IN MEMORIAM Air Devil [PDF]
Found this just now. Eagle Call. Spring 2006.
Published by and for Civil Air Patrol – California Wing, of which my dad was a member for over forty years.
My dad’s article about his 10K’ sky dive to celebrate his eightieth birthday.
His original title was probably I JUMPED FROM A PERFECTLY GOOD AIRPLANE. All we know is that the editor changed the title before press time, when he found out that Dad had died.
We were in the Central Valley this weekend for a memorial service for my cousin.
We spent the night in Lost Hills and took the long way home, through the Bitterwater Valley and on to Parkfield, then up 101 and a jog here and another there and finally home.
More photos to follow. Maybe.
Parkfield
So I open my Chron yesterday to find this article: Social isolation a significant health issue by Katherine Seligman.
I promised yesterday to blog about why the article’s focus annoyed me so much.
They could have more friends than ever online but, on average, Americans have fewer intimates to confide in than they did a decade ago, according to one study. Another found that 20 percent of all individuals are, at any given time, unhappy because of social isolation, according to University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo. And, frankly, they’d rather not talk about it.
i.e. “friends online” aren’t considered fodder for intimate confidences.
The article also points out that 80% of people are not feeling socially isolated, but that doesn’t sell books. (I doubt their 20% figure anyway.)
The article goes on to quote Jacqueline Olds, a psychiatrist who teaches at Harvard Medical School and co-authored “The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-First Century.” “People are so embarrassed about being lonely that no one admits it. Loneliness is stigmatized, even though everyone feels it at one time or another.”
Olds wrote the book with her husband, Dr. Richard Schwartz, because, she said, she wanted to bring loneliness “out of the closet.” The two were struck by findings from the General Social Survey (conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago), showing that people reported having fewer intimate friends in 2004 than they had in 1985. When asked how many people they could confide in, the average number declined over that same time period from three to two.
Why would three be better than two?
In 2004, almost a quarter of those surveyed said they had no one to discuss important matters with in the past six months; in 1985, only 7 percent were devoid of close confidantes.
Two separate issues [1) no one to disuss important matters with in the past six months, 2) devoid of close confidantes for a year]
I’d be interested re 1) in what the question text was. Was it, “Did you discuss important matters with a close personal friend in the past six months?” If so, what if there were no “important matters” to discuss with anyone? Does a “No” answer mean that you’re lonely?
Those who know me can see where I’m going here.
#1 The authors writing these books are obviously more comfortable with people around to talk things over with.
#2 The authors writing these books obviously don’t think that people can “talk things over” with online buddies. It’s F2F or on the phone or nothing at all, according to them.
So I read on
But humans are not wired to live alone, researchers say. The impulse for social connection – though it is stronger in some people than others – is rooted in the basic urge to survive. The need is so great, says Cacioppo, [John Cacioppo, whose research was mentioned at the beginning of the article and who has also! written a book, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection] that it is reflected in our neural wiring. Most neuroscientists agree, he said, that it was the need to process social cues that led to the expansion of the cortical mantle of the brain.
In “Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection,” which he co-authored last year, he wrote, “In other words, it was the need to deal with other people that, in large part, made us who and what we are today.”
Loneliness, Cacioppo explained in an interview, has more in common with hunger, thirst and pain than it does with mental illness. It signals that something is wrong and needs to be corrected.
and at about this point I twigged that Olds and Seligman and others who worry so much about loneliness and being alone are probably extroverts, eh?
See the Atlantic article Caring for Your Introvert by Jonathan Rauch, to see what I mean. (DT recently reposted a link on his Facebook page, just in time for me to get my every-couple-years re-read of a great article.)
As a follow-on to Peter Harlaub’s
The 9 types of Facebook friends
which the Chron ran last Sunday, today they ran
Other classic, and annoying, Facebook types
e.g.
Probably the two most annoying types of FB friends I’d add to the list: “The Infected” – seems to exist on Facebook to propagate memes (make lists and tag others) and share their quiz results. “The Activist” – almost every day they invite you to join a new cause, sign a petition, or send you a “lil green patch” request. They occasionally inspire the urge to explain why you don’t believe in a cause or how you feel their demands are a bit unrealistic, which you refrain from indulging.
- Sarah Lockhar, Oakland
The Tenderloin National Forest
We were at a North Beach Neighbors dinner at Lichee Garden on Powell last night. (Terrific dinner. $28, including tax and tip, for a ten-course dinner. No-host beer and wine, if desired. Fun time was had by all. Interesting conversations. Good food.)
Rigo was with a group at our table at dinner that included Fernando [last name?], from Portugal. Fernando was sitting between Rigo and me and only spoke Portuguese. Although I know Brazilian Portuguese is a far cry from Portuguese, I wished it had been less than fifty years since I last had a conversation in Portuguese. There are not many words I remember.
Talked with Rigo about ONE TREE and TRUTH, two of my favorite Rigo public works, and about what he’s up to. Turns out he and Fernando are currently working on a mosaic for the Tenderloin National Forest on Cohen Alley, off Ellis.
(photos of the Tenderloin National Forest from Dave Schumaker on flickr)
I plan to wander by some day soon and see how it’s coming along.
BEGIN FIELD TRIP REPORT
Thursday 12 Feb 2009
Up by 3:15A. Super Shuttle pickup at 3:45A for a 6:A departure from SFO.
Arrived O’Hare. Caught GO Shuttle to Fairmont for the 2009 AAAS annual conference, which split meetings between Hyatt Regency (sessions) and Fairmont (plenary talks).
We’ve been attending AAAS meetings during the long Presidents’ Day weekend in February since 2001 when the meeting was held in San Francisco and had dueling plenary talks by Francis Collins (director of the government’s National Human Genome Research Institute) and J Craig Ventner (head of privately-held Celera Genomics) announcing the decoding of the human genome.
Also that year was one of the best (and most beautiful) plenary talks I’ve been to: David Malin‘s overview of astronomy images from the Anglo-Australian Observatory. Beautiful.
We had such an entertaining time that in 2002, when the meeting was in Boston, we went again. And we’ve continued going each year as the meeting moved.
# Boston, Massachusetts, February 2008
# San Francisco, California, February 2007
# St. Louis, Missouri, February 2006
# Washington, D.C., February 2005
# Seattle, Washington, February 2004
# Denver, Colorado, February 2003
# Boston, Massachusetts, February 2002
# San Francisco, California, February 2001
Back in the day when I was writing a monthly surfing-the-web column, I could always depend on the AAAS meeting to give me enough batter to cook up several months of columns.
Arriving at the Fairmont, Chicago, Thursday afternoon, we checked into our room and walked over to the Hyatt to pick up our badges and bags and schedules.
(The AAAS Annual Meeting offers a unique, exciting, interdisciplinary blend of more than 150 symposia, plenary and topical lectures, specialized seminars, poster presentations, and Exhibit Hall.)
From 5-6:30P Thursday, we attended the Canadian reception at the Hyatt and schmoozed and noshed and drank wine, then moved over to the Fairmont for the AAAS opening and plenary talk by James T. McCarthy, President of AAAS, followed by more nosh and wine. Wine at the AAAS function was open bar (and $9/glass of wine!), so the amount poured by the tenders was considerably less than what was poured at the Canadian reception.
Friday 13 Feb 2009
Friday… sessions. His nibs’ background is in experimental high energy particle physics. Mine is in biology with a chemistry minor. When we look at the sessions (15-25 per time slot) and scratch this one and star that one as we decided which of the multitude available we’ll check into and maybe stay with, our choices are amazingly complementary. i.e. He scratches the things I star and vice versa. We do meet up at the noon-time topical lectures sometimes and the evening plenaries, but he’d rather listen to people expound on string theory while I’d rather listen to people talk about the problems of resuscitating dead zones in the Black Sea.
The Friday plenary (Evolutionary biologist Sean B. Carroll on Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species ) was held early, (4:30 – 5:30P). Interesting. Carroll talked of Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates, who were all under 25 when they went off exploring into the Amazon jungle, the Malay peninsula and on the Beagle and came back and changed biological science. Wallace, Bates and Darwin and their on-going inter-related histories made for an interesting tale.
Luckily for us we went, because some people left after the talk and we shifted over five seats in our row (third row back, stage left, even with the speaker podium) and wound up within feet of the speaker podium with an uninterrupted view.
We sat around, holding onto our super primo seats, waiting for the 6:30-7:30P talk by … Al Gore. We were >< that close to him. The ballroom was packed. The bouncers at the door were checking to make sure all the people filing in to find seats had their conference badges showing. The room kept getting fuller and fuller until it was utterly packed and Gore took the stage, thanking everyone for the welcome, thanking the scientists in the audience (by name) who had helped him further his understanding of climate change, thanking the multitudes who were off in another room listening to his talk because they couldn't be seated in the ballroom.
Interesting to see him do his pitch, which we’ve all heard so much about. I’ve never seen An Inconvenient Truth, but had heard folks tit for tatting about it. Gore had new slides and a revamped talk, updated things to say about climate change. Turns out a slew of scientists at the meeting, including the Prez, who’d given the plenary the night before, had given him long and lengthy explanations about what was going on that he’d used as a basis for parts of his original talk, and this one.
I knew some folks I knew from elsewhere would be having kittens if they were listening to Gore talk, which made it all the more enjoyable.
Walked over, after Gore finished and left the building, to the Elephant & Castle and had a couple Guinness and steaktips in gravy w/ mashed for dinner.
Saturday 14 Feb 2009
Saturday was another full day of sessions.
From 5:-6:30P we went to the AAAS Awards Ceremony and Reception at the Fairmont and enjoyed delish food (lamb riblets, &c.) and wine after. Then on to the 6:30-7:30P plenary address. Planetary scientist Susan W. Kieffer gave Saturday’s address: Celebrating the Earth: Its Past, Our Present, a Future? Kieffer had interesting things to say, but gave her lecture reading from her notes. STOP IT!
One of the things that becomes obvious during AAAS is the difference between having something interesting to say and having an interesting way to say it. Some sessions have talks that are just too mumble mumble boring while others are pepped up and interesting.
Stopped off to see Paul Sereno give his Family Science Day pitch in the exhibit hall on Saturday. He has amazing energy and a way of connecting to young people who come to listen to him talk about hunting down dinosaurs. Compare his stage presence with … well, we won’t go there. Suffice to say that some scientists really really really need media coaching to properly convey the excitement of the stuff they work on.
We returned Saturday night to Elephant & Castle for Valentine’s Day dinner. Ah, the romance.
Sunday 15 Feb 2009
After another full day of sessions, Sunday’s plenary was A Neanderthal Perspective on Human Origins by evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo. Interesting guy. Interesting talk.
We had Sunday dinner at the Fairmont because by this time it was snowing a bit and we had no clue which restaurants might be open on Sundays. We’d been stopping off at a coffee/sandwich place for a morning poppyseed bagel (split, toasted, with cream cheese) and coffee on our way over to the Hyatt and discovered Saturday and Sunday that “our” place was closed so we stopped off at a local small market that sold far-too-sweet-plastic-wrapped-coffee-rolls and coffee.
We didn’t want to wander out in the cold and snow Sunday evening and find that the restaurants we might be thinking of going to were closed. Hotel it was. We stopped off in the bar/sushi/casual food venue because we weren’t interested in what a hotel might think was a dining experience. The food arrived tepid. Too long under the heat lamps, perhaps. The service was slow. The food was over priced for what you got. The waitress mis-represented the beer she offered as an alternative after she told us they’d run out of the beer we wanted. (Gee, the beer she offered was $3/bottle more than what we’d ordered and she forgot to mention it?!??! Gee … Odd.)
Other than that …
Monday 16 Feb 2009
Monday was the wrap up of the conference with the last sessions ending at 12:30P. We’d asked for late checkout Sunday evening, and needed the extra time. We caught a cab to the Metra @ Union Station about 1:15. Ate sandwiches at the station while we waited for the express train that zipped us to Naperville in half an hour or so where Mom picked us up with the grandkids in the car — even the teenager, who was off school because it was Presidents’ Day.
Mom is in a bowling league and rather than spend hours there on Tuesday, when her team/league was playing, we went over to the bowling alley Monday evening so she could bowl three games in lieu, with the alley keeping her scores for the league play.
The teenager, his nibs, myself, the five-year-old and the three-year-old bowled in the alley to the right of Mom’s. Our single game took as long as she took to bowl three. The two youngest in our set had to roll the ball with both hands down the alley (bumper guards up of course). We waited patiently each time to see if the ball would even reach the pins. The ball always did, although not at great speed.
The teenager beat me by a point. His nibs came in just a bit behind our scores. Not bad for a couple geezers who hadn’t bowled in forever. (I think my last bowling set was about three decades ago.)
Tuesday 17 Feb 2009
Next day the teenager went to school and the geezers and Mom took the younger ones to the Brookfield Zoo for the day to see dolphins and pennipeds and orangutans and such. Came home in time for Mom to head off to her p/t job.
Wednesday 18 Feb 2009
Wednesday, the teenager stayed home from school to spend some quality time with her gparents. (Permission granted by Mom because the teenager’s grades showed all As and Bs when checked online.)
Thursday 17 Feb 2009
We got up early in order to spend some time with the teenager before she left to catch the school bus at 7:15A. Three and a half hours later, a shuttle picked us up and drove us to O’Hare to catch our plane home.
A fine time was had by me, and I think by all. More complete notes re sessions and plenaries remain to be straightened out.
END FIELD TRIP REPORT
I hadn’t realized what a production nest building was.
Our new neighbors — two doves — started in another spot, a little lower to the ground, a little more exposed to the neighbor’s Siamese cats. They decided after several days of nest building that their chosen spot wasn’t a good place, so they started over again. The new spot is higher and more protected, and they’ve carefully dismantled the partially-built nest and incorporated it into the new one.
I watch one of them (the guy? probably) down in the dirt finding twigs and grasses. He picks one up. No, not good. Tosses it away. Picks another. No. Finally he gets a bundle of twigs and grasses together and takes them up to the nest. The other dove arranges them and tucks in the edges and fusses while the first one goes back down to see what else there is that might work.
Lovely. Really sweet.
Our cat sits at the edge of his nibs’ desk next to the window and watches the doves. She moans and clatters her teeth. So near! So unobtainable!
The doves survived the rain that hit us overnight and this morning, even though the nest is far more exposed than it will be in a month or so when the fig tree is thick with leaves. I’d been worried the rain would drive them off, but they’re still here.
I sit at my desk, working, with their susurrant cooing as background noise.
* a mashup of several Facebook posts and comments
Bakers make cake with image of flash drive instead of image in flash drive – Boing Boing
Oh, dear.
Not realizing that the flash drive had the image wanted for the cake, the bakers made the cake with an image of the flash drive.
Duh.
Pretty cute, though. Bet the cake was a hit.
[via ‘sted]
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