Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Sunday musings…

1 Schnorrer. Yiddish for “alligator arms”. 

2 Season. Lake season is officially over. 

3 Tub. Hot tub season has officially begun.

4 Virtual. It has now been 7 months since I’ve attended a meeting of any type in person. In the spring I just couldn’t make myself log in to our second biggest professional meeting of the year. In a typical year I can get all of the educational credits necessary to renew my license by attending only our 2 biggest meetings. Now I am reduced to just another WFH wonk wearing my screen goggles.

How do you full-time WFH warriors do it?

5 Nutrition. Again. Anyone who has spent any time reading my drivel knows that I have been on a 20-year quest searching for the optimal nutrition plan. One that would simultaneously fuel all of my pursuits and lead to some sort of health risk mitigation. Does such a thing exist? I’m not really ball that sure to tell you the truth. Still, since I have the freedom to explore the topic and a willing partner in Beth, why not?

At the enthusiastic suggestion of Lovely Daughter Megan, Beth and I watched a documentary called “Forks Over Knives”. Its thesis can be summed up as this: eating basically any food that emanates from an animal in any way is ultimately unhealthy. One of the issues I’ve confronted as I’ve been on my little nutrition quest is the challenge of separating science from belief. Indeed, each time I think about the whole “no animal” thing I harken back to a breakfast that John Brown shared with Randy and me in Ramona while visiting our friends the Martins. A couple also visiting were literally preaching at us once they saw our order arrive. They’d been vegan for years; their nutrition choices had long ago become a quasi-religion. 

Still, there is much to ponder about nutrition at a macro level. Especially if you, like me, have a number of probable inherited health risks. “Forks Over Knives” makes much of research that implies a marked increase in cancer risk from eating animal products (including dairy). As a (now casual) CrossFitter I’ve read an equal amount of studies that conclude pretty much exactly the opposite: eating diets high in animal protein and fat leads to a longer, healthier life. 

So, which is it?

In the end I certainly don’t know. Still, the most impactful article I’ve ever read about the effects of markedly different dietary patterns on an individual was in Outside Magazine so many years ago that it predates my CrossFit journey. The author ate using various diets (IIRC Keto, Vegan, Paleo, and Mediterranean). Since he was relatively young (40ish) he then tested stuff that was easily accessible: serum lipids and inflammatory markers. It’s been a really long time so I don’t recall which one was the winner, but I do remember that his numbers were pretty crappy on 3 of the diets, and superlative on the one. Is it possible to measure something without experimentation to come to the same conclusion? There are certainly lots of companies that would like to sell you a test of your genome, but at the moment the answer is no. The only way you can know is to experiment. 

What are we doing then? With Megan’s encouragement Beth and I are now about 2 months into what can be fairly called a pescatarian diet. We are eating primarily plant-based, but we are eating fish several times a week as well. Kinda Mediterranean I suppose. We are eating small amounts of cheese for flavor purposes, and I am also eating eggs on occasion. I am finding that I can combine this largely plant-based strategy with the knowledge that I’ve gained about insulin sensitivity over the course of the day. By over-weighting protein in the AM and carbs in the PM I have been sleeping better both objectively (tracker-based metrics) and subjectively (I wake up rested). 

Will it last? Meh, who knows? Life is short, and if we start to feel like we are missing something by not eating meat I’m sure we will return to our carnivorous ways. For the moment at least it’s been relatively easy. After all, we changed to a predominantly white wine lifestyle 5 years ago. If we can do that, well, this should be a snap! 

I’ll see you next week (send me your recipes)…

Sunday musings…10/11/2020

1 Date. Anybody else notice that yesterday was 10/10/20? That’s gotta be a thing, right?

Should be a thing.

2 Verlaine. Name of a French poet. Now often used as an adjective to describe not just poetry but fine poetry. Cool name for a horse, don’t you think?

Here’s hoping the one we just added to the stable performs like fine poetry.

3 Map. “How did we ever find ourselves wherever in the ‘80’s?” Bill P, surgeon and muse.

At the moment I am riding shotgun as Beth drives us home from what stood in for dinner in Paris (our 35^th Anniversary trip to France with Bill and Nancy got 2020’d). On the way to Cincinnati we took a grand total of 2 roads until we got to our exit. Two more roads and there we were, in our friends’ driveway. Pretty straightforward trip during any era, but one that required only a tiny bit of info to pull off. So, we just winged it, right? Went all 1985 on the navigation. 

Nah. We had Waze on the whole way. You know, just in case there was an accident, or construction, or whatever. 

At breakfast this morning we all marveled at how in the day we always ended up where we were headed, and usually did so without incident. Bill noted that modern GPS is much more effective with a little bit of knowledge about your trip beforehand. For example, even if the GPS tells you it’s faster to take the ferry across the lake to get to Burlington, in the winter just a little bit of local knowledge reminds you that the time of arrival doesn’t take into account the amount of time you have to wait for the spring thaw. 

There was something different, better in some ways, certainly more satisfying, when you had to pull out the map or the atlas and look at pictures of your options. And then make a call. Beth was brilliant back in the day at seeing the routes in her mind after turning a few pages in one of the maps we had piled under the front seats in our minivans. For sure you can “see” where you are on the dashboard screen or your phone, but there’s a bit more info, and certainly more of what one might call romance, in answering the “Mommy, where are we?” coming from the back seat with a map. 

“Right here, Honey!”

No great insight here. We’ll keep on using Waze and Maps apps of one sort or another, mostly because we can. Still, something is missing in the experience, even if it’s only the pleasure of watching Beth re-fold another map into its picture-perfect, just out of the wrapper, original self. 

4 Language. Specifically, “love language”: how someone expresses their love. It’s really not as simple as just saying “I love you”, although for sure there are plenty of people who can say that, and do say that, and get across the reality that they do, in fact, love you. When they say “I love you” it’s much, much more than a simple salutation; they are just flat out stating the fact out loud directly to you. More often is the case that the expression of love is couched in terms that you may not initially understand or hear as “I love you”.

The best example from my adult life was brought to my attention, like so many other really important things, when I expressed a frustration to Beth. Having moved hundreds of miles away from family we raised our kids without the benefit of having either set of parents there to offer “on the ground” insights when it was our turn as parents to hit a speed bump. Kids come preassembled without any instructions. I’ve never done anything more difficult than my part of raising our kids. 

Anyway, I was fried one time after a hard patch with our oldest. Nothing bad, really, just the hard work of raising a bright, strong-willed first born. “It never ends! How do we even know if we’re getting it right? How do we know if he knows how hard we are trying, how much we love him?” Into my hands plops the answer. “Strong Boys”, a book about how boys communicate, especially when they are young. It was always there. He always knew, and more than that he was always telling us, telling me. 

I just didn’t know the language. 

According to the “Strong Boys” author boys, and especially young boys, express their love by helping. “Let me get that” or “need me to hold something” is code for something that is pretty much the same as “I love you” from someone else. Our other two had their own way of saying it. My point isn’t so much about how to read your kids as it is to remind that “love language” can be very different in the different people who are in your life. Heck, sometimes letting YOU do the helping is precisely equal to your third-grade son holding the yard waste bag while you rake. 

In these fraught times it can seem as if we get altogether too much criticism and not enough love. That may actually be the case, of course. There has been a coarsening of social intercourse of all kinds. It is hard to detect whether there is that much more criticism coming our way by volume, or if that negativity is simply so much more blunt that it just feels like more. On top of that, if we somehow miss it when someone is telling how much they love us, well, that just makes the negative stuff sting all the much more. 

We’re all hurting a bit now. Sometimes, when we hurt, we might not hear someone else’s “love language”. It’s as if our pain, whatever its cause, makes it more difficult to translate “let me get that for you” into the “I love you” it’s meant to convey. But it’s there. It’s still there. Your people, family and friends, close colleagues who’ve always covered your 6, they’re all still there. They all still love you for all the reasons they’ve always loved you. Now, when we all need it the most, we are surrounded by people telling us how much they love and cherish us. 

To receive it we just have to keep our ears, and our hearts, open to their “love language”. 

I’ll see you next week…

Sunday musings…10/4/2020

1 2020’d. New term for something that was, or would have been wonderful, that was either destroyed or cancelled by the events of 2020. At the moment I am writing this Beth and I would have been dressing for an Anniversary dinner. 

In Paris. 

2 Tracker. Yup, I’m doing it again. Using a fitness tracker. Pretty much basic stuff at the moment. Pretty much because my fitness routine consists mainly of being dragged around at the other end of a leash by Sasha. In a “what the heck, why not?” kinda way I’m also sorta tracking my daily steps. When Sasha and I get together I am comfortably between 10 and 12,000.

To keep things in perspective: a 60 yo “Old Amish” male gets in between 14 and 18,000 without resorting to “walking”. 

3 Mixology. I love a good cocktail. Thankfully so does my wife, as do our children and their spouses. Beth’s sisters and their husbands have tastes that align pretty closely to ours; my siblings and their spouses favor wine, a spirit that has graced many (most?) of our dinner tables, at least our weekend dinner tables, since the early 1980’s. 

What I really love about cocktails, though, is the sense of adventure, of discovery, that can be a part of the experience. Finding a new cocktail, whether as the result of a purposeful search or happenstance, is much like stumbling upon buried treasure. For us it is also quite often an opportunity to experiment around the flavors contained in that discovery. Our most successful examples at Casa Blanco are the “Very Bad Decision”, a take on a Margarita, and the “Sideswiped”, our version of the classic Sidecar. 

At the moment I am playing around with a companion to “The Last Word”, a classic 1920’s creation that features gin. There’s a book in me about cocktails during the Pandemic with a working title “Drinking with John Starr” if I ever get off the schneid and start writing. I can see that effort bookended by “The Last Word” at the finish and something I’ll call “The First Shot” up front. 

I’ll let you know what I come up with. 

4 Genius. The brilliant, awkward, prickly version. Seems that particular sub-species is much more interesting, in fiction or real life, however maddening they might be. Whether a detective, doctor, lawyer, engineer/inventor or other sort in which a singular genius type of intellect might come in handy, it more often than not seems to be the case that a soaring intellectual gift comes wrapped in socially challenging packaging. Think Sherlock Holmes in comparison with, say, Harry Bosch (fictional characters chosen to spare the real life guilty). So much so that when you encounter a true genius who is normal, or at least relatively normal when interacting with their non-genius circle, it kinda stands out. 

Hardly prickly, the genius with whom I am closest is an around-the-bend rabid NFL fan. Just doesn’t fit the whole genius motif, and yet, there he is. 

Historically the non-genius world has most often given a wide berth to the prickly genius walking among us. And why not? My Dad’s cardiac surgeon (long deceased now) was a jerk. A complete a-hole. Yet his singular genius gave our family 30 bonus years with our patriarch. With the obvious exception of moral reprobates who apply their genius toward nefarious outcomes, or just as bad, the genius who mistakes that wide berth for a pass to abuse fellow travelers in any way, the world is eventually a better place for having even the most cranky and difficult geniuses come along. Indeed, in order to extend the lifespan of that benefit, we all come out for the better if something along the line of a “genius tender” in some way becomes attached to one of these “social disasters” waiting to happen. Stories abound of brilliant men and women who create new technology, find medical breakthroughs, or conjure heretofore unthinkable artistic beauty out of the same air that the rest of us just breath as we move along the glidepaths of life. And then they crash. 

But why? That fine line between genius and some sort of madness need not necessarily be crossed. What possesses them?

Why bring this up now? I’ve written before that I personally do not have the “genius gene”. No part of Mozart’s genetic magic lives within my chromosomes. Nor that of Watson or Crick, or even the remarkable French monk who came up with the recipes for green and yellow Chartreuse some 200+ years ago. No, rather than the “Mozart Gene” I was blessed with a kindlier, less envious version of the “Salieri Gene”. It is my singular gift to be able to identify true genius in another human, genius large or small, while almost instantaneously knowing that their genius was just beyond my reach. Similar to Salieri, who in many ways made Mozart financially secure, I find it quite easy to imagine how to capitalize on any number of genius-level discoveries and help them do so. Unlike Salieri, though, I would find no joy, no solace or respite, in the jealous destruction of a genius as Salieri was said to have ultimately done to Mozart. 

In our world today, indeed in circles very close to my closest circles, there have been geniuses, visionaries, who have shattered in spectacular fashion. Each incident seemed to me as altogether preventable. Even for the most difficult, the prickliest of geniuses. Why is this so? Or is it really so? Why does it seem as if so many of the most gifted among us have crashed and burned upon hills that are either too trivial to “die on” or so easily circumnavigated that it makes one wonder if the figurative self-immolation was somehow their desired outcome? Why do we not have more like Steve Jobs, who somehow find their way back, who return from whatever prompted them to self-destruct and once again grace us with the fruits of their genius?

Lots of questions. There’s no answer coming from these quarters I’m afraid. Like I said, the genius gene is in a deeper end of the gene pool than that into which I was born. I understand that which makes them prickly no better than what it is that allows them to discover stuff just before I start to even think about it. A couple of these folks are friendly acquaintances or friends of friends. Always just beyond any chance that I might have been either a Salieri or a tender, yet close enough to see both the detritus of the destruction and the collateral damage that ensued. What benefits, what joy might have come from their genius had they not crossed that line so completely that there was no coming back? 

Prickly or not, “saving” them can’t be as simple as having an NFL Red Zone subscription, can it? 

I’ll see you next week…

1 Mountaineer. “Conquistadors of the useless.” Famed French mountaineer describing those of his ilk. Plenty of other groups and activities come to mind that could suffer the same label.

2 Sap. It is the American Dream to not be taken for a sap. Think about it. You take your place in line for the highway exit and some SOB flies by on the left, cuts in, and escapes the queue. You’re not sure if you hate him for being a jerk or for making you feel like a sap.

My car is broken. In the most 2020 of 2020 things the warranty ran out a year before I thought it was due to do so in January of 2020. I am now in the position where no matter what I do I will feel like a sap. Fix it and drive it? Fix and and sell it? A part of me feels “taken” by the dealership that sold me a car that barely made it to 5 years old. That the same dealership offered me $0.33 on the dollar of its open market value if I trade it in to them means they look at me coming and see “sap”.

Pretty sure that guy on the highway was a car salesman.

3 Time. The WSJ runs a column in its magazine in which “luminaries” weigh in on a single topic. This month it was “Time”. Two of them, Ayad Akhtar and Lily Cole hit on the top end of themes that I’ve returned to many times over the years and prompted me to consider time in the context of my life today. Akhtar, a writer, spoke about creating an “ever present now” while Cole, an actress I believe, was more interested in “empty time”, a gift that could be used to advance culture through open ended thought without the boundary of a deadline. Both were tiny little nuggets of wisdom, seeds planted that have germinated over the last couple of weeks and sprouted today.

Time is so often consumed in a rather mindless, programmed manner. The work week. Schools nights filled with homework. Flight schedules. There is very little mindfulness in following a schedule; it’s all laid out in front of you as long as you perform the simple act of awakening and leaving your bed. If you are good at what you do it is often possible to simply coast through, minutes and hours passing as do so many ounces of fuel powering a car on autopilot. It’s certainly not “empty time” in the manner that Lily Cole describes, nor can it really be described as an “ever-present now” per Akahtar since so little of your presence (beyond, you know, your presence) is actually required.

These strange times when we are obligated to live lives that are substantially smaller than our pre-pandemic lives have given all kinds of new meanings to “time”. For me time has sped up. Weird, eh? You would think that with so much sameness, so little latitude to move outside of my work/home orbits that time would slow down. Nope. Not for me. With few events (trips, for example) on the horizon to look forward to time just rushes on from hour to hour, day to day. I never really noticed how slowly time once moved when I was looking forward to something until there was no real difference between the hours and the days, no hour or day that had a “flag on the horizon” attached to it.

It appears that a life seemingly spent in near constant pursuit of discrete goals, which is suddenly devoid of flags to capture, requires a bit of rethinking.

It is important at this point in my thoughts to emphasize that my own concept of “empty time” may be somewhat different from Cole’s concept. Mine is very specific: time when I am both unaccountable to anyone for anything, and all alone (or accompanied by only little Sasha). Cole may include unstructured time in the company of others that is specifically set aside for “big thoughts”. Not I. “Empty time” is alone time. Time spent with little to no agenda or goals in mind but spent in the company of others, especially that spent with Beth, doesn’t fit my personal sense of “empty”, ever. Regardless of our agenda (or lack of agenda) time with Beth is the fullest and most fulfilling time I experience. For me, “empty” includes “alone”.

The unusual “pandemic gift” of “empty time”, time alone in which I am not responsible to anyone, have no requests or demands, is starting to seem to be a gift that must be repaid by eventually being fully present there in the “now” that Akhtar describes. Perhaps that means a new pursuit or challenge, or maybe a return to something prior that still has some meaning in the now. For the moment it is probably best to simply try to make every one of my “times” an “ever present now”. Best if I seek all of the richness that is there in even those times that are the same as they were yesterday, and the same as they will be tomorrow, in a long line of tomorrows that seem to stretch across what today appears to be a horizon without end.

These strange times will end. Flags will appear on the horizon once again; time will once more slow down each time we take aim and move toward them. Empty time alone will still be there, to be sure, just much less of it. Now is not so much the time to despair for flags unseen; it is time to prepare for one last stretch in which time of all kinds is once again the most valuable thing each of us needs more of.

Empty or otherwise, time always runs out.

1 Split. Driving home yesterday I watched a couple of young men splitting logs the old-fashioned way, with sledge hammer and wedge. Brought back crazy memories of my childhood home in RI. My Dad decided that my brother and I would split the logs created when the land was cleared for our house. My Dad was a master. Never missed a strike. My brother and I? Not so much.

To this day I can still see the look of utter disgust on his face as we handed him broken handles from our mishits.

2 Open. Today I will watch the final round of the 2020 U.S. Open Golf Championship. Note that this is the first Open held in the fall since 1913 when Francis Ouimet one his first. Beth and Sasha will keep me company, but like the memory of my Dad and our poorly done chore, my living room will be filled with memories of Dad and golf. Even in the years long after I’d left home we would find ourselves on the phone for a bit as we watched the carnage that was the back nine of a U.S. Open.

I’m hoping to hear from my brother later on. It won’t be quite the same of course, and we will each feel that difference. Still, Dad’s spirit will be with us.

3 Expert. “Be and expert in a small subject so that you can make a difference.” –Barbara Judge.

In may ways Ms. Judge states the obvious: it is easier to be a factor if you attempt to move the needle in a very small venue or subject. Still, it is interesting to see how many people spread themselves far afield from whatever area in which they make their first mark. It’s one thing to move sequentially from one small subject on to a next; what is striking is how often it seems “experts” begin to seek to apply their expertise on ever larger subjects upon ever larger stages.

It’s as if eminence is as addictive as power.

In my professional life I find myself doing more and more of less and less. Interestingly, at least outside of the office, the narrowing of my expertise as far as subject goes actually allows me to apply that knowledge more widely across that professional world. An interesting phenomenon that comes from the fact that my “subject” is more process driven than idea specific.

While I didn’t choose my particular professional subject with external impact in mind, as I enter the last few innings of the most active part of my career I am hopeful that Ms. Judge is correct. It would be nice to look back some day and be able to say I did make a difference, however small it might have been.

4 Balance. Last evening I discovered that my life is woefully out of balance. Not the classic work/life balance thing; Lovely Daughter and I are convinced that there is no such thing. Life includes work so that there is no way to balance an element that cannot be meaningfully separated from the whole. One seeks harmony among all of the elements that make up a life, including work.

But I digress. There is, indeed, a significant imbalance in my life. I noticed it last night as Beth and I began to prepare dinner. Per usual one of my tasks was to choose an aperitif. As I got my ingredients together and we mulled over our options I stumbled upon a heretofore undetected imbalance in my life:

My lemon/lime ratio is totally skewed; I do not make enough cocktails in which lemons are the primary fruit.

I know, I know, it’s not much of a big deal. Or shouldn’t be, anyway. But I’m the guy who survived the Great Pandemic Lockdown by “Drinking with John Starr”, going 17 consecutive “5:00 somewheres” without repeating a cocktail. Heck, I have a book outlined about that adventure (wonder if John will let me use that as my title?). My refrigerator is chockablock filled with lemons, and if I have a yen for a lime-based elixir it will have to be one in which just a whiff is all I need.

How could such a thing happen? We don’t drink exactly the same drinks so I have a chance to expand my repertoire even if I’m not the one to enjoy the effort. And yet, there they are. 20 lemons surrounding 6 lonely limes. They’ve been there for a bit, too. No one I know has maintained their inner Hemingway or Faulkner-like pace since we were released from our bar seats-in-place.

My friends, I am at a loss. I am turning to you to help me regain balance in this most important part of life. Help me to realign my citrus priorities by sending me your favorite lemon-based cocktails. Send me a comment on the blog or reply on FB. Do look above your response and check to see if someone beat you to a favorite. Who knows? Maybe we will come up with enough stuff for another book Idea.

“A Life in Balance: when the world gives you lemons AND limes.”

I’ll see you next week…

35 years! My Heavens, who could have imagined it way back when. My darling Beth and I started dating roughly 3 weeks into my first year of med school. Her toothbrush showed up in January when I got an apartment with a classmate, and pretty much everything else arrived a month or so later. Though the wonder of Facebook, where pictures of our pictures now live, I could look back at us when we were barely our of our teens.

There’s not a single wrinkle between us!

We are winding down from 10 or so days of celebrating our marriage. How does one do it? Stay together for 38 years, 35 of them married? I’ve certainly shed many electrons into the internet talking about this over the years but the simple things we’ve done bear repeating for their very simplicity and what is likely near universal application. There are just three, though of course those three branch out into about 3 million versions if you are the super analytical type. But for me, for us and for the family that came from that first date so long ago, it’s really just three.

Put your marriage, your relationship with your spouse, first. Center your life going forward there. Run every significant decision over which you have some control through the filter of how it will affect this one central facet of your life going forward. Will something enhance the marriage? Pretty much a no-brainer in most cases. Gonna hit the marriage hard? Man, the consequences of not making that choice have to be awfully dire to even need to have a conversation. Neutral, neither good nor bad? These are by far the most common forks in your roads traveled. There’s nothing better in these cases than sitting down together and hashing through what each or you desire. Our strategy was an unspoken agreement to take turns putting our “wants” first.

How do you make sure that things are turning out fairly equally in all of those “toss-up” decisions? That’s where the second of our three essentials kicks in: marriage is not a 50/50 proposition, it’s 100/100! Each person needs to commit 100% to the marriage. You can’t really keep score if you are both committed to the relationship and committed to each other. You’re not meeting halfway in or toward some goal, you are both moving together, 100% in each other’s corner. Believing and living like this makes it pretty hard to be too very selfish on a consistent basis.

And there are some pretty big decisions to make over time, some that will necessitate one or the other of you taking a bit of a back seat for awhile. Where to live? Kids, yay or nay? If yay, does someone stay home? Who will that be? Running and gunning for the big house/fancy car or laying back and chilling with only what you need? Some things will feel way bigger than they really are: Country club or horse stall? Still others will be comic relief: red wine or white? Or beer?! Over time if you are 100/100 you simply can’t help but be happier when you are 100% about being happier together.

Which leads me to the last of our three gems, one that we’ve been teaching since we stumbled upon it as comically broke new parents: never stop courting each other. Never stop falling in love. Tactically this is actually pretty simple: never stop dating. We’re a tiny bit famous in our little universe for our rabid devotion to “Date Night”. It started out so small. We were so short of money that we couldn’t really afford a babysitter AND dinner or a movie. Or really anything. Our first post kids date was a single cup of coffee we shared while we held hands in a booth at Burger King. $1.10 for the coffee, priceless for our marriage.

All through our years of raising our kids, building businesses and all the rest, Date Night has stood firm. Makes sense, right? No matter what, we have essentially told the world, and reaffirmed to one another, that our marriage sits at the center of our lives. Committing 100% to Date Night was a proxy for our 100/100 to the marriage. Date Night was often when we banged around our decisions, big and small. When we talked about what we might want, big and small. Whose turn it was going to be. Where we celebrated our successes and, yes, licked our wounds when things didn’t turn out quite the way we’d hoped.

I fall a little bit more in love with Beth every day; it just seems like it’s always been a little bit more on Date Night.

That’s it? Just three things and here we are, 35 years? It’s simple, but it’s not easy. Things that are worth it, things that are important rarely are. Put the two of you at the center of all you do and then commit 100% to you together. Court each other like you’re just starting out; keep on falling in love with each other. Just three simple things you promise to do better than anything else you do in your lives.

That’s it.

Happy Anniversary, Dollie.

He sees my face. There’s a faint glimmer of recognition. You can tell he knows he should know who I am. Still, nothing until I tell him.

I am just another ghost floating through a ghost town. Drifting among the ghosts of my past. Some, like the guy still here in the present day flesh, yet a ghost nonetheless. Time has been reasonably kind to each of us; I can see his ghost in high school as we exchange pleasantries about our mothers.

The houses are haunted. Not just ours, or rather the house that was once ours. It’s all I can do to walk by, to not just walk up the driveway and through the door on the farmer’s porch of my house. No, each of the houses is as occupied by the ghosts of the owners it had as mine is of ours. There’s the Licht house, right next door to the Wilson’s. That stone wall between our house and the Dehimer’s still just looks wrong, even 20 years after it was built. And wait…I thought Barbara moved to South County. You mean those skinny boys chasing around the yard between our houses are NOT hers?

Two little boys, the ghosts of neighbors long past.

Just before I turn the corner I pass the Dunn’s house. It’s funny, that house must hold some sort of power over its owner, or perhaps that’s just Mr. Dunn’s ghost compelling whoever lives there to obsess over the lawn. That house has always had the best grass in town, better than even the greens on the golf course in our back yard. As I walk by I can hear the sound of balls bouncing and sneakers shuffling in the gravel. I swear I see the shadow of Maureen’s hoop right there under my feet as I walk by, but alas it, too, is just a ghost.

Just a skosch longer than 5 years ago my Dad’s ghost visited as I sat on his porch under the trees watching his club mates climb the 14th fairway. Like the citizens of Brigadoon he drifted into view and stuck around for an hour or so. It was magical to have him there, all of him, the Dad I’d known, sitting there with me, chuckling at the golfers who misread the wind and plunked their second shots into our back yard. His stay was altogether too short; the mist reclaimed him after a while and returned him to whatever Brigadoon houses such spirits.

My walk brought me to the church of my youth. It was open so I sat in the very last pew for just a bit, spending a few moments with the ghosts of parishioners I’d known. It’s a tiny church, tinier than I remembered. Probably because of all the ghosts there with me. My sisters were both married there. What fun those weddings were! All of the guests were there with me today. Mom and Dad looked great. I could swear that was Father Ethier on the altar, smiling.

Dad is buried in the parish cemetery in back of the church. Established 1896. I never noticed the sign before. To no surprise I mingle with lots of ghosts on my way back to his grave. He was back there, waiting for me. Four flags surrounded his gravestone, one for each of us. There were a bunch of golf balls on the ridge at the base of the stone, all Titleist 8’s. Later in life Dad always played Titleist 8’s. My vision got kinda blurry all of a sudden so I took a seat in the grass, leaned my head against his gravestone, and just relaxed for a few minutes as my Dad’s ghost settled in next to me. I think I stayed there for quite some time.

So many ghosts. I walked along in the company of my own ghosts from the days when I called this town home. Those were happy days; my companions were happy ghosts. As I walked on my ghostly fellow travelers fell away leaving me alone as my little tour brought me back to the ghosts awaiting, the many ghosts of my Mom watching over her as she napped while I walked. Too many to describe, all there patiently waiting for her to wake up from the nap she’s taken nearly every afternoon for 65 years. They are there. She is there.

And so here I am in a ghost town. Mostly me, but part the ghost of the boy who used to be. Ministering to a Mom who I desperately want to still be mostly my Mom, as the ghosts settle in around us.

1) Ruffle. It’s perfectly OK to ruffle dirty feathers.

2) Auditioning. “Auditioning is like stripping without the money.” Jim Gaffigan.

Most of anything like an audition I’ve had over the last 20 years has happened without me being aware of it. Kinda the opposite of standing on stage and imagining your whole audience is naked. The ambush audition is like discovering that it was YOU who was naked.

3) Shields. It makes me wonder why face shields haven’t gotten more play as safety devices for school kids, especially K-8 or so. Even more perplexing is the directive yesterday from the CDC that there is “insufficient evidence” that they are protective. Meh, the evidence from real, honest to goodness study is paper thin for masks of all sorts that are short of N95 respirators.

Socialization is a key component of early childhood schooling. Indeed, it may be an even more important aspect to high school. It certainly leads to more emotionally healthy teenagers it seems. Seeing the entire face of your age peers, and that of your teacher, is an important part of learning how to occupy your place in society. Why have face shields been so readily disregarded as an option?

4) Experience. “Experience is the best teacher, but the tuition is high.” -Anon

This came across my line of sight around the time someone asked me about an ophthalmic surgeon’s operating peak, like an athletes peak or prime years. Like so many other things there is a confluence of factors that combine to create such a peak. While your hands, your vision, and your physical stamina are considerably higher in your 20’s or your 30’s, the true peak for an eye surgeon comes after 8-12 years of operating, depending on the number of cases you fit into each year. At this point you’ve mostly mastered the mechanics of your procedures. This, combined with the wisdom hopefully garnered by the mistakes you made over those 8-12 years, combines talent, practice, and more importantly the experience that allows you to apply the first two.

The tuition the anonymous author refers to is the anguish that accompanies the learning that accrues from both mistakes and from difficult situations that arise even when you haven’t deviated from known best practices.

I’m hard pressed to think of any aspect of life that can’t be viewed through the same prism. Think of the fine balance between the skillset of a modern NFL quarterback and the knowledge of the game that can only come from taking thousands of snaps under game time pressure. Or a front line, sharp end of the spear first responder like a police officer or warfighter approaching a dodgy situation in the field. The hard-earned experience of prior engagements will carry the veteran to a win even when he/she has started to experience a decline in physical skill. Even less martial examples, leading a salesforce for example, prove the principal. Woe be to that manager who continually makes the same mistake when deploying their people into the field.

It’s fascinating to look at purely intellectual pursuits through the lens of experience. Authors and academicians are certainly not physically taxed the way that athletes, peace officers, or even surgeons are. Yet rare is the person in these more cerebral fields who doesn’t get better at what they do with time and experience. Where the athlete or the surgeon may eventually break down physically to a point where no experience will carry them further, the intellectual can continue as long as they don’t lose their ability to think. Indeed, like the stiffening of joints in the active pursuits, failing to learn from experiences as they age leads to an ossification of thought, an inflexibility that hinders further learning. Here, too, the metaphor is apt.

There is, of course, a point of diminishing gains as one piles on the experiences. Not that one can’t continue to learn. More that the increments of learning garnered from new experiences, or more specifically their effects on the forward-going performance of the learner, necessarily shrink over time. An eye surgeon, for example, can remain in their operating prime (absent illness) well into their 60’s and even beyond. At a certain point experiencing something new and different is such a rare event that it brings equal parts shock and pleasure.

But the unknown sage who first uttered the words above was doubtless not talking about the crusty old surgeon or academic. No, he or she was almost certainly speaking to a much younger audience, and perhaps if they are very young themselves, the parents of that audience. In the pursuit of living making a mistake is only failure if it does not lead to learning. Failure need only be temporary if it is used as the springboard to the next experience, and the next, and the next.

Tuition charged by experience is most expensive when what is taught remains unlearned.

I’ll see you next week…

A few weeks ago a study from Georgetown University was published that purports to show that access to the American Dream lies through existing family wealth and not academic achievement https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/FR-Born_to_win-schooled_to_lose.pdf . On first glance their conclusion seems to have some merit. For example, children in the lowest socioeconomic quartile of socioeconomic status (SES) who score highest in 10th grade math are less likely to end up in the upper half of SES than 10th graders who begin in the upper half and score lowest in 10th grade math. In other words high achievers from low SES are less likely to rise economically than low achievers from high SES are to remain at the higher SES where they began.

My initial reaction to this finding (prior to reading the full study) was to accept the conclusion at face value for the years studied (2002-2018). While doing so it seemed plain to me that, if true, this represented a substantial change in how today’s young participated in the American Dream in contrast to Americans born during the Depression and, subsequently, their children. If true it seemed to me that there had to be a tipping point, a point in time where participating in the American Dream and rising economically through academic achievement was no longer the prevailing route to success.

My supposition, where once academic achievement was more important than SES and then at some time “flipped”, was met with varying degrees of derision and scorn on the social media platform on which I originally encountered the study. I decided to more deeply investigate the study by looking at the American Dream over time. In Part one of this series I told the story of my Dad’s rise from poverty: The Cardboard in the Shoes Kid. My father rose where his siblings and most peers did not through access to college afforded by scholarships and the GI Bill. Part 2 was my story and that of my peers, as well as a re-telling of Gen X Senator Tim Scott’s American Dream success. In the absence of comparable studies that examined earlier times in U.S. history I sought first to demonstrate that, at least through prevalent oral history, academic achievement was an integral part of the American Dream prior to 2002.

As I started to organize my thoughts for this analysis I met a fascinating gentleman with a very helpful perspective regarding Baby Boomers. Our discussion prompted me to be a bit more skeptical about my assumptions. Bruce M. is an African American who recently retired as a very senior executive in the banking industry. His journey began much like my Dad’s with an athletic scholarship followed by grad school. I explained my issue with the study, its conclusion, and the near universal opinions on social media that childhood SES has always mattered more than academic achievement. After sharing my anecdotal analysis and noting how his own journey fit my hypothesis he offered the opinion that perhaps I had done nothing other than identify outliers, the extraordinary.

One of the classic biases introduced in research based on anecdote is that the researcher only finds stories that fit their hypothesis. In Part 2 I explicitly acknowledge this. Bruce M.’s perspective made me wonder if I was correct in my assumption but perhaps not quite as correct as I’d thought. Perhaps the “flipping point” was actually much earlier in time, much closer to 1960 than 1980.

So I did what I always do, and teach others to do, when engaging in these types of inquires: I returned to the source material to review the definitions that were used to determine what was being studied. Here, at the most basic level, the authors are studying the impact of pre-existing wealth (or its absence) and academic achievement (as measured by math scores in 10th grade) on achieving the American Dream. My reevaluation of their premises shows that their definition of the American Dream appears to be at odds with how most people understand it: simply being in the upper half of SES strata within 10 years of college graduation. What directed my inquiry and led me to decide that their ultimate conclusion does not seem to apply to earlier times is the more commonly understood definition of the American Dream: to RISE into a higher SES than that of your upbringing. Indeed, I would hazard a guess that most Americans would not consider simply maintaining the SES of your youth being the American Dream.

Rather, the opposite likely stands, that falling out of the SES of your upbringing would be considered a substantial marker of failure.

Defining the American Dream in this more conventional way alters the sensational “headline” conclusion of the Georgetown study. While this makes it much less attractive as “click bait” on social media it is my opinion that it actually makes it a more important study. When one seeks data to support substantive societal changes that expand access to this truer iteration of the American Dream, the studies findings actually point the way. While doing so it makes me wrong: it is likely that the influence of family wealth has always been a very strong marker to predict eventual occupation of a slot in the upper SES, the precise interpretation of the study data. It also makes me very right: rising to that new, higher SES, the true definition of the American Dream, is driven by academic achievement. Let’s look a bit closer at the details of the study through this more culturally accurate lens.

Much is made of the finding that low SES students with above average math scores have a lower chance of rising into the top half of SES than high SES students with low math scores have of remaining in that top half. While we see fewer high achievers in the high SES segment falling out of the top 50% than low achievers, we do not have any data for the converse, high achievers who rise still higher within that top SES segment. Is it possible that even in the highest quartile, that academic achievement is a stronger factor predicting a rise in SES? Even families in the top 5% SES hope and plan for their children to rise into a higher segment.

Defining the American Dream as simply occupying a space in the top 50%, or even the top 25% SES, is a radical departure from what is regularly quoted as the American Dream. Whether you are native born or an immigrant to the U.S., the American Dream is one of economic rise. Therein lies the essential problem with the Georgetown study and its flashy title (“Born to Win; Schooled to lose). Since SES is essentially a Bell Curve someone in a higher SES must drop lower in order for someone in a lower SES to rise. Occupancy is a term of stasis; the American Dream is a term that implies movement, specifically upward movement.

Why is this important? Why gild this lily so completely? The authors clearly wish to cast aspersions on what they presume are the unfair tactics that upper SES families use to help their offspring remain in the SES of their birth, regardless of academic achievement (a proxy presumably for merit). Thus, the emphasis on the “staying power” of the lower achievers in upper SES. Yet such a conclusion has no chance of effecting change. How does one prevent a parent from doing whatever it takes to support their child? There is no measure of movement within that top half and therefore no way to measure the effect of academic achievement within smaller bands. There is no way to create policy or make recommendations that would assist young people in lower SES quartiles based on the authors’ conclusion.

Happily, the true finding of this study is precisely the opposite of what they conclude, and most assuredly the opposite of their splashy click-bait title: the most direct route to achieve the American Dream, to rise economically, is precisely through academic achievement. While I think my new acquaintance Bruce M. is partly correct, that I simply identified the outstanding in Parts 1 and 2, I believe he is also as fundamentally incorrect as are the authors of the study. The outstanding rose. Like him, and my father and Senator Scott, the outstanding rose economically by utilizing their academic achievement. The American Dream is about rising up economically.

More importantly, if you come to this conclusion, that the study actually shows that upward movement is the result of academic achievement, you create a very strong case for change in how we educate our young. There is an especially strong case for how we educate the young who are born into the lower half of SES. The study shows that there is a significant drop off in performance or progress at both points where math aptitude is measured. At these pivotal points further achievement (continued excellence in the 10th grade, attendance in college, college graduation) is derailed. After demonstrating that academic achievement is the key, THIS is the real finding.

The derailment of academic achievement simply cries out for investigation to determine WHY this happens, followed by HOW it can be prevented.

Finding that existing family wealth protects the children of the better off from occupying a lower SES later in life than academic achievement is a non-actionable finding. The kids themselves would likely shrug: “Duh”. What this study actually shows is that my muse, the economist from Harvard, need not be so concerned about the country his daughter will grow up in. She will be surrounded by acquaintances who have risen from lower SES through academic achievement as was shown in the study. How many rise will depend in part on a more enlightened and opportunistic re-evaluation of the data affirming that academic achievement continues to be the vehicle that drives the true American Dream.

Those who are born to rise are derailed by our educational system, not our economic one. This is the true finding of the Georgetown study. This finding is amenable to action.

1. Incandescenceness. Something more than incandescence. Maybe the essence of incandescence. Heard at a horse shoe.

Should be a word.

2. Distance. Same horse show. Only 2 people allowed around the ring for each horse, one of which is the rider. Mind you, horse show. Outdoors. Everyone masked. 100+ acre property and 50M ring.

How do I know? Got spanked for too many “followers” at one ride while distancing 6 METERS.

3. Era. As in beginning of a new one. Beth is a competitive rider again! This weekend for the first time in 6 years we went to a horse show and Beth rode. Did pretty darned well, too! On the one year anniversary of our big boy Hero arriving from Spain he is finally healthy enough, and he and Beth have worked together enough, to enter the ring.

As I’ve said for a couple of decades now, it is nothing short of thrilling to see someone doing something that they love. To see someone engaged in something that they are passionate about. Brava Dollie!

4. Era. As in the end of an era. The end came not for any personal reasons. Not for any inconvenience or lack of interest. What broke our 28 year win streak of gathering this week on Cape Cod was how daunting it was going to be for us all to travel from our respective homes during this pandemic time in order to be there. That, and the amount of anxiety that my Mom was experiencing just thinking about the process.

It’s sad for a million reasons, some big and others small. In a funny way this could have been one of the biggest groups in recent years with so many of the grandchildren (our kids) working from home. Heck, they could have worked half days and not even had to use up a whole week of time off. Yes, yes, we’ve been plagued by spotty internet access over the years and “work” from the Cape would have posed a challenge if this remained the case. Still, there was a little buzz about this lockdown thing actually making for a better trip.

T’was not to be.

So here I am at a horse show, actually thrilled to be here, but kinda bummed nonetheless. I mean, as a family, a significant group had made it to the same house on the same beach for 28 uninterrupted years. Two years ago we had babies on the beach for the first time in 14 years. There were even a couple of changes in “traditions”; with only a few of us still there on Friday the last couple of years we opted out of pizza in favor of lobster meat and a big, buttery chardonnay (our traditions evolved in a very positive way).

And yet as sad as I am about not being on the beach, what I really am is filled with gratitude for all of the years we DID get. In year one we all crammed into one house, one bedroom assigned to each little family. Our caboose, Randy, was 6 weeks old. Man, I sure wish I could find the iconic picture of him with our Sunday night dinner, dwarfed as he was by a 15 lb. lobster. There were only 6 grandchildren that first year. One of the beautiful things about Cape week was how it allowed our eventual squad of 10 cousins to get to know each other despite the fact that none of my generation ever lived within easy visiting distance from one another until my youngest sister moved to Connecticut. Randy and his close-in-age cousins Darric and Tim forged a lifetime friendship from their days together on the beach.

Births, marriage proposals, weddings and sadly deaths were all a part of our Cape Cod lives. We kept our trip alive through illnesses in the oldest and youngest generations. Through high school and college graduations, job changes, and major moves. Some time around year 4 or 5 we just got too big to fit into a single house and spread into one of the next door cottages. Pretty much every waking moment was still spent either in the “Cape House” or on the beach. Like a bunch of 6 year olds playing soccer we moved through the week as one.

I am so very grateful that my son-in-law and both of my daughters-in-law got to experience “our” beach. Two of my soon to be five grandchildren got to play in the same sand that all 10 cousins did. Will we head back when times are simpler so that our other three babies will build sandcastles and chase hermit crabs in their parents footprints? Ah, who knows? For today I am happy that so much more of our family can say they were “on the Cape”.

All things come to an end, and we never know just how or just when that will happen. Our streak is over, felled not by any internal family decision but by a pandemic. Perhaps that is fitting, that such a monumental family institution could only be interrupted by a phenomenon that has literally bought the globe to a standstill. Will we return? Return to our little slice of Cape Cod, a place we came to be welcomed as if we were “locals”, so long had we been coming? We shall see. There are other changes, other transitions yet to come.

For now, for today, I am sad that I am not writing this as I travel home from Cape Week. But I am now and forever grateful beyond words that my own family beach journey, begun in Mannesquan with Gamma and Gramp, spanned so very many years, from being the baby on the beach myself to welcoming two more generations of babies to join me. For today it is enough that I had that journey. Like so many waves we body surfed, it’s been a great ride.

I can almost feel the grains of sand between my lips from my last farewell kiss.

I’ll see you next week…