Musings on Modern Communication (Chatting with Laurie)

I tried using the e-mail password. Thanks, is appears it worked and I posted a little chat with Tiiu. However, while the blog 'let me in', a message appeared saying 'The password for blogger.com is different. Do you wish to reset it?' Of course I would, but there was no field to input any updated or other password, but the blog was open and ready to receive my wishes. So I just went on and posted that little thing I texted to Tiiu. If the atmosphere in Facebook were different, this would really be one piece of status. More expressive than most that one gets to see. But I guess this is not done in that environment. Sometimes I have the feeling that anything over ten words does not get any attention there. So I do not like Facebook as a real means of communication. With e-text it is the same feeling but there I simply rebel. E-text is a personal message addressed to one or several recipients who I think would be receiving on the same wavelength as the one on which the message is sent. Generally, a thought can be formulated in very few words. I can say "today it is really cold out there" and seven words have told you of my current view about the temperature out there. But it does not give you much color, does it? Why do I feel it is really (!) cold, and what is the 'out there' where I would presumably prefer to find warmer temperatures? The seven words might or might not make you curious. In the former case you would begin to speculate on possible expansions of the thought and probably fail, because you'd have no guide by which to direct your speculations. In the latter case you'd simply drop it because it was not able to stir your interest and by dropping it you take all the worth out of me having sent it in the first place. And so I rebel against the ways modern communication is used and the way it is shaped and the effect it has so very often to make itself so very superficial.
Perhaps out of these sentiments comes my satisfaction with just spending time with myself and spinning my thoughts out to myself.

Spring Takes Hold of the Trees All Over the Valley (Chatting with Kaarin)

The night brought a low of 48 degrees, but by the time I got out and about it was 51 and right now it has warmed up to 52. I went outside and found a fine drizzle coming down and I froze like ten naked men in a medieval castle (note: the original expression was modified in view of the changed ethnic sensitivities in some English speaking areas). So my stay outside was rather short.
What I cannot understand is why I do not find the warm jacket you and I bought a year and a half ago on the way up to watch the roof come. I was thinking I had left it here when I came down from the mountain last Fall, knowing that I had another one down there and expecting to have one in each place. When you look for forgotten things in the house some time in the future, would you look for that also? I might get caught in a snow storm before I start the trek down again and need one of them. Remember it is the blubbery black one. The brownish more stylish one I would like to keep in Gb because I probably will need it more often there, come Winter again.
Speaking about forgotten things: when I unpacked here, I found a veritable mountain of 'dirty' sweat- and T-shirts, but no dressy or semi-dressy short sleeve shirts, so I went to church with a long sleeved dress shirt and - gosh it was a hot day! That problem, though, was sholved. WalMart had what looks like OK-to-show-in-public shirts for under 15 bucks each. Two of them a actually Wranglers and all I need is a horse to make them feel in place. You do not need to put shirts on your list to pack, and the jacket - just let me know if you found it and perhaps Iivo can haul it up, since he does not include the Ozarks and Illinois in his itinerary when he comes up here in August. And if I do not have that jacket - no big deal. I have the fleecy you gave me for Christmas and that will keep me safe al long time ⛄️
Chip just pulled his camper to the basement door which means that he and Brenda will be gone this weekend. Who is there to play with then? Talking to Jason, he told me about Clyde Twitchell up on the mountain. That is not that nice young man we met at the Whitingham transfer station but his father. There is also another son living in the little ranch next to the old farm and then there is a third son living on Goodnow road with his property abutting to the back of his father's. Yet, with all sons and their wives and his grandchildren living almost all within walking distance, the (94 years) old man is living alone and none of them comes visiting except the son who lives next door, once a week in the morning on his way to work. The conversation on those occasions is restricted to a few minutes, just to make sure the old man is still around, says Jason. I think I might go and knock at his door some day. He is said to have problems hearing and that should create a feeling of affinity between him and me. We'll see what comes of it.
Last Sunday when I went to the cemetery I sat on the bench for a moment and immediately the local no-seeums came to accept the free offerings. Even though I was overdressed - see above - they still found enough seats at the table on my hands and in my face so I could not sit but a few seconds to put down the flowers, say Hello and to take that picture. I'm still itching and in response I have put only two of the garden chairs out on the deck and have used them only for very brief periods during this last week - one to sit on and one for my feet. As long as the wind blows briskly over the deck, things are alright, but when the leaves stop rustling, watch out!
Oh, yes - the leaves. There were almost none a week ago - the willows were green, but almost nothing else. That has changed so fast, the last few days you could stand on the deck and watch Spring take hold of the trees all over the valley. The temp has now risen to 57 and the sun is chewing its way through the clouds. I think I go out to enjoy things a little.
'nuff chat for now. More later.

Happy Mother's Day to you all!

The Dam Busters, released in 1955

See if you can catch this film from Netflix: The Dam Busters, released in 1955. It is a WW2 movie, but rather than perpetuating the thoughts of what happened more than 70 years ago, I would like to have my grandchildren see a wonderful example of applied engineering and physics. I saw this movie some fifty years ago and it is still part of my fondest reminders of what the application of our most basic sciences can do. What our schools do is teach the rules, but they fail to open the student's eyes to the practical application (OK, so hear is Pytagoras. So what? What can you do with it?). I still feel that, if we could teach our children the USE of what we expect them to learn, we would have an easier task to get them to study and remember.

I guess the difficulty I have in expressing my thoughts on this theme amply clarifies the problems our school systems have to apply the thoughts to teaching masses of teachers, and greater masses of students.

Other thought: I closed all windows and doors with the exception of a couple of windows 'cracked' up in the loft to let in at least some fresh air. The dripping nose has come to order! This 'fresh mountain air' is for the birds!

Good night to you all!

The Bluebird Story

5/8/15, 1:43 p.m.
Went to town for gas, came home and mowed the grass. Went for an inspection tour around the pond and through the woods. All is well. 

Around noon,  planted three bluebird nesting boxes at three fence posts near the deck. These are boxes Lulu and Bill built some thirty years ago. Lulu took them in somewhere around ten years ago. Now, just one and one half hour after putting them out again, there are already two 'interested parties' bustling about. I will get nothing done for the rest of the day. The show is too captivating. 

Update, 5/13/15, 7:12 a.m.

From the deck, the bluebird story looks like it came to an end before it really got started. They came and looked the houses over, much like Ema and I used to do: 'Oh, look, a new house! Let's go and see what it is like'. And never a thought to buy. 

They hang around and fly off after a while, they might sit on the house roofs and sing and meet and look at each other, but they don't seem to nest. They are here rather seldom. 

At least one website claims that boxes should be put out in this area in March, so I think our bluebirds up here already have settled in for the summer and will not move any more until they head south again. I give them a few more days and then I go and look inside the boxes. Stay tuned.

Family

Hi, again, Olivia!

While I was at it, I thought I send you a picture of your great-great-grandmother, Karolina Luisa Sitterding, i.e. your dad's great-grandmother, my own grandmother and my dad's mother. Isn't she beautiful? 

I estimate that this picture is just about 100 years old. There is another picture of her when she was much younger and I think of her as the most beautiful woman of all - excepting, of course, you 😌 

Perhaps this old shot fits into your collection? Would you want the same kind of reproduction of aunt Kaarin's grandparents? I tried 'shooting' them but was unsuccessful because the glass over those photos is reflecting too much. I'll try some other options if you want those pictures in the same form.

Hugs, Opa

Passport Pictures

Hi, Ol',
How is that for service? At first I couldn't figure out what you meant with "passport pictures," until I remembered what we did in 1971.

Kaarin Maila Sitterding

Iivo Markus Sitterding

 For the record, these pictures are date Jan 28, 1971.

😙 from Op'

------
NOTE: The request for these photos came from Olivia, who was working on this project.

Perfect Pairings

http://bubblyprofessor.com/category/perfect-pairings/

I send you this link for your enjoyment! It is a most delightful presentation of what lies behind the choices of wine for a meal, and why sometimes disasters happen and both meal and wine fall flat. But do enjoy this. I made it a bookmark!

An important thing to know?

An important thing to know: David Cameron sometimes sings Benny Hill's Ernie (the fastest milkman in the West) in the shower; Ed Miliband doesn't.

Phewh - that stopped my heard for a beat or two: Boston is one of the most neurotic places in Great Britain while Orkney is one of the least. That's the Boston in Lincolnshire, GB.

Don't do this, but also don't stop doing that: Human blood is almost twice as fattening per ml as beer.

If we only could!: It would take 38 minutes to journey through the centre of the earth to the other side of the world - four minutes faster than thought.

This was taken from BBC News and has me smiling to myself. There is nothing terribly wild happening in a world where an agency like BBC must fill space with stuff like this. 

Small Beginnings?

I remember it all, now, the weak and wobbly knees, the funny walk, the muscle pains reaching from the feet all the way into the shoulders, the strained arms and the cramped hands, and that being out of breath. Some sixty five years ago, a school friend and I decided we were going to spend our summer vacation (four weeks!) to cycle around Switzerland. With camping gear and rations loaded up, we started in Basel, more or less followed the western border with France, crossed through La Chaux de Fonds and further on down to La Brévine, from there out of the Jura and through the vineyards to Lausanne on the lake of Geneva, then east along the lake shore to the top of the lake.
While we were camping there we began to see the immensity of our undertaking and decided it was going to be too much. Already we were nearing the end of our second week in the saddle and had not made nearly half of our objective.
With this thought, we broke camp and pedaled up the valley of the Rhone as far as Aigle, where we began the short cut, following the road north into the Bernese Alps past Gsteig and Gstad and eventually to the shores of the Lake of Thun, where we took another rest. There, my friend threw in the towel, loaded his bike and his gear on the train and went back home to Basel. My home was in Zurich and, hard nosed as always, back then, I reloaded my iron horse and traveled along the lake to Interlaken, then to Brienz and over the Brünig Pass to Lucern. I'm listing all these names so you can look at the map and appreciate the immensity of this undertaking by two boys in their middle teens. I am still proud of that summer! The distant from Basel to Lucerne along the way I just described is 522 km, or so, not counting the numerous detours from the main line to the camp grounds. sightseeing, etc. the distance traveled would easily come close to 400. My total time in the saddle amounted to some 14 days. Add the profile to this distance. Along our route, the easiest part is the short stretch along the Lake Geneva and along the Rhone to Aigle. All else is either up a mountain or down a mountain, the latter a joy, the former often rather hard. Lake Geneva has an elevation of 373 meters, and the Col du Pillon, where the road crosses the alpine ridge and begins its descent is listed at 1546 meters. To make it easier for you to envision this, the difference of elevation is 1173 meters or 3847 feet. On the long climb from Aigle to the ridge of the alps, a slow truck passed us and without any consultation among each other we both reached for a hold on his back and he pulled us up a thousand feet or so until he turned off our route. Else, we pedaled as far as we could and then pushed our bikes up the road until the grade became a bit more friendly.
But while coasting down that wonderful slope from the Brünig to the lake and on to Lucerne I began envisioning the pressure from the density of the traffic in the 'flat lands' of Switzerland and used that as excuse to give up also. I took the train from Lucerne to Zurich and after I had climed the mountainside from the railroad station to our home in Witikon, a suburb of Zurich, I really had enough.
During the many years following I did not do much biking anymore. There was a short period with short excursions with Iivo and Kaarin some twenty years later but nothing to speak about in terms of athletic performance. As time went on, the physical need for exercise of some sort made itself felt and many were the trials to get back into some athletic routine. but year after year it became more and more evident that some low impact activity was needed. Running went out first and then walking and for a number of reasons, some of them rather disgusting, swimming did not come under consideration any more. The latest evolution around this need is 'the toy' which I presented earlier. With the late winter opening small windows of relatively comfortable weather, I started biking again. I just came back from breaking all records I had heretofore established on this side of life and recorded on Runkeeper. I pushed for this one. I just had to show progress! Listen to this and smile with me: 2.12 miles in 19.46 minutes, having burned 117 calories. I estimate the elevation conquered at about 15 feet. Oh, I'm going to celebrate!