Reality in dreams, dreams in reality

Last night I had a dream about wrapping presents. One of the presents was food and we had to hide it from the dog. I suddenly woke up with the thought that we had no dog. We haven't for about nineteen years.

I went back to sleep, probably had some other dreams, and then one in which a salesman was trying to get me to sign for a car. I was reluctant and woke up with the realization we didn't need a car; we had recently bought a car.

I find it interesting how often we have dreams that we think are the real world.

But then in the real world we have dreams about what we will do. Some will come true; some won't.

I long had a dream of visiting Europe again and visiting friends I have living there. Now I've given that up because I don't want to fly again. The last trip to Japan was too much sitting still for too long. And all the security hassle at either end makes the sitting still even more burdensome.

I have all kinds of dreams about what we will do with our Brimson property. We long ago gave up on building a house there. Now it's a lot to fix the floor insulation of the cabin; something I keep putting off every year as we have more squirrels with silicosis. I have a dream of opening up all the trails I once had cut. Will I spend enough time there? Even with the new chipper, it takes about four hours to sixty feet, what with the gathering of the brush and branches to stuff into the chipper. Four hours is about all the time I spend on this activity each two-day stint; there are other tasks to be done, including walking and loafing. I probably had at least two miles of trails.

I have all kinds of small dreams of becoming a better singer. I can't do that if I keep writing these blogs:)

So which is reality? The dreams when I'm sleeping or the dreams when I'm awake?

Healthy choices equal healthy life, always?

In the last two months several letters in the Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune have stated that if people would make healthy choices they would lead healthy lives and we wouldn't need a health care system for all. If this were only so.

A doctor once told me the secret to a long life was to not smoke, drink in moderation, exercise regularly, and pick healthy grandparents.

Granted there are many people who don't follow the first three rules. We see them all the time. These people do make up a large portion of those who need medical care. But should those of us who didn't pick healthy grandparents and didn't pick something else important to our health be left to our fate as described by some of these letter writers.

I have a heart murmur that has raised false alarms a few times. Should my ability to obtain health insurance determine if I get care to be sure the problem was not more serious?

I just read an entry on a Caring Bridges site of a person that almost died at the age of four. Did he have a choice then of a healthy life style?

There is a lot to the "wisdom" of "picking healthy grandparents". Many conditions are genetic and may be detected at a time early enough to prevent more serious consequences. Should this detection be based on the ability to pay or obtain health insurance?

The "something else important to our health" is to pick a good environment to live in. The problem is that we may not know our environment is unhealthy until it is too late.

A school in California had an abnormal number of students and teachers getting cancer, some of who died. See "Is Dirty Electricity Making You Sick?" Prevention Magazine, December 2009. Maybe there is another cause besides excessive radiation, but did those who became ill have any way of knowing they would be in an unhealthy environment.

Minamata Bay in Japan had excessive mercury that poisoned many, including giving children severe birth defects. Did the residents know that their bay was a dumping ground for industry? Did they have sufficient knowledge to relate the health problems to the pollution? Did they have the resources to stop the pollution or to move away?

Over two hundred people contracted pneumonia while attending an American Legion Convention in Philadelphia in 1976; thirty-four of them died. We lived in the area at the time and remember how baffled authorities were. It wasn't until January of the next year that it was determined that the bacteria came from the cooling tower of the hotel. According to Wikipedia there have other outbreaks of Legionnaire's Disease in Europe with fatalities; all traced to problems with the air conditioning. Does this mean that we should all stay away from air-conditioned buildings to stay healthy?

Even if we stay outside or only in our own homes, we don't know what harmful substances may be in our environment. Doctrinaire "free enterprisers" think any control on industrial pollution is bad for business. But sick and dying customers are bad for business. Sometimes we don't know if a product we use in our home is harmful until too late.

I guess the only way to have a guaranteed healthy life is to live in a cocoon. Oh, wait a minute! What is the cocoon made of? What are the nutrients being given to us from the outside?

I guess that leaves the only way to stay healthy is to never be born.

Bureaucracy and email

I had a contact at the Duluth News Tribune to report problems with the DNT and Star Tribune boxes at the corner. Problems like running out very early, missing sections, wrong price settings, and on and on.

Things had been going smoothly until last week. Supposedly the Saturday Star Tribune has the funnies included; they weren't last week. One day this week there was no Variety section in the Star Tribune even though it was mentioned on the front page.

On that day I emailed my contact at the New Tribune, which prints and delivers the Star Tribune in the Duluth area. A day later I got an email from postmaster@forumcomm.com titled "Delivery Status Notification (Failure)" with a copy of the message I sent to my contact.

I assume my contact has either quit or been laid off. In either case, that's too bad because she was a friendly person to work with. However, instead of just bouncing email to her, shouldn't the company forward email to whoever is doing some of what she did? Or, give some notice of an alternate email address?

This just doesn't happen in large corporations like Forum Communications. It happens in small companies, too. I sent email to a salesman that I had bought a computer from; I never received a reply. The next time I went into the store I was told he had left. Shouldn't somebody have received his email? But employees who are still at this company don't always answer their email. I've bought other computers from same company and my current favorite salesman doesn't always answer his email. Maybe I should just go to the Apple Store in Roseville next time instead of buying local.

See also "Bureaucracy can exist in any economic model".

Inclusiveness is exclusive

Sometime in the fall, I started reading "The Gospel of Inclusion" in UU World, the quarterly magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I started gnashing my teeth part way through and couldn't continue.

It was about a black Pentecostal bishop who became Universalist in his thought, was ostracized in the megachurch he was active in, and brought some of his followers to a large Unitarian church in Tulsa OK. That's OK, but some of the underlying thoughts in the article bothered me.

One was the statement that the only problem with the Unitarian church was that it "was really, really white." Is that a problem? There are churches that are really, really black, and there are churches that are really, really mixed. In fact, the megachurch the bishop came from had four white ministers.

The other was that the new congregants transformed much of the Unitarian church to be more active in the services, saying "Amens" and "Preach it, brother". That's OK if that's what most of the existing congregation wants.

However, what about the people who want a quiet, contemplative service? What about the people who don't want somebody clapping or shouting in their ear? They are being excluded in the name of inclusiveness.

I lay awake much of the night after I read this article thinking about what I would write. I told myself to get up and make some notes. But I didn't want to disturb my wife. In the light of the next day those thoughts just didn't come back to me. But the thought of writing a blog about those thoughts has been hanging over my head since.

I have this feeling that much of the inclusiveness of UUs is more a guilt feeling than a true inclusiveness. All groups by their nature are exclusive. They are made of people with some common interests. If you share those interests you are generally welcome; if you want the group to have other interests, please go elsewhere. For example, would a social bridge club really be interested in having poker players who bet?

Unfortunately, our society has a false division for many things on black and white. On the other hand, for a variety of reasons, cultural interests tend to follow this division. But, color divisions aren't the only divisions. Would these "inclusive" churches welcome practicing Catholics who wanted to bring the mass and cross into their churches. If so, it would be quite a turnabout for churches that have taken crosses out of their sanctuaries and taken "God" out of the hymnals. They were excluding the ideas and words they didn't agree with. "Joy to the world, the word has come…" The "word has come"??? That's not the way I learned that carol.

My own feeling is that inclusiveness is a guilt trip. Some people feel guilty about being white and that having more contact with black people will do their consciences good. I resent this! Not because I think the races should be separate, but because I don't share in their guilt. My contacts with others have been made by circumstance and they are not exclusively white.

The inclusive people don't know the neighborhoods I've lived in, the friends and acquaintances I've had, who I've shared meals with, who my subordinates and my superiors have been, who I've done favors for and who has done favors for me, who I've proven wrong and who has proven me wrong.

So, please, be inclusive in accepting people who share the beliefs of your organization, but don't exclude them on things that are irrelevant to those beliefs.

Coffee, tea, and you

After dinner tonight, my wife asked if I wanted coffee in the dining room or wanted it upstairs at my computer. I responded that I would rather have it in the dining room with her. After all, we may have only forty years more together.

Actually, she would have had her coffee at her computer, but having coffee face to face is better than having it back to back.

Bureaucracy can exist in any economic model

Many people complain about government bureaucracy as if it went away everything would be so much better. Unfortunately, bureaucracies occur in organizations of all types and sizes. They occur in government, in non-profits, and in profits.

We should also note that some employees have flexibility in almost any type of organization. I had a water inspector accept on my word that our usage dropped because I replaced a washer, not that something had happened to our meter.

The incident that triggered this blog entry was an automated call from a non-profit medical center reminding me of an appointment in two days. Some hours earlier that department had called me to move the appointment to next week. Left hand, please meet the right hand!

A couple of weeks ago I had sent an online problem report to a well-known computer manufacturer. I received a boiler plate response about checking that I had the latest version of the operating system and the latest version of the software with the problem. That information was automatically included in my report.

Today I discovered there was a work around to my problem, but it was not obvious. There were several non-intuitive steps involved. I sent a report to the agent who had initially responded to my problem report, including the suggestion that what I wanted should be a menu item. She thanked me for the report and suggested that I send the manufacturer a feedback suggestion. Duh! Couldn't she and shouldn't she do that herself? Shouldn't somebody in the call center be looking at the reports and extracting trends?

See also my "The Federal Government has no corner on bureaucracy", Reader Weekly, 2008-01-03.

An apology to my loyal readers

I'm sorry that the 8-13 people who regularly check this blog haven't found much here lately.

The cause is threefold.

The older I get, the longer my to-do list gets. Sometimes it's what-I-please; sometimes it's haftas. I do know my desk is overflowing with unfiled papers.

We've been spending a lots of time on outside activities, including trying to get more time in at the fitness center. And we've been spending three to four days a week at the cabin. After a day of moving stuff to the chipper and stuffing the chipper; I just want to read a book. Of course, the s-l-o-w internet speed doesn't help.

The muse has left me because I've ignored her. The text file in which I draft each month's blogs is filled with snippets of ideas waiting to be developed. I look at a snippet, write a sentence or two, and get stuck!

I make no promises, but I will try harder to keep this blog interesting to you.

Meanwhile, I promise that this sunset picture is not indicative of a sunset of this blog.


I took this Friday afternoon on our way back from the cabin. It is from Hwy 44 south of the cut through the moraine south of the tracks. As an indication of this not being a sunset of this blog, we went back to our cabin on Sunday and came back today.

As they say on Radio Nations Unies, "Merci pour vôtre fidelité."

As they say on Radio Nations Unies, "Merci pour vôtre fidelité." I'm sorry I can't promise, "Au demain, même heure, même fréquence."

Real values from a real conservative

I enjoy reading David Brooks columns in the New York Times because he often makes sense out of all the conflicting ideas. He is conservative in the non-ideological sense; he doesn't take automatic positions because those are the currently popular "conservative" "values". He looks at ideas from several perspectives; he weighs the good and bad of proposals both now and on a longer time scale.

A good example is his column "The Values Question", New York Times, 2009-11-24.

The values in question are caring for the vulnerable in our society. If we care for the vulnerable, then we may not have resources to invest in other things we as a society want. On the other hand, do we want to live in a society that does not care for the vulnerable?

To me, this is real conservatism, even compassionate conservatism.

His apostasies from "true conservatism" include that to pay for the costs of some of these programs "the Democrats have admirably agreed to raise taxes."

A computer screen is not a piece of paper

Many companies and organizations are making their documents available online. This can save many costs, including postage, paper, and printing. Unfortunately, they provide to their computer readers exactly the same format as they would in print. In fact, they often use the PDF files that go to the printer. Sorry, but my computer screen is not 11 inches high. And it is very difficult to read two columns meant to be on an 8.5x11 page.

I just found it impossible to read one document concerning Medicare supplemental insurance. The tables for comparison were spread across facing pages, that is a 17x11 document. The PDF file had the facing pages one under the other. I gave up trying to read it; we asked for the printed booklet.

Please, all of you information providers, please redesign your printed documents to be easily readable on computer screens. Have the information flow on seven to eight-inch high pages. Have all the information that belongs in a block on the same page, not at the end of one and the top of the next. Hire some good designers who understand these things.

If you do, you may find you have even less demand for the paper copies of your documents.