Outage

We were talking together in our living room when our lights quietly turned off.  An electrical outage.  No ignition for flame on our gas stove. No internet.  Our cellphones have power and a signal.  Looked up a number and called it.  

Turned out a little group of four houses were affected.    Linemen were here quickly and fixed us up.   Some wire needed to be replaced but it runs underground.  A temporary fix is installed but sometime later it will get more permanent treatment.

It's August

August is the month when my grandmother told me to go outside and look into the family car, which had just brought my parents home.  I did and saw that my mother was holding my new baby sister.  We have been connected ever since.

August is the month that was inserted into the calendar in the name of Augustus.

It is the last month before school reopens.

"The Week" by David Henkin

“The Week” goes out of Henkin’s way to emphasize that weeks are not natural.  Years have to do with the sun, days have to do with the sun but weeks are a human invention.  I wondered if some societies have used more or less days than 7.  I got this:

Yes, many historical and traditional societies have used cycles shorter or longer than seven days, such as the ancient Roman eight-day market cycle, the Egyptian and Chinese ten-day cycles, and the traditional West African four-day or five-day market weeks. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Ancient and Traditional Week Lengths

• 3-to-4 days: Isolated pockets in parts of central Africa historically operated on ultra-short three- or four-day intervals. [1]

• 4 days: The Igbo people of Nigeria traditionally organize time around a four-day market and ritual week. [1]

• 5 days: The Javanese people of Indonesia use a traditional five-day cycle called a pasaran, and various Korean and West African regions used five-day market structures. [1, 2, 3, 4]

• 6 days: The Akan people in Ghana use a six-day cycle alongside other reckonings. [1, 2]

• 8 days: Early Romans used an eight-day agricultural and market cycle known as the nundinae before switching permanently to the seven-day week. [1]

• 10 days: Ancient Egyptians and ancient China split their months into ten-day units (such as the Chinese xun). [1, 2, 3]

• 13 days: The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures structured time using a 13-day cycle, often called a trecena. [1]

• 15 days: Certain older Chinese administrative systems divided months into two 15-day periods. [1]

Modern and State Experiments

• 10 days: During the French Revolution, the government replaced the seven-day week with a decimal ten-day décade to eliminate religious influences, though it was short-lived. [1]

• 5 and 6 days: The Soviet Union experimented with continuous rolling five-day and six-day workweeks in the 1920s and 1930s to keep factories running constantly, but abandoned the practice due to social complications. [1, 2]

I'll last longer

When I said,”You know, your devices (connected tablets, smartphones, computers) will last longer if you only charge them 60-80% of their capacity”, she answered “I’ll last longer if I charge them without paying attention to 60 or 80 %.”

Try replacing "the" with "a"

I see titles that say “the truth about” this or that.  I think it would lead to better thinking if people tried replacing “the” with “a” truth. 

It is actually nearly impossible to tell or write “THE” truth about anything.  It might tip off a little wider thinking if we habitually said “A” truth.  There are many truths, more than we know or can hold in our minds. 

Janet Davis, photographer

Quite a few people complimented the photo of a hummingbird on a hot lips plant.  I want to say that I looked at something like 25 or 30 shots and the one I copied seemed the best.  Enough people seemed to think I took the picture that I wanted to give the Canadian photographer credit.  You may have noticed that she has a credit line in the picture.  You can look her up online.  The name “Janet Davis” is not that unusual so there may be several people with that name.  It seems she is also an author.

Hummingbird and hot lips plant

Four points

1. Cartoons are less funny, often not funny at all.  Am I alone in finding comics in the paper unfunny?  I sit down in a good mood, not a sour or grumpy one but they just aren’t funny.

2. YOYO dinners - my wife has said “Yoyo dinner” more than once.   I looked up “YOYO dinner” and yes, it is widespread enough and accepted widely enough to already be explained on some pages.  “You are On Your Own” dinner means get something to eat, cook it if needed.  She won’t be home.

3. Finding she can cook - thinking about wifey’s cooking reminds me that I never once gave a thought to her ability to whip up meals.  So, I was delighted to find that she is a good cook.

4. Is that person still alive? - At younger ages, I rarely asked if a friend was still alive.  Sure, they are.  Why wouldn’t they be?  They might have moved.  But alive?

"Open and save the date"

I got that email entitled “Open and save the date”.  What if someone is getting married and is looking forward to me attending the wedding?  I tried to open and save the date.  While trying, the foul thing relayed the totally misleading message to addresses in my contacts.  It might be good at selecting people I haven’t heard from recently.  That happened on Tuesday, the 21st, and I am still not back to normal.  Closer but not back.

One feature that is still not working is placing the title of an email in bold until I open it.  I never liked that feature much but without it, I am much more likely to skip a message and not respond.

Later years

Important features of living while elderly relate to loss: loss of health, loss of friends.  I read the local obituaries daily to see if friends died.  Before death, physical and mental problems may darken life and spirit.  Mobility may shrink or disappear altogether.  Religious or meditative practices and exercise may help enormously.