Does Aging Improve Brain Function?

The New York Times reported recently that researchers have discovered significant differences in the way young people and middle-aged people process information and solve problems. When young people undertake a cognitive task, the part of the brain they activate tends to be "highly localize." Older people draw upon a broader spectrum of cognitive facilities when approaching the same task.

The researchers—who probably wish they were still young, so they could be doing something  more fun than looking at brain scans—have come up with a perversely inaccurate acronym for this phenomenon: HAROLD. This stands for "hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults." According to the article, most researchers agree this phenomenon represents "a general reorganization and weakening of the brain’s function with age."

Weakening? I'm afraid it represents nothing of the kind. Unless it can be established scientifically that the solution arrived at most rapidly, and using the least amount of brainpower, is invariably the best, which I doubt. I think it's more often the other way around. Young people tend to have plenty of energy, but they often mistake their own infinitesimal corner of the world for the world itself, and as a result, they make snap judgments that often prove to be inaccurate and can sometimes be personally harmful.

Older people, tempered and enlightened by years of experiences, are much better at seeing the connections between things, reserving judgment, pondering alternatives. Due to these qualities--which, prior to the age of acronyms, went collectively under the name "maturity"--older men and women often become adept at charting a safe, effective, creative, and reliable course between A and B.

Rather than burdening older folks with yet another dreadful syndrome, HAROLD, researchers ought to be studying, and celebrating,  HEART—this is, Hemispheric Equilibrium and Reflective Temper.

(And by the way, have you notice how this gray weather has been bringing out the muted brilliance in the multicolored leaves, especially when a bit of sunlight makes them glisten with moisture?)

On the methodological level, the study once again reminds us that it isn't easy to design experiments involving the complex tasks that people typically have to deal with, where one of the options might be wait, or to ignore the task altogether.

I've become adept at such delayed responses. For example, a few weeks ago the "check engine" lit up on the dash of our 2015 Corolla. Our go-to mechanic tracked it down to an aging carbon canister, and proposed a $700 replacement. "You don't really have to do it," he told me, "if you don't mind looking at that light."

The "occulus" in the new Vesterheim visitors' center.

We pondered the expense all the way to Lanesboro, and on to Decorah, Iowa, to see the new visitors' center at the Vesterheim Museum. On the way back, somewhere near Zumbrota, the light went out. It stayed out. Problem solved. (For now.) 

Meanwhile, it may also be worth pointing out that the brain does lots of things besides solving problems. The "hemispheric asymmetry reduction" that the researchers refer to as a defect might be just the thing that many of us are looking for. Books appear almost daily giving us advice as to how to find serenity and inner peace. Centuries ago Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius followed the same track. It's matter of learning how to see the world, and our place in it, as an ensemble of more or less harmonious elements rather than the interminable series of crises that the purveyors of news are so good at describing hourly.

But there is one thing to avoid: it would be a mistake to become too adept at counterbalancing this and that, adjusting to every situation, putting things off, staying "in the moment," while slowly sinking into a quietistic stupor.

On some occasions, there really is something wrong with the car. And there are always more than a few things wrong with the world.         

Rain Taxi Book Festival 2023

I dropped in at the Twin Cities Book Festival once again the other day, where you never know what books you'll discover, what old friends you'll run into, or what new friends you'll make. The day is usually cold and blustery, making the two-block walk up the hill to the event refreshing, and this year was no exception. As I approached, the smell of mini-donuts filled the air—a pleasantly bitter-sweet reminder that we hadn't gone to the State Fair this year.

The Nodin Press booth no longer occupied its prime position by the front door, due to an administrative mix-up, but it was only one row down, still next to the main aisle. It was perhaps a better location: just as prominent as usual but less exposed to the elements. I said hi to Norton and poet Sharon Chmielarz, who was there to sign copies of her new book, Duet in the Little Blue Church, and promised to be back soon.

A few booths down I spotted a new novel by Will Weaver, Power and Light, on the Holy Cow Press table. "One of my favorite books," I told the rep standing there, "is Weaver's The Last Deer Hunter. I'm not a deer hunter myself," I hastened to add. "Then again, neither is he."

"What? Did someone say my name?" came a voice from down the way. It was Will himself.

"I was just conveying my appreciation for The Last Deer Hunter," I said. "It's got the farm, back-woods, and out-state urban flavor, but also Santa Cruz. I'll never forget the scene where you bring your girlfriend from Madison home to meet your parents, and wonder what she'll think of all the frozen fox carcasses in the barn. Hilarious."

"Thank you," he said with a smile. "Though the book is called The Last Hunter."

"My wife and I travel around the state a lot, and a few years ago we took a turn through your neck of the woods: the Smoky Hills. There's not a whole lot there."

"It's subtle," he said with a laugh. "Very subtle."

Turning back toward the Nodin booth, I ran into a young woman I vaguely recognized. "I think you're one of the famous authors that will be reading today," I said. "But I don't remember your name."

"I wouldn't say famous," she laughed. "I'm Kathleen Rooney. From Chicago. Right now I'm looking for that Robert Bly book. Oh, there it is.  I love Bly."

I couldn't resist mentioning that I'd edited and designed that book."

"Well, I reviewed it for Laurie Hertzel."

"Thanks very much. Laurie had a great book page, don't you think?"

So we talked about Laurie, and I mentioned that I'd reviewed a few books for the Star Tribune back in the Dave Wood era. (Kathleen was probably an infant then.) But Laurie knew a lot of book reviewers,  and drew from a far wider pool. 

I mentioned that I'd also reviewed quite a few books for the Rain Taxi Review. While we were discussing the virtues of that publication and the ways that Rain Taxi keeps the local book scene bubbling, Kathleen spotted Norton's bushel basket of crabapples, and that got her going on some of the orchards just east of Madison, WI, where they've succeeding in bringing back some heirloom species.

"I'm sure you know that the U of M is a sort of apple breeding capital," I said. "Haralson, Fireside, Honey Crisp."

"Yeah, well, that's not quite the same thing." True enough.

And I'm thinking now, isn't this what the book fest is all about? Individual authors and regional proprietors? Niche audiences? Intimate associations?

It's been quite a while since I met such a disarmingly friendly young person, who actually seemed eager to chat. I looked Kathleen  up online when I got home, and was introduced to the astonishing array of her literary endeavors  as both author and publisher. Yet she never mentioned any of them.

My next stop was the used book stall in the far corner of the building, where books were arranged at random in a few broad categories: fiction, biography. non-fiction, poetry, art, travel. I glanced at a few titles as space between browsers permitted. On the "non-fiction" table, which was relatively open, I came upon a weighty hardcover volume titled Bach's Musical Universe by Christoph Wolff, Harvard professor and former director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig. It looks a little technical—not a book to read cover to cover, perhaps—but I'm pretty sure he'll offer enlightenment about any particular piece I want to find out about. What? Only $5.

Less than a minute later I hit upon a paperback edition of The Size of Thoughts by Nicholson Baker. Essays. The pages were yellow, but the title was intriguing. And it was only $1. Why not?

But I drew the line at a $2 copy of Kenneth Rexroth's autobiography. I knew of the book, but had never seen a copy before. But the type was SO SMALL. I knew I'd never read it.

One very long table was devoted to LPs. The dust jackets looked ragged, the artists stale. Who cares about Cream or the Turtles these days, much less Peter Frampton or Styx?  "Where are the CDs?" I asked the nearest Rain Taxi volunteer.

"We don't do CDs," he said dismissively. "But next year we'll have cassettes." Are you joking?

Wandering the aisles, I spent some time chatting with Bookmobile prepress guru Sean Nickerbocker about his printing strategy for the series of graphic novels he's been publishing. And in the next aisle, I reintroduced myself to Carla Lomax, with whom I worked on the newsletter of the Professional Editor's Network many years ago. I passed junior colleges promoting their writing programs, individual authors hawking their self-published books, university presses where the books were lined up in a row between bookends (as if they didn't really want you to look at them), library organizations, and used book stores.

In one aisle I stopped to chat with a gentleman tending a booth for St Paul's East Side Freedom Library. By coincidence, I  had looked up the location of this branch just a few days earlier because some local poets had been scheduled to do a reading there.

I told the man that I knew almost nothing about the East Side, though I'd been up and down Arcade a few times as a youth on my way into St. Paul, before the freeways were built. He told me a bit about the neighborhood's immigrant heritage. What I learned just now, a few minutes ago, online , is that the East Side Freedom Library isn't part of the city system. Though it's located in what looks to be a beautiful Carnegie library building, it's an independent institution dedicated to labor history.  

 Among the most pleasant encounters I had, naturally, were with Rick Johnston, Richard Stegal, and Annie Klessig, old friends from Bookmen days. We used to chat often at the warehouse when business was slow, and occasionally at a happy hour after work. Here we were, striking up the same humorous banter as if it were thirty years ago.  It was a rare treat.

Back at the Nodin Press both I sat with Sharon while Norton went off to get some lunch. We chatted while she signed a few copies of her new book, Duet in the Little Blue Church, for fans and strangers. I mentioned that I'd been talking with a man from the Freedom Library. "I love that library," she said. "Such lofty windows. That man was poet Clarence White."

The festival also sponsors author appearances throughout the day. I was intrigued by the morning's opening event, which featured Josh Cook, author of The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century. Cook, a youngish used book dealer from Cambridge, Mass, would certainly have had some interesting things to say about the future of the book trade. But consulting the online catalog of the Hennepin County Library before the fest, I noticed that a copy of his book was available, and I placed a hold. It will arrive in a few days, and I can ponder his theories at my leisure. (Stay tuned.)

By the time I left the morning had warmed, but not much. Yet I had been warmed in all kinds of ways. I don't think anyone bought any of my books, but little matter. Though when one visitor to the Nodin booth approached our cigar box checkout table with a copy of Jim Gilbert's beautiful Minnesota State of Beauty under his arm, I couldn't resist mentioning that I'd designed that book and taken more than a few of the photos.

"Really?" he said. "Would you sign it for me?"

"Surely you're joking?" I said.

"Not at all. Please sign it 'to Ted.'"

 

Schubert Club Gems - Ah, Human Voices

The British a capella vocal group Stile Antico came to town Tuesday night to present a program devoted to the music of the Renaissance English composer William Byrd on the 400th anniversary of his death. This group has been making waves for a good long time now, though I'd never heard of them until they appeared on the Schubert Club Mix schedule a few months ago. 

My tendency is to lump Byrd in with Thomas Tallis, John Dowland, and Orlando Gibbons as agreeable composers of mostly rich, somber, and ecclesiastical music from the era when "standard" chord progressions did not yet exist. The musical lines, so I thought, tended to fold back upon themselves in peculiar ways, in ever-shifting cadences, all within a narrow range of intervals, rather than marking out an exposition, a secondary theme, a variation or two, a return, a coda, and a finale.

The pieces in Stile Antico's program confirmed that assessment. Which is not to say they were bad. On the contrary. It was as if we had entered a musical world based on an entirely different set of suppositions, the result being less like narrative adventures suitable for a Buster Keaton movie and more like ever-changing waves of sound, with voices rising and falling, appearing and disappearing, and harmonies squeezing into odd shapes as the individual voices followed their distinctive paths.

The textbook term for this musical approach is "polyphony," as we were reminded during the "pub quiz" during intermission,  but it's worth pointing out, I think, that the polyphony of the Renaissance is far more peculiar than that of the Baroque. (The harmonic patterns of Machaut and Dufay, from an earlier period,  are stranger still. ) Bach later made use of the same approach, and arguably brought it to an unparalleled expressive peak, but his works have far fewer of those bizarre harmonies and surprising cadences than do the works of Byrd and his contemporaries. Bach's music always seems to be going somewhere. Byrd's often seems to say, "Let's turn back and relish what we've already got." And more than occasionally they get caught up in harmonic eddies and backwaters offering no obvious means of escape. Yet escape they do.

Such theoretical niceties are difficult to discuss, and I suspect I've made a hash of it here. Which may explain why the interpretive material in the Schubert Club program and the review in the Star Tribune a few days later focused less on the musical elements of the performance than on the challenges Byrd faced as a practicing Catholic in the protestant court of Queen Elizabeth I.   

We left the Landmark Center enriched and subdued. I'm sure I'll never hear Byrd sung better—though I think back fondly to a performance of the Concert of Music with Emma Kirky in the basement of a church in Edinburgh, circa 1983.

But I think the stuff they were singing was Italian. 

Two days later we were back at the Landmark Center in St. Paul to hear a free courtroom recital by mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski and pianist Ahmed Anzaldúa in a program featuring Brahms, Catalan composer and pianist Federico Mompou, and several local composers. Clara is one of our favorites, and I was also looking forward to the crisp sound of a piano, after all those gorgeous waves of Renaissance vocal shape-shifting. The performance did not disappoint.

To my ear the Mompou pieces were the best of the lot. They had just the right amount of strange modernist digression in the piano line, and the lyrics were sheer poetry, though a bit over the top:

Above you are only the flowers.

They were like a white offering:

The light that they shone on your body

will never again belong to the branch.

An entire life of perfume

with their kiss was given to you.

You were radiant in the light,

treasured by your closed eyes.

That I could have been the flower’s sigh!

Given myself, like a lily, to you, that my life

might wither over your breast.

And never again to know the night,

that from your side has vanished.

The texts chosen by the other composers concerned themselves with red-winged blackbirds, a feather, and rabbits. Several of the poets involved were in the room, and MC Abbie Betinis invited them up to discuss their work, which is often difficult for a poet to do. But little matter. Clara's rich, soaring vocals held our attention in any case, and in the context of these fresh, modern works, the three Brahms pieces at the end of the program sounded tuneful and harmonically straightforward, almost like folk songs.

On our way back to Minneapolis we stopped in at Gai Noi, a new Laotian restaurant facing Loring Park that's been getting a lot of press. By an utterly strange coincidence—we don't eat out much—we had already been to chef Ann Ahmed's two other restaurants, Lat 14 and Khaluna. Here the food is just as good (or almost) and both the prices and the tipping practices are more reasonable.

Our waiter was a boy wonder: attentive, articulate, knowledgeable, and gracious. The afternoon was gray, and looking out from our table at the window, I almost got the impression it was going to snow. 

We don't get down to Loring Park much these days, and it was a pleasure simply to walk past the gardens on the way to our car, watching a flock of white pigeons swooping back and forth amid the trees.  

  

The fabric of the universe?

Metaphysical questions typically arise at an early age, when we first ask ourselves, "Why am I me, and not you?"  Before long this question leads to a second one: "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" Such questions may give us a eerie pleasure, or they may induce anxiety or even panic. In either case, answers are seldom forthcoming, and we usually put those questions aside, though with time a variety of lesser issues along the same lines are likely to rear their heads, including "Why are there mosquitoes?" and "Why is Mrs. Edstrom, my kindergarten teacher, persecuting me?"

Injustice, pain, the nature of meaning itself? For the most part, philosophers have done only a middling job of answering such questions. There are insights to be found in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and many others, but they tend to be strewn like shining nuggets amid a vast outwash plain of well-meant but unilluminating ratiocination.

In recent times—that is to say, in the last few centuries—thinkers have devised a number of approaches to such problems, drawing on the methodologies of mathematics, physics, linguistics, and other disciplines that lay claim to a more limited scope but firmer foundations. The results have been dismal.

Just the other day, Scientific American published an article carrying the title: "Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?" (You can read it here.) It describes the results of a conference recently held to discuss the fact that no nuts-and-bolts physical or neurological description of consciousness has ever been devised.

The chosen title poses an even larger issue: In what way can it be said that the universe has a "fabric"?

Skirting this enormous question, the conference attendees analyzed the question of whether a panpsychic theory—that everything in the universe already possesses consciousness—might solve the problem. It's a wonderful theory, though it begs the question. It has been proposed by many philosophers including Giordano Bruno, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Denis Diderot, all of whose investigations the attendees seem to have been entirely unaware. In any case, such an approach doesn't address the pertinent issue, which is less about the existence of consciousness than the nature of sentience.

Consciousness is always consciousness "of" something. And that connection between inner and outer worlds is always colored by the individual who makes that connection. So what? The conferees seem to have been content to analyze the question of whether the color "red" that I see actually looks like the "red" you see. That's a trivial question. More important would be to analyze how my understanding of beauty or justice aligns with, and differs from, yours.

Going further, we might explore the wonderful fact—and it is an empirical fact—that my notions of justice and beauty are similar to the ones my family and friends hold. For example, we gnash our teeth in concert as we summon images of the dastardly and dangerous rogues in the Republican Party who are dead set on destroying our sacred institutions. This, in part, is why we've become "family and friends."

Such affinities are widespread but they're rarely perfect, which is why many of us continue to explore the nuances of the world we live in and the wide array of consciousnesses we share it with—animal, vegetable, and mineral.

Maybe the universe has a fabric after all?