What's New?

It's funny how fascinated we can become with news. What's new with you, people often ask me, and I'm never sure how to respond. On some levels very little with me is new, and that's how I like it. On the other hand, there is always something going on: emergent occasions that some would count as news. For example, I recently repaired a crack in the cement of our front yard bird bath; the radishes I planted in my garden are beginning to yield some good results, the tomatoes also, and the sweet basil, the dill not so much; the squash plants are blooming, but so far no zucchini has resulted, and the celery has a very long way to go. I finally cleared out the weeds and accumulated oak leaves from the patio, trimmed the flaming acanthus bushes, and planted some fresh plants in the planters. In other household news, I replaced a flush valve in one of the toilets and the burned out attic gable exhaust fan for the second time since we bought the house; Texas heat is hard on electric motors. This time I saved the old fan and will recondition it with a new motor so I'll have a replacement ready next time. These are the sorts of routine home maintenance projects that occupy part of my leisure, but I don't really consider it worthy to report them as news.

On the other hand, most mornings I simply devote to keeping my aging body in reasonable working order. When I'm not out walking around checking on the progress being made by local home builders or observing the deteriorating condition of our recently closed golf course, I spend a little time in my home gym which I've set up in the otherwise unused half of our garage. I ride the elliptical or the AirDyne or just lift weights or practice my yoga. I try to do something at least slightly vigorous every day to justify the enormous amount of time I spend reading or playing music or watching sports, mostly tennis and basketball, on television. One of the things I most enjoy about the summers is getting back to swimming a few times a week. Swimming is not only great exercise, but so much more comfortable in hot weather than walking. Of course, none of this counts as news, since it's fairly routine. And, as my wife can confirm, I love routines.

My other routines tend to revolve around reading (on which see my other blog posts) and practicing my musical instruments. I still get my guitars out and play them once in a while, but the arthritis in my fingers is getting worse as I age and I notice it more the more I play. That's one reason I've turned my attention to my piano, the small Yamaha electric keyboard I have set up in my library and music room. I started playing around on this a few years ago, and with repetition and a little study I've learned a rather large repertoire of mostly popular tunes and jazz classics. If anything amounts to news for me these days it probably has something to do with what I'm currently playing or learning on my little piano. I'm amazed both by how much I've picked up and by how much I must have learned about reading music when I was a kid taking guitar and accordion lessons. I guess if there is any news on this front it's that I've downloaded a music composition program for my Mac, and have connected my keyboard to my computer via a Midi interface so I can compose and arrange my own music. I don't know what will come of this latest experiment, but it involves several things I enjoy doing, tinkering with electronics and playing music, so it also forces me to learn some new things.

But that's all just me. When I turn my attention back to the larger world I still inhabit, there is a lot of noise, but I can't really tell how much of it would qualify as news. I will allow that it seems unusual to have a president who appears so buffoonish and seems to revel in making chaos all around him, but it's way too soon to know if anything new will come of this. It could blow over or could lead to a serious deterioration of our political system, but anyone paying attention would have already observed that the deterioration began some time ago. Entropy is present in all systems, which is why nothing lasts. I've remarked on this before: humans live just long enough to think what they know and experience is normal and real. When change comes we are always surprised. But while such change may seem like news, it really isn't. If you live long enough, or just read a little history, you'll catch on that we're always going from bad to worse, then sometimes a little better, then to worse again. The arc of human history, alas, is not always toward progress, but more likely toward a bit of apparent progress followed by collapse. Check with the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Aztecs, the Incas, the French, the British, the Germans, the Japanese, the Chinese, etc. As we watch the current cycle unfold this may seem like news to some, but to others it's just confirmation of the laws of entropy.

So to answer the question I originally posed: what's new? Not much, but so far I'm doing fine. Here's hoping the heat death of the universe will hold off for a few more years and then it won't really matter that much. Of course, that's probably what the more aware dinosaurs were thinking when they saw that meteor come crashing down on them. Still, what was bad for them was good for us mammals. Now I guess it's the insects waiting in the wings, if we don't kill them off first with our wonderful insecticides. It's funny. When I was younger I always thought this would all happen long after I was gone. Now I'm not so sure. It's not that I expect to live a whole lot longer; it's just that we're making so much more progress in that direction than ever I thought possible only a few years back.