Today, Saturday, for the first time in a while, I am spending the entire day relaxing, also waiting for the Patriots playoff game to start, which it will do at the very civilized hour of 5:00 pm. The temperature this morning during my seaside run was 55, and the high is expected to be 70. Tomorrow we will be back to our fun-yet-hectic schedule, Morris dancing followed by pub stop followed by contra dancing, over a period of about twelve hours.

While cooking dinner a couple of days ago, I kept being distracted by the sunset, so much so that I stepped outside to snap a picture several times. Then I discovered that I could create an animation in Google photos. It’s fun to be old, able to discover things everyone else has known about for a while. My first animation is a little jumpy because I wasn’t thinking about combining the shots when I took them, but you can see how the sky changes.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Il6QSYJTknIoWyG52

My horticultural deficiencies continue to be apparent, but I’m seeking help. A friend from Scottish who is also a rose expert showed me how to prune my large rose bushes severely. My calla lily has defied my previous blog about it by developing three more blooms. Most of the plants are pretty happy due to last week’s torrential rains, really the strongest we’ve seen since we moved here. You may have heard about the deadly mudslides they caused in Santa Barbara County.

I got a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas and completed it this week.

My life of puttering still feels strange, which is good, because I will be looking for a job in earnest after my March trip to New Jersey. There simply doesn’t seem to be much temp work here, perhaps because it’s such a small metropolitan area, though I may get a short assignment in February. I will find out tonight if I have to report for jury duty this week.

Some day I really will retire, and spend my time dancing, playing music, reading books, volunteering, hiking, biking, blogging, posting tidepool pictures on iNaturalist, and traveling, with no end in sight. Will that be a well-earned rest, or a waste of time? Some days I want to enjoy my life, and on others I think I should be improving it.

It’s the keystone of our odd age: your brand, your recognizability on social media, how quickly your postings go viral. It’s related to your follower count, your willingness to video and post outrageous (often sexual) or tedious (package-opening) things online. It’s perhaps the most admired and desired, as well as despised and discredited, activity of our time.

If you are a brilliant geneticist, a symphonic contrabassoon soloist, a published author of witty, trenchant fiction, or a skilled woodworker specializing in Victorian replicas, you probably have a cohort of appreciative admirers, colleagues, and clients, and you may derive pleasure in your accomplishments. Most of us once were pleased to do meaningful work and impress those whose opinions we value.

Now most of us want fame, adulation, mania, bling. Rarely, these attributes accrue to someone who combines genuine accomplishment with a naturally entertaining personality, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson. More often, they accrue to someone with no talent or accomplishments whatsoever, such as Kim Kardashian. The GoFundMe campaign of the young woman dying of a curable disease without insurance failed and she died, while that of the young woman who said I want to buy more stuff hit in six figures. The new gods we now worship are capricious.

The real enablers of the era of the monetizable reputation are those who watch and click. Gangnam Style, the most popular Youtube video ever with 900 million views, made only $870,000 for Psy. That’s more than 1000 views per dollar. He was able to capitalize on that fame to earn much more of course, and he’s a far outlier. How many millions, billions of us are watching videos or clicking on ads right now?

How many of those are cat videos?

Efforts to channel click mania into constructive activities such as finding exoplanets or decoding gene sequences have had real success, but only a small minority of people participate.

The hedge fund manager equivalents in this industry are not the video personalities, but the consultants. Really vast fortunes are made by those who can successfully transform an eager corporation or celebrity wannabe into the Next New Thing. These social media savants are similar to the folks who set up brothels and mining equipment stores in San Francisco in the 1850s instead of panning for gold: They can name their price, they don’t have to deal with privation or act like idiots, and they “hit” at a much higher rate than their customers do.

I think that may what galls me most about the online fame game. Unlike diversions of the past, these promise real rewards, leading many people to spend not only their spare time and energy, but the bulk of their time and energy on what for most–approximately 100%–is a false hope.

Why can’t we just stop using our expertise? Sure, we’ve always done things that way, and yes, it works, but why not just stop? I tried this with ironing a few years ago. I have to purchase “wrinkle-resistant” clothes now, and my fashion statement is more Bernie than Hillary. I won’t be a candidate for celebrity seating at the Four Seasons, nor will I be offered employment at Goldman Sachs. But it sort of works. Just lower your expectations.

Like much of my countrymen, I have set aside my current reading this week to peruse Fire and Fury. Running the United States of America is another thing one can ad lib,  resulting in many unfilled government jobs, such as West Wing receptionist. When you arrive for your WW appointment, a military cadet will check you off a list and admit you, after which you can wander freely through the offices of POTUS.

Receptionists not only greeted visitors, they also answered phones, a function performed today by auto-attendants. These technology triumphs reduce employment and increase the amount of time callers spend on the phone seeking information. I don’t call to find information readily available on the Internet. I call because I need to speak to a person. As soon as the robotic voice starts intoning, I alternate between pressing 0 and saying “Agent” or “Representative.” Some of the auto-attendants give up easily, while others argue for a quite a while.

Speaking of technology, I’ve given up on living long enough to get a jet pack, but where are the self-driving cars? I haven’t seen a single self-driving car since I moved to California, even though I spend a lot of time driving up and down Silicon Valley–three hours this past weekend, for example. I hear there are truck convoys–lorry platoons, in the UK–with an active human driver in the first truck only, though the idea is still being tested. Even self-following must be technology whose time has not come.

Meanwhile, most human truck drivers in the US now find themselves part of the gig economy, assigned to cargos on an as-needed basis by an Uber-like app. Eliminating jobs with benefits and security is a good way to eliminate expertise, except for Millennials, who seem inexplicably willing to work for free.

My darting from thought to thought was also inspired by Fire and Fury, though it’s not a very good imitation. I actually think in complete sentences, and can’t help making a connection when moving from one idea to the next.

Although far from tropical, a storm created by bombogenesis can have hurricane-force winds and precipitation, which this time of year means snow. Having lived through five of Boston’s previous ten largest snowstorms, I have been feeling a lot of empathy with my East Coast friends and relatives this week. But bombogenesis is new to me.

There are a few other new things in recent weather reports.

Falling iguanas is one. Reptiles are immobilized by cold, and cold has come in a somewhat unprecedented way to the South, including Florida, so immobilized tree iguanas are falling to the ground. Sea turtles are also immobilized. These animals may appear dead, but as the air warms, they will revive, so this is not an opportunity to cook an exotic stew!

Pictures of snow-covered palm trees are new. I have seen this in person, but not with this much snow.

Winter is usually peak tourist season in Florida, but new this year, at least two Florida parks, Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon and SeaWorld, have closed. At other parks, lines are short! I hope everyone packed at least one pair of jeans.

People often ask us why we didn’t move to the South to retire, since living there is so much more economical. This week my husband is happy to point out, The South is too cold. 

New news from New Jersey: the January 1 Polar Plunge has been cancelled in at least two towns. Inexplicably to a southerner, people in cold states regularly sign up in droves to leap into the ocean at inappropriate times. Apparently the inappropriate level has risen from Crazy to Life-Threatening this year. Except in Atlantic City, where the event is a Go.

I definitely fell for the new clickbait headline, Colder Than Mars, referencing New England. Though new, it is not exactly true. The low temperature at the top of Mount Washington in NH may hit negative 35. The high temperature on Mars is negative 2. So sure, some parts of New England may be colder than some parts of Mars. Lows on Mars can reach negative 225, though, and lows in New England below negative 2 are not unheard of. So some may wish to tack this onto their list of mainstream media fake news.

Another interesting story talked about record high and low temperatures simultaneously. Alaska, Colorado, and southern California have had record high temperatures recently, for this time of year. If you vacationed there seeking winter weather, bummer. Here on Central Coast we seem to be about the same as last year: roughly 45-65 low to high this winter so far.

We had an earthquake on the Hayward fault yesterday, which we felt in Santa Cruz. It was 4.5 on the Richter scale. My final new-to-me story is about the Hayward fault, which parallels the San Andreas fault through East Bay. It is within its due date, though the target period spans decades. It could generate a quake of 7 or more, which would cause  devastation. We are going to Berkeley on Sunday so I thought about cancelling, but this is illogical, given a) geological time scales and b) temporal proximity to a stress-relieving event.

Is you are in a cold zone, stay indoors and snuggle! It’s a great time to be a mammal.

I’ve been planning to blog about seasonal weather, not about the weather in the news. Most of the US is having such a fierce cold snap, though, I want to acknowledge it. The weather reports remind me of the horrible winter in Boston four years ago that motivated us to move to California. I am truly not experiencing even a hint of schadenfreude. So many of my friends and relatives are suffering, and I can empathize! However, I do feel a lift in my heart every time I step outside.

Our younger son is adamant in his insistence that it’s not truly winter, or Christmas, without cold weather. I countered by reminding him that in Australia Christmas happens during the summer, while most of Africa and South America are in the torrid zone. Even in the US, cold is not the norm for all. Christmas in shorts was not uncommon in the Houston of my childhood.

Houstonians did exchange cards with pictures of colonial houses, read books about Santa coming down the chimney, and adorn our creches with fake snow and our trees with fake icicles. On arriving in Boston in December after my college graduation, I immediately thought, This is the archetype for Christmas. Though I now think I was wrong. More likely it’s, I don’t know, Germany?

I have visited Hawaii once, and it happened to be in December. I found colored lights and snowflakes draped on large, colorful tropical plants ridiculous, so I should be more sympathetic to my son’s finding colored lights on sailboat spars and outdoor flowering shrubs ridiculous. Perhaps the dissonance is due to the amount of deviation from our usual experience.

Yet our expectations can be set by culture as well as experience. When I moved to New England, I didn’t enjoy the cold, but I did think snow and Christmas decorations looked wonderful together. I still feel our best Christmas mornings were those spent by the fireside, with snow softly falling outside the window. I must have been culturally programmed to appreciate this.

In actuality, the whole scene is made up, right? Thinking of religious Christmas, I seem to remember hearing that Jesus wasn’t even born in winter, and while it can snow in Bethlehem in winter, it often doesn’t, and it certainly doesn’t look like New England or Germany. So at some point we evolved to marketing Christmas, with Santa Claus and chimneys and colonial houses and sleighs and snow.

For most of us who celebrate Christmas, the messages of peace and love and the spirit of generosity still predominate. That’s good, because when you start to unpack concepts,  it’s so easy to feel manipulated. Why do I think what I think about Christmas? Is thinking even part of it? Do I choose my feelings, or are they imposed on me?

I’m glad I waited until the holidays were over to muse about this. Happy 2018!

On the last night of our younger son’s visit, we went to a local restaurant with a sea view. Not that one could see the sea, it being dark. The sea is often quite hard to see after dark, because it is lit only by the moon. Sans moon, it looks like a black expanse. Sometimes you can hear it, even if you can’t see it.

In any case, we ate in the upstairs grill area, which has a better view–except we couldn’t see much, see above–and also a less expensive, grill-style menu. Our son ordered a cheeseburger, and when it arrived he took one look and said, with a sigh of resignation, I forgot to say No American cheese. 

Me: American cheese! They don’t serve American cheese here.

Him: Are you sure? It’s very common in New Jersey.

Me, to the waitress: Is this American cheese?

Waitress: Cheddar. We don’t serve American cheese here.

To one who grew up with sandwiches made using the plastic-enclosed Kraft single squares, American cheese is not real cheese. Though I didn’t know that when I was growing up. I didn’t really develop a palate until I was old enough to afford to eat out, but once I had one, I knew American cheese did not taste like real cheese.  I also remember my first experience of real mayonnaise, as opposed to Miracle Whip Salad Dressing. Ooh la la.

I think our family ate this sort of processed food because it was the Latest Thing. My mother was 18 when I was born, and very eager to be part of the new science (marketing?) trends engulfing our world. Processed food! Baby formula! Later there would be TV dinners, then Hamburger Helper, then fast food restaurants. Along with kitchen appliances, these made life much easier for the Busy, Modern homemaker.

Whence American cheese? Happily, my Wikipedia subscription is paid up.

Way back when, cheese from America was called American cheese in other countries. Today’s version was invented by James L. Kraft in the early 1900s, and has a legal definition in America: a specific type of pasteurized, processed cheese made from at least two types of cheese, using a manufacturing process that differs from that of natural cheeses. If made of two cheeses only, it can be labeled “processed cheese.” If it includes dairy, it has to be labeled “cheese food.”

I have encountered sliceable blocks of American cheese in grocery store delis, so I was not surprised to learn that a wide variety of additives and emulsification methods yield a wide range of products. None is a natural cheese, though.

I also learned why the individually-wrapped “slices” taste the worst: they aren’t slices at all. Instead, slabs of processed cheese are formed from a viscous processed cheese which solidifies between the wrapping medium. Yum.

Maybe American cheese goes well with Bud Light and Wonder Bread White Hamburger Buns. Is this elitist? If so, why? Real cheese, beer, and bread just taste better.

Our family saw two movies this weekend. The first was Coco. When it was over, I had one word: Wow. Amazingly inventive, this movie is filled with characters that seem more real than those in many live action movies. The story arc is perfect, with plenty of plot twists that keep it interesting. The script contains just the right mix of humor and pathos, and the original music is enjoyable. Pixar’s artistic conception of the world of the dead is unexpectedly beautiful, complex, and, above all, lively.

Our family usually watches a movie on Christmas, either at home or in a theater. Coco was a perfect choice for a meaningful family outing, another wonderful idea from my lovely husband.

We also considered The Last Jedi, officially episode XIII in the Star Wars series. Our older son had already seen that, so the rest of us saw it after he left. This movie is rated 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.6 on IMDB–Seriously? Folks writing rave reviews of this are clearly being incented. The more recent, mostly hilarious, reviews on IMDB are all bad, so I imagine there were some canned reviews released early to drum up interest. That worked. The movie was showing in multiple screens at several local theaters, and selling out every time.

We had to look a bit harder to find a theater showing Coco. Sad.

Below is my Fandango review of The Last Jedi, which you may not want to read if 1) you care about spoilers for this movie,  2) you are smart enough to have abandoned Star Wars “a long time ago” in this very galaxy, or 3) you never signed on to it at all. Extra points for those last two categories.

Will I have the strength to resist the Force of episode IX?

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The Last Jedi is a joke. Luke starts out as grumpy old man sans gravitas, appears as Holo Jedi for the final fight scene, then joins the pantheon of spectral Jedi for no particular reason. 45 minutes is spent on a “mission” by Finn that accomplishes zero, accompanied by a new character who is willing to sacrifice the entire rebellion to save him–ie, more a teen with a crush than a competent soldier. Rey gets three more minutes of training, so naturally she rocks at being the Best Jedi Ever. The writers work really hard, ridiculously hard, to keep Princess Leia alive for IX…oops. Snoke is really scary and powerful until he turns out to be super easy to kill. Kylo Ren throws so many tantrums the First Order is rethinking the concept of supreme leader. Quirky, purposeless animals remind us that the biggest Force here is Merchandising.

This calla lily blooms once a year, we think. The evidence: it bloomed once last year and once this year. One bloom each time.

From last year to this year, the green portion expanded quite a bit. The first few months we were here, we didn’t know it was anything but a green plant. Then one day, boom, a bloom. It seemed to happen overnight. This year we noticed the spike before it opened.

The web says bushy calla lilies that don’t bloom much may need more phosphorus and less nitrogen. It shows picture of lily plants with lots of blooms. I don’t know whether more blooms are better. Shall I interfere, or let this plant be?

Often after a new load of kelp is delivered to the touch table at the Seymour Center, we find a new animal hidden within. Wednesday we found this fascinating marine worm, shown inside its web-tunnel, built on one side of a kelp blade.

You can just make out the segmented worm inside. There weren’t many visitors that day, so we spent a lot of time observing this worm. It would occasionally stick a head festooned with quite long antennae out, waving them around. Once it ejected two brown blobs. It made a few U-turns and loops. A bubble entered the chamber, and the worm battered it vigorously until it exited.

None of the aquarists could identify this worm, though its presence didn’t seem to bother them. My husband suspects it is a baby Bobbit worm, and that soon all the other animals in the touch tank will be devoured, and perhaps later, the docents who lean over it.

Today I only had time for a short walk by the ocean, where I saw twenty cormorants clustered closely together on a rock in the ocean, some occasionally spilling off; small groups of pelicans, some flying, some floating; and a scattered flock of sanderlings chasing, and being chased by, shore waves. The very difference behaviors of various birds, plants, and worms really brings home that often-heard term, niche.

Much of what I do as an older person involves techniques I have spent much of my life developing. I don’t mean that I have spent a lot of time on these items. I mean that they have been influenced by widely-spaced events occurring through much of my life. Take tooth brushing, for example.

I admit I don’t remember much about brushing my teeth as a child. I must have done it, because my dentist appointments were fairly stress-free, though not the fun fests they were for my children. Them: We’re going to the dentist today? Awesome! Me, silently: Thank you, Dr. Weiss.

After I moved to Massachusetts, every dentist took one look inside my mouth and said, You didn’t grow up here. That’s because we had fluoridation in Houston drinking water. Some say it causes cancer…Not much I can do about it now. As far as oral health, either that, or Crest, or both, worked for me.

As a young, meritocracy-loving engineer I felt that in order to get my due from the dentist I should show up for cleanings having recently eaten something like a chili cheeseburger. My first dentist in Massachusetts was a bit of a sad sack who did the cleaning as well as the exam. I am a bit embarrassed now about having made his day a little rougher.

Around the same time I went through one of my back-to-nature periods. For six months I brushed with hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. At my next checkup, I had to get an unsightly filling near the gum line in one of my front teeth. Back to Crest.

In Brookline we found very competent dentists, and our children never had cavities. When our nephew came to live with us, though, his teeth had been neglected. Even after we got him all straightened out, he hated to brush, much less to floss, and continued to need fillings at almost every visit. Until, that is, I discovered Colgate Total.

Colgate Total was the first major advance in toothpaste technology since Crest discovered fluoride in the fifties, and wow did it work, preventing problems with gums as well as with teeth. We all switched, and everyone had great checkups after that. I dropped my frequency of brushing to once daily–I like to chew gum in the morning, what can I say?–and my dentist continued to be thrilled with my dental health.

My dentist in California doesn’t approve of Total, so I had to do some research to find out why. The active ingredient is Triclosan, an antibiotic. There is definitely an oral microbiome, and Triclosan definitely disrupts it. So do a lot of other things though, and it usually restores itself within hours.

So far I am sticking with Total once per day, though I realize it is a bit odd for an anti-meds, microbiome-aware person like me to be using an antibiotic daily. But it wasn’t a snap decision. My entire history led me here,

I am generally opposed to meritocracy, a positive-sounding concept that falls apart upon examination. In America, highest “merit” is usually attributed to the person who thinks, speaks, and acts most quickly–ie, someone shallow and glib, who runs roughshod over teammates, acts on assumptions, and has a poor grasp of how long actual accomplishment takes. Picture your most recent skip-level manager. Since Americans also positively associate compensation level with merit, clearly we value hedge fund managers, movie stars, and celebrity surgeons over social workers, teachers, and primary care physicians. No merit in that meritocracy.

I believe that everyone has something meritorious to offer, and tend to prefer activities with little hierarchy and lots of participation. These preferences were challenged at my first California Messiah sing.

I have been going to Messiah sings so long that I merited (pun intended)  my own score at the age of 13, so I thought I knew what to expect, but the left coast has its own ideas. First surprise: In this M. sing, anyone in the section is welcome to sing the solos, and many did, which definitely lends a Wild West flavor. As you might expect, the runs are muddy. Words like “crooked” and “appeareth” used the American pronunciation of the letter R. “Accomplished” had four notes but three syllables. The recitatives were, shall we say, challenging to both singers and listeners.

The next jolt: After every solo and chorus, they applauded, in a sort of Yahoo, We did it! way. This was joyous and crowd-affirming, but eliminated the contemplative, awe-invoking nature of the piece.

We ran the Christmas portion straight through then, in a nod to meritocracy, stopped to auction off the right to conduct the Hallelujah Chorus. The winning bid was $500, though I think it was a bit staged as the penultimate bid, $450, was made by the same person. The event is a fundraiser for the church’s music program.

I imagine the other people there thought I was a very happy person, because throughout I displayed a wide smile. I adopted that strategy quite early, the alternative being laughing out loud. Everyone had a fantastic time, and the evening ended with champagne. Maybe next year I can figure out whether this one was anomalous or representative of my new tribe.