The Measure of a Country

So how does Canada measure up?

On our way to Syracuse we passed through Ontario, Canada, the part at the north shore of Lake Erie. After dropping Syarra off at Syracuse, we then headed back into Ontario, but a different part. We are in Kingston, Ontario, at the point where Lake Ontario drains into the St. Lawrence River. This region is the 1000 Islands region and I will have more to say about that soon. But I have several blog posts in my head and they will come as they come.

Today, I want to talk about Canada, and some of the differences and similarities for Americans traveling there. There are a lot more similarities than differences, so, while it is a foreign country to Americans, it won’t feel all that foreign.

Driving is much the same. Canada has big controlled access highways that are practically the same as our interstates. Just like in our highways, most drivers treat the speed limit as though it were a suggestion (one that is cute, but hardly relevant) rather than a true limit. Of course the big difference is that these speed limits are measured in kilometers per hour. Now I am going to approach a tangent (not quite a limit.)

When we lived in Reno, we had two cars. My car was named Ozark. Going into a tangent within a tangent! The reason my car was named Ozark was because of its first big trip. We had just returned to the United States. We were with my parents in Boynton Beach, Florida. That is where we bought the car. That car went on an immediate road trip. First it went from Boynton Beach to Lancaster, Pennsylvania so we could see friends from the city we left when we started our international travels. From there the car took us to West Des Moines, Iowa, where we visited some of my family. Then we drove southwest to Harper, Texas, where Alrica’s parents live. Finally, the car took the long journey to Reno, Nevada.

We found the longitude and latitude of each of the cities on that first trip and took the average (the arithmetic mean for you mathematically minded people) of each. We then used the mean longitude and mean latitude to find a point on the map. That point was in the Ozark National Forest. Thus, the name of the car.

You may be curious what the name of the second car was (or is, since it is the car we still have.) Answer: It doesn’t have a name. Now you may be curious why doesn’t the second car have a name. I know this is going to sound a bit out there, but my wife does not believe you can just name a car. This isn’t to say that no car can have a name. But she feels a car must earn its name. Though the process for doing so is a bit opaque to me. I mean, if our car won the Indianapolis 500, would that be enough? (Heck, if it even competed in the Indianapolis 500, that would be quite a feat. Especially as it isn’t an Indy Car. I guess Nascar racing is more realistic.) What, short of some epic racing, jumping over a river, or being thematically related to a superhero makes a car worthy of having a name? Thus far, I don’t know. And that’s why I call our current vehicle The Car Which Shall Not be Named. (And no, that is not a name, it is just what I call it. Don’t argue with me, you’ll get me in trouble with Alrica!)

Back to only one level of tangency (though I am super tempted to consider, geometrically, what the tangent to a tangent would be, but I will save that for my imagination). We took a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia while we lived in Reno. And we took Ozark on that trip. Alrica was driving when we crossed the border. At the first speed limit sign we came to, she noted that it was in kph (kilometers per hour) and the car’s speedometer was in mph (miles per hour). The speedometer was digital only, Bemoaning that she would need to do conversions, I pointed out that there was no such need. One lovely thing about Ozark was that, on the dashboard, there was a button which would convert your speedometer from miles per hour to kilometers per hour. (Luckily, that same button would also convert back if you pressed it again, or the car would have been very frustrating for the rest of our days in America after that trip to BC.) One button convenience.

Now, we are using The Car Which Shall Not be Named. It has no such convenient button. But it does have an analog speedometer, where the needle moves along a circular arc with speeds on it. The outer edge of the arc has the numbers in miles per hour. But there is an inner arc with smaller numbers (here by smaller I mean in a smaller font size, because the numbers are actually greater numbers) which lists kilometers per hour. Zero button convenience. The Car Which Shall Not Be Named also has a digital speedometer. Thus far, I can’t figure out how to make that change units.

Incidentally, this difference in units applies to all the distances too. If a sign reads Toronto 240, you are not 240 miles away. You are about 150 miles away, because you are 240 kilometers away. And on that note, unlike in America where there is a mile marker every mile, in Canada there do not seem to be regular kilometer markers on the edge of the road.

The place where the change of units is most confusing is when you want to buy gasoline. In America we state our prices in US dollars per gallon. But in Canada they state their price in Canadian cents per liter. How can you know how much you are paying? Math to the rescue!

First, I convert from Canadian cents to Canadian dollars. This is just like it would be in America, you divide by 100, or you move the decimal point two places to the left. Then you multiply the price by 3.79. Why? There are 3.79 liters in one gallon, so to buy a gallon of gasoline, you have to buy 3.79 liters of gasoline. Finally, you multiply by the exchange rate, how much US money is one Canadian dollar? Right at the moment, that is about 74 cents or 0.74 dollars.

I could write fractions to explain it using dimensional analysis. Would anyone be excited about that? I mean, other than me? Anyway, effectively if you turn the price into Canadian dollars and multiply by 2.8 then you have approximately the price in US dollars per gallon. (If the exchange rate changes, that number would change too.)

For example, right now in Kingston, you see gasoline for 164.9 meaning 164.9 Canadian cents per liter. (Note: Canadians would correct me and say it is 164.9 Canadian cents per litre. I acknowledge that it was the Americans who changed the spelling of words and the Canadians are keeping it pure. But both my second grade teacher, Ms. Pelz, and my spell checker would be disappointed if I were to go around writing litre. You can’t probably see it in the blog post, but as I am writing this, there is a wiggly red line under litre.) So I would say 164.9 cents is 1.649 Canadian dollars per litre. And then multiplying by 2.8 says I am paying about 4.62 US dollars per gallon.

If you are feeling hot under the collar after that entire excursion into mathematics but you still want to travel abroad, no fears. There are apps that will convert your gasoline (or really petrol) prices from local currency per liter into dollars per gallon. So you can cool down now. And you would do so in Celsius.

Yes, that is the other everyday unit of importance. (It’s not the only other one, but it is one that comes up pretty often.) But think of it this way: 20 degrees - shorts, 10 degrees - pants, and somewhere in the middle, you decide when to change.

The grocery store is very familiar. I mean, I don’t know which aisle holds anything unless it happens to be common enough to be on the big signs. But that’s true anytime I go to a new grocery store. They have similar products, they have store brands, they have shopping carts and check out clerks and self-check out lanes. But I have noted a few differences.

The butcher area has a Halal section. I think this is very cool. We saw that a lot in Muslim majority countries when we traveled. It is nice to see such helpful service in a country that has many Muslims, but which are certainly a minority.

Weights are in grams, so if you want to compare meat prices to those at home, remember 454 grams is a pound. (You can approximate with 450 grams.) I was surprised by how many packages of ground meat are 450 grams or even 454 grams. This is probably a remnant from the days when Canada still used the Imperial system. Not saying the meat is that old, just the size of the containers.

The grocery store doesn’t give you any bags at all. At least not in Ontario. You can buy reusable bags, but you really need to remember to bring your own. They don’t have paper and they don’t have plastic.

I guess it is a question of flexibility. If you are going to travel internationally, there are so many cultural differences you have to appreciate. Honestly, the units of measure aren’t that big a deal. There are plenty of conversion apps and after a while, you get a sense of how much you are spending relative to the prices you are used to.

The other possibility would be for the United States to switch to the metric system, making all of us get used to it, and then foreign travel would have one of the obstacles taken out of the way. But that doesn’t seem likely. While I wouldn’t say we are diametrically opposed to such a move, we are certainly metrically opposed.

Unholy Green

A song about Chicago hot dogs and homage to Howard Ashman. To the melody of Somewhere That's Green. You can click on the video if you want to hear me singing it. (Not necessarily saying that will be better. But you know, it's up to you.)

A hot dog made of beef
A bun with sesame
With peppers and tomatoes
And diced onions I can see.
A pickle spear and relish
Like none I've ever seen
With a color you might name
Unholy green.

It's brighter than the hue
Of leaves on summer trees.
It's shinier than Kelly
And darker than split peas.
The taste is not like spinach
Nor sweet like nectarine
No other food is this
Unholy green.

The hot dog makes it juicy
The onions make it sweet.
The pickle makes you pucker
And the peppers bring the spicy heat.

So if you are around
Chicago, Illinois
You ought to try their hot dog,
A taste you might enjoy.
But when you see the relish
You'll wonder what machine
Could make a plant based food
Unholy green.

All My Sisters and Me

First, I must clear the virtual air and admit that I have no sisters. I have a brother and no other siblings. The title of this post is a reference to the song "We Are Family" which continues with "I got all my sisters and me." Even sisterless as I am I have the temerity to use the reference. I throw myself on the mercy of my readers as they judge me for my allusionary (or is it allusory) prowess or lack of prowess.

For the past week, we have been visiting family as we traverse the middle of the country. First we visited my aforementioned brother and got to see our niece and two nephews. Then we visited my aunt and three generations of cousins descended from my aunt. From there we visited one of Alrica's cousins. And in a couple days we will see one of her aunts. That journey will have taken us from Mountain Time to Eastern Time (currently in the middle of those in aptly named Central Time.)

There are so many commonalities in families. Don't overgeneralize from my statement. Families are all very different. Even separate branches of the same extended family have their unique history and interactions. But it is those differences, those quirks, which inform the similarities.

I suspect every family seems pretty eccentric to outsiders. My wife's family will always be a bit inexplicable to me. I'm sure my family seems equally exotic to her. And yet, it works. Families make it work.

When Alrica and I married, we both inherited new sets of relatives. We didn't have a good grasp on the history, the personalities, the past conflicts or triumphs, not the intergenerational issues. And now we are each a part of the other's family, writing our own history, bringing our own personalities, and developing new conflicts and triumphs. (What about new intergenerational issues? Ask my kids or my parents or my in-laws. Probably, yes.) For better or worse, she's a Goldstein. And I'm a Green. (As Kermit might tell you, that's not always easy.)

But in the same breath, it's great. We've each also gained new loved ones, new friends we can enjoy, new family who will always open their doors to us as though we had been born into their clan. I have a great time talking philosophy (and other esoteric topics) with Alrica's cousins we just visited. Alrica got to help my cousin choose paint samples. And the new baby who is my first cousin twice removed is just as much Alrica's cousin. There was plenty of snuggling to reinforce that.

Alrica with the first of a new generation

My point? (It's optimistic of you to think I have one. Thank you.) I may not have all my sisters and me, but I can still proclaim, for better or worse or in between, that we are family. Twice.

Splendor - Erich

There is a game called Splendor in which you are a gem merchant and you are trying to attract nobles. Our family would play that game and I would never win.

We took a car trip to San Diego and we brought along three games: a deck of cards to play Pitch, the game Pandemic, and Splendor. But since the other games started with p we said we brought along Pitch, Pandemic, and Plendor. And while on that trip, I dominated at the game. I can't win Splendor, but at Plendor I am unbeatable.

That was a very drawn out way to get to the topic of splendor. Not the game but the awe inspiring beauty. We have just spent several days in western Colorado surrounded by splendor.

The west slope of the Rockies, the canyons along the Gunnison and Colorado Rivers, the roads through the Colorado National Monument; every view is a spectacle. At one point while looking across the valley at the plateau topped mountains, Syarra declared those were not mountains but a painting. They are that majestic and artistic.

In the distance, does that not look painted?

 My brother, Adam, came to Grand Junction to visit. We went out in his truck and drove into public lands with petroglyphs and narrow canyons. You can see the stripes of each separate sedimentary layer in the different kinds of sandstone. Sometimes the canyon walls look like bubbles burst out of them. Sometimes you see fallen rocks and you can make out the gaps in the cliffs where that boulder fell from who knows how many millennia ago. Tectonic activity and erosion shaped this land, continue to shape it in patterns that would take lifetimes to observe.

Proof of Adam

And it is out there, public, we are all welcome to visit. You don't have to go to a national park to see some of the wonders. There is magnificence within striking distance and often you are the only ones there. The American West is beautiful.

Spectacle and Splendor

 In the midst of all that, I think I finally won at splendor.

Vestigial, Colorado - Erich

You know how humans each have an appendix and we don’t know what it does? Or how we have a tailbone which is a fusion of four vertebrae even though we don’t have tails. Or how whales have hip bones which are disconnected from the rest of the skeletal system.

These are all vestigial. This means that they hang around but with a different use (or possibly no use) than what they were originally intended to be. Our appendix must be leftover from an evolutionary ancestor who needed it for some reason. Our tailbones are from our ancestors who had tails to help balance their weight when walking or leaping on all four legs. Whales are marine mammals which evolved from land mammals. Early whales had legs, but that was not of an evolutionary advantage, so now they don’t. But the bones are still there, just in a different form.

We are currently in Grand Junction, Colorado. I wondered, why is the city called Grand Junction? Like tailbones and whale bones, it’s vestigial!

The “junction” in Grand Junction has to do with the confluence of two rivers. It is here that the Gunnison River and the Colorado River meet. But why “Grand”? That’s what is vestigial and what is so interesting.

Prior to 1921, the part of the Colorado River which began in present-day Rocky Mountain National Park and flowed to present-day Canyonlands National Park wasn’t called the Colorado River. It was the Grand River. The Grand River flowed from Colorado into Utah and met the Green River in Canyonlands in Utah. Downstream of that confluence, it was called the Colorado River.

So at the time that Grand Junction was named, this was the location of the confluence of the Gunnison River and the Grand River, flowing downstream as the Grand River. So, it was the Grand Junction, since it was a junction with the Grand River. Isn’t that grand?

What it means is that originally the Colorado River didn’t even flow through Colorado. That brings up a few questions: First question – Why was Colorado named Colorado? As is often the case in the western U.S. there were territories that became states. So the state of Colorado was named for the Colorado Territory. And the Colorado Territory was named because it means “colored red.” A lot of the rock in Colorado (particularly in the west, where I am now) is red.

The Colorado River was named for the same reason. It cuts through much red rock. So neither the river nor the state was technically named for one another.

Second question – How did the Grand River get renamed the Colorado River? That was due to the lobbying of a Colorado Congressman named Edward Taylor. He was a true believer in the wonders of Colorado.

The Colorado River was one of the most important rivers in the western United States. Taylor wanted that famous and important river to be part of his state too. He pushed Congress hard for a resolution to rename the Grand River, to make it more of the Colorado River. And in 1921, they agreed to do so. They passed a joint resolution renaming the Grand River as the Colorado River.

But places like Grand County, Grand Lake, Grand Valley, and yes, Grand Junction, kept their names. I guess that relegated the names of these places to the appendices of Western U.S. History. Which is perfect since they are all vestigial, like our own appendices.

I Didn't Say Banana - Erich

The title of this post is a reference to the universally-funny-to-all-seven-year-olds knock knock joke that ends when the joke teller finally says “orange.” My nephew recently told me this joke, and I was eager to get to the orange.

That is what I’m doing now. Alrica, Syarra, and I are crossing the country to reach Syracuse University where Syarra will be a student in the fall. If you don’t already know, Syracuse students are oranges. Yes, their mascot, Otto, is an orange. With legs.

At least an orange is a count noun. Harvard is the crimson? What do you call just one Harvard student? A crimson? Well, only if the student is male. I suspect a female student is a crimdaughter.

My son, while at University of Nevada Reno was a wolf pack. How does that work? That’s already plural. Besides, there are no wolves in Northern Nevada. Of course, there are no oranges grown in Syracuse, New York. But there must be some oranges in the region’s grocery stores.

Now, Carver has shed his wolf pack’s clothing to become a duck. We saw ducks in the Willamette River while we were visiting Eugene. So they do definitely have ducks there. We also saw turkeys (not in the river) but I guess the founders of the school didn’t want their fighting cheer to be “gobble gobble gobble.”

Back to the present trip. We emptied the house and left Reno on Sunday afternoon. We made it as far as Elko, Nevada that day. Along the way we experienced the Mormon crickets that had until recently infested Elko. Mormon cricket is a complete misnomer. They’re not Mormons! In a recent survey, 97% of those questions expressed no religious affiliation. Of the 3% who consider themselves spiritual, most aligned themselves with the worship of Quetzalcoatl. Go figure. Oh, also, they aren’t crickets. They’re katydids and they’re huge! For katydids. Not like bigger than humans. Or even human shoes.

Mormon cricket and shoe
For size comparison

 

From Elko we traveled to Lehi, Utah. That’s just a bit south of Salt Lake City. And we took a much needed chill day after the frantic work of clearing and cleaning the Reno house. We enjoyed pool of two forms, the swimming kind and the hit balls with sticks kind.

The mountains around the Salt Lake City area are beautiful. This is also true of Reno, but the beauties are different. Certainly the mountains in Utah were more green. That was surprising and maybe isn’t always the case, but is only a function of a very snowy winter this past year. I only get the one snapshot that I get. Though as I write this, rain is falling. So maybe it is more than just one winter.

Our next stop is Grand Junction, Colorado. I can’t want to find out what is joining so grandly.

That’s pretty much all I wanted to say in this post. Though if I had the humor of a seven-year-old, I would restart at the beginning and post the whole thing again. Lucky for you, I am slightly more mature than that – emphasis on the slightly – I will just leave you with this: Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?

Reno Recap - Erich

 

So, yes, I acknowledge that there was a six-year hiatus in the blog. And it is very fair to say, why? What happened in that period? So, in that same spirit of fairness, let me give you a quick overview of six years in one blog post. (How is that for compression?)

While we were still traveling around the world, we started to talk about to where we might want to come back when we returned to the U.S. We each took a map of the continental U.S. with the state borders drawn in. And everyone then colored their map. You could color an entire state one color or break a state up into different parts and color each part a different color.

Green meant “Yeah, seems like a cool place to live.” Yellow meant “Not exactly eager, but this place would be fine.” Red meant “Uh, no.” Then I compiled a map with the average of everyone’s individual maps. The greener a region, the more everyone valued it as a great place to be. The redder, the more everyone valued it as a great place to avoid. And the state of Nevada: entirely red.

Note that none of us had ever been to Nevada before. SIDEBAR – that’s a bit untrue. When I was seven, my family went, by plane, to California and then back to Iowa (where we lived.) One of those two ways, we had a layover in Las Vegas Airport. I remember this because there were slot machines only a couple feet away from the waiting area by the gates. And my mother was going to teach my brother and me a lesson about gambling. She pulled out a few quarters (they still took quarters in that time) and started plunking them in and pulling the titular one arm of the bandit. On the third or fourth pull, she won. Several more quarters came pouring out of the bandit’s mouth. But to prove her point, she then proceeded to feed in all those quarters until they were no more. The lesson, I suppose, was gambling is a losing game. But I thought maybe there was an alternative lesson. Once the quarters come out, stop! You got lucky, say hooray, and move on. Having said this, or written this, I am not a gambler myself, so maybe I did learn the intended lesson. (Or I learned enough about probability theory in my training as a mathematician to recognize a negative expected value. Didn’t that sound mathy?)

BACK TO THE MAINBAR – None of us had seen Nevada, but we all assumed it was a big desert with little but sand, wind, and casinos. (And airports with casinos in them.) So if it rated so poorly, why did you go there? (I’m speaking as the reader now, or I would have written “why did we go there”.)

Carver was accepted into a program for profoundly gifted children called the Davidson Institute. They promised that he would be able to continue academically at his own pace, and when he was beyond their curriculum, they would let him enroll in classes at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). That’s what led us to living in Reno.

The irony is that we moved there for Carver, and he had the worst experience that first year. The Davidson Institute did not let him move at his own pace. They slowed him down. And then when he finished Multivariable Calculus, they said they would not let him take further math classes at UNR. Given that we had moved there for this program, that was pretty crummy (to say it in nice terms.)

However, the rest of us did well in Reno. It is not a desert, but a rather beautiful city in a valley within the Sierra Nevada mountains. We took Carver out of the Davidson Institute and put in him the Washoe County School District. He went to the Gifted and Talented Institute at Hug High School and things improved dramatically. Plus, they gave us no trouble about taking UNR classes.

Now allow me to present a recap of six years, person by person:

Syarra had a great experience in middle school and then went to the Gifted and Talented Institute at Hug High School. She took a lot of advanced classes including several at Truckee Meadows Community College. In fact, she took enough credits that in her senior year, she only needed one more English class to graduate with the Honors Diploma. I will get to her senior year in a moment. But also on the academic side, Syarra participated in Science Bowl and Academic Olympics. In fact, her Academic Olympics team won first place in Northern Nevada. Syarra was part of an engineering team that built a pumpkin chucker (catapult) and a robot for competitions. She was part of a team that won the National History Day competition at the regional level and she got to travel to Washington, D.C. to represent Nevada in the national competition. The team’s historical presentation was on Disney’s Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

A pumpkin display created by Syarra and Erich
Not the pumpkins chucked by the chucker

 

Syarra was very active in Girl Scouts, becoming a student board member for the district and representing the district as a delegate at the national convention. She interned at the Northern Nevada International Center. She earned her biliteracy degree in Spanish.

Back to that senior year, Syarra studied abroad through the U.S. State Department’s Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange Study program (YES). Syarra lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina for ten months where she learned Bosnian, attended an International Baccalaureate school, joined Toastmasters, and competed in Model UN, winning best delegate at one of the competitions and being the runner-up for best delegate at two others. She returned to Reno just in time for graduation at the top of her Hug High class. And now she is on her way to Syracuse University.

Carver, as I mentioned, did spend one school year at the Davidson Institute, but then moved on to better things. He decided he wanted to finish high school and college early. He was allowed to take many classes at UNR while still in high school and graduated in two years. (He did graduate in 2020, which meant his graduation was virtual.) He then continued at UNR. Thanks to all the credits he had already earned, he finished in three years with two majors (physics and applied mathematics) and one minor (linguistics.)

Carver also did Academic Olympics and his team also won first place in Northern Nevada. (This was in a different year than when Syarra’s team won.) Carver founded the science bowl team at Hug High School. And at UNR, he won a computer programming competition. While at UNR, Carver also had a successful trivia team, an active D&D group, and was a member of the Society of Physics Students. In his last year, he became the Secretary for that organization.

As a college graduate, Carver can assure you
that mustard packets are not spoons.

 

Alrica took a position as the Director of Editorial and Production for the University of Nevada Press. There she fostered many books through the process of publication, and even had a couple get a starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. (To any non-publishers who happen to read this blog, that’s a biggie.)

In December 2019, Alrica left that position to found her own publishing company: Keystone Canyon Press (https://keystonecanyon.com/) Had she known the pandemic would begin three months later, she wouldn’t have started the business at that time. It was rough for a young publishing company, and then with the supply chain issues, there was much frustration. Still, in spite of this, Keystone Canyon published some amazing books. There was a series called Fields of Silver and Gold which covered history of the western United States for children at a middle school level. There was a series of detective novels, the Ratio Holmes series, for upper elementary school kids. (The author – Horatio Holmes – that’s a pseudonym for another author, one whose writing you are reading right now.) There was a very successful picture book for the newest readers that was about the importance of dark skies and nighttime for animals. There were books for adults too. Alrica really wanted to publish books about things that mattered, things that have a positive impact on the world.

Alrica was also active in Girl Scouts, leading the troop, but also engaged with the Service Unit. There she helped plan and run events. (She also spent a lot of hours at cookie booths in inhospitable temperatures. As did Syarra. Don’t worry, both survived.)

You see snakes here, sometimes.

 

Erich (now going to write in third person) works for Johns Hopkins University. He teaches in their online mathematics department and also for their Center for Talented Youth. He teaches higher level mathematics courses for advanced students. During the pandemic, he also started teaching some courses for UNR. It was virtual the first year and in person after that.

Outside of work, Erich got very active with the theater community in Reno, especially with the Reno Little Theater. He introduced the 24 Hour Plays to Reno, produced a virtual show during the pandemic, and produced some live theater when live theater was allowed. In addition, he acted in, assistant directed for, and stage-managed various productions in Reno. Plus he wrote two long plays: Two Wrongs and FU Aristotle. He made a lot of friends in that community. The hardest part of leaving Reno is leaving them.

24 Hour Plays - get moving!

 

Along with one of those theatrical friends, Erich started a podcast called Namely (https://namelypodcast.podbean.com/). Each episode explores the history of a name or a group of related names, but with a cartoonish and comical take. Chicken Pox, Dr Pepper, Days of the Week, and others in all kinds of topics.

Obviously, there are many details being glossed over or even left out. But consider this the executive summary or the nearly executed summary.

(Back to first person.) Leaving Nevada, I believe that were we all to color the blank U.S. map again, the Reno area would be a field of green. (Let me have my illusions.)