Wandering Toward My Shifting Self

SAD Month

Mother Nature dozed in the gentle autumnal sunshine. She woke raring to go. “What can I do? I know. I’ll put on a holiday fashion show!”

She launched her show just before Christmas. In her first outfit of swirling white Blizzard she drifted across the stage. We were awed at the terrible beauty of thirty six inches of fluffy snow.

A quick change and she came out in a sleek sub-zero Cold Snap.  As she ever so slowly moved across the stage, we were stunned by the sculpted crusty snow mounds.

Another change brought her on stage enveloped in Freezing Fog. She inched her way across the stage as we were blinded by grey mist pressing in around us. During windows in our limited vision, we grudgingly admired a landscape decorated with gauzy hoar frost.

Mother Nature ended with an Ice Storm. She entered the stage clad in a cape of Freezing Drizzle. She threw this off to reveal an outfit of Freezing Rain. Just before exiting the stage she threw this off to reveal a Basic Cold Snap.

Sadly her grand grey show of winter fashions earned no applause. We were simply and literally frozen in our seats waiting for an encore of January Thaw.

 It’s been a SAD month! That’s spelled Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or as it was called before the Pharmaceuticals developed a pill for it – Cabin Fever!

SAD does not necessarily mean unhappy. Do I get cranky about my enforced condo confinement? No Way!

I’ve engaged in lively email conversation with family and friends in the USA, Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia.

I ran out of ink printing Christmas greetings. A single click of my mouse brought refills from Indiana the next morning.

A couple of clicks of my mouse accomplished my Christmas shopping. Items from the Czech Republic, Ireland, Alaska, and various US outlets appeared on my door step three to five days later.

A couple of phone numbers programmed into my cell will bring groceries to my door from the Big Box Chain and the neighborhood stores I usually shop.

How can I be bored with 1768 channels on my HDTV?  Over the holidays, the History channel explained new archeological discoveries about the Life and Times of Jesus. The Discovery channels showed me new insights into the Ancient High Cultures of the Americas.

The advancements in robotic technology boggle my mind. I spent an afternoon watching a series called ‘Untouched by Human Hands’! It documented Idaho potato farmers who have developed machines to plant and harvest potatoes with a single operator. The spuds are trucked to processing plants where automated machinery turns them into chips in a variety of flavors. A few truck drivers and a dozen or so engineers in white coats and hair nets deliver tons of potato chips to grocer’s shelves.

Yes, I’ve had to re-schedule doctor’s appointments.

But I watched an Alan Alda ‘Scientific American Frontiers’ about a body implant that will allow doctors to diagnose by remote computer software instead of hands on visits. My pills already come automatically from a robotic pharmacy out east.

Now if I can only learn to cut my own hair, I can joyfully cocoon in my condo year round.

In a SAD month, the www. showed me a wonderfilled New Year!

Triage

 

Joint pain woke me early. I got up and fixed coffee. Turning on CNN, I saw a miracle in process.

A team of Mexican and German rescue workers had just pulled a seventy year old woman out of the rubble of the Cathedral. Dehydrated with broken bones but still miraculously alive after seven days, she kept repeating the prayers that had given her strength during her ordeal as a surgeon from Doctors without Borders treated her,

Anderson Cooper interviewed the doctor when he finished giving her water and dressing her wounds. He covered her with a blanket and explained he had done all he could. The airport was diverting planes with medical supplies and field hospitals in order to land combat troops with heavy equipment and armored vehicles to patrol the streets in case there were looting and riots.

An ad for a mid-winter get away at a resort in the Bahamas came on. Right next door to Haiti, it looked good. Sandy beaches, sunshine, private cabanas with tropical drinks served at your whim. Best of all ‘stay three days and the fourth is free!’ This was followed by a ‘Claritin Clear’ commercial.

The News came back with a clip of the victory speech of Scott Brown, the young man who won Ted Kennedy’s seat in a special Senate Election. Brown made a wise crack about his wife, a newspaper reporter, who had revealed her bias and voted for him. When the exuberant laughter died down, he thanked the American people for their money contributions and their phone banks into the state that turned out the kind of vote needed for his win. He praised them for doing the right thing by just saying no to this foolish extravagance of healthcare for everyone!

When pundits with opposite narrative arcs of potential civil collapse or restoring constitutional “Christian Values” appeared, I turned off TV.

I opened my computer and noticed on the homepage that Wall Street had enjoyed a huge surge in certain stocks at the prospect of Brown’s win. I checked the website of that Bahamas resort. Free day or not, the rate for one day would consume my total monthly income.

On to my emails! I found an offer from a company in Luxemburg for a new service. If I mount a camera on my monitor, I can talk with you face to face over live video. This is great! No more tedious typing with painful arthritic fingers. In real time I could chat with you while sipping my morning import Swedish coffee. All I have to do is download the software – and it’s FREE!

There is one small blip in this new addition to our personal freedoms. You’d have to live in the right time zone and plug into your computer on the same schedule I observe.

Until then, I will use my usual mode to express my joy at living in the ‘most prosperous, most charitable, most compassionate Nation’ on the face of the earth!

New Year Math

 

Mrs. Nononsense sent Barbara and me out in the hall to drill on multiplication tables. Eighth grade final exams were coming up.

We sat on the stairs and began 7 x 9 =? We had a slight problem. I was more focused on addition than multiplication. I concentrated on 1 + 1 = 2 blooming breasts.

When Mrs. Nononsense called us back in the room and tested us, I don’t think she was surprised at our differing proficiency. A couple of weeks later, she invited the class over to her apartment for a buffet supper – and perhaps a hint or two about social graces.

I went on to learn algebra, geometry, calculus and statistics. In due time, I learned the differential calculus of a woman from my wife.

That was 1945. This is a different world. Or is it?

Of course it is! But a disconnect between two different forms of math seems to persist.

The media and pontificating pundits constantly call our attention to New Year Polls measuring the rising ‘what if’ fear of the USA. On the crawl of one of the cable channels I see: “Bad news happening? Send pictures to (digital address).”

The math of statistical projection is remarkable. Survey 600 to 1000 people. Apply equations. You can now report the opinion of 310,000,000 citizens –with an error rate of only plus or minus 5 %.

There is another math that measures ‘what is’. For instance: in 2000 there were 280,000,000 citizens in the USA and 131,000,000 available jobs. Starting 2010 there are 310,000,000 citizens in the USA and 131,000,000 available jobs. Thirty million more citizens competing for the same number of available jobs has some impact on ‘The Job Crisis’!

The Statistical Abstract of the US Government reports a math of ‘what is’. Going back to the 1950’s, I discover that 60,000+ American government entities gave their elected officials taxing authority. At that time roughly 50% of all workers’ paychecks were issued by these governments.

At the beginning of 2010 this metric of a social fabric providing stability to everyday life had not changed significantly. What did change is the number of Americans and where they live. In the 1950’s there were only three American metros of more than a million residents - two of them with an ocean beach. In the 2010 New Year reporting, our population had more than doubled with four out of five Americans living in some 200 metros of more than a million residents – two thirds of them with an ocean beach.

I wonder as I wander into the autumnal decades of my life! My conundrum centers on a simple fact. This recent decade of my ‘old age’ has been more comfortable, more convenient with more good options than the decade of my ‘coming of age’ begun in 1945.

By no metric has the narrative arc of my life shown any evidence of being exceptional. I’m puzzled by the vengeful anger of the Tea Party movement with its call to ‘re-elect nobody’.

Indeed if this is a majority of voters as polls claim, there will be thousands of experienced elected officials out of a job in 2011. Replaced by anti-tax, anti-regulation, privatize everything for profit ‘it’s my money’ vigilantes.

Our complex social fabric of firefighters, police, schools, courts, emergency services, military, sewage systems, garbage collection, road maintenance and many more government entities with taxing authority is seriously frayed. Could these ‘re-elect nobody’ vigilantes finally rip to shreds the American dream of establishing a more perfect union for the common good and domestic tranquility?