Month: June 2026

Last Wednesday afternoon, I headed to the airport for a flight across the country. I’d forgotten just how long those flights are, but even though it was roughly five and a half hours in the air we were still able to see Mt. Ranier as the sun was going down during the descent into the SeaTac airport. I met my brother and sister-in-law in the terminal as their flight was a little delayed so that our arrival times synced up.

We stayed in Fremont, a quirky neighborhood where I’d stopped for lunch when I drove through Seattle on my cross-country road trip a few years ago. We walked around before breakfast on Thursday having all woken up way too early given the time zone difference. Thursday was our tourist day. We started at the Chihuly museum looking at the glass installations and watching a glass blowing demonstration. Then we went up in the Space Needle to take in the city and Puget Sound on what was a cloudless day with great visibility. We could see the Cascades off to the east and snow-capped peaks to both the north and south. To the west was the water, and in the foreground on all sides was the city itself.

After some fish and chips, we went to MoPop. If anyone is planning to visit Seattle, they can leave that off the agenda and be satisfied with their choice. Oh well, not everything can be perfect. Then we walked down to Pike Place Market to watch them throw the fish and eat some fresh cherries. We also walked past the original Starbucks, but I don’t speak that language and so it meant little to me. Next came a brewery and dinner in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, a spot I chose specifically to enjoy a main course of black cod on my visit to the Pacific Northwest.

Friday was gameday. Kickoff was at noon and so we left around 9:30. The atmosphere built and built and built as we got closer to the stadium and more and more people were around us, all headed in the same direction. There were some Disney lines to get into the venue and the line to purchase the matchday scarf moved at a glacial pace, but we secured our physical souvenirs and headed down to our seats. I splurged on this purchase so we headed down for a while, all the way to the third row as I wanted to be close to the action. You could say that next came the calm before the storm, but it wasn’t calm as kickoff approached. Then the teams walked out, the flags were unfurled, and Australia’s anthem played first. They showed up well given the travel distance involved, but it was a road game for them. All the while the energy continued to build. During our national anthem, the atmosphere hit a crescendo. Never mind political differences between us. This was tens of thousands of people proud to be Americans about to watch an American team. Even typing about it gives me goosebumps. It finished with a flyover from some helicopters and the loudest USA chants I’ve heard, then the match began.

The US dominated, forcing in an early goal via an Australian defender and scoring a second (after a VAR review that meant we got to celebrate it twice) off a looping deflection before half time. The crowd energy barely ebbed at all during the half and exploded at the moments when we scored, so much so that my sister-in-law reported hearing the noise from inside the stadium from some distance away as she watched the game at one of the watch parties hosted in a city park on the approach to the stadium. The second half was comfortable; Australia never really threatened and the US was content to pass the ball around. During one of their late attacks, one of our central defenders shoulder barged their winger, taking him out with an audible crunch that we could hear in the stands even if the field mic may not have picked up the sound for the television broadcast. Sometimes when you watch a professional sporting event on TV, you can get illusions that you’d be able to compete on the field. Being as close as we were to the field offered a very clear reminder that those are just illusions and that the speed at which the professionals play is insane.

When the final whistle blew, neither I nor my brother was in any hurry to leave. We’d just watched a solid performance and the energy was still pulsing through both of us. It would take several hours for that energy to dissipate, so it’s a good thing that it was a noon kickoff. Otherwise, I doubt that I would have slept Friday night. The US players weren’t eager to leave either, and we stayed and cheered them for several minutes as they walked slowly around the entire stadium and then off the pitch and into the tunnel. Only then did we head towards the exit.

No matter what happens during the rest of this tournament, we were a part of something truly special.

Hamilton was the big ticket of the summer theater season this year in Durham. The show was in town for a couple of weeks, but Sunday saw the final performances. On Friday, knowing what was already happening and going to happen with work as I take the lead on almost all of our active matters for a time, I bought a ticket for the Saturday matinee.

This was my second time seeing Hamilton as I saw it in New York in January of 2025 (check the archives if you want to read my reflections). I was closer to the stage this time, which helped me see more of the facial expressions of King George that helped make that character such a Broadway star. The staging itself was very similar. DPAC’s stage is a little smaller than the stage was in New York, but that was it. There is still the circular rotating floor in the middle of the stage that allows for the sort of movement in place that is so prevalent in musical theater.

The biggest difference was that I understood more of the lyrics, having now watched the show before in addition to having read the book on which it is based while in college. There was a person behind me who knew all the lyrics and sang most of them without the sonorous voice of those on stage, but such things happen. Understanding more of the lyrics allowed me to have a deeper appreciation for their artistry. There are some great quips among the diss tracks that make up much of the show’s musical program.

While seeing Hamilton again lacked the WOW power of seeing the spectacle for the first time, I very much enjoyed it and left with a similarly somber feeling as when I walked out of the theater in New York. The weather, though, was much warmer exiting the theater on Saturday compared to the cold winds that whip across the Manhattan streetscape in winter. 

I set an alarm for 4:18 this morning. I did this so that I could leave my house at five for my early morning flight to Houston. I did leave at five. I needn’t have bothered with the alarm. My body decided that I needed to be awake and alert well before then. This is a normal thing for me when I need to awaken during la madrugada (one of those beautiful Spanish words English lacks for describing the early hours of the morning in a succent manner).

The security line this morning was the busiest I’ve ever seen at my home airport. Mind you, I still got through in under ten minutes, but that would not have been the case if I had wished to check a bag this morning as those lines were much longer. I don’t take the early flights as often as I once did. I even accepted an overnight layover on my big summer trip instead of needing to leave for an airport before sunrise. But it was needed this time given the event timing and the constraints of reimbursement policies.

I continued my kick of listening to historical travelogue/adventure log audiobooks on flights this morning by starting a new one on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. From the description, it is one of those revisionist histories that has been so popular in recent decades that purports to tell a new version of the story. It’s too early to know how well the author will succeed, but my lack of preparation led to a quick scramble to download something before takeoff and that was the most interesting item at the ready in my feed. That’s on me; it’s not like I wasn’t aware of this trip weeks ago. At least it was more upbeat listening than the Hemingway short stories on my last flight that consistently ended in death.

I’m on a kick of trying to escape algorithmic capture and expand into new media. Part of this includes watching videos about the backstories of famous musical events, especially a few about which I had previously known very little. One of those videos was about the Koln Concert.

Keith Jarrett played a piano concert in Koln in January 1975, late at night after an opera performance. The concert promoter was an eighteen year old young woman, which is impressive in its own right as she sold out the venue for a show starting at 11:30 PM, but there was a snafu with the venue and the piano placed on stage was an out-of-tune baby grand. Jarrett wanted to cancel the concert, but since the sound engineers who were going to record it were already set up he agreed to play anyway. He improvised the whole performance, working with the piano instead of fighting it. The recording became the best selling piano album and the best selling solo jazz album of all time. I listened to the whole thing this week. Though I don’t know enough about music theory or how to play the piano to comment on its technical merits, I enjoyed listening. My grandmother would be proud.

One of my regular YouTube subscriptions also mentioned the Koln Concert this week. The channel (Michael MacKelvie) is mainly video essays on sport science topics and analytics, but the most recent video was a complete and deliberate break from that and hinted at some troubling aspects of pop culture being so recursive at present. He doesn’t use the word recursive in the video, but what else encapsulates a world where all ten of the highest grossing films last year were either sequels or prequels (and most of the nominees for best song in pop categories sampled prior tracks as well)? He used the Koln Concert as evidence that humanity doesn’t actually want perfection in art, an assertion that can be generalized beyond art.