Learning fractions

I taught 5th grade for four years.  Elementary school teachers are often organized so that they teach several different subjects to the class. In my school, there was some specialization.   I taught several classes in arithmetic including arithmetic of fractions.  I only got into elementary education because when I was ready to take classes in teaching, I was handed a sheet listing all the classes that were required.  They made up a full load for both teacher-training years.  I said to the person running the class,"I thought I would have some choices" and I was answered,"You want choices? Go into elementary."I did.  

"My Left Foot" is a movie about a true story of an Irish boy with a good mind but cerebral palsy that allowed him to write and paint only with his left foot holding chalk or a paint brush.  At an early point in the movie, one of the other children faces a homework question: "What is a quarter of a quarter?"  The other children and the parents are unable to understand the question but the hero writes "1/16" on his blackboard.  

Over time, I found that many adults don't have a need for fractions much or use them but having a good grasp of fractions turns out to be a handy tool for scientific concepts.  In science and sports and other areas, having a firm foundation in fractions and percentages makes for confident use of the modern tool of probabilities.

I fell

I went walking with Don and Jeff on our typical morning walk.  Those two are about 6'3" while I am 5'3".  If you aren't a human, you might not think a measly little 12 inches is much.  In many situations, it isn't a big distance.  But, in this case, it makes quite a difference - it is all in the legs. Today, I tried to keep right with those two and I did pretty well.  Until I got disoriented and lost my sense of balance.   I fell sprawling and smacked my face and knees and heels of my hands on the road bed.

I'm on a blood thinner because I have a pro-clotting factor in my blood and the blood thinner makes it less likely that a blood clot in the heart or brain will do me in.  But that thinner means that a cut or a wound needs special help to stop bleeding.  That's the white powder on my face.  I am thinking of entering this photo in a beauty contest.

Timers

We have many timers in our house.  Mostly, they function alike. I prefer countdown timers that make a sound when the specified period has elapsed.  We do have also hourglass timers with the right amount of sand in them so that they measure 3 minutes and other glasses that measure different times, like 5 min., 15 minutes and 30 minutes.  

I brew green tea five mornings a week and each time, I steep the tea for 2 minutes.  Some of our timers can be started without specifying a time, like a stopwatch.  I can't discriminate between a cup that has been steeped for 2 minutes and one that has had 4 or 5 minutes.   Some mornings, I don't want a persistent ringing in the house and I find a timer that just runs on silently showing the elapsed time.

My two Ipads have stopwatch functions on them and they run continuously forward like that.  My wristwatch has a countdown timer and a stopwatch function.  

Timing knowledge of likely time requirements can be helpful.  So far, I have not set a timer and forgotten it nor what it was for.  Don't be too surprised if you find I have started putting a note beside timers to remind me of what it is timing.

Happy Birthday!

The end of August and the beginning of September is the birthday season for our family. Today is actually my sister's birthday.  As of today, she has reached maturity.  Actually, she was mature twenty years ago, too.  Like most of us, she wasn't born mature but she reached maturity by aging.  

Lynn and I are going to a restaurant for a family birthday dinner.  My sister lives in Texas but today's dinner is for a granddaughter, a greatgrandson and a son-in-law. Our usual practice is to have a dinner at a place of the birthday person's choosing and then go to a family member's house for cake and ice cream.  That's what is up today.

Happy Birthday!

Sharing foods

There are some foods that I like, I buy in bulk and sometimes give as gifts.  

Dot's Home Style Pretzels (three bags at a time)

Heritage Flakes (six bags at a time)

Cheese flavored Nut Thins (six boxes at a time)

We Got Nuts Dates (one 5lb. bag) 

I don't say they are healthy or unhealthy but to me they taste good. They can all be purchased at local stores and from Amazon.   Amazon sometimes offers "subscriptions" but I don't think my consumption is either fast enough or regular enough for their schedule.  I think it does me good to do without any of those foods once in a while.

Yes and no and yes

Lynn's brother is in a residence home for impaired memories in Florida.  She wanted to find a place near where we live so she had see him often.  She has been on a merry-go-round getting him relocated.  She bought plane tickets to go down and accompany him here.  She found a room in a nice place in a nearby town where he can stay while waiting for something closer to open up. She flew down but he said he didn't want to move to Wisconsin.   She was prepared to come back without her brother.  But his younger son, a physician in Carolina, talked with him and he has agreed to her plan.  They are set to fly back tonight.  It can be tricky trying to help a brother.

Erotic stories

Somehow, I got into Harry Golden.  I got a copy of his book For 2 Cents Plain and liked it.  I read his Only in America.  He wrote more than once that one of the best groups in the US for skilled love-making were the people from India. I think of him and his writings, having just finished "Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows", an interesting novel.  A young Indian woman, in the Southall area of London, takes an interest in teaching literacy classes.   She enrolls some Punjabi widows who want to improve their reading and writing of English.  The heroine explains that to improve, they need to express themselves.  She says that is easier if they write about something they feel strongly about.  They do.   They write about love-making.  Pretty soon, more and more women start attending the class.  But in a religiously conservative community, they can be in real danger if word gets out that they are putting their minds to that subject.

The book really captured me. After a while, a person can have a very diminished appetite for erotic stories but I thought the plot was very well put together.  Some people I have mentioned the story to acted offended or put off about anything having to do with sex.  I imagine my friends know that each and every one of us owe our life to parental sexual activity.

Checking my past

It is handy to have a blog.  Mine goes back to 2008 and it is searchable.

I read about two women who are sharing first place in pole vaulting.  That reminded me of my own pole vaulting.   I had never tried or thought of trying when the track and field coach said to me that the team pole vaulter was sick and he asked me to try to fill in for him.  I thought I had written about my getting clunked in the head and in the forearm by the pole.  Yep, there on Novemer 5, 2022 https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/search?q=pole

There are several things I have failed at and pole vaulting is one of them.

Ancestors go way back

I advocate getting your DNA analyzed. I think we are lucky to be alive at a time when what is inheritable from parents to children is being understood more completely all the time.  Lynn and I have had our DNA analyzed four times, twice by the Genographic Project, now discontinued, and twice by 23andMe.  Spencer Wells was the leader of the Genographic Project and he said that the idea of studying the physical distribution of human genetic material has been valuable but that modern methods of travel are so fast and popular that they are homogenizing the Earth's human population to the point that it is rapidly becoming impossible to find much correlation between location of people and their biological makeup.

One of the most striking results is the page in the books we bought from 23andMe that simply lists the groups that each of us can be traced to.  Lynn has 11 identified sources.   I have five.  

I think the most gripping book I have read about ancestry and inheritance is "The 10000 Year Explosion" by Cochran and Harpending.

I read that there are 21 branches of creatures much like us.   The Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthals are examples.  The popular book Sapiens covers some of our recent history.

Personally, I am much more interested in large movements than in the individual, whether a single person is a king or an outlaw.  Look into the identification of the group called Denisovans.  I have some Neanderthal and some Denisovan in me.  Maybe I owe my diminutive height to my Denisovan.  Maybe it is from the Scottish "Small" group.

Losing a wife temporarily

Tomorrow morning, Lynn is flying to bring her brother from his Florida memory unit to this area, where she can be close to him.  He will be temporarily in a home in a nearby facility.   When an opening occurs in a closer one, he will be moved there. She loves him and plans to visit him a couple of times a week.  She will be back on Saturday

ATM Adventures

I tried to get some money from an automatic teller machine Saturday but I got a message that I had entered an incorrect pin.  Odd - I have had the same pin number for decades.  I didn't know the machine had that message in its repertoire.  I tried twice more and got the same result.  The bank was closed but it was open this morning.  On the way over to get some help, I thought it might be interesting to try the machine again.

It worked on the first try.  Good but odd.  I took the time to go inside and explain to a teller what had happened.  He said,"Weird.  We will keep an eye on it."

Upgrading heaven

I think I am more scheduled than most people.  I think my childhood concept of heaven is in need of adjustment.  Just as people need variety in many avenues, I think humans, me and others, are not built for continuous heavenly bliss.  I have read that Buddha said that everything changes.  In a grad school psych course on psychophysics, I learned that even our vision needs refreshing.  In a similar way, I guess that our appreciation of beauty or peace or harmony is improved by fluctuations.  Some amount of change and challenge probably improves our ability to feel gratitude and related positive emotions.

I find that doing a little habitual scheduling improves my ability to be positive and alert to my life.  At 10 AM most days, I have some ginger, a date, some whole almonds and some dark chocolate.  On Sunday and Wednesday, I have a cup of Starbucks Instant Pikes Peak coffee.  On other days, I have a cup of green tea.  That schedule has served me well and I look forward to the effect of extra coffee and to a cup of green tea when I have it.  

Generally, I form habits pretty easily and I keep them.

A Lovely Little Town

We sometimes buy some pastries for a Saturday bread\kfast.  Lynn often goes to the farmers' market and buys, especially mushrooms.   The mushroom man knows lots about growing them.  As I was getting ready to drive to the market, I asked if she would rather I just went alone and brought back pastries.  I am still reeling from the enthusiastic sound wave that washed over me in response to my question.  That was what she was hoping I would get around to suggesting!  That's how it turned out that I drove from east of town down to the market square.

Driving alone on a gorgeous morning got me reflecting on the size and character of this town.  Why would a young PhD move to a little town and live there for 55 years?  The main answer is that this town has a School of Education.  Which means a young PhD in Experimental Design, Testing, and Statistical Analysis could be offered a teaching job.  The man, his wife and two daughters could like their life in that town of 25,000 and live there for fifty-five years. 

The little town is not so little by some standards.  Our first Stevens Point neighbors introduced themselves and explained they were not used to such a large city.  They had moved here for the medical care their daughter could get here.  They had moved here from a town of 500.

Our town has some excellent parks, good schools, vistas, facilities, athletic events and teams.  We have been notably fortunate to have our grandchildren and our greatgrandchildren living close to us since they were born.

Whose night is it?

Lynn and I cook dinner for the two of us on alternate nights.  She has told me often that anybody can cook if they read cook books.  Last night was my night to cook but we took eight of our family members to dinner at Chili's.  Our usual practice is to carry over the turn to the next night so tonight is still my night. We have adopted the increasing trend to buy ready-made meals and we have several in our refrigerator now.   

We have a range of restaurants around.  Lynn is a good cook and experienced at quick meals and elaborate ones.  I can keep from starving and I provide balanced and healthy meals for us.  We have two restaurants that are about 20 miles away, one to the south and one to the north.  I like them both but Lynn increasingly rejects them both as too much driving is required.  

Our nearest supermarket is Walmart's and it really does often lower prices.  We find that traveling a bit further and buying at one of the other stores costs $5 or more dollars more for the same foods.

It is odd that on nights I cook, I spend less time and effort on the meal.  It is the other job, clean-up that takes the most time. I think we both feel choosing the foods and cooking them is a bigger worry than clean-up.

Family rummage sale

The family sale of stuff that is no longer wanted is half over. Having sat at the sales table all day the family sales people are ready for a restaurant meal.  It can be surprising how a piece of pottery is offered in Lynn's artists cooperative but not purchased.  Then, it is offered in a neighborhood rummage sale and scooped up. Of course prices are quite a bit lower in the rummage sale.

It can be boring to sit and wait for customers to come by.  There are strategically placed signs at important corners in the neighborhood announcing the sale and the location. When four different households bring items for sale, the amount of unwanted things can be quite large.  Each family's contributions that get sold are tallied separately. I think most people are as glad to get some unwanted things sold as they are to get a little cash. We are all eating out together a half hour from now. Now we can start noting what else should be sold off.

Short blog today

Tomorrow and Friday, our extended family is holding a rummage sale.  This is our third or 4th one.  It will be at my daughter's house.

I forgot my password for an account.  I started supplying the required information but when I tried to supply the required information to make a new one, the window would only accept three digits for a date. Then, the page got a message that I had to supply two digits for the month, the day and the year.  No dice.  I got hold of a help desk person and we got the problem straightened out. 

A desire to know

It seems that not too many people have a desire to know.  Plenty of people show a desire to do: climb mountains, play lacrosse, etc.  I am reading "Deviant Dreams" by Sola Mafouz and Melaina Kapoor, a story of an Afghan girl raised in a time and place governed both by Islamic ideas of the place and way that women should be raised and live and government attempts to force people to live "properly".  The Taliban emerged and imposed ideas, backed up by beatings, mutilations and executions.  

As a male, I am impressed by motherhood and its big and lasting effect on women's lives.  I think that having one or more children makes a big effect on women's lives and thinking.  To have an additional imposed rule that females must not be educated seems very short-sighted and damaging to both individuals and their society.  Speech and spoken language are clearly one of the most valuable and important human inventions.   Right on top of that is reading, writing and other learned skills.  Sometimes, the combination of the prod of being singled out and being robbed of an education plus a person's spirit and desire to be educated create a very strong drive to learn. 

Because of the Depression, my mother did not get a chance to attend college until her 40's but then she earned a master's degree.  Because of a home room math teacher and a guidance counselor, I attended college.  Because of a regulation in the state of Maryland and another guidance counselor, I got into a PhD program at the University of Maryland.  Because I learned to read and the existence of public libraries, I developed my nerdy side and fed my urge to read all the books there are.  Of course, I never faced death threats for reading or studying.

Sexual behavior

Over the years, I have read many stories and articles.   I feel as though I am familiar with plenty of storylines and plots.  I guess because I am a male, I am used to stories about what is sometimes called "toxic masculinity", applying a code of masculine behavior that is unsafe and wasterful of life, limb.  I don't think I have seen the words "toxic femininity" in print but I find that a phrase, a word, a concept or a question can be usefully expanded with a modern search engine, such as Google.  I looked up the phrase in Google and got only 230,000 hits.  That is a relatively small number, quite a bit smaller than many hits reported in other searches.

One of the hits on the first page of results refers to the movie "Barbie".  The item says that the movie has gotten some people using the words "toxic femininity" again.

I started reading the book "Defiant Dreams", a report of the experiences of an Afghan girl who wanted an education despite Taliban efforts to prevent girls from getting a secondary or higher education.  Lynn commented today that it seems very short-sighted to have such an aim, one that deprives a group or society of half of its labor force.  I realize that sex and gender are powerful and far-reaching topics, both for a person getting into adulthood and parents.  I was impressed years ago when I read of an American physician who took a job overseas with an American oil firm.  Soon after getting to his work site, an Arabic man sought advice and treatment for impotence.  He complained to the doctor that he could only perform sexually 3 or 4 times a day.  For older people, the movie "Poms" might be of interest.

Like all things human, ideas of what a man or a woman "should" be and how either "should" behave are constantly undergoing change and pressure to change, including pressures to avoid change.  Older people often feel that their training and convictions are very good guides while younger people, with impulses and challenges and hormones, often have their own convictions and questions.

Going and returning

Lynn is our warning, our beacon.   When it is seriously time to go somewhere for a couple of days, her Scandinavian ancestry kicks in, and we have to take off.  We drove to Barker Island Inn, on Barker Island outside of Superior, Wisconsin.  We have stayed there before.  The harbor area and the two cities of Superior and Duluth, Minnesota make for good scenery, of a type we don't often see every day.  It takes a while to get there and often when we go on a trip, we take Lynn's car.  It is big, powerful and driving it gives her a chance to flex her driving muscles.  She drove all 630 miles there and back, all the way over to Rhinelander and home.  I was ready to spell her but she batted me away.  Despite being a woman, she is pretty strong. She is also strongly pretty, even with a PhD.  

We visited Duluth's Great Lakes Aquarium.  I enjoyed the visiting kids more than the exhibits.  Some people feel it is a defeat to shorten a trip so to avoid that, we drove to Rhinelander to stay a night.  Our idea was to get to know the city and we did.  It is one of those places with roads leading in and roads leading out, a convenient arrangement.  While in Rhinelander, we visited a farmers' market.  We were surprised at the small number of vendors there.  We also found the Golden Market and Lynn quickly became a fan.  We bought a mini cantaloupe there and it is very sweet and delicious.  

We left Wednesday and got back Saturday noon but that was long enough to give our house a new look in our eyes.

Blog pause

We are taking a short trip.  I think the next blog post will be this coming Sunday.  Meanwhile, start your own blog on Blogspot or WordPress or some other service. Or, read some of 4000+ Fear, Fun and Filoz posts.

https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/

Eric Barker 8/7/2023

Every now and then, Prof. Eric Barker produces an especially good column.  I though yesterday's was a good one.

His blog is called "Barking Up the Wrong Tree" and yesterday's was a warning not to underestimate the value of negative emotions and experiences.

Making Good Use of Boredom, Frustration and Impatience

https://bakadesuyo.com/2023/08/overcome/

Memories

We moved to this town in the late '60s from the DC area.  I had not lived this far north nor in a town this small.  We spent some time with our girls and our poodle in a nearby park.  Some upper level biology classes in the local schools tend to assign students the job of catching salamanders and other little creatures that live in that park.  Lynn and I walked through the park this morning and I enjoyed the scenes  that came to mind, memories of parties and picnics from our more than 50 years of living here. Neither of us has lived in one place that long a time anywhere else.

It was ironic that the family living next door had never lived in a community this large but moved here to be close to specialized medical services their child needed. 

We have both noted what we have learned about a town with a university in it.  A sizeable school, with arts, sciences and professional faculty and majors makes a difference in the tone and spirit of a town.  The presence of the School of Education relates to the origin of the local university as a state teachers' college.  The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point has a strong drama and a strong music department.  It is widely known for its highly developed programs in many aspects of natural resources: Fisheries and Water Resources, Forestry, Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Management, Paper Science and Chemical Engineering, Soil and Waste Resources and Wildlife Ecology.

Changed forever

These days you won't find much use of the word "changed" without the next word being "forever".   I thought I would do others a favor and point out that every change is a change forever.  Most people say they know that the past cannot be altered and the future hasn't happened yet.  So, when you shake some pepper onto your salad, you cannot undo having committed that action.  Yes, you may, if you wish, locate each tiny bit of pepper and tweezer it off of the items in the salad but I still have a short video of you shaking pepper onto the salad.  You did it, you little devil, and we have video recording and your unique fingerprints on the pepper shaker.

I think that most instances of the modern pairing of "change" and "forever" are examples of attempts at emphasizing how important the change is.  But, I recommend recognition of the fact that the last breath you took was never ever taken before.  Taking that breath altered your breathing record forever.  Everything that happens changes the history of the world forever!  

You may be able to undo a particular EFFECT of an event or a lack of an event but what happens, happens.  

Not only was that last breath never, ever taken before, it will never, ever be taken again.  Isn't this an exciting world we are living in?

The unreality of 20XX dates

I was born before the middle of the last century.  Not this one but the previous one.  So, you can understand why a year labeled "2023" looks like I have blundered into a Flash Gordon comic strip.  I know I have been using those digits for more than half a year but it still feels like I am falling for a joke. I do appreciate that the year designation changes slowly, once every 365 days, unlike the silly name of the day or even the month.  For them, I just get used to a number or a name and the damned thing is quickly outdated, laughable, incorrect.

I imagine that if you are 40 or younger, you don't know that name Flash Gordon, just like I don't think I have ever read a Buck Rogers comic strip.  I practice trying to focus on the present and not wander into the past much and the future even less.  In graduate school, back before Apple and related companies and products, our major professor wanted us to learn a little coding.  He gave us a bit of a vague assignment: give him a computer program in punched card, one instruction per card, written in the coding "language" Fortran.  It should take in any two dates he provides and give him the number of days between those dates.  Excel, the Microsoft spreadsheet, can do that instantly.  I just did it and learned that today, I am more than 30500 days old.  Being that old, I can be expected to be cynical.

The movie Barbie

As you can guess from my voice, my build, my name and my dress, I am a male.  That means I have a natural basic attraction to females.  Even at my age, when a waitress places a plate of food on a table, the color and texture of the skin on her arm look inviting.  If I didn't have mature restraint, I might lick her arm or kiss her skin.  I sometimes get attracted to a nice set of teeth.  I have wondered how a young lady would react if I asked for permission to suck her teeth for just a short while. I don't like to shortchange attention to older women and old women but I try to behave in an acceptable and respectful way.

In addition to basic hormonal drives, I am interested in the lives of women and men given their basic and cultural and social differences. So, when I heard about the hit movie Barbie, I wanted to see it.  Lynn did too.  We haven't gone to a movie theater since we went to see "Mr. Rogers".  We tried on Monday but the theater is closed that day of the week.  We tried on Tuesday, the day of special low prices, but even getting there a bit before the late showing, they were sold out of seats.  We saw the movie last night.  

It is a young person's movie.  If you are in your teens or twenties, you may be living the time of life that Barbie is living.  Dating, finding a mate, getting married and having children is a very important sequence of events in life, in some ways, the most important.  Sometimes it is said that breathing and eating and other living operations and reproducing are the most fundamental things humans can do.  To me, it is amazing and exciting that each and every human has a mother and a father.  Not everyone creates new humans but the majority do.  There may be no time in life when most people have more energy and pep and excitement than during the late teens and years just after.

I thought the script was witty, the actors are, of course, gorgeous and the costumes are also gorgeous.  The worries and agonies of girls and of guys are well acted.  I recommend seeing Barbie.

He says, she says

We read that a functioning, healthy adult brain is an extremely complex item.  But from that fact, I think it is surprising that in addition to being complex, such a brain can and does engage in lots of communication.  We usually think of communication as being like a spoken conversation, a little bit from A and then a little answering bit from B.  Longer times between exchanges and longer exchanges are possible, too. If I read poems written in an earlier century in a language I don't know but translated by someone who does know that language, that is long range communication, too.  It ranges across time that is longer than a human lifetime and involves that human function of translation.

When I get a phone call, I may choose to not answer it.  I do have an answering machine that records spoken messages I don't receive live.  These days, I still have email that can transmit written messages and photographs, including videos but it is all the fashion to send and receive text messages, which depend on a different technology than email.  

That is already three systems: voice, email, text.  It seems to me that my friends and relatives, not to mention advertisers and propagandists of all sorts, use all three and more or less keep straight what they receive and what they transmit on all three.  I know four women who write letters on paper and drop copies in a mail box to each other once a month.  They have been doing that regularly for about 15 years.  So that makes four complete systems, each of which is capable of sending and receiving messages.  Then, there is the old-fashioned system of going to someone's house and ringing the doorbell.

Downsizing

My sister and her husband moved into senior housing.  Naturally, the idea of downsizing in various ways came up.  I just asked her what she wants for her birthday, a main day in my year.  Has been since I was four or five years old. She responded that I should just send her good wishes for another good year.  See what people do as they climb up in age?  They have what they want and often more than they want.  They don't need or want much more.  

I love the little squirt and I may not go along with sending only good wishes. I am confident she and her husband would not like a puppy or a kitty, or a parrot or even a goldfish.  I am a bookish sort of guy but I don't think I know of a book she would like but doesn't have.  It seems to me that older people have read enough heart-rending stories to satisfy interest in romance or crime solving.

It may be that sending only good wishes would lower my general esteem level but I still may go along with what she said.

Two-day months

We are not the first to find that in these later years, time is speeding up.  We find each month has its first day, the day of beginning, when we notice it is a new month.  And, we notice when the days show we have arrived at the middle of the month. That tends to be it: first and middle.  Then, it is the end just like that.  

We used to find that the months had about 30 days but no longer.  I read that the Roman emperor Augustus demanded that he have a month, August, with as many days as Julius and his July of 31 days.   We do have calendars with 31 days in both of those months but consciously months these days have a beginning and a middle - that's it