Music Millennium

Today I was taking a trip down memory lane, down a kind of rabbit hole in my own interior, memories of working in the AFSC Portland office, in many capacities over the years. 

At the same time, I was sharing these reveries with a Friend, via text, and that gave me a stash of autobiographical screen shots to reuse later, why not?

Before getting this far down Burnside, first on the 75 to Joan of Arc (a gilded statue in a traffic circle on Chavez), connecting to a 19 going west on SE Glisan, then south to Burnside on foot. 

My original intention was to take pictures of what used to be the AFSC office, a big old house around SE 23rd and Burnside, but my camera had run out of battery (no backup from the other Lumix). 

So I did a selfie instead (the panorama side of my camera has a fuzzy lens, although it reads QR codes — I carry a camera for photographs, an old habit).

Backing up to the start of my trip: before boarding the 75, I shot some contemporary views of the Linus Pauling House, with Adorn (body art) to the west, and the wedding dress shop to the west of that. Said wedding shop was a photocopier repair shop in an earlier chapter. Terry’s kingdom had dominion over all three properties back then, and the parking lot behind.

Yes, this is the famous LPH on Hawthorne, where Linus learned chemistry as a kid, and no,I’m not one of his biographers, more the storyteller specializing in Cascadian lore, Silicon Forest more narrowly. 

Doug Strain later helped ISEPP (an institute, nonprofit) rescue said LPH from neglect. 

Today, it’s still in good shape. 

Doug was a founder of Electro-Scientific Instruments (ESI), former owner of our Quaker Meetinghouse. We owe a lot to Doug’s cohort, the creators of such companies as Tektronix and Mentor Graphics, and many others I’m avoiding listing, for reasons of spatial economy.

Directly across from LPH is Third Eye (shown above), a vintage head shop from the early days of psychedelica, meaning glassware and T-shirts, black light posters, not controlled substances (the state would control those later). 

It has sporting a new look these days. I’ve learned something about its reopening but not a lot. I’m not super well-informed about local goings-on, unlike Glenn Stockton, who we jokingly considered a “Mayor of Asylum District” if only because he paid so much attention to what was going on. He had a lotta fans.

Yes, Asylum District. If you new to these blogs you may well not know the history behind Hawthorne Boulevard, formerly Asylum Avenue, Dr. Hawthorne being in charge of this 1800s area mental facility, which was in a bucolic setting pre urban development happening. 

The asylum is long gone, but the resonance remains, and works well with the Keep Portland Weird energy.

Also, “asylum” as other connotations such as “save haven” or “sanctuary”. I’m thinking of Logan’s Run: “there is no sanctuary” (AI took everything too literally, right?). 

That movie seems prescient in some ways, especially when it comes to WDC looking kind of out of it, politically. Great theme park though, tons of museums. Don’t skip it. I go there a lot, even lived there.

Speaking of the Mayor, I talked about Glenn Stockton this morning, on my Knowledge Engineering call. I had some diagrams prepared, showing Glenn (a Neolithic Math teacher) linking to Sumeria (a focus of his) while Milo Gardner links to Egypt. 

Both Glenn and Milo worked for the NSA but in different chapters, both in cryptography.

I’ve only met Milo through emails and Instagram and like that (I think math-teach might have brought us together, a public archive for math teachers and other stakeholders). 

Glenn was a neighbor and good friend. Glenn was super bright and once they realized how bright he was they sent him to language school to learn Vietnamese and then on to code cracking school (I forget where) and then to his post. He pops up in these blogs quite a lot. 

After bouncing around in Fort Meade, he switched to a college track, with Antioch, a university without walls we some call em. I met him decades later, after he’d raised a family and moved to Portland.

Anyway, Music Millennium: I was hovering over gazillions of vinyl records (alphabetical within genre), letting my mind wander, and chose an album based on cover art but also track names. I’ll do that sometimes: buy on a whim (for whimsical reasons).

I was reminded of my time at 2 Dickinson Street at Princeton (Class of 1980), although this record long postdates that. One of our number (the guy) wanted to be the dog of another (a gal), figuratively natch, and even wore a collar to signify a serious interest.

Per AI (Gemini), regarding my vinyl record purchase and citing Wikipedia: 

Modern Life Is War is a seminal American hardcore punk band known for raw emotion, gritty realism, and intense, poetic songwriting. 

Sounds good. Looking forward to it. I know nothing much about this band. I haven’t even taken it out of the shrink wrap yet. 

I also got two CDs: a Weird Al set (comedy covers); and a Paul Winter (New Age instrumental), plus some incense (sandalwood + frankincense & myrrh, 10 sticks of each). “New Age” is how things are filed,  and doesn’t signify any contemporary trending of “New Age” as a meme. I see way more action around “Gen Z” when it comes to what’s making waves in the ethnosphere (one of many). 

Although I’m being somewhat detailed here, I’m also bleeping over lots that happened, as my intention is not to have these journal entries become tedious recounts of a day’s miscellanea, or even important events.

A blog (if you wanna adopt my practice) is not a blow-by-blow so much as a “slice through”. Take a slant.

I’m more trying to wire up a switchboard to learning more history, among other subjects. 

I aim to reward curious readers, as I think that sends the right message: curiosity is a positive, even for all the cats it’s maybe killed (poking fun at an idiom: “curiosity killed the cat” — perhaps used to deter the impulse to pay attention to inconvenient truths, and I’m not talking about “climate change” (which I believe is happening, and humans play a big role).

Async vs Sync

This is one of my older, more-viewed tracks, less esoteric than a lot of them. When I say "track" I mean a recorded segment or performance, and action sequence, frames. 

The medium in this case is audio-video, a YouTube (as we’ll call em). It might've copied over to Rumble, I haven't checked yet.

Another dichotomy to explore (vs sync-async) is inperson-virtual where a 2x2 matrix gives all combos, such as async-inperson, which might be a contradiction, but then we say "late" for apparitions. 

Async-virtual, what's that? Async-inperson could also be like Mystery Science Theater 3000, where the inperson audience is in sync vs-a-vs some old film they're watching together and making snarky comments about.

Excitement in Sorting

What some readers might find useful in my online journals and elsewhere is my delving into computer science concepts through the door of what's immediate in one's experience, such as event scheduling and sorting (this entry is about sorting). I'm in no way the originator nor unique in this regard; that's how computer science gets passed down, by a lotta people. But how about life skills, what about those? Maintaining the connection remains goal.

Take sorting for example, a mundane task, what computers are good at, so reflexively we may feel “to good” or “too important” to sort. Or, alternatively, sorting is “too boring” or “too meaningless”. Or worse: “I should sort the tools drawer (a euphemism for an anything drawer) but I’m procrastinating, one of my issues, and I feel guilty about it.” Sheesh, don’t be a drama queen about it. Look at sorting as your homework in computer science. Didn’t you sign up to be a trucker (inside joke)?

I got into sorting just recently, and yes, it was a kitchen anything drawer, a mix of tools, nails, picture hammers, fixtures minus a context (like hinges), a few batteries (still good?), staples (for a stapler)… the list goes on. 

Some of the items were clearly tools, used as means to an end. I separated my junk into two shallow boxes: tools (means to ends) on the left, fixtures (hardware, supplies, more ends in themselves) on the right. Was this the only way to divide in two? Not at all. I changed my mind about nails: not tools, fixtures. Glues and putties: tools. They make stuff happen.

You see what’s interesting here? I’m doing supervised learning on myself. I’m using a dataset to train my categorization skills. But also: I’m studying my own psychology. What set off this whole task was thinking to hang an old bulletin board (the kind with thumbtacks) in the hallway, across from the Birds of Bhutan poster. 

I needed a picture hanger. I started riffling through the junk. I couldn’t find one. My first impulse: go buy one; I need the exercise. I saw myself giving myself reasons for walking to Fred Meyer. 

I do that a lot: need something; can’t find it; go get another one. Then find the one I already had. I actually have two alost identical Lumix cameras thanks to that thought process, and in that case I’m not sorry (I’m happy to have a backup — see? making up reasons again).

Making up reasons to not be sorry: we could name a whole faculty for that purpose.

Now, will I want to do a sub sort, starting from one or both flats? Maybe (I haven’t quite decided). Why put everything back, even if in a more orderly arrangement? Let’s dream up a whole new arrangement (time to drive it Ikea! — there’s that impulse again, part of what makes me so American). Having basketball on the HDTV (New York vs 76ers) adds to that ethnicity (like what? I’m a sports guy now?).

As a segue to philosophy, something to think about, I just took in a Dr. Justin Sledge lecture on Immanuel Kant and his critical philosophy. In my case, I think in terms of my Graph Theory 2025 video, which traces Emerson back through Coleridge to Kant (bottom center, early slide). In Knowledge Engineering, I’ve been building timelines around Blake, Napoleon, Margaret Fuller, her grand nephew Bucky, to name a few. Ada Byron. Jane Addams. Through Blake I was reconnecting to Swedenborg, and now, thanks to Dr. Justin, I’m connecting Swedenborg with Kant.

Graphs, networks, including the spherical ones that connect around in all circumferential directions, as Synergetics often puts it, are a type of data structure. Sorting, dividing sets by criteria, or just randomly partitioning (a kind of sorting), is more associated with the word “algorithm”. But algorithms and data structures go together. When rolled into one concept (structures with associated behaviors), that concept is often called a type of object. Which brings us back to sorting the junk drawer, attending to attributes, synthesizing new ones.

In computer science, a logic gains adherents because it’s relatively easy to use and proves reliable in the real world. I’m responding to Kent’s concern that logic without a track record (empirical evidence) has nothing going for it and so is a waste of time. 

How do we know Synergetics isn’t a waste of time? I’d suggest in the same way Python has proved itself, not as the “only” language nor even as “the best” but as a language that’s usable to good advantage, in the real world. We’re not appealing to mysticism or unique experiences. Fuller wasn’t using any argument from authority when he talked about his suicidal days; he was letting us know he was experiencing great  stress. Synergetics has more of a track record than Bucky feeling blue.

I did find a picture hanger thanks to the sorting process, and hammered into the hallway wall with a longer than regulation nail for the purpose. The bulletin board is hung. The drawer still needs more sorting.

Remembering Jon Bunce

From my email to another Wanderer (Apr 28, 2026, 5:54 AM ):

You may not remember him well but y'all did overlap at Pauling House a few times.

His dad was Louie Bunce, well-known in the visual art world (mural at PDX airport etcetera) whereas Jon distinguished himself in music.

The event was low key and largely unscripted (no program handed out), spread among a few rooms.

Given these were accomplished musicians for the most part, guests had a "go with the flow" attitude that made that loose format work well.

Martian Math Promo

Circuit Riding Again

I consider "wandering" a way of staying in shape. Physically: it counts as light exercise, with a fair amount of walking, and a little running even (just a little). Mentally: one has many opportunities to strengthen mental abilities, some of wnich are simply social, such as knowing bus etiquette and best practice.

For an example of bus etiquette, when someone with a walker or motorized wheelchair needs to get off, the driver has the option to both lower the front of the bus, and to unfold a ramp to the curb. Those wishing to board the bus need to stand back and let those getting off do so first, including if a ramp is deployed. 

A young blond, a male teen, didn’t get that, and the driver had to keep telling him to wait, as the ramp maneuver was still pending. But the teen didn’t get it, seeing the open door and no one in the way, so time to get on right? Wrong. Driver: wait. 

Finally the would-be rider just wandered off, apparently too demoralized by the experience to want to continue it. No bus ride for now. People hate being wrong, especially in public.

Alberta Street, like NW 21st, mirrors SE Division in many ways, with its own Petite Provence (French restaurant) and Salt and Straw (exotic ice cream flavors).

I had a pretty firm objective this time: get pictures of a specific wall mural, one showing an icosahedron in wireframe as an apparent source of teachings, spread by wind. The prayer flag motif in many ways, like in my backyard on TikTok.

On my way back to the Max, on a bus 8 from Alberta Street, I stumbled across a retirement party, in Holladay Park, for one of the first (Type 1) Max trains. People lined up for photo ops inside, and to sign their names to the train’s exterior. 

I asked an official about the planned fate for these particular cars and she wasn’t sure where it’d go next. Something for sleuths to monitor maybe.

I wasn’t the only one engaged in a form of treasure hunting (another form of skills building, involving clue following): Dave went to a postmortem regarding an pre Rose Festival treasure hunt organized by veteran Rose Festival treasure hunters. There’s an official one each year, with published clues coming out each day. These hints are purposely cryptic, yet all point to a specific location: where a plaque is hidden for the winner to find. 

This hunt was unofficial and this time steered hunters to the Mt. Tabor area, which Dave well knows (me too), although he was not the finder in this case.

The treasure hunting game resembles geocaching in large degree. The term “geocaching” was invented by Dave Ulmer, a Tektronix engineer who, in his next chapter, acquired an RV tricked out with bells and whistles I associate with the BizMo (business mobile) design. 

He parked behind the Pauling House that time (soon after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans) and gave us a tour.  Don stayed in touch, subscribing to Ulmer’s “daily picture” (usually of some deserted wilderness he was parked in) shared by satellite. This was all well before Starlink.

Although I had my 3-ring binder of “bus reading” with me, I found I was more into churning through my own thoughts on this trip. I did some thinking about the public sector and public spaces. There’s a public-private as well as private-public flow, with public metrics suggesting a kind of ambience or groupthink. To some extent, the groupthink varies by city.

Just as radio and TV resulted in the spread of new standards, in terms of accent and the look of one’s kitchen (ideally), so is AI spreading new speech and thought patterns. 

The construction I call “not but” is on the rise. “This was not just a spur-of-the-moment decision, not a random act, but a pre-meditated, carefully planned exercise.” That’s a not-but.  You’ll hear a lot more of this construction on YouTube, as AI continues to take over, not just thumbnails, but audio tracks as well.

Without myself being an AI, I’m nevertheless a natural language processor and somewhat LLM-like in how I continually reweigh my various marbles (presuming I have any; we know we have marbles because they say it’s possible to lose them, or to have too few as in “he didn’t have all his marbles”), so naturally my own speech and thought patterns are being influenced, as I absorb the new vernacular and update my worldviews.

A Wanderer’s Way

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention, if not open with, the therapeutic value of wandering, which is my translation of what a flaneur was up to, observing Paris (say), as it underwent metamorphosis. Or as London underwent industrialization in the age of steam, and then electrification. Or as the Global Village experienced illumination, by means of spectral social media, beginning with radio.

Not that morphing per se is the only phenomenon worth marveling at, awesome though turnover undoubtedly is. Details matter.

In this case, details of my trip were as follows: 

I began with a quick trip down memory lane (figuratively speaking) delving into the courtyard and parking lot area for Cedarhurst Apartments. I used to come here often, for years, as Glenn Stockton (Global Matrix) and Steve Holden (Open Bastion) used to have their respective corner apartments on different floors, each near a respective staircase. Open Bastion also had its own apartment offices for a spell.

I hadn’t planned to make the detour, but a principle of wandering is to keep it semi-unplanned. Have objectives but give yourself permission to change these objectives rather fluidly. Focus on each one as it arises. Some of them will likely be accomplished. Others will prove fleeting.

For example, I started out expecting to make a loop, which I did. Likewise, I started with a strong expectation I’d have lunch at that Hollywood sushi conveyor belt place on my return from St. John’s yet that’s not what happened. I changed my mind. Nor did I make it to St. John’s. Not this time, as it turned out (and that’s fine).

Right at the outset, the 75 passed me by, and just seconds before I’d’ve made it to the stop, but that was all unplanned as I wasn’t trying for a specific bus. I’d consulted no schedule.

So, having just missed a bus, I had some time before the next one. So I ventured into Glenn’s and Steve’s old place. I believe Paul is still there. 

I left by that tunnel I used to frequent, while making a mental note to query about the Hawthorne Theater later, to get more clear on its Masonic past. 

Here’s where I made another impromptu decision: with 8 or so minutes before the next 75 was to arrive, per the bus stop display, I chose to leave the stop and venture into Fred Meyer in search of gum or something, I didn’t even know what. I ended up with some nuts n stuff. 

Half way back to the bus stop, I realize I was sans my binder. No, it wasn’t at the bus stop bench. I must’ve left it at Fred’s after our interesting conversation. Yep. Some running was involved in this segment, to both recover the binder and to not miss the 75. 

Running is good for me, just not too much. Walking is also therapeutic. 

I recommend exploring your environs as a pass time, an activity you’re more likely to have time for if facing old codger-hood, or likewise if enjoying being a teen and cultivating a skillset, such as navigating around town using a mix of public transportation and exercising one’s skills as a pedestrian. 

You may mix in important errands, along with study (bus and train reading). You may reap rewards.

I boarded with the objective of visiting St. John’s, it’s own place north of Portland. But then why not explore NE Alberta instead. I got off at NE 42nd around NE Alberta and walked along it, due west, towards its business section. For a lotta blocks, it’s still residential along both sides.

Alberta starts getting busy around 30th and I enjoyed walking along it, imagining eating here and there, before boarding a 72, and skipping ahead to MLK but while making mental notes of places I’d like to return to, and photograph (I’m taking pictures the whole time). 

Later, waiting for the 6 along MLK is when I noticed The Portland Observer seemed to have gone out of business. But as Gemini later clarified, it had not. That business had simply moved but left some old signage behind. 

Again, upon boarding the 6 I had what proved a fleeting objective: to head to Goose Hollow, maybe catch the Max back to the sushi place in Hollywood. 

But then it didn’t take long for me to realize that if riding the Max train were my objective, then I should get off at the Oregon Convention Center, saving a lot of time. A green line Max was just arriving. 

I was back in Hollywood in short order, yet found myself deciding against grabbing sushi as the 75 stop was right there, next to the Trader Joe’s (which I imagined entering, but then did not). I was enjoying studying and drawing diagrams.

OK, that’s a lot of detail, and yet I’m skipping over many objectives (many around eating) that I entertained but then dropped. I think of this process as “being tickled by temptations” (possibilities) but then usually not getting sidetracked. 

But then what’s the main track vs a side track? I keep deciding that, remaining open to cues, to intuitions..

That’s what I mean by “unplanned”. My friend Ray Simon from Jersey City days is an influence on my practice. His book: In Search of Happenstance. I’m not finding it, but I have his other one, on mischievous marketing.

The overall objective, to have an adventure, is pretty much a given. 

To have an adventure and to study. The point of the binder was to do bus reading of Terry’s and DAF’s papers (an excellent combo) and to draw diagrams on blank white sheets already 3-hole-punched for that purpose. 

I might have other journal entries focusing more on these more metaphysical cogitations — or not.

Rear View Mirror

I was just updating a fellow Wanderer about my adventures diving into the W-Lambert function, too boring for words to a lotta people. 

I admitted to fighting old battles. 

What used to be uphill was my “everyone deserves a nerd cave” standard, as a responsibility of the education system. 

“What system?” you may ask. 

“Exactly” say I. 

However, not having the means to get there doesn’t mean disagreeing on the ends. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is old news by this time, yet was a previous obsession of these blogs. Not that every kid has easy access to a laptop by now. We just know that’s a goal.

I’ll quote from my outbox for the rest of this blog post:

"Using Python as a Calculator" I believe is the title of Guido's early tutorial (Guido being Python's inventor, Dutch guy) and it may still be embedded in the documentation somewhere. Yeah, it's still there.

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/introduction.html#using-python-as-a-calculator

But he never really meant a graphing calculator, as Python is not indigenously about producing graphical output; that's the job of 3rd party packages for the most part (still a part of Greater Python, but not "core" Python exactly, which is what Guido was wanting to teach at that juncture).

But my emphasis is a little different: actually replacing the scientific calculator as the classroom device of choice, or should we even have a classroom, when a personal workspace is the better choice? Like a nerd cave. 

[ Why "go to class"? Well, lectures in person still have a point I guess. But crowding a lot of desktop or even laptop computers into a rank and file arrangement... really? I know the corporate types like the bullpen architecture for supervisory reasons... I say everyone deserves a nerd cave minimum, with plenty of compute, as they say today. ]

So I do go 3rd party and dig into scipy, numpy, matplotlib... all that 3rd party stuff that makes Python popular because powerful. It's not so much the language out of the box that people dig, but the ecosystem that has grown up around it.

https://github.com/4dsolutions/m4w/blob/main/ProductLog.ipynb

The details of this so-called W function, inverse of x * e**x, may be too boring to contemplate (true for most people), however if you scroll down about half way you'll see the graphical calculator-like output I'm talking about; really better than a calculator might do.

I don't really even know to what extent the scientific calculator maintains its grip on contemporary high schoolers. I'm in many ways the product of my past, still fighting yesterday's battles (but hey, I'm learning new stuff in the process, so I wouldn't say I've stagnated entirely, no way jose!).

Another Milestone

:: on my Meta timeline ::

:: random comment, consistent viewpoint ::

:: reassurance ::

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