October 2013 – Auxiliary Memory

Sex Hormone Pollution (Endocrine Disruptors)

I’m reading a fascinating book, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Dr. Leonard Sax. Dr. Sax’s fourth factor is endocrine disruptors – chemicals in the environment that mimic female sex hormones that are affecting male animals around the world, including human males. I had vaguely heard about this problem, but the research and theories Dr. Sax reports on is eye opening. Like our bodies, the environment is a soup of chemicals that works in a delicate harmony, and the amount of pollution the environment is receiving is reaching levels equal to taking medicine for our bodies.

Since the beginning of the industrial age we’ve been dumping billions of tons of countless man-made chemicals into the environment, and we’ve yet to learn the ultimate outcome of these actions. If climate change deniers are freaking out over the idea of global warming, based on one natural element being increased in the environment, what will they make over sex hormone pollution? It was one thing to hear back in 1996 that synthetic sex hormone mimics were affecting amphibians and fish, but it’s a whole other thing to think they’re affecting human boys growing up today.

A good recent overview of the problem is “How Chemicals Affect Us” by Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times. Also read his older piece, “It’s Time to Learn From Frogs.” A more sensational piece is “Boys with Boobs” by Beth Greer at Huffington Post. Greer has several recommendations on how to avoid the kind of chemicals that can affect our sex hormones. [Man, I’m giving up drinking from plastic bottles!]

To read more of these types of articles on your own follow this link to Google.

Dr. Sax’s theory about endocrine disruptors and boys takes these protests up a quantum leap.

Dr. Sax theorizes that endocrine disruptors are making girls reach puberty earlier and boys later, partly explaining why boys are having so much trouble in school. Girls are now doing much better in school and college than boys and his book Boys Adrift tries to explain why. One of Dr. Sax’s theories suggests that endocrine disruptors are changing boys at a sexual hormonal level thus affecting their learning personalities. I don’t know how much research has gone into this hypothesis but it’s a very interesting one. Plus, I must point out that Dr. Sax has an array of theories about various problems affecting boys, endocrine disruptors are just one – but I think a significant one.

Is sex hormone pollution enough to change the dominant gender in our society from men to women? Sax doesn’t say that, but that’s what I’m reading into the story. What will the climate change deniers make over that idea? If Dr. Sax’s hypothesis is correct, and I’m not saying that it is, this will take the whole issue of man-made pollutions to a much higher level of impact than ever before. It’s one thing to change the biosphere, it’s a whole other issue to fundamentally change humans.

You can read Boys Adrift at Google Books.

JWH – 10/31/13

I’m Retired–Do I Throw Away My Alarm Clock?

Which is better: Following disciplined habits or natural cycles?

Having to get up and get to work on time used to provide discipline in my life. When I was off for weekends or vacation days, the time I was ready to start my day got later and later. Every morning I need to shower, exercise, dress, eat breakfast, floss and brush teeth before I’m ready to start my day. If I get up at 6 AM I can be ready to go by 7:30. But if I snooze until 7 or 8 AM, my day might not start until 9:30. This morning, I got up later, and didn’t hit the computer until 9:36.

Now that I’m retired I have a choice to make. Do I live by the clock or my biology?

[Living against the clock: does loss of daily rhythms cause obesity?]

Sleeping in seems so wasteful. But is that a false assumption? Now that I’m retired, does it matter what time I start writing each day? Would I be more productive if I lived by the clock or learned to adapt to my natural rhythms?

I’ve always assumed discipline is a major virtue. That we each seek to conquer nature by using willpower to bend our bodies and environment into our control. Isn’t it everyone’s assumption that we must overcome our animal urges? However, studies on health and stress show that might not be the best way to live, and that going with the natural flow of things might be healthier.

If you look across the Earth, have we conquered nature, or merely destroyed it? That’s getting awful philosophical as to whether I should sleep in or get up early. Can’t I just accept that the early bird gets the worm? Now that I’m thinking about this question I realize I’m living by a lot of assumptions. My 9 to 5 work years forced me to get up early, but now I’m free to follow a different path.

Since my health is in decline, it’s more important that I listen to my body than the Clock app on my iPod touch. Just writing these words shows me I need to do a lot of rethinking of my commonly held assumptions. And what other assumptions do I need to question about my other daily habits?

How many meals should I eat and when? Do I need to shower every day? Does it have to be in the morning? What time is best to do my exercises? When is the best time to write, clean house, socialize, watch TV, etc? What if I follow my circadian rhythms and I no longer track a 24 hour clock? How do I adapt my freeform schedule to my friends who follow a work schedule?

There is something to be said for natural sleep . I notice this morning when I woke up at 7:30 that it was just getting light. I’m wondering if my natural alarm clock is set by the amount of light outside. The room in which I sleep faces east, and has one long window without curtains across the east wall. Maybe I should do a scientific experiment and note when I wake up and when sunrise is for that day, and see if in the course of the year if I follow a natural cycle.

As I’ve been sleeping later, I’ve been wanting to stay up later. I’ve been retired just six days but I’m already having a hard time remembering what day it is, and I’ve stopped following the clock. Also, I’m now eating at different times. I even nap later.

My retirement goal is to write a novel. I assumed before I retired I needed to stick to a disciplined schedule and work at novel writing just like I worked as a computer programmer. Now I’m thinking that was a false assumption. Or is that just a rationalization to sleep later?

The western world changed after the invention of the clock. Now that I’m retired I realize I’ve left clock time. Because I don’t have cable TV, I don’t even watch TV to a schedule anymore. I’m on Netflix time. Does this mean I’ve been a Morlock all my life and now I’ve become an Eloi? That might not be good. Modern sequels recognized the virtues of the hideous Morlocks – they got things done, while noting the Eloi were lazy and wimpy.

Living by the clock is mechanical. Living by nature is undisciplined. There’s got to be a happy medium – or is that another false assumption?

JWH – 10/28/13

A Nonbeliever in Church

The only time I go to church anymore is for weddings and funerals. Sadly, I had to attend a funeral today, and sat through a Catholic mass. The church was beautiful, and very restful to sit in. I liked the music, especially the pipe organ, and a song they sang that sounded like “Danny Boy.” But being an atheist, it was very uncomfortable to listen to the words they preached.

The priest gave a loving sermon, except that the message sounded crazy to me. The resurrection and everlasting life was mentioned over and over again, almost hammered into the audience, until I felt that Christianity is a cult based on the fear of death. I can understanding people fearing oblivion, I can understand people wanting to see their loved ones again, I just can’t believe in an afterlife.

[Source Shorra]

Atheism has taught me to accept death, and the fact that my life on Earth is finite. I find it very scary that everyone around me believes they won’t die and will leave Earth for someplace else when their natural body ceases to function. Now I don’t want to argue with these people. I’m not sure I want to take away this deep rooted fantasy, but it depresses me that so many people choose to reject this Earthly reality.

Christianity preaches two main tenets: Jesus will forgive you of your sins and give you everlasting life. That’s quite a sales pitch. Quite a promise. Atheism is just the opposite. Atheism says you must own up to your sins and you will die. No wonder it’s not a popular philosophy.

I’m not trying to sell atheism, you must find your way into disbelieving on your own. But I will answer some questions that my faithful friends always ask me.

First, I don’t believe atheism leads to immorality. To live without religion requires embracing ethics. I believe all people commit unethical acts – sins if you will. I don’t think our sins should be forgiven. I think we should all work to overcome our sins in this lifetime, to become ethical. That we must learn to be better people through education and understanding, through scientific knowledge.

Second, this life is all we get. If something bad happens to us, its not due to powerful supernatural beings, either God or Satan. Bad things happen to good people because of accident, or the acts of bad people. This reality is full of random events beyond our control. It’s nobody’s fault, except for when people hurt each other. If you are killed by a drunk driver it’s not an act of God, but of a drunk driver. If you are killed by a crazy person going on a shooting spree, it’s because of a crazy person and not Satan. It is our responsibility to create a world where there are no drunk drivers or crazy people with guns. Most of what happens to us in life is beyond our control. Badness which we can control but don’t, is sin. Swearing allegiance to a supernatural being is no free get-out-of-jail card.

Global warming is an example. It’s a tremendous sin. We need to own up to it. We need absolve this sin through our own good actions. It’s a debt humanity has incurred. It’s a debt we all should pay. Saying you believe in Jesus to get everlasting life is wrong on two accounts. First, it’s skipping town to avoid your debt. Second, it’s delusional.

While sitting through the funeral service today I tried to imagine what an atheist funeral would be like. We would grieve for the departed, but we wouldn’t pretend their existence continued. We’d celebrate their life, and promise never to forget them, but I think we’d all sit quietly toting up their sins and judge our passed kin or friend on whether or not they forgave themselves.

But the best thing we could do is accept people for who they were. To me, the sin of religion is it whitewashes reality.

JWH – 10/25/13

Why Do We Remember the Beat Generation?–Three Films

Why have three movies about Jack Kerouac and pals come out in the last couple of years? Is a Beat Generation renaissance blooming? Last year, in 2012, On the Road finally showed up. It seemed like a long time in the making, especially for a 1957 novel that had so much cultural impact. Within the next month, most people will have two more movies about the Beats to go see on the big screen, Kill Your Darlings (Oct 16), about a 1944 murder that has been written about so much that it’s become a Beat version of Rashomon, and a movie version of Kerouac’s book, Big Sur (opens Nov 1).

On the Road, the movie, set the stage and re-introduced all the main characters. On the Road, the book, covers events from 1947-1950, and introduces us to fictionalized versions of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Lu Anne Henderson Cassady, Carolyn Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lucien Carr, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Hunke, and many others who would show up in various novels and biographies of the Beats.

Many of these characters knew each other for years, and many of them had been involved in the 1944 murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr. This murder figured in many later books by various Beat writers, and now a movie specifically about the mysterious stabbing has been made with Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg, Dane DeHann as Lucien Carr, Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac, Ben Foster as William S. Burroughs, and Michael C. Hall as David Kammerer. I’m not sure what modern movie goers will think of this ancient mystery, especially if they don’t know all the Beat players.

This paragraph from Wikipedia promises a lot for the film and portends that it’s a serious effort to understand the Beats.

The Telegraph granted the film a score of three out of five stars, stating that, "Unlike Walter Salles’s recent adaptation of On The Road, which embraced the Beat philosophy with a wide and credulous grin, Kill Your Darlings is inquisitive about the movement’s worth, and the genius of its characters is never assumed". Reviewing Kill Your Darlings after its showing at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, critic Damon Wise of The Guardian lauded the film for being "the real deal, a genuine attempt to source the beginning of America’s first true literary counterculture of the 20th century." Kill Your Darlings, wrote Wise, "creates a true sense of energy and passion, for once eschewing the clacking of typewriter keys to show artists actually talking, devising, and ultimately daring each other to create and innovate. And though it begins as a murder-mystery, Kill Your Darlings may be best described as an intellectual moral maze, a story perfectly of its time and yet one that still resonates today." Wise awarded the film four out of five stars. Justin Chang of Variety wrote, "A mysterious Beat Generation footnote is fleshed out with skilled performances, darkly poetic visuals and a vivid rendering of 1940s academia in "Kill Your Darlings." Directed with an assured sense of style that pushes against the narrow confines of its admittedly fascinating story, John Krokidas’ first feature feels adventurous yet somewhat hemmed-in as it imagines a vortex of jealousy, obsession and murder that engulfed Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac in the early days of their literary revolution."

I’m very excited to see this movie because I’ve read so much about these events, but how close can we get to the truth with a film made almost 70 years after the events? Doesn’t the movie just become another Rashomon witness? Does the movie have something real to say? Are the Beats famous enough with modern young people to entice them to buy tickets? Or have the Beats, a tiny literary subculture I’ve had a life-long fascination for, become Entertainment Weekly famous?

On the Road is always the start, the gateway drug to Beat addiction. However, I always thought On the Road, The Dharma Bums and Big Sur make an elegant trilogy, so I’m wondering why no one made The Dharma Bums into a film first? Big Sur is a strange novel, a self-portrait of self-destruction. Big Sur was Kerouac’s way of signing off, of distancing himself from being crowned King of the Beats. Why did they make it now?

Look at this first movie trailer:

This preview promises adventure, romance and sex, as if the story is just a continuation of On the Road. That’s totally misleading for Big Sur, because that book is about the end of the road. I’m worried they are just trying to create a Beat mania just about the false glamor and not about the real substance.

Look at this preview instead:

This is closer to how I remember the book. Kerouac spends much of his time alone, drinking and brooding, trying to think his way out of his slow Thunderbird suicide.

Big Sur, the book, came out in 1962, after Kerouac’s brief encounter with fame, and is somewhat the subject of the book. It briefly reunites us with Allen Ginsberg, Neal and Carolyn Cassady from On the Road, and , Gary Snyder, Alan Watts, Philip Whalen and others we first met in The Dharma Bums, and introduces us to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Light Books, a famous Beat bookstore. I once met Gary Snyder at one of his poetry readings, so this puts me two degrees of separation from all my Beat heroes – or anti-heroes. I was also a fan of Alan Watts and read several of his books on Buddhism and Zen that were popular back in the 1960s and 1970s. Someone needs to make a movie of the Six Gallery poetry reading like Kill Your Darlings, another major beat event, and then make a film version of The Dharma Bums, to give just the Kerouac slant. We need the middle part of the story before we get to Big Sur or Satori in Paris. Kill Your Darlings should be considered a prequel to Road novels.

Just when I thought the Beats were going to be forgotten, movie makers and readers are rediscovering them. I’m not sure what to make of this. Is The Beats movement a real literary movement with genuine insight, or was it just a bunch of wild people that us quiet folk like to remember?

JWH – 10/23/13

I Am Retired!

Finally, after many years of planning and dreaming, I am retired. I started work with my current employer November 14, 1977, but got my first hourly job back in November, 1967. A month before I turned 16, my mother told me I had to get a job within two weeks of my birthday. I did. I worked 25-33 hours a week while I was in high school. My first job was at the Kwik-Chek in Coconut Grove, Florida – a Winn-Dixie grocery store. My starting pay was $1.40 an hour, but I lucked out and minimum wage zoomed to $1.70 before I left a year later.

And before getting an hourly job, I had worked at mowing lawns, babysitting and two different paper routes. But I was no Horatio Alger, Jr. I hated work – it impinged on my childhood freedoms. I had many jobs between 1967 and 1977, but getting my job at Memphis State University in 1977 coincided with getting married in 1978. I couldn’t just quit a job anymore and move on. I had to settled down.

I always imagined I’d quit that job, never dreaming I’d stay 36 years. Instead I assumed Susan and I would move on to another city and state. We never did. But working for the state for all those years paid off with a nice pension. Plus working at a university was wonderful. In those ten years between my first job and the last, I worked many types of jobs and discovered all the kinds of work I didn’t like.

It took me over ten years to finish college. I ended up working with computers because I had so many computer courses, but ultimately I finished my major in English. I started taking computer courses in 1971 when they were still using punch cards and batch processing programs on an IBM 360 mainframe. I studied FORTAN, Assembly and COBOL. But by the time I got my first real programming job in 1987, I was hired to develop a dBASE III program for a Novell network of microcomputers. After web servers came out, I converted my programs to HTML/ASP/VBScript running on IIS using MS SQL Server. Those programs I developed in 1987 are still running. I wonder how long they will last? In 20-40 years, will someone still be maintaining them?

It’s strange to think that from now on I have no job to go to when I get up in the mornings.

Well, no regular job. My plan is to write novels. That’s my new career. I shall be my own employer. I hope I shall make myself work long hours and be very productive.

JWH – 10/22/13