Author: Shona

Engineering consultant by day, science fiction writer in off hours.

Murderer’s Lament

The water opened in front of me. Ripples at the edge of the lake transitioned into sun-speckled wavelets. I bent down to feel the coolness, and brought my cupped hands to my face.

A small silver dart exited the brown forest of underwater plants. Pink  granite and grey feldspar protruded from the sand, carrying memories of their faraway origins.

I lifted my head. A wall of late-summer-green leaves edged the far shore, framing the emptiness of the water’s surface. A few cottages, white, turquoise, lilac and pink, punctuated the living barrier. I silently thanked the houses’ inhabitants for their contribution to what would become my lasting vision of tranquility.

It had been years since I had seen so clearly. The memory of this last moment of quiet freedom has played over and over again in the cinema of my mind, as I knew it would, long after the small fish forgot all about the looming shadow that briefly darkened its way.

A message from The Great Merwegon

Still not getting anywhere with the second novel, I’ve been “helicoptering,” a creative writing technique where you write whatever scene occurs to you, even if what comes before it has not yet been created. I realize that my character, “The Great Merwegon,” was not developed. So I’m making up her teachings. Oh yeah, I decided she’s a female prophet. Most wisdom is wisdom, but maybe Merwegon will come up with some teachings that only a woman would. Of course, she’s not a woman. She’s a Winged Being of Kosbar, that planet far away that exists only in my mind.
The prompt was “It’s not all in your HEAd.”

“And this brings me to my next point,” Merwegon said, her finger pointing, in turn, at each of the members of the small group gathered around her.

“It is never all in your own head. Never. Whether we believe it or not, we always depend on knowledge stored in the collective consciousness. At the time of specific need, the tendrils of our mind reach out to access the facts, opinions, stories, legends, and myths of all the contents of eternity.

“The quality of the transmission back to your brain depends on how hard you have worked to maintain the health of your mind tendrils. This is done by cultivation of clarity.

“If you don’t also minimize the static in your physical neurons, by proper lifestyle, you won’t be able to isolate the wisdom signal.”

Merwegon sat down, and looked, in turn, at each of her disciples, coming to rest, with a longer gaze, on the face of Alitonia.

The Problem with the Two Party System

Sometime in my youth, I remember expressing happiness to my dad that my preferred political party had won the presidency, after a long drought. Unfortunately, the new president was having trouble finding well known, experienced, skilled, proven Democrats to fill the leadership roles in the Cabinet, and beyond. My father, long interested in government, to the extent of reading multiple histories of the Romans, ranted about the incompetence of the new president, and the general failure to fill many of the positions, due to the refusal of Congress to approve his nominees, thus proving his general incompetence to be president.

Is Now The Time to Expand Our Two Party System?

That’s the problem with election cycles in the two party system that we Americans love so much. We’re proud of the fact  that we have only two major parties. We avoid that messy coalition building that other democracies have to to through. We let the people choose, and then let the chosen person / party govern. At least that’s been the theory. The winning party claims a mandate based on the electoral college “landslide,” even if the popular vote went the other way. The winner then gets to fill the leadership roles in agriculture, the military, education, finance, drug policy, and all the other aspects of modern life.

But experience builds on experience.

As an engineer, age late 50’s, suddenly my clients are asking new types of questions. I would not have been able to answer these questions even a few years ago. Or maybe the questions have always been there, but I’m able to hear them now. Hard to say. A few times in the recent past, the answers have popped into my mind almost as soon as they are asked, and anticipated side concerns also seem to articulate themselves in the compost of the confusion of the questioner.

When only Democrats get to fill top positions for 8 or 12 years, Republicans don’t gain the skills required to lead. When only Republicans get to fill top positions for 8 or 12 years, Democrats don’t gain the skills required to lead. When Republicans, who by definition think multi-level hierarchy is the natural and best state for humanity, are in charge for long stretches of time, the sprouts of true egalitarian democracy are killed, pre-emergence.

Empowerment is the Key!

I heard an African-American community leader calmly insisting, correctly in my opinion, that money for White-led organizations helping African-Americans was wasted. African-Americans, he kept insisting, have to be empowered to solve problems by themselves. That means the role of the white cultural matrix must be to try to weed out the systematic discrimination that keeps African-Americans dis-empowered.

Empowerment is related to the SELF.

It does not mean power OVER others.

What are the major, current and actionable sources of this dis-empowerment? I’ll leave that question for all of us to meditate on.

Only by solving problems can we learn to solve problems.

This happens  at many simultaneous levels: individual, community wide, city wide, state wide,  nation wide, and world wide, and over many generations. It takes a long un-interupted time for the poisonous preconceptions carried in every culture to be weeded out in the “market-place of ideas.” These poisonous ideas are left from earlier times, were created in different circumstances, by well meaning people. But the only constant is change. And as change accelerates in the accelerated mingling of different groups in modern times, we need to move toward a system where people of all cultures and political persuasions have un-interupted chances to develop their leadership skills.

You may wish to view this Wikipedia article on other problems associated with the type of voting we have, which is not necessarily confined to two party systems. Thanks to the person who called this article to my attention.

Wrong about Worms!

The worm, surprised by the sudden appearance of daylight, quickly retreated into its tunnel.

“Do worms have eyes?” asked Danny.

“Hmm, good question. I don’t think so.”

“Either did I. Maybe they can sense light though. Or maybe it simply felt the air move. Or maybe it was resting against the bottom of the flower pot when you picked it up.”

I had recruited Danny to help me clean up the yard, his young skeleton being more flexible than mine, and his muscles stronger.

“It’s hard to say what a worm knows!” Danny pointed out.

“Well, it’s easy to find some verbiage about worms. But saying something meaningful and truthful requires mental wrestling,” I reminded my young neighbor.

“Worms do not have vertebrae!” retorted Danny. “That did not require too much wrestling.”

I nodded, happy to hear this entity of tender years producing such a pithy aphorism, and replied to him.

“We do have vertebrae, but we are still subject to the winds of fate. Our vertebrae help us stand straight, but we can’t avoid making some wrong turns in life.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Danny. “I’m still calculating the worth of that last explosion of wrath I indulged in.”

My eyes involuntarily sought the exit to the wormhole. I knew the feeling. We had met in the advanced anger management class. Our warped personalities were both on the mend. We were cultivating our minds. Tired of having to wriggle away from the complicated conditions we had created for ourselves, we were learning new habits. We were learning how to un-braid the strands of our troubled lives. We were learning to unwrap the layers of weird circumstances that had trapped us in inner turmoil. We were learning that prose is preferable to fists. Versatility is what we can learn from the worm.

Your face is wreathed in smiles,” noted Danny.

“Versatility is what we can learn from the worm,” I cheerfully replied.

“Right!” said Danny. No damn vertebrae to get in the way.”

MUSE

Our homework assignment in writing group was to randomly pick a word from the dictionary and write something about it or with it. I usually don’t do the homework. Most of the others in the group are retired and have more time. This time, I was inspired to write something though, but “WREATHE” (the verb) just did not give me much to go on. So I turned to the “Indo-European Root” dictionary at the back of the American Heritage Dictionary that I got a few years back. Word origins are very interesting. I read and underlined the entire Indo-European and Semetic root word appendices when the book arrived.

“Wreathe” comes from the root word “wer” of which there are three unrelated versions. (They’d sound different in the original Indo-European language, but all are represented as “wer” in modern American English. Wreathe comes from “wer” #2.) This version of “wer” has to do with turning and wrapping. It’s amazing how so few root words have generated so many individual expressions of nuance in the last 5000 years or so.

The highlighted words are all derivatives from “wer” #2. Of course some of the derivations in this dictionary are (IMHO) wrong. It’s tough work and the professionals tend sometimes to ignore the obvious in favor of the obscure. Sovereign, for example, (meaning self rule) obviously comes from whatever roots generated “swa” (self) and “raj” (as in “raja, king, also like reign!) but they have a different take.

 

Self Evident Truth About Distracted Driving

Earlier this week, the topic of discussion on NPR’s “On Point” radio show was the scourge of distracted driving. There are people working on smart technologies to  stop people from doing tasks that require too much attention when they are moving at high velocity. There are apps that track high cognitive activities such as browsing and texting. These apps would be the equivalent of a “breathalyzer,” and cops could ask to see your device if you were stopped for a traffic violation. Supposedly our legal system would let people off the hook if the passenger stated under oath that they were the one using the device, not the driver. Just as social pressure has been used to greatly reduce the acceptability and frequency of drunk driving, social pressure is being used to bring awareness of the dangers of distracted driving.

The main danger is often said to be the driver taking eyes off of the road. Usually the eyes are linked to using the device while it’s in the hands. Hands are surely linked to the brain.  But there have been studies showing that hands free driving is still distracted driving, and causes just as many accidents.

We See with our BRAINS

We have to remember, or realize, that we see with our BRAINS as much as we see with our eyes. The largest part of our brain is devoted to visual processing. While some people are undoubtedly better at multi-tasking than others, most of us over-rate our abilities in this area. See http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0054402  which includes the following

Ophir et al. [8] found that persons who frequently multi-task ….may be those who are the least cognitively equipped to effectively carry out multiple tasks simultaneously.

When we’re talking on the phone, it is not like talking with someone riding in the vehicle with us. It might be more like having a crying baby or a bunch of rowdy kids with us. The person at the other end of the line, the crying baby, the misbehaving kids, do not quiet themselves to allow you, the driver, to pay attention to the road when the situation demands. The person at the other end of the line, the crying baby, the misbehaving kids, are unaware that it would be safer for all if they were quiet, to allow the driver to pay attention to rapidly changing circumstances. In the case of the person at the other end of the line, they entangle the driver in their local “thought field,” (see this related article on shared consciousness), which is usually related to something other than the road conditions.

This realization came to me some years ago, when almost everyone believed that hands free cell phone use while driving meant safe cell phone use. That was well before the advent of smart phones. I had a client who had told me he thought that there should be two levels of drivers licenses. One for regular people, and one for those who had demonstrated that they could read while driving. He was a smart guy overall, and the above referenced work at the University of Utah leads us to believe that there could be test to allow the competent multi-taskers to be certified. But I still do not think I like the idea. A lot can happen in the blink of an eye when traveling at high speed.

Despite this, I’m also not a fan of driverless vehicles.

When is someone going to show that this emperor has no clothes?

We can’t keep our credit cards, bank accounts, medical information, social security numbers secure. We can’t keep our computers free of viruses and malware. How are we going to prevent hackers from creating giant accidents?

I guess we’ll “just have to get used to those giant “accidents,” as we are having to “get used to” attacks by terrorists and the neglected mentally ill.

Update October 30, 2016

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is taking action after the entrepreneur had tee shirts printed bragging about how rich they were going to get.

Hallelujah. Greedy, hubris drenched capitalist gets his come-uppance!

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/nhtsa-urges-u-self-driving-startup-delay-sale-133708559.html

 

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches

Drowning in peaches, peaches, peaches.

You have to be drowning, you have to have access to and responsibility for the tree.

Otherwise you’d eat the peaches as they ripen. Only when you have too many peaches,  some inevitably go past the stage of perfection to a stage of super-perfection. Because that’s when they are sweetest and most full flavored. And when you get them off the tree that way, starting to ferment a bit, turning brown in the pit, maybe some  bad spots that you have to cut away, those are the ones that make me want to have my own peach trees. Those are the ones that make it worth going through all the work of pruning and fertilizing and all the rest of it.

This was a great year for peaches. I had help in the orchard and thinned the fruit. The result was some really big and beautiful peaches.

Here’s my poem…

Peaches, peaches, peaches.

Not straight from the tree.

Even the warm ones bursting with flavor are too fuzzy straight from the tree.

Mother Nature’s fuzz functions too well.

Rub first in running water.

Cut along the edge of the pit. Grasp the halves and twist.

Open mouth. Bite. Turn so the flesh is down on the tongue.

Chew. Sweetness and flavor explode.

Confusion is the Starting Point of Wisdom

Confusion is the starting point of transforming the world into something new. Confusion makes us stop and if we are attentive to our state of confusion, we will nurture it into a full blown dilemma. Only a full blown dilemma provides the material for new vision. Who cares to keep looking out from the same eyes at the same world? Only those who have successfully cultivated personal wealth, health, and influence.

Teachings of the Great Merwegon

Volume 1, Chapter 4

Comments: I haven’t been making too much progress on my new novel, “Moses of Kosbar,” but wrote this in the group to a prompt of “confusion, dilemma,” and it was well received. I realized that I haven’t really tried to develop the character of the wise one of the planet Kosbar, the one who founded the new religion of the indigenous inhabitants of the planet far from Earth, that eventually gets colonized by homo saps. So I ended deciding to attribute the little saying to Merwegon. We’ll see where Merwegon’s personality goes!