High-minded thoughts

I spent six hours on our roof yesterday finishing the cleaning job that hasn’t been done for decades.  Peter looked up at one point and said “I’m thinking about what I will say to the emergency services if you fall.”  Rather than concentrate on what an unmitigated disaster McCain’s running mate would be as a President, I concentrated on various options Peter would have should I fall from my elevated perch. 

Possibility

1. I told her not to do it but she insisted.  (Not exactly true.  He didn’t tell me not to do it because we have always agreed that my role as his wife does not include obedience, and he knew I was going to do it anyway.)
2. I told her to be careful.  (True.  Repeatedly)
3. Why is her neck twisted that way?
4. You’d better come;  she’s just lying there not saying anything.
5. She says she’s okay except for the broken back.

Well, it’s not a very entertaining list, I agree.  But it felt like the preferred option next to a McCain/Palin ticket.  Here in England, the papers are asking this morning if the choice was a brilliant move or a disastrous gamble.  I profoundly hope the latter.  She believes the world was created in seven days, is against abortion, for guns and the death penalty, and her political experience at home and abroad consists of 18 months as governor of Alaska after two terms as the mayor of Wasilla.

El Convento

After the rescue by teenage boys and octopus fishermen on the mountain road in central Puerto Rico I described in yesterday’s post, we finally arrived in San Juan.  Instead of catching our scheduled flight back to New York, we decided to spend an extra two days at El Convento, a luxury hotel converted from a defunct cloistered convent.  The rooms were theoretically the original cells in which the nuns lived, but I was acquainted with the real thing, and the rooms we were put into represented about three cells which no doubt had been knocked together.  I doubt very much that the original cells were en suite, and the oak furniture, although having the look of belonging to a time several centuries earlier, most certainly were not the spartan furnishings provided to the original inhabitants.

The restaurant was the converted chapel, and an evening show featuring flamenco dancers was in the original sanctuary.  It felt vaguely sacrilegious.  But the food was good, the service exquisically lackadaisical, and the location in the old town marvellous.

We returned to the mad scramble of our lives in New York City and the news that my father was dying.  We were glad for the oasis and the reserves it gave us to cope with the hard winter and painful spring.

I have just Googled Hotel El Convento.  It is still there, with double rooms for between $175 and $250 a night.  It was expensive when we were there too, but we’ve never regretted the splurge.

Flat tires I have had

I have changed flat tires on my car in the snow, at night, on French auto routes, and in a Spanish vineyard.  Mostly they are stories of inconvenience, occasionally complicated by an errant jack or dubious spare.  But the flat tire on a jungle mountain road in a rented car in Puerto Rico is a story about Puerto Ricans.

Peter and I were using a road map to take what we thought would be an interesting short cut through the middle of the island to return to San Juan.  The map showed a through road and we fearlessly set off.  What the map did not show was a short break in the road of about 30 feet.  Unfortunately, the missing 30 feet had been a bridge over a ravine at least fifty feet deep.  We had no reasonable option but to turn around.  We got the flat as we were descending the mountain on a road with no side rails and about two extra inches between the outside tires of the car and a drop that made me sick just to look out the window.  Had I been driving, my vertigo would have been a lethal danger.  We were stranded on a sharp curve, so if a car were coming down the mountain without slowing down, we were all vulnerable to being pitched over the side.  I went ahead to signal any oncoming traffic to slow down, and Peter started to change the tire.

Then three teenage boys came loping down the road, and saw our predicament.  Our communications consisted of my rusty and rudimentary high school Spanish and lots of acting out, but our problem was pretty obvious, and they set about changing the tire for us with much greater alacrity than Peter would have managed.  When they were finished, they tossed the flat tire into the trunk, slammed the door shut, and bid us adios, refusing any recompense save our heartfelt gracias.  We got into the car with a sigh of gratitude and relief, and Peter held out his hand for the car key.  “I haven’t got it,” I said.  “You do.” 

But he didn’t.  After a panicky search, we realized they were locked in the trunk which the boys had so helpfully slammed shut.  We stood there on the road with this new problem.  I suggested I hike down the mountain to the nearest gas station, while Peter stayed on the mountain with the car.  Peter didn’t think this was a good idea, but neither of us could think of an alternative, since Peter spoke French but not Spanish.  That’s when the octopus fishermen arrived.

They pulled up in their ramshackle car and asked if there was a ”problema.”  I eventually managed to convey our situation and asked if they would stop by at the nearest gas station and ask someone to come to help.  They consulted together with some gesticulations toward the car and announced that it ”No es necessario” to go for help.  They would rescue our keys.  They proceeded to pull the back seat out of the car, and revealed a small hole several inches in diameter into the trunk.  They could see the keys, but couldn’t reach them.  So one of the fishermen got his octopus hook, which as I recall resembled a large cork screw, and drew them out.  They too resisted any recompense, and I refrained from hugging them.  But as they piled back into their car and banged on the side of the door in farewell to us, I think they knew how grateful we were.

Today we have a contract for emergency road service, and even on a remote mountain road in Puerto Rico, they can be reached by mobile phone.  And that’s nice, and it’s responsible, and it’s less scary.

But you know, you miss something that way too.  The Automobile Association doesn’t equip their drivers with octopus hooks.  Or with that unearned offer of help just because you are another human being on a remote road far from home.

I’m not weird…

We have house guests for a couple of days, which is why we were in Cambridge today, and where I saw the t-shirt saying “I’m not weird;  just smart.” 

It’s also why this is a very short post. I want to get back to the analyses of Clinton’s speech last night and its effects on the polls.  For myself, I thought the line “were you in this just for me?” was pretty powerful.  Though I’m not a politician, and maybe most of Clinton’s supporters who say they are switching to McCain instead of Obama won’t be convinced.

I sent in my request for an absentee ballot yesterday.  I wanted to vote in Ohio, a swing state where I thought my single vote might make a bigger difference, but the rule is that I have to vote in the state where I was last resident.  I doubt Obama will need my vote in New York but every little bit helps, I suppose.  And at least nobody else has more than one vote either.

I live in dread.  But also hope.

Favourite cards I didn’t send

My sister Dorothy and I have a tradition of sending birthday cards we really wish we could send to somebody else but don’t dare.  It’s a kind of negative-humour therapy mostly to deal with family relationships that are best not expressed directly to the principle protagonist.

One of my favourite cards, about which I have been thinking a lot lately, is

All the world’s a little crazy except thee and me.

Another important break through

Several weeks ago I was looking for some information on the net and stumbled on a blog.  I write this blog, but in a feat of insularity, I don’t read other people’s blogs.  But I stumbled on http://beversluis.blogspot.com/ late one night, and found myself laughing.  I eventually went to bed, but have been intrigued enough to go back occasionally.  I think the author is a university professor in an optics department, but he says he has very poor priorities which enables him to write the blog pretty regularly.  He finds stuff on the net that I would never discover, and he has a geeky sense of humour which I often enjoy, although sometimes find a little juvenile.   Anyway, he gives me a glimpse of the cyber generation which I also appreciate.  

Yesterday, he posted the following link:  http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2005/12/21/1523497.htm?site=science/greatmomentsinscience 

Do go look at it.  It’s not about anything that you can’t live a completely fulfilled, happy, meaningful life without ever knowing.  But it’s interesting.  And fun.  Or at least I think so.  

It made me think again that it’s a challenge to be a parent in this modern world.  In support of the learning process of one’s offspring, one must be ready to help one’s son, or in this case, daughter, by buying a roll of toilet paper more than half a mile long.  And then help roll it out.  Forget the equations.  How do you roll out 1.2 km of toilet paper in the house?

There is also helpful advice for dealing with ruled paper.  Worth waiting for in my disruptive opinion.

Maybe not as different as I thought

I like men, I like the challenge of interacting with men who see the world, in my experience, through slightly different lens than my own.  I’ve thought for a long time that was because there were subtle differences between male and female brains.  Research seemed to support this, showing in study after study among a large diversity of cultures and groups that on average* women are better at verbal and interpersonal skills, while men tend to do better at spatial and mathematical tasks. 

This idea fits in nicely with our sexual roles, giving women an edge in mothering and men an edge as protectors and providers.  There is even research suggesting that the formation of the brain leading to these average differences between the sexes is influenced by the level testosterone in the mother’s body during pregnancy.  Higher levels of the male hormone lead to more “male” brains.

However, I am now having to rethink this neat little package.  The European University Institute has recently published the results of a study that suggests these differences might be more the result of environmental influences than I thought.  Dr. Luigi Guiso examined results from the same maths and reading tests given to 276,000 students from 40 different countries.  He compared the results from different countries rated on the basis of economic, educational and political opportunities & cultural attitudes toward women.  Here is what he found:

• the average math scores of women are lower than of men but that difference diminishes as equality between the sexes increases, and disappears altogether in countries where there is little evidence of differences in economic, educational, and political opportunities;
• the difference in average reading increased between women and men in more equal societies, so that with equality, women excel even more in reading while catching up in mathematical skills;
• except in geometry, where men remain on the whole better than women.  So they really can navigate better.  (However infuriating it might feel in the passenger seat when they refuse to stop and ask directions.  The humbling possibility is that they might actually know what they are doing.)

Now my question is just how many differences would disappear if boys and girls were raised with the same expectations.  Even in highly egalitarian cultures, boys and girls are treated differently, and their behavior interpreted stereotypically.  But by the same token, even in highly egalitarian cultures, girls are different from boys, and some of these differences are noticeable from birth.  Given the choice, for instance, baby girls spend more time looking at faces, while baby boys look at patterns.  By the time they are three or four, as many parents will attest, they are very different, and dramatic changes take place again at school age when boys become bigger and stronger, and again with adolescence.

Hmmm.  Well, however it happened, although my husband can cook better than me and knows more poetry than I do and isn’t as good at repairing things as I am, he’s different and he’s different partly because he’s a man and I’m not.

*It’s critically important, I think, to understand what “on average” means.  It does not mean there are not men who are brilliant in reading and interpersonal skills, or women who are not at the top of the curve in mathematical abilities.  “On average” is not a justification for putting men and women into firmly different categories forbidding either to enter into the domain of the other.  It just means that fewer of the very best mathematicians will be female, while women will more often show the very highest verbal and interpersonal abilities.  I know the President of Harvard University fundamentally lost his job for saying this, but the evidence is on his side, whether ardent feminists like it or not.

On the roof and looking ahead

I’ve spent most of my working hours on our roof for the past three days scraping off decades of accumulated moss and algae.  Once I’m finished, I’m spraying the roof to prevent the roof from becoming a kind of elevated desert in the future, because I’m not planning on doing the scraping bit again in my lifetime.

Neither of the retired military officers who live on either side could resist making a comment.  It was all rather jokey and friendly, but I suspect they don’t think a 68-year old woman should be walking around on roofs, even if it is only one storey high.  I would probably not have been noticed if I were a 68-year-old man, a point of view with which I have some sympathy, though not because I don’t think a woman’s place is not on the roof.

In any case, while I’ve been in my elevated position, I’ve been thinking first that I am quite fortunate to be in both the physical and psychological condition to be up there.  And with little else to think about, I contemplated the process of getting old responsibly.  Sociologically, I guess I would currently be categorized as belonging to the group of the “young old,” which means I don’t feel old at all.  But if I don’t die first, I will in an astonishingly short number of years be among the “old old.” 

Life is full of preparations for growing up.  But how does one prepare to be old?  A lot of people just close their eyes and hope their money doesn’t run out, and stop there.  I tend to think that, although a great deal of luck is involved, how we age also has something to do with how we prepare for it.  Caring and being involved are my most effective ways of continuing to feel that life is still worth the effort.  On the physical side, I used to think nutrition was the most important factor, but I now think exercise has nudged nutrition into second place.  All the research I’ve read suggests that keeping active is the best way to stay active.

However much I exercise and however sensibly I eat & drink, though, I am eventually going to die.  The chances are that either my heart will fail, or I will gradually simply become more and more frail until the engine stops altogether.  I don’t have a choice in the matter, but my preference is for heart failure.  Or a short bout of something like pneumonia that fells me.

My husband thinks I’m vaguely neurotic for thinking about these things as much as I do, but I do not find the contemplation of the end of my life to be morbid or depressing.  It might be a little scary, but I think it’s a fascinating journey.

Trying to think about the possibility of asking for more

I’ve just read that Obama is now behind McCain in the polls.

I can barely let myself become fully conscious of the terrible possibility that after Iraq, after Katrina, after Abu Graib and Guantanamo, after the economic disaster created by our current President’s policies, Americans might still put a Republican back in the White House.

Safety first

I don’t have a problem with people who are gay and I don’t think homosexuality is either a sin or unnatural.  It exists throughout the animal kingdom and has existed among humans for as far back as we can see.  I can’t see the damage it might cause, though I do see a great deal of pain caused by those who fear homosexuality.  People who are gay are often discriminated against in same way unwanted ethnic groups are treated, though frequently with even less protection in law.

Nonetheless I reacted with some ambivalence when I discovered that the Chicago Theological Seminary is offering a serious course entitled “Safe Texts:  An Exploration of Queer Theology.”  I do appreciate the play on words, and I am sympathetic to the attempt to give anti-discrimination a firm scriptural foundation.

But I object to a theology and a scriptural interpretation for gays, as if it is a different from theology for straights.  I don’t think there should be a special theology for women, either, or for Blacks, or for the Irish or Polish or for short people or for the elderly or for children or for dumb people and smart people. 

As St. Paul said “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free man, neither male nor female, for we are all one.”

Theology – and above all Christian theology - is for humans.  All of us the same.