We tried

I like to savor the depth of enjoyment I have from some books and contrast that strong enjoyment with how easy or hard it is to remember the book.  I use the phrase "remember the book" but in this case, I just mean be able to think of the title or recall that I read it and remember something, anything about it.

I got an email from the New Yorker today listing "the best books of 2023".  From experience, I expect a list of the best books in the New Yorker to list no books that I have read and no books I will read.  Giving up on the New Yorker list because it is just too long to even look at from beginning to end, 

I asked myself to bring to mind again some books that made a lasting or a strongly favorable impression on me.  

Books that I have satisfied myself reading include Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" and T.H.White's "The Once and Future King".  I asked Lynn for examples of books I have read aloud to her that made a strong positive impression.  She said I throw questions like that at her when she is thinking of something else and she is not prepared to think about such a question.  But she did come up with three recent titles:

The Bell in the Lake - Lars Mytting

The In-Between - Hadley Vlahos, R.N.

The Brain that Changes Itself - Norman Doidge, M.D.

Interference

She did some rigorous, careful Christmas shopping online.  He didn't realize she had, so when he pulled up the shopping website on his computer and found many items in the shopping cart, he felt he could recognize misbehavior when he saw it.  He had carefully deleted 75% of the cart contents when she called him to lunch.  "I'll be there in a minute or two.  I am almost finished emptying the shopping cart."

Disgust!  Outrage!  Tears! "What!!  I just spent my morning loading and checking that I loaded up the right items and you are undoing all that work!"  They may decide not to divorce but that isn't confirmed yet.

Recent books

I just finished reading aloud the novel "News of the World".  Today, I received in the mail a copy of Kerry Ames' novel, "We Three",the story of the three kings who visited the Christ child.  I am reading the zoologist Lucy Cooke's book, "Bitch".  It is popular science about myths and truths about female animals of all kinds.

Books you have read

A good argument can be made defending the idea that reading a language such as English is the most important skill you added to the basic talents and abilities you have naturally.  You have probably heard that books can take you on amazing trips to amazing places, show you and inform you about amazing things. I am a fan of the newer form of books, ebooks that are a computer file of all the words of the printed form of the book but transmittable by email.  

A friend wrote today that she wishes she knew the total number of books she has read.  I asked Lynn, a professor of school librarianship and a PhD.  She said,"3219' but I think she made up the number on the spot and just reeled it off in a calm, persuasive voice.  My grad school course, Personal Reading for Professional Development, was about one's reading life.  The only requirement was a list of all the books the student had ever read, from The Poky Little Puppy to the latest hair-raising mystery.  Mature, experienced teachers were searching attics and perusing library shelves for books they had read but forgotten about.

If you want to know how many books you've read, keep a record, maybe for all of the coming year of 2024, of the books you read per month.  At the end of the year, take the number of books you have read during the year and multiply by the number of your reading years.  The result will be an estimate of the total number of books you have read.  

I don't plan to do that myself.  For one thing, I have read many.  For another thing, "read" is a funny thing - some books I looked at every word carefully and some books I looked at most words at high speeds.

Alcohol

I never got a deep thrill from having my judgment distorted by drink.  I am too much of a nerd or something. I never paled around with guys who drank a lot or felt I had to get woozy to fit in.  Over the years, I found that both Lynn and I like whisky Manhattans and that is the drink that we have most often.  Lynn likes martinis and I will often order one when I am eating in a restaurant.  We both enjoy a martini more from a martini glass and we like olives in them, three for me.

My mother and the two of us like the taste of Kahlua very much and on Sunday, we have black Russians.  That was my mother's favorite drink.  A bottle of Kahlua, the biggest size, costs $45 but it lasts us about 6 months or more.  Once I asked my mother how she made black Russians and she said she poured herself two jiggers of vodka and one of Kahlua. I advised her to use three quarters of a jigger of vodka and half of Kahlua.  She slurred her speech much less with that recipe.

Different interface

I am aware, somewhat vaguely and indirectly, that my mind and body are very capable of doing things on their own.  You may have read how walking through a doorway (and thereby changing "where" you are" can give you new(and sometimes distracting) thoughts.  I find that my natural self can basically assume that my Gmail inbox has a different collection of emails in it on my laptop computer in the office from what I just saw on my iPad in the living room.  One of the features I like about Gmail is that I can see it on several displays.  I know it is the same collection on both devices.  But still I get a quick feeling of interest in taking a look at the computer in the office despite having just dealt with Gmail in the living room.

It is true that the messages are the same on both displays but at the same time, the exact display, the interface, is not the same.  I am impressed that the Google design on the computer includes a little arrowhead at the top of the list of messages.   That arrowhead leads, when clicked on with the mouse, to a set of commands for handling the entire set of visible messages. The commands include "unread".  If I select that command, all the messages I have not opened are highlighted at once.  When highlighted, they can all be deleted with a single key press.  When I use the laptop, I am using the Microsoft product on a Google product.  When I use my Ipad, I am using an Apple product on a Google product.

What did you say?

My audiologist told me that the part of my brain that decodes speech into meaning is wearing out.  The result is that when my wife speaks to me, I have trouble knowing what she said.  So, I have to ask what she said.  Invariably, when she repeats herself, I understand.  This has been going on for a couple of years and it is wearing on her.  She still loves me and likes me but my listening is poor.  I have found if I can catch part of what she says and just ask about a detail or two, it strikes her much less negatively.  I need to look up the matter in Google and also have a short sitdown with the audiologist.

Let Us Give Thanks

I am confident that plenty of people got on ships to cross the "Pond" while fearing for their lives. If they managed to reach North America, even if they didn't know just where they were, it was natural to be grateful for land and food and survival.

The old practice of counting one's blessings has been showing up in current research as a valuable aspect of mental health.

So, I hope your pie and turkey and mashed potatoes and relishes and olives are accompanied by gratitude and appreciation for those and other good things that visit you

Being happy most of the time

There are two people I know of whose work is useful for exploring the theme of personal happiness construction.  One is a psychology professor at Northwestern University.  That's Lisa Barrett Feldman.  The other was an employee of Google and that is Chade Meng-Tan.  He is the author of "Search Inside Yourself" and "Joy on Demand". It is this latter book that relates to being happy most of the time.

https://chademeng.com/about/bio/

There are more books and other instructive materials coming out all the time about using one's mind to be upbeat about life.

Prof. Lisa Feldman has some TED talks.  One is titled

18:15

You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them

She is also the author of the best book I know about our brains and living with them, the book "Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain".

It may be that many older people have a natural tendency to supply themselves with good emotions but if not, read, watch and practice.

Write!

You are probably aware that you are mysterious and unique.  But despite being the only you there has ever been, you can shed some light on the inner you.  One way to do that is to write.  Your memories of childhood, your impression of your dates, of what sort of children you have, of the books you have read, of the classes you have attended, the trips you have taken, etc., etc. offer satisfying insights who you are, what you are like.  

You don't have to write every day but I guess the more often you write, the easier it is to become used to the experience.  

https://www.google.com/search?q=Blog+services

He may associate with the wrong people

It seems to me that there are places and practices in American life that promote guilt by association. I think that I am uncomfortable with deciding that a man who had lunch with a murderer is a murderer.  I realize that an investigation might want to question what those two have in common, how many lunches they have shared, etc.  But of course, a completely innocent man or woman could have some association or other, or even several that is more or less neutral, not association in any way.  As a friend, therapist, investigator myself or a person unaware of misbehavior or the consideration of misbehavior in the future.  Recently, calls have been made for "evidence" and that is indeed what we should look for

CNN Photos of the week

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/16/world/gallery/photos-this-week-november-9-november-16-ctrp/index.html

Wausau's "Birds in Art" Show

Lynn and I visited the Birds in Art show at Yawkey Museum in Wausau, the town to the north of us.  It is a good show every year featuring paintings, drawings and sculpture of birds.  This year there is a section "The Real Decoy" of duck decoys, built to lure ducks to settle on a given pond where hunters are waiting to shoot them.  One of the works, for the first time this year, ran a magic lantern sort of machine that showed a "picture", a movie-like of birds landing and taking off. There are artists showing work from many countries.  The show is on for another week.

Practice

I recommend again reading "Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain" by Lisa Barrett and "Incognito" by David Eagleman.  Much of what we want to think about will fit nicely into our normal method of thinking.   But these two books help us to recognize when a problem is too big for our brain or when it is outside the conscious brain's area.  Eagleman strikes me as more exciting but Barrett's little book actually covers more.  Her first chapter is titled "Your Brain is Not For Thinking".  The complex busy organ is actually in charge of breathing and other operations very important for staying alive.

Besides thinking, our feelings, our emotions, our history, our training and even our allegiances effect our decisions and our actions.

Just as I was finishing these two books, we revised our kitchen layout.  A handy cloth towel used to be hung from a certain drawer but we decided that the hanging cloth would be better hung on the other side of our facet. That was more than a year ago.  I still turn to the wrong side when I have wet hands that need drying. I haven't read if older brains clasp habit more firmly.  Maybe I am just stubborn.

Superlative suspicions

I taught tests and measurements to teachers for many years.  If you want to see the book I used to teach that, look here:

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/kirby-tests-and-meas-book-grading-testing-and-instructional-format

I mention that because I read today about a man who has been collecting pencils since childhood and has hopes of setting the Guinness World Record for pencil collecting.  My background and training and teaching experience make me somewhat anti-superlative.  You know that in many cases, English adjectives come in three degrees:

In bars and masculine comparatives, we are generally interested in the "Superlative" degree, in the "BEST."

Through years of experience and study, I have developed a deep suspicion of all claims to be "the Best"in anything.  Your Best date, car, dog, president, etc., etc. may well not be mine, me being so weird and all.  You can check out the info here:

This man has been collecting pencils since 1st grade
An Iowa man holds the new Guinness World Record for the largest pencil collection. Watch this video to see how many he has!

What were those words I was told to remember?

From time to time, I have read a little of the writings of the woman Byron Katie.  She is best known as the woman who promotes what she calls "The Work", which is basically asking oneself four basic and important questions and answering them honestly.  You can find the questions that she 

uses to examine herself, her own beliefs and her life and activities on the internet with Google's help.  The other three relate to the first. I gather she uses her "The Work" questions to examine and guide herself.  I only know the first one, which is "Is it true?", asked of ideas I am focused on.

I read that Byron Katie commented that she was having the time of her life watching (and experiencing) her body falling apart.  She is 80 years old.

I saw a neurologist yesterday.  She asked me many questions about my falls and gave me a few tasks to perform while she watched me.  She said she would want to see me in six months and see how that meeting compared with yesterday's.  I have never been this age before and I find it quite interesting.

Made an immediate difference

I complained to a nurse practitioner that I was feeling weird.  She immediately suggested I try to drink 50 oz. of water a day.  That was on June 9 of this year.  I have been drinking 50 oz. of water a day in addition to normal coffee and tea besides.  The internet said that what I drink in coffee and tea counts as hydration unless I drink a whole lot of caffeinated beverages.  I don't.  Within a day, additional water gave clearly noticeable additional good feeling.  Made a quick, notable difference.

Yesterday, I was reading about stretching for health, especially at older ages. Baz Thompson and Steve Donovan's books for older people said that stretches should be held at the stretch position for 30 seconds.  I thought reaching a good stretch for a second or two was the aim. A local showed me a good stretch at the edge of a bed or chair to give my muscles some loosening and stop having a sore back.Yesterday and today, I held the stretches for "one ten thousand, two ten thousand" up to 30 ten thousand.  What a difference!  I'm doing 30 counted seconds from now on.

Forgetting the internet

I have the feeling that opening a business or expanding the advertising for an ongoing one may get the internet and web pages in mind as a way to advertise menu, prices and hours.  But it can involve specialists and computer skills that are hired from outside the business.  Quite a few businesses use Facebook pages to advertise.  What can happen is that hours, prices or menu changes need to be advertised but the staff forgets what is posted.  Along comes a customer or a traveler who looks up the facility and reads out-of-date information because the busy staff forgot about what is posted, or had no way to access and change the information and update it

Today is my 84th birthday

I only get to say or write something like that once a whole year so I am taking advantage of it.

If you are interested in CNN's Photos of the Week, here is a link:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/09/world/gallery/photos-this-week-november-2-november-9-ctrp

Hope you are having a good day.

Old guy needs up dating

I am surprised at how many years have gone by since the Korean war.  It used to be quite a bit fewer.  I am surprised at the price of quite a few items.  Their prices used to be lower.  I am told that those items are much improved these days but I have my doubts. 

It is not only me that gets out of date but ages and prices do, too.

Trying

I was driving home.  A police vehicle passed me going the other way and as soon as it did, it whipped around and red lights on it started flashing.  It was clear that he was after me.   It took a minute to find a good place to pull over.  I did and stopped, opened the glove compartment and started rooting for registration.  In my state, I also need proof of insurance.  I put my window down and the officer came up alongside the car. He looked at my documents and handed the card from my insurance company back saying it was out of date by a couple of years. I rooted again and found one that is current.

He said he could give me a ticket for speeding or a warning.  Lynn rides with me often and tells me to slow down uppity-ump times a trip.  She often says she wishes I would get a ticket.  I told the officer about her steady line of wishes and that she would like it if he gave me a ticket. I asked how much the fine would be and he said my speed dictated a fine of $175.  I said if he decided on a warning, I would give her $175 but when I offered her the money, she refused it.

I am tired of getting warnings that I ignore so I decided to get more serious.  I taped a Post-it note to the dashboard that says "Speeding?".  I am surprised at how steadily I find I am.

Let's be "correct"

I have a varied background and I often question what I am told is "correct".  That goes double for etiquette.  Lynn told me about this Facebook page and that is not serious.  I didn't see the article but she told me about it.

I set our dinner table at least every other night and I do place plates for each of us much the way this shows.  We normally have only three pieces of dinnerware each, knife (right), fork (on the left) and spoon on the right, as shown.

I had dinnerware for Scout hikes and the fork was a notable pain.  It was utterly flat, not the current curve. A flat fork slid right out of things and didn't pick them up!. I read about the fork front/back curve and its development over time.  I also read of predictions that men would use knives and sharp-tined forks to hurt each other in the 1400's when people began to place such things on the table but I haven't seen much of that these days.

No investigation

Yesterday, Lynn asked me to look into the garage.  She doesn't do something like that  frivolously so I went to the door in our kitchen that leads to the garage and looked out.  Just about the first thing I saw was a chipmunk lying totally still on its side.  It looked dead and I guessed I was going to want to pick it up and dispose of it.  It definitely looked dead but young and healthy with no external wounds or bleeding.  In similar situations I have slid a shovel under it and used the shovel to carry it to the edge of our backyard and tossing it into the trees and underbrush.  This time, I picked up the little carcass with a paper towel and carried it back to the woods.  I hurled it into the woods where it can rot and maybe serve as food for some creature, big or small.

The little body was soft and felt as though it could be alive.   There was no obvious cause of death.

Amazing Marie Curie

Curie came from a family of teachers who believed so strongly in education that her father brought home discarded test tubes from the laboratory at his school and encouraged Marie to perform experiments. Because she was a girl, she couldn't go to University. So she began studying clandestinely at what was called a "Floating University," a secret set of informal, underground classes held in Warsaw.

Today, November 7, is Curie's birthday.  Her discovery of radiation is the beginning of modern knowledge of the spectrum of electro-magnetic radiation.

Curie won two Nobel prizes, which ought to be a signal that women ought not to be barred from any sort of education. 

I owe this blog post to Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac of today, republished from Nov. 7, 2017.

Appetite, food capacity and aging

We have both found changes in our appetite and how much food it takes to fill us up.  We both eat noticeably less food for a meal.  We can't hold as much and it is often longer before we are hungry again.  

Ever since reading "Blue Zones Kitchens" by Dan Buettner and "Quench" by Dana Cohen, MD and Gina Bria, we have been more enthusiastic about eating the same food again and again and in eating fruits and vegetables with good water content.  "Quench" makes a big point of emphasizing that vegetables and fruits with good water content are better at hydrating a human body than simply drinking liquid water.  Nevertheless, I have definitely increased my water intake.  My nurse practitioner advised 50 oz. of water a day.  Like old people, she judged me drinking too little.

CNN pictures of the week 11/5

A link to CNN Pictures of the week is usually part of CNN's Five Things on Sunday.  Yes, today is Sunday!  Sometimes I feel the Pictures of the Week are too much sports and warfare but not today.  There are sports pictures and warfare pictures but there are others, too.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/02/world/gallery/photos-this-week-october-26-november-2-ctrp

Rubik's cube while skydiving

I don't own a Rubik's cube.  I read recently that a teenager set a new Guinness record for solving a Rubik's cube while skydiving.  I am confident that I won't ever set a record for doing that, even if there is also a record for the slowest performance.  I recently saw an article "Do we really need a Taylor Swift reporter?"  I am shamefully ignorant of many aspects of current life, including Taylor Swift.  I am rather ignorant of Rubik cube feats and performances.  How fast can Miss Swift solve a Rubik's cube?  There may be benefits to having more Guinness records about Rubik's cube performance and about T. Swift and about the intersections of those two foci of American life.  What is the longest time someone has drawn out a single Rubik cube performance without putting the cube being used down? Who has the warmest sympathy for Rubik's cube solvers?  Should there be record-keeping on cleverly and systematically keeping all thought and attention off the subject of cubes and of popular singers?

Different life

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/travel/european-wildlife-photographer-2023-scn-spc-c2e

https://www.cnn.com/travel/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-2023-scn-c2e-spc-intl

Lynn and I are reading "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake.  It is about the fungi and how they live.  It seems clear that there are sorts of living things that live very differently than we humans so.

I have seen (or read) that already

It is true that a book you read has not changed since you read it but you have.  The longer ago you read it, the more you have changed.  So, if you have a list of books or movies that you have read or seen, you might enjoy looking over them again.  My most fun (for me) course ever was a graduate course called "Personal Reading for Professional Development".  The students had only one assignment: Make a list of all the books you have ever read, from "The Pokey Little Puppy" to the one you are currently reading.

You might want to re-read some of them.  You might be surprised at your reaction now compared to the reaction you remember having back then.  

Education graduate students are experienced teachers and fun to work with. Many were older than I was.

The same goes for movies.  My experience has been that between Netflixs 

and Amazon, if you are streaming, you can see a surprising range of movies.

I gave a talk today using these notes

I gave a talk today using these notes.  I also mentioned:

There are many other smaller companies that can do your DNA.  A good source of information is your local librarian.  Many people have a natural fear of the results.  I recommend getting them.  Lynn and I have had ours done four times.  Over centuries, there seems to be a basic assumption on the part of many that most people are sort ordinary but a few are special or "noble". I prefer the view that most people have some special abilities, whether they know what they are or not.

Have your DNA Done

Bill Kirby

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

1. DNA banking and analysis - blog post , "Fear, Fun and Filoz"

2. "Seven Daughters of Eve" by Brian Sykes, a butler a direct descendant, current Duke isn't.

3. "10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution" by Gregory Cockran and Henry Harpending

4. "Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures" by Christine Kenneally

5. "Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project" – Spencer Wells

6. Family Tree, Ancestry.com, 23 and Me – others

7. "She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity" – Carl Zimmer

8. Many misconceptions about inheritance and descent over the years

9. Out of Africa, we are primates.

10. Libby – book borrowing – app

11. Call the Midwife (TV show on Netflix) – Mechanics of baby-making

12. YouTube – enormous virtually endless resource

13. "Genome: The Autobiography of Species in 23 Chapters" by