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Some highs of 2023

2023 marked the start of my first time living in Connecticut and the end of 25 years in New York City. As the list below suggests, for me the year has been one of change. And with it the feeling of liking new things and adjusting to being without some of the old ones. Here are some of the moments that stood out for me in 2023.

Moving to a house of our own on 5.5 acres after 25 years of living in +/-550 square feet

Being finished with the process of buying a house

The moment we finally moved into our house

Job finished, celebrating with the crew who moved us

Experiencing New York City for the first time as a visitor from Connecticut 

Having an office big enough to hold a couch

Swimming in our swimming pool and realizing that it belongs to us

Being finished with a colonoscopy

The start of Daylight Saving Time

Discovering light bulbs that turn themselves on automatically at dusk and off again at dawn

Mom’s visit to Woodstock on a weekend in October that featured peak autumn foliage and 70-degree sunshine

Driving a car of my own after renting for years

Finding an outpost of Chopt in Glastonbury, Conn.

Owning a king-sized mattress and a platform that adjusts to zero gravity

Upon finding the right mattress

Lunch with Krista at Nando’s Fairgrounds location, Pietermaritzburg

Being with Krista in Plymouth, Mass. on what felt like the coldest day of the year 

Laughing with Krista and building inspector Ken on a sunny day in February as we toured a house from the 17th century for sale in Duxbury, Mass. that came with a deed granting the town the right to approve any alterations (the house needed plenty)

Clam chowder at the Wyndham, Beacon Hill

Playing pickleball with Stacy, Dan and Josh on Kiawah Island

Completing four hours of mowing and yard work on a summer afternoon

Hearing a judge rule in our favor in a criminal prosecution of our neighbor for attempted assault

Holding Olympus and Tesse, knowing that Saxa recovered from surgery, feeling Finny pressed firmly against my leg as he stood beside me, and spending hours at my desk with Puppy at my feet beneath it

A flight to Hilton, South Africa without a connection that required me to spend a night in Johannesburg

Listening to Phillipa Soo sing “Being Alive” from the musical “Company” during a private party at the Plaza Hotel

Returning home to Woodstock to find blinds that Krista installed in the windows of my office

The latest issue of The New Yorker in my post office box

The squirrel who helped himself to our birdseed

We named him Piggy

Experiencing the fullness of both summer and autumn right outside my door

Pizza without cheese at Pizza 101

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News Sports

Remembering Franco Harris

Franco Harris played for the Pittsburgh Steelers but commanded an army.

My sister and I enlisted at ages seven and nine, respectively, not long after Harris turned a shoestring catch of a ball that deflected off safety Jack Tatum into a touchdown to lift the Steelers over the Raiders in a divisional playoff 50 years ago today.

The catch and touchdown by Harris, who died on Wednesday at age 72, marked the start of a run of success by the Steelers that included winning four Super Bowls in eight years.

The “Immaculate Reception,” as the catch came to be known, created a legion of fans who formed “Franco’s Italian Army,” which took its name from his mother’s heritage. In seasons to come, my sister and I wore red, white and green knit caps and scarves that marked us as members. We wore them to Steelers games. And probably to plenty of other places too.

We listened to the Immaculate Reception on a portable Sony radio at my aunt and uncle’s apartment in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh. In those days, the NFL did not televise home games, even when the stadium sold out. 

No matter. Though I’ve seen replays of the Immaculate Reception dozens of times over the years, radio didn’t rob the catch of any of its divine power. I can still summon the jolt of realizing the Steelers won a game in the playoffs. (The Super Bowls were all to come.) And I can still recall my parents, who had attended the game, telling us they missed the very play my sister and I had just heard.

Franco Harris at Steelers training camp, Saint Vincent College

My father, who held season tickets, was disgusted the Steelers seemed poised to lose. (They lost a lot before the 1970s.) So he and Mom left in the waning minutes to beat the traffic. They turned back, too late, when they heard the crowd roar. 

Harris, who stood six feet two, would go on to run for more than 12,120 yards in 13 seasons, making him 12th all time in the NFL. He had a long stride in the open field that often started with a stutter step as he searched for an opening.

Of all the Steelers, he seemed like the one with whom you’d want to be friends, a feeling that seems shared by many.

“Rest in peace to a great man who showed so much support for me,” tweeted Najee Harris, the current Steelers running back who, like Franco, was a first-round draft pick. “He was way more than just an athlete, he was an icon and a role model to so many people.”

“He was a generous person who brought happiness to everyone he touched,” tweeted the Raiders, who called Franco an “unmatched competitor on the field.”

“He was an extraordinary man on and off the field,” said former President Barack Obama. 

I never had the pleasure of meeting Franco, but one day about four years ago, I saw him on Walnut Street in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood. Just seeing him was a thrill. 

My sister reminded me this week that in third grade she won the local stage of a read-a-thon fundraiser. The prize: a cruise aboard the Gateway Clipper riverboat that travels the three rivers of Pittsburgh. The cruise, which brought together dozens of kids who had read their way to the prize, was hosted by Franco Harris. My sister took a photo with Franco, who signed her skipper hat. 

As it happens, even Franco could not console a nine-year-old stuck on a boat with strangers. “The cruise was kind of a letdown,” my sister recalled. “Because I was a little girl and on a boat for an hour-and-a-half with 50 kids I didn’t know. Five minutes into it, I thought ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t know anybody.’ That’s my Franco Harris story.”

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News

Things to know about web3

It bothered me that I kept hearing about web3, so I am writing this post to find out what it is.

Web 3

Web3 refers to a coming together of advances in computing power, artificial intelligence, and cryptography to change how we interact with data and transact with one another. Its hallmarks include semantic search, meaning that you can use it with natural language (web 3 has been called the semantic web), and decentralization, as in people can interact with one another without the need for an intermediary like a bank (for transactions), a government (for money), or a third-party platform like Facebook or Twitter. 

An early example of web3 comes from John Markoff, a technology reporter at The New York Times, who discussed it in an overview from 2007. Web 3, in his telling, could provide a helpful response to a common-sense, natural-language search like this one: I’m looking for a warm place to vacation, I have a budget of $3,000, and I have an 11-year-old child. 

A more recent example is Bitcoin. If you pay someone in Bitcoin, a global network of computers verifies the transaction rather than a bank (if the payment is electronic) or a government that issued the money if it’s in cash.

Difference from the web today

Today’s web (web2) emphasizes walled social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok where people upload video, photos, posts, reviews, and other content they generate. It’s not decentralized.

In web2, a developer can connect a database of vacation homes for rent with Google Maps to show the locations of each listing. But to find a vacation rental that’s within your budget or that works for a family with kids would require you to read through the listings, ask people on a social network, or rely on reviews.

In a 2001 article for Scientific American, Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, explained that unlike the web of that era, which was designed for humans to read, the semantic web comprises content that “computers can manipulate meaningfully.”

As NPR noted this year, in web3 “people control their own data and bound around from social media to email to shopping using a single personalized account, creating a public record on the blockchain of all that activity.”

Or as Kara Swisher predicts, “in 2022, we’ll see new forms of social interaction being built on the blockchain, as well as formidable new search (Neeva) and e-commerce alternatives (Shopify) that will slowly leech at the foundations of the larger operations.”

On to the blockchain.

Decentralization

Web3 is decentralized. You don’t need an intermediary. (Well you do, kind of; the cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike explains why here.) But let’s run with the premise of decentralization.

By design, digital currencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum can be exchanged independently of banks. Instead of being money issued by a government (like dollars), records of cryptocurrencies are stored on so-called distributed ledgers, which have no central authority. 

Anyone can exchange Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital currencies with anyone else in the world without the need to go through a bank or payments processer like Visa, PayPal, or MasterCard. To ensure that a Bitcoin cannot be spent twice, miners lend their computing power to verify others’ transactions. People can transact anonymously.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) refers to financial services that are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. To use a bank or credit card, or to use an app like Robinhood, you need to apply for an account. DeFi is open to anyone. So, for example, anyone can send, receive, borrow, or earn interest on money without a third party, a gatekeeper, or the need to obtain permission. 

DeFi leverages Ethereum, a network that developers use to build apps for trading, lending, borrowing and other financial activity. In short, Ethereum harnesses cryptography and the blockchain to offer an alternative financial system.

Smart contracts refer to programs that can be deployed to the Ethereum blockchain. A smart contract allows parties to form an agreement that is moderated by software. Compliance with the terms can be reliably verified on the blockchain. Once a condition is met, the contract is executed. Imagine, for instance, a smart contract for agreeing to sell your house to someone. If the buyer pays the purchase price (in Ethereum), title transfers automatically to the buyer, without any human involvement. 

DeFi isn’t solely about finance. Ethereum supports applications for gaming (the creation of digital worlds), technology, and the trading of arts and collectibles. 

Nonfungible tokens

The Ethereum network also supports nonfungible tokens (NFTs), which are digital files that confer authenticity on an object, whether it’s a trading card, a video clip, or a piece of digital art. NFTs also confer scarcity by authenticating collectibles. Think trading cards turned into digital files. Whereas Bitcoin is a fungible token (one Bitcoin is just like any other), NFTs are linked to a specific digital asset.

NFTs made news in 2021 when someone who goes by the pseudonym Metakovan paid $69.3 million in an auction at Christie’s for a work of digital art that exists solely as an NFT. (Both cryptocurrencies and NFTs allow people to use them anonymously.) The NBA hosts a popular marketplace for officially licensed digital collectibles that’s called Top Shot. You can buy collectibles of things like digital video trading cards of Kevin Durant dunking. 

As the Times’ Kevin Roose, who made one of his columns into an NFT that he later sold on the blockchain, has observed, “NFT fans think the technology could be used to keep track of all kinds of goods in the future — titles to houses and cars, business contracts and wills.” 

Note that owning an NFT does not confer ownership of a copyright. (Unless the seller and buyer were to agree to that.) Whoever bought the NFT of a New York Times column does not own the copyright, which still belongs to the Times. In July, Jay-Z sued his former partner Damon Dash for trying to auction an NFT of Dash’s share of the streaming rights to the Jay-Z’s album “Reasonable Doubt.” (The lawsuit is pending.)

As Quartz explains in its guide to NFTs, while an NFT is stored on the blockchain, the metadata that comes with it may be stored elsewhere and, hence, can, in some instances, be altered. There’s also no way to verify that whoever mints an NFT owns or has anything to do with the file.

That can create some thorny questions. One, as Quartz notes, centers on the tie between the code — the NFT — and the work itself. Motherboard explains:

“This is because NFTs are not JPEGs, or tweets, or anything like that; they are cryptographic signatures (an alphanumeric code) that buyers and sellers merely believe is somehow connected to the work in question. Where and how the actual work itself is stored or hosted online is incidental to this cryptographic proof.”

That means in theory, the work itself, which is not hosted on the blockchain, can be changed. Or removed from the server where it’s stored. All by someone who doesn’t own the NFT. That could leave the owner of the NFT with a string of code that doesn’t connect to the asset. A buyer who bought an NFT certified by an auction house like Christie’s or the NBA may be able to sue the seller (the artist, for example), the auction house, or the company that hosts the work of art (or all of them) for breach of contract and/or, possibly, for conversion (you took something of mine entrusted to you that you had no right to take). But still.

Another potential problem arises when people tokenize (meaning make an NFT of ) artwork or other assets they have no stake in. That may be a violation of the creator’s intellectual property. Federal law authorizes copyright holders to obtain so-called takedowns of unauthorized works. But the anonymity that the blockchain offers can get in the way of identifying whoever violated the copyright.

So, if I were to buy an NFT of a photograph that belongs to someone else, the person who owns the copyright could ask the service that hosts the NFT to take it down. Unless the person who sold me the NFT is operating anonymously. Which is why if you buy an NFT that you care about you probably want a reputable third party like Christie’s or the NBA to certify the sale.

And as an attorney who works with rights holders told Motherboard, companies like the NBA or Disney have armies of lawyers who can go after someone who steals copyrighted material.

Suppose I buy an NFT of a photograph of the Mona Lisa. I would own the unique NFT of that photo. But I would not own Leonardo’s painting that hangs in the Louvre. I can later sell the NFT of the Mona Lisa photo to someone else, but I cannot sell the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Louvre because I don’t own it. Which is why most people probably would not pay much for an NFT of a photo of the Mona Lisa. If you’ve visited the Louvre and watched the crowds that gather at the painting, smartphones in hand, you know there’s nothing scarce about that.

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News

Some highs from 2021

This was the year we thought we might return to normal. But instead we surfed a series of waves triggered by the pandemic. Winter. Second wave. Mask on. Socially distance. Springtime. Vaccination. Breathe. Summer. Third wave. Mask on. Outdoors. Autumn. Pandemic plateaus. Breathe. Boosted. Fourth wave. Mask on. Socially distance. Still surfing.

Here are some of my highs – the things that carried me from one wave to the next – in 2021.

Scratching Puppy’s tummy as he lay on the floor in my office

Talking with Krista while we sat in our matching green chairs

Attending a virtual reunion of Hempfield High School’s Scholastic Quiz team

Reporting for Quartz about the pandemic in South Africa

Krista’s getting to Boston to see a cardiologist

Eyeglasses that help me see the computer screen clearly

Chewy naan from Little Punjab in Hilton

A blue sweatshirt from Jonsson workwear

Pfizer dose 1

Pfizer dose 2

Driving to Pittsburgh after being fully vaccinated

Finny

Apple AirPods Pro

Hugging Olympus

Playing doubles with Stacy, Dan and Josh

Landing a full-time job

An air conditioner for the window in the living room

Walking with Maddie to The Public Theater on a sticky summer evening followed by dinner at Eataly

New socks

A ferry ride with Mom to Rockaway Beach followed by happy hour at Eataly

Two monitors

Krista asking me to get her a chai tea at Ground

Listening to songs that I think Dad would have liked

Discovering Cederberg Merlot Shiraz and realizing with Krista how much we like it

Sneaking blueberries to Saxa

Plunging into the pool with Krista

Brunch with Maddie, Andrew and Katie in Sheep Meadow

The red desk chair that I bought at Midlands Mall

Going to Natal Nurseries with Krista

A brush good morning from Tesse

Pfizer dose 3

Finding N95 masks with ear loops

Finding panagrams on the Times’ “Spelling Bee”

Thanksgiving morning with Dan, Stacy, Andrew, Katie, and Maddie

Morning walks with NPR’s “Up First” podcast

An AeroPress travel kit

The trees coming down in Mondi

Three straight weeks of pizza and Merlot Shiraz for dinner

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To the horizon

I gazed at the horizon on Saturday for the first time all summer. It was aboard the ferry to Manhattan from Rockaway Beach. My mother and I had taken the ferry to the beach in the late afternoon. 

I sat portside, atop a box filled with preservers, in the forward section of the upper deck. A guy with a surfboard in a bag at his side sipped from a 16-ounce can of Coors. A young woman across from me read a paperback. She looked up occasionally to photograph the bay with her phone. Some people wore hoodies to ward off the late-afternoon chill.

A steel-gray sky blanketed the horizon. As we made our way north, a sailboat bobbed passed us heading east.

The ferry slipped past the tip of the peninsula and the horizon emerged. Because of the clouds I could barely make out New Jersey on the mainland. It was like staring into a Rothko field of bands of blue. A boat headed north provided a pinpoint of white. 

“Inlanders,” wrote Melville in “Moby Dick,” “must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling.” For a few hours on Saturday, I was on the water and loved it.

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Search on

I had nearly given up this blog. 

Not because I didn’t have more to write, but because I ran into a glitch with the site itself. Whenever I clicked on links from the archive, I received a message that read “Oops! That page can’t be found.” 

For the better part of a year, my attempt at a fix was to call tech support at the company that hosts the site. Tech support didn’t have a fix.

In time, I stopped posting. It seemed I always had something better to work on. But that didn’t feel right either. 

Then I searched Google. That seems like an obvious go-to; I think it took me as long as it did because I imagined the problem lay with hosting. Thanks to Google, I learned the problem lay with WordPress. 

WordPress users suggested a change to a setting on the back end of the site. That didn’t solve my problem, but it got me to play around with a few other settings. I tweaked one. Not it. Then another. Nope. I changed a third setting. Voila. The archived posts appeared. 

I feel so pleased to have fixed the problem that I’m posting this.

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Deborah Birx tried to protect us from the pandemic

Last June, the U.S. public-health physician Deborah Birx and her chief epidemiologist Irum Zaidi began a road trip across America to see first-hand the path of the pandemic.

Birx, who made her career combatting HIV and AIDS, had been appointed to the vice president’s task force overseeing the country’s response to COVID-19. As we now know, the task force, like most of the federal response, suffered from next to no leadership by the president.

The idea for the road trip came to the women after the White House brought in Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist who asserted that masks did little to stop the spread of SARS-1. As if that weren’t enough to disqualify him, Atlas also advocated for allowing the virus to move freely through the population with the aim of spurring so-called herd immunity.

We know this thanks to the reporting of Lawrence Wright, whose New Yorker issue-length account of America’s mistakes and struggles in confronting the virus may be the most comprehensive first draft of history of a pandemic ever reported.

As the task force began to dissolve amid the dearth of leadership and absurdity of Atlas’ views, Birx and Zaidi decided to hit the road. As Wright tells it, the idea was inspired by the duo’s travels together across Africa meeting with local leaders about HIV and AIDS.

In the months to follow, Birx and Zaidi crossed the U.S. eight times, visiting 43 states. In that time, reports Wright:

Birx corralled politicians, hospital executives, and public-health officials, often bringing such leaders together for the first time. She took charts and slides from state to state, promoting a simple, consistent message about masks, social distancing, transparency, and responsible leadership. She was the only federal official doing so.

The duo encountered governors like Jim Justice of West Virginia, who had mandated wearing of masks and who at press briefings read the names of West Virginians who had died of COVID-19. “West Virginia represents exactly what we want to see across the country — a commonsense approach based on the data,” said Birx.

In South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem, who had refused to issue a mask mandate, “couldn’t find time to meet with Birx,” reports Wright.

Wright’s account deserves to be read in its entirety. Especially as the U.S. records nearly 23 million cases of COVID-19 and deaths from the disease are averaging about 4,400 a day. “The U.S. is already by far the most affected region of its size on the planet,” The Washington Post noted on Wednesday.

Throughout their travels, Birx and Zaidi found that both Democratic and Republican governors had the same complaint. “Many people wouldn’t listen as long as Trump refused to set an example,” Wright reports.

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Trump incites violence against America

The seal of the U.S. Senate includes a scroll inscribed with “E Pluribus Unum” emblazoned on the wall above the desk at the center of the chamber. 

The inscription, which translates to “Out of many, one,” formed one of the most striking images to emerge from Wednesday’s assault on the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-fueled mob. In it, a member of the mob can be seen seated at the desk, the Latin on the wall behind him. 

Throughout four years that will finally end on January 20, Trump has embodied a sentiment of his own design; in his America, one matters more than many. The president’s baseless claims of election fraud are the latest manifestation of that belief. 

American democracy counts on coordination. The storming of the Capitol highlights the vulnerability of our federal system to those who aim to get their way by exploiting its gaps.

As the rioters forced lawmakers to suspend the counting of electoral votes that marks a mandate of our constitutional democracy, the federal and state lines that delineate it showed amid a scramble to summon reinforcements for police who guard the building.

Trump refused to call on the rioters to retreat. The District of Columbia endures without sovereignty of its own and a governor who can summon help. If fell to the city’s mayor and the governor of Virginia to call in the national guard.

The lack of federal leadership paralleled Trump’s abdication during the pandemic, throughout which he has forced the states to fend for themselves. The president has left the states to procure their own protective equipment, to develop their own tests and tracing, to carry out (or not) their own campaigns to promote wearing of masks and other non-pharmaceutical measures, and, most recently, to vaccinate people. 

By refusing to call on Americans to cover their faces (not to mention refusing to wear a mask himself), Trump ensured that many more Americans would be sickened by COVID-19 and die. Universal use of masks in the U.S. might have saved as many as 130,000 lives, according to researchers at the University of Washington.

The pandemic and the protests converged on Wednesday. As the rioters overran the Capitol, news emerged that a luxury nursing home in Florida offered scarce doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to its donors and board members. Even as elderly people at risk from the virus camp out across the state in the hope of receiving a vaccine. 

It’s not as if we didn’t see it coming. Trump defended violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville when he remarked there “were very fine people, on both sides.” He tried to coerce the leader of Ukraine to dig for dirt on Trump’s opponent. On Saturday, Trump asked the top election official in Georgia to find votes that would swing the state to Trump and overturn the outcome of the election.

With his attack on our democracy, Trump has pushed federalism to the breaking point. The Capitol houses not only a coequal branch of government but the first among equals according to the Constitution.

“Show me what democracy looks like,” chant protestors who call on America to right its racial and other injustices. The rioters who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday showed what an assault on democracy looks like when fueled by malevolence and a motive to weaken the nation.

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Najee Harris leaps over tall tacklers in a single bound

Najee Harris hurdles football players the way runners hurdle, well, hurdles.

On Friday, the Alabama running back notched what may be the highlight of the new year when he went up and over Notre Dame cornerback Nick McCloud on the way to the Crimson Tide’s 31-14 victory over Irish. 

Harris, who attended Antioch High School in California, was the most-recruited football player in the class of 2017. Now everyone knows about the athleticism of the 229-pound senior, who stands six feet two.

He’s also been hurdling defensemen for some time. On Saturday, I scrolled videos of Harris running with a football, including this video of him hurdling his way downfield in high school. 

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Some highs from 2020

This has been a year unlike any that most of us have experienced. I’m thankful for everything, even if I didn’t always like being stuck in place. (Though I liked it plenty.) That said, here are some of my highs from 2020:

An N95 mask that Krista gave me

Eating blueberry swirl ice cream with Krista (she had lemon)

Playing in the yard with Puppy

Kisses from Tesse, rubbing her belly

Sneaking blueberries to Saxa

Hugging Olympus

Walking arm-in-arm with Krista along the path at Ballito while the ocean sprayed in our faces

Planting lavender in the garden

Lockdown levels 3, 2 and 1 with Krista (level 5, not so much)

My Bean flannel sheets

Having a big beard (and looking forward to another one after I am vaccinated)

Catching up each day with Mom

Coronation chicken salad sandwiches with Krista, Pete and Sue at the South Africa/England cricket match

The Daily Mini crossword

A new eyeglass prescription that improved my vision

Thinking about the advice Dad might give me whenever I felt stressed, and feeling calmed by it

Getting three clients, up from one in 2019

Other people wearing masks and social distancing

My New Balance running shoes

Subscribing to home delivery of the Mercury, the Sunday Times (SA) and The New York Times

FaceTime with Matt

Noise-cancelling headphones

Daily walks

Listening to “Circles” by Mac Miller

Talking Congress with Andrew

Reading “Kitchen Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain

Zoom with Stacy, Dan, Maddie and Josh

The story pitches I was proud of even if they didn’t get published

Colors