Departing the Sensory

 [Below is a lightly edited email I sent to a friend recently. We were discussing journalism generally, and particularly the major print and Internet houses. I was trying to make the point that fair & objective reporting doesn't require journalists to treat all political statements as potentially valid -- being "fair" doesn't require ignoring truth or falsity. -- Ed.] * * * I'm so old I remember when HRC said "you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," and everyone flipped the fuck out. HRC's own internal expert concluded , for example, that that particular comment caused the biggest shift in undecided voters of the election. (Sidenote. While I buy the comment induced a big swing in undecided voters aspect, I don't buy related analysis that the comment was what got Trump elected. The EMAILZ!!!1! non-scandal and the late Comey letter were much more important in that regard, because the election ...

Hilling Black Aztec with my father's widest hoe, I cut weeds and pull chocolate earth to hills of four and five stalks. It's not easy work and best done early. Halfway on my last row I found myself not unlike Black Aztec with roots in another soil and still with memory of the network of mutuality. And as I hilled this seed crop, I felt my core strength building, stronger together, the only way I know how to live in this America that holds no container capable to contain our grief. We can no longer escape. We are the world once again.

Source: CDC / WHO There are two ways to beat the novel coronavirus. One is to take sufficient social steps to get R0 (reproduction rate, or "r naught") down low enough so that the virus burns itself out for want of new hosts. Estimates vary wildly, but current data suggests an R0 of around 2.5. We need to get it down to somewhere as low as 0.3, from what I understand. Doing so requires meaningful testing, contact tracing, and quarantine. The other way is to achieve herd immunity, either via vaccine or via acquired immunity after infection or some combination of both. It's pretty clear at this point that the U.S. is going for herd immunity rather than suppression of R0, given the Trump Administration is doing literally nothing that suggests the latter (and is in fact advocating for the former, albeit not explicitly). Basically the U.S. is doing what Sweden is doing, but without the honesty and without the social safety net and national healthcare system. Herd immunity requ...

Elmwood in a Queen Atlantic Now this is a stick of unsplit elm, damn near taking up the entire firebox, just added to a bed of elmwood coals. Elm is the perfect burning wood for this lowery spring. Despite what has been written about elm burning "like churchyard mold," I have found that if you cut your elm standing dead, and when the bark has just begun to slip, but not yet falling off in sheathes, and you cut it stove length and put under cover, you'll have the perfect cheery spring fire, enough to drive away the dampness, but not enough to drive you out! In 1976, we joined Bertha O'Brien, her granddaughter Grace, and their boarder Leland Smith, a retired teamster who had spent the better part of his life doing the field work for farmers in the area. Bertha had lived in the house her entire adult life and was about 94 at the time. She was in charge of the cooking. It was a ham dinner, from one of their own pigs. The only cooking stove in the old low po...

I wasn't thinking about the massacre at Kent State when I woke up this morning. (Although I think I would have told you it happened in 1970 if asked, I don't think I have ever known what the precise date was.) Then I saw on Twitter and elsewhere a breaking story, that the Trump Administration is internally predicting that deaths per day from C-19 will double by mid-June, at the same time it publicly advocates for "reopening" of the economy and ending stay at home orders. Those headlines reminded me of something my father once said. I've been interested in 60s counter culture for a long time, and I once asked what it was like to live thru that galvanized period -- particularly Kent State. I'm sure I was listening to Neil Young at the time. One of the things he told me (paraphrased somewhat) is that during the 60s the Vietnam War allowed activists and society generally to focus on foreign policy. But Kent State was a turning point, because "now, they...

In an effort to put more down on (digital) paper, just in case there are still historians in the future, I'm going to make a couple observations about C-19 and the economy.  [ - ] As of today, near the end of April 2020, government officials at most levels -- municipal, state, and federal -- are talking about "reopening" the economy. Setting aside for a moment whether the economy is something that can be opened (or closed in the first place),* and setting aside the obvious problems with treating the economy as some sort of device that has an on/off switch, the reopening talk is insane. It's insane because, as far as I can tell, no one has a plan to make the so-called reopening work. For one thing, the polling data we have suggests that a shockingly high percentage of Americans support social isolation. So as an initial matter, it's not at all clear that people will actually go out and use the reopened economy. Will people work from the office more than from ...

On March 2, 2020, I had a conversation with my wife and in-laws about the then-prevailing advice that wearing masks was not effecting at stopping the spread of novel coronavirus. In an email written and sent later that day, I called bullshit and concluded after analysis that the government was lying to cover up its incompetence. The email is reproduced below with minor edits for clarity. It turns out I was right, because now of course we should all be wearing masks when we leave our homes. * * * Subject: the idiots running this clown show Apropos of two conversations we had tonight, I looked at the whole "don't wear a mask " thing. Here's what's reported: In fact the U.S. surgeon general recently urged the public to “STOP BUYING MASKS !” “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!,” wrote Surgeon Gener...

Observations Part 2 are a collection of selected email and text messages from the last couple of days. (I've done minor editing for clarity and anonymity.) Regarding climate disruption: We [the US] can't get our act together about shit that's killing people now, why would we ever get it together for shit that's going to kill people later (soon).  The economy: People our age sometimes discuss retirement in various contexts, like how's the 401k doing and stuff like that. I've been saying for a while now that I don't worry too much about retirement savings because I think there's around a 30% chance money will be irrelevant to the sorts of problems we'll be having at retirement age. I would have put money on climate disruption before virus, but whatever. Broken legs and blown knees: What got me most was force-realizing how much mobility -- and I don't mean doing moderately impressive for my age athletic feats on skis, I mean like...

I went to my physical therapy appointment today as scheduled four weeks ago, the day after I had surgery to repair a fractured tibia plateau & torn meniscus. My PT folks are at a local clinic that does urgent care, but is not in any way a hospital. I decided to go even though I generally think we should all be acting like we're on house arrest, because there's a non-zero chance that I'll walk with a limp for the rest of my life if I don't get this recovery right. Driving in to park I saw for the first time an actual drive-thru testing setup. The clinic has put up a big tent like you'd see for a wedding or event, and the tent covers five parking spaces. Apparently, people who have been prescreened can drive up and park, and clinicians in hazmat gear do the nasal swab thing thru the window. (I don't know what prescreening looks like in Utah right now -- it's still very difficult at best to get tested -- and I assume the test is the swab, though I didn...

Pausing, I stand at the top of the world now well into February with my concerns half your wood, half your hay behind me. I stand in the clarity of my neighbor's expanse of sky it might be ten degrees I move snowshoed above the earth our uplands a frozen sea I am in shirtsleeves barehanded to stillness where the bottom of my fear drops away. - Jay Robinson, 2016

Look closely ... this is "snap wood." Not a tree species, but a name given to the process of cutting up a small tree for firewood, where one makes each cut deep enough so that a long section can be easily "snapped" by hand. Some care must be taken to leave enough wood at the end of making each cut so that the whole tree can be hauled easily without breaking up. If your stove takes 16 inch wood, make your cuts 12 to 14 inches apart, as the remaining hinge of wood will break with the wood's grain, rendering a somewhat longer stick. For years, whenever I cut up pole sized firewood, I remember Frank Farrin, who first told me about snap wood. In fact, no one else has ever mentioned snap wood before or since. I recall him at the store, foot up on the newspaper rack, describing how Alva Bridges (someone correct me if I'm wrong) would get in his firewood. If anyone else out there is running low on dry wood, find a small dead standing pine or ...

Mid-March. I always think of my father working at the woodpile, and myself tapping maples. Snow's half gone, some bare ground, some crusted snow drifts flecked with a winter's worth of wind driven bark and twigs stripped from nearby trees. Out in the middle of the field, less debris, but still bits of straw or feathers, or whatever skims the fastest on thin crust. What's left of winter's drama is fossilized in March's freeze and thaw -- a broken stem of Queen Anne's Lace lies in its cold imprint, the scant remains of a kill marked by its frozen blood. I notice these things in March. It's the time between seasons, a place between worlds: out from under the blanket of winter, yet not merged into the moment of summer. I see the shortening shadow. I count even paced footsteps. I hang my sap buckets made from my father's old George Washington pipe tobacco cans with homemade wire bails. I hang my buckets from the maples that line the stone wall that runs f...