Contradictions

Sometimes I get some pages stapled together and some of them are blank except for the sentence “This page intentionally left blank.”  I feel confident that the page is not blank since that sentence is printed on it.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the sentence is there to assure the recipient that no important pages were omitted.  

Sometimes I am asked to verify my identity.  I get a number by email, text or phone and my identity is accepted when I get that number back to the source.  When I get this set of digits, I am usually warned “not to share this number with anyone”.  Sometimes, I am told “we will never ask for this number.”  I share it with the sender and am temporarily verified.

"1,2,3"

The two of us are old and getting even older.  So, in the spirit of the age of abbreviations, we have encoded our frequent comments upon parting:

1. Drive carefully

2. Call me if you need me.

3. Enjoy yourself.

The code is “1,2,3”.  Do NOT share that code with anyone!

"Eisenhower" again

When you look through my notes, you may find that I wrote the name “Eisenhower” here and there.  I wasn’t imagining myself as Mrs. Dwight Eisenhower, wife of the 34th president.  Girls used to write the name of a guy they liked after “Mrs.”.  Maybe some do these days.  I wasn’t doing that.  I read that the word “Eisenhower” written in typical handwriting has helpful curves and twists to break in a new ball point pen.  

My blog “Fear, Fun and Filoz” has 6127 posts including this one.  A nice feature of Google blogs is a search window.  That means an older brain like mine with an older memory like mine can put in a search window something like Eisenhower to see if I wrote about using that word to get a ball point pen working properly.  I did on October 15, 2025.

Hidden Studios Tour

We traveled to half of the Hidden Studios.  Saw some friends and some good art: painting, pottery, sculpture

https://hiddenstudiosarttour.com/

Transmission time

Most of the time, our digital devices seem to work pretty much instantaneously.  But sometimes, there are delays.  I realize it is unAmerican to suffer delays but they can be unavoidable.  When a hot news item breaks, when all the students in the local high school are using their phones, when employees begin using their devices at the appointed hour, there may be a slowdown.  It takes time for signals to travel.  It takes time for human brains and fingers and electric currents to get their work done.

Books

See those shelves?  Books!!! They contain stories, ideas, memories, directions, answers, questions!  Almost all are in English but maybe that is 

a language you can read.  I know streaming puts all kinds of movies ready to watch but don’t forget books.

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看到那些書架了嗎？都是書！它們承載著故事、想法、回憶、指引、答案和疑問！幾乎所有的書都是英文的，但也許你能讀懂英文。我知道串流媒體平台提供了各種各樣的電影，但別忘了還有書。

Kàn dào nàxiē shūjiàle ma? Dōu shì shū! Tāmen chéngzàizhe gùshì, xiǎngfǎ, huíyì, zhǐyǐn, dá'àn hé yíwèn! Jīhū suǒyǒu de shū dōu shì yīngwén de, dàn yěxǔ nǐ néng dú dǒng yīngwén. Wǒ zhīdào chuàn liú méitǐ píngtái tígōngle gèzhǒng gè yàng de

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वो शेल्फ़ दिख रही हैं? किताबें!!! उनमें कहानियाँ, विचार, यादें, निर्देश, जवाब और सवाल होते हैं! ज़्यादातर किताबें अंग्रेज़ी में हैं, लेकिन हो सकता है कि आप यह भाषा पढ़ सकते हों। मुझे पता है कि स्ट्रीमिंग पर हर तरह की फ़िल्में देखने के लिए मौजूद हैं, लेकिन किताबों को मत भूलिए।

woh shelf dikh rahi han? kitaben!!! unme kahaniyan, vichar, yaden, nirdesh, jawab aur sawal hote han! zyadatar kitaben angrezi mein han, lekin ho sakta hai ki aap yah bhasha padh sakte hon. mujhe pata hai ki streaming par har tarah ki filmen dekhne ke liye maujood han, lekin kitabon ko mat bhuliye.

"I don't know"

In high school or college, I read Jacques Barzun, a Frenchman from a wealthy family.  He came to the US and served as a dean.  In his book, “Science, The Glorious Entertainment”, he says that new discoveries call for new names and words and implies that we might run out of words.  I thought that was a silly idea.  Since then, the 1950’s, there have been many new discoveries.  That is the sort of question I like to pester Google with: How many important discoveries have been made since the 1950’s?  Here is the first sentence of the response:

Thousands of important scientific discoveries and technological innovations have been made since the 1950s, making an exact total impossible to calculate. 

You may have noticed many new words and abbreviations being used.  Maybe his prediction is working out?  How about if I save time and typing and just indicate the first letter of the words in my next blog post?

If I forget your name

If I show signs that I cannot recall your name, that does not mean that you are unimportant to me.  If I am trying to recall your name, isn’t that a sign that you matter and that I care about you?  If you grant me a few minutes at my computer or with my phone or with my tablet, I may be able to use your name as of old.  That demonstration would not mean that tomorrow I may be unable to recall your name.

17 parts of the modern world ancients didn't have

Railroads, telegrams, telephones, electricity, refrigeration, cars, radio, movies, washing machines, airplanes, tv, internet, personal computers, smartphones, Google search, ebooks, artificial intelligence

"City Reading" and city living

“Though New York’s urban texts did not level incomes, instill ethnic harmonies, bridge neighborhoods or promote political consensus, they bracted these ruptures within shared experiences of public space by rendering by rendering much of the city legible to strangers and facilitating forms of access and interaction that did not require personal acquaintance, face-to face contact or recognizable individual authority.” I wish I had written that sentence.  It is long and complicated but when trying to describe human experience, it sometimes has to be.

My friend grew up well in a small Wisconsin town while I grew up in the large-ish city of Baltimore, Maryland. Because we worked together, I have had a chance to gain some understanding of her life and compare it to my own.  The professor of history, David M. Henkin wrote my opening sentence in his book “City Reading”.  The title refers not to use of public libraries or urban bookstores but to signs, handbills, labels and other opportunities that someone with the ability to read the local language finds in today’s cities.  Of course, the existence of public schools and the basic curriculum of ‘readin, writin’ and ‘rithmetic’ moved much of humanity from not having any code decipher-ability to many minutes looking at some alphabet and getting ideas from that activity.