…of times as we knew them.

I keep asking myself why Donald Trump got elected President of the United States. And I can’t find an answer. It seems I’m not alone in this, as two months after the election, and two weeks before the inauguration, I’m still reading news articles trying to figure out “what went wrong?” or “how did this happen?”

But I keep looking for an answer and I may have found it, at least in large part, in a March 2016 (yes, that long ago!) article in the Washington Post reporting a conversation with Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams. Scott Adams predicted a landslide Trump victory eight months before the election. The article makes for very interesting, and pretty compelling, reading.

One thing Adams talks about is rationality, and how humans are basically irrational, (and emotional.) As a member of the academic/intelligencia minority, I recognize I live and work in a bubble. Within that bubble things make sense to me, and all the other people inside the bubble seem reasonable to me. When I talk about Trump with them, there’s understanding, sympathy, and empathy. It just reinforces my failure to understand how Trump was elected. The world inside the bubble is rational, but the world outside the bubble is just the opposite.

A world dominated by irrational people cannot, by definition, be understood by people using theories and models of rational human behavior. I’ve spent nearly all my life trying to make sense of the world around me (like most academics), and I’ve been somewhat successful. But I’m about to give up and concede that it’s all just a random mess, an unpredictable morass, a hopeless errand. I’ll just take a seat and watch from here…

Most reviews of 2016 described it as one of the worst years in history (which is a very myopic and modern take on history, since surely 1914-18, and 1929-44 must take the “worst years in modern history” prize, and some of those years before 1900 sound like they really sucked). But back to the present, and yes, 2016 was pretty bad in a global sense, what with the Brexit vote, and the election of a prize dickhead to the US Presidency.

Still, it’s traditional, and perhaps mostly in a hopeful way, to wish others a Happy New Year, even if you see little evidence of widespread happiness, or much new on the horizon. New horrors more likely. So Happy 2017!

Below I provide the recipe for my light and fresh eggnog.

Served plain, with cinnamon, or fresh grated nutmeg

Phil’s Famous Eggnog

Ingredients:
12 eggs
1lb powdered sugar
1qt heavy whipping cream
1qt half-and-half
2cups rum
2cups brandy

Mixing the heavy whipped cream in to the yolk and sugar paste

Procedure:
Separate whites from yolks, keeping whites for later
Mix yolks in a pretty large mixing bowl
Fold in 1lb of powdered sugar until you have a light yellow paste
Add heavy cream and half-and-half slowly while stirring until you have a light cream liquid
Put in fridge for at least an hour to let the egg odor leave the mix
Add rum and brandy to taste. 1 cup each is pretty light alcohol, 3 cups each is pretty hard core, but nice…
I usually let this sit in the fridge overnight, then…
Beat egg whites until fluffy but not stiff
Fold beaten whites into liquid and pour into containers. (This makes quite a lot of eggnog…)

Mixture and egg whites waiting to be beaten

Despite all our optimism, maybe it’s time for a little reality. Adjusting sails now…

There are a few things about a Trump presidency that worry me.

1. With the Republicans controlling the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, there will be no checks and balances against Trump’s policies. Who will say no?
2. Trumps election will give some of his supporters a green light to take their fear, hatred, and bigotry into their communities and act out against people who are different: women, minorities, those of different abilities, and those holding different beliefs.
3. By electing Trump, the United States has set women, minorities, and those with different beliefs back an uncountable number of years. Any progress has been undone.
4. Trump has promised a lot of things. Some promises he might keep: He has promised to nominate a Supreme Court judge to reverse Roe v. Wade. He has promised to reneg on US commitments to reduce greenhouse gases and slow global warming. He has promised to close the Environment Protection Agency. He has promised to repeal Obamacare. These things he could do, with the support of the Republican congress, much to the dismay and detriment of Americans.
5. Some of the promises Trump can’t keep: He can’t build a wall and expect Mexico to pay for it. He can’t slap tariffs on Chinese goods and not expect serious economic hardship for Americans. He can’t put every American to work. He can’t lower taxes and not expect US debt to skyrocket. He can’t bomb the shit out of ISIS.

Thomas Ganderton, born June 5, 1925, died February 10, 1987. Jacqueline Wall Ganderton (nee Height) born April 9, 1924, died September 29, 2016. Married September 25, 1947.

How do we honor and remember those who have gone before us? Death is final, yet we have the ability to keep people alive, within us, not just as memories, but through our thoughts and actions. My parents live on through my recollections, but mostly, and most importantly, through my acts. By being a good person, I honor them.

Memories of my mother.
She was known by many names: mum, John, Johnnie, Jackie, Auntie Johnnie, Grandma Johnnie, Mamma Gandini, Gran, the ancient. She was many things to many people: daughter, sister, love of his life, wife, mother, aunt, grandmother, and friend. A friend most of all, as perhaps most of us would like to be, and be remembered as. She was someone to talk with, to share moments with, over a cup of morning coffee or afternoon tea. She actually enjoyed a cup of coffee, especially at a coffee shop in the mall. But a cup of tea is what she will be most associated with. A special blend of leaves and other ingredients she concocted that combined to make a great cup of tea.

Mum enjoyed a simple life, although she was by no means limited in her worldly view. She had travelled the world. To some places in person, but to more places through books, and thanks to the ABC and BBC, via television. I believe she holds the record (yet to be acknowledged by Guinness) as the longest continuous member of a book club in the world! For over 50 years she read the 11 monthly books, and many others in between. I’m sure she read thousands of books in her lifetime, literally. Her simple pleasures, especially later in life, were reading quietly, enjoying her garden, and spending time in conversation with a friend or friends over a cup of tea.

Her favorite color was blue. She adored the ballet. She preferred a time when people treated others with more respect, and didn’t use ugly language. She was bored by politics, which reveals the true depth of her intellect. I don’t know if she had a favorite piece of music, as music didn’t seem to play a large part in her life. I remember as a teenager playing Frank Zappa at high volumes without her ever complaining despite having her sewing machine right between my speakers!

She took great pride in the achievements of her children, and their families. She was a very proud grandmother, and great grandmother. I expect her legacy to live on in their love of beautiful things, and the knowledge that tea is the universal panacea.

Here is a gallery of photos of my mother and father.

Mum and Dad’s wedding

Mum with sister Leona

Paul’s family sans Robert and new grandchildren from Louise

Mum with Phil and grand daughter Emily

Mum with grand daughter Kirsten

Tom Ganderton, debonair

Sports car racing is the best. Period. The cars bear some resemblance to cars you can actually drive on the street, unlike Formula 1, or Nascar, which–while the most popular forms of motor racing–are only like regular cars in having four wheels and an engine.

The World Endurance Championship (WEC) is perhaps the pinnacle of sports car racing, as it includes the 24 hours of Le Mans each year. There are other, shorter six hour races in the series and I attended the WEC race at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) near Austin in Texas a few weeks back. During a five day, 1800 mile journey with friends from the Porsche club, I drove to Austin to see the race, then spent a couple of days in the Texas Hill Country and its delightful roads.

The WEC race started in the heat and humidity of southern central Texas at 5pm and ended six hours later in barely nicer conditions. But Porsche won ahead of an Audi and a Toyota by dint of luck and perseverance. That pretty much sums up endurance racing.

There are lots of items on a true car-guy’s bucket list including: an F1 race, Le Mans, Nurburgring, and for a Porschephile there’s Rennsport Reunion and the factory tour. A little further down the list is Monterey Car Week, six days of all cars, all day in August, held at venues on the Monterey Peninsula, including Monterey, Carmel, and Laguna Seca racetrack.

I went to Car Week with a group of fellow Porsche club members this year and it lived up to the hype! So many cars in five days that I got tired and overwhelmed. You can read all about it, day by day, here.

A scene from Ocean Ave Carmel as the cars from the Pebble Beach Concours moved on to the venue after display in the street.

Golf is an Olympic sport at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, the first time since 1904 that golf was a recognized Olympic sport. Back in 1904 I’m pretty confident every golfer was an amateur as the Professional Golfer’s Association (PGA) of America was founded in 1916. The Olympics were open only to amateurs until 1992 when professional basketball players were allowed to represent their countries. Since then the rationale for allowing professionals to compete has been to showcase the “best players in the world” to compete on the Olympics stage.

There will be both male and female competitions at the Olympics, and while many of the best golfers decided not to compete (mainly due to the Zika virus threat), there will be no amateur men golfers and only two amateur women golfers in Rio. There’s a nice discussion of this here at the GolfWeek website.

I’m of the opinion that the Olympics should be for amateurs. There are many “official” events in professional sports to showcase the abilities of professional athletes, such as the Tour de France, the World Series, and the US and British Opens. But there are few opportunities to see the best amateurs in the world compete. I’m old enough to have watched the Olympics when it was the most prestigious display of amateur talent. That remains true for swimmers, track and field athletes, and gymnasts. Maybe that’s why these events are still the most watched…

Follow-up:
The Olympics are over, and the men’s golf gold medalist is Justin Rose of Great Britain, and the women’s gold medalist is Inbee Park of South Korea. Both are worthy champions!

After the USGA spoiled the win of Dustin Johnson at the 2016 Men’s US Open by delaying the decision to penalize him for interfering with the ball on a 5th hole put, it’s hard to believe that the organization that hosts the Men’s US Open and the US Women’s Open could do worse. But they just did. Johnson was not informed of a possible penalty until the 12th hole and while he won the Open clearly, regardless of the penalty, he was not assessed the penalty until after he has completed his round, delaying the award ceremony.

The US Women’s Open finished Sunday July 10 with a 3-hole playoff between Brittany (aka Bethany*) Lang and Anna Nordqvist. All even going into the third playoff hole, TV commentators noticed that cameras had caught Nordqvist’s wedge move a few grains of sand before hitting her ball in a bunker on the 17th, the second playoff hole. USGA officials were notified and after review notified Nordqvist of the assessed penalty (two strokes) after she had played her third shot on the 18th fairway. They then informed Lang of Nordqvist’s penalty before she played her third shot. Lang then changed clubs and played a much more conservative shot on to the green, knowing she had a two-shot cushion to win the event. Nordqvist went on to make a mess of the hole while Lang won handily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGdJ1Wn698A

The USGA hosts the Opens (Men’s, Women’s, and Senior) because these competitions are open to both amateur and professional golfers., however it’s been a long time since an amateur won an Open. They also control the Rules of Golf, which creates the irony here–both the Men’s and Women’s Opens in 2016 ended in rule infractions and penalties that were handled in ways that were controversial, and reflected badly on the organization.

*The President of the USGA repeatedly called Brittany Lang, the US Women’s Open champion Bethany during the awards ceremony.