Titan, the Sub

The Titan submersible has been in the news lately. That's the submersible that was descending to the Titanic wreck and was crushed by the pressure of the ocean. All five persons inside Titan were killed instantly. So what, exactly, do I mean by instantly?

Did the passengers on Titan have any awareness of what was happening?

No, not at all.

The body surface area (BSA) of an average adult male is 22.173 square feet. That is 3193 square inches. Let's round it to 3000. The water pressure at the depth of Titanic is 6000 pounds per square inch (psi). Therefore, the total pressure on a human body at the depth of Titanic would be about 6000 x 3000 or about 18 million pounds, equal to 9000 US tons. 

Titan is believed to have imploded at 13,000 feet below sea level. The water pressure at that depth would be 13/19 of Titanic pressure, or 4100 psi. The crush force on a body would be the psi multiplied by body area, which is 4100 x 3000 = 12.3 million psi, or about 6000 US tons.

Your body would be obliterated in one millisecond. It takes about 15 milliseconds (or longer) for the human brain to recognize a nerve impulse. Your body and brain would be gone long before your brain could know that anything unusual was happening.

It's like sitting on an atomic bomb when it explodes. You don't have time to say, "Ow!" You just disappear.

Anthony Johnson

As I write this, the date is June 19, 2023. It is a holiday called Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day. Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. The celebration brings to my mind the story of Anthony Johnson.

Anthony Johnson was a slave owner and became a wealthy man by growing tobacco in the colony of Virginia. But here's the twist in the story: Anthony Johnson was a black man, born in Angola and sold into the Atlantic slave trade. He sailed to Virginia in 1621. There were no slavery laws in Virginia until 1661 and so he worked as an indentured servant. He earned his freedom after a number of years of working in the tobacco fields. Typically, an indentured servant worked for four to seven years. (Note: one of my ancestors, a man named William Dawson who was born in England in 1599, came to Virginia as an indentured servant.)

According to Wikipedia, Anthony Johnson 

"...later became a tobacco farmer in Maryland. He attained great wealth after completing his term as an indentured servant, and has been referred to as 'the black patriarch' of the first community of Negro property owners in America".

You can read about him on Wikipedia here. 

I say, "Good for him." Johnson was obviously intelligent and a hard worker. He probably lived longer and almost certainly gained greater wealth in the Virginia colony than if he had remained in Africa. I am not, of course, implying that his fate justified his capture and servitude. But evil intentions can sometimes produce a good outcome in an unexpected way. I wonder if Anthony Johnson, on his deathbed, would have preferred to have lived his life and died in Africa. The New World, especially in those early days, really was a land of opportunity for those with the courage and strength to seize it.

The Storm

I've lived in my house a long time. Yesterday afternoon, my city went through one of the worst thunderstorms I've ever seen. I've been through hurricanes. I've been through tropical storms. But this was a thunderstorm and it took down limbs and trees all over the neighborhood. Some of those limbs landed on cars and trucks parked on the street.  

The rain was so intense, I couldn't see the houses on the other side of my street. Rain and hail rattled the windows like rocks thrown at them.  I was expecting the hail to break one or two of the windows, but they held up.  The electricity went off, of course. It stayed off for hours and came back on as darkness fell. This morning, Nuria and I walked around the neighborhood. It's a mess. I took photos, of course.

The first thing Nuria found in our yard was a half-dead little bird. She brought it into the house to show me. It was alive, barely, when she picked it up, but it died in her hand. It was probably scared to death.

There's a sidewalk—somewhere under there.

And that was a walk around the park in my little city.

Listen to the Nurses

I went to my cardiologist (heart doctor) this week. He prescribes medications for my heart. I have atrial fibrillation (a-fib) which causes my heart to race to the point that it makes me breathless. The medications I take slow it down and keeps it beating slow and steady. Of course, at those times when my body needs my heart to beat fast, my heart can't beat much faster, so it can leave me breathless and having to slow my activity or stop for a break. But nothing's perfect.

Last year, the doctor prescribed a potent blood thinner for me to take every day. The a-fib can cause a blood clot that can travel to my brain and cause a stroke. The blood thinner is supposed to prevent that. Of course, taking the blood thinner has its own downside. For example, if I have a hemorrhagic stroke (a brain bleed) I can bleed to death before an ER doctor can administer the antidote to the blood thinner. That was the cause of death for that great fiddle player, Charlie Daniels.

I haven't taken the blood thinner. At this week's appointment, the doc asked me if I was taking it and I told him I was not. He asked why I wasn't taking it, and though my reasons were multiple and would take a while to explain, I summed them all up with one statement. I looked him in the eye and I said, "I'm not afraid to die."

Then the doctor did something I had not expected: he smiled and stuck out his hand and we shook hands. I suppose the handshake was the doctor's way of saying several things that would also take a while to explain. He didn't say anything more about the blood thinner, although he did leave it in his list of recommended medications for me. That made sense. He does, after all, have to think about lawsuits and what constitutes "proper medical advice" for his patients. In other words, he has to "cover his ass."  All doctors must do that.

If you're ever diagnosed with a terminal disease, the worst advice you may receive is to remain in the hospital because you've been told that if you do you'll live six months, whereas if you go home you'll live only one month. You can choose six months in a hospital bed with IV tubes, bedpans, and all the other misery that comes with being an invalid, versus a month in your living room, watching your big-screen TV, listening to your music, and having your friends and family stop in for visits. (They would visit you in the hospital, too, but it's neither an inviting nor a comfortable setting, so you might see less of them.)

My advice: If you find yourself in the hospital having to make a decision about staying or going home, don't listen to the doctors. Rather, listen to the nurses. They've seen it all.

Another Sleepless Night

It's 1:20AM. It's very quiet except for the tinnitus that's always in my head. 

Nuria and I were in bed but I woke up and couldn't return to sleep, so I got up. That happens often. In fact, it happens almost every night.

I reflect now on my life. Parts of it have been a private hell. I didn't go to war, like some of my friends. I didn't start and struggle to run a business, like some of my friends. I did seem to hang on to my sanity with my fingertips for years, and I saw a lot of psychotherapists who could not help me. I did suffer in silence countless times. I tried to look normal but on the inside I felt anything but normal. 

There was Connie, who had her own problems not unlike mine. Maybe like attracts like. She was eight years older than me. The last time we talked, she called me and I answered with the little flip phone I used at the time. As we talked, the phone signal dropped out. I couldn't call her back because she didn't have a phone in her room. (She was in one of those places people are put when they can't live on their own any longer.) But a minute later, the phone rang again and it was Connie. She yelled at me, "Never hang up on me again"—and then she hung up on me. I couldn't call her back. A year later I found out that she had passed away. 

I could measure my life by the number and type of therapists who have treated me. There was a therapist in Burlington, NC, that I saw weekly for two years. There was a therapist in Richmond, VA, that I went to only twice. He was a hypnotherapist but he couldn't hypnotize me. There was another therapist in Richmond who practiced progressive desensitization. I went through a series of sessions with him twice, but none of it helped me.

There was another hypnotherapist in Roanoke, VA, that I saw for a while. He specialized in regressing patients through past lives. But he couldn't hypnotize me deeply enough for it to work. 

I went to an Indian doctor in Roanoke for a year or two. He couldn't help me. 

One day I read about a medication—a class of antidepressants called SSRI—that, as a side effect, could help treat the condition I had, which, by the way, is called panic disorder. I blogged about it here in 2016.

Somehow after going through all this, I ended up with a woman who cares for me and puts up with my quirks. She just had a birthday yesterday. I ordered a cake from Publix. It's the best-tasting birthday cake I've ever tasted. I customized it—I chose the flavors and colors of the various parts of the cake. If you put a gun to my head, I don't think I could order a duplicate of this cake, because there were so many options to customize. But it really was a tasty cake.

And of course I bought her flowers. And I suggested that we go to the mall and shop for something else she would like, but she declined.

Mother's Day was three weeks ago and Nuria has three grown daughters, but I knew they wouldn't send her anything special, because in Costa Rica where her family lives, El Día de la Madre is held on August 15th. So I bought Nuria this Russian Ring necklace with her daughters' names engraved on the rings.

I feel I need to do more, but I always feel that way, no matter what I do, so I'm never sure if I've fallen short or whether I just feel I have.

It's 2:45AM now and this blog post has wandered all over the place. Maybe it turns out that I really had nothing important to write about, after all.

I'll call it a night and rejoin Nuria in bed. She says my typing keeps her awake. But I have to write when the "inspiration" is there, such as it is. Goodnight, everyone. Or, goodnight to all three of you. Or to both of you. Or, goodnight to you who are reading these words at 3AM. I'm sorry to know you can't sleep either.

Bedtime Thoughts

I went to the dentist this week. I went once in January,  twice in March, thrice in April, once in May, and I have two more visits scheduled, but there will be still more before year's end. This week's visit was for a temporary crown, and in June I'll go back in for the permanent crown. Then I have one or two more fillings and another crown awaiting me. Fun times. When I was a teenager, my younger brother, Ken, took note of how often I got fillings at the dentist and one day he remarked, "Your teeth are as hard as mashed potatoes." Sorry, but life is a roll of the dice. Or should I say, "a roll of the DNA."

My friend Butch who was recently in the hospital has decided to sell his house and move in with his daughter. I'll be sorry to see him leave the neighborhood, but he knows what is best for his life, so I'm sure he's making the right decision. It will be one of those turning points we all have in our lives. Someone said, "Turning points contain a message from yourself to yourself." This turning point for Butch also sends a message to me. Fortunately for me, I have Nuria, and together we are stronger than we would be living separate lives. I've been single for many years, but right now, just when I begin to need a little help, Providence has sent someone into my life—and I into her life. Deepak Choprah said, "There are no accidents... there is only some purpose that we haven't yet understood." Sigmund Freud said, "There are no accidents and no coincidences. Nothing comes out of the blue." The older I become, the more I understand. Maybe that's because some part of me, some part of my soul, has always been old. And yet I still have so much to learn. I feel both parts of me, the mature and the immature. I recognize those souls I know well, even when they merely pass through my life. I'm on a mission; they're on a mission, and we pass like ships in the night, each of us heading to our own unknown destiny.

Nuria is already in bed. I'll have to go now. Take care.

Lawyers and Stuff

I finally admitted to the encroachment of Time upon my mortality, and so I went to a lawyer and began the process of getting a will made. Actually, he's going to make three documents. There will be the Will, and there will be a Medical Directive, and there will be a Power of Attorney. Talk to your favorite lawyer for more information. The bundle will cost me $475.

And I went to my banks (I have two, due to historical reasons) and made my accounts POD to my partner, Nuria. One bank, Bank of America, allowed me to specify a beneficiary by going online. It was easy and fast. My other bank, Truist (formerly Suntrust and BB&T) required me to appear in person at the bank in order to specify a beneficiary. It was a time-wasting but straightforward process. The banker at Truist took care of puting the POD on everything except an IRA, which he said was going to be complicated and would take some time. Whereupon I said that's okay, I don't need the IRA to be POD, there's not much remaining in it anymore. 

It's morning and Nuria is off to her morning exercise class at the Senior Center. I'm well past the exercise stage of life. I just want to be able to make it from my bed to the kitchen to my PC and eventually back to my bed. And that's just the first hour of my day.

Nuria is planning a sight-seeing trip to Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. "Good idea," I told her. "See it before it's gone beneath the waves. Because oceans are rising and Tangier Island will disappear one day." Tangier Island isn't something I want to see. Neither is a boat ride across the Chesapeake Bay. Been there, done that, blogged about it. It was a trip I was fortunate to survive—and survival was very questionable for a few hours of that trip. You can read about it here.

Speaking of Truist Bank, I just received a call from a woman who works there. I left a message on her phone yesterday morning, asking her to call me, but I anticipated that she wouldn't call back the same day, because ... you know ... Truist. So I drove to the bank and took care of business. But it's nice that someone at Truist will return your call, eventually. Of course, I'm only revealing my own expectations and experiences. Your experience may be better—or worse. Truist has a pretty good website, but sometimes I experience glitches. The other day I was trying to do something and I kept ending up at a page that said, "You're almost finished!" But there was nothing more I could do on that page. There were no links to click on. It was a dead end. I figured I messed up somewhere, and I started over, but I ended up at the same page, telling me I was almost finished. After three or four tries, I gave up. I don't hold it against them. I've been a website designer, and sometimes you need to make one (possibly simple) change that (to implement the change) requires multiple changes to multiple pages, and you overlook something and then ... you have a broken link, a branch to nowhere, a page that's a dead end. It happens. It never happened with my websites, of course, but then, I'm a perfectionist. It can be a curse.

I have to go. Nuria just entered the room. 

"How was your class?" I ask.

"Very ... very ... how can I say ... very ... hard," she replied. And she told me that her trip to Tangier Island is off, because the trip is fully booked now. But there's a trip to Williamsburg that is still possible. I've been to Colonial Williamsburg at Christmas, and the Christmas lights and the brightly-lit shops and the many shoppers made it an amazing memory. Okay, it's a nice memory, not "amazing." But there's nothing wrong with a nice memory, is there?

Driving Wisdom

I was watching the local television news and I saw a short news clip about an incident that just happened in Richmond, Va. I was immediately reminded of something that my father said to me many long years ago when I was a new driver.

The incident in Richmond was a car wreck in which a 24-year old woman was killed. She was driving on the interstate highway when the car in front of her crashed into another car, thereby stopping very quickly. The young woman couldn't stop her car in time and plowed into the wreckage. She was killed.

The news about the wreck caused me to remember something that happened when I was a new driver in my teens. I was driving my dad's car and he was sitting in the passenger seat beside me. I was following a car ahead of me rather closely, and my father commented, "You're too close to that car."

Being a new driver and therefore knowing it all, I replied, "I can stop as fast as he can stop."

My dad didn't argue or offer explanations. If he had, I probably would have forgotten his words long ago. He simply asked, "What if he stops faster than he can stop?"

I hadn't thought of that. I thought only of the man ahead of me slamming on his brakes, but I hadn't considered what might happen if his car hit something and stopped almost instantly. My dad was right, as usual. I slowed and put more distance between our car and the car in front of us.

I've never forgotten his words of wisdom, and I wish other drivers could hear them.

No More Backtalk

Even though I'm an electrical/electronics engineer by training and trade, mobile phones baffle me at times. I've never used an iPhone, but Android phones can be difficult to figure out. Oh, I can make phone calls and send texts and use WhatsApp to communicate, but ... Okay, I'll give you an example of what I mean.

The other day something happened to my phone and suddenly every word that was displayed on the screen was also spoken to me by a female voice on my phone. I can't tell you how annoying this was. The phone was all but impossible for me to use. I spent several hours trying to figure out what was wrong and I never figured it out.

Finally, I went to my PC and told Google, "My phone keeps talking at me. Help!"

And Google did help. It told me—

Better yet, I'll just give you the commands for you to punch in should you ever have this problem:

Settings > Accessibility > Talkback > Off

There you go. Don't ask me how I managed to turn it on. I didn't know that such a thing exists. In fact, I don't think it was me that turned it on. I think the phone did it all by itself. Maybe I zapped the phone with a spark of static electricity and caused a glitch in its little brain. Or maybe it's developing its own free will and is doing weird things just to spite me. All I know is that Talkback was so annoying that I was ready to buy another phone. But Google saved the day. 

Thanks, Google. 

Just Stuff

It's Saturday morning. Nuria is sitting at the far end of the dining room table. She sits behind two computer screens. She's using my phone to make a call to a bank in Costa Rica and she's vehemently and adamantly discussing something in Spanish with a banker there. My PC is running an online stopwatch, counting down to zero. It's counting off the international minutes I bought for this call. When it gets to zero, the call will go dead and we'll have to buy more minutes. But at the moment, we're far from zero.

Nuria went to a "high tea" party at the senior center yesterday at noon. They told her to dress casual, and she did, with a white knit sweater-blouse and black pants, but many of the ladies wore fancy dresses—the kind of dresses women might wear to ... you know ... high tea. Nuria took the Costa Rica decorated coffee mug she uses twice a day; the other ladies brought those almost-useless little teacups that you hold with your little finger pointing outward while you sip. The tea lasted two hours and she brought back some fancy sweet pastries, which I quickly dispatched into my already oversize stomach zone.

We then visited my friend Butch in the rehab center, meeting up with his daughter Paula in the parking lot. It was a bright, sunny and warm day. Butch looked better than I expected. When we entered his room, he was sitting in a wheelchair (he's still too weak to stand) but he looked like his old self, with  his dark hair combed back and wearing black stretch jogger pants, socks, and an unbuttoned long-sleeve shirt. He has been in the hospital, in the rehab center, back in the hosptal, and back in the rehab center, for about three weeks. We sat down and the four of us chatted for about 90 minutes, then Nuria and I decided he needed rest, and so we left. Though he looks good, he's still in a very weak condition.

When we got home, I pulled the lawn tractor out of the garage, started it up, and mowed the yard—front, back, and side. Then I got out the string trimmer and trimmed the edges of the sidewalk. I need to do more yard trimming today, but I probably won't do it. I know myself well enough that I don't kid myself about what chores I'll do on a given day. 

It's quarter past 11 AM and I haven't eaten anything yet and my stomach is beginning to get that hollow feeling. Should I eat a snack or wait for Nuria? She's still involved with her chore. Dealing with her bank is like dealing with the CIA. Which I have done. I applied for a job with them, once upon a time. Long ago it was. I went to an interview and the CIA guy who questioned me gave me a large yellow envelope containing about 200 sheets of paper, and each sheet had about 20 questions on it. I was supposed to answer all those questions and return the answers to the CIA. That didn't happen. But I did get a job—somewhere else.

I'd better publish this and then check on Nuria. After a great deal of sighing (but no moaning or cursing) she has gotten suspiciously quiet. I should find out why. Catch you later.