#47 bagpipes and national anthems, bridge, Sanders and the Red Hen, secession

Good afternoon.

            I received an email, a word-a-day sort of thing, defining the word "skirl."  It is "of a bagpipe: to emit the high shrill tone of the chanter; also: to give forth music" or "to play (music) on the bagpipe."  I sent it to a few Scottish friends to ask if they were familiar with it.  They are, although not in the second sense, as a verb.  One wrote that Scots know the word, "but I would say rather literary and bordering on the archaic.  It might be used to persuade visitors to Scotland that bagpipes emit music rather than execrable noise :-)  But I've never heard of it being used as a verb . . . rather a noun as in 'the skirl of the bagpipes was driving Bruce slowly mad'".

            I confessed that I liked bagpipe music, in limited doses.  My friend wrote back: 

Rest assured if you lived in Edinburgh for any length of time you would rapidly cease to like bagpipe music :-) particularly the funerary version of this – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pibroch.  He is an extremely short sample – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRzQGvIshNQ – only 10 minutes.  I guarantee that by the end of this you will have come round to my point of view.

After listening to it, I agreed; I wouldn't want to listen to what is funereal music very long.  But I said that surely there is livelier bagpipe music that one could listen to for slightly longer a period.

            My friend suggested that I "try 'Flower of Scotland' – which must be the world's worst national anthem."  I found a recording of "Flower of Scotland" on the web.  I don't know whether it's among the worst because I don't know the universe of national anthems, but it wouldn't have been one I voted for.  The lyrics celebrate the defeat of Edward II of England by the Scots at Bannockburn in 1314; the music isn't exactly uplifting because it almost seems more like a dirge than an anthem.

There is a parallel with "The Star-Spangled Banner" (which ranks up there among the worst as well, in my opinion):  both songs commemorate battles (and both against the English!) that happen to be 500 years apart (Bannockburn in 1314, Fort McHenry in 1814).  I asked my friend if Scotland, in the 21st century, really wants to continue to celebrate Bannockburn (and snub their noses at the English)?  And does the U.S. really need to celebrate a minor battle in the War of 1812?  (One of my favorites—of the few anthems I know—is "Advance Australia Fair," but I can imagine that the Aborigines are not thrilled with it—not that it denigrates them in any way, but beyond the first verse it does celebrate those who came from across the sea.)

            My friend wrote back.  "There's a reason the Scots aren't fond of "God Save the Queen," the British national anthem.  Mostly just because it's seen as an English anthem, "but for the more erudite amongst us it's because of the words of the sixth (!) verse:

Lord grant that Marshal Wade

May by thy mighty aid

Victory bring.

May he sedition hush,

And like a torrent rush,

Rebellious Scots to crush.

God save the Queen!"

Which is why, he concluded, one can "understand the absolute relevance of celebrating a victory in 1314 in our anthem :-)"

            Field Marshal Wade (1673-1748), beginning in 1725, led "the construction of barracks, bridges and proper roads to assist in the control of" Scotland for about a dozen years, raised military companies from the gentry, and put down an uprising.  At the end of his career, however, he failed to "crush the rebellious Scots"; during the second Jacobite insurrection in 1745,

Wade concentrated his troops in Newcastle upon Tyne on the east coast of England; however, the Jacobite forces advanced from Scotland down the west coast of England via Carlisle into Lancashire and the speed of their advance left Wade scrambling. In freezing conditions and with his men starving, he failed to counter their march into England or their subsequent retreat back from Derby to Scotland.

Wade was fired.  (His successor won the Battle of Culloden, in 1746, ending the Stuart bid to reclaim the throne of England.  So George II remained on the throne and his son George III became the focus of American colonists' ire that led to the revolution.)

            Seems to me that if the Queen wanted to promote amity with Scotland, she should direct that the 6^th verse of "God Save the Queen" be discarded!  Whether the Scots want amity is, of course, another matter.

* * *

            My friend Joe Dixon talked me into playing club competitive duplicate bridge (at a place in south Minneapolis called, appropriately enough, The Bridge Center).  I quit playing club/tournament duplicate bridge about 30-35 years ago because, if you'll pardon the term, I thought those games attracted a disproportionate share of assholes.  Too many of them were nasty to one another (their partners!) or to us (their opponents).  Not all, of course, but enough that I found the experience unpleasant.  It's just a game, for Pete's sake! 

            Maybe times have changed.  The one time we've played thus far, the people were pleasant.  We even played reasonably well; we were second out of nine pairs.  I think we would have been first except that on one hand I pulled the wrong card, transforming what would have been a good result into a lousy result. 

* * *

            Adam Gopnik wrote a piece in the New Yorker about the incident at the Red Hen restaurant, when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave.  "To sit and share or to shame and shun? On the issue of Sanders being expelled from a restaurant, mixed emotions are the only ones a rational person can have."  I think that's correct.  Mine are mixed.  Here are the concluding four paragraphs.

On the one hand, one of the ritual functions of restaurants is to make a common place for commonplace civilization to proceed. They build social capital from their openness to all kinds. Think of how much the civilization of American cities depends on our being able to grab not just bite but a bit of anonymity—we eat alongside others without the others looking down too sharply upon us. It's a fundamental liberal value, worth protecting in all partisan instances and on all partisan sides. And, no, we don't want to set a precedent in which politics are so personalized that even simple common coexistence becomes impossible. As a moral duty, we should share the pleasures and conversation of the table with as many people of as many views as we can. . . .

On the other hand, the Trump Administration is not a normal Presidential Administration. This is the essential and easily fudged fact of our historical moment. The Trump Administration is—in ways that are specific to incipient tyrannies—all about an assault on civility. To the degree that Trump has any ideology at all, it's a hatred of civility—a belief that the normal decencies painfully evolved over centuries are signs of weakness which occlude the natural order of domination and submission. It's why Trump admires dictators. Theirs are his values; that's his feast. And, to end the normal discourse of democracy, the Trump Administration must make lies respectable—lying not tactically but all the time about everything, in a way that does not just degrade but destroys exactly the common table of democratic debate.

That's Sarah Huckabee Sanders's chosen role in life—to further those lies, treat lies as truth, and make lies acceptable. This is not just a question of protesting a particular policy; in the end there are no policies, only the infantile impulses of a man veering from one urge to another. The great threat to American democracy isn't "policy" but the pretense of normalcy. That's the danger, for with the lies come the appeasement of tyranny, the admiration of tyranny, and, as now seems increasingly likely, the secret alliance with tyranny. That's what makes the Trump Administration intolerable, and, inasmuch as it is intolerable, public shaming and shunning of those who take part in it seems just. Never before in American politics has there been so plausible a reason for exclusion from the common meal as the act of working for Donald Trump.

And what about civility? Well, fundamental to, and governing the practice of, civility is the principle of reciprocity: your place at my table implies my place at yours. Conservatives and liberals, right-wingers and left-wingers, Jews and Muslims and Christians and Socialists and round- and flat-Earthers—all should have a place at any table and be welcome to sit where they like. On the other hand, someone who has decided to make it her public role to extend, with a blizzard of falsehoods, the words of a pathological liar, and to support, with pretended piety, the acts of a public person of unparalleled personal cruelty—well, that person has asked us in advance to exclude her from our common meal. You cannot spit in the plates and then demand your dinner. The best way to receive civility at night is to not assault it all day long. It's the simple wisdom of the table.

            I sent the article to Elliott and Kathy.  Elliott didn't agree with Gopnik's conclusion.  "As much as I dislike her and the administration she serves I have to side with letting her eat. Not being a hypocrite is more important than getting even. Not to mention the more adult thing to do."

            In my view, I told him, the question at hand is whether this administration is so qualitatively different from all past Republican (to say nothing of Democratic) administrations that its representatives should be treated differently.  I am of a very mixed mind on this, because I *do* think this administration has gone far beyond the bounds of decency and civility in politics.  Sometimes passive, polite resistance works; other times, a more forthright and aggressive response in warranted.  In the case of this administration, I confess to leaning toward the latter.  But not without reservations. . . .

           

            Elliott still didn't agree, and Kathy agreed with Elliott.  "I don't think so, because Trump just turns any sleight against him into a Twitter rant and it just reinforces the idea that everyone is out to get him and his supporters eat it up. I think against someone like him ultimately the only option is to be the bigger person. "

            Then there appeared an article in the Atlantic pointing out that "attacks on incivility are rooted more in preserving the status quo than in addressing ongoing harms and violence."  The argument is that "civil" protests haven't changed much, and that change has occurred primarily in the face of "uncivil" protest.

* * *

             It seems to me that if the Supreme Court, with a new appointee, reverses the gay marriage and abortion decisions, and in light of the slew of distasteful opinions the Court handed down this month and in past years (e.g., Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, gun control), the governors of California, Oregon, and Washington could seek to hold referenda in their states on whether or not the three states should secede from the United States and form their own country.  I wonder if Mr. McConnell, Mr. Trump, and the Federalist Society realize that that is the direction their Supreme Court (and their Congress) is pushing the blue states.  I could imagine that New York and perhaps some other New England states could follow the lead of the west coast, as could some of the interior blue states.  Yes, technically, there is no way for a state to leave the country; the Civil War settled that question.  In a practical sense, however, the west coast could begin to move toward separation, were it supported by a significant majority, and there wouldn't be much that the federal government could do short of the use of force by the military.

            This is idle speculation, but if the country's leadership and decision-making lurch further to the right, surely the question will arise.

            If it does begin to look serious, I might talk with Kathy about her taking early retirement and us moving to Oregon.  With our sons, if they chose to accompany us.

            On that uplifting note, enjoy the day.

Gary

#46 dishwasher loading, nasty obit, who's in dreams?, cancer & vitamin D, the path of grieving, in 100 years

Good morning.

I usually consider Consumer Reports to be a useful and reliable source of information.  In the case of one recent post from them, however, I thought they were wrong.  It was a short piece on how to load your dishwasher, and the author asserted that with modern dishwashers, it is not necessary to rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher (other than removing excess food).  Baloney. 

I remind myself a couple of times per year of the adage "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."  Perhaps every six months I try putting unrinsed dishes in the dishwasher.  The result is always the same:  some bits and pieces of food baked on the dishes.  Why do I keep trying?  It may be that that approach works if one takes the dishes directly from the dining table to the dishwasher and runs it immediately—which we rarely do because the dishwasher isn't usually full enough to warrant running it.  Even then it doesn't work that well, especially if something like cheese has been microwaved onto a plate.  Perhaps we have a lousy dishwasher—but I don't think so, because at least in terms of price, it was in the mid/upper range. 

Nope, their advice was just wrong.

* * *

Most of you no doubt saw the news about the nasty obituary that the two children of a deceased woman put in the Redwood Falls Gazette.  (If you missed it, here's a summary:  http://www.startribune.com/son-who-wrote-humiliating-obit-about-mom-we-wanted-to-get-the-last-word/484867381/ )  I sent a news clip (before the son came forward) to Elliott.  He wrote back.

"Yeah, just remember there's only one person who has absolute authority over the contents of your obituary so you better be nice :P   That's pretty tacky though. To say the least. Whether warranted or not."  I agreed, and then sent him the clip where the son was interviewed.  His observation coincided with mine:  "Sounds like a whole collection of bitter and vindictive people."  It appears that those two kids had plenty to be angry about, but I'm pretty sure venting the anger in an obituary like that isn't the way to address it.  Better to have seen a therapist.

That incident prompted me to update my own obituary (yes, I've drafted it).  Elliott and Kathy better use it!

* * *

Dream phenomenon:  The details of a recent dream are unimportant.  I had a dream (one I actually remembered) that involved Elliott.  He still lived at home and we were sitting around in the living room talking one night.  He made the most insulting, derogatory comments to me, that my life was a waste, that I had accomplished nothing, that I was not worth knowing, etc.  I then told him he needed to move out within the next day or so and also (with no thought about Kathy or my own financial future) gave away all my retirement funds so that Elliott couldn't inherit them; I donated them widely.  That was the end of the dream.  Dreams are weird, as we know.  (No, Elliott has never made any kind of remarks like that!)

I told Kathy about this dream and she observed that it is rare that those closest to us appear in dreams.  Elliott has rarely, if ever before this, been in my dreams, nor has Kathy or Krystin or Pat.  Kathy said that neither her son Spencer nor her mother been in hers.  I wonder if there's any dream research on this point—or it's just idiosyncratic to the two of us (which seems unlikely).  Perhaps more likely is that we just don't remember. . . .

* * *

            As we all know, what's considered sound medical advice can change over time.  One recent study, however, caught my attention.  From Science Daily:

A new study authored by scientists from the American Cancer Society, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and more than 20 other medical centers and organizations finds that higher circulating vitamin D concentrations are significantly associated with lower colorectal cancer risk. This study strengthens the evidence, previously considered inconclusive, for a protective relationship. Optimal vitamin D concentrations for colorectal cancer prevention may be higher than the current National Academy of Medicine recommendations, which are based only on bone health.

            It was a huge study and appears to have included a meta-analysis of previous studies as well.

The article precis is here:  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180614101241.htm

This one may be worth having a chat with your physician about if you have any concern about colorectal cancer.  My physician is taking a look at the study and we'll have a chat about whether a small vitamin D supplement might be logical.  (For people who drink a lot of milk, like I do, it may not be necessary.  One cup of milk = 25% of the U.S. RDA of vitamin D, and I probably drink 3-4-5-6 cups a day, depending on the events of the day.  But given the study, it may be that the RDA is too low.  And the RDA itself comes under criticism.)  I don't have the sense, from the language of the report, that they're talking about the thousands of units of vitamin D that Linus Pauling recommended some years ago, only about adjusting the RDA for cancer prevention.

* * *

            I contemplate the "path of grieving."  I'm sure that's not an original phrase.  Many of you may remember the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who conceptualized the stages of grief in those who are terminally ill and who know it.  The five stages originally hypothesized are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  I familiarized myself with her work when my mother was dying, during the summer of 1989.  I have not returned to that literature since. 

Kübler-Ross's schema has been the subject of considerable criticism in the field.  Here are the concluding two paragraphs from the Wikipedia entry on "Kübler-Ross model" (links to citations omitted):

George Bonanno, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University, in his book The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After a Loss [2009], summarizes peer-reviewed research based on thousands of subjects over two decades and concludes that a natural psychological resilience is a principal component of grief and that there are no stages of grief to pass. Bonanno's work has also demonstrated that absence of grief or trauma symptoms is a healthy outcome.

The lack of support in the academic psychology literature has led to the popular and special interest press applying the labels of myth and fallacy to the notion that there are stages of grief, in publications ranging from Time magazine to Scientific American to Skeptic Magazine, the latter publishing findings of the Grief Recovery Institute that contested the concept of stages of grief as they relate to people who are dealing with the deaths of people important to them.

            Of course this has to do with Krystin's death, as you might infer.  There has been some research suggesting the stages of grief do exist, but they don't manifest themselves sequentially (a point Kübler-Ross herself made later) and not everyone goes through all of them.  Even if they aren't "stages," surely those five emotions are part of the grieving process in some fashion, all of them for some people and only some of them for others.  In my case, there was never any denial or bargaining.  I don't have the psychological makeup to deny death when I've looked right at it, nor do I have a set of beliefs that allows bargaining.  The other three?  Yes—anger, depression, and—I think in most recent weeks—acceptance.

Acceptance is critical.  I've wondered whether the path for me is different from what it might be for others because of the diaries, blogs, and Facebook posts that Krystin left behind, in addition to the years of email and text exchanges I had with her.  It is surely the case, in the age we live in, that everyone leaves a written trail of some sort if they ever send emails or text messages or use Facebook.  Unless you take affirmative steps to delete these compositions, they remain somewhere in cyberspace for a long time.  So any of us who lose a loved one can, to some extent, assemble the writing of the deceased, if they wish and have the time and energy.

            For all of human history up until the last couple of decades, when few left behind any written record (except perhaps for letters or diaries saved), grief consisted of the emotional trauma following death and a gradual lessening of the pain as time passes.  (That hypothesis isn't original, either, and it's pretty elementary, captured in "time heals all wounds.")  The loved one fades from daily life, remembered with affection (assuming an affectionate relationship, of course!), and in many cases remembered less and less frequently as the years go by.  (I dearly loved my mom, and she was a good friend as well as my mom, but I confess that I haven't thought of her as much in recent years as I did in the couple of decades following her death.)  I don't think there's anything immoral or evil about that lessening of remembering; it's the normal course of human events, for most of us.  It's also probably psychologically healthy (that's pure conjecture).

            When I decided to assemble and organize Krystin's writing, however, it did not immediately occur to me that I would be spending time on a daily basis with her for months.  I am reading her 2-3 hours per day as I collect pieces from the web, email, and text, all of which have to be copied and pasted into a Word document before they can be edited.  I am also seeing her because she liked to include photos in much of what she wrote.  Because I don't know yet where I'm going with all this material, I'm erring on the side of including much; I'm sure much of what I'm copying and pasting I will discard.  The upshot, however, is that my self-appointed task hasn't permitted Krystin to fade even slightly from my life.  I can't decide if this is good or bad.  For the most part it seems to me good; I can now work with her Facebook posts and her emails to me without emotional strain (well, 98% of the time, anyway).  Without acceptance I am certain that I'd quickly run away from this work.

            I do want to bring this project to a conclusion.  I originally thought to complete it within a year after Krystin died, but I won't make that deadline; there's just too much material to organize and work with.  So perhaps sometime in early 2019.

* * *

            Apropos of my musings about life in 130 years:  In the course of collecting my email exchanges with Krystin, I came across an excerpt from an Aeon piece that I sent to her (and to Kathy and Elliott) in March of 2015.  A very different speculation on aspects of life in 100 years, several elements of which I find frightening.  (It's a few paragraphs, out of a longer article, but worth a read:)

In 100 years it will not be acceptable to use genderised words such as ‘he’ or ‘she’, which are loaded with centuries of prejudice and reduce a spectrum of greys to black and white. We will use the pronoun ‘heesh’ to refer to all persons equally, regardless of their chosen gender. This will of course apply not only to humans, but to all animals.

It will be an offence to eat any life-form. Once the sophistication, not only of other animals, but also of plants has been recognised, we will be obliged to accept the validity of their striving for life. Most of our food will be synthetic, although the consumption of fruit – ie, those parts of plants that they willingly offer up to be eaten – will be permitted on special occasions: a birthday banana, a Christmas pear.

We will not be permitted to turn off our smartphones – let alone destroy them – without their express permission. From the moment Siri started pleading with heesh’s owners not to upgrade to a newer model, it became clear that these machines contained a consciousness with interests of heesh’s own. Old phones will instead be retired to a DoSSBIS (Docking Station for Silicon-Based Intelligent Systems).

Privacy will have been abolished, and regarded as a cover for criminality and hypocrisy. It will be an offence to use a pseudonym online – why would anyone do this except to abuse or deceive others? – and all financial transactions of any kind, including earnings and tax payments – will automatically appear on the internet for all to see. With privacy, prudishness too will disappear; for example, wearing a bikini or trunks to go swimming will be seen as no less absurd than bathing in a bow-tie and top hat.

In 100 years, the idea that ordinary humans – prone to tiredness and drunkenness, watery eyes and sneezing fits – could be in sole charge of weapons, cars or other dangerous objects will cause the average citizen to shudder. All driving, fighting and arresting will be done by silicon-based intelligent systems that are prone neither to a tipple nor to hay fever.

Wasting water will be regarded with the same horror that we now regard the spilling of blood: as a squandering of the stuff of life. Those who flushed toilets with water of drinking quality (everyone in the industrialised world) will be put on a par with those who shot the last tigers.

Well, maybe. Perhaps some of these predictions will come true, perhaps not. In some cases, the opposite might happen: a resurgence of the right to privacy that will armour-plate our personal space, making it unthinkable, even indecent, that anyone would ever reveal their real name online; or a movement for human accountability that derides reliance on automated systems – whether in our cars, phones and elsewhere – as an abdication of responsibility. But one thing is certain: in 100 years, ordinary people will look back at us and shake their heads, wondering how we could have been so irresponsible, so venal, so morally short-sighted.

Norms and values change. Think for a moment of the world in 1915. It is the world of just a few generations ago – depending on your age, somewhere between your parents and your great-great-grandparents. It was a time of world wars in which swathes of people were regularly dehumanised as preparation for conquest or killing; a time in which sexism, racism, imperialism, anti-Semitism and homophobia were not just accepted, but expected, even required.

These prejudices all still exist, of course. But in large parts of the world momentous shifts in our values have made them increasingly unacceptable. We authors, a Briton and a German, are writing this essay together in a peaceful and unified Berlin. This city is now in the heart of a continent-wide union of nations that, according to its treaties, is founded on ‘pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men’. And we write in between looking after our respective children while our respective wives are at work, doing jobs that would have been closed to their grandmothers.

            (Unfortunately, given the character and beliefs of the current occupant of the White House, their concluding two paragraphs don't ring quite as true as they did even a few years ago.)

            Krystin's response was similar to mine. 

What a good article, thanks for sharing.  I don't like the idea of this "heesh" thing, though.  Also, this sounds like it could be written as a more modern version of 1984! . . .  [She didn't like several of the projections, but] I guess in 100 years, the children born during that time won't know anything difference, so even though it's disgusting to think about for us, it'll be the norm for them.  Thus are the advantages and disadvantages of change!  Like they wrote in the article, some changes are for the better, some for the worse.

            This vision (or imagined possibilities) is at the other end of the spectrum from mine.  I think most changes will be at the margins.  I cannot, however, dismiss these as absurd.

Enough for today.  With warm wishes—

Gary