Tradition Contents - 2023aug12
This Tradition Contents came about when Harv had to fit his photography tradition, and subsequent geek trials, into his history, as he dealt with the family slides that were given to Harv in 1984 without interest or recourse from anyone at the time.
The beginning -
Connie's Marshfield sex education -
Milwaukee Inception -
Pre-marital instructions -
Marriage -
Photography -
Annulment -
Connie not friend -
Yearly visits -
Elaine not friend -
Harv not friendly ? -
Defining his self-essence -
Responsibility flips -
Job/degree life finishes -
Sue.M evicts Harv's retirement -
Retired at age 52 -
Home-sharing home-sitting -
Potential life partner search -
Parent responsibility -
Kid's college education -
Chris' dogs to Tampa FL -
Harv squats in Tampa -
Moved Susan to California -
$ for Chris/Tina Williamsburg -
One week squatter visit disaster to Lisa -
$ for Chris/Tina Baldwin Park -
Day-bed and Amber closeness -
Several squatter visits to California -
$ for Susan Lincoln CA house returned to Harv -
$ wealth distribution to Lisa, Susan, Chris equally -
$ for Chris/Tina North Carolina -
Scalp cancer and vaccines eviction -
Susan evicts Harv's retirement -
Solo retirement -
Prostate cancer Tx -
Disney World recuperation -
No 'COA' St.Cloud FL -
Choice of Four Townes FL with 'COA' -
Run-up to Real Retirement -
reverse chronological order
Run-up to Real Retirement -
2023july14. Real Retirement actualized 2023sep (specifically Harv's PCP review 2023sep21).
Harv retired at age 52 but didn't fully realize that reality at that time. Real Retirement for Harv has come to be; following the 2018 California-retirement eviction, and the 2019 annual-pass Disney-World recoup. In short, week 27 in mid July 2023 has experienced a feeling of a stabilized life-flow retirement-pattern in Florida (six years in the making). Amateur writing actualizes via Blogger. COA socialization draws Harv into friendly acquaintance with respect, encouragement, and challenge. Harv's personal COA challenge is continued growth of Computing Activity. Car-living personal support is smooth, with incidental technical problems solved along life's-way. Health-care support has been adjusted toward more convenience as well as effectiveness.
Will Harv's life-pattern take him to his 91yo life-expectancy projection ?
With daughter Susan, he has a texting and phone relationship. With family, he shares birthday wishes with the 'old' pix, as he extracts them from his morass. Also, texting with more individuals. Grandpa Bob provides a 'residence' address, and we visit face-to-face around mail and the Otto family in North Carolina. Harv's decades of house-sit for Bob/Sherry/boxers/orchids is the foundation for Harv's Real Retirement in the Florida Four Townes area. Many other 'house-sits' have been in Harv's lifetime. Previous words of Real Retirement are relegated along with other words of previous residences over his cherished decades :
2023jun09. Harv calls medical appointments chasing ill health steals too much time. His year 85 has demonstrated a dead-end dramatic slowdown in life tempo -- accomplishment of "big things", or changes in personal direction on his own, is past his "oldest of the old" current realized ability. Life-flow seems to stop, or at least proceed in slow motion. Yet, the years fly away, in spite of a daily blog and slow-motion progress. Harv may have his pauses but he has not succumb to ultra slow motion, near catatonic pace. For example, he had to give up the world cruise (fast-pace) for 2023-2024 at an $8000 loss :
https://www.harvotto.com/p/DEMENTIA-CKD.html 2023july18.
2023feb20. see end of page for possible/temporary conclusion to permit focus on other parallel work.
Under construction. This beginning looks to much rework representing a construction of written-out seemingly discordant thoughts, and with each rewrite a story closer to Harv's sense. He was there, it's his story.
First months-old understanding of Harv's hermit(introversion) understanding. As an idyllic breast-feed baby, Harv was exposed to a mother's female temper that was thrust from a shotgun wedding, their marital residence et.al. explicitly imposed by the clashing mores of hers/his traditions. Senior was not a responsible individual, and may already have been a functioning alcoholic. Harv believes that even a months-old introduced to environmental difficulty learns early to be a behaved introvert.
With the above expressed by Harv in 2023may, he discovered a description of a theoretical introvert written and attributed to Jung in the 1920s.
He holds aloof from external happenings, does not join in, has a distinct dislike of society as soon as he finds himself among too many people. In a large gathering he feels lonely and lost. The more crowded it is, the greater becomes his resistance. He is not in the least "with it," and has no love of enthusiastic get-togethers. He is not a good mixer. What he does, he does in his own way, barricading himself against influences from outside. He is apt to appear awkward, often seeming inhibited, and it frequently happens that, by a certain brusqueness of manner, or by his glum unapproachability, or some kind of malapropism, he causes unwitting offence to people...
For him self-communings are a pleasure. His own world is a safe harbor, a carefully tended and walled-in garden, closed to the public and hidden from prying eyes. His own company is the best. He feels at home in his world, where the only changes are made by himself. His best work is done with his own resources, on his own initiative, and in his own way...
Crowds, majority views, public opinion, popular enthusiasm never convince him of anything, but mere make him creep still deeper into his shell.
His relations with other people become warm only when safety is guaranteed, and when he can lay aside his defensive distrust. All too often he cannot, and consequently the number of friends and acquaintances is very restricted.[8] ^ a b c Jung CG (1971). Psychological types. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-09770-1 – via Internet Archive.
(2023may16. Wikipedia, Psychology portal.)
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| Senior 'vacation' 1941? truck driver deferral |
This section represents Harv's highest level of life-long-learning. Perhaps, in 85y hindsight, his simply running away from life in the pits. "What!" you say? Just as deceased family-friend Bob Dunn remarked post-marriage to Harv: "What happened," he inquired. "I thought you had the perfect marriage?" And it was -- Harv was there and lived it -- he remembers. Likewise with his entire life -- it was perfect. Not that difficulties were absent -- they certainly were there -- especially as Harv was pushing/running for more from life. He was rumored by wife Elaine as Stoic -- a description that he has yet to fully understand/rationalize. But this gets ahead of the foundational story of his tradition. Many good times and many more pix, some already at the following link .Harv thinks that cryptic is the way his mind works. In what way did his mind get that way? Or, in what way did others escape his presumed dysfunction, if it is that?
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| Connie in her modest 2 piece on the farm |
His infancy may have been idyllic. Toddler and pre school years were less idyllic.
For Harv's elementary years his education was turned over from the normal family experience (although every family may have a range of dysfunction from little to lots), to local Catholic parochial education, namely Notre Dame nuns and Diocesan priests. He immediately became indoctrinated with values. In the mid 1990s he cryptically wrote those values ( https://www.harvotto.com/p/article-1838-spirit-commandsprinciples.htm)
Along the way somehow, he was introduced to critical thinking, that is, "the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment"(OAD).
Perhaps his mother's Polish farming and father's German tavern ancestry encouraged an elitist attitude, as if critical thinking was elitist - not that his parents exercised elitist thought/talk? In short, he thought ideas as a way of life, evolving to and within a 'family-sociality' of a single working mother's frustration with her inherited pure-Polish temper/anger and no child-support, and a father who receded into drink. In a sense, Harv was isolated, on-his-own.
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| adventurous Junior in his coaster |
But solutions to what … to problems yet undefined? For example, "What are the human impediments to his longevity?" Mother Connie lived into her 102nd year.
Thus for Harv, his life complexity exists. No one life facet seems to dominate. Marriage did not. Jobs did not although intense. Geography did not. Careers did not yet he maintained national professional status. For Harv, over the years and decades, the complexity was always there, and always curious about something. He was curious about everything, just as all toddlers begin life with Why, Why, Why ... Seemingly, he wanted More, More, More ... In this sense, perhaps Harv never "grows up", that is, stops - as many retire, and seemingly waste away. He seems never to retire, always working on something - as illustrated by the PRIORITY EVENTS post that leads his blog.
Interest in school or high grades were definitely not a target of his curiosity. As the decades went on, mother would ask, "Harvey, how much education do you need?" As if Harv had enough. He wanted more. He wanted all of it to sate his curiosity.
His mother Connie was off the farm and was taken off her schooling after fifth grade, and given to domestic chores, and eventually she was hired out for in-small-town domestic live-in work with her father collecting her pay. However, working in-town gave her an expanded world view, especially from her hired-into new family. Thus, she eventually bolted to the big city, that is, Milwaukee the beer-town, where she was again a live-in domestic on the East Side, on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, the elite side of town.
Connie’s Polish relatives resided in Milwaukee’s South Side where tavern fish fries were a staple, along with dancing the polka, waltz, and schottische polka. In Harv’s eyes, dancing was her life joy! Harv took that observation and applied it for himself when engaged to Elaine. He was faced with wedding-dance 'ballroom' performance. Those dance lessons and subsequent "tripping the light fantastic" provided a super dance-partnership with Elaine - even ending dips with hair to the floor.
Beyond Connie's dancing joy? Maybe she also enjoyed beach sunning in her bikini. “Well,” probably it would be called a two-piece. She told of her Central Wisconsin experience at the community pool - she related that she almost drowned. She was never a water person in the sense of being a swimmer. Wouldn’t it be something if we learned that she liked sex? But Harv never saw signs of that. She seemed to fear and avoid men.
Yet she got caught with pregnancy, either through rape or pre-marital sex, went through a shotgun wedding, and lost a tossup deliberation for an abortion. Trapped in a life with no skills other than domestic servitude. By Harv's age ten she was divorced with no child support, although Senior had a stable job at Schlitz; a job acquired through his father Armand's tavern-owner's connections with beer distribution. specifically Schlitz. Senior did drive truck and his sister Eleanor married a truck driver. Harv reasons that Senior's drink tradition was interfering with truck-driving performance.
Harv knows not for sure about Connie's initial employment as factory worker. Harv back fits, that perhaps, as Harv enters St.Francis' first grade, Connie attains a job at HoleProof, the stocking manufacturer. Harv specifically remembers walking home from school solo, but he remembers not any other details of Connie's initial job. Then apparently, Square D was hiring and recruiting for what was Connie was to become, an electrical harness lacer - she was good at the job, and as a worker she excelled. She worked a lot of overtime, lived frugally, saved, and retired from Square D. In the meantime Connie relocated the family for second grade on, to St.Michael's where Harv could walk through the alley, and cross the non-busy intersection for the school grounds, right through eight grade. She worked most Saturdays, where Harv remembers walking miles to the North Ave. natatorium for Saturday mornings - he was a latchkey kid. He was alone but not necessarily lonely. Deprived perhaps. But missing what? He certainly did not get into social trouble, although he did have adventurous neighborhood friends.
The 'super' neighborhood group was the 'baseball team' that played no competitive games. We jammed into Gus' Jeep and headed to the park, not even in search of a sand lot.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Welcome to Harv’s tradition. But she did reverse the tossup deliberation choice, aborting Harv in 2003, at age 63.
One of her life problems was anger - she had a temper as related by her peers. Connie was caught
cryptic apology ?
Harv’s curiosity: Is there an optimal life experience for him? If he follows his values? Book title, "Are your values working to your advantage?"
The most pertinent study observation was "Another's spirit may not look after your spirit," And if Harv trusts everybody he is vulnerable thus hermitage and minimalism and frugalness for security. Overall financial security comes from self-responsibility, problem being Harv looks to his responsibility for giving to others, whatever that means = 'taking on more responsibility'.
In 2021 mid November (21w47), Harv’s retirement plans oriented to Four Townes, Florida. But as a prerequisite, the Orange City COA senior center needed to prove functional for his needs. In the year 2022 by November, COA proved functional enough for Harv’s retirement needs.
His mailbox address of years had already been DeBary. And a relationship with “grandpa Bob” had been growing for decades. The other towns of Deltona, Enterprise, and DeLand had been years-ago fodder for bicycling during the South Africa or Yellowstone household-sits.
CONFIRMATION OF VALUES POST MARRIAGE
Harv's values fit here and also in https://www.harvotto.com/p/article-1838-spirit-commandsprinciples.html from Harv's circa 1994 study -- roughly the time of Harv giving up the culturally imposed "there's a life-partner-out-there marriage is the way-to-go" life-style banner from tradition and religion.
What does it mean to grow/recoup one's spirit? How is that actualized? In Harv's case he recoup's self-spirit via hermitage minimalism frugality self-responsibility self-interest but socially responsible.
Harv wants to be organized. He has studied functional organization. To save clutter opposes organized access. For example, the Mac Finder contains much clutter. To declutter, glean as he calls it, takes time, time perhaps that he must now spend to mature to some higher level. But that higher level os open to his own definition, being relatively free. Thus, he chooses within the cluttered world he continues to create.
updated 2022nov03R7pm separate epoch Blogger Page deleted
In hindsight and in large scale, Harv’s 84 year lifetime has five epochs that are pointed to his future of 1) thesaurus-alive 2) freedom 3) acquaintances /friendships with mutual support :
LIFETIME years five CHASE epochs five OUTCOMES
22 self-spirit-development chase -- knighted H2o (Happy Harv Otto),
35 life-partnership chase -- unmarried but being not-solo considered,
22 blood-family chase -- replace w/close-family rebuild including blood,
05 self-spirit-responsibility chase -- until dead twixt above 1) 2) 3).
00 writer career akin sports career -- until death do-us-part then more.
sums to 84 years
In hindsight and in large scale, Harv’s 85 year lifetime has five epochs that are pointed to his future of a) thesaurus-alive b) freedom c) friendships with mutual support/values:
years five epochs outcome
22 self-spirit-development chase -- knighted H2o (Happy Harv Otto),
35 life-partnership chase -- unmarried but being not-solo considered,
23 blood-family chase -- replace w/close-family rebuild including blood,
04 self-spirit-responsibility chase -- until dead twixt above a) b) c).
01 writer career akin sports career -- until death do-us-part then more.
====
sums to 85 lifetime years = so far so good? One accountable week at a time!
Harv's values exposition
THIS IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Buried in Harv's life-partnership-chase epoch came his study of the principles of his Bible tradition which peaked in 1994. He was checking the choice of marriage that debilitated him from 1961 to 1984, and led among other key inputs, to his mid life crisis. He broke, Was the breaking a mistake? He was now alert, even loathed, to not repeating a mistake as he negotiated the singles market from 1984-1994. He concluded that "Happy Harv, as he became to be re-created in the 1984-1994 decade; was not fit to be married!" He did however continue to think in terms of a life-partner in friendship, cooperation, and support.
The cryptic sum : (see https://www.harvotto.com/p/article-1838-spirit-commandsprinciples.html )
ABOVE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
YOUTHFUL-SPIRIT LIFETIME THREAD
Harv searches for the source of his life-long youthful-spirit via notes from a recent current-news-article:(https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221205-the-upsides-of-feeling-small)
I've…had a…feeling staring out at the ocean, my imagination wandering to its unknowable depths, or looking at the stars, speculating how far the light had travelled across the Universe to reach my retina. Encountering things far bigger than yourself can provoke a mixture of emotions: astonishment, wonder, awe, but also humility.
Sometimes, it's easy to forget that there is a vast and obscure world still out there, waiting to be explored. Perhaps it's because so much of life is now mediated via a smartphone screen no bigger than our palms. Perhaps it's overfamiliarity: what was wild and remote in the 18th Century is now full of tourists, or as close as a Google search away. Or maybe it's that we've simply stopped looking. After all, the present moment is already overwhelming enough, through information overload, accelerating technologies, injustice, climate change, and more.
The hint of threat and mystery had not fully dissipated, however. In the dark gaps between the cloud [Wordsworth] observed "a fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place", through which he could hear the distant power of nature: "…the roar of water, torrents, streams / Innumerable, roaring with one voice!"
Seeing and hearing this, [Wordsworth] reflected on the human intellect's ability to approach something far bigger than the self: "There I beheld the emblem of a mind / That feeds upon infinity… a mind sustained / By recognitions of transcendent power."
Wordsworth was far from the only writer in this period to be compelled by a sense of the infinite. He and many others in 18th Century Europe were fascinated with the sublime, finding new appreciation for the dynamic power and enormity they found in nature.
One thing that made the sublime so appealing to Wordsworth and others was how it stretched the imagination. As the philosopher Emily Brady writes in her 2013 book on the sublime: "A view running through several theories is that as the imagination (or more generally, the mind) is expanded, we also experience a sense of our ability to take in vastness or great power, thereby evoking a sense of our own powers." Or as one 18th Century writer put it, the mind derives "a noble pride" from encountering a "sense of immensity" and "entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity."
To illustrate this, Brady cites the emotional experience of staring at the night sky: "In casting our eyes across it we cannot take it all in," she writes. "We can look to the left and the right, and all around, but it seems to go on forever, filling space and extending outwards in all directions in such a way that we cannot put any boundaries around it through perception. Through this kind of aesthetic experience we have a kind of sensuous feeling for the infinite, one which is quite different from any kind of intellectual, mathematical idea of it."
Over the past two decades, psychologists have converged on these 200-year-old ideas of the sublime, but from a different angle – and by doing so, they have illuminated other more specific benefits of feeling small in the face of enormity.
This body of work, which Keltner tours in his upcoming book Awe (Penguin, January 2023), has helped to clarify that awe comes with myriad mental benefits. Various studies have shown that experiencing awe can reduce stress, discourage rumination, and enhance well-being. It also fosters greater attention to detail, boosts memory and encourages critical thinking.
Then there are the pro-social benefits: people in awe are more likely to show generosity, become less individualist, and emphasize a greater sense of connection to others and the world.
The Victorian geologist Charles Lyell once wrote that there is an inevitable discomfort that comes when approaching the vast unknowns of the Universe, describing a "painful sense of our incapacity to conceive a plan of such infinite extent". To illustrate how he felt, Lyell described a circle of light expanding into the dark – it illuminates as it goes, but as its circumference grows, so does the boundary between light and dark. In other words, he was suggesting that the more we learn, the more we become aware of our true insignificance and how little we know. "While the scheme of the Universe may be infinite, both in time and space, it is presumptuous to suppose that all sources of doubt and perplexity would ever be removed," Lyell wrote.
This is true, but that does not mean that we shouldn't try ever harder to understand our place within the immense world out there. When approaching the unknown, the psychologist Frank Keil talks about the power of wonder, which [Keil] describes as a more active, engaged sense of awe. "Wonder is the engine that drives innovation and inquiry," he tells me; the "accidental impetus" behind humanity's greatest achievements. It implores us to ask: how, what, where, when, what if? "It is one of the most powerful motivations we have as humans, and no one can take it away from us," he says.
YOUTH EXPERIENCE BASE CONNECTED TO 85TH YEAR ACTION
The foregoing news-article-notes connect H2o’s youth-value-formation experiences of latchkey, parochial, farm, dance hall, worker characteristics ‘directly’ into his 85th year — his youthful-spirit then, and now the same -- although different in personal experience/memories throughout his latest 75 years, especially contrasted with the selective memories that are warped by discount. In reaction to discount, Harv uses “hagiographic” in the heading of his web site that facilitates his writing/publishing effort in this, his last life-epoch #5, that is, “writer career akin sports career” — now one year in completion.
From the notes, Harv dwells (could be translated as deep-reading) on several words:
- wandering
- wonder
- humility
- the sublime
- the mind derives "a noble pride" from encountering a "sense of immensity" and "entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity."
- Through this kind of aesthetic experience we have a kind of sensuous feeling for the infinite, one which is quite different from any kind of intellectual, mathematical idea of it."
- experiencing awe can reduce stress, discourage rumination, and enhance well-being
- fosters greater attention to detail, boosts memory and encourages critical thinking
- pro-social benefits: people in awe are more likely to show generosity, become less individualist, and emphasize a greater sense of connection to others and the world.
- as its circumference grows, so does the boundary between light and dark. In other words, he was suggesting that the more we learn, the more we become aware of our true insignificance and how little we know
- the power of wonder, which [Keil] describes as a more active, engaged sense of awe. "Wonder is the engine that drives innovation and inquiry,"
- ask: how, what, where, when, what if? "It is one of the most powerful motivations we have as humans, and no one can take it away from us,"
Real retirement? - the Disney World binge
Real retirement? - the World Cruise
Real retirement? updatedFeb20M10pm Four Townes, Florida
Real retirement? updatedMar18A0pm
2023 Four Townes retirement? updated2023apr09U9pm
2023jun09. Harv discerned that his old-hermit-nature is introversion described by Jung in the 1920s. Harv has progressed on the introversion/extroversion continuum to date -- eight decades hence. The introversion development began with his decisions as a baby, a toddler, preschool, etc -- always his choices within the context of his environ.
Flash drive will continue work on Photos. with 16244 17,014 16874 16784 16438 16324 15913 14661 13165 remaining on MacBook M2 -- working on 5471 2986 zero duplicates, and reset of iCloud library ( 64,112 ). More photos are in the Finder app which is s l o w l y being gleaned. Damn the Apple iCloud system for helping to generate this mess!