April 1, 2022
Good morning.
Writing accumulated. But nothing quite so serious this time. A final Florida wrap, driving, psychotherapy, attire, and a couple of more responses on artists and political views.
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We drove 1838 miles over the three days from Florida to Minneapolis: 656 miles day 1, Naples FL to Montgomery AL; 662 miles day 2, Montgomery to Champaign IL; 522 miles day 3 from Champaign to Minneapolis. We departed around 7:00 all three mornings and drove 11+ hours day 1, 10 hours day 2, 8 hours day 3, so 29 hours in the car or stopping for food/a restroom/gas. A waste of three days out of my remaining life.
In all that driving, I formulated the Laws of Interstate Inter-city Traffic Levels.
1. The interstate traffic on the longer distances between cities is usually fairly light. The interstate traffic in metro areas is usually heavy. That is because the inter-city traffic, typically light, is combined with the local traffic so there are more vehicles in cities than between them. I sometimes amaze myself with my perspicacity.
2. The number of semitrailer trucks per mile on an interstate is inversely related to the weather conditions: the worse the weather, the more semis. In the afternoon portion of our drive from Montgomery AL to Champaign IL, I drove through steady rain that often included lengthy downpours. The two lanes of the interstate—in both directions—were basically bumper-to-bumper semis. Semi drivers were driving fast than I felt comfortable doing in such heavy rain, so the semis were frequently passing me, throwing sheets of water on our car. I could only assume that the vehicle ahead of me would keep going and that the road would not curve. Anyone with half a brain would have stopped driving for the day, but since I have a whole brain, I kept on going. (Hmmm. After I wrote that, I realized I may have composed my first and only paraprosdokian.) In contrast, the afternoon drive from Champaign to Minneapolis, overcast but clear weather, saw only a few semis per mile. These observations held for other parts of the drive as well.
3. A common courtesy most drivers observe on interstates is to stay in the right lane unless passing. The Federal Highway Administration could save considerable money in repairing interstate freeways. For long stretches of freeway, the right lane has been patched in many places, often poorly, making for a bumpy ride. On those same stretches, the left lane has not needed repair, thus providing a much smoother ride. If there was no one behind me, I ignored the common courtesy and drove in the left lane to avoid the bumpiness. The FHA could just replace the right side of many freeways. There, a budget-saving proposal for the federal government.
4. There is no difference between red and blue states in the condition of their freeways. In all of the states we drove through, there are miles where it has been repeatedly and often badly repaired (the patches aren't level with the existing roadbed) and other stretches where it was fine (and relatively new). My conclusion about the bumpy repairs is that either (1) there were sweetheart deals between corrupt state politicians and buddies in the contracting business who did a cheap and inadequate job but made a lot of money, or (2) there was an honest bidding process and the contract went to the lowest bidder, who was dishonest about the bid or simply incompetent in road repair.
The view from our lanai most evenings.
The view from our lanai on a number of mornings.
We noticed, when sitting on the lanai in the late afternoon/early evening, that sometimes the clouds blow from east to west, which seemed weird to us.
On a recent evening just before we left, one of the Northern Mockingbirds was perched nearby. If you look them up, you learn that they have over 100 different calls. I think we must have heard about 30 or 40 calls from that one bird. It was great fun to listen to it. I swear one of its calls was "pretty bird, pretty bird." There was more than one of them around, so they apparently do not compete with one another, because it was only that one that was singing.
Now that we are home, I told Kathy "hey, we're still looking at water!" Unfortunately, this water is white and frozen.
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A bit of personal history of no moment. I was exchanging emails with a friend recently about the virtues of (psycho)therapy. I can recall in sharp detail the evolution of my own thinking about it.
In 1976 or 1977--I can date it to one of those two years because that's when I worked for the University's VP for administration—as a result of an exchange I had with him, I came to have a changed view of therapy. Up to then I'd sort of dismissed it as something for fuzzy-brained, touchy-feely people who couldn't think clearly. A few years earlier a friend had even recommended I see a therapist, but I blew that off as something that only wimps did. (I had no reason for such prejudice; it was just my impression, and even though I'd earned a graduate degree in psychology, I had had no intersection with the counseling field.)
The vice president was a hard-nosed physical scientist, no BS, no dithering, what are the facts, make a decision, and so on. One of the least touchy-feely people I have ever known. One day I was chatting with him and for some reason I've long forgotten he mentioned that he was seeing his therapist later that day. You could have knocked me over with a feather. This guy??? Seeing a therapist??? Well . . . if *he* thinks it's a good idea to see a therapist, then I should reconsider my bias.
I had no reason to think further about the subject until Krystin got a little older, into the early 1990s. We had to take her to see a therapist (she saw a couple of them) and we had to participate as well some of the time, solely because of her diabetes. Not for anything else--she was a good kid, but she was never able to carry out the medical tasks necessary to take care of her diabetes. So we had counseling up the gazoo, which helped us and, for a time, Krystin. But then she'd slip back into ignoring her diabetes. We know where that ended up.
Then I saw a family therapist after my divorce, but only after I'd gotten the kids into therapy first to try to make sure they were dealing appropriately with the divorce. (Elliott lasted about three sessions, after which the therapist told me that he—Elliott—didn't need therapy; Krystin had a few sessions and also discontinued it.) My therapist was one of the therapists who, earlier, had seen all four of us for Krystin's diabetes issues, so she knew Pat, Elliott, and Krystin, and I had liked her.
She had a problem with me: For clinical and probably insurance purposes, she had to have a "treatment plan." Except that I didn't need "treatment," I just wanted to talk with someone who knew family dynamics, divorces, kids, etc., so that I could be reassured that I was handling things in a normal fashion. (She thought I was.) She must have finessed the matter somehow, because I saw her for quite a few months, and then we just agreed to let the sessions fade away because I didn't need them anymore. (An unrelated aside: Ten years later, when she learned that Krystin had died, she called me up and asked if I wanted to see her. I thanked her but declined.)
All that's a long-winded way of saying that I found the therapist helpful in that she reassured me my head was on straight as I was tackling being a single father of a 16-year-old and a 22-year-old who were living with me. She also cautioned against dating too soon; I ignored her advice and went out on a couple of dates in the summer of 2007, within three months of the divorce. She was right, of course; I must have been an apathetic--maybe pathetic--date. So I stopped doing so for a few months.
So I'm a big advocate for psychotherapy. I have a somewhat different view about physical therapy.
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I laugh at how my habits in haberdashery have changed. When I was first working and for part of my career, I got my professional attire from Al Johnson's, a clothier in Dinkytown founded (I think) right after WWII. I knew Al Johnson well enough to talk to him when I went in the store. Their clothes and shoes were all classic Ivy League and the shop catered to college guys in the 1940s and 1950s, back in the day when they wore shirts and ties on campus and had formal dances and so on. The clothing habits of young men, by the early 1970s, had changed, to say the least. They had moved away from the Ivy League to jeans and sweatshirts and sneakers. Eventually Al sold the shop to one of his employees, Wally, and Wally moved it to Edina (50th and France). I shopped a few times at the Edina store, but then it went out of business.
Now, in contrast, my chief fashion source is Costco, at least for any attire that isn't business or semi-formal. I just got a new casual shirt at our last visit a week ago; my polo shirts and jeans and socks and underwear come from Costco as well. My, how my standards have fallen. That said, I'll still get my dress shirts and sport shirts and dress shoes from Jos. Banks, the chain-store version of Al Johnson's. But the purchases will be few. Like many male retirees, I do not need any dress shoes; the ones I have will last me the remainder of my life. Nor do I need any new blazers or slacks; I've gotten rid of quite a few of both. I may have to give in and get a couple of shirts because the ones I have are wearing out.
Needless to add, my clothing budget has dropped dramatically.
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Watching the weather in Naples prompted me to write to my meteorologist friend Kenny to ask if predicting the weather several days out for someplace like Naples is more difficult than for the Twin Cities. That is, is the weather more variable more quickly over a peninsula, with large bodies of water on each side and to the south? We've been wondering how reliable the Friday prediction is when we read it on (for example) Monday. I also told him that we have noticed, sitting outside in the late afternoon/early evening, that often the clouds here blow from east to west, which seems weird to us from Minnesota.
Kenny educated me, as usual.
In general, forecasts anywhere in Florida will tend to get the big picture right most of the time, but a nice day can of course be broken by a well-placed storm, or even clouds, for that matter. Given the natural limits on how warm or cold it can get, forecasts would tend to be more accurate by Minnesota standards, but the forecasters are really dealing with two different creatures: the continental, fast-moving, west-to-east pattern of Minnesota, versus the sub-tropical climate of Florida, which only occasionally sees substantial temperature changes. Your area is far enough south to be on the northern portion of the easterly "trade winds." So winds from the east or southeast would be common, and even more so during summer.
The winds there also respond to the temperature differences between land and water. The winds blow TO whichever is warmer (and FROM whichever is cooler), but that effect is pretty subtle in the winter, and much stronger in the summer.
When the land gets hot during the day, the air above it will rise, and cooler air from the ocean will rush in. This is especially true in the summer.
I haven't pursued with him the last point: if that's so, why is it so darn hot and humid in Florida in the summer? Where's all that cool air rushing in from the ocean?
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"According to a YouGov survey conducted in January 2022, the average American thought that 21% of Americans "are transgender", 27% "are Muslim", and 30% "are vegan or vegetarian". What were the true figures?
"According to YouGov, and rounded to the nearest whole percentage point, the actual percentages were 1% (transgender), 1% (Muslim), and 5% (vegan or vegetarian)."
(I looked up YouGov to check on their methodology. It appears to be reasonably sound, as good as any other polling organization out there.) I would have gotten the Muslim and vegan/vegetarian wrong by a percentage point or two. But one has to wonder how these perceptions affect people's political views. Not positively, I think.
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A couple of additional comments on artists and political views.
I can say, as a pretty conservative fellow, that if I limited my musical choices to those with whom I agree on politics, I wouldn't listen to music at all. Since I like music of all kinds, I would never limit my admiration for good music based on some political thing the musician happened to say or do. By the same token, I don't choose my friends, my dentist, my doctor, my lawn service or my auto insurance based on the politics of the person I am dealing with. To show my age, I can recognize that Barbra Streisand had one of the most beautiful singing voices and remarkable stage presence. Her talent was unsurpassed and I never miss an opportunity to listen to her sing. But politically she is an idiot as far as I am concerned. It never occurred to me to stop listening to her music because of stupid things she has said from time to time.
I wrote back: Within limits, I agree about choosing merchants or service providers on the basis of their politics. Friends gets a little dicier. I can be friends with you--with any thoughtful conservative--even if we may disagree about certain public policy matters. I could not be friends with someone who was anti-Semitic, racist, or a misogynist. That would be a bridge too far for me. That list, naturally, includes "white nationalists." I also cannot be friends with someone whose religious views lead to social or public policy views that I find repugnant—and although I have no religious beliefs—a couple of people who I count as friends and for whom I have tremendous respect and admiration are deeply religious (one is an Anglican priest).
My problem is that I have a hard time compartmentalizing. On the one hand, I can enjoy some of Wagner's music even though I know he was an anti-Semite--and I don't think about his anti-Semitism when listening to "The Ride of the Valkyries." But he's long dead. On the other hand, Van Morrison is alive and potentially doing people harm if he persuades anyone not to get vaccinated or wear a mask as appropriate. That's more troublesome for me. I am not sure I can get away from his stupid take on infectious disease even though I have liked all his music for as long as he's been writing it.
One further part of that story, that I did not include for my friend, is the grocer in Naples, Alfie Oakes. I related these events last year. Oakes operates stores called "Seed to Table," which, based on our one brief visit, appear to have splendid fruits and vegetables. We only got about 15 feet into the store, however, before we turned around and left.
I started to get suspicious when there was a sign outside indicating that they would assume people had been vaccinated if they did not wear a mask and that HIPPA forbade them from asking about their vaccination status. (That is simply wrong; HIPPA bars medical providers from sharing patient information. Anyone can tell anybody they wish about their own medical condition. Either they had bad legal advice or it was a malicious provocation.) Once inside the door, we were confronted with a life-size cardboard cutout of Donald Trump and a big Trump banner hanging from the second-floor balcony. At that point we knew there was no way we were going to patronize this grocery store no matter how good the produce was. We learned afterward that none of our friends in the area would shop there, either. (I learned later that Oakes also sent a busload of demonstrators to the Capitol on January 6, cementing my hostile view of him.)
So yes, I will make decisions about service providers and vendors based on their political actions and views when I know what they are if I find them especially offensive or if I judge them to be harmful to others. (Yes, I know, many views are not directly harmful to others—being a racist or sexist or anti-Semite, by itself, taking no action, does not directly harm anyone, but promoting such views can lead to harm to people. If they didn't, why would I and so many others find them offensive?)
On "Brown Eyed girl": Anyone who listens to a rock star (or any popular celebrity) on a subject matter more serious than, say, the best marijuana, or the best vacation spot in Mexico, is a fool. Unfortunately there are a lot of fools out there. Oh, and in the by and by, did you know that the musician Sting is against nuclear war? Sting really stuck his neck out on that one.
I wrote back: That's really the other side of the point I was asking about. My question was about separating appreciation of the work of an artist--music, painting, whatever--from repugnant views the artist might hold. I will have a hard time listening to Van Morrison anymore--whose music I have always liked--because I'll be reminded of his stupid statements about vaccines and masks. Your point, however, is absolutely correct: anyone who takes infectious disease advice (or scientific or public policy advice of any kind) from a musician is, in the words of my friend, a knucklehead. (One exception is Brian May of Queen; I'd listen to his advice on astrophysics 😊)
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Now to the task of getting our lives back to "normal" in our own house. I opened the wrong side of the refrigerator to put away the milk, for a second I couldn't remember where certain dishes in the cupboard were, I had to pry out the ice frozen in the dispenser after three months of no use, and we have to finish putting everything back where it belongs. I hope that all of you have a more rewarding weekend.
Gary
