Lady Bug, Lady Bug -

I'm going to ask you to think about making decisions. Every tangible object that surrounds us is the result of a series of decision - decisions piling on other decisions. Look at this toy butterfly and lady bug. Can you imagine the meeting in the toy company office?

"What do we need to fill the toy bug market?"
"I know, let's make a lady bug that rolls around on the floor, spins in circles, and occasionally flips over onto its back. Won't that be fun?"
"That's crazy, Phil. How about a butterfly?"
"How are you going to get it to do anything? It has to do something or the kids won't like it."
"It can flip its wings."
"The lady bug's easy. It's easy to pick a color for a lady bug. I mean it can just be red with a black face. Oh, and a smile. It's got to have a smile, but what color is the butterfly?"
"How about yellow? Green?"
"No, it's got to be blue. My daughter likes blue. We could put yellow circles on the wings with a few green polka dots. And it's got to have a smile too."

You can see how the conversation would go. There would have to be meetings with engineering to design the clockwork mechanism, design the injection molds, set up the molding machines, and the painting machines. On and on. Meeting after meeting. Decision after decision. These are all decisions for a simple plastic toy that will sell for less than a dollar and probably be crushed under foot in weeks after distribution.
The patterns in rugs, the molding around a door, the ingredients in a meal, the words on this page - all these things require a multitude of decisions. They interlock and pile on each, each decision has to be made in sequence. Many, if not most, of those decision must be made from knowledge and experience.
No wonder they say that life is hard.

Stay well,
Paul
Paul H. Raymer
P.S there's more to this newsletter - please keep reading.

Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead

I discovered this at https://crimereads.com/the-10-best-crime-novels-of-the-last-decade/ Maybe I'm behind on this, but this book was a surprise to me. Clair Dewitt claims to be the world's greatest detective. At least in her own mind. The story takes place a year or two after Hurricane Katrina when the city was devastated by flood waters. There is none of the buzz and pulse and bright lights of touristy New Orleans. It is a war zone populated by gangs and drive-by shootings. Claire has little respect for the police or the criminal justice system.
She is haunted by memories of her mentor, Constance Darling who introduced her to Jacques Silette who wrote just one book, Détection. Gran does such a good job of developing this fictitious detective that I had to do a Google search to determine if the book was real.
One of the numerous threads in the story is learning to see the world and its accompanying clues as Silette saw them. This mysterious book seems to magically permeate many parts of Gran’s story - levels removed from reality by Gran to Dewitt to Constance Darling to Silette - deeper and deeper. The dominant characters in the story are Silette and New Orleans. And then there are the green parrots!

This is not a cozy, quick read, comfy chair crime story. It’s definitely worth reading.

Mold and Frozen Pipes

You may have heard that there was a cold weather event in Texas that the state was not prepared for. The winter design temperature for here in Falmouth, MA is 6 °F. That means that my heating system should be running constantly at that temperature, keeping the house at 70 °F. If it's not, the heating system is oversized. 99% of the time here in Falmouth, the temperature won't get colder than that.

The winter design temperature for Dallas is 19 °F. So houses in Dallas should be built to withstand the cold - because it will get cold. And it did. And it gets colder inside the house when the heating system doesn't work because there is no power. It takes a while for pipes to freeze because they gradually lose heat to the surrounding air, abiding by the Second Law of Thermodynamics - heat moving to cold.

And when the water in the pipe thaws and starts moving again under the pressure in the system, it sprays out of the busted pipes and the surroundings get wet. That moisture is one of the three elements required for mold growth: moisture, mold spores, and mold food like the cellulose in gypsum board. The mold has a party! It can grow in just 24 to 48 hours.

It is extremely important that it be cleaned up carefully. Don't just rip out large expanses of wall board because invisible mold spores will fly off everywhere and you will wind up chasing mold around the house.

Celebrating Independent Bookstores

Books By the Sea
1600 Falmouth Road, Centerville, MA
Books By The Sea was the realization of a lifelong dream of Joyce Phillips to own a specialty bookstore that promoted local authors and catered to a unique, book loving community. Joyce passed away in 2007, but her memory lives on in the hearts of her customers and the authors whose lives she touched. Her husband, Tom, along with a dedicated and committed staff, have continued this store as her legacy to Cape Cod.

Books By the Sea is located in the Bell Tower Mall -- Phone 508-771-9100

Some Bits for Benjamin Bunny and the Rabbit Hole

Wordpress Collaboration with Anchor/Spotify

For an easy way to turn your Wordpress blog posts into podcasts there's Anchor which allows you to connect any Wordpress.com account to a free Anchor account. Then just use text to speech technology and you have another way to promote your work easily. Learn more

Masterclass

My children gave me a subscription to the Masterclass platform, and it's been great. I have listened to Dan Brown, David Baldacci, and Salman Rushdie so far. I think it has done a great deal to improve my writing and to confirm that I was doing a lot of things right. And these amazing craftsmen talk to you one to one. It's like having them right here. Learn more