The Month That Was - September 2020

Bluntly put, I turned 60 this month. I suppose I should have something of great gravity to say, but I don’t think I do. Follow up is below.

Here at summer’s end (summer the season, not the summer of my life, although that too) I find myself generally pleased with how I spent the warm months. I spent a good deal of time outside. A lot of exercise. A couple of trips. I have too few summers left to waste any.

One bad thing is that the pandemic completely disrupted my already weak writing habit. It seems like it would be a trivial thing to fix. The place I did all my writing previously is unavailable to me now, so I need to find somewhere to replace it. The problem is that I treat excuses not to write like most people treat excuses not to exercise. That is to say, the lamest one is good enough. This is job one for me at this point. Build a new writing habit.

[Rant] 60
[Covid19] Coronatime, Month 7
[Good Links] Fallback Links

[Rant] 60

I'm a little disappointed I don't have more to say about turning 60. I went back ten years ago to look at what I wrote here. A couple of quotes:

I can honestly say the cliche applies to me: I'm in the best shape of my life

I can't say that is still the case -- ten years have taken their toll -- but I am still in very good shape and very healthy, especially for someone my age. Still, I have to acknowledge there are peaks I will never again achieve and capabilities lost forever. There are mornings when I wake up so stiff I literally can't bend over far enough to put on pants (lucky I'm working from home, eh?); it eases up with a few minutes of movement. And lord knows I value a nap ever higher. I think the best response to these things is, to some extent, ignore them. I may not be able to do certain things anymore, but I need to behave like I can. Although I often kid around about being an old man, the real danger is that I let that become an excuse for inactivity, at which point it becomes self-fulling. I lose my health because I am convinced I am losing my health. It's not really rational, but I think it's my best shot to behave as if I can achieve new heights, even if I know I can't.

The question that manifests: "Is that all there is?" Not asked in the sense of disappointment and disillusionment with how life has turned out. Just the opposite, in fact. Said out of fear that the best times may be gone, never to return. You just don't see anything like those cherished moments of real joy in the future. "Is that it? Don't I get more?"

I still have this fear, but it is tempered by the knowledge that in the ten years since I wrote it I have still had great and wonderful times. At some point it will be true, that the good times are gone forever. But it wasn't the case ten years ago, and I don't think it will be the case over the next ten years.

Bottom line: I'm 50. It hurts a bit, but I'll live.

I'm 60 and it hurts both a little more and a little less. I have that much more behind me and that much less ahead, but I‘m confident that I will be grateful for that which is ahead.

[Covid19] Coronatime Month 7

More and more we are accommodating the new normal.  It's truly amazing how adaptable human beings are and how relative our perceptions of happiness and value are.  The fact is things are dribbling back excruciatingly slowly.  I can now go to the gym legally, as opposed to going illegally as I was for a while.  There are still a handful of things I can't do.  The library is still closed, which I find to be a much greater loss than I realized as that was where I did most of my writing.  And of course attending live sporting events is out, although sports has become so politicized I have trouble even watching an NFL game. 

I also grow weary of any coverage of the virus.  Long ago it became swamped by signaling. There is precious little actual knowledge.  All suppositions, even the most reasonable, have data contradicting them.  Eggheads call this heterogeneity.  But it basically means we have got it figured out yet.  Not that that will stop anyone accusing the other tribe of evil and stupidity.  

The good news is that vaccinations are progressing, although not at the pace they should be.  We are very good at having regulations keeping everyone safe.  We are very bad at determining when these regulations need to be eased in a crisis. 

I gather about 100,000 small businesses have shuttered permanently.  Given where we are now, with mask requirements and limiting large groups seems to have stemmed the tide of deaths and hospitalizations, the question has to be raised as to whether the forced shutdowns of businesses were really necessary.  Remember our initial reaction was that masks were ineffective and we had to shelter-in-place.  Maybe we didn't.  Maybe if we went straight to masks and reduced group sizes we would have been no worse off and lost many fewer businesses and not suffered such an economic hit. 

But again, we just don't know.  It is possible that there will be some point in the future where the data have been poured over and deep analysis has taken place and we do gain some measure of confidence about how the virus functioned and what worked and what didn't.  Let's hope some level heads are able to incorporate that information into our future responses, because we know the bulk of people won't believe it if it contradicts their current beliefs.

I begin to wonder how it all ends.  Can anyone actually picture a politician saying: "The crisis is over.  Take off your masks.  Go to your bars and clubs and football games.  Shake hands and stand shoulder to shoulder again."?

Lastly, under the heading of I'm-sticking-to-my-story, when this first started seven months ago and comparisons were being made to the 1918 flu epidemic, I pointed out that once the epidemic subsided we were not left in some sort of post-apocalyptic hell.  In fact, we stepped into the roaring twenties, one of the most lucrative and creative eras in U.S. history.  Well, we now have word that there may actually be nuclear fusion on the horizon (I know you've heard that before), and we have learned much about molecular biology and viruses in particular, and breakthrough in battery tech, and more importantly we have had some of our planted assumptions deeply questioned -- the value of college in general and on-site education in particular, and any conventional mediums of art have been upended in so many ways.  Now if we could only recover our senses of humor and perspective, things could get really lit up in here (...said the old man).

[Good Links] Fallback Links

In addition to not writing, I'm not really reading. Or watching movies. Or TV. Honestly, I've begun to wonder what is happening to my days. Am I spending too much time on the internet? Possibly, although I think I am better than most at finding worthwhile content to read. Am I just staring into space? Also possible, although more likely it involves napping rather than staring. I kinda want to change this but I also know that sometimes such behavior needs to run its course as it is often indicative of a change in desires that I haven't fully processed.

Which is all just a long-winded way of saying I'm going to do a link dump on you rather than write something longer. Maybe you're grateful?

• If you are interested in music discovery across both genre and geography, you could do worse than keeping up with Ted Gioia. Here are his music recommendations so far this year. You can search his website for past years. Note these are not links to the popular streaming services, which I believe he abhors. You have to search for the artist title on the service of your choice if you want to stream and often they are not available. For the musically curious, it's worth the effort.


• I don't know where I stumbled on the BabelColour twitter feed, by Stuart Humpheys, but it's astounding. If you're not on twitter, congratulations! Here is his portfolio on Insta. This fellow takes century-old color photos -- yes there are many such things -- that have flaws and blemishes and blurs and generally washed out colors, and he restores them, but does not colorize them. The colors are original, just enhanced. I am amazed how much this editing turns the subjects of these photos from relics into real living people.

  Maybe it's just me, but old photos in black & white or weak color leave me feeling that the past was two dimensional or incompletely drawn; as if the people in the pictures were simple constructs instead of actual human beings with full lives, this in turn leaves me feeling unrelated to the past instead of a product of it. This sensation is probably worthy of a full essay if I can ever sort my feelings about it out. In any event, check out Stuart's work.

• K-Pop is Korean Pop Music. It is a huge thing in many Asian countries, both as music and as culture. It consists of either all male or all female groups, all members in their early twenties and all members looking like fashion models. None of them play instruments. If you remember the boy bands of the nineties, their personas are something like that, although the band members are more numerous, some over a dozen. The music is a pastiche of hip-hop, pop, dubstep. Dormin takes a deep dive into it.

  The whole musical experience is corporation manufactured -- that is to say, as the article points out, there is no pretense of authenticity. The article also points to a dark side -- financial (and possibly sexual) exploitation of the young. Although financial exploitation is pretty standard in the music industry, not specific to k-pop. Sexual exploitation, or at least the appearance of sexual exploitation, is pretty common in the entertainment world, as we have seen -- again, not specific to k-pop. The kids are worked hard, physically hard, through years of tryouts and auditions and competitions to finally get in a group, but probably no harder than any athletes or dancers have to work to reach the top of their profession. The upshot is that the accusations of exploitation need to be considered in the context of the wider world. Still it's a fascinating look into one particularly successful corner of the music industry. I admit some of the videos are very striking. I can see why tweens and teens would go for it. I probably would too, just like I fell for the Monkees as a child.