Lift Up Your Hearts!

We will never forget.

A day that will live in infamy.

Forever is a long time.  How long will it be, I wonder, before the most recent unprovoked, surprise attack on American soil is as distant a memory as the one before?

I usually judge society's remembrance of an event by how often it is mentioned in the comic strips.  Back in 2006, BC and Mallard Fillmore were among the few that commemorated the day.  Today, I found none at all.

But a 70 year anniversary deserves recognition:  Today is, and will always be, Pearl Harbor Day.

— 1 —

(In)Security.  Here's another of the TED talks I accumulate from various places; unfortunately I no longer remember who to credit for the tip.  Security expert Bruce Schneier speaks on our models of security, our feelings of security, and why these often differ from the reality of our security.  I wish he had given more concrete examples, but it's still a good talk, especially at the beginning when he makes the point that all security decisions are tradeoffs, and the proper question to ask is not so much, "Does this make us safer?" as "Is it worth the cost?"  He's probably thinking about national and computer security, but the application that immediately jumps to my mind is parenthood.  Whether it's airport body scanners, tamper-proof bottles, or removing tall slides from playgrounds, it's important to realize that security—or even the illusion of security—comes at a cost.

UPDATE 8/15/19:  At some point over time, a large chunck of this post—numbers 2-7—went missing.  I have no idea why.  The video below obviously went with one of the missing posts.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

No time for Seven Quick Takes, so here are Seven Quick Thanks:

• Extended family who love getting together and enjoying our similarities and differences,
• All of our grandchildren, with their unique personalities,
• Home-grown potatoes,
• Home-grown music!
• Our eight-year-old grandson, whose birthday is today!
• Watching that same grandson with his nose in a book that I loved as a child,
• That all of our children, grandchildren, and nephews love to read or to be read to.

— 1 —

Cultural differences.  We're still reading the Sunday New York Times we picked up in Naples.  The Sunday Times may cost a whopping $5, but there's a book's work of matierial to read.

From Russia with Lies should be read by anyone doing business with—or dating—someone from another culture.  Author Elena Corokhova, a child of Communist Russia, explains vranyo, a culture of lies that everyone knows, but no one admits, are lies.  Everyone except the naive foreigner, that is—and Russians born after perestroika.

Putin was lying to us, we knew he was lying, he knew we knew he was lying, but he kept lying anyway, and we pretended to believe him. ... While I envy this uncommunist generation, I do see one deficiency: They have lost the ability to detect a lie.

My husband works with people from many different cultures:  north, south, east, west, and midwest in the U.S., and countries as different as China, India, Italy, Nigeria, and Australia.  One of his Chinese colleagues told him candidly something everyone needs to know when dealing with China:  culturally, it is not only acceptable, but admirable, to best a competitor by cheating and deception.  If the victim is not Chinese, so much the better.

My in-laws lived and worked in Brazil some 30 years ago.  Perhaps the culture has changed, but back then what we would call "taking bribes" was simply the way business was done.  If you did not participate, not only did you not get your business accomplished, but you were considered ignorant and rude.

My point is not to be disrespectful of other cultures, and certainly not to imply that every Russian is a liar, every Chinese a cheat, and every Brazilian corrupt, but to ask two questions.

• How can we be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves" when interacting with foreign cultures?  Acknowledge the risks in dealing with people whose mores differ from ours without being (or becoming) racist?  Maintain our own integrity while adapting to life and work in a foreign land?
• What are the aspects of American culture that trip up foreigners?  What makes it difficult to deal with Americans?  What do we take for granted as "normal" that others consider bizarre, rude, or even immoral?

— 2 —

A Rally I Can Believe In.  I can't ever see myself participating in a Tea Party rally, much less the more chaotic and uncivil "Occupy" events.  But if I'd been in the area, I'd have gladly taken part in the Raw Milk Freedom Riders' Caravan and Farm Food Freedom Rally on November 1^st.   I'd have made my first public act of civil disobedience, too, joining the mothers who bought raw milk (legally) in Pennsylvania and transported it (illegally) to Maryland, where they drank it in front of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in Silver Spring.  Speakers at the rally included Joel Salatin, David Gumpert, and other heroes of the battle for liberty as it touches what we eat, where it comes from, and how it is produced.

The mission of the Farm Food Freedom Coalition is, "to inspire, empower and facilitate consumers into action until everyone can procure the foods of their choice from the producer of their choice."  Here are some links for further information on the FFFC and the rally.

A good summary of the event from The Compleat Patient.

A pre-event post from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, with videos of some of the speakers (not from the rally).

Pictures from the rally (again at NECSC).

The Farm Food Freedom Coalition.

— 3 —

Is this a good place to point out that I am apparently incapable of understanding the Quick part of 7 Quick Takes Friday?

— 4 —

Okay, here's a quick one.  Not many e-mail forwards are worth passing on, but I couldn't resist this.  To understand its appeal, first you have to know something about my family tree.  My grandfather, my father, and two of my siblings are engineers.  So is one of our daughters, and both of our sons-in-law (who themselves come from engineering families).  Most of the rest of us are mathematicians.

— 5 —

Election Day fun.  I don't talk about politics all that often, and when I do, it may or may not tell you something about how I cast my ballots.  For one thing, I try to elect the best person for the particular job, which may mean voting for someone who is not my first choice, or someone with whom I seriously disagree on matters that only tangentially impact his capacity for filling the office in question.  For another, I really believe in the importance of the secret ballot.  But today I'm making an exception.

I am a conservative Democrat (which is not quite an oxymoron).  As such, I find myself more often than not these days voting against my own party.  So it was with a peculiar kind of glee that this week I cast my ballot in our mayoral election for a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT.  At least, that's what her opponent called her, in a blitzkrieg campaign that annoyed me enough I'd have voted against him in any case.  But in actuality, I voted for the incumbent rather than against her opponent—and believe me, it's quite a pleasure to be able to cast a positive vote for a change.  Ours is one of the nicest, most beautiful cities in the area, our taxes are low, and the city is debt-free.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it seems like a pretty good conservative attitude to me.

— 6 —

Ten is the new two.  That's how Free-Range Kids advocate Lenore Skenazy describes Amtrak's decision to raise the age at which a person can ride the train without an adult babysitter from eight to twelve.  And 13- to 15-year-olds have severe restrictions as well.  I can't help remembering our trip to Liechtenstein a few years ago, when we saw schoolchildren who were probably in the five to eight range travelling on public transportation—knowing where to get off, and more importantly, where not to get off—completely unaccompanied.  Granted, that's not the same as a long train trip, but Amtrak's restrictions seem ridiculous to me.

What are your experiences with train travel and children?  Somehow I can't picture the Europeans requiring a 15-year-old to wear a special wristband marking him as an unaccompanied minor—but I may be wrong.

— 7 —

Fighting ICD (Internet Compulsive Disorder).   CNNHeath asks, Does life online give you "popcorn brain"? and answers, alas, in the affirmative.  It's of particular concern to me because most of the work I do requires using the computer.  (Not that people did not, for example, do genealogy research before computers were invented, but it would be silly not to use this most helpful of tools now that we have it.)  I imagine there's a difference between what happens to the brain when you use the computer for research and when you use it for Facebook or to play an interactive multiplayer game, but that's not clear.

[S]tudies show multitasking on the Internet can make you forget how to read human emotions. ... "Human interaction is a learned skill, and they don't get to practice it enough."

The human brain is wired to crave the instant gratification, fast pace, and unpredictability of technology. ... "I never know what the next tweet is going to be. ... But I know what's waiting for me in my garden."  [Who needs the Internet for this?  All you need is a few children around the house.]

"We can't just sit quietly and wait for a bus, and that's too bad, because our brains need that down time to rest, to process things."  [Not me, despite all my computer use.  I'm more than happy to sit quietly and process things.  But with music and, increasingly, video blaring everywhere (even on buses), it's not easy to do.]

Over time, and with enough Internet usage, the structure of our brains can actually physically change. ... Researchers in China did MRIs on the brains of 18 college students who spent about 10 hours a day online.  Compared with a control group who spent less than two hours a day online, these students had less gray matter, the thinking part of the brain.

Not that any of this is the reason I'm announcing a blogging slowdown.  The next three months will be extremely busy for me, so my "7 Quick Takes" may not happen every Friday for a while.  I may have to adopt IrishOboe's "7 Quick Thanks."  :)  I'm not disappearing entirely—writing is actually one of my most important vehicles for the above-mentioned processing time.  But for anything involving an online presence (blogging, Facebook, e-mail) I'll be more than usually unpredictable for a while.

It's time to rebuild some of that grey matter, as well as real-life relationships.

— 11-11-11 —

And here's a bonus.  How fitting for a special day to fall on a special date.  For veterans of all wars, all current and past members of our armed forces, and all whose calling is to stand between others and harm, including those among our friends and family who serve as fire, ambulance, and police First Responders, I offer my favorite verse of our national anthem.

Oh! thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

— 1 —

One thing I learned from our stay at a Waldorf Astoria:  There's a limit to how much luxury I can appreciate.  I've become leery of cheap motels (especially along the notorious I-95 corridor) with their reputation as the lodging of choice for bedbugs and manufacturers of crack cocaine, but to stay at a Hampton Inn (Hilton's low-rent district) or Fairfield Inn (Marriot's) is all the luxury I want.  For me, the higher-end hotels add little.  In fact, they take away:  The big guys charge (a lot) for amenities that matter to me, whereas the price of a room at their poorer relations includes unlimited tea, cocoa, and coffee (and sometimes cookies!) in the lobby, a breakfast buffet, and in-room Internet.  It seems the more you pay for your room, the more they expect you to pay in miscellaneous charges. Mind you, the higher-end hotels are nice, just not worth the extra cost.

— 2 —

One notable difference between the Waldorf and a Hampton Inn that did matter to me:  Instead of a USA Today at the door in the morning, we received the Sunday New York Times.  Now there's a newspaper that still carries content!  About a month's worth of reading, I'd say.  Part of that content is the Sunday Times crossword puzzle, which has always intimidated me as the epitome of difficulty.  But no more.  It was no harder than the three-star (highest difficulty) puzzles in my World of Puzzles magazine.  And, alas, no more free of pop culture clues.  Reference an obscure vocabulary word or something in Shakespeare I don't know, and I'll happily look it up and thank you for the lesson—but spare me current movie and popular song trivia, please.

— 3 —

Gee, thanks, bank.  Here's the good news from one of our credit card companies:

We are always looking for new ways to meet your borrowing needs on your terms.  Effective January 15, 2012, you may receive new promotional offers that include an increased Minimum Payment Due, which can help you pay the promotional balance down faster.

Silly me, I thought you could always pay your balance down faster by remitting more than the minimum payment due.

George Orwell would be proud.

— 4 —

Babies are born geniuses, as Buckminster Fuller and observant parents could tell you.  Scientists are finally catching up.  Here's Looking at You, Kid is a not-to-be-missed article on the research of Richard Aslin, professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester.  Advanced technology has enabled his team to back mothers' intuition with reproducible data.

[B]abies just months old have mental capacities formerly believed to be the domain of children much older.  “We knew babies could learn—I mean, obviously they can learn. Your grandmother knows that,” Aslin says. “It’s the rapidity, the ease, with which they learn things that I think has just been startling.”

The key is measuring and interpreting babies' eye-gaze patterns.  For example, the idea of object permanence—that something continues to exist even when it is hidden—had been thought to develop by nine or ten months, because that's when a child will reach out and reveal a covered object.  It turns out that children as young as two months, who don't have the physical ability to remove a cover, already understand the concept.

A baby's language-learning capacity is particularly dramatic (emphasis mine):

[A recent study] conducted on infants, showing them multiple objects and giving them the name of the object in a sentence, demonstrated that they could pick out the object and learn its name by six months of age rather than the expected 17 months. While other such studies conducted elsewhere have given babies the words in isolation rather than in the context of sentences, ... the complexity of conditions in [this] experiment may account for the babies’ performance—the more complicated task of picking the word out of the sentence may actually have been easier for them because that’s the way they hear language every day.

[In another study, researchers] brought babies to the lab, where the children encountered a simple nonsense language the researchers had created to ensure they wouldn’t bring any prior knowledge to bear on the experiment.  “We wanted to find out what they could learn in the lab, not what they’d already learned in the environment,” Aslin says. The children listened to the language, “and then we tested them to see whether or not they’d learned the underlying structure of this little language.” They had.

“They learned the language in just a couple of minutes—and just by listening. Nobody was telling them what to listen to. They were only eight months old.”

When you consider that only 50 - 60 years ago scientists were asserting that newborns are blind and deaf, it's a good thing that mothers have been in charge of their babies all along.

— 5 —

The Stradivarius of Windchimes.  A scene from our recent trip to the gift shop at Bok Tower Gardens:

"Come listen to these beautiful windchimes!  Aren't they wonderful?  Just don't look at the price; leave it to me to desire the most expensive chimes on display."

"But you hate windchimes."

"Are you crazy?  I love windchimes!  I have since childhood."

"But I disinctly remember you saying how much you dislike them."

"Hrumph.  Must have been one of your other girlfriends."

After this exchange with my husband, we determined that perhaps he was remembering a conversation with his sister, or our friend who is also named Linda, or our neighbor.  I sure hope it wasn't our neighbor, because someday there will be windchimes gracing our back porch.  I gravitate to any windchime display I see, listening and pondering, though I haven't yet gone so far as to make a decision.  Maybe now that we have that little misunderstanding cleared up....

The chimes that so captured my heart are made by Music of the Spheres in Austin, Texas.  Choose "Chime Tunings" from their main menu, and you can hear recordings of their chimes in various tunings (Pentatonic, Quartal, Chinese, Mongolian. Westminster, Hawaiian, Japanese, Balinese, Whole Tone, Aquarian, Gypsy) and sizes (Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass, and more).  Here's a link to the Japanese mezzo-soprano.  And the Gypsy soprano.  I can't stop myself:  The Whole-Tone tenor.

The price?  There's more than one reason they're called the Stradivarius of Windchimes:  from $90 for a Soprano (any tuning) to $2950 (plus shipping) for the 200-pound Basso Profundo.

— 6 —

Educators, please don't miss this post on innovation from the Occasional CEO.

Children in America used to want to become cowboys and Indians, doctors and firemen, astronauts and acrobats.  Now they want to become entrepreneurs and innovators.  They are told they must change the world, often before they enter it.

But 90% of the population should not become innovators.

It’s not because they can’t do it well, though that’s possible too.  It’s just that innovation can cause great damage to the things we love.  To the guy making the fries at McDonalds or the pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks: Don’t innovate.  To the person building the next lot of iPhones from which I’ll be purchasing one: Please don’t innovate.  To my tax accountant: Do Not innovate.  The mechanic fixing my car.  The pilot flying my plane.  To the fine people at Apple: For goodness sake, stop sending me updates and new operating systems.  I hate em.  Just when I get everything the way I like, you innovate me into something that costs me two hours at the Apple Bar.  Where, incidentally,  I want zero innovation from your hip kids in blue shirts.  Just follow the FAQs and fix my iPad.

When we complain that schools are not teaching our kids to innovate, I say: Bravo!  People who can innovate will always find ways to innovate, while most of the rest of us need a serious tutorial in how to follow directions.  Show up on time. Do our jobs. That’s not something that comes naturally for many human beings.

There’s nothing less intelligent or inferior about people who practice consistency.  Consistency takes extraordinary talent, just like innovation. ... We have made innovation glamorous and consistency somehow mundane and less worthwhile. That’s our fault, not the fault of talented people whose consistency, attention to order, willingness to show up all the time and insistence on a little good ol' tradition improves our lives.

Here endeth the lesson; the following is my editorial comment:

Children do not need to be taught to be innovators and inventors.  They need to be taught the facts and skills that will become the tools with which they can innovate, practice consistency, or both.  Then they need freedom and time and opportunities to learn to use those tools effectively.

— 7 —

Those of you who enjoyed the TED talk by Temple Grandin, or the movie about her life, or any of her books, will probably like this TED lecture on the importance of perception, by Daniel Tammet, a high-functioning, synaesthetic, autistic savant who is also an artist and a writer.

Our personal perceptions ... are at the heart of how we acquire knowledge.  Aesthetic judgements, rather than abstract reasoning, guide and shape the process by which we all come to know what we know.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

What was Hallowe’en like when you were a little girl, Grandma? 

No one has as yet asked me that question, but if things run true to form for most Americans, someone will, someday, after I am past being able to respond.  So I will answer it now.

My Hallowe’en formative years were in the 1950s and early 60s, in a small village in upstate New York.  Contrary to what we’d like to believe, it was not an idyllic and crime-free time.  One of my first (and worst) Hallowe’en memories was of the teenaged thugs who thundered onto our porch, grabbed our carefully-carved jack-o-lanterns, and smashed them to bits.  I lived a sheltered life:  this was my first view of senseless, wanton destruction; my first encounter with people who get pleasure from breaking the hearts of little children.  Our tiny village did not escape teen gangs and vandalism, which seemed to be more widespread, if much less dangerous, in those days.   At least they attacked property, not people.

That was the only scary thing about our Hallowe’ens.

The most important difference between Hallowe’en then and now is that the occasion was first, last, and always for children.   A few adults dressed in costume for the neighborhood parade and party, but the purpose of the event was to entertain the children.  The only excuse for anyone over 12 going out trick-or-treating was to escort the younger ones—every once in a while a compassionate homeowner would give us a piece of candy, too.  Now, when high schoolers come to my door, I give them candy if they’ve made any attempt at a costume, but I pity them, that at their age they are begging door-to-door for candy instead of helping younger children to have a good time.

On the other hand, teenaged trick-or-treaters is a clear improvement over teenaged vandals.

The Hallowe’en season began several weeks in advance of October 31.  No, not because Hallowe’en stores began popping up all over town, and shelves everywhere sprouted candy in yellow and orange.  Because of the costumes.  Store-bought costumes were largely unavailable, and anyway, who would have wanted one?  Hallowe’en was an occasion for great creativity.  Merely deciding what to be could take a month.  (Decisiveness, I’ll admit, was never my strong suit).  Those who come to our door today are mostly beings—a cat, a princess, a Star Wars character—but we favored things:  one might be a rocket ship, a pencil, or the whole Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (no relation to the present-day Tea Party, as mad—in either sense—as they may be).  The challenge was to create a costume from whatever we could scrounge around the house without actually having to spend money.  No problem—we had not yet forgotten what any five-year-old knows:  the cardboard box is the most universally useful of all materials. (More)

— 1 —

Porter planted a wildflower garden in our front yard.  The excuse was to cover a patch where the grass, and even the green weeds, had long since stopped growing.  We think it is a definite improvement over boring grass! (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

— 2 —

Now that my daughter's birthday has come and gone, I can reveal the exciting news:  Speculoos à Tartiner, a.k.a. Biscoff Spread, is now available at Publix!!! And at a couple of other local stores as well.  This pleasant development came only just in time:  Our supply, generously imported for my birthday—from France via Switzerland—was running dangerously low.  Oddly enough, it's in the peanut butter section; perhaps not so oddly, as that's where they keep the Nutella, too.

If you've never experienced a Biscoff cookie, you're missing one of life's higher pleasures.  (For a long time I thought they were limited to flights on Delta Airlines, but the grocery store now sells the cookies, too.)  Speculoos à Tartiner is even better.  Making a spread out of cookies was a brilliant idea.  Think of the possibilities:  Oreo, chocolate chip, Girl Scout Thin Mint....

— 3 —

Seeds are amazing. When we feed our worms, it's generally with food that has been chopped rather vigorously, as that makes it more digestible for them, and hence they convert garbage to fertilizer at a faster rate.  Nonetheless, after one butternut squash meal last year, I noticed a large number of sprouts that grew vigorously in the worm bin, despite maceration and a total lack of sunlight.  Such persistence deserves some reward, so I rescued a few of the seedlings and planted them in our garden.

The plants appeared to thrive, putting forth healthy leaves and a multitude of blossoms.  However, perhaps due to it being the wrong season for growing most vegetables in Florida (too hot), or our persistent nematode problem, or a lack of water when we were on vacation—for whatever reason, the fruit that set would grow for a little while, then drop off.  The three squash you see here were the entire crop.  Even the largest is much smaller than those you see in the grocery store.

When cut open, the smallest was revealed to be too dry for use, but I cleaned and cooked the other two.  What a surprise!  The largest was very good, and the middle-sized (which was actually quite small) was the most wonderful butternut squash either of us had ever tasted.

My view of zucchini completely changed once I realized it was better to pick them small than large, and now the grocery stores have also realized that bigger isn't better.  But I can't buy butternut squash this size to determine if that's what made our squash taste so good.  Perhaps we'll have to try growing our own again, in a different season.

— 4 —

Picking squash before it is fully grown may be a good idea, but the same is not true of plucking human babies prematurely from the womb.  The steady rise in mothers and doctors who believe otherwise has prompted the March of Dimes to campaign against elective Caesarians and labor inductions before the 39th week of gestation.

Studies have shown that as many as 36 percent of elective deliveries now occur before 39 weeks, and many of these early deliveries are contributing to an unacceptable number of premature births and avoidable, costly complications. ... This is not to suggest that women should panic if labor begins earlier on its own. “It’s a whole different story when a woman goes into labor early than when labor is induced" ... [T]he textbook definition of “term pregnancy” as one that lasts from 37 to 41 weeks “is arbitrary—it has no biological basis. If a woman’s water hasn’t broken, if labor hasn’t begun on its own, if there are no medical or obstetrical problems, there’s no reason for a woman to be delivered before 39 weeks.” ... The recommendation applies not just to women whose labor is induced, but also to those having a scheduled Caesarean delivery. Too often, women are mistaken about when they got pregnant, which can throw off the calculation of their due date. Even when a “dating” ultrasound is done during the first trimester of pregnancy, there can be as much as a two-week margin of error.

Why on earth would someone without medical complications want to deliver a baby prematurely?  (Besides the obvious discomforts of late pregnancy, that is?)

Well-educated women may be more inclined to want to schedule birth at a convenient time for themselves and other family members. Doctors, too, may suggest an elective delivery so that birth occurs at a time that best suits their schedules, including office hours and vacation times. Sometimes doctors, fearing a malpractice suit if something should go wrong if a pregnancy proceeds to term, choose to deliver babies early when they are alive and well.

The March of Dimes wants to make the "well-educated" mothers more educated about the dangers of induction and elective Caesareans, confident that no mother will deliberately choose convenience over the long-term health of her child.  Sounds good to me.  Maybe they should enlist the help of midwives, who have been preaching against such practices for a long time.

— 5 —

Do you have trouble falling asleep?  Perhaps you should ditch the Ambien and reach for an ice pack.  Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh designed special "cooling caps" and studied the sleep patterns of volunteers.  Why?  Insomnia is associated with increased metabolism in the frontal cortex, and cooling decreases the metabolism.

Patients with insomnia who were treated at maximum cooling intensity for the whole night took about 13 minutes to fall asleep and slept 89% of the time that they were in bed, the researchers said.  That's similar to the sleep enjoyed by healthy study subjects who didn't have insomnia (who took 16 minutes to fall asleep and also slept 89% of the time).

Maybe it's just a placebo effect for me, but an ice pack really does help me fall asleep when my brain won't get out of high gear.

— 6 —

Speaking of drugs, it turns out that cannabis can induce symptoms of schizophrenia in healthy people.  Healthy rats, too:

[T]he drug completely disrupted coordinated brain waves, which are essential for memory and decision-making, in the area across the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. ... The resulting brain activity was uncoordinated and inaccurate ... The rats exposed to the cannabis-like drug were left unable to make accurate decisions....

Having grown up in the infamous 1960's, let me just say that this explains a lot about modern American society.  :)

— 7 —

Here's a 7.5-minute video about a mood-enhancer with positive effects on your brain.  It makes you happier, it makes others happier, it makes them think more positively about you, it has no calories, and it's absolutely free.  You could try to listen to Ron Gutman's TED talk without smiling, but I wouldn't recommend it.  It may be the healthiest thing you do all day.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

— 1 —

This. Is. Not. Good.  It's only my third Quick Takes Friday, and I had not written word one before today.

It's Google's fault.  Picasa made me do it.

— 2 —

I had experimented with Google's Picasa back in its early days, and still had a version of Picasa 2 on my machine.  I never used it, except occasionally for the image viewer, because I hated the way it took over my machine, and consumed so much space on my hard drive with its thumbnail images.  But a friend recently raved about Picasa 3's face recognition ability, and as I was (am) in the middle of working with a large batch of photos, and had been recently blessed with a new 500 Gb drive, I decided to try it out.

WOW.

True, the &*^%$ program still takes over the machine.  The first thing Picasa did was spend several hours examining and cataloging all my images, and then at least as long analyzing them for faces.  As far as I can tell, there is no way to stop the process other than shutting down the program.  Even now, if Picasa is running, even minimized, it will occasionally take up so much of the CPU that it looks as if the machine has crashed.  (Mostly, if I'm patient, it will eventually come back.)

But oh, the face recognition is incredible!  You train Picasa by identifying "unknown" faces, and it catches on very quickly.  Soon it begins offering you suggestions for the identification, and after a while makes its own decisions, asking only that you confirm or correct them.  It's really, really good.  Occasionally it mistakes one of my daughters for the other, but mostly it's spot on.  It is eerily able to extrapolate from a childhood picture to the same person as an adult, and vice versa.  It recognizes family relationships:  if it makes mistakes in the identification of a child, the suggestion is almost always the mother, father, sibling, or sometimes a cousin.  This is what makes Picasa addictive, resulting in the problem noted in QT#1.  You'd think the process of adding, correcting, and confirming identifications would be tedious, but it was difficult to pause, even for meals and sleep.  I was constantly calling to my husband in the next office, "Come here!  You have to see this.  You won't believe it!"

I'm finding that it's not quite as impressive now that it's store of possibilities is much larger, but it's still incredible.  And hopefully will be incredibly useful.  Note that this is not an overall endorsement of Picasa.  I haven't used it enough to make a judgement of the software as a whole.  But if the police have resources like this, it's no wonder the can identify criminals from security camera photos.

— 3 —

Do you ever get stuck on a project and can't get back into gear because it keeps growing and growing and you can't deal with the new stuff because the old stuff hasn't been dealt with and it keeps preying on your mind but you can't make yourself get back to it because it's all so overwhelming?  That's the situation my photo collection was in.  Never mind all the physical prints from years back that I still have to identify and label; I'm talking about our digital photos since early 2009, when thousands of pictures from our daughter's wedding caused my system to overload and crash.  Not the computer; me.

I'd already learned the lesson about how much can be accomplished if you tackle a project in small, but regular, sessions.  ("How to you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.)  But I couldn't get started.  This week I finally learned another important lesson: Sometimes a mighty effort can break a log jam.  I decided to spend four, concentrated hours working on the wedding photos, and made arrangements to have as few interruptions as possible.

As usual, things take much longer than expected, even with relatively few interruptions:  In four hours I didn't even finish preparing and organizing the photos, much less do any sorting, analyzing, culling, or labelling.  But it was enough to break the mental block, and I'm back on track to finish in, maybe, 2020 or so.

— 4 —

Speaking of overload—at the risk of being a bit incestuous by referencing a post at Conversion Diary, which hosts 7QTF, Jen's post on how she deals with feeling overwhelmed rang so many bells with me I thought I must be caught in a clock tower at noon.

I have a personality type that leads me to feel overwhelmed a lot. I’m ambitious but lazy; I have a latent perfectionist streak that comes out at unexpected times; I’m an Olympian procrastinator; and I’m so non-confrontational that I often find myself saying “Yes, I’d love to help with that” when what I should be saying is, “I CANNOT EVEN FIND TIME TO BRUSH MY HAIR RIGHT NOW, LET ALONE SIGN UP FOR ONE MORE FREAKING THING.”

To her excellent four-step survival plan—Get your physical environment in order, Get some sleep, Pray — preferably outside of the house, and Talk through it—I would add one more:  Exercise.  Because exercise takes extra time, it tends to go out the window when I'm feeling pressed.  I can whittle a two-hour shopping trip down to 30 minutes if I drive instead of walking.  When deadlines loom, even a half-hour run seems too time-consuming.  But just as with prayer, sleep, and order, it seems that the busier I am, the more important physical activity becomes.

— 5 —

I haven't had time to play with it much (see QT#2), but I've discovered AreYouInMyPhoto.com, a site for identifying old (and not-so-old) photographs and the people in them.  If enough folks get involved, this could become a great resource for genealogists and others with mystery photos.  I'm hoping it will also save old pictures from being tossed simply because no one knows who might appreciate them.

— 6 —

Another genealogical resource that can be fun for almost everyone is FindAGrave.com.  Thousands of volunteers have scoured cemeteries and uploaded gravestone information, sometimes with photographs.  Do you wonder where suffragist Susan B. Anthony is buried?  If, like me, you went to the University of Rochester, you know her grave is in nearby Mt. Hope Cemetery.  But ordinary mortals can find out the same information through Find A Grave.  Would you like a photograph of your great-grandfather's gravestone but can't manage a trip to Nebraska?  Check it out; someone may have done the work for you already.  Find A Grave is always growing, and I have often hit a brick wall in my research only to come back three months later and find exactly what I needed.

— 7 —

Thirty-two years ago, as I write this, I was within seven minutes of the culmination of a 20-hour ordeal.  Only a saint can see the glory to come while yet in the midst of suffering, but it's a lesson first-time mothers never forget.  Happy birthday, Dearest Daughter!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Modesty:  propriety in dress, speech, or conduct (Merriam-Webster)

It’s an old-fashioned word, uncommon in our hyper-sexualized, push-the-envelope, anything-goes culture.  It even has negative connotations, as when it is associated with oppression of women in Islamic countries, or with certain Christian circles in which women, even young girls at play, wear only long dresses.

But it’s a good word, and a good concept.  We’re not meant to share all that we are with all-and-sundry.   Merriam-Webster’s other definition, freedom from conceit or vanity, gives a hint as to one of its benefits:  modesty focuses our attention away from ourselves.

Perhaps because of the extremes, discussions and practices of modesty almost always focus on matters of dress and behavior:  physical modesty.   To our great loss, we have largely ignored what I will call soul modesty.  What is blogging but baring our souls to anyone with an Internet connection?  What is Reality TV but a striptease in which hope of financial gain entices the few to allow their emotions, weaknesses, and character flaws to be exposed to the ogling many?  How can the reporter’s demand that a grieving mother tell the world how she feels about her child’s murder be considered anything other than verbal rape?

Lest you think this is not a problem if one stays out of the public eye, how much do you know about what happens in your children’s schools, Sunday school classes, day care, and other activities?  As a school volunteer as well as a parent, I came to realize that our young children are frequently subjected to emotional intrusion that, were it physical, would have a teacher out on the street in a heartbeat.  We take great care to teach our children about private parts of their bodies, and how to recognize and report “uncomfortable touches,” but don’t give them the tools to detect and deflect uncomfortable questions or manipulative exercises.

What puzzles me the most is that I find as little respect for soul modesty among those who prize physical modesty as I do in the general community.  It is particularly prevalent in churches, where community, fellowship, and bonding are often forced, rather than being allowed to grow organically from shared life and work.  I had one friend from a former church—a dear, self-sacrificing lady—who not only shared the most intimate details of her own life but pressed others to reveal themselves similarly—all the while thinking she was “just being friendly.”  It was uncomfortable enough talking with her, but downright scary to see her apply the same approach to children.   More than that, she saw it as her duty to be intrusive in this way, and was hurt when others were not similarly “friendly” to her.  And she was hardly unique.  It must be difficult for churches to discern how to be inquisitive enough to appear friendly to some people while not driving others away.

I’ve been to more than one church gathering where crowd dynamics and peer pressure have induced people to make revelations that I’m certain they regretted the morning after, if not immediately.  I mean, what sadist dreamt up the idea of asking, “What was your most embarrassing moment?” as an icebreaker?  To this day I’m embarrassed for some of the things others confessed.  There’s a reason confessional booths are small.

Although they may differ on the particulars, most people will agree that when it comes to physical modesty, relationship and circumstance should guide our behavior.  That slinky nightgown is appropriate to wear for my husband, but not for my neighbor.  Family members may see us in our underwear, but that’s not how we dress for grocery shopping.  Doctors have privileges with our bodies that almost no one else does.

It’s time we took as much care for our souls. 

— 1 —

Many people have, at one time or another, described their jobs as "shovelling manure."  Last week, this was literally true for me.  A local mushroom farm sells their leftover compost by the truckload for a you-can't-afford-to-pass-this-up price.  Our neighbor has a pickup truck.  Hence the need for an extra shower that day.

— 2 —

Changing lives one soda bottle at a time:  Filipino entrepreneur Illac Diaz brings light to darkened homes.

— 3 —

My afflication has a name:  earworm.  According to this WebMD article:  They bore into your head. They won't let go. There's no known cure. Earworms can attack almost anyone at almost any time.  More prosaically, it's "stuck song syndrome," a song or song fragment that takes over your brain and will not go away.

On Sunday, our otherwise wonderful pastor, in an otherwise wonderful sermon, reiterated his determination to have us sing simple "praise choruses" at all our services, even the most traditional, so that they will stick in our heads and we'll have them handy in times of need.  I've complained about this before, because what is apparently comfort to him is torture to me.

Stuck song syndrome annoyed, frustrated, and irritated women significantly more than men. And earworm attacks were more frequent—and lasted longer—for musicians and music lovers. Slightly neurotic people also seemed to suffer more.

Well, there you have it.  Female, music lover, and slightly neurotic.  My own perfect storm.

— 4 —

With a hat tip to Liz,  I pass on this Salon article by Kate Fridkis, A Home-Schooler Goes to College.  I read the article, and thought it well-written and an accurate description of some of the shocks that await an unschooled child who goes off to college.  I thought it might be an encouragement to homeschoolers, and help others understand them a little better.  But after reading the comments below the article, I'm no longer sure.  It's almost always a mistake for me to read the comments to major blogs or newspaper articles:  they generally make it very difficult for me to remain in my little bubble of isolated naïveté, where people actually care about listening to and trying to understand those who are different from themselves.

— 5 —

Our grandchildren are growing so fast.  Joy (seven months) has progressed to crawling, sitting, creeping, and now pulling herself up since we saw her in August.  Joseph (15 months) clearly shows that he understands much, and is beginning to communicate, in three languages.  The older children also seem to have changed significantly in the two months since we were last together.  How miserable it must have been to be a long-distance grandparent in the days before blog posts, Skype, videos, and digital cameras!  I suck in newly-uploaded media like a camel at an oasis.

— 6 —

Tomato with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for....  Here's good news for gardeners with young boys.

A team of Finnish researchers found that sprinkling tomatoes with human urine mixed with wood ash was the ultimate eco-friendly fertiliser.  It worked just as well with cucumber, corn, cabbage and other crops.  The mixture produced bumper harvests when compared to untreated plants. ... The university study ... found using nitrogen-rich urine does not carry any risk of disease.

Hmmm.  Two young grandsons whose home is heated by a wood fire.  And I thought their record-breaking harvest this year was due to their new watering schedule.

— 7 —

We had a taste of autumn a week ago, but after a weekend that would have inspired the original Noah—nearly doubling the rainfall record set in 1954—summer is back.  The foretaste is a promise of more pleasant days to come, however.  October is a lovely month in so many places!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

There is no way I'm going to write this without sounding corny or superficial, but I'm doing it anyway.  I caught a glimpse of God's love (and sense of humor) today.

Let me begin by noting that the event itself was, on God's scale of things, and even on the human scale, absolutely trivial.  But any human lover knows how much love can be expressed through trivia.  More disturbingly, I've experienced having trivial victories followed quickly by tragic defeats.  But it is what it is, and worth reporting.

To simplify the story, there's a store at which we get what can amount to a very significant discount by using a particular credit card.  The catch is that we never know what the discount will be until the purchase has been made.  I've seen discounts of greater than 50%, and yet on some items it may be only a few percent, or nothing at all.  Shopping at this store is my substitute for playing the state lottery:  it's a thrill to "win big," but there's no point in buying something that you wouldn't pay full price for, because you might have to.  Of course, you can always cancel the transaction, but I hate asking the checkout clerks to do that.

So here's what happened today.  There's an item I wanted to buy, but there's no way I could justify paying full price.  Still, I wanted it badly enough to grit my teeth and face cancelling the transaction just to learn what the discount would be.  So this morning, on my way from the church where I had a commitment to sing, to the church where I had a commitment to get a flu shot, I stopped at the store.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I realized that I was fretting, getting tense over the idea that there might be little or no discount on this item that I really wanted, and worse, over the potential embarrassment of having to tell the clerk that despite having wasted his time and that of those behind be in line, I didn't want to make the purchase after all.  The morning's excellent sermon on worry, however, was not entirely lost on me.  The featured text, Philippians 4:4-8 ("Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God") is one of my favorite Bible passages.  So, thankful for the opportunity, I made my requests and relaxed.  I know, I know.  It's trivia.  And most of you will have no idea why the thought of returning a purchase is so stressful for me.  But it is, and I know some of my readers will nod their heads with understanding.

I never did find out what the discount would have been.  But not because I wimped out at the last minute.

Having found the correct department, I pulled out my notes to ascertain the correct model number.  To my dismay I realized that I had neglected to write down that crucial piece of information.  Ah, not to worry; I was pretty sure I could figure it out.  Sure enough, I picked out what looked to be the right model, and if I'd had any doubts, they were removed when I noticed that this model, out of all the models and manufacturers on display, was the only one on sale, and the cost was just thirty percent of the regular price.  A seventy percent discount!  Our credit card at its best is never that good.  I stood there in awe for a few minutes; when I came back to earth, I bought two!

No, it wasn't anything earth-shattering, or even important.  But it was the unmistakable touch of a lover's hand that says, "I am here"; the completely unexpected, simple gift that proclaims, "I love you."  And maybe, perhaps, "You can trust me through the dark and doubtful times, also."

— 1 —

For three years I have been considering joining the crowd that participates in Conversion Diary's "7 Quick Takes Friday."  It's a handy way to gather together random ideas that are cluttering up the backblog and/or are too short to make into posts of their own, and because it links back to the other participants, I get involved in a larger community.  Which is probably why it took an introvert like me three years to take the plunge.

— 2 —

We've been watching How to Look at and Understand Great Art from The Great Courses (formerly The Teaching Company).  I'll review it after we have completed the course, but already we are thrilled.  I don't know how anyone can graduate from high school without this kind of knowledge, but I did—and I was valedictorian.

— 3 —

Do you know how Google Translate works?  It's very clever.  I would never have guessed, but thanks to the folks at Little Pim, I know there's magic involved—well, Harry Potter, anyway.

Rather than try and do any actual translating itself, Google Translate figures that someone else has probably already done the hard work for you.  Google uses its incredible computing power to trawl through the vast swathes of human translation work, and pairs your English sentence with a human-translated equivalent. ... Whenever you ask Google to translate a sentence, it draws on vast archives of translated text, including everything the UN and its agencies have ever done in writing in six official languages. ... This is why books like Harry Potter are so useful.  With translations in 67 languages, Harry Potter provides an excellent frame of reference for Google Translate to draw upon.  While there may be no recorded history of direct translation between Hebrew and Welsh, by running both translations through the hub of the original English text, Google can attempt a direct translation.

— 4 —

I took the Front Porch Republic out of my feedreader's A-list because I simply couldn't keep up.  Fortunately, they send me occasional e-mails with their top posts, so I didn't miss Allan Carlson's The Family Centered Economy.

American writer and social critic Wendell Berry was born just three years before Russian agricultural economist Alexander Chayanov died in the Soviet Gulag; Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin was born at the same time as Chayanov but outlived him by 30 years.  The insights of these three men lead Allan Carlson to suggest seven social changes that  are sure to inspire and infuriate.  Who (besides me) would have thought that the secret to a healthy economy would involve homemaking, homeschooling, micro-business, small-scale farming, breastfeeding, and large families?

— 5 —

My family is tired of hearing me preach about the wonders a nightly xylitol rinse has done for my teeth and gums.  I find the dental profession in general remarkably incurious about this inexpensive and pleasant dental health aid, but here is some encouraging news, in both the linked article and other articles under "Related Stories."  The stories are depressingly old (2007/2008), but this paper says that the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry has supported "the use of xylitol as part of a preventive strategy aimed specifically at long term caries pathogen suppression and caries ... reduction in higher risk populations" since 2010.  Ask your dentist.

— 6 —

Last Saturday we enjoyed the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra's season-opening concert, Puccini é Verdi, a presentation of excerpts from the two composers' great works.  Music Director Christopher Wilkins certainly knows how to draw a sell-out crowd to begin the season with great enthusiasm:  feature the University of Central Florida Chorus and the Florida Opera Theatre Chorus and you're bound to draw many of their friends as well.

What impressed me the most about the production was how well it was staged.  The stage was structured so that the soloists, rather than waiting their turns stiffly on front-and-center chairs, made their entrances through the orchestra as they were singing.  It wasn't a complicated setup, and added much to the effect.

— 7 —

Crime is down, way down.  Everyone from Free-Range Kids to the New York Times to our local police department is telling us so.  Why, then, is fear up?  Here's my take on the subject:

Certainly the relentless, sensationalist, sponsor-driven news coverage of any tragedy, no matter how remote, is to blame.  Even worse, however, are regular television shows. (Books, too, but TV is more graphic.)   Face it: a kid walking safely to school does not make for an exciting story. So what do we see? Lots and lots of crime. Kidnappings, murders, rapes, dismemberments, terrorism, torture, lots of car chases and bullets spraying. Twisted neighbors, abusive family members, corrupt cops.

We know it’s fiction, but the sounds, sights, and terror have an impact on our brains we cannot control. Bare statistics about crime are no match for the horrors that our gut knows surround us—because we have seen them.

What do you think?

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

On the way home from church this morning, we stopped briefly at one of our local health food stores.  Yes, I said "one of."  Amazingly, we have three health food stores within a five-mile radius of our house.  This one is run by Seventh-Day Adventists, so it's closed on Saturdays but has the advantage of being open when we drive by early on Sunday mornings.

The cashier rang up our purchase of almonds and local, free-range eggs.  I did a double-take when she called out the total:  $9.11.

This morning the Prayers of the People were not the usual ones from the Prayer Book, but understandably had a special theme.  In addition to prayers for first responders, servicemen, and all victims of terrorism, our heartfelt cry went out through the following:

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

and

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So shower us with your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

In response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, composer Robert Kerr wrote the following anthem for the Orlando Deanery Boychoir.  Later, we had the privilege of singing it ourselves, when Rob was our choir director.  Here's a version sung this year by the Boychoir and Girls Choir.

Lord, grant us wisdom in our hour of need.
And give us vision, that we clearly see,
Your loving nature, Your mercies' might.
Bring us from darkness in to Your light.

Lord, touch our nation with Your healing hand.
And give us comfort o'er all the land.
Reveal Yourself to us and make us whole,
Reside within each heart and soul.

For there are battles we must fight,
And stand with courage for what is right.
Against the evil which infects us still,
Lord, give us conviction to know Your will.

Please help the strong to defend the weak,
But not in anger or revenge to seak,
So through Your justice let conflict cease.
Oh, unify us, and bring us peace.

For there are battles we must fight,
And stand with courage for what is right.
Against all evil, sin, and wrong,
Give us conviction to carry on!

Alleluia!

Lord, bless our soldiers across the sea,
And help them to set more people free.
And in their hearts, may they have pride to sing,
"God bless America,"

God bless America, Let freedom ring!

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. ... Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ... Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. ... Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge. ... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (From Romans 12)

And may your every goodbye leave an impression worthy of being your loved ones' last memory of you.

If you can read this, thank a teacher.

I've seen it on bumper stickers for years, and just today at the bottom of my Penzey's Spices receipt.  Only now did I finally wake up to the outrageous insult implied by that platitude.

With all due respect to teachers, of which there are some who are great and many, many more who do their jobs very well, how is it that we presume that a child, who requires only a reasonably supportive environment to learn to eat, to crawl, to walk, to understand, to talk, to love, to manipulate his environment—in short to acquire the essential skills of a lifetime in just a few years—how is it that we presume he cannot learn to read—a minor skill compared with all he has already learned—unless someone teaches him?

That's crazy talk.

I'm grateful for all who are willing to share their knowledge with others, and especially for those who make the sharing enjoyable.  I suspect that those who do best, however, are the ones who realize they are not teaching so much as facilitating a child's natural learning.

But that turns out to be much too big an issue to write about just because I was annoyed by a bumper sticker, when I'm surrounded by vacation detritus, my husband is hungry, and I haven't yet managed that shower I promised myself after walking four miles in the 95 degree heat....

Here's a quick post because the article frustrated me and I need an excuse to get off my feet for a few minutes.

For the record, I know that New Worship Conference Seminar: How To Talk To Note Readers is humor, and it did make me laugh.  But it perpetuates an unfair and inaccurate stereotype that pains me.  (Unless it's my over-worked legs and back.)

A note reader is someone with formal musical training who can look at a page covered with lines and dots, and actually sing it or play it.  Note readers aren’t normal humans.  Unlike me, they actually studied music in high school and college, whereas I didn’t have time to learn things like scales and signatures; I was too busy smoking weed and listening to Revolution #9 on the Beatles White Album....

First, the kind of "note reader" he's talking about can't just look at a note and hit the right pitch.  Okay, the instrumentalists can, but the human voice is a different kind of instrument and rare is the person with the ear to look at a note on the page and sing the correct pitch.

As for what I think he means—that is, being able to look at the patterns of notes in a song written in standard musical notation and know when to go up, when to go down, and whether to do so by a little step or a big leap—I learned that, plus a lot more, in elementary school, back in the 60's.  Ordinary, small-town, public elementary school, not high school, not college.  So if time signatures, notes, keys, and dynamic markings are foreign concepts in our culture, the first thing I'd ask about is what is going on in our schools.

You may have note readers on your worship team. You can recognize them because they usually have pocket protectors....

I know, I know.  It's humor.  But it reminds me of jokes about women drivers, or [insert ethnic group of your choice], which we have rightly come to recognize as in poor taste, at least.

(H/T Jon—thanks, my feet are feeling better now.)