This is NOT your practice life!

How To Face Daily Challenges and Harsh Realities To Find Inner Peace through Mental Mapping
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Test

Outhouse and Tea Time

8/8/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture

 
Remember way back to the outset of the pandemic and the panic over toilet paper? Do those days seem like ancient history in light of all you have experienced in the intervening time as a survivor—or should I say “masked survivor”? Oh! The hardships you faced and still face. The disruption of your life and the fear that the grocery store will no longer have any toilet paper!
 
There’s nothing insightful in pointing out that we live relatively soft lives, but that thought of our softness came to me recently as I walked the towpath of the old C & O Canal just outside of Hancock, MD, and then proceeded to the old rail line turned paved bicycle path. Along the way there’s a parallel dirt farm road that runs past the site where an old farmhouse once stood. Still on the land and not far from where that house stood is the old outhouse, now missing its door. Inside, the seat has collapsed. Neither privacy nor function now available to the needy cyclist along the bike trail.
 
As I was saying, hardships like a resupply of toilet paper aside, we live relatively soft lives for the most part. In an age before Charmin, people lived differently. Take the lives of the men who dug the canal. During the “Big Dig,” laborers were hit with cholera—a number of them died and many ran off the job. Digging a 185-mile-long ditch in the second quarter of the nineteenth century meant standing in puddles while shoveling, living along a progressing canal, and having no modern conveniences, probably not even an outhouse. That one in the picture above post-dates the canal dig.
 
Yes, life was harder in general during the nineteenth century. I recall James Burke, author and narrator of the books and series Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, pointing out that the nineteenth-century folks had about 500 foods available to them, whereas you and I have about 50,000.* Just look around the grocery stores (they sell more than toilet paper). And I think about how his pointing out the difference in variety and abundance affects what we believe to be important. Take tea time, for example. Er, rather, think about making tea.
 
Feeling the pressure of your fast-paced world even during times of shutdown and quarantine? Worried that researchers won’t find a cure or a vaccine for COVID-19? Depressed to the point of wandering around unshaven or without makeup while saying, “Woe is me”? Prohibited by your city, county, or state government from going to a bar? How tough are these times?
 
Not to worry. There are researchers researching everywhere. It’s just that some of them aren’t researching a cure for a virus. No, some of them, notably and maybe even ironically in China, are looking into the difference between boiling water on the stove as opposed to boiling it in a microwave. I know. This has been a problem front and center in your frontal cortex for years. Sure, those guys digging the canal while mosquitoes and cholera plagued their hard labor might have had some problems, but they never had to concern themselves with how they would use the electromagnetic spectrum to boil water for tea.
 
Who wants to watch a pot of water boil? The process is notoriously a long one, and even the added pressure inside a tea kettle doesn’t make the shortened boiling time an acceptable duration for the impatient tea drinker. “I want my tea…now!”
 
So much for relaxation in a fast-paced world. Seems that we want instantaneous respite from daily concerns and activities; we want a fully stocked grocery stores with shelves and shelves of both food and toilet paper. What do you say? “Stick the cup of water in the microwave. Two minutes, tops, maybe less, depending on the microwave and the size of the cup. And, hey, since when did the tea cup become a giant Starbucks mug? Isn’t the typical image of tea time a tiny cup too small for swigs? Are little triangles or squares of ‘sandwiches’ that don’t satisfy hunger not your ‘cup of tea’? Give me a MUG,” you say, “and give it to me fast. I have only a short time to spare. Heck. I’ll drink the tea while I work or while I binge watch something until this damn pandemic is over.”
 
But now, thanks to researchers, at least we know that old-fashioned boiling water in a pot or tea kettle is different from boiling it in a microwave. This is the science we needed in these trying times of our fast-paced world and suddenly dangerous and inhibiting world. And where better to experiment with boiling water for tea than in the University of Electronic Science & Technology of China? Tea from China and getting a “cuppa,” as the English say, well, those two go together like horsepower and race cars or shovels and nineteenth-century canal digs. The problem the UESTC researchers addressed is the way the water boils.** Put a pot of water on a stovetop and you get boiling from the bottom up, convection at work. Put a cup of water in the microwave, and you get nonuniform heating, no convection cells. The top of the water can be hotter than the bottom of the water. Now there’s a problem no one considered while sitting in that old outhouse along the canal.
 
Does heating liquid foods in a microwave make a difference in your life? Well, I guess. Think of heating something like a bowl of chili or some leftover soup in the microwave. Gotta go into the liquid with a spoon to stir it about halfway through the heating process. Otherwise, the top’s super hot, and the bottom’s still cool. The same thing happens to that cup of water for tea.
 
Lessons? Sure. Some I see; others, you see.
 
I think of the technology difference between my ancestors and me, between those canal diggers and my contemporaries. Microwaves? What happened to burning wood? Iron pots? Pretty heavy, especially when filled with water.  And then there was that process of cutting and hauling in the firewood. But when life was harder, people were probably harder. Had to be to survive. Doesn’t mean their lives were better, just different, though definitely, in daily activities, slower in some ways. If you’re used to watching the pot boil, then what’s the problem? If you’re used to one-minute-forty-second cups of tea, that’s what you expect. No slow sips, either. And multiple flavorings in exotic teas named after colors, black, green, white, all coming from lands far away, and all coming, if you desire, not as loose leaf, but in neat little packages for single cups—or mugs. What’s one of those little bags cost, anyway? At Starbucks, they appear to be as valuable as semiprecious gems when one works out the cost per cup.
 
Definitely, my life isn’t as hard as my ancestors’ lives, and definitely not as hard as the lives of those canal diggers or the farm family that had to go to a little building when Mother Nature called. And my impatience over boiling water, the impatience the extends to the number of clicks on a website, simply makes me a product of my times. So, from this, I take the lesson that I am truly a product of my technological times. And that makes me wonder how I am the product of influences other than technology. That canal, for example, gets numerous visitors each year as people ride canal boats in a recreation of olden days.
 
And my mind wanders in a stream of consciousness that includes other ways I’ve adopted a “microwave mind for speed and convenience.” I think of those long paragraphs in the essays of nineteenth-century writers, extensively developed and often for the twenty-first century reader, somewhat sleep-inducing. I think of ordering on Amazon and receiving the package in a couple of days. I think of flying from, say, Chicago to D.C., while riding in relative luxury, but occupying my mind with a book or magazine or a game or a movie or a quick nap or an observation about the physiography and that old canal over which I pass at 35,000 feet. I think about the flight attendant’s bringing me a cup of hot water and a teabag and imagine men in 1830 eating little that we would find appetizing and enjoying no toilet paper.   
 
 
*Burke’s stuff is available online. Just search Connections by James Burke. Season 1, Episode 1 can be found at. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-iba-syn&hsimp=yhs-syn&hspart=iba&p=connections+james#id=1&vid=a58b4ce0999c567c3adc58e6d99ff9e5&action=click
 
**https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200804111516.htm   Accessed August 8, 2020.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015

    Categories

    All
    000 Years Ago
    11:30 A.M.
    130
    19
    3d
    A Life Affluent
    All Joy Turneth To Sorrow
    Aluminum
    Amblyopia
    And Minarets
    And Then Philippa Spoke Up
    Area 51 V. Photo 51
    Area Of Influence
    Are You Listening?
    As Carmen Sings
    As Useless As Yesterday's Newspaper
    As You Map Today
    A Treasure Of Great Price
    A Vice In Her Goodness
    Bananas
    Before You Sling Dirt
    Blue Photons Do The Job
    Bottom Of The Ninth
    Bouncing
    Brackets Of Life
    But
    But Uncreative
    Ca)2Al4Si14O36·15H2O: When The Fortress Walls Are The Enemy
    Can You Pick Up A Cast Die?
    Cartography Of Control
    Charge Of The Light Brigade
    Cloister Earth
    Compasses
    Crater Lake
    Crystalline Vs Amorphous
    Crystal Unclear
    Density
    Dido As Diode
    Disappointment
    Does Place Exert An Emotional Force?
    Do Fish Fear Fire?
    Don't Go Up There
    Double-take
    Down By A Run
    Dust
    Endless Is The Good
    Epic Fail
    Eros And Canon In D Headbanger
    Euclid
    Euthyphro Is Alive And Well
    Faethm
    Faith
    Fast Brain
    Fetch
    Fido's Fangs
    Fly Ball
    For Some It’s Morning In Mourning
    For The Skin Of An Elephant
    Fortunately
    Fracking Emotions
    Fractions
    Fused Sentences
    Future Perfect
    Geographic Caricature And Opportunity
    Glacier
    Gold For Salt?
    Great
    Gutsy Or Dumb?
    Here There Be Blogs
    Human Florigen
    If Galileo Were A Psychologist
    If I Were A Child
    I Map
    In Search Of Philosopher's Stones
    In Search Of The Human Ponor
    I Repeat
    Is It Just Me?
    Ithaca Is Yours
    It's All Doom And Gloom
    It's Always A Battle
    It's Always All About You
    It’s A Messy Organization
    It’s A Palliative World
    It Takes A Simple Mindset
    Just Because It's True
    Just For You
    K2
    Keep It Simple
    King For A Day
    Laki
    Life On Mars
    Lines On Canvas
    Little Girl In The Fog
    Living Fossils
    Longshore Transport
    Lost Teeth
    Magma
    Majestic
    Make And Break
    Maslow’s Five And My Three
    Meditation Upon No Red Balloon
    Message In A Throttle
    Meteor Shower
    Minerals
    Mono-anthropism
    Monsters In The Cloud Of Memory
    Moral Indemnity
    More Of The Same
    Movie Award
    Moving Motionless
    (Na2
    Never Despair
    New Year's Eve
    Not Real
    Not Your Cup Of Tea?
    Now What Are You Doing?
    Of Consciousness And Iconoclasts
    Of Earworms And Spicy Foods
    Of Polygons And Circles
    Of Roof Collapses
    Oh
    Omen
    One Click
    Outsiders On The Inside
    Pain Free
    Passion Blew The Gale
    Perfect Philosophy
    Place
    Points Of Departure
    Politically Correct Tale
    Polylocation
    Pressure Point
    Prison
    Pro Tanto World
    Refresh
    Regret Over Missing An Un-hittable Target
    Relentless
    REPOSTED BLOG: √2
    REPOSTED BLOG: Algebraic Proof You’re Always Right
    REPOSTED BLOG: Are You Diana?
    REPOSTED BLOG: Assimilating Values
    REPOSTED BLOG: Bamboo
    REPOSTED BLOG: Discoverers And Creators
    REPOSTED BLOG: Emotional Relief
    REPOSTED BLOG: Feeling Unappreciated?
    REPOSTED BLOG: Missing Anxiety By A Millimeter Or Infinity
    REPOSTED BLOG: Palimpsest
    REPOSTED BLOG: Picture This
    REPOSTED BLOG: Proximity And Empathy
    Reposted Blog: Sacred Ground
    REPOSTED BLOG: Sedit Qui Timuit Ne Non Succederet
    REPOSTED BLOG: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
    REPOSTED BLOG: Sponges And Brains
    REPOSTED BLOG: The Fiddler In The Pantheon
    REPOSTED BLOG: The Junk Drawer
    REPOSTED BLOG: The Pattern Axiom
    REPOSTED IN LIGHT OF THE RECENT OREGON ATTACK: Special By Virtue Of Being Here
    REPOSTED: Place
    River Or Lake?
    Scales
    Self-driving Miss Daisy
    Seven Centimeters Per Year
    Shouting At The Crossroads
    Sikharas
    Similar Differences And Different Similarities
    Simple Tune
    Slow Mind
    Stages
    Steeples
    Stupas
    “Such Is Life”
    Sutra Addiction
    Swivel Chair
    Take Me To Your Leader
    Tats
    Tautological Redundancy
    Template
    The
    The Baby And The Centenarian
    The Claw Of Arakaou
    The Embodiment Of Place
    The Emperor And The Unwanted Gift
    The Final Frontier
    The Flow
    The Folly Of Presuming Victory
    The Hand Of God
    The Inostensible Source
    The Lions Clawee9b37e566
    Then Eyjafjallajökull
    The Proprioceptive One Survives
    The Qualifier
    The Scapegoat In The Mirror
    The Slowest Waterfall
    The Transformer On Bourbon Street
    The Unsinkable Boat
    The Workable Ponzi Scheme
    They'll Be Fine; Don't Worry
    Through The Unopened Door
    Time
    Toddler
    To Drink Or Not To Drink
    Trust
    Two On
    Two Out
    Umbrella
    Unconformities
    Unknown
    Vector Bundle
    Warning Track Power
    Wattle And Daub
    Waxing And Waning
    Wealth And Dependence
    What Does It Mean?
    What Do You Really Want?
    What Kind Of Character Are You?
    What Microcosm Today?
    What Would Alexander Do7996772102
    Where’s Jacob Henry When You Need Him?
    Where There Is No Geography
    Window
    Wish I Had Taken Guitar Lessons
    Wonderful Things
    Wonders
    Word Pass
    Yes
    You
    You Could
    Your Personal Kiribati

    RSS Feed


Web Hosting by iPage