Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Good afternoon.
When we travel, I usually write a travelogue. For this trip, here it is: We drove to Florida and arrived safely, it took three days, we will live here until March 31, and then we will drive back to Minnesota.
OK, I'll add a little. The house we're in, in Naples, is very pleasant. It's on an artificial lake, it has its own swimming pool (unheated, so too cold to use thus far), is well appointed and spacious, and has a kitchen far better than ours at home. Of course, most apartments have better kitchens than we do, so that's nothing new.
When Kathy and I travel, especially abroad, we try to see and do as much as possible within the time we have. During our working years, we always needed a rest from our travels when we returned home. Moving to Florida for three months is different: here we pretty much simply transplant our daily life from Minnesota to Florida. We have been in the Naples area and region a number of times, including three months last year, so that there aren't that many places to go or things to see that we haven't already gone to or seen. So life is routine. Its main virtue, of course, is that it is in the 60s and 70s and 80s and there are green growing things all around us. There is little else to commend Florida.
A few bits and pieces about life here and there.
-- One evening Kathy and I were reminiscing about food we ate when we were growing up, a discussion prompted by the fact that for a period, Kathy was unable to find brussels sprouts in Florida. (She finally found some at one of the grocery stores.) We realized that neither of us ever had (or rarely had) asparagus, brussels sprouts, or broccoli when our mothers were making meals when we were growing up. I also don't remember eating many salads. We mostly had peas and corn, out of a can, when they were thought of as "vegetables." I wonder what we got for greens.
-- One morning was very, very windy;
stormy rain was predicted for late morning. We had four tornado alerts
on our cell phones, about 10 minutes apart—the kind that buzz loudly and make
me jump in my chair. There were tornadoes in the region—and not that far away—but
all we had was high winds and a torrential downpour for close to two hours. In
Minnesota, we know to go to the basement during a tornado warning, but there
are no basements here. We were puzzled about what we should have done. At 5:00
in the afternoon, the sun was out. There was some tornado damage and power
outages in the area but we were unaffected—but the morning had been unnerving.
-- One of my colleagues has two quotes in his signature box at the end of all of his emails. "What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good" from Aristotle and "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?" from Martin Luther King, Jr. I don't agree with that at all. Of course I want to help others as part of what I do in life, but I also need to look after Gary—everyone needs to look after their own happiness and welfare as well as that of others. Those quotations strongly imply, to me, that the central focus of one's life should be directed towards others. Maybe I'm selfish—I don't think I am unduly so—but I don't believe many people would adopt that line of thinking about their lives. It's a lofty, unrealistic, and perhaps even foolish ideal.
-- I am bothered by the fact that I've been having trouble getting my Naples area geographic orientation right. I keep thinking east is west and vice-versa. I've always found it easy to get a map imprinted in my brain, wherever we go, so that I know generally where I am and which direction I am going. I'm slowly getting the orientation right, but it's taking far longer than it used to. I'm clearly not thinking as effectively as I did when younger—and that's a comment that several of my friends who are my age have also made (about themselves, not me!) in the past couple of years. So I don't think it's anything abnormal, and thus far at least not noticeable in almost any way, but this seeming miniscule decline in cognitive ability is nonetheless irritating.
-- A friend of mine, in the midst of gradually moving out of the house he and family have lived in for a long time, wrote to me that "we just reserved a rental truck for . . . Phase Two in the move: more everyday furniture, clothes, kitchen ware. After that, the houseplants and cats, then coming back at intervals to complete emptying out the house. I was just thinking that our 28+ years here will almost certainly make this the longest residency tenure in our lifetimes. I am looking for reasons to explain to myself why it's such a laborious and emotional process." I wrote back that "I personally believe that one of the most obnoxious tasks humanity has invented for itself is "moving." I hate moving. Even when you have movers do the heavy stuff, there's still all that packing up and then unpacking at the other end. Of course part of the reason it's laborious is because we have too much stuff. Kathy looks around our house and dreads the day we might move. So do I. We've concluded we might not, and just leave the dismantling to Elliott and Spence. Or so we joke."
As for emotional, I think it's hard to leave a place that has so many significant memories of one's life. For both of us, it's the place we mostly raised our kids (in Elliott's case, the *only* house he ever knew). It's now nearly 33 years for me--and I was in the house off and on all the time I was growing up, occasionally staying over a weekend with my great aunt and uncle as well as occasional family gatherings at holidays. It is far less frequent now, but even today once in awhile I will get a whiff of something that takes me instantly back to being a little boy in the house, usually a food smell that my brain remembers.
* * *
From a friend on Facebook.
* * *
I have been mulling over the abortion issue in light of the pending Supreme Court decision likely to narrow it considerably or reverse Roe v. Wade outright. Not whether abortion is right or wrong but from a political science standpoint. I wonder if the anti-abortion activists have thought about the implications of their quest, in a democratic society, to ban abortions.
It's worth thinking about religious/moral/ethical/legal codes in general. There are commonalities to moral codes that have appeared throughout recorded human history; the (non-religious, the 5th – 10th) commandments that Moses handed down for the Jews have parallels or similar provisions in many other Western religions and legal systems (the 4th – 10th in modern Christian delineation). You don't kill, steal, lie, etc. A prohibition on abortion is not one of them, even though some have interpreted the stricture against killing as including abortion. But that's not close to universal; many of those who oppose abortion do so on religious grounds, but at the same time there are many theologians and believers who do not. We all know about the divisions within Christianity. In Judaism, I have learned, Orthodox Jewish views are more restrictive than Conservative or Reform views, which leave the choice to the woman. I did not know what Islamic views are; here's what Wikipedia tells me:
Muslim views on abortion are shaped by the Hadith as well as by the opinions of legal and religious scholars and commentators. The Quran does not directly address intentional abortion, leaving greater discretion to the laws of individual countries. Although opinions among Islamic scholars differ over when a pregnancy can be terminated, there are no absolute bans on a woman's right to abort in Islam. . . . In Islam, the fetus is believed to become a living soul after 120 days' gestation, and abortion after that point is viewed as impermissible. . . . American academic Azizah Y. al-Hibri notes that "the majority of Muslim scholars permit abortion, although they differ on the stage of fetal development beyond which it becomes prohibited. . . ." In practice, access to abortion varies greatly between Muslim-majority countries.
So a prohibition on abortion is not close to being a consensus view in the moral/religious codes of the Western world.
As we all know, there is vehement disagreement in our society—less so in many parts of the industrialized First World—about abortion. Thinking about democratic theory, one must wonder about the wisdom of one segment of society imposing on the larger society a restriction on a behavior that the majority sees as acceptable and about which there is not widespread religious or ethical consensus. (My guess—unsupported by any data—is that the non-religious are far more likely to be pro-choice.) One of my friends, many years ago, told me that she is a practicing Catholic and accepts in the Church's view on abortion. At the same time, she is a resident of a democratic republic and accepts the political decisions made through a process that she regarded as legitimate (i.e., elected representatives enacting laws and policies). She took the position that she was not prepared to upend the political system in pursuit of a religious goal.
So will those who oppose abortion be pleased when the will of the majority has been set aside (by an extremely unrepresentative body—that some of would say has illegitimately- appointed members--the Supreme Court)? What does this portend for other contentious issues? Some feel equally strongly that gay marriage is unacceptable to their religious beliefs; will that be the next scene of battle? And if the Court were to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges (the case that legalized gay marriage, and there are at least two Justices on the Court who want it reversed), would that be acceptable in a democratic society when the vast majority of the American public supports gay marriage?
In broader perspective, we should give up any pretense that the Supreme Court is a neutral arbiter of the law (not that it ever was, but it is even less so now). It is a partisan political and legislative body—by the design of Mitch McConnell. Its rulings have nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with a political agenda that will play havoc with the country. Another friend, in a recent conversation, asked if the two-thirds of Americans who support access to abortion in some fashion will accept having the views of the other third imposed on them. "Why should the views of 589,000 people in Wyoming prevail over the views of 39,000,000 Californians?" His answer was, "that won't work for long" and that should such decisions become common, "the West Coast will bolt and so will New York and parts of New England." He may well be right.
Many constitutional law scholars, I think, would agree that a significant number of the Court's rulings don't have much to do with the Constitution—they can't, because it was drafted for a long-dead society. The idea of "originalism" is kind of silly; the Founding Fathers in 1787 could not possibly have imagined the world that exists in 2022 and I suspect many of them would sharply revise their views on how Constitutional provisions should be written in light of the world as it exists today. The "Great" Chief Justice, John Marshall, argued in 1819 for an expansive view of the Constitution, not "originalism" (in McCulloch v. Maryland). For the Court to use "originalism" as an excuse to impose its views on modern American society is a perversion of what Marshall and many of his successors believed it should do,
When the views of a minority are imposed repeatedly on a majority that does not agree with those views, the portents for a democratic society are ominous.
* * *
A friend wrote to me, apropos of getting rid of stuff (that our kids don't want).
Did I tell you about the book "The joy of leaving your shit all over the place"? It is a humorous response to the Marie Kondo "throw everything away" movement. One part I particularly liked was the chapter on books—the best thing to collect because you can stack them so many different ways. You can even make shelves for books OUT OF books! . . . And don't feel like you have to declutter your house unless the clutter bothers you. If you like looking at your stuff, keep it and look at it. If you ever need to get rid of it because you have to move, deal with it then (or better yet, hire someone to deal with it).
With that referral, I checked the Goodreads website.
The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place: The Art of Being Messy
by Jennifer McCartney
The anti-clutter movement is having a moment. You may have heard about a book—an entire book—written on the topic of tidiness and how "magical" and "life-changing" it is to neaten up and THROW AWAY YOUR BELONGINGS. Yes, you read that correctly. It's time to fight that ridiculousness and start buying even more stuff and leaving it any place you want. Guess what, neatniks? Science shows that messy people are more creative.*
Being a slob is an art, and there's a fine line between being a consumer and being a hoarder. Don't cross that line. This book shows you how to clutter mindfully and with great joy. The results are mind-blowing. Your plants will stop dying. Your whiskey bottle will never run dry. Your drugstore points will finally add up to a free jar of salsa and some nice shampoo. You'll go shopping and discover you've lost weight...
It's time to take back your life from the anti-clutter movement.
*As well as smarter and more attractive.
So the balance is between enjoying your stuff now and then, down the road, for those of you who have not done it and have accumulated too much, facing the possibility of moving, as in my discussion with my friend. As I finished composing this last paragraph, Elliott and Martha returned from a venture into Naples (they are visiting us in Florida for a week) and had purchased a very attractive wooden bowl made out of Brazilwood. I chuckled and told them that in 40 years they're going to looking at how to get rid of all these lovely pieces they've accumulated. Martha replied, "the kids."
Enjoy the day.
Gary
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