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Some highs of 2022

After two years of the pandemic, 2022 felt like a return to a normal that was new. Below are some of my highs from the past year. The pandemic gave me Covid-19, but it also heightened my appreciation for being in the presence of others. I recall delighting in real time in each of the moments in this retrospective.

Five days in London with Mom, Stacy and Dan

Seven days in Kiawah Island with Mom, Stacy, Dan, Andrew, Maddie, Josh, Katie and Noa

150 days in Hilton with Krista, Tesse, Olympus, Saxa, Puppy and Finny

Imagining that President Zelenskyy of Ukraine might be a relative

The force is strong with these three

A walk in the Mondi plantation with Krista, Pete, Sue and Tesse

Seeing Puppy outside the window of my office

Come out and play

Mixed doubles with Mom, Stacy and Dan for Mom’s 80th birthday

Court 18, Aug. 18, 2022

Standing on the floor of the House of Commons

Seated, Westminster Hall

Touring Lord’s cricket ground with Dan and Calum

Talking cricket with Pete, Sue and Connor

The home of cricket, with guide John Adams (second from left)

Trying pickleball for the first time

Eating one entire pizza apiece with Mom, Stacy and Dan at L’Antica Pizzeria in Marylebone

Finding a water bottle that I like 

A new, soft mouthguard to prevent me from grinding my teeth at night

Losing a few pounds after snacking less

Seeing “Top Gun: Maverick” with Mom at the Manor Theatre

Visiting the Angel Oak

Watching giraffes watch me, on a game reserve in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province

Walking with Mom and Stacy around the reservoir at Highland Park

Sue, Krista and Pete in the Mondi plantation

Getting a bivalent Covid-19 booster

Then getting Covid nearly there years into the pandemic

Testing negative for Covid 11 days after testing positive

Positivity

Watching alternating episodes of “The Crown” and “Harry & Meghan” with Krista

Dinner at Nando’s for three consecutive nights in Shoreditch

A one-night vacation in Durban with Krista

The Indian Ocean on the horizon

Heading home via the Merritt Parkway on an August evening after a day of house hunting in Connecticut, listening to Stevie Wonder BBC News and the Yankees, and then seeing the spires of Manhattan with their airplane lights that blink red, towering in the hazy purple twilight as I drive over the last hill in the Bronx.

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Channeling Saul Steinberg

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What social media showed us in 2017

On May 26, 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt took to the radio to talk with the American people about mobilizing for war. The address was the 14th “fireside chat” by the president, who during the Depression began the practice of using the airwaves to address Americans directly.

In “No Ordinary Time,” her history of the Roosevelt administration on the home front in World War II, Doris Kearns Goodwin notes that during such talks the public could imagine that they were sitting beside the president in his study.

Kearns Goodwin quotes Richard Strout, a journalist who worked for The New Republic during those years. “You felt he was talking to you,” Strout recalled about FDR. “Not to 50 million others but to you personally.”

The idea of talking directly to Americans (and the world) found its footing anew in 2017 thanks to social media. Twitter alone reaches more than three times as many people each day as FDR reached via the radio.

Just over a year ago, Leslie Stahl of CBS News asked then President-elect Donald Trump whether he planned, after he became president, to keep up the use of Twitter that he had wielded during the campaign.

“I’m going to do very restrained, if I use it at all,” Trump replied. “I find it tremendous. It’s a modern form of communication… It’s where it’s at… I really believe that, the fact that I have such power in terms of numbers with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et cetera.”

As we now know, Trump has not held back. In 2017, he used Twitter to speak to supporters. But he also used it to endorse a hate group, antagonize allies, threaten nuclear war, bully civil servants, and sow discord at home and abroad.

Of course, social media works two ways. When Trump appeared to disinvite the NBA champion Golden State Warriors from the White House, LeBron James, who reaches nearly as many people on Twitter as the president, rebuked him.

As Christopher Clarey noted on Friday in the Times, social media also gives athletes the means to amplify their messages – an opportunity for activism that many athletes have seized this year. Clarey notes:

What is evident is that the internet’s capacity to make the distant seem personal is not going away. Whether they are asked political questions or not, athletes, like other celebrities, will continue to be able to deliver their messages — be they solipsistic or deeply civic — directly and immediately to the public, no gatekeepers required.

Experts may debate whether a president actually can launch a nuclear strike at the touch of a button. But this year has showed that a president can risk apocalypse at the touch of a smartphone.

If anything, 2017 underscored that we are less likely to experience the moment at a remove. The year also highlighted, as the reaction to the tweet by James – which was liked by seven times as many people as the tweet by Trump that provoked it – the collective intelligence that modern media make possible.

Abraham Lincoln died a dozen years before Thomas Edison invented the first device that could record and playback sound. We infer what the 16th president sounded like by piecing together accounts of those who heard him speak.

Now, thanks to Twitter, we know what the president just watched on cable news.

“They can’t handcuff him,” Maggie Haberman, who covers Trump for the Times, told CNN recently. “They can’t break his fingers to keep him from tweeting. They do tell him: ‘Please don’t do this.’ He does these things anyways.”

Of course, the technology does not release the messenger from responsibility for his message.

As it happens, one of the protests that resonated the loudest this year was also the quietest.

It began a year earlier, when Colin Kaepernick, then the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, sat during the national anthem, a day after tweeting a message that compared the American and Confederate flags.

At least one reporter captured the portent of the moment. “At a time when NFL players are criticized for not speaking out on social issues, Kaepernick has provided a very significant and conspicuous gesture,” wrote Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk. “As the team noted, it’s his right to do so. But given that Kaepernick opted to make a stand by sitting during the traditional pregame honoring of the country and its flag — which is so tightly woven into the DNA of the NFL — there surely will be a reaction.”

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It’s true

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle that you know nothing about. Be kind, always.”

Written on a piece of notebook paper taped to the wall behind the counter of the snack bar at a truck stop in Sealy, Texas, as told by Jonathan Richman

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David Carr, R.I.P.

There’s a scene in “Page One,” a 2011 documentary about The New York Times, that stands out among the others. David Carr, the Times reporter who died Thursday, interviews the founders of Vice, the upstart media company that made its mark “going places we don’t belong,” according to the company’s tag line.

In the video, above, Shane Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Vice, tells Carr that Smith had been to Liberia, where he saw that people had been using the beach as a latrine and learned that some locals engaged in cannibalism.

The exchange that ensues:

Smith: “The New York Times, meanwhile, is writing about surfing. And I’m sitting going, you know what, I’m not going to talk about surfing. I’m going to talk about cannibalism. Because that [expletive] me up.”

Carr: “Just a second, time out. Before you ever went there, we’ve had reporters there reporting on genocide after genocide. Just because you put on a [expletive] safari helmet and looked at some poop doesn’t give you the right to insult what we do, so continue. Continue.”

The scene resonates with me and with many journalists with whom I’ve talked about it over the years because it demonstrates two things. That Carr had guts. And that he had the courage to call out the practice of adopting the tropes of journalism without recognizing what reporting entails.

Carr never failed to sniff out spin. He was a master at revealing the veneer of news that companies, organizations, governments and others cloak themselves in when in reality they’re advancing their mission or bolstering their bottom line. Or, as in the case of Smith, those who are quick to dismiss the work of journalists as plodding or somehow out of step, as if the hard work of pursuing the truth, of asking what the truth of the matter happens to be, somehow misses the point.

As Carr reminded us, reporting is the best job in the world. It’s a license to ask questions, to learn and to be an honest broker.

David Carr embodied what it means to be an honest broker. He also happened to be able to report thoroughly and to write beautifully. By all accounts, he seemed to be a terrific colleague. I will remember him for standing up for journalism and for telling the truth. Readers, including this one, will miss him.

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Some highs of 2014…

Tortured but not tortious
Tortured but not tortious

Visiting northern Namibia with Krista

Chapman’s Peak Drive

Running with Tala and Juma

24hoursofhappy

Securing a roadworthy designation for the Landy

Watching Kaizer Chiefs battle Maritzburg United

Making pasta with Krista and Rachel

Walking through Williamsburg as winter receded

Columbia hoops with the Wave

Riding the J train across the Williamsburg Bridge, gazing out at Lower Manhattan

Figuring out with Krista how to tie a mattress to the roof of a van

A nap at 2:00 a.m. at a roadside plaza en route to the city

May 11 in the Conservatory Garden with Krista

Dad’s bar mitzvah

“Much Ado About Nothing” in the park, with Krista (and Meryl Streep)

Discussing the law (and more) with Sam

Josh’s introducing me to Nike Roshe Runs

Shaken iced green tea lemonade at Starbucks

Original Pinkberry with blueberries and chocolate chips

Walks through Central Park’s North Woods to defrag my brain and lift my spirits

James Franco’s signing my torts outline

Riverside Park on summer evenings

Stacy’s quizzing me about constitutional law

Browsing at Book Culture

Riding the Thunderbolt and the Cyclone with Krista

The Rockaways in summer

Hearing Wallace Roney and his orchestra debut music by Wayne Shorter, at the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival

Swimming with Krista at Jackie Robinson Park Recreation Center

Editors who accepted my pitches then made my stories better

Cy Twombly at the Morgan

Break-fast, from Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, with Krista

Riding the bus to the ball game with Dad

Listening to Mom tell me about her investment club

“Transparent,” “Masters of Sex,” “The Good Wife” and “TURN”

Forging new ties at Quartz and strengthening old ones at American Banker

Passing the New York bar examination!

Visiting the South African Cricketeers’ Association, the Company’s Garden and the South African National Gallery with Vasu

My first bunny chow, with Krista and Mary

Figuring out where Pacer fees go

LSE podcasts and New Yorker cartoons

My ‘Dice volleyball shirt, from Maddie

Discovering Freedom Café and the square across the street

American Thanksgiving in South Africa

The Turkey Bowl with Dan, Andrew and Josh

Catching up with classmates

Discussing “Interstellar” endlessly

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Even lawyers need copy editors

20140726-130953-47393673.jpg

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Morning Glory

cheeriosCheerios made the news recently for airing a commercial that shows a little girl in a biracial family use the toasted whole grain oats to win her dad’s heart. I mention it because I’ve longed for the cereal since arriving here in South Africa.

Walk down the cereal aisle at a grocery store in Kwa-Zulu Natal and you may find Cheerios, but the oats somehow lack the flavor of Cheerios one finds in the states, where they’re manufactured by General Mills. Nestle makes the South African version at a plant about 37 miles north of Pretoria, according to BakeryAndSnacks.com, a trade publication.

Meanwhile, the Cheerios sold in the states have changed. Though the whole grains that go into Cheerios always have been free of genetically modified organisms, General Mills announced in January that the cornstarch and sugar used in the cereal are now GMO-free as well.

The change, which occurred over the past year, applies to original Cheerios. Eliminating GMO’s from other types of Cheerios, including Honey Nut and Apple Cinnamon, would be “difficult, if not impossible,” a company spokesman told CNN Money.

 

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Car Talk: Part II

landyI feared this might happen. The inspector pulled the key from the ignition while the motor was running. I showed up with my partner’s Land Rover at Class Auto Testing and, just before finishing his once-over, the mechanic flagged the key, which roughly two months earlier nearly had caused the vehicle to fail a roadworthy assessment.

In November, Steve, our off-road specialist, had persuaded the inspector to overlook that blemish. Now came my attempt. “The same thing happened last time and your colleague certified the vehicle as roadworthy,” I implored. “Plus, even when you remove the key the engine continues to run.”

“It’s not a big deal,” the inspector replied. “Just cut a new key.” That may be his view but it seems we might need to replace the ignition switch, according to Steve, who sighed audibly when I told him the inspector had identified nine items for repair.

But let’s turn back the clock slightly.

Earlier that morning I had visited Outdoor Marine in Pietermaritzburg. Steve had instructed me to see Philip, the owner, who would direct me to a testing center that we hoped might extend the roadworthy certification  I had allowed to expire.

All I had to win was two weeks, sufficiently long that my partner and I could register the vehicle after she returns to the country. Steve and I hoped the testing center might extend the certification without actually inspecting the vehicle anew.

When I arrived at Outdoor Marine I found Philip in his office, talking on the phone. I waited in the showroom, which brims with boats, rafts and other craft, all wedged at acute angles to one another. I fancied one of the rigid inflatable rafts that had twin outboard engines affixed. It looked like a Zodiac on steroids.

Just then Piet, a friendly guy with a shaved head who wore a red shirt emblazoned with patches from Mercury Marine and other suppliers, greeted me and offered to show me the way to the testing center. Piet comes from Mpumalanga, a province in eastern South Africa, but he has lived in Kwa-Zulu Natal for 12 years. “Mpumalanga is beautiful but it’s hard to find work there,” he told me.

During the five minutes it took us to drive to the testing center, we talked about places to visit nearby. Piet suggested Sani Pass, a road through the Drakensberg Mountains that connects Kwa-Zulu Natal with Lesotho and requires the use of a four-wheel drive vehicle. “I like to drive up there, drink a few Maluti Lagers, then head back,” Piet said. “You need to go, you have the perfect vehicle for it.”

We  would  have the perfect vehicle if we were able to register it. When we arrived at Class Auto, Piet and I headed to the office, where he explained to a nice Indian woman behind the counter that I had brought the Land Rover for roadworthy testing. She smiled and slid a form across the counter that Piet filled out on my behalf. After I paid the fee we headed back outside, where Piet instructed me to pull the Land Rover into a row of about four vehicles that had queued for testing.

While we waited for the Land Rover to move forward in the line, Piet and I chatted about South Africa, the U.S., the economy, labor unions (there’s been some  unrest lately at South Africa’s platinum mines), and boats. Sales have slowed in the last few years, according to Piet, who attributed the fall-off to a sluggish economy. That’s when Piet decided to call a co-worker for a ride back to Outdoor Marine. “You don’t mind if I call someone to fetch me,” he asked. “Not at all,” I answered, happy to survey the testing center.

Class Auto tests vehicles in a hangar wide enough for a single lane of vehicles. Light pours through mustard-colored plastic panels that line the tops of the walls. Cars, trucks and other vehicles to be tested enter the shed, where they proceed  along a pit into which the mechanics file so they can stare up at the undersides.

Vehicles to be tested  first roll across spindles, which detect the vehicle’s weight and measure braking force. The results appear on two gauges – one for the left wheel and one for the right – that extends from a wall.

The pit runs the length of roughly two automobiles and two trucks. Behind the Land Rover stood a Tata Motors flatbed with six wheels, a Volkswagen van from the Panorama Recovery Centre, a silver Honda Jazz and a flatbed from Norman’s Driving School.

An inspector walked the length of the pit, tapping the carriages of the trucks with a crowbar. (That’s one way to know if the pieces actually attach to one another.) When the inspector passed me I asked him if a vehicle had ever fallen into the pit. “Not since I’ve been here,” he answered. “But I’m just a trainee.”

After about 10 minutes the Land Rover straddled the front of the pit, where two inspectors probed its underbelly. They tugged on parts, stared up the guts of the thing and conferred with each other at least twice. Finally, one of them motioned for me to climb down into the pit, which one reaches via a ladder at the far end.

As eager as I was to stand beneath the Land Rover, I sensed the inspector had not invited me into the pit so he could tell me the vehicle had earned a roadworthy certification.

“You have to replace these bushings,” the inspector told me, as he used chalk to mark an “X” at each end of the front and rear stabilizers. “See this,” the inspector said, jiggling a part with his hands. “You have to secure the air filter.”

I listened with a look that I hoped the inspector would construe as my appreciating the seriousness of the situation. “There’s also oil, leaking,” he added, pointing at black droplets that had collected on a steel surface.

A few more pokes and the inspector ushered me out to garage level while he drove the Land Rover around to the front of the hangar and parked near the office. He remained in the driver’s seat, motioning to me to come over while he marked his findings on a form attached in duplicate to a clipboard.

“We discussed the bushings and the air filter,” he said, pointing to the boxes on the form that corresponded with those findings. “Let’s go through the other things.”

So much for an extension, I thought. Besides the items marked in the pit, he also instructed me to:

  • Replace the blade on the rear windshield wiper
  • Fix the spotlights on the wench
  • Tighten the parking brake, and
  • Harden the steering wheel, which is pliable in spots

“You can just replace the grip,” the inspector said, tapping the wheel. Steve told me later that we might have to replace the steering wheel unless he can stiffen it with an injection of silicone. I told you that Steve is a specialist.

Then came the key and my pleading with the inspector to disregard it. He told me that if I returned by February 14, I would not have to pay the testing fee again. “If you come back on February 13, no fee,” he said, handing me a pink carbon copy of the inspection report. “If you come back on February 14, there will be a fee.”

“OK,” I said.

Though my spirits sank, I thanked the inspector for his time. “Where are you from,” he asked me. “The states,” I answered. “I’m getting an education.”

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Car Talk

yellow_discIt was a Friday evening in January and I was on the phone with Steve, our nice guy Land Rover mechanic, asking for advice.

Earlier that day I had visited One-Stop Licensing, a business in Pietermaritzburg that will, for a fee, process the paperwork one needs to register a vehicle here in South Africa.

The manager at One-Stop informed me that the roadworthy designation for my partner’s Land Rover Defender – a certification by the government that marks the vehicle’s fitness for use on the road – had expired and that the vehicle would have to be tested again before I could register it.

The prospect of taking the Land Rover through roadworthy testing summoned the spirit of Sisyphus. The vehicle passed in November because Steve had persuaded the inspector that the ease with which the key pulls free of the ignition while the engine runs has nothing to do with the vehicle’s worthiness for the road.

Steve had relayed the incident while giving me a ride home in the Land Rover. “You see,” he said, yanking the key from the ignition while we headed down the road at about 50 mph. The engine continued to run as if nothing had happened “Still, we were lucky the inspector didn’t fail us for it,” Steve added. “Replacing the ignition switch costs a few hundred dollars.”

Now I had to submit anew to the  ordeal but this time Steve would not be there when the inspector tugged on the key. I would be there, trying to explain the key, the door that hangs a few degrees off alignment or whatever else the inspector might flag.

I didn’t  dare ask Steve to handle the roadworthy again. He had obtained the certification. My partner and I allowed it to expire. The next attempt would be mine. “Tell them you’re an American and you didn’t realize the roadworthy certificate lasts for just 60 days,” Steve counseled. “Plead ignorance and offer to pay the fee again.”

Though Steve’s advice might be my only hope, the certification’s lapsing left me feeling deflated. Every vehicle sold in South Africa needs to pass a roadworthy examination before it can be registered. My partner and I had been readying the Land Rover for two months in anticipation of registration, which confers a little round disc that you display in your windshield, similar to the decal many U.S. states issue to vehicles that pass inspection.

The preparation included a series of repairs. Three of the Land Rover’s tires lacked the millimeter of tread the government requires. The brakes gripped lightly, the engine smelled of oil and white smoke poured from the tailpipe when you accelerated.

That did not presage roadworthy even if it might be expected on a vehicle that has logged about 160,000 miles. Thankfully a friend had connected us with Steve, who specializes in modifying, repairing and building up vehicles that operate in the bush.

Steve lives in a sprawling house with a thatched roof and a garage that contains contain an assortment of off-road vehicles and an agglomeration of auto parts. A black German shepherd and a brown Siberian husky preside over the premises, barking at visitors until the gate rolls open and the dogs determine that you’ve come in peace.

When I first brought the Land Rover to Steve’s place, he and his assistant examined the engine, wheels, brakes and suspension. They flipped up the driver’s seat to reveal a computer underneath and a bundle of wires that connect the computer to the goings-on beneath the hood.

After an hour of probing parts, sniffing smoke, measuring the brakes and running their fingers across a layer of oil that coated much of the engine, Steve delivered his diagnosis. “The vehicle’s going to need some work if it is to have any chance of passing roadworthy,” he said.

The repairs took place over the six weeks that followed. Whenever my partner and I could spare the Land Rover for a few days we delivered it to Steve, who worked on it off and on through the end of October. By then he had:

Steve changed the air, oil, fuel and rotor filters, and drained and replaced the engine oil. He also checked the differential fluid, the oil in the gearbox, the water in the radiator, the fluid in the power steering and the belts.

In early November, Steve took the Land Rover to the testing center. Twice. The first time an inspector failed the vehicle because the stalk that activates the bright lights failed to trigger them. Steve called in an electrician to get the lights working. The test involving the key that falls from the ignition followed.

Finally we had a certificate of roadworthiness and, I thought, three months to register the vehicle. That felt like forever. We celebrated Thanksgiving. We worked, went to Cape Town, busied ourselves over the holidays and later headed to Namibia.

Then suddenly it seemed like time to register the vehicle. Off I went to One-Stop, with a few forms in hand, a day left on roadworthy and my partner, whose signature and passport the place needed, out of the country.

We had run out of time.

The provincial government publishes a spreadsheet that lists the locations of testing stations. I consulted the list, resolved to show up at the PMB Roadworthy Centre with my $30 (U.S.) fee and steeled myself for the scrutiny I imagined would follow.

Then Steve called. “Come by early on Monday,” he said. “We’ll pressure clean the engine and the underside of the vehicle. I have a plan.”