In for the long haul

In a sleepy town long ago, a man and his wife lived in peace.  At least, that was the outside point of view.  The man thought his wife, for no reason, was always on his case about getting more work, about shirking duty, about everything going wrong because of lack of activity, blah, blah, blah.  One day, the man decided to take a walk away from the house to give himself a reprieve from the constant hounding he received.  On the walk, he encountered some men bowling in the hills close to his house.  He participated, and all the while he was drinking their ale.  Soon, he fell fast asleep.

Of course, the tale is Rip Van Winkle written in 1819 by Washington Irving.  Most people know the next part.  Rip woke up 20 years later.  His wife had died.  His son by his same name was the official Rip Van Winkle of the small, sleepy town.  He missed the buildup to the Revolutionary War.  He missed the actual fighting of the war.  The picture of King George in the town's tavern had been changed to George Washington.  Rip was no longer recognizable because his beard had grown a foot longer during the 20 year interval.

 I think of this tale because some days I think on my rather simplistic childhood days and compare it to the present.  I grew up in my earliest years before color television had been discovered, before FM was a possibility on the radio dial, before interstate highways had made it from drawing board to reality, before the locally family owned soda fountains had been replaced by MacDonalds and Burger Kings, and before integration was the law of the land for schools and colleges.  Beatniks was a viable word; the non-party line phone had only been available a few years; an all electric house was as rare as central air conditioning; and power steering in a car was a luxury feature.

If I make the simple comparison between childhood and later adulthood, it's as if I have missed a forty year period of time.  Most of my food comes from a microwave or restaurant rather than the kitchen table, and everything else is controlled or accessible by my smart phone in place of going places and talking to people or doing things.  My own children don't recognize the words beatnik, party line phone, window unit, or soda fountain.  I could swear my beard is a foot longer and the space between Eisenhower's picture and Obama's has enough room for 9 other pictures.  What's that about?

The end of Irving's tale shows the townspeople finally recognizing Rip Van Winkle and being a bit envious of his luck in having missed a considerable period of time of taking a drumming by his wife and  the turmoil the Revolutionary War caused.  Thankfully, though, the time between my simplistic childhood days and my later adulthood are not unconscious years.  The turmoil of the years experienced have given me perspective in life which I would rather have than blissful ignorance.  And, I would rather have the pockets of months that have made life beautiful and given me vitality than trade them for a million years of sleeping.  As appealing as Rip Van Winkle is for some people, I am fully satisfied with being conscious for my life.  I even have faith that my future still holds some great enjoyment.

Beauty of recall

What a wonder it is to watch the night skies!  And what stories those stars do tell.  Tonight I am reminded of Pleiades, made up of 7 stars and located not far from Orion's belt.  Sometimes it is seen as a haze, sometimes as very distinct stars.  One of the 7 stars is called Alcyone, and it is around this star that the Mayans claimed that the Earth's solar system revolves.  As far-fetched as that sounds, astronomers have actually hypothesized that the Earth's sun has a twin star that it revolves around.  These scientists haven't been able to identify the twin yet, but who knows, it could be Alcyone.

Be that as it may, the Mayans claimed that someone from Alcyone gave them their knowledge of the stars.  That also sounds far-fetched until a person ponders the kind of precise knowledge the Mayans had, reflected in the alignment of certain temples to the cycles of Venus and the configuration of their temples to the Pleiades.  This precision gives one pause.  Consider that their calendar is built around three cycles: Earth years, Venus' alignment with the Earth and its transit schedule with the sun, and a 26,000 year cycle of alignment among Venus, Earth, the sun, and the black hole in the center of the Galaxy.  I stand amazed that they could understand the workings of the heavens without telescopes, spacecraft, or advanced mathematics.

I truly marvel at their understanding.  The Mayans depended on the cycles for their daily lives - for water, for crops, for beliefs, for community, and for travel.  I can appreciate that dependency in two ways.  I love its consistency, and I love its beautiful symmetry.  I identify also because my own well being depends on an alignment of sorts.  I need the beauty of pleasant recall to make it through the shorter cycles of my life: the cycle to combat troublesome times, to contemplate enjoyable times, to track the roller coaster times, and to laugh amidst austere times.  I do as the Mayans and celebrate once and a while those alignments at the beginning and end of cycles.  Many of the great visuals I have available in recall come from one great time period of vitality, that  once-in-a-26,000-year alignment.  It's my Pleiades, my Alcyone, around which my contentment revolves.

Reflection

"The question is, 'Does literature reflect culture or does it influence culture?'"  Those words were posed in my American novels class years ago to get the discussion started.  Since the 1700s in England, the people rather than the scholars began enjoying reading.  This was partly due to DeVere's popular plays with the commoners a century before (known as the Shakespearean corpus) and partly due to the rise in popularity of the newspaper beginning with the Tatler.  The Romantic Age writings of the time presented themselves because the people liked them 75 years before the name of the era was used and despite Alexander Pope's proclivity to use Greek and Latin classical literature.  Scholars have decided to name Pope's period Neoclassicism after the content he liked to write about, but the people read the authors who were writing Romantic themes.

However, the people prevailed... and for a long time (at least in literary age terms) Romantic themes continued. There was a bit of a shift in what Romanticists wrote about halfway through the period scholars have assigned to them, but even by the advent of the Victorian Age literature of the 1830s, Romanticism was still in the air of some of the writings.

Romanticism has been singled out because it was the historical point where the people read what they wanted to even though other literature was being produced.  Up to this point in history, literature had been the domain of the rich who had chosen to write what they wanted the people to read.  After the 1700s, people began to choose for themselves what they wanted to read.  Charles Dickens was a good example of the new power of the reader.  He is only known today because the people responded overwhelmingly to the nonromantic themes he offered.  He wrote under a pen name at first because he was embarrassed to try introducing a new theme not favored by the likes of Keats.  So, the new authors reflected the desires of the people.

It is still that way.  Schools may teach so-called great literature.  But, when all is said and done, it is the people and their consumer dollars that determine what gets read.  It was the people who supported the books of Hemingway and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald; they couldn't get enough of Poe, Twain, and Thoreau.  Readers of the 1800s and for three quarters of the 1900s chose what they wanted to read.  It didn't influence them, it reflected them.

In the 1970s, the format for storytelling began to change to viewing from reading, but even so, it was truly consumer driven.  Baby Boomers chose to end the pessimism of 1900s Postmodernism, opting to pay to see and read several new themes.  They loved the edge, the risky, the physical, and the real.  Following them, the next generation seemed to enjoy the real well enough, but wanted to add a touch of their own.  They liked themes of polar opposites: the elite and the underdog, the successful and the struggling, the glamorous rich and the despondent addict.

Reflection, not influence, is the rule of the day.  Modern storytellers follow the dollars.  They publish and produce stories that consumers will pay for.  No longer is the story in the domain of the wealthy or educated elite.  It is in the court of those willing to pay the cost of a ticket or to tune into a movie channel for a second run.

I know this is true of my own story.  What I choose to pay hard earned dollars to see (although I do read some) reflects my values... my hope that life will yield contentment... my faith that life will deliver its most enjoyable moments.

It'll be just fine

Inventions, discoveries, and resulting new philosophies change the world every so often.  People who lived among the saber tooth tigers, sloths, and woolly mammoths had to band together to bring one down.  Their artifact spears tell the tale.  But, then the ice age happened.  The big animals were wiped out.  So the people decided to not travel in tribes around the countryside looking for game, but to congregate up and down the banks of rivers.  Eventually, the population of the River Valley Civilizations outstripped the amount of space needed, so they spread out along the trade routes developed between the civilizations.  When writing was developed it seemed to help in making land transactions, recording epic tales, and in journaling the deeds or chronologies of their kings.  Math concepts were not far behind.  Then the heavens yielded their secrets.  Transmission of information, written and visual has most recently changed the world because paper is not necessary.  Records, therefore, are stored differently; anyone can see records with the right passcodes or if the author makes it public.  What's next?

The history of humanity has been exciting.  I would love to have been around right after the eruption of Mount Toba when the human race was reduced to under 10,000 people on the Earth's face.  I would have thought it fascinating to see how people moved about and cooperated during the last Ice Age.  I would have wanted to be present at the building of the Sphinx.  I would like to see one battle that a Roman regimen fought.  I would love to have watched King John sign the Magna Carta.  Meeting Ben Franklin would have been a pleasure.  Being a recipient of the world Steve Jobs touched has been a privilege.  Who or what will appear next?

Since the decades of my own life resemble that of humanity's ages, it means that something new and exciting is yet to come.  I would love that to happen.  I know those big changes happen only every so often.  But, surely over the next couple of decades...  I don't have a periscope, but anticipation tells me I might like it just fine.

Your hand, please

Conceit

Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and the love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand.

Maya Angelou (2003);

The literary term conceit is a metaphor whose comparison is more complex than the simple comparison of most metaphors.  So by naming her poem the literary term, Angelou is telling the reader that there is more than something simple here.  If the title is merely sarcasm of the types of poems people normally write (as stated in the stanza saying that others could have the poetry about love lost), then the poem fails in being complex.  So, what is meant?

Angelou is wanting to go beyond what is normal.  Those who love, write poetry about their loved one or their experience of love, especially lost love.  But, she wants to ensure that she is not writing about love lost.  She wants to be above words.  Others can have the privacy of their words.  She wants the active love in addition to the verbal love.

The poem starts and ends the same way... almost.  The first line has no punctuation.  It anticipates explanation.  However, the last line ends with a period.  The explanation is finished.  It is time for love... at least by invitation.  Extending an invitation should be simple.  But this invitation is more complex than merely asking for your hand and is best understood through a play on words.  The expression of love through the rage of poetry is compared to a higher expression of love: rising above the rage.  The pun on rage is intended.  Normally, people cathardically spill their rage (anger) by scribbling off a few lines; they should rise above it.  And, the invitation extends to escaping the fashionable (rage) response - jilted love.  She doesn't want to be a casualty of either anger or fashion.  Angelou is asking the one she loves to make room for her - escape with her.  

So... give me your hand.

Living in temperate places

The Earth has two poles, and both are extremely cold places to live.  Humans have decided not to tackle living in the extremes.  They have opted for all the places in between, especially the temperate zones.

Inside every person are two poles of realization about living.  One is represented by T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men. He very pessimistically penned the words representing his world:

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.

The other pole is represented by the psychological notion that what we think of ourselves in the world is what we actually become in the world, also known as inner self talk.  This notion was put forth by Albert Ellis in the form of an ABC model (A is an activating event, B is one's belief as a result of A, C is the consequence of B).  Eldon Taylor has commercialized this model in his work with subliminal messages, helping people create a robust belief in themselves.  He tells them that through positive inner talk they can achieve what they desire or alter their mode of operating.

Most of us have decided to live according to realizations of our own somewhere in between the extremes of the Hollow Men, where nothing counts for anything and the world ends "with a whimper, not with a bang," and the positive inner self talk, where the world is merely a reflection of the perception of ourselves.  Those poles are too extreme to live at; it's much more temperate between them... and I'm satisfied with that.

False measures

The exercise was to define success.  The audience was a group of adults who had never attended public schools with one exception.  They all defined success in terms of performance, determination, or hard work with the exception of the person who had attended public school.  That person defined success in terms of high grades leading to success in the workplace.

That's very troubling to me, not because I think that those who make high grades aren't successful but because the correlation between high grades and success can't be made statistically unless there is a clear definition for the term.  If something can be defined, it can be measured, and if it can be measured, then some conclusions can be drawn.  I suppose a person could survey a large number of people and find out what factors surface most often in their definitions of success, but that would still pose problems in measuring it since the factors would have to be weighted according to their frequency in the surveys.  As it stands, it's just as likely that drinking sodas is a factor in success as it is that grades or anything else are a factor.

If success can't really be defined, then it leads to another question about the message public schools are sending with their grading systems.  If grades led to success, then I would say, "Grade away."  But if success is some nebulous idea, then I say that grades don't show progress toward anything except the percentage of retention in the short term for a subset of skills.  If stamina is a contributing factor to success, then measure stamina.  If determination is a factor, measure it.  If ability to solve problems is a factor, then students need to develop that ability.  If oral communication is a factor, then measures should include that.

Giving an average of grades taken over a subset of skills disconnected from the package called success doesn't measure what is contained in the definitions I received for the word.  It's high time to halt the practice of equating grades with success.  Even if grade averages accidentally were the right measure  of academic success in some explainable way, a quantum leap still exists in correlating academic success to what adults define as success. 

If we want more successful people in society, we need to define that concept and reshape what we tout as paramount in our schools.  What IS measurable in the business world is the amount of money it takes to reeducate young people in what businesses expect people to know.  They could use some help from those in charge of educating our youth in the first place with teaching and measuring what counts in the workplace.

Behind and ahead

In the early days of recorded history, people looked at the skies and saw that the stars rotated, that the sun rose in the morning and set in the evening, and that the days were longer in summer, shorter in winter.  There are monuments built by them that highlight the solstices, rotation of the stars, and their understanding of the days of the year.

Thousands of years passed, and finally, in the Middle Ages, people figured out that the Earth revolved and rotated, the sun was the center of the universe, that the 8 planets also revolved around the sun as the Earth did, and that the moon controled the Earth's tides to a large degree.

A few hundred more years passed.  Then, people figured out how to calculate distances in space. They also discovered that the stars represented other solar systems, ours was just one of many, that galaxies existed everywhere, that black holes and white holes served as mechanisms to destroy and birth stars, that galaxies were on the move toward each other, destroying each other, that galaxies were connected by a solar type of matter that appeared like thread, and much more.

I'm thinking that as we learn to terraform and populate Mars and learn to travel beyond the solar system we now inhabit, that we will continue to be spellbound and  unravel the great mysteries that will have arisen from our knowledge.  An astronomer working for NASA was interviewed about all of our current exploration, including the search for a habitable planet like Earth in galaxies far away.  She said, "If we ever find an Earth-like planet somewhere else, it will profoundly change the way we look at the skies."

I guess our own lives are microcosms of the journey civilization has taken with the skies.  We are trained to reason a certain  way until we are about 30 before we start exploring on our own.  Then, we learn the world around us so well that we began to manipulate it to our advantage.  Eventually, we discover the more accurate truths about living and change our thinking to match our new knowledge.  But, there's that one pending piece of knowledge, that if discovered, will profoundly change our thinking.

I have changed my thinking already... a lot... along my way.  But I also know of an Earth-like planet that exists in a sphere outside of mine.  If I ever get there, it will profoundly change the way I look at and live life.

There's always something

The island bustled with the activity of all of its 200  residents.  They were busy getting their wares set up for the tourists to buy because they represented a number of different countries and quite a few states from across the nation, thus a great opportunity for money to be made.  The wares being sold weren't cheap.  They weren't trinkets.  The island was 5 miles around the perimeter.  Bicycle riding was the main mode of transportation for both tourists and residents.  People had gathered to soak in Atlantic beauty as it washed up on a rocky coastline.  Other islands dotted the view all the way around the coast of the one at the center of the view.

That was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, idyllic really.  I look at those pictures from time to time so that I will remember the feeling of utter relaxation.  One notable memory, though, marred the otherwise celestial scene...  all that oceanic majesty was enjoyed by one person, not shared by two.

Life presents circumstances that are many times so cruel.  I think that is supposed to make a person stronger somehow, or perhaps clearer headed so that a strategy can be developed for not allowing the circumstance to happen again.  I'm sure, though, that the angst created is greater than the spectacular vista and the lesson to be learned.  I find myself still shouting at the gulls circling the waves crashing into the 20 feet sheer sides of the stony bluffs, "No, no, no!"

Keeping that edge

Writers all have something that drives them to write for others who read their work.  Their motivations are many, but they will tell you that they need that reason to drive them because they normally don't finish their work in one sitting.  They rely on something to keep them coming back to the computer to type until they get finished.  And we're all glad they do because a little something for everyone's interests are contained in those books.

That's a pretty good analogy for the way life is.  Some days are hard to get up for.  But, we all know we have to, and it's nice to also perform at a decent or high level while we're up for the day.  But what keeps us going day after day?  Something drives us; perhaps, someone inspires us.

And if we ever lose that reason, that person... well... it's not pretty.  For writers, the story turns south or doesn't get completed.  In life, one's edge is lost, and that works itself into many different endings.

What a long night

There is an American saying, "the night is the darkest right before dawn."  For the most part, that is true literally and figuratively. Sometimes life intensifies before catching a break.  But I do rely on the fact that around the corner darkness breaks.  A more poetic version of the above saying is, "as sure as the night follows the day, so day breaks at the end of each night."  I'm not thankful for the first part of the cycle, but when that part of the cycle is in force, I do count on the truth of the second part of the saying.

I'm waiting on the turn of the Earth for the hint of the sun's rays.

Different Worlds

"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write." H.G.Wells

 Well, that's what I was thinking too.  Apparently, though, there is another school of thought.  I volunteered to "crunch" numbers for a cause that the executive director of a charity could use to make herself and her cause look very good.  Nope, she didn't bite.  She had a different perception of statistics.

"Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted."

Albert Einstein 

OK.  But I don't want to hear any moaning and groaning when suddenly things unravel and the things that should have been counted weren't, and the things that counted weren't.  Signiificance, trends, central tendencies, growth, and decline can be known factors.

Oh well.  I tried.  For free even.  But I think she thought I was arrogant or didn't really know what I was talking about.  Even if the first part was true, she should have looked past the attitude for the benefit to her.  She'll never know whether the second part was true or not since she couldn't ever understand that my offer contained something besides the raw numbers she was presenting in a table and calling statistics.

 

The two of us live in different worlds.  She wants to marvel at numbers.  I want to know what the numbers mean.  It's a matter of efficient citizenship to me.

First blood

USA Today carried an article two days ago of a survey taken.  I need to read the full survey before making too many comments.  And, a survey is the softest kind of statistical data to base too many predictions on, but I do want to comment on the direction the percentages suggest.

The article was about companies' hiring practices in the U.S.  Companies are still hiring people in the baby boom generation over younger generations for two reasons: 1) they are more reliable, and 2) they don't have to be reeducated to have good communication skills.  That's not as surprising as the pecentages given for reason 2.  Companies had to retrain 5 times as many younger workers as baby boom workers in the area of communication.

On one hand the percentage is surprising.  It is not often that the business world opts for older workers over younger workers.  On the other hand, it was predictable.  Jane Healy's book Endangered Minds was one of the first to speak of young people's "fuzzy grammar" in 1991.  Many people then and since have noted the effects of teaching to tests in favor of presenting a non-uniform, robust curriculum transferable to unpredictable situations.  Over the last decade, that fuzzy grammar group has begun and is continuing to come of age.  That's good news for baby boomers... at least for the moment.

The other side of the coin will take place soon, but certainly no later than the death of most of the baby boomers.  Communication will adjust itself to whatever the younger generations want it to be.  And that is the point of this blog.  The survey supports the idea that the major forms of communication are about to change.  Judging from the amount of You Tube activity, even for education, the amount of video consumption from TV to cell phone, the format of tracking one's life through pictures and short video clips through many formats including Picaso and Facebook, and the advent of holographic transmission, communication form has no choice but to be transformed.

Reading and writing are being phased out.  It's beginning to show up now in statistical data, not anecdotal data.  Soon more quantitative studies will surface showing the same trends that the survey showed.  Dinosaurs take note.  The KT boundary is now being put in place separating the Old World from the New. 

Quantifying satisfaction

In baseball, many a batter has envied a batting average of 200 or better.  Pitches come in fast and low, sometimes fast and high.  Pitches curve from left to right and from right to left.  Balls come straight for the corner of the plate, then tail off.  Sometimes the pitches change up and come in more slowly than anticipated.

That's why it is enviable to hit more than 200.  Every ball a batter hits, counts.  It increases the average by a small fraction of a point.  That translates into about a point and a half for each hit a batter is lucky to connect with.  An average of 250 is even harder to achieve.  Batters would love to have that average and work extremely hard to achieve it.  Not many actually do.

200 is written as .200.  It's a percentage - 20%.  That's not much.  Such an average fails in school.  One would expect a professional who gets paid millions to do much better than hit and become a base runner 20% of the time or even 25% of the time.  Occasionally, amazing players come along and put 250 to shame, hitting 3 out of 10 pitches.  A person in a business who showed up for work everyday but only was productive 30% of the time would go bankrupt or be fired.  An accountant who only made right decisions about numbers 30% of the time would retain no client.

But, context is everything.  3 out of 10 is what I am shooting for right now. I will come by all I've wanted if I but only achieve 300.  I'll outstrip the 200s and 250s by excelling to 300.  30% and I'll be the most satisfied person alive.

Savoring the flavor

Among my vices is good ole fried chicken.  I call it a vice because it is not really the best food for me to be eating.  It raises my cholesterol level immediately and adds three pounds to my weight.  Working out removes the effects well enough, but it takes twice the number of exercises or daily walks to accomplish that removal.  So, I don't eat it often, certainly not as often as my taste buds create the craving.

Fortunately, I can spare an extra cholesterol spike or a couple of pounds on the body every once in a while so that deprivation doesn't drive me completely crazy.  And fortunately, in life I have a hint enough of fried chicken experiences to keep me from wasting away with the diet that is required to keep me getting up in the mornings.  Just that hint of beautiful visuals in my mind's eye sets my mouth to watering every time.

Non-plused

Headlines about education in today's newspaper were supposed to be sensational - and would have been if the year was 1990.  The Secretary of Education announced that the day of the physical, bound textbook would be over with the next adoption of any subject's textbook.  In 1990 for sure that would have been absolutely sensational.  In 2000 the announcement would have been notable and admirable.  But, in 2012?

In my world in the last week alone, I never wrote one word other than my signature.  I typed everything I sent or used.  The files I typed were either saved to a resident hard drive or to a drive in the cloud.  I transferred money and checked balances at three different banks electronically.  Everyone I needed to contact for some reason or another by written word was sent an email or a text.  I made a presentation to a group of people during which I projected a YouTube interview, typed live feedback into a Power Point program, then showed pictures for ideas from a website suited for that purpose.  I read correspondence from my doctor and saw a table detailing results from blood work done on a website the hospital uses for all of its patients.

And, of course, last week I used the handiest device yet invented.  The news I receive daily was not on my driveway in the mornings, but on my phone whenever I had time to read.  I also took a poll from my phone for USA Today and a split second later saw the results of voting from my city, state, and nation.  I received pictures of people important to me by phone and attended a song writing session via Skype with my cousin.  When I picked up prescriptions from the pharmacy, I knew they were ready because I had received a text message saying so along with the amount.  To pay for them I signed an electronic pad authorizing insurance coverage.  I had to buy a motor for my dryer this week also.  When I paid the amount at the end of the service call, the repairman took out a white square card reader, attached it to his phone, swiped my card, had me sign his screen, and sent an sent a receipt automatically to my email account.  A little later, my granddaughter sat in my lap, and we watched my phone screen as I streamed in an episode from Disney's Snow White.  And, I did use my phone  to make a phone call, but I never dialed a number.  I touched the name or picture of someone or pressed a linked phone number. 

I'm pretty sure the good Secretary lives in the same world.  So, he knows that his announcement today is really an announcement that is at least one decade late, two in my opinion.  So, his words were not even important or relevant for 2012.  Now, if he had said that the new textbooks would be readable from an app on a phone or a television, then I might have taken notice.  If he had remarked that the schools would be required to make teaching videos available like the ones called Kahn Academy, then I would have applauded him.  If he had announced a partnership with Exxon Mobil to to fund the use of the new 3D Google Maps for geography, holographic, virtual labs in STEM courses, and 3D manipulative software for reading the stratigraphy of the Earth in geology courses, I would have loved his forward thinking.  If he had acknowledged the existence of online high schools and that brick and mortar schools would be phased out in favor of funding for new digital tablets for students to attend the online schools, then I would have been ecstatic.

But he didn't.  He announced the use of technology available in the last decade of the 20th century.  Electronic textbooks have been available for more than 10 years, widely available for more than 5 years, and most school districts already have them available to both students and parents.  Even RSS feeds from a teacher and school are as old as electronic textbooks.  So, Mr. Secretary, once again you are acknowledging the state of ill repair for the public schools you oversee.  Apparently, you want the nation's students to continue their slide into new depths of failure and ignorance, distancing them behind more and more developing countries.  Our country's higher education schools have world class status.  But, our lower education schools are second class rather than second to none.  Our nation is full of students who would like to use today's tools for information that will prepare them for tomorrow rather than see themselves forced to use yesterday's tools for information that prepare them to maintain what is already known.

The little we know

I have stopped being amazed at the enigmas ancient civilizations pose to us modern people.  Out of the jungles of Mesoamerica emerges a metropolis that has a temple with a square base that is the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza.  The base held a half pyramid but the size was the same with tunnels dug throughout (just like the Egyptian pyramids).  It  was amongst other great stone buildings which were configured after part of a constellation (also like the pyramids of Giza).

It's also pretty symmetrical that they are half a world away from each other and date back to roughly the same time.  If the two happen to be connected, then there is one site for the side of the planet facing the sun and one for the side in the dark at any given time.  One notable difference is that the stones used to build the Mesoamerican city contained mica and transparent quartz throughout it all.  Mica has properties of withstanding heat from radiation, the kind used for spaceship reentries through the atmosphere.

Perhaps, the explanation of such phenomena includes alien help in our ancient history, or perhaps, it merely means the humans had access to much more than we know about, that they were very advanced and then, for some reason, they were destroyed and humans lost some prior knowledge and had to start over again.  Either way, the history books need revising.

Life gives us wonder and beauty if we but look hard enough, and sometimes those two elements are not at all found in what we expect but derive from what is surprising.  We end up playing the "what if?" game to see if the surprises could be true.  I like the taste of the "what if's" that have surfaced and they tantalize me to keep looking for what could underlie our simple understanding of times gone by.

When success smiles

J.K. Rowling just released her first novel written for the adult audience after achieving a phenomenal reception from the younger audience for her Harry Potter series.  I wish her success in her newest venture because I love her story.  The new book is supposed to reflect much of her story with a character that lives at the bottom of society's classes and tragically dies at the end.  Rowling's own story contains a twist that the character's storyline in the book doesn't experience, though, since Rowling is now wealthier than the queen of England and Oprah Winfrey.

It's hard to believe that Rowling was receiving social welfare and facing the challenges of single parenthood when success smiled on her.  In a recent interview, she recounted those days with great pride saying that that series of events had to happen for her to be where she is today.

That's true for all of us.  Our lives' events shape us and get us to the next step.  Sometimes our next steps leave us rather lacking in some facets of our lives.  But, even the Sahara Desert is on alternating cycles between lush green jungles for a while and windswept sand dunes for an equal amount of time.  The goal is at least once to have achieved some part of the dreams we have had.  Then, contentment is possible.  My hat is off to J.K. Rowling.

Smarter about the allure

The Middle English period in the history of English had to be some hard times for the people of England.  The Danish clans had spent 500 years populating their new-found island and learning to live alongside each other.  Their clans had all come from an area that feuded,warred, and killed each other for about the same length of time.  But over the last 500 years in a new land full of opportunity, the clans finally learned to live together.  Their leaders were rough and rugged.  Their storytellers told of times when they had to conquer or be conquered.

Then their world changed.  The Anglo-Saxon clans had valiantly fought off Viking marauders for over 100 years, but an invasion and subsequent victory by the French allowed them the entrance to the throne in London.  From that point, all the royal names, events, and documents were written in a tongue quite foreign to the inhabitants.  However, the farther from London one went, the more resistance to French one found by the very traditional landowners of the countryside.  Near Scotland, the people said they would never learn the new language.

From this resistance, compromises were made with the language that resulted in a blend of French and English.  It could have been called Frish or Englench, but the people of the countryside were determined to retain the basic elements and name of their language.  So, English (after the Angles version of German) stuck as the name.  During the 500 years that followed, the blended language of French and English refined itself partly due to a very French idea.

The development of ecclesiastical authority and its associated language of Latin coexisted with the French invasion and subsequent blending of French with Anglo-Saxon.  So the word tempt came in simultaneously with the French idea.  But tempt was too benign for the French speakers (and so religious sounding).  They wanted to show all the intrigue, trickery, chicanery, and Machiavellian intent behind people's actions.  The French were such a devious lot after all.  They introduced the idea of tempting someone through great efforts at manipulation with the word allure.  So, the leaders of the nation began to allure the people into better ways of living to show a distinction between what they had been used to and what was possible under the new regime.  And it truly worked on several levels.  At one level, feudalism lost its grip first in England because of the allure of having more for their families.

The ploy worked of course on more than one level.  Allure came into the language as a verb (lurer=to entice, to seduce) but comes to us today in both verb and noun forms.  Over time, the noun form has supplanted the verb form as the most common use of the idea for allure, but that just means that we've become more passive and turned the action into the name of a sporting event (turning skill into a craft).  We know this because allurement is a noun form also found today.  The expansion of a noun into a second noun changes naming an action to the naming a general class of events (-ment).

From the rough and tumble world of the first English speakers to the more passive modern world we live in now, the action of "go and conquer" has evolved into the name of "come and see the benefits of the house that desire built."  I have to admit to falling prey to the allure of the American Dream.  But, that turned out to be just a dream.  I am now a whole lot more selective in what allures me - really only one thing.  But, I'm waiting for the noun to turn back into a verb.  That might be a while.  Reversion in language doesn't happen very often.

Backstory

Everyone has a story.  It doesn't take long in life to realize that everyone has faced adversity and overcome some kind of obstacle.  Adulthood makes seasoned veterans of us all.  The beauty of getting to know others is learning the backstories that season them. 

I spoke with a young man today who told me of his life outside the U.S.  It's quite a tale.  The first 17 years of his life were spent evading drug cartels just to stay alive.  Even after migrating to the U.S., he had quite an adventure.  He's lucky to be alive.  I learned more today about the tenacity of the human spirit.  I gained an esteem for someone I didn't know before.  I learned a little more how my own story fits into this world of billions.  I learned more about what kind of face I have put on and want to put on for others.  And I learned a little more appreciation for the events that combine to form the present for people, the backstory that doesn't get presented very often.

End of days

The kitchen, dining room, and study lights are off.  A low light in the living room casts shadows down the entryway.  The guest room doors are shut, but it is dark behind them.  Night set in three hours ago on the outside of the front door.  The day has wound down along with all its activities.  Tomorrow begins early; the work day starts at 8:00.  Sleep will last the customary 6 hours.  The day has been as productive as it needed to be and was restful enough for rejuvenating from the day before it.  Another day has ended.

But it is the time of day for smiles to linger because of some the beautiful moments during the day, for time alone to enjoy mental pictures of really important and pleasurable times that need to be seen again, and for a moment to look into the mirror of review for the day so that the next one can be at least as good as the last one.  Then oblivion comes.

Accidents of fortune

Being at the right place at the right time has proverb status in America.  It usually is used when something good financially happens, but it is also true of other happenings.  Tonight I want to reflect on the good fortune of right place and right time showing up as inspirational signposts on the road I have taken in life.

My first encounter with inspiration was with a Greek scholar.  I sat in his class for a semester and a half before he died of a heart attack.  Anything I may have gained in translation principles and language acquisition after that point, I attribute to the inspiration from this man.

Fifteen years after this man another man appeared who taught me about language behavior in society.  I had thought all along that language behaved by a strict set of rules.  That, I now see, is a far cry from the truth.  The person was not inspiring in and of himself, but he presented all the literature I had never read about language as it is spoken by people in societies around the world (as opposed to language presented in grammar books) and fascinate me with personal stories of his own work with people in various societies.

Eleven years later, I found myself once again in the class of someone world renowned for his knowledge of language and translation.  I loved every single second of his classes.  They crowned what I had learned a quarter of a century before.  He lent the expertise I needed to carve out a niche of my own in the language world.

Then, a couple of years ago, through an accident of fortune, I had a chance to spend several dinners and a few days with two of the nation's top historians, one on world history, one on U.S. history.  I loved being around them because they reminded me in all our conversations of how open to interpretation everything is that happens.

I'm sure I would be meekly minding my P's and Q's if I had not had these four chance encounters with five men who changed my philosophical viewpoint and inspired me to always consider as many factors as possible for what I see in life - even things that appear counter-intuitive.  Reflections of my experience with them serve as markers along the way to drive my performance to the highest levels I am capable of.  I thanked each of them at the time of our encounters, but my true thanks will be with the work that I have left to do in life. 

Off - by more than a little

Before the turn of the century, the NFL players decided to hold out against the owners for a season.  The league's answer was to have replacement players.  The season was pathetic, but there was a certain appreciation by the fans for having a season even if it was pitifully played by the replacement players.  Here we are a great number of years later and this time the referees are holding out for the season.  Again, the NFL has supplied replacement people - college referees who want to call on Sundays, basically.  The attitudes by the fans are different this time.  Many comments are being made about the chaos and disorder being allowed on the field.  Brawls are breaking out among players.  Balls are not being spotted on the correct yard lines.  Consistency from one call to the next is absent. And even if chaos is not reigning, incompetence is.

In business, if incompetence exists for very long, profits are lost and heads roll or doors are shut.  In law enforcement, incompetence costs lives.  In education, incompetence of the system causes a whole generation to have to be reeducated as adults, costing taxpayers millions of dollars unnecessarily.  In government, incompetence leads to stalemates, global weakness of perception, and reversion to "glory days."

That's why I love being around those who are efficient, informed, thrifty, and straightforward - competent.  It's tiring to be around those who act incompetently, but so refreshing to mingle with those who are competent.  Refreshing and desired.

Reminders along the road

Whew, that was close!  I was sitting at a dead stop on a rain-drenched freeway at night.  Two lanes over a car parallel to me was also at a dead stop.  Unfortunately, the car behind the stopped car two lanes over didn't notice in time that the car ahead of him was stopped.  I heard the scraping of the locked tires along the wet surface as the car behind slid into the car parallel to me, not at a fast rate of speed, but fast enough to make a crashing noise and see the front car slide down the highway about 3 feet.

Fortunately, the accident didn't occur in my lane and include me.  Since that time - only two weeks ago - there have been 3 more wrecks in the same stretch of road.  The last one was severe.  Such scenes make me think, of course.  When will my turn come?  When will my time be up?  Life can be going along so normally when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the end happens or something devastating happens.

Well, I've been down the road before with a good number of people who are no longer walking the Earth.  One day they are alive, the next day they join the billions of people who have come and gone from the face of this Earth.

I'll never forget driving through a small town about 9 years ago and thinking of a friend who lived there.  She had had cancer for about a year.  I drove through the town, but felt a nudge to turn around and call her house from a pay phone.  (This was before cell phones were so available and coverage wasn't everywhere).  So I turned around and talked to her about 4 or 5 minutes.  Then I continued the trip home.  The next day I learned that she had passed away.

I'll never forget seeing another friend of mine in the hospital.  She had come to my town from another town pretty far away to have surgery.  Something told me I needed to go see her, which I did on two occasions during her stay in my town.  Two weeks later, I received a text that she had died.

There are a number of other instances.  But, I am constantly reminded that every day when I wake up and breathe air, I should be grateful to call my friends by name, to enjoy the sun, to enjoy the rain, to kiss my daughter, to smile every time my granddaughter looks at me, to celebrate someone's special occasion, to enjoy feelings for the ones I love, or to make a call to someone who needs encouragement.

Someday, the call will be to my next of kin rather than a call to me.

Tribute to the different drummer

Archaeologists have found a great number of bones that date back a really long time, in excess of 20,000 years.  What do we as modern humans make of these bones.  Some of us deny that our methods are good enough to discern how old the bones are and say that the Earth cannot be that old.  Some of us cautiously approach the findings by saying that dating something that old needs corroborating evidence and look to artifacts and ancient settlements for further proof.  Others embrace the methods and results and construct a story that reads much differently from the myths, fairy tales, and ancient holy books.

There's a correlation of these three responses to people's world views, of course.  Those in the first group "look at things as they are and ask why" while those in the third group "dream of things that never were and ask why not" (Robert Kennedy).  Those in the first group find joy in meticulously following the rules in place, while those in the third group are driven by visions of the results of questioning everything.  The second group vacillates, naturally, with the prevailing winds.  They find themselves not understanding, so they make up things like the world is flat and the Earth is the center of the universe.

All kinds of people populate our globe, so it is really six and a half billion combinations of the varying degrees of the above three positions.  But I do know I am not a part of the "safe not sorry" group.  And, although I find myself at the mercy of a number of mysteries about life, I don't like to linger in the blissful world of ignorance if I can help it at all.  There's a beauty in "hearing the music of a different drummer, no matter how distant or far away" (Henry David Thoreau).  Viva all the kindred spirits of group three!  Where would we be without them?

That suitable score

"Game-changer" is a term to tell how something is going a certain way, then all of a sudden, the direction is changed or the momentum is changed.  So, routines are developed to keep people on track. Because life has a lot of routines in it, it's easy to keep going the way we are headed, even to drift aimlessly without direction.  But routines are not good when they don't allow us to always see what's best for ourselves.  That's when a game-changer is needed.  Most game-changers happen when they are not invited and are least expected.

Only twice has a game-changer happened to me that I wanted or invited.  They changed the way I thought and acted a whole lot more than the ones that occurred without warning or invitation.  I'm certainly amenable to a third wanted game-changer.  The score of the game I'm in right now needs a turn-around.  It's time for that "changer" to happen along to make the score more suitable!

Silent punctuation

Silence can mean a number of things.  Sometimes silence means approval, sometimes disapproval, sometimes ignorance, sometimes the stroke of brilliance.  Silence can be diplomatic or it can be the greatest snub.  It can mean that no information has been transmitted or that someone doesn't know what to do with information that has been received.  Silence interpretation always depends on context.

One thing is for sure, though.  No matter what the context is, silence always has a meaning.  People use silence when they want to noticeably make a loud statement.  My publishing side has spoken out of its silence; it wants to be resurrected.  I will accommodate that soon. 

And, other areas of life have been deathly quiet as well.  There is an interpretation for each of them.  Like punctuation gives tone to a sentence, so silence adds to the tone of these life areas.  But, the tone is troubling, so in my mind, words echo down hallways disspelling the brooding tone.  And I smile because those echoed words come from a time before the quiet, fill my head, and give me rest for the night.

Snap, crackle, pop or ho hum?

December 21, 2012.  The day will start, but it is not supposed to end.  The Mayan calendar is specific.  There are no days beyond December 21st.  Specials on the history channel have touted the day as if the calendar is certain.

But as the world spins closer to the end of humanity, I don't see a lot of concern on the faces of the people I meet every day.  The Mayans are no longer with us, but they were so advanced in their knowledge of the stars that some have given credence to their calendar.  In fact, their empire is being dug up a little at a time, and the places being found are numerous, organized, large, and advanced.  And, no one can say with certainty what happened to them (although speculation is in no short supply).  One of the possibilities is that they all disappeared  at once.  Now, that contains some fascinating options.

Well, whatever happened to them, they surely left an intriguing piece of information behind.  At the very least, a new epoch is supposed to start.  And, at the most, it's over for humans.  I look forward to seeing what is going to happen.  The next epoch of human history, which is my favorite interpretation of the calendar, should be outstanding, maybe something in science is about to happen to send us to the next level of civilization.  That couldn't be bad.  This particular level has run its course.

In the event that the Mayans disappeared out of ignorance of dealing with Nature (so they starved in a drought unlike any they had ever seen, which is suggested by studying ice cores), December 22, 2012 will dawn like any other day.  The Mayans just didn't plan well and couldn't predict a catastrophe beyond what they could handle.  That makes their calendar a bit of a fantasy table.  It was a good novel in their culture.  I'll go to work like any other December 22nd.  And I'll enjoy the rest of my days because every day is a good day to live and holds enjoyment either in reality or in memory.  And that's worth a daily note of celebration.

Loving what's next

In 1974, I made a trip to the local drug store to buy a couple of items.  The store was a mom and pop drug store.  There weren't any signs in the aisles to let me know where to get the items, so it took me a couple of minutes to find them.  I paid by check, so I had to write out by hand the six items required.  The cashier punched actual push buttons with numbers on them on the register.  When the cashier had finished punching in the prices of all the items, (s)he would punch the total button and a bell would ring for the cash drawer to be pushed forward from the bottom of the register ("ringing up the item" was the phrase used).  The total due showed on metal tabs in a window at the top of the register.  Time inside the store was about 10 minutes.

This morning I made a trip to the local drug store to pick up a couple of items.  It was a national chain store, so when I entered, I knew to look over each aisle where the signs were located telling me what the aisle contained.  I spotted the aisle with the items I needed quickly and proceeded to check-out.  The cashier hit a red square touch field on the register monitor, scanned the bar code with a laser gun, touched the square on the monitor labeled total, and was finished with her part.  I swiped my debit card, entered my PIN, tore off my automatically printed receipt, and left for home.  Time inside the store was about 4 minutes.

My goodness what  a different world I live in 38 years after my 1974 trip to the drug store.  Going back in time or living in a previous era absolutely has no appeal.  I look forward to the advancements of the next 38 years.  I may not even have to go to the drug store at all then.  I will probably order with a device much like the smart phone.  My bank account will be automatically debited, and a delivery robot will ring my doorbell with the item within a few minutes of purchase.  Life should be so good! 

And when teleportation of items materializing in front of me is possible... Oh my...  shopping might just take on a whole other dimension.

Underlying meanings

Recently, I was with a couple of young men and a young woman from El Salvador, a middle-aged, privileged man from Ecuador, a young mother from Mexico, and a hard working middle-aged man from another region in Mexico, an up-and-coming electrical engineer from Columbia, and a young man from Costa Rica.  We were together in the United States where everyone is currently living.

The group had several occasions to talk about both the U.S. where they're now living and the country of their birth.  Most didn't want to move back, but they all brought a perspective that let me know that the U.S. didn't measure up in some way or another to the various countries represented.  Most were from very large cities, the equivalent of New York, L.A., and Chicago.

Interestingly, the group thought that the best way to understand the people of the U.S. was to learn their language.  Then, they might understand the attitudes they had encountered while here.  That is not the only way to learn about a culture of another country, but it is one of the most thorough ways to learn why people act the way they do.

One of the great hypotheses of language learning is that the way a language is structured determines one's outlook on life and how life should work.  At least one linguist (Pinker) has sought to disprove the hypothesis.  But, after listening to the group mentioned above speak of the questions they have about the English language, the hypothesis appears to have some merit.

One example is from the group's difficulty with supplying nouns or pronouns to go with the verbs they used.  In Spanish, the ending of the verb contains the pronoun (as do all Romance languages).  So, they were not in the habit of having to supply the referent for the action.  Semantically, then, action and people are fused in Spanish, whereas action and people are fragmented in English.  The cultural connection is that the people of the group see their families as close knit and families of the U.S. as loose knit.  When asked why, they answered that it seemed the people of the family worked all the time and didn't see each other much.  Activities in the U.S. catered to the individual rather than to the family as a unit.  The sentence structure highlighting this fragmentation is the necessity to use nouns or pronouns separately from the verb.   

Well, that's certainly one viewpoint, and maybe it is accurate.  The argument for the hypothesis has more support for it than this one example, but this example is representative.  Attitudes certainly show through a person's phrasing of an utterance.  The whole field of semantics is about revealing underlying meanings.  Analyzing what people say is fun and revealing.  And, although the semantics producing people's utterances can be a hard deer to hunt, when the deer is killed, the venison is delicious.

Hurricane season

It's hurricane season again.  I remember when they would hit without too much warning and radar was primitive.  Scientists then figured out what caused them and they could track those tropical depressions a little better.  Then they noticed the patterns of waves of storms coming across the Atlantic from the shores of northern Africa.

Now when it's hurricane season, data are fed into software that calculates how many hurricanes will form in a season, predict the destinations of the strongest ones, and track each one on its journey from Africa to the shores of Latin America and the Gulf of Mexico with a pretty good degree of accuracy.  No big deal.

I also used to wander my way through a blurry life.  The prediction patterns are much clearer now.  It's old hat.  I know that the hurricane season of life will start in about 6 weeks and last for about 3 months.  My list of names for them is already prepared.  There should be fewer than last year, but the intensity of the ones that do form might be greater.  I'm watching the monitor for that this season for sure.

Figures of life

A Cliff Dwelling

There sandy seems the golden sky
And golden seems the sandy plain.
No habitation meets the eye
Unless in the horizon rim,
Some halfway up the limestone wall,
That spot of black is not a stain
Or shadow, but a cavern hole,
Where someone used to climb and crawl
To rest from his besetting fears.
I see the callus on his soul
The disappearing last of him
And of his race starvation slim,
Oh years ago - ten thousand years.

Robert Frost

Someone today used the phrase poetic license in reference to wanting to take some liberties with modernizing a well-known ancient story.  That got me to thinking about what all is meant by poetic license in a literary analysis.  The Frost poem Cliff Dwelling illustrates beautifully what is meant.

Usual sentence order is out of kilter.  The first two lines are good examples.  "There, the golden sky seems sandy and the sandy plain seems golden," become stacked stanzas so the reversal of terms is much easier to see as it is written:

There sandy seems the golden sky

And golden seems the sandy plain.

The reversal of terms is both on a single line and across two lines, so it is unmistakable and it serves as a visual where earth meets horizon.  It also is said twice to signify the two times a day when earth and horizon meet - morning and night.  Sandy and golden are synonymous terms since they refer to the same basic color so that even though earth and sky are different in nature, their sameness of color makes them seem as one.  There is a play on words then if the sameness of color blends earth and sky.  They become seamless, which is a thought triggered by the double use of the word "seem" which appears in the two lines one above the other.

In the fourth line from the end, "I see the callus on his soul," the poet is seeing something that no one else sees.  One cannot see into another's soul.  That means the poet has power that others don't and can make remarks full of insight.  For example, callus is a physical hardening of the skin, but callus has been turned into a metaphor for the meaning of hardening.  A hardened soul brings to mind how stoic a person's face may look when considering he is part of a vanishing race.  So the metaphor is then turned into metonymy, that is, something representing another thing it is related to or a part of, the soul representing the person housing the soul.  Frost also achieves contrasting ideas with this metonymy.  He uses soul for flesh and blood.  Flesh and blood are usually separate and distinguishable parts of a human.  But, by metonymy they are the same.  Soul is also ghost-like, something invisible, so the next line referring to a race's extinction, "disappearing last of him," allows the reader to see the invisible past in the cliff dwelling, helping her or him to understand a whole lot more than the physical cliff before her or his eyes.

Much more could be said about the poem, but the 4 lines used are an illustration of how much more a poem contains than normal prose.  So, poetic license doesn't mean merely to take liberties with the grammar, it means to hide images in figures, use words that create images and have multiple meanings at the same time, and rhyme in order to make the ideas memorable.  Poetry is rich because it is so compact, succinct because grammar has another dimension to its semantics, beautiful because its contours are presented in melody, rhyme, and syllabic control.  Poetic license and poetic punch are synonymous phrases.  

So, when my life rhythms come out as prose, I retreat into the inner sanctum of my mind and draw from the rich store of scenes that semantically, figuratively, and melodically have enriched my existence and meaning here on the Earth.  For a period of time, I get lost in the poetic license of life as it should be.

Cut the gyrations

Gyrations is a lovely word.  Its meaning can be applied to a number of situations.  Game playing is among them.  By game playing, I mean that people don't really say and do what is in their best interests or the best interests of those entrusted to them.  Instead, image is everything.  So, people present pictures of themselves or their children that don't match any sort of reality (or only partially match).  They go through such gyrations to throw people off the real track or to enhance the unauthentic picture.

Recently, I was around someone who has known me since college.  The person decided to make some statements for image's sake that didn't fully represent what I stand for.  In the past, I would have merely stood by and let this person say things, but time was up.  I reacted by saying that the person's statement was inaccurate and gave a fuller accounting of what I represent.  The people witnessing the reaction became immediately uncomfortable when a spade was called a spade because they too have let this other person's rants go unchecked.  So, they acknowledged their discomfort level about the interchange and switched the subject.

It is the better part of wisdom to pick battles carefully, but sometimes one has to dismantle the gyrations going on and speak undiluted words about a matter so that a false image does not result.  And it's refreshing to me to be liberated from or to thwart the propaganda people use to further themselves or to denigrate me.  So totally liberating.  And the other person knew to speak truth when continuing to comment about others.  You might call that a win/win.

Journey of 1000 miles

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
Gaul is all divided into three parts

 Julius Caesar penned his famous first line in Gallic Wars almost 2200 years ago.  I encountered them 41 years ago.  Latin was the first language I learned, so these words are burned into my memory.  I learned a great deal about a second language for the next two years.  I learned how different words were, sentence structures were, concepts for time were, culture was, and that some words and sentence structures could easily have two or three ways to be expressed in English.  I remember spending much time in poring over translations.

The Chinese have a proverb: A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.  Yes, these two years of Latin were my first steps.  I didn't know it then, but the journey's destination was to study several ancient languages and a modern language and to study all the principles in the science of all languages.  Who would've guessed!  But, the journey to that destination was the product of many, many, many steps after the first ones.

I don't know how many steps I have taken, probably about 950 miles worth.  I know I am not through taking steps and accumulating miles either.  But, there is a notable difference between the early steps of the first 500 miles and the later steps of the last 450 miles.  The first half of the journey contained tremendous amounts and bursts of work.  The second half contained mechanical ease from repetition, conclusions about limitations of expressions, and manipulation of facts in constructing theories.  Applying information from other fields to the science helped in seeing a larger and ever-growing picture.  Now operating within the discipline is not work, it is enjoyable and familiar.  Like family, I have grown up and grown older around this science.  Now it's time to smile.

I wish all of life would be like this particular journey.  But, life doesn't work that way.  It's not a series of unilateral decisions, but made up of bilateral or multi-lateral decisons.  Relationships developed have many contributing factors as to how strong they become.  Jobs have many people and circumstances to interact with.  My own birth family stretches its horizons beyond the family I knew and grew up in.  Beliefs are tested against reality and change their shape or break altogether.  Acceptance of values into one's own philosophical view is based on proven track records rather than their ideal or theoretical worth.  All in all, life is messy..  The destination of life is not well defined and evidently has so many different paths leading to its success, that even the proverbs of a society have to change if it lasts long enough.

The saving grace is that there is a degree of familiarity, ease, and enjoyment in the second half of life like there is in the formal training and experience that a person chooses... Golden years to be sure.

About halfway

Today someone asked me to keep a lookout for reading material and/or texts for 9th graders.  It was hard to slow my head from nodding "No."  It's an old subject, but here goes the 200th verse of the same song.

In the year 2000 a friend and I began a book that we never finished.  The chapters were to detail the demise and lack of need for the ability to read and write.  I know that people have decried the sorry state of affairs for both abilities, but I wanted to herald the disappearance of reading and writing.  Since that time on this blog I have tried to warn people of a struggle that would break out in society that would go way beyond poor scores in reading and writing on standardized tests for public school students.  The struggle would last 10 years and end with the unmistakable next stage in transmission of information, including storytelling.

My favorite analogy is to the striking of the meteorite in the Yucatan that killed the dinosaurs.  Dinosaurs were kings of the world and the top of the food chain for millions of years.  But they were unaware up until the time of the strike that not one single dinosaur would make it out alive after the series of devastations set off by the meteorite's crashing into the Earth.  The event is marked by iridium between layers of the Earth's crust called the KT boundary.

 The death of reading and writing will be marked with a 10 year tug-of-war between those who advocate the need for reading and writing forever and those who are bringing in a much more efficient and a quantum leap faster mode of relaying information.  The war would begin in 2007 and end after 2017.  The need to read and write would disappear after 2017, and when people recognized the new path being forged, they would hasten the dying forms for transmission of knowledge and entertainment that has lasted for so many centuries as the paramount mode for perpetuation.

When December comes and goes, the struggle will be halfway over.  From every sign I see, everything is right on schedule.  Other voices have joined mine in warning others of the impending doom of two of the three Rs.  Two of the important signs can be capsulized by two commercials and two innovations.  The first commercial is for a speech to type device so that people can speak their words and type will appear on a page.  The ability to create information on a page from a voice command will not be limited to type for long.  Creating visual logs from speech is next.  The second is for the Iphone's ability to speak a question and get the answer in a matter of seconds or utter a command and the task will be performed.  Since visual information can be archived also, it is a matter of time before that kind of information will be commanded.  The first innovation is the smart phone, complete with its myriad number of apps that can control lighting and temperature in houses, count the number of calories eaten, recognize information coded in bars and other encryption codes, and "read" notes in a song and tell you its title among a thousand other useful tasks.  The second innovation is the ability to be somewhere virtually, without travel and without loss of dimensionality.   The appearance of two other inventions will sound Taps for reading and writing: holographic virtuality and invisibility (cloaking) in matters of stealth.  Both are right around the corner - probably about 5 years away.

I hope to see the years after 2017.  There will be remnants plenty of the age that has just passed.  But there will be a layer of iridium separating the two epochs.  Readers and writers won't fare well in the new world.  The currency of the educated will be different.  Those who know how to organize electronic data and format what people visualize will conduct the funerals of those whose pens, pencils, and typing keys only make the runes of sentences and paragraphs.  R.I.P.

A color-filled cloud

It was a cloudy day three years ago, and in the western sky a beautiful rainbow occurred.  I had seen one just the day before too.  Those were the best days, and I remember writing a blog about those two rainbows and how they represented my reason for living.

Tonight, I stepped outside to view the sky.  Dark clouds had formed a half-hour to the east.  A beautiful, brilliantly colored arc filled the sky.  So, I stopped for a minute or two to let my mind wonder again about what it represented... the source of my life.  And below that rainbow tonight - my greatest treasure.

Insanely harsh at 112

Parked in the sun for only an hour and a half, the car had a temperature reading of 122 degrees.  This was at 5:00 PM.  The car's gauge did fall after hitting the road and having a little wind blow against it.  But, the temperature only dropped 10 degrees.  So, at 5 it was 112.  A couple of hours later the measurement was 106.  Even at 10:00 at night, the news reported a temperature of 98.

That's the second time this summer it has been 112.  I could feel the heat radiating from the driveway, and it felt every bit as hot as the heat pouring across my face when I open an oven door.  112 is a different level of hot.  Last summer set a record for the most number of days in a year above 100.  But, never did it reach 112.  Last month was the hottest July on record in the United States.  It was also the hottest 7 month period on record (January through July).  The record was last set in 1936 in the throes of the dust bowl and depression era.  Now it's hotter than one of the bleakest, driest, most drought-ridden time periods in recent history in the USA.

Hemingway wrote a short story called Hills Like White Elephants (1927), in which the setting was a place in Spain that was dripping hot.  The heat-driven setting controlled the story, its characters' conversations, and its actions.  It was the backdrop for forbidden topics to be discussed and extreme reactions to surface.

Extreme is the operative word.  At 112 degrees, I was ready to react more harshly to conversations today than normal.  And, I was subjected to some harsh, bleak, and drought-ridden conversations today.  Tomorrow is supposed to be only 104.  I look forward to the cool down in both outside air and topics of conversation.

Failure culture

NASA did it!  And I love them for the story they tell.

Exploration on Mars has been a long, desolate road.  The planet has beckoned to Earth's inhabitants ever since people have been gazing at it through telescopes.  After rocket power was discovered, attempt after attempt by the USSR and the USA failed to either reach Mars or operate properly.  Europe and Japan have also tried reaching Mars.  Finally, several probes from the USA managed to snap pictures of Mars' surface.  Then came the landings.  Most were successful, but landing on Mars and completing the mission successfully has only had a collective 47% success rate for all countries that have tried it.

That sounds a lot like the missions I try in life.  Some of my missions have not reached Earth's orbit.  Some have malfunctioned while making the trip.  Some have crash-landed on the surface.  And some have performed like they were supposed to have and have added much quality and knowledge to my life.  But, just knowing that some of the bravest, most expert scientists in the world have collectively not done very well in meeting their objectives makes me feel better about my own failures.

I think of Edison when I think of failures in life.  Time after time after time he tried this chemical and that, this shape and that, this thickness of filament and that, this size of bulb and that, this strength of current and that, this type of material for bulbs and filaments and that.  I have never tried to do something 1000 times, but I think I would probably drop experimentation after the 300th attempt.  But, Edison and space programs have something in common.  They knew that landing and light could happen with the right combination of knowledge and time.  So, they settled in for the long haul... and they will be remembered for all the quality they have added to human existence.  I will not be remembered by history for anything major done for society, but I can add to the quality of human existence within the sphere allotted to me.

Failures have happened for me in life and have occurred more often than not... over half the time (just as for attempts to land on Mars and discovering the light bulb).  But, how sweet it is when everything happens properly, and success is achieved.... sweet and long lasting, memorable and flavorful.

Following the trail of sweart

Sweart was a word from Anglo-Saxon meaning dark.  It was used when two items were being compared.  It also meant black and was used in describing skin color and sky color.  As time passed people began to only pronounce the a in the word, as in the word father.  So, lo and behold, the spelling changed to swart.  Apparently, some of the peasants of the country didn't know much grammar and thought the word was a noun instead of an adjective.  So when they wanted to say the adjective form of the word, they added y.  By the time Edward DeVere was writing plays under the pseudonym William Shakespeare, the word swarty was popular.  Then, the pronunciation became a function of where a person lived around London.  The ever-popular d alternation with t in words like hearty (pronounced hardy) became both a glottal stop (swar? i) in some outlying regions and an eth sound (voiced th, swarthy) in some other outlying regions.  By the time England began colonizing America the eth version of the word fell from the lips of the sailors and pilgrims making their way across the pond.

That is the microscopic version of a word journey from about 500 ACE to 2012 ACE.  It shows that change happens in language over time.  In fact, language change is the rule for words and grammar rather than stasis.  The change principle of language helped me see that life was like that too.  Things change.  A person's environment changes several times over one's lifetime.  A person's tastes in clothing and food change.  One's personal orientation changes from being single to include a partner and children.  One's attitudes toward others and important issues change from staunch to mellow as years pass.  Beliefs change either by addition or by deletion.  And, physically, one's body changes.  Ear lobes and noses elongate, skin loosens and eventually sags, bones compact, and hair thins.

I can't help but reflect on my own journey of change.  I have learned to expect it.  Life comes in phases.  I can tell you about a certain time in my life by referring to where I lived, what job I had, or whether it was pre-children, with children, or post-children.  Many types of phases and milestones mark a person's journey.  Mine is no different.  I have some interesting phases in my life, several beautiful phases, and yes, a few swarthy ones. I might have 3 or 4 phases left, but I look forward to them.  They'll be different from the ones that came before.  I will make the same journey from sweart to swarthy.

When I seek harmony

The scenery was like few other places on Earth.  I still have the pictures.  The mountain top was 14,000 feet high.  It really wasn't the tallest mountain in the world, but it was for me that day.  Peaks surrounded the summit I was on, but I was looking down on all of them.  Clouds hovered, suspended on most of them.  They drifted by me in the thin air.  I saw valleys carved by glaciers, and pools of deep alpine water dotted those valleys.  Others walked around on the summit, but I could hear nothing but silence.  14,000 feet in the clouds of the sky, but total silence draped the mountain sides all the way to their valleys.  Stupendous moments indelibly printed their time-stamps in the recesses of my mind.

On occasions when I need total peace, I retreat to this mountain top.  I breathe in again the cool, soothing air.  The intoxicating landscape takes me from any worry that has crossed my mind.  It revives in me the faith I have that once again life can rest in such breathtaking beauty. 

Then, I can make the descent to the mountainside floor for harmony with the flow of regular life.