Lift Up Your Hearts!

I'm not unsympathetic to those who are genuinely suffering in the heat. I spent the first 30+ years of my life in the Northeast, where air conditioning was almost unheard of, even in critical care hospitals. The laboratory where I worked in the 1970's only had air conditioning in the computer rooms, and that only because—like art—the machines would not work under conditions that people were expected to endure with patience. Even in Florida, my grandparents' house, like most buildings before the late 20th century, had no air conditioning. (It was, however, intelligently built: two blocks from the ocean, and constructed for maximum cross-ventilation, to take advantage of every breeze.) I know unrelenting heat.

So how did we manage?

• Buildings, like my grandparents' house, were built to take the heat into account, with cross-ventilating windows, breezy porches, and shady trees arching over the roofs. Central Florida as it is built now could not exist without the HVAC industry.
• House windows were habitually opened as soon as the outside air cooled off at night, which it did most weeks of the year in the Northeast, and closed when the day began to heat up. This practice has a power that I didn't fully appreciate until we moved to Florida, where the nighttime cooling is ofttimes non-existent.
• Swimming: in ponds, lakes, pools, and/or the ocean. Plastic kiddie pools and running through the sprinkler helped a lot, too. When we first moved to Florida, we kept the A/C set in the 80's, and spent a lot of time in the pool. That kept us cool, but took a terrible toll on our energy. Once we gave in and brought the inside temperature down to the high 70's, we used the pool less—but got a lot more accomplished.
• Another advantage the more northern climes have is that the really unbearable temperatures are only for a short time. When we lived in Rochester, there were usually only two or three weeks in the summer when I was reduced to nursing my baby while immersed in a cool-water bath, and planning excursions based on whether or not the destination was air conditioned. In Florida, sans A/C, that would be the majority of the year.
• A few very lucky people had jobs in air conditioned buildings. As for the rest of us: we suffered; we endured; we dialed down our activities to keep our bodies cooler and our minds saner. And we looked forward to the first hints of autumn.

But that was then, and this is now, and now what makes it possible to have a comfortable, productive society is air conditioning. It's no secret that the closest thing the American South has to a secular saint is Willis Carrier. Air conditioning is as critical in the Sun Belt as heating is in the Snow Belt. Having heard people seriously suggest that the cause of France's heat wave is American air conditioning, I can only say, "Come back and talk to me about giving up my A/C after you've lived a winter in your country without heating." Better yet, discover air conditioning for yourself. Even if you only need it for a few weeks out of the year, you'll feel better, and can be pleased with how low your A/C bills are compared with ours, just as we Southerners feel better about our heating bills in winter when we look at yours.

You might also consider investing in public places of respite, as I've seen in various cities here, where people can come in to get warm, or to get cool, depending on the season. As I said in my last post, one can stand a much greater intensity and duration of heat or cold if one can occasionally retreat to a more comfortable situation.

And gelaterias. We all need more gelaterias.

Now that we're back from three weeks in the Mediterranean region, people are wondering how we survived Europe's heat wave. The answer is simple: the same way we survive Florida's summers. Nowhere that we went did the temperatures exceed Florida's numbers: high 80's to low 90's were the worst we experienced. That's actual temperature. Having lived more than seven decades with that as my measure of ambient temperature, my brain rebels against the modern "feels like" idea, which always makes me feel more miserable than I am. For what it's worth, the UV Index at its highest in a day was generally 8—like a normal Connecticut summer. In Florida at this time of year that number is routinely 12. I was barely aware of the UV Index until I acquired the dminder app for my phone to help me keep track of the vitamin D my body is making. If I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt, a 10-minute walk in the midday sun at UVI 12 easily gets me 2000 IUs (and a warning that it's time to go inside). On the UV Index scale, 1-2 is considered Low, 3-5 Moderate, 6-7 High, 8-10 Very High, and 11+ Extreme.

Our first four days were in Florence, and were undeniably hot, because we wanted to make the most of our short time there. Our hotel was convenient to everything we wanted to see, so we walked everywhere and were on the go most of the time the sun was up. (Sane Floridians avoid the midday hours outside if possible. "Mad dogs and Englishmen," you know.) The Mediterranean sun was intense, the humidity was high, the cobbled sidewalks a challenge to walk on, and Florence's many staircases a trial for legs accustomed to flat surfaces. What made this only a minor inconvenience?

• This was early in our trip, when we were fresh and eager.
• Hats and sunglasses. Generally I hate wearing a hat, but keeping the sun off my face was a necessity.
• A Floridian's practiced eye for finding shade. Walk on the shady side of the street. Rest in a shady spot. It makes a significant difference, even when the humidity is high.
• Air-conditioned respites. This is huge. As with cold in the winter, one can stand a much greater intensity and duration of heat if one can occasionally retreat to a more comfortable situation. In our case, we spent much of our time walking from one museum to another, and generally recognize that great art survives better in a hospitable climate. So do people, but art refuses to be bullied. The museums were comfortably air conditioned—not the frigid situation one finds in Florida restaurants, for example, which is why I keep a sweatshirt in the car at all times and occasionally pull it out even during the hottest summer days.
• We didn't hesitate to adjust our schedule to accommodate our physical needs.
• Frequent gelato stops. Never underestimate the importance of this Italian staple.

For the remainder of our trip, we were on a Princess cruise, visiting Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Montenegro. The ship itself was over-airconditioned, but an occasional trip to the blistering sun of the top decks took care of that nicely. And the otherwise-excessive A/C was admittedly glorious upon returning from a long, midday excursion of hiking, under a cloudless sky, through ancient ruins.

Overall, to those who asked us how we managed in Europe's "terrible heat wave," my first thought was always, "What heat wave?"

But I do understand unrelenting heat, as I'll explain in my next post.

It was a small gesture, but it felt so good.

The government gave us these for free, and they've been stashed in our closet ever since. The last time I used one was ages ago, in order to be able to assure members of our choir that my symptoms were seasonal allergies, not covid. They are now three years past their putative expiration dates, and I needed the space in the closet—and in my mind.

Tossing these boxes into the trash did nothing to undo the harm that was done during the covid era, nor to erase the shame I carry for my own behavior in that time of mass delusion and conformity.

But it still felt really good.

One characteristic I share with of both my parents is a deep-seated suspicion of psychology and psychiatry, especially in their popular manifestations. Granted, I've known people who have been helped by counsellors, but I've also known those who have been badly hurt by the process. History is littered with examples of "best medical practices" that were more likely to kill patients than to cure them, and practices that mess with people's minds are no exception.

I totallly agree with my father's reaction to a lecture he heard in 1993, while visiting Uruguay.

The lecturer started talking about an article from "Psychology Today" on "The Secrets of Happiness," and I began to have problems. The problems were mainly with semantics and my interpretation of the meaning of words and while this was not a subject for discussion, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about it.

The article listed four important traits of happy people:

1. Self Esteem: Happy people like themselves.

2. Optimism: Happy people are hope-filled.

3. Extroversion: Happy People are outgoing.

4. Personal Control: Happy People believe they choose their destinies.

Of course I got into trouble early by asking what is meant by self esteem. I think she figured it was obvious, but she gave a rather long explanation that I didn't understand either. I suppose the answer is: Of course I like myself—I'm the only self I have.

But what we did not discuss is my dislike of the word "happy." To my mind, "happy" is a rather shallow word that describes a short-term condition. You were happy about Heather's recital; Porter's birthday was a happy event. But over the long run, your life is not happy except at times. You are contented, your life has been very satisfying, but it has always had the ups and downs that make "happy" inappropriate. Anyway, I think there are better words, no matter what others think. Perhaps my problem is that I don't have all the important traits for being happy.

I have still more to say about that letter, and that lecture, but that will be for another time.

There's been a lot of talk about autism, and the autism spectrum, in recent years: what it is, what causes it, why the condition seems to have skyrocketed, what can or should be done to help those dealing with it. I'm not getting into the politics of it all; whether you blame heredity, vaccines, Tylenol, environmental pollution, ultraprocessed foods, random chance, or all of the above doesn't matter for this post. Personally, my own favored "cause" is the explanation I once heard of the high number of children considered "on the spectrum" in places like Silicon Valley and Seattle: Engineers are marrying engineers. I'm only half joking.

From my perspective, 1988 seems recent, but in the 38 years since then much has changed, including autism awareness. In that year, my father attended an Elderhostel program near Pikes Peak, Colorado. This comment from his journal of the occasion stood out:

Mrs. Drummond felt compelled to keep up a conversation as we traveled to her home. They have two children, a girl about 7 and a boy about 5 years old. The boy is Autistic and is in the public school for the first time this year. The disease is rare enough, at least in that area, that she has had to spend a good deal of time instructing the teacher on how to handle the problem.

Today, no one would call autism a disease, nor would they consider it rare. On the other hand, I'm certain there are many parents of autistic children who would say that they are still having to spend a good deal of time educating teachers (also family, friends, and random strangers).

As I've mentioned before, I've been enjoying going through (and digitizing, where possible) my father's old journals and letters. I particularly like coming upon examples of his sense of humor, which often relied on either exaggeration or understatement, or both. The following, from a mid-1988 letter, made me smile this morning.

Last Monday while I was carrying an ancient and defunct television set out to the trash, my back gave way. It was not a heavy load--certainly not more than 20 pounds--but even though I had no trouble getting it up the basement stairs and through the house, the problem came without warning as I was descending the front porch steps.

Over the next several days, interspersed with other news, Dad reported feeling fine enough to spade the garden, then feeling considerably worse, finally consulting a doctor and getting x-rays which revealed a compression fracture. He next visited an orthopedic specialist, who was not concerned about the x-ray results, since they showed only something minor that might have happened many years ago. Based on Dad's description, the doctor concluded that the problem was muscular, and prescribed "time and a heating pad." When Dad then asked what kind of activities he could could indulge in, the doctor replied, "Anything you want." For anyone reading this who knew my father, the alarm bells are now going off....

Dad did limit his activities to the extent that he did not go bungee jumping, nor bowling, the latter having landed him back in the hospital on a previous occasion when his surgeon had told him that he could "do anything you feel like doing." He did decide that that heavy gardening was still on the table, and paid for that the next day, but the orthopedic doctor was apparently right, and the references in his letters to his back petered out. In the end, he was left with the following conclusion:

I guess this confirms my feeling that television is bad for you. But on the other hand, if you have one, keep it.

There are Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

Here's a very interesting, 14-minute video that sheds light on one reason Americans are so unhealthy: It's not that they've gotten sicker; it's that we're discovering things wrong with them that would never have hurt them in the past. Perhaps Americans in general really are less healthy than we once were, but the misuse of medical statistics is no way to prove that, nor to treat it.

It's worth your 14 minutes, despite a few bizarre misreadings of the script, and one word that somehow slipped through the profanity filter.

Pay special attention to the problem of overaggressive treatment that is encouraged by early detection of problems that would have been better left alone. I speak here from personal experience: My mother-in-law was saved from the trauma, expense, and harmful side effects of aggressive treatment of a cancerous mass only because she had something more urgently wrong that needed to be dealt with first. By the time she was ready for the cancer treatment, the mass had disappeared completely on its own.

What do you picture when you hear autism called a "spectrum"?

I think of a linear scale, the kind you see in so many surveys, such as this:

That's the image that comes to my mind, but I don't believe it's accurate.

Recently, I saw a short video of a man who dusted a thin metal plate with sand, and then drew a violin bow along one side, the vibrations creating a pattern with the sand. By placing his fingers on different combinations of points on the edge, he could create beautiful, complex patterns. These are called Chladni figures, and you can find out more in this demonstration, which is under 10 minutes long.

This strikes me as a much more reasonable way of describing the set of people that we have decided to label "autistic."

What of other people? What of other dimensions?

Maybe the true value of diversity lies not in magnifying our differences but in celebrating our beautiful patterns?

"Let the Worms Decide" is an Epoch Times article that caught my eye first because of the author, Joel Salatin, and secondly because I knew what kind of worms he was talking about. We've been vermicomposting since 2009, and I know a little bit about what our worms will and will not eat.

Salatin begins with a story from a middle school program he visited in California, where students worked on a small farm half a day each week.

They had a worm box about 8 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet. Imagine an oversized coffin. If you want to see children get excited, show them a worm box. It’s mesmerizing with all the slithering, slimy worm activity....

One week, the farmers assigned homework: “Bring food on Monday.” The students dutifully brought some food: Twizzlers, Gummy Bears, Froot Loops—you get the idea. They placed their “food” in one end of the worm box. The farm ladies put different items in the other end: an apple, a pork chop, and a glob of yogurt, among other things. The following week, the students, eager to see what had transpired, ran to the box and opened it.

They pulled out their Gummy Bears, Twizzlers, and Froot Loops—untouched. When they tried to find the food items that the farmers had placed at the other end, all that food was gone. The day’s lesson was obvious: “Why would you want to eat something worms won’t even eat?” I'll bet a lot of young people made some different eating decisions that day.

Tongue not totally in cheek, Salatin proposes turning our expensive—and too-easily corrupted—food safety testing over to composting worms.

I’ve known and worked with many worm farmers over the years who explain how sensitive their “livestock” is to unacceptable items placed in their boxes. If they like the substance, they devour it readily. If they don’t, they move away and give it a wide berth.

If worms are that decisive and timely to determine healthy versus unhealthy things in their environment, why not ask them to share their preferences with all of us?

Worms don’t vote, don’t listen to lobbyists, don’t invest in Wall Street, or watch ads. They are about as objective a researcher as you could ever want. Goodness, they aren’t even swayed by money.

Here’s my idea: why not get a small plot of land—perhaps 5 acres—and set up 100 worm boxes? Everything Americans apply to the soil or put in our mouths would undergo the worm test for a week. What the worms ate would get a green light. What the worms didn’t eat would get a red light.

We could hire a couple of college students to run the program. If glyphosate is really innocuous, let’s see if the worms like it. If Coca-Cola is really nutritious, let’s see if the worms like it. Pour it in and see if they want to come to that area, or if they avoid it like the plague. If Red Dye 29 is a wonderful food additive, or monosodium glutamate (MSG), put them in the worm bed and let the worms vote.

Based on my experience, I see a few problems with this scenario, as I'm sure Salatin himself does. Worms will eat (and detoxify) some really nasty things, given enough time for their cohabiting microorganisms to break them down. The farmers who sold us our system have huge vermiculture setups in which they say the worms will devour battery acid in small quantities. Just because you can convince a worm to eat something, that doesn't mean I want it in my food. But the one-week test would probably take care of that problem. Maybe the worms will eventually eat something, if they get hungry enough, but they definitely have their favorites and, like a small child at the dinner table, will go for the good stuff first.

That same small child may reject his beets despite their certified goodness, and my worms will reject things I find great. Like homegrown, organic lemon balm. Or citrus peels. (Granted, I never tried them on the chocolate-covered variety.) Some worms don't like broccoli; fortunately, ours eat it right up. So it's not a foolproof system.

That said, Salatin makes an important point: If something we're doing causes natural systems to thrive, that could be a clue that we may be going in the right direction. On the other hand, a failing system is a red warning light that should give us pause.

Stay tuned for the results of my own experiment.  We have leftover Hallowe'en candy, including the above-mentioned Twizzlers.  I plan to make an offering to the worms and see what they have to say.

Ahhhhh.  My mind and body are once again aligned with Nature.

I publish this here because I know there are people with whom it will resonate, although it apparently runs contrary to the experience of the majority. Why else would they be so anxious to banish silence from our lives?

A prime example is our water aerobics classes at the local community therapeutic pool. The warm-water exercise is worth the struggle for me, but it is indeed a struggle, every time. For some reason the instructors believe that people exercise better when accompanied by loud music and a headache-inducing drum beat. We've managed to find the instructors who will at least keep the volume down to where I no longer have to wear earplugs, but the incessant noise and throbbing beat continue.

To my fellow classmates who may think I am rude, unfriendly, or merely unhappy, I don't mean to be any of the above. But please don't tell me to smile. It takes so much effort to fight the sensory assault that social politeness is often a casualty.

With one exception: All too rarely, we play games with small beach balls: bouncing, hitting, throwing, challenging just ourselves or in competition with others. It's not unkindly competitive—half the fun is figuring out how to include everyone of varying skill and physical ability levels—but it's exciting, and when we're doing that I manage to tune out the music almost completely. I have no idea why. It's the most active of the physical work we do in those classes, and yet it is the only time I feel relaxed and free.

Often I even smile.

This research comes from Carnegie Mellon University, so it must be good, right?  In these days, as the cracks in our system of scientific funding, research, reviewing, and reporting are becoming evident, it's nice to find results I can embrace wholeheartedly.

In a carefully controlled laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, researchers exposed more than 400 healthy volunteers to the common cold virus. However, before the viral exposure, researchers spent two weeks meticulously tracking something most scientists might overlook: whether the participants had been hugged each day. ... Participants who were hugged on most days had about 60 percent lower odds of becoming infected than those who were rarely hugged. Additionally, those who did get sick recovered more quickly and had stronger immune responses than those who received fewer hugs.

When we hug someone, a cascade of events unfolds in our bodies and brains, affecting us on multiple levels—neurobiological, neurochemical, and social. Neurobiologically, hugging stimulates a network of sensory nerves under the skin, particularly a specialized group called C-tactile afferents, sometimes referred to as “cuddle nerves.” ... When triggered, cuddle nerves also release endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers that help boost mood. ... On a neurochemical level, hugging triggers the release of several “feel-good” chemicals. Chief among these is oxytocin ... which enhances feelings of bonding, trust, and safety. In addition, hugging releases dopamine, which is associated with pleasure, and serotonin, which stabilizes mood and promotes happiness. From a social and psychological standpoint, hugs convey support without the need for words, serving as nonverbal affirmations of shared emotion, reinforcing social bonds.

Hug duration was also considered in the study.

When researchers tested different types of hug styles and durations, they discovered precise requirements: one-second hugs felt unsatisfying and provided minimal benefit. At the same time, five to 10 seconds proved optimal before longer contact became uncomfortable. For intimate relationships, 20-second embraces produce the strongest measurable effects.

The article does not specifically mention one vital category of hugs: those between parents and their young children. (And grandma hugs!  Never forget the regenerative power of grandma hugs!) Possibly it was included in the "intimate relationships" category, but I'm inclined to suspect that there were not enough people in the parent/child cohort for meaningful data. Many university studies are done on their captive audience of college students; I'd like to know the demographics of their volunteers.

Read the whole article for more, including previous studies. Here's one from 2003:

Couples who had 10 minutes of hand holding followed by a 20-second hug with their partner before giving a speech had lower blood pressure and heart rate by half compared with those who sat quietly without contact. These results suggest that affectionate touch provides physiological protection, which partially explains the heart health benefits associated with supportive relationships.

Are you a bit short on the opportunity for hugs in your life? Do not despair!

Regular affectionate contact produces benefits that extend far beyond stress reduction and a healthier heart. People who receive consistent physical comfort—whether from humans, pets, or even weighted blankets—sleep more soundly and wake more refreshed than those lacking such contact.

It began as a student project by Professor Jamie Rector's class at the University of California, Berkeley. They wanted to investigate methane emissions from abandoned and sealed oil wells. What the students discovered could turn the approach to California's environmental concerns on its head.

As they researched California’s abandoned oil wells, Rector’s students discovered an abundance of natural oil seeps located above the same fields—and came to a surprising conclusion. Geologically driven, natural oil seeps are a major contributor to California’s greenhouse emissions, they say. And drilling—long seen as the problem, not the answer—might be a panacea for emissions.

Natural seeps occur when liquid oil and gas leak to the Earth’s surface, both on land and under water. California sits on actively moving tectonic plates, which create fractured reservoirs and pathways for the oil to escape. ... Waters off Southern California are rife with seeps, and oil and gas fields ... have some of the highest natural hydrocarbon seep rates in the world, emitting gases such as methane, as well as toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs). But these geologically driven seeps, Rector notes, have been largely unaccounted for in assessing how oil production fields contribute to California’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“There are hundreds of studies linking oil and gas fields to greenhouse gas emissions, to cancer rates, to climate justice, to groundwater pollution and everything else,” said Rector. “And yet none of these studies ever considered the possibility that it wasn’t from equipment or production, but natural seeps above the oil fields.” ... Rector’s team calculates that natural seeps, together with orphaned wells, produce 50 times more methane emissions than oil and gas equipment leaks in Southern California.

If seeps are driving emissions above oil fields, Rector reasons, plugging abandoned wells may do little to help pollution. In fact, he posits, the only demonstrated way to reduce natural seep emissions is by depleting underlying reservoirs—that is, by drilling.

Pointing to studies showing that oil production has reduced and even eliminated seeps, he suggests California’s current regulatory environment may be counterproductive.
“The crazy thing is, by stopping oil and gas production in California, after we’ve regulated and really gotten equipment emissions way down, we may be increasing seep emissions,” Rector said. “Because these seeps come up through the oil and gas fields, and the only way to stop it is by producing oil.”

The article is much longer than these excerpts, and the situation is of course complex, both scientifically and politically, but I see it as yet another demonstration of the truth that simplistic solutions with the best of intentions often lead to harmful, unintended consequences.

Here's an interesting look at attempts to replace farms and ranches with industrial food production facilities.

I'm not totally against efforts to use technology to create flesh; I'm quite excited about the possibility of using 3D printers to create hearts, kidneys, and other organs for those who need them. That, too, is still a far-off dream, but it sure beats re-defining death so that more organs can be harvested for transplant, as was recently suggested in the New York Times. (The link will be useless to you if, like me, you can't get into the NYT, but you can see the headline.)

The main reason I like that video is how it reveals the incredible complexities of natural life, which we take for granted until we try to mimic them. Lab-grown meat is no more likely to replicate—in taste or nutrition—a fire-grilled steak from a purely grass-fed steer than vanillin can replace a vanilla bean, or oat milk the marvellous liquid that comes from a well-tended cow.

I hear that the CDC is recommending that anyone travelling abroad get vaccinated for measles.  No matter where they're going.

"Never had it, never will." (Are you old enough to remember that 7-Up commercial?)

If my doctor recommended testing as part of my annual blood draw, and Medicare would pay for it, I might consider checking to see if my antibody response is still robust after all this time. After all, it has been a few years since I had the measles.

As it turns out, the CDC is okay with that.  If you dig down just a little from the scary news stories and read what the CDC actually says, they acknowledge that if you've had measles in the past, you're good to go.