Spo-Reflections

The Board of Directors Here at Spo-reflections and I met the other day for my annual employee evaluation.  This is supposed to occur on a yearly basis but actually happens more like every 2-3 years and sometimes in spurts of every other month. Being archetypes they don’t have a great grasp of Time. Indeed I sometimes show and they have forgotten about the appointment; sometimes they can’t recall even who I am.

My blogging contract is as endless as the Eddas minus its charms. It’s full up with words and terms like ‘suzerain’ and ‘stipulation’ and such. Truth is they haven’t a clue what most of it means let alone who wrote it. It’s been continually edited since 2006 and no one has bothered to rewrite it. There is no Word document in the Time of Legends.

I have been on an improvement plan since the get-go that never seems to improve but I’ve learned not to worry about it. They do enjoy ceremony and making threats and reminding me just because they wear the tunics doesn’t mean that I wear the pants.  After sufficient bellowing and sword shaking they keep renewing my contract to keep on blogging and then we all go to Heorot Johnsons II for a catered lunch. The dears.

Regularity:  A-  The contract states I am supposed to post daily which is about 90% met.  Once again Time is not their forte so this is good enough.

Accuracy: A   Then again what do they know. I allow myself one or two small evocations in nearly anything I write . If he read them Someone would give me an F grade most of the time. Oh the embarrassment.

Comment baiting:  C   Not surprised at this one. TBDHSR is a giant black hole of endless emotional needs and they live for comments. They prefer quantity over quality and no amount suffices.  No amount appeases them.

Danish literature:  B+   I would have gotten an A but for my bungle reciting the saga of Grettir the Strong. The harpist and I tend to go off into different keys.

Hand to hand combat:  C which is an actual average of D for no good at anything but A+ for managing to run away and stay alive.

Humor:  B+   TBDHSR  and I don’t find the same things funny. They don’t appreciate my Attic wit. They prefer crude humor as seen in a Roman comedy theatre.  I cut/pasted many ‘thumbs up’ comments from the Spo-fans to show they think I have humor.  Always the pragmatists they upped the grade a bit.

Interesting facts: A +   It’s always my strongest suit. 

Rolling down grass hills:   n/a this year.   They were divided whether or not I met the goal as someone spilled something on the contract blotting out the numbers.

Timeliness:  A   Our shared Nordic genetics keep us regular and on time – pretty good for The Time of Legends which lacks clocks and Alexa devices.

Tortures:  B   The blogging categories “Walking  the dog” and “Home life” count for torture as do many of my “Notes from the office”.

Uther tortures:  B   Whatever that is they never tell me.

Very nasty tortures:   C  “Poetry” counts here.

X-cert tortures:   n/a  as another stain is blotting out what I am supposed to be doing.

Yelling:  F   My sonorous prosody is a complete dud compared to my bosses who wouldn’t know how to whisper if their lives depended on it.

Zoo (sorry couldn’t think of anything else):  A   By now they have lost interest and are just filling in the blanks as lunch is ready.

I am learning three languages at the same time. I am trying to enhance my basic Spanish and reviewing my German all while attempting to learn French.* The sensible part of me says this is stupid; I should focus on getting my tongue wrapped around just one of them to the point I can actually converse and understand it. However another part of me thinks the moon will go blue with cold before that happens so I might as well have some fun dabbling in a few of them. Jumping from one language to the other fits my hummingbird-brain mind anyway.

Spanish has the advantages I’ve done over 1600 days of lessons and at work I am around folks who speak it. They are polite not to laugh when I try mine out no them. Interesting that I work with folks from Mexico, from Cuba, and from Guatemala all with different patois and idioms who discreetly correct me their way is the right way. I started learning Spanish as spoken in Madrid (taught by a couple of Scots can you imagine?) but quickly abandoned it as no one at work could deduce what the hell was I trying to say. Spanish has a few rules not obvious like saying two ‘L’ is a ‘Y” but otherwise what you see is how you say it. Placing the adjectives after the nouns is different and there are two ‘the’ (masculine and feminine) so you have a 50% chance of getting that right. Esta bien.

German is easier than Spanish as it resembles English (being both Germanic languages) and it is even better than Spanishwhat you see is how it’s pronounced. I am whizzing through the Duolingo starter lessons which places me as the top scorer, much to the dismay of thems below me who are struggling actually learning the language. German has a handful of new words since I studied it in the 80s but these are easy to grasp – mostly because they are just borrowed from Engligh. On the negative German has three articles masculine, feminine, and neutral and they change some depending on the accusative or dative. This is quite maddening to remember. Another downside to learning German there isn’t any Deutchen in a radius of hundreds of miles to speak with, so it’s all academic.

The new kid on the block is French. There is nothing practical about this one either but if I have to seek asylum in Canada next year it is good to be prepared to speak French as all good Canadians do. I sense the French I am learning is the type spoken in Paris, France and may not be exactly how thems in Quebec speak. Unlike German The French do not believe in consonants. What is written no way helps you figure out how to say it. My experience is folks who speak Spanish or German are amused and a bit charmed by my lousy attempts to speak but they are just as eager to speak English back to me. Rumor has it thems who speak French (in France anyway) have little patience with half-attempts at French.

The German, French, and Spanish words for pizza is pizza. That’s handy

There is no logic to articles. In German cat is feminine while in French and Spanish cat is feminine. A young woman is feminine in French and Spanish but in German she’s a neutral ‘it’.

The worse part of learning three languages is my brain tends to lump them together into the common category “not English” and fills in the blanks with whatever word comes to mind. The other day I translated ‘the dog and the cat’ as “el Hund y la Katze” getting a zero in Spanish and German simultaneously.

All this app learning isn’t going to get me anywhere unless I find some French and German speakers well over four feet willing to listen to my senseless ramblings. Better yet just lock me up with une bien homme for a week for intensive immersive lessons. Mon seul regret est d’en avoir a peine vu la couleur.

What languages to you speak?

*I took French in junior high school and I was very good at it. However there was no French taught in my high school so my counselor suggested I try German. I took four years of Deutsch with some follow up courses in college. Needless to say I don’t remember much if any French other than a few nouns.

“Where everybody knows your name” – Cheers

I recently read a treatise on a sociological concept called ‘The third place’. This is a literal place where you go for regularly other than home and work (which are the first and second places). In the third place people know you and you know them. Third places come in different types such as a neighborhood bar or a church or a club. It turns out third places are not only good for the individual they correlate with making a good community. In Third Places you get to know your neighbors and folks in various occupations. They in turn have contacts and can help you get things done. Also they keep people on their toes at their professions. If you are a clerk at the local city government you don’t want to be bad at your job if next week you are meeting these same folks at the Lions meeting or the neighborhood book club or at the bowling league.

I’ve been fortunate that in my life time I’ve had many third places; some of my favorite memories come from them. My church youth group comes to mind, and later in life the bell choir at St. Francis. A bar in town named Kobalt served as my ‘Cheers’ as the bartenders knew Someone and I and the others that appeared on Fridays for happy hour or Saturday night for “Broadway’ were the same faces from last time. Back in the 90s when I lived in Chicago every Monday after work was volunteering at The Howard Brown Clinic. I so looked forward to this weekly get-together knowing I’d see Kevin and Anthony and the others.* Whether church, bar, or clinic when I walked into one I felt was back I was among people who cared for me. There wasn’t much if any socializing outside of the third place boundaries – some but no a lot. The bonds were within certain walls.

Alas, Babylon! My third places are gone; I don’t have any more. I haven’ been to mass in years and when I went I felt alone sitting in a vast congregation of strangers. The staff at Kobalt have come and gone and the patrons I once knew now tend to stay home on Fridays than go out. It feels lonely sitting in a bar with people not talking to each other, served obsequiously by the bartender who does not feign to talk.

It would be nice to have an old-fashioned type of Third place again. The trouble is everyone is on line and/or prefer to stay home. In Phoenix everything is a long drive to get somewhere, further discouraging going to anything.

The treatise states by being in a third place provides us a great deal of good. When you look at the long livers they are quite involved with neighbors. Third places may be vital for our survival as a community.

This raises the question does blogging count as a Third Place? I think it does, at least for me. When I make rounds on my blogger buddies I feel I am dropping in on friends I know and who know me and hopefully care for me as I care for them. Curious some of them I have never actually meant – so do they count? I like to think so. I wonder though if I have developed an illusion of a third place. Some of my blog reads are one-sided viz. I read theirs but I don’t sense they read mine. With those bloggers the relationship is more parasocial than a two-way connection. I wish it were more two-way for some of them.

I think one of my resolutions for 2024 will be to find a new third place and if I can’t find one perhaps I will make one. I miss them. I need one.

Tell me about your Third Place(s).

Do you consider the blog community a Third Place in itself?

*I am still in touch with Kevin through my daily good morning memes.

Well today was the day: the Arizona 10K walk. I’ve been training for this since end of August to do it. My goals today were simple ones: Finish it and not lose my bowels or my dignity. Most of the attendees were running this or a marathon or something like it. They started at 7AM while we walking-types started at 8AM. It’s been decades since I attended one of these things. We arrived early as Someone was worried about parking. It gave us time to walk around the booths, which consisted mostly of new-agey snacks and devices. Someone was giving out free bananas.

On the whole runners/walkers are a fit-looking lot on the younger side. I was one of the chubbier ones. There weren’t too many oldsters and the ones I saw looked like beanpoles with the skin of someone who has spent most of the life out of doors.

The course wasn’t a straight but consisted of many three-sides of square streets in downtown Phoenix. It included a loop making the route resemble a large bow on a Christmas prize. Curious that the runners and the walker used the same route so I was often passed by thems running a marathon even though they started an hour ago. It resembled a caucus race minus the song. I worried about taking a wrong turn but there were signs and cones to keep us on the right roads. Mostly I followed the others.

As I looped around downtown Phoenix I got to see some sights I haven’t seen before including the governmental buildings. Mostly I saw the backs of everyone passing me many who were over four feet and had very nice backsides but they didn’t stay long in my view. There was even a Gorgeous George sighting and as always he didn’t have a shirt on. I wonder how he gets his time recorded at the end.

Although it is a 5K or 10K track (depending on which route you took) the distance markings are all in miles. This got a bit confusing as I would pass the 9 mile marker only to realize that was for the marathon runners.

I finally finished listening to my three hour lecture in prostate cancer.

I was pleased as Punch to realize a the 5 mile marker I hadn’t died but had some ‘umph’ still in me. I connected the dots perhaps medical lectures weren’t the best to inspire movement so I switched to music and picked up the pace. Why hadn’t I thought of this earlier? Caro Emerald pushed me along that I crossed the finish line looking like I had kept good form and pace all the while.

After you cross the finish line fair maidens give you a bottle of water, the dears.

According to my app I finished the 10K in 1:57:25 at a 18:20 min/mile pace which is faster than I usually do so I can be proud of myself – not just for today but I did it at all. I hope to keep up walking.

Afterwards Someone and I had bagels. He had butter on his and mine had Vegemite.

Oh, beside the bottle when you cross the finish line you are handed a king-size-titanic-unsinkable-molly-brown medal. I plan to hang mine in the closet where I dress to remind me what I accomplished.

When I was in Nova Scotia (Land of Norms) I visited a military museum in which was recreated a trench from WWI – minus the mud, lice, and rain. As you walked around trying to imagine the boards of the trench had written on them the names of the men who had died in the war. Taken as a whole these faceless names were mere data without stories without lives. I decided to make one of them more than that. I took a random photo of one of them. His name was William Elderkin.

I come from a long line of genealogists so it wasn’t too difficult to do the research. I think I wrote to a few places in Nova Scotia; I don’t quite remember now what I did.

William Arthur Elderkin was only 26 years old when he died. Here is the telegram:

Can you imagine receiving such?

Later I got more about him via find a grave:

He looks a handsome fellow. I like piece of information the most as it gives a face to the name on the wooden board at the museum. He was the only son. Oh the anguish to his family. I haven’t pursued if there are any descendants of his via his sisters and if there are do they remember their great uncle who was killed at Ypres. I wonder what he was like really. Was he a brave boy who fully believed in the cause or was he frightened and did his duty regardless? What his death due to stupidity on someone’s part? What were his hopes and dreams upon returning to Canada? It seems a waste.

On Veterans Day we are supposed to remember ‘The Veterans’ which is often too abstract and vast a term for me to appreciate fully. Having fatefully pulled his name off a plank and getting to know something about him helps me in my gratitude towards men and women who served in wars regardless of the wars merit.

Someday if ever I am in Belgium I would like to visit his grave and tell William I remember him.

I received a text the other day from Susan C. She and her family lived down the street from us during my childhood. The Cs and the Spos were on friendly terms; Susan sometimes babysat us kids. She texted to show she found an index card with a recipe for a Rice Krispie-based dessert my mother wrote out in longhand she gave to her mother. I have no recollection of Mother making this item for us or for anyone. I didn’t even know peanut butter-flavored Captain Crunch existed.* I passed on the photo to my brothers and asked them if they have any recollection of the recipe and none of them remember it either. This raises the question what was Mother up to she shared a recipe she never made? Mother and Susan’s mother are dead so the mystery won’t be solved.

I have a collection of recipes written on index cards residing in a tin recipe box that was my grandmother’s. When she died my mother got it and I took in turn when she died. The cards are fascinating not just the contents but the form: they are in various handwriting, some I recognize as my mother’s and my grandmother’s but there are a few I don’t. Were they relations? Perhaps lady friends from church wrote these. Like mother’s Rice Krispie dessert many of these recipes I have no memory of having. My intuition is the beldames of my family exchanged recipes to ‘someday make’ and never got around to them. Perhaps the recipes were taken out of politeness. If that was the case why hang onto them?

When I inherited my grandmothers’ and mother’s boxes of index card recipes I sorted out the ones that weren’t special (example: basic recipe for beef stroganoff) or unappetizing (lime Jell-O marshmallow cottage cheese surprise come to mind). I kept the ones I remembered actually having like Grandmother’s recipe for hamburger soup and the ones that sounded interesting to someday make like mandarin orange chicken.** I pulled them out the other day to have a look-see the Rice Krispie treat recipe was among them but it wasn’t there. The ones that were there seemed to say in chorus ‘remember you were going to make us someday?’. Funny that some of these recipes were probably passed down from generation to generation and have never have been made.

“Who was the woman who who made all of Julia Child’s recipes” I asked Someone. He’s learned to pause before responding carefully to these sorts of inquiries. He answered and then asked why did I ask (translation: what zany notion are you scheming). I announced I was thinking for doing something similar: make every recipe on these index cards. What my ancestors and what Ms. Child cooked are worlds apart. Apparently spices were not held in high regard but canned ingredients were. Rice Krispie Peanut Butter Captain Crunch Surprise is as good place to start as any. Anyone for a second serving of mandarin orange chicken?

Do you have a collection of recipes on index cards, written in longhand by your relations?

Do you actually make them?

*I had to look this up to see if peanut butter Captain Crunch still exists or was a it a mad scientist-like invention of the 70s that came and went with Tang? It looks like it is still being made. I remember eating Captain Crunch but it had small pink balls in it which had the consistency of styrofoam and probably tasted like it too. It’s a wonder how we survived childhood eating these sorts of thing.

**In each of collection some of index cards consist of clippings from newspapers glued to the card or held in place with scotch tape. I imagine my ancestors reading the newspaper and carefully cutting out the recipe as a ‘this sounds good I will try it some day”. With few exceptions I didn’t keep these as they were not ‘family heirloom recipes’. I did keep the mandarin orange chicken recipe as the newspaper article says your man will thank you for it. No harm trying anyway.

Note: I wrote this one when I was feeling pensive and perhaps a little hopeless about things. Spo

All great truths begin as blasphemies – Shaw

One of Mankind’s the greatest tragedies is humans are capable of believing things which go against the evidence of their sense and intellect. Not only can we believe nonsense and falsities we often prefer such. It is the foundation of countless miseries and the source of nearly all bad decisions throughout Time. It’s easy to see the folly in someone else, along the line of ‘what on earth were you thinking? but not so easy in ourselves. This worsens in group thinking. It is hard for someone in a group to stand up and say to the others the emperor has no clothes without being ostracized.

On the whole we’ve become more aware of this bias but so far we haven’t yet applied the insight towards better decision making. How naïf we were to think the internet would spread information to all and uplift us into a unified higher consciousness based on reason and evidence. We were stupid to think people would give up cherished dogmas for facts.

Recently with covid and vaccines Medicine made the same old error to think if patients were presented with facts and data this would change people to better health outcomes. We forgot even doctors when presented with facts that challenge their practices and assumptions tend not to change but to double down and keep doing what they think is right. Doctors (you would think ought to know better) had/have to be dragged kicking and screaming to better ways. This isn’t a new phenomenon. There was quite the backlash against data suggesting doctors should wash their hands between patients to cut down on infection or stop doing lobotomies as they don’t do any good.

Changing the beliefs of a system or a society usually happens slowly (unless there is a revolution) and there is always some backlash. It’s a journey that never goes always forward. A more recent example is seat belts. Once upon a time few wore them and when they became mandatory people bristled their personal freedoms were being suppressed. Now Thems who won’t wear a seatbelt are the rare birds and are looked upon as foolish.

In order to survive we as a species need to learn to live with uncertainty and complexity – two things we never liked and still don’t feel comfortable with. To avoid them, we make things up or hand power over to narcissistic psychopaths who promise they are certain and will provide simple clear truths. Whether we can do this metamorphosis before it is too late is not certain at this time.

I try to take hope in a Terry Pratchett book in which the character of Death tells his granddaughter you have to believe in the little lies like the tooth fairy in order to believe in the big lies like Truth, Mercy, and Justice. How else will they be? Some people (including myself) see current scenarios as hopeless to change but it wasn’t too long ago people firmly believed in the divine right of kings and that churches were all-knowing and blood letting was the panacea of all ills yet these so-called truths toppled like Ozymandias. May all falsehoods in time go that route. May we come to see the Emperor as what he is: truly naked and fooling nobody.