At home in Tuscany

I suppose is it about time for an update, though this will only be a very partial one:

We are trying to finish the last bits of our school year, and it's only just in the nick of time, because we are leaving next week for Italy. Our ostensible reason for going is so that CZ can attend a music festival in northern Tuscany, but we've managed to tack on some other reasons as well--practicing Italian and some work for Bob. We'll also be visiting a friend who lives in Como.

As is typical of me, I only just realized this weekend how close the trip is and how much I still have to prepare. (The major things, like bookings, have been taken care of.) But now that I've realized it, I'm starting to shift gears mentally.

I was thinking this morning about the summer when I lived in Cortona for two months. I shared a room that faced out over the hill town from near the top, and each morning I'd wake to the sound of low church bells, and I think probably swallows. There were no screens, only wooden shutters, so I would go open them and hang out the window for a while, enjoying the early morning. The window faced south and the sun hadn't risen yet, so I didn't disturb anyone else.

At one point during the summer, I made an agreement with another girl to get up extra early and walk over to the east side of the hill to watch the sun rise. I remember we followed through with our plan, taking along a roll or two and our cameras, and when we arrived we sat down amidst some small yellow flowers overlooking a scenic valley. When the sun appeared over the hill on the other side of the valley, I was so entranced that I started taking photos every few seconds, trying to get some nice lighting effects sometimes by focusing on the yellow flowers and letting the sun behind them form little sequin shapes in my camera. We sat there a while enjoying the sun and then walked back to the dormitory and went on with our usual day at the art school.

When I got home, my dad was, of course, baffled: "Why did you waste so much film taking pictures of the same thing?" What? He didn't notice the differences in the sun's angle? I finally had to admit that the camera didn't quite capture the full joy of the moment, but I have kept the photos, at least some of them, and whenever I want, I can still remember the whole magic of the summer I spent in a town with no traffic lights, electric wires, strip malls, or supermarkets. In some respects, the town was very fashionable (this was the summer of the neon hoop earrings, and I got a great haircut just by showing some teenage girls a magazine picture), but in others it was still a hill town so medieval I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to see an old man with a donkey cart.

The festival we'll be attending is in a town much like this, or even smaller. I can't wait to be back!

*These photos are from a trip we took to Tuscany in 2003, because I have digital images from that year, but they at least hint at 1984. As you can see, I was still after those atmospheric effects.

The downside of multitasking

The New York Times has published yet another article on how bad multitasking is for you.  It includes some tests for attention during multitasking, which I took.  Here's what the article says about the test results:

The multitaskers then did a significantly worse job than the non-multitaskers at recognizing whether read rectangles had changed position.  In other words, they had trouble filtering out the blue ones--the irrelevant information.

So, too, the multitaskers took longer than non-multitaskers to switch among talkss, like differetiating vowels from consonants and then odd from even numbers.  The multitaskers were shown to be less efficient at juggling problems.

I am a little confused about my results, however.  I did extremely well in the focusing task, but very poorly in the juggling task (though I got them all right and required no additional time for switching).  I have always, in some sense, known this about myself, and it's a big part of why I try to avoid getting too busy or socializing in a crowd.  I react slowly when pressured, like a deer in the headlights.

So, does this mean I'm a multitasker or a non-multitasker?  I'm not sure. I think I'm an easily-distracted person who much prefers to be alone and quiet so I can focus on one thing.  I'd be curious as to your results, too, and what you think it means, if anything.  As for me, I'm getting off the computer!

***

Update:  I wanted to add another couple of interesting quotes from the article:

Multitaskers tend to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.

This reminds me of our obsession with the newest kinds of knowledge, and our relegation of the classics to obscurity through our preference for political correctness.  I'm glad for the new perspectives, but don't want to forget the old, either.  There's so much that's universal in them, if we'd only just see it.

Researchers say these findings point to an interesting dynamic: multitaskers seem more sensitive than non-multitaskers to incoming information.

Is this a circular argument?  Do the multitaskers multitask because they are more sensitive to begin with, or do they become that way because they multitask?  It seems like it could be both. In our family, at least with CZ and me, I suspect that we were born with a propensity for distraction that we work to keep at bay.  Compared to many people we know, we are practically Luddites.  But I discourage new technology for a good reason--I know that it will only make it harder to focus, and the ability to focus is so worth the effort!


Another update:  I think there's something poorly designed about these tests, because everyone who commented on them got the same skewed results that I did.


Also, feel free to point out my typos.  This time they were so egregious that they changed the meaning of my post!

The naturalist impulse*

CZ feeding a Queen butterfly, 2007

In honor of the SAT II Biology test that CZ took yesterday, here is a quote from Anne Fadiman's essay, "Collecting Nature," from At Large and Small:

"Her conception of nature was incorrigibly romantic; she was painfully affected by beauty; she was a compulsive arranger; she focused on small details--the precise curve of a mourning cloak's forewing, the exact shade of the red spot on a zebra swallowtail's hindwing--rather than on larger and more important questions of behavior and habitat."

Thus Ms. Fadiman, who was describing herself as a child, became a writer and not a biologist.

That quote may apply more to me than to CZ, who shows few signs of being a compulsive arranger, but I think we're both delighted that she can now leave off test prep and go back to learning in a way that lends itself to enjoyment.  We are perhaps slightly appreciative of the impetus the test gave her to master the basics of the subject, but crammed in this way over two months, they are mostly devoid of beauty.  

We have raised butterflies, but we have spent more time birding, and this quote touches not only on the appeal of watching birds, but also on the appeal of keeping a notebook of birding lists (when she started she could barely write) or a life list on a site such as eBird, sponsored by Cornell's Lab of Ornithology.  CZ accumulated over 150 birds on her list before the spring concert season and her shoulder injury overwhelmed any desire to crane her neck looking for warblers.

Instead, yesterday afternoon, CZ watched a documentary on Jacqueline du Pre' and then spent three hours practicing violin. The sounds coming from her room were not unlike those of a bird or butterfly set free.  But in the evening, she picked up The Physiology Coloring Book, took out a set of pencils, and colored in the title. "See? These are the colors of the letters for me," she explained. Then she started reading and coloring the text--for fun.  

The last butterfly of 2007, a Monarch, going free in Riverside Park

*I wrote this title thinking I had heard the phrase somewhere before, so I looked it up.  Not too suprisingly, it was the name of a book on painting.

And now, for something completely different...

Eventually I will post some sort of personal update again.  But for now, a short diversion in honor of our current five a.m. sunrise:

Houses in Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard

(from Wikipedia)

CZ loves all things arctic.  One of the symptoms at the moment is the Svalbard webcam widget on the dashboard of our Mac computer. She's had it there since about March and checks it more often than I want to know.

Haven't heard much about Svalbard lately?  That's because it's halfway between Norway and the North Pole.  It's so remote that it's not even on weather satellite maps.  It's so remote that it's the home of the Global Seed Vault, which I gather is the Noah's ark of agriculture.  But it has its own history, government, ethnic structure and tourism.  And most interestingly from CZ's point of view, it's a frozen land of midnight sun.  

CZ updates me daily on the Svalbardian weather forecast:  Lately it's hovering around freezing and I think there's even been a bit of snow this week.  I've found myself trying to catch glimpses of the webcam when it's 3 a.m. there, trying to see the subtle differences in the sun's angle, and imagining what it's like to try to sleep when it's never dark. We've been watching the ice melt in the fjord, and watching huge floes appear in the camera's view as they drift in from the ocean. Occasionally we see some spectacular sun and cloud halo effects during the arctic spring equivalent of morning.

But most days it's cloudy, gray, and the grass is brown.  The webcam is pointed towards three buildings, all painted red, and we never see a human.  Yesterday as I was putting on my contact lenses, CZ pounded on the bathroom door, barely suppressing a fit of slightly self-mocking glee: "News flash!  Some people in Svalbard moved their cars!"  

The expected high today in New York is 88.  Two days ago I walked outside to find a cab on the sidewalk, a smashed bus shelter, glass and emergency vehicles everywhere.  (And that's only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.)  It's June and we're still busier with studies than we'd like to be.  Svalbard's looking pretty good, and apparently we're not the only New Yorkers who see it that way.