Shocks and boats and billy goats
Another off-beat compendium
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Off-beat. I guess that describes this newsletter. I write often about oblique things, diagonals, edges. That’s where the tension, the spring that brings things to life, is wound up.
There is a crack, a crack in everything, Leonard Cohen wrote. That’s how the light gets in.
Yard sails
It’s summer. Time to get those watercraft off the lawns and onto the water. Here are some grounded boats I’ve come across.
Goats
Goats are funny, with their cute little horns and yapping baas. I just remembered a rhyme from my childhood. It was in my mother’s grammar book; the exercise was to find all the nouns.
When I went looking to see if I remembered it right (I had) I found only one incidence on the Web. It credits Richard W. Emery.
It’s an earworm of a rhyme. The word for that is doggerel.
Billy Goats Chew
The billy goat would like to chew Your picture book or shirt or shoe. He eats the laundry off the line. He likes the taste of sticks and twine. His whiskers wiggle in his chin. He doesn't REALLY swallow TIN. The nanny goat is billy's bride. They chew the laundry side by side.
Shooting a goat
I wanted to run a photo of a billy goat, but I couldn’t find one online that I liked. So I decided to shoot one myself.
And here is how I found my subject.
Right after I downsized in 2002, moving from Southwest Portland to Southeast, there was a huge fire on the route to my new apartment. It destroyed the sprawling Monte Carlo Restaurant on Southeast Belmont. It was empty at the time, the owner having moved the operation to Gresham, where it failed to thrive and soon closed.
For several years after the fire, the site was a vacant lot ringed by a cyclone fence. Somebody brought in goats to keep the grass from overgrowing, and they proved a big hit with the neighborhood.
Everyone knew them as the Belmont Goats.
Eventually the two-acre site was developed into a Market of Choice and the Goat Blocks apartments. The goats were removed, first to a haven in the Lents neighborhood and eventually to an enclosure on North Syracuse Street.
That’s where I went to get a picture of a goat. I took a couple of buses, ending up at North Willamette Boulevard and Mecum Avenue.
Goat visit
I got lost, but helpful neighbors turned me around. I was looking for Syracuse Street. Well, here were some streets named after colleges: Yale, then Amherst and Princeton. Getting warmer. Ah, Syracuse. The street dead-ends at a fenced enclosure, and there are the Belmont Goats.
When I got to the Belmont Goats site, all the goats were on the other side of the enclosure, and they were standing around, not gamboling, as I’ve seen goats do. Too far away for a good shot.
But then, a miracle! One curious billy goat came over to check me out, and I got the photo I needed. According to the website, this goat’s name is Cooper, he’s a Nigerian dwarf, and he’s 11 years old. He’s even got chin whiskers, like the goat in the poem.
Bus adventure
The ride to the goats, on the 44 Mock’s Crest bus, was uneventful, but the return, on the 75 Cesar Chavez bus, was a real trip.
That bus travels down Lombard to MLK to Dekum to Columbia Boulevard before heading south on Northeast 42nd, which eventually becomes 39th, recently renamed as César Chavéz Boulevard.
I caught the bus outside the Fred Meyer on North Lombard and debarked at the Fred Meyer on Hawthorne. On the way I saw messages:
“Better banking for everyone” at the Lombard Avantis Credit Union
“Keep calm and floss on” at Edelweiss Dental
“Check out our new beer cave,” at the 365 Convenience Store on 42nd
University streets
Besides Yale, Princeton and Syracuse, there’s an Oberlin Street. No Cornell—that’s the university where my younger daughter teaches law—but there is a Chautauqua Boulevard. And Chautauqua is only a few hours by car from Ithaca, Cornell’s town, in upstate New York.
Some other North Portland street names: Congress, Jessup, Wall, Woolsey, Westona.
Shocking
I recently came across a study published in the journal Science in 2014.
Researchers at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville left volunteer subjects (UV undergrads) alone in a sparsely furnished lab room.
Their instructions were to just sit and think for 15 minutes.
Also in the room was a device that would deliver an electric shock if the subject pushed a button.
The researchers were astonished to find that “Even though all participants had previously stated that they would pay money to avoid being shocked with electricity, 67% of men and 25% of women chose to inflict it on themselves rather than just sit there quietly and think.”
Why would you do that?
You may be thinking about now how you would never shock yourself just to allay 15 minutes of boredom. But here’s the shocking truth: I probably would.
The problem isn’t sitting and doing nothing but think for 15 minutes. I do that all the time. I can clear my mind for lengthy periods and find it easy to meditate or concentrate.
No, the problem is curiosity.
Were I in that little lab, I would be so intrigued by the shock machine. I’m pretty sure I’d test it, to see if the shock was just a tingle or a real jolt.
I might even try it twice, if the first were a tingle, to see if the voltage varied.
So the researchers would conclude I couldn’t stand to just sit and think, and that wouldn’t be true at all.
I’m just someone who wants to explore my environment.
Chalk one up for unintended consequences.
Computer words
The word “troubleshoot” has floated into consciousness. It’s a fun word, a new word, a useful word, strong and sinewy.
At least, I thought it was a new word, a computer-era neologism. But actually, troubleshoot has been around since the 1870s. It originally described men who fixed problems with telegraph wires.
Those were the days. When Morse code was the hot new technology, and Wells Fargo was the swiftest way to deliver.
Morse morsels
Morse code still works as a plot device. In one of her more recent Inspector Gamache novels, Louise Penny has a detective listen for the clicks a woman makes with her facial hardware, a clandestine communication. I wish I could remember which book that was. Anyone?
This being the age where you can find anything on the Internet, including one iteration of a billy goat poem, someone has created a way to translate words into Morse Code automatically.
Here is a transcription of “I am in love with Morse code” courtesy of morsecode.world.
.. / .- -- / .. -. / .-.. --- ...- . / .-- .. - .... / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
Computer neologisms
There are likely many terms that cropped up with computers, but the ones I tested out, like troubleshoot and bandwidth, actually go a ways back. Bandwidth, in the sense of a capacity for understanding or absorbing information, is a relatively new use of the term, but the word itself has been around as long as radio, in the original sense of frequencies.
Think up a few
I learned the terms “kludgy” (inelegant design) and “RSN” (for Real Soon Now) from The Soul of a New Machine. This book about the creation of a new minicomputer came out in 1981 and won both a Pulitzer and a National Book Award. It was a super read.
Several years later, I had a chance to interview the author, Tracy Kidder. He had written another good book, Among Schoolchildren, about spending a year in a fifth-grade classroom. I was covering education for The Oregonian then. We had a nice conversation over the phone.
Just a few more
Some words, like bandwidth, acquired new meaning as computers became commonplace. Among them are “tweet” and “Google.” The latter is a play on the word googol, a very big number with, like, 100 zeros.
Or maybe Google founder Sergey Brin just liked Barney Google, with his goo-goo-googly eyes.
Barney Google
Barney Google with the goo-goo-googly eyes Barney Google had a wife three times his size She sued Barney for divorce, now he's living with his horse Barney Google with the goo-goo-googly eyes. Barney Google with the goo-goo-googly eyes Barney Google bet his horse would win the prize When the horses ran that day Sparkplug ran the other way Barney Google with his goo-goo-googly eyes --Billy Rose and Con Conrad, 1923
Young profiteers
As I was tooling through Portland’s Richmond neighborhood, I came upon a trio of boys who had commandeered a street corner to set up a limeade stand. Two bucks bought me a half cup of tepid seltzer with a vague aftertaste of lime.
As I was preparing to leave, one of the youngsters parked himself in front of me. “You know, we accept tips,” he told me in a sly voice.
It was a brazen appeal to a captive adult, but I caved. I gave him another dollar.
Cat nap time?
A new acquaintance, Kim Yoshihara, recounted her attempt to adopt a cat. She went to an adoption site out in Yamhill County, but was not able to see any cats. The cats were in cages, and the cages were covered with cloths. Kim was told it was nap time for the felines and they couldn’t be disturbed.
These were cats, not kindergartners! Anybody who’s spent any time around cats knows they nap when and where they please. They don’t need a lights-out time.
Kim left, catless. She eventually found her kitty. Just not in Yamhill County.
Cultivating
My mom used to say I should cultivate friends. I had visions of hoeing a garden.
Other than that, I had no idea how to proceed. Learning how to make friends was something I didn’t cotton to until my mid-30s. I was retarded that way.
Mom knew how to cultivate. She had a few dear friends during her life, most of whom I never met. She corresponded with her roommate from pre-WWII San Francisco during her years of marriage and divorce in New York State, Minnesota and South Dakota, until that woman’s death in the 1990s. She valued the other members of the Portland Parks & Rec team that walked around Mount Hood a few decades ago in 10-mile increments on a trail that no longer exists. They were all seniors, including a nun in her 90s. All of them died before my mother did, in 2011 at the age of 97.
So, cultivate your friends. They will grow in the garden of your soul forever.
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It’s not as late as I thought it was, and later than I thought it was. Which is it? It doesn’t matter. It’s both.
All answers are correct
You might not know it, But questions don’t matter. I’ve given up on them, So meaningless they are. In today’s crazy climate Where facts don’t matter, How can you even define What ideas are true? Besides, as you suspect, Answers don’t matter. All of them have become Dubious at best. So forget about questions, Forget about answers. What matters now Is just who you are. You are your own truth, Isn’t that obvious? Just make it matter In defining your world.
—30—
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My oddest local boat encounter was a good-sized sailboat at a homeless camp next to the Springwater Trail. I always wondered how in hell it got there (and why).
I recently adopted a cat. Didn't see any with their cages covered because they were napping. And the even better news is that I adopted a lovely young boy, Marlo. Will have to see if he likes me to put a blanket over the Amazon box he just "adopted" for himself as his napping place.