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Draft;;   My life: and overture to death. 

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This morning NPR had a piece about twin brothers who joined the Franciscans on the morning of the day that the afternoon's mail brought their draft notices for service in WW2.

The boys had been absolutely inseparable since infancy and when given the choice between serving God or the infantry they opted for God. They remained in the Franciscans, performing those menial chores required of the brothers for more than 70 years.They  remained together, one never leaving the side of the other for a life time. The elder by an hour, died yesterday morning. The younger died yesterday afternoon. They were 93 years old.

The Priest who reported the story thought that just as they had remained faithful to God, He remained faithful to them and took them up to heaven together, so that they could remain as one forever.

I am reading an interview of W.G. Sebald. The interviewer asks him to explain an episode in The Emigrants involving twins. There's a photograph of twin boys who look exactly like Kafka did at that age. Sebald explains that he had been on a trolley on his way to Kafka's birthplace when he saw the boys. He asked the parents for permission to photograph them, thinking that he wanted to document the improbable coincidence. Probably they thought him to be a pederast, and refused. The irony is that doubles, twins and triplets are often found in Kafka's stories. Sebald thought that it was nature's way of  breaking thought the surface, disclosing the fault line between nature and civilization. He says, "We  may not know what it means, but we have a sense that something beyond us is taking place."  Things, Sebald senses, are "outside our control."

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Fate is in my hands or not?  

I doubt it. 

Just when I think that I have everything under control and that I have become the master of my own fate, something happens, something usually not under my control. 

I am comfortable with that state of things, I know that the rudder of my ship is small, and that at times I won't be able to avoid a rock or even the rapids. But, I'll do my best, and I might call for all hands, or on occasion I'll  find myself just going along for the ride, but, in the end, I am confident that the rapids will peter out before my boat is swamped. 

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The Dunning–Kruger effect:

 

is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others"

 

("Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge") Charles Darwin

 

Stronghart's  corollary to the Dunning-Kruger effect: -- the effect works for each of us both ways.

 

 

 

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Rain yesterday just as I was about to go into the pool. Today, the Weatherman, (not Bob Dylan, the one on TV) threatens more occasional thunderstorms, so I am going down soon. I’ve been trying to get more exercise and the pool is one place where I am getting it.

On a scale of 1 (very little) to 10 (unbearable) I’ve had a slight hip pain (1 or 2, may even ½) for a month or so. Therefore,  I went to the hip doctor in Ft. Lauderdale, who  is the so-called “best of the best*” where I paid $250 for a consultation. (No Medicare) .   As you know, I’ve always maintained that no layperson can judge a doctor (or a car mechanic,  for that matter) but this doctor seemed to be great.  Tall, lanky, about 55, well spoken, very interested, humorous, and reminded me of a kind version of Marty Heilbraun, the best diagnostician I ever knew, who disappeared from his practice in Great Neck at the outset of third party medicine. Marty, a caustic humorist, whose examinations were without end, and included fingernails and very deep discussions of the patient’s personal life,  just closed his doors without notice… Maybe his wife murdered him on the grounds of excessive causticness or crustiness.  

I spent years wondering about the disposition of  his notes on my personal life. I was sure that no one else could have had such an “interesting” personal life which only shows how naïve I was at forty. Now we know that everyone was having those lives. {Randleman often said that he didn’t regret a moment or a single woman.}

The papers say that Arnold Schwarzenegger has regrets but I doubt it. Ditto for Clinton, and the rest of mankind. (Gender-ized word intentional, but now that I think of it,  women are probably included in the non-regretful.)

Anyway Dr William (“call me Will”) XX, chatted with Maria about her knees and about tennis, which he gave up because of his knees! However, one of his workers ( a pathfinder, whose mission it is to lead patients around the office, an endless labyrinth, has double knee replacements, and runs tennis programs where Maria plays. They knew each other. 

Digital X-rays were taken of my hips (I asked about the difference between hip and pelvis, and he showed me on the pics).  One of the best things about this doctor (“call me Will”) was that he studied the pics carefully, for what seemed like a very long time, and then, turning to Maria, pronounced my bones “excellent.” I felt proud and elated, and thankful that Maria was there to hear how wonderful my bones were.

He asked me to get up on a table across the room. I had to rise from the chair in which I had been sitting for about 15 or 20 minutes. Although I didn’t feel pain at the time, “Will” noticed a slight limp that disappeared as I took my fifth or six step.  Once he remarked about it, I became aware of it. And, in fact, now I feel or notice the very slight “lurch,”+ whenever I get up out of a chair.  

Once up on the table, he moved my legs into various, almost yoga-like positions, none of which elicited pain. But then he told me that he was going to “challenge”+ my hip, and he did cause some pain on the 2-3 level.  Neither “Will” nor I were concerned about the pain.

Again, “Will” turned to Maria and remarked about the marvelous strength in my legs and the musculature of my calf and thigh. I glowed in pride and immediately knew that no other doctor could serve.

“Will” (I was, and am, very uncomfortable about calling him by his first name) thought that no further tests were called for at this time, and only if the pain persists or increases might some tests be indicated. He named several tests that could be done,  MRI for instance, that only Maria knew about (you know, of course, that she’s another doctor).

I should continue to walk the beach, he wasn’t concerned about the angle of the sand at its verge. I could do anything, but should not indulge in painful activities. (From that advice you can tell that he didn’t get to know me as well as Heibraun. -- No one has to tell me to avoid pain or unnecessary exertion.) 

No source for the pain was identified positively. So, no hip replacement for me, but an interesting morning at the Docs.  If only they were all like this.

*”Best of the Best” means crème d’ la crème.

+ like “challenge,” “lurch” is an orthopedic term, of which you may not be familiar

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Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. 

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"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but I still can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do." ~Helen Keller~

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Reading someone else's  blog has 'all the sparkle of a second mortgage.'* They're really diaries written by amateurs and rarely rise to the level of mildly interesting to anyone not directly involved in the action or emotion or moral described. Even relatives must fight off the impulse to turn the page or click onwards in an optimistic, but futile hope, of a literary promised land.

Forty years?  Not enough time to find one. Stick to the classics and give up your wanderings in an empty desert.

If your life were really interesting someone else would have written about it**..

 “Unremarkable lives should go unremarked upon, the way God intended,”***

*Dick Cavett's phrase.
**Fran Lebowitz'
***.Neil Genzlinger, NY Times Book Review

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Meum Dictum Pactum

My Word is my Bond

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Is there honor among thieves? Some thieves would wholeheartedly say yes. Some would lie and say yes. While others would say no. When asking about honor among thieves, one also has to ask about the rules. Criminals break every rule when it suits them. If there is a buck to be made, the rules need to be broken like a safe filled with money or a glass shopping window showcasing expensive diamonds. When gangsters are breaking every rule in the book, lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering, how can one expect such men to uphold a code of honor? A code of silence? After a life of crime, isn’t that code just another rule that is meant to be broken?
 

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Today, Father, is Father's Day

And we're giving you a tie

It's not much we know

It is just our way of showing you

We think you're a regular guy

You say that it was nice of us to bother

But it really was a pleasure to fuss

For according to our mother

You're our father

And that's good enough for us

Yes, that's good enough for us.

 

Harry Ruby

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"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Martin Luther King

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An Oxford Don meets an old student and asks him what he's been up to --the student tells him that he's working on a doctoral dissertation about the survival of the class system in the U.S.  The Professor expresses surprise and says, "I didn't think that there was a class system in the United States."

"Nobody does," the student replies, "that's how it survives."

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It's not your job to control the world.  It's your job to live in it.

                                          Molly Goldberg

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My home...
Is where there's no day, no night,
And no holy book in sight

To squat on our lives

Kabir, a mysterious figure from Northern India

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A landless man is no man; where is his pleasure? 

Yebamot 63a 

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 After I completed a speed reading course I read War & Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia.

Woody Allen

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 A well-known English dictum, stoical if self-exonerating, 

"all political lives end in failure."

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now, if only I can keep this in mind...


Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Right brain: I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.

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Bob Herbert was a columnist for the New York Times, who could be relied upon to give the working man his due. This is what he wrote for his last column.
Losing Our Way

By BOB HERBERT 

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

 

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

 

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

 

Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck. Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations. A college professor in Washington told me this week that graduates from his program were finding jobs, but they were not making very much money, certainly not enough to think about raising a family.

 

There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.

 

Americans behave as if this is somehow normal or acceptable. It shouldn’t be, and didn’t used to be. Through much of the post-World War II era, income distribution was far more equitable, with the top 10 percent of families accounting for just a third of average income growth, and the bottom 90 percent receiving two-thirds. That seems like ancient history now.

 

The current maldistribution of wealth is also scandalous. In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.

 

This inequality, in which an enormous segment of the population struggles while the fortunate few ride the gravy train, is a world-class recipe for social unrest. Downward mobility is an ever-shortening fuse leading to profound consequences.

 

A stark example of the fundamental unfairness that is now so widespread was in The New York Times on Friday under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.

 

As The Times’s David Kocieniewski reported, “Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

 

G.E. is the nation’s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people.

 

Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.

 

New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.