Psychologists have only begun to unravel the concept of “personality,” that all-important but nebulous feature of individual identity. Recent studies suggest that personality traits don’t simply affect your outlook on life, but the way you perceive reality.
As psychiatry, which uses medical and biological methods to treat mental disorders, has largely overtakenpsychotherapy, which relies on non-biological approaches such as conversation and counselling, psychotherapists have sought alternative challenges. One common approach is to focus on enhancing the happiness of mentally healthy people, rather than relieving the mental pain and trauma of those who are suffering.
It’s therefore no surprise that people have come up with a range of ingenious, harebrained, and sometimes grim but often remarkable ways to stay cool during a summer scorcher. Below are eight highlights.
Wind Turbines
Blackwell, Oklahoma
(click to enlarge)
Humankind long ago acquired the technological ability to thrive in all climes, but citizens of the most advanced nations must now check the weather forecast to know if their fridges and household lights will work or be shut down in an electricity blackout.
A group of friends in front of the Dallas Museum of Art, night, long exposure
Non-fiction books of today are equally entertaining to read as fiction books. That’s also because they’re forced to be more interesting — books have a lot of competition these days.
“If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you?” ― Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master: A Screenplay
Cook throwing dough at Serious Pizza, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
I’m a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson. I’ve seen everything – wrote about Phantom Thread – and of course the impossible task of filming Pynchon Inherent Vice. I wanted to see his newest, Licorice Pizza – but never made it to the theater. Still, somehow, I was able to get a digital copy of the film and put it on my Kindle Fire 10.
I have been doing well in getting my ten miles a day of bike riding – so far in July I’m seven miles ahead of my pace. One cheat I do is that I joined the Huffhines Recreational Center (I am old enough for the senior discount – it’s a lot cheaper than a health club) down at the end of my block and they have really nice recumbent bicycles. An hour of stationary riding counts as ten miles in my mind – and I’m sticking to it. If I ride too many days in a row outside my shoulders begin to hurt – so a day on a recumbent is a big help.
Most of the bikes have flat screens and a good selection of channels – but one bike is more old-school without a screen. It’s not very popular – I’ve never seen anyone else using it – but I can prop my Tablet on the bike and watch a movie. So over the last two workout sessions I watched Licorice Pizza.
It wasn’t a great movie – but it was a lot of fun and a perfect way to let the hours go by while I pedaled away. It’s a pastiche, an homage to a certain time, the seventies, which I remember really well.
Waterbeds form an important plot point – and that’s one thing from back in the day that I still miss even now. I had a waterbed for about a decade (or a little more) and never slept better.
Another plot point is the oil embargo and subsequent shortage (lines at gas stations) and that, unfortunately, feels all too familiar right now. I remember 1980 well and the disaster that happened feels like it is happening again. The only difference is that in 1980 I was single and young and all I needed was to buy a couple Ramen Noodle packs and I could get through the day.
“Honestly, if you’re given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don’t say ‘what kind of tea?”
― Neil Gaiman
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Saturday, February 19, 2000
Too much ice cream
Nicholas had a basketball game today. They played an undefeated first place bunch of third grade kids.
The overall tenor was set when one kid showed up with only one shoe. I had noticed the fancy basketball shoes he wears before. I could hear him talking with his dad. “Are you sure it’s not in your bag?” “Sure Dad, I checked.” “He had it out last night to show Aunt Cecilia,” his mother interjected. “I told you to put it back!”
There it is, he is so proud of his shoes he pulls one out of his bag to show his favorite aunt and then forgets to put it back. His father told him to be sure and put it back without checking it personally, which is a sure disaster, as anyone with children should know. Still, you say out loud, I told you to put it back, knowing how useless and silly it sounds. The trip home to fetch the shoe took ’til halftime.
Then, about halfway through the first quarter another player on Nick’s team stumbled away from the action bent over clutching his gut. The coach and ref walked over to talk to him and suddenly the poor kid started puking all over the court. I was sitting up way high in the bleachers but still was surprised how red the barf was. I found out later that the kid was up all night eating strawberry ice cream; that explains it.
I am amazed at the speed in which a child can go from a laughing, grinning good time to “I don’t feel so good” to spewing vile vomit. It is definitely less time than it takes to pull a car over or to get a kid out of bed and to the bathroom.
They led the kid away but he still managed another good retch right in the path where folks were piling in to watch the girl’s game on the other side of the divided gym. One of the scorekeepers had to be stationed there to warn of the vomit pool and make sure they stepped around it.
The referee and the coach collected some paper towels from somewhere and started some tentative daubing at the mess. The manager of the center disappeared for awhile before returning with a yellow bucket and mop. The three started an inefficient, clumsy attempt at cleaning things up. I was relieved when Candy left the low bench where she was sitting with Lee and properly organized the work.
Men, as a rule, simply don’t deal with puke very well. Blood, they can handle, but not barf. The coach and ref were white as sheets, Nicholas, on the bench had his shirt pulled up over his mouth to stifle the stench. With Candy helping and directing it didn’t take too long before a trashcan was full of paper towels and the court was pristine again.
I saw Lee down on the bench sketching away with his crayons. After the game I checked and was disappointed that he had only drawn some dogs and aliens and hadn’t tried to capture the kid throwing up.
Nick’s team shook off these distractions and played really well. Despite some bad luck shooting they ended up winning 16 to 13.
We stayed awhile to watch the next game, a good friend was playing in it. I told him, “You missed a great game.” “Who won?” “Nick’s team did, but that wasn’t the best part.” “What was that?” “A kid on Nick’s team ate too much ice cream and puked right on the court.” “No, you’re kidding… really?” “Really.” “Cool!” was his enthusiastic opinion.
“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”
― Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now
My bike in front of the Staycation Coffee house, Richardson, Texas
Every morning I have been making a thermos of coffee and taking it with me on a bike ride – stopping after a few miles in a shady spot to drink my hot beverage. But today I left my Aeropress and bean grinder on the shelf and rode four miles to The Coolest Coffee Shop in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex for a large drip. The Staycation coffee was good – a bit darker of a roast than I usually choose, but better (much) than a Starbucks. They advertise Single Origin Coffee for market price – and I want to go try that out – but it was very busy today – a mother with three kids in front of me took ten minutes to choose their pastries – and the woman behind the counter looked relieved when I said, “Large drip, please.”
I was tempted by the cool air conditioning inside – it hit one hundred and seven today – but I went ahead and plopped down at the end of a big picnic table outside. I had brought a journal (I have a blue dotted book I use exclusively for cycling notes) and a selection of fountain pens – so I sat down to sip my coffee and write a couple of pages.
It reminded me of a time more than two decades ago when I would drop Lee off for two hours of art lessons and then go to Starbucks (no local gourmet coffee then) and write while I listened to the folks around me talk. On Saturday mornings in Starbucks there were a lot of people confessing their sins of Friday night.
Outside at Staycation is filled with young mothers and their children – so no juicy gossip. The women next to me were talking about books – I need to bring my Kindle to Staycation and read a bit – that would be nice.
The mercury was rising and I wanted to get another eight miles in so I didn’t stay too long. It was nice, though. I need to go back and try some single origin.
“How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Lee viewing the eclipse, June 10, 2002
I was moving files around on my computer, looking at old photos in the process, and decided to take a look at a couple folders that were right about twenty years old. I found one of Lee (he just turned 30 – so he would have been ten at the time) projecting the image of a solar eclipse onto some paper at a baseball game. A quick google search and I found the eclipse happened on June 10, 2002 (only an annular eclipse – not a total).
So I dug out my old journal and looked up June 10, 2002. Sure enough, I wrote about the eclipse. Here’s what I said:
I was exhausted after work today.
Although I had things I really needed to do I decided to go with Candy and Lee (Nick is gone to church camp this week) to a T-Ball game played by Candy’s twin nieces. Little girl’s T-ball is always good for a chuckle or two, the girls are cute, the parents ridiculous, the facilities overwrought.
I tried sitting in the stands, watching the little girls making faces and sticking their tongues out at Lee, but I was too worn out to sit still on those aluminum beams. I walked over to an open grassy spot, a warmup area between two of the baseball fields.
I knew there was going to be a partial solar eclipse at sunset today, so I asked Lee if it was beginning to look a little bit darker to him. This started him off on his usual spate of questions. “How do you know there’s going to be an eclipse?” “Why can’t we see the moon if it’s about to hit the sun?” “How can the moon block out the sun? Isn’t it smaller?” “What do you mean, partial?
I tried to explain everything but wasn’t very successful. Lee would scrunch up his nose whenever I said Umbra or Penumbra.
I had brought my fabric briefcase. It has my Alphasmart in it – along with the digital camera and some other stuff – in case the muse strikes unexpectedly. I pulled a couple pieces of paper out and punched a pen through one, trying to make a crude pinhole camera so Lee could watch the progress of the moon’s shadow. It was too late in the day, though, the angle too severe, and I couldn’t get it to work very well.
Then I remembered that I had a pair of compact binoculars in the briefcase. I don’t know why I carry those around except for a vague feeling that they might be useful sometime. Today, I was right.
I showed Lee how to use the binoculars to project a sharp image of the sun on to the paper. He’d check the progress of the fingernail-slice of the moon’s shadow as it slowly ate up the sun.
The remains of the sun set orange and unnaturally dim at the height of the eclipse. The game ended soon after that. I don’t think Lee completely understands the eclipse, especially the partial thing. I guess I’ll be cutting out a round piece of cardboard, sitting up late with a flashlight and a globe. I guess I’ll be printing some web pages out, maybe that’ll help.
“All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
Paths (detail), by Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir, Arts District, Dallas, Texas
Disneyworld
I was called out of class into the Principal’s office where my mom and my little sister were already waiting for me.
“Your Aunt Cissie is very sick,” the Principal said, “I’m so very sorry to hear this.”
“Aunt Cissie?” I replied. I had no idea who he was talking about.
“You know Aunt Cissie,” my mother said, her voice sounding desperate. I knew that tone – I had heard it many times.. too many times.
“Of course,” I lied. “I hope she’s going to be OK.” I was pretty sure she would not be OK – because she didn’t exist.
“So we will have to take you and your sister out of school for a couple weeks,” my mother said. “I’m going to have to take care of Aunt Cissie and you two will come with me.”
The principal looked suspicious, but what could he say? My mom gathered the two of us up and we walked out to the car as quickly as we could.
“What is this Aunt Cissie stuff?” I asked her. “I never heard of an Aunt Cissie.”
“There isn’t any Aunt Cissie you dummy. That’s just a story to get you both out of school.”
“You lied to the principal?” my sister said. She was too young and always told the truth.
“Just a little white lie,” my mother said. “We’re going to Disneyworld.”
“In California?” I asked.
“No, Disneyworld is in Florida.”
“Why are we going all that way, California is a lot closer.”
“Don’t ask me stupid questions. Your dad has made all the arrangements. We’re going to drive to Florida, so you and your sister have to learn to be quiet in the car.”
I was excited about going to Disneyworld. All our vacations up to that point had involved lakes full of odd-smelling water, bologna sandwiches, and coolers of beer. They always ended bad – both parents way too drunk and pissed of at each other – and a drive home days early. A cross-country trip in our beat-up old car didn’t sound like much fun, but Disneyworld! I wasn’t really sure exactly what Disneyworld was, but it was something that other kids, other families talked about and I wanted to be one of those people.
The drive was even worse than I thought it would be. I tried to stretch out on the floorboards – my legs over the transmission hump. Right when I’d relax and almost go to sleep, my sister would put her feet on me, pushing down, and I’d have a claustrophobic panic attack.
I’d yell, my sister would whine, my mom would scream and my dad would lose his temper. One time somewhere, I think it was in Nebraska, we pulled over and my dad pulled us out and gave us a beating alongside this nowhere road.
The car broke down in Mississippi… I remember my Dad pouring water from an old milk jug into the radiator and having to dodge the boiling water shooting out like a geyser. An old man from the gas station was able to patch something together and we were able to get on the road. Even though it was awful hot outside, my Dad ran the heater as we rolled down the highway with all the windows down. He said it helped keep the engine from overheating.
We had a room in a motel not far from the park. It was small and a little sketchy – still I couldn’t figure out how we could afford even that. But I thought… what the hell… Disneyworld!
And the park was everything I dreamed of and more. Mom took my sister and me – my dad dropped us off and left in the car – he said he had something he needed to take care of. Fine with me, without my dad, my mom was always in a better mood. We stayed all day and mom bought my sister and I anything we wanted – ice cream, hot dogs, stuffed toys of Mickey and Pluto. The lines at the rides were too long, but I enjoyed just walking around. It was like being in another world… a better world than I was used to living in.
We were completely worn out at the end of the day and my mom called a cab to take us back to the motel. I had never ridden in a cab before – it made me feel important. A perfect end to the best day of my life.
Something funny, though, back at the motel. My mom made us walk all through the parking lot looking for the car. When we didn’t find it she said, “Good, your dad’s not here, we can go back to the room.”
My mom was carrying my sister, she was asleep over her shoulder so she handed me the key to open the door. I walked in and saw may dad pulling bricks of plastic-wrapped white stuff from a big trash bag, packing them into a couple of empty suitcases. I had wondered why he had brought those along.
He screamed at my mother, “I told you to stay away until I was finished!”
“Your car wasn’t there, we looked!” she said.
“It broke down again, I had to get a rental! Get the hell out of here!”
Mom took us to the diner attached to the motel. My sister slept on one half of the booth while I picked at my fries and ignored my cheeseburger.
The damage had been done. I was young, but I knew what I had seen. Now it made sense – why we made such a long trip, how we could afford it, what made my dad so jumpy.
He showed up at the diner a couple hours later and I was surprised at how quiet he was. We packed up right away and left the motel in the middle of the night in the rental car. I never found out what happened to our old car and assume it was abandoned somewhere.
You would think this adventure would change our life – I certainly hoped it would. But other than some new furniture and my parents buying better brands of booze – the kind that came in glass bottles, not plastic – everything was pretty much back to normal in a couple months. I guess my dad was just a drug mule and they don’t actually make that much money. The principal looked sad whenever I walked by. He said he was sorry about my aunt Cissie.
I had to act along, of course. I was so good at faking the illness and eventual death of a non-existent relative that I began to believe it myself. To this day, sometimes I find myself thinking about my aunt and feeling sad – until I remember.
“After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.” ― J.G. Ballard, Crash
Scene of a crash. That heavy metal bollard – put in to protect the brick signpost – was bent. Somebody hit the thing hard.
I futzed and dutzed around today and didn’t get out for my daily bike ride until the brutal heat of the afternoon. It wasn’t too bad, though, I took some ice and water and at least on a bike you make your own breeze.
I found the bike trail blocked at Larkspur and Plano roads. Someone had hit a protective bollard, bending it more than a bit, and knocked the stop sign/street sign over. There was broken glass everywhere, though the car(s) involved were long towed away. I cut through a church parking lot and rode some residential streets to avoid the broken glass and bent steel.
I learned a lot in the past week about this kind of challenge — some of it was re-learning things I’ve learned before, but some of it was new learnings. I’d like to share here for anyone who is facing a daunting, overwhelming, discouraging mountain of tasks, messages and emails.
Bicycle Drag Racer on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge
Leaders must inspire their people with a strong and achievable vision, an inclusive culture, personal growth opportunities, and competitive rewards.
I know I’m a boring useless old man. But you need to give me (and my generation) a break. This is the stuff we were forced to watch when we were little kids. I remember watching the Red Skelton show. Young brains are impressionable – the amount of damage this sort of thing does in unimaginable.
“Yes,there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on.”
― Led Zeppelin
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Friday, June 18, 1999
Liner Notes
I’ve spent the last two days fighting panic and simply writing about it is too much so I’ll substitute for a real entry by typing in some highlights from the liner notes on my Ironing Board Sam CD.
Ironing Board Sam’s real name is Sammie Moore and he was born in 1939 at Rockhill, S. C. He spent a year-and-a-half in college but had to dropout when he got married….
…
In 1959, Sam moved to Memphis where he picked up his colorful “nom de disque.” Sam didn’t have the regular legs to support his electric keyboard, so he improvised and used an ironing board. He didn’t like it at first, but he was tagged Ironing Board Sam and it stuck. In fact one of the clubs where he worked gave away a free ironing board on the nights he played.
…
Sam’s first step toward becoming an “entertainer” occurred in March of 1978 when he made plans to play 500 feet over Jackson Square in a hot air balloon. Sam was going to run cables down to a PA system and an amplifier on the ground while he played up in the clouds. However, after tacking posters up all over New Orleans, the show had to be canceled because it was too windy and the balloon couldn’t be stabilized.
Sam’s next piece of self-promotion involved a 1,500 gallon tank filled with water. He devised a way to play underwater and debuted the show at the 1979 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
“I went on the road with the tank,” said Sam. “But I found out the tank was too big to get into a lot of clubs.”
…
In 1982, Sam was back in New Orleans but he was still finding it hard to work. At that point he developed yet another novel form of self-promotion.
“People didn’t want to hear live music,” said Sam. They just wanted to play records or the jukebox, I was hurting so I decided to become, “The Human Jukebox.” I built a giant jukebox that I fit into with my keyboard and amplifier. I had slots built into it where people put money when they wanted me to play their request.”
Sam was playing on the streets in the French Quarter for several months when fate stepped in. The producers of “Real People” saw Sam and shot a feature on him that aired nationally. In the mean time though, the police arrested Sam on a noise violation which took him off the streets….
—-Jeff Hannusch, June 1995
I like the record, good, old-fashioned blues. It would be great to be able to sit down with the guy, have a chat. I bet he has some stories to tell.
And today’s flash fiction – Ded Zeppelin, by Lon Richardson
“That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.” ― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Parker “51” loaded with Pilot Iroshizuki Syo-Ro ink
There are so many important things to do in life – so many rewarding activities that help you and help others and make the world a better place. For a long while today, I didn’t do that – I worked on my fountain pen Ink Catalog – probably as useless an activity as there is (though I’ll probably take photos and post them here). So I took an 8 1/2 x 11 sketchbook and put two ink samples on each page. First, I use a Q-tip to swab out a patch of color – then I use a dip pen to write out a writing sample.
Of course I write out, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” because it is the only phrase I know that has all 26 letters. I thought about this – what other phrases there are. As you know there is this interweb thing – and when you type in the phrase – you get way, way too much information. I looked over a few pages of phrases and typed out my favorites.
A sentence using all the letters in the alphabet is called a pangram (from the Greek for “every letter”). “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is the most famous pangram, but there are many others. My favorite may be “the five boxing wizards jump quickly,” which is four letters shorter.
Here is a self-descriptive pangram:
“This pangram lists four a’s, one b, one c, two d’s, twenty-nine e’s, eight f’s, three g’s, five h’s, eleven i’s, one j, one k, three l’s, two m’s, twenty-two n’s, fifteen o’s, one p, one q, seven r’s, twenty-six s’s, nineteen t’s, four u’s, five v’s, nine w’s, two x’s, four y’s, and one z.”
Perfect Pangram – one that only uses 26 letters – of course it is impossible unless you use abbreviations or archaic words:
Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD., bags few lynx.
GQ’s oft lucky whiz Dr. J, ex-NBA MVP
Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz This one uses some pretty archaic words; translates to “Carved symbols in a mountain hollow on the bank of an inlet irritated an eccentric person.”
I looked through a lot of these and discovered my favorite – Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow. It supposedly was used by Adobe InDesign to display font samples. (29 letters). I’m going to have to work on memorizing this one – and use in addition to/instead of “The quick brown fox…”
Here are a bunch more – collected across the internet for your entertainment:
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
Glib jocks quiz nymph to vex dwarf.
Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
The view boxing wizards jump quickly.
How vexingly quick daft zebras jump!
Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim.
Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz.
The jay, pig, fox, zebra and my wolves quack!
Sympathizing would fix Quaker objectives.
A wizard’s job is to vex chumps quickly in fog.
Watch “Jeopardy!”, Alex Trebek’s fun TV quiz game.
By Jove, my quick study of lexicography won a prize!
Waxy and quivering, jocks fumble the pizza.
The quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf
How razorback-jumping frogs can level six piqued gymnasts!
Cozy lummox gives smart squid who asks for job pen
Bill Chance 