Leaning into Recovery

“There is optimism overall as the industry, companies and travelers worldwide lean into recovery and the much-needed return to business travel."   (UPI, 17 Nov 2021)

 

My business travel game is extremely rusty.  I forgot to pack socks on a recent trip to Lisbon, leaving me hand-washing and blow-drying the same pair for three days.  For last week’s trip to DC, I forgot to pack jeans, so on the trip home I was rocking the suit pants, t-shirt and hoodie combination which suggests a hedge fund manager with a psychiatric disorder.  I used to be able to pack my bags like sniper assembling a rifle while blindfolded.  Now I stand in my bedroom staring at the floor, sure that I’m forgetting something but not sure what.

Things have changed at the airports.  Going through security, I don’t need to remove my laptop and iPad from my backpack anymore, although maybe that’s only because of TSA PreCheck, which I think I qualify for because I have Global Entry, but I’m not sure if this is the case at every airport.  Now there’s also something called CLEAR which you can pay for to get through security even faster.  I’m not quite sure how this works, but they’re selling it hard: one dude practically dragged me to the ground to offer me a free trial the other day.  “CLEAR makes you unstoppable,” promises their website.

I don’t know if there have been breakthroughs in airport screening technology which have enabled all this; or if the powers that be in the transportation industry have decided that a little less security is acceptable to get more people traveling again; or if people have simply stopped giving a shit about terrorism in the same way they seem to have stopped giving a shit about COVID-19. 

In any case, returning to traveling at least provides a respite from 7am Zoom calls, and an opportunity to stare at the ceiling in different transportation hubs around the world. 

Airport Ceilings, Vol. 3

Aeroporto Humberto Delgado, Lisbon (LIS).  Kind of cool to look at, in the way that early computer animation wireframes were kind of cool to look at in the 1980s.  This image in particular makes me think of the original Tron, or better yet The Black Hole.  Yet I feel like the designers have missed the mark here: this cold metal has nothing to do with the warmth one feels when visiting Lisbon.  And, for God's sake, if there’s one airport in the world which is crying out for tiles on the ceiling, it’s this one.

Oslo Gardermoen Airport (OSL).  This was taken pre-pandemic, which means that it feels like I was there either 5 months ago or 5 years ago.  Large, impressive, lots of natural wood, which seems on-brand for Norway.  I’m in the middle of doing some renovations, so I am unable to look at this ceiling without mentally calculating how much all that custom woodworking must have run them.

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).  Bright, domed, and teal, evoking the Capitol building and Disneyworld in equal measure.  I was down there for a conference and stayed at the Gaylord, itself the size of an airplane hangar.  These type of places always leave me marveling at the audacity of the human beings who conceived and executed such an immense structure.  “Live” conferences have started up again, and, from the upper floors, you could peer down the atrium into the lobby bar, which thrummed with industry people until way past their bedtimes.  It was also oppressively hot and humid during my visit, which amplified the languor one senses around DC, and which made the "swamp" metaphor feel a bit more well-chosen.

Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azur (NCE).  It’s hard to see from this picture, but this is a raised walkway, around 100 feet above the main terminal.  As if the designers had understood the desire to look at the ceiling, or to approach the sky, so they gave the airport visitors a lift.

This one was from February 2020.  I was on my way back to Geneva after a global leadership meeting in the south of France.  Our colleagues from China didn’t attend because of a virus which we had read a little about but didn’t give much thought.  I gave the same presentation four times, to different groups of my colleagues who rotated through.  On the last night, a bunch of us got on stage and sang “I Gotta Feeling” with the French cover band.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG).  As I’ve noted before, midwestern airports seem to have a thing for displaying fossils mid-terminal.  I was carefully positioning myself to get the McDonald’s logo in the background of this photo for maximum wry effect when I heard a voice over my shoulder:

“That’s the only one of those in the world.  You’ll never see another one like it.”

I turned to see a man, middle-aged and sandy-haired in a teal uniform shirt, who was working the information desk.

“A mammoth?” I replied, ready to counter that there is in fact a mammoth skeleton in the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College.

“That’s not a mammoth," the man said. "It’s an American mastodon with wooly mammoth tusks. Mastodon tusks are straight.”

I looked back up and confirmed that the tusks on this animal were in fact curved.

“They had mammoth tusks lying around, so somebody had the bright idea to stick 'em on a mastodon,” he continued.  “Took a 7^th grader to tell the museum people they had gotten it wrong.”

The man and I considered the mastodon/mammoth for a moment.

“Well,” I said, “perhaps they did that so no one would bang their heads on the tusks when they were walking by,” indicating with my hand the approximate angle at which mastodon tusks would intrude into the walkway and bonk the unalert traveler.

“Ha!” the man said, “I would love to see that!”

Airport Ceilings Volume 1 and Volume 2.

In the future the robots will care for us

 All the races are cancelled, so I perked up last week when I received the email saying that the 20km de Genève was organizing something.  Initial confusion at the subject line which read “2.0km de Genève.” I thought this was either a typo, or that perhaps they had broken down the race into 2.0km intervals, which seemed odd.  Finally I realized that they meant “2.0” as in “version 2.0,” a clever touch further over-egged in the modified logo, which had the “.” in “2.0” at the tip of the accent grave of “Genève,” like a typographical shooting star.  This year’s edition would have the usual choices of 5km/10km/20km distances.  But since we wouldn’t be able to run all together given COVID restrictions, each participant could run whenever they wanted (before Nov 22^nd), and we could follow the course and track our times via a smartphone app.  I signed up for the 10km. 

I set the alarm for 7:45, but I woke up a few minutes before it went off. I fed the cats, had coffee and toast with almond butter, drove to the other side of the lake, and parked near the finish line.  I traversed the Paquis (the closest Geneva has to a “red light district”), past a disheveled woman on a park bench speaking loudly to herself and a young African guy listening to music on his phone, which he held at ear level but looked away from.  I arrived at Rue de Lausanne just in time to catch the #15 tram, which would bring me up to the starting line at Place de Nations.  I realized that I had forgotten to bring a mask, which is obligatoire on public transportation now, so I slid the Buff I had brought with me over my head and wore it bandit-style.

Near the front gates of the United Nations, a few other runners milled around, heads bowed as they consulted their phones.  I almost never run with a phone, as I don’t listen to music or anything when I run, and I don’t like to have the extra weight on me.  I also enjoy the feeling of not knowing exactly where I am when I’m running, when the aperture of my senses seems to be at its widest.  On those rare occasions when I have brought my phone with me on a long run, it’s been stowed away in a pocket in my hydration vest, withdrawn only to take a picture if the scenery is especially nice.  I cringe whenever I see someone running with their phone in their hand, as if they were desperately chasing after it.

However, given the set-up of this race, leaving the phone behind wouldn’t be an option, especially if I wanted to “register” my time – something with no tangible value whatsoever, but one likes to be “official” and to compare times with other runners.  I wore a long-sleeve top with a phone-sized pocket over the left breast, so my plan was to put the phone in there, hoping that it wouldn’t bounce around too much.    

The blue sign marking the starting line was attached to a lamppost at the bottom of Avenue de la Paix, which curves up and around the UN headquarters.  As I approached, three fit looking guys fiddled with phones and watches as they engaged in pre-race bouncing-in-place.  They were lean and fast-looking, with close-cropped hair and red knee-high compression socks, so I figured I would let them go first, so I wouldn’t have to endure the psychological blow of watching them speed away from me.  After a few seconds, one of them said, “Okay, allez,” and off they flew, only to come tramping back down the hill around 20 seconds later, frowning and muttering that the app hadn’t started properly.  A moment later, they had sorted things out, and they disappeared around the corner for the second time.

I took out my phone and opened the race app, which required logging in with a registration number I had been emailed.  Once open, the app told me cheerily to “approach the starting point!”  I looked up and confirmed that I was standing immediately next to the start sign, but for some reason the app said I was 35 meters from the start, then 50 meters, then 10 meters, as I assume the GPS was trying to find me.  Then all of a sudden, a synthetic male voice with a British accent began counting down, calmly but very loudly: “TEN…NINE…EIGHT…”  I managed to stuff the phone back in my pocket and get the zipper closed by the time he reached “ONE,” and off I went. 

Normally at the start of a race, you feed on the excitement of the people around you, so you run faster.  This morning, there was no one around me save the stray passing car, but I still found myself breathing and stepping more quickly than I would on a normal Sunday morning. 

Soon the app’s voice (hereafter “the Voice”) switched over to synthetic British female.  She gave a plug for a breast cancer charity.  I huffed up the long hill, past the US mission and the hotel school.  The Voice then instructed me to take my next left onto Chemin de Machéry, butchering the pronunciation and making me wish I had chosen the French Voice.  I passed through the village of Pregny-Chambésy, and the Voice welcomed me, mangling its name as well. Then the grade smoothed out and the road narrowed, and I moved through the quite pretty and bucolic fields outside of town.  Ahead of me, beyond the airport, the Jura mountains hung purple as the sun strained to burn through in the morning mist.  This is one of the cooler things about living here: one can go from the center of town to farmland in a matter of minutes.  My legs felt strong and my rhythm steady as I headed downhill in the direction of the autoroute.  My km splits were under 5:00, so my rough target time of less than 50:00 (respectable for me on a hilly course like this) was still within reach.  

As I came to an intersection, the Voice instructed me to cross the street, turn into a private driveway, and follow a path into the woods.  This sounded a little suspicious, but I did as I was told, and behind a row of jumelle houses there was indeed a path, which I followed.  I checked my phone, and the little blue dot indicating me was still overlaying the red line indicating the course.  The path became a trail through thick woods, but the Voice’s commands were clear, and I negotiated a couple of turns while keeping a brisk pace.

The path hugged the edge of the woods parallel to the autoroute, then turned east, back toward the lake.  I checked my phone a couple of times to make sure I was still on course.  After another 500 meters or so, the light ahead of me started to brighten as the path neared the edge of the woods.  I emerged to find myself at a T intersection, with concrete paths the color of butter leading to the left and right of me.  In front of me on the other side of a wall were train tracks. 

I realized that I hadn’t heard the Voice in a while, and when I pulled out my phone to check, I saw that I had somehow flicked the little “silent” switch on the side.  The red line on the phone map seemed to lead to the right, so I continued that way.  I held my phone as I ran, trying to get my bearings, but the little me-dot was drifting away from the line of the course.  The Voice remained sullenly silent.

Raising my gaze, I saw figures moving quickly toward me, and as they got closer, I recognized the three fast-looking guys from the starting line.  They passed me and headed back in the direction I had come.  I paused for a moment, and then decided that I must have made a wrong turn, and that I should follow them, at least until I could figure out where I was.  I turned and ran back for another 3 minutes or so, past the T intersection, before realizing that no, this was actually the wrong direction.  The three fit guys were probably running the 20km, which starts with the 10km, but then peels off into a different direction. 

Still clutching my phone, I headed back in the other direction, past the T intersection again.  Looking down, I noticed that my screen had gone black, as my phone had locked itself.  I unlocked it, poking awkwardly with the touchscreen-sensitive tip of my gloved index finger, to find that the app itself had closed.  I reopened it, and it asked me for my password again, which I had to dig around in my email to find.  Finally, I managed to log in, and a cheery “approach the starting point!” message appeared on the screen.  The app had evidently forgotten that I had already started.  I poked around, looking for other menus that might be able to let me pick up where I left off, but there were none.

By this point, around ten minutes had passed since I had first emerged from the woods.  Fortunately, I could still see the course map on my phone, and I was able to pick my way across a bridge over the train tracks, then down a set of stairs to a paved path that ran parallel to them, alongside a cluster of houses near the lake side of Chambésy.  My pace had slowed, and finally I emerged near the gas station close to the autoroute on-ramp, a landmark I knew well, so I would be able to find my way "unofficially" to the finish line from there.

I would like to say that at some point I experienced a peaceful moment of “letting go” and giving thanks for the misty fall morning and for living in such a lovely place and for the ability to go out and run: a Zen-like realization that it’s not about how fast you get to the finish line, but the joy in the journey, etc.  I did not. Instead I just felt sour as I loped past the WTO, then down alongside the water for the final kilometer or so.  The paths next to the shimmering lake were already crowded with people, desperately clutching at the few remaining strands of fall before the arrival of the long, dark winter, whose approach this year feels especially ominous.  I passed the blue sign marking the finish line, then walked to my car and drove home, feeling the chill from the sweaty clothes clinging to me.

The Butterball Effect

The turkey market is in turmoil, so says The Economist. The annual supply of 40 million turkeys is ready for the chopping block (or has already faced it), but big family gatherings are out this year. Meanwhile, Denmark is culling 17 million mink, for fear that the coronavirus they carry could make human vaccines less effective. And the number of wildfires in Brazil’s Pantanal region, home to thousands of species of birds, mammals, and fish, has reached a record high.

So much for those springtime feel-good images of “nature reclaiming the planet.”

Sit Down Be Ehrfürchtig

Two identical buildings sit on opposite sides of Briennerstrasse, along the eastern edge of Königsplatz.  Grey stone, three stories high, no domes or other architectural flourishes.  Walking by, you wouldn’t notice anything special about them, and neither did we when we were in Munich a few weeks ago.  It wasn’t until our guide pointed them out that we noticed their understated neoclassical impressiveness.  Tall, round-arched windows set inside rectangular reliefs which formed their own frame and obviated the need for a lintel.  Squared-off doric columns supporting twin porticos that extended toward the street, shielding the entrances from the elements and offering a platform from which orations could be given.

The building to the north, our guide explained, was the Führerbau, built by the Nazis in the mid-30s.  It’s where Hitler and Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 (“peace in our time,” etc.), and it was the party’s HQ until the end of the war.  With this added context, the building took on an awesome / fearsome aura, which I suppose was the point when it was built, even though there’s nothing sinister per se about the architecture.  The only overt political symbols – two immense eagles, cast in bronze, which originally hovered over each portico just below the roof – have been removed; only the holes from the giant screws that held them in place remain, like the bullet holes one still sees pocking other sites in Munich.  Today these two buildings are home to the University of Music and Performing Arts and the University Art Library.  Some of the original fixtures are still inside, our guide noted, and indeed I spied a couple of cool art deco light fixtures through one of the windows. 

In 1945, I imagine it must have been extremely tempting simply to tear these buildings down, given what they represented and what went on inside them.  The Allies did in fact raze a nearby memorial commemorating the Nazis who had been killed in the Beer Hall Putsch. But rather than demolish the Führerbau, the Germans planted a row of trees across the street, to neuter the buildings’ dominance over Königsplatz, and rededicated them to art and music – a graceful middle finger to the National Socialists, who had gone to great lengths to persecute and shame so-called “degenerate artists.”

We continued walking toward the Alte Pinakotek, which had been partially demolished by American bombs near the end of the war.  The jigsaw of newer and older brick revealed how the museum was rebuilt, intentionally allowing the scars to remain visible. 

Inside the museum, like everywhere else in Munich, people wore masks.  Disposable white medical masks, plain fabric ones, hospital-grade ones, sequined fashion-y ones, homemade t-shirt reboots.  One man improvised with a cone paper coffee filter.  This did not prevent life from going on: people rode the metro, they went out to bars and restaurants, they stayed in hotels.  At most of the places we went, you scanned a QR code that sent you to a contract tracing form.  Once you got seated at your table, you could remove your mask, but if you got up to leave or to go to the bathroom, you put it back on.  In the dozen or so restaurants we visited over a week, every single person did this.  On the odd occasion when someone would absentmindedly forget, a waiter would dash over to remind them, and they would quickly and apologetically put their mask on.

Right here is where I was planning to draw a nifty compare-and-contrast between Germany and my home country.  How the fatality rate from COVID-19 in the US is six times what it is in Germany.  How one country is run by someone with a PhD in quantum chemistry, and the other by a landlord who muses about drinking Clorox. How I haven’t seen any reports from Germany of politicians suing each other over mask regulations, or of dudes with assault rifles storming government buildings over public health measures.  How Germany’s response to the pandemic has demonstrated above all a sense of humility: a respect for mysterious, often destructive forces which are more powerful than our own will, wishes, or pride.  Humility which has obvious roots in the country’s own past demons, and which has inspired gestures like Willy Brandt’s kneeling before the Warsaw ghetto in 1970.  Humility which has allowed artful acknowledgements of the darker elements of the country’s history, rather than the frantic, often hypocritical attempts to efface them that one sees elsewhere.

The problem is that this comparison doesn’t completely hold up.  In fact, there are dudes in Germany storming government buildings, minus the assault rifles, but plus the far right banners and sentiments.  The anti-mask protests are not confined to the Boogaloo crowd; they’ve sprouted up in London, and Zurich, and Geneva.  Even in Germany, where atonement for the sins of the Nazis has been deeply socialized into the post-war generations, around half of the population did not approve of the Warsaw Genuflection.  And to be fair, there are plenty of places in the US where officials are trying to do the right thing: my daughters’ school district in Massachusetts, for one, is being thorough and responsible with their plans for the fall (certainly moreso than the public schools here). 

Still, the numbers are what they are.   As of September 16^th, 9,371 people had died from COVID-19 in Germany, or 11 per 100,000 inhabitants.  In the United States, those figures were 196,676 and 60.  There is selfishness and denial everywhere, and to some extent, in all of us.  But where we live, and how we live, and the people we elect to run things, still mean something.

(sic)

Sat, Jun 27, 1:32 AM

TO: Thomas J. Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)

FROM: Donald J. Trump (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)

SUBJECT: Our most important deadline yet

Dear Tj:

I need you now more than ever.

Our End-of-Quarter Deadline is coming up and I want to make sure we absolutely destroy the Democrats. I’ve set a MASSIVE goal of raising another $18 MILLION DOLLARS - our biggest End-of-Quarter Goal EVER - but I can’t do it without you.

I asked my team to pull your donor file, and I'll be honest, I was disappointed to see that you haven’t contributed recently. I thought it was a mistake, but take a look for yourself:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I donated blood on Monday, which I am normally not able to do, since they don’t let you donate blood if you’ve travelled to the US in the past month.  Silver linings, etc.  Executing the pre-donation interview in French also gave a bit of a boost to my ego.  Of course the fact that, after having lived here for more than a decade, I would consider successfully navigating a 5-minute conversation in French, which mainly required “oui” or “non” responses, an “ego boost” says something about my confidence in French, and tends to offset the ego boost.

But I’m really good at donating blood.  I have good veins and I don’t mind needles terribly and I don’t get too lightheaded afterwards.

Early nubs of tomatoes have appeared on a couple of plants on the balcony, and the bean bush continues its frantic growth.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sun, Jun 28, 6:20 PM

TO: Thomas J. Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)

FROM: Mike Pence (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)

President Trump asked me to personally reach out to you about a very important deadline coming up.

Our CRITICAL End-of-Quarter Deadline is just 2 days away and we need every Patriot to IMMEDIATELY step up and contribute if we’re going to reach our MASSIVE $18,000,000 goal.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We’re in that middle period in which the novelty of the situation has worn off, yet the end is nowhere in sight.  Topographically, one would call this a “depression,” which sounds just about right.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mon, Jun 29, 3:41 AM

TO: Thomas J. Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)

FROM: Donald Trump Jr. (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)

Where have you been?

Each day my father sees an updated donor list and EACH DAY he notices that you STILL haven’t contributed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reading Brad Gilbert’s Winning Ugly.  I don’t read “sports books” very often, and a lot of it consists of Brad Gilbert telling you how much money he’s made, but I do find it useful as tournaments are starting up again.  Some take-aways:

• Never choose to serve first.  Because your serve almost certainly isn’t the weapon you think it is; because a serve is a complicated motion and you’re not fully warmed up yet; because allowing the opponent to serve is a bit of a psych-out move that might make him try to serve harder and thus make errors; because even if you lose that first game you’re still “on serve,” without having hit a single serve; because if you break you’re up a break.
• During the warm-up, hit balls down the middle and take note of which side your opponent favors
• Play the first two games of the match at around 70%.  Get into a rhythm before going for winners.  (I’m not sure about this one, as I think it might miss an opportunity to grab an early lead.  However, considering I went down 5-0 in the first set of my last tournament match, perhaps I should listen here).

-        There’s also detailed advice about how to play against certain players (e.g., against a pusher, try to get to the net, or better yet bring them to the net; against someone who runs all over the court, hit right at them, etc.)

The numbers for the Geneva canton still look relatively good.  Still, any travel seems a long way off.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tue, Jun 30, 9:03 PM

TO: Thomas J. Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)

FROM: Donald J. Trump (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)

Did I make a mistake in trusting you?

Our End-of-Quarter Deadline is TOMORROW, and I set a MASSIVE goal of raising another $18 MILLION. This is our BIGGEST goal yet, so why haven’t you stepped up?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I realized the other day that I hadn’t prayed in a long time, maybe even since all this started.  I’ve never been a prayers-at-bedtime guy, but when I was traveling and spending a lot of time by myself, I had motive and opportunity.  My go-to prayer was in a three-part framework of giving thanks, asking for forgiveness, and asking for strength, then an Our Father thrown in for good measure.  I usually do okay in living up to the first part.  On the second I usually ask forgiveness for thinking too much about myself, which I typically start doing again almost immediately after I finish praying. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thu, Jul 2, 8:46 PM

TO: Thomas J. Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)

FROM: Donald Trump Jr. (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)

SUBJECT: Chicken or Steak?

Is there something I’m missing?

The Vice President invited you to have dinner with him on July 9th, but I noticed you haven’t entered to win yet.  There’s not much time left, and I know the Vice President will be disappointed if you miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m not sure what possessed me to sign up to receive emails from Donald Trump.  Probably something in the spirit of keeping one’s enemies closer, etc.  Usually I ignore them, but the frequency and level of desperation seems to have been dialed up recently.  The unique mélange of cheap hucksterism, appeals to celebrity-worship, bullying, and alt-right nonsense would make for a good undergrad psychology thesis.

My friend Tris McCall postulates that this could all be part of a grotesque strategy – that the more disenchanted we decent, rational citizens become with this entire scene, the more likely we will be to simply stop caring, and thus to cede (still more) authority to the Power Elite.  I doubt that Trump and co. have the wherewithal to conceive and execute such a strategy.  Nonetheless, one makes fun of these people at one’s own risk.    

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

L wasn’t feeling well Saturday morning, so I went to Pilates by myself, where I did the reformer with Eva and was reminded that I favor my gouty left big toe.  Thinned out the radishes on the balcony and made a small salad with the leftover greens.  Made bread.  Made many grilled cheese sandwiches with said bread.   Played Zoom technical director for our Trinity Sunday service.  Played tennis with Yannick in the afternoon, who stated the obvious fact that I was missing 80% of my service faults in the net.  One must hit up.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fri, Jul 3, 4:40 AM

TO: Thomas J Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)

FROM: Eric Trump (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)

WE DID IT:  But, we could’ve used your help.

I convinced my father to give you another chance, which is why he’s decided to EXTEND your PERSONAL 500%-MATCH OFFER FOR 1 MORE HOUR.

We won’t extend your match offer again, Tj. Don’t let the President down.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A couple of months(?) ago, I started doing the NYT crossword every morning, to try to create a sort of buffer between getting out of bed and either a) traversing the crepe-thin membrane that divides “home” and “work,” or b) the angst-inducing foray into amateur epidemiology that comes with reading the morning news.   For a while this was effective, and I ran my “streak” (puzzles solved without help from the app) up to 35 days.  But then the crossword-doing, and the stress of keeping the streak going, started to become another part of the seemingly endless, anxiety-spurring morning routine.  Also, people like to think that doing crossword puzzles is good for “brain health,” but I think it’s mainly good for training you to think like someone who designs crossword puzzles.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sun, Jul 5, 11:39 PM

TO: Thomas J Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)

FROM: Eric Trump (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)

This is your FINAL NOTICE, Tj.

So far, we've emailed you 4 times inviting you to join the Trump Presidential Honor Roll. Team Trump emailed you, my wife Lara emailed you, my brother Don Jr. emailed you, AND President Trump emailed you.

We’ve done everything we can to get you to join this prestigious group, and now I’m reaching out to let you know that this is your LAST CHANCE.

I’m holding your spot for the NEXT 3 hours. After that, your offer will permanently EXPIRE and you will no longer be considered for a spot on the Honor Roll.

My father is counting on YOU, Tj. Don’t let him down.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last week, we spent a couple of days on Ile de Saint Pierre, which juts out like a polyp into the lumen of Lac de Bienne. 

We stayed at the Klosterhotel, which as the name implies is a former (12^th century) monastery which has been turned into a nice but not overtly fancy hotel.  It sits at the far end of the island, and walking with luggage isn’t really feasible, so a navette ferried us from Erlach around the south edge of the island to the small dock in front.  We walked up a short gravel path from the dock to the hotel, enveloped by the scent of chamomile which grew wild on the edges of the wheat fields.

Rousseau evidently spent six weeks here in 1765, which partially inspired Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire.  I don’t know enough about Rousseau to say anything meaningful here, but Alasdair Macintyre (from A Short History of Ethics) is worth pull-quoting: “Rousseau was the worst kind of paranoid and hypochondriac, the type who does in fact suffer persecution and is in fact constantly ill, and who therefore is able to justify to himself the irrationalities with which he alienates his friends.”

The hotel abuts a farm which raises Black Angus cattle and Boer goats.  In the front pasture were around a dozen cows with their calves, plus one bull.  We spent a lot of time watching them, learning a few things which are blindingly obvious to anyone who has spent any amount of time on a farm, but which were novel to us, such as:

• Cows can run extremely fast, or at least the young ones can.  Around twilight one night, we watched two of the calves messing around adolescently, nuzzling and nudging each other.  Suddenly, one of the calves decided to bolt to the other end of the pasture, building a serious head of speed in the process.  An instant later, the other raced off after him.
• Bulls look a lot different than cows.  Clearly checking out their undersides is the easiest means of identification, but their heads and necks are also distinctly shaped.  Bulls look more pensive, with deep furrows between their eyes and on their foreheads.  Their necks are also thicker, which evoked memories of my single season of Pop Warner football, where were given Xeroxed instructions on how to tackle properly, with the recommendation to “’bull’ your neck.”  This advice was eagerly embraced both on and off the field by many of my football-playing schoolmates, who, come team photo time, strove to make their necks wider than their ears (an effect accentuated by the flat-top haircuts which were then à la mode).
• Cows breathe loudly while they eat.  I speculated that this might serve a practical purpose, perhaps to avoid inhaling a mouthful of the ever-present flies along with the rich turf.  In any case, listening to cows eat – the whoosh of exhale followed by the satisfying tug and crunchy release of grass – is a relaxing and enjoyable thing to do.

Less relaxing and enjoyable is watching the bull calves, who, once they are weaned and about 10 months old, are segregated into another field a couple hundred meters away.  L and I took to referring to them as “veal” to reflect the destiny that awaits them.  One morning we walked the length of the island and we stopped briefly to look at them.  It had started raining, so they were all huddled together in a muddy patch near the fence.  They turned their heads to look at us as we approached, like refugees in a news photo.  At dinner that night we had fish.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jul 7, 2020, 5:23 PM

TO: Thomas J Snow (sneaux@gmail.com)

FROM: Donald Trump Jr. (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com)

Tj,

Why haven’t you accepted my Father’s invitation to join the Official Trump VIP Club?

The Trump VIP Club is a highly exclusive, invite-only group of my father’s most trusted supporters. So, when he asked me who I thought we should invite to join, I immediately thought of Tj.

This offer is only valid until 11:59 PM TONIGHT. If you fail to join, you might not get another chance.

Running and Non-Being

Thank God we can still go running.  There’s nothing to train for, since all the races and tennis tournaments have been cancelled.  Nonetheless, I’ve been going for long runs on Saturdays, and I’ve found myself adding one more mile every week, up to 11 as of last Saturday.  I suppose I will keep going.

There are obvious reasons for this: trying to stay in shape, getting outdoors, etc.  Fortunately spring comes earlier in Geneva than it does in Boston.  When I was flying back and forth a lot, it seemed like the leaves would appear on the trees here all of a sudden.  But this year I’ve been able to watch its gradual encroachment.  The trees are almost full now, which softens the landscape and warms the heart.  It also suggests to me an indifferent creator who goes about her business, pandemic or not.  My friend Nicola said that she felt like the planet wanted us all to stop so it could breathe a little.

As one runs longer, a queer thing starts to happen to one’s perception of the distance.  Things start to get relative.  What seemed like a long way to run a few weeks ago doesn’t seem like such a big deal.  I’ve experienced this before when training for longer races.  I suppose there’s also a similar phenomenon going on in our collective assessment of the covid tables in the newspaper.  Not long ago, it seemed horrific that Italy would have 10,000 total cases; in the past 24 hours, more than half that number of people died from the disease.  The last time I was in an airport, I noted warily that there were eight total cases in Geneva; this morning, the local newspaper was celebrating that there were “only” ten new cases diagnosed yesterday.  We are shocked, as we should be, as the numbers get bigger.  But at the same time each individual case starts to mean less.  Each life becomes marginalized, in the economic sense of “marginal.”

There is a less obvious aspect of long runs, which starts to reveal itself to me once I start going beyond 10 miles or so.  Murakami, in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, writes about how, during a 24-hour endurance run, his felt his ego begin to disintegrate.  My experience is obviously less extreme, but I get glimpses of that: at a certain point, it’s as if I were taking a hammer to my psyche which had been trapped inside a Zoom window 12 hours a day for the past month.  My thoughts become not my own.  Not like I’m hallucinating exactly (although I’ve heard that that can happen), but like they are flowing, very quickly, both from within me and from somewhere else.  This is very hard to describe.  Perhaps this is aided by the fact that I don’t listen to music or anything when I run.  Last Saturday it manifested in a torrent of thoughts which came so fast that I couldn’t even grasp them as they went by.  This feeling is both alienating and strangely pleasant.

Nowadays, we tend to think about ascetics (to the extent we think about them at all) as wackos: backward ignoramuses whose forms of self-denial – fasting, living as hermits in caves or on the tops of columns – were nothing more than strong indicators of mental illness.  I’m tempted to cut them a little slack, especially after a long run.  In 2020, we hear the term "mortification of the flesh," and it sounds like no more than self-punishment: an expression of shame and unworthiness that is both irrational and unhealthy.  But back in the day this was seen as an essential step in contemplation, in the direct experience of God.  Bonaventure’s Threefold Way lays this out quite neatly: through purgation, illumination, and perfection, you may encounter the Divine, not just as some faraway concept, but through your own direct experience.  Bernard McGinn, in the excellent Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, sums it up nicely: “Asceticism is seen as a necessary, if not sufficient, preparation for mystical grace…The divine nature in its majesty, goodness, and purity is so far removed from the imperfect world that for any created being to dare approach God implies a purification that goes beyond just overcoming the effects of sin…It becomes something like an essential condition for anyone who seeks God in this life.”

If you prefer (as I generally do) not to get too hung up on the “sin” part, note this is not far from the Buddhist concept of non-self.  If you're looking for a similar effect minus the knee damage, meditation can work just fine. The point is that self-annihilation, in one form or another, is a prerequisite for transcendence.

For a much deeper and more cogent exploration of all this, I can't recommend the classic Running and Being, by Dr. George Sheehan, highly enough.

Here we are

The other day someone wrote on Twitter “I know we’re all just stuck inside…” and I nodded my head in appreciation.  It wasn’t until 24 hours later that I realized that the author was talking about the fact we’re all supposed to stay indoors, rather than our collective emotional state. 

_____________________

One of our cats has an artificial ureter.  It needs to be flushed out every three months, and the Kleintierklinik in Bern is the nearest place qualified to do it, so we drove up there on Thursday.  The notification boards on the near-empty highway urged us to “STOP CORONA.  RESTEZ A LA MAISON.”  Closer to Bern, the message switched over to German.

When we arrived, there was a truck with a University Hospital logo on the side backing up to the front door.  The driver lowered the hydraulic ramp-thing in the back, and I thought we were going to get to see them move one of the cows or horses (or camels!) they’re known to treat in Bern.  But instead we watched as they wheeled two or three ventilators out and into the truck, I assume for transfer to the regular hospital.  Human needs taking precedence over those of the Kleintieren these days.

_____________________

I’m avoiding the numbers this weekend.  For a couple of days at least, I’m eschewing the exponential curves in the NYTimes – the upward-right slope which in my day job signifies growth and success and which in this case signifies the opposite.   Same thing for the canton-by-canton breakdown in the Tribune de Geneve, Geneva now competing with Vaud for top of the table in Switzerland.  The cantonal authorities also publish daily detailed charts for Geneva, including how many new cases there are, how many people are in the hospital, how many of those are intubated.  Earlier this week I had a glimmer of hope that we had peaked, as the daily new diagnoses seemed to be trending downward.  On Friday, though, they modified the chart to show both negative tests and positive cases, and it was clear that the numbers had only come down because fewer people had been tested.      

_____________________

It helps that the Swiss are good at following rules.  On Wednesday I ventured out to the grocery store at the larger shopping center by the stadium, as we thought it might be less crowded than the one closer to our place in town.  A friendly security guard in a face mask was at the entrance, directing people to the back of line that stretched down the corridor, past the other (darkened) stores in the shopping center.  There were around 15 people in front of me in line, and we all idled our carts in between the hashmarks of black tape that had been stuck to the floor every two meters.

 

I made it to the front after only 10 minutes or so, but not before the guy in front of me (who wore a high-tech-looking mask with Velcro at the back and complicated-looking valves over the mouth part, giving him the appearance of a post-apocalyptic skier) had an awkward exchange with the security guy, who tried to hand him a laminated card with a number on it – evidently the mechanism they were using to keep track of how many people were in the store.  I couldn’t hear their voices given the masks and the hashmarks, but it became clear that high-tech-mask guy wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking something from someone else’s hand.  Robot-dance-like gesturing and pointing ensued, until finally the security guy produced a bottle of hand sanitizer from his pocket, which settled matters.

I wore a mask myself, even though I’ve read the same articles you have about how they don’t really help.  I felt the odd warmth of my deflected breath on my eyeballs, and my glasses kept fogging up.  All of us in the store seemed to be moving at around 75% of normal speed, careful not to get too close to anyone else.  Fortunately, there was plenty of pretty much everything in the store; only the pasta aisle looked a little denuded, but not bare like last week.

At the checkout, an older guy in the lane next to mine was mildly admonished for violating the distance de sécurité.  The checkout woman in my lane and wore powder blue latex gloves and a mask.  After bagging and paying, I thanked her and said I realize it’s not easy for everyone who works in the store, etc..  She shrugged and replied, “Oui, mais on est là.”  

Grounded

It's like November 2016 all over again.  With each morning a fresh sprig of existential dread as I check the overnight news on my phone.  Today I learned that all of Italy, not just the northern provinces, is now on full quarantine, as their total number of cases approaches 10,000.  The financial markets got clobbered again yesterday – the S&P losing 8% and SAN.PA dipping below 80 (my online sell order for 85 thus blithely ignored).  My better half insists it's time to buy gold.

My company’s “non-business-critical” international travel ban is still on, so I continue to work from home at least until the end of March.  Working from home is what I do anyway when I’m not traveling, so it’s not too a big cramp in my style, so to speak.  Ask me again in four weeks.

The left-leaning media outlets in the US cannot resist engaging in some schadenfreude around Trump’s arrogance and ill-preparedness for all this.  There are 729 confirmed cases in the US as of this morning, but since test kits have been in short supply, one suspects that this is a gross underestimation, kind of a negative ascertainment bias. 

The Economist had a good piece in their “Graphic Detail” section (the one in the back near the obituary) analyzing travel patterns between other countries and China to predict how many cases a country should have versus the reported cases.  The US seemed to be underestimating only slightly, while Russia (“nothing to see here!”) should have many times more cases than they’re reporting.

Seeking succor in probability theory, I spent some of my Saturday fiddling with Excel to calculate the number of cases per capita by country.  A problematic exercise given the testing issues mentioned above, but I thought this might provide some context and clarity.  Here it is, sorted by cases per 100,000 inhabitants (cases as of Mar 10 am CET):

My Excel defaults to European decimal style, so the number for Italy is one-point-five cases per 100,000 inhabitants, not one thousand five hundred.  So one could look at this and conclude that there’s nothing really to worry about: you would have to shake hands with around 65,000 (100,000/1.5) Italians to encounter one infected person.  The current situation in the US – only one case per 14 million people – seems like nothing to lose sleep over.

Of course, this kind of logic crumbles under the slightest scrutiny.  In the Italian scenario above, there’s no way of knowing whether it will be the 65,000^th or the 1^st person you encounter who’s infected.  And of course it’s not the number of confirmed cases; it’s the number of carriers, most of whom are asymptomatic, out there, somewhere.  The numbers rise faster than we can keep track of them.  In the time it took me to write, edit, and post this entry, the number of cases in Switzerland went from 374 to 485.  My alma mater just told all its students not to bother coming back from spring break.  I don’t believe I will be seeing the inside of an airplane for a while.