Worm Food

These thoughts were on my mind, and I jotted them down in my journal on Monday. I felt compelled to put them up here on the off chance someone might find them (useful).

I felt compelled to write these thoughts down. They are not empirical, but they do have a certain truthiness.

• Markets are more robust, lifting more people, when they are free from monopolies of any kind.
• The government itself is a kind of monopoly that can influence overall economic performance, either for good or bad. Therefore, regulation and stimulation, both of which will always have unforeseen consequences, must be carefully considered before being implemented.
• Unregulated markets tend to evolve into monopolies or oligarchies that maintain their status-quo by suppressing creativity, innovation, and overall economic growth. Everything becomes zero-sum.
• Every market has winners and losers. When the elites perceive themselves as losing, they will use any means necessary to protect their power. They will also convince themselves they are acting for the greater good. Some won’t care about the greater good so long as they benefit.
• “What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee,” but the bees are not very good at recognizing what is good for them—especially when what is bad for the hive is pitched as being good for it. The inverse of Marcus Aurelius’s truism is patently false. Otherwise, nobody would poison the common well for their own profit.
• Humans are remarkably immune to cognitive dissonance. Double think is a real thing.
• I believe Greenspan was correct when he said the biggest problem with the economy was that nobody took the long term view. When asked why, he said, “because in the long run, we’re all dead.”

We are all “food for worms.” Memento mori.

Strike for Black Lives

I know it doesn’t sound like much given the infrequency and irregularity of posts on this page, but this site will go dark tomorrow to support the social media Strike for Black Lives. I actually did have a post planned, which will now appear later in the week.

How Long Do You Want to Live?

Photo by Unknown One thing centenarians have in common is being active in community and family. Here is Suna being active with her Master Naturalist community in the days before COVID-19.

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune on 2020-06-04 and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-06-04

You live and you die

And I’ll probably throw it away

But in the end it’s mine

And nobody has a right to say

“Go down lightly”

“Go down silently”

I’ll go down screaming

“Give it back! It belongs to me”

—Janice Ian

Barring the Zombie Apocalypse or the actual apocalypse, how long do you want to hang around on this planet consuming oxygen? Have you given your lifespan much thought? I have. I’ve thought about it a lot more on the north side of sixty than I did when I was younger—and even more since the onset of COVID-19.

When I ask people about this (I actually do; I’m like that.), their answers generally fall into one of a few buckets.

Young adults tend to look at me like I’ve suddenly sprouted a wasp from my forehead. They haven’t given the question much, if any, thought. And who could blame them? When I was their age, I just assumed I’d live forever. (I’m still on track for that, by the way.) I still believed I was ten feet tall and bullet-proof.

A few people say, “As long as I can,” a comfortably meaningless phrase. It gives the appearance of answering without commitment or much thought.

The most common response is something like, “as long as I can still do what I want” or “as long as I can be independent.” This answer implies good health, something none of us can guarantee. Most of us never want to become a burden on society or our families. Once you’ve been a parent, letting go of taking care of your kids is hard. And the thought of them taking care of you is horrifying. That horror is led my partners and me to form Hearts Homes and Hands, a state-regulated personal assistance service dedicated to helping people maintain their independence through age, injury, and infirmity. I am already a clients.

I think that fear of dependency is why many elders say something like, “I’m ready to go Home.” Dad used to say, “I’m ready to see your mother again.”

But we’re not really in control of all that. Julius Caesar had a slave whose only job was to whisper in his ear, “You could die today.” As could any of us. But we could also outlive our bodies or, more frightening to me, our minds. We need to plan for both possibilities.

Dad used to tell me, “Plan to live forever and know you won’t.”

Dad used to tell me, “Plan to live forever and know you won’t.” That’s really good advice. More Americans are now over 100 years old than ever before. We’ve even had to invent a new word, “supercentenarians,” for people who are more than 110. One study found that centarians and supercentarians have three common traits, all of which we can start working on today, regardless of age.

First, they are involved with their families and communities. We can all keep up with the kids and grandkids through social media and writing letters, even if we can’t get out. Church is another source of community support, especially if we give support to others before we need it ourselves. Pets also help us build deep ties and reasons to keep going. Someone has got to take care of Fluffy.

Second, they all keep busy. One woman still ran her family ranch at 104. Dad planted corn at 92 while he was dying of cancer. The only thing that worried him when he was in the hospital was how well his crop had done. I know several people who still go into the office every day well into their seventies and eighties. One of my first bosses started a new company when he was 84.

The third commonality is that they want to be alive. The first two traits give them reasons to keep going, but the drive to live is something deeper. It is a passion for life. As singer-songwriter Janis Ian put it, “I’ll go out screaming, ‘It’s mine! Give it back to me!’” I really admire the fight in that answer.

Bored? Some Folks Will Always Be Homebound

Photo by Postmaster / Shutterstock I think Marcus Aurelius once said, “We choose to participate in the rave.”

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune on 2020-05-21 and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-05-21.

Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more

She sits and stares through the back-door screen

And all the news just repeats itself

Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen

—John Prine

You see them more and more on the evening news: people out en masse, partying in crowded, recently opened (or illegally opened) bars. Some have just come from rallies where they gathered around Patrick Henry’s immortal soundbite, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” You can almost hear the excess capitalization as they ignore the fact that Liberty and Death are not mutually exclusive. In a pandemic, they can be correlative, if not causative.

But I understand where they’re coming from. Boredom. At least, that’s what most seem to say on camera. “I’ve just got to get out of the house!” One day blurs into the next, giving us the new word “Blursday.” A meme shows a generic calendar with each column headed by the same word. “Day.”

Our brains thrive on novelty. The first bite of our favorite foods can cause our eyelids to flutter shut and our eyes to roll back in transient ecstasy. A month later, you’ll remember that first bite, but you won’t remember the ninth or tenth by the end of the meal.

Photo by EVZ / Shutterstock Nanci Griffith once sang about being a clock without hands. She was more right than metaphorical. Our brains measure time in very long increments and tiny ones. And those measurements don’t really relate to each other.

Savoring that first bite can seem to take as long as the rest of the meal. That’s because our brains have many clocks to keep track of time. None of these brain clocks have hour hands. They measure time in fractions of a day or fractions of a second. There’s nothing really in between.

We experience that first bite in what neurologists call “prospective time.” While we’re looking forward to it and experiencing it, our brains measure time in fractions of a second. But the rest of the meal doesn’t get as much attention as that first bite. Rather than form new memories of each bite, our brains overwrite the same memory pattern over and over again. We don’t experience eating the rest of the meal so much as remember it later in “retrospective time.”

The same thing happens all the time. We experience new things in prospective time, but repetitive actions blur into retrospective time. We tend to live in prospective time where the length a pause in conversation can have real meaning. We may have only a split second to react when we see a snake while hiking through the fields. Is it a rat snake or a rattlesnake? Boom! We decide. That’s why time drags on forever when we’re bored. Each tick of the clock may take a week. But when we look back at a month of boredom, it seems to have slipped by in a blink as each day blurs into the one before.

Now put yourself in a different place. What if you weren’t “stuck at home” because of a government order? (An order that is being gradually relaxed as I write this.) What if you couldn’t leave home because your body was unable to take you outside? What if you were stuck at home—maybe even confined to your bed—for the foreseeable future? For the rest of your life? Your mind would turn the seconds into minutes and the minutes into hours. But it would also turn the months into days and the years into weeks.

Photo by Photographee.eu / Shutterstock If you’re feeling like you just have to get out of the house right now, please take a minute to think about those who will still be homebound when Shelter in Place fades into memory.

Many people are in this unenviable situation because of injury, disease, or age. Since 1891, these people have been called “shut-ins” or, more kindly, “homebound.” Shelter in Place orders have given all of us the opportunity to experience their reality. The difference is we can escape to protest or to deal with essential tasks. Even when the last Shelter in Place order is lifted, the homebound will remain…well, shut in.

One of the services we provide at Hearts, Homes, and Hands is to help the homebound deal with their persistent reality.

Even though it seems like it wouldn’t work, one of the best things you can do to fight isolation and boredom is to keep to your normal schedule as much as you can. Go to bed and wake up at the same time as before COVID. Prepare your meals and eat them when you normally would. Exercise on your regular schedule even if it means jogging around the living room or lifting your kids instead of weights. If you can’t go to work, set aside some time to learn new things, to write letters, or to play games—anything to create new experiences for your brain to look forward to.

But the most important thing to schedule is downtime. Set aside time to do nothing. That’s right. Make time to do nothing at all. Force your brain to be bored so it looks forward to and enjoys the experiences it can have. Contrast real boredom with routine, and most of us will really appreciate being able to focus on and savor that first bite of activity—whatever it is.

“It was paper when we started...”

Photo by The New York Times I remember thinking at the time, “That’s easy for you to say.”

The best things in life are free

But you can keep them for the birds and bees

Now give me money

(That's what I want)

—Berry Gordy, Janie Bradford

It’s not often you’ll hear me say I learned a valuable lesson from Sam Walton, but today is one of those days.

Thanks to declining production and falling oil prices, I had to take a huge write down in the valuation of one of my properties yesterday. It was frightening and disheartening.

To be clear, this isn’t real money. It didn’t come out of my pocket, but it does affect my net worth. And banks tend to look down on reductions in net worth.

So, I’m grateful for the lesson I learned from Walton way back in 1987. After the stock market crashed on Black Friday, he lost about a half-billion dollars in Wal-mart’s market capitalization the following Monday. Walton shrugged off the loss. He said, “It was paper when we started, and it’s paper afterward.”

I remember thinking at the time, “That’s easy for you to say.” But the truth is, paper losses hurt about as much as paper gains help. That is to say, not much. I still own the land, and my taxes will go down because of the write down.

Caring for Our Pets

Penny loves to cuddle, but I am trying to be more careful about keeping her tongue out of my face. Next, I’ll work on the feet.

Brody always took hand washing and social distancing very seriously…even before they were a thing.

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-05-08.

A big black dog

A little too much gray around the muzzle

A big black dog

Why she ended up at the pound is a puzzle

—Emmylou Harris

We all love our fur babies. Well, most of us. I suppose there are still people around like WC Fields hey, about her screenwriter Leo Rosten once said, “any man who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad.“ I just don’t know any.

Just about everyone I know falls at the other end of the spectrum. At Hearts Homes and Hands, we love our animals. Most of us have more pets at home than people. in fact, two members of our team are on the Board of Directors for Milam Touch of Love, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization dedicated to the welfare of animals in Milam County. Others have contributed to or done volunteer work for that organization.

If you use the term “fur babies“—it took me a long time to get used to it. But then I realized I call Carlton “Baby Boy“ and Penny “Baby Girl.“ Sigh. Anyway—if you use the term “fur babies,” you probably have experienced their delicate, little (or big, sloppy) kisses…whether you wanted to or not.

And that brings me to Winston, who made national news a couple of days before I wrote this article. Winston is a pug who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his family of four humans. The two adults are both doctors, but all four are COVID survivors.

One day Doctor Mom noticed Winston’s behavior was a little off. He even skipped breakfast. No pug I have ever known willingly skips a meal unless something is very wrong. So, Doctor Mom has Winston tested. Sure enough, he was positive for COVID.

Winston is the first American dog to test positive and the first confirmed case of human-canine transmission. We already knew that cats, including lions and tigers and—well, not bears—at the NY Zoo could get COVID. But Dr. Anthony Fauchi, the face of the Administration’s COVID Response Team, said there is “no evidence” of pets giving the virus to their people. That’s good. Just try putting a mask on a cat. Neither one of you will have a good result.

But Fauchi didn’t rule out the possibility of pet-human transmission. All “no evidence” means is that we haven’t proven that it happens, not that it doesn’t happen.

All this is to say our pets need to practice social distancing as much as we do. Right now, it’s a good idea to keep your indoor pets inside and your outdoor pets away from others. And avoiding those fur baby kisses can help protect both of you.

Feeling Isolated?

Photo by Suna Sue Ann says hi from Zoom with her under-the-sea background.

Photo from Lee’s Fakebook page Suna say, “Lee’s Facebook page is so old it still has his graduation picture on it.” Yeah, right! My sixth grade graduation, maybe. That was back when books were on paper, a non-volatile storage media (unless you had a match).

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune on 2020-04-30 and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-04-07.

Yes, I'm lonely

Want to die

If I ain't dead already, hoo

Girl, you know the reason why

—John Lennon, Paul McCartney

It’s no big secret: social distancing can cause its own set of problems. One of these is isolation. When we lock ourselves in our homes away from everybody else, we can get lonely.

Fortunately, technology provides us a workaround. Since we’ve been distancing, I don’t think a day has gone by when Sue Ann has not been on her phone or her computer Fakebooking, FaceTiming, Zooming, or using some other social media to stay in touch with her friends and coworkers.

I’ll admit I’m not the best at all of that. I kind of enjoy the isolation. But, in many people, isolation can lead to other problems like depression, or just to loss of motivation. For some of these people, technology is not an option for the simple reason that they’ve never needed or wanted to use it before (or can’t afford internet access).

I have a Facebook account that I think I logged into two years ago. I’ve never used Zoom. And I’ve never used video chat or FaceTime. However, I’ll admit that these are good ways to keep in touch with people when you can’t just go see them.

What do you do if you don’t have access to technology or don’t know how to use them? Well, here again, Hearts Homes and Hands can help. Some of our caregivers are very fluent with these technologies. They can help you set up a smart phone for the first time. They can help you Zoom or FaceTime so you can talk to your grandchildren, nieces and nephews, or children who live far away.

Just give Kathleen a call at 254-627-1200 and she can talk to you about all the different ways we can help you safely stay in contact.

Oh, and one bit of good news! A recent study showed that COVID-19 can’t be spread through flatulence. Everyone in my family is very relieved.

What Are Your Six Things?

Photo by jokerbethyname / Shutterstock Only a fool would not be scared if a rattlesnake suddenly raised its head. That’s a healthy and potentially life-saving reaction. But when I was a child, I was so terrified of snakes around our house in the country that I was often afraid to go outside for days at a time. That is not a healthy reaction.

Photo by NASAThis picture is a NASA photo of Flight Engineer Tim Kopra in 2015, not Chris Hadfield. But it illustrates just how alone you are in space, even if there is another person around to take the picture. Can you imagine suddenly and unexpectedly going blind in this situation?

Photo by Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock Washing your hands in warm, soapy water is the single most effective thing you can do to stay healthier.

This post originally appeared in the Cameron Herald and Thorndale Tribune and on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-04-17.

Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.

—William Faulkner

These are scary times. I’m reminded of a quote from William Faulkner. “Be scared,” he wrote “You can't help that. But don’t be afraid.”

Being scared is a natural reaction to a startling stimulus. It gets your heart beating and your body ready to fight or flee. Being afraid is ongoing. It can lead to complete inaction or worse—self-destructive behaviors.

How can we not be afraid when times are so scary?

Astronaut Chris Hadfield went blind while walking in space. What could be scarier or more frightening than knowing you are alone in the vastness of space and not being able to see how to get back inside the relative safety of your space capsule? Hadfield survived by focusing on the six things he could do to make things better.

I’ll bet we can each find six things we can do to make things better. Here’s my list.

1. My family and I are practicing social distancing and eliminating unnecessary trips to town and stores.

Even at home, we maintain our private spaces and keep our distance. This private distancing can be challenging with seven adults under roof.

2. While hand washing has always been important, my family and I are becoming almost obsessive about it. 

3. I work every day to keep Hearts, Homes, and Hands able to provide essential the services—like grocery shopping or help with housecleaning—that keep our clients safe and healthy.

We also work very hard to protect our employees. Kathleen and I reached out to every outlet we could find to get adequate protective gear for our employees when that gear became unavailable through our usual suppliers.

4. Every morning and every evening just before bed, I journal about things I am grateful for.

This practice keeps me focused on what is going right in my life and away from the spiraling cesspool of negativity that seems determined to drag us all down. We don’t control what happens, but we can control how we react to it.

5. I cut my own hair the other day.

Even if hair salons were open, I would not have risked my own health, nor the health of my clients and those I love, for simple vanity. And it didn’t turn out badly. Not like it could have. Not like it did when I was six.

6. Finally, I keep in mind that there is no problem so bad I can’t make it worse.

There are four items on my list that can move directly to yours. But really think about that last one. Social distancing works. It has kept the spread of the disease way down in Milam County, and it has helped keep the outbreak manageable in other parts of the country. Let’s not make the problem worse by taking unnecessary risks or getting out and about too soon.

We will all be happier and healthier if we focus on what we can do to make things better.

Focus on What We Can Do

Kathleen wears one of Lori’s mask Creations.

This post was republished on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-04-13.

Flesh and blood it turns to dust

Scatters in the wind

Love is all that matters in the end

—Robert Earl Keen

Each day brings us new opportunities and challenges—often cross-dressing as one another. Challenges can appear like opportunity to the unwary. That’s why many business people say their best deals are the ones they walk away from. Opportunities usually appear as challenges. That lead Thomas Edison to say, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

The truth is almost any situation can be an opportunity or a challenge, depending on how you choose to perceive it. I wanted to write today about how people are turning shelter in place—it sounds friendlier if we turn it into an acronym: SIP—into opportunities.

I’ll start with my partner at Hearts, Homes, and Hands, Kathleen Caso. For most of her career, Kathleen has worked to overcome isolation in our clients. Under SIP, isolation has become a benefit that helps our clients stay alive and healthy. “We’re doing more shopping for them, and I’m even teaching some of them how to order what they need online.” She said it’s been a real change in mindset.

Almost any challenge can be turned into an opportunity. Let’s keep looking for the opportunities and moving out of the darkness. Wendy rendering courtesy of Bob the Builder

Lori Vega saw an opportunity in the shortage of masks. Many of you know Lori from her sewing and alterations business, Vega Creations. Lori now makes masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19 in our community. Hearts, Homes, and Hands has taken delivery of two shipments to help protect both our clients and our caregivers.

Local attorney Kayla Chandler has been doing video chats because they add more face-to-face contact than just talking on the phone and still help with social distancing. “Video chats are always fun because when one dog starts barking, they all go nuts and we have a good laugh.” She and Matt also planted a garden with veggies and fruit tress. I would say it reminds me of the old Victory Gardens, but then I’d have to admit I’m old enough to remember them.

I heard one podcaster with a good idea. He said, “I don’t have to teach anyone to use Zoom when I interview them.” Everyone has already learned it in the last couple of months. Like Kayla said, Zoom and other video chat software are a good way to feel more connected while maintaining a safe social distance.

Let’s keep looking for the opportunities and moving out of the darkness. We can keep moving forward regardless economic challenges and social distancing. The question to ask is, “What can I do?” Not, “What can I do?” If we focus on what we can do, we’ll see opportunities abound.

Meaningful Work

Even if it feels like we are all flying alone, we are all interconnected. No one is an island. Rendering by Dr. Norbert Lange
Shutterstock

This post originally appeared on the Hearts, Homes, and Hands blog on 2020-04-02 (with different art).

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

—John Donne

One of the things that adds meaning to our lives is doing work that we think is important in some way. Work that helps others, that saves lives, that somehow makes our communities better. That’s one reason I started Hearts, Homes, and Hands instead of just retiring to my ranch. I wanted to continue to make a difference in people’s lives.

But many of us are in jobs that we don’t think of as meaningful. They feel enclosing like we are drowning in drudgery. They give us a pay check but little else.

The Shelter in Place order and the COVID-19 outbreak gives us a chance to rethink how we feel about our jobs and find the meaning that was really hiding there all along.

When I worked as a fast-food cook in high school, I never thought it was an important community service. Compared to being a nurse or a lawyer or a cop, it was almost embarrassing. Sure, flipping burgers put a few bucks in my pocket, but it did nothing else to make me feel good about myself.

Truckers lead mostly solitary lives, but modern society would not function without them. Photo by MNBB Studio
Shutterstock

But look at that job today. The government has literally defined it as essential to the community. Fry cooks and servers turn out to be more important to the world than we—even those of us who have worked as such—ever thought. They feed hungry people. They help keep the cops on the street and the healthcare workers tending the sick.

There are other examples of invisible, under appreciated jobs that are essential to society. Without stockers, grocery store shelves would be barren. Without truck drivers risking their lives to drive through and even into hot spots, there would be nothing for those stockers to put on the shelves. Without warehousers, consolidators, and packagers, those drivers would not be able to deliver our necessities to the stores or directly to our houses. And without factory workers and farmers, there would be nothing to deliver.

But even those without “essential” jobs may be doing important, meaningful work. So, take a minute and look at what you do. I’ll bet in some way, it improves someone’s life somehow.

We have a moment now to think about our lives. Let’s figure out how we make the world a better place. And if it turns out we don’t, let’s figure out how we can.

We are all connected. If we can each improve the life of one person—make one person laugh, make one person smile, or just ease one person’s pain—we are all better for it.