Flag Waving and Fireworks

By: | July 3, 2018

 

Some people seek out Canada Day; others have Canada Day thrust upon them. And so it was thrust upon me this year when, flying back from a wedding in Lethbridge, Alberta on Sunday, I boarded my Toronto-to-Ottawa plane at 9:15pm.

Throughout our airborne hour, hundreds of tiny fireworks displays sparkled in the darkness below. Miniature concentric globes expanded above fields and off lakeshores. At any given time there were at least a dozen in view, each filling one audience’s night sky. Any given gathering was unaware of the others. Parallel joy. In the 90-degree night, invisible communities flung pinches of hope into the firmament like salt thrown over a shoulder, and the sky answered them with orange heat lightening.

I’m not much for nationalism, and I don’t tend to do the Canada Day thing, so Sunday for me was more than a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. It gave me a lifetime’s worth of Canada Day in a single hour. More fireworks displays than most people will ever see.

It also happened to mark the day when Canada started dollar-for-dollar tariffs to match the trade barriers imposed by the United States. Apparently we’re a national security threat, so the tariffs against us are legal. My livelihood, which is entirely a cultural and financial exchange with Americans, feels precarious and misunderstood.

But I have a peace offering for you all—some free advice. Find yourself an airplane tomorrow, folks. Hop in at 9 or whenever the Fourth of July fireworks tend to happen. And fly around for awhile. It might get you back in touch with your own country’s hope, as it did for me. If only for one hour.

 

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Attention & Executive Function: Beware

By: | July 2, 2018

The latest of many, many tweets by many, many people all saying the same thing:  “Ok, but for serious: is anyone else having trouble writing anything at all because everything is just Too Much right now?”  Or:  “I’ve tried to make coffee 4 times so far & failed. Writing is just Not Going To Happen.”

Google “attention,” “distraction,” and “psychology,” find a nice, scholarly, psychology article:  “That is, do we use up general attentional resources when we attempt to block out unwanted stimulation, thereby leaving less of a limited supply to fuel the main task . . .?”  I take that to mean, attention is a zero-sum game, so if you pay attention to – just blue-skying here – politics, do you have less “fuel” for the “main task”?  Yes.  Jeez.  Sometimes I worry about the questions psychologists ask.

How about the reverse question:  does the main task ever take up so much fuel, you can’t simultaneously blink and speak?  I know the answer and I’ve done the experiment, so I’ll make up the psychology.  I’ll define my “main task” as the directions issued by what psychologists call “executive function,” which is jargon for the brain boss, the project manager, the general contractor that coordinates the separate workers to get the job done.  No, nobody knows whether executive function really exists or where in the brain it might be. Anyway, here’s the experiment.

My executive function last week:  Editor hasn’t edited draft, other editor hasn’t replied to proposal.  HEY LET’S GO BUY A CAR!

Worker:  I never bought a car before.

Executive function:  How hard can it be? Get out there and gather information.

Worker:  Um.  Ok.  The old car is still good and my car-loving friend’s expert advice is that cars are good in general so a new one would be good too.

Executive function:  Right then.  Buy a new car, sell the old one. Get back out there and get me the logistics.

Worker:  Ok.  Here’s three dealerships and 4,298 emails from each one; the Kelley Blue Book estimate for the new and old cars; car-loving friend’s expert advice about dealing with dealers; brother who wants to buy old car; and in all, five scenarios with 16 options each.

Executive function:  Go with dealership #2, here’s the price range for new car and price for old car.  Go.

Worker:  Navigate out to the county, test-drive new car, try to learn every single electronic thing the saleman says, negotiate slightly lower price. Tags-title-registration-insurance for new car tags-title-registration-insurance for old car State of Maryland oh dear I’m losing focus Motor Vehicle Administration regulations not written clearly get someone on the phone title and registration are different things please repeat it please may I quit now please Hartford Insurance Company no I can’t un-insure the old car I have to insure both oh golly that’s a lot of money yes that mileage is correct my signature seems to be degrading no way I’ve got enough fuel left to drive the new car home.

Executive function:  The salesman will drive it.  Just go home and get the old one in shape to sell.

Worker:  Ok.  Dings and scratches bad windshield wipers dicey tire thorough cleaning out of gas look up car cleaners ok gas station then cleaners.  I JUST CLOSED THE DOOR AND IT LOCKED AND I HAVE NO HOUSE KEY!  SPARE KEY!  NO SPARE KEY!  ALL FORTY SPARE KEYS LOCKED INSIDE HOUSE!  Um. I will fall to the ground and weep until magic happens.

Executive function:  Phone the neighbor who has another spare key.

Worker:  PHONE LOCKED INSIDE HOUSE WITH ALL KEYS!

Executive function:  Then for chrissakes walk over there and knock on her door.

Worker:  Not answering door not home not answering not answering not home.

Executive function:  So go find a neighbor who’s home and ask to use her phone to call the spare-key neighbor.

Worker:  Neighbor not home next neighbor not home farther neighbor not home neighbor home!  Oh thank you yes please if you wouldn’t mind I’ll just follow you trip over glass coffee table no I’m fine everything’s fine. Call spare-key neighbor no answer call no answer call no answer.

Executive function:  Don’t be obsessive, when the call is not answered then calling is not working. Find out if a different neighbor has a spare key.

Worker:  Walk to a different neighbor’s house not home ring again not home still not home go back to neighbor who’s at home trip over same glass coffee table this time full-body splat am I ok I’m ok ouch is that blood not really ouch it’ll heal I’m fine really I’m fine. NOT ONE MORE THING!  DON’T TELL ME ONE MORE THING!

Executive function:  No telling when the spare-key neighbor is coming home and knowing you, no telling whether you ever gave her a spare key in the first place.  Stop calling her. Call a locksmith.

Worker:  Be polite ask these nice people for one more favor no two more favors no three more favors can you google locksmith may I borrow a piece of paper may I borrow a pen may I use your phone to call the locksmith smile act normal no answer try another locksmith stop limping don’t think about cognitive impairment.

Executive function:  Go sit on your porch and wait for the locksmith. Pull yourself together here, you’re embarrassing me.

Worker:  Thank you dear neighbors thank you good by thank you. Locksmith is not coming not coming not coming locksmith came. He can’t get in front door keep trying can’t do it go to back door oh crap screen door is locked he can’t even get to back door so he can’t unlock it good God I didn’t know people could do things like that HE GOT IN!  Pay the man pay him a lot try to forget the last time this happened does cognitive impairment start like this?

Executive function:  Deep cleansing yogic breaths, you neurotic. Take the old car to get cleaned.  Then come back and see if you remember how to drive the new one.

Worker:  No no no no no no no not in a million years no no no no no.

Executive function:  Sissy.  At least take the at-home neighbor a bottle of wine.

Worker:  I can do that then I’m flipping your switch to off and unplugging you and taking out your battery I don’t even care get away from me.

Conclusion of experiment:  attentional resources are depleted not only during unwanted stimulation but also during episodes when executive function becomes excessive and issues inoperable operational directives, in which case attentional resources should be withdrawn before reaching the limits of the fuel supply and resulting in behavior that is suboptimal.  Fucking pessimal in fact.

__________

Photo credit: “Out of the Western Skies comes ‘Sky Corvette'” by Timothy K Hamilton via Flickr

The Last Word

By: | June 30, 2018

This week Cameron ponders the color, shape and purpose of eggs. It sounds like an odd thing to think about until you realize it’s a pretty big deal for the one who laid it.

Helen shares a cartoon to commemorate her 20-year anniversary with a very special partner – her sunglasses.

Rebecca says that an exhaustive LIDAR study indicates that city trees are absorbing more than their share of carbon. More than just a handy place to lock up your bike, it seems.

Sarah marvels at the familiar yet bizarre sound of the hermit thrush. If you don’t know the hermit thrush call, then you really need to go outside on occasion. More likely, you just didn’t know tat cool sound was a bird. It turns out this song does more than dazzle, it’s also a sort of biography.

And lastly, Craig and his two boys walk to the sun, carrying backpacks. It’s not really what they did – they backpacked to an outdoor astronomy talk, then flew to Anchorage for the solstice. But the image is just so lovely, I thought we’d end with that.

 

 

Photo Credit: Kareni

Worshipping the Sun

By: | June 29, 2018

 

My boys and I have gone to the sun and back. Not literally, of course. We’ve been on the curve of the Earth the whole time. But we’ve been on a mission, 20 nights on the road traveling north toward the longest day of the year.

Our trip started in Colorado near the 40th parallel two weeks before summer solstice, when the sun would reach its northernmost position in the sky. At our latitude, we had fifteen hours of daylight, long days of walking as we carried backpacks across a 10,000-foot plateau. Sunset was a golden band rising up the tallest aspens around 8:30 pm, five and a half more hours of daylight than we get in winter.

As a kid, I noticed summer days were markedly longer than winter’s, but I didn’t know why. Daylight hours must have been on some kind of dimmer switch. My kids learned differently. At home in Colorado, we have a western view, a big sunset horizon. We mark the sun’s northern point on the flank of a mountain range just across the Utah border, and then in winter track it south, almost to Dove Creek, Colorado, a distance of ten fists held at arm’s length, about eighty miles north to south, June to December. Continue reading →

Redux: Not all stories are words, not all maps are pictures

By: | June 28, 2018

This post originally appeared June 14, 2017

You know those sounds that slip across the senses until they settle, in the brain, on an association entirely unrelated to their maker? Those sounds that seem to almost synesthetically transform one thing into another? The way noise can be brilliant, or color evokes flavor, or a smell touches old dreams?

An unspectacular-looking, fist-sized bird called a hermit thrush makes a sound like that, when it sings. Its call is a variable set of layered chimings – like what water would be, if made into a bird, if you asked it to sing with a narrow feather-muffled throat instead of its own mud-and-cobble one.

Listen to this call for a moment, here. Consider that it has been transcribed as a sort of prayer: “Oh, holy holy, ah, purity purity eeh, sweetly sweetly.” I first remember hearing it in a sun-slanted aspen forest in Colorado, on my way up to a 13,000-foot pass and a hotspring on the other side. It seemed to descend through the glowing boles at the same stepped angle as the light. To come from all directions. To touch the surrounding talus fields and cliffs with little hands. It so filled me with listening silence that for years since, I have thought of tattooing a sound spectrogram of that song on my skin, to remind me of the places where I feel most at home in it.

Now listen to the song slowed, here: You will begin to notice the split in the hermit thrush’s voice, two notes carried by the dual voicebox that birds share, called a syrinx. Drawn out, his call becomes something that feels deeply Cretaceous, a dinosaur warbling through the jungle. Calling threat to his rivals, calling out his territory, calling plaintively for love.

A bird’s voice does all of that. It can also reveal other things: Where he is from, whether he is well or sick, whether he has been exposed to pollutants like PCBs and Bisphenol-A. And hermit thrush voices, it turns out, may also contain stories about the ancient movements of landscape and climate, and how these shape lives. Continue reading →

Save the Main-Street Forest

By: | June 27, 2018

The Arbor Day Foundation, which I have supported since I became a taxpayer at age 16, has a wonderful program called Tree City USA. To become a Tree City USA, all you have to do is have a tree board, have some kind of community tree ordinance, spend at least $2 per capita on forestry, and celebrate Arbor Day. It’s a good program and an easy one to join, which is why somewhere around 3,400 communities have done so.

But it turns out that being a Tree City USA, or a Tree City Wherever, is also a much more important distinction than you might realize. Urban trees, at least when there are lots of them, can provide as much carbon storage per hectare as a rainforest. Continue reading →

My Two-Decade Sunglasses

By: | June 26, 2018

I’ve been telling myself for a couple of years now that, when my sunglasses turned 20, they were getting their own blog post. Well, that’s sometime around now–my records aren’t too good, but it was definitely 1998 and almost definitely June–so here you go, cheap sunglasses. Thank you for your service. Let’s make it 20 more. 

I used to think of myself as the kind of person who loses things. I still feel guilty about a windbreaker I lost in 10th grade or so. That's why getting prescription sunglasses always seemed like a bad idea. Sunglasses exist to get lost. I got by without them when I was doing field work during the summers in college. Botanist is in focus. Rocky mountains are fuzzy. If I wanted the mountains not to be fuzzy, I went for the double glasses. So uncool. I did this for years. In June 1998 I saw an ad in the newspaper for cheap prescription sunglasses. I went to the store, tried on the frames - there were only two options - and took the plunge. The saleswoman says "Skikkelig Hollywood!" That means "Totally Hollywood!" I was in Norway. The glasses stuck with me. 1998, Sightseeing in Turkey. 2002, finally learning how to drive. 2009, Bering Sea ice. 2018, walking to CVS. I get compliments on them all the time, including this past weekend. My friend says "Nice sunglasses, Helen!" I say "Thanks!" This time it was in English.So here we are. June of 2018. I've had the lenses swapped a few times but the frames keep going. I guess I was wrong about what kind of person I am.

Art: It’s me. All me.

Egg Drop

By: | June 25, 2018

This weekend my oldest son held two brown eggs in his hand. He cradled them gently. Then he threw one on the ground. It bounced, and he laughed. This one was rubber. The other egg he held was a real one.

I’ve never gotten used to the fake egg. Sometimes it appears in egg cartons. Other times, it’s lonely in the corner of the room. But mostly, it gets thrown. It’s the most realistic I’ve ever seen, the perfect oval, the exact mix of brown and a bit of pink. Continue reading →