Silence is Golden

Under the heading of "More of What This Country Needs" I would add the idea that we need more silence.  The hum of "civilization" is no longer a hum.   Instead it's become a long and painfully loud crescendo with no end in sight. It's gotten to the point where we can't hear ourselves think. In a sense we have lost ourselves in the din.

 The hum of civilization isn't just that which we can measure in decibels, it's also those other things that compete for our attention from the time we open our eyes in the morning until we shut them at night.  We are under a constant barrage of competing things wanting our attention. We rush from place to place and from thing to thing.  It's like being pecked to death by chickens.  Alarm clocks, family, jobs, friends, Facebook updates, email, Television, smart phones, music, ...those are some of the obvious things screaming for our attention. Politics is another source of unpleasant noise, especially this year.

It's easy to lose yourself among all those things competing for your attention. We are seldom left alone to just think, daydream, and figure out who we are and how we fit into this whole creation.  It requires some silence to think about big things like "What is the meaning of life?", "What is the meaning of my life?" or "What gives my life meaning?" 

The silence we need is more than simply the lack of noise. It is also the silence of not letting a thousand thoughts compete in your mind.  I've experienced "silence" while being surrounded by noise.   Driving a tractor, plowing corn in the middle of an 80 acre field for example.  On the tractor, in the field but miles from there too. You might call it zoning out...but not in the sense that I started plowing out rows of corn...more like my mind was just open and thoughts flowing without much exterior distraction.  In a way the noise actually sort of helped with that process.

Sitting on the porch swing with my grandmother on a warm summer afternoon was another kind of silence. She was talking, I was listening, sometimes asking questions, but it was a quiet sitting, quiet talking, non interrupted talking and listening.  I remember sometimes hearing the sound of a car moving down the road in front of the house...gravel crunching under the tires.  You could see the dust rising behind the car before you heard it. But it didn't compete with what was going on.  How different from today.   I like to sleep with open windows whenever I can but we live next to a busy street.  Opening a window today just lets in a more or less constant roar of passing traffic.  Where are all those people going at this time of night?  Eventually you just get numb to the sound and don't really hear it any more...still the same amount of traffic moving down the street, but I've managed to push it far into the background, especially late at night while I'm sitting here at my computer working.

What this country needs is less noise in a lot of places...television needs less noise.  When did we decide news reporting was better when you had two or three panelists talking about the news...all at the same time.  Financial news networks are especially terrible about that sort of thing. Three or four guys sitting around a table debating what's going to happen in the markets or arguing because they don't agree, that's the kind of too much noise I can do without.

We need less noise and more substance from our politicians.  Political debates are not debates...they are junior high school shouting matches, it's pathetic. I've seen enough of those to last me until I die.

I'm thinking it might be a good idea to take up fishing...being out on a boat, away from people, traffic, TV, phones, and all the other trappings of "civilization" sounds pretty good. Just me and the dog.

What do Terry Bradshaw, Glenn Beck, James Carville, Thomas Edison, Howie Mandel and I have in common?

This is, after all, a blog of Random Thoughts and the following is just about as random as I've gotten.  Maybe it should be called rambling thoughts from the heartland because there isn't a strong continuity of subject matter in any of my subjects. From Travel, to photography, to family history and politics.  Holy Cow, this is beginning to sound like the ramblings of someone with ADHD or ADD.  

And there you have it, the lead-in to my thoughts on ADD.  Why? Because I'm probably the poster child for un-diagnosed ADHD as both a child and an adult.  

An interesting article appeared in the Washington Post recently. Written by Valerie Strauss: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/02/07/adhd-in-kids-what-many-parents-and-teachers-dont-understand-but-need-to-know/

Reading through the article dredged up some painful memories of my school days and reminded me of issues that haunted me through much my adult life,  but at the same time the article offered up some positive thoughts on the subject. From Dr. Ned Hallowell, one of the country’s foremost experts on ADHD: "Too often, teachers and parents (and bosses) jump to what I call “the moral diagnosis,” and ascribe the underachievement to lack of effort or laziness, which leads to lectures, punishments, and a gradual infection of the spirit with the viruses of shame and diminished sense of self.  In fact, the correct diagnosis is of a brain difference, not a brain deficit, and certainly not a moral failing."   I can't even begin to count the number of times teachers wrote on my report card "not working up to potential",  implying of course that I was a smart kid who could do a lot better but who instead was goofing off, not working hard enough. None of that was said because they wanted to be unkind. On the contrary.  My teachers wanted me to succeed.   My parents loved me and wanted the best for me.  As an adult, as a parent and grandparent that much is very clear to me now...it wasn't quite so clear 50 years ago.  

My failing to "work up to potential" was probably especially difficult for my father to deal with or to understand.  Dad was what I might call a "natural scholar", he had excelled in school both as a student and athlete. Success in school or athletics evaded me.   Failure was foreign to him and clearly there was a difference between what he expected of his children, based on his own experiences, and how I was performing.  I really feel bad that he had to suffer through that without understanding the problem. I wish we had learned all this years ago, it would have been so much better for both of us.  

I'm not going to go into the symptoms or treatment of ADHA in children but I thought some of the information on Adult ADD was worth talking about.   

Some of the often cited symptoms of Adult ADD or ADHA are: 
Trouble concentrating and staying focused.  
Hyper Focus....oddly the opposite of the first but can also be problematic. 
Disorganization
Subcategories of Disorganization are:   

• poor organizational skills (home, office, desk, or car is extremely messy and cluttered) 
• tendency to procrastinate
• trouble starting and finishing projects
• chronic lateness
• frequently forgetting appointments, commitments, and deadlines
• constantly losing or misplacing things (keys, wallet, phone, documents, bills)
• underestimating the time it will take you to complete tasks

 Oh....crap, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty and guilty!  
These things have haunted me my entire adult life.  My chronic lateness at work became a department joke. My desk, is just about a picture perfect example of poor organizaional skill.   

There are several other typical and often cited symptoms and they are pretty easy to find online if you are interested. The article in the Post did include a bit of good news.   First the problem is much better understood now than it was when I was a child and many studies have been done. Treatments are for the most part successful, books have been written and children suffering this diagnosis are much more likely to be treated today than children were 50 years ago.

In my case, which is the norm for most people, I  learned to compensate for many of the symptoms so that in many ways you probably would never suspect I ever had such a problem. Oddly it seemed to me, I mentioned this to my sister today and she seemed truly surprised that I thought I had ADD, but my wife said she had suspected such a thing for a long time, of course she's lived with me for almost 50 years and has experienced much of this.  My case remains "un-diagnosed" or only self-diagnosed but I may talk my my physician about this on my next visit.   

Dr. Hallowell noted in the article "In fact, what we call ADD (a terrible term, as it is not a deficit of attention but rather a wandering of attention, and it is not a disorder in my opinion but rather a trait; if you manage it properly it can turn you into a phenomenal success, but if you don’t it can ruin your life, which makes it unique and fascinating) is really a type of mind, genetically transmitted, and composed of a wide array of complex and often contradictory tendencies." 

"On the positive side, which people rarely discuss, people with ADD are the people who founded this country.  They tend to be visionaries, dreamers, explorers, inventors (Edison was a classic), path-finders, discoverers, entrepreneurs (almost all entrepreneurs have ADD), creative types, original thinkers, paradigm breakers, trend-setters, free thinkers, as well as being big-hearted, trusting, generous, and fun."

It is a relief to know I am in good company and I'm thankful that I escaped any great lasting harm. Still it did create issues and some pain along the way.  On the other hand it is part of what made me who I am.   It is interesting to know this was genetically transmitted...I wonder where that came from?  I have no doubt believing dad would have thought it didn't come from his side of the family. This was an eye opening read but I found additional good material at  http://www.helpguide.org/home-pages/add-adhd.htm 

OUR LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA.

I am the unofficial family historian with a membership at Ancestry.com and a regular visitor to several websites related to family history and or history in general.  One place I pay for a membership is NewspaperArchive.com.   There are several good websites with newspaper collections from around the country and around the world.   Some states are better represented in their collection than others.    Indiana newspapers are well represented in their collection and that was one reason I selected them over some of the others.

As I've learned so often there really is nothing new under the sun. While the the mechanics of delivering social media has changed over the last century the message remains the same..."Here I am, look at me, I made this, I did that, join me in my happy, sad, or meaningful endeavors, I am!"

The other evening I did a search for articles containing the name of my Great grandmother Olive Robinson and discovered that she and her family were frequently mentioned in stories from the Monticello Herald. In those days the Monticello paper was a weekly and every week they included "reports" from all the little communities around the county.  Almost always the reports were of mundane, everyday events.  Who went to visit who, who had guests from out of town, who visited someone out of town, who got engaged or got married, funerals attended.....in short they were almost always just reports of neighborhood social events.  As I was reading the items it occurred to me "Oh my God.....these sound just like what I read at Facebook"  It became quite clear to me...our ancestors were every bit as hooked on social media as some of us are today.  The only difference I could see was that they didn't have the option of including a photo of the group gathered for the dinner party they were reporting about, or a picture of their new car.    Three randomly selected articles are shown below as the sort of Social Media our ancestors enjoyed.

I am confident that had "Facebook" existed in 1915 my great grandmother would have been a power user of the app.

WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE, AND WHY DID GRANDMA SAVE THIS PICTURE?

Cooper-Best Family Reunion Circa 1904

There are 75 individuals in this picture.   It was given to me about 1987 by my grandfather Robinson's first cousin Harry Klepinger.  I easily recognized my great great grandfather, David Cooper sitting in the first row off the ground...what I've since come to call Patriarch row. Harry told me that it was a picture of a Cooper & Best Family reunion.  His parents are on the far right side and two of his older siblings are standing high in the back row but he didn't remember who many of the others were and he didn't have any idea what the location was or the occasion, other than a "reunion". David Cooper was Harry's maternal grandfather.  The only identification on the picture was written on the reverse indicating the names of the two families involved.  Coopers and Bests.  David Cooper was married to Amanda Best and she had died before this picture was taken.  In a closer examination with a magnifying glass I realized that three of David Cooper's children were also present, William P. Cooper, Kate Klepinger, and Mary Schoonover.  My own great grandmother and any of her family seemed to be missing.  Everyone else was a mystery.      This might have remained a mostly unidentified picture but for two reasons.   Collaboration, and the internet.  For several years this remained in a folder of other Cooper family pictures and data.

A few years later I connected with Cheryl Hipp, a great great granddaughter of Isaac Newton Best and we exchanged some family data. Isaac was the brother of Amanda Best Coooper.   I had started scanning my old family photographs and I sent Cheryl a copy of this image telling her the names of those I knew and asking if she recognized anyone else in the picture based on the old family photographs she had in her possession.  Imagine my surprise when she wrote back and told me that she also had that very picture in her own collection and that she knew which was her great grandfather and grandfather.  

If descendants of both Amanda and Isaac had copies there must have been many copies of the image given to others who were in attendance that day and while we are still waiting for another copy to turn up we have been able to identify several other family members based on other photographs posted to various family trees at Ancestry.com and others by simply going through our own collections.

One of the first chores we accomplished was figuring out the year it was taken.   Since Amanda was not in the picture we knew it was taken after her death in 1896.   We also realized that William P. Cooper's wife, Lottie was standing next to him and she died in June 1905.  So there we had our brackets.   Fashions are ever changing, and because of that change it is often possible to date an image with a fair amount of accuracy based only on the clothing being worn in the picture, and this picture is loaded with fashion hints all of which point to the first decade of the 20th Century.

Cheryl sent copies of the picture to several other Best family researchers she was exchanging information with asking for them to look for anyone they might recognize. We made a low resolution copy of the image and numbered each person then Cheryl made a spread sheet and we plugged in the names next to the numbers of those we knew.  That led us to thinking more about the image in a couple of different ways.   First....what event was this?  Was it just a run of the mill family reunion or was something else going on?  Had the family gathered for a celebration of a birthday or wedding anniversary, or maybe even a funeral?   Cheryl and I had both started out calling it a picture of a Cooper/Best family Reunion...and then we started thinking about family reunions and other family gatherings.  In our experience two large families might come together for a funeral or wedding, but usually other gatherings involve one side of your family or the other, not usually both.   David Cooper was married to Amada Best, and her brother Isaac N Best was married to David's sister Rebecca....so there was more than the average mixing between those two families, but still it seemed to me that if it were a family reunion it was probably for one famil or the other, not both, except those that intermarried.  Keeping that in mind it's probably safe to assume the majority of the others are going to be members of that family.

The presence of Henry Best, older brother of Amanda and Isaac N in the photo along with some of his children seem to tip the balance toward this being a Best family reunion picture.   Also present was David and Rebecca's brother Benjamin Cooper, but his presence at a Best family function is easily explained because he was making his home with his sister Rebecca and her family at this time. Henry Best, on the other hand had lived in Iowa for many years indicating a trip back to Indiana required a sort of special effort and his presence at a Cooper family reunion would seem less likely. 

Two additional spreadsheet pages were created to help us evaluate the image and those who might have been present.  One was a list of the various Best family members who might have attended and their ages and known residences in 1900.  The other was for the Cooper family members who might have attended along with ages and residences.     We have assumed that those in attendance were probably all descendants of Isaac and Jane Best, early pioneers of Tippecanoe County, along with those members of the Cooper family who had married into the Best family.   Isaac and Jane had ten children, but by 1905 only three remained, Isaac N, Henry, and Samuel who died in July of that year.  However, many of Isaac and Jane's grandchildren and great grandchildren were alive in 1905.  It is possible that the invitation extended beyond the families of the children of Isaac and Jane and perhaps some cousins might have shown up also.

We now have positive or nearly positive identifications of 23 of the faces in this picture, but neither of us are ready to throw in the towel.  Though not yet half done, both Cheryl and I feel there is hope that we might eventually figure out as many as half of these people, or maybe somewhere in a box someone has another copy of this picture on which the original owner wrote the names of everyone. Wouldn't that be nice!

Just because you don't know everyone in your old family pictures doesn't mean they can't be figured out with some effort and help from others and a bit of luck.  There are some good books devoted to working with your old family photographs.  Well worth the cost if you are serious about working with the old photos.          

How email became my worst nightmare.

Holy Crap!  What a mess.   I'm 66 years old and you would think I'd know better than to let something like this happen.  What happened you ask?   I changed internet providers.   I dumped Comcast...is that cheering I hear?  Comcast finally got some "real" competition here in town...Fiber to the home service, fast stuff, much faster than cable even, and a promise of good customer service.   So far my speed tests have verified what Metronet has promised, at least as far as the speed....and the service is cheaper than Comcast.  It comes with up to seven new email addresses....woo-hoo~!

So here is the problem, and it is one that has been building ever since I first got Comcast and opted to use a Comcast email instead of one of the big, free, online email services like gmail or Yahoo or MSN, AOL, etc.  Actually I did get a gmail address around 2008 and I used it on occasion, mainly I thought of it as a back up service in case something happened with Comcast.  Every time I signed up for a newsletter, or joined some online service I gave them the comcast email.   When businesses asked for my email I gave them the Comcast address, when I made a political donation I gave them the Comcast address, when I ordered something online I gave them my Comcast address,  everyone I've corresponded with since about the year 2005 has my Comcast address, friends, relatives, business associates, everyone.  

Ok...all you smart people out there can start laughing now.   I can see you shaking your heads, wondering how I could have been so dense.  I deserve it...

Of course this very issue is probably the reason all the internet providers out there offer "free" email...  like a worm on a hook...once you swallow it, and especially if you use it for a long time then switching away from that internet service company is going to be very painful...and they know that. They want it to be painful to leave.

I've spent the last four days going through my contacts folder....deleting a lot of old ones, addresses for people I have no idea who they are or why I have their addresses in my contacts....Those I recognize I've been sending a change of address email, directing them all to the gmail account.   I've also been going through all the newsletters, and services where my email is used, making changes on those I want to continue to receive....and smugly ignoring those who I don't want to hear from again.

I did set up a couple of address boxes with the new server...one will be used only for a small handful of the companies that I wish to still get advertising from, or daily news headlines, political or financial commentary and the other is reserved for junk...if I make a political donation that special email address will be used...it will be a box that I can look at occasionally, and then just delete the entire contents. If the hardware store wants my email I'll probably tell them NO, but if they insist, well, they will get that special address. robjnk@newprovider.com  It will be my email version of a "drop-gun".

I will probably forget changing something, or someone, but I'm getting most of them and even at age 66 I'm still capable of learning a lesson the hard way.  If you too want to prevent a nightmare like this, do as I say, not as I do.  

Politically Incorrect

TRIGGER WARNING: examples of hateful racial, ethnic, & religious slurs below.  You have been warned.

I was thinking about something Donald Trump keeps saying...  that he sick of "Political Correctness" and that it is "killing our country".  Jeb Bush was pretty ticked off the other day too after being caught in a Political Correctness "got ya!"    I'm thinking to myself...Trump is just an asshole who will use anything as an excuse for having no control over his mouth.  The anchor baby comment by Bush might be another story.  Has political correctness gone too far?  While political correctness is sometimes, maybe even often, over done I see it as one way to at least put a sock in the mouths of those who have no self control, but have we become so obsessed with the idea that we can't hurt anyone's feelings that certain topics are off limits or so limited by the fear of saying anything incorrectly that we just avoid the whole issue?  

I thought I should at least read up on "political correctness", what it is, how and when it came about...I just wanted to find a quick executive summary of the topic..sadly, none exist. It's a much larger subject than I initially gave it credit for.  However, after reading or reviewing a dozen or so articles I was able to learn a few of the basics.   The phrase has been around for quite a long time, much longer than I would have suspected.   That the meaning of political correctness varies with the person describing it and that the definition has changed  so often it has become a nearly a useless phrase. Most often is is used as a hammer, and you hear it used as a hammer more often by those on the right. At least that's my conclusion, and I don't mean hammer, as in "a useful tool", I mean hammer as in a weapon used to bludgeon others.

On the one hand political correctness makes for more polite conversation. I'll give it that much.  The use of words that can be hurtful like chink, dink, darky, half-breed, hymie, jap, jungle bunny, raghead, sambo, mackerel snapper, wetback, and wop are discouraged. That's a good thing.  Where Donald Trump and I disagree is that I don't see "political correctness as being inherently bad, unless it goes way overboard, which sadly, seems to be the case more often than I'm comfortable with.    To me "political correctness is about using respectful language, be it based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.  

Beyond acting to modify crude comments political correctness is overdone and in some cases people have just gone nuts.   Take the subject of "trigger warnings".  That the very idea of a topic is so offensive that we can't even talk about it without first warning our listeners that some part of the discussion might be uncomfortable.   If we do talk about it we have to be so careful in selecting our words that talking about the subject is something like trying to walk through a mine field blindfolded.  Sometimes perfectly serviceable words are deemed in appropriate.   Anchor babies is a good example.  When you say it Everyone knows what it means...so if you are talking about persons (not citizens) who come to America and have children and you want to debate whether or not those children should be citizens if they are born here I don't see the issue with using the term.  Just me, probably someone will explain to me why it's offensive, but it seems like a perfectly descriptive phrase.  When I say it or hear it I don't think of it as a slur, just as a description that describes babies born here of parents who are not citizens.  It's probably a conversation we should be having...the subject of immigration I mean...whether it be legal or illegal, documented or not documented, yet we can't have said debate because just hearing the term throws a wrench in the gears of a discussion.

It's true, some ideas make some people uncomfortable, but ideas have always made some people uncomfortable.   The earth is round!  That idea once got people in trouble.   To expect College professors, to warn their students ahead of time if certain ideas and concepts are going to be mentioned in class is just about the craziest notion I've ever heard of.  Yet Trigger Warnings have become "a thing" at universities all over the country.    Of all the places where  freedom of thought should be encouraged you would think college would near the top of the list.  Students protest if a speaker is brought to the campus who has controversial ideas.

What have we done to our children and grandchildren?  We seem to have protected them for so long, from anything that might make them uncomfortable, that they can't even be in the same room with someone who might have an idea that offends them.  I wonder how that will work for them in the real world after graduation?     Yes, maybe "The Donald" is right,  Political Correctness as gone too far, though in his case a good strong muzzle or a dirty sock in his mouth might be just what is needed.

It's sad, political campaigns are supposed to be about ideas for solving the problems of the nation, instead we argue about HOW we should talk about certain subjects.   Instead of hearing discussions about immigration policy we hear a discussion about what words we can and can't use when, if, we ever get around to actually having that discussion.  It's rather like diplomats arguing about the shape of the table and the seating arrangement instead of getting down to the purpose of the meeting in the first place.

Two sides of the same coin.

Here's something to think about.  Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump....they would seem to be opposites and in many respects they are, but they are opposites like heads and tails of the same coin.  I call it the Anti-establishment coin.  They both represent the same thing...the same promise....simply, that they are not a part of the larger "political establishment". They are outsiders. Not part of the old guard.  They hold out the promise of being different than the rest of the Washington establishment.  They are both willing to say things and take positions others fear to take. Trump seems to revel in being the anti politically correct candidate and he doesn't seem to care what Washington insiders think of him (must less media pundits).    I believe he has the Washington establishment worried, although they continue to believe (or hope) he will eventually flame out.  There is a lot of irony in Donald Trump claiming to be the anti-establishment GOP candidate, considering he has admitted giving truck loads of cash to politicians of all stripes for the sole purpose of extracting "favors" from them. I guess it's like he is saying "I'm not one of them, but I've been smart enough, and rich enough to USE them" and I guess that probably annoys them as much as anything....that someone actually admits they give big political donations with the expectation of getting something in return.  That our government really is "for sale" The establishment, Right and Left,  would rather not talk about that.

For many Americans the financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting recession brought into sharp focus the failings of the "free market", and and the financial deregulation that fueled the crisis.  A sagging middle class, income inequality, within a system that seems designed for the 1% by the 1% have created a deep suspicion of so called "Corporate Democrats". Sanders, like Trump is not afraid to say what he thinks and champions himself as the only true friend of the middle class.  Like Trump worries the establishment Republicans, Bernie Sanders has the "establishment"  wing of his party worried. Sanders and Trump, Two sides of the same coin based on a deep distrust of the usual politicians, playing the usual games, and making the same hollow promises.  There are a lot of pissed off voters if the numbers supporting Trump or Sanders are any indication...and I believe they are. Maybe some folks are even beginning to understand that "trickle down" economics doesn't work, never has worked, and never will work.

I find it amazing that the "establishment" cartel in Washington seems so clueless about how unhappy the vast majority of voters are.  Hell, all you have to do is set up a Facebook page, accumulate a couple hundred "friends" and just watch the news feed.  It isn't rocket science, just open their eyes and look around.  Personally if I were them I'd be getting damn nervous.  

  Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone wrote this today, and I can't agree more.
 
 "Trump's followers are a gang of pissed-off nativists who are tired of being laughed at, belittled, dismissed, and told who to vote for. So it seems incredible that the Republican establishment thinks it's going to get rid of Trump by laughing at, belittling and dismissing him, and telling his voters who they should be picking."   

The current crew running the train seems to think the passengers will just keep riding quietly along doing what is asked, believing what is said, no questions asked. As one of those passengers, I hate to tell the crew...your days might be numbered. I'm enjoying watching the Republican establishment try to tear Trump down, it might back fire on them, but this much we know for sure.  The next few months will be very entertaining if nothing else.