Monday, March 18, 2024

Another Spring Break come and gone

Took Graham back up to his dorm last night after dinner, marking the end of spring break. Quite typically, Graham came home, slept late, watched TV and movies with us, had dinner with family, and applied himself a little to the process of looking for a summer job. He couldn't be bothered to look for an apartment since he and his future roommate already have one which they judge good enough, even though I figure he'd likely be happier a little closer to downtown. Not a priority for Graham. He interacted with his girlfriend briefly when she brought some homemade Chinese deserts by the park behind our house.

As always, it was unfailingly pleasant to have him around. He's a fine young man. He even stepped in and remembered to do his normal chores with minimal prompting. I am sometimes a little mystified by the lack of diversity of the things that drive him. He continues to work hard to learn. He was reading Chinua Achebe's memoir over break and then some book for a class. He loves Quiz Bowl and his friends and teammates. Really he loves his communities -- including the chess and robotics communities.

I by contrast at his age was a hot mess of ambition, lust, feelings of insufficiency, desire for status and glory. I wanted to do everything and beat everyone at everything while seeming nonchalant and casual about it. As a result I was killing myself and bouncing off of walls. I've only gotten a little better, honestly. I have reduced the number of ways in which I gradually kill myself, which has slowed the process. By sheerest good fortune I've perhaps done a better job at this than many, but nobody's really counting. 

There is much to be said for Graham's approach. We are happy to have him so close.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

American Fiction

Continuing on with our family movie week, we watched American Fiction over the weekend. If you haven't read the plot summary, a black author and literature professor (Thelonius, but he goes by Monk) gets in trouble at his university for traumatizing his fragile students by writing the n-word on the blackboard and is rusticated back to Boston for a spell. Since his high-brow books aren't having commercial success, and he sees another very well-educated Black woman author selling tons of books by publishing bullshit tales of blacks on the street full of Black patois ("I axed him fo some chicken" and so on), he gets drunk and writes a parodic novel from the point of view of a streetwise felon. Hilarious hijinks ensue.

The backdrop to all of this, which takes up most of the screen time, is conflict within his high-achieving family, from whom. His sister gets sick and dies while she and Monk are out for drinks, which was a bit far-fetched but one has to move the plot along. His recently out of the closet gay brother, a plastic surgeon out in LA, comes home from the funeral. Their mother has Alzheimer's coming on. Monk's always been the emotionally removed one, which causes problems in a new promising relationship with the charming neighbor across the street.

In short, real family shit of the sort one sees too little of in movies these days. Unironic and earnest, though punctuated with laughs for sure. Altogether the movie was like a throwback to the 70s and 80s before blockbusters and franchises came to unrelentingly dominate the screen, when Norman Lear permeated the zeitgeist and Kramer vs Kramer and Ordinary People won awards. Very refreshing.

Plus the fact that white people are almost entirely marginalized and treated as stereotypically earnest idiots. There was a lot of truth in there, it must be owned.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Doctor Zhivago

From our running list of potential shows and programs to watch, Graham selected Doctor Zhivago, which I had put on there some time ago after he had shown an interest in the Zhang Limou-Gong Li series of historical Chinese movies from the 90s. I think he had seen Farewell My Concubine. Really the old David Lean epics are their own thing.


Of course it lost a lot by being viewed on the small screen, and is a little overwrought by contemporary standards, but it nevertheless remains a worthy classic, and I'm glad Graham chose it for some spring break viewing. More than anything, the unironic forthrightness and earnestness of the characters -- the absence of snark -- takes one back. We've come a long way from that and it's good both to be reminded that it was once an ideal and for kids to be exposed to it.

Personally, I was surprised to see just how well the three potential suitors (Komarovsky-Zhivago-Antipov/Strelnikov) and their treatment of Lara, the Julie Christie lead character, fits into the schematics of my dissertation. I can't recall if I thought about it at the time and rejected it or (more likely) was just too lazy to read the book.

Speaking of, I really need to read more Russian. Maybe a Chekhov story. But now it's time to grind out a little Japanese on DuoLingo before getting to work.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Acceleration in the wrong direction

First thing this morning I got a text from a dearly beloved client letting me know that her cancer has been accelerating and that it will kill her soon. Meanwhile, a medical specialist let me know that we'd be doing kidney ultrasounds on me annuallyish for the rest of my life to keep an eye on some "cysts" in there that are a normal side effect of a medication I took for a while to manage a medical condition. Also, per the colonoscopy guy (whatever you call him) I am on the "3 to 5 year plan" for colonoscopies due to some "polyps" they encountered down there. My internal medicine person interprets that as the 3-year plan, and I work for her.

All this medical shit is piling up over here.

Meanwhile, I went to an ENT yesterday due to some head stuffed uppedness (not to get too technical) I've been experiencing since skiing in Colorado. She had no magical fix but my comforted me that the OTC stuff I've used cleared out all the wax and that since my symptoms have 90-95% abated, nothing is too wrong in there. On the way out a guy about my age or maybe a little older had accompanied his mom, who had a cochlear implant, to the doctor. He told her he'd have to take her back for another check up in a month or so. She was fine with that, then she looked at me and said "before I got this thing I hadn't heard out of this ear for a long time!" She was psyched. It was a beautiful and sunny day. I need to stay on that bandwidth, lest I descend ever further into Andy Rooneydom.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

On housing as an investment

Clients often daydream about buying second properties as investments. It seems so logical. For primary residences, we hold them a long time and they seem to rise in value really quickly.

But there are lots of problems with this line of thinking. First off, we overestimate the rate at which they compound. Mary's family bought its house in Larchmont in 1974 for $87k and sold it in 2020 for right at $2,000,000. It seems like a fabulous return. But annualized, it's a 7.2% nominal (not inflation-adjusted) return. Meanwhile the S&P 500, over the same period, returned 11.3%. (though that's a pretax return, taxes on the dividends and capital gains/distributions aren't factored in)

Moreover, there are ongoing expenses like maintenance, taxes (very significant ones for the Berridges) and insurance which capital markets investments don't have. Then again, people who choose capital markets as investments but rent instead of owning have analogous expenses, so maybe that side of things is a wash. Except.... people owning homes in high tax jurisdictions will continue paying the high taxes (for which they get fewer services once their kids graduate from high school) due to inertia, emotional attachment to their homes and neighbors, and high transaction costs).

There is one very important function to that inertia, though, that helps homes serve as stores and accumulators of value. It is often said that not timing the market but time in the market is the most important determinant of returns. If you can hold on to something, for example an S&P 500 index fund, for a long time, it will compound for you. All the emotional things and high transaction costs that keep people in homes for a long time allow compounding to take place.

There's lots more to this argument. I apologize, by the way, for two financialish posts in a row. I know that's a little aberrant. I'll get back to the good old stuff soon enough.

Also, I drifted away from the question of second homes as invesments, which is really a different thing. I'd come back to that sometime in the future but probably you could give a fuck. and rightly so.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

On ESG or wokeness in capitalism

In recent years the Republicans have been pushing back hard against ESG (environmental, social and governance) in investing and corporate governance, branding it "wokeness" in capitalism. They have had some success. At the very highest level I have interpreted the turn towards ESG in corporate governance as a reflection of the monied portion of the electorate getting annoyed and frustrated at the inability of our legislatures to work together to compromise. Additionally, I think the educated have been frustrated with the way that demographic trends (the tendency of productive economies to cluster ever more tightly in and around a few cities) have intersected with constitutional provisions (the electoral college) and sheer Republican craftiness/genius in capturing state legislatures and then gerrymandering the fuck out of everything.


So if the affluent haven't been able to get the government to do what they want it to, we've turned to other means (ESG and shareholder proposals) to push corporations to effect broader policy aims that we'd like to see come to pass. One of the big problems here is that people who work in the private sector on balance do so to earn money and thereby advance their own private economic motives. So using ESG to effect public goods is pushing these people and institutions in a direction not native to them.

Another big problem is that all these ESG proposals compelling corporations to report on this or that metric create mini-bureaucracies inside the companies. And if the ESG aims sought are non-standardized, they are bespoke mini-bureaucracies. It is not unlike the effect of the Trump administration preference for bi-lateral treaties (US-Thailand, US-Malaysia, US-Vietnam, US-Mexico etc) instead of multilateral ones (TPP, NAFTA). These create more regimes for corporations to comply with and therefore inherently raise compliance costs, which are passed on to consumers.

Then again, effecting social change through the actions of multiple on multiple stakeholders (ESG campaigners vs. corporations) has an inherently bottom up feel to it. We know that ultimately change is very hard to force top down. It can be led top down by great leaders at moments of clarity and consensus, but it cannot be forced. Bottom up bends the needle more sustainably and meaningfully over time. 

The pushback from the right is all part of the great contest of ideas and is ultimately fruitful.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Respecting Trump voters

And so, we have the election nobody wanted. Biden vs. Trump, again. Ever the master of messaging and reading the public, we must give him that,* Trump has been able to cast the "lawfare" strategy waged against him as another instance of his victimization, which justifies his return to the White House. Never shy of going all the way over the top and back down again, he even likens himself to Navalny.

My gut says that the resonance of Trump's victimization inheres in the way his electorate feels like he represents them precisely because they have been disrespected and maligned. I'm sure this point has been made a million times in op-eds I've ignored, so forgive me for repeating it. One way to defang it, therefore, is to go out of our way to respect his voters, however crazy their Trump regalia look, however wacky the things they say may be. The video outtakes I continue to see from late-night TV shows about how stupid Trump voters are may keep ratings up and help networks and local affiliates sell ads, but they aren't helping our cause. Instead of focusing on how stupid the other side is we have to focus on just respecting them where they are and showing them we're not ourselves godless pedophile demons.


*Though reading Bob Woodward's Fear, about Trump in the White House, makes clear to me how much the insight is Steve Bannon's rather than Trump's.

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

Belated Barbenheimer

The weekend before last Mary and I finally caught up with the rest of the world and watched Barbie followed by Oppenheimer. I came out preferring Barbie, though each of them could have easily been cut by 20-30 minutes and nobody would have left feeling ripped off. In fact, the theater owners would have made more money. It is a sad fact that directors these days feel like a topic has been ennobled, when in fact all they are doing is pissing me off.

Barbie was in the end fun and clever with some great deets. Oppenheimer fairly ground the classic theme of genius/madness/autism into a very fine pulp. Then stomped on it a couple of times for good measure. Matt Damon was good, as always.

Mary and I would do ourselves some good socially if we went and watched these things at the same time as everyone else. Then we could participate in discussions at parties and whatnot. But we are an ornery pair and prefer to wait until they can be rented cheaply on a streaming platform which can pay me some money if it wants me to name it.

Monday, March 04, 2024

On writing for more people

On LinkedIn recently I saw a guy from my co-working space posting about how he had written for an impressive number of days in a row on the platform and how his content had been seen by 10s of millions of people and he has over a hundred thousand followers. All of which has helped him raise his income.

He is, not surprisingly, a sales coach.

I confess I am a little intrigued by all of this, but transitioning to that kind of mode would be a huge shift for me. It's hard to tell if I am just bedazzled by all the numbers, as yall know I am a sucker for numbers.

Meanwhile, I am pretty much worn out now from a weekend of being with people. My sister came to town and stayed with us for the weekend, while Mary's brother Rob also arrived in town and will be residing in the house just across the lake parking lot from us. Which is lovely, but also potentially hugely disruptive to my well-established rhythm.

Saturday, March 02, 2024

Getting ready

Hanging out on the couch in my study preparing for the arrival of two siblings: Leslie is coming to stay with us for a couple of days before going to mom's for a week, while Rob is also arriving with the plan of staying for a month on a trial basis in an apartment across the LFA parking lot from us, in John and Barbara's house, also incidentally the former home of a high school girlfriend, also name Mary. I'm looking forward to seeing both of them.

But I'd be lying if I said that my anticipation of Rob's arrival wasn't mixed with some apprehension. He's gonna be living awful close. Mary and I spend a couple of decades raising our delightful children, who are now mostly launched into the world and thriving (though obviously we're happy to have Graham here at UNC). But we are also happy to be on to enjoying the empty nester phase of life and not having default socialization at any time. So we're gonna have to figure out how to establish some norms and boundaries.

Thankfully Rob eats earlier than us and also goes to bed earlier and also really likes his own space, so this should all work out fine. And I have this couch here to retreat to at any time if he and Mary are riffing out on something some evening when I need to be on my own. Let's just hope the need doesn't become too acute to often.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

The Slim Messiah

I have rotated back to the Old Testament for a little while in my Bible journey. Just read through the Song of Songs which is truly sui generis, it really feels like it doesn't belong in the Bible at all.

Continued on into Isaiah, where I was surprised to see references to the messiah (though not by name, just anticipations of the Lord coming in seemingly human form). Which got me to thinking that this was new, I hadn't seen that before in the Old Testament. So I turned to the back of my New Standard edition of the Bible and looked up "messiah". There really wasn't much there from the Old Testament.

Of course, you Google "how many references to the Messiah in the Old Testament" and there is predictably a wide range of answers, the most interesting of which is how the references that there are anticipate details the messiah's arrival and life and therefore prove the prophetic nature of the whole thing and therefore how true it is... This is precisely the type of rabbit hole I ain't going down.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Lifestyle change -- Itchy Boots

While I was out in Colorado my friend Dave turned me on to an amazing series on YouTube: Itchy Boots. This is the video log of a Dutch woman who travels the backroads of the world, pretty much anywhere there's a road, on her motorcycle. I have watched little bits in the Himalayas and also in West Africa and one in Central America. It is pretty amazing. Here is episode 1. 



It needs little commentary, but it does occasion thought. For example, as she travels down nicely paved roads in central Republic of Congo, on the one hand I can understand how people in Africa could give a fuck about Ukraine if China is building them roads. On the other hand, I'd probably have to dig into it a little more deeply because it's entirely possible that the government of Congo went into debt to China to build that thing and that net net the people of Congo are being fleeced to pay for infrastructure they really don't need and can't afford. That is the story of much of China's Belt and Road initiative. 

BTW, this is a lifestyle change because it is starting to usurp time that would be otherwise spent watching scripted TV and/or sports. But there is so much here. She sees so much. Pretty soon I will learn her name.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Canceling the Wall Street Journal

I've been getting paper delivery of the Wall Street Journal for a long time, but I've decided to go online only. I tried to make the change online, but it was impossible to do so. They said they have "too many pricing options to quote prices online", which is total and utter bullshit. Of course they want me to call and and speak to a person so they can try to retain me. Fine, that's business.

But I just tried to call in and it was "outside of our normal business hours" without saying exactly what those hours are. I'm sorry. Also bullshit. The paper has a million paper subscribers and another 2.5 million or so online. They can staff a couple of retention specialists to their call center on weekends. Or they could outsource it to a vendor in the Philippines or something, which is probably what they're doing anyway. It's not always apparent to the naked eye but I am busy during the week. 

Thursday, February 22, 2024

The Funniest Girl in NYC

Really I'm just kind of bookmarking this.

 

Good news, bad news

Went to the dermatologist yesterday for what will, I suppose, be an annual ritual from here on out. On the one hand, unlike last year, they didn't even find any little pre-cancerous doohickeys that they had to zap with a little freeze spray. Apparently they had done so last year. I had forgotten. Once more I've been encouraged to wear sun block more consistently.

On the other hand, I had bad blood pressure readings. I had had a good one when I went to my annual with my general practitioner last month, which caused me to doubt the accuracy of my home blood pressure monitor (which had also been giving bad readings). What this presages, it seems to me, is greater dietary discipline, maybe even cutting back on coffee, less salt, less fat, a higher dose of blood pressure med, all messages I expect to hear from my nephrologist next month. All of this has me a little down.

Mentally of course I remind myself of the good example of my client who has literally been told that cancer will likely kill her in the next year. She has maintained good spirits. Why can't I? 

I'm pretty sure it's just of lot of poor me resentments of feeling like I'm working hard all the time (but not nearly as hard as so many others, like the newcomer to our fair country who delivered the rug Mary ordered to our doorstep this morning at around 7:45 and then hustled back up the stairs to get in his rug and go deliver something else as I was wrapping up round one of morning reading).

Get it in gear, Grouse. Gratitude vs Everything!

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

A new phase

Yesterday I had a call I knew was coming, but which saddened me greatly nonetheless. An old friend and client who has been battling cancer let me know that her most recent round of chemo had failed to shrink her tumors. She asked her primary oncologist how much time she had to live. He told her maybe a year.

This is a person I love dearly. I began to write out the story of our relationship just now, then stopped. It's too early for that. She has good spirits and energy now and a focus on preparing for her children's future and for living the time she has left in as much joy as she can muster, which I am sure will be not a little.

Since this blog is a bit of a selfish space for me, I won't pretend that this isn't a milestone of sorts for me. It's the first time that someone I am this close to is coming face to face with death in this way. But honestly we are back to that moment at which I arrive almost always when writing the blog. The workday moves forward and I with it. Andiamo. 

Monday, February 19, 2024

Presidents' Day

A cursory survey of the Grouse shows me that I have never made this point before, but in principle I think that Presidents' Day follows too hard on the heels of MLKJ Day. It might be better if the holiday were pushed back into March to get a better spread of holidays across the year.

Then again, this morning I'm feeling pretty good about not having a slew of normal work tasks to do. Even if much of the non tennis-playing (you know that's happening) portion of the day will be devoted to getting my ducks in a row for tax season. It will feel good to have done so. Meanwhile, I am easing into the day rather luxuriously, drinking coffee, reading the various magazines that languish on flat surfaces throughout the house, dashing off notes on this question and that, scheming on things I plan to do (wash sheets) and outsource to others (restring and clean up my acoustic guitar) because researching them on YouTube convinced me that I don't have all the tools or knowledge I need to do it best.

Long held tradition would seem to dictate that there should be a third paragraph here to pull together the mildly disparate threads from above and knit them together neatly. The structure for such a paragraph flashed briefly through my mind, then evanesced. Godspeed to it.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

President handing out pizza

When I was taking Graham back up to campus after two mental health days earlier this week I asked him changes at UNC, the installation of the Program in Civic Life or whatever you call it and the departure of Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz for Michigan State. Graham said that he had shaken Guskiewicz's hand something like four times and that he had been out serving pizza to students just a couple of days before his departure was announced. The "new guy," Lee Roberts, by contrast, hadn't been seen at all. And he certainly could have come out for the 40th anniversary of the opening of Davis Library the prior week, where I'm pretty sure pizza or perhaps cake was served. Graham was there.

So we see what makes an impression. And also that free pizza still has a certain allure even when more or less bottomless pizza is available in the dining hall all the time. There's just an eternal magic to it.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Attention Titans

I just happened across a reference to a proposed cage fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg from last summer. I had forgotten all about that little brouhaha. A quick Google confirmed it didn't happen because, basically, Musk wimped out despite some typically boisterous Tweeting.

And there you have one curious bit of modern living in a nutshell. In the attention economy those who can hold our attention are the big winners. Trump and Musk are masters of it, as is Taylor Swift. And so on. It's all kind of a big waste of time except to the extent that it gives us shared discourse to discuss. In a slower information flow world dominated by text, people used to be able to have marginally more serious discussions about more serious topics more frequently. Or so it seems to us with rose-colored, 20/20 hindsight. I'm not sure what's actually true.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

A turning point

Over at Jonathan and Sharon's the other night I was talking to Kip, who had been one of the Pacers coaches back when we ran for the club and had also taught English at the high school. I was recounting our 9th grade track season, really the height of my individual athletic career, when I scored more points than Jonathan and he and I (together with Konanc) scored maybe 80-90% of our overall pretty middling team's points. I scored the most points only because I could do more events than Jonathan (he was limited to running just the mile in meets where he ran the mile, maybe his best distance).

The other salient point here is that I never beat Jonathan once. In meets where we both ran the 400 and the 800, he always beat me. That was no surprise in the 800, which verged on being a distance race, but the 400 was a bit of a surprise. I was more of a sprinter and I think I was faster than him over 400 in 8th grade. 

So there, mixed in with my moment of greatest triumph overall, I was faced with the fact that I really wasn't the best at something I had thought was perhaps my domain. And I think I took it pretty well, even then. I just had to accept then and there that Jonathan was faster than me. We were teammates our interests were aligned and it felt like we were doing something impressive together, us two skinny geeky boys. One thing that made it easy to process and accept was that Jonathan was not from Glen Heights and had never once been mean to me during the more challenging early years.

All in all, I think it was a big developmental moment. 

I think I was pretty careful to never race Jonathan over 200, though. I didn't want to face potential disappointment there. So we'll never know.

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Canvassing in Butner

On Sunday Mary and I made our first foray out onto the campaign trail to knock doors for Terence Everitt for NC Senate and Bryan Cohn for NC House up in Granville County. We ended up with a route in Butner, a town of a little more than 8,000 (though I don't know where they all live, based on what we saw) most famous for the correctional facility where Bernie Madoff lived out his days, having reportedly earned a lot of cred from his fellow prisoners for the sheer amount of money he was able to steal before getting caught.

Certain things I forget about between canvasses in middle- to lower-income neighborhoods came right back at me as we started out. First off, the sense that most of these homes are regarded as little fortresses by their inhabitants. The blinds are always closed. Often the stale smell of cigarettes wafts out at one even through the closed door. The Google Nest doorbell has taken over wherever people have a little money for the upgrade. The ability to see who is actually at the door clearly holds a broad appeal.

So often the houses are quiet, and I have some guilt about the possibility that we might be rousing somebody who works hard throughout the week from a well-earned nap. Especially on an overcast day in February.

If someone actually comes and opens the door, the interactions are usually positive even if the residents aren't strong Democratic supporters. Even Republicans have to respect the work that goes into going door to door, for the most part. Most often it's the middle-aged to older Black people who truly seem grateful that we're out there advocating. On Sunday we got a few good interactions. One Black guy in his 40s was wearing a T-shirt that said "Gratitude vs. Everything." When we asked him what issues were top of mind to him he said programs for youth, especially troubled youth. Most people couldn't think that far, or couldn't be bothered. 

At the very tail end of the canvass the door was answered by a white guy in a UNC T-shirt. His wife was registered as an independent. When we handed him the information cards about the two candidates he immediately tore them up and said all politicians were criminals. But he stayed and talked for longer. About how the government never gave him anything (though it turned out he had a son at Appalachian State who wanted to go to UNC grad school, and they had spent $1 million on a sidewalk across the street which, although he framed it initially as an outrage, especially because the elderly fellow across the street who worked so hard on his yard now had this concrete going though it, but it did give the older folk a place where they could take a walk without getting runned over by a car (I quote). And the worst thing is you can't drink the water because it has all these chemicals in it and there's a weird pink slime in his pipes... He stayed and talked with us for maybe 15 minutes. Seemed like he liked being heard.