Winter                                                               Seed Catalog Moon

Expensive mistakes.  My phone, adrift somewhere in Colorado, not answering calls has moved beyond my reach.  Of course, Verizon was happy to replace it, demanding only a blood price and a new 2 year contract.  This phone contract business is great if you’re the phone company, for everyone else (most of us) not so much.

They did have a four propeller, camera equipped drone though, controllable from the phone. Would be fun.  But, I think for me, it would be a like a Christmas present of days gone by.  Used a lot for a while, then not at all.  Shaun Chenoweth, our Verizon salesperson, said realtors use them to show roofs and farmers use them to manage their land.  Both uses make sense to me.  Could help us find lost dogs but we have homebound canines at this point.  Still.

A smart phone is a great companion, especially once you have some reading material on it. That’s a generational attitude, I know.  All others have music.  Check e-mail.  Send texts. Take photographs.  Keep up with my Instapaper reading.  Keep notes.  Look up saved information in my Evernote account.  Even read a book if I want to.  Find the weather now and the forecasts.  Get warned about heavy weather.  A lot of work for one handheld gadget.  But wait.  There’s more.  You know, Internet, voice activated search, the flashlight, that chess platform, the calendar.  And on and on.

So, the phone is dead; long live the new phone.

Samhain                                                          Winter Moon

from Wired. Com

Ralph Grimm, Jimboomba Queensland, Australia.

Subject: Paramecium, showing contractile vacuole and ciliary motion. Paramecium lives in fresh water. The excess water it takes in via osmosis is collected into two contractile vacuoles, one at each end, which swell and expel water through an opening in the cell membrane. The sweeping motion of the hair-like cilia helps the single-celled organism move.
Technique: Differential interference contrast
Magnification: 350x-1000x

Credit: Ralph Grimm / Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

Samhain                                                              Winter Moon

An unsubtle irony.  All those people bent over their phones, heads down, eyes focused on another world, the cyberworld, have become tiny islands, connected to seas not in evidence, influenced by information and persons not present.  It is as if gatherings of people have become insular, the very islands which we were not supposed to able to be, at least among those to whom we are physically present, but functionally absent.

Samhain                                                            Winter Moon

Carlson Toyota.  Getting the Rav4 oil changed and 30,000 mile diagnostics.  It was a busy Friday afternoon, not as I had hoped.  My reasoning went that if I got there before 3 pm I should be ahead of the after work crowd.  The reasoning probably wasn’t wrong exactly, but the conclusion I’d drawn was.  Other old folks were in there with their cars along with mothers with young children, all the folks that have available time in the afternoon like I do.

The crowd at Carlson has a much more diverse feel than its Anoka County location might suggest.  Yes, we’re a pretty white county in a pretty white state, but Carlson employs many Hmong and Vietnamese as mechanics (technicians) and back office workers.  When I spend time waiting for an oil change, it’s always clear that the customer base is 15-25% asian.  Not all Hmong or Vietnamese either.  A few Chinese and Koreans as well and today, in a beautifully colorful winter hat, I spied my first Tibetan there.  African-Americans are less frequent, but they are there.

I watched one young African-American going over his bill, in detail, with a tall asian woman who looked Chinese.  She had a full head of black falling curls and at first, from a distance, I thought she was African-American, but when the encounter finished she headed back to her office and her asian features were apparent.  It is after all an asian car company and I suppose that has some influence.

Having a lot of time, an hour plus, much of which I spent reading Toppling Qaddafi, a change in behavior that everyone knows but goes little remarked was the shoulders slightly hunched, head bowed prayerfully, fingers flicking over the small hand held computer we insist on calling a phone.  This behavior is so common that it seems ordinary yet even 5 years ago it would have been unusual to see almost all of the adults in the waiting area, maybe 30 people, at one point or another assuming this position.

Almost does not include a certain contingent of older white males who either had constraint or had not yet entered the smartphone era.  Kate hasn’t.  Below that strata though, everybody had their phone out at some point.

Though the screen of choice for me was my kindle paperwhite, I still dutifully checked my e-mail, the weather and my calendar.  I rarely use the phone app, but I’m right there praying to the wireless gods to bring me good information, soon.  Right now.

Oh.  Yeah.  Oil change.  Multi-point inspection.  Changing of air filters in the cabin.  The cabin.  When the did the front seat area become a cabin?  Other various lubes, fluids and filling tires with air.  $152.  Worth it because a well-maintained Toyota is a thing of beauty forever.  Well, maybe a thing of transportation for ever.  Still a good deal.