A couple of days ago, our cat, Precious Mae, bit me. I had been sitting on the bed, putting on my socks, and she bit me. Well, actually, I had just finished putting on my socks and was reaching for my watch when she bit me. Both Michele and I agreed that it was my fault. Let me explain.

Precious Mae loves smelling and – for lack of a better word – cuddling shoes. Michele has a tendency to leave her shoes scattered around the house wherever she happened to take them off. Precious Mae can be walking through a room on her way somewhere else, see the shoes, and go over to spend fifteen minutes smelling and cuddling them.

In this case, Precious Mae was on the bed, cuddling my watch -which I’ve probably worn for at least 300 days during the last year, giving the leather band a smell, I guess, that entices Precious Mae even if I can’t smell it – when I reached for the watch. She instantly bit me, striking like a mongoose. I was shocked. My first reaction was that it was my fault and I said something like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.”. For some reason. the ridiculousness of the whole thing, besides making me laugh, somehow reminded me of people making excuses for their Jaguar breaking down.

Today, Jags are pretty reliable – nowhere near as reliable as a Japanese car or Korean car, but slightly better than a BMW, about the same as a Mercedes – but that wasn’t always the case. They were often very fast and usually gorgeous, but, up to about ten, fifteen years ago, they were notoriously unreliable. Because of their reputation, Jags didn’t ever sell very well which gave them an aura of exclusivity and that, along with the promise of speed and their good looks, meant that there were always some people willing to overlook the reliability problem. I have known three of them – a 4.2 liter E-Type, an XJ12 sedan with a magnificent 5.2 liter V-12, and a 3.8 liter IX Saloon – and all of them were astoundingly unreliable. The buyers were from different eras of my life and didn’t know each other but had one thing in common, when something broke, which almost always happened, they had a sort of excuses that basically amounted to, “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have driven it”. People willing to defend their cars – or cats, or dogs – at the expense of themselves, I find very appealing, in a quirky sort of way (being one of them, I guess, so, duh).

But I’ve always wondered why. And why do I defend Precious Mae in the same way? I’ve come around to the opinion that it is just good ol’ cognitive dissonance reduction.

Psychologists, like doctors, like to use very precise words, and the longer each word the better because it makes it more precise. As an aside, enginers are the same and Formula One is all about engineering, so, tires don’t wear (out), tires degrade and the distance left before they have to be changed is judged by the rate of degradation. But Formula One is run by racers so everybody just calls it deg as in “I’ve got a lot of deg on the right rear.” End aside. I’m not sure that there is an equivalent for cognitive dissonance reduction so I’ll use the full term.

The theory behind cognitive dissonance reduction is that we can’t hold two opposing beliefs in our mind at the same so we change something to make the opposing beliefs line up. Sometimes, we change the facts or the weight of one of the facts, an unfortunately typical and especially debilitating example is, My spouse is s great human being who has had a hard life but he beats me…so I must be wrong. it must be my fault. One of my favorites is I love watching the animals in our backyard, each one is an individual, living a life, wanting to prosper, wanting to live, but animals are so delicious…it is Ok to eat pasture-raised animals because they have had a good life (except for that one very bad last day).

It is shocking how powerful – powerful mostly because it is not conscience – cognitive dissonance reduction is. We think we are so logical but most of the time we are operating on deeply buried beliefs that we’ve changed the real world to match.

“After all, we are our bodies…and something else.” Michel Foucault to Simeon Wade at Artist Pallet in Death Valley. `

What a great time to have a birthday, the Covid Pandemic is not over – there were 11,310 new cases in the US last week; 28 new cases in San Mateo County, alone – but the panic part of the pandemic seems to be over. Here, at least, where the sushi restaurant in San Jose, where we had gone to get takeout, was full of maskless diners. Life hasn’t returned to normal yet, but we are close enough so that it is starting to feel like normal. It is a new normal, however, not quite the same as the old normal. While we were squirreled away in quarantine, the world seems to have slightly changed, but, the reality is that I, along with everybody I have seen during the last couple of weeks, have changed. We are a social species; it is our interaction with others, after all, the bumping up against the walls of other realities, that define who we are and we’ve not had that in a long time.

I know this, still I’ve come to like the solitude of being home, the selfishness of not bumping up against other realities, the torpor of watching TV. After months of isolation, the thought of seeing other people brings up my innate androphobia. That’s only the thought, though, the reality of seeing other people is actually one of joy and Love. The reality is the sweet feeling of fam Love, and being loved, that I’d forgotten while in quarantine, is even sweeter after the absence.

Just before my birthday, Michele and I had a birthday dinner with my daughter, Samantha, her husband Gabe, and our very grand grandkids, Auggie and Charlotte, at their newly remodeled home. They all seemed the same, still, like the house, they, we have all been slightly remodeled and improved. Being together, after months of absence, felt natural and comfortable and extra special.

On my actual birthday, Michele and I had dinner at Camper, a new – to us – restaurant in Menlo Park. Sitting outside in the cool of the evening, eating a meal freshly cooked by someone else, seemed almost magical.

Last weekend, Courtney, Tracy, and Richard came over to our place for dinner and it turned into another birthday celebration. It felt so normal, almost as if we hadn’t been in quarantine for the last fifteen months. But we have been in quarantine and it has changed us. We have slowed down, opened up, and softened.

We live in a world that is far from perfect and, in many ways, seems to be getting worse. I still have no idea of why I am anemic – although I have been getting iron infusions for the last three weeks and I feel much more energetic – and I have no idea how, or even if, we are going to face Climate Change, but this year, right now, as spring turns into summer, Life feels Grand.

A week ago, I started this post as a sort of medical report on my cause-unknown anemia but, then, my eighty-first birthday snuck up on me. A couple of weeks ago, I sort of put the cat on the roof with my anemia and then left, so, first, here is an update. The results of my capsule endoscopy generally showed no blood leakage although there were a couple of spots that weren’t covered because the capsule camera had been occluded by residual barium chalk that was still in my lower gut. My heart, lungs, and GI tract seem to be fine – well, as fine as can be expected – so what I really need is a good hematologist. I asked both my GP doctor and my cardiologist for recommendations and they both suggested the same woman from UCSF who is now treating me. Well, not exactly treating, she ordered a series of three iron infusions that are different than the ones I got in the hospital. At the end of the month, I will get a blood test to see what my reaction is, then she will treat me. Right now, the hematologist thinks I do not have a leak because my few red blood cells are small which indicates a red-blood-cell creation problem. I don’t think that is particularly good news.

Actually, I’m not sure there is an answer that is good news. Certainly springing a leak is not good news. but that a leak is not the cause of my anemia is not good news either. Still, I’m OK with that. Physically, I feel weirdly pretty good and emotionally great. As irrational as it may be, I feel like I am basically healthy with a couple of niggling problems that can be fixed. That may be because the iron injections are giving me more energy, or that just may be because I’ve completely lost track of any feeling good baseline. From last summer until I went into the hospital in late Spring, I increasingly had trouble breathing. For the last several weeks, I was on the edge of panic, feeling like I was drowning – not that I have any drowning experience to set a benchmark – so, not feeling like I am drowning is a big improvement. I am aware, however, that, if I had felt this way when I was twenty-five, I’m sure I would not have said I feel pretty good. That is the good news, in my case, at least. For me, the effects of getting old, in general, are buffered by both the loss of body memory and a greater acceptance of reality. I think of body memory as that unconscious feeling in our body that remembers what our body can do, and that changes as we change. A couple of years ago, I remember watching a group of girls in Charlotte’s soccer team, sitting on a grass field in a circle talking. When they were finished, they all just stood up. I don’t think any of them even used their hands to help. They just stood up by straightening their legs. My first thought was, Wow, I could never do that, but, of course, I could, it has just been a very long time and my body has even forgotten that it was not only possible but so easy as to be unconsciously automatic.

Feeling good, or good enough, really, I think comes with age. My years of teenage angst lasted way past my teenage years but, now, they are so far in the past that it is hard to even remember them. I have read that, if you give a person too many choices, it is harder to choose. I know that has happened to me and, often, it is not only harder to choose but I go away making no choice, putting the choice off for another time. Now, I have way fewer choices and it is easier to make them. And, no matter what the result, it never seems as catastrophic as it once did.

My dad died in 1968, at 61, which, at eighty-one, now makes me twenty years older than my dad – Daddy – was when he died. It got me thinking about what I would have missed if I had died at the same age as my dad. The first thought that comes to mind is that I would have missed the Obama Presidency and then, of course, the Trump Presidency. What a contrast, Barrak Obama, the first Black President, aloof and intellectual, and Donald Trump, all Id, the first President to deny he lost the election. I would have missed the first pandemic in a hundred years; my dad was born in December 1906 so he was about eleven when the October 1918 Influenza Pandemic hit. To me, this pandemic has been a big deal but I don’t ever remember my dad – or my mother, for that matter – talking about their pandemic, which I now find strange.

I had a cell phone in the 1980s, but it was a regular phone handset that sat on a box as big as a car battery, and we called them car-phones, but I would have missed the smartphone revolution which started in 2007 with the iPhone (and an Android in 2008). My dad would have loved the car phone, he was a phone fanatic and knew the location of every public payphone from here to Sacramento. Driving somewhere, he would constantly stop and check in with his office, usually several times a trip. Of everything that I would have missed including the pandemic, the smartPhone has most changed my life as well as our day-to-day world.

Maybe twenty years ago, Michele and I were talking about what was called Global Warming then and I said something like, “I won’t see it, I’ll just skate through.” and Michele answered, “Don’t be silly, Global Warming is coming faster than you think; you’ll see it.” Michele was right and, although I hate what we are doing to our poor planet, the only home we’ll ever have, I’m glad that I haven’t missed it.

I signed and would sign 100 times over if I could. Democracy is in danger. It’s time our elected representatives started behaving accordingly. A Tweet by Amanda Hollis-Brusky @HollisBruskyPoliSci Prof @pomonacollege

In 2022, democracy itself is on the ballot. The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln

A couple of days ago, when I posted my concern that we are losing our Democracy, I was worried that I was overreacting. Then, yesterday, a group of one hundred academics specializing in government and politics issued a Statement of Concern that is both scarier and more hopeful than my post. Their concern is that, When democracy breaks down, it typically takes many years, often decades, to reverse the downward spiral. In the process, violence and corruption typically flourish, and talent and wealth flee to more stable countries, undermining national prosperity. It is not just our venerated institutions and norms that are at risk—it is our future national standing, strength, and ability to compete globally.

Their biggest worry seems to be that, if we lose our Democracy, we will lose market share, which seems like a pretty conservative position to me. Not populous conservative like Fox News, but more business conservative like Forbes. Still, it is surprising that they lay the blame on the Republicans, saying, Elected Republican leaders have had numerous opportunities to repudiate Trump and his “Stop the Steal” crusade, which led to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Each time, they have sidestepped the truth and enabled the lie to spread.

When I was eight – I don’t actually remember it as happening when I was eight per se but I do remember wearing a Dewey button home which upset my dad no end, so that would have made it 1948 – I asked my dad “Why don’t people like Roosevelt?” He said that he didn’t know because “…even rich Republicans should love Roosevelt, he saved Democracy and Capitalism.” It was one of those answers that I bought into as an eight-year-old but, as I got older, seemed more like hyperbole. A hyperbole that I’ve heard many times since. Now, at eighty, I’ve come full circle. Now, watching Trump claim he won and the election was fixed, watching his followers – not all his followers of course, but the rabid ones – actually storm the Capitol, watching the majority of Republican Representative and even Senators say it didn’t happen, I am starting to understand how fragile our government really is. Now I understand that President Franklin Roosevelt probably did save Democracy and Capitalism.

That is what President Joe Bidden has been saying and that is what the signers of this Statement of Concern seem to be saying. What I find surprising is that so many of them seem to be conservative. And, while they are professors of government and politics, the wording suggests they are concerned with the business of America. There are ten signers from Stanford including Francis Fukuyama – one of the few signers I didn’t have to Google – who has always seemed pretty conservative to me. These professors are part of the establishment and they think the establishment is threatened; they don’t want the hoi polloi getting their pitchforks out.

There were 54 votes in favor of enacting the January 6 Commission, and 35 opposed, but because our rules are completely bananas that means that the 35 WON THE VOTE. The filibuster must go. A Tweet by Brian Schatz @brianschatz United States Senator from Hawaii. Dad. Climate Hawk. Chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Chief Deputy Whip. ÜT: 19.72105,-155.087417 brianschatz.com

I was going to say that the headline in the LA Times says it all but it really doesn’t. Driving home last Friday, I heard the news on NPR, and it wasn’t a shock or even a surprise. Still, I was instantly outraged and I turned off the radio – turned off is probably too mild – but I still couldn’t shake the deep sense of betrayal I felt. At first at the 34 Senators who voted against looking into what happened, not so much as looking into what happened as much as to even acknowledge the insurrection and put it on the record. My sense of betrayal spread like an oil slick, sliming out from the 34 Senators that voted against it, then the eleven cowards, including two Democrats, that didn’t even have the guts to show up for the vote, the guts to say “Fuck you America, I’m voting to protect the traitors.” My sense of being betrayed spread to the Senators who say they are our friends and want to vote the way 67% of Americans want but the rules won’t let them, then, irrationally, my sense of betrayal spread to our the entire Government.

My whole life – well since about the first grade – I been told to trust the Government and, deep under my cynicism I do (or want to, at least). Still, increasingly, I feel the government has betrayed us. Not The Government, really, because The Government isn’t real, only the people in it are real and, if they don’t act for us, the Governed, if they only act for their own self-interest or for their corporate benefactors, then then this whole democracy thing is a charade and I am increasingly worried that has come to pass. Our country has a long history of government that looks like a Democracy, has the form and trappings of a Democracy, but really isn’t. Our founding document, The Declaration of Independence, says; We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, but, the reality of our founding is that only White Male Landowners had the right to vote. So, while I’m sure we’ll keep the trappings of Democracy, I feel betrayed because I am fearful that our reality will never match our aspirations. Worse, on this Memorial Day weekend, I am fearful that the country is drifting backward into rule by an oligarchy of the rich and powerful for the very rich and very powerful.