Month: February 2022

I recently read Of Wolves and Men. It was published in 1978, at a time when wolves had been extirpated from the lower 48 with only two small exceptions in Isle Royale and in parts of the North Woods in Minnesota. This was well before the reintroduction of wolves into Greater Yellowstone or the slow expansion of wolf territory south through the Rocky Mountains. I have not yet seen a wolf in the wild myself, but the magic of being in the presence of a large predator may be the impetus for any future journey I take to Yellowstone.

The book starts with wolf biology and describes what was known about wolves at the time of publication, but turns then to human attitudes towards the wolf and projections onto it. This latter part is much more engrossing as man’s attitude towards wolves presents a reflective lens through which human psychology can be observed. It may be unfair to oversimplify the book as describing a difference between Native Americans trying to live in harmony with and as a part of nature on the one hand versus Whites conquering nature on the other, but that is a first-cut approximation. Even though I grew up imbibing a conservation ethos, I still lack the ability to bring myself into the perspective of someone who grew up and lives on the land. Maybe that is why I found reading descriptions of that perspective so engrossing.

No animal elicits reactions as strong as those caused by the wolf. For centuries, eliminating wolves was seen as a sign of the progress of civilization and an unequivocal good by the American government—there were several bounty programs in this country. When wolves were protected under the Endangered Species Act, many were killed in protest. Conflicts continue to occur between wolves and people/livestock on the Northern Plains, and this trend is likely to grow as time passes even though small interventions can greatly reduce such incidents. It is difficult to disentangle whether the wolf being the villain in so many fairy tales is the cause or the result of animosity toward them. It is likely both. Lions, tigers, and bears have all received more favorable portrayals in fables, stories, cartoons, and movies while wolves are always portrayed in a negative light. Yet dogs are man’s best friend. There are intimations of humans projecting feelings about our own natures onto canids, what with its positives and its negatives, but that is a psychological exploration beyond the scope of this short writing. To end this, it is enough to say that I found it enjoyable to read a book outside of the business books that have formed so much of my reading over the past year. Selective dabbling is something I will continue to pursue and explore.

For several days last week, I was without internet connectivity in my apartment. Given that I work from home and almost all of my work either involves online teleconferences or working with documents stored and accessed via cloud servers, this was not ideal. I had the benefit of being able to use my mobile data via a wireless hotspot so I was not bereft of the internet, but I was data-limited and my connection speed was reduced. This forced me to take Zoom calls on my phone while simultaneously looking at documents on my computer, a practice that I find annoying and so resented doing myself even if I had the camera stationary in order to minimize the potential distraction.

On Thursday with my internet still out, we extended what is usually a half day of being in-person working together into a full day as I drove to Durham as if I had a normal working commute. I don’t miss that part of the day, even if the absence of a commute means I listen to fewer podcasts now than I have during certain periods. My productivity was also less than it would have been on a more typical Thursday morning, but there were some broader strategic discussions that compensated for this slight delay in production work.

By the end of Friday afternoon, I had a new modem in place. It had also been a roller coaster of a day, starting off with a business pitch that went very well and ending by offering the opportunity to absorb some lessons on how to better manage particular situations (and angry counterparties). It was a good evening for a group dinner and some decompression. It was also nice to have a period of forced no-television for a few evenings, even if this meant I had to delay watching the gold medal match of mixed doubles curling at the Winter Olympics, something I finally did early Saturday morning when I couldn’t go back to sleep. Mind you, I returned to watching videos sooner than I would have liked. Maybe that is suggestive of something I can experiment with removing in order to create more time and mental space for other things.

Saturday, I found myself in the suburbs. Specifically, I was in Cary, a (for now) suburban dreamscape that is a divisive subject among residents given the number of people who have relocated there from out of state. I have been intermittently watching a Netflix show about Asian megacities, so I took the opportunity to visit H Mart to look around and have a late lunch.

H Mart is not a normal American grocery store, and while there was one in Cambridge I never ventured the short distance from Harvard to Central Square for that purpose so this was my first visit. You enter into a section of fruits and vegetables with a makeup boutique also cornered off to greet you as if you were entering a department store. The fare is more varied than what I grew up with and there is an obvious bent towards Asian varieties. I did not see rambutans, so rejecting the similar lychees I did not purchase any groceries. After walking though the fruits and vegetables, you circle around the back past the meat and kimchi. Then there are rows and rows of items where little to none of the packaging is in English, but that is not unique among international markets. The back left corner is a fish market that had some wonderful-looking salmon steaks and sashimi. The smell in the fish market section was close to some of the markets I have visited myself in Asia. Yes, it is the smells of a market that linger longest in my memory. Some have been wonderful, like the spice markets in India, and some have not, like a particular market in the afternoon heat of Saigon.

After my walking tour, I circled back through the bakery (the macaroons looked delectable, but that isn’t my area of expertise) and wandered back to the alleyway on the far right of the store to browse the menus at the built-in food stalls. I cobbled together a three-course meal for myself with fried octopus balls as an appetizer, Korean fried chicken as my main, and sushi for dessert. Not that I intended it to be a multi-course meal, but my orders were ready at different times from different stalls. The octopus was easily the best of the three dishes, meaning that the meal started with its crescendo and waned from there like an anticlimactic narrative.

The store is about a half hour from my current apartment, so visiting won’t become a normal part of my routine but it was nice to get a dose of different this weekend, however sanitized. My propensity to walk through markets and grocery stores in each new place I visit, though, will persist. I have found that to be among the quickest ways to learn about a place and its people. I like to think I inherited this habit from my grandfather, even if I never joined him in any of his own scouting visits to grocery stores.

Monday morning, I received a video on my phone. It was one of my young cousins delivering a very important message: “Hi James David, brother’s on the way and he’s doin’ fine. Bye.” Then she repeated the message after some prompting and that was that. The message was delivered with the sort of innocence that only a child can have, oversized decorative candy cane twirling in her hands and still wearing her pajamas. Her little world has changed forever—now she has a baby brother and is a middle child. Given her repeated insistence that she is not a baby, though, I’m sure she will come to embrace having someone younger in the house. By early afternoon I had received several pictures of my newborn cousin.

I no longer use Facebook and have not even responded to the text pictures, which I probably should have done. Alas, this post is my way of sharing how excited I am to welcome another member into the family. It will be at least a few months before I can meet him in person, but I look forward to holding him and just watching him sleep (fingers crossed) in my arms—there is nothing quite like holding a baby and thinking about all the possibilities for its life. A few of my law school classmates have also had children in the last month, and all of these babies have offered a stark reminder that some things matter a whole lot more than everything else.