Human nature in a box of crayons

photo credit https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8648/16462767919_1f5599bdd9_b.jpg

If you were anticipating something along the lines of "Life is like a box of crayons; you never know what you're going to get," you may be disappointed. This blog doesn't go there. It's something a lot more concrete than that.

I have a very vivid memory of my oldest child's entry into kindergarten. The school sought to save money by giving parents a list of supplies required for each child. That included a box of crayon. On the day we brought in our children and their supplies, the assistant teacher opened up each box of crayons to empty the contents into a container. That's when we learned that we were not buying the crayons for our own kids the way we bought them a knapsack or the like; we were buying crayons that became general classroom supplies.

 Those of us who had not been through this before were a bit surprised. One mother even said, "Had I known that they would do that, I would have bought the cheaper crayons rather than the thicker, more expensive ones."

This mother didn't mind having to buy her child the crayons to use for schools. She even spent more than she had to because she wanted her child to have the best ones on the market. So she felt letdown that her kid would not even get to use those crayons any more than any other kid in the class whose parents may have just bought the cheap, thin kind of crayons.

From her perspective, it may be like lovingly preparing a carefully planned out lunch for her child, only to discover that all the lunches are mixed up together, and other kids have brought jelly sandwiches.


That encapsulates much about human nature. We are motivated to do more when we feel that we -- or our children -- benefit directly. If we find out that they benefit only indirectly we would not have  enough motivation to put in more than the bare minimum. Consequently, the parents who had already been there, done that knew there was no point in buying the special crayons as they might have if each child kept his/her own pack of crayons.

 That is not to say that people aren't generous. I'm certain that mother would have willingly contributed several dollars for a fund to provide families that could not afford school supplies with what they need. It is rather the sense of futility of seeing your extra effort disappear in the sea of average that is demotivating.

Isaac Asimov on Creativity

Clearly Isaac Asimov lived before "synergy" (now displaced by "collaboration") was  buzz word. In 2014 MIT Technology Review ran "Isaac Asimov Asks, 'How Do People Get New Ideas?' and cited Asimov's 1959 essay on creativity. 

from https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7380/12625238314_6794bf272c_b.jpg

Like Woz, quoted in Susan Cain's Quiet and here, he does believe "isolation is required" to achieve creativity. His description of a creative mind also corresponds to how introverts operate: "His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it."

What's interesting, though is his describing the intrusion of others as not being a problem due to distraction but to introducing self-consciousness that would impede progress: "For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display."

However, Asimov doesn't go so far as to say that you should shut yourself off from society altogether. He explains that interacting with others has other benefits for the mind

No two people exactly duplicate each other’s mental stores of items. One person may know A and not B, another may know B and not A, and either knowing A and B, both may get the idea—though not necessarily at once or even soon.
Furthermore, the information may not only be of individual items A and B, but even of combinations such as A-B, which in themselves are not significant. However, if one person mentions the unusual combination of A-B and another the unusual combination A-C, it may well be that the combination A-B-C, which neither has thought of separately, may yield an answer.

Yet that doesn't mean that he considers the group dynamics to lead directly to new creative insights. Instead they "educate the participants in facts and fact-combinations, in theories and vagrant thoughts." For the group to work in that way, he warns that the group has to not be at all censorious. He explains that even one person can poison the atmosphere in which all creative expression is unimpeded:

If a single individual present is unsympathetic to the foolishness that would be bound to go on at such a session, the others would freeze. The unsympathetic individual may be a gold mine of information, but the harm he does will more than compensate for that. It seems necessary to me, then, that all people at a session be willing to sound foolish and listen to others sound foolish.
If a single individual present has a much greater reputation than the others, or is more articulate, or has a distinctly more commanding personality, he may well take over the conference and reduce the rest to little more than passive obedience. The individual may himself be extremely useful, but he might as well be put to work solo, for he is neutralizing the rest.

He also offers advice on capping the number of group members. Any more than five, he believes would be counter productive because of "the tension of waiting to speak, which can be very frustrating." But even more important than that is the question of expectation. In other words, one's official job should not be to what today is called "ideate."

The way he puts it is this: "The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all." The ideas just came while they pursuing other things, which, he feels is important to remove a sense of obligation: "To feel guilty because one has not earned one’s salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either."

Jane Austen and Capability Brown

I'd rather by reading Jane Austen tote 

by Totally_Jane_Austen

    Capability_Brown
          by_Nathaniel_Dance,_(later_Sir_Nathaniel_Dance-Holland,_Bt)_              

                                                                                        

The road to true love begins to to run smooth 

The 50 miles of good road in Pride and Prejudice, Darcy's 10,000 a year, and the "ha-ha" in Mansfield Park are all features of the times and background for Capability Brown's influence on English gardening. August 30th 2016 marked the tercentenary of the baptism (his date of birth is unrecorded) of Lancelot 'Capability’ Brown (1716-1783). If you were in England this year, you may have seen certain events dedicated to this man who transformed the British landscape with his vision of naturalistic gardens See The genius of Capability Brown. People in Britain  were  even given the opportunity to buy special stamps to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Capability Brown's birth.  I only heard about him on this side of the Atlantic because on one of the tours of Old Westbury Gardens  (which were designed to emulate English estates to appeal to the taste of the owner's British bride) the guide mentioned Capability Brown as the designer. Of course, he couldn't have designed the Long Island estate directly, but his influence came through in the play of lawns, trees, and water to be found even on Long Island. thatched cottage at Old Westbury Gardens Curious about the person who shares our last name, my husband looked for books about him in our library system. We only succeeded in obtaining one: Roger Turner's  Capability Brown and the Eighteenth-Century English Landscape. The History Press Rizzoli International Publications, 1985. While Turner frequently quotes the poet Alexander Pope to give some literary background and one time quotes the writer Hannah More, he fails to mention Jane Austen in connection with the transformation of the landscape at all, and this is an omission I intend to rectify here.  In fact, we owe our visions of Mr. Darcy's beautiful estate, Pemberly, to Capability Brown, as well. He set out the design for Chatsworth House. that house was was used as the setting for Pemberley in the  2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.    In Ch. 32 of Pride and Prejudice, Darcy tells Elizabeth,  "`And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance.''  Darcy was particularly appreciative of "good road"  because it was still a relatively recent convenience that made a dramatic difference to travelers.  As Turner writes on p. 17, "During Brown's practising years, 1750-80, the time taken between London and the major towns was halved. Before these improvements bad weather and wintry conditions made travel impossible for wheeled traffic."   Earlier in the book, we have the famous pronouncement about Darcy's wealth amounting to 10,000 a year. That figure is also one that Turner mentions as requisite for an estate owner to really maintain a good figure in society: "At least five or six thousand pounds a year was required to support a great house, to allow for the expenses of the London season and to enable the owner to patronize the arts. More comfortably it required ten thousand a year" (p. 17).  The book named for a park Awareness of garden features gains prominence in Austen's Mansfield Park. In chapter 10, Maria Bertram complains: “Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. ‘I cannot get out,' as the starling said.” Refusing to remain restrained, she goes through, ignoring Fanny's warning of the danger of slipping into the ha-ha.  Of course, all this foreshadows Maria's breaking through the set boundaries of her marriage and becoming a fallen woman. But there still had to be a physical ha-ha, a type of sunken fence that created a barrier between the extended grounds of the estate where animals could graze and the gardens near the house without obstructing the view. This was not a feature that Brown invented but one that he did use.  Taylor refers to this device and the explanation for its name on p. 29 in  quotes Horace Walpole's 1770 essay On Modern Gardening:  "The capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed, was (I believe the first thought was Bridgeman's) the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses -- an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha!s to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk." In fact, though, Charles Bridgeman (1680?-1738) could not have been the first to make use of this sunken fence, as it already was in use in Versailles before it appeared in England.  However, it appears to have become increasingly common in England in Jane Austen's time, enough so that she could safely assume her readers would be able to picture the obstruction posed by the ha-ha she references several times in Mansfield Park.  The woman writer Turner does quote, Hannah  More (p. 78) was already quoted by a prior biographer of the master gardener, Dorothy Stroud. She records what the writer said about here"friend Mr. Brown" who "illustrates everything he says about gardening by some literary or grammatical allusion." She said: "He told me he compared his art to literary composition. 'Now there,' pointing a finger, 'I make a comma, and there', pointing to another spot, 'where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon, at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis, now a full stop, and then I begin another subject.'” While Taylor doesn't like the literary take on landscaping, it strikes me as an inverse of what Austen said about her own writing in the expression about her own miniature scale. The quote comes from a letter to her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh: "What should I do with your strong, manly, vigorous sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?" Capability Brown's landscaping took a great deal of labor to produce subtle effects that could be appreciated many years later. The same can be said of Austen's novels.

                                                                                Related posts:

Jane Austen mug

Jane Austen and Autism
Jane Austen's Heroines
Observations on Jane Austen's Emma
Love and Limerence in Jane Austen
Jane Austen at the Morgan
Three Janes, Two Governesses
Pride and Prejudice in Job Applications

French vs. American Style: the du Pont Estates in Delaware

The recipe for the nursery rhyme

image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing_a_Song_of_Sixpence

g

I'm in the middle of a work of historical fiction that takes place during the Middle Ages. It referenced pies with live birds à la the four-and-twenty blackbirds mentioned in "Sing a song of sixpence." It also suggested that some people topped this with a human child popping out of the pie but suggested that some kids may have been hurt in the attempt. In reality, there really were such recipes, but no birds (or children) were actually baked into the pie. Rather the pie was baked and then cut on the bottom to allow them in. 

What else is the internet for if not to find recipes for such whimsical concoctions dating back over five centuries? I found it on more than one site but went for the one from Chef Frank for better clarify. The origin is an Italian cookbook from 1549 that was translated into English 49 years later. Chef Frank writes up the recipe in modern English with modern instructions, as well as assurances that the birds will be completely unscathed. Supposedly this kind of crust only works with lard, so it wouldn't do for people with kosher or hallal dietary requirements. 

Four and Twenty Blackbird Pie
24 live blackbirds12 cups all purpose flour1 1/2 tbsp salt6 eggs, slightly beaten2 lb lard1/2 cup water3 eggs, beaten2-3 heads decorative kale (for garnish)
Make sure all the blackbirds are alive and comfortable. Reserve. In a large bowl, place the flour and salt. Pour the eggs into the center of the bowl and with 2 knives, cut the eggs into the flour until it looks like course cornmeal. In a saucepan, bring the water to a boil and add the lard. Heat until all the lard is melted. Pour hot lard into the flour mixture, and work into a firm dough. While the dough is still warm, divide 2/3 - 1/3. Roll the larger part out on a floured surface into a large circle, at least 36" in diameter. Don't worry if the dough is thick. Keep the other part warm. Find a wide and deep pot big enough to hold 24 standing blackbirds comfortably. Grease the outside of the pot and form the circle of dough around the outside of the pot. This will form the bottom crust, or the "coffin" (no, the birds will still be alive when served! Honest!!). Allow to cool. Cut a circle 6" in diameter in the center of the bottom of the crust (actually, in this case, the top on the form) and remove the dough. Carefully remove the bottom crust from the form and place on parchment paper on a large baking sheet. Crumple sheets of aluminum foil into balls, and place inside the bottom crust, 2" higher in the center than the sides. Roll out the other part of the dough to 2" wider than the coffin. Brush all along the edge of the dough, and place on top of the coffin. Crimp the edges. Using the 6" circle of dough, cut out decoratve shapes. Brush the top crust with the beaten egg and attatch the decorative cut-outs. Don't be bashful - how often do you get to decorate a coffin? Brush again with beaten egg. Place in a 325F oven and bake until the crust is golden brown. Allow to cool.
When the crust has thoroughly cooled, carefully lift up and remove the crumpled foil. Prepare your serving platter by lining it with the decorative kale. You may further dress up your platter with small bunches of grapes, small whole fruit, and/or baby vegetables. When ready to serve, place the coffin on the center of the platter. Gather up your reserved blackbirds. Carefully lift up the coffin and gently place each blackbird inside, being careful not to crowd them. When all the blackbirds have been hidden in the crust, let the crust lie flat on the platter. Serve immediately. 

Note that recipes were not written in this fashion centuries back. The original text, which I found here is:

Make the coffin of a great pie or pastry, in the bottome thereof make a hole as big as your fist, or bigger if you will, let the sides of the coffin bee somewhat higher then ordinary pies, which done put it full of flower and bake it, and being baked, open the hole in the bottome, and take out the flower. Then having a pie of the bigness of the hole in the bottome of the coffin aforesaid, you shal put it into the coffin, withall put into the said coffin round about the aforesaid pie as many small live birds as the empty coffin will hold, besides the pie aforesaid. And this is to be done at such time as you send the pie to the table, and set before the guests: where uncovering or cutting up the lid of the great pie, all the birds will flie out, which is to delight and pleasure shew to the company. And because they shall not bee altogether mocked, you shall cut open the small pie, and in this sort you may make many others, the like you may do with a tart. (From Epulario, 1598)

Seems weird to us, of course. But perhaps the people of that time would find things like sprinkles and rainbow bagels  even more absurd.

Innocence and experience

A great scenic sunet along the main branch of the Mississippi River on the Great River Trail, Wisconsin photo at https://www.goodfreephotos.com/places/wisconsin/great-river-trail/wisconsin-great-river-trail-scenic-sunset.jpg.php

Beat Not the Poor Desk  is the title of one of the books I was introduced to when I took a graduate course on teaching composition. It has some really helpful writing ideas based on particular frames. One of them is "Once I was ___; now I am___." The idea is using concrete narrative to convey a more general point.

This is exactly what Mark Twain does in his piece, "Two Views of  the Mississippi." Picking up on the transition from innocence to experience that William Blake explores in his poetry, Twain encapsulates the gain that also entails loss:

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and has come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river! 

Twain offers further details and then suggests a parallel with the medical profession:

 Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beautyʹs cheek mean to a doctor but a ʺbreakʺ that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown think with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesnʹt he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesnʹt he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?   

This happens to most of us in our trade. I tried to explain this to someone about seeing a piece of writing through the eyes that have assessed hundreds of thousands of essays (I'm  not exaggerating, I scored SAT essays for over a decade after having grades college students' writing for a decade before that). It's impossible not to notice flaws in the mechanics when your eyes -- like those of the doctor looking for signs of illness -- have been trained to spot them. That doesn't mean I always comment on them even when seeing "aisle" without the a, a usage error that makes me feel like I'm hearing fingernails on a blackboard.  It also doesn't mean I claim to never make a mistake myself, but that's not really the point. A musically trained person may hit a false note once in a while, though that hardly disqualifies that person from giving a professional assessment of another person's playing.


To return to the them of Blake and Twain, the fact of life is (without some form of memory loss)  you can't go back. You can't recapture the perspective of innocence once you've passed into experience. That doesn't mean that life is over, only that you've passed into a different stage that will color your perspective. And here's one advantage that experience has over innocence: you know what it was to look at the world through the eyes of innocence while the person who has no experience cannot know of any perspective beyond what s/he has had.

Have desk, will travel

When we picture mobile now, we picture something  small and light like this.

from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/MANEJANDO_LA_NUEVA_TABLET.png

But a hundred years ago mobile meant something different than it did today. The concept of a mobile desk was just one that could be moved, not necessarily one you could easily carry with you.  It serves some of the same purpose as a tablet does, holding information one wants access to in an organizaed fashion with space for writing your own additions to all that data. 

photo of Lyndhurst interior  by Ariella Brown

This is the desk that Jay Gould used at Lyndhurst and when commuting from there to his office on his yacht.  Though the railroad did pass right by Gould's summer home, it was built by Vanderbilt, and he vowed never to use it.  But he didn't suffer too much, sailing in on a yacht took only 45 minutes, an enviable commute by today's standards. However, he could have been travelling too lightly if he took the desk-- and likely an attendant or two  pull it for him--along for the trip.

That formidable piece of furniture is a Wooton Desk, which is known for having many compartments as well as casters, which makes it mobile as in designed to be moved. As the Wikipedia article explains, "The Wooton desk was introduced at the end of the 19th century, at a time when office work was changing in a drastic fashion with an increase in paperwork that led to the introduction of filing cabinets, among other things."

 According to the tour guide at Lyndhurst where the desk still stands, this particular one has over 100 compartments, which likely includes some secret ones. Instead of password protection or biometric identification, you'd rely on physical keys and hidden levers for securing your confidential documents from prying eyes. One plus for the desk: it is still usable over a century later. It's very unlikely that will be the case for today's tablets and smartphones.

Update for the CE (Covid Era) timeline. Lyndhurst has not been open as usual to visitors (though it has hosted the film crewfor The Gilded Age series ) since 2020. For spring 2022, it is scheduled to reopen on  May 6. For more information, see the sitelyndhurst.org and be sure clarify what the current policy for entry as spelled out here: lyndhurst.org/covid-19-protocol

Related: 
How many times did Edison fail in attempting to invent the light bulb?

A grand vision of Victorian architecture and engineering

French vs. American Style: the du Pont Estates in Delaware 

Restoring a garden and some history in Yonkers

Above and below and some of the views of the walled garden, one of the highlights of the Untermyer Garden in Yonkers.I also included a picture of the Temple of Love that overlooks a waterfall.  Most of the rest of the gardens have not been restored to the glory they held back in the day when 60 gardeners tended its 150 acres with plants supplied by 60 greenhouses.  What is restored is worth seeing, and there's no charge  entry.

You can learn more about the gardens and the man behind them, Samuel Untermyer, at http://www.untermyergardens.org/. As the pamphlet in the garden and the site says, "Samuel Untermyer was born in Virginia in 1858, and moved to New York City after the Civil War. He was a partner in the law firm of Guggenheimer, Untermyer & Marshall, and was the first lawyer in America to earn a one million dollar fee on a single case."

The site offers a lot more in-depth information, including an article by Greogory Kupsky  that gives further insight into the response of German-American Jews to Hitler's increasing power and how Untemeyer clashed with others in pushing for a boycott of Germany.

 This is the better side of the ampitheater. As you can see form the picture below it, the other side is in much need of repair.

See more photos of the garden that I posted on Pinterest. If you don't get to Yonkers but do get to the northern part of Central Park, check out  the fountain adorned by the sculpture of the Three Dancing Maidens there with a plauque for Untemyer. see https://www.pinterest.com/writewaypro/conservatory-garden-at-central-park/

Living on 24 hours a day

Though the contexts may vary from those cloaked in spiritualism with suggestions of meals with a Buddah to those that guide you to a state of mindfulness, the essence of self-help books seems to be very much the same. 
And yet you are in search of happiness, are you not? Have you discovered it?
The chances are that you have not. The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

That's what struck me when I read the really short book, How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett with a copyright date of 1910.  The author consciously references other book titles that say "How to live on X amount a day" to emphasize the point that time is money and even more precious and more evenly distributed than currency. I took a copy out from the library, but you can read the entire text online for free from the Gutenberg project here.

The book's central theme is maximizing one's time to achieve happiness, though not the happiness one pictures in a extroverted sense (see  http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/08/happiness-is.html). The happiness is rather the result of achieving harmony between one's principles and one's actions. This point is revealed in chapter 8: 

We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely important things; upon the problem of our happiness, upon the main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us, upon the share which reason has (or has not) in determining our actions, and upon the relation between our principles and our conduct.

The book is a 20th Century product, so it's no longer deferring to the Church for guidance on how to live. Rather it is exhorting one live according to principles and reason. In contrast to Disney's advice to follow your heart, you are advised to use your head. But in doing so you also gain an appreciation for science, art, music, literature (if those things interest you) or even your own daily life. What would be packaged today as "mindfulness," he calls reflecting on genuinely important things. 

Chapter 5 is entitled "Tennis and the Immortal Soul." The conjunction here is not intended to suggest a deep connection as one finds in  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. On the contrary, the suggestion is that tennis and other leisure pursuits are what people regard as important while they neglect the type of "cultivation of mind" that the author believes is essential to feed the soul. That becomes clear from the end of the chapter:

 But I do suggest that you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a half every other evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of the mind. You will still be left with three evenings for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic scenes, odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions. You will still have the terrific wealth of forty-five hours between 2 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Monday. If you persevere you will soon want to pass four evenings, and perhaps five, in some sustained endeavour to be genuinely alive. And you will fall out of that habit of muttering to yourself at 11.15 p.m., "Time to be thinking about going to bed." The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.But remember, at the start, those ninety nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be the most important minutes in the ten thousand and eighty. They must be sacred, quite as sacred as a dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match. Instead of saying, "Sorry I can't see you, old chap, but I have to run off to the tennis club," you must say, "...but I have to work." This, I admit, is intensely difficult to say. Tennis is so much more urgent than the immortal soul. 

I find it fascinating that the core of such advice is so consistent for over a century, despite the massive changes the world has seen over two World Wars and the rapid advance of technology. That is not to mitigate the differences in contexts. They are quite striking. Clearly, the people the book addresses are not feeling the same stress people do today when they rise early to commute to work and return from it. Work begins for them at 10 AM and ends at 6 PM. The commute is assumed to take at most half an hour, though there also is an assumption of a sixth half day of work ending at 2 PM.


For people living in England in 2010, leisure time is not frittered away in front of a screen (not even a movie screen, never mind a smartphone, computer, or television). Even a radio is out of the picture, as music is only to be found in live events. Still they manage to fritter away time but just by doing this and that until thinking of going to bed for a good 45 minutes before doing so. In that way, one lets time slip through one's fingers instead of getting one's real 24 hours' worth. In fact, the author doesn't expect one to use all 24 hours but just to make better use of the time spent outside work by exercising one's mind for 90 minute sessions and actively reflecting at other times when is apt to adopt a "semi-comatose" state.

Another difference most of today's self-help books and this one is that very little attention is paid to exercise of the body. Bennet does mention that 10 minutes a day of that can make a difference. However, he is not arguing that one needs to put in the time for the physical regimen but for exercising the mind and getting it into shape. Likely people walked a lot more just to get around as we're talking about a time before cars were owned by the average person.

Chapter 7 is entitled "Controlling the Mind," and like many modern books on meditation, the goal is to achieve concentration and focus, though Bennet skips the thinking about nothing step and jumps right into focusing on your end goal:

"What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, in the train, and in the crowded street again?" Precisely. Nothing simpler! No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, the affair is not easy. When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round the corner with another subject. Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot by any chance fail if you persevere.

When you achieve a certain mindset, you can appreciate that "nothing in life is humdrum" as stated by the title of Chapter 10. In that chapter Bennet demonstrates how an appreciation of cause and effect can make one more philosophical and less shocked when things don't go one's way with the example of accepting one's stolen watch as the result of knowable causes. But it's not just a matter of learning to appreciate human nature but all of nature:"The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that curiosity which means life, and the satisfaction of which means an understanding heart." That is something that can even be appreciated by someone who does not care for art, music, or literature. But for those who do care for the latter, Bennet devotes an entire chapter.

"Serious Reading" is the title of Chapter 11. By using that term, Bennet's intention is to exclude novels because they do not require the mental exertion that should be applied to the 90 minute program. Good novels are all too easy to read, he says, and bad ones just aren't worth reading at all. It's remarkable that what was considered merely popular literature then are are now seriously studied in college courses. Wouldn't any reader today be proud for working her way through something like Anna Karenina if she were not required to read it for a class? Bennet has loftier reading goals, as he indicated by his own choice of reading, including the works of Marcus Aurelius (he doesn't leave home without him in book form), Epictetus, Pascal, La Bruyere, and Emerson. No women featured here, though he does reserve special praise for Elizabeth Barrett Browning and recommends that everyone read Aurora Leigh.


Aside from praising poetry over prose, Bennet offers two concrete suggestions for the one who embarks on improving reading:

The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts. Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a single author. Say to yourself: "I will know something about the French Revolution, or the rise of railways, or the works of John Keats." And during a given period, to be settled beforehand, confine yourself to your choice. There is much pleasure to be derived from being a specialist.

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least forty-five minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your ninety minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. This means that your pace will be slow. Never mind. Forget the goal; think only of the surrounding country; and after a period, perhaps when you least expect it, you will suddenly find yourself in a lovely town on a hill.

Related post: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/its-meaningful-life.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2014/12/views-on-boundaries.html

Tech overload in the bathroom

I just got a promotional email for "bathroom upgrades" from Bed Bath and Beyond that makes me

wonder if we've really gone completely mad in embedding sensors in everything. In truth, I enjoy shopping in the store. It's fun to see various kitchen gadgets and doodads for decor. Most of the stuff no one really needs, though it can be put to some use, but I do question some of these things.


These items each have their own promotional videos to try to really convince you that your life will only be complete with an illuminated toilet bowl, automatic soap dispenser, smart mirror, or connected scale.

The first item is called Illumibowl, that a night light for your toilet -- not your bathroom, mind you, but just the toilet that gives you a choice of nine different colors. Hurrah! I must say, it really makes it so much more fun to go to the bathroom at night if your toilet bowl is illuminated in UFO-eerie green or spooky blood-red. And what bit of utility are you supposed to gain from this $19.99 gadget? Well, "no more blinding lights, wandering in the dark or late night misses or messes." I am assured that my "bathroom will never be the same." But maybe I do want it to be the same. And maybe I don't think it's so very hard to flip on a light when I want it. And maybe, just maybe, if I really have a problem with full light, I could just put one of those traditional night lights in. But then I wouldn't have that UFO glow effect.


The second item is simplehuman® Rechargeable Bath Sensor Pump in Brushed Nickel. For a mere $49.99, you can eliminate the hassle of washing your hands. Well, actually, it won't wash your hands for you, but it will eliminate the need to go through the trouble of actually pumping the soap out, dispensing it in a remarkable .2 seconds! Yes, that will save you a whole 2 seconds, giving you more time to scrub up!

This is the kind of thing that has some utility built into public restrooms as people are concerned about touching what others have touched, but it seems just a bit OCD to me to have to keep one in your own home.


I was most disappointed in the third item, the simplehuman® 5X Sensor Vanity Mirror. For the price of $199, I thought it should at least talk to you like the mirror in Snow White. But no, all it really does is light up as your face approaches because it's just too darn hard to hit a switch for an illuminated mirror.

This mirror only has a single light setting to simulate natural light. Back when I was a kid there was one that even offered a choice of different lights, to duplicate four different conditions, daylight, office, evening, home. It was called the Clairol True to Light mirror, and it still has some fans who now may purchase the Jerdon Tri-Fold Two-Sided Lighted Makeup Mirror with 5x Magnification for $34.99 on Amazon.


Of course, your high-tech bathroom would not be complete without a Wi-Fi connected scale. This email included 2, one of which is supposed sync with the data in your Fitbit to help you track your progress. That eliminate the difficulty of either remembering a number of writing it down. Who can be bothered with that? You have to conserve all your energy and your time for your fitness regimen. That extra second can be used for another jumping jack!  Put tech on your side, and you will, no doubt, achieve your goals!

I'm not an absolute Luddite. I think technology can be very helpful in promoting health and enabling an unobtrusive form of monitoring. But that doesn't mean we need to adopt everything that cuts out really easy tasks like switching on a light or pumping out soap just because we have the tech that makes it possible.