Noticing wonders

It can feel difficult and false to spend too much time on noticing miracles and savoring good luck.  It can feel that one has no luck and no connection to any miracles.  Yet, I think practicing awareness of miracles and good luck can be a big help in feeling good about life.

Here are some tools that can be associated with wellbeing and good luck.  

1. Physical balance

2. Breath and breathing

3. Electricity

It is easy to walk around the house or sit in a chair and take balance for granted.  But talk to someone having trouble with balance and you will get a different story.  My elderly friend often has trouble with dizziness and inability to balance.  My deceased daughter had trouble near the end of her life sitting in a chair at a table without toppling over.

I learned that meditation worked for me when I used a single point to keep my eyes focused on.  When I realized I had let my vision and my thinking go to something other than that point, I noticed and returned.  It worked well: https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2019/06/direct-meeting-with-yourself.htm

Later, I realized that focusing my attention on my breath was possible with my eyes closed.  Closed eyes can be rested while the breath serves as a good anchor for one's attention.  A student in Larry Rosenberg's "Breath by Breath"complained that focusing on his breath was very boring.  Rosenberg told him about Brooklyn meditation where one holds his breath while meditating.  After quite a few seconds, the man had to start breathing.  "Was that boring?", Rosenberg asked.

You can take electricity to be a modern miracle.  If you have had to do without that force in your house, you know how grateful you can be to have it and the tools and activities that have developed using it.  Computing, cellphones, tv, streaming, washers and dryers, stoves, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and last but most, electric lights are all wonderful even when we just assume they are part of what we deserve.  Each use of a light switch can be a moment to think of lighting a candle or a group of them.

Three notes

1)  My friend, Ken Hanson, introduced me to the magazine The Week.  Both Lynn and I find it the best magazine we get.  This week's issue introduced me to the book by Judith Flanders: "A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order".  The review emphasizes that people understood the typical alphabetical order is arbitrary and putting things like books in alphabetical order de-emphasized their value or their sacredness.  

2) I keep reading lockdown, quarantine and isolation are putting a great many people in a bad mood, a sour mood, a depressed mood.  I can understand that, but I do think that if we compare what we are going through to what others have done, we will often find the current situation is not too bad.  If you are sick or out of work and money, that is clearly serious. Still, this can be a good time to read, to exercise at home, to practice music or art, to write to friends, to reflect.

3) This blog is more than 10 years old.  That is not a great deal of time but it is enough to allow me to look back and see what I was writing about in previous years.  With this post, I will have 4,016 previous postings and some of them are good reading.  The search window in the upper left corner of the main blog page https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/

allows for searching through them all for mention of a term or phrase.  I looked up a earlier date using the list by date in the lower left of that main page the other day and liked this one:

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2010/10/lust-and-libraries.html

6th grade animation

My youngest greatgranddaughter likes art and drawing.  She has opted for all online schooling.  She can get her school work done in less time and that gives her more time for her own activities.  I visited with her the other day just to see what she was up to.  She introduced me to Flipaclip, an app that she has put on her phone.  So, here was a modern 6th grader working on an animation.  I am impressed and interested.

You may have run into many writings asserting that we are living in different times.  We can agree with that statement all right.  Today is October 29, 2020 and as far as we know, we have never, ever had just this time, this moment, this day before, anywhere.  But many statements about new times, digital natives, unprecedented this and never-before-that are attempts to say something more, something along the line of these are times that are so very different, that have a big enough difference from our great grandparents' time that it all amounts to a new world, one where life is different, possibilities are different and dangers and joys are different.  

Maybe and maybe not.  Young couples in love may actually be quite like young couples in love centuries ago.  As always, interest in and assertions of difference depend on what we mean and what we focus on.  Working on crops, serving food - there may well be activities that are carried on in the same way as they were years ago.  

I have a few friends who have spent years on learning the history of film.  Like Anthony DiNozzo in "NCIS", they can remember lines, particular scenes and shots from movies from the 1930's until now.  I saw the movie "Hugo"

https://www.google.com/search?q=A+Trip+to+the+Moon&newwindow=1&client=firefox-b-1-d&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAG2PsQ4BQRBAE5VKRHIkU000WlSUCkRy14lCN5hzy-6O7O5J7o_4Dj9mcyIRtDMv780059Bbsrgje8wed60eN485GaUraC8c232BudIGx8PRFJIX-kHGlYf2twGSdcG4MhfxXu0040YqOjJ0Zrh26oJBMEQgE7GxopwPtcnQmZ0H-DmIyiCGQqS76VuGB7IeNWFaWobWiQuyNk4HpPdV_09p0tj2jVwVI-2kDMjkdIUfP9b5J72N9UYRAQAA&sxsrf=ALeKk01E16cZKnOTaCjrsk_cxzoqMfQS5g:1604003139406&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjk1d6q0drsAhXhB50JHRevAs4Q_AUoAnoECAMQBA&biw=1280&bih=588

(a link to a Google search about that Hugo movie and its images that is so long and complex I made the print size "4".  Copy it and make it big if you want to check me out).  "Hugo" reminded me that film making started in the late 1800's.  Animation is a slightly different story.  If you had sat with my greatgrandson as we delighted in the repetitive stupidities of Wile E Coyote, https://giphy.com/explore/wile-e-coyote

you would know that animation can show things and do things that only humans can dream up and demonstrate.

I have never animated but some children are doing it these days.

Lynn talks Cuba

The woman is impressive.  She pictured herself a mathematician, a dentist, a physician but Dad said girls could become teachers, secretaries, or nurses.   So, she enrolled in teachers' college where we met.  We had both had plenty of experience dating and yet we still decided that the two of us made a good pair.  She got a job teaching 2nd grade but she resigned to help shepherd 40 college students on a semester in Europe.  When she got back, she used her minor in school librarianship to land the job of stocking and opening a elementary school library in a new building going up.  She retired more than a decade ago with a PhD and teaching experiences at two Wisconsin universities.  

Her grandmother was an impressive adventuress, too.  She was orphaned as a little kid and lived in an orphanage in her native Cuba.  Her granddaughter's other relatives and ancestors were Nordics so the Cuba connection stood out.  Nana's marriage to a mining man and relocation to the US led to childhood for the granddaughter in the DC area.  She didn't forget Cuba, which is often touted as being close to the US physically.  We have taken more than twenty Elderhostel/Road Scholar trips.  When she saw one of their trips to Cuba, not only to Cuba, but for once, a trip that didn't just visit Havana but started 700 miles away in Nana's childhood city of Santiago, she arranged for us to go.  

Today, she gave a talk on Zoom to our local learning in retirement group.  Typical of her, she worked hours and hours on the talk, trying to squeeze 500 years of history and two weeks of travel into 90 minutes.  It is not a simple subject since that island nation tired of the domination of the US and joined the Soviet Union as an ally, which has led to all sorts of special situations, especially for US citizens who want to visit.  She showed some of the 1000 pictures she took and covered both experiences we had and general topics related to life there.  

Scrunched

We watched as our old couch was loaded onto the trash truck. We paid a special fee to have the men and their truck pick up that wonderful old sofa that supported us well for several decades.  The truck had a crushing mechanism that scrunched the whole thing as we watched.  It was sad.  

Still, we had planned the event.  We had asked for help and our granddaughter and son-in-law came over and carried the old sofa out and put it at the curb.  

The men and truck bringing the new sofa arrived today on time.  They carried in the new sofa and put it in place. 

What should I focus on?

I recently found a new book by Deepak Chopra, MD.  I read his "Return of the Rishi" about flying to the US from India and going straight to the hospital where he was supposed to be on call as a resident physician.  He found the practice of officially needing a physician to pronounce death had occurred, odd.  I also read his "The Higher Self", a book that capped an interest in meditation and led me to my own meditation practice.  

While leading a group of students on a tour of Britain and Europe, I found three students meditating, having learned to practice with the Transcendental Meditation group.  I was interested and read over the years about increasing evidence of the benefits.  One of the first books was The Relaxation Response (1972) by Herbert Benson, MD, a professor at the Harvard Medical School.  That book is still in print and discusses the benefits of physical relaxation but skips the topic of meditation. The new Chopra book is "Total Meditation", about working to integrate meditation practice into more of one's life.

Over the years, Benson and meditation developed in me an awareness of body and facial tension when I am relaxing.  Tension leads to awareness which leads to mindfulness, being aware of what thoughts have come to mind.  I try to characterize my thoughts, give them a title or make a summary.  They often furnish a satisfactory focus for my blog posts.  What is on my mind?  In a similar way, the question arises What is here?  What is going on where I am: my living room, my street, my town?

Of course, judgment has to be exercised, artistic judgment.  I often think of that woman but no, I won't write about that.  That same idea of what needs to be done in this county occurs to me, yet again, but no, that is not what I want to write about, either.  Last night, because of a friend's urging, we watched "The Way I See It" on Amazon Prime and other places.  Pete Souza was the Presidential photographer for two 8 year presidents and he shows how a photographer or a writer or a thinker continuously picks and chooses his focus.  Staying close to one's self with meditation and being open to recognizing what is going on, internally, as well as locally and more broadly, keeps one's mind, body, and life in harmony.  

Not so good

This picture is part of a New York Times article on current struggles with work, money, worry and getting along in various parts of the US.  I am confident that we could find the same thing in some part of just about any country.  But, I find this picture especially expressive and poignant.  

Earthy

Gladiolus bulbs came out of the ground and daffodil bulbs went in.  The ground is not frozen so it wasn't hard.  For the health of some other plants, we cut off the leaves and supporting stems.  

Here is a link to some of my blog posts about our lawn and grounds. 

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/search?q=lawn

I want simplicity and Lynn wants acceptable appearance.  So far, we seem to be fairly able to achieve both without too much worry, energy or expense.  At our age, it doesn't take much for the job to be somewhat hard work.  One of the advantages of living in the north is that it gets cold, which is a good excuse to stay in and a strong obstacle to working on grounds and plants.

Our trees are getting close to letting go of all their leaves.  We have a little disagreement over procedure.  She has read that letting the leaves stay is a good idea but I have already told our grounds people to give us both a fall clean-up and a spring clean-up.  

I often hear that some cataclysmic event changed everything.  Not only that, but it was "changed forever".  Now that we have dug up bulbs and planted others, our lives are changed forever.  Ok, not in a very big way.  Not in a way that I will remember but our lives are changed.  Yesterday at this time, we had not dug up bulbs nor planted them but now we have.  Our fortunes, our pasts (especially the last few hours), our present and all future (minute) histories could include the change that happened before lunch today.

Last night, I participated in an online session run by the director of the local Center for Critical Thinking, Prof. Warren.  She directed our attention to careful awareness of words used to express ideas.  Her teaching and my awareness of my fading memory and ability to omit events from what I recall does raise the question with me about how I would know if the grounds work changed my life or didn't.  I can carry the idea, more or less memorized, that my life has changed minutely, but if it has not changed, would I know?  Let me get back to you on that.

Suppressed

Quite a few friends and relatives have expressed some exasperation with avoiding crowds and not eating in restaurants.  It is a bit surprising that so much emotion can slowly emerge from the Covid situation.  We have not been very ardent about eating out but as people list things they are not doing, like attending church, having lunch with friends or getting together for a book discussion or a knitting group, it seems clear that momentum can build up to simply do what one wants to do, where one wants to do it and with others, regardless of increasing or decreasing indicators of the likelihood of catching a bug.  

An elderly person may have a little less trouble going through a daily routine that involves face masks and mostly being home.  I admit I am grateful for ebooks that are delivered through the air, quickly and cheaply.  We tend to be awake and out of bed for 16 hours a day and two of those hours we watch tv nearly every day.  Some days, something different comes along but our internet wi-fi and Roku streamer are a pleasure.  The same old gruesome murders and the same old characters in "NCIS" start most of our evenings and we have a feeling of familiarity comfort with the repetitious characters and our crime-solving duties.  It has gotten to the point that we can tell the crew would not be able to function without our attention.

Most of our mornings involve coffee and breakfast and then a 1 or 2 mile walk.  As winter gets closer, indoor use of an stationary bike and a yoga mat get to be more important.  We are past trying for great shapes or bulging muscles but we have found that body and spirit, flexibility and strength are better with exercise.  We realize that at some point, we will have more difficulty standing up and balancing but for now, we are grateful for what we can do.

It can be helpful to ask questions and they are more valuable if they are written out.  What about this Covid quarantine is most annoying?  What can I do about chafing to burst out?  Does my Texas sister and her family feel the same way?  How about Sally out there in Oregon or Catherine in Connecticut - how are they doing?  Which of my books have I still not ever opened?  Do my plants need watering?  Have I ever faced a problem that felt like this before?  What did I do that time?

The problem of dated silverware

If I don't stay alert, fashions could change and leave me behind. My wife is more sensitive to the acceptability of my haircut, the width of my tie and the color of my shoe laces than I am.  Every now and then, she announces that something is out of date, passé, approaching pathetic and hilarious.  Except for my height, people at one time kept thinking I was Abe Lincoln.  Then, with proper coaching, I gave up the beard, the stove pipe had and wore more colors and less black.  That problem seems to have gone away.  

Yesterday, our fashion officer announced that we have in this house DATED SILVERWARE!

The announcement sounded serious and in little time, I had refreshed my knowledge about just what silverware is.  The announcer explained that current soup spoons are much larger than our old-fashioned spoons.  We have recently taken action to update our living room sofa and our refrigerator so I am aware of the importance of being in step and trying to stay with the modern world instead of the Babylonian one.   

You may be aware that we are already living a lie.  Our silverware is not silver!!!!!  It's some other kind of metal but that doesn't mean that we aren't wary of the social fall we are in danger of suffering if we serve soup to our fashionable friends.  I just read this blog post to our fashionista and she laughed and said that, in truth, our forks are unfashionably small, too.

Teaching leads to thinking!

From today's Writer's Almanac:

On this date in 1512, Martin Luther joined the faculty of the University of Wittenberg. As a young man, Luther planned to study the law, but when he was caught in a powerful storm in 1505, he vowed to St. Anne that he would become a monk if he lived through the storm. He didn't feel fulfilled by his experience in the monastery, and his disillusionment only grew after he was made a delegate to a church conference in Rome. When he got back to Germany, he decided to pursue his doctorate at the University of Wittenberg. He did so well that he was asked to teach there as a professor of theology. The act of preparing lessons for his students led him to think more deeply about his own faith, and what it was that bothered him about the Roman Catholic Church. In 1517, Pope Leo X announced the sale of indulgences to help finance the construction of St. Peter's Basilica. People could give money to the church to lessen their punishment for their sins. Luther was enraged and wrote a document called "Disputation on the Power of Indulgences" — commonly known as "the Ninety-five Theses" — explaining why the sale of indulgences corrupted people's faith. He nailed his theses to the door of the university chapel, and kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

Not long ago, we read the excellent "Leaving the Witness", in which author Amber Scorah recites her story of deep feeling for her religion, her facility in learning languages, being sent to China as a more or less secret missionary and what happened.  She reports that translating her religious message into another language repeatedly caused her to think and re-think the ideas and led to deep doubts and new convictions.

We see faces everywhere

I have read that no other species gets so much information about another member of the species as we get from a face. Facial layout, with two eyes, a nose and a mouth, are the subject that even gets a newborn's attention.  

This picture came up on the Windows lockscreen this morning.  You can see the hair and the face looking to the left, with ears, eyes, eyebrows, a forehead and more.  The scene may be from the coast of Portugal.  

We are all automatically conscious of a human face wherever it appears and we automatically evaluate the personality of the "person" with that face, whether or not we can do so accurately or with any true insight.

During this time of coronavirus Covid-19, it is no wonder that we are sensitive about covering part of our face and wearing facial masks, not to mention any effect doing so has on breathing.  Along with heartbeat, breathing is our most obvious sign of being alive.

A little pain

Nearly thirty years ago, I had a bit of trouble with the skin on the sides of my nose, where my glasses rest.  I can't remember what got that episode started.  Often, when my glasses are painful, it is because I struck the edge of my glasses against a cabinet door or something.  That can jam the nose piece on the side of my glasses into the skin and bone.  It hurts and the area can be red and sensitive.  

Yesterday, I began to have pain from my glasses resting on my face but I don't remember striking or jamming my glasses into myself.  When I put on my glasses at the end of the day, I was surprised at how red and damaged the area on the right side of my nose looked.  I knew I needed to go to the doctor today and I did.  I figured I had some sort of skin irritation or infection.  I think that as I age, my skin is a little less able to defend itself.

The hospital optical department has been fitting and adjusting my glasses for more than 50 years.  I went there first after checking that they were open and had somebody who could see me.  The woman technician put new nose pads on the glasses and advised me to see my ophthalmologist.  I was able to get an appointment right away and he saw me.  He prescribed over-the-counter hydrocortisone cream twice a day on the area.  He said to use it only for five days since that cream can make the skin thinner.  A dermatologist ran his hand along the top of my forearm years ago and said, "Your skin is so thin."  I have been trying to urge my skin to thicken ever since and I don't need it to be thinning.

If I try and don't get discouraged and immediately dismiss the possibility, I can see pretty well without glasses.  The skin problem is such that it helps to wear my glasses a little farther down the nose than usual.  That way they sit in a new place on my face.  I guess I have yet another situation where I have to be patient and wait, not my best strength.

Alternative and healing meditation

I have found that meditation increases a good type of self-awareness.  There are many types of meditation and many traditions, religious and other, about how to meditate.  I have found 10 minutes or so, sitting still and being quiet, does a lot for my mind and mood.  In general, keeping one's attention on a given target and returning to that target whenever you notice that you are attending to something else, does good things.

However, Prof. Willoughby Britton of Brown University has specialized in studying people and situations where such a meditative practice is not good.  In general, people who have emotional scars and bad memories, such as some soldiers, can find themselves in the grip of the same nightmares and terrors again while trying to meditate.  Until today, Prof. Britton was the only name I knew for people looking into downsides of meditation.  

Today, I got an email from Sounds True about another researcher/expert looking into meditation under special circumstances.  Prof. Elizabeth A. Stanley is a political scientist and works in the US military.  She is interested in modified and sympathetic ways to ease oneself past trauma and into meditative comfort.  Her book "Widening the Window" is about dealing with trauma and getting healed.  That book is available for only $6 on Kindle.

Putting more pep in life

I listen to music.  Many of the classic composers do good things for me.  I don't get much from heavy metal or jazz but if I didn't get a lift from Beethoven's 8th or 9th, I would try Metallica or Duke Ellington or whoever is currently hot in jazz.

The best single tool I know for appreciating what I have and bad things I have had the luck not to have is meditation.  The word can mean many things but to me, it means set a timer and sit still looking at the same point until the timer rings.  It is not easy, especially for an American male.  He is impatient, wants everything easy and fun and he wants it now.  Right now!  Over time, it gets to be a strange kind of comfortable to sit again in the same chair with the same timer ticking away, looking at the same point as before. 

If you can see the point, you have sight.  Not everybody does but you do.  You are lucky already.  You are doing well.  If you can hear the timer, you have hearing, another lucky thing to have, another benefit and another source of pleasure.  

So, you are sitting and you are waiting.  Stand up.  Cool: another thing you can do.  In another 55 years, you might not be able to stand up.  If you can stand up now, do that and do it slowly and appreciatively and gratefully.  You can sit down and take a breath.  You know some people can't take a breath, they can't swallow but if you can, score another point for you!  If you are warm enough and cool enough, yay You!

If you have electricity in your house and power in your phone and a connection to the internet, you are way ahead of anything Archimedes or Newton did, despite being smarter that either of us.

It's not your fault.  You try to count your blessings but you have more of them than you know.  Actually, more than you CAN know.  So, pep up!  Smile!  For people with our bank accounts, our memories and our shortcomings, we are doing totally fine.

Winter preview

We were sitting on the couch when it began.  Heavy wet snow tearing down in a very dense snowfall.  It is about 36° outside and it had been quite nice this morning.  When you look outside, the lawns and the street are just wet now.  Well, they were a minute ago.  It has begun again and it is all whiter.

I know if you are from a sunny place that Wisconsin sounds deadly but if you move here, we can offer you cheese, less cold than you think, and good controversy over a beer.

Pascal, Columbus and us

I phoned my nephew the other day.  I hadn't spoken to him for years but he kindly took my call.  I was calling to ask him to review the worth of his grad school work in a sentence or two.  The grad school work that was completed five or ten years ago.  He kindly gave me a quick assessment of the current applicability of the studies he made.  Given that he now works in machine learning, the earlier studies didn't apply very much. 

My cheap computer is quite slow.  I am trying to use its retarded speed as a prompt to practice patience.  

When you wait a long time, what you are waiting for can come as a surprise. My nephew waited for years and then entertained my call politely, fully and usefully.  I admire doing that and I appreciate his action.

In 1654, Pascal wrote that all of man's problems stem from an inability to sit quietly alone in a room.  My nephew, my computer and the recent Columbus Day got me to thinking.  Just think of Queen Isabella devoting considerable funds to launch three ships western.  Christopher and his crew left Spain with little guidance on August 3, 1492 and they didn't reach land until October 12.  All during that time, Isabella and her husband and his government got not a single telegram, phone call, text message or other communication.  They just had to wait.  

Election Day is November 3.  Let's all wait until January 12, 2021 before we ask about election results.  Let's just sit quietly alone in a room while counting, screams, charges and counter-charges are filed and refuted.  It'll be good for us.  We don't need everything instantly. Ok, take your phone in with you.

Alternatives

It seems that I keep running into multiples.  First, I find something of interest.  Then, I find that there are alternatives.

Take email, for instance.  It can be difficult to stay up with one's email.  So, some people create multiple email accounts.  But then, when I email my friend, I send my warm and important message to the account he never gets around to.  I have no idea why he doesn't respond.  I don't know that I chose an email address he rarely uses.

Same with phones.  I have four phone numbers.  If you call the right one, we can probably talk.  Otherwise, your urgent matter may sit untended for weeks since I don't know about it.  

Or, books.  I like books.  In fact, I am reading a book these days.  But I actually have other books.  They call to me, tempt me to pay attention to them instead.  Same thing with streaming tv.  While I am watching The Worst Witch on Netflix, I realize I could be watching the latest Acorn series.  

Books are just one branch, tv streams are just a 2nd branch.  When I am reading, I am missing out on some fine audiobooks I could be listening to.  If I try to simultaneously watch a Netflix show and read a book and get in some knitting, I am missing some fine public lectures on the local university Zooms, not to mention the great stuff waiting on YouTube.  

You have heard of radio shows and I have, too.  We have a super state radio system but I just don't have time for that.  You can see why I can't fit broadcast tv into my day.  I don't have patience for the news or political debates.  I realize I decide how to spend my time and what to put my attention on.  I am trying to keep it all going.

Special deal

I didn't get around to writing a post for Fear, Fun and Filoz until late.  I just wanted to bring to the attention of others the deal being offered on Amazon Kindle.  For $2, one can download the entire set of Harvard Classics, containing some of the fundamental books of the Western civilization.

https://smile.amazon.com/Complete-Harvard-Classics-Anthology-Literature-ebook/dp/B07VWGHR6J/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2GQL2V9R8ZA0U&dchild=1&keywords=harvard+classics+complete+set+kindle&qid=1602644875&s=digital-text&sprefix=Harvard%2Caps%2C239&sr=1-1

71 books of great and famous literature for $2.

Calm or angry or riotous

We decided to do our evenings a little differently.  We realize that Netflix, Amazon, PBS, and Acorn, taken together, have far more on them than we can watch, than we can stand to watch, than we want to watch.  Normally, we watch an episode of NCIS, I read aloud to Lynn while she jigsaws a puzzle, and we watch something else for about an hour.  Of course, I get emails from all our streaming sources about the latest and greatest.  The other day, I sat with pencil and paper and looked for items that seemed of interest.  When I do that with Lynn, I usually jump through possibilities too fast for her.  Plus, she often wants 30 minutes or so of a movie before she knows if she likes it.

I sometimes like "Kim's Convenience" and Lynn enjoys PBS "Nature".  We have enjoyed some of PBS "Van der Valk" and "Frankie Drake".  My more determined list just from Netflix:

1. Enola Holmes 2 h 

2. A Life on Our Planet 1 h 23 m 

3. Greenleaf 42 m 

4. 28 Days 1 h 43m 

5. My Octopus Teacher 1h 25m 

6. Crash Landing on You 1h16m 

7. Heaven's Garden 1h 

8. Wentworth 48m 

9. Travels with My Father 1h 

10. One Day at a Time 1/2h 

11. Stranger than Fiction 1h53m 

12. Evil 44m 

13. Worst Witch 1h, then 30m 

You probably won't find any movie that is calmer than My Octopus Teacher.  Yes, it is about a real, live octopus and a real, live diver who make friends.  

Lynn has mentioned "Enola Holmes" each day since we watched it.

We watched "28 Days".  I like calm living, I can do well enough offering myself thrills and appreciation of daily joys and I am not attracted to alcohol or drugs or other thrills.  The first half of 28 Days was tough to stick with but I am glad I watched it and Lynn is, too.

Three strikes

I try to be on the lookout for mental troubles in me. But doing so isn't easy.  I can be absent-minded over just about anything at any time.  

This morning, I woke up and saw that my two clocks were off.  They are digital clocks and they didn't say the correct time.  I put some water on my face to wake up and I remembered my mother's trick of waking in the middle of the night, convinced it was dawn and time to get up.  I went back and looked again.  Nothing wrong with the clocks.  I just had another four hours of sleep coming.  I took them gladly.

I drank some coffee and felt something odd.  I heard a little squeaky sound.  Wiped my chin but found nothing.  Another drink, another odd feeling, another squeak.  Looked more carefully and found a teaspoon in the mug.  

On Sunday mornings, I made oatmeal with banana, apple, raisins, craisins, and nuts.  What?  No bananas.  Usually one of us notices we are short and we replenish the supply.  Usually they get written on the grocery list.  Better look again.  Looked again.  Looked more carefully.  No bananas.  Made the oatmeal without bananas.  Putting away the milk, I thought I saw something  yellow.  Look, a bread wrapper, the sort of wrapper associated with the bread we buy, contains some bananas.  

That is my set of three mistakes for today.  I am out of goof-ups and solemnly promise not to make any more. (Today!)

Texting

Several friends and relatives like to get text messages.  They respond to them more often and more immediately than to emails.  I imagine phones tend to make a different alerting sound for texts than for emails.  I was recently told that a friend often has her phone set to silent.  Once a phone is set to silent, it is easy to forget it is on that setting.  No wonder nobody is calling!

"Among other data Hiya found, related to incoming call pick-up rates           

• 52% of all calls received are answered

• 70% of calling numbers that are "saved in contacts" are answered

• 53% of calls identified with a business name are answered

• 24% of unidentified calls are answered

• 9% of calls identified as spam are answered"

https://bgr.com/2019/01/29/smartphone-usage-statistics-new-data/

Today, a friend and I exchanged 25 text messages in about an hour. (I use my computer and keyboard and Google Voice to text.)  I wondered how the immediacy and the length of messages back and forth relate to the honesty, the self-revelation and even the benefit of texts.  It seems to me that answering rather quickly and without too much elaboration might tend to answers that are more accurate and unadorned.

I have gotten some surprising long text messages on occasion.  I guess there are many programs, apps and services that support texting and I suppose that more recently built ones allow longer messages.  I read that some services mechanically break overly long messages into several shorter ones.

I like two TED talks about texting, one by the linguist Dr. John McWhorter and one by Nancy Lublin

McWhorter:

We always hear that texting is a scourge. The idea is that texting spells the decline and fall of any kind of serious literacy, or at least writing ability, among young people in the United States and now the whole world today. The fact of the matter is that it just isn't true, and it's easy to think that it is true, but in order to see it in another way, in order to see that actually texting is a miraculous thing, not just energetic, but a miraculous thing, a kind of emergent complexity that we're seeing happening right now, we have to pull the camera back for a bit and look at what language really is, in which case, one thing that we see is that texting is not writing at all. What do I mean by that?

Basically, if we think about language, language has existed for perhaps 150,000 years, at least 80,000 years, and what it arose as is speech. People talked. That's what we're probably genetically specified for. That's how we use language most. Writing is something that came along much later, and as we saw in the last talk, there's a little bit of controversy as to exactly when that happened, but according to traditional estimates, if humanity had existed for 24 hours, then writing only came along at about 11:07 p.m. That's how much of a latterly thing writing is. So first there's speech, and then writing comes along as a kind of artifice.

I recommend looking at Nancy Lublin's TED talk or using the link to read the transcript of what she says.  She gave me a new respect for texts and interest in them.  Just reading that,for instance, texts have 100% opening record, that unlike email, you don't get a text message without seeing what it says, makes me feel that it is understandable that texts are a modified form of communication and matter in their own right.

Being at the top of the ladder of life

By comparison, estimates of the data footprint of all books ever written come out to less than 100 terabytes, or 0.005 percent of a mouse brain.

From "An existential crisis in neuroscience" by Grigori Guitchounts

http://nautil.us/issue/81/maps/an-existential-crisis-in-neuroscience

I'll be here for a while

We got a call last night.  My echo cardiogram was good.  My four heart valves are behaving normally.  Looks like I won't be leaving just yet.

I'm glad to continue on for a while.  The countries of the world have assured me that they are prepared to carry on without me.  My wife says that she too is willing to die, but that I had better not leave before her.  Women, and indeed mammal females in general, are well known to live longer than men and males, but I intend to buckle down, bite the bullet, give it the old elementary school try, hitch up my belt, and pay attention to living long and right.

If I am good and I don't do anything stupid, if my luck holds out, if I don't waste my money, if I look where I'm going, if I don't drive too fast, I should last a while.  Piece of cake!

Thoughts about leaving this life

I have read "Final Gifts" and "How We Die".  I get that I am mortal and that people get more likely to die as they age.  Six months ago, the doctor said she heard a heart murmur, a sound made by one of my four heart valves that isn't working perfectly.  She graded the sound a 1 of 5 for ominousness.  Two days ago, she heard it again and graded it 2 of 5.

I had an echo cardiogram today and will hear what a cardiologist thinks it means soon.

I think thinking about death, my death as well as the subject in general, helps me see what I and others are. This is actually a good time of year for such thoughts, with Halloween and all.  I guess the moment of conception or the moment of birth are good candidates for the most important moment in one's life.  But, the moment of death is another big moment.  As I get older, more of my friends die.  Each such death is a reminder of my decreasing expected continuation in this living, lively, loveable format.  

I asked Lynn not to refer to my "passing" when I die.  I would rather have the actual word "dead" used instead of being compared to a kidney stone or a nasty storm.  I am aware that my influence, ideas and example could continue to be a source of influence and inspiration after my heart has ceased beating and my breathing stops.  I notice that modern writing, photography, video and sound recording make the question "Is that person still alive?" more and more difficult to answer.

I have met fear and reluctance to entertain the subject of death enough times to expect younger people to want to avoid the subject.  That seems somewhat odd in a way, what with so many crime shows, murder mysteries and scary zombie movies.  We are often urged to believe that death is the ultimate loss and to be avoided with strong, strong effort.  It's good to believe that and act on the belief, but sometimes, it can't be helped.

Words and pictures of words

If I search for a word on a page, the computer will find that word if it is there.  But it can't find a given word in a picture of words, in a picture of the Declaration of Independence, for instance.  

For a couple of months or more, I have been trying to tell my Kindle my new Twitter password.  Without it, the Kindle cannot transmit highlights from a book I am reading to my Twitter account.  I have 156 Twitter followers, which is very few, but I still enjoy posting interesting bits from books I am reading.  

I know the layout on an older Kindle Oasis and of a newer Paperwhite.  Today, I had an iPad handy.  I know that the options and coding for a Kindle app on an iPad are not identical to those I know.  But when Twitter told this quote was too long,

The answer is simply that you don't know where the prosthetic leg is. Your good leg is streaming an enormous amount of data to the brain, telling about the position of your leg, how much the knee is bent, how much pressure is on the ankle, the tilt and twist of the foot, and so on. But with the prosthetic leg, there's nothing but silence: the brain has no idea about the limb's position. 

Eagleman, David. Livewired (p. 82). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I thought I would try the iPad to see what its controls could do.  It offered me two options, paste a Tweet in words or as an image.  I offered a word Tweet, not a picture but just to explore, I switched to an image.  The software can't count the words in an image and my Tweet was accepted.

My friend, a retired advanced dentist, told me about getting false teeth and how one doesn't realize how much natural teeth send information to the brain about what is going on in the mouth, with the tongue and between the biting teeth.  Eagleman emphasizes the same sort of loss of information with a prosthetic leg and learning to use it.