Procrastination Tips Nos. 6-10

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Philip Heckman

Procrastination Tip #6
A pencil-sharpener app would be awesome.

Procrastination Tip #7
Is wool hair or fur?

Procrastination Tip #8
Arrange the fingers of one hand so that each of them simultaneously touches the other four. Don’t let anyone see you doing this.

Procrastination Tip #9
Seven of 10 people can think of more English words that contain “uu” than contain “aa” than contain “ii.”

Procrastination Tip #10
Suppose “the young man from Nantucket” were a haiku instead of a limerick.

Come on, what’s your favorite procrastination tip?

Faithful to the book

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Philip Heckman

When two-year-old O finds a tricycle in his grandparents’ garage, he first puts on Grammy’s helmet before trying to ride.

Each time we play Driving the Car, O fastens his imaginary seatbelt.

Between bouts of activity, O is likely to sit down with a book.

O is a modern child, growing up in a fully electronic household. His parents’ primary sources of news and information are Internet devices. O has long known how to unlock a phone or an iPad, and he loves, loves, loves pushing buttons. But just as O associates helmets with bicycles and seatbelts with cars, he connects books with relaxation.

O expects someone to read a book to him before his afternoon nap and again at bedtime. In between, he’ll ask for storytime whenever he’s in the mood. Sometimes he wants to be read to, sometimes he wants to explore pages on his own. In any case, books have become the linguistic equivalent of comfort food for him.

Because of the positive associations his parents set up, O doesn’t question the value of books any more than he questions the value of bicycle helmets or a seatbelts. All of them provide refuge from the uncertainties of a busy, stressful world. Because of the connections he’s making today, he’ll always travel safely, and he’ll always want to curl up with a book.

Superstition by the numbers

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Philip Heckman

The marks of balls that didn’t make it out of Fenway Park. Not humid enough?

A hallmark of human endeavor is conventional wisdom. Sports seem to be particularly rife with self-appointed wise men and their decrees. And the overlap of the baseball and football seasons is particularly fertile ground for pundits to plow.

Conventional wisdom, of course, goes largely unchallenged and eventually becomes “law.” It also gives life to superstition. Consider these examples:

* By this point in 2012, you’ve surely heard that no NFL football team that started with a 2-4 (or 1-5 or 0-6) record has ever played in that year’s Super Bowl. This factually correct statement is always delivered predictively, as if such numbers were a curse, rather than the marks of mediocre teams unlikely to finish in contention.

* Every year that the New York Yankees earn a spot in the MLB playoffs, we hear that their mere presence should strike fear into the opposition because the Yankees have a (current) record 27 championship trophies on the shelf. This factually correct statement is also delivered predictively, as if the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig had influence over the flight of the ball.

Superstition is part of sports’ charm to some degree. However, superstition makes us less likely to question factually incorrect pronouncements. For instance, how many times have you heard the conventional wisdom that humidity gives baseball pitchers an advantage “because the ball doesn’t travel as far,” ignoring the fact that water vapor is less dense than the other stuff that air is made of.

Unfortunately there’s little that can be done to remove conventional wisdom and superstition from sports. It does pay, though, to roll your eyes when you hear it and check the facts when pundits have their say.

What’s your favorite example of conventional wisdom or superstition in sports?

What’s your child’s storytime preference–paper or glass?

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Philip Heckman

Perhaps you heard about the recent report that parents and children both prefer books on paper to e-books when reading together. I suspect that if you’re above a certain age, you found this news to be an encouraging reaffirmation of your values, otherwise known as curmudgeon-hood.

Conventional (read “elderly”) wisdom has it that paper is a more “warm and nurturing” medium than an electronic device. I agree, at least for the time being.

The key phrase above is “reading together.” What is warm and nurturing about reading together is the physical contact between parent and child. At present paper books lend themselves to better contact because they give readers a qualitatively different physical experience–a distinctly three-dimensional experience. Think of what’s involved in turning a paper page:

The Poky Little Puppy

1. Grasp the right-hand page, usually at the corner, by separating the top sheet from those underneath.

2. Life the page and carry it to the left;

3. Drop the page and smoothe it.

Can a child do this easily? Some can, some can’t, especially the very young. (That’s why “board books” were invented.)

Poky on screen

Now compare that with what’s involved in “turning” an electronic “page:”

1. Swipe the screen or press a button. That’s it.

Can a child do this easily? Probably. So in terms of ease of use, the electronic book wins “hands down.” But in terms of physical interaction, paper provides the reader with sensations on more than one level.

Electronic pages feel the same to your touch whether they’re displaying War and Peace or The Poky Little Puppy. In tactile variety, paper is the clear winner. Different paper books have different size pages, using paper of different weights and degrees of opacity. And who has not noticed and enjoyed a “new book smell?” As a result, a paper page turns with more fanfare and tactile feedback than an electronic page. So much so that learning the skill of paper-turning can give a young child a sense of accomplishment, an added positive association.

Of course, the relative advantages of the two media will likely change as technology improves. Already e-books provide color, a major shortcoming of early devices, and full-blown Search features. But I’d say the jury is still out on the hyperlinks that e-books make possible. Although they have the potential to enrich text, hyperlinks can also distract viewers with games and activities of dubious value. As a result, e-books are just as likely to detract from a good story as to make it better.

The complex positive associations that many of today’s parents have with the books of their youth prejudice them in favor of paper. The above study also found that 60% of parents prefer that their children read from paper rather than glass.

But who knows? Twenty years from now when today’s children, who are more familiar and comfortable with technology of all kinds, become parents, they might prefer e-books. And then the definition of “warm and nurturing” will change, despite what the old folks think.

Until then, though, let your child be your active reading partner. Together enjoy the feeling of lifting each page to see what that precocious puppy is going to do next.

Paper or glass? What’s your preference for your own reading? For reading with your child?

Procrastination Tips Nos. 1-5

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Philip Heckman

Procrastination Tip #1
Convection currents in the air above hot coffee cause cream scum floating on the surface to ripple and flex. Stare as long as you want, the patterns formed will never repeat.

Procrastination Tip #2
Everything hung on the walls within sight is slightly crooked. Attempts at telekinetic correction will only make the degree of crookedness more pronounced.

Procrastination Tip #3
Thread count–it’s considered a quality-of-life measure in some circles.

Procrastination Tip #4
Seventeen of 46 Triple-A baseball teams are named after animals, 18 if you consider a baseball “bat” to be an animal. Most of the animal mascots are depicted as ferocious and/or stern in their team logos, even the parakeet.

Procrastination Tip #5
What is the Botswana-Pula-to-US-Dollar exchange rate right this minute?!

Come on, what’s your favorite procrastination tip?

Rocky Mountain hiatus (2/2)

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Philip Heckman

Post 2 of 2: A few weeks ago I took a backpacking trip in Rocky Mountain National Park with my son, my return to a particular high country campsite after 40 years. Here’s the second half of my notes, edited to seem even more insightful than the first.

Timber Lake with the route to Mt. Ida via the “V” in the background. (Click to enlarge.)

THURSDAY, Sep 6

Made Timber Lake today, a “long, hard slog.” Quite a few day trippers up here, mostly fishers. One group of 3 with day packs, shorts and sleeveless shirts just left for the trailhead nearly 5 miles away. It’s 5pm, with maybe 3 hours of light left. Good luck with that. I’d hate to be stumbling around on the trail in the dark.

.
Cooking has been a challenge. Fires are prohibited and only stoves allowed. This means balancing cooking equipment, eating utensils, ingredients, and cooked food on rocks, logs, or the ground. So I was delighted to find the only flat spot in the entire park at Rockslide Campsite: the stump of a dead pine felled by a jack with a Euclidean sensibility. Even better than merely flat, the cut surface is within 1-2 degrees of perfectly level, as the water in my bottle reveals.

A fisher coming down from the lake alerted us to moose ahead. Minutes later we saw them, a cow and her calf, both aware of us, alert, but unwilling to move from their creekside forage 40 yards away. We paid homage and moved on.

Timber Lake is smaller than I remembered, and comprised of three distinct basins, but still cold and still clear.

Rain during the night, light rain. Cozy.

View of Timber Lake from Mt. Ida with rain and hail on the way.

FRIDAY, Sep 7

Cold, clammy morning. Clouds began to break apart about 11, allowing a trip up Mt. Ida. Rain kept menacing, however, with the temp alternating between 50 and 70 degrees, depending on the sun. Got within a few hundred feet of the 12,800-foot summit, when hail and approaching dark clouds hung with streamers of rain convinced us to turn back.

.
Nick came face-to-face with the moose cow and calf on the return trip, maybe within 20 feet. The cow quietly turned away, and after a second the calf followed. By the time we covered the 20 feet, they were out of sight.

Hail continued from the lake to the Rockslide Campsite, turning to rain just as we zipped up the tent. Sun 15 minutes later, with rain 15 minutes after that, lasting an hour or so. Ate dinner early, not knowing how long the dry spell would last.

Nick and I on the shoulder of Mt. Ida.

SATURDAY, Sep 8

Hiked out with nearly the same loads we carried in (I overestimated our food needs). The sunny, cool morning was a relief, considering the five miles of lunges my legs suffered on the way down.

.
An excellent adventure, sweaty at times but always relaxed. It’s comforting to know that hard physical labor is still possible at my age, although it helps to have a good companion to set the pace and lend a hand over the tougher spots.

The trail, the lake, the mountain have all changed a great deal in 40 years, but that’s more a statement of the weakness of memory than the power of nature. The two trips could not have been more rewarding in their different ways. I’ll cherish them both, the one when I wondered what I was going to make of myself and the one when I knew and wondered if it was too late to do better.

Rocky Mountain hiatus (1/2)

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Philip Heckman

Post 1 of 2: A few weeks ago I took a backpacking trip in Rocky Mountain National Park with my son, my return to a particular high country campsite after 40 years. Here’s the first half of my notes, edited to seem more insightful.

Timber Creek at dusk. (Click to enlarge.)

TUESDAY, Sep 4

We reached Timber Creek Campsite–3 miles from the trailhead in 3 hours–with no signs of altitude sickness. The trail up to the campsite would look exactly like Timber Creek if it were under water.

.
Flecks of light in the creek–iron pyrite. I wish my 2-year-old grandson Oliver were here so we could pan for gold (son Nick is no fool).

I estimate one-half of the trees on the mountainsides are dead. (Ranger later says they’re the work of four kinds of pine beetles, all native to Colo., which are usually held in check by harsh winters. Within a few years, Rocky Mountain National Park will burn to the ground. Just a heads up, taxpaying nature-lovers.)

Blasé tourist mulie. (Photo by Nick Heckman.)

I’m going to get sunburned! But it sure feels good now.

A mule deer wandered through camp soon after the tent was up and I was changing out of my shorts. He got as close as 15 feet over the course of 15 minutes. His new antlers were bright red and festooned with partially shed velvet, which dreadlocked around his head. After losing interest in us, he moseyed off to rub his unwanted dreads against some bushes.

In bed from 8pm to 9am–slept maybe 9 of the 13 hours while trying to adjust to mummy bag confinement and the cold (mid 30s, I’d say). Thought I heard a bear in the night playing bongos on our food containers, but they were untouched in the morning.

Long Meadow. The muddy patches to the right provide animals with salt and other trace minerals.

WEDNESDAY, Sep 5

Climbed to Long Meadow today, a short (1 mile) hike up a steep trail criss-crossed with tree trunks and other guerrilla-like hazards. The meadow was open, golden and still. With more than a mile of grassland in sight, the only wildlife we saw were several gray jays and an eagle.

.
Bear scat everywhere we hiked. At last, the answer to a long-pondered question: No, he shits on the trail.

Water filtered from Timber Creek is the most refreshing I’ve ever drunk–cold and thin, like January air, with a taste like the essence of hydrogen and oxygen.

Rocky Mountain hiatus, Part 2.

Why I procrastinate

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Philip Heckman

Why do I procrastinate? I’ve been wondering for some time.

I’ve long wanted to write a personal Hesitancy Manifesto, but I kept putting it off. I guess I wasn’t ever quite ready, or maybe I was ready but still asleep.

I rationalized that creating a formal declaration of delay implied that I didn’t take the principle seriously. Let’s face it, few people do. Procrastination is not held in high regard. Take Major General George B. McClellan. Take Hamlet.

People assume that procrastinators can’t pull the trigger because they fear failure. But it’s not that simple. Sure maybe you don’t ask someone out because you’re afraid of being rejected. But suppose that person accepts your offer–what good is that? Acceptance means you can’t go out with other people equally or even more desirable. Why rule out all those exciting unknown prospects by picking just one?

No, it’s not that I’m afraid to fail. It’s that I won’t settle for a single consequence.

Considering all the alternatives, no matter how remote, procrastination is only logical because procrastination is all about preserving possibility. For an architect, say, it’s easy to imagine a house of many shapes, sizes, and styles before the foundation is dug. As long as she doesn’t think too specifically about working, or start working, or actually work, she can build anything. And as long as she has yet to act, the possibilities are endless and every imaginable outcome presents unlimited promise.

To choose a course and act on it is to set all other courses aside. Until I lay down my first word, all sentences are available to me. So I procrastinate to preserve my maximum potential. As long as I hold off word smithing, I can prolong the pleasure of anticipating what I will write. And when that day comes when I do succumb to the urge to string letters together…

Why, then, the work’s mine oyster, Which I with word will open.

In the meantime, all that latent award-winning writing? I know I have it in me.

Another national observance of defeat

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Philip Heckman

Another year, another anniversary, another national observance of defeat.

One more annual reminder of how we blew the chance to prove our strength of character.

The recent wrangling over who’s responsible for funding the National September 11 Memorial & Museum is just the latest bit of evidence of how that terrorist attack has redefined this country for the worse. Also consider “the iron curtain of security surrounding the site,” a mashup of all the inconveniences that nervous authorities have devised to make citizens think that their government is on top of terrorism.

Then, of course, there’s the design itself, an evocative display of respect for our dead whose redundant symbols of loss hammer home how much we miss them.

But the fact that the memorial’s centerpiece is a fearful double void is something to regret. We merely compounded our weakness when we decided to commemorate the tragedy of 9/11 with these symbolic representations of absence.

The site’s twin holes in the ground–footprints of a rampaging monster–are exactly the opposite memorial image we should be projecting. They say: You have taken American lives; look at what we’ve lost.

Instead we should have restored the New York skyline, not to feature two open graves, but two upthrust fingers. The rebuilt twin towers–rebuilt to correct previous design and construction flaws–could’ve housed a suitable memorial to the victims while erasing the most obvious evidence of the attack.

Imagine what a recreation of the familiar, iconic New York City profile would’ve defiantly declared: You have taken American lives, but you cannot take our resolve. There is a hole in our hearts, but our will and our courage is undiminished. We can take your best shot and show no sign of demolished ideals, liberties, or spirit. We will carry on, not pretending that nothing happened, but constantly reminded of our dedication to keep this great nation whole.

Then this anniversary would not be an observance what has killed us. It would be a celebration of what has made us stronger.

Then, meet Now

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Philip Heckman

Next week I’m off to Rocky Mountain National Park for a short backpacking trip. I’ll be returning to a campsite that I first visited in 1970. Then I was hitchhiking from Madison, Wis., to California and back, and found myself dropped off in Estes Park, Colo.

I had inadequate equipment for backcountry travel, even for that era, but on a whim I snagged a permit for a lakeside campsite chosen at random. The trail was five miles in, climbing from 9,000 feet to 11,000 feet. No sweat, I thought, a remarkably blasé attitude for someone who ordinarily lived at 863 feet above sea level and carried nothing more than books between classes.

Still, I was young then and fairly healthy, and, as they don’t say but should: Ignorance is not only bliss; sometimes it’s the only way things get done. I made it to the campsite and even beyond, to the continental divide, another 1,800 feet above the lake.

The trip was an experience of extremes. On the one hand, misery. My boots were barely better than those worn in Braveheart. I froze at night in a sleeping bag you could almost see through. My meals were a routine of peanut butter and bread.

On the other hand, magnificence. Peaks to the horizon on all sides, the views devoid of human activity. Quiet consisting only of wind and other species’ voices. And the stars! The glorious stars whose number and whose light was ten thousandfold what I was used to seeing from the bottom of the atmosphere.

In those days I had no life plan, no foreseeable career, no possibility of family other than the one I was born to. In short, I was a slacker a full generation before the term was coined. Alone in the wilderness then, I wondered what my future would be like in years to come, and how I would get there.

Considering my prospects four decades ago, I eventually got damn lucky with my marriage, children, and work. I don’t know what I did to acquire such a fulfilling life, much less deserve it. All I know is that I’m reaching back in time to say, Hey, I made it. And as proof of my good fortune, on this return trip I won’t be alone. I’ll be climbing with my 27-year-old son, Nick. Magnificent.

Then, meet Now.