and the class was quite intimate, just me, my wife, and a young dude-- it was kind of stream-of-consciousness, with lots of anecdotes from the teacher's EMT experiences and the main thing I learned-- which no other class was so blunt about-- was that you don't need to worry about breaking someone's ribs when you're doing CPR because they are CLINICALLY DEAD . . . once she put it that way, it assuaged a lot of my fears about pressing too hard or whatever, you're literally trying to resurrect someone when you're doing those compressions (and we always have an AED nearby when I coach, so hopefully that machine will do the trick . . . although if someone like me goes down, you'll need the razor in the accessory kit top deal with my excessive chest hair).
Youngsters are Cute . . . But F%$% 'em
Impressive Stuff
Impressive amount of people at the Rutgers pool yesterday for Fourth of July; impressive amount of meats served, not so impressive performance by Alec and I in the balloon toss (I blame the overfilled balloon), very impressive amounts of lantern fly nymphs on the trees, tables, and one old guy; impressive amount of fireworks on display from Connell's back deck-- perhaps we could see displays from North Brunswick, South Brunswick, Milltown, Sayreville and Somerville but it was hard to tell . . . Cat and I returned home stuffed and tired and I was glad to get back to the routine today: I went to the gym, then biked to the pool-- which was empty-- did some laps, passed out on a lounge chair while reading my book, woke up and biked home (I don't understand how people bike enormous distances-- my butt hurts when I ride a few miles).
Right on the Note
Sort of Relaxing Saturday
It could have been a relaxing Saturday . . . but I got up early and did some work on my new podcast-- it's called We Defy Augury, I'm looking for guests, and it's up and running-- you just have to read something you've read and talk about what the reading makes you think about-- and then I played 90 minutes of two-on-two basketball with my older son and a couple guys at the Piscataway Y, and then I collapsed on the couch-- ostensibly to relax and watch some Wimbledon . . . but the featured match was Nick Kyrgios vs. Stefano Tsitsipas and it was NOT relaxing-- I was really rooting for Tsitsipas and he was trying his best to deal with Kyrgios's antics but Kyrgios spent the entire match bickering with the line judge and talking to himself like a lunatic and playing at a breakneck pace (and serving the hell out of the ball) and while Tsitsipas had his chances, he just couldn't break Kyrgios's menacing serve.
The Joy of Joy
I'm starting to understand Joy Williams a bit more-- I just finished The Quick and the Dead and her fragmented moments and motifs are starting to make sense; Annabel, Alice, and Corvus are three precocious girls linked by grief-- all of them have lost parents to terrible tragedy-- and they wander through a nameless desert town-- volunteering at a grim nursing home, forging strange relationships with older people, navigating a big game hunter's taxidermy museum . . . and all through, the living and the dead interact, and man and nature push against each other in strange oppressive ways . . . once again, the world is on the verge of something apocalyptic and these girls realize this more than the adults who are blinder by their petty thoughts.
Victory . . . But At What Cost? At What Cost?
I beat Dr. Michael Atkin today at tennis 7-5-- it was a grueling match and I rarely get the best of him (he's the quickest 40 year old this side of the Raritan) and then I had to bike home from the match (because Ian took the van to work) and I saw my wife's car parked on the road but she wasn't in the house or the yard (though the shed was open) and I yelled around to see if she was home, but she wasn't inside-- and then a few minutes later she poked her head in the house and said, "You really didn't see me painting the front porch? You biked right past me? RIGHT past me!" and she was correct-- I didn't see her, or the entire painting set-up-- the match took away all my noticing skills (and I don't have many to begin with) and if the police would have interrogated me I would have swore up and down, on my grandmother's grave, that my wife was NOT in the driveway-- and that's why I don't believe anything anyone says they saw or didn't see because while people may be great at seeing and hitting a bouncy yellow ball, they're not so great at seeing other stuff.