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Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Extraordinary.
Walking through the Boston Common I came upon a new installation.
Something that hitherto the park sorely lacked: clean public toilets on the Charles Street edge of the park.
This installation is the real thing, not some souped-up porta-potties.
The pictures below show the piece.
Immediately below see the whole unit: three toilets.
Two doors facing us; a third door on our right, an end cap.
Three toilets.
Their usage is recorded.
I stepped inside and took a picture of me taking a picture of the sink.
And of the bowl.
The toilets are commodious.
Clean.
Fresh smelling.
With a full-time monitor who keeps order.
He intervenes if anyone exceeds a twenty-minute limit, the intervention both for order and for safety.
Three times a day a crew comes in and cleans the toilets from top to bottom.
In between visits, in an emergency, the monitor will clean it.
What a relief for families with small children.
And for the homeless.
And anyone who has to go.
The facility will close in October and then a decision will be made to keep them or not as a permanent seasonal installation.
Kudos to whoever thought of and implemented this long overdue idea.
Extraordinary.
The weather in the next few days is decidedly ticking upwards in temperature and in sun.
Let’s exult in this coming glorious weather.
The hours are ticking away and if we don’t make the most of our time another day will soon click past.
Unnoticed.
Unappreciated.
Tick Tock.
In clock language:
Enjoy today.
Enjoy the week.
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Postings Count, Weather Brief, and Dinner
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Our 396th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
After 396 posts we’re at the 7.92 percentile of our commitment, the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.
Time is 12.01am.
On Tuesday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 68* with a feels-like of 72* with mainly sunny skies and a chance of a shower. Gorgeous.
Dinner for tonight will be Roast chicken with artichokes and roasted peppers.
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Question of the Day:
What is an out-of-body experience?
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Chuckle for Tuesday, May 7, 2019
A loving couple was celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, privately, at home with a couple of bottles of champagne.
A bit tipsy and feeling very intimate the husband sets his glass down and asks, "Tell me truthfully, sweetheart, I won’t get upset. Promise. Have you ever been unfaithful?"
"Well, just on three occasions. And they were isolated.”
“Tell me.”
"The first time, twenty-five years ago, when we were first married. You needed open heart surgery. We didn't have the money, The surgeon offered a way; so I went to bed with him."
"Wow! That was brave of you. Thank you.”
“The second time, you wanted that promotion so bad, and it was a close call, so I went to bed with the President and the Vice President and they gave you the job."
"Both of them? But maybe I could have done it on my own. But that was a great position I got.”
The wife continued. “The last time was when you wanted to become President of the Little League Association. But you were missing 53 votes..."
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Answer to the Question of the Day: Tuesday, May 7, 2019
What is an out-of-body experience?
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is an experience in which a person seems to perceive the world from a location outside their physical body.
An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although the term autoscopy more commonly refers to the pathological condition of seeing a second self, or doppelgänger.
The term out-of-body experience was introduced in 1943 by G. N. M. Tyrrell in his book Apparitions, and was adopted by researchers such as Celia Green and Robert Monroe as an alternative to belief-centric labels such as "astral projection", "soul travel", or "spirit walking".
OBEs can be induced by brain traumas, sensory deprivation, near-death experiences, dissociative and psychedelic drugs, dehydration, sleep, and electrical stimulation of the brain, among others.
It can also be deliberately induced by some. One in ten people have an OBE once, or more commonly, several times in their life.
Those experiencing OBEs sometimes report (among other types of immediate and spontaneous experience) a preceding and initiating lucid-dream state.
In many cases, people who claim to have had an OBE report being on the verge of sleep, or being already asleep shortly before the experience.
A large percentage of these cases refer to situations where the sleep was not particularly deep (due to illness, noises in other rooms, emotional stress, exhaustion from overworking, frequent re-awakening, etc.).
In most of these cases subjects perceive themselves as being awake; about half of them note a feeling of sleep paralysis.
Another form of spontaneous OBE is the near-death experience (NDE).
Some subjects report having had an OBE at times of severe physical trauma such as near-drownings or major surgery.
Near-death experiences may include subjective impressions of being outside the physical body, sometimes visions of deceased relatives and religious figures, and transcendence of ego and spatiotemporal boundaries.
Typically the experience includes such factors as: a sense of being dead; a feeling of peace and painlessness; hearing of various non-physical sounds, an out-of-body experience; a tunnel experience (the sense of moving up or through a narrow passageway); encountering "beings of light" and a God-like figure or similar entities; being given a "life review", and a reluctance to
return to life.
Along the same lines as an NDE, extreme physical effort during activities such as high-altitude climbing and marathon running can induce OBEs.
A sense of bilocation may be experienced, with both ground and air-based perspectives being experienced simultaneously.
Inducing OBEs:
Artist's depiction of the separation stage of an out-of-body experience, which often precedes free movement.
Rad el Baluvar - Own work
Neuroscientists and psychologists regard OBEs as dissociative experiences arising from different psychological and neurological factors.
OBEs can be induced by hallucinogens (particularly dissociatives) such as psilocybin, ketamine, DMT, MDA, and LSD.
OBEs can be induced mentally.
Falling asleep physically without losing awareness.
The "Mind Awake, Body Asleep" state is widely suggested as a cause of OBEs, voluntary and otherwise.
Thomas Edison used this state to tackle problems while working on his inventions.
He would rest a silver dollar on his head while sitting with a metal bucket in a chair.
As he drifted off, the coin would noisily fall into the bucket, restoring some of his alertness.
OBE pioneer Sylvan Muldoon more simply used a forearm held perpendicular in bed as the falling object.
Salvador Dalí was said to use a similar "paranoiac-critical" method to gain odd visions which inspired his paintings.
Deliberately teetering between awake and asleep states is known to cause spontaneous trance episodes at the onset of sleep which are ultimately helpful when attempting to induce an OBE.
By moving deeper and deeper into relaxation, one eventually encounters a "slipping" feeling if the mind is still alert.
This slipping is reported to feel like leaving the physical body. Some consider progressive relaxation a passive form of sensory deprivation.
Deep trance, meditation and visualization. The types of visualizations vary; some common analogies include climbing a rope to "pull out" of one's body, floating out of one's body, getting shot out of a cannon, and other similar approaches.
This technique is considered hard to use for people who cannot properly relax. One example of such a technique is the popular Golden Dawn "Body of Light" Technique.
And there are various ways OBEs can be induced mechanically.
To be continued.
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Good Morning on this Tuesday, the seventh day of May, 2019
Our homily dealt with the trial installation of quality public restrooms on the Charles Street edge of the Boston Common.
We posted the weather, the date as time ticks away, and the number of postings to-date.
Then a chuckle and our question and answer which dealt with other body experiences.
And now? Gotta go.
Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?
Your love.
Public toilet facilities lend a lovely timbre to wandering the city.
I keep a list of them on me at all times.