Daylight Savings Time: Don’t try this at home

We’re still on the old fashioned schedule so Britain changed to daylight savings time this weekend instead of in early March when the U.S. now makes the change.

I have always found the spring change quite exhausting, and I remember walking into university lectures feeling as if I were recovering from a hangover through most of April.  But it seems to be getting worse as I get older.  Today I was painting the crack in the living room ceiling I’d repaired yesterday and became so feint I thought I was going to fall off the ladder with a bucket of paint in hand.  I stumbled to the kitchen, grabbed a handful of raisins, and went to bed for half hour.

Most of the afternoon I ate and drank like a deranged inmate trying to escape this intense fatigue.  It is not a solution I recommend to any rational individual.  I now not only still feel exhausted but bloated as well.

I would think I should have learned by now.  Maybe it’s because this happens only once a year.  I don’t really have time to practice.  But this is ghastly.  I’m determined to remember next year and at least not apply the Eat-Anything-Within-Reach strategy.

Boggling the mind

Vladimir Putin and George Bush are meeting next week at a Black Sea resort to discuss, among other things no doubt, the possibility of building a tunnel connecting Russia and Alaska under the Bering Strait.  It would be 64-miles long and cost about 70 million dollars. 

The original proposal for the tunnel came from Tsar Nicholas II a century ago, but the argument today is that it would build “a real bridge” between America and Russia and help reduce tensions over Nato and America’s proposed missile defence system in Eastern Europe.

The  ringer for me is the argument that the tunnel would allow rail connections between London and New York.  I was so surprised I went to our globe to see how this would work.  It looks like the long way round to me.  Even with airport delays, I suspect it will be faster to fly.  For the duration of my lifetime anyway.

About fathers and elephants

By coincidence after my ruminations about cruelty yesterday, I read some fascinating statistics about violence.

But let me begin with a story about an elephant cull that took place in Africa some years ago.  The elephant population in one of the nature reserves was becoming too large.  It was invading the fields of farmers nearby and authorities decided a cull was necessary.

In a misbegotten attempt to keep the females with the youngsters as well as to slow future population growth, the cull was limited to male elephant bulls whose numbers was drastically reduced.  But over the next few years, juvenile male elephants began to get out of control, causing much greater mayhem that even the larger population before the cull.  The keepers eventually realized that the problem was that the adult male elephants had exerted a socializing and moderating effect on the young males, and without them, the young males were simply running wild.  With the re-introduction of adult elephant bulls, the problem gradually subsided.

Today, I stumbled on a case for a human counterpart.  A recent analysis of the history of violence suggests that young men are more apt to believe that problems can be solved through violence than any other group in society.  And a study of demographcs seems to suggest that when there is a bulge of young males in a society, there is an upsurge of violence.  Without young men, violence is much less apt to occur, even in the fact of  social upheaval, injustice, or subjugation.  Nor is it necessarily reduced by increasing levels of education and affluence.

This pattern is not limited to any particular ethnic group nor is it limited to our present age.  It shows up in our prisons repeatedly.  It happened in the U.S. and Britain in 1968, in 17th century England, in Germany in WWI, during the French Revolution, the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Cultural Revolution in China, the troubles in Ireland, in Palestine, and Afghanistan.   Today there are 67 countries where 15-29 year olds make up more than 30% of the population.  There are significant levels of violence in 60 of them.

Do high levels of unemployment make a bad problem worse?  How significant is the influence of social injustice?  I don’t know.  I don’t know either how big an impact being raised without a father has on human male juveniles.  I’m sure fathers are by no means the whole solution.  But the number of children being raised without fathers in the world today worries me.

The best hope, perhaps, is that young males between the ages of 15-29 don’t stay that age.  And when they grow up, fighting it out doesn’t seem like such a good solution anymore.

Making sense of cruelty

I think if I am ever tempted to despair, it is over the cruelty we humans are capable of showing each other on such a grand scale.  In the last 24 hours alone, major news stories have included the suppression of Tibetians, preparations for vote-rigging in Zimbabwe, the continuing war in the Congo which is killing 45,000 civilians a month, Darfur, and what might erupt into a full-scale civil war in Iraq. 

Why?  What is it about us humans that seems to make us turn on each other with such impunity?  Why do we so often turn it into a virtue, an act of heroism, and bestore honour on brutality?  Other species are known to attack and kill each other, other species will kill or abandon their young, and fight to death over territory or a female or food.  But nothing like the wholesale slaughter that we humans engage in.

And I can’t see what’s going to stop it.  Or even slow it down, save our killing or being killed in such drastic numbers that we have enough space to keep hostile groups apart.  But maybe even that won’t work.  The world is so small, and history suggests that some group will always set out to dominate.  Religion seems as often to support the suppression of our fellow humans as oppose it.  And science the same.  And all the while, we go on developing more lethal weapons of war.

In my moments of doubt, I think we will end up killing ourselves and spinning into oblivion.  The most gifted, intelligent, ingeneous form of life ever to appear on this planet, and I’m not sure we can hack it.

I dreamt last night I was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  And the night before that Peter fell through the attic floor and I couldn’t help him.

I do seem to be worried about something.  Whether it’s really as grand as the human condition or a little more self-centered, I don’t know.  I suspect the latter.

Misspoken

I am most interested to hear how people react to Hillary Clinton’s creative account of her visit to Bosnia.  Will it show up in a drop in her poll ratings or effect the outcome in the Pennsylvania primaries?  Will the Obama camp be able to gain from Hillary’s misspeak?  Or will all the gain go to McCain?

The press over here suggests that misspoke is a euphemism for lying.  If it works, there are a lot of politicians here in England who will rush to assure the public, as well, that they merely “misspoke.”

Rice and words

I have a long-term friend in New York who speaks Spanish well enough to make a living as a translator.  For recreation, she has been learning Irish, and out of interest has now begun on Arabic.  I admire this endeavor but there is a disconnect between what I hear and what I see, so that I have to make a bigger effort than I usually want to make to comprehend most conversation in a foreign language.

So I’ve decided not to try to keep my brain functioning by expanding my small repertoire in Spanish or my embarrassingly garbled French.  I have found a coward’s alternative, however.

 My sister Dorothy sent me the address of a website that donates rice for every word (thankfully, in English) one recognizes correctly in a multiple choice format.  http://www.freerice.com/index.php.  I log on once a day, play it until I’ve missed five words, which I then write down, and use in a sentence at least once before I log on again.  I’m finding it a rather fun method for increasing my vocabulary.  I dare say, it might even improve my scrabble score. 

Whether it will actually make me more intelligent or just less intelligible, I’m not sure.  My words to learn today, for instance, are keloid, claymore, oculus, collier, and sibilate. 

Caffeine and osteoporosis

I’ve known for some time that if I’m going to have a shot at maintaining a reasonable level of energy and continuing to live primarily in an upright position for most of my remaining days that a certain discipline is required.  I know that some people grow very old drinking, smoking, and sitting, but I know I don’t have the genes for that kind of life style.  I need daily exercise, limited alcohol and sugar, and eight hours of sleep.

I did hope I could sneak in a fairly luxurious amount of caffeine, as in chocolate, coffee, green tea, and occasional soft drinks.  And so I have been not only sneaking, but quite publicly luxuriating.

Unfortunately, I have now read that caffeine decreases calcium absorption in the gut and then proceeds to cause what may have snuck through the gut to be excreted through the urine for hours afterwards.  Even more draconian, the problem gets worse the older we get.  Women in my age group who drink more than the equivalent of about 3 cups of coffee a day have significantly higher rates of bone loss at the spine, the worst possible place to lose it.

I’ve even read that if one is diagnosed with osteoporosis, one should cut out caffeine altogether.

Oh drats. 

Easter: 2008

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

e.e. cummings

I’m dreaming of a white – er- Easter

England rarely has a white Christmas, and the bookies invariably make a profit on those who place bets that we will.  But late, in this case, is not better than never, and I am not consoled with the predictions for most of England of a white Easter.

Up to four inches of snow should provide some novel places to hide eggs for the local hunts sponsored for children in many estates and gardens here though.  I guess if the snow melts, it could facilitate finding them too.

 I hope your Easter, whatever color the eggs, is a happy one.

Geraldine and John

I’m sitting here looking at a snap shot taken in the early 1970’s.  I’m sitting on a couch with Geraldine and John in their apartment in Paterson, New Jersey.

I’m dressed in a nun’s habit, with a medal around my neck, and wearing a veil that allowed a fringe of hair to show, the convent’s concession to modernization at that point.   Geraldine and John are in their early twenties.  Geraldine worked in the local hospital, John did odd jobs in the community.  They were quiet, retiring, kind people.  Geraldine tended to do the talking for both of them.  We became friends insofar as a Catholic nun living only temporarily in the community and a young Black couple can become friends.  I attended their church services on occasion and shared a meal at their table.

Tragedy struck when John was arrested for rape.  Geraldine was distraught, and it was an allegation which struck me as ludicrous.  Geraldine and I worked together to find some kind of legal representation, and eventually John was released without trial.

We stayed in touch, and several months after I’d left Maryknoll, Geraldine called me again in desperation to ask for help.  John had been arrested for armed robbery, something Geraldine said was absolutely impossible because they were having a party in their home during the time of the alleged robbery, and John had been out of the house for less than fifteen minutes when he went out for more wine for the guests.  At that time, I was living in a one-room apartment in New York City on a very small income as I was trying to finish my degree.

I told her I didn’t think I could help. 

Later I tried to telephone, but her number was disconnected.  I wrote a brief, helpless note but that too was returned as undeliverable.

I’ve never talked to her again.