First Things, One Would Hope, First?

Back in the day, this is as opposed to now which is also day, but not the day. So, back in the day, when I was at NYU which is in Greenwich Village (in Manhattan) and Alrica was working at Scholastic which is in Soho (in Manhattan), we would often meet for lunch.

A digression for those who don’t know the layout of Manhattan. You can be comforted to know that Greenwich Village and Soho share a border. That border is called Houston Street. Two things about this: Soho is short for South of Houston, so as you might guess, Houston Street is the northern border of that section of town. The other thing, Houston Street is pronounced HOW-stun and not HUE-stun. It is not a city in Texas. It is not named for Sam Houston. I am not entirely sure for whom it is named, but whoever that Mr, Mrs, Miss, or Ms was, the person pronounced the name HOW-stun.

Now to regress (which probably isn’t the opposite of digress. Maybe to progress?) Many of our lunches were purchased at Hong Kong. No, not the one in Asia, but a restaurant conveniently close to both of us in our respective offices. Hong Kong was wonderful. It sold delicious foods such as Chicken with Cashews and Beef with Broccoli and other (Meat) with (Plant) which were not required to start and end with the same letter. Plus it was a very reasonable price.

The place had no atmosphere worth mentioning. If you wanted to eat there, you had choices of benches rather like picnic tables. But most of the time we took our food back to one of our offices or ate outside in a park. And it was scrumptious. Except the one time it wasn’t.

Once, when Alrica and I visited this fine purveyor of Chinese delicacies, we discovered the whereabouts of Jimmy Buffett’s famous lost shaker of salt. Someone had poured the entire thing into the sauces for the food made that day at Hong Kong. Our food was so salty it was inedible.

But we took it as a one-time error and the next time we returned there, the food was excellent as usual. That led me to realize (and probably Alrica too, but while I do not hesitate to speak for her in some things such as preferred ice tea making methods, I would not dare to do so in regards to realizations), it led me (us) to realize that it was lucky this was not our first trip to Hong Kong. (The restaurant in Manhattan, not the region in East Asia.)

If that had been the first meal we ever received from Hong Kong, we would have assumed that their recipes called for salt as the main ingredient and meat and vegetables as an afterthought. Why would we have possibly returned? The correct answer is: there is no reason or E) None of the Above. We would not have returned.

This supports the idiom which says you only get one chance to make a first impression. Though in this instance, that’s not entirely true. There could have been several people who bought food that day from Hong Kong for the first time. So Hong Kong had multiple changes to make first impressions, not just that day, but everyday it was open and serving meals. I suppose the more precise idiom would be you only get one chance to make a first impression per impressionable person on whom you are making an impression. But brevity and wit make it clear why the less precise version of the idiom is better known.

At present, Alrica and I are in South Carolina. My friend Jeff, who lives in North Carolina, told us we should try a fast-food chain of the south called Bojangles. I love trying regional fast-food chains. I like to see what is different, the same, and, for lack of a better term, regional, about them. Plus, if the chains ever spread nationwide, it is fun to think you knew about them when they weren’t so ubiquitous. For example, they have Culver’s in South Carolina. Of course, I remember Culver’s from living in Iowa and Wisconsin, when it was a Midwestern chain. It’s fascinating to see Culver’s locations spread like pancake batter emanating from Wisconsin and spreading across the United States. (And if you think I should have used a custard reference, rather than a pancake, I get that. But I am going back to a pancake theme below. Just have a little faith.)

Jeff recommended that we get, as our side, Bo Rounds. He accurately described the shape of them. He told me to imagine a tater tot, but someone had pounded it so it was much flatter and way more spread out. I like his metaphor of pounding it, presumably with a mallet or something malletish. As a mathematician, I would have probably said “Imagine a tater tot in which, while still cylindrical, no longer had a height greater than the diameter, but instead had a diameter greater than the height.” Mathematics is a wonderful language for expressing exactly what you mean, but it is rarely poetic.

Of course, we took Jeff’s recommendation and did eat at Bojangles on our drive to South Carolina. We got the Bo Rounds, as suggested. And while Jeff’s description did him credit in terms of shape and size, it was less on the nose about flavor. Because the moment I tasted my first Bo Round, I realized these are not a form of tater tots. No, these are latkes.

Latkes, also called potato pancakes, are shredded potato and onion with salt and other seasoning which are fried in a skillet, made almost like a pancake. (See, I promised a return to pancakes, and here it is!) It is a common food associated with Hanukkah. (Hanukkah involves miraculous oil, so foods fried in oil are a Hanukkah tradition. I’m sure even Judah Maccabee enjoyed a good jelly doughnut before revolting against the forces of oppression.) My first bite of Bo Round and I felt that ketchup was not the appropriate condiment. I hankered for either sour cream or applesauce. And given that now it is Hanukkah, how appropros!

But what I also found, at Bojangles, was Cheerwine. I had seen a billboard for Cheerwine on the road south. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I guessed, from the aluminum cans in the picture, that it was not, as the name might imply, wine. I just think most vintners grimace at the idea of putting their product in a can. (I know there is wine in a box, though probably not your finer wines, but I am unfamiliar with wine in a can.)

Been around for 106 years and I am just learning about it?

 

It turns out Cheerwine is pop, if, like Culver’s, you originated in the Midwest. It is soda if, instead, like Subway, you originated in the Northeast. (On that note, and on a tangent, you would think Subway started in New York City given that there is NYC subway map wallpaper on all the stores. But no, it started in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Yes, that’s still the northeast, but it makes you wonder if this is a tepid form of cultural appropriation.) And if, like Bojangles, you originated in the South, you probably think Cheerwine is a kind of coke.

Regardless of the regional term you use for fizzy soft drinks, Bojangles has Cheerwine in the self-serve soda fountains. And I wanted to try it, and it was great. It is a cherry soda, refreshing and bubbly. But why do I bring this up?

Because a week later, I had a second chance to get Cheerwine from a soda fountain. And I found it wanting. It was barely any of the red cherry syrup and way too much of the colorless carbonated water. Bleah! Not good, let me assure you.

But, like Hong Kong, I realized how fortunate it was that this was not my first encounter with Cheerwine. I knew this was just a problem of that particular soda machine having too little syrup, either through the bag running out or a problem in the brix. (Aren’t you impressed that I know a technical term like brix? It refers to the ratio of the soda syrup to the carbonated water, so it is exactly what I want for this paragraph. And so many people told me my trivial knowledge would never be useful. Ha!)

Had that been my first drink of Cheerwine, my first impression, I might have disdained it. I might have declined future chances to repeat the experience. But having found it to my liking the first time, I know that this was more likely the fluke, and I will return to Cheerwine at some future opportunity.

This makes me wonder. How many things are there in the world that I think I dislike, but really it is a matter of my first experience with that thing being a negative one? I will give you an example: shrimp. Mom, if you are reading this, I love you very much and I enjoy many of the wonderful recipes you made for our family when I was growing up. But not your shrimp. For years, I thought I didn’t like shrimp and I wouldn’t eat it. It wasn’t until college, while dating Alrica, that she convinced me to try shrimp. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it. It turns out I don’t dislike shrimp. I just didn’t enjoy the way my mother made it the first time I had it. That initial encounter led me to an erroneous conclusion. How many other such erroneous conclusions have I come to on the basis of a sample size of one?

I have tested some of my dislikes to be sure they are not just a one-time affair. For example, I am positive there is some chemical that cucumbers and melons have in common which most people seemingly cannot taste, but I can. And its flavor is reminiscent of a sour citrus juice which was breaded in baking soda and ashes, then left to rot in a tomb for a few centuries, and then reintroduced into the offending flesh of the fruit or vegetable (though horticulturally, cucumbers are also fruits.) I am also fully convinced that tea is a revenge plot by trees in response to the incessant human desire for paper and two-by-fours, offensive to taste buds, and probably a ploy by the sugar industry to maintain their profitable business.

But now think grander than just foods and beverages. Are there places that someone doesn’t like because of bad first impressions? Are there religions that some sectors of society demonize because of early impressions, possibly even those not personally experienced? Is this the root of bias, implicit or explicit?

I know I am a mathematician, not a sociologist. But how important are those first impressions on our way of thinking about big, important things? Can we overcome them with a good second impression, like my experience with shrimp? Or are some things so ingrained that we won’t allow ourselves to take that second chance?

Well, this is heady stuff now, way beyond Hong Kong and Cheerwine. But to paraphrase Jimmy Buffett:
I’m wastin’ away again in First Impressionville.
Hating foods with whole shakers of salt.
Some people claim that there’s whole subgroups to blame.
But I need to reset default.

The Fourth Thursday

Today’s the fourth Thursday. It’s likely I may
Be asked, now, for what are you thankful today?
And I guess, if you asked that, here’s what you’d be told.
I’m glad that I don’t have to stay in the mold.

This life where we nomad
And somehow don’t go mad
Come and go without pomp, without guilt
Though it’s plenty of fun,
It’s not easily done
‘Cause it’s not how America’s built.

Not to say we are homeless, but home we have not.
And a home is expected for really a lot.
Car registrations
And voting locations
Depositing royalty checks for creations.

There isn’t a system to do those with ease
But that is the price for the life that I please.
So I’m thankful that, even though sometimes it’s wild
We are able to live this way: undomiciled.

A River Cuts Through It

Here is an amazing story of geological history. And it began around 270 million years ago (give or take). It’s a pretty dramatic beginning too because the African plate and the North American plate collided. (Neither of the continents looked exactly as it does today.) This occurred on the eastern side of the North American plate, pushing massive volumes of rocks to the west. These rocks crunched and bent and piled and became… (any guesses?)

This rock pile became the Appalachian Mountains, version 1.0. These were big mountains. We’re talking size of the Himalayas big.

Then what happens? Erosion, same as is happening now. But this is the part I never knew before. Over millions of years, the Appalachian Mountains eroded away completely, down to the roots of the mountains. So, the Appalachian Mountains of that time would be better called the Appalachian Plains.

Those of you paying attention should be saying, “Wait a sec, there are mountains there now!” Yes. The movie is never as fun if you already know the ending. Like when I saw the movie Titanic, I already knew the giant squid was going to win. But, unlike that story, there is an interesting twist to our already known ending.

In the time of the Appalachian Plain, there was a river called the Taeys River. (Taeys rhymes with daze or maze or the phrase that pays.) The river began in what is present day North Carolina and ran northwest, which was downhill at the time. It flowed through present day Virginia, then West Virginia, and then into Ohio. It flowed as far north as what today is Columbus and then turned west. Here it ran through the middle of what is now Indiana and Illinois before turning southwest and hitting the Gulf of Mexico.

Again, if you’re paying attention, you probably think, “It must have gone through some other states before hitting the Gulf, right?” Surprisingly, no. The Gulf of Mexico stretched as far north as present-day Illinois in that time.

So yes, the Taeys River is very old, but you are justifiably asking, “Why is the Taeys River the twist of the story? And you still haven’t explained why there are mountains in this supposed plain!” Calm down, reader, I’m getting to it.

The Appalachian Plateau started to rise again, buoyed and thrust by magma from the Earth’s mantle. But the rise was very slow. Geologically slow. While this changed the courses of some rivers, not so the Taeys. The Taeys River managed to cut through the land at the same rate that the land was rising. So it isn’t that the Taeys cut down to form a canyon, but rather that the land rose on either side of it forming the canyon. Meanwhile the Taeys River stayed pretty much where it had already been. It survived the rise of the Appalachian Mountains 2.0.

However, while the river survived the rise of the mountains, later, the downstream part of the river wasn’t so lucky. Though it wasn’t mountains that wiped it out, rather glaciers. Glaciers came down through Ohio and Indiana and Illinois. They pushed earth and rock and filled in the channel that the Taeys River took through those states. In fact, the earth pushed by the glaciers dammed the Taeys River. A huge lake with several fingers of water was formed called Lake Bright along the present day border of West Virginia and Ohio.

Eventually Lake Bright got too full and had to go somewhere. A new outlet formed that tumbled down the present-day path of the Ohio River. From then on, the downstream part of the Taeys was gone.

That wasn’t the last change to the Taeys. When a new river out of the Appalachian Mountains formed, the Gauley River of West Virginia, it met the Taeys and changed the course of the Taeys downstream of their confluence. That new path is the present-day Kanawha River which runs through Charleston and eventually to the Ohio River. Interesting note: Kanawha is pronounced K'naw.

Still, the upriver part of the Taeys, the part that runs from North Carolina to the junction with the Gauley River in West Virginia, that part is still in its same bed. It is the oldest river in North America and one of the oldest in the world. Some geologists believe it may be the second oldest river in the world, second only to the Nile River of Africa. (Presumably, everyone knew where the Nile River was, but clarity is a virtue.)

This river is the only river that cuts across the Appalachians. It begins east of the mountains, but cuts through them and drains out to the west of the mountains. Not many rivers in the world do that!

One final note for the readers, who, as I mentioned previously, are paying attention. I would like to think that is many of you, but let’s be realistic. Still for those intrepid few, if you go looking for the Taeys River on a map or a globe or most likely the internet, you won’t find it. Because that isn’t its modern name.

And here is the irony: The river that run in this ancient bed, the oldest in the continent, the one that survived the rise of mountains, it’s called the New River. That brings a different meaning to the idiom “everything old is new again.”

The New River Gorge

 

We got to experience that amazing canyon that formed as the Appalachian rose around the river while we were in West Virginia. It is called the New River Gorge, and it is a national park. If you are ever in the area, you should check it out and know you are standing in a place not only of history, but prehistory. Really even pre what we usually call prehistoric. Though not so pre-prehistory that its primordial. Maybe just ordial. For those who are paying attention.

Authentic Chili Diving

When I was in college, my roommates and I made a distinction we called swimming vs. diving. It will likely come as no surprise that this definition came about while the Summer Olympics were going on. None of us were likely to achieve our dreams of standing on the awards platform, so we found tangential ways to be a part of the events.

The distinction between swimming and diving is this: In swimming events, meaning the races where you must do the breaststroke or backstroke for so many meters, there can be little argument about who wins the event. The person who swims the required distance in the minimum amount of time is the gold medalist. This is as opposed to diving which requires judges to give scores and hold up their scorecards. These scores are summed and the person with the highest total wins.

But the number of points given by two different judges who just watched the same dive may not agree. There is an element of subjectivity here. In fact, the entire event is subjective. Why is a small splash better than a huge splash that wets the first three rows. (This is transparently biased against breaching whales trying to enter the Olympics.) What determines if an tuck is more difficult than a curl (or whatever the terms in diving are.)

At some point, a group of self-proclaimed diving gurus decided upon the rules, what was good, what was bad, what was ugly. If a different group of gurus had decided upon the rules, the event might look very different. Well, the scoring would look different. The fundamentals of leaving a board and going downward into water would be the same. We can't overcome gravity. Even if the same group had decided upon the rules after having a very unpleasant meal, the event could look very different. This means the rules in diving are not only subjective, but arbitrary, as opposed to swimming where fastest is fastest and slowest is slowest and never the twain shall meet, because if they met, slowest would be going as fast as fastest and wouldn't be slowest, would it?

This post is, at its core, about several authentic experiences I had recently. But I want to make clear one point: Authenticity is diving. It is like deliciousness. It is possible for two people to eat the same thing and for one to say, "That's yummy," while the other believes the victuals have strayed far from delicious, tasty, or even palatable. 

Case in point: I made chili today. I would rate my chili's deliciousness at about a 5.5, but my wife would likely give it a 2 or less. I used too many jalapeños for her liking. There's an irony there. The very ingredient which, arguably, makes the chili authentic (namely, the chilis) is what detracts, in my wife's mind, from its deliciousness. So deliciousness is clearly diving. It is subjective, arbitrary.

I claim authenticity is similarly diving. So when I say, as I am about to say, that I had authentic experiences, you may disagree. It's just my arbitrary vision of what is authentic to various locales or foods or experiences.

Even above, when I said chili peppers are what determine the authenticity of chili (which does seem to follow from the name), that's still very diving of me. Just look at the insistence of Texans that real chili has no beans and the rest of the country's acceptance that beans are normal in chili. You can see that authentic chili has no universally agreed upon set of ingredients. (Or go to Iowa and get chili with a cinnamon bun, or go to Wisconsin where it is served over spaghetti. There's a lot of region flexibility to chili.)

I think the point is made. Let's move on to the experiences, shall we?

In Schenectady, NY, which is very fun to spell, Alrica and I had lunch one day at a place called First Prize Mike's. Alrica got a burger, I got a hot dog and a shake. We both had onion rings. The food was fine, not incredible, not bad, but fine. But the experience was so New York.

First Prize Mike's is laid out like a diner. It is long and narrow with a big bar around the open kitchen and then there are booths on the wall opposite the open kitchen. But it was the people who made it such an experience. The employees: cooks and wait staff, constantly razzed one another, griping that each was making everyone else's job harder to do. The waitress called her patron's "honey" and treated them like she'd known them all her life. She probably had known some of the regulars for a long time. But Alrica and I were first-timers, and we got that treatment too. It took forever to get our food, my chocolate shake, when it arrived, was strawberry, and when I tried to clean up my own table, I got scolded for taking away my waitress's job. It was fantastic, fast-talking, and friendly in that authentic matter-of-fact New York style. Or at least what I consider authentic for New York. It felt authentic to me.

When we traveled from Schenectady, NY to Cambridge, MA, we took a scenic route. This led us through country roads in Vermont. It so happened that we passed by a huge outdoor farmers' market and so we stopped. This market was so Vermont (a diving statement if ever there was one.)

What do I mean? The port-a-potties were sawdust compost toilets. If you bought food to eat on site, the utensils were all wooden or cardboard so they could be recycled. (There were multiple kinds of recycling at the recycling station, so you had to figure out which bin your utensils went into.) One vendor made a point to tell me that everything sold at the market was made or grown by the vendors selling at the market. And I found my fashion peeps, or at least I could camouflage as a Vermonter.

I like to wear t-shirts. I find them comfortable. But I do make concessions to the temperature. And one of those concessions is that when it is nippy, I put on a flannel shirt over my t-shirt. Usually I leave it unbuttoned in the front. For some reason I don't entirely know, the vast majority of flannel shirts are plaid. Mine are no exception to that rule. (In fact, now that we live out of a car and backpacks, I only have one flannel shirt. And it is plaid.) So, point being, I was wearing my plaid flannel shirt over my t-shirt.

Proof of my flannel shirt (and my ugly hat (and the Mohawk River))

 

As I looked around, I was astonished to see how many of the men were wearing plaid flannel shirts. (They did not have them open in front.) But by buttoning up my plaid flannel shirt, hiding the t-shirt beneath, I became one of the crowd, indistinguishable from lifelong Vermonters (or at least I couldn't distinguish between them and me, except I have the secret knowledge that I am not now nor have I ever been a Vermonter.) It's possible that the Vermonters could tell I wasn't one of them, but if so, I don't know what gave it away. I was certainly wearing the uniform.

You could argue this is more about stereotyping than a quest for authenticity. You might be right, but they were all dressed in plaid flannel. You can't take that away from me. That's swimming.

Alrica talked to a sugarmaker (a person who makes maple syrup, but isn't called a syrupmaker) about what causes the different grades (colors): golden, amber, dark, and very dark. Spoiler: It's bacteria. We got hot mozzarella (on a compostable wooden fork, of course) which is an entirely different experience from not hot (though not exactly cold) mozzarella, or so we were told by the cheesemaker (a person who makes cheese, though that word was pretty self-explanatory.)

Authentic Vermont, right? Unless you have a different definition of Vermontiness (or maybe Vermonticity,) which is totally diving of you.

In Charleston, West Virginia we visited a fast-food restaurant called Tudor's Biscuit World. (Sadly, people who make biscuits are not called biscuitmakers. They are called bakers. But it rhymes.) The biscuits were great. They are served with a variety of things inside, mainly products of pork, cheese, and potato. Definitely delicious (diving) and arguably authentic (diving).

Regardless of whether or not you agree with my various diving arguments, we all must concur that I need a deep dive into the leftover chili. I'm not likely to get much help in eating it. That's okay, because I think its reasonably good (diving), but not really good enough for a chili cook-off (which is completely a diving event.) Though maybe I could train for the Leftover Chili Eating Olympics. Then, just like all those years ago in college, I can dream about being an Olympian.

Spy vs. I

We wandered a museum devoted to the spy.
Those spies, you may not see ‘em, adrenaline is high.
Such craft to learn, and assets turn, and drones to glide and fly.
Would I become a spy, they asked. Now I’m asking, “Why?”

Are you a wandering ranger? Yes
Are you seduced by danger? No
Do you like solving puzzles? Yes
Do you like guns and muzzles? No
Are you good with disguises? No
Do you watch for surprises? No
A fan of obfuscation? No
Or one who’d serve his nation? Now, hold on a minute.

Is what I do any less important to the nation than what a spy does? I’m not sure that it is. But for comparison’s sake, let’s say we are talking about a really good spy, one who obtains critical intelligence that saves many lives. We won’t talk about the ones who turn on the country or who cause civil unrest in a foreign land that comes back to haunt us twenty years later.

What do I do in comparison? I help people to learn mathematical techniques that will propel them through college. And I would like to think maybe it gives them vital skills that will prove useful in their lives. This isn’t to say I think they will all be differentiating functions or writing proofs by contradiction. But I hope they will be thinking not only about what things are like now, but how they can change (and how we can predict that change.) I hope that when presented with some supposed “fact” that they can think critically, be a skeptic, and analyze it to determine if it is true or not.

It is like the parable of the frog in the pot of water. The story says if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog will jump out immediately. But if you put the frog in a pot of room temperature water and then heat it up to boiling, the frog will stay there until it’s boiled.

This is a story. Remember the analyzing-something-to-determine-if-it-might-be-true-or-not? Well, this doesn’t ring particularly true to me. The slowly heating water will eventually start to hurt and the frog will notice that and jump away. That’s how it seems to me.

And then I did a bit of research. I am not the first to ask this question. Guess what, I was right. Frogs thrown into boiling water may jump out, but they will be badly hurt by the time they can do so. Frogs in room temperature water that is being heated will jump out before it gets hot enough to hurt them.

You might wonder, what do frogs have to do with spies?

The spy is the hero of the moment. At that one moment, Spy gets crucial information and saves lives. Or if Spy is of the James Bond type, Spy defeats Villain and saves lives. We think that is impressive, because we just judge the spy in that moment. We ignore the months of slogging or undercover work. We ignore all the times the spy lied or hurt people who got in the way. That moment is hitting the boiling water and we frogs jump out (meaning we give our congratulations to the spy.)

But the educator is the long-slogging hero. There’s not one moment that defines it. But through the many lessons, the years of influencing students, the knowledge that has been obtained, bit by bit, Educator changes our nation, hopefully for the better. Sometimes, like Spy, for the worse.

Almost everyone can remember that teacher who touched their life and gave them a new idea, a new confidence, a new outlook. Almost everyone can remember that teacher who put them down, made them doubt themselves, or turned them off a subject. (I’m looking at you, math.)

But this is the slowly heating pot. Since it isn’t one moment of huzzah, we, as a society, don’t see it, we don’t celebrate it.

In 2001, someone sent some anthrax through the mail. Four such letters were sent. Four out of over 100 billion letters that are sent in a year. I need not tell you, that is a tiny, tiny percentage. (Maybe I do need tell you, if you were turned off from math at a young age.) Yes, this was terrible to imagine what could happen. And because it was short term terrible, we spent billions of dollars refurbishing the postal distribution center. I’m sure that saved some lives, a few lives.

Climate change is happening, slowly, creeping along. And it is killing people all over the world. It is changing economics in region after region. It is causing droughts and floods and gigantic hurricanes. And yet, we do little about it. In some state governments, we have done more to ban a state employee acknowledging the existence of climate change than we have done to help people affected by it.

Why is that? Because anthrax is the boiling water and climate change is the slowly heating pot.

This isn’t about the museum. If you are ever in Washington, D.C., you should go to the Spy Museum. It is amazing, interesting, and there are so many stories you either only half knew or never heard of that will make you gape.

But don’t forget those slowing heating pot professions that make your life as good as it is: road work crews, trash collectors, water treatment plant operators, electrical line maintenance workers, researchers, engineers, oh, and teachers.

So ask me, “would I be a spy?” I’ll say no, through and through.
But I would like to ask the spy, “Would you do what I do?”

Howe vs. Yankovic

Long ago, in this very blog, I posted about something I discovered which I called Ordinal Awareness Fallacy. It is when you assume that things happened in the same order that you knew about them, but they didn’t.

That particular post was when I first encountered a pomelo, a citrus fruit somewhat like an orange. I assumed that a pomelo was hybridized from an orange and some other fruit. But when I did some research, I found out I was exactly wrong. The pomelo came first. In fact, the orange is hybridized from a pomelo and a mandarin.

But I had known about oranges my whole life and only recently encountered the pomelo. And that’s where the fallacy came in. Just because I knew about one of them first doesn’t mean it existed first.

I recognize that I may not be the first person who ever made note of this phenomenon. Maybe it has been written about before, but I didn’t know about it before I discovered it. So I could have Ordinal Awareness Fallacy about Ordinal Awareness Fallacy.

But I also had Ordinal Awareness Fallacy about something else. Here at the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, we went to the John Brown Museum. It is about John Brown, his life before the raid on the U.S. Armory, the raid itself, and the aftermath of the raid including his death. In one of the videos at the museum, there was a chorus singing “John Brown’s Body.” It goes like this:
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground.
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground.
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground.
His soul is marching on.

You may have guessed, it is to the same tune as The Battle Hymn of the Republic. So I assumed that someone wrote new lyrics to the existing Battle Hymn of the Republic, but about John Brown. I was wrong on both counts.

John Brown's Fort - where he made his last stand

 

The Ordinal Awareness Fallacy is that John Brown’s Body existed before The Battle Hymn of the Republic. However, it is also a set of new lyrics to an older song called Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us?

But I was also wrong that the song was about John Brown, or I was sort of wrong. The origin of the song is way more interesting.

The lyrics were written, originally, by Union soldiers in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. They had a sergeant named John Brown. What amused them so much was that John Brown the abolitionist was a larger-than-life figure, depicted as gigantic, with powerful arms, an unwieldy beard, and blazing eyes of judgment. Whereas Sergeant John Brown was small, quiet, and even-tempered. It was this juxtaposition that so amused the soldiers of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, and that led them to write the lyrics. The body a-mouldering in the ground was John Brown the abolitionist. The soul that was marching on was the mild-mannered sergeant.

The song caught on with other Union regiments, and they wrote more lyrics, bawdier lyrics, bloodier lyrics. Eventually it was being sung by soldiers who had no idea it was about Sergeant John Brown. They thought it was only about the abolitionist. And it became very popular among Union troops.

Writing new lyrics to existing songs, that’s something I enjoy. I am a big fan of Weird Al Yankovic, Allan Sherman, and Spike Jones. These are just a few of the artists who have engaged in the practice of song parodies. The idea goes back millennia. In fact, the word parody comes from the ancient Greek para (beside or altered) and ode (song). Parody songs are funny. Even in Ancient Greece where the word parodia referred to burlesque songs. (So maybe they weren’t all funny, maybe they were dirty. But that was probably funny.)

But how did this bawdy song become The Battle Hymn of the Republic? Julia Ward Howe was a published poet of some repute at the time of the Civil War. She was in Washington with some other dignitaries and was invited to see a marching and inspection of Union troops. And while the soldiers were marching, some of them were singing John Brown’s Body.

One of Howe’s colleagues, a reverend, suggested that she write “better lyrics”, probably meaning cleaner ones. And she did, the very next morning. Howe said that she woke up in the middle of the night with words in her head, hastily jotted them down, and then in the morning discovered she had written The Battle Hymn of the Republic. That’s an amazing story that must have involved a lot of midnight jotting, because the full song has five verses (plus lots of glory, glory hallelujahs.)

The song was soon published and became a huge hit among Union supporters. It also became wildly unpopular in the south, because the song placed God on the side of the Union. It reframed the war as a war for what was capital R Right and capital G Good. For example, in verse five there is a line that reads “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make them free.” (The “he” in that sentence is Christ.)

So here is the question I pose to you. What do you call this, writing lyrics to an existing song but not to make it funnier? Rather to make it more serious? It’s not parody, right? Maybe intrody? Serody? Dramody? (I suppose that’s too close to dramedy, which is already a thing.)

I don’t know. But it is not the same fine art of the Honorable Yankovic and Squire Sherman. It is another fine art of its own.

And I wonder if I am wrong about assuming that parody songs came first and serody songs came second? I am drowning in my own fallacy. Or someone else’s.

Happy Accidents

You know how Bob Ross, while painting, would talk about happy little accidents? There were no errors, because you could make the error into something that seemed intentional.

We experienced our own happy little accident, though it wasn’t any sort of error. Alrica and I are staying in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia at the moment. And here in Harpers Ferry is the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park. Naturally, we wanted to visit that while we here and we waited until the weather was going to be very nice to do so.

So it turns out we first went to the park on September 14. This, so it happens, was a happy little accident. The Harpers Ferry National Historic Park commemorates many things. Certainly high among them is John Brown’s Raid on the U.S. Armory that was once here. But it also marks various battles from the Civil War in which possession of Harpers Ferry changed hands.

You see, Harpers Ferry is a very strategically important point. The Shenandoah River and Potomac River meet here and then flow downstream, as the Potomac, through the Blue Ridge Mountains. This pass cut by the Potomac River is the only easy way through the Blue Ridge Range. So it became an important transportation center, basically a bottleneck.

Yes, the view is from a cemetery, but it is a view of the
Potomac cutting through the Blue Ridge Mountains

 

The B&O Railroad (for you Monopoly fans) connects Baltimore with the Ohio River. (Hence its name, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.) And how does it get through the mountains? Right through the pass, following the Potomac River and passing through Harpers Ferry. Also, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (called the C&O Canal) followed the Potomac River. And the Winchester and Potomac Railroad ran along the Shenandoah River until it met the Potomac River in Harpers Ferry.

The Rivers and States

All this transportation made Harpers Ferry a big prize. To control your supply lines, it's nice to control the trains and canals. Add to that the fact that Harpers Ferry is right at the border between the Union (West Virginia and Maryland) and the Confederacy (Virginia) and this area saw more different battles than most anywhere in America. It is estimated that Harpers Ferry changed hands eight times during the Civil War.

The biggest of these battles took place when General Robert E. Lee invaded the north. He was on a winning streak in battles in Virginia and decided to take the war into the Union’s lands. This is going to lead to the Battle of Antietam (as the Union soldiers call it) or the Battle of Sharpsburg (as the Confederate soldiers call it). But before that occurred, Lee wanted to capture Harpers Ferry from the Union garrison that was stationed there.

Here comes the happy accident: That battle took place September 13 through 15, 1862. So we happened to go to the national historic park during the anniversary of that fight. Because of that, we were treated to special ranger programs about the battle.

We went up to Bolivar Heights where the Union troops were stationed. Interesting note: Bolivar Heights is in a town called Bolivar which borders Harpers Ferry. Before the town incorporated, it was usually referred to as Mudfort. But the people didn’t want that to be their city name. So they asked the state of Virginia (it was still Virginia at that time) to incorporate as the town of Washington. But the State of Virginia had so many places already named Washington that they said, “Not gonna happen.” The people had to come up with another name.

This was in 1825, when Simón Bolivar was in the news, liberating South American colonies from Spanish rule. So they asked to incorporate as Bolivar. Except newspapers don’t give pronunciation guides. So the local name of the place is pronounced Bolliver, rhymes with Oliver.

On Bolivar Heights we met Ranger George. He hiked us down the heights to the skirmish line. He hiked us back up. He told us about stages of the battle, how Jackson (confederates) outflanked Miles (union), about the different regiments there, about the Union surrender, and then about the hard march of the confederate soldiers to Sharpsburg, Maryland. After their decisive victory in Harpers Ferry these exhausted men would have a pretty rough defeat two days later.

It was fabulous. There were plenty of signs to tell you about the battle. But the ranger gave lots of extra information, answered questions, described it and how the land looked then, and made the story come alive in a way that the signs couldn’t have.

So just like Bob Ross assured us, sometimes accidents work themselves into something beautiful.

A Tale of Two States

When I first got to NYU, I was waiting in line to get my NYU ID Card. Also in line with me were a young man and a young woman chatting about where they were born. And I heard the young man say, “I was born in West Virginia or East Virginia. Whichever one of those is a state.”

I’m thinking, “You don’t know what state you were born in? You are an incoming freshman at a university, meaning you presumably made it through high school, and you don’t know whether or not the U.S. has a state called West Virginia or East Virginia?” I sometimes wonder what happened to that young man, if he made it through college, if he knows his address or if he lists it as being in North Connecticut or Old Hampshire or Rhode Isthmus.

I happen to know which of those two is a state. In fact, I happen to be in West Virginia right now. Today, Alrica and I visited Charles Town, WV (not to be confused with Charleston, WV. Unlike West Virginia and East Virginia, both of those exist.) Charles Town was founded by Charles Washington, younger brother of George Washington. And one of the sites we saw in Charles Town was the Jefferson County Courthouse.

The Jefferson County Courthouse

 

This courthouse has an interesting claim to fame. It is the only county courthouse in America which has been the site of two different treason trials against two different states. How is this possible?

Before the Revolutionary War, the colony of Virginia included both present day Virginia and present day West Virginia. When the Constitution was ratified, this entire area became the state of Virginia. At some point after this, the counties of Virginia in the Shenandoah River Valley and further west wanted to form their own state, to be separate from Virginia. They didn’t feel that Richmond represented their interests. But this was a non-starter. The U.S.Constitution didn’t allow new states to be formed from old states unless the old state said, sure, you can leave. And naturally Virginia wasn’t keen to let this northwest part go.

Enter John Brown. Brown was an avid abolitionist. He believed slavery was an offense against God. On the other hand, he was okay with murder if the people he were murdering were slavers or pro-slavery. Brown came to Harpers Ferry, Virginia with a plan. He gathered men together to complete his plan. And then one October night in 1859, he and his 21 men attacked the U.S. Armory in Harpers Ferry.

They captured the Armory, killed a couple people, freed slaves, and then abducted Armory employees when they arrived to work the next day. The townspeople didn’t take too kindly to this. They began firing on Brown and his raiders inside the Armory. Deaths ensue, but the townspeople managed to oust Brown from the main armory. He and some of his remaining raiders took refuge in an engine house.

The next day, a party of U.S. Marines arrived in Harpers Ferry. They raided the engine house. One marine was killed, but they prevailed. Brown was terribly wounded, but alive. And interestingly, who led that party of marines? General Robert E. Lee.

This leads to the first treason trial at the Jefferson County Courthouse. John Brown and his raiders were convicted of treason against Virginia and they were hanged. And yet, many Americans felt that Brown was right (not necessarily to kill people, but to rebel against a government that allows slavery.)

Of course you know what happens just a few years later: The Civil War. But this has an important implication for the people in the northwest counties of Virginia.

In 1861, Virginia held a Secession Convention and decided to secede from the Union. This was overwhelmingly popular in Virginia as a whole, but not as popular in the northwest part of the state. Lawmakers there held a convention in Wheeling. They stated that the Virginia Declaration of Rights said that any substantial change in the government of the state had to be approved by the people, not just the legislature. This was certainly a substantial change. So the Wheeling Convention said that the lawmakers of Virginia had broken Virginia Law by seceding without making sure it was the will of the people. So the people in Wheeling established the “Restored Government of Virginia”. They elected their own governor and other officers.

Now there were two different governments claiming to represent Virginia, one in Richmond which had seceded and one in Wheeling which said, “We do not secede!” The federal government chose to recognize the “Restored Government”. And one of the first acts of this restored government was to grant permission for the northwest counties to form their own state separate from Virginia.

Originally this new state was going to be named Kanawha, named for the Kanawha River. But there was already a county named Kanawha County. Many lawmakers were worried there would be confusion if there was a county in a state with the same name as the state. Besides, most people in this new state considered themselves Virginians by birth. So the name West Virginia was chosen instead. It became the first of two states to be admitted to the United States during the Civil War. (I bet my friends in Reno know what the other one was.)

What about the other treason trial? In 1921, a group of coal miners in West Virginia wanted to unionize. The coal mine owners didn’t want to allow them to do so. The owners hired strikebreakers and were also backed by law enforcement. The miners armed themselves and confronted the strikebreakers. The ensuing melee is called the Battle of Blair Mountain.

The Battle of Blair Mountain is the largest labor uprising in the history of the United States. It is also the largest armed uprising that has occurred in America since the Civil War. The miners had numbers, but the strikebreakers had better arms. Eventually the miners lost, but many people were killed in the process.

Though the fighting had occurred in southwestern West Virginia, the leaders of the labor movement were put on trial in northeastern West Virginia. Guess where? The Jefferson County Courthouse. It was another trial for treason, but this time it was treason against West Virginia. One of the miners’ leaders, Bill Blizzard was acquitted of the charge of treason. He was tried first as the state thought it had the best chance of convicting him.

In the end, one miner, Walter Allen, was convicted of treason and three other men were convicted of second-degree murder.

It’s an interesting distinction for a courthouse that didn’t move but still changed states. And unlike the young man at NYU, it knows which state it was born in and which state it is in now.

The Curse of the Mummy

When we were preparing to leave Reno, one thing we did was put some things at the end of our driveway that we were giving away for free. This was signified by a paper with “FREE” written on it which was taped to the end. I thought the meaning would be clear. Take things, they’re yours. And people did come and often took things.

But not everyone seemed to glean the purpose of the free pile. Someone, I don’t know who, had another idea. They added a box full of things to our free pile. When I went out, at the end of the day, to pull it in, I found things we hadn’t put there. This defeats the purpose people! We were trying to get rid of things, not gain new things.

That being said, there were several interesting finds in the box. There was a PS2 and some PS2 games. We managed to sell those to a game store for $60. Not bad for items left at the end of our driveway. There was a harmonica which we gave to Carver. I have no idea if he has yet tried to play it. There was a VCR (yeah, those still exist) and a VHS tape of the movie Stand By Me.

Our saga of this blog post begins with one more item in the box: A iPod Shuffle. Since we were going to be spending our lives in a car with no CD player, we thought this could be a useful tool to have. We would put songs we wanted on it and we could listen to those.

The iPod already contained several songs. For example there was “I Got a Feeling.” Have you ever listened to this song? It begins:
I got a feeling
Tonight’s gonna be a good night
Tonight’s gonna be a good night
Tonight’s gonna be a good good night

It continues in much this way for its remaining two and a half minutes. So I wonder: Why is this called “I Got a Feeling?” Shouldn’t the title be “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night” given that those lyrics will be repeated 490 times in the course of the song? (Writing other lyrics was clearly too hard. At least give it the right title.)

Syarra took on the project of culling the songs that were already on the iPod and adding new ones. She did a great job, with the eclectic mix to make both Alrica and me happy. There’s songs by Weird Al and Tom Lehrer (to make Erich happy) and songs by Bette Midler and Madonna (to make Alrica happy). There are songs from shows like Avenue Q and Little Shop of Horrors (Erich) and songs from shows like Les Miserables and Scarlet Pimpernel (Alrica). There are songs and bands that please us both like Queen and They Might Be Giants. And then there is the song we can’t get rid of.

Whenever Syarra would connect the iPod to a computer or other device to edit the song list, one of the songs that was on the iPod when we got it doesn’t show up in the list. You can’t delete it. It isn’t there. Except it is there, because whenever you play the songs on the iPod, it is one of the songs in the playlists. Syarra called it a zombie song. No matter how much you kill it, it won’t die.

Except the particular song holding zombie status on this iPod is “Walk Like an Egyptian,” the 1986 classic by the Bangles with their very 1986 hair. And since it is about Egyptians, we decided that it isn’t a zombie song, rather it must be a mummy song.

Whey oh whey oh

 

And so once every cycle through our songs all the cops in the donut shops say “whey oh whey oh ay oh whey oh” (Note, this could be “way” like direction rather than “whey” like milk, or even “weigh” like find out how much you are pulled down by gravity. I’m unclear on which “whey” is being used in the lyrics and context is little help here.) The tomb which was sealed in 1986 is breached once more and the mummy rises again.

The Canadian Myth

There are certain myths that are so common, well-known, and repeated that everyone accepts them as true. Even when there is evidence to the contrary, that are hard lies to kill.

Some examples:

• The tongue map - that there are certain parts of your tongue that taste sweet and other parts that taste salty and others bitter and so on. Not true. All parts of your tongue can taste all flavors, but some parts have higher concentrations of specific types of taste buds.
• Humans only use 10% of our brains - we use all of it. All the time. Every part of your brain is incredibly active. (Maybe I shouldn't speak for you. My brain, active. Your brain? You'll have to let me know.)
• Canadians are very friendly, so much friendlier than Americans - from first hand observation, not true!

Having just returned from Canada, I can tell you that this myth is just that, a myth.

This is not to say that all Canadians are unfriendly. Many of them are delightful, helpful, and welcoming. But there is an appreciable percentage who are not.

Let's start with driving. Ontario drivers are kind of aggressive. They're not New Jersey level aggressive drivers, but they aren't Iowa laid back drivers either. They are comparable to California license plate drivers in Nevada. They will cut you off and think their horns are the best tool for communication. Once we were waiting to make a turn because there was a pedestrian in the crosswalk and the car behind us started honking at us. Dude, you want me to run over the woman with the baby stroller? (I never asked the Candidates if they say stroller or perambulator.)

We didn't find our fellows particularly patient about waiting in lines. (I didn't ask the Canadians if they wait in lines or on lines.) We had a man honk and yell at us about where we parked. So we moved and then he wanted the spot we moved to.

I'm saying that Canadians are just like Americans in this respect, at least Ontarioans are very much like Americans of the East Coast. I wonder if in Alberta and British Columbia they are more like Americans of the Mountain West.

I don't know, that will take further study. I'm just starting that Canadian friendliness is not supported by the existing evidence. So next time some TV show makes a joke about the Canadians being so nice they (fill in the blank) don't you believe it.

It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Which I can taste with my entire tongue.

Labor Doodle

You probably think I meant to write labradoodle and I desperately need to spell check. But alas, I meant what I wrote and I wrote what I meant. My title is faithful one-hundred percent.

Today is Labor Day. And today when I saw the Google Doodle, it commemorates Labor Day. I first saw it today when I was on the Virtual Desktop for my work. This desktop thinks I am in Maryland and naturally gives me an American version of the browser. I noticed that when you mouse over the doodle, the little box that pops up says “Labor Day.” That got me curious.

So after I finished on the Virtual Desktop, I checked the Google Doodle on my local desktop. Same doodle. Same message when you mouse over it. Why would that be strange? Well, I am in Canada.

Yeah, Erich, but it is Labor Day in Canada too. (That was your line. Now my response.) Yes and no. It is, but they would spell it Labour Day. So I thought that when I mouse over it, it would say Labour Day. But it doesn’t. It says Labor Day. And I am definitely on the Canadian site for Google because it says Canada at the bottom.

See, it says Canada and Labor Day

 

What’s more, if I click the link, it takes me to a search page for “Labor Day” and not for “Labour Day”.

Search Results from clicking on the doodle

 

Maybe it is because my computer is set to American English? But I doubt it. I suspect that was in the coding for the doodle.

Incidentally, most countries do not celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September. The majority of countries celebrate it on May 1, International Workers Day. Why don’t we celebrate it then? I guess it’s like not using the metric system. One of those things that separates Americans from their former British overlords. Like spelling Labor without the u.

Fire and Water

This post is not, as the title might imply, about what the ancients believed were the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Nor is it any sort of incantation meant to bring about rejuvenation. Nor is it a metaphor for alcohol. Instead the title, Fire and Water, is much more literal.

This is a post about fear.

If you are thinking, that’s not literal, wait. You haven’t read it all yet.

When I was younger, I had a fear of fire. Let’s call it a healthy fear of fire, because fire can be bad for your health. I don’t know how young it began. There isn’t an inciting incident I can point to and say, yeah, that’s what did it. Or maybe there was, but it is buried deep in my subconscious. And I don’t have a submarine, so I can’t go there. (And given the weirdness of my dreams, I don’t think anyone would want to go there.)

It wasn’t a crippling fear. I could sit around a campfire with my fellow scouts or campers. But I didn’t love getting too close. I was perfectly okay with my marshmallows only slightly roasted. I never wanted to get them really into the fire so they could get warm and gooey and brown. A fire in the fireplace, that was great. Because there was a grate. Or a screen. Or some device that kept the fire inside and away from me.

But I was unable to have personal interactions with fire. The very idea freaked me out.

This is logical when you think about it: fire is dangerous. It destroys homes. It causes burns on people. It spreads across huge swaths of forested land every year. I’m not saying my fear was rational, but it had some justification.

I did get over that fear, because I had to. When I lived in New Jersey, I got a job at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. I was a demon! Okay, I was a demonstrator, meaning I did science shows for the guests of the museum and at schools throughout the tri-state area. Demonstrator is a cool title, but demon, that’s dope. (Hoping I am using dope correctly. Also hoping if my children read this they roll their eyes at my attempt to use dope.)

This job required, as you might have guessed, personal interaction with fire. I had to use a propane torch to heat a pop can with a bit of water in it so I could turn the can upside down in a dish of water and watch air pressure crush the can. I had to submerge lit candles into aquariums filled with carbon dioxide so you could see them extinguished by the lack of oxygen. Most dangerous of all, I had to demonstrate the difference between a physical change—in which I ripped a piece of paper in two—and a chemical change—in which I took one of those remaining pieces and set it on fire with a match, then put it out with my bare hands. Why would anyone do that? Well, it demonstrates science. And it earns you some street cred.

Discovering that I could use fire, work with fire, befriend fire (that may be going too far, but at least we weren’t enemies) helped me overcome my fear. Or forced me to overcome it. It wasn’t like a helping hand offered in generous benevolence. It was do or do not. There is no try. There was no try? There will be no try? Whatever the correct verb tense should be, assume I used that.

Today, I experienced that sort of fear again. Though it wasn’t about fire. It was about water. Or at least it was related to water. I’m not afraid of water itself. I’m not avoiding toilets and showers and sinks. I can still have a drink when I’m thirsty. (I mean a drink of water. Of course, I could also drink juice. I don’t have a fear of juice either.)

One of the items that Alrica and I still own, living in the trunk of the car (or the boot since I am in Canada) is an inflatable two-man kayak. Today we inflated said kayak and we kayaked in said kayak. We were on Collins Bay. It’s a small bay shaped sort of like a dragon’s claw. It is on the northeast end of Lake Ontario.

Not saying it is an exact match, but there is a similarity!

 

We entered at a boat launch, I was in front, Alrica in back. And it was great. For about thirty seconds. And then it was not great. My legs were uncomfortable. Every time I moved to paddle, the boat wobbled too much. The bay was choppy and the wake of motorboats was unfun.

About a minute later, I was getting more concerned, and a couple minutes after that, I was freaking out.

That’s weird. Let’s think about why. (Note: when you are a compulsive overthinker, you can’t just accept you were afraid. You have to analyze it, nay, overanalyze it, even though the analysis will likely come to nothing, you know it will likely come to nothing, and yet, you cannot stop yourself from doing it. Those of you who are not overthinkers can probably understand this intellectually, but not on a visceral level. Those of you who are overthinkers are probably, this very minute, overthinking whether or not you are overthinkers. Sorry if I brought that about.)

Before I analyze why I was afraid, let’s first consider, why would it be weird that I was afraid?

• This isn’t my first time in this kayak or in kayaks in general. In fall of 2022, we took the kayak to Lake Tahoe and had a delightful time. And that was just the most recent of several such trips.
• There was no threat of drowning. I had on a life jacket and I know how to swim.
• I’m not a notably jumpy person. This is not to say I am fearless, but only that I am also not generally afraid.

Let’s get to the real analysis (which in my line of work usually means a course in which you relearn calculus but you rigorously prove all the theorems. But that’s not what I mean this time.) Why was I afraid this time?

• Alrica thinks maybe I am developing a fear of being in a small craft on such a large lake. I’m not sure I agree. Lake Ontario is huge, but Collins Bay is narrow. I could see the shore we left and the shore across from us the entire time. I could even see the tip of the dragon’s claw.
• There were more motorboats with more wake than I had been used to recently. That’s true. But why did that freak me out and whitewater rafting doesn’t?
• After we pulled out, Alrica realized we forgot to attach the keel. For any non-boaters, the keel is a fin shaped piece of plastic on the bottom of the boat. It sticks down into the water and keeps the boat from pitching from side to side as much. That’s because the water pushing on either side of the keel keeps it from moving side to side easily. That could have made a difference. Maybe we were rocking more than I was used to.
• I have a cord which I can attach to the back of my glasses so that they won’t fall off easily, but I forgot to bring it to Collins Bay with us. (I know I packed it, but honestly, I don’t remember where it is in our trunk full of goods. It must be somewhere. But I didn’t remember it until I was out on the water.) Maybe I was afraid of losing my glasses. That might seem a bit unlikely, but I definitely remember that I was thinking about the fact that I didn’t have the cord for my glasses when I started to feel panicked. So if not the whole cause, it could have been a contributing factor.
• There is no reason. Fear can be irrational, and sometimes it just pops up and there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t like this reason. I like to believe that we are our brains, that we make our own decisions, that we have some semblance of control. You may think that is an illusion, but I am happier believing in the illusion. Don’t tell me how the magic is done!

So, once you have overthought the entire thing, what are you going to do then? For me, it would appear one of those things is to write a blog post about it. Does writing said post make me feel better? Eh. I wouldn’t say yes and I wouldn’t say no.

The other thing to do is get back on that horse. That isn’t literal like the title was. There were no horses involved in today’s kayak incident. We weren’t playing water polo. And yes, I know they don’t use horses in water polo. The horses would drown. They use hippocampi or hippocampuses. What’s the plural of hippocampus? (Here I refer to the hippocampus of mythology, not the part of our brain that helps us learn and remember and process the experience of fear. That hippocampus might have been involved today.)

So at some point I should go kayaking again. I can think scientifically. I can change one of the factors or all of the factors that might have caused my feelings of fear and see if that changes the situation. Of course, knowing that I should go kayaking soon and in action kayaking soon are not the same thing.

For right now, I am just happy to back on the firm earth. Ooh, that’s a third of ancient elements. Air, air, air? I’m breathing air! Now I can say this post was, in retrospect, about the elements and had nothing to do with fear.

I feel so much braver. Maybe denial is the fifth element.

Canals

A Dan, a clan, a canal, Canada! (That is a palindrome in the style of an already well-known palindrome. But this story doesn’t really involve anyone named Dan, nor any clans. But it does include canals and Canada. So well worth the reversibility.)

Thinking about some of the places we have visited—Chicago, Illinois; Midland, Michigan; Kingston, Ontario—as well as many other cities we didn’t get to, I realized that many of them wouldn’t exist or would be much smaller if it weren’t for canals.

Water is essential for a big city. Certainly we need it to drink and wash. But just as important in the development of trade, we need water for shipping. Big cities are generally cities where lots of trade can occur. There are inland big cities, like Atlanta, which was a major trading location due to the railroads that crossed there, and later the interstates. But most big cities are on major waterways or on the coast.

The Great Lakes are massive. But for realistic shipping, you need to be able to go from one lake to another. And more importantly, you need to be able to connect to the ocean. That’s not the case with the Great Lakes as nature left them.

You might be saying, “What about the St. Lawrence River?” Great question. The St. Lawrence River does run from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. The trouble is that the river isn’t navigable the whole way.

Prior to canals, if you entered the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, you could go upstream a long way. But then you hit a set of rapids. Where? Right at Montreal. That’s why Montreal is where it is. It was the furthest into the interior you could get by river. But this meant you had to transport goods over land from Montreal further west or from the west to Montreal. That’s heavy work.

The rapids were originally called Sault Saint-Louis (sault is the French word for rapids.) They were named for a teenage sailor, Louis, who drowned in these rapids during an early expedition up the river. But they were later renamed the Lachine Rapids. That’s a funny name. They were named for a city called Lachine, just southwest of Montreal and very close to the rapids. But Lachine is the French term for China. It’s kind of a joke name, because the original nobleman who was granted the land, René Robert Cavelier de La Salle, thought he could use the St. Lawrence River to find the Northwest Passage, a way across North America to the Pacific and eventually to China. That didn’t work out, but ironically they named this piece of his land Lachine, so he could say he had reached China.

Narrow boats with little draft can actually go down the rapids. In fact, there are whitewater excursions that run them. But it wasn’t possible to go upriver over the Lachine Rapids. So ships from the Atlantic couldn’t reach Lake Ontario. Montreal was as good as it got.

Then someone had an idea! Let’s build a canal that goes around these rapids. And they did. The earliest canal was called the Lachine Canal. These days that has been replaced by the bigger South Shore Canal which is part of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The St. Lawrence Seaway project was a joint venture between Canada and the United States to make it possible for ships to go from the Atlantic all the way through any of the Great Lakes to reach as far as Duluth, Minnesota or Chicago, Illinois.

But passing the Lachine Rapids was only one necessary step. It isn’t generally possible to get from one Great Lake to another. There are two exceptions. The first is Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. They are connected by a channel called the Straits of Mackinac which is deep and navigable. In fact, the water levels of Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and the Straits of Mackinac are all the same elevation. Hydrologically this means it is really all one big lake. But historically we think of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron as being separate lakes.

The other exception is between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. You get from one to the other through rivers and another lake. Lake Huron drains into the St. Clair River which runs to Lake St. Clair. Ironically, this lake is in the middle of the great ones, but it’s not big enough to be great itself. Maybe it is great adjacent. From Lake St. Clair, you go downstream through the Detroit River and reach Lake Erie. These rivers are navigable upstream as well.

Lake Superior is the highest of the lakes in elevation. It connects to Lake Huron through a river, St. Mary’s River. But that river also has a set of rapids: Saint Mary’s Rapids. Or, in French, Sault Ste. Marie. On each side of the rapids is a city called Sault Ste. Marie, one in Ontario, Canada, and the other in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, United States. How does one get past these rapids? With a canal, of course!

But the biggest, scariest barrier to navigation is between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. These are also connected by a river, but the barrier here is no set of rapids. That river is the Niagara River and that barrier is Niagara Falls. No ship is going upstream or downstream across that massive obstacle.

Ships passing between these two lakes avoid the Niagara River entirely. They use the Welland Canal, a north-south cut through the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario. It is an impressive feat of engineering, such a long canal.

But the Welland Canal isn’t the longest canal connecting the Great Lakes to the ocean. That honor goes to the Erie Canal, 351 miles long, which cuts across upstate New York to connect the Seneca River which empties in Lake Erie to the Hudson River which empties in the Atlantic Ocean. The Erie Canal is the longest canal in North America. But it is only the fourth longest canal in the world.

The longest canal in the world is also the longest duration for any canal to have ever been built. It’s called the Grand Canal and it is in China. It connects the Yangtze River and the Yellow River and it runs 1,104 miles. But what’s crazy about this canal is that work began on it in the 5th Century BCE and it was completed in the 17th Century CE. It took over 2000 years to build this monster and it was completed before any of the canals of the Great Lakes was even begun.

Well, I had plenty to say about canals and certainly Canada was mentioned. If anyone has any ideas as to how to work a Dan or a clan into the story, let me know. I hate to waste a good palindrome.

Canadian Eats

Part of the fun of going to new places is trying the local foods. As foreign nations go, Canada’s foods are perhaps the least foreign. In many ways, Canada offers similar choices to the U.S. You can find a great variety of good ethnic foods and barbecue and burgers and all the things you might find at home.

Canada has plenty of fast food options. One difference is that their most frequently encountered fast food chain is Tim Horton’s. Where we are staying, there are two Tim Horton’s so close to us (and by the Triangle Inequality, so close to each other) that I could easily walk to each in ten minutes. Tim Horton’s serves coffee and donuts, but also has grilled sandwiches (like grilled cheese or grilled cheese with some sort of lunch meat included.)

But we have tried two uniquely Canadian foods. The first, and perhaps most well known is poutine. Poutine is a dish originally out of Quebec, but has spread through the rest of the country. It’s french fries with brown gravy on top and then cheese curds atop that. That is the classic poutine québécoise. There are many variations on it. Some use a marinara sauce instead of gravy, or mozzarella instead of cheese curd. Others use different gravies. (I’m not sure I have ever needed to use the plural of gravy before.) Or different cheeses. Some even use some other form of potato.

Poutine (and forks which are not part of the poutine)

 

This really gets us to the philosophical question of the Poutine of Theseus. If Theseus replaces the cheese curd with another cheese, say parmesan, then replaces the gravy with a different sauce, say marinara, and then replaces the french fries with a different potato or a different starch, say pasta, is it really still poutine? Isn’t it now spaghetti? Are spaghetti and poutine just different varieties of one another? And is all of this irrelevant since Theseus wasn’t Canadian?

We tried poutine and found it delicious. I can only imagine how much cholesterol it has. (I could do better than only imagine, I could look it up. But I am happier not knowing the exact amount.) The cheese curd was pleasantly squeaky. The gravy was pleasantly savory. And the fries were pleasantly… um, fry-y is not a word. Let’s just say they were good french fries. As with so many things, when you combine three good ingredients, you get something that transcends the flavor of all three.

Another Canadian victual is beavertails. Before you panic, no beavers were harmed in the making of this blog post. Beavertails are named for their shape, not for having any beaver ingredients.

Picture of a picture of a beavertail

 

A beavertail is deep fried dough that is similar in shape to, you guessed it, the tail of a beaver. The fried dough is similar in crunch and flavor to a funnel cake, but it is flatter and ovaler (again not a word, but neither is ellipser. So I am at a loss as to how to explain that the shape is more ovular or elliptical. I’ll have to think about how that could be expressed.)

You might think that this fried dough would, by itself, be delightful. It probably would, but I wouldn’t know. Because a beavertail is then covered in toppings. You can have savory beavertails or dessert beavertails. The original beavertail was topped with cinnamon and sugar. Very classic. But now you can have all kinds of frostings, candies, jams, and more.

We tried an Avalanche. This had a cheesecake frosting and Skor toffee bits on it. As you can imagine, it was tasty! (Let’s not talk about the cholesterol in this delicacy either. Or maybe we should. How do the Canadians survive if all their foods are deep fried and chock full of unsaturated fats?)

Avalanche! (partially eaten)

 

Here’s something that isn’t exactly a Canadian food but a Canadian flavor. Check out this Ben & Jerry’s. Ah! More empty calories!

My home and native dairy dessert

 

The only way to work off all those calories is to walk. And the walk signals here have a jaunty head-thrown-back, shoulder-lifted attitude, unlike our walk signals with more regular posture. I know that’s not about food, but do you think I could get away with a blog post about walk signals?

I'm walkin' here!

 

Walk this way! Talk this way, ay?

Maybe I could get away with it, because no one could stop me until they had mastered the head-thrown-back, shoulder-lifted walking style of Canada. Of course, I haven’t mastered that yet. Something to work on.

Sweet Sorrow? Seriously?

William Shakespeare is often revered for having written plays that are telling in all times, not just his own. But when Juliet says, “Parting is such sweet sorrow” in Act Two of Romeo and Juliet, I have to wonder if maybe the Bard missed the mark on this one. I get the sorrow, but sweet? Where do you detect sweetness, Will?

I say this finally writing the blog post I have not been writing. Have you ever had a project that you knew you had to do, but you had no great desire to do it. So you found other projects, maybe of lesser importance, so you could work on those, never getting around to the one hanging over your head. Of course, when you eventually finish the one you must do, it is a big sense of relief, but you can’t bring yourself to do it until you just do it. (Not in a Nike way, just in a resigned-to-your-fate way.)

For example, when each new semester approaches, I have to set up the learning management system. This is the computer portal where students get the videos and problems. This set up is tedious in the extreme. I set due dates and load videos and write the syllabus which is mostly standardized, so there is little interesting about it to me. (Probably none too interesting to my students either. I write an amazing syllabus, but no one is giving Pulitzer Prizes for best syllabus.)

So instead I say to myself, “I could write a better problem for the midterm!” (The midterm is two months away, but writing problems is interesting.) I find things that I do need to do, but not really right now, so I can avoid the right now course set up that is so dry.

That’s what I have been doing as a blogger of late. There is a blog post in me that wants to come out. But I also don’t want to think about it, so I have been writing other posts so as to not write this one. I can’t not write it forever. (In truth, I could not write it forever. It’s not like I’m being paid to do this and there are job requirements. But it does feel dishonest not to write it forever.)

This past Monday was momentous; a change of season in the life of a man (this particular man) if you will allow the metaphor. We dropped off Syarra at Syracuse University. Our youngest child is now no longer a child. She’s off to pursue her adulthood, to get an education, to take steps in the life that is outside of our home.

I’m not the first parent to go through this. I’m probably not even the most verbally fluent parent to go through this. What can I say that hasn’t been said? My own experience of it.

Barren dorm

Monday itself was good. I was upbeat, so excited for Syarra. What an adventure? A new dorm room. New friends to be made. So many activities to participate in. We got to Syracuse. She checked into the dorm. We brought her stuff upstairs and helped her unpack. We gazed at the view out of her window. (It was grassy, but it is not the quad. Not all that is grass on campus is a quad. Or so I am told.) We bought some supplies and ate lunch. And then we left her.

Not barren dorm

There were no tears, no long clinging hugs. She was ready to go and to meet people. We were ready to let her be ready.

For me, Sunday night was the hard part. Looking at my daughter, knowing it was the last night of her just being a kid. For sixteen years, she had been ours, depending on us, bringing home love and tears and frustrations and laughter. This is my culinary adventure partner. (We love to try new things when we cook together.) This is my little mind reader. (When she was very young, she told us this was her superpower.) This was a face I could look at forever and enjoy seeing it. And I knew that Sunday night, it was the last of this.

Of course I will see her again. But she won’t be just a kid. She won’t be living with us. She will be growing in all kinds of ways and Alrica and I will find out who she is becoming from the sidelines now.

Really, I’m lucky. Syarra gave me a trial run. She spent her senior year abroad in Sarajevo. I didn’t get to be with her for ten months straight. But even then, I knew when she did return, she was still my child, my kid. Next time I see her (which will be a lot less than ten months) she will still be my child, just not my kid. She will be my young woman. And I will be proud.

I can hardly wait to find out who she becomes. I can hardly wait to find out what kinds of friends she makes, what clubs she joins, what classes she loves and hates, what stresses her out and what makes her smile. This is a huge adventure for her. I couldn’t be happier for her to sally forth into her own future. Happier for her.

This is also the launch of a huge adventure for Alrica and me. We have nothing tying us to any one place. We are living a completely nonstandard lifestyle. We might love it, we might hate it. But we’ll find out. We are using this new freedom our own way.

So I guess it’s not all sorrow. There is a lot of wonder, imagination, and hopeful anxiety mixed in with it. Parting is certainly sorrowful, plenty of it, but, I hate to admit, it's also a little bit sweet. Damn it! The Bard was right again. That guy!