The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Accurate

About 11 AM, two days ago, local television stations began breaking into their "regularly scheduled programming" to bring us bulletins about an approaching emergency.  These winter storm warnings for what they later began terming "Winter Storm 2014," told of weather conditions expected nearly two days from that point, in the evening of the following day.  The storm was to take us into isolation for hours as snow and freezing rain enveloped us.  Specific amounts of ice and snow accumulation were provided as well.

My level of faith in the accuracy of their precipitation has reached new lows of late, since the best of the best usually hits about 75% of the time (Source: ForecastAdvisor.com), but those measures are simply the high for the day, and whether it rained on a day when they forecast precipitation.  When it comes to stating when or if the temp will reach 32 degrees, their accuracy is quite limited.  Doing it forty hours out?  Their likelihood of being correct is probably quite small.

Charging out and raising the alarm is risky.  Schools, more so than businesses, often make decisions about closing for the day based on weather forecasts, but they wait until the night before.  Nevertheless, we have been receiving warnings and dire forecasts ever since.  When the storm was to begin, we had steady rain, but temperatures did not drop enough to produce snow, or to freeze the rain that fell.  This morning, we have a slight drizzle and on the windshield of the car, there are small fragments of ice, as if if had sleeted briefly, and the streets are wet.  No snow, and no ice accumulation.  Why am I not surprised?

The only people who are happy about this are school children, teachers and weather people on TV.   The weather people are delighted, they have enjoyed hours of face time on their regular news broadcasts, as well as all those emergency break-ins.  You should know that almost no one in the business of TV weather actually looks back at their forecasts to see how accurate they are, not even for bragging rights or to look good on their resume.  What they fondly remember is leading off the news and having all that time on camera.  It calls to my mind a line from one of my favorite singers, Jimmy Buffett--"The weather is here, wish you were beautiful."  In this case, I'd put it more like this.  "The weather is here, wish you were accurate."
    

The Birth of Canned Beer and the Japanese Soldier on Guam

Two seemingly unrelated events took place on January 24th in the previous century.  On January 24th of 1935, the first canned beer was made and shipped.  Sales boomed, topping 200 million cans sold in the first year.  During World War II, "brewers shipped millions of cans of beer to U.S. servicemen overseas (in all likelihood, including the island of Guam).  Today, canned beer sales amount to roughly half of the $20B industry beer has become.  Cans have the advantage over bottles in that they are both easier to ship and to store.  It had taken several years to perfect the can.  It had to be both pressurized and lined with some kind of seal to protect the metal from corrosion by the carbonation in the beer.  After the Prohibition ended, it still took two years to find a brewer who was willing to take the chance.  The rest, as they say, is history.

On January 24th, 1972. farmers located a single Japanese soldier living in the jungles of Guam.  He had been alone there for 28 years after the Japanese fled the island during WW II.  It was said that the Japanese Army Sergeant was unaware the war had ended.The more I thought about it, the more I suspected there was a connection between the two events that no one had pointed out.  I couldn't quite explain it, but I was convinced kit was there.  

After reading this stories and noting the possible unspoken connection, I want to sleep, only to awaken suddenly at 4:30 AM.  All at once I knew, and it came to me in the form of a poem.  I believe you'll get the connection at once when you give it a read.

So Many Cans of Beer

Thousands of cans of it all shipped here
Leaving so many soldiers without any fear.

Left behind by GI’s retreating from Guam
It just sits in the sunshine getting so warm.

This beer left behind by GI’s on the run,
Japanese gather up, leaving one man on guard
When the GI’s return, he’s left, just the one.
His duty, it rests on his shoulders so hard.

Tough to imagine sitting there in the sun,
Resisting the urge to try that first one.
Twenty-eight years come and go, the supply he’s used up.
Now guarding just empties, he gives himself up.

You can probably see why I was sleepless.

Addicted to Checking Email

People of my generation acquired the habit at work.  We didn't face the problem so early in life.  With me, it started when I received my first Blackberry.  Those of us who acquired the habit this way soon realized our new "device" was really a leash.  Every waking hour of our workdays, weekends, holidays, vacation, and even sick days, we were available.  Contact was often made via email--it saved the sender from having to offer the perfunctory apology (sorry for calling you--at this hour, on a weekend, during your vacation, etc., but....),  We really felt obliged to check our mail all the time, whether at work or not.  Thus, we became available to our bosses, colleagues, internal and external customers all the time.  

Anyway, for the past dozen or so years, I have carried a portable device and habitually checked my mail--probably at least every thirty minutes.  When traveling on business, I would sometimes be awakened by some hotel noise or another, and I'd find myself checking my mail before I tried to get back to sleep.  For those of you who believe that such a habit automatically disappears when you stop working fulll-time--not so fast there.  I have been retired and away from work for almost two years, and the habit persisted.

But today, I can tell you I have been mysteriously cured.  As I write this, it has been thirteen hours since I checked my email, and I have checked it only one in the past sixteen hours.  I'm taking the time to write about this in the interest of discovering just how and why this happened.

As I noted earlier, my generation acquired the habit later in life.  We didn't grow up emailing and texting from the age of six.  We were in our 40's before texting was even commonly available.  We're the ones who still punctuate our text messages.  Our Blackberries later became iPhones, although we often still capitalized the "I," since it was the first letter of a proper noun; making it show up as "Iphone," or "IPhone" (unless auto-correct saved us).  But that's just the compulsive punctuation habit manifesting itself again.  

But back to email.  Initially it was almost exclusively business-related.  It was, after all, a phone provided by your employer, etc.  But quickly, personal email began to grow as part of the mix.  The easiest way for friends (and even family) to reach you was to send an email to your work address.  Then they could rest assured you would be seeing it in the next twenty or thirty minutes.  Text messages later took much of this over, but that's another story.  The really big explosion of not-so-business-related email came when we began shopping and buying on the internet.  The merchant would ask for your email "to allow them to send an order confirmation and/or tracking information once your item shipped."  This initial, useful information was promptly replaced by regular delivery of ads for special sales, ads for new products, "newsletters" packed with more ads, etc.  Soon, every business you ever dealt with had launched a newsletter.  Newspapers had "online" versions distributed by email.  You could get the joke of the day, or the word of the day, or the inspirational quote of the day sent to you as well.

This soon became the IT departments' worst nightmare. Too much space on their servers was being taken up by email.  They began trying to ration space, but, if you went to your boss and told him or her this limitation was causing a problem, he or she could go to bat for you and get you a larger, seemingly limitless, allotment. 

The whole thing got out of hand if you didn't perform regular maintenance on your inbox.  You had to go in and read each item (or at least skim it) to know whether to save it or delete it or consign it to a folder (where email messages go to die an even slower death).  All of this took up hours at a time.  Management consultants added to their stock advice on time management the statement that you should only check your email two times per day.  Too late for us addicts--"Are you kidding?  My inbox would be full and messages would start being rejected!"  

Eventually, we began the laborious and only occasionally successful process of "unsubscribing" from newsletters and sales lists, provided you answered a series of questions as to why you didn't want to receive them any more and whether a reduced frequency would allow them to stay in touch.  This process is also labor-intensive and time-consuming.  

But the biggest realization that came to me was that these automated providers of "newsletters," sales ads, online newspapers, inspirational quotes, jokes of the day, etc., were the vast, vast majority of what I'd find in my inbox   These are becoming the only ones you could rely on receiving.  We're all so busy digesting those we either miss or set aside until we have a little more time the person-to-person messages.  On the receiving end, these can also be the emails you were really looking for, the responses to friendly messages you had sent, invitations, questions and more were just sporadic and not-so-reliable, sometimes even non-existent.  This can make the experience of checking your email somewhat less pleasant.  It finally led to me to decide to just check in occasionally, just in case I had received one of those personal replies every so often.  Now, I think I know what cured my addiction.  Good luck with yours.  

Physical Fitness--Me and A-Rod

As I was approaching sixty years of age, I decided to get as serious as I can be about fitness.  I will admit that I haven't had the eating and drinking parts under control as consistently as I could have, but, four years later, I'm still pretty confident I am healthier than I have been in some time.  Once it becomes habit, doing the work is not really that hard.  Some of it is just grinding it out, but when you remember why you committed to it, you "just do it" (to coin a phrase).  Now and again, you look around for some inspiration when or if you become discouraged.   

Now, Alex Rodriguez, has demonstrated an inspiring sort of commitment to his own brand of fitness for many years.  Yes, I am talking about the use of illegal supplements.  According to some who went to high school with him, he has been using them since high school--during a six-month period, he was able to increase the weight he could bench press from 100 to 310 pounds, putting on 25 pounds of muscle between his sophomore and junior years. Yes, the drug use began after his sophomore year in high school, according to statements recently made by former classmates.  Are they telling the truth?  Who knows?  This much is clear, A-Rod has not been telling the truth about drug use while he's been a Yankee.  He was once again revealed to be a cheat.  The people who have been accusing him turn out to have been right.  

Could he have begun as a high school sophomore?  Today, according to an editorial in The Staten Island Advance, it is estimated that 75% of illegal  use of steroids today occurs among high school students.  Performance enhancing drugs fall in the same class of offense as amphetamines, morphine and opium do.  There's a reason.  They can kill you.  It takes commitment to fitness to take that kind of chance, doesn't it?  

This week, he even reached another plateau that few reach.  He was the subject of the opening skit on Saturday Night Live.  Congratulations, A-Rod, not very many people outside of politics get skewered on SNL opening skits.

But back to commitment.  It takes dedication to rise to the level of a major league baseball player.  There are millions upon millions of people who, as kids, played baseball.  The most talented among them dream of playing varsity baseball in high school.  Only a few of them make those squads, and even fewer make the starting lineup.  Then, consider how many of the hundreds of thousands who play in those starting lineups in high school, are on successful high school teams.  Then there are the thousands who try out for minor league teams, and how rare it is for a minor league athlete to make his way up to the majors.  I mean, facing those odds, it must take incredible dedication.  So, why not improve your odds by taking steroids?  Only a few, like A-Rod, have the stuff to make that kind of commitment--and stick with it--just so they can hit 600 home runs in the majors.  Who can blame the young high schoolers who look to him for inspiration.   

We should be proud.  We should admire his commitment. Now, when he needs our support, when people are lining up to tell stories about him.  Wanna hear another one?  Now, people are saying he used to give away to opposing hitters the pitches his own catcher was calling for when games weren't that close.  It seemed he was hoping hitters on the other teams would return the favor.  That one is really a stretch, isn't it?  What some people will say to get quoted in the papers.  Poor A-Rod...  And, he's down the $25 million he was going to make next year.  But he's planning to take Major League Baseball to court.  Here's a man dedicated physical performance and fitness.  Kids, I'm thinking you and I had better look elsewhere for inspiration, if we ever need to look beyond those we know and love for the inspiration to keep on grinding it out.  

Grateful For An Amazing Friend

I won't call him by name, because he'd probably object, but I just want to write something about him. Today, he came over to use his new saw and his electric drill/screwdriver and help me put up some built in shelves (in my office for books, a printer and a dozen other items that clutter up a smallish desk).  He then helped cut and mount another shelf adjacent to my outdoor grill.  With his help these jobs were completed in about a fourth of the time it would have taken me.

He just did it because we were talking about how I'm progressing in creating a space to use as my home "office" in what was once a small third bedroom.  Just because you never know how much "sleepover" space you'll need, we have retained the bed, this meant I had to be creative about what I did with the rest of the space. I found a "Murphy" desk that folds down from the wall when you want to use it, and can be folded back up when not in use.  You may think I have wandered off onto another tangent here, but guess who helped me mount the desk about a month ago?  Yet another instance of his just pitching in when he sees the opportunity.

This is a new residence for us, and we handled the move by ourselves for the most part, hiring a truck and a couple of men to handle only the largest pieces.  In any event, on the two days we spent packing and moving, he insisted on coming over to help.  I say "insisted" and I mean it.  He wouldn't take no for an answer.  He is always alert for the opportunity to help his friends in this way.  I have only rarely had the chance to return the favor, because he will often have it already done on his own before he mentions whatever his project is.

f course I am not the only beneficiary, we had an old friend relocate here a few weeks ago, and there my friend was, helping them paint their house in advance of moving in, and helping repair things that needed it and more.  I was able to join him in helping assemble a giant wine cooler/cellar in our friend's garage.  He was there with his electric drill, having the time of his life.  The directions suggested this job could be done in two days with two people involved. I  will grant you there were four of us doing it the other day, but we finished in two hours, partly due to his being "really good at screwing," as we stated it, and partly due to his keeping all of us on the move.  There are likely dozens of others just around here who have received his cheerful, valuable help in the past few years, more so since he retired.

My personal trainer (she is also his) and I were talking about him and I said he embodies paying it forward. She said he had once said to her he was making up for a lot of bad karma from his past.  I've known him for forty-five years, I told her, and I have never seen him behave selfishly.  It's not in his makeup.  We concluded by simply saying how much help he will have earned from so many if he ever is in need.  I hope it never happens, but if it does, I hope the Good Lord or the forces of karma, or whatever guides this world, allows me to be there and pay back just a small fraction of what I have seen him do for others.

It's my hope as well that all of you, at least once, cross paths with someone like him.  He never ceases to amaze, and it is my privilege to call him my friend.

A Winter’s Day On the Island

Walk the beach on a cloudless day

Circum-navigate tidal pools

Feet will get really wet anyway

Shells, crabs, the occasional dog,

Sniffing around a hollowed out log

Drive on home to the chores of the day

Boats in our backyard, fishing for

Same ones that grey old pelican

Swallows up quickly nearer to shore.

Fishermen motor off, calling it a day

Pelicans long since flew away.

Here we sit watching, dining late.

For Dummies, Times Two

Did you know For Dummies is copyrighted and trademarked by John Wiley & Sons?  I learned this today as I coincidentally wound up at the same web site while pursuing two totally unrelated topics.  Not long ago, I decided that among the many possibilities that life offers to someone like me, fishing was one I needed to explore a little further.  It may be that I decided on this path while looking out the window in my current residence.

It seems on any given day, at almost any hour, a bateau may appear in the waterway behind us, with one to four occupants either holding the fisherman's end of a rod and reel or casting a net.  Fish, however, seemed to avoid the fish's end of the rod and reel as I never saw anyone reeling one in or anything else that successful fishermen do with fish they have caught.  The cast nets were being used to capture bait, so I think what they hauled in using the nets does not count as success in fishing.  With that said, I didn't consider asking any of these fisher-persons for advice on fishing--they weren't catching anything.

So, I asked myself, how have I learned most things?  I started by picking up a book and reading about it.  Somehow, that has always seemed to get me started in the right direction (or scared me off completely--see my short-lived interest in skydiving).  So, in looking for the right book, it came to me--there must be a Fishing For Dummies book somewhere.  After looking one up on Amazon, I decided I probably didn't want to wait several days to get my hands on it, so I logged on and found that my local B&N store had a copy.   I clicked on the "pick me up" button, and now I have my copy.  

But, instead of reading it, I decided I needed to pursue my alternate topic--the use of rhythm and meter in poetry.  I learned a few things along the way.  But I just can't hold it back anymore.  Do you know what I discovered?  In poetry, rhythm is all in the feet!  I mean, is it like tap-dancing?  It turns out that the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables are contained in units called "feet." There are five kinds of feet--iambic (x-unstressed, /-stressed), anapestic (/xx), trochaic (/x), dactylic (/xx) and spondaic (//).  

Meter, on the other hand, refers to the number of feet in each line.  This can range from one to eight  (monometer, dimeter, trimeter....octameter).  So, with a little For Dummies.com magic, I found the following illustration of iambic pentameter.  The example they offered was the famous five iambic feet string below:                 

Christopher Marlowe's line from Dr. Faustus:

Duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh

Which reminds me of a conversation I overheard a few days ago--
Dad:  Son, don't touch that cat!
Son:  D-a-a-a-a-d, why not?
Dad:  'Cause we're dog people, not cat people. 

Me, too.