Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1060
Jane's first art show, the end of my 8-year CD sale, sun deprivation, road ecology the US forest service and my uncle, children driving luxury cars, nearby New urbanism
Hello! 1060! Feel like there’s some sort of joke about 1060? Can’t think of it though. Feels like a significant number. Can’t wait for 6 more issues, though. William the Conqueror whaaaat?
One of Jane’s art pieces was selected by her art teacher for the all-county student art show, so last night, Jane, Emma, Grammy and I all headed down to Pittsboro to the old mill building and went to the opening. We met one of her classmates, and we finally met her art teacher. Jane was very excited about the whole thing. It was kind of awesome. They had yummy brownies. Mental note: Teach Jane how to perform introductions.
Reminder: last chance to sign up for a Webbles holiday card, fill out the form here (no need if you got one last year).
Continuing favor request: If you are interested in doing a quick Google review for our pool company, drop me a line!
Exciting news: If you are in the Boston area on Christmas eve, and have nothing to do, come to our annual Christmas eve gathering, which I will actually be attending for the first time in, oh, ten years or so. I am so excited. Gonna rule.
Big epiphany yesterday as I was fulfilling an order for Low’s Tonight the Monkeys Die remix EP: I don’t want to sell my CDs anymore. It’s been a fun eight years, I’ve fulfilled 1,082 orders, probably about 1,300 CDs. Discogs tells me I have just under 1,000 left. I think I am stopping for a while. Or at least I am going to go through what’s on sale and pull anything I even remotely like. I don’t have a rational explanation for this, and I still really want the space back that they are taking up in my house. And I do believe that there are people out there who want these things more than me, or there might be, and if there are, they should get them. But something about sending them out now makes me sad, so I’m gonna run with it for a bit.
Speaking of SAD Emma rightly pointed out that we have not been walking as much lately, so I’m probably not getting as much sun as I used to. And she’s right. We’ve really slacked on our daily walks this winter. Last winter, we were great and we did them almost all winter. But this winter, well, Jane’s become slightly more against them as she wrestles with this newfound cold fear, and she’s also got the very good point that she’s already been outside today, and she’s already gotten her exercise, so this is our problem, not hers. But we can’t leave her in the house without us, legally, for another two years. And Emma and I are both tired of arguing and forcing her to do things she doesn’t want to do — I know I reserve all of that energy for mornings these days (though I have to say she was just great today). So we are at an impasse. Maybe I should build a float platform for her new cardboard fort and bring the whole thing and pretend we are having a parade each day, that would be something.
We are learning car logos in the line to the school in the morning. Today was the first time she got Subaru unaided, so that’s good. Now she knows Toyota, Honda, Acura, Subaru, Jeep, Ford, Tesla, Nissan, BMW. Still has trouble with VW, Chrysler, Audi, Volvo a few others. We are making progress. It is profoundly, deeply disturbing to me looking at the people in these expensive cars. They all look like children. Often well under 30. Driving around in super expensive new cars. I mean, I didn’t own my first new car until my 40’s, it was a Mazda, and at 50 I have bought my first car that could be termed expensive. It is deeply weird to me to see so many children driving luxury cars. Are they leasing? Trust fund kids one and all? All have good jobs in a good economy (gasp)? Anyway, this is probably a me problem, good for them I guess. Gen X problems.
My friend Jen just brought up a good point. Having visited us not too long ago she pointed out that a neighborhood near us had deep Celebration, FL vibes. And she is so right! I was remiss in not mentioning it. Southern Village. It rules. Designed by the same guy who designed Seaside, FL, the town where Truman Show was filmed. Andrés Duany. Father of American New Urbanism. Emma and I are obsessed with Southern Village. The homes are rarely on sale. There are about 5 artists lofts upstairs from part of the downtown core, and I want one so bad. Lotta Zillow alerts there. I think part of our excitement about this Disney community is that it could be another Southern Village. The thing is, though, Southern Village has a quality about it. Like the grocery store is a branch of the beloved local health food store. The cinema is owned by the residents. The burger place was once voted top ten in America. It’s good stuff. Remains to be seen whether Disney can match this quality.
Oh crap all the other topics on my list are political and I don’t want to write about politics this week I’ve had a good run, it’s Friday, let’s not ruin things. I have today off and am going to Walmart soon in hindsight I shoulda gone before this so that I would have that as material. Whoopsie daisy.
My road ecology book has started exploring the largest road system in the world, which belongs to the US Forestry Service. Apparently for the last couple decades there has been a raging debate about these roads, about the environmental damage they cause, about the animals they fuck up, pitted against the evil logging that happens in our national parks, and the recreationalists. I am not the largest fan of logging in our parks, especially when the people don’t receive any money for it, but it was also the premise on which Teddy Roosevelt made the parks: to promote sustainable and responsible logging in a time where there was barely such a thing. And of course recreation makes a lot of sense people want to go out and enjoy nature. But once you start learning about the ecological damage these roads do, you kinda see they need to be undone. We have stopped building more roads in our national parks, but we’ve only undone about 2% of them, more needs to happen, it seems.
What’s personally very fascinating to me about this whole thing is that my uncle was for a good while the head of all engineering and development for the Forestry Service. Like, I guess the dude oversaw the largest road network in the world? And built a ton of it?? This was not a thing I knew. I kinda always thought it was funny to be the guy in charge of building stuff in a place where basically no stuff was built, but nope! I have no idea his thoughts on these issues. I’m gonna email him and see what he thinks!
This is the second weird personal connection in this book, as I was talking to some friends about America’s first frog tunnel (frog tunnels rule, I am now obsessed) and it turned out it was like 200 feet from one of my friend’s houses and it was on a road we were just talking about the week before.
What a world, what a world.
Had a dream I wrote another book about advertising last night. Really do need to finish that book. Someday, someday.
Moody and quiet today, all new. Well, except David J and Cindy Dall, who I’ve been thinking about of late. She was kind of amazing. Left us too early.
Have a lovely weekend, lovelies.
Upon moving in with Julie in 2009 I pared my CDs way down to a no-filler (severely so) core. I love my CDs and buy a new one every month or two and I admit it pained me to see you sell yours!