Politics and Judges

I can’t stand what I know about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. His wife is a shrill shill for the far right, he took expensive vacations with a far right billionaire and his rulings stink of politics. He dissents anything that doesn’t sound ultra-conservative an espouses anything that does. He clearly led the decision on Roe v Wade being overturned. He is a danger to our democracy and to our country.

And yet…

Today in the NY Times I read an article about a judge in Germany, named Andreas Muller. He is not the equivalent of a Supreme Court judge in the US but he’s a highly influential jurist. He unapologetically lobbies for the repeal of laws that ban cannabis. He lets off people who are found in possession of marijuana, using legalities to do so. The article discusses an 18-year-old found with 7.5oz in his parents’ home. I find this quite sympathetic, but of course and forced to realized that I happen to agree with Judge Muller’s politics. “It makes me so mad to see so many young people locked up and criminalized just because they use cannabis and not alcohol,” he said.

I feel a little embarassed, that I can rationalize how I feel about Judge Muller (and any equivalent in my country) but can despise Judge Thomas or others. So…it has made me a little introspective about it….but only a little. I can’t bring myself to be more sympathetic toward Judge Thomas; perhaps just a little more sympathetic to my righty friends who might be uncomfortable with the Judge Muller’s of the world.

Cat sitting

Cat sitting is easier than dog sitting. It just is.

We agreed to pet sit for my daughter’s cat this week, in London. She lives in a flat in central London (our flat, actually), and the cat spends most of her time indoors. She goes outside when supervised by my daughter and her boyfriend, but that is not a responsibility I would take on while cat sitting…so she is living here in the flat.

Don’t feel bad for her – she is well spoiled. There are two bowls of dry food and one bowl of lovely wet food. There are two kitty litter pans, one in each bathroom. There is water in each bathroom and a special one in the living area. There are toys. I don’t know how to estimate how many toys there are, but you wouldn’t want to walk around with the lights off. There are probably 100 cat toys.

Her cat’s name is Piggy. Piggy is short for Pigwidgeon, a character from Harry Potter which my daughter was/is obsessed with. She is also obsessed with Lord of the Rings, and named one of our dogs Gimli, after a dwarf from those movies, but Gimli will have to wait for his own blog post. “Pigwidgeon Christmas Steinharter” is her full name. Sarah also loves Christmas, so there.

Piggy is very pretty (see photo above). She is spoiled, yes, but it is fun taking care of her. Sometimes she wants to be chased, sometimes she wants to play with her toys. Several times a day she gets affectionate. She tells us when that is, we don’t define those terms. She tends to come into our bedroom in the morning and curl up in the bedspread and purr. It’s pretty cute. We don’t have to take her out to pee and poop like our dogs. We don’t have to walk her like our dogs back home. Cat sitting is easy (if you don’t mind scooping out the kitty litter every other day or so).

I do like cats. I like Piggy.

Biking in Holland

After our long ski weekend in Zermatt, Switzerland, we popped over to the Netherlands to embark on our planned 3-day biking trip.

Firstly, before you get confused, Holland is not the same as Netherlands. The Netherlands is the whole country; Holland is comprised of two of the 12 provinces in Netherlands. So there.

Our adventure seemed pretty ambitious when we booked it, and as we got closer, Dale became more and more nervous, having little experience with biking, much less biking for over 40km a day for 3 days in a row!

Tulip Cycling (www.tulipcycling.com) is the outfit we booked. They were wonderful and I highly recommend doing this and using them. We landed in Amsterdam and took an uber to the nearby city of Utrecht, where our tour began. Pieter (not to be confused with his partner Peter) met us at our hotel, which they had booked for us. He gave us all of our equipment and took the time to explain everything – bikes, bags for carrying stuff, a garmin gps, maps for following along and a commitment to meet us each afternoon with our luggage transported to the next hotel.

We biked first from Utrecht to Gouda (ya, like the cheese), stayed overnight and then biked from Gouda to Leiden. The next morning we biked from Leiden up to the Keukenhof gardens to see their amazing display of flowers, then out along the beach and up to Zanvoort before cycling in to Haarlem (not to be confused at all with Harlem) for our finish. Peter (not Pieter) met us at the Haarlem train station, collected all his equipment and we caught a train to Amsterdam and met a good friend for dinner and wine for our last night.

Point #1 – The Netherlands is beautiful. We cycled through little villages, farms, flower farms, protected lands, past the dunes by the ocean. We saw a lot of babies, since it was April – lamb, calves, chickens, and many more sheep and lambs than we could count. The scenery is gorgeous and the little villages offered opportunities to stop for a tea or lunch or other.

Point #2 – The Netherlands is flat! This is a huge point, especially for those inexperienced or unsure. The biking is easy. The worst you can get is wind or rain. We were lucky and avoided rain, but did have the wind from time to time. Big deal, just keep pedaling.

This was a lot of fun and we handled 40k each day pretty easily. I would guess that we did about 5 hours of biking each day. This allowed for a leisurely breakfast at around 8am, on the bikes at 9 or even 10 and we’d arrive at the next town by 3 easily. Time for a rest, a walk and a nice dinner before bed.

The towns (are they really cities?) are good fun. Our favorite was Gouda, though we missed the big cheese festival by a week or so. It is charming and nice to walk around. Leiden is a university town, so a little bit busier, but we made do at a nice little wine bar. Haarlem is really pretty (yes, Haarlem), and Amsterdam is of course the big city, but one that we really enjoy.

Okay enough pontificating. Just logging and blogging this trip cuz it was a winner. I would do it again.

Off to London to visit our old home for a week.

Zermatt

This week I spent five days in Switzerland. It’s been a while since I had been here and that had always on business. This time it was to see my girls! Dale and I flew to Zurich and spent a day in that lovely city. Dale insisted on going to the FIFA museum in Zurich so I said okay :-). We ate well and drank Swiss beer and wine and the next day the two girls arrived, one from London and the other from Colorado….impressive commitment as it’s heck of a long trip for a ski weekend!

We took the train from Zurich up to Zermatt and discovered what we agreed is the loveliest ski town we have seen. We booked a little hotel on the outskirts of town (Alpen-something or other, of course) and you can see the Matterhorn from our window (see above).

First important point – I am a shitty skier. I can get down the mountain, but without style and always in danger. My wife has always been a good skier and the kids have all learned properly. I ski once (maybe twice) a year and only with Katie. She usually can use her employee status to get me a discount that makes it worth it even if I only last a couple of hours before I start complaining of my knees or ankles.

Friday the two girls skied alone, which I expect they enjoyed. The weather was lousy so I had little interest, and Dale skipped as well. Saturday I could avoid it no longer – I went to the shop, rented all the necessary equipment, bought a one-day pass (i don’t think I had ever skied two days in a row) and headed up the mountain with all three girls. This mountain is huge (over 12,000 feet at the highest point) and it takes a long time to get up there. I made it for a couple of hours and then we got to go sledding, which was a blast and then back to eating and drinking, activities I am far more skilled at…and paying.

Saturday morning started as a bluebird day – not a cloud in the sky, and Sarah talked me into going back out. With plenty of trepidation (two days in a row?) she insisted that I had to see the Italian side of the mountain. It turns out that the mountain lies on the Swiss-Italian border and you can ski both sides with the right pass. It took about and hour to get all the way to the top. It was breathtaking. The view was worth the journey.

But then I had to get down the mountain. We started out and I thought I was going to kill myself it was so steep. Sarah only told me after we made it down the first run that it was supposed to be “for experts only.” that little b____h.

Okay after that I started to get a little confidence and the Italian side was sunny and warm and gorgeous. We went to a tiny little restaurant just on the ski run, not at the bottom. We had lunch, a couple glasses of local wine and then I earned a nap in the sun, while Sarah did a couple more runs and Dale and Katie caught up with us. Nothing like a two-hour break in the sun to rejuvenate. I was then able to join them for several more runs and can now say that I skied two days in a row. Of course we stopped again for more wine and then went out for Italian dinner, and more wine.

I am not much of a skier, as I have already admitted…but the chanced to spend several days with my girls is priceless. They were patient enough to wait for me as I plodded down the mountain…and nobody got hurt.

Bottom line – I cannot recommend Zermatt highly enough. The town and the mountain are gorgeous, the service is excellent (very Swiss) and even though somewhat expensive, the meals were wonderful. Sitting here in the lounge at Geneva airport I decided to kill some time by sharing.

Fear v Hope

The more I read and the more I listen (and the older I get) the more I tend to oversimplify. Today I am simplifying the difference between how people try to inspire and motivate us using either fear or hope. Politics is a great place to start, so let’s start there.

Is Donald Trump the new Joseph McCarthy? Is Trumpism the same as McCarthyism? In many ways it sure it. Those two (not so) gentlemen tried to prey on our fears. Many people fear the loss of their way of life in some way. Communists in the 1950s were supposedly going to threaten everything that is true blue American. What Joe McCarthy was doing was simply using these fears to promote himself. It’s not even clear that he believed most of the bullshit he was peddling – there were plenty of side conversations that revealed this. Trump is similar – he preys on (some) people’s fears of things foreign as well – immigration, people of color, LGBTQ types. He invented “deep state” to be afraid of and inspired many to protest and violence to “keep America great.”

Our greatest leaders inspired hope. Abraham Lincoln and FDR are a couple of examples. Their speeches were about hope and inspiration, not about fear. In fact, it was FDR who said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself!

I take heart in the history that set Joe McCarthy aside (he was censured by the US Senate and died not long after) and hope (yes, hope) that Donald Trump will be relegated to the same dust bin. They both did damage to the reputation of the very America that they professed to be protecting. They were really simply promoting themselves.

Who among us will inspire hope next?

Why are these people elected?

Caveat – my leanings are leftward. I do believe in a liberal society. I do think we should have better gun control, legal abortions, combat racism and national health care. Okay, now that’s out of the way….

What the fuck are people thinking about when voting for idiots like Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Matt Gaetz, Bobert, and this joker Santos? People voted for them!!

MTG says the most outrageously idiotic things, and then yells out “liar,” when Biden is giving a speech to the nation.Gaetz has molested underage women. Santos hasn’t told the truth in a very long time. Has Donald Trump simply made lying ‘okay?’ I grew up thinking that lying was a bad thing. Now it seems that either it doesn’t matter, or perhaps it’s a means to the end of getting elected.

And this guy McCarthy is now 3rd in line to the Presidency. He doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings about policy or doing what’s right the American people, even for his own constituents. He simply prioritizing being in power. He was willing to compromise almost everything in order to become Speaker of the House. So many more principled people would have said “no thanks” to such demands. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney. I may not agree with many of their (conservative) positions, but at least they have integrity and represent themselves honestly.

Are so many people in the USA simply stupid? Or are they committed to their positions on particular social issues (pick one – abortion? banning CRT? ) so deeply that they would vote for a candidate who professed(?) to advocate such positions, regardless of their integrity. For chrissakes, many people in Georgia voted for Herschel Walker. They all (mostly?) knew that he’s an idiot amongst other failings. They voted for him simply because he was the Republican candidate and they wanted the seat.

Wow. People who grow up with values are more considerate when choosing their representatives. We might vote for a candidate because we believe he/she represents what we want in office – honesty, integrity, hard work, and policies that we agree with…not just because he/she is a democrat or a republican or a socialist or a green party, or other.

I find the state of the “system” in the United States today to be awfully frustrating. I’m not quite sure if it’s because it’s worse then ever, or because I’m older and more curmudgeonly than ever. I read recently (read Jon Meacham’s new book; it’s excellent) that when Abraham Lincoln was elected, a group of people stormed the capital to prevent his election, even threatening the vice president, hoping he would not certify the electoral college vote. It was in March rather than on January 6th, but still…

I guess some amount of divisiveness is inherent in the system. Politics is messy by design. It is also the case in running a company. Making strategy decisions is messy by design, and better decisions come from diversity of opinion and vigorous debate. Decisions are made and people move on, rarely going to lengths to sabotage the decisions made. We need more people with integrity in office. I think Joe Biden is an honest guy. He’s too old to run for President again, but at least he’s trying hard to do what’s right and he doesn’t seem to be lying to us. For me, that’s a win.

Enough for now.

Do my kids still need taking care of?

When your kids are young you do anything and everything to protect them and care for them. You worry about negative things happening to them, even though you know they need to learn many lessons for themselves. You are quick to come to their defense after any transgression – a bully, an unfair teacher or coach – no matter that it was probably their fault :-).

What about after they grow up? when you kids are over 21, out of school, living on their own, or all of the above…what then? The instinct to protect is always there, but now it must be controlled carefully. When my kid calls me to complain about work, vent about a romantic relationship gone south or a friend done wrong, I have to remember that I don’t have to fix it. My job – first and foremost – is to listen. Every once in a while he/she will actually ask for advice (depending on the kid, some more often than others). If advice is requested then it can be (carefully) shared. Advice given needs to be different from “here’s what you need to do.” They don’t want or need to be told what to do any longer. I tend to talk about options and ideas for consideration that my child (is she really still a child? yea i think so!) can consider when making up her own mind.

“It’s the decisions you make” has always been my most important advice. They need to make their own decisions and live with them, even the mistakes.

Of course it was a lot easier when they were little and I could just protect them from the world.

Don’t be afraid to take risks

I remember when I was young that some people spoke about wisdom that is acquired only with experience. This sounded like you had to get old before you knew things, or knew enough to be successful (whatever that may mean to any one of us).

In my periods of introspection, now that I appear to be retired, the title of this item is what occurs to me, and I need to relay it to my kids.

I grew up in a reasonably privileged household. We were white, middle-classed (as they said back then) and reasonably comfortable. Dad had a job most of the time, and we always had food on the table. I went to high school and was a good student as well as a decent athlete. I went to a large high school (graduating class was over 1,000 students!) and I became captain of the soccer team. I was even named Scholar-Athlete of the Year by the Philadelphia Bulletin. In other words, it seemed I could do little wrong, moving from success to success. I got into Dartmouth College, one of the finest institutions in the world.

All is well, yeah? Yes, but I never really had to extend myself. I worked hard on my studies, made friends, was a decent soccer player, etc. I got to Dartmouth and discovered that everyone who was fortunate enough to get in was talented in some or several ways. One of my searing memories was when the coach of the team (i made the junior varsity as a freshman) ran ‘category’ sprints and in succeeding sprints told everyone to “go if you were captain of your high school team, ” or “go if you were all-conference,” or “go if you were a Nationl Merit semifinalist,” or, or or. The point of course was to see that everyone was a hot shit, and the bar was now a lot higher. It was wise of him ๐Ÿ™‚

As a sophomore, I showed up at training and the coach told me I had to improve on my right foot – my left was probably the most powerful on the team, but I was weak on my right side. He was right of course. When it came time to make decisions, he told me I was not to be promoted to the varsity squad and he wanted me to play JV some more and improve. I was furious. Everyone knew he was a jerk, and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t use me on varsity for my strengths. I quit.

One of the other fabulous opportunities at Dartmouth back in the late 1970s was an innovative new program called Language Study Abroad (LSA). These days, every school has such a program, but it was a pretty cool new opportunity at Dartmouth back then. You could satisfy your language requirement by either taking a series of classes, i.e. French 1, French 2 and French 3, or you could go to France for a term, living with a french family and studying while there. This terrified me, and I took the easy route – I took the required classes and did well enough to satisfy my requirement. Many of my friends went on LSA and came back with wonderful stories, and even a command of the language.

These are two of my biggest regrets from my college career. Don’t get me wrong, I did well at school, made friends for life and went on to have a good career. I even made up for my missed opportunity to go overseas by taking a series of job that afforded me the chance to both live and work in other countries. I have worked in over 40 countries and lived in Australia and England. I played soccer until I was 50 years old and retired after finally injuring my knees too many times.

The point, however, is that I was a pussy back then. I took the easy route rather than take a risk. I could have been brave and gone overseas, even though it scared me. I could have kept playing soccer, even if it was on the JV, knowing that I was good enough to make it to Varsity at some point. Yet I didn’t. I took what I thought was the easy route, made the low risk choices and still regret it, dammit.

I recognize that these are “first world problems,” and that I never had to fight for my life and face decisions that were truly risky. Nonetheless, the principle applies to all of us, at whatever level we operate. Take risks, especially when young – go somewhere new, take a job that stretches you, do something risky (not irresponsible, but..).

Next time around, I am going on the LSA trip and I am going to keep playing soccer, even if the coach is a jerk.

I buy books for Christmas

Okay, I actually buy books all the time.

I am counting on the fact that my wife never reads my musings, because this topic is one we argue about regularly. She doesn’t understand why I am forever buying books and taking up space all over the house (but primarily in my office, so wtf).

This post, however, is about Christmas. I harken back to when I was a child. I always loved to read, and Aunt Phyllis knew and encouraged that. She owned and ran a bookstore on Cape Cod, called the Owl’s something or other (i can’t remember). Every year on my birthday I knew I would receive a book from her. I loved Aunt Phyl, she was fun and she loved books. I miss her now.

I am now (mostly) grown up, and have a wife and four grown kids. Buying christmas gifts is always a challenge for me. Some people love it, and are truly excellent at coming up with creative gifts for everyone on their list. I struggle with it…but have settled into my own strategy: Books.

I buy a book for everyone in the family. (at least one book for each). This is a lot more involved than it seems – it’s not just a simple point and click or one quick visit to Barnes & Noble. I need to think carefully about each person’s interests and choose just as carefully, Nothing is worse than buying a book for someone that they don’t care to read. (Okay, some things are worse, but you get what I mean.)

My wife prefers fiction, mysteries and other easy to read fiction. Her reading is an escape and a distraction. In fact she now prefers audiobooks, which she listens to while she’s doing whatever, but I still get her a real book. My daughters love to read as much as I do. They like both fiction and non-fiction and I choose carefully to grab books of substance for them. Girl #2 particularly loves Booker prize nominees. I need to choose one that she hasn’t already finished, of course. They both care about causes like racism, some politics and other reasonably liberal views. Thus, I can choose non-fiction for them also, but it needs to be written well and engrossing for them to read. I never struggle finding good books for them. Sample authors might be Hanya Yanagihara, Elizabeth Strout, Malcolm Gladwell, Amor Towles, Michael Lewis…

My older son is in medical school. This makes the choice a rifle shot because he is extremely busy. My girls are too as they have good jobs, but med school is another level, i think. He likes books about medical topics (Emporer of All Maladies, for example), but he also likes to escape with fantasy and “spooky” movies and books. I am buying him one of each this year. I got him Mukherjee’s new book, about the Gene. I hope he likes it.

My youngest is also easy – he’s a history kid. He’s been a history kid since he was in elementary school and we read books about WWII together. I rarely give him fiction, as he prefers history. I can choose some politics (this year he will get the new Abe Lincoln book by Meacham, and one or two others).

We now are getting “significant others” joining us for Christmas in Connecticut. This means a bit more research. I ask my kids – “what does Ian like to read? What does Katy like to read?” I need that intelligence before I can expand my program properly.

*Of course I deserve a book at Christmas time too! People don’t seem to give me books. I suspect that’s because they don’t know whether I’ve already bought it for myself ๐Ÿ™‚

Thanksgiving

When I was young I loved Thanksgiving. I think it was my favorite holiday. Low stress due to lack of gift-giving pressure, lots of eating and drinking and those are things I do quite well, and enjoy.

Thanksgiving is still a nice holiday, and the meal is quite a reward, but it isn’t top choice any more. It is clearly because the family don’t gather for Thanksgiving any longer. One of my kids lives in England and annoyingly they don’t celebrate the holiday there – it’s just another Thursday work day. When we lived in England, there was no Thanksgiving celebration – often I was traveling for work. My oldest lives in Colorado and she doesn’t come home for turkey either.

Christmas is the big one. My wife looooves Christmas. Therefore we all are required to love Christmas, and we have learned to do so. They house gets decorated inside and out. We all seem to go overboard on gift giving, no matter how many times we try out proposals to tone it down a notch or more. We have Christmas traditions, meals, and the whole family gathers – it’s a requirement.

My older son got engaged this week – very exciting. He took his gal to our house in Maine, enjoyed the peace and quiet and proposed with a lovely diamond ring. He then made a nice Thanksgiving dinner. I think this may be the start of his own Thanksgiving tradition, but there was no need for him to come home and join us.

My youngest was here – probably because he didn’t have anywhere else to go – he starts work on a ski mountain in Maine in a couple of days, but why not hang around with Mum and Dad, have Thanksgiving dinner and watch moves and play pool. So there – we had at least a little Thanksgiving this year. All the kids sent photos of their own turkey dinners. I am thankful for that and for them. And I got to watch real football all day thanks to the World Cup – the NFL is always so boring, but never more so than on Thanksgiving.

That’s enough.