The 14-year-old is taking a break from finishing her last final project of the semester. She just borrowed my amp and preamp; I can hear her strumming beautiful chords up on the third floor. 

The 12-year-old is taking a break from home schooling. He just borrowed my duck boots; I can hear him scrape metal against concrete as he shovels the heavy snowfall from the sidewalk outside.

I can hear my spouse rustling a package of something as she enjoys a snack in the kitchen.

The dog walked and his claws tick-tacked on the wood floor. He shook his body and his tags clinked against each other.

The SSoCIA conference where I presented on Tuesday ended an hour ago. I am approaching the end of the semester and the number of tasks before break are countable on two hands.

My belly is full and the world is good.

Cultured meat is coming to market: chicken cells grown in a bioreactor are going to be sold in Singapore. At some point I may have to consider whether or not to consume it.

As a child, I read every science-fiction anthology available in the public library of my small town and purchased every science-fiction magazine I could find in the local department store and newsstand. Somewhere and sometime, I read a couple of stories about artificial meat. I remember one included a detailed description of how the cultured cells were aggregated into sheets and mechanically stretched, in order to duplicate the texture achieved when real-life animal muscles are stressed and strained.

For more than fifteen years, I have not eaten meat. To be more precise, I have not knowingly consumed any products that required the death of any mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians. Here are my personal reasons, in order from least to most significant.

5. personal health

Dietary guidelines, whether based on scientific studies or fad diets, have changed over the years. I am far from assiduous about keeping track of the latest data. I do avoid saturated fats and, although I understand that some is necessary for our health, one easy way to avoid saturated fat is to eliminate beef and pork. Instead, the fat in my diet comes from consuming liberal amounts of extra virgin olive oil and nuts, eating full-fat dairy products (especially yogurt), splurging occasionally on butter and cheese, and — during this period of COVID home isolation — eating perhaps more frozen fried fish and French fries than I ought. 

As someone on a pescetarian diet, I also need to make sure that my diet has enough protein variety to include essential amino acids. But because I eat fish, milk products, and eggs, this is not too difficult.

Beyond thinking of the body as a mere biochemical vessel, I do sometimes miss certain esthetic aspects of meat. It’s not clear to me that it’s healthy to deny myself pleasures such as a prime steak well-prepared at a restaurant, a tender pot roast cooked at home, the crunch of lechon, the lusciousness of duck confit, the savor of my mother’s A-1 chicken, etc.. It’s also not at all clear that artificial meats like those from Morningstar Farms, Beyond Burger, and Impossible Foods are any better for our bodies than the real thing, and they don’t taste as good.

Before I became pescetarian, I did find that, as much as I enjoyed medium rare steaks, as well as partially cooked eggs, uncooked animal products could cause me indigestion, sometimes painfully so.

Considering all of the above, on balance, personal health is one reason that I am pescetarian, but it is certainly not the most important one.

4. environment

The evidence is much more clear that, as a global species, we humans can more efficiently produce the macronutrients that we need without resorting to the mass production of livestock. I can still remember driving cross-country for the first time: enjoying a delicious steak in Amarillo, yet enduring the smell of manure for miles. The production of beef, pork, and poultry strains our limited availability of fresh water, increases the amount of the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide, and pollutes the environment with animal waste. The way we first-world humans consume animals — focused only on their muscle and fat to the neglect of the blood, bone, or internal organs — further exacerbates this wastefulness.

The environment is not the reason that I initially became pescetarian, and I recognize that one person alone does not make a significant difference on the environment. Still: I do vote in national elections, and I do not eat meat.

3. household economy

I had expensive tastes when it came to meat. I am much more satisfied with quality canned seafood, select frozen seafood, and smoked seafood than with their meat counterparts. Food spoilage is less of an issue, it’s easier to clean my plate, and leftovers are easier to store. So not only is a pescetarian diet more affordable, it leads to less household waste 

While it’s turned out to be easier on the household budget for me to eat as a pescetarian, we could certainly afford meat; the rest of the family does, on occasion. This is not the reason I became pescetarian, but it does make it easier to sustain this lifestyle.

2. personal ethics

I would like to reduce suffering in this world. There is little doubt in my mind that mammals and birds possess sentience and have the capacity to suffer. Perhaps I am being speciesist, but it is more difficult for me to recognize this in many fish — although, since becoming a scuba diver and observing octopodes in person and on film, I have begun avoiding eating cephalopods. 

I eat only those animals that I would have been willing to kill. I cooked lobster, with some moral difficulty, so I allow myself to eat lobster. I have caught fish and watched them gutted and cleaned. Unless I were in a survival situation, I would have much greater difficulty killing a deer.

This is a nuanced position. I do consume eggs and milk products, even though they are a product of industrial agriculture, which demands the confinement of living beings. Yet I avoid cheeses made with animal rennet and have only bought one leather product in the past fifteen years, even thought these are also byproducts of our 21st-century way of life.

I know others, including in my family, who have killed and do kill animals. I have no issues with anyone who is able to perform this act with mercy, or at least with clinical distance. The fact that I cannot is more of a reflection on the society where I was raised, where many of us are raised — where meat is packaged so that it does not resemble the animal from which it came, and sold in a manner so that we never have to consider the moral cost of another being’s death.

1-1/2. dream

More than twenty years ago, I was teaching on a college campus in a summer program where we faculty had access to complimentary meals in the dining hall. Every morning there was a vast steam table of unlimited food, including included stacks of bacon. I always asked for a full plate and happily enjoyed their crispy flavor.

One night that summer, I had a dream. It was an overhead view of two clean-bristled pigs, snuffling around, looking at each other in the eyes, snuffling and communicating in some fashion with each other. Then, as though I were watching a film, I heard a voiceover: This is how pigs were, before we domesticated them.

I awoke and looked at the dog next to me. I decided not to eat bacon that morning, and the next morning, and the morning after that. I have not eaten pork ever since.

1. memory

After the death of my best friend Mookie, who accompanied my life with unwavering loyalty for over sixteen years, I struggled with the difficulty of being the one who willed the death of my fellow mammal. I knew this was necessary and kind, because he himself had ceased eating. Yet I wanted not to eat ever again: because I had no appetite, because eating disgusted me, and in his memory.

Of course it was not possible for me to live and not eat.

So I touched his portrait every day. I kept a stone in my pocket. I had my hair cut short. I ceased drinking alcohol, which heightened my mood whether happy or sad. I stopped eating meat.

Family and food; games and rest. Despite tensions around intensifying political differences, Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday. I am looking forward to next week.

Last year we hosted Thanksgiving with everyone bearing food to our house, save the Palo Alto contingent. This year we will not bring our households together because of COVID-19. Instead, we have shared recipes on Google Docs, held a Zoom call to discuss food prep, will make these dishes in our separate homes, and then Zoom again on Thanksgiving Day over common dishes.

On a recent Zoom call I volunteered the famous mushroom rice casserole that I developed as a bachelor: canned cream of mushroom soup warmed up and poured over rice. This is a variation on the green bean casserole often served at Thanksgiving tables: just substitute rice for canned green beans and leave out the fried onion pieces. I also mentioned the easy version of this dish: omit the rice. Everyone loved the memory of my recipe, but still bid me to suggest something else. We all have our own way of roasting vegetables, so that didn’t pass. We decided I would share my maple pecan pie, which went over very well last year.

…

In truth, good food doesn’t require numerous ingredients or complex processes. When I enjoy well-prepared sushi, there are two main ingredients (fish and rice), one cooking method (for the rice), one preparation method (slicing), and one immediately apparent utensil (knife). A good sushi meal is a delight because of the restaurant environment, food presentation, and most of all the skill of the chef, who selects quality ingredients and knows how to serve them.

Sushi takes scant time to make, and yet it is expensive. When we watch a consummate professional at work — whether plumber or professor, professional athlete or venture capitalist — we might bear witness only to a single masterful performance. Nevertheless, behind the moment, there are months and years of training, fraught with struggles and stumbles.

When teaching the children how to cook in the kitchen, I emphasized being safe, always using your senses, and developing a sense of timing so that everything is ready when it needs to be. Experiment with recipes, be attentive to details, and iterate so that you are satisfied with what you have made.

As I planned to type up my maple pecan recipe, I realized that it was only a slight modification from one I had pulled from the Internet years ago. Except for the fact that I like the way that it tastes, and that it elevates some of my personal favorite foods into an even grander dish, I felt there was very little that represented “me” about the dish. So I changed course and wrote this instead:

…

frutos secos y frutas secas

This dish is a completely customizable platform. — you tailor it according to your personal taste and the availability of ingredients. The fundamental idea is to create and enjoy a colorful and delicious display of nuts and dried fruit (frutos secos y frutas secas).

Here are some guiding principles:

1. Build your dish on a small plate. This is your personal dish and you shouldn’t overload it — it should be just large enough to whet your appetite.. The plate itself should ideally be fairly plain — preferably white and without adornment. The idea here is to have a blank canvas upon which you will create your masterpiece — the canvas shouldn’t distract from what you are building.
2. Buy the best single ingredients available to you. This is ultimately a simple dish, so the quality of ingredients is very important. This doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor: I buy just about everything for this from Costco. Try to avoid adding any items to the plate that have more than one ingredient (!). Dried fruits should be fruits (no sugar if possible), roasted nuts should be nuts (no salt or other coatings if possible), cheese should be milk (plus a tiny amount of cheese cultures and salt).
3. Use nuts that are roasted (not raw) but unsalted. I like cashews, almonds, pecans, and walnuts here. While I enjoy peanuts, they might be a little strong for this dish, at least for me. I also don’t think macadamias would work well, but maybe I’m wrong about that for you. Try to find nuts that are processed as simply as possible and that are not stale.
4. Use dried fruits from a freshly opened or well-sealed package. I use plums and apricots here. Maybe I’ll try dates next time or maybe raisins, just because they’re in the house, even though I’m not terribly fond of either. Dried cherries would be good, at least for me, and maybe dried cranberries. Because the nuts are all different shades of brown, try to find dried fruits with brighter colors. Try to locate fruits that are not sweetened (this is difficult for cherries and especially cranberries). You want to be able to taste the natural unadorned flavor. 
5. I like to use a mild cheese as a centerpiece. Costco has tiny mozzarella balls that come in packets of three — these are a perfect size. Cheese is optional.
6. I add a very light wisp of extra virgin olive oil to the cheese and a tiny pinch of salt. 

You want to create something that looks appealing to your eyes, in terms of a variety of colors, shapes, and textures. You also want to have a variety of foods with different mouth feels — soft vs. crunchy — and that represent enough fundamental tastes. You should have some items that are primarily sweet (dried fruits), others that are oily/fatty (roasted nuts, EVOO), and some salt.

Use a small amount of each ingredient (three plums is definitely enough, and the rest of the ingredients should be sized equivalently or smaller). Arrange them around the circumference (or perimeter) of the plate so they are not touching each other. Try distributing the most colorful

Ingredients around the plate instead of all clumped together. Do keep the ingredients separate — it’s like you’re a painter creating a palette of paints — you don’t want to mush them together right now: that can be for later, when you’re eating with your mouth.

When you have finished plating this variety of small amounts of food, do not eat it immediately. Set it aside in a safe place, covered if necessary, but it’s better if it’s in your eyesight for a while. You want to savor the way it looks with your eyes, think about how it will taste, maybe allow the scents to reach your nose. Allow everything to reach room temperature (this is most relevant if you have decided to include some cheese).

When it is time to eat what you have created, reflect upon the Vulcan IDIC philosophy (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations). Now it’s up to you. Do you eat each ingredient entirely on its own (Mookie style)? Or do you take an almond and eat it with a dried apricot? How about swiping a dried plum with a bit of olive oil and salt? This is a great time to be reflecting on the various parts of the world where everything came from, appreciating and being thankful for this simple bounty, this bite-sized, personalized mini-cornucopia.

…

Our family is being represented by a plate of nuts and dried fruit? exclaimed my wife yesterday. Well, yes. If you really attend to this dish with care, I don’t know that it’s all that different from other dishes we typically serve at Thanksgiving.

And I really do enjoy it.

I have never lived during a time when I was older than the US President However, throughout history, more than half of Presidents were younger than I am now when they began office.

I look forward to the day when I am older than the President. For a brief while this will be disconcerting in its unfamiliarity. On the one hand, this will also serve as a reminder that I am getting old — or, more to the point, that I will die, along with the entire world of my peers. On the other hand, it will be wonderful for the nation to be led by someone with recent perspectives (Obama is the only one who was born after 1946!) combined with sufficient life experience.

This will also mean that I have survived to be a certain age: an accomplishment of sorts.

A newspaper article from 1987 indicates that the life expectancy for a white male, in 1787 at the establishment of the Constitution, was 38 years. I do not know the primary source for this data. It does have the feel of being roughly correct, especially because the article specified that this was the life expectancy for white males. The life expectancy would have been different for women, who died more frequently in childbirth but not in war, and for non-whites. Probably the data was never taken for those populations. They literally did not count. The number is likely the life expectancy at birth; someone who survived infancy would have had a significantly higher life expectancy.

I don’t know if the Federalist Papers or any other surviving documents explain why the minimum age for the President is set at 35, which seems arbitrary to me. Some people speculate that this has to do with preventing immediate succession by a direct descendant: that is, a monarchy. Three Presidents intervened between John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams; in my own lifetime, the specter of monarchy reasserted itself, with only Bill Clinton between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

I hope we never see a child of our current President in any national office.

In 1968 I was too young to remember.

In February 1972 we moved from the South Bronx to small-town Ohio. I don’t remember discussing politics with any of my Ohio classmates. I do have a dim memory of being with classmates in someone’s station wagon when we still lived in New York, where we chanted: Nixon, Nixon, he’s our man! He’s our man for the garbage can! McGovern, McGovern, he’s our man! He’s our man for the President stand!

By 1976 I had sat before the TV to watch the Watergate hearings as well as Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speech, witnessed both Agnew and Nixon resign, unironically sent for a “Whip Inflation Now” button, and read news stories of Ford’s clumsiness. The Presidency had become a human figure to me and, while I was still much too young to vote, I empathized with Carter’s humility and humanity.

In 1980 the country itself had been humiliated by the Iran hostage crisis. Ronald Reagan visited my hometown for an enormous rally just two days before the election. One of my sisters placed a tape recorder on the stage to record his speech; when she went to check on it, the tape had stopped and she realized that a Secret Service agent had turned it off. I understood the enthusiasm of everyone around me for this change. 

In 1984 I voted for the first time. The polling place was off-campus and it was exactly as a I imagined, a machine with red levers. During college I hardly engaged in mass media except for college radio and my morning dose of the Cornell Daily Sun delivered to my dorm room, yet somehow I was aware of Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign theme. But I looked beyond the tax cuts and the improved economy and saw a tragic lack of sympathy for the AIDS crisis; the over-simplification and underlying racism of the War on Drugs; the growing financial inequality that spawned Yuppies and glorified attitudes that later exploded in expressions like “greed is good”; the increased military spending. Outside the Straight, I signed letters for Amnesty International; I affixed a “Bread Not Bombs” button to my knapsack. And I watched Reagan win against Mondale in a landslide.

In 1988 when I was a grad student at Berkeley, I watched Lloyd Bentsen eviscerate Dan Quayle in the Vice Presidential debate. I was standing in line at a BBQ joint in Oakland, it might have been Everett and Jones. Everyone in the shop, watching the single TV behind the cashier, we looked at each other and laughed. Nevertheless, George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, despite Iran-Contra, running on the legacy as the former Vice President of the Teflon President.

In 1992 I was teaching at Andover, where Bush had attended school many years ago. In the previous election, Bush had promised, “Read my lips, no new taxes” — then he raised taxes. Meanwhile, the young and charismatic Bill Clinton won by focusing our attention on the economy.

In 1996 I was teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as summers in writing workshops with Bard College. Clinton had become the Democratic version of a Teflon President. “It’s the economy, stupid” was the unofficial election mantra — and indeed the stock market was booming and the national debt was actually going down. Dole/Kemp didn’t stand a chance; Clinton cruised to reelection.

In 2000 we were living in Santa Fe while I taught at St. John’s College. I closely watched the early returns between Al Gore and George W. Bush, focused on which way Florida would go. When the networks called it for Gore, I felt liberated to vote in New Mexico for Nader, on the principle that Gore as my favored major party candidate wouldn’t be endangered, so I could support alternatives like the Green Party. Florida ended up being contested, and the younger Bush was installed.

In 2004 we were living in New York City. Living in a state that would inevitably support the Democratic Kerry/Edwards ticket, I wrote in the Green Party candidates. Regardless, W. won a second term.

In 2008 we had moved to Pittsburgh. I voted for Barack Obama over John McCain.

In 2012 I saw Obama speak in person on the Carnegie Mellon campus. I favored him again over Mitt Romney in that year’s election.

In 2016, I was caught up in the populist movement. While much more energized about Bernie Sanders, I voted for Hillary Clinton. Instead, the populist Donald Trump was elected.

In 2020, I voted in Pittsburgh once more, for the first time this year by mail. I pumped my fists in the air after I dropped the envelope into a mailbox on Penn Avenue. Last night, on the eve of the election, Joe Biden spoke in my neighborhood — exactly forty years to the day after I saw Ronald Reagan in the final days of his campaign — which I took as a good omen. As of this moment, the results of the election are uncertain: Arizona and Nevada are leaning towards Biden, North Carolina and Georgia are leaning towards Trump, and too many votes are uncounted in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and here in Pennsylvania. And yet, less than an hour ago, from inside the White House the President threatened to go to the Supreme Court so that my vote will not be counted. Every vote must be counted. If Trump wants to rule a country where he decides whose votes count and whose don’t, he should leave the United States. What an utter embarrassment.

We have a propane heater that served us well last year when the thermocouple on the water boiler of our radiator system needed to be replaced. This would also have been handy in 2010, when we returned to an ice-cold house after a holiday in Santa Fe, where we wed in 2000 and first lived. In addition to the heater, we have a camping stove that can burn either propane or butane. However, both of these devices thread onto 1-pound propane canisters. These small bottles are exceedingly wasteful, from an environmental standpoint because the steel containers should be disposed after just a single use, as well as from a financial standpoint because one is actually paying more for the container than for the fuel itself.

Fortunately, there is a solution: 1-lb propane cylinders that have been designed and manufactured specifically to be refilled, along with a kit to connect these bottles to 20-lb tanks, which are more widely available, being a typical size for RVs and BBQ grills.

Yesterday I bought the last remaining propane refill kit from a store down in Washington, PA. This morning I went on a quest for a new, filled 20-pound tank. Here is the result of my mission:

• Home Depot has empty tanks inside the store but was out of propane. The customer service rep did not know when they would have more, and said the Sunoco across the street would have some.
• The Sunoco attendant said they were out of propane too and had no recommendations.
• The cashier at the Marathon gas station on the way home said that they did have propane but couldn’t help me because she was alone at the store. She gestured towards the beer distributor (I misheard her say “bear distributor”). Even though this is my neighborhood, I have to admit that I never knew there was a package store in the area. It just never registered because we are a teetotaling family.
• The beer distributor said they no longer carry propane. He pointed me towards the two gas stations nearby — the Marathon where I had just been, and the Sunoco (different from the one I had already visited).
• The Sunoco cashier said they didn’t carry propane and suggested the Home Depot. When I explained I had already been there, she moved her thumbs as though using a smart phone and suggested Googling propane.

I had already tried Duck Duck Go, Google, and GasBuddy — none of them could help me find current prices for propane, whether a store has current stock, or even a clear map for where it is available. I guess search engine and app developers don’t use propane, or already know where to find it? Maybe they just go to gas stations near campgrounds, or to national chains like Wal-Mart, U-Haul, or Home Depot. It seems like a ripe opportunity for a developer to gather this information, especially because propane can obviously undergo temporary local shortages. Here in the US we do produce more than enough propane to meet our needs; this is a storage and distribution problem — and maybe a little predictive modeling could solve this issue.

Anyhow, because I don’t have a smartphone, when I returned home I called U-Haul, which is also close to our house. (I don’t want to travel far with a full tank of propane in our passenger car, out of an abundance of caution.) I called U-Haul with great reluctance, because years ago I had the most horrendous experience with U-Haul in Chicago and swore that I would never never never give them my business again. I learned that they do have it in stock, and the person on the phone sounded very knowledgeable and matter-of-fact about the pricing. So I’ll return to Home Depot to buy an empty tank, and go to Marathon or U-Haul to fill it up.

Here are more widely relevant things I have learned recently about propane:

• 20-pound tanks are DOT-approved and initially certified for 12 years. Because they meet stringent government standards, the brand is irrelevant. Government FTW.
• New tanks are not purged and the air inside may contain moisture. There is some disagreement on the Internet about whether this must be done by a professional, how many cycles of purging are required, and whether this is necessary if the tank has been manufactured in the past six months.
• There are three ways to get a full tank of propane: buy a pre-filled tank, exchange an empty one, or refill an existing one. The problem with exchanging an empty one is that you are receiving an indeterminate amount of fuel — there are discussions about whether overfilling the tanks might be a safety issue because gas could be vented in hot conditions, or whether underfilling the tanks is another way for propane companies to increase their profit margins.
• In the United States, propane now comes primarily as a by-product of processing natural gas, not from refining petroleum.
• Propane is measured in pounds instead of gallons. You can determine how much propane is in a tank by using a luggage scale and subtracting the tare weight, which is stamped on the handle. A typical volume capacity for a 20-pound tank is 4.7 gallons; that is, liquid propane has a density of 4.2 pounds per gallon.
• Propane prices vary across the country. I imagine it must be relatively cheap here in western Pennsylvania, with our proximity to Marcellus Shale and nearby natural-gas processing plants. The person who answered the phone at U-Haul quoted me $3.25 per gallon, mentioning that it would cost about $15 if the tank is completely empty. That’s about 75 cents per pound.
• Meanwhile, four 1-pound containers cost $12 plus tax at Wal-Mart last year (or $16 plus tax at Home Depot yesterday), corresponding to $3 per pound. Because the Flame King refill kit cost $50 plus tax (it was only $38 at Home Depot last year) and an empty 20-pound tank at Home Depot cost $35 plus tax, the break-even point for buying these items instead of individual 1-pounders is nearly 40 pounds. While I don’t know if we will use enough propane to make this outlay economically wise, I feel better knowing that we don’t have to deal with the safe disposal of single-use tanks, that we will produce less waste metal, and that we have greater flexibility in obtaining fuel for cooking and heating.

We lived in Manhattan between Santa Fe and Pittsburgh, from 2003 to 2005, soon after 9/11. During that time, I carried various talismans in my pockets and backpack: a whistle to be heard in the midst of rubble, potassium iodide tablets to flood the thyroid if there were a dirty bomb or nuclear power plant accident, an N95 mask to protect against fine particulates, a pocket knife because sharp metal is one of the most important tools devised by humanity. I did not have a cell phone at all, even as they were becoming ubiquitous. I did carry my MetroCard and a swatch of the orange fabric used in Christo’s The Gates.

How differently I prepared for dangers during the 80s and 90s whenever I visited the city of my birth! Back then I carried mugger money along with subway tokens.

Mugger money, potassium iodide, propane.

Just in case.

Why are you dressed up today? I asked my daughter as she stood near the front door, wondering whether she was planning to go out somewhere during this time of COVID-19. It’s Culture Day, she replied, speaking of the school she attends online.

Later in the day, I expressed surprise to my wife that our daughter was wearing a Filipino dress. She thinks it looks cottagecore, she replied. I had no idea what that was. It’s an aesthetic, you need to see pictures. Look it up. So I did.

Foxfire ≠ Firefox

Cottagecore is like the Foxfire movement back in the Seventies, I offered, referring to the series of books devoted to self-sufficiency, a rejection of over-reliance on technology. Foxfire is tangled in my childhood comprehension with hippie and folk culture, as well as with popular culture through TV shows like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons. Wikipedia characterizes cottagecore as a back-to-the-land movement.

The Little House books depict Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life from 1870 to 1894; the first book was published in 1932; the television adaptation premiered in 1974. The Waltons television series depicts life in rural Virginia starting in 1933; the series first aired in 1971. Cottagecore, with its emphasis on traditional skills, became popular here in 2020 during quarantine, according to Google Trends:

 

Before these works of literary, broadcast, or social media, there were the Transcendentalists, with their emphasis on the goodness of nature. The Transcendentalist Club held its first meeting in 1836.

It seems the American back-to-land movement revives in popularity about every generation and a half, with a period of forty to fifty years. Everything old is new again.

This morning I received this email message from Senator Pat Toomey:

I Will Vote to Confirm Judge Barrett

This week, I had the pleasure to meet with Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Our meeting, along with her record and recent confirmation hearing, affirmed for me that Judge Barrett clearly has the intellect, experience, character, and judicial philosophy needed to be an outstanding Supreme Court justice.

Importantly, Judge Barrett reiterated to me her strong belief that the proper role of a judge is to apply the law, including the U.S. Constitution, as written, and not to serve as an unelected super legislator who imposes one’s preferred policy outcomes.

Given Judge Barrett’s stellar record and credentials, her nomination is deserving of overwhelming bipartisan support. It is unfortunate that most Democratic senators rejected her nomination from the start and even refused to meet with her. Nonetheless, I look forward to supporting Judge Barrett’s successful confirmation.

Read more about my decision in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

I replied:

Confirmation Bias

I received your message this morning that you intend to vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court.

Shame on you.

[In an earlier message] You claim to care for the will of the voters, who indirectly determine the Supreme Court by electing the President, who nominates justices, and the Senate, who confirms them. For this exact reason, you resisted reviewing Garland’s nomiation for eight *months*.

You are now ram-rodding this nominee through a hasty confirmation process, knowing full well that the Republican party could lose both the Presidential and the Senate elections in eight *days*. Indeed, it is only by accident of the six-year election cycle of Senators across 50 states that the Republican party retained control over the Senate in 2018; you surely witnessed how the party lost the House two years ago.

As for your praise of Barrett’s orignalist views, judicial activism has an important role in our history: Brown v. Board of Education. Roe v. Wade. Do you hope that the Supreme Court will review and overturn these monumental precendents, or that the court should not interpret the Constitution in light of any societal changes since the 18th century?

If you truly believed in listening to the citizens of our nation as well as in the strength of your position, you would wait until after the election. What is your hurry, sir? Surely you recognize this process is hasty. Why the big rush? I welcome a sincere answer.

Our country is going to pay the price for your planned malfeasance. I hope you see the error of this path.

May God have mercy on your soul.

When I was growing up, I looked forward to the mail. Sometimes we would have outgoing letters, so I could tell that the mail had arrived from the living room window because the flag was down. But more often I would walk to and from the mailbox. I didn’t get mail often, even collecting First Day Covers and writing famous people for their autographs. I subscribed during my childhood to Highlights, Cricket, Boys’ Life, Chess Life, Linn’s Stamp News, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, National Geographic World. Every month the Ontario Science Centre would send their newsletter.

I still do look forward to the mail whenever I have ordered something. But more often than not, the mail and the email and the phone calls I receive are an annoyance, distracting me from the other work I should be doing, which also arrives by these same methods (especially email).

People who don’t know me well are surprised that I don’t have a smart phone, that I don’t text, that I have disabled voicemail on my flip phone. Those are not for me — the world already has enough ways to reach me. 

The children are still delighted when they receive magazines or personal mail. It’s a rare treat to have something delivered to them. It’s a sign that the rest of the world recognizes their existence, separate from everyone who happens to live at the same address.

When did this change?

I have been asking my daughter what she wants for her birthday. Today we received her wish list: non-profit organizations we could support; an appeal to buy from small companies instead of big businesses; and finally some items that would advance her comfort, learning, and making.

I’ve been reflecting on her list this morning, before and after talking with her about it. I wonder why she stated a preference for smaller companies. After all, the two larger businesses that she named (Amazon and Walmart) were once small, even within my own lifetime. While Walmart’s early origins go back to my birth, I was not aware of this store until they opened a store in my Ohio hometown sometime in the 1980s after I left for college; I placed my first order on Amazon in 1996 when I was developing a course on the chemistry of food and cooking. I remember my parents expressing enthusiasm for the low prices and variety of goods at Walmart, and I myself was dazzled by the pricing and selection of books on Amazon.

Shouldn’t we be happy when small businesses such as these are successful and grow?

For me, the answer is: it depends. Both Amazon and Walmart have grown spectacularly not because they offer low prices and offer a broad selection, but also because it is easy to buy from them (up to 24 hours), delivery is fast, and it is easy to find products. This depends upon a vast distribution and transportation network. On top of that, Amazon has built a community of reviewers who share their opinions with other customers; offers digital services including hosting, entertainment media, and seller platforms; and can easily leverage all of this data to nudge users towards additional purchases. Collectively, all of these traits provide Amazon a strong competitive advantage over other retailers — and the leviathan only becomes more knowledgeable and stronger with every purchase, every view, every click. I purchase much more from Amazon now than I did 24 years ago. As I do, Amazon learns more about my preferences, as well as others’, and serves us better over time, which in turn makes me even more likely to turn there for my purchases.

What’s not to like about this cycle?

First, there is the danger of too much power being divested to one entity, even to one person (Jeff Bezos). With control over vast wealth, Bezos and his descendants can control what people see and do not see, hear and do not hear, eat and do not eat.

Second, the company influences not only its customers, but also its employees — and therefore the working conditions of many citizens. This also has an impact on the culture and the benefits that other workers experience across the country. Depending on the laws of the land, this can in turn lead to vast inequities in wealth distribution, which are unhealthy for a nation, because citizens do not share enough common experiences.

Third, there is the very real question of how much is enough. After all, growth is not always identical to success: cancer is abnormal cell growth. Although it’s been awhile since I’ve read John Bogle’s book, I recall he observes that some appetites (such as for food) have physical limits. Not so, with appetites for money, power, and adulation.

Fourth, it is more difficult to maintain a culture of quality customer service. As a gigantic company takes a life of its own, it can afford to lose a few customers due to bad service.

Fifth, a large company develops many mechanisms to dwarf upstarts who would challenge it. This drowns out alternate voices, depriving the public of opportunities to shop the world (and shape the world) in innovative ways.