Lots of FaceTime With My Granddaughter, Blog Suffers, But World's A Better Place

My oldest granddaughter is eight.  She's been FaceTiming with me fairly regularly.  Also teaching me the whole emoji alphabet and how to custom design emoticons.  And she shares her explorations with the effects options.  She also plays the piano for me. In exchange I've been providing an appreciative audience. And loving challenges.  I've been  introducing codes.  We've had a lot of exchanges where every second letter is the real one.  Slbigkne rtshwims.  And I've finally got her working with me on the newspaper Cryptoquotes.  And she dazzled me with her magic trick of making a toothpick disappear and reappear.  Her calls come whenever and I just don't think there is anything I can do that is more important than being available for her.  

But there was also a local Citizen Climate Lobby meeting yesterday.  I helped tutor reading in my granddaughter's class via zoom.  That's easier than it sounds.  I just sit there and listen to first and second graders read books they've chosen.  

And Wednesday is the zoom with my SF grandkids for a couple of hours.  And I've been keeping up with my DuoLingo Spanish (I'm taking a break from the Turkish - they started introducing too many new words and grammar patterns at once.)  

After dark - it gets later and later now - is Netflix time, though their algorithm is now sending us lots of bloody sword fight combat movies.  This seems to have started by our watching Marco Polo - which is an interesting fictionalized account of Polo's time in Mongolia with Kubla Khan.  There are some bloody hand to hand battles with swords.  Not my thing, but getting a sense of the history, even fictionalized, was interesting. The costume designers must have been in heaven.  This led to The King - about Hal and Falstaff moving up to King and his general and a lot of blood and swords as they attack France.  

That's when the algorithm seems to have gone crazy.  We got offered Age of the Samurai; Rise of Empires: Ottoman.  All take place around the 15th Century and include lots of battle scenes which include sword fighting, some rudimentary guns, catapults, and some canons to break down the walls of sieged cities.  The blood and guts has gotten too much for us. A couple episodes were enough. We passed when they offered The Lost Pirate Kingdom.  When we do watch these sorts of shows, we have to clean our our brains with something sweeter, like the Great British Baking Show.  

But there are lots of more serious things I want to blog about, but those things take more time.  There's lots that needs to be done on the Alaska Redistricting Board, like profiles of the Board members and some contextual pieces on how to evaluate how much the final maps have been gerrymandered.  I'm also trying to get information on the law firm that was chosen to advise the Board.  

So, no, I've not abandoned the blog - and I do update the Alaska COVID numbers daily (see the tabs up top.)  And thanks to the commenters on the last post.  I'm thinking about what they wrote.  

And while I'm rambling, some thoughts from reading today's obituaries:

"... is survived by his loving wife. . .; children . . . ; two snakes; a goldfish; a turtle; and a cat."

". . .  and gave hugs to family and friends to show how much he cared for them and never wanted anyone to feel left out or unloved." 

The second one, about the hugs, relates to another issue I've been thinking about - the evolution of what men are allowed to do in their relationships with women.  While many Republicans may have been distressed by Trump's admitted (on the tape) use of his star power to abuse women, they still voted for him.  Meanwhile, they're all aboard in calling for Gov. Cuomo to resign.  

This obituary raises a cultural issue about touching and hugging.  Some people grew up in families where hugging is a natural form of greeting.  (In France people kiss each other on the cheeks as a form of greeting.)  So when men come from hugging families and cultures, that kind of greeting for someone you care about, is usually pretty innocent.  But for a woman who comes from a family with little or no affectionate touching, or who has been abused, those touches can have a very different meaning.  I'm not downplaying the ways men abuse their power to make sexual overtures to women who work for them.  I even suspect a fair amount of male support of Trump is in support of their own right to rule over women.  But I am saying that in some cases it may not be about power or sex, but simply cultural differences in how people show platonic affection.    

I'd also note that in this second obituary, there are long lists of people who preceded him in death and those who survived him, including "his pride and joy" two sons.  But nowhere could I find mention of the mother of those two sons.

So, this is to let you know I'm not brain dead.  More like overloaded.