This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 7 Shadow 0009 (June 26, 2020)

“Happiness equals reality minus expectation.”
          Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna (An Auntie Poldi Adventure Book 2). HMH Books.

 

 

Do not forget, National Be a Dork Day falls on July 15. It is also Return Your Tax Day. Also, have a safe, sane, and properly social distanced Independence Day.

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN SOCIAL DISTANCING:

 

 

 

 

It has been a week or so since I have written here last. The only thing of note during that time was my trip to SF for my immunotherapy infusion and visit with my doctors. They indicated that I have responded well to my treatments so far — a tepid bit of cheer to say the least, but an appreciated one nonetheless.

I have tried to replace spending my time writing here every day with increased reading — mostly of trashy novels. My goal, for no reason but bragging rights with myself, was to read one book a day, a goal I mostly succeeded in reaching. I had decided to bury myself in comic fantasy novels because I could think of no other genre that would get me farther from self-quarantine with less effort. Two of the novels I chose simply because their covers were decorated with cartoons leading me to conclude their content was suitable for 12 year-olds. Upon reading them, however, I was surprised to discover they were perhaps more suitable for 17 year-olds.

One book told the tale of a bureaucrat from DICOMY (Department in Charge of Magical Youth) tasked with preparing a report about an orphanage located on a small island off the coast of Britain owned by a Sprite who also doubled as a cook, housekeeper and sometime teacher at the orphanage. The orphanage director was a mysterious man who would turn into a phoenix (a bird of fire) when agitated. In the course of the novel, the man from DICOMY and the director fall in love. He quits his department job and moves into the orphanage to be with the director-phoenix. There were only six orphans in all living at the orphanage, a sprite; a gnome (female) who was obsessed with gardening (of course); a boy who when frightened would turn into a small pekinese dog and begin yapping and peeing all over; a wyvern; a blob with two eye stalks who liked to hide under beds; and, a five-year-old boy who was the Antichrist. In the end, they all lived happily ever after except for the ferryboat captain.

The second book turned out to be the first novel in one of those never-ending series that continues on until the author dies or the public refuses to buy any more of his stupid books. It tells the story of a young man sailing a boat somewhere in the Bahamas who gets caught in a massive storm. During the storm, while trying to save a dog on another boat also caught in the same storm, he cracks his head on something and falls off the boat where he would have died except that he is somehow transported to another world where he lands on an island populated by beautiful women who appear somewhat reptilian (you know a few brightly colored scales on their otherwise uniformly beautiful human bodies) and all of whom want to have his baby. He happily complies with their request but, what makes this different from other books of this type is that in-between couplings he actually has adventures — like fighting and killing in great numbers orcs and wargs and many, many other creatures as well as conquering other islands peopled with women representing other species (deer and raccoons so far) who have similar designs on his reproductive organs as did his original reptilian fan club. I then read the following 4 books in the series that the author has written so far.

I could have taken mind-altering drugs to get me through the rest of this time of social-distancing but fearing the possibility of adverse drug interactions with the ten or so medicinal drugs I am now digesting, I decided I could just as well destroy my mind with books. I am not one who believes reading is only the road to enlightenment. It may also be the pathway to benightedness.

One delightful evening we went for a walk through some paths in the Enchanted Forest we had not explored before. The bright evening sunlight filtered through the trees left patches of darkness among the vibrant greens and browns of the late spring landscape. We came upon a large meadow with some benches. It was time for photographs.

Naida, Boo Boo the Barking Dog, and the meadow.

Pookie, Boo Boo and the Blue Hydrangeas

On other days on other walks, we came across the “decorated” duck statue.

And, on an early evening stroll, we came upon this:

One day, actually on several days, I drove into the Golden Hills and visited with Hayden. He has been working helping Dick to build the elaborate garden (flowers, vegetables, trees, paths, and terraces) around the house and also reflooring the deck outside of his man-cave bedroom.

On one of those days, I mentioned to him how pleased and proud I was with the empathy he shows his friends and how much it seems they depend on that. He thought about that a moment or two and then told me a story.

One of his friend’s mother had been murdered and his father imprisoned for tracking down the murderer and beating him to death with a lead pipe. After this, the friend had taken to adopting gang appropriate clothing, hairstyles, and mannerisms and behaving aggressively toward everyone. He became a loner. Hayden said:

“He was trying to act tough but he was just another skinny white kid trying to look tough. So, I took him aside and said to him, ‘You’re doing that because you think you don’t have any friends. Well, you’re wrong. You have us.’”

Now the friend has forgone all the tough-guy stuff and has become mostly a sweet-tempered kid if a bit edgy. I call the group of friends “The Scooter Gang” because of their current preoccupation with scootering. I know full well in a year or so I will have to change the name to “The Fast Car Gang” or something like that. Although they are at times considered a slacker group, their cohesion and support of one another has not left them isolated in school by teachers and other students. Instead, they are, due to their kindness and cohesion, actually a social force that others enjoy and respect. I believe HRM is the reason. Of course when, in the next year or two, the frontal lobes of their brains and the resulting ego insanity flourishes and later when they first experience the forces of society limiting their ability to indulge their desires, all this kumbaya stuff may come crashing down along with whatever else may support their egos.

Speaking of automobiles and teenagers, in that same conversation I pointed out to HRM that his current obsession with automobile driving and engineering is similar to those other students in school obsessed with things like quantum theory or late 19th Century American literature that many call “nerds.” He could, I told him, be considered an “automotive nerd.”  He seemed happy with that.

Several more days have gone by. Naida feverishly pounds away at the computer working some time as much as ten hours in a day on volume two of her memoir. It promises to be a barn burner. I cannot wait to read it.

My daughter just informed me that she just left her job with the US State Department responsible for microbial resistance. That is tracking viral and other threats to the country and thereby hopefully keeping us safe. She will now work for AID in a similar but senior position where she will continue to try to keep us all safe.

 

B. NOT BOOK REPORTS:

I thought I’d entertain myself by summarizing the books that I have read over the past two weeks because they amused me and by recalling them I hoped I might feel a bit like I was reminiscing about the fevered dreams from a pipe full of opium. During the era of the Great Pandemic of 2020, you can get trashy novels over the internet, opium not so much. Anyway, at over 80 years of age, I can do almost anything I like except go outside without a mask.

In addition to the six books I mentioned above, in the past two weeks I have read and mostly enjoyed the following:

The Philosophical Detective by Bruce Hartman. In this book, a graduate student at a university in Massachusetts is asked to chauffeur the elderly and blind Nobel prize-winning poet and novelist Jorge Luis Borges and his wife while Borges was a visiting professor at Harvard University. During that time, besides meeting for breakfast at some coffee house in Summerfield Massachusetts, they become involved in several murder mysteries which Borges ultimately solves. Outside of that, I can recall little else about the book. The fact that I cannot recall much of the book does not mean it was a bad or uninteresting book. On the contrary, I enjoyed reading it. But, remember it was Borges the post-avant-garde meta-fictionalist who was solving the crimes and I simply could not understand what he was doing nor how he did it.   (See Today’s Poem below)

The 1066 to Hastings by Howard of Warwick. I do not know if Howard of Warwick is the actual name of the author. It’s a mystery. In any event, he has written a number perfectly silly but enjoyable to those like me who delight in things silly detective novels set in England around the time of the Norman Conquest. I had already read one of the novels and liked it enough to try a second. The series features a three-person detective team ostensibly led by a monk named Hermitage who had been thrown out of every monastery he had tried to join because he was a compulsive talker, preternaturally naive, and borderline autistic. He does have the remarkable ability, however, to solve murder mysteries and only murder mysteries as long as someone else does the work in gathering the evidence — not because of his laziness but because of his terminal naïveté. He managed to his great distress to be appointed the King’s Investigator by King Harold the Saxon and after Harold’s death at Hastings by King William the Norman. Hermitage’s two associates are a weaver of pornographic tapestries named Wat the Weaver and his associate and one-time apprentice Cwen an unabashedly aggressive young woman with a chip on her shoulder because, at that period in history, tapestry weaving was considered men’s work and to her annoyance, she was doing all the work while the somewhat greedy Wat schmoozed the customers.

This novel includes a lot of Saxons and a few Normans, the disappearance and presumed death of a cowardly Saxon carl at Hastings and the murder of the retainer of another Saxon carl’s associate all of whom appear to belong to a secret society whose motto seems to translate as something like, “It is better to surrender than to die in battle.”

By the end of the book, the mystery of the murder of the associate was solved. I was not so sure about who killed the Saxon carl.

 

Disaster Inc. and I Have Sinned by Caimh McDonell. Caimh McDonell is my newest man-crush. He has written two series of novels featuring Bunny McGarry an overweight Irish detective with a heart of gold and who distributes justice with an Irish hurling stick. The first series of books features McGarry doling out righteousness, morality, and pain in Dublin. In the second series, we find Bunny in the United States without a passport searching for his one-time lover, a beautiful black jazz singer who, 20 years previous, assisted by a mysterious order of nuns, took refuge in Ireland to escape from a mob boss’s vengeance. Due, in part, to McGarry’s incompetence the mob boss learns she is in Dublin and so she escapes back to the US and disappears. In the two books above, although McGarry does not locate his lost love, along with a few new-found cronies he blunders into solving a few other mysteries.

Two Necromancers a Dwarf Kingdom and a Sky City by L.G. Estrella. I enjoy Estrella’s books. They are light on the mind, bizarre, and somewhat amusing. In this novel, one of a series of two or three, Timmy, a Necromancer with earth magic and who carries shovels instead of a sword or a magic wand, along with his coterie of strange magical creatures and men, women, and a child or two, in alliance with the Dwarf Kingdom and the wizards and armed forces of his country whose name I have forgotten, defeat the orcs and then journey into either the past or another dimension to re-capture the Lost City in the Sky of the Dwarfs and bring it back to use in defeating the Evil Empire’s designs. Although they defeat the Evil Empire, ai the end of the book Timmy warns that all is not over.

Ziegfeld Zaggar, Quantum Detective & the Dirty, Rotten, Sarcastic Multiverse by Greg Montego. This is a book that I would write if I were to write a book which is also why I do not write books. It reminds me of the work of the great David Wong who wrote such masterpieces as “What the Hell Did I Just Read” and “This Book Is Full of Spiders” but not quite as good. The story features as the sleuths Ziegfeld Zagger, or Zigzag for short, a batshit nuts professor of Quantum 101: 101 at Columbia University, Croquet whizz, and Quantum Detective and his assistant Robbins who acts as his Watson. Robbins (preferred nickname Jazz), however, lacks the respect that Watson showed Holmes:

“Suddenly, your madness makes sense,” I said. “Not even you really know what you’re doing.” “Haven’t I told you that before?” “But now,” I said. “I believe it!”

          Montego, Greg. Ziegfeld Zaggar, Quantum Detective & the Dirty Rotten, Sarcastic Multiverse (The Quantum Detective Book 1).

Irene Alder, of course, makes her appearance as a CIA agent in charge of “Quantum Crimes.”

 Our heroes attempt to solve the murder of an insane inventor who resembles Elon Musk.  The murdered genius, who believed the universe was born on the day of his birth and will end on the day he dies, invented small boxes imbued with his essence that run all the electronics, airplanes, and whatever in the world.  They discover the murderer within the first few pages of the novel. Unfortunately, with the genius’s death, the boxes begin to stop working and the universe starts a quick if erratic decline beginning its return to its original state. So our intrepid trio must discover who or what is killing the homeless men in New York. During their search, they exit an elevator and see in front of them a large toadstool on which sat a caterpillar smoking a hookah, and lurking behind him is the dreaded Jabberwocky. So they set off to see the Wizard of Ooze. The story goes downhill after that — no not downhill more like around the bend. After all, they, like us, are forced to live in a quantum universe. And, in a quantum universe, the cat may be dead or alive or even have had kittens which is far more likely.

In this frenetic stretch of reading, I also read a few other novels, Reginald Hill’s Bones and Silence, Terry Pratchett’s Johnny and the Dead, and Ben Aaronovitch’s False Values but I will save reporting on them for another day if ever.

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

A. Terry on Top:

Terry always an astute observer of things political had the following insightful thoughts on a recent opinion piece by Ross Douthat in the New York Times:

This NYT  Conservative Writer, Ross Douthat,  has a pretty interesting point. 

Trump has taken, according to Douthat, the “decadent Reagan” philosophy (deficit  obsession, dismantlIng the social safety net , strong military,  globalization, etc.) that had been the bedrock of the Republican party and destroyed it (deficits galore).  Period. It’s no more. 

He created a new Republican philosophy of authoritarian, nativism and sloppy ineffective government, which thrived until it didn’t; which has come crashing down leaving the Republican Party as a rump, with no base other than Trumps MAGA cohort. 

Douthat believes that Trump and Republicans are now in their “Retreat from Moscow“  stage, to use the Napoleon metaphor. It’s deep dark winter and all is lost! It has driven the majority of the country into the hands of the classic liberals that Republicans defeated in 1980.  Or worse, “radical extreme leftists” whatever that means. I don’t know any. But I’m sure a few exist in the twitter world. From a practical point of view, the politics have seismically shifted. It’s no longer a question of whether the Democrats will win but by what margin and with what effect.

To understand the future, one needs only to look at a similar period in the past: The 20’s and early 30’s. That was a period that included  the 1918-1922 pandemic, the ‘29 stock market crash, massive income inequality, social disturbance, marches of the unemployed on Washington 1930-31, military intervention against peaceful protestors ‘31-32 ; it’s all happened before. We now call it The Great Depression.

And, it led to the New Deal, when the pent up ideas of two decades of the progressive movement took Washington by storm and enacted a radical restructuring of the US economy. And they did it in less than a year. The “New Dealers” were all in their thirties or early forties.  Imagine the so called “squad” led by AOC, becoming Assistant Secretaries of the then major domestic Departments of the Treasury, Interior, Commerce, and  Agriculture, and you get a feel for what it was like. 

Now Biden isn’t going to lead with AOC, (although you never know) but he will bring in the millennials. Lots of them. And  interesting “ radical” progressive ideas of the past will be enacted. Such as Senator Moynihan’s Guaranteed Annual Income  (advocated by Nixon in 1969); Senator Warren’s breakup of Big Tech, which is what happened to ATT in the seventies being  broken into the five baby bells;  a screeching halt to globalization and the massive re birth of American manufacturing and it’s domestic supply chains as Senator Sherrod Brown has advocated for years.  Suddenly they will have the votes. The filibuster has died; having been undermined and mostly broken by Mitch McConnell. The Democrats will hardly stand for it once in power. The American Economy will never be the same. What will it be?  It’s up to the younger generation soon to take power. But it will be much fairer and much different. God bless them. 

FINIS Reaganism, Trumpism and McConnell’s icy indifference to his fellow man. 

And to Douthat’s point, it’s thanks to Mr. Trump. “It’s Trump’s Revolution”. 

It’s Trump’s Revolution,

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/opinion/trump-presidency.html?referringSource=articleShare

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

Throughout my life I wanted to grow up. I wasn’t very good at it and the best I could manage was to grow old. No one I know liked that at all, least of all me.

C. Today’s Poem:

Adam Cast Forth

Was there a Garden or was the Garden a dream?

Amid the fleeting light, I have slowed myself and queried,

Almost for consolation, if the bygone period

Over which this Adam, wretched now, once reigned supreme,

Might not have been just a magical illusion

Of that God I dreamed. Already it’s imprecise

In my memory, the clear Paradise,

But I know it exists, in flower and profusion,

Although not for me. My punishment for life

Is the stubborn earth with the incestuous strife

Of Cains and Abels and their brood; I await no pardon.

Yet, it’s much to have loved, to have known true joy,

To have had – if only for just one day –

The experience of touching the living Garden.

By Jorge Luis Borges. translated by Genia Gurarie. 

D. Pookie’s Musings:

I have been searching for a chart that compares the US GDP with the GDP per capita growth over time. If per capita GDP is less than the GDP it seems reasonable that the ordinary person is probably making less because that wealth must be going somewhere — where? Also if population growth is a factor in GDP, and it is to some extent, shouldn’t it be that a stable or falling population would have a negative effect of some sort on GDP and perhaps even on GDP per capita? Our population without immigration is either stable or falling. Other developed countries with stable or falling populations have seen their GDP growth rate stagnate even while they become more productive. How is that reflected in GDP per capita? Am I correct to suspect that if the per capita growth rate is less than the GDP rate the money must be going somewhere other than being distributed among the population? After more than a modicum or research, I could only find one chart that shows the relationship of GDP to GDP per capita  from 2006 to 2016 and shows that post financial crisis, the GDP per capita was rising at a rate significantly below GDP. What does that signify? And what about from 2016 to 2018? Well, given that we are in the Trump depression, GDP has fallen dramatically, I not sure it will tell us much. In 2018, GDP per capita was about $62,000. Does this mean in the US the average family of four should take home somewhere around $250,000 per year? No? Where did all that money go? More musings — I need to get out more — Maybe find a job suitable for 80 year-olds — Sitting on a bench most of the day somewhere perhaps.

E.  Giants of History — Burma Richard, 

So Near And Yet So Far — Part II:

The following is Part II of a story about my dear friend Richard Diran’s trip to find the sacred lake of the Wa peoples who lived in the remote area along the China-Burma border. You can find additional stories, artworks, and photographs at Richards two blog sites, http://www.diranart.com/ and http://www.burma-richard.org/.

Andrew and I hope to find the ancient lake from which the Wa people believe they crawled out of as the first people on earth, formed as tadpoles. The lake is on top of an 8,000-foot mountain which may originate from an underground spring. The lake, Nawng Hkeo is across the border in Burma and there should be a large river flowing down the side. From Ximeng we will go northwest to Shin Chang where according to our maps, one from the U.S defense department, with large swaths of landmarked, “relief data incomplete” and another world war 2 maps from 1943 on silk, there seems to be a trail into Burma.

Up and down the trails are spiderwebs glistening with the morning dew. In the market of Ximeng, we bought blankets to warm ourselves on the slopes. Young Wa soldiers, kids really in green fatigues have the rising sun of the Uwsa, the United Wa State army stitched on their shoulders. Dogs prowl the streets faithfully waiting to be eaten by their masters. We have learned how to say I don’t eat dog in Chinese. The Wa are dirt poor and having a key worn around the neck is a treasure because it means you have something to lock up.

I woke up and something had apparently bit me under my ear as it swelled up but there was no pain and the lymph seems to be normal. By noon it seemed to be all right. The bus to Shin Chang was completely full of people and huge bags of produce. We paid two people to get off the bus so that we had seats. Until the minute we left, we were struggling to learn Chinese phrases. On the bus we began to practice some Wa language with the Wa people copied from sir George Scott’s journals from the turn of the century. Surprisingly most of the words were still understandable. Andrew has an uncanny grasp of language.

We passed through mountains of perfectly formed conical conifers like Christmas trees on winding switchbacks until the road abruptly ended at a massive landslide, cutting a gorge more than 300 feet across, washing the road away completely. Stones were laid into the mud traversing the crevasse and everyone on the bus as well as all the vegetable and Lancang beer was carried across to the other side. Another bus was waiting, and after another hour we arrived at Shin Chang where the entire length of paved road was 100 feet long and ended at a beer shop. “niplai” is the Wa word for “cheers”.

The mountains rise dramatically shredding the clouds, and a waterfall in the distance must be well over 100 feet. Temperatures rise and fall more than 20 degrees f in minutes, baking hot then the fog rolls in like bales of thick cotton turning everything into mere shadows. To the west we can see Burma, and to the north is the village which we will hike to tomorrow if we can get the two hardy Wa guides we have asked for. That village is dai gu la or kola on some maps, a Wa village. I am sure that there have been very few foreigners in these hills for many years. In fact this area of Yunnan was only officially opened last year. This is China with the kids in the red scarves of the young pioneers. In these seemingly endless hills and mountains, there are only four or five lights to the north and a few more to the west. We are at the edge of civilization. Chinese tentacles reach through the whole of China, we hope it will be different in Burma.

We woke up in Shin Chang at the Wa headman’s cement house. My sty was like a potato blocking the vision in my camera lens eye, but it was ripe and I popped it, mopped up the puss, and slathered the eyelid in antibiotic. We got two strong Wa porters and headed out for the march. The rice fields were framed in ferns and the trail was a combination of slippery mud, buffalo shit, and warm water, and ideal combination for the dozens of varieties of butterfly. Some were spotted green velvet with turquoise so bright it made my eyes water. Others vermillion with serrated wings lined with black, white, and pink.

A few hours’ walk from Shin Chang we reached a Chinese border post where the authorities in green uniforms and red epaulets dotted with brass stars said we could not go on. Across the trail was a bamboo barricade painted yellow and black. It was the ideal vantage point over a huge expanse of the valley up the slope to dai gu la. After looking at our passports, and ascertaining that we had not crossed into China from Burma, the big boss said that we could continue for one day. I said that it was not enough so he offered us two. I asked him for three, and before answering said many times that we must not go into Mien Tien, Chinese for Burma. We lied and said that we wouldn’t.

After about an hour and a half more we reached Dai Gu La village and rested. The mountains are unrelenting rising straight up, crisscrossed with streams. A few more hours walk brought us to Yung Gwang, the end of the trail. Apparently, the guards at that checkpoint had notified the police here in Yung Gwang and they met us at the entrance of the village. Telephone and electric lines extend everywhere in china to the furthest outpost, unlike Burma where communications in outlying areas is nonexistent.

There are Wa houses with thatched roofs which extend high up and all the way down, nearly touching the ground. You have to stoop low to get inside. Andrew was met at the doorway by a very bored cow. There are a few old Wa women with silver hoops in their ears, wearing hand-loomed red striped skirts, and the lacquered black leggings holding up strips of cloth to protect their legs from leeches and sharp elephant grass. Their skin is like creased dark hardwood.

There is only one trail into Yung Gwang made probably by the retreating K.M.T nationalist army who escaped into Burma at the end of their war in 1949. There is no place to hide. The guards told our porters whom we had already paid for the day the exorbitant price of 130 yuan each, or $15, not to take us as they had agreed to Burma and the mountain with the sacred lake which we could see in the distance. The porters left frightened. Here we are miles from the last bit of civilization where the trail ends, left with our heavy packs, my camera bag, and no fucking porters.

To the north is Burma. To the west is Burma. In the distance, we can hear mortar fire at what we don’t know. The police that ordered our porters out of here had better get us, new porters, to get out of this place because there is no way I can hump my crap down this mountain. We are disappointed but not yet defeated.

We were given a small room like a jail cell with open doors. There is no way to disappear, no way to head west into the mountains of Burma. Above the door is a huge spider and there is a beetle flying around the room that sounds like a b-52. Andrew and i are together and the room is lit with our candles. We eat trail mix, instant noodles, and are about halfway through the moldy french salami which is as big as a canoe, weighs a ton, and has been a joke from the very beginning. It is wrapped in plastic bags from every hotel we have stayed in and is a history of our trip thus far. Still, it stinks. I think that I’ll never eat salami again, I’m sick of the shit.

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“Class: ‘Old money’ meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds that had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny, that; a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of.” 

Terry Pratchett, Making Money

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 21 Jojo 0009 (June 6, 2020)

 

“A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.”
          ~Alfred E. Wiggam

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN HEAT OF THE GREAT VALLEY:

 

 

One day the afternoon had been quite hot, so we waited until dusk to take the dog on his walk. As we walked through the Enchanted Forest, Naida mentioned a woman who she had met on her walk a few days ago. The woman had been a singer with the Sacramento Opera and also, much to the amusement of her neighbors liked to periodically dress up a statue of a duck that stood next to the path. As chance would have it, as we passed the duck, now festooned with bright yellow flowers, we were hailed by someone in a nearby house. It was the woman. So, while carefully keeping social distance, we visited with her and learned that she had been a lead singer in the Opera; was a close friend of Bing Crosby who had fostered her career, worked as a US Marshall and was assigned to be the Marshall in charge of Squeaky Fromm; and was buddies with Naida’s friends, the Van Vleck’s who owned the massive cattle ranches along the Cosumnes River. Another bit of evidence that there are really only 400 people in the world or that those who dress up stone ducks have all the fun.

Days have gone by. I lost everything that I had written here except for the above paragraph. It is a shame really, What is lost from memory or some other means of preservation, at least as far as I am concerned, might very well not have happened. On the other hand, most of us carry memories and beliefs in our consciousness that never really existed, at least not as we remember them. I guess that makes us some sort of hybrid creature, half memory, and half fantasy. Humans are centaurs of consciousness, half real, half bullshit. That sounds about right.

The temperature outside for the past few days has topped 100 degrees. We wait until dusk before walking the dog. It is still hot and stuffy but the shadows and the lamplight adds a bit of mystery to our stroll through the Enchanted Forests. Some paths take us within a few feet of a house and the shock of a light from a window — at other times we see the houses, windows glowing softly, cluster under the trees across a meadow.

This evening we went for our usual walk. The jasmine were in bloom and their delightful aroma accompanied us as we strolled around. Upon our return to the house, we watched on CNN the burning of Minneapolis a city I always enjoyed visiting. TCM’s Edward G. Robinson festival continued for the third day.

Today I did not get out of bed until noon. Naida recognizing my commitment to lazing in bed that morning brought me my breakfast. After finishing breakfast, a little hanky-panky, and a romp with the dog, I got down to lying there with my smartphone searching the internet for the latest news of interest to me.

The first thing I came across was He Who Is Not My President’s heroic retreat to a bunker beneath the White House while those Americans who were not being felled by a pandemic were being endangered by rioting to protest police brutality. I thought back to the actions taken by the great Presidents of our history during times of crisis. This is not one of them. The current incumbent in the White House seems to be little more than an evil corrosive clown.

This evening, the Corrosive Clown in Chief had peaceful protesters attacked beaten and tear-gassed so that he could stroll across the street for a photo-op of him holding up a book he has never read while standing on property to which he was not invited. He now threatens to call out the military to attack the legitimate protestors and looters alike. And, I and most of the rest of us sit here and watch it all in shock and horror and wonder deep in our consciousness whether the spectator is really not much better than an accomplice. And then, I think again and tell myself am too old to be involved.

We have entered another spate of days where the temperature has exceeded 100 degrees. We sit indoors with the A/C turned on high, watching TV or in Naida’s case working on her memoir while I content myself with frequent naps, contemplating boredom, death, and strategies to keep Boo-Boo the Barking Dog from barking.

One morning, several days after I wrote the above paragraph, as I struggled to open my sleep encrusted eyes, across the room Naida sang and danced and the dog barked. All seemed well with my corner of the world.

 

 

B. AN OLD MAN’S MUSINGS:

 

“Under certain conditions … merely living from one moment to the next can take forever. There’s a kind of immortality in that, albeit a temporary one. It’s bound to end badly,”
Hartman, Bruce. The Philosophical Detective (p. 98). Swallow Tail Press.

 

Life it has been said is a river of memory and imagination. Like most old men, I guess, I spend more time worrying about losing my memory than about the dwindling of my imagination. It is as though by remembering things or writing them down in T&T and now and then rereading them I am somehow prolonging my life and confirming my existence. Silly perhaps, but I think that one of the principal fears we old-timers have of dementia is that that the forgetting of what we have done is a form of death, and with it comes the shock of realization that we are really the just sum of our memories. Once they are gone we are little more than what we are at that moment — someone without a past And so, we become like children again, but, alas, children with no future.

On the other hand, perhaps, as I write here in this journal or reread past entries or recall things from the shreds of my memory, it will reveal some secret, some shimmering jewel of knowledge that… that what? That will keep us alive, make it all meaningful? I am afraid not. Consciousness is a blessing and a curse. It allows us to manipulate the world around us while forcing us to recognize that we are being dragged screaming and shaking to our ultimate destiny. Along the way, about all we can do is laugh about it all. I guess that is what makes clowns so frightening. We are all just Emmett Kellys sweeping up the last bit of light before the tent goes dark.

Chuang Tzu the ancient Chinese sage tells the story of one day falling asleep and dreaming he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he wondered if he was Chuang Tzu dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu. I think what the sage was talking about here was probably the insubstantiality of memory and imagination, or perhaps that memory and imagination are one. I do not know. It is all beyond me. I do know that we are here and then we are gone — sic transit Gloria Mundi.

“Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.”
          Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

 

 

C. CHRISTO DIES:

 

This week the artist known as Christo died. He was best known for wrapping buildings or other large objects in fabric or draping it across the landscape.

I had got to know him and his wife during the installation of the Running Fence in Marin County in the early 1970s.

I was Chief Counsel at the California Coastal Commission at the time and managed the permit appeals section of the agency. The permit for his proposal to construct the piece had been appealed to the Commission and the analyst in charge of the appeal rushed into my office to tell me about the great and lasting damage to the coastal environment that would occur should the project be built. I was not so convinced, but he being the analyst involved had more specific information so I allowed him to proceed with the direction that he be extremely careful and attentive to everything. Well, the long and short of it is, the fence was built without the permit and taken down before any litigation could be completed.

Several years later, when I was in private practice, I met Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude again. This time to assist them in obtaining the approvals to cover a significant portion on the Southern Central Valley in large umbrellas. The installation was a success except for the wind taking an umbrella into flight and killing an onlooker when it returned to earth.

I liked the Christos. Christo himself a sort of a happy go lucky kind of guy obsessed with the process of his art and Jeanne-Claude much more serious and goal oriented. Several people including the Christos told me bits and pieces of the story of their lives. I do not know nor can I verify the accuracy of what I learned, but a story is the story — Here is what I remember (perhaps I will check Wikipedia later):

Christo born and educated in Bulgaria fled the Iron Curtin and continued art studies in Austria. He, according to my informants, began selling his art of the streets (some indicated in Italy, Trieste perhaps, others in Austria or Hungary). Among the art items he sold were wine bottles and paint cans wrapped in decorative paper or fabric. He was not very successful. He eventually moved to Paris where he lived above a service station or car wash of some sort. One day the owner came by and told the workers he would like to have a portrait of his wife painted and asked if they knew any artists. They mentioned Christo. The owner hired Christo and invited him to live at the house and paint the portrait. While there, Christo hit on Jeanne-Claude’s younger half sister. She rejected him so he hit on Jeanne-Claude. She was engaged to be married at the time but just before the wedding she discovered she was pregnant by Christo. She went through with the marriage anyway but soon after ran away with Christo — sort of like the closing scenes of “The Graduate.” The family disinherited them. They were destitute. That’s when Jeanne-Claude came up with the idea of monetizing Christo’s work — everything, the materials, the legal documents and so on. Usually, artists paint or whatever and then sell their work in a gallery or on the street. She came up with the concept of selling people shares in a Christo proposal before beginning the work and promising the investors a piece of the work such as a bit of the fabric in an attractive frame after it was disassembled. She sold them on the idea that everything the artist does as well as the reactions to his activities were also a part of his art product. This required works that would attract publicity and controversy. And so the art of wrapping buildings was born.

So, was it art or was it a money making scheme? All art is a money making scheme. Artists have to eat like anyone else. Sometimes the artist makes the money and sometime others do. But is it art? Who’s to say. Those who saw the installation liked it or didn’t. Those individuals and museums who received the bits and pieces of the disassembled project probably did. Critics, writers and academics may even make careers out of it. You and I? Who cares? Art makes us happy or sad, perhaps even better. Someone has to do it.

Which reminds me, when I had the resources I collected the art works done by people in prison. The dominant theme of the artists was Jesus bleeding on the cross. Was it art? I paid for it as art and I hoped the artists got some of the price I paid. Are garden gnomes art if I collected them?

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN THAILAND — March 2011:

 

I have retreated to the solitude and solace of Paradise by the Sea to try to deal with the fact that I seem unable to deal with the facts. If these decisions were of the significance of say life or death, I would understand my difficulty in making them. But alas, I must admit they are more about whether to have a second cafe latte or leave for the US on April 29th or May 5th or whether I should wear my camouflage shorts today or a solid color pair. Heaven must be where one goes to avoid all responsibility. God upon greeting you probably says, “Congratulations you made it. You don’t have to give a shit anymore. Just wear a white shift and spend all day stoned on glory and a sense of superiority that no you longer have to figure out how to survive as you or for that matter even be nice to anyone.”

(Damn, I finally found a reason to want to go to heaven.)

For the past few weeks the weather has been mostly overcast and a bit dreary here in Thailand. Obviously we are going into some seasonal change. Some people I have spoken with have said that this weather is quite unusual for the season. Others blame it on global warming.

Annual fluctuation in weather is mostly meaningless. Any process of climate change — both natural and man-made — unfolds erratically over time (a lot like the stock market). Long term all peer-reviewed studies have shown that, regardless of the cause, we are locked into some degree of warming; but by the end of this century, the actions taken now whether to try to curb it or to ignore it and deal with a host of other problems will matter enormously. To a greater or lesser degree, the worlds desert belt (Sahara, Middle East and Southwest North America will expand north and south (probably including Northern India and Southeast Asia and Central China) while the east and west coasts of the northern continents will experience more precipitation as rain and snow.

The Chinese have a curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Alas, our children and their children certainly shall.

 

 

 

 

DAILY FRACTURED FACTOID:

 

 

 

955–963 AD.

Pope John XII (deposed by Conclave) was said to have turned the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano into a brothel and was accused of adultery, fornication, and incest (Source: Patrologia Latina). The monk chronicler Benedict of Soracte noted in his volume XXXVII that he “liked to have a collection of women”. According to Liutprand of Cremona in his Antapodosis, “They testified about his adultery, which they did not see with their own eyes, but nonetheless knew with certainty: he had fornicated with the widow of Rainier, with Stephana his father’s concubine, with the widow Anna, and with his own niece, and he made the sacred palace into a whorehouse.” According to The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, John XII was “a Christian Caligula whose crimes were rendered particularly horrific by the office he held”. He was killed by a jealous husband while in the act of committing adultery with the man’s wife. (See also Saeculum obscurum)

 

(Not only that but he was infallible…At least that’s what he told all the girls. Ah, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, we hardly knew ye.)

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

A. The old sailor, deep sea driver, pirate, adventurer, etc., on Top:

 

 

1. On Elon Musk’s recent SpaceX launch:

 

.On   duty  ..++for one hr..it is   1am  ==++#@worked  with  a  RETIRED..((40 years))……………….ground-crew ……NASA ..(((we-we   working  frxing a pimp))).>>>@   HE SAID   THIS    ..GUY    -“”     ELON’MUSK- “”   DOESN’T    PAY   MUCH   ATTENTION   TO  SAFETY   ..=SO   THE   LIFTOFF   TOMORROW ………AFTERNOON    SHOULD  B   ON  TIME..

 

 

2. Following the failure to launch:

 

Yea  …this  space-lift-off  ..was    very  popular.-(TRY again  Saturday)

@there  were  cars,,((from   many states)) everywhere……the   

hotel  and  business   

loved  it …perhaps for you  ,,perhaps not.    .

=I am just caught-up-in  It

3. Flying to Columbia:

YES  …..I  WAS   TAKING   FLYING   LESSONS..

++THE   INSTRUCTOR     –WE  WERE  FRIENDS   ….

@@    SOME   DRUG  “”DREAMER “”

RENTED    A  CESNA   180   …FLEW    –  DOWN  TO  COLOMBIA..TO  BUY  DRIGS …CHANGED  HIS  MIND…..AND  LEFT  THE PLANE. DOWN THERE….

>>>☆COLOMBIA    GOVERNMENT..SAID  COME AND GET YOUR  PLANE…

++++@   I  WAS INVITED  TO GO  ALONG.++   WENT  FROM  Barranquilla….to   Panama….to   Manahua  .-.Nicaragua(((Howard Hughes…was there)))……>>>from there   To    COZUMEL   -MEXICO…—+++=    THERE  TO    KEY WEST……………….FAR  OUT    ………REGARDS    RUBBER MAN

4. Flying with an ocelot:

We   Had  a   ocelot..on  the  airplane…flying back   from   a trip to Colombia…The  wanker    GETS  out  the   baby   ocelot..

> THE  FUCKING   THING  GETS  BEHIND  THE  INSTRMINTENT  *PANEL…UP IN THE WIRING..HE  HAS THE   -THING   BY  THE   TAIL  =IT  IS  MAKING  MORE  – NOISE- NOISE   …THAN  THE ENGINE.–( ( *LOCATION))-@13 thousand ft….—By    the coast of   Cuba =

> +++THAT   WAS FAR  OUT

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

Information is not the same as meaning although why that is remains a mystery.
(I fear poor old Trenz has found himself some old books on eastern philosophy and a pound of hash. It must be difficult being a six-foot-two naked mole rat and living in Daly City.)

 

 

 

C. Today’s Poem:

 

 

Lamplight

 

Suddenly
awareness spread
in the corner by the bed.
Cascading
from
the dressers lip
it fell
silently
upon the carpet
consigning
all
to naked rage
that had not fled
beyond its
gaze.
Trenz Pruca

 

 

 

D. Giants of History: Burma Richard —So Near And Yet So Far.

I have written here in T&T often about my beloved friend Richard Diran (also known as Burma Richard), perhaps one of the last true adventurers. He is also an accomplished gemologist, explorer, ethnologist, artist, poet, raconteur, and all-around good guy. I urge you all to learn more about him and examine some of his works. You can do so at the following sites (http://www.burma-richard.org/) and (http://www.diranart.com/). The following is Part I of a post of his that can be found in diran art. It describes his exciting and exhausting attempt to visit Lake Nawng Hkeo the sacred lake of the headhunting Wa people.

 

So Near And Yet So Far— Part I.
In September 2000, Andrew Marshall a scotsman and I set out from Kunming China, traveling to the Wa autonomous region near the border with Burma in search of a fabled lake called Nawng Hkeo on the Burmese side of the border. This lake had not been seen by any foreigners since V.C Pitchford, a British surveyor set out in 1937 to find the lake which did not appear on any maps. It was believed by the Wa people, former headhunters, and now the world’s biggest producers of opium, to be their birthplace where they struggled as tadpoles to become the wild Wa.

Andrew contacted me through my publisher in London because he knew, that like him, I was an avid reader of sir George Scott, a forgotten Victorian writer and photographer who traipsed through unexplored areas of Burma compiling the “Gazetteer Of Upper Burma and the Shan states,” a five volume series more than a century before. Scott’s massive ethnographic study became my bible, the rock of arcane knowledge which I later based my book, “The Vanishing Tribes Of Burma”. I held Scott to be a hero and so did Andrew. Andrew planned to do a book retracing Scott’s footsteps and he couldn’t find anybody to go with him, until he talked to me.

Our trip lasted more than three grueling weeks, and became one of the most arduous trips I had ever undertaken. Andrew and I had a tacit agreement that if either one of us were to die out there, it would be impossible for the survivor to carry out the body of the other. Although we were only hours from our goal, and could see it shrouded in the misty distance, we failed. Weeks later Andrew set out again, this time with a missionary named David. Armed with the knowledge of our prior mistakes, Andrew and David reached the fog covered lake which is recounted in Andrew’s book, “The Trouser People”. Published by Viking, and Imprint of Penguin Books, London 2002.

Sometimes failure is as important as success. Perhaps in the end it is not the goal that matters, but only the journey. The following is the story of our attempt.

The flight from Kunming in Yunnan province to Simao is only 30 minutes by air, or 20 hours by road. During the 1920s, Simao or Szw Mao’s basin was a thriving trade center with 70,000 people. Then it was struck with the bubonic plague followed by malaria. By the time the people’s liberation army of china entered in the 1950s, there were only 3,000 desperate people living in rotting houses with a 90% incidence of malaria. From Simao we drove to Jinghong home of the “quiet relish fleshpot” whose name is self explanatory, stayed over night and then drove 7 hours to Lancang. The road was dotted with small brick buildings with old ceramic roof tiles and tea plantations cut concentric rings into the mountains with a thundering brown river below.

The stone cobbled road from Lancang to Ximeng, head of the Wa autonomous region snaked thru lush green mountains which rose straight up through the fog with jagged sawtooth stones protruding out from the sides, tearing at the clouds just like the old Chinese ink brush paintings. After about 4 hours on those hand laid cobble stones we reached Ximeng, a distinctly hostile town where it was difficult to raise a smile from anybody’s lips. Ximeng had hastily built ugly square Chinese cement buildings strewn about the saddlebacks of mountains which raise to 7,800 feet.

Medicine men prowl the streets in groups with heavy strings of beads around their necks, some wearing animal fur hats of orange and white with long tails like the old raccoon hats of my childhood. The faces here are very dark, and the jawbones are very heavy. One medicine man invited us into his room which he shared with a half dozen others of the same ilk, who had barking deer penises tied and knotted at the open window drying. One of these medicinal quacks rubbed my face with a deer penis. They had a tiger paw with claws and orange and black fur still attached to a foreleg of bone.

The fog of Ximeng is very thick and the people on the roads move as vague silhouettes. Burma to the west is very close. Small curtained three wheel vehicles which are modified two stroke motorcycles take passengers up and down the steep slopes upon which Ximeng is built. Night life offers some karaoke places with bored girls and horrible singers. Drunken men smash glasses on the tables and floor. I nearly got into a fight twice. Nobody seems friendly. There is also gambling with three oversized dice painted with various animals held up on an incline and released at the tug of a string. Crowds swell around the tables and bets are placed on the tumbling dice.

The fog grew so thick that you can’t tell the time, except that it is day or night. Then the rains began. I haven’t thought of shaving since I got to China and have quite a stubble growing. I’ve been wearing the same three layers of clothing for days as it is too cold for bathing. Ximeng has many Chinese soldiers and people still wearing chairman Mao caps, long forgotten in the larger cities.

For days now I have had pink eye, connectivities and a large sty growing on my eyelid. Although I use eyedrops, in the mornings my eyes can’t be opened without removing a thick layer of crust. Smoke from the woodfire below our bedroom drifts up through my window as I look out over ancient tiled roofs covered in thick green moss. The toilet stinks and the seat which is disattached , must be put over the bowl when needed. This hotel, the Ximenggxianwashan hotel has a directory of services, but inside all of the pages are blank.
(To be continued)

 

(It should be noted that the existence of a remote lake from which the people or the tribe emerged is a creation myth shared with many Native-American tribes, e.g., the Taos Pueblo which in 1996 had the ownership rights to their sacred Blue Lake returned to them by Congress (https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1643&context=ailr).)

E. Terry Takes Them On:
Terry as many of you know served in the military, including a stint as Professor of Military History at West Point. He was also co-author of a test book on US military history. Distressed by the concerns expresses by some of a possible military coup my the current president wrote a letter to the NY Times expressing his belief that based on their history, the military itself will resist such misuse.

 

A MILITARY COUP TO KEEP TRUMP IN OFFICE? ITS HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL NONSENSE

Paul Krugman recently lamented in the New York Times :
“The United States could follow the path of Hungary into an authoritarian one party state”; “Today’s Republican Party” would cheer on a “Trumpian power grab even if it amounted to a military coup”. And that as a result we are in “dire political straits”.

This may make hearts flutter but it is really historical and political nonsense. The United States is not now, nor has it ever been, with one possible exception at the end of the Revolutionary War, in danger of a military coup. And certainly not to maintain a defeated President in office beyond his elected term, as a number of leading politicians fear.

The key to understanding the successful American experiment starts with a victorious General: George Washington . At the end of the Revolutionary War, the victorious Continental Army, the progenitor of the United States Army, (US Army flags proudly carry the battle ribbons of the Revolutionary War), had no future. It also had not been paid for months, going on years. The highly educated, for its time, officer corps also had not been paid. These intelligent, powerful, young men had won a war and were dead broke, with families in economic distress, if not facing starvation. These men were in charge of the only organized institution in the former thirteen colonies that represented the entire United States. It was a lethal and effective instrument of national power.

The elected government of the United States, the Continental Congress, had no Chief Executive, was without funds because it had no taxing authority and existed only at the sufferance of the thirteen State legislatures. States reluctantly sent it money to pay for the war. The War was won, the States had their own problems and The Congress and the Army were on their own.

The problem for the country was that the Army was the country’s only disciplined , armed force and was armed to the teeth, with thousands of men in artillery, infantry and cavalry regiments. The only other armed forces were part time soldiers organized in state militias that had neither the training nor the experience to stand up to a disciplined and trained professional army such as the Continentals had become.
And the Continentals were very unhappy.

They were loyal to one man: their victorious General, George Washington, who had organized and led them through great hardships to victory. He had begged the powers that be for their food, clothing , arms and shelter. He had succored them in defeat and celebrated them in victory. And now they demanded that he take over the country and govern as an undisputed Prince or King. Under similar circumstances Napoleon Bonaparte twenty years later would become Emperor of the French.

But George Washington not only refused, but lost his famous temper and castigated his troops for being disloyal to the American Democracy that they had fought and died for. He told them that his loyalty was to The Congress that had given him his commission as Commander in Chief of the Army and that he would return his Commission to The Congress within a matter of weeks. He told his officers and men to return to their families, their farms and their shops and enjoy the liberty that they won with their comrades blood. And in the most important Initial act that occurred in the history of the United States, he voluntarily resigned his commission as Commander in Chief in person to The Congress. The moment is captured in a large scale painting by John Trumbull and hangs today in the US Capital rotunda.

Why is this story so important: Because it is taught with great reverence and firmness to all of the succeeding generations of West Point cadets, Annapolis midshipmen and Air Force cadets at all of our military academies. It is the foundation of the Country’s trust in our Armed Forces. It binds the generations of military professionals who have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. And that means the Constitutional provisions to elect a President every four years and install and honor the President-Elect in his new office. If necessary that will be enforced, if required, by the Armed Forces. And there is plenty of historical precedent for such action.

In 1861 when the coming of Civil War threatened the inauguration of President Elect Abraham Lincoln , General Winfield Scott, a Southerner from Virginia, victor of the Mexican War and Commander in Chief of the United States Army, mobilized regiments of infantry and artillery in Washington to insure the peaceful inauguration of Lincoln. In 1876, out going President Ulysses S. Grant mobilized the troops to insure that the duly elected President, Rutherford B. Hays, who had been elected by the House of Representatives by the slimiest of margins, be sworn in as President. There are numerous other examples in American history of the military honoring the requirements of the Constitution and obeying the law, not a particular man.

The recent reaction of the military professionals, both active duty and retired, to President Donald Trump’s threat to impose martial law by invoking , illegally and unconstitutionally, the Insurrection Act of 1807 to restore “law and order” to suppress peaceful protests, demonstrates the profound abhorrence of the military leadership and ranks to a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of Americans to peacefully assemble and protest their government. This abhorrence underscores the obvious: the United States Military serve the constitutionally elected leaders of the country only in their legal roles. Not in actions that may be manifestly contrary to the Constitution.

A President Elect in January 2021, whoever it may be, will command the Military’s loyalty and devotion. If directed, they will install and defend the duly elected President “against all enemies, foreign or domestic”. And that includes an outgoing President Trump.

I hope the Times prints this letter in its editorial page. The military’s historic loyalty to the Constitution needs to be revealed to all Americans, but also to the Military itself to remind them of their over two hundred year loyalty, not to an individual or a political philosophy but to the Constitution. However, I cannot remain sanguine that his argument that the history of the US military’s defense of the Constitution is adequate to withstand the possible coming constitutional storm. History is rife with countries and their military’s commitment and loyalty to a specific organizing principle only to have that commitment and more important their understanding of the organizing principe to be confused as a result of disagreement over its interpretation. Today, the politics in America is only too often a disagreement over the meaning of provisions in the document. For example, Attorney General Barr’s interpretation of the Constitution as granting almost unlimited Constitutional power to the President. A position that appears a majority of the current Supreme Court seem sympathetic to. How can we expect the military’s loyalty to a Constitution that the people of the country disagree as to its meaning?

Also, it seems this administration is relying primarily on para-military forces to rally to their defense. Militarized boarder security forces, AFT, Secret Service and the like appear to have been called upon by this administration to execute its orders and put down protestors. Now we also have lurking in the background, disgruntled local police forces who over the years have been armed with military weapons as well as the well-armed right-wing militias to worry about. We eventually may be looking for military intervention to keep this energized para-military under control. Will they be available, or will the colonels not trained at West Point join with the paramilitary forces already acting of the Crazed Clown’s behalf? Probably not, but neither should its possibility be overlooked.

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

 

“Interior decorating: ’t’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colors are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow, or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colors always smell slightly of boiled cabbage even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity.’”
Terry Pratchett. (Equal Rites).

 

 

 

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

R. Crumb

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 8 Jo-Jo 0009. (May 24, 2020)

“Whenever I hear people talk about white superiority, I have to pause and think back on some of the white people I’ve known. It’s a depressing moment.”
Burke, James Lee. Robicheaux: A Novel (p. 183). Simon & Schuster.

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSICA.

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES DURING THE GREAT PANDEMIC OF 2020:

 

 

Of course, during confinement, adventures are hard to come by. Unless, they are in our dreams, or in books and media or whatever people can make up to keep themselves sane — or not. Actually, the “not” sounds more adventuresome. One can always, however, find adventure vicariously in someone else’s life or works.

For the last few weeks or so, I found myself rattling around in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. A pleasant enough pastime to avoid spending my time talking to myself. Of course, I talk to Naida and yes, I talk to the dog also — sometimes fairly lengthy conversations. True, it is mostly me doing the talking, but he does look at me with those wet and very understanding eyes, especially when it is getting close to dinner or walk time.

About a week ago, I plunged back into the blogs written by my dear friend Richard Diran or as he is sometimes referred to, Burma Richard. I found things there I had not noticed before. So, for the next week or two, I expect I will become somewhat fixated on him and his works.

 

 

The weather in the Great Valley has cooled considerably in the last few days — from the sweltering mid-90s to the brisk sixties. One day, a little after one o’clock, tiring of staring at the cloudy sky, and having little to do but finish a bowl of leftover pesto gnocchi for lunch, I decided to check my Facebook posts. In response to a collage of photographs of Trumpsters haunting the White House bearing the title “When he goes, they go too” that I had shared, Neal the Fish-Man replied:

“I’d like to see Eric locked up with that guy who beat up Jeffrey Epstein in prison the day before he killed himself. Miller should be burned at the stake. The rest of them should just be thrown off cliffs.”

 

That made my day.

This morning I had a Zoom conference with another doctor at UCSF about the potentially cancerous nodule discovered a few weeks ago in my lung. He confirmed the opinion of my oncologist that, although it may well be cancerous, it is too small and poorly placed to be biopsied. He did add that, in his opinion, it was of the slow-growing kind and would review it again after my next CT scan in three months. Meanwhile, he said he will confer with the surgeons about the viability of an operation to remove it.

Today Naida and I spent some time in the yard examining bugs. Actually one bug in particular. Naida discovered it crawling among the roses and wanted to know if it was a good bug or a bad bug. After some research on the internet, we decided it was a good bug and so she allowed it to live. So goes another exciting day in this age of self-quarantine.

So, the days wander by, I do not remember how many. I am tired of writing about the nothing during this season of our self-quarantine. I decided to go back to reading all day. I have collected a bunch of the silliest books I could find and nestled down to read them. Outside of that, I do not remember what we did, so as far as I am concerned whatever it was it does not exist.

Ok — I will break from my self-imposed silence to mention that last night while preparing for bed a tune was going through my mind but the only words that rattled through my head were “strawberry jam,” “Casey,” and a band playing. I asked Naida, who is a walking encyclopedia of music, what the actual lyrics were. She immediately sang out:

Casey would waltz with a strawberry blonde
And the band played on.
He’d glide ‘cross the floor with the girl he adored
And the band played on.
But his brain was so loaded it nearly exploded;
The poor girl would shake with alarm.
He’d ne’er leave the girl with the strawberry curls
And the band played on.

When she finished, I asked, “Was that before or after the game or did he strike out with the strawberry blond?” (For those under 70, this no doubt means nothing to you. For those over 70 it probably leaves you with an upset stomach.)

Speaking of upset stomachs more or less, the next morning both Naida and I woke up with massive attacks of diarrhea. I reasoned that there could be three causes for this — first embarrassment over our colloquy of the previous evening; second the onset of coronavirus; and third, the most likely, the effects of the fresh elderberry pancakes we ate that evening made from the elderberry flowers we picked on our walk along the American River yesterday. I also seem to have lost my smart-phone. All in all, I am having a thoroughly horrible morning and that’s not even including the dreadful dreams that kept me awake most of the night. Sharks — they were about sharks — everywhere. Why sharks? There are no sharks in the Enchanted Forest. Perhaps elderberry flowers beside their laxative powers were also hallucinogenic. Sharks — they were all over the place — coming through the windows, up the pipes, through the new floor — ugh…

The Elderberry Flowers

 

 

Today, a few days after I wrote the previous paragraph, my telephone showed up. I had searched for it using a find-your-phone app. The app indicated the phone was in a house a few doors away from ours. After two days of leaving notes and banging on doors with no response, I decided to explore the possibility that the app had identified the wrong house. So, guessing that the phone may be located in the same area of our house as the neighbor’s, I searched that area again — first in our downstairs with great vigor — to no avail. I went upstairs to the bedroom where the app showed that the phone lay on our bed about where the dog places his nose whenever he crawls under the covers at night. We had torn the bed apart previously but apparently not this tiny spot and sure enough there it was. I decided to forgo wrestling with the many questions and recriminations that passed through my mind and be happy in a melancholy sort of way.

Today, Naida discovered a spider that eats the bug that eats the mites that eat her roses. Somewhere there is a nursery rhyme in this. In was also the morning the garbage trucks and the leaf blowers came around the neighborhood. Boo-boo the Barking Dog doing what he does best — barked.

I drove into the Golden Hills to check up on HRM and the Scooter Gang. Tyson one of the original members is moving to Roseville. Kaleb, the youngest and most troubled is much happier because his older brother who bullied him has moved out. Of course HRM and Jake seem to float about happily in their automobile obsessions. I am pleased.

Today begins the Memorial Day weekend. We have no plans. I know I will take a lot of naps. I will walk the dog several times, watch the news and several movies on TV, read at least two novels, visit HRM once, look up something odd on the internet, and fall asleep on the chair in the garden one sunny afternoon. Life is full of surprises. Like this evening. We watched cartoon fairy tales.

That night in bed, N and I hugged and sang a bit of “Yes Sir! That’s My Baby” to each other and then fell asleep.

Take care. Keep on social distancing. And don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers.

 

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:

 

 
I was living in Chiang Mai Thailand during the early part of 2010 when I wrote the following:

This and that from re Thai r ment. March 6, 2010

It is hot. Chiang Mai has shared in the heatwave that has struck Southeast Asia for the last week or two. Although the mornings and evenings continue to enjoy wonderful spring-like temperatures, mid-day temperatures approach 100 degrees. Ordinarily, that temperature would drive me indoors, however, the Sala that I sit in writing this remains very pleasant. Other parts of Southeast Asia are hitting temperatures of 110 degrees or more. It all appears to reflect the regional differentiation in climate produced by the general global warming. The decade just past has been the warmest and driest on record, consistent with the temperature reports for the globe as a whole. The climate models I have reviewed predict that this trend of warmer and drier weather for Southeast Asia will continue into the foreseeable future. We have already seen the climate of the Northeast portion of Thailand, the country’s poorest, change from semi-tropical to semi-arid during the past decade or so. Given that the ASEAN nations of Southeast Asia contain a population of 600 million almost twice that of Europe and their lack of modern infrastructure, I expect we will see significant population movements regionally in the next decade.

For the past week, I have been forced to forgo my normal writing schedule (emails, novels, journals) and succumb to pressure to complete a number of children’s stories by next week when Hayden returns from Bangkok. I got started on this because I ran out of children’s books to read to Hayden at bedtime. When my daughter Jessica was a child, at bedtime I would make up stories to tell her. Unfortunately, long before the story was finished, much to her dismay and amusement. I would fall asleep. In order to avoid inflicting that trauma on another child, I decided to write down the stories so that we can read them together. I chose to use Google Images to illustrate the stories with cartoons and photographs to add interest. Once it got out that I was doing this I began to receive demands and deadlines to produce new stories, not from Hayden or other children who couldn’t care less, but from their parents. I am under the gun to finish one of the stories by Thursday of this week for parental review.

One group of stories is a series of detective tales staring Hayden and his stuffed animal friends “Snaky the Snake”, “Buddy the Bear,” “Whitey the White Tiger” and other creatures of his bedroom menagerie. Also appearing in the stories are some of the creatures living in the gardens and empty lots around the house. They include “Feral Kitty (one of the feral cat pack that lives in the lot next door), “Boo-blue bird”, “Francis the Fraidy Frog”, “Clarence the Cross-eyed” the king of the cobra’s living in the lot next door (yes, we have cobras as neighbors in the lot that I have dubbed the “Wild-lands”) and in Bangkok “Ratty the Great, King of the Rats, the 10347th of his Line” and others. The humans in the story include me “Pookie the Old,” Nikki the Pilot” and “Pi Nuan.” Pi Nuan is the name of the maid and is usually the heroine of the adventures while Nikki and Pookie prove to be pompous and mostly useless. In addition to the Prologue, the first three tales are, “The Case of the Missing Breakfast,” “The case of the Monster of the Wild-lands” and the Case of Close Encounters of the Rat Kind”. The latter I have to finish by Thursday or suffer the consequences.

Apparently, I wrote an entire book of fairy tales. I do not remember this. Some of the titles I recognize, but I cannot recall any of the stories. This makes me sad.

 

 

 

DAILY FACTOID:

 

 

 

1805. A Viennese man, Johann George Lehner, invents the Frankfurter.

 

(That’s funny, I always thought his name was Nathan and he lived on Coney Island.)

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

A. Terry on Top:

 
On May 11, Terry sent the following email:

THE END IS COMING! The poll numbers are terrible. Trump’s campaign manager is going to be sued by Trump because he bought a Ferrari with what he made off the campaign and the rats are leaving the ship. Nobody is waiting for November, they are finding horses to ride in 2024. And the Senators have panicked! The question is what exit do they run for if the ship is half sunk.

“Trump’s Feeling Is, ‘Why Are We Losing Everywhere?’”: With Advisers Feuding and Numbers Plummeting, Trump Eyes Campaign Shake-up. Brad Parscale (and his Ferrari) is in the hot seat. Kushner is pushing for Nick Ayers, and against a Corey Lewandowski return. But whose fault are the disastrous swing state numbers?
Vanity Fair

 

A few hours later he followed it up with:

Yes, it is. But it’s a long way to November and a lot more people are going to die, the economy is not going to recover until there is a vaccine, even if Biden takes over. It’s going to be a long five years. It took FDR 8 years and a world war to get out of the depression. Perhaps a liberal majority in Congress will act faster than FDR’s Congress that was limited by the Southern Democrats. They no longer exist. They are red state republicans right now. Same right-wing philosophy.

But it will take getting rid of the filibuster and adding two justices to the SCOTUS to get the real Second New Deal. And that’s the only thing that will work. Something profound has happened. The country has been set back and brought to its knees. Blame is a waste of energy. Read Schlesinger’s Age of Roosevelt (Three Volumes) to see how we did it before. It was messy but effective. Roosevelt said when he came to office: “ If I don’t succeed I’ll be the last President of the US”. A left-wing dictator is not out of the question. Think AOC. And she ( or someone with similar Populist charisma could pull it off in 4-8 years). So we Democrat’s better do it right, no hold barred.

 

While I agree with most of what Terry writes here, I still cannot ignore my suspicion that the Trump administration is actively planning to find a way to avoid the election or, if it is held and goes against him, invalidate it. This would not be the first time in history that great empires have crumbled seemingly overnight nor would it be the first time that the light of democracy has been put out by a wealthy psychopath.

 

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 
One should not confuse a mistaken belief with general incredulity.

 
(I cannot figure out what this means. Either old Trenz has gone a bit batty or he has recently been reading the works of some obscure Nineteenth-Century German philosopher.)

 

 

C. Today’s Poem:

 

 

An Untitled Poem
As you watch the sand of your life
sift through the funnel of fate,
will you turn to your mirror and ask
“Is there time still, or am I too late?”

Have I done all the things that I love,
or only those things that I hate?
Do I know the value of life,
or only the hourly rate?

Could the money I traded for time
compensate for what I had lost?
Oh, if only I’d known then, what I know now:
the sunshine not only the frost.

The rich and the poor share one fact
when the time of your life unfulfilled,
falls through the funnel to black.
Not one grain can be sucked through time’s hole, not one
grain can ever come back.
Burma Richard (Richard Diran)

 

D. Peter Responds:

 

 

In the previous issue of T&T I wrote:

“I discovered the following quote in Wikipedia while looking for something else. It is one of life’s great conundrums that whenever you look for something, you inevitably discover something else more attractive but far less useful than that for which you were originally looking. Anyway, I have posted what I found here in the hope that Peter, who studied and received advanced degrees in philosophy from one of the world’s great Universities, and sometimes reads my postings, could unravel the meaning and significance of it as well as the conundrum I mention above.”

 

To which Peter kindly responded:

 

“It seems You found the following quote ‘more attractive but far less useful than that for which you were originally looking.’ So, two things of concern: (a) re: unraveling the meaning and significance of the quote, and (b) unraveling the meaning and significance of the conundrum. Regarding (a), epistemic refers to knowledge; epistemology concerns how we know what we know. An ontic state “is precisely the way it is,” describes reality without reference to epistemic knowledge. Hume showed that causality can’t be proven–stuck it in his desk drawer and went on with life, but reality remains nonetheless—unless you consider that the Buddhist precept that everything is imaginary, under the veil of Maya, in which case the whole thing is moot and there’s nothing left but to say “Om” and chant the Diamond Sutra under the bodhi tree until you achieve moksha in a blaze of enlightenment; and then face (b) the conundrum: shall I become a bodhisattva and return to the world of epistemic and ontic in service to struggling humanity, or remain in the eternal boredom and humorlessness of nirvana? Of course, bodhisattva uber alles, certainly more attractive because it’s where the action is, if less useful than wallowing in the eternal salubrious idleness of moksha.

“The above stuff is why my philosophy dept. chairperson, the esteemed George Geiger, a former student of John Dewey and distinguished humanist, reluctantly acquiesced in allowing me to get my 30 credits so I could graduate, especially after I submitted my senior thesis entitled ‘The Mythological Basis of Swedenborg’s Cosmology.’”

Om……………”

 
Thank you, Peter, for clearing things up and to all you Swedenborgians out there Om… to you too.

 

 

 

E. Giants of History: More Burma Richard.

 

 

In addition to his ethnographic activities, gem trading, and other adventures, Burma Richard also visited some of the more spectacular sites in Myramar and recording them in his blog (Here). The following tells of his visit to the Shwedagon Pagoda.

The Shwe Dagon Pagoda
Objects that have been donated for centuries fill one room. Jewel encrusted scabbards, solid gold Buddha’s, silver Buddha’s set with rubies, and lacquered gold prayer books. In an adjoining room where racks of women’s hair hang, some are four or five feet in length and still glisten. I was told that those too poor to give anything of worldly value, had their hair cut off as a sign of deep faith and humility. I held the hair in my hands and the consistency differed from thick to thin, and the color from brownish to deep black. Some hair was straight, some wavy, but it was very eerie, fingering the hair of the dead.

As I walked along speechless at the enormity of it all, I noticed small cubicles dedicated to the day of the week with worshipers burning incense. If you ask someone from the west when they were born, they will answer you such and such a day in that month in the year of our lord. If you ask a Burman when they were born, they will reply, Monday or Friday or whatever day of the week that they came into the world. The Burmese week has eight days, Wednesday being divided in half, each day represented by a different animal. Wednesday morning is an elephant with tusks and Wednesday evening is an elephant without tusks. My birthday is Thursday which is represented by a rat.
Burma Richard (Richard Diran)

 

(For those who wish to know, I was born on Sunday. In the Burmese Zodiac, my animal is Garuda (mythical bird, Hindu/Buddhist bird deity)

Ruling Planet: Sun
Ruling Direction: Northeast
Personality/Attributes of the Garuda:
Kind, generous
Overly gracious
Challenge willing taker
The tougher the obstacle the more motivated you are
Energetic, optimistic, motivative to others)

F. Tales From the Old Sailor, Deep Sea Diver, Pirate, Treasure Hunter, and Many Other Things:

 

 

Every so often I receive communications through various channels from my dear friend, The Old Sailor, etc. Those communications include fascinating collections of oddities including photos, videos, items from the black net, natural remedies for maladies you never thought you had, and many other things. Among them are short bits of writing that I sometimes pass on through T&T.  I am not sure how to characterize the following that he recently sent me — tales, poetry, ravings, hallucinogenic dreams, confessions, mini-memoirs, or transmission from another dimension — nevertheless, here they are…

Introduction:

I. Am. A. Burned

Out. Half_ass

Driver….going to.

the. Elephant.

Graveyard .. titudvilla

One:

He   was  from    “”Malta…””

…I   was   in the   Carousel  bar   When   Crazy  Carl  ..showed   Me  his  (( Deportation Papers ))  

…While  we  were there    the   Marshall-s came to get him For Deportation  to -Malta .

== for trying to sell a  Machine  gun to an  F.B.I

   Agent.

. ** the stories never end….around  1970  s . 

Two:

CARL was also busted on sailboat

.@…on-aboard was 6Tons  of

dope…Carl told

the Judge..that he

didm’t know’’’’it

was on —

board….THERE

WAS SO MUCH 

DOPE   COULD NOT

GO

BELOW…..=HE

GOT     2 YEARS…

Three:

one time we had

stolen a tug boat

from the Miami

river..(((The Tug

was already stolen

FROM CUBA)))at

night then we stole

fuel..from a

barge…then we

went to

Jamaica…..and

smoked

dope….with pat

Four:

Dirty Roy  said i can

have the DEAD

FRENCH guys 30 ft

boat ((.in French

St. Martin….)))),,,,,,,

,,,…throw the dead

guy over the

side. ..>>>the boat

is mine >>>>must

do soon he is getting

pretty.   Ripe

Five:

There are lessons to

be learned from a

Stupid man

Fuck up work is

never done

(donur)

==donuts=====

(d)(o)(n)(u)(t)S…

,,,,,,@. and

COFFIE  3AM

SiX:

*ERK = BKK.

HERE  @.NOW IM

TITUSVILLE.FL

**(come and

visit…perhaps pick

u up in Orlando))

— Rocketships

blast—off  every

month or

so….interesting..*

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“WHAT IS THE BIGGEST SOURCE OF DANGER for any organism? Predators? Natural disasters? Fellow organisms of the same species, who constitute the most direct competition for everything? Sibling rivals, who compete even in the same family, the same nest? No. The biggest danger is the future. If you’ve survived until now, then your past and present offer no dangers, or at least no new dangers.”

          Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.  

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

R. Crumb.

 

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 23 Capt. Coast 0009. (May 9, 2020)

 

“By the logic of the free-market theorists, shouldn’t religious exemptions from U.S. taxes—state subsidy by other means—breed complacency and laziness among the leaders of every American church?”
Andersen, Kurt. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History (p. 292). Random House Publishing Group.

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, George.

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES DURING THE PANDEMIC:

 

 

I returned from my one-day trip to UCSF in the Big Endive by the Bay for my immunotherapy infusion. As soon I entered the house from the garage and placed my hat in the closet, the front door opened and Naida entered with the dog in tow. They obviously were returning from a walk. She was holding in one hand something that looked like weeds —sprays of tiny white flowers radiating from a pale green stalk. “Welcome back,” she exclaimed. “Guess what I have?”

“It looks like hemlock.”

“No,” she laughed. “They are elderberry flowers. I picked them from the bushes by the river. The early California pioneers used to dip them in pancake batter and fry them. It is supposed to be very good.” And so, she flounced off into the kitchen and whipped up two elderberry pancakes. They were very tasty.

Two of three days after I wrote the entry above and not related to it, I felt sick. I checked for coronavirus symptoms — no fever, cough, or difficulty breathing but slight chills, headache, upset stomach, and fairly intense fatigue. I spent most of the day in bed. It could be simply a more severe than usual reaction to my immunotherapy infusion due to the doubling of the dosage at my last appointment. Or, it could be just another episode of my hypochondria. Time will tell.

I got up in the late afternoon still feeling terrible — sat in my recliner, ate a lunch of bread pudding with raisins (I’m not kidding), and instead of returning to bed, I watched “Singing in the Rain” for the umpteenth time. Still great.

I was still feeling bad, so I prepared to go back up to bed. The next movie on TCM, however, was Francis the Talking Mule starring Donald O’Connor. So, I decided to stay up and see it. Wouldn’t you?

After the movie, I was feeling a bit better but I felt as though I had a fever. I asked Naida to find the thermometer from where she left it so that I could take my temperature. She found it. Unfortunately, we had no alcohol with which to clean it so she took the bottle of Limoncello I had just purchased and plunged the thermometer into it. I had not known how pleasant taking one’s temperature could be (Of course, it was under my tongue.) Finding myself happier after sucking on a Limoncello flavored thermometer, I stayed up and watched “Fallen Angel” a noir film from 1945 directed by Otto Preminger and starring Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Alice Faye. Good movie.

The next morning, I woke up feeling much better (the Limoncello?) I decided to visit HRM, But before I go, a few words about hypochondria.

 

B. A FEW WORDS ABOUT HYPOCHONDRIA:

 

 

I often make fun of my relatively slight case of hypochondria, but for many, it may be a rather serious mental health disorder. Being a hypochondriac and experiencing health anxiety can be debilitating. It can severely affect the lives of the people who suffer from it. “A person with health anxiety often may have gone through a serious illness and fear that their bad experience may be repeated. They may be going through major life stress or have had a serious illness during childhood.” (As a child, I had repeated hospitalizations for pneumonia — virtually every winter from when I was about 7 until I was 14).

To those suffering severe episodes of this disorder, I apologize for making light of it. Nevertheless, according to the literature hypochondriac symptoms may include:

· Regularly checking oneself for any sign of illness.

(I do this, especially at night when I am trying to get to sleep.)

· Fearing that anything from a runny nose to a gurgle in their gut is the sign of a serious illness.

(Me too — a gurgling gut also keeps me awake. Doesn’t it do that to you too?)

· Making frequent visits to their doctor.

(I do. I love going to the doctor. Lots of shiny things to look at and also they, the doctors and nurses, really do try to make you believe they care.)

· Conversely, avoiding the doctor due to fear that the doctor will find they have a dreaded disease or serious illness.

(Not me. As I said, I love doctor visits.)

· Talking excessively about my health.

(Just read my previous T&T posts — I manage to mention the state of my health in just about every post.)

· Spending a lot of time online, researching their symptoms.

(I do this. Where else would I find the statements in italics I have included here?)

· May focus on just one thing: a certain disease (example: cancer) or a certain body part (example: the lungs if they cough). Or, they may fear any disease or might become focused on a trending disease (example: during flu season, they may be convinced that a sniffle means they’re coming down with the flu).

(My focus over the years may change, but I generally concentrate on one imagined disease at a time — I am not an Omni-hypochondriac).

· Are unconvinced that their negative medical tests are correct, then worry that they have something undiagnosed and that no one will be able to find it and cure them.

(All the time. Just today I read in the report of my most recent CT scan:

Redemonstration of tubular low density 10 mm structure in the right lower lobe tracks along the bronchovascular bundle unchanged over multiple prior studies. Previously seen groundglass nodule in the left lower lobe measuring 5 mm now appears to be entirely solid rather than groundglass (series 2, image 196).

 

If groundglass in your lung doesn’t concern you, nothing will. What frightens me most, however, is that I cannot understand what they are talking about. I mean, solid rather than goundglass should be a good thing, no?)

· Avoiding people or places they fear may cause them to get sick.

(I do. I even cross the street when walking past a hospital.)

On the other hand, the opposite of hypochondria is anosognosia a symptom of severe mental illness experienced by some that impairs a person’s ability to understand and perceive his or her illness. Now that is serious. Don’t be an anosogniac.

 

 

C. OFF TO THE GOLDEN HILLS:

 

 

 

Anyway, I drove off into the Golden Hills in the Mitsubishi to visit HRM. He and Jake washed the car and then, as teenage boys do, put their heads under the hood and practiced car-talk for a while.

 

HRM and I also stopped by the little lake where I used to watch HRM fishing when he was younger. We reminisced about this and other things as we strolled around the ponds. I one point he said, “You know something? I never caught anything.”

We also watched some geese and ducks shepherd their goslings and ducklings on the grass by the water.
   

 

Back at HRM’s house, while the teens were occupied with the Mitsubishi, I took the time to examine the new landscaping they were all busily installing this last week or two.

.  

 

 

D. BACK IN THE ENCHANTED FOREST:

Another view of the Enchanted Forest.

 
After my return to the house in the Enchanted Forest, Naida spent much of the evening entertaining me with stories about the two goats she owned when she and Bill lived on the ranch by the Cosumnes River. Her original intention was to have the goats eat the unwanted invasive vegetation in the horse pastures. In fact, they named them Black and Decker because they were supposed to remove the weeds. Although it did not work out quite as she planned, and, if her stories are to be believed, they were more trouble than helpful, she nevertheless loved the goats until they passed away leaving her sad but with a lot of funny stories. One of them has her chasing the escaped Decker across the golf course fairways that bordered the ranch and urging the surprised golfers to join her in the pursuit.

Naida with Black — Decker hides in the shadows.

 

 
A day or so later, Naida and I decided to take the dog and spend the afternoon on the banks of the American River. The river is separated from the Enchanted Forest where we live by a fifty-foot high levee. In the bottomland between the levee and the river, bike and hiking trails snake through cottonwood, black oak, and elderberry woodlands. Arriving at the edge of the river, we put down a yoga mat to sit on, watched some people fishing from boats, and eventually fell asleep.

 
This week seems longer than most. In addition to my frequent naps, and watching the political punditry and old movies on TV, I spend the afternoons dozing in my chair in the garden, like an old man waiting for sundown. Perhaps tomorrow I will do something odd and unusual, perhaps even a new adventure, but right now I wonder why I would want to. At my age, naps and afternoons dozing in the sun seems to be as good as it gets.

I almost forgot, we still have our evening walks through the Enchanted Forest. They are nice too.

Naida and Boo-boo the Barking Dog on one of the paths near our home in the Enchanted Forest.

 

 
Today the sameness of the day was broken with a FaceTime call with Peter and Barrie. There was a lot of talk about dogs, music, food (marzipan), and toilet paper.

One day. I dove back into the Golden Hills to do a little shopping. I also picked up some medicines and visited HRM. The crew at Dick’s house remains in their landscaping frenzy. SWAC has Dick, Adrian, Bob the Handyman and HRM working every day for the past week or so buying plants and trees (hundreds) at the nursery, hauling them home, planting them, installing the drip irrigation, transporting rocks and masonry and building the paths, terraces, and rock gardens. It all seems a bit mad.

Hayden by one of the several new rock gardens.

 
I do not recall much of the past few days because I have felt, ill, listless, and irritable in the 90-degree heat and have taken to spending much of my time in bed — what else is new.

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:

 

 
I began writing, “This and that…” 10 years ago when I moved from the US to Thailand. It was not called “This and that from re Thai r ment” then. That happened almost a year later when my good friend Irwin Schatzman suggested I name it that. Irwin also suggested “3Th,” but I no longer remember what that means. About eight years ago, my beloved “cuzin” died, a victim of cancer.

I moved into a house in Chiang Mai I built but no longer owned in order to take care of Hayden who was four at the time.

My original purpose in writing what became T&T was to make it more efficient to keep in touch with my friends and relatives back in the US by writing a single email rather than separate ones to each. I also wanted to begin keeping a journal about my exile. I had tried to keep a diary many times in my past but would soon lose my resolve and abandon it. For a while, I kept the journal separate from my letter but I thought by combining my journal with that letter I would feel obligated to keep on writing it and it also would be more efficient and less work for me.

Here is my first post from Chiang Mai and the associated journal:

My first full day in Chiang Mai. The house that I had built, for those of you who have seen it, is in pretty good shape. The landscaping has grown in well.

This morning I walked Hayden to school. As befits the dawdling scholar, he took absolutely the longest way possible, stopping to examine every hole in the ground, viewing from both sides each muddy mosquito-infested canal that passed under the road and insisting on discussing the wonders of each thing he investigated.

Joe…

PS: Below are photographs of the grounds of the house and of Hayden and I clowning around. I apologize for the mawkishness of this e-mail. I am composing it at the local coffee shop that I realize may, in part, circumscribe my life here.

My home in Chiang Mai Thailand.

Haden and I horsing around.
——————————————————————-

FROM MY JOURNAL: January 19, 2010

Walked Hayden to school this morning. He said he knew the way since I did not. It was a boy’s map, full of turns to visit points of interest (friends houses and residences of selected and named canines). We also explored any interesting holes in the ground and had several discussions about my walking stick among other similarly engaging and important topics. We stopped at all of the muddy weed-choked and mosquito-infested canals that crossed beneath the road on which we walked, first to one side and then the other searching for ways to get down to the water (me of course counseling against it).

A car stopped driven by a woman who I believe lives in the house across the road from ours. She offered us a ride and over Hayden’s objection, I accepted.

At Haden’s school, “Sunshine Kindergarten” we were met at the gate by an attractive young Thai woman. And of course, even in my dotage, I preened.

The school contains the main building and several small attractive adobe like outbuildings.

The entrance to “Sunshine Kindergarten.”

 
After seeing him off, I searched for the cafe in order to have a latte. At first, I went in the wrong direction but retraced my steps and found it. I ordered a cafe latte and an orange juice and played with my computer answering some emails and trying to set up my calendar.

I left the cafe. As I walked towards home I passed a group of buildings that I recalled were either a school or the subdivision office but were now mostly derelict. One building in good repair contained a restaurant. I went in and ordered pad thai and an iced tea. Mediocre. The other customers were Europeans of whom there is a lot living in the subdivision. I left and slowly walked home.

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

A. On Top: A Few Brief and at Times Amusing Essays for Understanding Some Basic Science with Which to While-Away Your Time During Self-Confinement (continued) Part IV.

 

 

Part IV

 

ENTROPY, THERMODYNAMICS, AND THE UNIVERSE.

 

There is another puzzle associated with entropy in our universe.

Astronomical observations do not fit well with the Second Law. On cosmological scales, our universe seems to have become more complex with the passage of time, not less complex. The matter in the universe started out in the Big Bang with a very smooth distribution and has become more and more clumpy – more and more complex – with the passage of time. The entropy of the universe seems to have decreased considerably, not increased. Matter is now segregated on a huge range of scales: into rocks, asteroids, planets, stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, galactic superclusters, and so on. Using the same metaphor as in thermodynamics, the distribution of matter in the universe seems to be maturing increasingly ordered. This is puzzling since the Second Law tells us that a thermodynamic system should become increasingly disordered.

The cause of this clumping seems to be well established: it is gravity. A second time-reversibility paradox now rears its head. Einstein’s field equations for gravitational systems are time-reversible. This means that if any solution of Einstein’s field equations is time-reversed, it becomes an equally valid solution. Our own universe, run backward in this manner, becomes a gravitational system that gets less and less clumpy as time passes – so getting less clumpy is just as valid, physically, as getting more clumpy. Our universe, though, does only one of these things: more clumpy.

Paul Davies’s view here is that ‘as with all arrows of time, there is a puzzle about where the asymmetry comes in … The asymmetry must, therefore, be traced to initial conditions’. What he means here is that even with time-reversible laws, you can get different behavior by starting the system in a different way. If you start with an egg and stir it with a fork, then it scrambles. If you start with the scrambled egg and very very carefully give each tiny particle of egg exactly the right push along precisely the opposite trajectory, then it will unscramble. The difference lies entirely in the initial state, not in the laws. Notice that ‘stir with a fork’ is a very general kind of initial condition: lots of different ways to stir will scramble the egg. In contrast, the initial condition for unscrambling an egg is extremely delicate and special.

In a way, this is an attractive option. Our clumping universe is like an unscrambling egg: its increasing complexity is a consequence of very special initial conditions. Most ‘ordinary’ initial conditions would lead to a universe that isn’t clumped – just as any reasonable kind of stirring leads to a scrambled egg. And observations strongly suggest that the universe’s initial conditions at the time of the Big Bang were extremely smooth, whereas any ‘ordinary’ state of a gravitational system presumably should be clumped. So, in agreement with the suggestion just outlined, it seems that the initial conditions of the universe must have been very special – an attractive proposition for those who believe that our universe is highly unusual, and ditto for our place within it.

From the Second Law to God in one easy step. Roger Penrose has even quantified how special this initial state is, by comparing the thermodynamic entropy of the initial state with that of a hypothetical but plausible final state in which the universe has become a system of Black Holes. This final state shows an extreme degree of clumpiness – though not the ultimate degree, which would be a single giant Black Hole.

The result is that the entropy of the initial state is about 10-30 times that of the hypothetical final state, making it extremely special. So special, in fact, that Penrose was led to introduce a new time-asymmetric law that forces the early universe to be exceptionally smooth.

Oh, how our stories mislead us … There is another, much more reasonable, explanation. The key point is simple: gravitation is very different from thermodynamics. In a gas of buzzing molecules, the uniform state – equal density everywhere – is stable. Confine all the gas into one small part of a room, let it go, and within a split second, it’s back to a uniform state. Gravity is exactly the opposite: uniform systems of gravitating bodies are unstable. Differences smaller than any specific level of coarse-graining not only can ‘bubble up’ into macroscopic differences as time passes, but do.

Here lies the big difference between gravity and thermodynamics. The thermodynamic model that best fits our universe is one in which differences dissipate by disappearing below the level of coarse-graining as time marches forwards. The gravitic model that best fits our universe is one in which differences amplify by bubbling up from below the level of coarse-graining as time marches forwards. The relation of these two scientific domains to coarse-graining is exactly opposite when the same arrow of time is used for both.

We can now give a completely different, and far more reasonable, explanation for the ‘entropy gap’ between the early and late universes, as observed by Penrose and credited by him to astonishingly unlikely initial conditions.

It is actually an artifact of coarse-graining.

Gravitational clumping bubbles up from a level of coarse-graining to which thermodynamic entropy is, by definition, insensitive. Therefore virtually any initial distribution of matter in the universe would lead to clumping. There’s no need for something extraordinarily special.

The physical differences between gravitating systems and thermodynamic ones are straightforward: gravity is a long-range attractive force, whereas elastic collisions are short-range and repulsive. With such different force laws, it is hardly surprising that the behavior should be so different. As an extreme case, imagine systems where ‘gravity’ is so short range that it has no effect unless particles collide, but then they stick together forever. Increasing clumpiness is obvious for such a force law.
The real universe is both gravitational and thermodynamic. In some contexts, the thermodynamic model is more appropriate and thermodynamics provides a good model. In other contexts, a gravitational model is more appropriate. There are yet other contexts: molecular chemistry involves different types of forces again. It is a mistake to shoehorn all natural phenomena into the thermodynamic approximation or the gravitic approximation. It is especially dubious to expect both thermodynamic and gravitic approximations to work in the same context when the way they respond to coarse-graining is diametrically opposite.

See? It’s simple. Not magical at all …

Perhaps it’s a good idea to sum up our thinking here.

The ‘laws’ of thermodynamics, especially the celebrated Second Law, are statistically valid models of nature in a particular set of contexts. They are not universally valid truths about the universe, as the clumping of gravity demonstrates. It even seems plausible that a suitable measure of gravitational complexity, like thermodynamic entropy but different, might one day be defined – call it ‘gravtropy’, say. Then we might be able to deduce, mathematically, a ‘second law of gravitics’, stating that the gravtropy of a gravitic system increases with time. For example, gravtropy might perhaps be the fractal dimension (‘degree of intricacy’) of the system.

Even though coarse-graining works in opposite ways for these two types of systems, both ‘second laws’ – thermodynamic and gravitic – would correspond rather well to our own universe. The reason is that both laws are formulated to correspond to what we actually observe in our own universe. Nevertheless, despite this apparent concurrence, the two laws would apply to drastically different physical systems: one to gases, the other to systems of particles moving under gravity.

 

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 
Liberals have principles, Conservatives ideology.

 

 

C. Today’s Poem:

 

 

Untitled — Anonymous Australian Aboriginal Poem.
The white man dropped from the sun bright sky,

For he envied the blackfellow’s land,

With greed and revenge in his restless eye,

And disease and death in his hand.

And he grasped the forest, and he seized the strand,

And claimed the blue mountains high;

And he scours the bush with a ruthless band,

’Till its denizens trembling fly —

And his pigs and his cattle pollute the land

’Till it stinks, and the blackfellows die.

— Anonymous (source language unnamed), “Untitled,” Bendigo Advertiser (Victoria), September 26, 1855, page 4.

 

 

D. Pookie’s Musings:

 

 
I discovered the following quote on Wikipedia while looking for something else. It is one of life’s great conundrums that whenever you look for something, you inevitably discover something else more attractive but far less useful than that for which you were originally looking. Anyway, I have posted what I found here in the hope that Peter, who studied and received advanced degrees in philosophy from one of the world’s great Universities and sometimes reads my postings, could unravel the meaning and significance of it as well as the conundrum I mention above.

In the philosophy of science, the distinction of knowledge versus reality is termed epistemic versus ontic. A general law is a regularity of outcomes (epistemic), whereas a causal mechanism may regulate the outcomes (ontic). A phenomenon can receive interpretation either ontic or epistemic. For instance, indeterminism may be attributed to limitations of human observation and perception (epistemic), or may be explained as a real existing maybe encoded in the universe (ontic).

After reading the above, I concluded it has one of two meanings. The first has something to do with universal fecundity. After all, of what use is one’s epistemic without an ontic? On the other hand, perhaps it all has to do with the effect of self-quarantine on my mind. Could it all be attributed to its limitations on my observation and perception — a hallucination perhaps? Or, could it be explained as something real, existing, and perhaps encoded in the universe? Is whether anyone cares an epistemic surmise or an ontic reality?

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

The Mayfly and the Great Trout.

“[A]n old mayfly is telling some youngsters about this god, as they hover just above the surface of a stream:

‘… you were telling us about the Great Trout.’ ‘Ah. Yes. Right. The Trout. Well, you see, if you’ve been a good mayfly, zigzagging up and down properly—’ ‘—taking heed of your elders and betters—’

‘— yes, and taking heed of your elders and betters, then eventually the Great Trout—’ Clop. Clop. ‘Yes?’ said one of the younger mayflies. There was no reply.

‘The Great Trout what?’ said another mayfly, nervously. They looked down at a series of expanding concentric rings on the water. ‘The holy sign!’ said a mayfly. ‘I remember being told about that! A Great Circle in the water! Thus shall be the sign of the Great Trout!’
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

 

The view from my window at night

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 11 Capt. Coast 0009. (April 28, 2020)

 

“Any system can be corrupted as long as people will pretend it’s not their problem.”
Mayne, Andrew. Dark Pattern (The Naturalist) (p. 78).

 

Happy Birthday — Naida, Nikki, and George.

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES DURING THE GREAT EPIDEMIC OF 2020:

 
The weather was warm and sunny today, the temperature reaching into the 80s. We decided to go out wander along the edge of the nearby American River. Although we were breaking confinement, we were sure we would not violate social distancing guidelines because usually there were not too many people wandering around there. We walked to our favorite spot on the riverbank. Along the way, Naida, as usual, instructed me on the local flora.

We sat on some dry grass and watched people on the opposite bank launch a boat and the birds taking off and landing on the water. Naida recited a part of a love poem that featured rabid cormorants. She also, for some reason, sung an old Sam Cooke tune:

Every day, along about evening
When the sunlight’s beginning to pale
I ride through the slumbering shadows
Along the Navajo Trail

 

The American River by the Enchanted Forest.

 

Before she became an accomplished novelist, Naida obtained a Ph.D. in sociology. Her 1978 thesis, entitled Leadership, and Gender: A Comparative Analysis of Male and Female Leadership in Business, Politics, and Government, She had previously published a book on the early results of her study, Leadership With A Feminine Cast. She interviewed such people as Ivy Baker Priest US Treasurer in the Eisenhower Administration who famously quipped, “I’m often wrong, but never in Doubt”; Ruth Handler of Mattel fame; Jess Unruh the powerful leader of California’s Assembly and over 70 other well known civic and business leaders.

We spent much of the day reading sections from the thesis. It was fascinating for me to learn that an overwhelming majority of these leaders, most of whom were and still are household names, were the children of immigrants or, in the case of African Americans, had migrated from the South. Another consistent element in almost all of their lives was the presence of a strong mother. One female leader commented:

“My grandmother never wanted to come to the United States. She made my grandfather unhappy some of the time. For instance, she wanted to see the Panama Canal. So she left to see it. She said. “If all these kids can’t take care of him, something is wrong (fourteen children) My grandmother went off to more places than you can imagine in those days when traveling was difficult.”

 

What seemed to differ in the lives of the women leaders from the men, other than the resistance of the latter to the aspirations of the former, was that women generally worked harder to get where they were. As for management and leadership skills, the men mostly learned and honed their skills in the military and tended to manage their institutions in a hierarchical top-down manner. The women, on the other hand, generally tried to encourage a feeling of family in their organizations with her as the matriarch. In fact, the woman leaders overwhelmingly reveled in being considered different in how they dressed, behaved, and led. (Note — because women leaders overwhelmingly were the children of immigrants Naida specifically choose male children of immigrant parents to balance it out. She said, in either case, women or children of immigrants [including people of color] had a more difficult time of it than white males [and they were aware of it])

Days have rolled on by with little to comment on other than that the days of our confinement have increased. We have begun losing track of the days of the week, We have been in self-quarantine for about 50 days now — almost 15% of the year.

Interesting — the retirement village not too far from the Enchanted Forest that has been actively promoting us to choose them when we inevitably divide it is time to ender an assisted living facility, called today and offered us a free dinner from the local restaurant of our choice delivered to our home this evening. We chose Zinfandel a somewhat expensive Italian-American restaurant that we enjoy eating at.

I drove up into the Golden Hills to see Hayden. I arrived just as he returned with SWAC from buying flowers for planting around the house. I put on my mask and rubber gloves and keeping my social distance when with him as he showed me what they had been planting these past few days. In the side yard, they had planted about eight trees — a Japanese Maple, an orange tree, a lemon tree, apricot and peach trees, pomegranate, and some Thai fruit trees. I do not know how well some of these trees will do in that environment.

The front yard, actually a slope from the garage up to the road, has been planted with many flowers and an olive tree. On a bare area between two massive redwood trees next to the driveway had been used for burying pets — Pepe and Pesca the two Bichons, a crayfish, a couple of lizards, a tiny snake and a large goldfish named Sharky. A few clumps of flowers have now been planted on that hallowed ground.

 

I then returned home. Shortly after my arrival, our free dinner that I had been eagerly anticipating arrived. It was a hamburger for me and chicken tacos for Naida. I was disappointed and pissed. What’s worse, the meat looked and tasted like it came in a can.

This afternoon we took Boo-boo the Barking Dog on a long walk through the Enchanted Forest. It was sunny and warm, in the upper 70s. We tried to find paths we had never walked before and we did. At one point we found ourselves by the lake and sat there awhile enjoying the view.

 

Land Park is a large park in Sacramento. The Sacramento Zoo is located there. According to Naida, the developer of the area created it as an amenity for his development. He went on to be elected mayor of the city. We decided to visit it today, taking all the care necessary to avoid breaching social-distancing guidelines. Equipped with masks and rubber gloves we walked around a lake and through the rock garden.

The story about the rock garden: In the late 1930s a woman began planting the garden in the public park. The city did nothing to stop her. They even gave her an award. After she died, the garden she worked so hard on was taken over by the city. I do not know if any of this is true, but history is story and if the story is good enough then it is good enough. As Pratchett writes, “We make up our world according to the stories that we tell ourselves, and each other, about it.” (Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.)

For the next few days, the weather hovered in the mid-80s. Sunny with a slight breeze. I placed a folding camp chair in a spot of shade in the back yard and spent much of the afternoon dozing with the dog lying at my feet and now and then typing things like I am doing now. I wonder why lazing away outdoors in sunny weather is so pleasant and not boring at all, while sitting indoors often feels tedious and uncomfortable. Perhaps Peter knows. He understands things like this. I consider him a master keeper of obscure and unconventional notions.

 
I think I will go up to bed. Napping also is neither boring nor unpleasant.

That night after I got up, we watched The Sunshine Boys for perhaps the fifth or sixth time in the last month. I did not want to. I thought of going back to bed. I couldn’t. I love that movie. One could say I liked it because of the timing between the actors, the directing, Neil Simon’s script, seeing Gorge Burn’s again on the screen, or Matthau tearing up the scenery. No, I liked it because it was about old guys. Also, because once, at a Coastal Commission meeting, I was mistaken by the press for Walter Matthau. I would have preferred being mistaken for Rock Hudson.

Last night, I had a dream. No not a dream about freedom from four centuries of oppression. Instead, I was riding a bus. I do not know where that bus was or where it was going, but something about it made me think it was somewhere in San Francisco. I was sitting as usual in one of the reserved for seniors and handicapped seats that are generally filled by 20 somethings or the mentally ill. Anyway, the bus was full of men — stuffed full. They started hassling and ultimately punching me. Eventually, I fought back, swinging my cane and discovered they were all ghosts because when struck they each disappeared in a puff of smoke — except for four big heavyset men. They were real and, hopeless as it may have seemed, I waded in, punching them with all my might only to wake up and discover I was punching Naida. Having experienced this before, she knew enough to avoid my punches and calm me down until I fell back to sleep.

The next morning I felt physically, mentally and emotionally like dog shit so after breakfast and a bit of news about our Commander in Chief recommending we shoot up with Clorox to cure us of the plague and stop us from criticizing him, I drove into the Golden Hills to visit HRM in hope that it would cheer me up. Donning my mask and gloves, I met him and Jake in front of the house and accompanied them on a walk through their most recent plantings at the back. Haden now has a bedroom on the bottom floor with a large deck extending into the backyard. He has festooned his deck with flowering plants everywhere, hanging from the rafters, on the floor, and in the backyard. He has included a large wisteria bush that he plans to train to extend onto the deck.

The next day or perhaps the day after, we packed some soft drinks, a box of Fig Newtons, some coffee and Boo-boo the Barking Dog into the car, and set off for a ghost town on the banks of the Mokelumne River Naida had visited a few years ago. We drove through the Gold Country on Route 49, until we came to the turnoff to the town. Alas, the road was closed. “Let’s walk” I suggested. “How far can it be?”

So we parked the car and set off. The walk started out delightfully. The route ran along the banks of the river that snaked through the foothills of the Sierra’s. California Poppies, Lupine, and many other spring wildflowers covered the hills. A blue oak and Digger pine forest grew along the banks of the river.

 

     

 

 

The Mokelumne River through arches of blue oak.

 

 

The town we were heading to was originally built to house the workers building a hydroelectric project on the river. Now and then small groups of hikers passed us along the road some of them looked like they had been bathing in the river. As the walk lengthened, I began to grow tired. I asked a group of young men coming down the path how far it was. “Not far,” they responded. Of course, “Not far,” for some 20-year-olds and “Not far,” for an eighty-year-old are two entirely different concepts.

 

 

My plan was to walk as far as I could. Not too far (80-year-old far) from where we passed the young men, I had reached my limit and sat, exhausted, in some shade at the side of the road. I realized my plan to only walk as far as I could was flawed. I still had to walk back.

Naida, being healthier and more athletic than I, felt no such fatigue. Nonetheless, She agreed we should head back. And so we did. I walked from shadow to shadow and collapsed at just about everyone we came to. At one point I considered keeling over and forcing Naida to call for an ambulance.

Naida discovered an unusual poppy along the way.

 

She also found some bush lupine growing by the road.

 

 

Once we left the path to walk a few steps to the river so the dog could get a drink. (Did I fail to mention that despite bringing copious amounts of water and juice and Fig Newtons along, we left them all back in the car) While the dog was drinking his fill, a big black snake with golden stripes slithered out from under some detritus just after they passed. I thought it might be the California version of the east-coast deadly coral snake except 10 times larger. Not being much of a woodsman, I did the only thing I could think of. I screamed. “What’s the matter?” Naida responded. “A big snake,” said I. “What color?” she inquired. The snake had disappeared into the grass by now. “Yellow with black stripes,” I said. “Oh, no problem, they eat baby rattlesnakes” she explained. Not knowing if that made me feel any better, we slowly and for me agonizingly made our way back to the car without further mishap except for me almost stepping on an evil-looking thing that Naida said was an alligator lizard that she said grew much larger than the specimen I almost stepped on.

Just after taking this photo, the snake appeared from beneath some fallen piece of bark at the foot of the tree.

 

 

(In case you wonder about my relationship with the natural environment, I am a city boy. As Neuwirth said, “We get nose bleeds if our feet are not touching cement.” We may love the wonders of nature but still prefer to sleep in our beds at night. We like the wonder better than the feeling of nature on our skin. That is why for some of us, our knowledge may be deficient but the wonder never dies. Sort of like, believing in God is a lot more pleasant than actually meeting the bearded old bastard.)

Back at the car, we drank copious amounts of water. Naida drove us back while I dozed and recovered. Back home we discovered the Fig Newtons were missing. We had not eaten any. We suspected the culprit was Boo-boo the Barking Dog, but we could find no evidence. (He is a very sloppy eater.) Perhaps if was the alligator lizard.

The next day, fully recovered from my adventure, I set off for SF for some CT scans. Traffic was so light, I was able to get back by early afternoon in time for lunch. After lunch, I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting and dozing on a chair in the back yard. I one point, Naida woke me from my reverie to inform me that she had just discovered a nest of black widow spiders in a cranny in the wall near where I had been resting.

That evening we watched every episode of Ricky Gervais’ network series After Life. It was great. One of the best things I have seen in a long long while. It was about a man with deep unrelieved depression and a group of extremely odd but often engaging characters with which he was involved. It resonated with me. It seemed to say a life of pathological depression is livable and amusing. See it you’ll like it.

Finally, this morning I awoke, the room was dark, Naida’s body was pressed against my back. “It must be early,” I thought. Boo-boo the Barking Dog had not yet barked his wake up bark. I turned over to give Naida a hug and as I did so I heard a low growl. It was the dog in my arms. I looked up at the clock it was almost noon and the shutters on the window were still closed.

Later the doctor called about the results of the CT scan he said the cancer in my neck has not grown but a nodule in my chest had thickened and he will be speaking with the surgeon about removing it.
That was how my day began today. I wonder how the rest of it will play out…

And, that was my past week or two of self-confinement. How was yours?

Take care.

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

A. On Top: A Few Brief and at Times Amusing Essays for Understanding Some Basic Science with Which to While-Away Your Time During Self-Confinement (continued).

 

 

Part III

INFORMATION, ENTROPY, AND THERMODYNAMICS
A central concept in Shannon’s information theory is something that he called entropy, which in this context is a measure of how statistical patterns in a source of messages affect the amount of information that the messages can convey. If certain patterns of bits are more likely than others, then their presence conveys less information, because the uncertainty is reduced by a smaller amount. In English, for example, the letter ‘E’ is much more common than the letter ‘Q’. So receiving an ‘E’ tells you less than receiving a ‘Q’. Given a choice between ‘E’ and ‘Q’, your best bet is that you’re going to receive an ‘E’. And you learn the most when your expectations are proved wrong. Shannon’s entropy smooths out these statistical biases and provides a ‘fair’ measure of information content.

In retrospect, it was a pity that he used the name ‘entropy’, because there is a longstanding concept in physics with the same name, normally interpreted as ‘disorder’. Its opposite, ‘order’, is usually identified with complexity.

The context here is the branch of physics known as thermodynamics, which is a specific simplified model of a gas. In thermodynamics, the molecules of a gas are modelled as ‘hard spheres’, tiny billiard balls. Occasionally balls collide, and when they do, they bounce off each other as if they are perfectly elastic. The Laws of Thermodynamics state that a large collection of such spheres will obey certain statistical regularities. In such a system, there are two forms of energy: mechanical energy and heat energy. The First Law states that the total energy of the system never changes. Heat energy can be transformed into mechanical energy, as it is in, say, a steam engine; conversely, mechanical energy can be transformed into heat. But the sum of the two is always the same. The Second Law states, in more precise terms (which we explain in a moment), that heat cannot be transferred from a cool body to a hotter one. And the Third Law states that there is a specific temperature below which the gas cannot go — ‘absolute zero’, which is around-273 degrees Celsius.

The most difficult — and the most interesting — of these laws is the Second. In more detail, it involves a quantity that is again called ‘entropy’, which is usually interpreted as ‘disorder’. If the gas in a room is concentrated in one corner, for instance, this is a more ordered (that is, less disordered!) state than one in which it is distributed uniformly throughout the room. So when the gas is uniformly distributed, its entropy is higher than when it is all in one corner. One formulation of the Second Law is that the amount of entropy in the universe always increases as time passes. Another way to say this is that the universe always becomes less ordered, or equivalently less complex, as time passes. According to this interpretation, the highly complex world of living creatures will inevitably become less complex, until the universe eventually runs out of steam and turns into a thin, lukewarm soup.

This property gives rise to one explanation for the ‘arrow of time’, the curious fact that it is easy to scramble an egg but impossible to unscramble one. Time flows in the direction of increasing entropy. So scrambling an egg makes the egg more disordered — that is, increases its entropy — which is in accordance with the Second Law. Unscrambling the egg makes it less disordered, and decreases energy, which conflicts with the Second Law. An egg is not a gas, mind you, but thermodynamics can be extended to solids and liquids, too.

At this point we encounter one of the big paradoxes of physics, a source of considerable confusion for a century or so. A different set of physical laws, Newton’s laws of motion, predicts that scrambling an egg and unscrambling it are equally plausible physical events. More precisely, if any dynamic behaviour that is consistent with Newton’s laws is run backwards in time, then the result is also consistent with Newton’s laws. In short, Newton’s laws are ‘time-reversible’.

However, a thermodynamic gas is really just a mechanical system built from lots of tiny spheres. In this model, heat energy is just a special type of mechanical energy, in which the spheres vibrate but do not move en masse. So we can compare Newton’s laws with the laws of thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics is simply a restatement of energy conservation in Newtonian mechanics, so the First Law does not contradict Newton’s laws. Neither does the Third Law: absolute zero is just the temperature at which the spheres cease vibrating. The amount of vibration can never be less than zero.

Unfortunately, the Second Law of Thermodynamics behaves very differently. It contradicts Newton’s laws. Specifically, it contradicts the property of time-reversibility. Our universe has a definite direction for its ‘arrow of time’, but a universe obeying Newton’s laws has two distinct arrows of time, one the opposite of the other. In our universe, scrambling eggs is easy and unscrambling them seems impossible.

Therefore, according to Newton’s laws, in a time-reversal of our universe, unscrambling eggs is easy but scrambling them is impossible. But Newton’s laws are the same in both universes, so they cannot prescribe a definite arrow of time.

Many suggestions have been made to resolve this discrepancy. The best mathematical one is that thermodynamics is an approximation, involving a ‘coarse-graining’ of the universe in which details on very fine scales are smeared out and ignored. In effect, the universe is divided into tiny boxes, each containing (say) several thousand gas molecules. The detailed motion inside such a box is ignored, and only the average state of its molecules is considered. It’s a bit like a picture on a computer screen. If you look at it from a distance, you can see cows and trees and all kinds of structure. But if you look sufficiently closely at a tree, all you see is one uniformly green square, or pixel. A real tree would still have detailed structure at this scale — leaves and twigs, say — but in the picture all this detail is smeared out into the same shade of green.

In this approximation, once ‘order’ has disappeared below the level of the coarse-graining, it can never come back. Once a pixel has been smeared, you can’t unsmear it. In the real universe, though, it sometimes can, because in the real universe the detailed motion inside the boxes is still going on, and a smeared-out average ignores that detail. So the model and the reality are different. Moreover, this modelling assumption treats forward and backward time asymmetrically. In forward time, once a molecule goes into a box, it can’t escape. In contrast, in a time-reversal of this model it can escape from a box but it can never get in if it wasn’t already inside that box to begin with.

This explanation makes it clear that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not a genuine property of the universe, but merely a property of an approximate mathematical description. Whether the approximation is helpful or not thus depends on the context in which it is invoked, not on the content of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And the approximation involved destroys any relation with Newton’s laws, which are inextricably linked to that fine detail.

Now, as we said, Shannon used the same word ‘entropy’ for his measure of the structure introduced by statistical patterns in an information source. He did so because the mathematical formula for Shannon’s entropy looks exactly the same as the formula for the thermodynamic concept. Except for a minus sign. So thermodynamic entropy looks like negative Shannon entropy: that is, thermodynamic entropy can be interpreted as ‘missing information’. Many papers and books have been written exploiting this relationship — attributing the arrow of time to a gradual loss of information from the universe, for instance. After all, when you replace all that fine detail inside a box by a smeared-out average, you lose information about the fine detail. And once it’s lost, you can’t get it back. Bingo: time flows in the direction of information-loss.

However, the proposed relationship here is bogus. Yes, the formulas look the same … but they apply in very different, unrelated, contexts. In Einstein’s famous formula relating mass and energy, the symbol c represents the speed of light. In Pythagoras’s Theorem, the same letter represents one side of a right triangle. The letters are the same, but nobody expects to get sensible conclusions by identifying one side of a right triangle with the speed of light. The alleged relationship between thermodynamic entropy and negative information isn’t quite that silly, of course. Not quite.

As we’ve said, science is not a fixed body of ‘facts’, and there are disagreements. The relation between Shannon’s entropy and thermodynamic entropy is one of them. Whether it is meaningful to view thermodynamic entropy as negative information has been a controversial issue for many years. The scientific disagreements rumble on, even today, and published, peer-reviewed papers by competent scientists flatly contradict each other.

What seems to have happened here is a confusion between a formal mathematical setting in which ‘laws’ of information and entropy can be stated, a series of physical intuitions about heuristic interpretations of those concepts, and a failure to understand the role of context. Much is made of the resemblance between the formulas for entropy in information theory and thermodynamics, but little attention is paid to the context in which those formulas apply. This habit has led to some very sloppy thinking about some important issues in physics.

One important difference is that in thermodynamics, entropy is a quantity associated with a state of the gas, whereas in information theory it is defined for an information source: a system that generates entire collections of states (‘messages’). Roughly speaking, a source is a phase space for successive bits of a message, and a message is a trajectory, a path, in that phase space. In contrast, a thermodynamic configuration of molecules is a point in phase space. A specific configuration of gas molecules has a thermodynamic entropy, but a specific message does not have a Shannon entropy. This fact alone should serve as a warning. And even in information theory, the information ‘in’ a message is not negative information-theoretic entropy. Indeed the entropy of the source remains unchanged, no matter how many messages it generates.

 

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

 
The internet provides the opportunity to create a world-wide society or culture with its own stories, customs, and biases. The question is whether or not it will be any better than what we have now.

 

 

C. Today’s Poem:

 

Along the Navaho Trail
Every day, along about evening
When the sunlight’s beginning to pale
I ride through the slumbering shadows
Along the Navajo Trail

When it’s night and crickets are callin’
And coyotes are makin’ a wail
I dream by a smoldering fire
Along the Navajo Trail

I love to lie and listen to the music
When the wind is strummin’ a sagebrush guitar
When over yonder hill the moon is climbin’
It always finds me wishin’ on a star

Well what a ya know, it’s mornin’ already
There’s the dawnin’, so silver and pale
It’s time to climb into my saddle
And ride the Navajo Trail

I love to lie and listen to the music
When the wind is strummin’ a sagebrush guitar
When…
Sam Cooke

 

D. Pookie’s Musings: Something somewhat more that risqué but a smidgen less than pornographic.

 

 

While reading The Science of Discworld II with which you should all know by now I am somewhat obsessed, I came across the following sentence by the author in the midst of his attempt to explain quantum theory or evolution or something like that:

“The Hedgehog Song, a Discworld ditty in the general tradition of Eskimo Nell, first made its appearance in Wyrd Sisters with its haunting refrain ‘The hedgehog can never be buggered at all’.”

The reference to The Hedgehog Song apparently referred to the author’s contention that:

“Stories have power because we have minds, and we have minds because stories have power.”

 

Which makes sense in a quantum world.

Having been intrigued by the reference to “the general tradition of Eskimo Nell” and its possible importance to a possible unified theory of everything, I looked up Eskimo Nell in Wikipedia. There I found a poem, The Ballad of Eskimo Nell, the last stanza of which, if not a unified theory, nevertheless expressed the almost universal status of males of my age. I guess that is a unified theory of sorts

When a man grows old, and his balls grow cold,
And the tip of his prick turns blue,
And the hole in the middle refuses to piddle,
I’d say he was fucked, wouldn’t you?
The Ballad of Eskimo Nell

 

What was even more amazing to me was that two movies have been made about that apparently fascinating young woman.

 

 

 

E. Giants of History: Peter on the benefits of Sloth during times of crisis.

 

 

To my paragraph ending with, “I feel like what those old mountain men must have felt like while being trapped all winter in a snow-covered cabin in the wilderness” Peter responded with:

I remember, many years ago when we were living in Boston, a friend moved up to northern Vermont to live. Never mind why. Anyway, we met a couple of his new friends; I recall one was living solitarily. He was very talkative; I imagined that living alone in semi-wilderness might engender an inclination to volubility when one infrequently is in contact with other humans.

As for me, the daily routine of arising, ablutions, dressing, breakfast — first big decision of the day: eat minimally or have more — reading the newspaper and e-news, and — ta-da! morning is half or mostly gone already. Barrie back from walking Ramsey, lately at MacClaren Park – mostly empty and beautiful. Today, though, I went out to pick up one of my various prescriptions at Walgreens. Wore a mask during the pick-up. Staff was fully garbed and covered. Stood the requisite six feet behind the person in front of me in line. Another periodic routine.

A vague memory of early 1972, playing tennis and sightseeing and learning the city and hanging out stoned after having moved to SF. Different times.

 

I wrote about breaking quarantine and gamboling in the Oak woodlands with Naida. That take ended with, “Following our visit we drove back into the Enchanted Forest.” Peter responded:

 

 

We, on the other hand, have transformed sloth into fine art. However, still, several big steps removed from solitary crypto-holiness meditation with endless recitations of the Diamond Sutra and slurping gruel. Although, this week, in a sudden paroxysm of activity, Barrie decided to clean up her office. She is now about 90% done; prodigious effort, but apparently very satisfying. My “office”, however, needs no such treatment. Anyway, it would interfere with my reading of the portion of Robert Caro’s tome about Lyndon Johnson about his election to the Senate in 1948. Talk about Texas!

Meanwhile, I got notified that our next periodic teleconference of the CMIB board (the CA Maritime Infrastructure Bank, of which I am a member — still!) is canceled for lack of a quorum, due to the virus disruptions. We’ll wait a couple of months +/-. Put the file back in the drawer…..

 
After describing another escapade of flight from incarceration I wrote, “We returned refreshed if a bit concerned that we may have snared a coronavirus or two along the way.” Peter wrote:

We get to walk around the block; practically no one out except a dog walker or two, or some Latina pushing a baby carriage with some gringa’s kids inside.

Although, the New Neighborhood Thing!: two houses down live a couple who moved in a few years ago, relatively recently. Affluent. He’s on the phone all day. Turns out she owns a winery business. With this house arrest fiddle, she has now set up a children’s lemonade stand in front of their house, except it’s her wine selling table. $20/bottle, red, white, rose. Fairly decent stuff, in fact. 3-6pm daily, more on weekends. I’ve purchased a couple of bottles, and hung out and gossiped with her. Quite pleasant, and my kind of practically effortless productive activity. Proper distance, masks, wash hands, all medically kosher. The Ernest Winery. right here on 25th St. Careful not to make it a habit.

 

Having a had jaunty run through some amusing and risqué aphorisms of the ancient Sumerians that ended, “That is civilized. And, the abominations of Utu to you to too,” Peter added:

Interestingly, you refer to the Sumerians. I was recently looking at various maps, which I enjoy, these were of ancient civilizations, in particular those of the Levant and the Middle East, including, of course, the Sumerians! There were entries about the “collapse of civilizations” around 5,000-3000 years ago. Perhaps you picked up on the very recent article in the Atlantic about the United States as a failed state. The author nailed it perfectly. It’s really horrifying, infuriating, and frightening. I can imagine what the Europeans are thinking and saying. The outlook for our children and grandchildren is grim. I don’t like to think about it.

 
At one point during my description of our trip to the Sandhill Crane refuge, I commented, “We saw huge flocks of geese and other birds feeding in the wetland.” Peter interjected:

 

Sounds delightful, all this outdoorsy touring. It’s too built up where we are, even with very little traffic, but parking lots are all closed, and anyway, we are too slothful.

Peter

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

1. The importance of “our group”. When times are hard, our group is primary. When times are disastrous, group loyalty disintegrates. When famine strikes, one will even eat one’s children. Nothing has changed. Perhaps, someday, they will really engineer human genetic make-up. Then the degrees of villainy will Really shine.
Peter Grenell

 

 

2. Hollywood is a potential gold mine for anthropologists because it’s the only culture in the world where educated and rich and powerful people have the mind-set and manners of Southern white trash.
Burke, James Lee. Robicheaux: A Novel (p. 95). Simon & Schuster.

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

BOO-BOO the BARKING DOG and POOKIE spend a pleasant Sunday morning in bed.

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 24 Joey 0009. (April 15,2020)

“Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.”
          Will Rogers (He made this comment about 90 years ago. Sometimes nothing changes)

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN SELF-QUARANTINE:

Today is the fortieth day of our self-quarantine. It began like most of my days do now, quarantine or not, with my usual breakfast followed by sitting in the reclining chair to watch the mornings news. What differed now was the recognition that, more or less, it also would be what the rest of our day would be like. We are beginning to run out of novel ways to entertain ourselves. I suppose by now that has become common for most of us stuck waiting for this pandemic to end. I feel like what those old mountain men must have felt like while being trapped all winter in a snow-covered cabin in the wilderness.

Having read the prior paragraph and checked back through previous posts, I noticed that I often begin these issues of T&T with either over-melodramatic tales of woe or irrational joy. Why not? After all, I am 80 years old and just woke up. Who the hell knows what I may feel like on any given morning.

Easter Sunday, same old, same old. Last night, I did not sleep well. My mind tossed about reviewing lengthy examples of what I would write here when I woke up. As expected, they are all gone now. Anyway, it is Easter.

For we Catholics (fallen away, apostate or believer), despite the vast number of feasts and holy days on the liturgical calendar, Christmas (Originally Saturnalia) and Easter ( Eostre or Ostara, a Germanic pagan sex goddess) stand out as the most revered (Renewal and redemption — the renewal of the sun and the start of planting. Yes, redemption for what you did during the winter can be redeemed by a good spring plowing.) Although one would think all children would prefer Christmas and the presents they received, I liked Easter better. For me, Christmas always was filled with disappointment and family strife. Easter, on the other hand, required only dressing up in new clothes you probably did not like, suffering through an over-long mass (loved the music and the smell of incense though) and no-one cared what you did thereafter.

 

B. Naida, Pookie, and Boo-Boo the Barking Dog Break Quarantine.

 

Anyway, on Easter Sunday we broke confinement. We were pretty stir-crazed, so, instead of church, we decided to drive into the country — to the Cosumnes River near the ranch where Naida used to live — the history of which was included in her remarkable books, The California Gold Trilogy (bridgehousebooks@gmail.com). It took only about fifteen minutes to get to the turn off onto the unpaved portion of Latrobe Road. Naida told me it was the main road from the train station at Latrobe (a town that no longer exists) to Sacramento. Along the road, several buildings and structures from the middle of the 19th Century that she mentioned in her books still existed.

Naida and Boo-Boo the Barking Dog standing in front of a typical Oak Woodland.

 

We expected the road to be empty but instead, there were a few motorbikes churning up dust and some cars with couples looking for someplace to park. The dirt road wound through a few enormous cattle ranches. Eventually, we also parked and got out of our car for a walk. The ranches have preserved the landscape as it more or less had been since the Native Americans roamed the area unmolested. The famous Oak Woodlands of California remain much as they did then. The grasslands, on which the woodlands stood, were cropped clean by the vast herds of Elk and other ruminants until they resembled manicured golf courses. They also do today trimmed by the grazing herds of cattle.

Almost everywhere along the road and in the meadows spring wildflowers bloomed — California poppies, dwarf and standard lupin, fiddle necks, and others.

         

       

 

We then drove through another large ranch that contained the remnant of the Gold Rush town of Michigan Bar. The miners in that town during the Gold Rush slaughtered the Native-Americans that lived on Naida and Bill’s old ranch located about a mile downstream on the Cosumnes River. Naida recalls the event in her novel, River of Red Gold. The novel also tells of the miners from Michigan Bar fighting a water war with the local ranches and killing Jared Sheldon a leader of the ranchers who were attempted to dam the river downstream to irrigate crops at Naida’s ranch site.

A View Across the Cosumnes River to the Remnant of the Old Gold Rush Town of Michigan Bar.

 

The Old Hotel at Michigan Bar.

 

While driving through the town two odd things happened. The first occurred when we parked to photograph a remaining tiny log cottage in which the miners lived (those that did not live in a tent or sleep in the open). When later I looked at the photo, I saw this:

I do not know what caused this but I love the result so I included it here.

The second strange event began while I was taking the above picture. Not too far from us, an old car was parked with what looked like one person sitting in the front seat enjoying the river view. The car appeared to be an old Hudson or Mercury, you know, all black with tiny windows resembling the Bat-mobile. Suddenly he jumped out of the car and walked off a few steps at stood there as we drove away.

We drove on to the edge of town and stopped to photograph some wildflowers exposing their passionate spring colors along the side of the road. Suddenly, I noticed the black car speeding down the road toward us. It passed, went up the road away, turned around, and stopped by our car. There was a young man and a young woman in the front seat. The young man rolled down his window and said, “Can you take our picture?”

Forgetting all about social distancing, I agreed. Then remembering and being embarrassed to now refuse, I grabbed some lens-wipes l had brought along to clean my glasses hoping they would somehow protect me. I got out of our car, took hold of his camera trying but failing to grasp it with the lens-wipes, and prepared to take their photograph.

The young man was skinny, with a bleached white complexion, scrawny brown beard and a few odd small blue poorly executed tattoos, The woman, who seemed annoyed about something, had a little more heft to her dark hair and brown skin. I guessed her to be a Latina or perhaps of Native American extraction. They insisted on being photographed sitting on the car bumper and showing the car behind them rather than the beautiful landscape all around.

After taking the photographs, I returned to the car convinced that I had broken all the rules of social distancing and that within the next two weeks I would surely die.

Following that bit of misadventure, we drove onto the massive 15,000 acre Van Vleck Ranch. The Van Vleck’s were friends of Naida and Bill. I was in state government when Gordon Van Vleck was Secretary of Resources. He was a pleasant man who tried to do the right thing in a Republican administration. Both Gordon and his older brother Stan had died while piloting his small plane over the ranch. Stan’s wife, Lynn, who inherited the ranch, shortly after his death had married a sheep rancher from Texas whose ranch was even larger than the Van Vleck’s. Naida wanted to visit them in order to see how her friend Lynn was doing because she had not been able to contact her for a while because she had misplaced her phone number. Lynn was at home and we, observing the proper social distancing protocols, had a delightful conversation.

Naida and Lynn observe social distancing across the fence.

The Van Vleck Ranch Center at dusk.
Following our visit, we drove back into the Enchanted Forest.

 

C. Back in the Enchanted Forest.

 

The next morning we woke up to discover that our portion of the subdivision was without water. We think that is because the HOC is installing a new water metering system. So, we spent the day just like we always do except today without water.

I think self-confinement is beginning to get to Naida. She has begun shouting at her smart-phone. It is not so much that she did not do it in the past. We all do now and then. I suspect that in the future will recognize a new health hazard — smart-phone fury syndrome. Anyway, it is now happening more often. Like my own rage at sitting here reading Facebook posts and watching endless news programs on why we are confined and our President’s whining about how it is not his fault. We could go for another ride somewhere. It will be good for both of us. Instead, we decided to spend today watching crime shows like “Forensic Files.” They did not improve our mood.

At about 5PM having grown tired of learning about the several gruesome ways of committing murder, noticing the sun was shining brightly and recognizing the meaning of the dog’s whining we decided to once again break containment and take a walk. This time we walked to the levee along the American River. The azaleas bloomed everywhere. There were a lot of people, mostly from nearby Sac State walking, running, bike riding, and generally enjoying this pleasant warm evening. We returned refreshed if a bit concerned that we may have snared a coronavirus or two along the way.

Azalea Madness in the Enchanted Forest.

 

D. OFF TO THE SANDHILL CRANE PRESERVE:

The following day we decided death by plague to be a superior method of meeting one’s maker than death by cable-news. So, we set off for the Sandhill Crane Reserve at some restored wetlands in the Delta near Gault. The sandhill cranes had long departed the wetlands and had returned to Canada for the summer. Nevertheless, I was eager to visit the restored wetland having a hand in promoting and developing early wetland restoration techniques over 40 years ago.

We took care this time to pack masks, food, drink, and rubber gloves. The wetland restoration was as well done as any I have seen and the wildlife surprisingly varied. We saw huge flocks of geese and other birds feeding in the wetland.

 

 

That’s all for now. Take care of yourselves. And, above all, remember to always keep on truckin…

 

 

 

DAILY FRACTURED FACTOID:

 

 

A Few More 5000 Year Old Zany Aphorisms From Sumer.

The fox, having urinated into the sea, said: “The depths of the sea are my urine!”

For a donkey there is no stench. For a donkey there is no washing with soap.

For his pleasure he got married. On his thinking it over he got divorced

To serve beer with unwashed hands, to spit without trampling upon it, to sneeze without covering it with dust, to kiss with the tongue at midday without providing shade, are abominations to Utu.

He came, he stayed a while; he finished, he did not stay put.

All day long, oh penis, you ejaculate as if you have blood inside you, and then you hang like a damp reed.

To appreciate the earth is for the gods; I am merely covered in dust.

Bitterness afflicted the anus; but it entered by way of the mouth.

The dog gnawing on a bone says to his anus: “This is going to hurt you!

Not only were the ancient Sumerians the creators of Civilization but they also seem to be the originators of slapstick comedy. That sounds reasonable. A civilization without humor cannot be considered civilized. Or, as Groucho said, “I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.” Or, even more appropriately, “It isn’t necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.” That is civilized. And, the abominations of Utu to you too.

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

A. On Top: A Few Brief and at Times Amusing Essays for Understanding Basic Science with Which to While-Away Your Time During Self-Confinement.

 

Part II

INFORMATION, A NUMBER — Biology and Physics.
Most people, scientists in particular, are happiest with a concept when they can put a number to it. Anything else, they feel, is too vague to be useful. ‘Information’ is a number, so that comfortable feeling of precision slips in without anyone noticing that it might be spurious.

Two sciences that have gone a long way down this slippery path are biology and physics. The discovery of the ‘linear’ molecular structure of DNA has given evolutionary biology a seductive metaphor for the complexity of organisms and how they evolve, namely: the genome of an organism represents the information that is required to construct it. The origin of this metaphor is Francis Crick and James Watson’s epic discovery that an organism’s DNA consists of ‘code words’ in the four molecular molecular ‘letters’ A C T G, which, you’ll recall, are the initials of the four possible ‘bases’. This description led to the inevitable metaphor that the genome contains information about the corresponding organism. Indeed, the genome is widely described as ‘containing the information needed to produce’ an organism.

The easy target here is the word ‘the’. There are innumerable reasons why a developing organism’s DNA does not determine the organism. These non-genomic influences on development are collectively known as ‘epigenetics’, and they range from subtle chemical tagging of DNA to the investment of parental care. The hard target is ‘information’. Certainly, the genome includes information in some sense: currently, an enormous international effort is being devoted to listing that information for the human genome, and also for other organisms such as rice, yeast, and the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. But notice how easily we slip into cavalier attitudes, for here the word ‘information’ refers to the human mind as receiver, not to the developing organism. organism. The Human Genome Project informs us, not organisms.

This flawed metaphor leads to the equally flawed conclusion that the genome explains the complexity of an organism in terms of the amount of information in its DNA code.

Humans are complicated because they have a long genome that carries a lot of information; nematodes are less complicated because their genome is shorter. However, this seductive idea can’t be true. For example, the Shannon information content of the human genome is smaller by several orders of magnitude than the quantity of information needed to describe the wiring of the neurons in the human brain. How can we be more complex than the information that describes us? And some amoebas have much longer genomes than ours, which takes us down several pegs as well as casting even more doubt on DNA as information.

Underlying the widespread belief that DNA complexity explains organism complexity (even though it clearly doesn’t) are two assumptions, two scientific stories that we tell ourselves. The first story is DNA as Blueprint, in which the genome is represented not just as an important source of control and guidance over biological development, but as the information needed to determine an organism. The second is DNA as Message, the ‘Book of Life’ metaphor.

Both stories oversimplify a beautifully complex interactive system. DNA as Blueprint says that the genome is a molecular ‘map’ of an organism. DNA as Message says that an organism can pass that map to the next generation by ‘sending’ the appropriate information.

Both of these are wrong, although they’re quite good science fiction — or, at least, interestingly bad science fiction with good special effects.

If there is a ‘receiver’ for the DNA ‘message’ it is not the next generation of the organism, which does not even exist at the time the ‘message’ is being ‘sent,’ but the ribosome, which is the molecular machine that turns DNA sequences (in a protein-coding gene) into protein. The ribosome is an essential part of the coding system; it functions as an ‘adapter,’ changing the sequence information along the DNA into an amino acid sequence in proteins. Every cell contains many ribosomes: we say ‘the’ because they are all identical. The metaphor of DNA as information has become almost universal, yet virtually nobody has suggested that the ribosome must be a vast repository of information. The structure of the ribosome is now known in high detail, and there is no sign of obvious ‘information-bearing’ structure like that in DNA. The ribosome seems to be a fixed ‘machine’. So where has the information gone? Nowhere. That’s the wrong question.

The root of these misunderstandings lies in a lack of attention to context. Science is very strong on content, but it has a habit of ignoring ‘external’ constraints on the systems being studied. Context is an important but neglected feature of information. It is so easy to focus on the combinatorial clarity of the message and to ignore the messy, complicated processes carried out by the receiver when it decodes the message. Context is crucial to the interpretation of messages: to their meaning. In his book The User Illusion Tor Nørretranders introduced the term exformation to capture the role of the context, and Douglas Hofstadter made the same general point in Gödel, Escher, Bach. Observe how, in the next chapter, the otherwise incomprehensible message ‘THEOSTRY’ becomes obvious when context is taken into account.

Instead of thinking about a DNA ‘blueprint’ encoding an organism, it’s easier to think of a CD encoding music. Biological development is like a CD that contains instructions for building a new CD-player. You can’t ‘read’ those instructions without already having one. If meaning does not depend upon context, then the code on the CD should have an invariant meaning, one that is independent of the player. Does it, though?

Compare two extremes: a ‘standard’ player that maps the digital code on the CD to music in the manner intended by the design engineers, and a jukebox. With a normal jukebox, the only message that you send is some money and a button-push; yet in the context of the jukebox these are interpreted as a specific several minutes’ worth of music. In principle, any numerical code can ‘mean’ any piece of music you wish; it just depends on how the jukebox is set up, that is, on the exformation associated with the jukebox’s design. Now consider a jukebox that reacts to a CD not by playing the tune that’s encoded on it, as a series of bits, but by interpreting that code as a number, and then playing some other CD to which that number has been assigned. For instance, suppose that a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony starts, in digital form, with 11001. That’s the number 25 in binary. So the jukebox reads the CD as ‘25,’ and looks for CD number 25, which we’ll assume is a recording of Charlie Parker playing jazz.

On the other hand, elsewhere in the jukebox is CD number 973, which actually is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Then a CD of Beethoven’s Fifth can be ‘read’ in two totally different ways: as a ‘pointer’ to Charlie Parker, or as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony itself (triggered by whichever CDs start with 973 in binary). Two contexts, two interpretations, two meanings, two results. Whether something is a message depends upon context, too: sender and receiver must agree upon a protocol for turning meanings into symbols and back again. Without this protocol a semaphore is just a few bits of wood that flap about.

Tree branches are bits of wood that flap about, too, but no one ever tries to decode the message being transmitted by a tree. Tree rings — the growth rings that appear when you saw through the trunk, one ring per year — are a different matter. We have learned to ‘decode’ their ‘message,’ about climate in the year 1066 and the like. A thick ring indicates a good year with lots of growth on the tree, probably warm and wet; a thin ring indicates a poor year, probably cold and dry. But the sequence of tree rings only became a message, only conveyed information, when we figured out the rules that link climate to tree growth. The tree didn’t send its message to us.

In biological development the protocol that gives meaning to the DNA message is the laws of physics and chemistry. That is where the exformation resides. However, it is unlikely that exformation can be quantified.

An organism’s complexity is not determined by the number of bases in its DNA sequence, but by the complexity of the actions initiated by those bases within the context of biological development. That is, by the meaning of the DNA ‘message’ when it is received by a finely tuned, up-and-running biochemical machine. This is where we gain an edge over those amoebas. Starting with an embryo that develops little flaps, and making a baby with those exquisite little hands, involves a series of processes that produce skeleton, muscles, skin, and so on. Each stage depends on the current state of the others, and all of them depend on contextual physical, biological, chemical and cultural processes.
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

I have come to accept that here on our earth there are no heroes only different degrees of villainy.

 

C. Today’s Poem:

 

The poem below is an excerpt from a much longer one written by Renee Verona that I discovered while wandering through the internet. The poem appears to be based, in part, on Dante’s Paradisio. Verona, a self-published poet, has an internet site (https://rarityofparadise.com/). In it, he periodically publishes his poems and requests donations to enable him to continue his work.

It is not unusual for poets to try to find novel means of publishing their work. Whitman used to wander through the bars of NY (as did Blake in London) selling handwritten copies of his poems, and Shelly often stood on busy street corners and tossed bundles of his poems into the carriages of the noble and wealthy as they drove by.

What attracted me to Verona was, admittedly, less his poems than his audacity and some of the artwork that accompanies the poetry.

 

From “Obsidian and Alabaster.”

 

Through the reflection of my obsidian blade, I saw a jester drowning in the sorrows belonging to his hopeless witticism

Scarlet to cover the tulips that laid foolish, herald a cut-throat… forsaken in this storm praying for thunderbolts to alleviate me,

Sharp lighting to scream, and there, bury me within an unholy divinity as devilish is my creed,

Yet this clown that smirks comforts thee

Thine eyes have witnessed much suffering, men art, but demons chasing eternity, misguided by prophecy… and he dares to laugh

The reckless Montague a saint unto I… to empathize…to seize, realize a moment of freedom when all is cursed by hypocrisy

(…To despise… To visualize )

God favors the trickster, giving unto him a horrible truth that he bears with a grin ( a glimpse at how the world primarily sins)

Watch as they abandon themselves all for epicurean philosophies,

Drink a bit more the red wine, corrupt your soul a little more to hold a few pieces of sol …More the greed…this obsidian grow thirsty

Unsated…hungry… the blood moon calls, onward towards the twilight where hellhounds roam free, festering, and feasting

Fair Jester,

I will be an angel unto thee, unto you that bards hysterically… a sad epigram life has become ( everlasting is the hologram)

Forever is nevermore, soon we will have our reckoning…upon the sun we horde, shadows epithetical to the moon

The forgotten, the vigilant defacing the vox populi, simple mercenaries that seek only to bloom, the evening to forbore…

 

D. Giants of History: The Old Sailor, Deep Sea Diver, World Traveler, ex-Pirate, and So On.

 

It is always a pleasure to receive communication from my old and dear friend. He used to live in Thailand but I think he may have returned to his beloved Virgin Islands. Here are his two most recent messages.

 

1. Am now at Walmart…”titusville” “old people struggling..to get inside…going to buy wine.”

2. Jerry _____ ..he was staying with pat. About the time when marcelle got pregnant…..dot and I were living in the slave quarters…..
Jerry would leave leave everyday “cleaned up” ..by 9 or so to work ..at the end of the day ..he would be back and we would meet upstairs .for drinks with Candeed. …he…would always COMPLAIN he could not get paid ..he would half to chase people to get paid….every day the same working hard and having trouble getting paid …this went on for months ..
…Guess what his job was

HE was selling Coke at FAT CITY
…..Dot and I moving to FRENCHTOWN>

 

Life in the Caribbean must very exciting.

 

 

E. Useful Simile of the Week:

“…like some mad weaving machine or a squadron of Yossarians with middle-ear trouble.”

          Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“The most important role of the tribal Make-a-Human kit is to provide the tribe with its own collective identity, making it possible for it to act as a unit. Tradition is good for such purposes; sense is optional. All religions are strong on tradition, but many are weak on sense, at least if you take their stories literally. Nevertheless, religion is absolutely central to most cultures’ Make-a-Human kit.”

“The growth of human civilization is a story of the assembly of ever-larger units, knitted together by some version of that Make-a-Human kit. At first, children were taught what they must do to be accepted as members of the family group. Then they were taught what they must do to be accepted as members of the tribe. (Believing apparently ridiculous things was a very effective test: the naïve outsider would all too readily betray a lack of belief, or would simply have no idea what the appropriate belief was. Is it permitted to pluck a chicken before dark on Wednesday? The tribe knew, the outsider did not, and since any reasonable person would guess ‘yes’, the tribal priesthood could go a long way by making the accepted answer ‘no’.) After that, the same kind of thing happened for the local baron’s serfs, for the village, the town, the city and the nation. We spread the net of True Human Beings.”
          Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 24 Joey 0009. (April 15, 2020)

 

“Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.”
          Will Rogers (He made this comment about 90 years ago. Sometimes nothing changes)

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN SELF-QUARANTINE:

 
Today is the fortieth day of our self-quarantine. It began like most of my days do now, quarantine or not, with my usual breakfast and then sitting in the reclining chair to watch the mornings news. What differed today was my recognition that, more or less, it also would be what the rest of our day would be like. We are beginning to run out of novel ways to entertain ourselves. I suppose by now that has become common for most of us stuck waiting for this pandemic to end. I feel like what those old mountain men must have felt like while being trapped all winter in a snow-covered cabin in the wilderness.

Having read the prior paragraph and checked back through previous posts, I noticed that I often begin these issues of T&T with either over-melodramatic tales of woe or irrational joy. Why not? After all, I 80 years old and just woke up. Who the hell knows what I may feel like on any given morning.

Easter Sunday, same old, same old. Last night, I did not sleep well. My mind tossed about reviewing lengthy examples of what I would write here when I woke up. As expected, they are all gone now. Anyway, it is Easter.

For we Catholics (fallen away, apostate or believer), despite the vast number of feasts and holy days on the liturgical calendar, Christmas (Originally Saturnalia) and Easter ( Eostre or Ostara, a Germanic pagan sex goddess) stand out as the most revered (Renewal and redemption — the renewal of the sun and the start of planting. Yes, redemption for what you did during the winter can be satisfied by a good spring plowing.) Although one would think all children would prefer Christmas and the presents they received, I liked Easter better. For me, Christmas always was filled with disappointment and family strife. Easter, on the other hand, required only dressing up in the new clothes you probably did not like, suffering through an over-long mass (loved the music and the smell of incense though) and no-one cared what you did thereafter.

 

B. Naida, Pookie, and Boo-Boo the Barking Dog Break Quarantine.

 

Anyway, on Easter Sunday we broke confinement. We were pretty stir-crazed, so, instead of church, we decided to drive into the country — to the Cosumnes River near the ranch where Naida used to live — the history of which was included in her remarkable books, The California Gold Trilogy (bridgehousebooks@gmail.com). It took only about fifteen minutes to get to the turn-off onto the unpaved portion of Latrobe Road. Naida told me it was the main road from the train station at Latrobe (a town that no longer exists) to Sacramento in the mid-1900s. Along the road, several buildings and structures still existed from the middle of the 19th Century that she mentioned in her books.

We expected the road to be empty but instead, there were a few motorbikes churning up dust and some cars with couples looking for someplace to park. The dirt road wound through a few enormous cattle ranches. Eventually, we also parked and got out of our car for a walk. The ranches have preserved the landscape as it more or less had been since the Native Americans roamed the area unmolested. The famous Oak Woodlands of California remain much as they did then. The grasslands, on which the woodlands stood, were cropped clean by the vast herds of Elk and other ruminants and resembled manicured golf courses. They also do so today except now they are trimmed by the grazing herds of cattle.

Naida and Boo-Boo the Barking Dog standing in front of a typical Oak Woodland.

 

 
Almost everywhere along the road and in the meadows spring wildflowers bloomed — California poppies, dwarf and standard lupin, fiddle necks, and others.
 

 

We then drove through another large ranch that contained the remnant of the Gold Rush town of Michigan Bar. The miners in that town during the Gold Rush slaughtered the Native-Americans that lived on Naida and Bill’s old ranch located about a mile downstream on the Cosumnes River. Naida recalls the event in her novel, River of Red Gold. The novel also tells of the miners from Michigan Bar fighting a water war with the local ranches and killing Jared Sheldon a leader of the ranchers who were attempted to dam the river downstream to irrigate crops at Naida’s ranch site.

A View Across the Cosumnes River to the Remnant of the Old Gold Rush Town of Michigan Bar.

 

The old hotel in Michigan Bar.

 

While driving through the town two odd things happened. The first occurred when we parked to photograph a remaining tiny log cottage in which the miners lived (those that did not live in a tent or sleep in the open). When later I looked at the photo, I saw this:

 
I do not know what caused this but I love the result so I included it here.

The second strange event began while I was taking the above picture. Not too far from us, an old car was parked with what looked like one person sitting in the front seat enjoying the river view. The car appeared to be an old Hudson or Mercury, you know, all black with tiny windows resembling the Bat-mobile. Suddenly he jumped out of the car and walked off a few steps at stood there as we drove away.

We drove on to the edge of town and stopped to photograph some wildflowers exposing their passionate spring colors along the side of the road. Suddenly, I noticed the black car speeding down the road toward us. It passed, went up the road away, turned around, and stopped by our car. There was a young man and a young woman in the front seat. The young man rolled down his window and said, “Can you take our picture?”

Forgetting all about social distancing, I agreed. Then remembering and being embarrassed to now refuse, I grabbed some lens-wipes l had brought along to clean my glasses hoping they would somehow protect me. I got out of our car, took hold of his camera trying but failing to grasp it with the lens-wipes, and prepared to take their photograph.

The young man was skinny, with a bleached white complexion, scrawny brown beard and a few odd small blue poorly executed tattoos, The woman, who seemed annoyed about something, had a little more heft to her, dark hair, and brown skin. I guessed her to be a Latina or perhaps of Native American extraction. They insisted on being photographed sitting on the car bumper and showing the car behind then rather than the beautiful landscape all around.

After taking the photographs, I returned to the car convinced that I had broken all the rules of social distancing and that within the next two weeks I would surely die.

Following that bit of misadventure, we drove onto the massive 15,000 acres Van Vleck Ranch. The Van Vleck’s were friends of Naida and Bill. I was in state government when Gordon Van Vleck was Secretary of Resources. He was a pleasant man who tried to do the right thing in a Republican administration. Both Gordon and his older brother Stan had die Stan while piloting his small plane over the ranch. Stan’s wife, Lynn, who inherited the ranch, shortly after his death had married a sheep rancher from Texas whose ranch was even larger than the Van Vleck’s. Naida wanted to visit them in order to see how her friend Lynn was doing because she had not been able to contact her for a while because she had misplaced her phone number. Lynn was at home and we, observing the proper social distancing protocols, had a delightful conversation.

Naida and Lynn observe social distancing across the fence.

 

The Van Vleck Ranch Center at dusk.

 
Following our visit, we drove back into the Enchanted Forest.

 

C. Back in the Enchanted Forest.

 

The next morning we woke up to discover that our portion of the subdivision was without water. We think that is because the HOC is installing a new water metering system. So, we spent the day just like we always do except today without water.

I think self-confinement is beginning to get to Naida. She has begun shouting at her smart-phone. It is not so much that she did not do it in the past. We all do now and then. I suspect that in the future we will recognize a new health hazard — smart-phone fury syndrome. Anyway, it is now happening more often. Like my own rage at sitting here reading Facebook posts and watching endless news programs on why we are confined and our President’s whining about how it is not his fault. We could go for another ride somewhere. It will be good for both of us. Instead, we decided to spend today watching crime shows like “Forensic Files.” They did not improve our mood.

At about 5PM having grown tired of learning about the several gruesome ways of committing murder, noticing the sun was shining brightly, and recognizing the meaning of the dog’s whining we decided to once again break containment and take a walk. This time we walked to the levee along the American River. The azaleas bloomed everywhere. There were a lot of people, mostly from nearby Sac State walking, running, bike riding, and generally enjoying this pleasant warm evening. We returned refreshed if a bit concerned that we may have snared a coronavirus or two along the way.

Azalea Madness in the Enchanted Forest.

 

D. OFF TO THE SANDHILL CRANE PRESERVE:

 

 

The following day we decided death by plague to be a superior method of meeting one’s maker than death by cable-news. So, we set off for the Sandhill Crane Preserve at some restored wetlands in the Delta near Gault. The sandhill cranes had long departed the wetlands and had returned to Canada for the summer. Nevertheless, I was eager to visit the restored wetland having a hand in promoting and developing early wetland restoration techniques over 40 years ago.

We took care this time to pack masks, food, drink, and rubber gloves. The wetland restoration was as well done as any I have seen and the wildlife surprisingly varied. We saw huge flocks of geese and other birds feeding in the wetland.

 

 

 
That’s all for now. Take care of yourselves. And, above all, remember to always keep on truckin…

 

 

 

 

DAILY FRACTURED FACTOID:

 

 
A Few More 5000 Year Old Zany Aphorisms From Sumer.

The fox, having urinated into the sea, said: “The depths of the sea are my urine!”

For a donkey there is no stench. For a donkey there is no washing with soap.

For his pleasure he got married. On his thinking it over he got divSumerorced

To serve beer with unwashed hands, to spit without trampling upon it, to sneeze without covering it with dust, to kiss with the tongue at midday without providing shade, are abominations to Utu.

He came, he stayed a while; he finished, he did not stay put.

All-day long, oh penis, you ejaculate as if you have blood inside you, and then you hang like a damp reed.

To appreciate the earth is for the gods; I am merely covered in dust.

Bitterness afflicted the anus, but it entered by way of the mouth.

The dog gnawing on a bone says to his anus: “This is going to hurt you!”

 

 

Not only were the ancient Sumerians the creators of Civilization but they also seem to be the originators of slapstick comedy. That sounds reasonable. A civilization without humor cannot be considered civilized. Or, as Groucho said, “I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.” Or, even more appropriately, “It isn’t necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.” That is civilized. And, the abominations of Utu to you too.

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

A. On Top: A Few Brief and at Times Amusing Essays for Understanding Basic Science with Which to While-Away Your Time During Self-Confinement.

 

Part II

 

INFORMATION, A NUMBER — Biology and Physics.
Most people, scientists in particular, are happiest with a concept when they can put a number to it. Anything else, they feel, is too vague to be useful. ‘Information’ is a number, so that comfortable feeling of precision slips in without anyone noticing that it might be spurious.

Two sciences that have gone a long way down this slippery path are biology and physics. The discovery of the ‘linear’ molecular structure of DNA has given evolutionary biology a seductive metaphor for the complexity of organisms and how they evolve, namely: the genome of an organism represents the information that is required to construct it. The origin of this metaphor is Francis Crick and James Watson’s epic discovery that an organism’s DNA consists of ‘code words’ in the four molecular molecular ‘letters’ A C T G, which, you’ll recall, are the initials of the four possible ‘bases’. This description led to the inevitable metaphor that the genome contains information about the corresponding organism. Indeed, the genome is widely described as ‘containing the information needed to produce’ an organism.

The easy target here is the word ‘the’. There are innumerable reasons why a developing organism’s DNA does not determine the organism. These non-genomic influences on development are collectively known as ‘epigenetics’, and they range from subtle chemical tagging of DNA to the investment of parental care. The hard target is ‘information’. Certainly, the genome includes information in some sense: currently an enormous international effort is being devoted to listing that information for the human genome, and also for other organisms such as rice, yeast, and the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. But notice how easily we slip into cavalier attitudes, for here the word ‘information’ refers to the human mind as receiver, not to the developing organism. organism. The Human Genome Project informs us, not organisms.

This flawed metaphor leads to the equally flawed conclusion that the genome explains the complexity of an organism in terms of the amount of information in its DNA code.

Humans are complicated because they have a long genome that carries a lot of information; nematodes are less complicated because their genome is shorter. However, this seductive idea can’t be true. For example, the Shannon information content of the human genome is smaller by several orders of magnitude than the quantity of information needed to describe the wiring of the neurons in the human brain. How can we be more complex than the information that describes us? And some amoebas have much longer genomes than ours, which takes us down several pegs as well as casting even more doubt on DNA as information.

Underlying the widespread belief that DNA complexity explains organism complexity (even though it clearly doesn’t) are two assumptions, two scientific stories that we tell ourselves. The first story is DNA as Blueprint, in which the genome is represented not just as an important source of control and guidance over biological development, but as the information needed to determine an organism. The second is DNA as Message, the ‘Book of Life’ metaphor.

Both stories oversimplify a beautifully complex interactive system. DNA as Blueprint says that the genome is a molecular ‘map’ of an organism. DNA as Message says that an organism can pass that map to the next generation by ‘sending’ the appropriate information.

Both of these are wrong, although they’re quite good science fiction — or, at least, interestingly bad science fiction with good special effects.

If there is a ‘receiver’ for the DNA ‘message’ it is not the next generation of the organism, which does not even exist at the time the ‘message’ is being ‘sent,’ but the ribosome, which is the molecular machine that turns DNA sequences (in a protein-coding gene) into protein. The ribosome is an essential part of the coding system; it functions as an ‘adapter,’ changing the sequence information along the DNA into an amino acid sequence in proteins. Every cell contains many ribosomes: we say ‘the’ because they are all identical. The metaphor of DNA as information has become almost universal, yet virtually nobody has suggested that the ribosome must be a vast repository of information. The structure of the ribosome is now known in high detail, and there is no sign of obvious ‘information-bearing’ structure like that in DNA. The ribosome seems to be a fixed ‘machine’. So where has the information gone? Nowhere. That’s the wrong question.

The root of these misunderstandings lies in a lack of attention to context. Science is very strong on content, but it has a habit of ignoring ‘external’ constraints on the systems being studied. Context is an important but neglected feature of information. It is so easy to focus on the combinatorial clarity of the message and to ignore the messy, complicated processes carried out by the receiver when it decodes the message. Context is crucial to the interpretation of messages: to their meaning. In his book The User Illusion Tor Nørretranders introduced the term exformation to capture the role of the context, and Douglas Hofstadter made the same general point in Gödel, Escher, Bach. Observe how, in the next chapter, the otherwise incomprehensible message ‘THEOSTRY’ becomes obvious when context is taken into account.

Instead of thinking about a DNA ‘blueprint’ encoding an organism, it’s easier to think of a CD encoding music. Biological development is like a CD that contains instructions for building a new CD-player. You can’t ‘read’ those instructions without already having one. If meaning does not depend upon context, then the code on the CD should have an invariant meaning, one that is independent of the player. Does it, though?

Compare two extremes: a ‘standard’ player that maps the digital code on the CD to music in the manner intended by the design engineers, and a jukebox. With a normal jukebox, the only message that you send is some money and a button-push; yet in the context of the jukebox these are interpreted as a specific several minutes’ worth of music. In principle, any numerical code can ‘mean’ any piece of music you wish; it just depends on how the jukebox is set up, that is, on the exformation associated with the jukebox’s design. Now consider a jukebox that reacts to a CD not by playing the tune that’s encoded on it, as a series of bits, but by interpreting that code as a number, and then playing some other CD to which that number has been assigned. For instance, suppose that a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony starts, in digital form, with 11001. That’s the number 25 in binary. So the jukebox reads the CD as ‘25,’ and looks for CD number 25, which we’ll assume is a recording of Charlie Parker playing jazz.

On the other hand, elsewhere in the jukebox is CD number 973, which actually is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Then a CD of Beethoven’s Fifth can be ‘read’ in two totally different ways: as a ‘pointer’ to Charlie Parker, or as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony itself (triggered by whichever CDs start with 973 in binary). Two contexts, two interpretations, two meanings, two results. Whether something is a message depends upon context, too: sender and receiver must agree upon a protocol for turning meanings into symbols and back again. Without this protocol a semaphore is just a few bits of wood that flap about.

Tree branches are bits of wood that flap about, too, but no one ever tries to decode the message being transmitted by a tree. Tree rings — the growth rings that appear when you saw through the trunk, one ring per year — are a different matter. We have learned to ‘decode’ their ‘message,’ about climate in the year 1066 and the like. A thick ring indicates a good year with lots of growth on the tree, probably warm and wet; a thin ring indicates a poor year, probably cold and dry. But the sequence of tree rings only became a message, only conveyed information, when we figured out the rules that link climate to tree growth. The tree didn’t send its message to us.

In biological development the protocol that gives meaning to the DNA message is the laws of physics and chemistry. That is where the exformation resides. However, it is unlikely that exformation can be quantified.

An organism’s complexity is not determined by the number of bases in its DNA sequence, but by the complexity of the actions initiated by those bases within the context of biological development. That is, by the meaning of the DNA ‘message’ when it is received by a finely tuned, up-and-running biochemical machine. This is where we gain an edge over those amoebas. Starting with an embryo that develops little flaps, and making a baby with those exquisite little hands, involves a series of processes that produce skeleton, muscles, skin, and so on. Each stage depends on the current state of the others, and all of them depend on contextual physical, biological, chemical and cultural processes.
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

I have come to accept that here on our earth there are no heroes only different degrees of villainy.

 

 

C. Today’s Poem:

 

The poem below is an excerpt from a much longer one written by Renee Verona that I discovered while wandering through the internet. The poem appears to be based, in part, on Dante’s Paradisio. Verona, a self-published poet, has an internet site (https://rarityofparadise.com/). In it, he periodically publishes his poems and requests donations to enable him to continue his work.

It is not unusual for poets to try to find novel means of publishing their work. Whitman used to wander through the bars of NY (as did Blake in London) selling handwritten copies of his poems, and Shelly often stood on busy street corners and tossed bundles of his poems into the carriages of the noble and wealthy as they drove by.

What attracted me to Verona was, admittedly, less his poems than his audacity and some of the artwork that accompanies the poetry.

From “Obsidian and Alabaster.”

Through the reflection of my obsidian blade, I saw a jester drowning in the sorrows belonging to his hopeless witticism

Scarlet to cover the tulips that laid foolish, herald a cut-throat… forsaken in this storm praying for thunderbolts to alleviate me,

Sharp lighting to scream, and there, bury me within an unholy divinity as devilish is my creed,

Yet this clown that smirks comforts thee

Thine eyes have witnessed much suffering, men art, but demons chasing eternity, misguided by prophecy… and he dares to laugh

The reckless Montague a saint unto I… to empathize…to seize, realize a moment of freedom when all is cursed by hypocrisy

(…To despise… To visualize )

God favors the trickster, giving unto him a horrible truth that he bears with a grin ( a glimpse at how the world primarily sins)

Watch as they abandon themselves all for epicurean philosophies,

Drink a bit more the red wine, corrupt your soul a little more to hold a few pieces of sol …More the greed…this obsidian grow thirsty

Unsated…hungry… the blood moon calls, onward towards the twilight where hellhounds roam free, festering, and feasting

Fair Jester,

I will be an angel unto thee, unto you that bards hysterically… a sad epigram life has become ( everlasting is the hologram)

Forever is nevermore, soon we will have our reckoning…upon the sun we horde, shadows epithetical to the moon

The forgotten, the vigilant defacing the vox populi, simple mercenaries that seek only to bloom, the evening to forbore…

 

D. Giants of History: The Old Sailor, Deep Sea Diver, World Traveler, ex-Pirate, and So On.

 

It is always a pleasure to receive communication from my old and dear friend. He used to live in Thailand but I think he may have returned to his beloved Virgin Islands. Here are his two most recent messages

1. Am now at Walmart…”titusville” “old people struggling..to get inside…going to buy wine.”

2. Jerry _____ ..he was staying with pat. About the time when marcelle got pregnant…..dot and I were living in the slave quarters…..
Jerry would leave leave everyday “cleaned up” ..by 9 or so to work ..at the end of the day ..he would be back and we would meet upstairs .for drinks with Candeed. …he…would always COMPLAIN he could not get paid ..he would half to chase people to get paid….every day the same working hard and having trouble getting paid …this went on for months ..
…Guess what his job was

HE was selling Coke at FAT CITY
…..Dot and I moving to FRENCHTOWN>

Life in the Caribbean must very exciting.

 

E. Useful Simile of the Week:

 

“…like some mad weaving machine or a squadron of Yossarians with middle-ear trouble.”

Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

“The most important role of the tribal Make-a-Human kit is to provide the tribe with its own collective identity, making it possible for it to act as a unit. Tradition is good for such purposes; sense is optional. All religions are strong on tradition, but many are weak on sense, at least if you take their stories literally. Nevertheless, religion is absolutely central to most cultures’ Make-a-Human kit.”

“The growth of human civilization is a story of the assembly of ever-larger units, knitted together by some version of that Make-a-Human kit. At first, children were taught what they must do to be accepted as members of the family group. Then they were taught what they must do to be accepted as members of the tribe. (Believing apparently ridiculous things was a very effective test: the naïve outsider would all too readily betray a lack of belief, or would simply have no idea what the appropriate belief was. Is it permitted to pluck a chicken before dark on Wednesday? The tribe knew, the outsider did not, and since any reasonable person would guess ‘yes’, the tribal priesthood could go a long way by making the accepted answer ‘no’.) After that, the same kind of thing happened for the local baron’s serfs, for the village, the town, the city and the nation. We spread the net of True Human Beings.”
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 23 Joey 0009 (April 11, 2020)

 

“Trump is… a gang boss, born and bred. Brought up to screw civil society all ways up, not be part of it.”
          le Carré, John. Agent Running in the Field (p. 222). Penguin Publishing Group.

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES DURING THE PLAGUE:

 

 

I read somewhere that there is no reality only story — no matter, no energy, no universe, no love, no sorrow, no up or down — only stories. So, what is my story? This is especially pertinent now as I sit here during the great self-confinement of 2020. Who knows? Who cares? I only want to get back to a different story. One I used to know, with people I know. With goals other than simply waiting it all out. Does this make me a delusional bundle of narrative? You know, between you me and the storyteller? I don’t really care. I want out.

This morning I woke up earlier than I have for the past week or so. It was sunny outside following a couple of days of rain. That lifted my spirits. That and the fact that I had finally slept well after a few nights of disturbing dreams.

After screwing around on my smartphone a while (you know checking messages, reviewing the weather reports, sport stories, Facebook posts and a porn site or two) I got up, did significantly less than half of the exercises prescribed for by the physical therapist, I took my pills (Those that I have left) brushed my teeth, patted down my hair and dressed. I then set off downstairs for breakfast.

Naida, as usual, had arisen much earlier than I in response to Boo-boo the Barking Dogs barking. She went downstairs with him to let him out into our backyard to do his thing. I have come to believe this is more convenient and neighborly than putting the dog on a leash and taking him out to do his thing on the neighbor’s property.

After that, as usual, she, still in her housecoat, made her coffee and sat in her recliner to watch the morning news.

I strolled down the stairs slammed open the doors to the study where she was quietly sitting at peace enjoying her coffee with the dog on her lap and I belted out:

Hello my baby, hello my honey
Hello my ragtime gal
Send me a kiss by wire,
Baby, my heart’s on fire,

I do this routine at least four times a week (sometimes, but not often, I change the tune). I do not really know how this goes off with Naida. She always smiles and gives me a kiss when I bend my head down to receive one. Boo-boo the Barking Dog on the other hand generally scampers off her lap and hides under the desk. There are critics everywhere.

 

It rained for a day or two, I do not recall for how long. I have a vague recollection of writing in here about the minutia of our lives, but, if I had, it clearly has disappeared, most likely caused by the imps of the computer, those arbiters and critics of our life nowadays.

Anyway, today the seventh day of April the sun came out. The washing away of the pollen and civilizations grit (with an assist from social distancing) allowed nature to shamefully but happily expose itself with sparkling clarity. The tree on my back yard whose colors, the vibrancy of which, I rely upon to tell me that the glory of the day was worth experiencing gleamed in splendor.

 

Frank called from Florida shortly after I had settled into my recliner with my usual breakfast of coffee and toasted English muffins slathered in butter and marmalade. He, like the rest of us, has settled into self-imprisonment comfortably having had the pleasure of experiencing its, joys, sorrows, and tedium in a far different circumstance a number of years ago. Like me and you and most of the world, he spends a lot of his time before the television viewing movies like a movie critic on steroids. He suggested I see “The Godfather of Harlem” a series of which about 10 episodes have been shown. It stars Forest Whitaker as the Godfather. He said it portrays many of the Italian Mafiosi I have met (Like Frank Costello) in actual historical events. He also recommended “Machine Gun Preacher,” a movie described as “The true story of Pennsylvanian [USA] biker Sam Childers, who overcame a life of drugs and violence to embrace Christianity and wage a 13-year war to free enslaved child in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan, Africa.”

After exchanging stories of our current confinement, I hung up and looking out of the into at the splendor outside (a good name for a television movie), I suggested to Naida that we break out of our socially imposed confinement, leash up Boo-boo the Barking Dog, jump in the car and drive to Discovery Park. And we did.

Discovery Park lies on a low bluff at the confluence of the Sacramento and American River. The Native Americans called the area Mo’mol, (pronounced mok mal) The Big Drink.

Someone Fishing at the Confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers. (The clear waters American River coming from the right meets the muddy waters of the Sacramento. The buildings of downtown Sacramento loom in the distance.)

 

The Maidu group of Native-Americans inhabited the area of Sacramento around the Park prior to the arrival of the Spanish. According to Naida, this area in effect could be considered a Native-American town because of the number of villages supported by the enormous fecundity of the immediate area.

The park area itself during this period, according to Naida, was park-like, a meadow with huge trees of Black Walnut, Cottonwoods, Valley Oaks, and Sycamores growing around.

Naida and Boo-boo the Barking Dog resting by the Massive Trunk of a Cottonwood.

 

Large trees still dot the landscape.

 

The Native-Americans from the villages would often gather on the meadow for festivals and other get-togethers. Naida said that when the first Spanish explorers arrived at the confluence of the rivers and noticed its park-like visage and grazing elk one of them exclaimed that it was so beautiful it was like a sacrament of God. Hence the name Sacramento was born.

 

Today the park is a bit unkempt. Still, there were hikers, bicycle riders, and a few people just lounging around, all social distancing and enjoying the day. Many of Sacramento’s homeless were there also. They too were social distancing from one another and everyone else.

 

 

 

That evening after returning home, I was exhausted and irritable. Trying to figure out what is going on after going through the usual, I suddenly remembered that I had run out of my happy pills several days ago. I had started taking them about 12 years or more ago because I was fed up with my inability to control myself when I was under stress or fatigued and convinced my psychoanalyst at the time that pills were quicker and less expensive than he was. Naida told me that Bill had been taking similar medicine to deal with some of the physical and psychological effects of his last months and she still had some. So I will be taking some tonight if we can find them.

The next day, I arranged for my original prescriptions to be filled. I was still feeling bad so Naida drove me to the Walgreens in El Dorado Hills to pick up those prescriptions and after that, we collected our groceries at the pickup spot at the Raley’s near our home.

On Thursday I drove into SF for my immunotherapy appointment. After parking, I put on my face mask. As I entered the Hospital everyone else was also wearing a mask and it was strangely quiet. After the treatment Drove to Peter’s house where Peter, Barrie, and I had a brief social distancing discussion through the car window. Then I drove home.

Friday was a day for naps.

 

 

 

 

DAILY FACTOIDS:

 

 

 

A. Gravity:

 

 

“The gravitational attraction exerted by a single doctor at a distance of 6 inches is roughly twice that of Jupiter at its closest point to the Earth.”
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

 

B. Burning Wood:

 

 

Burning wood gains weight.
(This occurs because the oxygen added is heavier than the heat released. That is also why the bucket of ash the morning after feels so heavy as you take it out to the trash.)

 

 

C. Race, Racism, Thomas Jefferson, and Sally Hemmings:

 

 

“Race exists, of course, but its reality is not primarily biological. The reality of race is in the domain of the symbolic. Race is most real in the sense that, as is well-known, Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his black slave, Sally Hemings. Yet according to the only extant descriptions of her, Sally Hemings had light skin and long, straight dark hair. Why? Because only one of her four grandparents was African. She was a slave because of her symbolic ancestry, not because of her biological ancestry or her appearance.”
(http://anthropomics2.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-coined-phrase-human-biodiversity.html)

 

 

D. Eternal Truths From Sumer.

 

 

Within a collection of proverbs written in ancient Sumer in about 2300 BCE, the following was discovered:

“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband’s embrace.”

“To be sick is acceptable; to be pregnant is painful; but to be pregnant and sick is just too much.”

“In respect of both expenditures and capital goods, the anus is well supplied.”

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

A. On Top: A Few Brief and at Times Amusing Essays for Understanding Basic Science with Which to While-Away Your Time During Self-Confinement. PART I

 

 

Introduction:

During this period of self-confinement as we begin to discover electronic entertainment remains inadequate to fill our thirst for distraction, I thought it may be interesting to some to learn of developments in modern science written in a simple, entertaining, and understandable way. To that I turn to the beloved Sir Terry Pratchett, the recently deceased O.B.E. and author of the many, many volume Discworld series who with his able coconspirators, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, produced a four-volume work entitled “The Science of Discworld” in which they attempt to explain and compare the science of Discworld (none only magic) and our earth, Roundworld, (no magic only science) and the universe in which it sits.

Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the bestselling Discworld series. He has been appointed OBE and a Knight Bachelor in recognition of his services to literature. Ian Stewart is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick, and the author of numerous books on math and popular science, as well as science fiction novels coauthored with Jack Cohen. Jack Cohen is a professor of biology and honorary professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick.
The odd chapters of the four novels relate the adventures of the Wizards of the Unseen University located on Discworld in the center of that world’s largest, most dense, and least desirable place to live Ankh Morepark. They created the Roundworld universe which is contained within a small glass globe at Unseen University either in the offices of the Archchancellor of Unseen University Mustrum Ridcully, or in the subterranean offices next to or behind the boiler that provides heat and other things to the university occupied by the Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, Rincewind, or in the library presided over by the librarian. a 300-pound Orangutang named Ook because that was the only recognizable word he spoke. These Wizards and others periodically travel to their creation, Roundworld, attempting to right whatever they think has gone wrong and usually failing at it.

The even chapters, written for the most part by Stewart and Cohen, attempt to describe, quite successfully I believe, the mysterious science of Roundworld.

Although the four books explore a huge variety of things odd and mundane, this post entitled Part I contains excerpts only from chapter 18 of the second book in the Science of Discworld entitled, The Globe.

 

 

                                                    PART I. —

 

Is information a concept, or a number? Is it meaning or message or is the medium the message?

 

 

INFORMATION IS A CONCEPT —

 

Information Technology.
Information is not a thing, but a concept. However, the human tendency to reify concepts into things has led many scientists to treat information as if it is genuinely real. And some physicists are starting to wonder whether the universe, too, might be made from information. How did this viewpoint come about, and how sensible is it?

Humanity acquired the ability to quantify information in 1948, when the mathematician-turned-engineer Claude Shannon found a way to define how much information is contained in a message — he preferred the term signal — sent from a transmitter to a receiver using some kind of code. By a signal, Shannon meant a series of binary digits (‘bits’, 0 and 1) of the kind that is ubiquitous in modern computers and communication devices… By a code, he meant a specific procedure that transforms an original signal into another one. The simplest code is the trivial ‘leave it alone’; more sophisticated codes can be used to detect or even correct transmission errors. In the engineering applications, codes are a central issue, but for our purposes here we can ignore them and assume the message is sent ‘in plain’.

Shannon’s information measure puts a number to the extent to which our uncertainty about the bits that make up a signal is reduced by what we receive. In the simplest case, where the message is a string of 0s and 1s and every choice is equally likely, the amount of information in a message is entirely straightforward: it is the total number of binary digits. Each digit that we receive reduces our uncertainty about that particular digit (is it 0 or 1?) to certainty (‘it’s a 1’, say) but tells us nothing about the others, so we have received one bit of information. Do this a thousand times and we have received a thousand bits of information. Easy. The point of view here is that of a communications engineer, and the unstated assumption is that we are interested in the bit-by-bit content of the signal, not in its meaning.

So the message 111111111111111 contains 15 bits of information, and so does the message 111001101101011. But Shannon’s concept of information is not the only possible one. More recently, Gregory Chaitin has pointed out that you can quantify the extent to which a signal contains patterns. The way to do this is to focus not on the size of the message, but on the size of a computer program, or algorithm, that can generate it. For instance, the first of the above messages can be created by the algorithm ‘every digit is a 1’. But there is no simple way to describe the second message, other than to write it down bit by bit. So these two messages have the same Shannon information content, but from Chaitin’s point of view the second contains far more ‘algorithmic information’ than the first.

Another way to say this is that Chaitin’s concept focuses on the extent to which the message is ‘compressible’. If a short program can generate a long message, then we can transmit the program instead of the message and save time and money. Such a program ‘compresses’ the message. When your computer takes a big graphics file — a photograph, say — and turns it into a much smaller file in JPEG format, it has used a standard algorithm to compress the information in the original file. This is possible because photographs contain numerous patterns: lots of repetitions of blue pixels for the sky, for instance. The more incompressible a signal is, the more information in Chaitin’s sense it contains. And the way to compress a signal is to describe the patterns that make it up. This implies that incompressible signals are random, have no pattern, yet contain the most information. In one way this is reasonable: when each successive bit is maximally unpredictable, you learn more from knowing what it is. If the signal reads 111111111111111 then there is no great surprise if the next bit turns out to be 1; but if the signal reads 111001101101011 (which we obtained by tossing a coin 15 times) then there is no obvious guess for the next bit.

Both measures of information are useful in the design of electronic technology. Shannon information governs the time it takes to transmit a signal somewhere else; Chaitin information tells you whether there’s a clever way to compress the signal first, and transmit something smaller. At least, it would do if you could calculate it, but one of the features of Chaitin’s theory is that it is impossible to calculate the amount of algorithmic information in a message — and he can prove it. The wizards would approve of this twist.

‘Information’ is therefore a useful concept, but it is curious that ‘To be or not to be’ contains the same Shannon information as, and less Chaitin information than, ‘xyQGRlfryu&d%sk0wc’. The reason for this disparity is that information is not the same thing as meaning. That’s fascinating. What really matters to people is the meaning of a message, not its bit-count, but mathematicians have been unable to quantify meaning. So far.

And that brings us back to stories, which are messages that convey meaning. The moral is that we should not confuse a story with ‘information’.
           Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

I have recently realized that I don’t leap to conclusions, I plunge headlong toward them.

 

 

C. Today’s Poem:

 

 

School of Truth

O fool, do something, so you won’t just stand there looking dumb.
If you are not traveling and on the road, how can you call yourself a guide?

In the School of Truth, one sits at the feet of the Master of Love.
So listen, son, so that one day you may be an old father, too!

All this eating and sleeping has made you ignorant and fat;
By denying yourself food and sleep, you may still have a chance.

Know this: If God should shine His lovelight on your heart,
I promise you’ll shine brighter than a dozen suns.

And I say: wash the tarnished copper of your life from your hands;
To be Love’s alchemist, you should be working with gold.

Don’t sit there thinking; go out and immerse yourself in God’s sea.
Having only one hair wet with water will not put knowledge in that head.

For those who see only God, their vision
Is pure, and not a doubt remains.

Even if our world is turned upside down and blown over by the wind,
If you are doubtless, you won’t lose a thing.

O Hafiz, if it is union with the Beloved that you seek,
Be the dust at the Wise One’s door, and speak!

HAFIZ. From: ‘Drunk On the Wind of the Beloved’ Translated by Thomas Rain Crowe

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

“‘The Lords and Ladies,’ she said. ‘Who’re they?’ Nanny looked around. But, after all, this was a forge … It wasn’t just a place of iron, it was a place where iron died and was reborn. If you couldn’t speak the words here, you couldn’t speak ’em anywhere. Even so, she’d rather not. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘The Fair Folk. The Gentry. The Shining Ones. The Star People. You know.’‘What?’ Nanny put her hand on the anvil, just in case, and said the word. Jason’s frown very gently cleared, at about the same speed as a sunrise. ‘Them?’ he said. ‘But aren’t they nice and—’ ‘See?’ said Nanny. ‘I told you you’d get it wrong!’ You said: The Shining Ones. You said: The Fair Folk. And you spat, and touched iron. But generations later, you forgot about the spitting and the iron, and you forgot why you used those names for them, and you remembered only that they were beautiful … We’re stupid, and the memory plays tricks, and we remember the elves for their beauty and the way they move, and we forget what they were. We’re like mice saying, ‘Say what you like, cats have got real style.’

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No-one ever said elves are nice.

Elves are bad.

          Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 11 Joey 0009 — the twenty-eighth day of our confinement. (April 5, 2020)

 

“One thing about Republican presidents: They never went in much for plans. They only had one plan. It says, ‘Boys, my head is turned. Just get it while you can.'”
          Will Rogers

 
HAVE A HAPPY SOCIAL DISTANCING.

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

A. AFTER TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS OF CONFINEMENT:

Would you believe that six months ago I was bald?

 

 

B.POOKIE’S FURTHER ADVENTURES IN SOCIAL DISTANCE LAND:

 
Today is my 28th day in self-quarantine. It has begun to feel like years. I never thought that by becoming a recluse I would be seen as being socially conscious. On the other hand, in my case and a few others, I can think of that may be true.

This evening in keeping with the national social distancing policies during the coronavirus epidemic, Naida, Peter, Barrie, and I had a virtual dinner party. Naida and I were in our house in the Enchanted Forest here in Sacramento and Peter and Barrie were nestled in their home in Noe Valley in the Big Endive by the Bay. We were connected to each other by FaceTime. Naida and I enjoyed fettuccini arrabbiata with a side of raw cabbage and washed it all down with cran-raspberry juice. Peter and Barrie were dieting and refrained from dinner. We had a good time. We discussed these days of social distancing and the impact of the current plague on coffee and comfort.

I wonder when this epidemic is over if we will not find ourselves in a totally different world. People are discovering new ways to entertain themselves by devising different means of enjoying social interactions with others through the internet. And, what is more important, we are now beginning to find them enjoyable. Shopping has changed. Corporations may find that passing on the cost of real-estate to work at home employees is beneficial to their bottom line. I guess what I am saying is that we won’t go back to the way we lived before the plague nor how we worked. Whatever the trends and possibilities of the so-called connected society that may have been coming will be greatly accelerated by this damned plague.

On this same subject, while prowling through the internet, I came across the following in Daily Kos:

Here are some of the things that are going to fundamentally change.
A big return of Keynesian economics. Almost overnight, Republicans ditched their austerity mantra and quickly voted for a $2 trillion stimulus. There was no talk of “we need to balance the budget;” instead there was talk about keeping people whole.
A return to government expertise. Watching Dr. Fauci and other experts during this crisis has been very comforting because they tell the truth (which stands in stark contrast to Trump). Polls show that the public trusts them. Once this is over, expect the public to become a lot more comfortable with expertise.
A rise of teleworking: Modern technology allows people to work remotely. I’ve observed there’s a clear generational divide regarding this idea: old people dislike it, younger people are all over it. Once this is over, expect this idea to become part of the modern workforce
A huge rise in automation. One of the big problems with manufacturing in the current crisis is that large groups of people have to be in close proximity, which prevents social distancing. Expect factories to adopt automation at a faster pace to ramp-up production as this thing comes to an end. And this will lead to …
A future discussion and eventual adoption of Universal Basic Income: I’m behind in understanding the specifics of this concept, but I understand the basic idea, which is pure Keynesian in concept. Expect this to become a commonly expressed idea.
A complete rethinking of the US health care system. Watching this disaster unfold one thing has become very clear: the healthcare system has to change in a big way. I have no idea what it will look like. But it’s going to change. (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/29/1932324/-Accept-That-Everything-You-Understand-About-the-World-Will-Fundamentally-Change?utm_campaign=trending)

 

I am not so sure about some of these but clearly, times are changing.

This morning Naida awoke with severe pain in her right shoulder. She believes it is a return of something that occurred several years ago that was alleviated by a trip to a chiropractor. I am not so sure. Tonight we watched Fiddler on the Roof for the umpteenth time. Before that we saw Sterling Hayden in a great Noir feature whose name I forgot, and before that one with Cary Grant playing a doctor and before that…well, you get the picture. All the movies were very good, unlike some of those we see on other nights.

I usually work on my computer, read or eat during the movies. I, also, sometimes just sit there daydreaming — not so much fantasy or mulling over regrets but debating with myself about things like:

Is sufficiently advanced magic practically indistinguishable from technology? Or, can we hear the thoughts of thunderstorms or the conversations of dogs? And, for something to be true, does it have to be expressed in numbers? If so, does nature care whether humans can do sums? Also, if God were separate from the material universe, would then there be an entity greater than God, namely, the entire universe plus God? Even, which of the King’s sons win the hand of the fair princess? Perhaps, does feminism address the same questions as male-oriented models? Also, why is it the three Rs and not two Rs and an A? In addition, are homo sapiens not ‘wise men’ but apes that got what they wanted or were they simply apes who gave up trying? And finally, what really is ‘the magic word’?
(Note: Thanks to T. Pratchett’s The Science Of Discworld II, for much of the foregoing paragraph.)

I am getting sick of movies. Today they were all about baseball.

Today, a day or two after the baseball movies, I decided to move into the living room from the studio in order to get away from the tv while reading. I was immediately rewarded with a bit of a new and erotic interpretation of fairy tales like Cinderella. Most fairy tales, as that old lecher Freud pointed out some with a fairly racy interpretation and so does cinder girl’s glass slipper. It seems in the old German version of the tale, the young women of the kingdom gave the lusty young prince their “fur slipper” to try on for size. When the story arrived in France and was translated in that language ‘verre.’ Verre can be translated as either ‘glass’ or ‘fur’. The Grimm brothers went for the hygienic alternative, saving parents the danger of embarrassing explanations.

As long as I am going on about the real story behind the fairy tales of our youth, here is another one from the irrepressible Terry Pratchett.

Rumpelstiltskin was an interestingly sexual parable, too, a tale to program the idea that female masturbation leads to sterility. Remember the tale? The miller’s daughter, put in the barn to ‘spin straw into gold’, virginally sits on a little stick that becomes a little man … The dénouement has the little man, when his name is finally identified, jumping in to ‘plug’ the lady very intimately, and the assembled soldiers can’t pull him out. In the modern bowdlerized version, this survives vestigially as the little man pushing his foot through the floor and not being able to pull it out, a total non sequitur. So none of those concerned, king, miller or queen, can procreate (the stolen first child has been killed by the soldiers), and it all ends in tears. If you doubt this interpretation, enjoy the indirection: ‘What is his name? What is his name?’ recurs in the story. What is his name? What is a stilt with a rumpled skin? Whoops. The name has an equivalent derivation in many languages, too.
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I much prefer my fairy tales explained to me by Terry Pratchett than Joseph Campbell, don’t you?

Several days have gone by mostly sitting here in my recliner with the television rumbling on and Naida dozing off on the recliner next to me with the dog asleep on her lap. Sometimes I dip into Pratchett’s four volumes of The Science of Discworld and extract one phrase or another to paste in here for lack of anything else to write about.

Naida just woke up and told me that it is time to walk the dog. I used to think it was some obligation that life forced upon those with dogs in their house. Now I respond like the dog, excitedly running around the house tongue hanging out and looking for the leash.

Last night I thought, no believed, I had caught the dread coronavirus and was going to die before morning. A tickle in my throat, an upset stomach, a feeling of general malaise, and a few other things I no longer remember had me terrified. Naida said it was just a springtime allergy and gave me our last Loratadine pill. I was dubious and remained convinced of my imminent death. This morning I woke up feeling great. Later in the day, she discovered Loratadine pills she had purchased for the dog containing enough pills for all three of us to get through the next few weeks.

Today, whatever day this is, Naida scheduled a video conference call with her daughters, Sarah and Jennifer. She spent a few hours excitedly preparing for it — changing clothes, straightening her hair, reviewing the directions for operating the application. Boo-boo the Barking Dog slept and I happily banging away on the computer keys here recording the event. Thinking about it all, I could have been more up to date by recording everything on my smart-phone, but instead, I attempt to record it in words on paper— oops, on my screen. Damn, I wrote the word “paper” in the last sentence, and spellcheck changed it to “tape.” I give up, even the machines know what’s coming.

Alas, Naida’s conference call sadly was canceled in part because of technical difficulties.

Today I woke up at noon after a night of horrid dreams. It is raining outside and bit dreary but the tree at the back of the yard, at the height of its spring colors, cheers me up.

 

That’s all. Keep on social distancing. Remember to say hello to yourself in the mirror every morning. You are always there for you.

 

 

 

 

PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:

 

 

 

For every species, their main competition is members of the same species. They’re the ones that want exactly the same resources that the others of your species do. This goes for humans too. We compete with each other for resources. Collections of humans, whether tribes, states, empires, or whatever also compete for resources with other tribes, states, and empires.

This is the problem with human-caused climate change either local or global (we do have many examples of other species causing local climate change [recently at times with human assistance] and one or two examples of global climate change).

For this reason, global human-induced climate change cannot be dealt with unless humanity sees itself as one single society.

Even so, Malthus is correct in that without some means of controlling population or securing off-world resources ultimately we will destroy ourselves. Hope is the myrrh of disappointment.

 

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:

 

 

 
This continues my posting of the entries in a diary I kept in 1963, 57 years ago. The diary and another one from 1964 for some unknown reason have accompanied me all these years through all my different life experiences. They are the only things that have, given my tendency to abandon or give away everything I have including wives every 10 years or so. The only other things that have remained with me consistently throughout the years are my children and a few dear friends. That is not too bad a deal I think.
May 18, 1963, Saturday.

I feel terrible about the exam. I must have done very poorly. I will do better on my next one.

President Kennedy has decided to visit the pope during his tour of Italy because, he says, of the Pope’s failing health. When John XXIII the world will lose a great man. Few men have done more for humanity and the human spirit in this quarter-century than Pope John. What makes his accomplishments more impressive is that he has done it all not through the use of power or dialectic but only through the greatness of and compassion in his soul.

(I cannot believe I used “myrrh” in a sentence. I was a little over-wrought about Pope John, but I was a practicing Catholic back then. I am a non-practicing Catholic. agnostic. or atheist now depending on the day you ask me.)

 

May 20, 1963, Monday.

It is raining today. It is on of those pleasant warm weather showers that I have always found enjoyable. It is like a dark curtain that drops over one separating him from the heat and dust of the day. It cleans the air as it cleans the mind.

We had a study session today in which we went over the previous contract exams. I found myself opposing every answer to the questions that were advanced by the other members of the practice group. Two of them left in disgust.

I hope I will do better on the next exam. I am sure I will.

 

May 22, 1963, Wednesday.

With every examination, I feel like I did poorly. I find myself faced with two choices, either I should drive myself harder so that I do better or should I allow the haunting question of whether what I am doing is worthwhile at all.

Perhaps deep analysis would solve the dilemma. Analysis in-depth, however, is not something accomplished in a single day. Sometimes it takes a whole life.

My social position is not one that lends itself to the dedication of one’s life to analyzing primary human problems even if those problems are our own. A choice of goals must be made but without some faith, it is probably impossible. Unfortunately in our society today that faith seems to have been driven from the hierarchy of human values.

(For the life of me, I do not know what I was talking about here. I clearly was having a bad day.)

 

May 23, 1963, Thursday.

Today, regretfully, I have not studied. Instead, I began reading a new book, Sea Venture. It is partly a historical tale based on the shipwreck of Ad. G. Sommers (?) on Bermuda Island. I wish I could read books with the cold analysis of a dispassionate reader. Instead, I always seem to find myself entering the story as a participant. The words disappear. I discover myself on the deck of that ill-fated vessel. With my modern prejudices and fears, I find myself deposited back in that exciting if cruel time. It is my hands running along the barmaid’s thighs as I prepare to rape her. It is my face feeling the spray of the water as we enter Portsmouth Harbor, my nose smells the stench of the ships hold, my stomach destroyed by years of bad diet and my heart longing for a new start in the New World.

Perhaps entertainment is better than self-improvement. It certainly is much more enjoyable.

(Maybe that is all I have ever wanted in my life — to sit and read. In that way I could live thousands of lives, travel everywhere even into worlds of fantasy, experience things I could never have experienced in my mundane life. I guess those more modern than I hooked into their smart-phones or computers experience even more that I did by reading. But alas, who brings the food. Perhaps that is the future, machines produce the food and delivered it to us sitting before our screens traveling through dreamland.)

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

A. Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog of the Week:

 
Today, I decided to drop into one of my favorite blog sites Logarithmic History (https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/). It is a blog that traces the history of the universe throughout the year beginning on January 1 with the Big Bang and ending on December 31 with today. The years progress, however, day by day on a logarithmic scale. The author explains:

“If you’re a bit hazy about logarithms, all you have to know is that each day of the year covers a shorter period in the history of the universe than the preceding day (5.46% shorter). January 1 begins with the Big Bang and covers a full 754 million years. January 2 covers the next 712 million years, and so on. Succeeding days cover shorter and shorter succeeding intervals in the history of the universe. At this rate, a given calendar date covers only a tenth as much time as a date 41 days earlier.”

“On this logarithmic scale, Earth is formed on January 20, trilobites arise toward the end of February, and dinosaurs meet their doom on April 6. The middle of the year finds Homo erectus giving way to early versions of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. October begins with King David and ends with Columbus. By December 7, we reach the year of the Beatles’ first LP (1963). December 31 covers just one year, 2017; calendar time and history-of-the-universe time finally coincide at midnight.”

 

Here is his entry for today March 28th, he discusses the rise of social insects.

“Certainly the statistics on social insects today are impressive.”

‘The twenty-thousand known species of eusocial insects, mostly ants, bees, wasps and termites, account for only 2 percent of the approximately one million known species of insects. Yet this tiny minority of species dominate the rest of the insects in their numbers, their weight, and their impact on the environment. As humans are to vertebrate animals, the eusocial insects are to the far vaster world of invertebrate animals. … In one Amazon site, two German researchers … found that ants and termites together compose almost two-thirds of the weight of all the insects. Eusocial bees and wasps added another tenth. Ants alone weighed four times more than all the terrestrial vertebrates — that is, mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined.” E. O. Wilson pp 110-113”

“E. O. Wilson, world’s foremost authority on ants, and one of the founders of sociobiology, thinks that the origin of insect eusociality might have lessons for another major evolutionary transition, the origin of humans (and of human language, technology, culture, and complex social organization). In his book The Social Conquest of Earth he argues that a key step in both sets of transitions was the development of a valuable and defensible home — in the case of humans, a hearth site. Wilson returns to this argument in his book Genesis: The Deep Origin of Human Societies, just published, which I’ll get around to saying more about here eventually. On the same topic, Mark Moffett’s book The Human Swarm: How Human Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall, asks how it is that we somehow rival the social insects in our scale of organization.”

“One trait found in both ants and humans is large-scale warfare. Wilson gives an idea of the nature of ant warfare in fictional form in his novel Anthill. It’s an interesting experiment, but also disorienting. Because individual recognition is not important for ants, his story of the destruction of an ant colony reads like the Iliad with all the personal names taken out. But Homer’s heroes fought for “aphthiton kleos,” undying fame (and got some measure of it in Homer’s poem). The moral economy of reputation puts human cooperation in war and peace on a very different footing from insect eusociality. (Here’s my take on “ethnic group selection,” which depends on social enforcement, perhaps via reputation.)”

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

 

People are not only people. They are people surrounded by things and circumstances. Human beings are their history. There is no such thing as an individual. We are each the sum of our history and the circumstances that enfold us.

 

C. Today’s Poem:

 

At a certain age
We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: “That’s me.”
     Czeslaw Milosz

 

D. Apologies, Regrets, Humiliations, and Comments:

 
Some comments on my previous post. I have omitted the names of the commenters because in the past some people objected to being identified.

1. This is an excellent and very funny blog. It cheered me up in the time of the Plague; or Corvid19. Or whatever this fucking thing is.

2. So, is it true that the Decameron is the product of the stories Boccaccio and his friends told each other while isolating themselves up on Bellosguardo hill while the plague raged below in Firenze?

Should we take some meaning from it? Or at least start looking for some equivalent enterprise?

3. Stay safe Al-Azeem!

4. In response to the entry that ends with “Naritivium essentially replaces magic in a universe without it”:

Sentence one takes me back to my days as a philosophy major. Epistemology- how do we know what we know? Etc. Are you sure phlogiston isn’t really real? And causality and David Hume: Prove it! — you can’t. But you can stick it in your desk drawer, as he did, and carry on. And of course, the Buddhists, for whom it’s all Maya and illusion, so go sit under a bodhi tree and seek apotheosis, OR: go wallow in social distancing and house arrest and hope your TV doesn’t conk out.

5. In response to “Speaking of ability, it has been said, or I have read it somewhere that most sane, rational human beings learn quite early on that you feel just as certain even when you’re wrong. For this reason, the strength of your belief is usually not a valid measure of its relation to reality”:

This, of course, is the root of much domestic strife and sitcom comedy. Imagine if everyone Didn’t do that. Probably if all were like that, it would describe the terminal boredom of heaven.

6. I have been thinking of you. Lots of time to think, as you mentioned. How are you planning to get your treatments in SF? It is even possible to get the treatments? Is it safe to go for them? I presume the overnight at Peter’s is not going to happen. I know that you will figure it out, because that is what you are good at, figuring hard things out. Better than most. You are also good at getting hard stuff done when you want to.

To which I responded, “I don’t know about getting hard things done. It is usually those who remain strong and give support that allows others to get the hard things done.”

7. Thank you for your email. Due to the Coronavirus, our office is closed until April 7, 2020.
8. This is a system-generated message to inform you that your email could not be delivered to one or more recipients.

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

“Nowadays only cosmologists and particle physicists are allowed to invent new kinds of matter when they want to explain why their theories totally fail to match observed reality.”
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S MYSTERY:

DOES ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS?

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S ART ODYSSEY:

 

ZOE LACCHEI

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 1 Joey 0009. (March 26, 2020)

 

“Progress just means bad things happen faster.”
Abercrombie, Joe. A Little Hatred: 1 (The Age of Madness) (p. 152). Orbit.

 

I hope you all remain properly socially distant while enjoying, Palm Sunday, Passover, April Fool’s Day, Good Friday and Easter and those who don’t (except for medical personnel, pharmacists, farmers, grocers and the like) may you be forced to spend the next six months locked on the oval office with He Who Is Non Our President.

 

 

 
,

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES DURING SOCIAL DISTANCING:

 
We have hunkered down at home in the Enchanted Forest to wait out the coronavirus emergency. This is not as difficult for us as for some since our lives have become quite sedentary as of late. Given the number of times we have received the same information about the epidemic on the media, we are almost saturated enough to return to watching TCM and old movies.

The mismanagement of the crisis by the federal government, unfortunately, probably will result in more deaths than would have occurred with even a little bit of competence. I suspect these deaths will pale in comparison to those that will happen as a result of the economic impacts from the mishandling of this crisis.

In the evening, at about dusk, we took the dog for a walk. We figured it was OK to leave the house since the only thing we would be touching would be dog poo and even then our hands would be protected by some plastic.

Recently, I have taken to replacing the forlorn turkey feathers that I find around the paths in the Enchanted Forest and place in the bands of my hats with fallen seasonal flowers that I locate the same way — currently camellias. At eighty years of age who cares how silly you look. It’s the pleasure that counts.

Camellia Joe.

 
Speaking of fallen Camellias, Naida has taken to plucking up those in the yard that fall from the bushes and creating a centerpiece for our table.

A Bowl of Camellias.

 

A Smiling Lady of the Camellias. 

 

As long as we are on the subject of Camellias or at least of flowers fallen or not, here is a photograph of Naida taken at a restaurant a few days ago before we decided on seclusion from the depredations of the coronavirus. She is in the midst of telling me one of her fascinating stories or pointing at some interesting birds or something else.

Not a Camellia.

 
We briefly went out to shop for provisions to sustain us during our self-quarantine. When we arrived at the Safeway nearby, it seemed like everyone else had the same idea. While most things appeared well-stocked, toilet paper and hand wipes were all gone. While I understand the run on hand wipes, I fail to comprehend the toilet paper mania. After all, how many times does one shit during a 14 day period? Two or three rolls per person seem more than adequate to me. If someone needs much more than that, I think they should have seen a doctor long before now.

Of course, my hypochondria is in high gear. Every fifteen minutes or so, I become convinced I have caught the disease and am sure I am about to die. I must be driving Naida mad.

While sitting around in my recliner watching CNN ramble on endlessly about coronavirus, I played on the computer and looked up Pookie. I discovered there was someone in San Angelo Texas named Pookie who forced a woman into prostitution for drugs. I bet he doesn’t wear hats festooned with flowers. On second thought maybe he does.

Another day of self-quarantine. It is raining and dreary outside. Same same.

One day I spoke to Nikki by phone. He is quarantined on the top floor of an apartment building in Busto a small town near Malpensa airport a few miles from Milan. He is alone and spends most of his day doing what we all are doing, watching television finding busy work, talking on phones, and taking long naps. Sometimes, he goes out onto his balcony and sings along with others imprisoned in high-rises nearby. At other times he goes out on to the balcony and dances.

Nikki is a senior pilot for Al Italia. He is on call to fly his plane to pick up some of the 10,000 Italians stranded in foreign countries. He is scheduled to fly to South Africa to pick up some of them this week.

While I am bored and a little concerned during my isolation, I do have Naida with me and of course, the dog who barks a bit less now that fewer people and vehicles pass by the house. I also try to ruminate on the good things this junior plague may bring. We are forced to briefly halt whatever things we believed we had to do and now have time to consider its value to us. Everyone has the opportunity to do this at the same time. Almost the entirety of the people of the world is being forced to stop and take stock of what is really important in our lives. That could be a good thing.

For a brief moment in, we are also forced to halt our collective assault on our environment, giving that environment a brief respite from our onslaught upon it.

The saddest thing for me is my awareness that many of those who were led to believe it was all a hoax, just another common cold, still believe it.

Yesterday was my onomastica, my name day. I did not celebrate it. I would celebrate it if I could find somewhere that makes fresh Zeppole. Tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day. We probably will not celebrate that either.

It is now 4:30 PM. I awoke at 11AM this morning and spent most of the day writing the above 10 or so lines. So it goes in these our days of confinement. I think it is about that time for Naida, Boo-boo the Barking Dog, and I to break away from our computers and sing and dance for a while.

Saint Patrick’s Day, we went for a walk along the river. On the way, we passed the dog park. It was empty. People seemed to be walking their dogs along the levee and keeping their distance. I have begun coughing. I do not know whether I am simply clearing my throat or if it is an artifact of my hypochondria or something else. The Hospital called and put off my immunotherapy appointment for three weeks.

Have you noticed, that recently the world seems full of omens? The good thing is you get to choose those you like.

You know we shouldn’t be so hard on the Donald for his constant lying. It may just be that he thinks the truth is so precious that it shouldn’t be waved around too much.

It is now a week or more into the local version of social distancing huddled in our houses while the coronavirus prowls outside. In addition, to boredom, it also gives one time to think and reflect — two very dangerous activities especially when one is 80 years old.

Try as we like, during our lives we still will have words we think we should have spoken left over in the end.

Everyone is good at something. Sometimes, alas, you don’t find out until too late. And, unfortunately, even if you do find out in time, it may very well be of no use or value to anyone even yourself. For example, you may be good at picking your nose and that may very well please you immensely, but it is hard to imagine that talent has any benefit to anyone. I do not know what I am good at, but there are times when picking my nose pleases me a lot. And while I take pains to hide my ability from view, I still take a bit of pride in it.

Speaking of ability, it has been said, or I have read it somewhere that most sane, rational human beings learn quite early on that you feel just as certain even when you’re wrong. For this reason, the strength of your belief is usually not a valid measure of its relation to reality. I believe a lot of things. For example, I often believe that whenever I get a sniffle or a slight headache, it means I will surely die before morning. Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But I haven’t given up hope. I also believe I am as knowledgeable and smart as the next guy or gal. I never really found that to be the case, but I still believe that to be true despite the amount of evidence to the contrary.

It is now Friday at about 1 PM. We are sitting here watching Belmondo in Breathless on TCM. Boo-boo the Barking Dog lies half asleep on the chair. I read an email from Peter. He writes, “Vaccine is 18 months off; meanwhile should be interesting. Universal voting by mail? The Hyatt Regency Hospital? Or is it the Homeless Repository? Will Batman close the Bat Cave and move to the Hyatt Regency Homeless Repository?”

To which I responded, “Speaking of Superman, do you have any idea where he changes into his tights now that there are no more phone booths.”

Peter replied, “Now, about Superman, that’s a great question! more great possibilities: A knock on the door, you open it in the Enchanted Forest, and there stands this mild-mannered, bespectacled, besuited fellow, who asks politely: “Excuse me, but may I enter so I can change clothes? There are a bank robbery and kidnapping happening down the street I need to attend to.” Alternatively, he could use the old red phone booth our sister-in-law (Barrie’s brother’s wife) Migiwa used in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in front of the Tasty Freeze that was one of her artistic creations. Of course, he’d have to transport this to Gotham City or wherever. I haven’t been present where he actually does his changes, so I have no idea.”

So that’s what Peter and I do during this era of social distancing. What do you do?

This evening Naida played the piano and I danced. She played a hot rendition of Malagueña. I strutted around the room clicking my heels on the new wood floors.

For the past two days, I have spent most of my time in bed overcome with fatigue. I do not know what caused it, the only other symptom was a thickening of mucus. Of course, I thought I was sure to die in a day or two. I didn’t. Today, however, I am up and about. Up and about for me means sitting in front of the television and watching the news about the pandemic.

It has been two weeks now of our confinement. Like others throughout the world, we are getting a bit of a taste of what imprisonment is all about. At least many of those actually in prison know when it is they will get out. Everyone, I guess, has their own way of coping. For me right now it is staring out into the back yard at one of our trees that has just begun to bloom.

 
OMG! —— I never thought I would see myself use that acronym but I cannot conceive of a worse disaster during this time of plague. Our television has broken down. True we have another set but we cannot get it to work. We have tried and failed to find a repairman. Anyway, who would want to allow a potential carrier of the plague into the house? What to do? What to do? We need help quickly before we fall into entertaining ourselves, or God forgive, reading. When, if the future, they write the history of this time of the plague I am sure they will have a chapter on the horror experienced by those poor souls forced to rely on their own imagination. The horror.

I finally hooked up the other TV, but for some reason we only get TCM. It could be worse. We could have been stuck with Fox News or the Weather Channel.

It is a day or two later and we fixed the TV. That is not much of an improvement since all that is on is stories about Coronavirus and He Who Is Not My President talking about it or old black and white movies and Technicolor musicals. It could be worse. Someday in the future, if there is a future, children will ask their parents what they did during the great plague.

Of course, everything we talk about or write about is not really real. It is just energy screwing around doing its thing here in this infinitesimally small and remote portion of the Universe. What we write or tell each other about it is a narrative imperative — a story or Naritivium as Terry Pratchett calls it. We make it up and tell each other about it and feel good or bad about it as the Naritivium dictates. Naritivium essentially replaces magic in a universe without it.

“The curious thing about the human belief in narrativium is that once humans evolved on the planet, their beliefs started to be true. We have, in a way, created our own narrativium. It exists in our minds, and there it is a process, not a thing. On the level of the material universe, it’s just one more pattern of buzzing electrons. But on the level of what it feels like to be a mind, it operates just like narrativium. Not only that: it operates on the material world, not just the mental one: its effects are just like those of narrativium.”
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

In other words, in my case, and I suspect also with most of you out there, we just make shit up.

 

 

B. NAIDA, POOKIE, AND BOO-BOO THE BARKING DOG BREAK OUT OF CONFINEMENT.

 
One day while I was complaining about creeping cabin fever Naida, for no reason that I can identify, suddenly said, “We need to get a new key for the Mitsubishi.” We had either lost or misplaced the keys several weeks before. I had decided not to get them replaced until the current emergency ends. Despite this, and again for no reason, I immediately called the key-smith thinking he would tell me they were closed until the crisis ends. To my surprise, he said instead, “Someone will be right over. He’ll meet you at the car.” So we gathered up the dog and walked to where the car was parked and waited. The key-smith arrived. We had no way of knowing how many coronavirus carriers he had come into contact with. We passed over our information standing closer to each other than six feet. He then crawled all over the car setting about doing whatever key-smiths do leaving behind, I am sure, whatever bugs he was carrying around.

While watching him work another car pulled up. It was the dog walker and her daughter. They exited the car, came over to us, and stood well within the six-foot barrier. She was carrying two packages of Thomas’ English Muffins which she thrust into our hands saying, “I knew you were running out. I found a store that still has a few packages and bought them for you.” Out of a misplaced sense of politeness or gratitude, we could not refuse the offer even if it might be another potential plague vector. So, I held the tip of the plastic bag they come in between my fingers and thanked them for their consideration. They then returned to their car and left.

The key-smith handed me the new keys. I passed over my credit card and took it back. He drove off and we deciding, “In for a dime in for a dollar” got in the now, I was sure, thoroughly contaminated vehicle and drove around Sacramento for about an hour.

We returned home, put the keys in a drawer, placed the muffins on a shelf, and washed our hands. I then sat in my recliner and pondered mortality. After two weeks of stringent social distancing, I am now convinced that death is crawling through the Enchanted Forest headed to our door.

 

 

C. RETURN TO CONFINEMENT.

 
So following that adventure into stupidity, we returned to enjoy the pleasures of social distancing. Naida discovered a container of three-year-old Lysol wipes that were dried up. In the hope of rejuvenating them, she pored Clorox into the container and set about wiping down whatever she could find. I went back to watching CNN drone on about coronavirus. They broke off their symphony of woe to tune into He Who Is Not My President’s daily publicity sessions at which he bloviated on about how he was going to make our impending deaths especially meaningless.

At about six PM today Naida discovered the missing key. The one we felt so important that we broke containment to replace and risked death by the Trump virus. I assume either “It’s always something,” or “Tomorrow is another day” is appropriate here.

And with that, I think I have gone on enough in this post. So I think I will end it here.

Take care of yourselves. Don’t lose your car keys. Stay socially distant. Don’t take anything too seriously. And above all:

 

 

 

DAILY FACTOID:

 

 

Humanity/life = >7.65 MeV and/or 30 fundamental constants (+ or – )? I do not know what this means but some scientists believe it represents the basis of the existence of the biosphere and, in the case of the fundamental constants, existence itself, here there or perhaps anywhere. Other scientists, not so much. What do you think?

“An atheist is not someone who believes that God doesn’t exist. It is someone who doesn’t believe that God does exist. If you think those are the same, ponder this statement by the comedian Penn Jillette: ‘Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.’
Pratchett, Terry. Judgment Day (Science of Discworld Series) (p. 324). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
“The writer and comedian Ricky Gervais made a similar point more pithily in 2010:
‘The dictionary definition of God is ‘a supernatural creator and overseer of the universe’. Included in this definition are all deities, goddesses and supernatural beings. Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3,700 supernatural beings, of which 2,870 can be considered deities. So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say ‘Oh, which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra…?’ If they say, ‘Just God. I only believe in the one God,’ I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869.’”
Pratchett, Terry. Judgment Day (Science of Discworld Series) (p. 322). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

Comedians and clowns, I believe, are the physicists of the soul

“We have been around for a few million years at most, perhaps only 200,000 if you restrict attention to ‘modern’ humans; the universe is about 13.5 billion years old. We occupy one world orbiting one of 200 billion stars in one galaxy, which itself is one of 200 billion galaxies. Isn’t it just a tiny bit arrogant to insist that the entire universe is merely a by-product of a process whose true purpose was to bring us into existence?
Pratchett, Terry. Judgment Day (Science of Discworld Series) (p. 302). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

I do not know if I completely buy this last point. I mean, if you are so irrelevant in the scheme of things why would you even bother to get up in the morning?

 

.

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

A. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 
The Nobel Prize in Economics was established in 1966 by bankers who fund it and is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895. It is not technically a Nobel Prize.

 

B. Today’s Poem:

A Double Standard
BY FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER

Do you blame me that I loved him?
If when standing all alone
I cried for bread a careless world
Pressed to my lips a stone.

Do you blame me that I loved him,
That my heart beat glad and free,
When he told me in the sweetest tones
He loved but only me?

Can you blame me that I did not see
Beneath his burning kiss
The serpent’s wiles, nor even hear
The deadly adder hiss?

Can you blame me that my heart grew cold
That the tempted, tempter turned;
When he was feted and caressed
And I was coldly spurned?

Would you blame him, when you draw from me
Your dainty robes aside,
If he with gilded baits should claim
Your fairest as his bride?

Would you blame the world if it should press
On him a civic crown;
And see me struggling in the depth
Then harshly press me down?

Crime has no sex and yet to-day
I wear the brand of shame;
Whilst he amid the gay and proud
Still bears an honored name.

Can you blame me if I’ve learned to think
Your hate of vice a sham,
When you so coldly crushed me down
And then excused the man?

Would you blame me if to-morrow
The coroner should say,
A wretched girl, outcast, forlorn,
Has thrown her life away?

Yes, blame me for my downward course,
But oh! remember well,
Within your homes, you press the hand
That led me down to hell.

I’m glad God’s ways are not our ways,
He does not see as man,
Within His love I know there’s room
For those whom others ban.

I think before His great white throne,
His throne of spotless light,
That whited sepulchers shall wear
The hue of endless night.

That I who fell, and he who sinned,
Shall reap as we have sown;
That each the burden of his loss
Must bear and bear alone.

No golden weights can turn the scale
Of justice in His sight;
And what is wrong in woman’s life
In man’s cannot be right.

 

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an abolitionist, suffragist, poet, teacher, public speaker, and writer, one of the first African American women to be published in the United States.

Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, she had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at the age of 20. At 67, she published her novel Iola Leroy (1892), which was widely praised.

As a young woman in 1850, she taught sewing at Union Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, a school affiliated with the AME Church.[1] In 1851, alongside William Still, chairman of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, she helped refugee slaves make their way along the Underground Railroad on their way to Canada. In 1853 she began her career as a public speaker and political activist after joining the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Her collection Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) became her biggest commercial success. Her short story “Two Offers” was published in the Anglo-African in 1859, making literary history as the first short story published by a black woman.

Harper founded, supported, and held high office in several national progressive organizations. In 1883 she became superintendent of the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1894 she helped found the National Association of Colored Women and served as its vice president. Harper died aged 85 on February 22, 1911, nine years before women gained the right to vote. (Wikipedia)

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

“You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. But the smell! You know — that gasoline smell… the whole hill! Smelled like… victory. (Pause) Some day this war is going to end…”
Apocalypse Now. Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Kilgore.

 

 

OLD PHOTOGRAPH OF THE DAY:

That is me asleep on the couch many years ago. Bobby, Ruth’s dog, is my partner in lethargy.

 

 

 

TODAY’S ART ODYSSEY: