Winter, winter, winter

 

Winter continues...and continues and continues.  Come on, Big G, it's almost April!  I suppose I should make some snarky comment about Global Warming, but, blahhhh!  All those people who tout that should take a long walk off a short pier.

Well, at least it's fireplace weather.  Few things better than curling up in front of a cozy fire, listening to the wind moan and whistle around the eaves and roar in the cedars and pines, look out the window and see the snow swirling into drifts, check the thermometer on the porch and think, man, is it cold out there.  Glad I'm in here!  A cup of hot chocolate and something engaging to read...life is good.

What am I reading? Dygartsbush by Walter D. Edmonds.  It's a novella first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1937.  It's about a man and wife pioneering in the Mohawk valley of New York in the years immediately after the revolution and how they come to re-establish their relationship and pick up their lives after she returns from  being kidnapped by the Indians and living with them for seven years. Captured in the early days of the rebellion, when the British paid $8 for the scalp of an American, she was lucky that a brave took a fancy to her and made her his squaw. After the British defeat, the Seneca signed a peace treaty with the Americans, one provision of which was the return of all white captives, and thus she came home.  Eight or nine decades ago, when the country still belonged to us, stories such as this one resonated with Americans -- real Americans they were then, not a mob of indifferent, ignorant, arrogant and incurious FOB foreigners who claim to be Americans but are not -- and novels like Drums Along the Mohawk and Arundel enjoyed a wide audience, and Edmonds is probably the best who ever wrote about the early days of our country.

What else do I do on these stormy winter days?  One thing is dance with the house apes, mine and sometimes a couple of the ranch hands'. One guy is a widower, his wife lost in a traffic accident, and one is divorced, such a common thing these days, he having partial custody of his child. They usually stay and watch, sometimes they'll try to dance, too, after some good-natured coaxing (they are a bit bashful), and I will show them some simple steps. The time spent is enjoyable for both the grown-ups and the kids, and we do have so much fun while I'm teaching them various dances.  We laugh a lot. Afterwards, we're all tired and can have a snack -- the kids like brownies and cup cakes with milk, the adults maybe a BLT or ham with chips -- and then the small fry take a nap while the adults chat.  I'll make the guys a hot toddy with a little extra dash of whiskey and they relax and tell me about their days. If something breaks or the cattle need their attention they will be out in this weather, hands and feet freezing, icy wind whipping into their faces and cutting right through their coats.  But they won't quit till the job's done.  So I'm happy to provide them a little bit of fun and relaxation when things are going well and they have some free time.

What do we dance to?  Songs like this, one of our favorites:

Why?

 The cat's asleep; I whisper "kitten"
Till he stirs a little and begins to purr--
He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb
(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)
He mewed until I heard him in the house.
I climbed up to get him down: he mewed.
What he says and what he sees are limited.
My own response is even more constricted.
I think, "It's lucky; what you have is too."
What do you have except--well, me?
I joke about it but it's not a joke;
The house and I are all he remembers.
Next month how will he guess that it is winter
And not just entropy, the universe
Plunging at last into its cold decline?
I cannot think of him without a pang.
Poor rumpled thing, why don't you see
That you have no more, really, than a man?
Men aren't happy; why are you?
―Randall Jarrell

 

 

Is it I?

Approaching Two Harbors, Catalina Island.

 

Will spring never come?  What a winter this has been, in so many ways.  I can't wait to put it behind me.  I'm thinking of taking off for California for a while to break the spell of this bleak season.  Stroll around Santa Barbara and Isla Vista, drive out to Gaviota, do some surfing.  Then down to Channel Islands and rent a sailboat, something like a Catalina 28.  I used to sail one of those a lot when I was in high school and college. Sail out to the Channel Islands, maybe go all the way out to Santa Barbara Island, from there maybe down to good old Santa Catalina Island -- island of romance!  Then sail past San Clemente Island down to San Diego, wave at North Island. 
Yeah, well, dream on, Wanda. I've got too many obligations and responsibilities, too many people relying on me, to just take off like that.  Here I am and here I'll stay.

 Sometimes, reading websites and blogs absolutely discourages me.  I was reading one where some guy said he had tried to read Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim but couldn't get through it because it was too difficult and poorly written.  Sigh.  Joseph Conrad a poor writer?  Words fail. Civilization is crumbling before our eyes.  Lord Jim is a novel every person should read, and, I think, most especially youths -- by that I mean young men or boys on the verge of manhood. 
How can it be that a novel that has been admired, enjoyed and learned from for well over a century, one of the most popular in the English language, cannot now be understood?
I don't mean to belittle the person who couldn't read or understand this novel; it's not his fault.  I do mean to express my dismay at the dying of my civilization.  The previous generation failed to preserve and pass it on.  Any civilization is at most three, but more likely just two, generations thick.  It's like looking at a wildfire.  On the ground you see a wall of flames that could, for all you know, be infinitely thick and deep.  But looking at those flames from the air, you see that they are merely a thin line.  That, to me, is how civilization is. But it is not formed of flames, but of a thin line of parents and grandparents, sometimes also great-grandparents -- but no more -- who constantly hand forward to their children and grandchildren the values, folkways, religious beliefs, wisdom, knowledge, way of life -- all that comprises a culture and civilization.  Maybe you could compare it to a relay race in which the baton handed off is civilization itself.  And the last two generations have simply failed to preserve and pass on Western Civilization to the next generations.  So it is not the fault of the person who can't understand Lord Jim that he can't do so.  It is the fault of those who failed, didn't even try, didn't think it was important, to teach him how to understand it, how to read it, how to appreciate its writing; how to tackle difficult, demanding subjects, persevere even in something so trivial as reading a novel, trivial compared to the other demands life will place on each of us.  Demands which, as Lord Jim examines, we may fail at. In the pitiless glare of life's challenges, we may discover that we are not much, that we are cowards, that we run away.  And after such knowledge, as they say, what forgiveness?  How can you forgive yourself when you have learned who you really are?  That we are all Lord Jim.
Of course, many will never face such challenges and go through life in ignorance of their own true natures.  But they may wonder how they would behave under supreme stress.  They may imagine they would be heroes, brave, resourceful, unafraid.  But Lord Jim whispers to them that that will not be so.

“There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention―that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary―the sunshine, the memories, the future―which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

This and that

Formulaic description of Hebbian learning.

The other day, I mentioned I have an ancestor named William Hebb.  I was wondering why that name Hebb seemed familiar to me and finally it came to me.  Back when I was getting my advanced degrees in underwater basket weaving or whatever it was, I studied Hebb's postulate, aka cell assembly theory.  It's a neuropsychology rule stating that an increase in synaptic efficacy arises from a presynaptic cell's repeated and persistent stimulation of a postsynaptic cell. Or, in other words, the neurons that fire together wire together and  those that fire out of sync lose their link. It was introduced by Donald Hebb in his  book, The Organization of Behavior. Hebb's work anticipated spike-timing-dependent plasticity, among other things.  I won't bore you with anymore of this shop talk, but, see, I ain't just a pretty face and a curvalicious bod with a swivel in my wiggle and a gasp in my groan when I get the bone.  Heh.  Okay, down girl. Lol.

A favorite book:

 

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood. 

 “What does it feel like to be alive?
Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly back up, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!
It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”

From another favorite book, Herman Melville's Moby Dick:

 “To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.”

 

 

 

 

Back in the saddle

 I've been getting back in shape for the last fortnight or so, starting gingerly negotiating the stairs, as I mentioned earlier, gradually increasing my activity level day by day.  I've been surprised at how quickly I'm getting back to normal.  The bruises are gone. My knee is fine. I can take deep breathes without pain, 'though I still get winded too easily.  But that will take care of itself as time goes by. Otherwise, it's almost as if nothing had ever happened.  That's so often the way it is.  Fortunately.  As long as you don't lose a limb or suffer brain damage or have severe internal trauma. 

Have I literally gotten back in the saddle?  No.  I'll let that go for now.  At some point I suppose I will need to do that, but there's no hurry.  It can wait till spring.  Or summer.  But I have gone down to the stable and supervised the house apes as they curried-combed their favorites.  I did finally Skype with el jefe and had a long chat, which cheered me up immensely.  Just to see him looking well and hear him talking, telling jokes and stories, made me so happy.  I can't wait till he gets back home, at least for a while.  I do want him to wrap up his career and come live on the ranch, but I suppose that is wishing for too much.  In some sense, when he is not with me I feel as if I am in suspended animation, waiting for life to begin again.

Oh, right.  I did do as I said I would when I got better.  I went to the rec room and danced.  Not too vigorously, but a good stretching and cardio workout.  What was the first tune I danced to?  You wouldn't guess, lol.

And, unbeknownst to me, I had an audience. A 'poke had dropped by to ask about something, and, finding no one in the parlor, followed the sound of music to the rec room and stood politely waiting for me to finish hopping and gyrating before excusing himself to me and making his inquiry.  Was I dressed as in the video?  Um... *cough* Well, I do like to get my girly-girl on!  I can't wait to tell el jefe about this.  He will get a good laugh out of it.

 

The Black Room

 

How do you survive a complete and utter loss of hope?

 Where do you live? Park Place, Main Street, Lake Shore Drive, Mulberry Lane, Lennox Ave., corner of 4th and Walnut, three miles out on Route 7? Come now, you know better than that. You may hang your hat anywhere at all, but you live in the black room of your own mind.

"The Black Room," first broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater on October 29, 1974.

Different strokes

I was listening -- okay, trying to listen --  to some pop songs people liked a lot that I found posted on some website, things like "California" by Blue Oyster Cult and "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" by Paul Thorn and I am sorry but I just couldn't take more than about 30 seconds of each.  Okay, okay, I'm not sorry, that's just verbal padding to cushion the comment, but, really, I just don't understand why people can enjoy stuff like that.  I know tastes differ, can differ radically, but I feel like I must be a visitor from another world suffering culture shock.  I don't know if I am out of touch or just have good taste, as somebody once said -- it's something I read somewhere, and I kind of agree with it.  I don't know about the good taste part, but I definitely am out of touch with what a lot of people like.

 When it comes to popular music, as a rule I like something danceable and singable, a catchy tune, a conveyed emotion but nothing really serious and certainly nothing trying to make a Statement.  Like somebody also said, if you want to send a message, call Western Union.  Or I guess nowadays, text it, don't sing it.

It does amaze me how seriously people take their pop music tastes though. To me, as I've said before, it's all just ear candy and nothing really important or worth giving weight to. As my dad once remarked when he heard me listening to a Buddy Holly tune, "Three chords, a cloud of dust and a hiccup at the end."  Well, yeah.  And what's wrong with that?

Speaking of tastes in music, I asked my dad what he liked as a teenager.  I mentioned Elvis and he made a face. No!  Hates him.  So...what did you like, I asked him.  He thought back and said he remembered as a senior in high school driving his dad's 1966 Chrysler Newport with a 440cid four-barrel a hundred miles an hour while listening to Paul Revere and the Raiders sing "Kicks" and shouting along at the top of his voice.  Way to go, Popster!  I listened to it and like it. I could dance to it, fer shure.

I guess that was a message song, though, anti-drugs, so I gotta revise my thoughts on disliking message music.  Life is so complicated!  Heh.

Oh, well.  Like what you like.  Just don't make me listen to it.  And don't call me a moron if I don't like the stuff you like and you don't like the stuff I like.  And what do I like?  As if you didn't know.  Stuff like this:

PS:  

Regarding how people are different, I read someone in a blog comment putting down those people who write comments on old pop songs in YouTube saying how this one brings back memories of their first date, or when they met their future wife or husband or it was their mom or dad's favorite.  This guy just found such comments banal and boring and like who cares about your stupid life, just shut up.  I guess he preferred comments about how the video shows Biff Blowblatt on the kazoo while the original line-up of the band had Zippy Muldoon making that kazoo rock, so this is not truly authentic or, you know, like whatever or something.

But, for me, those memories people post telling what the song meant to them are endlessly interesting and I never get enough of them.  Those commenting on the history of the band or technical details and so forth I skim past.  I don't care.  But if your mom always sang that song when she was happy and you played it at her funeral, well, gosh, I will read every word and then listen to the song again and think about your mom and try to understand why she liked it so much.

It's the same with blog posts.  I like the personal stuff most of all.  I don't care all that much for the pontificating on Covid or the Ukraine or some political or economic thing, though, of course, I read them to try to keep up with what's going on in the world, but mostly they are all the same to me, whatever the point of view.  But, when the blogger slides off into some personal musings, then is when my ears perk up and I read with close interest.  Yeah, yeah, Amerika sucks, BFD, what else is new? But you ate that for supper and liked it?  Huh -- just looking at it makes me want to heave.  And it only cost 57 cents?  Too expensive at half the price, if you ask me.  Or, you were able to bicycle to the grocery store despite the two inches of snow on the ground, but, darn it, they were out of spotted dicks and only had extra large chocolate ones, but they did have a case of Three Musketeers on sale and you snatched that right up because your father-in-law, who is diabetic, loves them and...