goatee

°2021.02.18.Thu | Returning to Old Dog Hill

Amidst the slushy doldrums of February I find myself thinking of a return to old dog hill.

The new extension of the old Cambridge library straddles a small hill. The rain sluices off, making for a comfortable and dry position from which to survey the park and its denizens.

When Casper was younger, we’d pass the hill on the way to the corner of the park where the dogs chase and wrestle. Casper had balls to snatch from the air and dogs to best in tug. We never gave the hill any thought until a middle-aged man and his old retriever became evening fixtures. He sat beside his Golden, idly petting her as she held a tennis ball in her whitened muzzle in remembrance of more active days. That’s when we took to calling it old dog hill.

After a few years, the man and his dog relinquished the hill. Shortly thereafter, we claimed the spot as our own.

Casper’s mid-air collisions and tug battles have left him with a bad back. Weather permitting, we sit on the hill, speaking to passersby, idly petting Casper, and tossing a ball every few minutes for him to leisurely fetch in remembrance of more active days.

We sometimes still see the man walking to the library, alone. And as he passes I wonder if he thinks as we once did, “there they are, on old dog hill.”

✽

How tug-crazy was Casper? Witness.

°2020.12.21.Mon | What counts as meat?

Rebecca Schuman’s Schadenfreude, A Love Story reminds me of my favorite zines from the naughts, and I’m enjoying her stories of high-school angst and collegiate travel from that era.

Last night I laughed with recognition when she learned, as a vegetarian in Germany, that the little cubes of ham on her broccoli and cheese was not meat but ham (“Das ist doch kein Fleisch – das ist Schinken.”)

I’ve had similar experiences traveling the world as a vegetarian:

• In Europe and Asia, ham, chicken, and fish are not necessarily “meat.”
• In Asia, a “vegetarian” dumpling can have fish sauce.
• In Asia, asking for “vegetarian” food can also mean no onion or garlic because the diet is closely associated with Buddhist monastics who swear off pungent vegetables.

°2020.12.21.Mon | Winter rosemary

Winter pizza night
The rosemary is still green
Under the snow

°2020.12.14.Mon | Lunchtime sun at Breakheart Reservation

December lunch
the scarred winter sun
sits low but warm

°2020.11.08.Sun | Breakheart Reservation Pond

°2020.10.24.Sat | Masks in the alley

°2020.09.27.Sun | Raising the flag at Powder House Park

°2020.09.23.Wed | Mr. Neuman’s overhead projector

COVID19 has meant the end of many things. This bin of overhead projectors – displaced by fancy new “solstice pods” – made me think of my high school astronomy teacher, Mr. Nueman.

Sitting next to the glowing glass, with colored pens in hand, he illustrated his lectures on acetate sheets. I’ve yet to see this teaching technique rivaled.

What a privilege it was to have a small planetarium and astronomy teacher in high school!

°2020.03.17.Tue | On the ethical differences between prepping, hoarding, and profiteering

As an anxious pessimist, I’ve joked that preparing for the Corona Virus has been my moment to shine. But I’ve also been thinking about the ethics of preparation and the distinction we might draw between prepping, hoarding, and profiteering.

I’m intrigued by prepping, but don’t identify as a prepper – I live in a city apartment. Nor would I want to spend thousands of dollars on the off chance I could make a go of it post-apocalypse. I find such folks amusing, a bit deranged, and, at times, a little too gleeful; but everyone needs a hobby, and I see no social harm.

And there’s much to say for being prepared for likely events that span a few weeks or months. I have a lot of toilet paper, but I usually do as I buy it in bulk from Amazon. I have a box of surgical masks, that we wear to dremel the dog’s claws. I bought a new box of N95 masks, which I use during allergy season and air travel. I bought some more gloves, which I use for bleaching my hair and doing stuff around the apartment. I stocked up on food, but will be able to eat all of it in a couple months. I got some money out before the market crashed, but my 401ks are in the same dump as everyone else’s. This was ego-centric but not anti-social behavior, done before the panic.

To prep is to skim bountiful capacity for later use. In this way, it distributes and decentralizes essential resources. My twenty pound bag of rice – plus some dried beans and tofu tetra packs – could be handy to me and others in an unforeseen crisis. There’s still the quandary of if and how to share those resources when asked by those less prepared. (See The Twilight Zone’s episode “The Shelter.”) And I wrestled with shorting in the market, but didn’t have time to open a margin account in any case.

To hoard, on the other hand, is to deprive others of resources you don’t need. To buy more than what you need when others are trying to do the same is excessive and anti-social.

Profiteering then, such as that fellow in Tennessee, is benefiting at the expense of others – he’ll never use seventeen-thousand bottles of hand-sanitizer. The anarcho-capitalist might excuse the profiteer because there’s no formal coercion, but I use a social-good test: is this a behavior that adds value to society? The profiteer is not creating more resources or value, he’s only extracting it. If he’s extracting value from purchasers who are desperate, this is exploitative. If he’s extracting value from the wealthy who can afford it, this is an unjust redistribution of resources.

Whereas the profiteer is able to extract far more value than they contribute to society, the prepper, as a type of decentralized storage, adds some.

°2019.12.30.Mon | Gears and roots