The Funhole is No Fun

The Cipher by Kathe Koja is one of the weirdest, darkest, most disturbing things I've ever read. It was originally published in 1991 and it reeks of grunge. The original title was "The Funhole," which is what Nicholas and Nakota have discovered in the storage room down the hall. 

Blackhole fun.

After a series of bizarre experiments with the hole-- spearheaded by Nakota-- Nicholas ends up with a second funhole in his hand. And things keep getting weirder. The tone is dark, dank, and ambiguous. I'm not sure if I recommend this book, but it was impossible to put down.

Here are a few quotations to give you the idea of the tone:

These days she must really be gnawing them, and I wondered if the hand had bitten nails too. I’d read that nails kept growing, after death, a little while. “Who bites the nails of the dead?” I said, silly sonorous voice, and was rewarded with one of Nakota’s rarest smiles, a grin of genuine amusement. “I do,” she said, and went on fishing. 

You can get used to being wrong all the time; it takes all the responsibility out of things. 

I was so tired of hating myself. But I was so good at it, it was such a comfortable way to be, goddamn fucking flotsam on the high seas, the low tide, a little wad of nothing shrugging and saying Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t know it was loaded, I didn’t think things would turn out this way. It’s so easy to be nothing. 

And a moment oddly resonant of now . . .

All bodies are, in some sense; engines driven by the health or disease of their owners, jackets of flesh that are the physical sum of their wearers. But to become your disease? To become the consumption itself?

High School + COVID + Math = Hot-Zone Mess

Here's some basic math so you can get a grip on the back-to-school situation in New Jersey. For the past week, 426 cases of COVID-19 have been blossoming in The Garden State each day. On average. And depending on what source you check, the numbers can be higher than this. 

These positive tests are accumulating while bars and restaurants and gyms and schools are closed. 

The population of New Jersey is 8.82 million, but for the sake of making the math easy, we'll round the population up to nine million.

In comparison, Germany has a population of 83 million. Nearly ten times the population of New Jersey. Germany is also generating around 400-500 cases a day. Though Germany is 10x our size, they are "very concerned" with this number of cases per day. So while New Jersey may have this under control in comparison to Florida and Arizona, we do NOT have this actually under control.

Let's look at the math, see what will happen statistically if we send everyone back to school (if you don't want to look at the math, the Superintendent of South Brunswick High School has written a very compelling, non-mathematical argument of why it is too soon to open).

For the sake of easy arithmetic, we'll say that Jersey is germinating 3000 new positive tests each week. Obviously, there are far more than 3000 people in New Jersey that have COVID at any given time. Some people are asymptomatic and some have less severe symptoms. Some didn't get tested.

There may be ten times as many people with the virus as the testing indicates, but I can't even get into those numbers . . . they would be nuts.

COVID is transmissible before you have a fever, while you have a fever-- which can last from a couple of days to a couple of weeks-- and then it's still transmissible after the fever has broken. It is recommended that you quarantine for ten days once the fever naturally breaks. So a week's worth of COVID cases is probably contagious for around two weeks after that. The point is this: the five hundred or so cases that test positive each day in New Jersey don't just disappear a day later. They pile up.

Understand that all these numbers underestimate the actual prevalence of the virus. 

In a three week period, at the very least, 9000 people in New Jersey are going to test positive for COVID-19. Many more will actually be contagious. But we'll work with 9000 because that's approximately .1 percent of our population. 

One in every thousand New Jerseyans. 

Doesn't sound like much . . . until you put people in school.

Of course, far more than one in a thousand residents will be contagious in any three week period, but we'll use that very low number to illustrate my point.

New Jersey has lots of huge high schools. 

34 of them have over 2000 students. 

I teach in one of these schools: East Brunswick High School. We have over two thousand students (and that's just grades 10-12). We have over 200 adult employees. All crammed into an old, cobbled together building with crowded hallways, poor ventilation, and no central air-conditioning. 

If you had a school of exactly one student, using our simple mathematical model, there's a one in a thousand chance that your student has COVID (in any three week period).

But if you have 2000+ students in a high school, there is almost no chance that all people inside are NOT going to have the virus. One easy way to estimate this is to multiply 999/1000 times itself two thousand times. Then subtract that percentage from one hundred percent. You get 87%. That's the chance on any given day that some student is going to have COVID in a 2000 person high school. This isn't taking into account the teachers and janitors and guidance counselors and coaches and trainers and all the parents and child study teams and other humans that come into the building or work in the building. It's not taking into account the asymptomatic and mild cases. It's not taking into account sports, the possibility of playing teams from other towns. So any large school is probably going to have two or three or five or ten people with COVID in the building. Probably more.

Some schools might get lucky for a short period of time, but it won't last. It's statistically impossible. The virus will be present. It has to be. One in a thousand is a low estimate, but these high schools contain many thousands of people. Indoors, for long periods of time. So the virus will spread. That's what the virus does, even when schools are NOT open. Even in the summer.

So what happens when we open?

There's nothing like a school to harbor germs and spread sickness. In fact, schools are the germiest place on earth. Teaching is the germiest job.

Here's some research on this:

When Gerba and other University of Arizona researchers studied the desks, computers, and phones from various professions, teachers wrecked the curve.

Teachers had six times more germs in their workspace than accountants, the second-place finisher, with slightly cleaner desks but five-and-a-half times more germs on their phones, nearly twice as many germs on their computer mice and nearly 27 times more germs on their computer keyboards than the other professions studied.

The reason for all the germs is, of course, the reason why the teachers are there in the first place.

"Kids' desktops are really bad, too," Gerba said. "Probably the dirtiest object in a classroom is a kid's desktop."

During a typical school year, I get sick a couple of times. A cold or two, perhaps bronchitis, a stomach bug, occasionally strep, and the one year I didn't get the flu shot, I got H1N1. I used to think this was normal for adults, but now I realize it's not. 

Since the lockdown, I have not been sick at all. Not even a sniffle. The last time I was sick was February. I had an awful cough for two weeks and a fever. It may have been COVID, though I tested negative for antibodies (that test isn't supposed to be accurate). The teacher across the hall from me had COVID . . . so who knows? The point is, when you are in a huge school, there's stuff going around all the time. It's a petri dish. 

I used to think this was a perk of the job. My immune system is so strong! It's dealt with everything! 

Now I think it's a bargaining chip. We are going to be on the front line of this pandemic and we've been on the front line of general sickness and we should be compensated for it, with money and health benefits. I never really considered this until now. Many of us work in hot, crowded, poorly ventilated buildings, and-- unlike the meatpackers that have been sacrificed during this pandemic-- we have a union. 

It's going to be quite a clash.

I understand that it's hard to wrap your head around this because it's so statistical. We all really want things to go back to normal, the economy to open, schools to open, etc. It sucks. 

But 1 in every 550 people has died in New Jersey. That's significant. Many of these people were old and/or sick, but not all of them. We've had over 182,000 cases and nearly 16,000 deaths. So nearly nine percent of the people that tested positive died. That's an insanely high rate of death. Yes, many of them were in nursing homes, but lately, according to recent hospitalization data in the New York Times:

Adults aged 18 to 49 now account for more hospitalized cases than people aged 50 to 64 or those 65 and older.

Again, this is all happening with schools closed, bars closed, restaurants closed, gyms closed.

If you haven't felt the pernicious power of this virus, you are lucky. You are probably also fairly well off economically, you probably have the ability to work from home, you probably don't live in a multi-generational house or apartment, you might not have a lot of underlying health conditions, and you probably don't work in an essential service, as a grocery store employer or meatpacker or a nurse. 

You might not know people in those situations. 

So to understand the situation, you need to study the numbers.

You also need to understand that schools are the social-class blender of many towns. Kids from mansions and kids from apartments mingle. Kids who spent the summer in quarantine hang out with kids who worked all summer. Kids with their own bedroom in their own large suburban house come to learn with kids who live in crowded multi-generation households. And kids from different towns go to battle against each other on the pitch or court or field . . . the COVID permutations of high school sporting events are incalculable.

While kids probably won't die from COVID, they will pass it around. Especially high school kids. And then other people will die. COVID is not as dangerous as Ebola, so it's hard to put it in perspective. Death rates lag behind infection rates, so once again, you've got to look at the data.

The final arbiter is that many more people are dying than "normal." This is with schools closed. People who think this is an overreaction need to understand these numbers. The death toll is the final statistic. The bodies are piling up. And we're probably undercounting. 

Here are some numbers about "excess deaths" from the white paper I linked to.  Not only are there many many more deaths than usual this year-- and these deaths are directly attributable to COVID-- but there are also extra deaths above and beyond the COVID deaths. 

Results: There were approximately 781,000 total deaths in the United States from March 1 to May 30, 2020, representing 122,300 more deaths than would typically be expected at that time of year. There were 95,235 reported deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 from March 1 to May 30, 2020. The number of excess all-cause deaths was 28% higher than the official tally of COVID-19–reported deaths during that period.

Conclusions and Relevance: Excess deaths provide an estimate of the full COVID-19 burden and indicate that official tallies likely undercount deaths due to the virus. 

There's going to be a vaccine soon, and then things will go back to some sort of new (and hopefully more vigilant) normal. But this has exposed some serious problems in our infrastructure and preparedness. Most of our public schools are hot, crowded, poorly-ventilated places where large numbers of humans congregate without much thought to hygiene and the spread of sickness. 

Elementary schools may have a shot to open because you can keep the numbers very small. The Daily did a good podcast on how other countries (with the virus under control) have had some success in elementary schools. 

We may be able to send small pods of kids back to high school. Perhaps special education students and others that need school the most, but trying to parade several thousand bodies through a typical high school-- even on a rotating schedule, even with masks-- is going to perpetuate and accelerate the spread of COVID. No question about that.

I know people don't want to hear this. I'm not happy with my math. It's inconvenient and awful. But that's the story, right now. If we want schools to open, we're going to have to get the case count way, way down.

Israel tried to reopen schools on a large scale and this probably fueled a new outbreak. 

Sweden has kept schools open, and they have the highest death rate (12%) of any European country and several teachers have died of COVID.

I don't envy the administrators and politicians that have to make these decisions, but if you look at the simplest of math, while underestimating the amount of COVID in the population, there is still only one conclusion:

The fall is going to be a hot-zone mess.

The Biggest Game in the Wildest Town

Though it didn't help my poker game, I really enjoyed Al Alvarez's classic portrait of the 1981 World Series of Poker: The Biggest Game in Town. I recommend it to everyone, whether you play poker or not. It's beautifully written, and it hearkens back to the end of a simpler, wilder time. A time when being a gambler meant loving the action more than knowing game theory.

I've been playing some low stakes poker during the pandemic, and while I'm not proficient yet, I do know a little. This comes from reading a bunch of books, my favorite way of learning. I read Gus Hansen's swashbuckling account of his 2007 Aussie Millions victory Every Hand Revealed and Phil Gordon's informative Little Green Book and a couple strategy books by "Action" Dan Harrington and some mathematical stuff by David Sklansky and Ed Miller.

While these instructional books are competently written, they are pretty boring (aside from Gus Hansen's book . . . his tone borders on adorable; he uses lots of exclamation points).

While the purpose of most poker books is to convince you that with a little bit of math and a little bit of strategy, you can hold your own at the table, The Biggest Game in Town takes you to another planet. A planet where you don't belong at all, where the action is astronomical, even in 1981 dollars. The money amounts sound huge by today's standards. These guys were nuts.

We are in Vegas, an odd and insular place:

J. B. Priestley once remarked that in the Southwest you are more aware of geology than of history. The land is too big, too old, too parched, too obdurate; the only alternative to submission is defiance . . .

The book focuses on what is known as "the Cadillac of Poker," Texas Hold'em. 

Crandall Addington, a supremely elegant Texan, who regularly sets the sartorial standard for the tournament, and has said, “Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you.” 

The mix of cards and golf and high-stakes gambling reminds me a bit of the Jordan documentary, "The Last Dance." 

James "Slim" Bouler would fit right into this world.

 Yet some of the gamblers here, who are worth nothing compared with those people, will bet a hundred thousand without blinking. Most of them are average golfers—they shoot in the middle eighties—but at the end of a match they regularly settle up for fifty or a hundred thousand dollars. Even the golf pros don’t play for that kind of money, and if they did they probably wouldn’t be able to hold a putter. If a golf pro who shot seventy played a gambler who shot eighty-two and gave him the right handicap, he would lose all the time. The pressure would be too much for him; for the gambler, it is a stimulus.”

This is the attitude you need to be a great gambler:

"If I had too much respect for the money I couldn’t play properly. Chips are like a bag of beans; they have a relative value and are worthless until the game is over. That is the only attitude you can have in high-stakes poker."

This is how you keep score:

"Money is just the yardstick by which you measure your success. In Monopoly, you try to win all the cash by the end of the game. It’s the same in poker: you treat chips like play money and don’t think about it until it’s all over.”

The book is full of adages like this:

“The way I feel about those pieces of green paper is, you can’t take them with you and they may not have much value in five years’ time, but right now I can take them and trade them in for pleasure, or to bring pleasure to other people. If they had wanted you to hold on to money, they’d have made it with handles on.”

Sorry that I'm not attributing quotations, but you get the idea. The old-time poker guys like Alvarez, who is a British poet-- something foreign and innocuous. They love bending his ear about poker strategy and philosophy. 

It’s the downside of a gambler that ruins him, not his upside. When you’re playing well, you can be as good as anybody, but how you handle yourself under pressure when you’re playing badly is the character test that separates the men from the boys.

Funny and true.

Perhaps the Freudians are right, after all, when they talk of gambling as sublimation. In the words of another addict, “Sex is good, but poker lasts longer.”

As to why I enjoy poker, Alvarez nails it on the head. I'm playing for small amounts of money, but I love the competition.  

For many of the top professionals, poker has become a substitute for sport—something that they turn to when their physical edge has gone, but that demands the same concentration, skill, and endurance and provides a channel for all their bottled-up competitiveness. “Discipline and stamina are what poker is all about, especially when you’re competing with top players in games that go on a long time,” said Brunson.

My knees are only going to last so long, but hopefully, my mind and my nerves will last a bit longer. 

This accords with Jack Binion’s theory that the top poker players are not only “mental athletes” but also former athletes, who turn to gambling when they no longer have the physical ability or the inclination for sport. “It’s a question of excitement,” Binion said. “Gambling is a manufactured thrill—you intensify the anticipation of an event by putting money on it.

Reading . . . Books and Otherwise

Like many of you, I've been reading a lot during this pandemic. I've already read thirty-five books in 2020. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Not only have I been reading books, but my family has also subscribed to the New York Times, for obvious reasons. I'm normally not a newspaper person-- I don't think the day-to-day grind of following all the "stories" the media deems important in the 24-hour news cycle is healthy nor is it efficient use of time.

In the old days, I liked to catch up on the news by chatting with my colleagues in the English Office and my students. And I would read some magazines, but they were always way behind. That was fine. But things have changed. 

I still like reading magazines because they often address broader topics-- I've been reading the usuals: The Week, The Atlantic, and Wired-- but now the articles are more of a summary and a broader perspective on stuff I've been following.  

I'm not sure if it's a good thing, but each and every day I've been reading statistics and charts and numbers about the virus. Mainly in the New York Times. I think the information in The Times is trustworthy. But this information always opens up other questions, and then I end up in the black hole of the internet, something I usually stay away from. Most stuff out in the wild is just not vetted or accurate. 

But how many people usually die-- on average-- each day in the United States? How many people a day are dying now, during the pandemic? What is the increase?  

Try to find a solid answer that. It's difficult. 

I've been listening more and more to podcasts and less and less to music. And reading lots of text strands, from worried teachers. Basically, I've been ingesting a lot of information. I'm not sure what good it does. But we are living in the weirdest, most historical moment of my lifetime. 

The only other time in my life that felt like this was when my wife and I were teaching in Damascus, Syria from 2000-2003. We experienced 9/11 and the Second Intifada and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq while living in the Middle East. It felt like we were in the middle of something. Like now, there were school closings and the constant flow of information, but this is the difference: during that time, life was far more normal than not normal, occasionally punctuated by wild news events. Right now, it's the opposite. It's all wild news events punctuated by small amounts of normalcy.

I've been doing a few things to escape this information overload, which also involve reading.  For the past couple of months, I've been doing the New York Times crossword (and the mini . . . if you're not doing there mini, you need to. Get on my leaderboard! Try to beat Stacey and Gary!) So I've been reading clues. You get better at deciphering them. And I've been playing low-stakes texas hold'em online. So I've been reading cards and hands. 

But the best escape is still a good old fashioned book. 

I recently read these three very excellent and very different books:

1) The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez

2) The Cipher by Kathe Koja

3) Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosley

I will eventually write individual reviews of each, and include my Kindle notes and quotes, but here's the skinny on each book.

The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez is the best-written book on poker ever. I've read a shitload of poker books recently, and most of them are helpful (and some of them are well-written). The Alvarez book will NOT help you play poker better. Alfred Alvarez is a British poet who somehow gets assigned to cover the 1981 World Series of Poker and writes a gritty ode to old-time gambling and the people who populate that world. It's awesome and compelling.

The Cipher by Kathe Koja is a gross, weird, and frustratingly ambiguous horror novel. It was published in 1991 and it will bring you back to the age of grunge. 

 Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosley is the most topical of the three, though it is set in 1964. Easy Rawlins is on a mission to help find and retrieve a friend's son: Brawly Brown. But Brawly has been radicalized by a far-left African American group. The Urban Revolutionary Party. While the Party has some good intentions, there is a fringe element of the group that Brawly has gotten involved with that is going to use violence to achieve its goals. The novel depicts the conflict between the black folks in Los Angeles on how to achieve equality and power in America, and-- as usual-- Easy Rawlins walks the tightrope between the gangsters, the radicals, the old-timers, and the police.

Nothing Says Welcome Home More Than Spoiled Cheese

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

It looked like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

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

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

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

And a power outage, which probably caused this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broken fridge tip . . . call The Appliance Doctor.

Everything is More Difficult Than It Looks on YouTube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do Not Resuscitate (the voice of Kurt Vonnegut)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Ms. Etiquette:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Dave "My Manners Matter" from Jersey

Double Beach Vacation (During a Pandemic)

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

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

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

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

Par for the course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5) Lola really enjoyed playing in the warm surf.

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

Zoom in on his face in this picture . . .

Actually, I'll do it for you.

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

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

These guys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Has she earned this awful task? 

I think not, she already does too much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh no.

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

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

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

Unfortunately, Catherine doesn't eat tuna.

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

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

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

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

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

Warning: Requires Ancillary Brainpower

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Respect the Community Garden

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

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

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

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

Is this racketeering?

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

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

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

Gods of Tennis? Hello?

Gods of Tennis, I Beseech Thee . . .

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

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

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

Or do I have to give up something dearer?

Like egg sandwiches?

I am waiting for a sign.

Alex Goes All-in on a Bike Ride to Princeton

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

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

1) it was too late in the day

2) there were supposed to be thunderstorms

3) he wasn't wearing biking shorts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Gyms = No Rocks (Hypothetically)

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

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

An Old Lady Touches My Balls

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

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

I thanked her, but I was slightly appalled.

She touched my balls!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growing Pains

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

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

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

I ran up from my study.

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

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

Glass was everywhere.

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

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

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

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

Father's Day itself was less eventful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I also learned the word "ansible."

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

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

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

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

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

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

ITEM NAME: Thoughts on the Galaxy—Chapter Three

AUTHOR: oshet-Tekshereket esk-Rahist as- Ehas Kirish isket-Ishkriset

ENCRYPTION: 0

TRANSLATION PATH: [Reskitkish:Klip] 

TRANSCRIPTION: 0 NODE IDENTIFIER: 9874-457-28, Rosemary Harper

When meeting an individual of another species for the first time, there is no sapient in the galaxy who does not immediately take inventory of xyr physiological differences. These are always the first things we see. How does xyr skin differ? Does xe have a tail? How does xe move? How does xe pick things up? What does xe eat? Does xe have abilities that I don’t? Or vice versa? These are all important distinctions, but the more important comparison is the one we make after this point. Once we’ve made our mental checklists of variations, we begin to draw parallels—not between the alien and ourselves, but between the alien and animals. The majority of us have been taught since childhood that voicing these comparisons is derogatory, and indeed, many of the racial slurs in colloquial use are nothing more than common names for nonsapient species (for example, the Human term lizard, to describe Aandrisks; the Quelin term tik, to describe Humans; the Aandrisk term sersh, to describe Quelin).

Though these terms are offensive, examining them objectively reveals a point of major biological interest. All demeaning implications aside, we Aandrisks do look like some of the native reptilian species of Earth. Humans do look like larger, bipedal versions of the hairless primates that plague the sewer systems of Quelin cities. Quelin do bear some resemblance to the snapping crustaceans found all over Hashkath. And yet, we evolved separately, and on different worlds. My people and the lizards of Earth do not share an evolutionary tree, nor do Humans and tiks, nor Quelin and sersh. Our points of origin are spread out across the galaxy. We hail from systems that remained self-contained contained for billions of years, with evolutionary clocks that all began at different times. How is it possible that when meeting our galactic neighbors for the first time, we are all instantly reminded of creatures back home—or in some cases, of ourselves?

The question becomes even more complicated when we start to look beyond our superficial differences to the wealth of similarities. All sapient species have brains. Let us consider that seemingly obvious fact for a moment. Despite our isolated evolutionary paths, we all developed nervous systems with a central hub. We all have internal organs. We all share at least some of the same physical senses: hearing, touch, taste, smell, sight, electroreception. The grand majority of sapients have either four or six limbs. Bipedalism and opposable digits, while not universal, are shockingly common. We are all made from chromosomes and DNA, which themselves are made from a select handful of key elements. We all require a steady intake of water and oxygen to survive (though in varying quantities). We all need food. We all buckle under atmospheres too thick or gravitational fields too strong. We all die in freezing cold or burning heat. We all die, period. How can this be? How is it that life, so diverse on the surface, has followed the same patterns throughout the galaxy—not just in the current era, but over and over again?

We see this pattern in the ruins of the Arkanic civilization at Shessha, or the ancient fossil beds on the now-barren world of Okik. This is a question that scientific communities have wrestled with for centuries, and it seems unlikely that an answer will present itself in the near future. There are many theories—asteroids carrying amino acids, supernovae blowing organic material out into neighboring systems. And yes, there is the fanciful story of a hyperadvanced sapient race “seeding” the galaxy with genetic material. I admit that the “Galactic Gardener” hypothesis has fueled the plots of some of my favorite science fiction sims, but scientifically speaking, it is nothing more than wishful thinking. You cannot have a theory without evidence, and there is absolutely none that supports this idea (no matter what the conspiracy theorists lurking on Linking feeds would have you believe).

For my part, I think that the best explanation is the simplest one. The galaxy is a place of laws. Gravity follows laws. The life cycles of stars and planetary systems follow laws. Subatomic particles follow laws. We know the exact conditions that will cause the formation of a red dwarf, or a comet, or a black hole. Why, then, can we not acknowledge that the universe follows similarly rigid laws of biology? We have only ever discovered life on similarly sized terrestrial moons and planets, orbiting within a narrow margin around hospitable stars. If we all evolved on such kindred worlds, why is it such a surprise that our evolutionary paths have so much in common? Why can we not conclude that the right combination of specific environmental factors will always result in predictable physical adaptations? With so much evidence staring us in the face, why does this debate continue?

The answer, of course, is that the laws of biology are nearly impossible to test, and scientists hate that. We can launch probes to test theories of gravity and space-time. We can put rocks in pressure cookers and split atoms in classrooms. But how does one test a process as lengthy and multifaceted as evolution? There are labs today that struggle to find the funding to keep a project running for three standards—imagine the funding needed to run a project for millennia! As it stands, there is no way for us to efficiently test the conditions that produce specific biological adaptations, beyond the most rudimentary observations (aquatic climates produce fins, cold climates produce fur or blubber, and so on).

There have been bold attempts at creating software that could accurately predict evolutionary paths, such as the Aeluon-funded Tep Preem Project (which, though well-intentioned, has yet to unravel the mysteries of biological law). The problem with such endeavors is that there are too many variables to consider, many of which we remain ignorant of. We simply don’t have enough data, and the data that we do possess is still beyond our understanding. We are experts of the physical galaxy. We live on terraformed worlds and in massive orbital habitats. We tunnel through the sublayer to hop between stellar systems. We escape planetary gravity with the ease of walking out the front door. But when it comes to evolution, we are hatchlings, fumbling with toys. I believe this is why many of my peers still cling to theories of genetic material scattered by asteroids and supernovae. In many ways, the idea of a shared stock of genes drifting through the galaxy is far easier to accept than the daunting notion that none of us may ever have the intellectual capacity to understand how life truly works.