Ask Arthur 2020, Part 4: A dreamy end to this series

This is the final post in this year’s shortened “Ask Arthur” series. It’s been varied, as the full seasons, so to speak, of previous years have been—just less of it.

Today’s question is from Roger Green:

Dreams: I've had a few. Are you having dreams in 2020, ones more vivid than in previous years? Please share a couple.

I must dream—scientists say we all do—but I seldom remember any of them, and this year has been no different. However, I do remember having some that were very cinematic—big, sweeping, and/or dramatic stories that were very movie-like. I didn’t remember them for long, but I do remember one involved fighting terrorists, like in an action movie. I can’t remember, though, if I was the fighter or just watching the movie.

The thing about the dreams that I did remember, however briefly, is that I’m very often not in them or even part of them: I’m just an observer. I also very seldom dream about people I actually know, and that includes Nigel. When he was alive, I almost never had a dream about him or with him in it, but I know that he had dreams with me in them because he’d wake up and hit me because he was angry about something “I” did in his dream (and when I say “hit”, that’s dramatic license, because when it happened I was asleep and he and wasn’t actually awake, so it seemed like a bigger thing than it actually was).

Still, I did have some dreams that I remembered, mostly because I wrote notes about them, and all of them were after the Covid nightmare began, apart from one.

A dream I had fairly soon after I moved in to my new house, and before lockdown, included Nigel. I’m not sure he was dead in my dream, but he seemed to have been away. I remember saying to him, “I love you,” and he replied, “I know. I love you, too.” Then I said something about missing him, and the dream ended. That’s not a particularly interesting dream (well, fragment of a dream…), except for one thing: I’ve known plenty of people who’ve had dreams about Nigel that they interpreted as visitations, and this was, and still is, the closest I’ve come to having a dream like that. I wish I remembered more of it.

Months later, in August, I had a particularly bizarre dream with Nigel in it. I knew he’d died and he’d returned. At first, it was him—appearance, voice, everything. But later, maybe after I realised that it was impossible for it to be him, the person was someone else in appearance, voice, etc.—but I knew it was actually him. After that, the dream became about how I was going to convince others that it was really him when he didn’t look or sound like Nigel. “This is so hard,” he said to me. “I know,” I replied. Then I woke up.

The only reason I remember that dream at all is because I wrote down some notes about it, only because I instantly saw how after some tweaking and expansion it could be a good fictional story. That happened to me one other time, but then it was Nigel who’d had a bizarre dream, and when he told me about it I knew that would make a good story, too—and I even started writing it. But it all fell apart because I know nothing about American police procedure, and that was an important part of the story. But the possibility that my own dream might be a story is the only reason I wrote down anything about it—and even that wasn’t very detailed.

A month or so later, I had another dream with Nigel in it, but only kind of peripherally, because what stuck out for me was a song. I blogged about that at the time in a post called "The dream about my ‘only you'", and there, too, details about the dream itself are mostly missing.

I may or may not have had dreams about Nigel after that (or at any other point this year), but if I did I either don’t remember them at all. I also don't remember any other dreams in any detail, if I remember anything at all.

That is, until December 23.

I was thinking about dreams because Roger had posted his question only some 10 days earlier, and I was in the midst of planning my posts in this series. When one popped up, I immediately wrote it down in some detail. Sadly, Nigel wasn’t part of it.

The dream began when someone rang my doorbell (which I installed not long after I moved in, by the way…), so I opened the door and a realtor for a major chain was putting up a “For Rent” sign on my front lawn. I just looked at him, and he said something like, “As you know, these houses were built by a Christian group to provide rental housing…” and then some other bits I didn’t quite catch. I was pretty incredulous, especially because he was implying I didn’t own my house which was absurd because, as a realtor, he would know I did. I pushed back: “So, originally all these houses were supposed to be built by a religious group?” I was thinking that as far as I knew the builder for my house wasn’t religious, and I knew a secular house-building company owned the lot to one side of my house, and the house on the other side was being built by another secular house-building company specifically for a couple. I thought about how other houses on the street didn’t seem to be rentals, and I was about to push him on what the hell he was on about.

Then I remembered that at one time or another I thought about maybe moving back to Auckland and renting out this house. It’s never been a serious thought, more like a daydream along the lines of, if I did that, how would it go? Where would I put stuff? That kind of thing. So, even though the thoughts were little more than idle speculation, they nevertheless seem to have inspired a dream. I was just about to point out that I owned my house, and it wasn’t for rent, but he should keep my details on hand, just in case I changed my mind. I was about to tell him all that, when suddenly the realtor was a woman who sells houses, not rents them, and I was going to tell her to keep my details on file, but instead I woke up.

I don’t think that dream “means” anything, apart from the fact it’s really “about” how unsettled I am in life, which should surprise no one (and it certainly doesn’t surprise me). I thought it was interesting how clear-headed I was in the dream—I knew reality and was going to push it, but I didn’t get the chance. That’s interesting to me because of how often dreams are bizarre and surreal (like Nigel morphing into a different person that I knew was still him, but no one else could/would recognise or accept him, or an epic battle against terrorists. The list is endless.

The only reason I remember that dream at all, really, is because I wanted to write it down specifically for this post. I thought—correctly, it turns out—that I might not/probably wouldn’t have another dream to include between the realtor one and when I wrote this post. I guess the real lesson there is that if for any reason I wake up remembering a dream—even if only “What the hell was that about?!” I should write it all down. Knowing me, though, I’m unlikely to heed my own advice, even if Nigel is in or part of the dream.

I have one other dream story, going back to when I was a kid. I had an involved, epic dream that was only “part one”, something I realised when I woke up. I told my friends about it, and mentioned it several times over what seemed like years, but that was probably actually only weeks at most (weeks and months seem very similar to a kid). I wanted to know the how the story turned out. One night I dreamed the “conclusion” of the dream, and woke up knowing it was. Unlike so many movie sequels, the dream conclusion was satisfying. And then I promptly forgot both parts. So, me not remembering dreams in any detail, or at all, has always been part of me, and not even 2020 could change that.

That’s it for the 2020 series of “Ask Arthur” posts! Maybe I’ll do another series next year, and if I do, I’ll try to give more notice so it can be more like it used to be. Or, not—no promises. I should point out, though, that I welcome questions all year long.

Thanks for this year’s questions Roger and Sherry!

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-20”. All posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Sure, why not ask again? – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 1: An untold story
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 2: Same as it never was
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 3: Important and not

Ask Arthur 2020, Part 3: Important and not

Today’s questions are serious/important and, to lighten things a bit, one that’s, well, not. At least, not to me. I suppose some might see tings the other way round.

Be that as it may, today’s first question is from longtime friend Sherry, who I’ve known for—well, a very long time:

I have always loved your take on American Politics.

I want to think my Trump supporting friends and family only supported him because they are Republican, or Anti-abortion. Not because they are like him, because I think character makes the man. And I believe in my heart, Trump is the worst human to ever sit in our White House. I pray my loved ones are not condoning his behavior.

I believe his lies alone have set our country in a terrible direction, because his in-your-face behavior says "it's okay," to be like me.

With you having come from a family where your father was a Pastor, do you feel Trump's character will forever change America? That 4 years of this man's behavior has brought out the worst in America? That it's okay to dehumanize women, hate Muslims, create division, encouraged violence, dismiss science, openly lie, ignore laws designed to protect a country from nepotism, benefiting financially from your position.

I'm afraid his influence on our morality is almost worse than his policies and political fallout. If so, how do we fix it?

I’m glad you like my take on politics, especially because I’ve been giving US politics little blogging attention for awhile now. There’s no doubt that the USA has been launched in a terrible direction, and the questions you raise are important ones.

First, his supporters. I think it’s important to separate 2016 and 2020 because the first lot may or may not have known what he was really like, but many didn’t care because they just wanted to “burn it all down” after decades of being ignored by the political establishment. Naturally, I think they chose the wrong solution to very real problems, but that’s mainly about ideological as well as tactical disagreements.

However, there were significant numbers of his supporters in 2016 who did, indeed, think he was just fine to be president, despite being an awful human being. In 2016, such people were very often anti-immigrant, racist, misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, etc., but in 2020 the proportion was clearly higher.

In 2018, just a month out from the Midterm Elections, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer wrote “The Cruelty Is the Point”. He said:

Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

I think the important point there is that the cruelty and hatred unleashed by the soon to be ex-occupant of the White House merely tapped into existing prejudices and hatred. In other words, he didn’t create the moral collapse in the USA, he mostly just exploited it.

Prior to 2016, it was (mostly) socially unacceptable to say racist things out loud and in public. Once racist and xenophobic and similarly bigoted Tweets and campaign rally taunts became common, everyday things, it opened the floodgates for people to express what they were already thinking and feeling. Because of that, I agree with you that “his influence on our morality is almost worse than his policies and political fallout,” but that leads to another question you asked, whether his character “will forever change America”.

The hard, cold reality is that after four years of the current regime, half of the USA quite literally hates the other half. It’s more than mere ideology, it’s basically tribal, especially for Republicans (though Democrats have been drawn in, too). How do we put the genie back in the bottle? After all, while 80 million people voted to make Joe Biden the next president, some 74 million decided that an incompetent, ignorant, lying narcissist with psychopathic tendencies was exactly who they wanted in the White House. Moreover, Democrats actually lost seats in the US House and in state legislatures, and failed to take control of the US Senate (on the night, anyway; we’ll know for sure early in 2021).

The solution to Making America Moral Again is far more than just electoral politics. Earlier this month, FiveThirtyEight published a piece, “Why The Suburbs Have Shifted Blue”, which talks about opportunities as well as cautions for Democrats in continuing to win what had been strongly Republican areas. While demographics in the suburbs are clearly trending toward Democrats, it could take some time for an actual shift to happen. The article quotes Ashley Jardina, a political science professor at Duke University:

“The big question mark for me is what happens in these suburban areas in two years or four years if [Republican candidates] adopt a similar strategy to Trump but with more competence and decorum?”

In my opinion, the real danger is not the current guy, it’s what happens if a smart, savvy person with the exact same immorality and amorality becomes the Republican standard bearer? The inept and ignorant current Republican leader managed to show how easy it would be for someone smarter and more capable to completely dismantle US democracy and establish an authoritarian dictatorship. Add to that the Republicans rigging the system to keep themselves in power, especially in Congress and the state legislatures despite being a minority of all US voters, and it raises huge warning flags that go far beyond the current guy.

Which doesn’t mean there’s no hope. If Democrats win control of the US Senate, they could move quickly to enact reforms to make it much harder for future wannabe dictators to damage the country. But the biggest of the necessary reforms—abolishing the Electoral College, reforming the US Senate by making it proportional like the US House (or even abolishing it), ensuring every citizen can vote—are all beyond the power of Congress, and would require Republican-controlled state legislatures to ratify Constitutional Amendments. As the saying goes, that would be like turkeys voting for an early Christmas—suicide, in other words.

No, I don’t think his character “will forever change America”, because he merely unleashed what was already there. Whether things can be fixed or not will be the big question, and it will depend on 74 million Americans being able to admit they were wrong, to learn from the experience, and to grow. Right now, we cannot know whether any of that is even possible, let alone whether it will happen.

Today’s second question is from Roger Green, who asks:

What products or services from the US – which you believe still exist – do you miss now that you're in New Zealand?

The short answer is nothing. Much of what I might miss (like Chicago’s Marshall Field’s) I know is gone. I’ve long forgotten what other products or services I used to buy because I've been here for 25 years now.

Still, there are a few. I miss Fruit of the Loom underwear, so much so that I’ve ordered it from the USA. I also miss clothes shopping at places like Target where I could get good quality inexpensive shirts (and that underwear…). In New Zealand, I’ve found shirts that are inexpensive or good quality, but not often both. Books and technology products (like from Apple) are also dramatically cheaper in the USA, however, I can get those here and do, so it’s just the cheap prices I miss.

There’s also food. American-style pizza and Mexican food isn’t easy to find, though most American fast food is available here. Apart from that, some food items (like kosher dill pickles) either aren’t available here or are very expensive.

So, after living in New Zealand for 25 years, there really aren’t that many products or services from the USA that I miss. I’ve either adapted, found ones here I like better, or, probably most common of all, I’ve simply forgotten about the old ones. All of which is for the best.

Thanks for the questions, Sherry and Roger! There’s still one more post in this series, which I’ll publish before the year is out. Of course.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-20”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Sure, why not ask again? – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 1: An untold story
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 2: Same as it never was

Ask Arthur 2020, Part 2: Same as it never was

Over the years, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about all sorts of things—politics, religion, even my own philosophies, among many other things. Today’s question is no different.

Today’s question is from Roger Green:

This is actually a question that came up in a Bible study this morning. The assumption is that people want to get back to the way they were before COVID (and George Floyd and 2020 generally).

What processes are most likely NOT to go back to what had been the norm? And related, how do you think people have changed by 2020? Kinder, greedier, more or less tolerant?

I think the answer to that is really, “depends on where you’re talking about,” because, as with fighting the pandemic itself, everything depends on where one lives. For that matter, the problems of the year that seemed the biggest also depended on where one lives.

First, the pandemic. I think there will be some lasting changes in all developed countries. Chief among them, there will be more people working from home, at least part of the time, but probably more than that. It will mean more corporations downsizing their real estate, which, in turn, could mean large vacant office buildings in major cities. Because of that, the hospitality trade in business areas will suffer dramatically, which will mean going out for lunch or after-work drinks workmates may become less common.

People will desperately want to get back to what they had, so I expect there will be problems with compliance with things like physical distancing and wearing masks. I say that in part because I’ve seen a notable drop in people using New Zealand’s Covid Tracer App. Obviously my personal observations aren’t evidence, but they at least suggests that some people in New Zealand have already become complacent—the very reason the government launched its “Make Summer Unstoppable” campaign.

While everyone want to get back to “normal”, we have no way of knowing if that will even be possible. We don’t know if people are infectious after getting the vaccine, or how long their protection lasts, so we can’t be sure it’ll ever be safe to go back to what we had before. The only way to make that more likely is for people to get vaccinated and to continue wearing masks and physically distance until we have better answers about immunity for, and transmission by, vaccinated people.

A huge amount of kindness shown during the worst of the pandemic, most of it unheralded. In New Zealand, kindness was a cornerstone of the government’s response because they needed us to do our part, not just to get through lockdown, but also to help ensure that others did, too. It worked. However, I’m not convinced that kindness is a natural state for humans in normal times, so I think that most of us will probably go back to being cantankerous and unforgiving when the crisis does eventually end. I hope I’m wrong about that.

In the USA, much of the turmoil and stress was stuff caused—usually directly, sometimes indirectly—by the soon to be ex-occupant of the White House and his disastrous mishandling of the pandemic. Having a real president and vice president in office, pursuing perfectly rational policies and upholding the rule of law will go a long way toward turning down the flame under the societal pot. I certainly don’t expect any of the issues—like Black Lives Matter, for example—to be solved in the next four years, however, we at least know that none of them will get worse like they did in the previous four. That alone should allow a bit of a return to “normal” for society generally—the caveat being that patience is not infinite, and the new administration will need to take action to make things better because simply not making them worse is no progress at all, not really.

Similarly, the new US administration will need to act on climate change, which even with action will continue to disrupt societies with more (and more frequent) severe storms and wider, more destructive events like wildfires. But there can be other natural events, like the eruption of New Zealand’s Whakaari/White Island, something that happened only a year ago, in December 2019, mere weeks before Covid emerged. All of those sorts of things—weather related and non weather related events—are by definition unpredictable. We can only hope that things will be better in 2021 than they were this year, and if they are, that, too, will help restore a sense of normality.

People throughout the developed world have been changed by 2020, and some of that may be permanent or, at least, long-lived. The deep and bitter political division in the USA, for example, won’t vanish any time soon (it built up over decades, after all), but it might get better if nature doesn’t get too dramatic and political progress is made.

As a sign of hope, I offer New Zealand: Faced with many of the same challenges as the USA—the global pandemic, systemic racism, a large income divide and poverty, etc., New Zealand voters saw they had a strong, capable, competent government that was trying to unite, not divide, the country and they re-elected their government in an historic landslide. That’s what good government can result in. So, if the new administration gets the pandemic under control, if it makes progress on finally dealing with simmering unresolved social and political issues, there is hope for a return to more normal times.

All of which puts aside questions about “what ‘normal’ are people expecting to return to”. What people perceive as “normal” isn’t necessarily desirable, and it may not even be real. I’m thinking especially of the folks who are convinced that there were no racial problems until “troublemakers” started rioting. And there are still people who believe the fantasy version of 1950s America is something to aspire to. None of those viewpoints are based on reality, and if that’s what the “normal” people want, they will be hugely disappointed.

Thanks to Roger for today’s question, my rather in adequate answer notwithstanding.

It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. You can also send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-20”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Sure, why not ask again? – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 1: An untold story

Ask Arthur 2020, Part 1: An untold story

I hadn’t really planned on doing an “Ask Arthur” series this year (I didn’t do one last year, either). But then, along came a hypothetical question and I decided to go ahead this year, anyway. So, here we are.

The question was from Roger Green, added to the end of a comment to my post about my recent cryoablation procedure. He asked/commented:

So, if I were to Ask Arthur Anything, it'd be about the scar he got when he was 14..

What Roger’s referring to is a brief, off-handed remark I made in that post:

As it happens, [injection of the local anesthetic] wasn’t particularly painful because they chose a site next to a scar I got from surgery when I was around 14, and the skin between it and my leg has no feeling.

Obviously there’s a story there, one I’ve never told before merely because it’s not that interesting to me, and so, not on my mind very often. I’m not embarrassed by it at all, and the fact that I’m not, and that I wasn’t upset back then, says something about how I’m wired, I think (or maybe that should say “weird”?). That’s getting ahead of the story, though—one I think I also placed in the wrong year. More about that, too, later.

Back in 1972 (I now think…), when I was 13, I was sleeping on the floor of my parents’ room one summer night because they had a window air conditioner, and it was very hot. I woke up in the morning with the feeling that I’d been “kicked in the groin”, as “they” politely put it—“kicked in the balls”, I’d say. It turned out I’d had what the doctor called a testicular twist, something that’s usually formally known as testicular torsion. The Wikipedia article describes it well: “Testicular torsion occurs when the spermatic cord (from which the testicle is suspended) twists, cutting off the blood supply to the testicle.” That same article has good information on causes, probability, and so on,. By the time I saw the doctor, the only possible treatment was removal of my right testicle.

When the surgery was done, they entered through my abdominal wall, where it meets my right leg, and removed it that way. I have no idea why. That’s why I have that scar, and why I have no feeling in the skin there. Then, they made a small incision in my scrotum and “tied down” the other one to prevent it from twisting. That definitely worked.

I was fatalistic about it all, with the same sort of “it is what it is” attitude I’ve often had about things I can’t change. The nurses told my mother that there’d recently been another boy in there for the same thing (he was older—16, maybe). Apparently he was angry and depressed, full of the “why me?!” sort of thing. The nurses were amazed, for lack of a better word (though it’s probably a pretty accurate one), at how calm and nonchalant I was about it.

Be that as it may, when I said I wasn’t embarrassed, that’s absolutely true. However, some gym teachers decided they’d try to make me feel embarrassed.

Doctors didn’t want me to participate in any sort of contact sports or training because of the obvious risk to my remaining testicle. Some gym teachers decided to try to humiliate me for not participating. Sometimes that meant making me do some sort of alternative, non-contact activity, and only a few of them called any attention to it by having me do whatever the activity was in full view of the other boys. Most gym teachers weren’t sadistic—disinterested, if anything, and many of them made me sit on the sidelines (probably because they didn’t want to supervise some alternative activity and the other boys).

That’s actually how I know it was probably 1972 when the surgery was done. During one gym class session in junior high school, I was excused from activity and I was sitting on the bleachers playing with my cassette tape recorder that had an AM radio. One song that played frequently was Elvis Presley’s hit song, “Burning Love”, which was released August 1, 1972. That doesn’t rule out it having been the following year, however, I seem to remember that the song was in heavy rotation, and that suggests 1972. Still, whether it was 1972 or 1973 doesn’t really matter.

In the years since, I’ve been aware of the need to protect myself from injury, but that’s about it. No embarrassment, no issues of any kind. At one point I wondered about getting a prosthetic implant (which I’d just learned were a thing), but since I don’t parade around naked (and, at the risk of TMI, no partner ever said anything), I realised it was a pretty silly idea.

It never occurred to me to tell this story before precisely because it matters so little to me, and is so seldom front of mind—not until it became relevant again when I had that cryoablation procedure.

And that’s a story I’ve never told before, and still wouldn’t have if Roger hadn’t hypothetically asked a question. But, then, I'd also never have done this year's series if he hadn't. And now this year’s series has officially begun.

It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. You can also send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-20”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Sure, why not ask again? – The first post in this year’s series.

Sure, why not ask again?

For several years beginning in 2012, I had an annual year-end series of “Ask Arthur” posts (I also had two July series, but gave up that idea). I didn’t do one last year because I was, of course, a bit absorbed by other things going on at that time. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to do a series this year, either, and then I thought, “Sure, why not?”

The decider was when Roger Green made a reference to a question he’d ask, and since that meant I already had one question, why not see if there are any others floating around out there? However, I’m opening it up much later than I would’ve if I’d planned to do these posts, so I plan to leave the questions open for about a week or so, depending on how many I get.

The “Ask Arthur” series of posts is a chance for people to ask me nearly anything, and I try to answer whatever I’m asked. I’ve never had topics that are “off limits”, but the plan was that if I couldn’t answer something for whatever reason I’d say so. It turned out that I never had a question that I wouldn’t answer.

Over the years, I’ve been asked about myself, my past, about life in New Zealand—mine or in general—about being an expat, what I think about various topics or events in the news, and so on. Many different things, many possibilities.

To ask questions, leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. You can also send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.

Finally, as I always note, this idea is stolen from inspired by Roger Green’s “Ask Roger Anything” (“ARA”) posts. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or something like that.

So, over to you: Ask your question whatever way works best for you, and I’ll do my best to answer it.

All posts in this series will be tagged “AAA-20”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

What do you want to know? (December 2012)
Ask Arthur (July 2013)
Ask Arthur – Again (December 2013)
Ask Arthur Again, again (December 2014)
Ask Arthur yet again (July 2015)
It’s that time again (December 2015)
It’s ‘Ask Arthur’ time again (December 2016)
Let the 2017 asking begin (November 2017)
Let the 2018 asking begin (November 2018)
There was no “Ask Arthur” series in 2019.