Hair

The Lifetouch representative helping with school picture day during seventh grade had poor handwriting. When I received my packet of pictures, the name on the envelope was, "May Vale". I was horrified, and I quickly became the victim of endless ridicule by the other students in my carpool. The only way to ensure that name didn't make it into the yearbook was to have my picture retaken on make-up picture day, checking that they clearly and correctly wrote down my name this time. The new photo to be taken, which would supersede my original one, was incidental, which was a shame, because I really liked my original photo.

One morning after showering, I tried parting my hair down the middle. Whoa, I thought as I looked at myself in the mirror, look how handsome I am! I kept the look and emerged confidently from the bathroom. When my older brother spotted me, he proceeded to criticize my hairstyle. I can't remember if the criticism was that only girls part their hair in the middle, or that I looked incredibly dorky.

In spite of my older brother's derision, I decided to part my hair down the middle for the make-up picture. I felt confident in my decision to do so until I got the new picture back a few weeks later. Objectively, the picture was fine--albeit not as good as my original photo--but every time I looked at it, I could not push what my older brother had said about my hair out of my mind. I became ashamed of that photo.

Later that year was when the texture of my hair thickened, and it started to get curly. If it was windy--or, more commonly, after I ran the mile during morning P.E.--the individual hairs within a lock would separate from each other, puffing outward. Most people want their hair to have more volume; I had extra volume I wished I could give away. It became difficult to tame and for me to keep a clean-cut appearance.

I no longer considered getting a buzz cut an option, even though I had done so every spring or summer prior. Last year, in sixth grade, my best friend and I happened to get buzz cuts around the same time. Since we were always together, many of my classmates had assumed we did it together. At the eighth grade softball game, we sat together in the front of the bleachers; from the back of the bleachers, an eighth grader called to us, "Hey bald-headed twins, move!" I heard laughter behind me and some slight muttering about us being gay. That was the last time I got a buzz cut.

Instead, I grew my hair out. My older brother encouraged me to do so, and it was consistent with the classic rock music phase I was in. I had progressed through puberty enough such that I was less afraid of being perceived as a girl, as had happened with my younger brother when he grew his hair out. If my hair was going to be difficult to tame anyway, I might as well have it be long.

This was when my fate was sealed that I would forever be a shower-in-the-morning person, rather than a shower-at-night person--and I would have to shower daily. Showering in the morning was essential to rein in my hair's volume to something resembling a normal aesthetic. Showering in the morning became necessary to exert over it whatever little control I could muster.

And yet expressing why I needed to shower in the morning was out of the question from both a spiritual standpoint and a gendered standpoint. Spiritually, the messaging I was served was that I was not supposed to be so fixated on my physical appearance; that was vanity. "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). By caring about how I looked, I was being self-centered rather than Jesus-centered, which was sinful. And anyway, only women and girls cared about how they looked. Men and boys were not supposed to care. The boys and men from church groups with whom I went on camping trips could all get by without having to shower daily. My need for a daily morning shower undercut my masculinity.

My middle school long hair lasted less than a year. I chose to attend the Christian high school at which my brother was enrolled, which legislated that a male student's hair could not extend past his eyebrows, past his ear lobes, or past the back of his shirt collar. After my long locks were chopped, I learned just how curly my hair had become over the previous 18 months. Waves, tight curls, and tiny ringlets distributed non-uniformly made my inch-and-a-half long hair atop my head look only half an inch long in some places. The overlapping curls and waves made my hair puff outward and upward, and wind or rain could make it double in size.

Visor beanies were in fashion at that time, and I quickly adopted them as my signature look at the outset of high school. I had so much anxiety about how my hair looked at any given moment and near-constant frustration that it would not behave the way I wanted it to, so I carried a visor beanie with me almost wherever I went in case of hair emergencies. If my hair poofed up, I could wear the beanie for a while in hopes that the beanie fabric's tensile strength would flatten and smooth my hair out. Best of all, I could use a beanie for mornings when my access to a shower was restricted.

Throughout high school, I visited barber shops as infrequently as I could manage. It seemed no matter what I asked the barber to do, I always walked away with a haircut much shorter than I had in mind. The curls made it appear even shorter than it was, accompanied by several lone wavy strands snaking upward from my scalp. After the first few haircuts, I chalked it up to the barbers' faults. That this outcome occurred every time I visited a barber eroded this assertion's veracity. 

So I began taking more drastic measures. During my sophomore year, I did not rinse out my conditioner after application in the shower, which enabled me to keep the hair on the top of my head pasted down and soft in texture once it dried. Several girl friends repeatedly told me that they wanted my hair, to which I sardonically responded, "No, you don't," while other girl friends were disappointed in my flat hairstyle choice, urging me to "embrace the curl!" Everyone seemed to have an opinion on my hair, while I was the one who had to actually reckon with possessing a hair type and texture that I did not want.

During one of the summers in which I was a junior counselor at a Christian camping organization, the Camp Director chastised me on the third day of pre-camp training that my morning shower was an imposition on everyone else. He sternly told me that he expected everyone to be present for the start of breakfast, which I had missed the previous two days for my shower. He deemed me selfish for choosing to shower at that time and for using up the cabin's limited hot water supply. I was ashamed. I did not bother explaining to him my reasoning for needing to shower first thing in the morning, because I knew that in his eyes, the need to feel okay about my appearance would not be a rational justification. How I felt about my appearance was irrelevant to him.

Tired of bad haircuts, I let my hair grow a bit longer at the beginning of my junior year. By September, I knew my hair had crossed the thresholds outlined in the student handbook--my hair extended past my eyebrows at times, depending on how tight my curls were that day--but I opted to wait until a teacher asked me to cut it. Surprisingly, several additional weeks passed without a teacher reprimand.

One day in October, two classmates in my physics class and I were invited to a special lunchtime assembly about an undisclosed subject. We were an odd combination of bedfellows with no overlapping social or academic characteristics. It turned out our common trait was that the three of us--plus about 40 other boys across all classes--had been identified by our teachers as being out of compliance with the school's hair length rules. During the special lunch assembly, the 40 or so boys who had been summoned, myself included, were handed a comb and then one by one forced to sit in a chair in front of each other while the Principal, Vice Principal, and a Bible teacher issued dispositions about exactly how we needed to get our hair cut within the next week. As we left the classroom in which the assembly was held, dozens of curious students waiting outside eager to know what the special assembly was about swarmed us asking for details.

That afternoon, I posted a Facebook Note describing the details of the incident and how humiliated I felt by it. The responses I received from fellow students and recent alumni generally fell into two camps: those sympathetic to the dehumanizing experience I endured ("That's fucked up"), or those who were apologists for the way the school handled it ("Well, you agreed to abide by these rules, and the Bible says you should obey authority"). The school staff and faculty also got involved, insidiously making it my fault for not expressing my anger to them in a biblical way as outlined in Matthew 18.

In follow-up conversations with school faculty, they said they might be willing to consider changing the hair rules if I presented them with a compelling case. Rather than seeking to understand my perspective--for instance, why short hair may not be ideal for my hair type--the onus was completely on me to justify why I did not want my hair short. The hair rules as they stood were the presumed default; the faculty did not reflect after the fact that perhaps the rules were flawed to begin with.

I got my hair cut the day after the assembly. And that was when I started the cheeky practice of hanging a sarcastic paper sign around my neck the day after I received a haircut:

 

DAILY SPECIAL

Handshakes.....................................................FREE

High-fives.......................................................FREE

Hugs.............................................................FREE

Asking about school..........................................$5.00

Asking about my day..........................................$5.00

Asking about my hair........................................$10.00

Commenting on my hair....................................$20.00

My mother was never pleased any time I fashioned one of these signs. "You know this is just going to draw more attention to your hair, right?"

In spite of my disdain for my hair, the next year, I quietly hoped that I would be nominated for the "Best Hair" senior class award. My hair was nothing if not unique, and I had certainly made quite the ruckus following the hair assembly. Maybe this would be a way for my hair to redeem itself, to provide some positive contribution to my life, trivial as it might be. But the award went to a popular, pretty boy with stylish hair.

I visited my friend's mother, a stylist, for the last haircut I received in high school in January of my senior year shortly after my birthday. Despite my high expectations for her to be able to give me a short hairstyle that worked with my hair type, her haircut turned out exactly like all of my previous ones. Worst of all, her $42 haircut was at least twice as expensive as anywhere else I had gone. I handed her the three $20 bills I had on me, but she did not open the register to make change. She sent me home with a bottle of expensive conditioner that my friend, her daughter, used. I rationalized the transaction by assuming the change I did not receive had constituted her tip plus the conditioner, even though I did not ask for the conditioner. The following morning at school, my friend, her daughter, handed me $18, saying that I overpaid, and that her mom gave me the conditioner as a birthday gift. It was extremely odd.

That was the last haircut I had for five and a half years. I graduated from the hair length rules at my high school into a world where I could choose my hair length. I could grow it long enough such that it could weigh itself down--maybe I would no longer have to worry about the wind expanding it into a "jew-fro".

Around this time, Lady Gaga released Born this Way. In the song "Hair", Gaga asserts that hair is "all the glory that I bear", is an essential part of one's identity, is inextricable from the self--"I am my hair". As the song's play count kept increasing in my iTunes library, I found myself of two minds about the song: on the one hand, I found the equation of hair with identity reductive; yet I also understood the pain of not being able to present my hair how I wanted. I analogized Gaga's relationship with her mother in the song, who cut her hair as punishment, to my high school, whose rules required me to cut my hair lest I face punishment.

Despite my eye-rolling at the teenage subject matter of the song, it had staying power with me during my first few months of college. I found the pre-chorus line, "I just wanna be myself and I want you to love me for who I am," particularly resonant as I struggled to make new friends. On a day of especially strong feelings of loneliness, I posted that lyric as my Facebook status. Ignorant of the deep anguish that prompted that post, a friend commented: "Is it bad that I almost laughed out loud at this?"

I became friends with Nina, a senior, at my new college church group. One day, I leafed through her Facebook profile pictures, and I came across a photo of her with a shaved head dated about a year and a half prior. The photo was captioned, "why I did it," followed by a link. The link was a video of her explaining that her life had always been a "normal, comfortable, middle-class, white" life, and that it was unfair that she received special treatment because she possessed these outwardly visible characteristics. To help her understand what others experienced in being judged for their appearances, she decided to shave her head. A timelapse showed her undergoing the process, her brother in charge of the clippers. 

The comments section was overwhelmingly positive, lauding Nina for her courage. At least two comments included the phrase, "You are not your hair!" It was an interesting juxtaposition to encounter that exact phrasing at the same time that Gaga's lyric, "I am my hair!" bounced around in my head. Who was right? I pondered.

In retrospect, Nina's act was a performative flavor of SJWism that was more socially acceptable in the early 2010s but probably would not be viewed favorably nowadays. All photos of Nina from that timeframe appear to have since been deleted from her Facebook profile. 

All throughout undergraduate and grad school, I kept growing my hair. I gained a modicum of control back when it became long enough to tie back into a ponytail. I regularly wore my hair in a bun for at least two years before the "man bun" craze swept the internet. Every three months or so, I very imprecisely trimmed about an inch off to mitigate split ends, or so I was instructed to do--I never actually encountered any. Perhaps the sole benefit of curly hair that I found was that the waves completely hid my jagged trimming jobs.

The drawbacks of my long hair, however, were numerous, not least of which was the sheer number of times I was called, "Blond Jesus", or "Weird Al". Those occurrences more than anything else made me want to cut it all off. But I remembered how miserable short hair had made me feel about my appearance in high school. I could not risk that again. So I kept growing.

I cut it off a few days before I began my first full-time job after grad school. Doing so was not a prerequisite for the job; I had interviewed with the man bun and still received an offer. I simply decided it was time for a new era. I suppose by that point, I was ready to accept that my short hair might still have an awful texture. But, to my delight, the hair that was left had smoothed out quite a bit. Nowadays, people are surprised when I tell them my hair is (was?) curly.

I still get a lot of questions asking, "Why did you grow it out?" or "Why did you cut it off?" I wish I had more elegant answers than the truth. I grew it out because I hated the look and texture of my short hair; it truly made me feel ugly. And I cut it off because I decided I was done having long hair; I simply felt like it.

And maybe I don't need to assign any more meaning to it than that.

LBJ Biography Reflections

The other day, I finished the fourth volume of Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson biography of the former President. The fifth volume is still being written, the tail-end of over 40 years of meticulous research and masterful writing by the author. I cannot extol Caro's work enough; I've started my next audiobook by a different author providing a history of reality television, and the level of detail contained in the text as well as the writing style just leaves something to be desired when following a Caro masterpiece.

But I digress. Caro's biography of LBJ changed my perspective on several things, a few of which I am documenting here as lessons learned.

Lesson 1: Election integrity in the United States has always been fraught.

Caro describes in The Path to Power, the first volume, how in LBJ's first unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1942, he played his cards wrong, announcing victory in certain precincts before all results were counted. By doing so, LBJ's opponent knew how many votes he had to "come up with" to ensure victory. His opponent still had enough time to encourage his pawns in precincts that had not yet reported to change the results. Caro characterized such practices as commonplace in Texas politics. He described how, especially in the rural counties of Texas near the Rio Grande, voting was effectively controlled by local bosses, or "jefes", who either cast ballots on voters' behalves, told them how to vote, or bribed voters to cast their ballots a certain way. A candidate could essentially "buy" a precinct. And that was how the game was played.

The final episode in the second volume in the series, Means of Ascent, tells the story of LBJ's victory over Coke Stevenson in the runoff Democratic primary election for the open U.S. Senate seat for Texas. LBJ eked out with the nomination by a margin of a mere 87 votes, and he went on to win the general election and win his Senate seat. However, Caro provides substantial evidence that LBJ's victory in the primary runoff election was achieved through fraudulence. The electoral results in Precinct 13 ("Box 13") in Jim Wells County showed an addition of 202 votes after the polls had closed, with registered voters who did not show up to the polls being added to the end of the results tabulation in alphabetical order, in the same handwriting, and with the same pen. 200 of these votes went to LBJ, and 2 went to Stevenson. Challenges to the results' certification were filed in courts, but access to the original Box 13 receipts was never obtained to verify these results. Had the 202 names not been added, or had this precinct's results been thrown out, LBJ would not have ascended to the Senate in 1948.

Given how Caro characterized the convenient vote totals in 1942 as the way the game was played, it seems probable that what happened in the Box 13 scandal was merely one incident--the one that got challenged in court and therefore had visibility. Stevenson almost certainly had his own pawns at work "coming up with" votes all across the state. It's also hard to determine to what extent LBJ was personally involved in the Box 13 machinations.

Regardless, Caro's writing made me consider current conversations and anxieties around election fraud. The 2020 election educated me quite a bit about voting security and certification practices and processes. The country's magnifying glass on the vote collections and tabulations in that election somewhat shook my confidence in our elections' integrity because of how many ways that exist to game the system. (I do not believe that mail-in voting ballots are magically a more secure way to vote, as the left seems to unequivocally advocate.) I got the impression that election security and integrity was deteriorating from how it used to be.

But the LBJ stories showed me that voting has always been corrupt in the United States, with bad actors, especially those in charge of the results, always able to exploit the system. What I also realized is that elections are more, not less, secure now than they were in the past. Our electoral system learns and adapts when loopholes are discovered. Basic changes such as using machines that count ballots, which are far less error-prone than hand counting, enhance election security.

That is not to say we should be grateful for what we have and just accept that things are improved now. We need to remain vigilant and to continue to challenge our elections systems to ensure that one person equals one vote. But it is folly to think that election integrity is getting worse over time. That was my takeaway.

Lesson 2: Utilities should not be run by private companies.

Utilities were really not a central plot point of the biography volumes. However, in The Path to Power, Caro goes to great lengths to describe daily life in the rural Hill Country of Texas in the early 1900s. He describes in detail the grueling manual labor required, mostly performed by women, to complete daily household tasks without the aid of electricity or plumbing: collecting water, washing clothes, ironing, cooking. He describes this not only to set the scene of LBJ's boyhood, but also to highlight how transformative extending electricity to the Hill Country through the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was to those who lived there.

The REA was established to fill a gap that the private market, which was the mechanism by which electricity was provided prior to the New Deal, refused to fill. Private electrical providers refused to extend their service areas to rural areas due to a low perceived benefit-cost ratio. Because these rural areas were sparsely populated, the revenue that these companies would obtain by providing service would be small compared to the upfront costs required to construct the electrical distribution infrastructure. It did not make business sense for them to venture into these service areas.

This is exactly the niche that government is intended to fill. No private company would want to provide roads, streetlights, drainage systems, or other such utilities, because these services would not be profitable. To ensure all citizens have fair and equal access to what we deem a basic standard of living, the government must step in. The private market cannot be relied upon.

I'm sure it's more complicated than this, but I am reminded of PG&E and the decades of deferred maintenance on their electrical systems in the name of shareholder profits. Whether or not this is true, it is plausible. And faulty PG&E and SCE equipment has been named as causes for several massive wildfires in California within the last decade. It's unclear whether wildfire destruction could have been mitigated had there not been a profit incentive by the utility operator, nor is it clear that a government-run utility would be better. But at the very least, government-run utilities have the mandate of ensuring fair and equal access to its citizens.

Lesson 3: The United States Senate is designed to be obstructionist.

The third volume, Master of the Senate, begins with a 100-page history of the U.S. Senate. Through this history, Caro highlights several nuances of the Senate: how it distinguished itself from the House through more lofty and stately member conduct and courtesy; how strongly it valued its independence from the executive branch and sought to entrench that independence; how the rules governing Senate practice were set by the Senate itself rather than being spelled out in the Constitution; and how in the post-Civil War era, Southern Senators became experts on Senate rules, parliamentary procedures, precedent, and strategy, because they knew that realistically, a Southerner could not be elected President, so they instead focused their efforts to Senate mastery.

But the most compelling point I took away was that although the Senate is frequently lambasted today for its lack of progress and how it does not reflect majority opinion, it was designed to be this way. Caro includes in his volume the possibly apocryphal story of George Washington pouring his tea into his saucer to illustrate to Thomas Jefferson that just as the saucer cools the tea, the Senate was intended to "cool" or "temper" House legislation. Indeed, the very structure of the Senate, with its members serving six-year terms that expire on offset midterm cycles, was designed to ensure it was free from the whims and vicissitudes of the executive--and even the House--electoral cycles. The fact that Senators were not directly elected until 1913 was another way of preserving the Senate's independence from popular opinion. Thus, the Senate was designed to be a tempering governing body instead of a body driving progress.

Furthermore, the Senate in its structure is undemocratic by design--and this was intended. Each state was allocated two Senators, regardless of the population within the state. While this structure does not intuitively seem fair, its purpose was to mitigate the "tyranny of the majority" in fully democratic systems. Equal Senate representation by state was explicitly designed to grant minority interests of smaller states more power, ensuring that these interests were not trampled as they would be in the House.

It was a sobering reminder that as frustrating as the Senate's present-day lack of progress can be, it had more or less always functioned that way. The New Deal era was a notable exception to this historical precedent, in which FDR basically got a rubber stamp from Congress to pass his New Deal legislation. And, in fact, there were serious contemporary concerns about the perceived degree of control that the executive had over the Senate during the New Deal. The marriage between the Senate and the executive branch was ended when FDR attempted his "court-packing" scheme to add more justices to the Supreme Court.

In an interview given related to The Power Broker, Caro's biography of Robert Moses, Caro expressed his own frustration and concern that the modern-day Senators belonging to the same party as the President largely cow to what their party's executive wants. "Don't you [Senators] know the rich history of the Senate? Don't you see what you're losing?" Caro approximately expressed.

Of course, just because the Senate was originally designed to be obstructionist does not mean that this structure necessarily continues to serve the 21st century United States. Our Constitution need not be considered an infallible document, and the "founders' intent" need not receive as much weight as it does in modern-day arguments. Governmental structures should be adapted to suit the needs of its people, and it is worth questioning whether the Senate's structure is suited to modern Americans' needs.

Lesson 4: Senate mechanics are complicated.

A lot of ink is spilled in Master of the Senate and The Passage of Power, the fourth volume, describing the nuances of parliamentary procedure at play in the Senate. Infamously, the Senate has special rules and procedures that minority interests can leverage to indefinitely stall legislation: namely, the filibuster. The filibuster is unique to the Senate, which I hadn't realized. A filibuster can be stopped through the achievement of cloture, which was established through Senate rules in 1917. At the time of LBJ's time in the Senate, cloture required a two-thirds majority to pass (today, it is 60 percent).

A lot of strategy goes into navigating around the filibuster: if legislation is brought to the floor, will it be filibustered? And if it is filibustered, can cloture be achieved? The filibuster, or even the threat of a filibuster, sometimes stops legislation from even being brought to the Senate floor at all if the answer to the latter question is unclear

And even upstream of bringing legislation to the floor, legislation has to be added to the Senate agenda first. Even a motion to add something to the Senate agenda itself can be filibustered, so there is a necessary calculus behind that decision as well.

This is why the ability to "count votes" is so valuable in the Senate. Caro asserts that LBJ was deft at doing so, which is why he was so successful as the Majority Leader of the Senate.

But the point is, navigating a bill through the Senate is a fascinating problem in game theory requiring a lot of will and skill.

Lesson 5: I still don't know if LBJ truly cared about civil rights.

One of the landmark pieces of legislation passed while LBJ was President was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When LBJ was the Senate Majority Leader, he also oversaw passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. Additionally, Caro highlights several stories from Johnson's life which paint a picture of a compassionate man who wanted to improve the lives of the downtrodden. One such story covered his stint as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, where his colleagues characterized him as the first teacher who cared about the kids in the school, most of whom were poor Latino children. LBJ successfully obtained funding to provide resources such as playground equipment for the students, and he came in early and stayed late to help his students. He had plenty of feathers in his cap with respect to civil rights and seeking to improve the lives of the less fortunate.

On the other hand, LBJ was a product of his time, and he was a Southerner. Caro includes several examples of LBJ disparagingly referring to black Americans, including use of the n-word. His first speech after he was elected to the Senate was his "We of the South" speech which cemented his allegiance to the Southern cause and all that it stood for.

Nevertheless, one of Caro's main theses in the volumes is that LBJ had an extremely high political acumen. LBJ took to heart input from many an advisor that if he wanted to be elected President, he would have to "clean up" on Civil Rights, abandoning the "scent of magnolia". LBJ would often switch his positions or ideas on issues when talking to different audiences to the point that many people could not tell what LBJ truly stood for or believed. He would even change his style of speech and pronunciation of words ("Negro" in particular) based on whom he was speaking with. He was sly, ambitious, shrewd, and opportunistic.

From Caro's narrative, it is hard to definitively say that LBJ was personally invested in championing civil rights. Was he simply exploiting a pressing social issue to advance his own political career? A solid argument can be made to support that claim.

False Causality

At 8:48 PM Eastern Time on Wednesday, January 30, 2025, a U.S. Army helicopter crashed into AA5342, operated by PSA Airlines, while the latter was on final approach to Runway 33 at DCA. There are believed to be no survivors from either aircraft. NTSB is in process of conducting its investigation into the crash. But while we have a vacuum of information about the factors of the crash, people have supplied their own bogus explanations for causes of what happened.

Our cheeto in chief sticks out like a sore thumb in this regard. In his press conference, he weaponized the tragedy by tying it back to his vendetta against federal government DEI hiring initiatives. He strongly implied that DEI hiring could have been a factor in causing the crash.

To make that case, one would have to prove that either the controller overseeing the regional jet and the helicopter, the PSA airlines pilot and first officer, or the helicopter pilot were hired with relaxed qualification standards. It would also have to be proved that their performance records had been sub-standard and yet they were retained in spite of poor job performance. That is not how the aviation sector works. It has strict standards for staff operating in these critical positions directly responsible for overseeing the safety of others' lives. Drawing a line between DEI hiring initiatives and this crash is a complete red herring, entirely a false causality narrative.

Of course, the left is not immune to lapses in sound logic. In the previous days, I've seen multiple retweets of a list of facts deliberately sequenced to suggest that the cheeto's administration played a causal role in the crash. These tweets cite that in the days preceding the crash, the FAA administrator and the TSA administrator were ousted, a federal hiring freeze (including ATC) was instated, and the Aviation Security Advisory Committee was disbanded. The tweets then culminate in the January 30 crash. Even Mary Pete's tweet commenting on the situation suggested a linkage between these occurrences.

This is equally as spurious as the cheeto's arguments. The tweets imply that had these two men not been ousted, ATC hiring been permitted to continue, or the Aviation Security Advisory Committee retained, the January 30 crash might not have happened. None of these conditions would have had any direct role in or control over what happened. The crash would still have happened, even if nothing had been changed from January 19. These stories are complete false causality narratives.

Perhaps those making the aforementioned arguments--internet pseudo-pundits, Mary Pete, incendiary former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and the cheeto himself--would assert that I'm misinterpreting what they've said. But they juxtaposed their presentation of facts in such a way to guide their readers or listeners toward certain conclusions. It's lazy, it's sloppy, it's trash, it's bogus, and it's infuriating.

And I suppose it's not the faulty arguments themselves that upset me so. It's the fact that so many people think these arguments are credible and are giving them air time.

I had to get this out of my system. I know this is only one of many times in the next four years when garbage logic like this will be put forth for serious consideration.

Terminal Observations at Logan: A Story from December 7, 2023

The Marimba tone blared out from my phone speaker at 4:00 AM. Although I had been in Boston for the three days prior, my body still had not adjusted to the time difference. It's too early to be waking up.

But today was the day that we were going to do terminal observations. To pull out our clipboards and watch strangers sort themselves into the general, Pre-Check, and CLEAR checkpoint queues. To see how long groups of travelers took to use a kiosk, to drop their bags off, or to speak with an agent. And to get the best representative data, we needed to observe the period when the system was under the most strain; its peak-period performance. So we had to watch the terminal in the 5 AM hour as yawning red-eyed passengers scrambled to board their early-morning departures.

Flipping on a light, I got out of bed, my head recoiling and my eyes squinting from the light. I showered, brushed my teeth, styled my hair, and donned my "client visit" attire--a suit and tie. Because I was in Boston in December, I also wrapped a pashmina around my neck for warmth.

Two colleagues and I met in the lobby of our Copley Square hotel. We summoned an Uber to take us to Terminal B. At this inhumanely hour, the streets were nearly deserted.

Upon arrival, I placed myself in the Terminal B East lobby, standing against the back wall of the circulation corridor running parallel to Spirit's, Alaska's, and Southwest's check-in counters. From my vantage point, I could see all three sets of counters. I drew three tables on a blank sheet of paper I procured from my binder: one for Spirit, one for Alaska, and one for Southwest. I began making tally marks for each passenger that used a particular check-in channel: Did this passenger use a kiosk and then leave? Did this passenger go straight to the full-service counter? Did this passenger use a kiosk and then go to bag drop? My brain struggled to keep track of all the simultaneous transactions occurring across three check-in areas as I made additional marks. This is a fraught exercise, I thought. I'm not getting this perfectly, and this is too small of a sample size anyway.

The female Alaska agent kept looking at me as I marked up my page. Yeah, this probably looks weird. A few minutes later, with a lull in customers, she approached me.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm on a project working with the airport. I'm collecting data on what check-in modes passengers use."

"Do you have a badge?"

"No."

"Who are you working with?"

"The Capital Programs group for Massport. [Name] is our contact."

I held up the binder I was using, the cover of which had a printed photo of the Massport staff member who served as our project manager above his phone number. She examined the binder.

"Normally, they tell us if they're going to have staff out here like this."

"I can try giving him a call, but he's probably sleeping."

As I dialed my Massport contact's number, the agent walked back toward her desk. I saw her also make a call. As expected, my call went to voicemail. She remained behind her desk, so I continued to observe passengers and collect data. Moments later, a Massachusetts State Trooper wearing his full leather-daddy boots, uniform, and hat approached the Alaska counter and began speaking with the agent. They both walked over toward me. I repeated to the officer what I was doing, why I was doing it, and whom I was working with at Massport.

"Ops has no information that anyone was going to be out here doing this," the officer told me. So [name] forgot to alert operations.

The officer also attempted to call my contact. He left him a voicemail, identifying himself as an officer.

Not wanting to cause trouble, I stopped making tally marks on my sheet. I called my supervisor, who was a badgeholder and was stationed in Terminal B West. As I explained to him what was happening, four other State Troopers joined our exchange.

We remained in deadlock for about another five minutes, when my supervisor came over, showed his badge, and explained our purpose for watching strangers. The State Troopers were not ready to let us go until they received confirmation from Massport staff that we were authorized. Chatter about us fluttered in and out on the officers' radios. No one was tense; no one was angry; everyone was calm.

Shortly after 6:00 AM, our Massport contact had awakened, seen the bombardment of messages on his phone, and called operations to sort things out. As the information gradually trickled into the officers' radios, they slowly started peeling off and returning to their normal posts. We held a final exchange, and then the State Troopers were gone. My colleagues also returned to their positions. But by now, the early-morning departure peak was over. I had missed dozens of passengers sorting themselves into the various check-in channels. The queues were empty.

I stood there for another five minutes, making very few additional tally marks, until I decided to join my colleagues in Terminal B West--American's counters were allegedly still busy and could provide a data source. To show her I harbored no ill will, I decided to approach the Alaska agent who first confronted me, who remained behind her desk.

"Thank you for calling the State Troopers; that was the right thing to do. I know what I was doing definitely looked suspicious."

As I crossed the parking lot to get to the other side of the Terminal B landside, I remembered that BOS was the originating airport for the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Perhaps understandably, airport security was consequently a very serious matter at BOS. Perhaps the Massachusetts State Police force felt guilty for allowing terrorists to pass under their noses and kill thousands. Perhaps BOS's failure to guarantee the safety of the National Airspace System created a culture of fear among airport employees.

Is that the kind of society we want to cultivate--one of mistrust? How can we effectively coexist if we are constantly surveilling each other and we don't believe what they tell us? Have we overdone it with the safety and security rhetoric?

While I personally may not favor the culture of suspicion, it surely helps many people feel safe, secure and comfortable--travelers and airport employees alike. And it is not my place to take that away. If engaging in the practice of, "if you see something, say something" helps someone feel safe, then I'm happy to let it stand. I was not harmed in my encounter with the State Troopers.

But, I wondered, what if I were black? What if I were not as immaculately dressed as I am right now? What if I were wearing a dastār? My encounter with the State Troopers could have ended very differently. I could have been met with a much harsher attitude, could have been arrested with probable cause, could have been physically assaulted. But I was not. Was it due to my presentation? I will never know.

I wondered how sustainable this method of data collection is for my line of work. How the ability to collect these data might hinge on an unspoken privilege of presenting a certain way such that one's actions are less readily called into question. I concluded in that moment that I could never ask a non-white colleague to collect data in this manner.

Around 7:30 AM, my four colleagues and I wrapped up our observations, gathered our belongings, and headed to the Massport offices between Terminals B and C.

2024 in Flight

GOALS FOR 2024

I had no flight goals for 2024!

YEAR-OVER-YEAR TRENDS

 

40,024 miles flown in 2024, measured as great-circle distances in statute miles. 1% decrease over 2023; 19% increase over 2022.

 

48 segments flown in 2024 (a new record!). 20% increase over 2023; 50% increase over 2022.

 

$7,695.95 in airfare paid in 2024, which considers the actual amounts charged to my cards, inclusive of airline credits, miles used, taxes, and fees. 7% increase over 2023; 52% increase over 2022.

At the outset of 2024, I received a huge voucher from Alaska to give up my seat due to overbooking. This was in the midst of their 737 MAX 9 grounding crisis, when they were obviously short on fleet. I scored $1,500 in Alaska credit to take a flight operated by United that departed only 30 minutes later. I used up this credit in 2024, decreasing my leisure spending from what it would have been, and taking flights I perhaps may not have otherwise taken,

 

 

 

 

MORE ON MILES

 

 

I have not flown on a wide-body since 2021.

 

 

MORE ON MONEY

 

I broke the threshold of $1/mile. Yay? Honestly, I should have just taken Amtrak, but I had that trip booked before I realized that EWR to DCA is only 199 miles.

Also, my leisure minimum and average are so low because of the $1,500 credit I received. There were perhaps four itineraries for which I paid $0. The "free" itinerary with the most miles was the one-way BOS-SFO listed here.

Interestingly, all the itineraries listed here are one-ways. Technically, the DCA-SFO minimum business itinerary should be roundtrip, but I did not fly the return segment on Alaska. That return segment was what I gave up to fly United half an hour later in exchange for $1,500 in credit.

 

"Lead time" is defined as how many days in advance of departure the ticket was purchased.

 

The 0-day business lead time purchase was during the week when I was on standby for jury duty. I did not know until 4:30 PM in the afternoon whether I would be required to report the following day. As soon as I found out I did not, I booked a flight for that evening in order to make a client meeting the following morning.

 

A loosely concave relationship. It is interesting that my business and leisure itineraries are almost completely distinct in terms of days lead time.

 

 

 

 

MORE ON WHERE

 

 

 

A "visit" is defined as a segment either originating or terminating at a given airport. Therefore, connections grant two visits to the connecting airport. The size of the font is directly proportional to the number of visits.

 

This year, the airport names are loosely organized by geographical location, to the extent possible given divergent font sizes.

I suppose the only commercial service Southern California airport I did not hit in 2024 was LGB, which is rather ironic given that I went to LGB for a work meeting in January.

I suppose it is a surprise how much I have flown to and from LAX, not only in the last five years, but also in 2024 alone.

 

 

These represent both originating and terminating mode shares combined. Each color of bars sums to 100%.

"POV" also includes cases when I was picked up from or dropped off at the airport in another person's rental car. "Rental car" implies that I transited through the airport's rental car facilities, even if I walked or took a bus from the rental car center to the terminal. "Walk" may times covers cases where I am at a client site.

WHILE IN FLIGHT

 

 

This is a new chart this year! I'm thinking about what kinds of data are most useful for me when I put my terminal planner hat on. This is the level of fidelity we want for analyzing check-in requirements.

This year, I eliminated the "Segments Flown per Day of Week" chart. It is less interesting than the "Miles Flown per Day of Week" data.

 

 

A "pushback pause" is defined as the time when the aircraft is stationary after being pushed back from the gate. Specifically, it begins when the aircraft stops moving backward and the tug begins detaching, and it ends when the aircraft begins moving forward on its own power. Collecting these data were the reason I began a flight log at all. I sought to collect data around this specific statistic for use in simulation modeling.

 

 

Anecdotally, it seems as though pushback pauses are getting longer. I experienced several in 2024 that exceeded three and a half minutes. This conjecture will require further monitoring and analysis.

 

 

Astonishingly, two airframes made return appearances in 2024 alone. Also, N296AK made another appearance. This is the only airframe I know of having flown four times.

 

 

 

RECORDS

 

 

For some reason, I didn't track this one before this year. But given that I set a record this year, it did seem appropriate to track.

Unchanged from last year.

 

 

Also unchanged from last year. 

This statistic speaks to how well distributed air travel is throughout the year.

At 199 miles, EWR-DCA, which I flew in 2024, just barely did not make the list of shortest segments.

The long Alaska pushback pause recorded in 2024 was perhaps due in part to Donald Trump's rally held at Madison Square Garden earlier that evening. He was departing around the same time we were, so the New York airspace had to be shut down for security. It created a night mare on the ground at EWR. There may have been upwards of 40 aircraft in the departure queue held up by the temporary airspace closure.

This year, I eliminated the "Most Expensive and Cheapest Full-Fare Single Tickets Since 2016" because...why does this need to be tracked?

Okay, there's a lot of discussion to be had on these.

First of all, I could no longer ignore the impacts on inflation skewing these statistics. I have now introduced nominal versus real cost per mile flown, the latter normalized to 2016 U.S. dollars. However, even with this normalization, three of the four highest nominal cost per mile itineraries still make the list. 2024 was an expensive year!

But...2024 was also a year of great savings! As mentioned previously, I obtained a $1,500 Alaska Airlines credit. The four lowest cost-per-mile itineraries, shared among the nominal and real rankings, are direct uses of that credit.

This year included the specification of miles by operating carrier, the introduction of segments by operating carrier, and the separation of spend per marketing carrier both in nominal and real dollars. Southwest Airlines is definitively not a low-cost airline, if low-cost is intended to refer to the consumer's perspective. On average, each of my 14 Southwest segments cost me over $217 apiece, and 13 of these were between OAK and ONT.

OAK and ONT over the last three years have become staple airports for me.

 

HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2024

First time flying...

• ...on these aircraft types: A220-300, CRJ-550
  
• ...with these operating carriers: Air Canada Jazz, Endeavor, Republic, Flair, Westjet, Gojet
  
• ...to/from these U.S. states: Maine, Utah
  
• ...to/from these airports: LGA, PWM, SLC
  

First time voluntarily giving up a seat for a flight credit! On January 13, I was supposed to fly DCA-SFO on Alaska. However, this was just over a week after their 737 MAX 9s had all been grounded for inspection. Thus, they were still figuring out how to make their scheduled network function by cancelling flights and consolidating flights. While previously somewhat empty, my flight became oversold, likely as a result of cancelling an IAD departure. They offered $1,500 for two volunteers to take the United flight which departed 30 minutes later. I jumped at the opportunity; with that offer, I would have even considered staying overnight. While I did give up my upgrade to first class, it was well worth the reward.

I am still kicking myself for not acting fast enough to claim the $2,200 credit that Delta was offering for giving up a seat on YUL-LGA. I was the third volunteer when two were needed.

First time flying one of those low-cost carriers that actually makes you measure your carry-on bag before you get your boarding pass. I took advantage of Flair's ridiculously low one-way SFO-YVR fare just for fun. I was unable to get my boarding pass online. Because I had purchased the most basic fare class, they required a check-in staff member to verify that my personal item was indeed sized as a personal item before I could enter the check-in line to get my boarding pass. It was a dehumanizing experience shoving my backpack, stuffed tightly with all my accoutrements, into a metal frame. The agent allowed me to remove my water bottle and laptop, the latter likely for liability reasons. After this experience, I suddenly understood why the check-in lines at Spirit and Frontier counters were always so long; obtaining a boarding pass is conditional on this verification step.

My return flight was on Westjet. I purchased their basic economy fare since I wouldn't have brought a carry-on up with me anyway. I was never subject to a similar sizing exercise, and I even got a snack and a beverage in-flight. Because Westjet is a real airline.

This year was a year of delays. Owing primarily to the SFO runway closure for taxiway construction work, many of my flights that involved SFO as origin or destination were delayed by one hour or more.

Breeze Airways is not a real airline. I flew SFO-SBD for a work trip at ONT simply to avoid flying OAK-ONT on Southwest yet again. When I submitted my email confirmation for reimbursement, my company auditor requested a "proper airline ticket" for a receipt; i.e., one that included the ticket number. I called Breeze's listed customer support phone number. An automated voice told me, "to keep fares low, please use our chat feature..." I began text chatting with what was clearly an AI, because it did not understand what I was asking for. Eventually, I got what seemed to be a real human on the chat line. After much back-and-forth, I was informed, "We do not have ticket numbers." "How do you track your flight reservations in your reservation system, then?" I replied back, to which I did not get an answer. Breeze is not a real airline.

The airside of Terminal C at EWR is the only redeemable quality of that airport. The airfield is a mess, Terminal B is a shithole, Terminal C curbs are a disaster. Perhaps Terminal A is nice.

Still no diversions or go-arounds.