Going Dark [UPDATED AGAIN]
My laptop screen is, at more and more angles. Soon it won’t light up at all.
So if you don’t hear from me for a few days, that’s all it is. I have to get to an Apple Store, and my ProCare membership has expired, and I have a choice between shlepping J there with me today (2 exits down Rte. 40 in the ginormous Southpoint Mall) and throwing myself on their mercy, or going in Fort Myers, Florida on my father’s birthday Thursday. Sucks either way. …
Actually, I just learned that it sucks worse than that: it will have to be out of my hands for as much as 3 to 5 business days. It may need a new logic board or motherboard. And the hard drive isn’t backed up.
So I have to hope it doesn’t die completely and I can keep working on it with the screen partway closed, until . . . when?
THE PLOT THICKENS: It only (or mostly) happens when it’s running on battery. I plugged it in, and it stopped. WTF does that mean??
SO NOW: It’s happening again while plugged in. Go figure.
Impatience: The Road Rage of the Keyboard
From the book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life
If time is perceived as an enemy, to insist that there is value in waiting is foolish. Advances in technology such as e-mail and instant messaging all presume the question “Why wait at all?” When I started using computers, in the mid-1970, I noticed that while the programs with which I kept track of the finances of several small businesses made my work much easier, they also made me more impatient. I went from being grateful for how quickly new software could do the bookkeeping to snarling at the machine for being so slow. While I knew that my desktop Apple was many times more powerful than the first UNIVAC, which had filled a huge room in the 1950s, I failed to be grateful for the inventiveness and skill that had made it possible Instead, I sighed each time I had to wait while the machine checked a record, made a computation, or saved to disk the work I had done.
One day, when I timed one such annoying delay and found that it constituted all of ten seconds, I felt as if I had been slapped in the face and warned: Pay attention–watch yourself. And when did, I saw an idiot groaning with impatience over a tiny increment of time. Technology had made a fool of me, for a few seconds of “waiting” in computer time is no longer than seconds spent “waiting” on a magnificent, rocky beach for the sun to rise over a pearl-tinted ocean; it is only my perception that makes them seem different. And how I perceive such things is a matter of spiritual discipline.
Our perception of time is subject to technological revision, and increased speed has generally translated into a subtle diminishment of our capacity to appreciate our immediate surroundings. . . . Wendell Berry has written eloquently of pulling off the high-speed world of an American interstate highway into an Appalachian campground, and needing more than an hour to slow down and adjust to the rhythms of his own body and the world close at hand.
~ Kathleen Norris
(Makes me think about the many similarities between being online and driving. A desktop is a minivan or SUV, a laptop a sedan or coupe, an iPhone or BlackBerry a sports car. The screen is the windshield. The keyboard is the gearshift and steering wheel. The engine is your brain. Slow-loading sites are traffic jams or stoplights. Don’t you curse and swear at the keyboard or keypad just the way you do behind the wheel? The only difference is, you can’t see the competing drivers and you don’t have a horn. Maybe computers should come with horns for the self-expression of frustration, which is how drivers use them 90% of the time anyway.)
Butter and Cheese
See,you wake up and you know what the post title is. It’s the big phrase at the top, the one people will read first. So you help them out, you show and not tell.
ooooooo
ahhhhhhh.
Now if I were writing a network news piece I’m practically done. I just have to jaw about what ever hobby horse I’m on, mention Edward R. Murrow, and I’ve got the “…itzer” part of some prize I’m supposed to win.
But we’re smarter chickens here aren’t we?
If this were a foodie blog, I’d have to be complaining about Danish butter distribution in Idaho.
If this were a health blog, I’d have to compare the dairy industry to IG Farben.
If this were The New Yorker, I’d have to use the word “avoirdupois” more than once.
And, lastly, if this were Vanity Fair I’d have to compliment supermodels on their moral superiority in choosing cocaine and cigarettes instead of butter and cheese.
Somehow, I now feel the need to talk about butter and cheese themselves, but why? We all know them; we may feel rueful about some of their aspects, but, hey, it’s not like they’re raising our taxes or invading other countries are they? (no, really…are they? No? Whew! You just don’t know who to trust these days)
While ambivalence is our mise en place here, (sorry, must’ve got some New Yorker on me) I’m going out on a limb and start the New Year by just flat out saying ‘Yay!’ to Butter and Cheese. My boldness is even giving me an attack of the vapors.
I hope my fellow Ambivaloids love something enough to wax on about here at some point this year… at their repose, of course!
A Brief for “Ambivalence”
It’s not for everyone. But the resolved have such strong, almost unanswerable arguments in favor of being resolved; I like having a strong defense of not being.
He thinks of nothing but ‘Political Justice’ . . . I explained what I thought of Dilke’s Character. Which resolved itself into this conclusion. That Dilke was a Man who cannot feel he has a personal identity unless he has made up his Mind about everything. The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up ones mind about nothing–to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party. The genus is not scarce in population. All the stubborn arguers you meet with are of the same brood–They never begin upon a subject they hve not preresolved on. They want to hammer their nail into you and if you turn the point, still they think you wrong. ~ John Keats
My New Year’s Resolution
Tweeted. (The Anchoress asked.)
@TheAnchoress My NewYear’s resolution was expressed in action: I got us to dojo 4 last workout of year/decade. Augur & earnest of resolve
Kind of a ritual. Just making the effort, not crapping out, gets the new year off on the right (correct) foot. Won’t give up.
What you do on the last or 1st day of year is like a Chinese fairytale about a pot that multiplies whatever you put into it.
I am pleased that I did not put laziness and reclusiveness and inertia–constant temptations–into the pot.
What are yours? Or don’t you do that? If something short of resolutions (self-improvement vows in particular may leave you feeling more wistful, cynical, or wary than resolute), it’s a natural time to think about things you’d like to improve, change, start afresh, find time for, stop putting off . . . or, as in my case, merely sustain.
The Killer Mothers are Coming!
Romantic Medicine vs. Utilitarian Healthcare: A Dialog [UPDATED]
UPDATE: Highly pertinent to this post is Wendell Berry’s 2002 essay “Two Minds.” While it was ironically published in The Progressive, Berry is what you’d have to call a green conservative. He talks about “Rational Mind” vs. “Sympathetic Mind” in very allied terms.
I recommend this beautiful post by James P. Pinkerton at his blog Serious Medicine. I don’t have time right now to excerpt it in a serious, bloggy way, so I’ll quickly post the brief tastes I “tweeted” from it:
The argument for heroic surgery is like that 4 sending people to the Moon.
Talmudic teaching, who saves one life saves the entire world, vs. the health-policy, quantitative way of looking at it
‘Serious Medicine’ … “is qualitative, not quantitative. The quality of mercy is hard, if not impossible, to quantify.”
“the overall romance & mystique of medicine is inherently qualitative…that’s why civilization has so revered medicine…a romantic aspect”
While not unaware of the real problem of how all this is going to be paid for, Pinkerton makes a stirring argument — human, religious, and Romantic — for saving single lives even at horrendous cost, whether at their precarious beginning (look at Charlie Miller now!!) or near their end (the example of the advanced-cancer patient in the post).
I had recently been thinking about these issues as a result of hearing about an 80-year-old with fairly advanced Lewy Body dementia (what J has) who fell, broke his hip, and is now getting hip replacement surgery. Because of the impairments that caused him to fall, it’s going to be very hard for him to rehab to the point of being back on his feet. Does it make sense to replace the hip of someone who will probably never stand again? Or is the surgery the only way of keeping him from being in intractable pain? In the old days and the old world (I saw this in Romania), someone who broke a hip was usually bedridden for the rest of his or her life, yet could last a couple more years well-tended to by exhausted family members. This man is now going into a nursing home to stay; he wife was reaching the breaking point anyway coping with his irrationality and paranoia (the latter being what J, thankfully, mostly HASN’T got). She was terrified of trying to explain to him why he had to go into a facility, and was actually relieved that he fell and broke his hip.
All this led to another exchange between me and my sistah the doctah:
A[mba]: I found this an absolutely beautiful post, if problematic. Even if you disagree with its “never give up” ethos being taken to absurd extremes, it will still make you feel good about being a doctor.
S[istah]: I confess to not being able to wade through the entire post…when I hit the religious stuff my brain shut down. even though he writes beautifully and says some perceptive things.
I read the NYT article about the surgeon and the surgery and confess that my first thought was Wow how incredible, my 2nd was what a cowboy (about the surgeon. not a fair response but an extrapolation from my own dealings with transplant surgeons who have egos as big as the great outdoors and motives that aren’t always altruistic but cravenly human), my 3rd what a waste. of time, money, resources. But how potentially amazing for both the patient and his family (i refuse to get involved with the god part).
The economization of medicine maybe does separate us all too much from the glorious ability [of] medicine to save and improve lives. But we’ve gotten way out of hand here. I can’t help thinking of what the hundreds of thousands spent on that guys surgery could have done for old people who can’t afford their basic meds and all the other medical inequities that exist. It’s obviously not a quid pro quo, I know. And you can certainly make a point that in this particular situation the surgeon was trying out techniques that may be useful in more hopeful situations. But one of the problems I see is that people (Americans specifically) have absurd expectations about health and healthcare. we’re all going to fucking die some day. we need to focus on doing the most good for the most people…not do outrageous things for the few. or we can do those things as long as the many are getting the basics.
I REALLY feel it’s all about the capitalization of health care…so much $$ is being made by drug co’s, hospitals, insurance cos, and…yes…some doctors. Until we do something about that care will continue to be insanely polar. whew. a rant.
A: I think the conservatives’ argument would be that people on the whole are not motivated to do great things simply by the fact that it’s good and compassionate and sensible to do so. They are most motivated by rewards — money, power, and fame. So if you restrict the rewards, you restrict the greatness of what will be done. Decapitalize “serious medicine” (or any other field of activity) you demotivate it. And of course you will still have greed and corruption, the monopolization of wealth by the powerful and power by the wealthy, fraud, black marketeering, etc. etc., with less ability to regulate/correct them. They would argue (despite their religion thing) that virtue and common sense are weak rewards, to which most people have to be prodded by fear (hell) and shame, or perhaps luxuries — the ultimate rewards for people who’ve already had all the other rewards, like Bill Gates and Pastor Rick Warren (of The Purpose Driven Life, who now gives away 90% of his income, so he says).
Do I agree, i.e. am I a conservative? No; just not a liberal anymore either. I’ll sadly entertain their argument (“entertain” rather than “hold” is what I do with most beliefs these days), but not being very motivated by material rewards myself (obviously, or I’d have some), I don’t get it viscerally at all. I can just see that it may be true of others. The Darwinian conservatives would just say this proves that a) I am simply not the fittest, not vigorously self-interested, not surviving, not reproducing, being eliminated from the gene pool, and b) proof that when greed dies out it is either the ultimate luxury or a symptom of vitiation or decadence. It’s the brawling “getting yours” stage that they most admire, the force that propels deprived but enterprising people out of poverty and doesn’t stop there, but goes on to build empires, empires which do great good as well as harm. I find it amusing that they can be so Darwinian and so pro-Christianity at the same time…until you observe that maybe Christianity serves its holders’ survival, optimism, will to power, and reproduction.
Possibly to be continued/updated between us; in the meantime, I hope you will jump in.
P.S. In the interests of full disclosure (lest I make myself sound like a noble failure), while not very motivated by material rewards, I’m certainly motivated by attention, recognition, admiration. Just not any good at getting them on a scale beyond the happy few.
Outliving Life
A lot of us will remember 2009 as a hard year. I will remember it as the year my mother died. I was reluctant to write about this. I’m not sure if it was simply too personal, if I didn’t want to troll for condolences, if I was too busy with Christmas and in the middle of moving houses to gather my thoughts, or if I had a hard time connecting them to my feelings.
The good news is that my mother lived to be 87, died married to the man she married 64 years earlier, was lucid until the end, suffered no pain, and faced her final passage without fear. From where I sit, that looks like about 75% of the measure of a successful life, right there.
One thing surprised me about her final days. She did not die from any acute illness, but from a weariness of life itself. This caused our family much consternation as we tried to push her to eat and drink enough to survive. Over her last six weeks I called ambulances to take her to the hospital three times and to quick care facilities twice, all for episodes of falling caused by her weakened condition. She objected each time, but each time the family wore her down. And, she had four stints in rehab facilities.
I did not realize it, but since my mother died, several friends have told me of parents who died in the same way. They just lost interest in eating or drinking, and they faded away. They outlived life. It is not that my mother did not know starvation and dehydration would kill her, she was simply indifferent to that outcome.
Our postmodern culture, with its relentless materialism, cannot comprehend not wanting to live any more (absent a painfully terminal illness) because life is seen as all there is. The religious culture which preceded modern times rejected suicide as a denial of God’s sovereignty. At the edge of life, the lines between suicide and not caring whether you live or die become a bit blurred.
Ambiance 