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Are you talking to me?

Michael 2 Comments

There are times when the things I think I think are stranger than the things I think and that I know. Like the other day, I was reading for enjoyment, yes a novel concept and every now then I do get the chance to take on such an inviting task. As is typical for my leisure activities, murder played a major role. Another major role was played by a major. A retired major I would assume because he was described as a “gentleman with a private income” and became a major (sorry) suspect. Now here’s what I think I think about that. At least I think I thought this.

Stories, whether played on pages, screen, or stage, set anytime through the early twentieth century and/or in England through modern days, are filled with captains, majors, colonels, and the occasional admiral or general (or brigadier (across the pond)). I think it would cool to actually see that happen in practice and/or real life. (And for all I know, it does – across the pond.)

Except for the odd “Mr. Michael” from a barely English speaking customer service phone representative, I never am never offered any honorific, haven’t hear a title associated with my name since I left hospital practice. But if people were to start introducing, and speaking of and to me as “Captain,” I could get along with that. And I promise I wouldn’t ever give reason to suspect me as the murderer. Everybody knows the butler always did it. (I wonder if I could still fit in my old uniforms. I’m sure the hat would still fit me.)

There is absolutely no way to tie this in with yesterday’s Uplift post other than to say it’s Thursday, it must be time for my shameless weekly plug. So…shamelessly speaking, if you know where you’re going and you know how to get there, trust that you will get there. Knowing where you’re going is more important than how fast you get there. You might even get there at the speed of popcorn. Check out, You’re a Pop Star at ROAMcare.org, this week’s Uplift offering.

Did you ever wonder

Michael 7 Comments

Things I’ve sat and wondered about this week.

Winter is the coldest season in the northern hemisphere. It’s also when the earth is closest to the sun.

How many “new year days” are there in a year? If we celebrated the “new year” 23 days ago, what was the “new year” that started yesterday? There are actually 26 different days that begin a new year around the world. Some are solar, some lunar, some lunisolar, some religious, some an arbitrary date. One thing that is constant, there are all cause for celebration and they are all celebrated!

An extra tidbit about the Lunar New Year, even though it is called “lunar,” it is actually lunisolar in that both the position and movement of the sun and the moon determine the beginning of the year. Although it is generally associated with Asian cultures, not all Asian communities will celebrate it on the same day every year. Because of the great physical size of the continent, in some years there is enough distance between major Asian centers that the position of the moon will be in different phases on the same day and result in the new moon observed on different days. Thus there will be a different determination for beginning the new year. Also, not all Asian communities identify their years the same. For example, this year the Chinese are celebrating the Year of the Rabbit while in Vietnam it is recognized as the Year of the Cat.

How much does our brain do without telling us? You may know a favorite hobby of mine is painting. I add a heart into every piece I paint. It is my way of telling whoever sees it (whom ever?) (whatever!) that they are loved. Often when I finish a painting I will set it aside for a few days, then hang I up and take a good look at the finished piece. And often find several hearts throughout it that I hadn’t realized I had painted.

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Can you find the heart?

While I am thinking about painting, did you know that black and white are not colors? To a pure physicist they aren’t. (And if you are a pure physicist and you say they are, just let me have this one please.) Colors are colors because of the amount of reflected light our eyes perceive. The different colors are formed by the different wavelengths light emits as a result of that reflection through whatever the light is passing. White is the presence of all of the possible reflected wavelengths the light may take on, and black is the absence of any reflected light.

Another interesting “color question” is, if there are only 3 primary colors, why are there 7 colors in a rainbow? The three primary colors can be combined to form the 3 secondary colors. In theory, these are the basic “building blocks” of all other colors. If you look at the light as it passes through a prism you can easily identify the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) and three secondary colors (orange, green, and purple). But they are not perfect divisions of color.  Each color bleeds into its neighbor, the secondary colors between the primary colors. We see seven colors in the rainbow because between primary blue and the ultra violet wavelength where all light is absent resulting in black, blue goes through two stages or hues, cyan and indigo, before turning purple. A rainbow just as easily could be considered 6 colors but what would Roy B. Giv say about that?

A few years ago I considered changing the name of the blog. The Real Reality Show Blog was born on Nov 7, 2011 (990 posts ago) during the hay day of reality TV shows which bore no semblance to reality. I wanted a blog that was reflective of reality, at least my realty, and thus the unwieldy title was chosen. I suppose a number of times I wished I had an easier to remember, to say, or to type blog identifier that still reflected who I am. A while ago I thought I had come across the perfect description. Given that the posts are the ramblings of all that I am, I should title the blog what I am, and thus I thought, what am I? Aha. I am a single white male. And the stories are of a kind that a single white male would encounter. I thought that was a perfectly descriptive blog name. A Single White Male. And then I thought, but what would the email from WordPress to the author of a blog that I chose to follow read? Why it would read, “Dear [Blog owner], Congratulations, A Single White Male is now following you.” Umm, no.

Did you ever notice, when I do one of these brain dump type posts, the entries get longer as we get further along with it?

Have a great week! Next week I’ll try to be more thought provoking.

There are many sources of help but help gets us only so far. Don’t expect others to do for you. Ultimately, you have to do the work. We talked about this last week in Uplift! on ROAMcare.org. Read what we said about it here.

Hi, Confused to Meet You

Michael 8 Comments

This weekend a seminarian came to our church to start his year long spiritual internship as it were. At the end of the mass he stood on the altar and after introducing himself he said, “I’ll be at the back of the church and would like to meet all of you personally . I won’t remember all of your names but over the next year, I’ll try.” If it had been me saying that I would have made it “I won’t remember any of your names but over the next year I’ll forgot the couple that I accidentally had remembered. And it will probably at the absolute worst time.”

You see, of all the billions of data that I’ve committed to memory over all the years that I’ve been exposed to data, I can remember almost all of it, from every important work piece to the most useless of useless trivia. Except names. I tried all of the memory tricks. Use somebody’s name three times in the first 10 minutes of being introduced. Associate the name with some physical characteristic. Build a mnemonic that describes where and Forgotwhen you met that person. None of it worked. I even tried doing what I did to remember the billions of data that I did remember and is rolling around in my head. I just remembered. But it seems I’ve never been good with names. Why, it took me almost 4 years to learn my own mother’s name. And that’s most surprising since almost everybody’s mother’s name back then was Mommy.

So how did I manage to go through life with such a disconnect from the most personal of other people’s personal information? I guess I always had cheat sheets around. While in the army, everybody wore their name above their right pocket. As long as I didn’t mind to appear to be somewhat not all quite focused I could pass my eyes over their collar looking for rank, down to their pocket for surname and in one almost smooth motion would greet Captain Hook. In the hospitals and other medical facilities everyone wears name badges. Except for the few who inexplicably wore their identification cards on the hems of their shirts or jackets it was easy enough to spot the picture card and zero in on the name. At the college the entire clinical faculty was into wearing white jackets with their names stitched above the breast pocket. Except me. I didn’t care much for wearing consultation jackets while standing at the front of a lecture hall. It struck me as the same useless gesture as those who wear scrubs in a hospital yet never move from their desks in the administration wing except to go home.

When I didn’t have a visual cue to jolt me into name recognition I relied on the old standby. Everybody became “sir” or “ma’am.” Actually, that worked out quite well in my career ladder climb. People to whom I reported liked that I call to them with such politeness while everyone else junior to them tried to feign familiarity by beginning each conversation with “Well Bob,” or “If you have a minute Sue.” As I rose to have more who reported to me I continued with “sir” and “ma’am” and endeared my staff to me with my gentility while other department heads routinely referred to their crew as “the minions of 4 Central” or some similar certainly meant to be cute appellation.

So, my advice to you if you should ever become a seminarian assigned to your pastoral learning experience and don’t think you can remember everybody’s name before your year is up, do what I did. Don’t try. Make them all sirs and ma’ams. They’ll appreciate the courtesy. Or, you can just think of them all as useless trivia and you can probably commit a few billion names to memory. Just don’t let the pastor find out.