George Floyd or Black Lives Matter (6/1/2020)

I am upset. This country is being torn apart, hijacked by certain people, a noble cause is being drug through the mud, allowing dog whistles to fly.

Let me explain, I am white or Caucasian if you have not figured that one out yet. I was born in the darkest of Africa, the Congo. I often joke that this makes me an African American, although I have a distinct advantage of having a white skin color. I can only imagine what real African Americans go through.  I have actually been subject of reverse discrimination of which I write about here.  I grew up in the Caribbean and had white, brown and black friends. We did not see the difference (and this was in the 1960s). In my adult life, I worked in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and on a Native American Reservation. Again, it acknowledged to me that we are all the same. We all put on our pants in the morning, one leg at a time. Currently, in front of our home we have a sign that reads “Black Lives Matter.” 

The sign in our front yard.  We got this at our church and we proudly show this in our front yard.  We get people stopping by, who tell us how much they like it.

I have not been blogging much lately, this Covid-19 business has gotten me down, but as you can probable surmise, the George Floyd murder and what is currently happening to this country is really upsetting me. Yes, I am as upset about it as everyone else. While I am against the death penalty, I almost wish the police officer would face a similar penalty: “death by knee strangulation.” What upset me almost as much was the video of one of the police officers quickly looking at the scene and then looking away.

What also upsets me is what followed. I really liked the nationwide demonstrations. They are needed to focus attention on what is happening to the black community and they are needed to bring social and political change. Boy, do we need social and political change (I might write about it later). However, I do not like the looting and the burning of buildings that accompanied it all.

Our church is on the border of a black, somewhat poor neighborhood, and since the outbreak of Covid-19 I think it was burglarized 3 times. In my mind and I have explained it to my wife by telling her that probably these folks cannot or have a hard time getting unemployment or even the stimulus check. To be able to survive they have to go to food pantries, food kitchens or rely on burglary. Case-in-point, the food was stolen out of the fridge at church, in addition to the laptop. So the looting of grocery stores maybe, but fancy sneaker stores, not really. In addition, it seems that there are right-wing agitators in the crowd that maybe egging them on or are really the Molotov cocktail throwers and fire starters. 

It was Dillan Root the white-supremacist Charleston Church killer, who hoped that his killing would “start the revolution.” Other white-supremacists were hoping their action would do the same thing. I am afraid that this is what the agitators are trying to do, assisted by Trump, who is sending dog whistle after dog whistle to his troops and supporters, and the failing Republican Party. We need to go back to peaceful protest and do the following things:

1. Elect Biden as our next president
2. When we do that, make sure that Biden selects a young, dynamic person as vice-president. Because, we all know that Biden will serve for one term and this person will be next. We need a new generation of leaders and thinkers in this country. I am a 66-year-old baby boomer and I realize it is time for new thinkers. Mayor Pete or a younger white or black male or female would be a good choice.  (I used to be a Klobuchar fan, but it seems that she did not prosecute the cop that killed George Floyd for a previous violation when she was the District Attorney).
3. Trow the republicans out of congress and the senate, they are obstructionists and cling to the old ideas of yesterday that don't work and have caused the situation we are in now (the riots and the Corona pandemic).
4. All these protesters should understand what Trump is doing, keep up the demonstrations (peacefully) and they should use the power of their vote to force social and political change. Get people registered and get people to the poles in November. Yes, Trump and his cronies are going to call them socialists or worse communist. Remember, he is in bed with Putin, the real communist dictator.

You should never be alone (4/1/2019)

I was listening to one of the psychiatry shows on one of my favorite XM satellite radio stations (Doctor Radio) where one of the geriatric psychiatrists said something that sounded very profound to me: “There is a difference between loneliness and solitude.” I think that this is one of those phrases many introverts understand.

This got me thinking. Loneliness is a negative emotion. A person is or feels lonely when something or someone is missing; when no other person is with them. As common believe tells us we need human contact. It is one of the things that might prevent or at least slow down mental decline in old age; things like Alzheimer and dementia. This is also, why joining groups like religious communities and other clubs is so important, especially at advanced age (over 65 … help that’s me!).

Solitude, on the other hand, is defined as the state of being alone. It is the state of being alone without being lonely. Solitude, the definition goes on, can be especially peaceful and pleasant, an interesting distinction, indeed!

This is why that sentence stayed with me the whole day. We introverts often enjoy solitude and I have often wondered if my need to be alone is harmful to my mental health. Conversely, it seems now that my need for solitude means that I may not lose it when I get old. Introverts like me still surround themselves with their family, friends and often clubs and religious communities, but we need to retreat in solitude so now and then (more often than extroverts do) to recharge. We can probably survive by spending two thirds of our free time in solitude.

I am not sure if solace is related to solitude or not, but one would think so. The official definition for solace is “help and comfort when you are feeling sad or worried.” I find my solace from blogging, being with my bonsais, from walking in the woods, being out in nature, sailing or even just driving the backroads, all activities I do in solitude. While I enjoy retreating in the woods, I usually do not seek solace there. I do it because I am an introvert, a naturalist, a lover of nature and because of my nature deficit disorder. However, at times, I definitely have retreated into the solitude of the woods when I was sad and worried, in search of solace.

As I have described before, being out there in nature, in the woods, brings a certain inner peace to me. It clears my mind it allows me to concentrate on what is around me and not to obsess about what is in me, what is eating me. It all comes so very close to meditation, being in the moment, observing all that is going on around me; breathing in those phytoncides, lowering my blood pressure. 

Naturally, being a naturalist, it is just nice to be out there in those woods. I take any moment possible to get out there, take the dog for a walk and just be out in nature. I do not have to see or discover anything new; the regular, the common, is good enough. But that alone time, that solace is so sorely needed. 

Our walk through Pointsett State Park showed a beautiful ecosystem of oaks, loblolly and longleaf pines.  Oaks were covered by by Spanish moss.

Even on our vacation to Charleston, SC a few weeks ago, we had to make a side trips and visit state parks, the beach and spend a few hours hiking before we hit the hustle and craziness of this great town. We spent time in the Cape Fear Botanical Garden, in the Pointsett State Park and later on on Folly Beach and in the woods. Just being able to get out there and enjoy the natural world is so important. But so is being in and around Charleston. We got more enjoyment out of the stately trees (the life oaks) and peering into the gardens and courtyards than the oh so famous market. But even in the market which is full of people you can be utterly alone and lonely. 

The gardens of Charleston, SC.: live oaks, palmetto and other plants.

Forgiveness anyone? (11/10/2018)

Having to drive for four hours in the afternoon you eventually hit that spot when the news on NPR starts repeating itself. I forgot to download a podcast, so there was nothing better to do than to hit the browse button on the car radio. Not being interested in sport, and music putting you to sleep, I end up listening to talk radio stations as I mention before in this blog. At time I hit an AM Religious Station that are so plentiful of in the western part of our state. I often linger at these stations and as a Unitarian Universalist, but somehow raised in a religious community by non-religious parents, I love to listen to what dogma they are spouting this time. This is mostly for entertainment purposes and partially for education. However, this time, the discussion got my interest. The part about God lost my interest; but thank God that came at the end. 

The talk was about forgiveness. There were no Bible parables or whatever, but just a fairly good and frank discussion. I am not sure if I remember all of it, but it came down to the concept that we need to be able to forgive for society to function at its best. Even better, on a personal level, that forgiveness is good for your own mental and even physical health.

Clinical research seems to support that forgiveness is good for your mental and physical health. It seems that forgiveness is good for your coronary (hearth or vascular) health, the immune system and overall stress. Amazing isn’t it?

This discussion on forgiveness hit home on so many levels. After the past weeks where we have been through a mid-term election; all the racially charged crap about caravans that were ready to invade us, but all the sudden evaporated after the elections; a bomber being arrested; a number of murderous shooters: one of two African Americans in Louisville, regretfully somewhat ignored, the killing at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, and most recently at a western bar in California. We desperately need a lot of empathy and maybe even some forgiveness. Empathy for the victims and their family. Forgiveness of some of those anti-Semites and gun tooters who saw the national reaction after what happened and saw light. Forgiveness for those who gave lip service to the demagogue leader of our country who told us after what happened in Charlottesville that neo-Nazi anit-Semites were nice people too, or maybe that some of the people who opposed the Nazis were evil. Forgiveness for others who have hate in their hearts and now understand that this is going to threaten humanity as we know it.

The radio program hit me on a personal level, as well. The inability to forgive seems to be a genetic affliction that plagues my family; both on my mother’s and my father’s side. It goes back for generations and it is not only in my direct family and siblings, but it also plagues the brothers of my father and my mother and their direct family. It is absolutely amazing. On a personal level, I have tried to make my siblings aware of this fact and proposed to them to bury the ax; I made my overtures, but to no avail (an interesting side note, none of the siblings talk with each other). I have told them we are repeating the mistakes of our parents (but then, history repeats itself); that we have a chance to break with family “tradition.” I have been laughed at, ridiculed, belittled, gotten angry responses, and been blamed. It was affecting my physical and mental health, and my marriage. So, I have decided that they don’t exist any longer; I no longer have siblings in my mind. It does not mean that I have not forgiven them in my heart, but as I’ll explain later forgiving does not mean forgetting or reconciling. I am not saying that the relation can never be “born again,” but it for right now it would need to come from them; I am done from my side.

So yes, as you can see, the talk got me thinking. What exactly is forgiveness? Doing some research, I found that it is very easy to confuse forgiveness with terms or words like: condoning, excusing, forgetting, pardoning, and reconciling. Forgiving is when you let go of the negative emotion, feelings or attitude, including vengefulness, combined with your ability to wish your offender well, regardless the offense or the emotions it brings up in you. The person that was offended might be justifiably offended but he or she has evolved and grown past it. So, forgiving does not mean reconciling and being friends again, it just means no longer being bothered by what ever happened and going on in life. As the saying in my mother language says: “you are trying not make your heart a killing zone (or a murder pit).”

Being close to a Buddhist, I looked in to what they said about forgiveness or the lack of it. In Buddhism the lack of forgiveness causes havoc in one’s mental well-being. Feelings of ill-will seem to have lasting effect on one’s karma. It seems that resentment and hatred or the lack of forgiveness forces us to be reborn around this issue of pain and we will never be able to move on in generations (lives) to come. Doesn’t that sound familiar, history repeating itself? At least in both branches of my family it does.

Try to forgive in your life and see the end of the trail of hate, resentment and vengefulness.  It is bad for your health and general well-being!  

It is just interesting to see how a religious program on an AM radio station got me thinking and my relationship with my siblings; the relationship of my parents with their siblings; my uncles with each other and with my parent; and my cousins with their siblings (from different branches of the family and different uncles). I have forgiven them all, but again, reconciliation is a different thing. However, at least I am trying my best to maintain a relationship with my cousins, nephews and nieces, regardless of what my brother and sister think or say about me; and that is heartfelt. Hopefully we can do that as a society as well, stay civil and talk, regardless what and who we are as a society, what our political or social believes are, and how desperately our political leaders are trying to divide us.

Why are you here? ... On Training and Teaching (Part IIX) (7/14/2017)

I finished with the development of a new class about six weeks ago, before I went on vacation.  So it had been sitting on the shelf for that long before I finally was able to pull it off and teach it this week.  Boy, lesson learned; although I did review it a few times in the past week, it still felt foreign at certain points.  It definitively had its rough edges.  The reviews were kind, but I am my harshest critic, I can do better.  I asked them shred me, to be brutally honest, but they were too nice.

Fascinating isn’t it, we live in a strange society where if you want critique and ask for it you can barely get it.  Really, I thought it was not that polished and flowing well.  On the other hand we have a person at the helm of this country who will try to squash you like a bug if you give him the slightest little bit of critique.  You’ll be at the mercy of what his little fingers can type out in his twitter account.  It is such a strange world out there.  I am not that way; I really would like to learn from my mistakes and screw ups; although I am far from perfect (although I may come over as too arrogant in one or two of my posts).

This week I received a survey from the National Science Foundation that was sent to people with Ph.D.’s (I wonder under what rock they found me).  One of the questions was interesting.  It asked me what was important in my job (I am paraphrasing here); was it:

• Money
• Benefits
• Freedom
• Research
• Teaching
• Perceived contribution to society

I needed to say yes or no.  Well, the state does not pay much of anything, so that wasn’t it, I do not do research, so we can scratch that one as well.  So I choose the remaining ones.  But after I had to rank them, and there came the rub, to me it still is my perceived contribution to society.

A few weeks ago I was part of a meeting/survey that was conducted by the Virginia Institute for Marine Science on their service to local communities.  People that were asked to attend were all (volunteer) members of local boards that deal with wetlands and coastal issues.  The first question there was: “Why do you volunteer.”  My simple answer was: “To give back to the community that is willing to put up with me.”

There you have it.  It reminds of those cliffs full of gannets, murres or puffins that we saw in Newfoundland, and the story of the people from (coastal) communities in Newfoundland that pulled sailors from ships that hit those rocks and took care of them.  In my previous post I spoke about two of them, but another example is the S.S. Ethie.  This ship perished December 11, 1919 and here again, the kind people that lived along the shore helped to save the crew and passengers (including a baby) and took care of them once they were on shore.

Remnants of the SS. Ethie that shipwrecked in 1919.

So yes I want to contribute to society.  It was Henry David Thoreau (who just celebrated his 200 birthday this week) who encouraged "Civil Disobedience."  I would like to advocate contributing to society instead.  If we all contribute a little, the world would be a better place.  That is why I still teach, and still enjoy it, even though the pay sucks!  That is also why I encourage feedback, improve my classes and myself in general.

Who is the Common Man? (1/27/2017)

Partially thanks to an article in our newspaper on how Hollywood depicts the “common man” in movies, followed by a letter to the editor on how Donald Trump is stacking his cabinet with billionaires who are supposed to take care of the common man, have I been wondering who the common man really is, and then also what motivates the common man.

So what does one do?  You ask professor Google what the definition of a common person is.  Common person, thefreedictionary.com defines it as: “a person who holds no title.”  They have all kinds of different items in their thesaurus, a Bourgeois (a member of the middle class), a Nobody (a person of no influence), a Plebeian (one of the common people), a Proletarian (a member of the working class), and (my favorite) a Rustic (an unsophisticated country person), just to name a few. 

In a 2011 article entitled “10 Terms for the Common People” Mark Nichol listed: Bourgeoisie; Great unwashed (I love that one); Hoi polloi; Little people; Mob; Peons; Proles (from proletariat); Rank and file; and Riffraff.  In the comment section readers added some more, British readers added “chav” a word I never heard off but seems debatable, and “the chattering classes”.  U.S. readers added: the Masses, Joe Blow, John Doe, Yahoos, and Plain Jane.  As the outfall of the latest elections maybe we should we add (a basket of) deplorables? 

All I can say is let them eat cake!  Oh no that was Marie Antoinette in the late 1700 a few weeks or months before her head was chopped off by the common people. 

But walking through town in my lunch hour and looking around; am I looking at “the Masses” or “Joe Blow”, or “the Plebeians”?  They are definitively not “rustic”, and it looks like they did shower recently.  But can I call these bankers and business men, common men?  What about all those government employees; and what about those beggars, what are they, less than common?  Who are the common men or the common women and what motivates them?

When you do an internet search on "the common man" you inevitably hit on the speech by by Vice President Henry A Wallace, entitled: The Price of Free World Victory. Wallace had been Secretary of Agriculture and was VP under Roosevelt, during the time of the second world war at the time he gave this speech. While it was an anti-Hitler speech, it obviously touched the common man, Wallace said: "Men and women cannot be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to read and think and talk things over. Down the years, the people of the United States have moved steadily forward in the practice of democracy. Through universal education, they now can read and write and form opinions of their own." 

Having worked overseas in dictatorships, I have seen what literacy or the lack of it can do; or maybe the lack of credible information to read, to get from the radio or to watch on TV. We were able to compare various shortwave radio stations and compare it to the local news; things the common folks could not do, because they could not speak any other language, at least not those from the foreign radio stations and the relied to the government sponsored  (fed) news. There was fake news everywhere.  We really need to make an effort to keep our press free and resist the notion by some in the current White House that the press is irrelevant (or what they call "the Main Stream Press.") 

The speech by Wallace was so inspiring to some, that composer Aaron Copland wrote a piece of music after it entitled "Fanfare for the Common Man."  The tune was reintroduced to the next generation (mine) by Emerson Lake and Palmer (click here for a YouTube video of ELP).  

I feel that we have lost that in our society, there is no real inspiration any more, nothing that inspires people or pushes them towards the greater good.  We are all inspired against the other; this country has become one of two polar opposites.  I attended the Women's March on Washington the past weekend; it was very charging and inspiring; it was against the new administration and the fear they install in many of us.  I just wish it would inspire all common women and men to set their differences aside; that we restore civility and make sure this new political experiment we are embarking on does not end wrong; these guys have never run a country before.  But let's make sure that we stay informed and by independent, unbiased, unfiltered news sources.

I took this picture at the Women's March and to me it symbolizes what I am trying to say here.  This sign did not criticize the President or even congress but asked (in her own way) for the restoration of civility and trust in human nature.  I have no idea if she was a lone counter demonstrator or a very spiritual person, but her sign was very out of place, but so poignant. 

You are not alone (11/30/2016)

It sometime takes strange circumstances to realize things in life.  After "unfriending" someone in Facebook (I'll write about him a bit later), getting a text from a friend, and listening to the radio on my drive back home, I realized something during my meditation session in yoga: "I am not alone." 

I have been interested by that concept of being alone in the world for a long time; as a young boy my favorite book was "Nobody's Boy" by Hector Malot (free download on Kindle). The title in Dutch is "Alone in the world" and in it's original French is "Without a family".  You get the drift, I remember reading the book over and over and sitting there crying over the pages.  I read a few disappointing reviews on English translation, but others say it is still worth the read.

As a teen I have felt alone in this world.  It was a combination of circumstances, doing a lot of moving as a child, having parents who did not seem to care about us children, being shipped off away from the family for a half year to a different culture, getting to a high school where everyone had their own established groups and clicks, you name it.  I felt different and alone.  I mentioned it before, as a young budding photographer, my favorite hobby was taking pictures of empty park benches.  About a year ago I heard the same thing from an old friend who I grew up with on the islands in the Caribbean.  She felt different and alone as well after being transplanted to Switzerland.  

The latest empty park bench picture I took (yes I still take them).  I took this one May 19, 2016 in the Norfolk Botanical Gardens when I visited it with my wife and daughter.  So no I was not alone and I did not feel alone!  I liked the composition.

So here we are at a time in our culture that we surround ourselves with artificial friends on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (I do not have a Twitter account), and many more, but you get it.  I have written before about on how I rely on them during my travels <here> and <here>.  But it really hit home during this past year during the elections.  I have my political preferences, and I started wondering why I put up with the crap put up by the people that were opposing my candidate.  But I let it slide, I believe in the first amendment, right?  OK, my candidate lost, and I am part of the sore loser crowd.  I have a right to complain.  That's fine.  But the guy I unfriended, now more than a month later, is still trying to bash my candidate.  He is like a sore winner, get over it dude, your candidate won.  For one, he is just a distant acquaintance, a guy I supervised nine years ago, and then I have to look at that crap he keeps posting?  He should be celebrating that his candidate won, and not still try to trash my candidate.  It was then that I decided that I needed to surround myself with my true friends and not with fake friends.  Why anger myself over something like this?  At the end of the day those fake friends make you actually feel that you are alone, they are not there for you, they are there for themselves to accumulate friends and to aggrandize themselves; they are not worth your attention.

This realization together with a text message exchange with a true friend and lunch with another, culminated in that realization that I am not alone, but that I need to make a concerted effort to purge myself from the negative people that surround me (sorry Bob ... nah, not really sorry at all ... good riddance) and cultivate my current friendships and enjoy the people who have the political, cultural and social values that I have.  I know I have started this process in the past and will continue to do so (and at times when I let those toxic people back into my life, they turned toxic again; it is just a matter of time).  I am not purging myself from people who think different but only from those who are obnoxious about it and toxic, we need a healthy discourse and friendship.

These are my baby steps to my independence from toxic people around me and embracing of friends and like minded people. (Photo taken on 11/29/2016 at the Virginia Arboretum during one of my favorite things to do: a walk in nature). 

Catching flies or on being nice to people (8/22/2016)

Of late I’ve seen very little civility in public life.  I’ve written about it before in various blog posts <here>, <here>, and <here>, or look at my label section under tolerance.  Right now with the presidential elections in full swing there is at least one presidential candidate who’s every word is being followed; journalists are trying to figure out what outrageous thing he has said today or who he is making fun of.  His allies are desperately trying to urge him to stick to the teleprompter, but he is telling everyone that he is not going to change, that the people like who he is, as abrasive and uncivilized as ever.  I don’t need to use names, everyone knows who I mean, whether you like him or not.

While privately I may need to blow off steam so now and in public I try to be civilized and well mannered.  That is partially because I am in front of so many people.  Most of my readers know what I do for a living, or at least you think you do.  I am a teacher, an instructor; I develop courses and I travel throughout the state to teach them.  Hopefully I am a nice guy when I do that (actually, I am told I am an OK kinda guy).  

Ah, but I do more.  We have a certificate program and people need to pass an exam.  Once they are certified, they need to take classes that are relevant to keep up their certification and submit them to us.  I have the unlucky task to make sure that these courses are relevant.  This is where I often cannot be Mr. Nice Guy, and that bugs the hell out of me.

We have almost 4000 certificate holders and so there are a lot of courses to track.  Thank goodness we do this with 3 people, but I have to email the certificate holders when there is anything amiss.   I am finally at the end of 350 questionable courses that were submitted for review these past few months and let me tell you, for me this was the worst job I had in a long time.  Don't you just hate looking for things people do wrong?  Well I do!  I rather look for things people to right and compliment them for it!  I finished the other day and had three aural migraine attacks in one day after being migraine free for months.  Just coming down from the stress of it all.

So when I have to email them and deny them credit for a class, I try to do this with a smile on my face or at least in a nice email. (It still stresses me out.)  Why make them feel bad?  Some people don't care, like an ex-colleague of mine.  He was very hard nosed and  I'll call him Harry.  "Harry" I said one day, "be nice to people, it is easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar." Harry looked at me and said: "But Jan, I don't want to catch flies."  The metaphor went completely over his head, he did not understand I actually meant people not, really flies.

The ultimate bug catcher, although he looks pretty docile, relaxed and friendly, he's a pretty fierce predator when you see him moving at night on our sliding door window.  This is how I see myself auditing people's re-certification efforts.

This is another way to catch flies.

But Harry is not alone, there are so many Harry-s out there.  The world is more and more lacking compassion.  Why is that?  Maybe part the explanation lies in what I read in this article about ecological economics.  In it Robert Costanza argues that the larger to difference is between income groups, the less cooperation we have between the groups, more competition, and less productivity.  The groups are spending a lot of resources on preserving what they have (sounds familiar, doesn't it? Our politicians are for sale to the highest bidders trying to preserve their wealth and class status.).  I think you could also conclude then that this is why we probably also have less compassion between groups, or just generally in this world.  We are more interested in protecting what we have than in helping each other.

Vinegar anyone?  It is an amazing world we live in, isn’t it?  

Procrastinators Unite (5/19/2016)

Why do we procrastinate?  Beats me, and I even do it at times. 

At work there is another deadline looming and man does it get me riled up.  I work in a certificate program that is in place for 17 years or so, and people's certificate expire either on May 31 or November 30.  About 300 every half year.  Their certificate is valid for 3 whole years.  People have certain requirements they have to fulfill to the eligible to recertify, like taking classes during those three years, enter them in a tracking system and pay a small fee.  Well if you look at the date, you know: THE END IS NEAR!  Just today, I already got three emails from people who have not taken one class yet and have 13 days left to get them all in.  Fun!

This is one thing we seem to procrastinate very well: :The end of war", where we will save the lives of young men.
This is a quote on the memorial bridge over the James River in Richmond from Browns Island

Frank Partnoy writes in his book “Wait, the Art and Science of Delay” that procrastination may be good, at least when it comes to making a decision.  I can see that, on the battlefield, in sports, and in making stock decisions; maybe even in photography, taking that perfect shot.

Susanna Halonen argues in her blog in Psychology Today that procrastination actually improves your productivity and happiness:

1. You can therefore concentrate on other (important) things and those things are getting done leaving more time for the thing you procrastinate.  (personally I find this a little farfetched, but OK).
2. Unnecessary tasks disappear with procrastination. (I'll buy that).
3. Procrastination shines a light on what is most important to you. (maybe).
4. Procrastination makes you more creative. (Yes, I can really see that).
5. Procrastination helps you make better decisions. (Partnoy agrees with that)
6. Procrastination leads to better apologies. (I like this one, and yes I have seen some good ones, even the ones like "I started my last online course at 10 pm om May 31 and the Internet went down" ... oh well).

But you could be lying to yourself as Dustin Was suggests in his article, and that is often where I see the people that I deal with.  It is so difficult not to call them out, to rub their noses in it.  Tell them they are full of crap!

Why do I procrastinate?  Looking inward, my excuse is often motivation and inspiration, not because I know I would be making better decisions or have better apologies; I don't go to war.  Halonen's point 4 speaks to me; once inspired and once it flows I can be darn creative!  Points 2 and 3 are also up there.  But once I am inspired watch out, then my motivation kicks in higher gear.  Like earlier this week when I was working on a new course that I was designing.  It was fun, I was going strong.

However, I am different, even when I am inspired.  I need to think and mull things over (as I also describe <here>).  Sometimes I only get one or two slides developed in a day and I can just sit there and think of how to the class is going to go; about what is next.  It is fun and sometimes very exhausting.

Oh my god I just came up with a great apology why I procrastinate with the development of a new class!

Digging deeper (3/30/2016)

Boy, I only had one post in March.  Guess I had nothing to say.  Well, not really, but life is getting away from me (taxes and other writings).  Maybe I had nothing inspirational to say or nothing I have wanted to share; at least until today, when during lunch time I started looking through the on-line version of Wired and ran into the "Instagram Rabbit Hole" section of the magazine.  That was fun.  What Wired does is, one of their photographers takes one of their favorite photographers on Instagram and looks who they follow or who follows them and they go down five levels and see where they end up.  I tried it with people who follow me on Instagram and it was fun.

It is kind of as the 7 degrees of separation, the theory that everyone on this earth is no more that 7 persons away from each other.  Fore example my wife and I have actually spent a very pleasant evening talking with the father of the king of the Netherlands (or Holland as some call it) when we lived in Yemen of all places.  Now that all the sudden brings you close to many world leaders.  I wonder how many degrees I am away from Kim Jong-un; although that would not be really be not something I to be very proud of.  But then, I have been close to other weirdos as well (see my posts on Idi Amin).

It is just very fascinating to me these kinds of rabbit holes.  When I did it to my Instagram contacts I ran into locked pages, or pages that you had to ask permission to the owners from to connect to.  Makes you wonder what they have to hide, or if they are just private.

Going to one of my favorite photographers following me: Derya or @Daltuny on Instagram from Turkey, this is one of the latest photographs by her:

Photo taken by Derya and published on Instagram

Going "5 generations" in random down the rabbit hole (avoiding locked pages and just selfies) I got here to the page of Kenny Byron or @kidd_ok on Instagram.  Kenny seems to be a snow boarder and this was a recent photograph I loved:

Photograph by Kenny Byron published on Instagram

Fun to games like this.  Next time I would end up somewhere completely different, but I am so happy I ended up here Kenny Byron takes some awesome pictures, but so did the intermediaries between Derya and him, it was a feast for the eyes.  You should try it, whether you do it in Instagram, Google+ or maybe even in Facebook.  Who knows where you end up and what you learn about the world around you and your fellow humans.

So sorry guys, no photographs or deep thoughts by me, just some observations on the inter-connectedness  of us all, something I did discuss in this post before as well.  I am still amazed how small our world is becoming and how much we depend on each other.

Coastal living and sea level rise (12/16/2015)

While scenes like the pictures that I took below are idyllic, being on the hook (anchor for you non-boat people) in the York River in the middle of December, or me scrubbing my sail boat bare chested on Sunday morning in the middle of December in coastal Virginia is somewhat unheard of.  I guess it does happen, because Sunday evening my 88 year old father-in-law told us that he remembered that it happened once before some December day approximately 50 years ago (and I am too lazy to research what year that was).  I did hear on the Weather Channel and on the CBS news last night that this is the longest that Buffalo New York has ever gone without any snow in any winter since the start of record keeping in the late 1800s.

December 14, 2015, an early morning scene on the York River in Yorktown.
A ship on the hook and the sun is just coming up over the horizon.
The temperature was 61 degrees that morning, probably 20 to 30 or so degrees above normal for this time of the year.

Sunday December 13, 2015.  Scrubbing the Beagle.
I got so warm doing it, so I took my shirt off and I did it bare chested.
The temperature was 72 degrees.

But hopefully you get the message.  I was so happy when I heard about the climate accord in Paris this weekend.  I did not listen to the conservative pundits (no teaching up state so no travel in a car without satellite radio), but I can just imagine their discussions about a climate’s cyclical nature, the takeover by the United Nations etc., etc.  I did see a small article on how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already promised that as soon as President Obama leaves office they are going to throw the deal out.  Here is another example of some criticism.

I know I should not get into the debate, I’m just a minor blogger who tries to show pretty pictures and talk about his teaching, stormwater, his sailing, coastal living, and his travels throughout Virginia; however, my teaching, stormwater, my sailing and my coastal living are all impacted by global warming, isn’t that the truth?  Take a look at the article about Tangier Island (or click on the next one as well).  I honestly hope to write a blog post from my sailboat when I visit Tangier Island next year (at least that is a cruise I would like to make), and yes, it will not disappear in the next few years.  But it still is serious, for the people living there, for our culture, as a colonial heritage site and as part of our history.  As both articles discuss, we really do not need to go to those poor Pacific Island Nations to watch them disappear with sea level rise, we can do that right here, in Virginia.

But then even closer to home, just two minor storm this September and October and we could not even get to our sailboat.  The marina was flooded.  Members of the club were forced out of their home and friends of ours who live in Poquoson on the water could not get in or out of their home, there was one to two feet of water in their yard and streets.  I can just imagine if the water levels rises a bit more over the years combined with the subsidence we will have in our area, particularly during storms.

October 2, 2015.  Flooding at the marina.  The Beagle is in the first slip on the left.  You had to go through almost knee deep water to get to the dock, and then you had to watch out for missing boards that had been pushed up by the rising water.

Oh of course, why should I care?  I’ll be long dead and gone before it would even affect me.  Very optimistically I may have 40 to 45 more years to live.  What can happen in those 40 or so more years?  Climate change is slow, so who cares?

I think that’s the problem we are facing.  Too many people are too cavalier about environmental issues.  We worry about the economy and saddling future generations up with our financial debts.  However, this environmental stuff is too touchy feely and more difficult to define; it does not touch our pockets or directly effects our livelihood, so we don’t worry about saddling future generations up with environmental debts, a.k.a. disasters, such a climate change, sea level rise, famines, desertification, you name it. But environmental debt may also translate into financial debt in the not so distant future, but that is so difficult to define.

I am still simply amazed how misinformed some people are, not informed at all, don’t care, don’t want to know, and of course some people are just plain partisan.  I am not sure if I captured them all here, but yes, even in this country you still run into people who have never heard or considered things like global warming or climate change.  Even if you believe it is cyclical, this is not a time to take things laying down.  How can you be so sure that humans are not aggravating, speeding up, or worsening this natural process?  Even over geological time it has never happened this fast except when there were meteor impacts or massive volcanic eruptions.  So can you be that sure that we humans are currently not "helping."  I strongly believe that we can try to minimize our impact and that we can try to anticipate what will happen and to preempt at least some of it or try to slow it down, instead of just rolling over and saying "so be it, it's natural." 

On cyber communities (12/7/2015)

On the road again, for the last trip of the year.  It started pretty darn shitty, but finally made it to my destination as of this writing.  Wytheville is a sleepy town in "them hills" of Virginia. I have this reputation with my colleagues of being in love with this town, and for one reason or another I used to go here very often; at least until they discovered it.

When on the road I rely a lot on my (artificial) cyber communities that we all seem to have amassed around us.  I was reminded about that today during my drive over here listening to National Public Radio's Fresh Air by Terry Gross.  She was interviewing Rick Moody about his new book "Hotels of North America".  The book is written as a set of hotel reviews.

It made me think of how I live and depend on my cyber community when on the road:

• Yelp (for restaurant reviews)
• LinkedIn (for support form like-minded professionals, kind of like a support groups)
• Facebook (mostly friends)
• Google+ (my blog, more artsy community and bonsai enthusiasts)
• Google Maps (for traffic updates and restaurant recommendations)
• Weather Underground (all about weather)

Within these communities there are also special groups that I'm a member of.  For example in Facebook I'm a member of our church group, our neighborhood group, the Virginia birders group, and a bread bakers group.  In LinkedIn I'm a member of 20+ groups.  Driving over, I started realizing that I have a lot of fake or maybe artificial friends. The interesting thing is too that all these sites keep suggesting more groups that you might be interested in joining, like trying to suck you in deeper and deeper.

I'm always amused by my 88 year old father-in-law  (who reads these posts and will probably give me grief for mentioning him), because he seems so bemused by the fact that Facebook knows so (too) much about him and it keeps suggesting potential new friends to him or trying to invite him to join LinkedIn.  He is correct it is somewhat intrusive, just look at that list of communities that know my preferences etc. and keeps tabs on me.

But yes, without Yelp, I would never have found those great restaurants, or avoided those supposedly lousy ones.  I also write reviews, usually only of good experiences and only once or twice of really horrible dining experiences (I hated those professors that graded you on your mistakes and did not look at the things you did correct).  I never review a place to settle a score or to make someone look bad; I try to be a responsible partner in my community.  Some don't; this morning there was a thing on morning edition about women being taken advantage off through on-line dating, another one of those communities.

Internet communities are great things for a lot of people including me.  They put all your friends together: it allowed me to rediscover old long lost friends; it gave me support groups; it gave me traffic information; and I had some absolutely great inexpensive food.  So yes, I like my friends on my cyber groups, my real friends or virtual friends.  Moreover, traveling is lonely and it is better than getting silly in a bar.  But I realize as well, nothing is better than real life friends in real flesh that you can talk to, have a drink with and just be with.

Yorktown (6/29/2015)

So going to work on the boat we got stuck at the railroad overpass by a train with tanker cars.  The railroad is owned by CSX and serves the heavy industry in York County.  With heavy industry I am referring to our power station and what used to be the refinery.  Both are and have been changing a lot lately.

The power station is owned by Dominion, and it is my understanding that it is partially coal and partially natural gas.  From what I understand, it is or used to be one of the most polluting power stations on the east coast, and we know that!  After a few days without rain we have a (not so) nice, thin, black dusty coating on our white boats, and the only thing that could possibly contribute to that would be the power plant.  Hopefully it is not the hexavalent chromium that was found by the EPA in the waste site.  I also hope that they’ll make good on their promise and discontinue using coal.  But then they are complaining that they cannot generate enough electricity for the Peninsula and have to construct a power line over the James River, in view of historic James Town, but more importantly Kings Mill a neighborhood with million dollar homes.  Dominion is threatening rolling blackouts if they don’t get what they want.  It seems somewhat childish, but of course we the common/middle class man will be the victim.

There is one nice thing about the power station: it is a great beacon for us sailors.  If we aim for the smokestacks we know we are on our way home.  That time we sailed across the Bay it was a very clear day and we was able to see the stacks all the way from the eastern shore.

The refinery has been closed for some time, and the current owners have been retooling it as an oil storage and shipment facility.  CSX is the major transporter of heavy crude from the wells in North Dakota to the Yorktown facility.  We have heard of two major accidents in the past year.  Both of them, the one in West Virginia and the one in Lynchburg, involved CSX trains that were on their way to our sleepy county on the York River and Chesapeake Bay.   This was somewhat concerning to some of us because we had discovered some issues with a stream crossing in our county.  Finally after all the accidents, CSX fixed the problem.  The photograph above shows the railroad crossing, one of the big storage tanks, and a train on its way out of the refinery.  I assume it was empty and on its way back to North Dakota to pick up another load.  The tanker cars looked new (no graffiti), so hopefully they are the double walled type, although I am not sure if that would be any help if you roll down a cliff in the mountains. 

No real message here today, but just a record of some of the things that we saw over the weekend.  It illustrates how this little county, that we live in, is connected to the world (remember my post on the Dolly Sods?).  This interconnectedness includes the electricity that is generated in the county and its influence on the construction of power lines elsewhere, or even as far as North Dakota and exploding railroad cars in West Virginia and Lynchburg.  We are amazingly interconnected in this world and it feels like things that affect us in York County may have nationwide or maybe global impacts.  The photo below illustrates that as well.  It was taken a few weeks ago and shows the visit of the Hermione from France.  In front of it is a small cruise ship; I wonder if it’s visit was planned or if the passengers had a treat that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, and most likely they will remember Yorktown as well.

Photo taken June 7, 2015.

Seaford (2/20 &2/21/2015)

As regular readers might have seen, we have had a harsh weather week these past few days.  It snowed on Monday and temperatures went below 10 degrees Fahrenheit (or -12 degrees centigrade).  Yes for us southerners that is cold!  It was that cold that it froze Back Creek where our boat is located.  As I mentioned previously, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) website mentions that seawater freezes below 28.4 degrees and our measurements showed the ice surface was 28 degrees; indeed cold enough for saltwater to freeze.  Expecting rain on Saturday night, I thought it was prudent to at least get a lot of the snow of the boat, in the hope to let the rainwater runoff easier and keep the inside drier.

First getting on the boat was an adventure.  She was stuck in the ice.  Thank goodness we were able to pull her forward a bit and I was able to push some of the snow of the bow with my snow shovel, thus taking some of the weight of the bow and loosening it enough that I could pull it over.  Now getting on without slipping and going of the other side.  I did succeed, and got most of the snow pushed of.  I only slipped once and thank goodness I fell right into the cockpit and did not need to try to swim in 28 degree water.  The snow was nice and soft.  I tore off the handle to the companion way hatch on my way down, but at least I've got something else to work on this winter.

Removing snow from the boat (photo taken by Donna A. Briedé)

It is always good to be at the yacht club.  I’m seldom alone; there is always someone working or at least visiting their boat.  This was also the case on Saturday and actually on Friday as well.  The advantage of membership of a group such as this is comradery and friendship.  It is a great place to hang out.  We humans are social animals and need others around, despite my regular assertion that we men are all monks and rather be alone.

Seaford Yacht Club (12/13/2014)

The nice thing about being a member of a yacht club is the sense of community.  Research has shown that one of the things that is important to longevity is being part of a community; and while this mostly relates to houses of worship, I am sure it applies to yacht clubs as well.  The yacht club that I am a member of serves this function very well for me and its members; although one could argue that for some members it may not be good on their liver and actually decrease their longevity.

Previously I had my boat at a marina and as I described it, it was a place where boats went to die.  There was a sunken boat that stayed under water for weeks on end; there was a boat with an actual tree growing in the cockpit (being a botanist, I am fairly confident that that tree was at least two to three years old).  The owner of the marina confiscated the boats of owners who stopped paying and then sold the boats to unsuspecting people who showed up two or three times and then quit coming and paying.  The boats were then confiscated and sold again and again, thus making up the slip fee and entering this vicious circle.

Suffice it to say that I was happy to be out of there and I have never regretted my move to the yacht club now two and a half years ago.  There is always a person at the yacht club to give you free advice, give you a hand, or even offer you a beer. 

In addition, the yacht club is one of my only community type Christmas parties.  Working for the state, we do not have any of the perks like luxurious Christmas parties that I had when working for engineering firms.  We had a “Christmas breakfast” without any speeches or real community, just a quick run for the food, scarf it down and back to work.  It really had nothing to do with Christmas at all.  All the warnings about poor behavior at these kinds of parties, getting drunk, and having sex on top of the copy machine with an office partner do not apply to state employees.  Oh well, we live up to other clichés; dull and just plain boring.  On top of that, we even have not seen a real raise for the past 5 years, let alone a good party.

So we had a wonderful party it is always good to see friends, eat good food and have a few nice drinks.  Everybody behaved; my kind of office party; no stress and a great sense of community.  The photo of today was taken outside the club house.  The committee had set up one of the dinghies outside the entry and decorated it with lights.  My wife took this picture of me in front of the boat.