Totality

The morning of Monday, April 8, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio dawned with cloudy skies.

I'd been anxiously checking weather reports for the week leading up to that date, hoping to see a forecast for a clear day for the once-in-a-lifetime (without traveling) total solar eclipse. Instead I'd been seeing a very uncertain forecast, oscillating between partly and mostly cloudy. For the past few days I'd been checking the hourly percentage cloud cover forecast on the 8th for Cleveland and other locations within a few hours' drive, trying to decide whether Erin and I should drive somewhere to increase our chances of seeing the eclipse unobscured by clouds. Around 24 hours out it was starting to look like maybe we should - our forecast was at around 50% cloud cover, and there were locations to our west at around 25%. But when I woke up early on the morning of the 8th I saw those predicted differences had mostly disappeared. No real point, then, in dealing with the headache of traffic to travel out of town. In Cleveland, as I recall, the cloud cover forecast for 3 pm (totality would begin at 3:13) had settled to a percentage in the mid 40s - meaning, apparently, that we had slightly better than a coin flip's odds of seeing the sun when totality hit.

The clouds parted by late morning. When Erin and I rode our bikes down the hill into Little Italy to take a red line train to the west side, it had become a beautiful, sunny day, the sky a bright blue with few clouds in sight. Could this really be happening? Were we going to get a perfect day for eclipse viewing, in Cleveland, Ohio, in April?

We exited the train in Ohio City and then rode our bikes several miles to Edgewater Park on the shore of Lake Erie, which was very predictably an eclipse viewing hot spot. After locking up our bikes, we headed over to a very familiar spot for us, the rocks by the iconic Edgewater willow tree, and settled in.

The skies were not nearly as clear as they had been an hour prior. Anxiety about the clouds returned - but there was nothing we could do about it. No sense worrying about something out of our control.

By the time the eclipse's start was imminent, most of the sky was in fact covered in clouds, but a very thin layer of clouds so that the sun still shone through. We eagerly counted down the moments, donning our eclipse glasses and looking upward.

Right on time, at 1:59 pm, the shadow of the moon began to creep across the face of the sun.

I do hope people appreciate just how amazing it is that we humans are able to predict with such precision and accuracy the times and locations at which these events will occur. Like so many other wonders of the modern world, it's easy to take for granted, but it's something that is only possible thanks to the cumulative efforts and ingenuity and combined knowledge of countless people working at these very difficult problems over years and decades and centuries and millennia.

Biologically, we humans aren't really much different from humans who lived ten thousand years ago. We aren't endowed at birth with significantly more intelligence or ability to understand the world we inhabit. But a human back then who encountered a total solar eclipse would (1) have no idea ahead of time that it was going to happen, (2) have no clue what was going on, and (3) probably find the experience pretty terrifying. A human today can know exactly when the eclipse will happen and look up in the sky in both awe and understanding at the cosmic dance unfolding overhead. This is despite the fact that no individual human, starting from scratch, could ever have worked out all the details of these phenomena. As a scientist, I think about these things often, with amazement and gratitude.

For most of its duration, this eclipse was not a new experience for me. I'd experienced >80% solar eclipses in both 1994 (at age 10, a momentous experience in a young future scientist's life) and 2017.

The 1994 eclipse, I see now, was an annular eclipse - not a total eclipse anywhere, but at the center of the path the moon's shadow was completely inside the sun. And Cleveland got annularity, but I lived in Columbus at the time. Funny, that.

In 2017, I could have experienced totality had I extended an unrelated vacation by a few days to stay out in Oregon with my parents, but opted not to take extra time off work. In retrospect, this was a poor decision.

So here's the thing about solar eclipses. I'd heard this said before, but I never appreciated the extent to which it's true until I experienced it myself. There are partial solar eclipses, and there are total solar eclipses. And a partial solar eclipse is a really cool thing to witness, but a total solar eclipse is... just something else. And nothing, nothing, can prepare you for what it's like to experience a total solar eclipse in person until you actually do it yourself.

We've all seen countless pictures of solar eclipses by now. Here's a picture I took approximately 35 minutes into the eclipse:

This picture looks basically just like what you'd see if you were looking at the eclipse, in person, through eclipse glasses. Obviously there are much higher quality pictures out there, but looking at a really high quality picture of a partial solar eclipse still looks basically just like what you'd see if you were looking at the eclipse, in person, through a telescope with a solar filter. Seeing a partial solar eclipse in person, from a purely visual standpoint, isn't all that different from seeing a picture of a partial solar eclipse.

As more and more of the sun's surface was covered and the daylight began to grow dimmer and the air noticeably cooled, I found myself wondering if we were really going to get the full totality experience. A thin layer of clouds continued to cover most of the sky. The clouds were thin enough that the sun's light easily shone through, but I knew that the light from the sun's corona at totality wouldn't be nearly as bright as the light from the solar surface itself. Would we be able to see the corona very well, or even much at all, through the clouds? I didn't know! Obviously the sky would suddenly become much darker when totality was reached, but beyond that, would we be getting the visual spectacle we were hoping to see? Or would many of the people gathered there on the shores of Lake Erie end up feeling the whole thing was a bit of a letdown?

Again, there was nothing to gain by worrying about something outside my control, so I could only watch and wait and hope for the best. I looked up through my eclipse glasses as the last sliver of the sun's surface disappeared into nothingness. As I began to move the eclipse glasses away from my eyes, I remember hearing Erin next to me say, "Look at that" - or words to that effect. I looked up.

This is a picture I took of totality (edited simply to decrease the exposure level). Again, there are much higher quality pictures out there, but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out given my lack of fancy equipment:

We've all seen lots of pictures like this now. This is basically the standard totality shot everyone tries to get. It's a cool looking shot, right? The black circle of the moon's shadow with the heavenly white light of the corona encircling it. The pictures of partial eclipses look really cool, but this definitely looks a lot cooler.

Here's the thing about solar eclipses, though. Pictures of partial eclipses look really cool, and in fact, a good picture of a partial eclipse basically captures what you see looking at the eclipse in person.

Pictures of total eclipses look even cooler, but no picture can even remotely begin to capture the experience of seeing a total solar eclipse in person. It just can't be done. I've seen hundreds of great totality photos by now, and not a one even comes close.

I've seen a lot of really beautiful things in my life. Yosemite Valley, where Erin and I eloped in October, is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Seeing it in person definitely far exceeds seeing it in pictures... but a good picture of Yosemite Valley at least gives you a pretty good sense of what it would be like to see it in person.

A total solar eclipse might be the most unique visual experience any of us will ever have. It's so far outside the realm of normal human experience that I think our minds just can't comprehend what it's like to see it without actually seeing it. Our cameras can't capture the full range of light in a single image that our eyes can, and this is true for pictures of many things, but with most things we can at least imagine what they'd look like in person because they're in the realm of normal human experience. A total solar eclipse is simply outside of that realm.

When you look at the classic totality picture, you're seeing a white ring of light on a black background. That's it. It gives you no context for the rest of what you're seeing.

When I looked up at the fully eclipsed sun, I gasped, my eyes went wide and my jaw dropped, and I'm pretty sure I got at least a little misty-eyed. Seeing those pictures gave me absolutely no idea what it would be like to look up into the sky, a sky that even aside from the eclipsed sun was unlike any sky I'd ever seen before, and up in that sky to see what looked like a hole in the sky with the most beautiful white light I'd ever seen flowing out of it.

In comparison to the context-less white ring of light on a black background picture, this picture of mine gives a somewhat better sense of what it was like to see totality in person:

 

This is actually a composite of two images - in the original picture the sun was too overexposed to see the moon's shadow, so I took that from another of my totality photos.

This picture helps me remember what that moment was like, but I feel like if I hadn't been there in person, it still wouldn't give me any real idea what it was like. There are countless far better pictures out there on the Internet. I've seen all sorts of stunning and beautiful photos of the eclipse. None comes close to the reality.

Another thing that must be mentioned about total solar eclipses is the incredibly improbable cosmic coincidence that allows us to see these spectacles. The disks of the moon and sun appear almost exactly identical in size in our sky. This is true because the sun's diameter is approximately 400 times the moon's diameter, and the sun is approximately 400 times as far away from the Earth as the moon is. There's no reason things have to be that way. It just happens that they are. If the moon were just a little smaller or farther away, total solar eclipses would never happen. If the moon were much larger or closer, there would still be total solar eclipses and they'd still undoubtedly be amazing, but the unforgettable sight of a black hole in the sky surrounded by a ring of glowing light is something we'd never get to witness. There's nowhere else in our solar system with eclipses nearly as spectacular as those we see. How many worlds are there in the universe, I wonder, where intelligent beings with the ability to understand what they're seeing are lucky enough to witness eclipses as amazing as those visible from our Earth? (I've seen it said that the apparent coincidence of the sun's and moon's apparent sizes in our sky is one of the best arguments for the existence of a higher power - after experiencing a total solar eclipse in person, I can see the appeal of this argument.)

In Cleveland, we were lucky to get almost four minutes of totality. I took a few pictures and then set my camera down. I've thought many times about the double-edged sword of taking lots of pictures of cool experiences (concerts, hikes, etc.) - it's really great to be able to look back on those pictures later and it helps you remember the original experience, but if you focus too much on taking pictures, it takes you out of the moment, and the original experience isn't as good as it might have been. These precious few minutes of totality were perhaps the best example of this dilemma that many will ever experience.

I just tried to take it all in - the sky, the lake, the enraptured crowds of people, the cool air, the sounds of birds calling in ways they never normally would in the middle of the afternoon - and most of all the magical sight of the moon's dark, perfectly circular shadow with the white light of the corona flowing over its edges and even a pinkish solar flare visible near the bottom. I hugged Erin. A part of me wished this moment could last forever. Of course it couldn't.

Perhaps the most beautiful moment of all was seeing the building glow of the sunrise over the edge of the moon's shadow just before totality ended. It was indescribably beautiful. The whole thing was, but especially that moment. It really was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. 

And then it was over.

Erin said something to the effect of how it was interesting to have had this experience where there was this buildup, this intense anticipation of an event, and then it happened and for a few minutes we were basically transported to somewhere so different from anything we'd ever experienced - and then it was all over, and it felt like, did that really happen?

The crowds began to dissipate not long after totality ended. We'd planned to wait until after totality to check out the eclipse through a telescope the Cleveland Metroparks had set up, and were very disappointed to discover they had taken it down already even though there was still a good hour of eclipse left. Still, we hung around on the beach with a dwindling crowd of other "eclipse enthusiasts" (as we might say) until the moon's shadow had fully disappeared from the sun's surface. The entire thing was just a magical experience - totality, of course, by far the most magical, but why not savor it all?

April 8 was not only the day of a total solar eclipse, it was also the Guardians' home opener, always one of the most anticipated days of the year in Cleveland. We decided to ride our bikes to one of our favorite bars/restaurants Happy Dog to catch the game on TV. It ended up being a win for the home team, who are off to quite a hot start to the season. After watching most of the game, we rode to Mitchell's ice cream in Ohio City for the once-in-a-lifetime eclipse-themed ice cream sandwiches they were offering on that day only.

The ice cream sandwiches were disappointing, the cookie to ice cream ratio way off. Oh well, the rest of the day far exceeded expectations.

It was really nice to enjoy a day of riding our bikes around together to various fun destinations. It had been a while since we'd done this, the winter in Cleveland generally not being conducive to the activity. So this was actually the first such day we'd had as a married couple.

And what a day it was, one I'll surely look back on fondly for the rest of my life!

The Weather Station's Toronto residency: an emotional musical journey

When Erin and I walked into the Great Hall concert venue in Toronto on Monday, December 11 for the first night of a three night residency by Canadian indie folk/rock outfit the Weather Station, I was immediately struck by the familiarity of the room. But I didn't quite believe it at first - how had I not recognized the name of the venue when the concert was announced and when I bought tickets? Sitting in the balcony, the familiarity sunk in more and more and a quick Google search during intermission confirmed that just over ten years ago, in September 2013, I had attended one of the most memorable and powerful shows of my life, Ohbijou's farewell concert, at this same venue.

The Great Hall viewed from the back balcony. Top: September 2013. Bottom: December 2023.

The juxtaposition of events in my life that had been recent the first time I'd been at the Great Hall and recent events in my life now upon my second visit was utterly staggering. This juxtaposition added considerable emotional weight to what would already have been an emotional three nights of music. That's not what this post is about, though, so I won't go into it here, but as any post on my blog is in part a record of a moment in my life, I'd be remiss not to mention it.

Oddly enough, I see (from my last.fm history) that September 2013 was also when I first started listening to the music of Tamara Lindeman, aka the Weather Station. I was really only a casual fan, though, all the way up until 2021 when her brilliant album Ignorance took hold of me in a way few albums have. Since then, I've gained additional appreciation for her whole body of work, and when she announced earlier this year a three night Great Hall residency playing two different albums each night to chronicle her whole career to this point, I decided it was an event I didn't want to miss.

I'd never before seen an artist do anything like this. In being a whole career retrospective, the concept bears some similarity to the hot music event of this year, Taylor Swift's Eras tour (which Lindeman referenced at one point, saying that her and her band's costume changes were far less elaborate). Here, though, the Weather Station residency was a three night event, and each album was played in full (in contrast to Swift's epic one night shows containing selections from each album). I thought it sounded like such a cool idea, and it definitely lived up to my expectations! Seeing the evolution of Lindeman's work from sparse folk to richly orchestrated art-rock was a fantastic experience, and hearing her narrate this journey made the experience all the more compelling.

Night one featured 2011 album All of It Was Mine and 2014 EP What Am I Going to Do with Everything I Know. (2009 Weather Station album The Line was not included and if I recall correctly Lindeman described All of It Was Mine as her debut album so I guess she must not consider The Line as essential to her career, but it's a really good listen too.) Although the three nights collectively covered her career in order, it was only night two's albums that were played in the order they were released. On each of the three nights it seemed the larger of the two releases got headline status; thus, on night one the EP was the first set and the earlier LP was played second.

Both All of It Was Mine and What Am I Going to Do... are made up of really pretty, sparsely instrumented folk music, Lindeman's distinctive voice and introspective, evocative lyrics complemented well by delicate acoustic guitar and banjo parts with occasional flourishes from other folk instruments and well-timed vocal harmonies. The intimate small venue setting with a crowd who were all there to enthusiastically listen to and appreciate the performance (no chatty concert crowd here, thank goodness!) was perfect for this gorgeous music. During the first set, Lindeman said that the six songs of the EP weren't enough for a full set and so she and her band included several unreleased songs from the same era, a welcome addition.

Unlike most shows I've seen where a band plays all the songs from an album, here the setlists did not follow the album tracklists. Often the tracks that might most be considered standouts were placed near the ends of sets. On All of It Was Mine, what I and I'd guess many other listeners would consider the most outstanding track is stunning album opener "Everything I Saw," which was pushed back in the setlist - but only by one song, to second. So when Lindeman stumbled over the banjo part and had to stop shortly into the song, she said it was a mistake to have put it so early! None of her albums since have had her playing such an intricate banjo part, so she'd been out of practice. She mentioned having considered the possibility of slowing the song down but that that wouldn't have felt right. After starting over, she played wonderfully, to the delight of the audience. It was a great, human moment that you can only get in a live concert setting.

I really loved every moment when Lindeman spoke about her songs, her feelings about her songs, the process behind the making of the songs, her life as it related to the songs, etc. Getting to hear these insights from a musician about their music that I love is always such a treat. During the All of It Was Mine set she mentioned that she considers "Traveller" one of the best songs she's written and I flashed back to seeing her live in 2021 and how emotional the performance of that song was. The lyrics paint an astoundingly good and heartrending picture of the moments in time in the aftermath of a loved one's death.

After the two sets comprising the songs from the two featured albums, each night also featured an encore. Night one's was highlighted by a rousing cover of recently deceased (at a tragically young age) Canadian folk artist Richard Laviolette's "Snuck Right Up."

Night two brought performances of 2015's Loyalty and 2017's The Weather Station. Loyalty was described by Lindeman as a transitional album, which can be seen in both the lyrics and the music, still mostly delicate folk music but starting to get bigger in sound compared to the previous night's albums. It was really interesting to me to hear her talk about how she looked back at the songs she'd written in the past and how she'd had a tendency to not express things as clearly or directly as she might later in her career. This is apparent to me, looking back over her albums - her lyrics have always been so thoughtful and so beautiful, but the lyrics of her most recent albums often have this wonderfully piercing quality where in the past the meanings of her words were often more obscured.

Before playing "Tapes," Lindeman explained that the song was about her finding and listening to tapes that someone close to her had made of himself singing while walking around the city, after he had passed away. And after hearing this explanation, the simple lyrics of the song, lyrics I'd not fully comprehended before, were just so powerful, and Lindeman's vocals as she "sang 'Oh'" were absolutely haunting. I got chills.

The self-titled album that was the second to be performed on the second night is one of those albums where if you've listened to an artist's previous catalog and then you get to that album you think, Whoa, where did this come from?? The Weather Station's sound suddenly transforms from delicate, folksy singer-songwriter type stuff (albeit with more complexity than that phrasing implies) to big, full band alt-country stylings and some of the songs actually rock in a way that was barely hinted at on the previous three records. "Thirty" in particular is such a great song and it was fittingly saved for last before the encore, moved back from its also very fitting track two position on the recorded album.

 

Another highlight of the set was Lindeman's musings about the song "Power" - how she'd looked back at her old lyrics and felt she mostly still agreed with things she'd said in the past but on this song she'd felt repulsed by her expressing a desire for power. Because wanting power over other people is a fucked up thing, she said. But then she'd thought about it more in the context of the full lyrics and had realized that when she'd said she wanted power, what she had really been hoping for was to simply have respect. (Like Aretha Franklin, she said!) And thus she was able to make peace with herself about her old song.

 

At times, it felt like the performance was a kind of therapy session for Lindeman - and I mean this in the absolute best way! It was a joy to watch and listen to her work her way through all those years of her life via her music.

Night three was the night I'd been most anticipating, featuring 2021's Ignorance, one of my favorite albums of all time, and 2022's How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars, something of a companion album to Ignorance. What I said about the self-titled being an album that makes you think, Whoa, where did this come from?? That applies doubly to Ignorance, an album that I never would have imagined Lindeman making based on her previous body of work. It's recognizably a Weather Station album with Lindeman's voice and lyrics and strong sense of melody, but the lush orchestration and complex, jazzy arrangements and the intense, propulsive (two drummers for this live performance!) rock sound are so unlike any of her previous records. And it all works so well.

How Is It... then took things in yet another totally new direction sonically as an album of piano ballads, thematically related to the songs on Ignorance and written at the same time but very different in sound. And stunning in its own way, more than I would have imagined an album of piano ballads could be. The songs took more time to grow on me than those of Ignorance but grow on me they did, with a couple that I'd consider among Lindeman's finest work. This beautifully understated set of songs made up the first part of night three's show and the intimate setting was perfect for experiencing the first ever live performance of most of them.

 

I do vividly remember seeing my favorite song from the album, "Stars," from which the album's title comes, performed live in 2021. At the time, I'd never heard the song before. I was instantly captivated by it and hoped fervently that it would be released on an album in the future. During the performance of the song at the Great Hall, Lindeman had to stop partway through to drink some water (all the singing and talking had done a number on her voice, apparently). She took the opportunity to tell the story of the song, of how when she was a child, her mother always took her out to see the Perseids meteor shower every August, and how she'd been so awed by the beauty, but now it was hard for her to appreciate that beauty because it made her think of all the beauty on our unique and wonderful planet and the devastation the human race is wreaking upon it.

"But how should I look at the stars tonight?/At a million suns? None of them mine/Nowhere up there is a place like this/Not one waterfall, no river mist" is, to me, just such a beautiful expression of this sentiment.

It was fitting, Lindeman said, that the night of the show was the night of the Geminids meteor shower. As someone who has loved watching meteor showers since childhood, I especially enjoyed hearing this backstory. The song plus Lindeman's narration of it did get the tear ducts going a bit, I have to say.

Unlike the five previous sets, the performance of the songs from Ignorance went straight through with no narration from Lindeman, just a high energy rock set of great song after great song. I got the sense that the albums that were further back in time gave Lindeman more to talk about because she was revisiting her past in rehearsing and playing them, whereas this was not so much the case with Ignorance.

Lindeman's band (with some repeat and some different members across the various albums) was great throughout the residency but especially got to strut their stuff on this last set. A sax solo on one song brought the crowd to raucous applause.

 

I've already written a lot about Ignorance on my blog so suffice to say, the live performance easily lived up to my high expectations. A rousing encore rendition of "Better Now" from Ignorance's deluxe version (amusingly introduced by Lindeman as hopefully the last song she'll write about writing songs, something she's done a lot but that she does really well so I don't mind!) was a fitting conclusion to the three nights of music.

At the end of the performance, Lindeman remarked that after playing through those 60+ songs over the course of three nights, she felt in a way complete. It was a really touching statement. A reminder of the powerful way that music accompanies us on the journey of life. Lindeman was grateful we the audience had joined her on that journey. I'm grateful she gave us the opportunity, and I'd love it if other favorite artists of mine would do similar career-spanning performances. It really was a magical experience.

boygenius, Bartees, bikes

I've been to hundreds of concerts in my life. Just about any time I get to witness a musician I really like performing live, it's a special experience, but after so many years and so many shows, it's rare that I come away from a concert thinking that it was truly unlike anything I'd ever previously seen. The boygenius show at Riis Park in Chicago on June 24 was one of those rare occasions. How so? I'll get to that in a bit.

I first became aware of the indie rock supergroup, made up of the trio of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, after they released their debut self-titled EP in 2018. I was already a huge fan of Julien Baker and had been ever since I went to see Daughter at Mr. Smalls near Pittsburgh in the summer of 2016 and this tiny young woman I'd never heard of before took the stage to open the night and proceeded to blow me away with her powerful voice and haunting melodies and lyrics. Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, however, had flown under my radar until 2018. In October of that year Dacus happened to headline Studio-a-rama, the annual festival put on by WRUW, the radio station of my alma mater and now employer Case Western Reserve University. I went and really enjoyed her performance. I remember seeing news about boygenius and how the trio were touring together the next month, each playing solo sets and also playing the songs from their EP together. The nearest show to me was in Detroit; unfortunately I hadn't yet gotten around to listening to Bridgers or boygenius and therefore didn't consider it worth the trip. That's something I've regretted for a long time and now regret even more.

That winter I have two specific memories of hearing specific songs on the radio in my car. The first was "Funeral" by Bridgers. I remember that I was driving to Ray's Indoor Bike Park after work and that this song came on the radio and I was just so stunned by the sad beauty of it. The second was "Me and My Dog," a standout boygenius track that I remember hearing while in the parking garage at work and staying in my car until the song ended. I quickly recognized the voice of Bridgers as the same voice that had captivated me on "Funeral." Right away I had to look up the band and I soon got their EP and fell in love with it.

Ever since, I'd hoped the band would release more material and tour again. A tantalizing hint at the possibility happened when Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus each released fantastic albums in the 2020-`21 pandemic era and each of the albums included a song on which all three boygenius members contributed vocals. The songs, it was revealed, had all been recorded on the same day. It was some time longer, though, before the March 2023 release of the record was announced, instantly launching the debut boygenius full-length and the tour that would come with it to the top of my anticipated music events list for the year.

Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are all amazing solo artists. (Especially Baker, to me, but I'd respect any ranking or lack thereof.) The three of them together, though? They're just something else. The more I listen to the record the more I love it. So I couldn't wait to finally see the three of them together live (having already seen Baker five times, Dacus twice, and Bridgers once). The initial announcement of boygenius shows for 2023 came as part of the Re:SET concert series, an odd sort-of festival series that was "conceived as an artist and fan friendly alternative to the standard summer concert experience" according to the promoters. Each weekend of June saw three four-artist lineups rotating between three cities in a region across the three days. Boygenius headlined at shows also featuring Clairo, Dijon, and Bartees Strange, and I decided that traveling to Chicago to see them on Saturday the 24th was more appealing than going to Columbus on Friday the 23rd despite being a farther trip, so Erin and I made the drive from Cleveland after work on the 23rd and checked in late to an Airbnb in the Logan Square area.

The most notable aspect of our trip, other than the concert itself, was that we took our bicycles with us and made great use of them while in Chicago. The concert started in the late afternoon of the Saturday so earlier in the day we headed out on our bikes to explore. The Airbnb was very conveniently located right next to the Bloomingdale Trail, an elevated multi-use trail running for several miles above the streets of Chicago on what used to be a rail line. Riding on this trail was a revelation. Being able to ride a bike through a city, on an elevated path and therefore able to cross over streets without having to worry about cars or stopping at traffic lights, was amazing - I wish there could be trails like this everywhere!

After reaching the end of the trail we continued along surface roads to Lake Michigan. There were bike lanes nearly the whole way and we soon found ourselves in a sort of impromptu convoy of cyclists, which was another very fun experience. There's just something about being on a bike. When you're driving a car on a city street and a lot of other cars are going the same way, you get annoyed because the other cars are slowing you down and getting in your way. On a bicycle it's the opposite - the other cyclists aren't obstacles or enemies but allies and comrades and there's a sense of joy at using your own legs to propel yourselves through the city, feeling the wind on your face, and being around other people doing the same thing. In the last year I've come to appreciate much more the pleasures of just being on a bicycle. It used to be I tried to ride fast on almost all my bike rides. That's currently not something that would be healthy for me, which I'm definitely not happy about, but I think this experience has helped me see cycling at a moderate pace in a new light. Cycling is just such a wonderful mode of transportation whether you're going close to 20 miles per hour (like I almost always tried to do in the past) or little more than half that speed. It's been great, with Erin, to go on adventures where we can explore places together on our bikes.

 

We checked out the lakefront a bit and then headed back to the Airbnb to get ready for the concert - which we also rode bikes to (about 4.5 miles each way, partly on the aforementioned Bloomingdale Trail and mostly on bike lanes thereafter). On the way, we purchased large bottles of water in preparation for the frankly infuriating show policy that each guest could bring one sealed bottle of water and no refill stations were available. This was a terrible decision for a long, hot day, and predictably at least three concertgoers needed medical attention during the boygenius set after passing out. All in all, I can't say I have much if any praise for the Re:SET organizers, but the musicians made attending the event more than worth it.

We entered the festival grounds, a large grassy field with a few trees here and there, a stage at one end, and various booths around most of the sides, to find the completely unshaded pit area already packed. We had no interest in standing in the sweltering heat of the sun for hours so we found a spot near a large tree where some others had already gathered. I had seen headlining shows by each of Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus in the fall of 2021. All were great, but I enjoyed the Bridgers show at a large outdoor venue less than the Baker and Dacus shows in more intimate settings. This was partly because of being much more removed from the action and partly because some members of the Bridgers audience were annoyingly chatty. Although I was very hyped to see boygenius, I was worried that similarly annoying audience members might dampen the experience. I'd read complaints on a boygenius Facebook group about poorly behaved audiences with people theorizing that Gen Z kids never learned concert etiquette because of the pandemic.

The first act of the day was Bartees Strange, who I'd previously seen open for Dacus. The crowd was indeed quite chatty during his performance, although that's never been uncommon for openers at large shows. It was too bad, because he put on a great set which I did still enjoy a lot. I hadn't listened to his latest album so almost all the songs were unfamiliar to me, but I really liked what I heard. The highlight, though, was an excellent cover of a song I do know well, "About Today" by the National.

 

Next up was Dijon, an artist who I knew basically nothing about before the show. I feel this was a mistake on my part - he was fantastic! His music had some great grooves and I really dug the interesting soundscapes created by his band, with the unexpected combo of synths and slide guitar meshing nicely. Unfortunately much of the crowd again didn't seem very appreciative and chatted through his set.

I guess the next artist Clairo has garnered a good following among the Gen Z set because the crowd quieted down considerably for her performance. She was also very good, with some nice retro vibes to her indie pop/rock songs. Although I question a lot of the show organizers' decisions, they did well in putting a good lineup together.

The first three artists were all good, but boygenius were who we'd all been waiting to see. It was great fun for Erin and me to just observe all the diehard fans filling the venue. Most of them were much younger than us, and many had dressed for the occasion, some in boygenius-related costumes or homemade shirts with favorite lyrics like "Not Strong Enough" or "Always an Angel, Never a God" emblazoned across them. Another fun sighting was a little group of friends made up of male/female couples, the guys wearing shirts that said "boy" and the girls wearing shirts that said "genius." There was the sense that this wasn't just a show. It was an Event. It was probably a landmark moment in a lot of those kids' lives. And heck, by the end of the night I came away thinking it was a landmark moment in my life too.

What made this show unique among all the shows I've ever seen in my life? Boygenius are very early in their career as a band - they've released one EP and one LP. Therefore, a boygenius setlist could contain every song they've ever released (although at this show "Bite the Hand" was omitted in favor of new, unreleased track "Boyfriends"). I've seen shows like that before, but they've always been in fairly small venues. I'd never seen a band play almost their entire catalog in front of a crowd nearly this huge and when it comes to the type of music I generally listen to, that's something that basically never happens. It requires a band to dramatically explode in popularity in a way and to an order of magnitude that just doesn't tend to happen for an indie band that's only released one album. And clearly boygenius being a supergroup with one member, Bridgers, having previously shot to stardom is a unique factor here, but there was something else about this show, something that wasn't present when I saw Bridgers play in 2021.

The crowd for the Phoebe Bridgers show was definitely full of huge Phoebe Bridgers fans, but there were also a lot of kids who seemed to be there to hang out with their friends and as a result the crowd was, as I mentioned before, annoyingly chatty at times. This crowd was different. In this crowd, it seemed, everyone was a huge boygenius fan. And not just a huge fan. A lot of these kids worship boygenius. Which made the show something like a religious experience. And like a good religious experience, the proceedings truly held the rapt attention of everyone present. After grumbling about chatty audiences and other irritating audience behavior at most other large shows I've attended recently, I think back to that boygenius show and marvel more and more at the fact that at no point during boygenius's set did anyone in range of my ears do or say anything to detract from everyone's enjoyment of the beautiful music coming from the stage.

To summarize what made this show so unique and special in my concertgoing experience: it's the only time I've ever seen a band I love (or any band, for that matter) play very nearly every song they've ever released in front of a crowd of thousands of people. And to make it even more special, it seemed most everyone there was just as captivated by the music as I was.

It truly is a magical experience when you're at a great concert in a crowd of people who are all there for the music, and the music (perhaps with audience members joining in) is the only sound entering your ears. It's like being under a wonderful spell. A spell that can sadly be broken by a single inconsiderate jerk, which is maybe why it's so much rarer to experience at really big shows. And this was a crowd of mostly Gen Z kids who, as mentioned before, probably had their social development hindered by a pandemic. Just for being able to so fully command their attention, boygenius deserve enormous praise.

"The boys," as fans like to call the trio, were appropriately introduced by "The Boys Are Back In Town" playing over the speakers, then kicked off their set backstage, with live video projected on a large screen behind the stage, the three of them huddled together and serenading the crowd with the beautiful harmonies of the record's opening track "Without You Without Them." Then they took the stage to raucous applause and proceeded to play one of the best series of 20 songs that I've ever seen live. I realized during the show that not only do boygenius have no bad songs, they also have no songs that are merely "good" - every song on both their EP and their LP falls somewhere on the continuum from great to superlative.

This is a band that truly is more than the sum of its parts, and that's saying a lot because "the sum of its parts" would already be pretty damn good. Listening to boygenius truly does feel like taking the best parts of what makes each of these three young women's music so great and mixing them together in the most perfect way. What makes seeing them live even more special is how clear it is that not only do they meld so well as musicians, they do so perhaps even more as human beings. The friendship the three clearly have with each other is a beautiful thing. They seem so much happier on stage together than they do when performing as individuals. The sheer joy emanating from Baker in particular is delightful to behold. That friendship is a theme that comes across clearly on the record and its accompanying music videos. Although each of the three is known for making "sad music," when they join forces their output is, at times, downright uplifting. With a healthy dose of sadness still there for good measure, but that makes the uplifting parts extra cathartic.

Nearly every part of the concert could be described as a highlight, but one of the biggest highlights was when that trio of songs from their most recent albums - Dacus's "Please Stay" (the one song during the set that got me to "cry with the teenagers," to quote an iconic boygenius lyric), Baker's "Favor," and Bridgers's "Dreamland Too" - was played in order. Each of the songs is just stunningly beautiful. The lyrics, the music, the incredible harmonies. And the way the songs go together, the progression from the devastating "Please Stay" to the hopeful "Dreamland Too," it was all just sublime and gave me chills.

The main set concluded, not surprisingly, with "Not Strong Enough." "Not Strong Enough" is my favorite boygenius song, my favorite song of 2023, and perhaps my favorite song in quite a bit longer than that. Also, the moment where the repeated "Always an angel, never a god" harmonies of the bridge build to a raw scream and then Dacus's voice comes in above it with an exuberantly sung "I don't know why I am, the way I am" has to be one of my favorite moments in a song ever.

It's a song that for much of this year has felt like my theme song, with that "I don't know why I am the way I am" chorus and me wondering why I am the way I am and trying to stop myself from "spinning out about things that haven't happened." And then I think, that must be a challenge for most of the young people who have come of age during the last few years. No wonder boygenius have such a hold over that demographic. They're a band truly fit for this moment in time - and yet also somehow timeless.

Being in a huge crowd of people all joyfully singing along to this anthem was one of those moments that makes one really feel alive. I think that's the best way to summarize the feeling.

After a two song encore, the show was over, and it started to sink in that I really had just experienced something unlike any concert I'd attended in my life, and also that it was one of the best concerts I'd ever seen. With that realization, I told Erin that I needed to buy a shirt to commemorate the experience, and I did, and then we joined the throng of exhilarated concertgoers exiting the festival grounds and made our way back to our bikes. As we rode in the direction of the Airbnb (in fact, a little ways beyond it at first for a late night drink at a cocktail bar), it struck me that here Erin and I were, riding our bikes through the streets of Chicago at night after having attended such a monumental show, and this, I thought, was one of the coolest experiences I'd ever had.

The next day brought more bike riding and sightseeing along Chicago's lakefront before we headed home. It was a wonderful weekend.

I started writing this post almost two months ago. It's been an extremely busy time in our lives. I have another post that I started much, much longer ago and still have to finish. In the time between my starting this post and now, Erin and I went to another music festival for which we also stayed at an Airbnb and rode bikes to the show (and also another festival at which Bartees Strange played), the National's Homecoming in Cincinnati, and it was also great. Live music and bicycling are two of my favorite things in the world. Combining the two? Well, that's hard to beat. And how great to have someone to do that with me.

We are the only friends we have

There was a point in time, fifteen years ago, when there was no band I had seen live more times than Piebald.

This is funny, because the first time I went to see Piebald live, my liking of their music was really a secondary reason for me going.

That show happened in October 2005, and was not only the first time I saw Piebald, but also the first time I went to the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights (the Cleveland suburb where I now live), one of my favorite music venues and one where I've seen so many fantastic shows over the years. The main reason that I went to that show was that I secretly hoped to get inside info about the rumors on the Internet that my favorite band Ozma would be reuniting, and I knew that members of Piebald and Ozma were friends with each other. I hardly knew any of Piebald's music at the time, just a few songs I'd downloaded from their website.

I went to the show wearing an Ozma t-shirt, which did indeed lead to me getting inside info, as more than one member of Piebald complimented my shirt and then told me about Ozma's plans to reunite, information that thrilled me to a fairly ridiculous degree. But the show itself was also a revelation. I hadn't been to a whole lot of concerts yet at that point in my life, and I don't know if there had been any that were just as much pure fun as that one. I vividly remember standing in front of the stage by the large speaker at the right side of the room and enthusiastically banging my head to the heavy guitar chords of Piebald's emo-tinged rock music.

After the show, I was hanging out by the bar with a couple friends and a Grog Shop employee asked if we'd like a promotional poster from the show. I gladly took one, a memento of a very memorable night, and 17 years later it's hanging in my bedroom.

I saw Piebald twice more at the Grog Shop before, in 2007, they announced they were breaking up, and so I saw them one last time at the Agora, bringing my total number of Piebald shows to four. There they were one of the opening acts for the Format, a band I wasn't particularly into, and I didn't stay until the end of the show. The Piebald set was very fun, but also sad, because I thought I'd never get to see them again.

It turned out I was wrong! They got back together and toured again starting in 2016, and another Grog Shop show in July 2017 was again one of the most fun shows I've ever been to. I wrote about this show along with Okkervil River and Andrew Bird shows I saw the same week. Wow, what a week of shows that was, and also, wow, what a different place my life was at, and what a crazy unfolding of events has proceeded to happen in the years since.

Piebald's album We Are the Only Friends We Have is one of my all-time favorites. It's just such a fun album from front to back. I was completely obsessed with it for a period of time after I bought the album. It also holds a special place in my heart as the pump up music of choice for both Cara and me on early morning drives to cycling events I went to with her and later by myself. A few months ago Piebald announced they'd be playing a few end of 2022 shows for the 20th anniversary of the album. I immediately began to consider going.

There's another Ozma connection here. In December 2019 I took a trip to California to see 20th anniversary shows for Ozma's Rock and Roll Part Three, an amazing trip and my favorite shows I've ever attended. That experience definitely made me think taking a similar trip for Piebald would be worth doing.

It ended up being something of a last minute decision to go, however, due in large part to the turbulent mental health I've been experiencing of late. But a week before the December 30 show at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn, I did pull the trigger on purchasing a ticket to the show and a plane ticket to New York.

It ended up being a very good decision. There's a lesson here. There have been a number of times when I've questioned whether I really wanted to go on a trip due to how I was feeling or things going on in my life. Every single time that I've made the decision to go, I've ended up being glad that I did. So I think that's some good data to have collected and to inform future decision making.

Going on a trip centered around seeing a favorite band live but that also involves spending time in a fun destination is one of my absolute favorite things to do. This was another such trip, a fairly short one, but a very good one. I got into town the day before the show and went on a great walk from my Manhattan hotel, including walking through Central Park, and thinking about previous times I'd been there (a topic for another planned blog post).

I also went to one of my favorite restaurants, Coppelia, and later that night to a very cool speakeasy called Patent Pending that is located in the building where Nikola Tesla once lived and worked.

I love visiting New York. There's so much to do and see and so much amazing food. I also love how easy it is to get around the city without a car. It really stands above any other American city in that regard.

The 30th was another fun day, and with great weather. I got a delicious bagel sandwich with smoked trout, walked the High Line, and checked out a cool bookstore. The main event, of course, was coming up that evening in Brooklyn. Before making my way to the concert venue, I also got a delicious pizza dinner at Roberta's, a restaurant my former Brooklyn resident sister had suggested.

I was surprised when I got to the concert venue shortly after the door time, 7, and not only were doors not open but also there was hardly anyone there waiting. It was a sparse crowd at first, but filled out well by the time Piebald played. All three openers - Rites of Springfield, Rebuilder, and Phony, put on energetic, fun sets. And then it was time for Piebald to take the stage.

There's a feeling of excitement I get about seeing one of my most favorite bands live that little else can compare to. That feeling was definitely present that night. Seeing a favorite album performed from front to back live is a rare and special thing to experience. And We Are the Only Friends We Have is an especially good album to experience that way.

When the familiar opening notes of "King of the Road" filled the room, the crowd went wild. The first four songs of Friends - "King of the Road," "Just a Simple Plan," "American Hearts," and "Long Nights," comprise one of the best opening quartets of any album I know. Seeing them performed in order live? That was something else.

Being in a crowded room, seeing a band you love play music you love, and surrounded by other people who love that music, is one of life's most special experiences. I'm always grateful whenever I get to have that experience. And this was definitely one of the top such experiences I've had since the pandemic temporarily made such experiences forbidden.

At times lead singer Travis Shettel wandered out into the crowd, holding the mic out in front of the faces of delighted fans. There was plenty of dancing, banging of heads, and pumping of fists. There was a little moshing (I could have used more, but that's okay). And there was a room full of people singing and screaming out the familiar lyrics of those twelve great songs. Album closer "Sex Sells and (Unfortunately) I'm Buying" features horn parts that were (unfortunately) not part of the live show, but some audience members did a nice job singing those parts instead.

Market Hotel is a cool venue. Nothing fancy, just a small-to-medium size room with an elevated stage at one end and a bar at the back. What more do you need? The unusual feature that makes it stand out is this - the room is upstairs in the building where it resides, and directly behind the stage is a window that looks out onto an elevated subway platform. Seeing trains pass behind the stage throughout the show was just such a cool visual that enhanced an already great setting!

After the show, waiting for the train back to Manhattan, it was also cool to see that window from the other side and think about the great time I'd just had inside that room. It felt like a very New York thing, something I'd be unlikely to experience anywhere else, at least not in this country.

Several times during the show Travis expressed great gratitude at the fact that we were all there to see them. It was amazing, he remarked, that music they had made twenty years ago was still loved so much by people today. At one point he asked if anyone there had seen them in the '90s (the band actually got their start at very young ages way back in 1994) and I was surprised by the number of cheers from the audience. That was long, long before my concertgoing days.

I definitely thought back to that night in October 2005 and to how much younger the members of the band had looked back then, and how much less young they look today. Which of course speaks to the same about me. But that's life. Where did those 17 years go?

After playing the twelve songs of Friends, the band took a quick break without leaving the stage and then continued to thrill the audience with some additional songs from other albums (mostly from 1999's If It Weren't for Venetian Blinds, It Would Be Curtains for Us All, another classic album and also one of my favorite album titles). I was especially glad when they kicked off the extra material with "Grace Kelly With Wings," one of the handful of songs I'd downloaded when I first checked out the band and therefore one of the few songs I recognized the first time I saw them, and a favorite ever since.

The show seemed to be over after five more songs were played, as the house music started up. The crowd continued to applaud, and then chants of "one more song" started up, and then I laughed when I looked over and realized the chants were being led by Piebald guitarist Aaron Stuart, who had descended from the stage and was standing in front of it and acting like he was an audience member! After two more songs, the show was over, and what a great show it was. Sneaking in before the deadline as a contender for my favorite concert of 2022.

After I took the train back to Manhattan, I stopped at a bar by my hotel for a drink. The bartender asked how my night was. I told him about how I was in town from Cleveland and had just seen a 20th anniversary concert for one of my favorite albums. He asked what the name of the band and album were. When I told him the album title, We Are the Only Friends We Have, he said, "That just broke my heart a little."

I reassured him that it wasn't sad music (not that I'm not also a fan of sad music), it's actually a really fun album, and he said he hadn't meant that as a bad thing. I mean, not that I had taken it as one. He said there was an old Irish saying, and I forget exactly what it was he said, but it was something to the effect of, does life have meaning without heartbreak?

My Google search failed to find the saying he quoted. When I searched for "Irish saying about heartbreak," the closest result was, "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." Which, yeah, I can relate to. Who knows whether the bartender was quoting an obscure saying I couldn't find in my search, or whether he was misremembering, or whether he was making it up?

Anyway, I can appreciate the sentiment. The Jeff of five or so years ago might have taken the opportunity to launch into an account of all the heartbreak I've already experienced. The Jeff of today didn't feel the need to do that. I could definitely use a little less heartbreak going forward, but I'm ever hopeful.

Post-truth America

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States. Leading up to the event, Trump boasted about the enormous crowds he was certain his inauguration would draw. This led many in the media to point out, after the inauguration, that it had in fact not drawn as large a crowd as either of Barack Obama's inaugurations.

Crowds from Barack Obama's first inauguration (left) and Donald Trump's inauguration (right). Emily Barnes—Getty Images; Lucas Jackson—Reuters

The next day, at White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's first press briefing in his new job, he attacked the media and falsely claimed that Trump's inauguration had drawn the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe."

Later, high-ranking Trump staff member Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer's lie by claiming that Spicer was merely giving "alternative facts," and I feel like this infamous statement was a preview of so much that has happened in the five-plus years since. I feel like we are living in a country where more and more, everyone has their own alternative facts and it's getting increasingly difficult to bridge the divides they create.

I wrote a post last year in which I outlined the reasons that I characterize the modern Republican Party as akin to a cult. The reasons I focused on were two very prominent false beliefs around which the Republican Party had come to organize itself - one, that COVID vaccines are bad, and two, that Trump won the 2020 election. The first of those false beliefs has led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. The second of those false beliefs led to a violent mob assault on the US Capitol and continues to threaten to tear apart our democracy.

These are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to alternative facts popular on the right. The epidemic of mass shootings and gun violence in this country gets worse and worse and nothing gets done because one of our two major political parties has concluded against all evidence that the solution is more "good guys with guns." Abortion bans are now going into effect in many states, the proponents of which ignore many inconvenient facts such as (to name just one) that ectopic pregnancies are never viable and the only safe course of action is abortion. Laws targeting LGBT people or targeting the accurate teaching of the role of racism in American history continue to be pushed forward based on total fantasies about non-existent harm to children, and instead cause very real harm to ordinary people who are just trying to live their lives.

I recently attended a birthday party for a relative and saw a number of other relatives who I hadn't seen in quite some time. I was reminded of how nice and enjoyable it can be to just spend time with people in person. But also of how there are certain topics that you just can't talk about because you're inhabiting two different worlds. Avoid those topics, and it's a perfectly lovely day with perfectly lovely people. Get into those topics, and you'll just get a headache as the alternative facts fly.

I've written a lot about the falsehoods that are popular on the American right. I'm also becoming more and more aware that different sets of alternative facts are becoming increasingly popular among many on the left. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the two are equivalent to each other - the American right is waging an active campaign to end democracy based on lies, and no one in a position of real power or influence on the left is doing the same. Nonetheless, it's all bad and I feel it's all contributing to the fracturing of society.

With the recent disastrous rulings by the Supreme Court, a lot of people have pointed out that these things wouldn't be happening if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election, as a way of highlighting the importance of voting. Other people, many of whom in 2016 were diminishing the importance of voting for the Democratic nominee, have gotten angry at these statements.

Look, I get their frustration at the many failures of the Democratic Party, but that doesn't make it less true that the Supreme Court would not be making these rulings if not for Donald Trump, rather than Hillary Clinton, getting to appoint three new justices. That's a fact. The idea that voting doesn't matter is an alternative fact.

(I think we should take a "yes, and" approach in discussions of who is to blame for the current fiasco instead of a "no, but" approach. So if someone says that more people should have voted for Hillary, you can respond, "This is true, and at the same time, the Democratic Party should have done x, y, and z," instead of saying, "No, the Democratic Party should have done x, y, and z, so it's their fault, not people who didn't vote." There are so many things that could have been done differently to avert this nightmare, and I'm not pinning all the blame on not enough people turning out to vote for Hillary Clinton, just using that as an example.)

One issue where I'm becoming increasingly aware of alternative facts becoming popular in some circles on the left is COVID. Obviously, as I've written about before, COVID misinformation on the right has taken a horrible toll. I don't want to minimize that at all. But I also see a lot of people on the side who say we should "follow the science" who... aren't following the science.

For a couple of specific examples, here are things I've seen people say on Twitter recently that were racking up huge numbers of likes and that I think represent pretty common sentiments among certain groups of people. Yes, I'm sure these views are over-represented on Twitter compared to society as a whole, but I'm also pretty sure there are a lot of people out there who think similarly.

One was a person posting the weekly case averages for the state of Virginia at this time in 2020 (608 cases/week), 2021 (200 cases/week), and 2022 (2,695 cases/week). "The biggest changes? No more mask requirements and a governor who refuses to acknowledge this multi-organ damaging virus is an issue," they wrote.

No. The biggest change, or at least by far the most important, is that the version of COVID circulating today spreads much more easily and is much more immune evasive than the versions circulating in 2020 and 2021. To an absolutely ridiculous extent. These numbers say literally nothing about the effectiveness of mask requirements or guidance from the government. Yet many people out there very confidently hold the incorrect belief that the much higher case numbers now vs. one year ago are because of mask mandates going away.

My other example is someone who said this:

Every time I tell a friend their in-person social activities prolong the pandemic & prolong my isolation, 9 times out of 10 they say, "I need SOMETHING to give me release/a break."

And I say, "So do I, but your actions mean it'll be longer until I can."

Many of them are still friends because we have conversations about why their actions are ableist & they change their behavior.

The ones who don't are no longer friends.

The person who said this has some sort of condition (I'm not sure what it is) that puts them at higher risk from COVID. I have a huge amount of sympathy for people like this. I hate that this is the new reality of the world. It has to be unbearably awful to feel that you have to isolate yourself for an unknown duration because even in spite of being vaccinated, your level of vulnerability to a COVID infection is still too high to risk getting infected. (I think there are some people who are correct in feeling this way and some people who are overestimating their risk, but I don't know which category this person falls into and I'm not criticizing their personal risk assessment.)

The harsh reality, though, is that the idea that people engaging in in-person social activities are "prolonging the pandemic" is not an idea grounded in evidence.

Imagine that somehow we could make everyone stop their in-person social activities for some amount of time. (We can't, without being a totalitarian state, but imagine we could.) The number of cases would go down, but the virus wouldn't be eradicated because it's too widespread (even in many non-human animals!) and a functional society requires some contact between people and other people. Also, lots of bad side effects would happen - people's mental health would suffer; businesses like restaurants and music venues would have to close, etc. Eventually, after whatever amount of time, social activities would resume... and the case numbers would go right back up. Stopping in-person social activities would have accomplished nothing toward the goal of ending the pandemic.

To be fair, I said similar things about people "prolonging the pandemic" in 2020 and early 2021, and I can see now that I was wrong. I now think that once the virus started to spread globally, it was essentially inevitable that we would eventually reach a situation like our current one. But in my past self's defense, back then, we didn't yet know that the virus would evolve to a form where reaching herd immunity would be impossible even with very good vaccines. Also, in 2020 there was a very clear goal - by limiting in-person social activities to reduce the number of people infected until vaccines were available, we could clearly save a lot of lives. And it was a goal with an end point. Now there's no clear goal and no end point.

I want to also say that there is a lot of very justified frustration about people pretending the pandemic is over and the government not doing more about it! There are a lot of things we should still be doing - namely, pouring huge amounts of funding into improving indoor air quality and into research on better vaccines, as well as mandating paid sick leave, and better accommodations such as remote options for vulnerable people. All of these would have huge benefits both in the near term and for the foreseeable future. But I don't think there's anything that anyone could realistically do right now that would change the reality of a virus still running rampant.

The people who think there is seem to also be ignoring that, with the much more easily transmissible and immune evasive omicron variants, case numbers continue to surge even in countries that had largely suppressed the virus through the pandemic's first year-plus. This is no longer a situation where America is screwing up and we can look to a lot of other countries that are doing a lot better. We can just all be grateful that the surges in case numbers are becoming decoupled from surges in deaths.

Why is this such a big problem? These alternative COVID facts on the left aren't directly causing a bunch of people to die the way the alternative COVID facts on the right have. So what's the harm?

Well, let's look at what the second person I quoted said. "Many of them are still friends because we have conversations... & they change their behavior. The ones who don't are no longer friends."

So what we have, really, is someone telling their friends to do something based on ideas that aren't well supported by evidence. And then cutting people out of their lives who don't do that. They certainly have a right to make that decision, yes. But it's pretty bad, I think, especially if it's happening on a large scale! I think people everywhere are building up a huge amount of resentment toward other people because they don't subscribe to the same alternative facts. And it's all contributing to the fracturing of society.

Specifically, regarding alternative facts on the left, I think that with the growing threat of fascism from the right, anything that leads to a fracturing of the different groups of people who should be united to oppose fascism is a big problem.

I realize as I write this that I might sound like I think I'm above all the other people with their alternative facts and I'm some ultimate arbiter of truth. I'm not. I'm sure there are things I believe that aren't true. I just try to be really careful about believing too strongly in things that aren't really well supported by evidence.

So a big question about all of this is, are things really different now from how they've been at various other times in human history? I mean, people everywhere have always believed things that aren't true.

I'm not sure of the answer to this question. But one thing I think might make this moment actually different is the Internet. In the pre-Internet days, everyone everywhere believed some things that weren't true, but they just had their own untrue beliefs, or the untrue beliefs shared by relatively small (at a societal or global level) groups. They didn't have the ability to instantly connect with lots of other people around the world who have similar untrue beliefs, leading to increasing reinforcement of those untrue beliefs. During the flu pandemic of a century ago, someone could tell their friends an alternative fact about the flu. But they couldn't send that alternative fact out into the world and instantly be rewarded with hundreds of little hearts and the resulting little dopamine hits.

People have always to some degree self-segregated themselves based on beliefs they hold. But it seems like the extent to which that is happening today, to which people are organizing their whole lives around certain sets of alternative facts and then organizing themselves into social groupings based on belief in those alternative facts, is unusual. Perhaps even unprecedented.

It feels like we've entered a post-truth America, a place and time where the truth largely just doesn't matter. Where different groups of people all live in their own alternate realities. From my perspective, it seems like the alternate reality that is shared by the most people, and that is the most threatening to society, is that inhabited by many on the right. And that it's imperative that everyone else recognize that threat and work to stop it, but instead different groups on the left and center are drifting off into their own alternate realities. But maybe that's just what it looks like from my perspective.

Anyway, it's all pretty scary!

I don't know what the answer is. I guess I'll keep trying to do my own little part to encourage people to look at the evidence on things and not just accept at face value whatever so-called facts are popular in their in-group. As well as to encourage people to regard other human beings and their life situations with empathy and decency. It often seems futile, but I'll try.

I paid 25 cents to light a little white candle

For the last few months, I've felt like I've been seeing the number 424 unusually often. The number 424, or the time 4:24, or the date 4/24, or a 4 and a 24 next to each other. Some of you reading this already know why that number would have meaning to me. For anyone reading who doesn't know, it's because my wife Cara passed away on 4/24 - April 24, 2015. I was already feeling like I was seeing this combination of digits with uncanny frequency prior to the events I'll describe in this post. That's important background for the events I'll describe.

This year, on April 24, I traveled to Detroit to see a concert by one of my all time favorite bands, Typhoon. They're a band whose music, with lyrics grappling with mortality, was my own personal soundtrack to Cara's battle with lung cancer, so the date of the show was eerily fitting. It was even more weird to consider that the most recent previous Typhoon concert I attended had taken place on June 12, 2018 - that is, my and Cara's wedding anniversary. Significant concerts taking place on significant dates - a long running theme of my life and my blog!

It was really great to see Typhoon again for the first time in years. The band's lead singer Kyle Morton is an amazing person who I've befriended through conversations at previous Typhoon shows; unfortunately, I did not get a chance to catch up with him this time due to the band's very understandable COVID precautions. During the show he talked about how weird it was to be back out on the road playing in front of people but also how important it was, how there's such a big essential part of life that was missing when we couldn't have those in person gatherings. He also thanked people for wearing masks during the show - he has had some very serious health issues and is a kidney transplant recipient, so trying to avoid COVID is more important for him than for most people in our age bracket.

The show, along with visiting some very close friends in Ann Arbor earlier the same day, was a great way to mark an April 24. It was also not the first time I saw an important concert on April 24.

On April 24, 2018, I saw the Decemberists at Cleveland's Agora. They were a band Cara and I both loved and whose music had had some significance to our relationship. One of the highlights of that show was the performance of "Grace Cathedral Hill," a beautiful song from the Decemberists' debut album Castaways and Cutouts. I remember muttering "wow" upon my recognition that they were playing the song, because I was so happily surprised.

This has all been a prelude to what happened to me last week. I traveled to San Francisco last Wednesday to attend a meeting on Thursday and Friday where I'd discuss my research into asthma with other asthma researchers. That was what was supposed to happen, anyway. But then, on Wednesday, I realized I was feeling sick, with a sore throat and other symptoms of a respiratory infection. I took a COVID test and it was negative. On Thursday I took another COVID test and it was again negative. But I was still feeling sick. Apparently I'd come down with a cold. My symptoms had definitely made me wonder if I had COVID, even though I'm triple vaccinated and had an omicron infection at Christmas. It wouldn't be impossible. Despite apparently not having COVID this time, I still didn't want to expose all the other people at the meeting to my illness, especially considering that if they caught it, not only would they get sick, but they would have the added stress of wondering if they had COVID.

So I told the conference organizers what was going on, and then ended up with a bunch of time to kill in San Francisco, while feeling sick enough to not want to attend a meeting but not sick enough to be utterly incapacitated. I ate a lot of takeout meals. I watched a lot of playoff basketball on TV. I wandered around a lot on Wednesday, at first not realizing quite how sick I was feeling. I wore a KN95 mask whenever I was in an indoor space and tried to keep close contact with other people to a minimum. Thursday I mostly spent relaxing at my hotel, hoping I'd feel no longer sick by Friday morning, but this didn't happen. On Friday I again wandered around a lot, since at that point I was clearly missing all of the meeting and there was nothing else to do. The weather, thankfully, was beautiful the whole time I was there.

It was very disappointing to have traveled out there for the meeting and not get to participate in it, but on Friday I really managed to take advantage of my free time, and by the end of the day I came away from it thinking, oddly, that perhaps my illness had been... fortuitous?

I noticed that the famous "Painted Ladies" houses that are across the street from Alamo Square Park, as seen in the opening credits of Full House, were a couple miles' walk from my hotel, so I went there, and it was really nice just hanging out in that park for a while and taking in the sights and sounds and sun.

Heading back, I picked up some food, ate it in the park across from city hall, and then was looking at my phone trying to see if there was anything else interesting that wouldn't be a huge amount of extra walking, and I saw this:

Oh! Grace Cathedral, like in the Decemberists song! Well, I pretty much have to go, was my thought process, and then I scrolled through the music on my iPod, selected Castaways and Cutouts, hit play, and set out toward the cathedral.

I've always had a thing for cathedrals. The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. is one of my favorite buildings anywhere. Grace Cathedral is another really nice one.

There's a line in the song that goes, "I paid 25 cents to light a little white candle," and because I'm a huge freaking nerd I of course decided, I should pay 25 cents to light a little white candle while in Grace Cathedral. (This was in addition to a $12 admission fee for visitors that I did not realize I'd have to pay until I was inside, but I decided, why not.) I first did some wandering around the inside of the cathedral, admiring the beautiful architecture and artwork and stained glass.

The whole time I was there, I was thinking of the song and of that Decemberists show that had taken place on 4/24. Eventually I decided I was ready to go and pay 25 cents to light a little white candle. I headed over toward a candle lighting station. While doing so I glanced at my watch.

The time was 4:24.

Long time readers of my blog might remember that I have a thing for noticing and pointing out weird coincidences. By now it's happened so much that things I would have once viewed as astounding coincidences, like the Typhoon show being on 4/24, I now kind of shrug my shoulders and laugh about. But this, especially in light of my already feeling like I was seeing those digits strangely often - this was a special one.

So I went, and I put a quarter in a donation box, and I lit a little white candle.

And then I stood there for a minute and talked to Cara. It's not something I do often, at least not in a direct way. But in this moment it felt like I was supposed to. I'm glad that I did.

After leaving the cathedral, I resumed my wandering, and resumed listening to the Decemberists on my iPod. The song "Grace Cathedral Hill" had not yet come up prior to my arrival at the cathedral but came on shortly after my departure. I stopped walking while listening to the song and just admired this view:

It gave me a very peaceful feeling, something I haven't had a whole lot of recently.

That night I caught a red eye flight from San Francisco to Washington DC before connecting back to Cleveland. I managed to sleep for most of the flight. Upon landing in DC, I was dismayed to receive a text message that my flight to Cleveland was cancelled and I'd have to select another flight. But this turned out to not be a problem because the flight had been replaced by another flight at the identical time. So the cancellation turned out to have no effect on my day, except for one thing, which is that I was issued a new boarding pass with an interesting combination of numbers on it:

Then, after I arrived in Cleveland, got to my car, and started driving home, I laughed when I noticed that the first gas station sign I saw showed a price of, you guessed it, $4.24.

Signs from Cara? Who knows, but it's nice to think that maybe they could be.