End of summer

So here we are, Labor Day weekend, about to move into the busiest part of the year, and I'm tired. It was a lovely summer, in so many ways. Lots of important milestones.

Graham had the most transformative summer. The biking trip in Italy with granny plus three weeks at Duke TIP really have opened him up to the world in a lot of ways, and it's a beautiful thing to see.

Natalie's own trip to Italy and then Spain was lovely for her, but really a more incremental step forward since we already knew she could handle herself wherever she was perfectly well. But she had fun and made friends and learned a lot, so it was all good. I think her internship with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, in which she spent a lot of time driving around rural NC, going to county law enforcement offices and asking them for data (and understanding why they couldn't just snap their fingers and get it), probably showed her just as much of the world as going to Europe. Just seeing a lot of rural America and walking in the buildings taught her a lot about where she lives and what she has.

Mary and I, we went to Boulder for a week and stayed in Leslie and Walter's house, which was lovely. Then there was work. Then we went to Larchmont and helped pack up Mary's mom's house. Not quite enough vacation. Oh well.

I would try to chill out over the weekend, but I have to prep for my lecture on Eugene Onegin at NC State in a couple of weeks. How the heck did I let myself get talked into that?

Spousal competition

Natalie texted Mary about a couple of things yesterday evening while my phone was upstairs. It sounded like the kind of thing I might have been cc'd on, but I wasn't. Meanwhile, there have been things she has texted me about and Mary has said "why didn't I get that?"

It is odd that, of all things in the world, there should be even the slightest bit of competition between spouses for the affection of their children, but of course there is, and at some level we encourage it. By mildly criticizing one another to the child when the other is absent, or by carping at each other in front of the kids about trifles, for instance, instead of presenting an eternally unified front. But it's ultimately -- obviously -- not a good thing. What is a good thing is that our kids should feel free to reach out to each of us about whatever without a need to include the other for worry that our feelings might be hurt.

Generally speaking, my family -- which started off as a family of four and in some sense remained that through my dad's death -- has a much more robust culture of one-on-one communication than does Mary's -- a family of six. They tend to do things communally, and even regard my family's insistence that we break away for one-on-ones -- me and Leslie going to the store or for coffee over Thanksgiving, for example -- with mild suspicion and envy.

So really I should (and in general have done) encourage Mary and Natalie (and Graham) to cultivate dedicated and open communication channels to one another. The sibling bond is super-important for after we are gone.

If there is a silver lining to this jealousy, it is that the kids will remember it when they are adults (and hopefully raising our grandkids) and realize that it was all about our own insecurities and imperfections, because we had not in fact figured it all out and were always just doing our best with our limited means. Because that's also all they'll be able to do.

Saddling back up

Back in NC now after a bittersweet visit to Larchmont and the Northeast. On the one hand, life rolls forward, so we experienced a full week of lasts:

• Last stroll in Manor Park -- at least from walking out off the porch
• Last swim at Manor Beach (I realize all this "Manor" stuff sounds vaguely ridiculous, but these are the actual place names)
• Last lunch at the Village Deli after popping out from the library, where Natalie and I ceremonially enjoyed a final chicken cutlet with LTO and hot sauce together. This had become our go to sandwich
• and so on

Or at least we hope we did, because once we list this house we sho nuff hope it sells.

In the course of this, I twinged my back after carrying too many boxes up and down steps, so I ended up spending a fair amount of time sitting in the highly automated recliner that was purchased for Mary Lee during her health bouts this spring and I must confess, I liked it. But it is a little sad that, I spent the last week in this house, so majestically oriented towards the Long Island Sound, in the darkest room in the back of the house, even if the sitting was top notch. Between my back, the lack of air conditioning and the concerted effort to keep the humidity in the house down to stop the mold so heroically battled down by Rob last year from returning, and the general state of reminiscence-infused chaotic packing of the rest of the house, I spent precious little time in the sun room, including that most magical of happy places, the couch in there, upon which I have read so many excellent books while listening to the gentle metallic sounds of boat parts whose names I don't know because I didn't grow up in a boaty place clinking against one another out on the water.

But it was perhaps a function of hiding away in the back, and also in the Public Library during the day, which deprived me of the spunk needed to write.

Adrenaline and cathexis

I have realized that the key thing for me on the tennis court is to let everything go as quickly as possible. I must forgive myself every error, every flubbed point, right there where it happens, and get back to internal equilibrium before the next point starts  -- because I have a tendency to extrapolate wildly from each error and feel that it is a reopening of wounds from time immemorial, to flagellate myself and think that I will never get better. Which I know objectively is idiocy, yet it has been hard to fight the tendency.

Similarly, when I hit a great shot, run down or stretch for something that seems impossible, and get that charge of adrenaline and ego, I have to let go of that too, I must not read my own press and get all hyped up, because that's when I let down my guard and mean regression kicks in. Each point ends, a new one begins, none of them matter much.

So I have to consciously slow down between points to let the prior one go. I have to actively focus o my breathing, the sky, something other than the game.

Certainly I am not the first to make this observation, everybody who does any sport knows this, and I have made the observation and even written about it before, most likely.

But it was only today that I realized that the factor that I had not considered was adrenaline. When I hit a good shot, or hit a shitty one, or when my opponent does one or the other, there's always a little burst of excitement at the end of the point, but particularly when it is me who does the good or the bad thing. And in that moment my self-judgment is cathected, or infused with meaning and intensity, by the adrenaline. And that is what messes me up, and that is what I need to walk away from, to let the adrenaline die back and let me get back to a calm place.

Which was news to me.

So I beat Rob -- who has been practicing a lot -- 7-6 (7-5).

Writing every day

I was just reading a blog about writing every day, when I realized I should really rather be writing than reading. After all, the initial premise of Chew Your Grouse was that it should be a daily blog, though I have slipped from that practice somewhat. Having kept a pace of about three or four posts a week over coming up on fifteen years is really not too shabby though, so I won't beat up on myself too hard.

We are getting ready to head off on a "mini-vacation" as a family. We'll go from Larchmont up to Cold Springs to go for a hike. Natalie picked the hike for us, the Hudson Highlands Trail. As luck would have it, I'm 90% certain this is the hike Mary and I made the day after the day after our wedding, when we took a mini-honeymoon and stayed in a B&B in Croton-on-Hudson.

This was the day that we went up to Garrison to get sandwiches, the day the dudes drinking beer in the parking lot used the word "cleanity," as described in this post.

At any rate, while Mary and I were out on the Hudson Highlands Trail, we encountered a young couple in a meadow who got up somewhat sheepishly, as if they had been enjoying themselves in the traditional way. We kept right on hiking, but actually hastened back to our B&B pretty quickly thereafter.

Re-intermediation

There has been a lot of excitement in recent decades about the virtues of disintermediation, or making it possible for people to get goods and services without access to intermediaries or gatekeepers. Everybody hates salespeople.

But there are all kinds of problems with this, with the demise of the gatekeepers. First and foremost we see this in the decline of expertise and respect for it. If everybody DIYs everything, nothing ever gets done well. Things fall apart, then we have to go back and do them again properly. If we even get a chance to do so, as we might not with the rainforest.

At the very worst, we get conspiracy theorists and crackpots being pushed by YouTube algorithms in ways that destroy everything, as we have seen in recent electoral cycles. This article from NYT on YouTube in Brazil illustrates this principle well. YouTube begets Bolsonaro, who may be more destructive than Trump.

How do we move back to a model where expertise is respected? First and foremost, by respecting it ourselves and paying for services when we can. Subscribe to newspapers. Buy books. Hire handymen, and lawyers and accountants. These are threadbare answers, I know, but it's a start.

Bowie, MD, Town Center

On the way up the coast the other day, we found ourselves in Bowie, MD in an upscale shopping center called "Town Center." It was neo-urbanist in design, so it was laid out like real streets with parking behind, to make it as town-like as possible and make people see each other from across the "street" while walking. Pretty cool.

One thing that was distinct about it was that it was a pretty African-American place. Probably 75% of the people were black.

I was pretty exhausted from fighting through and around DC suburbs and exurbs, while dealing with some Eastern Shore traffic too from bad planning. And I wanted to check on Google Maps to be sure the next leg of our route was the best one in terms of balancing time and scenery (i.e. 97 to Baltimore vs. 50/301 across the Bay Bridge then up to Delaware that way -- sometimes a good bet in terms of time vs. aesthetics). But it was hard to get a cell connection inside, and the music was really loud in there, and I got a little annoyed.

So I really wasn't able to accept and appreciate that I was in a different kind of place, a place where we were in the minority as white people and just roll with it and dig it for what it was. I need to go back there sometime when I'm not in a pissy mood and check the whole place out.

Home and away

Installed now on the front porch at Larchmont, looking out over the Long Island Sound. Of course, for what is likely to be our last summer trip here, it is perfect. The air is cool, the sky is blue, etc.

Yesterday we picked our way up the East Coast at what I have decided is the typical rate of travel for us. Including the time for all stops (2x bathroom plus lunch, coffee, and gas), we made our way from Chapel Hill to here at 49 mph. This is pretty much how it works out.

What is astounding as time goes on is how the center of pain has shifted south. From Richmond to Baltimore it is pretty much hell, and then the gates open and we fly through Delaware, NJ and NY. With a little pain on the approaches to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and the GWB. I wonder if this is a function of population shifting south and the failure of infrastructure to keep up. But it does make me kinda want to move back to the North.

But now we must get this household ready to move. After all the trauma and the onset of reality of the last few months, the acceleration of Mary Lee's health events and the begrudging realization that it is time to move on, not much seems to have changed in the house to get her ready to move and it ready to be sold. Some rooms have been painted. I hear a lot of progress has been made in the attic. Some bookshelves have been cleared. But not much else.

Of course not. It's a big step, and they've been here for almost half a century. But it will be on us to act as catalysts and try to shift things forward a little.

Mid point

Whenever possible, I prefer to read using natural light, so I have taken to opening the skylights on the side of the house where our dining room table is in the morning, so I can read the paper at breakfast by their light. Only recently did I realize that the one on the street side of the house is much more important than the one right over my spot, but that's another story.

At any rate, this morning, there was less light than usual, and I realized it's because we are just about midway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox: days are getting shorter. It's the south, it's hot, we're not close to the true end of summer, but school starts soon, we drop Natalie in New Haven in just two weeks, then Graham's school starts the week after that. And this proximity is pretty palpable.

In some sense I feel like it hasn't really been summer because we haven't had a true vacation. Six days in Boulder, sure, but that's pretty short and we didn't have the whole family there. Better get used to it, there will be more of that coming and that's just life.

On Saturday we drive north for what may be the last of our August visits to Larchmont, maybe (if we're lucky and the house sells in the fall) the last long stint in the house at all. If I haven't blogged about it, Mary's mom is selling the house they've been in for 45ish years and moving to the retirement community where she worked for many years. She had resisted moving to what feels like the office, one can understand that, but her accelerating health events finally brought it home to roost that it was time to suck it up and move.

Underlying all of this is a sense of time accelerating, a natural codicil of aging, and thus the need to cultivate an appreciation of the passing of time itself and little good things. Like kicking Adam's ass at tennis yesterday.

Slow weekend

First weekend in a long time in which I had really not much to do, so I got a lot done.

On Saturday I went for a very long run (9 miles), which naturally ended up involving lots of walking. Basically I circumnavigated the area in which I've lived most of my life. Up Kensington, then crossed by path onto Piney Mountain. Out into Carolina North. A little while on the single track trails in the pine forest (Outer Neverland Loop) before returning to Pumpkin Loop, and from there into Glenn Heights, past the Hookers', the Konancs', The Clarks', the house Carol Ann rented while doing renovations, the Steiners', the Deknatels', the Turnbulls', and the Harmons'. All within 200 yards! Then past the Gulf Station, the Mini Mart, over the Lake Ellen Dam (the lake still empty after the event a few years back -- but they're working on it!), down Shady Lawn (where Kiger lived), past Mary Rice's house, around the East side of Eastwood on Lake Shore Lane, then along the creek and up the hill back to my house. My feet and calves were killing me.

Then I ate a bunch of food.

Yesterday I finished a finance book I had been grinding through forever, talked to Leslie on the phone for a while, fixed Graham's toilet (kinda), then went out to dinner with mom. After dinner, all four of us watched a couple of episodes of "The IT Crowd", which Graham and I have seen (Mary watched some on first go round), but Natalie hasn't. Still a good show, with one and a half comic geniuses, which is more than most have.

And I put in a quick three miles, for good measure, and worked on a Townes Van Zandt song on guitar.

The evening before the morning

The magic of morning meditation has largely worn off as the pace of my business -- indeed my life, in certain regards -- has accelerated. I get up, start the coffee, feed the cats, plunk down on my mat and try to clear my mind, and all the concerns of clients and business flows in to fill the gap. I can concentrate on my breathing and it helps to a certain extent, but something of the thrill is gone.

But I keep at it, and my gluteal flexibility continues to rise, and I keep doing my situps and pushups, and then I go out on the porch and read a little of something, right now Trungpa.

What I am not doing, and perhaps I should try, is meditating in the evening. Instead, after my nightly course of TV with one child or other (last night Graham and I revisited "The IT Crowd" with Natalie, to see if she might like it), I go up to my desk, make sure no email needing attention has come in, and then I watch some sports (Messi, Federer, Jordan, that kind of thing) or music (right now Townes Van Zandt) video. Last night I was watching vids trying to teach me a Townes Van Zandt picking pattern for an awesome song.

But one way or another, the things I am watching are aspirational in nature. The things the greats do. I am dreaming of being them, or even, if I am studying picking, trying to emulate them. Instead of just focusing on being there and accepting that I am fine. Then I go to bed and read a book which is itself most often geared towards edification. No wonder I wake up tired, mind racing.

JW

Went to an AA meeting this morning, where I ran into someone who reminded me of Akin, who in turn reminded me of JW, about whom I have written recently. I had hoped to run into each of them in AA in North Carolina, but they never quite made it there.

There was a time we were friends, and had fun together. He road tripped with me to Bloomington (where he had gone to high school, I think) the summer of 1990 when I went for a summer course in Slovenian. He had gotten a book called Learn Italian By Yourself. He refused to speak any Italian with anyone else, insisting that he was learning it by himself.

Over time JW degenerated into someone I was generally not excited to see. We were on very different wavelengths. I had quit drinking, had kids, and was focused on the future in addition to the present. He had not, not, and was living resolutely in the present. Apparently there were many who found him charming, and I will confess that, on Facebook at least, he seems to be handling this whole death thing pretty well.

But it would have been great to have seen him get a handle on things and live a little longer.

Slightly charred

Woke late this morning, fairly burnt out after an intense two weeks, crowned by the social intensity of the last two weeks: client party on Sunday, followed by 10 neighbors coming over Monday to eat and drink leftovers, and a Board meeting at the house Wednesday to work through more of the pappadam and beer.

I am encouraged this morning by a couple of stories in the Journal, one about regional variants of pizza around the USA, another about the blossoming of baseball in Peru in the hands of Venezuelan immigrants fleeing Chavez and Maduro, in turn. Twas ever thus, the spread of culture. And it's a good thing.

Along those lines, I am intrigued by the Turkish Cultural Center opening near us on Franklin Street. It is certainly odd, given the low density of Turks around here. A little Googling shows that it is being funded by one Aziz Sancar, a UNC biochemist who won a Nobel Prize (Daily Tarheel article referred to is as "Noble" -- a shameless lack of copy-editing and/or basic cultural literacy).

So, the obvious questions: how close is this guy to Erdogan, and is there a Turkish government role in funding it?  He met with Erdogan in 2015 after getting the Nobel, and again in 2017. Erdogan was already descending into autocracy by then, though he wasn't as much of a cad as he is now, enboldened as he is by the world's turn to nativism.

It will be interesting to see the path of this center over time. If there are deep pockets of Turkish emigres around here, deeper than I know, then it may flourish. If it is dependent on Ankara for funding, I would like to think that it will fail in time, as the autocratic mode retreats. Although perhaps an enlightened regime in Turkey will support it too.

In any case, it is certainly odd to have a faux Turkish building going up just down the way from the always oddly place Hotel Siena.

Time to go pick up Graham from Duke TIP!

Thoughts on inflation, value, and values

Most economists think the Phillips Curve -- describing the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment -- is broken. Therefore we can keep cutting interest rates as long as there is no inflation these days.

I think that in fact we don't have an absence of inflation these days, we have inflation that is not being measured properly, because it is expressed in the inability to find people to get things done. Contractors who don't call back because they're too busy, for example. Businesses that can't expand because they can't staff up quickly enough. Right now Amazon is seeking to hire 20,000 people nationally, 10,000 in Seattle alone. But housing is so expensive in Seattle that a medical practice downtown (where a client works) can't hire young doctors because they can't afford to live within an hour's commute of work. That is a to a large extent a zoning problem (they need to build more housing and to do so must tear up restrictive zoning).

A couple of stories have supported my thesis. The Fed is taking the view when people say they can't hire they aren't offering enough pay (see here in the Economist). Meanwhile, the town of Emeryville, CA has raised its minimum wage to $16.30, but businesses are having trouble because their margins are eroded. A large part of the problem there is that one small town was trying to take action on its own, so it made its services more expensive than those of neighbors. Why pay $18 for a burger when you can drive 5 miles and get it for $13?

Fundamentally it's a problem of price-inelasticity: people balk at paying the prices that things actually cost, so they substitute or go without. If we want things to be cheaper, we need more people.

But that clearly means we need to arrive at an immigration policy that is acceptable politically. Unfortunately the current situation at the border was probably fueled by an instance of judicial activism (a 2015 court decision that created an exception for families seeking asylum, vs. individuals seeking asylum) that has created an opening for nativist extremists, who also are suspicious of judicial activism. Better that the border situation be addressed legislatively and the nativists defanged.

Almost done

After several days, one large party and a smaller one to attack the leftovers, we have reached the point where we are almost done with the tandoori chicken from Vimala's catering, and we are left with only rice, channa, naan, papadam, and some sauces. Which is not terrible, but still a little sad. Also some beverages. And cookies.

One very positive outcome was that I attacked a lot of things that had been nagging at me around the house, aside from the standard cleaning of windows and all the white paint on the porch, I also did some touch up painting, changed filters in the AC units and also the water filter, and even tested out Marvin's proposed method for cleaning the roof (hand-wiping with a bleach solution), which would be rather labor-intensive but is probably a plausible way to go about mitigating the really dirty areas. And it would be a good way to hang with my boy. Though the logistics of having enough of the right kind of rags to clean it all off is pretty daunting. And rinsing and wringing them while up there. In some ways it's a kind of crazy plan. But it would work without messing up the plants, and no power washers will send us a quote, it seems.

But the house is intrinsically in much better shape than it was a week or so back.

The role of the advisor

To probabilistically frame the nature of the tradeoffs between present enjoyment and future security inherent in a given choice for a given counterparty, and then contextualize it for them in their own life or business situation. All of this is subject to the uncertainty of the future course of events well outside our control, the limits of the client's willingness to share with the advisor, and indeed the limits of their own self-understanding.

Grasping

In recent months I've had difficulty achieving the zen-like state of morning groove that I try to get to from my early routine. While meditating, I keep getting distracted by business and other topics. My readings haven't felt as deeply engaging. On the positive side, it has gotten much easier to do 100ish crunches and 20 push-ups (those I can keep track of more easily than the crunches, perhaps a bad sign... Probably should ramp up and do more)

I have taken to going out on the porch and reading with my coffee when it's not too hot out. Today, while reading Chogyam Trungpa's Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, where he was talking about "seeking" (or not seeking, ideally) to do away with a firm distinction between "I" and "this" (whatever we're doing), I found myself increasingly distracted by the sound of birds singing and absolutely grooving on the wind blowing in the trees (always a fave). And I realized that I was doing pretty well.

Once more

Back from the lake, my face is scratchy from its deferred date with the blade. Made surprising progress over the weekend re-reading Eugene Onegin, getting ready for my upcoming September lecture at NC State on the topic. Which is, by the by, going to be huge and of considerable interest to all.

But now I must get in gear and get out to the office. Long day of stuff to do, thankfully most of it interesting.

Getting moving

Gotta hustle up to the lake so will keep this brief.

After a week of not swimming much, my lower back pain is back (not acute, but worse than yesterday and the day before) after maybe 25-30 minutes in the water yesterday evening. Hmmm.

Also spent some time around dusk yesterday getting the house ready for the party next weekend. First I swept leaves and grass cutting out of the driveway. I wrote not long ago of the place of keeping the driveway clean in the The Great Program, and I cannot help but to think back one of the original moments that led me to think about this, watching shopkeepers sweep the sidewalk in front of their shop. I forget where I was, Italy, Spain, Harlem, Brooklyn, somewhere. And I thought "why would he do that? It will just get dirty again tomorrow." But, as time goes on, and it becomes clear that keeping one's space relatively clean, and thereby bracketing not entropy itself, but its impact on those who enter your space, is one of the few instances of control permitted us by the universe. So, far from being futile, this Sisyphean effort to sweep the sidewalk, it is fundamentally noble.

Also makes the place look nice, attracting more customers.

More later.

Ghosts of things past

Today being Sunday, it was of course pancake day, so I made pancakes. Graham has come to prefer pumpkin pancakes, even in warm weather, so I made "pumpkin" (actually substituting sweet potato because he can't tell the difference and I am a little sick of pumpkin myself). But today's batch tasted funny. Had Graham forgotten to put sugar in the dry ingredients, which he mixed? He had not, he allowed surely. Hmmmm. What was it?

Turned out, it was the baking soda. We had left a thing of it in the back of the older Prius after Mary thought she had squished a baby mouse in the door many months back. I was never sure about that, but there was a smell. Well, the baking soda didn't absorb all of it, but clearly it absorbed some. Neither Graham nor I finished our pancakes.

Later in the day, after we had checked Graham into TIP over on Duke's west campus, we were eating lunch in Brodhead, Duke's swanky new uber dining hall/food court. After we got our food and sat down, I realized we were in the old dining hall, and I remembered the last time I had been there, in early 1990. I was auditing courses in Duke's graduate program in literature with Fredric Jameson, and he together with the Duke Slavics Department had sponsored a conference on new trends in literary and historical thought in Russia. We had a great set of people come over, people I didn't know from Adam but who turned out to be players.

Surprisingly, in the crowd of attendees, I saw a name tag that said Joseph Kosuth, who turned out to be the Joseph Kosuth, who back in the 60s had been a leader of the Conceptualist school of art in New York. A pretty well-known guy. I pointed out to Jameson that he was there, then introduced myself. Turned out he and the guy he was with, maybe a finance guy from New York, were hungry. I escorted them over to the dining hall -- the one we were sitting in today. We went through the line, and Kosuth got very excited when he got to the soda fountain and he realized he could combine sodas however he liked. So he went at it, mixing up Coke and Sprite and Mountain Dew and root beer.... like an 8-year old. It was pretty disgusting. Artists.