Last week the journal Science published a research article on happiness, attempting to rank its prevalence by state. Supposedly, this research compared what people said against objective measures known to affect happiness (weather, population density, air quality, home prices, etc.). You'll be happy to know that Louisiana was number 1 and New York was number 51. My own home states, Maine and Massachusetts, checked in at number 10 and number 43 respectively. Eight of the top ten were warm-weather states.
May I say that if we believe that happiness can be measured by objective measures such as the above, we should change our species name to Homo superficialis.
This study contrasts with a happiness survey taken by Gallup in November that relied only on what people said. Here the top states were the wealthiest and the most tolerant, with Utah first and West Virginia last. Massachusetts was 8th and Maine 29th. Even taking into account people's ability to lie, especially to themselves, these data seem more representative.
It's probably no accident that both studies were published around the holidays. I know that for many the holidays are stressful and depressing, for the hype can't possibly measure up to the reality, and indeed makes it worse when the reality is loneliness, poverty, or ill health. We are told to be happy, that the perfectly cooked turkey or latest-model cell phone will save us if we just try and buy. When will we see a happiness survey based on friendships and family and peace and contentment?
That describes us this Christmas, especially with daughters having safely returned from France. Geographic, scientific, objective, and especially commercial descriptors have little meaning or place. Happiness is decorating a tree with ornaments from a lifetime, angels and nutcrackers, frosted pine cones, homemade Santas, the silly and the corny, the ornate and the plain, the special box of fragile glass pieces that sparkle in the colored lights - all the reminders of growing up together in our own little state of bliss.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Climate change
1. Big storm blasts up East Coast, blanketing area from Carolina to Boston with snow. A nice change from the usual December rain and slush?
2. Northern France (where both our daughters are) shivers in below zero (Centigrade) temperatures and a couple inches of snow. A nice change from the usual December rain and slush?
3. Maine, usually synonymous with snow, gets almost nothing from the storm. A nice change from the usual December rain and slush?
2. Northern France (where both our daughters are) shivers in below zero (Centigrade) temperatures and a couple inches of snow. A nice change from the usual December rain and slush?
3. Maine, usually synonymous with snow, gets almost nothing from the storm. A nice change from the usual December rain and slush?
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Wind, yet again
Wind was again in the news this week. Some perspective:
1. Three sites off the coast of Maine have now been chosen for the testing of wind-turbine platforms in deep water, the first in the US, including one a few miles from Monhegan. (Monhegan's famous artists George Bellows and Edward Hopper might enjoy such a beast, Jamie Wyeth and Rockwell Kent perhaps not). Norway already has a deep-sea turbine in place.
2. Turbines in southern Maine are not producing nearly as much electricity as hoped. (Sites on undeveloped rural hilltops, and presumably the open ocean, apparently will be fine.)
3. Maine recently installed its 100th turbine. (California has 14,000.)
There was a report on NPR's Marketplace a week or so ago on Japan's efforts to conserve energy since the oil crisis of 1973-1974.
1. 40% of "green" patents are now held by Japan.
2. All Japanese companies must become at least 1% more energy efficient each year, and must have at least one employee overseeing the effort.
3. Every new appliance model must be at least as energy efficient as the latest release from a competitor.
The average Japanese now uses about half as much energy as the average American.
1. Three sites off the coast of Maine have now been chosen for the testing of wind-turbine platforms in deep water, the first in the US, including one a few miles from Monhegan. (Monhegan's famous artists George Bellows and Edward Hopper might enjoy such a beast, Jamie Wyeth and Rockwell Kent perhaps not). Norway already has a deep-sea turbine in place.
2. Turbines in southern Maine are not producing nearly as much electricity as hoped. (Sites on undeveloped rural hilltops, and presumably the open ocean, apparently will be fine.)
3. Maine recently installed its 100th turbine. (California has 14,000.)
There was a report on NPR's Marketplace a week or so ago on Japan's efforts to conserve energy since the oil crisis of 1973-1974.
1. 40% of "green" patents are now held by Japan.
2. All Japanese companies must become at least 1% more energy efficient each year, and must have at least one employee overseeing the effort.
3. Every new appliance model must be at least as energy efficient as the latest release from a competitor.
The average Japanese now uses about half as much energy as the average American.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Shooting stars
Quite by accident, I saw shooting stars early Monday morning (can't blame the dog this time for waking me at 4:00 a.m. - she conked out under the covers as soon as I went to bed and didn't stir all night). I discovered later that it was the night of the annual December Geminids meteor shower, and the windows happen to face the right direction, east, and I happened to wake up before dawn, and I happened to try the sky for a soporific.
The bedroom windows allow a view of sky and bay and pointed firs of only a few degrees. I should have gone outside for the full 360, but it was 4:00 a.m. and cold. Even so limited, the view was thrilling: the stars are so brilliant and numerous and inspiring anyway in the undeveloped night skies of Maine, and then there would be a silent little pop! of light, then a brilliant little trail, then a little white flame-out. You really did get the sense of stars falling down, and also the slight and thrilling fear that a real star directly overhead (or at least a substantial meteor) would take it upon itself to target the house.
"Thrilling" is a slight over-statement. It's not a spectacle like, say, what the Chinese do for international honor. A shooting star lasts about a second. Its trail is tiny. I saw maybe 10 in an hour of gazing.
"Humbling" is a better word. In order to get all those cliches out of my head (life-is-so-short, blaze-of-glory, what-is-the-meaning-of-life), I tried to calculate how many shooting stars there would be in my life if they arrived once a second for 70 years. The answer, after a certain amount of stops and starts and confusion about decimal places, was about 2 billion (later confirmed by a real calculator to be 2.2 billion). Now that's thrilling. Don't you love the idea of a second of glory?
The calculating, and the humbling, put the world to right, and getting back to sleep until 6:30 (5,400 seconds later, with dreams) was a piece of heaven.
The bedroom windows allow a view of sky and bay and pointed firs of only a few degrees. I should have gone outside for the full 360, but it was 4:00 a.m. and cold. Even so limited, the view was thrilling: the stars are so brilliant and numerous and inspiring anyway in the undeveloped night skies of Maine, and then there would be a silent little pop! of light, then a brilliant little trail, then a little white flame-out. You really did get the sense of stars falling down, and also the slight and thrilling fear that a real star directly overhead (or at least a substantial meteor) would take it upon itself to target the house.
"Thrilling" is a slight over-statement. It's not a spectacle like, say, what the Chinese do for international honor. A shooting star lasts about a second. Its trail is tiny. I saw maybe 10 in an hour of gazing.
"Humbling" is a better word. In order to get all those cliches out of my head (life-is-so-short, blaze-of-glory, what-is-the-meaning-of-life), I tried to calculate how many shooting stars there would be in my life if they arrived once a second for 70 years. The answer, after a certain amount of stops and starts and confusion about decimal places, was about 2 billion (later confirmed by a real calculator to be 2.2 billion). Now that's thrilling. Don't you love the idea of a second of glory?
The calculating, and the humbling, put the world to right, and getting back to sleep until 6:30 (5,400 seconds later, with dreams) was a piece of heaven.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The writer's friend
The woodstove offers:
1. warmth, preventing you from going back to bed or curling up on the couch with the New Yorkers that you're way behind on
2. complexity - lots of flues and vents and baffles, the frequent opening and closing of which keeps your brain alive
3. tangible results and goals, i.e, the thermometer magnetically attached to the stovepipe registers the temperatures ( 400-500 degrees) for "best operation"
4. discipline - it must be lighted first thing in the morning, even before orange juice, the log rack must be restocked twice a day, the wood pile in the garage must be replenished
5. creativity in choosing the exact right log - diameter, length, hard- or softwood - for maximum burn and most shapely fire
6. nostalgia: Baron Wormser lived for more than 20 years with only woodstoves for heat and cooking? Such a simpler way of life.... Also, when you light the stove in the morning, you use newspaper, financial statements, cereal boxes, and old manuscripts and sometimes you read them and get distracted by the past, which leads to the most important point of all:
7. distractibility: getting up constantly to check the burn, open a vent or door for just a little more air, brush wood bits from the floor under the log rack and ash bits from the brick apron in front of the stove, get some more logs from the garage, check the stovepipe thermometer, then your house's, then the outside one and feel virtuous, in fact do anything at all to get you away from the balky sentence, the lame phrase, the description that slithers around like jello, the cliches that just will not leave your brain, the character who sounds like you, and the impossibility of transitions between paragraphs.
All in all, quite a useful thing, the woodstove.
1. warmth, preventing you from going back to bed or curling up on the couch with the New Yorkers that you're way behind on
2. complexity - lots of flues and vents and baffles, the frequent opening and closing of which keeps your brain alive
3. tangible results and goals, i.e, the thermometer magnetically attached to the stovepipe registers the temperatures ( 400-500 degrees) for "best operation"
4. discipline - it must be lighted first thing in the morning, even before orange juice, the log rack must be restocked twice a day, the wood pile in the garage must be replenished
5. creativity in choosing the exact right log - diameter, length, hard- or softwood - for maximum burn and most shapely fire
6. nostalgia: Baron Wormser lived for more than 20 years with only woodstoves for heat and cooking? Such a simpler way of life.... Also, when you light the stove in the morning, you use newspaper, financial statements, cereal boxes, and old manuscripts and sometimes you read them and get distracted by the past, which leads to the most important point of all:
7. distractibility: getting up constantly to check the burn, open a vent or door for just a little more air, brush wood bits from the floor under the log rack and ash bits from the brick apron in front of the stove, get some more logs from the garage, check the stovepipe thermometer, then your house's, then the outside one and feel virtuous, in fact do anything at all to get you away from the balky sentence, the lame phrase, the description that slithers around like jello, the cliches that just will not leave your brain, the character who sounds like you, and the impossibility of transitions between paragraphs.
All in all, quite a useful thing, the woodstove.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Giant contradictions
Finally some good news about carbon dioxide! The increasing level of the stuff in the ocean seems to make the shells of lobsters, shrimp and crabs (but not snails, oysters, clams and scallops) bigger and harder and stronger. This is a finding of considerable implications for Maine's fishing industries, but is also a finding in isolation, and scientists have no idea what it might mean in the bigger picture.
Well, I do. Just like in the real world, the rich gets richer. Those scuttling creatures are already abundant and doing well; stronger shells will make them indestructible. The more we pollute, the more they will benefit. At last they will grow huge and emerge from the sea. The crab will form campaign committees, take over government. Shrimp will school together in giant pods and conquer TV and movies. Lobsters will be the new New Army, or I should say, Peace Keepers, red in tooth and claw. Little helpless things like crabs will have no Hope.
Farfetched? Not nearly as much as headlines that say "President Defends US Wars, Accepts Peace Prize."
Well, I do. Just like in the real world, the rich gets richer. Those scuttling creatures are already abundant and doing well; stronger shells will make them indestructible. The more we pollute, the more they will benefit. At last they will grow huge and emerge from the sea. The crab will form campaign committees, take over government. Shrimp will school together in giant pods and conquer TV and movies. Lobsters will be the new New Army, or I should say, Peace Keepers, red in tooth and claw. Little helpless things like crabs will have no Hope.
Farfetched? Not nearly as much as headlines that say "President Defends US Wars, Accepts Peace Prize."
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