Why Is Everyone Going Brunette?

Billie E, sure, you go for it girl, but not every Billy is on board...!

Landscapers

We finished this HBO miniseries, based on a true story, last night. The film-making, with its occasional theatrical contrivances and flights of fancy, didn't always work for me. But on the plus side, you do get to watch possibly the greatest actor of our time, Olivia Colman, doing what she does, and very well. Who else could pull off creating an integrated character from this bundle of delusion, pathos, humor, affection, repression, and fury? David Thewlis, as her husband, is near-perfect as well. 

Sylvia Townsend Warner Omnibus

Sylvia Townsend Warner was, according to Wikipedia, a "musicologist, novelist and poet," and I suppose she would have agreed with that characterization, although I bet she would have added an Oxford comma to the list. She was also a feminist, a Communist, and a lesbian, perspectives that deeply informed her novels but never threatened to derail them into the formulaic or programmatic. Her books were unknown to me until NYRB released several of them, and I feel lucky to have discovered them. 

The first one that I stumbled upon, The Corner That Held Them (1948), about which I have already blogged at some length, remains my favorite. But Lolly Willowes (1926), her first novel (and the first-ever selection of the Book of the Month Club!), is a close runner-up. Whereas The Corner That Held Them follows a large ensemble cast of characters over a long period of time, Lolly Willowes is largely a character study of its eponymous protagonist. Lolly is wonderful literary creation, a woman trapped by tradition and family duties who in middle age plots her escape to live alone in a small country village. There she picks up a "trade" practiced by many of the local folk– witchcraft– and even meets Satan himself. The novel is gentle and humorous, with a little sting. Highly recommended.

Summer Will Show (1936) follows an aristocratic Englishwoman who– by a couple twists of fate– finds herself in Paris in 1848, falling in love with her husband's mistress, and joining up with the revolutionaries. A very good historical novel, it was presumably ahead of its time in its matter-of-fact depiction of same-sex romance, although history and politics take center stage here. The novel ends with the first few paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto. Triumphant, hopeful, ironic, bitter? From the vantage point of a communist writing in 1936, you can imagine which.

Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927) is in the genre of novels about Brits living among the savages, which range from pro-imperialist adventures to Leninist critiques of colonialism; given Warner's politics this likely counts among the latter, but frankly, I just couldn't get into it. Perhaps I'll try again. 

Get Back

There seem to be two basic reactions to The Beatles: Get Back among critics and viewers alike. One is unbridled enthusiasm; the other is that watching it is a bit like watching paint dry or grass grow for 468 minutes (that's right, nearly 8 hours)– admittedly, with a few good songs thrown in, but songs you already knew by heart, and played over and over and over and over... 

As for me, I loved it. Oh yes, it drags at times, but that comes with the vérité here as much as it would in a Frederick Wiseman documentary. Sure, you just might start to tire of those familiar songs from Let It Be. You might even nod off once or twice. But as an insider's view of the creative process, workmanship, and wistful denouement of the career of the greatest band ever, it feels true, and it looks and sounds fantastic. Read Adam Gopnik for a longer and more enlightening take.

Some aspects I especially loved: 

• Those boys playing the blues, Brill Building hits, Dylan, skiffle... just how much music was crammed in their heads, and ready at their fingertips?; 
• How lyrics are fitted to melody, and harmony selected and corrected;
• The (largely) silent people: Ringo, Yoko, and the amazing Billy Preston;
• The fashion;
• The playfulness of Paul and John in "rehearsal"– singing in fake accents, singing through clenched teeth, ad-libbing call and response– somehow all of it helping make the music better, I guess, though god knows how;
• Paul. 

Give it a try and see which camp you belong to.

This hair that I leave on boys' pillows splits the sun's rays for my eyes only

 Poet still unknown. Reveal thyself, bard!

Don't forget to vote!

After hours of research and agonizing over the choice, I decided to vote NO on the recall of Gavin Newsom. Well, actually, that part was easy, but what about the 46 replacement options? The Democrats are telling us to leave that second part blank, but my take is different. California's Republicans are incapable of fielding a single candidate who would be even remotely competitive with Newsom in a head-to-head contest. So instead, their objective seems to be to make the state into a sad, ungovernable joke by wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on a recall, hoping that exhausted, scared, and angry Californians will stay away from the polls, and the recall will slip through on the votes of the dedicated GOP crackpots. In a rare show of bipartisanship, I've decided that if it works, and Newsom is turned out, I'd like to help with the goal of making the state and its GOP a laughing stock. But so many to choose from. I ended up going with Angelyne, Billboard Queen. One problem: she's not actually a Republican. Another: She'd probably do a better job than Larry Elder, the GOP frontrunner.

So difficult being a responsible voter these days.

Sweet little sci-fi love stories

I confess to being a sucker for the genre of small movies that build a sweet love story on a sci-fi theme. Starman is the classic– though maybe a Jeff Bridges vehicle doesn't really count as "small." I praised Monsters here already– a sci-fi action romance that does a whole lot with what must have been a limited budget. And last night we watched Long Weekend, a worthy addition featuring two cute-as-buttons protagonists, relaxed humor, and a nice supporting turn by Damon Wayans Jr. Between delta, Afghanistan, and Haiti, you need 90 minutes of sweetness, don't you?

"I avoid philosophy, abhor economics"

Oh, Rita, that hurts, but I plan to read your new book of poems nevertheless.

Bacillus

 

Darren Johnston

One of my very favorite musicians, formerly Bay Area-, now Brooklyn-based, always worth hearing whenever and wherever you have the opportunity.

No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: II. Allegretto

Alexi was but a youngster when we attended a crazy Millennium party, at which guests were invited to give a very brief presentation of their nomination for the greatest human achievement of the past thousand years. Mine was "Beethoven," and I played a snippet of this. I'm happy to report that Alexi, whose knowledge and appreciation of classical music would very soon eclipse my own, now recommends the same piece to readers of the New York Times: 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Symphonies.

Dystopias

I've been reading... just not blogging. Time to catch up with a first installment of reviews.

Hummingbird Salamander
Jeff VanderMeer

As a big fan of VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, I went into this with high hopes. After all, I loved the trilogy and enjoyed Borne... and hummingbirds and salamanders are both among my very favorite creatures! With such lead characters, how could a near-future dystopia by a master of biologically informed future weirdness go wrong? Oh, let me count the ways. Basically, Jeff phoned it in, with mediocre writing and a perfunctory, almost weirdly conventional suspense plot. That the hummingbird and salamander are stuffed is emblematic of the lifelessness of the book. The ending is a shameless cliffhanger setup for the inevitable sequel, which I doubt I will be reading.

Good Neighbors
Sarah Langan

Heathers meets Desperate Housewives meets Stranger Things, this novel is at its best when it explores the intensely fraught relationships among the kids who inhabit this sinkhole-stricken suburb– fraughtness that spills over to their class-conflicted parents. The climax is a little forced, but it's mostly a fun and nasty little piece of work.

Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro's latest is more or less a hybrid of his two greatest novels: The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. It is a good read, but not as great as either of its parents. The protagonist and first-person narrator of this novel of the not-so-distant future is the "artificial friend," Klara. Klara is a wonderful literary invention– brilliant, naive, and tragicomic– but I couldn't help thinking that by now we have had plenty of exposure to interesting cyborgs and synths, if only from some recent TV series. Battlestar Galactica, Humans, Westworld (not to mention movies from Blade Runner to Ex Machina)– each has in its fashion explored quite effectively the territory of synths who become conscious of their exploitation and must decide how to react to that forbidden knowledge. Countless books in the sci fi genre have done the same. What has Ishiguro, Nobel laureate, shown us that we have not already seen? Without giving too much away, the book's distinctiveness and suspense rest with the question of whether Klara– smart, perceptive, and empathetic as she is– is ultimately capable of transcending her artificial worldview and recognizing the true horror of her condition. Like Stevens in the The Remains of the Day, Klara is pathologically self-denying and deluded (in her case, by design). Unlike Stevens, Klara seems profoundly admirable and lovable. Which makes the author's treatment of her– and the reader– that much more cruel.

The looming Chinese "demographic crisis"

The recent NY Times reporting on Chinese population and population policy is appallingly bad. Birth rates are falling rapidly around the globe, so much so that population will begin to decline in many countries, and many countries will increasingly face the challenges associated with an aging population. China is hardly unique in this regard; even if the draconian one-child policy accelerated the process, China's fertility rate is not far from what one would expect given its per-capita income. Visit your friend Gapminder if you need the evidence. The chart below plots total fertility rate (children ever born per woman) against per-capita income (log scale), by country, with circle size proportional to population. China is the big red circle toward the right. If you eyeball a curve through the dots, you might conclude that China is a bit below what you'd predict, but on a trajectory similar to such countries as Brazil, Iran, Thailand, Italy, and Japan. 

Does catastrophe loom? Japan fell below replacement fertility in the mid-1970s. Sure, there are sad stories of lonely old folks, but it's hardly a crisis. Ongoing productivity improvements coupled with appropriate social policies can easily accommodate the changing age structure. And let's not forget that world population has already pushed up against the earth's carrying capacity. I am not one to argue that overpopulation is the main source of the climate crisis, but reducing greenhouse gas emissions can only be easier with fewer people around to burn fossil fuel.

May the women of China continue to question pro-fertility norms and prove to be an example for people around the world!

15 percent of Americans say they think that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles...

OK, but I believe that human beings emerged from a dynamic process of random genetic mutations coupled with natural selection of the fittest over many millennia. So we all have our strange notions. Then again, many of the Q-Anons also seem to hold the view that "American patriots may have to resort to violence” to depose the pedophiles, whereas I hold the completely self-defeating view that guns should largely be banned. Which makes me wonder who is the fittest to survive, after all.

I am Groot

Toward summer dormancy

By mid-May of a dry year, the trailside maiden hair ferns that were lush emerald green a month ago are on their way to being leaf litter. But still catching the eye with their delicate fan-shaped leaves and ebony stems.

The crazy reproductive life of gall-inducing wasps

"Cynipid wasps are responsible for the most extreme galls in color and shape. Galls that look like miniature stars, sea urchins, golf balls, cups, saucers, clubs, teardrops, goblets, and bow ties are among the fascinating shapes that stir the imagination.... 

"Cynipids typically exhibit an ALTERNATION OF GENERATIONS, called HETEROGONY, with a spring sexual generation emerging from a different gall (often from a different plant organ) than the summer-fall generation of unisexual females (agamic generation). The latter females overwinter in diapause as prepupae (usually in the galls) and then pupate and emerge in spring, timed in harmony with the development of the preferred plant organs. Eggs produced and deposited by these females result in larvae and galls of the spring sexual generation. This alternation of generations is rather rare in the animal kingdom but also known in aphids and rotifers. This interesting alternation of reproductive modes confused early entomologists, as the alternating generations of the same species induced galls with different morphologies. This led researchers to believe the different galls belonged to separate species or even other genera."

Ronald A. Russo, Plant Galls of the Western United States, p. 48

The Morning of the Poem

I have been working my way through James Schuyler's Collected Poems, and not everything he wrote stands the test of time, but much of it does. Weighing in at just over 40 pages, "The Morning of the Poem" is his masterpiece. Stream of consciousness, in long, free lines, its music is reminiscent of Whitman's, but where Whitman sought to write the universe, Schuyler zeroes in on the particulars, naming names– of friends, lovers, flowers, shopping lists, bodily functions, food, Fauré. It begins and ends with that most mundane sensation: having to piss, and holding it in (quite literally, in his case). The forces of life, love, and beauty keeping death and despair at bay. Do read it.

NYRB roundup

Three works of fiction from NYRB. 

Fat City
Leonard Gardner

Set in gritty working-class Stockton in the 1950s, Fat City tells the tale of two boxers– one past his prime, the other aspiring– who are not quite good enough to make a living at it, but without any better options. Written in a hard-boiled poetic style, the depictions of the boxing matches are violent and vivid, but many of the best scenes are on the street, in a bar, car, or apartment, or out in the fields, where the protagonist Billy Tully occasionally puts in a grueling day of hoeing or picking to make ends meet.

To say the novel is a depiction of toxic, self-destructive masculinity would not do it justice, because both of the men want nothing more than love, and their relationships with the women in their lives are sometimes tender, if also confused, bitter, and ultimately failed or failing. A sad and beautiful little book.

Alfred and Guinevere
James Schuyler

"It may be I'll grow up more of a sportswoman type and wear tweeds a lot with matching saddle leather accessories. In that case I wouldn't wear jewels except a short string of pearls now and then and just lipstick. Don't you love tall pale women who walk very fast?"

"I think it's better to be more feminine and not look hard. What's your ambition?" 

"I'm not sure yet. It's important to give it a lot of thought and not make any serious mistake, don't you think?" 

"Oh very. Have you found out your aptitudes though? They're a good clue. Mine are for dancing and managerial. My first ambition is interpretive dancing—gypsy and light-classical—and my second is hotel management." 

That's Guinevere talking with her friend Betty. Alfred is Guinevere's younger brother. Schuyler never had children of his own, but this charming and funny 1958 novella– the poet's first book– captures their voices, inner life, and undercurrent of anxiety about what's up with Mother and Daddy. Lovely.

The Rider on the White Horse
Theodor Storm

I ordered this one because it was translated from the German by James Wright, the wonderful poet. The title novella is a kind of a ghost story, but mostly a tale about small-town politics, envy, and the very specialized business of dikes and dikemasters. Worth reading if you are into that sort of thing.

Lindley's blazing star

I have only ever seen this beauty (Mentzelia lindleyi) at Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve, above east San Jose. It is blooming in abundance right now on the slopes high above Alum Rock Canyon, alongside patches of California poppy (similar from a distance) and purple owl's clover. The flower is altogether a joy to behold, with its day-glo color and five sculpted petals, but the abundant, graceful stamens are the highlight.

Up your game, dudes

The gender gap in vaccination rates is about ten percentage points. The article presents a variety of theories that might explain this, but never quite gets to the most logical explanation, which is that–relative to women–men are (1) dumb and (2) selfish, not necessarily in that order. Pretty far down in the article it is noted that men are more likely than women to be Republicans, and Republicans are more likely to be vaccine skeptics, but this seems to me to be a corollary of my base theory.

The title of this post is ironic, because there is little reason to expect it to happen.

Homage to the Filet-O-Fish

Jane Hu writes well, and has excellent taste in fast food. It got me thinking... did I learn to love dim sum because it reminded me of the Filet-O-Fish?

The Filet-O-Fish became my menu item of choice. Its virtues are too many to count; doing so would be futile. As McDonald’s only seafood-based option, the Filet-O-Fish’s semblance of relative health appealed to my parents. Luckily it was also McDonald’s most delicious item. It played to my Chinese palate: While other McDonald’s buns were toasted, the Filet-O-Fish’s was steamed, much like the baozi. From its honeyed starch to its tangy tartar and savory fillet, the taste of the Filet-O-Fish carries an ineffable umami-ness. At once sweet and sour, it reminds me of orange-chicken sauce: a plausibly Chinese flavor mass-produced in America. Eating one always felt transportive — the equivalent of Proust’s madeleine for my Chinese diasporic upbringing.

Misguided UBI skepticism: Krugman on Yang

Plenty of progressives are weighing in against Andrew Yang's run for mayor of New York, and I'm sure they have some good reasons. Yang's signature policy proposal is of course a universal basic income (UBI), set at something like $1,000 per month for every adult. I'm a fan of the UBI, but many lefties are not– at least, not when it is Yang pushing the UBI.

Count Paul Krugman among the skeptics. First, he notes, one of Yang's main justifications for the UBI is concern about massive job loss through automation (robo-apocalypse), for which there is so far scant evidence. Fair enough, although we are in early days of AI. In my view there are plenty of other reasons to support a UBI, including basic distributive justice arguments, so I don't find this critique decisive.

Second, Krugman dings the UBI for its high cost, which he considers unsustainable. The seemingly modest $1,000 a month comes with what appears to be a staggering price tag: "... the Yang proposal to pay $12,000 a year would cost... well over $3 trillion a year, in perpetuity."

The math here is pretty simple, but misleading and I think disingenuous. To get $3 trillion, we take $12,000 x 250 million adults. That unconditional payment to every adult really adds up! Why not just give the money to the people who really need it? Krugman: "The point is that for now, at least, the best way to provide an adequate safety net is to make aid conditional." 

This sounds kind of reasonable, but it ignores the fact that in practice a UBI would be paid for by a tax that varies with income, and thus the $12,000 UBI "payment" to a rich person would be more than taxed away. In fact, the net effect of a UBI plus taxes on disposable income is indistinguishable from an equivalent means-tested transfer program that assures every person at least a minimum disposable income– i.e., Krugman's conditional aid. I'll call such a program a basic income guarantee (BIG). It is also known as a negative income tax.

Let's do the math. 

To keep things super simple, I'll assume that the only government program is a transfer system with taxes that just pay for it (i.e., balance the budget). Each person i's pre-tax/transfer income is fixed at yi; I ignore any incentive effects of the tax on incomes. I'm also going to stick to a flat marginal tax rate of t (100t%) on each additional dollar of income. There are N adults. Total income pre-tax is I = Σyi, and the average per-adult income is Y = I/N.

UBI: 

Suppose we wanted to give every adult a UBI that is a fraction u of average income Y. Then we would set UBI to an amount U = uY, and the total spending on the UBI is NuY = uI. In the United States, a $12,000 UBI would be roughly 1/6 of average adult income, requiring u = 1/6. 

To pay for this UBI, the government has to raise on average U = $12,000 per adult in taxes, and using a flat marginal tax rate of t it is trivial to see that a balanced budget requires t = u = 1/6: UBI total cost = uI = uΣyi = tax revenue = Σtyi = tΣyi, thus requiring t = u to balance the budget.

After taxes and transfers, each person i's disposable income Di is:

Di = yi + U - tyi = U + (1-t)yi 

The total "cost" of this program to the government is of course simply N*U = roughly $3 trillion.

BIG: 

It's easy to construct a means-tested basic income guarantee that leaves every adult with exactly the same disposable income as the above UBI. Under such a BIG, low-income individuals receive a means-tested transfer payment Mi, which we make equal to U if their income yi = 0 (hence a guaranteed basic income), and which is reduced (phases out) by a fraction t for every dollar earned, up until it becomes 0: Mi = U - tyi until Mi = 0 at yi = U/t. Overall, the disposable income of the transfer recipients is:

Di = yi + Mi = yi + U - tyi = U + (1-t)yi

For people who make yi > U/t, the transfer Mi is zero, and instead they face a linear tax of Ti = tyi - U. Notice that their tax bill is based on their income but "discounted" by the amount U. Their disposable income is again given by the same formula:

Di = yi - Ti = yi - (tyi - U) = U + (1-t)yi 

Comparing BIG and UBI:

My simplified UBI and BIG programs leave each and every adult with the same disposable income, given their pre-tax income, and thus each person is on net paying or receiving the same amount vis-a-vis the government. Hence if the UBI scheme balances the budget, so does the equivalent BIG.

Despite the programs being identical in their net outcomes for both individuals and the government, the total transfer spending and taxes collected by the government appear to be much greater for the UBI than the equivalent BIG. Under BIG, only people below the income cutoff U/t get any transfer payment, and only those at zero income receive the full amount U. The total amount paid out (and therefore the amount collected in taxes) would depend on the distribution of income below the average, but for a ballpark, suppose half the population received some transfer and the average transfer were half the UBI; then total transfers and taxes under BIG would be a quarter of the UBI scenario, so something like $750 billion annually. Not peanuts, but not the scary $3 trillion number that Krugman throws out either.

This difference is strictly an accounting difference, not a real difference, because there is no difference between these policies in terms of the net amount people receive or pay, and thus no difference in their post-tax financial situation. Furthermore, because either a UBI or a BIG would presumably be administered through the income tax system, the net effects would be pretty obvious to transfer recipients and taxpayers alike. 

Nonetheless, maybe appearances matter, in that people get scared by the big numbers or care about the gross flows. From a political point of view, the $3 trillion price tag of the UBI looks a lot worse than the $750 billion price tag of the BIG. On the other hand, the UBI has the feature of paying everyone the same social dividend, which has always been part of its rhetorical appeal. Anyway, as an economist, Paul Krugman knows that we should look at net fiscal impacts, not gross flows, to determine how these programs really affect both individuals and the government budget. In other words, he knows better. Let's engage the substance of the debate over transfer programs, not the trivia. 

Brood X

I grew up in Connecticut and I do miss cicadas, which could be loud enough to interrupt conversation and were so weird and big and cool when you actually happened to find one. That was not so easy, because despite their size they were well-hidden in the trees, and tended to shut up upon approach. I envy the east coasters who will enjoy the emergence of the massive Brood X, coming soon. I guess if I ever heard a periodical cicada in CT it would have to have been Brood II of the 17-year cicada, so presumably in 1979. More likely my cicadas were of the annual type. 

Can you eat them? Of course! Dr. Chris Simon, of UConn, "said she had one fried in Sichuan sauce but she doesn’t encourage people to snack on them. 'I feel sorry for them, growing up for 17 years, then someone eats them,' she said." 

Mills College, RIP

This is very sad to see, and of course disconcerting for anyone whose livelihood depends on a private college salary, such as yours truly. Their music program has enriched the culture of the Bay Area immensely, with a faculty that has included Fred Frith and Roscoe Mitchell.

The regressive rooftop solar subsidy

My friends at Environment California sent me an email today urging me to contact the California PUC in defense of net metering:

A fundamental solar energy policy is under threat in California.

Net metering, a rule that fairly compensates solar owners for the excess energy that they contribute back to the grid, is a popular solar policy used in 49 states. But the CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is expected to consider making changes to this important solar policy, even at a time when we should be doing everything we can to add more solar panels to our rooftops and more batteries to our homes.

But hang on a second. There's this from my other friends over at the Energy Institute at Haas:

We are effectively funding the state’s energy infrastructure through a tax on electricity, but like most taxes, many wealthy people find a way to avoid it. The well trod path for avoiding California’s electricity consumption tax is behind-the-meter (BTM) solar. It’s the offshore account for your utility bill.

Basically, non-solar customers are cross-subsidizing the rooftop solar customers, who are not paying their fair share of various system costs, with the result that the marginal cost of electricity is higher than it should be, even taking account of the social cost of carbon. This is discouraging electrification, which is a key part of the plan for addressing climate change. And on top of that, it is a subsidy for the relatively well to do, who are more likely to install and benefit from rooftop solar.

What to do? Get the prices right. I know, I sound like an economist.

Neanderthals vs. Texans

The Neanderthals were pretty sophisticated, and it's questionable whether they would choose to be Republicans had they made it to 2021. So I'm just not down with the President insulting our closest cousins this way. On the other hand, not all Texans are that stupid either.

Clay Jenkins, the county judge of Dallas County, said the governor “absolutely” decided to reopen the state to distract residents from the sky-high electricity bills and credit card balances they faced after the storm.

“This gives people something to talk about other than the state’s failure to protect the power grid,” he said.

Kill the filibuster

That raising the minimum wage would not pass muster in the budget reconciliation process is not unexpected. I'm not sure $15 is the right minimum wage for a low-wage state like Arkansas or Mississippi, but given the tradeoffs I'd say let's give it a try. Not gonna happen.

Your FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

Driving While Black (and young and male) in 1941 Pacolet, South Carolina (population 352 in 1940), must have been... well, you'd like to ask these fellows...

Untitled photo, possibly related to: Negro youngsters and their Model "T" near Pacolet, South Carolina, Jack Delano, 1941.

Your FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

That wasn't so bad, was it now?  Dr. Schreiber of San Augustine giving a typhoid inoculation at a rural school, San Augustine County, Texas. John Vachon, 1943.

Do Re Mi

 Shorter Ezra Klein.

Milford Graves, RIP

 Sui generis. With the great David Murray.

Sand hills of Santa Cruz

 A unique landscape and habitat. 

The Expanse

I've enjoyed this Amazon Prime space opera, which recently finished its fifth season. Humans have colonized Mars, and much of the drama revolves around the political tensions between Mars, Earth, and the "belters," the proles who mine the asteroid belt. Being subject to imperialist/extractive global powers, the belters are prone to revolutionary-nationalist impulses, and the more radical among them are capable of inflicting horrific violence on the innocent to gain their independence and respect... or fear. On top of all that, humans have to contend with mysterious and highly powerful artifacts left behind by ancient alien civilizations– in particular, the "protomolecule," which makes the novel coronavirus look pretty harmless!

The best thing about the show is its look and feel. From expansive outer-space scenes and alien landscapes to claustrophobic interiors, the producers have done a lot with their budget. Zero-G is convincingly rendered. Suspenseful set pieces make you feel like you are there. Whether they use CGI or models, the buildings, mines, and mountains are lovely to look at. Some of my favorite scenes show cargo containers docked at the space station Tycho, floating in rectangular blocks and looking for all the world like the cargo of ships docked at the Port of Oakland. Also enjoyable are the incredibly diverse casting, and the sometimes barely comprehensible patois of the belters.

Having said all that, what makes The Expanse feel a little flat compared with its predecessor, Battlestar Galactica? Well, I'm sorry to report, the dialogue and the acting: Clunky, and clunky. Too bad: It's damn near a classic.

Johnny Pacheco, RIP

Fania Records... maybe the best music there is.

Springtime in Foothills Park

While the rest of the country shivers and digs out, we are enjoying what amounts to early spring in the Bay Area: The magnolias and pear trees are in bloom, if you like that kind of thing (I do!), and up in the foothills the earliest bloomers are out, including the uncommon western leatherwood, Henderson's shooting stars, warrior's plume, and milk maids (easy to take for granted). The buckeye leaves have sprung too– flowers to follow soon. Ferns in abundance, greening up as best they can in this year's dry wet season.

Heaven, My Home

This is the third crime novel by Attica Locke that I have read, and I think it is the best of the three. The plot moves at a crisp pace, and along the way you will learn some interesting tidbits about the history of northeastern Texas, out in the wild bayou country around Caddo Lake, where much of the action takes place. Our hero, a Black Texas Ranger named Darren Mathews, shares with many cops in this genre a strong moral compass, plenty of smarts, and a troubled past that becomes entangled with his case. That the story takes place shortly after Trump's election in 2016 and features a cast of genuine and wannabe white supremacists as well as the white grifters who seek to exploit them and their Black and Native American neighbors... well, that just gives the whole affair a certain piquance that is only spicier since January 6.

Chick Corea, RIP

I went through a brief love affair with jazz fusion in the 1970s. How could you not? Some of the most brilliant musicians of their time were the progenitors: Miles, of course, but also notably keyboardists Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. After free jazz exhaustion we were ready for something a little more accessible, something that held out the hope that jazz could once again be a genre with mass appeal. Herbie's forays became foundational to hip-hop; Chick's were a little stranger and goofier... leprechauns, anyone? Ultimately fusion was pretty busted. But with Chick Corea, there is so much more. To me, the free jazz stuff sticks. Especially in the company of musicians like these... 

Toxic, part 2

TENTSMUIR FOREST
Karen Solie

The sign denoting a negative quantity indicates, 
also, subtraction. The symbol for equivalence

means also alike. The deadliest mushroom is
among the most delicious. Distinct

in their intensities of purpose. Her children found her

on the kitchen floor, plate on the table,
pan on the stove. A life foraging in these woods,

she should have known. But to pour out
is not to spill. To spill is not to lay oneself down.

                                    From The Caiplie Caves

Toxic

Untraceable
Sergei Lebedev

This is a tightly written and cold-hearted literary suspense novel, based on something close to real life. The two protagonists/ antagonists– the Russian chemist-defector Kalitin and the Russian agent-assassin Shershnev– are on a collision course. Along the way, we learn their back stories. Do we come to understand what makes them tick? Hard to say. Comparisons of the book to Le Carré's moral universe have been made, but unlike Smiley, neither Kalitin nor Shershnev seems to have a moral bone in his body, and what emotion or empathy they possess is buried so deep in their psyches as to be nearly snuffed out.

The book actually has a third protagonist: the neurotoxin Neophyte, designed by Kalitin to be lethal and "untraceable," a cousin of the real-world novichok. Neophyte has its own personal history, paralleling Kalitin's as well as Russia's. The stories of these three toxic characters are compellingly told, and the descriptions of the landscape and action are vivid and artful. Thank the translator, Antonina W. Bouis, as well as Lebedev for that. A good read about awful stuff for bad times.

Two more cheers for capitalism

Basically the U.S. government has done jack shit to combat climate change. So we are left relying on Elon Musk and now General Motors. Not ideal, but beggars can't be choosers. 

Crocodile tears for the capitalists

 Ooooh scary! Until you look back five years and see average returns in excess of 10% per year... 

Grant Park lichens

In addition to plenty of birds, oaks, and vistas... lichens! Not the best lichen spot in the region by a long shot, but an interesting rock outcropping here and there...

Busy acorn woodpeckers

 Grant Park, east of San Jose.

Woodrat project, vol. 5

Oh, the woodrats in Wilder Ranch State Park are very very busy. Click on the pictures to appreciate the craftsratship in higher resolution.

Soul

The new Pixar movie is very clever and very sweet. I liked the bustling New York scenes better than the Great Before, with its indistinguishable pale green bubblehead spirits and Calder-esque bureaucrats. I especially loved the jazz itself, which is played in a straight-ahead modern style, no concessions to pop, just what you would expect to hear in a downtown club like the barely fictional "Half Note." Tia Fuller's alto sax is awesome, and Jon Batiste, whose stylistic choices are not always to my liking, gets it just right. The rest of the animated band is as good as you would expect it to be given the roster of real-life musicians who played the notes.