Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1471
Flight to Fairbanks, a bunch of good articles, and day 1 of sorting mom stuff.
Morning, morning. Well. Maybe if you’re on the east coast. It is 9:17PM here in Fairbanks, Alaska. So, 1:17 AM on the east coast. So technically morning, right?
Flight here was fine but also sucked. I kinda hate SeaTac now. Is that irrational? I always thought it was a decent airport. But, you know. It holds a lot of trauma for me. Probably caught COVID there in February of 2020. Passed through for my dad’s funeral, for my cousin’s funeral, now for this trip up to clean out my mom’s apartment. Used to stagger through it hung over in my hedonistic Seattle days (god I miss you guys). It just.. I dunno. I am bad at stops on planes. A non-stop I can handle. A 12-hour drive I can handle fine. But a layover? Kill me now.
The way I handle long articles is this: I never read them. I send them to my Kindle Scribe, using an automator script (on my Mac) or a shortcut (on my phone) that converts a web article to a readability-enabled PDF. And then they just pile up on my Kindle until I have either a special “reading day,” only on vacation, or until I am on a long flight.
So yesterday I read… maybe 60-70 articles? Some are short, just a couple pages. Some are longer and more epic. It is so amazing. So overwhelmingly intellectually stimulating. And so exhausting. By the time I got through Seattle and on to the second leg of my flight, SEA-FAI, I was exhausted and just passed out.
But in that time, my god, did I read some amazing articles.
I hate hate hate newsletters from friends that are just a bunch of links. Because I want to read a piece. And then I get a newsletter, and I’m settling in to read a piece from my old friend, and no, it’s just a bunch of links. Don’t give me more work maaan. I was excited to get something done by reading this newsletter from you but now you just gave me five more things to do.
(Also this reminds me I have to sort out why my processes do not work with Matthew Levine’s Bloomberg column. I don’t know why. Never works with that one. And just that one. Real mystery. Kindle only receives only, like, the first 5 pages of a column of his. And it always cuts off just when I am getting really into it. Maddening.)
All of that is a preface apology for what I am about to do to you now, which is tell you about a bunch of great articles I read. I am sorry. I’m sure you want to know about my emotions and the twelve hours I just did of mom apartment clean-out. We will get to that. But first, articles:
A 56-page article laying out the 50+ year efforts by tribal leaders and farmers to get four dams removed from the Klamath river in Southern Oregon and Northern California. Absolutely mesmerizing, inspiring. A pean to organizational activism, committees and doing the work. Just fantastic. The dams are gone man, and everyone had a part: from corporate raiders to Scottish parliament to leftist trans-national activists, to right-wing semi-milatarized farmers, to US senators, to multiple presidents. Except Dick Cheney. That guy can go screw. And a tour-de-force of reporting.
Ronen Farrow’s latest epic saga of #metoo and the story of someone who is perhaps the most prolific rapist in the United States, and the way abuse begets abuse through the generations.
The single greatest newsletter entry ever, an ethnographic and capitalistic assessment of wandering through a modern, Aldi-era Trader Joe’s in Texas. Seriously. The thing brings Edward Saïd and Walter Benjamin into the picture. Just some of the best writing out there. Thank you, Liz Onstad, for recommending this grocery industry newsletter a couple years back. It is the gift that keeps giving. Who know grocery store B2B writing could be thrilling. Seriously.
Finnish Larpers! My god! This is crazy! I can’t remember who posted this article, I think it was in the WITI slack, but my god. The organization! The volunteerism! The emotional plot! Just… all of it. Amazing. FINNISH LARPERS.
Okay so I know I mentioned a week or two ago that Daniel Khaneman killed himself, and I kinda glossed over the assisted suicide part of it. BUT yes, it was assisted suicide, but, and I just learned this, not because he was sick! Just was worried he was going to… I dunno, not have as much fun in life? Experience cognitive decline, maybe? His friends seem to be pretty universally sad about his decision. It all seems very dramatic and sad! Also, and this is scurrilous, salicious celebrity gossip, but it seems, as far as I can tell, that after both their spouses died, Khaneman started dating his best friends’ widow. Which, I mean, fine, yes. Someone snatch Emma up if I die. But I myself did not know any of this. Anyway, this was a very emotional piece from a friend of his about the whole affair. Intense.
Those are the ones that stuck with me. Moved me. Very emotional flight!
Plus there were, like 50 navy fliers at SeaTac at the gate next to mine, all there to receive an “honor flight,” which I don’t know. They were all in uniform and lined up to salute and stuff. Maybe servicemen coming back from overseas? But, like, aren’t we not in wars right now? There were photographers in HONOR FLIGHTS shirts and everything. Whole big production. I wish I coulda seen it through to completion but I had to board.
Landed in Fairbanks at 2AM, it was 30 degrees, snowing, and multiple people at the airport were wearing shorts. I counted at least four people.
Couldn’t sleep very late cuz of jetlag so I was up at 8, went to Fred Meyer to buy supplies for dealing with the house and arrived at my mom’s house at 9ish. Portia, my cousin’s wife was there watching my nephew. I said hi and then started packing up the house around them. Very emotional!
Worked out a few systems: A family group test where I will post items, family members can heart them if they want them. I am very proud of this system.
My aunt came by and pointed out a few things she would take.
And I put a ton of stuff aside that Val I would need to discuss.
Talked to the woman who oversees the elderly commnity my mom lives at. She hooked me up with the dumpster and a hand truck and set up the free stuff table and told me what kind of free stuff the other seniors living there like. She is also taking a bunch of my mom’s stuff to give to a Ukrainian immigrant family in need, so obviously that hits the spot for everyone in our family.
I started with her clothes because people had already taken what they wanted, and I knew exactly what I was doing with them: donating them to a charity my mom used to work with.
Did the bathroom and kitchen because not too much emotional stuff. Took out a ton of trash.
Afternoon I finally started on her office, which is just absolutely crammed pack with family stuff. So many photo albums. I found my dad’s territorial birth certificate. And my mom’s. I found my mom’s entire professional career folder, all her old reviews, all her letters to her superviors and whanot. The deeds to our old house. SO MUCH SHIT.
I would sort it in piles: one I knew val needed to go through, piles for members of my mom’s family, my dad’s family.
Val got off work and joined me at 5 and we went through about a third of the “emotional” stuff we have to decide. But we did the big ones, dividing up the stuff between each of us and family members. Took a bit to get a good rhythm going, we were both being so deferential. But we got it.
Our styles are complementary. I will get this done, and facilitate most of the logistics with the close family. But Val, she does what is one of the most important parts, and one that was completely not on my radar: finding meaningful things to set aside for all of the friends. This didn’t even occur to me. But val had it all worked out for, like, 50 different people, I swear. Amazing.
You want someone like that in your life, or in your death I guess I mean. Someone who knows how to make all of your old friends feel loved, makes sure no one is left out. This is a hard job! It spans an entire life, almost by definition including whole eras you were not part of. I don’t know jack about my mom’s childhood friends. Well, not much anyway.
I try to leave notes for Emma, about things people should have, even people she’s never met. But it’s a lot. I found my mom’s notes on this topic today, actually. Or, like, an attempt. She did not finish. But she did explain about 20 items around the house and their significance, and I am so, so grateful for it.
The hardest thing to find, the one that just hit me the most, so far: this yearbook-style card everyone at West Valley gave her when she left. It was huge, like a posterboard folded in half, made into a giant card. But everyone she worked with, each of them wrote, like, parqgraphs, like you did in your friend’s yearbook, you know? It wans’t just “had a great time working with you! -Bob.” Each one was a long, thoughtful essay.
The whole thing was made with so much love and care. It really it me.
After two hours of us sorting stuff, Val and I had dinner at the Thai restaurant that is one of the best in America that also does these amazing Thai-Alaskan fusion that basically exist nowhere else in the world.
And now it is 10PM, the sun has set, and I am running on fumes. I bid you good night. Gonna get through the rest of that office tomorrow, mark my words.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.