Boardwalk ( 木板路, 遊歩道, 산책로)

All boardwalks are on a beach, but not all beaches have boardwalks. This Memorial Day weekend, MJ and I had the pleasure of walking on one of the prominent boardwalks in America, and it wasn't the most pleasurable. As expected, everything on the boardwalk was marked up, especially hotel prices (we luckily enjoy traveling vast distances by car and thus avoided being milked for multiple hundreds of dollars per night to sleep in a "crappy" Fairmount Hotel or Holiday Inn Express- MJ's standards are understandably high), with half of that charge not for the hotel but for the proximity of the hotel to the boardwalk. Ben & Jerry's was $8.50 for a "large" cup that wasn't that big (but the small cup was "just $7.50 so psychologically it made you feel like you got a deal?- that's how they get you) and the surchage to get on the "jetty" or "pier" stretching into the ocean was.... get this, $4.00 a person for "watching" the fishermen do their thing. It's a racket. The one pleasurable thing that I got out of it, though, other than the weather and calm May winds that made the weekend just a beautiful one foretelling hopefully a temperate and not sizzling summer, was the boardwalk full of U.S. war facts contributed by the local high schools' AP US History Programs, commemorating the service of military personnel for Memorial Day weekend. About every 100 feet there was a long 7 foot panel called "heroes' Walk displaying information about famous wars or individual battles in US history, everything from must-know wars like the War of 1812 to the much more obscure "Battle of Bladensberg (fought in Maryland in 1814 that allowed the British to arrive in DC and burn everything) to the unknonwable "Easter Offensive" of the Vietnam War. A worthy cause for celebration, these panels full of great history, too bad most boardwalk attendees just chose to walk past them blissfully, not paying attention to any of the contents staring them rigth in the face, usually wih head buried in thir mobile phones and oblivious to the ironically similarly shaped wall panel in front of them. I notice the same thing at art museums: there's a lot less interest in great art museum exhibits than there should be, particularly when there are various ways to get into museums for FREE while baseball games (the Amercian pasttime) charges an entry fee AND exhorbitantly charges its loyal fans whom they supposedly care so much about ("Fan Appreciation Night") $8.50 for a hot dog and $15.00 for a chicken tender + fries meal and alcohol for an absurdly higher upcharge. It's almost like at a baseball game you're paying the baseball franchise to subject you to infomercials and being exploited as a consumer, (you get less stuff for higher cost) while at a museum you get higher quality material (Frida Kahlo displays, history of Barbie dolls, famous Impressionist pieces) for often zero cost. Zero obligation to buy, no need to stay 3 hours at a museum and get trapped into having to pay for a meal. It's a racket. But yea, I like the history of warfare, liking the cool sound of wars and the names of generals who get credit for being on the winning side or the losing side, forgetting that for each battle there are at least hundreds who died probably unnecessarily, and if it's one of the more recent wars, thousands to even hundreds of thousands per war, soldiers who didn't make it to a lofty rank like Lieutenant Colonel or General of the Allied Forces who died without seeing their families for the last time, or died horribly in fire, drowned, or worse, tortured by the enemies before succumbing to their deaths. One of the panels wrote about the Tokyo Raids by U.S. Air Force pilot Jimmy Doolittle, who I had heard about from Jeopardy as doing the heroic feat of slipping past the Japanese ranks and dropping bombs on Tokyo. The Boardwalk panel stated it had the positive effect of raising the morale of US troops after Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Japanese last year, glossing over some unnecessary details and collateral damage, but reading more carefully it said that a bunch of the planes that flew out with Doolittle got shot down and either fell into Russia or fell into Japanese-occupied China, where they were captured by Japanese and tortured, while some died instantly upon impact. Only Doolittle got the credit by coming out alive as the hero, but how many had to suffer for that one hero to emerge and some "much-needed morale to boost the forces?" Is that really worth all those lives? I certainly wouldn't want to be one of those who died and just became a statistic. O yea, they forgot about the little statistic (credit to the Boardwalk panel to include this) that 250,000 Chinese people were killed by Japanese troops for trying to help the U.S. fighters who crash landed in Japanese-occupied China. I had to do a double take on seeing that number. I know that the West doesn't value Chinese lives and thinks China has a billion people anyway, who cares, but half a million people died as a result of Jimmy freakin' Doolittle? (O and let's not forget the bombing of Tokyo probably took out innocent civilians' lives, not likely the emperor or any higher-ups in the military who actually were responsible for WWII and Pearl Harbor). I appreciate the dedication to the U.S. troops on Memorial Day, but could we also take the chance to acknowledge that some of these battles were mostly costly and might not have been the best idea just assessing the cost-benefit analysis afterwards?

Emergency Room (急诊室, 救急処置室, 응급실)

One of the greatest things about living a mundane, no-risk life is not having to go to the hospital outside of some earwax cleanup and acne medication when I was younger, almost never, and I have gone exactly zero times to an emergency room, usually reserved for the most urgent cases with dire need and possible life-threatening conditions. MJ and I went to urgent care which is one step below the emergency room, just to get some medication: seemed relaxed, controlled, and just one nurse practitioner on staff running tests and prescribing medciations. We were in and out of there in half an hour, no hassle and no line, and no life-threatening conditions, no sight of blood. That seems totally different from what I've hard of (and seen on TV shows like the Pitt and ER) about how emergency rooms operate: controlled chaos of multiple doctors and nurses running around to address as many cases as they can or the hospital has beds to hold patients, going off a board that looks a lot like a list of departures and arrivals at a major city airport, lots of blood and breathing tubes and various wounds and damaged body parts that normally would make anyone queasy out in public, becomes commonplace in the ER. And that's just inside the treatment center, there's a whole lobby of patients waiting to be seen and checked out who may have been waiting for hours to just get past those doors, ironically shut out because their issues are not that serious: the worse shape you are in, the faster you get seen: it's a perverse relationship of amount of pain and severity to length of time spent waiting: almost like you should hurt yourself more to get seen faster. Would I be a good patient at the ER? Probably not, I'm impatient and try to avoid lines as much a possible, don't like admitting when I have a problem and hope it just goes away (I have a nerve in my back that aches every time I sit for too long that's gone on for more than a year), and don't like the smell of hospitals in general. MJ and I do have great health insurance right now, though: we're on the gold plan, which allows us various procedures but also costs me every month in the form of having to pay for other people's treatment through my premiums. Would I be a good doctor or nurse at the ER? Probably not. There are so many things I am that don't fit the qualifications for being a doctor, despite my parents' hopes and dreams for me when I was a kid to pick the stethoscope when going through the "pick a job symbol" ceremony. a.) I didn't have patience to stay with one endeavor for 10 years through med school and residency and everything just to finally become something that I might even want to be....doctors have to actually know what they're doing; I've faked it through most of life now but doctors have to make a call on someone's life: it isn't the low-level decisionmaking at my day to day job, doctors especially in the ER are making life and death decisions. I'm not confident enough that I'd make enough good calls, and I also second-guess myself and do postmordems (not literal ones) about bad decisions like I made in chess, stocks, fantasy baseball, etc. that I'm sure I'd be killing myself if I was a doctor. Also my hands-on dexterity abilities are rather poor: I colored outside the lines in kindergarten and couldn't do good stitching in home economics class, kind of what you need to do quickly in an emergency. I WOULD probably stay calm under pressure, as emergency rooms are like if car crashes happen over and over again and you have to deal with the fallout; I would sympathize with the patients and not be dismissive of their concerns, and I would like to be on my feet all time time doing something dynamic and trying to juggle many balls at once; I actually enjoy that type of activity when managing events, etc. My childhood friend told me recently about his brother who works as a real-life ER nurse: he works 12-hour shifts for 10 days out of 14, and then just goes back to his regular assignment, and since he maintains a good relationship with the nurses and staff, he can get away with resting during the shift and watching the Super Bowl in his office. Doesn't sound that bad! That's kind of what I do, work 5 days out of 7 every week. Maybe this whole ER doctor thing is not as tense and action packed every second as depicted on TV. I just hope I never end up in one!

Hairstreak (ヘアーストリーク蝶, 细纹蝶, 털나비 )

A clue on Jeopardy mentioned a hairstreak the other day, and I guessed "bird" because while it sounds like maybe a silver streak of hair worn as a type of style, hairstreak sounded like some form of winged animal, and indeed it had wings, except it was an insect, the butterfly, one of the creatures around us with the highest reputation, despite it being a bug. I often marvel at the discrepancy of attitudes humans have towards animals, and I've spoken up for snakes as just misunderstood and discriminated against because of their shape and movement. Butterflies tend to be beautiful with wonderful patterns on their wings, so they look like works of art, not anything harmful, and indeed they don't bite anyone or cause any harm. But we could say the same thing about ants, rolly pollies, and smaller bugs...but MJ often classifies them all as "MOGI!" screams and tries to kill them or get away from them as fast as possible. In some cases, she's correct: a tick that causes lyme disease has been spotted in outdoor areas like gardens around where we live, so it does cause damage! MJ also described a cockroach "lying on its back and moving its legs around" in the lobby of our condo building, which o be fair does sound pretty gross. Some bugs are just attracted to dirty areas and look like they're up to no good. Our condo recently has been infested with seemingly a large nest of fruit flies, probably because MJ leaves out large pieces of fruit like a quickly ripening pineapple, kiwis, oranges, and what we found was the culprit today: a wilted peony flower that went bad on Day 2 of us bringing it home from Trader Joe's and soon the water in the vase became just a cesspool of flower remains and what looked like slime, perfect conditions for fruit flies to gather. In that moment I sympathized with MJ about disliking bugs: they're just creepy, especially when 5-10 or more of them gather around one thing and cluster around. I have the same dislike of groups of pigeons, geese, ducks, seagulls, etc....STOP FEEDING THESE THINGS people, it's bad for the birds' diet and it's bad for me, I don't want to get pooped on or get touched by these birds, who knows what diseases they carry. I guess that's why we love butterflies: 1.) they look beautiful, 2.) they don't gather in groups, although monarch butterlies convey quite a site during their annual migration, and 3.) they're not dirty, or at least known to land on poop or equivalent. They're usually around flower gardens and plants, it's where we all want to be on a warm spring-summer day, just chilling in the garden and enjoying their company. Butterflies also have a pretty cool birthing story that adds to their mystique: the 4-step metamorphosis includes egg, larva, pupa, and adult, as most Pokemon players know already if they ever caught a Caterpie which invovled into metapod into Butterfree. The egg turns into a larva or caterprillar and then into a pupa, or chrysalis (just the name chrysalis sounds cool, like crystal). Compare that to the human process of the egg upon fertilization becoming an embryo and then developing into a fully-formed baby but all inside the mother's womb, I guess the butterly metamorphosis process is just cooler than the human one, it all happens on the outside and we can see the actual changes, whereas humans can only rely on ultrasound printouts and measuring heartbeats until the baby pops out....at which point maybe we can consider that the caterpillar? And then it needs to be wrapped up in the cocoon of the chrysalis (swaddling clothes like Baby Jesus) until maybe Age 13 or so when it comes of age and becomes an adult? (Some would argue kids nowadays never become adults and permanently stay in the chrysalis stage unmoving looking at their phones). Maybe the butterfly metamorphosis is better! And less expensive.

Fanum Tax

Speed round of cool facts I've learned since recently my posts have been pretty critical and makes it seem I'm perpetually in a bad mood, which is partially true as I am turning into a grumpy old man. MJ charges a "Fanum tax" every time I make food for myself, which is eating something from what your roommate made, a phrase from a Youtube influencer named "Fanum" but now just means stealing food. I can never tell how hungry MJ is because she's either very "tempted" by what I have made or actually hungry and just not saying so and when food is presented to her, she suddenly gets hungry even though she isn't. I learned there is something called the "Olympic Peninusla" across Puget Sound from Seattle that is one of the coolest-looking places with cities like "Forks" and "Port Angeles." Really loved a trip in college to Orcas Island, everything around there is just awesome. It also makes me think of the Last of Us Season 2, whose story currently takes place in Seattle, except it's a post-apocalyptic world with fungus zombies, warring factions called the Wolves and the Scars, and competing revenge plot lines. It's this decade's Game of Thrones, and just like GoT introduced us to great locations in Europe (Dubrovnik, Northern Ireland, various desert locations) Last of Us takes place in various cities that are NOT L.A., Washington D.C., or New York, the main settings for any TV show. Habemus Papus- is Latin for "We have a pope!" The whole transition of popes just played out in film via Conclave and then a few months later, in real life with Pope Francis passing away, and the masses have learned all about the phrases like camerlengo (acting head of the Vatican), the papal conclave, white smoke, and all the politics behind becoming the next pope. All in all, this college of cardinals got off relatively drama-free, I guess popes unlike politicans have a reputation to uphold and have to act morally and maintain the high ground, no matter how badly they want the top job. Paul McCartney's real first name was James. It's a big surprise how many famous people you've known since a young age actually had a different birth name, and we know them by their stage names, another layer of the mask that they portray to the world while hiding their true identity. It's also better in some cases to use stage names, it just rolls off the tongue better, like Whoopi Goldberg instead of Elaine Johnson.....I think Whoopi probably got more fans just because of the name change. Good thing to know if I ever become famous, as Robert Yan just doesn't sound like a household name. Bob Dylan was originally Robert Zimmeran, Bono was Paul Hewson; The Rock was Dwayne Johnson. Feels like singers more than actors need a stage name, just because they're their own brand and face of the music, whereas the actor can at least be associated with the movie name. "I'm going to a Dua Lipa concert" as opposed to "I'm going to see Captain Phillips starring Tom Hanks. La Nina, unlike el Nino, brings colder conditions to the southeast Pacific Ocean. I had always thought it was a cousin or related idea as El Nino, turns out El Nino is the warm phase of ENSO, or El Nino- Southern Oscillation and occurs around Christmas, and La Nina is the cool phase, like summer vs. winter. Feels like that type of cold/warm contrast in the oceans will become a more important concept as we move along. I really at some point have to understand what this Minecraft thing is all about. There's even a movie I apparently missed out on! Starring who else, the king of kid-young adult movies, Jack Black. And also Jennifer Coolidge, who's late-career breakout has made her one of the world's most influential people, according to Time magazine. There's hope for people turning 40 soon like me to get better! We may not have peaked yet! Apparently Greta Gerwig has directed 4 movies total, and 3 of them have been nominated for Best Picture. That's a pretty high rate, although not as exceptional a feat since the Oscars changed from 5 Best Picture nominees to 10 each year. I propose we go back down to 5........it's a nice round number and fits nicely for best actor and best actress when they put the split screen up of the anxious nominees and their reactions as to who won. I really, really, try to watch all Best Picture nominees every year and it's just hard to get to all 10, even if they're interspersed among the streaming companies and on various airlines' feature movies list during Oscar season. I'm just not into Dune: Part Two, for instance, or the Substance, or Emilia Perez. And the Brutalist is 3 hours 35 minutes long. Adrien Brody might still be acting in that movie, and Adrien Brody might still be giving his acceptance speech (he rejected the fade-out music asking him to stop his speech at the Oscars this year).

Spitting (随地吐痰, 唾を吐く, 침을 뱉다) and the Pope

One of the worst things about being on public streets, more than seeing dog poop on the ground left uncleaned, litter just thrown willy nilly without a care in the world, more than people taking up a whole sidewalk even when seeing someone else approaching them coming the opposite way, is spitting, one of the worst offenses in my opinion anyone could do, and something I just don't understand why it has to happen. Throughout the day, I never get any urge to spit or eject saliva out of my mouth for any reason, and if I do spit I'm going to spit into a sink for brushing my teeth or if I taste someone really bad or a bone in a piece of chicken or something, I'm going to spit it out. But what is it about spitting that people get into a habit of? Is it because smokers need to spit out something? I understand there's chewing tobacco that people spit out, sunflower seeds, etc., but there are people just walking on the sidewalk who just spit randomly, and not into like a corner or anything, just down in the street where everyone is walking. It's also possible on a windy day for that spit to travel and hit someone else, maybe not directly in the face but towards their body; not something anyone wants to subject themselves to. Spit has so many dirty substances in it and can definitely transmit disease, so there's a practical reason not to do it but it's really hard to enforce and unfortunately people just "IDGAF," a name of a Dua Lipa song but also now a standard phrase among the younger generation meaning "I don't care." Living in a society kind of relies on having people who do give a F or who do care, but the prevailing attitude now that explains why spitting is so common is people just don't have respect for rules, consideration for others, trust that what you do for others will be paid back in kind. It's just a further rebuttal of my belief as a kid that the adult world is filled with responsible, capable people who have a very sophisticated system holding society together with a strong foundation and good actors with the best intentions for others. The older I get, the more I realize society is barely held together by a string, a whole ton of people don't do the right thing, and those who do risk being disappointed when the care they have for society doesn't get reciprocated, and another responsible person gets corrupted to teh IDGAF attitude because if others don't care about me, why should I care about them? For example, I thought government leaders were the best in our society and choose leadership because they think they can do the best for the world; now I realize politicans are one of the least trusted professions and most are acting for their own benefit or to gain more power; I thought the police had great moral authority and have to be upright citizens and be trustworthy themselves before enforcing the law and judging others; come to find out police are just people who wield a disproportionate amount of power, some with the correct amount of duty and responsiblity, but very often they also fall prey to human weaknesses. This week I was walking on a walk sign and almost got run over by a cop who had the red light but went anyway by putting his emergency lights on, the ultimate get-out-of-jail card. "power tends to corrupt. Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely."- Lord Acton. Which is one of the good things that religion can help with: showing the morally correct way to treat others and keeping people in line. With religion, at least people have some sort of code, some basis to guide their behavior. And the pope, newly elected Robert Prevost, or Leo XIV, has the unique position of being someone people look up to, to see that he doesn't spit in public or swear profusely or do illegal drugs or trick other people into buying things they don't need, being a bastion of good in the world that we so desperately (since the traditional "leaders" don't look anything like leaders anymore, like the President of the U.S., or chief of police, or local mayor....) there's really no one to turn to because with the rise of the internet and everyone knowing about everything all the time, it's hard to pick anyone who is a leader. It's no accident people who actually go to church is on the decline and belief in organized religion is at a recent low, it's inversely proportional with the number of people who have access to the internet. People just don't have faith anymore, which makes the pope's job more important but also an opportunity to provide something society desperately needs, is faith in each other and showing good behavior actually works. Otherwise, everyone will just be spitting and even worse without any fear of recourse. Also high on the list of things that makes me incredibly angry as an adult for some reason that is just basic things people shouldn't do: 1.) not flushing after you pee in a public stall. Just one flick of your wrist, guys. 2.) loud music at night from cars with incredibly loud basses, that's not even just neglect like some other activities, that's someone purposely playing their music loud so other people can hear. 3.) walking up really close to traffic as cars passing by trying to "time" it so you walk through as soon as the car passes by. Incredibly dangerous, incredibly low upside (gaining half a second as opposed to just waiting by the sidewalk until the car passes by) compared to the incredibly high downside (getting hit by the car or getting your feet run over), and it's also bad for me as the driver not knowing what you're going to do. 4.) flicking cigarette butts all over the place after you're doing. Some people honestly live like animals, maybe even worse than animals because some dogs know to dig a hole for their poop. We shouldn't get angry over the worst of society, but man it's difficult not to comment or consider dropping everything I do for others when others are doing this to others.

The Pit (坑, ピット, 피트)

HBO has a new medical drama trending called "The Pitt" after the city where it takes place, Pittsburgh. The Pitt in the show is actually the emergency room at one of Pittsburgh's hospitals, where the opening episode sees medical procedural veteran Noah Wyle (from ER, which was set in Chicago) take on the role of doctor again leading a group of new doctors in an understaffed, underappreciated department. Does this man know how to play anyone else besides a doctor? The first episode shows a doctor who speaks 6 languages (not sure how this could be true unless inherited from a young age, as balancing a career as a doctor and learning languages seem fundamentally incompatible) and the usual difficulties an ER may offer, like patients suddenly going into cardiac arrest, new emergency cases being brought in, and a dude just needing an enema. All sorts of cases almost like random people from the street walking into a law office asking for legal help, except unlike lawyers the ER cannot just turn them away and refuse them as clients. It struck me watching The Pitt that the actors playing the medical team can just shoot the scenes and remember their lines and give dramatic performances (not saying that's necessarily easy, but it's not brain surgery) versus the people they're depicting, who actually have the tough jobs and can't back away from the jobs. It made me think, "what are the worst jobs in the world, the pits of the work force, if you will?" Nursing has to be one of the toughest jobs, which is probably why they're constantly understaffed and there's a consistent nursing shortage that probably won't go away ever. Hard to imagine ever having a nursing surplus, that's for sure. MJ did the equivalent of a heroic sacrifice to willingly choose to become a nurse as her second career, whereas many people she worked with conidered going the other way, quitting nursing to pursue a second career. Stories of bad patients, bad doctors, bad co-workers, people calling out of work, travel nurses in it only for the money, always being on one's feet all the time, 12-hour shifts that can go up to 13 or 14 hour shifts if you feel guilty for leaving someone with a bunch of work: the one good thing is that there's alway going to be work for nurses somewhere, it's just the level of B.S. you can put up with. It's compounded by the fact that the hospital always has to be open, 24/7, so they need like triple the work force as a normal operation. Say a restaurant or office work, 40 hours a week, closed rest of the time, only need to sign up 40 hours of shifts. Unfortunately for nurses, there are 24x7 = 168 hours total in a week, so that's more than 4 times the number of hours other businesses have to find employees willing to work! That's actually pretty incredible. I really doubt the new Gen Z is going to suddenly flock to the nursing profession in droves based on the conversations I hear at restaurants (hey your Youtube video was so awesome! You LITERALLY killed it) to "I'm so upset at my boss for (doing something annoying that most employees in America have to put up with), I'm very offended and looking for a new job. I can't believe I have to go into work twice a week)." - actual conversations MJ and I overheard while sitting at vegan restaurants. I'm guilty of the same: once someone has drank from the pool of easy work, as I have, you don't want to go back to doing hard jobs ever again. And in this age of everyone knowing all the information all the time immediately as it happens, everyone knows what the easy jobs are and want to do the easy jobs- get paid thousands of dollars for putting up a video of yourself! "Influencer!" Live your best life! Maybe some sort of "draft" will have to be installed to get people to become nurses, like during World War time, conscription. It's a battle against aversion towards difficult jobs. You'd think the free market could handle this by raising the price of nurses, but then where does the demand come from? People don't just "purchase" nurses or healthcare, the insurance system gets in the way of that and the money that I pay for health insurance (pretty hefty amount that gets into 5 digits annually if I consider additional costs than just the monthly premium) doesn't flow directly to the healthcare workers, they flow through the insurance companies to pay the hospitals who then pay the workers. That's at least 2 additional middle men (are we calling them middlepeople now?) Could I see myself working in the "Pitt?" I honestly don't; I'd be like the medical intern the first episode who's there to learn but immediatley faints upon seeing a disfigured leg. Could I be a farmer? Probably not. Could I be a construction worker? Probably not. Could I be any of the various jobs out there that have strong need for workers but are tough on the body and don't necessarily pay as well as white collar jobs? Probably not. It takes a lot of strength and dedication to work in places like the Pitt, and ironically those are probably the ones that won't get replaced by AI. (software engineers, translators, lawyers, "consultants", all white collar jobs can foreseeably be replaced much quicker, especially the ones with high-paying salaries). Will there be a work force revolution in the world, instead of the industrial revolution people moving from agricultural work and by hand moved to machines and mass production...will it be a reverse thing of moving from machines back to labor jobs like nursing and non-machine related jobs? Maybe the reckoning for us sit-at-home laborers is coming and we will be sent down to..... The Pitt.

Lessons in Chemistry

Several months ago there was a contestant on Jeopardy, David Erb, who revealed in his contestant interview segment that his wife was the acclaimed author Bonnie Garmus, author of "Lessons in Chemistry." I'd heard of the book and the TV show, but didn't know much about the content of the book.... until today, in which I finally went to an independent bookstore (the best way to support authors and the entire writing industry, I'm told by a friend who was an aspiring author) and came home with the paperback (I've always had a mental block about buying a hard cover, perhaps the cheap side of me kicking in thinking a book is a book, why do I need to pay more for the binding) that has the red cover with chemical elements displayed, a way to at least remember a random assortment of the elemnts on the periodic table, like Curium (Cm, No. 96) and Nitrogen is 7 (that's actually a big one, squeezed right between No. 6 carbon and No. 8 oxygen). NOT the cover that I've seen around every bookstore with a blonde woman peeking behind sunglasses, after reading the book I felt that depiction is pretty far off from who the main character was except for the pencil in her hair; it looked like Sydney Sweeny in one of her romantic comedies. I was a little disappointed a book called "Lessons in Chemistry" doesn't have much chemistry in it, it's more about......romantic chemistry, but also about life and the challenges women face getting into traditionally "men" fields (which was almost all academic and high-earning fields) in the 1950s. If you left reading Lessons in Chemistry feeling that white men always feel like they run the world and get all the benefits, that's because they were.....at least in the 1950s, based on lack of laws against sexual discrimination, and the culture. You can still feel that to this day, or at least I felt it coming of age in White America in big law firms and working for judges, law professors, and just among some in the "elite fields...." there's a sort of entitlement that's definitely not confined only to white men, but definitely does exist in the "elite fields...." so I sense the frustration that Garmus's main character Elizabeth Zott must have felt. I've steered clear of fiction pretty much in the last 5 years, but when I do get into a good story, I flip the pages quickly and consistently, and for once am engaged enough to stay off the phone checking baseball scores: It's like I'm in a zone of focus normally reserved only for highly competitive endeavors like chess and dodgeball. I find getting through a book is MUCH more enjoyable when unplugging everything and not responding to any emails or distractions: it's like the old days when I was 10 years old lying down on the carpet fully engrossed in a book while my dad was cooking dinner or grandpa was watching TV.....there were no phones back then, no text messages, it was just me and the book, free for me to fall completely in that world, like having chemistry with the pages or the writer: the writer writes the words, I absorb the words and understand the pace of the book and brim with anticipation of where the book is going. YIL (Yesterday I learned) that Caesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta were known for their involvement with the United Farm Workers but also in something called the "Delano Grape Boycott, started in 1965 where the farmers union encouraged consumers not to buy non-union grapes. I never even thought of grapes being non-union, but I wonder what kind of grapes I buy from Costco- union or non-union? Usually I only have to make the difficult choice of "red" or "green," apparently red has more antioxidants due to its deeper color, but green often has a more fresher, simpler flavor that agrees with me, red has more inclination to be sour and have more a tarte flavor. If I'm REALLY adventurous I'll get the black grapes or the cotton candy grapes, but my plain vanilla personality usually just defers to one of the standard non-adventurous flavors. I guess even in 1965 there were ways to influence corpoorate control and enforce rights, so maybe in 2025 we can still influence policy and business behavior through boycotting goods? The obvious example is Tesla cars which has driven sales of Tesla way down (but weirdly not necessarily the stock price) but also......can we change behavior of Costco's chicken policy by not buying their perpetually $4.99 rotisseries chicken? MJ and I briskly march past the rotisserie chicken ovens every time where there and try to avert our gaze to the rows and rows of chickens strung up on a spit and dripping with oils, which looks tasty after they roast it but probably not as appealing when they killed the chickens and raised them specifically fro killing. Perhaps vegan activism or at least supporting vegan restaurants will make some restaurants consider more meatless options and decrease their orders of chickens? That's the hope at least. More and more after reading books like "Soul of the Octopus" by Montgomery Sy or "Book of Eels" by Patrik Svenson (a pun on Book of Kells, maybe?) I get the sense that we should be learning from these animals, not eating them. Even ast tasty as they are. Maybe even have to examine my substitute for meat, shrimp....do they feel pain too? I tried vegan dim sum today in my latest experiment to eat every kind of normal dish in a vegan way: the shrimp rice roll can be replaced with some sort of seitan that makes it feel and taste like shrimp, and somehow they've replaced xiaolongbao soup dumplings with a vegan option. It's magic, maybe even a lesson in (food) chemistry.