“Our Teams Are Working Hard”

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So says British Airlines. Dammit BA, what did I ever do to you? I was hoping to have started including you dear reader in my Belgium cycling adventure by now, but major baggage feck ups have delayed that. It started in Seattle when someone apparently sent 85 people’s baggage to arrivals instead of departures.

First world problems of course. I am coming to you from a warm apartment, drinking coffee, and I have quality company, so I will be A-okay. I even have my bike, contact lenses, and a change of clothes since two of my three delayed bags arrived yesterday.

Still missing . . . cycling kits, all bike tools and other accessories, among other things, so I will be the only no show at today’s shakeout ride. The loneliness epidemic.

I do have lots of reading material. Yesterday, I read a long New Yorker article about the kidnapping crisis in Nigeria. Kinda put my British Airway “problem” in perspective. Long story short, it’s mostly in the Northern Muslim part of the country and it’s fueled by economic desperation which is a fancy phrase for poverty. Nigerian police don’t have anywhere near the resources to fight kidnapping and it is working in the sense that most people pay ransoms. Brutal numbers, stories, scenario more generally, with hardly any hope for improvement any time soon.

Meanwhile, I wait for my expensive cycling kits, computer, radar, etc. And you wait to come along for the ride. Boohoo for you, boohoo for me.

Going Against Type

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My mom was famously antisocial on planes, which is a bit odd since she was quite personable. She’d literally psych herself up not to talk to her neighbor(s). And she had strategies. Other people in my lineage lean anti-social.

So on my way to London yesterday, I decided to blaze a new path of airplane neighborliness. My next-door neighbor was a young, East Indian man with two phones. Uber courteous when I first sat down, he took my man purse and stowed it for me since there were no seats in front of us. An hour into the flight I dishonored my mom by asking him, “Are you from London?” He smiled and said, “No, I’m from Seattle, but I travel to London frequently for work.”

Definitely the most interesting dude I’ll meet on my two week Euro sojourn. When I told two of my friends that in Heathrow, they were hurt, but I clarified “most interesting new dude”.

Can’t believe I didn’t get his name because I’d love to follow his career. 33 years old. Ohio State grad, but let’s not hold that against him. Got a PhD from Rice University in Oncology at 26. Works for Eli Lilly doing “small and large” drug development deals. Was on his way to Barcelona for a conference.

I knew he had serious science chops when he was familiar with Multiple Systems Atrophy. We talked about Lynn’s passing and his grandfather dying in India right before his 90th birthday. And him, afterwards, moving his parents from Chennai to Lynnwood, WA.

He met his wife when he was 19 and she was 18. Despite him spending the next 10 days in Barcelona, they’re trying to get pregnant. They’re vacationing in Japan in October.

He speaks English, Tamil, Hindi, French, German, Arabic, and Spanish poorly. He learned Arabic while teaching English in Cairo as a part of his high school education.

We bonded in ways my mom would never understand. So much so, when British Airways informed half the plane, him and me included, that our bags didn’t make it on our flight, he felt comfortable bitching about it. “What am I going to wear out to dinner tonight?” First world problem for a high flyer, figuratively and literally.

Do Not Delay, Find This Book

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The opening four paragraphs of the most glowing book review I have ever read.

Dwight Garner in today’s New York Times.

“In the souk that is contemporary publishing, much attention has gone recently to the minimalists and the tinkerers, to writers of short novels steeped in irony. It’s been a meal of small plates, reflective of short attention spans.

The Jamaican writer Marlon James’s new novel, “The Disappearers,” at 600-plus pages, is instead a maximalist’s banquet: It is humane, blood-flecked, disturbing and sustaining. It takes James 90 pages to say hello. It’s another 70 pages before his story settles into your guts and begins to twist them. It’s yet another 150 before you fully comprehend his loping authority and the scale of his ambitions. Booster rockets fall away. Disparate coordinates begin to converge.

Why not just say it? With this novel about gay experience and murderous homophobia in Jamaica and elsewhere during the 1980s and ’90s, James has written a masterpiece, the novel of the decade and possibly of the century thus far.

It deserves to be talked about alongside Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children,” for its tumult of language and its crisscrossing post-colonial themes; Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” (James picks up on a revenge scenario from that novel); and William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” — the greatest American novel, I’d argue — for many reasons but especially for the way James, like Faulkner, hammers his themes like a Vulcan, rolling over them relentlessly from new and sometimes oblique angles, advancing and enlarging his attack each time. This is another way of saying “The Disappearers” was one of the signal reading experiences of my adult life. It sank knives deep into my heart. I’m still in recovery from it.”

The Disappearers

Perspicacious

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I read this sentence on Tyler Cowen’s blog today.

“I once had on Sam Bankman-Fried, now a convicted felon.  It was an excellent episode, and I will point out my lines of questioning were more perspicacious than many people since have realized.”

Cowen is explaining to his readers why he’s going forward with an interview on his podcast with a well-known Chinese internet intellectual, who recently was accused of plagiarism.

I did not know the meaning of “perspicacious”.

I try to be as perspicacious here as possible, but ultimately, that’s your call dear reader.

DDTTM

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Second in a possible series of intros of especially loyal PressingPausers.

Full name, Dan Dan the Transpo Man. Dano is retired, but gets more done in a day than Travis or Scottie who allegedly “work” fulltime.

He’s from Minneapolis and has all the classic signs of Upper Midwest niceness—does not swear, prefers music from the 1950s-1970s, has wood tennis racquets in the garage—until a high school referee making $12/hour makes a questionable call against the local team. Then he loses it a bit. Or when the announcer says, “It’s another Olympia first down!” He despises that.

Why the Transpo Man? Because when he was a working stiff, he was in charge of Washington State’s federal highways. Which was fun because other friends and I had someone to vent to as our commutes worsened. He was always so sympathetic to our plight. Not!

Dan is a physical marvel. He runs a few times a week. Really fast for just having turned 69. And walks a few times a week. And hits the Tumwater Stairs really hard every Tuesday morn. And roller blades. And mows his ginormous yard. And goes to Adoration every Friday morning and prays in advance for a miracle for me once I’m at the Pearly Gates.

Start with Minnesota and add a progressive Catholicism and you get one goodhearted, generous dude. The type of dude who saved up his timeshare weeks to take twelve of his closest friends to Hawaii when he retired. The type of dude who returns from Alaska with salmon for everyone. The type of dude who will invite you to his Sunriver casa if you’re lucky. The type of dude who will take delivery of your new car for you when you’re stuck in Colorado.

He’s not perfect though. He still roots for all the sad (sick) Minnesota teams despite having lived in the PNW longer. He insists on using a nickname for your humble blogger mostly because I’ve never liked it. And, in a nod to Catholic brotherhood, he is likely to vote for Vance for President in 2028.

Just kidding on that last one. Dan is as blue as they come. And he’s an activist, writing letters to public officials and postcards to NC voters and even fancying himself a poet at times. An engineer with writing skills, who’d a thunk it?! A true Renaissance Man. And one of the nicest, best friends a guy could ever hope for.

Back in the day. DDTTM on the far right after trouncing Scottie and me.

Note To Self

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Listening to a Spotify “Acoustic Chill” playlist while decluttering files and reliving the past is not a great combo. Word of the day . . . melancholy. . . a deep, quiet, and lasting feeling of sadness or thoughtful sorrow. It often comes without a single clear cause and can be mixed with a sense of nostalgia, longing, or calm reflection.

Then add this into the mix.

Nothing some hip-hop and touching grass can’t fix.

Losing It

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Any self-respecting writer must eventually come to grips with today’s political reality. Eventually, intelligent readers deserve more than paddle boarding and dance vid posts.

So, what to make of today’s lead article in the “paper of record”? “As Iran Truce Expires and Options Shrivel, Trump Lashes Out”.

The first three sentences:

“As a crumbling truce with Iran officially collapsed on Monday, President Trump signaled his frustration at his inability to resolve a war that he started but cannot seem to end.

In an interview with Fox News, the president lashed out at an American ally, Oman, that has been trying to mediate negotiations with Iran.

‘If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,’ Mr. Trump said in a phone interview, according to Fox News’s Trey Yingst.”

Until this war “that he started”, Trump has excelled at bending reality to his patently false and often delusional will by using the bully pulpit and his legion of cowardly acolytes to repeat lies over and over until all of the Fox News anchors and half of the voting public believes them.

But lying as a means towards self-serving ends doesn’t work in the context of geopolitics. There are too many actors and too much complexity for his bullshit to work on the global stage. Remember when he said the Russian War against Ukraine would be over within 24 hours of his being elected? More specifically, Iran’s leaders are immune from his bullshit. As is the price of crude oil and all the related agricultural and consumer products. Saying we control the Strait of Hormuz and we have ample military resources for this conflict and others does not make it so.

Trump is learning he can’t bend Iranians or inflation to his will like he has the Republican Cult Party. And he can’t investigate or fire anyone abroad. He’s trapped by his own inattention to detail and his team’s incompetence, so of course he’s lashing out. At Oman. At South Korea. At the families whose sons and daughters are showing more selflessness on the USS Lincoln than he ever has. Or will.

This will not end well for the Middle East, for the (dis)United States, or for the global economy. But if his name is just put back on the Kennedy Center, Trump won’t sweat it.