Rovelli, Zanny and Arkady

ebikes, big and small

I just wanted to make note of the book I am currently reading: There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important than Kindness, and other thoughts on physics, philosophy and the world, by Carlo Rovelli (2018, translated 2020). It's a book of short essays, accurately summarized by the title. A gem of a book, imminently readable no matter what your level of understanding of physics/philosophy/the world.

The last essay was written in Italy near the beginning of the pandemic (April 2020), in which he talks about his observations of what is happening, in Italy and elsewhere. The last paragraph is probably the best last paragraph of a book of essays that I have read so far:

"We are not the masters of the world, we are not immortal; we are, as we have always been, like leaves in the autumn wind. We are not waging a battle against death. That battle we must inevitably lose, as death prevails anyway. What we are doing is struggling, together, to buy one another more days on Earth. For this short life, despite everything, seems beautiful to us, now more than ever."

I recommend this book, no matter what your level of understanding of history, poetry, science, philosophy. The essays are short and easy to read, but you will need to allow yourself extra time to muse about them. 

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As a subscriber to The Economist, I get to listen or participate in their zoom calls on the War in Ukraine and its implications. Each episode is one hour long, with three or four Economist editors, including the chief editor Zanny Minton Beddoes, on a Friday afternoon. For one episode two of the editors, Zanny and Arkady Ostrokov, travelled to Kyiv to interview Volodomyr Zelensky. 

Another episode included Arkady in a vehicle somewhere in eastern Ukraine reporting first hand on the eastern front of the war. That was a somewhat tense episode since it was live and they were unable to connect with Arkady until the last 15 minutes of the hour, due to internet connectivity issues (but since he was in the middle of a war there was some speculation as to whether his lack of connectivity was due to more ominous problems). 

One can actually submit one's own questions which the Economist editors field and attempt to answer on air. I have not tried to do so, but I guess it's an option. One participant asked why Arkady was in a car without a seatbelt, which Arkady assured the world was because the car he was in was parked on the side of the road (on the eastern front). 

The Zelensky interview was very interesting to watch, Zelensky switched from English to Ukrainian to Russian randomly and without a hitch. The start of the interview was delayed somewhat due to the absence of the translator who was busy translating elsewhere, Zelensky commented that it says something when the President must wait on the availability of the President's translator (strictly speaking it was interpretation not translation; translation pertains to written language). 

During the interview we saw Arkady, Zanny and Volodomyr in the same shot; the look of awe on Zanny's face communicated very well her sense that she was in the presence of a great man. She commented later that as a journalist she would leap at the chance to interview Putin, but knew that going to Moscow to interview Putin would be far more risky and dangerous than going to Kyiv to interview Zelensky, her employer would never allow it. Still...

Sunny Days

Last few weeks have been terribly busy, and I have probably been pushing myself too hard. I am keeping lists of things I have to do, and as each item gets checked off two more get added on. I am not making progress.

A pile of turtles

Went kayaking, it was fun (and exhausting). As it turned out, the second Covid booster seriously set me back. I almost didn't go kayaking, I felt so sick. A full week after getting the shot I think I recovered, but the first day of kayaking left me almost too dizzy to function. It was only a bit less than two hours of an easy paddle up a quiet meandering river. We saw piles of turtles. Literally piles, they were perched one atop another on floating logs in the sun. The second day of paddling was much better, I had recovered from the booster shot and was able to spend the whole day out on the water. 

There were six of us in a three bedroom cottage, ranging in age from early sixties to mid-seventies. The difference in energy level between the three in their sixties and the three in our seventies was pretty stark. The other two seventy year olds were recovering from bouts of Covid in April, so they were in only slightly better shape than me. On the second and third days we split up into two paddling groups, the younger women wanted to go further faster. They even went swimming!

It felt good to be out in my kayak again, the trip was so worth it.

Shortly after I got back, the roofers arrived to reroof my house. The idea is to have brand new shingles under the solar panels. In three days they had most of it done but there are some ridge shingles missing because of shortages; none to be had in the entire province. They'll be back to finish the job when the ridge shingles are available again. I warned them about my crow family, but there was no conflict, the men and the crows did not bother each other.

I called the solar panel installer after the roof was done to get an estimate of when he planned to start. Turns out some document or other got lost so there is a delay. Surprise surprise. He thinks he will start in 3 weeks, and it will take about 6 weeks. I am not holding my breath.

Then I put my car up for sale, it sold within a couple of days. I priced it at an amount that I wanted, then after it sold I looked on the internet to see what it should be priced at. I was about $500 under what they said it was worth. Even so, the guy who bought it tried to talk me down in price. I am pretty sure he knew it was already underpriced, he just wanted to see if he could get an even better deal. Nope.

My next big job is to get the house painted. I had already lined up a friend to help me do that, and she wanted another person to do the ladder work. A friend of hers has a son with a mental illness that pretty much prevents him from getting a steady job, she arranged for him to help, after running it past me of course. But she can't start until June and I had the idea that the young man could start this month doing cleaning and scraping. So he's been here for the past few days. He's a good worker, he just has difficulty relating to people. That's fine with me. He has some experience with this kind of work so I don't really have to supervise him. I know his mother from the dog park, she used to have a border collie that Hapi liked, which says a lot because Hapi didn't much care for border collies.

New garden frames and transplants-in-waiting

Since coming back from kayaking we've had beautiful sunny weather and I've been working in my garden. It is slow going because it's heavy work and I am tired and dizzy. I'm not making progress as fast as I would like. My transplants are huge and desperately need to be planted, but strictly speaking it is too early yet and I haven't got the beds ready for them. I did manage to get peas, spinach and some potatoes planted.

I love seeing the goldfinches and cardinals flitting about, and the male cardinals are quite noisy now, declaring their territories. Pinky and Big Red are still fighting, I saw them in a showdown in my neighbour's driveway. But they saw me watching and flew away before they really got into it.Traffic at the bird feeder is dropping off, but I keep it up because the cardinals always come in the evening and I like seeing them.

I am being referred to an internal medicine guy and I am supposed to go to the Chronic Conditions centre for a NASA Lean Test. That's to see if I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). If I have POTS then I guess it means my heart has been affected, but not sure how much. Not even sure I have it, but it would explain the two years of dizziness and fatigue. It's also a known complication of Long Covid.

I am reading an interesting book, A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky. It's about his years in Kenya studying a troop of baboons. He obviously has a deep fondness for his study subjects and a wicked sense of humour. At the start of the book he says that the tragic last chapter is completely true, but he did change a few names. My curiousity caused me to read the last chapter first, and it was so tragic I almost couldn't go back and read the first chapters. Who knew you could be so fond of baboons? Stuff I've read about baboons suggests that the males run the show and females are completely under their control, but it turns out that is wishful thinking on the part of (male) animal behaviourists. As usual, things are a lot more complicated. However, because Sapolsky's research involved taking blood samples, and the females were mostly pregnant, lactating or generally taking care of children, he couldn't take samples from them. Taking a sample involved darting a baboon, waiting for it to fall unconscious, carrying it back to his vehicle where he took the sample and then returning the baboon to where it was when it fell unconscious. Since he couldn't really do that to a female who couldn't afford to spend time away and unconscious, most of the baboons that he knew up close and personal were male. 

All the lovely sunny weather we are having does not bode well for summer crops. The land is unusually dry. It is supposed to be a La Nina summer which is unusual too, and that means more hurricane activity. The large number of snow storms we had this winter were due to a La Nina winter. Not sure what unusually dry ground and unusual hurricane activity will add up to, not much good I guess.