michael

When asked, my doctor replied with a question. “Can you walk a mile ?” Well yeah, anyone can walk a mile. He asserted that if you could walk a mile, you were fine.

Really? Just a mile? Anyone can walk a mile. Or so I thought. People that go to Costco and shop there get a mile in. A Trader Joe’s is six blocks from our home. Walking there and back with a little walking through the store, that is a mile. But then there is the question of “will you walk a mile?” 1 have to admit to taking a car to Trader Joe’s. Yes, we did fill it up with three or four bags of groceries. But still.

Perhaps the doctor should be asking things like:

Can you walk a mile every day for a week?
How quickly can you walk a mile?
How far can you walk in an hour?

And perhaps:

Do you walk a mile? or
How far will you walk instead of taking a car?

I checked in with about a dozen friends and family people about how long it takes them to walk a mile. I put the Same question to each of them, “how long does it take you to walk a mile?” None of the people under 4@ knows what their time is. (3 people) One replied “Too long… One person, who spends his summers walking the Pacific Crest Trail said “2 miles an hour is a good pace.” People who walk for fitness report 13, 16, 17 and”on a good day with good weather 15 mins +/- 30 seconds On a typical day 15:45 – 16:10″ He also used to come in “under 14:45 consistently” All the rest of the people I asked gave answers in the 20 to 25 minute range. There is one guy who replied, “Thanks to my phone obsessively stalking me I know this. 18 minutes to walk a mile.” My phone reports that I walk 22 ti 28 minutes per mile. My real question for myself is “Everyday?” And the answer much like my One Typed Page answer is “No”, not every day.

I know there is more to be said about Walking. About how good it is for you, mentally and physically. About how there is so many things to discover while you walk. About all the things that are not part of the rest of your life. There is more to be said about walking.
Not today.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-08-05

Does § have special meaning in foreign languages, like French? In English it is a section sign. It is called section mark, section symbol, or, for fun to my eyes, a silcrow. And from what internet searching I have done, it seems that silcrow is just that – a word for the § symbol.

To get personal for a paragraph, today my dentist spent eight minutes inspecting the implant thing he installed in my jaw months ago. He agrees that they have healed up just fine so now I can get a tooth installed. At last!

The paragraph market, ¶, does not appear on my keyboard A section takes precedence over a paragraph? The etymology for silcrow is “Portmanteau of pilcrow and Latin signum sectienis (“section sign”), or a derived form thereof.” This is the kind of thing I get wrapped up in. Now I will need to find and open an Oxford English Dictionary and see what they have to say about silcrow. So much for sleeping.

This is the blather that comes out when I do not have anything to write on.

—- MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-08-02

Father Steven goes on a long walk each fall. It is a walk on the Santiago, or rather the Camino de Nantiago. There are many routes on this walk. They all end up at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. People have done this walk in all times of the year. Reasons for doing the walk varies greatly. Father Steven’s reason is to take a dozen or so veterans to address the moral harm they have suffered from. He leads them in prayer to start the day. They walk the route for the day. They reflect on their problems. A psychologist is with them for those who would like more secular advice or counseling.

On the Camino walk they cover 12 to 20 kilometers each day. 1 was working up to a half marathon. While l think of it as a 13 mile event it also can be thought of as a 21 kilometer walk. I was almost there when health issues braked me to a stop. I am working on getting back up to the half marathon. It is harder this time. However, and St. Augustine or Diogenes said originally “it is solved by walking.” And so I do each day.

This all comes to mind after a walk (mostly) to the library to pickup Hrling Kagge’s book Walking (One Step At A Time).It was recommended to me by Father Steven. Nothing was said about the book. He just texted me the title. It has a quote up front (what are those things called?) it is from Laurie Anderson from “Walking and Falling”

You’re walking. And you don’t always realize it.
But you’re always falling.
With each step, you fall forward slightly.
And then catch yourself from falling . . .

I seem to be falling a lot. Falling as I try to do it again and again.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-08-01

My favorite month is now here. Yes, we have a lot of hot days ahead of us. Yes, we will have cooling days ahead of us. It is a glide path into Autumn. Yes, my favorite season. Welcome! Welcome to August:

One Typed Page, gee there is a point to this title, just type m a page, or a portion of it, every day. It is good for you. It is like drinking coffee or brushing your teeth or whatever it is you do every day. That you have to keep you going. Well, coffee keeps me going. Brushing my teeth keeps me out of the dentist’s office. Most of the time.

Every August I do a “thing of the month” and my thing for the month is to blog, or write something l put up on the web, kinda publishing. … Well, this is a way of me saying I will be here every day. Because that is what August is all about.

Professor of Rock. He was introduced to me by Kent. That was a couple of hours ago. Remembering the days of a lot less traffic. Remembering the day so more heat but we did not mind the lack of air conditioning. We got out and got sweaty. And I need to slow down on the memories because there are too many

This August is a special one. I turn 65 during the month which means that I start on Medicare today. For many of you that, perhaps, is not a big deal. For me, well I have used lots of my medical insurance.

A big lot. Enough that I write a letter of thanks to the heart team at Kaiser, letting them know that I am still here and still very happy with the six weeks I spent in the hospital back them. 1t is four years ago and I now have a graduation from that events. Those events. Still here, still working on my health, still being very aware of how things can go badly during a “procedure” and cascade through a whole bunch of nasty.

Now I am going to go find the video of guys hanging out at a seaside bar, one of them picking up a shark’s jaw and chasing around the bar. I just need to remember.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-07-31

Oh! Oh! Oh how nice, how very nice. I need one of those. Those since evermore shiny objects. Are you afflicted by the desire for a shiny object? That desire that leads to a deep desire for a new bicycle/ukulele/book/… you fill in the blank for a new object. Oh, and have I mentioned the one that afflicts most of you? A typewriter? You feel the urge for that new one that is different from the one, or from one of the many, objects you have. Or a new fountain pen. Gotta have it. It is not like one of the ones you already have. It is different in some way. It is smaller, bigger, lighter, brighter, smoother, rougher, a new insight, a confirmation of your bias, it is colorful in a new way, it is a sublime view of what it is.

I have been fighting this group of urges, and it is a group because the urge afflicts all manner of objects. The library is a great help for this. Want that book? Check it out. (not completely a cure, used books take me away) A new fountain pen? They are cheap, well if you like to explore the imported from China group. I ink up a pen and write with it until the urge passes. An another ukulele? I “only” have two. Well, seven if I count my wife’s collection. I play a bit and think about what I have yet to learn to play. That quells my desires, for a bit. A new, another typewriter? That, for now, was quelled when I could not find all of my typewriters, 1 know the Corona is here, someplace I know it is here. We did eventually find it.
Eventually.

Lucky for me I also have an urge for hobby objects. I can rotate to another thing I can do. Watercolor painting in on its way. Perhaps a new shade of yellow is in store for me. Or maybe a paper? At least they are consumables. I use them up. Unlike sketchbooks. Don’t get me started on them.

-— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-07-03

Roasting coffee fills’ the house with (what? three (four or five) typo errors in the first line? aw c’mon, wake up here) wonderful aromas. Our house smells mostly of Guatemalan coffee. My wife loves Guatemalan flavors and there are so many to choose from, so be it. This morning she offered to finish my coffee because its flavor did not, in her mind taste good with my food. Dan Dan Noodles were my leftovers served for breakfast. I thought they tasted fine as a combination. Consider:

            COFFEE
Good Taste           Bad Taste
Pancakes             Orange Juice
Chili, the dish      Apples
Pie, any kind        Gaspacho (Gazpacho?) (sp)
Pizza, leftovers     Sushi
Peanut Butter        Chinese Food in General
Cheesy Grits         Pickles

You understand how foods either, well mostly, really augment each other and damn you want more. Other combinations bring eating to a halt. No more now.

I have wondered how Chinese cuisine would be different today if they had coffee for hundreds of years. Let us enjoy the lighter flavors of tea and its pairing with foods.

For better or worse our July 4th weekend is starting off with a frozen flat house. Thawing out the refrigerator which had become a block of ice. So we are eating a bunch of now thawed foods. Many of them (a lemon pound cake at the moment) taste wonderful with coffee. Not So with the very flat tire on my car. Fortunately, this did not happen on the trip to and from Billings. The car picked up a roofing nail. I decided to pair that with some needed maintenance. While not as tasty as coffee with anything on the good list above I am killing two birds with one stone here. I think my metaphors are getting a bit thick here.

I put this aside for a bit. I go sit and sleep.

The car repairs take too long again. I will not make it to the library before it closes. That, I guess, is ok. There are a half dozen library books lying around to be read. It will wait for me.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-07-01

This came to me from Austin Kleon’s online collection of wonderful things. He got it from Reborn Journals and Notebooks 1947 – 1963, from Susan Sontag. It is about what makes a writer.

The writer must be four people:

1) The nut, the obsédé
2) The moron
3) The stylist
4) The critic

1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come
out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence.

A great writer has all 4 — but you can)”;
still be a good writer with only 1 and 2;
they’re most important.

This is from an entry of December 3, 1961. The book, Reborn, covers her life from age 14 to 50. I know of Sontag from her monograph On Photography (1977) and Illness as Methaphor (1978). I certainly have a skewed view of her and her writing.

I flatter myself by self assigning being a moron. Well, a bit of a nut. The rest will need to come with more typing. If I flatter myself.

Writing is such a naked art. Everyone can see all of the things that are presented. While you do not know what they wrote and threw out first you do see what they came up with. It is all there, you know the words, Now to come up with the words you make in your writing.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-06-28