From whence the readers? And why must they be that way?

Over the weekend, I read a regular blog by one of my favorite writers, Claire Berlinski, who wrote that she saw an unusually large, sudden increase in her readers. She wondered why, so she did some checking.

It turns out they came from an unusual and unexpected source.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has been a regular reader of her work for years and mentioned her blog, “Claire’s Invariably Interesting Thoughts,” on Fox News. She now has many readers from that dark side of the spectrum. Well done, Claire. May they stay long enough to read at least one of your blogs, interesting and thought-provoking as they are. I have my doubts, but one never knows.

However, in keeping with the head-in-the-sand approach to the novel coronavirus and its deadly disease, COVID-19, taken by many on the right, plus Speaker Gingrich's and the new readers from Fox News's "lack of concern," she also wrote this telling bit:

"The novel coronavirus is now the leading cause of death in the United States. If you fear that you or one of your loved ones will die from this virus, it is not irrational at all.

"In April, more Americans died from Covid-19 than from accidents, chronic lower respiratory disease, cancer, or heart disease. Particularly if you live in New York State or New York City, you would be insane to be unconcerned..."

How hundreds of thousands of infections and almost 80,000 deaths in the USA alone fails to raise concern in even the most isolated, jaundiced individual is beyond me.

If you want to read some of Claire's musings that attracted a former Speaker of the House, point your web browser to: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/

Regrets. We all have them.

These days of quarantine, I find myself being drawn more and more to British shows that star older people for some reason.

This one is called 'Edie.' Edie is an 80-something woman whose husband had dies and who rediscovers a long-forgotten goal she had as a much-younger woman - climbing a Scottish peak. Her adult daughter is frustrated by much of what happens in her life, so she sells the family flat and stashes her mom in a 'retirement home,' where she spends her time making flower arrangements and listening to a bad singer sing songs she hates, badly at that.

She lasts less than one week.

Then she finds that postcard with the peak. She calls her daughter, leaves a message, and takes the train to Scotland.

Of course, this is a movie about aging, a film about last chances and opportunities pondered and taken. The last chance to do something longed for, to visit a place dreamt of, to make that one final climb up a peak from long ago. For some reason, that is what attracts me. Well, that and British police dramas.

But as I sit here in my empty house with a full fridge, fancy knives, and high-quality pans, I do not think about food or eating. I tend to think of those things I never did.

Or at least things I imagine I never did.

There is probably some word for that, one kind of like reminiscing about things not done. [Can one truly 'reminisce,' which is defined as "to think about past experiences or events," about things not done, yet dreamt about?]

So. what "things" do I imagine I wanted to do and never did? As a Traveler, with a capital "T" and defined as one who has traveling blood in his veins, as opposed to one who travels (small "t") for work or a living -- like a truck driver -- I can look at a photo of someplace and want to see it in person. A lake in Scotland, a river in Thailand, a mountain in Nepal, a valley in Alaska. Bahá'í Houses of Worship on all continents and local Houses in various countries.

Much of it, of course, is romanticized, like the desire to fly an airplane without a radio across the country I had 40 or more years ago.

Long ago, I read a book by Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, called Biplane, written in 1966 that described his mostly-accurate flight much earlier in his life in a time when he could make such a flight in mostly uncontrolled airspace from North Carolina to California after he bought an old World War I trainer biplane. He bypassed airports with operating air traffic control towers, landed in farmers' fields to spend the night, dealt with storms and cold and rain and birds ... and unhappy farmers. He ran out of fuel just short of the runway at his destination, crashed, survived, and wrote a book about it. I do not know how much of it is true and how much is fiction and I do not care. I still have that well-worn book and read it from time to time.

The 80-something protagonist in this movie, Edie makes that one trip that she has wanted to make for her entire life. She braves the loss of an oar in a rowboat, a steep climb that her knees really do not want to make, loss of her protective tent...and she makes the last few steps to the top alone and unaided, to cast her glance over the far distance she has longed to see. And she plants her 'flag' at the top, a pebble she picked up along her journey.

As a 70-something, I ponder all those things. The trips not taken, sights not seen, flights not made. Pilgrimage not made. And I reminisce. Or whatever the word is for thinking about a dream not realized.

Longing, perhaps. Not regret.

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...