Daily Archives: February 28, 2012

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings

Fun? Bah, Humbug

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Imbolc                                   Woodpecker Moon

OK, so maybe having the ex on your facebook friends list is odd, but we do share a son and besides, hey we gitta along.  Anyhow she posts a facebook photo of her with her latest guy–who lives, weirdly enough, in Andover not far from us.  She’s dressed as Cher, he’s dressed as Bono.

She looks like she’s having fun.  Then I think, in one of those places it’s not wise to go but who tells the mind what paths it can travel, what do I do for fun?  Ooops.  OK.  Can’t think of anything.  I asked Kate last night what we do for fun.  She couldn’t think of anything either.

OMG.  Dreary northern europeans celebrating the winter solstice with a candle.  That sort of thing.

As I’m wont to do when perplexed, I picked up my bible, my word bible that is, the Oxford English Dictionary (literally the best dollar I ever spent since I got this two volume complete version back when the History Book Club sold them as comeons for new customers) and look up fun.

Once in a while things turn out really well.  There are two entries, one for a noun and one for a verb.  In both cases the 1st, therefore dominant (and occasionally obsolete) definition is:  a cheat, a hoax, a trick.  The other definitions aren’t much better.  2. n.  diversion, amusement, sport jocularity, drollery.  and 2. to make fun or sport, to indulge in fun, to joke. Not much to worry about not having much of, I decided.

Still, I wondered, what about enjoyment or delight?  They’re different.  Delight:  pleasure, joy or gratification felt in a high degree.  Enjoy:  to be in joy or in a joyous state, to manifest joy, exult, rejoice.

Then came the light bulb:  joy 2.b  to experience pleasure, be happy now chiefly to find pleasure in an occasion of festivity or social intercourse.

There’s the smoking gun of extroversion–now chiefly to find pleasure in an occasion of festivity or social intercourse.

In this youth drenched, extroversion drunk country of ours, it’s possible for those of us introverts to lose sight of what delights us, what we enjoy. (admission:  Kate wondered whether we should look at what we enjoy.)

Yes, it’s weird, but Latin delights me.  After a struggle with a verse or a grammatical construction, at that moment when the obfuscation clears, delight.  Planting in the spring.  Caring for the bees.  Travel.  Writing.  Being with the grandkids.  Seeing our kids.  Reading. Playing with and taking care of the dogs and each other.  Art, cinema, jazz.  Quiet moments.

Sounds like a blurb for E-Romance doesn’t it?  So, I’m happy, no delighted, to tell you that Kate and I enjoy many, many things.  But fun isn’t one of them.

 

General

Greed, A Synonym for Unethical

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Imbolc                            Woodpecker Moon

Store this in the Well, Duh file:

As an individual’s wealth and status rise, so does their tendency to be unethical, concludes a new study of the relationship between socioeconomics and ethics.

The study included seven different experiments that spanned real-world and laboratory settings, from rude San Francisco drivers to test subjects given a chance to take candy from children.

“Occupying privileged positions in society has this natural psychological effect of insulating you from others,” said psychologist Paul Piff of the University of California, Berkeley. “You’re less likely to perceive the impact your behavior has on others. As a result, at least in this paper, you’re more likely to break the rules.”

The findings, announced Feb. 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come at a moment when historical tensions over wealth and class have reached a fever pitch: Is greed good, and extreme wealth a sign of virtue? Does wealth corrupt, and should a society strive to be egalitarian in income as well as principles?

GeekWorld, Weather +Climate, Writing

Whoa. Just Backup.

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Imbolc                                       Woodpecker Moon

Woodpecker hacking away this morning as I awoke.  Yesterday the crows cawed, setting on the branches of our big cottonwoods, 40 feet or so off the ground.

A few snow flakes fluttered to the ground, but nothing like the original forecast.  Now they’re talking slush and smelting snain.  Yuck.  I’m in favor of snow, more snow.  And cold.  Show me the winter.

When Kate and I came home Saturday night after the birthday dinner with Anne, I noticed the neighbor had a fire going in the large depression between our homes, a storm water runoff feature.  He did some brush clearing over the last week or so and stacked up a good sized mound of branches and limbs.

Since the significant feature of this winter has been drought, his fire worried me a bit since a woods occupies about an acre and a half of our property.  When I cataloged what I would lose in case of a fire (all this as I tried to go to sleep), after getting the dogs and Kate and me to safety, I sat up and thought, my novels!

The answer is, yes, I do backups.  But.  The backups are on external hard drives physically connected to my computers.  They protect against system failure, but not against fire.

The next morning I went downstairs, took out my 16 gigabyte thumb drive and backed up my entire documents folder.  That was about 2 gigs.  While I was at it, I added another 10 gigs of photos.  Now the question is what do I do with the thumb drive?  Carry it with me all the time?

Gonna have to check out cloud based backups.