Adult reading

My most fun course was Personal Reading for Professional Development.  It was a grad course and the only assignment was to make a list of title and author of every book the student had ever read.  I had no way of verifying that a student’s list was complete.   Many experienced teachers read a large number of books as students, to keep up with the subjects they teach and for fun and out of curiosity.  

My all-older male reading group consists of retired academics and professionals only.  We have had a practice of alternating a common book each month, with a fiction choice alternating with non-fiction.  Non-fiction possibilities dominate with fiction choices being difficult to even get suggested, much less chosen.

Many readers are reluctant to re-read a book they have read, even though they often don’t remember much of the book. But it can be very pleasant to even just hear the title of a book they read way back when.

Car crash friendship

One day in the 1970’s, my wife and three other teachers were driving home from a town north of here.  The entrance to the highway at that point was being repaired.  The final bit of the repair was a bit lower than the roadbed and when the driver tried to leave the entrance ramp, she had to wrench the steering wheel  to overcome the slightly raised edge.  The motion carried the car into the far lane in time to be hit head-on.  

The resulting crash killed the driver on impact.  There were no seat belts in the car but the three passengers survived.  One of the passengers and my wife have had points of contact several times since and have developed a friendship that matters to them both.

It's time!!

I was born itchy and excited for the moment, any moment.  Time to go!  Time to leave!  Time to watch!  (I did have trouble with naps but I have overcome that handicap.)

Being excited for THE moment, whatever it is about, leads to antsy-ness and the problem of being too early, when others aren’t ready.

It was the end

The man I wrote about yesterday did die after some hours of “agonal breathing”, deep intense breathing for hours.  He was a resident in a home for memory care.

Might be the end

Our younger daughter suffered from mental illness.  She was hospitalized in her 40’s.  We visited her there and found her unconscious but breathing hard and rapidly.  The nurse said that she would die soon, that her body had begun breathing at a pace and depth that no body could sustain.  

Lynn’s brother has been in hospice care for a while.  Today, when Lynn went to visit him, she saw that same deep, gasping breathing we had seen in our daughter.

For good health and good mood

I suggest for health and mood, seeing little kids once in a while.  I think there is a natural reaction from adults to little kids, say four or five years old or younger.  I looked up “Is there a natural reaction in adults to little kids” and Open AI returned this:

To understand the natural reactions of adult humans towards little kids, consider the following points:

1. Instinctive Caregiving: Adults often feel a natural urge to protect and nurture children.

2. Empathy Development: Seeing children can trigger empathetic responses, making adults more compassionate.

3. Playfulness: Adults may feel inclined to engage in playful behavior, reflecting a desire to connect.

4. Teaching Instinct: Many adults instinctively want to teach and share knowledge with children.

5. Emotional Bonding: Interactions with kids can evoke feelings of joy and warmth, fostering emotional connections.

Social Responsibility: Adults often feel a sense of duty to guide and support the younger generation.

Stunned

When I was a teen, a girlfriend said I had a stunning body.  Maybe it matters that she said that decades later, working, you know, from memory.

Today, we got some heat.  Heat for us, anyhow.  I put on shorts for the first time this year.  I forgot that I don’t look good wearing shorts with boxer shorts underpants.  I need briefs under shorts.  I had to strip completely.  That girl was right: I have a stunning body.  If a barrel stuns

What is the average?

When I am interested in the “average”, I am usually trying to get a picture of a typical case.  The words average, typical and some synonyms and semi-synonyms are often attempts to get a feeling about a phenomenon.  I was interested in how long people often spend in hospice, a semi-medical service for those thought to be close to death.  

The best book on actual hospice experience I have seen is “The In-Between” by Vlahos, a hospice nurse.  

I wondered how long the typical period between a physician seeing signs that say this patient has 6 months or less to live and that patient actually dying.  The book “How to Lie with Statistics” by Huff makes clear that sets of numbers can be somewhat distorted by, for instance, having a few very high numbers while mostly being numbers that are not high. That same book describes three common measures of “central tendency”: mean, median and mode.  I taught calculation of the “mean”, often called the average, to 5th graders who took the step of adding a set of numbers together to get their sum but often failed to divide the sum by how many figures were in the set.  Doing that gives an average or “mean” for 5, 6 and 7 of 18.   The students didn’t have an adult feeling for “average” or typical. 

Many people placed in hospice care live for a short time while a few live much longer. 

Activities needed

It is the season of the year.  Graduations as well as school concerts both vocal and instrumental.  Plays, games and championships.  But I see there is a big chunk missing.  We have students, sure.  And each year does show they are growing up, passing milestones and making progress.  But what about those who have married and have children?

Don’t think that just because a person has regular employment, you don’t want to see them in action.  We have family members who work at computers, golf courses, investments, and teaching.  We have some retirees.  Wouldn’t it be fun to see them all at their work, solving problems you wouldn’t know what to do with? Quietly, those former members of the cross-country team, those choir soloists have gone to master grown-up skills for which they are paid.  Let’s arrange to visit them doing what they do and get into their worlds!

Beautiful here

 I like to think that every season of the year has its advantages and beauty but spring is easy to like.  With trees developing leaves in striking bright green and flowering trees in colorful blossoms, with clear strong blue sky scattered with extra white clouds, one just has to glance out a window to be distracted and mesmerized.  True, we are subject to mosquito hordes after a little of our blood, strong winds and stubborn cold.  We do have sandy soil that allows extra water to drain but sometimes it drains too quickly.

Stop reading my mind

Google keeps reading my mind.  Before the deluge of comments and information about artificial intelligence, I often found valuable suggestions and angles in the published inquiries other people had made.  Related questions and searches often suggested to me interesting angles and related searches and questions.  

But now I sometimes get annoyed by Google or my computer reading my mind.  I can’t get a search or question completely typed before the question on my mind is supplied by digital forces.  Who should I complain to about brain invasion?

A visit to the department of motor vehicles

I don’t live far from an office of the state department of motor vehicles.  When I got a notice that my auto license plate renewal date was approaching, I figured I would use my computer and renew online.  It is easy but it might subject me to scams.  I mentioned to my digital savvy wife that I was thinking of driving to the DMV to renew my license, she commented that I should be prepared to stand in line.

You see, I am an American, which means I somewhat childishly want every duty and task to be accomplished very quickly and smoothly. As usual, she was right.  When I got into the business room, I joined the line of 6 or 7 people waiting for service.  The line did move quickly and soon I was led to a desk with a computer on it and told to type answers to its questions.  I did that carefully.  I have to be careful and check everything I do since I am a male and not a good keyboarder nor typist.  After maybe ten minutes, the computer said I should rejoin the line.  I had no sooner joined the line when the clerk said I should take the papers he offered and leave.

I was reminded by many notices and signs that I could have avoided the drive and simply renewed online.  I had tried that but ran into suspicious responses.  The trip was interesting and worthwhile.

Happy Mother's Day

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-9-2026

Two books by Jo Marchant

About 2023, I read “Cure” by Jo Marchant and I liked it very much.  Recently, I saw that her book “In Search of Now” came out.  I could use the more recent wording and say that her book dropped but I don’t feel comfortable with that. I like Kindle ebooks since they take up no noticeable room, are weightless and are delivered immediately over the Internet.  Another feature is that a reader can mark impressive passages and all of them form a file that can be searched, sent to a friend or oneself.  Amazon makes it clear when I look up a book that I once bought it and supplies the date of purchase.

Possibly the logical, scientific and personal aspects of the subject of now simply don’t hit me the way aspects of the mind and its medical influences do.  Whatever, we stopped my reading Now and switched to Cure.  The sub-title of Cure is “A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body” but the text focuses on mind over body in medical matters.  So, the subject of placebos comes up.  A typical way of testing a medicine is to give it to a group and give some inert fake, the placebo, to another group of people and see how the groups compare.

Generally, the medicine and the fake are delivered under cover so people are not aware of which they got.  I learned about “honest placebos” where people getting the fake treatment are informed they are not getting the medicine being tested.  There are cases where placebo group members know they received a fake but feel benefitted anyhow and request another dose. 

Video libraries

You may know that YouTube is in many ways the hottest website.  It has billions of videos and something like 500 hours of additional video is added EACH MINUTE!

A library of videos could be an important tool in learning. Distance educators often make use of a real-time lecture that tends to become an addition to a video course and content of a video library.  That content can be available after the teacher has retired or died.

You may have heard of Canvas, software for making educational videos available to students and today’s hack that interfered with Canvas.  That system is back online now.

It is a different world when many people habitually spend their days with video equipment right in their pocket or purse.

Grade of A

Today’s Numlock News reports that some faculty at Harvard are unhappy that so many grades at the end of a course are A.    The item reports from The Atlantic that 64% of the course grades were A.  I notice that when people are trying to name a college or university that has a reputation for high quality, they often name Harvard. If Harvard gets very high level students, doesn’t it make sense that most, if not every single one of them earns a high grade?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dwilDyXwbXG_vQm7vKpMA5HwTuUiiAEZ/view

The link leads to my chapter on ways of grading students.  A single symbol such as a letter grade can mean many different things.  Many people assume some sort of competition that results in those who ‘win’ getting the prize of the highest grade.  I recommend that some sort of clear arrangement be constructed about the grading method so that if a student wanted to get the highest grade offered, it would be clear just how to do that.  

To me, it is the meaning of the grades, the basis for giving them, that matters. 

Lynn's photo of our apple tree in bloom

Talk like Artificial Intelligence

Before the current wave of articles and reference to Artificial Intelligence (AI), I often found that reading what other humans had questioned or said stimulated my brain to think in new directions.  Whether it is a party, a ride together, a group of researchers or just friends sitting and talking, such a human group has been a major problem-solving tool. It probably doesn’t pay off unless some or all of the people in the group speak the same language but with modern tools like photos, translating software, who knows what the outcome will be?

Kirbyvariety1 and 2 websites

If you read my blogposts, you probably know that each post appears on the Google blog site.  More people look at the posts on the blog site than get a copy in their email.  The total number of pageviews is approaching one million but that is since the first posts appeared in March 2008. The name of the blog (from “web log”) is Fear, Fun and Filoz, my attempt to suggest thoughts and items about worries and pleasantries and comments about them.

I sometimes feel that my daily blog is somewhat like a newspaper or magazine, being a place for immediate and short-term subjects. I want to point out that I have another place of information, one that serves more like a filing cabinet.  Kirbyvariety1 and Kirbyvariety2 are Google websites where I have information that may be seen as longterm.  Much of the information that appears on the website pages relates to various courses I taught between 1968 and 2005 at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.  

Once I was teaching in a certain classroom on campus a class for graduate teachers.  Teachers all over the US can often get raises if they earn a master’s degree, beyond their bachelor’s degree or get a doctorate.  Somebody from the campus department of information technology mentioned that the certain classroom was equipped with distance education tools that could allow teachers in a classroom 90 miles away to see and hear the lessons I taught.  Most graduate teachers are older adults who know themselves and adulthood.  The thought of such students gathering in a classroom right in their school after their teaching day ended to listen and learn was wonderful instead of not only driving 90 miles dodging deer and other animals on the road but driving 90 miles back home.  

Information, explanation could be made available using the school computers as well as increasingly affordable home computers and community businesses offering internet connections to schools and homes.

Take a look:

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/welcome-to-my-home-page

CNN Photos of the Week 5/3/26

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/30/world/gallery/photos-this-week-april-23-april-30?utm_source=cnn_Five+Things+for+Sunday%2C+May+3%2C+2026&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=Hr%2FihbdNIWvhohCuX2VoMdqriU6tlApnbmO%2FpZ5cfuWp4krshJcq4Vww97haB%2FI3&bt_ts=1777812217678

State music evaluations

I tried to remember what I had written today’s blog post about, but I couldn’t.  I looked at the blog page for FearFunandFiloz and found I hadn’t written a post for today.  It makes sense.  My greatgranddaughter had musical state trials today.  She is a percussionist and I was the drum and bugle corps drum sergeant in my all-male high school.  She plays a full set of drums including a snare drum and a foot-pedaled bass drum. Naturally, when music students from many central Wisconsin high schools assemble to be evaluated by state judges, it is a big deal.

Her parents had gone to a nearby city to watch her younger brother play soccer but both her grandmother and her greatgrandmother showed up for her state evaluations. She is a senior so this was her last state evaluation.

Happy May Day!

It is not that happy here since it is too cold.  It is reported to be 46 degrees Fahrenheit here but with a cool wind, “It Feels” like 36 degrees.   That is a bit cool for May Day.  Hope we do better by July Day.

People here have a tradition of avoiding the word “cold”.  It is ok to use the word “cool”.