A Chuckle

I got a chuck­le* from this on page 376 in Com­ing Into the Coun­try. The speak­er is a woman named Elva. Elva has a mas­ter’s degree in edu­ca­tion and for many years ran the school-dis­tricts health pro­gram in Anchor­age. This expe­ri­ence leaves her the most qual­i­fied med­ical provider in the town of Eagle.

Peo­ple come in off the riv­er with blood infec­tions, red streaks up their arm. They get cys­ti­tis from not enough water. They come down from Daw­son with v.d. We don’t have lab­o­ra­to­ry tests. We treat on symp­toms. An out­board motor chewed on a guy’s legs awhile. We sewed him up. I tell every­one, ‘I don’t mind help­ing you out. Just don’t use me.’ We don’t want to be awak­ened for noth­ing, for some­one who is mere­ly drunk. For gun­shot wounds and stab­bings I of course get up. Oh, we have enough of that sort of thing. Yeah. You betcha. We’re get­ting ready to have din­ner with com­pa­ny and they come in and bleed all over the sink. Who needs TV in Eagle? We’ve got action enough in the streets.

You betcha.

I’m guess­ing health care costs in Eagle were (are?) on the low end.

*I won­der if I’ve ever used that word before.….

Time Flies…

…when you’re hav­ing fun! Let me clear a cou­ple of cob­webs off.…

There.

Geez, one post in the past two weeks. A bit off my goal of one every oth­er day.

In my defense, we are in the process of try­ing to sell our house and buy anoth­er house. This is a bit of a dis­trac­tion. It does appear the clos­ings will take place soon, so the process of mov­ing might be a bit of a dis­trac­tion. I appre­ci­ate the patience of, ahem, all my loy­al read­ers (I think there’s three or four).

Anoth­er dis­trac­tion is the advent of foot­ball sea­son. I’ve spent too much time read­ing Green Bay Pack­er blogs. One would think the world is about to end since the Pack­ers lost to the Bengals.

Saturation

McPhee’s Com­ing Into The Coun­try has begun to get more inter­est­ing in the sec­ond half…

On page 261* is this:

In a good fish year, two moose, two hun­dred ducks, and sev­en­ty-five quarts of king salmon will be plen­ty for one riv­er cou­ple. The upper Yukon now is con­sid­ered “full,” sat­u­rat­ed with set­tlers, all space reserved – rough­ly one per­son for every five miles.

One per­son for every five miles is con­sid­ered sat­u­ra­tion. I guess because if things get more crowd­ed a need for a wee bit of gov­ern­ment arises.

Just pri­or to the above is an account of a near­ly week long gath­er­ing of “riv­er peo­ple” for the 1976 ver­nal equinox.

It was a coun­cil of war and a par­ty, too – a time of talk and music, no booze – a way to keep con­tacts, to exchange opin­ions and information.

Then just a bit fur­ther on:

They planned a net­work of cab­ins for win­ter trav­el. They tried, with no suc­cess, to agree on a a com­mu­nal bulk food order, and on a way to admin­is­ter com­mon own­er­ship of a truck for use in Eagle. Their desire to be “trib­al” does not approach in strength their need to be self-reliant.

There always have been and always will be peo­ple who feel crowd­ed when the den­si­ty goes beyond a cou­ple of square miles per per­son. Peo­ple who want to sur­vive or fail to sur­vive on their own. Peo­ple who are unable to come to an agree­ment on a com­mu­nal bulk food order. There has always been a wilder­ness for such peo­ple to go to. Sure­ly those days are com­ing to an end. The avail­able wilder­ness is now all set aside for parks, for min­ing, for drilling, for natives.

Such a life will soon be avail­able, if not already, only to those wealthy enough to buy all the need­ed land.

*Yes, I am a slow reader.

Sense of Humor

Deb­by and I watched Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristi­na Barcelona the oth­er day. Good film. Here and there dur­ing the movie I had to remind myself that it is prob­a­bly fun­ny. And as soon as I thought that, I found it to be fun­ny! Even to the point that I laughed out loud.

But I could have eas­i­ly sat through the whole movie with­out real­iz­ing it was sup­posed to be fun­ny. I would wager that I have done that at least once in my life: watch a movie that is sup­posed to be fun­ny with­out ever real­iz­ing that was the case. And then think­ing “strange movie.”

On the oth­er hand, I find Craig Fer­gu­son to be very fun­ny. I actu­al­ly find him to be fun­ny even when he is being juvenile.

But Conan O’ Bri­an isn’t fun­ny at all.

By the way, Vicky Cristi­na Barcelona is real­ly good. Filmed in ter­rif­ic set­tings, very good act­ing, and a decent script. And Allen is not in it (a big plus in my book).

Create Your Reality

I don’t remem­ber where I heard or read this idea, but the con­cept is straight for­ward. If you want a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion to exist, you deter­mine what the results would be if the sit­u­a­tion did exist, then you take steps to bring those results about inde­pen­dent­ly and this will help to bring the desired sit­u­a­tion into being.

This method has its lim­i­ta­tions. If one wish­es to be a mil­lion­aire, buy­ing a Porsche 911 might not be the prop­er way to go about it (though there might be cases.…)

Many years ago my broth­er urged me to answer the ques­tion of “How are you?” with “Ter­rif­ic!” regard­less of how I actu­al­ly felt. I tried it. And I was sur­prised to learn that answer­ing “Ter­rif­ic!” (excla­ma­tion point clear in my tone) actu­al­ly made me feel bet­ter and often seemed to bright­en the mood of the questioner.

Now Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can finds that my expe­ri­ence is not unique (and here I thought I was one of a kind…). Smil­ing makes a per­son hap­pi­er, at least in the short term. The linked arti­cle men­tions evi­dence that smil­ing in the face of rea­son to frown con­sti­tutes repres­sion of feel­ings that then man­i­fest them­selves in oth­er ways. So don’t get car­ried away with it.

Hat tip: 3quarksdaily

The Question of When

It is a sev­en­teen page arti­cle, but the writ­ing is good and it goes fast: Tri­al by Fire by David Grann in The New York­er.

It real­ly has nev­er been a ques­tion of if, but only of when. When an inno­cent would be exe­cut­ed, and when we will final­ly do away with the death penalty.

It appears that the first ques­tion has an answer.

hat tip:  The New Republic

I Can’t Stand It

There is a very old Peanuts strip that I am remind­ed of late­ly. In the strip, Lucy is walk­ing with Linus and explain­ing to him the ori­gin of tele­phone poles. She says some­thing along the lines of “The tele­phone pole is actu­al­ly a tree spe­cial­ly devel­oped by the phone com­pa­ny to grow with­out branches.”

Char­lie Brown over hears this lec­ture, drops his head against one of the phone poles and says “I can’t stand it.”

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma plans to deliv­er an address to the nation’s school chil­dren that “will chal­lenge stu­dents to work hard, set edu­ca­tion­al goals, and take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their learn­ing.”

Con­ser­v­a­tives are up in arms that the Pres­i­dent wants to indoc­tri­nate the nation’s school chil­dren with his “social­ist agenda.”

So work­ing hard, set­ting edu­ca­tion­al goals, and tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty now con­sti­tutes a social­ist agenda?

I can’t stand it.

A Plan for Man

More from Com­ing Into The Coun­try by John McPhee…

This is from Book II, What They Were Hunt­ing For in which the search for a loca­tion for a new Alaskan cap­i­tal is described. On page 133 a Robert Atwood is quoted:

Ide­al­ists here in town see a need for a park in every hous­ing devel­op­ment. They want to bury util­i­ty lines, reserve green belts, build bicy­cle paths. With these things, the bowl could only con­tain three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand peo­ple. They favor ani­mals, trees, water, flow­ers. Who ever makes a plan for man? Who ever will make a plan for man? That is what I won­der. I am known amound con­ser­va­sion­ists as a bad guy.

Fool­ish me. I thought favor­ing ani­mals, trees, water (water!!!) and flow­ers was a plan for man!

Why Man Creates — Memory of a Movie

I attend­ed high school from fall of 1969 through the spring of 1973. In that four years, I was shown the movie Why Man Cre­ates two or three times (I’m real­ly lean­ing towards the three). It is a strange flick and most of it I only vague­ly remember.

I do, how­ev­er, vivid­ly remem­ber one long sequence. I do no so much remem­ber what all was in the sequence, but I remem­ber what it looked like. The con­ceit was that we are look­ing at one long con­tin­u­ous sheet of paper scrolling across the frame top to bot­tom. As the paper scrolls, a pen­cil point enters the frame and draws (very quick­ly) illus­trat­ing the his­to­ry of mankind.

I can still remem­ber the dark ages going by as the pen­cil draws tall tow­ers with arched shut­tered win­dows. Then one shut­ter opens up and a man leans out and says “Egads!! I’ve invent­ed the zero!”. Anoth­er shut­ter near­by opens and a man leans out and says “What?”. The first man responds with “Noth­ing. Nothing.”

I am a big lover of puns and I thought that was great. I’ve always remem­bered it. Or did I?

As you can see, the movie does not quite con­form to my memory.

The nerve.

I see that I took my favorite “dia­logue” from the movie and insert­ed it into the mem­o­rable sequence (the pen­cil sketch­ing). Then I for­got all about Allah and sub­sti­tut­ed “Egads!”. Those two things com­bined gave cred­it for the dis­cov­ery of zero to the wrong cul­ture. This mem­o­ry per­sist­ed even though I knew bet­ter regard­ing where the cred­it lay.

This makes me won­der about the verac­i­ty of my clear mem­o­ry of writ­ing the song Amer­i­can Pie. I’m sure McLean stole it from me.…