The turn of a phrase

Readers of my words will know that I love this English language I speak and always have.

I do not recall any particular focus on it as a child of a U.S. diplomat father and a stay-at-home mother growing up in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, but I do know 'English' was always my best and favorite subject in school and in college. No matter what it was, whether English literature, American history, creative writing, or just plain reading, I recall the joy of crafting sentences and paragraphs and the special joy of reading a much-better writer's own phrases.

While reading a lengthy piece about a man who was wrongly convicted of murder and spent almost 50 years behind bars as an innocent convict, I caught one phrase that really touched 'that' spot in me.

"...a sturdy jug with a satisfying handle..."

What an amazing collection of simple, yet completely comprehensive words. Who would have thought the adjective 'satisfying' could so immediately create a mental image of the perfect container?

I just sit and shake my head at the wonder of this language and the artists who practice it.

It Is All About Supporting the Musicians

As many readers know, I am much more music-obsessed than TV-oriented. I do watch, but only rarely and for (generally) short times. Music, however, is on from the time I get out of bed until I return to it.

I subscribe to Spotify. I tried Apple Music for a while, being part of the Apple Corps, but I found it not to meet my needs. Spotify, on the other hand, I learned to program so I can hear what I want to hear and ignore the rest. They give me six Daily Mix sessions that change, well, daily, and two weekly mixes that showcase new artists, new music from my chosen artists, and an occasional horrible song; Spotify gives me the option of never hearing the song again.

A reader might also know that sales of physical music media - CDs and records, mostly, though vinyl has seen an increase in sales recently - has plummeted for decades. From the days of music piracy made famous by Napster and other online sites to modern times, the way we listen to music has changed. Only big-name artists now put on expensive concert events. We don't steal music, which is good, and we do not buy much, which is not. We have stopped downloading paid versions of those physical media, too. 

This sea change in how we hear music hurts one group more than any other...the musicians who create the music.

They no longer get a portion of the sales of their discs and downloads and there is much less opportunity for a new artist or band to gain an audience without those sales. The sale of physical media and electronic downloads has been replaced by music streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify, among others.

My membership in Spotify helps pay the artists a bit. Because of the anti-theft laws worldwide, musicians now get paid for their songs, though not much. Before those laws, the membership money went to the service provider, not the record company or the artists themselves. I have spent some time learning how that works; how does the artist in, say Australia, get paid when I listen to a song of hers hooked to a device here in America?

My study has shown that the artists are paid in a very different way than if I was to buy a compact disc or a vinyl record or even to pay for a download. per play, per song. It is a fraction of one U.S. penny, so the importance is the number of plays worldwide. I own nothing, download nothing, and cannot increase my own music library without the actual purchase of a CD or vinyl record or by downloading a file to my computer. Doing so, of course, would be prohibitively expensive; my current CD library has over 2.000 units that I have build up since CDs started being created in 1982.

[An interesting side note: since I got rid of my players and many (most?) computers no longer come with a way to insert one to play, I no longer have a way to play any of those CDs. They have become obsolete! My collection of over 1,000 vinyl records has become relevant again and I do have a way to play them, though I do not have the space to put up my turntable and accessories.]

Here is what I have decided. Since I cannot afford to make a one-time purchase of an artist's production, I stream as much as I can. Mostly, I pick one of the Spotify Daily Mixes - I really dislike hearing the same song over and over, which is one reason I have not listed to broadcast radio for years...listening to commercials is another, something that is also missing on a paid streaming service. Often, I pick one artist and listen to that for hours or days. The artist will be paid a bit more money because more of the songs will be played, thus making Spotify pay a bit more for each.

A couple of weeks ago, it came to me that my e-devices sit unused overnight. I have several and perhaps I could use them to help fill the coffers of a musician while I sleep. So I tried it and it works! Before I go to bed, I pick an artist I want to support - most recently, that has been Shadi Touloui-Wallace (https://www.shaditolouiwallace.com) a young Australian Bahá'í and a very talented musician now living in Vancouver, British Columbia - and put her songs on repeat with the volume down.

I listen to her music for the eight hours I am asleep and she reaps the benefits of those extra payments.

If reading this makes sense to you, doing the same is something you can do if you have Spotify - I do not know if it works with any of the other streaming services like Apple Music. Pick your favorite artist, choose the songs by that artist, put them on random and repeat, and go to bed. 

When you get up next, you will have helped a struggling artist make a few pennies just by sleeping. If many of us do it, think of how rich we can make our faves. Heck, maybe one day, they can put together an arena tour!

Stay-at-Home Is a Good Thing

Why is believing in "stay-at-home" orders difficult to believe in the face of a severe lack of testing to determine the true breadth of coronavirus? From The New York Times:

• "As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say."

The USA has a population of about 330 million. According to the Johns Hopkins real-time model, so far we have only given 3.3 million tests. That is 1% of the population.

One percent is less than a rounding error in any statistical model, yet we want to make national policy based on it?

I trust scientists, science, and public health officials. I do not trust politicians whose focus in on putting money in the hands of businessmen and businessmen who pander to politicians. I will obey the stay-at-home order in my state until I can be relatively sure that my own risk is minimized. That might even be longer than the current order ends on April 30.

I know many are in very different conditions than I am, living alone, retired with a pension and Social Security, a debt load that, while heavy, is manageable. I also know there are pressures on others that I do not have, and I equally sure that the risk of severe illness and death is far greater for my age-group. Making a small sacrifice is not a big deal for me.

Life's regrets. We all have at least one, right?

As I get into the last third of my time on this plane of existence, I ponder back to specific moments in my life. These moments might be precipitated by a thought, a song, or a television show.

Today, I had one of those experiences. I was watching a movie shot by a fellow over ten years living and working in Antarctica. He wintered over at the McMurdo Station, by far the largest inhabited outpost on the continent, for all those years, meaning he did not leave on the last jet that left in the summer. It is a beautiful movie because it is a beautiful place. I think his movie does not adequately convey the difficulties that come with living and working in extreme cold, in cramped spaces, with the same few people, in a world without light.

Kind of like Alaska, only colder. Much colder.

I recall spending my first winter there in 1977. My job was flying around the Interior, often above the Arctic Circle, in winter. Cold temperatures, blowing wind, reduced visibility...and did I mention cold temperatures? I recall having to drain the oil from my airplane's engine into a sealed container and sleeping with it in my sleeping bag; if I didn't, the oil would coagulate in the engine and would have lost all its lubricating properties, thus killing the engine permanently.

Watching the story of wintering over in Antarctica made me recall my time in the Navy in Coronado. I was what was called a 'Radarman,' meaning my job was to operate various kinds of shipboard radars under various conditions. While I was in Vietnam, I also had to repair the boat navigation radars that were installed on the two types of boats we had, the LSSC, Light SEAL Support Craft, and the MSSC, the Medium SEAL Support Craft. Even though I was not a trained ET, Electronics Technician, I knew enough about electronics and am smart enough to have figured out most of the common failures and repairs.

So I was very excited when I read that the Navy was seeking volunteers to winter over at McMurdo Station. One of the positions the Navy had was Electronic Technician, so I got the application and looked at it. I met the time-in-grade requirements and the description of the arduous winter conditions did not scare me - remember, this was many years before my time in Alaska - and I had the experience I thought would suffice. I had also read that not many sailors applied, so there wasn't much competition, which I considered a mitigating factor to my not being an ET. I was excited, so I sent the application in.

Then I waited. A good while later, a personnel clerk from somewhere in the Pentagon called me saying he had one question.

"Have you ever been to ET 'A'-school?"

My heart sank. Why? 'A'-school is the initial training a sailor gets after boot camp; it prepares the sailor for assignments based on the battery of aptitude tests given to all recruits in boot camp. Because I chose UDT/SEAL training during boot camp and was taken out of my 'normal' boot camp training, I took no aptitude tests other than those given to me before boot camp. Since I had volunteered for UDT training - the modern process is very different - I was sent to Coronado and not to any 'A'-school.

So, my answer to his question was 'no, my knowledge came from experience.'

And that ended my progress on the path to wintering over in Antarctica. So I watch the movie with a combination of sadness, longing, and a bit of lustful wonder...

Could I qualify now, as a 70-something, for a job with one of the contract companies now?

Will we experience a repeat of history?

Will we see a repeat of history? 

Will the world experience another, perhaps even greater depression?

Newly-elected, President Herbert Hoover came to office just before and "pursued a variety of policies in an attempt to lift the economy" during the initial part of the depression. Because he headed the federal government, he had many tools at his disposal, as did President Obama during the later Great Recession. Hoover, however, was a former businessman and politician and a conservative. The Great Depression became the central problem of the Hoover administration, but he was one who "opposed directly involving the federal government in relief efforts."

Sound familiar?

This 'minimal-government-involvement' mindset goes against many of the major economic thinkers and the financial processes put in place after the Great Depression to prevent - well, they hoped it would prevent - a proliferation of the conditions that gave rise to the greed and myopia that caused the Great Depression, and subsequently the Great Recession.

That mindset, however, fits very well with the elimination of the administrative order...

Gratitude for being a grandparent

This is from an article in Medium by an author I read:

• What’s amazing to me is how consistent this struggle is among every parent I talk to. The texts and social media posts bouncing around my circle all echo each other. We feel like we’re failing at both. Our kids don’t just need us — they need more of us. Our kids are acting out, abandoning the routines they already had, dropping naps, sleeping less, doing less — except for jumping on top of their parents, which is happening much more. We’re letting them watch far greater amounts of screen time than we ever thought we’d tolerate. Forget homeschooling success — most of us are struggling to get our kids to do the basics that would have accounted for a Saturday-morning routine before this pandemic.

What amazes me about this is the consistency the author conveys and what I see in my own, much smaller circle made up of people I either knew in high school or Bahá'ís I have known since the 1970s.

Namely, they are older and without at-home children. Often, as in my case, there is no spouse, no other human in the house.

We do not have to worry about homeschooling, keeping pre-teens from going crazy or damaging things (dogs, furniture, walls...themselves), and balancing whatever paid work there is with the necessity to give "enough" time to those children and perhaps a spouse.

A person I know is the parent of three children, all under the teenage years. There is a spouse and both parents have stay-at-home jobs now. The challenges my friend deals with are unlike anything in one's life experience. There are the stresses created by keeping children contained within a relatively small space (house and backyard), of keeping a large breed dog de-stressed by walking as often as possible, and dealing with a spouse's stressful new job, started just about the time the novel coronavirus began to make its presence felt.

There is very little 'downtime' for this new breed of parents. Considering this pandemic involves a novel coronavirus against which not one human on Earth has any immunity, there is no historical basis on which to rely; the decisions are far more frequent than day-to-day. They come minute-to-minute. There is no consistency; what worked an hour ago might fail now. There is no manual, no helpful book by an experienced pediatrician.

There is just the Now.

As I sit here in my own small cave, alone, writing these words, I am reminded that there was a time when I was one of those parents with a houseful of children, all needing attention, direction, guidance, and discipline. The difference, of course, is there was no novel coronavirus waiting to inflict incredible sickness on a body just around the corner.

My heart goes out to all parents with children, the children themselves, and the teachers who will have to deal with a wide variety of homeschooling results when they finally go back to school. The time between now and then will be stressful and chaotic for them.

I am glad I am a grandparent.

What noise down yonder pathway comes? Tis the piper come for payment.

It is time to pay the piper.

For the decades since the Great Recession, governments at all levels from the federal to the states and localities have cut public health funding almost out of existence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has had its budget whacked. In Maine, then-Governor Paul Le Page cut the state's health department nursing staff from 90 to less than 20. As Detroit neared bankruptcy, all of their health educators, the people who teach others how to be health-wise, were released. 100% of them. A former Oklahoma state representative, an emergency room doctor, said it is easier to cut public health than to cut personal benefits or access to care. 

 

And cut they did. While you might be inclined to blame the current Republicans for all this, there is plenty of blame to go around. This process of cut, cut, cut has happened under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Politicians cannot be accused of taking the long-view on something as seemingly benign as public health.

Until a pandemic shows up. One has.

Now the piper is demanding payment. A rapidly-increasing death toll is a cost of not being prepared, of being slow to react, and of misreading signs of a coronavirus against which not one person on Earth had immunity.

 

We have waited until the house is on fire to start interviewing firefighters. It is time to start thinking of mankind as one family living on this Earth. It is time to start thinking more long-term than we have. We need to prevent fires, not just put them out.