What will life be like for them?

I read a statement by an excellent woman writer that I admire.  She seemed a bit down.  Her teen daughter's anxieties and doubts about what the girl's future would be and the news teamed up on her.  The news was filled with highly improbable events, good ones and bad ones.  Of course, the journalists and the editors are likely to look for events that surprise, either with positive or negative feelings.  If the events are sufficiently improbable, you can just discount the news as you might reading about events in a far-off tribe who are not near you, don't live as you do and have very little to do with you.

But when you view the events through the lens and the emotions and the doubts of a sharp and well-educated teen, you can see how the improbability might be a little muted, a bit distant.  A person could read about such events and let the feelings of lift or loss emerge inside without using the probability filter.  About fifty years ago, I wrote my dissertation based on decision theory, which is based on measures of probability and value.  Much more recently, I read The Improbability Principle by David Hand and Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.  These books are related to our ability to have a feel for our future.

Of course, as we age, we expect less of a future to have.  A long time back, two medical scientists estimated the "natural" average human lifetime to be 85 years, with a standard deviation of 15 years.  That might mean that barring warfare, car accidents and other life terminators, the majority of people would live between 70 and 100 years.  James Michener advised younger people to fool around until they are 40 years of age, on the grounds that until you are 40, you are still experimenting, trying things out.  Gilbert has evidence that people are not good at predicting the happiness they will feel in the future.  Hand shows that some very odd things will occur in this world, especially if given scrupulous newshounds that hunt down and report odd or amazing things that happen anywhere on the planet at any time.

When education scientists and data analysts think about people and data, they try to remember forces that can modify educational outcomes and experiments. One of the most important of these factors is maturation. Take a look at a photo of yourself at age 15 or 17 and look carefully for traces of the person you were by 30 or 40.  You probably can't see the strength, the imagination, the flexibility, the intelligence that are blooming beneath the surface.  You will undoubtedly recall some times in life when a bit of challenge, a defeat, a strong putdown, a rotten event actually brought home to you or those around you surprising skill, ingenuity or patience.  I say don't be too sure you know what's up next for you and yours.  Don't be too sure you have an inkling of what yours may accomplish.  Your own parents may have been surprised by you.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Don't you want to be famous?

Now, in our age of television, where we can see anyone famous in motion and hear them and hear comments and chatter about them, it is difficult to imagine what it was like back then to hear that the famous, famous man was HERE.  Charles Lindbergh was 25 years old and had flown alone across the Atlantic ocean from New York to Paris.  Others had tried and failed.  When flying, the pilot often needed to fly low over towns in the hope of reading signs to tell him where he was.  Then, he succeeded!

The summer of 1927 he was famous and sought in a way we might not see today:

It is impossible to imagine what it must have been like to be Charles Lindbergh in that summer. From the moment he left his room in the morning, he was touched and jostled and bothered. Every person on earth who could get near enough wanted to grasp his hand or clap him on the back. He had no private life anymore. Shirts he sent to the laundry never came back. Chicken bones and napkins from his dinner plate were fought over in kitchens. He could not go for a walk or pop into a bank or drugstore. If he went into a men's room, people followed. Checks he wrote were rarely cashed; recipients preferred to frame them instead. No part of his life was normal, and there was no prospect that it ever would be again. As Lindbergh was discovering, it was a lot more fun to get famous than to be famous.

Bryson, Bill (2013-10-01). One Summer: America, 1927 (Kindle Locations 4752-4757). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

It can be a wonderful thought to imagine oneself sought after.  But if you have seen the scene late in the movie "Love Potion No.9" by that wonderful screenwriter Dale Launer (My Cousin Vinnie, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ruthless People) where a young woman who wants to be sought by men really gets her wish with about 125 of them, you know it can be terrifying and very dangerous.  We may want to be sought after but not insanely!  We don't want to be torn apart by ecstatic crowds who don't really mean us harm but threaten to crush us in a frenzy.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Inspiration and self deception

There is some evidence that boys and men have greater math ability than girls and women.  (Don't worry - similar evidence says that the females have greater language ability.)  Of course, that doesn't mean that all males can do math better than all females.  There is going to be overlap where some females are better than some males.  I don't know about the "effect size", which is how much difference has been found.  It might be quite small.  

But the other day, I read of an experiment conducted by a UW-Whitewater psychologist and her colleagues that caught my imagination.  Dr. Shen Zhang and her associates gave math exams to both male and female college students.  The exams for the females already had names on them, some male names and some female names.  The women with male names on their exams did better than those working under female aliases.

One of the reasons this result intrigued me was that the last chapter of "The Body Keeps the Score" is a moving account of people healing from traumatic experiences through drama.  With the help of acting coaches and experienced actors, traumatized people find ways to bridge the terrible memory and the locked-away parts of their minds, gaining some comfort and mastery over their wounding experience.  

I often wonder how I can get my mind to do what I want.  Say I want to be a merrier person that I typically am.  Normally, I would be telling myself "Merrier!, Merrier!"  But since I am not typically merry, I may have difficulty thinking of how to be merry.  However, if I pretend to be Marlo Thomas or Mary Tyler Moore or merry old Santa, I can see how to take on the role of a merrier person.  Then, I don't have to be merrier.  I only have to play the role well.  When I play a role, I don't have to think about me but just the character and personality of my temporary self.

People are famous for self-deception.  Fathers think they are more loving than they are.  Teens think they have a better handle on the world than they do.  People have evidence staring them in the face that they conveniently ignore.  There are many kinds of self-deception but maybe consciously trying to adopt a character once in a while can harness the possibilities more effectively.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Limits

In a lecture by Neil Tyson DeGrasse, he made clear that there are limits to what astronomers can know and test.  There is a space which encompasses all the points from which light could reach Earth before it is consumed by an expanding, dying sun.  Points beyond that space seem to have no conceivable way to communicate in any way at all with Earth.  Some things are probably beyond us.

In the closer, slightly homier realm of government and commerce, we may also have limits.  Despite whatever theory can be applied to either government or business, it seems that we are likely to have competitive and egoistic drives to excel, to surpass, to set records.  So, even if my company is doing very well and all my employees and all my stockholders and all of the people all of them love, support and care about are happy, healthy and wealthy, somebody somewhere is going to want to surpass the previous record holders, or their dad or their predecessor or their own previous personal best.  So, we will probably have drives to expand as long as we have the same brains and biology as we do now.

In modern life, there are two ways that expansion takes place besides the more basic military conquest, which is getting more and more scrutiny as a waste and a pestilence.  One sort of expansion is more income/sales/customers.  Whatever clothes, food, methods of travel, books, movies, etc. that you use, somebody is going to what to persuade you to buy and maybe invest in alternatives.

Still, I may be quite wrong.  I am learning to try to test some of my ideas using Google.  I just Googled "businesses unwilling to expand" and got nearly 23 million hits.  The 4th one, relating to the British Isles, says:

Even with George Osborne's call to action for UK businesses to take exports to a new level of £1 trillion by 2020, research has revealed that the majority of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are happy with their success levels and have no ambition to increase their size.

SMEs, which include limited companies and sole traders, have often been called the engine room of the UK economy; however, the poll by accountancy firm Baker Tilly revealed that 96% do not wish to expand. The poll also highlighted that 84% of SMEs were unwilling to take on any more borrowing to fund growth.

The other push that seems it cannot go on forever is advertising.  It is unlikely that my business will acquire you as a customer if you have never heard of it.  I may pay an advertising and media company to interrupt your dinner, your phone call, your face to face conversation with your neighbor or your mate with a little information about my marvelous company.  I am already interrupting your searches on the internet.  I have an ad on your ereader that disappears when you begin using it.  Would you mind terribly if we delayed its disappearance another 10 seconds?

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Overload, shmoverload

Yes, you get lots of unwanted junk mail, pleas for funds, opportunities for investment and you may have won the Nigerian British Argentinian Ohioan lottery.  We both know you don't need more stuff, right?  But what you may need is a good chance to tell your story (or stories, since telling your story quickly involves telling your neighbor's story, and your grandparents' tale, not to mention that incident that took place that time in the railroad station.)

In the fall, I am set to give a talk on Google Blogs and Websites.  If you aren't using them, you might want to start since they are great places to put your story.

I email this blog to about 90 people each time I post, which is just about every day.  I have wondered about the day when each of them emails me their posts on their blogs.  So far, they haven't done that.  I think nearly all of them don't have a blog or a web site.  If they start one, it may be more sporadic than daily.  I might not have that much too read, after all.

True, if you do have a blog, you might find, as I did, that the other million blogs on the net, plus the newspapers, news magazines and the others, the books, the movies, and all the other stuff to read is too thick for your story to get through.  If you start your own blog and all my friends to the same, we will have reached "Irtnog."  Irtnog is the title of a New Yorker article written in 1938 by E.B. White, a writer's writer.  You can read the article through the link but I will summarize it for you.  White's writing is more fun than a summary but the general idea is that the writers of the nation produce so much all the time that readers just can't keep up.

But basically that is nothing new.  Neil Perrin, a literature prof. at Dartmouth, figured in "A Reader's Delight" that there have been quite a few American novels written.  I can't find his estimate now but whatever it is, there are in addition far too many readable and unreadable nonfiction books around, just those in English, mind you, for you to read any sizable portion.  You might take the view that with all of those readable items around, there is no point in adding to the piles.

That would be a mistake.  Writing is good for your brain, whether you ever read what you have written or anybody else ever does.  The Irtnog situation of writers without readers always applies.  Even if you write to your lover, you can't be really sure that the writing gets read.  (As a teacher of testing, I can tell you that even if your writing is read, the reader might not recall what you wrote.  Sometimes, readers even recall what you wrote but you didn't write that.  Their recall gets you confused with William Faulkner or Erma Bombeck.

But going through the construction of your words from your ideas - ah, that's building a healthy mind and a strong set of typing fingers.  It also increases your awareness of really good writing when you come across it in others.

Look up Blogger and or Google Sites and see how to get started.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

incovenience

I am really enjoying listening to Bill Bryson read his book "One Summer America 1927".  When I listen to a book, I have to move through it at the speed of the reader.  No jumping ahead and no skimping.  I suspect that careful and detailed research might turn up interesting events for any year in the history of the US but this book certainly lists a string of interesting ones for the summer of 1927.  

Henry Ford was mentioned in an uncomplimentary way in the post linked above.  But for all his shortcomings, there is no question that the man changed not just America but the whole world.  When was the last time you were in a moving car?  When was the last time you drove?  Do you have your own car?  The gift of convenient travel by auto is the result of ideas and efforts and successes by many people but Henry Ford is definitely one of them.  Thanks, Henry!

The Model T, which was the car that changed America, partly through the miracle of down payments and regular payments thereafter, was not very convenient by today's standards:

The Model T, like Ford himself, was an unlikely candidate for greatness. It was almost willfully rudimentary. For years the car had no speedometer and no gas gauge. Drivers who wanted to know how much gas they had in the tank had to stop the car, get out, and tip back the driver's seat to check a dipstick located on the chassis floor. Determining the oil level was even trickier. The owner, or some other compliant soul, had to slide under the chassis, open two petcocks with pliers, and judge from how fast the oil ran out how much and how urgently more was needed. For shifting, the car employed something called a planetary transmission, which was famously idiosyncratic. It took much practice to master the two forward gears and one reverse one. The headlights, run off a magneto, were uselessly dim at low speeds and burned so hot at high speeds that they were inclined to explode. The front and rear tires were of different sizes, a needless quirk that required every owner to carry two sets of spares. Electric starters didn't become standard until 1926, years after nearly all other manufacturers included them as a matter of routine.

Bryson, Bill (2013-10-01). One Summer: America, 1927 (Kindle Locations 3594-3602). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Layouts and focus points

 Since I was a little kid, I have been practicing the Western convention of beginning my writing in the upper left corner of a piece of blank paper laid out in front of me.  My wordprocessing programs pile characters along a line from that point to the right edge (minus a margin) and then jump back to the left margin for another line of characters.  You know the pattern:

 

I only bother with this to explain where I get my focus point patterns from, as far as I know.  They might come from the way my little sister treated me, for all I know.

To select a visual focus for a meditation session, usually 8-10 minutes, I look for a right angle with this layout:

This would normally be the lower left corner of a piece of writing paper.  The point where the two lines meet would be the origin on a Cartesian graph. From the origin "up", we have the positive segment of the Y axis and from the origin to the right, we have the positive segment of the X axis.  I like to work with positives and I like to use a habit to get started.  In many inside settings, such points are easy to find.  One that is not too high nor too low and is likely to be stable during my 8-10 minutes will work nicely.

 

I make it a habit to use something that does not itself emit light but a point that is easy to see and one that I can recognize and find again if my mind and eyes wander, which they often do.  I want something that is not too bright nor too dim. I keep my eyes focused on the origin.

It doesn't have to be a geometric point where lines meet.  I find it is much more helpful, at least for me, if I use something to look at, somewhere to anchor my sight. The usual advice is to consciously breathe in and slowly exhale, staying very much focused on each breath.  When my eyes are tired, I can follow my breath with closed eyes but that can encourage falling asleep or at least dropping sharp focus on that origin point.

Doing this staring at a point while gently but persistently dismissing the many thoughts that try to get started is mind training.  It is the activity that students, physicians, coaches, special forces, thinkers, those in pain, those that want to happier are all doing regularly.  During the meditation, it works best to just look and breathe, not to justify the activity at that time or recall really good jokes or anything but sit and stare/breathe.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

It is all connected

You probably know that the Zen practitioner said to the hot dog vendor," Make me one with everything."

You might know that Carl Sagan, one of our first superstars of astronomy and cosmology, said that to make a cake from scratch, you have to first make a universe.  With everything being related to everything else, you have to more or less start at Genesis or the big bang, to have anything at all.  Good thing much of that work has already been done for us.

It is not uncommon for a person who gets a strong deep interest in say, aviation, to find himself studying all sorts of things he never imagined he would be studying.  You start out with a plane but then you are studying business, politics, merchandising, military science, psychology, physiology, anatomy, psychophysics.  Pretty soon, you are into law.  You don't want to ignore depictions of the aviation life in art, literature and music.  You need to study biology, including the life of viruses and bugs that travel on planes.  

See, it is all connected.  In fact, as David Weinberger clearly shows, it is all "Too Big to Know", but if you try, you can make quite an impressive amount of progress. 

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

What should schools teach?

My philosophical friends are in a discussion of liberal education.  They are interested in Prof. Louis Menard's book "The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University".  He is a prof. of English at Harvard, has written several books and writes for the New Yorker fairly often.  There are certain subjects that are traditionally thought of as the liberal arts, subjects that assist in freeing the mind and habits from any narrow confinement from one's upbringing and growing up experience.  History is one of them.  Menard writes that "garbage is garbage but the history of garbage is scholarship."  

Most academic discussions of curriculum focus on college and university level education and ignore or underplay the earlier years of human life.  The truth is that there is little basic or scientific or logical evidence as to what makes an ideal curriculum. Clearly, the times, the era in which a person lives is a relevant factor.  People in the 1600's didn't study electrical engineering or computer science.  Most people today study little or no archery.  

It seems clear to me that in the US today, and maybe more so in some other places, anyone who wants to learn just about anything can do so.  There is a book called "The Boy Who Tamed the Wind" about a African young man in a village where there was no electricity who spent time in an American-sponsored library.  He learned what he needed to know and built a wind-driven dynamo that supplied the town with electricity.  

Many curriculum thinkers would ask of that boy whether he had gotten a wide-ranging introduction to mathematics and to literature.  If he knows little about world art, they might advise him to return to his library for that subject.  Music, poetry, philosophy, other languages, the sciences and many other topics might be of interest or profit sometime in his future.  

In general, curriculum has not been a hot topic over the years.  There is very little sex in curriculum thinking and nothing ever blows up.  One of the most biting and memorable books on curriculum was written in 1939, "The Saber-tooth Curriculum", describes satirically the situation where all the saber-tooth tigers are extinct but the skills involved in hunting them are still taught and still graded.  One can still fail to "graduate" with failing grades in saber-tooth tiger hunting.

As with anything else, schooling and one's future are related to one's times, one's family and the general society in which one grows up.  My mother and grandmother had little chance of studying ballet or harp.  I might well have been in sports or medicine if my dad or stepdad had been more determined that I would study those fields.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Lawns and all

We have half an acre for our house and garage, gazebo and shed.  The driveway takes up room, too.  What remains is no western ranch or Australian spread.  That does not stop me using a riding mower. I relish getting the grass cut lickety-split or even faster.  But what takes time is trimming.  We have prairie areas, multiple flower beds and plenty of trees, not to mention the buildings since I already mentioned them.

Trimming is a pain.  I could ignore the need but that would endanger both my marriage and the happiness and feeling of neighborhood acceptance of my wife.  So, I endeavor to do some trimming.  I like the idea of what is called a string trimmer, which is a high speed whirling string of nylon that slices off the weeds and grass along the edges of buildings, steps and beds.  These string trimmers are very popular but they tend to be a pain.

There are two types, gasoline powered and electricity powered.  I have had a gas powered snow-thrower that needs oil mixed with gas to work.  Too much oil and it can't move.  Too much gas and it goes wild, has a heart attack, runs at a ridiculous and unsustainable speed.  Getting the mix just right is a pain, triply so when some of the mix is in the tank and I am trying to guess how much more is needed.  So, gas is out.  Electricity can come from a battery or a line to the house supply.

String trimmers are always losing their string to rocks or other objects and obstacles.  Some are built to advance the string from a spool inside the head and some require a bump on the ground to advance the string.  Both kinds get jammed very easily, mostly from the string still inside the spool getting crossed with itself and unable to advance.  

The one I bought today in another spurt of hope to find a useable one that doesn't put me in a rage is a Black and Decker tool, from Towson, Maryland, where my wife and I met and went to college.  It is also where my grandfather worked for years.  Maybe it will be the answer for a smooth, useable trimmer but I got my doubts.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Michael Mountain and my blog

I have a degree in educational research, measurement and experimental design.  That means I am interested in the improvement of education.  I finished that degree nearly 50 years ago, way before I learned that what might be the biggest omission from the school curriculum for most American children is the technique and rationale of meditation.  The evidence of the benefit psychologically, physically and in general for meditation is already overwhelming and gets more so every year.

As I explained to a friend the other day, there are two basic problems with meditation of the type useable and acceptable to everyone.  One is that practicing it will increase anyone's familiarity with their own mind and feelings but practice can be a little disconcerting at first.  The meditator just needs to sit still, focus on something to look at (any spot or corner or one's own breathing) and gently dismiss thoughts that come up.  The trouble sometimes is that a novice may find that keeping the focus is more difficult than expected, often to the point that the novice decides his or her mind is especially unsuited to meditation and stops trying.

The other difficulty with meditation is just that it seems so simple that it is easy to doubt the activity has any real worth.

I began this blog in 2008 with the idea of spending some time writing and explaining what meditation is, how to do it without interfering with any religion or other conviction or creed, and why it pays.  But it soon became clear that I was reaching a point where I wanted to write about and think about other things.  I realized that every moment of my life is actually a miracle.  It doesn't always feel like that or look like that but it is.  I began to see that I could stay in touch with myself and write about experiences, feelings, events, insights.  I might be able to make such writings interesting or amusing but even if I couldn't, I myself would enjoy the reflections and the activity of finding words that described and related parts of my life.

Somewhere along the line, I came across Sarah Bakewell, a London librarian and writer.  She is a scholar in the writings of Michel de Montaigne.  You only have to Google his last name and you immediately come on tons of information about this Frenchman who lived from 1533 to 1592.  His writings, even when translated into English, are clearly different from the way we think and write today.  But Bakewell, in her book on the man, "How to Live", makes clear that he was one of the first essayists in any language.  His interests and his time in history was in some ways just like ours and, of course, in many other ways, very different.  He didn't have electricity or aviation and we do.  He didn't have antibiotics and we do.  But he and his family and friends got sick, aged and died, just as we do.  There are a very large number of editions of his essays on Amazon and most libraries have copies, too.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Getting some news

I wake up every morning with an empty, hungry mind.  Some of my friends turn on the television news.  We rarely turn on our television set before 7 or 8 PM.  Lynn goes through Facebook and tells me interesting or important news of friends.  I read my email.  Often, the email from friends commenting on the previous day's blog takes up some time and thought for responses.  I get daily newsletters and I am on the lookout for sources that provide what seems both valuable and interesting news and insights.

I get the PEW daily religious newsletter.  I often think it will be boring or too narrow but I keep finding that it is interesting.  I guess it should be no surprise that religion is a very strong force worldwide.  I get Time's newsletter.  It sometimes has interesting news but it is a little too full of ads.  Further, it seems their web coders are using a tool similar to that recently introduced on Netflix, which is continuousness.  Watch a Netflix tv or original with episodes and the next episode will begin whether you want it too or not.  You have to be quick to stop it, although you can stop it at any point if you want.  Similarly, the Time articles run together in what I guess is supposed to be a convenience but is an annoyance for me.

I get various newsletters from the Brookings Institute, chosen by the University of Pennsylvania's review of think tanks as #1 for several years.  Note: there are more than 6,000 think tanks in the world.

I just realized while writing this that I have not been getting the Atlantic's daily newsletter for a while and I don't know why.  I went to their web site and got engrossed in an article on the reasons for San Bernardino, California's municipal bankruptcy.  It seems to be a bad idea of indexing their police and firemen's pay to that of surrounding but wealthier communities.

I don't think I have done any sort of stellar or sweeping review of news and information sources but the question of how to do so interests me.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Covers

Many people have a cover story.  A very common one is "I am busy, gainfully and respectably, of course. Besides, I am worried. I have duties, you see, and I am worried about the successful completion of them all.  I don't want to fail to meet deadlines because the parts I need didn't arrive or I made a big mistake and had to start over."  See?  Worried and hardworking - so don't blame me or criticize me.  Don't interrupt me or try to tempt me with goodies.  I am busy and engaged.

When a lull happens at work or in family life, or when retirement comes, or a new job means oversight and quiet appraisal and thought, it can come as a surprise that outside of one's duties, there is a whole world.  If the duties change or technology renders the job or the whole business or even the entire industry obsolete, it can be surprising to find that behind the cover, a person is tired or bored or confused.  Many events as well as simply thinking can abruptly create a situation that is unfamiliar and question-provoking.

When we are thrown into a new situation or a deeply reflective mood, it can help to meditate for 10 timed minutes.  A timer that will ring or otherwise alert us means that we can focus on simply looking or breathing until the time is up. Doing so improves our awareness of what is actually on our mind and what feelings we actually have.  Sometimes, that awareness is a big help.  But sometimes, as we become aware, we are able to see and feel loneliness, fear, doubt or general confusion.

At such times, getting a pad and pencil and making a list of problems, assets financial and otherwise, debts and difficulties.  The list may clarify or it may show a need for further help or planning.  It can help to know that having a big change can force a new and strange picture of yourself on you.  Giving yourself a day or two to digest the new picture, get used to it can help, meditating each day.

Whatever the new situation, it can also help to read about it, Google the problem and simply recognize that plenty of other people have faced and are facing the same new challenge.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Mailbox adventures

Our mailbox sits on a post by the road.  The postman or woman drives along in a special vehicle with the steering wheel and other controls on the right side of the vehicle, instead of our usual left side.  That position enables the postperson to deliver our mail from the mail truck into the mailbox without leaving the truck.  

Without trying, I have learned to distinguish the truck's engine sound from other noises around us.  I have not learned to allow for the extra extension on my riding mower when I am collecting the grass cuttings.  Spring means they can be used for mulch but that means putting the rather large and clumsy grasscatcher on the mover.  It also means that the catcher is waiting to whack our mailbox unless I stay alert.  I have lost alertness enough times that I had to replace our mailbox today.  

I wanted a plastic one that sun, rain, snow, heat and cold would not affect.  I bought a plastic one but that store didn't have the sort of pole I wanted.  The last time I put up a box, I had an arrangement where I drove a big long metal stake in the ground with a sledge hammer.  There was a wooden pole that fit over the stake.  I have never mixed concrete and I didn't want to get into that mess.  You might not be messy with it but I don't trust me.

The plastic mailbox I bought didn't fit the pole I finally located.  The pole was the convenient kind so I bought a 2nd mailbox made by the same company that made the convenient pole.  The whole thing is up now.  Hope we get some mail tomorrow.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Directing myself to be what I want

It is ok not to be bored, scared or confused.  For me, the best tools to avoid these states of mind are first of all, just sitting.  Focusing on a single object and gently turning away all thoughts for 10 minutes is enough to make it clearer and clearer that any mind state tends to be my abode only with my permission.  I might think it is unfair or unloving to step out of boredom or fright since many people, including those I love, might be feeling that way.  Maybe I have a duty to feel the same way they do out of companionship.

But I find that I can be just as friendly, just as social or maybe more so when I step away from feeling down.  We are still reading "The Body Keeps the Score" by van der Kolk and are on the chapter about EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. This odd therapy method involves rapidly moving the eyes diagonally back and forth, which is similar to the REM (rapid eye movement) that we all do in parts of our sleep time.  The book "Getting Past Your Past" by the originator of EMDR, Dr. Francine Shapiro, includes many exercises, images and metaphors that can be used to uproot moods, convictions, fears and other state or convictions that hold a person back. Shapiro's book can be downloaded from Amazon for $10.

Whether I am thinking of myself as Christian, or Buddhist or honest or open or suffering, I can use any of those mantles to see myself as ok, noble, strong, wise and flexible while accepting my age, my life, my status, my condition as ok.  I don't seem to be as likely to work at staying in a given state as emerging from one I am not tickled with into one I like more.  I am trying this eye movement stuff more often and it does seem to be useful.  The idea is that my brain is actually working while I sleep to sift memories for things worth keeping and integrating into my brain and mind while discarding those that are not helpful.  That sounds like a good thing to be doing and the eye movement process can help me do that whenever I want to. I don't seem to have suffered any traumatic experiences, which tend to be defined as so yucky, frightening or horrifying that they are too overwhelming to be processed in the normal way, by my brain while I sleep.

Katherine Andler's book on Self-Administered EMDR can be downloaded for $1.17 or free if you are in the Kindle Unlimited program.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Strangers and Naked Manatees

The guys at lunch told me about a book called "Naked Came a Stranger" written by a group of writers who decided to write a novel together by each writing a separate chapter and then stitching it all together.

I downloaded the book and have read a little of it.  It is not bad but not that good or arresting or gripping.  They also told me about "Naked Came the Manatee" written by a bunch of Florida writers, including Dave Barry, whose Big Trouble is one of my favorite stories.  Their idea was to also write separate chapters at the same time but to try to leave their chapter is the worst possible way for it to be inserted sensibly in the book.  

Then they told me about "Dick for a Day" by some women writers explaining what they would do if they were male and had a penis for one day.  I read about that book on Amazon and it didn't appeal to me.  Neither did "Chic for a Day", with male writers thinking of a day of being fully female.

Since "Naked Came the Manatee" is not available on Kindle, I got a used copy today on paper.  I am not surprised that the manatee came naked since I have no doubts that it is very hard to find decent clothes for a manatee.  No disrespect but manatees are more or less shape-free:

Order and purposeful invention are usually better than chaos and unruly crowd efforts so I will not be surprised if the story stitched together by 13 Florida imaginative but possibly tired writers, somewhat working in competition, is not all that gripping.  I will let you know what we think when we give it a try.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Where are good sources of perspective?

Everybody has a staff. Of course, I am exaggerating and what does it matter?  Because one or more employees devoted to an office and a cause tend to increase the intensity with which an idea, a movement, a cause is sold, promoted, explained, defended and very often, exaggerated, too.

I read on Twitter that my state legislature was considering cutting the support of public broadcasting.  What does that mean?  After some Googling and sifting through the baloney, turns out that 24% of the state public broadcasting budget comes from the state, with the rest from donors and other sources.  The tweet said that the proposed cut was 35% or roughly one third of 24%.  Losing 8% of the funds would be no picnic, I imagine, but it seems quite different to me from the idea of the immediate loss of all public broadcasting in the state.

Compare the headlines or article titles:

   Legislature considers 8% cut in public broadcasting's budget

   Legislature considers cuts in public broadcasting budget funds

Because there is so much information floating around and therefore such high competition for attention, readers and audience, it seems that few people, causes or offices can afford to state the simple truth these days.  It seems that almost everyone takes the view that it is better to try to be alarming.  At least, cover up details that might lessen the shock and emphasize any way of allowably stating facts that frightens.  But if everyone takes the salesman's approach, maybe the pitchman's approach, what happens to the idea of an educated public?

I realize there is little point in putting on the masthead of my paper or in the title of my book a statement that I speak the truth without slant or spin.  I imagine that one way or another nearly all writers, speakers and promoters of causes and products assert they tell the truth.  A few may be able to sketch their communication strategy and explain how it differs from what they might consider an unsophisticated approach.  Many are probably able to explain what those others, the enemies of truth, are doing, how they distort the facts and lead people astray.

Maybe we have to resort to the Anglo approach used in English and England-derived legal procedures where we ask for vigorous contest between defender and prosecutor but that still leaves the need for a judge or jury to decide what seems to be the truth of the matter.  As a citizen judge of many issues and questions, I wish I could get a little more unbiased, ok, minimally biased, help.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety