Changes Aren’t Permanent…

I’ve been watching the incoming US administration flood the zone with shit mostly with my hands over my eyes, like a kid at a horror movie. The level of idiocy on display has been mind boggling, and I’m finding it impossible to imagine where this continuing for (at least) the next four years will leave us.

Dawnise and I used to say “stupidity should be painful,” and it occurs to me that maybe we should have been more… specific in our ask of the universe.

‘Cause this stupidity is painful. But it’s painful to the wrong people.

What’s really getting to me, above all the jaw-dropping stupidity, is the casual cruelty.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Groups tend to adopt and exaggerate attributes of their leadership. That’s true even when the group isn’t a group of toadies, and when the leader isn’t an unhinged narcissist. And this group is, and their leader is. And that chosen leader has been openly casually and repeatedly cruel for decades.

So this is very much what was asked for by those who asked for it.

And that’s the part I think I’m most struggling with.

That America has decided it’s ok to act like a prick.

To tell those who put themselves in harm’s way to protect others that the people who attacked them were patriots, were heroes, when those attackers were observably and objectively criminals. To jump around on stage like a ketamine addled teenager who never got past the idea that it was all about “winning.” To decide that the president is above the law.

To take actions while ignoring, or being incapable of predicting, likely consequences that will affect millions.

And I come back to the deeply depressing thought that it’s entirely possible that America has always been this way. Any marginalized group will tell you this isn’t new. There’s just an ever shifting set of scapegoats.

Still, I think something fundamental, and dangerous, changes when enough of us lean in to darker instincts. When we encourage our deamons to step out of the shadows and into the light, to stand proud. When we decide that it’s ok to openly exclude or subjugate the “other,” ignoring that we’re all an other to someone.

History shows us that over the long term these shifts are temporary. Sometimes it takes decades. Sometimes it takes generations. Sometimes it takes tipping into open conflict.

But ultimately things change.

They don’t go back to where they were, they converge to some new thing.

Until they change again.

Changes aren’t permanent, but change is.

Done Done Done

Last week Dawnise was naturalized as a British citizen. Just a week later her British passport arrived in the post.

With apologies to Inigo Montoya; “I’ve been in the ‘dealing with the UK Home Office’ business for so long, now that it’s over I don’t know what to do.”

Maybe pick another country, and see how many passports we can collect before we decide enough’s enough…

History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, You Say?

I’ve tried writing something about the cognitive dissonance today being both the presidential inauguration and MLK Jr. day is causing me several times. I started aiming to say something profound, when that didn’t work I tried to say something constructive, and when I couldn’t manage to even say anything coherent I gave up.

Since I couldn’t think of anything new to say, I’ll just repeat myself.

Skeptics

News outlets are all reporting on Trump nominating Robert F Kennedy as US secretary of health and human services. And these outlets typically describe RFK as a “vaccine skeptic.”

A skeptic is “a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions.”

Skepticism is a powerful force against groupthink. I’m a practitioner, and a fan.

Someone who questions or doubts facts demonstrable well beyond a shadow of a doubt – like that vaccination saves lives – isn’t a skeptic.

They’re just wrong.

What We Do

Jung said “you are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

So, when the gamblers and bookies do things that disagree with the pollsters, my money’s on the bookies.

Sadly, the bookies basically called the US Election weeks ago.

This morning brought resigned sadness, but not much surprise.

I read the idea, somewhere, that politics and policy affects us in two ways: by what it does to us – the liberties provided or restricted, the taxes and tariffs levied – and by what it says about us – how our sense of self is reflected and affected.

What our tribe’s politics and policies say to people – especially those outside the tribe – about who we are, what we believe, and what values we hold dear.

It’s mostly through that lens that I’m despondent about another Trump presidency. Because of what I believe the choice says about the beliefs and values of the tribe that chose him.

A tribe that I’m part of. A tribe whose decisions cause ripples in every direction, and into the future.

Electing him to lead, and to represent the US on the world stage, is a decision that I fundamentally do not understand and deeply disagree with.

I didn’t understand it the first time. We knew plenty about Trump through how he ran his businesses. He had a long history of mistreating people who worked for him. He didn’t dispute it. He was proud of it. He berated belittled and verbally attacked people who disagreed with him. He weaseled out of agreements. And he styled himself a “self-made success,” despite starting well up the ladder thanks to inherited wealth. (You may notice that Trump’s current favored sycophant suffers from the same misapprehension.)

I was confused the first time. I’m utterly incredulous the second time. We had four years to see his reprehensible character and behavior amplified by the office of the presidency. Four years of him acting like a petulant child who needed nothing more than his mommy or daddy to send him to his room until he learned to behave like an adult. Four years of him putting his immediate family into positions of authority and responsibility for which they were no better suited or prepared than he was.

And there was a veritable conga-line of close former advisors and collaborators vocally, publicly, and voluntarily shouting that he’s unfit to lead.

And yet. Here we are. At least another four years.

So now what?

Well, mostly things are the same as yesterday.

He’s a bloviating cretin who spews an incomprehensible amount of nonsense and cruelty and who has historically broken more promises than he’s kept.

I don’t expect him to change.

So it seems there’s little choice but to see which promises he tries to keep, and do what can be done in response.

He’s stacked the deck pretty strongly in his favor, so stopping him will be … hard. The Supreme Court seems unlikely to help. The media is basically why we’re in this mess in the first place, so don’t look to them for help either.

I’m honestly not sure what that leaves.

What I am sure of is that there will be people who will need help. Will need support and defence against this “new world order.”

So we’ll help. Because, what we do matters.

Choose wisely…

Dear America,

I get that some folks are uncomfortable with the prospect of a female president.

And I can believe that the idea of a Black female president makes some people even more uncomfortable.

I don’t understand, but I can believe.

And some folks really aren’t worried about her gender, or her skin color, they really disagree with her politics.

And that I can l understand a bit.

Maybe one of those is you.

Fair enough.

I entreat you, vote for her anyway.

Even if – especially if – you were going to “sit this one out.”

Don’t abdicate that right and responsibility.

I’m not advocating for her because I think she’s the best possible president.

Rather because I think – because I am completely convinced – that she’s the best option.

By a country mile.

And because the alternative saddens and frightens me, in equal parts.

I’m saddened and frightened by the notion that the country would give power and control to a man who’s clearly and consistently demonstrated that he uses power to attack and suppress those who disagree with him… A man who has clearly and consistently demonstrated that he’s a petulant, racist, xenophobic, nepotistic, misogynistic, anti-science narcissist who can’t distinguish fact from fiction… A man who routinely, and almost casually, encourages violence against those with whom he disagrees.

That the country would give authority to such a man again makes me despondent.

Maybe you don’t like Kamala’s politics. Or her past as a public prosecutor. Or her performance as Biden’s Vice President. Or that she was part of Biden’s administration at all. Or that she’s a Democrat. Or her choice of running mate. Or.., something else.

I’m not saying those concerns aren’t important.

I’m saying that when forced to choose between the alternatives, I don’t see a choice. I have disagreements with Harris about what’s best for the country. I have a deep disagreement with Trump about what it means to be fit for leadership in a democracy, and what it takes to be a decent human being.

I get that a bunch of the people reading this live in states where your vote “doesn’t matter.” Where your vote will be just one more vote for or against the candidate that will nearly certainly carry your state.

That’s broken and needs fixing, make no mistake.

But even if that’s you. Vote.

Make a choice.

And please, please,

Choose wisely.

If Only I Could See What I’ve Seen With My Eyes

I’ve needed vision correction most of my life.

I have a strong memory of putting on glasses and being able to see the leaves on trees.

Despite the dramatic improvement, I hated wearing glasses as a teen. As soon as I could convince my parents I switched to contact lenses. I wore rigid gas permeables for years, before switching to extended wear softs for a while, and eventually to daily disposables.

I wore contacts basically exclusively from my late teens to my late 30s. I don’t even remember why I decided to get an updated glasses prescription, but at some point I did.

I still wore contacts most days – my glasses living in a case in my bedside table.

Until late 2019.

As COVID grabbed the world’s attention – and there was much speculation and uncertainty about how it spread – I decided that despite being careful about sanitization, sticking my fingers in my eyes twice a day every day was a risk I could easily eliminate.

By the time I considered switching back to contacts, two things had happened. First, my old contacts had passed their expiry date and I’d chucked them out. Second, and more importantly, I had gotten my first set of progressive focus glasses.

Presbyopia is a harsh mistress.

A bit over a month ago I decided to investigate contacts again, and made an appointment at a local optometrist.

I expected to end up with contacts and reading glasses, but learned that multifocal contacts had come a long way, and were only marginally more expensive than single focus. So we started there.

Over the next couple weeks I tried various combinations of distance and reading correction, ultimately finding a prescription that’s “pretty good.” Distance isn’t as good as my glasses, but it’s workable. Near field is similar – workable, but not as good as my glasses.

Annoyingly, this seems as good as it’s likely to get – ok, but very much a tradeoff.

Even more annoyingly, with contacts in you can’t “cheat” and look over/under them. Want to see detail in a piece of art? Getting closer doesn’t help.

As a final experiment I got single vision contacts and a cheap pair of reading glasses, to see if that was the sweet spot. After trying it for a day, running errands around the city and meeting friends for lunch, I can confidently say that reading glasses are not better,

Not even a little bit.

So after all that I’m likely to stick with glasses, at least most of the time. They’re better for reading. They’re better for distance. But they get rain drops on them. And steam up when coming in out of the cold.

And when you take them off to swim, or shower, or get a hair cut, the world closes in and gets very very small.

The optometrist told me that despite the claims in the marketing materials, multifocal contacts “won’t give you back the eyes you had twenty years ago.”

And that, it turns out, is what I really want.

So I guess I’m waiting for the ocular implants Cyberpunk fiction has been promising for decades to become an actual thing.

And when that happens, I hope they come with the option to toggle the world into black and white…

International Man of Mystery: Correspondence School

On Monday afternoon I sent away for another passport.

Not a renewed passport. Another passport.

’cause Monday morning I said the right words, sang the wrong words to America the Beautiful, and added “British” as the second in my “list” of nationalities.

When we lived in Luxembourg I kept a bag of “US essentials” – and I had a ritual, while sitting on flights back to the US, of swapping European cards for US cards in my wallet, Euros for Dollars in my money clip, and the SIM in my phone. I would joke that all I was missing was a passport.

So it’s kinda neat, in a slightly childish sort of way.

But putting your passport in the mail is a uniquely uncomfortable act. Special Delivery, signed, tracked, doesn’t matter. If that thing doesn’t get to its destination, or ultimately doesn’t get back to you, things are … a bit complicated.

I felt a bit better once it had been signed for at the UK Passport office, and I’ll feel even better once it gets back in my hands, hopefully in a couple weeks.

Until then I can’t leave the UK, ‘cause I don’t have a passport. And even if I had my US Passport, I wouldn’t be able to get back into the UK. Like the US, the UK requires its citizens use its passport to enter, so the moment I became a citizen my Indefinite Leave to Remain and all previously issued immigration Visas became invalid. Passport or GTFO.

Hence the passport-in-the-mail maneuver.

So yeah… in other news, I’m now a British-American citizen. (American-British reads wrong, I’m not sure why. I suspect it’s just one of those rules we follow without necessarily understanding.)

And I’ve registered to vote, so I guess I don’t get to say “not my circus, not my monkeys” anymore – I’m a monkey in two circuses now.

A Good Bag Is (Surprisingly) Hard To Find

I really like bags. I used to swear by messenger bags, and have a couple Timbuk2’s and a Chrome, but my back stopped loving asymmetric loading some years back. So I switched to backpacks – and ever since that switch I’ve been looking for “the right one.”

And it turns out that “the right one” really means “the right ones.” Much of the time I just need a bag to carry my computer and other “bits and bobs” – what the kids these days call an “everyday carry” bag. Sometimes I want to bring my camera along with a computer and those “bits and bobs.” For a while, when I was flying between Seattle and Palo Alto regularly, I wanted a bag to carry my computer and pack for a couple days. And occasionally I don’t want to carry any of that, and just need a bag to carry “stuff.”

So I’ve ended up with a collection of bags. I have a Tortuga that was great for for those short work SEA-SJC work trips, and a Timbuk2 that I really like, but the bag I grab the most these days is one I Kickstart’ed from a local design firm here in London called Wingback. When I don’t need to carry a computer, like when I’m running out to restock on coffee beans (from Monmouth) or bagels (from B Bagel), I grab a basic backpack I bought from Stubble & Co. (I had hoped that bag would be my “daily carry,” but it turned out not to be great for that.)

The most problematic is when I want to bring work stuff and my camera. Years ago, basically by dumb luck, I found a bag from a now-defunct company called Kata. It was on sale at a camera store in a mall, and seemed better than the Case Logic bag I had, mostly by virtue of having room for both camera gear and “other stuff” and a dedicated laptop slot. I used it for years, and it’s actually still in pretty good shape.

The thing I didn’t like about it was the need to take the bag off to get the camera out safely. I knew a bunch of bags had started adding side access, so I looked around. After reading a bunch of reviews I decided to buy the bag that everyone seemed to rate at the top. The Peak Design Everyday Backpack (v2). I got the 20L version, ’cause bigger would just mean I’d pack more stuff, and more stuff means my back gets grumpy faster.

Sadly, after a few trips to our Vietnam office – where I needed work stuff and camera – and a couple trips other places, I realized the bag just isn’t as good as I want it to be.

It’s both too big – camera gear rattles around in it because of the specifics of their divider system – and too small – fitting my work computer, personal ipad, e-ink tablet and Kindle is hard. The accesses are awkward and stiff, making it hard to get things in an out. And it’s got pockets that “share” space with other pockets, so you can’t really use all the organization it offers.

So I started looking for something better.

After asking friends and my brother for suggestions, reading a ton of reviews, looking at a bunch of bags on-line, and auditioning a half-dozen in person [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (mostly from Amazon – let’s hear it for free returns), I’ve come to the conclusion that the Peak Design sorta sucks, but it seems to suck less than everything else I’ve tried.

Turns out, I’m picky (I know, you’re shocked). I wanted something around 20-25L, with roughly a 50/50 split between camera and other stuff, and that rules out a bunch of camera bags right there, which are often bigger and lean 80/20 or more into the “camera” part. Side access was the reason I was on this quest, so it was clearly a must. And I’m right handed, but I want the side access hatch be on my right side, which ended up ruling out a bunch of otherwise promising bags, too. (I tried a couple with the hatch on my left, and it fights my muscle memory. Worse, it’s opposite to my everyday bag, so I’d never “learn to switch,” it’d be frustrating every time.)

I also don’t like roll-top bags, which are all the rage right now (in particular a really well regarded one from a bag company that can’t spell) – I find them a hassle to get in and out of. I also don’t love “tactical” looking bags – I’m more “city professional,” than “special forces.” If Barbour made a camera bag, I’d probably try it. And my work computer is a 16″ MacBook Pro, which rules out a bunch of bags that only go up to a 14″ machine. Finally, when I travel for work I have a couple other electronic gadgets that need to fit so a “just big enough” laptop compartment probably isn’t just big enough.

After all that, the nearest miss was the Nomatic (Gomatic in Europe) Luma 18L. It was so close, but at 18L it was just a little too small. Another inch or two in each dimension and it’d have been a winner. Design was great, materials felt high spec, and based on our experiences with the Kickstart’ed Nomatic travel bags we have, I’d have given them the benefit of the doubt.

The Gomatic Peter McKinnon 25L was pretty close too, despite the high price tag. I’m willing to spend money on a good bag, but as the price goes up, my expectations go up to match. When I discovered that, for some reason, they didn’t put side access on the 25L version, adding it back on the larger 35L, that one went back too.

So after all that I made one more attempt at organizing the Peak Design, and I came up with something that seems better than my last few attempts. We’ll see how it does on the next trip.

Until then, if you’ve got suggestions for a bag I haven’t tried but should, drop me a line.

Like the Deserts Miss the Rain

I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate professionally with a bunch of incredible people in my career. And I’ve been even more fortunate to count some of those collaborators as friends, long after our professional paths diverged.

Over time we’ve become scattered far and wide. Northern & Southern California, Boston, Chicago, New York, Canada, North & South Germany, London, New Zealand, Seattle.

So, as you might imagine, I don’t see nearly as many of those friends nearly as often as I’d like.

I’m in Seattle for work as I write this. And because there weren’t enough days last week to do everything I came to do, the trip spanned the weekend.

I got to visit my sister, brother in law and nieces, and to see my parents. And that’s (always) fantastic, and (always) goes in the jar first.

I also reached out to some Seattle-area friends I hadn’t seen in a while.

Sometimes a long while.

I was honored and grateful at their willingness to make time to reconnect. Meeting on short notice for coffee. Making the trek into the city for dinner. Getting off a cross country flight and coming to meet me for a drink.

Each meeting was a chance to exchange updates about life, to laugh, to commiserate. And each, for me, was a welcome change from the business of the trip.

And each parting was a sharp reminder of just how much I miss these good people.

If you’re reading this, and recognize yourself in this missive, thank you.

For the time. For the comradeship. For including me in your journey.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to attend to friendships suffering from unintended neglect.

And if you’re reading this and we haven’t managed to be in the same place for a while, I’m sorry for that, and hope to see you soon.