Marsh 2022
HI-
This monthly HiPiers column normally reflects my thoughts of the time, news of my writings, and whatever else intrudes. Mundane news is not much of it. But this time Russia is invading Ukraine, with Putin threatening anyone who interferes, and Trump praising Putin. I’m not familiar with the inside political details, but Putin reminds me increasingly of Germany’s Hitler, and Trump smells vaguely of treason. I am reminded how America invaded Iraq because of falsified reason: they had tortured a prisoner until he told them the lie they wanted to hear, because Bush wanted to be War President. Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union, step by step. So maybe I should change the subject before I say something unkind.
Last time I mentioned the mystery of the extra window on the Smith & Wesson watch/stopwatch I got as a novelty. But as I work with it, I like it increasingly well. A fan sent me a link to find out about the window, but coincidentally I figured it out for myself. It’s an indication of the mode the watch is in. Regular time, stopwatch, alarm, or settings. Mystery solved. My Seiko is slowly running down, so S&W may soon replace it. Today I saw that it even jumped from 2-28 to 3-1 without my having to reset it. That’s a nice feature.
MaryLee and I have now been married 22 months, and it still feels new. Our 22nd anniversary fell on 2-22, 2022, and we pondered the significance of 2:22 PM that day. Which reminded me of an old joke: in the days of passenger trains—they existed in my day—a man entered the station and asked “When’s the train here?” The clerk looked at the timetable and read “Two to two, to two two.” The man said angrily “I didn’t ask you what kind of noise it makes!” When I go out on my exercise walks or whatever, MaryLee reminds me to heed her Little Voice that follows me, saying “Be Careful!” For some reason she doesn’t want me to trip and fall on my face the way I used to. I have a T-shirt that says “It took me 87 years to look this good!” Maybe I wouldn’t look as good with my face a mass of scars. The neighbors are burning surplus wood in their yard, and it smokes; when I walk through that smoke the Little Voice starts coughing.
We were returning from a routine shopping trip when we came to a tricky intersection. As I pulled up, it seemed that every car in the world was there. I counted 15, then spied a gap. I moved in, turning right, then immediately slowed and bore left for the left turn. As I said, it’s tricky; you have to get it just right. Suddenly another driver was there, cussing me out, giving me the finger. All I can figure is that he came in from the side where there’s a filling station, not looking ahead, and thought he owned the road, almost rear-ended me, and was furious to have to slow down. It reminds me of the drunk driver who took out twelve year old Jenny, a fan of mine, as she crossed the road in 1988, with school signs and crossing guards out; rather than yield the right of way he crashed through and almost killed her, paralyzing her for life. No remorse; they had to arrest him to get him to attend the hearing instead of going on a fishing trip. A quirk in Virginia law allowed him to pay no penalty. Her family had to sue the insurance company to make it pay. The world can be a pissy place. I still write to her weekly.
I commented before on how, during the generous minute it takes for my email computer to get online, I have taken to glancing at books I have on my library shelf in that vicinity. Last time it was one about ice cream, with a memorable girl eating her cone with her legs spread wide toward the reader. Can’t think why I like that picture so much. This time a couple of rather different ones. One is A Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi. He was a renowned warrior. By age 30 he had killed more than 60 men in duels, often, I understand, using a wooden sword against their steel. He finally retired to a cave and wrote his book about combat strategy, this one. It is regarded as a classic, not just for combat, but for life. He defines The Way as five books concerning five different aspects: Ground, Water, Fire, Wind (Tradition), and Void. The Void, or Nothingness, is a Buddhist term for the illusionary nature of worldly things. I suspect most of us today live in that Void. I play with similar Elements in Xanth, notably in Three Novel Nymphs, though they are not much into warfare. The nymphs must seek and tame those Elements, which is a challenge.
The other book is The Longevity Strategy – How to Live to 100 Using the Brain-Body Connection. by David Mahoney and Richard Restak M.D. I bought it in 1998 and apparently didn’t read it then. Now that I am 87, it interests me more, maybe because I am closer to the mark. When I married MaryLee I told her I hoped to give her ten good years before I moved on, which would take me to age 95. She’s not satisfied; she wants me to try for fifteen. Sigh; it’s hard to satisfy a woman. So maybe this book will tell me how to do that. It’s jam packed with relevant advice. It says that in the twentieth century life expectancy rose from 47 to 75, so it is rooting for 100 in the twenty first century. But you have to plan for it, physically, mentally, financially, family, and friends. Don’t smoke or get drunk regularly. Eat a wide variety of foods, though no particular food helps or hinders. Are there qualities of character that centenarians have? They tend to be independent. They want their own way. They are high on optimism, and rarely depressed. In their nineties they were employed, sexually active, and enjoyed the outdoors and the arts. In contrast, becoming old means losing interest in life, accepting the notion that it’s too late to change, believing that life doesn’t matter anymore, failing to set goals and commitments, losing a sense of surprise and giving in to boredom. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but this pretty well describes me, and I’m not getting old in the ways described. I am only part way through skimming the book, and believe I will continue.
The Irish Writers’ Unions issued a statement on Ukraine, saying in part that war is a disaster, and they are shocked and dismayed by Russia’s invasion. They oppose it, and stand for Ukraine to live as an independent country determining its own destiny. The Irish have solid experience with this sort of thing. Considering history, they know that no good will come from this. I suspect they are correct.
I continue to write Xanth #48 Three Novel Nymphs. And am now four chapters, 30,000 words, into it. Remember, nymphs are supposed to be good for Only One Thing, which they constantly practice with the fauns in the Faun & Nymph Retreat. Now away from the Retreat, their memories no longer get erased every night, and they start catching on to the nature of regular Xanth. They are no longer satisfied to be limited to that One Thing, and in addition to saving Xanth from being ravaged by the wild Elements they begin to have ambitions to be recognized as complete women in their own right. But there’s going to be a Hades of a lot of adventure before they accomplish either objective. I am now making notes on their encounter with Ouroboros, the serpent who circles the world holding its tail in its mouth so the planet doesn’t fall apart. You don’t want to mess with that creature. Stay tuned.
I went through another backlogged magazine, FREE INQUIRY for December 2012 / January 2013. You might think that such ancient issues would be moldering in their graves, but this is hardly the chase. Good thoughts are relevant regardless of their dates. This issue has an In Memoriam for its former editor Paul Kurtz, 1925-2012. I’m still not clear what the technical cause of death was, but he did make it to age 86, not a bad length. He was a powerful figure in the humanist and skeptical movements. I may be confusing him with editor Tom Flynn, who died more recently, younger. An article in this issue is titled “Islam is Woman’s Enemy,” by Wafa Sultan, who plainly has experience, having lived 32 years in Syria before discovering relative freedom in America. Some say the mistreatment of women does not derive from the Koran (I’m spelling it the way I learned it, in another century), but she makes the case that the abuse of women is inherent. I remember how in some Muslim (in my day it was Moslem) countries women simply have no rights. Elsewhere in the issue is a tribute to Harry Harrison, a science fiction writer whom I knew personally. He was a good writer; I hadn’t known he was a humanist. The preceding issue has a cover picture of a man walking a high tightrope, which is splitting into two ropes ahead. He’d better choose the right one. An Op-Ed column by James A Haught addresses Death. “It takes courage to look death in the eye and feel ready for it. So be it. Bring it on.” He is bolder than I am. I have lost a daughter and a wife, and am not eager to join them in oblivion. Remember, I’m an unbeliever; Heaven or Hell do not wait to welcome me.
I still subscribe to IG Living, being reluctant to let go of this connection with my late wife Carol who required immune globulin (that’s the IG) treatments to maintain her life. I believe those treatments extended her life more than 15 years. It covers technical matters, of course, but also has some items of general interest. The February-March 2022 issue discusses among other things, Surprise Medical Billing, article by Abbie Cornett, MBA. That’s when a medical bill seems to come out of left field, and you’re stuck for it. Congress passed the No Surprises Act that went into effect in January. So why are folk still receiving those unwelcome surprises? I got one. I am covered by Medico plus supplemental insurance, so I am completely covered. Ha ha. The article says that one third of insured, non-elderly people struggle to pay medical debt related to surprise billing. For me it’s not the money, it’s the principle. I feel similarly about robo calls; we’ve been on the do not call list for decades, but it seems to make no difference. MaryLee says back in Tennessee she asked them nicely to stop, and most of them did. I am skeptical; I suspect it was coincidence.
The Equedia Letter keeps coming. The issue for February 6, 2022, concerns the digital dollar. It makes the case that a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) could give the Fed complete monetary control, an absolute monopoly over all credit and transactions settled in its tokens, not even needing the backing of Congress. Equedia is wary of that, and so am I. China’s communist party controls all circulating digital yuans. I don’t want to be unduly paranoid, but I deeply distrust China’s economic and human rights motives. I’d rather have money be fundamentally independent of government, if that is remotely feasible. The 2/13/22 issue says the Financial system is going through a paradigm shift as the Fed’s powers grow and the economy is over-leveraged. It asks “How do I shield and invest my money in this regime?” How indeed! They review gold, real estate, even crypto, but caution us that there will be no definitive answers; this is just the preparatory work. It says that since the beginning of Covid, the world’s four major central banks have printed over $4.5 trillion, which accounts for one fifth of all dollars in existence. That the monetary sugar high has set off a chain of complications that has thrown the economy off balance. It blew up demand so high that supply can’t keep up with it. Yes, we have noted how whatever we most want at the grocery store is sold out; the shelves are empty, except for stuff we have no use for. Home prices have risen 26-32% compared to a year ago, and most other markets are growing at double digits. Last quarter the world’s debt hit a historic $300 trillion, with more than half of it accumulated in the past five years. What is this doing for investments? In the old days, before the Virus, all you had to do was put 60% of your money in stocks and 40% in bonds. This did well. But last month the 60/40 portfolio saw its worst monthly drop since the beginning of Covid, losing 4.2% of its value. This is mischief. The 2-27-22 issue has the final installment, exploring alternate investments. Gold? It says that the idea that inflation drives its price is a myth; what counts are real interest rates. Bitcoin? It has huge upside potential, but a short track record. Real estate? It discusses this with reference to REITs, which it doesn’t define. Real Estate Investment Template? Your guess may be better than mine. It says to be cautious. Private markets? These are things like venture capital, which is investing in start-up companies. I have dabbled in that; it’s risky as hell.
Clippings: these are likely to be more limited, as The Tampa Bay Times no longer sends my physical copies and I don’t go online for such news. So I am limited to the local paper; we backwoods yokels don’t get much respect. THE CITRUS COUNTY CHRONICLE. It’s not a bad newspaper, but its perspective is limited. I think it first mentioned the invasion of Ukraine on page nine. But I do have tear-outs from the magazines I subscribe to. The Florida House passed an education measure that prohibits instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. This bothers me. I feel that children should know that different orientations exist and do not signal evil. Censoring out information is an early step toward book burning. Letter 2-07-22 by Roger Cullen says that wealth inequality is destroying America. “In 2006 almost every Republican voted for the Voting Rights Bill, but now hardly any do. Their new goal is not to bring the country together, but to tear it apart. They’re talking about succession [I think he means secession] and civil war. That they endorse conspiracy theories like Q anon, and are anti vaccine, anti mask, anti science, anti history, and anti books.” My hope is that this is overstated, but I do see evidence of it here in Citrus Country, Florida. We moved to Florida for the physical climate, not the political climate. David Shribman has an article titled “Why aren’t we happy?” Why, indeed! He says that the Making of the President series it speaks of “the terrible conflict between the idea of liberty and the idea of order,” and says “Rarely does any civilization harness the two, but when that happens, the results can be spectacular and magnificent, as they were in Republican Rome, in ancient Athens, in England at its apogee, in the United States for how long we do not know.” He mentions how a Black poet pleaded for America “Let it be the dream it used to be.” Wouldn’t that be nice. Article in NEW SCIENTIST for 15 January 2022 titled “How to hack your personality.” It says that who you are changes through your life, and the latest research says that you can deliberately alter your character. “Traditional psychologists believed personality to be more or less fixed over your lifetime. Not any more. Now it seems personality evolves throughout life, and in recent years, several studies have even demonstrated that it is possible to transform your personality on purpose.” Well, now. But will the bigots, racists, and sexists seek to change? I fear not. “These days, most psychologists use the Big Five model, which divides our personalities into five independent traits: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and neuroticism, otherwise known as emotional stability.” I’m not sure I am following this. Neuroticism is part of emotional stability? I’ve always suspected that psychologists are a bit crazy; that dates from my childhood when I was sent to child psychologists, and realized that they really didn’t understand children, at least not creative ones like me who don’t readily fit into standardized boxes. So maybe they’re not crazy, just ignorant. I remember a savage sequence in West Side Story where the gang kids took off on ignorant adult analyzers; maybe psychologists should be required to watch that. Regardless, how can you change yours? “Fake it until you make it pretty well sums up how to change personality.” I suspect psychology still has a fair way to go before it gets close to understanding real people, if ever. “Stand your ground” laws are proliferating in a number of states, according to an article in the 2-28-22 newspaper by Curt Anderson and Lindsay Whitehurst, and the result is an 11% increase in homicides per month, up to 33% in southern states like Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana. You don’t like your neighbor? Blow him away, knowing that you can claim self defense. It cites the Florida case of George Zimmeman in 2012, who spied a black teen, hounded him, and shot him, claiming immunity. I call it deadly racism. Article in NEW SCIENTIST for 1-15-22, “Dawn of a new physics?” by Harry Cliff. There are hints from particle smash-ups at the Large Hadron Collider that there is a new force of nature that suggests a deeper theory of reality. No, I don’t believe he is talking about Magic. The Standard Model does not explain things like Dark Matter. That, I think, is because Dark Matter does not exist. I will be interested to see what they come up with. The same issue reviews a book The Power of Fun: Why fun is the key to a happy and healthy life. It says that True Fun is typically a serendipitous [that is, accidental] experience that brings together playfulness, connection and flow. True Fun makes us feel alive. It says there is plenty of fun out there for the taking. “Why waste your time on anything else?” I suspect it depends on what you consider fun. Some folk seem to like getting drunk. I like playing free cell, writing fiction, and being with MaryLee. Another article—yes, I also like reading science magazines—reviews the book Emotional: the new thinking about feelings, by Leonard Mlodinow. It says that feelings play an essential role in shaping our thoughts and decisions. “Emotion is not at war with rational thought but rather a tool of it.” Yes. I believe that the main purpose of dreams is to decide how we feel about the events of the day, and that without feeling we have no purpose in existence. Another article, by Bencie Woll, says that sign languages are flourishing in many parts of the world. Yes, they can exist independent of spoken language and be useful not only for the deaf but for communicating with those using other languages. A universal language, ideally. And an item about how millions more folk are exposed to dirty air from US wildfires. It’s not healthy. And an interview with Patricia Brennan, a biologist who studies sexual behavior. Mammals have clitorises, and some, like the dolphins have sex all the time, for fun as well as reproduction. Females will have sex with males and other females, rubbing each other’s clitorises with their snouts and fins. They also masturbate. So in dolphins, the clitoris is equivalent to the penis. I wonder how that would affect human society? And one on how merging black holes —no, I’m not talking about female sexuality — produce a really speedy runaway, a truly fast moving black hole. So if you see one coming, dodge. And an item on how ancient humans may have started hunting two million years ago. They can tell this by analyzing cut marks on old bones. As a vegetarian I hate to say this, but the advent of human meat eating did significantly change our species, perhaps enabling it to become globally dominant. We became predator rather than prey.
NEW SCIENTIST 1-29-22 has an article titled “Taming Migraine” by Jessica Hamzelou. Migraine headaches have been a mystery for decades, maybe centuries. My mother suffered them, and MaryLee does. Migraines are the third highest cause of disability in the world, affecting women more than men, three to one, which may be why they haven’t been taken seriously and little funding has been available for studies. It’s more than a headache. What causes them? We are finally starting to get answers. They can begin with a premonitory phase, or prodrome, which can have symptoms such as mood changes, neck stiffness, yawning, or a vague feeling that something bad is going to happen. There may be an aura, which is a sort of vision. If I ever have a character who suffers migraines, I will name her Aura. Then a headache, which can be debilitating, lasting for minutes, hours, or days. Followed by a hangover, leaving the victim feeling tired or unwell for days. It may be hormone related. There’s a huge variation, making study complicated. But they are making progress. I suspect that if it mainly affected male financiers, we’d have had the answers long since. In the same issue, article “Virtual reality is as real as physical reality, but just different.” It’s an interview with philosopher David Chalmers by Richard Webb. It is the question of consciousness, one of my buttons, one of the three major questions I’d like to see answered before I tackle the ornery Kick Mee bucket. The other two are the universe: why is there something rather than nothing, and what is the real nature of life? Chalmers has his own questions, such as How can we know about the external world? What is it? What is the World Made of? How do mind and body interact? Is there a god? He refers to 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes, who said, as I recall, “I think, therefore I exist.” He also asked “How do we know we’re not dreaming? How do we know an evil demon isn’t fooling us?” Today we wonder whether we are living in a simulation like The Matrix, where a giant computer program models the world. Chalmers says that even if we are in such a simulation, we still exist and interact with others. You can lead a meaningful life in a virtual world. He calls it our Garden of Eden picture. We just don’t know.
A team working on cold cases has reached what it calls new light on the betrayal of Anne Frank’s family. Remember, this was a Jewish family hiding from the Nazi persecution, as recorded by her teen diary that her father, I think the only surviving member of the family, found under her bed after the war. Five years of combing through evidence, investigating over 30 suspects in 20 different scenarios, produced the most likely one. Van den Bergh was a prominent member of the Jewish community in Amsterdam, may be the one. He died in 1950. Newspaper article by Laura Ungar says they may be unraveling the biology of the mystery of stuttering. Globally, 70 million people stutter, including President Joe Biden, who has spoken of being mocked by classmates and a nun in Catholic school for his speech impediment. Many children start stuttering at age 3 to 5, with about 80 percent outgrowing it. There are slight brain differences. Ignorant folk think it’s just nervousness or shyness. Not so; there’s genetic component. They have my sympathy. I never stuttered, but I did wet my bed, shake my hands, toss my head compulsively, so I know how difficult being different can be. Yes, they thought I could stop it if I wanted to. My problems eased when I started taking control of my own life, instead of allowing myself to be subject to the stresses of others, including the ignorance of child psychologists. It’s not that simple for stutterers. Item in THE WEEK for 2-25-22 on the electric vehicle revolution. These cars are now powerful, high-tech, and cool, as well as being relatively low polluting. Now batteries can have a range of up to 450 miles. Yes, we are interested. Our main concern is getting them recharged on a long excursion. There needs to be a charging grid that rivals the present one for gasoline. Newspaper item: over half of US abortions are now done with pills, not surgery. I don’t like abortion, stemming from losing our first three babies because of a septum my wife Carol had that closed off half her womb, forcing premature expulsion, but I have little in common with today’s anti-abortionists who seem to have no care for the welfare of babies, only for condemning the mothers. It should be the woman’s choice, not that of the so-called moralists masking a religious anti-sex agenda. So this strikes me as a positive trend. NEW SCIENTIST item in 2-12-22 says a mega comet flying toward the sun is 137 kilometers — that would be about 75 miles — wide. That’s huge, for a comet, twice the size of Hale-Bopp. THE WEEK for 2-18-22 says that exercise is good for sexual health, as it improves blood circulation, which is key to erections in men and sexual sensation in women. Sexual activity has a significant impact on mental and emotional health. I, as a serious exerciser and admire-er of the look and feel of the other gender, am glad to know it. And one on violent crime: what’s causing the surge? It follows an unprecedented spike in gun purchases during the pandemic, with an estimated 80 million Americans now owning firearms. We could save many lives by getting those guns away from the nuts. But Republicans are fighting even modest efforts to limit the explosion in gun sales and trafficking. So who is really soft on crime? NEW SCIENTIST 2-5-22 article by Bill McGuire on science fiction’s spate of novels about the dark future we are heading for because of climate change. They call it Cli-Fi. It seems that storytelling has a power scientific papers lack. Amen! So far I have not found a publisher for my own warning novel, Deep Well, that spells out a solution. Can it be that publishers are not interested in solutions? Lotsa luck getting an answer there.
