Answer!

When an article or comment or Tweet online has 100 or more comments and responses, it seems to me it takes an extra level of optimism to think that people will scroll through so many messages to reach the latest one.  I am open to data and experience.  Maybe someone has started a valuable exchange with a post way down the line.  Seems unlikely, though.

I can imagine my pride in what I typed and I might scroll down to my wonderful comment to see if anyone reacted specifically to it.  With a long list of responses, it may be that "neighborhoods" develop where "local" comments tend to be about a common subject.  Later, a respondent may change the subject and develop a new bunch of comments.

This post is titled "Answer" because I am trying to advocate "answering", responding.  Not just to a single statement but to all those that create an internal reaction.  Many people think about the reaction that others will have to a possible comment and their reaction can matter.  But don't underestimate the effect on you of composing a statement, evaluating it for worth, acceptability and such and then posting it.  If someone responds in a way that creates a reaction or response in your mind, post your idea.  Much of the time, it pays to work at responding in a way that extends the subject in a new direction.  Of course, many people fall into the blame game easily and quickly get to a description of some problem and an accusation that such-and-such a person or group of them created the problem or are behind it.

You might be surprised if you haven't experienced the result of answering repeatedly, building up a bit of a conversation with someone.  I admit that many people are not inclined to feel a reaction or response, think how to express that answer and post it.  However, valuable and satisfying relationships do get established that way.  I say give doing so a try.

Sorry, no Martian vampires, please

We have enjoyed several series on TV, like Foyle's War, Scrubs, Third Rock from the Sun, Virgin River, NCIS, Doc Martin, Miss Fisher, Candice, Balthazar.  We have sometimes come to the end of a series and watched all the episodes a 2nd time.  But eventually, they come to an end and then we have to search and judge and try.  

The other day, I Googled "popular shows on Netflix" or some such search terms.  I found things like "439 shows you will love".  I have read through a couple lists of suggestions and I am surprised to find yet again, how different we are from what seems to be the typical audience.  After all, we are old.  We have been listening to radio programs (what's a radio?), going to movies, watching tv, streaming for years.  All the while, we have been reading novels, some plays, non-fiction, etc.  But we don't get into horror.  So all those zombies, vampires, witches, ogres, and such can take a break.  We have enough to deal with just in the line of killers, bad guys, sorrows and heartbreaks.  

I guess we are in an era of popular choice that involves horror and supernatural fears and dangers.  I admit there is much to be afraid of and to worry about, but there are certain types of content I am not attracted to.  I have heard that with modern communications and advanced marketing ideas, that fictional "content" gets used up very quickly and that large audiences are ready to quickly consume whatever is available.  I realize that old people have been saying their earlier days were ever so much better than current possibilities ever since there have been old people.  

We have sometimes taken refuge in the Great Courses, available as a Roku streaming app and over the years, we have accumulated quite a few of the courses.  In the meantime, we will continue to pick and choose and search for what tickles our fancies. 

What Redacted

What Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted she Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted 

Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted

am 

Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted 

Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted

  

I Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted 

Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted 

Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted

Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted 

Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted Redacted

What does it mean?

What does it mean when your little sister turns 80 years old? It means many things: that she is healthy and lively, that if you do the math, the end of your own life is approaching.  That can be frightening but I am not particularly scared.  The end of my life has been approaching for years.  I'm used to it.  If she can bear the weight of the years, so can I.  

I want to salute her and remind her that I love her, that I respect her and that I admire her.  I went to my blog posts at https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/ and searched for "sister".  I was surprised to find how much I had written about her already.  You can follow the link and search if you want.  I hope you have as fine a sister as mine has turned out to be.

Hans Rosling

My friends were talking about the state of the world.  At the same time, a book by Swedish professor Hans Rosling arrived at my house.  He is the author of "Factfulness" and was a professor of health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.  He made a speciality of looking at data from the whole world and assessing how humanity was doing.  

The current worries about climate change and other environmental problems were the focus of the 1972 book, "The Limits to Growth."  That's the book that inspired my historian friend and me to create and teach a course called "Futures".  It was a serious and semi-scientific look at trends and supplies and more or less predicted trouble for humans about the year 2025.  During use of that book, I learned about ancient predictions of "disaster" and "the end of the world", often associated with military operations by and against one country or set of them or another.  

Rosling was a good model of a data collector and analyzer.  He enjoyed talking to college students and audiences of adults about what they knew and what they "knew" about the situations of life around the world.  His data often contradicted general opinions about health and the quality of life.  I didn't realize until I began writing this blog post that the 1972 book was followed up by "The Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update."

Rosling died in 2017 but there are several of his videos on YouTube.  Try searching Google for Hans Rosling videos or just go to his "200 countries, 200 years in 4 minutes".  Rosling's son Ola and his daughter-in-law are carrying on his work.

Lynn's work is featured

Lynn is a member of Gallery Q Artists Cooperative.  

https://qartistscooperative.com/  

She has had work exhibited elsewhere sometimes but Gallery Q is the main place.  They put up a different display about every two months.  

For months, Lynn has known she would be one of the featured artists starting this weekend and has been working to have a variety of good ceramics ready for display.  She is excited to have this focus.  

You can see some of her pieces here:

https://qartistscooperative.com/lynn-kirby

But she is thinking of changing which pieces are pictured here.  Different ones are featured in the Gallery until late October.  Open seven days a week during the summer:

Another app

I found the Teaching Company, a.k.a. Great Courses, has an app available in the Roku streamer.  I have listened to audible courses from them and watched a few of their video offerings.  I added the Great Courses app to the set of programs I have connections to in the Roku set.  I logged in and bingo!  All my programs are there to be re-run if desired plus some new ones I just ordered.

These days I don't fit much pure audio into my time.  I watch video and I skim through print but audio slows me down. When I buy a Kindle book, the audio version is often available at the same time at a very good price.  When Lynn does pottery, she often gets her hands gooey and the Amazon smart speaker, Alexa, can be controlled with her voice and play audiobooks very nicely.

Roku and apps

We have our phone, tv and internet with a single company.  We don't use the tv cable much any more.  Once a serviceman came to our house and thought we would have a better picture if you connected the cable tv box to the HDMI outlet on our set.  We get the local paper and read CNN and Google News on our computers so we hardly need broadcast tv. 

I suspect that the weather service on our local channels is worth watching but when I tried to get the broadcast local channels, I couldn't.  I tried to use a phone call to get help but I couldn't.  I drove to the local cable company store and was told to try installing their "app" on my Roku channels page.  I did and it is convenient and fast to pull the broadcasts up in that app.

So, I am learning to think "possible app" in connection with our Roku streamer, not just with smartphones.

Kiln, shelves and labels

I am married to a potter.  Potters commit their work to very high temperatures.  When we clean our kitchen oven, the stove rises to 900° F.  But potters need to fire the pottery at around 2000° when they do a bisque firing.  That hardens the clay but it is important to have the pieces fully dried first.  Otherwise, steam will form and explode the piece, maybe shattering a few other pieces, too.  Then, the piece is glazed.  It looks like the potter is painting the piece but the paint is a form of glass.  The 2nd firing is hotter and changes the glaze coating into a hard layer.  

The pieces need to be carefully arranged in the kiln so that they don't touch each other.  The glaze can connect two pieces in a very tight bond, tight enough that separating them can wreck both pieces.  

I put "shelves" in the title since they are essential to using the kiln but glaze can melt onto them and must be ground off.  Shelves are fireproof and strong and expensive.

This weekend begins a show at the gallery that features Lynn's work and that of the other potter in the cooperative.  Of course, each piece of pottery needs a sale price and a customer can read the price on a label.  But the gallery is out of labels.  They must be printed on the gallery computer, be a certain size, have a serial number and the price.  Many other pitfalls have fallen and may fall before the show is ready.

Smartphones, breathing

I already have blog posts that advocate using a computer for many communication tasks instead of a phone or smartphone.  A computer is a much more powerful device and can accomplish more, and more different tasks faster and easier than a smartphone.  If you visit sites.google.com, you will find tools and forms for creating a web site.  Included are viewers to see what your site looks like on a computer, on a smartphone and on a tablet, like an iPad.  

One way to more or less keep your computing time under control is to make mental or paper notes about things and people you want to contact and then setting a time to actually use a computer to get that done.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a 2nd subject, you probably know that breathing is important to stay alive.  When a human stops breathing, they are either dead or close to it.  However, there are other valuable angles to the subject of breathing.  The book by James Nestor, "Breath", has recently been popular but I favor the books by Larry Rosenberg, "Breath by Breath", and by Gay Hendricks, "Conscious Breathing".  

Breath by Breath takes a relaxed but wide view of the use of awareness of breathing and focusing one's attention on one's own breathing.  Highlights from my reading of the book are here:

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/breath-by-breath-notes

Here is a list of my blog posts related to Rosenberg's book:

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/search?q=breath+by+breath

Old eyes like mine can be irritated by focusing on one anchor.  I was pleased to find that careful inhalation and slow controlled exhalation can be an excellent anchor for my attention and during the whole time, I can keep my eyes closed.

I have gotten plenty of good ideas and encouragement from Dr. Gay Hendricks.  Highlights I noted from his book "Conscious Breathing" are

here: 

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety2/conscious-breathing-highlights

I enjoyed his confession that he used to be something of a pain in his enthusiasm for "breathwork".  I was surprised at the idea that pulmonary and other physicians have suspected that many health problems come from poor breathing.  I think Dr. Hendricks put his finger on one source of difficulties: the abdomen.  Several sources emphasize that good breathing involves using the diaphragm and that it is far more basic than expanding the chest.  Yet, Hendricks points out that expanding the belly to use the diaphragm fully contradicts the fashion objection to a protruding, rounded belly.

Get them letters right!

I like to pester Google search with all manner of questions and inquiries.  My general rule of thumb is that the first page of results will always give me new insights and sources.  But I have found that if I am searching for something, getting the first letter of the search terms wrong will set me off in a very wrong direction.  All the letters matter, of course, but that first one is extra-important.

I like to look up an author to see something of the person's background and credentials and experience and reputation.  Things go even more haywire (what is it with the wire for hay, anyhow?) when more letters are off.  I found a book that sounded valuable.  I misremembered the author's first name as "Robin".  I was very surprised to find that Robin is an advocate for spanking, the old-fashioned being struck on the buttocks.  I think that the subject is spanking errant children, not dominating an adult.  At first, I thought, "Well, maybe this person writes both about my subject of non-zero games and also spanking" but finding several volumes on spanking and none about no-zero games and activities, I went back and found not Robin but Robert.  

I admire the book "A Place for Everything" which is actually the history of alphabetical order.  How can there be a history of alphabetical order?  It turns out that at one time, it was thought to be more properly religious to store books in the order of moral importance.  Then, it slowly became more common to use the first letter of the author's last name.  It evidently took many years before someone thought of using the second letter and subsequent letters to order the books.  

I read that at one time, finding a book in a mammoth library was very hit and miss and that the best strategy was often asking a librarian for information on where that book might be found,

My brother-in-law

I have had that brother-in-law for more than 50 years.  I didn't pick him - my sister did.  He is all kinds of good.

No.1 in my mind - energetic  The guy has energy.  Not just up and at 'em arm and leg energy but psychic, too.  

No. 2 - genetic/biological energy  He and my sister have made some excellent children and the fruits show.  Those former kids are more than grown now.  They have children of their own.  

No. 3 - brains  He became the family go-to guy for information on our ancestors.  He knows more about who I came from than I do. 

If you are considering brothers-in-law, look him up.  He is a good template for shopping.

Where did I put that record?

I have heard that Mark Twain said,"Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET!"  When I am told not to put all my eggs in one basket, I take the advice to be offered for the sake of safety.  I think that modern insurance ideas emerged, in part, from shipping.  Back in the age of sailing ships, you know with actual sails, valuable cargo might sometimes be separated into shipments on several ships so that no one of them would sink with the entirety of the valuable goods. 

Book-keeping, record-keeping, file cabinets, alphanumeric ordering of records, filing systems, spreadsheets- all to keep order, to be able to find and recall things and to be able to browse, when desired.  I prefer the way Google lets me accomplish those things on various machines and devices.  Their Drive is a place to store data files, such as a Google Doc or Sheet.  Apple has its iCloud and Microsoft its OneDrive.  I understand that Amazon has a very large operation called AWS (Amazon Web Services) that does business with businesses that need storage for digital documents and records.  

Eric Schmidt was chairman of Google for about ten years.  He writes:

Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As We Did Up ...

Aug 4, 2010 Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003, according to Schmidt. That's something like five exabytes of data, he says.

When we get into data creation and storage, we run into the bigger families of numbers.  Sometimes, the word "zillion" is used to mean a big number but "exabytes" and "petabytes" and other very biggies come up, too.

Machines and me

I am not a mechanic.  I can read but I don't tend to do machines.  When I started grad school at age 25, it wasn't long before I started making use of a computer.  That was before computers were desktops or laptops.  They were too big and too expensive for a single homeowner to want.  The one I had access to was not touched by me or others making use of it.  I wrote the lines of Fortran I wanted the computer to use, one line across the top of one computer card.  I handed the deck of cards to a clerk and returned a day later to retrieve the deck and the printed pages from the computer.

But I don't change the oil in my car or rewire the doorbell.  I use devices to download e-books but are there machines I use?  Yes, there are.  When I look around me, right in my house, aside from computing and phones, what else?  The automatic garage door opener comes to mind.  The car, the dishwasher, the washing machine, the dryer, the vacuum cleaner, the furnace, the airconditioner, the ceiling fan, the lightbulbs, the tv, the lawnmower, the coffeemakers, the radio/compact disc player, the refrigerator, the stove.  I count 16 machines used frequently, 14 depending on electricity, two using gasoline and one using natural gas. 

Good tool for book shopping

I can easily spend more time looking at book titles and lists of books than reading.  I saw an article the other day about libraries and it mentioned places where African Americans were not allowed in but Caucasians were.  I was thinking how my life would have been very different if I had been prohibited from entering, perusing and borrowing.  I got my first library card when I was five.  There was a public library near my school and I visited often on the way home.  I worked in a public library while in high school.  I asked my wife of more than 60 years on our first date in the campus library.  

When I found out about ebooks and read that they required NO use of computers to download, I immediately started purchasing them.  Now I have so many that I am often informed that I purchased a book 5 or more years ago as I go to buy one. As explained with a photo, I now use the app "Libby" on my iPad to borrow books instantly and I have learned how to start looking deeper in the set of available books than page 1.  With more than 500 pages of offerings, it can be valuable to skip the same old very popular offerings that I have read or don't want.  

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2022/08/borrowing-ebooks.html

I limit myself to Mondays to look at books and I can borrow up to 10 at a time.  I can keep access for 14 days but I often know I am not interested in a book after 15 or so minutes of looking at it.  Since Monday, I have looked at "Braving the Wilderness" by Brene Brown and "Tiny Habits" by B.J. Fogg.  Both are good and I may buy an ecopy of them.  I like the way the Libby app tells me all the time how many days remain before the borrowed books are magically swallowed.  No driving to return anything anywhere.

If you want the app on your computer (stronger, faster than a tablet or smartphone) or tablet or phone, go to the app store on your device or use a browser to visit Libbyapp.com.  Have your library card handy.

Communicating then and now

I can phone him but I don't know if he has his phone with him.  I don't know if it is on.  I wonder if it is charged. I don't know if it is set on silence and if the volume of the ring is loud enough for him to hear.  When we all had what we now call "landlines", the instruments were always getting electricity, the volume was always set loud enough to signal an incoming call and there would usually be some device to record a voice message if the call was not answered.  I was impressed with the episode of Downton Abbey when the family and the staff were considering having a telephone installed.  There was no question of multiple phones and it was understood that the remarks made on this end could be overheard easily.

Maybe I should text him but I have never gotten a text from him.  I wonder if he texts.  I could email him but he has several email addresses. Which one is the best one?  Does he ever look at all of his accounts?

We seem to be at risk of communication difficulties despite having multiple ways to communicate.

When I moved most of my classes to web sites and work requirements based on emailing me the students' work, I was used to being in the classroom with the students.  That arrangement is often called "face to face" and it assumes being able to hear students speak. The media staff and I transmitted the image of me and the classroom and voices, mine and students, to them and to me.  It became very clear that transmission failure of the image didn't much interfere with the class, but loss of the voice transmission was equal to turning the machines off.  

At that time, my colleagues and I were used to going to a class for 50 minutes or so, teaching orally, accepting questions and comments throughout, collecting written work being handed in at the end of a period and seeing the same class again in a day or so.  When we moved to sites and email, it was no longer necessary for students to come to a site.  All the course requirements were available on the first day and the work could be done more quickly if desired.  Some statistics classes relied on compact discs to be played to learn techniques or on early morning tv transmissions to understand concepts and methods.

Poetic language about the outdoors

My book group is reading "Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. I knew it is a famous book about ecology and nature but I had never heard that it is truly passionate, beautiful writing.  The version I got for my Kindle includes his excellent sketches and some top-notch introductory comments by the writer Barbara Kingsolver.  I realize that the arts of painting and drawing changed radically when photography came along.  Before that time, the ability to draw lines and shapes that depicted a face or a scene was highly prized.  Now my smartphone camera and my iPad camera can do an excellent job "capturing" a likeness.  Nevertheless, Leopold's drawings of wild geese, chipmunks and other parts of nature really take the viewer up close and details for the eye what they look like.  

Much the way visual art expanded beyond depiction into fantasy and experimentation with scatter, poetry also began taking new turns.  Why should each line have the same number of syllables?  Why have rhymes so regularly?  Let's experiment. How about if I try to express what I feel?  How about if I try to create art that gives you a certain feeling?  This sort of expansion and additional goals and purposes have led me to use the term "poetry" for writing that has a strong emotional impact.  Sand County Almanac is poetry and does have a strong emotional impact.  

Leopold's writing emanates love and admiration for wild plants and animals.  I have never vibrated much beyond women and children but clearly some men are enamored of the hills themselves, the trees, the streams and wetlands and their love and fascination are contagious.  I am not yet hugging trees or loving wild rabbits and deer but I am closer to getting those who do.

Happy with now

An older man I know stated that he sometimes forgets that he is advanced in age.  When he sees a beautiful young woman, he might instantly feel that he would like to meet her.  An older woman was aware of the attention of dozens of young men when she was young.  Now, she doesn't like her shape or her abdomen.  

We can't expect our internal biological drives and impulses to cease all at once.  Our impulse to mate is fundamental to our species.  Still, what we look like now is part of who we are now and what we have accomplished.  If we are beyond parenting years, it makes sense that we should no longer have the bulges and curves that attract possible mating partners.  I realize that it is difficult to look at our older sags and wrinkles and feel a sense of pride and delight.  To feel that now, we have to practice.

An app here may differ from that app over there

I like the Kindle reader for its ability to show me the text of a book with few or no distractions. If you go out of your way, you can use an e-reader to get the news but there are other devices that will do a better job of intruding on your time.  I am very aware of the Paperwhite and other Kindle readers to just let me read for a while without helpfully letting me know that the moon will rise in 57 minutes or some other trivia.  I have set my devices to omit "notifications".  I don't want to be informed of each message some corporation sends me about their sale and certainly don't want to be informed about the same thing multiple times.  

I started this post with the idea of noting that sometimes a slight difference between one device and another or between using one browser and using another one can matter.  I have only found one of my favorite Kindle features on the reader device itself.  That's the one that emails a single file of the highlights I made with my finger into my email.  

It is often helpful for me to put some question that's on my mind into Google search and see what answers come up.  Also what related questions other people have asked.  I have been unable to find that ability to send my email a file of my highlights in the online Kindle reader at read.Amazon.com but the search results did explain how to find and use that feature using the Kindle app on my iPad and on my Motorola smartphone.

I imagine a person could give himself a headache attempting to try all the buttons and choices but when you get tired of knitting, it's something to do.

Finding cheer

Meditating has two traditional pathways in the East, as I understand it.  One, the easier for me, is to keep my attention on something still and small and more or less unimportant, such as a corner of a picture frame.  The other is to calmly watch what comes to mind, just to see what comes up.  The latter is harder since topics that come to mind may often include matters that matter to me and I can get pulled into thinking and figuring about them instead of keeping my distance and observing.  

Meditating can develop my mindfulness, my awareness of what subject, what topic, what focus my mind turns to.  But there is more to me than my thinking.  That is the subject of the book "Incognito".  That book is quite good at showing that much of my body and overall brain is busy with maintaining me and my life.  As Prof. Lisa Feldman Barrett says in her book "Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain", in her first chapter, "Your brain is not for thinking."  Of course, it is for thinking but it does much more, like keeping breathing and heart going.  One of those "much more" things is feelings, emotions, moods.  Parts of our brains deal with emotions but our awareness of and reaction to what we experience with others, directly or indirectly, creates reactions in us steadily.  

I found the books "The Female Brain" and "The Male Brain", both by Louann Brezendine, MD, helpful.  They gave me some knowledge of the role of hormones in our lives, impulses and desires.

Hate potholes?

Two days ago, we had a primary election here.  There was a single question in addition to many offices to be filled.  The question was Should all road projects costing more than 1 million dollars be required to have a referendum question on a ballot before being carried out?  The question was answered Yes by 31 votes out of a total of 5483 votes.  

The question was stimulated by the idea of modifying a major street so that it had a passing lane down the middle.  People against requiring a referendum pointed out that 1 million was a low figure and the question would require too many referendum questions.  People in favor said more referendum questions would hold down taxes.  Those against thought there would be less repairs and asked if voters hated potholes.  

At the same time, I looked at CNN Photos of the Week and thought that the third photo in the set showed the pothole to end all potholes.  It is actually called a sinkhole.  It occurred in Chile.  It would swallow my car and me.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/04/world/gallery/photos-this-week-july-28-august-4/index.html

Use this link to see them all and explanatory captions.

Men: get those hearing aids by Kerry Ames

(Written by guest blogger Kerry Ames)

In my social/family circles, there are those who need hearing aids yet refuse to do the least thing to get them. Of the seven I can name, all are male. Every one. Each has a rehearsed list of excuses ranging from "it's not so bad," to "they don't help," to "too expensive." They all have hearing problems and can handle the expense painlessly. It all comes down to male pride and vanity and the rejection of the idea that age has diminished them in this way. One had urged his father for over a decade to get them (no luck there), now will not get them himself. 

My father-in-law got hearing aids and has never used them. We stayed at the hearing test we had to drag him to and saw that he could repeat only 20% of the test words correctly. What, then, is he understanding when we converse? What portion is he comprehending correctly? He is especially deaf to his daughter's (my wife) vocal range so she has to amplify to a yell and that makes her sound cross (and, by the time he finally gets what she is saying, she IS). Neither is comfortable with this, but it won't change. 

Men, if you need hearing assistance, we live in an age where help is effective and abundant.  Avail yourselves! I said, "Get those hearing aids!"

What did you say?

I recently got a new set of hearing aids.  I haven't done any teaching or presenting to a group for a while but I have a presentation coming up in October.  I imagine teaching could take place acceptably with questions asked in writing only but that would be awkward and slow. Plus seeing the questionner's facial expression and hearing the tones of their voice helps to gauge the meaning and mood of a question or comment.

I do have some hearing without hearing aids but I have trouble making out what was said. I pay attention to word choice and evaluate the mood and intent of the person asking a question or making a comment.  The book "The Universal Sense" by Seth Horowitz helps grasp the deep importance of human hearing.  Clearly for musicians, parents, and teachers, hearing matters.  Horowitz makes clear that there are animals that don't have eyes but none that are insensitive to sound. Humans can hear, I understand, while they are still in the womb.

Many men seem to have a natural disposition toward silence and not speaking.   The current fashion for having very loud music in some eaterteries and at some dances and social gatherings, as well as playing in a car, can result in hearing loss.  The Harvard Medical newsletter today has an article on the health damage loud noise can do.  The article pictures a leaf blower in use, a machine that can definitely be loud.  People under 30 years of age may not realize that their lives after reaching 50 or 60 may be happier and fuller if they haven't limited their hearing while young.

Two sites I value

The way the world wide web works is that I use a given web address to get to a particular file on a particular computer.  Here is an example:

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2019/05/give-us-our-daily-bread.html

Using most computers, if the machine is connected to the internet, clicking on that blue link will connect my machine to the one that houses the file of that "page".  Clicking sends a request to the host computer to send a copy of the file to my computer.  My computer uses the incoming file to create a facsimile of the page that I can look at.  To send me a copy, the sending machine must have an "address" for me.  The sending machine can keep a copy of my "address" and its owners can sell my address to those who will pay to know who is interested in fearfunandfiloz.   

Unlike most people writing blogs and other documents, I am not making money using my blog.  Unlike most people writing web pages or blogs, it is not important to me to get more people visiting my blog.  I don't mind if they do.  I have my posts on an open site where people all over the world can find and read my writing but it is not of great interest to lure more readers.  

I have found lately that the sites "time.gov" and "https:radar.weather.gov" are satisfying and useful.  Time gives the accurate time in the time zones of the US and its territories. Radar shows the continental US and where there are storms over the country.  

I enjoy trying to have accurate time.  The time site gives the time including the seconds.  The chapter in Steven Johnson's book "How We Got to Now" called "Time" describes the situation a while back when each town kept its own time.  The book "Longitude" by Dava Sobel describes what a mess it was for navigators without our system of longitude.  The mess sometimes included sailors dying from not reaching supplies in time.  

Radar shows where storms are in the US.  A storm that covers multiple states is a mammoth thing and does not move much in a short time.  Still, it is a pleasure for me to get an idea of what is drifting toward my position.

Some possibilities

I get it that writers and journalists want to be read so exciting news and dire predictions get created.  However, I recommend less use of military and battle language and more use of calm images.  We don't need to compare voting publicity to battles, with ammunition, etc.

Today is Sunday, a good day to look at CNN's Photos of the Week 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/04/world/gallery/photos-this-week-july-28-august-4/index.html

What does it mean?  Doonesbury today shows archaeologists 1000 years in the future finding political materials from now that say "Character counts".  One asks the other,"What do you suppose it means?"  It may help many of us in multiple ways and places to ask what is meant by

• Freedom

• The other side

• Safety

• Urgent

• Imperative

• Any other word that is pounded or emphasized

What should I do with myself?

I enjoy hearing what people wish for.  I am not usually hungry or thirsty but I am confident that I could feel hunger and wish for food.  I guess we all have more forces, habits and conditions in our lives that we take for granted and would miss if they were gone.  Many of my friends and contacts seem satisfied with their lives and don't seem to deeply need or wish for anything.  

As I age, I find increasing interest and respect for anything that keeps my interest or the interest of others.  I often sit with a man who has been in hospice over and over.  He is beyond being able to stand or do most anything for himself.  I sit to more or less watch over him while his wife takes a break walking or biking or doing errands.  His ability to communicate is quite limited as is his ability to think and reflect or so it seems.  He is almost 100 years old.  I can imagine that sometime he might express a wish to die or be interested in death.  I don't know how he feels about dying.

I have read that humans are more or less incapable of picturing themselves after death and so often emphasize images of an afterlife.  When I hear of a self-caused death, it is surprising when the person who took their life is young, that is, younger than, say maybe, 70.  Since quite a few parts of the world are experiencing greater human longevity, I wonder if intelligent living will someday include some special idea of allowing a sufficiently old person, who has lived a full life and is experiencing an endless and boring prolonging to take some death pill.

A friend told me that some ancient Greeks could apply to a committee for permission to die.  They reportedly had to wait three days for the permission.  I just found this with Google:

The people of classical Athens did not regard suicide as a crime committed by the victim. Instead, the Athenians regarded suicide as a crime committed by the instrument that the victim used, or by the victim's hand as opposed to the victim himself. This non-human agent was culpable, just like non-human agents were blamed for accidental deaths. Although suicide victims were innocent, inanimate agents were guilty. In Sophocles' Ajax, for example, the sword that the hero turned upon himself was blamed for his death. The Athenian response to suicide was more about objects than it was about people.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo

A Netflix series from Korea called "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" grabbed my heart.  We have only watched one episode but it was great.  Lynn compared it to some of the tear-producing episodes in "Call the Midwife", also now playing on Netflix.  She said that both Extraordinary and Call can be a bit emotionally taxing.  

Attorney Woo is autistic.  The series opens with her father and her in a doctor's office where the father is worriedly stating that his daughter is five years old and has never spoken.  The physician explains that is classic behavior for someone who is autistic.  Public schools throughout the country have special teachers trained to help autistic children.  Autistic people vary in how severely the situation affects them.  Here is a short link to a Google search page on autism: t.ly/BC7y.  

During the visit to the doctor, "law" is mentioned and the five-year old, previously mute, immediately fully and accurately quotes an entire page of her mother's law books relevant to the office conversation.  Amazement erupts.

Sometimes autistic people are said to be "on the spectrum" since their symptoms can range from quite mild to quite severe.

Take a look when you get a chance.

Trying again

Lynn missed recycling.  Ten years or so ago, she bought two recycling bins.  We used them in warm weather.  They each sat in a stand fixed in a way that allowed them to be turned.  They got too old and brittle.  But she wanted to start again.  

We got a new 8-sided bin from Amazon.  It came in a large flat box, to be assembled.  It includes two bags of nuts and bolts.  One of the bags holds over 50 pieces of hardware.  They included a little pamphlet and a note that they have better explanations on their website.   Off and on, I have been slowly putting the whole thing together.  I have found that the stand is misshaped or I have made errors or both since the body jams against the frame and interferes with rotating the bin.  I will work on it.  

The bag on top is what we are using for scraps now.  Lynn feels I would be more accurate if I replaced all instances of "recycling" with "composting". 

Recent photos

In front of a student exercise and dance building, a bike in the rack with plenty of spider webs.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOlmA9yeKpAKa4Id9Q1RXDmOuMnfvWmCtx7vA77

Our greatgranddaughter becoming an artist and costumer.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMDs9lcOkfPdOnJwdgDrw7-bJiwHqPQKGD_MM1y

Very large lily for sale in local farmers' market:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaLsqzQoMQplj_V4RY_4iT8_juvLzuKOmJgA_I5MVN5RwnSbL80EqCnIelr3nlJmPFggljxDB9bBugLZu5uN4Qu0goKaDDbcUlU6gCJKFOOdKW9UhjpIoo9gat4HDENGqC53uSTqFVMv0/w655-h873-no/?authuser=0

Assembling a rotatable composter:

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipML82jeuyY6jzOnpbNJ46d3HK8caFD8rOY05kUA

Sometimes, look at the blog web page

Yesterday, I wrote about using the "Libby" app to borrow library books electronically.  I wanted to show how to start looking through available books at some other point than the beginning of the list, which often runs to 15,000 items.  I took a screen photo of the beginning of the list and a 2nd one doctored with drawing tools to emphasize an option to get to a given page of the list without scrolling through hundreds of pages.

I have sometimes gotten a message from Gmail that a file was too large to transmit over the internet but I did not get one while creating and sending yesterday's blog post with two photos in it.  Later, I discovered that the emailed posts had been sent with the photos mechanically removed.

I am writing today to say that the blog web page 

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/

 is available with both photos in it.  

Google blogs can be written and posted using programs without use of email, but posts to a given blog can also be emailed into the blog.  

An author wrote after yesterday's post that borrowing a library book results in little or no increase in income to an author.  I sympathize with that truth but I have gained so much from libraries all my life that I continue to feel they are an important public blessing.  I do admit that the Kindle reader's feature of collecting my marked highlights in an ebook and delivering that collection to my email often makes me want to purchase an ecopy even while I also have a borrowed ecopy.