Five Things This Week: week 33

The New Yorker
Maybe you’ve been following the story of SpaceShjp One since Scaled Composites chased (and won!) the Ansari X Prize back in 2004 for successfully taking a manned craft beyond the boundary of space twice in two weeks, and then through Richard Branson’s acquisition of the craft and the founding of Virgin Galactic. Maybe you saw the press about the tragic desctruction of SpaceShipTwo during testing. And you might have even seen that they recently completed a powered test flight of the replacement vehicle. This long read article covers the history, but through the lens of one of the test pilots. It’s a fascinating perspective on this 21st century space race that you might have missed.
NYTimes
Is Elon Musk our Henry Ford? Or Thomas Edison? Or Preston Tucker? However you think of him and his accomplishments, it’s hard to argue he has recently been going through a rough patch. His companies (Tesla, SpaceX) are doing great, but the man behind them seems to be feeling the brunt of the pressure he’s taken onto his shoulders. And from this unusually frank interview, it’s clearly taking a toll.
Atlas Obscura and NPR
This. I so want to do this.
I adore Atlas Obscura for its collection of odd and unusual locations, often nearby places you’ve never been. I’m lucky/blessed/unreasonably proud of the fact that I’ve ridden the coast from Long Beach to the top of Washington and there’s only one place on this list I’ve actually gone (the Chandelier tree). I was further shocked to see the FRICKEN MAMMOTH RUBBING ROCKS are seriously 10 minutes from my house and I haven’t been there!!! That needs to be rectified post haste! And while summer winds down and we resist the siren song of these adventures, noting our depleted vacation hours, please take a few minutes and enjoy this virtual road trip and, you know, maybe put some markers on a map for a trip next year. Or this fall…
Signature
Because, naturally, you’ll need some reading material for your virtual road trip…
This one hit my sweet spot right now. I can’t explain what has lately been drawing me to the desert, but it’s undeniable. This list of books draws from varied genres and the books themselves are neither dry nor, obviously, unending.
Washington Post
It’s been a crazy political week/month/year/term. We seemingly have more scandals in a week than we’ve had in twenty years.
It’s exhausting.
Take a deep breath.
Now click on the above link and read about what former President Jimmy Carter’s days are like. No, let me help you: here’s the first three paragraphs:
Jimmy Carter finishes his Saturday night dinner, salmon and broccoli casserole on a paper plate, flashes his famous toothy grin and calls playfully to his wife of 72 years, Rosalynn: “C’mon, kid.”
She laughs and takes his hand, and they walk carefully through a neighbor’s kitchen filled with 1976 campaign buttons, photos of world leaders and a couple of unopened cans of Billy Beer, then out the back door, where three Secret Service agents wait.
They do this just about every weekend in this tiny town where they were born — he almost 94 years ago, she almost 91. Dinner at their friend Jill Stuckey’s house, with plastic Solo cups of ice water and one glass each of bargain-brand chardonnay, then the half-mile walk home to the ranch house they built in 1961.
Go read the rest. It is salve for out battered and bruised national consciousness.
An extra because, well, farewell Aretha Franklin:

Five Things This Week: week 32

Washington Post
Did you ever see a famous picture in a gallery and think,”I wish that were in my home?” This unassuming couple apparently went through with it and enjoyed their own private de Kooning for the rest of their lives.
Topic
A hellaciously toxic lake in Montana becomes an international tourist destination, while at the same time threatening to drown an entire town. Not gonna lie, I want to visit!
Inverse
Caught in the fire caused by a massive earthquake and then frighteningly close to the epicenter of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the last survivors of the division Ginkgophyta are serious! I wonder if I could even keep one alive!
While we’re in Japan…
Afar
I find this concept of lining up fascinating. “Queuing is a big deal in Japan, a physical exercise of the principles of discipline and etiquette that are drilled into every schoolchild and reinforced for every adult.” she writes. Hard to think of that in our culture, and yet I look forward to the annual release of Russian River Brewing’s Pliny The Younger and the multi-hour wait in line. For that event, I wholly embrace the idea that the author is putting across which is “The wait isn’t part of the cost, as I’d always considered it; to a Japanese person, it’s part of the value.”
Spotify
I still intend to put together a podcast for the playlists I curate every month, I just haven’t gotten my time organized enough yet. In addition to those hour-long new music (mostly) playlists, I’ll ocasionally put together something a little different – a “Songs that Shaped Me” playlist, or a “Albums that turn 10 this year”. Or, like this, “A Brief History of Punk Rock.” My conceit was, if you wanted to put together about an hour of songs (mine ended up being an hour and a half), how would you introduce someone to punk rock. I chose 27 songs that run from Patti Smith to Minor Threat to Green Day and finish up with The Interrupters. Along the way I listened to some bands I eschewed growing up for no good reason, and I revisited some of my old favorites. Just writing about this makes me want to sit down and do a podcast explaining my choices. Maybe I’ll make time sooner than later. Until then, if you have Spotify, check the above link or let’s see if the below player works:

Selfie Week 32: Potius sero quam nunquam (Better late than never)

We’re a week into August. The big box stores have put up their Back To School displays. Heck, my parking permit for the fall quarter at Santa Rosa Junior College just showed up. The buckeye maples along River Road between Northwood golf course and Summer Crossing are starting to let a few harbinger leaves fall through the shafts of the golden, already-shifting, late afternoon sunlight. Let’s face it, today we are closer to the fall equinox (46 days) than we are to the summer solstice (47 days). Summer, my friends, is waning.

This year I feel like summer snuck up on me. Part of it is I decided not to plant a garden. The daily growth and weeding and picking and eventual die-back provide something of a visual calendar for the growing season stretching from late spring into the balmy Indian summer days. When the season opened I felt I didn’t have the time or money to plant this year, so I didn’t. I do miss it, though.

Another reason for distraction was preparing for – and going on – my summer roadtrip which I still haven’t written up. It’s coming, I promise. If for no other reason than to revisit the pictures and experiences. Ah, so much fun. If I could, I’d go again tomorrow. And look! It’s only supposed to be 111° on Death Valley’s floor tomorrow! Fall is even coming to the desert!

I know a lot of it missing summer is due to working six days a week, but that’s nothing new. And, realizing that’s nothing new? That’s a lot of what brings me here to this post.

Being busy isn’t new. In fact, it’s a pretty lousy excuse, all things considered. Don’t get me wrong, whenever I see those “Michelangelo only had 24 hours in a day. What’s your excuse?” posts I want to slap someone. This isn’t that. But it has been something of a wake-up call to enjoy the hell out of the season that’s left.

Potius sero quam nunquam. Better late than never.

I started Weight Watchers about a month ago and it’s been good so far. One of the things it’s pushed me to do is enjoy my outdoor workouts. The towel and swimsuit in the picture are a result of my fantastic workout in the river yesterday. In the spirit of saying something out loud gives it a better chance of coming true, I’m hoping to hit my other two favorite summer time workouts this week – the east ridge trail at Armstrong Woods, and the Howarth park/Spring Lake loop. Both feel so much a part of my Sonoma County life, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to use them to get into better shape. I went to the gym two weeks ago and genuinely felt a little guilty after I finished my workout and stepped out of the air conditioned building into the bright, hot sunlight. Fall and its shorter days are creeping closer with every day. When outdoor exercise after work becomes inevitably untenable, then I’ll return to the gym. Until then…

One of the interesting aspects of tracking my weight each week has been revisiting my spreadsheet. Back in 2005 Anna started tracking her weight and, in a move of solidarity, I followed suit. But I also realized it’s data! As such, I started logging it in a spreadsheet because of course I did. My relationship with my weight has varied since then from idle speculation to outright denial, and as such, the data points are far from regular. Back in that first year the line graph shows detailed, jagged resolution (oh yeah, of course I graphed it!) but there’s some years where I logged my weight exactly twice, and the line gracefully swoops from one point to the next. The line arcs upwards in late 2012, and by mid-2013 it crosses into heretofore uncharted weight territory and kept going up. This slope coincides, not coincidentally, with the first agonizing death throes of my marriage. The summit was reached late last year and my denial plateaued for a few months. I weighed myself at the beginning of the year and then left it until I joined Weight Watchers four weeks ago and I pleasantly discovered I managed to unwittingly engineer a rather precipitous drop — attributing it to excessive perspiration working in the sun on the weekend, I’ve taken to refer to this drop as “The Sweatening”. Over the last few weeks I’ve continued to lose in fits and starts, and it has been amusing to track the receding weight against its rise, like my weight is time traveling — two weeks ago I was weighing May 2015 and Monday I had reverted back to my birthday in 2014. Here’s hoping this Monday I’m weighing younger still.

Looking at my weight this way serves another purpose: it reinforces the idea that I didn’t put it on all at once, and it’s not going to come off all at once. But it’s starting. Maybe I had to learn something during that rise? I’m pretty confident I did. But the process has begun, and you know what? Better late than never.