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.