Cop Car's Beat

I'll miss reading his weekly column - Leonard Pitts Jr

Thursday, December 15, 2022 - Retirement of a favored syndicated columnist

There is no columnist (or person, for that matter) with whom I have ever completely agreed - my being a dedicated contrarian. One whose weekly column I have long appreciated, though, is Leonard Pitts Jr whose column in this morning's The Wichita Eagle announced his retirement from writing his weekly opinion column. I'll miss his thoughtful approach to his subjects - and his humor. I hope that he enjoys the retirement on which he embarks. Mr Pitts announced his intention to spend more time writing books to add to the few that he has already had published, about which I was ignorant (or about which I had forgotten, at least.) The following excerpt is from this morning's column. I found the paragraph to be amusing.

"Thanks to a bunch of people – and so long! By Leonard Pitts Jr: Miami Harold"

....

"Thanks to Judi Smith. My former assistant retired in 2019, but still insists on proofreading the column. I will miss sparring with her over what does and does not constitute an extraneous comma. I wrote this, sentence just, for her."

....

Excerpts from Wikipedia*:

Leonard Pitts

Leonard Garvey Pitts Jr. (born October 11, 1957)^[1] is an American commentator, journalist, and novelist. He is a nationally syndicated columnist^[2] and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He was originally hired by the Miami Herald to critique music, but quickly received his own column, in which he has dealt extensively with race, politics, and culture from a progressive perspective.^[3]Raised in Los Angeles and educated at the University of Southern California, Pitts currently lives in Bowie, Maryland. He has won awards for his writing from the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and the National Association of Black Journalists, and he was first nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993, eventually claiming the honor in 2004.^[4]Pitts is a bestselling author. His first book, Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood, was published in 2006. His first novel, Before I Forget, was released in March 2009, and earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. The novel centers on a faded soul singer whose early-onset Alzheimer's disease compels him to reconnect with his father and son. Pitts's third book, Forward from This Moment: Selected Columns, 1994–2008, was published in August 2009. It is a selection of his columns from the Miami Herald.Pitts gained national recognition for his widely circulated column of September 12, 2001, "We'll go forward from this moment", in which he described the toughness of the American spirit in the face of the September 11 attacks.^[5]

 

^{_____________________________________________}References

1. 1. ^ "Leonard Pitts". Who's Who Online.
   2. ^ "Leonard Pitts Jr. columns". Tribune Content Agency. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
   3. ^ Pitts, Leonard Jr. (April 4, 2016). "Column: So, Leonard Pitts, are you liberal or are you conservative?". Miami Herald.
   4. ^ Fish, Stanley (March 14, 2011). "So's Your Old Man". The New York Times. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
   5. ^ Pitts, Leonard Jr. (September 12, 2001). "We'll Go Forward From This Moment". Miami Herald.

__________________________________________

*    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ 

100 Books Everyone Should Read 2022

It seems to me that I've picked up other bloggers' memes that demonstrated how many books on the 100 best books listing, before. What I can find in my postings is a meme having to do with science fiction books and one having to do with books that I recalled having read. The meme that follows is taken from The Misadventures of Widowhood, with the books that I recall having read highlighted in green. I must say that I do not consider some of the entries to be books, but I suppose I shouldn't quibble when the list is presented as 100 Books Everyone Should Read 2022. I hope that I have not confused having seen a video, movie, or live production for having read a book. I try hard not to confuse those actions.

 

1. 1984 (George Orwell) - B, S	51. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
2. The Alchemist	52. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) - S
3. American Gods (Neil Gaiman) - S	53. Lord of the Flies (William Golding) - B, S
4. And Then There Were None and Selected Plays (Agatha Christie)	54. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
5. Animal Farm - B, S	55. Madame Bovary
6. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)	56. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
7. Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights) (Anonymous)	57. Metamorphosis
8. The Art of War - S	58. Middlesex
9. As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner)	59. Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie) - S
10. Atlas Shrugged	60. No Country for Old Men
11. Atonement (Ian McEwan) - S	61. The Odyssey - B(?), S
12. Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)	62. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck) - S
13. Beloved (Toni Morrison)	63. Old Man and the Sea
14. A Bend in the River (V.S. Naipaul)	64. On the Road (Jack Kerouac) - S
15. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)	65. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - S
16. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) - S	66. One Hundred Years of Solitude
17. The Canterbury Tales - S	67. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) - S
18. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) - B, S	68. The Postman Always Rings Twice (James M. Cain)
19. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)	69. Pride and Prejudice
20. A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess) - S	70. The Raven - B, S
21. Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) - S	71. The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
22. Crime and Punishment	72. The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
23. Divine Comedy - S	73. Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe) - S
24. Don Quixote	74. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie - S
25. Dracula (Bram Stoker) - S	75. Schindlers List (Thomas Keneally) - S
26. Dune - S	76. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
27. Emma	77. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
28. Ender's Game - B, S	78. Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut) - S
29. Fahrenheit 451, S	79. Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison)
30. Fairy Tales (Hans Christian Anderson) - S	80. The Stranger (Albert Camus)
31. Fanny Hill (John Cleland) - S	81. Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert a Heinlein) - B, S
32. The Fault in Our Stars	82. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens) - B, S
33. Faust - S	83. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), S
34. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Nevada)	84. To the Lighthouse
35. The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom	85. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
36. The Godfather (Mario Puzo)	86. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) - S
37. Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) - B(?), S	87. Ulysses - S
38. Gravity's Rainbow	88. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera) - S
39. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)	89. Vanity Fair
40. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)	90. War and Peace
41. Hamlet (William Shakespeare) - S	91. Wasp Factory
42. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)	92. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Raymond Carver)
43. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)	93. Where the Wild Things Are - S
44. House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)	94. White Teeth (Zadie Smith)
45. The Illiad - B, S	95. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame) - S
46. Interview with the Vampire (Louisiana)	96. Winnie the Pooh (A.A. Milne) - S
47. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)	97. The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
48. King Solomon's Mines	98. Women in Love
49. Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) - S	99. A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'engle)
50. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo - S	100. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

                                    B = Bogie, S = Stu

More publicity for sister-in-law

Several weeks ago, in She has done it again!, I announced publication of Hunky Husband's sister Helen's second book on cooking. Later, The St Louis Post-Dispatch writer Daniel Neman interviewed Helen. An excerpt from Neman's resulting newspaper article appears below.

Daniel Neman: Tony's pastry chef does it her way in new cook(ie)book

Daniel Neman, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Oct 18, 2021

Published in Variety Menu

 

To the baking world, it’s an unthinkable suggestion bordering on blasphemy: When making certain desserts, it’s just fine to use imitation vanilla extract.

So says Helen S. Fletcher, the author of “Craving Cookies: The Quintessential American Cookie Book.” It may be the best cookie cookbook you will ever see.

Fletcher is the pastry chef at Tony’s, one of the highest-rated fine-dining establishments in St. Louis. For more than 20 years, she owned Truffes in University City, a bakery that catered to restaurants, hotels and caterers, and also did a lot of work with weddings. So she knows about baking, even when it comes to imitation vanilla.

“At work, at Tony’s… I use vanilla that costs $400 a gallon,” she said, demonstrating in one short sentence the difference between professional bakers and hobbyists.

Even small bottles of what she considers the best tasting, most aromatic vanilla, Tahitian vanilla, can cost $35. And she doesn’t want to price anyone out of the joy of baking.

“My whole mantra is: I want people to bake. I want people to enjoy baking. I want people who have never baked to bake,” she said.

And that means using imitation vanilla when the vanilla flavor doesn’t stand on its own, such as in recipes that also use a lot of spice or chocolate. She usually uses professional imitation vanilla herself, but she also recommends McCormick’s.

Fletcher, 81, has had no formal training as a baker. So she has developed her own way of doing things, tips and tricks and hacks that work wonders but that other bakers don’t use.

“Sometimes, when you are trained, you get stuck on the way you are taught or the way the book taught you. Well, I wasn’t trained and I didn’t have the book,” she said.

Her new cookbook, which is self-published, has tricks for baking the way she bakes.

She has done it again!

In 2012, I posted a brag on my sister-in-law, Helen's, new cookbook - European Tarts –  Divinely Doable Desserts with Little or No Baking at Cop Car's Beat: Bragging on family (typepad.com). Since that time, in addition to her work as pastry chef at an upscale restaurant in St Louis MO (more than enough work for one of our generation), Helen has been working on a cookbook of cookies. That book turned into two cookbooks: one for American cookies, the other for European. The American-style book is schedule for publication the 1st of October; but, having an "in" with the author, Hunky Husband and I received an advance copy 10 days ago.

Ta da (that's a fanfare) or, better yet, Fanfare for the Common Man for brass & percussion (from Symphony No. 3): 

Helen is nothing if not gracious, loving, and kind (and bubbly!), demonstrating those qualities once again by crediting me with having started her off in developing one of her cookie recipes by sharing a recipe that I used. Truth to tell, I have absolutely no remembrance (or record) of the recipe or, indeed, of any similar recipe that I may have used when our children were small; but, Helen's memory is much better than mine. I'll take her word for it and thank her for the publicity.

BTW: Helen and I have always had an agreement that I, completely lacking the domestic gene, won't try to act like a chef if she won't try to design airplanes. One further note on Helen's facility with European cooking: she carries on the tradition of a long line of wonderful cooks, her mother having, as a teen-ager, come to the USA from the former Yugoslavia.

P.S. I should not fail to, explicitly, include the link to Helen's blog: Pastries Like a Pro.

The Aging Brain

This past June, we were treated to a visit from Elder Brother of Boulder, Colorado, for the first time in nearly one year - understandable for those of us who have heard about the novel corona virus pandemic that has been plaguing our world. As he and I are wont to do, not as much as were our mother and I but still enough, he brought "stuff" to me. In this case, "stuff" included the DVDs and the Course Guidebook to a course put out by The Great Courses in Chantilly, Virginia, "The Aging Brain" put out in 2016.

EB had thought that Hunky Husband and I would find the course interesting, considering HH's developing dementia. The course author (and narrator on the DVDs which I have not viewed) is Thad A Polk, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. HH read the Course Guidebook before passing it on to me with the comment that he liked it. Me? Well, not so much. That's a personal bias, of course.

If I thought that "The Joy of Sweat" was a slim volume of a book, "The Aging Brain: Course Guidebook" is even more slender, topping out at 117 pages that include 12 pages of Bibliography. That is to be expected of a book that is merely the outline of the lectures that populate the course. The reason I didn't find the book more intriguing is that, as I expect to be true of anyone who spends time on the internet, I've been exposed to so much of the contained information - whether I understood it or not. I shall try to present some of the ideas presented by Professor Polk that caught my attention.

• Page 43:  "Communication between Different Brain Areas"

        "...studies have shown that the prefrontal cortex excites and inhibits other parts of the brain depending on task demands--at least in young adults"

        "...older participants had a selective deficit in neural inhibition. Although their prefrontal cortex could turn on relevant parts of the brain when necessary, it didn't do a good job in turning irrelevant brain areas off."

        "....This experiment [by a Dr. Gazzaley and his collaborators] suggested that the ability to inhibit neural processing might be a crucial component of successful memory."

• Pages 46-48: "How our Emotions and Mood Change as We Age"

        These paragraphs cited several studies (longitudinal and cohort) that show "that life satisfaction peaked at age 65."

A hypothesis was put forward that the increase in life satisfaction might be produced by increasing cognitive impairment as one aged; however, it seems that "The sharpest older people are typically the most positive. The positivity seen in older adults seems to be a strategic choice, not a pathological impairment."

"Probably the most successful explanation for this is called socioemotional selectivity theory, which was developed by Laura Carstensen at Stanford University. One way of summarizing this theory is to say that older people realize that life is too short to focus on the negative."

 

• Pages 59-60: "We remember information that we test ourselves on."

 

"One particularly powerful demonstration was conducted by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke at Washington University in St. Louis. They asked 120 undergraduates to study and try to remember as much as they could about an article that you might read in an encyclopedia."

"One group of students studied the article in four different sessions for a total of 20 minutes. Another group of students only studied it for five minutes but were then immediately tested three times. Specifically, they were given a blank piece of paper and were asked to write down as they could remember." After the first test, the students were given another sheet of paper on which to write what they could recall - twice, without being given any feedback on the accuracy of any earlier test.

"Both groups were also asked to guess how well they would remember the article a week later."

"The next week, everyone came back and tried to recall as much information from the article as they could."

The results showed that the students who had been tested remembered more than 60% of the original ideas while the other group remembered 40%. Personally, either statistic seems really high, to me.

 

• Pages 62-67: "Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease"

 

"Dementia refers to a loss in mental abilities that is severe enough to interfere substantially with the normal activities of life"

"Dementia is usually progressive."

"People with dementia may also have trouble with language and may find it difficult to follow directions or put thoughts into words. They may become restless, agitated or disoriented and start behaving inappropriately, or even aggressively."

"Warning signs include symptoms like repeatedly asking for the same information, finding it difficult to complete mental tasks that used to be easy, or forgetting what season it is. Other early symptoms could include getting lost in a very familiar environment...."

"...silent strokes produce infarcts--that is, localized brain damage. And if someone experiences a series of multiple infarcts, the accumulation of brain damage can lead to dementia...called multi-infarct dementia."

"By far the most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's disease...accounts for 50-75 percent of cases of late-life dementia."

"The disease progresses at different rates in different people, but no treatments have yet been found that can slow or halt the disease. It usually has a late onset...after age 65. When it's diagnosed before age 65, it's referred to as early-onset Alzheimers...."

_________________________________________________________

Notes to Bogie and Dudette:

HH read "Humble Pi" that had been passed along to us by Dudette & WichiDude a few weeks ago, and passed it along to me with a notation, "Good Book". Today, as I was on the last few pages of the book, HH came into my den to see what I was reading. It was as if he had never seen the book before. He doesn't recall anything about it or having read it. (Hey! He can read it with enjoyment, again!) While I was writing these notes, HH walked in and, of course, the same was true for "The Aging Brain". He will be reading it, again - and watching the DVD(s) if he can find it/them.

For the past few days, HH has come into my den while I've been sitting at my computer. Each time he has asked why I am shaking my head. I can only assume that what he is seeing is my head movement due to essential tremors - which several years ago, he teased me about when observing me from across the room at Red Cross meetings. He doesn't remember that I have them or anything about them. (I had essential tremors before I retired from Cessna in 2004!)

No sweat!

For many decades I've heard others (or myself) reply to a statement that infers one has been caused to worry or to expend effort, "No sweat!" From Idioms Online comes, "Saying no sweat is a slang expression that is similar to no problem. It means, figuratively, “helping you was not hard work for me and it did not cause me to sweat.” This idiom is very informal." However, to some people, no sweat, has another meaning - that we are unable to sweat.

Although I have no genetic inability to sweat caused by absence of sweat glands, I am one of many who are unable to produce enough sweat to provide sufficient cooling under high heat conditions - first noticed when I passed out from heat at age 12 following a hurried bicycle ride of only 1/2-mile to purchase some supplies for my mother who was preparing a picnic lunch for our family. I came to, hearing people praying over my prone body. This insufficiency of my cooling system caused me to pay attention to an NPR interview with the author of a new book: Sarah Everts, author of "The Joy of Sweat". During that interview, Ms Everts said, "...instead of thinking of sweat as gross, think of it as an "evolutionary marvel." She even calls it a human superpower and a highly efficient one at that. "We effectively dispatch water to our skin and, as it evaporates, it whisks heat away from our bodies." I purchased the book from Barnes & Noble as Hunky Husband and I left his last appointment with his audiologist.

As is evident from the image in the above photo, the book is slim - a mere 285 pages. However, I abruptly and unexpectedly came to the end of it this afternoon, discovering that 44 of those pages are notes and 17 comprise entries of the Index. That caught me (pleasantly) unawares. I include some of the more interesting or intriguing statements from the book, below.

• Page 27: "Certainly sweat glands can be trained to be more active--that's acclimation--but everybody has a different baseline."
• Page 49: "...clinical armpit sniffing is not performed willy-nilly: She [professional sniffer] follows a scientific protocol developed for professional armpit sniffers worldwide that is described in the Standard Guide for Sensory Evaluation of Axillary Deodorancy."
• Page 53: "The strongest evidence that there are no two armpit odors exactly alike, Preti [the late George Preti, research chemist] said, comes courtesy of canines. Dogs can often identify individuals with just one sniff of something they've worn. (The exception is identical twins living together and eating the same diet.)"
• Page 59: "Some researchers are convinced there's a way to diagnose diseases such as ovarian cancer because dogs can pick out patients from an otherwise healthy lineup." [My understanding is that some canines are trained/in training to detect COVID-19.]
• Page 62: "What's fascinating about anxiety odor is that it can sometimes beget fear even when we're not conscious of it."
• Page 70: "...who cares if you both share a love of, say, taxidermy or Murakami novels? You'll eventually smell the body odor of your lover, and it's probably going to be a make-or-break moment. Smell dating skips to the chase (or, more accurately, it entirely skips the chase) and uses body odor as the first elimination round for mate selection--or date selection, at any rate." [Sometime in a recent post or comment thereto, I mentioned that Hunky Husband is the opposite of me. He has always perspired freely. Fortunately, the fragrance of his sweaty body is not offensive or unpleasant. After reading this book, I can remember our first "date". Probably his pleasant body odor had a lot to do with my saying, "yes", to a second...and third....]
• Page 74: "From birth, we rely on our sense of smell to learn the body odor of individuals we love or need the most. A newborn baby, though helpless and immobile, will skootch preferentially toward its own birth-mother's odor...."

"Newborn noggins inspire many to inhale deeply. 'Family-friendly crack cocaine,' is how a friend of mine once described the smell of a baby's head."

"Sniffing the odor of our loved ones--whether consciously or unconsciously--continues throughout our lives. Siblings and married couples are able to correctly identify the smell of people with whom they cohabitate. Even adult siblings, who haven't seen (or smelled) each other for more than 2 years can still correctly recognize their brother or sister's unique odor print, the signature mixture of chemicals floating off their bodies."

• Page 209: "For most individuals, body-wide eccrine [active in thermoregulation] develop in utero between week 20 and week 30."

From the Mayo Clinic website article on Sweat glands comes the graphic, below.

Summary of the week

Hunky Husband's busy calendar - 6/21/2021

It is well that HH is as organized as he is. It really helps him. Today he has a social engagement (to see old friends from 50 years ago, one of whom has come to town) and an appointment with his audiologist. That being the case, HH brought his penciled schedule for the day to me last evening to see if he had missed anything. He had noted the time at which he was to leave the house to meet his old friends at McDonald's, the time he was to leave McDonald's for home, etc. Right on! Unless HH starts getting more anxious about the whole thing, I plan to go to the gym this morning. I should return home before HH needs to leave, but I don't plan to go with him. McDonald's is less than one mile from our home.

How can we be so wasteful? - 6/22/2021

The item, below, is from News for Nerds.

Amazon Labels Millions of Unsold Products For Destruction, New Investigation Finds (theverge.com)73

Posted by msmash on Monday June 21, 2021 @01:39PM from the closer-look dept.

Amazon marks millions of unsold products for destruction each year in the UK, according to a new investigation by British television program ITV News. From a report: ITV found stacks of boxes marked "destroy" that were filled with electronics, jewelry, books, and other new or gently used items in one warehouse's "destruction zone." The news outlet caught the practice on camera while going undercover at the Dunfermline fulfillment center in Scotland. It says it tracked some of the goods to recycling centers and a landfill. About 124,000 items at Dunfermline were labeled "destroy" during a single week in April, according to an internal document obtained by ITV News. Just 28,000 items were set aside for donations during the same period. About half of all the stuff that's trashed are things that people returned, a former Amazon employee told ITV. While the other half are "unopened and still in their shrink wrap," the ex-employee said.

 

Sidenote to Bogie: I recall your telling me about wastefulness when you worked at Brookstone. I think it pales into insignificance when compared with the magnitude of Amazon's wastefulness.

 

Hunky Husband's busy calendar - 6/23/2021

 

 

For the first time since February, 2020, I got to see my friend who lives in a retirement village in northwestern Wichita. Hunky Husband took Elegant Friend and me to lunch at the Bricktown Brewery, a restaurant just a few blocks from EF's apartment. EF and I failed to recall how large portions of food are at that restaurant and each of the three of us took as much food home with us as we ate.

 

We lost our ISP (Cox) - 6/26/2021

 

 

As I was trying to solve a "no audio" problem with my computer software, this morning, I lost Internet connection - at about 7am. Since Cox has been laying some sort of cable in up along the main street that is about 1/3-mile to the west of us, I checked that our Wi-Fi was working and chose not to panic; but, I did check up on it every once-in-a-while. Hunky Husband and I just returned from the public library where, for the first time in 1.5 years I checked out a couple of books (both fiction, this time). In logging the books into my Excel spreadsheet, I note that I now have Internet connection - at about 2:45pm. Yay! HH is going down to his computer to check on his incoming emails.

 

I still have no audio. (Yes, the speakers are plugged in, powered up, and producing sounds.) The Troubleshooter software checked out my system and found nothing that it could fix - even after it reinstalled the audio drivers. I updated the System BIOS which, likewise, produced nothing. I don't much use the audio; but, it would be nice to have it back. 

 

Unlike previous times, HH has been choosing to go with me for most of the errands that I run - whether he drives or whether I drive. This is new behavior.

 

P.S. Weather - 6/26/2021

 

We received 1.6" of rain overnight. That cooled us down a bit, even if it raised the humidity. It was rather nice doing yardwork this morning - pulling millions of weeds and gathering branches downed by the wind.

It's a matter of perspective

I just know that I have made a posting with a similar title; but, for the life of me cannot find it. Although I've always found the TypePad internal search function pretty useless, I gave it a try. The search function came back with exactly one hit on "perspective" - What Makes Us Laugh from 15 years ago. The subject of that posting was my favorite cartoon character, Ms Crumm. When I went to the posting, the most interesting part was the link to a now-defunct (AFAIK) blog by a friend in the UK - and the comment string that followed.

Back to perspective: Liz (in Wales) frequently posts about her exploits in the field of exercise. She leaves some of us in the dust! Two Three weeks ago, I started going back to the gym. Wednesday, all of the signage to the effect that "Textron requires everyone to wear a mask" were missing and I was informed that they were no longer required. As there were only three other people in the gym, that morning, masking/not masking wasn't a big deal. I did, however, note that the only other woman was wearing a mask and asked if she would feel more comfortable if I left mine on. She demurred, thanking me for asking. I don't know her vaccination status; but, she is a member of a minority community so it is entirely possible that she and her adult son (also working out - never with a mask) are not immunized against COVID-19.

To the point: Amount of exercise that one is taking is a matter of perspective. From the perspective of my old, old age and past experience, I have been trying to gradually increase the intensity of my work-outs (from the "weak" state at which I re-started my gym visits) so as to avoid aching muscles. So far, so good. I am making great progress. However, my usual intention of applying the same concept to the work that I do in the yard has been less successful. Today, I arose with achy upper arms (biceps).

Yesterday, I cut off dead wood from one of our crepe myrtle bushes with our Craftsman loppers. "Aha!" I thought. That is what made me achy. But...I didn't do that much. It didn't stand to reason. Oh, yes, now I recall. Before I did the dead wood lopping, I had weed-whacked around all of the newish trees, around the steps down to the woods, and so forth. Our string trimmer is a Weedeater cordless - not very heavy. However, I did use it until the battery ran down and I am sure that was the cause of my achiness. 

ADDITION of five hours later:

Today, I've had to get myself outside between rain showers. I used the Weedeater to trim around the lone tree in the front yard (oh, yes, that's where the achiness came from!) and have completed the removal of dead wood from one of our crepe myrtle bushes. In addition, I've pulled a lot of weeds and, from the edge of the woods, many purple winter creepers. As of 4pm, we have received 0.55" of rain.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to turn off the sprinkler system last night. At about 5:30am, I heard the sprinklers hitting my bedroom windows - that would have been from Station 3 of the system. An hour later, there was an announcement on the radio that said that Wichita was getting rain and thunder. I wondered, to myself, whether we too would receive rain. A few minutes later, we had several flashes of lightning. I arose about that time, and it was raining by the time I got upstairs. The rain sensor only turns off the system if it detects rain before the system activates; thus, I turned off the system just after it had cycled to Station 6 (we use 7 stations). Most of our yard has received a lot of water, today.

Tidbits for another week - 3/12/2021

Electrical Problems (3/10/2021):

We have overkill in my kitchen: There are four ovens in it. Since I'm not much of a cook (I only cook to keep us from starving), you may not think that logical. However, the number of ovens in my kitchen is not the point of my sad tale. The point is that I had an electrical problem with the small toaster oven (to left of microwave on the counter in the photo, above) which proved to the world that I, who completed a minor in Electrical Engineering back in the late 1950s, am an idiot.

I wanted to toast a sandwich bun for our dinner, last night. I put the bun in the toaster oven, set the controls and started the oven, and left the room. Upon my return, I discovered that the oven was not hot, did not even have glowing digital control numbers showing. I unplugged the unit, re-plugged it. (That's the plug to the toaster oven at the right end of the toaster oven and above it. The other plug to the left of the toaster oven is actually the plug to the microwave.) Nothing. Exasperated, I used a skillet and the range top to toast the bun. As I went downstairs to bed, last night, I took the toaster oven down to our workshop where I intended to check it, later, to see if there is a fuse inside the casing.

This morning, as I came upstairs, I brought our standby toaster oven up from the basement. Later, I stuck a bagel into the standby toaster oven and set its simple mechanical controls. I listened to the hum of the spring-loaded timer as I walked away. When I returned, did I find a toasted bagel? Nope. The toaster oven was (electrically) dead as a doornail. Bah! Humbug! The poor thing had served me well in Albuquerque in the 1980s and had served me well for the first 10 years after my return to Derby KS; but, it hadn't been used since about 2000 - at which time it had been replaced by the newer unit.

A bit later, after working in the yard and kicking back thinking to take a short nap, my idle mind realized what was going on with the little ovens: I had been checking the wrong ground fault interrupter (GFI) unit. I had checked the GFI into which the microwave is plugged. That's logical since it is, physically, the nearest GFI unit to the outlet into which the toaster oven is plugged. However, the electrical outlet into which the toaster oven plugs is actually wired into the GFI unit of the outlet that is to the right of the microwave. Duh!

While everyone is looking at the photo of the ovens, please note that the little woodwork one can see is nice and clean. I started on spring cleaning, in the kitchen, the other day. It took me four days to finish scrubbing all of the cabinets in the kitchen, but they are clean!

Terminology Illuminated (3/12/2021):

The other day I asked that anyone who understood "Lie group" and/or "surfaces of ignorance" let me know so that I could share the Zoom login information to yesterday's Wichita State University Physics Seminar. I needed someone to watch and translate for me. The seminar featured Dr. Shannon Ray, National Research Council Fellow, Air Force Research Laboratory, speaking on“The Purification of 3-Level Quantum States and Surfaces of Ignorance”.

No one took me up on the challenge of translating for me, so I watched the presentation, alone. It turned out to be an interesting talk. Although I understood the math (heavy on tensor algebras), there was a lot of what turned out to be jargon - much of it invented by the presenter and his colleagues. One term that he used in a peripheral comment turned out to be less esoteric than I had perceived or considered: it was "The Bottom Turtle".

In exchanging emails with Ole Phat Stu, a few minutes ago, I was inspired to research "The Bottom Turtle". *Face Palm*  The term is from Yertle the Turtle by Dr Seuss.

Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) has been in the news, much, of late - at least, here in the States. Fortunately, Yertle the Turtle was not implicated in the loud complaints against some of the Seuss books. Who knew it would contain an allegory during a physics talk? Whoo boy.

Personal Tidbits from Hunky Husband and me:

As of Wednesday (3/10/2021), Hunky Husband and I are considered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be "fully vaccinated". We may now meet with a few other people who are also "fully vaccinated", indoors, without masking and distancing. Unfortunately, in our family, being "fully vaccinated" has skipped the generation of our daughters. We are looking forward to their attaining the designation no later than the end of May.

On Friday (3/12/2021), HH & I met with our tax guy. Yikes! HH had, without my having noticed it, until we gathered our tax papers, chosen to skip the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from his Volunteer Investment Plan (VIP) with Boeing, for 2020. The problem that it presented for our 2020 taxes was that by not taking his RMD (not required in 2020 because of COVID-19), he did not contribute the taxes that he would have had withheld from the distribution.

For 2020, we had under-withheld (Fed & State) by an amount equal to my income from retirement benefits plus social security. (Of course, for 2019 we had over-withheld 1.2 times that much.) HH had left home without his checkbook, so the rest of our taxes will be automatically syphoned off of my checking account.  Fortunately, I am in the habit of carrying a blank check in my wallet and Robert was able to get the routing information off of it to give the Feds and the State Revenuers. (The minute we got home I transferred the funds from my savings. In the meantime, HH had received texts from H&R Block informing him that both sets of taxes had been accepted and would be deducted from the indicated account.)

 

Money well spent

In my youth (which I consider to extend to a greater age than did it 50 years ago), I transferred schools during my senior year of college. The transfer was from University of Missouri School of Mines & Metallurgy¹ (MSM), basically an engineering school, to University of Wichita² (UW). The strange thing about WU was that, although they had a School of Engineering, as a physics major I matriculated into the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Woo hoo! In so doing, I lost most of the hours I had earned in "engineering" courses (10 semester-hours were allowed to transfer), I lost the minor in electrical engineering whose requirements I had completed (no minors allowed outside one's school), a bunch of non-technical (humanities) courses were required to be fulfilled in order to earn a degree in liberal arts & sciences, and a couple of humanities courses that had been accepted as substitutes for over-crowded required basic courses (one in economics, the other in English) at MSM were disallowed and the "required" basic courses were added to my requirements at UW. As I recall, by the time the dust settled, the part of my previous college work that would count toward my degree from WU amounted to but 118 semester hours. Yikes! (Please note that, in order to earn a BS degree at MSM at that time, I had to earn at least 150 semester hours of credited work.

I needed only four physics courses (12 semester hours) to complete my technical requirements for a BS from UW, but I needed to complete four semester hours of physical education (not offered to female students at MSM), introductory courses in public speaking, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and those basic courses in economics and English literature. Actually, I rather enjoyed some of those courses; but, tonight the money I spent taking the required English course - Introduction to American Literature - paid off. I got bragging rights, tonight.

Hunky Husband was watching some old episodes of Law & Order. I walked into the room in time to watch the last couple of minutes of one episode in which a sleazy lawyer was saying (my quote probably isn't exact), "Sometimes a guy has to dare to eat a peach." Ah, yes...from 1962 I recall The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock by T.S. Eliot. [Yes, the same man who wrote, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.] Of course, even though I claimed bragging rights for knowing about the poem, that bit of knowledge has come in useful down through the years. In the copy of the poem, below, I have high lighted the appropriate phrase.

The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T.S. Eliot

 

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .                               10 Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.   In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.   The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                               20 And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.   And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate;                                30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea.   In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.   And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                               40 [They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"] Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.   For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                       50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.   So how should I presume?   And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                    60   And how should I presume?   And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.   And should I then presume?   And how should I begin?         .     .     .     .     . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets              70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . . I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.         .     .     .     .     . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?                  80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet–and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.   And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while,                                             90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" If one, settling a pillow by her head,   Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.   That is not it, at all."   And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while,                                           100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:   "That is not it at all,   That is not what I meant, at all."                                          110         .     .     .     .     . No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.   I grow old . . . I grow old . . .                                              120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.   Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.   I do not think they will sing to me.   I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.   We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown               130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.                                                               [1915]

From a Virginia website0

 

¹ Now Missouri University of Science & Technology

² Now Wichita State University