A Little Fix - PTAS

There's a concept called Learned Helplessness, a feeling of lack of control over one's circumstances, which can lead to listlessness and depression. That's a small snapshot of one element of a broader area of research, but it's relevant today in a dramatic way, as many of us shelter at home to try and slow the spread of an as-yet unpreventable and incurable (though generally survivable) disease that is sweeping across the globe.

Learned Helplessness is thought to be especially prominent in people with generally pessimistic worldviews, a category of the population that I probably could be said to belong to. When all this [gestures at everything] winds down, I may even seek out some cognitive behavioral therapy to see about shifting my perspective.

One simple thing though that people can do to counter the impulses of helplessness, stress, and apathy brought on by the current state of our world and lives, is to make or change something. It's a small way of telling our brains "look, I have some power over the world, regardless of how things might feel."

The explosion of people baking bread right now is one good example of that behavior pattern.

Which brings us neatly to today's photograph. What you're looking at is the carburetor of Sadi, our 1950 Pontiac Chieftain. If the engine is the heart of a car, the carburetor is the lungs of a pre-fuel-injection-era gasoline-powered vehicle. The carb mixes fuel and air into an explosive mixture that is drawn through the intake manifold into the combustion chamber of each cylinder during its intake cycle, that mixture is then detonated to turn the piston, and by extension, power the car.

This particular carburetor has been something of a headache for the two years we've owned Sadi, prone, among other things, to leaking gasoline. Engine compartments are full of hot things, the exhaust manifold for instance, runs right behind the carburetor in a 1950 GM L6 engine. Uncontained gasoline + hot engine components is a good way to end up with Pontiac flambe. An ignoble end for a car that has survived for seventy years, and one we continue to try and avoid.

Saturday, I decided to go out and do some work on the car. I'm in the midst of re-wiring parts of the electrical system, and there is plenty of springtime maintenance needed after sitting for the winter. But once again, the damn carb started tinkling out gasoline at a steady rate, and I was determined to put a stop to it for good this time.

First on my own, then with Owen's help, I traced the leak, determined the cause (the bowl was overfilling), and made the necessary adjustments, namely bending the tabs on the float to reduce its travel. We then ran the car for a considerable amount of time without any leakage.

As victories go, it's a minuscule one. We've got two quite nice electric cars that we drive nearly all the time, and we're not driving anywhere right now regardless.

But I felt like I'd hung the moon anyway. For the first time in over a month, something had changed because I had made it different, had made it better. It sounds silly to say that an old car I'm not driving right now anyway, running a bit better than it was, gave me hope for the future, but it did.

Brains are weird, and mine is a bit more atypical than the average, but for now, I'll take the victories, and the serotonin hits, where I can get them.

Isolation - Picture Tells A Story

It’s been several weeks since I posted a Picture Tells A Story, though that doesn’t actually mean I haven’t been thinking, or even taking photos for them. 

I got… stuck at the end of last month, when my PTAS was going to be a shot of the receipt from an expensive food shop, talking about the privilege inherent in being able to stock up on food in preparation for going into COVID-19 preventative isolation. I knew exactly what I wanted the photo to look like, and what I planned to write. But I ended up not going ahead with the post, since many folk I talked to at that point were of the opinion that we were being a bit ridiculous in our concerns, and the steps we were taking in preparation. 

The next week I couldn’t figure out what to do or say for my weekly post, as I was still stuck on the previous idea. By the week after that, I lacked the emotional resources to charge my camera, much less take pictures or write a PTAS. I had a stack of photo editing work for paying clients that wasn’t getting done either, and I’m only now getting back on top of. 

Of course, the developing situation, that on February 29th, I worried my husband and I were overreacting to, is rapidly turning out to be one of the most impactful global events of my lifetime.

One thing that is becoming fast apparent through all of this, is that I, like many of us, am not emotionally or intellectually prepared for a slow-motion disaster. That isn’t news to anyone who has followed climate change-related dialog or policy over the last decade or two. Like climate change, COVID-19, both the public health calamity and the accompanying global depression that appears inevitable, is moving at a scale unfamiliar to most people alive today. 

My peers and I are used to the big-thing-happens-quickly-with-lasting-effects model of traumatic change. There was 9-11, the September 15th 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers that heralded the Great Recession, Hurricane Katrina, Super Storm Sandy, school and other mass shootings beyond counting, and so on. And looming behind all of those, the awareness that we will someday have to personally confront the impacts of climate change. 

COVID-19 is an ongoing disaster that takes far more than a day or two to unfold, but without the time scale or feeling that everyday people can do much to help, that we find with climate change. 

About the only thing most of us can do is stay home for an as-yet unknown amount of time. The world is holding its breath, and we know that things are going to change, probably for the worse for at least a while, but we don’t have any way of really knowing what that will look like, when it will happen, or who amongst our friends and loved ones we will lose along the way. 

That uncertainty and stasis is taking its toll on many of us. 

As an asthmatic diabetic with a lifelong history of upper respiratory infection, I am considered at very high risk for COVID-19. It’s been over three weeks since I’ve left the house even for a quick errand, and fortunately my husband can work from home, as well.

That brings us to today’s photo, a macro shot of the rear brake rotor of my car. As you can see, the enforced idleness of COVID-19 isolation has eaten away at the rotor surface, which is now thoroughly encrusted in rust. My mental health can relate. 

Tomorrow I am going to take my little car out for a drive. Those brakes will squeal terribly from disuse at first, but I’ll warm them up and break them back in a bit before returning. Shooting and writing today’s post hopefully does a bit of the same for me.