Some themes

Hydration - Better hydration has made me feel quite a bit better.  A nurse practitioner advised me to try for 50 oz. of plain water.  On some days, 50 or three 16 oz. drinks are too much.  I have been gulping down a pint when I wake up.  

Ideas for writing - I find if I don't write them down, they float away.  I have read that older people often forget what is on their mind if they walk through a doorway.

Aging - It can be helpful to hear about other people's physical problems but I am not them.  If his arm falls off, will mine?

Cranberries - I noticed the other day that cranberries have a place in my life.  They grow in boggy or flooded ground and central Wisconsin has some good places.  I put a handful of dried cranberries in the Sunday morning oatmeal I make for us.  We read "Two Old Women", the story of two elderly Native American women who were sufficiently old at a time when their tribe was stressed for food.  They were abandoned but the two had skill and knowledge and found cranberries to live on.  

Decoding sounds into words - We can see that hearing, vision, knees, hips and other parts may wear out or cease to function adequately.  My audiologist said it is not the part of my brain that detects sound that is failing but the part that makes noises into meaningful language.  I am a bother to Lynn since I can understand what she says after she says it the second time.  

Getting medicines - I have been having more trouble with acid reflux.  I was given a prescription for famotidine but I ran out.  I have some on order but there was a holdup in getting it.  Lynn suggested I ask a pharmacist for an over-the-counter alternative.  She showed me Famotidine sitting right on the shelf.

Three strikes

Ken went well out of his way to give all the guys in our lunch group a sample of The Week magazine.  I like reading it not for the big news which is much the same in major news sources but for the marginal items.  I have never purchased a grocery store magazine but these little items are often the stuff of the National Enquirer and other magazines that specialize in sensational items, often involving celebrities.

Recently, I saw an item that got my attention enough that I recalled it without having it in front of me.  Wendy Hansen of Iowa was informed of the unpleasant news that her house was aflame.  She jumped on her motorcycle to see what was happening but going to her house, she was going too fast and lost control of her cycle.  She crashed and was taken to the hospital.  While being checked out, cancer was discovered.  A house fire, a crash and a cancer diagnosis all together!  Not good!

I often turn to Google search for answers to questions and retrieval of some name or date that an elderly brain can't find.  I thought The Week website could give me the facts again but searching both The Week and searching for "several mishaps in one day" produced nothing.  Trying "Wendy Hansen crashed her motorcycle" produced plenty on the right item.  t.ly/Oy6rK

Sliding into nearly continuous meditation

I think that one of the most valuable things I have done for myself is meditation.  I had heard of the practice and read some about it.  When we took 40 students to Europe on Semester Abroad in 1974, I learned that three of the group had worked with someone from Maharishi University to learn the practice.  I could see that the Quaker practice of sitting in silence was somewhat similar to the method taught by that University and by both visiting Indians and American teachers.

Reading and taking psychology courses in graduate school pointed me to short practices rather than the longer sessions described by people like Jack Kornfield and Larry Rosenberg.  There are books explaining the value of eight minutes of meditation.  The shortest sessions I read about were described by the former Google engineer, Chade Meng-Tan, in his book "Joy on Demand", where he mentions a single, conscious breath.

I have found that for myself, ten seconds or 4 minutes, dropping any thoughts about any worries or excitement or hope or fears and just concentrating on long, slow breaths, more or less gives me calm, appreciation, and joy just about continuously.

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/how-to-meditate/meditation-presentatiion

Interfaces on computer and tablet

When I compose a message on an iPad or similar tablet, I don't have the same computing power as when I compose using a computer.  The iPad is an Apple product but my computer uses Microsoft's Windows operating system.  Sometimes, when I am sitting in the living room and my iPad is close at hand, I use it, holding it with one hand while pecking away with the other, mostly because I am too lazy to get up and walk all the way to the office for the faster, more powerful computer.  I am impressed at the difference between the two products, Apple and Microsoft.  

The Windows operating system is installed on 1.6 billion machines while the iPad is used by 550,000,000.  Those figures say that Windows is used by 29 times as many machines.  What I see and can use on my monitor or tablet is usually called an "interface."  I am impressed at the more powerful tools available to a Gmail user on a computer that are not available on a tablet.  

My first home computer was an Apple IIe and it was very good.  I still have a Mac and it is up-to-date and fine.  I read "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson and learned that for Jobs and Wozniak, it was fundamental to control many aspects of the design and manufacture of their computer.  I had had some instruction in coding and use of a large computer and I knew how limited a handmade product could be.  But, when Apple came out with the package called Appleworks, a word processor, spreadsheet and limited data base, Lynn gave me the package to go with my first computer, that Apple IIe.  

It was a delight and changed my life and teaching.

Our first iPad was and is a blessing.  For me, getting email and taking and sharing photos on the iPad is unmatched.  But I recommend doing things on a computer at least some of the time just to see the difference.

Heather Cox Richardson post

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College.  She regularly postcomments on the events of the previous day.  Her comments are titled "Letter from an American" and regularly dated one day ago.  I admire her comments and the language she uses.  I thought you might, too.

July 26, 2023
.

(my wife says I am limited to 40 words for an except.)
 

 

 

 

And therein lies a huge problem for today's Republican Party. A recent poll of young voters shows they care deeply about gun violence, economic inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change. All of those issues are only becoming more prominent.

 


 

Upgrade to paid© 2023 Heather Cox Richardson
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Another literacy

I often mention books that seem relevant to a conversation.  Since there are so many forces and opportunities to read, some degree of reading ability seems to be part of being an American adult. I guess being able to read can be assumed for most people.  So, when I read that literacy rates in the US are about 80%, I am surprised. Of course, there are many definitions of reading and even of seeing.  I just looked at some answers to the questions about blindness.  These days, large print, braille and machines that can read aloud can make a big difference.  

Various sorts of "literacy" are commonly referred to.  Ads will mention places that can improve one's financial, veterinary, or nutritional literacy.  In my college days, I read texts aloud to a blind professor for income.  I didn't know my Greek letters at all well and there were times when I had to describe the squiggly shape of some symbols to try to convey meaning.  My literacy is limited, almost completely to English.

I have found it interesting to read and think about being able to read.  I read that the great French king Charlemange could not read, but wanted to and hoped to learn.  I read that he kept a book under his pillow to improve his ability to learn to decipher writing.  

I have been thinking about smartphone literacy.  I have a semi-smartphone.  It is not an Apple phone and when I see Lynn using hers, I feel deprived, under-educated, illiterate.

Pills

I have a pill container for daily pills at breakfast.  Just writing that sentence made me realize special circumstances and guests made me skip my morning pills today.  I just took them.  

I wanted to look into the history of pills and pill-taking.  A recent routine visit to the doctor emphasized that having Lynn follow written notes of what I should take has given her a good knowledge of what I take but not me.  I had to ask her repeatedly if I take X.  We agreed that it was time for me to put pills out into little compartments for each day of the week.  But the first couple of times I tried looking the subject up, I kept getting history and discussion of "the pill", oral contraceptive pills, which were mentioned as the famous pill that was typically called "the pill".  When our daughters realized that Mom took a pill each morning, they asked her why.  She said it was to avoid having a baby. They said,"Mom, what is it really for?"

I also have a pill container for pills at night.  I imagine that many of my friends take a medicine regularly and I wondered when the practice began.  The most on-target article I found was from the LA Times and was written by a reporter named Rosie Mestel:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-mar-25-he-booster25-story.html  I was surprised to read that pills go back to 1500 BC.

I have only done both pill containers all by myself once but in a year or so, I may know what I take.  Test-makers and psychologists know that recognizing is a bit easier than recalling.  If you ask me if I take a statin, yes, I know that I do.  I don't remember my parents taking pills but I know my grandmother took nitroglycerin pills for her heart.

Bill Kirby and "Fear, Fun and Filoz"

A Wisconsin poet, Patrica Williams, emailed me a few days ago and wrote that she mentioned me in her latest book, "Rejection to Acceptance."  The title refers to the journey a poem makes from an idea to a composition through revision to completion to consideration for publication to publication.  It turns out that my blog posted on "Fear, Fun and Filoz" on March 22, 2022 got her thinking about the place of "important" papers in one's life that document birth, death and important moments in our lives.

She wrote to me that anything can inspire a poem and that the more obscure, the better.  Out of grateful appreciation for her attention, I offer this obscure and attractive statement:

उन्होंने मुझे लिखा कि कोई भी चीज़ कविता को प्रेरित कर सकती है और जितनी अधिक अस्पष्ट, उतना बेहतर।

Run around shouting and jumping

We spent the day driving to the Green Bay gardens, around 90 miles one way. There is a wide variety of plants and flowers but a more fascinating collection of children.  You may have noticed that young kids can't stop running.  Of course, young families are much peppier and livelier than plants.

https://www.gbbg.org

Body shape and size

On June 12 of this year, I posted the blog linked below:

Hummingbird's lament

A creature may enjoy life and being alive but may still have regrets as to size and shape.  I am confident that developing women sometimes wish they were bigger or smaller. It's not just women.  During the early days of high school, I envisioned being a fine performer on the football team until the coach introduced the newest player saying he only weighed 150 lbs.  I weighed 130 at the time and dropped my football plans.

We like to say that our country offers big opportunities but body size and shape still affect what we can do and be.

School and colleges of education are different

The School of Education is different. At one time, it was the "department of education" but the chancellor at that time saw that when students study those courses they are preparing for an occupation. So, the department got the new title the School of Education and it was made part of some other 'schools' in the College of Professional Studies.  Many college subjects are taught with an aim of enriching the entire life of the students but the "professional" is explicitly aimed at occupational interests.  In the School of 

Education, the interests involve teaching, most often public schools, which usually offer instruction from the pre-kindergarten level through the last year of high school.  There are "teachers' colleges" all over.  After all, children often need individual or small group instruction so one teacher is needed for each group of 30 or so children.

Typically, at colleges and universities in the US, a student interested in being a public school teacher is female.  About 75% of US teachers are female.  In many colleges, the student studies general courses on a wide variety of humanities, scientific and artistic subjects during the first two years but in the 3rd, the first semester is devoted to considerations of the subject of teaching while the 2nd semester is devoted to "student teaching", where the student is assigned to a classroom with a fully credentialed teacher, already running the class.  The student teaching semester usually begins with the student teacher observing and steadily moving into greater responsibility.  By the last few weeks, the student teacher is teaching all the subjects and the classroom experienced teacher is observing and advising.

Many college professors spend important time and effort on research and publications but in general publications carry less weight but the education professors visit student teachers at their student teaching locations, observe the student teacher in action, and explore the opinions and reactions of the classroom teacher to the student's teaching.

Another aspect of being an education faculty member is teaching graduate students.  Teachers can improve their teaching and their pay rate by accumulating graduate school credits. The teaching faculty may be expected to teach summer school and late-in-the-day courses to graduate students, experienced teachers working toward a master's degree or beyond.  Another difference for education faculty is that their publications, books or articles, may matter in their own evaluation much less than they do for professors in humanities and sciences.

Getting to the moon, women voting

There are some websites that tell what happened on days of the year.  Today is the anniversary of the landing of men on the moon.  I certainly would not have been aware of that fact except that it was mentioned in one of the comics in today's newspaper. I think it is a very impressive event.  

July 20, 1969

I can understand anyone's feelings that the event hasn't changed their life much, so far as they can tell.  I think a person needs to be somewhat older than 54 years for there to be any memory of the television broadcast and the understanding of the event.

I realize that there have been stories that the television broadcast was a fake.  You can see some discussion of the question of authenticity and other matters on this Google page:

https://www.google.com/search?q=moon+landing

Today is also an anniversary of the Seneca Falls, New York convention.  

175th Anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention

This July marks the 175th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, which took place on July 19th and 20th, 1848. Seneca Falls was the first women's rights convention and was organized by a group of five women: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt.

We visited the site in Seneca Falls.  We were told that the organizers included women who had traveled to London to attend a convention to end slavery.  They were told that, as women, they needed to take seats in the balcony where there was seating for women, but not on the main floor of the hall, where the official delegates, all men, were seated.  Upon returning to the US, the women were motivated to hold a gathering to start work on obtaining the right to vote.  Getting the vote was a long process.  Various states had women voting, but on August 18, 1920, quite a while later, the 19th amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote across the whole country.

Hidden parts of me influencing me

When I think of my mind and some of its mysterious parts and books about it, several come to up.  

1. Incognito by David Eagleman

2. Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

3. A Mind of Its Own by Cordelia Fine

4. Before You Know It by John Bragh

5. The Brain that Heals Itself by Norman Doidge

6. The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge

I have this web page of books I have found valuable:

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/books-about-the-unconscious

On that page, I also mention Wray Herbert, a professor who has worked on aspects of writing and ideas coming to mind about what to write about and what to write.  I wrote my dissertation in 1968 and the book "Thinking: Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman and related work by Kahneman and Tversky was a central source.

Quite a few ancient thinkers were impressed with human deliberate thinking and of course they were influenced by emotions, politics, and their upbringing.  In general, it is difficult to think about our unconscious minds.  The very word "unconscious" means that despite that part of me being in me and influencing me, I can't easily tell what it is up to.  Eagleman, mentioned first above, and Cordelia Fine make clear that analysis of what goes on in our heads, may include notification of a decision we have decided on only as the last step in our process.  My favorite examples include tossing a crumpled paper where I used to keep the trash can but no longer keep it there and turning to where we used to keep a towel for drying hands.

Pausch and Chen

Because of a friend's comment, I was reminded of Dr. Pauline A. Chen's book, "Final Exam". I realize that many people take school exams that are referred to as final exams but aren't all that final.  Chen's book is about the education of a physician and the included dissection of a human body.  I just finished reading it aloud last night despite the fact that I have had the book in my Kindle collection since 2008.  Since I have several thousand Kindle books, I am used to forgetting I have a particular one and being reminded by the announcement that Amazon shows me when I look that book up.

I recently got a new Kindle reader.  One of my readers is fairly old and the other one is a refurbished version.  Both can be slow and seem unsteady at times so the recent Prime day sale seemed a good time to get a new strong reader.  To load some good books to read or re-read, I used the web site and my computer to send books I am interested in to load up the new reader.  My oldest Kindle book, also purchased in 2008, the year I started using ebooks, is "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. Like "Final Exam", it is about death and dying.  Professor Pausch says that older professors are often asked to give a "last lecture" about retiring and/or facing their own deaths.  

Quite a few of my friends, all males, have died in the past five or so years.  I am interested in ideas and stances that encourage acceptance of death as a natural event even though I don't yet have any reason to think my death will be "soon", whatever that may mean. Dr. Chen participated in dissecting human bodies as part of medical education.  Prof. Pausch knew that  his liver was failing and that death would be soon.  Both books are beautifully written so if you get interested in dying, losing a loved one or considerations of death, you might want to take a look at them.

She was cold

Don't tell anybody because it is embarrassing.  While much of the country is suffering quite high temperatures, it is 71°F here.  This morning, on my walk, I met a friend who complained that she was cold.  It was a degree or two less that 60.  Meanwhile, much of the country is experiencing too much rain but we are having a mild drought, less water than we used to. We have a Great Lake to our immediate north and another to our immediate east but much of our weather comes down from central Canada.

We keep getting some of that Canadian wildfire smoke but it is intermittent.  We have had many days with rather strong and persistent breeze.  Most of the time, our air quality is good or excellent.  Sometimes we have a morning or afternoon of mediocre air quality.  People tend to associate Wisconsin with cold winters.  While we have some cold, it is not like our first winter of 40°below and some days of windchill of 80°below, more than 50 years ago.  In general, I think our weather is fine.

CNN photos of the week

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/world/gallery/photos-this-week-july-6-july-13-ctrp/

I think the photo of the panda and her babies is especially impressive.   Bill

Using ChatGPT or a modern search engine

Somewhere about a month ago, I first read about chatGPT, one of, I guess, several software packages that answer many types of questions.  The letters GPT stand for the words "generative pre-trained transformer." Everyday language may refer to such "LLM"' (large language models) as smart-computer packages. I have seen articles explaining that such computer tools may get out of hand and arrange for us all to die.  Some other deadly or dastardly or destructive event may emerge from people messing around with smart computers.  

That idea or cousins of it have been around for quite awhile. Google says that the story of Icarus flying too close to the sun came from the Minoan civilization, which arose between 2600 BC and 1400 BC.  You may have been in an automobile accident or burned some part of yourself while cooking or making tea.  Our literature and our imaginations, as well, of course, show that we can see how technology of one sort or another can get out of hand.  

There have been what is to me a surprising range of fears expressed about these new software tools/toys. If you are interested, look at some of the apps that are now available to try out ChatGPT or competing versions.  I advocate trying simple old Google in a way that uses that "search engine"  to assist with some idea or project of interest.  Whenever I have a problem or a strong emerging interest, I think of asking Google about it.  "What should I buy for my uncle for his birthday?"  Of course, that software doesn't know but it searches many reference and language sources and may suggest a good idea. If it suggests something completely out of the question, thinking what is wrong with the suggestion, may clarify what you do want to give.  

You may enjoy using searching out and using the 1966 computer program called "Eliza".   It works as a Rogerian counselor assisting a person with fears or personal problems.

What do you say?

Over the past couple of days, Bob Artigiani and I have written about the power and importance of language, spoken and written.  The whole business surprises me since society and hormones tend to say to boys and some men that it is muscles and bodyweight that matter, combat tools.  I  wrote a paper in graduate school on statements of the purpose of higher education.  One of the more famous personalities in that history is Robert Hutchins, a man who headed the University of Chicago.  He was a relatively young man when he took that position and had things to say about higher education.  Both Hutchins and Socrates were aware of the power of words.  Hutchins liked to say that politics is the architectonic science.  

I am confident that physical appearance and mannerisms matter, also.  But you may have heard the statement that the voice of the people is the voice of God.  Today, July 14, is Bastille Day, an important day in the history of France, of Europe and in the development of humankind and its ideas of what a government is and should be.  I am not a historian but I know that the French revolution, like the Magna Carta, was important in showing the power of people.  Ok, mobs, maybe, but it can happen that a demonstration, a riot, a rampage is the only tool that people have to make their wishes known and respected.  

We like to think that our human brains are the only ones that get our range and depth of impulses and ideas and the only way I can tell others about the wonderful ideas I have is with words.  I can use the old Greek idea of plays to influence others or the modern version, movies and videos, but the process works better and more accurately when I can use words.  My home state has a motto in Italian: Manly deeds and womanly words.  I think maybe humans are moving toward respecting words as an important tool for both sexes.

All our words are in one language or another.  Google says there are 7100 languages spoken somewhere on the planet.

Professor Robert Artigiani on human development and evolution

I remember reading an English anthropologist who argued that the opposable thumb was the critical feature. No doubt it makes making and using more complex tools possible. But for thumbs to do that brains must get larger. That is problematic enough in itself. But it is taking place at the same time the upright stance is evolving -- the hands with opposable thumbs were being used for other things than walking. For us to stand (not just run) upright the architecture of hips and pelvis had to change, shrinking the birth canal. So nature was asking women to deliver large-brained babies through shrunken birth canals. 

That problem was solved by delivering offspring BEFORE their skulls were fully developed. But then the babies entered the world as incomplete skulls with useless ganglia dangling from them. At least two years had to pass before they were developed fully enough to survive without constant attention. That meant males had to do more than their biologically essential minute or two of sperm delivery. So we get the "family" out of that. 

And the whole thing does depend on the coevolution of speech and language, which require altering our air passages in ways that reduce our breathing abilities. Fortunately, the language developing permits organizing cooperative efforts to compensate for the declining physical abilities of individual organisms. Now we get rudimentary social systems, which language has to further develop to make correlating individual behaviors over distances and time possible. 

Will you tell me?

I sometimes read how hands have made humans what they are.  I am impressed by hands and what they do, from delicate surgery to playing instruments to pottery to pitching baseballs and passing that odd-shaped American football.  But, I think, in the larger scheme of things, a very good case can be made for the human voice mechanisms as the most powerful tools of people.  I enjoy reading about the invention of the printing press, the development of speech, the development and current use of the internet and world-wide web, television and movies.  I also read that a man's physician told him to show the doctor his sexual equipment and the man, no doubt an older man, held up his hands while sticking out his tongue.  In the past couple of years, I have read several articles about the deep desire of most humans, maybe all, to have satisfying relations with other people and that almost always means communicating with them.  

When I think of books about communication and its history, I immediately think of "What Hath God Wrought" by Daniel Walker Howe and "From Gutenberg to Google" by Tom Wheeler.  Modern education from primary grades to graduate and professional school is filled with communication and it is a major force for developing not only the human mind but also the desire to recognize and communicate one's own thoughts and feelings.  It is well-known that if people of the right age and structure get together, they may develop additional human beings. All sorts of variables of shape and texture contribute to bringing them together in that "creative" way but older people often experience language and communication as maybe the most important force bringing and keeping people close.

Good attitude toward dying

We were reading "The Housemaid" by Frieda McFadden since a friend said it was gripping and striking.  We got introduced to a single or divorced woman who was out of money and living in her car.  She interviewed for the position of housemaid with an older couple who clearly had money.  She found the job would include meals and living in an upstairs bedroom.  During the interview, she meets the gardener, a well-built, attractive man who seems to speak only Italian, which she doesn't.  The gardener says to her, privately, "Pericolo".  She asks her phone to translate and hears "Danger".  I felt we were being set up to shake and quake a little too obviously and proposed we take up a new book.  Lynn agreed.  

Earlier that day, informal off-the-cuff emails with a friend brought to mind the book by Pauline A. Chen, MD. called "Final Exam". It is a somewhat detailed description of a medical school experience of dissecting a human body.  I've had the book for 15 years but I only opened it after my friend said that he didn't want any final exams.  He was referring to typical school tests but the book is about facing death, experiencing death and having an ok attitude toward expiring. I read some of it and Lynn said she liked it.  I like it, too, for the thinking and the language.

Plots and motivations

For financial and social reasons, Lynn is working to arrange for memory-impaired brother to move into a local home for the memory-impaired. One of the clearest obstacles for the move is that the home of her choice doesn't have space for another resident.  They expect to have a place fairly soon but not yet.  That got me to thinking about constructing a crime story about a killer who wanted a space in an old folks' home and committed a murder to make one.

I may have been watching too many crime shows.  Today, I saw a cardinal land in some neighbors' yard and eat some of their bird seed.  But we want all the birds to come to our yard.  Could a crime story about jealous bird watching that leads to murder of the competition sell? I just looked up "What did Cain kill Abel?"  and found that the Lord looked with favor upon Abel's offering but not Cain's and drove Cain into a murderous rage. I am working to accept that some birds are going to our neighbors' offering and rejecting ours.

CNN Photos of the week

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/06/world/gallery/photos-this-week-june-29-july-6-ctrp

Bill

Lured!

Yesterday, I was invited by philosopher friends to talk to them about sin.  After boldly announcing there was no such thing, I have thought again. I can see that if I kill my brother, that act may be morally wrong as well as socially and legally punished.  I think what I dislike is the idea of "original sin".  I am not a religious scholar but as I understand it right now, all of humanity is stained forever by the disobedience of Adam and Eve in regard to eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  

As in so many things, Eve, looking so fetching and curvy, is basically responsible.  "The woman, which thou hast given me, she did offer and I did eat." I ask you, is it plausible that a guy would disobey God and do what he has been explicitly told not to do, just because the mother of all humankind offers an apple?

There were alternatives available.  Hypnosis or drugs or the right combination could have been employed to wipe out the memory of that apple-gained knowledge.  But no, my great grandchildren are supposed to be burdened by punishments of pain in childbirth and the requirement of deep effort and sweat procuring food because Cutie there couldn't resist the fruit. 

Scout memories

Each morning, I take a piece of sugared ginger.  I don't need more sugar but washing the granulated sugar off the ginger is complicated so I usually skip it.  I also have a date, 6 almonds and a small square of dark chocolate.  Each of those foods is kept in a reclosable bag.  I am impressed at how long-lasting and effective it is to roll the actual bag of food and insert that in my zipper bag.  I started with rubber bands on the product food bag but I have found rolling the product's bag up works quite well.  The rolled up inner bag stays that way nicely.

Paying attention to my bags brought to mind my Boy Scout days.  I lived in Irvington, a suburb of Baltimore when I reached the age of ten when I could join the Scouts.  I had read the Scout handbook and the Scout Fieldbook and was prepared!  The Scout master and older guys were surprised that I knew the Oath, the Law and the skills needed to be a Tenderfoot.  I had read in a typical nerd way and prepped.

Thinking about how newly available plastic bags fit well into my packing ideas brought back memories of Scouting.  I became the patrol leader of the Eagle patrol.  I don't recall many duties or responsibilities as patrol leader.  Our Friday evening troop meetings were fun.  I remember enjoying playing "Red Rover, come over" where I tried to dash through a group determined to stop me from doing that.  As a game progressed, more and more boys were captured and converted to the restaining team.  Eventually, I got dragged down.

I advanced over the years to the rank of Life Scout.  My parents were very eager for me to be an Eagle Scout, the highest rank but I never mastered swimming, diving and life-saving.  I am considering finding a local troop and attaining that rank if they will let me.

Limits on pontification

I don't feel that expressing an opinion is a bad thing.  I do try to stay sensitive to my own feelings about the truth of what is expressed.  I often hear or read broad statements, such as a sweeping statement about the nature of men or women.  When I hear a statement about people or animals or plants, I often think that I might be able to find examples that are just the opposite of what is alleged to be the case.  I think being sensitive to the various conditions and situations of people, places and things and the difficulties of accurately summarizing can make people uncomfortable, maybe even afraid that the world is too varied and too complex to be summarized.  I realize that being too aware and observant about complexities can leave a person unable to make large sweeping statements while making such pontifications can be satisfying and ego-boosting.

If I try to be accurate, I can wind up sounding cautious and even insecure.  How am I going to come across as god-like and super-wise if I steadily intersperse my sentences with sources and footnotes? Teachers know that variety and difference are everywhere.  What is true about one child or one student or even one faculty member can be quite wrong about another. When I was asked to sit with a high school history faculty and try to get them to be more similar in what they taught, it became very clear that this group of people had very different convictions from each other about the best content to teach and the best language and activities and assignments to teach it.

What's happening today

I may have used that post title before.  I find in my advanced years that it is quite satisfying to take refuge in the very present.  I realize that doing so is an impossibility.  On an everyday level, by the time I note something, just in my mind or actually make a note, the event is already in the past.  I read once that William James, an important contributor to psychology of his day and to philosophy, said that we should extend our notion of the present to the current 17 seconds.  For a flighty mind like mine, it is relaxing and novel to take full recognition and deliberate sight of me, my partner and what I can see of current happenings around me.  

I find that it is a big help to have some suggested topics to write about and I use a spiral notebook to list up to five possible themes.  Sometimes, I don't think of five and some times, I think of more.  I do notice plenty of contradictions and omissions in my thinking. Yesterday was the first day of using a new notebook, my third.  It is a bit exciting to see a whole fresh notebook that awaits inspirational jottings as well as idiotic ones.

I enjoy being able to search my posts and I just used that feature to try to see if I have used "What's happening?" as a title before.  I have read all sorts of modern research results that show our eyes and parts of our minds perceive events and feelings literally before we know it.  Both David Eagleman ("Incognito") and Lisa Feldman Barrett ("Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain") emphasize that in microseconds our tools of perception and intention do their work and subsequently let our conscious minds know what is happening.  You can also see John Bargh's "Before You Know It".

(Search tells me I did use the title "What's happening?" on Nov. 18, 2016.  With 4,957 posts, I can't remember everything I have typed.)

Hard to believe

Two items came up that are very surprising:

The squirrel

The chef

The squirrel

My friend sent a link to this story.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/1/2178754/-A-Flying-Squirrel-Hears-Footsteps-And-Fakes-H

You see that this is from the Daily Kos, said on Google to be a progressive news site.  Using Firefox and its Pocket service, I see the names of all sorts of sites, news sources and writers.  This squirrel item still strains my credulity but I am not familiar with Daily Kos, nor flying squirrels. See what you think.

The chef

My friend Ken went out of his way to persuade several of us to subscribe to the British-American weekly news magazine, "The Week".  I appreciate what he did.  I look forward to each week's issue.

This week the magazine cover showed Putin in a boiling pot while the chef looked on.  I learned that the man who really was Putin's chef is the same man who is a general in the Wagner group that caused a serious and threatening disturbance in Russia recently.  I am not clear how he got from chef to leader of mercenaries and I will probably not bother learning more.  It is still surprising.

https://theweek.com/magazine-stand  I am referring to the first cover on the left.

Forgot password?

We typically use our streaming TV for a couple of hours every day. We can change the reception to broadcast quickly and easily but we don't. We can select what we want to see at any time and not just watch what is being sent out.  It is true that once we fasten onto a program that we enjoy, we do tend to tune in at the same time each evening but we have lots of choices.  The regular broadcast tv offers over a hundred channels but we tend to like the streaming choices more.  

We have used our Roku streamer for maybe ten years.  The other day, it stopped working.  I replaced it with a new one but that means that the channels and services we stream have got to be convinced that we are indeed the same subscribers as before.  In other words, we needed to get into password wrestling. I guess some streaming channels could make customers happy but giving us a safe-word that we could supply to be identified as continuing, honest, reliable, sturdy continuing customers.

We mostly watch Netflix, Amazon tv, Acorn, and Wisconsin Public TV.  The first three got connected to our new equipment fairly quickly and easily but Wis PBS is still hanging.  It seems correct to say that the programs are split into the group that we can simply tune into and the other group.  To view that one, we need to have a "passport".  We earned the passport by Lynn making regular contributions to Wis PBS but we are having trouble getting identified as having done that.

Link to CNN's Photos of the Week

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/29/world/gallery/photos-this-week-june-22-june-29-ctrp/index.html?utm_term=16883029000547d13bfe4b5fa&utm_source=cnn_Five+Things+for+Sunday%2C+July+2%2C+2023&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=DTvH6zKKLN981C3codnqhDuhPmtJQPaJaiEJQdS1mcAw8HDF6hG8Ld0YlWaxbXft&bt_ts=1688302900057

Bill

Timed out repeatedly

We use our Roku streamer to watch tv for about 2 hours each night. It went kaflooey.  I bought a replacement.  We watch tv in the living room and the router and modem are in the office, not close by.  I have tried umpteen times to get the replacement to pick up the wi-fi signal but it doesn't.  I blame the influx of tourists using their phones to stay in touch with friends.  The whole deal is a rigorous challenge to one's patience.