State of the Pete-2020 (Commentary)

I came to these shores on the Summer of 1973. I arrived with my family to the bucolic town of Littleton Colorado as legal immigrants. I entered Isaac Newton Junior High as a seventh grader, mingling anonymously with all the other elementary school graduates from the area. I was immediately immersed in the American culture, Colorado style, whether I liked it or not. I did like it.

By the time I was a senior at Arapahoe High School, I felt like I was fully integrated into the American culture and lifestyle, western version. Also, in my senior year in high school, I took the AP US History class from Mr. Dalton Holsteen. A truly fortunate decision on my part. This was the class where I learned all the US History that was approved for high school students at the time. This class formed the foundation of my knowledge regarding the American government and the history from whence it came. Although my knowledge has been augmented and amended since that time, this was the foundation. This was where I learned about the founders, read the documents, reviewed the salient historical events, formed the basis for what I believed to be the American ethos, and bought into the American dream. Indeed, it was during my senior year, after I turned 18,  that I became a naturalized American citizen. I had my interview with the immigration judge in downtown Denver with my parents present. The judge asked me a few questions and commended me on my knowledge of American History, even though I did miss one question, that still rankles, and granted my citizenship.

Regardless of how my knowledge and opinions changed over the years, the basis of my beliefs was formed there in Littleton Colorado, all those many years ago. My knowledge grew, that is just the nature of knowing how to learn; and my opinions changed, that is just the nature of maturation.

My dilemma in 2020 is that everything that I was taught about the American Republic and about the meaning of the great American Democracy experiment is wrong. If not wrong then highly dubious, as exemplified by the present situation in the Republic and the cancer growing in the American Democracy.

This goes beyond what one Orange Criminal has wrought the last four years, it has to do with what a select group of one percenter decided to do to destroy Roosevelt’s grand experiment and Johnson’s great society and regressing about a century into a white patriarchy that is out of step with the reality. Heather Cox Richardson laid her case out on her Letters from An American for December 30, 2020. She is far more eloquent than I am in laying out the historical evidence, I just want to frame that argument in my own perceptions and opinions. I am sure there will be many who disagree with me, and at this point in the destruction of a more perfect union, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Stop reading here if you are getting defensive, or better yet, unfriend me, I frankly don’t care, I am tired of being the better person, it has not done anything for the good of the society when progressives cave to selfish and racist louts.

Those lessons that I had internalized are a belief in the operation of a Democracy, that no matter what transpires, Americans are dedicated to preserving and strengthening the institutions of Democracy, that the citizens of the Republic understand the tenets of the founding documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist papers etc., perhaps not having memorized them by heart but having internalized their meanings. I believed that those who chose to serve in the government are driven by their love of country and their dedication to the purpose of the Republic. I am not naïve enough to believe that everyone has pure intentions, but I thought that the debates and disagreements were a part of a healthy Democracy; that in the end, those who are governing share the same ideals of the governed.

I no longer believe such a thing. I gave up on that belief after the GOP stole the election from Al Gore and handed it to Dubya. But, even with that abysmal happenstance, I still hoped, naively, that there was good in the hearts of the thieves. The GOP cabal of 2020 blew that to smithereens. The top of the GOP and the present Senate are prime examples of the parasites that have come to infest our Republic. The central focus is not to maintain and preserve the Republic or to create a more perfect union, it is to destroy the society that FDR had wrought, the society that had closed the equality gap between the haves and have nots. Nothing matters to them other than their ability to run the nation at the greatest profit to themselves. This cabal of cowards are more self-involved  than principled and more greedy than patriotic. These are toddlers playing at being responsible adults.

I do understand that there are Republicans and conservatives who became disgusted with the Orange Colored sycophancy and had defected to the Lincoln Project, but not enough. Those who are still members of government have been toadies to the Orange Criminal for the sole purpose of being re-elected. They have completely forgotten why they are in government. Or truer to form, they know exactly why they are in government: to enrich themselves and their families. Public service is far down the list of their priorities.  Even those who do show signs of a backbone fold themselves neatly back into the draperies when challenged. The only ones who had any real backbone is either dead like John McCain, or no long a Republican, like Justin Amash. The rest of the so-called moderate Republicans will only be so independent and when the time comes for them to put up or shut up, they do a convincing Mitch McConnell imitation, they pull their turtle heads back into their turtle shells. I am talking to you: Collins, Murkowski, Romney, and Sasse. Those lessons that I had listed are long forgotten or creatively spun to the parasites’ selfish uses.

Given the amount of scandal and shame that the Orange Criminal has brought upon the office of the president both domestically and internationally, the complete mishandling of the pandemic response, and the 338,000 murders resulting directly by his tiny impotent hands; one would think that most Americans would turn their backs on the incompetent blowhard, and  yet there is still a solid 40% voting block who indiscriminately voted for the Orange Criminal. Forty percent.

This is what hurts my heart. It negates all the best beliefs I had about my fellow Americans.  It negates everything I believed about America and Americans. When I became convinced of the benevolence of my fellow citizens, I was sold on the myth that my fellow Americans cared deeply about our fellow human beings. Most importantly, I believed the myth that if immigrants, the ultimate outsiders, worked hard, integrated themselves into the greater American tapestry, contributed to the great melting pot, that we would be accepted as equals into the great American Democracy. Even as the realities in my experience demonstrated that this is not necessarily so, I held on to that belief because I felt that I had to, or else all my struggles and  all of my parent’s struggles were for naught. 2020 gave me my rebuke as 40% of the intelligent and otherwise fair Americans, people I trusted to have my back and accepted me into the great American society  voted for the Orange Criminal. The hurt comes from the fact that even as these former friends and colleagues can look me in the eye sincerely and treat me as an equal, their core beliefs gave them an excuse to vote for someone who is the antithesis of who I thought them to be. The single act of voting for the Orange Criminal for the second time showed me that not so deep in their hearts, they were more xenophobic than not, more misogynistic than not, more racist than not, more cruel than not, more self-absorbed than not, and more selfish than not. All the PSA styled pronouncements which emanated from their lying lips were meant to be pure bullshit. Their vote revealed them to be who they are. It isn’t that I expected them to put my concerns, or my black brothers and sister’s concerns, or the dead immigrant children’s concerns ahead of their own. I did expect them to view the corrupt values exemplified by the Orange Criminal to be significant, significant enough to be the showstopper. I expected them to recognize that the accumulated evil of the Orange Criminal far outweighed their own narrow agenda. Instead, we got excuses. If you can overlook all that is wrong with the Orange Criminal, then you were not sincere about what you originally said to me. Your action speaks louder than your pithy words. You may object to being called xenophobic, misogynistic, racist, cruel, self-absorbed, or selfish; but you are all of those things when you go along with them when they are supposed contrary to your beliefs. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. (It’s right, I checked, I didn’t want to be Dubya.)

Particularly galling are the nominally Christians who are swimming in the orange muck. It was difficult for me to see how they can justify their choice; how can they do something that is so far removed from what their Christ stand for, but then I realized that these invertebrates lost their conscience long ago. There is no sense of guilt, no sense of compassion, no sense of empathy, no love of fellow man with these bottom dweller, just opportunism. I hope they all go their own particular brand of hell.

These two factors I listed explains the chaos that cropped up in this country in 2020. It explains the failure of one of the most organized and effective emergency relief systems in the world to deal with the pandemic, because without competent and people motivated by a higher purpose and a love for their fellow humans, no system can operate, no matter what the system legacy was at one time. Obama left the dumbass an operations manual, but he threw it away because it came from the Obama administration.

The latest development shows the depth of their shamelessness, those very officials who protested that COVID-19 was hoax were the first one seem elbowing the frontline workers out of the way to get their vaccine shot. Yes you, Marco Rubio. Yes you, Joni Ernst. Yes you, Mike Pence.

It explains the cold-blooded murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery to name but a few. The apathy and privileged response of the officials speaks to both factors working in conjunction. Indeed, race is a wedge deployed by both the official of the system to divide the poor into black and white; fooling the poor whites to antagonize the poor blacks in the Machiavellian scheme to pitting one set of have nots against the other set of have nots. It was splitting the enemy to maintain the wealthy white’s stranglehold on power.

The existence of the “Karen’s” in our society is explained by the duplicitous behavior of the 40% of Orange Criminal voters, who exercised their privilege indiscriminately, even as they understood that by doing so may cost another human their life, but they don’t care.

The Operation Varsity Blues scandal came because of the privileged class being too greedy to accept that their children are not smart enough, not good enough to go where they wish. The concomitant system of white privilege known as legacy admissions into the desirable colleges, admits the children of alums under the cover of legacy, to the exclusion of those who were smart enough, who were good enough to go to that school. They are left looking inside from the outside. So don’t be spouting the high ideals of higher education, these institutions can prostitute themselves as well as anyone. Spare me the arrogant rantings regarding athletic scholarships and minority admissions. The precedence had been set by the legacies. Discontinue the legacy admissions then maybe the playing field might be slightly less sloped against the disadvantaged.

Even as I write these words, my optimism had grown over the year 2020, by the actions of some of my fellow humans. My cynicism is tempered, and my optimism had grown much as the Grinch’s heart did at the end of the tale.

The exceptionally large and human response by the citizenry to George Floyd’s murder heartened me.  The scale of the protests and the diversity of those who stood tall in the face of the usual subterfuge was heartening. The steadfastness and persistence of the protests, the general responses of the police in most of the protest cities was heartening, the engagement of people of all races and economic backgrounds was heartening. The earnest soul searching and conversations after the protests, especially amongst my friends and colleagues was heartening and extraordinarily remarkable. Black Lives Matter stopped being a Black issue, it became a human issue, for the time being. I will withhold my full-blown optimism until the changes a coming is permanent and sustainable. I believe it is because we have never seen anything like this before. But I have a reputation to uphold, once you declare yourself a cynic, you can never let up.

The list of books addressing the underlining issues not only grew but the books showed legs on the best seller list. Who knew that How To Be Antiracist, White Fragility, and Caste would crowd the New York Times  nonfiction list and their authors become celebrities?  Who could have foreseen sports teams, collegiate and professional put the issue of racism and violence due to racism front and center in their bullseye? Who could have foreseen Collin Kaepernick get redemption? Who could have foreseen Roger Goodell defy the Orange Criminal and the owners? Who could have foreseen professional athletes put their careers on the line for a social cause?

The biggest source of optimism comes from the elections themselves. When we saw a black woman who had a governorship of Georgia stolen from her by the Orange cabal forego the usual lucrative lecture circuit and token seats on corporate boards for the hard work of registering voters and declawing the very machinery that stole the election from her, even though it should have been the job of the DNC. Because it was her, because she knew what it took, she made it tangible and real, Stacey Abrams delivered on her promise.

Black women saved the Democrats and Joe Biden, and in the process saved the Republic and American democracy from the usurpers and Russians. Jim Clyburn saved Biden’s candidacy in South Carolina. The black women demographic votes to play a big part in saving the nation from a second term from the Orange Criminal and his machinery, as hapless as they may seem at times. A shoutout to Rudy Giuliani and the Four Seasons Total Landscaping crew.

Anonymous poll workers and counters, both Democrats and Republicans counted the votes, recounted the votes, and then re-recounted the votes to shut out the Orange Criminals minions from stealing this election.

Finally, the nation’s visceral and emotional response to the passing of John Lewis and the Notorious RBG brought me out of my depression, as that kind of emotions can not be faked, it can not be bought. Their tragic passing brought to the fore the need for the present generation to take the baton and carry forth the legacy or progressivism.

These are the people that  demonstrated those lessons that I had learned in AP US History all those years ago. Those lesson and tenets that I had internalized and held noble in my heart. In a very tangible way, these people restore my rose colored lens’ view of what America means. Of course, the danger to the Republic is not over, the Democracy is still fragile and that 40% can mobilize at any time to throw the Republic once again into peril. At least now we know and we have the slightest bit of hope.  Vigilance is required from the majority 60% and ruthlessness is required when dealing with the treasonous 40%.

 No more pills of any color. I bid you an optimistic and safe New 2021. Please wear a mask, be alert, be careful, and socially distance.

Pete

The State of the Pete-2020

 Do all you can

with what you have,

In the time that you have,

In the place you are.

Nkosi Johnson

The structure and the mode of distribution for this version of the State of the Pete has changed a bit this year. Since I have been working on my blog, the one I have supposedly kept for over thirteen years, I decided to put the State of the Pete on here so that I don’t have to haphazardously bombard people with PDF files. I am also not writing it in LaTex, which started last year. Finally, I have separated my State of the Pete from the State of the Pete’s Commentaries into two documents. The two put together has become a very cumbersome essay, and I am quite sure some people would prefer not to be brought down by my commentary and cynicism during the holiday season, while others enjoy watching  me vent my spleen in public. Regardless, both letters are on the blog, but in separate articles. So, if you feel up to it, go take the red pill. Finally, in a shameless play for attention, I would appreciate it if you all would follow the blog on the page so that I kind of know who is reading the blog. Molto Grazie.

This tradition of the State of the Pete letter started during my gradual school years. I was writing holiday cards as I was waiting for my simulations to run and it has evolved into these overly long tomes.  It has become more than just a letter of update, it is a snapshot of my mind for the year. I recently read this fitting quote: ”I write to find out what I think”, so this exercise has been the means for me to gather my disjoint thoughts and summarize the year, as most humans are wont to do this time of the year.

So here we go.

Hello friends,

A big virtual bear hug for everyone. As we navigate our way through this extraordinary year of travails and challenges, we need bear hugs more than ever;  the ultimate insult is that we really can’t bear hug, or hug for that matter. Needless to say, as with everyone else, I am happy to see the door smack 2020’s butt as it exits. 2020 has accrued uncountably many negative events, I keep wishing desperately that this were a bad nightmare from which I will hopefully awaken. No such luck so far.

My mother and I are still living here in rural Ohio. In addition to the litany of disasters that befallen everyone worldwide, we had also experienced one major upheaval that has thrown our lives into chaos. My mother fell at home on the last week of July. She had fractured her pelvis in two places. Fortunately, the breaks were clean, and the orthopedic surgeon decided against surgery for her 95-year-old body. She is now staying in a  rehabilitation facility that is within a ten-minute drive from home, where she is still convalescing while also being quarantined from COVID-19.  I was able to talk to her by phone as I stood outside of her window during the initial few months, but she has been moved to a private room in mid-October and the windows for that room  faces an inner courtyard and not the outside yard, so I only see her occasionally. We would set a time and she would walk herself out on her wheelchair so that we can see each other in the foyer of the facility. I am not allowed to enter the facility because of precautions brought on by COVID-19. 

As of December, her pelvis has healed; even though she was scheduled to come home in mid-October, she still felt unsure of her gait and her ability to navigate our little house. We made the difficult decision to keep her in the rehabilitation facility until she gets stronger, hoping that her confidence will rise with her strength. I believe that it was a good decision. The new timetable is to bring her home in mid-January. One fortuitous unintended consequence of her stay in the rehabilitation facility is that because she is staying in the facility, she just received a vaccine shot for COVID-19 on the last week of December 2020. Our timetable thus revolves around the timing of the vaccine shot.

Our interaction with the Medicare system has been satisfactory. The bills have been paid, substantial bills; the rest have been paid by the Medicare supplement that my parents had bought many years ago. Of course, on the day that Medicare decided that mom is well enough to leave in mid-October, all the cost reverted to us. All I can say it: I am a big cheerleader for Universal Healthcare. It is this up close and personal view of the American healthcare system that threw me unreservedly towards a single payer system, being one of those who  are edging inexorably towards old age certainly enforced my conviction.

As for mom, she hates the food at the facility, they were worried about her weight as it dropped quickly, yet when we send her takeout Chinese food, she complains bitterly about how inconvenient it is for her to deal with the intrusion on her routine, so I have stopped trying to give her additional taste treats, although she doesn’t really complain that much when I drop off steamed chicken feet dim sum. I am taking that as a hint.

In addition to her fall, mom has had a very bad 2020. She had lost two of her own younger sisters in China this year, and she lost her bestest friend since childhood in July. Aunt June has been a part of our family, and we as a part of her family, ever since I can remember. She and mom have been as close, if not closer, than sisters. They went to grade school together and their lives were intertwined since before the marriages and children came along. They were there for each other during each other’s best and worst times. I consider Aunt June my other mom and I consider her daughters as my sister. It was particularly heart wrenching to watch her slowly let go of life over the last week of her life. Mom was already in the rehab center, so she was unable to reach out to say goodbye to her best lifelong friend. I was crushed, but mom seemed to have handled the sadness with stoicism. I marvel at my mother.

On my personal front, far too many people had succumbed in 2020. Some due to COVID, most did not. One person that I will miss is  Dr. Dale Ray, the graduate coordinator at the School of ECE when I first entered Georgia Tech. He was the gatekeeper for all the gradual students. He was very straight forward administrator. He was the one who had to help me clean up the messes I made of my graduate career, and he did it with efficiency, but he was never unkind, even as I messed up. Two stories that comes to mind is that he always typed his own letters to the graduate students or to the faculty, he always added DCR:mtf in the place where the typist initials are required in the body of the letter. MTF was short for My Two Finger. The second story involves my finding out that he had an office on the fourth floor of the Van Leer building, I was up there waiting for my advisor when I spied him and his office. The office was a large one and the most impressive part was that every square foot of the office was covered with books, folders, notebooks, and general clutter. The only exposed part of the floor was  a narrow trail that led from the door to a desk at the end of the office where Dr. Ray sat, ruminating. I decided that he wasn’t such a bad guy after all after witnessing that, it seems we were similar with regard to the issue of organization and tidiness. Long after I graduated from Tech, we somehow became Facebook friends, and I would like to think that we became real friends. He always made comments on my postings and made digs at some of my religious comments, as he is a deeply religious man. He passed away a few days past Christmas after having suffered a stroke around Thanksgiving and then was diagnosed to have COVID. He passed away alone in the COVID ward in Grady Memorial Hospital, without his dear wife Barbara and family by his side.

I spent these last months, as with everyone else in the world, hunkered down at home. The unintended consequence of being a functional introvert is that the lockdown has not affected my routines significantly. My days have been uneventful and pleasant because it is the kind of life I am used to; I did my teaching and my IEEE work at home, either in the basement or on the dining room table. I had resurrected my stereo system, so I am rediscovering much of my musical collection.  Damn, I had really good taste when I was young!  My lectures at the University of Dayton were all on Zoom, even though I went in to lecture in a room for a couple of months. As it happened, my in-class students would rather listen to me talk on Zoom, and since I had to broadcast these lectures on Zoom, anyway, they all took the stay-at-home option most of the time. It wasn’t until I had to lecture to an empty room for the third time that I finally got it, so I cancelled all live in-person lectures.

I will admit that there have been a few moments of angst and being affected by the enforced solitude, but my friends have generously talked me through the morass of emotional over-reaction due to a dearth of social contact, some have simply told me to pull my head out of my butt get over it. Each tactic, when applied in a timely and appropriate manner helped immensely. The two biggest destabilizing influences were the instability associated with the November elections and my overactive imagination playing tricks on me. The first resolved itself in favor of my preference, and the other involved my learning to live in the moment rather than speculating and talking myself into imaginary scenarios. Being mindful is as advertised. I want to thank all my friends who had sensed my struggles and have reached out to make sure I was right in the head. Outside of the fact that I was rarely, if ever, right in the head to start, I thank you sincerely for your help. I am one of the stubborn ones who doesn’t know when to ask for help, but through persistent phone calls, text messages, and Whatsapp messages, they got me right in the head. I am looking forward to passing the love forward, or reciprocating in kind if you want when you want.

I have not been completely slothful this year, I still work for my IEEE Industry Application Society as the paper submission portal administrator, I taught a class: Introduction to Electrical Energy at the University of Dayton, I am the chair of the IEEE Smart Grid, and by virtue of that last volunteer position I was rewarded with yet another time-consuming voluntary position of Educator in Chief for Smart Grid for the IEEE ad hoc Lifelong Learning Committee. Note that the importance of the position is inversely related to how important the title sounds.

The adjunct teaching gig I have had for a few years, teaching the same class in the Fall. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, the pandemic threw in a few wrinkles. University of Dayton went full on virtual in the Spring. I wasn’t teaching then, thankfully; but in talking to some of the faculty who did, it was rescued from being total chaos because UD had the foresight to create an eLearning office many years ago. While the transition, in three days, wasn’t completely smooth, it was much better than it could have been. UD thus created websites in the Learning Management Centers for each course and nicely forced us all to get online and create our course template and lesson plans online for the Fall. I honestly believe that this saved my fat butt from certain disaster. The course went relatively smoothly although it wasn’t planned efficiently or effectively. I will be making changes in how I will teach this class next semester. I learned quite a bit about online teaching from the experience. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

As most of you know, my other outlet for my pedagogical nature has been coaching junior volleyball, that season became irreparably disrupted because of the pandemic. I had the only 17’s team, an important age because many of these players are still looking for a playing opportunity in college. My team was pretty loaded with talent if height challenged overall.  We were ironing out the early season kinks and just when we all thought we can hit reset on the season and start anew, COVID hit. We managed a few Zoom sessions as we stayed away from the gym, working productively with my friend, the Mental Game Guru Dan Mickle, on the mental game.  We had to eventually pull the plug on the season as all our tournaments got cancelled. It was a disappointment for the players and the teams, but for me, it was an opportunity and a coaching experience denied. As we wrapped up the season, the hurt and disappointment in my player’s voices cut at me. They still had their high school seasons to play but the chance to create memories with this particular group of players had been denied.

The annual geekfest that I have always participated in was converted to a virtual conference in a period of three months. The conference was supposed to be held in the city of Detroit during late September, we held the virtual conference at the same time block. The result was not as dire as we all had expected. We were able to meet up synchronously and asynchronously and accomplish everything that we would usually accomplish, except for the most important part: the social and fellowship portion of the conference, which is the raison d’être for the conference in everyone’s minds. Since we are practical engineers, we made do with what was presented to us, we improvised, adapted, and overcame, but we did all kvetch mightily. I chaired a panel session on fear of failure in the engineering realm and organized another session on System Engineering.

The annual volleyball coach’s convention was also held virtually. I was not sure about the turnout seeing as many colleges had started to cut budgets, and worst of all, cutting programs. I wondered about whether the coaches were willing or able to pay the registration fees for the virtual conference since so many colleges were not going to pay as they had before. I was also thinking about the number of coaches I know who are getting out of the coaching game, taking the pandemic as a sign to move on from their passions.

The American Volleyball Coaches Association pulled out all the stops and gathered a stellar group of presenters to present at many outstanding sessions, while also  promising  extraordinary access to many famous coaches, but if you can’t pay, you can’t pay. I hope that the financial impact does not affect the organization.

2020 being the year that it was, I don’t want to dwell on all the negatives that had happened this year, that would be the easy way. To be honest, the optimists in me stepped into the void more often than not this year. Partly because it had to step up or else I would have collapsed into a despondent heap of sobbing protoplasm; and partly because I have overcome some of my inborn cynicism. As Alain De Botton so sagely observed: “Cynics are merely idealists with unusually high standards.”  I want to believe I am one of those idealists, but I have been able to tamper my expectations and ameliorated my standards to more reachable dimensions because I had come to realize that, to paraphrase Dr. Bob Rotella: “Life is not a game of perfect.”

One of the best positives that I derived comes from my teaching experience at University of Dayton. My student’s  altruism and idealism have surprised and inspired me. Their resolute devotion to making this world better than they encountered it was initially stunning to my cynical soul, but then I realized that their agenda is pretty simple and pure: they sincerely believed that they will make a difference in a world where we, their elders, have mucked things up. I told them of my admiration of their pureness of purpose and altruism in class during a lecture and  they seemed to be stunned by my admission because the millennials are gun shy about the message that their elders have sent them. It was interesting to observe because they all seemed to relax their countenance considerably as our discussions became less confrontational. This class is made up of seniors, even though it is a junior level elective. My class covers the existing electric energy system: how we generate electric power, how we have operated the complex national grid,  how this business mode has managed to serve needs of the consumer reliably and economically. The major area of discussion is the generation technology as we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional hydro, thermal, and nuclear technologies. We delved into the sustainable energy sources like solar, wind, fuel cell, and micro-hydro. We also discussed the future, like the Smart Grid and other new technologies that are becoming reality.

When I was an undergrad, somewhere in the Pleistocene era, the motivation of my contemporaries was to go for the brass ring, i.e. to get a well-paying job. We weren’t complete Philistines, we also had our youthful moments of  idealism, but eventually our idealism took a distant second place to our survival instincts, which partially explains why we find our society  in the present predicament. I am not naïve enough to believe that all of my millennial students will somehow manage to maintain their idealism throughout their lifetime, especially since there are no guarantees that they would sustain this idealism through their first year working in the real world, particularly in an economy that we are witnessing right now. But, and that is a pretty large BUT for me to use; in my observation of their motivation and their mindset, I have confidence that many of them will retain much more of their idealism than my generation.  These students have put their skins in the game, they are committed to a better world, one where global warming is not only a reality but a direct challenge to their generation. It is interesting that one of the lessons that I preach to them is the pragmatic realities of all the technologies that we are using or will use in our future, they seem undaunted by the realities that I showed them. Indeed, they are still resolute in doing the right thing. As one of the more outspoken student said to me at the end of the semester: “You just blew up my assumptions about our energy future, but that’s not going to stop me.” I was heartened by his boast, and quietly hoping that he holds true to his convictions. This is #WhyITeach.

One of the unintended positive consequences that happened during the pandemic in Dayton is that I met the acquaintance of a group of friends that stimulates my need for knowledge and provided intelligent conversations. They also helped challenge my biases and beliefs, our coffee klatch is intense and challenging. It all started as a part of my daily routine on the days that I teach. I go to my favorite coffee shop in Dayton to get my coffee, I usually stay in the coffee shop to read, write, spilling my guts to my journal, and try to be productive before the beginning of my class. In my foray into the downtown coffee shop scene, I met these three men of varying backgrounds, temperament, and interests.

One was the president of the Greater Dayton Rowing Club; he has not succeeded in getting my fat ass into a boat, even though he tried. Jim is a self-made man, a plain talking, tough acting eighty something who puts up with no BS. Dennis was the dean of the University of Dayton law school, now retired; he had written a book based on the true-life adventures of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur nuns during the second world war in Belgium. He is also a first-class history buff, and of course a skilled and insightful debater. The third man, Dan, works at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base, working on databases and the complicated processes that makes the base run. He is also one of the best problem solvers I know, it shames me to hear him talk about his trouble shooting and problem-solving prowess, always practical, and always highly creative, he is a hundred times the engineer than I am. We started out just chatting during our time at the coffee shop, but when the shop stopped indoor service because of the pandemic, we started sitting outside in picnic tables and chatted some more: The coffee klatch  became a ritual for us, we would sit and converse for about ninety minutes to two hours. The topics would range all over the map. They would have to listen to me talking about volleyball, learning theory, the books I am reading, or electrical engineering. The amazing part is that they seemed to enjoy it. As the weather became colder, we would congregate in Dennis’ garage after we collected our coffees and go at it. Dennis even gave the group a name: The Garage Gang. The reason we met in the garage is that this was the only place where we can be socially distanced, with the garage door open to ensure some air flow.  Truthfully, these meetings saved my sanity to a large degree as I was isolating myself voluntarily from most social interactions. It made me converse with real people other than the voices inside my head.

As a result of the conversations, I was asked to take part in the mock trial preparation for the University of Dayton team, Dennis was the advisor for the team. I played the expert witness role in their preparation. The technical details were not difficult to grasp, but I was asked to be a strong witness during a trial. It was great fun, I put on my Hans Püttgen (my PhD advisor, for those who know him) mien, and toyed with the poor law students. Another new experience and a good one at that. I have been asked to be the witness this year as well, except this time I am to play a PhD electrical engineer specializing in electric power. I guess I can fake it.

My volleyball life was also revived as our club decided to venture into the wild unknowns that awaits us in the club volleyball scene. Many larger club tournaments have changed the nature of their existence, accommodating the demands of social distancing and safety procedures. I am coaching a region 16’s team this year in deference to my need to stay local to take care of my mom. This is yet another challenge that I am looking forward to tackling. It will make me polish and refine my teaching and coaching skills as well as putting my coaching beliefs and philosophy to the test. The team seems to be a group of introverts, coupled with an introvert coach, that should be interesting. 

I decided to restart my long dormant blog during my extended stay at home. It really is not a restart, I had always maintained the blog, but I rarely posted, mainly because I was too distracted. As I sat home listlessly awaiting for inspiration to creep up on me, it hit me with Thor’s Hammer instead. I usually write the occasional book reviews with short essays on topics that grabbed my wandering attention, but the forced idleness causes the writing to burst forth, I am not sure if any of it is any good, or if it is reaching hearts and minds, but I must at least try. I also need the practice.

This annual missive to my friends is a part of the reason why I felt a certain level of competence in writing. So it is  that I also thought that I needed to work on practicing writing. I am writing mostly in essay form as I had studied the essay form many years ago. Another source of motivation comes from  reading about Michel De Montaigne’s essay writing in Sarah Bakewell’s book  (Bakewell 2010). Bakewell asserted that Montaigne wrote to satisfy his own purposes rather than for an audience, which struck a chord with me. As I had quoted earlier, writing is a way for me to gather and organize my thoughts so that I can figure out what I am thinking, to gather my thoughts and the information that I have at my disposal to form an opinion; as I hope it is a decent and educated opinion.

I posted 40 essays in 2020, a modest improvement over the 25 essays I wrote in 2019. A lot of essays about volleyball of course, but some observations and some book reviews. I am enjoying the exercise and I am sensing that the exercise is working: I have become clearer in my thinking.  Here is the link to the blog itself, feel free to peruse at your leisure and do let me know if I am just full of myself. https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/

One result of the enforced isolation is that I eventually got around to using the Neflix and paying for Disney+. Disney+ is of course to watch Hamilton, which was a transcendent experience. I have always been a history nut; while I knew the story between Hamilton and Burr through my AP US History class (Thanks Mr. Holsteen!), I was not familiar with the minutiae  of the revolutionary war. I do understand that dramatic license was taken with the story in order to present a unified play, I was still educated.

I rarely binge watch anything on Netflix, other than shows about chefs and travel. One particular favorite this year was Midnight Diner, a not so recent Japanese television series about a diner that opens at midnight, serving the denizens of the night. Each show was around 30 minutes long and focused on the people who lived on the fringes of normal society and behaved on the fringes of acceptable behavior. I believe I mentioned it before, there are two series on Netflix and both are worthy of a watch. https://www.netflix.com/title/80113037

On the recommendation of my friend Becky, I decided to binge watch the Queen’s Gambit. It is apparently all the rage this year. It also seems to have spurred many girls and women to take up the challenge of playing chess, which is always a good development. I thoroughly enjoyed the series, the story telling, and the ethos created by the film making. I, of course, was able to retrieve the title of the mathematics PhD thesis of the main protagonist’s mother: “Monomial Representation and Symmetric Presentation”, I have no idea what the complete means but the two parts of the title does mean something in group theory, a subject that I had always had interest in studying. And no I have not delved deeply into it.

I did not pursue the chess angle at all. I don’t know why.

Another side dabble I indulged in was my long-time interest in origami. I did fold a few things in the extended stay at home, nothing extensive, just followed directions on a few designs, most in modular origami.

One of my favorite finds on the intraweb is the daily Letters from an American https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ from Heather Cox Richardson. She is a history professor at Boston College and her specialization is on political history. She had inadvertently tapped into an audience that was hungry for news content balanced with a historical perspective when she started writing about the background of the Mueller investigation and the Ukrainian connection. Her letters have been focused on the present administration and their shenanigans, but she broadened quickly into many topics. Here is a NYT article on her accidental fame. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/27/business/media/heather-cox-richardson-substack-boston-college.html

She saved my sanity during the long political season by telling stories from history that paralleled the present narrative. She stoked my long-time inner love of political history and she made history come alive, treating history as something more than a recitation of facts. She made history relevant in the face of the present crisis. I am not alone in that regard; she has a little more than a million followers on Facebook and 350,000 people directly receive her email. A million followers, on written articles about history and current events. Astounding.

As a sidenote, one of the books I have been reading by Nicholas Carr (Carr 2010) expounds on the damaging effects that embedded hyperlinks to other articles has on the reader’s cognitive load, which insidiously changes the way we read and pay attention to the media. Oops. Sorry.

Another positive and sanity preserving product resulting from the extended social isolation has been the tongue in cheek yet very real Some Good News site on YouTube. The SGN “Network” is the brainchild of John Krasinski from The Office fame. He initially produced one every week, having famous people dropping in casually while also highlighting all that is good that has gone on during the shutdown. He, in the best sense of populism, shed light on the great things that we, the regular folks, have been doing to keep the kindness and generosity flowing. It is a marvel if you have not seen it. Here is another burden on your cognitive load. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOe_y6KKvS3PdIfb9q9pGug

As I said, I took some of my audio equipment to be fixed. It was astounding to me that there was only one shop that still exists to fix high fidelity  equipment in a town that is the size of Dayton; people have moved on to lower bandwidth musical equipment for the convenience. The guy who owns the shop is a guy who is about a decade older than I am and we had a good old time talking about the bands that we had seen and the various piece of high-fidelity audio equipment that he had worked on. He had work on a number of Nakamichi Dragons, that was a great conversation.

Indeed, my own listening habits have changed, but I have not given up on my vinyl records and CDs. One of the joys of rediscovery came when I found some old mix tapes in boxes buried in my basement, I was able to get my cassette deck working and relive my mix tape days.

I am not a complete luddite, I do stream, on a limited basis. I listen to music on my laptop through the SiriusXM app and a couple of other streaming services. Mostly I listen to the usual suspects: Classic Vinyl, E Street Radio, Deep Tracks, Tom Petty Radio, etc. I start the morning with Symphony Hall, a gentle awakening to the day, and I migrate to the jazz and soft jazz stations. I still change channels when Kenny G comes on.

We had lost so many musicians during the pandemic, the one that struck the hardest personally was the passing of John Prine. He was a part of memories of my undergrad days, Prine and Steve Goodman were both Chicago based, and they would occasionally gig in Champaign-Urbana. It was a part of the singer/songwriter wave that caught me in its wake. John Prine wrote some very insightful and painful lyrics, which was kind of rare for that time. He was also hilariously irreverent, which made him immensely popular in a college town. The fact that his death was preventable if someone competent was the leader of the country make me boil with anger. Indeed, 330,000 people might still be alive if the 2016 election had not been stolen. Of course, life goes on, but one notable tidbit of news that came out months after Prine’s passing involved Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires returning their CMA card because the CMA did not see fit to memorialize Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker during their award show. Country being country I suppose.

Another favorite is Neal Peart, the drummer for Rush. This one hit me almost as hard as when Chris Squire passed on in 2015. Both were the foundation of their bands and both were virtuoso musicians whose influence cuts across all the corporate radio defined genres.

Eddie Van Halen’s passing was a shocker, even though I never much cared for the band Van Halen, I too was one of the many teenage boys who marveled at his guitar pyrotechnics, having played air guitar religiously during an Eddie Van Halen solo. Of course, all the teenage boys of those days were so jealous that he married Valerie Bertinelli. Admit it.

Hillard "Sweet Pea" Atkinson was the singer for Was (Not Was) a band whose short-lived career and recording output blew my mind in the 1980’s. Snarky and clever lyrics, a big horn sound, and the smooth vocals of Sweet Pea made me wear out the groove on my copies of  Was Not Was vinyl records. My old office mate Randy turned me on to them.

Julian Bream stood out in my mind because this was the first classical concert I attended during my undergraduate days. It was in the Krannert Concert Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois. I had no idea what I was getting into, I just remembered being mesmerized by the dulcet tone of his guitar and the simplicity of his stage: it was just him, a chair, and his little foot stool. He was also the first classical guitarist that I had seen, and the first non-Spanish classical guitarist I had heard about, where many of the repertoire was rooted in Spain. 

I first heard Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” while living in Honduras. It was 1972 and that song was the hottest single going. It was pop-y, hopeful, and tuneful. Of course, we all look at pictures of Johnny Cash and thought: this can’t be right.

I have been reading a bit while at home. Not as much as I would like. I indulged in my usual escapist fare: Peter Robinson’s Inspector Bank’s series, Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series, Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police series. I had held off on reading more of Camillieri’s Inspector Montalbano series for some reason and picked up Mauricio De Giovanni’s Inspector Ricciardi series. The latter is a dark series, to go with the dark times I suppose. The peculiarity of this police detective, and they must all have some sort of peculiarity, is that he hears the dead repeating their last words on earth, and he sets out to solve the mystery of their deaths and to send their ghosts on their way. Dark enough for you? I found the books very well written, translated, and plotted. I have stopped reading them for now, too dark.

On the non-fiction front I have started to divide those books into various stacks: the compendium stack, the philosophical stack, and the single subject stack. The compendium stack I can read separate chapters independently as they are an accumulation of many essays, articles, or selections from various writers. The philosophical stacks are the most demanding to read, as I need to pay attention to the minutiae. The single subject stacks are the ones where I have to be careful and try to read them frequently or I will lose the thread of the book, these are the books where I am trying to learn something new.

I have three boxes of books at the foot of my easy chair and I will read whatever grabs my fancy and read until my short-term (working) memory is filled with that particular book and then move on. Not particularly efficient, but I am experimenting with my ability to augment my long-term memory.

This year was the year of dealing with uncertainties, as such, I read three books dealing with the subject: Ian Stewart’s Do Dice Play God (Stewart 2019), David Spiegelhalter’s The Art of Statistics  (Spiegelhalter 2019), and Maria Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff  (Konnikova 2020). Konnikova’s was the most entertaining, fun anecdotes of how she managed to move into the upper echelons of the poker playing world by facing her own inadequate tactics against her own biases in dealing with uncertainties, and then facing those biases and overcoming them. I was never a gambler by nature, but her book made me want to at least delve further in the world of poker. Spiegelhalter’s book is the most in depth in exposing how we, in our zeal to “make decisions by the numbers” have instead led ourselves astray and made bad decisions because we don’t understand probability and statistics. Stewart’s book was in between the two, this would have been a good primer into the subject, but unfortunately, I read his book in conjunction with Spiegelhalter’s book, which made it seem like it is less interesting as I had read the same material already.

If there was one book that inspired me and lifted the black clouds above my head, it is the book by Francis Su (Su 2020). Titled Mathematics for Human Flourishing, it is unlike any other mathematics book that I have read recently. It has all the mathematics to make the curious little nerd inside me very happy, but it also took a broader view of mathematics and the author wrote beautifully in describing what mathematics did for him intrinsically. It was a spot of beauty in a very dark time.

Stuart Firestein’s Failure on the importance and meaning of failure in scientific inquiry made a definite impression on me. (Firestein 2015). I started reading it last year, it made me look at our definitions of failures and its value in a scientific world. This importance was later reinforced when Konnikova started to write about her lessons in poker playing, how examinations for failures, honestly and without bias became the basis of her strategy.

Sports? What sports?

Well, that is my life during the pandemic year. Not as interesting as previous years, but I did manage to keep myself occupied. I am hoping for a better 2021, although rationally I understand that time keeping by years is just another human construct and that the uncertainties does not care that it is a new year. But here is hoping that our mindset, which is indexed to time, will prevail over the uncertainties that we are coping with.

I wish you all Peace, Health, Good Fortune, and Joy.

 

Pete

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

The Red Pill: 

https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2020/12/state-of-pete-2020-commentary.html

Works Cited

Bakewell, Sarah. How to Live OR A LIfe of Montaigne. London: Chatto & Windus, an Imprint of Random House, 2010.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 2010.

Firestein, Stuart. Failure: Why Science Is So Successful. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Konnikova, Maria. The Biggest Bluff: How I learned to Pay Attnetion, Master Myself, and Win. London: 4th Estate, 2020.

Spiegelhalter, David. The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data. London: Pelican Books, 2019.

Stewart, Ian. Do Dice Play God: The Mathematics of Uncertainty. New York: Profile Books, 2019.

Su, Francis. Mathematics for Human Flourishing. Yale: Yale University Press, 2020.