7/3 Addendum. When we got here, the immigration procedure was entirely facial recognition and nothing else. At no time were our passports looked at by anyone, not even a computer. It used to be that you’d only get this when registered – and paying – for Global Entry, now having an American passport is enough. It’s what you’d expect, if the biometric data in the passports is worth anything, and if that data is in fact also stored in the border protection computers. I am not concerned about it, I am pleased that it works.

7/2 Hamilton with the kids. I just hope it lingers on in their memories, and having taken them to the best seats in the theatre to watch it is about as much as we could do. The bright harmonies in the Battle of Yorktown.

7/1 Removed Facebook from my phone. I am certainly not deleting my account, and I do feel sad and embarrassed that I have to do this, but the amount of trash it makes me watch has become intolerable. This is a big change in how I think about myself. I had always been convinced I could have everything around at my fingertips, and my mind would always be strong enough to make only the wisest choices. I have had to learn that this is not the case.

6/30 The certainty with which my children classify me as a boomer by far exceeds the certainty with which I am officially outside the boomer years.

6/29 Hayden Planetarium, Encounters in the Milky Way. The projections are world-class and stunning. Yet science feels like a rebellion at this time.

6/28 First day together in Manhattan. A bit overwhelmed, a bit in crisis about being four people in this tiny space. Barotrauma Tutorial. Walked down to Playa Betty’s on seventy-fifth in the evening, Sixteen Handles afterwards. To bed early, as three of us are still in jetlag, and indeed, overwhelmed.

6/27 Back via Amsterdam.

6/26 On one of the flights I can look out the window and see all the other passengers coming up the stairway to board the flight. There is no clear, single observation I get out of it, but I realize that Pieter Bruegel would have been the right one to work with this.

6/25 So that was the first election in my new country where the result is what I myself had hoped, and voted for. Seems appropriate to make a note of it.

Flying to Sweden tonight to pick up the kids and return with them after less than 24 hours.

6/24 Voted in the New York City primary. Before I realized that the voting process is the same as in the presidential election, I told the election workers, embarrassed, that I was doing this for the first time, upon which they loudly shouted, so that the entire gym hall could hear it, “first time voter!”, and everybody applauded.