Ramblings – Page 2 – The Hermits' Rest

Book Report: A World Appears

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Michael Pollan. He fearlessly investigates what makes us human and is delightfully unafraid to test out his own ideas and find them wrong. A World Appears (2026) is his latest, an exploration into what it means to be conscious, and for that matter, what exactly consciousness is.

The title refers to what happens as we open our eyes from sleeping. A world appears. How does that work? Hint: the answer to the consciousness question is not really the goal of the book. The goal is to explore various ways of addressing “the big question” and how close they come to an answer.

Pollan interviews a wide range of fascinating scientists, deep thinkers, academics, and spiritual leaders in his quest. Some think they have the answers, some think they’re getting close, and others doubt we’ll figure consciousness out.

Mostly, Pollan drinks a lot of tea. If you listen to the audiobook you can make a drinking game where you down a shot of an interesting beverage every time he sits down with a pot of tea to interview someone. I guess consciousness scholars aren’t coffee drinkers. (Aside: Lee and I have a drinking game for every time an HGTV host says “pop of color”.)

Other than that quirk, I enjoyed reading along as Pollan thinks about what the experts tell him and points out where he thinks they have a point or are a little off. I was fascinated by the idea that consciousness is controlled by the cerebellum, not cortex, and I loved learning how many other living things may well be conscious, depending on how it’s defined.

Other parts of the book delve into whether machines can be conscious. All sorts of conflicting ideas come up in this part of the book. I will say I’m hoping Pollan’s conclusions on this one are right.

Fans of Pollan will not be surprised that psychedelics come into play when trying to figure out how to escape consciousness. Meditation is also invoked (and I’m more familiar with the brief flashes of transcendence from this method—brief—that’s why it’s a practice). It’s all fascinating.

One thing missing from the book is what happens when we are asleep. Are we completely unconscious? What do dreams have to do with our stream of consciousness? Maybe that’s another book.

All in all, this was a fun book that gave me much to think about and more tools in my toolbox to figure out what “I” am. It’s deep!

A fictional dining companion

If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be?

Just a quick one. I knew the answer to this one right off. I’d love to have dinner with Sherlock Holmes. I’d like him to tell me horrible facts about myself just from looking at me and proceed to tell me how insufferably boring I am.

Then I’d probably talk to John Watson.

And I choose Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, please.

Apps? What apps?

What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?

Great news for me—I have another fun question to answer while not much is going on around the ranch but work, heat, dogs, and my sore mouth. I have overdone the NSAIDs and it’s making my old lady red spots go into overdrive. The pain is a bit less, so I’ll cut down starting tonight.

Barely need to rub on the skin to get this. Yuck.

However, the question was about apps. Here’s what my phone has to deal with every day.

Merlin Bird ID: it has its own phone, so it’s on much of the day, but I only look at it every couple of hours. It’s very important for my bird data, you know. (Yeah, I’m such a scientist.)
Facebook: sorry, haters, but I keep up with old friends, new acquaintances, and lots of horses and dogs. I’m encouraged by the kindness and interesting ideas I come across. I skip repetitive ads based on the things I’ve been talking or thinking about, and only very rarely do I see offensive, ignorant, or mean content. I’ve curated my feed. No, I have no secret other than liking what I like and ignoring the rest.
Finch. I check this cute self-care app 3-4 times a day. It reminds me to do kind things and lets me engage in harmless play with a few friends. It’s really good for my mental health. I can send my friend code; just ask.
Crossword: the Redstone Games crossword app is great. There are themes, different creators whose puzzles you can play, and many levels of difficulty. There are always new games. It’s good for keeping your brain sprightly. I play a game or two per day. Lee is constantly playing.
INaturalist. I’d say I add one or two observations per day or hundreds when I’m traveling. I love to look up whatever plants, birds, insects, or other creatures are near me. It’s endlessly fascinating.
WordPress or JetPack or whatever they’re calling it. I do blog a while most days. Yesterday was too uneventful for me to dredge up anything, so I skipped. I like WordPress just fine. I have always enjoyed putting words on the internet and formatting them. It’s what I do. For me.
Others I use often are Clime weather (official live radar maps), Google for asking questions, LinkedIn to check on work buddies, Gmail for the occasional personal email, Zoom/Teams for chatting, the camera app (duh), and boring banking and financial apps.

Do I feel bad about any of it? Heck no. The only app I felt bad about using was Bejeweled. I used it to escape from my daily life for about ten years. Things got better and I stopped.

Benito is settling in well. He’s very attached to Lee.

No doubt younger readers have very different app preferences. These folks have never known a time without apps. I guess books and drawing paper were my “apps.” I got lost in them!

Make it go away

If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be?

I’ll tell you what trend I’d like to eliminate: charismatic psychopaths taking over the leadership of powerful countries and embarking on unstoppable campaigns to satisfy their need for praise and power.

Can we make this trend go away? Not without a destructive struggle, I fear.

Okay, people who came here to read the prompt response can stop reading. I’ll go on to ranch news. First, the dogs are making progress. And, hey, I discovered in the archives that we got Penney seven years ago this week, and she was my most recent acquisition. So we aren’t grabbing dogs Willy-nilly. (Kathleen rescued Goldie.)

Benito has started to both play with and assert himself with Harvey. I just hope they establish their boundaries quickly. It’s hard to keep B calm for his heart worm treatment when everyone wants to play and play. But they do sleep a lot.

We have noticed much less mounting and marking from Benito, which is really good. I’m not fond of that stuff.

As for the rest of us, we are muddling along, with no one feeling all that great. My jaw swelling has gone down, but I still hurt. I’ll let the dentist know, and I’m taking the antibiotics on schedule.

Sharing some white-mouthed day flowers, which got sprayed today. They were pretty, but it was time to trim some overgrowth.

Big thing for me: I am finally going through all my clothing from work and ranch and will be making some lucky thrift store shopper very happy. I got two boxes full of clothes today. More to come! This is one of my “issues,” having too many clothes. Comes from not having many growing up. But I go overboard. Sigh. I guess I could have worse issues (and probably do).

PS: haven’t lost a fish in my water garden! Yay!

Old technology memories

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

I still feel bad in the tooth department but I’m gonna answer this question anyway, since nothing exciting happened today(which is good). Anyway, I miss two things from the olden days of my youth, back in the 20th century.

One is standard transmissions in cars. It was just plain fun to drive a stick shift when I was younger. You felt like you were actually telling the car what to do, as opposed to today’s cars that control the speed, yell at you if you stray out of your lane, and park for you. Cars used to be fun.

The other thing I miss is just for the fun aspect, and that’s intercom systems in homes and offices. It was so much fun to yell at your siblings on intercoms (we didn’t have one, but well-off friends did.) I know it was supposed to be so cool to play the radio throughout the house…but I liked paging parents. And oh, my, did we have fun in my first “real” job in Illinois, calling each other into our offices and being silly until we were reminded that it WAS a business.

All I know is we removed a lot of those systems when remodeling houses.

Genuine news! Finally have the first half of the year of temperatures in my blanket. July was hot!

I’m trying really hard to feel less down in the dumps and to make sure my mouth is healing. The dogs are still entertaining, though!

My excuse was flimsy

What is the best excuse you have heard lately?

Today’s question was quite appropriate. I did something monumentally dumb and my best excuse is that I read too fast. My other excuse is mouth pain making me grumpy and prone to misinterpreting things. So I embarrassed myself in front of many Internet strangers (and a person I know).

Positive note: our property is covered with these beautiful golden rain lilies. A reward from the storms.

What happened is I got a text telling me that my subscription club was ending and that I had until September to use all my points or they’d expire. Or something to that effect. My mind immediately leapt to my monthly subscription to nail strips from Color Street (such a weird name, I know). I look forward to the monthly surprises, so I got sad.

You know, my extreme nail vanity I can’t control for long.

I immediately told my friend who sells the strips, who was shocked. I then posted about it on a Facebook group for super-users of the strips. Before I was able to see any responses, Rebecca asked me to show her the text I’d gotten. I then saw my mistake. It wasn’t my Color Play subscription that was ending, but the Color Club for my hair coloring stuff, Overtone. Oops.

By the time I got back on Facebook, a tizzy was occurring in the nail group, since no one else had heard anything, including the “stylists” (MLM marketing term). I quickly changed my post and apologized, though people kept demanding I change my original post, which I had already done. I felt so embarrassed.

Luckily people were mostly forgiving and one even asked about Overtone.

But wow, my excuse for that mistake, while honest, was merely the best I could do, not a good one.

What makes us ourselves?

Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are?

Oh. I have been reading so much about the self, nature versus nurture, what the heck reality is…my main conclusion boils down to:

I don’t know and don’t think it matters

This doesn’t imply that it’s not fascinating to seek insight into how experiences and genetics affect your physical and mental health — after all I enjoyed The Myth of Normal just recently, and I’m currently reading about the nature of consciousness.

Flowers are conscious beings, according to Michael Pollan.

My point is that I’m fine not knowing the answers to these questions. In fact, I think I enjoy pondering the possibilities and learning about other scientists and spiritual practitioners propose so much that if we knew exactly how much nature and nurture contribute to who we are, I’d be sad.

Perhaps it’s human nature to want an explanation for what we perceive. On the other hand, for some cultures and individuals, not knowing is something to be treasured, a great mystery. (I do not advocate for choosing ignorance of course—you need to know what you don’t know.)

Right now, I’m choosing to be curious while enjoying being alive without really knowing what that means. I’d make a lot more sense if I were more awake and less achy from the tooth thing. I feel pain, therefore I am, said some wise person.

Update on dogs. Benito is fine. It’s hard to stop him and Carlton from playing in the evening, though. Curiously, the dynamic has changed, and Carlton is now doing dominance behavior over Benito. Hmm. Maybe they’re equals now. In any case, they sure stick together.

B is next to me, C is on the next pillow.

Reason to be celebrating America today

Today was Anita’s and my first full day on our genuine vacation with NO WORK involved. Throughout the day, I was reminded of why we still have a chance to recover and be proud of our 250-year-old country.

The day started out with a dreaded condominium sales pitch. Anita agreed to do it so I could get a bunch of Hilton Honors points. There’s no way Anita should be buying a timeshare, but we went through the motions with a sweet young salesman. I think he’d never heard a story like hers, but he tried real hard to do the pitch he was supposed to do, knowing he would not make a sale.

Wandering around looking at condos and getting sales pitches.

We got to the very end, when they bring in “the closer” to try one more time to get her to buy. While that didn’t work, somehow the topic of birds came up. He was a big-time birder! He turned into his human, non-salesperson self and we had a great talk. He told me about a fascinating sanctuary to go to, drew me a map and everything. Faith in Americans revived! We all have things in common!

An interesting group of new and old military planes and helicopters flew by the beach. That was fun.

We took a walk on the boardwalk here at Myrtle Beach and looked at the wide variety of humans who visit here. You name the ethnic group, there were some of them here. It’s not a snooty place like Hilton Head can be. Middle America was well represented, and everyone was cheerful, friendly, and having fun. That’s how it should be. No signs of divisiveness at all.

We took naps this afternoon, a real treat for both of us, then headed off to get food at the sports bar. Everyone we talked to was friendly and happy to be here. We had fun with a new young woman friend from Georgia and discussed more with Kevin the bartender/history professor about how our families interacted. He was related to my childhood pediatrician. Weird.

Unrelated: Anita spotted this Osprey with a large fish flying around our balcony.

But that’s the point. If you actually talk to people you will find commonality. That’s my favorite part of relaxed travel, getting to know new people. America doesn’t seem as full of hate and division when you interact with the people around you.

That brings me to Independence Day fun. We were going to try to get high up in the building to see fireworks, when they started and we realized we could see them from where we were. A young couple invited us to join them on a comfy bench, so we watched a huge display with them.

Our view of fireworks and other condo folks

The young people were having a nice break from their sleeping baby (who they were watching via a video call—clever), which means all four of us were relaxed and happy to enjoy the show with low stress. We had to do the oohing and aahing, because it’s mandatory. It was great to enjoy the festivities with them.

We went back to our room and were charmed by the impressive shows regular people were putting on up and down the beach. We did get our fill of pyrotechnics and were glad nothing burned.

All in all, I felt better today than I thought I would. Just being around people doing their jobs with respect and kindness, catching up with old friends, and meeting friendly and gracious people reminded me that this country is full of good citizens who do care about each other. I’ll hold on to this hope as long as I can.

Traveling is good for you, duh

I was pleased to be able to drag my friend Anita out of her house and on an adventure with me to the condos on Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I didn’t go last year and I’m glad I dragged myself, too. This will be my first actual vacation in a long time. No work will be done!

50 years after graduating high school, here we are.

We went from Austin to Anita’s favorite city, Baltimore, and finally to Myrtle Beach. I’d never flown here. It’s a nice place. The trip was long, but I did enjoy airplane WiFi and got to do many, many crossword puzzles on the plane. I recommend getting the extra legroom on Southwest. It was pleasant.

We even met a cute dog with a very large tongue.

I survived driving a rental car to the condos, then sort of collapsed after the arduous check-in process that was all my fault. We lived.

Nothing revived me like a trip to the bar to find my favorite bartender was still there. We met a new friend , too, and ate pizza. Anita and I both had a good evening. onward for more of the same this week. I’m so happy Anita’s back going places with me again!

I know my negativity

What’s the best way to deal with negative thoughts?

As an expert on negative thoughts (my own) I have much to say about dealing with negative thoughts. I’ve written plenty about it over the years. And, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve gotten a lot better at dealing with my negative self talk.

Being human, and living in 2026, I do still have negative thoughts, both about myself and the state of the world. I don’t know what’s the “best” way to deal them, but I can share what I do.

When I’m thinking negative thoughts about myself, I remind myself that I’m just fine and that other people’s opinions of me are their issue, not mine. And over the years I’ve simply gotten more comfortable with my imperfections and oddities. That helps. Just reminding myself that no one’s perfect and that’s FINE helps me push aside negative self talk.

As for the state of the world, dealing with negative thoughts about the state of the world or the future, well, that’s harder. I latch onto any positive news like a life rope. Last weekend’s convention was helpful. But most important for me, I need to live in the moment and see the good and beauty around me. Nature, dogs, horses, family, and work are the things I can focus on. Anyone can do something like that!

Just think of a basket of puppies (I wish it were so easy)

When I was learning to not be so hard on myself, I taught myself to redirect negative thoughts by acknowledging them, then focusing on a positive statement. Things are difficult now. Your feelings are real and do matter—it’s just important not to dwell on them all the time, since it doesn’t make anything better.

Nowadays, when doomsday thoughts, hopelessness, or fear creep in I remind myself that there are way more people who just want a safe home for their families, meaningful work, and freedom to be themselves than there are oligarchs and their ilk. They have money, but we have numbers.

Did that help? Maybe?

PS: Happy Canada Day!