Eric The Blue

In school

I work on about 80 percent of school days, and park next to the above van on about 80 percent of those days. I think Ron's guy is there as often as I am. There are around 500 kids in the school, ranging in age from 5 to 11, so it's probably not surprising that plumbing events are common as spilt milk in the cafeteria, especially considering that supervision tends to be light in the rest rooms—the boys might be more culpable, and elementary education is a female dominated profession. More than once have I been recruited, while strolling down the hall, to check up on Aiden or Avery or Juan or Jamal, who has been about his business in there for a suspiciously long period of time. Usually I end up playing the part of the home plate umpire breaking up a confab on the mound, which in this case is sometimes a wet one, though I don't investigate. That's for Ron, the sewer rat.

I have to say that these mostly 30ish women teaching in the school are doing the lord's work. My boss, for example, seems to be kind of a utility all-star. Just one of her tasks is evidently to fill in at a moment's notice when another teacher doesn't make it to school in the morning. Kids can manipulate subs, but they don't conduct their experiments on her: more like, there's a new drill sergeant on base and she's known to be tougher than the regular one (to say nothing of knowing all the lessons for every day in every grade, and the name of every kid in the school, their test scores, the language they speak at home, the family background if it's notable, the teachers they've had in prior grades, the trend of their academic performance, probably the number of ribbons they won on track & field day). She might think I'm better at my job than I am, because her attendance at tutoring sessions changes everything. Suddenly the kids are well behaved and I can teach instead of just try to impose a semblance of order. If someone's attention wanders, she doesn't say a thing, just aims an irritated look in their direction and the behavior ceases. To mortals, she possesses a super power, and no doubt I'm fooling myself to think that she might not know that I just get to borrow it when she's around. 

Her "office" is an unused classroom she shares with me and a bunch of others. Her "desk" is a table top that has an area roughly twice that of her chrome book. She's about 30, has a master's degree, and probably earns less than people I used to work with who were perplexed by 5th-grade story problems such as

If Mike owns a one-third interest in a parcel of real estate, and he conveys one-fifth interest to Jim, who also has a one-third interest, how much interest does Mike now own? And how about Jim?

Yet these stumped colleagues of mine went through the schools before there was a crisis triggered by "woke" ideology, the teachers' union, etc., etc., blah, blah, whine, whimper, triple exclamation points. I'm not buying it. If teachers could "indoctrinate" and "groom" kids, they'd take a spare moment to groom them in the proper use of the apostrophe, too. This complaint concerning "the youth of today" goes back centuries and yet somehow the world keeps creaking along—maybe in part because some people, instead of freaking out about same-sex greeting cards for sale at Target, throw themselves into important and challenging work that's grossly undervalued by the vaunted market. 

Wallace Stevens go to work

The scholar Harry Levin, in giving an account of why so many odd theories denying that Shakespeare's plays were written by Shakespeare, writes that the figure of "a practical man of affairs, although well attested by the evidence, seemed rather too modest to occupy the lofty pedestal reared by the Bardolaters." I wonder what these romantic skeptics might make of the career of the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), who went to law school and then, after knocking 'round the law game for a short while as a young man, caught on in the legal department of an insurance company, The Hartford Accident and Insurance Company, where he eventually rose to the position of vice president, writing his poems in the evenings and on weekends. He's not my favorite, but I remember him on every Memorial Day as the author of the following poem entitled "The Death of a Soldier":

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.

Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.

Eating less meat

The subject of animal consciousness—animals' experience of life—was never on my radar till I had a dog. So, on the big question, cats or dogs, there you have it: cats never forced the topic into my view, and I just can't feel about them the way I feel about dogs.

There's a mail delivery person who works on the other side of Nicollet Avenue, where I often walk our dog, a member of a species famously antagonistic toward people in her line of work. She makes friends by carrying treats and dispensing them liberally. We've gotten so well known to her, and our dog loves her so much, that if she sees us while driving along in her USPS van she'll pull over and get out for a little small talk in addition to the usual doggy biscuit. It seems that the goodwill thereby generated has, in the mind of our dog, been extended to all postal workers. Their vehicles aren't very different in size and shape from lots of others but only a passing USPS van causes Coopsie—that's his name—to strain at the leash and try to keep up. If the van stops, and his friend gets out, he's wildly happy; if as often happens it's someone else, he stands at expectant attention. It sure seems to me that he can distinguish between "sure thing" and "somewhat promising," though I have no idea what's going on in his head. I said "wildly happy" but it could be some other emotion. 

Is "emotion" the right word? Close enough for a layman.

Animal rights is currently a hot topic in academic philosophy. The dour Schopenhauer (1788-1860) remarked that the one good thing about the railroads is that they saved millions of draught-horses their miserable existence. Like many of her colleagues, the contemporary philosopher Martha Nussbaum (pictured above) goes quite a lot farther, as shown in this interview about her latest book. I have thought for a while that of the various arguments for not eating animals none was conclusive, even if most had at least some merit, and that taken together they probably made a compelling case, although evidently not compelling enough to make me turn up my nose at a hamburger. If my own case is representative, animal rights supporters should play up the similarities between the animals we slaughter for food and the ones we keep for pets. I'm pretty sure that, in their capacity to experience (for example) fear or contentment, cows and pigs aren't a lot different from dogs and cats. 

But I do like to eat cows and pigs, and chickens. It's like my brain and brain stem have to agree to disagree, and it works out in my version of the "incrementalism" Nussbaum recommends:  I eat less meat than formerly—smaller portions, more meatless meals, less beef and pork, more fish and shrimp (I doubt shrimp experience fear or contentment). Tonight I'm making a penne dish. In a little olive oil, I sauté whatever vegetables I have while cooking the penne. Then I run warm water over some frozen shrimp, tail-off, peeled and deveined, before adding them to the vegetables. When the pasta is almost done, I throw into the skillet a bunch of grape tomatoes and a small bottle of pesto—the contents, not the bottle itself. Then I drain the pasta, add it to the skillet with the other ingredients, and toss it all together. Daughters serve themselves first and, since they pick around the vegetables, I imagine it's quite the healthy meal for me. Two glasses of cheap red wine as it's easy to go overboard with healthy habits. 

At the old ball game

 

I was at Target Field last night with some of my favorite people, pictured. The game was not sufficiently entertaining—four hits all night for the home team—to divert my attention from the idiotic palaver of the drunk 20-something bros. sitting behind us, so I'm thinking all my pretty ones heard some of it, too. Boy, these guys really have a lot of sex. Good for you, Aiden! (I'm guessing at least one of them must have been named Aiden.) The high point, I mean one of the low points, came when someone asked whether anyone worried about pregnancy. Obviously the brooding deep thinker of the group.

"Oh no," answered the one I'm calling Aiden, "she pops birth control pills like candy."

Ya, quantity is a crucial and often overlooked consideration: if you want to be really safe, and you're having really a lot of sex, you better take several a day, I'm pretty sure that's how it works, Aiden. How did you find your way to the ballpark? I know I sound like an old guy, but I honestly don't think my friends and I were this dumb. And we devoted summers to playing softball, so it's not like we were just back stateside at the end of our Rhodes scholarships. 

By the way, the Twins are in first place by 3.5 games in the American League's Central Division even though their record, 22-18, is identical to that of the last place team in the Eastern Division. 

. . . and I feel fine

Sixth grader says to me yesterday, "Dad, I have a theory. Oxygen is poison but it takes about 80 years to kill ya." She might have been in a dark mood as we were on our way home from a volleyball tournament in which her team had been walloped in the semifinals. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, the end of the world is a recurring theme in her conversational starters, especially the factoid from science class relating to the sun's life expectancy. "It's not just going to go on and on and on, you know," she says. 

Yes, but somehow I'm not concerned. Our solar system goes cold, implodes, whatever, "leaves not a rack behind," what you want me to do about it, girl? Also, fyi, the chance that humans go on for as long as the sun is essentially nil. I don't say this aloud as I'm pretty sure I know what she's driving at: the senselessness of going to school, algebra in particular. I've told her it's what we do, solve math problems, tell stories, sing songs:

 

Rule 5.09(b)(1)

If you watched the Twins game tonight, you might like me be wondering what exactly the rule about avoiding a tag by running out of the baseline says. It's Rule 5.09(b)(1): A runner is out when

He runs more than three feet away from his base path to avoid being tagged unless his action is to avoid interference with a fielder fielding a batted ball. A runner's base path is established when the tag attempt occurs and is a straight line from the runner to the base he is attempting to reach safely . . . .

In the play in tonight's game, Cleveland had a guy on first when the batter hit a grounder to our third baseman, Miranda, who ranged to his left to field it. He then appeared to fumble the ball in his glove when trying to transfer it to his throwing hand and, by the time he finally got it to Polanco, covering second, the runner had slid in safely. That's when things started getting kind of crazy. Miranda by this time was closer to second base than third, and Polanco had the ball at second. The runner, having been called safe, popped out of his slide and headed for third, which was unoccupied by any fielder. So now, if you can picture it, there is this odd kind of situation where Miranda, half facing Polanco in order to receive a throw, is also retreating toward third as fast as he can. Meanwhile the runner, sprinting for third, is almost even with, and next to, the retreating Miranda. Knowing that Polanco will throw to Miranda, who'll then try to tag him, the runner begins veering toward the outfield, away from a direct path to third base, and also away from Miranda. Polanco throws, Miranda catches it and then lunges to tag the veering runner, who is by now too far away to be reached. There is no tag, the runner reaches third safely, and is not called out for running out of the baseline. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli argues long and loud and gets thrown out of the game. This play happened in the middle of an inning in which Cleveland scored three runs, and they eventually won the game, 4 to 3. 

Seems to me that the rule leaves a lot, probably too much, to the umpire's discretion. The runner is veering away from the fielder to avoid a tag. Did he veer more than three feet? Probably, except that the three feet has something to do with where he was "when the tag attempt occurs"—a vague phrase, though as to the play in tonight's game a lawyerly umpire would surely point out that a tag attempt cannot occur before the fielder even has the ball. On the other hand, the language of the rule would apparently permit a player who anticipated a tag attempt to leave the baseline by so much that the attempt isn't made, and that can't be right. 

If in tonight's game the runner had been called out, the Cleveland manager probably would have been tossed, the Twins probably would have won, and Cleveland's case for having been screwed by the umpire would have been, roughly speaking, as meritorious as the Twins' case is. Happily, there is another game tomorrow: new things to wonder at. 

Candid camera

The family Christmas cards of some of the gun fetishists in the Congress put me in mind of Diane Arbus, the photographer of freaks and misfits who took her own life in 1971. Did she come back from the dead to contribute her skills to spreading right-wing holiday cheer?

Holiday card of Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican from Kentucky:

Arbus:

Holiday card of Rep. Lauren Boebert, Republican from Colorado:

Arbus:

The most recent holiday card of Rep. Andy Ogles, the Tennessee Republican whose district includes the Covenant School, where in March eight people were killed in a mass shooting:

Arbus was sometimes criticized for exploiting her subjects in the pursuit of "art." Well, what about the kids in the photos that are meant to warm the heart?

Potpourri

Sitting here at the dining room table while, down below, workmen install a new boiler or, as I am more inclined to think of it, over-solve the problem of what I should do with my extra dollars. 

I haven't plugged Scott Shapiro, my favorite social media personality, for a while. His view of Elan Musk is, shall we say, jaundiced, and he consequently appears to be switching his base of operations from Twitter to TikTok. Here he is on his new platform, presumably creating content for teens:

 

@scottjshapiro0 #philosophy #philosophytiktok #gilbertryle #hedonism #fyp #foryou #philosophyjokes ♬ original sound - Scott Shapiro

Shapiro teaches philosophy at Yale. But you'd already guessed, right?

I believe it was the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an advisor to President Nixon and then, from 1977 to 2001, a Democratic senator from New York, who coined the phrase "defining deviance down." Thought of it today as a way of explaining why people seem to think it's not especially crazy that the last vice president just gave testimony to a grand jury investigating his former boss, the last president, for crimes committed against the United States. And that in around 14 months or so that indicted former president will likely be the nominee of the Republican party to be president again.

I don't get the strategy of Trump's legal team in the rape case now being tried in Manhattan. Their client loudly insists that the encounter never happened: it's a complete fabrication by a woman who, he says, "isn't my type." (What, is she smart and decent?) But in his cross examination of her, Trump's lawyer keeps trying to trip her up on the details of this nonevent. Why didn't she scream? Why did she joke around with Trump, telling him that he ought to slip on the see-through body suit? Sounds a lot like something that really happened. 

To the clank and thud in the basement I've been reading this article, "How Doctors Die." Apparently they surrender faster than the laity, and the author's premise is that experience has taught them that hopeless is hopeless:

Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call "futile care" being performed on people. That's when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, "Promise me if you find me like this that you'll kill me." They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped "NO CODE" to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.

Why do so many of the rest of us do otherwise? The doctor/author has some ideas—the whole essay is of considerable human interest—to which I would add that it's easy to see how the determination to live a little longer at any cost is a trait that, while irrational, would be favored by natural selection. In this regard, it's like the emotion of sexual jealousy: only makes sense in the world according to Darwin, the one we inhabit. 

I think I'm drawn lately to this lighthearted topic by the necessity of mailing copies of my dad's death certificate hither and thither in order to get money. Every time, before licking the envelope, I read over again the cause of death, complications of subarachnoid hemorrhage (non-operated), and feel a little twinge at the parenthesis that then dissipates when I proceed on to the drear list of "other contributing conditions." The things people have to endure when dying! Getting your head sliced open so that it happens in March instead of February—not recommended by Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, the author of "How Doctors Die," or my dad's offspring. Kids, if I don't make it to a lawyer, you can consider this my health care directive. Hope it's clear, I know you're not the most devoted readers.