I can't look away

It is very hard for me to consistently tear my eyes away from the images of the destruction in the NC mountains. We were just there in late July/August. I love it out there. 

A couple of thoughts. I am disproportionately swayed by the fact that it is NC. Cross the boarder into South Carolina and -- even though I have friends there -- I am less tied to and influenced by it. This is nothing short of stupid, silly and shameful, yet it remains true.

I am a little ashamed as well that, as was the case with 9/11, I don't have a strong instinct to rush to the scene and help. I have given money a couple of times, to MANNA Foodbank of Asheville, which is hard at work distributing food despite the fact that its headquarters were severly damaged, and to the Governor's Recovery taskforce through United Way (can't find link), but I don't have an urge to run down there because my skill sets aren't well-suited for it. I've never used a chainsaw. I can't build stuff. Almost undoubtedly the highest and best use of my efforts are to stay here and send support, but I'm not proud of that, for some reason.

Wake up call

I was taking something out to the recycling bin over the weekend when a neighbor walking by spoke to me. She said she has Alzheimer's so she wasn't driving anymore, but that fortunately someone was going to be able to address it surgically. Of course I didn't know exactly what to say, it's one of those rare types of conversations for which we really don't have a lot of experience of training. I just said I was happy she was going to get help and then turned the conversation over how a friend had said he might be able to bring a chainsaw and help with some of the enormous logs of hardwood laying around her yard that the electrical company's forester had left lying there when it took down a tree that was threatening a power line.

But inside I was a little freaked out. She is not much older than us, maybe in her mid-60s. It was just another one of those shots across the bow to remind me of my mortality. I am very used to wake up calls from cancer. This very weekend came the news that UNC's Eric Montross -- who has been such a gift not just to Be Loud! Sophie but also other parts of UNC's cancer center -- has cancer himself. Early onset Alzheimer's and/or dementia falls into another category altogether.

But, again, what is one to do? I did the only rational thing, I went inside and told Mary and then hugged her. I would have liked to have hugged Graham too, but he has COVID this week so I held off on that one. Beyond that, it's just another reminder to focus on health: exercise, eating better (always an area of potential improvement for me), sleep, laughter, talking to friends and family. I probably should have called mom; I'll do that sometime today.

Coordinated mowing

When we came back into the neighborhood where our Airbnb is in Juneau it seemed like everyone was out with their power yard tools: one woman was mowing, the guy across the street was using a chainsaw on some branches, somebody down the block was doing something else. It was as if they had decided to coordinate the time for using noisy stuff in the yard. If they hadn't, still, it's really the most brilliant idea ever to do so. An extension or corollary of the widely accepted practice that one does not mow on Sunday morning.

Chainsaws

It is the 3rd day or so of intensive and near continual chainsaw use right near our house as these guys from Asplundh make their way up the house cutting down all branches within 7 feet of the power lines.  Often this means whole trees.  It is not ideal for trying to jam in material for the CFP Retirement Planning exam I take 6 days from now, but thankfully we've got a fine public library and I was able to arrange for a private study room for most of today.

In general, it's a pretty astounding, downright monumental undertaking to manage the above ground power lines on the east coast.  If we think back to August, 2003, the big blackout that took down the grid on so much of the East Coast, it was caused by some random trees somewhere in upstate NY near Canadia.  Now, since then, I like to think that some kind of circuit breakers have been put in place to limit the systemic impact of similar events -- and I think there have been -- but still... we have lots of little outages with no explanation, and we did in Princeton too.  Which is not to complain.  We haven't had anything in our fridge go bad in years, and if you go to sleep by flashlight once in a while, hey, it's kind of a fun family thing, it's good for the kids, I think.

Now, think about the monumental reforestation of the East Coast since WWII.  I remember reading in the New Yorker, probably an article by Elizabeth Kolbert, about how spring on the East Coast is totally viewable from space and meteorologically impactful in the sense that there's this huge carbon sink that reappears and starts pumping oxygen back into the global system.

So there's a lot of trees and a lot of power lines.  And these guys in front of our house are moving slowly, maybe 50-100 yards up the street a day.  They have to. Big trucks with cherry pickers, four guys.  They are probably union or, if not, at least relatively skilled labor, and paying to insure them is expensive too.  Map that out across the whole wooded portion of the United States, and the cost of maintaining lines is huge.

But they could have picked a better week!  Oh well, back to the coal mine I go.

My trip to Orlando

All work, little fun.  For excitement, I rented a car.  The first night I drove to a hotel near the airport, the Sheraton Suites, which I scored for $59 off of Hotwire.

I went running around a barren area of corporate America, filled with every shade of middle tier hotel you can imagine. There was a Holiday Inn with a Hooters in it. Just the thing for the kids.  I ran past an Oracle building, where I came to the end of the road, and a big field next to the interstate leading back towards a runway or something.  I ran across the field, and the air got cool and fresh, and I could sense some of the original charm of Florida, though there was a menacing looking trailer off in the corner of the field which looked a little too Texas Chainsaw like for the kid.

I also saw some "development coming soon" and "this office building for rent signs".  The most unexpected thing, though, was that a Starbucks along Rte. 482 was closed when I went past it this morning at 7:30 or so.  Starbuckses are supposed to be open at that hour.

For the conference I stayed at the Loews Portofino on the Universal World (or whatever it's called) property.  The whole place was a little cheesey, but they could have messed it up a whole lot worse, and would surely have, if it had been built in Vegas.  In fact, when the sun was going down and after, it didn't look all that fake.  And, in fact, it was possible to get confused about where you were from within the many piazze within the hotel, just like in the old country.

What I don't understand for the life of me is how hotels never have the Fox Soccer Channel or, quite often, Comedy Central.  What else are you supposed to watch?

There was a CNN news store at the airport.  I wonder where the Fox News viewers were supposed to purchase their news?  Oh yeah, they don't read.

Don't blink

It was a very full weekend, what with David visiting from Marin County and all. I hadn't anticipated just how jacked up he'd be to play tennis, but of course he was, what was I thinking. So we were out on court promptly at 9:30 both Saturday and Sunday. We also had a full culinary tour of southern treats: Bullocks, Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen, Time Out (for some chicken) and even some Asian noodles from my wok. Also a walk out to the old Occoneechee Speedway. 

As we were traipsing around I noticed a number of changes: new apartment buildings going up in Durham (what else is new), the new one on Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill moving forward. I was sad to learn that Deli Edison has permanently closed. That is a true loss to our neighborhood. They made the very best bacon, egg and cheese ever, what with the house-cured bacon.

To top it all off, Mike and Ian came by late in the day Sunday with a chainsaw and mauls to chop up this old oak tree that Duke Power had taken down in our neighbor's yard to protect a power line. So I had to get out my brand spanking new shiny maul to chop up some wood.

By now I am of course plumb tuckered. Thankfully we have enough leftovers to make dinner and Graham is out at a movie with friends. So we are living the empty nester dream here at the crib. It's all I can do to peck out this very narrative post.

Ahh yes, lest I forget. I awoke this morning with one of those pre-waking dreams that seems oh so real. In this one, someone had told me that 50,000 people had been in the park behind our house in connection with high school graduation. That would be a lot. But it was just a dream.

The gentle riddims of the suburbs, part N, v 2013

A somewhat rough day here at my desk, as down across the gully I am continually serenaded by chain saws and their accompanying base line, the chipper. So, I think, I'll go running, figure out where the sound is coming from, and calm the noggin.  And so I do, and as I'm in the last mile, headed back home, I am passed on the curvy road by a loud, slow-moving truck carrying... mulch!  And so on one side somebody's using a two-stroke engine to cut and break down tree matter, while on the other more carbon is burnt delivering the same, maybe 3/4 of a mile from the chainsaw.

And then, and here's the kicker -- as I come into my yard I see a bunch of deer -- whose numbers have multiplied of late, brazenly grazing in Mary's hard-tended garden, which is ostensibly planted with plants the bambi set don't like. Problem is, it would appear, that the expanded population is hungry, and there's not enough wild underbrush to support them on things they like, so they eat things they don't.  It's as if Graham was hungry enough to eat something he really hates, like, maybe, cooked cabbage.  That's tough to imagine.

All of this makes it difficult for the Grouse himself to really bite down on such tender fare as the tax treatment of partial annuitizations, or the use of Qualified Personal Realty Trusts in estate planning.

I know, I know, you may well be thinking:  what the hell did you expect?