My other internet source

You may be familiar with my (mostly) daily blog, “Fear, Fun and Filoz”.  Today’s blog post is about my websites, Kirbyvariety and Kirbyvariety2. To me, blogs are like newspapers but websites are like file cabinets.  The websites are basically older information, more often used when I was teaching.   If you want to take a look, click this link:

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

Email misbehavior

I got an email from a friend I hadn’t heard from for years.  It was an e-card.  The title said to open and save the date.  I had trouble opening it and never found the date.  

Over the morning, I was contacted by others to ask if I had sent them an e-card.  I had not.  

If you got a card from “me”, I advise you to delete it unopened and forget it.

"Does this mean you will see me naked?"

We are reading “Does this mean you will see me naked?” by Robert Webster.  The sub-title is “Field Notes from a Funeral Director”.  Until this book, I had not heard of ‘death care’.  It is just a term used to mean a specialist who provides care of a body after death.  Webster makes clear that a dead body can fart, expend mucus from the mouth and nose and perform other maybe unexpected actions.  The author also makes clear that important aspects of death services involve emotionally upset marriage partners, children of the deceased - often adults themselves, and others.  The funeral director and staff members perform tasks and render services that may well be completely out of the world of most functioning adults. 

Too smoky

I posted that there would be a blog pause but there is too much smoke from US and Canadian forest fires.  We didn’t go.  The government air quality web site says even our Zip code right here has air quality now that is “very unhealthy”.  We are holding our breath until it clears up.

Blog pause again

Look for a post along about Wed., the 22nd.

A daytrip

Yesterday, we took a bus trip with 48 people, about 5 of them men.  It was a trip organized by UWSP Continuing Ed and featured our usual driver.  It was called “Wisconsin Cherry Pie Christmas” and it was around the vacation spots of Door County, a peninsula that sticks out into Lake Michigan from Green Bay.

One of several Door County shops and restaurants we visited was Tannenbaum Holiday Shop in Sister Bay.  It was the most minutely decorated store I have ever visited, in an attempt to show Christmas and Fourth of July decorations and paraphernalia.  Each member of the group was given a Christmas tree ornament of a slice of cherry pie, to hang on our tree in December.

It was in Tannenbaum shop that I saw my first upsidedown Christmas tree.  It was designed to be for the 4th of July celebrating the birth and history of the United States - many objects and ribbons - all red, white and blue.

Cherries are an important product in that area.

Blog was paused - too busy!

We started early and we just got home.  Blog will resume tomorrow.

Movie: "Song Sung Blue"

We had a quick dinner last night and therefore extra time for tv.  We landed on the movie “Song Sung Blue” about a pair of night club singers who meet, love and marry.  They emphasize songs by Neil Diamond and sing in the Milwaukee area.

I have never been much for popular music but I listened to Neil Diamond often.

I was surprised by my feelings of understanding and sympathy for the couple as they have children and develop careers.  If I had been born with different hearing for music and tones, the story could have been about me.

Supporting cast

We watched all the episodes of “The Closer” starring Kyra Sedgewick.  When she left the show, the story was continued as “Major Crimes”.  I had never experienced the level of comfort and familiarity with the supporting cast of officers in the “LAPD” that I knew from The Closer when Major Crimes became our first program of the evening. We knew the personalities and specialities already.

Early!

I am often early.  I put it down to enthusiasm, with maybe a little fear of being late.  It doesn’t seem to matter what the event is.  I leave to get there early.  I try to allow for the correct travel time but then there are no holdups or traffic jams so I get there early.  My wife is aware of this tendency but she is not sympathetic.  Arriving early is not always welcomed.  It can be awkward.  People are finishing preparation, trying to get properly dressed, and I arrive early.  I haven’t been told to come back in 15 minutes but I read that message in frowns.

Animal and maybe plant detectives

We read “Dog on It” starring a German shepherd dog who has extra abilities solving crimes.  Last night, we watched “The Sheep Detectives” featuring a flock of sheep trying to solve the murder of their human shepherd.  We are on the lookout for stories featuring helpful spiders, insightful octopuses and maybe gardenias that assist or guide humans toward uncovering who dunnit. 

You and I and McWhorter

John McWhorter is an American professor of linguistics.  I enjoy his books.  I just bought one about pronouns.  He writes that his daughter, a toddler, often asked to be carried by saying,”Carry you?”.  He explains that adults often asked her those words when she was carried. So the little logic engine used the same word.  Over time she inferred that she was “me” in this instance and used the pronouns “correctly.”  Humans often learn important things outside of schools and classrooms. 

Initials

It makes sense that people who talk and write about a common subject might develop a short word or set of letters to refer to their subject instead of writing out a long name over and over.  In addition, the modern business world searches for meaningful, memorable product names or tries to invent them.  Google Search, Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Duckduckgo, Apple Safari and other software will search the internet to offer definitions and explanations when I run into an acronym or new word.  They help when my aging memory can’t produce a term that I used to know. 

 “Recognition works when memory doesn't” is a principle that people who 

write tests understand, too.  When I can’t think of my greatgrandmother’s last name, I may be able to recognize it in a list of possibilities.

Would you rather type “antiphospholipid syndrome “  or APS over and over?

Not a normal day for blogging

I normally write a blog post in the afternoon but we are going to be away then.  I suggest catching up on a half finished book you forgot about or a magazine.

The world is full of things

The world is full of things to pay attention to.  Just the birds in our backyard are interesting.  I have dozens of books.  There are something like 300 different “channels” or TV services that we can stream into our TV set using the internet.  I have this blog to write in.  I have 1000 contacts I can write to or phone or, if I am modern and up-to-date, I can ‘text’.  I can follow the example of my wife and her friends and draw or paint or sculpture or photograph.  I can create helpful and inspiring videos.  No wonder I am bored.

All these possibilities put me in mind of this long sentence I met yesterday.  This is from the book “Lion” by Sonya Walger.  She is describing the life as the grown child still living at home:

But how hard to be the one who stayed! The one who packed the raisins but not the nuts, who wiped the lipstick off the piano teacher’s mug, tissue-wrapped the Christmas ornaments, washed the sheets, staunched the blood, ignored the lies and the slammed doors, peeled the stickers off the walls, fought for sunscreen and table manners, made beds, combed out the lice, stapled the hems and later sewed them, kissed the friends, befriended the lovers, returned the books, loaned the car, the house, the denim jacket with the Liberty lining, combed out the lice, listened to the story tape jammed in the car stereo, held back the hair bent over the loo, paid the school fees, paid the tennis coach, paid the airfare, combed out the lice, pushed the swings, paired the socks, allowed the cigarettes, forbade unkindness, packed the trunk, renewed the passports, taught the second tongue, recited the alphabet, churned the ice cream, bought the brads, the Walkman, the wedding dress, learned the names and never forgot them, shared the crossword, the towel, the chewed gum.

"The Light Eaters" by Zoe Schlanger

We are reading “The Light Eaters”.  It is about research into plants.  I am not the plant person that Lynn is.  I know they usually need good soil and water.  I know they are important parts of our diet and the diets of most animals, if not all.  A major angle of this look at current research into plants has to do with plants not having anything like a brain.  Yet, they seem intelligent.  How do they accomplish all that they do with no brain?  Can they see?  Can they remember?  How?  We have plenty of plants around and in our house.  Are we in danger?

Blog stats

My blog is published on Google’s Blogspot.  I have posted most days since 2008.  Google offers a blog author quite a bit of analysis, such as the number of visitors to my blog site worldwide per day.  I am surprised at how many different countries are represented in the list of viewers.

Top ten:  

United States

Singapore

Vietnam

Germany

Netherlands

United Kingdom

Bangladesh

France

Canada

Old peoples' eating capacity

I am closer to 90 years old than to 80.  As I grew up, I didn’t hear much about oldsters eating.  I am surprised by how much less I can eat at a meal than I used to eat.  We recently ate out.  We had a good meal and brought our leftovers home.  When we ate the leftovers, we didn’t finish them in one sitting.  Mind you, that was with meals said to be for one meal.

The 4th

I am confident that you already know that today is the Fourth of July and that it is called America’s 250th birthday.   The 4th of July stirs memories in me since I had just arrived in Stevens Point a few days before.  I told the people hiring me that I couldn’t take the job without a summer assignment.  We were strapped for cash.  Education faculty are used to a surge of experienced teachers showing up for master’s degree courses during summer.  They made up a summer wave of graduate students.

I flew to Point while Lynn oversaw the movers and drove our daughters here from College Park, a long drive especially for a single driver.

Stevens Point seemed somewhat like Towson, the seat of Baltimore County and the place where I had met Lynn and dated her.  I expected to teach pre-teachers and graduate teachers at UWSP for the rest of my career and that’s what happened.

My first days were filled with the excitement of a new place and at the time of a national holiday.  Lynn timed her drive from Maryland to be in Point during the last days of June.  We had arrangements to live in a house available because the professor who lived there had a year’s sabbatical at an institution in the east. The Fourth of July holiday was our first experience of note in Stevens Point and it was a good one.

When the 4th rolls around, I am transported back to getting started here.  It is exciting.

Changes forever

It may not be easy to think about, but everything is always changing forever.  Let’s take a large busy city and freeze it and everything and everybody it.  Nobody moves.  This sort of freezing allows nothing to happen.  Doing that will change that place forever.  Why?  Nothing happened.  Yes, it did: that freezing took place.  That freezing never happened before.  If it does, the 2nd freezing, where, again, nothing happens, will again change that place forever.  It will be the place where that 2nd freezing took place.

Everything changes forever.  Time keeps rolling again, steadily racking up history.  You are now changed forever, as am I.  

Contradictions

Sometimes, I get several pages stapled together and one or more of them may have printed on them the words “Intentionally left blank”. I can see that

the page is not blank.  I suppose the organization has gotten questions and complaints about missing pages when the page is actually blank but I can plainly see that the words printed on the page do not leave it blank.

Sometimes,  I get a set of numbers that I use to send back to the sender as part of the process of establishing my identity.  The numbers come with several warnings and statements that I should not share the numbers with anyone but just below the warnings, I am directed to insert the numerals I have received. I think I understand what I am supposed to do but it seems contradictory. I think if someone wrote out a more complete statement that did not create a contradiction, I would skip it and not read it.

Collections

I guess you can have a large collection of just about anything.  A good-sized city, a modern university, all can have many employees, records, offices, restrooms, hallways, elevators.  My life has been affected by libraries.  When I was a part time employee of the Enoch Pratt Library, the main branch had separate rooms for books and periodicals (magazines).  I worked in the History room.

The book “A Place for Everything” by Judith Flanders discusses aspects of the development of methods and practices for arranging books in such a way that they could be located by someone trying to find books of a certain kind.  When you think about it, there are similar problems whether dealing with hundreds of soldiers or weapons or tools or pictures or movies or lessons or students’ tests.

Individual families have stores of possessions that they may not even remember obtaining.  In a similar way, libraries of books or painting and photos may include just what someone needs but without anyone knowing.

I have read that in some libraries, the best thing to do to locate what is sought is to ask the librarian where that item might be.