Choices

A fertility clinic in San Francisco had an equipment failure and 2,000 frozen eggs and embryos may have been compromised. Another fertility clinic in Cleveland had a similar failure that same weekend that compromised 4,000 eggs and embryos. Women who wanted a baby in later life may be out of luck. Naturally, lawsuits are pending. 

When I saw this on the news, I had an imaginary conversation with an imaginary wannabe future mom. “If you want to have a baby, better have it now,” I told her.

“But I want a career, too,” she replied. “I shouldn’t have to choose between a baby and a career.” 

“That’s what life is: choices. We make little choices and big choices all the time. Do I get pizza or hamburger for lunch? Choose wrong and you may get indigestion. Should I marry or not marry, should I choose this person or that person? Choose wrong and you could live a lifetime of regret. Life is a long series of choices.”

“But it’s not fair,” she said. “Those eggs were supposed to be there when I want a baby. Now they’re gone. I’ve lost my future child. Somebody has to pay.”

“I’m sure they will pay, but it’s only money. That is no substitute for a baby you can hold, a child of your own.” The imaginary conversation slowly faded and reality returned. 

As Aldous Huxley said in his 1932 novel Brave New World…
And as Mark Twain said in his 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn…
And as a cartoon in Punch said in 1846...
“You pays your money and you takes your choice.” 

Sometimes the wording is changed to “You pays yer money and you takes yer chances,” which is a variation that I favor. Life is choices, and choices entail risk. You may bet right, but you may bet wrong. So you’d best decide, before you bet, that if you can have only one outcome of the bet, which would you prefer it to be.

Vaccines

In the news here in the USA you may have heard of "anti-vaxers." They don't want to get a Covid shot because they "don't trust" the vaccine. Now if these anti-vax people were medical scientists, their distrust in the vaccine would give me pause. But they're not scientists, they're people who get their vaccine news from sources like far-right TV news and unknown people on the Internet. Those news sources are exactly who you shouldn't trust, because they're not medical scientists. 

I've gotten vaccines my whole life, starting with smallpox—a disease that used to be a scourge but is now extinct thanks to the vaccine. I got the Salk polio vaccine, and I got the Sabin polio vaccine. Polio was another scourge. Just look at an old photo of a room full of "iron lung" machines with a human head sticking out of each machine, their bodies lying paralyzed inside the "iron lung" machines.

I've gotten so many tetanus shots that I long ago lost count. I got my first shot at age six after I was walking home from school and a German Shepherd lying on a front porch jumped up and ran up to me and bit me. When I was 13 I got a paper route, and I was bitten by collies and German shepherds and mixed-breed dogs of various sizes. Never mind rabies; I don't think anyone even considered that disease, but a new tetanus shot awaited me after each dog bite. 

I get a flu shot every fall. I've had the flu and a bad case of flu is not a picnic. The last time I had flu I lay in bed with a high fever. I took off all my clothes, the better to cool down, and I lay on top of the sheets all night. The fever broke during the night, but the illness left me very weak. My mother had an expression, "weak as water." After that night of sweating out the flu, I understood what she meant. I was truly weak as water, and I've gotten a flu shot every fall after that. 

I had a vaccine shot for typhus and a vaccine shot for yellow fever. I've forgotten the names of all the vaccines I've had. So when the Covid vaccine became available, I wanted it. Covid is dangerous; it's a killer disease. Sure, you might live through it with only few symptoms, or you might struggle to breathe for days before dying alone in an ICU bed, but who wants to roll those dice?!

I've been vaccinated for pneumonia and for shingles. Some vaccines were free, and some required payment. The Covid shot is free, and I got two of them. If there's a booster, I'll be in line to get that, too. Thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands, have labored to make a Covid vaccine that is safe and effective, and the U.S. goverment is paying for them. Get the shot!

Unvaccinated people are playing a dangerous game that there's no need to play. There's no upside and there's only a downside. If you're unvaccinated and you get Covid, you may be one of the lucky ones with mild or no symptoms. But you may pass your Covid on to another unvaccinated person who dies. That person maybe be a father, the sole financial support for his family. Or that person may be a young mother raising her babies. The unvaccinated need to think less of their fears and more about the people they may kill.

When Covid was new, I thought vaccine shots should be up to the individual. But it has spread and evolved and has become very dangerous and may mutate into something even more dangerous if we don't stop it. So many people have gotten Covid and so many have died from it that I no longer think that any responsible person can make the decision to not get the shot. Not getting the shot is not unlike shooting a gun into the air and letting the bullet fall wherever it may. That bullet might kill someone and it might not. That's why the law forbids shooting into the air. 

The person who can safely get a Covid shot and refuses to do so may end up having blood on his hands, whether or not he knows about it.

Guanacaste Day

Today (it's late evening now) is/was Guanacaste Day in Costa Rica. On this day, Costa Ricans celebrate the annexation of the Partido de Nicoya to Costa Rica that occurred on July 25, 1824. You can read about the Annexation of Nicoya here and read about Guanacaste Day here. 

I'm not a history buff. History was my worst subject in school. I hated history. I thought it was deadly dull and boring. But judging from the photo, it appears that Costa Rica has some very pretty young women, and I'm in favor of that. Pretty young women are a great redeeming factor when you're celebrating a holiday for which most people are probably somewhat hazy about the details. I suggest Costa Ricans should also have street vendors selling Guaro. If Guaro is too sour for you, try a Chiliguaro or even just a beer. Beer in Spanish is cerveza. If you're going to be drinking cervezas, you'll need to know the Spanish word for bathroom, which is baño. That's pronounced bahn-yo. Just say baño and any Costa Rican will know what you mean.

It's time to say goodnight. I've done my daily Spanish language lesson, I've mowed my lawn and done a bit of trimming with the string trimmer until the string broke off inside the hub and I decided to come in and fix the string and finish the job tomorrow, weather permitting. Have a good day and I'll see you when I see you.

Boiler Job

A heating technician came to my house today to clean my hot-water boiler which heats the house in winter. The job took about 90 minutes, and I watched him work and we conversed. There came a point in the conversation where I pointed at the control box and told him that it had failed a few years earlier and I had to get a heating technician to replace it. He then told me that if the company he works for had replaced it, it would have cost me $950. I was incredulous. I told him that when I had it replaced, it cost me $90. The technician reiterated that their charge would have been $950 unless I purchased one of their service plans, in which case the device would have cost me $650.

"That's completely unreasonable!" I said. "As I just said, I paid ninety dollars for a new one, and the man who sold it to me made money on it. Nine hundred dollars is a rip-off." But the service guy stuck to his guns and insisted their price was really $950. He also told me I probably couldn't buy one because I'm not a contractor.

After the technician left, I went to my PC and looked up the part number for the control box. Amazon has them in stock and will sell me one for $85. Free shipping. They don't mention anything about my having to be a contractor. Frankly, I don't think you have to be a contractor to work on your own house. Be that as it may, I'm considering ordering one to have on hand in case the control unit suddenly fails during a cold winter and leaves my house without heat. They're very east to swap out. Just a few screws to remove, replace the unit, tighten the screws, and it's ready to go. It takes about a minute.

Imagine: a thousand dollars for a relay box that Amazon will sell you for eighty-five dollars! That is just incredible. Actually, the word chutzpah comes to mind. If you're not familiar with the Hebrew word chutzpah, it means a lot of nerve, a lot of audacity. The classic definition of chutzpa is, of course, this: Chutzpa is that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."

But the technician appeared to do an okay job. He vacuumed soot and ashes from inside the unit, replaced the oil nozzle and the inline oil filter, He spent ninety minutes servicing the boiler, for the low, low price of $472. I'm supposed to have the heating system serviced every year, but maybe I'll go two years and then look for someone else to service it. In fact, I might talk to the local gas company about replacing the oil-fired boiler with a gas-fired boiler. Energy cost would be lower and maintenance would probably be lower. Two can play this game.

Quotes

When I was a boy I delivered the morning paper. I used some of the money I made to create a coin collection. I'm much older now and I no longer collect coins. I'm still a collector, but now I collect wisdom. Some of it is priceless and yet, paradoxically, it has no price tag.

---

"The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine." —Sir James Jeans

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." —Albert Einstein

"You taught me, baby, how the few who win, acquire what their hearts' desire. It ain't practice, it ain't skill. They'll help, but not as much as wanting will."
—from the Broadway production Chess

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
 —T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
—Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

"In the book that is my memory, on the first page of that chapter that is the day I met you, appear the words 'Here begins a new life' ”.
—Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova

"We must rise above the millieu into which we were born. Sometimes, doing that requires more strength than we can summon at that moment. Nevertheless, we must try to always remember that becoming a better person is our ultimate task. It is a task we may choose to put off today, to forget about tomorrow, but it is a task that will always await us and which circumstance will eventually force us to confront."
—VirtualWayne

"We aren’t supposed to understand all of reality. Quantum physics tells us there are some things in our reality that are unknowable. They’re unknowable not because we don’t have the right instruments or because our knowledge is insufficient. They’re unknowable in principle. They’re unknowable because the Universe won’t let us have some kinds of information. They’re unknowable because that is the way our Universe is structured. Some kinds of knowledge, some kinds of information, really are, and always will be, beyond our grasp."
—VirtualWayne

"Human beings are biological robots – biobots. We believe a certain way and behave a certain way because we have been programmed to believe and behave that way. If you believe God is named Jehovah, it is because you have been programmed to believe that. If you believe God is named Allah, it is because you have been programmed to believe that. Biobots are extremely versatile and can be programmed and reprogrammed in an infinite variety of ways."
—VirtualWayne

Life would be no better than candlelight
tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were
not touched by what has been, to issues of
longing and constancy. 
—George Eliot, Middlemarch

"Everyone is at different stages of consciousness. There is a certain stage you reach where your intent is to only speak your truth, not convince others of it. You begin to realize that everyone has their own path. In other words, you cannot convince a baby to walk when it is at the stage of crawling. To convince them of that truth is irrelevant."
—Unknown

“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”
—Marcel Proust

“Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.”
—Marcel Proust

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
―Friedrich Nietzsche

"So we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too –
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out –
And take upon 's the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies...”
—William Shakespeare

"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."
―Aeschylus

Stages

Sometimes the jobs I've had have taken me to "big cities." Most of them I didn't care for. A few of them I liked. In particular, I enjoyed visiting Los Angeles, especially the coastal parts of LA like Santa Monica and Venice Beach and Redondo Beach. I enjoyed driving along the coast highway and visiting the old Spanish missions. But LA has changed a lot since those days, and I have a feeling that the door has closed on those kinds of adventures. I don't think I would enjoy them now. I think they would bring more trouble than pleasure.

But life comes in stages. The things you love now, you may find boring later in your life. So if you enjoy something now, then take it all in—enjoy it as much as you can. 

When we're young, we think we are going to live forever. We know better, but that's the way we feel. We see old people and can't imagine that once they were children; no, they've always been old. That's how I saw my grandparents when I was a youngster. They had always been old; they were born old and were never kids that grew up and witnessed the passage of years. Oh no, that was unimaginable. My grandfather had always worn a suit and tie with a vest and a brown fedora. He had never been a baby; he had never been young; he had always looked just as he looked to me at that time of my life. 

Each stage of my life seemed like it would last forever. I would always be a teenager; I would always be a twenty-something; I would always be a thirty-something. Sometimes I was foolish, but I didn't know I was foolish until years had passed. Intellectually, I knew that I would grow to a point that I might consider my "peak years" and then I would go downhill toward a different kind of childhood when once again I might need help and support from adults around me. That end was far away and out of my mind, but I knew it was waiting for me, as it waits for all of us.

I'm not at the end yet, but I'm close enough that I have no fear of it. I can see into its eyes, and I don't see the eyes of a tiger, but the eyes of a granddaughter I never had, the eyes of an angel that stood beside me when I was foolish. There were times I counted myself lucky when, instead, I should have thanked that angel.

I'll soon take a step into another stage of life. It feels familiar and it feels unfamiliar. I don't know when and where it will end. All I know is that life—existence—arrives in stages. Birth was not the first stage and death will not be the final stage. What came before is a mystery, and what comes after is a mystery. But I accept it. Acceptance brings peace. 

I wrote in a previous blog post that all my life I've felt like a train on a track, unable to change my destiny—my destination—by the smallest degree. I feel a wisdom greater than my own is in charge of my destiny. I don't know about that, it's just what I feel. Especially at night when I sit alone in the dark and think about my life and where I've been and where I might yet be. 

Stages. Is it just me, or does anyone else sometimes sit alone in the darkness and think back on the stages of their life and wonder what the next stage may bring? I think only those spirits who have seen many stages, many lifetimes, think such thoughts. As a wise woman once told me, "young spirits are too busy trying to get themselves out of jail." Life is a long journey: you get to be young and old and everything in between. And, just maybe, you get to do it over and over until you do it right.

Languages

"You can never understand one language until you understand at least two."
—Geoffrey Willans

I'm on my way. I practice Spanish every day with Duolingo and with my Spanish friend in Costa Rica. I practice about 20 to 25 hours per week and I'm on a 199 day streak. At this point I might be able to hold up my end of a conversation with a one year old Spanish child.

Why am I learning Spanish? Because I might want to visit south Florida one day. Have you heard those people in Miami? They all have strong Spanish accents. Some don't speak any English. I might be visiting Miami Beach and decide I want a cheeseburger. How would I order one? Knowing Spanish, I would ask for a "hamburguesa con queso"—a hamburger with cheese. And I might want to order a Diet Coke. In Spanish, that would be "Coca-Cola Light." Seriously.

But getting back to the quote by Mr. Willans (at the top of this post), I understand what he is saying. Languages are different, and it's not just that they use different words. You cannot substitute Spanish versions of English words into an English sentence and have a new Spanish sentence with correct grammar. Spanish grammar differs from English grammar. You might translate an English sentence word for word and end up with a perfectly okay Spanish sentence, or you might end up with a mess that a Spanish speaker wouldn't understand. It depends on what you're trying to say.

And what I'm trying to say is that learning another language isn't only about learning new words, it's also about learning a new way of using those words. Learning new words is a challenge to the memory, but learning to use them in a new language is a challenge to your way of thinking. The most frustrating thing for me is when I ask my Spanish friend, "Why can't I say it that way?" and she replies, "Because it's wrong." That's not telling me anything. I know it's wrong, I just want to know why it's wrong. Too often, there is no answer to why. It is a certain way because that is what Spanish people have learned from toddler to adult until it becomes automatic. "You say it this way." 

When people converse, they are exchanging thoughts. To exchange thoughts, humans create sounds. We've even learned how to express those thoughts as symbols. The sounds and symbols are what is called language. Certainly, thoughts influence language, but does language influence thoughts? I suspect it does, in some subtle ways. A good translator doesn't just convert words from one language to another language. I have a translator app on my phone that can do that much. A good human translator converts a thought in one language to the same thought in another language, and that is a much more difficult skill to master.

Election Circus

I have stayed away from the 2020 Election Circus: the Big Steal, the Big Lie, etc. All the news reports of fraud and and the court cases buzz around me like a swarm of June bugs. Most people have made up their minds one way or the other. A few people are open-minded, and it is to them that I write this short note.

I saw a GOP "big shot" on the TV news saying there was definitely fraud in the 2020 election. It's like listening to someone who swears Bigfoot is real. We've all probably seen video supposedly of Bigfoot, but there has never been proof that it was really Bigfoot. It might have been a man in a gorilla suit. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

More than 60 court cases have been filed claiming the election was stolen. Every one of them was dismissed for lack of evidence. The simple fact is that no one has any evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. Mistakes? Yes, a few, but not enough to overturn an election. Deliberate fraud? No. There's no evidence of it. Lots of people are talking about it, but there is no evidence. If someone does have evidence of fraud, it would be all over the news. It hasn't been, and it won't be.

If someone tells me the election was stolen, I tell them to show me the proof. Show me the evidence. Show it to me! That's my mantra now. Show me. Show me. Show me. But no one is showing me the evidence. No one is showing the courts the evidence. No one is showing the news media the evidence. All the proponents of the Big Steal theory talk about it as if it's real, but it's not real. It's just talk. It's hot air.

If you tell me Bigfoot is real, the burden of proof is on you. It's not up to me to prove you're wrong. If you claim there was election fraud, the burden of proof is on you. It's not up to anyone else to prove you're wrong. If you are a Believer but you can't prove you're right, then you should consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you're not right.

July Fourth

Today is the 4th of July. It is America's Independence Day. On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, setting the Colonies on a path to independence and a destiny apart from Great Britain.

There is a poem that I think is appropriate for July 4th. It is called "Let America Be America Again." It was written by a black man named Langston Hughes. The gist of the poem is this: for people around the world who live harsh lives, who live in poverty, who live in fear, who live in desperate situations, America is an idea that beckons them. America is also a place, also a country, but it is the idea of America that draws people from around the world. America itself was never the idea, yet people came because of the idea of America.

A 1630 sermon by a Puritan named John Winthrop is now famous for its proclamation that “we shall be as a city upon a hill.” The phrase "city on a hill" has persisted in American culture and has been used by several presidents. The version most Americans remember today is Ronald Reagan's "shining city on a hill." The shining city was never a place you could step foot into. It was an idea. It was a destiny. It was a call from the Divine and a reminder that, as was stated by Luke in the New Testament, "To whom much is given, much will be required." America has been blessed, but much has been required of her as well.

When Langston Hughes wrote "Let America Be America Again, Let it be the dream it used to be"; when he wrote "The land that has never been yet—and yet must be—," I think he had in mind the city on a hill and the inspiration in knowing there must a place where Good and Evil will struggle but Good, in the stretch of time, will prevail.

Full poem: Let America Be America Again

Flying to Saba

In the Caribbean Sea, east of the Virgin Islands, south of Anguilla, and northeast of St. Kitts and Nevis, there is a speck of land called Saba. The island consists mostly of a volcano called Mount Scenery. There is a medical school on the island: the Saba University School of Medicine.

On the northeast corner of Saba is the Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport. This airport has the shortest commercial runway in the world. The runway is 400 meters long with cliffs that drop into the sea at both ends. (Nimitz-class aircraft carriers have flight decks 333 meters long, but they also have steam catapults for launching planes and arrestor wires for landing planes.)

I've had jobs that required me to fly on a variety of airplanes. One of those airplanes was the "de Havilland Twin Otter." It is a high-wing, twin-engine, propeller plane. The Twin Otters I flew on had 18 seats, 9 on each side of the plane with a center aisle. Wikipedia says they have 19 seats now. Maybe I am mis-remembering. It has been a long time since I flew on a Twin Otter.

The predecessor of the Twin Otter was the de Havilland Otter. It was a high-wing, single-engine, propeller plane. 

Here is what Wikipedia says about the Twin Otter:

The Twin Otter has been popular with commercial skydiving operations. It can carry up to 22 skydivers to over 17,000 ft (a large load compared to most other aircraft in the industry); presently, the Twin Otter is used in skydiving operations in many countries. The United States Air Force operates three Twin Otters for the United States Air Force Academy's skydiving team.

On 26 April 2001, the first ever air rescue during polar winter from the South Pole occurred with a ski-equipped Twin Otter operated by Kenn Borek Air.

I liked the Twin Otter. It flew much lower than the big jets. If I'm just "guesstimating" (peering down from the airplane's window) I would say the airplane flies at around 1000 feet when flying a short hop from a large airport to a small airport (or vice versa).

Now, back to Saba with its 400-meter runway with cliffs at each end. What kind of passenger plane do you think would attempt to operate on such a short runway? That would be a Twin Otter, of course.

Here is a de Havilland Twin Otter landing on and taking off from Saba’s runway.

Here is the view from inside the plane: