My Typed Page

Two things I do on a daily basis, meditation and Duolingo. They are things like Seinfeld’s calendar with red Xs on it. At dinner time for myself, I decided to eat some leftover pizza. Heat it up in a pan, like the pan I described yesterday. We have found warming pizza in a pan is great. As I put the slice of pie I realized I had not yet done Duolingo. This is good, I thought, while the pizza warms up I will get some language lessons. It should take the same amount of time. After doing the lesson I went to the kitchen and realized I had the heat up too high. Shucks. I ate it anyway. A little carbon would not hurt anyone.

So much for that daily thing to do. As I bit off another bit of pizza I reflected on my earlier interruption for meditation. I was, at that time, trying to read Sam Harris’s book Waking Up. A half paragraph in my brain wandered off and … I caught myself I decided to meditate to get some settling down in my brain. A few minutes later I emerged from mostly watching my breath go in and out, catching myself thinking about other things, returning to in out in out in out. I could read a page or two before I drifted off into other thoughts.

112 # of 35 units. Make that #112 is the waiting line at our local library. I decided to buy the book. Stolen Focus, see yesterdays ‘s Give burned pizza and not paying attention to a book I was trying to read it seems I will need more than three weeks to read the book. And I expect I will be needing to write in the book. One does not write in books they get from the library. One should write in the ones they own. So I bought it.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-19

A couple of months ago we took a first step in ridding our lives of Teflon coated devices. Non-stickness not no more, just not via a chemical that is not good for you and that wears out. I bought two carbon steel frying pans. They showed up all pretty and shiny. But the shininess would not last. To start we coated the pans with oil and put them in the oven. Then we repeated that three times to get a coating of oil on the pan that was mostly non- stick pans. They had a beautiful brown surface to them. That did not last either. Now we are midway into the final state of non-stickiness. The surface of the pan is mottled, and it is to my eye, the most beautiful of all. Because it has “beausage”.

Beausage-ness is a beautiful a beauty that comes from use. Beausage is not a word, not in an y dictionary. At least not yet. The word was, or so I am told, comes from Grant “no relation” Petersen. Grant is a bicycling guy, he founded Rivendell Bicycles. He coined the word, I saw it, I picked it up, and here we are. I am admiring the beausage of my pans.

Things do not need, in my view, to be all shiny new. It is a maintenance that takes care of things, to keep them as new looking as can be. That is great for hospital floors. In my life I prefer things with the scoffs of living to be evident.

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Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How To Think Deeply Again is a book that delves into things that cause our attention to drop – and it is not just your phone’s attention-grabbing. It is also an interview with Dan Harris of Ten Percent Happier (get it through your podcast source) I am going to return to the interview. More on this topic tomorrow. Well, I should say that there are 12 primary ways your attention is stolen and some of them are things you would not expect to find.

-—- MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-18

Kent Peterson told me a story, well in this case it is not really a story but it sounds nice to start this with that assertion.

Kent Peterson told me a story about Issac Asimov having a bunch of typewriters, Selectric as the case was, anyway a bunch of typewriters of which each one had a function. The first one was for the novel he was working on. The next one was for a short story in progress. Then there was one for correspondence. (All I really know here is that there are or were a bunch of Selectric and at least one of them was dedicated to the novel at work. That all sounds good to well I hope to many of you. You have three, four, or many more typewriters. Load ‘em up with paper. Fine a thing to type on each typewriter. My Royal KMM, standard platen, becomes my One Typed Page machine. My International Hermes 3000 is for correspondence, especially for Spanish and Esperanto.

If you give this method a try please let me know how it works out for you.

Side note: according to Wikipedia Asimov typed at 90 wpm. What a pace!

April showers bring May flowers. Or so they say. What brings April flowers? We have a bunch of them, especially tulips.

Fair Warning Time: the bit about Asimov and his Selectric collection that comes to you via my second-hand telling of Kent’s tale. I asked Kent where he found out about Asimov and the Selectric, Kent got right back to me. He read it in Asimov’s autobiography. You need to trust the source here.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-17

Six years ago this word did not exist. There were no arguments about it being legal or not. Now it is, not in a dictionary. Yet. I am referring to “proplifting”. Proplifting is when you find a bit of a plant – like when a bit gets knocked off so there it is, a bit of a plant. A person sees the bit of a plant and they pick it up and propagate a new plant. This seems to work best with succulents.

Note that this is not taking a cutting from a plant. The part of a plant you or one picks up is already off of the plant.

Proplifting was coined by Sarina Daniels. She was in Reddit and participating in r/succulents. She created r/ proplifting as a joke. Instead people that do the act, picking up and nurturing plants, did not get the joke intentionally or not they participated in r/proplifting.

There were some people who call them common thieves.

If you are of a mind to grow things and you find a piece of a plant on the ground a bit of plant that could grow if potted and cared for well you just might do that. Other people would sweep up that bit of a plant and put it into the compost bin.

This concept was introduced to me by Austin Kleon where he quotes Mark Twain (I hope to type correctly here) where he said, “It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.” To which Austin Kleon asks “What about proplifting?” You can find the article easily enough by just searching for
proplifting.

I should point out that this only applies to bits of plants that have already fallen off the plant. Cutting a bit of plant is not the same. Nowhere in here do I refer to cutting off a bit of plant. I am only referring to picking up that which has already been separated from the plant.

Proplifting is now being debated by people who do it and people who consider the fallen bits to be their property and to take it is a form of stealing, they want to put it into their compost bin.

It seems people will argue about ownership of anything.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-16

Nah, it is not going to happen. I am not going to buy an Underwood Student typewriter even if it is a rare thing. I did drive up to Ace Typewriter to look at it again. Perhaps he will have an Underwood more to my liking. One with tabs, a right margin, and those things that are not needed but sure are nice.

IPA

IPA stands for India Pale Ale. It was developed for export from England to, I bet you figured this one out, to India. Mostly for the men who were stationed there. What separated IPAs from Pale Ale was, mostly, hop bitterness. This protected the ales from spoiling during the shipping. It did not hurt that it was developed in a region with lots of hop fields. American IPAs tend to be even more hopped than the original ales. That trend was led by “brutal Bitter“ developed by John Maier of Rogue Ales. At first taste, it was way too bitter. Give consumers a chance to adapt to its flavor profile and the growth of bitterness grew. Since that time the tastes for hop teas mellowed and we still drink IPAs in copious amounts. One thing is certain, one will never complain about IPAs being too sweet. Or even sweet at all.

This talk has worked up a thirst. I have a bottle of Dark Mild from Machine House Brewery. We will see how it is.

— MichaelRpdx :: 2022-04-15 :: rkmm

PBS when did you first watch it? I have no idea. I did not watch any television from 1975 through 1993 or so. Not that I never watched TV, I caught a sporadic thing. But I did not have one and I found plenty of things to do to keep me busy.

As a kid, eight or ten or so I got up early to watch whatever they had when the station came online. There were some educational bits, one piece about the investor of safety glass. His sweetheart was sliced to ribbons in an automobile accident. He vowed to avoid it from happening again. The show showed him hitting panes of glass with a hammer over and over until he hit on layering (do not trust my memories here, but I think…) shellac or something Similar coating both sides with it.

https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/april-14-2022

It is worth the effort of typing that URL into your computer. James Clear is the author of MABE (I really need to get an eraser) Atomic Habits and has a weekly, on Thursdays, idea blog.

This week’s episode starts with:

For those who expect everything, there are many curses.
For those who appreciate everything, there are many blessings.

That is followed by two other quotes from him. Then there are two quotes. This one led off with a piece from Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed

Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or racking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortunes or terrible injustices. And you have to do it no matter what is
True. …

He, James Clear, then goes on to pose a question or two. I will leave it to you to find out for yourself.

I am going down a rabbit hold. Sesame Street started on PBS. According to Wikipedia Sesame Street rand from 1969 to 2015 on PBS. However, Wikipedia shows PBS launch date of being October 5, 1970. Somebody’s wrong here. More digging to do.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-14

OK, I am thinking about not writing now but writing at 3:00 or h:00 in the morning instead. Nah, that is silly. I am not a silly.

Blood on the Tracks and Rumours, to name the two that come to mind right now, they are embedded in my mind. What did a 65 year old buy have the same reaction to music released in late twenties? Certainly not albums, Ah heck, they had a collection of 78rpm records bound into “albums” like photograph albums. They did not get a format we recognize – those were introduced in 1948. Take a look at Wikipedia’s article “Album” which provides a nice history of albums.

Interestingly, they list “the dominate form of recorded music” from the mid-1960s through early 21st century. Most of us, like me, were alive and listening to it throughout its history. Did you realize that? Were you aware that you were listening to something that would fade away? It brings to mind the days of black and white photographs, now described as an alternative format.

What else do we have fading away? TX(get a list of them)

Not going to touch the subject of affordable housing – even in New York City and San Francisco — before they realized what they could make and decided they needed to make those bucks.

I prefer to listen to silence while I work, Where work meant employment and doing things around the house. I like the sound of Silence, still do. Today I am listening to Rumours. As I use a bluetooth connection to my hearing aides it is like having a really nice headphone set.

Think it is time to go off in search of 25¢ beers and summers of discovering being me.

—- MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-13

It has to stop.
It really must stop.
There was no snow on the ground. It is cold enough to be there. But none, at least no snow yet. But here I am at 4:00 am awake for an hour, So I type. I do not need to stop typing. I do not need to be up and awake at those small digits. The only positive thing is reading about other people who wake up in those hours and they cannot sleep either. What it it about 3:00 that wakes people?

Underwood, that was the type of typewriter my Mom had, the one she used to type my Dad’s resumes on that H she used to type my first term paper in ninth grade before I knew how to type but was required by the teacher. My wife says it is better to collect typewriters than to collect guns. She said the same thing about fountain pens.

But here I am at 4:00 am collecting thoughts and typing them out. Coming up with what goes now, right now, onto the paper. Onto paper bits of thoughts appear from under my fingers to something I foist on to all of you.

I am not watching YouTube or attempting to read. Though it seems like a nice thought to absorb what others have written and rewrote and had an editor go over it and then they come together to a final manuscript and sent it to a printer. There is a lot of work there to create a book.

Naked Statues. Fat Gladiators and War Elephants is a book about ancient Greeks and Romans. It is filled with answers to the questions you were afraid to ask in school. I went to it to see about books. It has a glossary and from bison; body hair, removal of; to boxing; bras; and breast bands there is no mention of books. Were people unafraid to ask about books for Greeks and Romans? Or was Garrett Ryan, the author, too subsumed in writing a book to consider the topic of one?

A trip to the internet is not something I want to do in the early hours of the day. This needs to be wrapped up. It is approaching 7:00 in our editor#s time zone. Time to submit.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-O4-13

It is mostly green again. Mostly. It was quite the surprise to wake up to snow falling at 3:00am. It continued to snow through the morning. It did not snow a foot in Grangeville like it did when I grew up. They do have 10 days or so to meet that retelling of my youth. (I have a sister in Grangeville, that is how I know about their weather. )

After I finished typing this morning it was time to not go back to sleep, I just could not get back to it again. (if you wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 and are Awake you know this state of being )

I checked YouTube and found a piece by Joe Van Cleave (it would be nice to have an eraser….) he had put up called “Royal Mercury Sound Insulation Kit” and hey wait, I have one of those. So I settled in and watched it. It is an easy piece of work and, yep, it helps. Joe said maybe the kit would be for sale. The source was Ted Munk. I dashed off a note asking if that were the case. As it turns out, it is not. It was a nice gift from a nice guy to a nice guy. Ted did tell me what he used to make it.

A used Yoga mat (in his case a $3X $1 thing from a thrift store) thick felt from the thrift store or a craft place, and grommets from Ace Hardware. For less than $5 (7) bucks it, a Royal Mercury, is as Joe Van Cleave wrote “rendering it even better than new!”

We will see how it works out for me.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-Ol-11

PS –

Keep On Thruckin Mike: I fly get a starter sentence and let it go from there. This is a land of First Drafts for me here. There have been times when I laid out a list of things to cover. Those are ideas and I fill them out.

Catalina: you bet I remember. Want more? 😉 (Though I do have more, they are available.) How is your ink supply? First one is free. Like so many say. Thank you for warming my heart.

You think I would read One Typed Page before I sign off.

Leo: My count is still in the single digits. I think. But there is a really nice Underwood …