A new place to walk

Yesterday took the family down to White Pines Nature Preserve between Pittsboro and Sanford. It's managed by the Triangle Land Conservancy (thanks Bo Howes!) and is at the confluence of the Deep and Rocky Rivers, neither of which I had ever heard of. Most surprisingly, the hills are really pretty high, so tall, in fact, and north-facing, that it creates a cooler microclimate (often 8-10 cooler than Pittsboro, about 8 miles away).

I highly recommend parking in the first parking lot on the left as you come in, rather than going all the way down to the end. That way you end up taking a trail that really gives you the full sense of the size of the hills, with a descent marked by switchbacks of the sort you typically only see in real mountains.

On the way back we skipped stopping in to downtown Pittsboro and the excellent used book store there. Mary and I had just been there on the way back from canvassing in Sanford a few weeks back, and everybody's book stacks are pretty tall. But it was probably not the right moment to add us in as Covid vectors. Plus we had the wedding of my first cousin once removed Nola to watch on Zoom. Though the video quality was not great, we were able to clearly make out the ringbearer, who was the dog of the marrying couple. We were sad not to make it in person, but they did the right thing epidemiologically to keep it small.  

Nostalgia for the war

Picked up another Alan Furst -- one of the pile of books I snagged a couple of weeks back at the excellent used book store in Pittsboro -- as my quick read for the holiday weekend. As with all of these books, it's set in the 30s, as the Nazi threat moves across Europe, and is deeply nostalgic. Just read a lovely paragraph about the hero's dog, which came from the hills around Salonika and is a shepherd, so it escorts the kids from its block to and fro from school, likewise the postman, etc., much to the delight of the old ladies who watch it from kitchen chairs on the sidewalk each day.

It is curious that the time around WWII, a time of almost unprecedented calamity, death and disruption on the world stage -- is the focus of so much contemporary nostalgia. Perhaps it's because it was a time when the fruits of modernity were beginning to be shared more broadly across the populace, but still everything was relatively direct, person-to-person, and unmediated. The size of the boomer cohort and the longevity of the "greatest generation" and its children probably also plays a role. Will this specific nostalgia outlive those generations, just because we've all experienced the imprint of the good old days tone associated with its styles?

It's also likely that the sheer destruction of so many buildings and the cold anonymity and lack of geographic particularity of modernist architecture plays a big role.

Tippy top of the morning

When I was first starting to build my financial planning practice five years back or so, at the recommendation of the guy who ran my firm (who ended up having some hair on him), I started listening to and reading some of the self-management and improvement books that form part of the canon of the business and sales world: Brian Tracy, Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar, etc. There was some kooky shit in there, no doubt, but also more than a dollop of wisdom.

One thing that Tracy talked about was that it was a very beneficial practice to wake up in the morning and write down the thoughts that came to you. To make that a daily practice.

I get that, for sure. Sometimes my mind is racing with the thoughts of the day -- and my morning meditation and sit-ups, push-ups, and reading are a conscious attempt to offset that, and similarly the practice of not touching my computer till 8:15-8;30 (today I was up early so that drifted a little early). But often I have very solid and interesting thoughts flowing into my mind just when I'm sitting down to my first cup of coffee to read. Maybe I should start journaling some of them. On the one hand, I would hate to have to put them on paper and then go back and type them up. Then again, nobody ever said everything needed to be in my blog.

Looking off to my right, I see Charlie Munger's Almanack, and I am reminded of how little he has written (similar to Heraclitus and Wittgenstein). In Munger's case I'm pretty sure it's because he believes that his time is more valuably spent doing other things, reading and/or talking to Buffett and the others in his orbit on the phone, designing dorms at Stanford, really doing whatever he wants to. Who am I to argue with him? 

Itchy and scratchy

That's where I find myself right about now on many days, having gone through a morning's worth of readings, first from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, then the Journal, then a first turn through my inbox as I build my task list for the day. I'm working from home so I don't really need to shave and shower but... man is my face itchy from this stubble.

My first call is coming up at 10 and the markets open in 10 minutes and there are piles and piles of other stuff to read and my task list keeps growing as I think of other stuff and more people ping me, there's no end to it all, but I think I will attend to my face and head.

Most excitingly, Natalie is expected home later this afternoon after spending the night in Bethesda at the home of her roommate Ravya. She's driving the Bethesda-NC leg home solo, which will be a first for her but a good milestone on the path of adulting. I can't recall when I started driving CT- or NY-NC alone, but it was at about her age. It should be good for her.

The Brothers K

As I mentioned a couple of months back, I started re-reading The Brothers Karamazov for the first time since I took Robert Jackson's course of Dostoieveskii and Tolstoi in 1985. I started, and then I put it down and read something else (Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree [currently paused] and also a mystery novel by Elizabeth George).

I must confess that the Dostoievskii is rough going. I remember this book as really being his crowning achievement, but I am frustrated by the inability of any of his characters to have a conversation which doesn't plumb some corner of the depths of the human soul, and also by the relatively unmotivatedness of so much of their behavior and beliefs. I get that Fiodor Mikhailovich was taking the novel in a completely new direction, he was trailblazing into the human psyche and the novel itself, no mean feat. But what the actual fuck? I could use a sunrise, or a tree, or a description of a meal, or a horse galloping, a little something. Man does not live by flashing eyes and soul bearing alone.

Mikhail Bakhtin, in his highly influential Problems of Dostoievskii's Poetics, puts forth the theory that Dostoievskii ushers in a new era in the novel by virtue of what he called "polyphony," the fact that many of the author's characters have full-fledged, distinctive voices that compete for and sometimes overwhelm the authority of the author: we don't know who is right, what to believe. I'm actually not feeling that. I think that all the characters sound much too much the same. Obviously Zosima is an exception, and by extention Alyosha, but we really don't hear that much from them.

The AIG Story

I just polished off The AIG Story, written by the guy who built AIG -- Maurice Greenberg -- together with business/finance writer Lawrence Cunningham. It's the 5th book I've read on AIG, which is pretty much all of them, so it's a topic I know reasonably well for the cohort of people who never worked there, but all of my knowledge is still very mediated.

Greenberg makes the case that he was basically taken down for no particularly clear reason by Elliot Spitzer when the NY AG was trying to make a name for himself, and he makes the case pretty diligently and persuasively. Once Greenberg was forced out of AIG, there was basically nobody capable of running the place well (and for this lack Greenberg himself probably shoulders a significant share of blame, he didn't build an able enough core of lieutenants to render himself replaceable). Then AIG Financial Products got way out of hand, and history ran its course.

Greenberg also argues pretty well against the actions taken by the Fed with regard to AIG after Lehman went down in September 2008: the Fed took about 80% of the equity in the company while foisting on it a an $85 billion loan at 14%. It was crazy times, and as a spectator back then I remember we just had an attitude of let them do whatever they need to, just make it stop. But Greenberg is probably right on this point too.

More interesting is his critique of changes to AIG's governance leading up to the crisis. He basically says that AIG was subject to generic bromides about governance: more outsiders, separating Chairman function from CEO, etc, and that the net effect was that nobody was in charge or really understood the business after he was forced out. He is particularly critical of Arthur Levitt, the celebrated Chair of the SEC under Clinton. Again, what he says makes a lot of sense, so I'd be very interested in hearing a governance specialist take a whack at his arguments.

There's no doubt that, once Greenberg was shown the door, AIG got in trouble, and we all eventually suffered. The extent to which he can and should be blamed for the organization's weakness is debatable.

Turning

It appears fall may actually and fully be upon us, even as the last leaves drift down from the trees. It has unquestionably been warm, though this is the rare year that we will take it happily, as it affords us an opportunity to have just a few more lunches outdoors before that becomes a bad option.

One of these days this election may be well and truly over. Yesterday I allowed the news of the evening -- that the Board of Elections in Wayne County, Michigan (home of Detroit, which provided Biden with the margin that let him take the state), had refused to certify that county's election results, part of a scheme to let the state's Republican state legislature appoint an alternate pro-Trump slate of electors. My blood boiled.

To calm myself I decided to watch episode 1 of season 4 of The Crown, which I had been patiently awaiting all these months. In this episode a fair amount happens. We are introduced to Margaret Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson. There is violence from the IRA (no more detail than that, lest I spoil a plot twist). But mostly we are introduced to the young Diana Spencer, who appears and fills a hole in Charles' heart and life, which could have been occupied by Camilla Parker-Bowles from the start had it not been denied him by the strictures of the court.

I will confess I was moved by her appearance, by the promise she offered, and I was transported back to the suburbs of Manchester in 1981 where I, at the tender age of 15, met one Sara G-R, cousin of Alistair (with whom Leslie had a little thing), who lived in Paris. She was only 13 at the time, which seemed like a huge gap, but she was so clever, so charming, so cute, she in many ways was a first love. Back in Chapel Hill I had had girlfriends and sexual dalliances, it's true, but none of them seemed like a really great match for me and, honestly, I was just trying to build confidence as I grew into my teeth and achieve status within the local social hierarchy, and of course hit sexual milestones. Don't get me wrong. I was happy for the attention and for the validation of my fragile ego, but none of them seemed to offer romance, like Sara did. I think we may have kissed once if that, but man did I have a crush on her. At the end of the summer,  I went home. She sent a very nice letter, one I would really like to find it somewhere, but because I had no epistolary experience and because I was a lazy dolt, I never answered it. I left a message for her when I was in Paris in the summer of 1983, but didn't connect. Then I tried again when I was there in 1988, no luck. We are of course in touch now on Facebook. 

In any case, seeing Charles swoon for the younger Diana last night brought all of it back.

After the show, I looked at the news again, once more breaking my rule of no evening news. The Wayne County BOE had in fact certified the election results, moving them on to the state BOE. Watch the fuckers try it again there.

Blanketing the bed

One of my jobs around the house is to make the bed, it's just not something that Mary prioritizes. It's the US of A, she's well within her rights there.

So it also falls to me to manage the mix of blankets, sheets, what have you that go on the bed. Recently that has gotten harder during shoulder seasons as we've seen much greater variability of weather. So today I was making the bed, and I had to take all the blankets off to tuck the sheet in at the base of the bed. Before I decided which blankets and in what order should go on the bed, I went and got my phone and checked the weather for this evening so I could make an informed decision. My windows are wide open.

It's November 12. Thanksgiving is in two weeks. There shouldn't be much to think about. It's fall on the East Coast and it should be chilly, there really shouldn't be any question.

The absence of consensus about the reality of global warming and how we should approach it is deeply unsettling. The fact that the mantle of leadership has been taken up by a Scandinavian teenager with autism is striking.

Staying clean

Since the election, I haven't so much as looked at Facebook. I don't know if I am gone forever, but I am cutting way back for sure. It is a very stressful time as Trump refuses to concede the election, I fear at times for the guardrails of American democracy, but I also suspect that going out on Facebook won't help.

So much going on. Mary's mom's health is not good. We really need to get up north to see her in case she is really close to the end, but we can't find that out till we can get her in front of a good specialist in what ails her, and right now she is in a skilled nursing ward where she is cut off from everybody. Sigh.

Then there's work, and school, and just getting through this damned coronavirus. One good thing is that Mary has been going out in the kayak pretty regularly taking pictures. After years of being underengaged with the lake and insisting that she can more or less only take pictures of people, that's a great development. She needs more variety in her life, it makes her more fun to be around, like most people.

Gotta get cleaned up and go to the office.

Cultures of law

Was thinking back to Mary's observation about warning signs about guns at houses in the country. In the city and suburbs -- at least the affluent parts -- people have security systems to protect property but basically everybody feels safe and is ~98% law-abiding. People drive 68 in 55 zones, maybe smoke a joint here or there, sometimes they drive after having 3 glasses of wine (but so much less than they used to -- and all the credit in the world to Nancy Reagan on that one). If you call 911, it comes.

Even tax compliance is high. Yes people who can afford them hire CPAs to get guidance on how to manage down their tax liability within the confines of the tax code, but egregious tax evasion is very much frowned on.

Out in the country, they don't have the luxury of trusting in the written law like we do. People have to protect themselves, hence the culture of the fetishization of guns, big trucks and other metal objects, male dominance, fences, etc. It used to be and to some extent is still subtended by a culture of churchgoing and the norms that come with this.

Of course, you have to fit in and play the country game. This is also the land of lynchings -- the historical scale and publicness of which is truly shocking (as I have been reminded recently listening to The Warmth of Other Suns). If you were gay or an ambitious woman (like my mom) or otherwise nonconforming the thing to do was get the hell out.

But the layer of superficial norms has been an important part of the placid exterior of the countryside, it's claim to some moral superiority. Trump and his demagogue predecessors have ripped the pleasant facade off of that, have made it OK to embrace one's savagery so long as it is supported by a culture of "work," which is equated with sweating and transforming matter, building and making physical things. How the preachers justify it I cannot tell you, though it's all ultimately about their way of life being threatened, I get that.

OK, I have digressed. Gotta get to work. 

The mornings after

We are still in the middle of this election, but it's not too early to start learning lessons. So long as the integrity of the vote is respected, we have to abide by the results. On the subject of the integrity of the vote, the decisions of the Texas Supreme Court -- all Republican appointees -- and its support the next day by a Federal court last week regarding drive-through voting in and around Houston were encouraging. The Trump administration and/or the National Republican Party sought to stop it, the courts protected it. That was very encouraging from a checks and balances perspective.

And checks and balances are super important right now. I think overall what we've seen in the last couple of days is America showing its strong structural preference to let Presidential administrations have two terms to work on things. Obviously that is hard with Trump, because he doesn't give a fuck about any precedents and tramples on things willy nilly just to demonstrate that he can. It appears that America is disgorging itself of Trump himself, but acknowledging the legitimacy of some of the issues he touched upon. And also lots of Republicans continue to just hold their noses and prefer lower-tax, lower-regulatory regimes.

So it looks increasingly likely we get Biden but constrained by a Republican Senate and also a House in which the balance of power shifts incrementally back towards the middle. We can live with this. Indeed, we have no choice. Or perhaps it is better to say that we do have a choice and we have just shown what that is. With the Supreme Court conservative, the legislature will have to work to do anything. Having two Senators in the White House should ideally be great for getting the legislature back in productive, compromising mode. Let us cross our fingers.

There will be time to parse out the shifting demographics of the election. If more blacks and latinos are showing an acceptance of some of the pro-growth less government tighter boarders rhetoric of Trumpism, we have to listen to it.

The astonishing thing is the general acceptance of higher overall mortality in the face of coronavirus so that the economy will grow. A large part of the problem is that red states and counties had low mortality early in the crisis so they didn't feel the shock. It was a trauma to those of us in blue places. My life is in many ways more closely bound to New York, and even to London, Paris, and Madrid, than it is to Sanford and Yanceyville. I am in touch with people in the other places, I hear their stories and feel their pain.

It only just dawned on me this morning that, if Biden is elected, Kamala Harris will be the first woman in line for succession to the Presidency. That is a big deal that nobody has been playing up. Fingers croesed.

All in the neighborhood

We never see many trick or treaters at our house. The hills are steep, the lots are pretty big compared to contemporary subdivisions, the houses set back from the road, behind trees, the walkways to them are not always that well lit. Many of the houses are lived in by old professors who have been there for decades and don't have huge disposable incomes. Put it all together, and a kid has to work pretty hard to get to each unit of sugar. It's so much easier to hop in a car and go to Southern Village or Meadowmont, where it's cookie-cutter, Norman Rockwell dense.

This year was different. Trick or treating was a bit more of a fraught affair as people around the nation tried to carry on in a pandemic-friendly way. Benches and tables were put at the end of driveways with little bags of candy.

Remarkably, we had more trick or treaters than ever, about 20 of them. I think it's pretty much because people didn't take there kids to other neighborhoods. So I ended up meeting a number of people, including people I've seen around the lake in the summer. It was really nice. Perhaps this is another lesson in the unseen downsides in our metrics-driven, return-optimizing culture, in this case reflected in our children, who are well-tuned candy-seeking machines.

Although I will say I remember taking Natalie to Southern Village a decade or so ago and running into a couple of people I hadn't seen in decades, people I didn't even know were back in Chapel Hill.