Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Dad's Last Stand
Daughter's bedroom, circa 2000
I was shocked the other day when I saw my daughter Kimmi pass through the den.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, then shot upstairs to her room.
She and her sister Kate recently turned 18. They don’t normally check in during waking hours.
I blinked. Down the stairs she flew. “Bye, Daddy.” The front door slammed and she was gone.
My daughter had been reduced to a fleeting image in my life. Why wasn’t she home more often?
I laughed at the answer. She wasn’t home because she had no place to stay. According to gossip, her room, once habitable, had experienced a cataclysmic event.
I decided I would fix this problem. I would fix it by cleaning her room.
With a Marine’s demeanor I ventured upstairs and stood dry-mouthed before her bedroom door, which is chronically closed. I nudged it open.
I marveled as the hallway carpeting, a solid green, became a collage of hues and rugged relief as it spread throughout her room. I was particularly fascinated with the pile of unwashed relief keeping the door from opening past the quarter-way point. Shouldering the door like a blocking sled, I muscled the laundry back enough to slip inside.
I stood, calculating where next to place my feet. Along with clothes, her floor was a final resting place for CDs, jewelry, fast food bags, schoolbooks, pictures, half our kitchen’s tableware, and a monopoly on the world’s Coke cans.
I had the feeling everything was in delicate balance, like an ecosystem. If I took a wrong step, civilization as we knew it would collapse.
I found patches of green breaking through here and there and leapfrogged from one spot to the next, making my way to the other side of her bed.
Then I stared at the floor next to where she slept.
The quake had jumbled the contents of her dresser with weeks-old glasses of milk you could invert without spilling, supine Cheez-It boxes supporting upright Cheez-It boxes, puddles of chocolate syrup welded to the carpet, plates of once-edible black stuff, a cornucopia of spent tissues and Q-tips -- all intermingled with little red cans, most of them open and still brimming.
I wanted to run for my life. Instead I ran to the garage.
I fetched industrial-strength trash bags and came back. I hauled out clothes, Cokes, and virescent French fries. I scraped the syrup with a steel brush. When the brush wore out I got a stronger one. As carpet emerged I attacked the room by vacuum. Then I brought in heavier artillery, the deep-clean machine.
My shirt was sopping when I finished. But the clutter was gone. You could walk around recklessly, without looking at your feet. I had opened her quarters to the living.
She once again had a place to stay.
Kimmi arrived home much later and whisked past me to her room upstairs. This time I waited with a victor’s smile.
Soon she came skipping down the steps. “Daddy!” she exclaimed. My smile broadened. “What is it, sweetheart?” I asked.
“Can I borrow ten dollars? I’m going to meet Lindsay at the food court.”
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, then shot upstairs to her room.
She and her sister Kate recently turned 18. They don’t normally check in during waking hours.
I blinked. Down the stairs she flew. “Bye, Daddy.” The front door slammed and she was gone.
My daughter had been reduced to a fleeting image in my life. Why wasn’t she home more often?
I laughed at the answer. She wasn’t home because she had no place to stay. According to gossip, her room, once habitable, had experienced a cataclysmic event.
I decided I would fix this problem. I would fix it by cleaning her room.
With a Marine’s demeanor I ventured upstairs and stood dry-mouthed before her bedroom door, which is chronically closed. I nudged it open.
I marveled as the hallway carpeting, a solid green, became a collage of hues and rugged relief as it spread throughout her room. I was particularly fascinated with the pile of unwashed relief keeping the door from opening past the quarter-way point. Shouldering the door like a blocking sled, I muscled the laundry back enough to slip inside.
I stood, calculating where next to place my feet. Along with clothes, her floor was a final resting place for CDs, jewelry, fast food bags, schoolbooks, pictures, half our kitchen’s tableware, and a monopoly on the world’s Coke cans.
I had the feeling everything was in delicate balance, like an ecosystem. If I took a wrong step, civilization as we knew it would collapse.
I found patches of green breaking through here and there and leapfrogged from one spot to the next, making my way to the other side of her bed.
Then I stared at the floor next to where she slept.
The quake had jumbled the contents of her dresser with weeks-old glasses of milk you could invert without spilling, supine Cheez-It boxes supporting upright Cheez-It boxes, puddles of chocolate syrup welded to the carpet, plates of once-edible black stuff, a cornucopia of spent tissues and Q-tips -- all intermingled with little red cans, most of them open and still brimming.
I wanted to run for my life. Instead I ran to the garage.
I fetched industrial-strength trash bags and came back. I hauled out clothes, Cokes, and virescent French fries. I scraped the syrup with a steel brush. When the brush wore out I got a stronger one. As carpet emerged I attacked the room by vacuum. Then I brought in heavier artillery, the deep-clean machine.
My shirt was sopping when I finished. But the clutter was gone. You could walk around recklessly, without looking at your feet. I had opened her quarters to the living.
She once again had a place to stay.
Kimmi arrived home much later and whisked past me to her room upstairs. This time I waited with a victor’s smile.
Soon she came skipping down the steps. “Daddy!” she exclaimed. My smile broadened. “What is it, sweetheart?” I asked.
“Can I borrow ten dollars? I’m going to meet Lindsay at the food court.”
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Don't say you're too old!
If you're looking for a Fountain of Youth, stop looking. It's been in plain sight for a long time, and it's called exercise and diet.
95-Year-old Weightlifter
Oldest man to swim the English Channel
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Can't speak Japanese? Your hologram could.
This, my friends, will blow your mind.
Imagine being able to create a lifelike hologram of yourself able to speak any language, and not only speak it but do so with your own voice inflections. Imagine if this hologram could be anywhere on earth, with or without you . . .
Imagine being able to create a lifelike hologram of yourself able to speak any language, and not only speak it but do so with your own voice inflections. Imagine if this hologram could be anywhere on earth, with or without you . . .
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Riley--Newspaper Correspondent by Mark Twain
One of the best men in Washington—or elsewhere—is RILEY, correspondent of one of the great San Francisco dailies.
Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes his conversation to the last degree entertaining (as long as the remarks are about somebody else). But notwithstanding the possession of these qualities, which should enable a man to write a happy and an appetizing letter, Riley's newspaper letters often display a more than earthly solemnity, and likewise an unimaginative devotion to petrified facts, which surprise and distress all men who know him in his unofficial character. He explains this curious thing by saying that his employers sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several times he has come near losing his situation by inserting humorous remarks which, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently not understood, were thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended to convey signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or something of that kind, and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer and cast into the stove.
Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted with a yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that he simply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in the delight of untrammeled scribbling; and then, with suffering such as only a mother can know, he destroys the pretty children of his fancy and reduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy. Having seen Riley do this very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak. Often I have laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him plow his pen through it. He would say, "I had to write that or die; and I've got to scratch it out or starve. They wouldn't stand it, you know."
I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw. We lodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8, moving comfortably from place to place, and attracting attention by paying our board—a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous in Washington. Riley would tell all about his trip to California in the early days, by way of the Isthmus and the San Juan River; and about his baking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and setting up tenpins, and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures, and teaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and keeping dancing-schools, and interpreting Chinese in the courts—which latter was lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up a little money when people began to find fault because his translations were too "free," a thing for which Riley considered he ought not to be held responsible, since he did not know a word of the Chinese tongue, and only adopted interpreting as a means of gaining an honest livelihood.
Through the machinations of enemies he was removed from the position of official interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar with the Chinese language, but did not know any English. And Riley used to tell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only an iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians, and other animals; and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all his paying subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floated out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become an English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions; but a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection again and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors came home every time, and away they went with the northeast trades drifting off sideways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up the Cannibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in honor of it, in which it was noticed that the better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed him; and as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather got so fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and it got so sloppy under foot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about at all; and at last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnant of the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to the other, and then plunged under forever, carrying the national archives along with it—and not only the archives and the populace, but some eligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as they diminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold at thirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept the province afloat ten hours longer and got her into port.
Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets anything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a stanch friend, and a permanent reliable enemy. He will put himself to any amount of trouble to oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to be done for the helpless and the shiftless. And he knows how to do nearly everything, too. He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-spring that never goes dry. He stands always ready to help whoever needs help, as far as he is able—and not simply with his money, for that is a cheap and common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and sacrifice of time. This sort of men is rare.
Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating joke. One night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next door to us, and Riley said that our landlady would be oppressively emotional at breakfast, because she generally made use of such opportunities as offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, and so we should find it best to let her talk along and say nothing back—it was the only way to keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral in the neighborhood but that the gravy was watery for a week.
And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs of woe—entirely brokenhearted. Everything she looked at reminded her of that poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the coffee forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail that made our hair rise. Then she got to talking about deceased, and kept up a steady drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through. Presently she took a fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs:
"Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!—the poor old faithful creature. For she was so faithful. Would you believe it, she had been a servant in that selfsame house and that selfsame family for twenty seven years come Christmas, and never a cross word and never a lick! And, oh, to think she should meet such a death at last!—a-sitting over the red hot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on it and was actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally roasted to a crisp! Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked! I am but a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave—and Mr. Riley if you would have the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which would sort of describe the awful way in which she met her—"
"Put it, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,'" said Riley, and never smiled.
-- Twain, Mark. The Complete Mark Twain: Novels, Short Stories, Essays, Letters, Humor, Non-Fiction, Travel and Speeches . Bybliotech. Kindle Edition.
Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes his conversation to the last degree entertaining (as long as the remarks are about somebody else). But notwithstanding the possession of these qualities, which should enable a man to write a happy and an appetizing letter, Riley's newspaper letters often display a more than earthly solemnity, and likewise an unimaginative devotion to petrified facts, which surprise and distress all men who know him in his unofficial character. He explains this curious thing by saying that his employers sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several times he has come near losing his situation by inserting humorous remarks which, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently not understood, were thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended to convey signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or something of that kind, and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer and cast into the stove.
Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted with a yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that he simply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in the delight of untrammeled scribbling; and then, with suffering such as only a mother can know, he destroys the pretty children of his fancy and reduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy. Having seen Riley do this very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak. Often I have laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him plow his pen through it. He would say, "I had to write that or die; and I've got to scratch it out or starve. They wouldn't stand it, you know."
I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw. We lodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8, moving comfortably from place to place, and attracting attention by paying our board—a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous in Washington. Riley would tell all about his trip to California in the early days, by way of the Isthmus and the San Juan River; and about his baking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and setting up tenpins, and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures, and teaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and keeping dancing-schools, and interpreting Chinese in the courts—which latter was lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up a little money when people began to find fault because his translations were too "free," a thing for which Riley considered he ought not to be held responsible, since he did not know a word of the Chinese tongue, and only adopted interpreting as a means of gaining an honest livelihood.
Through the machinations of enemies he was removed from the position of official interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar with the Chinese language, but did not know any English. And Riley used to tell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only an iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians, and other animals; and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all his paying subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floated out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become an English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions; but a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection again and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors came home every time, and away they went with the northeast trades drifting off sideways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up the Cannibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in honor of it, in which it was noticed that the better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed him; and as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather got so fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and it got so sloppy under foot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about at all; and at last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnant of the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to the other, and then plunged under forever, carrying the national archives along with it—and not only the archives and the populace, but some eligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as they diminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold at thirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept the province afloat ten hours longer and got her into port.
Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets anything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a stanch friend, and a permanent reliable enemy. He will put himself to any amount of trouble to oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to be done for the helpless and the shiftless. And he knows how to do nearly everything, too. He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-spring that never goes dry. He stands always ready to help whoever needs help, as far as he is able—and not simply with his money, for that is a cheap and common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and sacrifice of time. This sort of men is rare.
Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating joke. One night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next door to us, and Riley said that our landlady would be oppressively emotional at breakfast, because she generally made use of such opportunities as offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, and so we should find it best to let her talk along and say nothing back—it was the only way to keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral in the neighborhood but that the gravy was watery for a week.
And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs of woe—entirely brokenhearted. Everything she looked at reminded her of that poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the coffee forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail that made our hair rise. Then she got to talking about deceased, and kept up a steady drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through. Presently she took a fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs:
"Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!—the poor old faithful creature. For she was so faithful. Would you believe it, she had been a servant in that selfsame house and that selfsame family for twenty seven years come Christmas, and never a cross word and never a lick! And, oh, to think she should meet such a death at last!—a-sitting over the red hot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on it and was actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally roasted to a crisp! Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked! I am but a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave—and Mr. Riley if you would have the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which would sort of describe the awful way in which she met her—"
"Put it, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,'" said Riley, and never smiled.
-- Twain, Mark. The Complete Mark Twain: Novels, Short Stories, Essays, Letters, Humor, Non-Fiction, Travel and Speeches . Bybliotech. Kindle Edition.
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Professor Jordan Peterson on climate change
It's refreshing to hear an intelligent voice speak on this subject.
Saturday, August 18, 2018
Yuja Wang does Mozart
The following recital excerpt was downloaded from this YouTube channel. For the full 20-minute recital visit the original post.
Yuja Wang's talent is so great I'm tempted to believe she's from another planet. I hope you enjoy this brief performance.
Yuja Wang's talent is so great I'm tempted to believe she's from another planet. I hope you enjoy this brief performance.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Monday, March 19, 2018
Christopher Reeve
The following is extracted from Wikipedia. Reeve's life is an inspiration, as well as a tragedy.
Actor Christopher Reeve was born on September 25, 1952.
Actor Christopher Reeve was born on September 25, 1952.
He was no dummy. When he applied to college “he was accepted into Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, and Princeton.” He chose Cornell, got into acting, and became a movie star — a 6’4” movie star.
For his senior year he transferred to Julliard. Two thousand students applied for 20 positions, but Julliard only took two — Reeve and Robin Williams. After completing his first year at Julliard he graduated from Cornell in 1974.
During his first stint as a professional actor he ate candy bars and drank coffee instead of healthy meals. It took its toll. He was cast for the Broadway play A Matter of Gravity and on opening night uttered his first line, then "promptly fainted.”
Things improved after that. After the success of Superman and other films, he turned down lead roles in "American Gigolo, The World According to Garp, Splash, Fatal Attraction, Pretty Woman, Romancing the Stone, Lethal Weapon, and Body Heat.”
In 1985 he started horse riding, and eventually entered competitions. On May 27, 1995 he entered a competition in Culpeper, Virginia that included a number of jumps. One of them was a routine three-foot fence shaped like the letter W.
His skull and spine were disconnected, and Reeve seriously considered suicide. In the depths of his depression his friend Robin Williams showed up and got him laughing.Witnesses said that the horse began the third fence jump and suddenly stopped. Reeve fell forward off the horse, holding on to the reins. His hands somehow became tangled in the reins, and the bridle and bit were pulled off the horse. He landed head first on the far side of the fence, shattering his first and second vertebrae. This cervical spinal injury, which paralyzed him from the neck down, also halted his breathing. Paramedics arrived three minutes later and immediately took measures to get air into his lungs. He was taken first to the local hospital, before being flown by helicopter to the University of Virginia Medical Center. Afterwards, he had no recollection of the accident.
During the period of paralysis, Reeve continued to write, direct, and act. He even made guest appearances on Sesame Street. He became an activist for research in spinal cord injuries.
He suffered from asthma and allergies all his life. He also had severe drug reactions, one of which stopped his heart. In early October, 2004 Reeve was being treated for sepsis,
a complication he had experienced many times before. On October 4, he spoke at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago on behalf of the Institute's work. This was to be his last reported public appearance. On October 9, Reeve felt well and attended his son Will's hockey game. That night, he went into cardiac arrest after receiving an antibiotic for the infection. He fell into a coma and was taken to Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York. Eighteen hours later, on October 10, 2004, Reeve died, aged 52. His doctor, John McDonald, believed an adverse reaction to the antibiotic caused Reeve's death.
His widow, Dana Reeve, headed the Christopher Reeve Foundation after his death. She was diagnosed with lung cancer on August 9, 2005 and died, aged 44, on March 6, 2006.
They are survived by their children and their fathers.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
UGA winning TD in 2018 Rose Bowl
Both teams played tough to the end. Georgia played a little better.
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