Pull Together, Now

Fio has been thinking again, as is her wont. This time she's been thinking about support groups. There are ones that focus on drug addiction and alcoholism and every other kind of ism, and there are also ones that come together in the arts and sciences, like the Byron-Shelley-Keats literary clique and the Einstein-Goedel partnership. In sports, they're called teams.

In fact, one might regard all of society as a giant support group. Maybe that's the secret of humanity's success.

Albert and Fio

Supposedly Einstein said that he wrote down everything he didn't feel was important enough to memorize. Fiorella herself lives by her lists. Starting in junior high, she kept track of her school assignments through written lists, and now she keeps track of her daily life the same way.

Sometimes she even adds in Husband's commitments so he won't forget them, but lately she's noticed he's keeping his own lists.

Watch out--it's catching.

Einstein's Brain, Yours, and Mine

Fiorella has some clips in the back of her to-write tablet about scientists slicing through the bumps and furrows of Einstein's brain to find out how he came up with E=MC2.

That's nonsense. It's not what he thought with that was important, it's what he thought. Focus is the key, and that's in the personality--nature shaped by nurture. Just enough obsessiveness to get the job done, not enough to land him in the local shrink's waiting room.

The people Einstein hung around with were also key. They always are. Think of Shelley-Byron-Keats and their crowd. Think of today's political Tea Parties. Think of homicidal motorcycle gangs. Interest groups support and empower their members.

Which is why Fio finally joined Romance Writers of America.

I think her brain is safe from post-mortem examination.