Talking to one or many

Just as I was about to sit down and blog, I saw a note on yesterday's task list that reminded me that I needed to send a card to a friend from college whose mother had passed away recently. I went and did that, I even wrote the address by hand rather than putting one of those pre-printed sticker on there since the whole point of doing it in the old way is to do it yourself and do it slowly and individually, in acknowledgment of the uniqueness of the loss.

Of course this is in marked contradistinction to the blog, which goes out to millions. Just kidding, my readership is not that big, the true contrast is of course to one of the well-known social networks, you know what I'm talking about. This blog is an intimate space, more so because my real name's not on it, read by a few, and I am grateful when any of you stop by.

We are fortunate to live at a point in history when there are many ways of keeping in touch with people. I have found it helpful to cultivate many of these modes of communication, the blog being but one, the telephone is even better, but the lunch or coffee is the best. Though of course we only have so many of them to allocate out, and often they are claimed by my favorite periodicals. Though even as I write that I realize that -- as the pandemic rises again and we move rapidly from solstice to equinox and the days move imperceptibly but inexorably towards brevity and cold -- that really I need to be getting out to see more folx while the getting's good.

Good kid

After stopping through Princeton for a tour of and disquisition upon Princeton by our friend Ted, last night at around eight we stopped at a truck stop at South Hill, Virginia to get some food to gird us up for the last leg home. The pickings were fairly slim. It was Subway, which we diligently avoided through the whole trip, McDonalds, and a range of hot dogs spinning away in the convenience store part. Ever the lover of the frankfurter, Graham rolled with a dog. I reached in my wallet and handed him an undifferentiated wad of smaller bills and headed off for the McD's, having been intrigued by an NJ Turnpike Chinese-language billboard for McDonalds' "new" chicken sandwich (it actually sucked). Somewhere before bedtime I momentarily wondered what had happened with my change for the hot dog purchase. My query was answered when I was headed out to the driveway this morning and I found the remainder of the bills sitting in my cubby next to my wallet.

This is a far cry from how I managed cash with my dad. He took money from He's Not Here in cash, presumably as a means of tax evasion, facilitated by the fact that it is relatively impossible to accurately inventory keg beer since so much can be spilled, etc. I routinely went in and stole money from dad's cash pile on top of his dresser (which is now my dresser), often when he was passed out in bed drunk. Probably I felt justified in doing so because I knew he was cheating on my mom and because he was generally so absent, certainly I felt I was entitled to the money for one reason or another. In any case, Graham is not like that at all, nor is Natalie, for which we are eternally grateful but also more than a little bit proud.

Building muscles

Yesterday after dinner in White Plains a typical belabored dinner-table discussion erupted, with Marys Lee and Lloyd joining with Rob to argue that high school kids shouldn't need to learn things like geometry, trig and algebra. Graham and I took the other side, maintaining that there was real value in forcing kids to study things that seem impractical and divorced from the reality of day to day living.

I won't bore you with the details of the argument. What was most interesting to me after the fact was going for a walk with Graham afterwards (to loosen up a little space in our tummies for the brownies I had just baked) and hearing how he was excited to have rehearsed and run through the possible pros and contras of this argument in case he gets in it again later with his friends. Which really kind of proved the point of how important it is to get kids to think in terms of building mental muscles and habits of the type that is facilitated by math study. It is very gratifying to see him internalize these lessons, as opposed to just ingesting ever vaster and vaster quantities of seemingly undifferentiated and unstructured factoids from the internet. It's all good, mind you, but some goods are better than others.

On the second of our half mile walking loops around Rob and George's neighborhood we discussed how Graham's study of Latin prepares him well to study not just Romance languages but also Germanic and/or Slavic ones, simply because he is used to working with case systems. Graham allowed that if a university's distribution requirements forced him to study a modern language he'd be "pretty pissed," but I still hope he will bite the bullet somewhere in there. Languages just do a brain good.

Ghosts of an absent woman

After 800-900 miles of traipsing around New England and upstate New York, we are back in White Plains, in a bachelor pad for two Yankees dominated by the trappings of a woman from Mississippi. Susan lived here for a long time and then -- after her daughter Allison started having kids down in Austin and unable to get George to move, to have faith that he would ever have a team of attendants who could take care of him as well as his current team (and this is 95% Sam, I'm pretty sure), she hied off to Texas. Understandably so, mind you. It was a miracle she ever came and shared as much of her life as she did with George.

But it is funny to live amongst all of her stuff. Big prints of flowers on the walls with gilded frames. A little piano no one ever plays. A pretty sizeable Noah's Ark off in the corner.

It doesn't bother Rob and George, mind you. It seems entirely natural and honestly probably comforting to George, I think, and for Rob.... well, Rob cleaned out Larchmont, at least 80-85% by himself. I think the prospect of emptying another house of the belongings of a woman is the last thing he'd ever want to do again. And if he emptied it, he'd have to fill it with other stuff, which would be so deeply contrary to his nature that it defies description. As far as things go, Rob is a pure minimalist -- with the exception of gadgets and athletic equipment and shoes, which he accumulates in reasonable but modest quantities, relative to your average American male.

Certainly I'm glad to be back here. I have come to appreciate this little love seat in the sun/piano room, whatever you call this space to the left of the front door. And also the armchair in the corner of our bedroom, and the wildflowers Rob has "cultivated" out back. There are places to stretch out before hitting the road once more.

Facts about farmhouses

For a time it seemed to me that one of the things that made the northeastern countryside more picturesque than the southern one was that there was more money up here, which made for the easier preservation of the old wooden houses along the roadside. So there were more nice old houses, as opposed to the south where they had gone to seed and/or been replaced by mobile homes.

Broader experience driving around upstate New York makes me realize that this impression was based on a small sample size. Certainly the two lane roads leading from I-88 to Ithaca were dominated by the same single- and double-wides that dot the roadsides of the south.

Or maybe it's that things have changed a lot in the last couple of decades. I remember some of this, but maybe not quite this bad, from when we used to go to Canandaigua from Princeton in the oughts. That's maybe 150 miles west of where we are, so by many measures more geographically and economically isolated. So it should be poorer over there. Maybe the trailers are a more recent thing. Certainly, I get it. Particularly if you can spring for a double wide. That can be pretty good living.

Schenectady

After resting a bit and cleaning up we headed out yesterday evening for dinner at a Japanese place with outdoor seating we had seen on the way in. I was driving along the road, maybe a little slow in an unfamiliar city, trying to figure out if I was in a 25 or a 35 zone. All of a sudden this guy pulls out and passes me on the left. In town. Double yellow lines. A couple of blocks down I learned that we were right by the town's big hospital.

Dinner was perfectly fine, if unexceptional. We were hungry. Somewhere in the middle a Black guy and a white woman came out, fully masked. He was wearing slides with white socks. She had on crocks with white socks. Made me feel right at home, though I rarely am so bold as to venture out in public wearing that combo. They got into a mustard-colored late model Camaro and drove off. America at its finest.

On the way back to the hotel we came through this nice older neighborhood we had seen on the way there. It was dark as hell, in town mind you. Only the sparest of streetlights to be had, at very low wattage. It was hard not to wonder whether municipal budgetary concerns weren't a factor.

Schenectady, it seems, was once the headquarters of GE, some many years ago. Its population peaked somewhere around 1930 and is now about a third lower than it was then. It has stabilized and clawed back a little in the last couple of decades, but is visibly not what it once was.

In the Charles Kuralt book I read earlier this summer, NC's favorite wayfaring journalist notes how, already in the 50s, he had begun to chronicle the disappearance of family farms throughout the heartland. The emptying of America's great hinterlands is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for many decades. On the one hand, the myth of a golden era of plenitude is just that. On the other, it is a powerful one, and no one can be blind to its persistence and fertility, the soil whence sprang Trump.

The Waning of Roadside America

I have seen it in many many places, but am always sad when I do. Today we took Route 2 west from Boston headed out towards Williamstown. Lots of beautiful road, fringed with trees, abutted quite often with ponds and rivers (first Millers River heading West, then the Deerfield River as the road rises into the Berkshires). But  populated with all too many old motels and other attractions that have just gone to seed, with faded paint at best, all too often just abandoned and with roofs caved in, forlornly hearkening back to simpler days of American summers and touring.

At the top of one mountain there was one motel, the Mt Whitcomb Resort, which was still operating and was freshly painted. I rejoiced inwardly and we stopped and checked out the view. But the shops out in front of it were themselves ramshackle. We kept moving.

We were due at this swank riverside hotel (on the banks of the Mohawk) and casino in Schenectady, where I had gotten a room at a very reasonable price, I'll have you know.

Blazing new trails

George and Susan (more recently George and Rob) have been living up in North White Plains for 20 years or so, but only with the sale of Larchmont in late 2019 did it become the base of our operations when in Westchester. Then came COVID.

So we may be forgiven for having had a narrow understanding of what is around here. The Chinese place that Walter's family had considered the best place in Westchester was just a mile or so away, but then it closed down somewhere in there.

This trip, with the help of our friends at Google Maps, I've been discovering what is actually nearby, and there's lots of goodness. There are Korean restaurants, an H Mart, a good Chinese restaurant, a Columbian take out place (not great, but needed to be tried) and even a Golden Krust Jamaican beef patty bakery. I've never been to a freestanding one of those, though I've often admired the one visible from the train on the New Haven Line of Metronorth as you pass through the Bronx. To burn off those calories, 12 minutes away is Rockefeller State Park, built on land which must have been an old estate of the oil scions. We enjoyed a stroll on "David's Walk." Many miles of trails back up in there. Yesterday evening Mary and I checked out the trails at Graham Hill Park in Pleasantville. 

Not so very far away, half an hour or so, is the Pound Ridge Preserve, where I remember going in the 90s with Story, back before we had kids. Maybe we'll go back there next time we're nearby. And then get some beef patties.

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.

Western Vignettes

Between jet lag and a bit of an allergy I am still struggling through after returning from the west coast. All in all a good visit, if less frenetic than earlier trips. In both Seattle and San Francisco, I saw the primary people I was there to see and had one other meeting, a coffee and a lunch. On the one hand, I learned less than I have on previous trips. On the other, I rested more. For now, the latter made sense.

I took long walks in each city. In Seattle, Mark had been telling me what a clusterfuck of a place it had devolved into after the establishment of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone back after the George Floyd protests. I thought he was exaggerating, but he pretty much wasn't. Homeless people and substance abusers are very much in evidence all throughout the downtown area and the cops are exerting little control. Downtown is still underoccupied and tagged up. My friend from Chapel Hill characterized the whole city as traumatized.

San Francisco didn't seem as out of control, but then I didn't go into the part of the city where things are the worst. Out where I was on the edge of the Mission things were pretty much as they always are -- a little rugged despite the all-pervading wealth existing cheek to jowl with legacy lower-wealth populations -- and when Natalie and I walked through a bunch of neighborhoods and the Golden Gate Park -- all the way out to the ocean -- the most striking thing was how distinctly residential so many neighborhoods were, how little commercial activity there is.

Then we took the tram and a bus back home -- Natalie having fully mastered the public transit system in a few short weeks. As we passed through the Haight or somewhere thereabouts, a young Asian woman got on, having been escorted to the tram by a few friends. After she got on they came up close to the window and waved goodbye, smiling, while she waved back. It was almost unbearably Old World, so sweet.  

Putting Natalie in a Lyft

Since I was out on the West Coast and Natalie is too, I stopped through San Francisco to see her. Yesterday, in typical Troy fashion, we set out from John Fox's place on the edge of the Mission with a vague plan to wander through neighborhoods and check things out. We ended up walking all the way out to the ocean via Golden Gate Park, about seven miles. On the way there we had Banh Mi, some pineapple buns from a special Chinese bakery in Sunset that Natalie had read about where there was a line around the corner. We got coffee and also blisters. It was about 7 miles all told. Then we took a tram and a bus back. It was lovely.

In the evening we were pooped and got burritos from this place that was acclaimed for being the best. They were fine, but I'm not sure what all the fuss was about.

Also, on Friday night we went to a fancy sushi place and got Omakase, the curated sushi prix-fixe where each morsel is narrated for you by the wait staff. It was more expensive than I am willing to admit in public. Some of the fatty tuna had been massaged by the chef for an hour to enhance its tenderness. We both agreed that the sea urchin was an acquired taste we didn't care to acquire.

This morning I put her in a Lyft when she was headed back out to Silicon Valley, actually going down to Santa Cruz to see some fella from Wesleyan she had recently met. After she got in the car I started crying, which was rather unexpected. I remember it being difficult to part from her in her freshman year, when she was a little overwhelmed with the newness of being away from home and she herself was emotional. This time, to the best of my knowledge, it was just me. Oh well, I suppose it would be much worse if I was like "good riddance." 

 

John McPhee

I have always had a soft spot for John McPhee, which I of course share with many others. The idea of this extraordinarily curious and erudite guy willing to follow just about any thread or adventure out to its logical conclusion and then write about it cleverly and naturally is extremely appealing. If something by him appears in The New Yorker, which it has been doing for almost six decades now, I tend to read it.

But sometimes the picture of Hilary floats before me when McPhee came up in conversation sometime over the last couple of decades. She screwed up her face in clear disapproval and perhaps even said "ugh". Of course I mostly don't care and I keep reading him, but I remember it nonetheless. And of course I shouldn't give a rat's ass what she thinks, since we haven't been going out for well over three decades and I've raised children to young adulthood with someone else.

But it brings back the weight her judgment had those many decades ago, when I was a young buck from the south and she was a New York intellectual pure and simple, with a book-filled apartment on the Upper East Side who summered at Chilmark, where her mom hung out with William and Rose Styron. It flattered my ego that she liked me enough to be my girlfriend, but I also pretty strongly craved her intellectual approval, something that still kinda sticks with me, if kinda not too. But not enough to dissuade me from reading McPhee. 

Judge and jury

On the flight from RDU to Seattle most everyone was well-behaved and fully compliant with mask mandates. All except, of course, this one white guy. Five rows or so in front of me across the aisle. Somewhat heavy set, in his twenties, red hair, gym shorts and a sweatshirt, wearing headphones playing loud rap. He kept his mask on about 30-40% of the time, maybe. What's more, he was up and down pretty much constantly, going to the bathroom, getting more drinks. "Fucking idiot, asshole" I muttered to myself internally.

Then, when we deplaned, he didn't move from his seat, which confused me. As everyone was getting off, he waved energetically to all of us with a quasi-beatific smile and I understood. In 19th century terms, he was in fact an idiot. We would say that he is intellectually differently abled. He was traveling unaccompanied, like a child, and was waiting for a flight attendant to take him off.

Meanwhile, Seattle has not yet removed its mask ordinance, technically even for walking outside. Compliance on the streets is mixed. Maybe 50% of people seemed to be complying in the city center, almost none of them were out in Magnolia, where Mark lives. But there were plenty of people walking around alone wearing masks in town. Sometimes I saw people wearing masks while driving alone in cars, still. "Fucking idiots," I thought to myself.

The moral to the story is of course that I am the only one who isn't a fucking moron, and it's true for so many of us. 

Ramsey questions

On weekends I continue to plug through Cheryl Misak's bio of Frank Ramsey, which has been a bit of a slow go. I knew him from the legends of his interaction with Wittgenstein but also his polymathism (died at 27 after making fundamental contributions to philosophy, math, and economics)

Of course, given where I am in life professionally, it was his contributions to economics that intrigued me most. And though I can't fathom the depths of his mathematical formulas and, frankly, don't even try, he does ask good questions: "What is the optimal level of taxation?" and "What is the optimal level of savings, for a society?" I.e. How much should we save for future generations? The second question brought with it a couple of corollaries: "to what extent should we discount the enjoyment of future generations relative to our own?" and "What is the optimal level of the taxation of savings?" The latter is directly relevant to today's discussions of capital gains rates and even the treatment of unrealized gains in estates.

Given how closely Ramsey worked not just with Keynes but also with Arthur Pigou (famed for "Pigovian externalities", i.e. the notion that those who cause damage that impacts future generations (pollution) should bear some of those costs), these are important questions indeed.

Sorry this is a particularly boring post. Today I am kind of using the blog as a place to take notes for myself in the future.

R & R

Getting ready to head to the West Coast tomorrow to see Mark and Karena in Seattle, then Natalie in San Francisco. For the most part I have otherwise failed to fill my calendar for my trip out there, perhaps it's for the best. Unlike much of North America, I am not fairly bursting at the seems to get out and travel. I've been to the Northeast four times under COVID, to the mountains once, and Down East a couple of time, so I guess I'm spoiled enough.

Perhaps just as importantly, I don't really feel highly motivated to grow my business out West. A few years into the business has led me to an understanding that having clients elsewhere just adds travel requirements to my schedule. If they aren't truly special to me (as most of my far-flung clients are), why bother? Perhaps just as importantly, it's hard to serve them properly, to stay on top of changes in state or local tax code that may be pertinent. And keep a curated stable of CPAs, attorneys, etc. who can help.

It's pouring down rain so no tennis today, which is probably good. Sometime yesterday afternoon I yoinked my back. It was sometime between riding my bike and lunch, most likely because I rode hard on account of hustling to get back to our YABS/Madonna Fan Club Zoom call and then wasn't sufficiently mindful of my body's signals somewhere in there.

Speaking of, before I leave I must decide whether to continue on with Lionel Shriver's The Motion of the Body Through Space, which feels like a pretty wooden roman a these. Honestly, it reminds me a little of reading Chernyshevskii. In many ways I am plodding forward in it now first and foremost because we paid retail for it.

I would be very surprised if it traveled West with me. Once more I will likely have recourse to the ever self-refreshing pile of mystery and espionage novels (mostly Alan Furst for the latter) on the shelves off to my right just now, despite the feeling that by reading these things I squander precious time.

  

Getting a call

On my way to play tennis with Z yesterday I got a call from Whitey. Just to check in and say hello. This was a super-nice little treat, the kind of thing I maybe haven't been doing enough of myself recently. A small-town, small-businessperson touch that just feels right. It was also great that I could tell Whitey that I had messaged with his daughter earlier in the day to connect her with this kid who has been working with us this summer who is joining Deloitte soon, so she could counsel him.

I had been on the phone with another of our Chapel Hill contemporaries -- this one a client so he shall remain nameless -- talking about some new business activities he is spinning up now out of his academic area. He had needed counsel on some business formation stuff (LLC vs. S Corp), and I started off by refreshing my memory on that topic, then I realized what he really needed was to talk to someone who spent more time in those weeds, like my friend Donna who has a law practice focused on that. I went to her web site and blog and was checking out the guidance she offered and saw that the indexing and date stamping on the blog was not what it could be and made it hard to navigate and find things. So I dropped her a quick note with suggestions on how it might be made better. She wrote back to thank me. Again, I love that shit.

It is hard to operate and get everything right, and it's hard to know how to set one's boundaries correctly. I am reminded of something Jason Zweig said not long ago in an interview with Michael Kitces (they are both great forces for good in my professional world, look them up using your search engine of choice if you are curious). In response to a question, Zweig said that the essence of professionalism was knowing when to say "I don't know," and saying it a lot.

By the way, Z beat me 6-3, 6-4 yesterday. It took 2 hours as we ran each other around good. I am in a bit of a slump right now against Z for whatever reason, but we continue to slug it out, beat each other up thoroughly, and sleep well at the end of it.

 

In the woods

Not long ago my neighbor Russ looked over my mountain bike, which is pretty ancient. He tightened this, tweaked that, and came to an assessment that it was perfectly reasonable for mild offroad use, though it might not be optimal for lots of the single track trails.

"Great." I told him. Yesterday I headed off into the wilds of Carolina North around rush hour. My theory is that I should road bike on weekends when there are fewer cars on the road, but since prime biking time for me during the week is pretty much rush hour, I should be offroad then.

I had seen some trails back by some of the Zinn subdivisions off of Homestead, branching off from the paved trail that goes into the back of CHHS (and also Smith and Seawell), really an atypically ingenious touch by the developers. I had no idea where the trails went, which vexed me.

It didn't take that long to get there, but when I went onto the little trails that had intrigued me, I found they looped back quickly to the paved trail. Nothing worse than that. So I kept going and crossed over to the west side Bolin Creek and rode down the trails along the sewage line next to the creek. Before too long I was on nice single track trails in the woods and my bike was doing just fine, thank you. I was going along, tra la la, feeling great, bending around, looping back, going up and down, popping over roots of all shapes and sizes, crossing little bridges, happy as a clam.

Then I saw some houses at the edge of the woods and stopped and looked on Google Maps on my phone to see where I was. I was over behind a subdivision off of Hillsborough Road, kind of near where Eric and Max Stein used to live, a pretty long ways from home.

No problem, I thought. I'll just go back to Bolin Creek and follow it down to Estes, then go back on the road. There the plot thickened, because I had underestimated how rocky and shitty the path was there. Often I was picking my way carefully along, going maybe 6 mph. My legs were getting tired and I started to curse a little internally. At one point in time I saw a single track trail that I thought could take me back over to Seawell School Rd. That didn't work at all and it was steep and rocky and I was pushing my bike. Eventually it took me back down to the creek.

Eventually I got to where the railroad crosses the creek, where I waded through the stream and up the embankment, then rode home on Estes Extension. I was beat, and had come to a true understanding of the limits of my bike.

But I had gotten a good workout and adventure and slept well, so it was all good.

Vacation

In summer I have taken to eating as many meals as I can out on the porch. I started this out last summer as a way of extending the house, and the practice has continued on this year. This morning it was cool and breezy -- I actually had to go into the mud room to grab an old shirt to stay warm enough. It's lovely, each meal at home contains a whisper of vacation.

What I need is an actual, honest to goodness vacation, though I really can't say where I'm going to get one. We will go to the Northeast and see Mary's family and we will visit some more colleges and help Graham wrap his mind around that problem, and I'll have some road trips with Natalie if she lets me and we'll have some weekends in the mountains with friends for weekends and concerts -- but actual vacations? Multiple work days where I'm not working and am actively putting the cares of the world aside? I don't know where those come from.

So I guess I need to have the discipline to find vacations within myself at the ends of days and weeks. To turn it off and just chill. Which is pretty hard for me.

The driveway

Sunday I took time for a project I had been deferring for sometime: I pulled the cars out of the driveway, got out the big push broom (and then a smaller broom and a metal rake) and went to work cleaning up all the leaves and other vegetable matter that had been building up on it and the front walkway. It ended up taking about an hour and a half, and I was sweaty and tired by the time I was done.

There was a lot of it, both along the edges and in the middle of the driveway and especially along the joints in the concrete. Much of it was highly decomposed and already turned into soil or well on its way there. There was also a lot of moss on the steps from the driveway down to the patio by the side door.

My mind went back to Mary slipping on a slick spot in the driveway a couple of years back and either spraining her wrist or getting a little fracture in her arm. That's what needs to be controlled for, for her, for mom, for guests, and so on. I could never fall down, of course, having a perfect sense of balance.

Also, when dark spots build up on the driveway it just looks like shit. I can't wait for the power washer guy to get here and blast the hell out of the driveway and patio and deck and -- most importantly -- the metal roof. It could be that I could have just waited and power washing would have taken care of all of this. But then what would I have blogged about?

Screwing my head on right

Like it or not, a five-day work week starts today, It was a fine weekend: biking, tennis, food, TV, sports, I even tackled a project around the house that I had been putting off and dropped in to Dick's to pick up a tennis ball hamper to replace the one I ran over back in the spring. But I am not excited for Monday.

Part of it, I suppose, is that I am still stuck in COVID rhythms while the world reopens, occasioning some friction and anxiety. Also, there's just a lot going on on many fronts and I need a proper vacation, but I honestly haven't the foggiest where I'm going to slip it in between various road trips to see family, check out colleges, and get Natalie back to school.

Although, and this fucked with my head going into the weekend, Mary had told me that Natalie was not excited to road trip with me because I got stressed out about traffic, etc. Mostly traffic. It is true that sometimes I do get pissed and curse and whatnot. But come on, am I supposed to be perfect, given all I do for her? It took me a day or two to work through the disappointment in this news and come to accept I don't need her to think I'm perfect in every way, that she can have her own life etc. Also I could just email her and say I'll work hard to do better.

Plus do I really necessarily want to road trip from Austin to Chapel Hill (and thence perhaps a week later to New Haven before heading to a wedding over Labor Day weekend)? It's kind of a lot.

On the road and breakdowns

Reading Charles Kuralt's A Life on the Road, which I found in a Little Free Library across the street from Beth and Kevin's in Queens. Not a great book, but lots of interesting stuff.

Kuralt tells the tale of his coming to New York in the 50s to work at CBS as a reporter -- first on radio, then on TV (at first considered a backwater within the organization, compared to the mighty radio). Already by the late 50s, he was going around the country chronicling the demise of family farms. So that's a very long-running story, which runs counter to the Republican and sometimes also Green mythology of farms being under threat only recently. There wasn't some halcyon period of rural plenitude under Eisenhower following the hardships of the Depression and the shared sacrifice of WWII.

Secondly, Kuralt says that in the 50s and early 60s CBS didn't have bureaus in secondary cities, just NYC and DC, not even Chicago and LA (plus Paris, Bonn, Rome...). So the interior was covered by just Kuralt and Harry Reasoner running around. This after in 1955 Harry Markowitz advanced the theory of efficient markets, that markets reflected all available information. The problem was, nobody knew anything. I was reminded of the rudimentary level of analysis being carried out at the Fed in the early 90s when bank analyst Mike Mayo went to work there, per his account of his time there in Exile on Wall Street. Again, there was lots of dynamic terra incognita for markets to process in pricing securities. In some real sense there still is. But Markowitz was still right in essence because no one person or computer can grasp it all and make consistently good judgments.

Lastly, Kuralt chronicles at lengths the problems that his team had with different models of recreational vehicles as the "On the Road" segment that would prove his lasting legacy to the world found its feet in the 60s. Continual breakdowns of wheels, tires, brakes, engines... Things that happen rarely now. It is impossible for us to understand the benefits we all derive from the manufacturing revolution that began in Japan and particularly Toyota in the 70s-80s and has been enshrined in the practices of TQM (Total Quality Management) and kaizen (continuous improvement). Not just in cars but in all things manufactured. The role of standards is also huge.

But I also wonder if all of those breakdowns didn't have a purpose, in that they slowed Kuralt and team down and made them talk to people on the highways and byways over which they passed. Could be that the breakdowns made "On the Road" so good. And that we miss out on this forced engagement with those with whom we have little in common, those in flyover country, metaphorically. And they miss out by not meeting us. 

Karaoke

At Buddy's on Saturday there was karaoke, which is something I've never done. Actually, I'm not sure I've ever been at a place where it was being done, though probably I've just repressed it.

As would be expected, there were a mix of performances, from a courageous but technically challenged version of "Drift Away" to a pretty impressive rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by a British guy I didn't know who, perhaps not surprisingly, was the guy who had the baddest-ass car there.

Like many, I suspect, I've always been a little shy of karaoke, particularly since I quit drinking, and I was sitting there thinking "there are no songs for me to do." Then, afterwards, I realized that there are of course great songs I should have done, songs I've recently been singing along to at home (Springsteen's "Thunder Road") or have taught myself on guitar and sing along with in the privacy of my man cave (Roy Orbison's "In Dreams"). Next time.

Special day

It astonishes me, as I look back over my years of blogging, how often I fail to note the specialness of June 7th in our household. I did it again yesterday. It is Mary and my anniversary (this year our 24th), Leslie's birthday and also Natalie's birthday, this year her 21st. A big day. One of the kids, probably Graham, used to refer to it as "Junior 7th" out of respect for the awe it inspires in our household.

Yesterday night, just before bedtime, it occurred to me that I should at the very least post a bunch of pictures of Natalie on Facebook on the occasion of her 21st. So I started going through my photo files here on my laptop. It wasn't too hard to find a bunch of good pictures of Natalie, since she has after all been beautiful her whole life, if somehow a little blurry or backlit in many of the pictures I've taken through the years, for some reason.

There were also a ton of pictures of Mary in there, and I don't know why I was surprised at how good she looks through the years. It's likely because I've seen her in all states of tousledness and with the imprint of pillowcases and whatnot on her face, at all moments of varying ill temper and the like. It is easy to forget how lovely one's spouse is. I would have posted a collage of these to Facebook, but I know better than to do so without getting pre-clearance from her for each picture.

I also came across a small trove of videos from 2011 of the kids playing around in our rental house and other stuff. I'm a little sad I don't have more video of them at various stages. We have plenty of pictures and I've tried to blog a lot, but there is something breathtakingly full about the moving image. Of course, I have been constrained by Graham's outright aversion to video that he picked up somewhere along the way, perhaps because Mary shot so many still images of him. Also, I've often thought that others have been so obsessed with capturing everything on video that they can't be present in the moment in which they find themselves. Still, I'm glad I have what I have.

To Oriental and back

Went down to Oriental, NC for the first time over the weekend for Buddy Kelly's birthday party. I had never been there before, but must admit it's a very nice place, though I'm glad they have some boats, because I think it would be less interesting in the absence of boats, and everyone seems to agree. It's all rather boatie.

I was housed in a rental in a subdivision across the bridge from the main part of town. Just before the bridge, on the right, there's a guy who had three Rolls Royces, the old school ones, two of them for sale. Then, on the way out of town headed north towards Bayboro, there was a junk store on the left, where there was another Rolls Royce in amongst the other stuff.

You don't see a whole lot of Rollses out in Eastern NC. When I got to Bayboro, abutted by its twin "city" Alliance, there was both a Hardees that had gone out of business, then what looked to be a failed Taco Bell. Later, there was a Golden Corral. It's flat and humid and appears to be excruciatingly boring out there, if you don't have a boat, that is.

Masks were really not much of a thing out there. Marc George told me he had been mocked in the Piggly Wiggly for wearing one.

Taking it off

There was a sign at Trader Joe's on Tuesday saying people could come in without masks on. At first I kept mine on when I went in, but my face was sweaty from playing tennis and I saw maybe 20% of the people in there did not have them on so I took mine off. It felt pretty weird. Certainly I was glad that my flank was covered by others who didn't have theirs on.

Today there was a picture of a bunch of kids in New York playing outdoors in a jazz band with black masks on, presumably pulled aside to put their mouths to their horns, etc. It seemed pretty excessive, given the moment. I also continue to see people walking around outside in neighborhoods with masks on.

To the extent that masks represent a true civic-mindedness and consideration for others, compliance above and beyond what is expected of us could be construed as a noble thing. I think we all need to be careful of letting mask-wearing devolve into a tribal statement: I am a Democrat therefore I wear a mask, and only we Democrats have the public interest in mind, the rest of yall are evil. We need to try to move past that. It is no longer serving us well.

That said, when I go into stores going forward I don't have a strict "I'm not wearing my mask to show I'm a free man" policy laid out in my mind. This will be situational. People in urban Asia have been wearing masks in public for a long time and specific situations like public conveyances it may be the better part of wisdom to wear them for a while.

I recently read a story about how lower instances of colds and flus and the like have challenged the business models of general practitioner physicians. Seems like they were dependent on the cashflow that came from visits of people coming in for assurance that nothing more was wrong with them, which could then be billed to insurers. It may be that broad public health risk avoidance behaviors in the general population changes the economics of healthcare going forward. I think we could all live with that;.

Early rising

Yesterday I took Adam in the first set 6-3, then he came back in the second 6-1. At the changeover when I was up 5-2 in the first, Adam asks me "Did you hear Tony King died?" Typically, Adam tried to rattle my nerves and distract me to fuck with my rhythm. But I held on and made it through, which is something of a triumph for me, because I often start slow and lose the first few games as my brain settles into being on court, at which point in time it's hard to come back in the first. So I more often win the second set.

But I would be remiss now if I didn't say a word about Tony's passing. I never knew the guy particularly well, but I also don't recall any reason to be down on him for anything. He always seemed like a good guy. He is the most recent Black guy from our class or a close one to die: Junebug, Russell Dula, Ivan McClam, Major Geer... I know I'm missing one more we discussed yesterday. I know white guys have died too (Akin, Scott Clarke, Tim Brower), so maybe it's hard to generalize, but it does feel like Black fellas are dropping disproportionately quickly, perhaps in aggregate as a function of poor diet and less access to good healthcare, which is a shame on all of us.

In any case, back to me, I was surprised to have cramping overnight: first my left calf at around 1, then my right hamstring at around 6, which woke me up for good. In each case I hopped quickly out of bed and got weight on it, then went and hydrated. It's odd I should cramp because it's not like we played longer or harder today then we have in recent months. Must be the heat.

But the cramping and the sleep challenges it brings returns me to the oddness of sleeping without Mary. Under COVID, we slept together more or less 15 months straight, with a couple of nights off when I went North with Natalie late last June. Now with both of us getting on the road a bit, we're having some hiati, which is definitely a touch disconcerting. We'll get through it, but it will be nice to have her back.  

The blur

Another 3-day weekend blows past. Yesterday was teed up to be a slow day and was headed in that direction, then Russ pinged me and said he could look at my mountain bike, and John texted me and asked if I wanted to open the valves on the dam right after that, which was important that we do while the lake level was low.

In short order, I got Russ interested in checking out the dam, then Tyler came down too, so Graham came down (for a minute, he didn't like standing on the dam). Eventually, it was Russ who got the bottom valve open, the one furthest from out from the dam, the one that lets us empty the whole lake. When the water finally gurgled out of there, it was the foulest grey sludge. Hopefully it sucked up much of the mire at the base of the dam around the intake valve. When Russ got home (a couple of houses down the hill and creek from us), his daughter Tessa asked why everything had smelled so bad for a few minutes there.

Then John came up for iced coffee and told me that his feelings had been hurt when he was blindsided by the dues increase.

In any case, much of the day was given over to stuff I hadn't fully planned on but which did need to get done. Then I went for a run (not around the lake -- up through Cedar Falls to the trails behind East and down through the ravine in the neighborhood over there). I came past Caroline and Toby's and was sad that nobody was out in the yard, not even any kittens or chickens. I have come to count on the little community center effect over there. Came past the old George homestead and was sad to think that Joan had left us and that Julio was really fading.

Then Graham and I got takeout and watched Bosch, which is pretty good if not great.

Nothing doing

Having a very low activity day after what has felt like a very active couple of weeks. The main activity has been pushing through to the end of Lee Smith's Family Linen, which I had picked up somewhere used and I guess I started reading it because it is a rare book in the "pocket paperback" format which used to be so popular but no longer is, for whatever reason (is it because Boomers aged and their eyesight got weaker? Or is it that trade paperbacks offer booksellers higher margins?).

In any case, I took it with me when I went North to fetch Natalie the week before last because it would be less heavy in my bag, but it proved to be pretty slow going. Smith is a little too dedicated to the Rashomon trick of having many narrators tell a story from many perspectives. It is also quintessentially low on plot and long on texture, focusing as it does on intergenerational stuff in a small southern town. So no car chases. Yet it rewarded persistence, at long last, because there was a there there.

Otherwise, Graham is pulling his first shift as a Lake Forest staffer, while Natalie was out for a walk with a friend as she and Mary prepare for blast off headed west tomorrow. I know that Natalie's excited, while Mary is perhaps more apprehensive, as it will be her first cross-country drive. But they're gonna have a good time, as they've budgeted plenty of time to do it, and it will be their longest jaunt together ever. It will be all good. It had better be. 

Fundamental Rights

Yesterday I was Zooming with an old friend, who has been drifting in a measured and reasonable fashion towards a more conservative way of looking at the world as his hair greys and he rises up the income tax brackets. Somehow our conversation ambled around to gun ownership and I mentioned how Josh had not long ago characterized gun ownership as a public health issue and invoked the progress we have made controlling traffic fatalities over the last six decades as we've incorporated seat belts, air bags, rumble strips, regs on tensile strength of different parts of car bodies, driver's ed, drunk driving laws, etc., into our social fabric.

My buddy raised his voice about how he was a bit uncomfortable discussing a "Fundamental Right" such as gun ownership in such terms. But the thing is, the right to bear arms is certainly no more fundamental than the rights to speech, assembly, or press, and certainly our understanding of how each of them is best implemented under different technological conditions and at different historical moments has evolved over time. I would argue that the very fundamentality of a right means that we should think deeply at different times over what it means then, debate it openly and often, and then implement our understanding of it.

Certainly the idea that the founding fathers were some sort of holy men who has it all figured out and who laid down holy writ is overplayed. They were not Moses gone up on the Mountain of Reason. They were a great generation, no doubt, arguably one of the greatest, and we are in many ways fortunate to live in the country they founded and even on the planet they trod, but they did not have it all figured out and could not anticipate all that would follow them. It is meet and right that they should be studied, but not in a silly attempt to explain everything.

Messy interlude

Between Natalie and her roommate Anya, we filled a pretty good sized storage space in New Haven. But we also brought home a pretty full car of stuff. Given that she's headed out to California soon, it wasn't really clear what all this stuff is for, but really I'm one to talk. I seem to remember bringing my whole stereo and all my vinyl home from college, I think just for Christmas, because how on earth was I ever going to live without it for 3-4 weeks?

And now it is pretty much strewn all over the house, though it's gradually being cleaned up. The inveterate neatnik in me really wants to let her know it bugs me by stomping my feet and making a scene but... I know she's only here for a week so it's really not worth creating a ruckus over it. There will be enough tensions that arise.

This, then, is the essence of adulting.

Recovering

A bit ragged out after the run up to last night's meeting of the lake community and the stressful run up to it. It was a lot of hard work after a couple of weeks of heat. In the end, the aggressive keyboard cowboys of the listserv scarcely bothered to raised their heads in the curiously harsh glow of a Zoom call. Funny how people get shy when people are watching. I don't really get it.

Then, today, work, then tennis. Not my best day on the courts but it was good to get out there and run. More tennis Thursday.

Natalie is getting me grooved into Bojack Horseman. A bit of a taste that must be acquired, perhaps not unlike beer.

Hop to the hinterlands

Yesterday I hopped up to Josh's place up on Lake Gaston for a sliver of guys' weekend, before heading back to Chapel Hill for dinner and a movie with Natalie and Graham. For lunch we went to this place at a marina down the lake, where pretty much nobody had on masks. I did see one African-American guy wearing one from his car into the restaurant. The pandemic, it would seem, is over.

But it's not. It rages on in the developing world. Supply chains are disrupted, there is huge inflationary pressure from stimulus, etc. People are all so pent up from having to stay at home more and having had it be harder to consume a wide range of things. While it's good on the one hand for people get out to see friends and relatives and stoke demand to get people integrated back into the workforce, folks also just need to calm the fuck down, think about what's important, and recognize that we're in a weird place as a planet.

There is still a lot of opportunity for good and for improvement, if we can get our heads right. 

Home again

We made it home after a largely uneventful 670-mile day home from New Haven in a 21-year old car, which did very nicely, thank you. Largely uneventful -- because we took evasive action, first skirting bad traffic on the George Washington Bridge by skooching up to the Tappan Zee, then by heading west via 78 to 81 because it was clear our late start doomed us to hit DC around rush hour. Finally, after we got news that a truck carrying cars had caught on fire south of Harrisburg caused a nearly 2-hour backup on 81, we took another jog (via a beautiful mountain traverse in Maryland which took us across the AT), though eventually we ended up back on 81 and dropped down to Danville on 29.

Things might have been different had we left earlier, but we didn't, because between racing around New Haven in a rented truck jamming things into a storage unit with Natalie and her most excellent senior year roommate Anya (who grew up in Atlanta but whose family is from Tbilisi, so we call her Anya from Georgia Georgia), Natalie bustled around seeing friends. Which made sense. COVID made this a tough year for socializing and exams were just over. So it was good to see her wanting to touch base one more time with her peeps, who are a really nice group of folks.

But in any case, we got home late, at which point in time I got an email from a former fellow board member which was the equivalent of a large stinking unflushed turd. Joy of joys. On with the day. 

Breakfast at Nica's

Though it didn't exist when I was in college, this place has been integral to our experience of Natalie's time at Yale. On her very first day, Mary's friend Marion suggested we get sandwiches from there before we went to have lunch with her and Greg and their daughter Valerie and her recently born twins at her place a few blocks up Orange Street. Yum.

Now Natalie lives even closer to it than Valerie did, though only for this year. In any case, Natalie and I have taken to provisioning ourselves here before heading out on the road, often with a simple chicken cutlet LTO with hot sauce(no cheese). A true classic we landed on at the deli near the library in Larchmont, but they do it better here. Sadly, those probably won't be ready today before we head out.

The illusory romance of grad school

Once more at an Airbnb in a New Haven neighborhood primarily inhabited by grad students, it would seem. I am momentarily nostalgic for graduate school.

But then I recall the feeling of stepping on to campus at Columbia the other day and remembering that graduate school wasn't actually that romantic. It's not like college. It's kind of a grind. Lots of great stuff happened in grad school, no doubt. Learned a lot, met Mary, got sober, got to know New York better, learned how to make a delicious lasagna by making a normal lasagna and then pouring a container of heavy cream over it, but it wasn't a time of adventure in the same way college was. It was instead the time of the end of adventure in the old sense, the time when I realized that hopping around obscure corners of Europe (the most adventure I'd allow myself) got old.

Maybe it would have been different had I ventured further afield, but I doubt it. But there's something about New Haven that makes it look exciting. An optical illusion, no doubt, caused by the fact that I went to college here.

4:02 to New Haven

I ran a little late in Brooklyn and could only get on this train instead of the earlier one I had been hoping for -- the trains before 4 are technically off-peak and have a lower fare. But it turns out that all trains are off peak until full service resumes, so I'm in luck! The train was maybe 60% full, fuller than I thought it would be. Just as the subways are pretty full but not packed.

Though I didn't make it around midtown much, my qualified prognosis is this: New York lives. People are inching back to normalcy, day by day. Residential neighborhoods are full of life. Everyone is happy for the warm weather -- late coming this year -- so they were out.

There is no doubt persistent pain. Crime is higher. There is still a lot of hunger out there. My client who's a school principal in East Harlem tells me that the school continues to serve twice as many meals as it does during the normal school year as people from the community come in to eat. This has been a little understood function of the city schools: they have big kitchens, so they have been feeding lots of people. 

It's interesting to observe mask-wearing in different neighborhoods. In Flatbush today, on the streets, there was maybe 85-90% compliance in a largely Caribbean neighborhood. In Ditmars, Queens, it was probably around 50-60%. In Central Park, maybe 35-40% of people wore masks as they walked. Up by Columbia, maybe 70%.

The science is pretty clear that there's little risk of outdoor transmission, but New York hasn't changed its guidance just yet, and a lot of New Yorkers have died. So people are keeping it together and staying masked up on the streets. It's good to see, even though I hate wearing the durned things outdoors myself, especially when it's hot.

W Train from Ditmars

On the subway for the first time since October 2019. I bought a large MetroCard figuring that, if some of it goes unused, it will be a small contribution to the future of the MTA because -- and let's be clear here -- public transportation and cities are important, and New York is the most important city in America and always should be.

Then, when I reached the turnstile, it appeared that one could just tap a credit card and pay per ride. I do hope the MTA is charging a premium for that service, because really it is in its interest to sell rides at higher volumes. Unless the transaction costs of managing the infrastructure are too high.

As the train pulled in, I saw one woman who had her mask pulled down because she was talking to someone on the phone and, clearly, it was very important that the person she was talking to should hear her well. Looked like she was on speaker phone. Sigh. Some things never change.

Headed to RDU

It's not without anxiety that I'm all geared up and ready to head out. It's been 15 months since I got on an airplane and, to be frank, the staying home part of this pandemic has been mostly good. I know how fortunate I am to be able to say that, but I say it nonetheless.

It's a little autumnal outside, so I am feeling a touch like Pushkin in November 1830, preparing to leave Boldino and the period of his greatest productivity. Not to flatter myself unduly.

Preparing for liftoff and a proper accounting

Flying to NYC on Sunday on my way to pick up Natalie from college and road trip home. Frankly I'm only mildly excited about leaving home. I was just in DC and PA in March, what's the rush? Though I'm psyched to see her and others as well.

One conversation I look forward to having is with my niece Sadie in Queens. At one of our low points of the pandemic, on a Christmas family Zoom call we reacted poorly and unsupportively when Sadie was telling us of her alternative route through high school and into acting school. Our stick in the mud by the book belief in a standard academic path through life reared the ugliest parts of his head, and we apparently sat their aghast in a way that freaked her out and made her cry once the call was done. Not a good Christmas present at all.

It is sometimes hard for all of us to believe that there are paths through life other than the ones we have trod ourselves, and I think being the one of the deepest moments of the pandemic probably made that even worse. So I will apologize to her again in person, even though we already did it on the phone.  

The little things

When working at home, one of the steps of getting started with the day is making my bed. Perforce, I have to wait till Mary gets up, which is a little later than me. It's not because I work in the bedroom. Really it's just because.

So I was in there making the bed today and I looked over at the reading chair over by the window facing out towards the lake. With the leaves back on the trees, it is shadier than ever, which makes it a poor place to sit and read in the afternoon for lack of a lamp. There's a lamp on the desk in front of it, the desk Natalie used as her work station through the deepest months of lockdown, but that lamp sucks. I tried to get Graham involved in rewiring it -- obviously not my bag -- but he had no interest. Which is why I really don't think he's an engineer at heart.

In any case, the reading chair needed a lamp. Conveniently, there was a standing lamp in my office not being used as a standing lamp. I will spare you the description of what it was being used for (probably elsewhere on the blog, in any case). I brought it into the bedroom, took the lightbulb out of the broken lamp on the desk, got the shade for the standing lamp from the top of the old filing cabinet, put it all together and turned it on. It works!

Problem solved. I am very excited by this. Another place to sit and read late in the day and at night. Admittedly, the chair is 26 years old and needs to be replaced, and Mary will start to hate the standing lamp soon enough. But the wheels are in motion....

Leaving town this weekend and am a little sad about it after such a meaningful and affordable upgrade to the old living space.

Righteousness and wickedness

When I headed off to grad school in 1991, I fully intended to take up yoga. Still haven't quite gotten there, though there are some nice videos on YouTube. For a similar length of time, I've been meaning to read the Bible. I've had a King James translation since I was a child, I got it at St Phillips in Durham. I got a New Standard Oxford Study edition sometime in college, probably for reference when I took that course on rabbinical literature.

Recently I started reading it in the morning, alongside the Tao Te Ching (much easier going). Because the Bible is so daunting, I figured I'd start the Psalms, which are reputed to be real nice.

Even there, however, the whole thing is weighed down by this Manichean view of righteousness and wickedness, 24/7. I'm like, ease up fellas. Don't be so sure. Then I got to the end of one of them and it had this line: "Let the words of the my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in the sight, Oh Lord." It took me a few minutes to realize where I knew it from.

 

More on court insight

Beautiful weather today, mid-to-upper 60s when Z and I hit the courts at a little before 11. The first set was interesting. He went up 2-0, then I fought back to be up 3-2, then he closed me out 6-3. As we were hydrating before starting the second set, Adam tells me that I had won only 2 points the last four games. Which was odd, because I didn't feel all that bad about it and what I remember most was a beautiful down the line backhand passing shot I hit on one of those two points, that nestled snugly in the corner. In the second set I was up 4-2, then he came back to tie it up 4-4, then our time on the court ran out.

I feel fine about it all. Especially after Thursday, when he took me 6-1 in the first while I was feeling shitty because of all this crap going on out on the neighborhood listserv, people attacking the Board and whatnot. Then I came back and took him 6-4 in the second set, hustling my ass off. That was a true mental victory.

But the thing about today which is really interesting is that it fits a pattern that I remember from when I was playing a ton of tennis with David in Princeton back in 2008-2009 ('m sure I wrote about it then, but don't have time to look). He and I would trade off, he'd beat me 6-4 one day and I'd beat him 7-5 the next but it was always even. On the one hand, I don't have it within me to beat my friends badly. Something within me will always let up or trip me up to keep it close. On the other hand, I also very easily let up and let myself off easy. If I win 3 or 4 games in a set and am not beaten badly, my internal meter kind of goes "good enough" and my mind drifts. I start blogging or thinking about work or something.

Is it that I am slack and slightly underachieving, or is it a sign of ego health that I don't feel like I need to prove much to anyone? I'm 55, in decent shape, obviously a passable athlete, why get all worked up?

And nobody else can blog like me. Here, I am the uncontested world champion.

As for now, I gotta go work on Mother's Day dinner.

A good day to me

After a couple of days of stress around HOA stuff involving a disgruntled former Board member and things the current Board is doing that threaten his legacy -- and some shit he has stirred up on the nabe listserv, we are moving on. Also, Graham took his SATs today. 

And I am moving towards the end of my most recent Elizabeth George mystery novel. On the one hand, that means I will have to get back to reading one of my more serious books. On the other, it's nice to get to the end of this rather slow-moving mystery and figure out what the hell is going on. Really, by this time I could do with a little bit less of the soap opera in the lives of the main characters. Yes, it would be nice if St James and Deborah had a baby, and if Lynley and Helen would tie the knot, and if Travers would sell her old family house and move on with her life. But I don't care that much. It would be nice to see a few more corpses, honestly. It has been nice to have a long narrative to come back to throughout the pandemic, but now I'm ready for the next book.

I have folded the laundry. Now I must bike. Then Graham will select our takeout for the evening.

The flattening of conversation

Saw a headline about a place where commercial landlords have leverage and restaurants are filling up and I thought, where's that? The answer, of course, is Israel, where the vaccine rollout has gone rather smoothly.

My mind quickly ran to the conversations of the people in the restaurants, and indeed to conversations I am having with people in general. The great thing about talking to people is that you get a lot of really diverse information about the wide range of things people are doing in the world. Over the last year and change, we've all been doing more or less the same thing: sitting behind our computers, exercising, getting take out, watching stuff on Netflix, etc. The range of recent experience to make conversations lively has narrowed or flattened.

Which doesn't mean it's not still good to be talking to people. It just kind of means that you have to talk to people for longer for it to get interesting, and that pre-existing relationships where you've known people for a long time are much more fruitful than new ones.

In a sense, it's another constraint on idea liquidity, alongside the exodus from cities and the decline of face to face retail.

Resisting the tug of the day

My morning reading and task routine is pretty extensive. I think I have laid it out for you before, I won't bore you with it again. In general its burden and intent are to keep me focused for as long as possible on matters general, common and long-term -- before being pulled down into the thicket of specific implementation details for individual clients. 

I nonetheless have a practice of checking email and texts on my phone at around 8:30, and also the stock futures, just in case there's something pressing that needs quick attention. Usually there is not.

But in actual fact there is no conflict between these two, the general and the specific. Rather, I'm trying to take in wisdom from varying sources -- right now ranging from Psalms to Bezos' annual letters -- to apply to specific client needs. And in the short term it is all about the specifics, and that's where the real joy is.

Yesterday I was helping out an 18-year old zero fee client (child of another client) who had a problem with a small deposit. She also wants to take a gap year and go abroad next year, so I'm gonna put her in touch with a friend in Spain, someone I met when I was 15. Very long shot. I love this shit.

But I also need to take the time to read up on some deep in the weeds tax stuff and to counsel a client about changes in tax structure that are coming on just as he starts to earn big money. This is the fun stuff, the warp and woof.

Dinner table conversations

A friend of mine who works at home alongside her husband recently joked that she and he have to be careful not to speak much at lunch so they can have something to talk about at dinner. We have a little bit of that going on in our household. Every night we drag ourselves down into the mire of: "How was your day?" Which can easily get bogged down in excessive detail or frustration or even -- if one of us has a particularly good day, and it's more likely to be me because I leave the house more -- mild envy.

When there is so much going on in the world but it's so hard to talk about it. Right now -- India. Burning up with COVID, so many dying, so much pain. On the one hand, who wants to talk about it. On the other, we kind of need to because ultimately we are all bound up together in all of this and we need to convey to our kids an understanding of that, and the global topics are almost more easily addressed because they are more distant from us than the local ones.

But we get bogged down in our little shit.

The good fortune of a slow day

Forgot to set my alarm and woke up this morning a little after 8. Whoops! No biggie, my calendar is pretty light today in terms of fixed responsibilities, if not items on my task list. There is never a shortage of productive things to do. Rather than beat myself up, I really just need to remind myself how fortunate I am to not have to sweat such matters.

But also, I'll take it. Looking forward, I must say that all I see for the summer is a continual scramble of logistics: trip to NYC, then getting Natalie out of her apartment and back to NC. Getting her to California (Mary's handling that one, but I'll have to frontrun the logistics). Visiting clients Seattle. Taking Graham to visit colleges and starting work on essays. Visiting family in NY. Roadtrip back from Austin with Natalie (that will be true adventure. I've never been to the deep South, really, and we could go through Alabama and Mississippi).

Much of this will be fun, in its own way, but it's also a ton of time behind the wheel, and I'm not sure where the vacation happens.

So if I sleep in one fine morning, so be it.