I’ve seen them from some pretty interesting places.

My favorite was from a cottage dug into the shore of Cayuga Lake in upstate New York.

My buddy and I watched a wall of rain make its way frame by frame across the water then to the shore and across the deck until it pelted the tin roof above our heads with one ping, followed by two, then three, then ten thousand all at once as it unleashed on us with surprising intensity.

We heard branches crashing all around us and wondered aloud how quickly it would pass (this was before smartphones).

After just a few minutes it was gone.

We felt like heroes dragging a fallen tree out of the road afterwards and barely considered what might’ve happened had it been any of the trees towering above the cottage where we watched.

I loved the intensity of Texas storms watched from my first-floor apartment’s patio in Austin. Wild flighting flashes would illuminate the courtyard pool at night as if it were the middle of the day.

I briefly had a private office on the top floor of one of New Haven, Connecticut’s tallest office buildings and will never forget the amazing storm I saw there. Lightning streaking across the horizon seemingly at face level; I felt the building swaying ever-so-slightly with each wind gust.

My client did not get their money’s worth out of me for that billable hour but the storm temporarily washed the icky feeling off of me from working in banking law.

As a child I once rode with my Mom and two brothers through the Florida everglades in a downpour and saw true panic in Mom who was scared to keep driving but even more scared of pulling to the side where we could just as easily be washed away.

I’m not sure if she was more worried about the gators or the drowning.

That one was a little intense for me.

The best summer storms are the ones witnessed with a feeling of safety but intense enough to make you feel like you’ve got a little skin in the game.

My current perch, in a house overlooking a reservoir where lightning cracks across the horizon backlighting the hills on the other side, is a pretty good one.

A good storm raises the hair on the back of your neck a few times but stops short of tensing up your shoulders.

It’s hearing the wind creak over the roof and rafters of your home without the force of a driving storm that makes you move away from glass windows.

There is a fine line between walking your property’s perimeter to look for sticks and branches or checking on downed wires and to see that everything’s still standing.

A good storm moves fast.

It’s not a wash out of a day where the kids sing “Rain rain go away,” or The Cat and the Hat comes for a visit.

It’s an intense energy burst where the clouds ripple with electricity and the thunder rolls in waves across the horizon, through your feet and up your spine.

You don’t merely hear the thunder, you feel it reverberate until the earth absorbs it and spits out it’s worms as a sacrifice to birds, the guardians of the skies.

That’s why birds singing are the universal sound of “all clear.”

My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter is starting to mirror my excitement for summer storms.

Thunder used to scare her but now she’s curious enough to come watch a storm fall on the reservoir through our bedroom floor to ceiling windows.

She sits on the shin-high window ledge commenting on everything she sees and jumps at each clap of thunder.

It’s all a show for her and hopefully never becomes true cause for alarm. No matter what she’s doing, she’s always game to join me when I ask her to stop and come watch a summer storm with me.

I look forward to her someday being comfortable enough to come out with me to the garage or underneath our covered gazebo to feel the changes in the atmosphere itself.

Life is full of so many twists, turns, and challenges right now that it’s easy to view a common summer storm as one of them and reach for your favorite streaming app or distraction when your plans get upended.

Especially if you live in the northeast this summer where we’re getting them nearly every day.

But if you have the time, stop and watch a storm roll in this summer. You just might find a pretty good show that you can’t go back to binge later.

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My still-forming thirteen-year-old brain hadn’t yet developed a resistance to making a spectacle of myself so I took the stage with unwarranted bravado.

The second my pre-pubescent voice growled the words “you ain’t nothing but a hound dog” into the mic, the audience was mine.

When I added in the twists and pelvic thrusts, the audience roared in approval.

Were some of them laughing at me? Almost certainly.

Most of them, most likely.

But it didn’t phase me because I was having so much fun. They offered a microphone and I grabbed it. Unpolished and unrehearsed to share my joy with the world.

I sang a lot as a child, especially in the summer.

Nearly every moment from the beginning of July to the end was spent learning, memorizing, practicing and rehearsing songs for a big summer musical we put on through the school.

Where I really let it rip was on the bike rides to and from rehearsal thinking I was moving too fast for anybody to hear me well. This, of course, was an illusion.

Though the wind passing by my ears may have muffled the sound to me, anyone in earshot certainly heard me belting out show tunes with all of my might.

I can’t help but wonder what the poor joggers and dog-walking neighbors must have thought as a chubby kid with acne came whistling past singing, “Oh what a beautiful morning,” at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

By my mid-teens, however, the singing stopped.

I became more inhibited.

Aware that I wasn’t a particularly good singer, I decided not to do it publicly anymore even though it was one of my biggest sources of joy.

For the twenty years that followed that source of joy became a source of apprehension.

Once in my late twenties as part of a bar trivia night my team had to sing Yellow Submarine for some reason and I wanted to melt into the floor.

I still won’t sing at church because I live in Connecticut where congregations sing in a collective whisper and I am incapable of whisper singing so I just stand there thumbing through the hymnal listening to the organ music drown out a tiny sea of even tinier voices.

But now, the singing’s back.

Singing has become a big part of my life again since becoming a stay-at-home dad.

Not just the private songs I sing to get the baby to stop crying, but the public displays at story times in libraries and parks throughout my community.

Most people set aside their singing vulnerabilities for kids songs.

The only hesitation I’ve ever heard from other parents at story time is at the Durham Library’s Mother Goose story time when Miss Diana’s “Where is Thumbkin” rendition includes unabashedly going all-in on finding Middleman.

Let’s just say that “Two Little Blue Birds” aren’t the only birds flying around the Durham Library’s basement classroom on Monday mornings.

When the children’s librarian says that my kids will pick up and reflect the enthusiasm I have towards a class, I take her at her word.

That’s why I belt out that the wheels on the bus go “round and round,” and lean into the demonstration that when cows wake up in the morning they always say, “moo moo!”

I’m trying to bring this energy into other parts of my life.

Yoko Ono didn’t let an utter lack of talent stop her from doing duets with the most successful singer of all time so why should it should stop me from belting out “the heat is on” every time I use my bathroom’s heat lamp?

There is so much monotony in my life as a stay-at-home dad and so much negativity in society in general right now. Singing, even a few quick bars of “someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,” counters both of those pressures.

So anyone who sees me around town proudly singing anything: show tunes, old TV show theme songs, nursery rhymes, or the instrumentals for “Hail to the Chief,” I’m sorry if it throws you for a loop.

If you can, take comfort knowing it’s because at that very moment I’m living a life without inhibitions and with joy in my heart.

Join in if you know the words and don’t worry if you’re a little off key: I probably am too.

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It takes a special kind of downer to cry over slightly shorter days when a year ago they were alone drinking spiked seltzer and complaining that Zoom makes their neck look fat.

If your takeaway from the summer solstice is that shortening days are cause for dread, you’re completely missing the point.

The summer solstice is an apex; the pause between an inhale and an exhale where the lungs are temporarily weight-less in the chest neither expanding or contracting, just entirely at ease. It’s earth’s way of regulating our seasonal extremes and nothing worth getting upset about.

I think of it as a little head nod to our main boo, Summer.

This is confusing because the solstice is historically known as midsummer even though our current culture treats it as the start of summer in terms of vacation seasons, school calendars and the Today Show’s Summer Concert Series.

Life in the northern hemisphere is great right now. The weather is just hitting peak awesomeness.

Even though we’re now pulling away from the sun, July is warmer than June because it takes so long for the ground and water to warm up from their winter chill.

As any bagel can attest, a toaster hasn’t even really started working until its coils are burning brightest.

It’s so much better being able to step into a pool up to my *ahem* shorts *ahem* without my voice jumping to a falsetto.

Earlier this week my daughter watched an episode of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood teaching that when something seems bad we should turn it around and find something good.

Daniel’s example is discovering that his smushed tiger cake still tastes yummy. Indeed, his friends didn’t even care that the cake was smushed they just wanted to have fun celebrating together.

Almost immediately after watching that episode I turned on the local weather forecast to see how awesome the week’s weather would be and the meteorologist tried to use the summer solstice to smush my tiger cake bemoaning the loss of sunlight set to occur throughout the months of June and July.

Not this time local demigod Scott Haney.

I’m inspired by Daniel Tiger (or “royally inspired” as Prince Wednesday might say) to take the trolley one stop further and say that the best half of the year is just getting started.

Mr. Roger’s ghost tiger taught me that too many of us are quick to say “nay” when we should be saying “neighbor.”

The negativity surrounding the solar solstice’s momentum shift has got to stop.

It’s a mentality reminiscent of the overweight divorcees with wine-stained teeth who I’d see throughout my childhood crowded into the Spencers store at the mall buying vaguely sexual gag gifts for Over-the-Hill themed birthday parties.

No matter how hard she cackles when they’re opened, “saggy-boob suspenders” have never amused anyone but the gift-giver.

There’s plenty of humor to be found along aging’s one-way path but it’s not for sale between an inflatable cane and a t-shirt asking, “Who Farted?”

I’m coming into the second half of this year’s solar revolution hot rolling with momentum from a first half that included some of the best six months of my life.

The next six months also promise lots of amazing opportunities of their own including exiling my newborn son from the bassinet where he currently sleeps just inches from my head, taking our first vacation as a family of four, not feeling weird about being back in public, and most exciting of all – baby’s first Christmas!

No matter what your take is on Jesus, you can’t deny he throws a hella good birthday party.

Christmas is my favorite day of the year and also one of its shortest.

So lets stop all this sky-is-falling negativity about losing a little daylight and enjoy the rest of this trip around the sun.

There’s a lot to look forward to in our ever-shortening days and thanks to the miracle of science, we’ll get to do it safely together.

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As regular readers well remember, Buddy is a 1,000 pound “highly-aggressive” buffalo-cow hybrid who escaped from a local slaughterhouse and successfully outmaneuvered the publicity-happy small-town police who talked a big game but couldn’t back it up.

Buddy captured hearts throughout the world selling merchandise, inspiring several very poorly executed Twitter parody accounts, and securing enough online donations to change his destination from the slaughterhouse to an animal sanctuary in the event he was finally caught.

What finally took Buddy down when the harsh New England winter and dogged determination of Nowhere’s finest could not?

Love.

Buddy was caught mid-coitous seducing a local farmer’s herd with his bad boy antics.

Fantastic reporting by the Register Citizen tells us that local middle school custodian and Sleepy Hollow Farm owner Ron Rice sounded the alarm that resulted in Buddy’s captivity.

After Rice’s 10-year-old grandson warned Pop Pop that, “a strange cow is in with us,” he saw the horns and responded with a puzzled, “We ain’t got nothing with horns.”

Later that day those horns nearly cost Ron Rice his life. His gripping first-hand account continues:

“The owner came over to my farm and we attempted to get him. We put the bull in a smaller corral, and he was able to lasso him,” Rice said. “We had Buddy, but things went sideways, and he snapped the rope.”
…
“I almost got killed. He slammed right into the gate to the trailer that I was holding. It happened so quick, I didn’t even have a chance to move and get out of the way,” said Rice, adding Buddy got loose and escaped.

Buddy’s reward was an extended stay at Sleepy Hollow Farm until he got calm enough to be tranquilized and hauled away.

During that period Farmer Rice says, “Buddy made himself at home.. We were feeding everybody like normal, and he was getting less apprehensive. He was happy, he had free food and had female companionship — he wasn’t going to nowhere.”

Except, of course, he was ‘going to somewhere’ because the long arm of the law reached in to disrupt Buddy’s newfound domestic tranquility.

He was tranquilized, sedated, and transported to Critter Creek Farm Sanctuary in Gainesville, Florida.

Critter Creek Farm Sanctuary sounds less like a peaceful resting place and more like a place that advertises Alligator Wrestling Wednesdays. If so, my money’s on Buddy.

As soon as Buddy the Beefalo arrived at the sanctuary, he escaped again.

Twice.

Once by jumping into a horse pasture and once by nearly trampling several employees, according to WTNH’s battle-hardened reporters.

Buddy’s newest captors are attempting to rebrand him more accurately as a “biso-cow,” since he’s technically a cross between a bison and a cow, not a buffalo and a cow, but it won’t stick.

Buddy’s brand isn’t about accuracy it’s about freedom.

When my children have grown to an old enough age where they’d be embarrassed to sleep in my bed when they’re scared, I will tell them the tale of Buddy the Beefalo, the renegade bovine who once roamed these very woods around us.

Buddy the Beefalo is an American tale as tall as Paul Bunyan with horns as sharp as Babe the Blue Ox. I’ve heard Buddy made it through the winter grazing on apples fallen from Johnny Appleseed’s trees.

How has Connecticut, the land of PT Barnum, Mark Twain, and World Wrestling Entertainment become so unimaginative that the same forces that stripped Buddy of his freedom have stripped us of our star?

Imagine if the sons of Punxsutawney, upon realizing the prognosticating powers of their beloved Phil had taken up a collection and sent him south where the sun always shines for him to better enjoy his shadow?

Udder nonsense.

Bring Buddy back!

Make him Grand Marshal of the Goshen Stampede. Pin a blue ribbon on him at the Durham Fair and build his Lego likeness at our Big E statehouse.

Sure, he’s an unhinged flight risk with a long list of near fatal encounters but let me pay $5 for a selfie with him and give the proceeds to a local charity.

We, the people, must take up Buddy’s charge.

Just as Scotsmen from Ness lifted up their dear Loch monster, and loggers from the Pacific Northwest fueled Bigfoot expeditions, we must pick up Buddy’s mantle for posterity.

Join me in making this solemn vow: the legend of Buddy the Beefalo must never die.

Indeed, given the lustful end to his time in Connecticut, one might speculate that at least one Beefalo sequel is in the works at Sleepy Hollow Farm.

Imagine an entire herd of freedom-loving beefalo combining the majesty of the American buffalo with the udder ambivalence of a simple cow.

Consider this: Buddy was captured on April 14, 2021. The average cow pregnancy lasts 283 days, which brings us to January 22, 2022. It has been preordained.

Buddy the Beefalo 2 coming 2 U on 1/22/22. Get ready.

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Since this word doesn’t exist, most of us call ourselves vaccinated, which is misleading.

Though I haven’t been formally deputized by Dr. Fauci and the CDC, I’ve taken up the charge of explaining that full vaccination doesn’t exist until two weeks after the final dose.

I wander the streets like a Shakespearean soothsayer warning people to “beware the ides of shots” and to heed the lesson of UCONN women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemmma who quarantined for our sins before his glorious resurrection in the Sweet 16.

But now that I’m a few days out from getting the first dose of a Pfizer vaccine, I’m feeling first-hand the appeal of declaring myself vaccinated and resuming life from before times.

I’m not so caught up in it that I’m trying to French kiss the mail lady (read you loud and clear #metoo) but there’s an extra pep in my step (which may be the rush of hope replacing dread).

Anchoring my post-vaccine euphoria is the inescapable truth that, while full vaccination may be right around the corner for me, it’s still a long way off for my children.

A family is only as healthy as its least vaccinated child.

Adult vaccination isn’t the end of our fight against Covid-19 but it’s an important turning point. We’re hopeful our newborn will get antibodies from breast milk but only herd immunity offers a foreseeable path to protection for my two-year-old.

All of my daughter’s surviving grandparents have already been vaccinated and the vast majority of her aunts and uncles are well on their way.

We’re assembling the herd, broadening the scope of people she can safely socialize with, and no longer fighting on our own.

This is the point in a superhero movie franchise when they start doing crossovers to foreshadow the final confrontation that takes each of our heroes to overcome.

Though we’re making great strides at reaching herd immunity here in Connecticut (anticipated as soon as mid-August), I’m not too hopeful about hitting it nationwide since I’ve seen the selfishness of places like Texas and Florida.

A country is only as healthy as its least vaccinated region.

I don’t know what the solution is to get more Americans to step up for their fellow countrymen but I do know that my family will be better off for it.

Regardless, that’s something to worry about once I’ve reached full immunity, which I have not. For now, my focus is on enjoying the spring and making the most of my last few weeks of self-imposed isolation.

It seemed a bit too on the nose that I drove to my vaccine appointment this week in a bed of fog but left to radiant blue skies on a picture-perfect spring morning. Nobody does spring time quite like New England: manicured, reserved, tailored toward beauty and hope.

Thank you to the millions and millions of people who are answering the call for service every day by stepping up and getting vaccinated.

You’re all heroes.

Our country and our families are safer because of you.

Dark forces are throwing everything they can at us as we near the final confrontation (spring break, Wrestlemania’s two night super-spreader smackdown, Florida) but in the end we will prevail.

Because of you: earth’s mightiest heroes. You can’t save the world alone.

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To be clear, she didn’t like it.

But, she was still reeling from the horror of being approached by Mr. Peanut in front of Oscar Meyer’s Weinermobile so it’s understandable that it jarred her moving so suddenly from broad daylight into the sort of darkness you’d expect inside a 60-foot whale’s belly.

She much preferred the whale replica’s outside where she happily pretended to brush his teeth.

I told her she was brushing the teeth of the largest toothed-animal in the world but that didn’t impress her nearly as much as the gravel she was busy forcing into his mouth.

Poets and spiritualists encourage us to view life through the eyes of the child. Days like this must seem strange when there’s a man-sized peanut twirling a cane between a 60-foot whale and an RV-sized hot dog.

Especially when you think that dancing peanut is a snowman because he’s wearing a top hat.

Though she didn’t care for being inside the whale’s belly, Jonah and Pinnochio teach us that is where transformative experiences happen.

This was a transformational moment for me. It wasn’t my first time inside Conny.

In fact, I used to run through him screaming and laughing as loud as I could with my two brothers, which Mom encouraged to help us burn off energy after the car ride to The Children’s Museum in West Hartford.

Whales have a special place in Connecticut-born hearts. Fudgie the Whale (a popular ice cream cake from Carvel) was as big a presence in my childhood as Mickey Mouse or Big Bird.

And, of course, we had The Hartford Whalers: a National Hockey League team that was ripped away from us in 1997 even after the people rallied together to meet the villainous owner’s insanely high demands to save it.

Peter Karmanos was his name. I didn’t have to Google it because he was nefarious for a brief blip in the 1990s before fizzling out, much like David Koresh or Kevin Federline.

The Whalers were named after the whale hunters who made New England and early America’s economy strong. The areas from Nantucket down to the Connecticut shore were once considered the Saudi Arabia of whale oil.

Whaling had such a big impact on Connecticut that we named the sperm whale our state animal, which is why Conny has been sitting outside The Children’s Museum for over 40 years as its most popular exhibit.

Looking at rescued Guinea Pigs and fossils is cool but it will never match the joy in my heart from hearing my own voice echo back from inside a whale.

I hope my kids learn to appreciate that same joy someday but the museum’s future is unclear.

The land’s owner (high-end prep school Kingswood Oxford) is publicly nudging the museum to vacate the valuable property directly across from a Whole Foods and the much-hyped Blue Back Square development.

It doesn’t take an archeologist to unearth the meaning when the school says the property sale, “would advance our strategic goals.”

I read that in The Hartford Courant, a paper far too familiar with the damage that often follows “strategic goals.”

Whalers are back in Connecticut but this time the creatures they’re looking to slowly bleed dry and strip for parts are our flagship enterprises.

In just the past month impassioned cries for help have sprung out from our capital city’s largest employer and from our newspaper of record (which holds the remarkable distinction of being the country’s longest continuously published newspaper).

Insurance company The Hartford fended off an unsolicited acquisition attempt from global insurer Chubb who released a statement saying it is, “disappointed that The Hartford chose not to engage in discussions regarding a strategic business combination.”

The bloodied water attracted other, more powerful hunters, like Allianz and Berkshire Hathaway.

Whalers keep firing as many harpoons as it takes to get the job done.

Meanwhile, The Hartford Courant is leaning on the legislature to fend off a hostile takeover by Alden Global Capital, a “cost-cutting hedge fund.” This comes AFTER shuttering their iconic newsroom and headquarters.

Economic whalers would be smart to learn the lessons of their far-manlier sea-faring predecessors: over-hunting in the name of profit has a drastic impact on once-vibrant areas and creates a cascade of unintended consequences.

Though it may take longer than it should (the United States didn’t outlaw whaling until 1971, just 5 years before Conny was built), the public will eventually catch on and rise up to defend our beautiful majestic creatures from an excess of greed. Whichever ones are left, at least.

Change is always jarring. Sea-faring whalers were the financial backbone of our colonies and now they’re mere relics. Hartford was a hockey town until it wasn’t. Insurance was its bread and butter when I came of age though that is slowly melting away.

As Jonah and Pinnochio taught us: transformative change comes from the belly of the beast. Though as my daughter knows, it’s dark inside.

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Like many of my fellow Connecticut residents, March 13th is the date my lockdown officially began.

Supermarket-Sweeping across already-ransacked and bare shelves at my local Stop and Shop on that fateful Friday the 13th will long live in my memory as one of the oddest experiences in my life.

As I wrote about here that week, when I noticed my one-year-old daughter absorbing the other customers’ fear and aggression, we took refuge in the florist aisle and focused on something beautiful amid the chaos. We played peek-a-boo with a St. Patrick’s Day 4-leaf clover balloon.

I knew we were embarking on a new reality that afternoon but I had no way of knowing that would be her last time in a non-medical, non-socially distanced public setting for over a year.

Now, here we are a year later once again welcoming the first signs of spring, baking Irish soda bread, and assembling the ingredients for corned beef and potatoes while preparing for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations at our local library (though this time over Zoom).

There is a bittersweetness about the whole thing (and not just from the soda bread’s caraway seeds).

It seems appropriate to honor the moment in some way. I think of it as a “pandemiversary.” A bit dark perhaps, but not as dark as my family’s practice of recognizing Mom’s deathiversary every year on the date of her passing.

Our “pandemiversary” calls not for celebration but for commemoration.

We aren’t usually good at that. We treat Memorial Day synonymously with Labor Day; backyard barbecue bookends for opening and closing our swimming pools.

It isn’t in Americans’ nature to dwell on past unpleasantries. Uncle Sam is never painted with a teardrop tattoo though he could certainly lay claim to plenty.

Whether you’re part of the forces pushing towards vaccinated herd immunity or part of the forces blundering through herd stupidity, it’s impossible to deny that the past 365 days have tremendously impacted our lives.

It’s important to reflect upon such moments, even the unpleasant ones.

We’ve all seen enough “2020 was the worst” and “2020 wasn’t all bad” posts to know last year was a mixed blessing. Now that we’re in 2021 and done blaming a calendar year we can try to comprehend a little bit about what happened.

With Connecticut rocketing past one million vaccines administered and approximately 20% of the population already vaccinated, spring has sprung eternal bringing new light that will, with time, reveal the true scope of damage incurred from the storm which pummeled us throughout the night.

Morning doesn’t bring much help in the midst of a hurricane but it allows you to assess the damages sustained while comforting you that time proceeds and clear skies will be here soon.

From my vantage point, however, it appears as though the past year has burst our resurgent nationalism like a poorly-insulated pipe on a frozen Texas plain.

We’ve been here before.

Patriotism and disillusion are as natural to the American condition as inhalation and exhalation. I’m particularly sensitive to this because I was born into the void between Jimmy Carter’s malaise and Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

There might be nothing more American than periodic disillusionment – except for the surge of optimism that always follows.

Don’t forget to set your clocks forward next Saturday. It’s time for all of us to spring forward; together again.

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Though only 28 days long, no other month packs quite as much of a punch as February.

This is especially true with weather in the northeast.

December snow is welcomed as magical while January snow is tolerated with good humor but February snow is a dreadful nuisance.

By February, kids have retreated from their sleds back to the comfort of their WiFi and public works departments are getting stingy with their salt supplies and overtime leaving progressively sloppier messes behind.

February has a greyish brown hue of dirt mixed in with snow and sand and salt dragged through the streets then frozen and thawed into an everlasting slush.

Last week alone we had three winter storms with one kind enough to stick around for two days.

Even my newspaper’s advertisers have given up on February. I appreciate “40% off a second window or door” as much as the next guy but three weeks is too long to celebrate President’s Day.

I cope with February’s perpetuity by trying to force the future. We bought all the ingredients for making my deceased Grandmother’s Irish Soda Bread but as delicious as it tastes, we’re no closer to seeing green outside our bedroom window.

Though we’re already snacking on it’s candy, Easter is still far more than a few hops away.

I delude myself by equating how much later the sun sets with spring’s impending arrival yet still every time I look out my window there’s someone ice fishing on the reservoir across the street.

Even on the day when it was 48 degrees and sunny, which seemed very reckless.

The adult and child pictured above (whom I presume to be father and son) are two of my favorites. My daughter and I watched them from the driveway this week drilling hole after hole through the ice.

They had at least a half dozen lines but kept throwing down more in a technique I can only describe as “binge fishing.”

Everything’s a binge lately.

I’m an OG binger traditionally preferring books to TV though I’m currently torn between the two.

I don’t binge as quickly I used to binge.

Put a really good book into my younger self’s hands and no matter what else was happening in my life I’d be done with it within two (generally sleepless) nights at most. Now? I’m chafing at the library’s renewal limit.

At least the library has the decency to put a clock on it so I can’t drag the game out the way I do my many other “books in progress” littering my desk and shelves.

Of course the binge I most want to indulge in is sleeping.

I’d offer my first-born child to be a binge sleeper again but that wouldn’t solve the problem cause my second-born child’s the one who keeps waking me up.

He’s also a binge pooper, which now makes me a binge diaper changer, my wife a binge milker, and his two-year-old sister a binge “helper.”

Though her idea of helping is to grab his pacifier any time he isn’t using it then run straight at him from across the room to try and jam it as far back into his throat as possible.

Our current mostly-snowed-in, waking-every-few-hours-to-feed-newborn lifestyle lends itself very well to binge watching TV.

It can be disorienting but it’s also almost soothing to know there’s always another piece of entertainment coming refreshing itself on a never-ending loop.

A TV viewing style to match the lifestyle of the longest month on earth.

My understanding is that when the sun rises in the morning, it’ll finally be March and we’ll be one step closer to this season’s finale.

Of course, with a newborn sleeping just inches from my bed, I’ll probably wake up at least two more times before then.

Next Feeding Starting In: 3… 2…. 1…

[Pre-emptive speculation that a few may email asking what I’ve been bingeing. My current show is the Kominsky Method on Netflix (you can’t go wrong with Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin and each episode is about a bottle-feeding long) and my soon-to-expire library book is Christopher Buckley’s latest satire: Make Russia Great Again. Jenny is deep into the Netflix show The Crown while also reading Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms.]

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As I touched the faded ink, he looked me straight in the eyes so I could see that he was human.

That touch brought history out of the textbook and into my life.

When I was 17 years old, my AP History teacher Leonard Fenelon taught me about historical nuance.

Long before Lin Manuel Miranda made him cool, Len Fen made our entire class pay respect to an Alexander Hamilton statue in between touring Ellis Island and watching Miss Saigon on Broadway.

He taught me that history propels our values and ideals.

When I was 20 years old, I was delivering a message outside the Senate cloakroom in the United States Capitol (sometime after the first World Trade Center tower was hit, but before the true scope of the attack was made clear) completely unaware that a group of passengers in the sky above Pennsylvania were likely saving my life.

That moment showed me that we live through history.

I’ve felt history’s pull in our common experiences ever since – especially this past year.

I felt it when the House of Representatives impeached the President of the United States and again when the Senate voted to acquit.

I felt history’s pull when a gay person won the Iowa Caucuses for the first time.

I felt it when the words “global pandemic” leapt from my library’s History shelf to Current Events, then only became available through curbside pickup.

I felt history’s pull when I saw opportunists filling shopping carts with more toilet paper than they could ever need and driving from store to store buying pallets of hand sanitizer from employees deemed “essential” who still needed to work three jobs to survive.

I felt history’s pull when food lines wrapped around city blocks and stretched onto freeways for miles.

I felt it seeing communities of color waiting hours in line to exercise the right to vote, which more affluent communities like mine exercise in five minutes or less.

I felt it even stronger when I watched a rainbow coalition come together to decry the long-standing knee on black America’s neck and continue the perpetual march towards equality.

I felt history’s pull when over eighty-one million Americans voted for a black woman as Vice President of the United States.

I feel it now as major hospitals are overwhelmed, bodies pile up in refrigerated trucks, and families are torn apart in the fight between science and fiction.

But of all the times I’ve felt history’s pull in the past year, the most jarring was this week’s insurrection at our United States Capitol during the electoral college certification.

I watched all day in shock breaking away only when my toddler daughter needed more of the undivided attention she’s accustomed to getting from me throughout the day.

The following day, I felt numb and not just because I stayed up through the night to witness the legal conclusion.

I largely detached on the second day. Occasionally, I scrolled through a news site, answered a group text with friends, or popped in on social media, but all day I resisted opening the physical newspaper that showed up in my driveway.

I finally opened it at night after my daughter’s bedroom door clicked shut and I breathed that restorative sigh that feeds tired parents’ souls.

Holding the newspaper in my hand made the stories inside seem so much more permanent and tragic.

I read the headline first, “Democracy Attacked,” then the masthead, “Hartford Courant,” with the logo reading, “Founded in 1764.” I wondered where this edition ranked in the archives of America’s oldest continuously published newspaper.

It’s amazing how ink brings history to life.

An old saying sprang to mind, “may you live in interesting times.”

I’ve long thought this was an Irish blessing but Google suggests it may be an English expression based on an unverifiable “ancient Chinese curse” recognizing that “interesting times” are tumultuous and full of despair.

Several minutes of research produced no definitive origin to the expression.

Since truth no longer matters, I’m sticking with the phrase being a blessing and trying to appreciate that though our challenges right now are varied and significant, they do make for interesting times.

It is our nature to define things through silver linings to shape narratives we can live with.

I’ve seen incredible mental contortions this week towards that end, none of which I’ve found persuasive.

The only comfort I’ve been able to take from our common experience over the past year is that it has deepened my appreciation for much of human history and the art it has inspired. This, in turn, has enriched my understanding of what it means to be human.

I used to read Shakespeare with the same detachment I’d have towards a fantasy novel.

The idea of mad tyrants with sycophantic inner circles enabling and scheming for their own purposes seemed as relevant to my worldview as dragons enamored by the beauty of a neighboring kingdom’s princess.

Suddenly, large parts of human history seem more accessible.

It’s easier to imagine the passions of the French Revolution after seeing mobs rampage through our corridors of power, just as I appreciated the suddenness of Pearl Harbor more after hurriedly evacuating the Capitol on 9/11.

Anti-segregationists’ courage is clearer after seeing the naked face of hate.

The Black Plague is even more relatable after seeing just a fraction of its toll overwhelm modern hospitals to the point that patients in some cities are spilling into the streets and mortuaries are turning away customers because they’re overwhelmed.

We are facing enormous challenges as individuals, as a people, and as a Republic. Challenges that, while unprecedented in our time, are well-known obstacles throughout the human experience.

We live in interesting times, which may be a blessing or a curse – only history will know.

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Both expressions seek to immediately end disagreements by referencing absent authorities that usually don’t hold up to scrutiny and may never be seen again.

When someone says to “do your research,” they’re not talking about applying unbiased scientific or academic research methods to critically solve complex problems.

What they’re actually saying is, “align your worldview to mine by subscribing to the same beliefs I follow.”

It’s a rhetorical device meant to shut things down. But, unlike a girlfriend screaming, “don’t tell me how to feel,” or a parent chastising “because I said so,” the phrase “do your research” opens a window for introducing new evidence.

If you’ve ever gotten schooled in an online argument when an opponent lays down the “Do Your Research” card, now you can be schooled by me (a totally trustworthy man with a .com url) on how to do the research they asked for to actually win your online argument.

While I have both a Juris Doctorate and a Bachelor’s Degree in Writing with a Concentration in Political Rhetoric, the credential that most qualifies me in this area is having watched an embarrassing number of episodes from the 2012 MTV show Catfish.

Catfish was a show where a guy named Nev (pronounced NEEVE) calls incredibly trashy people to help them find out if their online boyfriends and girlfriends are fake.

I am not above watching scripted reality TV, but Catfish pushed the suspension of disbelief too far. I couldn’t get past the absurdity of none of the Jerry-Springerish people getting tripped up on the name NEEVE.

Not even once does someone he cold calls ask, “Are you saying Steve!?” They all just pretend to live the kind of life where it’s normal for someone named Nev to call them for a chat.

Nevertheless (production critique aside), Catfish taught me that logic and reason have no place online. In order to understand Internet people, you need to think like Internet people.

That’s the organizing principle behind the following tips on how to “do your research” for online arguments:

Tip #1: Ignoor Speling and Grammer

Grammar is a weapon wielded by the Illuminati to try and control our thoughts. Spelling is the foot soldier beating every word into submission.

Have you ever heard the expression “grammar Nazi” before? That’s (probably) where it comes from. Open your mind!

Tip #2: Invoke Immediacy

While it’s true that everything lives forever on the Internet, the only thing that matters is whatever’s being talked about now. Just ask the Gangnam Style guy.

When it comes to sources, “I’ve heard” is good, but, “I’m hearing” is better because it invokes immediacy. Neither need to be true; it can only be fact-checked if you crack.

Tip #3: Choose Visuals Over Citations

Citations don’t matter, they merely give your opponents a chance to point out flaws in your argument.

This is why I highly suggest using only screenshots to prove your point. Extra points if you highlight or circle relevant portions in neon colors.

Tip #4: Choose Sources that Talk Like You

Every mainstream media source has been effectively smeared online so using them only adds fuel to your adversaries’ fire.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than quoting a source only to find out it’s run by someone who thinks differently than you.

That’s why the best information comes from memes shared by patriotic-sounding Facebook pages with unmockable names like “Friends of Freedom” or “We Stand for the Flag and Kneel for Jesus.”

Sure, a journalist’s lifelong dedication to a profession (with active affiliation in nonpartisan guilds that champion industry standards and practices) sounds good but it can’t match the passion of either a full-time YouTube personality who only gets paid when millions click or of talented hackers propped up by Russian oligarchs eager to please their dictatorial overlord.

Every voice is equal online so there’s no risk in exclusively choosing ones that talk the way you feel.

Tip #5: Make Google Work for You

When Googling something, be sure to type in the exact result you want.

Search engines don’t care about objectivity or context, they only care about the relevance between the search and the results.

It is far more effective to research something with a pre-formed conclusion than to start researching before your mind is made up.

For example, when I Google “Frasier TV show,” I’m shown the show’s Wikipedia page and IMDB listing. Boring!

When I Google “Frasier is a great show,” I’m shown a quote pulled from Reddit reading “Frasier is not simply ‘good,’ it’s brilliant. Brilliant cast, brilliant writing. It’s one of the best sitcoms in the world history of sitcoms. It’s a fantastic series.”

Yet when I Google “Frasier sucks,” I get a Reddit article with a meta description reading in part, “the more I watch it, the more I find myself hating Frasier. He is a giant prick.”

Of course he is! This is the kind of research we can rely on for an informed dialogue! Online research responds favorably to aggressive search terms.

The most important thing to remember when someone online tells you to “do your research” is that they don’t want you to be better informed on a topic so that the conversation reaches a more meaningful depth. They simply want you to look at the information that supports their conclusions.

We’re fortunate to live at the dawn of the information age where (for the first time) we have easy access to most of our ancestral knowledge.

But it isn’t timeless works by great thinkers like Aristotle, Seneca, or Andy Rooney that are most persuasive; we’re most persuaded by the things that look and sound like us, which isn’t actually doing any research after all.

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