Good morning.
I had a
brief email exchange with our representative in the Minnesota House (who I know
and support), in which I expressed the hope that perhaps some Republicans in
the Minnesota Senate could be persuaded to vote for items important to the
Democrats. He responded with a phrase I'd
never heard before and had to look up: "I
believe the saying is 'from your lips to God's ears." Huh.
Elliott had heard it. (In case
you are also ignorant of the phrase, according to UsingEnglish.com, "When
you say this to someone, it means that you hope what they are saying will come
true.")
* * *
A family
tale I've told a few friends. My great-grandparents
Nels and Inger Kjestine (Jensen) Larsen had 14 children who lived to adulthood,
many of them into their 80s and 90s. Those
14 children had 29 children of their own, of whom 27 lived to adulthood; one
died within a month of birth—as did the mother—and one died at age 11. My grandmother was one of the 14 children and
my mother was one of those 27 siblings/cousins.
Another one
of those 27 was Mae, one of my mother's 26 cousins. Mae died in the hospital in the middle of the
night on January 21, at age 94. This is
not a terribly sad story; she had suffered a heart attack the week before, her
kidneys were failing, her blood pressure kept dropping very low, she had
terrible edemas, and the last couple of days she was mostly unconscious. She awoke long enough to recognize my
sister-in-law, who was visiting, and the physician—she was lucid (my
sister-in-law told me), she reaffirmed her DNR/DNI instructions, and she
refused any invasive treatments. She was
ready to go (and had told me that in a phone conversation a few days before she
went into the hospital). She had always
lived an active life, "I did it my way," and had had a good
time. She traveled more places, more
times, for more time, than all the people reading this missive put together. Well, maybe that's slight hyperbole—but not
much. She was also in Who's Who of American Women because she
was the first female bank vice president in the country (or so the book says).
Mae was the
last of the 27, so the last of an entire generation. The first of the 27 was born in 1904; the
last died in 2019.
I have no
idea how many total children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren the 27
had. Mae had none. My mother had three children and a number of
grandchildren. I know a few of the other
families, but I'm sure that by now there are at least a couple of hundred
descendants from the 27. My mother alone
has about 20.
Pat caught
an interesting factoid: Mae Lillian
Kushlan died on MLK day. Elliott pointed
out that it was 1/365 chances that would occur.
I noted that it would be difficult to calculate the odds that it is MLK
day—rather than, say, RTH or SOM or BRD day.
Dr. King had to have the same initials as Mae for that to work.
I'm coming
to feel like national holidays are my Dia de Muertos. (I know that Dia de Muertos is not a sad
celebration, but I'm co-opting the name.)
On New Year's Day I found myself sorting through more of Krystin's
belongings. On MLK Day I was sorting
through Mae's belongings and beginning (with my brother and sister-in-law and
Kathy and Elliott) to clean out her house.
I can't wait for Memorial Day. . . .
* * *
While I'm
on the subject of mortality, I wrote a few years ago about the belief that
death comes in threes. Both the research
sources I examined as well as my colleagues and friends agreed that the claim
is a myth.
My friend
(and former University of Minnesota president) Nils Hasselmo died on January
23. Kathy and I had dinner with him and
attended a play with him two years ago when we were visiting Tucson, AZ (where
he and his wife lived part of the year).
I worked *with* Nils from 1973 to 1975 (when he was Associate Dean of
the College of Liberal Arts and I worked for the Dean, which is when I met Nils),
I worked *for* Nils from 1980 to 1983 when he was Vice President for
Administration and Planning, and I worked again *with* him when he was
President from 1988 to 1997. We had
remained in touch ever since he left the presidency, often exchanging humorous email
messages. He was one of the most decent
and thoughtful people I ever had the privilege to know and to work with and
for.
But the
deaths can stop. Now. I don't need three.
* * *
Our house
was built in 1931. Pat and I remodeled
and expanded it extensively in 1996-97.
The new part of the house is well insulated; the original part has tar
paper for insulation (except around the new windows installed throughout the
house). The kitchen is in the original
part of the house. When the temperatures
are as low as they are right now in the Twin Cities, our kitchen cabinets on
the exterior walls become additional refrigeration space. (The
high today is 4° and the highs next
Tuesday and Wednesday are -6 and -10, respectively, with wind chills much lower.) Food gets cold quickly when placed on plates
that are 30°.
* * *
On that
same general topic, there was a fun short article in the Atlantic titled "Why So Many People Hate Winter." The author, a woman born in Russia who lived
in St. Petersburg until she was 3 years old, after which she grew up in Texas and
then moved to Washington, D.C. She hates
winter and cold (although, from my point of view, Washington doesn't exactly
suffer from much of "winter"; she complains that "there's
usually a day in mid-January when I grouse that the weather forecast is, yet
again, '38 and raining,''' which is t-shirt weather in Minnesota in the winter).
After
contemplating the effects of years of Texas heat, Ms. Khazan reports that "research
suggests that there are two kinds of people who tolerate the cold very well:
indigenous Arctic groups, and men. And the more people are exposed to cold
temperatures, the better they acclimate."
It seems that people who have lived for a long time in northern climates
"have evolved to be slightly more stout and to have shorter limbs, so they
have less surface area, compared with their body mass, from which to lose heat.
. . . Other studies suggest that polar
peoples also tend to have more 'brown fat,' which generates heat." It's also the case, she tells us, that those
who reside in cold areas have a higher basal metabolic rate [BMR], which is the
measure of how much heat your body generates.
If it's cold, you generate more heat.
You also require more calories in order to generate that heat. One drawback to being descended from people
who've lived in cold climates for centuries is the increased "uptake of
thyroid hormones," which causes thyroid problems among the elderly. On advantage is that you're less likely to be
overweight and have better heart health.
The great
office dilemma is also explained. "BMR
also helps explain why men—of all nationalities—tend to be better at tolerating
the cold than women are. Women are often too cold at work because
office-building temperatures are set to the men's higher metabolic rates,
according to a 2015 study on 'female thermal demand' . . . Men, the study found, might be comfortable at
temperatures as much as 5 degrees lower than women are." Of course, if you work in an old university
building, as I did for most of my career, the temperature you want is unrelated
to the temperature that the heating system provides.
Ms. Khazan
related a conversation she had with a "professor in thermoregulatory
physiology" who's in Sydney now but who was in Ottawa, Canada for a time.
Jay told me that people can
psychologically adapt to the temperature outside if they are exposed to it for
about 10 days or more. That's why those last few 40-degree March days feel so
much warmer than the first 40-degree day of November. He and others have found
that people who are exposed to the cold more often tend to shiver less and feel
less cold, which suggests that their bodies got better at keeping them warm
from the inside. "As you become
more acclimated to the cold, your body becomes more effective at delivering
warm blood to the extremities, your core temperature goes up, and all that
contributes to being more resistant to the cold."
She concludes sadly "that
means the only cure for hating winter, unfortunately, is just more winter."
Obviously I'm
a man, so I suppose I tolerate lower temperatures then women, on average. I suspect that difference is mitigated by
age; aren't many older people more intolerant of cold (and keep their homes
warmer than they did when younger?)? But
maybe older men still tolerate cooler temps than older women. I'm also of north European descent, but not from
any indigenous Arctic population, so I'd guess that I and those of similar background
have a greater tolerance for cold than those from tropical or warmer climates—but
not as much as the Arctic folks.
In any
case, Kathy and I plan to vacate the Midwest for 2-3 months once she retires, higher
BMR or not.
If you live
near me, stay warm. If you don't, I hope
your BMR is low enough.
--Gary
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