Blog pause

I have events coming up and will pause my blog, probably until Friday of this week. There are 5960 entries already, some of which are worth re-reading.  During the pause, you read some at fearfunandfiloz.  You start your own blog but if you do, I encourage you to make notes during the day of possible themes.  I also encourage you to make a blog comment every day, not just on the days that stand out.  You may be surprised to find the inner resources you possess to see and comment.

I can write

English is the only language I know well enough to use to write.  I am confident that my studies in Latin, French and German have been sufficient for me to use some app or program or digital tool to translate writings into one of those other languages. According to OpenAI, there are about 3000 languages that have a system of writing and I suppose I could find some tools to translate this blog post into most or all of them.

Writing and speaking are special for teachers and others who attend to the inner thoughts and feelings of others.  If I am feeling grumpy and grouchy, you might conclude that by seeing my facial expression but generally what I say or write is a more incisive guide to what I feel inside and why.

I used every page in my notebook recently and I am now on the first page of a new notebook.  I imagine that in ten centuries such documents will be sold for tons of money or jewelry or property.

56 times

I taught various courses at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point.  Just about every spring, the radio station on campus, WWSP 90FM, 89.9FM, runs “the world’s largest trivia contest”.  It has done so 56 times.  The contest is noticeable since many cars are parked near some houses from Friday evening until midnight the following Sunday.  My son-in-law and my daughter live nearby and they host a team.  Some people have been team members for years and some have aged enough that a contest that runs from Friday at 6 PM until Sunday midnight is too long.

The contest includes 300-400 teams scattered all over the world.

Perfection problems

Ezra Bayda and Frederic Nietzsche have writings that emphasize that our lives have disappointments and troubles.  Bayda and Elizabeth Hamilton were both followers of Charlotte Beck.  Beck died in her 90’s in 2011.  She was a teacher of Zen.  

Bayda’s book “At Home in the Muddy Water” and some of the writing of Nietzsche point to learning to think of a satisfying life without imagining no troubles of any kind, with just steady ongoing bliss.  We have nervous systems built for troubles and disappointments and both men saw that disappointments and troubles and genuine “messes” are part of being alive.  When we think of moving to our favorite scenic canyon or seaside in the hope of zero messes and failures, we tend to under-appreciate our need for challenges and bringers of despair and tears.  Admittedly, it can be temporarily impossible to be thankful for troubles and pains.  But if we stay aware and open, we can come to appreciate falls, errors and bothers while striving to avoid or minimize them.  We are built to handle downers and benefit from the handling.

Greening

We didn’t have an especially cold winter but it is fully into spring now.  Plants and trees that need a bit of time to green up are visibly doing so.  Now, when I look at trees, it is not an illusion that buds and little leaves are there.  They really are.

Lawns are now green, too.  It is really spring.  We went to lunch and neither of us wore a jacket.

Yuck! A leg!

I rarely try to read something that is difficult to pay attention to.   But last evening, reading Oliver Sack’s “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Stories”, I read chapter 4, “The Man Who Fell Out of Bed”.  Sacks was a neurologist and the book in question is about unusual conditions that patients developed.  I may have fallen out of bed sometime but not lately and not often.  This chapter tells of cases of loss of the sense of proprioception, our sense of our own bodies and where our parts are, currently.  Chapter 4 is about a man who awoke only to discover a LEG in his bed!  Yuck and a half!  Some prankster must have put a severed leg in his bed.  Stressing and straining, he managed to push the repulsive thing out of his bed but as he did so, he fell out of bed, too.

Yes, it was his leg!  Nicely and properly attached to him, just as it should be.

Chomping at the bit

I have had little experience with horses.  The horse I was given at a riding stable in Britain tried to roll over on his back with me in the saddle.  If I hadn’t dismounted as he went down, he would have pinned beneath his weight.  As I recall now, our guide said something like “Oh he will do that now and then.”  

I realize that virtually everybody once depended on horses for transportation, as well as breeding and racing and plowing.  

When I can feel internal eagerness for something, I sometimes think I am “chomping at the bit”.  I looked the expression up and found it was once “champing at the bit”, that is, biting onto the metal bar that passes through the horse’s mouth as part of the gear used to guide the horse.  I have never bitten repeatedly on a metal bar, but I sometimes do feel I wish time would move along since I am ready and energized and eager.

Prices then and now

When I was a kid, things were different.  For one thing, a candy bar cost a nickel, you know, $.05.  Now, I received an email from a younger friend asking where were candy bars selling for “only” one dollar.  So, was a nickel the “right” price and a dollar “much more expensive”.  

I think prices need to be evaluated relatively.  If a nickel was very difficult to obtain then, but a dollar is easy to obtain now, there is probably a good argument to be made that the candy bar is cheaper now.  Sometimes, prices are evaluated in terms of minutes or hours needed to be paid that much.  To a large extent, minutes or hours of work seem more or less the same now as a couple of decades back.

Trouble with chicken and pills

They are not a big deal but they are certainly irritating.  Every now and then, I like to buy cooked chicken.  I don’t want a cooked chicken.  I want pieces of chicken: wings, thighs, breasts, etc.  But five or six times, I have looked at plastic bags of cooked chicken, been certain I am buying separate pieces and then find at home, that no, it is a bag of a whole cooked chicken.  Very annoying!

Lynn takes fiber pills but I bought her a type that she doesn’t like.  Please get the type she does like.  So, I went to the store, looked around carefully and bought the kind she doesn’t like AGAIN!  Can you believe it!  Talk about very annoying!  On second thought, you don’t need to. I have annoyance enough on my own.

Click on the purple

We recently had a stack of legal papers to sign.  Each place where a signature was called for had a purple spot on the computer display.   We were asked to click the mouse on each purple spot and our “signature” would immediately replace the purple bit.  All our clicks were witnessed by two members of the staff but I want to avoid taking a test on what I “signed”.  We did discuss what the papers said a week or so beforehand but still…

Poetry and me

Our former teacher told me about an event at the library and I got myself there.  It was a meeting of the local chapter of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.  I am definitely not much of a poet.  Here is a sample of my poetry.  It might be my entire production of poems.

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/bill-kirby-poems

I have had courses in English departments that included work on and with poems.  I have never felt drawn to writing poems but I am quite interested in the best wording for what I am trying to say.  

Lynn and I have enjoyed the three part special on PBS by Ken Burns and crew about Henry David Thoreau.  I thought of saying to the small group at the library that they might enjoy reading “Walden” for the poetic images that imaginative individuals used in his book.

Blog statistics

Most days, as I finish a blog post, I check the web page to see that the post was posted nicely.  It is only a click or two away from the page and the owner (me) can see the past week’s statistics about the blog.  I am a fan and former teacher of basic statistics and I am interested.  The information of most interest to me is the number of blog visits during the past week from viewers in different countries around the globe.  Usually, there have been blog page views from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America.  Sometimes, Australia too but not Antarctica.

Looking at babies and toddlers

When I look at a baby or toddler, I feel something happen in me.  It is usually a joyous moment.  It is so strong and so reliable, I wondered if what I feel is a common experience.  I looked up:

“is there a human reflex that is felt when an adult looks at a baby or toddler?"  Here is a link to what I found: t.ly/1Soiz

I guess what I feel is an innate nurturing response.  I really like the way babies stare at a face as though they are hypnotized.

I don't know!

Henry David Thoreau first came to my attention when I was about 14 years old. Our English teacher gave us a flyer listing books we might enjoy.  One was “Walden” by Thoreau.  The description of the book intrigued me and I bought the book.  At about 17 years old, I tried basing an English paper in college on the book. Last night, we gravitated to Wisconsin Public TV and the Ken Burns programs about Thoreau.  That got me reading Walden again.

Today, I read his question “How can he remember well his ignorance when he so has often to use his knowledge?”  That brought my friend’s description of worry about that day’s doctoral oral exam to mind: “They could ask me ANYTHING!”  She was aware of her ignorance of many, many subjects.  I have often wondered if some such stark focus on what one does not know is a pivotal part of being helpfully educated.

The world of feminine beauty

We watched “Legally Blonde” on a whim.  We had seen it before but that time I paid attention to the story, to what happens.  This time, I paid attention to the world of beauty.  I see that a real beauty queen gets a facial, skin treatments, comes close to being assaulted with all the things that must be done to her skin, her hair, her nails, her other nails and plenty of other things that guys are not allowed to even know about.  Once that is all properly done, she is PERFECT! (for a short time). 

Morning sites

I still look at CNN Five Things AM.  The limit of five items appeals to me and I am a fan of the language Alexandra Banner uses.  It is clear, honest, direct without being comforting or scary.  I supply my own level of comfort or fright.  My wife and I share events on Google Calendar despite Apple efforts to get us to use their products exclusively.  I am not trained in meteorology but I like to see all of the US at radar.weather.gov. I still use Gmail mostly and rarely use Voice for texting. 

Happy

I may not have time later so I am blogging earlier than usual.  

Happy Easter!  Happy Spring!

Wishing you a fine day!

Ice storm #2

We just had our second ice storm.  The temperatures and moisture content of the air are just right to coat the trees with ice.  The result can be visually unusual but the situation creates an overload of broken power lines.  I am an ex-Boy Scout and I know humans can do all right without electricity. But we are used to having a supply and the things we derive from the supply such as tv and digital communications.  

I am surprised that as the day warms, ice on trees not only falls off but it often bounces when it hits the ground. 

"Call" and "Hurt"

I wrote some about the book “This Is Going to Hurt” by Adam Kay.  That book and the TV show “Call the Midwife”, now in its 15th season”, are both about women’s lives and bodies.  It is amazing that we all came out of a woman’s body.  That fact and how the process of us emerging gets started is often disguised or avoided with children until somebody thinks they are old enough to hear about what happens.

To this American with a rather sketchy understanding of medical training and the vocabulary connected to it, reading about medical training in Britain is interesting.  But I didn’t know that the training involved is in the gynecology and obstetrics field.  I read that “Call the Midwife” was very popular on British TV.  I am confident there are many paths to interest in the book and the TV series.  Both are arresting.  

Take the recent episode in the book where a young woman was unhappy with the appearance of her labia and just took some scissors to what she felt was misshaped. She bled very badly, even to the point of threatening her life.  She explained to the author that she just wanted to look normal.

Enough!

When you have bought enough books, you have enough semi-smart devices, it may be time to decide “Enough!”.  You may have to rely on yourself to make a decision like that but it may be worth doing.  That pair of sentences contains three instances of “may”, a word I have an increasing aversion to. You may have enough, it may be time, you may have to decide yourself.

I don’t want to try to be more definite but in today’s world, relying on yourself can save overspending, acting out of an outdated habit and opening the door to new adventures and worthwhile habits.

Duration

I sometimes find that a specified duration is unnecessarily long.  Take meditation sessions.  They can sometimes be recommended for an hour when I find that a good effect is attained in 15 minutes or less. I wonder if longer periods are specified because good timers for shorter periods were rare.

I do find that repeating training regularly is an important practice.  I like to pick a time somewhat arbitrarily, one that fits into other plans and activities and make sure I repeat the activity daily.  That is often key for me: repetitions, not duration.

One of my favorite books is Prof. Larry Rosenberg’s “Breath by Breath”.  The title refers to using breath as a focus in meditation.  He cites a time when he and students traveled to a Buddhist monastery in Korea, to experience meditation there.  He found that the institution had a tradition of staying awake and avoiding sleep for one entire week.  My background immediately makes me wonder if that length of time was first used in order to be long enough to be difficult, to make a physical challenge that would be felt. It doesn’t take much for males to dream unnecessarily big.