Mitch's Blog

We arrived at Kasane Airport, a small airport outside Chobe National Park in Botswana, yesterday, and when we stepped outside the airport that is when our trip really began. A driver from the resort met us, a dark-skinned black woman wearing a navy medium weight coat and wool beanie hat despite 80-plus degree heat. We loaded aboard our vehicle, which was not the shuttle bus I’d expected, but rather a flatbed truck with high sides and padded bench seats. She drove us about 40 minutes, almost entirely on the park’s rutted dirt roads, to our home for the next three nights, the Chobe Game Lodge inside the park, which is a vast nature preserve on the Chobe River. We had a few minutes to settle in and then we had tea and snacks, then a game cruise on the river, on a flat pontoon boat with about a dozen people. This small group and our guide, a dark-skinned black woman named RB, would be with us the three days of our stay. RB is also the boat pilot, sole deckhand, and bartender.

I’m currently enjoying jet lag at 4:34 am. Wake up call for river cruise in 25 minutes! An hour or two ago I heard an animal roar or growl or trumpet outside the lodge. It sounded big and possibly carnivorous and not a bit anti-Semitic in its food preferences.

Note from 2020: Up until the point we got in that open-air tour bus, the trip to Africa had been very ordinary, just like flying between any two major metropolitan airports anywhere in the world. But when we got on that tour bus, it was a different world. We stopped on the side of the road and looked and wildlife, including elephants. Elephants! Right there on the side of the road! We saw a lot of that over the next few weeks, but it never felt ordinary.

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I fell down an Internet rabbit hole this morning. I received an email from someone signing himself as “Alan Tarica.” It read:

“How do you have nothing to say? Idiots like you need to be exposed for having no critical thinking or meta cognition and no integrity.”

I had no idea what this was about. I thought it might be related to one of my political posts, but experience tells me that it could be about _anything._I’ve been active on social media, blogs and other Internet discussion services for many years, and have received worse insults like that for expressing options about Doctor Who, Star Trek, Apple, and any number of things you’d be surprised that people get worked up about.

I scrolled down a bit and found Mr. Tarica was apparently following up an email he sent me in January 2017 — yes, more than three years ago! — that I never replied to. I don’t even remember receiving the initial email. The initial email contained several links to articles about Shakespeare.

That is the full extent of my correspondence with Tarica. Two emails, both sent by him, unsolicited, with no response from me. Or maybe just one email; I have no record of ever receiving the initial 2017 message from Mr. Tarica

I am not a Shakesepeare scholar and I don’t have anything more than a casual interest in Shakespeare. I struggled through his plays in high school and college. I loved the movie “Shakespeare in Love.” Julie and I have seen a couple of Shakespeare productions over our years together; we loved one, liked one or two more and I vaguely remember another that we disliked although I couldn’t tell you where we saw it, which play it was, or why we didn’t like it (though I vaguely remember it having to do with the production rather than the plays themselves).

I googled “Alan Tarica” this morning and found this article:

The Shakespeare Wars: 150 years of vicious conflict www.jameshartleybooks.com/shakespea…

From which I learn that Tarica is a middle-aged software developer in Bethesda, Md., who believes that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were, in fact, written by the Earl of Oxford, and that a conspiracy of academics is burying the truth. This is actually a somewhat common theory, dating back nearly 150 years; believers have included Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, John Gielgud, Charlies Chaplin, Charles Dickens and the actor Derek Jacobi.

The conspiracy theorists are known as “Oxfordians,” while people who believe Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him are “Stratfordians.”

I also found this thread, which started in 2013 groups.google.com/forum/

Alan Tarica apparently likes to send insulting emails to Shakespeare scholars, and people who have even casually mentioned Shakespeare, to get attention.

Alan Tarica is on Twitter as well, where he likes to insult people.

twitter.com/alantaric…

Perhaps he will take notice of me as well?

I find the whole thing charming, reminiscent of an older, more innocent age on the Internet, when the worst thing Internet trolls could do to you was send nasty message. Nowadays, the Internet trolls and conspiracy theorists literally have access to nuclear weapons. For example:

twitter.com/realdonal…

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Yesterday, Lake Murray was open for the first or second day since the social distancing order became law in California (which was March 20, by the way, so that’s nearly two months now). I went there on my daily walk.

Too many people! Social distancing was difficult, too easy to slip inside the six-foot distance. Only about half of the people were wearing masks. Maybe less than half. You could walk in and out freely but they had park workers set up on the entrance road to keep the parking lot from filling up. According to what I read, they were allowing only 50% capacity in the parking lot, to keep the park from getting crowded.

The photo here doesn’t look crowded but it was tricky trying to maintain a brisk walking pace AND social distancing. Pedestrian traffic on that trail is tricky even under normal conditions because you’re basically trying to manage four or five groups of people, all moving at different velocities: You’ve got people out strolling, often with small children in strollers, who are moving very slowly and not paying attention to their surroundings; there are brisk walkers like me; there are runners; there are adults riding bicycles and other wheeled human-powered transportation; and there are also preteens on bicycles, who rocket along at a million miles an hour not paying attention to their surroundings and occasionally colliding with other objects and people.

I was feeling nervous when I got home, and did not get close to Julie until I’d showered and changed my clothes. I plan to not go back to the park, to resume my daily routine of walking there, for a while, until it feels safer.

In other pandemic news: We got a shipment of paper towels yesterday. We are also stocked up on toilet paper. We are ready to face the apocalypse with clean countertops and butts. 📓

1. I had long, thick hair when I was a young man and I miss it. For years I’ve wondered if I would look good with long hair today, even though my hair is extremely thin now.

Social distancing gave me an opportunity to find out; I went far longer than usual between haircuts.

The answer is that I look terrible with long hair. I am back to number two clippers all over, for good.

2. For years I have thought that I could just give myself a haircut, or have Julie do it for me, and save us some money. How hard can it be to cut my hair with number 2 clippers, all over?

Turns out it’s actually pretty hard and I will be going back to a professional barber as soon as it is healthy to do so.

3. I have long luxurious ear hair and Julie did not want to trim it out of concern for injuring my ears. It looks awful. But on the other hand it helps keep my AirPods securely in place. 📓

Yesterday I read some of “Storm before the Storm” a history of the fall of the Roman Republic, by Mike Duncan, and “Silver Pigs,” the first in the mystery series by Lindsey Davis about Marcus Didius Falco, a private detective in Imperial Rome. I’ve read that series before but I’ve forgotten most of it so it’s nearly new to me.

I finished re-watching “I, Claudius” Sunday — that’s the fourth time I’ve seen that. Maybe give it another go in ten years?

I listened to the “I, Podius” podcast, which is about “I, Claudius” — possibly the final episode of that, although there seems to be some unfinished business, so there may be at least one more episode.

I bookmarked a few articles about the historical accuracy of “I, Claudius,” for later reading.

Julie expressed some interest in rewatching “Rome,” the mid-2000s HBO series about the rise of Julius Caesar and the Roman Civil Wars.

Also, a few weeks ago, Julie and I watched “Hail, Caesar,” a Coen Brothers comedy about the making of a Golden Age Hollywood movie about Julius Caesar, featuring George Clooney. Julie didn’t care for it but I loved it; I still have 37 minutes to watch.

“Storm Before the Storm” is the earliest chronologically, covering events in the second century BCE. Then comes “Rome,” 1st Century BCE. Then comes “I, Claudius,” later in the 1st Century BCE through the early and mid 1st Century CE. Then comes “Silver Pigs,” a couple of decades after “I, Claudius,” in the late 1st Century CE. Finally, “Hail Caesar” comes along almost 1900 years later, around the time the books “I, Claudius” and “Claudius the God” were published, with the movie-within-the-movie covering the events of the early part of “Rome.”

It’s all the same universe, like the Marvel superhero movies. 📚📺📽📓

A young woman ahead of me at airport security was walking with a cane and had a “boot” on her foot – a removable enclosure to immobilize an injured foot.

The security guy asked her if she could walk without the cane, and take off the boot, and put them through the security scanner. The security guy was nice about it; he said if taking off the boot and walking without the cane caused any discomfort at all, she should just leave them on.

The woman said no no no that’s all right and she sat down in a chair and wrestled the boot off, and then hopped through the scanner.

It occurred to me, watching, that this was security theater in the purest form. This exercise was completely unnecessary. I bet if you asked this woman why she was going through this exercise, she would have looked surprised and said, why, it’s the rules. And you have to follow the rules, right?

This woman was given a choice of whether she had to send her stuff through the scanner, and she chose to do it , even though the purpose of this exercise is not supposed to be empty obedience. It’s supposed to be catching terrorists. And this woman knew better than anybody else that she was not a terrorist, and therefore would have been perfectly safe strolling through security without any screening at all!

I don’t say this to criticize the young woman, who seemed perfectly nice and just trying to be accommodating, or the security guy, who was also very nice and just trying to do his job.

I wrote the preceding in my journal a year ago. Re-reading it now, I see that I was wrong then. The purpose of security theater isn’t security. It is empty obedience.

You may well ask, holy crap, Mitch, when did you become such a paranoid conspiracy theorist? I ask myself that sometimes. 📓

I watched Britannia, with Julie, and am rewatching I, Claudius.

I just started reading “Silver Pigs,” the first book of the historical mystery series by Lindsey Davis about Marcus Didius Falco, a private investigator in 1st Century Rome. I read many of those books years ago but I have essentially forgotten them so I’m quite enjoying “Silver Pigs.” I did not get through the whole series then, and plan to do so now. I expect it’ll take me a couple of years but that’s OK.

And I just started reading Mike Duncan’s “Storm Before the Storm,” a history of the events that led up to the fall of the Roman Republic.

The Roman Republic rose from an obscure village to the first megacity, conquering Italy and beyond. It lasted 500 years. Think of how long that is – that’s the equivalent of the early 1500s to today. The Republic must have seemed immutable, a permanent fixture of the world, like the land and sky. And then it went away. Potential parallels to today are obvious.

I think of Roman TV shows as being set in the same universe as I, Claudius, like Marvel superhero movies or Star Trek shows. The Claudiverse – or Clavdiverse! Britannia is a series about events that take place entirely offstage during the 11th episode of I, Claudius, “A God inColchester.” One of the main characters of Britannia gets namechecked twice in that “I, Claudius” episode. “Rome” is a prequel to “I, Claudius.” And so on.

Reportedly, when David Milch pitched “Deadwood” to HBO, he went into the meeting with a series in mind that would have been set in ancient Rome. Milch was obsessed with the concept of civil society rising up out of disorder – you can see that in “Deadwood” and his earlier show, “NYPD Blue.” So his idea for a series would have followed two ordinary soldiers in the Vigiles Urbani, the police and firefighters of imperial Rome. According to the story, when Milch took the meeting the HBO executives said they already had a Roman series, which become “Rome,” and so Milch thought fast on his feet and the series became “Deadwood.”

“Deadwood” was fantastic but I want to see that other series. I even have a made-up title for it: “SPQR Blue.” 📓📚📺

Minnie is hopping around on three legs and occasionally using the injured one, which suggests it is healing. She’s got her old personality back – active, curious and playful. She even tried chasing one of the cats yesterday.

However, she won’t eat her regular kibble or canned food. We’ve been giving her treats, a little cheese and a lot of rotisserie chicken. She loves that rotisserie chicken.

I put down a bowl of kibble for her to eat a few minutes ago. She sniffed the edges and gave me a dirty look, like, “You are SO getting a one-star review on Yelp for this!”

I’m not worried – yet. We went through something like this when she was a puppy. I’ll keep giving her rotisserie chicken until we run out of that, then switch her back to 100% kibble. If she skips eating two days in a row then back to the vet she goes. 📓

Monotony, frustration over having to wear a mask, being unable to take the dog to the park, or go anywhere around people. And I have so many opinions!

But I am also mindful that there are people out their dying in the most miserable conditions, exposing themselves to contagion to stock supermarket shelves, and medical personnel working 20 hour days without adequate protection. So yeah my problems, while large to me, are small. 📓