Suitcases

For ten weeks, I have been living out of two suitcases (ah, and an accompanying trash bag we accumulate dirty laundry in).  it's driving me mad, and I haven't come close to the two biggest hazards of using suitcases.  --damaging or losing them. Most of that happens when the airlines get involved.  We have stayed on the ground.   Despite their presence, I have on two occasions had to go buy shirts and even a suit.  You see, the suitcase manufacturers have developed suitcases with "moisture wicking" liners, but so far, none of them will wash a shirt or two when you run out of clean ones.  Hence, the two new shirts.  

The suit is another story.  I put it in the cleaners, failing to notice the store would be closed from July 4th until the 8th.  Since we hsd to leave on the 7th, I had to buy a suit while on the road.  No biggie, but how many suits does a retired man with his oldest married, and his youngest nowhere near.  I don't plan to wear a suit for the dirt  nap--I am thinking cremation.  

Which brings me back to Suitcase Simpson, often thought to have been named Suitcase because he moved so frequently from one team to another, he was instead called Suitcase after a comic book character with feet as big as suitcases.  Some of you may only know of the ballplayer from Tom Selleck's movies as Jesse Stone, a Robert Parker hero who serves as police chief in a small Massachusetts town called Paradise.  When Selleck/Stone arrives in Paradise, he finds a young officer named Simpson, and promptly dubs him "Suitcase" in recognition of the old former ballplayer who was among the first dozen or so black athletes to integrate the American League.  I'm old enough and happen to be from Chicago, so I remember Suitcase as a player who joined the White Sox at the beginning of 1959, was traded away during the drive for the 1959 pennant the White Sox won, then promptly returned in 1960, just missing the only White Sox World Series check in a period of fifty or so years during which the White Sox never appeared there.  

Wikipedia's contribution is below:

"A suitcase is a general term for a distinguishable form of luggage. It is often a somewhat flat, rectangular-shaped bag with rounded/square corners, either metal, hard plastic or made of cloth, vinyl or leather that more or less keeps its shape. It has a carrying handle on one side and is used mainly for transporting clothes and other possessions during trips. It opens on hinges like a door. Suitcases lock with keys or a combination."

Wikipedia indicates it is "Mainly used for transporting clothes and other possessions during trips."  Oh, sure, and dirty clothes, books, forwarded mail. prescription meds, a power strip with charging cords for your iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Laptop, and who knows what all.  The thing that stuck in my mind was the phrase, "It opens on hinges like a door."  Has living out of a suitcase felt like opening a door?  I think not.  More like closing a window.  Every time you are lucky enough to find what you actually went looking for, you have to stuff everything else back in and struggle to zip it closed again.  God, I love suitcases.  

Dragging these things around, and relying on them to hold what's important, just doesn't seem right.  On loan from home to help you transit out and back can be ok, but ten weeks just doesn't seem like the right kind of time frame, and indefinite doesn't seem to be the right destination.

A Rare Day for Me and Google

Unbelievably, I witnessed one of the rarest of moments this morning.  Google calendar, through some setting I have never gotten around to disabling, sends me a message each morning--almost invariably, it reads: "you have no events scheduled for today."   It is always among the messages that hit my email overnight and are downloaded as soon as the computer notices it is both connected to the internet and I have opened my inbox.  

It has become a metaphor for retired life some days, a reminder that what I accomplish today is up to me, and I'd better get moving or I'll waste it.  But I was up and writing and reading at 5:25 this morning, because I have a date with a medical procedure I had been up all night preparing for (go ahead, use your imagination).

Anyway, I heard the little tone it plays.  Google mail calls it, I am not making this up, "New Messages Sound"--gmail offers fourteen other sounds to use--I chose Basso today after listening to them all once again.  But when I heard "New Messages Sound," I looked up and I sensed somehow that it was not another empty notice, reminding me I had nothing going on.  This one, I can already tell, has two or more events on it!

There it is, I open it up--it's my calendar all right, for two weeks ago today.  I remember that I did do those things two weeks ago.  It's Google having a senior moment, not me.  Let's see. that's one for Google and 69,372 senior moments Google has bailed me out of by recollecting what I could not.  I think I'll let this one go....

Rehearsing Conversations

It must have started then when he was quite young.
He can't remember when he didn't, really.

It began with the phone and somehow it jumped
from there to his brain--compelled to rehearse.

He just assumed then there were good reasons
to plan all he'd say so nothing came out--

Unintended or awkward or stupid
like some mope or some fool who knew nothing.

He'd plan what he'd say so he wouldn't regret
leaving out or worse saying the wrong thing

Often he'd realize later it seemed
what he wished he had not said at the time.

In spite of it all, he realized now
what he'd said anyway--some foolish thing.

Did he really say that, please tell me no.
He meant to say this, but he didn't, you know.

It came out all wrong.  If it came up now,
he'd never repeat that unrehearsed thing.

Now he finds himself driving and thinking
words over, choosing only those best ones...

Wasting his now time rehearsing for some 
next conversation that never will be.

Weather Two (Forecast Accuracy? Twitter for NHC Updates)

So, as forecast, today dawned gloomy and rainy, just as yesterday had ended.  I was up at dawn, actually, so I know the weatherman was right.  You might assume I'd be encouraged by the accuracy of what the past 48 hours forecast has produced, but I'm not.  You see my little sojourn onto the world of weather forecast accuracy has shown me too much.  This is just an example of what is called the "persistence method of forecasting."  You see, forecasting the weather is a highly complex problem, riddled with opportunities for things to go wrong.  Being accurate in your forecasting requires employment of highly technical methods to make it all come together.  The most-utilized of these methods is the "persistence method."  The weather forecaster looks at what yesterday's weather was and assumes it will "persist."  If yesterday was hot and muggy, today probably will be, too.  If it was rainy and gloomy (wait for it, wait for it, here it is) today probably will be, too.  The "persistence" method is a great aid to today's meteorologists.

If you read yesterday's discussion of weather accuracy, you know that this issue has become very important to me.  Living 35 yards from water that eventually connects to the Atlantic Ocean means this is oh so personal, my behind is on the line, so to speak.  If you think of a day when rain was forecast and it was instead a sun-filled day, you are pleasantly surprised and you think nothing else about it.  On the other hand, if the day is forecast to be sunny and instead it pours, you are looking for a phone to call the forecaster and complain, or you are tweeting some insult in their direction.  Either way, in a few weeks it's all forgotten, presumably.

But put yourself in my shoes, if they get it wrong about coastal flooding or tropical storms (or even the h-word, we don't say that word given that whole water-connectedness thing I explained), I'm washed away.  So, I'm getting a lot more interested in accuracy.   Believe it or not, there is no arm of the National Weather Service that works on measuring the accuracy of past forecasts.  The same, as I mentioned in my earlier commentary on this subject, is true for the private sector, home to all those professional meteorologists who don't even keep up with the accuracy of their own past forecasts for bragging rights, resumes, salary reviews, nothing.  

Ah, but the private sector to the rescue.  I found the father of a 7th grader who, on discovering there was little or no local information available began a test in his area by collecting his own data.  It began as his son's science project, collecting data for a week, Dad went a little overboard, and was still going after 7 months when he wrote about it for the Freakonomics website.  Here are some of the comments he heard from TV people: 

“We have no idea what’s going to happen [in the weather] beyond three days out.”

“There’s not an evaluation of accuracy in hiring meteorologists. Presentation takes precedence over accuracy"  "All that viewers care about is the next day. Accuracy is not a big deal to viewers.”  He concluded that few, if any forecasts were accurate consistently beyond the next day.  

It turns out, however, that there are a few more nerds like him who have seriously created studies and are assembling a large body of work.  One began doing it for money on a part time basis in 2004.  Today, he has started his own business full-time and is growing by leaps and bounds.

Today, his conclusions are based on forecasts from around 800 cities in the US, or about 275,0000 forecasts each year.  That's more than 2 million forecasts in his data base.  His name is Eric Fluehr and he has a commercial web site from which he sells data to businesses including commodity futures traders and media companies.  He also has a free consumer web site that allows you to look up accuracy ratings nearest to your zip code and read his blogs, etc.  It's called ForecastAdvisor.com and it's worth a look.  It's nice to know who is the most accurate provider of forecasts in your area.    

Nice-to-know material, but the forecasts I have to watch are the tropical storm activity from the National H----cane Center, which is federal government.  With a little digging, I learned that this summer, at the start of the six month h----cane season, they doubled their computing power, after-effects of Sandy most likely, but I am thrilled to learn it.  Maybe I can stay here after all.  I tried to sign up again for email notification of all their updates on storms as they are identified, only to learn that due to its cost the system has been discontinued, however, you can follow them on Twitter at @NHC_Atlantic.  This is my return to Twitter after a four year absence, i think.       

Weather--Hi-Temps, PoP's, Precipitation Icons and Me

I'm starting to have my doubts.  In just three weeks, I will be moving into a home that stands about 35 yards above a small body of water next to a marsh, which connects to Broad Creek, which connects to the Calibogue Sound, which connects to the Atlantic Ocean.  At that point, I will be dependent upon weathermen for my survival, so to speak.  No, not Bob Dylan's Weatherman from his Subterranean Homesick Blues (not needed to know which way the wind blows) and not the infamous Weather Underground (although a bunch of them still hang out and offer advice to us all, most notably, Bill Ayers, the professor of Education at University of Illinois Chicago, famous more recently as an Obama campaign fund-raiser/contributor) 

No, I am talking about our trained meteorologists.  Those who slave away staring at computer models, trying to make sense of all those shifting shapes and colors on the LED screen (I hope they at least aren't still using CRT's, I mean if you're going to relentlessly spend tax money and money you someday hope to tax, and more, the least you can do is spend it to provide good, modern equipment to the National Weather Service, so I can have as  much warning as possible of any inclement weather (like a flash flood, for instance), or even a hurricane.  

I sat down to write this while the sun was blazing away, despite the TV forecaster's prediction last night of three days of rain.  I was all set to run him down for being totally wrong, etc. when it finally started to rain about 6PM.  But still, I wondered, were all the local forecasters singing the same song that night, and how about the governmental arm, the National Weather Service?  I started looking around, and I couldn't find any of yesterday's forecasts to review. 

I dug a little deeper and could find little evidence that anyone was looking back.  By contrast, the British government's web site for its Met Office (their national weather service) devotes multiple pages and graphs to rating its forecast accuracy both in terms of hi-temps and lo-temps and PoP's (that's probability of precipitation) on a continuing basis, and includes accuracy goals as well, for key data, such as high and low temps, rain or sun days, etc.

Now, most of you probably believe that these certified meteorologists on TV have high levels of accuracy on their resumes.  How else would they get opportunities like those that land them on your TV?  It turns out that only ratings drive those decisions, not forecasting credentials.  I know, I know, you are shocked and amazed that weather, like the news has always been about ratings.  And don't you believe that the stations pay some person with the proverbial "radio face" to sit in the back room and do the technical work so a face (and, yes, sometimes a figure) can appear on TV and give us a "good-looking" forecast.  In fact, no TV meteorologist posts their accuracy statistics on their résumé.  No station managers use accuracy statistics in the hiring or evaluation of their meteorologists.  They are looking for charm, personality and looks, and I am living 35 yards from the water! 

But do the stations keep those records and evaluate their own  performance?  It turns out that no meteorologist or television station keeps records of what they predicted, and-- therefore they are incapable of comparing their predictions to actual results over the long term.  The station managers will tell you the past is past and people only want to know what the weather is going to be tomorrow.  This latter fact is among the principal reasons why mid to long-range forecasts (going out beyond five or seven days) are so inaccurate.  No one cares about the weather beyond tomorrow and maybe the next day.   

While the TV forecasters probably care about their accuracy, the only thing that yields complaints is when a negative event occurs--meaning they failed to display their precipitation icon on a given day, and the general public was surprised by a sudden downpour.  In other words, people are pleasantly surprised when rain is predicted, but is not forthcoming.  But angry and complaining when the reverse happens.  Given that bias, you might wonder a little why the TV weather personalities don't always predict some rain.  

However, if they did so, to minimize complaints, they would be right only about 27% of the time, since it has only rained on about 27% of all days in the past year on average.  If they wanted a simple way to appear right more often, they would be better off predicting dry days every day and they would be right 73 per cent of the time (100-27% days of rain=73% correct).  But that would also mean lots  of complaints received on 27% of all days. Since TV stations don't want their phone lines tied up with complaints, they tend to have a "wet bias," meaning they will show their precipitation icon for more days when it might rain than they would if they wanted to be perfectly accurate.  It turns out, for example, that the Weather Channel arranges its forecasts such that pleasant surprises outnumber unpleasant ones by a 2 to 1 margin (2012 data).  This "wet bias" is also observable by noticing TWC's threshold for displaying the precipitation icon is just 30%.  If the probability of precipitation equals or exceeds just 30%, TWC will predict rain.  This allows them to avoid unpleasant surprises for their viewers, subscribers, etc.  However, it leaves me wondering who the most accurate forecasters are and where I can find them when that nagging worry about being washed away in a storm pops up in my head.       

(Tomorrow--let's look at what private enterprise has started doing to study forecast accuracy and how to learn about the accuracy of the services you use when trying to divine the future.  The local forecast is for a dull, rainy day, and I believe it.  So what else will there be to do but write?) 

On Eighty Eight Books That Shaped America and Stranger

I like to read.  It's not really my fault, I inherited it from my mother.  As a rule, I'd rather read than watch TV most of the time, with certain NFL games involving the Chicago Bears or the Atlanta Falcons being the inevitable exception.

This morning, I heard a biblical reference about being a stranger in a strange land.  This made me think first of Robert Heinlein's book, then Leon Russell's song.  The stronger pull was to Heinlein's book.  Back when I went through my science fiction phase, a long time ago, I read three authors for the most part--Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Heinlein.  Of the three, I probably read less of Heinlein than of the others.  With that said, Lots of things from "Stranger' stayed with me; grokking, Fair Witnesses and open-mindedness, especially.  If you've read the book, you will recall that Valentine Michael Smith, the central character, was as open-minded as they come.  He was the stranger being introduced to Earth customs, having literally been raised on Mars.

in looking back by way of Google and Wikipedia, I noticed a reference to "The 88 Books That Shaped America," specifically, that Heinlein's book made the list.  This was a list created by the Library of Congress, but despite the government involvement,  it's an interesting list.  Heinlein and Bradbury made the list, but Asimov did not.  I read more Asimov, in part because there was more of it.

What is the impulse that sends you almost at once to a pencil and paper to check off how many of them you've read?  I am not going to facilitate that by providing the list here, but our friends at Google can provide it very quickly (in 0.27 seconds according to their search results).  There were some interesting choices--Joy of Cooking, for instance.  Did it shape America literally, by changing eating habits?  For example, did looking at an easy recipe for fried chicken simply send people to KFC all the more often, or was it vice-versa--did it lead to the near-demise of places like Stuckey's?  I'd say the former, the fast food biz grows faster than an American waist line.

Now on to Leon Russell, here's the opening stanza:

How many days has it been
Since I was born
How many days until I die 
Do I know any ways
That I can make you laugh
Or do I only know how to make you cry

Can you beat that?  How about this one?

When the baby looks around him
It's such a sight to see
He shares a simple secret
With the wise man
He's a stranger in a strange land

Great stuff, give it a listen and you'll agree.  It's a call to learn to love each other, nothing wrong with that.  By the way, I read thirty-three of them, the 88 books, of course.

Friendships, Like Life, Come and Go and Stay

As I sit here chewing on my pen, figuratively speaking--I'm really at a keyboard watching my fingers bounce--I'm trying to find my way around a hole in a story.   You see, I have long believed something Aristotle wrote, that "friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies." My own view of that evolved into the notion that the best of friends share parts of their souls, and that departed friends live on by way of that shared soul.  This permanent sharing of one's soul implies a permanence I haven't always had or given to the friends I've encountered.  

In my life, which has led me a thousand miles from home and had me moving ten different times to new towns or cities, I have had the good fortune to make a number of friends at different stages of this life and in all those different places. They have drifted in and out of my life at times, since we've moved in different directions at different times.  What sometimes sinks in is the reminder that these old friends are still a part of me somehow.  In their day, we shared major portions of our respective lives and souls.  I am still aware on some level that these friends still inhabit parts of my soul, despite the fact we have not maintained contact, close or otherwise.    

During the long trip I made last month, I met a man who is in touch with an old friend of mine, one with whom I have lost contact for more than twenty-five years.  We talked--I about the youthful days when I knew him well, and he about the man he is today--the one I really do not know.  So is this old friend not a part of what makes me who I am?  Is he more a part of this man who encounters him from time to time in his present existence? 

Even as I stay in the same place, some friends step in and out of my life.  While it does mean we don't share what we once did, it doesn't mean that we no longer have what we shared.  Like friends who were teammates for a special championship season, or friends who shared a special road trip--or even Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca who will always have Paris, these friends always share a piece of what made them who they are.  So, today, when I was reminded of one of those transitory friendships, I remembered it was gone, but still here somehow.  I can't quite fill in the blank.  But I know I still carry around a piece of that person somehow.  Nothing's changed.              

Memory Tricks

I can't tell you exactly how it happened, because I am not a member; but I am on the AARP's e-mail subscription list.  When they have sage advice on certain subjects important to seniors they send them to me. And I thought my 4^th year in college was the last time I’d be a senior.  This week the subject was memory; and I thought I’d share the AARP’s seven tips to help with memory.

These suggestions are intended to address seven apparently common memory issues that strike the senior crowd.  If they have happened to me, I don't remember anything about it.  

They include forgetting the name of the person you were just introduced to, not getting everything on your grocery list, losing your keys, forgetting internet passwords, being unable to recall the name of a movie you just saw, forgetting where you parked your car, and forgetting important dates like birthdays.  

First, to remember a name, "Look, snap and connect."  You are supposed to really look at the person, listen to their name, snap a mental picture of the face and name, and then connect mentally by creating some sort of image that helps your brain connect a visual image to this person.  Really? By the time you have ordinarily forgotten the person's name you are supposed to come up with some clever image that will come to mind when you see this person, like this (let's see, his name is Jim, so I'll picture him at the gym on a treadmill, listening to music with earbuds, and the next time I see him the picture will snap in and I'll know...hey treadmill…that's Ted Mills!  No, wait, walking with earbuds… it's yeah, Bud Walker, or, he’s at the gym…is it Jim?  Yeah, Jim Nasium...  I don't think that one's gonna work for me.  How about if I take a picture of him with my smartphone and enter his contact name while he's standing there thinking--how cool is this, this guy really wants to remember my name?  Or will he be thinking just how weird is this, is he texting my picture somewhere?  (Advantage: smartphone)

For remembering the grocery list, you think up a story to include each item on the list.  I am not making this up, this is the actual example they used: "A chicken was eating cornflakes when a car burst through the wall.  A monkey was driving, throwing oranges out the window, he honked wildly as he drove off a cliff into a lake filled with milk."  Wouldn't it be simpler to write a list on paper, or better yet, on your smartphone like this--chicken, cornflakes, oranges, milk? (Advantage: smartphone) 

For recalling online passwords, create a template that you personalize for each site.  For instance, use a word number combination that's meaningful for you, like your address when you graduated from grammar school.  In my case, that's 331Taylor.  Then, you add the initials of the site, it it's your bank, Band of America, you'd use BA.  It will make sense to you but not to some hacker.  Or, you could make a list of passwords in small print and carry them around like this. Or put them on your smartphone, on one of those apps for your phone just don’t make it too obvious, if you lose your smartphone…. (Advantage: AARP)

Then there's finding your keys.  Just start using a smaller purse, ladies, or don't wear cargo pants, guys.... Oh, you mean at home--well that's easy, just keep a basket by the door and make a habit of putting them there every time you come in.  In fact, make it a bigger basket and you can put all your important stuff in it--like your wallet, spare change, old receipts, chewing gum wrappers, even your smartphone. (Advantage: AARP)

Now, coming up with the name of the movie you just saw.  You know, it's on the tip of your tongue but you just can't spit it out.  AARP says, try remembering the star of the movie with a mental picture that reminds you of the title.  Like what’s-his-name, the guy who was in Spiderman—picture that guy next to two men made of spiders, for Spiderman 2, if you can just remember what’s-his-name's name...  Or, if you ever remember his name, you could just Google it on your smartphone. (Advantage: smartphone)

Finally, how do you go about remembering everyone's birthday?  Well, you can use your Facebook account, which has an accounts notification page you can activate and it will store it under "has a birthday coming."  Not really friends with Facebook?  You can use the calendar function on your smartphone to store this information.  But first you have to find them out somehow, because—remember—you’ve forgotten them. (Advantage: smartphone)

Before I finish, in all seriousness, some people wonder if any of these occasional lapses might be cause to check in with your doctor, they aren’t.  But here are three you should take seriously: 

·      You know you've been forgetting things, but you can't remember what they were, or 

·      You not only don't remember the name of the person you just ran into, you don't recall him or her at all, or

·      You are unable to remember the name of someone quite close to you on a regular basis.  

If those things are happening to you, do this, get out the smart phone, and enter this on your to-do list app—“Make an appointment with that doctor guy before you forget his name.”

My take on this? Just get a smartphone or forget the whole thing. I have one….

By the way, have you seen it?  (Patting my pockets) I thought I put it right here.  

Philadelphia Conjuring

I dreamt you up one night some years ago
in Philadelphia
I swore it was your hat flowing past amidst a sea
of people trudging through the airport.
After a moment, I turned around to follow.

Thinking you had headed out the door,
I stepped outside and glanced around.
I imagined you on that bus with darkened windows,

Gazing out as I looked up and down the walkway,
Then I turned, looking directly at the bus.
Sending a message just in case. you were

Indeed watching, first  shrugged,
then shivered, you and I could not be we
again the way we were once
in St. Louis and on Finley