2025-11-07 - Christina's November Questions =========================================== Here are my answers to: Christina's November questions > Do/Did you do anything special for Samhain/Halloween/Dia de los > Muertos? I read a ghost story from Project Gutenberg: Unhuman Tour I ate some chocolate-coated pecans that were a gift from a friend. My nephew and i had fun playing Scorched Earth in DOSBox. Scorched Earth > Did a grandparent or great-grandparent serve in any of the World > Wars of the 20th Century? My great grandfather served in World War 1, and he wrote a memoire using a typewriter. I have a printed copy. > What are you a "natural" at doing? I am a natural at learning and problem solving. I also have an aptitude for navigation and for repairing things. > What has been your best work of art? At one point i knew someone who painted art cars and vans. I couldn't afford it. So i bought shoe paints and painted a pair of combat boots. I painted ferns, flowers, snails, hearts, spirals, stars, waves, and things like that. I received many compliments on those boots over the years and i believe i got just as much satisfaction out of them as i would have from an art vehicle. I guess that feeling of satisfaction is my measure, and i would call it some of my best art. > What's something that amazes you? Natural beauty in hard times, like finding river access and a porch swing hidden in the trees, and having the place to myself, at a time when i needed solitude. Serendipity, when all the metaphorical traffic lights are green and my day flows along just as well as it possibly could, and at the end of the day i feel fulfilled and satisfied. I remember the first time i saw the milky way. I used to think that the photographs were time-lapsed exaggerations or somehow doctored to make it more vivid. I have been camping all my life and in some remote locations with no light pollution. The stars never looked THAT amazing to me until finally, one night when i was over 40 years old, i saw a spectacular, awe-inspiring view of the milky way. Years later, walking through a creek in a Northern Californian wilderness, i was startled by a pair of eyes staring directly at me. It was a Pacific giant salamander lounging on a rock in the creek. I had read about them as a kid, but had never seen one before. Amazement is relative to mundane day-to-day experience. With repetition my experience becomes normalized and i lose perspective. I have many ways to regain fresh perspective, such as temporary deprivation or the study of history. For example, people can write about my nation having the most expensive health care in the world, and the outcomes don't compare well. While this perspective is totally valid, it is not the only option available to me. When i read about pioneer medicine, which was essentially the same as medieval European medicine, it helps me appreciate the good parts of modern medicine and not get stuck on systematic problems. When i read about famous computer scientists writing code on napkins because computer time was scarce even for the most privileged, this helps me appreciate that i am experiencing the polar opposite. I live on the event horizon where i am limited not by scarcity but by abundance. That same intensity of thought required to model code on a napkin also comes in handy when navigating the howling winds of distraction that blow through the barrens of the modern Internet. tags: bencollver,community Tags ==== bencollver community