2.27.2024 – as a way of life

as a way of life
that disappeared long ago
production doubled

Technology is the main driver of rural decline, Schaller and Waldman argue. Indeed, American farms produce more than five times as much as they did 75 years ago, but the agricultural work force declined by about two-thirds over the same period, thanks to machinery, improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Coal production has been falling recently, but thanks partly to technologies like mountaintop removal, coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago, with the number of miners falling 80 percent even as production roughly doubled.

From The Mystery of White Rural Rage, Feb. 26, 2024 By Paul Krugman, an Opinion Columnist for the New York Times.

There is much to digest in this short essay.

But the line that stayed with me was coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago.

To me and my limited experience with hard work, I would like to think that if coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago, it would be a good thing.

One spring weekend back in the day in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up, my Mom told me and my two younger brothers (I grew up in a family of 11 kids, with 8 boys and three girls, I was 8th and the three after me were all boys and we were known as the Four Little Boys until one year we signed our collective Christmas gift to our parents as ‘The Boys’ – but I digress) that a friend needed some help.

This some help turned out to be leveling the bottom of a pit that had just been dug for the basement of a house they were building.

We drove over there the feller there pointed to bottom of a square mud hole.

We had to use a ladder to get down into the hole where we found three shovels.

The ground the hole was dug in was pretty much clay.

The clay at the bottom of the pit had hardened into a crust that we had to hammer at with out shovels until we broke through to mud.

The feller pointed out some high spots and some low spots and told us to get at it.

I am not sure how long we worked.

I do remember that my brother Pete slammed his shovel into the clay like a harpoon, trying to break through, for about 10 minutes and then said, “I’m done.”

But we kept at it and after an afternoon of slogging, we climbed up out of the hole.

It was the hardest work I have ever done.

I think I got home and found a catalog of liberal arts college classes and never ever again in my life picked up an honest shovel.

Snow shoveling doesn’t count here.

I think coal miners and I think ‘The Depression’ and the photography of Walker Evans.

On one website about Mr. Evans, the blogger writes:

Many of Evans’ early photographs revealed the influence of European modernism, particularly in their formalism and emphasis on dynamic graphic structures.

But Evans gradually moved away from this highly aestheticized style to develop his own evocative but more reticent notions of realism.

He focused on the role of the viewer and the poetic resonance of ordinary subjects.

The poetic resonance of ordinary subjects.

Coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago.

Maybe what I am after is to say that the poetic resonance of coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago.

Mr. Krugman writes, “Technology eliminates some jobs, but it has always generated enough new jobs to offset these losses, and there’s every reason to believe that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.“

I understand this a little as it seems that these coal mining jobs are replaced with service industry jobs.

I remember talking with a waitress in Charleston, WVA recently who said she had three jobs, two in restaurants and then a motor newspaper delivery route.

I think of what I call the Ralph Kramden Conjecture.

Ralph Kramden was a character portrayed by Jackie Gleason in the 1955 TV Show, the Honeymooners.

Mr. Kramden was married and lived in Brooklyn with his wife, Alice.

Mr. Kramden was able to support this lavish lifestyle through his job as a New York City Bus Driver.

But He was able to support himself and wife at a certain social level on his salary alone.

Could someone today support a two person family in Brooklyn on $27.83 / hour that is the listed NYC Bus Driver Salary.

Where have these jobs gone?

What has replaced them?

Or is this just one more example of a job that as a way of life largely disappeared long ago.

2.26.2024 – last light of the sun

last light of the sun
that had died in the west still
lived for one song more

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music — hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush’s breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went—
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn’t been.

Come In by Robert Frost in A Witness Tree, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1942.

The scene is the island road on Pinckney Island, South Carolina.

The Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge is a 4,053-acre (16 km2) National Wildlife Refuge located in Beaufort County, South Carolina between the mainland and Hilton Head Island.

The refuge is one of seven refuges administered by the Savannah Coastal Refuges Complex in Savannah, Georgia.

In a partial review on Wikipedia, Harriet Monroe of Poetry Magazine noted that Frost is most interested in “showing the human reaction to nature’s processes.

But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn’t been.

2.25.2024 – errors from feeble

errors from feeble
interactions can mimic
destructive effects

Yet quantum superpositions are skittish creatures. Measure a qubit in a superposition state and it will collapse to either 0 or 1, wiping out any computation in progress. To make matters worse, errors stemming from feeble interactions between qubits and their environment can mimic the destructive effects of measurement. Anything that rubs a qubit the wrong way, whether it’s a nosy researcher or a stray photon, can spoil the computation.

From Never-Repeating Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information by Ben Brubaker, Quanta Magazine, Feb. 24, 2024.

I am not sure what it means either but it sounds really really bad and I really liked how the words rolled out.

On the other hand, I am not sure what other fields from Cooking to Politics to Relationships that the idea, errors stemming from feeble interactions between … (insert field here ie:) Cooking and their environment can mimic the destructive effects.

Anything that rubs a qubit the wrong way, whether it’s a nosy researcher or a stray photon, can spoil the computation.

Well …

Anything that rubs anything the wrong way, whether it’s a nosy researcher or a stray photon, can spoil anything.

2.24.2024 – twice two makes four is

twice two makes four is
an excellent thing, makes five is
sometimes charming too

But man is a frivolous and incongruous creature,

and perhaps, like a chess player,

loves the process of the game,

not the end of it.

And who knows (there is no saying with certainty),

perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining,

in other words,

in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula,

as positive as twice two makes four,

and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen,

but is the beginning of death.

Anyway,

man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty,

and I am afraid of it now.

Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty,

he traverses oceans,

sacrifices his life in the quest,

but to succeed,

really to find it,

he dreads, I assure you.

He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him to look for.

When workmen have finished their work they do at least receive their pay,

they go to the tavern,

then they are taken to the police-station —

and there is occupation for a week.

But where can man go?

Anyway,

one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has attained such objects.

He loves the process of attaining,

but does not quite like to have attained,

and that,

of course,

is very absurd.

In fact, man is a comical creature;

there seems to be a kind of jest in it all.

But yet mathematical certainty is after all,

something insufferable.

Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence.

Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting.

I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing,

but if we are to give everything its due,

twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

From Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal Epoch in 1864.

It is well documented that when Winston Churchill spoke publicly in the House of Commons, he would have his speeches on paper 8 by 4 inches with a hole punched in the upper corner and a string through the holes to keep the speech in order.

The words would be typed out in short phrases that lent the words to pausing, hesitation and emphasis as Mr. Churchill delivered the speech.

Insiders referred to this style as Churchill’s Psalm form and once you know about it, you cannot help picture the prepared text as you hear the words.

Unconsciously or sub consciously as well as by design, I have adapted this style into my writing of short phrases and sentences.

I don’t know that I could write a paragraph if I had too.

The short staccato AP style of one line, one thought also lurks in my background especially as the news writing I did the most were with stories that were meant to be READ out loud by a reporter or presenter.

So ends my confessional.

Considering all that, I think this bit of Mr. Dostoevsky’s writing works quite well when read out loud in the fashion in which I present it.

But what is Mr. Dostoevsky saying?

And I ask this in a the latest edition of ‘In a World Gone Crazy’.

And I put it to you that as now, so little makes sense from what it used to mean that truly, twice two makes four is the beginning of death.

And that twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing.

But beware of those who tell you twice two makes five.

In the end, it always comes out four.

Boy, Howdy! but man is one frivolous and incongruous creature.

2.23.2024 – wilderness of waves

wilderness of waves,
dip and dive, rise and roll, hide
a desert of waves

The sea is a wilderness of waves,
A desert of water.
We dip and dive,
Rise and roll,
Hide and are hidden
On the sea.
Day, night,
Night, day,
The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.

Long Trip by Langston Hughes, in Poetry, compiled from poems published between 1921 and 1928.