Entry 572: A Hodgepodge of Topics of Varying Importance

The delta variant continues to be in the news.  It's concerning, but I don’t know what I can do about it personally.  I got vaccinated.  Everybody I know well enough to discuss vaccinations has been vaccinated.  I live in a city that is around 75% vaccinated, and in my neighborhood that number is almost certainly higher, perhaps significantly so.  What else can I do?  Going back to my old ways of social distancing won’t help much, neither will wearing a mask (although I willingly wear one when asked).  It’s like, I want to do something, but anything I do will be doing something just for the sake of doing something -- hygienic theater.

I suppose I could be more cautious with the kids, since they are too young to be vaccinated.  But they already mask up when in public indoors, and they hang out almost exclusively with kids of vaccinated parents.  We go to the pool a lot, and they obviously don’t wear masks there, but it’s an outdoor, private pool in a mostly liberal area.  I can only also assume vaccination rates are high and risk is low.  My best assessment is that it would be worse to keep them shut away, limiting their social engagement and exercise.  As we've all learned over the past year and a half this carries its own risks to health, particularly mental health.  Plus, I’ll be first in line to sign up my kids for their own vaccinations once they drop the age limit, which can’t happen soon enough.  (Fingers crossed on fall.)

You’ve probably heard that right now Covid is a disease for the unvaccinated, and I think that is right in terms of who is still getting sick and dying, but it’s not true in terms of the disease’s wider ramifications.  Sick people use up resources and put strains on the system that hurt everybody.  They also keep the virus alive and in the news, which freaks people out (even if they are vaccinated and highly unlikely to suffer serious illness themselves) and slows down the economic recovery.  Most worrisome, it allows the virus to mutate in ways that could potentially make vaccination ineffective.  Thankfully (to put it mildly), this hasn’t happened yet, but the possibility of returning to square one with a vaccine-resistant variant is always there, hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles.

Sometimes I can't help but find myself in the mindset of “I’m vaccinated; fuck all y’all that aren’t,” but I try not to stay there long.  It’s a quick off-ramp when I'm heading uncontrollably into a stretch of Covid dread.  The better attitude is, “What can we do to compel unvaccinated people to get vaccinated?”  I’m in favor of persuading people; I’m in favor of punishing people (provided it doesn’t create a counterproductive backlash); I'm in favor of paying people; I’m in favor of doing anything that works.

One thing that definitely needs to be done is the FDA needs to officially approve the vaccines.  Right now they are being dispersed on an emergency approval.  This might seem like a technicality that doesn't actually matter, but I heard a reporter named Derek Thompson on The Bill Simmons Podcast make a very compelling case that it does.  Surveys show more people will willingly get vaccinated if the FDA officially signs off on it, and it allows municipalities, schools, employers, and the like to legally mandate vaccination.  So, let's get on that, FDA.

One thing that definitely doesn't need to be done is any sort of federal laws or decrees.  They will backfire.  If right-wingers feel the Biden administration is too heavy-handed they will be even less likely to get vaccinated than they already are.  It's ironic, isn't it, that the people who clamor the most for "freedom" are the ones most controlled by the actions of their political opposition?  It's just in an inverted manner.

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Never Have I Ever is back with a new season.  I’ve been watching it with S and her sister (who just moved to the DC area, which is very cool).  I love that show.  Apparently, smart, subversive comedies centered on female high school students are my thing.  (See also: Booksmart.)  This one being centered on a South Indian girl born and raised in America only adds to the hilarity.  There are cultural things they reference in the show I wouldn’t really appreciate if I didn’t spend so much time around S and her family.

I also started watching this show called I Think You Should Leave.  It’s pretty good – weird as hell but legitimately funny.  It’s sketch comedy, so there are definitely some swings and misses.  (Is there a less reliably funny form of comedy than sketch?)  But I’ve also found myself legit LOLing watching it by myself.  

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The Milwaukee Bucks recently won the NBA championship.  I watched all their playoff games and found myself cheering for them like I was born and raised an Elm Grove.*  I don't know why they captured my fancy the way they did.  Usually when I come into a sporting event with no routing interest, I subconscious pick a team halfway through and root for them for the remainder of the game, but I don't really care.  I don't have that emotional investment.  This time I did for some reason.

And that reason might be Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, aka, "The Greek Freak."  He's just so awesome to watch, and he has such a humble, intriguing backstory.  How could you not root for him?  Also, the Bucks were playing against Phoenix Suns, led by Chris Paul, and I'm really sick of those State Farm commercials.

 *That, apparently, is a suburb of Milwaukee.

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I heard an interesting interview on The Michael Shermer Show with Whole Foods founder John Mackey.  Mackey is one of those guys whose ideals would probably be described by most people as pretty liberal, but he’s also an unabashed advocated for minimally regulated capitalism, which puts him at odds with, say, hardcore Bernie supporters.  Like, he wants a lot of the same things people on the left advocate for, but he thinks the invisible hand of the market is the best way to get them.  I found myself mostly agreeing with 75% of what he said, mostly disagreeing with 20%, and stridently disagreeing with 5%.  (One thing I really take issue with is his characterization of resentment toward super-rich people as "envy."  To some degree, yes, of course there is envy, but more so I think it's that many people feel, rightly or wrongly, that billionaires represent the injustices of an unjust economic system.) 

Mackey is a vegan, really into animal rights, and he and Shermer were positing that people in future generations might look back on our treatment of animals today with similar shock and horror to how we currently look back on slavery.  I have heard this proffered before, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.  It's not an apt analogy, because killing other living creatures is absolutely vital, at the most basic level (sustenance), for human beings to survive.  For millennia we had to hunt, and even today when we don’t, when we can healthily subsist on a strictly plant-based diet,* we still kill a lot of critters growing food, either accidentally (e.g., crushing small animals with heavy equipment) or intentionally (e.g., spraying pesticides).  I don't think we could grow enough food to support everybody on the planet without doing these things.  So, the question becomes: Is breeding cows for food so much worse than exterminating colonies of weevils for food?  The answer might be yes, but I don’t think it's a big enough yes that future generations will look back on it like we do on past atrocities.

*Although I don't currently eat an entirely plant-based diet, I'm totally down to transition to one as a society.  It's more efficient and much better on the environment.  I think lab-grown meat will really have to take off for us to get there though.

So then, what current widely accepted aspect of society will be judged harshly by future civilizations?  I don't know.  Possibly nothing, at least not at the level of something like slavery.  It seems reasonable to me that it was so awful that we simply don’t have anything analogous to it in today’s society.  One possibility I will throw out there, however, is closing our borders on refugees -- just our treatment of refugees in general.  We can all see how people might look back on "kids in cages" with utter disgust (because most people feel that way now), but even more mundane, acceptable refugee laws are quite terrible if you think about them on an overall human level.  If I were in charge, I would allow in more refugees (more immigrants in general) by a massive factor.  My feeling is, if you can get to this country, you can stay, and you can become an American citizen, end of.

Republicans often claim that Democrats support "open borders," but it's not true -- they don't.  But I do.  Maybe not absolutely 100% open, but pretty damn close to it.  When we get to the point where you fly over the country and see something other than endless swathes of city-less land, then we can talk about the country being "full".  Until then give me your tired, your poor,  your huddled masses.  There's always room in Wyoming.

Until next time...

Entry 571: Sawing Logs and Mowing Lawns

I'm quite tired these days.  The kids have to be at summer camp an hour earlier than they do at school, and I'm the one who takes them to there, so that means I have to wake up and hour earlier.  You might think this would force me to go to bed an hour earlier, but it doesn't.  It just means I get an hour less sleep.  I find it almost physically impossible to go to sleep before midnight on a regular basis (and many nights it is significantly later than that).  I can do it for a little while, or as a one-off "catch up" night, but sure as the setting sun I will eventually regress into my night-owl habits.

It's been that way my entire adult life.  One summer as a college student, I worked stocking shelves at a sporting goods store, which required me to wake up at 5:00 am.  The night before my first day, I got in bed around 9:00 pm set on getting a solid eight-hours of shut-eye.  I laid there for about 20 minutes, listening to the birds chirp, hearing the comings and goings of my neighbors (it wasn't even totally dark out), before thinking, Well, this isn't going to work, and getting up to play Nintendo.  I don't think I slept more than five hours a night that entire summer.

I would, however, often nap in the afternoon on the couch after I came home.  It's the only time in my life I napped regularly.  It was different sleep than I got at night though.  It was like the sleep I sometimes get on airplanes, where I'm kinda still following what's going on, but it's not what's actually going on.  It's some sort of dream-reality hybrid.  At some point it all gets too weird and I pop back into full consciousness -- except on rare occasions, when I don't, and I experience sleep paralysis.  This is an absolutely terrifying state in which one is awake but cannot move or speak.  I don't think there is a literal Hell, but if there is, I imagine it somehow involves sleep paralysis.

S is the type of person who can fall asleep almost immediately in almost any environment, so she doesn't really understand my plight (and, I suspect, is frequently annoyed by it).  "Why don't you just go to sleep earlier?" she asks.  I try to explain that that's like telling a fat person to just eat less and exercise more: Gee, thanks, I never thought of that.  But it works out okay, because she usually lets me sleep in a little on the weekend, and I always rally and get out of bed when I need to, no matter how tired I am.  On Monday, I got the kids to school, put in a full day at the office, and took a Krav class on about an hour of sleep.

This is not an exaggeration.  Sunday night* I got caught in the death-spiral in which you can't sleep because you are anxious and you are anxious because you can't sleep.  At one point, I got up to get water and peeked at the clock (which I typically try to avoid, as it only makes things worse) and it was 4:00 am on the dot.  I went back to bed and finally slept until S's alarm went off a little after 5:00.  I could not get back to sleep after that, around 6:30 I resigned myself to that fact and just got up for the day -- a one-hour sleep night.  I've had them before, and they totally suck.  Somehow I manage to power through, though, and I almost always sleep soundly the next night.

*Monday morning, technically.

In other news, we apparently stumbled into a free lawn care service.  When we first moved to this house, over two years ago, we signed up to get our grass mowed every two weeks by the same company who does our neighbors' yards.  It's $40 a pop, so we paid the main guy cash on the spot the first few times he came over to do it.  But then he quit coming and instead sent his workers, who said they don't handle the money and wouldn't take payment from us.  Since then, we just haven't paid.  They still come every week, but we don't give them any money.  It's the weirdest thing.

It's also annoying, because we are just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  We probably owe them like $1,000.  I'd say they cut our lawn at least 25 times since we last paid.  I was keeping track for a while, but I've now lost count.  Are we going to get hit with a huge bill soon?  I mean, it's been like two years.  A few weeks ago I sent him a text asking him to send us an invoice, and he replied asking for our address, so I sent it to him, and then... nothing.  How can you run a business this way?  Don't you need the cash flow?  How do you pay your employees?  Is this a front business for some sort of shady activity?

Whatever the case, it makes me feel uncomfortable, but I don't know what to do.  I could cancel the service, but if he's not responsive to getting paid, I doubt he'll be responsive to not getting paid.  Also, they do a really good job and are super reliable (ironic, given how many negative experiences we've had with contractors we were paying).  I think I'm going to ask my neighbors what they do.  If they don't give me a satisfactory response, then I'm going to write a check and just give it to a worker the next time I see one.  Either that or I'll just do nothing and wait until a huge bill comes due... or doesn't.  Maybe we will move or die first, in which case -- we win?  I dunno.  I really can't figure this one out.

Until next time... 

Entry 570: Beaten Up But Not Beaten Down

I feel pretty beaten up right now, mainly because I am.  I took two Krav Maga classes each of the previous two nights, and I am feeling it today.  One of the classes is just called Fight and it's pretty much as advertised.  It's a lot of sparring, a lot of grappling, some kicking -- dirty boxing, so to speak.  You don't get blasted like you would in a real fight -- everybody knows everybody has to go to work the next day -- but you definitely feel what it's like to get hit, and it doesn't feel good.  This one dude caught me with a pretty good right flush on the chin.  I think it was payback because I booted him in the side and made him wince.  Turnabout is fair play.

I definitely have daydreams about starting sport fighting in my early twenties instead of my early forties.  I think I'm picking it up pretty quickly, but my body just can't do things it could do 20 years ago.  I'm not as agile, not as fast, and not as confident.  That last one is a big one.  So often I find myself holding back a little bit because I don't want to pull a hamstring or strain my back or fuck up my neck.  These aren't things I ever worried about as a younger man.  During my last class of the week the instructor asked me if I met my class goals, and I said, "Yeah, I didn't get injured."  And I was totally serious.

Then again, even if I took up fighting earlier and more seriously, what would I have done with it?  Almost certainly nothing.  It's not like I was going to be a pro or even an amateur fighter.  I just would've gotten hit a lot more and that's probably not a good thing.  Doing what I'm doing now, cosplaying MMA, pretending to be a badass, is likely the better way to go.  I get to beat up on the patzers and get a workout in the process.  That's a pretty sweet deal.

The workouts have been paying dividends too.  I've dropped about 15 pounds over the past month and a half.  I lost like 12 of those in two weeks, just by eating better, and then it's been an ongoing grind to get off the rest.  The thing is, weight is not a good metric for me, because I don't mind if I add muscle weight, but I don't know what else to use.  Basically, I want to look good with my shirt off, but how do you measure that?  Maybe I'll start an Instagram account and just post weekly pics of myself shirtless and then read the responses.*  What could go wrong with that plan?

*Does Instagram have responses?  I honestly have never been on the site.

Actually, that does kinda sound like a fun idea.  But I'm not going to do it, mainly because inertia, but also because being off social media has really been a boon to my mood and mental health.  I miss Facebook sometimes, because it really did keep me connected, if only superficially, to people I really like, but aren't in my "real" life for one reason or another.  For the most part, however, I just don't even think about it, and that's a good thing.  I was listening to the Slate Political Gabfest podcast today, and they had an interesting discussion about social media.  Here's an excerpt from cohost Emily Bazelon.  The impetus of the dialog is a personal essay in The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan about quitting Twitter.  (You don't actually have to read the essay to follow along; I haven't read it.)

You know, what I was thinking about is that one of the things this essay gets at is the difference between quitting social media and desperately wanting social media just not to exist anymore at all. There’s taking yourself out of the game, which for her sounds like absolutely a healthy psychological move and better for her work. And then there is just wishing there was no conversation going on that you then had to feel excluded from or that you’d excluded yourself from. I mean, I really do flirt with the idea that we would just be better off if social media platforms didn’t exist whatsoever.  That they do so much more harm than good even with all of the wonderful celebration of free speech and the way that it has democratized participation in debates, and I see huge benefits to it, including to my children. It also just causes tremendous damage, like apart from ethnic violence and ruining elections, which is like very real. I think that it also makes people really anxious and insecure in unhelpful ways. It definitely has that effect on me some of the time. I don’t think I’m addicted to it, but I can’t quite bring myself to get off it because it keeps going. So it it creates this FOMO. And yet I also have just participated in it less because I don’t like the sharp meanness of it. I can’t figure out how to argue on it without feeling some kind of awful sense that I’m supposed to then go back and see what retort someone has written back to me and I really, really don’t like that feeling through the day. So then I don’t argue and then my feed is boring.

I think this is really well said.  I agree with pretty much all of it, especially the last part about having a boring feed, because of the "awful sense" you have throughout the day when you argue online.  This is also why I almost never post anything even the slightest bit controversial on blog comments -- even anonymously I hate that feeling.

There's also the time aspect of it.  Back when I would go on Twitter regularly, I couldn't get any traction.  Nobody engaged with my posts much at all.  Then I looked at the feeds of other people, who had a bunch of followers, who were no wittier or more poignant or famous than me, to see how they did it, and it was like, "Oh, they tweet all the fucking time."  It's like the only way to make social media worth it is to be on social media constantly, and that totally sucks.  Ergo, social media either isn't worth it or totally sucks.

Alright, I'm already 14 minutes past the blogging limit I set for myself this evening, so I'm going to wrap it up.  But before I do, here's the latest in Lil' S2 solving math problems in his head that would literally (and I mean that literally) stump a decent portion of the adult population.  We measured him a few days ago and he's 46 inches.  So I said to him, "There are 12 inches in a foot, so how many feet and how many inches are you?"  And then he thought about it and said, "3 feet and 10 inches."  I tried it with my height 73" to make sure it wasn't a fluke, but he got it as well: 6' 1".  I'm telling you, he's pretty sharp for a five-year-old.

Until next time...

Entry 569: Friday Night Gloom

It's a wet, gloomy Friday here in DC.  We got hit with heavy thunderstorms last night -- flash flood warnings and whatnot.  It's probably a good thing, actually.  You don't want to have a super dry Fourth of July weekend.  We haven't seen the raging wild fires here that have been devastating parts of the West Coast, and I'd prefer it stay that way.  Not sure if we will see any fireworks this weekend at all.  I'm not that into the little home-show stuff you can buy legally (or of dubious legality at an Indian reservation), and the major fireworks shows, like the one on the National Mall, are such hassles.  They are pretty cool though.  Maybe when the kids get older, something like that will be worth it.

I wouldn't want to do it now because I think the kids would complain about the walking (among other things).  Lil' S1 in particular seems to never want to do anything that involves any walking at all.  I'm worried that he's gradually moving toward a very sedentary lifestyle.  He doesn't really like sports; he refuses to got on hikes (an activity we used to do a lot as a family); he complains about walking anywhere instead of driving; his favorite activities can be done while sitting indoors (watching TV, playing video games, reading); and he often says things on the weekend like, "I'm not going to put a foot outside all day."

He does like some physical activities.  He loves swimming/goofing off in the pool, and he will play outside if there are other kids around.  Also, we got him in a camp program where everyday the kids go somewhere off-campus and do something active.  It sounds pretty cool actually.  You do stuff like inner-tubing, going to a farm, going to a museum, etc.  It's a lot of walking, and he seems to be enjoying it so far.

It's kinda funny, actually.  We have Lil' S1 in this super fun program, and then his little brother is a program literally called "Summer School."  Sorry, kid, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.  They weren't offering summer school for fourth-graders, and you need the work.  You didn't get a whole lot academically out of virtual kindergarten (i.e. sitting upside down in a sofa-cushion fort, ignoring your teacher on Zoom).

I'm glad the kids are in camp full-time this summer, like the before-times, but this new Delta variant of Covid has me a wee bit worried.  The good news -- nay, the great news -- is that the vaccines seem to basically be 100% effective against it.  Even if a vaccinated person contracts the virus they won't get very sick (they might not even realize it), and they are unlikely to pass it on.  The bad news is that there is no vaccine yet for children under 12.  Well, there probably is, the same vaccine that is available for adults, but it needs to be tested and approved for kids, and from what I'm reading that won't be until fall at the earliest.  In the meantime, we will continue to mask them up before they leave the house, fill out bullshit wellness questionnaires, and hope for the best.

Personally, I've scrapped the mask almost entirely.  I'm trusting the vaccination science.  I think that's important.  There is harm in being overly cautious.  This article does a pretty good job laying out this case.  It should be noted that the author is perhaps unrealistically bullish on our vaccination efforts (he predicted we would have herd immunity months ago), but he still makes some good points.  The one that resonates the most with me is that you lose credibility and capital if you impose rules that aren't really necessary.  I mean, what if, god forbid, we actually do need masking mandates and social distancing rules again, even for vaccinated folks.  People will be much more receptive if they believe the threat is real, and they won't feel so burnt out and defeated if now they get a "break" from having to worry about it.  The mental health effects of stressing over Covid are real and are often given short shrift by epidemiologist (because epidemiologists are experts in epidemiology, not psychology).

The rub, of course, is that unvaccinated people should wear masks still in public indoor spaces.  But the people who are unlikely to get vaccinated (despite it being free and super easy now) are the very people who are least likely to wear a mask in the first place.  If you're a hardcore right-winger who thinks Covid is a media conspiracy to hurt Trump's election chances (mission accomplished!), you're not getting vaccinated or wearing a mask.  But, if you're not one of those people, I think you just have to hope that there are not enough of them around where you live to mess it up for everybody else.

Now I'm wondering what the typical profile is of the person who won't get vaccinated, but still wears a mask and follows social distancing guidelines.  Obviously there are some people who can't get vaccinated for health reasons, but I'm not talking about that (presumably very small) segment of the population.  I'm talking about people who don't want to do it, but are still willing to follow the proper safety protocols.  I'm thinking they are probably the left-wing anti-vaxxers.  The people who are really into naturopathy and who dismiss vaccines because they are the product of the Westernized capitalistic healthcare industry.  They believe in Covid, but don't trust Big Pharma.  They are out there, I'm sure.

I must admit, though, I do get self-conscious if I go into the supermarket and almost everybody is wearing a mask but me.  I would say it's about 70-30 most places near where I live in favor of a mask.  (It was more like 90-10 a few weeks.)  And I get really self-conscious if the only other non-mask-wearers are white dudes.  If I walk in somewhere and see, like, a couple of Black chicks who aren't wearing masks, it puts me at ease for some reason.  I don't really know what's going on there -- why does somebody's race and gender matter in this scenario that's entirely in my head?  Maybe the wokesters are getting to me.  I need to sign-off and listen to Joe Rogan or something.*

Until next time...

*I'm not really going to listen to Joe Rogan.  But I am going to look at the Baseball-Reference page of the great "Bullet Joe" Rogan.  MLB recently designated the Negro Leagues a "major league" and the B-R website just added the stats to their database.  It's really cool to look at them.  Rogan in particular was a marvel as a pitcher and a hitter.  If you look at his value on a per-game-basis, you can make a strong case he was the most valuable player in MLB history.

Entry 568: Old People

We got a knock on the door the other night around dinner time.  Lil' S1 answered it, because he loves answering the door, and I heard a voice say, "Can you go get your daddy for me?"  It was my next door neighbor.  Her husband had fallen and she needed help getting him back up.  It's funny when it's on a campy '80s commercial; it's a lot less humorous in real life.

I put my shoes on and hustled over there as quickly as possible, finding, indeed, a fallen old man crumpled in a hallway.  I asked several times if we should call an ambulance or something, but she assured me that once he got back up he could manage on his own.  He also has a broken shoulder -- not from the fall, it was already in a sling -- so it was hard to get a grip on him, but I was able to get under him and grab his belt loops and hoist him back up on his feet.  His wife gave him his cane and then he ambled over to the toilet (the closest seat) and sat down, completely enervated.  I made his wife take down my number and then I left.  I felt like I should have done more, even though I know there was nothing else to do.

Of course, when something like this happens, I start thinking about my own parents (who seem to still be holding their own, physically and mentally, thank goodness) and also about my own mortality.  I didn't have a full-on existential freakout, but I did think about myself at his age (assuming I get there; I'm planning on it, but you never know).  I just can't imagine degenerating to that point -- brittle-boned, unable to stand, exhausted after a few steps, barely able to speak.  I think about it, and it's, like, fuck, maybe Hemingway had the right idea.  But that's too bleak for me.  I'm an optimist at heart.  So, to cheer myself up, here's a list off the top of my head of some inspiring accomplishments by old people.

• Buck O'Neil, the iconic baseball personality, was touring the nation, giving interviews, championing the Negro Leagues Museum and pre-integration Black ballplayers right up to his death at age 94 in 2006.
• The oldest living major league baseball player Eddie Robinson recently started a podcast at age 100 about his playing days.
• Robert Marchand rode a bicycle 15 km (about 9 mi) on his 107th birthday.
• Carl Reiner wrote three memoirs in his 90s and was active (and cogent) on Twitter and other media until his death at 98.
• Grandma Moses didn't start painting until 78.  (Note: I don't really know who Grandma Moses is.  This is just the example I always hear cited of somebody starting a new trade at an advanced age.  I should read her Wikipedia page... done -- interesting enough.)
  
• Writer and running enthusiast Malcolm Gladwell beat his friend (a 27-year-old) in a race by running a 5:15 mile; Gladwell is 67 years old. 
• George Foreman rewon the heavyweight boxing title in 1994 at age 45 and defended it a year later before retiring.  This is my favorite old person sports feat, because Foreman did it in one of the most physically demanding sports and because it doesn't require the "for an old person qualifier."  He was heavyweight fricking champion!  Not of the senior circuit, of the entire sport.  That's amazing at any age.  He knocked out a 26-year-old to do it.**  It just goes to show the true power of meat grilled at a slant. 
• A lot is made of Joe Biden being an old president at 78, but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is two years older, and her California counterpart in the Senate, Dianne Feinstein, just turned 88. 
  
• Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős was one of the best and most prolific problem solvers until he died at 83.*

I think what this list shows is that you can't beat death -- we're all going to go sometime (relatively soon, too, if you think about it) -- but you can put up an admirable fight with a little determination and probably a lot of luck.

*Erdős was fascinated by the subject of his own death and would frequently reference it in casual conversation in his old age.  He supposedly once said, "I want to be giving a lecture, finishing up an important proof on the blackboard, when someone in the audience shouts out, 'What about the general case?'. I'll turn to the audience and smile, 'I'll leave that to the next generation,' and then I'll keel over."

**It's a pretty crazy fight (highlights here).  Foreman survives haymaker after haymaker from the then champion, a lefty name Michael Moorer, and then knocks him out with what looks to be an ordinary right cross.  It goes to show how much power Foreman had.  The thing about those really big dudes is that their punches often look weaker than littler dudes because they don't have that same quick pop to them, but they are usually way stronger.  It's physics -- mass matters.  

In other news, we hit the pool pretty hard this weekend.  We went to our pool Friday afternoon and then today one of Lil' S1's classmates had a birthday party at a different pool.  It's fun, except Lil' S2 can't really swim yet, so we always have to go in the pool with him, or watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn't get in over his head.  It's hard to just chill and chat with the other parents.

Lil' S1 went off a high dive today for the first time (we don't have one at our pool).  He didn't hesitate or anything.  He just went right up and cannonballed off.  He's a pretty competent swimmer now.  The only thing I have to worry with him about is getting tired or goofing off.  Today he was playing in the deep end with his friends, and they were stealing each others noodles, and I had to intervene a few times and tell them not to do that.  Roughhousing by taking away a 9-year-old kid's flotation device in ten-foot water just didn't seem like a good idea to me.  (One thing I like about our pool, as opposed to the one we were at today, is that there isn't really a deep end where kids can play.)

I swam laps yesterday for the first time in, I dunno, 15 years?  I think the last time I went was the campus pool in grad school.  It's such a hard workout for me.  I had to stop for a little breather after every length.  (Meanwhile the old woman in the lane next to me is going nonstop and doing kick-flip turns.)  It felt pretty good though, and it's a low-impact exercise which is a welcome change-up to the fight class I took on Thursday.  I think I'm going to try to add swimming to my regular workout schedule.

The only thing I don't like about it is the chlorine really irritates my skin, and I get really bad swimmer's itch if I go in a pool too frequently.  That's the main reason I didn't play water polo in high school.  Well, that and I didn't want to go to practice at 6:00 am, which is when the pool was available.  I quit football because the helmet hurt my head, and I never played water polo because I have sensitive skin and don't like to get up early.  I never realized before how much my fussiness affected my athletic endeavors as a youth.

Alright, that's all for tonight.  Until next time...

Entry 567: Juneteenth

There was no school today to commemorate the new national holiday, Juneteenth.  It's cool and all, but it would have been nice to get more than an evening's notice.  We literally got a text at 6:01 pm last night informing us school was cancelled.  S and I already had light work days scheduled (the kids had "graduation" ceremonies we wanted to attend -- or rather that she wanted to attend and I felt compelled to attend), so we were able to handle it, but still, that's harsh on parents with elementary school kids.  Maybe you go ahead and make the announcement now but the actual observation doesn't start until 2022.  I mean, I can't imagine working-class Black parents (of which there are many in DC) were very excited about losing their childcare on such short notice.

In general, however, I am in favor of Biden making Juneteenth a national holiday.  We need more awareness about the history of slavery and its abolition in the US.  Kids learn about it a little bit in history classes, but not very extensively.  I didn't even know what Juneteenth was until I watched an episode of Atlanta a few years ago.  So, I was, like, 41 when I learned.  That's not right.  We need more Black history in school -- actual history -- not just performative paeans to Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks every February.

Unfortunately, however, the Republican party seems to be trying to turn "critical race theory" into a culture-war weapon, which doesn't bode well for a robust Black history curriculum.  Critical race theory is such a nebulous term it's absolutely going to be coopted by Trumpers (the same way as "cancel culture") to mean anything that they don't like, regardless of how true or merited it actually is.

I think most people, especially those who lean right, just don't want to (or can't) confront how truly awful slavery was.  I think they think of it as really bad in the same way that the oppression of women was once really bad.  But it goes so far beyond that.  It literally goes into worst-atrocities-in-human-history territory.  I mean imagine "owning" people and forcing them to do work for you and being allowed to beat (and even kill) them if they don't do it.  And you could also rape them -- maybe not totally legally, but who's going to stop you?  Think about those stories of children being kidnapped and locked away for years on end, and everybody's reaction is What kind of sick fuck could ever do that to a fellow human being?  But how is what American heroes like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock did any better?  When people talk about not wanting to deify our founding fathers because they were white supremacist slave-holders I completely get it.  I agree.

The flip-side of this coin, however, is that the worse you recognize the past to be, the farther it means we've come since then.  This is something a lot of people on the left need to take to heart.  Too many liberals suffer from progress phobia (a term I heard credited to the science writer Steven Pinker), whereby they are scared to acknowledge the undeniable fact that things are way better for Black Americans than they used to be, and very likely they are getting better still, slowly but surely, as I write this.  For some reason, it's gauche to say this, and when you do you have to give a five-minute caveat beforehand: Certainly racism still exists today, there are widespread discrepancies in the treatment of Black and White people in so many areas, including schooling, housing, and policing, we still have a long way...

Well, I set out to talk about going to the pool, and pumped out a 500-word tangent on slavery instead.  I'm going to hit a few more topics, lightning-round style and call it a night.

• We went to the pool today.  We got a summer membership to one some other families from school go to.  It's not a super chichi country club pool or anything like that.  It's pretty bare bones (and the bathrooms are actually kinda gross -- at least the men's is), but it's affordable and it's a pool, so it's quite nice.
• I started up online Scrabble again.  I might start playing tournaments again too.  I need some time to build my skills back up though.
• I also joined my neighborhood fight club.  One of the other dads from school is a boxing enthusiast, and he has a little set-up in his garage, so he's been holding makeshift workout sessions for me and another guy.  It's pretty awesome, actually.
• Remember in a previous entry I said Lil' S2 is really good at math?  I shit you not, he solved the following problem in his head correctly with absolutely no help: The zoo has 112 types of reptiles and amphibians in their exhibits.  There are 72 types of reptiles and the rest are amphibians.  How many more types of reptiles are there than amphibians in the exhibits?
• The correct answer is 32, if you're not as smart as a five-year-old.
  

Until next time...

Entry 566: Some Followups

The plumbing work in our basement is finished and the giant trenches have been refilled.  The "only" thing left to do is the recarpeting/retiling.  Well, that and cleanup.  Everything in our basement has a thin layer of dust on it.  It would have been nice to get a heads-up from the workers so that we could have put covers on some things (and it also would've been nice if they closed the doors to help confine it), but whatever.  If they fixed the issue, it's all good.  That's my one and only criterion on whether or not they did a good job.  If never hear that gurgling sound, and if I never to clean up shit-water, again then they did fantastic work,* and I'll gladly de-dust the entire basement myself.  (Okay, that's a lie, but I will pay somebody to do it.)

*According to the city inspector this company is "the best in the business."  If he was trying to make me feel confident about their work, he did the exact opposite.  He made me wonder if they were in cahoots.

One thing I was thinking while looking at the mounds of dirt in our basement: Why don't they put in access panels under the flooring to sewage lines?  I'm sure it's a cost thing; everything's a cost thing.  But it just seems so ridiculous to have to jackhammer through the foundation to fix something like this.

Oh, if you're wondering what the ultimate cause of this all was: roots.  Whoever laid the pipe originally used an ill-fitting joint, and over time roots squeezed in there and clogged/destroyed a large section of the line.  I really like trees, but their roots sure do fuck shit up sometimes.  

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The kids' baseball seasons are over -- yay.  Lil' S2's last game was a lot of fun, actually.  It went by super quickly and the kids played really well.  It's coach-pitch, so I lob them some balls, and if they miss five or six in a row we put the ball on a tee.  This was the only game of the season in which we didn't use the tee at all.  (For the not-so-good kids I have to aim at their bats, and I was really hitting my spots.)  Lil' S2 hit the ball on the first pitch both times he was up, which is either a huge improvement or a total fluke.  (He told me on the ride home "I didn't do it on purpose.")  Either way I'll take it.

Lil' S1's last game, on the other hand, was kinda a disaster, mitigated only by the fact that it was a playoff loss, so the season is thankfully over.  In this league it's machine pitch, and they have strikeouts, and Lil' S1 struck out his only two times up, including once with the bases loaded and two outs.  (I was really counting on the kid who came up before him to make the third out of the inning, but he somehow made contact and got on base for the first time all year -- terrible timing.)  He just looked so bad, anemic, halfhearted swings, and he wasn't even ready to bat -- he was lying under the bench and the coach had to holler at him to get him up.

I didn't say anything immediately after the game, but later I asked him how he thought the season went, and we had something like the following conversation.

Him: Pretty good.  Except the last game we lost because of me.  If I got a hit my last time up we would have won.

(I don't think that's actually true -- I think they lost by quite a bit -- and I suspect he was more going for pity points than he was genuinely sad about it.) 

Me: Yeah, but it didn't look like you were even trying to get a hit.  You just kinda waved the bat softly through the air.

Him: I was trying.  I'm just not very good at hitting.

Me: That's because you never practice.  You never ask me to play, you never play with your friends, and you don't really participate on your team.  It seems like you don't really like playing baseball.

Him: I do like it.

Me: I don't think so.  One of your teammates told me you said that you were losing on purpose.  It's okay if you don't like it.  You don't have to play next season.

Him: [On the verge of tears] I want to play! I like it! I want to play!

Me: Well, you'll be in a higher league next year, and it's even more competitive.  So, you'll have to get better and you definitely have to put more effort into it.  I'm not going to spend two hours every Saturday to watch you tepidly swing at baseballs.

Him: What does tepidly mean?

Me: It means, like, in a weak manner -- not very strongly.

Him: Oh... I don't do that.  I am good!

Me: *Dissenting groaning noise.*

Him: Well, I want to play anyway!

Me: Alright, I'll make you a deal.  If you'll hit baseballs or play catch with me once a week then I'll sign you up for next season.  But you have to ask me.  I'm not going to ask you to do it.  At least once a week, deal?

Him: Deal!

That was about a week ago, and unsurprisingly he has yet to broach the subject.  It's so weird to me that he's so insistent on playing when he clearly doesn't want to actually play.  Maybe I just caught him in a weird mood, or maybe he just doesn't want to feel left out.  I don't know.  But it's going to be very strange if I have to compel my son to not play baseball.

Alright, it's 11:35pm.  That's enough for now.

Until next time...