daily (M-F) reflections
02/17/2021: the hope of Steven Callahan
When the going gets tough, it can be challenging to focus on our reasons to be hopeful. This series of gratitudes is an exercise in reflecting on my reasons to be grateful, which is meant to in turn bring hope. So, in effect, this is an exercise in staying hopeful.
And as I always say, nothing provides hope like the dramatized near-death saga of a sailor lost at sea for 76 days. 76 Days at Sea is one of over 200 similar docu-dramas from the Wonder network’s series of videos called I Shouldn’t Be Alive, all of which are available for binging upon on YouTube. The synopsis for this episode reads…
When a ferocious storm leaves a man adrift in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, he quickly realizes help isn’t coming any time soon. For 76 days he must adapt to his new surroundings in the deep blue to fight off an endless bombardment of life-threatening blows. From starvation to dehydration, and insanity to predators. This is well and truly a fight for survival.
If the story sounds familiar, it may be because the subject Steve Callahan is pretty famous for his 1986 book, similiarly titled Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea. More recently, he worked with Ang Lee as a consultant on The Life of Pi, the 4x Oscar winner from 2012 about a guy in a similar predicament (albeit with ample companionship).
If Steven Callahan didn’t narrate the production himself, I would probably assume that his series of unfortunate setbacks had been fictionalized and stretched out by the Wonder folks simply to fill the formulaic 48 minutes of the production. Callahan seems like a reliable narrator, however, made to seem more reliable and relatable by how he reflects with great humility on his life and (lack of) success from the depths of his solitude. Despite this self-doubt and self-hate, he continues his struggle against all odds and, at the risk of spoiling things for you, lives to tell the incredibly inspiring tale.
When there are not two other very unread books on my nightstand, I intend to pick up Adrift… because if a mediocre 48 minute docudrama can be as riveting as 76 Days at Sea was, surely the book will provide even more inspiration and hope!
02/16/2021: well-placed park benches
During the twins’ weekend naptimes, Matteo and I have been getting out and exploring a lot lately. These outings have paired his interest in bombing hills on his bike with my interest in slowly scanning the hillsides for chanterelle mushrooms. One area we’ve come to especially appreciate is around Lake Chabot in Castro Valley, where there is a full network of walking and biking trails. Last Sunday, we continued further down the Indian Cove Trail than we’d been before. Matteo was ahead of me and as he crested a point on the trail that I had assumed would open up to a lake vista, I heard him excitedly call out to me. It was as though he’d discovered the new world. While I was more excited about his excitement than the view, it was a spectacular sight and a fun discovery. We shared a moment of stillness and peace from the perfectly-placed park bench there and talked about our great fortune to have such a place so near and accessible to our home.
02/15/2021: weird gifts
During the holidays, weird gifts often show up at our house. While they’re not things we’d ever buy for the kids, the joy they provide (and thus, my gratitude) is undeniable. One example is a set of drinking cups received yesterday for Valentine’s Day from a work acquaintance of Michelle’s. The cups employ most of the traits of modern novelty plastic drinkware, except for that water you might sometimes see sloshing around the double-layered plastic of a beach-themed cup . They don’t have that.
These are loosely valentine themed, featuring unicorns, dinosaurs, and sloths with messages like “you are magical”, “i rawr u”, and “hug me” (respectively). An affixed hard plastic straw protrudes from the bottom and spirals up the sides of the highball-shaped vessel, the bottom of which is reinforced with chunkier plastic to house its electronics: surprisingly bright strobing lights powered by 3 non-replaceable LR44 button batteries. All this excitement has for the moment proved hard to leave on the table or oriented in such a way that allows liquid to remain within. For this reason, choice of filling has been limited to water. It will be interesting to observe whether laws of physics will be understood and respected before the batteries of the cups (or our patience) wear our. Nevertheless, grateful for these stupid things. Because joy!
02/12/2021: the advent of social audio
For years, I have wondered to myself, “where is the audio-only version of [Twitter/instagram/TikTok/etc…]?” In articles or blog posts where I would hope to find the answer, I would only ever find explanations of why audio was decidedly not a viral format. Viral or not, it has always seemed to me that there’s enough appreciation of audio’s enduring, endearing qualities for there to exist a moderately-popular, somehow monetizable community for easily sharing aural morsels too small for podcasting. Such a place would be ideal for the mining and sharing of nuggets from my hundreds of hours of iPhone Voice Memos or thousands of hours of minidisc field recordings. I’m still waiting for the day and for the outlet and I feel it coming closer.
Clubhouse, the much talked about social network based on voice, is starting a lot of conversations about social audio (among thousands of other things). The longevity of its COVID-driven popularity is being questioned by some critics, who are saying things like “let’s see how many of you want to be on Clubhouse when the Foo Fighters are playing Jones Beach.” Regardless of whether Clubhouse succeeds in becoming the next social hub or whether most people go back to what they were doing, I am incredibly grateful for the app is making a convincing argument for the viability of social audio.
02/11/2021: vinyl
A couple months back while on a morning run, I came upon what looked to be a neighbor’s moving day trash. Sticking out of the pile and catching my eye was a mid-90s SONY stereo, resplendently protected from the elements in its original cabinet–one of those old rolly things with the components on top and the record storage underneath, busted plastic wheels as good as rubber stoppers, and the glass front door blowing in the breeze because the duct tape (where the magnet used to be) wasn’t sticking anymore. I’d finish the run and if the stereo was there by the time I got back to it with the van, cool. If not, cool.
Turned out the stereo was still there on the curb. I brought it home and it became a kind of foster child in the garage while I struggled to sell it on CraigsList. The kids were loving playing with it despite all of their records being too scratched to play without skipping after a minute. The fella who eventually came to take it away was an avid record player who I invited to have a look at my collection; if ever there was a time to sell off a few records, it’s nowadays. The collection here in California is what I’d describe as the headstash of the larger collection, still in the crawlspace of my mother’s home in Vermont.
I sold a lot of records… but I kept a lot of records. Most importantly, I got back in touch with my records, even if I didn’t play or even touch each of them. To merely see their covers brought me back to places and times in my life that were almost entirely happy and leisurely and made me hopeful for the day when the kids are older and our space is larger, when a stereo will once again fit in my life. Akin to photo or audio collection, the records are a part of me that I grateful for.
02/10/2021: (national) pizza night
As the kids’ Highlights magazine made known to us, yesterday was National Pizza Night. I’ve made pizza in the electric pellet smoker a few times now and, together with the kids, I was looking forward to observing such a fun event. Having the meal on the calendar, it was also a good opportunity for me to finally plan ahead and prepare the dough per the recipe of Joe Beddia, from the Pizza Camp book I received this past Christmas.
Like other Pizza Nights here, what I intended to be a family affair inevitably turned into another Daddy show. Mom and the kids got stuck in traffic and arrived home late. While a blessing in a sense because there was a lot of prep going on, it put us behind schedule and mom had a night meeting at 7pm. While the littles popped outside to cheese their own pies, they mostly waited impatiently from the living room. From the pizza station, I was reminded of father/son projects with dad like the construction of a quarter-pipe skateboard ramp that similarly became father projects. I imagined my father enjoying himself there in the New Jersey garage, tinkering with the oversized wooden contraption he knew would only congest the garage he kept so tidy. Selfless act, really.
The pies came out better than any before. The highlights for me were the carmelized onions and my pepper-powdered anchovies. At the end of the night, I don’t know who enjoyed pizza night most–the kids, who got to eat their own creations in front of the TV; mom, who said she loved each pie more than the last from where she stood and ate, over the oven in the kitchen; or me, who had my best outing yet, pretending I was a pizzaiola at bustling wood-fired pizza restaurant. Or maybe it was our neighbors Kate and Pat, who had their sizzling pie delivered straight from the pizza peel! Making pizza for the family is a convergence of gratitudes as delightful as the combination of pizza flavors. Along with others, I look forward to many pizza nights to come!
02/09/2021: children’s singer-songwriter Tim Kubart
For Christmas, Santa brought Matteo his first guitar, a cool little acoustic uke-like thing made by a Kickstarter’ed company called Loog. Like seemingly everything else these kid/music-related these days, it’s not only a physical instrument, but a complete learning system including an app and all the requisite social properties. The YouTube channel features a bunch of demos, featured user vids, highlights from something called Loog Fest, and a series of instruction vids called Loog Academy hosted by a fella named Tim.
Tonight, Matteo was watching his favorite show “Caitie’s Classroom”, an educational series from Super Simple Play hosted by the brilliant, tirelessly enthusiastic Caitie Claessen. (Caitie will certainly be featured in another gratitude at some point soon, as she has been an incredible gift to the Basiles!) From the kitchen, I heard Matteo say “that’s Tim from the guitar videos”. I came out to see who it was that looked or sounded like the Loog Academy guy and it was our buddy Tim! I was far more delighted than Matteo, which made him excited too.
As it turns out, Tim Kubart is an impressive children’s music celebrity in his own right, with the Loog series being only one of his (lesser known) credits. I have enjoyed a look at Tim’s website and have previewed to his stuff on Spotify. The kids will get to know Tim’s positive vibes better in the coming months. I’m eternally grateful for spirits like Tim who have made it their vocation to support parents like me.
02/08/2021: the Yamaha SK100
I re-activated my Facebook account Saturday to post a couple of things to Marketplace. Glad to report that while the working SONY stereo w/ turntable that I brought in off the curb is still not gone, the double stroller is GONE–another step forward. Whilst on FB Marketplace, I came upon an ad for a free electric Yamaha organ in Castro Valley. My motives in wanting it were two-fold: 1) clean it up & flip it for a few bucks and 2) enjoy it with the kids for as long as it takes to sell and hope it doesn’t get too destroyed in that amount of time. I did some research to determine the keyboard would fit perfectly in the Sienna, so Matteo and I headed out for the “surprise”. The address was close to the entry point to the Lake Chabot open space, so we parlayed the trip into a bikeride/hike.
The kids reaction to the organ was as expected–they were all excited to play it and eagerly jockeyed for a seat on the bench that came with the organ. They were all delighted and then, after about a minute, tired of it and wanted “downy”. Things like this are all about that one minute of delight, for which I’m grateful. Looking forward to the kids enjoying the organ for [an undetermined amount of time], one minute at a time.
02/05/2021: the teachers in the middle
There’s an ongoing struggle happening between the people who want teachers and students to be back in classrooms and those who want there to be much more progress in our fight against COVID-19 before schools safely re-open. This week, the city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against its own school district in a desperate effort (stunt?) to force schools to re-open. While the whole situation sucks for so many stakeholders and there’s a lot of angles to debate, one thing is certain: teachers are in an incredibly tough spot and continue to be one of the most undervalued parts of our economy. We don’t have kids in school yet, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I hope that by the time Matteo is ready to be in the classroom, the classroom is safely re-opened. Until then, and nevertheless, I am grateful for all of the essential workers who are operating in extraordinary circumstances to do a job for which they’re mostly underpaid in ordinary circumstances.
02/03/2021: Vaccines!
This afternoon, my mother got the first of her two COVID-19 vaccines. She was happy to show off the Band-Aid on her arm during our Facetime. This evening after dinner, my wife got a proactive ping from her doctor to let her know that school administrators were up and ask if she’d be available to get her shot tomorrow. She’s made an appointment and will be vaccinated at 3:30. It’s an enormous relief and privilege to be on our way to less worry at home.