2016 End of the Generation Gap

2016 End of the Generation Gap
October, 2016

Steven B. Zwickel

2003 I am Certain, I Think, About Uncertainty

May, 2003

Steven B. Zwickel

In 2003, someone in Guangzhou, China sent me a long email by mistake. It started out like this:

UNCERTAINTY  PRINCIPLE

IS

UNTENABLE

By reanalysing the experiment of Heisenberg Gamma-Ray Microscope and one of ideal experiment from which uncertainty principle is derived , it is found that actually uncertainty principle can not be obtained from these two ideal experiments . And it is found that uncertainty principle is untenable.

…and the article went on to describe, in great detail, two experiments (with formulas and equations) proving that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is, probably, not right. I am guessing, here, because I lack the ability to interpret all the math and physics, but I did feel that my unknown correspondent deserved a response, so here it is:

I don't know why you sent me this. I am not a physicist.

My thoughts about Uncertainty:

Are there cockroaches in my kitchen?

✔ I think that there might be cockroaches in my kitchen. I have not seen them, but my neighbors have told me that they are common in our building. Mathematically, it would be surprising if I did NOT have cockroaches in my apartment.

✔ I think they come at night, but if I go into the kitchen and turn on the light, there is nothing there that I can see. If I leave the light on during the night, I won't see cockroaches either.

✔ To test my hypothesis that there are cockroaches in the kitchen, I left some crumbs on the floor. The next morning, the crumbs were gone. Something made the crumbs move.

✔ For the next test, I spread a thin layer of oil in a circle around a few crumbs. The next morning, the crumbs were gone but I was able to note a narrow trail of oil leading to the corner of the cupboard.

✔ Therefore, I conclude that there are cockroaches in my kitchen and they probably live under the cupboard. They can't be seen when you turn on the light, because the light makes them run away. The very act of looking for them makes it impossible to find them although there is other evidence that they were there.

✔ Final experiment: set a cockroach trap along the trail of oil between the crumbs and the cupboard. Statistically, this is the most likely place to find cockroaches. 

✔ But you never know. . .

Why family therapy works.

As a long-time psychotherapist, I know that I can help people if I can get them to talk about their problems. What is so surprising is how often talking about a problem is effective, even if I (as therapist) don't offer an new insights or help.

When you ask someone to talk about their parents, their spouse, or their children, they have to put their emotions into words. This process is still not terribly well understood, but language skills are extremely complex and it must use an enormous amount of brain power to do this.

What happens though, is that, as they convert their feelings into words, they actually change they way they view things. Something happens when you turn your emotions into phrases and sentences. Perhaps these things become more "real" or more managable to the speaker. It's amazing to listen to someone talking about his or her relationship to a parent, for example, and to hear them framing ideas in different ways. They leave therapy with a different perspective, even if nothing actually "happened" during the session.

Maybe Heisenberg was wrong about sub-atomic particles, but my experience has been that the act of examining one's relationship changes that relationship.

2002 My Political Rant

Steven B. Zwickel

November 18, 2002

What should we do when public servants put their own self-interests before those of the public? It seems that our elected representatives are caught in an endless cycle of fund-raising and campaigning that has plunged our whole system into a pit of corruption. They need help to escape this trap and to restore confidence in government.

Our representatives run for reelection for a variety of reasons. Some want to continue in office to press legislation on certain issues. They feel that public service is a noble calling that enables them to act as advocates for the issues that are important to them. Many of them see themselves as professional politicians and the process of getting reelected is a way of continuing their careers. All of those who run for reelection do so because they can, because there is no limit to the number of times a person can run for an office in this state.

The more times a politician gets reelected, the more seniority he or she acquires. In the legislature, seniority leads to an increase in power. The lure of power is a strong incentive to run for reelection.

This desire to get reelected is the root cause of all the problems our legislature has had in the past few years. When legislators have to worry about getting reelected, they can’t act on their principles—instead of doing what they think is right, they do what is popular. They try not to take positions on controversial issues, because these votes may be used against them in an election campaign. Even if a legislator has a strong opinion, he or she dare not express it, lest they give ammunition to their political opponents when they come up for reelection. This is why our legislators actually prefer inaction to action. No wonder so little gets done! And no wonder there is so much hoopla when a bill is enacted.

It also explains why all the candidates sound alike. They conduct polls to find out what the majority of voters think and then they try to please everyone. They all sound alike because they all base their campaigns on telling us what they think we want to hear. This is called “pandering” and it is a good indication of how rotten our political system has become. Our representatives no longer stand for anything.

The current system encourages politicians to avoid trying anything new. New ideas may be controversial and they can fail, so politicians have learned to avoid them. They have discovered that it is much safer to run on a platform that opposes new ideas. It is harder to defend an idea and to campaign in favor of doing something. It is the height of absurdity when campaigns become contests to see which candidate can come out against more things.

Perhaps the worst example of how our system has become dysfunctional is the political gridlock surrounding the issue of taxation. The candidates—every single one of them—promise to curb spending and cut taxes. If they are so absolutely determined to cut taxes, why haven’t they done so? The reason they have not cut taxes is because they can’t. They know it would be impossible to maintain the level of services we get from government if taxes were cut. We expect roads to be fixed, snow to be plowed, crooks to be caught and sent to jail, schools and libraries to be open and working, and cutting any of these would make the voters very angry.

The same legislators who can’t cut taxes can’t raise taxes either. All of them have pledged to never, ever raise taxes. This foolish oath, if taken seriously, means that, when the unknowable, unforeseeable, and uncontrollable come to pass (as they surely will) we can expect no help from the state. They are powerless to raise taxes, even in an emergency! In the recent budget crisis, any sane person would have (reluctantly, I think) concluded that a small tax increase would save the ship of state from deficits. Not one voice was heard in the legislature proposing this solution. The legislators know that a vote in favor of any tax hike is “political suicide”—something career politicians must avoid at all costs. Instead, they used the tobacco settlement windfall, which temporarily (at least until after the next election) solved the problem without raising taxes.

Are the voters opposed to tax increases? Of course we are. We don’t want to pay more taxes, but we aren’t stupid, either. Had the legislators raised taxes to balance the budget, we would have griped and complained, but I think we would also have recognized the importance of paying for all the things we want, and have come to expect, from the state. When taxes need to be raised, we need legislators who are not afraid to do the right thing.

Our politicians are constantly raising money to pay for the TV, radio, and newspaper ads for the next election. This need for money caused the scandals we have seen splashed all over the news. The need to raise money for campaigning has led some good people astray. Too many elected officials have given in to temptation and become deeply beholden to big campaign contributors and a lot less sensitive to the needs of their other constituents.

Who wins when a large donor’s interests conflict with those of the community? Can a politician afford to say “no” to a wealthy contributor? By saying “yes” and taking the money, he or she can more easily ignore the will of the public, because a big campaign warchest can be used to buy lots of ads that will put a positive “spin” on things. In other words, if you raise enough money, you can screw the public and later on persuade them that you actually did the right thing.

We have an elected body whose members are more concerned with getting reelected than with doing what is necessary to keep our state going. On some issues, like taxes, they seem to be completely immobilized. Their self-interest requires them to chase money in underhanded and illegal ways and to accept contributions knowing that they may have to vote against their consciences and against the best interests of their constituents. How can we get them out of this mire? Can anyone reform our state government?

The argument may be made that the legislators can reform themselves—that they can pass legislation that will solve these problems and end the abuses. If they could have, they would have. They can’t do it. They can’t reform themselves: they have too much at stake, they are too partisan, and they are much too much attached to power.

We, the people, will have to reform our own political system. We need an end to partisan gridlock. We need to stop the endless fund-raising and campaigning. We need to hold a convention, as described in Article XII, §2 of the State Constitution to put things right. And it needs to be a convention of the people, not of the politicians.

Let’s start by putting a clause in the Constitution limiting how much money anyone can contribute to a candidate. Make it a percentage of the salary for the office—say 1%—or use any formula, as long as it is applied fairly to all office seekers. This amendment needs to be airtight; there mustn’t be any loopholes. Let’s get rid of “deniability” as a defense. We can permit a candidate to make one “mistake”, but two violations of the law and you go directly to jail. Let’s treat candidates the way we are (finally) treating CEOs. They must be held personally accountable for what their campaigns do and they should be required to sign off on an outside audit.

It is also time to get rid of the career politicians whose pettiness, sneakiness, and partisanship got us into this mess. We need term limits. Other states have them and we would not be the first to try them out. Opponents of term limits argue that it means “throwing the good out with the bad” and that the end result is a terrible “loss of experience” when senior legislators are forced out. Needless to say, all the opponents of term limits are career politicians (and their backers) who have a lot to lose. Service in the legislature was never intended to be a full-time job, much less a career. Reelecting a batch of “experienced” politicians means bringing back all the old animosity, greed, and personality clashes that led to gridlock in the first place.

Term limits would free our elected representatives to devote their time in office to doing the job at hand instead of spending it fund-raising and campaigning. They could increase or decrease taxes as needed, regardless of how popular such a move might be. They could do the “right” thing and tell the special interests and big donors to take a hike.

We, the people, have to do a better job, too. More of us have to vote and all of us need to know more about the issues. But, we can solve the problems we face—in fact, we are the only ones who can do so.

More than 225 years ago, Tom Paine insisted that there comes a time when reform can’t be left to the politicians; when the people themselves must act. That’s why the authors of the Wisconsin State Constitution put in Article XII—so that we can do what needs to be done ourselves. Now, we must do it.

2016 Baby Boomers and TV

Steven B. Zwickel

May, 2016

I got caught a while back by some click bait on-line that promised me a listicle of ten TV shows that were most influenced the Baby Boomers.  I read the list and I don’t agree with it at all. 

Baby Boomers, for those who don’t know, are a huge group (nearly 80,000,000 people) who were born in the 20 years after WWII, about 1946 to 1964. (I have written this piece so people who are not Baby Boomers can follow it). It was an era marked by the “Generation Gap” and adolescent “alienation”, terms used to describe how teens came to distrust adults and to challenge the values they were raised with.

I divide the Baby Boomer (BB) generation into two groups— older and younger. Older BBs are those who were old enough to understand the events of November 22, 1963. Younger BBs did not. The two groups had different experiences growing up and the impact of TV was different on the two groups. Television changed in an attempt to attract younger BBs and to win back older BBs. The older BBs drifted away from TV in the 1960s and spent more time pursuing other interests (think sex, drugs, politics). 

TV was different in the 1950s-60s, when the BBs were growing up. The target audience for most shows was the whole family, and advertisers were terrified of offending viewers. This meant that there were strict rules about content and language—no discussion of personal issues, no sex, no swearing. 

The networks filled prime time—the hours between dinner and bedtime—with family fare and that is when most people watched TV. No one watched much TV in summer—it was all re-runs, except for baseball games (which were played in the middle of the afternoon until the TV people persuaded the owners to move games to a later time when more people could watch on TV). Up until the mid-1960s, we watched TV shows in black and white—few people could afford color TV.

The listicle I disagree with contained soap operas. I don’t know who was influenced by the soaps. And, as I remember it, the BBs were in school all day and it was only stay-at-home moms who watched the soaps. 

The listicle also included the Tonight Show, but in the 1950s, few people stayed up late to watch TV because most had to get up early for work or school. Tonight started in the mid-50s and didn’t really become an institution until Carson took over in the early 1960s.

The listicle mistakenly included Sesame Street, which came along in 1969, long after the older BBs were toddlers. We did have TV shows for kids, but most had little-to-no educational content. The exception was Ding Dong School with Miss Frances, which only ran for a few years in the 1950s. Other shows for kids were the Mickey Mouse Club, Wonderama (both started in 1955) with people like Captain Video, Sandy Becker, Bill Britten (Bozo the Clown), and Sonny Fox. Total slapstick was found on another show that started in 1955 called Lunch with Soupy (Sales), but only preschoolers and sick kids who were home at mid-day got to see that show.

Well into the 1960s, radio was much more influential than TV. Radio was the source of the BBs music, which was a key part of the BB culture. And most families had a single TV, which was watched by everyone, while teenagers had their own portable “transistor” radios on which they listened to “their” music. 

In the 50s and 60s, Hollywood movies were in a period of decline. The big stars of the 1940s were fading and the quality of the scripts and productions was weakened by the blacklisting of many writers. Attendance in movie theaters fell off and, to save the industry, movies wound up being shown on TV. NBC started the trend in 1961, with NBC Saturday Night at the Movies and the other networks followed until there were movies on TV just about every night of the week.

My list of the TV shows that most influenced the older BBs. 

These are not the most popular shows, but the ones I think were most influential. I Love Lucy was extremely popular, but not influential. For contrast, not everyone watched Watch Mr. Wizard (starting in 1951) with Don Herbert, but those who did were influenced by it and became a lot more interested in science than they might have been.

1. Evening News. The networks started boosting their news coverage right around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and TV news really took off at the time of the Kennedy assassination in 1963. It was something everyone watched. We knew Huntley and Brinkley (Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC ), even if we couldn’t tell them apart. We trusted “uncle Walter Cronkite” (CBS Evening News 1962–81). The networks’ coverage of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War had huge influence on how the BBs saw the world and their future role in it.

2. Variety shows. People today talk about an event “going viral” on the internet, but the BBs grew up in an era where the whole country watched an event and it became a shared cultural experience. Weekly variety programs, like The Ed Sullivan Show (1948 to 1971),The Perry Como Show (1955-59), and a dozen others not only created a shared culture, but they gave exposure to performers from every field. We saw comics, opera singers, Broadway shows, jazz bands, magicians, puppeteers, and everything else.

3. Rebel heroes. Walt Disney was so completely mainstream and conservative it’s hard to believe how much influence his TV shows Walt Disney's Disneyland (1954–1958) and Walt Disney Presents (1958–1961) in promoting rebels as heroes. These were anthology shows, running multi-week series, often about a single historical character. History, in this case, meant action, and the characters were rebels like Davey Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Francis Marion. This was TV for boys and it gave young BBs the powerful message that it is OK for men to rebel against authority, especially when the authority is in the wrong.

4. Career shows. The BBs were told that they could be anything they wanted to be, and TV played right along. We had Perry Mason (1957-66), who made us want to be lawyers; Ben Casey (1961 to 1966) and Dr. Kildare (1961 to 1966), who made us want to be doctors. The Man from UNCLE (1964-68), Mission: Impossible (1966–1973), Checkmate (1960-62), The Wild Wild West (1965-69), and I Spy (1965 to 1968) made us want to be detectives and secret agents. I have no idea how many people chose careers based on these shows, but they certainly made BBs consider them.

5. Westerns. These “oaters” were a TV staple of every BBs childhood and most had interchangeable plots and characters. Their significance lies in how they promoted a cultural norm they called the “Code of the West” or the Code of the Cowboy. The Code was never stated overtly, but it was implied by the cowboys’ (good and bad) conduct. It was a code of honor that required a man to fight for his property, his woman, and his dignity. Real men used guns. The worst thing a man could be was a coward. If you must fight, you follow the rules (kicking, biting, and sucker punches are for cowards, but see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969] for a hilarious take on this part of the Code). When you hear politicians talking about how women need to be protected, they are reciting part of the Code. It is still with us.

6. Bonanza. I grouped the other westerns together, but Bonanza (1959 to 1973) was in a league of its own. The all-male cast took on topical issues like sexism and intolerance. The Cartwrights stood up for people of other religions, races, and ethnic groups. Not all the scripts were first-rate and some of the plots were sappy, but the show gave a whole new perspective to the BB audience that they didn’t get from the other westerns.

7. Annual Events. Everybody watched: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Miss America Pageant, The Oscars, the Olympics, the Jerry Lewis Telethon. For many years, these gave all of us a sense of being part of a common culture, but for the BBs in the 60s, they also came to symbolize the influence of corporate America. These shows were on the other side of the Generation Gap—for older people—and irrelevant to the many social, economic, and political changes the BBs were experiencing. 

8. Star Trek. Thousands of words have been written about the little show (79 episodes in just three seasons 1966-69) and its impact on viewers. For BBs, who grew up watching the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions on TV, Star Trek was “reality” TV. Space travel was real and we truly believed that some day we would be able “to boldly go” where no one had gone before. We were inspired.

9. Music. TV had a strained relationship with music. Radio was perceived to be TV’s biggest competitor for the BB audience and it was a real struggle for TV to lure teens away from the Top 40 Hit stations. Musical tastes changed very rapidly from the mid-50s to the mid-60s when rock ’n roll was replaced by Rock. Just before the British Invasion (the arrival of the Beatles), the networks tried shows featuring songs the whole family could enjoy. Thus, we had Hootenanny (1963), Shivaree (1965),  Hullaballoo (1965),  Shindig! (1964), and the granddaddy of them all,  American Bandstand (starting in 1952 and featuring the ageless teenager Dick Clark from 1956-1989). Bandstand concentrated on rock ’n roll dance music from the Top 40, but the others brought folk music and protest songs into the BB’s lives. Some were silly, some terribly dated, and others were truly sappy. But these songs and the people who sang them (Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and many more) became an important part of the BB hippie counterculture.

10. Topical humor. The majority of the comedies in the 50s and 60s were sitcoms, and most of them were predictable slapstick and fairly low-brow. The sit-com scripts and acting ranged from mediocre to awful. We watched them because we liked the characters and every once in a while they were funny, but they were not really influential. 

The listicle included The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis because the author believes that the character of Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver) engendered the beatnik/hippie/flower children counter-culture. I can’t imagine anyone seriously emulating Maynard. 

Many of the other sitcoms relied on what passed for irony—kids are so much smarter than their parents and other dumb grownups. The show may have been called Father Knows Best, but it was clear that, like most TV dads, father was an oblivious idiot. 

But, there were some smart comedy shows, based on topical humor, like Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (started in 1968) and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (started in 1967) and those were influential. These shows made fun of authority figures and disparaged “serious” politicians and leaders, especially those who were seen to be liars. The BBs heard that it’s OK to rebel against people who haven’t earned your respect. The lesson that was not learned was how to disagree respectfully with others and the result of that was more than a decade of political and social chaos.

These shows, taken together, form a pattern of sorts. The view of the world they promoted was cynical and distrusting and I think it got worse as the younger BBs moved through adolescence. 

It’s not fair to generalize, but I will do so anyway. The older BBs responded by dropping out and becoming anti-establishment. They became the flower children and the Hippies. The younger BBs were more focused on beating the system and moving up into the establishment. They became the Yuppies —Young, Upwardly-mobile, Professionals. 

2009 I’m the man who brought spaghetti (back) to China

Steven B. Zwickel

August, 2009

I’m the man who brought spaghetti (back) to China. (According to a popular myth, Marco Polo brought noodles from China to Italy 700 years ago. It’s not true, but who cares?). This is the story of how an American prepared a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs with all the wrong ingredients in China.

In July, 2009, I returned to Dingnan, the city in Jiangxi province where I’d had such a great time teaching conversational English to teenagers the year before. My host was Geoffery Zhang Yong Bin, who taught English at the local high school. Geoffery met me at the train station and helped me get a hotel room. I spent a couple of wonderful days with my students and their families. 

After a long afternoon hiking around Dingnan, I arranged to meet Geoffery, his wife Linda, and their daughter Honey later so we could go to dinner. I got the woman at the hotel to let me use the internet connection for 20 minutes so I could send out my email. The room I was in didn’t have a working air-conditioner, so I had to change my shirt again before going out to dinner. I remember doing this last summer and I was glad I brought so many extra shirts with me this year.

We ate dinner at a restaurant near the little lake and close to the International Hotel where I lived the summer before. While we were waiting to be served, Geoffery and I were conversed in English and he translated for his wife and daughter. Geoffery asked me how often I ate Chinese food in Madison and I told him about all the restaurants we have (I think Madison now has about 40 Chinese restaurants). I told him that Americans like variety in their diets and it isn’t unusual for us to eat a different kind of food every day of the week. I knew he’d had Korean food and when I asked him if he’d ever had Japanese food and he said no. Nor had he tried Thai or Vietnamese.

He asked me what kind of food I liked best and I told him that Indian was very high on my list, followed by Italian. I told him that there were many, many foods he could eat in Madison. In fact, I said, if he came to my house I would cook an Italian food called spaghetti for him.

Can you see where this was going? Before I knew it, I had offered to cook dinner for the four of us if Geoffery and Linda would buy the ingredients. I made a list of what I would need and wondered what I was getting myself into. I told them that we could either have meatballs or we could use ground meat. Geoffery told me that he has a way to grind meat, so I told him that he could buy an inexpensive piece of meat and I would use that in the sauce.

Geoffery let me pay for dinner. He sent Linda and Honey home in a cab and we went for a walk around the lake. Then it was time for a zú liáo — a Chinese foot massage.

This zú liáo “foot” massage is one of the greatest inventions ever. It starts with a lovely young woman squeezing and pounding your shoulders and neck while your feet soak in hot tea. That night, I think it lasted a long time. We watched the new Dingnan TV station (same dreck as the rest of Chinese TV, but with a local touch). We ate watermelon and drank green tea while the girls pushed, twisted, and pounded on us. They even cleaned the Dingnan mud off my shoes. Geoffery let me pay ($13) for both of us.

I was so relaxed I had trouble getting up to my room—4th floor walk-up. Very pleasant dreams indeed. Tomorrow I am cooking spaghetti in China!

I slept a bit later than I usually do in China. I don’t know why, but most mornings I am up and awake before 6 here. Back in Madison I rarely get up before my alarm goes off, but in China I seem to need less sleep and I get up earlier. That’s why I have been able to do so much writing here.

Blue skies and mild temperatures lured me out of the hotel. I wandered over to the “Supermarket” to see what had changed since last year. It was only slightly changed; someone had reorganized the second floor merchandise so that clothing took up a lot more floor space. I didn’t see any of the Chinese swords or musical instruments they had last summer. The first things you still pass when you enter are the big tubs of “Wisconsan” ginseng. The street on the far side of the supermarket is now an outdoor clothing and housewares market.

Traffic is heavier in Dingnan this summer. There are more cars and the city has installed electronic count-down traffic lights at several busy intersections. I was surprised to see the police out and enforcing the traffic laws during rush hour. I never saw anything like that anywhere else in China. In Weishi, a traffic cop stood on a podium in the middle of the busiest intersection, but she stood at attention and seemed fairly oblivious to what the cars and trucks were doing below her.

Dingnan is different from other parts of China in other ways, too. The air here is clean—I could see the stars and the moon at night, something I never saw anywhere else this summer. The streets are clean—they wash them twice a day. I saw more people wearing nicer clothing here than in other cities. Even the bicycles have less rust on them. Later in the afternoon, when I was walking with some of my students back to my hotel, one of them commented that Dingnan is so small. Then she said, “And we are so poor!” I was going to say something about what I’d seen in Henan Province, but I just shook my head and said, “No, you are not poor.” Teenagers have their own ideas about money and I didn’t think I could give an adequate explanation of the realities of economics, so I shut up.

After lunch at the home of one of my former students, I played poker with the girls for “Hell money” and plastic coins. Poker was fun. I lost most of my “money” then I won it all back again. The girls had trouble keeping poker faces. They are hardly inscrutable. Geoffery called and asked if I’d like to go for a bike ride later. We made plans to meet at the hotel at 4.

He was waiting for me wearing Nike athletic wear and shoes. I’d never seen him dressed in anything but long pants and a dress shirt before, so this was a bit of a shock. He had two bikes, his own and Kelly Marie’s, for us to use. We rode south around the lake and I finally got in to see the new athletic field at the school. The surface is artificial turf and Geoffery insisted that they’d put in a big drainage system beneath it (Last summer that field never dried out.).

We headed east and Geoffery showed me the building where he hopes to buy a new apartment next year. We got to another new road, but Kelly Marie’s bike was much too short for me and my legs started cramping up, so we went back to the hotel.

I changed into a dry shirt and we went to Geoffery’s to make spaghetti. He, or Linda, had bought 3 tomatoes, 2 onions, and about 50 garlic cloves. They had a bottle of “tomato sauce” that seemed to have a lot of added thickener.

The search for hard cheese had failed. Geoffery had asked at the bakery and he’d brought back a cup of sweet cream pastry filling. I assured him it wouldn’t go to waste and that I’d make a special dessert out of it.

Linda had brought home a bag of Chinese meatballs, which I think are made from pork. She’d also purchased a piece of meat that looked like beef. I asked them if they wanted to save back the meat and just have the meatballs, and they said they wanted to use the meat for the spaghetti.

I put on an apron, an act that brought on endless rounds of giggles. I chopped up the veggies. I saw some small peppers on the floor (they don’t have a pantry, so they keep food wherever they have room) and I asked Geoffery if they were hot. He said no, so I chopped one up. Linda seemed a little bit unnerved by having someone else cooking in her kitchen. I asked Geoffery to reassure her that I wouldn’t touch anything without asking and that seemed to be OK.

Linda took out the meat and started trimming off the fat. I tried to keep her from cutting off too much. Then she started to slice the meat. I got Geoffery to explain to her that I wanted to grind the meat. She dug around under the dining table and pulled out an electric food processor! I threw in the meat. Geoffery and Linda stepped back. I turned the machine on. Just a few clicks and I had ground beef. Hooray!

I poured some oil (peanut, I think) into a wok and tossed in the onions and garlic with a spoonful of salt. Next came the meat. I asked for wine and Linda produced an unlabeled bottle. It was my duty as a chef to try a big swig, which made Geoffery go into hysterical laughter. It was sweet wine, just what I needed. I poured some into the wok. I added the meatballs and the entire bottle of tomato sauce with the tomatoes and the pepper. It was starting to look sort of like spaghetti sauce.

Oregano had been impossible to find. Geoffery wasn’t even sure what it was. I got Geoffery to turn on his computer and we went on-line looking for herbs. I typed in “oregano” and he read the Chinese and shook his head. I typed in “basil”. No, neither he nor Linda had ever seen basil. (Later, I remembered having seen flower pots with basil growing in Kaifeng). The same with thyme, rosemary, cilantro, marjoram, and allspice. They read the Chinese and looked at the pictures and shook their heads. Can you make a decent spaghetti sauce without any herbs? I guess.

While the sauce was cooking, I cut two big hunks of watermelon from the one sitting on the dining table. I chopped it into bite-sized pieces and put them in a bowl. I asked Geoffery if he had any other fruit around. All he had was a single Dingnan pear, so I washed it, cut it up and added it to the watermelon. I sprinkled some sugar over the fruit and poured on some of the wine. Then I put the bowl in the fridge and went back to my sauce.

I made sure the meatballs were completely cooked. Linda only has one burner, so I had to take the sauce off the heat while she boiled water for the noodles. When the noodles were ready, I dished them out and re-heated the sauce before I poured it over them. Everyone got 4 meatballs. I set them on the table and told Geoffery to explain to Linda and Honey that I wouldn’t be at all upset if they didn’t like the food. I knew that it was strange to them and that they had never had these ingredients combined this way before, so if they tasted it and chose to have rice instead I wouldn’t mind.

We ate spaghetti with chopsticks and they liked it.

I brought out the fruit and dished it out into rice cups. Then I put a dollop of the pastry filling on top of each cup and served it. It was a big hit with everyone. They were very nice about the whole meal. It felt good to be able to cook for someone else for a change.

After dinner it was time for me to go back to the hotel to pack. That was my last night in Dingnan. The next day I left for Guangzhou, Tokyo and back to Wisconsin, where they sell fresh, dried, and organic oregano and where you can buy genuine, aged asiago to put on pasta. So, Marco Polo or not, I claim the title of man who brought spaghetti back to China.

1993 Letter from the Heartland

Steven B. Zwickel

14 July 1993

Madison, Wisconsin—We learned, this past month, that the Buick floats and the Toyota leaks.

The rains and floods that have hit the midwest have made international headlines and, quite frankly, we are not happy with all the publicity. Reporters and TV anchors have descended uninvited on this part of the country to report on the unnaturally vast quantities of water that Mother Nature has bestowed upon us. Like most of our fellow midwesterners, we are, by nature, publicity shy and don’t like all the attention we have received when we didn’t do anything to deserve it. Case in point: a schoolteacher in Wisconsin won $111 million in the lottery last week and went to the convenience store where he bought the winning ticket to claim his prize. When he saw journalists skulking in the parking lot, he is alleged to have driven on by.

The rains have made some things easier, such as getting new sod to grow in the backyard. At the same time, other jobs have become exasperatingly difficult. The first week in June we prepared to replace the old wooden deck behind our house and discovered that the constant rains made the job much harder. Lifting and shifting 16-foot lengths of wet, green-treated wood in stifling humidity was exhausting. We consumed endless pitchers of lemonade and made countless trips to the hardware store and lumber yard. Working between torrential soakings and tornado warnings that sent us scurrying to the shelter of the basement, we still somehow managed to finish it in just two weeks. If it dries out before winter returns, we’ll try to set up the grill on the new deck and throw on some brats and burgers.

We have had a few nice days, but the endless rains produced clouds of thirsty mosquitos—aggressive, nasty little beasts that have added to the discomfort of this miserable summer. Another by-product of the frequent showers has been an increase in the rate at which the grass grows. Just about every time the sun breaks through the clouds you can hear the roar of a dozen lawnmowers going at once. We are learning to conserve sunshine. It is a precious commodity this summer and we take advantage of every non-raining minute. Last weekend, an art fair drew thousands of people, not, I suspect, because there are so many art lovers in this part of the world, but because it was the first weekend activity in months that wasn’t rained out. (Even this event was interrupted briefly by showers and tornado warnings on Saturday night).

We spent the July 4th holiday weekend visiting our son in Minneapolis and we fortuitously borrowed our other son’s Buick station wagon for the trip. Our plans were only slightly affected by the weather—it rained on the trip north and it rained on the day we helped our son move to a new apartment and it rained when we took our granddaughter to the Minnesota Zoo. Of course, the day we spent watching the Twins play the Brewers in the shelter of the Metrodome was sunny and mild.

The rains did stop on Independence Day and the evening was remarkably clear and comfortable. We watched fireworks by the light of a full moon sparkling in the bloated Mississippi.

We got a late start on the return trip, but we had clear sailing until we were about one hundred miles from home, when the rain began. The heavy rain and water kicked up by other cars and trucks cut visibility to a few feet. After an hour of struggling to see the road, we got off the Interstate and took a highway that runs parallel to it.

The rain got heavier the closer we got to home. Twenty miles from Madison we reached the first stretches of flooded roadway. My wife, a Wisconsin native, urged me on. “Wait for the car in front of you to clear the water, then put your foot down on the accelerator and keep it there. Whatever you do, don’t stop or we’ll never get out of here.” Her advice proved sound. Huge plumes of spray shot up from the tires. Our six-year-old granddaughter clapped her hands and shouted, “Wheee! That was fun. Can we do that again, Grandpa?”

Again and again, we forded the runoff. The drainage culverts along the road were filled with fast-moving, muddy water and huge bolts of lightning bracketed the highway. The pounding rain could only be described as being of “Biblical proportions.”

I made the mistake of relaxing when we reached the edge of the city, in the erroneous belief that it must have escaped the worst of the flooding. 

While we debated which streets to take home, Mother Nature made some decisions for us—we detoured around one flooded intersection and started the last mile of our journey. That was when we reached the deepest, roughest stretch of water yet. I waited for the car in front of me to get out of the way and then I pressed down on the gas pedal. Halfway across the stream, I realized that front of the wagon (now referred to as the “bow”) was drifting towards the sidewalk. I made a joke, “Get me a rudder so I can steer this thing!” My wife yelled, “Don’t let up on the gas.” 

I was giddy from the stress of the past few hours. “Engine Room,” I said into an imaginary intercom. “Give me full steam ahead.” 

“Why does Grandpa want a rudder? What’s a rudder?” the six-year-old asked.

Miraculously, the Buick kept going, foamy wake spewing from the wheel wells. We reached the other side and the tires again responded to the helm.

The State Patrol closed the highway we had been on a few minutes after we got home. My wife told me that she’d  caught a few seconds of footage on the late news of a blue Buick station wagon crossing the flooded roadway.

I didn’t see myself on TV because I went to bed early. Besides, I’m not really interested in publicity I

Steven B. Zwickel

2016 How to Write a Better LinkedIn Profile

How to Write a Better LinkedIn Profile

Steven B. Zwickel, 2016

LinkedIn has become an extremely important tool for job seekers. (See Why LinkedIn Is Not Optional for New Grads by Ed Han <http://www.job-hunt.org/social-networking/LinkedIn-job-search/LinkedIn-new-grads.shtml>. Employers use it to find and research prospective employees, so, having a LinkedIn profile is essential. 

✒ LinkedIn is for professional, not for personal information [it is not Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc] or private communications, so don't use it in lieu of email or a phone call.

1.  Before editing: Turn Off Activity Broadcast

Turn off activity broadcast temporarily, so you can update your LinkedIn profile without letting the world know.

          a. Move cursor over your small photo in the top right of your homepage to see Account & Settings.

          b. Click Review at Privacy & Settings to open Activity broadcasts (or type https://www.linkedin.com/settings).

          c. Click the box to uncheck the option and turn off Activity broadcasts while you edit.

          d. Click Save Changes. You can turn it back on after you’re done editing.

2. Turn Editing On

If you are completely lost at editing LinkedIn, clicking on Complete your profile will take you through a step-by-step process for editing. Clicking Edit Profile will enable you to edit your own way. Now you can work on editing the different parts of your profile:

Parts of LinkedIn Profile

Photo, Name, Title, Location/Industry, Connections, Contact Info, Background

• Summary

• Experience

• Volunteer Experience & Causes

• Publications

• Courses

• Projects

• Skills

• Education

• Additional Info

  - Recommendations - Connections - Groups - Following

3.  Profile Picture

Your profile picture is your first impression, so make it a good one and use a professional headshot and keep it classy. The LinkedIn photo format is square, so keep that in mind when you choose a photo.

4.  Name

Use the full name that people know you by and that appears on your transcript. If you have a common name, use your middle initial or name to help people find you. If you are concerned about search engines finding you, consider adding an "Alternate names/Common Misspellings" section to your Summary.

5.  Title or Headline

Right below your name, LinkedIn fills in your title and your company name.

Write something descriptive of what you do in 120 words or less. Change your LinkedIn headline by clicking on the blue pencil icon next to your headline. Be specific—tell people enough about what you do so they want to read more.

6.  Location & Industry

This appears below the Title. Change these by clicking the blue pencil icon next to your location and industry.

7.  Customize your profile URL

Below the photo is a LinkedIn URL. The default is LinkedIn.com/in followed by a row of random numbers and letters. Click the blue Edit next to it, and you can create a custom URL for your profile. Best and simplest would be your first and last name.

8. Connections

Some people are impressed by big numbers, but it’s not clear how most people feel about this. This section shows people how you are connected to them. 



9. Contact Information

To the right of your URL, there is a button that drops down all your contact information. This allows people to know how to contact you!

Fill out Contact Info using your work information. If you use Twitter, you can link to it here as well and you can list up to three websites. When you put in your website, choose the Other option and write a custom title for the website.  So instead of it simply “Company Website”, call it by the name of your business.

10. Summary

The first category under Background is Summary. You have 2000 characters (counting spaces as characters) to explain who you are as a professional and provide a narrative of your work experience. This is a writing sample and you will be judged on your ability to communicate clearly.

•  Highlight your strengths and your accomplishments. A well written summary will make your profile more than an online résumé and demonstrate that you have good communication skills.

•  Summarize who you are as a professional, not just what you are doing in your current job. A good summary includes information about all of your relevant experience, not just from your current job.

•  Write in the third person If you write about your accomplishments in first person, it can end up sounding like you are bragging and egotistical. Writing in third person gives the reader the perception that someone else is saying these nice things about you, even if you wrote them.

•  Use the keywords and phrases you would find in a job description that would interest you.

•  The summary helps readers understand who you are, what you do, and what you might need to be successful. If readers can’t tell why you love what you do and how you do it better than anyone else, it might be time to bring in a coach or an editor to help you craft something more compelling. Write a crisp, detailed summary of your career.

•  Try to tell a compelling story that includes specifics and quantifiable achievements. Share your accomplishments. Everyone likes a good story. If you can grab some attention with something about yourself that we wouldn’t know from your resume bullets, you’re heading in the right direction. Jason Alba <jasonalba.com> suggests writing PAR (Problem – Action – Result) stories in your summary statement. First, state the business problem you addressed (the reason for the project you were assigned). Second, describe the actions you took to solve the problem for the organization. Third, state the result of the actions you took; quantify if possible.

•  Try to “wow” recruiters with your experience or achievements. Don't just hope that they’ll read far enough into your Experience section to see how good you are. The Summary is your best chance to grab their attention and hold it, so use it wisely!

•  LinkedIn lets you upload media to represent your work—a video, presentation, or portfolio—at the end of the Summary section (and in other sections). Katie Wagner <katiewagnersocialmedia.com> says provide links to your other professionally active social media, to another, more visual digital, or to a life streaming profile. You can also embed or link directly to your best original content (such as: a popular blog post, YouTube video, Vine, or slideshow on SlideShare). You can even embed a short video of your "elevator pitch." To find out which file types and content providers are compatible for media samples on a LinkedIn profile, go to <http://embed.ly/providers>. Only link to professional, high-quality media; anything less will hurt your image. Here’s how to link or embed content:

When you click Edit Profile, three icons appear on the right in each section.

✒The blue pencil is Click to edit so you can edit the text in this section.

✒ The blue box with the plus sign is Click to add a video, image, document, presentation. 

✒ The blue triangle gives you a choice: [add Link or upload File].

✒ The black up-down arrow is Drag to rearrange profile sections

•  Consider saving some of your 2,000 characters for two additional sections to make it easier for employers to find you. William Arruda suggests you add these:

Specialties: add those all-important keywords you want to be associated with. 

AKA/Common Misspellings: so people can find you with a Google search even if they don’t know how to spell your name/nickname or weren’t aware that you were married or divorced and changed your name.

•  Brenda Bernstein <www.careercast.com> suggests you use graphic elements, like stars and bullets from Wingdings or Zapf Dingbats fonts, to break up the blocks of text. Here are some that work: suv n HQ . These will engage your readers and make your Summary a lot more eye-catching and interesting to read!

•  Include your contact information at the end of your summary to enable people to get in touch with you easily without having to look any further.

11.  Experience

This is your chance to write a spectacular online résumé.

12. Volunteer Experience

Use this section to show you did more while at the university than study, party, and play video games. Demonstrate that there are things that matter to you—that you care about more than just making money. You can list non-profit organizations for which you volunteered in this section or under Organizations.

•  Consider very carefully before you list jobs or organizations that are political, religious, or controversial; employers get nervous whenever employees are associated with anything that could even remotely harm their businesses.

13.  Other Options

These appear in a box at the upper right hand when you are in the “edit profile” view.

Organizations is for highlighting any non-profit work that you do or support.

Honors & awards is a place to list anything that you have been recognized for.

14.  Skills & Expertise

There are two parts to the Skills & Expertise section—listing your skills and getting endorsed for those skills.

•  This section offers a way to tell potential employers what you can do. LinkedIn lets you list up to 50 skills, which work like keywords. Because of this, you want to list skills relevant to your business or job and you want to order them with your most important skill at the top of the list.

•  Once you have listed a skill, LinkedIn will ask your Connections if they think you have that particular skill. If they say yes, they will endorse you.

•  The orange help buttons in the Skills & Expertise section give more information about managing endorsements, re-ordering skills, and hiding/showing endorsements

15. Education

For early-career  professionals, Education is one of the most important credentials they have. In addition to listing the college you attended, list any credentials, certificates, or professional training you have earned.

•  You don’t need to post your GPA here, but do indicate any honors you earned for your work.

•  Like Experience, LinkedIn organizes Education in reverse chronological order—most recent degree on top. The nextt line is the name of the school, the second is your degree and major. The bottom line is gray and contains the dates you attended that school.

16. Recommendations

It is not clear how sincere and credible Recommendations on a LinkedIn profile really are. It’s possible that people write recommendations spontaneously, but it seems more likely that they are responding to specific requests.

Treat LinkedIn Recommendations the way you would treat anyone you ask for a job reference. When you ask someone to act as a reference, you should:

•  Tell them how (and how long) they know you

•  Remind them of what you have accomplised

•  Emphasize the skills and characteristics you would like them to include in their recommendation.

17.  Additional Information

Both Interests and Personal Details are out of place in a professional profile. Save this for your FaceBook page or other social media. You may want to use these as talking points when you get the job interview.

Use Advice for Contacting to give your business email addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information. There’s no reason to give out anything personal on LinkedIn.

18.    Proofread your Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is a professional writing sample. Mistakes will reflect badly on you. You must edit and revise to make it as perfect as you can. There is no excuse for having any errors of spelling, grammar, or usage in your Summary. No one will hire an engineer who is careless. Lying or distorting your background is a particularly stupid thing to do in the age of Google. No one will hire anyone who is a liar.

19.  Request Connections

Some think you should connect with as many people as possible because of the compound effect of multiple connections. I think it is much more impressive to have connections with people who are influential in your field than to have connections to large numbers of people who have nothing to do with  your career. It may be that a large number of connections impresses readers, but there is no way of knowing how many you "should" have, so don't worry about the numbers.