A 2nd missing piece

Socrates is often considered an important wise man.  He is famous for his advice to "know thyself."  That is good advice but we now know it is not fully possible.  Too much of each of us is not connected directly to our conscious minds. I see that many intellectual people may live assuming they do know themselves.  For many at most times, they are pretty good at knowing, remembering and observing themselves.  Of course, in addition to having murky or hidden motives and fears or motives and fears they are reluctant to face, we all age and change.    

I found the book "Incognito" very helpful in emphasizing the value in recognizing aspects of ourselves that we can't explain.   So, I will add both moderation and tolerance of strange and unexplained aspects of myself to my list of September 28 for use in a talk.

A missing piece

My recent list of ideas to help make a good life seems to be missing an important one, one that I have used often and that has a very long history: "Everything in moderation".   The logical question those words can prompt is"Should I apply that idea in moderation?" Maybe there should be one or two things I don't do moderately?

I didn't know until looking up the idea with Google that the apostle Paul quotes the principle in his letter to the Phillipians.  

When I tire of something, I can quote that idea, a fundamental one with ancient Greek thinkers.  Doing that gives me the idea that I am being smart and well-rounded.

Talk coming up

I am giving a talk on Monday.  You might not know from the title, "Wisconsin Life and Living Today", but it is my attempt to mention some tools and practices that tend to contribute to a good life.  I wrote this list to guide my talk:

1. Meditation

2. Appreciation

3. Helping Others

4. Facing and discussing fears

5. Jotting at least a note a day, or at least regularly

6. Activity and exercise

7. Gratitude

8. Surround yourself with pleasing things

9. Maintaining friendships, creating new ones

10. Have a social life

I think the ideas listed are fairly understandable.  I also think a meditative practice is surprisingly helpful.  Spending a short time in a good posture with a timer that makes a sound but no devices or games or exercise does indeed improve self knowledge and appreciation and understanding.  If you want some advice, I recommend Jack Kornfield, Sylvia Boorstein and/or Larry Rosenberg.  The basic clue is you don't need hours or weeks - just a steady practice.  You can search for those names with the search window on my blog.  It is on https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/

Growling may help

Growling may be of more help if you are male.   It almost seems that females may have some extra tools in the area of sweetness, cooperation and niceness that many older males either lack or can't find.  My nature and my habits are such that a quick growl can be a comfort and make things seem in order.

With my currently tender back muscle, it can take some extra effort to stand, bend, lift and parts of me know when to throw in a growl or snarl.  

Such a sound helps me recognize pain and tolerate it.

Bonnie

Bonnie was a longtime girlfriend of mine.  I looked at today's date and thought I think today might be Bonnie's birthday.  I looked it up in my list and it is.  When I was in the 8th grade, I asked her if I could take her to the movies.  We saw some swashbuckling film, possibly starring Burt Lancaster.  

Bonnie has been deceased for at least a couple of years.  When in the 6th grade, I had a crush on her but I didn't get around to asking her on a date until 8th grade.  At the time, Baltimore had 14 public high schools and many parochial high schools.  I studied Latin in 9th grade and I could only get a second year in one school, the city's humanities classical all-male high school.  It took me an hour to get there by public transportation and an hour home.  In 10th, 11th and senior years, Bonnie often rode home to the western suburbs from downtown with me.   She was good company.  She was a student at Western High School for girls, one of two public schools for girls.  My sister went to the other one, Eastern High.

Bonnie and I were young and not very intense. My parents at one point said they didn't want me dating only Bonnie.  It was convenient that I had another girlfriend also named Bonne and I could sometimes get away with not specifying which Bonnie I was going to see.

She and I stayed in touch off and on.  When I was 62 and living in Wisconsin, she tracked me down.  Lynn and I dropped in on her once when we were in the Baltimore area.

Sore back

I have developed a sore back.  I am not sure how or why.  I have an appointment to see a chiropractor next week.  It isn't extremely painful.  I guess the problem is mostly just an unusual sensitivity, one that I am sensitive to and somewhat fearful of.   I don't want it to get worse.

My usual practice has been to sit with a heating pad on my back.  Doing that seems to help.  I am not sure if the total time and discomfort is diminished with a pad or not.

63 years

I was quite surprised when Lynn said "Happy Anniversary" today.  I can't recall each of our 63 anniversaries but I think this is the first time in that many years that the day began and I didn't recognize the event by myself.  My daughter recognized the date and congratulated us but I needed to be told by Lynn. I like my marriage and consider myself quite lucky to have a woman as intelligent, energetic and multi-talented as a wife.  As a college freshman, I was impressed with my English prof called the roll and said when he called Lynn's name that her last name seemed Finnish.  Her skin and hair still supports the idea of her Finnish ancestry.   She has ancestors from the area of the Finnish town of Rovaniemi, on the Arctic Circle.  It is the capital of the Finn province of Lapland. Liking her and her company, I want to stay married to her.  She is unusual in many ways, not least of which is that while her paternal ancestry is Finn, her maternal line is Spanish and Cuban and Swedish and Taino, which is native American from the Caribbean.  I have my doubts I could find a replacement that is even close to as talented.

Fall, two books and garlic

We are now officially experiencing fall. The fall equinox occurred here this morning. Fall will end on Dec.  21 at 9:57 AM CST.

Lynn and I are now reading the book "Leaving Church" by Barbara Brown Taylor.   Lynn heard about the book from our friend Barbara Dixson.   Lynn recognized the book as one we had read.  It is hard for me to believe that I have already read it once.  Maybe I have become more sensitive but it is very good writing about religion and being a woman leader of a congregation.

I am reading "The Inbetween", a non-fiction story of a young woman hospice worker.  Both books are excellent.

We recently got a recipe for a pasta dish and Lynn cooked it.  It makes quite a bit and I served it for the second time last night.  It has a good amount of garlic in it.  Lynn finds it quite strong but I don't notice it at all.  I tend to like garlic and garlic powder.

Lessons from Bob

A couple of times I sat with Bob Shaw while he was deeply aged and infirm.  He once in a while said something to me but mostly seemed to simply vegetate. I am aging myself but I feel like I understand much of what is happening from my skimpy associating with Bob.  He was a good bit older than me and I may not reach his age but I am in his debt for older person lessons.  Lynn loves me and accompanied to one of my nurse practitioners as we tried to learn why I fell at the end of two of my normal walks.  As Bob aged, he had strong trouble walking. I don't think I have reached that stage yet but I am prepped.

Oils and falls

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychiatry-and-sleep/202308/cognition-boost-of-226-from-aromatherapy?

After reading this article, I bought two boxes of ten bottles of essential oils and two oil diffusers.  I have slept with an hour of four different diffused oils four nights.  I am impressed with an effect size of 226% even though I recognize "cognitize effects" are high to measure.

Lynn came with me to the doctor's office to see what I could learn about my two falls.  I have been referred to neurology to see if they can find anything.

The story is often more complicated

I get the feeling that people often tend to think they understand something when they only know part of the story.  The courtroom pledge to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is often an impossible standard.  We often don't know the whole truth.  Furthermore, in everyday conversation, we may not have time to state the whole truth.

I realize when dealing with organizations, whether businesses, governments, families and other conglomerates, that a statement, a story, a position may be sent out representing the group when only a few people know about the issue or subject.  I have very little idea of what happened on the campus near me, where I worked for 37 years or in the local schools or in town or in my state today, much less my country or in other places on earth.  Experts craft "news" items, often with an eye to readability and reader/audience interest and attracting attention, and sometimes excitability.

I was impressed when I read in A.L.Herman's book, "Churchill and Gandhi," that when the British abandoned India, many Indians did not know that a foreign power had ever controlled their government.  But the British control lasted for about 100 years.

Changes

I am walking around the neighborhood carrying a walking stick.  The stick seems to help me not fall.

I am drinking a pint of water three times during my waking hours.  Between my nurse practitioner and the book "Quench" by Cohen and Bria, I have a renewed interest in adequate body hydration.  The three pints are in addition to my usual morning and noon cups of coffee and my 10AM green tea or instant coffee.

I am running an atomizer with an essential oil in it when I go to sleep.

The mathematics of a lady tasting tea

Sir Ronald Fisher wrote a famous short paper in 1937 called "The Mathematics of a Lady Tasting Tea".  He relates the story of a fictitious lady who claims she can tell if cream was poured into a cup before or after tea. His paper proposes a test of her ability.  His procedure is to assemble four cups with tea added to the cup first and four cups to which cream is added first, then all 8 cups are presented to the lady randomly. Her task is to taste the cups and sort them without error. According to his standard, if she makes any mistakes, she fails the test.  He explains where he gets his numbers.  His reasoning is based on the idea that we could make a mistake whether we say the lady has the ability or that she does not have it.

You can get all philosophical in assessing the lady, but a common idea in British and American approaches to statistical analysis of experimental data is to aim at having no more than a 5% chance of thinking the lady has the ability she alleges she does when in fact she does not.  

This paper is quite famous.  You can read it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea

Saved when I retired

I retired in 2008.  At that time, I had made basic instructions for several courses online.  I thought it would be a good idea to remove the files from the UWSP computers since I wouldn't be teaching those courses any more and others teaching similar courses would do so with different structure and content than I use. Lynn knew the computer language for HTML web pages better than I did and the web pages she made were a big help to my students and to me.  I saved my creations and hers.  I have been looking forward to selecting some of the more appropriate pages as blog topics.  

Today, I finally got up on a step ladder and go an external compact disk drive down so I could look at the saved files.  I haven't been very successful so far.  It has been long enough since I even read a CD or a DVD that I couldn't figure out how to see the file names on a disk.  I am making a little progress but I am not there yet.  I read once that the changing format of disks and files is a challenge to libraries and academic institutions and historians trying to preserve access to writings in those media.

Busy day, odd day

Lynn's brother lives on the edge of the neighboring town, Wisconsin Rapids.  Our friends, a retired Lutheran pastor and his wife wanted to meet him to get to know him a bit.   They live in Rapids, too, and thought that a situation might arise where they can help, being 10 minutes away instead of 30 minutes.   So he and the two of us met them at a restaurant near him and them.  She is a retired school administrator and used to situations that are challenging and of course, so is he.

Lunch out made for an unusual day and on top of that, today was Steven Point's "Art in The Park" day.   After our lunch we visited the Park by the River and visited several potters' booths.  Those unusual activities changed our normal day and put me well behind my usual blogging time.

I fell again on a morning walk

My friends and my wife got concerned.  I do have a doctor's appointment next week. I don't know why I fell either time.  Two men held me by the arms to prevent further falling during the last part of the walk.  Today, I carried a hiking stick and I didn't fall or come close. I tried to go more slowly and doing that helped.  So far, I haven't hurt myself but I want to keep my balance the whole walk.

I want to keep practicing mobility and balance.

Walmart shopping

We shop for food from Walmart, Metro Market and Fantasy Foods. When Walmart first moved to town, its store was not as close as others and we very rarely bought there.  Then, it moved and we moved and now, it is much closer to us than any of the other stores.  For quite a while, Walmart advertised with the slogan "Always the low price, always".  None of the stores are very high priced but we have found buying at Walmart is cheaper than other stores. For a typical group of foods, Walmart tends to be five or so dollars cheaper.  The main draw of Walmart is how close it is to our house - 1.5 miles away.

There are some goods that we don't buy there.  For instance, Lynn finds their women's clothing unacceptable.  They do have a large parking lot.

I go to that store often enough that I can recognize people who work there.

Obituaries

I am officially an old person.   I have adopted the old person characteristic of consulting the newspaper's obituaries.  It helps if I know someone is dead and don't try to speak or write to them.  I have reached a stage where some friends are already desisted.  Who is and who isn't changes often and erratically.   

One of my best and closest friends was Bob.  As far as I am concerned, he had no business dying.  He was a sweet and fun guy.  He was a school principal and a good one.  Before she was my wife, the woman wanted to be chosen to represent our freshman college class but Bob argued to appoint me.  He actually did me something of a favor since she was impressed that anybody liked me enough to argue for me to be chosen and I wasn't even in the meeting.

Another close friend was Bruce.  He was a Methodist minister.  He was a learned guy and once gave our wives the task of acting out a long complicated title of a book in a game of Charades.  It was something like "The Ecclesiastical History of the Early Middle Ages in the West."  They didn't get it in the time allowed.  They were irritated enough that he and I were walking the neighborhood at 2 AM, giving them time to cool off.

Lynn recently made a list of friends who have died and all those listed were men.  Google says:

Why do females live longer than men?

Biological differences also help to explain women's higher longevity. Scientists believe that estrogen in women combats conditions such as heart disease by helping reduce circulatory levels of harmful cholesterol. Women are also thought to have stronger immune systems than men

Post #5023

I started blogging March 29, 2008.  Like many things, it has evolved.   I started as advocated for meditative practice.  Meditation can be practiced in many ways.  As a faculty member working with the UWSP School of Education Block 1, I thought the evidence for benefits was strong enough that college students who were about to practice teach would for a semester find a few minutes of daily meditation beneficial.  Over time, I was not surprised to find more and more books, articles, videos on YouTube and other places.  I was neither highly experienced in meditation nor explicitly trained.  There were better sources, such as Jack Kornfield, Sylvia Borstein, Larry Rosenberg and Herbert Benson.

Given my personality and my education, I haven't been attracted to high priced courses, or camps to get me into meditation or improve what I do when I meditate.  Neither have I been attracted to rigorous approaches such as waking at 3 AM and meditating until 11 PM, even with walking breaks.  The activity of meditating was begun 4000 years ago by people with little money or education.

When I saw the outpouring of books and other tools, I thought it might be valuable to write daily and it has been.

Having Dr. Lenore Susan Kirby as a partner

She turns 84 years old today.  It has been a pleasure to be married to her to her for 63 years.  That is long enough and a large enough portion of our lives, both mine and hers, that I have really been able to experience her personality and her judgment.  I didn't know that she would create two children, become a fulltime graduate student and end with a PhD.  I didn't know that she would lead us to trying out life at the University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse and that over time, we would move back to Point, liking the faculty at the U of W - Stevens Point and the town of Point better than LaCrosse.  She developed skill in creating and criticizing web sites and web pages, which helped me as I ran distance ed classes where I never met the students.

I kid her that she is always right.  She is an imaginative and careful thinker. Plus, her memory is better than mine.

Photos of the Week, Looking for a Replacement

CNN photos of the week: https://e.newsletters.cnn.com/click?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

Lynn and I went to the Wausau art show in the town's central square.  She has decided to stop being a full time member of Gallery Q at the end of this year.  She is too busy and wants to cut back and empty her schedule some.  We are both feeling our age more.  She turns 84 tomorrow.  She looked at the home community of each artist and those that seemed close enough to Stevens Point, she asked if they had an interest in being part of Gallery Q.

Slippery pants

I use my laptop computer quite a bit each day.  Despite the name, it sits on my desk and my desk chair is rather slippery.  If I sit up square and with good posture, my weight presses straight down and I don't slide.  But between naturally leaning forward to type and slumping, I spend quite a lot of time sliding slowly out of the chair.  Some pants are worse than others at sliding me onto the floor.  I haven't been scooted out yet but I often come close to scooting out.  I think I could wait too long to straighten up and fall right on my tailbone. 

It is not a fast process. Just a little bit at a time.  I remember once in college, Lynn slid backwards on the edge of the tub in her room and fell backwards into the tub on her tailbone. Not pleasant and can probably cause an injury.

I have thought about putting some tape on the seat to make it less slippery.  But so far, I haven't done anything preventive

Favorite presentation

My friend asked the other three of us to mention what presentation or lecture over the course of our teaching was our favorite.   That fits well with my own realization that over 37 years of teaching, I taught many things but now I can't think of what they were without consulting notes and records.  That realization has been on my mind and persuaded me to dig around in files to refresh my memory. 

I probably taught the course "Tests and Measurements" more times than any other course.  That is the only course I wrote a 98 page booklet as a text for the course.  The table of contents lists the chapter titles.  There are 20 chapters plus a final statement.  The first chapter is titled "The Dimensions of a Person".  Elementary pre-teachers usually have a natural tendency to be aware of the physical and all teachers work with the cognitive side of students all the time. Secondary pre-teachers sometimes are a bit overly focused on the cognitive side of their students.  But any two humans who work, play, date together become aware of the emotional, social, and moral aspects of each other.

The 2nd chapter discusses ways of grading, from pure judgment using intuition to other methods, such as using the famous "normal" or "bell-shaped curve" to a merit-badge approach, specifying requirements for each grade.  Introducing and discussing that chapter is my selection for a favorite presentation.

Nutrition and me

I feel that I know some of the basics of nutrition.  I wrestled on my high school and my college teams.  That sort of wrestling is sorted by body weight so if a wrestler shows on the scale that he is heavier than his weight class allows, he is not allowed to wrestle.  Quite often there is no one else right ready to take his place and the team forfeits the match.  The wrestler in that class on the other team is awarded the point as though he defeated the guy who is too heavy. That never happened to me. 

Some guys believed that eating some foods would result in weight gain of more than the weight of the consumed foods.  The "bad" foods were usually the ones that tasted good, such as candy bars.  I thought that was impossible.  I realized that skipping food to try to avoid being disqualified because of body weight could lead to extreme dehydration or weakness.  A good friend of mine was taken to the hospital in college from overdoing not eating.

In freshman English, I wrote a personal reaction to Walden by David Thoreau.  The professor said it was good writing but not the assignment, which was a "research" paper.   He said I could redo the work.  I did a paper on nutrition: classes and types of foods.  I did.  Between participation in the sport and being aware that I would be eating all my life, I have had an interest in nutrition since my teen years.

Eggs, Timers and Forgetfulness

I have made myself soft-boiled eggs for breakfast since I was an 8th grader.  They were filling and easy.  My nurse practitioner advised me to limit myself to an egg a week but I think that is a bit too stringent.  When I was young, I liked to have 3 eggs but now I eat two for breakfast.

Yesterday, Lynn saw a different sort of egg timer and bought us one. It is a solid chunk of glass with a tab inside.  The timer indicates when a boiled egg has been cooked to a soft, medium and hard stage.  I was eager to try it out and I saw no reason to wait to begin cooking until my usual time of 7:30.  I started cooking at 7 AM.  I put five eggs in a pan of water, put the new timer in and promptly started the eggs.   At 7:30, I thought of breakfast and suddenly remembered the eggs! I sped to the kitchen!  The timer's red indicator dot had completely shrunk away!  These eggs were definitely hard boiled.  

I didn't want hard boiled eggs and cooked two new ones but Lynn ate one of the hard ones.  

I conclude that modifying a procedure I have carried out to the point of automaticity or even carrying it out at a different time of day is not that easy for me and takes concentration and an audible timer.

Movement and activity

This is a much more dynamic day than it looks.  It is the first day of the fall school term.  We don't have any preschool nor elementary school students in our family. But the community, the ongoing lives of students in every grade and the local college students and the local grad students from freshman thru doctoral level and their families, it is the first day of another school year.  In addition many businesses are open.  Fall purchases are being planned and made.  Between Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, plans and purchases are under way and being carried out.  In many towns and cities across the state, technical colleges and football teams are beginning their activities.

Scents and cognition

In Google News today, there was a blurb about this article.  Researchers found a 226% improvement in cognitive power after subjects had smelled essential oils while they slept.  Seven different oils were used, one a night.

The version of the article that I saw did not itself list the oils but I found this in the comments:

Wes Sawkins | September 3, 2023 at 6:10 am | Reply

Individuals assigned to the olfactory enrichment group were provided with an odorant diffuser (Diffuser World) and 7 essential oil odorants (rose, orange, eucalyptus, lemon, peppermint, rosemary, and lavender; from The Essential Oil Company, Portland, OR) in identical glass vials that each fit into the diffuser.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1200448

I looked at Amazon.com and they sell many sets of essential oils but I didn't find one that completely matches the types listed.

Gulp

I have been more emphatically drinking water each day since June. Between a nurse practitioner telling me I wasn't drinking enough water each day and finding the book "Quench" by Dana Cohen, MD and Gina Bria, I have felt quite improved.

I think that Dr. Cohen, having a MD degree, might have been added to try to conform to good medical advice and practice.  Gina Bria is a cultural anthropologist and got into studying Bedouin and others who live in very dry places.   As she explored human physical hydration, she saw some practices that others should adopt.  As I read through "Quench", I felt lucky to read desert people Gulp water.  I imagine I could hydrate myself drinking a pint mug of water three times a day if I sipped but I enjoy drink swallowing continuously and consuming it in 3 or 4 drinks.  Evidently, 65 and older people can benefit from hydration without realizing it they can.

I didn't undertake to drop coffee at breakfast and lunch but I find that if I gulp a pint of water first and then wait for 10 or so minutes, I can drink my coffee at any speed.

I looked up both Gina Bria and Dana Cohen.  Both women mention H3O2 as a product for hydration but so far, I am relying on Stevens Point municipal water and it has been impressively helpful. 

Walking bags of blood and water

I thought I was drinking enough water but on June 10, a nurse practitioner questioned me and said she was confident I was short-changing myself. Despite some older advice to drink 8 ounces 8 times a day, she said to try for 50 ounces a day.  That was on June 10.  I have a 16 oz. mug I like and I have had the first of three mugs of water first thing in the morning each day since then.   I am quite positively impressed at how good I feel with this greater input of water.

I looked up what % of blood is water and found that 55% of blood is  plasma and 90% of plasma is water.  So, 45% of my blood is water.  High temperatures cause me to loose moisture.  There are many articles about people, especially older people, getting seriously dehydrated.  There seem to be several contributing factors but a major one is that thirst is not as easily sense by older people.  I remember that Lynn's stepdad taken to the hospital in an emergency helicopter for dehydration.

A colleague who taught science teachers once said that human bodies work basically on the principles of water chemistry.  

I suggest you work to be properly hydrated every day.

A new month

Today is the first day of September.  The first day of any month is a busy one for me.  Bills, state and federal estimated taxes, birthday gifts - they take time and concentration.  In just a few days, school buses morning and evening.  Greatgrand kids back in school.

So far, I haven't scared anybody too badly that I know of.  My chin and throat make me look Maori, the native people of New Zealand.  They get their chins and cheeks tattooed.  My chin and throat look like they have been tattooed but they haven't been.   It may take weeks or months before I am back to normal. I am actually doing well.  I don't have anything aching or broken.

We are in our part of the year when we can manage early morning outdoor temperatures of 40's and afternoon temperatures of 80's or 90's.