In early June, 1989, I went to my friend Alex’s family cabin. I was eleven years old. Many things about the weekend are hard to remember. I think they had a dirt bike, but I was too nervous to ride it. I believe we went golfing one day, though I don’t remember how I played. We must have spent time on the lake? I don’t recall.

I will never forget what happened the last day of our visit. Alex and I were out in a nearby grassy area. Maybe it was a pasture. We had his BB gun. It wasn’t far from the surrounding cabins, but there were 180 degrees of no people in one direction. We set up cans as targets. Since we were careless eleven-year-olds, we probably tried to shoot at flying birds.

Eventually we got bored with that, turned around, and trained our eyes on the pavement leading down to the water access. This is where vehicles would play the back-up game, maneuvering their boats down into the water before gently releasing them into the waves. There was a truck by the lake, it’s cargo floating. There were people near the shore, helping to manage the driver. Talking idly amongst themselves as managers do.

We were in our own world, though, when we decided to shoot our ammunition at the pavement twenty feet in front of us. It was warm, but not hot. As tar gets soft in the heat, we may have been curious if the BBs would lodge themselves in the pavement. We may have just wondered if the BBs would deflect and how high they would travel. I doubt we had very detailed thoughts about what we were doing.

Hello!

I hope 2022 has been treating you well so far. I’ve found it to be a decent year so long as my head is sufficiently in the sand most of the time. At the very least it has been a surprising year for me.

My long lost itch to blog has returned. This wasn’t a new year’s resolution, but it entered my brain around that time. I spent a fair bit of time trying to decide on a platform. Did I want to stay on my antiquated Ruby/Sinatra blog running on Heroku? Did I want to dive into static site generators (😈)? Or did I want to use some sort of service?

In the end I chose Micro.blog. It took me a while to wrap my brain around it, but once I did it gave me in a nice, big hug. I don’t think it’s for everyone. If I wanted something turnkey that I didn’t plan to style, I’d probably pick Write.as. Blot and Wunderbucket are also very intriguing.

As I get older I have realized that a lot of my ways of working, my ways of motivating myself, are tied to the culture around me. Specifically these motivations are tied to the culture of my geography; the culture of America. In this case, when I speak of culture I am talking about the work ethic that “made America great” and the moral value tied to that work ethic.

A read a book that opened my eyes to how many of us have been manipulated by this intentional culture creation. Things like the protestant work ethic were latched on to by capitalists in order to tie morality to work. In the first half of the 20th century literal war-time propagandists were enlisted by the business world to conflate workers’ senses of self worth with their ability to achieve results in the workplace.

(I’m 90% sure the book was Do Nothing. I don’t know if I recommend it. Parts were “Woah?!” and parts were “Wha?”)

It has been a minute. Summer came upon me and time spent with the family became a priority. I also worked on a few woodworking projects. And we took a glorious, two-week road trip. Writing took a backseat.

Don't expect any consistency from this little letter going forward. Sometimes I might write one, though. It could be a week between letters or it could be months.

Organizing

The GOP strategy of motivating voters by sending out operatives to disrupt shit at the local level has arrived in my city. “Public challenges School Board on rights during open meeting.” It’s all around Critical Race Theory (there was a high school class with that same name last school year, but no such class is on the schedule this school year).

It’s my good friend’s birthday today, and so he is the inspiration for me to write. (I don’t mean that he inspired the specific words. This isn’t an homage. Mostly I mean that I wasn’t going to write, but it being his birthday makes me feel like, well, I really should write. It’s like a gift to him!)

Regular activities are starting to pick up around the household. Soccer, gymnastics, and marching band practices are happening near daily. The oldest is at the beginning of working through her college decision. Standardized tests are frequent. Spring sniffles are also bringing about Covid tests. All negative so far!

It has been a bit of a challenge to adjust to the arrival of prior reality. While we haven’t enjoyed the isolation, we have enjoyed the calm. The obvious response is DON’T OVERCOMMIT YOUR CHILDREN OMG!!!1!! We keep a close eye on their commitments. This seems like a reasonable level. It’s just that our boundaries are pushed even at a reasonable level.

We live in a five-star world. I am definitely not saying everything in the world is amazing. (Though who wants to go back in live in 1904? Nobody, that’s who.) What I am saying is that many of us engage this world as if the things we purchase and partake in always need to be five-star experiences.

Years ago when one had a need for a tool, article of clothing, or whatever, one visited a store, looked at the selection of things available, and picked a thing. Over time one would learn about trusted brands and tend to buy them more frequently. Or one would learn about a good product by the social experience of talking to friends or family. In theory this process is costly in terms of time. Travel to the store, dig around the shelves, travel to another store to compare products, purchase, and travel home. It is much more streamlined to open a web browser, purchase an item, and receive it in a few days.

In practice I can’t help but believe I spend significantly more time in the overall purchase process in today’s world than I would have in the world of thirty years ago. I always want the item that provides the best ratio of performance to price. I research what the best things are in the category. Then I pull back and get reasonable because the best things are often expensive. Maybe there is a very good thing that costs considerably less? While I’m a proponent of buy once cry once, I also don’t want to waste my money. What is the cry to buy ratio on this item?

The drive to Arkansas was a long one, but not excruciatingly so. We picked the location due to a self-imposed we-won’t-drive-more-than-ten-hours radius from our home base in southern Minnesota. As we drove through the states we noticed more green buds in the trees, though the difference between here and there was not as great as we had expected. As we hopped from gas station to gas station we noticed fewer masks.

As we went through Kansas City we noticed fewer signs than we’d like to have seen. Then we were on a road we were not supposed to be on. Siri kept asking us to please cross four lanes of traffic to exit in one-quarter mile. Eventually our helpful vehicle, via advice from its GPS system, intoned, “Welcome to Kansas.” Those in the know realize that Kansas City is in Missouri. Well, except for little-sibling Kansas City that is actually in Kansas. In the end we visited both Kansas Cities (Kansas Citys? Kansases City?) on our drive.

This is not an April Fool’s letter, though it happens to be written by a fool on the first of April.

Since my sixteen-year-old and I were on a call list at our local pharmacy, we were able to get the vaccine on Tuesday evening. These lists are for when a pharmacy has vaccine that is going to expire and get thrown away. This is especially applicable to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which can only be out of refrigeration for six hours. These lists are long because people from around the state have called numerous pharmacies to get on many lists. The pharmacist called many people before us, but they all either didn’t answer or were not able to get there quickly. Fortunately since we live so close we could actually get there in time to get the shot.

So if you haven’t gotten the shot, I would recommend calling a couple of your nearby pharmacies and getting on a similar list if they have one. This will help make sure that no vaccine goes to waste.

I am thankful for the nurses and pharmacists who are distributing this shot. I am thankful for the systems, government and otherwise, that are getting it out into our communities at a faster and faster rate every day.

I am writing today’s letter from a Toyota dealership. What started as a routine oil change has turned into a three-and-a-half hour oil change, alignment, and tire change. I’d say today’s letter is sponsored by Toyota, but the money is flowing the wrong way for that. Does this mean it’s a reverse sponsorship?

Yes, it pains me to be changing tires at a dealership. Everything in my being distrusts car dealerships and maintenance shops in the same building as car dealerships. However, we bought an all-wheel drive minivan, it needs run-flat tires, it had two holes in one tire, and the price looked more than reasonable. The reasonable price was a big surprise, and while I still distrust their tire-wear measurements it seemed prudent to just get it done before going on a road trip to Arkansas next week.

Swagger Wagon

Oh, baby, is it getting springy here. I even made some guacamole! We sat around a bonfire with our neighbors. It was 30 degrees. Springy!

With spring, comes the introduction of a March of Time theatrical reading. It comes from my friend Mike who hears the title of this letter in a certain way.

Also, baseball is starting. Though fewer than expected are going to watch it what with the streaming packages not able to carry the regional sports networks. The regional sports networks are careening toward their own, overpriced streaming options. It looks like we’re moving toward $40/month to watch your baseball team, whether that’s a direct streaming package or paying for overpriced cable TV. Faaaaaantastic.

It was good to get outdoors this week and do a bit of walking in the woods. We have a nice park nearby with several trails amongst the trees. It does require a drive to get there, and that always feels wrong to me. Wrong enough that I don’t visit as frequently as I should. I think I’ll go again today.

The Consumption

Over the past week I’ve been reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. To be honest, I find it a bit dry and I kind of get the gist at a glance. I’ve considered putting it away in favor of someone else’s notes, but then that someone else (in this case Nate Eliason - someone I do not know) said:

I’m back!

The past week has seen absurdly cold temperatures where I live. For six days prior we were not even above zero degrees. Some days the high did not get above negative ten degrees and at one point the air temperature was approaching negative twenty-nine degrees. I know where I live and that I should not expect different, but that’s still a bit colder than necessary methinks.

Sun Dog captured by Jesse

Who else is excited that this past Wednesday did not include nation-altering events? Is the curse of the Wednesday over? Or did I just miss the thing?

We’ve been passing our time here with movies, online cribbage, online video chats, and shoveling snow. The first polar vortex of the year arrives tomorrow and it is going to be quite a thing. Several days of not getting over 0° Fahrenheit will be unwelcome, but we were already passing our time here with movies, online games, and so on. So, really, what’s the difference?

The Magpie by Claude Monet

The week has flown by since I last sat down to write this thing. I’m not feeling incredibly inspired, so this will probably be a short week. Certainly shorter than last week!

How are you doing out there? Feeling content? Living life? I hope so.

The Consumption

Happy 12121 (Jan 21, 2021)!

I know I’m not the only one who feels a little lighter today. It just feels nice to unplug a bit from the daily dread. A dread that sticks in the back of one’s mind even when one isn’t paying attention. For the moment anyway it has fallen out of the brain like a loose chunk of orange ear wax.

Let’s relish in it for now. Let’s see if we can hold on to that feeling. Let’s see if we can encourage that feeling in others.

As I sit here awaiting an impending blizzard and listening to a piano quintet by Ernst von Dohnányi, I’m feeling pretty content. The world is a bit crap right now, but the space I occupy and control is rather nice. I’m quite grateful for that.

With everything on fire in the distant world, I hope those reading are not experiencing localized blazes. If you are, please let me know what I can do to help. If not, let me be the one to give you permission to put down the phone, shut off the computer, and pick up something you enjoy. Whether it’s a book, an album, a game, or a movie. Whether it’s a pen, a brush, a chisel, or a crochet hook. Just go do it. And maybe call a loved one.

After all, what else is there but to live life?

Happy New Year! Has everything changed? Will it be changing soon? Do you have resolutions? Have you broken them, or are you waiting until the end of them month?

That was a thing I wrote early yesterday afternoon. And then things happened.

I’ve finished my week off the grid. This time my experience was not that transformative in the moment. The knock-on effects have been lovely, however. Not only have I continued to ignore the news, but I have also kept social networks like Instagram and Snapchat at bay. I have even resisted Reddit!

I hope you didn't think I'd leave you empty handed during my week off the grid. Here is my wafer-thin letter. It's more to check the box of "I didn't miss a week" than anything else.

Leading into the holidays I converted some credit card points to Apple gift cards. There was a promotion making the points more valuable. What else was I going to do with them? Book a flight?

When I received the confirmation email I was understandably concerned that I may have just flushed the points down the cyber toilet:

It's that time again. That’s right, it’s time to take a week off the grid. If you’ve never done it, I highly recommend it. And by recommending it to you, I’m also recommending it to me because for a while now I’ve been terrible at taking my own advice. Friday-to-Friday it’s going to be books and games and movies and my family. It’s going to be nice.

If you need me, though, I’m still a text away. I mean I’m not mad enough to completely shut off my phone!

For those who celebrate, it’s also time to eat too many sweets, share gifts with those you love, and try to keep the focus on what matters most. Hopefully you have found a way to make this year’s holiday special in its own way. For those of us being careful in the winter climes, we don’t even have the option to see those we love outdoors. We will see them soon, though. We will!

Winter is landing in Minnesota. Frigid mornings and brisk afternoons make it "indoor time." The snow has stayed away thus far. More and more it looks like we'll be having a brown Christmas. It's not romantic, and my children would probably prefer the play material, but it keeps me from having to clear snow!

This past week Jesse and I picked up a new kettlebell exercise routine, which we are working on with our friend Arun. Our prior group effort was to complete 10,000 kettlebell swings in five weeks. Jesse was the only one still swinging all the way to the end. Amazing! I was able to get to 9,000 swings before my back told me to stop.

One of the key features that I like about the latest program is that it self moderates. We do sets of cleans & presses and front squats. Then we break for a moment. If that last set was tiring, we break for a longer moment. If that last set was easy, we break for a shorter moment. It's a great practice of staying aware in real time and choosing next steps based on experiences.