My piano role

Back in the day, when I was not in as much control of my life as I would like to be now, I had to take piano lessons. I did not want to take piano lessons. My parents often admonished me with a "some day you'll thank us for these piano lessons." That day never came, at least not on any specific day that I can remember as having marked the time I thanked them for forcing me to study the piano.

Of course, you should never expect gratitude from a younger generation, simply because chronologically they're not in a position to appreciate your wisdom in these matters. Had I become a concert pianist, or even a competent pianist, undoubtedly I would have told anyone who listened that I owed it all to the generosity of my parents, who paid for the many hundreds of hours of instruction, and tolerated the thousands of hours of practice.

I quit taking piano from the first instructor, a tyrant who intimidated me at every misstep, and insisted that I did not practice sufficiently. Of course, he was right. I practiced out of fear, and gave new meaning to the musical term, tremolo.

The next and final teacher lived in the neighborhood, offering lessons to many who could otherwise not have afforded them. She might have succeeded in inspiring me to a more musical life, had it not been for the fact that I had been aesthetically traumatized by the first teacher, to the point where only a lobotomy would have allowed me to approach the instrument with any sense of calm.

Our next-door neighbour who moved in while I was still approaching the teen years, was, in fact, an accomplished classical pianist who taught many higher-achieving students. Her entire diningroom was taken up with a baby grand piano. Her husband, an Armenian rug merchant, was himself no musician, but spent hours listening from the kitchen while drinking his tea, in rapt adoration of his spouse's and her students' musical achievements. A professional photographer in his native country, he would retreat to the basement darkroom to develop his black and white photos of flowers and faces, but since it was directly under the piano, I suspect that much of what he did down there was listen undisturbed to the heavenly concerts above.

Although I did not blossom as a pianist, I retained a "musical ear" which has permitted me to play exclusively by it, in any of three common, uncomplicated keys, C, G and F, on a variety of instruments. That, plus a few lessons, allowed me to be a third clarinettist in our high school cadet corps band, thereby saving me from having to carry a gun. The clarinet was much lighter.

I like to think I didn't totally waste my parents' money even as I dashed their hopes, because I appreciate music, especially of the baroque classical genre. Perhaps the struggle with the intractable piano has led to a greater appreciation of those who master it (including my own brother's abilities: he plays both from notes and/or by ear, in a variety of styles, and in any key required, and if the key is unsuitable, he transposes, even if he's playing by sightreading a piece for the first time!)

The advent of Internet radio with stations like Otto's Baroque on 1.FM and many others from around the world is an enormous gift to my generation. Perhaps in the future the technology will make it possible to travel back in time to watch the young Mozart composing his themes on the harpsichord at the age of three. For now, I am seriously grateful for the musical education I was given, for by failing as a performer, I have had the time to become a better listener.

Carpe Diem

It looks like the beginning of a hard winter.

J has just commenced her first round of chemotherapy for her stage IV metastatic breast cancer. The side effects (fever, aching and loss of appetite) have already devastated her energy and, to a lesser extent, her spirit, and this is only the first day after the first treatment.

J lost her mother to the same disease at the relatively young age of 55. Her mother suffered through chemo, but unsuccessfully. She refused a second round, as I understand the story, and it is not difficult to see why.

One of the difficult transitions J has been facing is that of letting go of her expectations for life. We all, whether we acknowledge it or not, live a good portion of our lives in anticipation. And another big chunk is devoted to the past, whether rose-colored or not. Cancer of any type, however, or indeed any other life-altering disease, forces a change of perspective.

How one feels right now becomes the focus when pain is so omnipresent. One of the handout booklets from the oncology center cites cancer as somehow improving one's ability to live in the present, because to live in any other expectation is a waste of time and precious energy. I can vouch for this as a computer instructor in a public library. Most of the seniors I teach are very much focused on the present. They want to learn enough to be independent of all those people who are mostly younger than they are, because the young are impatient: they are future-focused.

As we progress towards our second babyhood, we once again become dependent on and appreciative of those around us who are our caregivers. As we grow dependent after a life of independence, we grieve our loss of control, our limitations. But each new day is ours, even if only in some small, inner way that is not necessarily obvious to those who care for us and about us.

And so it is with the will to live one day at a time that one "beats" cancer, even if it eventually wins.

My thumb is opposed to old saws

On September 14th, 2008, in the remnant of Hurricane Ike with peak gusts of 82 miles per hour in the Cincinnati area of Ohio, two large branches of our neighbor's 50-year-old sycamore came crashing down. The smaller one (about 5-8 inches in diameter) landed across the old wire fence, and the much larger one came down in their yard.

I took my pitiful electric chain saw next door once the weather cleared. Cutting and piling for a couple of hours, I managed to arrange a respectable pile of logs for their newly-built firepit. Then, I moved back to our side of what used to be the fence, and began cutting and limbing the remaining branches.

I got into a kind of rhythm at the job: pulling a branch over the wheelbarrow, lopping off a stove-length chunk, pulling the branch further, lopping off another length. The problem is, when you get into a rhythm with a chainsaw, even a pathetic, underpowered electric one, you become accident-prone.

In this case, I lopped off a limb and stopped the saw. The branch fell and the blade kicked up against the thumb of the left hand which was holding the main part of the branch. Electric saws don't stop instantly the way their bigger cousins do. So the slight remaining momentum of the chain caught the glove on my left thumb and shredded the heavy cotton.

Instantly I noticed a rather generous bloodstain welling up in the glove. When I tore it off, it appeared that a tooth on the chain had caught my thumbnail with sufficient impact to cut a triangular piece nearly out of it. It had lifted up, but was still attached. I immediately ran for the house, to get a band-aid, if not a tourniquet.

J met me and helped wash the wound. Knowing my sensitive nature, she prepared a drink of juice, all the while attempting to persuade me that I needed the services of the local emergency room. I demurred, because I felt that getting blood on the car upholstery would only hasten its rate of depreciation.

In time, the healing began. As at this writing, I still wear a band-aid over the area, simply because the nail has grown out to the point where the slightest catch, such as putting on a glove, results in a sharp reminder that all is not yet whole.

Some things I reflect on from this experience:

1) The body aggressively tries to heal whatever hurts it. And in most cases, it succeeds, although not without leaving some evidence of the struggle to survive, perhaps as an object lesson, or at the least, a warning.
2) As a rule of thumb, the price paid for inattention is one of the highest we can pay.
3) The inattentive are protected only by their good luck. One should not rely on this, but when it happens one must be grateful.
4) You can do something a thousand times, but the thousand and first may be the one that gets you.
5) Bleeding is a sign that something is probably wrong.
6) The empathy of a loving person is a powerful force for healing.

GPS: for the GyPSy in you

It wasn't the fascination with gadgetry that inspired me to buy a GPS receiver  this week. It was partly that I was itching to spend money on something to mark my 67th birthday coming up. It was even more due to my fear of getting lost, as we have many times when driving around Ohio. 

Some cities, like Cincinnati, are impenetrable via ordinary road maps. Even Google maps present difficulty when driving: you have a printout on the seat beside you (or on the lap of the seatmate beside you), and you give it your best shot, trying to squint at directions in a timely manner while blasting down a major highway, or through streets that you've never seen before.

The GPS, on the other hand, talks you through the entire hassle. Signals from four Global Positioning Satellites are constantly providing quadrangulation, so that the little car icon on the well-lit screen moves calmly down magenta avenues, and the voice of your choice warns you that you'll need to turn in a few moments. If you miss a turn, or take one that you like better, she says, "Recalibrating", and after a few seconds, directs you to the next possible route back to your original path.  And these are just the features we've tried so far.

However, there's a learning curve.

I had read the manual, and poked in the address of a Hallowe'en hafla that would be our destination for the evening. In passing, I would note that Google's directions always begin with an instruction to "turn north on ..... Street". This is a horrible way to commence a trip for someone other than a flock of birds, who, it is said, navigate by the position of the sun. By contrast, this GPS tells you which way to turn, and shows you the compass setting as well. Then, I handed the unit over to J.

I have blogged elsewhere about my spouse's ability to control the most complex of home electronics without reading the manual. She does it by experimentation. Hence, when it was time to go, she had seen everything worth seeing on the little box.

We started out fine, although Jill got a workout as we followed our normal route to the Interstate, rather than giving in to her insistence to take a more constricted one. She had probably been asked to give the shortest route, rather than the fastest, which, in traffic terms, can make a huge difference. 

As daylight disappeared, we found ourselves moving into a suburban area of 25 mph streets. When Jill announced that we had reached our destination, it was a dark urban wooded park. We turned into the parking area, and stopped to to reconnoitre. Shortly, a white Park Patrol car pulled up and we rolled down our windows.

"Do you need some help", queried the officer.

"Sure do", I explained. "We have this new GPS, and we're trying to get to ...."

"Oh, well, you'll figure it out", she said.

"I sure hope so", I replied.

"Just turn right at ......... and left at ........... and you'll be back on ........."

(I use dots here because whenever someone gives me directions, I retain them in my head for about 10 seconds, 15 on a good day.)

"Thanks for the help", I said.

"No problem: have a good evening."

I reprogrammed the destination, and ultimately, in spite of a detour around a bridge maintenance site, we arrived, safely, a mere 45 minutes late.

So the mystery remained. How did the destination get changed from the original to another one that bore little relation to reality? We may never know, but perhaps this time the "poke around until you find out" learning style of the partner may have manifested Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. 

The best points:

1. With Jill announcing everything in her accurate-to-20-foot self-assured manner, the coefficient of profanity is approaching zero. 
2. Gone is the nagging at the navigator (disagreements are now directed at a 3-by-5 inch screen). 
3. Directions are always given in a timely and complete fashion, such as by telling the driver what the next turn will be at least a block or two ahead of the need to make it, taking into account the actual speed of the vehicle. 
4. The presence of an accurate compass heading is reassuring. 
5. For the navigationally-challenged, saving a home location means that, like a prairie horse in a blizzard, you will always be able to find your way back.
   

Can you dig it?

Last year we had cherry tomatoes in abundance. This year, almost nothing. Last year, we grew them upside down, in pails with holes in the bottom. This year, we got smarter and hung the pails right-side up, which apparently drowned the roots, or starved them of oxygen. So our waterboarded tomatoes failed to yield any useful data.

This afternoon, I was enjoying a beer in the Zinn Center, a screened addition to our deck, when up popped a squirrel. Assuming a he, although one is never entirely sure except during breeding season, the visitor scrambled up onto the railing. In this mouth, he clenched a black walnut in its green case. Around the corner he roared, and came to a screeching halt at a handful of peanuts, placed there by J's granddaughter earlier in the afternoon.

He placed the walnut carefully beside him, and paused to enjoy the first few pieces of the offering. Soon he retrieved the walnut and raced to the end of the railing, where he clambered up a wooden post from which I had hung a pot of petunias. With his back to me, he dug a substantial hole in the pot. Then he dropped the walnut into the cavity, and covered the treasure.

Back he roared to the remaining peanuts, and sat calmly while devouring them so fast that I could barely see his lower jaw moving. Stopping to scratch an itch, he completed the feast, and continued along the railing the way he had come in. At that moment, a tomato pail caught his eye, so up he jumped into the pot. It soon became apparent from the falling leaves and stems that he was treating himself to an after dinner mint.

The devastation complete, down he sped along the rail to the steps, and vanished.

I assume that the idea behind burying the treat is that the outer covering rots, making it easier to delve into the nut inside. I also assume that he, like every other squirrel we have observed, will forget where he buried the walnut. At some point, the chances are better than fifty-fifty that a small walnut tree will begin its life in our petunia pot. And in this way, Mother Nature carries on her fascination with life against all odds.

Help. I've fallen and I have no cell phone.

I teach seniors how to use computers. Being a senior myself, I think this gives me some seniority in the matter, plus the fact that I started out in the biz when computers read (and ate) punch cards. To sort cards you had to understand how to plug wires into a patch panel underneath the sorter. Or, if you were too scared to do that, you could sort them by hand.

In fact, I had a computer burst into flames one night. Well, that's a bit of a stretch: a few wisps of smoke and the smell of electrical fire permeated the computer room when a resistor or a capacitor decided to burst. Fortunately, I was not to blame, but it made me more respectful of the power of computers to cause gut-wrenching panic.

We are now thoroughly into the age of the cell phone, even though we don't know for sure whether these things are killing us. Since you can now watch feature length movies on your cell phone, there's not much holding us back from being thoroughly immersed in cell(ph)-absorption.

What amuses and amazes me is the number of my older students who come into the lab knowing square root of minus one about computers, despite having no trouble dealing with the tiny, inconvenient buttons and displays on their cell phones. Of course, they forget to turn the damn things off (a skill they have yet to master), so each session is inevitably disturbed by someone's choice of annoying ringtone music at random intervals, despite the signs on three walls asking that they be considerate of others by turning off their cell phones. Or at least setting them on stun.

Well, when I say "no trouble", I mean, relatively speaking. For one thing, they forget which pocket or section of the purse or pants the phone is stashed in. This can sometimes lead to complete performances of a ringtone opus until the battery wears down or the device comes to hand.

Most seniors, however, display basic courtesies when taking a call. After all, they grew up before the right to privacy was shredded. Back in the day, no one would THINK of discussing a private matter within earshot of strangers. In one class last year I had a student in the middle of the room who took a call from the phone company and settled in to a discussion of a billing error, complete with credit card numbers. One of the other students finally told her to take the call elsewhere. (I suppose that was my job, but I'm not an authority figure).

The other day at the physiotherapy center, I waited for J through about an hour and a half of her treatment. Although I was able to absorb about fifty pages of Leo Buscaglia's 30-year old book, "Personhood", it took considerably more concentration than usual, owing to a cell phone monologue provided by a woman who was clearly trying to sort out someone else's life. One of the many blessings of senior living may well be diminished hearing acuity. An elderly lady who brought her husband for therapy sat absorbed in her paperback for the whole time. When her spouse reappeared, he came over to her and tapped her on the shoulder. She probably got through a hundred pages.

Just in passing, it appears that a too-loud ringtone can set off a feedback loop in a hearing aid. Very unpleasant, because you now have to deal with two miniature sets of controls, located in two different areas of the personhood.

There are a few of my students who will never master anything more difficult than a can opener. Nevertheless, they continue to try their best to understand a technology that claims to be simple, but is becoming more complex with every iteration. One of them is bringing her twelve year old granddaughter to class with her, presumably because she knows that a kid who has been born in the late 90s is intuitively able to fix whatever goes wrong. I think the granddaughter mostly instant messages her friends during the sessions, but I could be wrong. She is probably, like most kids, multitasking, a computer geek term that means doing several things at once. Certainly she asks pertinent questions at times.

I will have taught myself out of a job in another two years, I think. Already we are seeing that in some classes where twelve register, only three show up. Perhaps in the few weeks that they were waiting for the class, they learned how to google and satisfy their own curiosity. I always make a point of teaching how to use Google, because it is the most easily understood (and fastest) way to learn how to do something. Once they can google, they don't need me anymore. And that's a good thing.

And by the way, Google generally doesn't like the word google to be used as a verb. You could look it up.

Ask and it shall be given you

J's been in pretty much constant pain lately. So far as the doctors know, it's not caused by the cancer, but rather by some combination of muscle and nerve interaction that results in bouts of sciatica or muscle pain or both. This is all very motion inhibiting.

How can they be so sure? Three letters:- MRI. Magnetic resonance imaging. If you ever want to know more about your insides than you want to know, be sure to get one of these examinations. Then sit down and poke through the collection of amazing images: it will give you a new respect for your inner you.

The irony is that the long periods during which the patient has to remain motionless while undergoing the scan produce further immobility in J. She can barely get up, and has to load herself with pharmaceuticals before the exam in order to endure the pain of arising after the scan is over (which can be a period of 90 minutes or more for each scan, and they do at least two).

For the person who takes the patient to the MRI center, the experience can be somewhat of a misery as well. J's recent scan took place at an imaging office in Cincinnati that has a very small seating area, and a ceiling-mounted TV set that is never off. The volume setting is generally past "background" and very close to "annoy".

Since the scan took place in mid-afternoon, the TV was set to a channel that offered all the classics of the worst of American network television: Judge Mathis, Jerry Springer and Maury Povich held forth for the hours from 4 pm to 6. The first exemplifies impatience and intolerance, the second, ignorance, sex and violence, and the third immorality, the three great operating principles of public life in the US today. People suing each other over unimaginably trivial complaints are followed by women beating the crap out of each other over some neanderthal who has made one or more of them pregnant but whom they still love dearly, and finally a whole hour devoted to name-calling and swearing, all of which is bleeped out to the point where there is no way to follow a conversation, with the issue finally being settled when Maury pulls out a manila envelope and reads the results of the DNA paternity test.

Although I had taken J's MP3 player with me, I was unable to match the volume, so even though John Denver did his shrieking best to cover the background, I could still involuntarily follow the thread of each program. Another visitor sat impassively in one of the tiny chairs and worked on sudoku puzzles with such concentration that I concluded he was already deaf.

J's scan took so long that several patients had to leave for supper and come back. A mother with a young son and a teenage daughter who was wearing a knee cast, came in and began to fill in the medical history survey form. It wasn't long before she turned to me and said, "Isn't there anything else on?" Her young son was obviously enjoying lip-reading the animated dialog between the three women who were claiming that the Cro-Magnon across from them was the father of their various progeny.

I shrugged. "I've been staring at this stuff all afternoon. It's so fascinating to see real life."
She replied, "I can't even think about what I'm writing."
A moment later, she got up and went to the receptionist.
"Is there a remote for this TV?"
"Yes, here," and the small key to freedom was handed over.

Two or three clicks later we were watching NASCAR, but the roar of engines was muffled to nearly nothing.

I slapped myself mentally upside the head.

On her way to dinner, the mom said, "Here... you look like you could use this."
"I promise not to wear out the battery," I replied.

Surfing for a few minutes, I finally found the Discovery Channel, and spent the next half hour absorbed in the disasters that will finally overtake the earth when it is hit by the asteroid that we all know is out there. What a relief!

To Make a Long Story Shorter

A barber is a very personal choice. I had one once in Thunder Bay who could barely speak English but his Italian was masterful. Unlike a typical talkative barber, this guy would just say, "Same t'ing a-like-a always?" And I would say, "Yes thanks!" And that was about the extent of it.

Mother cut our hair when we were kids: the famous "bowl cut". She didn't actually use a bowl as a guide, but the results were easily identified.

Mother's manual clippers pulled occasionally: not a pleasant experience. And I lived in terror of those scissors pokes in the back of the ears when she was "Trimming" around them. Equally, I feared the itching that took place at the end of The Trim, when she brushed us off, but the tiny clipped hairs remained like little needles. If I complained, she responded by blowing at my neck. The puff of motherly air was seldom enough to relieve the itch for more than a few minutes, but I was "grateful for small mercies", as my Dad (her most patient and least hairy customer) used to put it.

In winter, the venue during The Trim was the kitchen, a cramped corridor in which we sat on a stool during the ordeal, where the only light was provided by the kitchen ceiling fixture directly overhead. As a Child of the Depression, Mother would never approve higher than a 60 watt lamp for this unit, so The Trim was finest on top. Perhaps this contributed to my current bald spot.

If The Trim could be arranged for a Saturday, the lighting would be augmented by the ambient reflected sun, bouncing off a gray stucco wall, providing just enough illumination to reduce visibility whenever the barber stepped between it and her victim customer.

However, the real challenge was the fact that the neighbor's wall contained a large window, which sometimes framed the neighbor's children, noses pressed to the pane, enjoying the scene next door. Although they never taunted us about these moments, I felt extreme vulnerability when I went outside for about a week afterwards.

My brother likes to say, "The only difference between a bad Trim and a good one is three weeks." Sometimes, when Mother would say, "Hold still", because The Trim had continued for a longer time than I could comfortably endure, it would be followed by "I've asked you to hold still." I knew that even three weeks from that point, I would still have a small thatch to mark the place when my muscle spasm occurred.

When I was in university, I occasionally would take the electric clippers to my own cranium and emerge from the bathroom with a cut that would have made a woolybear jealous. It was all done with mirrors. The coordination of hand and eye when working in a non-intuitive direction was not of a high order. Although I never actually Mohawked, I often achieved a certain sassy imperfection that attracted comment from my peers, who evidently delighted in such deviations.

"You get run over again by yer lawn mower, Bill?"
"Gotcher ears lowered, I see, haw haw haw."
"Don't worry, I know a good barber."

And so forth.

Although I felt that buzzing my own follicles would impress my Child of the Depression mother, she never seemed to appreciate fully my frugality. Often her response would include the word, "Scalped" and an invitation: "Here, get me the clippers and let me fix that."

The other palpable memory is of the hair-raising, chilling experience of a plastic sheet being draped over a half-naked body.

We did not wear much clothing during The Trim. In the summer, we moved to the enclosed back porch, where, ironically, no neighbor urchins could actually view the process. No windows were so closely aligned, and wisteria vines provided cover on the opposite side. And the light was better. So, dressed in my Trim uniform, a pair of underpants, I exposed myself to a Trim that held the promise of a refreshing shower.

Given that Toronto in July was reliably hot and humid, the notion behind near-nakedness was that the hair was going to stick to me anyway, so why not be shower-ready, and why make all that extra work for the laundress (Mother)? The shock came when she stopped using a linen cloth, and started using a plastic cloth (why make all that extra work for the laundress?) Draping this material over my back would instantly correct my normally slumping posture. Sitting up straight was the only way control contact. Of course, as the body warmed the plastic, it was possible to assume the normal curvature, which was much more comfortable. But then the sense of humidity and stickiness eclipsed all other sensations.

My non-ergonomic posture was responsible, at times, for the distinct slope of my sideburns. Head bent forward, clippers held level. Result: six degrees of separation from true horizon.

There was always the moment when "the Bangs" were Trimmed. I closed my eyes, ears, nose and skin pores as best I could, but nothing prepared me for the oncoming steel, whose point I occasionally got in the forehead. And at the end of The Trim, Mother would stand back, shake her head slightly, and come at me again. Seldom totally satisfied with her handiwork, she would offer to Trim something she missed because "the light was bad', even as much as three or four days afterwards.

In later life, I have always resisted going to a barbershop. For one thing, I don't speak the language. For another, they seem to charge exorbitantly for something that I can do for myself. I don't miss the Playboy and Hustler magazines. We couldn't read while Mother cut hair, because it would fall into the fold of the book, and turn up in some other context at a later time.

I look at the cats and wonder, how did they manage to evolve those wonderful Trims that are always exactly the right length for their furstyle, and how come we didn't? Perhaps the creator knew that cats would never consent to sit still long enough to endure a Trim.

With one Accord we locked the doors.

The other night, OGADE had a drumming gig at a retirement community in Oxford, Ohio. The Knolls, as they are known, is a lovely, modern complex, complete with all the features and conveniences that make for a gracious denouement of life's struggles, assuming one has the means to afford it.

In any case, the performance was followed by a concensus that we repair to a local watering hole for whatever refreshment we might deem pleasing to our palates. J and I were able to park in front of the place, and we shortly ordered our entree and made our way to the patio. As it turned out, the cooks made a small error and duplicated the order, so we were able to share our choice with others of our group at no extra charge.

Suffering from sciatica as she sought to sit at the picnic table, J dispatched me to the car for her folding chair, which sports a large cushion. I went around to the side of the vehicle where I had stored the chair.

Imagine my mixed feelings of shame, anguish and frustration as I peered in the window of the unyielding door, spotting my keys reposing in full, tantalizing view on the rear seat.

It is J's habit to lock everything. Michael Moore, in his documentary "Bowling for Columbine", discovered that Canadians hardly lock their houses, let alone their cars.

I reconstructed the events in this fashion: I had laid my keys on the seat because I had both hands full at the time, retrieving my wallet from a bag on the floor. I momentarily busied myself with checking for tissues, wallet and credit card.

Meanwhile, J had extricated herself from the front seat, pressed down the lock button, and moved on to the restaurant. Satisfied that I had everything I needed, having no reliable short-term memory to speak of, I closed the door. Oh, the power, the synchonization, the irrevocability of electric locks.

Once the error became public knowledge, many helpful suggestions were offered. Most would have incurred considerable monetary loss if not physical damage. Finally, one of our members, M, offered to take us back to Hamilton (some 15 miles) to our house, where J's purse would yield the extra car key.

This solution was much preferable. A few miles toward our destination, it occured to me that the house key was also a taunting component of the incarcerated keychain. The only holder of a spare key was J's daughter who lived in the community on the far side of Hamilton.

"No matter," said M cheerfully. "We'll go wherever."

It was a long journey, taking in not merely the trip to get the key, but obviously a return to Oxford to make use of it. By midnight we were stumbling in, with work looming ever closer the next morning. However, the car was undamaged, and a lesson was learned.

According to this site,

The oldest known lock was found by archeologists in the Khorsabad palace ruins near Nineveh. The lock was estimated to be 4,000 years old. It was a forerunner to a pin tumbler type of lock, and a common Egyptian lock for the time.

That's impressive. Four thousand years of imbeciles locking themselves out of domiciles. Forty centuries of the inconvenience of non-conveyance.

I wonder if Khalil Gibran locked himself out of his studio before he wrote:

Your friend is your needs answered.

Thank you, M...
---
Footnote: This article in Wired Online appeared in timely fashion today, although it probably does not apply to the situation described above.

Pass me the butylated hydroxyanisole

Remember the old days before the cell phone? In fact, the days before phones could take messages for you? Days when "the party line" didn't mean that your representative was once again voting against your best interests?

Back in that day, a conversation without multiple "clicks" being heard as your neighbors tuned in on your conversations would be a rarity. Even in cities like Toronto, phone lines were shared, and you didn't just get an "in use" signal: you heard what the other party was saying.

Interesting, therefore, is it not, that improvements in technology brought the private line within reach of the ordinary user. An expectation of privacy grew out of that advancement.

Ironic, therefore, is it not, that advancements in technology have made it possible for millions of daily conversations to be culled for keywords and phrases that might catch you up in an unwelcome net of inference. The party line is back, and you'd best be adhering to it or you'll be invited to a hearing.

And so, as the art of literate communication fades, the algorithm of text messaging surges. Today's instant messengers have rediscovered what the ancient Phoenicians knew: y dnt nd vwls 2 b ndrstd.

We were a hardier crew back in the day. If we were out on a car trip and a tire went flat in a way that we couldn't fix, we bundled out of the car and sought a farmhouse or a phone booth. Or we waved down a passing motorist who invariably would help in some way. The technology of travel was not advanced enough for us to be able to hold a cellphone up to our head, let alone have a car that knew where we were at all times, and what the problem was and how to report it.

So life is easier in many ways, but more expensive, for those services are pricey. And at some point, our dependence on technology will inevitably bite us in strange ways. Tech that reduces our physical activity levels contributes to all sorts of potential harms, such as thrombosis caused by poor circulation. Cell phones themselves are suspected of inducing tumors over long exposure.

At what price does convenience become too expensive? With oil going as it is, our ability to eat a wide range of imported foods in the off-season will be curtailed. Of course, this could be better in the long run, given the preservatives that are often added to extend the life of perishables. But extending the lives of perishables may not be extending the lives of those who eat them. Other methods may be developed to reduce the chemical components of our feasting.

Fortunately, the internet is the easiest resource to use to identify risky food additives. In a sense, the technology of information is available to counter ignorance that is fed by habit. Inertia must give way to motivation, and searching for answers is good exercise.

If you don't have enough irony in your diet, consider this: while we may be living longer, we need to work longer in order to afford our longer lifespan.

A new moan, hey?

So I'm out mowing my lawn tonight, and a middle-aged couple and their daughter are out for a constitutional, and as they pass by, he says to me, "That there's one thing I'd never be able to do. First time out I'd cut the cord."

See, after six seasons or so years of faithful service without even an oil change, the transmission on my 6.5 horsepower Sears Craftsman self-propelled mower seized up, and the mower became as balky as pushing a wheelbarrowful of cinder blocks over a railroad track. So after researching the matter, including some bank balance inspection, I decided to go for a cheaper option: a swingover-handled Black & Decker electric push mower.

Mowing a lawn using a device that has a swath width of "an average commercial string trimmer" (a derisive but probably accurate measure authored by my stepson-in-law), one requiring about 200 feet of grounded power cord, comes down to how well you did in geometry. The front lawn is encumbered by two young maple trees and a slightly older peach tree. So navigating the mower becomes an exercise in devising the most efficient, least annoying layout. The maples are not bad, because at their age they have not branched out wildly. The same cannot be claimed for the peach. Not only is the peach a wide-branching tree, but is also a variety that branches low to the ground. I believe it may have been a lawn-mowing person who invented the limbo.

At any rate, I smiled back at the gentleman and parried, "Sounds like you're speaking from my experience!"

"Not on your life," he shot back. "I know my limits!"

And off they went. I chuckled, and resumed trying to calculate the square on the hypotenuse that would best describe the next half of my lawn cutting pattern. He had triggered a memory of a time in Thunder Bay when I was out trying to use an electric snow thrower as a Zamboni on our backyard rink. Of course, electric cord meets no resistance on ice, and so in one startling instant, twenty feet of fairly new outdoor cable was severed and tightly wrapped around the paddle and axle of the thrower. Ah, the memories.

I console myself by thinking that the carbon footprint from the lawnmower is probably much less than that of its predecessor. This may be fallacious, if, indeed as it seems, it takes three times as long to cut the grass. But the other consolation is that it is not nearly as noisy. I can even hear the barking dogs and the revving Harleys even while scalping my yard.

I sure do miss that gas mower.

Wheeling and dealing

The new wheelchair, indeed, the first one ever, arrived today. Its purpose is to allow J to participate in such events as a birdwatching field trip, or the Oxford, Ohio Relay for Life for breast cancer research, or just shopping at stores that don't have electric carts. It weighs 42 lbs. And it was made in Mexico, not China.

Isn't it amazing how unconscionably high the prices are for assistive devices? Not being an expert in economics, I'd have to put it down to the fact that prices in this field are determined by how much a manufacturer can gouge an insurance company. Otherwise, how can you explain the spread between $197.00 and $560.00 for exactly the same item? And when you're buying something like this without going through insurance, you want to be sure you find exactly what you're looking for, so you won't have a full-blown case of buyer's remorse two days later when you discover the same item on the internet for hundreds less and free shipping.

In any case, we discovered this gem at IKEA, the new monster furniture place in West Chester, when J looked for an electric cart and found a wheelchair that met her weight and dimensional requirements. I have to assume that battery technology just isn't up to propelling the average shopper in a cart around an area that's touted to be the size of six football fields. Or maybe they just don't want amateur jockeys bashing into all that lovely Swedish furniture. In any case, we enjoyed the whole experience, and from her seated vantage point, all she had to do was point in the direction she wanted to go, and I revved up the old Armstrong motor and off we trundled.

Whenever we shop at some food chain outlet, she gets into an electric cart, because they have a basket on the front, and because they make an obnoxious beeping whenever she thrusts it into reverse. The six-year-old in her loves that. But now that sciatica has become a sporadic accompaniment, she needs access to places where no electric cart has ever gone before.

Why not an electric scooter? Well, refer to the points made in the second paragraph above. But even more importantly, we're still paying off a Honda sedan that we bought before we realized that the future might be easier if we had bought a van. And there are other reasons, too. I can't keep up with a scooter. A scooter has power requirements that border on being a nuisance. After all, J does not have to plug me into the wall at night, although I might get a charge out of that.

So what do we know now? One thing we know for certain is that the fully-expanded chair will not go through the doorways of our 70's cape cod home. Another is that I will develop muscles in places where they have been largely absent hitherto. And another is that since I've always walked behind J when she rides around in the stores, I will now be less of a Prince Philip (hands behind back, head slightly deferentially bowed forward, attendant on every word) and more of an interested companion. And if J doesn't like where we're headed, she can apply the brakes or turn the wheel. She's on a roll!

Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down

It is Sunday morning. Three cats are in three window boxes Pictured by J on her website. Sleeping with their faces planted into the towels laid on the floors, or with one paw covering their eyes, they do what cats do best.

Outside, a thunderstorm brews and the winds pick up speed. Inside, incessant babble and keening of two grandchildren. My sanity is preserved by a door which, though locked, cannot completely filter the frequencies because it has a hole in it, for the convenience of the cats.

At the first rumble, an ear pricks up and rotates slightly. As it settles back, another rumble brings the head up and the eyes open. The rain begins in earnest, and the owner of the ears moves quickly out of harm's way. She begins a new vigil near the interior doorway, to be ready for the event that she most desires, the opening of the bedroom door and the emergence of J, on whose chest, in front of the computer, she will truly begin her day.

Lightning. Now nature has the cats' full attention. There is a world of birds out there, seemingly within easy reach, but the era of chattering teeth, twitching tails and guttural whining has long since passed. Maturity, along with indoor captivity has attenuated their interest in those feathered morsels who flit so tantalizingly close to edibility.

A roll of thunder. The orange cat turns around to face the interior. Still in his bower, he considers whether he, too, should retreat to a less exposed venue. But to do so, he would have to pass The Vigilant One, who would not take any such intention as less than a challenge to do momentary battle. Old instincts do not pass easily.

A Mozart violin concerto begins on the computer. The Vigilant One stretches languidly and commences her morning lick. Evidently she has calculated, based on noises that only she can hear, or perhaps some innate timekeeping facility, that it is coming close to the time of emergence.

She is not disappointed. Barely has she completed her grooming when J opens the doors. The inner door is one of the few that does not have a cat hole. The prospect of a cat ensconced in The Old Allergic Guy's bed was as unwelcome as the cat's sudden materialization in the bedroom. The Old Allergic Guy, therefore, added a screen door to the outside of the frame, a solution which proved antidotal to the element of surprise. There have been lapses of attention, but on the whole, the animals are excluded.

But now, two cats have accompanied J to the bathroom, and there this tale must end. It is the same each Sunday morning, a comfortable diversion, varying slightly with the weather, of course. And no bird is ever harmed in the observance of this ritual.

KISS me, you old fool

There comes a point in an old guy's life when he begins to wonder if all this new technology is worth learning. My lovely bride is the master of the remote (as well as of the intimate, but that's another story). Whenever I turn on the television set, I get as far as pushing the button for sound, and hitting the power button that turns on the TV. After that, all bets are off.

If I hold my mouth right, I can get the weather report on the local Cincinnati channel. If not, the DVR will report that both channels are in use, and to be able to shift channels I'd have to cancel one of the recordings currently in progress. Do you think I'd have the nerve to even consider such a possibility? If you do, you don't know me very well.

It's not that I care, really, because J and I share a lot of the same interests in programs that she records. These include The Daily Show, apparently the only reliable source of media-based news reporting in the USA at the moment, and Deadliest Catch, the story of the rigors that crab fishermen endure in the Bering Sea for the sake of their share of a million dollars or less a season. We root for the crabs.

Video games are becoming so sophisticated that the next phase will be the surround helmet, which will convince the player that s/he has stepped into a real, not virtual, world. Beyond that is 3D computer and movie screens that require no special glasses to view.

Cars that drive themselves, kitchen robots that take care of meal preparation, cranial implants that will replace the functionality of diminishing senses, all of these and more are well on the way to mass production.

If these can all be operated by pushing one simple button, then I say, "Let them come and take over". But so far, it has been my life's experience that more sophistication entails more difficulty. Consider the barbecue, and how it has morphed from a grill over a pan of briquets to an outdoor appliance, complete with timers, rotisseries, warming ovens, side burners and self-cleaning ovens. Just putting one together, never mind learning how to use all its features is a challenge suitable for a younger mind.

At some point many of us feel a growing discontent with the complexity of our daily lives. It isn't necessarily a sign of senility to feel that it's getting more and more difficult to find simplicity and contentment, even though automation is moving the mundane to the periphery of our existence. First, we voted with a shout of assent. Then we began requiring a show of hands. Next came the paper ballot. Then the voting machine. And now the computerized voting station. With what result? More certainty? More fairness? More accuracy?

There's a lot to be said for the KISS principle, "Keep It Simple, Stupid". When the things that make your life easier make it more complex, then something just isn't adding up.

Get a Horse!

Do you remember a song called "Love and Marriage?" It claimed that "they go together like a horse and carriage".

You know, there's a downside to the horse and carriage. I don't date back quite that far, but I did once "enjoy" a ride in a pony carriage, on a farm owned by a cousin of my mother's, down near Picton, Ontario. That was about all I could handle.

My first and only recollection of riding a horse was that pony. I guess I might have been about nine or ten, and, as my dad so eloquently put it, "scared shitless".

When you climb aboard one of those animals, you become conscious quite quickly that you are astride some independent-minded horsepower. That, and the smell. Thank goodness old Henry Ford didn't find it necessary to capture the essence of horse in the horseless carriages he produced. Note, by contrast, that contemporary horseless carriage manufacturers (or horseless carriage dealers) use synthetic "new car" sprays to bring the olfactories in line with the old factories.

This pony was docile enough until it started to move, but even though it was being led around by the cousin using a short lead and tight control, I was more or less paralyzed by the feeling of straddling a rocking bench with ears that constantly turned toward me, daring me to issue any commands that it might challenge.

I did not stay long aboard. "Get me offa this thing!". Amidst the spectatorial merriment, my carriageless horse came to a gentle stop, and I slid down some way or other, smelling of horseflesh and humiliation.

No, it is not a tale of someone who, first time aboard, was thrown, as my dad so eloquently put it, "ass over teakettle" by an ill-tempered bronco. It was more like the gentle repudiation by a knowledgeable animal who totally understood that some are made to ride and most are not. I recall a sound of equine snickering, which, in later recollection morphed into a whinny, only because my pride prevented a more accurate depiction.

Yes, I did go for a ride in the pony-sized carriage, but cannot claim to have enjoyed it. The driver seemed to want to urge her steed to higher rates of speed than I felt were safe. Neither she nor her pony appeared to think that the speed of a normal walk would be worth the effort of harnessing.

My cousin later appears in one of our home movies, riding the pony bareback, chasing the family dog in ever-tightening circles around the expanse of the front yard, and loving every second of it. It is a tribute to her patience and sense of humor that she was willing to lead her fear-soaked cousin around on his gentle, thirty-foot trip aboard such a free-spirited mount.

Music going down the internet tubes?

Greed almost killed internet radio a while back. The authorities in the federal government who go by the name of Copyright Royalty Board imposed a new fee structure for stations that play music, making it prohibitively expensive for internet niche players (e.g. "all-baroque-all-the-time") to stay on the air. At present, only Congressional action (an oxymoron) can prevent this from happening.

The current situation is best understood if you look at this article.
So the old motivation of greed kills the simple pleasures. Where there's a buck to be made, you can be sure someone in this country will find it. Once again, Big Media takes over and deprives anyone who can't pay from listening or broadcasting.

Apparently corporations don't understand the story about killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

There's plenty of evidence that consumers are more likely to buy music if they have a chance to audition it. When I was twenty something, one of the biggest music stores in Toronto had a whole floor devoted to listening stations where you could (with the help of staff) put on headphones to listen to a potential purchase. Some people, of course, abused that, but most were serious purchasers. And this was years ago.

Now, the music distribution model has changed, and become much more convenient than the old listening station. And music of any type can be downloaded rapidly and wirelessly to your tiny listening device while you're doing something else. We are living in an era when it is no longer necessary to buy a load of claptrap on an album in order to obtain what you really want.

The notion that royalties must be set in such a way that only the corporations survive is so quintessentially stupid that it is astounding. Music does not survive when nobody can hear it. It is essential to the culture of any civilized country. Put a prohibitive price in place and you penalize the populace. And another goose gets killed.

An end will come. It may be that when we can no longer afford oil, sometime in the next two years at the current rate, we'll have no means of churning out the plastic for CDs and DVDs. But it seems to me that before that happens, the music business will have killed the affordability of its own product in any case. Way to go, you greedy idiots.

But until that happens, why not download and install a good internet radio player like Screamer Radio, or find a Mac equivalent, or just go to a website like Accuradio.com, select a genre of your choice, and listen to the amazing works of Bach or the Beatles, or Benny Goodman while you still can?

"The day the music died" may well be on its way unless saner heads prevail.

What is it about Florida?

What's so much about Florida anyway?

The climate? The beaches? The ocean? The people?

Well, three out of four ain't bad.

And it's not the people: it's the crush of people and traffic, all seeking only two things: a place to eat and a place on the beach. Preferably both at the same time.

For anyone who has been to the running of the bulls at Pamplona (and I haven't), the only thing lacking in the Florida beach scene is "thee bool". Along the roads of Clearwater that parallel the Gulf shore, any place that has public parking is, by definition, full. Every other place has a private property sign, rife with the numbers of local ordinances that condemn the violator to a life of perpetual payment and pariahhood. People circle the block or doublepark (with engines running and the A/C/ on of course, because it's hot in a car) while waiting for a parking space to become available.

By contrast, if you are fortunate enough, as we were, to drop your air mattresses into someone's spare bedroom, you can suddenly find yourself, as our host frequently remarked, "Livin' the Dream." Even if only for a couple of days.

The future of Florida is uncertain, as it is with any near-sea-level outcropping near the great oceans. If global warming doesn't slow down or reverse, all the beach-front public parking areas will be part of a huge involuntary marina.

The only other place I've been to where access to Paradise is comparably restricted is San Juan, PR, and that was a few decades ago. I don't know how much things have changed, but at the time, the island was full of junker cars. These old crates were imported by the shipload from the mainland because there was a prohibited import tax on anything that was less than a couple of years old. It was said that in PR, there was only room to park a third of the cars. Thus, two-thirds of the cars had to keep moving.

Of course, certain times of the year are more congested. We know this. Events, however, conspired to make us take the trip or not go at all. And to our host and hostess who saved us the cost of accommodation and let us be who we are, we can only say,"Thank you so much." With friends like these, who needs beach-fronts?

Each ending is a beginning

Tomorrow J undergoes the increasingly common operation that women are experiencing in depressing numbers, a mastectomy.

The support expressed by everyone who has learned of this situation has been most reassuring. Typically, these expressions fall into two categories: 1) my friend, relative had this operation (or variant of it) and has survived for __ years, and 2) you have our prayers/good thoughts. And many also add, "If there's anything we can do..."

This is the good stuff that human beings are made of. It comes out spontaneously, and it's not mere polite/self-conscious chatter. The worse the situation the more intense the sympathy and support.

Cancer itself is one of our universal fears, not always because of the probability of a shorter lifespan than one would have wished or planned for, but often because it means such a loss of control over one's body. Medical treatments are not something anyone looks forward to, but the fear arises as much or more from the uncertainty as from the inevitable pain.

And so, from tomorrow forward, the prospect of living a day at a time with an attitude of gratitude becomes the first order of business. For, as the Dalai Lama has said, "If you have a situation that you can do something about, why worry? And if you have a situation that you can do nothing about, why worry?"

One day, perhaps, we shall understand how to heal ourselves of all these genetically-based diseases. I hope that if that is ever the case, we also become wiser, gentler, and more loving. Greed and war and selfishness are so old school.

Let me make this perfectly clear

Nixon used to say that phrase a lot, didn't he? It was right up there with "Make no mistake", and "I am not a crook".

Can it be true that manuals are written as part of a corporate strategy to wrest yet more after-purchase money out of the consumer's bony fingers?

Currently, I'm trying to assist a friend in another state who is having a problem getting his VCR to record or play back anything that comes via the new cable box service he has had installed. I think that video manuals and instruction sheets hold the record for being the least well written documents.

I suppose the companies keep their costs down by writing documentation that takes little note of the end user. The quick start guides that show the cartoons of how things get connected often seem to leave out certain facts, such as the ones that show optional gear as though it were part of the standard setup. The optional gear is the stuff that actually makes the rest of it do what you bought it for in the first place.

This, of course, makes after-market revenue almost a certainty, and the rates for such personal attention vary all over the country.

Even though most of the manuals for installation and setup are now available on the web, that just means that it's more convenient to find this miserable collection of poorly-written, myopically printed documentia. And while we all appreciate that it's there, we still can't get past the fact that it doesn't say what we want to know, which is, in simple terms, How do I get this damn thing to work properly without my having to go back to college?

Well, it comes down to the fact that the young generally do not understand the needs of the elderly. Unless they've had first hand experience of no experience, they can't possibly write a manual or prepare a tutorial that starts at Square One and step-by-steps it through everything it takes to make it happen.

After all, the technical writers of today were born in the generation that had a computer in their home. And the next ones will have them in their brains. They have little in common with us: their documentation is rife with assumptions about what we know, based on what they have always known.

And then there's the matter of English as a second language, but let's not get into that here. Generally, these manuals seem to have been translated word by word, choosing the first, not the contextually applicable, meaning for each one.

My friend just wrote that he's thinking about telling the company to take the gear out and return things to the way they were. And I just wrote back that I believe he has found the solution. Corporate America doesn't lose customers willingly.

And for any of you out there who may be technical writers, don't take this personally, but just as a favor to me, will you please read "How to Give Instructions" from Lifehack.org. Dustin Wax, the author, has a wealth of good ideas. They're not hard to understand. So why are they so difficult to do?

Ack and gah!

One thing I especially love about J is her insatiable desire to experiment. She never reads a manual: she just dives in and presses all the buttons, making a mental note of which ones do whatever, and from then on, she is mistress of all things related thereunto.

In the culinary arts, however, she adopts the prescriptive approach. She browses her collection of recipe books and computer files until she finds one that both her mind and her appetite can agree on at the moment. She takes these instructions to the kitchen and by following them pretty much as written (except when things that are listed are not to be found in the cupboard so substitutions are in order) produces something that would certainly be worthy of public consumption.

Many times we have discussed whether if all else failed, she might open a bistro under the obvious name, "Eat@Jo's". This would accommodate both those meat-and-potato eaters to whom the very name suggests roadside diners, while also making room for the computer-savvy amongst the traveling public, who could order ahead by email.

Rarely, but not statistically impossibly, she will hit a clinker, which finds its best audience with the raccoons who nightly forage our feeding platform, otherwise known as the deck.

Last night was such a rarity.

She found something that combined it-might-have-been-a-chicken with breadcrumbs and something else, and the other thing was broccoli and something also coated. Her irrepressible urge to experiment resulted in a dish I promptly named, "Ack and Gah!"

Back in the day, had my mother put such a meal on the table and met with restlessness from the natives, my father would have answered my reluctance by saying, "Too well fed!" This in turn used to enrage me, because, from my point of view, at that precise moment, I was not well enough fed at all. Dad, as usual, of course, was merely quoting some wisdom of the Fathers, someone whose name was "Grandad", who might have been any one of a number of such persons in his stable of ancestors.

J, on the other hand, simply laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more. This made me laugh in concert, until eating either the Ack or the Gah was rendered nearly impossible.

Such happy times! Other spouses might well have said, "Suck it up or go get your own food". But J's attitude toward food doesn't differ much from her attitude toward life itself. "Well, let's try this, and if it doesn't work, we'll have to try something else."

I once made the mistake of bragging, "I'll try anything once". That's no longer true. Bungy jumping and anything involving heights is pretty much exempt. I've learned to draw a pretty strong line in these older years. But occasionally, something will cross the line.

Ack and Gah! Please dear...

Derailing my train of thought

On my way to work a couple of mornings ago, a trip that normally takes about ten to twelve minutes, I encountered conditions that tend to confound the drivers in this area. A light dusting of snow had fallen. Lacking countermeasures, we all drove over each other's tracks which became more slippery with each passing vehicle. Intersections were positively dangerous. Yet not many people got in trouble, because they drove with extreme caution. The one or two who spun out were driving light, fast cars, or at least they were when they started out.

And then there was the train. A four-headed monster with about 150 cars, traveling around 15 miles an hour. This was the second train in two days. The previous day, however, the train was shorter, and the time was around noon, which I regard as preferable to 7:45 a.m. when you need to make it to work by 8. This train, however, stopped on the crossing for five minutes, and since I was the first in line, I had no choice but to observe the rusty side panels and the insignia of the companies within my view.

There must be some law here. Let's see how it might be formulated.

1) The speed of the train at the crossing is inversely related to the urgency of your mission.
2) The amount of snow that falls, multiplied by the number of cars using the roads during that time period yields a number which expresses the scale of certainty that you will be late for whatever you need to do.
3) Preferred times for rail traffic are during morning and evening rush hours.

I think this last one is so because when they run trains at night, they are bound to get more complaints about disturbing the peace than if they run them during the day. And it's obviously much safer during the day, because motorists can see the trains coming. On the other hand, in our city, trains run night and day, so perhaps this rule needs more precise formulation.

It always amazes me how close to the railway right-of-way people build their houses. At a local crossing (when I was a kid I used to think those big crossing signs read "Rail Crossing Way"), there is a house that can't be more than ten feet from the wigwag, which has the World's Most Annoying Bell that pounds continuously and can be heard for about two blocks whenever a train comes. The people who live there must have to strap down the TV and pick the pictures (or the plaster) off the rug. But I bet they got the place for a really good price.

Ah, but there's nothing quite like trying to puzzle out the graffiti on the boxcars and tank cars as they crawl across your field of view, since you're the one driver who couldn't make it across the rails before the bar descended. You may not make sense of this, but you have a feeling that it's the last protest against the totally surveiled society. Is this the handwriting on the wall?

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

-- Omar Khayyam

For the love of lava

The Lava Lamp

You know, there's something brilliant about the lava lamp. I'm not talking about the level of the lighting, because we all know that there's something very subdued and subtle about lava lamps. The brilliance lies in the way it fascinates and intrigues.

Like most things in life, the lava lamp does not immediately perform its formless magic upon being turned on. It takes a while for the 40 watt light in the base to heat the wax enough to begin the process of changing the specific gravity to cause flotation.

And this is, of course, a metaphor for most things in life. Things that begin immediately tend to end immediately if not sooner, in my experience. The things that we savor, such as a fine dinner or an episode of meaningful lovemaking, do not have instant beginnings. They take planning and consideration.

When the wax heats to the right temperature, the process begins. Thanks to the laws of physics, chemistry and thermodynamics, a blob rises through the water and becomes a ball as it separates from the column that feeds it. And it ascends for a time, and it stays at the top for a time, but all too soon, it sinks slowly down, often being compressed by a new blob on the way up.

And this is, of course, a metaphor for most things in life. Thanks to the laws of gravity and similar imponderables, the blob is doomed to descend, slowly and perhaps with a certain dignity, but nevertheless downward, inexorably to be absorbed at the bottom of the column, to await a tranformational experience that will renew its upward course. But it will not be the same blob. It becomes a part of all that it has met.

Can you relate to this? Is your life a series of ups and downs: the ups caused by the heating and energy of some source that may not even be visible or clearly understood, and the downs the result of the inevitable cooling of interest and the general downward pull of forces that seem only too ready to work against always being up?

Eventually, the general temperature of the lava lamp heats to the point where the large and sensuous blobs give way to a chaotic mix of small balls and bubbles, and the charm of the lamp is perhaps diminished by a more frenetic mode of activity. And eventually, the action ceases as the water is too warm to allow for the cooling which brings the ball back to the bottom. And so the last generation of lava modules rests for a while at the top of the lamp. But when you turn off the lamp, everything gradually returns to the state in which it began, at the bottom of the lamp.

Without wishing to beat the metaphor to death, I can say that this phase may recall that critical stage in human development called "Midlife Crisis", where, after a life of increasing tempo, and compulsive need to achieve as much as possible, one comes to the realization that you are but one blob in a very numerous crowd of like-minded blobs, and even if you make it to the top, you won't hold that position forever. "Cool it!", and so you do, and you begin the final descent as the energy that moved you to action no longer seems so compelling.

But it is not necessarily a descent into darkness and incapacity, unless you allow it to be so. Like a blob of cooling lava lamp wax, you may find that you will coalesce with a larger group like yourself at this stage, having in common the experience, the judgment, and the perspective that is somehow comforting and welcome amongst like-minded companions. And you may not resent the surrender of your rugged individualism for the greater good, at least as much as you did when you were on the way up, or even at the top.


The lava lamp. It's all in how you look at it.

When it's empty, fill it. When it's full, empty it.

These words to live by are from my loving and gentle spouse. She coined the phrase a couple of days ago in response to my ha-bitch-ual comments about the one-snout-away-from-a-pigstyle house that we live in. Since that time, this phrase has roiled around in my frontal lobes and come to have a much wider applicability than at first thought.

See, the problem is, as anyone who has been around children or has started out life as a child (Mark Twain), kids don't pick anything up without being harped at. Merely demonstrating the process does not typically inspire imitation. There's nothing in it for them, after all. If they had the ability to understand that leaving stuff strewn in the living space is both dangerous and unaesthetic, there would probably be no issue. As it is, it is much handier to leave stuff where you'll be sure to be intrigued by it another time.

Well, in the course of talking about this as if there were any potential cure for it, J came out with a few ideas as to how behavior can be altered best by simple means, such as posting helpful reminder signs on every vertical surface. Not all of the children, of course, can read, but most can. And in considering the wording, she considered the need.

In our tiny inadequate corridor kitchen, we have a water cooler, two sinks, a garbage pail, two recycle bins, a can crusher and a dishwasher. At any given time of the day, one or more of these devices is bound to be full to overflowing.

Hence, the brilliant relevancy of J's sign (which she has yet to make because her desk is too full to find the sign-making supplies, but that's for another day). For consider this: if the dishwasher is full, it needs to be emptied. If the dishwasher has not been run yet, it needs to be started, and after an appropriate interval, emptied. If the sink is full, it needs to be emptied into the dishwasher and/or garbage depending on contents. If the dining room table is full of dishes, the table needs to be emptied at least into the sink, but preferably into the dishwasher. If the garbage is full, it needs to be emptied outside into the garbage containers. If they are full, they need to be taken to the curb, or set aside for collection. If the water container is empty it needs to be filled.

To this new J's Law, I would add a few corollaries. If the basement is full, it needs to be emptied into the garage. If the garage is full, it needs to be emptied into a garage sale. If the rug is full, it needs to be cleared (of toys and Cheerios and clothes and books, as well as dirt). If the countertops are full, food and appliances need to be put away. If the refrigerator is empty, we need to go shopping. If the stomach is empty it needs to be filled.

And so I wait for a sign.

Justice once, let's do something nice for these folks

The most interesting thing about the New Year is that it will have one more day than the three previous years did. I suppose they each gave up a quarter of their entitlement so that 2008 could bask in the additional day.

So the big question becomes, "What am I gonna do with the extra day this year?" For most of us, it's just the last day of another month, and if we're working, we're working.

This is all wrong. February 29 should be a national, if not a world, holiday. It's very special. Consider all those people who were born on this date. Their first birthday celebration would have been when they were three years old.

It should be a bigger deal, and there are, of course, leapers who are working on it constantly. Here's a list of famous leapies, and here's an example of the kinds of problems they face, having to live a lie when it comes to drivers' licences and insurance.

What could it hurt to honor leapers by declaring a day in their name, and preferably a day off? It's a throwaway anyway, because most of us don't welcome the idea of working an extra day in February. We're too excited by the groundhog and winter and global warming and terror and shopping to want to waste time slaving in the pits that day.

I think I'm gonna do it anyway. If I haven't burned up all my vacation by then, I'm gonna talk the boss into letting me celebrate LeapDay this year. After all, it's a Friday.

And then I'm gonna find me an 84 year old and wish him or her a Very Happy 21st Birthday!