Happy 4th
All posts by Steve Stern
A thought from the road, Everyplace is different
In the deep American Outback, Labor is cheap and Stuff – material – is expensive. A custom cooked meal comes on plates and we drink our homemade ice tea out of glass glasses. In civilization – using the term very loosely – Labor is expensive. In Civilization – again, using the term very loosely – the further down the economic scale we go, the more Material replaces Labor. In our Holiday Inn Express, everything is prepackaged, one serving size; we drink out of wrapped plastic or paper cups and eat our complimentary breakfast off of paper plates.
It is only when we get to the elegant Bistro PETIT OISEAU, in Portland that we get back to reusable – stuff valuable enough for somebody to wash – glasses and best of all custom cooked food. Very delicious custom cooked food.
We are going to Portland for our nephew Jason’s wedding
But first we are going to the Smoke Creek to see Mike Moore. The we will wander around the Eastern Oregon desert – drylands? – for a couple of days (we really don’t have much of an idea of what the area is like except that it is in the rain shadow of the Oregon Cascades). We will be back a week from Tuesday.
Things that go bump in the night…poor dear
A loud bump at the other end of the house woke us about dawn yesterday morning. Both Michele and Precious Mae sat up and looked around, but that’s all it was, one loud bump. And then silence. We all went back to sleep.
When we did get up, at first, there was no sign of what could have made the noise. I would say, Here is a book that fell over, and Michele would say, No, I put it there. The whole loud bump thing was soon forgotten, that is until Michele found a Band-tailed Pigeon – Columba fasciata – dead, under a chair out on the deck. As an aside, the name columbarium – a place to store cremains, the cremated remains of humans – comes from the Latin for dove, columba, and originally referred to the compartmentalized nests for doves and pigeons. End aside. This poor dear had apparently flown into a window and killed her/his self.
We have a bird feeder out in the garden and I mistakenly bought Wild Bird Seed rather than Patio Mix and that has resulted in the birds at the feeder sorting through the seed and throwing the seed they don’t like on the ground (I guess, technically, they sort through and let the seed fall to the ground). Either way, this has brought more ground feeders into the area and that includes the Pigeons. Unlike their city cousins, feral pigeons – Columba livia domestica – the Band-tailed Pigeons are very shy. The slightest movement sends them flying and this poor animal flew the wrong way.
All the Pigeons didn’t fly into the window, just this one, and that is vitally important.
Courtney Gonzales and I were talking about the desirability of embracing differences in people. In thinking about the Pigeon, it seems to me that embracing difference is not just desirable in itself but vital to any group prospering. Monocultures don’t do well in a changing world, they probably wouldn’t do well in a static world either, but – since the world is never static – we don’t know that for sure. As an aside, diversity is the most basic success story in the living world, it is engine that drives evolution and, to get diversity, we have sex. At the most basic level, if we reproduced by splitting into clones of ourselves, there would be no diversity and there would be no evolution (and we would all still be proto-amoebas). End aside. Societies that are monocultural, that are pure, are not as strong as societies that are diverse.
Our diversity is what makes the United States is so powerful and it is why the most diverse parts of the United States are the most prosperous. Silicon Valley is so successful because it is so racially diverse (and I suspect it would be even more successful if it were more behavior and gender diverse). People who want to have everybody the same as themselves are really trying to make an environment that is a setup for stagnation and failure.
It is nice to remember that.
Muscle memory
I bought a pair of minimalist – for lack of a better descriptor – shoes the other day because I have been, increasingly, having problems with my feet. A couple of months ago, I started to worry that I had somehow broken a bone in my foot because I had such sharp shooting pains. After X Rays, the doctor assured me that it was only Arthritis.
Because of the pain, I started walking less and that only made it worse. Finally, I went to Michele’s Chiropractor who is somewhat of a holistic healer. He gave me a heavy-duty massage – with what he called a jack-hammer, it was very strong – and told me to soak my feet in hot water, get massages, and walk barefoot around the house more (since I never walk barefoot, anything would be more). Also, he told me that my shoes were too stiff and I should Get a pair of minimalist shoes.
All of this has been counter intuitive, at least for me, but I am walking around the house with only socks, soaking my feet in hot water, and I have even gotten a foot massage. I also got a pair of New Balance Minimus Trail Shoes. I have been wearing Keen Trail Shoes and they are fairly heavy-duty, in theory to protect my feet.
I knew switching shoe styles would be somewhat of a shock because the Keens are designed to cushion my heel when I land heel first and the New Balance have no heel padding. What I didn’t expect was the feeling of familiarity I got when I first put them on. Pulling the shoes on – and putting the shoes on is closer to putting on socks than it is to slipping into some comfortable old shoe – I was flooded with memories of pulling on my track shoes. I think that the last time I wore track shoes was May of 1958. That is over 56 years ago and they still – instantly – felt familiar. Now just picking the shoes up brings back those familiar feelings.
It is not specific feelings, I am not brought back to that feeling of standing on a hard track on a warm day, I am not transported in time. I pick up the first shoe and it is lighter than I expected and I am aware that my hands, my muscles – not my mind – are being careful not to grab the front with the sharp cleats. I loosen the laces and open the shoes as much as possible, then I pull them over my feet. I have to run my thumb around the back to get my heel in and, as I run my thumb around, bringing the soft shoe back up over the back of my heel, it all feels so every day. Everyday now, not every day then.
It is not like my mind remembers, it is like my muscles remember. I like that.