Luck or Reason?

Enjoyed listening to the TED talk from Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy-- on how we are usually wrong about things. 

Heres the link--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVdiHu1VCc


I've come to realize that's true and yet still I always think I'm right until proven otherwise. A great example-- I thought the 3-point shot would ruin basketball. I predicted Renee Zellweger was going nowhere when I met her as a college undergraduate. I thought Robert Rodriguez's artistic vision was completely juvenile when he showed me a student film. Well, maybe I was right about that last one. 

I dismissed "Twitter" as a dumb idea when I first heard about it. A few things I did pretty good on-- moving to Austin, suspecting Climate Change was happening.... and betting on Birdstone (pure luck) to win the 2004 Belmont Stakes against Smarty Jones. I liked the name of the jockey, Edgar Prado, with the Prado Museum in Madrid association.


So maybe luck is more important than reasoning...?

Message in a Bottle (from Edge of Glacier)

A 1959 message was discovered by arctic scientists at the very northern end of Canada. A scientist, Paul Walker, left a note in a plastic bottle at the edge of a glacier-- requesting:

"Anyone venturing this way is requested to re-measure the distance..."  


Today's scientists say Walker would not have known whether the glacier would expand or shrink. Walker left his message at a rock ledge just 1.2 meters away from the glacier ice. Now the distance from the buried bottle to the glacier is 101.5 meters. The glacier has melted, or retreated, an entire football field in distance. 

Sounds like no big deal. But the message in a bottle has something to tell us.

Chapter One—December 22, 2013

Got over 70 degrees yesterday in New York, just coldest day in December history by about 7 degrees. Broke the record by 7 degrees. How’s that for seven degrees of separation. Course the seasons are all out of whack. Mankind said we’ll show nature a thing or two about the rhythms of nature—just destroy them. Who cares? All that matters is I make it to work tomorrow on the freeway, driving my car, heating the sky up... let the clouds take care of it even if that means building New York City into a greenhouse. The better to grow tomatoes and jog around Central Park in your shorts and tank top. 

Sargasso Sea of Being

Sargasso Sea, a place for me, a place where the eels bee. A place to let my protoplasmic eruptions of joy and sadness flow. Diluted by the endless salty brine. Maybe you've released your inner demons for the Neptunian tides and eddies to blow and suck them, whistle them, pound into so much mutton chop fibrous sea foam and venous outpourings of virulence and myopic menstruations. Oh sea gods be kind on a cold, windswept Shakespearean night of Lear-like flatulence and turbulence, necropolitan buzz clangering of fear and mythopoeic meanderings of verisimilitude.

The buzzspeak of the electronic smattering machines have lent massive mutterings to the heaving sigh of an antique gramophone. Thomas Edison you fott... Your friends Firestone and Ford, the f-boys and Florida was the place to meet and greet and speak your shared secrets. You unlocked the universe, took Promethean fire and made lemonade, yes for the masses, we love the 'lectricity and the rolling thunder of automobile tires.

Tureens of goose liver pate dot the landscape and pocket watches made by Dali go click, click, click to eternity.

Questor-- What does all this mean?
Anselmo-- Don't ask, unless you really, really, really want to know...

Questor-- That's too many reallys... really
Anselmo-- So you don't really, really want to know, you drunken sot, you're a  bacchanalian     balustrade of barterdom means nothing beyond boredom and you ain't no friend of mine. Passive aggressive and parsimonious. You make me sick.

Questor-- Okay so you know me too well. I like bourbon better than bombast from a pulsating prestidigitator like yourself.
Anselmo-- You find me manipulative?

Questor-- Massively. So much so that I find your octamerous offerings an intrusion, an innocuous recitation on resuscitation for those not yet put unconscious by your drivels, scriveling, scribbles and plenary plenitude of moral morass.
Anselmo-- Now that hurts!

Do you believe in miracles?

A squirrel in my backyard suffered a grievous injury. He lost the use of his back legs. Maybe a storm blew him out of the tree and he landed hard. In any case I saw the squirrel pulling himself along with his front legs. Hw looked pathetic. He had to be in trouble. A squirrel with only two working legs seemed like a squirrel with a death sentence. I figured his days were numbered.

Every morning I eat oatmeal and I  add apple to my oatmeal. I started putting the left-over apple peel next to a tree where I knew the squirrel lived. The peel was missing after a few hours. A month later I saw the squirrel with only two good legs. He looked fat! But he was still able to pull himself up the tree. The squirrel was climbing down the tree and eating the apple in front of me. He seemed to be looking at me.

Recently I found some pecans in a metal canister in my house. I added them to the apples. The squirrel became more confident about looking directly at me. Did the squirrel understand I was leaving the food?  Does this qualify as a miracle? I don't know.

How walkable is my neighborhood?

I live in LoBu (Lower Burnet Rd.) in Austin, Texas. Burnet Rd. is an important north-south artery. Our area of Burnet Rd., between 45th Street and Anderson Lane, traverses several neighborhoods: Rosedale, Brentwood, Allandale and Crestview.  We used to be in the flight path but no longer.

Have enjoyed this area for a long time. My street has always been a mix, a mishmash of apartment complexes, homes, and duplexes. Back in 1996 when I moved in, we had a fair number of shacks, sub-standard housing with cheap rent. This traditionally had been a blue collar area, with honky tonk bars and drive-in movies, must have had a real edge of town feel back in the 1960s. That included Threadgill's, the bar and gas station where Kenneth Threadgill taught Janis Joplin how to sing.

This area  evolved into a twenty-something neighborhood, with young people living the Austin low budget lifestyle. Some attended the University of Texas. There has always been a high turnover rate with the young folks moving in and out.  The same youth have noisy parties on summer evenings. You definitely hear bands belting out numbers at house parties during South By Southwest (SXSW).

Lately the neighborhood has been gentrifying. You see more people walking their dogs and pushing baby strollers than you did back in 1996. An explosion of coffee shops and restaurants has happened along this portion of Burnet Rd.. Cappuccinos are  more readily available here than on the Via Veneto in Rome. With great coffee comes great laptops, and diligent yuppies lurk everywhere being creative. I'm using one as we speak. People want to live close to the center of town and this neighborhood has been booming for the last decade.

Is the neighborhood better or worse as a result? LoBu has been thriving. The demographic shift towards the center of the city, with more people wanting to walk more and drive less, bodes well for the future. However, our neighborhood is not ideal for walking. My street lacks sidewalks, a carry-over from the era when you got in the car for every errand. Most of the walking around here is for exercise or relaxation, but let's celebrate the change-- it is walking! Change is in the air.