Lena Horne's album "Stormy Weather"

Summer is half over, but it feels like it never got started. It’s supposed to be the vacation season; a time to get outdoors and relax. We’ve had heat and summer thunderstorms, but we’re certainly not relaxed.

The world news seems to get worse every day. I’m still angry about all those years that Exxon lied to us. We read about inflation and recession in the same sentence. We don’t know which way to turn. Turkey sold drones to Ukraine, but now it may be selling them to Iran. The Supreme Court decision on abortion has sparked a nation-wide series of protests and demonstrations. It feels like Vietnam all over again.

We not only don’t have solutions to a lot of our problems, sometimes we don’t even ask the right questions. Science is based upon a valid hypothesis. A lot of times we’re just guessing. Yes, the Climate Crisis is real and no longer open to debate. But finding the political will to do something about it is even more difficult than addressing gun violence. After four years of political chaos, we need time just to stabilize the public debate and learn how to communicate with each other. All the shouting gets media attention, but does it lead to any solutions?

I have expressed my disappointment in the programming on the History Channel numerous times. It is one of the A&E Channels on their streaming service. I get it as one of my cable channels on Spectrum Cable. In recent years they have reached for a different audience. But in recent months, they have upgraded their programming to include some actual history content. For example, the series The Men Who Made America was excellent. The most recent show of that series was the Frontiersmen.

The 2-part, 5-hour series on Theodore Roosevelt was produced by Doris Kearnes Goodwin, based upon her book Leadership in Turbulent Times. The series was co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. Apparently, he played the role in some of the dramatizations. I binged watched it over the Memorial Day weekend. Of course, I recorded it and played it back that next 2 nights to zap the many commercials. I don’t know if their streaming service, called The Vault, includes so many commercials.

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

I recently read a book with the unwieldy title: Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. Since I suffer from chronic pain, I’ve read several books about the structure and function of the brain. In spite of advances in neuroscience in the past decade, we still have gaps in our understanding.

The author has a delightful sense of humor and tries to decipher a lot of the technical language of science. He delves into consciousness, expectations, chemistry (drugs and hormones), electrical energy, pain, diet, emotions, beliefs, memories, the placebo effect, acupuncture, alternative medicine, hypnosis, meditation, our “stories,” faith healing, and brain waves. His definition of the title: “Suggestibility is a cocktail of genetics, personal beliefs, experience, and personality. Expectation is just a system of shortcuts our brains have developed to get through life without stopping every five seconds to figure things out.”

In other words, the brain is not just some wind-up computer that controls our bodily functions and emotions. The mind is far too complex for us to fully understand. “The smallest unit scientists can use to measure an indirect form of brain activity contains about 9.4 football stadiums’ worth of brain cells.”