Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1502
Heirloom china replacement, update from the last Shakers, who've been shafted by Trump, more parenting angst, a banker construction meeting, a story about a guy who hated harmonicas.
Oh man, tired tired tired. Good morning. One more week of this 6:30 nonsense. A break from this misery from a few months is just the ticket. Just don’t think about how you have, like, eleven more years of this shit, because you live in a school district where all schools — elementary, middle, high school — start at the same stupid, lame, evil, unhealthy, ungodly hour.
Been trying to only take my advil-tylenol combination on mornings where I feel actual pain. Been a two-day experiment so far. Not going particularly well. Basically, I wake up, I think I am in good shape, I am too tired to notice the pain, I guess. Skip the pain killers.
And then on the drive back from dropping Jane off, my head is just killing me and I crack and take the pain killers after all.
Is there a point to this, I wonder.
We are listening to a band called Trunks this morning. Album is called On the Roof. It is a re-listen. I have no recollection of listening to it once before. I do not remember why it is in the queue. It is a mid-tempo instrumental affair, at least so far, after one song. I do not hate it. Bandcamp tells me Trunks are a “pretty noise-rock and haïkus from Rennes, France.” And I am looking at a picture of them, and I gotta say: they are pretty. Uh oh there is sax in song two. Look, I am not anti-sax, but you gotta have a reason to have a sax in a song.
(This reminds me of my friend who, at the time, said his favorite band was Lush. And then Lush spin-off band Sing Sing came and played TT The Bears and we went to see them, but they had a harmonica and he believed it was an irredeemable sin to put harmonica in songs. So he walked out. Gotta admire his consistency. I wonder how he feels about harmonicas these days. I should text him and ask).
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Important Shaker update: Brother Arnold and the Sabbathday Village Shakers, the last Shakers in the world, lost two federal grants to help improve their herb barn. Says the paywalled article:
Shaker Village Director Michael Graham said that over the past few months, plans for an herb house and cultural center have been thrown into financial turmoil. The village recently saw a $1.5 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities terminated, and lost out on previously allocated congressional funding with the passing of the 2025 budget. Graham said that, in the wake of these setbacks, the village will continue managing construction with what money they have so they don’t overspend. He hoped that, in the meantime, the village will regroup as a fundraising team and bring in philanthropic organizations to make up for the lack of federal grant opportunities. A $750,000 Semiquincentennial Grant from the National Park Service was still intact as of now, said Graham.
Kinda an interesting MAGA quirk: unlike the Nazis, they don’t really glorify even the 100% American parts of America? Like the Nazis believed in Germany, German pride, German history, spent all sorts of money promoting that shit. And what’s more American Christian roots than a buncha white people making Shaker Chairs.
Also I really wanna know what the hell is up with the word “semiquincentennial” and I would like to give props to the Maine Press Herald for using that word without a single explanation for the Average American whom, I am told, can’t read too well. So the eggheads say.
(Wait is it the Maine Press Herald or the Portland Press Herald and does this have anything to do with the excellent Press Hotel in Portland? Inquiring minds.)
Also that article was paywalled on my desktop but not my phone. Mysterious.
IIRC, Michael Graham is not a shaker. The only two remaining still are Brother Arnold and Sister June. I think Michael Graham is the one who tried to be come a Shaker and Brother Arnold was like “naw dawg, you’re too much of this world” and told him it was not his path. I mean, that definitely happened, just not 100% sure it was Michael. But shit, man. You gotta respect Brother Arnold, even with only two Shakers left, brother has not lowered his standards.
Anyway, I don’t see a method to donate to the Shakers online. That is a shame.
Amongst my mother’s possessions was a set of china that belonged to my paternal grandmother, Millie, whom I did not know, she died right around the time I was born. It is nice China, as old China goes, been in my family a long time. This china has passed on to me with my mother’s death, as I seem to be a lot more attached to it than my sister was. It is an eight-piece set, three plates per setting, plus cups and saucers. A lot of china. Shit do you capitalize “china” when talking about the dishware? No idea. Probably not, huh? Anyway, I packed it up in some specialized UHaul-built china shipping boxes. Except I mailed all this stuff back from Alaska via ground post because it was like a thousand bucks to send all this shit back as it was and woulda been like $5k to send it all back air mail.
So, even though it was packed well, in its nearly-a-month trip to North Carolina from Alaska, I lost one large plate and two bread plates. Shattered. I mean physically, the plate. Not me emotionally.
But, as I kinda suspected, none of this stuff is actually rare, you know? Like… it’s old, but it was mass-produced, sort-of the very beginning of “accessible luxury,” companies making nicely-made china and selling it to millions of Americans.
Also, as any estate-sale vet can tell you, most Americans just don’t care about old stuff anymore. With a few exceptions. Like tools. But not China.
So, I was feeling kinda bad for breaking three of these plates, out of 40 or so plates. I coulda let it lie, but it occurred to me this stuff was probably cheap, so I just went and bought replacement plates on eBay. Like $10-15 each. Bob’s your uncle.
I also bought a decently-nice (god, the temptation to hyphenate -ly words is overwhelming in me) china storage case from Amazon.
So this week, finally, I am going to delicately and carefully place all the china in the storage case, and put it on a shelf somewhere.
And there it will sit for, oh, and another thirty years.
I mean, sure, now 3/40th of the plates, or 7%, of the china are not actually authentic family heirlooms anymore. But you know what? No one is ever gonna know. Or, actually, probably, no one is ever going to care. I am the last person to care about this china. It ends with me.
Since, as Emma delicately points out: “it is not really our style.”
I mean, she’s not wrong.
But it is kinda pretty.
Yesterday I had to go to the bank and do a meeting about our construction financing on the Boat and RV Storage Facility. We are mid-construction, steel is going up. Been a lotta confusion about the loan amounts so me and two of the partners went to the bank and met with the banker and oh my god what is wrong with me, even my sideline hobbies involve trips to see bankers, I swear I am really trying to leave the world of business behind and become a drone rock monk.
Construction financing is very different from tech startup financing! It was a whole new batch of things to learn, lots of conventions and norms and rules that I just did not know about, even though I have been dealing with bankers in business for, oh, more than twenty years now. Kinda humbling!
But we got ‘er done, so to speak, and I am very relieved. I mean, not the construction, that’s not done. And I am still very stressed about, you know, actually getting people to store their boats there. And insurance. And websites.
But at least the financing is back in order and I am very proud of that because I swear to god I have worked on it for, like, a hundred hours over the past month.
Thanks for those who wrote in with kind words of parenting encouragement yesterday. I was writing to my friend Suzy yesterday and I think I hit the nail on the head about parenting anxiety:
Parenting is such a pain because you always see ways to do it better. And unlike, like, your JOB, it MATTERS. Very stressful do not like that part about it. Plus you see every parent around you and most of them are doing a good job and several of them are doing some thing you’re not doing. You tend not to see a bunch of people in your day-to-day life who do your day job much better than you.
I mean, I don’t see anyone in my day-to-day life who does the same job as me. I haven’t met another AdTech CEO in, oh, like, three years. Well, except my fellow board member, I guess. But still. He lives in New Jersey. But I see parents all the time and they, are, like, sending their kids to dance lessons and music lessons and this and that and it is just very keep-up-with-the-joneses stressful, do not like.
Need to hang out with more deadbeat parents!
Hrm seems I do not have a single playlist ready for you today that is curious. Let’s check our YouTube history. Oh right. Here. Have the new Saint Etienne single with its pretty cheery video. Will maybe bring a bit of joy to your day like it did to me:
Goodbye!
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.