Kelly, Kyle, Dad, and I are staying outside Newton, New Jersey, where today we celebrated Auntie Connie’s 100th. While her actual birthday was last Tuesday, the four of us couldn’t travel out here until the weekend, gathering together with Gaby, Chrissy, Maria, Anna; Gus, Chil, Justine (with her dog Lola), Matt; Bong, Malu, and Rafael.

My experience is limited so I am only supposing: for those among us who have the fortune to reach the century mark, our personalities become tumbled by life’s currents, our rough edges worn away until what remains is a polished essence of our souls.

…

So you could be looking out the window upon a gathering in your backyard, making out one of your brothers with your keen eyesight, holding in your warm soft hand the hand of that brother’s son, smiling as you recognize and remember both of them, your expression changing abruptly as you remember that brother’s twin has died. But a few minutes later you could be struggling to recall the name of your beloved husband, who served in the Navy and had the foresight to provide for you for decades after he passed. Or you could be seeing the balloons that spelled out “100” and not know those balloons are there for you.

You are living the second childhood Jacques describes in “As You Like It.”

…

The years can play out in different ways. At a diner afterwards, we met someone who is 99, wearing a cap indicating that he himself served in the Navy during the Second World War. Dad at 91 clearly recalls the names of everyone in the three families who lived with him in the jungles of the Philippines during the war, hiding from and fighting against the Japanese occupation. It helps to have a photo, a rare photo from that time and place, somehow developed by my father’s father.

In that photo, Auntie Connie is standing straight, tan, confident, smiling. 

A list of the ways West Side Story (2021) is better than West Side Story (1961):

• Choreography is tight in the street scenes: spectacular with the larger number of dancers.
• Rita Moreno; Rita Moreno again.
• Casting actors with Latino heritage is far better than putting them in brownface.
• Rachel Zegler speaking and singing is better than Natalie Wood speaking and not-singing.
• Spanish! Spanish spoken between the Puerto Rican characters.
• Bright clear voices in the “America” number.
• A wider depiction of New York City, near the time of my birth there and where I have lived as an adult.
• “Somewhere (There’s A Place for Us)”: having Valentina voice those lyrics.
• “A Boy Like That / I Have A Love”: more natural blocking and vocal inflection.

A list of the ways where I can’t decide which version I prefer:

• Staging. The original is claustrophobic, appropriately. (In the new version, going to the Cloisters implies Maria and Tony’s problems will dissolve if only they would leave the neighborhood, but the reality is racism exists everywhere.) On the other hand, the more realistic establishing shots in the new version take us beyond the occasionally distracting artifice of a movie set that looks like a Broadway stage.

This afternoon I’ve been occupied with picking up a heavy dresser that I saw listed on Nextdoor, chopping up vegetables to make roasted mirepoix, and practicing Spanish on Duolingo.

When I pulled into the alley just a few blocks south to pick up the dresser, the woman who listed its availability happened to be there. She said they had it for many years and pointed out that the entire right side was covered with découpage: old photos and messages from which I did and continue to avert my eyes, because I am stunned by its sentimental value. She said that she had taken a picture for her daughter. It was a task to put the dresser in the car, involving removing a seat belt, folding down the seats, removing the cover and netting, and then lifting the hefty object. This afternoon I will bring the dresser into the house, clean it up, haul it to the second floor, organize some clothes. For now I’ll leave the collage.

I enjoy roasted mirepoix and it is so simple to make. I was inspired years ago when Marissa was making a delicious roast in a cast-iron pot, and the aroma was marvelous. Having been a pescetarian for exactly sixteen years today, I had to find a solution — so I made a vegetable roast, with ingredients similar to what I would use when I made pot roast, minus the beef. Besides chopped carrots, onions, and celery, I pour generous amounts of good-quality extra virgin olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, black pepper, and salt. Today I omitted the potatoes (usually I incorporate root vegetables, such as a variety of baking potatoes and sometimes sweet potatoes). It’s not exactly how I would make beef pot roast — in my version, there would be powdered onion soup and condensed mushroom soup — but it’s healthier and simple. Over the years this simple recipe has received good reviews from people whose tastes I respect very much: Jason at a office holiday potluck; Kelly and Kyle during Thanksgiving. The only difficult part, once the shopping is done, is chopping everything up. To cook down six kilos of vegetables requires a lot of chopping. Because it cooks for well over an hour, it’s also suitable during the colder months. I hope the oven, with its unreliable digital controls are unreliable, holds through. I just stirred the vegetables in their roasting pans to baste them, and the LEDs flashed in a worrisome way when I opened the oven door.

There is a relatively new feature on the Duolingo app, to listen and respond to audio. This is exactly the sort of feature that Duolingo had been missing and for which I turned to Pimsleur in the past. Pimsleur is more comprehensive and demanding — I can feel my brain working at the end of a half-hour session — but it is also requires a greater length of uninterrupted time. With Duolingo, I can be chopping vegetables or cleaning house while listening and responding. I do remain highly motivated to learn Spanish as well as other languages: in the short term, for our trip next month; for the long term, to be able to become more of a global citizen.

The sky is getting dark and the sun will set soon. I should take a walk over to the Homewood Library to return and pick up items before they close, and I do want to empty the car before tomorrow morning, when I will head over to campus for office hours and to continue cleaning the office. But I also need to mind the vegetables. Probably I should rake the leaves this weekend too — the yellow leaves from the neighboring gingko tree rained down on the sidewalk and front lawn overnight. At least that can wait until tomorrow afternoon; it’s a Sunday night game this week, and there is no precipitation in the forecast.

It happened around this time, exactly sixteen years ago — actually, it probably happened around the time I began to sit down and write. The sun was bright that day, the weather was warm. He breathed hard, he labored to hang onto life, he wouldn’t give up. We were together for sixteen years, one month, and four days. Sixteen years ago today I said goodbye.

It is difficult to lose a friend.

27 days ago I received two trees from Tree Pittsburgh. I hope that I did not do them a grave disservice by leaving them in their planters on the deck until now. I was away for awhile, and then just kept on putting it off upon my return. I finally planted them in our backyard today.

I had my choice of trees at the end of the celebration of Westinghouse Park becoming designated an arboretum. Other people had requested these trees ahead of time and then didn’t pick them up. There were some beautiful well-known species, including a maple and an oak. I asked for advice on trees that would work in a relatively small backyard and then chose these two for that quality: serviceberry and dogwood. I was also influenced by their names, because they would decorate the yard around the resting place of the inimitable Mookie, the best dog in the world. I was also drawn to the fruit-bearing nature of the serviceberry (labeled Amelanchier laevis) and the genus/species of the dogwood (Cornel officinalis) reminded me of my beloved alma mater

The last time I used that shovel was to dig Mookie’s grave in the spring of 2006. He died sixteen years ago this month, after more than sixteen years of service. The dirt smell on my hands reminds me of making moats at the base of the tree that shaded my childhood home. 

The last time I planted a tree was after Arbor Day in 1973 or 1974. I received a tiny sprout of a locust tree at school, bringing it home in a container the size of a Dixie cup. I planted it and over the years it grew. I remember when it grew taller than my height, and then taller than the dinner bell mounted on a nearby post, and then tall enough for me to grab onto its branches, and then rivaling the height of the house. The guy who bought the house, who himself lived there before we did, he had it cut down. When I learned that, it was like a part of me had been chopped down too.

I delayed planting these two trees because I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure quite where to place them. I didn’t want to place them too close to Mookie’s unmarked grave, or maybe I should place one directly on top, to anchor and prevent any disturbance, but that would be a final admission that he and I would never be buried together.  I wanted to keep them away from the foundation of the house, away from fences, away from the garage. Yet I wanted them to be close enough to provide shade to the windows in the summer and some privacy from the neighbors. I wanted them to be spaced from each other a natural way. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure even whether to plant them at all — this was the yard where the children ran and played when they were younger. Trees get in the way of running, and will be in the way when I mow the lawn.

I brought them home and we’ve now had a couple of nights where the temperature is below freezing. The trees deserve to live. Yesterday I plotted out their sites. Today I dug two holes and planted them.

On Saturday the children and I walked to Giant Eagle so I could get vaccinated. (My second dose of Shingrix, not for COVID-19. I am the only adult in my immediate family — including three sisters living in three different states, parents, spouse, and father-in-law — who has not yet had received the coronavirus vaccine.)

From my shingles vaccination back in October, I anticipated flu-like symptoms, so I drank copious water and took ibuprofen in advanced. Nevertheless, I suffered tenderness at the injection site, achy eyeballs and knee joints, dry throat, and overall exhaustion. I fell asleep before 8pm.

Over the past two nights I have averaged over seven hours of sleep, which is two hours more than I usually manage. During a full of Zoom calls yesterday, I remained off-camera and largely prone. This morning the worst has passed, although I am still tired, a bit fuzzy in my thinking, with swollen hands.

…

I received this vaccination on the weekend for two main reasons. First, the lines at the pharmacy are extensive on weekdays, when they are delivering the COVID vaccine. Second, this would allow me time to recover and rest.

Rest. Two more hours of sleep. Prone. The vaccination forced me to take a sliver of vacation. Even during weekends, I am normally focused on writing and reading on the glowing screen of my laptop, in order to compose and reply to email messages, grade and assign homework, plan lectures.

The vaccination enabled me to take a break without guilt. To care of myself.

The 14-year-old is taking a break from finishing her last final project of the semester. She just borrowed my amp and preamp; I can hear her strumming beautiful chords up on the third floor. 

The 12-year-old is taking a break from home schooling. He just borrowed my duck boots; I can hear him scrape metal against concrete as he shovels the heavy snowfall from the sidewalk outside.

I can hear my spouse rustling a package of something as she enjoys a snack in the kitchen.

The dog walked and his claws tick-tacked on the wood floor. He shook his body and his tags clinked against each other.

The SSoCIA conference where I presented on Tuesday ended an hour ago. I am approaching the end of the semester and the number of tasks before break are countable on two hands.

My belly is full and the world is good.

Cultured meat is coming to market: chicken cells grown in a bioreactor are going to be sold in Singapore. At some point I may have to consider whether or not to consume it.

As a child, I read every science-fiction anthology available in the public library of my small town and purchased every science-fiction magazine I could find in the local department store and newsstand. Somewhere and sometime, I read a couple of stories about artificial meat. I remember one included a detailed description of how the cultured cells were aggregated into sheets and mechanically stretched, in order to duplicate the texture achieved when real-life animal muscles are stressed and strained.

For more than fifteen years, I have not eaten meat. To be more precise, I have not knowingly consumed any products that required the death of any mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians. Here are my personal reasons, in order from least to most significant.

5. personal health

Dietary guidelines, whether based on scientific studies or fad diets, have changed over the years. I am far from assiduous about keeping track of the latest data. I do avoid saturated fats and, although I understand that some is necessary for our health, one easy way to avoid saturated fat is to eliminate beef and pork. Instead, the fat in my diet comes from consuming liberal amounts of extra virgin olive oil and nuts, eating full-fat dairy products (especially yogurt), splurging occasionally on butter and cheese, and — during this period of COVID home isolation — eating perhaps more frozen fried fish and French fries than I ought. 

As someone on a pescetarian diet, I also need to make sure that my diet has enough protein variety to include essential amino acids. But because I eat fish, milk products, and eggs, this is not too difficult.

Beyond thinking of the body as a mere biochemical vessel, I do sometimes miss certain esthetic aspects of meat. It’s not clear to me that it’s healthy to deny myself pleasures such as a prime steak well-prepared at a restaurant, a tender pot roast cooked at home, the crunch of lechon, the lusciousness of duck confit, the savor of my mother’s A-1 chicken, etc.. It’s also not at all clear that artificial meats like those from Morningstar Farms, Beyond Burger, and Impossible Foods are any better for our bodies than the real thing, and they don’t taste as good.

Before I became pescetarian, I did find that, as much as I enjoyed medium rare steaks, as well as partially cooked eggs, uncooked animal products could cause me indigestion, sometimes painfully so.

Considering all of the above, on balance, personal health is one reason that I am pescetarian, but it is certainly not the most important one.

4. environment

The evidence is much more clear that, as a global species, we humans can more efficiently produce the macronutrients that we need without resorting to the mass production of livestock. I can still remember driving cross-country for the first time: enjoying a delicious steak in Amarillo, yet enduring the smell of manure for miles. The production of beef, pork, and poultry strains our limited availability of fresh water, increases the amount of the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide, and pollutes the environment with animal waste. The way we first-world humans consume animals — focused only on their muscle and fat to the neglect of the blood, bone, or internal organs — further exacerbates this wastefulness.

The environment is not the reason that I initially became pescetarian, and I recognize that one person alone does not make a significant difference on the environment. Still: I do vote in national elections, and I do not eat meat.

3. household economy

I had expensive tastes when it came to meat. I am much more satisfied with quality canned seafood, select frozen seafood, and smoked seafood than with their meat counterparts. Food spoilage is less of an issue, it’s easier to clean my plate, and leftovers are easier to store. So not only is a pescetarian diet more affordable, it leads to less household waste 

While it’s turned out to be easier on the household budget for me to eat as a pescetarian, we could certainly afford meat; the rest of the family does, on occasion. This is not the reason I became pescetarian, but it does make it easier to sustain this lifestyle.

2. personal ethics

I would like to reduce suffering in this world. There is little doubt in my mind that mammals and birds possess sentience and have the capacity to suffer. Perhaps I am being speciesist, but it is more difficult for me to recognize this in many fish — although, since becoming a scuba diver and observing octopodes in person and on film, I have begun avoiding eating cephalopods. 

I eat only those animals that I would have been willing to kill. I cooked lobster, with some moral difficulty, so I allow myself to eat lobster. I have caught fish and watched them gutted and cleaned. Unless I were in a survival situation, I would have much greater difficulty killing a deer.

This is a nuanced position. I do consume eggs and milk products, even though they are a product of industrial agriculture, which demands the confinement of living beings. Yet I avoid cheeses made with animal rennet and have only bought one leather product in the past fifteen years, even thought these are also byproducts of our 21st-century way of life.

I know others, including in my family, who have killed and do kill animals. I have no issues with anyone who is able to perform this act with mercy, or at least with clinical distance. The fact that I cannot is more of a reflection on the society where I was raised, where many of us are raised — where meat is packaged so that it does not resemble the animal from which it came, and sold in a manner so that we never have to consider the moral cost of another being’s death.

1-1/2. dream

More than twenty years ago, I was teaching on a college campus in a summer program where we faculty had access to complimentary meals in the dining hall. Every morning there was a vast steam table of unlimited food, including included stacks of bacon. I always asked for a full plate and happily enjoyed their crispy flavor.

One night that summer, I had a dream. It was an overhead view of two clean-bristled pigs, snuffling around, looking at each other in the eyes, snuffling and communicating in some fashion with each other. Then, as though I were watching a film, I heard a voiceover: This is how pigs were, before we domesticated them.

I awoke and looked at the dog next to me. I decided not to eat bacon that morning, and the next morning, and the morning after that. I have not eaten pork ever since.

1. memory

After the death of my best friend Mookie, who accompanied my life with unwavering loyalty for over sixteen years, I struggled with the difficulty of being the one who willed the death of my fellow mammal. I knew this was necessary and kind, because he himself had ceased eating. Yet I wanted not to eat ever again: because I had no appetite, because eating disgusted me, and in his memory.

Of course it was not possible for me to live and not eat.

So I touched his portrait every day. I kept a stone in my pocket. I had my hair cut short. I ceased drinking alcohol, which heightened my mood whether happy or sad. I stopped eating meat.

Family and food; games and rest. Despite tensions around intensifying political differences, Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday. I am looking forward to next week.

Last year we hosted Thanksgiving with everyone bearing food to our house, save the Palo Alto contingent. This year we will not bring our households together because of COVID-19. Instead, we have shared recipes on Google Docs, held a Zoom call to discuss food prep, will make these dishes in our separate homes, and then Zoom again on Thanksgiving Day over common dishes.

On a recent Zoom call I volunteered the famous mushroom rice casserole that I developed as a bachelor: canned cream of mushroom soup warmed up and poured over rice. This is a variation on the green bean casserole often served at Thanksgiving tables: just substitute rice for canned green beans and leave out the fried onion pieces. I also mentioned the easy version of this dish: omit the rice. Everyone loved the memory of my recipe, but still bid me to suggest something else. We all have our own way of roasting vegetables, so that didn’t pass. We decided I would share my maple pecan pie, which went over very well last year.

…

In truth, good food doesn’t require numerous ingredients or complex processes. When I enjoy well-prepared sushi, there are two main ingredients (fish and rice), one cooking method (for the rice), one preparation method (slicing), and one immediately apparent utensil (knife). A good sushi meal is a delight because of the restaurant environment, food presentation, and most of all the skill of the chef, who selects quality ingredients and knows how to serve them.

Sushi takes scant time to make, and yet it is expensive. When we watch a consummate professional at work — whether plumber or professor, professional athlete or venture capitalist — we might bear witness only to a single masterful performance. Nevertheless, behind the moment, there are months and years of training, fraught with struggles and stumbles.

When teaching the children how to cook in the kitchen, I emphasized being safe, always using your senses, and developing a sense of timing so that everything is ready when it needs to be. Experiment with recipes, be attentive to details, and iterate so that you are satisfied with what you have made.

As I planned to type up my maple pecan recipe, I realized that it was only a slight modification from one I had pulled from the Internet years ago. Except for the fact that I like the way that it tastes, and that it elevates some of my personal favorite foods into an even grander dish, I felt there was very little that represented “me” about the dish. So I changed course and wrote this instead:

…

frutos secos y frutas secas

This dish is a completely customizable platform. — you tailor it according to your personal taste and the availability of ingredients. The fundamental idea is to create and enjoy a colorful and delicious display of nuts and dried fruit (frutos secos y frutas secas).

Here are some guiding principles:

1. Build your dish on a small plate. This is your personal dish and you shouldn’t overload it — it should be just large enough to whet your appetite.. The plate itself should ideally be fairly plain — preferably white and without adornment. The idea here is to have a blank canvas upon which you will create your masterpiece — the canvas shouldn’t distract from what you are building.
2. Buy the best single ingredients available to you. This is ultimately a simple dish, so the quality of ingredients is very important. This doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor: I buy just about everything for this from Costco. Try to avoid adding any items to the plate that have more than one ingredient (!). Dried fruits should be fruits (no sugar if possible), roasted nuts should be nuts (no salt or other coatings if possible), cheese should be milk (plus a tiny amount of cheese cultures and salt).
3. Use nuts that are roasted (not raw) but unsalted. I like cashews, almonds, pecans, and walnuts here. While I enjoy peanuts, they might be a little strong for this dish, at least for me. I also don’t think macadamias would work well, but maybe I’m wrong about that for you. Try to find nuts that are processed as simply as possible and that are not stale.
4. Use dried fruits from a freshly opened or well-sealed package. I use plums and apricots here. Maybe I’ll try dates next time or maybe raisins, just because they’re in the house, even though I’m not terribly fond of either. Dried cherries would be good, at least for me, and maybe dried cranberries. Because the nuts are all different shades of brown, try to find dried fruits with brighter colors. Try to locate fruits that are not sweetened (this is difficult for cherries and especially cranberries). You want to be able to taste the natural unadorned flavor. 
5. I like to use a mild cheese as a centerpiece. Costco has tiny mozzarella balls that come in packets of three — these are a perfect size. Cheese is optional.
6. I add a very light wisp of extra virgin olive oil to the cheese and a tiny pinch of salt. 

You want to create something that looks appealing to your eyes, in terms of a variety of colors, shapes, and textures. You also want to have a variety of foods with different mouth feels — soft vs. crunchy — and that represent enough fundamental tastes. You should have some items that are primarily sweet (dried fruits), others that are oily/fatty (roasted nuts, EVOO), and some salt.

Use a small amount of each ingredient (three plums is definitely enough, and the rest of the ingredients should be sized equivalently or smaller). Arrange them around the circumference (or perimeter) of the plate so they are not touching each other. Try distributing the most colorful

Ingredients around the plate instead of all clumped together. Do keep the ingredients separate — it’s like you’re a painter creating a palette of paints — you don’t want to mush them together right now: that can be for later, when you’re eating with your mouth.

When you have finished plating this variety of small amounts of food, do not eat it immediately. Set it aside in a safe place, covered if necessary, but it’s better if it’s in your eyesight for a while. You want to savor the way it looks with your eyes, think about how it will taste, maybe allow the scents to reach your nose. Allow everything to reach room temperature (this is most relevant if you have decided to include some cheese).

When it is time to eat what you have created, reflect upon the Vulcan IDIC philosophy (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations). Now it’s up to you. Do you eat each ingredient entirely on its own (Mookie style)? Or do you take an almond and eat it with a dried apricot? How about swiping a dried plum with a bit of olive oil and salt? This is a great time to be reflecting on the various parts of the world where everything came from, appreciating and being thankful for this simple bounty, this bite-sized, personalized mini-cornucopia.

…

Our family is being represented by a plate of nuts and dried fruit? exclaimed my wife yesterday. Well, yes. If you really attend to this dish with care, I don’t know that it’s all that different from other dishes we typically serve at Thanksgiving.

And I really do enjoy it.

I have never lived during a time when I was older than the US President However, throughout history, more than half of Presidents were younger than I am now when they began office.

I look forward to the day when I am older than the President. For a brief while this will be disconcerting in its unfamiliarity. On the one hand, this will also serve as a reminder that I am getting old — or, more to the point, that I will die, along with the entire world of my peers. On the other hand, it will be wonderful for the nation to be led by someone with recent perspectives (Obama is the only one who was born after 1946!) combined with sufficient life experience.

This will also mean that I have survived to be a certain age: an accomplishment of sorts.

A newspaper article from 1987 indicates that the life expectancy for a white male, in 1787 at the establishment of the Constitution, was 38 years. I do not know the primary source for this data. It does have the feel of being roughly correct, especially because the article specified that this was the life expectancy for white males. The life expectancy would have been different for women, who died more frequently in childbirth but not in war, and for non-whites. Probably the data was never taken for those populations. They literally did not count. The number is likely the life expectancy at birth; someone who survived infancy would have had a significantly higher life expectancy.

I don’t know if the Federalist Papers or any other surviving documents explain why the minimum age for the President is set at 35, which seems arbitrary to me. Some people speculate that this has to do with preventing immediate succession by a direct descendant: that is, a monarchy. Three Presidents intervened between John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams; in my own lifetime, the specter of monarchy reasserted itself, with only Bill Clinton between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

I hope we never see a child of our current President in any national office.

In 1968 I was too young to remember.

In February 1972 we moved from the South Bronx to small-town Ohio. I don’t remember discussing politics with any of my Ohio classmates. I do have a dim memory of being with classmates in someone’s station wagon when we still lived in New York, where we chanted: Nixon, Nixon, he’s our man! He’s our man for the garbage can! McGovern, McGovern, he’s our man! He’s our man for the President stand!

By 1976 I had sat before the TV to watch the Watergate hearings as well as Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speech, witnessed both Agnew and Nixon resign, unironically sent for a “Whip Inflation Now” button, and read news stories of Ford’s clumsiness. The Presidency had become a human figure to me and, while I was still much too young to vote, I empathized with Carter’s humility and humanity.

In 1980 the country itself had been humiliated by the Iran hostage crisis. Ronald Reagan visited my hometown for an enormous rally just two days before the election. One of my sisters placed a tape recorder on the stage to record his speech; when she went to check on it, the tape had stopped and she realized that a Secret Service agent had turned it off. I understood the enthusiasm of everyone around me for this change. 

In 1984 I voted for the first time. The polling place was off-campus and it was exactly as a I imagined, a machine with red levers. During college I hardly engaged in mass media except for college radio and my morning dose of the Cornell Daily Sun delivered to my dorm room, yet somehow I was aware of Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign theme. But I looked beyond the tax cuts and the improved economy and saw a tragic lack of sympathy for the AIDS crisis; the over-simplification and underlying racism of the War on Drugs; the growing financial inequality that spawned Yuppies and glorified attitudes that later exploded in expressions like “greed is good”; the increased military spending. Outside the Straight, I signed letters for Amnesty International; I affixed a “Bread Not Bombs” button to my knapsack. And I watched Reagan win against Mondale in a landslide.

In 1988 when I was a grad student at Berkeley, I watched Lloyd Bentsen eviscerate Dan Quayle in the Vice Presidential debate. I was standing in line at a BBQ joint in Oakland, it might have been Everett and Jones. Everyone in the shop, watching the single TV behind the cashier, we looked at each other and laughed. Nevertheless, George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, despite Iran-Contra, running on the legacy as the former Vice President of the Teflon President.

In 1992 I was teaching at Andover, where Bush had attended school many years ago. In the previous election, Bush had promised, “Read my lips, no new taxes” — then he raised taxes. Meanwhile, the young and charismatic Bill Clinton won by focusing our attention on the economy.

In 1996 I was teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as summers in writing workshops with Bard College. Clinton had become the Democratic version of a Teflon President. “It’s the economy, stupid” was the unofficial election mantra — and indeed the stock market was booming and the national debt was actually going down. Dole/Kemp didn’t stand a chance; Clinton cruised to reelection.

In 2000 we were living in Santa Fe while I taught at St. John’s College. I closely watched the early returns between Al Gore and George W. Bush, focused on which way Florida would go. When the networks called it for Gore, I felt liberated to vote in New Mexico for Nader, on the principle that Gore as my favored major party candidate wouldn’t be endangered, so I could support alternatives like the Green Party. Florida ended up being contested, and the younger Bush was installed.

In 2004 we were living in New York City. Living in a state that would inevitably support the Democratic Kerry/Edwards ticket, I wrote in the Green Party candidates. Regardless, W. won a second term.

In 2008 we had moved to Pittsburgh. I voted for Barack Obama over John McCain.

In 2012 I saw Obama speak in person on the Carnegie Mellon campus. I favored him again over Mitt Romney in that year’s election.

In 2016, I was caught up in the populist movement. While much more energized about Bernie Sanders, I voted for Hillary Clinton. Instead, the populist Donald Trump was elected.

In 2020, I voted in Pittsburgh once more, for the first time this year by mail. I pumped my fists in the air after I dropped the envelope into a mailbox on Penn Avenue. Last night, on the eve of the election, Joe Biden spoke in my neighborhood — exactly forty years to the day after I saw Ronald Reagan in the final days of his campaign — which I took as a good omen. As of this moment, the results of the election are uncertain: Arizona and Nevada are leaning towards Biden, North Carolina and Georgia are leaning towards Trump, and too many votes are uncounted in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and here in Pennsylvania. And yet, less than an hour ago, from inside the White House the President threatened to go to the Supreme Court so that my vote will not be counted. Every vote must be counted. If Trump wants to rule a country where he decides whose votes count and whose don’t, he should leave the United States. What an utter embarrassment.