Nutrition

I have been eating all my life but I haven’t much knowledge about food.  I was on the wrestling team in both high school and college and had to “make weight” before each match.  That means a referee watches as I step on a scale so that he can see that my weight is within the required limit for my weight class.  I was never too heavy to qualify for a match, but I naturally thought about what I ate.  My first research paper in college was about nutrition and I did learn from writing it.

My basic understanding divides foods into three main categories: carbs (“starches”), vegetables, especially greens, such as spinach and kale, and proteins like meat and beans.  To get a bit deeper in the subject, most foods are not just in one of the three classes but are mostly one of the classes or outstanding examples.

I think any food or drink can be overdone and so moderation is key.  In August of 2023, I posted about what happened to me when I neglected another important nutrient: water.  After I fell on my face from the effects of poor hydration, I was told to drink more water.  Since then, I have and I suspect it is contributing to my longevity;

Great-grandparents not included

A great-granddaughter formally graduated from high school last night.  She has been a successful soccer midfielder, drummer and singer.  She has very high marks.  She is a model person in many ways.

The public town high school includes appropriately aged students from several nearby communities.  The graduation ceremony was available on television and we saw her accept her diploma. My wife and I are great-grandparents and are not sufficiently central to the graduate’s family to have a ticket into the ceremony itself. There are too few seats for graduates to have more than 5 guests.  Parents, siblings and close relatives alone can easily come to more than 5.

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.