Update from the road

On Saturday Graham and I went to see a special father-son bonding movie: Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. I had read a bit of one review that said it wasn't your typical Adam Sandler movie, and Graham had noted it got positive reviews on Rotten Tomatos, etc. Big mistake. It was the most painful thing I have perhaps ever sat through, like George Costanza at his absolute worst, cubed. Oh well. That said, it was in its own way a good movie, well executed, but that doesn't mean you want to watch it. Better to just take my word for it and appreciate it.

Yesterday we drove home, making a special stop in Princeton to see our old friends and neighbors for brunch. Which was totally worth it, but then the rest of the day was arduous, what with the short day and rain and pretty horrific seasonal traffic. We tried to be smart by going down 301 on the north part of Maryland's Eastern Shore, only to get slammed by truly nasty traffic on a construction-narrowed Bay Bridge. Note to self: do more due diligence on road construction in the future. But, in the end, it's the East Coast during the holidays. It's just a hard game to win if you don't make a very conscious effort to time it well.

The Possessed

For Christmas Natalie got a copy of Elif Batuman's The Possessed, a memoir which tells the tale of those who are consumed with the study of Russian literature, as she was when she earned a Comp Lit PhD at Stanford. The book also addresses the tension within the author between the desire to write and the need to study those who had written before. Naturally I had to borrow it forthwith. I am now about eighty pages in and can pronounce that it is thus far good if not great. Sometimes it gets dragged a little too far into the depths of trivia.

For the time being I will plow forward, as this has shouldered aside the German mystery novel I mentioned recently. No doubt I am encouraged in this task by Rob's excellent new La-z-boy recliner here by the window in the bedroom at George's house, which has been a great place to hide out while the house swarms with the activity of Berridges bustling about trying to figure out where to put things as the great exodus from Larchmont to North White Plains moves into its final chapters. Mary and Rob have returned to Larchmont for one last visit as we speak, to attend to some loose ends and because, I think, it is hard to let go of one's home of 45 years. Mary Lee will meet them there.

Natalie will go into the city to see the Broadway production of Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill, while Graham and I will head into White Plains to see Adam Sandler's new film Uncut Gems, which has apparently been well-received.

The thing about the recliner is that it so completely takes ones body out of the equation, doing all the physical work, encouraging me to be pretty much a reading, writing, and phone calling machine. I can live with that. Though it reminds me that I do need to go out and get a little exercise too.

Curiously neutral nabe

Our Northeastern base of operations has shifted from Larchmont, in lower Westchester, to North White Plains, about 15 miles upcounty, in the welcoming home of Mary's brother George. The area is less swank, but still plenty comfy and with much of its own interest. We have been exploring on foot and trying to figure out good paths by which we can get out and get some exercise. The best way leads through the graveyard out behind George's subdivision.

It was hard to figure out how to get back there, but we eventually determined that we had to go through the side and back yard of a guy named Kevin, who has a very nice 1957 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud in his garage which used to belong to the drummer of Bon Jovi, for whom Kevin used to run the soundboard.

The graveyard is an interesting one. We couldn't find any gravestones much older than 1918, which makes it seem like it only really became a commercial burial place around the time of World War I. A large plurality if not outright majority of the gravestones are of Italians, many of them with very rarely encountered names like "Kresenzia" and "Emanuella." Some of the stones tell pretty eloquent stories in very few words, something like:

Antonio 1882-1928
Antonia 1888-1974
Luigi 1922-1942
Fiorello 1916-1998

Not a whole lot of commentary needed there. 46 years is a long time to survive a spouse.

Alongside the Italians there are a bunch of clearly German and Irish ones, but very little of your milquetoast WASP variety, and not a lot of Jews.

There are a couple of plaques commemorating a "Home for the Poor" here which presumably predates the cemetery. I should have taken a picture so I could look it up.

The neighborhoods up behind George's subdivision probably were built from the 1940s and 50s forward, so post WWII. Solid little houses, with some torn down and larger houses built in the 70s-80s but not much since then. Interestingly, very few bumper stickers, no yard signs, very few visible signs of political affiliations, though some houses had driveways full of Toyotas and Hondas and sported solar panels, while others had big American trucks. But even those houses lacked the American flags we often see in patriotic households.

That said, spent some time in the local public library this morning working. A nice modern facility, where one of the librarians sported a knit pancho and spent a long time on the phone with an apparently elderly patron explaining the difference between looking a book up on the library's catalog vs. Amazon. Out in front of the library flew an American flag, and below that a black POW MIA flag. Just before I left for lunch, an enormous American truck was backed into a parking space. Out of it climbed a skinny hasidic kid. I wasn't expecting that.

A Christmas miracle

Before we headed north last week, I found myself praying -- to the extent that I do, which is not really much -- that the Economist special double Christmas issue would arrive before we went on our trip. And lo -- there it was in our mailbox on the 18th or so. Santa had worked his magic properly.

The issue is by far the highlight of the year, with quirky feature stories about distinctly untimely subjects such as the history and culture of Siberia and the history of the Eucalyptus tree in California, two of this year's features. It is qualitatively better to have it over Christmas, and it makes a distinct improvement in the holiday break in the Northeast, because it gives me something warm to curl up with and read in 20-30 minute chunks during brief breaks in family activities and whatnot.

New regime

In North White Plains, at George's house, about to head into the city to see new clients and also have lunch with my old buddy Joe, hopefully at my favorite Bukharan place in the jewelry district, first described here back in 2005, though it did move to a different location at least a decade ago. Haven't seen Joe in a couple of years, and I'm excited to introduce him to Natalie in passing at the Grand Central clock, which feels in so many ways like the epicenter of the universe. I know that betrays a certain provincialism in me, but what are you gonna do?

Have begun reading a new mystery novel for the holidays, Babylon Berlin by Volker Kutscher. Pretty good.

I had something of a light nightmare last night that I was subletting an office space from a certain Chapel Hill lawyer, a tall and balding neighbor whose family sports no fewer than three Prii ("team Thrius"). I had a nice office with a window, but then a woman lawyer came in and took over the space and redecorated the place in a not very nice green and I was being pushed out of there, though my stuff wasn't moved. It looked at first like I was being put in a crappy office with no window, but then it turned out I was being punted into the outer portion of his office suite, which had evolved into a pretty crowded coworking space, populated by millennials whose eyes were glued unwaveringly to their screens, and who listened to music at shared worktables. It was horrible, horrible.

I think it may have been influenced somehow by the Sanford and Son episode we watched last night in which Scrooge-like Fred is visited in dream by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, all of them incarnated by Lionel. Fred sees the error of his ways and gives away all of Lionel's Christmas presents to this enterprising kid, including a number of items monogrammed "LS", which Fred tells them stands for "Love Somebody."

The Yanceyville bypass

Driving to New York, taking the Western Passage through Virginia, with our newest driver at the helm for the first leg. We just went past Yanceyville, taking the little 86/158 bypass around town. Which leads begs question: why was that road ever built? All the town's businesses, such as they are, are out there. A quarter mile away, the town proper, with its classic courthouse and parking in the square, more or less moulders. Did Yanceyville really need to be bypassed? I guess it makes truck routes faster, but was it worth it? Probably not.

A House for Mr Biswas

VS Naipaul is one of those names of authors that I've seen around forever and been meaning to read, but never get around to. Somebody told me A House for Mr Biswas was a good place to start, so I did.

Published in 1961, loosely based on the biography of Naipaul's dad, it's a very good book. It is neither easy nor hard reading, per se, nor is the tale it tells easy (in the sense that is inspires and has an uplifting moral) nor hard (in the sense that it exposes the terrible cruelties of colonial society or the fundamental injustice of Being). Instead, it reflects pretty well the story of the protagonist's life -- to the extent that the typical reader -- incarnated as me -- has a solid frame of reference to evaluate it.

Even as I write this I feel the theoretical critic in me looming over my shoulder ("reflects? What do you mean? It's fiction, created from whole cloth"). But I have to let this go.

In any case, the reader gets a good sense of what it was like to strive, flail and make limited progress in life in colonial Trinidad. I'm sure the book will bounce around in my head for a while. It was unlike other things I have read, and I pushed through north of 500 pages pretty quickly, so I have no regrets about taking it up.

(call came in re board responsibilities while writing. Now am a little behind, so must push forward)

Graham running down to the lake

In the summertime Graham often runs down to the lake to see who's there. In the autumn the habit has continued, even when there's no one there. It is very sweet to see him goofily hurdling down the hill after we get back to the house (today after his first foray onto the interstate as part of a full 1.75 hours of driving, then some Mexican food up in Hillsborough, punctuated by a lengthy discussion of negative interest rates and how they are supposed to ripple across capital markets and incent behavior). Then we raked and got a Christmas tree. A good day.

These Truths

Just finished listening to Jill Lepore's These Truths in the car. A book of tremendous importance, her command of American history from John Winthrop to Alex Jones is pretty impressive and she is a tremendous writer and, perhaps most important, an honest and honorable person who is aware of her own limitations and those of the people naturally inclined to ally with her. The recording was enhanced by the fact that she took time to do the reading herself, which is something many authors don't do, but it lets them place emphasis where it feels right.

The most important thing to take away from this book is that -- far from unprecedented, Trump and the populism he embodies is all too precedented in American history, and in people we don't think of as natural precedents. Democrats don't come off uncriticized, as indeed we shouldn't, though it's pretty clear whose side she comes down on.

She is undoubtedly stronger on some subjects than on others. Her treatment of the evolution of judicial originalism is particularly strong, as is her portrait of the arc and influence of Phyllis Schlafly. In general, I'm not sufficiently versed in American history to criticize much of this book, though if I knew of a place where a reputable and intelligent conservative had published a reasonable length review of the book, I might try to read it.

One thing I will say is that, Lepore's book -- like Stephen Pinker's Enlightenment Now, Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, or even Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads -- seeks to bite off a very large chunk of world history, digest it, and present it back to the reader. All of these are great books, each of them worthwhile, from brilliant folks. And yet I wonder if there isn't something odd about this totalizing instinct in contemporary authors, this instinct, nay this need to explain everything, if there is not a bit of hubris to it, or is it just born of an ambient anxiety particular to the present moment, a sense of history getting out of hand. That said, I really need to buy physical copies of each of these books that I've listened to in the car and have them on my shelf for reference purposes. Great books all, from great minds.

Contra indications

When I was an analyst covering the life insurance industry, I remember at some conference in Vegas somebody saying to me that people get either Alzheimer's or cancer, but not both. As more and more people in my orbit pass away, primarily friends' parents but increasingly contemporaries too, that seems anecdotally true. So using the power of the interweb, I looked it up, and lo and behold there is actual research supporting this "inverse comorbitidy" and even of a potential molecular reason why both tend not to develop.

There seems to be an almost divine mercy to this. Either there is cancer, causing a lot of pain to the dying person, accompanied often by great cognitive lucidity and presence (when not addled by chemo). So that families are able to take leave of one another and, when the person has passed, a sense that at least the burden of suffering has been lifted. Or there is Alzheimer's/dementia, in which case those left behind suffer from a lack of closure and from the protraction of a shadow of the beloved and also sometimes with struggles in the earlier stages when cognition is slipping and there is denial and resistance, but when she passes it is also a relief.

Of course the inverse comorbidity is not absolute, but it seems to be largely true. As the affluent adopt better and better health habits and chronic diseases recede as causes of death, these seem to be becoming more frequent paths out of this mortal coil. We come to place where two roads diverge, and the path chosen for us makes all the difference. In the short term.

The enthusiasm of sales

In a shocking and unprecedented move, I forgot my phone charger in Larchmont on Friday, which I discovered when I was already on the train to New Haven. So, after having lunch with Natalie a Sally's Apizza (my first time -- delicious but no better than Pepe's, which has personal nostalgia value), and after walking Natalie back to campus, I stopped into a TMobile store off of the town green to get another one.

The people in the store -- a young fellow of African descent and a young woman of European -- were very nice. Because they had the cord part of what I needed for purchase but not the little box thing that plugs into the wall, the young woman went and found one they had sitting around and just gave it to me.

But then the guy asks me: "So are you a TMobile customer?" and I sheepishly admitted I was not, he lit up. He was 150% ready to pitch me on plans. I needed to make a train and didn't have time to talk to him (admittedly, I slightly exaggerated how soon my train was due), but I admired his spirit, because this guy was doing his job. And yes, I'm sure he would have gotten a nice commission had he been able to convert me, and it would only have been right. Honestly, this is the kind of kid you want to hire.

Which brings me to my main point, which I am pretty sure I have made before but I'll say it again: one of the great tragedies of the shift to e-commerce is the disappearance of retail jobs which encourage person-to-person contact and -- in the best cases -- offer some sort of variable compensation. Particularly for people with less privilege and wealth, retail and front of house food service jobs are ways to interact with other people, develop people skills and confidence, and progress in the world. Of course it isn't easy, there are no magic carpets, but they are important nonetheless, because they are great levelers, places where people from different social strata are brought together and made somewhat equal through the magic of that commercial copula, the retail transaction.

That kid really should go far, so long as he plays it straight, works hard, and is fortunate enough to have someone pay attention. I would have tipped them had their supervisor not come out.

When the credit card prompter asked if I would like to donate to the charity of TMobile's choice, which was something education-related, I was like "oh hell yes."

Belmont, MA

Arriving at my friend's mom's memorial service at a nature center, I was directed to park in a spot. A guy parked next to me in what was, I suppose, a Nissan Leaf. He looks at me. "Is that an electric vehicle?" he asks, eyebrow arched. "No" I said. "This is an electric vehicle charging spot" he says, pointing to a sign. So I dutifully backed out and parked in one of the last remaining spots. Somebody else pulled into the charging spot 30 seconds later, in a Camry. Sigh.

Once more

I find myself back in Larchmont, at the old family manse. It is a calm day, the winter sun glinting off the Long Island Sound, except for the inescapable sounds of suburbia: somewhere within earshot a big truck or other piece of equipment is grinding away and beeping as it works on something: pouring concrete, tearing up a street to put in new wires, something. It is the hidden and ongoing cost of maintaining old infrastructure, which is needed to support high population density: unless it is planned for in advance, which they didn't used to. (NB. Went outside to clarify noise. Apparently it is limb-trimming/grinding and custom cabinetry noises as the next door house is being filigreed for some new neighbors. Pretty sure this is at least the second major renovation since I started coming round these parts, but then again that has been a quarter century, so what do you expect?)

Being in the old house is odd. It is half full of familiar furniture, half full of the stuff brought in by the stager to sell the place, which we seem to have done. And let there be no doubt, at this point in time we are lucky to have been able to make a quick exit (knock wood) from the house, albeit at a lower price than we expected/hoped over the years, especially having listed in September. I recently had drinks in NC with a guy who wants to move down but can't sell his house in Milford, CT. He listed at $2.4 million maybe 2 years ago and can't find a buyer at $1.5.

Soon this house will be the source of noise to its neighbors as it is brought into the 21st century.

Kevin's mom's funeral in Yonkers last night was interesting. It was a lovely display of her art and pictures from her life, that was all good, and an interesting group of people. I talked to a few of them, but mostly I was the total outsider, the WASP from central casting, and everybody was talking to the people they knew, which is understandable. The open casket and people coming close and kneeling down and crossing themselves before paying their last respects, that was a new one.

Funerals, weddings and lifecycles

On Saturday I heard that someone I know from Al Anon, whom I will call Margaret, had died. Which was something of a shock. She was quite young, maybe in her early forties, and I hadn't seen her for some time. When someone that young dies, it can be pretty much one of two things: cancer or suicide. Which it was doesn't really matter.

Margaret's passing made me reflect on all the cancer and dying I see around me. A cousin has pancreatic cancer, the mothers of not one but two of my brothers in law are in different stages of the passing process, but are in it, nonetheless, and a friend from high school just posted about her 22ish son's cancer. Plus the sister of another friend has gliobastoma, I just heard. On the one hand, knowing a lot people with cancer is pretty much a function of being 53 and knowing a lot of people. This is just what my life is going to be like for a while, if not the rest of my life.

Usually, when people get to the age of much grey hair and much dying around them, it is offset by a stream of weddings and births amongst their children and their peers' children. But that hasn't quite started happening, and it is our own damned fault: it's because we married and the started families late, relative to historical standards. Time was, people married in their teens or early twenties and started families a few years later. So it was normal to be a grandparent around the age of fifty. But we got married in our late 20s at best and started popping out the littluns even later. Natalie was born when Mary was 36 and I was 34, Graham three years later. Do the math.

At the very least, I like to think that the stability of our household (relative to the one in which I grew up) and the priority we have given to family all along the way will communicate something to our kids, and at the very least won't make them anxious about getting in on the settling down game from the get go. Fingers crossed. I am not far from ready for some grandchilluns!