Notes: Projects

Also wrote this.

I drove out to Point Richmond to see a show of new work by @douglaswittnebel (who also sold t-shirts). Met and talked with several friends, learning that a mutual friend is now a neighbor. (I wrote to her.) Doug's work was selling. I didn't know the artist that Point Richmond Gallery paired him with, but a friend said she started painting in earnest after she retired. She lives in Pacific Grove, so her plein air work reflects that setting. I only ever go to Point Richmond to see shows at the gallery, so the way in from the freeway isn't a natural act. I made it, but then I had to look up the gallery address on my phone. It was nearby - I should have seen it, but I'd started walking in the wrong direction.

Following up the post immediately below, I wrote up a Common Sense for the Democrats to use, headed into the 2026 Midterms. Less a program, it's more an affirmation of an ethos.

The Midterms are three months away. What's the case for retaking Congress? I don't see the Democrats making it.

My wife surprised me last night by making a joke about "Bourgeois Virtues," asking if the author's name was something I'd made up, since it was so clearly something I might have written. She must be more familiar with my works of fiction than I realized - several of them explore the question of scale as a dividing line between one form the bourgeoisie has taken and the other. I fall in the first category - scale matters to me. I think Marx's MCM theory of capitalism rising up from markets for goods to embrace finance (and try to throew off constraints in the process, consistently triggering its own demise) relates to this.

Reading Musil's pre-WW1 essays. Looked at three volumes on the bourgeoisie that I tried and failed to read before, but now they're pertinent. Making more time for reading this summer.

"Functional stupidity," Musil wrote, leads to fascism, among other things. It seems like we're in an era rife with it.

Jacques Bouveresse's book on Musil, in French, outstrips my ability to read it, but this led me to three articles and back to Musil himself. "My summer reading," I texted my daughter. She earlier surfaced drafts of two pieces related to her stay in Sicily. In other news, I tested Claude's ability to read Russian (it's great). I also interacted with Chat-GPT after an absence, but on something specific. Its interactions are now more Claude-like, I noticed.

One of my friend Rocky's cats.

End of a call earlier. It's July - overcast and in the 50s.

Added a chapter to this novella.

My letter to The Economist, defending Anthropic.

Fourth of July 2026. I added a chapter to In Lindsey County. My daughter texted from "north of Como," saying she missed the south, but adding that she met a descendant of a famous Italian architect from the 1930s and will have lunch with him. That led to an exchange. In other news, a letter I wrote to The Economist was published on its website, I learned from my wife's middle sister. I defended Anthropic from the charge that it's a cult. It's not.

I updated this. The link is to a PDF of the A5-format book.

A celebratory dinner yesterday at Corso with our oldest son. Our daughter is in Verona, she texted. I've never been, I texted back.

Closed, as they say in real estate, which meant getting up early to sign papers in downtown San Francisco, my old stomping grounds across from what used to be Bank of America's HQ. The trains were modestly crowded, but we found seats both ways. I don't miss commuting, and I never particularly liked that part of downtown. What was nice about it - like Café Claude, a zinc bar - is long gone.