Return from Sylva

Graham, Mary and I are just back from a not-quite whirlwind tour of the mountains west of Asheville. We stayed in rather shiny new cabin up a crazy driveway in some random holler. You may hear more about that later.

But for today I would be remiss if I didn't tell you about Sylva. It's a sweet little town with not one but three book stores, though admittedly one is a friends of the library store so the selection isn't great (but the guy behind the desk was super friendly). It is more than counterbalanced by the one next door, a classic used book store of the sort one sees rarely, where the owner clearly just buys up the collections of faculty members from the nearby university (Western Carolina) and sells them. All manner of oddities and things that took me back to college. Graham ended up independently picking up a book about US-China relations that had been on my Amazon list for years.

One can also purchase food in Sylva.

But the place de resistance, no doubt, was the one in this picture, which features the world's largest collection of pieces of the Berlin Wall, some of them adorned with the original graffiti, others with newer artwork. Accompanied by a museum which gives a detailed timeline of the Cold War. It is owned by a guy from Florida who is a history buff. It's free to go in but you can buy some of the art and also T-shirts (Graham and I got a couple) and other memorabilia. There's also a range of other period stuff strewn about, like a 1979 issue of US News and World Report which promised to explain why there would be food inflation in the upcoming year. I turned to the relevant article, which proved to be a fairly detailed interview with the Secretary of Agriculture. Times have changed.

Early Wednesday I have to pick up and head to the west coast, first to Seattle for a couple of days, then on to Juneau to see Natalie for a few days before she returns to the East Coast. Then I'll be back for a week and change before we deposit Graham in the apartment he will share with Ben. This morning it occurred to me that Graham may never live under the same roof with us again for as long as a summer. My heart fell. Though, as I have attested before, there are virtues to empty-nesting, it is also nice just to have him here.

Internal vs external motivation

Adam and I almost never practice at tennis. We warm up for 5 minutes, 10 if we have a lot to talk about, then we start keeping score. I find it difficult to make myself run hard for the ball if we're not keeping score.

More serious tennis players practice all the time. They work on specific strokes, hitting cross-court backhands to one another, then forehands, then they alternate working on volleys and so on and so on. Reams of research show that such "deliberate practice" is important to making a lot of progress in specific domains.

Mary's brother Rob, on the other hand, likes to just hit the ball and says that he is so "intrinsically motivated" that he doesn't need the scorekeeping mechanism to keep him focused. Rob and I often hit with one another for a while before starting to play. I think he's not wrong to call this out as an instance of internal vs. external drivers.

I wonder if I shortchange myself by allowing myself to focus on external motivators like the score in a meaningless tennis match too often. I have written before about feeling to some extent imprisoned by numbers and metrics, mpg in the car, number of posts in the blog, more recently things like number of DuoLingo points (holding steady at 500 a day for over a year) and pushups (started the 1776 challenge (1776 in July) on July 2, an old shoulder twinge has slowed me down but am at 930 and counting -- i.e. I'm not going to make it but feel I shouldn't quit). Then there's also the question of money. 

I think by and large I harm no one but myself with my overreliance on metrics. But do I harm myself? Certainly -- and I think I've written about this before -- the fact that it's not easy to quantify progress in guitar-playing has held back my progress on the guitar. But I'm good enough that at least Mary and the cats don't suffer too much.

Brain packing

I was sitting there petting Leon and sipping coffee when I saw someone walking out at the lake. I happen to know this person quite often listens to NPR while out walking, which I really don't understand. For myself I greatly prefer being alone with my thoughts while walking, running or biking, though I am an inveterate book and podcast listener in the car.

But then again, I am almost OCD about my habits including, at that very moment, thinking I should be reading something in the spiritual vein, as I do at that time of morning. Presently I'm re-reading Abraham Joshua Heschel's Man is Not Alone. This despite the fact that it's been some time since any of those books really spoke to me in the deep way I hope for them to. I have clung to the ritual despite not getting the payout.

Meanwhile, I really do get a lot out of just sitting there petting the cat, despite Leon's pesky insistence that I scratch his belly in exactly this one spot and him putting himself at an angle and distance that is a bit of a pain in the ass to reach. But he looks so beatific when scratched there and wags his tail in such a sweet way. Discomfort or no, I should be focusing on the cat. The books will be there forever. He won't.

The truly prolific and the one-sentence paragraph

There's a guy I know from the coworking space who has now posted for like 1400 days straight on LinkedIn and is, according to him, killing it leading "social selling" seminars Monday nights on LinkedIn. I am, I must confess, intrigued. Many deride it but LinkedIn has evolved into an extremely useful platform over the years. A good way to keep in track of people, relatively tightly focused on business for the most part which keeps it largely free of the partisan rancor that infects other networks. 

But then again I find the writings a little annoying. All too many people have gone over to this style of writing exclusively in one-sentence paragraphs. If the Lord had intended paragraphs to include only one sentence, why would he have made it so easy to have more? And why would the convention stating that the one sentence paragraph should be used only sparingly have evolved. Overuse of the one sentence paragraph is an asinine thing.

So I should probably resist. Especially as it may well conflict with tennis.

Making the globe smarter

The Economist has a great leader this week about what the world can do to help more people in more places realize their potential (it's behind a paywall, but oh well). So much of it has to do with raising nutrition for infants and toddlers in places like Africa and Bangladesh and by limiting regional conflicts.

And that means multinational organizations that cooperate with one another as well as stable geopolitics. Which depends upon good leadership.

I remember back in the 90s one would often go to airports and run into groups of evangelical Christian returning from missions to Africa and feeling ashamed of not doing something similar. I had good intentions, but they in some sense were walking the walk, even if perhaps they were Bible-thumping in a way to which I might object. At least they were going over there and seeing how people lived and doing something. I'm sure they did at least if not primarily a little latrine-digging work and/or brought some food/medicine to embody their message.

Has this faded with the rise of populist nationalism? I honestly don't know. The America Firstish tone seems to imply it has. 

I do know that the left/public health/ESG world does have a focus on this stuff, if not a firm handle. And Gates has been a good leader in this regard, so it is disheartening to see him vilified. Ditto for Soros

Trump assassination attempt

On the one hand, Biden probably didn't condemn the attempt quite forcibly enough in his initial statement. The phrase "we cannot condone violence" rings in my ear. That was a little bit soft. He did a lot better in his six-minute address to the nation last night. He hit the right notes. Yes there were a couple of boo boos ("battle box" vs. "ballot box"), but it was cogent, coherent and from the heart. 

On the other, it must be owned that it was Trump who at once lowered the tone and raised the temperature* of American politics and created the combustible atmosphere that led to this. Yes Democrats have fallen into the trap here and there. The shooting up of the Congressional baseball game where Steve Scalise was badly injured and the physical attacks on neo-Nazi Richard Spencer the weekend of the 2016 Trump inauguration stand out as particularly low moments. But honestly more than anyone it is Trump who has created the conditions that came back and nipped him in the ear.

I'm glad he wasn't killed because Biden is right, that's not who we are. But I would not be sad if he were to die of natural causes. But it is too late for the death of Trump to mean that much. He has created the template for nationalist populism in America. If he dies JD Vance** or the like steps in and fills his shoes. Whether anyone else will ever have license to mouth as much virulent nonsense at that level as Trump has remains to be seen. 

*I had written that phrase before I heard Biden use it in his address, btw.

** BTW let the record clearly reflect that I wrote this before the nod to Vance as VP candidate was made. Some days I have the hot hand.

The problem with scaling mutuality through charity

There is a tendency on the right to lionize charitable giving and volunteering as a superior method for people to take care of one another relative to having the government do it. Many conservatives hearken back to de Tocqueville's eloquent rhapsodies on the way Americans participated in "voluntary associations" to help one another. Barn-raising is probably the most paradigmatic romantic instance of it. Sadly there's not much barn-raising these days, and where there is something analogous (Habitat for Humanity builds) there's often a need for people who know what they're doing to go back on Monday to fix some slapdash work done by a volunteer on Sunday.

Americans do both give money and volunteer their time at pretty reasonable clips. But it's nowhere near enough. Charitable giving hovers around 2% of GDP, whereas the aggregate value of hours volunteered is estimated at around a quarter of that. Even if we assume that the value of hours volunteered is low by a factor of three we're still not doing that well.

Of their own free will people are willing to give to a point to their neighbors and relatives. But our willingness to do so falls off quickly when people are more distant. Which is a massive structural impediment to realizing any kinds of economies of scale through individual giving.

So there will always be a need for the state to play a major role in helping us care for our more distant neighbors. We'll never do it ourselves. We can't.

Agile war

Yesterday the Journal ran a story about how the Russians have been quickly adopting to the various technologies the Ukrainians have been throwing at them drawn from the American stockpile of goodies. Russian armies have historically been good at figuring stuff out quickly and making do with less.

This comes on the heels of reading in the Musk bio about how Elon pushed teams at SpaceX (and we've seen him do this at Tesla and try to do it at Twitter/X) to grind harder and push through walls to get things done more quickly and cheaply than others thought possible, not always but not infrequently successfully.

I have a sense that as we lurch towards different military flashpoints as China/Russia/Iran and even North Korea test our resolve, that the US, NATO, AUKUS etc will be needing to adopt ever more agile product and technology development cycles. Things will get messier and the reconfiguration of product  cycles will have odd cultural collisions with the whole concept of top down chain of command. Effective fighting forces have already figured out how to devolve authority and empower lower level officers and enlisted people on the front line. Now they will have to do something of the same with technology.

Not that I'm really saying anything new here. I guess it was just that time of day and I needed to post something.

Elon

After my brother-in-law Rob continued his full-throated espousal of Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk I decided to go ahead and read the copy Rob gave Graham for Xmas or birthday or something. Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs had been good (though the Ben Franklin got gummed up a bit in the details -- Isaacson can string along a good narrative but he is no Robert Caro).

Anyhow, I've never been a big Musk fan, as I have likely shared somewhere here on the blog. Musk seems too devoted to being a big hairy ape dedicated to demonstrating that rules don't apply to him, to being above the law. Not my people. I have too much experience with that type.

A hundred pages in, I don't yet hate Elon. The guy had a hard life in many ways and, though already having demonstrated many of the genius/asshole features that are so prominently on display, there's a boyish earnestness to the guy and a sheer bursting ambition that he channels effectively enough to get things done that has an appeal.

Flattened

Awoke rather exhausted after giving blood late yesterday afternoon. Giving blood has been a good addition to the list of things I do over the last few years, though admittedly I have fallen into arrears of late (I don't think I had given for maybe nine months) and the Red Cross phone team does call very aggressively once one is able to give again (two months after one's last donation), which is a total pain in the butt.

But it's one of those few things one can just do and know unequivocally that one has done a good thing and it's also a good way to spend time with people one wouldn't otherwise come into contact with.

At dinner last night we were talking about blood donations and Graham told a story of some point in time when the Soviets were talking about preparing for war with the United States. Some members of their armed forces said that a good indication of whether we were ramping up would be the price of blood: if the price people were being paid to donate blood jumped up, that would be a clear sign the US was getting ready to attack. Soviet intelligence told the military people that actually people in the US were not paid to give blood, they simply did it to provide a service to others. The military initially did not believe that this could be true in a capitalist society.

While there is no payment, there are snacks. I always take some Cheez-Its (now "whole grain"!) and usually some Nutter Butters, even though it's before dinner. 

Rhythms

Though we had a couple of breakfasty breads -- muffins, the walnut raisin bread from Weaver Street -- I had to go ahead and have my Monday cereal to kick off the week if only to get into work week mode. 

I am in a weird place with my rhythms now, my cycle of exercise, sleep, eating, reading and watching which form the core of my week. On the one hand, they are serving me well and have gotten me through the challenging time of this first act of Mary's health crisis, such as it is. On the other, they feel a little constraining, I sense that it is summertime and I really do need to break out a little bit.

Which is to say I need to actually sit down with my calendar and figure out when I and we are going to get in some travel: to Seattle and Juneau, to the Northeast, to Ann Arbor to see Kate, something I've never done but we've been talking about for decades. I just need to do it or Labor Day is going to roll around and I'll still be sitting here on this couch every morning. 

BTW -- I'm sure there are those amongst you have may have thought "this is exactly why I shouldn't read blogs like this. Who gives a flying fuck about what he has for breakfast?" An entirely legitimate point. But of course as I have said before, this blog isn't really for you, it's for me, and in this case the choice of breakfast food is naught but a symptom or facet of the ongoing effort to maintain energy and equilibrium. Our young men and women have given their lives in foreign lands for centuries now to keep you free to not read my blog. Exercise it if you so choose.

Dr No

I just polished off Percival Everett's Dr No. We had enjoyed the movie American Fiction, based on another Everett's Erasure, then I read of profile of him in the New Yorker, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I finished it. I wasn't blown away, but it was amusing enough, if occasionally dragged down by an excess of mathy discourse (the protagonist is a math professor). I may read more in the future but I won't sprint after it. 

It was important that I finish the book because I had just gotten 100 pages or so into some random Scandinavian murder mystery I had picked up at Circle City Books in Pittsboro and I hate to quit two books in a row.

Limits on Power

The most recent Supreme Court decision concerning the court case around Trump and January 6 is disheartening. I can see some narrow legal basis for granting Presidential immunity for official acts, but I would imagine we really want that for situations like in 1978 when the Carter administration was secretly negotiating with the People's Republic of China to recognize it and grant it full diplomatic status. That was all done very secretively. I don't know if it was technically illegal. If it was, I think Carter did a good thing. Since then and since Deng presided over the opening of China more people have exited poverty than at any other time in world history. Having China as a counterweight also expedited the fall of the Soviet Union. The subsequent rise of Xi Jinping complicates matters for sure, but we were never gong to be alone on the world stage.

If the President has immunity for actions carried out as part of his official duties, what about people acting on Presidential orders? Are they also immune? This opens up an enormous can of worms.

And it elevates the role of the press. Just because the President has immunity it doesn't mean we have to approve of everything the President does. There needs to be ever more vigorous debate on what are appropriate actions of the state.

As I said right after the 2020 election, the Biden administration should have been a time when we focused as a nation on the limits of Presidential power and putting guardrails in place. Instead, we keep removing them, including by Biden continuing to look for ways to extend it by doing things like forgiving student debt (a worthy goal if it could be targeted and authorized properly) by fiat (a bad thing). This has been a huge wasted opportunity.

Sitting round at home

Just now I took a quick scan of an article on Medium entitled "10 Deadly Habits You Need to Avoid." Something like that. I didn't expect an epiphany, but figured it was unlikely to hurt me.

One of them was "sitting more than 8-10 hours a day." I have been following all the hoopla about sitting being the new smoking etc but had never seen a number like that. Shit, I got out of bed 90 minutes ago and have been sitting at least 75 of those, though perhaps I may exclude the brief period in quasi-lotus position while I meditated. I sit a lot, enough that my butt gets tired. Should I perhaps be looking into a standing desk? It's not like I can stop reading and doing the things I need to do while sitting.

It also mentioned being late as a bad habit. "How many times will you have to say 'I'm sorry' to a friend?" Also not always my strongest suit. I am fortunate that Z continues to play tennis with me, the number of times I've been 3-5 minutes late.

Anyhoo, I think Graham's up. Time to stand up and go empty the dishwasher while he eats breakfast.