Sasha

At around 7:30 last night, at the nearby MedVet clinic, I had Sasha put to sleep.

Sasha Looks Into It

He had had some fainting spells earlier in the week and, working with my veterinarian, I took him to the clinic, where they found he had tachycardia and some other evidence of heart disease.  We started him on a course of medication designed to ease the irregularities in his heartbeat and (we hoped) to eliminate the fainting spells, and things went a little better and seemed almost back to normal till Friday mid-afternoon, when they went downhill fairly rapidly.

I took him back to the clinic then, where they stabilized him, and he and I started home with a new set of medications, with the object of seeing if he would fare any better over the weekend, but we were overtaken by events.  Before we got home things took a turn for the worse, and, once home, Sasha could barely get out of the carrier by himself, and the spells were now coming one right after the other.

So I brought him right back to the clinic, and at my request they kindly and promptly (and in my presence) put him to sleep.

I know that ‘putting to sleep’ is both a euphemism and a cliche; but in this case I could see a peaceful end to a series of struggles over the past few days that he had made plain he wanted no part of any longer.  We had 14 good years together, twelve of them with his brother Kasha, both of them with me from tiny kittens.

After Kasha died, Sasha and I made ourselves into an even closer relationship than before (and believe me, we were already close).  He loved to sit on my lap while I read or worked at the computer, and even in the last days he loved to play string.

All the cliches apply: The house feels so empty, I keep expecting to see him at any moment just before reality catches up with me and I realize over again that he is gone and won’t be coming back, and all the rest.

I took him in the carrier in my car, the world’s best car, as I call it; and we drove toward the MedVet clinic through one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in a lot of locales to see a lot of sunsets, and this was one of the world’s best sunsets.

It seemed a fitting salute to the passing of the world’s best cat.

And Then She Added…

One of my readers has reminded me that there is in fact a real audience for the stories and tales of older people, which can serve later as a reservoir of the bandwidth of understanding: young kids and grandkids.   And he’s right. If you don’t believe me, go find yourself a copy of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine.  I replied to him:

I hope you didn’t — or don’t — stop telling them stories!  Kids love to hear stories from grandparents (they are not like the impatient early middle agers (30′s and 40′s are the worst, with some late 20′s mixed in).  I loved hearing stories from my grandparents, and my Dad, too, when I was a kid.  It’s only later that the stories-ennui seems to set in…  I feel like I’m something of a time machine, because I had a step-grandfather who was born in 1865 (!!!!) and he used to tell me stories from his life…  as did all my other grandparents and parents as and when they could.

Those are stories I value now, and wish I could hear more of.

It’s the opposite of magic tricks.  Kids aren’t taken in my magic, but grownups are; kids are willing to listen to grandparents’ and parents’ stories, but as grownups we lose the ‘wanna’ for a while…

So please, please, for their benefit and your pleasure, keep telling those stories to the grandkids as long as they’ll listen!

A Side Effect Of The Passage Of Time

From our recent correspondence:

[My friend is] also the person who has known me longest and most closely who is still alive — and therefore with whom I have the greatest communication bandwidth: a few words get across a great deal of meaning (i.e., I don’t have to stop and explain things to him: he was there, or already knows of them, and a word or two suffices to refer to all that).  As you get older, having to explain things or else risk being misunderstood (or ignored) gets to be more and more of a strain on conversation, complicated by the current trend of no one listening to anything, no matter who is talking, for longer than 10 seconds at a time — and you’re lucky to get that much.

Eventually, not many people much younger than you are care what you have to say, even when you know it’s vitally important, for them as well as for you — and, all too often, those few who do aren’t willing to go through all the background explanations that are required to bring them up to speed to actually hear and understand your intended meaning. Inevitably, some of those explanations take the form of recalled events or anecdotes from your past, at which point some people inevitably decide (erroneously) that you’re living in the past or starting to ‘lose it.’

So, after a while, you start really missing the people who can actually hear what you’re saying — or who are interested enough to wait around long enough  — a minute or two? — for you to finish saying it.

Two Important Points

from our recent correspondence:

… two points seem important to me:

First, as Van Jones points out, anyone actually wanting to cut taxes would start with the big stuff, by making the bailout recipients pay back what they got, quick march, before they take any more of those infuriating bonuses; and also stop the subsidies to big corporations and tax breaks to the rich.  And then, re-evaluate those two wars, in which our brave soldiers are sent to kill and be killed for reasons yet to be explained to anyone’s satisfaction, and civilians die, countries are ruined, and only the war profiteers (aka M-I complex) profit — and which are costing us millions a day (maybe more; I don’t have the figure but I’m sure someone does).

These are governors of states, and members of state legislatures, not national figures, you may argue. They have to deal with state finances. But like-minded governors of states could band together to get those bigger things done, and work with their elected colleagues in both the Executive and the Legislative branches to do so (every state has two senators and a group of representatives in Congress; and groups of state governors have met with Presidents before now, to get their points across and work together to a common goal).  That they don’t now, tells us something.

Real tax-burden champions wouldn’t start by worrying about the small but necessary potatoes of social and civil services. Those services are pieces of the necessary infrastructure, which are — think about it — of no consequence to the rich, who can afford to pay for whatever they want and need, whenever they want and need it, but vital to the rest of us, and they are irreplaceable once gone.

Teachers, nurses, along with police, fire, and paramedics, our first responders (those heroes of 9/11, never let it be forgotten), do you want them ready and able to do the job or not?  Well-trained, up-to-date, ready to do their vital work, using the best and best-maintained equipment, ready to roll?

I do. So why, I’ve been asking for a long time, are so many people who are not super-rich marching to the tune and agenda of those who are?

Second, another Van Jones point, we’re not a poor country, despite attempts from all sides to make us feel and act as though we are!  We’re being drained by the bailouts (the collapse came on September 15, 2008, under Bush, please remember, and the big bailout was pushed through, still under Bush, on October 3, 2008) and subsidies and tax breaks to the rich and, not least, by two wars, at least one of which had no cause whatever (no WMDs).   Yes, but further cutting already pared-down  services that more of us need more than ever, thanks to eight years of job losses running into the millions under the Bush regime, and wrecking the infrastructure of the countryby neglect, is not the way to do it, no matter who you are.

I want to say to them: Get real.  Grow up.  Go get the actual job done you keep talking about — finding ways to pay for what we need, and not pay for what we don’t — or pipe down…

Mo Ra Bata Titun* — Redux

This has been a busy few weeks — OK, months, if you want to look at it that way.

I found I really needed a new pair of shoes, and bought some from Zappos.com, a totally pleasant experience.  A nice delivered-right-to-my-door present to myself, and much needed.  Comfy, too.

Then, in December, just to make a change, I rearranged my kitchen.  Unless you’re into very heavy lifting or total remodeling, there isn’t much you can casually rearrange in a kitchen — but I changed where my table and my cutting-board-topped movable island were standing.  Not least, I found a place for everything that had been sitting around the kitchen on counters and tables and stowed it all. I liked the whole kitchen a lot better.

Then, in January, I found the need to streamline my diet and myself and accomplish a few other goals along the way, and my rearranged kitchen came into its own, all streamlined itself and ready to rock, everything at hand, well-stowed when not.

Then, this month, two new, no-plunger-needed toilets were installed in the house.  My decades-old original-equipment antiques, ones I’ve been coaxing and fixing and plunging for all the years I’ve lived here, broke in the most extremely inconvenient way, and when the handle snapped so did my patience, and two new wonderful swallows-everything-without-a-ripple toilets (low water usage and all) are now in place.

Then, last Thursday, a new window wall I had ordered a while back was put in. I was fortunate to find a 60 F. day without rain (in February!) for the installation — the weather prediction had held.

Then, two days ago (Monday) I visited my CPA to get my taxes finalized. I had already entered the preliminary data online and uploaded electronic copies of all documentation, an activity that had kept me out of trouble while the windows were going in (and, since that visit, my taxes are ready to file).

Then yesterday I noticed that one of my tires seemed soft. Since my car is low-mileage and my tires tend to age out rather than wear out, and it had been quite a while since I had new ones put on, I suspected strongly that new tires would be needed, whatever the diagnosis on the particular tire that looked soft. I took it in to my local Firestone service center to have the tires checked for aging and tiny tell-tale cracks (and change the oil, please, while you’ve got it on the lift).  The outcome: an oil change plus an entire set of new tires, the old ones being completely superannuated (universal astonishment behind the counter that they had lasted all those years).  My car is a great car — its non-flashy but solid make  and small size having nothing to say about its quality — and it deserves nothing but the best.

I felt great! And I still feel great! No, I didn’t go there trying to spend money, but the new tires were necessary, they are good ones reasonably priced, and my car really needed a new pair of shoes — just the way I had when this whole series of  unrelated but transforming events began.

* Look here.

Flushed With Pride

I am ridiculously pleased this morning: yesterday afternoon two new American Standard Champion 4 toilets were installed in my house, replacing 30-year-old porcelain veterans.  (Yes, I know you really didn’t want to read about toilets with your morning coffee or afternoon tea, but I’ll try to make it interesting.)

I don’t usually puff particular brands and models in my writing, both my readers are now pointing out, so why this time? And, really, why this subject?

Because if there’s one thing in your house you want to have working absolutely right, it’s the toilet.  I don’t mean just getting along OK most of the time, or requiring the occasional assist from the rubber plunger, or using way too much water to get only mediocre results.  I don’t mean something that has to be kept going by plumbing life-support, replacing floats and gaskets and flusher handles and everything else turn and turn about. I don’t mean having to become savvy yourself at keeping toilets from running off at the tank.

No, I mean, works right, and works right the first time, and works right with very little water usage.

And has a surface that’s a dream to keep clean, not one that stains up over time permanently and irrevocably, not one that requires a choice between the use of harsh chemicals (not always effective, but always harmful to the environment) and looking at offensive and ugly stains.

And is quiet and sturdily built. One high enough off the floor for a grownup, even a tall one, to sit on it comfortably. That does one thing and does it very well.

A toilet that can truly boast, along with its new owner, “I am flushed with pride.”

 

Spurious Precision in the Dietary Realm

From our recent correspondence:

Yes, I am  dieting the good diet, and now I’m exercising the good exercise by using my Wii Fit Plus again (lapsed time: nearly 1 year).  But “come back in three months” from the doctor puts a time limit on the superb pleasure of just winging it, especially when (dietetically, at least) I was already doing well on a careful vegetarian diet with not too much sodium.  That makes it both the good and the bad news: the ‘well’ that I was doing, or anything like it, turns out to be not good enough — until it can be made to do so, with more stringent efforts; and we get to find out only at the end of the three months, and only if we put our quadriceps into it as well as our molars.

One of the things I like least about tracking those individual nutrients in grams and milligrams is the spurious precision of the results.  If the testers’ particular piece of kiwi — 1 medium —  fruit weighs 56.7g and is measured to contain 1.7 g of protein and 0.8 mg of fat and 2.3 g of fiber,  then that’s the value put in in the database.  When you track your foods by recording that you’ve eaten 1 kiwi fruit, those amounts — the standard amounts; the diet tracker is at heart a database-accessing tool, although the one I have does lots more than that — are what show up in your tracking list, to be added to others by the end of the day.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell whether the kiwi fruit you ate, even one judged to be 1 medium by size and weight description, weighs exactly the same amount as theirs.  Even if you are fanatical enough to weigh accurately in grams each item of food you eat before you prepare it, and calculate the exact differential in values from that ideal (I’m not willing to go that far; and I’d like a life outside the kitchen, thanks), even then you couldn’t be 100% sure of the accuracy, since fruits and all foods vary slightly in their makeup, while conforming to a general standard which makes them ‘them.’

So all those decimal places (there are often two or three of them in evidence, especially for scarcer nutrients) may be as accurate as possible for that one piece of originally weighed and measured fruit (no one’s disputing that) but, when you add up everything you eat all day long, all those decimals with their aggregate rounding off (nothing in life is ever really exact, least of all measurements of nutritional components; once you get past “1 kiwi fruit” it comes down to the degree of precision you choose and where you decide to round off) introduces a spurious precision into your totals.  People differ one to the other, and so do kiwi fruit or anything else you eat.  And, larger, smaller, how finely chopped or sliced, slightly more or slightly less in an individual piece plus your serving, cooking or preparation method, and more, all enter into the variation from the ideal that is represented in the database.

On the other hand, calling it ‘one fruit’ and leaving it at that for the day is not only more accurate (it actually matches 1-1) but more precise.  At the end of the day, I can’t trust that I’ve actually eaten (say) 1237.8 calories.  I’ve eaten probably something close to 1200, and probably a little over, but a diet in which I count servings of fruit, vegetables, grains and bread, protein foods, dairy foods, etc. is much more accurate and an awful lot easier to track and tally, once you get used to the sizes of servings in each group.  How do I know how I’m doing? By eating the ‘spread’ of food servings called for by my diet in each group.  So counting by servings and types of food seemed more sensible, lots easier,  and less spuriously precise than counting grams, mg., etc.

Or it was, until it became important to me to track sodium, since I don’t know the sodium content of most foods, and certainly not (without reading the labels, but that only gets you so far) of made foods.  I recently pulled a loaf of otherwise praiseworthy whole wheat bread (store-bought) from my freezer.  Only after I ate a sandwich and went to record it   (I wasn’t at the store trying to read labels, I grabbed it from my own freezer, which holds a lot of ‘prior’ foods) that I learned how much sodium was in each slice.  Way more than I wanted, I’ll tell you that.  I may have to go back to making my own bread. I use a lot less salt — and it’s a lot more work.

I guess that’s the other side of things: planning, cooking, eating, attendant cleanup, recording what I eat, buying more food, etc. can take up a huge amount of my life.  I don’t want to spend my life doing ONLY this.  I keep telling myself part of the difficulty is that I’m new to this particular effort (true) and that when I once get past the initial stage I’ll find it easier (a core repertoire of known recipes and meals, a familiar shopping basket of foods, etc.) and I’ll be able to spend less time at it.  But each aspect of the diet, at least the one I’m concocting for myself with the help of reliable nutritional information from trusted sources including about the DASH diet, and books from Harvard: this, and that), opens a vista of new ramifications of kitchen activities, at least so far, and doesn’t seem to close off or shorten any old ones.  There’s even a DASH diet online program (fee required).  Depending how my own Herculanean efforts pan out, I may try that.

For instance, I ordered varous grains, beans and seeds from a good seller, Bob’s Red Mill in Oregon.  The foods came, just as good and as well-packaged as I had hoped.  But then I found I needed a more permanent storage medium that I could open and close and reseal and stand up on my shelf, so I ordered a dozen quart-sized Mason jars.  Again, these came in fine shape.  I spent several hours in the kitchen filling jars and labelling them (we neophytes have to learn the visual differences between amaranth and quinoa, hence labels taped on the front and recipes, cooking instructions, and nutritional info taped to the back, “front” and “back” of a mason jar being arbitrarily assigned by moi).

Now I have to plunge into a forest of recipes and cookbooks — one of my favorites already in hand, and the ‘net being only one source of many — that use these grains and legumes, so that I can enjoy the many and varied nutritional benefits they contain, in delicious, flavorful dishes.  Thus, yet more vistas of action and research, and buying the other ingredients (non-grain and non-legume) called for by the recipes, once I locate the recipes I want to try.  Where the foodstuff hits the plate, that’s where I live, in the great state of spurious precision.

I’m eating well so I can have strength and health to live well to eat well so that… at least it seems so right now.  I won’t even mention the old foodstuffs tagline about how this too shall pass.

To Ad or Not to Ad

Nowadays, everybody wants a monthly fee for nearly everything you can think of, either to buy access to some service, or to keep something annoying from happening that didn’t used to happen, such as having ads start appearing everywhere you look on the ‘net and on pretty much every service you use.

I feel a little like Yosemite Sam saying “Back Off,” but I refuse to pay a monthly fee simply to keep ads from appearing along with my posts, when they didn’t in the past.   In and of themselves ads are intrusive and irritating — they’re trying to catch your attention. The ads have their own colors and visual style, ones that clash with my sites. Worse, since the particular ads you see are selected by a computer using keywords and in other non-human-considered ways, ads promulgating the exact opposite of what I may advocate, feel or think can easily appear with my posts, especially when the posts are viewed singly.

I do understand the need to fund development and upkeep.  However, the “put up with the ads we’ve now put everywhere vs. pay to keep the ads off” route is not a good way to do this, to my mind. After all, you put the ads in, and then told me I could pay you to keep them from appearing. Trendy, perhaps, and done more and more often today, but not exactly friendly-feeling.

In the abstract, I’m willing (maybe — let’s see the terms of the deal) to pay a small amount as a regular user of your service, either monthly or, better, annually) to see that you stay in business under reasonable conditions.  After all, I’ve got a certain investment in your keeping my previous posts available on the blog sites I’ve set up. Even with good archiving of blog copy, I’d find it a bigger job than I’d like to re-create the run elsewhere.

But putting ads all over the place well after I’ve put lots of posts into an initially free  – and ad-free — blogging service, and then, afterwards, saying if I don’t want the ads, I can pay you a monthly fee to keep them off, feels like something a bit different to me.

For all I know, many people may not mind viewing ads wherever they look on the internet, whether they are text-only ads with links or animated ads or even video-based ads. Others, those who view my newly-added posts on RSS feeds, may not even have to see any ads at all. I DO mind the ads that are now infesting the net everywhere you look. I don’t want to have to find and click the ‘close’ button on the ad before I can read the material I came to the site to see, which so often is located carefully right under the ad window.

I dislike seeing the ads on my blog sites very much, not least because I’ve set up and designed my blog sites to be simple and visually attractive — I’m not merely an RSS-item generating station, although one or two readers prefer to view my blog pieces using that functionality — but rather I offer a consciously chosen visual experience when you view the entire blog site, as I really would like you to do.  OK, as overwhelming aesthetic experiences go, compared to, say, viewing the Pietà or the David up close, my blog sites are no big deal, but each offers a certain atmosphere that enhances the content of the blog pieces.

At least, I find it so, and I hope both my readers (the non-RSS ones, at least) do, too.

So, for now, I’m putting up with the ads, because I don’t want to have to pay merely to keep them off.  But, when a notice comes from me that a new blog post is available, you may choose to visit the link to the general blog site where the newest post appears at the top (links to the sites are posted handily in the signature of the emails) to minimize what looks to me very much like advertising pollution.

As I remember the scene, one character in an episode on the second season of The Wire points out “We used to make things ourselves in this country.  Now we just take money out of each other’s pockets.”  If those aren’t the exact words, that’s exactly their gist.

I think he’s got a point.

Half Together Now; or, Inadvertent Fecklessness in the Dietary Realm

One particularly fun aspect of using a good diet tracker is the ability to compare food values across different foods or food types.

For instance, my interest in a dietary change (words my doctor told me) is to watch sodium levels and lose weight.  Calorie-watching is important but secondary to me.  I’d rather watch my total portions and balance of nutritional elements, and stay within healthy, pre-determined limits.  So “fat-free” foods are not by themselves a necessity. I’d rather use moderate amounts of unsaturated fats and oils and avoid saturated ones, not try to cut fats out altogether.

Having said that, why am I tracking with a (very fine indeed) software tracker that counts calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat, sodium, and fiber?

Because a.) foods nowadays are labeled with nutrition labels, and large databases exist based on those nutritional elements; foods are not often labeled in terms of exchanges or food-type portions; and b) I’d like to track what I eat both ways, because of tracking sodium in particular and a desire to see the nutritional makeup of what I’m eating and c.) this is a fine, flexible tracker that does this type of nutrient-counting very well in an easy-to-use entry and simple-to-read report structure I like.  (I’m using Perfect Diet Tracker available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, also available through the Mac App store, where I bought mine.  I recommend it highly.)  I’m tracking exchanges separately.

And now, back to our exciting story of dietary adventure: each morning I enjoy a small pot of coffee, lightened with a little half-and-half.  In a recent shopping trip I saw some fat-free half and half and wondered what could possibly be of interest in such a product.  The whole essence and enjoyability of cream — the entire point of it, as it seems to me — is the butterfat.  My attitude towards foods has always been to fish or cut bait: I don’t normally use ‘substitutes’ or ‘concocted’ foods.  Use it and own it, by counting the calories, fats, etc. as part of the dietary allowance for the day; or give it up altogether.

But, in a fit of unthinking excess dietary zeal that day I said, “Aaaah, I’ll try this maybe I can use the calories or fats elsewhere.”  I should have paid more attention, perhaps, to the clue offered by the crowd of ‘fat free’ containers remaining in the half-and-half area of the dairy case, and the dearth of regular ones.

I got it home, and put some in the coffee the next morning.  Not as good as the real stuff, but acceptable, sort of. Definitely sweeter, and that’s not good (I’m not fond of sweets). An acquired taste? Maybe. H’mmm.

Then I did a side-by-side comparison of the ingredients in standard half and half and an equal serving size of the fat-free type, using my computer-based diet tracker.

In this comparison, R = regular half and half and FF = fat free half and half; in each case, a leading national brand is represented:

Calories: R 40,  FF 20

Carbohydrates: R 1g,  FF 3 g

Proteins: R 1 g,  FF 1g

Fats: R 3g, FF 0 g

Sodium: R 10 mg, FF 30 mg

Clearly, what you lose on the roundabouts you make up on the swings.  While yes, with the fat-free type, you’ve lost half the calories (20) and all the fat (3 g.), you’ve also gained three times the sodium — not good in my case — and carbohydrates. In addition, you’ve lost most of the flavor and texture, and gained a certain sweet flavor that I don’t care for (skim milk and corn syrup are the first two ingredients listed).

I like a small amount of half and half in my coffee, used moderately it fits within my diet, and I am going to buy some of the real stuff for that purpose when I go shopping later today.

Other people may have different preferences and needs and I wish them only good luck and happiness.

But as for me, a lesson learned: give me the real deal, or else forget it entirely.

A Silent Moment

The President has called for a moment of silence at 11 am today for the victims of the shooting in Tucson Arizona.  I, for one, plan to observe that moment of silence.  I also plan to observe it standing outside, on my lawn, in the snow, and holding my flag at half-staff.

This may seem like a pointless gesture, one that will be seen or noted by no one.  Here’s why I don’t agree that it’s pointless: I’ll see it, I’ll be there, I’ll know it. That matters to me. And it’s equally important to me that I be holding my flag, appropriately positioned at half-staff.  I don’t have a flagpole holder on my house, as many others do, or I’d be flying the flag from there at half-staff as directed by the President, all day long.

And, it should be noted, I don’t routinely fly my flag outside my house, as some of my neighbors do, because that is their way of proclaiming a political identity which I don’t share.  It strikes me as not beforetime to reclaim the use of the flag for all citizens who wish to display it.  How to do that without giving a false impression of political orientation?

Today’s moment of silence for victims of a tragic event — a tragedy which brings to the attention of all of us to a nation-wide atmosphere of hatred, hateful speech and hateful actions, which threatens the peace and well-being of our country more profoundly, at this moment, than any foreign enemies — seems to me a moment when I can display my flag, at half-staff, as called for by the President to mark this occasion, without danger of having the message of that flag misinterpreted.

I hope that you will observe this moment of silence.   Observing the moment of silence across this country today is important, whoever and wherever you are, and whether you, or the building you’re in or company you work for, are flying a flag at half-staff or not.

 

No More Bananas In Our Republic?

At some time or another in this country, nearly everyone, it seems, has heard, or said, something funny about a banana.  At the same time, we are reliably informed, Americans eat a lot of bananas: 7.6 billion pounds in 2008. That fact, plus our own actions past and present, seem to make us the banana republic, not others.

Mike Peed’s article in The New Yorker’s January 10, 2011 issue  explains that there’s a blight on the horizon: Tropical Root Four, a blight that is taking down whole banana plantations all over the world.  (Alas, this article is viewable in its entirety only to subscribers, and if you’re not one, this particular issue of the magazine is worth going out and getting, at the newsstand or using your iPad app.)  That means, if a solution is not found — at least one attempt is underway — there may be no more bananas on the table or in the supermarkets in the relatively near future.

The situation is made worse in that only one variety of banana, the familiar Cavendish, the variety of banana you see sitting out at your nearby supermarket, is grown almost exclusively the world around.  The danger attending monocultural cultivation — allowing a single variety of any plant to be grown nearly everywhere —  is precisely the danger facing bananas now: a disease can run rampant over the entire population of a single variety and, possibly, wipe it out before anything can be done to stop it. Other varieties may be disease-resistant, but those (if they can be discovered) are not widely present in the currently-cultivated population. And they may not be as appetizing or as durable for shipping as the Cavendish. The blight has already devastated East Asian banana plantations, and is now in Australia — which is where Peed’s article picks up the story.

I again urge both my readers to make the extra effort to find and buy the print edition at a bookstore, or puchase it using the New Yorker’s iPad app. The iPad price is the same as the newsstand price for the issue: $5.99.

Wanted: A Real Turn-Off

Developers, whenever your software deals with text in any way, at any scale, one that includes spell-checking or its cousins autofill and grammar-checking, make sure that there’s a way for the user to turn those features off completely, at the program level.

Not just turning spell-checking off item by item or document by document (this is especially troublesome when adding notes to documents such as .pdfs or using sticky-note or notecard-type features), but absolutely, positively OFF, as an option, within the whole program.

Turned off once for good and all, if that is the wish of the user.  And it’s definitely the wish of this user.

Why is that?  Because I’ve been using text and word-processing software since there were desktop machines to use them on, and I’ve seen that I spell better than any spell-checker I’ve yet run across; because I use lots of words spell-checkers and their ilk don’t know, or words they mistake for other words in far-fetched mismatches; and because I often use contractions and abbreviations in notes to myself that  either have to be taught to software spell-checkers, autofills, or grammar-checkers, or, worse, that they can’t seem to ignore or absorb, some of them, no matter what.  And I’m not willing to stop and deal with all that, whether I’m writing a few words to myself as a reminder or a long piece for publication.

A few of us actually can spell correctly, have large vocabularies (hard-earned in my case by years of wide and voracious reading), and have excellent writing ability crafted by years of producing sizable and complex written documents for others, intended for publication, or by editing such documents. We happy few don’t have many problems with spelling, grammar, rhetoric, or diction.  We know exactly which word we want to use, how to use it, where to place it in the sentence or paragraph for best emphasis and clearest meaning, how to spell it correctly, and how not to confuse it with words that may sound like it but which are spelled differently.

Spell-checkers, grammar-checkers, and autofill are tools, no more and no less. Used when needed, and used properly, they may be just what many a writer or texter needs and wants.  In any carpenter’s toolbox there are many tools, and for each job the carpenter chooses those that are needed, and no others.  If the job is driving nails, there are hammers or power nail-guns to do it.  Leave the screwdrivers in the toolbox for now.

Software tools need to be able to be left in the software toolbox, too, resting and inert, clean, oiled, and available. Despite all their potential usefulness, power, and flexibility, they only get in the way if they’re not needed.

So, please, app and application developers, do the right thing: provide me with a simple program-level option to turn these tools off.

Thanks.

It’s Earlier Than You Think

I don’t know about you, but for me, the clocks have just gone off Daylight Saving Time — the ‘fall back’ clock change — and where, for instance, it used to be 4:00 it is now 3:00.

Although this clock change happened a few nights ago, over the weekend of the 6 and 7 November, I’m still getting used to the difference.  I usually know very closely what time it is before I even look at the clock, but with this change I’m still looking at the clock and being surprised that it’s an hour earlier than I think it is.

And I’m not the only one ready for getting up, going to bed, eating meals, or whatever else scandalously early.  My cat Sasha is reminding me each day, an hour before time if you go by the clock, that right NOW is the time when I’m supposed to be putting that catfood in that dish…  and somehow, I’m finding it hard to explain it to him convincingly.

Has the mail come yet?  It’s about time — nope, it’s only 9:15.  9:15?  It feels like 73:30, at least…  Time to put on the rice for lunch?  nope, it’s only 10:15 — the mail hasn’t come yet — and it feels like 89:02, or maybe even later.

It’s just earlier than I think.  Until it won’t be, anymore.

Walkability

Neighborhoods can change over time, but it seems to be a truism that good bookstores mean good neighborhoods.  If you don’t believe me, look here.

A friend, who lives in Denver, told me of a great bookstore, The Tattered Cover Book Store within walking distance of where she lives.  I envy her the bookstore, and I envy her the walking distance.  Today I’ll talk about the walking distance.

Living in a city or town where a mix of businesses and services are within walking distance, and where there are sidewalks or other good pathways for pedestrians, including walk lights, audible signal walk lights, and other conveniences geared to those on foot, not just those in cars — that is a great pleasure.

Most often in the U.S., such things are found in older cities which grew up over a long time, with a resulting mix of housing and businesses, often with parks and other public sites all together, making walking itself a pleasure, and providing somewhere to get to on that walk, not just aimless wandering (although I’m not against aimless wandering).

Lewis Mumford, we are informed, on p. 55 of the print edition of the October 25, 2010  issue of The New Yorker (subscriber login required for full text) suggested that the suburbs are “a collective effort to live a private life.” If you think back to the immediate post-WWII era, you’ll remember that at that time, people in America lived in cities, in small towns, and on farms. Suburbs — housing tract developments — as we know them today were unknown. Privacy as we know it today in the suburbs — your own house or condo, with the right (within wide legal limits) to do inside it as you wish — was a rarity then. You were in a city apartment or a house or room in a small town, or you were out on a farm.  And believe me, I guard my privacy and value it highly — and I love the house I live in, and am not planning to change.

But now that much of inhabited America is covered with suburban developments, restricting access to anything besides the next-door neighbor’s kids’ swing set to those who can drive (or who can get a ride from those who can), and offering only shopping malls and strip malls with a few gas stations and professional offices here and there as nearby destinations, we are beginning, with the increasing scarcity of oil and gas and increasing awareness of the need to change our way of life, to come out of our suburban dream state (or was it a coma?) and consider factors such as walkability,  a factor at least as important, and increasingly recognized as such, by towns, townships, counties, small towns, and cities themselves, as driveability.

Walkability is the friendliness of a neighborhood, city, or area to pedestrians, especially to the people living there. The more easily people can walk from place to place there, and the more interesting and friendly places there are to get to within walking distance, the greater the walkability. The relative walkability of any area has been dubbed its Walk Score, on this site at least.  And here’s a list, with photos, of America’t 10 Most Walkable Cities.

I’ve lived in Boston, highly walkable, with excellent public transport, and also stayed for extended periods in San Francisco, even more walkable, with great public transport choices, both superbly walkable cities.  My friend of the enviably nearby bookstore lives in Denver, and a cousin of mine lives in the Chicago area, highly walkable, with libraries and other friendly facilities nearby. Another cousin lives in Springfield, Illinois, in a highly walkable neighborhood, friendly to pedestrians, used by cross-country teams from two high schools during practice, and by state workers during lunchtimes, as well as many bicyclists, walkers and runners passing through en route to the park across the street. A third cousin lives in Portland, very high in the walkability ratings. It’s only since I’ve moved here, a largely suburban area around a city center that for the most part shuts down at the end of the business day, that I’ve been restricted to car-based transport to get to almost any desirable destination. (Some fine places do stay open in or near downtown in the evening, but the area is not basically pedestrian-friendly then, and getting to them represents a car excursion and finding a parking place, not just a pleasant stroll).

I can tell you, as one who for all of my life until quite recently walked almost everywhere, and when I couldn’t walk I took the bus, the subway, the T, or Muni, I miss being able to walk places, and miss having good places nearby that are easily reached by walking.  (Again, lots of fine places exist, but you need a car to get to them — even to get to, say, one of the entrances to the excellent bicycle path.) My physical fitness, including walking as an automatic weight control and health benefit, has gone somewhat downhill, as a result.  I keep active, but there’s nothing like a good, pleasant walk with something great at the end of it, and then the return trip later on.

I used to walk several miles each day to work from apartments in East Coast cities, and that meant in all weathers: snow and ice in winter, rain and heat in summer, with lots of hills both up and down between here and there (and in both directions, too).  With the right snow gear or a good raincoat and umbrella (or rainhood, on windy days) the trip was a pleasure — or at least doable; then shed the gear, once inside, and feel great all day at work.

I miss that.  Well, you may say, you could walk now, what’s stopping you?  Nothing — except that now I’d have to plan a walk in a basically not-walking-friendly area, to no particular destination except to loop around to come home, and little enough to look at on the way except the neighbor’s swing set (my neighbors don’t actually have a swing set; I’m just using that as an example).  It’s true, there are some beautiful trees and nicely-planted yards, and they do change with the seasons — it’s a nice, friendly suburban area — but I miss the more urban walkability, even of smaller cities I’ve known.  Foolish me: all that free air and sunshine (or rain, snow, cloudiness, damp, or whatever)  is out there, just waiting for me.

There’s a very nice little nature park nearby, a great place to stroll — but it’s not pleasant to walk to. The traffic whizzes by two feet away at 45 mph, with all the noise and the smell that traffic brings. (You can always drive, of course; there’s a nice little parking lot right next to the park.)

The good news: the town I live in is considering putting in sidewalks and pedestrian crossings on some of the streets nearby where those cars whiz along at 45 mph.  That would immediately make the park available to me as a pedestrian, and encourage me to walk to various areas — stores, businesses, professional services —  which are closer to me now than my workplace was all those years ago.  YESS!! I hope they go ahead with that plan: planning for pedestrians, the wave of the future, rather than planning to pave over more land or expedite yet more cars more quickly.  The economic picture makes that kind of planning more iffy than I, they, or anyone would like, but the future demands it.  I hope it works out.

 

Bill Moyers Retires

Bill Moyers is one of my heroes, as he is for his many viewers across the country.  And he’s retiring at the end of this month.  He has examined important issues affecting American life, including many that others have declined to examine, for 40 years on his Journal (since 1971).

Moyers himself explains his decision to retire in his blog — a decision all his own, not PBS’s (who, he says, begged him to stay on) nor one from any funding source.

Journalist Eric Alterman tells us why Moyers is the top figure in American journalism since Edward R. Murrow — and may have had even more of an impact.

My personal hope is that PBS will decide to keep in stock all of Moyers’s work on DVD.  The Bill Moyers Shop on the PBS site shows DVDs of his Bill Moyers Journal available (146 items) at list price.

There’s also an online archive on the PBS site where you can watch videos of each of the programs free, get a transcript of it, or link to the PBS store to buy the DVD.

Mood Painting

Michael Mann paints his films not just with colors, but with how the colors make you feel — so he says in his commentary on the movie Miami Vice (unrated director’s edition), and I believe it.  He establishes mood as much as context; cool glass buildings, very high-tech and expensive in their simplicity, with glorious views outside all that glass; inner city streets squalid, complex and jumbled-seeming, noisy and busy, lots of men with guns, in uniform and out.  The movie is not only, perhaps not even mostly, about the plot, although the plot is a good one and airtight in its setups and payoffs: it is about mood, situation, human emotion.  Jose Yero’s actions (played by John Ortiz) are almost entirely guided by emotions: how he ‘feels’ about it… and, for the most part, so are those of the others in the film. Excellent if you are using hard-earned but unconscious survival skills to stay alive; not so good if you are jealous, because you have secretly been infatuated with the leader’s woman and now someone else has clearly taken her heart, and that person is not you, and not the leader either…

It would be easy, and a mistake, to watch this film for the plot alone.  Yes, you do have to pay attention in order to understand what’s going on, but if you do, it is clear enough.  The real action is the visuals, providing mood and emotion — so much natural beauty, so much man-made squalor — and the expressions on people’s faces.

The actor’s job is to create a character by showing us — or withholding from us — emotions, not just wearing a costume and makeup, saying lines, and hitting a mark or doing a stunt.

All of the actors in this film are top-notch, and many world-famous, whether their have names are familiar to us or not.  In fact, Isabella is played by the great Gong Li, famous to millions around the world for her lead roles in some of the greatest recent films of Chinese cinema, although her name may not be a household word (yet) to some US movie-goers.

Sights and sounds, sights and sounds:  The camera flying over the incomparable Iguazu Falls, at the border of Argentina and Brazil.  One of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, photographed more beautifully than I’ve ever seen before.  And I will never hear the song “Pennies in my Pocket” without thinking of this film every time I do.

One technical note: Wilmfilm and I watched the unrated director’s edition on a single-sided DVD rented from Netflix, and in that way we saw the ‘extended’ version and were able to enjoy, afterwards, Michael Mann’s commentary.  When we decided to purchase a copy for ourselves — we definitely wanted to be able to return to it from time to time; it’s a classic — the product description did not warn us that the HD-DVD combo copy offers the unrated edition only on the HD side. The DVD side of the combo contains only the theatrically-released rated version. No HD player in this house. While the rated version is a good film, the unrated version is superb, and contains more material and more plot and character subtleties, and lingers over some of the greatest shots longer, and has some different music placements (same music, different place in the film).

If you don’t have an HD player, you will have to obtain a DVD-only disc (no combo) to view the unrated edition on your DVD player.

The Spend Nothing Game

When I first retired, a friendly advisor on money matters suggested a strategy: “See how little you can spend — make a game of it.”  That was in 2003, when housing prices were still high and many thousands of jobs, gone today, still existed.

Now we’re in a time — the “Great Crash” — when many people absolutely need to spend less: more people than ever are  out of work or, of necessity, starting to work from home, work as consultants, take part-time jobs, or continue to look for work. One of the most interesting and helpful series of posts I know going on right now is a series on the blog First Today, Then Tomorrow written by Randy Murray, and devoted to the Spend Nothing game.  And judging from reader response, many people agree.

Scroll down to the bottom of the linked page to read about it, because there are now several posts, and it’s important to read them in the order they appeared.  The first, at the bottom of the page, explains the game; the ones that follow, working upwards, talk about various aspects and respond to user comments and questions.  The link I used (thanks, Randy!) is designed to yield all the posts about the game no matter when you search.

The Spend Nothing game is a game only in that it requires an effort that you can measure that takes place over time.  You play against yourself and your own temptation to spend in ways that are outside the fixed parameters you set up, as laid out in the first of the series of posts.

Randy Murray, as he tells you at the head of First Today, Then Tomorrow, is a writer and marketing consultant.  He’s also my friend, and this game is one of the most thoughtful challenges I’ve seen in a long time.  It gets you thinking hard about what’s really important to you.  Even if you’re already frugal, with your spending cut to the bone, this game is worth a look.  And if you’re not, there’s even more to be gained.

Virtual Virtues

In the past, my good intentions to exercise have only paved the way to greater inertia and exercise avoidance.  If only exercise were actually FUN rather than merely dreary dues one has to pay to one’s body and mind to help keep it fit, I used to say, I might actually do it.

So, following a tip from a friend, I got myself a Wii system and Wii Fit Plus.

I installed the Wii system first.  I don’t have a TV; instead, I have a VCR which shows tapes through a video projector, the kind people use when giving talks with slides in an auditorium. I use the wall as the screen, and placing the projector nearer to or farther from the screen makes the image smaller or larger.  No chasing larger and larger TV screens for me, even if I could afford to do it.  Just push the projector table a little farther back. I can see Lawrence of Arabia, 13 feet wide, in my very own basement!  Or interact with a 30″ Wii image.

The Wii system uses a sensor bar to detect motions of the remote when you play games or do exercises.  When installing it, you have to place the sensor bar above or below the TV — and I don’t have a TV.  But I was able to place the sensor bar on my side of the video projector, and that works fine.  Ah, the virtual world!

I had some fun right away playing sports from the Wii Sports disc that came with the Wii unit.  I played baseball, and didn’t do badly as a batter; but I realized my right elbow won’t let me pitch anymore.  I’ll have to see if there’s a way I can do just batting practice; or I’ll have to learn to pitch left-handed.  Guess how you bat:  you hold the remote in two hands, as you would the handle of the bat, and you swing.  That’s it!  The system senses the remote’s motions.  I hit a triple and a double, but I also struck out.  The system tells you if you’re too early or too late on your swing when you have a strike.

The next day, I installed Wii Fit Plus.  It uses a balance board and sometimes the remote to let the system sense what and how you are doing in various activities.

I learned that I need to keep the sound on.  Since the text describing what comes next or offering choices is written on the screen, and since I find sound distracting while I’m reading, I had turned the sound off.  But once I got my head down with downward-facing dog in the warmup, I couldn’t see the screen, so didn’t know how I was doing or how long to stay in that position.  My guess: the trainer was telling me… but the sound wasn’t on.

I did really well on the warrior pose, getting a rank of “Yoga master”  — 4 stars out of 4.  By contrast, I was a mere “Chickadee” (1 star out of 4) in flying (barely made it to the first landing pad — still a fledgling).  Coordinating leaning forward to go forward on screen and waving faster to go higher, and having to steer, too, by leaning left or right, will take more practice. It’s a little like driving a shift car at first: it seems as if you don’t have enough legs and arms to do all the things you need to do.  I now know how fledglings feel when they try to fly from the nest for the first time.  I think.

I also bicycled partway around the virtual island, although I kept overcorrecting the steering. (You stand on the board to pedal, stepping from foot to foot; but you hold the remote crossways in two hands to steer.) Maybe I should try to go a little slower until I get more used to it; it’s not a time trial.  A dog barked at me because I passed too near him, and I managed to crash into the third flag…  Ah well, the virtues of the virtual!    No cuts and bruises for me — and nobody else hurt, neither the dog nor the flagpole.  It’s easy to walk away and try again another day!

The up-front body test, which helps you measure your progress, told me my Wii age is 3 years younger than my chronological age.  Woot!  Once I finish digesting brunch — I’m waiting that hour or more after eating, just as you should before going back into the water when you’re at the beach– I’m going to go downstairs and try it all again!

A Good Companion’s Friendship…

… is worth a thousand words; any thousand words you care to name; more than any words at all, sometimes.  As proof, I suggest you look at The Orangutan and the Hound.

Go ahead, bookmark it on your browser; watch it again as often as you like.  I feel good every time I see it.

Paving the Way

A friend made me aware of the work of Julian Beever, the English artist based in Belgium whose astonishing pavement art — ‘anamorphic to the max,’ as my friend put it — is just that: astonishing.

Check out his work here by clicking on various illustrations.  As you’ll see, the actual artwork is distorted in such a way that it makes sense only if you view it from one specific ideal point — but when you do, that view is amazing!

Most of the images show the work from the ideal point of view, but a few show the work, additionally, from a view that reveals what the artist has created in order to get his astounding effects.

A YouTube video, How the ‘Pavement Picasso’ does it, shows Beevers at work. Fascinating!