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Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

Dear Senator

Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 27 Sep 2025| Leave a Comment »

I write to express my strong support for your recent vote to REJECT the continuing resolution to fund the government, and I beg you to hold fast and continue to fight for a negotiated bill that will undo some of the worst effects of the GOP’s efforts to strip American’s in need of their Medicaid and ACA assistance.

Moreover, I am also in support of the broader position that we cannot continue to fund the GOP’s efforts to dismantle the federal government, nor the administration’s obvious predisposition to limit, ignore, and outright deny American citizens their constitutionally-protected rights. A vote for the CR would make us all complicit in our own demise, and would be nothing less than appeasement of this the president’s growing autocracy.

I know that the president has threatened mass firings/layoffs should a shutdown come to pass, but I have two things to say about that.

First, he threatened this the last time, and Democrats blinked, wanting to avoid the unnecessary hardship that firings would cause to thousands of government employees. However, that concession, that concern, got Democrats nothing but a black eye and a reputation for not having the resolve to match their rhetoric.

Second, firing those employees would be the president’s choice, not a necessity, as he has the option of furloughing them instead. If he does fire thousands, yes, it will cause those employees harm, but how much harm will be caused by the loss of Medicaid and ACA subsidies? We must weigh the difference between employees losing their jobs and citizens losing their lives.

So it is with knowledge of the painful ramifications a shutdown would cause that I plead with you to stand your ground for as long as it takes to bring your GOP colleagues to the table, to push the president to take your meetings, and to force this administration to govern by negotiation and consensus, rather than by fiat.

Thank you for your past service to our state and to the nation.

In hope,

k

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No, I am not Glad

Posted in Politics, tagged , on 18 Sep 2025| Leave a Comment »

With my reputation as a life-long and somewhat outspoken liberal, some can be excused for assuming that I was glad to hear that Mr. Kirk was assassinated. This is not so. I am most definitely not glad of it.

Primarily, having lost a parent in my youth, I empathize with the loss his wife and children are suffering. Though his children are younger than I was—I was almost six when my mother died—such a loss effects the entire family, and for a long time. I still feel the effects of my mother’s death, a lifetime later, and given Kirk’s large-sized life and the manner of his death, I know his family will feel it forever. Nothing to be glad of, there.

Also, I lived through a period marked by political assassinations. From JFK and MLK and RFK to Milk and Moscone and Sadat, I’ve experienced the gut-wrench of seeing a hero struck down, the rage of having one man’s bullet steal the hope of multitudes, and the despair as that rage boiled up, spilled over, and engendered an escalation that led to more violence, more hatred, more division.

And then there’s the fact that political assassinations never bring about the result desired. Assassins see their act as the simple solution to a complex problem, but all their crimes do is create new sets of problems and embolden their victim’s supporters, exacerbating tensions and giving new life to old hatreds. We see this happening now, too, and I am not glad of it.

I was not a fan of Kirk’s outlook and philosophy, and found much of it backward-looking and hate-filled. However, I’ve learned that there are many in my circle who, before this week, had never even heard of Charlie Kirk. It’s reasonable to assume, therefore, that there are many right-leaning folks who were likewise ignorant of Kirk’s message and activism. Until now. Thus, rather than silencing Kirk’s message, this assassination has the unintended effect of amplifying his message, presenting it to more people who might find it acceptable. It transforms messenger into martyr, and I don’t see this as a positive.

Amid all this, there’s the ridiculous tendency for pundits and politicians and performers to keep score. An assassin’s motives are, to my mind, largely irrelevant, because the crime is indefensible. So, regardless of whether Kirk’s assassin was an alt-right reactionary or an ultra-left-wing anarchist, the end results are the same. Understanding motives is only relevant when discussing radicalization in the aggregate; when we talk about individuals, it only serves to rile and enrage and justify finger-pointing tirades.

Finally, there’s the permission structure the assassin has provided Kirk’s supporters. By murdering a man who was—let’s face it—simply exercising his rights to freedom of speech, Kirk’s assassin has given our nascent autocracy the perfect excuse to ratchet up their own rhetoric, prosecute political enemies, label criticism as “hate speech” (which is protected by the First Amendment and legal precedent*, by the way), attack/doxx/fire private citizens for expressing opinions, and manipulate corporations, markets, and media that don’t hew to the prescribed orthodoxy.

None of this—none of it—makes me glad. None of it is good. None of it is helpful. None of it solves anything.

So . . . what to do?

The only thing that has helped me avoid absolute despair this week is this: be kind. Especially—and this is the hard part—be kind to those you encounter who may be grieving over the death of someone they admired. Why? Because a lot of people who admired Kirk are unaware of his more incendiary and regressive views, having only been exposed to his more faith-based and patriotic messaging. Also, there are those who, as mentioned, were unaware of Kirk in general, but who see the assassination of a right-wing firebrand as an attack on their world view. Being kind to these folks, right now, might allow you to have a reasoned discussion where everyone is able to agree that Kirk’s assassination is not something that makes us glad, even though we disagreed with him. Naturally, there are those who are wholly on-board with what Kirk was laying out there, but even then, being kind is useful, as it protects us from entering into useless arguments.

That’s my take on things. I will never be glad that someone is assassinated.

*Info on the SCOTUS precedent (for what it’s worth these days) can be read about via this link to Matal v. Tam

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Why We Can’t Have Anything Nice

Posted in Creativity, Hi Tech, Politics, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 28 Aug 2025| Leave a Comment »

AI; the grift that keeps on grifting. Feed it, press a button, and (in the immortal words of our president) “Bing Bong Bing,” there you have it: AI slop.

It’s everywhere, now including your bookshelf. If you’re not careful, that is.

And we weren’t.

We wanted to read Robert Reich’s new memoir, Coming Up Short, so we went to the Evil Empire (aka Amazon) and searched. “What format?” was the question. Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, or Audio? Paperbacks are easier on our ancient hands, so that’s what we picked. And there was our first error. I did not see the red flag, did not twig that this was a new release, available in both Hardcover and Paperback? That never happens. If you get a hardback deal, publishers aren’t going to undercut that with a simultaneous paperback release. Sadly, all we saw was the reduction from the hardcover price (expected in a paperback), so we dropped that turd into our cart and hit the checkout.

My bad on that score.

When the book arrived, it was (as my wife described it) like opening a door to an alternate universe. I was coming up the stairs as she first viewed our purchase, and all I heard her say was, “….the hell?” The cover (pictured, right) was unlike anything we’d ever seen on a new release from a major publisher. It was also about half the thickness of a major release (150 pp vs the 400 pp of the hardback).

….the hell? Indeed.

What we had purchased was a bunch of AI slop.

Someone—definitely not Shem Grant, the named author of this tripe, whose magnum opus has now been de-listed from Amazon—fed a bunch of open source info into an AI chatbot, had it spit out enough slop to fill the 150 pages required to give it a spine, slapped a cartoonish rendition of its subject on the cover, and voila, instant grift. I’ll admit, I’ve not read this “product,” but in skimming through I found it repetitive, composed much like a high schooler’s book report, and rife with errors (within three minutes I fact-checked two: Reich was born in Scranton, not New York, and he was a Rhodes Scholar, not a Marshall Scholar).

Yup . . . AI slop.

Is this a thing? I wondered. Heading back out to Amazon, I executed similar searches for new memoirs and found similar AI-generated knock-off versions:

  • Jacinda Ardern’s A Different Kind of Power had half a dozen slop versions
  • Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor had a few grift versions, plus about a dozen “workbook” editions
  • Kamala Harris’ 107 Days had fifteen (!) “books” that included the phrase “107 days” in their title, all by “authors” who had no other titles to their credit

In addition to these obvious attempts to con buyers by piggybacking similarly titled slop onto the sales of new releases, there were many self-styled “biographies” that had dubious authors, were listed as “independently published,” and often had obviously AI-generated covers (some that were really bad, and I mean like embarrassingly bad).

So, this stuff is out there, and there is a lot of it.

Remember when self-publishing became a thing? Remember how everyone wrung their hands over that? “There’s already enough crap out there in the book-sphere, and now everyone who can hold a pencil is going to think that they’re a writer!”

Hehe. Good times, eh? Because now, not only can anyone with enough grip strength to hold a pencil pose as a writer, but all those who are too lazy to even pick up a damned pencil are able to churn out utter rubbish, slap a fake name and an SEO-optimized title on it, send it into the Amazonian jungle to sting the unwary, reap the grift, and move on.

It’s enough to make one want to give up.

But, lesson learned. Once burned . . . .

k

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Dream Jobs

Posted in Creativity, Culture, Music, tagged , , , , , , , on 31 Jul 2025| Leave a Comment »

We all are aware of folks who are fortunate to make a living at their dream job. Usually, this is a confluence of talent and hard work and luck; we “mortals” see them as world-class athletes, renowned experts, and global celebrities. But I know that there are folks out there living quiet lives, who are also working at their dream job, as a teacher, a firefighter, a decorator, a data analyst, and such. Not all dream jobs are splashy. And, the concept of “dream job” isn’t fixed, isn’t static; they change over time, as we grow and learn and become ourselves.

When I was in grammar school, my dream job—as it was for many—was to be a veterinarian. What could possibly be better than working with puppies and dogs and kittens and cats all day? So, when given the opportunity to spend the day at a vet clinic, I leapt at the chance (as did several of my schoolmates). The day started with grooming and nail clipping and such, but when we were introduced to the procedure called “expression of the anal glands,” I was out. Looking back, I’m pretty sure they popped that particular procedure into the day’s agenda so as to weed out the weak of spirit. Wise move.

Shortly thereafter, I was given a violin to play, and all thoughts of a “dream job” were set aside in favor of figuring out how, as a bookish, bespectacled violinist, I might survive into puberty. Somehow, through strategic applications of humor and social invisibility, I survived the wholly predictable bullying and made it into adolescence. At this point my success with the violin and my now well-honed acumen in pleasing those in positions of authority led to other musical opportunities. Violinists were a dime a dozen in grade school, but a viola player? Priceless. So, sure, I could try that. And I did. How about branching out? The jazz ensemble needs a bass player. Wanna? I’m on it. Band could use a tuba player. Any interest? You bet. I also tried bassoon and French horn, but sadly I met my match with piano and harp (playing two staves of music at once was, simply, sadly, beyond my ability).

But all of this was an academic exercise. None of it hit me as a “calling,” and none of it constituted a dream job. Could I see myself as a musician? Sure. It made my folks proud, it brought a certain frisson of fame during recitals and concerts, and it put me into the society of kindred souls, some brilliant, some pedestrian, but all of us akin to misfit toys searching for a home.

Then my high school orchestra teacher, the wonderfully eccentric Hugo Rinaldi (may his memory be a blessing) decided to start a “student conductor” program. Would I be interested? Oh hell yes!

Instant Dream Job.

Everything changed for me at that point. I had my first Life Goal: Symphony Conductor.

It was a great opportunity to learn, but it was also a thrill to stand up there, baton in hand, and lead an orchestra through a performance of stirring music. During those few years, I conducted musicians through symphonies and concerti and musicals and operas. I conducted orchestras, symphonic bands, marching bands, chamber groups, and pit orchestras. I loved it! It was a tremendous, not because I was the focal point on stage—that was actually the aspect I cared for the least—but because it was a collective experience, where through rehearsals and sectionals and repetition we all, together, brought a piece of music to life, and if I had done my job well, by the time we performed, I was merely a timekeeper, a reminder, an encourager, an adjuster of volume and balance and speed and precision.

And so, entering university, my dream of a life as a conductor was my goal.

Within two years, that dream was dead.

The conductor “path” at my uni had certain requirements. Beyond the music history, theory, and orchestration that were part of any performance major, it also had a specific requirement for proficiency on the piano. No way around it. In time, this requirement made perfect sense—most conductor path grads would go on to get teaching credentials, and when leading a school orchestra, being able to play the score on piano was an almost essential tool—but at the time, the revelation was devastating. The joy I experienced leading an orchestra from sight-reading to performance, that exaltation I felt as the conduit of an orchestra’s creative energy, it would never be, not for me.

I kept on with music for many years afterward, but it was not a dream job. I tried doing an end-run around the hurdles. When I was principal violist for a regional symphony, I tried to cajole the conductor into allowing me to lead the group so he could go out and check the balance (we really needed it in our concert hall), but ceding the podium, even for a few minutes, was something that particular conductor would never contemplate.

And so, eventually, the dream was not only dead but finally buried.

In time, I found other avenues of interest, and contemplated other “dream jobs.” As I grew older, more introverted, and (admittedly) more jaded about dealing with the public, my concept of a dream job became more solitary and cloistered.

“Successful novelist” was one dream job. I gave that two decade’s hard work before reality sunk in; the best I was able to achieve was “accomplished novelist.” A more recent iteration was “museum conservator,” specifically of documents and books, but by the time I began contemplating that, I knew it would remain more “dream” than “job.”

Now that I’ve retired, I have no need of a job of any kind, “dream” or otherwise. Now I am free to do what I will (as long as my health holds out, I guess).

In the end, though, I have to say that I’m not rueful over dream jobs never achieved, for I have dreams that I have achieved. A happy home, a secure life for my family, an excellent partner, a long marriage. And as for those dreams that lay broken along my life’s margins, they are what led me to achieve things nearly dreamed of, gave me a taste of perfection, and drove me to efforts I did not believe I could perform.

So I say: Regret no failure met in service of a worthy goal.

Onward

k

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Discerning Friendship—One Introvert’s Take

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , , , , on 01 Jul 2025| 2 Comments »

I’ve never had a lot of friends. My cadre of close friends in school could usually be counted on one hand. Even now my FB “Friends” list barely hits triple digits, and few of those are close friends. It takes a while for me to form a friendship with someone new, both because of my innate stand-offishness, and because—I’ll admit—I’m an acquired taste.

Despite this, I do have some close friendships, and it’s not surprising that, now that I’m in my 60s, most of those are measured in decades. However, it’s a fact that over time people change, and that sometimes relationships require work, need recalibration, or simply cease to function altogether. It is also a fact that sometimes those troublesome changes are in me and are not my friend’s responsibility.

Recent events—and the reality that I and my cohort have begun to grey and stiffen—have led me to take a long look at the nature of my friendships, primarily to understand why some have begun to falter, but also to understand any changing dynamics, and to set my expectations at realistic levels. I need to know on whom I can rely.

I am a 100% introvert and was also the “invisible” child in my family, the kid my parents rarely had to worry about. As a result, I’ve always been self-reliant (often to a fault), I rarely ask for help (even when it is needed), and I navigate my social world in such a way as to create the least disturbance in my wake. This last one means a few things: I strive to take genuine interest in my friends’ lives and activities, to be generous with my time and resources, to be a reliable supporter and helper in time of need, and to be a relatively drama-free addition to the friendship.

And thus my issue, for when I do ask for help, I really need it, and when I raise concerns of a perceived imbalance, it’s serious. However—perhaps due to my pattern of self-sufficiency, or because I have misjudged the reciprocity of the relationship—responses are often muted and my requests easily shrugged off.

It is this level of reciprocity, I have discovered, that is a critical factor. Now that I recognize this, it is easy to see the difference it makes. Does this friend reach out to see how I’m doing? Do they express curiosity about things that are on my interest list but not on theirs? How well does the other know me, and how well do I know them?

In many friendships, this is irrelevant. Our interactions are cordial, conversations rarely dive deep, and we have large gaps in our knowledge of one another. But we enjoy our visits and interact over mutual interests. We’re not close, but we’re definitely friends.

In close relationships—my inner circle, if you will—my expectations are higher. Conversations are often more deep and detailed, and my knowledge about the other’s life is more extensive. I expect we have greater consideration for one another, a deeper knowledge of likes and dislikes. And I expect that we have a strong mutual concern for each other’s well-being.

When difficulties arise (I now realize), it is when this reciprocity is not present in what I had considered to be a close friendship. It is here that my expectations have proven to be too high, which has led to disappointment, strife, and ruptures in relationships.

Social relationships and etiquette are fuzzy things with few definitive boundaries. They are usually founded on tacit understanding of the rules, rules discussed more in the breach than in the observance, and they are rife with particulars unique to the friends involved.

But it is neither fair nor reasonable for me to expect a friend to do all for me that I might do for them. One can rarely know the depth of a friendship until it is tested, but I believe I have found a tool that I can use to better judge my position as seen from another’s perspective.

Friendships can be marvelously resilient or shockingly fragile. They can survive long neglect or require constant maintenance. None of these traits are any better or worse than the others; they are not flaws, but mere attributes of the relationship. Denying their existence is fruitless, but while we must accept them as facts, it does not mean they are satisfactory to our needs.

The key—for me anyway—is being honest about the relationship; that way, I can avoid critical misunderstandings and failed expectations. My hope is that I can avoid mistakes such as I’ve made in the past and the heartache that often came with them.

 

k

 

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Patient 3914744

Posted in Health, Seattle, tagged , , , , on 28 Jun 2025| 2 Comments »

On Tuesday, I said two words that I had never spoken to anyone before.

“I’m scared,” I told Matt.

Matt was a giant. At 6’8” tall, with a firefighter’s physique, he was an imposing presence. He’d had to duck to enter our front door, and when he knelt down in front of the couch on which I sat, to apply the electrodes to my chest and arm, he still towered over me. A phalanx of men surrounded me, all of similar build but of mere mortal height. The cul-de-sac was filled by a massive fire truck that dwarfed the ambulance, both with red lights spinning, engines purring at poised rest. My wife had been on the doorstep, directing them toward me—“Upstairs, and to the right”—and was now providing one of the human-sized EMTs with info on what had preceded our call to 911. But despite Matt’s outsized frame, he was a calming presence, a rock of competence and confidence, spiced with a soupçon of humor that evoked a brotherly trust within my rapidly pounding heart.

Of course, I’d been scared before, but I’d never admitted it aloud, in the moment. Car wrecks, sudden job loss, a rock climbing accident, nearly losing a hand in a newspaper web press, a myriad injuries and mishaps, a televised viola solo in Vaughan-Williams’ “London” Symphony No. 2—I was no stranger to fear, but never had I given voice to that emotion, that primal, skin-tightening, gut-loosening feeling that strikes out of the storm like St. Elmo’s Fire.

This time, though, with a kernel of blue-white heat burning in my chest a centimeter above my heart, with my body pulsating at every heartbeat like an over-filled balloon, with the numbers on the BP monitor angrily flashing “248/195 . . . 248/195 . . .”, the fear was existential.

Matt winked. “Of course you are.”

What followed was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride to the hospital, an hours-long session of “hurry up and wait” in the ER, an uncomfortable and sleepless night followed by an early morning angioplasty, and then by an echo-cardiogram and more poking, tapping, prodding, squeezing, injecting, testing, and monitoring.

In the end, obviously, I survived. Compared to some folks I know, my experience was relatively minor (one artery blockage, handled with one stent and a few angioplasties, no permanent damage to the heart), and the only true casualty was my illusion of invulnerability. I may have been a 66-year old male, non-smoker, active, with no daily meds and no chronic illness or history of heart trouble, but that didn’t matter. Matt, the herculean EMT, perhaps he was a demigod, but I . . . no, I was mortal.

Some friends really came through for us, while others (sadly) disappointed. Helpful advice came in from many quarters, as did well wishes. And I will forever remember all the professionals—a cadre of EMTs, four MDs, a half-dozen RNs, a score of technicians, and support staff uncounted—who all, with professionalism and kindness and competence and humor, kept us going, instilling hope, calming fears, and distracting us at the trying points of our journey. To them, my eternal thanks. You saved me, in many ways.

Admitting my fear to Matt was a turning point, a true and unvarnished admission of my own mortality, and it affected not just this experience, but the rest of my life, moving forward. I am not immortal. I can be broken. I do need to take specific care of myself, rather than trusting in my innate constitution and past record of good health.

It’s not that I will be living in fear, constantly worrying that Death waits around the next corner, but just as I check my side-view mirror before changing lanes, there are simple precautions I can take to keep myself in good nick as long as possible.

Onward.

k

Shout out to the staff at the UW Medical Center – Northwest ER and SCU, and to the great guys at SFD Station #65. You were all wonderful!

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Anticipation

Posted in Books, Creativity, tagged , , , , , on 16 May 2025| 1 Comment »

There is something special that happens, something ephemeral and transitory, when I approach the end of a good book. It can go one of two ways: I either rush headlong toward the conclusion, driven forward by a thirst for the sweet wine of revelation and release, or I hold off, pacing my approach, lingering over what has come before whilst imagining, wondering, whetting my hunger for the last few chapters. It is a magic, specific to books, this control, this opportunity to choose.

When we watch a movie, the pace is set for us, as we experience the timing, the focus, the framing decisions of director, cinematographer, and editor. The Pause button is analogous, but a weak shadow, often used merely to grab a nosh, hit the loo, or tend to a load of laundry in the dryer. One does not pause a film in its approach to a climactic scene merely to reflect on all the scenes that have come before.

But with a novel, we are the director, we frame the shots, and we flesh out the rooms and towns and landscapes—sketched by the author—with costumes and onlookers and paths of our own fashioning. In a book, we are the collaborators, assisting the author in their work. We bring the words to life in our mind’s eye, and in the case of a well-written book, it is a joy, this work, this journey, so as the pages tick past, from recto to verso, as the end-papers grow nearer, we must choose: race ahead? or slow-walk our way to the last page?

(For those of you who read the ending of a book first, no judgment—okay, a little judgment—but I think you’re missing out on one of readings truly great pleasures. That’s not to say I’ve never read a book that didn’t go along swimmingly only to have a massively sucky ending, but I’ve only thrown a handful of books across the room for that reason, so for me, knowing the ending ahead of time would ruin far more than it would preserve.)

The decade past, my fiction diet has been lacking. The ongoing stresses of work, coupled with what I perceive as the slow (and now much more rapid) deconstruction of our national norms, left my brain ill-equipped to concentrate sufficiently on a novel. The run-up to retirement was anything but stress-free. Disappointingly, the first year of retirement was likewise fraught with unexpected challenges, from dealing with new insurance carriers to a cancer scare to dealing with large household projects and more. So, my first year as a retiree was not just me, lying in my hammock, a novel in one hand and a wee dram of whisky in the other.

Since my recent non-diagnosis, however, I’ve redoubled my efforts on the fiction reading score, and once more I find myself in the delicious dilemma described above. I purchased several books that were on sale, titles and authors about which I knew nothing, the sale decision made solely on the strength of the blurb, and so far I have two titles on this year’s list of Books Read. One turned out to be a mystery, and I found myself wholly absorbed as I read to the conclusion; the other was a surprisingly twisty bit of magic realism, and for that my pace slowed, savoring the last chapters.

I plan to foster this renewed joy of reading books, physical books, in the months (and years) to come. It used to be that I never walked anywhere, stood in any queue, or waited for any bus without having a book in my hand. I took a book with me from room to room, catch a page or two while the tea water was heating, or read a chapter before sleep. I’m hoping that, like riding a bike, these habits will return, that the tablet I have been carrying with me everywhere is exchanged for a dog-eared paperback with a tattered receipt as a bookmark. It’ll take some effort, but I suspect it’ll be worth it.

k

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