The Cherry Blossoms are hard to top.
2021 was better than 2020, but it was a pretty low bar. One week after I sent out last year’s card/links (still in 2020, the worst year of my life), my mother died, the reality of which was much worse than I had anticipated (it didn’t help we could not be with her and were poorly informed about her status). We only had her funeral and a memorial service November 26th, and I did my best for her at both. Her death certainly added to my discontent with my living and employment situation, and I decided to take a position with the Lehigh Valley Health Network and move back to Bethlehem, PA, where I went to college and lived for 2 years after getting out of the USAF. I will be paid substantially more with a markedly lower cost of living, important with only a few more years of quality earning potential, and my life will be much more normal, with things like a car (Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid), sunlight (I often joked I could live in a cave, and I essentially did – though lit with artificial light – for the past 12 months. I did it, but it gets old.), and the subtraction of tourists and the bleeping scooters everywhere. My move from DC was OK for a move, since the LVHN paid for pros to do it for me, but I moved again two days after getting into my new apartment due to a leaky bathroom ceiling. The ceiling creaks like crazy, but I am settling in ok. I don’t start work until January 10th, so I planned a trip to Antarctica* from 12/19 – 01/06. The plan otherwise is to find a house near Moravian University.
Neologism: I love to make up new words, and this is the best recent one: Doublecroxx: timing the crosswalks and walk signs just right to not break stride while crossing both streets at an intersection to arrive catty-corner.
Travel:
The skiing in the Rockies is the best, especially if you aren’t very good.
Obviously, minimal. I went to our summer house on Keuka Lake for a few days on 2 occasions. I did manage a ski trip to Colorado in late February with my nephew, Andrew, and Christina, which was pretty great. Staycations in DC are ok – still lots to do.
*So, Antarctica: leaving Dec. 19th and returning the 6th (I just had to revise the trip due to a flight cancellation), will be doing a “base camp” cruise where they anchor for 3-4 days and then you do activities on land and in the water, including snowshoeing, mountaineering, kayaking and camping, as well as walks. 2 activities a day. It is hard to get there and back, especially with Covid, but I should be able to pull it off despite Omicron. I am more than a bit stressed about it.
Tiresome movie/TV tropes I can’t stand:
1. The cathartic sucker punch to the face. NO ONE should ever punch someone in the face, much less without any warning or from out of their field of view.
2. A justice system that somehow has an investigation and trial in a matter of days, all conducted by the same 3 or 4 people.
3. Car chases. They are tedious, wasteful, and dangerous, while encouraging susceptible people to do them in real life.
How are these still a thing?
1. UFC/MMA/Boxing – beating someone into unconsciousness? Please, please stop.
2. Single use plastic water bottles – The water is no better than from your tap 99% of the time, is expensive, and almost none of the plastic gets recycled. Buy a filter and fill your bottle up from that.
3. Car commercials featuring the vehicles being driven illegally and recklessly – so a fine print disclaimer makes it ok? See “car chases” above.
Fitness/Health: I am doing pretty well at the moment, but I got a frozen shoulder in May and it hurt a lot. My foot and knee bothered me some, but I was tenacious. I joined Moravian’s gym and will be back to working out with students again.
Music: Still only listening on Apple music, which has come in handy with the new car (Android Auto isn’t perfect, but better than hooking up an iPod, though somehow it still picks the worst songs I have very often).
Albums I recommend/enjoy (no particular order) I first heard in ‘21
Julien Baker, “Little Oblivions” and “Sprained Ankle”; Feeder (maybe the single greatest find, yet another Welsh rock band), “The Singles”; Group Love, “This is This”; Bob Mould, “Blue Hearts”; Belly, “Ring” (from 1995, but I’d not been aware of it); Beabadoobee, “Fake It Flowers”; The Jayhawks, “Xoxo”; REM, “Reckoning - Deluxe Edition”; Grant-Lee Phillips, “Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff”; Son Volt, “Electro Melodier”; Van Wagner, “The Boone Sessions”; The Verve Pipe, “Villains, Live and Acoustic”; Noah Gunderson, “A Pillar of Salt” and “Selections from ‘White Noise’ Live”; Toad the Wet Sprocket, “Starting Now”; Oasis, “Knebworth Live 1996”; Snail Mail, “Valentine”; Dinosaur Jr, “Emptiness at the Sinclair”;
I saw a few acts live before leaving DC: Bob Mould, Toad the Wet Sprocket (with Raquel and Brian Bishop as a guest of the band – it was quite good), and Beabadoobee.
I also went to comedy shows by Sarah Cooper and Ronnie Chieng.
Books/Reading: It was a bad year for books and reading overall. I had more distractions (oh, the REELs/Tik Toks!!)
I got very behind in my New Yorkers and Atlantics and had to take away time from books. I also wasn’t taking the Metro enough to finish any books while riding.
Barack Obama, A Promised Land : well written, but mostly campaign minutiae, all the more justification to reform the whole system, but he seemed to like it.
Michael Lewis, The Premonition : the failures of the system to deal with the pandemic and the people who saw it coming, knew what to do but couldn’t.
Kurt Andersen, Evil Geniuses : how the right wing, since the 1970s, hijacked the USA with lies, propaganda, subterfuge, money and sheer force of will.
Early morning photo at the beginning of the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin
Quotes:
The New Yorker: “Emory University recently released the results of the most comprehensive analysis to date of people who are prone to conspiracy beliefs. According to the study, the personality profiles most often associated with such beliefs are entitlement, self-centered impulsivity, a sense of being wronged, and elevated levels of depressed moods and anxiousness.”
The New Yorker, in a humor piece on the drawbacks of referring to Hitler while public speaking. It discouraged it, and it ended with this line: “The good news, however, is that improvement is possible. Hope, like Argentina, remains within reach.”
The Atlantic (multiple authors): “over the past century, the United States has deported more immigrants than it has allowed in. Since 1882, it has deported more than 57 million people, most of them Latino, according to Adam Goodman, a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago. No other country has carried out this many deportations. This challenges the simplistic notion of a long tradition where the U.S. has welcomed immigrants,’ Goodman told (the authors).”
Me: from my blog post called “Modern Trumpianity” - “Was there anything more ridiculous than the biggest election cheat in history raising hundreds of millions of dollars to ‘stop the steal’ all while trying to steal the election for himself?” He is literally in charge of trying to steal it.
http://terence-orourkejr.squarespace.com/religionpolitics/2021/3/8/modern-trumpianity
Kurt Andersen, “…during the 1970s and 80s, liberty assumed its powerfully politicized form and eclipsed equality and solidarity among our aspirational values. Greed is good meant selfishness lost its stigma. And that was when we were in trouble.”
And: A member of Congress … said, ”you are a slave to the donors. They own you. That’s the (real) corruption, the ownership of Congress by the rich.”
And, echoed by me, “apart from passing a constitutional amendment, there isn’t anything the government can do [about regulating campaign finance} now.” So, let’s get a 28th amendment on election reform!
And, if people worked less: “Those who ask what the average working man and woman could do with so much free time forget that in Victorian England the ‘upper classes” did not seem to have been demoralized by their idleness.”
Louis Menand, in the New Yorker: “it excuses Republicans from debating policy proposals or offering alternatives. They can be purely oppositional. Today, that is virtually the only platform the Party has left to stand on.”
A guy named Poullian, in the Atlantic: “We could do without princes, soldiers and tradesmen, but we cannot do without women in our childhood.” (the nurturing work of women should be elevated, not debased) “We offer great rewards to a man who can tame a tiger, admire those who can train horses, monkeys, and elephants, and praise to the skies the author of some modest work, yet we neglect women who have spent years and years nourishing and educating children.”
New address:
2252A Aster Rd
Bethlehem, PA 18018
Happy Holidays!!