Affecting Others

 Most of us are well aware of how others affect us. Of course, we seldom pass that along, or at least not often enough. Most of us tell a beloved spouse/partner how we feel, how important they are in our lives. Some of us even do it often enough. We might also inform not-so-beloved spouses or partners of our alternate kind of feelings and reactions to them. For the kids we raise, much the same, and when those children are really lucky they actually hear they are loved from the various ways we communicate that to them. It's pretty much a given that they hear the opposite when we're angry with them.

But how much do we really know about how we affect others, especially those peripheral to our lives? That random person we pass on the street, do we know whether our smile is important in their day or just dismissed? Have we any idea, when some expression of anger or disappointment crosses our face in reaction to something totally separate from the person who sees our expression, whether they think we don't like them, or can separate out that it's truly not about them?

I recently had cause to be aware that I don't know how I affect others much of the time, especially from many years ago in brief encounters. Even our memories of what happened vary. I have absolutely no memory of the event, while another person thought it an amazing adventure, and named a child after me.  Well, perhaps "after me" is over dramatizing it, though I don't know... yet. At least the other person liked my name well enough to use it later. I have yet to hear the story in full and first hand.

So far the story is passed along from somebody who had it second hand herself. Or is that third? I have family members who delve deeply into genealogy, and are generous enough to pass along what they learn to those of us who don't have or make the time to pursue it ourselves.  I grew up  knowing there was a book put together by a first cousin tracing their side of the family, the paternal one, back to before any immigrated to this continent in the early 1600s, and up to at least my existence as one of the youngest of my generation. A first cousin on my maternal side has been tracing that side, even including a trip to "the old country" which disproved some family stories. Another family member has continued it in a more narrow focus, the part of the family she married into, so she has the old and the new information to pass on to more recent members, including me and my descendants, which now include great grandchildren.

Obviously there are many splits in a very wide family tree, and a distant cousin descended from a grandparent's sibling had been reaching out for information on how to find me. As a result, I received a fascinating chain of emails yesterday giving me some information, not only that the search is being made, but that I'm part of the reason for it. There is another Heather in that part of the family, and her mother and I connected long ago as children. Whatever happened, I'd love to know. I do know other kids I met while growing up who made an impression on me who I'm sure have no idea. I also know from the age in question that it makes sense to believe I (or my name) was a reason the name was given to another child. How else would they have come across it? It was well before Heather Locklear gained fame and suddenly every third girl baby seemingly was named Heather. I never met another one growing up until I was in high school in the "Big City", aka St. Paul, back in the '60s. Cold callers see my name on a list and make erroneous assumptions about my age and what they could sell me.

Good luck with that, folks!

I do plan to pursue the connection. Just not right now. I'm thinking about two months should be about right for things to settle down, the house to be sold, the new one moved into, the 95 tons of paperwork to be dealt with, and some more normal sleep patterns to emerge again. I don't do stress they way I used to. I need to have some illusions of control in my life, some kinds of plans for my days. There will be enough changes that are unavoidable even then, but coming from a stable base they'll be easier to cope with. I don't like being cranky - it's just not me, or at least not til recently. I'll find a way to be creative again, possibly something brand new, maybe something old. It just doesn't happen out of nonstop stress. Maybe I'm spoiled. Maybe I'm just old...  OK, no maybe about that part!

But soon it'll be time to reach back and find out what happened way long ago that I've forgotten which had an effect on somebody else. And meanwhile, I'll be more mindful of what I'm doing these days which might have an effect on somebody else and whether it's a good one or not so much. I'm hoping crabby won't be part of it!

My Talent? Others' Handicap?

There are lots of ways we are each unique, including ways where some people have a talent or an ability to do things that others mostly do not. Or many have the ability and few do not, and the lack is considered a handicap. An easy example is being able to carry a tune. It doesn't have to be perfect pitch. I consider that so rare that it must be a talent. I lack it, having a fairly decent relative pitch instead. In choirs I sometimes needed to be reminded by a director who did have perfect pitch that I needed to bring mine either up or down just a tiny bit, as mine was a voice others would follow. Just loud, maybe, but at least able to carry harmony. But I've known someone who'd look at me as if I were deliberately injecting chaos into their life by being a teensy bit off of perfect.

We're no longer friends. It's not a standard I can meet.

I know two separate family groupings with no sense of pitch whatsoever. I get invited to family birthday parties. In both those families I absolutely dread the birthday song. Everybody starts on a different note, wanders all over, rising and falling at random individually, and never where the song does. I do my best to find and maintain a melody but its impossible. It's excruciating. It's a relief when it's over and nobody follows with another verse of "How old are you?" Perhaps they are blessed that they so lack the ear for music that they seem to have no idea how they sound... or don't. Just smile, blow out the candles now and cut the cake!!! Ice cream, anybody?

There's another example where I seem to have an ability others don't. I'm not sure what to call it, but it's a kind of spatial sense. Moving, house hunting, and house selling are pointing it out. I dimly knew there were differences in people that I used to just check off to being a lack of imagination. But it's not that.

I can walk into an empty room and see in my mind how I would fill it with furniture. I know where the couch would go, the TV, the recliners, the table and chairs. I can place book cases, a desk, see which wall the bed goes on. The patterns of traffic jump out at me, not just ours but, when we have them, the pet's as well. I know where plants and pictures need to be.

 I can even do it from blueprints. When the Shafer house was getting ready to be built, I was given several small sets of blueprints, choices of floor plans. Those were my only choices for the route I was going. I immediately selected one, with the stipulation that they needed to  move a wall. Just one, only three feet, making the kitchen narrower and the living room wider. They did, and it's a very comfortable, usable space. The builder, once it was finished, decided he'd add that as an option for his customers. When Steve and I were thinking we'd go for a newly built modular home, which only get done in a factory with preshaped units, we both wound up picking the same design. It was about space, shapes, and traffic flow, and we've lived together and grown old together long enough to know what works for us. When we changed to buying an existing one, it had those basic requirements met, with room for creativity. It also has more space, and together we've arranged the furniture - on paper - and even bought more, and we both know how to direct our moving crew when the time comes for what goes where.

But now we're trying to sell a house, obviously necessary before we can get into the new one. The furniture is packed and stored, the old house empty. Somehow the people going through just can't see bare rooms and see where their own possessions would go, or what they'd need to have to make the space comfortable. (Well, except  for one woman who wanted to take out an exterior wall, extending the space with no regard for support and a slight difference in elevation, i.e. falling hazard. She decided her budget wouldn't allow for those changes.) After three weeks of that, our realtor brought in some cute furniture for the living room. Fake plants. Wall art. She sent us photos. The room pops! She changed the MLS listing photos, and suddenly people are making appointments to see the house. Monday will be busy over there. People who just couldn't picture how to use the space are now seeing it. 

Even I see it differently. The pieces she used, as I said, are cute. They absolutely do not fit our needs. We can't sit in delicate little chairs with narrow legs which could tip over with a tiny bump. A desk and wall art on the wall opposite the only place wired for the TV? Nope, need chairs, and our chairs have certain requirements, like a lift chair for Steve. The desk won't hold much, but it's adorable. It's not our vision, our needs. But we won't be living there again.

Now, I wonder if I could persuade her to put a pan of cookies in the oven, or bake a loaf of bread. I hear that screams "Home!" to a lot of folks. You know, the ones who need help seeing themselves in a different place and how that fits them. 

Do you suppose...? Could it be an olfactory thing?

And Yet Again: "You're On My Neck. I can't Breathe!"

This time it was in Canton, Ohio. It wasn't over a possibly bad twenty-dollar bill. It was a traffic accident that broke a pole and the driver fled the scene, went to a bar, and was belligerent. None of those things carry the death penalty... except possibly when the culprit, Frank Tyson,  is a black man and the arresting cops are white men.

But black men are "scary", doncha know! I guess especially so if they can yell and wave their arms around while you outnumber them and carry guns, eh? Even handcuffed down on the floor but still capable of yelling and thrashing around a bit, amiright? Ooooooooooohhhh!

That is just one thing that is a tragic, and which should be criminal, echo of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In his case too, it was one black man against white officers over a much too minor offense. Floyd's death was filmed nonstop for over 9 minutes by a determined young girl with a cell phone. This man's was filmed by multiple police body cams, and without the intent to capture every possible second of what transpired, judging by the quality of the video shown on morning news. Once the man was handcuffed with his hands behind him and lying face down on the floor, struggling, saying over and over that they were trying to kill him, they proceeded to do exactly that. Clearly heard are him protesting faintly, "I can't breathe. I can't... I can't...You're on my neck. I can't breathe." and the officer kneeling on him telling him that he was fine. It takes 5 1/2 minutes before the officers check on him, with one saying, "He might be out." Another three minutes pass before somebody starts chest compressions, obviously too late to do any good. 

What will it take for, first, cops all over to realize that there are better ways to restrain somebody that do not involve stopping them breathing by being on top of them?  Or that (black) people don't have to be totally pacified into complete inertness before they are considered restrained? When will we make lethal force for non-lethal acts itself a crime, not just in one set of trials in Minneapolis but all over?

Or are we (still) the kind of country where we have to teach black males to "play dead so you don't become dead" in hopes that it's actually good advice?

How many more George Floyds and Frank Tysons do we need in order to produce change in this country?

Which Way Shall We Go?

Once we complete our anticipated move, we will be roughly between two different shopping areas, each of which includes a Walmart where our prescriptions are filled, per our insurance companies. Today was a weird day where we had to visit both towns for different reasons. 

One has Steve's bank, and an omission by a phone bank employee has left him without the debit card he needs to function while shopping. He needed to identify himself to an on-site bank employee in order to get it straightened out and get some actual cash in hand. This town also has a gas war going on so prices tend to run 30 cents a gallon cheaper, sometimes more.

The other town is across the state border where sales tax was a bit cheaper, at least last year, but I haven't bothered to check this year. Our prescriptions currently are being filled there, and it has a movie theater, should we ever go to a movie again. (Steve says, "NO" because the movies are too loud, and while I agree about the volume, ear plugs are easy, even if just a wadded piece of napkin.) 

We currently live closest to this town. We're moving in the direction of the other one. Today seemed like an excellent day to do mileage checks to each from the new location. Both were marked from where we'd get on the same highway to where we'd get off for either Walmart. Since I got gas at the larger town with the bank, I hit the trip meter there. 

It registered 12.2 miles as we passed the stoplight for our turn to our new home.

I hit the trip meter again, starting it over. Keeping an eye on it as we went to the other town, I noted to Steve that we were at 10 miles just before we crossed the state line. It was going to be close once we climbed the hill to their Walmart. It was a long hill, giving us a chance to watch in suspense as the odometer climbed... climbed... here comes the light where we turn off the highway..... at 12.3 miles!

We were both in stitches as how close it had been and how little it mattered. But, at least now we knew. Once we move, we'll likely hit both towns  the same way we do now, depending on what we need there. The one to the west has more different places to shop, and while their Walmart is harder to find early afternoon parking spots at, especially handicap ones, the store there has items we don't find in the next state.

But the one across state lines will do a better job of filling our eyes and hearts with beautiful scenery as we climb into and out of the river valley.  Yep, both of them is the answer, though the larger town will likely get our prescriptions transferred in a few months. But the other one has truly spectacularly red maple trees  dotting the parking lot in late September!

Gobsmacked: Sorting Through Blogspot Stats

 Perhaps I'm very late to the table, so to speak. I've been crazy busy lately with the move, of course, and overwhelmed much of the time, and basically blowing off steam just by writing. But Blogspot has added some features for those of us who post on it, and I'm just catching up.... gobsmacked! If you bear with me, I promise there's a surprise at the end.

For years now I've been noting how many readers hit the recent posts here. Some take a day to be noticed if I'm not posting regularly. Some get 5 right away, then sit static for a week, maybe picking up two more on a weekend. Yeah, OK, whatever. I still write for me, and you all are welcome to come along for the ride. It seemed like I have been talking to a very few family members or friends over the years. I as writer never know who the readers are, of course, any more than you readers can see how popular any particular post is... or isn't. I've been presuming "isn't."

After a while I dug a little further, looking at longer time scales, see what is still getting visited, or even just the surprise that some are actually still getting visited. One always stood out, and still brings a lot of people to the blog, my post on the Big Job's Daughter's Secret. It got 68 quick visits shortly after being posted. OK. Another time I noted it had a couple hundred. Hmmm. Interesting. Then it was over a thousand, and just kept growing. Right now it's over 13.7 thousand, and no indication that it's losing readers. Nothing else comes close, although there are some that have steady visits from new eyes, like How Many Bubbles In A Bar Of Soap? or How To Pack A Display Cabinet. Some are approaching a thousand hits individually, which I find gratifying. But when I located the all-time number of hits, I was bowled over by 263K (!), with the largest portion of those by far in the last year. The graphs Blogspot has put together are very skewed to the far recent end, so something recently kicked up a bunch of interest. This post will make 1704 on this site. So people come for some particular thing, apparently, and then check around to see what else is here. So...

               How about a fancy daffodil from the front yard?
 

While scouting what's getting attention, I noted that Blogspot made it much easier to scroll down through pages of titles, recent to further in time, which also gave number of hits. Many that I thought fell into an abyss after, say, 7 views, were now sitting over 50 a couple months later. And there are still a regular stream of them which just aren't all that interesting.

Blogspot gives other kinds of information, once you (finally!) happen to notice some red fine print in a corner saying "More about this blog". No clue how long it's been there, but some of the regular format recently changed, making it easy to conclude it all happened at the same time. No, it doesn't show to you, but when I'm writing I see it. New stuff is on the tool bar which I haven't tried out yet. But someday. Frankly, I'm still struggling with posting pictures. Blogspot apparently is fussy about how much text I put ahead of one and how much after, or it just won't load any. Eventually I'll figure out the "rules."

 Is it cheating to pop some eye candy in to keep interest in boring stats?

Anyway, the first section of deep-dive statistics is about referrers. No surprise here, Google is top. The second is the title of the blog, so people must have bookmarked it and go directly there to see what's new. Heck, I have to in order to find it and it's mine! The list following that has some familiar names as well as new-to-me ones, ending with something called www.vampirestat.com. Seriously, folks? Am I supposed to think I'm attracting vampires now? Listen, all you alleged vampires out there: You are NOT welcomed in my house! I refuse to believe in you, just like I think zombies are incredibly silly and the "rules" governing them/you are ridiculously inconsistent. But in case you actually need an invitation to enter, you do not have one! So there! The last referrer on the list, and most popular of all, is "Other", at 245K. I'm kinda glad they quit listing individual ones at that point. What do you think: 287 pages of individual referrers to go through before reaching the next category? More? Yeah, forget it. I'd never get on to the next category of information.

Next comes top referring URLs. Apparently that's different from referrers, even though the top 4 items all are Google, just now printed with the www and a .com at the end. Once again, all of the "Other" ones vastly outnumber the total of all the others put together.

Getting bored yet? Just hang in there a bit longer please. The final category is what totally blew my mind. It does, however, come after Audience, by which they mean a list of browsers used, not who you all are. Then a list of top keywords searched...  Yawnnnnnn......

Oh heck, let's just skip past the rest and get to the last bit: Where are you all from? Without seeing the map and graph, I'd have thought the answer would be the US. Yes, I know the internet is world wide, and there are English speakers/readers all over. But who else would be interested? This is the part that really gobsmacked me. The US is only number 2. Any guesses about number one? Any at all? Was Singapore on your list? Yes, SINGAPORE !!!!! And the list of countries is nowhere near ending there. In order, from 3rd highest, France, Hong Kong, Russia, Indonesia, Germany, Australia, United Kingdom, and finally, Other.

Just for fun, I clicked on Other and got a new list. I mean, why not? It won't get much crazier, will it? Add Canada, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, China, Japan, "Unknown Region" - had to be in there somewhere, right? An admission of ignorance when we think everything is known online... who knew?  - United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Sweden, and not to be forgotten, Other. Yes, another "Other". If that final Other was a single country, it would have been way up on the list right after United States.

So "Hi," all you you scattered readers. Welcome! Have you met your neighbors yet? Are you as gobsmacked as I when I first read all that? I don't know about you all, but it's going to take me a bit to get used to all of you out there. I'm not sure what it takes to entertain you, but we'll see as we go, eh?

That (Figurative) Pocket In My Brain

That's how I think of it when I have occasion to think about it, a little tiny pocket somewhere among all the folds and neurons and blood vessels. One solitary piece of data fits in there. It's a very old piece, and very out of date, having been replaced numerous times by now in my life. But the data can't be kicked out of that spot however many times new data has been offered up, tagged with a huge "SHOULD REPLACE" sign attached. It's wedged in there, zippered shut, and not about to budge however important more recent data is.

The data is one  letter followed by 12 numbers in four groups of three. You'd think that would be easy to forget, replace with something perhaps shorter, maybe more letters and fewer numbers. It doesn't matter. It's been there for over 50 years. It's stuck, entrenched, stubborn, indelible. It's my very first driver's license number. I can still recite it at the drop of a hat: R200 302 and on to the end. You don't need all of it, and I won't give all of it. 

The R200 is apparently because of my last name when it was issued. I got my license at the tender age of 22. I'd had Drivers Ed of course in high school, but afterwards not many chances to drive. Eventually I had access to a stick shift car, making learning to drive smoothly delayed even longer. But I did get it, the second time. (Nevermind how I flunked the first behind-the-wheel driving test.) When the family moved to Georgia for a few years, the license was my social security number (I do presume they changed that policy long ago) but upon returning to Minnesota after the divorce, the original number reclaimed me. 

Once I started driving for a living, there were times I had to check into a government facility and produce my license... just in case. In case of what? I stole something? Got backed over by one of their semis? Had an accident on their property? Criticized the latest war? Nobody ever explained, it was just done. For decades I was R200 302 and so on.

Then Minnesota changed their numbering system. Don't ask me what that was, though something at the end of the alphabet started my new number. Then I moved, got a license in Arizona, and by now knew enough to not even bother to try to memorize that number. I could look it up since that is still in my possession, but why bother? I'll have a new number on a new piece of plastic coming in the mail shortly anyway. With luck it will be the last license number I'll ever have to be unable to learn.

While I was in getting things switched over, the gal on the other side of the counter asked me if I'd ever had a  license in Minnesota. I told her yes, but it was over 12 years ago, and the one number I remembered was even older than that, then proceeded to rattle the old number off like it was my middle name. As I did she actually found that original number in the system. I, in turn, explained to her about the "pocket" in my brain that is the only place allowing a license number to be stored, but it's been full for ages.

She at least was polite enough not to act as if I were crazy. 

Maybe she's got her own pockets like those.

Observations From A Visit To The Social Security Office

Of course my Social Security card was left in the PODS in Arizona with all those other important papers I need to  officially relocate. Once I'd gotten the birth certificate, the (first) marriage license for the name change since birth, the application for the new MN driver's license (with a much better photo, thank you), I still needed two more things. One I haven't bothered with yet. I'll have time to wait for my car's title if it's just to change my car license plate. But in order to apply to live in the (not-so-) mobile home park which the double-wide we want has our deposit on, I need to prove income, and part of that is proving not only am I me, but I have Social Security.

Note that they also need to see a bank statement to show we can afford the bills, and that would show the SS deposits. But now, I have to have the SS card. I used to carry it in my purse many years ago. Now everybody worries about the number getting out to the general public, enabling fraud of multiple kinds, so I took and put it in the home "safe place", which in turn got packed in the POds because that was a "safe place"while we were in the extended process of relocation. Of course, it's way too safe there. Not only is it over 1800 miles away, but I'd have to totally empty it out and open one of half a dozen boxes to locate it. Of course that's if I accurately labeled all the boxes where it could possibly be. There was some chaos going on at the time after all. If you've been following, you already know this. If not, this is context.

Having been through the process of securing one document to get the next document to get the next document, I brought a fat envelope of all that stuff along, in addition to the old driver's license which I still need to drive, and my only photo ID.

Showing up in person is one option. The other is trying to do it either online or over the phone. I opted for in person, at 1811 Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. Steve chose to stay home and not get his back bounced by every pothole in kingdon come. (Wise choice. Living in Arizona for a dozen years one tends to forget how full of potholes Minnesota is. Arizona isn't. While roads are still bumpy, they're mostly the cutout grooves for water drainage after the very rare rain, in lieu of actual storm drains.)

My many years as a courier means I know where Chicago Avenue is without needing a map, and which several possible freeway exits can bring me to that address from different directions. Still, it has been a long time, and some memories were a bit hazy until I was actually on the streets again, like which pair of one-way streets, like Park and Portland, went which direction for example. Seeing them as I drove refreshed my mental map. All was not lost in my aging brain. Yet, anyway.

I had worried a bit abut parking, being short of change for a meter at the moment, but the building has a large free parking lot and I found a space quickly. Walking in puts you immediately in a security line, filtering people slowly through. Like an airport, there are guards, a place to empty all your pocket contents for hands-on inspection, and a walk-through metal detector for anything you missed. The guards are polite to those who are polite with them, so I asked one if the detector was magnetic, explained my pacemaker cannot do magnets, and was given a workaround path to be wanded. He even had me cover my pacemaker with one hand during that process just to be safe. The wand beeped in all the right places, and I collected my things after their inspection.

Next is a pair of machine where one checks in, answers a few questions the machine has, so you can be sorted by time of arrival and specific needs. Do you need a replacement card? Reason? Type in the number. Do you need your first card? Since I didn't, I have no idea what the other questions were beyond how many people in your group (they need enough chairs at the window you get called to). In starting the process you were given a bunch of choices of language so the machine already knew to assign you to a window where somebody spoke your language.

Once dispensed a ticket with your number/letter combination on it, there were lots of benches to go sit on while you waited. And waited. Once seated you could see the doors to the bathrooms, and then it was a choice between holding it for however long, or going right away and possibly loose your spot. They were very busy, and at any given time there might be five open spaces, mostly scattered in ones or twos, which could be a challenge for larger groups of, say, 4, of which several came through while I was there.

I opted for two things: people watching, and calling my daughter who happens to live 5 blocs away. Lately she mostly is working on her masters from home, so it's not a ridiculous question to find out was she there and had she some time to get together, say for lunch in an hour or more, looking at the lines. She had a couple things to finish at home, then would be walking over. I'd picked a seat facing the door so I could flag her down if she showed up before my number was called.

The people going through the office for their cards were as eclectic a group as I'd ever seen in such a (relatively) small space. There were many I identified as Somali, having worked with many of them back when they were fairly recent immigrants and working for our courier company. There was a pair who could have been Chinese or, upon reflection, more likely Hmong even though that immigration wave peaked in the early 80s if I recall correctly. I pegged the great majority of them as immigrants, new to this country and needing their first Social Security card. Most were dressed as I was, or "to blend". However some looked in African ethnic dress. Several hijabs were worn, although since the Muslim community in Minneapolis is very openly so in their dress, men and women, they could have been like me, needing a duplicate card.  Skin tones varied from my pasty white to very dark brown, and everything in between. Ages ranged from under one to perhaps 90, and languages, while mostly English, were occasionally unidentifiable. Some came with interpreters,  including the 90-year-old, and a group of Russian speakers. One person had to go to the desk where the guards were and somehow communicate she couldn't use the ticket machine because she didn't find her language written there. She got help, though I'm not sure how well she fared if her language wasn't represented. Perhaps it was a reading issue.

I was impressed by how well all the small children behaved, whether with a single parent or two, or even half a community of adult family. Even though it was nearing lunch time, not a one was crabby. One pair of parents had a daughter who wished to explore and they made of game of catching her before she got more than a couple feet away, lifting her up high with laughter and a hug, and setting her down again. Needless to say, that game lasted a while, but nobody was disturbed.

The line went much faster than I expected, so I was out before my daughter showed up. I called her when done, and it turned out she was in the other entrance. Oops! My bad. I forgot to tell her the proper door was on the Elliot side of the building. We met in the parking lot, had a good long hug, and went off to lunch, leaving three cars to jockey for my parking spot. 

One of them finally figured out  they needed to move away so I could get out, traffic could move, and at least one more parking spot opened up for somebody.