Let me see if I have this straight

There is plenty of verbal and non-verbal aggression today.  Much of that comes from men but not all.  Often, the basic idea is "accept my ideas, my descriptions and my orders, or I will hurt you and yours."  The impulse to use tough language and to advance the level of threat is probably basically animal and lies rather deep in us, especially for those of us that are male.  It seems that if we can find a common ground between us, we can get more done and have more fun doing it.  

I taught educational psychology for years.  It was an undergraduate course for those preparing to teach, usually in American public schools in the grades of kindergarten thru high school.  Pre-teachers differ widely in their personality, their convictions, plus their school subjects put different demands on the teacher and offer a variety of situations involving instruction and practice.  Over the nearly 40 years, I got the impression that one of the most valuable things I taught, I learned from our textbook "Teacher Effectiveness Training" by Thomas Gordon.  

That training is divided into three parts and the first part is the most valuable.  Gordon calls the first part "Active listening" and it involves listening with the active purpose of learning what the speaker is saying and then repeating it back, not in verbatim form, to that speaker.  Showing an interest in learning clearly what the speaker is saying sometimes quickly reduces the level of aggravation or irritation the speaker is feeling.  When it is clear to you that I am trying to learn your message, you will often feel less like attacking and more like explaining.  Quite often, by the time I have finished showing you I understand what you have said, when you hear someone else say your message, you have an immediate wish to modify that message.

Eat this!

This morning, we ate dragon fruit in yogurt and pumpkin seeds.  Doing that reminded us of eating rambutan in Hawaii and later here at home.  We are wiling to try unusual foods but we haven't fallen in love with either fruit.

Dragon fruit today:

Rambutan 13 years ago and once since:

Life, Guarding Art and miracles and gripping stories everywhere

One of the small insert items in the current issue of The Week explains an art show at the Baltimore Museum of Art called "Guarding the Art".  It is a show based on the art tastes and the job experiences of the Museum guards and members of the security department.  t.ly/TGA0 (Firefox shortened link to the Museum's page on the show).  I was tickled to learn of the show.

The UWSP campus Learning in Retirement organization, "LIFE", also tries to uncover some of the treasures all around us.  LIFE recently expanded to include similar organizations in Wausau and Marshfield, also central Wisconsin towns.  LIFE and the Wisconsin Public Television program entitled "This Wisconsin Life" have somewhat similar missions: find and highlight interesting and informative activities, outlooks and experiences around us.  

We have lived in the cinematic age long enough that most of us have some idea of what can be done with makeup and stagecraft.  Give us a nicely wrinkled old face and body and with the proper clothing, makeup and lighting and accompanied by the proper laudatory language, we can probably get people to accept an elderly, somewhat decrepit guy as a hero.  Give our writers a little time and we can probably increase enthusiasm for stories about the cuteness of kittens and the wit of five year olds.  The hunt for authentic heroes and genuine beauty takes effort but we can learn to see the miracles around us.

Striking information and unusual perspectives

We are reading "She Has Her Mother's Laugh" by Carl Zimmer.  It has been a genuine eye-opener.  The most striking part was a mother being told that the children she bore were not hers, based on the results of DNA testing as was required by her state of residence to qualify for financial assistance.  This happened in 2003, not that long ago.  Luckily, an earlier similar case came to the attention of her lawyer.  Both cases hinged on a simplistic view of heredity, DNA and the biology of cells.  The takeaway correction idea seems to be that a mother can get some cells into her body from her fetus and those cells can multiply enough to be obtained in a blood draw.  

Amazon sends me ads about ebooks every day.  I ignore the cozies, books that explain after a breakup or a death, a lovely but lonely young woman raising two children meets a new employee.  He happens to come with a fantastic six-pack abdomen and is quite handsome and attractive.  Unfortunately, he is also imperious and arrogant but over time, our lovely finds that she enjoys looking at him, catching him looking her over, etc.  I have actually heard that story enough.  

I like to stay open to unusual angles, ideas and perspectives.  This morning, I saw "The Men Who Lost America" about British military, diplomatic and political men who were in power during the defeat of British attempts to quell the American revolution.  I immediately thought of "Poldark".  I couldn't remember his name but that trusty old-guy's friend, Google Search, quickly supplied it. Amazon had that book on sale but I have lots of ebooks so I checked the app Libby and the online catalogs of the two libraries in town.  One had it but before I got there, I thought of posting quotes from books I like on Twitter as "@olderkirby", which is fun.  I wound up buying the Amazon book on sale. 

CNN news photos

It is going to be a busy day with an odd schedule.  So, I will just use one of Firefox's shortened links to the past week in 40 photos from CNN:

t.ly/Mdz2

Help from kids

My friend worked to get me to try The Week, a magazine that comes out weekly and is therefore more expensive than many. I began reading it.  At first CNN's newsletter "Five Things" cover the big events going on and I didn't pay much attention to The Week.  Over the months, I found that the little items, inserted below the big headlines, were the most fun and the most positive and the most unusual.  You know you aren't going to sell many copies with headlines like "All's well!" and "Ain't Life Grand?"

As you can imagine, being a father, I am not equipped to give birth and I have never even come close. Still, I notice that seeing a toddler or maybe just the face of someone leading a toddler or holding a newborn with delight lifts my spirits.  We have watched enough "Call the Midwife" and "Babies" to know that the sound of a newborn protesting the confusing, compressing experience of being squeezed into the world is a delightful sound. So, I applaud the imagination of Jessica Martin, the art teacher and her colleague Ashera Weiss at Westside Elementary School in Healdsburg, Calif. who created a hotline for adults to get advice from little kids.  The hotline is called "Pep Toc" and offers recordings from children as young as kindergartners on bucking up, cheering up, counting one's blessings and such.  

Here is a shortened link to The Week page that gives the story.  

t.ly/VyJO  Scroll down and enlarge the screen to see the article.  The Pep Toc number is 707-998-8410,

The sight and sound of little children can lift warriors and the depressed, too. You don't have to be a kid to benefit.

Thinking of my story

Lynn wrote several books.  That's not surprising.  She was a school librarian for 14 years and then got her PhD in instructional media. She took a job at UW-LaCrosse as a professor of education and taught school librarianship.  Two of the books she wrote are about her own history: her ancestors, mostly Finnish, Cuban, Swedish and other bits, and her own childhood.  

The other day, I got an ad from Amazon for a journal book to be filled out by a Dad so his kids can understand his background and story.  t.ly/KmZL (short link via Firefox to that Amazon page).  Lynn set a good example and I have started a few notes about where I have lived and what I have done.  

I count 18 residences from our home when I was born to now.  It can be a little tricky to decide if I lived in a place or not.  Twice, Lynn and I led a student group for a semester abroad but I didn't include places on that trip.  We have taken 20 trips with the Elderhostel/Road Scholar organization but we still had a principal residence elsewhere.

When I think of the important events of my life, I think of a math teacher, a counselor and my mother all sending me step by step toward college where I met my wife of more than 60 years.  I think of a program that offered a scholarship in educational research that resulted in teaching at the University of Wisconsin - Steven Point for nearly 4 decades.  Technical developments like broadcast TV and the internet with its web sites have had a big influence on my path and my daily life.  

Selecting Latin for a language in 9th grade, joining the high school drum and bugle corps, wrestling in high school and college, acting the role of Captain Queeg in high school and using television and computers for distance education have all had important consequences. 

Getting out

Yesterday, a friend wrote:

THE MOMENT OF DEATH IS ONE BRIEF MOMENT, BUT THE SCRIPT LEADING UP TO DEATH HAS ENDLESS VARIATIONS...ONE SCENARIO MIGHT INCLUDE PARALYSIS FOR MANY YEARS BEFORE DEATH OR MAJOR DEBILITY DUE TO A STROKE OR A SERIES OF TIAs, LIMITING OUR ABILITY TO RECOGNIZE FAMILY AND CLOSE FRIENDS, OR UNDERSTAND HOW TO GET TO THE BATHROOM.  IT IS THOSE VARIATIONS THAT I PREPARE MYSELF TO MEET WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR, COURAGE, PATIENCE WITH MYSELF, FORGIVENESS FOR OUR COMMON HUMANITY AND EQUANIMITY

I understand that death may be quick but the experiences of aging and related deterioration may not be.  Not being able to hear or see or run or digest food or stand or breathe or swallow is depressing.  Not being able to do just about everything is sometimes called "being locked in".  Most discussions of that state that I have seen are related to being paralyzed and unable to communicate.  A book by Adrian Owen, "Into the Gray Zone" discusses situations of being locked in and unable to show signs of being alive.  There was a report in Google News in the last few days about a man locked-in but having a brain operation that has enabled him to communicate.  t.ly/gLdz

We have a friend who is dying of cancer.  We heard that he asked, "How long is this going to take?" Going through stages of aging and getting older seem likely to bring to mind and to offer real awareness that the process may be frustrating and depressing.  I think many people are first gripped by the idea of not being, not existing, being gone.  How can an important, lovable person like me be gone?  I have been here for decades.  I know how to be and how to be here.  So, as Lucy might say in "Peanuts", who ordered this exiting business?

I find, more and more, that anything is more tolerable if it is spoken about, discussed, written about.  Some books, movies and sessions with others may help bring the business into focus.  Getting used to the idea normally helps.  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's book "On Death and Dying" is very famous but it is rather old now.  I haven't read much about dying but I did read "Final Gifts" by Callahan and Kelley and we read Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal". 

A person's age matters

We read Stephen Johnson's "Extra Life" and we watched a PBS show that featured him and the ideas that have made living longer more possible and more common.  I don't think I have been as conscious of age at any earlier time in my life, except maybe as a teen.  Between age 10 and 20, there are many steps, goals and possibilities that are related to being old enough.  

I think that once a person is older than 70, no one is going to think of them as young.  But in that period of life, it seems that age again becomes important.  I have read some about psychological tendencies at 70 and later, so when I read of Franz Schubert dying at age 31 and Mozart at 45, I wonder what the world would have seen from them if they had lived to 70 or 80.  

People often remark that "death and taxes" are inevitable but once we reach the age of 70 or 80, we become aware of the possibility of dying at nearly any time.  I have found that facing death as death is very helpful.  It eliminates basic fears.  Of course, there is the suspense of when something might be fatal or lethal.  Is this the moment when we die? 

We seem to have the idea these days that death is associated with being "old" but it doesn't take much looking to see that in earlier times, childhood was riddled with deaths.  Sometimes, I read that current life expectancy is not too different from earlier times, with the exception of surviving childhood.

I have deliberately tried to think and use the words "death" and "dying" instead of euphemisms.  I realize that many people have wondered what is the use of being born if things are just going to end in death.  Since we have a natural tendency to keep alive and avoid death, and since the modern world and modern life are full of scary and attention-getting reports of floods, fires, tornadoes, wars and other life-ending events, much of our news and fiction is about avoiding the bad guys (and girls!) who kill and threaten to kill.  If we are able to accept the possibility of death, many fears can be erased.

Most people I have heard mention death either focus on the ages of death of their parents or on life expectancy.  Despite the fact that we came from our parents, we may still lead very different lives from theirs.  Life expectancy is an average and just about nobody is average. 

Your documents or your life

I have read of a time, before 1920, when there were no such things as passports. A friend mentioned "death certificates", another sort of credential. We have "birth certificates", deeds to our houses and the land they sit on, Pieces of paper that say we graduated and that we paid a kennel for our dog, papers or little cards that say we are allowed to drive automobiles and further pieces of paper that say we did indeed purchase this car and that we are still making payments on it. Currently, we have pieces of paper that say we did get a vaccination against the currently widespread disease and older papers that say we successfully passed all the tests and wrote accepted papers of the required length to be considered graduates of high school.  Some pieces of paper say that Reverend Harris did indeed conduct a ceremony with which she and I both promised to cling to each other up to the moment one of us expires.

The internet is changing human life every day and it began with the DARPA agency trying to find a way to protect important files and documents.  Their solution was to make good copies and scatter them all over, in so many places that deleting all the copies wouldn't be likely.  

Of course, any document might be a forgery, whether we are talking about a US dollar or a diploma.  But documents tend to have a history of their own and those who made it or saw it might be able to convince people we have never met that they issued a questioned document or have their own record of issuing it or showing that it has those tiny identifying microdots that show authenticity.  

I understand that the Bible and other sources say that I am a child of God and built in His image.  As far as I know, nowhere does it say that my life is over if I can't find my birth certificate.

Complicated creatures

I mentioned the other day about my test of whether a person has read a book.  That's the test where I read a phrase from a randomly chosen page and the person who says he has read the book is supposed to tell me the next word on the page.  It's a dumb test and by most definitions of reading, it is worthless.  But the idea can help show how many different angles we can view ourselves from.  

I was justly accused the other day of being "the guy who only reads the first 20 pages" of a book.  I do sometimes read all the pages but I don't manage to do it all in one sitting.  I can be sitting reading when the phone rings or the clock shows it's tea time.  The act of reading a book is familiar to us but it is quite complex, more so today.  The book might be on paper, it might be a library book, it might be an ebook.  The book "Reader, Come Home" is one that looks at the complexity of the reading act and the current use of digital devices to offer reading opportunities, including intrusive chances to read an ad you didn't ask for and irritates by intruding itself into the story.

I focus on reading because it is a complex act and it is related to learning and to pleasure.  But every day, we engage in equally complex acts that are also shaped by our 

• chronological age, 

• habits and beliefs, 

• health, and 

• purposes and projects.  

That list implies we are four-dimensional creatures.  But, I didn't list our political preferences and convictions and I didn't list religious influences and backgrounds.  I didn't list what Mom convinced us of or what Dad always advised.  No wonder we are somewhat unpredictable. 

Ok, it is now spring

It has been spring for about three hours.  Do you notice a difference?  That is using the occurrence of the vernal equinox to be the beginning of spring (in the northern hemisphere) and autumn in the southern hemisphere.  I live in the Central Time Zone of the US and Google told me that the vernal equinox happened at 10:33 my time.  I enjoy looking at time.gov and seeing the seconds tick by.  

Our calendar is only one of about 60 different calendars in use around the world, according to something I read somewhere sometime.  Our mathematical and traditional categories may not exactly fit Earth's movements.  It seems that the Earth's movements are slowing slightly but only a few thousands of a second.

Winter can be deadly, challenging, inconvenient, expensive. Once, on April 4, supposedly into spring by that date, we had to pull off the highway at Madison, 100 miles south, to pull wet heavy snow off the windshield.  It was too heavy and sticky for the windshield wipers.  Late storms in the last of winter and the beginning of spring have sometimes brought that heavy snow to power lines, leaving people without electricity.  This winter has been mild-ish and we have had no late snowfalls.  We hope it continues.

DNA surprises

We have been reading "She Has Her Mother's Laugh", a book by Carol Zimmer about the "Powers, Perversions, and Potential" of human heredity.  In some ways, it seems pretty straightforward.  A male and a female get together and later, there is a new human, who didn't exist before but does now.  Many people have heard of eggs, sperm, chromosomes, and DNA.  I have heard of them and we have read several stories about baby-making and what it involves.  But I was shocked by what I read in Her Laugh last night.

"It began to look like there was nothing more to be done. The state prepared to put Fairchild's children into foster care and prosecute her for fraud. But then Fairchild's lawyer read about another mother who had been informed that her children were not her own."

The basic idea involves two things, it seems.  One is that twins can sometimes share blood streams in the womb and so, if one twin develops any type of body cell that the other twin doesn't have, the twin without that type of cell can have gotten some from the sibling.  The other is that mostly and normally, a mother does not get any cells from the developing fetus or fetuses "back" in her own body but once in a while, the mother does get cells from her growing baby.  Often, healthy cells find a way of growing and duplicating.  

Depending on the type of cells, it is possible for physicians and scientists to affirm that some things are impossible, depending on their understanding of human biology.  The Fairchild situation developed in 2003, rather recently.  New evidence and modern communication prevented the woman's state of residence from convicting her of fraud and taking her children away from her.  

This situation reminds me of the basic premise of the Netflix show "Jane, the Virgin".  Jane is healthy and interested in the opposite sex but her mother and her grandmother have drilled into her that she needs to wait for marriage.  So, when a physician informs Jane and her mother that Jane is pregnant, they naturally challenge the statement.  Jane asserts that she has never had sex, implying that she simply cannot be pregnant.  She doesn't know what the audience knows, that the physician got mixed up and accidentally artificially impregnated Jane when she came in for an exam. 

Devices are not me

One of my favorite features of the internet and the worldwide web is being able to visit the same site in multiple ways using multiple devices.  I don't know enough about the technical history of the web to know if sites and devices have always been aware of each other or if that is a more recent development. With a Gmail login and password, I get access to my Google Drive and I can use Google Docs to write posts on my Google Blogger blog, called "Fear, Fun and Filoz".  My nephew has a master's degree in computing so when I began avoiding using my university email and having a different email address, I copied his example and went to Gmail.  

I like the idea of a floating office that I can easily get into with a computer or a tablet or a smartphone (CTS).  It is easy and fast if I know the Universal Resource Locator, also called the web address.  I open a browser program like Firefox or Chrome or Edge or Brave or Opera or Vivaldi and type in the web address.  Bingo!  I am there.  So, to read the blog post I wrote about reading to Lynn, I put in the web address of the blog https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/ and press return.  Then, I use the Search window to search for "reading to Lynn".  The blog posts containing that search phrase come up.  

I have many passwords and memberships.  I am used to having to sign into Amazon or Google.  I think of myself as a particular person who gets recognized for who he is by the logon and password I use.  Lately, when I use a different device to use an account, I give my logon and password and get passed in but I also get an email to notify me that someone who knows my credentials has logged in with a device the site has not experienced before.  That got me thinking.  I use the word "connected" to mean having a device (CTS) but I am realizing that these "devices" are not me and they are not human.

Besides, I can't do what I have them do, even though I hold them in my hand and use them every day.  

Have you read that book?

When we go to first grade and maybe before, we learn to read.  It is not the same thing to learn to write but clearly reading requires somebody or something doing some sort of writing or printing if we are going to have something to read.  Between school, library and smartphones, we get lots of reading done, not to mention signs and labels and ads and such.  

I knew that I enjoyed getting into a book and eventually I started a  course called Personal Reading for Professional Development.  It was a review that graduate, experienced teachers could use to think back over their reading lives.  The only assignment was to make a list of the books they had ever read, from the Pokey Little Puppy and the Little Engine that Could to the last James Patterson thriller.  Graduate teachers often have completed their master's degrees and have been reading since they were about 7 years old.  The students could usually make lists of 300 books or more, often three times more.  

A teacher is often aware of basic learnings and skills and experiences they are responsible for giving students.  In today's multi-media world, they may use field trips, films, projects requiring multiple students working together as well as lectures, student and guest presentations as well as textbooks and other printed sources.  I think it is worth the time and effort to ask yourself what books have mattered in your life.  I have two lists online, one from 1983 https://sites.google.com/d/1Mj_h2EbWEE7UefuJVfDBUQei7JHcthi1/p/1Yd0teDOh-hkVw4MYnJgOOBJIhPALnvGy/edit

And one from 2011

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/recent-reading-2011

Naturally, I was often asked what authors have mattered to me.  My usual answer is "C.S. Lewis" and "Jacques Barzun".  Of course, they are deceased now but their books were excellent for me and basically still are.  There are many other authors, books and subjects that have mattered.  "Walden" for instance and "The #1 Ladies Detective Agency" and "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry".  I read aloud to Lynn most every night and "A Gentleman in Moscow", the nutty novels of Peter DeVries and "The 3lb Universe" came to mind as memorable.  There is no guarantee that we recall everything we have read or that we would like something now that we read in the past.  I used to ask students who assured me that they had read the assignment, "Ok, what is the next word after "Fisher" on p. 26?" Of course, they were outraged by such a question.  I couldn't answer that question myself.

Stop the presses! It's St. Urho's Day!

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day.  I am not Catholic but the saint's day did get me interested in lineage and heredity and all that.  Various reports from DNA analysis tell me that I carry male markers similar to what many Irish men carry.  In high school and college, I got interested in human history and where my people came from.  That interest added to the spike of biological interest I felt when I met the woman who has put up with me for more than 60 years.  The added interest spike came from a college professor asking her if her last name was Finnish.  Finnish?  I had never met anyone who said they were Finnish or related to Finns.

In keeping with worldwide celebrations of the Finnish saint who drove all the grasshoppers out of Finland, I am posting early today just to give everyone extra time to have an extra glass of milk or reindeer juice.  Some further information on this great and holy man is available here:

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2020/03/patrick-and-urho.html

Definitely down for a while

I like to try and experience all aspects of life.  Prof. Lisa Barrett makes clear in her book "How Emotions Are Made" and in her TED talk "You Aren't at the Mercy of Your Emotions" that we construct our emotions and we can modify them. Nevertheless, I don't think I get the emotions many of my friends do, especially my women friends.  Some of them seem to have five or ten waves of emotion for every one that I experience.  Mine seem lighter and less affecting.  I believe that cheer and joy are better than sadness and I have been practicing for many decades anticipating negative emotions and modifying them.  

I try not to be false or fake to myself but I can usually see something like at least a neutral side, if not a humorous or positive side to situations.  Practicing my usual approach doesn't give me many strong negative feelings.  So, I was surprised when I could feel quite clearly depression and awareness of negative aspects of life this morning.  I knew I was feeling that type of emotion.  True, it was dreary, chilly and unpleasant outside. I could feel negativity rising.  I made a note after looking at Google News and taking in the dreary, foggy morning weather that I wanted something besides fog, war, covid-19, inflation, shrinkflation, pollution, cold and aging.  I didn't increase or decrease the negativity.  Our durned outside thermometer has seemed stuck on 20° for days, despite predictions that we would get to 40 or 50.  

Now, the sun is out, the sky is blue and we have reached 49°.  I have to get out there!

How much?

I taught a course called "Tests and Measurements" many times.  I experienced many situations where a student or a teacher or parents equated the grade point or the class rank with a person's basic worth. I have certainly seen similar approaches with money.  If you have more money than I do, you might be worth more than I am.  

When I ask people who have more money than me, if I am worth less than they are, they usually say "Of course, not."  I admit that for many people, the question of comparative worth needs clarification.  They may ask "worth less in what way" or "worth less to whom."  Many Americans are basically committed to some sort of equality between people, at least in the opening exchanges about worth.  But various experiences and convictions have left me rather soured on so-called "measurement".

But today, in "How We Got to Now" by Steven Johnson, I read

"New ways of measuring create new ways of making. The ability to measure bacterial content allowed a completely new set of approaches to the challenges of public health. Before the adoption of these units of measurement, you had to test improvements to the water system the old-fashioned way: you built a new sewer or reservoir or pipe, and you sat around and waited to see if fewer people would die."

— How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson

I have seen plenty of salutes to measurement and what it can do.  I want to take a moment and add my respects to attempts to measure.  It is, indeed, possible to confuse a measure with the item measured.  In a modern world where there is plenty of communication and still only 24 hours in a day, reducing a person to his bank balance or his class rank can be a quick way of deciding how much attention to pay to that guy.  It takes more thought and noticing to see a person's personality than to just get a number or two but there are times when numbers help understand the world more clearly.

So, which is it?

Guess what I heard

Did you know that Barack Obama is actually the love child of Abraham Lincoln and Betsy Ross? I hope not.  I just made that statement up.  Yes, I was consciously trying to make a halfway understandable idea that had only a small chance of being accepted at true.  Since both Abe and Mrs. Ross were dead well before the year 1961, the year of Obama's birth, it seems very unlikely that they were the biological parents of the 44th American president.

So, my allegation of a liaison between these two famous Americans can be labeled "misinformation", or "junk", or "blatant lies".  However, I do want to make a plea for a tiny bit of tolerance for "misinformation".  I am confident that many people shoot off their mouths or type off their keyboards with little forethought.  It is not just fantasy or imagination, either.  Besides 'revenge misinformation' and professional and semi-professional and quarter-professional and quasi-professional slander and deliberate rumor making, we have bouncing effects.  Surely a US senator or a genine elected Member of Parliament knows what he is talking about and I just heard my cousin say that a US senator said this".......!"

I don't appreciate it when my enemies accuse me of being a dealer in illicit guns and ammunition but I do see some interesting parallels with messages zipping around the lunch table, the bowling alley, the internet and amateur radio networks.  You know how it goes.  I am in a group of friends when that Guy walks in.  I have been trying to get him to appreciate my wit, my intelligence, my broad-thinking ever since I met him.  So, I offer a fantastic bit of info to the group, hoping he will be impressed.  It's not (entirely) my fault that some of those present repeat my fantasy that evening or next weekend.  Look up "Old Testament references to malicious gossip" and you will see that wagging tongues have been around for a very long time.

My tiny plea is that we take note of a parallel with respected interchanges from the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) or discussions of whether it is "bad air" or viruses that spread disease.  Just as a start-up business needs to try to find paths to success, thinking about God or about physical particles also searches for a good idea, a usable solution, an answer that stands up to examination and criticism.  The process can take a long time and include some hypotheses that are way off the mark.

Things can take time

I am interested in lag time, the gap between an event and a follow-up.  I get information from Google News, CNN's Five Things, Numlock News, Writer's Almanac and Personal Information, which, despite the name, is a newsletter about national politics.  I don't think I am well connected to any group nor am I a professional observer.  

I tend to think personally and somewhat locally.  I just checked and I see that I got a Covid vaccine shot in Feb. of 2021.  We had waited some and kept an eye on local and national news from the internet about getting shots, wearing face masks, practicing social distancing and we thought we were following good advice about what to do to avoid a serious illness.  I still feel that we proceeded sensibly.  

Various reports about people being extremely interested in not getting any Covid vaccine come along regularly.  I have read of people rejecting a shot even if they can't get a transplant they need.  The whole business of a large group getting some medicine was played out, and probably is still being played out, around other medicines and other diseases.  A friend reminded me today of the story of British doctor John Snow.  In 1854, cholera was hurting people in London.  As numerous histories have made clear, there was a general conception among many that diseases traveled on "bad air", "miasma", much like unpleasant smells.  As Steven Johnson makes clear in his book "How We Got to Now", there was a slow chain reaction from Gutenburg's press to more books to more people wanting spectacles to better glass to microscopes to being able to actually see biologically important and dangerous life forms that had formerly been too small.  

Gaps in time, lags between a discovery and knowledge of it being widespread, occur for all sorts of reasons.  I didn't understand until recently that psychological and then political reasons, fashions, beliefs and doubts can all create lags in the spread of any phenomenon.  Reading about the acceptance and non-acceptance of the smallpox vaccine has shown me strong parallels between today and 1798.  

It is completely understandable, I think, that ideas need time to spread and to be accepted.  A search turned up the date 1996 as a good one to stand for the eradication of smallpox, just about 200 years after Jenner.  That is the sort of lag that can happen.  I imagine that things have speeded up today but there are still lags.

Getting there

The other morning, I was vegetating on the couch, trying to motivate myself to do something or other.  I noticed that when I used my voice to say in short, clear words what needed to be done, I immediately experienced a strong desire to get up and act.  I have been interested in the internal mechanism that humans use to express themselves in speech or writing.  I realize the mechanisms for talk and for writing are clearly different in some ways, but it seems to me that brain actions to decide on words that express my thoughts and feelings are going to be involved in either type of communication.  Human language is a standout achievement of my species and all forms interest me.  

I am also interested in what might be called "mind medicine", placebos and nocebos.  Does my belief that I am going to get rid of this cold help me to get rid of it?   How can I tell if I really believe or if I am kidding myself?  Books on belief and the body such as "Cure" by Jo Marchant and "The Cure Within" by Harrington, a Harvard historian of science, are interesting examinations of the power of belief.  Somehow, I discovered Tim Grimes, who titles himself "the radical counselor" and I get his newsletter regularly.  

The other morning, I had just internally verbalized in clear words my need and desire and duty to do something or other, feeling that clear, positive energy to act, when I saw that Grimes' newsletter referred to Emile Coue (1857-1926).  I recognized the name as a pioneer of psychology, psychiatry and the power of belief.  I looked at what Grimes had written and saw a motto that Coue had encouraged patients to repeat daily, "Every day in every way, I get better".  

It happens that I somehow irritated the muscles in my back on Monday and I have been using a hot pad to help the muscles get back to normal.  Between Coue's motto and this morning's yoga, my back, my blood, my breath have me back to normal.  It helped that I have the book "Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach to Halting the Cycle of Chronic Back Pain" by Ronald Siegel and others.  Siegel is a psychologist and I have read some of his stuff before.  The Back Sense book makes clear that all sorts of fear and other reactions are often used by the body to signal pain.

Is it time?

When I have an appointment at a certain time, I like to be there then.  But, I get eager to be going.  I know that there are usually extra steps to being ready, to getting what I want to take with me.  Sometimes, I want to do an extra errand or two on the trip and I may need the shopping list or briefcase for briefs and such.  

I have heard about books on the perception of time and on psychological time.  I have read things about time management.  I don't think I have learned anything of much value.  I do have a habit of asking what I most want to do and how I can use opportunities to achieve goals.  I dislike being overly focused on being productive, whatever that means. I started this blog to advocate a habit of meditation.  Meditation, philosophy from eastern nations and authors emphasize the value of seeing what is in front of me and appreciating beauty, wisdom, comic situations and kindness when and where they arise.  

But despite being interested in the value of being appropriately laid back, I am basically a hotbox.  Too eager, too much in a hurry, overly aware of the joy of having completed the task - all that leads to impatience, to too little appreciation of the moment and too much focus on the joy of completion, the pride in being able to check off another item.  

Maybe I am overly interested in simultaneously enjoying the present moment and focusing my attention on the next one, the upcoming moment for which I want to be fully equipped and prepared right while I continue to observe and savor the current one.  I guess I am very interested in wringing all the joy there is to be rung from Now while being super-ready for Next and New and Other.  Whatever is to become of me?

(While fooling around with time, my timing and such, I have enjoyed visiting the web site time.gov.  It is the official site of the US Bureau of Standards and gives the time in various US time zones.  I like that it gives the seconds, too.)

Appetites and capacities

I've noticed two changes as I am aging. I can't eat as much as I used to and I don't read as fast or as far as I used to.  I get quite full with a smaller amount of food.  I need more time to ponder, reflect and consider material I read.  I spend more time pondering, reflecting and questioning what I read.  I guess the difference applies more to non-fiction than to a story, although I can spend quite a bit of time asking if what the heroine is trying to do makes sense or if there is a better choice of actions in her situation.

I have wondered if the act of eating, of just sitting down and serving my plate and taking some food is somehow registering differently with my mind, memory and appetite.  I wonder if the quantity of food matters less than having gone through the steps of a meal.  I do think that I have become better at noticing my actual state of hunger and taking into consideration how hungry I am instead of eating because of the time of day.  With winter and Covid, I am certainly doing less walking and biking so I am not burning calories very much.  Plus I am old and I don't burn as hot.  

There are many commentators who say that the internet, smartphones and social media have fractured people's attention.  Ever since I started reading with a Kindle reader, I have been aware that in addition to the book I am looking at, right in the object in my hand are many other great books that I haven't been reading and could get back into.  Besides, I quite enjoy highlighting smart sentences and notable insights by highlighting them.  If I am going to highlight them, I might as well share those gems.  It is easy and fast to share highlights on Twitter, whether or not anyone ever looks at my sharing.  The presence of a handy computer, smartphone or tablet makes it easy to look up facts about the author and see what other books that person has written.  Finding that the author was born in Podunk, I may take a moment to look up the location and history and population of Podunk.

No wonder I take forever and still don't finish a book!

Class or case

In what is called a "self-contained" classroom, an elementary school teacher is with the same students the whole school day.  It becomes very clear that each student is unique.  Over the course of school days from September to June, a student's appearance, habits, strengths, academic weaknesses emerge to create that person's "essence" in the teacher's mind.  I taught the 5th grade for 4 years.  For the first two years, four 5th grades ran in a self-contained way.  For the last two years, the students moved from teacher to teacher for different subjects, the way our junior highs, senior highs and college classes do.  

In those latter years, I taught arithmetic to four different groups each day.  The classes were supposedly differentiated by ability.  But it was always possible that a student in the "highest" class would have trouble with a concept or a calculation while a student in the "lowest" sailed through ideas and operations.  A friend recently used the word "class" to mean a group that had some sort of similar record or label and the word "case" to mean an occasion when attention was focused on that student alone and that student's unique personality, history, family setting, abilities, and interests.

I have been reading Prof. Anil Seth's "Being You: A New Science of Consciousness".  I also have Prof. David Linden's "Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality".  I am reading aloud to Lynn the book by Carl Zimmer "She Has Her Mother's Life: The Powers, Perversions and Potential" of heredity.  These books often focus on what there is about me or about you that is not true of anyone else, on the uniqueness of the individual.  The picture of a therapist and a single patient sitting facing each other and talking about the patient's life, problems, difficulties and goals is the typical picture of a specialist concentrating on a client's description of dealing with some personal combination of mental, emotional or social difficulties.  Sometimes, a classroom teacher has such a session with a student or a parent.

Hank and Franz

When I am cooking or cleaning up the dishes, I often find that "good" music helps my mood and makes the task shorter and pleasant.  I like to be able to choose the music and I often play Mozart or Haydn.  But I like to vary the music some so sometimes I play marches, waltzes and popular music from the 1960's or more recent times.  I have a copy of The Elixir of Love (1832) sung in English and I have listened to it many times.  I enjoy the blowhard Sargeant Belcore, who admits to being extremely attractive and exciting to ladies and who "can feel their passion growing stronger" when he is around.  Equally fun is Dr. Calmarara, another blowhard who knows all about the sciences and sells a powerful elixir guaranteed to make your chosen fall in love with you.  

I like Strauss waltzes and Hawaiian music, especially tunes sung by Iz Kamakawiwoʻole.  But the other day, I put on a collection of Hank Williams songs.  That is a different sound and a type of music that is not to the liking of everyone living here.  I think Appalachian twang is related to traditional Irish and Scottish music and there is something about the basic logic and structure of a plaintive wish to "melt your cold, cold heart" that attracts me.  As an antidote for ear offense, I played Schubert's men's choruses singing his catchy tunes and rhythms. 

Changes

For the first time in months, water fell all around our house today.  It fell from the sky.  I think it is called "rain" in English.  

We know that we are on the way to spring.  Google says the spring equinox will occur on March 20:

Spring Equinox 2022 in Northern Hemisphere will be at 10:33 AM on

Sunday, March 20

All times are in Central Time.

Of course, big changes in the energy we receive can be disruptive.  We still have some ice on our front walkway.  As we change from colder to warmer, we know that snow and ice can block drains and waterways.  Melting the snow pack on the grounds increases the runoff and this or that floods. I've heard that a weed is a plant growing where you don't want it.  Often a flood is water where you don't want it.  It can be dangerous or disruptive or damaging.

One of the differences I experienced between Maryland winters and central Wisconsin winters is ice.  In the middle of the country, there is more warmth on many winter days, enough to melt snow which can freeze in the colder hours, creating danger of slip, slide and skid, day after day.  At this latitude, we get less of that until winter changes into spring.  

As the Earth moves around its orbit toward the spring equinox and summer solstice, we get longer days.  We already notice the sun going down a bit later and more light longer.

Humans

We are reading "She Has Her Mother's Laugh" by Carl Zimmer.  He has several books and I enjoyed "Planet of Viruses".  When I looked at what else he has written, I saw the Laugh title.  I was clear from the title that the book would be about ancestors and human descendants.  As we have been progressing through the book, several references and stories were familiar.  Ever since we had our DNA analyzed by the now closed Genographic Project run by the National Geographic Society, I have been getting more aware of and information about genetics, human evolution and the disbursal of humans from Africa to the rest of the planet.

I remember reading Christine Kinneally's "The Invisible History of the Human Race" and I remember being negatively affected by the story of various attempts to "improve" humans using execution, sterilization, segregation and shame.  As a student and professor of school testing and grading, I am familiar with the ins and outs of sorting and discriminating between and among humans.  

In addition to having our DNA analyzed by the Genographic Project, we had an analysis done by 23andMe.  We bought little books about the findings.  Lynn's ancestors' locations make a list twice as long as mine.  Mine are European: English, Scottish, Irish, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Scandinavian.  She also has Native American and some Ashkenazy.  I have some Neanderthal and Denisovan, which are other branches of humans, along the lines of Cro-Magnon.  I guess the most affecting book on human dispersal and descent I have read is "The 10,000 Year Explosion" by Cochran and Harpending.

Ideas about dying

A basic rule for living things is "Live, stay alive".  But basic rules can take many forms and occur in many situations, especially after a long life.  I'm just writing today to mention some of the modifications I seem to have found.  

A friend lost a pet to death and said,"When you live alone, your pet can be everything."  I wasn't close to the pet but I realized it would be rude to say "Death comes to all.  Just forget about it."  I looked up supporting a grieving friend and found this: https://getpocket.com/read/1956390835  I think males like me have both a natural tendency to shy away from deep and sustained negative emotions and a feeling that it isn't "manly" to be upset or noticeably afraid.  I have been wondering if people like some women have a better way.  They seem to take in more of the misery and be more miserable but I wonder if being that way leaves less fear or other baggage behind.  I did know that it is not helpful to say "Don't feel that way" or "You'll get over it."  

A husband and father is dying.  I heard that he asked,"Is this going to take a long time?"  My reaction is similar.  I don't want unpleasantness or pain.  It seems as though death and increasing disability and limitations could take a very long, drawn-out time.  I read quite a few years ago about a way to die on purpose and to do so rather neatly, without a big mess.  I don't know enough about the physics of dying to know if taking many sleeping pills and taping a plastic bag over my head would be effective or not.  I can imagine doing more harm and causing more trouble while trying to die but failing to do so.  One friend said that he envisioned going to the back yard, leaning against a tree and firing a shotgun in his mouth.  His idea was that the resultant mess would be quick and easy to clean up.  

Another friend's husband has been officially in hospice more than once.  She seems devoted to his comfort and quality of life, but her life is mostly about caring for him.  I can imagine being torn between such care and fatigue and resentment.