Part sixteen of my ongoing journal entries about life in the time of the 2020-2021 Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Previous posts: Part One (Jan-Mar, 2020). Part Two (April 2020). Part Three (May 2020). Part Four (June 2020). Part Five (July 2020). Part Six (August 2020). Part Seven (September 2020). Part Eight (October 2020). Part Nine (November 2020). Part Ten (December 2020). Part Eleven (January 2021). Part Twelve (February 2021). Part Thirteen (March 2021). Part Fourteen (April 2021). Part Fifteen (May 2021).
June 3
Having somehow survived the Saga of the Fawn over the past few days, our attention can now turn to…cicadas!
The Brood X cicadas are now out in force. They were mightily anticipated last month but made their presence felt only slowly. First there was an otherworldly hum in the distance, like the mothership hovering just offscreen. A couple of weeks ago, we saw our first cicadas at a friend’s house in Silver Spring, but just on one tree. I kept my eye out for them on my evening walks and only saw a few here and there on older trees.
Last week, I started to hear them more loudly in specific areas on my walk. I stopped in one loud area to try to record them but I found that the iPhone doesn’t really capture the true sound. I didn’t see very many cicadas on the trees immediately around me, but then I looked closer to the ground and saw dozens in the brush and grass.
It’s gotten warmer and as of this week I can officially declare they are everywhere. I’m on our back deck at the moment and just downloaded a decibel app to measure how loud it is. There is still the mothership background thrum that simmers constantly in the distance, but it’s now joined by a more pronounced high-pitched cricket noise that is closer and arrives in waves every few seconds, just like water washing ashore. The noise level ranges from 62-66 decibels, which the web describes as the noise level of a business office or normal conversation. But more annoying. (While I got this post ready, a small rain shower passed, cooling the temperature and dropping the noise level to 42 decibels, more like a regular suburban outdoor level.)
Sitting on the deck, I can now see the cicadas flying across our yard. They’re ungainly, poor flyers. It’s rather like watching little kids dogpaddle across a pool. You can almost hear the cicadas yelling, “Look at me! I’m flyyyying!” So far, only one of them has actually landed on the screen and Manny quickly pounced, scaring it away. Driving around yesterday and today, I know I hit several of the poor buggers as they paddled across the sky. The roads look like crime scenes. I took some better pictures of individual cicadas on my walk yesterday.
Yesterday I went to the driving range at Waverly Woods to start to get into shape for playing golf with Joe in July. The range was near a stand of older trees with lots of cicadas, and there were many flying with the breeze across the range. I can attest it’s very distracting to have one land on you in the middle of a backswing. One of them came to rest on my shoulder and it sounded for all the world like a fire alarm going off a few inches from my ear. Very unnerving. It’s a good thing cicadas don’t bite and can be easily shooed away. A couple of kids set up near me on the range with a coach trying to give them a lesson. The coach didn’t stand a chance. The kids were entirely more interested in the cicadas than golf. After a few minutes the coach hauled the kids off to the other side of the range to be further away from the trees and cicadas.
Now that the cicadas appear to be hitting their peak, it will be interesting to see how long they will last. We have a string of very warm days coming up. It should be prime time for them.
Yesterday was the first time in about a decade I picked up a golf club. I first had to dust all the cobwebs and garage gunk off my bag and clubs, which took a few minutes. I got a large bucket of balls at the range and proceeded to chunk away. My first dozen or so swings were awful, digging up more dirt than anything else. But after a while I started to hit a few nice balls between the clankers. I started to remember that less is more with a golf swing: the less effort I put into actually swinging, the better the result. By the end I was mildly pleased with my progress. I could drive the ball pretty straight and got to where my short irons were at least going in the right direction. On the very last swing I could feel the twinge of a blister on my right thumb so it was a good time to stop. I’ll have to get out a few more times before July, but I haven’t completely forgotten how to play. I’m not greatly incentivized to actually play a round, though. That can wait until I see Joe.
The virus, I’m happy to report, continues to abate. The U.S. average is below 20,000 daily for the first time since the beginning of the crisis last March. That’s pretty remarkable progress. The global average is still high but is at least trending downward after a little tick up last week.
Numbers:
- Global cases: 171,800,000; Daily average: 462K; Total Deaths: 3,700,000
- USA cases: 33,300,000; Daily average: 16K; Total Deaths: 595,000
- Maryland cases: 460,000 Deaths: 9,622; “At risk of outbreak”
- per CovidActNow.org
- 1 state “On track to contain COVID” (Northern Marianas)
- 49 states “Slow disease growth” (West Virginia, Florida, Arizona, Oregon, Louisiana…)
- 3 states “At risk of outbreak” (Wyoming, Washington, Colorado)
- 0 states “Active or imminent outbreak”
- 0 states “Severe outbreak”
I ate inside at a restaurant today for the first time on my own. While the Maids were in the house, I got shakshuka for the first time at Mikey and Mel’s Deli in Maple Lawn. It was tasty, and better yet, there was hardly anyone else in the restaurant. I felt relatively safe. It was nice to order a dish with poached eggs — I wouldn’t have tried to take them home. More signs of normal.
On the cultural scene, I watched all four episodes of High on the Hog on Netflix, which I thought would be a food tourist show but turned out to incorporate a much higher than expected quotient of African American history. Plus it’s just beautifully done. I missed this NY Times review which would have clued me in. I quite enjoyed the first three episodes about African roots in Benin, some of the impact in South Carolina and Gullah cuisine, and the roles of the enslaved chefs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I recommended the show to Laurie and Allie. Unfortunately the fourth episode about Texas was the weakest. They also could have easily done a show about New Orleans and Creole cuisine, and perhaps one about the Great Migration and spread (and co-option) of African American food around the country. Still, I quite liked it.
I also finished Mare of Easttown which generated a lot of buzz, particularly surrounding its finale and twist ending. I enjoyed the series overall, the performances are excellent and the plot pulled me along, but I was dissatisfied with the ending. In reaching for an emotional climax that pulls lots of strings together, I felt it skipped over a lot of procedural and legal steps and strained credibility. Not that it was terribly credible to have so many deaths in one small community — worse than Cabot Cove or Midsommer. It was well-acted and deserves awards, but hopefully not for its screenplay.
A final cultural note was finding a trove of media surrounding Alexander von Humboldt, sparked especially by a current Smithsonian exhibit at the Museum of American Art. He’s a fascinating character and I want to learn more about him. The exhibit leans heavily into the impact of his 6-week visit to Washington DC and Philadelphia in 1804. That’s all well and good, but there’s a lot more to his life. I had wanted to visit the exhibit before the pandemic, but now that I’ve had a dose of the exhibit online, I’m not sure I need to. Credit to the Smithsonian for making so much available online, but it doesn’t really cover the aspects of von Humboldt’s life that I’d like to explore, plus I feel like I’ve seen all I need to see of the exhibit. I’m particularly interested to learn more about the overlap and connections between von Humboldt, Lafayette and Bolivar. Which reminds me that it’s time to tackle Bolivar’s story in the Revolutions podcast.
June 9
I feel like I’ve fallen behind in my journaling. I’ve been busy the past few days processing a bunch of additional photos I found on the bookshelf with the Goodloe Genealogy that I’d overlooked for years. I’ve been slapping them into various posts all over the website, very much like a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t think they’re really worth cataloging in a separate post like I did with Mom’s Bag — it’s not quite that extensive a set of pictures and there’s little rhyme or reason to them, though I think it’s another collection of photos that Mom had squirreled away and then so did I.
The highlight was finding Dad’s report on their 1974 trip to China with a group of Hong Kong businessmen. This was a very early glimpse into China and represents the most extensive example I have of Dad’s writing. I knew I had seen it somewhere in this house and I’m glad I finally found it.
I’ve also been chauffeur over the past couple of days, first for Leslie who needed a ride to Baltimore’s Mercy Hospital for an operation. I’m waiting to pick her up today to bring her home. Over the weekend, Barb learned from a friend of a big jewelry store in Pikesville going out of business and having a big sale. So she sent me there on Monday to scope it out and we returned yesterday to actually make some purchases. She got a ring and earrings for herself and also some for Allie. They are her post-pandemic purchases to help get the economy started again. We’ve been spending far less on restaurants and vacations and Barb felt the money start to burn a hole in her pocket. Plus, it’s been a long time since she got the bug for new jewelry. I don’t begrudge her desires but now, hopefully, that’s out of her system for a while.
In fawn news, our friend showed up one more time the morning of Saturday, June 5, but didn’t stay very long. We checked an hour or two later and it was gone, possibly scared off by some of the neighbors’ lawnmowers. I did get a couple more pictures, though, including a sequence where the fawn stood up and then plopped back down right where it had been. I’ve added them to the fawn saga.
The cicadas are at their peak. Yesterday, one flew in my car and perched on my dashboard, looking satisfied with himself and staring at me with his beady red eyes. Fortunately, I was at a stop and was able to toss him out the window without incident. The back deck noise reached 75 decibels which is vacuum cleaner level. Over the weekend I was walking outside when one landed near my ear and started buzzing. I swatted him away but then panicked when I felt something in my ear — it took a few stressful moments of epileptic swatting before I realized it was my earbuds. I hope no one was watching. Since then, I’ve walked on my treadmill upstairs rather than getting divebombed outside; also it’s been grossly hot and humid. The news reports say people are tired of the novelty and ready for the cicadas to disappear, which they should do in another couple of weeks. They are an odd phenomenon. Barb and I realized we will be 80 before we see them again, which gave us pause.
I guess that’s most of the news of the moment. Seems like there were other things that kept me from writing but I’m not sure what they were.
I’ll forgo the virus numbers — they’re still generally going down in the U.S. and globally, but there’s continuing concern that new variants will become more of a problem before enough people are vaccinated. For the moment, that’s a lower level worry. For the most part, life is quickly returning to normal in the U.S., particularly as the weather warms up. Barb and I ate indoors at Shannon’s yesterday for an everyday Wednesday dinner, another first of sorts for us. Movie theaters and music venues are ramping up, though I haven’t been to either yet. Maybe July or August, certainly by September when I have a ticket for a Bela Fleck concert.
June 14
Not a whole lot to report other than things in our lives are drifting toward normal. I went to lunch with our neighbor Mark today to thank him for watching our house and Manny while we were in Boston. We went to Clove and Cardamom, a new restaurant in Columbia that scored high marks for our lunches. It offers a mix of Indian, Mediterranean and Latin foods, most of them spicy. I’ll be happy to return there with Allie or Laurie someday. Barb will never go.
On Saturday night, I cooked a nice steak and we watched In the Heights on HBO, a dinner-and-a-movie date nowadays. Barb and I went to Manalu in Frederick yesterday and came home with lots of leftovers, after which I finished season two of Lupin and watched Mulan. I’ve added my reviews of each to Movies I Saw in 2021.
Tonight I will play tennis at Cattail for the third time. It’s slowly becoming a habit. It looks like our indoor group will return for the winter starting in September. I’m going to get back to the driving range tomorrow or Wednesday to get ready for golfing with Joe. So that’s my stab at a healthy lifestyle.
The U.S. passed 600,000 deaths today. What can one say to such a number? The declines in virus rates seem to have leveled off in the U.S. and globally. The Delta variant which originated in India is rapidly spreading globally but fortunately the vaccines still seem to work against it. The problem remains getting enough people vaccinated to slow the spread and lower the risk of more deaths and additional variants.
Numbers:
- Global cases: 176,000,000; Daily average: 303K; Total Deaths: 3,810,000
- USA cases: 33,400,000; Daily average: 14K; Total Deaths: 600,000
- Maryland cases: 461,000 Deaths: 9,686; “Slow disease growth”
- per CovidActNow.org
- 1 state “On track to contain COVID” (Northern Marianas)
- 50 states “Slow disease growth” (Missouri, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Florida…)
- 2 states “At risk of outbreak” (Wyoming, Colorado)
- 0 states “Active or imminent outbreak”
- 0 states “Severe outbreak”
Biden’s forward momentum from his first 100 days has flagged. He’s on his first international trip now to the G7, NATO and Geneva to meet with Putin. It’s going well but his domestic initiatives have hit the wall of unified Republican resistance and some Democratic wavering. It doesn’t bode well. Already, pundits are writing off the 2022 midterms and remainder of Biden’s presidency. It seems a little early to give up hope, but it may just be wishful thinking to believe he will get any other major programs through this narrowly split Congress. No doubt it will be the focus once he’s back in the U.S.
And so we make the transition from spring into summer. The weather’s getting hotter and more humid. The cicadas are in decline, though still very present. It seems like they’ve become better flyers now, later in their cycle. More desperate, maybe, but a little more competent. Manny is keeping busy protecting our deck.
In a couple more weeks Allie will be here and then it’s time for our Colorado adventure. I’ve started a Google doc for Colorado daily plans and activities. I’ve shared it with Sara so far and will open it to others when we have more details filled in. Hoping everyone can find something fun to look forward to.
June 17
Our fearless leader, Maryland Gov. Hogan declared that most pandemic restrictions are to be lifted by July 1. The pandemic is over and we won! It may not be over around the world, but in Maryland we are declaring victory and moving on. The new normal is here. Nothing more to see, people. Get on with your lives and spend some money.
Now what?
As if the past 16 months have not already been an extended exercise in excessive navel gazing, I feel the need to indulge in a bit more. What have we learned? What will we do differently with the rest of our grace-given lives?
There is the oddity of trust, nay, faith in science. We have faith that since we’ve been poked twice by a vial of Pfizer juice we are now immune to the threat of imminent, random death or inadvertently killing those around us. I’m mostly willing to believe it. While I harbor some lingering, skeptical doubt, I’m increasingly willing to eat inside restaurants with no mask. This is the measure of my devotion.
Religion may be dead, but science is a very fickle, brittle substitute. Science is great until we learn something new that upends whole segments of certainty. Humans don’t have a good track record of knowing everything.
I toy with the notion of exploring my own inchoate personal philosophy but I’m hesitant to sound completely naive. I’ve done no rigorous study of religious, post-religious, existential or philosophical thought. Nevertheless, I keep coming back to a self-defined concept of existential joy as a kind of opposite of existential dread. I need to at least try to write a post that explains my pre-elementary school level thinking on the matter.
Here is the state of my self-indulgent life: It’s a gorgeous day, perfect temperature, low humidity, cloudless sky. The Maids are here cleaning my house so I don’t have to. I’m sitting on the deck writing this because writing these self-referential solipsistic mutterings is what I like doing best. I’ve largely convinced myself that it’s a productive endeavor, worthy of some future reader’s time or at least contributing to my own mental health. Sometimes (like now) I’m not so sure. Nevertheless, I shall persist.
Getting back to the topic of the pandemic, when you come down to it, the pandemic has been at most an inconvenience to me at a personal level. I can grasp the threat it has posed to those less able to socially distance or sit in a castle with nearly unlimited food and entertainment options, but that threat and the pandemic’s impact have been at a remove from me. I’ve been obscenely lucky, along with my 1%, 2%, 5% or whatever cohort to be able to sit this out in splendid isolation. Hell, I’ve even prospered as the stock market reached new highs and my personal spending declined. That doesn’t feel right, but I haven’t covered myself in any glory of increased giving or sacrifice. There’s still time, of course, but the tide is ebbing.
No. I find my main concern coming out of this period is to wonder when and where I can travel again. It may be the most self-indulgent response possible but that’s where I am. And on top of that, I’m somewhat resentful that most of the world is still off-limits or at least restricted. We have Colorado next month, which is great, but I haven’t been able to plan anything else beyond a short trip to see Allie in Boston and Cape Cod in late August.
But with some luck (and faith in science!) I can start planning for 2022, 2023 and beyond, right?
I’m conflicted over the reasons why I want to travel. I still maintain an extensive bucket list of vacations I’d like to take, but I’m having a hard time prioritizing them or deciding if I even want to do them. For the next 18 months there’s the headache of Barb still working and her reluctance to take more than a few days off at a time. I have places I’d like to go — to see Laurie in Spain and to spend time in Memphis and/or Nashville are at the top of the list at the moment — but I’m not at all sure when either of those might make sense.
Once Barb retires, we have a big splurge planned to cruise through New Zealand and Australia in February 2023, but after that, who knows? In general, cruising — especially on big ships — holds little appeal. I scan the brochures and find very few other trips I’d consider. Maybe a river cruise tied into some additional stay in Europe. Our friends Mary and John just expressed an interest in traveling with us and that might be a fun change to the equation, someday when our calendars align.
I have little desire to simply see sights for the sake of seeing them. I will be fine if I never see the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat. I do have a desire to experience new places with fresh eyes for somewhat extended days, live a little bit like a local and get to know a place just a bit. I greatly enjoyed my trips with Laurie to Caiscais, Porto, Finisterre and Asturias where we stayed 3-4 nights at least. I’m not sure how that fits into Barb’s notions of travel. We need to sort that out after she’s retired.
Traveling to see family or friends (what friends?) holds some appeal for me, but I’m not sure how much for Barb. Colorado will be a big test. I wouldn’t mind making it more of a habit to rent a house and have everyone together at their option. Maybe the Colorado mountains can be the equivalent of a North Carolina beach house vacation for a few of the coming years. I can see why the Embrey family did it year after year. I can also see why it stoked resentment among and between family members, however.
I don’t see Barb jumping to go to Spain or Asheville or Gainesville, though. Much less the Galapagos…which I doubt I’ll ever return to though I’d like to see Jill and her kids. I can foresee a California trip to see Chris and maybe Gerard at some point after Barb retires.
On top of all these travel considerations are the issues of what to do with the house, cat, newspapers, mail and lawn while we’re gone. Our neighbor Mark has been very considerate and generous with offers to help but how far can we stretch that? Someday, eventually, we might move closer to Allie (or someone else in the family?) so she can watch over our cats and house more readily. But that’s not likely for at least 3-4 years, if ever.
These are my weighty considerations in the aftermath of the pandemic that changed everything.
Well, the Maids are gone, it’s lunchtime and I need to mow the lawn this afternoon. Sayonara. So much for my deep assessment of post-pandemic life.
June 24
The news of the moment is at the neighborhood level. I’ve avoided trying to document the ongoing drama of our neighbors Jerry and Janna’s massive deck expansion project and the impact it has on the Fords, their neighbors on the other side. The deck has been under construction for five months and is only partly done; we had been told it would only take 2-3 months but evidently they’re having trouble getting building supplies in the post-Covid race to upgrade homes. Work on the deck has slowed to a crawl.
This whole time, a large pile of dirt has been sitting in the Freshtats’ backyard, directly in the line of sight of the Fords who spend lots of time outdoors. The Fords have taken to calling it Mt. Freishtat. With spring moving to summer it is now sprouting an impressive array of weeds. I can’t see it directly from my house, but when I mow my yard it is plainly unsightly. The issue is compounded by the Freshtats’ plans to install a pool after the deck is done, which will extend the whole project well into next year.
A few weeks ago, the Fords got me involved as part of the homeowner’s association architectural committee. A volley of emails and discussions ensued — no actual shots or violence but I was a little worried. As of today, the Freishtats are having the mound of dirt removed or leveled (I can’t quite tell which, yet). The Fords are impressed that anything positive is happening but we are waiting to see the end result. In the meantime, tensions in the neighborhood are a little prickly. We haven’t had an HOA meeting in nearly two years and are way overdue. There will likely be one next month but I’m not looking forward to it. Maybe I can get someone else to be on the architectural committee.
Aside from this domestic drama, things are going moderately well. It looks like the country will fall slightly short of Biden’s goal to have 70% vaccinated by July 4. There is still vaccine hesitancy particularly in the redder states. Maryland and most of the northeast and west coast — the bluest states — have reached beyond 70% and we’re feeling pretty smug about it. Maryland is actually in green territory — “On track to contain COVID” — one of the first states in the nation! All restrictions are or are just about lifted. Many people, including myself, are still wearing masks in grocery stores but the percentage is declining week by week. I suspect in a month very few will be wearing masks. I now eat indoors at restaurants without a mask.
There is concern and increasing likelihood that there will be a resurgence of the virus in the fall since so many Americans remain unvaccinated. Presumably a smaller percentage will get very sick or die, but those are nearly all preventable illnesses and deaths at this point. It’s hard to fight stupid.
The U.S. is in better shape than most countries for getting people vaccinated. There are many promises to provide vaccines to other countries but actual shipments seem slow, virtually guaranteeing the virus will be a major source of sickness, death and sorrow — and a significant hindrance to travel and trade — for another year or more. We are clicking toward 4 million worldwide deaths from the virus. Brazil has passed 500,000 deaths in a nation with ⅔ of the U.S. population. International virus rates are up 20% from 10 days ago. The show is not over.
Numbers:
- Global cases: 180,000,000; Daily average: 365K; Total Deaths: 3,900,000
- USA cases: 33,600,000; Daily average: 11K; Total Deaths: 603,000
- Maryland cases: 462,000 Deaths: 9,722; “On track to contain COVID”
- per CovidActNow.org
- 4 states “On track to contain COVID” (Northern Marianas, Vermont, Maryland, Massachusetts)
- 46 states “Slow disease growth” (Connecticut, South Dakota, District of Columbia, Wisconsin, Michigan…)
- 3 states “At risk of outbreak” (Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma)
- 0 states “Active or imminent outbreak”
- 0 states “Severe outbreak”
Biden’s first international trip went well enough and, as predicted, the focus has returned to domestic squabbling over contending infrastructure bills and actual matters of government along with nonsense culture-war issues the Republicans dream up. Same old, same old. To some extent it’s nice that politics are relatively quiet and back to normal but it’s only a few more turns of the calendar before the crazy folks come back to town.
To bide my time, I’m playing a little more tennis which is starting to feel good once I get over the next day’s aches and pains. I’m enjoying the Revolutions podcast on the South American liberations of Bolivar and his cohorts. I’ve started Andrea Wulf’s book on Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature, after enjoying leafing through her richly illustrated version, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt’s journeys overlap and supplement much of this period of French and South American revolutions. He’s a fascinating individual.
I still haven’t gone to a movie theater, mostly because there’s nothing in the theaters yet that I can’t see at home. I feel a little bad that I haven’t subscribed to any of the AFI Docs films that are now available but I remain very reluctant to purchase/rent individual movies to watch from home. That’s my own prejudice but it doesn’t help support independent filmmakers or documentaries. I content myself by figuring I will eventually see the best of these documentaries on the various streaming platforms I already pay for. At least I hope I will.
I’ve been going in circles a little bit on Billzpage for the past month or so. I’m finding little troves of memorabilia in various places in the house or on various computers and then I have to take time to figure out where they belong on the site. For example, I found a number of Allie’s dance and modeling photos and realized I’d seriously underreported those episodes in her life. It gives me a chance to go back and tidy up various posts, which is useful but it’s not readily evident that I’m making any progress. In general, I’m up to the point, 2006-2007 and beyond, where I have a lot of digital ephemera on several different computers so it’s taking me even more time to filter through things. I hope that, in total, it makes the project better and not just more unwieldy. If all goes well in Colorado, I will gather more photos and stories for the Fisher side of the family. I will stay busy for a good long while..
Next week, on July 1, Allie and Perri arrive for a week before we head off to Colorado. It appears there’s a chance we might also overlap with Maggie and her boys in DC, which would be a treat if it works out. Much to look forward to.
June 28
I’m greatly enjoying reading Andrea Wulf’s book about Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature. It actually helps to have read her subsequent graphical treatment, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt and seen several YouTube lectures surrounding the Humboldt special exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (especially this one, which predates the exhibit). I hadn’t known much about Humboldt before all this and now have a pretty good perspective on at least the first half of his remarkable life.
The surprise for me is how Humboldt’s exploits link to and tie together the revolutionary century from roughly 1750-1850 that I’ve been working to understand. The Prussian intellectual grew up in the shadow of American and French revolutions, explored South America and Mexico for four years, measuring and documenting every step of the way, gained transformative insights into the unity and ecology of the natural world, recognized a harmony between the wonders of nature and man’s intellectual well-being, wrote extensively and beautifully of his findings, traveled throughout Europe during and after the Napoleonic era, knew everyone who was anyone and corresponded exhaustively, leaving behind a massive paper trail, met heads of state and had important political influence from Bolivar to Jefferson to Napoleon…and I’m not even halfway through the book and his life.
Humboldt was one of the first to recognize and extensively document nature’s incredible web of interconnections. Each organism has a connection and impact on each other and the environment encompassing all the natural sciences from biology to geology to climate to the cosmos — all tied together and evolving over time. On top of his insights, he was an indefatigable, loquacious gadfly who became by some accounts the most famous man in Europe after Napoleon. He influenced the arts and literature nearly as much as he did science. And he way gay (or probably was). He qualifies as one of the most fascinating historical figures I’ve encountered.
Very unexpectedly, the Humboldt book is helping me piece together the interconnections of events, ideas and personalities involved in the American, French, Haitian and South Americans revolutions — crucibles which formed today’s world of nation states, representative democracies, multiethnic societies, our intellectual focus on reason and science, and nascent recognition of human impact on the earth. I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate this book without having traveled over several years of readings and now podcasts, sparked by the unlikely source of John Leguizamo’s play, Latin History for Morons. I’m still embarrassed that this goofy show was the genesis of my curiosity, but it led me straight to Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Israel’s The Expanding Blaze, Wilson-Lee’s Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, Mann’s 1491 and 1493, Arana’s Silver, Sword and Stone, Roberts’ Napoleon: A Life, Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin, Horwitz’s Spying on the South, and the Revolutions podcasts (courtesy of Conan O’Brian’s Big Dick History joke, thank you very much). I’m very pleased to be able to keep track of and reference these breadcrumbs (lilypads) along the way, lending validation to my effort to document and reflect on my own life.
I’m grasping for a better understanding of where our nations come from, what defines us, and whether there is a better way to govern ourselves and thrive on a healthy planet earth. Why do we live the way we do and is there a better way? That’s not asking too much, is it? I feel like I’m making a little bit of progress. I also feel like maybe I’m a balloon that has become untethered and floating away a little too high and far for my own good. Or climbing my own Chimborazo but without the physical ordeal. Well, at least I’m enjoying the view.
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