Two Types of Tongues II

 And here is the second -new- version.

Two Types of Tongues I

 Hi There -

A bit of history. The first post I am sending is of an image I drew back in 2003. It is called "How We Got Tongues." I am sending the images in two posts because I believe Bogger compresses the images and they are both large.

Hitting from The Middle Tees

 Hitting from the Middle Tees

[Content Advisory: Some of you out there on The Wall also spent time as students in my various classes. Remember those days when I would start out in one direction, move through “What is he talking about?” And end up at “Weird, but interesting.”? Well this might be one of those times. Hang in there. DrS]

While having dinner last night it came out that one family member was having a “milestone birthday,” which, among other things, would allow him to tee off on the middle tees at the golf course up by their lake cottage over in Michigan. “What does that mean?” asked my wife. Not a strange question given that her exposure to golf has been gleaned from quick glances at the TV while passing through the living room, enough to convince her there was no reason to pause.  

Still it made me realize that it was a bit “golfist” to assume that everyone would know what “Middle Tees” meant. Was it like the Middle Ages? Middle Earth? Middleweight? Middleman? And since l am using it in the title of this post, it behooves me to at least attempt a definition. So briefly, here goes. A golf course consists of 18 holes, long stretches of lawn leading from the “tee box” to the “green” where the “flag” sits in the “hole” which actually is a small hole (4.25 inches in diameter) in the ground of the green into which the golfer wishes to hit his or her ball.  Obviously there is more to it than that but that is sufficient for our purposes since we are only with the tee box. 

The tee box is usually divided in three areas each progressively closer to the hole: the “back tees” furthest from the hole and hence reserved for the best players. Everyone on “televised tournaments” hits from the back tees. The “front tees,” which are those closest to the hole - sometimes significantly so - are reserved for participants who for reasons of age, gender, or other issues are deemed worthy of some sort of benefit. And then we come to “the middle tees.” I think of being allowed to “tee off” in this area, often located midway between the back and front tees, as an acknowledgment, or reward for dedication to the game as one often “ages into” permission to tee off from here. This was the case of last night’s milestone birthday - 70. 

So “hitting off the middle tees” in golf - and in life - isn’t so much a case of “try it from up here, old guy,” as it is a reward for having reached a particular plateau, while still realizing that age brings both rewards and rational limitations. Having already passed this particular milestone I occasionally think about instances where pre- and post-middle tees in real life are most obvious. 

One that often springs to mind is a trip to San Francisco to deliver a paper in the early days of my teaching career - so I was in my late 20s or early 30s. I remember hiking up into the hills above the city, and pausing to appreciate the view out across the city, past the Golden Gate to the bay and the Pacific beyond. Part of my appreciation stemmed from the realization that I could walk from my present location to anywhere in the vista spread out below me. I was limited only by time. Now, “hitting off the middle tees,” I realize that is no longer the case. I could probably get from here to there, but it would entail cabs, Ubers, cable cars, or some combination thereof. The legs were just not going to make it. And that was OK. That’s why I was here on the middle tees and glad to have made to this point in life.

There are other middle tees realities that I have become comfortable with - like puppies and parrots.  Let me clarify. We share this domicile with a wonderful 13 year-old black lab named Vito Muso (saxophonist with Stan Kenton in the late 1930s). If you know much about large breed dogs, you know that Vito is approaching the upper limits of life expectancy for the breed. And while we hate to contemplate that eventuality, we are somewhat comforted by the fact that no lab has had a better life. Three humans fuss over his every need, food, exercise, medical. We stop and pet him every time we pass him by. He often blocks my way, lying down, wagging his tale, demanding a longer rub down. I naturally oblige. Or he will camp on the kitchen floor in front of the treat stash until Christine, the official treat dispenser, caves in and gives him his treat - or maybe two. A truly blessed doggy life. But when he does hop off to chase tennis balls in the sky, none of us would even contemplate replacing him with a puppy. 

The obvious reason is that - while no dog could ever replace Vito - even a perfect puppy would be playing from the back tees. Full of Vim, Vigor and Vitality as 3V cola used to brag back in the late 1950s. Christine and I will be playing from the middle tees while Smitty will be way out there swinging from where the 90+ golfers get to tee off. None of us will be able to raise a puppy. 

Parrots come with similar baggage. I have always been fascinated by African Grey Parrots. Smart, winsome creatures. But knowing that they are often smuggled under terrible conditions, and that they can live to middle tee ages themselves - 60 to 80 years! - makes me walk on past the pet store.

Which got me thinking. Back in the late 1960s as Ph.D student at Wayne State one of my favorite classes was Communication Theory taught by Dr. Raymond Ross. In my mind the neatest thing about Dr. Ross’ class was building communication models, when, truth be told, we got to just make up models of how communication worked. While we were often more than a little “off point” it was an excellent way to figure out how we could better understand the process. It is a process I have returned to all my life - and often far afield from just communication theory. 

Most obvious and of greatest current importance to me is the model that can depict Distilled Harmony. I have played around with some fancy depictions of Distilled Harmony, but for the moment let this simple straight line model suffice:

Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony-> Enable Beauty-> Distill Complexity -> Oppose Harm.

Which is just one, prioritized, way to represent the various stages of Distilled Harmony, my model of how we should approach life. To reach Distilled Harmony (Inner Peace, a State of Grace, Nirvana, call it what you are comfortable with) you begin with a general attempt to foster harmony in your everyday life and then pull the other subsequent elements of the model into your life as possible. 

Well it struck me that using the golf tee box as a metaphor for the stages of our life and the kinds of legitimate options each position on the tee represent was really another communication/aka life model or metaphor. And so, as my wife is fond of saying “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” here is my first cut at blending “Distilled Harmony” with the “View from the Tee Box Life Model.”

The first thing that obvious is that the two models don’t line up. That is because Distilled Harmony is by far more encompassing than Tee Box. No surprise there since Distilled Harmony has been “under development” for 30 years or so, while Tee Box just came to me after dinner the other night. But Tee Box does bring, I think, some valuable insight.

E.g. you cannot just “think” your way into another tee box. You work your way there. You spend most of your life hitting from the back tees, learning everything that will be valuable in life, and then putting all that into practice. Inventing stuff, teaching, practicing medicine, studying law, improving agriculture, protecting the environment, doing art, whatever. The Tee Box model gives us a pretty wide range for hitting off the back tees, essentially until you are 70.  The potential blend with Distilled Harmony is the notion that we really don’t come to a clear understanding of harmony until we are approaching what western culture considers “retirement age” - 65 or 70ish. 

So let’s try this on: Hitting from the back tees for 50 years or so enables you to gather a vast amount of information in your field, perhaps in several fields. Starting in the 1600s we used to call folks like these “polymaths.” They are excellent at Trivial Pursuits and Jeopardy. But perhaps not the person you might turn to when faced to serious personal problems. They “might could,” as we say in the South tell you who had written novel A, or invented thingamiggy B, or was the first human to walk on Mars, but would have no idea how any of that worked out. And that is why after spending 50 or 60 years hanging out in the back tees we turn our attention to the issues of the middle tees, because there you increase your chances of finding, not just information, but wisdom.

Let me quickly point out that reaching 70 is no guarantee of finding wisdom. Any glance at the news these days would seem to argue the opposite, but it is in the middle tees that we can find guides, mentors, examples of wisdom that have stood the test of time. It is a more gentle tee box. One less defined by loud harangues of certainty. More inclined to quiet reflection. 

Having now spent a few years hitting off the middle tees I can report that it too, carries no guarantees of wisdom. I occasionally find myself stumbling into some stunning instances of foolishness, and occasional flashes of unintended arrogance more appropriate to the exuberance of the back tees. However, the view from the middle tees does allow one to recognize those stumbles more quickly and to learn from them - perhaps approaching the wisdom expected here on the middle tees. It also can awaken a desire to make amends, if that option remains feasible. Sadly, the view from the middle tees often forces one to realize that sometimes the desire for reconciliation arrives too late. 

So you sigh. You learn. And you trudge along the weary path to wisdom, where, strangely, these awkward insights also reveal the route to Harmony and joy.

They’ll Learn Much More

 I hear babies crying, I watch them grow.

They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.

-Bob Thiele and George David Weiss

My own experience with these lyrics is hearing Louis Armstrong sing them over the visual carnage accompanying of the opening scenes of the searing Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, movie Good Morning Vietnam.  For my generation it is a very, very emotional montage. I used to show the movie to my media criticism classes so have watched that scene many times over a couple of decades - in the company of 18 to 20 year-olds for whom the film increasingly became a history lesson. 

I would look out over their faces - some riveted, others bored - and wonder what they will be doing with the awesome opportunities that a university education would provide. There are times when it is easy to despair, what with global warming, NRA enabled school shootings, and the raw megalomania being revealed in Putin’s war on Ukraine and, shockingly, exposed in the reports stemming from various investigations into the Trump inspired January 6th riots in our own capital. 

However, recently I have been regaining some of my natural optimism as I forsake the “if it bleeds, it leads” bias of the most news programs on commercial networks and programs whose bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Instead I am paying more attention to documentaries that demonstrate how various collections of fresh-faced youngsters, removed not many years from those in my classroom, are rolling up their sleeves and reimagining, redesigning, and rebuilding this “third rock from the sun” in wonderful ways - if we; their parents and grandparents don’t trash it beyond redemption first.

For example, Elon Musk wrote a paper in 2013 conceptualizing a mode of transportation now commonly referred as the “hyper loop” which features people/product pods zipping around in enclosed tubes at speeds surpassing “bullet trains” and approaching those of jet aircraft. Then in a seemingly “un-Musklike” move he threw a white paper clarifying the idea out for public development, and sponsored a contest for the best designs. Hundreds of teams of young engineers, designers, and dreamers from all over the globe took up the challenge, resulting in several new start-ups building green, working prototypes of what could be a hugely significant evolution in transportation. 

The Hyperloop story is cause for optimism, not simply because of its potential impact on transportation and the immense knock on implications for the climate change impact on that traditionally “dirty” industry - think SUVs as the single most polluting vehicle in the world - but more importantly as a model for enabling and encouraging young, energetic students in all disciplines to focus on and pursue issues they simply have not have time to think about or encounter. Set a target and turn the amazing power of human thought and creativity loose!

I’m going to break with my normal Wall posts here and stick in another piece that I have been working on for awhile. It was designed to be a separate post but seems to fit nicely here as it could be one of those “unimaginable ideas” that the “amazing power of human thought and creativity” might address. So here it is:

My Marvelous Toy

There are any number of rabbit holes

Ripe for the tumbling down these days.

Dug by youthful techies 

Raised on science fiction,

A plethora of these

Hopeful Hogwarts wannabes 

Have jumped the requisite hoops

To claim labs of their very own.

At MIT, CERN, Google, Meta, and the like.

Not surprisingly these big-brained

All-but-babies have come 

To focus on the brain.

Or some artificial version of

Intelligence creativity artistry 

AI, AC, AA, AWhatever

They are the magicians of the impossible.

Intellectual descendants of those

Who built Steven Hawking’s awesome

Array of prosthetic devices that freed

Thought from his compromised body

To unimaginable rainbows of insight.

They enable the knitting of 

Shattered spines back through 

Silly-putty wired silicon so

Legs could again march about

To the myriad directions 

Of that maestro of intention

The brain.

But even as I read of 

Entrancing marvels ready made,

I cannot help but wonder

Will I live to see the day -

The month, the year, the decade

When the toy I most desire

Finally makes the 

“Name that Brain Game Hit Parade?”

The desire strikes most predictably 

When I suddenly find myself

Caught up in drawing a pattern -

Leaves, or dots, or swirls bright.

All that such and such 

Tedious but vital whatnot

When the brush needs a 

Sewing machine-like repetition.

Dot dot dot dot dot dot dot

Visible if you take your 6X

Magnifying glasses to a 

Carpet painted by Vermeer.

A sleeve stroked by Rembrandt.

And as my mind grows fuzzy

It occurs to me to wonder

What was Vermeer thinking 

As his brush went dip dot dot

Dip dot dot dip dot dot dip?

What was Rembrandt thinking

As his palette knife went

Scoop slap slap scoop slap slap?

What wasÉlisabeth Le Brun thinking

As her brushes went 

Dip soft stroke dip soft stroke dip?

What was Pollock thinking, ever?

What were any of them thinking

In those mindless meditative

Moments when planning is 

Replaced by artistic instinct

In the mind of a genius?

My toy with a marvelous 

Brain would tell us.

All we would need to do

Would be to capture a hi-rez

Image of any picture by anyone

From any place or time now

Floating around out in digital-land.

Free to be clicked upon for

The menu for “reveal thoughts.”

We could then choose

“Text” or “Talk” or “Other” or “Immerse”

And our device would select

The most appropriate modality

To reproduce whatever 

Had been going through 

The artist’s mind/brain/heart while

Creating the image we had chosen.

Now before falling victim to counting the

Unbelievably number of advances

Looming between my marvelous toy

And the experience I chose

Remember, time was when

Symbols required stone

Or clay or skins or paper or screens

When only birds 

And small dinosaurs flew

When we got electricity from lightning 

When phones where tethered to

Permanent cords

And could only reproduce sound.

When cars only ran on gasoline 

When you were only either male or female

When you got music from bones 

Or carved reeds, hollow skins

Or hand cranked record players

When you could have heard

A Nobel prize winning poet sing

“The times they are a’ hanging.”

When the prescient Bard scribbled 

There are more things in heaven and Earth, 

Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Right now I’m dreaming of my own

Marvelous Toy.

As you can probably tell, the old clock on the wall, or more accurately the clock here on my laptop has made its way into the tiny hours after midnight when my thoughts, while still seeming clear and rational to me, tend to make their way into the land of “What the Heck is He Talking About?” So I will bid you goodnight, and see what other dreams might creep into my philosophy.

Masters of Time

Ok, so my hands shake. Big deal. They have done so all my life. Strangely, it seems to be an inconsistent anomaly. Often when I am in an emotionally intense situation, they shake. But if it is mandatory that they not shake, they don’t. Two examples. Back in the days as a theater student when I had to do my makeup and the choice was either stop shaking or poke my eye out, the hand would stop shaking. More recently when creating some of the drawings I share with you, I often back myself into a corner by drawing very detailed designs that must eventually be colored in. The choice in that situation is to either stop shaking or smear color all over the image. There, too, the hands usually stop shaking - but not permanently. I’m good for a couple of hours and then a suspicious jiggle tries to creep in, and I have to stop drawing at least for a similar couple of hours. I have tried to “tough it out” a couple of times, and end up trying to hide errors that, to my mind anyhow, immediately draw the eye to that, usually tiny, part of the image. But I did come to believe in the notion that if I paid attention and rationed my efforts and concentration, I could calm my shaking hands in the service of any task.

Well, tonight that bit of arrogance got kicked to the curb. Curiosity Stream again. This time the series was called “Masters of Time: Independent Watchmakers.” The title is somewhat self-explanatory, the series does feature the works of several independent watchmakers, but that doesn’t prepare one for the intricacies, the detail, the artistry involved. First, least there be any mistaken notion, all of the watches created by these artists are handmade - hand tools shaping metal, wood, wire, etc.  And all the watches have some type of tourbillon in them.  And what, you might well ask - as did I eventually, after pretending I knew what the heck they were talking about, - the heck is a tourbillon?  Glad you asked.  A tourbillon is a little gizmo you put into a watch to counter the affect of Earth's gravity on the isochronal properties of the balance wheel and spring. Right, sure. That means - various sources tell me - that the balance wheel and the spring stay in sync. So these watchmakers and their watches are addressing chronological concerns and variables I have never heard of, let alone thought about. Again for example, one watchmaker addressed these and other concerns, after which the artist then carefully covered the face of the watch with black glass - you could see nothing. The idea, according to the watchmaker, who tuned the, now invisible, internal elements of his watch by holding them against the body of a violin, was to not distract you with looking at the hands of the watch, hence freeing you to concentrate on the far more important task of simply listening to the passage of time. Accurate quote, as God is my witness.

But that was not what convinced me that the very least of the tasks performed by these incredibly skilled artists was far beyond the abilities of my poor shaking hands. It was, in large part, the fact that their measurements and tolerances were routinely measured in tiny fractions of millimeters, and if you missed the mark with your tiny little tools, minuscule screwdrivers, wrenches, etc., you simply scrapped that piece - sometimes a large part of the watch - and started over. Arrrrgh! But finally one of them copped to what was really going on: “I am trying to create the smallest mechanism that can be built by human hands.”

Oh. Now I get it. And I realize that I will never get it. 

Schrag PPP: A Pair of Roses

 Hi there - 

Some of you might be expecting pictures of Andrea, Sam, Maya and Ellie - Roses all, branches of the family and worthy of pictures. But these are roses of a different bloom. The first image, call it Big Rose, I have been working on for the last week or so.  Big Rose because it is 22 x 16. The second image, oh, let’s call it Small Rose is 13 x10.

Now, how there came to be 2 different Roses.  The first step in any of the PPP images is a lengthy browse through an embarrassing huge mass of photos from decades of digital images. That is, of course, the problem with digital photography - there is no film and if you, as I do, backup obsessively you end up with thousands of images. And I came across this Rose picture. Cool, I thought. I think I’ll work on this.

So I did. Then several days and multiple steps into the image, as I was going upstairs for dinner or a basketball game or something, I happened to glance up at a corner of my “gallery.” And, oops, there was Small Rose. It had no date on it, so I pretended not to see it, and went on to finish Big Rose. I have now acknowledged Small Rose, and am glad that, although they are obviously sisters, they are different enough that they are the result of different artistic moments.  Anyhow, here they are:

First, Big Rose:

 

And now, Small Rose:

Probably wise to point out that although they look the same size here Big Rose is, well, Bigger.

Precision Napping

If I knew how it was done, or why it happens, I would tell you. But first let me explain what it is. I’m not sure where you stand on napping, or to what extent your life allows you to indulge in “nap time.” If you are, or were, the primary caregiver of little ones then nap time might well be something you seek to impose on others in order to claim some time for yourself - for napping or reading or catching up on any number of the myriad chores that caregivers are heir to. Been there, done that. You have my heartfelt sympathy. If, however, you believe that adults should not nap, you can skip this post and click over to Amazon and take some personal shopping time.

The rest of us are currently in the midst of a debate regarding to what extent wage earners are free to determine their own nap time. Elon Musk, whose wealth and business acumen apparently makes him some sort of authority figure on all things, has declared that Tesla employees must be “in the office” for the traditionally requisite 40 hours a week. The fact that he feels that there is an immutable relationship between being in the office and being awake, calls his credibility - at least in this area - into question. What is true is that in many cases adults do have a certain amount of control over when they nap. Being retired gives me a great deal of control over my nap time, and I think that is quite important for precision napping - aka PN.

My ideal nap time begins between 2 and 3pm. Sometimes life does intrude; medical appointments, auto repairs, pizza deliveries, and other significant life events. But I try to keep those to a minimum. When nap time rolls around I arrange my technology to support PN. First, for me, PN is supported by a couple of digital apps - a timer and access to audio support. I access both of these through either my iPad or iPhone, though similar support is available through other sources.

First I set my background audio. Ideally, I blend two sources on my iPad. One is called Naturespace, which features a wide range of - as the name implies - nature sounds; rain, wind, surf, cicadas, birds, etc. The cool thing about Naturespace is that you can “blend” it with other apps, so I “blend” it with Pandora’s meditation or classical music options, giving me a variable blend of tranquil audio.

That done I set my timer for 15 minutes, recline and spend 15 minutes reading a novel, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, or poetry - just about anything that is not focused on politics, mass shootings, global warming, etc., in short, the news. It is not that these issues are unimportant, it is just that they are counterproductive in the PN arena. When my 15 minute timer goes off, I add an additional hour to the initial 15 minute setting, bringing the PN total session to an hour and a half - 90 minutes. You can see why being retired is a significant PN advantage.

But now here is the strange part, and why I call it “precision napping.” The second timer almost never goes off. I awake, seemingly automatically, with 2 or 3 minutes left on the timer. So have I “conditioned” myself to that 90 minute cycle? I have no idea. And if I were able to do that, one would think I could exercise some sort of similar control over my “normal” nighttime sleeping regimen, which is anything but normal. 

You may recall that in a number of these posts I refer to “the tiny hours.” Like with PN, I am referring to 2 or 3 o’clock - however in those instances I am talking about 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning when, unfortunately, the ideas, poems, etc., that end up here on The Wall strike me. And, yes, I realize that there may be a connection between a 90 minute nap in the afternoon and a period of uncontrollable wakefulness at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. And I further realize that omitting PN might also eliminate the tiny hours wakefulness.

But what if that isn’t the case? What if eliminating PN leaves the tiny hours wakefulness unaffected!? When, then, do I sleep at all! Horrors!