Things That Count

Things That Count

But enough about Venice, although it might just as well have been Venus at  times for all we knew about finding our way, enough....  You think I was kidding?  Let's talk counting. We are  with a woman who is wearing a device on her wrist that she connects to her iPad at night and it tells her how many steps she has taken that day.  In two days we took roughly twenty~five thousand 25,000 steps!  All those  steps and I think they were all taken in an area two or three city blocks square if we had been in Chicago.  All those blind alleys, dead~ends at canals, bridges to nowhere....

while I'm thinking numbers, I have a product idea.  converting Euros to dollars is too complicated for a window shopping wife,   so she just calls them "dollars."  So a fifteen Euro price tag becomes "fifteen dollars" instead of the twenty it actually calculates to.  Will somebody please invent a pair of eyeglasses that converts those prices in real time?

Mazeophobia In Venice

Mazeophobia In Venice

Getting around in any place new is awkward at best.  In Venice, it's frightening.  Even with a map,  nothing is straight and everything looks the same, even when what you are seeing IS the same--or you thought it was the last three times you wound up back in this same spot.

Then see what happens when it gets dark and you realize you didn't sleep at all the night because you were on a plane flying here in a coach seat you really could not recline because you knew the passenger behind you was also six feet tall and jammed into his own seat.

Now, I wouldn't be here writing this if we hadn't eventually found our way but come on, how does anyone find their way?  And don't tell me some satellite GPS system would take care of this.  I don't believe you. These alleys are four feet wide or less.  Your satellite can't see it.

I went looking for a term that describes what we were feeling as we pondered leaving our apartment this morning--it's known in psychological studies as mazeophobia--The irrational fear of becoming lost in a maze from which you never escape. But this
 seems so real. I for one don't think it's irrational at all....

On The Move,If You're Lucky

On The Move, If You're Lucky

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Eventually, the glow you feel from all those x~rays you absorbed in the ever~changing world of passenger screening subsides.  You reach for your phone and notice a phone message from your airline ~your flight has been delayed  hour and fifteen minutes.  Your layover of just under 2 hours is now "estimated" to be 35 minutes.

Can you make it?  It depends.  From the 20th row, there are seventy people who must disembark  ahead of you.  You'll  lose ten to twelve minutes waiting for them to get out of your way.  Further, your departure time is just an estimate and is likely, as it was in our case, likely to be optimistic by fifteen minutes.  In short, all of your layover time is gone.  

But miracles do happen and they may delay departure of your international flight since twenty~five of the passengers on your flight are trying to make the same connection you are.  "We made it baby, it could happen to you."  NEXT: mazeophobia in Venice

On The Road Again

On The Road Again

What is it about driving down the road to someplace you've never been that isso attractive anyway?  Driving itself is mostly boring, especially on the long straight dull interstate that makes up two~thirds of the first leg  of  our  usual journey, followed by the airport.  

Next up, the ever~so~soothing process of lining up for inspection to be admitted to the waiting corridors that stretch for blocks  but back to that inspection  Open your bag, remove certain electronics and all liquids~oops I forgot, this is Atlanta on a Friday, so wait in line for forty~five minutes just to be inspected.  Now, will you be x~rayed?  Oh yes, we must ALL do that  and remove your belt  and any jacket or sweater you have on  Oh, and those shoes..  

Now stand  on the painted footprints and raise your arms [hoping your pants don't begin to fall].  The unfortunate among you will be directed aside and the inspector will have to rub the back of his hand over the suspicious spot or spots on your x~ray image  Luckier still?  you can have your hand swabbed and watch while the cloth used to swab your hands is moved with tongs  to a machine "sniffing" for traces of bomb~making materials  Hope you didn't spread fertilizer in your yard recently.  

Where was I?  Oh yes, your bag might have contained suspicious metal objects, so now after you retrieve your shoes~hard to forget those~and the contents of your pockets, like your wallet, spare change and  your cellphone;you get to watch them remove the offending object object or objects from your carry on ["are there any sharp objects in here that might injure me?"  I wish, you think but don't say].  Then they inspect the entire bag.     The suspicious objects, and your bag,of course, are re~x~rayed.  

Now your bag is wiped with another damp piece of cloth and "sniffed" by that machine looking  for traces of bomb~making materials.  Let's hope that's not your old briefcase from when you  used to work for a chemical manufacturer, but you pass, put your shoes  and belt back on and,glowing with radiation, you head for the gate to begin the wait.  

Being the reflective sort you pause to wonder why they don't call it "the waiting room" and not the "terminal.'  Ah, but mixing "terminal' with "waiting room" only brings on....   Are we having fun yet?  Wait a minute, where did I leave my cellphone?  

Why I'm Still Driving

Why I'm Still Driving

Some would say driving here is not for the faint of heart.  It's a resort community, so there are always visitors hunting for clues that might lead them to their destinations.  Worse yet, it's a retirement community.  Many who visited regularly with their families when they were young, returned to live full time where they so enjoyed visiting for too short a time in years past.

Not content to leave a difficult situation alone, the city fathers, or perhaps the developers--embarrassed at the environmental damage that massive migration here by both of he groups mentioned above simply had to cause--sought to maintain the appearance of the island's unspoiled appeal.  They created rules that limited the size and location of signs, restricted the outdoor lighting, forbade the cutting of trees without a permit--not just cutting down trees, but the mere trimming of a tree or trees.  Now, think about that for a minute.  Tourists driving onto the island in the dark, after driving for eight to fifteen hours to get here, now have to find their way without the benefit of a visible sign, or a well-lit, broad avenue.  Think also of the senior citizens, no longer confident in their night time eyesight, driving slowly down the road headed for home.

Now add to that the fact that the leading cause of fatal accidents is not speed, nor is it driving while intoxicated, or even road rage.  It is, quite simply, distracted driving, not paying attention to where they are going.  It's true.  How is that scenario of the arriving visitor fitting that profile?  From "when are we gonna get there, Daddy," to "I really have to go," to "where is that blasted sign?" to "you just missed it, you were supposed to turn right there!"  Driven to distraction, impaired by fatigue and eyestrain, it's a wonder they make it at all.  Then there are the seniors, ambling along at thirty in a forty-five zone, in the left lane of course.  Must have been gabbing with their passengers, or telling a story they could still picture at this very moment, otherwise, how do you explain the sudden right turn from the left lane?  Did you know also that senior citizens and teenagers are the two most dangerous age-groups behind the wheel?

Here, we have a median age nearly twice that of the nation, and we have more than two million visitors each year.  Why aren't we all dying off in car accidents, or at least driven crazy by the act of driving?  I think it's "adaptation."  Local drivers have developed the ability to shrug it off, to notice the out-of-state tags and be wary of their next move.  Who knows when his wife (or her husband) will yell, "There's your turn, right there!" and the startled driver will turn without warning from the opposite lane, or cut you off as you approach the intersection and he turns left in front of
us.

We've learned to nod and smile in disbelief when the geezer in front of them rolls along at thirty in the left lane.  If we are lucky, he will slow down, move into the right lane a few blocks before his turn, and leave his turn signal on for several blocks.  He will tap the brakes at each driveway or street in case it's the one where he has to turn.  Then, when he gets to his turn, he stomps on the brakes in the traffic lane, nearly coming to a full stop in the traffic lane before making his right turn.  Or, while rolling along in the left lane, he will notice his turn is right here--and he'll cut straight across without applying his brakes at all, proving he can turn at thirty just as well as at five miles per hour.

When locals get together, they will tell about the latest crazy move someone made in the road recently.  By developing this penchant for gathering our "I can top that"stories, we have improved our awareness of the drivers around us, and we are better for it.  We are not distracted, we are focused on defensive driving.  We learn to anticipate and be prepared for even the craziest of moves, like the driver coming out of a two-lane street that is divided by a parkway of grass and shrubs who has failed to notice he was supposed to cross that parkway before turning and is now driving the wrong way on a one way street, and wait until you see what they will do to extricate themselves from that situation!

But, back to my personal situation.  I have, in the past eleven years, developed that sense of defensive anticipation more keenly than most people driving in "normal" cities and towns.  Even as I pass Paul McCartney's long ago measuring stick for being really old--a new stanza has been added  to the lyrics--

and when I'm so old, just barely alive, 

will you still keep on letting me drive?  

will you still trust me, 

sure you won't bust me 

when I'm sixty-four?   

I'm still out there driving, and sooner or later, people will be shaking their heads at how I drive.  But I'm thinking most of them are conditioned to look out for geezers like me.  As long as I don't leave the island, I think I'll be able to drive while staying alive.

Mental Floss

Mental Floss

It came to me as I was flossing my teeth this morning.  Yes, I floss my teeth every morning.  It's one of those healthy things that I kept doing long enough that it became a habit.   If I fail to do it, it haunts me the rest of the day, really.  This can be awkward at certain times as I have good-sized hands and a smallish mouth (this is the  physical quality of space within the cheeks and behind the lips, so to speak, not what some might perceive as a too large quantity of words that emanate therefrom).  But back to the observation that came along.  I had my hands halfway in my mouth and some floss pulled down between the last couple of molars back there, and I could not get my hands to move the floss any way at all.  I stood there a moment then managed to move my hands out of my mouth and started over at the other end of my mouth.  Everything worked fine after that, not so remarkable, but it set me to thinking, probably somewhat earlier than I should have.

One of the opportunities I have been afforded in this life (thank you, Kaitlen--things the old Jim might characterize as weaknesses and/or defects are really just opportunities) is dealing with the disruption of the messaging system between my brain and my muscles.  As it's been described to me, nerves are just telegraph lines (Oh, come on Jim--this is the 21st century, call them fiber optic cables for the analogy, for heaven's sake!)....  OK, the nerves are just a sort of network of fiber optic cables that carry messages from the brain to the muscles, mostly without conscious thought.   You might decide to get out of bed, for example, and once your brain has received that message, the part of the brain that governs unconscious movement sends hundreds, maybe thousands of signals to get your hand to grasp the sheet and or blanket, to begin pulling it off your upper body, telling each of your legs to slide up toward your upper body, and your toes to search for the open space to escape from the covers, telling your hips to turn in the direction of the open side of the bed, telling your hands to help raise your head and shoulder off the mattress, while telling your legs to move still further to find the edge of the mattress, and pushing your trunk upright, then executing a swivel in the direction of that open side of the bed, then dropping one leg at a time down off the edge of the bed, while trying to sense the approaching floor so they don't just crash to the floor, and so on and so on....  Each of those movements required hundreds of messages to be sent from the brain to the muscles and from the muscle to the brain.  Probably the only thought you had was, "I've got to get up."  Your brain unconsciously does the rest.

Well, the chemicals that carry these messages have to come from somewhere, don't they?  So, your brain has a place that manufactures those chemicals (in this case, dopamine).  Mine slowed way down, and only provides a trickle of them around for my brain to use.  At the same time, there has to be a receptor in each of your muscles to receive and translate those messages into making the muscles move.  These receptors have to work harder to sense that trickle of dopamine (sort of like straining to hear something, I'd guess).  As a result, the receptors wear out prematurely.  They can be replaced, but your brain and nervous system only create new ones when demand is created by vigorous activity.   Hence, it is important for people like me to exercise vigorously on a daily basis and vary the kinds of activity we engage in so that new receptors are activated and fresh, new connections are made.  If you run into something that won't move when you want it to, you try doing it slightly differently or more consciously, since the conscious movements are controlled by another part of the brain.  (Whew! That part's over.  I don't think my neurologist would grant me this much poetic license to describe this condition, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her in this case).

In any event, it occurred to me that our citizenry ( or society, country, species, life form--whatever collective term you might choose to apply), might just benefit from a similar approach.  If one approach doesn't convey the message the way we intended it, try another way.  Don't just repeat the same slogan until it becomes meaningless (what does the mantra, "no new taxes" mean anyway?  No new ones at all, or just increases in licensing fees instead?  And do we really want "universal health care" whatever the cost?)  Secondly, why not have each part of the body politic try some vigorous exercise, as in thoughtful debate on a regular basis, instead of repeatedly sending the same slogans to the worn out ears (receptors) of the rest of us.  Maybe all that activity could cause some new receptors to activate and get some things moving.  OK, it was before I had my morning coffee, but there it is.          

Where's That Bollywood Ending Dance Number for The 100 Foot Journey?

Where's That Bollywood Ending Dance Number for The 100 Foot Journey?

Imagine my dismay when the The 100 Foot Journey ended without a Bollywood Ending Dance number.  While it was no musical, the film should have had a true dance number with the whole cast, the street market extras, and anyone else that could learn those standard dance moves that ended all those Bollywood Movies.  The first time I remember seeing one was in the India-based Oscar winner, Slumdog Millionaire.  It was filmed at the train station with the cast dancing on the wide concrete platform.  Slumdog Millionaire was no Bollywood film, but it paid tribute to its cultural roots with the big dance.

The 100 Foot Journey depicted members of two distinctly different cultures (one of them Indian) crossing a cultural divide.  Further, it even contained plenty of striking music in its score, and a scene where two of the central characters (Helen Mirren and Om Puri) actually dance alone in the home/restaurant of Ms. Mirren’s character.  Surely that was enough.  Oh, I know the traditional Bollywood movie was a musical, with the music and dance woven inextricably into its plot, but at least give us the ending in the credits! (and, yes, I spelled inextricably right in my first attempt).

I guess I was just expecting it after recently seeing The Jersey Boys” put on a spectacular (by American standards, anyway) Bollywood Dance Number to end it.   I make the reference to “American standards” intentionally.  While I am sure the whole cast of The Jersey Boys took part, a Bollywood Ending Dance would contain hundreds, if not thousands of dancers.  Why did I become such an ending-dance fan?  Just go take a look at Slumdog Millionaire’s ending number, I found that one pretty quickly, and I’m still looking at Google and YouTube for The Jersey Boys.  (But I'm still mad about The 100 Foot Journey, not even one dance step, much less a hundred.)

P.S., Yeah, I know it's been a while, I kinda lost my bearings for a time, but I'm coming back.