Quarantine 2020: Day 209

October 23, 2020
​Richmond, Virginia

Quarantine continues

The quarantine continues unabated as Day 209 rolls into view. We spend the majority of our time in Lexington, returning to Richmond for Monday and Tuesday mornings so that Alison can squeeze in a few of her favorite clients. At her salon, they've implemented some strict and impressive COVID-19 measures, so we've got our fingers crossed that Alison (and, in turn, I) will remain healthy.

So far, so good.

Our time in Richmond also presents Alison an opportunity to walk with her many good friends. Pictured here are two of her regular walking buddies, Nancy (center) and Cousin Annie (right).

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From the archive

I ran across these two photos recently. In the first one, I am sporting my favorite-ever beard, while vacationing on Ocacroke Island back circa 2005. As much as I liked this beard, Alison did not, and as my personal stylist, she has refused to let me grow another one. She prefers my beard short, neat and trim.

The second photo was taken during our one-and-only family vacation in August 2003. We saw various sites in and around San Diego; this picture was captured at the world-famous San Diego Zoo, which was probably the highlight of this ill-fated trip. Ian was 11 years old; Eli was 7. I can't quite tell what animal they were posing with.

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Double Nickels

I had planned a big bash for my 55th birthday back in May, but the party was dashed by COVID-19. Instead, Alison contacted all of our friends and family and asked them each contribute a photograph of them wishing me well. She collected all of the photographs and put them into a hard-bound book. It was a wonderful and thoughtful gift.

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Corrotoman Weekend

We spent a recent weekend at Tony (Alison's brother) and Melanie's vacation home down on "the river". Given the beautiful weather, we chose to drive dad's convertible with the top down, of course. It was a beautiful fall ride and a terrific time all around. Sophie even took her first ever boat ride!

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Ian

Ian graced us with his presence for a week at the end of September. He had two weddings, back-to-back, in Charlottesville. We had the opportunity to spend some very socially distanced time with him for a couple of days before and after his wedding weekend. Alison was disappointed that she couldn't spend more time with him, but between a cross-country plane trip and two 75-person weddings, he was definitely a high risk.

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The Confederacy

If the Confederacy is alive and well anywhere in the country, it most likely is here in Richmond, Virginia. As the capital of the Confederacy, we've got the Civil War Museum, the Confederate War Memorial Museum, the White House of the Confederacy and more Confederate monuments than you could shake a stick at. 

Pictured at right is the Robert E. Lee Monument, the last Confederate statue still standing on Monument Avenue. Monument Avenue, in fact, is named after the Confederate statues that line it.

The monument was defaced during the civil unrest of this past summer. As much as I like the smiley face and wear my own button every day, I had nothing to do with the one pictured here 😇.

The resurrection of the Back Yard

The back yard in Lexington had been suffering for at least five years, overgrown with weeds and a space that we just did not use. This summer, we had a 16' x 16' concrete slab poured, bought some outdoor furniture, rocks and mulch, a fire pit and some decorative lights, and we've now got a very inviting outdoor space to use when the weather allows. Come join us there sometime!

Books

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned me into a hermit. I can easily go for a couple of weeks without leaving the property. Alison ventures out to buy food and walk with her friends, but I've remained holed up at home. This has given me the opportunity to read more than usual. Here is a summary of the last few books that I've read and enjoyed.

​102 Minutes

This book was written by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn back in 2005. Dwyer was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New York Times. Sadly, he died recently and I read his obituary in The Times. It mentioned this book:

​In 2005, Mr. Dwyer and a Times colleague, Kevin Flynn, published “102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers.” The book, based in part on a long investigative report published in The Times in 2002, and on survivors’ accounts and tapes of police and fire operations, chronicled the final minutes of many among the thousands who died in the collapsing towers.

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The topic intrigued me, and a sufficient number of years have passed since that tragedy that I felt comfortable reading it. 2,749 people died inside the Twin Towers that day, and the authors give you a chilling, inside look at the people that made it out and those that didn't. There were many stories of bravery that day, most of them about civilians, not the rescue crews. The book also gives you a detailed look at the dysfunction at the Port Authority (the owners of the towers) and the fire and police departments of New York, who couldn't communicate with themselves, let alone others during the catastrophe.

The Grand Design

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion—or does science offer another explanation?

These are the questions posed and answered in The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. It introduces the various answers that have been posited over the last 6000-7000 years, concluding with today's answer to the questions: M-theory and model-dependent realism.

The book is geared toward the scientifically-inclined lay person. The topics were clearly presented and reasoned, which is a rarity in books of this kind. As for me, I struggle with M-theory's concept of the multiverse. I understand the reasoning that leads to its proposal, but I'm not yet convinced that there aren't more plausible results of that reasoning. I'm ready and willing to listen to some.

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Feynman's Rainbow

In the early 1980s, Leonard Mlodinow arrived at the California Institute of Technology (a.k.a. Caltech) to begin a postdoctoral fellowship. As luck would have it, Richard Feynman was just two doors down from Mlodinow's office. Despite the fact that Feynman's best years were behind him and he was slowly dying of liposarcoma, he was still sharp, quick-witted and irreverent.

The two struck up a somewhat unlikely friendship over the next year, and it is chronicled by Mlodinow here in this book.

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All the Devils are Here

Louise Penny had a successful career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a radio host and journalist.  After 18 years, newly married and newly sober, she took up mystery writing and created the character of Armand Gamache, the Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, the police service of the Canadian province of Quebec. 

Penny has written 16 books in the Gamache series, with All the Devils are Here the most recent release. If you enjoy crime fiction and a flair for the Francophone, then don't miss her books. They are engaging and gripping.

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The Johnstown Flood

David McCullough has won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for biographies and Harry Truman and John Adams. He's written many other books before and after those award winners. His very first book was The Johnstown Flood, a close and careful analysis of the Great Flood of 1889, focusing on both the people who lived and died on that day, plus the gross negligence that lead to the flood.

I've read several other books of his: The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge,  The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914, and The Wright Brothers. I can honestly recommend them all! McCullough is a master at his craft.

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Modern Romance

This blog post is getting long, so let me abbreviate these last few books.

Aziz Ansari, of Parks and Recreation fame, has written a surprisingly erudite book about the perils of modern romance with the advent of both the Internet and ubiquitous mobile devices.

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Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray

Sabine Hossenfelder is a German theoretical physicist. In her book Lost in Math, she posits that nothing useful has happened in theoretical physics in the last 40-50 years and that's because the physicists have become "lost in the math." The search for beautiful mathematical theories has led us astray, since (she believes) it is quite possible that the next round of useful theories "will not be pretty," but will be accurate nonetheless.

If you enjoy theoretical physics, then read this book. If you don't, then don't 😉.

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The Terranauts: A Novel

The Terranauts was a very odd book. The author took the real-life story of the Biosphere 2 project outside of Tucson, Arizona, and overlaid additional, fictional storylines onto that story.

Now, the real story is gripping enough, as told in various other books like ​The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2, written by one of the eight people that sequestered for those two years. I saw no need whatsoever for the introduction of fictional storylines.

If you are interested in Biosphere 2, then read The Human Experiment. Skip this book.

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Music

Paul Simon is a towering presence in the music industry. At 79 years old, he is still actively writing songs and releasing albums — and good ones at that! Here he is in 2016 on Live from Here.  He is performing Rewrite, a catchy little tune.

Martin Sexton is the 10th of 12 kids from a large, Catholic family in Rochester, New York. Two or three decades ago, he parlayed a successful stint as a busker on the streets of Boston into an equally successful career as a professional musician. His music spans various rock genres, but his style is definitely and uniquely his own. I've seen him live in concert several times. He's not to be missed!

Herb Alpert is a Jewish, American trumpeter who has been making music since 1957. He led "Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass" in the 1960s, at which time he also co-founded A&M Records. At the age of 85, he's still going, albeit not necessarily strongly. Here is an Alpert arrangement of Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz" with a dance accompaniment. Notice that the entire dance was performed within a single, uninterrupted take!

Tidbit

A favorite idiom of mine refers to "the best laid plans of mice and men." I've often wondered about its derivation and whether it was inspired by the John Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men. So, given the copious amount of time on my hands recently, I decided to go figure it out.

It turns out that the phrase comes from a poem To a Mouse by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. The poem tells how the author, while ploughing a field, disturbed a mouse's nest. The poem is an apology to the mouse:

​But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy...

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As for the Steinbeck novel, the title of that novel is taken from the poem.