anamnesis

M is my favorite niece in Japan, and one of the kids' favorite cousins abroad when they were small (and probably still.) In March she quit her job, packed up with her husband, and moved to a small island among the hundreds or so which make up the Okinawan Prefecture. The Prefecture, in turn, is part of a larger chain called the Ryukyu islands stretching from the southwest of Japan to the northeast of Taiwan. Since then, we've been a little concerned about them. They went there with no jobs and no real exit strategy. The island they picked was beautiful, but you can drive *around* the *whole* thing in 2 hours. I certainly admired the approach. Picking a destination, then letting the details work themselves out, instead of building up toward a destination to reach someday. They had some savings, so first they were going to decompress from the rat race before becoming seriously concerned about survival. They were both fed up with the work and the pace in Japan and needed some ti...

Confession: I haven't actually tried this yet. It looks fantastic though, and I'm putting it here so a. I don't forget b. Someone else might try it first and let me know :-)

If you want to know why something is the way it is in this country, don't be fooled by rhetoric, the answer can usually be found in money. Did you know that medical profits and income make up one-sixth of our economy? Any time there is that big of a racket, the motives for keeping things status quo will be wrapped in distortions about how their only goal is to benefit _you_. After all, _you_ are the most important reason for why things are the way they are. (Your money, that is.) Thus the fear-mongering about socialized medicine and how bad it sucks in places like Canada. (BTW, I'm on a board with lots and lots of Canadians, and they are amazed and amused how easily Americans swallow propaganda which totally misrepresents Canadian health-care and satisfaction, just so we won't consider it a viable alternative. Ends justify the means I suppose) A Dr. Shadid in Oklahoma had an interesting model in 1929, his case is informative . And a pretty good argument why the free market...

I've got lots and lots of books. Probably 5000+. Seriously. Every room in the house has at least one bookshelf, usually many more. I have bookshelves in my garage, lining both walls. Even after my recent purge of books related to my office and older technology, which accounted for about 8-10 boxes worth going to recycling. So here's my plan. I finished working out the details last night. Storage bins that are stackable and weight-bearing. Labels and Sharpies. No rush, do a box a day or so, fill it with books. Enter just the title of the book in a program that will look up the rest of the details from amazon and fill it in, including an image of the book cover. Assign it a category or two and the storage bin number. Now, what I'll eventually have is a stack of storage bins with clearly visible labels. A program I can look up any book I have and know exactly where it is. Just the 100 or so books I'm actively reading, and the 100 or so reference books, will be out on my st...

The other day a sibling asked what I meant by "I had a productive day." It was a good question, and immediately brought to mind that we all probably think about that term differently. So I thought I'd wake up this afternoon by rambling a little about this. Being productive is only half the recipe. The other half of a *good* day, would be "enrichment." Of course, being more Spanish than German, it's not split down the middle. Enriching is the stuff like good conversation with good company, snuggling with a loved one, hugging family or trying the vulcan mind meld with a squirrel at the kitchen window. It's learning new stuff, trying new things. Sometimes it's just noticing old things in a new way. It can be just about anything, but its characteristic is a nice, uh... enriching feeling. Watching TV or doing anything that's become rote very seldom qualifies. Productivity is usually enriching, but enrichment does not have to be "productive."...

Well, following Sleepy Elf's lead but less exciting, our earthbox experiments this year are getting close to paying off. Here is the suspect line-up: From closest to furthest we have japanese cucumber, japanese eggplant, tomato (4th of July and Bigboy w/Basil for pest control), parsley and yellow squash. So far we've picked a cucumber and a couple of squashes, but the tomatos' days are numbered...

I encourage you intrepid Argonauts out there, wrestling with maintaining a daily fish oil regime, to check out this little graph: You can read the short article on wired here . But the cliff notes are: Guy decided to improve his mental processes by timing himself on a set of 100 random math problems every day. These were simple problems, like: 7 x 9 or 13 - 5. MRI studies have shown that just doing these type of problems daily, with time pressure, improves overall mental functioning . He improved a bit, but hit the typical training plateau after 90 days. Then he got curious about what effects fish oil might have. Looks like it started helping pretty quickly to break through the barrier and at 800mg of DHA the effects started really kicking in. More detailed background , if you're interested.

More and more I have come to admire resilience. Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side, it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true. But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs -- all this resinous, unretractable earth. ~ Jane Hirshfield ~ ( Given Sugar, Given Salt ) --- may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living whatever they sing is better than to know and if men should not hear them men are old may my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if it's sunday may i be wrong for whenever men are right they are not young and may myself do nothing usefully and love yourself so more than truly there's never been quite such a fool who could fail pulling all the sky over him with one smile ~ e.e. cummings ~ ( Complete Poems 1904-1962 )

The first true week of liberation from work-world duties has come and gone and I think I'm doing it wrong. I've re-organized, re-arranged, re-structured and to re-view I have a mind map of 9 areas of interest which expands out into 50+ or so items of activity or exploration. I've tried to freeze it, for at least a month, but it keeps growing. It has slowly dawned on me that to really put all this "freedom" to use, I need limits. It may not make logical sense, but I've been conversing with poets of late. I usually turn to them when I'm trying to figure stuff out and need insight. They tend to have some of the most subtle perception of conditions and the freshest ways of looking at things in new ways than any of the left-brain contingent (who excel more in how to do stuff once you've figured out what to do.) David Whyte is the man, in this regard. And one could do worse than spending a few days with his counsel in Midlife and the Great Unknown where he ...

8 trips escorting Ms. Dolly from the 3rd floor, down the elevator, through a maze to the loading docks and into the dumpster. 4-5 boxes per dolly load, filled 3/4rths of a dumpster with 23 years of accumulated files, folders, weird hardware, cables, manuals, proposals, research and software. Feels like a weight lifted from my shoulders. It's been a fun ride, but now I'm hopping off and fishing tickets out of my pocket, looking around at the other attractions. One look back at the ride I just got off ---for many years this was my view, facing north... Facing East, where birds would often land on top of those trees and cock their heads curiously to check out the strange dude in the glass cage... I brought bright-eyes in on the way and, of course, she's taking pictures of the clouds ;-) Click on 'em to zoom :-)