I am happy to report that Alison and I, all of our children, all of our parents (save one) and all of my siblings voted for the Biden-Harris ticket. In turn, we did our part in their winning all of the states represented by the extended family (Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, California, Massachusetts and Arizona) except one (Indiana).

I am optimistic that President Biden and Vice President Harris will guide all of our lives toward an improved standing on the world and national stages.

This picture of my sister Rachel and I was taken on Sunday, September 16, 2001. I remember it distinctly, as it was one week after the tragedy of 9/11 and one week before my brother Andrew died suddenly of an undiagnosed heart condition. Despite the tragedies that bookend this photo, this is a favorite of mine. My sister looks as cute as ever, and I had hair 😎.

This picture of Cameron and his best friend Michael Zacharias was taken sometime in the late 1990s. The looks on their faces are classic, a distinctly disgruntled Cameron and a happy-go-lucky Michael.

This picture was taken around 1975. It shows me (obviously, the chubby one on the left) and my grandfather (“Papa”), my mom’s dad. We were playing shuffleboard, possibly at Sunny Oaks, a summer getaway in the Catskills. Shuffleboard was a favorite pastime for Papa, and soon became mine also. I still enjoy playing when circumstances permit.

Alison is one of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's biggest fans. After she died, Alison went on a buying spree, purchasing various RBG t-shirts for all of the women in our extended family. Here's a picture of my sister-in-law Ginger in her t-shirt.

It is rare for me to read a book twice, but I recently re-read The Drunkard's Walk, written by Leonard Mlodinow. I was motivated to re-read it after recently reading Feynman's Rainbow, another book by Mlodinow. 

The book introduces concepts like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, chaos theory, and probability distributions, and explains in relatively simple terms how as humans we often assign meaning and structure to processes that are inherently random.

Mlodinow uses the stock market as a stereotypical example and explains how past performance of a fund manager provides no guidance whatsoever as to how that manager will perform in the future. To illustrate this point, he presents the two charts reproduced below. In the first one, we see 800 fund managers, ranked by their performance over a five year period. In the second one, we see how those same 800 fund managers performed in the next five years. As you can see, it is completely random -- past performance provides no indication whatsoever of future performance.

Any yet, we continue to put unreasonable faith in our fund managers and expect future performance to reflect past performance.

From the time our nation was founded until Lincoln's presidency, Thanksgiving was celebrated on different dates, varying from state to state. It often coincided with the celebration of Evacuation Day, celebrating the day that the British left the United States after the end of the Revolutionary War. Eventually, Thanksgiving superseded Evacuation Day. 

In 1863, President Lincoln formalized Thanksgiving across the country as the last Thursday in November. In 1939, President Roosevelt changed the date of celebration to the next to last Thursday in November. Finally, in 1941 he changed it again to the fourth Thursday in November, where it has remained ever since.

Along with the vast majority of Americans, and for that matter, the majority of human beings on the planet, Alison and I have been quarantining ourselves in an attempt to avoid COVID-19. Today is our 15th day in quarantine, which we've spent entirely in Lexington. If you need to stay home, you might as well stay in your vacation home!

During this time, I have been quite busy with work. Busier, in fact, than I've been in years. Go figure. Alison, on the other hand, is on vacation. She objects to that designation, but given the amount of sewing, hiking and kayaking she's been doing, it sure looks like a vacation to me.

No one in our extended family has contracted the virus, so that's a good thing. On the other hand, we're staying away from all of them, out of an abundance of caution. One keeps hearing how older folks and people with underlying medical conditions are at the greatest risk, and given my recent health history, I definitely fall into the latter category.

My brother Matt and his girlfriend Ginger had intended to tie the knot on April 18th. As bad luck would have it, it's not a good time for large celebrations with people in close quarters. So, they've postponed the wedding until November. Let's all hope that we're out of quarantine by then!

For those of you who are not on our holiday card list, I've posted this year's letter here. The list is currently 178 friends and families strong, and we're shooting for a cool 200, so if you'd like to get on the list, just let me know. These blog entries tend to be infrequent, but you can always depend on our annual New Year's Card.

We were blessed with a visit from our very favorite niece, Abby Noga (pictured, on the right). She came to Lexington for the weekend with three of her college friends from Clemson. Having graduated a year ago, Abby is working at the bottom rung of the medical profession and trying to decide which ladder to ascend: doctor, nurse, physician's assistant, or nurse practioner. We look forward to her decision!

The 1918 flu pandemic was commonly known as the Spanish flu. It lasted from 1918 to 1920, infected a quarter of the world's population (500 million people) and killed between 20-50 million of them.

To maintain morale during World War I, most war-torn countries minimized early reports of illness and mortality. The exception was Spain — neutral during the war — whose press were free to report the effects of the epidemic. These reports created the false impression that Spain was especially hard hit, giving rise to the epidemic's nickname, Spanish flu. The actual origin of the epidemic was never adequately identified.

What is now known as Mount Desert Island was known to the local Wabanaki Indians as Pemetic, meaning "mountains seen at a distance." The Wabanaki fished, hunted and collected clams, so many in fact that what has become Bar Harbor was originally known as Man-es-ayd'ik, meaning "clam-gathering place."

What is currently known as Acadia National Park was initially called Sieur de Monts National Monument,  by proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson in 1916. That monument was renamed to Lafayette National Park by Congress in 1919, in honor of Marquis de Lafayette. Finally, the park was given its current name in 1929, an Anglicized word meaning "a colony of New France in northeastern North America."

Over 3.5 million people visited Acadia National Park in 2018, making it in the 7th most-visited national park in 2018.

In an op-ed piece from 2017 titled Legislative Lemons, author Michael Tomasky writes that:

In 27 years, Republicans have passed one popular conservative law and spent most of that time voting against things that clear majorities of Americans wanted. If they weren’t serving Americans, whom were they serving? And how have they gotten away with it?

The answers to both questions, alas, are depressingly familiar. They are serving their megarich donors and the most extreme elements of their base. And they get away with it because of the way they’ve gerrymandered House districts, because of an ideological right-wing media that obfuscates facts and because the one thing they’ve done astonishingly well is to make a big chunk of the country hate liberals.

​Do you consider yourself a Democrat? If so, then you probably already know all of this (sadly, too well). On the other hand, do you consider yourself a Republican? If so, then I implore you: read that piece and then explain to me how you can hold your head high in 2019 and continue to call yourself a Republican, proudly or otherwise.

Thank goodness I've got music to help distract me from the otherwise chaotic news cycle that has dominated our world since He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named was elevated to the presidency of our country. 

One of my very favorites, captured at right, is the Prelude of J. S. Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major. In fact, I've just finished a book that focused on Bach's life and his composition of the suites. I'll tell you about it sometime.

The hour is late. Time for sleep.

Trombone Shorty is the stage name for Troy Andrews, a musician (and producer, actor and philanthropist) from the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. 

His primary instrument is the trombone (thus the nickname), but he also plays the trumpet, drums, organ and tuba.

I've included two videos here, one of Trombone Shorty's appearance on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts and another in which he appears as a supporting musician. I realize that the second of these has been highlighted in my blog previously, but I enjoy it so much that I thought it was worthy of a re-run.

For those of you who live here in Virginia, note that Trombone Shorty will be performing in Lynchburg on August 21st of this year!