Much of the world is happy and tranquil but parts are very much not. I hope your area is the way you want.
This a Sunday and you can view CNN's Photos of the Week by clicking this link:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/world/gallery/photos-this-week-march-21-march-28/
As I understand it, evidence points to a time when some of my ancestors used all four of their limbs to walk and move generally. I have read repeatedly that going about on just two legs enabled animals to develop hands. You might think that having hands is nice and all, but what are we going to do with them?
The answers are surprisingly complicated. Roughly, the answer is "everything." I said to a physical therapist that I had read that back and spine problems might be less for humans if we gave up walking on two legs and returned using all our four limbs for walking but he said he didn't want to give up walking on two legs ("bipedalism"). My hearing has gotten poor and I often can't tell what someone said. People my age often find that their eyesight isn't as good as it was. People my age have memory problems, too. I try to keep pen and paper handy to write a note about something I want to remember. Those thoughts bring me to hands, using them to make notes.
Once I start thinking about hands and paying some attention to them, I realize how much I can do with them. I do use them to make the letters in this blog post. I do use them for carrying things. I do use them to pour and cut and use cutlery. I am impressed with the way my fingers and my brain cooperate in picking up and carrying several objects at once, without thinking about how to do that. It almost seems that my hands do important things on their own. There is a book "The Hand" by Frank Wilson.
I mean by "open collections", arrangements to gather or collect without any provision for capping or halting the gathering. My clothes and my pocket handkerchiefs have no lid, no top, no maximum. My Kindle books and my blog posts have no halting number. I did get informed by Google Sites that my website Kirbyvariety was close to maximum allowed size but I started Kirbyvariety2 successfully. I have a large collection of Kindle books and a large collection of posts on my blog Fear, Fun and Filoz.
One thing that I appreciate is a collection that is searchable. Often, a sign that a searching arrangement is in place is an icon of a magnifying glass:
The presence of such an icon usually means I can search for a given word or phrase and the computer will find every instance of that word in the document or collection I am searching. Sometimes, I can search for a number or a date as well.
My wife recently questioned my collection of bound, paper books. She asked if I ever use them and I admitted that the answer is "not much". Similarly, what about my collection of old shoes? Why am I keeping 18 pairs of worn-out, rejected shoes? The process of collecting is smooth and easy: the shoes I am wearing get criticized for being too old and beat-up. I buy a new pair to look more acceptable but the older pair might come in handy when my shoes get wet and need to dry. So, I add the pair to my collection. Don't worry: I do plan to get around to getting rid of some of them.
I attended an excellent presentation on Zoom today. Larry Oathout, the director of our Portage County Libraries, spoke on the modern public library and what it offers people. It is a bit hard to say what it offers. It is easier to see what you want, especially if you want to know something, to ask a librarian if you can find what you want in the library. Of course, these days, books can be found there. There are some people who don't like books. They can't read or they can't read English or they can't see. Even for such people, it could be valuable to visit the library and to learn to find its website on the internet and check that out.
Much is made these days of the "digital" services but I think maybe that word puts some people off. The digital services are also computer services but they are also tablet and smartphone services. So, if you have a smartphone like an iPhone, or a tablet like iPad or Kindle Fire, or a laptop like an Asus, there are many ways to use that device to take advantage of today's library.
The local public library has taken to loaning items you might not expect, such as a colander or tool of some sort.
She got her driving license. Of course, we older, more experienced folks realize that it is more than a license to drive a car. It is also an ID for air travel and for many other forms of accepted identification, that is, documented verification of name, age and some other variables.
We have four greatgrandchildren and two of them now have driver's licenses and are permitted to operate large, heavy vehicles that travel at high speeds. These vehicles allow drivers to reach points well beyond walking and even biking distances. Plus, cars can easily carry quite large loads that are too heavy and bulky to carry by hand.
We hope the new driver uses good sleep habits and steadily stays alert to learning what other drivers, wild animals such as deer, and road conditions are up to.
I like reading a good book. There are many in my own collection. There are many in the local library. I could buy some good ones and I have. How can I choose a good book?
There are many films we could watch on Netflix and other channel/companies. How do I choose which to watch?
I wrote my dissertation on choice theory and methods but it takes too long to list advantages and disadvantages of reading each book. I can apply those writing and judging methods to 4 or 5 candidates for reading. I can ask my wife which appeals to her.
I was impressed when my 4 or 5 year old greatgrandson was able to make a satisfying choice of videos to watch after seeing the artwork on the box.
We all do many things by "gut".
If you want to see CNN's Photos of the Week, click here.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/world/gallery/photos-this-week-march-14-march-21
My friend said that when she had just gotten her driving license, her mother asked her to get some groceries. She drove to the store and bought them. When she was putting the food away, her mother came in and said,"Oh, you're home. I didn't hear your car." Oops! Out of habit, she had carried the groceries home, leaving the car where she had parked it.
Our young friend has a 4 year old son. He is very interested in science,
especially astronomy. He has learned about black holes. She tells us that he wants to dress as a black hole for Halloween.
I have two prompts for myself to write today. They are related to each other, both having to do with modern smartphones and their use. I do own a reasonably smart phone. It is a Motorola phone, not the ubiquitous iPhone. Every time I see or hear "Motorola", I am only ten years old again, listening to The Lone Ranger on my bedroom table top radio.
In our house, we have Panasonic phones for our landline and I encourage their use, although with my deteriorating hearing, if someone calls and leaves a message, I often cannot decipher what they said to our answering machine. Many electronic tasks in a modern household are explained by instructions that assume I have a smartphone quite close at hand and am familiar with everything it can do.That idea is far from true.
I am still vibrating with excitement over email. I remember the excitement I felt in about 1990 over my discovery of email. I realize that many friends and relatives don't look at email accounts for the good reason that nothing happens in them. It's "texting", you silly old guy!
Yesterday, Thursday, March 21, 2024, is the first day in 15 or 20 years that I didn't post in my blog Fear, Fun and Filoz and I didn't notice. We went out to dinner and talked with friends there so it was a bit of an unusual evening. This morning I saw that my prompts notebook had no entry, not even the day and date for yesterday. I looked at the blog page and Wednesday, the 20th, has an entry.
If you looked for an entry for yesterday, I didn't provide one. I am sorry for me that I didn't keep up my string but I am not too tearful over it. When I have taken trips and I suspect I might not have access to the internet, I have intentionally skipped, but not plain oversight and forgetting.
I do urge keeping a blog. I think it helps notice one's own life as it happens. You can run one for free on Google's Blogspot and on WordPress. If you search, you may well find many others. If you start one, be careful about what you post.
I like to think of myself as an open-minded guy interested in "good ideas" and "progress" toward a good life. But sometimes, I see signs that don't support that picture. Sometimes, I get quite annoyed with the simple passage of time. Today is Wednesday, March 20. I just get that fact firmly in mind when the fact gets out-of-date and WRONG. It will get to be time for bed rather quickly and when I wake up in the morning, I will have to clear that fact out of my head and memorize the day as being Thursday, March 21.
I was reading about Americans who call themselves "conservative" and what people drawn to that group have said their basic beliefs are. I read that a basic belief is that a smart citizen keeps his eye on the government and works to keep it smart, unobtrusive and limited. I can't find any more obtrusive aspect of my relations with the US government than its imposition of time zones and dates. I have read that before the American development of its railroads, each town looked to the sky and took the moment the sun was at its most overhead position to be noon. So there were multiple "times" all over the place, not even considering the reliability and steadiness of clocks and time calculations. I'm a time-conscious guy, maybe even time-dominated, but I would like my government in the land of the "free" to get off my back and not change the damn date every damned day!
I am surprised to find that it is already spring!! The Spring equinox occurred hours ago!
I like to try to keep things simple so I use the 21st of certain months for the official change of seasons. But you know…. THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MEN GANG OFT AGLEY
We try to keep track of things but nature, including that of our bodies and heads, is complicated. As Pope Gregory XIII found when his astronomers had a little chat with him about the calendar. Today is the 19th, so the mental adjustments needed to accommodate when I find that it isn't Thursday as I expected aren't burdensome. It is still cold and sunny outside. I don't expect there will be riots demanding that the days be restored in 1582. I learned in graduate school that people were horrified and angry that 10 days had been removed from their lives. They angrily demanded those days be restored. The days were not "restored".
Just so you have fewer electrifying surprises:
My sister explained. She had a burglary. They came through a window. They stole her brain. I actually didn't believe her. Turns out she was referring to less speed in her memory retrieval. I sympathize with her but everyone I know who is over 80 has similar experiences. What is the name of that actress? I always like her. She was quite popular. I know I know her name but I can't get it to come to mind. It is on the tip of my tongue. I think she had an affair with that actor. She was the mother of what's- his-name.
I told my sister that there are moments when my lunch friends, all retired professors, are all sitting at the lunch table with their heads tilted back, gazing upward. They are trying to make brain juice run down to their tongue, enabling recall.
When listening to a statement, a plan, a defense, an attempt to persuade, I am often taken with the idea of changing a sentence that includes the word "the" to the word "a".
Many people in the US are naturally drawn to whatever is exciting, outstanding in some say. I guess it is a natural psychological tendency. It is difficult to state a superlative without using the article "the". Which book is your favorite? Which team will win? Which artist did you like THE most?
I am impressed with the more relaxed, less argumentative feeling that comes along with change in the little words. Which book did you like? Which team will do well? Which artist did you like? Having played with this sort of change, I have learned that it doesn't take much to invite broader, more open thinking. If I add plurals, as in Which artists did you like?, I open the door to different sorts of liking: dramatic, original, memorable, etc.
We practice being "right" with good reason. We want to be a source of useful, solid information. When I ask what book is your favorite, you are asked to scrutinize your reactions and tease which author, athlete, date, subject, food REALLY is your favorite? You have to unlease your careful comparer and weigh carefully. So you can't answer until you have carefully weighed your reactions to "Oppenheimer" and to "Barbie".
Many books, videos and other tools aim at helping people develop a helpful attitude toward life and difficulties. I recommend developing an attitude based on a life as a path of adventure. When we awake in the morning, we are beginning a day that has never been lived before. If you want, you can emphasize similarities between what happens one day and what happens another. Some people hope that the basic list of daily events doesn't change and that the quality and details of the day stay very much like what happened on other days.
But if you are old enough, you can remember what happened five or ten years ago. It may be obvious that these days are quite different. You can compare today or yesterday with days just after you were born, or as you started school or in the first days after agreeing to marry your partner.
There has never been another you with your body, your hopes and doubts, interests and fears and there never will be.
Being you is an adventure!!
I attended a L.I.F.E.round table of open discussion today. I think a rectangular table is okay. My lunch group of all retired men used to sit at a round table and after we moved to a location that didn't have one, there were some mild complaints and wishes to find one again. My hearing is worse than it was and too many statements and comments sound like the speaker has a mouthful of muffling mush. If I ask about a word I didn't get, I usually get a calm, polite repetition but I know that can get annoying.
I suspect a criminal gang, a group of scientific researchers or a family facing a monetary shortfall sit and talk in somewhat similar ways. Small groups talking together are one of humankind's main tools for solving problems and lifting spirits.
I was born in the US a while back and I am now rather old. I have been abroad some, but basically I am an American. That means in addition to my natural basic impetuosity and male readiness, I learned that a fundamental measure of life proceeding as it should is immediacy. When I type, it should be FAST! When I cook dinner, I should prepare it FAST! When I calmly sit back and enjoy the day, the moment, my life, I should get deeply in such enjoyment FAST!
I am confident that seeking, promoting immediacy has its limits and downsides. I learned from the very helpful book "Incognito" by David Eagleman (only $7 in Amazon ebooks or borrow from a library) that there is far more to me than just my mind. The important parts of me, the parts that are needed to keep alive, are often unconscious. A stethoscope can detect my heart rate and other devices can measure this or count that but many essential processes are not directly detectable nor controllable.
It is fully true that respiration, balance on just two feet, digestion and processes I am not aware of all matter to my old, wrinkled body. There are sort of inbetween factors that are mostly outside my mind but are still quiet influencers that exert some control that is difficult to notice and very difficult to modify like habits, unconscious effects of hormones, levels of fatigue.
Despite all that, not everything needs to be immediate.
At a half-time show in 2004, Janet Jackson had a moment when her left breast was exposed. I didn't actually see it happen but I heard about it. I was impressed by my first experience of hearing the incident called a "wardrobe malfunction." Something came loose, something broke and oops! Pants fell down! Breasts were exposed! Try to relax. A great many of us are males. We can "see" you without any obscuring fabric all the time. Don't purposely engineer an exposure but don't be too embarrassed either.
Elon Musk and his crew are about to launch a Space X rocket into space. They are hoping the launch goes more according to plan than the last try when their rocket suffered a "rapid unscheduled disassembly", exploding in an unwanted way at an unwanted time.
I recently re-read Robert Frost's famous poem "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening". t.ly/ZsrHA He describes driving his horse and wagon thru a woods and stopping for a moment to enjoy the scene and the sounds. He says his pony is a bit confused. They never stop at that spot. Why are they stopping? The pony shakes his harness and bells at the puzzle. That little moment of a shake has been immortalized, much like the rapid unscheduled disassembly and the wardrobe malfunction by some poetic thought and effort.
Getting deeper in the month - The days sneak into a good -sized pile very quietly. It is already nearly a third of the month gone.
Voice smart speakers - It seems that more people are finding smart speaking gadgets useful
Stephen Hawking - Hawking is the amazing British astronomer and physicist, told as a young man who developed ALS that he would die young, lived to be 76. An outstanding writer, as well
Kindle Unlimited magazines and books - I am surprised at the extent of the books and magazines that are available with Kindle Unlimited
"Look what I found, Grandad" - when my oldest great-grandson was little, he wandered our house and tried surprising and pleasing us by his "fortuitous discoveries" of things around our house
Ufology and UAP - Ufology, the study of Unidentified Flying Objects is the 1st word I have seen combining an abbreviation and the ending of "ology". UAP is still another abbreviation in our increasing use of them. Do you know F.O.M.O.? Use Google.
Mouths full of mush - my hearing is deteriorating. Many conversations sound like all speakers have mouths full of mush.
Both my wife and I are in book clubs, hers all women and mine all men. These two groups operate a little differently but both propose to their members to read a particular book a month and meet in one of their homes to discuss the book and their experience and thoughts reading it.
We have been married for a long time. When we first married, we were both interested in the crazy novels of Peter DeVries. I wanted to know when she got to a certain pivotal moment in the story so I read her the book aloud. That way, if I could read a passage clearly and not giggle or garble the words, I knew when she realized the joke or the shocking revelation. We have kept the habit of my reading aloud for a bit of most evenings.
If she has a book discussion coming up, I often read the scheduled book to her. If I have one coming up, I may read the group's selection to her, unless I have something else I am more interested in paying attention to.
I have gotten interested in seeing what recent books have made an impression on me or gotten a strong reaction or made what feels like a lasting memory that I would not have even heard of without our two reading groups. "The Bell in the Lake" by Lars Mytting is a good example of a book I liked that I read because she needed to hear it. Of course, in the case of that book or the current one (Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elisabeth Billand's History-Race Around the World), I wouldn't know about it without some unknown person in her group:
Reading the book
Liking the book
Taking the time to attend the group's procedure to recommend the book
Joining with others to vote the book onto the list
I didn't do a good job explaining yesterday. I was trying to say that IF you are selling me something, I won't do business with you by buying your product unless you subscribe to me as a shopper. A subscription to me as a customer costs $8.99 a month. I gave a fake web address for the location of a fake window to use to logon and buy such a subscription.
Every time I turn around, I find some other business that I have dealt with in the past offering a time-limited service that will only be good for a limited time, after which another payment will have to be made to keep me as a customer. I was offering in a fake way to reverse the situation and have business buy a subscription from me for my attention and purchases.
When my daughter expressed an interest in what is now called a tablet, the Apple iPad, I got interested, too. I found I used the very portable device quite often. As time went on, I had developed a strong enough habit of using the iPad, a mini version, that I tried to anticipate when my iPad was getting too old and bought a 2nd one. At that point, I had my first one, which still works despite my anticipation and the larger newer model.
I very much liked the idea of ebooks and I have a large collection of them. I didn't like getting tempted to look at the news while reading on the Ipad. I bought a KIndle reader. Then I bought another. Then I bought a third.
Sometimes, Lynn is using our office for a Zoom or Facetime meeting that I am not part of. A full-sized keyboard and a nicely powered laptop computer are my favorite computing tools but I don't always like to interrupt her to get my office computer unplugged and moved to the living room or basement. So, I have a backup in the living room and in the basement.
Just as Lynn waters house plants, all these devices need charging, too.
In 8th grade, I had a typing class. I discovered I am not a good typist. Oh, I can type at a high speed and since keyboards and electronic simulations of them are everywhere, that is a plus. However, in the class, we lost points for each error. I always had plenty of errors. I still do. I fat-finger, hitting two keys at the same time. I reach out and over-do the reach or under-do the reach. I accidentally drag a finger tip across several keys, inventing a new but useless word.
I tried electronic listening to my spoken word but the machine managed to misunderstand what I said and typed words I didn't even recognize.
I find the spell/grammar checker in Google Docs is the best one I have worked with. It and I disagree sometimes but I always know best, of course. So, I tell the app to just ignore what it labels as an error.
Both of my granddaughters are mothers of a daughter and a son. The eldest greatgrand child is in a different stage of life and to some extent, so is the youngest of the four greatgrandchildren. We find both greatgrand daughters very impressive young women. Lynn and I spent today at a local evaluation of music students interested in advancing through several contests for whole-state honors. The girl who recently exhibited in art contests also sang a solo. The girl who is an inter-state soccer player is also a tympanist and a drummer of every other sort of orchestral drum.
The artist solo singer received the highest score for her song. The many-skilled athlete got the 2nd highest score in four performances of singing and drumming that stretched throughout the day
The British Psychological Society posed the question: Is your partner the most annoying person you know? I read that just after appreciating my wife, whom I consider my partner. So I rejected the idea that she gives me the most annoyance. I try not to be annoyed by anybody or anything, but I fail, sometimes for only a second and sometimes longer. I asked my mindful self who is connected to the most annoyance I feel.
Turns out the answer is clearly "Me!" I have a broad streak of laziness in me so when I have time and opportunity to go to the store, or get gas for the car, or shelve that book I was reading, I don't. What is the matter with me? I have no good reason not to create the internal permission and motivation but I persist.
I have a memory that is chock-full (what is a chock?) of book titles and intriguing questions but I have to check what day of the week it is. It is right in this area of little items to remember that I get the most annoyance.
