April 14 – Catching up
April 27 – (Not very) Deep thoughts, Westminster, MD
May 22 – Lafayette and history
May 25 – Memorial Day weekend, Ellicott City
April 14
It’s been a busy week for both Barb and me. On Monday we spent a couple of hours monitoring the eclipse. We had nearly 90% coverage of the sun here and it simply looked cloudy and a little spooky outside. The TV coverage of totality was repetitive but still looked pretty amazing. I’d had thoughts of traveling to see totality but ultimately decided against it. I’d been thinking of going to Texas Hill Country but it seems they were mostly in clouds, so good thing I didn’t spend thousands to do that. Laurie says there will be one in Valencia in August 2026. Maybe my next target?
We had dinner with Larry and Ashley at The Beaumont in Catonsville on Tuesday, our first time at the restaurant which has been open a couple of years. It was good seeing them and getting a rundown of their trip to Vietnam for a wedding as well as recounting our NZ-Australia journey. Unfortunately, the meal was not so great with a disappointingly overcooked steak au poivre.
On Wednesday I had a nice lunch with Jenny at Sin Fronteras Cafe in Annapolis. Again, the visit with Jenny was great but the meal itself was something of a disappointment. Barb and I then met Leila for dinner at El Azteca. This time my meal of ceviche was better than the visit. Leila was in NZ and Australia herself in January though her memories of the trip were already spotty and she had zero interest in our trip.
I went to see Richard Thompson Thursday night (excellent show) and had a terrific dinner (duck leg confit on pappardelle) at The Maple Room in Vienna, VA. A first class evening. On Friday we headed back to The Beaumont to congratulate Tom and Donna Coons on Tom’s retirement. This time I went with lamb chops and was much happier.
I’m in my third week on Wegovy and I’m certainly still interested in food. I don’t want to eat as much or as often as before but I’m still eager to eat something tasty when I do. At the moment, eating well is even more front of mind for me. I’ve lost about five pounds since I started but have plateaued for the time being. That will likely continue next week when we head to Punta Cana for an all-inclusive week. I’ll start eating better after that, I’m sure.
I’ve been plugging along slowly in the Big History course on Wondrium – I’m up to the Indus Valley Civilizations (episode 12 of 36). I expect to do more next week in Punta Cana assuming the internet cooperates. I’ve discovered there’s a somewhat similar Big History series on Amazon but it seems to also require a subscription to History Vault, yet another streaming service. I find I like the overall Big History concept; it functionally operates as a remedial world history course for us folks that should have learned most of this a long time ago.
Speaking of Punta Cana, we are headed there next Wednesday-Sunday, meeting up with Allie and her friend Catherine. Barb and I are looking forward to it, mostly for the sake of seeing Allie. The trip puts a damper on my tackling anything new on Billzpage other than this journal but I hope to make some progress after we return (and I write up that trip).
April 27
Why does it feel wrong to be happy? What’s so bad about feeling content?
I’ve been going about my life for the past week (year, decade…) or so, catching up on odds and ends, not really getting much accomplished but feeling more or less at a point of equilibrium. I know there’s plenty going wrong in our world, many things to worry about and I’m not doing much to contribute to solutions, but I’m feeling smugly happy in my own little corner. I feel like I’m gliding down a smooth highway at a little above the speed limit – I could go faster or take a more scenic, adventurous route but this pace is easy. I’m not getting in anyone’s way and I’m enjoying the ride, more often than not listening to music that I like. With some care and luck I’ll eventually get to wherever I’m going without hurting anyone, getting killed or running out of gas.
I think this feeling of contentment is one of the rewards of retirement, of a life reasonably well spent up to this point. As I read (or to be honest lately, listen) more to history, I’m more convinced than ever that now or in the future is the best time to be alive. Life has never been so comfortable for so many, though of course there are still far too many in despair and misery. But there’s the rub: the glass that’s half full is always half empty…and no glass is ever full.
So, again, why does it feel wrong to enjoy being happy? Humans (some more than others, including some who live near me) seem wired to seek out discontentment, to find the burr under the saddle. I feel the need to be a little more useful, more helpful to the world than I am at the moment. But it’s a matter of fine tuning – I’m not going to do anything too radical or discomforting, nor am I likely to do anything that’s truly impactful. Most likely, I will strive to do the least I can do, or maybe just a little more than that – like going a few miles above the speed limit rather than below it. That seems like it should be fine.
And that’s as deep as I’ll plunge for the moment.
A small story: A couple of days ago I went to my sleep doctor for the first time in six years. My CPAP supplier stopped sending me new supplies and insisted I renew my prescription status with the doctor. It turns out I was supposed to be visiting him annually but no one ever told me – least of all the doctor. Anyway, the doctor is located in Westminster, MD, about 30 minutes due north of our house, a town and direction I rarely visit. The town’s motto is “Where history meets tomorrow” but the evidence from driving the streets is that tomorrow has so far avoided Westminster. The stretch of town near my doctor was filled with medical offices serving every manner of ailment, capped off with a hospice and funeral home. Westminster is evidently a fine place to grow old and die. Main Street was more of the same, with aging law, real estate and vacant storefronts far outnumbering active retail establishments. Granted, I avoided Winchester’s more modern thoroughfare of strip malls and chain restaurants.
I sought out a quirky lunch stop recommended on Yelp, the Pork and Beans Store. It turned out to be the retail wing of Hahn’s of Westminster, a pork and beef processor for more than 100 years in Carroll County. The store is adjacent to the processing plant and many of the store’s customers were plant workers on their lunch break, still in their hairnets. The atmosphere was very friendly in a mid-20th century kind of way, like traveling back to Mayberry for a few minutes. I was the time traveler who stuck out like the east coast elite that I am, but everyone was quite nice to me and to each other, it seemed. I enjoyed my pastrami and egg on rye even if it didn’t come with the advertised hash brown. I spent a pleasant 30 minutes there, minding my own business playing my NY Times games. I felt like if I asked a question about politics things might get ugly but I kept my mouth shut and left with a smile. It was a reminder that I never have to travel far from my little Howard County bubble to explore different cultures – they’re all around in any direction. I wanted to buy some lunch meat to take home but that little section of their retail refrigerator was bare (I guess I could have asked at the counter but I didn’t think of it); I’ll keep my eyes out for Hahn’s products in my local Giant…and I can always buy online. It might be fun to go back there for Christmas baskets when the time comes.
May 22
Yesterday I attended a presentation on Lafayette: Hero of Two Worlds at our local community center. It turned out to be an overview of Lafayette’s life and a plug for an array of activities to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Lafayette’s final tour around the United States. The presentation was given by Patti Maclay on behalf of the American Friends of Lafayette and their Lafayette 200 initiatives. I was inspired to come home, join the AFL, and make plans to get involved or at least attend some of the events. There will be commemorations in Baltimore on October 6-9, just as we get back from visiting Allie in Boston after our Ireland trip. I may try to take in some of the many other regional or national events on the calendar.
The presentation came on the heels of just finishing the Apple TV+ miniseries on Benjamin Franklin, focusing on his time as Ambassador to France and featuring Lafayette, though it played a bit loose with the latter’s storyline. The miniseries wasn’t great but helped rekindle my initial interest in understanding the relationship between the American and French Revolutions, one of the key initial drivers of my foray into history more than five years ago. Lafayette was and remains a favorite central figure. It makes sense for me to get involved with commemorations of his grand tour which itself was an orchestrated project of remembrance and community/nation building, a culmination of his own life’s work. I suspect it will give me a bit of purpose for the coming year and beyond.
I feel like I’m due for an update of my History Lesson, Part One, though I’m not sure I’m ready for a full Part Two yet. That essay/post was an attempt to tie together some of the many threads I was learning about in 2021-22. It’s not a great piece of work on its own, but it was a useful summation of what I had learned to date. My understanding has deepened somewhat over the subsequent years but I’m also getting fuzzy on some of the details I once had in my head. It always helps to write things down in order to clarify my thoughts, set my own direction and communicate more clearly.
The Washington Post featured an opinion piece last week about immigration: How America tried and failed to stay White. It included an excellent graphic showing immigration flows from countries/regions since the 1830s. It provides a useful long-term perspective on the ebbs and flows of immigration and should be required reading for those trying to make immigration a flashpoint in current politics.
The question of impending global population decline is one that keeps popping in my mind but I find very little broader discussion of its impacts and implications. It seems like it should be a matter of much greater study. It will have huge ramifications later this century and next, I imagine for both good and ill, and it seems reasonable for smarter people than me to start thinking about it more openly. It will certainly be disruptive to the growth paradigm humans have operated under for centuries. The demographic implications of no growth and then population decline for Europe, China and India this century will be dramatic, as will the remaining population surge in Africa over coming decades. What then of America and immigration? What will become of our political and economic order amid shrinking populations and still-accelerating technological change?
A metaphor for the moment: we keep trying to make sense of history (and our own lives) as if it was a composed piece of music, a song or symphony written with a conscious story or message when in fact there is a large element of jazz improvisation. But it’s not necessarily free jazz or cacophony (at least it doesn’t need to be). Our plans – financial, political, constitutional and otherwise – are attempts to write the songs in advance. We can try to play along to those plans as best we can but it’s better to be open to improvisation. Great music comes from listening, harmonizing and working in concert with other players.
I’ve started chipping away at posts for the Second Half of 2009 and my time as a VISTA. I now have access to my full archives of [email protected] and [email protected] emails as well as my Google calendar for this period, so I have extensive documentation of my daily activities. It’s a boon for record keeping and accuracy but greatly complicates my choices of what to cover in each post. I’ve always taken a kitchen sink approach to Billzpage but this level of detail threatens to overwhelm me, much less any prospective reader. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to soldier on. I cannot conceive of quitting this project now, even as it gets more unwieldy and I evidently have no active readers. Billzpage has become my avocation, my retirement hobby and a legacy project, for better or worse.
Meanwhile, Barb seems to be falling apart, physically. She seems to have an increasingly debilitating case of arthritis in her hands, arms, shoulders, knees and who knows where else. She is especially creaky in the mornings to the point of having trouble dressing herself or doing simple tasks. Today she laid down an ultimatum that my little baseball trip to Toronto will be the last time she allows me to go away on my own because she doesn’t think she can take care of herself. That’s not an acceptable alternative for me but I am concerned about her quality of life…and mine. She is seeking medical help (next up: a specialist appointment on June 6) and talking to a lot of friends but it’s slow going getting to the bottom of what ails her and what can help. For the moment, she’s going to try glucosamine because it worked well on one of her friend’s cats.
May 25
It’s the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and Barb is at the Cattail Creek pool where she will be most of the summer. I took advantage of the occasion to have a nice, impromptu lunch in Ellicott City at the Syriana Cafe, with enough left over for dinner. I walked around Main Street where they have now torn down several blocks of buildings at the low end of town to make a new park and water retention area for the Tiber River. I took a few photos in commemoration and anticipation of what I hope will become an attractive hub of town.
It’s good to see how the town has recovered from the 2016 and 2018 floods even though some buildings are still empty shells. There is now an eclectic mix of interesting local shops, making for a nice window shopping stroll on a sunny afternoon. Two of my favorite stops remain the EC Pops store with lots of Maryland paraphernalia and Sweet Cascades for salty and spicy chocolate candies.
I picked up some Sweet Cascades chocolate in anticipation of having the Harders over tomorrow for a cookout, followed by Betsy Pelovitz on Monday (possibly, if rain doesn’t scare her off). It’s a continuation of a busy stretch of socializing. Yesterday we had a very nice lunch with Jeremy and Deanie Wu who hosted us at L’Auberge Chez Francoise to celebrate Barb’s retirement. We discussed their Viking cruise to Antarctica and ours to New Zealand and Australia. Jeremy was very kind about my writeup of our cruise; it was nice to get some encouragement. They are planning to go on Viking’s Egypt cruise in November. It was a very pleasant lunch.
I recommended The Last Kings of Shanghai to them and Deanie checked out the audiobook the next day. Laurie also just finished listening to it and we are trying to find some time to discuss it. Laurie reminded me of several YouTube presentations by the author, Jonathan Kaufman. I watched them last night and am primed to speak with Laurie. I’ve decided I’m now obliged to sign up for Kaufman’s Smithsonian Associates presentation next month which is what clued me into the book in the first place.
The socializing will continue next week with Dan and David to get a recap of their recent Ireland trip. On Friday, I will head off on my Cleveland-Toronto-Pittsburgh road trip. Barb is getting more and more agitated about my departure.
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