Dave's Journal, Aug 2018
Deb went off to lunch with some old-time HS friends ("girls from the 'hood" she calls them), and despite the 92deg + sunny + humid weather, I trek'd to an outdor museum of sculptures. Been there years back, and heard they have fallen on hard time, so I went to check it out.
Yep, they have fallen on hard times.
Not a lot to see, sadly. A bunch of summer camp groups picnicking on the lawns and in the woods. I wandered around for about 30 minutes, felt sorry for them, and drove off.
Hopefully the $12 admission fee they squeezed out of me will help turn things around for them {/sarcasm}.
You will have to study this and think (yikes!)
Did a quick trip to the Italian car show. It was wicked hot, sunny and sticky. Kind of drained your energy. But some nice classics there. I was not too much in the mood for Italian muscle cars today - enjoyed the classics.
Well, let's sneak in a muscle car anyway .....
It was 1953 and I was 8; we lived on the 2nd floor on 18th street in Grandma Leo's house.
I specifically remember seeing this movie on two successive Saturdays, after having pleaded with Mom for 50¢ the second time.
I have loved the movie through these decades. It's not a very complicated storyline and even an 8-year-old knew how it would end. Especially when they said "rocket with nuclear isotope" or something like that, and we watched Lee Van Cleef go up the roller coaster to take the shot.
Science: a fathom is 6 feet, so 20,000 fathoms = 120,000 feet. Each 33 feet underwater = 1 added atmosphere of pressure, so 120,000 feet under water = a pressure of ..... 53,454 pounds/square inch (psi). (The atmospheric pressure where you are right now is 14.7 pounds/square inch.)
Fact Check: The deepest point under the ocean on Earth is actually only 36,070 feet (about 6000 fathoms).
The 8 year old Dave in me suddenly feels betrayed and deceived.
To avoid capsizing, bodies should stay low in the hull, especially if you intend to make any lateral rocking movements.
Take some basic precautions. First, make room. Stow your paddles, handle ends down, behind the stern seat. Take out the removable center thwart, if there is one; you don't want to get stuck under it in the event of a flip. . . . .
To maintain balance, relax your body. Let your hips roll with the canoe . . . . Be mindful of the fact that sound carries particularly well across still water.
To avoid someone rushing to rescue you, keep some body parts visible above the gunwale. A canoe with nobody in it raises alarm.....
Beginners should try such activities only on still water.
You may decide to remove your life jacket, which is probably fine as long as you're a capable swimmer.
Before disrobing, consider that black flies and mosquitoes are most active around twilight.
Just so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of hundreds of other 2018 car pictures, this is my favorite picture from this summer's cars. Not exactly a "car picture" but anyway I'm really happy with it, and I thank the anonymous lady who stuck her face in there as I hit the shutter button (she made the shot!)
We laugh at the absurd cost of living in NYC .... don't laugh too loud. This parking space on a back alley street in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood is on the market for $345,000.
A few years back, one sold for $500,000.
This will be hard to explain clearly.
What started me down this train of thought was getting used to the sounds and voices that are produced by my cochlear implant.
Early on, I tried to diligently listen to the implant sounds and think intently to figure them out. I did very poorly at that. I just could not figure them out. So I kind of gave up and "let it flow". Before I knew it, it all came together by osmosis or something. My brain just figured it out by itself. Just as a child's brain figures out what words are without any help from the child (who can't explain things to its brain because he/she has no vacabulary yet). It is just amazing how that happens.
For many years (decades actually) I've been aware that my initial reaction to anything and everything is that the thing is a threat to the balance / equilibrium of that moment in my life (maybe a very mild threat, but still a threat). This is not a conscious reaction. My conscious reaction is "okay, let's go with it, this is fine, looks like fun", but my brain has already decided that this thing is a threat and I have to reason with it (my brain) and calm it down. This is weird when you think about it. *I* have to talk *me* into or out of a response, and change my (?) own mind.
There's a scary kind of duplicity to this conflicted process.
I have to tell my brain ..... "You are just paranoid, push passed it and let's go on to the next step".
Come to think better on this, I have some examples of the idea that "my brain has a mind of its own".
The flash fiction stories that I wrote when I first retired (http://davesjournal.net/FlashFiction.html) - true that I typed them, but they were dictated in streams of fantasy that my brain was making up as it raced along. I did not consciously proceed thoughtfully through those stories. I just typed them.
Also, my complete journal page for August 2011 - same thing. I just typed what my brain dictated in rapid fire thoughts. If *I* (and not my brain) had deliberately thought about those ideas, they never would have been written.
A quote from a short story that I am coincidentally reading this afternoon:
"He forced his tongue into action, trusting that it would say something on its own accord; without any help from him."
I wish the people (who should be) running this country would shut up, stop pissing on each others shoes and make some compromises and deals and apply real solutions to real problems.
It's not going to happen (considering the morons involved), but I needed to get that off my mind this morning.
Have a good day.
(Gloria Swanson / Sunset Blvd)
Okay, a motorcycle is not good for me, but there is a credible option ......
If we had to send a spaceship full of people out to find and then colonize another habitable planet, how many people would we have to put on board to get that to work?
From the University of Strasbourg ....
The number Marin came up with is 98. Just 98 healthy people would be needed to operate the ship over many generations and to set up a healthy (non-inbred) population on another world, he estimates. That number holds even for his test case of a space ark mission lasting more than 6,000 years, although he allows for the population aboard the ark to grow over time - up to about 500, perhaps.
The implications of this finding go far beyond the sorts of spaceships we might be able to build in another century or two. "Our results apply to any enclosed environment where emigration and immigration are not possible . . . . The same elements are essential for any self-sustaining colony, so our code can easily compute the survival rate of a group of humans after a local or global catastrophe as well."
Me: Why do I have to finish college. The paper says that NYC garbage men make $16,000 / year with overtime, and engineer graduates only make $10,000 / year.
Dad: Okay, drop out and become a garbage collector.
Me (thinking): Hmmmm .... he has a point there.
Arguably the most enduring "monster" franchise ever (but let's not forget the many incarnations of werewolves and vampires).
Not arguably . . . it is a DVD of Godzilla's adventures (one of many that I have) that I grab when I need to "return to GO", shutdown and restart (what is left of) my mind.
Cousin Pete sent me the trailer to Godzilla 2019, and of course I watched it knowing that trailers are always 10X better than the actual movie. And the last few G movies were disappointing (was G even in the last G movie ???).
The problem is ..... us old guys (who were there way back when) are not the target audience for the next summer blockbuster Godzilla movie. It's the millenium kids who are the new audience. And , I gotta ask .... what do 20 year olds know about Godzilla ? or Mothra ? or .... (pick a classic monster). Answer: they don't know jack sh#t (but they do drop the $$$ at the box office).
So .....
What to do ..... what to do about our classic movie monsters ? Leave them where they are or make stupid cheap overblown CGI movies, cash in and bail out?
Or (my vote) prove me wrong and make a great new Godzilla movie.
Sunday morning NYTimes article about dying, that is somewhat uplifting. "Strange", you may think, but read on. (I'm just clipping snips from it.)
Over lunch, Helene describes the complicated logistics of dying in Paris. They're a lot like living in Paris. She was terrified of dying in August, when Parisians are on vacation, so "at my burial there would be one dog and three people." She was relieved when a funeral planner promised that he'd refrigerate her until September.
She has drawn up a guest list for her memorial service - called a ceremonie d'adieu - and selected an "elegant" crepe de Chine dress to wear for it. She had hoped to be cremated afterward and then sprinkled into the Seine, but "with this stupid and authoritarian state, you don't have the right to do what you want with your ashes."
She decided to have them buried instead, but she discovered that funeral plots in Paris are scarce: The city receives 5,000 requests annually, for 150 plots. One city official is in charge of who gets in. There is plenty of room in the suburbs, but for Helene, "that was absolutely out of the question. Me, I want Montparnasse," the cemetery in southern Paris that holds luminaries including Charles Baudelaire, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Helene takes out her phone and together we admire a snapshot she took of the grassy, sun-dappled plot that she would like to get, though she's not allowed to reserve it. "I hope that between now and September, no one is going to take this place," she says.
Helene's insights are modest: Don't confuse your own joys and preferences with anyone else's. Observe your own mind and experiences carefully and arrange your life - and your death - accordingly.
"That's it," she says quietly. "It's to try to find a truth that is really yours, nothing but yours. And not to act out of conformism." By doing this, she has reached the pinnacle of female Frenchness: She's une femme libre - a free woman.
"What if you're still alive in September?" I ask, hopefully.
"Please don't wish that for me," she replies. She detests being dependent, and she can't be cured.
"I hope you'll come to my funeral," Helene says, walking over to embrace me before I leave.
I tell her the truth: I wouldn't miss it.
New Yorker: Dave, you have been reading the New Yorker since, when, that'd be 1963 if we recall.
Dave: Yes. It's always been my #1 source for great, literate writing and intelligent humor.
New Yorker: But we notice you're letting your subscription expire. Why?
Dave: Honest?
New Yorker: Honest
Dave: Today's New Yorker devotes too many covers, cartoons and pages to your political opinion, and I'm sick and tired of reading people's political opinions. I can stand a bit of it now and then, but not pages of it every issue.
New Yorker: So, you disagree with our view of the current adminsitration ?
Dave: No, I agree, I'd say with 90% of what you write. I'm just tired of it.
I get it. You get it. We all get it. What's the point of trimming the wonderful writings that used to be in every issue with editorials? That's not what kept me reading for the last 55 years.
New Yorker: We're trying to stay relevant and meaningful in a turbulent world.
Dave: The world is not any more turbulent today than it ever was. The world hasn't changed much, but the magazine has. And I'm sad about this.
Cruising Youtube on the porch today, I stumbled into stories of "local heroes" and "restored faith in people" and I remember something Deb did a long time ago. We were in a team triathalon; Deb was an outstanding swimmer (swam a mile every morning before work). I did the bike ride and Sue ran.
Swimmers went out first, tagged the bike racer who tagged the runners.
So .... Deb comes in way behind her time. Like *way* behind her time. Like *last* !!
We ignore it for the moment and pressed on as fast as we could.
Turns out that another swimmer (friend of Deb's) panicked in the water (it was really chaos with all the swimmers charging in and thrashing in a tight group). Her friend panicked and was in trouble. Deb went back, calmed her down and talked her into waiting for everyone else to go ahead, get out of the thrashing, and they swam together in back of everyone.
I forgot that event until a few minutes ago. Dug into my shoebox archive and found the pictures up above.
This was a "first" for us, after talking about it for years. Took the commuter rail from in-town here, 45 miles into Boston. Excellent trip. Saved me from driving 35 miles into the Alewife train station (which I have been doing for years), then taking the Red Line another 10 miles into Boston.
Sat upstairs, enjoyed watching the towns go by. No driving stress for me. Both of us got the 50% senior rate, so the cost was not much higher than driving & parking.
We didn't do much in Boston. Cruised through the Italian North End and saw them getting ready for The Feast of St. Anthony this weekend. Had lunch there. Walked along the harbor to South Station, took the Red Line back up to the commuter train (where we connected with Mike), then back home.
Little tricky on the trip back, stumbling over the express train vs. the local train. Turns out, Mike saved the day, and ran from his office (really ran - heart racing ran !!) to meet us just as the train pulled into the station, and we all rode home, while Mike explained the secrets of riding the commuter rails out of the city.
Definitely how I will get into the city from now on.
(Twice her weight !!!)
Stumbled around Youtube today, as it is 100deg and muggy. Even hotter outside !! Found these guys cooking this breakfast for 3 ? - yes 3 !!
Thought of a few heart attack and cardiologist jokes.
Then I got curious about peoples' diets around the US and the longevity, region by region. This does not look good (from a life expectancy POV) for southern cooking !!
Very delicious & Good for your happiness - you bet. But you know they say "Temptation and Death lean on your doorbell.
I am so bored. He's asleep. I mean his body is alseep. His pulse and respiration are in snooze mode; his body lies here motionless. Doing nothing. "Rest & recharge" is what you'd call it when a body does this.
But, brains recharge a lot faster than bodies do. I'd say in two, maybe three hours, and we up and start thinking again. Bad thing is, when bodies sleep, we brains get no sensory input (sights, sounds, etc) that we can think about. The screen is blank, the audio is off, the kitchen is quiet, there's no wind, no birds, no odors in the air. Just nothing. And here we are, wanting to think about something.
Which is why we make up dreams. Snatching random emotions and fragmented experiences that we had stashed away (as squirrels burying nuts), we make up new stories, simply because we are bored, in the dead of night, with nothing better to do.
We write our most imaginative stories when left alone like this at night, but when at last the bodies are recharged and wakening, we erase our stories and get on with the day ahead.
That's Rachel and Loretta out there picking crops for some home-made pies and other cookin's. Say what you want about rural mountain life, but this is not bad whatsoever.
