Monday, March 18, 2024

Streaking

 I found myself doing something I try not to do: Generate ultimatums. 

As I was running up the hill near my house, my legs were reminding me of all sixty-one of my years. And it made me think, not for the first time, that I didn't have to do this. 

I could find an alternative way to exercise. I could discover something that worked up a sweat and worked my cardiovascular system in a similar fashion. One that didn't come with the complication of tired joints. 

I also know that there are many and varied options to the pain. Younger men than myself have surrendered to knee replacement surgery. Which brings its own flurry of insurance and logistical hoops through which I would need to jump. Bad knees and all. 

Which is where I rationalize, as the miles go by, that it's not so debilitating after all. It's not the sub-ten minute mile I used to work toward, but it's getting up and getting out.

This is about the time that I make this weird equivalency: Would I rather give up running or writing this blog? They are both lifelines in my world of seemingly endless repetition. They are both, at the end of the day, optional. I choose to do both of these activities. Daily. That's where it crosses over into compulsive. Finding alternatives to that need to check the box and fill in the blank every single day is the part that starts to lock up my gears. 

What's the matter with taking a day off? If you were to ask any sane person, they would counsel calm restraint. Just let your mind and body tell you how to proceed. 

I'm sure that's what Cal Ripken's brain said around the time he passed Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak. "Why not just stop? Two thousand one hundred thirty-one games is a remarkable accomplishment. Go ahead and sit this next one out."

He didn't. He kept going for another five hundred games. 

So if you see me running around the neighborhood, that's pretty much what's going through my mind. 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Plain Kate

 I don't care about Kate Middleton. 

Okay, I care about Kate Middleton in the same way that I care about all of my fellow inhabitants of the rock called Earth, but I am struggling to stay interested in the whereabouts of a young mother who was last seen entering the hospital for "abdominal surgery." Why should I care?

"Because she is part of the Royal Family," comes the answer from somewhere behind me.

They Royal Family from whom we separated nearly two and a half centuries ago? The ones who have a whole wing of Netflix devoted to them? The ones who have absolutely no say in the day-to-day policy and governance of our former enemies across the pond? The ones whose life of privilege continues to fascinate those of us who are not Kardashian? 

Well, sorry. That never got the needle to jump off of "don't care." 

Yet, here I am, devoting time and space to the discussion of the latest "tragedy" to befall this terribly inbred group of soap opera stars whose relevance has been all but snuffed out beyond their ability to generate tabloid fodder. 

Which sort of makes what your are currently reading just that: tabloid fodder. 

To be completely transparent, I am not above digging around in the dirty laundry of families whose sole interesting factor is their momentary flash of fame. But these royals have been hogging social bandwidth since 1603, with a brief Republican Break from 1649 to 1660. Which, considering the short attention span of your average hairless ape, is pretty impressive. But they haven't really ruled much of the world for a century now, and once they gave up Hong Kong back in 1997 they tend to rule primarily the gardens behind the castles they continue to maintain at taxpayer's expense. 

But here in America, we can't help but keep one eye on the Monarchy, just out of our genetic predisposition. Once a colony, always a colony, I suppose. Then there's the whole Disney-infused fascination with princesses, which always seems to work out in the storybooks, but not so often in real life. One need look no further than Kate's late mother-in-law, the tragic Princess Diana of Wales. Since that was way back in the late twentieth century, around the time that Hong Kong was given back to China, I suppose the Royal Family pot needs a little stirring. "Abdominal surgery?" 

Sure. Why not? 

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Do-Gooder

 In the world of politics, and sports, there was this news: Steph Curry suggested that, once his days of playing basketball are over, that he might consider a career off the court. "I have an interest in leveraging every part of my influence for good.”

Mister Curry, known to his friends, family and most of the rest of the planet as Steph, has already had a huge impact on the world around him. He used the occasion of the release of his second book for children, I Am Extraordinary, to discuss his future with a reporter from CBS News. Then there's the map of the Bay Area that is littered with signs of Steph's attention to the place that brought him to fame and fortune in the shape of playgrounds and youth programs. Oakland is the center of his Eat Learn Play Foundation that he and his wife started in 2019. Students there have been supported not just in healthy food and excellent equitable places to play, but in their efforts to ensure that every student can become a proficient reader by the end of third grade. 

If he didn't already have my vote for winning multiple championships for his adopted hometown, his generosity and activism would. For the past two years, I personally received a membership to Master Class, with an eye toward moving up the career ladder. Or taking a class from Gary Kasparov to improve my chess game. And while he continues to strive for another NBA title, he is creating scholarships for women's sports, and lifting them up to the level he believes they should be. 

Yes, I understand that nailing three pointers in the closing seconds of an NBA game is very different from creating public policy. There are plenty of actors, athletes and other nominal celebrities who have made forays into the political arena with widely varied results. But wouldn't it be nice to have a hero?

A hero who helps build playgrounds and lifts people up. A hero who remains committed to his ideals and manages to be a devoted family man while pursuing a career that has continually defied the odds? 

For now, there are no immediate plans for Steph to hang up his sneakers, but when he does, I will be ready. Ready to vote for someone who does good. And well. 

Friday, March 15, 2024

All Wet

 Raining again. 

Can't help but think of my mom. 

She always used to say, "We need the moisture." This was her standard reply no matter what the season when water fell from the sky. It didn't matter if it was rain or sleet or hail or snow. It didn't matter how many inches or feet. "We need the moisture."

When I moved from Colorado to California, we had periodic discussions about the precipitation levels in our respective locations. When I told her we were getting rain, she would often ask if I couldn't "send some it our way," over the hills over the mountains, halfway across the continent. Because that was the way it worked. 

There were times when, in spite of my best efforts, I couldn't make this transference happen. When we had a deluge, one that had caused flooding and all sorts of alerts and damages, I could sense my mom was tensed in anticipation. 

Then there was only a sprinkle east of the Rockies. A shower of disappointment, if you will. 

Then there were those storms that bore down on my old hometown without ever making an appearance on the left coast. Blizzard conditions. Swollen streams and rivers. Where did all of that come from without first making at least an appearance on the left coast?

These days the weather is pretty much my own. With my mother gone, I don't have a Colorado correspondent for comparison. 

But I still sneak a peak at the weather over there. I want to say on top of these things, meteorologically speaking. 

We need the moisture. 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Blue Bird

 It grinds on me, a little bit, that I can no longer automatically post these blog posts on Twitter. I used to be able to shout out to the world from my comfortable little corner of Al Gore's Internet using the amplification supplied by that little blue bird.

I still call it Twitter, but journalists and the like are now prone to referring to it as "X, formerly known as Twitter." And the benign and not-so-oft putting verb "tweeted" has been replaced by "posted." The fun, it would seem, has gone along with the thrill. Just like my automatic posts. 

It's a business deal. Much like the way Tech-Daddy Google swooped in way back in 2003 to devour Blogger. I am certain there were Blogger folks who reacted in a similar way to Twitter zealots when their machine was engulfed by a giant. This was just before yours truly began scribbling on this outlet, so I didn't notice the way the furniture was arranged or the wiring was any different. 

Until Elongated Mush paid four billion dollars to spoil everyone's good time. He took away that little blue bird and replaced it with an unknown quantity from an algebra book. He let the Nazis back on. He started using it to promote his own scary world view. This little corner where people used to gather to complain about the red carpet fashions and the red hatted fascists has been converted to a place where I now regularly get ads for The Epoch Times sprinkled into my timeline. For those of you were unfamiliar, as I was when it first started to appear, The Epoch Times is a media conglomerate that likes its news the way we drive here in America: to the far right. They like the unvaccinated, QAnon, election denier angle on things. I don't claim to know a lot about computer algorithms, but it seems to me that the clicks I click on the artist formerly known as Twitter should be bringing me kinder, gentler left wing content rather than the January 6 apologists and fans of a certain former game show host. 

Alas, the new owner of this former bastion of free speech is currently busy twisting this once snarky place into a snarling vision of his own ugly imagination. A place where lies get amplified and anyone who points out that the emperor has no clothes or business doing so gets banished. And of course there are cat videos. 

Why don't I just leave? Because I don't want to leave when there is a point to be made in the name of truly free speech. There are still those who fight the good fight, calling out the nastiness and hypocrisy. It's free, after all.

And sometimes there are cat videos. 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Figures

 Over the last week I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. This wasn't a political vortex or a path down nostalgia lane. This was all about numbers. 

I have written here before about my love for teaching math. This came as a bit of a surprise since most of my enthusiasm for mathematics was knocked out of me by an ill-tempered high school instructor of elementary functions. He was not a fan of my approach to my senior year, which included a predilection toward the class clown end of the spectrum. But that didn't mean I didn't care about the math. This did not register on his end and he gave me the option of dropping his class before he failed me for my attitude. 

I dropped the class. 

And it was almost twenty years before I found my way back to math. 

Helping kids find patterns and connections in numbers and shapes and strands is fun for me. Watching them piece together the world around them through mathematics is a joy. This also gives me a chance to extend my own appreciation for figures and calculation. This past week had me sharing with fourth graders the fact that the product of any two even numbers is an even number, and the product of any two odd numbers is an odd number, but the product of an odd and an even number is always an even number. Which was intriguing enough for them, but after I was done with the class, I found myself wondering why there weren't more even numbers than odd if that was the case. I brought this dilemma home to my wife, and made my conjecture that this might have something to do with prime numbers. Together we imagined a sea of numbers and pictured the products of even numbers lighting up, then odd numbers in another color, then prime numbers in yet another. 

Later I turned to Reddit, where I found a thread of folks who had similar cogitations. I felt validated for having this somewhat vague quandary. And pleased that there was still some mystery left for me in arithmetic. Forty plus years after being kicked out of Elementary Functions, I was still thinking math thoughts. 

It felt good. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Doubt

 I am going to try and give Katie Britt the benefit of doubt. Specifically I doubt that it was her intent to go on national television and create a ready-to-air parody of the Republican Response to the State of the Union Address. I doubt that she expected to spend days after her appearance on everyone's social media being roundly criticized and laughed at for her earnest and we assume well-meaning attempt to disagree with the other party's leader. I doubt that she would have imagined that this opportunity would put her team in defense mode, rather than being the ace in the hole she was anticipated to be. 

A little background: Ms. Porter is the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama and the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate. These accomplishments should neither be denied or ridiculed. Furthermore it bears noting that California, that liberal bastion, is about to slip back into that realm of states without a woman senator after more than thirty years. Alabama has one. Once again I doubt that it was her state's or her party's intent to have her become a laughingstock. 

How could this have happened? 

I blame the patriarchy. For all the victories women have had over the course of our history, they continue to fight their fight in a rigged game. Who makes the rules? Men. Who calls the shots in the Republican Party? Men. Who said, "Katie, I think we should shoot your response in the kitchen. Not in your office. And if you wouldn't mind delivering all of your lines in a hushed whisper, that would be great." That advice came from a man. I know this because I have spent a lot of time hanging out with men and I know that so much of what they say about "fairness" is predicated by the scraps they are willing to toss around after they have finished gorging themselves on what they can force down their power mad gullets. 

Katie Britt was there as a counterpoint to the women who have been horrified by the man who sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and then defamed her to the tune of eighty-four million dollars in defamation penalties. The man who proudly boasts that it was he who overturned Roe v. Wade. The man who cheated on his pregnant wife with a porn star. The man who bragged about walking around backstage at the beauty pageants he owned, leering at naked women. 

Does it surprise me that Katie Britt was set up for failure by the party that has chosen to go all-in on this monster? Not a bit. But unfortunately I doubt that she is fully aware of how badly she was played.