Over-powering presence

We spot her walking in and a quiet sense of awe flows over us.  Such elegance, such grace.  Good thing I am not a buck.  I would be chained to follow her everywhere.  A young doe came into our yard this morning.  Sure, she is cautious with a kind of caution that is smooth and knowing.  Hope she comes again.

Sometimes

Sometimes, I need to know exactly what was said. My hearing is poor, especially for decoding speech.  We had the family over for lunch for Father’s Day and Lynn asked me to sweep the floor.  Later, she said, “Did you sweep ?” but I thought she had asked “Did you sleep?”  Just that 2nd letter: sweep, sleep, steep,seep.  It matters. Often, when she senses I am missing something she said, she spells out the word but I often can’t tell what letters she said.  This time, I did hear that W and I realized what she was saying.

Dad Day, Summer Solstice

I read that men come from a woman’s body and they spend their lives trying to get back in.  Indeed, the sex drive can be a burden to anyone as well, of course, as a source of pleasure: immediate, parental, satisfying, fulfilling.  I imagine there will be plenty of salutes to fatherhood but I add mine here.

Tomorrow is also the day of the summer solstice, when the earth is positioned to get its longest day in the Northern Hemisphere and marks the beginning of summer on the North side of the equator.  Have a good summer, Dads, Mothers, Children.

Federal holiday

Today is the holiday “Juneteenth”, celebrating the end of slavery in the US.  I have a book “Slaves without Masters” by Ira Berlin about free Blacks in the American South before the Civil War. I am not very surprised that there were black people who were not slaves in the South before the Civil War but I had never thought about the possibility.

I knew about a New Yorker article, possibly in 1997 by Malcolm Gladwell, about the best runners and sprinters being Black. The book “The Great Stain” by Noel Rae has valuable information on sex between slaves and owners.

APS

I was once told I had a blood clot from my hip to my heel.  Then, a hematologist said that I had antiphospholipid syndrome, better simply called “APS”, and that I should take blood thinner regularly.  I do and am doing well.

When I was five years old, I discovered my father and me in our family car driving to my aunt’s house.  When we got there, my mother came to the car before I even got out and informed me that my 6 year-old cousin had died.  He went to the hospital to have his tonsils removed and developed a fatal blood clot that went to his brain and killed him.

Dishwasher

We have a pretty good machine and I buy expensive pellets of wash chemicals.  But one thing it doesn’t do is empty itself.  The dishes, glasses, bowls and silverware have to be put back in the various places we keep them when the dishwasher is finished.   That task is for a pair of hands connected to a brain that knows where things are kept.

There are times when the meal was simply too big: too many diners, too many sorts of dishes and too many of each type to fit into a single load.  So, we run the machine more than once but that means, again, that the first load has to be emptied before loading in the 2nd load.  For a good many years, we did it all completely by hand.  We didn’t own a dishwasher.  This one has shown itself to be worthwhile and is one of the machines that gets run the most.

Humming birds

I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.  The state bird of Maryland is the Baltimore oriole but I had never seen an oriole before moving to Wisconsin.  Likewise, I had heard of hummingbirds but not seen one until Wisconsin.  I wanted our brass structure for support of climbing vines right beside our dining room window when it came time to plant a dropmore honeysuckle vine.

You can see that each flower is trumpet-shaped, ideal for a humming bird with that long bill.

We read Sy Montgomery’s “The Hummingbird’s Gift” and learned that the little birds expend so much energy and have such small bodies that they need to eat five to eight times an hour.

We were part of Elderhostel tour of Cuba and in one of the many gift shops, a handcarved real-sized wooden hummingbird caught my eye.  It hangs in our dining room now.

Storing and locating

The book by Judith Flanders, “A Place for Everything” and the book by Deirdre Mask, “The Address Book” have some commonalities that don’t stand out.  When you have bound books in large numbers and someone builds shelves for them, you soon run into the problem of finding that book that happens to be on your mind.  In a somewhat similar way, when you have buildings along avenues and streets and you want to do that modern thing and deliver messages written on paper, you run into the coding problem of using a short code on each message as to where the message should be delivered.  Some places in the world, even with many people living close to each other, still don’t have addresses.  If you have an address, respect it and be proud of it.  

My wife was a school librarian and later taught school librarianship at a university.  She got into that activity at a time and place where people were creating “slide-tapes”, recordings of speech meant to be played in conjunction with the showing of a set of slides.  School librarians were confronted with the problem of storing and then finding one of the collected items when needed.  She wrote her doctoral dissertation on similar work being done by the US Dept. of Agriculture’s library of new types of materials.  Often, new types of material have physical characteristics that require new types of storage, labeling and tools to locate them.

Libraries

My life has been affected at several points by libraries.  I looked up “public libraries” and found several different versions and ideas.  My mother took me to the main Enoch Pratt free library in downtown Baltimore when she knew I could write my name.  I don’t know what sort of credentials she had to present, if any.  I didn’t have much to do with libraries until I was in elementary school.  It happened that my house was on a walking route past a Pratt library branch and I remember spending time there.  As a high school senior, I was employed at that same main library branch, reshelving books left out on tables, often to hide poor men drinking behind them.

In college, I invited the person I have been married to for almost 67 years out for the first time in the campus library.  After marriage and children, my wife wanted a job closer to home.  She applied to the local school system and got a job as an elementary school librarian.  She had a minor in school librarianship from college. Later, she was a librarian in the high school library.  Eventually, she attended grad school and got a PhD which led to a teaching job at a college about 120 miles away.  She wrote her dissertation about the problem of cataloging and housing new sorts of materials other than books.  After a year or so of straddling jobs in disconnected places, she switched to working on the local campus and teaching ways to make web sites and web pages, a new possibility then

I don't know what you said

I think the main stressor in our house is my weakening hearing.  I can usually detect that somebody is speaking.  My problem is decoding, comprehension.  If a comment is delivered in a very high voice or spoken very quickly, I have less chance of comprehending what was said.  The voice tone, the accompanying facial expression help but I often have to admit “I don’t know what you said.” I asked my hearing doctor about the problem and she said that the part of my brain that understands spoken words is wearing out. So far, I have not gotten too interested in a cochlear implant.

We did it again

We assured each other that we would take a trip.  We need a trip.  Of course, we have taken trips before.  We have been to Europe several times and to Australia and New Zealand.  We have driven to all 50 US states.  

As recently explained, we wanted to drive to the town of Wisconsin Dells and we did.  But when we got there, we were not charmed.  Everything seemed too commercial.  We drove to another town and walked.  As we walked, we discussed what we had done and what we wanted to do.  We discovered that we both felt disinclined to go anywhere but home.  We drove home happily.

Since then, we thought of driving to an unusual place in Wisconsin but yesterday was too stormy and rainy for a trip.  We waited to today.  We talked and discovered that we both felt disinclined to take a trip.  We realized that not taking a trip, we would not have to pack.  We wouldn’t forget things and discover we had left an important item at home.  We visited the cultural circle in the riverfront park, drove to Emy J’s for coffee.  Then, we came home and had lunch.

Is it the year 2026 already?

Is it 2026 already?

Why didn’t somebody tell me?  I have got to buckle down and get cracking.  I haven’t started on a great American novel or a hit play or a best-selling memoir.  I am getting further over the hill each day and if I am not careful, I am going to stop breathing without any of my great work done.

I just asked Google “How many people have expired without their great works even begun?”  I got this answer:

It is impossible to provide an exact number, but historians and researchers estimate that roughly 102 billion to 105 billion people have lived and died throughout human history without their "great works" ever being realized. [1, 2]

This concept traces back to a famous quote by physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.: "[Alas for those that never sing, / But die with all their music in them!]"(http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/owh/vless.html). Spiritual teacher and author Dr. Wayne Dyer famously popularized this idea as, "Don't die with your music still in you."(https://www.drwaynedyer.com/video/dont-die-with-your-music-still-in-you-wayne-dyer-and-daughter-serena/). [1, 2, 3]

Here is how researchers and analysts break down this loss of human potential:

• The Historical Toll: Out of the estimated 110 billion humans who have ever been born, the overwhelming majority lived in eras dominated by war, disease, and the basic, grueling struggle for survival. Their "great works" were either completely lost to time or never had a chance to be conceptualized due to circumstances beyond their control. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

• The Modern Equivalent: In the modern era, analysts (such as those at the Wealth Research Group) estimate that up to 92% to 98% of people ultimately pass away without ever achieving their goals and dreams. [1, 2]

• The Reasons: This staggering percentage is rarely due to a lack of talent or ambition. Instead, sociological studies suggest people most often defer their potential due to the fear of failure, societal pressures, or putting off what they want to do for "someday" until time simply runs out. [1, 2, 3]

Couldn't find it

There was a meeting for former faculty on campus today.  I did save a postcard telling about the event but I didn’t read it carefully.  It did not say what I thought it did.  I went to the room I thought was the meeting place but no one was there.  I immediately guessed they had moved to a different site.  I went there: nobody.  I asked a dean’s secretary and she told me a third location.  Nah - I just went home.

How do they find my blog?

Almost any browser computer program uses a version of artificial intelligence unless deliberate steps are taken to avoid AI.  Leading browsers are Chrome, Foxfire, Safari but there are several others.  So far, my own experience hasn’t changed much from the development of AI.  What did change my computer search experience was reading search questions and phrases that others had asked about the same or similar searches.  When a group of researchers discuss a problem among themselves, comments and others’ questions continuously inspire others in the group.  A family discussing a problem may produce ideas that no one in the group had before the group discussion began.

A friend asked how people in other parts of the world find my blog.  I am not sure but I am confident that several different avenues lead to reading my posts.  Google offers some statistics and information about blogs published by them.  A small portion of page views come from direct contact with Google Blogspot.  There is no restriction on access or subsequent use of my posts.

I had never seen reports of page views from a particular Asian country but then they started.  I searched the name of a person I had recently informed about my blog and found that person was an “influencer”, a person, often on YouTube that speaks that language and promotes ideas and products

This blog and others

I did a little math today and figure that I have posted on the blog about 90% of the days since I began it. I have been writing “Fear, Fun and Filoz” for 18 years.  I have been retired for 21 years.  After I retired, I learned a bit about meditation and I thought it might help any beleaguered student teacher to know about meditation processes and ideas.  I don’t have formal training in the subject but I have read quite a bit.

Over time, more and more YouTube presentations, books, athletic teams, and trainers became available to teach meditation and I became aware of how many materials and sources there were.  But by that time, I was in the habit of writing a bit each day.  I abandoned the practice of explaining mediation and just wrote about things that came to mind.

When I am too busy to write, I often suggest that readers try blogging on their own.  If interested, search “Google blogging” and/or “Wordpress.com”.  Or simply search for “blogging hosts.”

Contrast

On this day of the year, fifty-eight years ago, I landed at the Stevens Point airport to take a job as an assistant professor of education. On this day today, I am scheduled to attend a party for a great-grand daughter who days ago graduated from high school.  On that day, fifty-eight years ago, I didn’t have any grandchildren, much less grandchildren who had children.  Things change!

Blog pause

It is a busy day for me.  This is a good day to read the 6000 posts already posted for my blog.  Or, start your own blog.

Fawn

We had a fawn in our backyard this morning.  No sign of the mother.  When we moved here, I wanted to try doing without a lawn.  We bought seed from a Wisconsin company that sold prairie grass and wild plant seed, intending to avoid a recurrent need to cut the grass.  We found that grandchildren can be lost in high grasses and asked a landscaper to take a look.  He said that many people desired the sort of plants we had grown.  He suggested we leave two large areas of wild plants but have small lawns we kept cut.

That idea has worked well.  It was in the wild plant area that our fawn settled down for a nap.  When it curled up for a rest, it was nearly impossible to see him (maybe “her”) except for the tips of his ears, perked up and alert.  When we checked later, he had moved on.

Bluebirds of irritation

We have a carefully constructed and positioned bluebird house in our backyard.  We must have the same pair we had last year now. The male overdoes his job of protecting but does get the idea that the other male he sees reflected in our windows is HIMSELF.  So, he keeps flying at the intruder, crashing into our windows.  I have talked to him, sent him texts and emails to no avail.  My wife has explained to me how bluebirds are lovely and have trouble surviving so she does not want me to go too far trying to discourage his crusade against strange opponents.

Banana duct-taped to the wall

I know we are experiencing high prices but I am confident that I can find a banana for less than 6 million dollars.  The Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan contributed an art exhibit to a French museum consisting of a real banana duct-taped to a wall.  Of course, a real banana aged into rot over time but museum staff replaced the rotting fruit with a fresh banana as needed.  I read that the purchaser of the artwork got a certificate of authentication and a booklet explaining the process of buying a new banana and tape.

The web shows photographs of the art work.  As far as I have heard, eating artwork is unusual, rare even.  This reminds me of my friend who collects rare books and my other friend who delights in writing the author’s name in handwriting on the cover page of a book.

Two books

Two books came to mind today, books that I liked, I benefitted from and I used in teaching undergrads preparing to be teachers.  One is “Teacher Effectiveness Training” by Thomas Gordon and the other is “Uptaught” by Ken Macrorie.

Thomas Gordon wrote “Teacher Effectiveness Training” (T.E.T.) and I got good useful information for myself from the book.  The world wide web says that he was a colleague of Carl Rogers, a well-known psychologist and counselor.  I practiced the three basic skills from T.E.T. and they felt so right and helpful, I adopted the book as the textbook in my Educational Psychology class.  Gordon advocates three basic skills, which he calls

1. Active listening - where a complaint or description of a problem either with learning or getting along with the teacher or class is actively mirrored back to the student for verification and improved understanding.

2. I-messages - where the teacher explains his personal reaction to the problem using carefully constructed personal revelation of his own feelings and reactions

3. No-Lose method of conflict resolution - Problem solving in a civil manner- much like an investigation in science

I don’t have a copy of “Uptaught” handy but I remember a humorous, insightful book about a professor developing understanding of himself and college students.  I remember that it was quite a revelation for him when WWII ended and mature men took advantage of GI bills and opportunities and started attending college classes.

But what will the doggies do?

The first regularly printed newspaper is widely considered to be the Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, published in 1609 in Strasbourg, Germany, by Johann Carolus. [1, 2]

The history of newspapers, however, spans much further back depending on how you define them:

• 59 BCE: The Romans created the Acta Diurna ("Daily Events"), a daily handwritten news bulletin posted in public places, which is often considered the first Newspaper.

My neighbor takes our discarded newspapers to the local animal shelter, providing fresh bedding for puppies.  As subscriptions to our local paper dwindle and it has difficulties surviving, I wonder about fresh bedding for the doggies.