Friends leaving

One of the most notable aspects of being older is that long-standing relationships get ended by death.  There are other enders, too.  People move to be near their adult children or a medical center.  But until death comes, there remains the possibility of live or live-ish communication by email or phone or Zoom.  

It can seem that the world is falling apart since things aren't the way an older person is used to, and then some pillar of one's life goes and dies on you.  It is sad, knowing that you won't hear from that person again.  Well, you might but as time goes on, it is less likely there is a letter or a video you haven't seen, maybe multiple times.  It is motivating, maybe guiding you toward your own blog posts and photographs and memories.  If you get in touch with a mutual friend, you might reminisce about trips or comments or personality traits.  It is motivating too in that you can be driven to start smiling at younger neighbors and contacts while trying to get some younger friends.

Of course, that a pillar of your life can topple, exit, is sobering and maybe frightening.  Not only might you be rather alone, you too might exit.  My friend envisions me playing a harp in the sky but that doesn't ring true for me.  I do like harp music but I am musically illiterate and I don't know notes, tones or harmonies.  

I have heard that a difficulty conscious minds have is imagining their own cessation.  It helps me to focus on the millions of human lives that have been lived before my time and to see and feel that I don't know them or any of their details or stories.  So, I plan to join the unknowns and the absentees but I would appreciate it if you postpone any permanent departure until after mine.

Tongue worms

I borrowed "On Repeat" by Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis.  I saw an article about the book somewhere in the Pocket article suggestions but I lost it.  I asked the university library to borrow it for me.  The woman is a specialist in the psychology and neurology of music.  The book discusses the difference between music reception and production as opposed to language reception and production.  People don't learn a language with the intention of listening to it only and not speaking it, but people listen to music and enjoy it and remember it without learning to produce it and without an intent to produce it.  

When my mature and intelligent nephew told me that the songs of the Beatles were a major influence on his ways of looking at life, I was shocked.  Still, it was his comment and words by Margulis that gave me the idea that popular songs, often message, poetry and tune, all three contributing to a strong impression on modern peoples' thinking and stance toward their lives. I recently read an email from my friend Ames that further demonstrated the depth that tune, words and rhythms can reach in our minds and emotions.  

I was motivated to look through some of my blog posts (there is a handy search window on the blog page: fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com)  . I found that I haven't referred very often to words in music.  Tunes, melodies, yes.  Words, not much.  However, I did find that members of my family, especially the children, have uttered words and phrases that replay over and over in my mind.  Therefore I am hereby launching a new line of study: tongue worms!  They are like the well-known earworms, which are themselves tunes and songs that recur unbidden in our minds.  Tongue worms are quotes that stick, fascinate and recur:

"In the grand scheme of things…" - my greatgranddaughter explaining that a week away from parents actually passed quickly

"Grandad, I'm just a kid!" - my greatgrandson mentioning he had no power to assist me with my problems

Hizzy, Behie! Our daughter Beth surprising us, jumping out of her hiding place.  Her phrase translates into adult language as "The daughter you are seeking is located here!"

Fwd: Sale

Our family is holding a three day rummange sale.  Meanwhile, try this well-done piece:

https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2021/07/awesome/

Write it down!

Writing this blog is an extension of meditation. It is an activity aimed at paying attention to what is going on.  I realize that I have aged a little bit since I typed the word "Writing" at the beginning of this post.   I realize that the moment I wrote that word is gone forever and will not, cannot, return.  I am not trying to stop time, but I do want to try to savor the good moments and not just bolt them down without noticing their beauty and their unique flavors. Even fears and pains can be experienced as special opportunities.

I am an old man, already beginning to experience "extraordinary longevity" while an increasing number of other people are doing the same thing.  So, my memory may be different from when I was young.  It is possible that my ability to remember isn't as good as it was, but I know that it is common practice to ask people what they had for dinner last night to show that it is not easy to remember events, themes, comments unless they are a threat or some special achievement like a winning lottery ticket.

When I was asked by a professional hypnotist what I wanted to achieve by the experience of being hypnotized, I said I wanted new eyes, an ability to see myself, others and my life anew, for the new experience it always is.  I didn't want to just toss each day into the bin marked "Just another one."  Writing daily has changed my habits and added an automatic search for themes that could be used in that day's post.  

I am surprised at how easily I can think of a topic, consider it a bit, realize it is a contender and then be unable to recall it 30 minutes later.  I am working on getting a few words for each idea written down before I forget them.  The themes of interest are often ideas that don't easily connect to rocks, furniture or hard and fast objects.  I don't blame myself when a good-sounding idea slips away and I can't retrieve it. Lynn is reading "The Splendid and the Vile" by Larson about WWII and I am reading aloud "A Distant Mirror" by Tuchman about the 1300's in Europe. These history books make me realize that when I learned about history, it can seem to be the only way things could have turned out even though people at the time were rightly worried that worse turns awaited.  That "history can seem inevitable" was one theme I have been writing down and considering.  It is a somewhat slippery idea.

What is my next thought?

Several friends know that I like meditation as a personal aid to living.  Whether a person is dealing with pain, poverty or perplexity, meditation can often help.  It has been handy for me to remember that ancients, without benefit of smartphones or super highways or electric heating pads, developed the tool of sitting with one's mind in quiet.  I have suspected for years that the act of meditating can be helpful if done for 5 or 10 minutes.  I have never devoted myself to a week of daylong meditating and I might be better off or a better human or a better husband if I had.  

A question arises naturally when sitting quietly, as Karen Maezen Miller says, "looking at a wall", what am I supposed to do?  How do I do this?  That brings up the anxious, eager, young person who asks, "What happens next?"  The good answer is "Nothing happens next.  This is it."

Impetuous, squirrel-ly people like me are often advised to keep paying attention to something: a wall, one's breath in and out.  Thus, books like "Breath by Breath" by Larry Rosenberg and "Joy on Demand" by Chade-Meng Tan. Rosenberg is a retired psychology professor and Tan is a software engineer with Google.  He is the one who says he and his two year old daughter meditate for 2 minutes, about as long as a software engineer and a 2 year old can manage.  He teaches a course on this subject to Google employees and says that a single, conscious breath will be sufficient to increase mindfulness, the awareness of what is occupying one's attention and thoughts.

This approach to knowing and liking one's own self is about the same as practiced by many Quakers and American Buddhists.  A different approach is explained in the books by Eckhart Tolle.  His question: What is my next thought? often helps me watch my mind while looking with curiosity to see what comes to mind next.  Generally, looking with alertness sends thoughts scurrying away until a brave or extra sneaky one slips into my mind.

A book to read

I try not to buy too many books.  I already have too many.  We just read that in the 1300's, an institution like a monastery that had 76 books had a good-sized, impressive library.  We have considerably more than that on our office shelves and we have about 40 times that many in our Kindles.  It's no wonder that I keep finding that helpful banner across an Amazon web page that says I purchased the book in question ten years ago. (That means that despite having never downloaded it or opened it or looked at it, it has been waiting there all that time.)

There are times when I am simply looking for a good mystery but much of the time, I am after a specific book.  Sometimes a book I would like to look through is available in used form for only a dollar but usually that will require a shipping fee of $3-5.  Now that covid is losing some of its grip, I can enter a local library more easily and I can check if the public or the university library has the book.  If the book is from a long time ago and it is a famous one, there may be an ebook at no cost or very low cost.  One of several good things about an ebook is that I can get it immediately.  One of the not so good things is that older books that are not popular may not have ever been converted to an ebook file.  

I turn to the Libby app on my phone or iPad to check if a book I am after can be borrowed in e-format from our ring of libraries that cooperate in sharing and lending.  If the book is available in e-format, and if the library has purchased it [two big "if"'s!], it is often the case that other people are also after that book.  Others may have already put holds on the book and the app estimates that a copy will be available to me in about 6 months or a year.  If I were more patient, that would be ok but I am not.

Yesterday, for once, I found "Facts and Fears" by James Clapper, former head of US intelligence, and got it right away.  I find the book clarifying and the writing easy to digest. 

Multiplicity and limits

I was impressed by a tv ad years ago. It showed a football coach in the locker room calling for attention and explaining that a chaplain was about to ask for blessings for the game.  He said something like "Please give Father Clancy your attention."  As the priest finished, the coach said something like "Pastor Jones will now ask for a blessing."  As the pastor finished a short invocation, the camera showed another man wearing a Jewish skull cap, a man in Buddhist-type robes, a Native American man who looked like a spiritual dancer and many other religious and spiritual types.  The impression is that there are too many blessers to accommodate the time schedule and the impatience to hold the football game.

Whether we are inviting guests for an occasion or listing books or movies we plan to get to, there are limits.  We have only limited attention, limited patience and limited memory to remember our own plans and wishes.  If you are sympathetic to the plight of orphans and I seem to be all taken up with concerns about the climate, your focus and my cause may make each of us dismiss the other as irrelevant and basically unconcerned with important situations that deserve attention.  When I see titles like "500 Places You Must See" or "The 1000 Must-Reads Before You Die", I am seeing a lack of focus and restraint.  

How about recommending A book you think I would enjoy or ONE place for me to visit?  If you feel real tender about not mentioning 999 other really good places, the tenderness, the sorrow, the pity that I may not get to those other wonderful places, that is the pain that editors and librarians and broad-minded people feel.  Maybe you can console yourself with the realization that I have limits, plus new respect for your bravery and commitment to using your strength of character to trim your recommendations down to a usable, valuable size.  I may learn to use your recommendations as good advice. 

Living in and outside of my head

Meditation, even for a short time, helps the body and mind in many ways. 

https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/life-classes/meditation-steps 

A big part of being human is being in two worlds at the same time: the inner world of feeling and thought and the physical world that stretches from one's current location to outer space and beyond.  An advantage of having access to both worlds is that a person can mentally move from one to the other and back, more or less at will. 

From time to time, I try emphasizing the physical world around me and the current moment I am in.  But, when I get too immersed in being present, human events and plans and wishes show me that people live in their past (I remember what my parents told me and times I have followed their advice) and in their future (we are going to a party tomorrow so I better get a present and a card). I know the formula that the past is gone and the future has not arrived but it is still important to me and those I love and like to be aware of past events and future plans.

We are reading "A Distant Mirror" by Barbara Tuchman, a historian who won the Pulitzer Prize twice.  It is about the 1300's and she wrote that time seemed to have some of the same problems and concerns that we do now.  The book was published in 1978 so it doesn't deal with current politics or social problems and themes.  But the questions of how we live our lives, what our duties are, what our fortunes are and will be loomed large then, too.  In addition, contrasts can be valuable too.  When the government takes a while to find out what its citizens think and support or oppose, we realize that ideas and communications can move more quickly over much greater distances now.  

The 1300's are not current right now and the fact that it is July 24, 2021 means that in many ways we are in a different situation from any human who lived at that time.  Trying to pay focused and sympathetic attention to where and when I am now can pay off wonderfully.  However, my mind, my impulses and my contacts keep pushing me back to yesterday and last year and the year that my daughter was born.  Similar forces propel me forward to later this summer, next year and times ahead. I benefit from concentrating on where and when I am now but I also enjoy dips into pictures of the past and plans and fears for the future.

You Americans and Your Freedom

I am confident that most of us around here will stand up and salute if there is a call to honor "FREEDOM!".  Almost every politician and marketer can rely on doffs of the caps and smiles of agreement and support in support of freedom.  I have never lived in a place governed by strict laws or tyranny but from what I have heard and read, I wouldn't like it.  

Still, I wonder what sort of freedom I have.  I am free to write but I need to be careful not to slander or gossip or imply that I know what I don't.  But I am not free to drive too fast or in the wrong direction or lane.  I am free to get medical care if I can pay for it.  I am free to catch diseases from others and from floating viruses and bacteria.  

A professor friend of mine describes explaining to a student from a foreign country rights students had in connection with taking exams.  The student said, "You Americans and your freedom!"  I am interested in what freedoms we have and what we don't.  It seems to me that nature, politeness, consideration of others all limit what I can do.  But, they also guide me.  Google offers these:

	Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
	Right of trial by jury in civil cases.
	Freedom from excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishments.

Car service extension

We both have cars that have low mileage on them.  We don't drive much, especially during Covid time.  Still her car needed an oil change.  I drove to the garage behind her.  The car appointment and an online yoga class changed our typical morning schedules so we took a walk in a different location, along unusual paths just for a change.  You can hardly go wrong if you try something different with this wife.  

If you look up "Green Circle Trail", you will probably find Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  The trail circles the town and is good for walking or biking.  Lynn wondered if the forest along the trail would house more wildlife if it weren't so trimmed and cared for.  We did see plenty of fallen logs and undergrowth, the sort of habitat that we suppose attracts wildlife.  We saw a deer and a fawn and mentioned them to a passing couple who said they were the tenth deer they had seen on their walk.  

We met a small crew of Natural Resources College students and Lynn asked them about the care they give the woods.  They said they try to look out for invasive species such as buckthorn and remove it.  

Walking about 45 minutes is more or less standard for our mornings.  Our terrain is fairly level but of course, our latitude limits the outdoor walking season.  That means that we walk when we can but we use a stationary bike, too.  When I hurt my knee in wrestling about 60 years ago, I learned that the motion of biking nourishes the knee joint and can be an aid to knee health.  Lynn finds that the surface she walks on matters, too.  For her, soil and unpaved trails are better. 

At the beginning of our walk, she agreed to lunch at the golf course restaurant but at the end, the hard-boiled eggs she had cooked called to her.  She did one of the well-known right angles turns, changing direction abruptly.  We'll see you at that restaurant at dinner.

Composites

Most uses of the word "composite" that I have seen refer to manufactured materials made from combining other materials.  Still, it seems to be a good word for much that humans do, in manufacturing and in general.  I have the impression that it is difficult to predict a decision made by a group of people.  I think the difficulty may be greater when the decision is made between more than just two choices.  

I have read that many human brain operations involve association and that who associates what with what else is very complex.  When I say "Florence", you may think of an Italian city while I think of my mother's only sibling.  It may be that sometime in the future, we can quickly comb through my associations and yours and estimate accurately what may come to mind with a given stimulus.  I am not at all sure that accurate prediction is very valuable or important but I suppose that greater self-knowledge or knowledge of someone important to another might be achieved with fuller understanding of each other's propensities.

The idea of sub-sets brings to mind the powers of 2: 2,4,8,16, 32, 64,...

2 to the Nth power, where N is the number of elements in a set gives the number of unique subsets that can be chosen.  "30" can be an important number in education since many classes of students may number about 30.  In a class of 30 students, a teacher has 1,073,741,824 possible subsets or well more than a billion, for choosing committees, finding friendships or animosities, noting the best athletes or some other selection.  And that is for just one choice.  The number of different choice possibilities rises if two sub-sets are going to be chosen.  

The subject of "composites" (combinations, multiple ingredients, steps in a process and their order of application) came up today with discussions of John Hartman's Light Painting and of virtual choir performances.  You may have seen pandemic-inspired choral performances where singers are scattered physically but photographically and technologically combined in what looks and sounds like a single, traditional choir standing and singing together.

Here is my card

I was impressed with the idea that humans might have so many ideas, inventions, discoveries that they would experience a shortage of words to name everything.  I think it is in the book "Science: The Glorious Entertainment" by Jacques Barzun that I met that notion. I was reminded of the possibility just now as I looked up "calling cards" in Google.  The more recent item called a "calling card" is a small, wallet-sized piece of plastic with the formation needed to get a phone signal and make a call.  

I am writing here about a different item.  I am thinking of a small white card made of heavy paper or light cardboard with my email address and the name and web address of my blog.  I tried asking Google the question "What year did gentlemen callers leave their card?"  That question did get me answers along the line I was seeking.  I have never called, that is knocked on the door or pressed a doorbell button, and had a butler or maid answer, to say that the young lady is not at home or not receiving visitors or just doesn't want to see me.  I think that under some circumstances, if I had, the person might have said I could leave my card.  

I was led to this item:

Calling cards came into widespread use in the mid-1800s, when the middle class was trying to acquire a bit of an upper class finish, and when it became feasible for everyone to print up and carry around personalized bits of paper. They lingered for longer than you expect.Jan 6, 2016

Young People Used These Absurd Little Cards to Get Laid in the 19th ...

https://gizmodo.com › young-people-used-these-absurd-li..

And this one:

During the 1800's and early 1900's the practice of "calling" upon or visiting one's relatives, friends, and acquaintances was a middle and upper class social ritual governed by countless rules and traditions.Sep 7, 2008

The Gentleman's Guide to the Calling Card | The Art of ...

https://www.artofmanliness.com › articles › the-gentlem…

In the current time of scams and upsets and endless causes and oppositions, it can be awkward to mention that one writes daily about minutiae, books and scattered themes.  It can be awkwarder to persuade that you are not asking for money or a subscription.  So, the point of this blog post is to suggest to all and sundry to visit Vistaprint online and order some cards to carry with you.  They are inexpensive and can be accompanied by mouse pads, caps, shirts and pens!

On video!

We got an email last night from our granddaughter.  Her garden last year was very good and she had high hopes for this season.  Then, some of her plants inside a well-fenced area suddenly were leveled, eaten even.  Not good.  She used her trail camera to see the culprit.  A healthy, well-fed bunny chomping away!! Somehow, he had found a set of wire snips and opened the fence enough.  Ok, but he did gain unwanted entry.  

Trail cameras show all sorts of things in Wisconsin: deer, raccoons, bears, rabbits, weasels, skunks, cranes.  We even have the occasional cougar.  I admit that it was unusual when a couple of fishermen reported a hippopotamus in the woods but that was a run-away for a local circus and an exception.  We have many animals that we never saw in the big city.  I have read that coyotes are found in many cities and that they are expert at finding food and avoiding detection.  

Our granddaughter sent a link that let us play her bunny trail video.  She used a Google Drive to host the file.  Here is a link to a Google Drive that may let you see the slide tape that Lynn made in 1978 about our town of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  The video is more than 40 years old and the town has changed quite a bit since.  

Reasons For St. Pt.

Something bad happens

I have read that "it's not a story until something bad happens".  You get the idea: we can't hardly take note until there is a danger, a sadness, a loss that might happen to us, or one that reminds us of one that did.  It is another version of good news gets ignored or forgotten.  Only when our alarm or emotion systems get activated, do we pay strong attention.  

One of the first courses in my psych doctoral minor was psychophysics, the brain and our senses of perception.  I guess we humans have been pondering and considering and thinking and weighing for a long time but we are still wired for survival, so even though we can think, we get motivated to do so by worries and dangers.  We are watching "Unforgotten" on PBS and "Virgin River" on Netflix.  The PBS show is about British police finding a skeleton in a basement floor and it shows a murder took place 40 years ago.  In the Netflix show, a young nurse/midwife moved to a small town in northern California after losing a baby in a stillbirth.  

Our internal alarm systems that get us worrying seem to energize us enough to produce energy to pay attention to the plights of life and the artificial plights of fiction and imagination.  Long before the printing press (about 1440), Greek drama and worldwide storytellers and troubadours and poets and speakers got us thinking about possible dangers under our bed and in the basement.  Of course, since radio and television and movies came on the scene, we have more ways to stimulate our imaginations without books or decoding letters.  Some of my older friends whose vision is poor make good use of audiobooks so their mental lives get stimulated through their ears. 

Saluting zipper bags

I am a fan of plastic bags.  Not the ones given to me at checkout cash registers but the zipper bags.  I can see myself as a Boy Scout packing clothes, small items and some food and realizing how much I would have liked to have some pint bags and some quart bags available.  I have read reports of far, far too much plastic in the oceans and microplastics all over.  There is probably a limit to how much humans can use plastic of all kinds, including bags.  I have seen messages about plying things from my cold, dead fingers.  I am not quite that much of a plastic bag fan but do think they are handy for lots of things, especially when dealing with keeping air away or moisture in.

The bags I am thinking of are transparent so I can quickly see what is inside.  Spent batteries of many sizes and shapes, cords and devices that go with those devices, thumb drives, index finger drives (just kidding), crackers that I don't want to wilt, tea bags.  My favorite teas are from Stash and their bags come in sealed foil containers but a box of 100 is too unwieldy, especially given the number of tea varieties we keep on hand.  But a nice sandwich bag with 40 or so bags fits on our tea shelf nicely.

Like anything subject to human imagination, plastic bags can be misused. We saw pictures of large bags filled with gasoline and stashed in a car trunk. Doesn't seem safe at all.

Today's poetry

I have read that poetry was very important over the centuries but except for Ogden Nash, I haven't gotten all that interested or moved by poetry.  Horace Davis conducts a group that discusses loved poems and his interest made me wonder if I should try harder to find poems I like.  At the same time, I realize that current popular music is a big factor in many peoples' lives but not in mine.  I have met a few instances of modern poetry that I like and savor.  As I wrote earlier this year, 

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2021/04/jesus-must-have-been-saint.html

Marie Howe's line "Jesus must have been a saint" gets several intriguing themes going in my mind at once.  

The other day, I happened upon a YouTube video of the Carpenters singing The Top of the World. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADwAmqQZgy8

I hadn't heard that pair nor that song for years. It was so bright and cheerful that it gave me a rush of happiness.  My hard-working brain supplied a related tune that I was reminded of.  It is Both Sides Now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1UngfqojI

I looked up the lyrics of both Top and Both Sides and it struck me: This is the poetry of today!  Ok, not actually today but my younger years.  Imaginative and uplifting and just what I need at times.

Stet

I saw a word game advertised.  Lynn plays computer games online and she knows many words.  The game is called "Stet" and I bought it.  I told her and she said she knew what "stet" meant.  I had never heard the word and has assumed it was just a made-up name for the game.  She said it is used by copyeditors and it means "I have changed my mind and the alternation I suggested should be ignored."  I looked up the definition and found a statement that the word means "let it stand".  

I think human choice and decision-making is fascinating.  I wrote my dissertation about mathematical decision making.  I was quite surprised when a friend said "I've read your dissertation".  That was the first time since it was written in 1968.  It is called "An Application of Decision Theory to Education" and you can see it here:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxraXJieXZhcmlldHl8Z3g6NGNiMjhlZTVjYjM2ZjJiYQ

When people make a decision formally, they can be pretty careful to list reasons for and against having dinner out or whatever they are considering.  Benjamin Franklin wrote a semi-formal method in his autobiography (1791) but his method and many others often assume a single decision made once.  I am confident that modern interface designers and smart device coders allow for undoing, rejecting a decision after changing one's mind.  A human can decide, undo, re-do.  I looked up What is the world record for undoing and re-doing? but I didn't find any good answer.  

Real-world decision making by humans can be very tricky and that is not even allowing for intuition, bribes, purposeful spite, trickery, drunkeness, dementia, etc.  In many pieces of software, there is a slightly curved arrow

that will allow the last action to be undone and one facing the other way to redo that action if you decide you do want it after all.

Bastille Day

Today is Bastille Day, the anniversary of the storming of the French prison what was a symbol of the monoarchy and the oppression of the people.  This happened on July 14, 1789 I am told.  I wasn't there but I have read a little about the event and its aftermath.  The Writer's Almanac included this comment today:

It was on this day in 1789 that an angry French mob stormed the Bastille prison in Paris, an event that launched the French Revolution. The Bastille was a medieval fortress, built in the 14th century, with eight towers, each 80 feet tall. It was used as a prison and it had a reputation as a place where political prisoners and enemies of the royal family would rot away in miserable dungeons without a proper trial. By 1789, under the reign of Louis XVI, the Bastille didn't have many prisoners and the conditions were relatively comfortable — some wealthy prisoners even brought their own servants. Nonetheless, regular people considered the Bastille a symbol of royal oppression.

In June the National Assembly had formed, a political body representing the common people of France. Rumors flew that King Louis XVI was trying to overthrow the National Assembly. At the same time, Parisians were starving, and the nation was on the brink of economic collapse. A few days before the storming of the Bastille, King Louis XVI abruptly dismissed his Minister of Finance, a man who had wide popular support. Angry citizens took to the streets — there was widespread looting, with food and weapons stolen. They gathered thousands of guns but needed gunpowder and the Bastille was known to contain a large store of ammunition. By midmorning thousands of people had gathered outside the Bastille, demanding gunpowder and the release of prisoners. They soon grew tired of negotiating and attacked. The fighting lasted several hours. Almost 100 attackers were killed and just one guard, but the mob was successful and flooded into the prison. There turned out to be only seven prisoners to liberate: four forgers, two lunatics, and an aristocrat accused of incest. The mob killed the governor of the Bastille and paraded around the city with his head on a pike.

I wrote that Lynn and I are reading "A Distant Mirror" by the historian Barbara Tuchman, who died in 1989.  The title refers to Tuchman's idea that today's world has some issues that are similar to what was faced in the 1300 and 1400's in Europe.  She goes to some effort in the first 5% of the book to explain that feudalism, fealty to a given man, was still the norm.  The state, a government as we know it, did not exist as such. Tuchman comments that the "state was still struggling to be born."  Tribalism, personal loyalty to, and animosity against are probably more basic and biological.

"A Tale of Two Cities" (1859) by Charles Dickens tells something of the story of conditions before the French Revolution, with its famous guillotine and the propensity of the time and place to execute members of the nobility.  It was no doubt a shocking, horrifying, topsy-turvy time. Imagine if the recent Jan. 6 incident at the US Capitol had included executions of leaders, many thought by some at the time to be God-given.

Snafu

I guess many people, including me, learned that "snafu" was invented in the American army and was created from the first letters of the words Situation Normal All F***** Up.  I looked up the derivation of "snafu" and found there is some disagreement as to the word's origin.  Besides, the original N seems to have stood for "nominal".  I guess that word's implication is that the situation is not what it should be.  

We had a snafu in our area recently.  Some painters were working on one of the local water towers and by mistake, made giant letters incorrectly spelling the name of the town "Plover".  We discussed this at our lunch meeting and wondered just how the letters got shuffled into "Plvoer".  One of the lunch guys had some good pictures of the mistake.  When I looked up "Plover misspelling", Google showed 3 million hits.  

The conversation got me thinking about personal mishaps.  They occur in small form every day.  When I toss something in the trash, I miss.  Sometimes, the item manages to stick to my finger tip for a second and then break free, totally misaligning my toss.  This morning, I poured milk into a bowl of flakes and the milk made a flake bounce from the bowl to the floor.  That should not happen!

At age six or so, I dropped a bowl into my aunt's pigs trough.  The bowl broke into sharp fragments and the pigs ignored them, cutting their snouts and ate while bleeding.  I was horrified and screamed.  My aunt came running and said it was ok.  

In 4th grade, I took my shoes to the shoemaker, carrying them in my hand.  When I got there, I had only one shoe.  I don't know what happened.  I had to do errands hauling groceries at the store until I earned enough to get new shoes.  As a college senior, I got a job as a school bus driver.  First day on the job, I drove the bus between a garbage truck and a delivery truck.  It didn't fit and the garbage truck side mirror crashed through the bus window.  Nobody was hurt but I was fired.  

From that day on, I have made no more mistakes!

"A Distant Mirror"

I finished "The Midnight Library".  Pretty good, life-affirming. So what's next?  I thought maybe "Everything Bad is Good for You" but the beginning would bog us down in details of paper and pencil simulation of baseball.  I tried to list 5 or 6 possibilities.  I had heard of Barbara Tuchman, a historian (1912-1989) but mostly in connection with her Pulitzer Prize winning "The Guns of August", about the beginning of WWI. 

I searched through books we had already purchased that we either haven't read or have forgotten.  It was time for a non-fiction so I skipped offering the fiction titles that I thought might be ok to read aloud.  I suggested 

The Mathematics of Love

Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen

Simplexity: Why Simple Things Get Complicated

Deep History and the Brain

The Political Mind

And A Distant Mirror by Tuchman

Lynn liked the sound of Tuchman and we started it.  We only read 3% of the book but she has already written two comments I appreciated.  One is that no Pope had ever issued a Papal Bull in support of something.  The book was written in 1978 and I just looked up papal bulls (named after the seal of authentication, bulla).  I see that bulls have announced the Great Jubilee and the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy so I take Tuchman's assertion with a grain of salt.

Tuchman also made a comment that applies to our lives today.  She says that the ordinary and normal don't make for news.  What gets recorded and reported is the extraordinary and the frightening and the bad.  She estimated that reporting an event multiplies its impact by five or ten times.

Secret weapons

Humans, especially in some places, are living longer. We may have learned that reaching the age of 80 years was surprising but these days, it is getting more common.  Drugs and antibiotics certainly matter but even more so, is hand-washing with soap and clean drinking water.  See the book by Steven Johnson called "Extra Life", about increasing longevity.  See the book "The Longevity Economy" by Joseph Coughlin and the book "The Longevity Project" by Friedman and Martin.  Also, see "Extra Life" on PBS.  So, a bar of soap is an advanced scientific tool and so is a glass of clean water.

Physical processes of communicating

I have pretty good credentials as a nerd. Nerds are often accused of living in the head.  That is they think of things and concentrate on their thoughts while not noticing where they parked the car.  Living in the head means working with facts, figures, ideas and words but not so much with things, physical things.  As a nerd with pretty good credentials, I also feel close to books since they are a good source of facts, figures, ideas and words.

But I am here to stress that a functioning head is part of a living thing.  Reading, speaking, writing, hearing are physical processes and they involve complex neurological and physical processes. I have run into some books recently that emphasize the physicality of speaking, handwriting, typing and other ways of communicating.  Come to think of it, if you are interested in the opposite state, of not speaking or writing or reading or listening, take a look at "Into the Grey Zone" by Adrian Owen.  He worked with people who kept breathing and had heart beats but were in a state sometimes referred to as "locked in", unable to communicate.

The book "Reader, Come Home" by Maryanne Wolf and her book "Proust and the Squid" highlight some of the complex processes involved in translating marks on a page into ideas, insights, emotions and education.  The book "Space Between Words" by Paul Saenger is about the invention of leaving a space between written words and how it led to what we do today when reading silently.  

As you age, you too may find that things slip out of mind when you don't want them to.  So, we older people make use of notes more and more. If I try to stay alert to cars around me, changing lanes, making turns, going at an appropriate speed, I can forget the four items I need at home.  Generally, when I make a note, the act of making it makes some of the items stay in mind or return to mind easily.  With a long list, or several phone numbers, I need the piece of paper.  I haven't tried writing just what I want without using paper, just going thru the motion.  I have been to the store to find that I forgot the durned note and need it.

What time is it?

Ever since I read James Gleick's "Faster", I have been aware of the possibility of being a time nut, a person overly concerned with time accuracy.  The other day, I visited the current web page at time.gov

I am intrigued by trying to be more accurate in reporting the time but for no good reason, just interest.  The webpage at the link tells me how far off the current exact time where I am, my computer clock is.  I have never seen an estimate like that before.  

I am aware of the difficulty of knowing the time.  I don't think being a little off matters.  The most dramatic situation I can think of is when the sound booth man gives the signal for the beginning of a broadcast to start NOW.  It is a surprise to me how much trouble it is to capture when the signal was given and then to check how correctly timed it was. 

We don't have too much trouble knowing the day of the week, or of the month but we know that is a somewhat crude measure, mostly easily tracked.  I use a mnemonic of 'small time' to remind myself that when I or my relatives and friends try to be super accurate in calling or arriving, we are going to run into the accuracy of clocks problem.  The book "Longitude" by Dava Sobel is excellent at explaining how being able to tell time accurately mattered in a life and death way to ocean-sailing ships in the modern age.  Read that and you can marvel all the more at Polynesians traveling on rafts and navigating by stars.

You can get all nervous about the tick of your clock realizing that each tick is one more step toward the end of your life, but I recommend you don't.  We saw an old clock in London that has no face and no hands that chimed every quarter hour.  Our ancestors did without second hands and stopwatches for millenia and we can work at being relaxed about what time it is?  Remember Yogi Berra: "Yogi, what time is it?"  "You mean, now?"

Morning reading

In the mornings, I tend to read CNN's Five Things.  I think it is generally well-written.  Good writing to me these days includes good headlines. I think it is surprising how much the headline influences the reading.  Maybe it shouldn't but, with me, it does.  A headline can be semi-accurate or better and still raise alarm or lower alarm.  

Most mornings, I also read the Writer's Almanac, both for the poem of the day and for the interesting, informative and well-written biographical bits about people, usually people born on that day of the year.  I almost always read Numlock News by Walt Hickey.  The items feature some number or numerical measure.  I am confident that numbers often bewitch and mislead, but the items in Numlock News manage to bring attention to surprising aspects of our world.  For instance, two items today continued interests and experience we have had.

The first is about "corridors", passageways over or under a busy highway that deer, bears and other large animals, small ones, too, can use to cross a road without getting hit.  We first found the subject when our bus through Canada drove under passages explicitly built for wildlife.

Corridors

Large animals cause 20 crashes a day on California's state highways, amounting to about 7,000 collisions per year. Animals just want to cross the road, but lack an opportunity to do so safely; deliberately building bridges and underpasses for animals to traverse freeways reduces the number of collisions. Utah saw a 98.5 percent decrease in deer mortalities after two new underpasses were installed along migratory routes, and Colorado saw vehicle collisions drop 89 percent after two bridges for mule deer and elk went up across a highway. California seeks to follow that model, funding its very first animal overpass for $7 million in Liberty Canyon, plus $2 million for a tunnel under Highway 17 and another $52.5 million for other crossings.

Marissa Garcia, High Country News

Lynn was the librarian in the local Plover-Whiting Elementary School.  She would be annoyed during hot weather that she needed to wear a sweater to be at all comfortable. Other parts of the building were kept at okay temperatures but her central library room, in the center of the building, was too cold.  Earlier, she was an assistant in the local university library and her place there was even colder.  So this Numlock News item got my attention. There seem to be many people who find the workplace too hot or too cold.

Office

A new survey of Americans gauging preferences in returning to the office found that while 48 percent of employed respondents can currently work in-person, 12 percent of them said they never want to return to in-person work. That latter data point has an interesting crosstab: while 7 percent of men who responded said they never wanted to return to the office, fully 19 percent of women indicated they had no desire to ever return to an office to work in-person. Huh, yeah, guess you kind of reap what you sow when it comes to the thermostat and also pretty much all the other stuff that comes bundled up in office politics, eh?

Alyssa Meyers, Morning Consult