Butterflies

It would just be dishonest of me to fail to note that today is an anxious day. The polls have led us to feel good about Josh's chances, though I have worn my knuckles out knocking on wood.

But the fact that the world-historical monumental jackass Trump is as close as he is to retuning to the White fills me with shame. How do I live in a country, nay a world, where something like 50% of the population thinks that's OK. Where people are so susceptible to disinformation that they will believe anything he says, seemingly reading directly off a teleprompter put there by the GRU.

Kamala Harris is far from perfect. Joe Biden's belated dropping out the the race and the backroom way in which we elevated her to the top of the ticket was not the greatest, though admittedly it spared us the necessity of going through a gut-wrenching set of debates where Democrats attacked each other viciously. But nor is she horrible. We can work with her and trust her to acquit the office honorably. If she is elected, she will need to up her game to act as a meaningful counterweight to Xi and Putin on the world stage, and she will need allies of greater stature and weight than are on offer at present.  

Then there's the issue of Michelle Morrow and Mo Green. Fingers crossed.

Rascal moves on

I have been remiss this week in failing to note the passing of our cat Rascal. We got her and her "brother" Leon from the Goat House Refuge down by Pittsboro not too long after coming to NC, somewhere around 2009-10. 

She was always the more social of the two. So much so, in fact, that she was known to upstage even Josh. One time at a fundraiser at our house he was standing on the stairs, addressing the assembled crowd, while Rascal went back and forth along the bannister, pretty effectively upstaging him. Thankfully it did no harm to him politically.

She was always happy to be petted, especially if you would scratch her haunches. She loved in particular to perch on the pillows on the back of our couches when we were watching something or reading. Sometimes, in fact, she was even willing to play the role of pillow herself, letting me put the entire weight of my head back on her while I watched TV. That was pretty awesome. She loved to hop into any box that crossed her path and also bags, if they were laying on their side. She also had this adorable way of hanging a leg or two off of a couch or table, as in this classic photo where a sleeping Graham unconsciouly pays tribute to her.

In her last few months things went downhill. She lost more than half her body weight. She started leaving various types of presents around the house, often on the rugs or couches, so we swathed the couches in blankets and towels. It was a bit of a pain for us but we had no indication that she was in pain. We were happy to let her live out her days as long as made sense. She is missed.

The thin line between small talk and oversharing

On the way back from Cleveland today I was picked up at my hotel at 5:15 for a 7am flight. Actually the driver was early, so it may have been 5:10.

A very nice guy, to be sure. But super chatty. When I told him I was from NC he paused and then was telling me about a trip he had taken to an AA convention in Myrtle Beach with a friend who is a recovering alcoholic. I told him I was in AA. He was quiet for a little while then he recounted about how awesome the lazy river was at a neighboring hotel. "It was much better than the one at our hotel, so we snuck in over there." Then he started telling me about the guy who made the omelets at his hotel, who was named Omelet Ray for his complete mastery of his craft: "I'm pretty simple, I just like bacon, sausage and cheese," he told me. 

It was like this pretty much the whole way to the hotel, just a ton of detail. Oversharing.

Which made me wonder. Am I like that? When does one reach the edge of making light chit chat to pass the time and venture into the realm of inane and excessive detail?

Certainly the night before at dinner with four members of the firm that was courting us only the CEO had much of a gift for small talk. I did have to wade in with a story or two, lest the conversation should die out.

And I had to pick the apps and the sides since, for some reason, everybody else was afraid to make suggestions. I picked pretty well.

Rolling up the trades and hollowing out towns

Maybe it's because I'm descended from small-town businesspeople, but it has long struck me that one of the ur-scenes of the disconnectednes and anomie that afflicts small towns is the destruction of so many local businesses by chains of everything. I know I'm not alone in this observation, I don't make a claim to any great originality here.

Which is why it's so wonderful to walk into a place like Dick's Hot Dog Stand in Wilson, which is right next door to the Wilson County Democratic Party HQ, where we went to canvass on Saturday. Open since 1921, it looked awesome. I was very sad to have eaten a turkey and swiss in the car on the way down.

But I digress. It had long seemed to me that the trades (plumbing, HVAC, electricians, etc) were one of the few places where it was still possible to start and run a good solid small town business. So it was with some sadness that I read an article in the Journal about how the trades are being consolidated and rolled up by private equity companies. 

Now the management consultant in me sees how this could happen, how one could get economies of scale in purchasing, one could define fairly standard practices not just for the actual carrying out of tasks on sight but of training, etc. I can also see how the corporatization of the trades could lead to better opportunities for classes of people largely shut out of them now.

But I also see a loss of some pretty well-hewn pathways to independence for a class of people who like to work locally and in community and build relationships. Yes you put money in the hands of existing tradespeople when they monetize upon exit. But another leg of the the small-town table could be kicked out from under it and a rare path to prosperity and independence for less academic types could dead end into the brick wall of The Corporation.

ISP Shabbos

Thinking about the apparent disconnectedness of neighborhoods like the ones we've been visiting (not all of them, mind you. When I canvassed in Stem I saw a fair amount of porch-sitting and driveway hanging out. Also a decent number of walkers and hedge trimmers in Fuquay Varina) it occurs to me that much of it probably derives from people isolating around their screens of choice. One remedy for this would be for internet service providers and cell companies to shut off service for a period, like parents often do around bedtime to make kids unplug and sleep. Of course, by now too many services run over the internet and cell networks ("I've fallen and I can't get up!") so I know this can't happen. But one way or another forcing people to get off their screens could be helpful.

Disinformation aside, all that I have seen from Western NC in the aftermath of Helene indicates that people have been very generous and neighbor-oriented without regard for political or whatever affiliation. This seems to be more or less the rule after natural disasters when modern communications are challenged. People recoonnect and help each other.

If we could manufacture that condition without endangering people, it would be great.

On integration and ZIP codes

On Sunday we canvassed in Willow Spring (or is it Springs?), NC. As had been the case in nearby Fuquay-Varina a couple of weeks back and also Roxboro, Stem, Butner, basically all the places we've canvassed this year, we were impressed with how integrated the neighborhoods were. Not so many Asians as Chapel Hill, but a broad range of white, black and hispanic people living next door to one another. Trump flags and Kamala signs here and there.

And then it occurred to me: it's not so much that these places are exceptionally well integrated so much as that Chapel Hill and the affluent ZIP codes where I spend my time are particularly segregated just by way of price.

Don't get me wrong, the subdivisions we've been in haven't been all that cheap. Houses in the one we visited Sunday were 10-12 years old and were valued by Zillow at $350k-$500k for 2500-3000 square feet. That's a lot more house than you can get for that money here in Chapel Hill.

So basically it would appear that we are more outliers than the places we are visiting.

I will say that the places we go have been generally pretty low on street life. Sunday was a beautiful day, temps around 70-72. We saw one kid out on a bike and two people out walking. They were visiting from Jamaica. A couple of guys working in garages on projects. Otherwise people were indoors or perhaps in back yards. Which is a shame. I suspect it's mostly because people are glued to one kind of screen or another, but that's bad.

Holes in the self

A few weeks ago at our 40th high school reunion my hopes of having at least a half-way decent conversation with the girl (now woman) I had an unrequited crush on back at the day were cruelly dashed. Yeah I stood around in clumps with her but and we exchanged witticisms but I had hoped to chat a little and bask in the glory of her attention at least momentarily. One time I sat down next to her (again in a clump of folx) and she sprung up immediately and said "I need to go talk to Nik, I haven't connected with him." I assume she meant Niklaus. I get that. Who doesn't love Niklaus.

Then the other day I was at the polls and a woman I had served with on a board was there with her husband. We had worked together pretty closely for years on important stuff. After we voted I hoped to catch up a little but she was immediately off doing other stuff around the church, where she's also on the board. I get that she is a pretty high octane WASP doer at all times, but it felt in the moment like she was avoiding me.

The problem is of course me. Part of me still just wants everybody to like me which is just ridiculous, counter productive and silly. At least you, my reader, take the time to stop by the blog and subject yourself to whatever I serve up, and for this I am grateful.

Gotta get organized to go canvass in Fuquay Varina now. 16 days till election day. GOTV time.

Third-Rate Romance

Really I just want to bookmark and share this video. Just perfect. Didn't know this song before but I really like this performance. I am on record as a Josh Turner fan already. Carson is also always solid but this is the first I've seen of his little brother Skylar, who I think stars here.

Canvassing on

By now I -- mostly with Mary -- have knocked on maybe 175 doors and talked to 40-50 voters about the upcoming election. In the towns of Butner, Stem, Rocky Mount, Fuquay-Varina, and Roxboro. Everyone is following the top of the ticket of course and many people are aware of Josh and Mark Robinson. In addition to advocating for the state legislative candidates for whom we're nominally canvassing (which have included Bryan Cohn, Terrence Everitt, Lorenza Wilkins, James Mercer, Lisa Grafstein and Safiyah Jackson) we're making sure people are aware of the Mo Green-Michelle Morrow race for Superintendent of Public Instruction. For those of you who haven't been following that, we have Mo Green -- who did a great job running NC's 3rd largest district (Guilford County) vs. Michelle Morrow, who has no experience in education, said that Obama should be executed on pay per view, that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act and put the Constitution to the side around January 6, and other just flat out crazy shit.

We are also trying to get people to understand what it means for a party to have a supermajority in the state legislature so that they can always override the Governor's veto. That Phil Berger is really a huge factor in their life right now, even though they've never heard of him.

It's a lot to get through. But we are headed back out Sunday. I feel a little slack to not be headed out both days but some concessions must be made to self care

Cornbread and eggs

I made some cornbread the other night to accompany some bbq (pretty good) and slaw (excellent) we picked up at the store in Hurdle Mills on the way back from Roxboro. Great store. Always worth stopping in.

It wasn't the best cornbread ever, for whatever reason, but likely cuz it was a little low on salt. Yesterday evening I crumbled some up and threw it into the mediocre chicken chili Mary had gotten from Trader Joe's. Both of them improved. It got me thinking about how to incorporate old cornbread into stuff, like for instance scrambled eggs. It seems like a very natural combo -- especially since Mexicans have been making Chilaquiles for a long time with much success. The internet confirmed I wasn't the first to think of it.

So this morning I tried it, throwing in a little cheddar as an insurance policy then squirting a little salsa verde on there for spice. I approve this message. It also has me thinking more expansively about how to do things like make a spoonbread loaded with some veggies, cheese and perhaps even bacon as a dinner main course. I suspect that the internet will have gotten there first. 

As a bonus, I was thinking about how the cornbread in chili was a lot like cowboy food and it took me back to this great scene from the 2009 documentary Sweetgrass, one of the more singular movies ever.

The End

I finally made it to the end of the Bible today. I just looked back at the blog and see that I have been at it for more than two years, so I'm happy to have gotten past this initial phase of engagement with the text. The next phase will certainly be a little time away.

But before I move on let me make a few comments about Revelations. I was a little anxious about this book, mostly based on my well-documented fear of horror films, many of whom draw inspiration from this last book of the Bible. But when I got to it I found that what it reminded me of more than anything was watching The Avengers with Graham. As with the super heroes series, Revelations alternates between seeming like the coast is clear and the second coming about to commence before some other plague or demon beast swoops in and a bunch more people get carried off into hellfire. Lather, rinse, repeat. Just like in the Old Testament how it seems like everyone's in good shape for a while then they drift back to those damned hill shrines to those pesky other gods. Even at the very end there's a warning about the sanctity of the text itself: if anyone adds to the holy writ, they will be damned. Same thing if anyone takes away from it. Then it ends on an up note.

I will confess that all through the Bible it has been difficult to keep my attention on the text. I start to reading, then drift off. I suspect that is from a childhood of going to church and then ignoring what is going on up front, whatever the preacher or whoever is saying or reading, while looking at the stained glass and calmly reviewing the events of the week. Not as a conscious decision, mind you. Just because that's how it works for me. I got the main points, for the most part.

I am not entirely done with the Bible. It's kind of a phenomenon. But I will take some time off.

Brief hiatus

These have been some busy weeks. Lots of client meetings during the week followed by weekends of canvassing and then getting together with folks in this context and that. All good, but a lot, not leaving a lot of time or energy to reflect and write.

This weekend Mary and I headed up to Roxboro, always a favorite destination since it's where my mom is from and where I went to visit my grandparents back in the day. 

Roxboro is looking a little bit up. Businesses continue to invest in and revivify Main Street, though there's still work to do. 

We canvassed a small neighborhood back behind the Food Lion, with a mix of newer and older, smallish houses that per Zillow trade in the $200k-$250k range. As one would predict, there was a mix of folx back in there. Some Trump signs but also a mix of Black people and recent transplants from Durham, Ohio and elsewhere. Solid D houses. One guy had very clearly posted No Trespassing signs but he was home and when we knocked he invited us in and said that yes, he'd very much like a ride to the polls.

A good solid day. 

Ghosted by a child

Graham and I have been having weekly check in calls about his search for an internship for next summer. This last week I was trying to nudge him on the importance of having informational interviews and talking to people about their jobs, their industries, their career paths -- as compared to the general futility of firing off resumes to random megacorporations across their career web sites -- and I visibly upset him. So much so that we needed to cut the call short.

I immediately apologized, but he didn't respond for 24 hours or so. With Graham it's never 100% clear if he is intentionally ghosting me or whether he just didn't see the text (as he sometimes claims, perhaps plausibly). But I know I experienced it as being cut off, which saddened me tremendously. The last thing we ever want as parents is to upset our kids. There are moments to administer some tough love, and I guess that job and career search is a domain in which some non-intuitive learnings need to be conveyed, but it doesn't need to be in a way that upsets our kids.

I know of parents who have been flat out cut off by their kids, one of them because of their son's borderline psychotic girlfriend. Somehow they have been able to carry on with their lives. Ultimately one has to realize that one does the best that one can, is not in control of other people and that time heals most wounds. But it's hard. 

The Big 2-0!

And so, as if in the blink of an eye, this blog is all grown up and ready to set off on its own in the world. Twenty years old.

I had a nightmare last night. Trump carried Massachusetts on the way to victory. What the actual fuck? Praise the lord I woke up, and that Mary and I head off to Fuquay-Varina under the auspices of County to County to knock on doors for NC State Senator Lisa Grafstein and Safiyah Jackson, who is running for the first time for NC's House. Aside from the gubernatorial contest everything is rather tight here in NC. Everything we can do helps.

I may have touted him before, but for me right now the artist of the year title goes to this Jesse Welles kid from Arkansas. He cranks out a fresh song every few days. Not every one shimmers with brilliance, but none suck and many of them grow on me. The one below is seasonally (and life stage) appropriate and approved for all audiences.

Thanks so much to all my regular readers. You know who you are and I think I do. I appreciate you.

My blog, venerable yet vulnerable

As we shall soon see, my blog has gotten rather long in the tooth. Last night I was looking for a specific post and the whole thing refused to load and for a moment I was filled with fear. Has Google stopped supporting this platform? You can see how it easily might. I sincerely doubt it's a big money-spinner.

Many years ago a friend and reader ran a script and backed the blog up and sent me the file. Which I of course lost. Yesterday I began to reflect on what would be lost if the Grouse disappears. From the perspective of discourse, not so much. Anything I've written here about some abstract topic can either be recaptured elsewhere and/or lingers somewhere in the back of my brain or just isn't that important.

But the specifics of my kids' lives, the notes on their early childhood, those remain rich and irreplaceable veins of gold, if only for me and (if she ever bothered to look at my blog) Mary. So I need to back it up later today, after I get done with work. 

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.

Closing notes on Isaacson on Musk

For some reason I read to the end of Walter Isaacson's bio of Musk. I guess because my brother-in-law Rob liked it and I'm curious why, because Musk seems so much like the kind of guy Rob would hate.

Musk no doubt impresses with his ability to get stuff done, including big stuff. He has a willful disregard for all norms, rules, laws, anything that would hold him back. He veritably incarnates the marriage of intellect and testosterone. Not generally a good thing.  

Though Musk has indeed made the electric car a thing through his manic mad-dash balls to the wall style of leadership, and has by similar means created in SpaceX a really impressive company, the big question is whether one can lead like that in a way that could save humanity's tenure on earth, honestly a much more important goal than shepherding some small number of us to Mars, the thing that really makes Musk's dick hard. Once there, after all, what will we be doing other than scratching out survival? I am reminded of William Shatner's quote about actually being in space instead of, like Troy McLure, playing it on TV: "When I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold ... all I saw was death... I saw a cold, black emptiness."

Instead of manic turbo-charged project managers like Trump, we need leaders who can calm us down and focus on preserving what we have. I refuse to concede that it is too late, if only because that concession would represent our ultimate failure.

Don't read this book. 

The sadness of the hills

Watching the vidoes and pictures from western North Carolina in the aftermath of Helene fills me with sadness not just on account of the harsh reality of climate change but also because it strikes a region that will likely be carried by an asshole of world-historical proportions, a man so idiotic that he would debase the office of the Presidency mocking an autistic Swedish teenager. Yes Greta Thunberg is pretty extreme, but not without cause. 

I will continue to manage down my meat and petro-fuel consumption.

One wonders if the slowly-festering crisis in home insurance will eventually be the thing that wakes the Right up to what is going on. Kyla Scanlon lays it out well here. It's probably reasonable to think of this crisis as a component of the carbon tax we've never been able to push through legislatively.

Public and private spending, and the election

I was thinking of writing on a more refined topic around the question of public and private goods but started looking into the question of government spending as a % of GDP. There are lots of ways to slice and dice the question, it's not simple. I haven't had (and will unlikely soon have) opportunity to kick the tires of the graph below, taken from Wikipedia, but it accords with what I read and see elsewhere. Click on the image to expand and see details if you need to.

Right now it feels like that government's role in the overall economy, generally, is at a pretty high level historically. Americans have tended to want to trim it down. Which is why we have tended to have alternating regimes of Democrats who build it up (perhaps excessively), followed by Republicans who tear it down (perhaps excessively). 33% seems to be a rough equilibrium point around which we oscillate.

Right now lots of Republicans seem to be feeling this and are willing to tolerate Trump's excesses to do some tearing down. Democrats ignore this tendency at their peril. 

The problem is, of course, that the existential problems we face (global warming, an unstable geopolitical situation, populism) call for steady-handed leadership and significant public expenditures. Democrats need to make this case rather than run around trying to promise shit to people that we can't deliver. Unfortunately, taxes need to rise even for people with incomes around $200k and spending needs to fall. The upper middle class needs to participate. It has the means, just not the will.

Once more trained by pets

When pets die people post pictures of them on their social networks of choice containing pious testimonials about the love and joy the little animals had brought to them and their families. All true. We love our two cats, Rascal and Leon, and will be very sad when they are gone.

That said, the process of caretaking their later years is less rosy-tinted. We have been covering our couches in blankets and towels for what seems like years now to protect them against various cat emissions. We have limited the cats to the public part of the house, barring entry to the bedrooms, after a couple of poops in rapid succession on a rug in Graham's room. The rug in our rec room came up months ago after a couple of incidents. And now the one in our dining room is next. Mary had said we should take it up a couple of days ago but I resisted. Then I woke up today with not one but two little gifts left for us on the rug. Mary was not happy with me and my resistence, to say the least, and the terrible part of it is that she was (sigh) right.

This will likely provide Mary with another excuse to not have guests over.

Earlier in life I had thought about how having pets and needing to feed them, walk them, clean up poop, come home early, prepared young people for parenthood. Now I am seeing that having them later in life trains us to take care of our spouses as we move towards the exit.

Stem, NC

With Mary out of town with friends, I canvassed solo yesterday for Brian Cohn for NC House and Terrence Everitt for NC Senate in the town of Stem, NC. Home to all of 960 residents, Wikipedia tells me that Stem is famous for having its high school basketball team beat UNC sometime in the 30s when they went down to Chapel Hill as spectators but then the opponent, maybe Davidson, was unable to get there because of snow. So the boys from Stem (including apparently a 22-year old ringer) took on the Tar Heels and won.

There is no official record of this having happened. Certainly the university did not send its crack archivists to ensure that the memory of this was preserved for all of eternity.

Honestly I read about this when I got home but I really wish I had known about it so I could have asked some of the older people about it, especially the old white guy who was offended that I had made him interrupt his Sunday afternoon NFL watching just so he could slough off an annoying Democrat. Then again, that guy had no interest in discussing the fact that the road that he lived on was named after his family, and he lingered at the door and watched as I got in my Prius and drove off, so he might no have been drawn out by any topic of conversation whatsoever.

Other than that, amongst the 960 residents of Stem were a surprising assortment of different folx, including transplanted Yankees. One woman was from Nutley, NJ. Her daughter had worked for Trump and she swore he was a good man who cared about people, having been a "good husband to three women," despite cheating on them. Beyond that she was very open to hearing about Democratic candidates and certainly wasn't going to vote for Mark Robinson. Really a lovely woman in her own way.

Then there was the Jehovah's Witness who summed up their theology as not even trying because the Lord would sort it all out in the end. An interesting spin on the school of though ushered in first by Parmenides, that since all is One change is impossible.