Census Work -- It's a Living

I'm training this week to be a Crew Leader for the 2010 Census, visiting and interviewing the people who haven't returned their questionnaires.

"May you live in interesting times...."

I have never had anything like a managerial job (unless you count teaching a middle school history course). This is something totally new to me.

I kind of wish I hadn't read that blog post, though, about the guy threatening to greet census workers with a shotgun. I feel worse about the prospect of sending enumerators out to interview people like that than I would about going myself.

Oh, well. If I totally hate being a manager, or totally stink at it, it will only be for a few weeks. And if it turns out I like it, that will be something worth knowing.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Seek, and ye shall find."\\

Drywall and Firewall

We're putting up drywall on the living room ceiling, getting sore arms, also getting the occasional faceful of plaster grit/dust/soot from the fire of 1948, gradually getting some ceiling covered.

As I write these words, we're taking a break with a mocha and an apple fritter, feeling perfectly entitled to do so (and it takes some doing to really feel entitled to an apple fritter, what with the grease and the sugar frosting), and I'm struggling with an infestation of "Vitsa Antimalware 2010".

It seems especially unfair to have to deal with a fake Vista program, considering I'm not even running Windows Vista....

Anyway, does anybody know what to do when a viral nasty walks right in past your Norton 360 like it was asleep on the job?

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Try to put computer viruses in perspective."\\

The Good Guys Won!

It just happens that I had a really good day today.

And it ends with the health care reform bill passing.

Thank you, Mister President.

Thank you, House and Senate.

Thank you all.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Remember the good days. They will help carry you through the bad days."\\

Census Work

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week, my mother is going to training as a census worker, so I am looking after my father the whole day, those days.

Tuesday, I took him into Philomath to the gym for his usual workout.

Wednesday, I took him into Corvallis to spend some time with his sister Ann and her husband. Also present was my wife Kathe and Kathe's former husband Jim (who by sheer coincidence lives in Ann's neighborhood).

Thursday, Dad didn't feel up to going out, so we wound up staying home all day. He doesn't have a lot of energy these days, but he does benefit from mental stimulation.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Do what you can and leave the rest."\\

So What Next?

I am at loose ends right now. I haven't exactly been laid off from my caregiver job, but I have been assigned no clients. They say at work that they haven't taken a dislike to me, it's just that there are fewer clients, and none who are willing to have a man in the house.

I believe them. And I don't even resent the injustice of being rejected for being a man. Justice is not guaranteed in this life.

But it does leave me wondering what to do next.

I'm still promoting myself as a massage therapist, but it's not bringing in a sufficient income by itself.

I failed at the end of my first year of nursing school. That still hurts. I still feel a powerful desire to go back and prove myself, and to get the degree and the job that I feel called to do. But it's expensive, and a major challenge, and.... I just don't know whether I should climb into that particular meatgrinder again. I don't know.

I trained as a phlebotomist, in hope of getting more pay and more humane hours than I had as a caregiver. I keep on applying for jobs, but I haven't been hired yet.

I wrote a story and had it published almost twenty years ago. I finally sold another one. I'll have another story finished soon. I could make at least some money writing, if I could write more and faster. There was a time when I would have said that being a writer was the life I wanted. Now that I have had a taste, is it still what I want? I'm not sure.

Kathe said recently that I had always put her in mind of a history teacher. I was surprised -- it seemed like something totally out of left field. Until I remembered that I had, in fact, taught a history class a few years ago, while Kathe was on the board of a small private school. And I'd enjoyed it, too. But is that how I want to spend my fifties? I don't know.

It feels strange and wrong to be at such loose ends at my age. Here I am, forty-nine years old, married 25 years, my kids grown, and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But I am what I am, and my life has brought me to this place, and no other.

So what next?

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "You must, yourself, decide your duty -- and do it well."\\

Wake Up And Smell the Coffee*

*[Because I can't think of a better header for this post than the one used on all eleventy-twelve other posts about the Coffee Party]

Kathe and I attended a Coffee Party at the Dutch Brothers on Monroe.

I doubt if we will regret it.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "This is your country -- if you can keep it."\\

An Icre of Scized Sardels

[Recycled from 07:18, 17 March 2005 and from 10 October 2005, and from 21 March 2009, with new links added on 28 February 2010]

When I have the time, I like to haul The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language up here to the lookout tower and pore over its pages. It's a truly monumental work, its twenty volumes containing some three-quarter of a million words. However, it does not accept just any word. From time to time, some dictionaries have included words based on handwriting errors, incorrect interpretation of a foreign phrase or other misunderstandings. These rejected words are listed in an appendix, from which this partial list was extracted:
Dog-ray: A type of sea life
Compearer: A person not a party to a lawsuit who wishes to oppose the suit, and is approved by the judge to take part.
Exidemic: Synonym for epidemic (but doesn’t it sound like it might mean something beyond a mere epidemic?
Galverly: Energetically.
Goffish: Silly.
Gosting: The rose madder herb [John's suggested alternate definition: a color like unto rose madder].
Graduction: Marking with graduations.
Grout: Wild apple.
Guay: An unbridled horse.
Habenry: Some sort of decoration of the roof or eaves of a house.
Herebote: A military messenger.
Icre: A group of ten [John's observation: potentially a very useful word].
Investive: Enclosing.
Minutal: Diminutive.
Momblishness: Mumbling.
Munity: Freedom.
Phantomnation: An immaterial apparition.
Quadrune: A type of sandstone.
Sardel: A precious stone, apparently salmon-colored [John's suggested definition: a color close to salmon, somewhere between orange and pink].
Scize: To cut or penetrate.
Tendsome: Requiring much attention.
At the end of the appendix was a further list of rejected words with no definitions or explanations appended, including: abacot, cluttish, cone and key, congrument, cookmate, counterset, eposculation, lastery, papescent, segnotic, tip-cheese and topinch.
Naturally, I responded to this list of words which do not exist with a hearty, “Oh, yeah?”
I was instantly fascinated by the idea of rejected words, and resolved to start using them whenever a convenient opportunity arises, and I invite my readers to do the same.
If we all start using words like “gosting” and “munity”, just once in awhile, soon they’ll be getting hits on Google, being included in dictionaries, and will have been brought to life and legitimacy at last.

//The Magic 8-Ball says, "You can do this, if you have nothing better to do."\\

Blood and Embroidery

It was clearly a day for needles: donating blood at Stoker's Vitaworld in the morning, meeting with a crafting group in the evening to work on our sweaters.

Well, okay, there wasn't any needle business I can think of in between, but I doubt they would have added to the experience if they had.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Stick with it."\\

"Ignitor" is Not a Pokemon

I suppose it's a perfectly proper Latinate form for a loanword into English, but it seems wrong. Shouldn't it be "igniter"?

It definitely shouldn't be this hard to replace, or have to be replaced so often (every year or two years since we bought the dern thing). Still, it could be worse.

And today, for the first time ever, it was me replacing it instead of Kathe. Made me feel very accomplished, once I was done snarling and cussing and then done feeling guilty over making such a fuss over getting such a simple job done.*

* Kathe made me feel much better by admitting that the reason she usually changes the glowbar while I am out of the house is so she can get her own cussing and snarling done while I'm not there to hear it.

Oh, and I also just put myself laboriously through the process of checking my bank balance over the phone and double-checking it online, processes so extremely elementary that the bank doesn't even have a tutorial for it. But I managed to pull it off anyhow. And as a bonus, I confirmed that it really does hold a whole $125 more than I thought it did -- bills I thought were going to have to be deferred can be paid on time!

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Take life's little victories where you find them."\\

Thursday Noon Concert

Kathe and I just went to the weekly concert up at the Memorial Union, on the OSU campus. We used to go there all the time with our kids, when they were little. We saw many small children running around, and some small children who were enjoying the music very much.

//The magic Eight-Ball says, "Sometimes you have to walk away from downtown to go downtown together."\\

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Kathe and I went to see it tonight.

I will admit, I went in dread that it would be a mess, because so much was said about how it was completed as a tribute to Heath Ledger, who died during filming. I feared that this was a "sell" for a film that would not stand up on its own merits.

It does. Go see it. Even if you didn't like Time Bandits or Brazil, although frankly, you should have.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Tastes differ."\\

Bad Day

I had a bad day today. I wept and cursed and upbraided myself for sins real and imagined. I could barely get to sleep (and wrote a retroactive post the next day).

I don't know why -- although I have plenty of things to cause me anxiety and concern:

--My father's health is bad. Quite bad indeed. More on this if necessary.

--I am not exactly laid off, but all of my sources of income are greatly reduced, and I have a couple of really big problems that could be helped greatly if I had more money*.

--I have several other problems that I'm not going to go into here.

* I also don't have any money to arrange a session with a therapist....

As I said, I don't know why it all came down on me at once today, but it sure did.

Anyway, not a good day. But maybe tomorrow will be better.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "And when will it happen next?"\\

Metropolis

The other night, Kathe and I went to see the newest restoration of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, at the Darkside Cinema.

Even in the butchered form it has been seen in for most of its life, Metropolis is a masterpiece. Its restored form is vastly better.

And if you live in this area, you could certainly do worse than to go to the Darkside Cinema.

I must call up my 8th Grade teacher, who is so fond of Metropolis, and make sure she knows about it.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "The heart must mediate betwene the head and the hands."\\

A Very Nice Evening

Kathe and I spent the evening at a Meetup.com group in Albany, where everyone brought a sewing project and we sat and talked and sewed and had a very good time.

We spent a good couple of hours sewing on our sweaters, and telling everyone present the story behind them. They told us about their own projects, their jobs, their kids, recent vacations (one to Vietnam), &c.

Nothign special, just an enjoyable evening and a chance to meet new people.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Making new friends is a special occasion indeed."\\

A Very Nice Afternoon

Kathe and I just spent a delightful hour or so with our friend Lana, at the downtown Beanery, where we also ran into various other people we know: Paula, Marie, Rui, a couple of others we know by sight but I couldn't put faces to their names.

We drank mochas and ate a panini and talked about whatever we felt like. It was swell.

We wish we could sit down and spend time that way with more of our friends.

If you should happen to be one of our friends and would like to meet us for coffee or come over and get your feet rubbed or whatever, please let us know.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "It can't hurt to ask for what you want."\\

See(k)ing Egre(t)s(s)

One of the benefits of the work I have been doing helping my mother look after my father has been increased opportunities to drive along Highway 99W between Corvallis and Bellfountain. It's really some very nice country.

I like driving past the Winkle Buttes. I like seeing the hills which are surmounted by the Mysterious Big White Thing. I like seeing the occasional wildlife, including deer, Great Blue Herons and Snowy Egrets and occasional life-forms that I can't identify ("What's brown and long-legged and weighs about 100 pounds and doesn't seem to be a deer?" "I don't know." "Me neither").

The other day, I saw a largish gathering of egrets (I don't know whether they flock, ever, or if it was just a dense accumulation of egrets at a strangely attractive swampy patch). This inspired a train of thought that ran through many different regions, including Robert Heinlein's novel The Door Into Summer, and the thought that Professor Kirk's famous wardrobe must surely be a snowy egress.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Keep your mind on the road when you're driving."\\

A Good Day

I just had a spa day, apparently: since getting out of bed this morning, I had a massage (a trade, with a local practitioner of long standing but with whom I'd never traded before), got a haircut and had an EMDR session with a practitioner of *that* art. Hadn't meant to so indulge myself, but I sure am not going to ap...ologize for it. After the year I've had, I deserve it.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Know your worth."\\

Top Ten Good News Stories From the Muslim Nations

10. Saudi Arabia opened its first coeducational college campus, the King Abdullah Science and Technology University. In a country where the sexes have been so separated in public that some have spoken of 'gender Apartheid,' this move, which came from King Abdullah, provoked raging controversy. When a prominent cleric criticized having male and female students on the same campus and the teaching of modern scientific theories like Darwinism, the king summarily fired his ass. It may seem a small thing, but many big social processes start small. Most Americans forget that Princeton U. did not become coed until 1969.

9. Qatar is on track to average 7.5 percent per annum growth for the next few years. The natural gas giant is a cauldron of development activity. It permits Aljazeera satellite news to remain the most open and controversial media outlet in the Arab world. It is expanding the 'Education City' complex, in which many American universities maintain campuses, and which serves as a key educational hub for the Gulf and its region. (This robust expansion contrasts with the difficult times higher education is facing in Dubai).

8. A Pew Forum on Religion and Life poll finds that American Muslims are unusual in the degree to which they are integrated into mainstream American society and demonstrate moderate attitudes, condemning religious extremism and violence. They differ siegnificantly from the profile of Muslims in the UK and Germany, e.g, in these regards. (Muslims in the US are generally from higher class origins and are better educated and wealthier than is typically the case with European Muslims).

7. The information revolution is making strides in the Arab world. A University of Maryland Poll finds that "the use of the internet continued to grow, with 36% stating that they use the internet at least several times a week and only 38% stating that they never use the internet (compared with 52% in 2008).

6. Albania has averaged 10 percent a year growth for each of the last four years, and was the fastest-growing economy in Europe in 2009. It held elections in 2009, and although they were imperfect, an EU report described them [pdf] "as meeting most OSCE commitments," despite flaws. The European Union seems to be giving the country a nod in its application to join the EU. Albania has an especially aggressive government policy toward implementing alternative energy and wants to be the first green country in Europe. It depends heavily on thermal and hydroelectric plants (perhaps too heavily). Brussels concluded this year, "The government took measures towards the development of the sector by issuing licences for the construction of seven wind farms with a total installed capacity of about 1360 MW and one 140 MW biomass thermal power station." Albania, a country of 3.2 million, is 70-80% of Muslim heritage, but a majority of the country is non-religious. That is, these European Muslims are more secular than German, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Polish Christians.

5. The small Gulf oil monarchy of Kuwait took steps toward greater democracy and rule of law. Women were given the vote in 2005, and in the May parliamentary elections, 4 women were for the first time elected to the 50-seat parliament, and fundamentalists only gained 16 seats, down from 24 previously. As Greg Gause points out, in December parliament was allowed to go forward with a vote of no-confidence in the prime minister, which he survived. What is significant is that he is from the ruling Al-Sabah family and it had previously not been considered dignified to subject a high official from the family to such a vote.

4. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world at about 230 mn., had successful parliamentary elections in 2009, further consolidating the country's decade-old democracy. Secular parties did better this year, and support for Muslim fundamentalism dropped, both in the voting both and in opinion polls. President Barack Obama's enormous popularity in the country is credited by some observers for a sharp decline in approval of Muslim militancy. Indonesia has become the world's 19th largest economy, and it, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the three Muslim-majority states in the G20.

3. Turkey, which averaged 5.8 percent a year economic growth between 2002 and 2008, was slowed but not devastated by the world's financial crisis. In these 6 years it has moved from being the world's 26th largest economy to being the 17th largest. It is on track to be the second fastest-growing economy in 2010, after South Korea, according to OECD projections. The democratically elected Justice and Development Party government continued to govern with considerable popularity. Despite severe tensions between Ankara and the Kurdish minority in the southeast, the ruling party took the bold step of pushing for more Kurdish rights.

2. Stability returned to Lebanon. Successful parliamentary elections, untainted by Syrian interference, were held in June, and a national unity government was formed in November after a lengthy negotiating process. The Lebanese army intervened forcefully and in a timely fashion to nip potential sectarian flare-ups in the bud. The 13,000 UN troops patrolling the south helped back the Lebanese army, and despite tensions with Israel on the part both of Palestinian militants and the Shiite Hizbullah militia, there was no significant clash on thbe southern border. Prime Minister Saad Hariri recently visited Damascus, building on earlier diplomacy by Maronite Catholic president Michel Suleiman, a former general, and reducing regional tensions. Lebanon is probably now about 70% Muslim if the children are counted. The year 2009 saw the return of musical and cultural festivals and the country of 4 million attracted 2 million tourists, the best year ever. Lebanon's banking and real estate sectors were slowed but by no means devastated by the global financial crisis, since they had adopted conservative investment policies as a result of bad experiences during the years of instability in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The country was on track to grow 6 percent in 2009, down from 8.5 percent in 2008. The brutal Israeli assault on Lebanon's economic infrastructure of summer, 2006, set the country back three decades, and it will take time fully to recover. But despite fragility and a few clashes and small bombings, it is fair to say that at the moment, your biggest problem in Beirut is that you can't get a timely reservation at the better restaurants.

1. A considerable proportion of the Iranian public resorted to concerted street and cultural protests against the stealing of the June presidential election by incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Crowds demanded popular sovereignty and democracy and condemned dictatorship. Among the largest demonstrations were held just last Sunday. It is the greatest political awakening in Iran for 30 years. (Well, OK, you heard about this one, but not as much last weekend as it deserved; the corporate media go on vacation from news at awkward times.)

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Look for good news, don't wait for it to come to you."\\

Contact Light 2009

[If all goes well, a slightly different version of this newsletter will accompany our year-end cards]

Contact Light 2009
A Blackberry House Production by John M. Burt, 960 SW Jefferson Avenue, Corvallis, Oregon 97333 USA
john_m_burt@hotmail.com // katheburt@hotmail.com // burtfamily@live.com // john_m_burt.blogspot.com // thesweater.blogspot.com // johnandkathe.blogspot.com //

It's been a pretty good year, over-all. We're living together and having fun, in a variety of ways. Kathe continues to work as a process server. John continues to work as a caregiver and massage therapist, and hopes soon to be working as a phlebotomist (that's the person who draws your blood when the doctor sends you to the lab for a test). He took the course and passed with outstanding grades, but hasn't yet landed a job. We are continuing to work on one of our long-term project, the Coffee Shack Book, a task which is made easier by Kathe's job, which allows scouting the entire mid-valley area for new coffee shacks, and also allows John to ride along when he's not otherwise occupied,

Our son Walden and our grandson Richard Loy Gentry are both living in Corvallis. We don't see a lot of Walden and even less of Dick, but they both seem to be doing well.
Our daughter Asnakech is living in Portland. Our daughter Mestowet is living in Georgia near Atlanta. There is more we could say about family matters but...they are family matters. Here and now, let it be enough to say that there are other people we hold in our hearts, also.

We have no pets unless you count the elderly cat we feed in the shed. We inherited her from a former neighbor, and I don't think of her so much a pet as a feral animal we feel sorry for. It's hard not to, looking at her. She's more or less friendly and appreciative, but she will never be a house cat. Last winter she disappeared for several days and returned minus her tail. We think maybe the local raccoon ate it.

John's father remains in poor health, but his mother looks after him diligently and with energy. John helps out a lot, and is grateful for the opportunity.

As always, we continue to work on the house. And, as always, it is not finished. The roof, foundation and exterior walls are sound, though and those are the most important parts.

The community art theme for da Vinci Days this year was fish. We disdained the precut fish patterns the organizers offered, opting instead for our usual contribution, a collage, assembled on our usual schedule, atthelastminute. We've done worse. http://www.davinci-days.org/

After years of hearing compliments on our "signature" sweaters, and telling people as much of the backstory as they would hold still for, we decided we needed to have cards printed up telling the tale. We still don't have the cards, but at least we can give them the Web address of the sweaters' blog: http://thesweater.blogspot.com

We are so sorry we missed the chance to pick up the "Rude Hippy" story from Craigslist; it would have been an excellent addition to the sweater blog.

Oh, you haven't heard it?

Apparently, we offended someone by not talking to them long enough when they commented on the sweater (there was just one, until last year), and they posted on the Craigslist rant page. A wonderful rant, about how we were probably liberals, and self-centered, like all liberals, and didn't have time to be polite to someone who stopped us on the street to comment on the sweater (described as "technicolor barf"), and besides, I was too thin and John was too fat, and so on and on. Probably they said "That's an ugly sweater" and we replied, "Sorry you don't like it," and walked on, entirely unaware that they wanted us to stay around for further derision. Rude us. Actually, the community appreciation seems to be picking up.

We didn't really observe Christmas this year, but we did mark New Year's with, among other things, a new digital camera, with which we took the attached photo.

Well, here's hoping next year will be even better. Especially that health-care thing.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Take a cup of kindness."\\

Fried Noodles and Fudge

Kathe and I went to the Mongolian Grill last night, a rare enough outing for us to be worth mentioning. We had a coupon, made sure the tip was calculated according to the full price rather than the discounted, ate lots of noodles and veggies and meat, and had a good time.

When we got home, we found that our son Walden had come by and left us some of his latest batch of fudge. It was good.

The fudge was wrapped in aluminum foil marked NOM NOMS, so I sent him a text saying, "Thx 4 da noms kthxbaignite." He replied, "Youve been spending too much time in the tubes."

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "hes probly rite u kno"\\