List Making

Someone asked me the other day why I hadn't written a blog entry lately.  Well, it's not for lack of trying.  I'm being blocked by my fears and anxieties.  I can't seem to pick one topic to write about, or if I settle on one, it's too big, and I can't figure out how to whittle it down.  Just to try and 'unblock', I made a list of my concerns.  Here it is.  

The Pandemic

Climate change

Electronics outpacing my ability to keep up

Tribalization of the USA culture

 Dementia

Information Overload

Death of Civility

Public School System

Artificial Intelligence

Cyber Attacks

Wealth Inequality

Racism/Rise of White Supremacy

Facism/Socialism creeping into our politics

Social Media - too few hands holding the reins 

Lack of Trust in American Institutions

Guns - pick either side of the argument - it's all arguing; no solutions

Globalization (both politically & economically)

Solar Flares (also known as "The Sky is Falling")

California falling off into the ocean

Louisiana/Florida three feet under water

The NEXT Pandemic

The Apocalypse - (also known as World War III)

Dystopian/Utopian Societies coming to fruition

Euthanasia/Lack of Euthanasia

The Ultra Right

The Ultra Left

The Electoral College

The Death of Facts

The Loss of Journalism

Death of Paper (Books, Newspapers, Magazines)

Abortion as politics

Too many choices (you pick the product)

The Economy

The Housing Market

Do we stay or do we go?

Selling our AZ house

Cedric's World (both the micro and the macro)

The Anxiety of Weather Monitoring

North Korea

Middle East

Hunger in the USA

I didn't even PAUSE making the above list.  I didn't have to ponder.  And, frankly, I'm appalled by the ease with which the list flowed out.    I've realized mainly I'm distressed about the current climate of negativity which threads through everything.  Most movies, music, books, opinion pieces, news leads, TV shows, documentaries, etc., etc., etc. - negative.  Life around me seems to be more about "Bah, Humbug" rather than "Coming Up Roses".  The Scrooge view is seeping into my personal view of life.  Never have I ever had to search and search for optimism either externally or internally.  Life for me is always half full.  My family kids me I could find a silver lining if my arm fell off.  (I'm not exactly sure about THAT - but you get the picture.) 

I don't want anyone to think, "Curmudgeon" - (if you don't know the word, look it up - you carry a damn computer in your pocket 24/7).  I don't think life was better fifty years ago because it wasn't.  We had dirty air, dirty water, second class citizens, nuclear proliferation, the Cold War (which threatened to heat into Nuclear War), out of control diseases, and a 'hot war' to name a few.  (Again, I didn't even have to pause to come up with that list.)  

Just writing that last paragraph makes me realize every age has its burdens.  Why is it the burdens of this age loom so much larger as I ponder them?  Is it the realization solutions are never nice and neat.  Or is it once one problem solves, another one presents itself?  There's never any laurel resting.  Or does the winding down of my life making me realize the world of humans was/is/will be always infinitely messy.

So, what's the solution:  List making isn't it.  Picking something off the list and work on it? (Yes, idiot I am, I believe one person can make a difference.)  Am I too much inside my head?  Is it vague agoraphobia which came free for me with the pandemic?  Should I disconnect, and just give up?  Looking for solutions here.   Also, looking to hear what you want to read about.  Think of this blog as a suggestion box.  All suggestions welcome.  Just DON'T ADD TO MY LIST.      

Some Thoughts on Social Media

 I was browsing on a social media website today, and one person was outraged that 'over half of the posts have been removed'.   That comment sparked me thinking about the ideas and parallels between 2021 and 1881.  I know that seems like a very long time ago.  I've thought for a long time about the ascendency of the cult of money and status happening within the confines of a revolution.  In 1881 it was railroads.  It seems antiquated today to talk about railroads as some miracle technology which transformed an economy, and became a culture in itself.  In 1881 that's what railways were.  In 2021, if I talk about technology, we all know I'm referring to electronic technology.  It's a miracle that is transforming an economy, and it is certainly becoming a culture unto itself.

The Gilded Age (generally from 1881 - 1905) refers not only to the number of millionaires which arose during the period - many involved in owning or financing railroads, but also to the idea of gilt (a thin layer of gold) over the top of widespread grinding poverty, political corruption, labor unrest, and problems with ethnicity, race, and immigration.  Building railroads and all the industries which fed them sparked innovation and invention in all areas of the economy as well as severely punishing other economical endeavors.  Substitute the word 'technologies' for the word railroads in the previous sentence, and suddenly it's 140 years ago.   This rather all sounds familiar, doesn't it?   I wonder how our age will be designated by the historians?

So back to the outrage on the social media website.  There seems to be some expectation the social media platforms are public forums.  This is totally false.  There is very little social media regulation.  According to an article I read on a website called TechCrunch, there are four bodies of government which could possibly regulate social media:  (1)  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) actually regulates communication, but has no authority over what is communicated.  It's concerned with infrastructure.  (2) State Legislatures are attempting social media regulation coming at it from the concerns over privacy and use of a person's data.  California and Illinois have enacted laws aimed at regulating what's said over social media, and how the social media giants can use information.  (3)  Congress.  Well, Congress is a day late and a dollar short.  They dropped the ball when social media got rolling because Congress is filled with people who realized much too late the power of this new economy.  Think old white/black/hispanic guys.  Out of touch and out of date and so mired in gridlock, the tech giants are  gleeful.  (4)  International law - social media doesn't stop at borders.  However, the chaos of getting international regulations concerning privacy and metadata hammered out make a unified standard of regulation just about laughable.

Wake up!  When you 'post', you do so at the sufferance of the company which owns your social media of choice.  Facebook/Twitter/WhatsAp/NextDoor/YouTube/Tumblr/ WeChat/Pinterest/TikTok etc, etc, etc (and this list currently numbers in the hundreds) are all recognizable denizens of the social media world.  These companies can use and remove anything on their websites at their sole discretion.  (Google, in fact, owns this blog - since I use the app Blogger, which is their creation.) Screaming 'censorship' and 'privacy' and 'freedom of information' is hogwash because these mega companies are not really regulated by anyone.  There's no oversight.  There's no grievance process.  Here we have freewheeling capitalism at both its best and its worst. 

For many years, there have been rumblings and outright shouts about too much government.  A significant number of citizens want less regulation and less oversight at every governmental level.  Social media companies LOVE this.  It makes the majority owners of these companies the most powerful people in the world.  One thing I've always known:  Rich people take care of themselves.  They only think about the public good when forced to by responsible government. 

 2021 - Welcome to the New Gilded Age!  

I think this slogan could definitely catch on.  What do you think?    

The New and Improved MOMA

With our art loving friend visiting (and working on a Coney Island hospital project), we bought our timed tickets, donned our masks, and ventured to both the Metropolitan Art Museum and the new and improved Museum of Modern Art.  The MOMA had been working on a two year expansion thanks to the purchase of the adjoining building at their 53rd St. location.  Now, it's 'stretched' and thus expanded.  The permanent collection fills three floors shown in chronological order.  The remaining two floors house the temporary exhibitions. 

The most talked about exhibition in the City is the 278 Cezanne drawings at the MOMA.  They were a fascinating look at an artist's process.  However, there is something to be said for selection and brevity, and this exhibition is really overwhelming.  I felt like I saw everything and nothing.  Many of the drawings were obviously 'practice' in the how to process.  It was pretty interesting to see him refine his fruit.  He also drew himself repeatedly.  (The full front face is his self portrait.)  I wondered if he spent a lot of time looking into mirrors.

He also practiced drawing his art friends' pictures, sculptures, as well as copying classical sculptures he admired.  This is "Olympia", his friend Manet's famous picture which was a reinterpretation of Venus of Urbino by Titian.

 

  

While Cezanne was fascinating, the OTHER exhibition was the one which I really enjoyed.  It was an Alexander Calder exhibition.  Calder has been involved with the MOMA since 1931 - the year of his first exhibit by the MOMA.  "Lobster Trap and Fish Tail" was specially designed for the new MOMA building - in 1939.  

At the dinner commemorating the 10th anniversary of the opening of the new building in 1939, Calder also designed the ten foot long candelabra decorating the table 

The current exhibitions is full of wonderful examples of Calder's art from large floor pieces to small whimsical wire sculptures as well as his signature mobiles.  If you love Calder, this is the exhibition for you.

The third exhibition was a bit of a dud in my opinion.  It's called Automania, and it was designed to show how detrimental the automobile has been on the urban landscape.  Not terribly successful.  My favorite piece was a Judy Chicago painted automobile hood, (outrageous at the time).  The Jaguar was also so beautiful, and the chrome on the Air Stream trailer was a mirror finish.  

 

I also picked and chose some of my 'fave' pieces from a couple of floors of the MOMA collection.  I loved the new expanded MOMA.  Hope you like my pics!    

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yhfWAuPrYk6E6X2h9

 

Long Island Lavender

 One of the delights of a vacation for a curious (nosy) person such as myself is meeting people who have a passion.  Everyone is usually proud of 'their town', but passionate people are usually attached to and passionate about a very particular place or event.  On Sunday we ran into one of those people when we visited the Lavender Farm.  A woman about my age told me everything there was to know about lavender.

I learned their farm is in two parts:  A 17 acre parcel (see above), and a 31 acre parcel.  Even with all the lavender harvested, the scent was pervasive.  There was no doubt what kind of farm you were visiting.  At the farm store they were selling lavender plants (most of which were still blooming) in the size pot in which you would buy a geranium.  And, the bees were busy at work on those blooming plants.  They were also advertising their once a year lavender honey was now available.  In addition to lavender, the farm has its own bee hives.   

There's French Lavender and English Lavender.  Generally, French Lavender has one bloom per stalk while English Lavender usually has two blooms.  "F" (French) is for fragrance, and "E" (English) is for edible.  Thus, you would make a sachet out of French lavender and brew your tea with English lavender.  The lady I chitchatted with confided she drinks a cup of lavender tea every night right before bed as her sleep aid.

In July, harvest begins as the sounds of chainsaws rip through the air.  One man wielding a chainsaw can harvest one acre a day.  Prior to gas driven chainsaws, lavender was harvested using scythes.  It was a much slower harvest, and less noisy.  If you notice, the lavender plants look like domes.  That's the preferred method of harvest.  Apparently, you never harvest lavender close to the ground

19th century scythe

 The woman I talked to demonstrated how to harvest a geranium sized lavender plant you would buy at their Farm Store.  She thrust her hand into the plant about halfway between the tip end of the plant (where the bloom grows) and the soil.  Then she spread her fingers and mimed snipping the plant just above her fingers in an arc, so you would be left with a dome shaped plant.  To successfully grow lavender, you need six hours of direct sunlight and good drainage.

The store was chock full of an array of lavender products.  I was thrilled to find one of my favorite ointments for dry skin.  It is a bees wax/oil pressed with lavender oil, and I seek it out every chance I get.  I use it at night on my hands and feet since lavender is used to calm angry skin as well as promote sleep.  This store had sachets, neck wraps, bath salts, hand lotion, soap, plants, tea, honey, mugs, aprons, t-towels, and my personal favorite:  a purple t-shirt advertising the Lavender Farm.  I also bought harvested lavender in a four ounce pouch.

I plan to add that lavender to my own rose petals I brought to Brooklyn from my rose bushes in Arizona.  I'm going to be making some sachets out of the Korean silk Marilyn, my mother-in-law, gave me.  (She and Norm, Drake's Dad, spent two years on an American Air Force base in South Korea in the 1970's, and Norm's employees had full Korean ceremonial dress costumes made out of silk presented to both of them.)  Forty years later, I was the happy recipient of the silk.  Since the clothes were floor length and 'full', there was a lot of salvageable material. 

Once again, readers, you now know more about a subject than you ever realized you wanted to know.  

The Intrepid Pigeon Fighter Makes a Plea

 

Staring Down the Humans

The Intrepid Pigeon Fighter, whose fame was enhanced by several blog entries [1/30/12;  2/5/12/; 2/21/12] ,  retired from competition many years ago after winning his gold medal.  He defeated an entire flock of the rat birds on behalf of his mother.  He vanquished these pests from nesting in the eaves of her house.  He entertained thousands of pigeon fighting admirers with his intrepid battles against roosting by these vermin on his mother's front porch.  And, when the field was won, he passed on his winning techniques in the Intrepid Pigeon Fighting School he founded using his sponsorship $$.   

Upon our move to Brooklyn, NY, he closed his school and considered himself completely retired from the pigeon fighting business.  However, his outrage has been building.  While living here, he's discovered a mutated version of these so called 'rock doves'.  If you are walking on the city streets, these pigeons stare you down.  Expect to be pecked, or even flocked, if you make the unwise choice of trying to 'shoo' these so called 'birds' out of your path.  The IPF thinks these NY pigeons must be a mutation of the suburban version.  They nest on roof tops in a thin oxygen atmosphere.  Intrepid speculates there must be pigeon brain mutation since their diet is totally take-out/delivery. 

The Intrepid Pigeon Fighter is so concerned with the bold attitude of these NYC pigeons, he's willing to share all his pigeon fighting methodology and techniques with any interested New Yorker.  Just send, a stamped, self addressed envelope together with $100 dollars in food delivery coupons to THE INTREPID PIGEON FIGHTER, Brooklyn, NY 11231.  Satisfaction guaranteed!  New Yorkers what do you have to lose?  This pigeon behavior is INTOLERABLE!

Owl Sleeper

   

Social Influencing

 Hasn't life changed!  And the rate of change is dizzying.  Who can keep up?  Not me.  Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the glut of content, here's the solution of too much information many people have adopted:  Social influencers.  If you are old or wary or have adapted to the information age by opting out, you may not know what social influence is.  Here's a tutorial.

A social influencer is a person with a robust, even mind blowing presence on the web.  They tend to post vlogs (short videos on a topic) instead of writing blogs (a now archaic presence on the web).  Using YouTube, and Instagram, they build hundreds of thousands if not millions of 'followers' (people who watch the vlogs) and 'like them'.  Thus, social influencers tend to be industry specific (beauty, food, parenting, automotive, tech, etc.).  

Now, here's the real kicker:  People trust the opinions of social influencers over information provided by a product manufacturer or government official, or elected official.  In other words, a company can make all the advertisements they desire, a politician or official can deliver information or speeches, but they are not as believed as the vlogger.  Can you already see what's happening?  

Social influencers make $$$$ by accepting advertisements on their vlogs or just outright cash from producers of products or backers of a particular world view, and they vlog about it.  Basically, you're still being shilled even if you think you're getting an unbiased assessment of a product or idea by a vlogger.   These unvetted (who monitors their truthfulness), uncredentialled (what are their qualifications) and uninformed vloggers are the current movers of public opinion, and they are being straight up paid and manipulated by the wealthy and the political fringe.  

So, what will change a person's opinion on a topic or about a product?  Vloggers have to be aware of 'cognitive dissonance'.  This is a psychology term which means how people perceive information which is contrary to their world view.  Let's say you 'follow' one of the leading vloggers on any subject you can imagine:  beauty, parenting, politics to name a few.  One day, the beauty vlogger does a video showing how to use the least amount of make up possible.  Or, the parenting blogger does a video showing how to 'hit a toddler'.  Or, a right wing political vlogger does a video endorsing climate change.  Any one of these would be contrary to the world views of a majority of his/her 'followers'.  How does the follower of a social influencer handle the vlogger's sudden change of heart?  Not only does the loyal follower ignore the influencer's opinion, they begin to actively double down on their own world view rejecting the influencer. 

Back to the question:  How can you change a person's opinion on a topic or about a product?  It's still all about social influence.  People shift their thinking about a topic or product when they hear the contrary view from the outer edges of the social influencer's network. (This is according to a paper from the University of Pennsylvania on social networking.)  If you want to change opinions, avoid the center of a social network.  Instead, look to an influencer on the outer edges of a social network.  Instead of being one of a million, the person who changes opinions is one of 100.  

Social influence is a reality of the electronic age.  Everyone who doesn't live under a rock is being socially influenced.  Pretending YOUR opinions are not being influenced is simply folly.   As soon as information started to be disseminated more globally, people have been influenced.  Think books, newspapers, movies, radio, television, and now:  websites. 

Here's why you should care and think about who is influencing you.  The United States moves socially and politically on PUBLIC OPINION.  You can't legislate people's opinions.  People change their opinions about a subject based on exposure.  Surprisingly, exposure to local influencers are what changes opinions.  However, mega influencers (bought and paid for) drown out other voices.   The question a thinking person asks is:  Who is trying to shaping my world view? 

Letter Writing is Drowning my Blog

 I write letters.  I've been writing letters seriously since 2010.  What is serious letter writing?  Currently, my definition of 'serious' is an average of ten letters a week.  Why would I do that?  First, and foremost is because I was poleaxed for two years (2005 - 2007).  During that time I lost my job, my ability to walk, developed chronic pain issues, had three surgeries, and spent all that time house bound.  I also spent a total of eight months in bed during that two year period.  I battled not just physical pain, but mental issues such as anger and depression.  Thanks to a combination of friends and Pastor Marilyn (pastor at St. Paul UMC at the that time) I pulled through.  When Pastor Marilyn had the temerity to suggest something good was going to come from all my suffering, I cussed her thoroughly.  (Sigh....let me apologize here publicly to her.)  I couldn't imagine how anything good could come from two years of misery.

Well, good things have come from that misery.  I've always been an optimist, but now I do have a greater understanding of faithfulness.  However, that's another blog.  Back to letter writing....  That two year period in my life made me understand how reaching out with snail mail comforts people.  I sporadically wrote cards and notes to people who were ill as soon as I was up and about.  It was when I left the town I'd lived in for twenty years to start vagabonding I realized the importance of letters to maintain friendships.  Paula has written me every week (sometimes more than once) from the week I left Texas.  If we still kept paper address books, my page in hers would be multiple pages since in eleven years, I've had almost twenty addresses.

The number of letters per week I write has slowly evolved over the past eleven years.  First, I realized I should write Paula back.  Second, I re-connected with an uber elderly person (over age 90!) who I thought would like letters since those seemed a lot more natural to her than electronic communication.  Third, since I have a lot of friends older than me, some started getting sick and I wanted to be in touch with them in a meaningful way.  (I dislike sappy 'get well soon' greeting cards.)  Finally, some of my youngest friends seemed to need the comfort and stability of weekly letters.

So, at this point in time I'm writing Paula, the uber elderly, the sick/recovering, friends my age, and young friends.  Here's what I have discovered:  Sick people, even when recovered, were mum about their recovery.  They wanted to stay on the letter list!  Young friends, even when they want to be more connected by responding to my letters, are struggling with the explosion of their careers as the pandemic winds down, but they want the connectivity and don't have time to be responders.  Friends I've been writing fall into two categories - those who write/call/email/text back and those who are silent.  

Now, I was fine writing all these people and adding on to the list by chance UNTIL the pandemic.  That's when I just lost control, and my blog postings suffered.  It IS more difficult to write so many people every week when we are keeping Cedric 40 hours a week.   I'm really mentally tired at the end of the work day, so I don't tend to write during the week.  We had a solid year of nanny time during the pandemic with no breaks.  It was also hard to 'thin' the weekly letter list since we all looked forward to real mail during the pandemic.  And, if that wasn't enough to affect my blog, well, I struggled for writing topics in weekly letters beyond toddler antics, and since we weren't going anywhere or doing anything for a solid year, well blog topics were even harder to find.

If I'm going to continue my blog, I need something to change.  My solution is to move some people who just like to get letters to a monthly basis while continuing to write weekly the sick, the uber elderly, and people who respond to me.  That solution will cut my weekly letter outflow about in half.  That allows me to write a blog entry more often.  Blog entries take much more work to write than weekly letters.  First, you need the idea.  Second, you need to formulate the idea.  Third, you need to polish the formulation.  Fourth, you need to polish again.  Some blog entries take several hours to write, so I can wind up publishing exactly what I want to say.   Hopefully, you will begin reading interesting entries again because they will be better entries than the past year's offerings.

Finally, if you got moved to the monthly letter list, well, it's not because I don't treasure your friendship.  it's because I want to redistribute my writing time.  Of course, you can always fake being sick if you really, really need my idiot letters.