State of the Blog 2025

Blogging Year 17, here we go!  

I don't have any big changes planned for the coming blogging year.  The schedule will be the same...

Tuesdays: Family Adventures

Fridays: Star Trek

Occasional book posts

For Star Trek, it's onward with both Deep Space Nine and Voyager.  I should be well into Season 5 for the former and Season 3 for the latter by this time next year.  We have a movie coming up before long, too.

Family adventures will likely continue with the same themes: travel, food, film and games, more or less in that order of priority.  No big travel plans for this year but Spain/Morocco was far from a certainty twelve months ago so who knows?  I can virtually guarantee trips to Massachusetts, DC and Pennsylvania.  Beyond that, we'll see.

I am eternally grateful to those of you who stop by to read and engage.  As always, if any of you enjoys reading The Squid half as much as I enjoy writing it, we're all doing fine.  

Squiddies 2025

The Armchair Squid turns sixteen years old today.  It's time to hand out some hardware.  The Squiddy goes to...

Biggest Surprise: Casablanca

Morocco wasn't even the point of our late-February/early-March trip.  Royal Air Maroc had the best airfares for getting to Andalusia.  Why not extend what was already a long layover in Casablanca?  We could add another country - indeed, another continent - to our life lists.  Is Casablanca even that exciting a city?  According to the guidebooks and the websites, not really.  But if we're going to go at all, let's not spend half the time trying to get somewhere else.  Let's make the most of where the plane lands.

Well, wouldn't you know it.  Casablanca knocked our socks off.  No, it's not a tourist trap and that was perfectly fine after our more conventional adventures in Spain.  It's just a city where people go about their daily lives - people who let us walk in their midst for a while, mostly ignoring us, to be honest.  My friends, it was grand.  That's what real traveling is - not gawking but simply being.  Fly on the wall rather than sightseer.  No long lines.  No tour guides.  Just life.

I'd live there for years given the chance.  It's been a long time since I've felt that way about a place.

Biggest Disappointment: Trump's Second Term

Is disappointment even the right word?  Donald Trump's narcissistic lust for tyranny is not exactly a secret.  And yet, my country voted him back into the Presidency.  I guess that is my disappointment.  I'm still amazed and deeply discouraged that so many people aren't horrified by him.  They want this.  All of the bigotry, misogyny, contempt, incompetence, recklessness, dishonesty, crassness, arrogance, pettiness, the near-daily betrayals - they aren't dealbreakers.  Folks, that says a lot more about us than it does about him.  

And the feeble response of the Democrats in Congress has been appalling.

I fear for the present and the future.  Even if we can turn this around, the mess to clean up will be huge.  Plenty of the damage can never be entirely undone.

And that is what they want.

Best Read: Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

We're living in interesting times.  It can be difficult to know what to say to people.  The Right is so... programmed.  They all watch the same news shows, visit the same websites, watch the same TikTok videos, stick to the same talking points as if they are gospel.  Even imagine they are gospel.  Even when they're in clear defiance of gospel.  

I'm veering off point.

If you're looking to make solid progressive arguments, Reni Eddo-Lodge's book is a great reference.  More importantly, it's an essential read for white people to better understand the racially-framed experiences of people of color.  Systemic racism is real whether you believe in it or not.  So is privilege.  The question is what you do with truth once it's presented to you.  

Thanks to my ex-pat time in Japan, I still have several British friends.  A few of them believe racial injustice is an American problem and not a British one.  I really want them to read this book.

You should, too.

Best Comics Find: Love and Rockets by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez

via Wikipedia

I've been aggressively exploring the comic book medium for over a decade now and practically the instant my curiosity took me beyond Marvel and DC, I started hearing about Love and Rockets.  First launched in the early '80s, L&R is considered by many to be the most important and influential indy comic in the American industry.  I'd never read it until this summer.  Now I'm hooked.

Why is L&R so good?  The characters are so real you can practically smell them.  You experience their love, their pain, their shame, their thrills, their lusts, their losses because you are sitting next to them on the couch, feeling awkward as Maggie and Hopey start making out right in front of you, forgetting you're there.  It's the same reason Scorcese films are amazing.  These aren't strangers.  They're the young squatters in the house next door with sketchy friends stopping by all the time.  They occasionally ask you to buy beer for them because they're not old enough yet.  They're the rowdy group of young men talking too loudly in the street late at night outside your front door.  Or it's even closer.  You're in the street with them, annoyed by the stuffy old geezer who keeps telling you to shut up and go home.  

This intimacy is achieved so elegantly you don't notice until after you've been absorbed.  Every storytelling experience should be like this, yet it rarely is.  Without question, L&R is a masterpiece.

Athlete of the Year: Ichiro Suzuki

via Wikipedia

The Armchair Squid began life as a sports blog but I rarely return to the subject anymore.  Of the athletes I did mention over the past twelve months, no one had a better year than Ichiro Suzuki.

In late July, Ichiro became the first Japanese-born player to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  Ichiro was simultaneously the greatest contact hitter, the greatest leadoff man, the greatest outfield arm and the most internationally beloved player of his generation.  Just one unbelievable stat of many: for ten consecutive seasons, Ichiro had at least 206 hits.  Ty Cobb can't claim that, nor Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Rod Carew nor any of the other great contact hitters.  In fact, no one else has even come close.  Pete Rose also had ten seasons with 200+ but never more than three in a row.  Sports fans are forever talking about "records that will never be broken," then Alex Ovechkin surpasses Gretzky's once-unassailable career goals total.  I feel 100% safe saying that Ichiro's ten consecutive years with 206 hits or more is untouchable. 

During his career, there was discussion of whether Ichiro could truly be considered one of the all-time greats, having spent so much of his early career in Japan.  In the end, the Major League numbers alone were plenty: 3,089 hits, .311 lifetime batting average, 509 stolen bases, 10 All-Star Games, 10 Gold Gloves.  The years in Japan only pad the already sterling resume.  Without a doubt, he was one of the greatest athletes in American sports for nearly two decades.

Best Family Adventure: The Alhambra

The Alhambra in Granada, Spain was the main target for our aforementioned February/March trip.  The Alhambra, a UNESCO heritage site considered by many to be the most beautiful man-made structure in the world, has been at or near the top of my travel wish list for as long as I have known it existed, over 30 years.  With such high expectations, a let down is practically inevitable.  Even while we were there, I worried I wasn't doing enough to appreciate what I was seeing.

I needn't have worried.  The Alhambra is an experience that invades your soul.  Now, just a few months later, it feels like a dream.  Were we really there?  I remember our last day in Granada, already wistful over the fact that we had to leave.  Already thinking of how to make the most of the next visit, knowing full well it might never happen because life is like that.  

So, yeah.  I read all of that and it sure looks like I had a great year.

Apart from Trump.

Fuck Trump!

On the Road: Pennsylvania and Maryland

I made my annual journey to the Tree Farm (see here) in Pennsylvania this past week.  I traveled on my own this year as both wife and child had to work.  So, it was just my parents and me in the cabin.

The Tree Farm doesn't change much from year to year but the people in the community do.  There was a new baby this year.  And, of course, there are those who have passed away since we were all last together.  The rest of us just get older.

Most of my visit was quiet and predictable but I did go on one side adventure to Camden Yards in order to see my favorite baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles.  It's a three-hour drive from the Tree Farm but still considerably closer that from home.  The Colorado Rockies were in town for a three-game series.

Those who follow Major League Baseball (MLB) already know it's been a horribly disappointing season for the O's.  With two consecutive playoff appearances and a young, talented player core, expectations were high for more of the same in 2025.  It hasn't worked out.  The injury list has defied belief and it has impacted every facet of the game.  Just one example: the O's have already used six catchers this year, tying a team record.  And we still have two months left to go.

So Sunday's tilt was a matchup between two bad teams.  As miserable as my Birds have been, the Rockies have been much worse: 30-81 as I write this on August 4th, by far the worst record in the big leagues.  Still, a game is a game.

Fortunately, the Orioles have been much improved over the past couple months and they won Sunday's game easily, 5-1.  Japanese right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano was the winning pitcher: a quality start with 8 Ks, 2 walks, 4 hits and 1 earned run over six innings.  Sugano, a highly decorated ace in Japan, has been a mixed bag in his first (and likely only) year in Baltimore but unlike nearly every other pitcher on the staff, he's stayed healthy.  So far.  It was nice to see him do well.

Sunday was a big day for Japanese baseball in general as Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese-born player to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York,

Watching a game between two bad teams in late July, the looming trade deadline means quite a lot of the players on the field will be in different uniforms within a few days.  Sure enough, five Orioles who played in the game I saw were gone by Thursday...

Cedric Mullins, CF, traded to the Mets

Ryan O'Hearn, 1B, Padres

Ramon Laureano, PH/RF, Padres

Andrew Kittredge, RP, Cubs

Seranthony Dominguez, RP, Blue Jays

Dominguez was also traded two days later between games of a doubleheader to the team in the opposite clubhouse.  Starting pitcher Charlie Morton was traded to the Tigers.  Utility infielder extraordinaire Ramon Urias was traded to the Astros.  

Eutaw Street

A mural devoted to pre-integration baseball

Oriole Park at Camden Yards is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful stadiums in MLB.  For a devoted fan such as myself, it also feels a bit like a museum with statues devoted to the Orioles' undeniable pantheon of six legends from the glory days.  You scoff?  The Orioles were the American League's dominant team from 1966-83.  Go ahead, check the numbers.  These six, each enshrined in Cooperstown and each with a retired number in Baltimore, were essential to that success:

Cal Ripken, Jr., shortstop, The Iron Man, now co-owner

Frank Robinson, outfielder, probably the single best player in franchise history.  Alas, he played more of his career with the Cincinnati Reds.  He was also the first black manager in the Majors.

Brooks Robinson, third baseman, The Human Vacuum Cleaner, 16 Gold Gloves - the most by a non-pitcher, widely considered the best fielding third baseman ever.  Worth a Google.

, 

Eddie Murray, first baseman, owner of the greatest sideburns in baseball history.  When I was old enough to start paying attention, he was the man.  "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie..."

Earl Weaver, manager

Jim Palmer, starting pitcher, Jockey underwear model, still one of the color commentators for the team

On the Road: A Long Overdue Statement on the Garbage State of the World

Hello America by Vincent Valdez

Our long weekend travels took us through our usual Western/Central Massachusetts stops: North Adams, Northampton and Worcester.  Our adventures helped me focus some of my thoughts about the state of the world, a subject I've been reluctant to address here - not because I'm not upset.  Indeed, I'm furious.  But I've been struggling to find the right words.  For months.  So, here goes...

"Why were we taught to fear the witches and not the people who burned them alive?"

That quote popped up on my Facebook feed a while back and it has stayed with me.  The Salem Witch Trials weren't really about religion.  That was just the excuse.  They were about power and social control.  That social control lives on in our mythology.  Mythology is social control on a trans-generational scale.  

Enter Professor James B. Haile III, Ph.D...  

In North Adams, we went to a reading by Dr. Haile at Research & Development, one of the retail stores at MASS MoCA (The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art).  He presented his new book, The Dark Delight of Being Strange, a genre-bending work combining both fiction and nonfiction elements.  Haile's philosophical charge for himself and for the reader is to challenge and reform our mythology, especially regarding people of color.  

If you control the mythology, you control everything. 

The political rhetoric coming out of Washington right now reinforces a mythology we've all been fed our whole lives.  For the MAGA crowd, the history of the United States - of "America" - is a story of white triumph.  People of color were to be conquered, subjugated and exploited.  The fact that any of them would with to be treated as human - never mind as equals - is intolerable.

The current immigration policies aren't about the law or economics as the policies are disastrous regarding both.  They're about race.  

You don't think so?  Fuck you.  

I'm not joking.  I'm tired of being nice about any of this.  If you're offended by what I'm saying, fuck off.  If you can't draw a line on this unacceptable shit, fuck off.  

If it were about the law, there would be due process.  People would not be snatched off the streets and out of their homes on suspicion alone.  Those arrested would not be hidden away in remote prisons in Florida or abroad in countries with appalling human rights records, even worse than Florida's.  

If it were about economics, there would be acknowledgement of how much even illegal immigrants contribute to our economy, never mind our society.  There would be acknowledgement of the fact that mass incarceration costs more than just leaving people the fuck alone.  But there isn't.  

It's about getting rid of brown people.

What is it MAGA fuckheads say to people they don't like?  "Go back where you came from!" or "Learn English!"  They just want people of color and their cultures to disappear.  Because if they have to see them, hear them, interact with them, share the community with them, then they have to accommodate them.  And I don't mean in the bullshit "Nanny State" sense.  The United States is only a nanny state for billionaires.  I mean they have to incorporate them into their reality, their normal.  They have to acknowledge their right to exist and that is intolerable.  

They have to incorporate them into the mythology.  As equal contributors.

There is a culture war, folks, and the good guys are taking a beating these days.  Why are people fighting so hard over what is visible in schools, libraries, sports, public spaces?  Because if you control the mythology, you control everything.  If LGBTQIA+ is presented as normal, they lose.  If the Ten Commandments are displayed in reverence, they win.  Because the mythology matters.

There's more but I need time to think it all through.  For now, I'll grant the last words to SNACKTIME, a funk/hip-hop/punk/thrash metal band we thoroughly enjoyed on Saturday night.  

They closed their show with the following message:

Fuck ICE!

Fuck Trump!

Free Palestine!

On the Road: Montreal 2025

Montreal is one of our favorite getaway spots.  We visited recently for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  It had been a couple years since our last trip and we stayed in a different part of town from our usual. Typically, we stay on the Plateau, a relatively residential area with ample dining and shopping opportunities.  This time, we stayed in Vieux-Montréal (Old Montreal) which, largely because of the Notre-Dame Basilica, is considerably more touristy.  Still lovely, of course.  Just a different vibe.

Our first full day was spa day, our morning spent at Scandinave, just down the street from our hotel (described in this post).  For me, few things in the world feel more self-indulgent than a long, hot bath.  It's wonderfully freeing to be in a place where your only purpose is to relax.  Electronics and even conversation are taboo.  While my wife went for a massage, I enjoyed three full hot/cold/relax cycles.  I wish we could afford to do it everyday.

We spent the second day at art museums, primarily the Musée de Beaux-Arts.  It was also my best day for photographs:

Paysage by Albert Gleizes

Le port (Marseilles) by Gleizes

Le port de Bordeaux by André Lhote

La Vierge attentive ou La Vierge à l'étoile by Louis Cattiaux

Forme dans l'espace by Alfréd Réth

Evening on the Terrace (Morocco) by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant

The Main Path at Giverny by Claude Monet

The Pitchpoling (D-27, 2X) by Frank Stella
Stella created a mixed media piece for each chapter of Moby-Dick.  "The Pitchpoling" is chapter 84.

"Tower of Songs", a street mural portrait of Montreal native Leonard Cohen by Gene Pendon and El Mac

As we were packing up our car to leave, our valet joked that we'd "had enough of Montreal."  Not true.  While I'm definitely not a city person at this stage of my life, I find Montreal to be as dynamic and accessible a city as any I've visited - and I've been to quite a few of the world's greats, even lived in a couple.  We'll definitely be back.

On the Coffee Table: Herman Melville

Title: Moby Dick

Author: Herman Melville

via Amazon

Pull up a chair.  We have a lot to talk about...

Captain Ahab leads the crew of the Pequod, a 19th-century whaling ship.  Most are just trying to make a living but Ahab is out for revenge.  A white whale - THE white whale - chomped off one of his legs.  Ahab means to make him pay.  If ever there were a story to convince you that genius is often wasted on the maniacal, this is it.

Moby Dick is, of course, on a short list of Greatest American Novels - indeed the finest works in world literature.  Melville's masterpiece is a profound reading experience: global in scope, richly detailed, lingually dazzling, expertly cast and ultimately unforgettable.  There are brief-candle caliber passages: Ahab throwing his lit pipe into the sea, for instance.  You read them once and you know they'll be with you for the rest of your life.

I finally made it all the way through for the first time.  It took me six months.  I didn't skip any of the chapters about whales - so many chapters about whales!  There are individual chapters about their classification, their spouts, their bones, their heads (two: one for the right whale, one for the sperm whale), their tails, etc.  There are three separate chapters about whales depicted in art. 

So many damn whales...

And I didn't skim over a single one.

The biological details aren't 100% accurate by 2025 standards.  Little was known in the mid-19th century, for example, about the blue whale - identified by Melville as the sulphur-bottom whale - as it was too fast to be hunted.  Furthermore, the author frequently refers to whales as fish.  That said, there's no denying the whaler of his day had far more intimate knowledge of the animal than most 21st century biologists ever get.  

And boy, was Melville eager to share everything he had learned.  Expertly written though it undeniably is, there is a notebook-dump feel to the prose for hundreds of pages at a time.  I get it.  Like all of his serialized contemporaries, Melville was paid by the word.  If the reader of 1851 was willing to stick with you through all of the minutia, more power to you, Herman.  The action of the story could probably have been told in 150 pages.  Maybe even fewer.  But then it wouldn't be Moby Dick.  This is a book the reader has to earn.  At last, I have.

On one of my childhood visits to The Philosopher's Island (read here), The Philosopher's dad brought a copy of  Moby Dick along to read on the trip.  I have fond memories of this kind, quiet man reading by lamplight with a delighted smile on his face.  The story begins in that part of the world, you see: specifically New Bedford, Massachusetts, then the ship launches from nearby Nantucket.  As a family, we've been to NB - even visited the whaling museum and the famous chapel described by Melville.  Having read the book, I'd love to go back.  The novel makes me curious about Nantucket, too.

The monomaniacal Ahab has become a character template all his own.  After reading, I'm also curious about the legacy of his first mate, Starbuck.  The world's largest coffeehouse chain is named for him, of course, but I wonder more at the literary legacy.  Every stubborn leader needs someone to talk them out of the crazy shit they want to do.  Every Ahab needs a Starbuck, even if he ultimately ignores him.  

Frequent visitors might remember my challenges in pinning down the narrative purpose of Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I see now, he's Starbuck.  Of course, Picard is no Ahab.  In Star Trek, Khan is the best equivalent.  But Riker is clearly a Starbuck, perhaps best demonstrated in "The Pegasus."

Without a doubt, Moby-Dick is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read.  However, I'm not eager to read more like it (not that there are many).  At six months per, who has the time?  Even so, I can see myself picking it off the shelf from time to time for a quick fix: "Oh, lonely death on lonely life!  Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief."

So many damn whales...

On the Road: Paul F. Tompkins and Gnome Houses

We took a swing through southern New England this past weekend.  The main excuse was Paul F. Tompkins's Varietopia tour stop in Westerley, Rhode Island.  We also visited our child in western Mass and our dear friends the Mocks in eastern Mass - quite a lot of territory for one weekend.  

Tompkins's tour is essentially a traveling variety show.  He himself, of course, is the comedian.  He also has a four-piece band, a singer and a magician along for the ride.  Tompkins sings, too, and he's surprisingly good.  I don't mean to imply that I'm surprised he's talented as he certainly is.  I just didn't know singing was among his talents.

The show's a lot of fun.  Tompkins's comedy is the highlight, though the singer (Medusa) was also quite good.  The magician (don't remember his name) was a good showman but the tricks themselves were pretty basic: card tricks I've seen friends do.

As ever, a stop in Northampton requires a visit to The Botanic Garden of Smith College.  At the moment, they're featuring a student-initiated and -created exhibit of Gnome Houses, hidden among the other plants for visitors to find, scavenger-hunt style:

A few other highlights:

On the Road: Northampton in May

Driving south this time of year is like time traveling through seasonal change.  On the way down, you get more spring, then less again on the way back up.  The Smith College campus is bursting with color, just in time for graduation next weekend.

Our child wanted to introduce me to Paco, a pacu who lives in the children's section at the Forbes Library.  By my calculations, Pacu is 38 years old.  

As it's a children's library in Northampton, it should not be surprising that there's an Eric Carle original on the wall.  (The children's author lived in Northampton for many years)