Summer 2023

We passed the solstice yesterday and officially crossed into Summer, when my work obligations shift from five days a week to two, and my cherished free time blossoms. I celebrated last night with The Cure at MSG and am eagerly anticipating Dead & Company tonight at Citi Field. I have seen some other great outdoor shows already this season including Taj Mahal at Prospect Park and Dave Matthews Band at Forest Hills and have another MSG jaunt next week with Tears For Fears before returning in August for a couple of Phish shows. I was thoroughly entertained by Shucked and…

Time

I can tell time, but don't know what Time is; it is one of the most obvious and important features of our existence but the more I think about it, the more I realize that my temporal comprehension is just a simplistic and survivalist adaptation for functional life. It's been five months since I last sat down to write here and all that exists of it is memories, accessed by patterns of electrical impulses in the synapses of my brain. Using the present to tap keys on my laptop creates a lettered breadcrumb trail of my past, which might be…

Books

I have a few pockets in my schedule when I get to sit leisurely with a book and I have gotten through some really good ones over the past few months! Overstory by Richard Powers. An incredible work about intertwining roots and purpose. My appreciation of trees grew infinitely. How It Ends by Chris Impey. Basic comprehension of Time and Space for feeble minds like mine. Sum by David Eagleman. Postulates on the afterlife shifting perspective on the nowlife. Storm by George R. Stewart. Written in 1941, describing a storm forming in the Pacific that barrels through North America. Rudimentary…

Debt: The First 5000 Years

Since Introduction to Macroeconomics with Professor Michael Claudon in my Freshman year, I have been passionately infatuated with the study of money and its profound effects on every aspect of our civilization and society. It is one of life's greatest marvels that something so ephemeral, dependent completely on a communal belief in its power, could be responsible for almost everything that man has ever made. How could we be so motivated by scraps of metal and paper that we would organize our entire lifestyle and human existence around it? I have always been both fascinated and repulsed by our obsession…

Reading “books”

Summer always affords good book reading opportunities, and I have bolted through a few in the past month. My first journey was into The Change with "Dies The Fire", a sci-fi novel taking place in 1998 from moments before a cataclysmic event which renders all engines, electronics and explosives useless. The aftermath is brutal; a struggle to survive in a suddenly lawless world, described precisely by S.M. Stirling. I look forward to continuing this series... "The Beach" by Alex Garland is another world of savagery that festers then erupts on a utopian tropical wonderland and was a huge challenge to…

Delivering Happiness

Caitlin sent me a link to an interview with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com discussing his upcoming book. She wrote this note: This interview reminded me of you because you're happy and enjoy spreading happiness to others. That's why I love ya!! That is probably the nicest compliment I've ever gotten! What else is there besides happiness? It is the only real currency... all else is just a means of achieving it. And who better to spread this message than one of the richest men in the world? He gets it; he has accomplished more in the technology and business…

Freakonomics and Moneyball

I was an Economics major in college and anytime I tell people that they find it funny--probably because my job is playing music with kids instead of making money with money. I never had any interest in joining the corporate workforce but still found Econ the most interesting department at Middlebury. It incorporated so much about humanity, from history to psychology to our core values. The focus was usually money, but the how and why made the topic endlessly engaging. Stephen Levitt is an economist who brings the study into new realms; he sees the discipline as general tools to…

The Road

After six months of Infinite Jest, it was nice to speed through Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" in three days. It is the polar opposite of IJ in so many ways; staccato sentences with stark descriptions in contrast to epic details of minutiae, a barren world versus an oversaturated one, a simple story of survival against a complex web of culture. Despite their fundamental differences, both books are amazing, capturing the essence of humanity from different angles. The Road is a journey though a post-apocalyptic world, where life has been all but completely destroyed, and a father and son's struggle to…

Infinite Jest

The book turns out to be depressingly finite. At 1000 pages, it took me about six months to hack my way through, and still I feel like there isn't enough -- I am cruelly left hanging (as was David Foster Wallace...) -- as it ends without any resolution. The story is bizarre and compelling from the first few pages and weaves its way through so many interconnected lives of greatness and depravity, but feels after the last page turn as if we have just reached an intermission... I have previously read D.F.W.'s "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men", which is a…