In A Jamb

It's just after the noon hour on Friday. Yesterday, around 3PM, I opened the front door to leave the house, and when I opened the storm door, the door closer broke. Specifically, the thing that broke was the bracket that attaches the door closer to the door jamb. Just to keep things simple, let's say that there are two ways to mount the jamb bracket to the door jamb, and let's call those two ways "horizontal" and "vertical." This will be significant.

I went to the basement to get my tools. I drove to Home Depot and I bought another door jamb bracket and six 4-inch long Phillips head screws. Back home, I scrounged for my electric drill, and a 1/8 inch drill bit, and a Phillips screwdriver, and a Phillips screwdriver bit to mount in the drill chuck. I drilled six deep holes in the door jamb for the new bracket. I got the bracket mounted in a vertical position, which is how the old bracket was mounted to the old door closer. Now I only had to attach one end of the door closer to the bracket and the other end to the door. This was a struggle—a struggle the door closer lost. The end of the closer broke off. It looked like it was made of black rubber, but it was not. It was black iron or steel, about 3/8 inch square, and I can't imagine how I was able to break it. I guess it had been weakened by years of use. I drove back to Home Depot and bought a pneumatic door closer (that's the long round cylinder) and I returned home.

I was already very tired, so I quit for the evening. I had spent 4 hours working on it. I resumed work the next day. 

Looking at the instructions, I could see that this new door closer required the door jamb bracket to be mounted in a horizontal position. This meant removing the six long screws, rotating the bracket by ninety degrees, drilling six new screw holes, and then installing the screws.

After two hours, I finished mounting the jamb bracket and the new door closer and all was good. Total time, six hours. That seems like a long time for such a repair, and it is, but it was the first time I had done such a thing, so I was learning as I went. Plus, two trips to Home Depot are included in the six hours.

But before I worked on the door closer this morning, I had to handle a piece of mail. It was a late notice that stated I hadn't paid my water bill and my water would be turned off in five days. The notice said to not pay by bank check, because it would take too long. The City has an online payment system, but I couldn't get it to work. So I had to drive to City Hall to pay the bill. I hadn't received the original bill, probably due to the new mail delivery person who I am sure delivers some of my mail to other addresses. I know this because she delivers other people's mail to my mailbox. Usually I just walk their mail across the street or next door or wherever their house is, but I don't think, when they get my mail, they return the courtesy. I think they toss my mail into the trash.

So I paid the water bill, and I told them that, in the future, I'd like them to email my water bill to me. And I told them about being unable to get their online bill pay system to work for me. They responded, "Oh, that doesn't work."

I momentarily wondered, if the online bill pay doesn't work, why do they keep it on their website? But I didn't ask them. They're government employees. They're supposed to do things that don't make sense. It's part of their job description.

Spanish Journey

I've been studying Spanish on Duolingo for 497 consecutive days. But I think that streak is about to end. I'll go to 500, then I'm going to call it a day. Or 500 days. Have I learned anything? Definitely. What have I learned? I learned that the time for me to learn Spanish is long past. 

My friend Ralph who lived in Costa Rica learned enough Spanish to get around and get business done. He could say to the Uber driver "right" (derecha), "left" (izquierda), or "straight" (recto) in Spanish, which was helpful. Derecho (not derecha) also means straight, which I think is unnecessarily confusing.

Present tense Spanish is fairly easy. Okay, it's not always easy, but it's do-able. But then you get into past tense and future tense. This causes confusion. Then, just when you think you have a handle on those three tenses, they hit you with subjunctive. It's impossible to learn the subjunctive tense because they make up the rules as they go. In fact, I think all the grammar rules in Spanish are made up on-the-fly. Maybe I could have learned Spanish when I was much younger. I don't know.

And when four tenses give me difficulty, imagine my dismay to learn that Spanish has 14 tenses.

I won't say I've wasted my time. Though I can speak only rudimentary Spanish, I'm somewhat better at reading Spanish. Translating English to Spanish is difficult for me because I often can't think of the Spanish words I need to use, but reading Spanish is easier because when I'm presented with Spanish words I'm often able to recall their English equivalents. If I see "herramienta" I know it means "tool," but if you give me the word "tool" and tell me to say it in Spanish, forget it. "Herramienta" does not pop into my head.

Another problem with Duolingo is that it's buggy. Sometimes you work hard to make points and then the web page hangs and when you finally close and reopen it, the points you just earned are gone. That's disheartening. 

I don't plan to quit Spanish entirely. I plan to quit Duolingo. There are other programs that teach Spanish. One that is #1 recommended is +Babbel.  The #2 recommended language learning program is Pimsleur. I plan to look at those two programs and see which one is best suited to my learning style. I'd like to find a system that lets me learn at my own pace. Duolingo "pushes" me to keep up with the other learners in each new weekly group, and it pushes me to put in more time than I want to put into learning new words. Sometimes, I would just like to go over the words I've already learned more than Duolingo lets me do.

So that's what is on my agenda now, language-wise. 

Oh, and for readers who wonder why this old man is learning Spanish—it's because I have a ladyfriend named Nuria who hails from Costa Rica and I'd like for her to be able to hear her native tongue now and then, even if only a little.

Consequences

I've been around a long time, as some of my readers know. I've seen America change in a lot of ways. I can't speak of other countries that I haven't seen, but I suspect they've changed, too.

These changes take many forms, but one example that is quite obvious to me and many older Americans is that, to put it bluntly, people are getting dumber. People in Congress are a lot dumber than the Congresspersons of my younger years. I once had a cop tell me, "People are getting dumber and dumber."

Passengers fight on passenger jets. People shoot up their streets and workplaces. People walk into a store and shoot customers they don't know. And so on. I'm tempted to say, "For no reason." But, there is a reason. There is always a reason.

Many years ago I read about an experiment that scientists performed on rats. Scientists put a small number of rats into a very large cage. The rats had plenty of room and were friendly with each other. But the population of rats grew without restraint, and the cage became crowded. As the rats became more crowded, they became more aggressive. They began attacking each other for "no reason," rather like some people who are trapped in crowded, inner-city environments with no escape. Violence goes up. Compassion goes down.

But what about people getting dumber? Is that true? Yes, it is. Worldwide, many decades of IQ tests prove that people are getting dumber. There's a reason. The reason is "tetraethyl lead."

Tetraethyl lead was added to gasoline beginning in 1922 to help engines run better. But lead is poisonous. Exposure can cause severe neurological damage, something that was known the entire time that leaded gasoline was in use.

Lead takes the place of calcium in the body. It gets into bones, nerves, and the brain. Falling IQ scores correlate with increased usage of leaded gasoline over the decades. We're getting dumber and we (as a species) did it to ourselves. When lead gets into our bodies, it is extremely difficult to remove. A process called chelation can remove some of it, but chelation comes with its own dangers. In children, chelation therapy can cause serious complications including permanent kidney damage or even death. The treatment is often reserved for only those children with very high lead levels. The person with lead poisoning is permanently damaged.

We've polluted our land and oceans, and we're still polluting them. We've turned Eden into a Dystopia, and now we are living in it. From overcrowding our habitable places to poisoning our planet, human activity is among the biggest disasters to hit Earth. Quoting Wikipedia,

"The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (with the more recent time sometimes called Anthropocene) as a result of human activity." 

And now, Earth is hitting back. Today's humans are more dumb, more aggressive, and more sick, in more ways, than their ancestors. It is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Incidentally, there is an article about the history of tetraethyl lead on the YouTube channel Veritasium. Quoting Veritasium, "One scientist caused two environmental disasters and the deaths of millions." It's a story worth knowing. The title of the video is "The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History." You can watch the video here.

Cell Situation

My trusty cellphone that I've been using for six years developed a problem. I couldn't make or receive phone calls, and that's a rather big problem for a phone. I got on tech support with my phone company and I spent hours following their instructions: do this, try that, etc. But nothing helped. I had to change a lot of settings on the phone, and type in many lines of what I can only describe as ancient Greek, or possibly Klingon. But nothing helped. Tech support was unable to get the phone working, so I ordered a new phone.

But unfortunately, they sent me two phones and billed my credit card twice. I got it straightened out after several calls to tech support and a trip to a Fedex drop-off location to return the second phone. But hours were wasted.

So now I have my new phone and my old phone. At this point, I had not installed the SIM card into the new phone, so I decided to experiment with the old phone. Tech support couldn't fix it, but maybe...

I removed the phone's battery and re-installed the battery. I tried making a call. I was successful. Using another phone, I called my phone. No luck, it still wouldn't receive calls, but that may have been due to all the twiddling with the phone settings that tech support had me do.

I installed the new SIM card into the new phone and configured the phone and it worked. Then I realized that I should've kept the old phone. It was perfect: I could make calls, but no one could call me. But I kept the new phone, and the old phone no longer works except to browse the internet. 

The new phone hassles me with unwanted calls from numbers I don't recognize and voices that sternly warn me that I'm in trouble with the FBI and I should press "1" immediately...etc. I get a lot of texts from females that say, simply, "Hi." Behind that greeting is a criminal, probably in India (why do they always sound Indian?) fishing for an American all-day sucker. 

My partner Nuria thoughtfully gave me a case for the phone. I won't bore you with the number of times I put the case on, then took it off to make the phone work, put the case on, took it off, put it on, etc. A more reasonable person would have sent the case back for a refund. But my experiences with getting a refund for something that doesn't work, especially if it's cheap, is—it (getting a refund) usually doesn't work, either. 

And so it goes.

Fallen Beings

WorldAtlas says: "Humans and their ancestors have been walking the planet for about 6 million years. Homo sapiens, who are the modern form of humans, evolved 300,000 years ago from Homo erectus."

UniverseToday says: "While our ancestors have been around for about six million years, the modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old, and industrialization started in earnest only in the 1800s."

But then, humans became a little too clever. The world's first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945, at a site located 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the barren plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto. Upon witnessing the explosion, J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called The Father of the Atomic Bomb, recalled a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, in which Vishnu says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Today is April 9, 2022, meaning the first atomic bomb was exploded 76 years ago. Only 76 years ago. And already, the dictator of a nuclear state is rattling the nuclear sword, threatening Armageddon if he cannot have his way and conquer his peaceful neighbors in brutal fashion while committing horrific war crimes in the process.

Can anyone think that we humans will not, one day, destroy our present civilization? It may take millennia, but we will rise again, and our far-removed descendants will find, here and there, the remains of our civilization and wonder who built it. They will eventually discover the artifacts we left behind on the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Saturn's moon Titan, and they will wonder how we primitive humans were able to extend our reach to other planets. It will be as big a mystery to them as this mystery is to us: the mystery of how ancient Egyptians and Incas carved and transported huge stone blocks using tools wholly unsuited to such tasks.

Perhaps those humans living many thousands of years in the future will avoid another holocaust. Perhaps they will evolve into a more peaceful species and find a way to avoid obliterating their civilization. But as for us? I would give the odds of survival for our current civilization as being fifty-fifty at best, and I think I'm being an optimist. I would love to be wrong, but I've seen too much of "Man's inhumanity to man," a phrase, incidentally, that was first written by Robert Burns in 1784 in a poem titled Man was made to mourn: A Dirge. Burns may have reworded a similar quote from Samuel von Pufendorf, who in 1673 wrote, "More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature's causes." 

How can one be an optimist in the presence of so much evidence of human evil? But at least, knowledge is power, and knowing we are a fallen species is a reason to try to be better humans: a more loving, more understanding, more wise, more valuing kind of human. We may have an uphill battle, but our future is in our hands. I'm sure many people will deny that a serious problem exists, but we cannot correct a problem until we admit we have a problem.

Getting Busy

With Nuria living with me, my personal time has taken a hit. For example, this week I took her to a bank to open an account, and that should be simple, right?

Why does she need an account? Because she wants a Virginia ID. That is part of establishing who she is so that she can do other things. To obtain a Virginia ID, you must go to the Virginia DMV and submit various paperwork, including:

One proof of identity (she has her birth certificate)

One proof of legal presence (she has her passport)

Two proofs of Virginia residency (she can't use a phone bill)

One proof of your social security number (she has her SS card)

Proof of name change if your name appears differently on your proof documents (her birth certificate, her marriage certificate, and her husband's death certificate)

For proof of Virginia residency we decided to open a bank account. So on Monday we went to my bank. After the banker found out she has a social security number, things went more smoothly and the process only took an hour. Maybe 90 minutes. The copy machine broke down. The initial deposit was more than she expected, so I had to leave the bank and drive to an ATM, despite the fact that I'm a customer of that bank.

There was a lot of paperwork, and she needed the one document that showed her Virginia address (my address), but guess what... the banker forgot to give it to her. He does not respond to my emails nor to her emails. So we'll have to go back to the bank, perhaps tomorrow.

Yesterday Nuria decided she wanted to make a flower garden in the front yard. I drove her to a florist and we looked at their wares. I learned something there. There are basically two kinds of flowering plants, called annual and perennial. That much I knew. But annual plants, which die at the end of fall, bloom during spring, summer, and fall, whereas perennial plants, which live year after year, bloom only for a few weeks in early spring. After those few weeks, the flowers disappear until next year. It was interesting but we were in shopping mode, not buying mode.

Then we drove to Walmart. Then we drove to Home Depot. We decided to buy plants from Home Depot, and Nuria created her flower garden. I gave her a few old bricks I had, and when we go to the store again we'll get something more suitable to surround the flowers.

This flower garden is an experiment. Neither of us has created an outdoor flower garden before this one, so we're both in the process of learning. For example, I've learned that flowers are expensive.

The dark flowers in the center of the circle are called Heuchera, and they're annual plants. We bought a hybrid called Evening Gown. I don't know if it's the afternoon sun or the color of the leaves, but the photo does not do the plants justice—they're very pretty. The colorful flowers around the Heuchera are Begonias, and they're perennial plants. 

Today's weather forecast calls for rain, so we got them in the ground just in time. After today's April showers, and maybe tomorrow's, we'll have sunny days for a while.

In further news, Nuria and I began a morning vegetable juice regimen. I have a juicer, and on our last trip to Sam's Club we bought carrots, celery, seedless cucumbers, apples and black seedless grapes. I juiced enough for both of us for two days. The juice drink was out-of-this world delicious. Really. I hope it's as healthy as it is tasty. I'll look for some other juice recipes. Gettin' healthy, y'all!

After the juice, we ate breakfast (prepared by Nuria): gallo pinto, eggs, and link sausage. 

Gotta go now, it's almost lunchtime. I've been making sandwiches for lunch. Sometimes BBQ sandwiches with coleslaw. Sometimes sliced ham or turkey on whole wheat or whole grain bread.

Nuria makes dinner for us, on those evenings when I don't defrost a frozen meal. Last night, dinner was spaghetti topped with homemade sauce, and a salad. All good. 

You have a great day!

Insurrection

On the evening of 7 April 1775, Samuel Johnson uttered a now-famous apothegm: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." The line was not about real and generous love of country, but rather what Johnson saw as the false use of the term "patriotism": that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.

What triggered that memory was seeing again on TV news so many people waving (and wearing) the American flag as they stormed the U.S. Capitol with the intent of hunting members of Congress. Holding zip-tie handcuffs and models of gallows, their murderous intent was clear. 

Yet if they wanted to change Congress, they already had the power to do it: the vote.  If they had more votes than those they opposed, then Congressional power would swing their way. That is the way our system works. But they knew they were a minority, so they could change our government only by subverting our democracy and toppling—or murdering—the elected Congress.

They draped themselves in American flags while brandishing firearms, planting bombs, and hunting for lawmakers. What happened that day was nothing less than a failed coup d'état. Wikipedia described it thusly:

After Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, then-incumbent Donald Trump pursued an aggressive and unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support and assistance from his campaign, his proxies, his political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the 2021 United States Capitol attack, which was widely described as an attempted coup d'état. 

Thus, Trump—the man who so often wrapped himself in the flag, literally—also promoted an overthrow of our democracy. History is filled with coups d'état but this was the first coup attempted in America. Our country has come to a sad state of affairs when Americans who have the power of the vote decide that violence is a better way to change government.

Many of the insurrectionists admitted that they don't vote. For them, storming the Capitol was like beating your car with a hammer because it won't start, when you haven't even put the car key into the ignition lock. It makes no sense. And these fomenters, these demagogues (there are worse names for them) have for the most part been given light sentences, sometimes only house arrest.  

Fifteen months have passed since that Black Day and the unraveling of plots is not over yet. It is maybe, maybe, half over. For many of the rowdies who wanted to overthrow our government, the worst may yet be on its way.

News From The Heights

Nuria, my lady friend from Costa Rica, has been at my home for five days. It is now the morning of day six. With a woman in the house, my spare time seems to have evaporated. It's almost 3AM as I am writing this. Nuria is sleeping.

I drove to the Richmond airport to meet her on Monday morning. I kept my speed at or under 75mph, and still there were cars passing me like I was parked. I estimate some of them were going 100mph, easily. 

She had two suitcases. One of them was new, having been used one time, and she paid over one hundred dollars for it. It had (past tense) four wheels on the bottom, like most luggage you see at airports. But after her flight from Costa Rica to Richmond, one of the wheels was missing. So was the corner of the suitcase to which the wheel had been attached. There was now a big hole in her suitcase. She didn't have insurance on it.

← Note the missing wheel and the hole in the upper left of the photo. This is what happens when baggage handlers get their paws on your nice, new luggage. It appears someone threw it from the cargo hold down onto the tarmac. Good work, guys. Very professional. 

The luggage was the only bump in the flight, however. Everything else was as expected. The flights departed on time and arrived at their destinations on time. 

[Time is now: 1PM. And no, I have not been writing for ten hours.]

It is early April, but the temperature is still chilly.  It is a sunny day but the temperature is 54°F with a little bit of wind. I had a sudden impulse to mow the yard yesterday, so I gassed up the lawn tractor and went to work. As I was mowing, Nuria joined me with the leaf blower and started her own yard improvement. (Elsewhere in the world, a yard is usually called a garden.)

On Thursday, I had a routine visit with Dr. Laura, my dermatologist. She found a skin cancer on my back and she cut it out. The bandage has to be changed daily for the next ten days, and the wound must be cleaned and a little Vaseline applied to it before the new bandage goes on. Nuria is handling that. She arrived just in time. A similar event happened on her last visit. It wasn't cancer on my skin, but it was something that required treatment and it was on my back where I couldn't see or reach it. She handled that, too—three times a day for a month. It's like God is saying, "I told you that you need this woman in your life!" All I can say is, "I get it, God. Don't send me any more misery, please."

Nuria's next project appears to be a decoration of flowers in my front yard. There is an old well in my yard. (My yard was once part of a plantation in Civil War days. It was called Lyons Plantation. That's why the well is there.)  The well has been filled in with sand, but over the years the sand has compacted and now there is a depression in the yard. It seems to be a perfect place to add topsoil and make a flower garden (maybe marigolds) around the perimeter and some taller plants in the center. I've told Nuria that I hate having to mow around things, but it's going to be her home now, as well as mine, and I think she's entitled to dress it up the way she likes. She already has a bouquet hanging on the outside of the front door. I have a feeling she's just getting started.

So that's how my week has been going. Trips to Walmart, Food Lion, the doctor, etc. Nuria walks every morning for about an hour. She wants to rope me into walking with her, but I know won't keep up with her. I'd like to—I used to go for a walk every day, and I've blogged about that. But with the passage of time, my joints have become a little creaky. I've begun drinking Joint Juice every morning to see if that helps. I have a friend who swears by it. So Nuria and I each bought a case of 30 bottles to try it for a month.

At the end of each of his radio shows, A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor used to say, "That's the news from Lake Wobegon." Maybe I should do the same, and use my town's nickname. And that's the news from the Heights. Nope, it doesn't have the same ring to it—more like a dull thud. Hopefully, I'll be able to work in some interesting blogs amongst the news from the Heights.