Neighbors

Neighbors can greatly impact our lives, especially close neighbors.

Fortunate is the person whose dog never barks, whose children never throw a tantrum, or who is blessed with benevolence toward other human beings and their manifold weaknesses. That person would be the perfect neighbor.

Yet our world is far from perfect. And so are most of us. We all have days when we need to make an extra effort to be pleasant to others, especially to those who live in close proximity. A sensitive neighbor may interpret our absent-minded grumpy nod instead of our usually friendly good morning as anger and may worry all day long.

Before you sign that check to purchase a condo, be sure to visit your prospective neighbors. You may be allergic to cats, dogs, or cigarette smoke; tell them about it and ask them questions about your other neighbors.

Not long ago, the city in which our condo is located, instituted a no-smoking rule. It means you can no longer smoke in your own living space unless it’s a one-family home; no more smoking in an apartment or in your own condo. For smokers this is a great hardship. It can also be a giant headache for board members who may have to deal with complaints from non-smokers who are convinced that a bit of smoke in the hallway may be dreadfully harmful.

Another thing, before you make the final decision, be sure to read carefully the CC&Rs, By-Laws, and especially the House Rules of the condominium. You may be surprised how many rules you have to follow—or face fines.

On the other hand, if you like people, having neighbors can add greatly to your enjoyment of life.

Until next time,

Rosi

Condo Living — Pros and Cons

It’s always been the American dream to own your own home—to be the King or the Queen of your castle, to have your own backyard, and maybe to plant a few vegetables.

But suppose you have obtained a strata title to your place, in other words, you bought a condominium. You own your four walls, but you have to share everything else with forty or four hundred other owners.

The condominium is a fairly new concept. Utah attorney Keith Romney came up with the idea about 55 years ago, and in 1960 in the fair city of Salt Lake City had the first, 120-unit, condominium built.

Does a condo fulfill our American dream of owning a home?

It depends on the way you look at it. From a commercial point of view, such as credit card applications or questionnaires, yes, you are a homeowner. But if you wish to be Queen of your castle, a condo may fall short. There are CC&R’s and House Rules to be obeyed, monthly homeowner dues to be paid, common area restrictions to be followed.

Many condos do not allow children or teenagers to be in the pool area or gym without parental supervision. Your dog, if the association allows you to have one, may be banned from the condo grounds. You may even be fined if your best friend barks at the wrong time or your music invades your neighbor’s space after ten o’clock at night.

Condo living is ideal for an adult who doesn’t want to be bothered with fixing the roof or mowing the lawn, a person who can tolerate a change in the lobby furniture or the color of the building, a person who doesn’t mind or care what the neighbors are doing.

Condo living provides great ease for its residents. They can leave town without being too concerned about burglars. They can enjoy the association’s amenities without having to buy and maintain them.

On the other hand, condo living requires a tolerant attitude—you need to be able to live and let others live too. Luckily, it’s only once in a great while that you come across a person who perversely rejects the idea of being neighborly to other residents.

So when you consider buying a condo, ponder your preferences and attitudes, and think about meeting your future neighbors. I plan to come back to the topic next time.

Until then,

Rosi

Equality of the Sexes

There’s much talk about the equality of the sexes these days. It wasn’t always that way. Women were delegated to Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen and church). Many fields, such as higher education, medicine or engineering, were closed to them. A woman’s pay was about half of what a man earned for identical work. 

World War II caused a change in that inequality. While the men were fighting the enemy, women had to take over in the homeland. "Rosie the Riveter" worked in the factories, the farmer’s wife managed the farm, women pitched in wherever men once labored. Lo and behold, they did an admirable job.

The time had finally come to grant women a better education. Not surprisingly, women turned into good doctors, bright scientists, and capable engineers. They’ve become astronauts and explore space.

Equality at last. Well, not quite yet, but we’re getting there.

Let me define equality of the sexes. Does it mean that there’s no difference between the sexes? Not at all. Men and women may have as little in common as Cabbages and Kings. As the Walrus says in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass:

                     "The time has come," the Walrus said,

                     "To talk of many things:

                     Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--

                      Of cabbages and kings …

                      And why the sea is boiling hot--

         And whether pigs have wings."

The variety of topics that the Walrus suggests is just as broad as the range and depth of the differences between men and women.  

The French have a colorful saying for it: Vive la difference!

Women may have adopted the male fashion of wearing pants. So be it. The Scotts used to wear skirts, but neither clothes nor gender affects the value of a person. Look at the snowflake — not two are alike, nor are two human thumbprints, much less two women or two men, not even identical twins. Nature abounds in variety.

We may be tempted to classify all rats and mosquitoes as “annoying pests.” Yet rats and mosquitoes might feel quite hurt by our flagrant oversimplification.

Men and women will never be identical, but they need to be equal before the law and in their opportunities of pursuing happiness.

Goodbye to all bias based on gender!

Until next time,

Rosi

Demon Age

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Some people call the years of retirement the Golden Years—for many they are. Some people dread them as a time of loneliness, depression and decline—that too is possible. But it need not be so. After all, we are the pilot; we choose our path.

In my younger days the thought of aging never occurred to me. I was too busy with family, home and work. But times have changed—the internet, advertisers and a growing awareness of life around us keep reminding us daily of the passage of time.

Having passed the three-quarter-century mark, I can speak from experience now.

I chose the title Demon Age because of its twofold, apposite meaning. Age can be interpreted as the Devil’s doing, the Devil at work. Or if we look at the word’s Latin and Greek origins, Daemon and Daimon, we encounter the meaning of Deity and Genius. We use the word demon to praise a person’s extraordinary skills, such as a demon cook, or a demon at tennis.

And so it is with age. We can call on that divine spark in us to chart our voyage. We can plan ahead ingeniously —we can save, we can exercise and remain fit. It does take discipline, but the rewards are worthwhile—they enable us to anticipate our Golden Years.

It has been many years now since I retired. Yet surprisingly, my days are never long enough. I still get up around five in the morning. I’ll run errands on my bike and spend many hours volunteering. I have taken up Bridge and piano and write books, one of which became a bestseller.

These can indeed be the Golden Years. We finally have the leisure and wisdom to be aware of the many blessings that Life is granting us, filling us with infinite gratitude. Mark Twain put it in a humorous way when he said Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind it doesn’t matter. Age is no reason for depression and loneliness.

I savor being retired. No more outside pressures, worries and deadlines, except those of my own making. We see life from a different perspective. We treasure our friends more deeply, knowing full well that our numbers are steadily declining. I admire their stamina and persistence and especially their contented smiles.

There is much talk these days about the possibility of prolonging life indefinitely. To me it is not an appealing thought. We may not be eager to die, but I’d prefer to progress and come back one day with a new body and see how this planet has improved and advanced.

In the meantime I don’t want to miss a laugh, or a new experience, or a moment of enjoying our beautiful planet Earth.

I went to a tea dance yesterday. A young man from Buenos Aires asked me to dance a Rumba with him, a dance I’ll long remember. In perfect rhythm and with total grace he executed and taught me some wonderful Latin steps! I drove home bewitched with a wistful thought stirring my mind … if only I were young again.

Until next time,

Rosi

Phi in Nature, Art and Architecture

Way back in the thirteenth century Leonardo Fibonacci wanted to figure out how many offspring a pair of rabbits and their offspring would have if each bred one female rabbit a month. Simple: 144 rabbits after one year, 46,368 after two, and 14,930,352 rabbits after three years. The illustrious mathematician of Pisa had discovered the Fibonacci Sequence.

By dividing each number in his sequence by its previous number, he had detected Phi, and called it the Golden Ratio. Phi can be rounded up to 1.618.

Arab scholars had long known about this sequence, because for ages they had been using Arab numerals, 0, 1, 2, 3, and were far ahead of Europeans, who were still struggling with Roman numerals.  No matter how brilliant a mathematician, the use of II, IV, or CXII is not conducive to doing math. When Fibonacci returned from his travels to Arabia, he vigorously encouraged Europeans to use the Arab system.

Amazingly, Phi happens to be ubiquitous and a fundamental characteristic of nature. It shows up in the patterns of leaves, flowers, pinecones, pineapples and shells, and even in the spiral of the galaxies.

Phi is not only known as the Golden Ratio in nature, it also features in architecture and art. The pyramids and the Parthenon reflect this principle. Le Corbusier carefully calculated a Golden Ratio when he designed the UN Headquarters. Many city halls and theaters are built in the Classical Greek tradition based on Phi.

Even great artists have embraced Phi. Leonardo Da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo and Salvador Mundi are all known for having applied the Golden Ratio to some of their famous works of art, such as The Last Supper, The Annunciation, The Birth of Venus, and The Creation of Adam.

Some people claim that the beauty of a face may depend on its ratio too.

May Phi harmonize your life.

Until next time,

Rosi

Computer Glitches

Computers are simply inanimate devices, right?

Wrong.

Computers are highly delicate and sensitive creatures. At least mine is, and it can be quite stubborn at times.

Have you ever been in a big hurry to print out something? My printer worked fine earlier in the day. But now, when I don’t have a minute to spare, it is not cooperating!

Not only that, but the sentence I changed switched back to the old version. Twice. I’m at my wit’s end. Why do computers do that?

Frustration over technology glitches is becoming so prevalent that yesterday the Wall Street Journal featured a front-page article called "The Tech Fails That Annoy Us Most." Geoffrey Fowler and Joanna Stern write "We love technology, but this week we're shaking our fists at it for all the ways it annoys us." They invite readers to send in their pet peeves.

I suspect that computers want us to be grateful, glad and relaxed when we interact with them. After all, what would we do without them? Computers are everywhere and run everything. They know full well how much we depend on them.

Do you suppose that solar flares might occasionally interfere with our computer? Solar flares are known to cause trouble with satellite signals.

It is useless to talk about a computer’s feelings to an engineer. If he’s polite he will tell you that computers are simply machines—man-made, inanimate objects like shoes. If he’s the more direct type he’ll tell you that you’re nuts, how can computers have feelings?!

But suppose my haste and impatience and my rapidly beating heart are sending out jagged vibrations that interfere with the electronic field of my computer. They affected my grandson when he walked into my office.  Even though we didn’t exchange a single word, he said, “Slow down Grandma, slow down!!” How did he know? Because he felt my haste, just as my computer did. It’s not surprising that my computer is sensitive to my feelings; I spend much of my day with it.

I asked a friend of mine about it. He smiled at the foolish idea and patiently explained that our vibrations are much too weak; they measure in micro-volts and couldn’t possibly interfere with the five or more volts that a computer uses.

Perhaps we need to learn how to accurately measure human feelings and how emotions can interfere with or affect electronic equipment as well as other people.

Or could it truly be just us, hitting the wrong computer buttons causing chaos?

As the Cracker song goes:  I could be wrong, I could be right.

Until next time,

Rosi

Lessons of Life

I tossed and turned. Sleep would not come. Tears were soaking my pillow. Helen, my best friend had been killed. Her innocent blue eyes and gentle smile kept beckoning to me. Just a week ago she had turned ten.

Helen had died in an air shelter. I disliked those underground cellars. They were cold, damp, dark and scary. Yet as long as I could remember we had spent part of every night in one. I suppose they did provide some safety, as long as you reached one in time and if it didn’t suffer a direct hit. I shuddered thinking of those who had been buried in one alive.

Would it ever end, this miserable war? You couldn’t ask a soul. Questions of a political nature were severely punished.  They labeled you as a traitor. Complete faith in the country’s leadership was a prerequisite for survival.

I secretly asked Mother one day. Infinite pain clouded her face, but only for a moment.  Then she softly stroked my head and whispered, “It will, one day.”

Why can’t we live together in peace, I wondered.

Why spread so much distrust and hate?

Why not work together and make it a better world for all?

It seemed so simple and so obvious, but why was it an utterly out-of-reach goal? The very air we breathed was laden with sadness. When was it that I saw someone smile or laugh? I could not remember. Death and destruction was everywhere. And fear, infinite fear of more death and destruction, or worse.

I suddenly sat up in bed, electrified, the first epiphany for a ten-year old. “That’s it. Of course!” I smiled to myself. “What the world needs is more kindness. I shall always be kind.”

Happily I fell asleep and never doubted or altered this first lesson that life had taught me.

Until next time,

Rosi