Big Little Lions

The song of the day is Stories from the 2015 album A Little Frayed, A Little Torn by prolific songwriting duo Big Little Lions (Helen Austin & Paul Otten).

Morality Dream

I had an interesting dream this morning. In my dream, a young woman had a crush on me. She wasn’t particularly pretty, nor was she unattractive. I would call her “average looking.” I knew she was too young to be interested in a relationship with someone my age. Nevertheless, she was.

Let me hasten to add that this dream was not about sex. The female in my dream was just a young woman who wanted to be around me, to “hang out” with me. I knew she liked me and wanted more than just friendship, and I enjoyed her company, too. But at the same time, I knew I was being unfair to her, because a future relationship with her was not possible. I knew I was too old for her. That created a dilemma: do I tell her this friendship has to end now, or do I enjoy her company for a while longer?

My dream-friends told me to end it now. They said that letting something continue that ultimately could never be, would be unfair and hurtful to the woman. And my reply to them was can’t I let this continue for a little while? I like her company, and she likes my company. Do I have to end it now?

Some people might like to know which outcome I chose. But that was not the point of the dream. After all, my dream-friends who were telling me to end the friendship were nothing more than a part of me – what Freud called the super-ego, the moralizing part of the personality. And the part of me that wanted the friendship to continue for a while longer was what Freud called the id, the part of the personality that wants instant gratification. The dream was a debate between the id and the super-ego. And dreaming-me, the observer of the debate, was what Freud called the ego, the realist that mediates between the id and the super-ego.

My dream was a morality dream, as if something was saying to me: let me give you this situation and see how you respond. And I responded by admitting that something made me feel good and I would like more of it, while also acknowledging that having it would prove to be a mistake. For me, my choice mattered less than learning that I had a bit of wisdom about the matter. For me, the dream was about the difference between getting what one selfishly wants, and doing the right thing.

I’ve had many “junk dreams” where nothing is gained. Then along comes a dream that makes me think, if there are spiritual beings on “the other side,” perhaps, now and then, they test someone. Maybe, once in a while, they “plant” a situation into a dream to see how the dreamer will respond. It’s just a thought.

Tonight, I will probably go back to dreaming that I’m spending hours wandering through a maze of downtown city streets looking for my car, or a similar dream that is equally pointless. That kind of dream happens much too often.

The Sweet Potato Elucidation

I went to the grocery store to buy some items for dinner. One of the items was a sweet potato. I went to the self-checkout and started scanning my purchases. The sweet potato didn’t have a UPC sticker on it, so I had to type in the name. First I typed sweet potato, but the checkout machine said No result. Then I typed potato, and the machine displayed several choices such as Russet Potato and New Potato, but again, there was no sweet potato listed.

I was stumped for a few seconds, then I tried yam. Success! The checkout machine weighed the yam and sent the item name and price to the register tape. On the register tape, the yam was listed as sweet potato. Of course.

So what’s the deal with yams and sweet potatoes? Are they the same thing, or are they different? I decided to ask Google.

It turns out, they are not the same thing. Yams and sweet potatoes are not only not related, they don’t even have a lot in common. Furthermore, yams sold in U.S. grocery stores are almost never true yams. They’re simply a different variety of sweet potato. So why are they labeled yams?

It’s because of history. Broadly speaking, sweet potatoes come in two varieties called firm and soft. The firm sweet potato was the first to be produced in the U.S., and when the soft variety came along, grocers needed a way to distinguish it from the firm variety. They chose to label the soft variety yams. But they’re not yams, they’re sweet potatoes.

If you’re not confused yet, you should know that sometimes grocers will choose to label their yams as sweet potatoes, which is what they always were.

Orion

It’s still winter in central Virginia, just as it’s winter everywhere else north of the equator. You wouldn’t know it, though. It was 80° today. And for the next 10 days, the forecast is for highs in the 70s. I can hardly wait for spring and the warm weather it will bring (sarcasm). I do, however, dread the coming of summer, because if winter is 80°, how hot will this summer be?

It’s 9 PM and still comfortable as I lug a bag of kitchen garbage to the wheelie bin behind the garage. This bag weighs at least fifty pounds; what the heck did I put into it that is so heavy? Walking back to the house, I look up and notice the constellation Orion, The Hunter. The city’s light-polluted night sky makes it difficult to see constellations. When summer heat and humidity arrive, it will be even more difficult to see them.

But tonight, I stop and gaze at the sky. Orion’s Belt is the first thing I notice: the three stars Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Then the corner stars: supergiant Betelgeuse, noticeably reddish; giant Meissa, actually a double star; bright Rigel, a triple or quadruple system; and massive Saiph, only 6.2 million years old and destined to explode as a supernova.

South of Orion’s Belt is a faint streak called Orion’s sword. Through a telescope, one would see stars and nebulae, including M42, the Orion Nebula, and M43, a part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. When I was a kid, I was fascinated with the starry sky and bought astronomy books to learn about it. My life might have taken a different path – into astronomy instead of engineering. But that decision was made long ago, and now astronomy is only an interest rather than a vocation.

I brought my eyes down to the back door and stepped back into the house. I closed the door behind me and sat down at the computer. I decided to write a blog post. After a moment’s thought, I typed the title. Orion.

David Gray

The song of the day is The Other Side from the 2002 album A New Day at Midnight by English indie rock singer-songwriter David Gray.

The House

There’s a man named Lloyd Goddard who lives in my city. He lives in a house that has been in his family for four generations. The house was built in the late 1820s to early 1830s. During the Civil War, it was a camp for soldiers because of its strategic location. The house was located near a railroad line between Richmond and Petersburg and was less than a mile from a Confederate depot.

His family bought the house and surrounding 80 acres in 1910. They turned the land into a dairy farm. It was a dairy farm until the late 1950s, when Interstate 95 was built and the state needed the land. So the property was downsized to 7.5 acres, but the house remained standing.

Now the state wants to build a roundabout at a busy intersection near the house, and they’ve told Goddard they need the rest of his land and his house. The state will use eminent domain to seize Goddard’s property, and the house will be torn down. Goddard, 62, has lived in the house all his life. He says the state will take everything he owns.

A house that survived the Civil War and and a number of hurricanes will be demolished because it stands in the path of a road. That’s called progress. And, as Goddard said, “History doesn’t mean anything to progress.”