Paper, plastic or neither? Notes on consuming (and existing) ethically in 2023 CE

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By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Jan. 31, 2023

I began composting last year after becoming alarmed by the amount of inedible organic material that I was tossing in the trash. Composting has a variety of benefits. It can produce rich fertilizer for gardens. It also cuts down on the potential production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that’s generated when anaerobic microorganisms break down the contents of landfills.

I tend to eat a lot of corn when it’s in season. Whenever possible, I buy it from my local weekly farmer’s market in my (still) new (at least to me) community. Unshucked corn brings with it a, well, cornucopia of green material that can be composted. I was very happy to be able to divert the leaves and husks into the compost bin in my back yard.

These days, there’s no farmer’s market, so my biggest contribution to the compost bin comes from clementine peels. I wonder whether the peels are too acidic to make for good compost. If so, I might not find out for months. Even if it proves to be the case, this wouldn’t be the world’s worst tragedy.

Vignette: Bed vs. leg, Atlantic City, N.J., edition

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Jan. 28, 2023

The first Sunday in November, I drove to Atlantic City to play some poker. Over parts of two days, I played Texas holdem at all three local casinos that offer live poker. I stayed overnight at a fourth property, the Golden Nugget.

I came away from the Nugget with a free souvenir: A pair of lacerations on my left shin. Like many hotel beds, the one in my room at the Golden Nugget rested atop some kind of solid pedestal that was firmly attached to the floor. For reasons that aren’t quite clear to me, the mattress atop the pedestal didn’t really line up with the supporting structure. As a result, I repeatedly banged my left leg on one corner of that pedestal.

These violent encounters between my lower leg and the pedestal caused me only a few fleeting moments of pain. But my skin is still regenerating in the area.

Every so often, I’ll glance down and notice the slowly healing red patches on my shin, and I’ll remember that room and the misaligned mattress. Two and a half months later, the sight reminds me of that trip seemingly at random.

Peering into my political crystal ball

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By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Jan. 27, 2023

I’m going to throw out some political predictions for next year.

• Donald Trump will likely be the Republican nominee for president. If corrupt, whiny Donald Trump wants the job, voters will give it to him. The only viable rival for the position at this moment appears to be Florida’s hard-right governor. Ron DeSantis has more discipline than the former president and would likely be more adept at implementing cruel policies punishing liberals, homosexuals, transsexuals, African-Americans and other opposition, minority and/or marginalized groups. But DeSantis may lack Trump’s personal charisma, and he wouldn’t be the first presidential hopeful whose public image dropped like a stone once voters in places other than his home state got to know him.

Yes, Trump’s candidacy might be derailed by severe illness, death, prosecution or a major scandal. But none of those events are guaranteed, and if Trump feels sufficiently motivated, all potential obstacles save death might be overcome.

• Joe Biden will likely be the Democratic nominee for president. Some people on the left love Joe Biden; others loathe him. I would characterize myself as mildly approving of his actions during his first two year in office. Biden has certainly offered little leadership on Covid-19 beyond straightening out the initial vaccine distribution mess that he inherited from the Trump administration, a choice that has led to thousands of deaths and immense immiseration due to long Covid. There’s certainly room to criticize Biden on immigration — a low-priority issue for many Americans — and on labor. But is Biden 1,000 percent better than any potential Republican opponent? Of that I have no doubt.

Dream diary: On deadline in the newsroom and the delivery room

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By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Jan. 25, 2023

I had two dreams over the past several days that lodged in my memory, unlike most of my unconscious ramblings.

In the first dream, I was working at a daily newspaper, a job I have not had in quite a long time. It was a weekend shift, presumably a Saturday or Sunday, meaning that I was the only reporter on duty. There had been a number of breaking news stories that day, and I was responsible for writing all the text — insiders might say filing all the copy — for those four or five front-page pieces.

It quickly became apparent that I was somewhat overwhelmed by the task — the number of stories, the amount of very particular details that it was vital to get right, the impending deadline. There was talk about delegating one or more of the items to another reporter, but I fretted about this. First, I was concerned that it would be so time-consuming to hand off all of the important facts that the time saved would be negligible. Second, I worried that the potential for introducing some kind of serious error or oversight would be so high that delegation was not the right call to make. And briefing another reporter on even a single one of these stories might involve a lengthy, complex process…

One man, two legs, two devices and three apps that track my movement

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Jan. 18, 2023

I’ve had a Fitbit since October 2015, when my Parental Unit gave me one after upgrading to a device with a display. I’ve since been given at least one additional hand-me-down Fitbit tracker.

Almost exactly two years after I got that device, I purchased an iPhone 8, which was a major step up from my old iPhone 5. One feature of the then-new phone was an accelerometer, which functions as a de-facto step tracker with the use of Apple’s Health app.

Fitbit and Apple Health make for an interesting pair of complementary pieces of software. Many of the data fields they track, whether automatically or by manual input, overlap. For instance, both apps keep tabs on user weight, number of steps, distance traveled, stairs climbed and calories burned.

However, some of the results can vary widely. On Jan. 7, Apple Health automatically captured my having climbed 50 flights of stairs. This is more than thrice my daily average of 11 floors ascended from May 2022 through this month. However, on that day, Fitbit automatically recorded my climbing 159 floors. There was an even bigger gap on Dec. 18, when Health indicated that I climbed four flights, while Fitbit captured my going up literally 100 times as many flights.

Not so nuts: A short funeral story

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Jan. 16, 2023

Last week, I attended a burial at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in the unincorporated community of Hawthorne in Westchester County, N.Y. The skies were overcast and the temperature was around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. It felt colder, possibly because I was wearing an overcoat better suited to warmer weather, possibly because I rarely stand around outside in cool conditions. (When I’m outdoors, especially in low temperatures, I tend to move around quite a lot.)

I’ll call the decedent E—. I did not know her well. She was related to my sibling-in-law, who was not able to attend the event. I only met E— a handful of times, always in the company of her longtime husband. I liked both of them and found them to be charming company. The husband, who died first, was famous in the family for cooking delicious steaks and entertaining children with his simple, unbounded joke about an elephant: “And it went… and it went… and it went… and it went…” This never failed to crack up the kids.

I attended the burial with my Parental Unit. We gravitated toward the only person at the funeral service that we knew well, O—, the mother-in-law of my Sibling and a sister of the decedent. A man held a vertically oriented smartphone that he used to document the proceedings, apparently for a live videoconference session for distant mourners. I suspect that my parent and I were caught in the background of the shot as O— related a few of her memories of E— during part of the burial ceremony.