Mild and clear of body, cloudy of mind

Today is picture postcard fresh in middle Westchester, with a high in the mid-70s. It went down to the low 60s overnight, so we slept with the window open. As with many late summer visits over the last couple of decades, I find myself migrating around a Berridge household, searching for the best place to plunk down with a mystery novel, a process somewhat challenged by an excess of bric a brac and a reticence to make tough decisions about paring things down and making the space better because, after all, the stuff belongs to someone else (in this case, Susan, who has long since decamped to Austin), because it does support human weight when you sit on it and is therefore by definition furniture. Then there's the question of the wall hangings and decorations, which are all Southern Woman, though the house has long been occupied by two Northern Men. Makes no sense.

It's all good and at least there is central AC, of which the Berridges somehow never deemed themselves worthy in 47 years in Larchmont, but I must confess I miss looking out at the Long Island Sound, the saving grace of that old house. And the Sound itself, being so deep in the crook towards New York City, was always a pale shadow of a true seaside summer location.

Which in some sense begs the question of what the hell we have been doing all these years piling up all of these dollars, storing, saving, squirrelling against the risk of what conflagration? In full knowledge of the fact that we can't take it with us. Yes, the money can be bequeathed to future generations, but at what cost to enjoyment in the present? Is this inward-turning crouch really reflective of nothing so much as fear, is it not its own form of disability?

The 'limpics

I haven't really been watching the Olympics that much in recent years, but I guess I'm catching the spirit this year. Became a Fan fan in the table tennis final, but then had to admit he was outclassed by Ma in the end. Then, I was at first poo pooing the Triathlon mixed relay, but then I basically couldn't tear my eyes away from the race for a full hour and twenty minutes. Of course I was delighted to see the US women sneak through over the Netherlands in the morning, and more than pleased to see Djokovic get his ass kicked by Zverev in the men's tennis. And the track and field basically hasn't started.

It looks like I am in.

Oh yeah, Mary's mom was supposed to make it up here for dinner tonight, but she didn't because she got in a fender bender with a motorcycle. Turns out she ran into a guy George Jr. used to sail with. They figured it out while they were waiting for the cop to show up. "How nice to run into you," he said.

The Ghosts of the Noisy Hasids

Last night we stayed in a Home2Suites in Easton, PA. Coming into the room, we all had a vivid flashback to an almost identical room in Lancaster, PA where we stayed back over spring break when we were visiting Franklin & Marshall.

It also started out so innocently. We picked out an appealing looking pizza place from which to order dinner, then we want into town to check it out and walked around. When we got back to the room and were having our dinner -- including an amazing eggplant, peppers and onions calzone, I'll have you know -- we heard some no so gentle sounds coming from upstairs. Sounded like a bunch of kids bouncing around. It was early in the evening, we figured it would die back later.

It did not. We called down to the front desk. It seemed there was a Hasid wedding going on and there was much frolicking. They had pretty much the whole top floor of the hotel. We weren't the only ones to have let them know. I was watching some really stupid action movie (how Mary let me get away with that I don't know) but it didn't really drown out the noise. The desk staff were pretty flustered by it all. At around 10:30 I went downstairs for something else, maybe some cookies or a Perrier. A couple of Hasid dudes where carrying in enormous aluminum trays of food. Again, not good.

It kept going right up until midnight. Eventually I asked the staff if they could find us another room. They did. It was much quieter and we were able to sleep.

Here in Easton we are on the top floor and there have been no issues.

Media, Pennsylvania

Spent the night at a Hampton Inn in Media, PA, a short hop from Swarthmore College, stop 1 of this round of college tours. We will be escorted around by Natalie's friend Susannah, a rising senior. Later we hit Haverford, where our guide will be Gus Stadler of the English Department, famed scholar of Woody Guthrie and my freshman year roommate from Yale. The day ends up in Easton, PA, where we'll see Lafayette in the morning.

Media is a sweet little suburb, not super upscale like the Main Line but plenty nice. The light rail goes straight though town and has stops, improbably, every two blocks or so. Had dinner outdoors at a brew pub on Main Street, across the parking lot from a Trader Joe's that had been carved out of some old stone structure. As we walked back to our car we saw that a pizza place trumpeted that it had won an award for best pizza in Philly in 1982, 1984, and 1993. We were sad to have missed it, though that's sort of like UCLA basketball. 

Unfortunately we're not supposed to step on campus at Haverford till 5 so we'll have to kill a day in Philly, so we may look at Penn, though I have it very hard to see Graham going there and swimming with all those sharks. Mostly I think we'll try to lolligag through the day to the best of our ability, searching out shady spots. Though maybe we'll go check out the Liberty Bell etc.

In the background bullshit persists on the question of the playground back in Chapel Hill, as the former Board Chair and current Board Nemesis has sent an email saying he is talking to lawyers blah blah blah. I am trying to ignore that nonsense to the best of my ability. 

Ready to roll

Tomorrow we hit the road for the first of my three major road trips to conclude the summer.

1. To the Northeast to see colleges and family with Mary and Graham
2. Home from Austin (after flying out there) with Natalie -- via Birmingham where we will visit the Racial Justice Memorial
3. From Chapel Hill to New Haven with Natalie to settle her in for her (gasp) senior year of college

In preparation we are scrambling around getting things done: mowing the yard, suspending newspaper subscriptions, paying tuition (thanks Adam and Ben for reminding me about that little issue), etc.

Hopefully this weekend marks the end of the neighborhood listserv batshittery about the playground out in the park. I have, gentle reader, spared you the details about that. Next time you see me, thank me for doing so. One thing I have learned is that when I quit this board I am going to really need to walk away from it and be truly done with it. I can't try to influence from beyond the grave unless my feedback is requested.

Keeping score

Today I took Adam 6-4. I haven't mentioned it to Mary, because it always annoys her when I do. She rolls her eyes and looks at me like "Do I have to listen to this again? I so don't care." But it's not really about me beating Adam, that's what she doesn't get. It's about me beating myself and stuffing down the doubting demon voices in there that tell me that he's better than I am, that I'm not supposed to win, something like that. Because those are very real, the doubting, the negative scripting, all this stuff that evolved from growing up scrawny with buck teeth and not as athletic as lots of other guys for a long time. Yeah I caught up in time, but it took a while, and it was to some extent because of the demons.

I may try to talk this through with Graham on the DL. Also, Mary probably doesn't realize that she gets an unrepresentative sample because I'm sure I talk about it less when I lose.

Blueberries at 10:40

In typical fashion for us, we ate dinner very late yesterday. Mary and I were over at Ben and Emily's enjoying a drink on the back porch. When we got back at 8, we discovered that Graham -- having driven back from Triangle Chess Club in Morrisville as he continues the renaissance ushered in by the late realization that a driver's license offers him wondrous new freedoms -- was out in the park hanging out with Jake.

By the time we finished dinner it was 9:45. Then we cleaned up before watching the last 35 minutes of the 1984 classic Repo Man (which held up pretty well, if not perfectly).

So at 10:40, as I was gathering my things to head upstairs for a pre-bedtime watching of sports highlights on YouTube, Graham came out and was measuring himself out a serving of fresh blueberries. Because, you see, a fruit serving must be eaten before dessert, especially if you don't eat many vegetables. He is a good boy.

Music from the Street

Mary's friend Kate and her husband Kim had been visiting from Ann Arbor but then headed out to see other friends in Atlanta a little earlier. As I was settling in at my desk, I heard music from the street. It was this friendly Black guy about whom I wrote last year in this post. 

Now, there may be those amongst you who are thinking -- why do we need to call out his race? Is it really important? And in some sense you're right, but in another, you're wrong. We don't get that many Black people walking in the neighborhood, and certainly not that many who are lower wealth ones, as he clearly is. So it's great that he feels safe and welcome walking in the nabe. Also, it should be noted that he is most often listening to classic rock, often by big haired bands such as Journey. Not bands that are high on my playlist, but also not ones one expects to be in heavy rotation in the Black community. So the guy is showing us something different and diverse and opening our minds up. Thankfully, the wattage at which he plays his tunes is not that high, because mediocre hair metal is only so funny, no matter who is blasting it.

Sadly, I'm almost never in my yard when I see him go past. I've chatted with him once or twice when passing on my bike or when running, but we've still never had a good conversation.

The Deflating of the Olympics

By now it is clear just how very star-crossed the Olympics in Japan are. Every day another headline drives another nail into their coffin. This or that star won't attend or tests positive for COVID. No fans. Today I read that Toyota -- Toyota, mind you -- will not run ads connecting itself to this iteration of the games despite sponsoring them at the highest level and thereby having the right to display the Olympics logo on its ads.

Time was, the Olympics were the locus of a distinct romance, a place to inspire kids to strike out on their own and pursue the most exotic and improbable of dreams and know there could be great glory and honor awaiting them: curling, javelin, ping pong, whatever. It was really the greatest celebration of career diversity in the world. Which used to be very unique.

I suppose the internet and social media has in some ways upended that by showing that there are other paths to a disproportionate share of the world's attention. The Olympics were at least uniformly wholesome and to that extent probably preferable, though in recent years the consumption of them on TV had devolved into much too packaged an experience. Let's hope they make it back.

Them thar hills

As I had said last week, yesterday we made our way up to the Blue Ridge Music Center in Galax, VA to see Sierra Ferrell in concert. I had found her on YouTube and then turned Mary on to her. In typical fashion, Mary quickly became an obsessive fan, and she told her friend Kate about her. And so plans were laid for Kate and her husband Kim to drive down from Ann Arbor and meet us in the hills on July 17 to hear her sing. 

Then we got there, and there was rain. And thunder. And lightning. Apparently this happens all the time up in the hills, and everybody was kind of expecting it. We were prepared enough to have brought raincoats, and Mary had brought an umbrella. Since I don't really believe in umbrellas, we only had the one.

In any case, the proximity of lightning had thrown the whole thing into question, and everybody was just hanging out, using all available modes of shelter, waiting for it to blow over.

There were some great styles in evidence. There was one barefooted guy who had dreadlocks down to his waist and a straw hat that had a curlicue top like something straight out of Dr. Seuss. Another dude had on cowboy boots and work shirt cut off at the sleaves to display a fine portfolio of tattoos. Reminded me a lot of Jack Whitebread. 

Eventually we made our way over to the breezeway by the building of the Center, where we had heard a magical little set by some guys with banjos and/or fiddles or something years ago of an August afternoon  (and where they are having performances these days from 12-4 daily, we caught some of one on Monday). Yesterday we were sitting there waiting with a family with a couple of small kids who were listening to something on an iPhone and drawing some drawings. The dad saw a rainbow and told his kids, who hopped up to see. In short order, it had turned into a double rainbow, which got them really worked up.

Then they announced that the show was cancelled, so we drove back to our AirBnb to meat Kate and Kim.

Patience

Much is being asked of us -- by which I mean me -- these days in terms of patience. Just a few items: I ordered a couch in late March with an expectation of 9-11 weeks for delivery. I recently checked in on my order and was told that because of the "foam crisis" and other supply chain constraints, late October-early November was probably more like it. There's a guy who's going to pressure wash my house and also my roof and he hasn't been able to make it by. I ordered some fluffy looking flip flops off of the internet and they sent me the wrong size.

Thankfully, I have enough books and coffee so I should be OK. And there are plenty of things to watch on TV. But still.

A fatal pivot

By now, watching the numbers daily, it's clear that the spread of the Delta variant is accelerating to crisis levels and that the prudent thing to do is to dial back in-person indoors interactions, mask up in public settings and generally reimplement best practices we learned in the first year of the pandemic. It's already clear that lots of people are going to die unnecessarily.

But can and will the American public pivot at this point in time? How are Fox and OANN reporting on this? Can we get more of the vaccine hesitant and vaccine skeptic to go in and get their shots?

It's not at all clear. My office mate David said he heard Richard Petty doing a pro-vaccine PSA on sports radio the other day. Let's hope that his exhortations and those of others do not fall on deaf or even dead ears.

Hospitality shift

An article in the Journal this morning described how there has been a measurable shift in the workforce away from hospitality jobs towards logistics but also real estate, insurance, etc. One of the drivers is that people who've been working long stressful days into the night for varying pay are appreciating more stable and diurnal schedules. We all see it in restaurants these days as things take a little longer, so we just need to adjust our expectations.

There are a bunch of knock on effects that are already being realized and can be expected:

• Hospitality providers are increasing benefits and pay for workers. In the short term it could drive inflation. In the long term it could even out as turnover decreases and more stable career paths emerge.
• At the low end, more processes will be automated (restaurant ordering automation could become more ubiquitous at the low end and more prevalent at mid-tier establishments, hotel reservations and check out [mostly already there], etc.
• More food service will move towards quasi-catering to accommodate lower foot traffic in stores
• Ultimately, retail-facing real estate could continue to transition to logistics, call centers, and other non point-of-sale uses as demand settles

If demand for sit down food service falters because of waves of opening/closing as the pandemic drags on and the workforce transitions away, it could have the baneful effect of taking away the customer service jobs that help lower and younger people get the confidence and social skills that can help them advance their careers. That would be a shame. It would be much better if we could accept growing pains and celebrate new entrants to the workforce. 

The absolute best thing would be if we could open up our borders a little and let more people onto paths towards naturalization to fill the gaps. Ultimately, that's what we need: more people. The US fertility rate is at its lowest rate ever (1.64 vs. a replacement rate of 2.1) in 2020. So we need more immigrants, or we are just going to have to accept fewer services. More importantly, we just won't be America, where we should be embracing and empowering immigrants.

But I digress.

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Of late I have had a hard time getting momentum in reading books. I picked up some generic espionage book at FlyLeaf in the used book section. It had good blurbs, but it actually sucked. I tried reading this Lionel Shriver novel about modern obsession with fitness but couldn't catch a groove.

So when I saw a novel I had stolen from Natalie's shelf, Hank Green's An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, I decided to roll with it. Natalie and I will be spending a lot of time in the car together in August, so I figured I might as well get on the same page with her.

It is a fun book. After two nights, I am 100 pages and change in. I wouldn't characterized it as a great book just yet, but it's totally enjoyable and is written from a perspective rather different than mine, that of a young person. It really brings home how fucking old I am and makes me realize that I had really probably better work on that a little by checking out some of the young folks' stuff. More later.

Cross-generational fitness

Monday Monday. After a mildly disappointing weekend on the sports front (England lost, Djokovic won), it's back to the coal mine.

Had a lovely brunch with my high school soccer coach and history teacher yesterday. Afterwards, I had intended to go for a long bike ride, but realized before heading out that I in fact would be better off seeing if Graham came out with me. Often I have a twinge of guilt when I'm out on the road and I know that he's back at home, laying in a contorted position on his bed reading about something on his iPad. Not that I'm worried about what he's reading. He does a good job with his mind. What he needs to work on is his body.

So yesterday we headed out and were on our way to Carolina North when I remembered Niklaus telling me about the newish extension of the Bolin Creek Trail that goes up the hillside into the Northside community. So we doubled back and headed over to it, then biked around on campus before coming home via trails in Carrboro and Estes Extension. All told, 12 miles or so. 

Not a great workout for me but I really need to get over my fixation on my personal fitness and think more about the aggregate cross-generational fitness of my family. It's more important that I bring my kids into the realm of healthy habits then that I be super lean. Honestly, I can make other adjustments, like eating less or going for a swim afterwards. In principle. In practice it's easier to do one long workout then multiple small ones. And it's hard to eat less.

In the evening, I started a new book, a novel by one of Natalie's favorite young adult influencers, Hank Green, brother of John Green and co-host with him of the most excellent podcast "Dear Hank and John," as well as a host of other content channels on YouTube and elsewhere. Really good guys, and the book is fun, and it puts me on the same page with Natalie. 

The end of a life

At long last I made my way to the end of Cheryl Misak's biography of Frank Ramsey. And though the whole romance and mystery of Ramsey is tied up in his early death, at the age of 27, and the promise of what he might have done had he lived, I was nonetheless greatly saddened when the book actually came to the moment of his death. Perhaps it was the sadness of all those around him -- Keynes, Wittgenstein, Russell, really all of Cambridge -- but it was also just the fact that he seemed like such a genuinely nice guy, a lovable lunk.

In any case, as with any book I finish, I'm glad it's done. Now I can put it on the shelf and read another one.

But before that, I need to go work on cleaning up the porch because Kate and Kim are coming next weekend after we all head up to the mountains to see Sierra Ferrell in concert at Galax. Psyched for that.

And, oh yeah, I was proud to beat Adam 7-5 today in a hard-fought set after holding off a number of set points when I was down 5-4. I continue to develop solid mental callouses.

The Wrath of Khan

One of the Biden administration's more interesting moves has been to appoint 32-year old Lina Khan to run the FTC. Khan has been on a rocket ship since she wrote a paper ("Amazon's Antitrust Paradox") while at Yale Law School criticizing the efficacy and wisdom of applying current antitrust law to Amazon. First, Columbia University made her an Associate Professor straight off, skipping the normal tenure process. Now she's been appointed to run an organization of 1100 without having ever managed much before.

I hope she does well. She went to Mamaroneck High School, Mary's alma mater, after all. But it is a rather rapid trajectory and not without risks. Democrats criticized appointments of judges by Trump when the judges had little experience but were just ideologically friendly. And rightly so. I fear this is a repeat of putting Atul Gawande -- a wonderful author and human being and likely a great doctor and surgeon -- in the CEO role of the JP Morgan/Amazon/Berkshire Hathaway captive health care provider. It failed ignominiously. Not because Gawande wasn't the right person for the job, probably because it couldn't be done. But having the wrong person for the job at the helm likely didn't help.

Khan's core thesis is indeed interesting. Since Robert Bork established the grounds of current antitrust law back in 1978, mergers have tended to be judged on the basis of their benefit to consumers, as measured in prices. Khan argues that Amazon engages in predatory pricing to grab market share and has insidious effects across the economy (now I am summarizing summaries, but it's soon time to move on with my day).

One key question I think is whether lower prices are really all that for the consumer. After all, we all know that buying the cheapest thing is not always the right thing. We also know that -- if something is being given away (Facebook, or Robin Hood with free commissions for example) -- something else is being taken (consumer data, payment for order flow). In a freemium situation, the consumer is the product.

Anyway, there's no doubt that she raises legitimate questions. We'll see how she does at the FTC. Certainly she has directed attention at a government agency people don't think about a lot, and to that extent she continues the civics lesson that was the Trump administration, which is itself not a bad effect. The more people examine, discuss, and think about the role of government, the better our outcomes will be in the end.

Good day

A strong showing yesterday, I took Adam 6-4, 6-4, in each case after being down early in the set (2-3 and 0-3, respectively). Adam says he thinks it's the first time I've ever beat him in two sets, which is exactly the kind of thing he might 1. remember and 2. dream up. But he may well be right.

The key thing was mental resilience. I kept resisting the temptation to globalize any inferences that might be drawn from an individual point. No turning points, only points.

Also, I stepped in from the baseline and took more balls out of the air around the service line rather than letting them bounce. I've observed Federer doing that pretty effectively recently on YouTube.

Pictures from trips of my youth

Mom has been cleaning out the bathtub in her condo, which was full of stuff she couldn't cull when she moved from David's house on Laurel Hill to their condo at the Cedars. Some of it has ended up at my house. Sometimes it's things I'm happy to have, but often it's things that she can't discard because of general decision-making fatigue. Certainly I can't judge her for it, we all experience it every day. And it's why Jeff Bezos has said that he tries to structure his day so that he has to make a couple of important decisions, something like that. Because more than that exhausts us.

One of the things mom brought is photo albums from trips: me in Moscow '87, the two of us in Spain, France and Switzerland '88. The striking thing is how much of it is landscapes and cityscapes and other artsy bullshit. It seemed important at the time. I wanted to demonstrate to others where I had been, that I had been there, and that while I was there I had a "good eye" for important, revealing and attractive things. Some of it is good and there are nice echoes, for example I photographed old people ballroom dancing in the park in Moscow, and Mary would return to the same spot in her Moscow series from '98. Hers is of course much better.

Several decades my pictures are largely fluff. I want to see pictures of myself, my mom, and then other people -- particularly the women I had some sort of sexual contact with -- more or less in that order. I am intensely curious about how I looked -- my clothes (often a little silly), my hair, did I look healthy, did I look happy? It's pretty natural, given how much of a blur it is to me now.

But there aren't that many pictures of me, because I thought pictures of people and especially of myself were vaguely uncool.

Riding in Durham

Headed out on a ride yesterday, a little after noon. It was a mild day, otherwise that last sentence would have been crazy. I was headed north, towards Hillsborough, but am a little tired of those routes already, so as I started along Erwin Road I thought: "why not head to Durham and tool around?" I had made this ride last year while the protests following the killing of George Floyd were ongoing. America was still quasi shut down, though opening back up slowly with masks on. On that day I -- a middle class white guy on a not cheap if not too fancy road bike -- rode past an encampment right in front of the new Durham police HQ on East Main St. It was a hot day. A young woman of color who was camped out there said to me as I passed: "Do you need a water?".

Riding in Durham for me is a constant stream of memories, in a way very different from Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is baked into my consciousness inch by inch but also day by day, minute by minute, so often I am trying to recall what was once in a given spot because I feel I should command its entirety. It is therefore a space more of forgetting than remembering.

Durham, by contrast, is a place I haven't lived for longer than a summer since I was 5, but I've spent a lot of time there. So places are associated with people and events. I ride across Duke's campus and there's the dorm where Leslie lived her freshman year, there's the one where I did soccer camp and there was no AC and we'd get burgers from McDonald's delivered at the end of the day, after we watched films, because we'd be so hungry from playing games after dinner. There's the dorm where Natalie stayed at TIP, there's the one where Graham did. There's the one where Amy from Dallas -- whom I met at Andover in '82 -- lived her freshman year, where I visited her when she came to Duke later. Did I spend the night???

I rode out through Trinity Park to the School of Science and Math, where Leslie and I were born. I stopped on Main Street at a new patisserie -- Miel Bon Bons -- and had a spinach-artichoke croissant. They didn't take cash so at first I couldn't buy it. I went outside and was putting on my helmet when the young lady working the register came out and said: "I can give it to you for free!" I threw a couple of bucks in the tip jar and sat and ate the thing (quite good) and watched a number of lower income Black people walk by, looking at a boarded up convenience store across the way. It was hard not to be reminded of Eddie Murphy's classic "White Like Me" skit from SNL, but the thing was delicious and the proprietor had shown marketing savvy.

But I digress. The main point is that my memories of Durham aren't laid on quite thick enough for them to obscure one another. There are just enough of them to form a mnemonic layer.

Hitting the pavement early

This morning, as I was sitting out on my porch drinking coffee and reading and watching the morning exercisers, I was struck by a thought I've had before: "These people are smart, getting the exercising done first thing in the morning." And then my brain said to me, "But wait, you like to think you're smart too, right?" I couldn't argue with that, so I went and laced'em up and headed out around the lake for my statutory 3 miles. It was hot already, and humid of course, but I made it through without my body chiming in to voice objections about how hungry it was or, conversely, to let me know that other important parts of the morning routine had been skipped.

We will try this again, my body, brain, and I.