Category: Whimsy

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Attention! Um….attention?

This weekend past I attended our local science fiction convention, Archon. I was on a number of panels and something of a theme started to emerge. More than one, actually. A couple of times the discussion came around to our lack of attention. And I coined a phrase.

We live in a Fractured Attention Ecology.

I’m keeping that. It was off-the-cuff, but the more I think about it, I think it’s something worth exploring. I’m not equipped to do that, not clinically. I’m a writer. But I realized that we keep trying to label the chronic short attention span that seems to plague contemporary life, to fit it into a manageable file to be dealt with by the appropriate expert. Everything from ADHD to a general lack of discipline. Occasionally someone points out that we have too much information to manage, but that doesn’t always explain why we can’t simply ignore the enormous quantity and just pick a few things.

For one thing, for people who apparently are inflicted with ever-shortening attention spans, we sure consume a lot of big thick novels and tune in to extended series and even movies are getting longer. We see people scrolling through their phones for hours at a time and the hours spent going through internet connections…

But then it becomes apparent that the depth of our knowledge on average is getting shallower. Many of us know a little bit about a great many things, but not much about any given subject.

Humans adapt. We adapt very well. Over the last forty years, since cable tv appeared just to pick a starting point, we have been adapting to an ever-expanding range of choices. We have been training ourselves to try to pay attention to more and more, which means we’re absorbing less and less. The urgency to try to stay abreast seems to drive us to simply not spend much time on any one thing. Added to that, the range of things we have to pay attention to is widening.

I grant you, some of the problem is organic, but it may be self-inflicted. We adapt. We’ve adapted to a changing ecology. We haven’t done so very well. But then the ecology itself has not yet stabilized.

Fractured Attention Ecology.

Now, this may be something already being studied, so I won’t suggest I have a brand new idea about this, but no one else recognized the term, so for the time being I’m taking credit for it. It does suggest a different way to look at the problem.

More information for us to deal with.

Absurdity

Status Whatever

In a little over a week, I will be 70. The mind, as they say, boggles. How did this happen?

All in all, though, I have little to complain about. Physically, I seem to be in fairly good condition, I just got my COVID and flu shots, the minor inconveniences that dance around me like gnats are largely insignificant and can be ignored.

I have a lot on my plate, though, and I have noticed a marked decrease in…

I don’t know if it’s energy or just give-a-damns. There are things I think it would be a good idea to do and then I just sort of fade when it comes time. I have less time during the day when I feel like a ninja warrior able to defeat all enemies. (I haven’t done any martial arts exercises in I don’t remember,) Our local SF convention is this weekend and I have a full roster of panels and such. I’m looking forward to it, as much as I look forward to anything.

I’ve passed up some shows I wouldn’t mind seeing. Partly this is a money thing. I still cannot get my head around the price of tickets these days. But let’s not go down that path, which leads to a desperate nostalgia and does little good. At the end of the month we’re going to see a farewell tour (Renaissance) that I expect will be excellent though melancholy. All my musical heroes are aging out or dying. Kind of like the writers and actors I grew up with.

And now I have to acknowledge that perhaps for someone, somewhere, I count as one of those aging relics.

Trust me, I have every intention of seeing the Tricentennial. (I doubt I’ll make it, but everyone needs a goal.) It does, in a way it never did before, depend on whether civilization survives. We are on the cusp of that wonderous age we all anticipated from the pages of whatever SF magazine we were reading at the time. As William Gibson said, the future is here, it’s just unequally distributed.

But I for the first time actually have before me a handful of projects I could consider my last. Again, it’ll take time to do them, but I sort of know what I’m going to be working on for the next five or ten years.  In one way, that’s a bit unnerving, but mostly it’s reassuring that I have that much to do.

There’s a game some people (maybe most) play, if you died tomorrow would you be satisfied. I don’t quite understand satisfaction that way. It involves being “finished” in ways that I can’t figure into my own desires, but I get the gist. Maybe, I have to say. More so than not. The thing is, I still can’t quite accept that I’m no longer the new kid on the scene. I don’t know what has to happen to make that sense of myself go away. Not sure if I want it to. I suppose that means I’ll just keep working until.

Until whatever.

Anyway, the best part of the last seven decades has been the people I’ve met and the friends I’ve made. Fine folks. And they put up with me. I guess I still have them fooled.

So, unless something strikes my fancy between now and then, I’ll see you all on the other side of….damn….70.

Art

Louisville

Many years ago, Donna went to Louisville, Kentucky, on a business trip. The company she worked for sponsored a workshop and put them all up in the Brown and she raved about it ever since. We finally got to go together last weekend, in company with friends, and my first reaction is—we need another week.

The Brown Hotel is one of those landmarks that has been kept up to snuff and is redolent with the charm of a past that clings here and there and is easy to miss unless you’re looking. We stayed three nights. We will do this again.

The excuse (as if one is needed) was a distillery tour, the Woodford Distillery, which is in Versailles, near Frankfort. I had not realized that bourbon can only be called bourbon if it comes from Kentucky. Like champagne, it is a regional hallmark. We have long since discovered Woodford and have yet to taste anything better. Comparable, sure.

The place has been there since 1812 and the original buildings are still there and in use. Beth, our guide, gave a great lecture while taking us through the facilities. Old stone, the odor of baking bread, a heady wheat and corn aroma, and in some ways the quiet of a church.

It has only been Woodford since 1996, but the continuity has apparently never been broken. (Not sure what they did during Prohibition, but whatever, lots of old distilleries survived somehow.) At the end of the tour we of course spent far too much on the product, bringing home some specialty bottles which we intend to savor carefully.

The grounds as well are beautiful. I could spend a week there photographing. Picturesque is both accurate and a cliché. The two things that hold the imagination of folks there seem to be bourbon and horses.

After the tour, we drove into Frankfort. Frankfort, along with being the state capitol, is also the public art capitol of Kentucky. Lots of murals and street sculpture. We didn’t have the time to really go through it. (One thing, the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in Kentucky is in Frankfort, but it is privately owned and not open for tours. Still, it would have been cool to see it.)

We returned to Louisville and later had dinner at one of the local “famous” watering holes, Jack Fry’s Bar & Grill. Fry was a boxer and opened the restaurant and it is one those “everyone has eaten here” kind of places. The food was excellent, but it was too loud to really carry on  any kind of conversation. (I had lamb chops, Donna has a pork chop.)

We Ubered. I don’t usually, but it was not my choice. Watching Maia navigate the rides prompts me to rethink my attitude.

A lot of upgrading seems to be going on. The confluence of neglect and revitalization is everywhere, and walking down to the river into the museum and bourbon crawl district was a treat.

We toured the Frazier History Museum. Again, a great deal of display space allocated to bourbon, but there’s a lot of early Republic history there. George Rogers Clarke has a statue overlooking the Ohio, and the Frazier had an elaborate Lewis & Clarke section.

On Saturday we walked around a lot, which only made it obvious, despite the pleasure, that we didn’t have enough time. So clearly a return trip is in the future.

We lucked out with the weather. Mid-80s most of the time and very cool evenings. We ended with dinner at a place called Proof (you can interpret that as you will) which turned out to be attached to a 21C Museum Hotel. So after dinner, we toured their current art show.

All in all, as near perfect a long weekend as could be had.  I’ll add a few more photographs below

 

 

 

 

blog

Note The Date

May 30th, Donald Jay Trump is found guilty of 34 counts of felony fraud for covering up moneys spent to affect the election. People (some) will think this was for sleeping with a porn star, but it was not. It was for the crime of defrauding an election by way of illegal payments to muzzle someone.

Conspiracy is very difficult to prove because one must demonstrate intent. New York state prosecutors managed to do just that and 12 jurors came back after 9 and 1/2 hours with unanimous guilty verdicts.

This is historic, certainly. The first time a former president has been so convicted.

The concern now is manifold. Big picture, will this make a martyr of him? That could redound to his benefit. Secondly, will the other trials now move forward with more alacrity? It seems to me that certain courts have been dragging their feet, waiting to see how this would play out, especially in Florida. Now that the first one has gone down, perhaps the others will decide to act and proceed. Thirdly, while there is no Constitutional bar to his running, how will this affect more state ballots?

On another level, the question must be asked, how safe are those jurors? Or the judge? Trump has a cadre of zealots who (clearly) think nothing of employing intimidation to serve their idol. I hope steps have been taken to protect these people till after the election at least. Maybe longer. Trump made a show of eye-balling them after conviction, the method of gangsters and bullies. That he is a bully has been apparent for a long time. We’re learning more about that from his time on The Apprentice, but anyone not swayed by his “charms” has seen it for decades.

Why this does not matter to those who buy into his messianic p.r. will baffle many of us forever. Just as a matter of taste, his cult is repulsive. But it is what it is, so we must act on other metrics.

Those who are claiming this has been a sham and despicable are pleading on his behalf. It must be said, no convicted felon ever has accepted that the trial was fair. But it was done by the numbers, according to the law, professionally and in detail. It transpires that Michael Cohen, who has been a problematic element in all this because of his track record as a proven liar, was not key to the outcome. Too much evidence merely corroborated his testimony. He was icing on the cake, so to speak. To be found guilty on 34 counts required far more than simple word-of-mouth.

Trump has played this game since he appeared on the scene as a “tycoon” and it has caught up with him. This has been a pattern. He thought, probably, that he could treat the presidency as if it were just another real estate deal. (This is one reason the assertion that “a businessman would make a better president” is bullshit. The office requires a statesman, which is a whole other set of skills most business people lack, not because they couldn’t be but because the job of running a business doesn’t require it in the same way nor does it allow time to learn it. For one, you have to be somewhat selfless. Anyway.) He was all about making deals. He thought he could play international politics the same way and he not only lost the respect of the majority of allied leaders but our enemies took advantage and played him.

He was a bad president.

He would be a classic dictator.

But for now, we can breathe a little easier knowing that he will not always get his way.

For a little while. This is just the first one. We have an election coming up,

And what do we see, once again? The one doing the work, which is not reducible to soundbites, is not “sexy”, is longterm on a road filled with potholes and obstruction, is being derided for not being a “savior” and the one in the clown car is getting all the press and making claims that have no substance but play well on television. The test here is how gullible the electorate is.

If we want to put this to rest, Trump must lose unequivocally. No narrow margins. We the People must make it clear as can be that he is rejected. It is not just Trunp. It is his backers, and by that I mean the moneyed interests and the fascist wannabes  behind him. This includes his enablers in Congress. Trump is a fool, but if we give him the precedent, the next will not be and we can kiss our institutions good-bye.

Yes, this is a very partisan statement on my part, but it is not party partisan. I am concerned about my country.

But for now, celebrate if you’re so inclined. Then next week get back into it and see the task through. Thank you for your time.

Whimsy

One Year After

One year later…

Curious, how time just goes on as before, as if nothing has changed. And once the thought occurs, you look around and wonder what has changed?

Not much, really. The present emerged from a slow set of inevitabilities that challenged as they happened and left us with a sense of exhaustion, melancholy, and perhaps a tinge of unfocussed regret.

Life has a shape. We can’t always see it, not all the time, and it does change in response to, well, living, but it does have a shape. We rely on it, we live within it. I’m not sure I would go so far as to say it defines us—more that we define it—but it certainly contributes to our sense of self. The components that create that shape…other people, aesthetic choices, the general gestalt of the world…

When there is a loss, that shape changes radically enough that we are unbalanced. We stagger, grope for the familiar ease with which we navigated (or the familiar dis-ease, which can form its own kind of dependence), we experience a reordering that seems impossible because that which is lost cannot be replaced.

The effect is often unexpected and we aren’t really taught how to handle it. It’s just assumed we’ll figure it out—or, as seems to be the case, we’re expected to simply keep staggering drunkenly through the rest of our lives as some kind of homage to the loss.

But healing happens for the most part. We learn how to walk again. Sometimes we replace the lost part, sometimes it simply heals over and we learn to go on with some balance. Sometimes we find something new that is not a replacement but fills out that shape we once knew.

Recovering is never indicative of forgetting, though. 

It’s been a year since my father died. He faded. It took a few years, but finally he came to crisis and he passed away after a few days of difficulty. Despite the fact that he could neither hear or see, limiting communication profoundly, he was popular at the care facility, and he received a final farewell from the staff that squeezed at our hearts.

He was a good man.

There is a large vacancy in my life’s shape now. It does not hurt. I miss him. We had no unfinished business. For my part, he was a substantial part of that shape, a presence to be relied on, not for anything specific but just to be there. I’ve been able to look back on him with a measureless affection for all that he did, for me and others. He could be gruff and occasionally short-tempered (he did not suffer fools) but at the end of the day he was a generous and kind man who went out of his way to make whatever he could better.

After retirement, my parents bought a house in a subdivision and over time he became the guy to go to for any number of things. Most surprisingly, he cut down trees for neighbors. He had spent time as a teenager in rural Pennsylvania where, I assume, he learned how to do this. Insofar as plotting the fall is an engineering problem, it would seem a natural thing for him to do well. I think he cut down 28 trees in the area before time and pain stopped him.

One of those neighbors took this photograph of him after one such project. It is quintessential dad, the best of him. He’s in his glory. He was having a great time. He expressed emotions in limited ways, but when he did, like everything else, he was all in and effusive.

 

I think that part of my life’s shape he once was has been partly filled by memory and by new stories my mother has been telling me, things I never knew or only knew partly. As for what I miss…

Occasionally I think how good it would be to have one more argument (Socratically, mind you), one more conversation. Not that I have anything I need to tell him—as I said, we left no unfinished business—but just to have the talk, the give and take. I surprised him occasionally and I relished those moments. 

I miss him, but it doesn’t hurt. It just is.

He was a great dad.

Art

Images

The one skill I acquired from my stint at my last lab job was color printing. I’d never been interested before. My few attempts in my own lab had been frustrating and unsatisfying. But I had to do it for the job. I learned. But.

But I will always be fond of black & white. I value good b&w more than color (with certain narrow exceptions).

So I’ve been playing a bit. Here, for your pleasure, are some recent results.