Food banks, Age-related hearing loss and Mental Health advice

Number of searches for "Food Banks" on Google since 2004.

The sequence is very periodic with the points of the teeth being the week of Thanksgiving. The two fliers were April of 2020 when the economy was shut-down for Covid and Thanksgiving of 2020.

Over the last year, the top five states for rate-of-inquiries have been Washington, Montana, Alaska, Delaware and Arizona. The five lowest were Wisconsin, Mississippi, South Dakota, Minnesota, and New Yawk.

For those families who are likely to visit the food-bank just before Thanksgiving, I have it on good authority that Radio Station WKRP will be distributing turkeys at local Kroger stores.

Three trips to Lansing last week

I made three trips to Lansing for routine medical visits.

You will be pleased to learn that my hearing is about what you would expect of a geezer of my vintage. I have more degradation in my left ear than my right one. For most of the "banana" my degradation vis-a-vis an average 18 year-old is on the order of five-to-10 dBA. That means that my threshold for hearing requires three-to-ten times higher energy levels than required for a teenager.

The end that shows the highest loss (about 20 dBA) is in the 8000Hz range. That impacts my hearing of the letters "F", "Th" and especially "S".

Those letter-sound are not make with vocal cords but by buzzing/whistling. Try it!

"S" becomes "Sh" by moving your tongue farther back in your oral acoustical cavity which adds lower frequency content.

Upper-crust British "S" sounds have much higher high-frequency content than the softer, lazier US "S" sound. Listen to a member of "Parliament" say the word "Issue". The "S" sound comes hissing out.

My audiologist "suggested" that I could improve my listening skills by having face-to-face conversations. The shape of lips and the visibility of teeth are markedly different between "S", "F" and "Th" so my ears are good enough to discern that there is 5k Hz sound but not good enough to parse out exactly which letter-sound. That can be done visually.

As the "sender", I can improve my transmission by dwelling on "S" and "F" so the listener has more time to decode. This is possible because "Buzz/whistle/hiss" can be extended indefinitely unlike percussive letters like "P" and "B".

I can also soften the "Th" and substitute "D", i.e. "Dat" rather than "That" because the "D" sound has more mid-range content than "Th"

Gratuitous Mental Health advice

You can only have ONE priority that is Number One.

You are not responsible for things that happen that are outside of your control.

You are responsible for how you respond to those (unexpected) things that happen outside of your control.

People who are angry, hungry, tired, rushed or drunk make a lot of stupid decisions. Take care of yourself. Give yourself enough time. Wear shoes that fit well enough that you can walk three miles in them. Eat enough fiber and drink enough water.