Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Good morning.
As you know, I enjoy reporting on odd or interesting research results in various fields. There has been a dearth of research on matters I find intriguing so I don't have any in this epistle. So it's just chatter and family news. You should feel free to discard it without reading.
Kathy and I have decided it's time to visit some of the sites in the Twin Cities and Minnesota that we've never seen, so we're doing little day trips. We're starting with the James J. Hill House in St. Paul. Although I concluded some time ago that I didn't need to see any more of the mansions built by rich industrialists or entrepreneurs, this one is in our backyard and represents a part of Minnesota history, so I'm making an exception. Also on the list is the Memorial Chapel at Lakewood Cemetery, which one writer describes as having the best Byzantine mosaics in the United State. "The interior was inspired by the mosaic design of the Basilica San Marco in Venice and created by New York designer Charles Lamb. The designs were created in his studio, then six of Italy’s best mosaic artists created the more than 10 million mosaic pieces in Italy . . . which they then assembled personally inside the chapel in Minneapolis."
A visit to the Landscape Arboretum is on the list; both of us have been there, but not for many years. Also on my list is the Minnesota History Center. There are plenty of other places to add to the list, which we will do.
The Hill house is like many of the homes of rich industrialists. 36,000 square feet, gold inlaid dining room ceiling, polished wood everywhere, bedrooms for the 10-12 live-in staff, and so on. Finished in 1891, it was one of the first in the area to have electric lights and heat vented into rooms from two large central furnaces. One full-time employee shoveled coal into the furnaces. They held dances in the first-floor central hallway, it was so large. And so on.
* * *
A follow-on to my social science research project that I reported on in my last epistle. One distinguished and much-published social science research friend reminded me that "in survey research one must beware of the 'socially desirable response,' i.e., what you think they want to hear. It's one explanation for the underestimation of the Trump vote. Do you think that your enlightened respondents might have been a bit prone to that?" I told him that I didn't believe so, although I couldn't be sure. The nature of the comments that I received, however, lead to me believe that effect was minimal, because quite a few of my respondents included comments that were not favorable to the respondent him/herself!
Another friend, one of the most insightful people I know, wrote that "what stands out to me is that the split of all the chores is less important than the acceptance of the split by both partners. Also, I'm guessing most of us are splitting the chores out of love and respect for our partners. I do things for [my husband] because I love him, not because I have to. And for those few times when I feel there is inequality, I talk to him about it. That doesn't always change the inequality, but it helps me understand why it is there."
I meant to mention that point myself: no one complained about the allocation of duties. However, I also doubt that anyone would have treated me as a counselor or otherwise griped about how irritated they are at who does what in the household. I also suspect that there isn't much resentment between the couples who were in my sample, for the reason she mentioned.
A good story from another friend.
We have a useful expression in our
house. ‘That’s a boy's job’ or ‘that’s a
girl's job’ used for any job one of us doesn’t want to do. It originated years
ago when 2 friends bought their first car. Some weeks later the engine seized
up as it had no oil in it and neither of them had checked. Dave wrote a list of
boy's jobs and girl's jobs in relation to the car! Boy's jobs . . . driving.
Girl's jobs . . . checking oil, checking tyres, washing, paying for petrol,
etc., etc. The expression stuck!
I forgot to ask the most important question, also traditional "women's work": who changes the sheets!? I'm not seeking responses. In our house, I do it.
* * *
After years of failed experiments, I think I finally found a way to keep the chipmunks out of the flowerpots. Mostly they dig around the plants, burying seeds, but sometimes they dig out an entire plant. I've tried blood root, cayenne pepper, so-called rodent repellants, and other substances. Nothing bothered them in their quest to bury seeds. I even put river rocks on top of the dirt in all the pots once the flowers were planted; chipmunks just dug around them. But, aha, I cut about a 6"-wide strip of chicken wire (which is a pain in the hand to do) and wrap it around the top of the pots. Cut chicken wire has prongs, which I bend outward on both top and bottom, so there are little metal spikes both on the way up and at the top that the chipmunk encounters if trying to jump up on the pot. So far I have had no chipmunks digging in the flowerpots that have the chicken wire wraps. It's not as aesthetically pleasing as having nothing on the pots, but it doesn't hurt the eye. (We do not help our cause, of course, when we feed them sunflower seeds whenever we're sitting on the deck. I worried a little that chipmunks might get wounded on the prongs, but one night sitting on the deck, we had eight of them scrambling around to pick up the sunflower seeds that I kept tossing to them. We've never had that many at one time. So they seem to have survived any encounter with chicken wire.)
The update a month later on this clever piece of engineering is that our neighbor, apparently tired of all the chipmunks digging in their garden, started live trapping them. There are now zero chipmunks in our back yard, along with flowerpots with chicken wire necklaces.
* * *
Kathy recently drew my attention to radio station WDGY, which was the station that many of us listened to in junior and senior high school and college back in the 1960s and forward. The station now plays songs from that era, so it's a pleasant listening experience while in the car most of the time. (Like everyone else, I didn't like *all* the songs from that time, and even now there are some I dislike, but on balance the music brings back memories.)
My usual other station while driving is the classical station of Minnesota Public Radio. I actually don't like the MPR station that much because I sometimes think it's trying to mimic WCCO: way too much talk and too little music. (We listened to the local NPR station when we were in California for a couple of weeks a few years back; the station was housed at USC and it played classical music about 98% of the time. It was a delight to listen to.)
Anyway, to switch back and forth between WDGY and MPR is an exercise in volume control as well as station selection. I have to turn up the volume considerably for MPR, and if I switch to WDGY, I just about get blasted out of my seat.
That problem won't confront me any longer, however. I was running an errand recently and had WDGY on the radio. There came an ad for MyPillow. I turned off the station and won't go back to it as long as they take ads from Mr. Lindell. I also sent a message to the station telling them that. I'm sure it will have a big impact. For all I know, the station owners agree with Mike Lindell and they're his buddies.
* * *
I can't remember if I mentioned my newest time sink in retirement. I do paint-by-number paintings. My grandmother used to do them in her living room in the 1960s and 1970s and as a result I've always thought of it as something old people did. I don't know what made me do it, but I looked on the web for an outfit that would turn a photograph into a PBN kit. Lo and behold, there are several.
So I've decided to do a series of PBNs of Elliott, Elliott & Krystin, and Elliott & me in travel settings. So first Elliott on the top of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh overlooking the center city and the Firth of Forth. Then Elliott on top of the Duomo in Florence. Next Elliott & Krystin in Japan with the Golden Temple in Kyoto in the background. Then comes Elliott petting a Koala in Queensland, Australia, and maybe a second one in Australia with him grinning at the largest hamburger we had ever seen. After that I haven't decided; maybe the two kids trying on funny hats at the merchandise store in Tivoli Garden in Copenhagen. Anyway, it's fun for me to do them.
The color algorithms aren't always quite right, and a couple of times I've had to mix paints to get a better color. (In one, the sky on the canvas was to be a slightly greenish blue, but in the photo it's a bright light blue sky, just like we see on many days. So I'll mix up a light blue of my own.) But they mostly get it right. It's "representational" anyway, not a photo and not an attempt at a perfect reproduction; many of the small details get lost.
Elliott has seen the first two in process. He helped me on color development on one of them. I'm sure he's saying to Martha, "oh my God, my dad is painting these awful kits with me in them and he's going to give them to me." I've told him he can hang them in the basement of the house that he and Martha hope to buy at some point in the near future.
* * *
Unlike many of you who receive this, I have been grappling with which kind of Medicare insurance program to enroll in, supplement or advantage. I am late to Medicare because I was covered by Kathy through the University until last September. I chose an advantage plan for the first year, knowing that if I wished I could change within the year to a supplement program without medical exam. If you don't do it within the first year, the insurers can require a medical exam and may rate you higher to accept you. (If you haven't gotten to the point of making this choice, perhaps you'll be lucky and the program will have been made much simpler by the time you face it. But don't hold your breath.)
So I've been fretting for a month: stay on the advantage plan or change to the supplement. One major difference is premiums, about $80/month for the advantage plan and about $260 for the supplement. The advantage plan has copays up to a limit; supplement plans do not. Advantage plans cover hearing, minimal dental, and some other things that supplement plans do not. Supplement plans are good for any medical clinic/provider that accepts Medicare; advantage plans require that you use a clinic/provider that accepts your insurance (in my case, Blue Cross/Blue Shield).
What I discovered, as a function of aging and genetics, is that the hearing aid benefit far outweighed the disadvantage of having to deal with copays. As of next week, I will have hearing aids. The retail cost would be $6600. My cost with the advantage plan benefit is $1800. So after dithering and dawdling for a month or more about which kind of plan to choose, the hearing aid benefit made up my mind.
I knew I was doomed to hearing aids. My father had them and so did my maternal grandmother. (My mother, who died at age 62, didn't get old enough to learn whether or not she needed them. I've had audiology testing several times in the last 15 years and I knew that there has been a gradual decline in my hearing ability, so it was only a matter of time.) Both my dad and my grandmother hated the things and mostly didn't wear them. So I haven't been thrilled with the prospect of having them, although I have no reluctance because of vanity or any other reason for not using them. I do prefer to hear what people around me are saying without sticking my ear in their face and asking them to repeat themselves, which I've found myself doing all too frequently in recent years.
The process of being tested for the hearing aids left me amazed at the technology. There are certain sounds, primarily consonants, that I don't hear as well as I could. The newest technology in hearing aids allows the clinician to program them to pick up primarily those sounds and not others. The audiologist I saw said they are now basically little computers and that the problems my dad and grandmother had have mostly disappeared. Remembering my dad's and grandmother's fussing around replacing the batteries (all too often), I opted for the slightly more expensive version that is rechargeable. As many of us do with our cell phones, you put the aids on the charger overnight and they're good for more than the next day.
So that's my "getting older" story for the day.
* * *
A short while ago I surveyed friends on another topic, requiring proof of vaccination. This wasn't more social science research; I wanted the opinion of a few friends. Elliott and Martha have set a wedding date for next April. Depending on the situation at the time, they have been debating whether to require proof of vaccination in order to attend the wedding and reception.
The preponderance of the advice I received from friends suggested asking people not to attend unless vaccinated and explaining clearly and firmly why—but not requiring proof. With the spread of the Delta variant (and who knows what variants might follow), I wonder if that advice would be different. My own view is that expressed by a couple of my friends: it's Martha and Elliott's event and they can do what they want.
In the meantime, we have a wedding
on August 28. It will be outdoors but there will be about 150 guests and we are
already a little worried about being in such a large group.
* * *
A few months ago Kathy discovered the "Buy Nothing" website, part of Facebook. It's set up by neighborhood and one posts on it anything one wants to get rid of, for free. You cannot post items in other neighborhoods nor may you obtain items from other neighborhoods. You are not permitted to sell, only give away. The range of items is astonishing, everything from an organ to a bag of onions (which Kathy got because we happened to be out of onions!). Everything on offer is close by because the neighborhoods are small sections of a city (for those who know our area, our "Buy Nothing" site is the Longfellow neighborhood). I presume the "Buy Nothing" sites exist across the country, so if you're looking to get rid of stuff, this is another alternative to donation if you use Facebook.
We have taken advantage of the site; Kathy has posted a number of items that we wanted gone that now have new homes. I decided that I do not need six winter scarves for the few times I now wear a dress coat in the winter, so four of them went away—and I probably should have given away five. The only items Kathy has taken from the site (besides the onions) is yarn and puzzles, and she has given away many of the latter once she's completed them. I've been amazed at the amount of yarn that people are giving away; at one point Kathy came home with two lawn bags full of skeins of yarn. She has obtained additional yarn from others giving it away. Our family room is now full of plastic tubs of yarn. I teased Kathy that all this yarn will last longer than she is likely to live; she retorted that no, it will perhaps last a year or so. There are a lot of afghans in our future.
* * *
It is by now a cliché that our children (of Baby Boomers) are not very interested in inheriting many of our material possessions. I've heard that comment, and stories, from a number of friends. "None of them want our stuff!" (I suspect this may not be boom times for antique stores if those anecdotes reflect the general preferences of the Millennial and subsequent generations.)
There are, of course, exceptions to every generalization. I have sitting on a shelf in our basement more than a dozen "things to hang on the wall" (I can't call them art because it's a congeries of stuff), all in custom frames: a couple of posters, a couple of paintings my parents had in their living room for years, a couple of "oil prints" from the 1920s or 1930s that belonged to my grandparents, a couple of charcoal sketches, and so on. I asked Elliott to come over and tell me which of them he'd like to have someday; I told him I'd save the ones he wanted and get rid of the rest. He brought Martha along. Much to my surprise, between the two of them they wanted all but one. So back on the shelf they go until the two of them buy a house.
A related aside: Elliott has a number of his own paintings that I've framed over the years. Martha has a number of pieces of art and whatnot that hang on a wall. I've given Elliott several framed items (including two paint-by-numbers that my grandmother did). He knows that he's going to inherit from me a boatload of pieces of art and family photos and grandparents' wedding certificates and posters and more. I have told Elliott and Martha that they will need to buy the James J. Hill house or its equivalent, with its 36,000 square feet, in order to have enough wall space to hang up everything they own that should hang on a wall. So it's not true that our children are not interested in our stuff.
I was
musing that in getting rid of many of these items—which I'm now not going to do—I
was giving away a fortune in framing costs.
* * *
Finally for this edition, a product endorsement. I hate flossing my teeth. I always have and I don't do it anywhere near as often as my dental hygienist wishes I would. When were in Florida, I wanted to buy toothpicks; all I could find was a pack of 1000 or something like that. Instead I found these G • U • M picks, some with a metal spine and bristles, some with plastic spines and bristles. Maybe all of you know about them and we're just late to the game, but I think these are among the best inventions since sliced bread.
I discarded the metal ones; they could
too easily poke the skin. The plastic ones were great substitutes for
toothpicks and in fact work much better. When I next went to the dentist, my hygienist
asked her usual question about how often I floss. I don't lie; I tell her not
very often (but told her I use toothpicks after many meals). She said instead
of toothpicks, I should use these little things—and she handed me a couple of
packages of G • U • M picks. She also told
me that if I used these regularly, they could take the place of flossing.
Yippee!
Warmly—
Gary
