Personally, I don't think I would ever have thought of the answer, but
perhaps he was right and I didn't give it enough time. I won't put you
through the same exercise, as I intend to give both the question and the
answer in this blog today.

BUT WAIT!

Some of you might not like this joke, as it is a little off-color, so I
intend on asking the question in the upper part of this blog, and I will
supply the answer in the area below where you will have to click and see
the answer. Therefore, if you are easily offended, please do not read
on. Or, if you wish to think about it to see if you could come up with
the answer on your own, then don't click below until you are ready to
read the punch line.

I don't believe Peter made this joke up, as I don't recall him saying he
did, and if there is attribution to the originator on the web somewhere,
I did not research it enough to include that here. I would like to know
if anyone else who knew Peter remembers him telling this joke to them in
years past?

With all of that said, here is the question:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

QUESTION: DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE CRAB THAT HAD INSOMNIA?

Anyway, when, (or if), you wish to know the answer to Peter's inquiry about the crustacean with the sleeping disorder, then click below, or else treat it like the time joke that Peter claimed it was...

He would say, "Good judgment comes from experience, and often, experience comes from bad judgment.", or something like that, and then he completed it, with the syllogistic punchline eluding me!

If you remember Peter using this phrase, PLEASE take the time to tell me? This has confounded me for the last several years. The memory is there, but for whatever reason, I can't pull it out... I can't complete the thought.

If only I could just pick up the phone and ask Peter!

Consider this a phone. Consider that I have asked.

One evening my husband Steve was out on our back deck, when he was overcome with grief and a sob escaped him. Peter was on the other side of the fence, and asked Steve in a most concerned tone of voice, "Is everything all right? Is there anything I can do to help?" Steve, who rarely, if ever, talked about this situation, confided in Peter that sometimes our grief just rolled over us like a wave, and could not be controlled. He explained that his 22 year old son had committed suicide a while ago, after which he became choked up and just couldn't continue speaking. Dear Peter, burst into sobs, saying, "That's the worst thing I've ever heard!". No one could bear it!". And continued to cry as though his heart were broken. We were so moved by his genuine outpouring of compassion, and we will never forget his true kindness. Steve and I viewed Peter in a much different way forever after that... -- Linda

A recent discussion of cleaning and chores brought this to mind:

Peter was not, in my memory, the cleanest/neatest person ever, but he was certainly less messy/cluttered than I am.

Most of the time, when I was a kid, he didn't seem to notice the clutter. But every once in a while, he would suddenly decide that the house (or at least my room) needed cleaning. He always said the same thing about it: "This place is a pigsty!"

A while after Marcy died, when Peter began looking for a partner again, he placed an ad in the newspaper that started out "Hobby is doing dishes." He figured that would get women's attention. Jay asked him something like, "If doing dishes is your hobby, how come Jed and I have to do them so often?" Peter replied, "I like my hobby so much that I want to share it."

I think he worked for a while as a janitor (at a nursing home, maybe?) when I was a kid. Later, when he and Nancy were living in Tacoma, I got the impression that he basically did all the cleaning chores around the house. As far as I could tell, he was perfectly happy with that arrangement, and he kept the place pretty clean.

I was in my early teens when I was "busted" for some rule infraction of my parents. I do not remember whatever triggered this family event, but after I admitted I had done this thing, I was "punished" in some way, and again, the details are not relevant.

At some point later, when Peter and I were alone, he asked if he could give me a tool to use, on occasion, such that some traumas in life (and/or punishments, such as what happened) would virtually disappear!

"Always cop to a lesser plea!", Peter advised. ("Fib" might be another way of putting it...)

I accepted his advice and used it on many occasions in my life. (If a "fib" makes for a better life for all concerned, I see no moral imperatives violated. That's just me, you'll have to make up your own mind where this line is crossed, if ever, for yourself...)

I make a distinction between lying and a "fib". I believe Peter was telling me to "fib" instead of blurting out the real truth, especially when the Truth may cause unpleasantness, while the "fib" allows life to go on in a friendly way.

For example, if you are in pain, but you knew the person you were around didn't like you taking drugs, (even to stop the pain), you might say that you had taken no drugs and that you were sleepy. If you say you were all right because you had taken the meds, the person may react hysterically, yet now, life goes on and you are out of pain!

"Are you in pain?" ==> "No, I'm just sleepy." See, this person "copped to a lesser plea", and life went on...

While Society calls for "Truth", We usually accept mere "Truthiness", perhaps even "An Inconvenient Truthiness".

********************************
I wrote this a second time, as I lost the original text to an unplanned reboot. (I sort of wondered if it wasn't Peter's red pen at work, editing in a Fell Swoop, but unless the power goes off, or Windows crashes, I'm assuming it's OK with Peter to now let this particular cat out of the bag...)
********************************

Late one evening, our neighbor's dog began to bark. The dog, named "Jack", who was not prone to barking without reason, continued to do so, then subsided, when another dog began to bark, with the sound coming from the opposite side of our house.Then Jack gave an answering bark, and the two dogs began to communicate, growing ever louder and more adamant. Now one of the dogs began to howl at the full moon, followed by the other, and increasing steadily in volume. My husband, Steve, stepped out the back door to see what on earth was going on out there! Jack would howl, and then the unknown dog would howl even louder. Steve was able to pinpoint the second dog's location as Peter Hartman's back yard.......but he knew that Peter did not have a dog, and thought it unlikely that a stray would be in Peter's fenced yard. He took a look over the fence which separated our two houses, and was astounded to discover that the howling wolf was none other than a buck naked Peter, totally into the moment, on all fours, with head thrown back, howling wildly at the moon! When Peter became aware that he was not alone, he was rendered speechless, stood up, shrugged, and went in his back door, thus concluding the calls of the wild for the night.

(Peter lived next door to Linda and Steve for several years. -Dobe)

don't you think?

"A mathematician confided
That a Möbius band is one-sided,
And you'll get quite a laugh,
If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided."

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/strangely_attracted_to_chaos.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/strangely_attracted_to_chaos.html Peter's Interests Sat, 24 Nov 2007 05:06:07 -0800 I have long and often wondered about Peter and books.

For example, I estimated once to someone in a conversation that my brother Peter had probably read 100K books and that he was a "speed reader". Pure speculation. So I had occasion to tell Peter about my conversation (I went to the source) and he laughed and made his own estimate, somewhere in the thousands, but stared kind of dreamy-eyed, as if he wished he could have read a hundred thousand volumes.

A story he often told, (OK, so I prompted a few times, it was so incredible to me), was how he "proved" to Mom and Dad that he could read and understand most of what he was reading in a newspaper at the age of 4. The story always proceeded to include how proud he was at that age, having his own library card, and swore that he walked the couple blocks to the library and brought home books, BY HIMSELF, at the age of 4. (Oh, sure, anybody could do it at 5, and be motivated to, and keep up the routine for another 60 years, but at 4, Peter?)

Another common thought of mine was: how large was Peter's own library, at the end and/or through the years?

What were his favorite books? Which ones did he re-read?

I can tell you that Peter once told me that he read the book, (I hope I don't mangle the spelling), "Goedel, Escher, Bach" (GEB), all the way through, in one sitting, and then read it all the way through, again! Now, I would say, that GEB was one of his favorite books, wouldn't you?

He also always spoke very highly of Jeffrey Mishlove's "Roots Of Consciousness", (1975). I have Peter's copy here in hands. It is inscribed:

"To Peter Hartman,
Who taught me so much!
Love,
Jeffrey Mishlove"

I think one of his verymost, (I'm pretty sure that's all one word), favoritest (hargh! Peter had so many!) authors was Robert Anton Wilson (RAW), (Peter told me once that Marcy had met or knew RAW in Antioch, (early 1960's?), do you remember his story, Jed?), as he is mine.

Of course, not that many books survived the fire, or so I think. Peter said once that he didn't care so much for "things and money", because he knew he couldn't take those with him, but that knowledge, ah, knowledge could probably be carried discorporeally.

And he loved to share books. He had a tradition of a "book box", at least since the early 60's, which anyone was free to take any of them home and keep. A "freebie" book box. If you visited him at his home, Peter would invariably try to send some book(s) home with you. They were constantly in flow around Peter. Most of them not simply read by Peter, but, I would say, mostly devoured by Peter. In great stacks and by the tonage. In boxes, shelves or backpockets, no book was safe from Peter's hunger...

Sometimes I wonder how fast Peter read. I picture him flipping through a novel in under an hour, wouldn't you say, Jed?

Once, he had a stack of books he needed to finish and return the next day. I watched him take the entire stack, maybe 20+ books, into his room that night and he returned them the next day. I asked him if he'd finished them? He said, "some, I read all the way through, and some I heavily perused. The few others came in though my dreams." He was serious. He believed he could glean essential data from books through osmosis, during sleep.

Did Peter truly have eidetic memory for anything he read? (Did he pass the test of "what's the 3rd word down on page 23", or whatever, days after he had even looked at the book? The family story says he did, but I was too young to have direct memory of it.)

I asked him once if he had, or had previously had, eidetic memory for anything he had read, and I think he denied it, although admitting his "retention was high". I suspect he had a "fantastic" memory when he was a youth, but that 50 years of alcohol dimmed this into a mere "good" memory. I'd like to read feedback on this.

I know Peter bought books, sometimes, when he had virtually no money reserves. Books were very important in Peter's life, yet, I suspect that he didn't care much for the actual book itself, but craved the knowledge within, as an addict is driven, to find relief.

I hope you found relief, brother.

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/books.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/books.html Peter's Books Fri, 23 Nov 2007 04:05:06 -0800 When Peter worked at a place in the Northwest teaching computer hardware and server systems about 8-something years ago, he had a co-worker he talked about sometimes.

This co-worker was not very informed on the subject, according to Peter, but at the same time was very cock-sure about his knowledge, waving his hands and mumbling if push came to shove about some topic. (Peter felt badly for the students assigned to this co-worker.)

What I remembered recently about this was what Peter told me once; when he took this co-worker teacher aside and explained something to him that he obviously was misinformed about before Peter's intervention, this co-worker would invariably end the explanation with "I knew that", seemingly by reflex, and this happened a number of times.

Peter's comments about this were twofold.

First, Peter felt dissed that this fellow obviously did NOT know the topic, and after Peter showed him, he should have thanked Peter.

Second, according to Peter, this fellow was teaching his own subconcious mind to reject any new thoughtforms because he "already knew it", so his mind would then NOT make the pathways permanent, rejecting the new information for long-term storage. He was, according to Peter, beyond learning anything new!

I'm sure I used that phrase myself occasionally, BEFORE Peter told me that story.

Since that time, if the phrase was ever about to pass my lips, this story came to mind, and I would change what I was about to say.

I decided that I needed all the learning I can get!

Thanks, Peter! (And Happy 23rd!)

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/teaching_about_learning.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/teaching_about_learning.html Peter's skills Fri, 23 Nov 2007 02:03:04 -0800 Peter taught me to juggle in the early 1960's. He wasn't professional or anything at it, but he was good, very entertaining. While I never attained his skill level, I admired his accomplishments.

One of the "tricks" he did with juggling was to juggle two balls with the right hand, and then lift the third ball, up and down, in perfect timing, AS IF it was being juggled! I was never able to do this one, but I loved to watch it.

Another "variation" (as opposed to the "standard" juggling of three balls, with both hands throwing and catching) Peter had taught himself, was to only toss the balls with one hand, and then let the other hand simply feed the throwing hand by letting the ball "fall" into it. I think it's called a "waterfall juggling".

Paul had learned to ride a unicycle, in Ellensburg, (which he got really good at). Peter really wanted to learn this and spent many hours falling off of it, but was never proficient, to his regret. (It was Peter's wish that the two could be combined, that he could learn to juggle while riding a unicycle, although he never did, to my knowledge.)

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/juggling_life_and_leisure.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/juggling_life_and_leisure.html Peter's skills Sun, 18 Nov 2007 04:14:03 -0800 Whenever someone complained about being sore or having aching arms or legs, Peter would say:

You know what they say: "If you get stiff in the joints, don't go in the joints!"

I was always amused, but found that when I repeated this to friends, they just looked puzzled, or thought I was making some kind of sex joke. And I would have to explain that one meaning of "stiff" is "drunk," and that a "joint" could be a bar, and by the time I explained it the joke wasn't funny any more.

At least, that's the meaning I always assumed Peter meant. I could be wrong. Some words have entirely too many meanings.

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/joints.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/joints.html Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:23:44 -0800 On a more entertaining note than my last entry:

When Peter was 20, he was a regular at a local bar--presumably he had a fake ID, or else he looked old enough that the bartender didn't check.

On his 21st birthday, he went to the bar and told the bartender, "Buy me a drink--it's my birthday!"

The bartender said, "Congratulations! How old are you!"

Peter said, "21!"

I don't remember if there was more to that story. (Somehow a bunch of these stories I've been writing up turn out not to quite have punchlines when I finish writing them up.) I think the bartender winced, but bought him a drink anyway.

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/peters_21st_birthday.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/peters_21st_birthday.html Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:48:20 -0800 Sometime in 2004, Jay and I noticed that Peter's 65th birthday was coming up. We decided to have some kind of party for him, and then set the idea aside and forgot to come back to it.

Shortly before his birthday, we realized that we hadn't put together a party for him. I was embarrassed and sad to have failed to do that. We arranged to go up to WA for a visit, but for various reasons we couldn't make it for his actual birthday. So we planned to go up the weekend of December 4-5 instead.

The rest of this entry may have happened that weekend, or it may have happened the weekend in January of 2005 when I flew up for Grandma's birthday; I'm not sure which. I was pretty sure that I wrote about it at the time, in email to friends if nothing else, but I have no record of having done so. But I'm going to assume it was the December 2004 trip.

I vaguely think that Jay couldn't make it after all; Jay, do you remember?

I flew up to SeaTac that Friday evening; not sure where I stayed, but it may've been a guest apartment at the nursing home where Grandma was living. On Saturday, I went to hang out with Peter, but he didn't seem sure what to do; he seemed to feel that he needed to keep me entertained, so after casting about for a while, he hit on the idea of taking me to the Museum of Glass.

It was fun, and neat, in a low-key sort of way. We hung out there for a while, just the two of us, and then we went back to his house.

And it became even clearer that I hadn't adequately explained that the point of my visit was to belatedly celebrate his birthday. I offered to take him and Nancy out to dinner; I think he said he didn't really want to go to a restaurant, was just going to eat some leftover soup they had in the fridge. After some further discussion, there was briefly a plan to go out to a nearby cheap Mexican place where they apparently ate fairly regularly, but we never made it out of the house.

I had been thinking of going up to Seattle that night to see friends, but the timing was uncertain. I made a couple of surreptitious phone calls; I felt like if Peter was up for doing something, then I should stick around and Do Stuff With Him For His Birthday, but if he wasn't, then I'd rather go see friends than sit awkwardly and silently around the house.

So there were various changes of plan, and Nancy didn't really want to go out or to do anything, but in the end Peter convinced Nancy to play pinochle with us. We had a reasonably good game, in which Nancy got very lucky and (iIrc) won by quite a lot. And then I felt my familial obligation had been discharged, so I drove up to Seattle, and if I'm right that this all happened on the December trip, then that was the night that I ran into friends completely by accident in a little Mexican restaurant in Capitol Hill.

But the bit of that unsatisfying day that stands out most for me, unfortunately, was the moment when I tried to give Peter a birthday present. I'd had a story published in a book of zeppelin-focused pulp adventure stories earlier that year, so I decided to give Peter a copy of the book for his birthday. Only again there was a communication breakdown. I had told him about my story being published, but he didn't remember, and he still didn't realize that my presence there that weekend had anything to do with his birthday. So when I pulled out the book and tried to give it to him, he sort of glanced at it and said something like, "Oh, okay, but it doesn't really look like my kind of thing, so you'd better keep it."

At which point it was kinda too late to say "This is your birthday present!"

So, hurt but not sure how to proceed, I opened the front cover and said, "The editor quoted my story here on the first-page blurb." And after a little further confusion and back-and-forth, Peter said, "Oh! This is the book with your story in it! Well, then of course I'll take it!"

So the evening worked out okay in the end, I guess. But not my finest hour in either communication skills or present-giving.

I later retrieved the book, singed but intact, from the house. It's on my bookshelf now, along with a bunch of his other books. I had intened to spend some of today working on the long-delayed project to deal with his books, but didn't have the energy for it.

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/peters_last_birthday.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/peters_last_birthday.html Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:46:15 -0800 I don't remember the first time I realized that Peter was born on Veteran's Day, a holiday at some companies. He always seemed to get that day off, and I remember him telling me once how much he liked that. I don't seem to ever remember a traditional birthday for Peter, with a birthday cake and candles. I'm sure it must have happened, I just have no memory of it.

Although I was never very good about getting birthday cards off to him, (or anyone...), I always remembered his birthday, (and doubt if I missed many of his birthdays since the 1960's without calling him or seeing him) with a phone call.

I remember the last birthday gift I gave him in Tacoma. I had painted a yard sign for him which said "Fnord!", but it had a small GO game in progress on the sign as a graphic. This sign was never found, so far as I know. I believe it must have been burned in the fire. I believe he never put it in the yard, or outside. The last time I ever saw it, it was just outside the kitchen area on a table stand.

I did see him in his birthday suit. Several times. Once, we were making a home movie on the Peninsula, and Peter volunteered to pretend he was sunbathing in the nude, the twist being that there was snow on the ground, and very cold out! I don't think that video survives, but I remember seeing it at least once. Jed and Jay were there, along with Marcy. We were traveling around the Olympic Peninsula for a few days and looked up an old friend of mine for a place to stay for the night.

The second time I remember seeing Peter nude was in the Folk's house in Tacoma. He had told me privately to go down and watch what happened when he came down. When he emerged downstairs naked, Mom didn't think much of this "joke" and proceeded to abuse him. I won't say how, but it must have hurt Peter. It wasn't one of Mom's finest moments, and I always wondered why Peter did it...

I miss you Peter, and I remember and honor you, on your birthday.

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/peters_birthday_veterans_day_n.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/11/peters_birthday_veterans_day_n.html Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:23:17 -0800 Dobe asked about Peter and games. I have a couple of things to say in that area, but I'll start with this one.

Peter taught me to play Go when I was a kid. The way he taught me went kind of like this:

He would play a stone.

I would look at the board and not know what to do.

He would tell me where the best place to play was.

I would play there.

He would then make a better play of his own that cancelled or countered the play I had just made.

After several repetitions of this, it began to feel to me like (a) he was really just playing himself, while I watched (I wasn't really participating); and (b) the moves he was telling me to make were only leading me into trouble.

I'm sure none of that was intentional on Peter's part; he was trying to share this wonderful game with me. Not his fault that his approach to teaching it to me pushed some of my buttons.

But I never really got into Go. Even though several of my friends have gotten into it over the years.

I was pleased recently to pick up a Go book belonging to someone or other (Kevin, maybe?) and to be able to follow it; it was a detailed introduction to liberties and how to tell whether a group is alive or dead, and it made a lot more sense to me than it did when I was a kid. (My feeling as a kid was that Peter would point to a group of stones and tell me "Those are dead," and I could never understand how he knew that; it always seemed kind of mystical and vague to me.)

Still, the traditional boardgames (chess, Go, Othello, checkers, etc) were never my strong suit, and knowing that I could study my whole life and still never be all that good made me more or less uninterested in playing Go.

But I know it was always one of Peter's great loves.

What ended up happening to Peter's big solid wooden Go board? Do I have it in the garage? Dobe, did you end up with it? I hope it's somewhere where it'll be used.

...At some future point I'll write about pinochle and/or poker. But not tonight.

]]> http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/10/teaching_me_go.html http://www.kith.org/journals/peter/2007/10/teaching_me_go.html Games Peter Played Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:16:39 -0800