While we were staying at Tracy and Richard’s place at Point Reyes Station a couple of weekends ago, we hiked- maybe wandered is a better descriptor – to Abbotts Lagoon. I love being outside and, especially, walking on a dirt trail or on no trail. Still, I haven’t walked on a dirt path – except to cut through a parking lot border – in probably four years, and I’ve missed it. There are all kinds of reasons, from hammertoes to having trouble breathing. After I got my new replacement aorta valve, I started exercising by lifting weights and walking on a treadmill, which I still do, but neither one offers the satisfaction of being on the land.
The short hike to Abbotts Lagoon, in Point Reyes National Park, was harder than I expected. And more fun! And more interesting. When I am walking on a treadmill, once I get to a steady pace, I don’t think about the actual walking part, but walking on an uneven dirt path, I have to think about almost every step. That is not something I did fifteen years ago. Fifteen years ago, I had much more available bandwidth to look around and marvel at the scene around me. Not that this is a particularly spectacular landscape. At first, it is just dry grass and gentle hills. Still, it is full of detail.
Close to the end of the trail, well before the beach, is Abbotts Lagoon, which connects with the ocean by way of several lazy meanders. There is more wildlife here than I expected, and everybody seemed less afraid of humans. And why shouldn’t they be less afraid? Our species has gone from hunter to birdwatcher in most of the world -well, here at least – during the last century (plus or minus a decade). The fur traders and casual hunters have been replaced by people like us who are not looking for decorative feathers or otter pelts, and the animals have reacted to that.
Something is healing about being out on the land. Being on the land is primal; it touches our animal core. There are a lot of people on the trail and each one of us is singular. Each of us has our own personality. Just like the animals we cross paths with. That difference is the engine of evolution, and it runs deep.
As an aside, about seventy years ago, I tried my hand at raising snails. I had read about it in Sunset Magazine. The article was about taking common garden snails and putting them in a large container of cornmeal for a couple of weeks to clear their digestive tract, and then…that was it. Like magic, they were ready for eating. Except I couldn’t do it. When I took the top off to clean the container, some were on the cornmeal munching away, and some were sliming their way up the sides to see more of the word; one was even all the way to the top, trying to get out. Each snail had its own personality. Snails are pretty primitive, pretty basic, but even at that level, each one is different. It is harder to kill and eat an animal that has a personality, for me, at least. End aside.
Neoteny is the retention of the juvenile features in an adult animal. Genetic factors influence the degree of neoteny in individuals. Neoteny is manifested both behaviorally and physically. Temple Grandin, Mark J. Deesing, in Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals.
On the one hand, I am convinced that man owes the life-long persistence of his constitutive curiosity and explorative playfulness to partial neoteny that is indubitably a consequence of domestication. … On the other hand, domestication is apt to cause an equally alarming disintegration of valuable behavioral traits and an equally alarming exaggeration of less desirable ones. Conrad Lorenz in the forward to The Wild Canids.
Debating is all about dominance, and Vice President Kamala Harris dominated former President Donald Trump in last Tuesday’s debate. She doesn’t want to come across as an Angry Black Woman, but she can’t look weak; that’s a pretty narrow path to follow, and, after a shaky start, she pulled it off. Somebody with a much better political memory than I have said it was the first time anybody beat Trump in a debate.
When I repeated that to some friends on a Zoom call, they all said I was wrong, insisting Hillary won in 2016 and Biden won in 2020. That’s not how I remember it, so I listened to the second of three debates between Trump and Clinton. Ok, I didn’t listen to the entire debate – I’m not that much of a masochist – but I did listen to the first third. What I came away with was not so much about who the clear winner was but the impression that Donald Trump was way more coherent eight years ago. He was a much more formidable candidate then.
What I thought this blog was going to be about was neoteny and how it fits into Donald Trump’s persona, but I believe now that the most noticeable thing about Trump is his deterioration. Sure, he is an adult who acts like a three-year-old – a bad-mannered three-year-old who acts in a way most people would not want their three-year-old child to act like – but that is not as noticeable as the deterioration happening in front of us.
We are born, we grow up, and we – eventually – die. However, it is not a linear process. The change a human goes through in their first fifteen or twenty years is dramatic, and I believe the same sort of dramatic change takes place during the last fifteen or twenty years of our lives. We are comparatively stable during what I would call our middle years. Comparatively, the change that occurs in us at thirty to forty-five – or even forty-five to sixty – is pretty minor. But Trump is past those relatively stable years – stable not being a descriptor I would not normally use to describe Trump – and rapidly falling apart on live TV. If he were to win, I imagine that decline would on accelerate. That’s pretty scary.
“Thank you, Chicago, for your energy; thank you, Kamala Harris and Jim Walz, for your vision; and thank you, Joe Biden, for your service.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“The existence of my family is just one example of something that was literally impossible as recent as 25 years ago … This kind of life went from impossible to possible. From possible to real. From real to almost ordinary.”Pete Buttigieg
“Tim Walz is a weaponized Norman Rockwell painting.” Ezra Klein
“And to be clear: In my entire career, I have only had one client. The People.” Kamala Harris
I thought I must have blogged about almost every Democratic National Convention since Obama. However, as I go back through my blog, I see that the only Convention I commented on was the 2020 Democratic Convention, which was during Covid and was more of a virtue convention on Zoom (mostly, at least, as I remember). Maybe I haven’t written about past Democratic Conventions because all conventions are pretty much the same – especially political conventions.
Political conventions are pep rallies, and the latest Democratic National Convention was no exception. It was more professional than most pep rallies, which is to be expected because the same guy – Ricky Kirshner, who has 26 EMMY Nominations, 9 Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an Edward R. Murrow Award – has been doing DNCs since Clinton. Still, it was a bunch of talking heads, of which only a few were interesting. On the first night, that included Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Hillary Rodham Clinton – introduced as the former United States Secretary of State, which, I guess by the introduction, is higher than Senator – and President Joe Biden.
Of the three, I thought Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the best speeches, and President Biden gave the weakest speech. In Ocasio-Cortez’s case, I may have been overly influenced by my admiration for her, but I don’t think so. Ocasio-Cortez – or AOC, if you prefer – is a staggeringly good politician. She has been on the National Stage for less than six years, and she is already a household name. I was surprised at how good a speech Ms. Clinton delivered. Now that she has nothing to lose, she is much looser and less preachy. Listening to President Joe Biden’s speech, I was reminded that, even at his best, he is not a natural public speaker.
The second night, Tuesday, was another night of talking heads – most of whom were forgettable – which ended with three super speeches. The first was by Kamala’s husband, Doug Emhoff, who I thought gave a better-than-expected speech. The night ended with Michele Obama and Barack Obama. Of the three, I thought former First Lady Obama was the best speech. By far. She came dressed for battle, in a sort of ninja outfit, her arms bare and her hair pulled back from her face in a long braid.
What I thought was most interesting about the speeches was the comparison between Michele Obama and Barack Obama juxtaposed to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Michele Obama and Kamala Harris’ childhoods were in segregated worlds. Tim Walz and Barack Obama were not; Walz because he is White and Obama because his early childhood was in Indonesia and Hawaii. Their speeches reflected that. Both Obama and Walz gave speeches that said we can all get along, with Obama saying, “That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in. An America where We the People includes everyone. Because that’s the only way this American experiment works.” and Walz saying, “But I’ll tell you what, growing up in a small town like that, you’ll learn how to take care of each other that that family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they’re your neighbors, and you look out for them, and they look out for you.”
Michele Obama and Kamala Harris were much less conciliatory. Michele Obama had similar words as her husband but from a different point of view, saying, “Kamala knows, like we do, that regardless of where you come from, what you look like, who you love, how you worship, or what’s in your bank account, we all deserve the opportunity to build a decent life. All of our contributions deserve to be accepted and valued because no one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American. No one.” And Kamala by saying,” “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man…Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.” In speaking about the Republican position on abortion, she said, “Simply put, they are out of their minds.”
The third night included Governor Josh Shapiro – who I read was the vice-presidential nominee that the Democratic establishment wanted – former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz. I thought Walz was terrific, a poster child for the mid-west. Still, as somebody who was in the Army for three years, what I find most interesting about Walz is that he was a Command Sergeant-major. There have been many vice presidents who were officers and many who were privates, even vice presidents who were not in the military, but only one other sergeant, Al Gore. Gore served in the Army as an enlisted man, spent six months in Vietnam working for an Army newspaper, and was discharged as a Sergeant E-5; despite that, he was not a career NCO like Tim Walz. Having been a career NCO and not having graduated from Harvard – Walz went to Chadron State College in Nebraska – will bring a much-needed new outlook to Washington.
The last night – the biggest night – was all about Vice-president Kamala Harris. The speakers were old friends, various members of the House of Representatives, and even a member of the Central Park Five, a group of young black men who had been wrongly charged and jailed for a crime they did not commit. Harris’s speech was excellent, but it came after several days of hard-to-follow great speeches. For me, the most appealing thing about Harris is that she will bring a new outlook to the presidency. I hope.
I say “I hope.” because we have been here before. By here, I mean an outsider bringing a new perspective to the inside of the Beltway thinking that has seemed to deadlock Washington. Biden was effective because he had been around long enough to understand how Washington works and doesn’t work. Harris has not been in Washington nearly as long; she was a Senator for only four years before becoming vice president for another four years, but hopefully, she has been around for enough time to know where the power is and how to bring change.
