The Beginning/Kid Rock

Michael’s stop

But even though she might not ever be a star on the court, I figured we might bond over nba fandom. It’s always fun to have your team, and to share them with a small band of like-minded people. Michael had used the top pick in the draft to select Kwame Brown, an unknown player, who was making the jump from the NBA to high school. I didn’t know anything about him, but he had worked out in the front of the GOAT, and that was enough. Michael was a winner. He had also replaced the college coach with Doug Collins, another winner, and, saints preserve us, he had decided to come back and play!

He had retired at the top of his game. He still looked great and there were rumors that he was dominant in scrimmages on the practice court. I even bought a Jordan Wizards jersey, feeling that it was going to be a part of something special.

That year, Anna was going to day-care in my office, the US Courts building, which is right next to Union Station on Capitol Hill, and several stops on the red line from our house in Northwest. That 30 minutes, coming and going, on the subway in a suit and tie with a two year old, was by far the longest hour of the day for me. I look back on it fondly now, but when I dropped off Anna at Day-Care and got on the elevator to go up to my office, I knew that the rest of the day was going to be easy by comparison.

She needed constant entertaining on the subway, and I tried to mix up a combination of books and games. We would play I Spy (Do you see anyone with a newspaper; an umbrella; a hat, etc; and I tried to have a piece of trivia about each stop. When we would get to Gallery Place/Chinatown, I would tell Anna” “This is Michael’s stop,” imagining the GOAT getting off the train and swiping his fare card as he ascended to the luxury of the newly opened MCI Center.

After awhile, she knew this stuff by heart, and would announce to anyone seated near us that Gallery Place was “Michael’s stop,” usually adding, sua sponte that her favorite stop was Van Ness, although she pronounced it “Bean Ness” and could never explain just why it was her favorite. “I like Bean Ness” she would explain, if I or anyone asked what it was about that particular station that was so special

We also got Direct TV that year, and we would watch the Wizards on the local network. I had fallen in love with Tivo, and would start watching the 7:00 games at 8:00, knowing that I could fast forward through the commercials and halftime and finish up the game pretty much in sync with real time.

Anna would start the games with me, asking lots of questions about Michael and Rip--Richard Hamilton, who was looking like a decent foil to the Wizards new #1 option. But it wasn’t the same Jordan. He had no hops left, and his game seemed to consist of about 80% fadeaway jumpers. The danger of the mid-range jumper was not yet known--at least to me--and even though I marveled at the artistry of his game, the airborne part of it was gone. I remember going to a game against the Timberwolves that year, and when Jordan intercepted a pass and was off on a breakaway, the crowd rose to its feet, knowing what was to come. I can’t remember exactly what happened. The story is better if he missed the dunk, but I think he barely made it. It was a synecdoche for everything we got from his time in washington: a shadow of what he had been exacerbated by a sullen refusal to admit that it was over and he had a lot to learn about the management side.


The Music

Music is a different story, though it is the same in that you begin wanting your kids to love what you love, and some of it rubs off; some doesn’t and then after awhile you have a shared hsitory and a partnership of equals. Anna had a powerful interest in music from an early age, and, or should I say, but, that began with Raffi and the Wiggles. Lloyd Cole recommended Woody Guthrie’s “Songs to Grow on” on his new website in 2001, and although I liked it all right, it didn’t connect with Anna the way Dorothy the Dinosaur and Bananaphone did. Anna was obsessed with a version of “Marie’s Wedding” by the Wiggles, and we used that to introduce her to some other Irish music, and, by association, to Great Big Sea and Riverdance

I tried to work songs that I thought she might like into the new recordable cd technology that was quickly replacing my mix tape universe, and I had some success with songs like “Ham and Eggs” by A Tribe Called Quest, “The Influence” by Jurassic 5 and “Pressure Drop by the Clash; songs that were catchy and contained choruses both memorable and singable.a time,

For her 3rd birthday I made a cd as a party favor, titling it Kid Rock and including the picture below as the cover. The playlist was as follows:


Len: Did you Steal My Sunshine
3 is a Magic Number
Buddy Holly: That’ll Be the Day
Raffi: Bananphone
Paul Simon: Love me Like a Rock
Norman Blake: You are my Sunshine (from the O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack))
De La Soul: Tread Water
Jackson 5: ABC
They Might Be Giants: Don’t Let’s Start
Pete Seeger: If I Had a hammer
Banana Splits Theme Song
Louis Armstrong: If I Could Talk to the Animals
Between the Lions Monkey Time Theater: Sven Said Ted
Beatles: Penny Lane
Shirley Ellis: The Name Game
Ernie: Rubber Ducky
Woody Guthrie: Pick it Up
Tribe Called Quest: Ham and Eggs
KC and the Sunshine Band: Boogie Shoes
Kool and the Gang: Celebration
5th Dimension: Up, Up and Away
Barenaked Ladies: If I had a million dollars
Mystery Song







I’m pretty sure the final song on the cd is This Land is Your Land. In a brilliant metaphor for everything that is great and terrible about technology (and me, I suppose) I found the cover photo on my Google Drive and a copy of the CD in one of the four giant binders to which my bookshelves of discs and jewel cases have now been reduced. I can’t find a copy of the cover, but I did have the cd. When I connected my drive to my computer, I tunes was quickly able to play the old format (it’s probably a Cd-R, if that even still exists) and I quickly fast forwarded through the songs until I got to the last track, where the player failed. But I can tell that the track is 2:19 and looking at my ITunes Library, the only songs that seem plausible candidates for the final track are the one I mentioned and Leadbelly’s Goodnight Irene. I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure that’s the case, and I’m actually delighted that it worked out the way it did.

Anyway, we listened to that a fair bit, and some of the songs wormed their way into Anna’s life. Not all of them, mind you, and not all of the ones that I would have bet on (The Name Game, for example). Len stuck, for some reason, as did the Beatles and They Might be Giants, largely because of the hilarity of the “Wake up, smell the cat food/In your bank account” lyric. And I had found the formula: make mixes of favorite songs, sprinkled with a few songs from your collection that you think she might like. See what works; repeat ad infinitum. That’s how Otis Redding, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Clegg and Prince came into our shared folder; and it led Anna into many voyages of discovery and a rich musical experience that would find her introducing me to new material in the not too distant future.

Shaq and Kobe

I had a vision of being one of those hockey dads, but in the nicest possible way. I figured that I would devise various ways to play fun games with my daughter while simultaneously turning her into a basketball savant. I hadn’t been introduced to the game of basketball until I was ten years old and a neighbor had put up a hoop in the alley. My dad, seeing that I was taking to the game, put up a basket in our driveway. It was just a little over nine feet off the ground and, looking back, I am certain that the lost decade of training, the lack of instruction and the improperly calibrated equipment are what kept me out of the NBA. I developed into a decent canadian high school player; rode the bench until my senior year, when I became the starting point guard, the fourth-best player on a team that would surprise everyone by winning the city championship for the first time in a long time for my Catholic school.

But Anna would have all of the opportunities that I had been denied. We lived on a fairly busy street in Northwest DC with a small yard and no parking. This meant that a hoop outside was out of the question, but as Anna was barely walking by now, this wasn’t the time to worry about regulation size equipment. I bought one of those toy baskets that comes with a small soft basketball, and on Christmas Eve, after Anna and her newborn sister, Evie, were asleep, I spent several hours trying to put together what a number of handier friends could have done in fifteen minutes.

I don’t remember Christmas morning all that well. Evie was sick and we ended up taking her to the emergency room, where she lay intubated (in an induced coma) for a couple of very difficult weeks. My wife and I traded watches at the hospital, and Anna, who wasn’t so keen on sharing her parents with a sister in the first place, was feeling neglected.

I figured that i would fix this by introducing her to the game I loved with the toy that she hadn’t yet showed much interest in. “Do you want to play “Shaq and Kobe?” I asked her.

“Sure.” she answered. She was always up for a game.

We went into the living room, and I cleared out some space around the hoop. I showed her the ball. She looked at me.

“Shaq and Kobe” play for the Lakers I told her; and they work together to make the team the best in the world. I am going to show you what they do. I will be Kobe and you can be Shaq. Ok?”

“OK.”

I positioned her with her back to the basket. “We need buckets.” I told her. “It’s the 4th Quarter and we’re six points behind. I will throw you the ball. You catch it, and put it through the hoop.” I had positioned the height of the hoop so that she could dunk it if she stretched out on her tiptoes.

“The fans at the forum are going crazy.” I yelled. “Kobe has the ball at the top of the key. He’s looking for Shaq in the middle. He passes it in.” I gently lobbed the ball into the clearly interested Anna, and it bounced off of her chest and onto the floor. Time for Lesson 1.

“OK, sweetie, you want to make a basket with your hands, catch the ball, turn and put it into the basket. Let’s try again.”

We did, and, although she had her hands in the right position, and was following the ball with her eyes, she didn’t really integrate the two actions.  The ball again bounced off of her body and onto the floor.

No worry, I told myself. That’s why we are starting young. We tried the drill a few more times, and I tried to maintain the level of excitement by describing the screaming fans, the cheerleaders, the tv cameras and all of the things that make the NBA so fun.

But something you need to know about my daughter--which I was only then just learning: she is very much of her own opinion and single minded. It was, and always has been extremely difficult to get her to do something for which the value of the action is not readily apparent.

After a few reps, she picked up the ball before I could pounce on it and reset the offense.

“Kobe invited Shaq on a picnic.” she announced. And she walked into the sunroom with the ball in her hands, spreading out a small blanket on the floor in front of the sofa and sitting down.

What to do now. “But they need us in the game.” I reminded her.

“It’s time for a picnic.” she announced, inviting the stuffed animals strewn around the room to join us. “C’mon Shaq. Sit down.”

I sat down, as she was distributing small plastic teacups and plates to everyone. How was i going to get us back on the court.”

“We’ll be back to the game after a short break.” I announced.

She ignored me. “Would you like a cookie, ApplePeach?” she asked a small stuffed horse. “Is everyone having a good time?”

It was clear to me at that time that Anna’s interests lay elsewhere, and she hadn’t shown any indication of prodigial quality . I would have to introduce her to the game more gradually.  But I still believed that it could work.

As it turned out, after turns in a couple of mite leagues, trying basketball and soccer, Anna had no love and not much talent for athletics. She was bound for a youth focused on dance and theater, and I was not going to be realizing my lost athletic potential through her. I would be attending plays and recitals instead of playoff games, and that would be fine.

After awhile, the hoop lost its seat of honor in the living room. It was exiled to the basement, where it sat for the next two years, a reminder of my failed initiative to develop my daughter into a baller.

Go Wizards--the Preamble

I started to lose interest in the NBA when I moved to Washington in 1990. The Pistons were giving way to Jordan and the Bulls; I couldn’t have afforded cable, even if it had been available in my Capitol hill neighborhood (it wasn’t at the time); and I didn’t have access to Channel 50 any more. The Bullets were bad at the time, playing out in Landover, at the end of the Blue LIne, and I didn’t pay much attention to them. I was vaguely aware of Bernard King, Wes Unseld, Harvey Grant, and the mess of an organization that Tony Kornheiser called Les Boulez, but my interest in basketball was waning.

It was saved by a few things. The first was fantasy basketball, which I started playing with a New York friend and his co-workers. We would get a fax (!) every week detailing the production of our players and our standing in the league. Our performance at first demonstrated our lack of knowledge about rotisserie basketball and the NBA, but I started paying a lot more attention to box scores than standings, and the 3rd iteration of our squad--which we had named Ice Team--led by Patrick Ewing, alongside the playmaking of Muggsy Bogues and the sharpshooting of Glen Rice, was a runaway winner in the 1993 season.

The Bullets also generated some attention from me as they began plans to move into a downtown arena, located in a derelict neighborhood that I sometimes walked through on my way home from work near the White House to my house near Eastern Market. Plus they were contemplating a name change, and the dismal choices--to be determined by a vote that was probably rigged, were also the subject of much derision.

I bought Bullets t-shirts for my groomsmen in 1997, failing to understand that the name change was more about merchandising than anything else, and that the iconic red white and blue motif with the outstretched hands logo was still going to be readily available at the gift shop.

But the new arena was coming and Michael Jordan himself, the man who had ended the Pistons’ run, and who I had watched on WGN when I was in law school, had joined the organization as President of basketball operations. Everything seemed to be going in the right direction for Washington basketball. I spent the 1997 and 1998 seasons in Macedonia, and, although I didn’t see much basketball, the Washington Post (now my hometown paper and internet home page) assigned two excellent writers, Michael Lee and Ivan Carter, to cover the local team, and the quality and breadth of their coverage was fantastic. Despite being 3,000 miles away, without American television, radio or newspaper, I felt like I was closer to a team than I had been since 1988, my last year in the Motor City.

We came back to DC the following year, but I didn’t watch much basketball in the 1999-2000 season. Partly because I had a newborn baby daughter, but mostly because the team, which featured in Juwan Howard, a star who in my view could never be the best player on a good team, and Mitch Richmond, a player who I had heard much about, but never really seen play, because he was on a west coast team that didn’t get any national exposure, wasn’t very good. The team had traded Chris Webber for him, after a promising season and a playoff appearance, but it was quickly evident that he was in the downward arc of his career. It was the type of player I would get used to seeing in Washington.

But give Michael a break. At least he was making moves, and in the 2000-01 season, which was to be Mitch Richmond’s last in the league, his hand-picked coach--a mildly successful NCAA veteran--guided the team to a 7th place finish and a place in the lottery, which in contravention of all Washington tradition, they won, selecting Kwame Brown, a high school phenom who, hand-picked by the GOAT himself, was going to help turn things around.

Anna was starting to talk and soon walk, and it was at this point, the 2001 season that our relationship with the team, and each other, really began.

2017 Books

Full list here. Still feeling like I don’t read enough fiction. Only about 25% of the total, although none in the top 5, so maybe I know what I like. Disappointed by David Foster Wallace and Charles Bukowski; Delighted, as always by Tyler Cowen, Edith Wharton, Rob Sheffield and Tim Harford. Shout-out to Pat, GLo, my dad and 5Books for the referrals and the reviews. Already a dozen titles in my pile, including Norman Mailer (Harlot’s Ghost), Charles Dickens (Martin Chuzzlewit) and Dostoyevsky (Demons).

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

Fascinating look at a cholera outbreak in London in 1854, this book deals with the rise of cities, the dangers of confirmation bias and the growth of science, all built around a riveting story of crisis and investigation.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon

Brilliant study of growth in the American standard of living from 1870 to 1970, and the suggestion that we may never see its like anytime soon. The Internet is great, but it can’t hold a candle to the benefits of electricity, indoor plumbing and the car.

 

This is London: Life and Death in the World City by Ben Judah

 Chronicle of life in the big city for Roma beggars, Filipino nannies, Polish construction workers, Arabic princesses and African sanitation workers, among others. Gives you a real sense of who the people you see on the train are, what they do, and how big cities could not function without diversity.

Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of QuestionsAsked, Answered, Illustrated by Shea Serrano

Delightful, carefully reasoned consideration of various basketball-related disputes and hypotheticals, including a disquisition on pickup dos and don’ts, building Frankenplayer and the concept of a “memory hero,” someone who is overrated by virtue of being a favorite player in our youth. A delightful read from one of my favourite writers right now.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I read this after all of the hype and it still blew me away with its insights and candor on what it means to be black in America. Everyone should read this book.

January Books

Right back at it. Already off the pace and ignoring my resolution to read more fiction this year. Always happy to read anything by Tim Harford. Hillbilly Elegy was bracing, though flawed, and the Smith Tapes reminded me how distant 1972 is from the present.

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

by Tim Harford

Not as good as his other books, but, like everything he writes, lucid and a pleasure to read. I think I had read half the book in excerpts before I cracked my copy.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

by J.D. Vance

Vivid picture of another part of America, along with the acknowledgement that it won't be so easy to make America great again. Not perfect, by any means, but worth the effort.

The Smith Tapes: Lost Interviews with Rock Stars & Icons 1969-1972

by Ezra Bookstein

Great collection of interviews with icons of the 1970s, celebrities, activists, everybody. The times they have a changed.

What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam & Modernity in the Middle East

by Bernard Lewis

Very helpful concise history of politics and culture in the region from the beginning until now. Recommended.

Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

by James P. Carse

Interesting premisse, repeated over and over again in various opaque epigrams. Short book that seemed to go on forever, oddly appropriate, I guess.

Books of the Year

I read 67 books in 2016 (full list here, let's be friends on Goodreads, people!) and only a few were the result of fishing expeditions at the local bookstore or the CHPL. Most were referrals from trusted sources, and I am thankful to Farnam Street, The New York Times, the Economist, Tyler Cowen, Arnold Kling, and a few other online sources for recommendations. Also thanks to G-Lo for her monthly reporting and occasional exchanges of recommended reading material.

But a special shout-out to my friend Pat Fay, who introduced me to the book of the year, and an author of four of the books I read this year. I had the idea to send him something I thought he might like around 2010. I had visions of an organic book club where a bunch of friends would be passing stuff around sua sponte; mailboxes choc-a-bloc with unsolicited reading material from trusted sources. Happy days.

Well, it never really grew beyond Pat and me (the other two founding donees, Tom and Jason, quietly ignored me),but we are going strong, exchange a book or two a year and follow each other on Goodreads, where I am glad to say he has taken to posting reviews, which are a valuable tool in assessing candidates for my attention.

Which leads me to the book of the year, and my 2016 discovery of Ryszard Kapuscinski, the peripatetic Polish journalist who reported from Africa, Iran, India and the USSR in a deceptively simple way. combining the wonder of a stranger in a strange land, with an astute assessment of what was actually going on. It showed up at my door last year, uninvited. I opened it knowing nothing, and when I finished it, I felt like the scales had fallen off of my eyes. How could this book and this person be out there and me not know about it?

I think I liked the Africa book the best, but I have to choose Iran as my book of the year, because the subject matter was so interesting and most of the detail of the events largely unknown to me. Plus it was my first, and you know how that works.

No big resolutions for 2017, except to read more fiction, and maybe to get out of my chair a bit more. But there's a big pile of stuff against the wall that I can't wait to get to. And it's cold outside. You know how it goes with resolutions.

Shah of Shahs

by Ryszard Kapuściński, 

A history of the rise and overthrow of the Shah of Iran. The Goodreads review calls it a a "compelling history of conspiracy, repression, fanatacism, and revolution", and that's putting it mildly. Somehow, someone who can't quite figure out what's going on helps you understand it in a way an expert never could. That's the best I can explain it. You need to try it for yourself. 

Possession

by A.S. Byatt

Goodreads calls it "an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas."

I found the combination of literary history, professional competition, love and mystery masterfully done--one of those books where you constantly are reminding yourself that a fellow human being did this, however improbable that may seem.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

The scope of this book is ridiculous, but somehow he ties it all together in that Jared Diamond or Joseph Campbell way that has you nodding your head and thinking that now you really do understand it all. Maybe that's not quite accurate, but it's not entirely wrong either.

Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books (Stuff I've Been Reading)

by Nick Hornby

I do love Nick Hornby's writing, and I didn't know that he had written a gang of book reviews until I came across one in the Chapel Hill Library. It didn't take me long to seek out the Omnibus version, and never has 500 pages flown by so quickly. He helps you understand things about everyday life and the joy of reading, that, like Kapuscinski, looks far easier than it really is. The older I get the more I realize how hard it is to be simple and clear.

The Remains of the Day

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Struggled with this and the Age of Innocence as my final selection, but I chose this one because I liked the relationship dynamics and the chronicle of the end of an era in Britain. It's a great story, but the deeper you get into it, the more you realize that it's also an historical artifact and a meditation on what it means to be a person in a community of others.

December books

Forgetting my book of Maupassant short stories at home, along with the Bahamian sun and the Economist Christmas issue, kept me from finishing the year as strongly as I'd hoped, but I was delighted, as always to see a pile of book orders waiting for me. I will always order something I come across that looks interesting, but often by the time I am home to pick it up, I've forgotten who recommended it and why I thought it would be interesting. This tends to be a feature, not a bug, as it has been a joy to open the cover on something that I know nothing about, except that at one time, it sounded interesting enough to order.

Full 2016 list here. Top 5 for the year to follow soon.

Travels with Herodotus

by Ryszard Kapuściński, Klara Glowczewska (Translator)

My author of the year. This is the book that got him started, and which I did not love as much as the others, although I loved it nonetheless. Perhaps the presence of a smarter third party celebrity detracts from the author's honest and empathetic view of the strange world in which he finds himself. 

On Writing

by Charles Bukowski

From the English section of my neighbourhood bookstore. Thought it might be interesting, and it was, mildly, if somewhat repetitive. Didn't see the same poetry in his life that Mickey Rourke did.

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority

by Martin Gurri

Published in 2014. Good look at how movements like the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street were nihilistic and without any goal other than to smash the status quo. Brexit and Trump both eerily consistent with the author's claims.

Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

by Sebastian Seung

Interesting summary about how much more we know now about how the brain works, and how little that is. Still closer to phrenology than the singularity.

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg Not as interesting as I'd hoped, but worth the effort. Concepts all well presented, but I was familiar with many of them already. Finally understand the law of large numbers, though.