On the road again

[Note that the following was actually written on Thursday, Apr. 28; just didn't manage to get it online before now.]

Well me and my little 15-year-old Toyota which, according to the first mechanic I took it to for its annual inspection, needed $700 worth of work done before it would pass inspection (happily, a second opinion garnered me a 'pass,' and all I had to pay was the $12 fee...but, you know, the car probably does need work)...the two of us just returned from another whirlwind trip to upstate New York. Seven and a quarter hours there, on Monday, six and a quarter hours returning, on Wednesday. Wasn't kidding about the whirlwind.

It took me longer going because I decided to vary my route from the usual down-to-Massachusetts-across the state-via-the-Mass Turnpike-around-Albany-then-straight-out-Route-88-to-Oneonta. I needed this trip partly because I needed a break from my routine, and going the same way I always go didn't seem like enough of a break-with-routine. So I went the scenic route, across New Hampshire and Vermont, then around Albany from the north, rather than the south, and out Route 88.

I knew it would take longer, and suspected I would have to exercise a lot of patience, because of all the winding roads that make passing poky drivers impossible, but I didn't count on how tired I would soon feel, and how interminable the stretch from the Vermont border down to Albany would seem. What really made it kind of a waste was that New Hampshire and Vermont on Monday were as much in very early spring mode as Maine -- no leaves on the trees, no flowering trees or shrubs, not much in the way of green grass. And it was overcast, cool, sporadically raining all day. So I wasn't experiencing New England at its best, in the middle of summer lushness, or autumn splendor, or as a glittering winter wonderland. Just a countryside trying to shake off winter, and not quite there yet.

I announced to my little hand-held tape recorder that I always take with me when I travel that New Hampshire and Vermont were not places you should drive through, to get from A to B, but rather places you should visit, when you have plenty of time, can stop whenever you see something that attracts your eye, like some of the antique stores that are practically cheek by jowl along Route 4 in NH, but are much in evidence everywhere

When I finally reached Oneonta I drove past a depressed-looking Budget Inn and Super 8 Motel, and checked into the more presentable Holiday Inn. My room cost me about $60 more than I'd hoped to spend, but whaterya gonna do. The room was fine, very clean, the bed very comfortable, but I noticed after I'd gotten settled in that the little refrigerator, when running, made a very loud hum. I knew I should call the front desk about it, but I suspected their solution would be to have me move to another room, which I really didn't want to have to do. I was tired and hungry, needed to get some dinner so I could get to bed, so I decided I could live with the hum. However, after I'd had that dinner -- about which more in a moment -- had sat propped up in bed to watch my latest police drama enthusiasm (The Chicago Code) and then settled down under the covers to go to sleep, I discovered I couldn't live with the hum, or at least couldn't get to sleep with it. Which meant I would have to unplug it, but it had several perishable snack items in it, necessary for this girl who has to eat every time she turns around.

So, heaving a large sigh, I got up, got the plastic ice bucket, walked down the hall (in my nightgown which I hoped anyone seeing me would think was a lounging outfit) to the vending and ice machine alcove, filled the bucket with ice which I then transferred to my little travel cooler, transferred the food to the cooler, made another trip to the ice machine so I could put my Dr. Pepper and bottled water in it to keep them cold, and finally settled in to sleep. And then a rip-roaring thunder storm arrived...

The dinner in the hotel's "cafe" -- where I went because the young people who had checked me in at the front desk said it was "awesome" -- was unfortunate. I ordered the trout, as I like to have fish when I dine out, because I have it so rarely at home. But when it came (finally), and I started in on it, it was warm only, not hot, and after a few bites I decided it wasn't fully cooked. But once again I hesitated to send it back, because I didn't want the bother, or the delay. But when the waitress -- who had been unavailable anyway, since she'd delivered my dinner to me, as she'd been out at the maitre d's desk, chatting with some fellow -- finally put in another appearance, when she ushered a woman and her daughter to a table (and note that we were the only ones in the place), I did bring the situation to her attention. She insisted on taking it back, assuring me that it wouldn't take long for the chef to produce another one. And sure enough, after a shorter wait than the one that had resulted in my undercooked fish, I got a perfectly cooked fish.

But here's the corker. Even cooked sufficiently it wasn't all that good. The seasoning combination was not a success. I would have to say that garlic does not work well with trout. And the crowning glory to the evening was that I felt compelled to eat as much of the second fish as I could, since I'd asked for it; but since I'd already consumed probably a third of the first fish, as well as a cup of (really quite delicious) corn chowder, and two (really quite delicious) small, warm rolls, I was uncomfortably stuffed when I got up from the table. Ah, well.

I'll tell you about some of the positives of the trip tomorrow.

I do believe I'll win, I do believe I'll win, I do I do I do believe I'll win

When I was at the convenience store earlier I impulsively bought two lottery tickets, one for the Powerball game, and the other a Megabucks ticket. This is something I do very, very rarely, mainly because I know it to be a waste of my money, but also because I feel awkward doing it, as a result of almost never doing it! I don't know the proper terminology, or even (until recently) the proper procedure. And you know me and hating to appear foolish.

But there was no one else in the store at the moment but me and "Rusty," the (female) cashier, and I wasn't worried about appearing foolish to her. I was just going to buy one ticket, but when she asked "Do you want the Powerball or Megabucks (which is the first time I knew the two were not the same), I thought, what the heck, in for a penny, in for a pound.

So do I really expect to win? Well, no. I do know that the odds of my winning are absurdly small (more likely to get struck by lightning, isn't that how it goes?); besides which I am too much the eternal pessimist. But I'd like to be some-one who expected to win. Isn't that what all those self-help gurus say, "You've got to envision what you want to happen, and it will," and “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change,” (that one is a direct quote from PBS's irritating Dr Wayne Dyer). Well, I have lots of times envisioned myself winning the lottery -- know exactly what I'd do with all that money, in what order -- but obviously I must take the additional step and occasionally play, in order to win.

What it all comes down to, I think, is faith. I simply am not a person of faith. And to get through this life with anything approaching equanimity, it seems to me that one really does need to have faith in something. If not in a loving, merciful god who will take care of you, than in yourself, or in the various forces at work in the universe ("It'll all work out in the end," "Things have a way of working out," etc.) That's what those people who play the lottery for literally years, and finally win, have. Faith that eventually God will answer their prayers, or that that mysterious thing called Luck will finally look their way.

It's the same kind of faith that people have who keep sending out manuscripts they've written, even though they get rejected time after time. They believe that eventually someone will like what they've written, and help them to publish it. I have never had that faith, and so have tended to give up after a few tries -- then maybe I'll try again a few times, after a few years have passed -- then give up again in discouragement. Never get published that way, never win the lottery.

I'm inclined to think that the ability to have faith -- which produces hope -- is the most important characteristic one can have in life. Even more than compassion, which I think is extremely important, even more than energy, which is necessary to get anything accomplished, one must have faith, or one is likely to be saddled with a negative outlook on life.

But it has to be real; you can't fake faith. Aye, there's the rub.

Desperate times call for desperate measures

Is anybody else wondering why the Japanese don't just bury the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant? A physicist from City University of New York, Michio Kaku, was recommending that on CNN (which I don't get, but I saw it on YouTube). I have been watching NHK, the Japanese news station, for the past couple of weeks, and they keep reporting that the radiation in the sea water beside the plant is "280,000 times the legal limits set by the government" -- on Saturday, April 3rd, it was 7.5 million times the legal limit! -- but the government keeps insisting there is no "direct danger to human health." What about all those fishermen who make their living from the sea? The Japanese eat huge quantities of fish, and other seafood. And now South Korea is getting concerned about the higher levels of radiation reaching their waters.

Then there are the higher levels of radiation found in the soil in the area of Fukushima, and various foodstuffs (spinach, milk). Things just don't seem to be getting any better -- every time you turn around there's a new crisis, a new complication -- and this has been going on for a month! Kaku was saying in his interview that it was time for the "Chernobyl Option" -- burying the plant in a mound of concrete, sand and boron. When the interviewer asked why the Japanese government wasn't ordering that this be done, Kaku said the government was "out of touch with reality." It's beginning to look like that is indeed the case. I feel so bad for the Japanese people. It isn't enough to be devastated by a giant earthquake and tsunami -- to lose everything you own, and quite possibly a number of loved ones -- but then to have the very air you breath, the soil under your feet, the water all around you, made unsafe for who knows how long, while 50 exhausted power plant workers are giving up their lives for what is obviously a lost cause (it is extremely unlikely the plant can be salvaged to generate power again)...well, I'd say it was time for all those brave, stoic people to stop being so stoic, and get a little angry. Bury the damn power plant.

Walking in the other guy's moccasins

One thing I really like about my local PBS television station is that I'm able to get not only BBC World News, but Deutsche-Welle News (in English), and just recently they've started running an English-language news program from Japan (with incredibly detailed descriptions of the various problems at the stricken power plant). I like hearing about what's happening in the world from a perspective other than American. For that matter, I like hearing about what's happening in the rest of the world! Except for disasters like major earthquakes and tsunamis, we hear very little about the rest of the world on our network news.

For example, I've been learning a lot about the German economy during the recent economic crisis. They're doing much better than we are, in terms of recovery, mainly because their economy still depends so much on exports, and the things they export -- especially cars -- have continued to sell. On the other hand, I have become familiar with how desparate the economic situation is in Spain, in Portugal, and in Ireland.

And I've been learning about German politics. Of course I knew before that Angela Merkel was Chancellor (well, actually no. I knew she headed the government, but I think I thought she was, maybe, the Prime Minister. Which she essentially is, but in Germany the position is called the Chancellor); but I doubt I would ever have known that her very popular Defense Minister, Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, was forced to resign when it came out that he had plagiarized much of his doctoral thesis. I was somewhat surprised, but pleased, to see that so many people thought that was important enough to merit his leaving office. ("It calls into doubt his integrity," one person said). I couldn't help wondering if the same thing would happen in this country. Would people think it was that important?

The one thing I continue to have trouble with, though, is the German language. When German speakers start talking their voices are quickly muted to make way for the English translator's voice, but you still hear a few snippets. And I'm sorry, but that is just the most incredibly ugly language. Here are all these reasonable, well-meaning people espousing perfectly reasonable ideas and opinions, and they all sound like angry Nazis.

It was interesting, seeing how all the various political leaders took a real bashing from their own people as the result of the economic crisis; 'twern't just Mr. Obama. In England they actually got rid of the head guy (Gordon Brown), people have been very unhappy with Sarcozy in France, especially after his government raised the retirement age, to save money; and in Germany, Merkel's popularity has steadily slipped. People have to have someone to blame, and it's easier to zero in on the country's very visible political leaders, than on the invisible people who really caused the problems.

So anyway, I'm having my horizons expanded. Thank you, public television.

Where's it coming from?

The winds have been raging for three days now. I was just lying on my sofa, resting the aching neck and shoulder that are apparently never going to stop hurting, and watching out my front window the great tall trees across the street bending and swaying in the wind. An impressive show of force (as if we needed any more displays of Nature's strength, after the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan); but the wind wreaks havoc with my T.V. (could hardly watch Fringe on Friday evening, the cuts in and out were so bad), and makes it feel much colder than the mid-30s temps we've been having. This is nobody's idea of spring, and Mainers are reading for some spring.

There's also the fact that the wind is blowing around all that sand left over from snowy days when the public works guys would be out making the roads safer. Now they're safe, but dirty; driving through the airborne sheets of dirt you feel like you're in a sand storm out west.

Still, the Kennebec is a river once more, rather than a snow-covered sheet of ice. We did not have an ice jam like we did last year (see Note of Jan. 31, 2010); I guess the melting was more gradual all up and down the river this year. They've pulled in the smelt-fishing huts that line the river across the way in Randolph all winter. They appear as soon as the river is frozen enough to do ice-fishing, disap-pear when the ice ceases to be safe.

There are still patches of dirty snow on the ground here and there -- indeed, we had a dusting of snow last week -- but we cling to the hope that, as every year, it will get warm, and beautiful, soon.

Something I hate

The way products are forever being "discontinued." My first experience of this happened way back in the early 70s, when "Seven Winds," the cologne I had been using since about 1965, was discontinued by its maker, Dubarry. That stuff was so in sympatico with my body's chemistry that strangers on the street would compliment me on how nice I smelled. Then the same thing happened with the fragrance I replaced "Seven Winds" with, whose name now escapes me. More recently in the fragrance department the scent I've been using for many years -- "Youth Dew" by Estee Lauder -- has not been discontinued ('though the space it takes up at the Estee Lauder counter has gotten smaller and smaller, as they've introduced other fragrances), but the perfume has been, including the lovely little cameo-topped boxes in which it came, in solid form, at Christmas. Perfume is much longer lasting than cologne, but I am reduced to the latter (which is housed in a much tackier-looking bottle than the perfume was), and the dusting powder.

Then there's Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper. I love this soda, and have just learned from one of the two places in the area where I've been able to get it, that it has been discon-tinued. What?! They also discontinued Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, which I liked even more. And Coco Cola discontinued the diet versions of Coke with Lemon and Cherry Coke, both of which I liked.

And my stockings! For many years I've been buying No nonsense pantyhose at the drugstore or supermarket. Durable, reasonably pleasant to the touch (especially important back in the days when there were people touching my legs), and very cheap, they were perfect for me. If I got a run or (more likely) a hole, it was no big deal because they were so cheap. But over the last year or so I've noticed that fewer and fewer of them -- sizes, colors, just number of packages -- are available at Rite Aid or Hannaford's. They seem to be fading away, which certainly suggests that they, too, are being discontinued.

These are just a few small examples (have you got one?) Presumably such discontinuations mean that not enough people were buying these products to make it worth the producers' investment, but it is certainly no comfort to know that I have such refined tastes few other people share them. What it means for me is that I have to keep search-ing for substitutes, which is time-consuming, and can be expensive, and is generally discouraging. When I've found a good thing I want to keep it, in perpetuity, but that does not seem to be the way our world is set up.

On the other hand...

In my last posting I was urging people who hadn't read it to read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. However, I do have to mention some of the bad news the book conveys. It seems especially relevant given last Friday's earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Coming on the heals of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chili last year, as well as the eruptions of two of Indonesia's active volcanoes (Mount Karangetang erupted again a few hours after the earthquake/tsunami in Japan)...well, there's just no question that the earth beneath our feet is in turmoil. And we can't do a damn thing about it.

There are two unsettling scenarios Bryson discusses in his book. The one has to do with the "hot spot" located beneath Yellowstone National Park. That hot spot is what produces all those spouting geysers and bubbling mud cauldrons that so fascinate visitors. Alas, what it basically is is a volcano, waiting to erupt big time. In fact, it's considered a supervolcano, because the magma chamber deep below the surface is huge, about 45 miles across, or pretty much the size of the park. The park, in other words, visited by thousands of people every year, is the caldera of an active volcano.

There are other "superplumes" on earth -- about thirty -- but the one beneath Yellowstone is the only one that does not lie below the sea (a number of volcanically active, and inhabited, islands -- Hawaii, Iceland, the Azores, the Canary Islands -- do sit atop such superplumes). So when it blows, which it has done about every 600,000 years, it affects a huge area of land. And that land now has lots of people living on it, unlike 630,000 years ago, which is yes, the last time it erupted. In other words, Yellowstone is overdue.

Which makes me want to get there for a visit as fast as I can, before it goes. But which also calls into question my insistence that people who live in dangerous places should just get the heck out of there (see Note of Feb. 1, 2009). For it would seem that there is no safe place. Those ranchers out there in Wyoming and Montana, I'm sure they figure they live in a pretty safe place. Brutal winters, but no hurricanes, no drowning sea coast, no earthquakes, no volcanoes.

And even if you live nowhere near Yellowstone National Park, you could be adversely affected by an eruption as far away as eastern Nebraska. That's where the fossilized remains of a whole slew of animals were found in what is now called Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park. They were buried under ten feet of ash, and had died from breathing in air full of ash. The ash fall from the last eruption covered nearly the whole of the United States west of the Mississippi. And there's no telling how long the volcanic winter from such an eruption would last. This is not a pretty picture.

So what are ya gonna do? You realize you have to "Don't worry, be happy," as the old song put it, because there is nothing you can do to prevent Yellowstone from blowing up...or a meteorite from hitting the earth, another unpleasant possibility Bryson investigates in his book. After all, meteorites have been plowing into the earth for millions of years; why shouldn't it happen again? But now the earth is full of people, and the impact of a meteorite the size of the one that hit what is now Manson, Iowa, about 75,000 years ago, would be devastating for a thousand miles in all directions. Bryson's description of "devastating" -- provided to him by geologists -- is pretty darn scary. Which starts me on another train of thought. Maybe we really need to be pumping money into space exploration, so that we can find some places for the human race to spread out, in case this little globe of ours becomes just plumb uninhabitable.