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Posts Tagged ‘Technology’

Autumnal Equinox

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on September 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

We were all in the pool when it hit me, Fall that is. But Fall in the South feels different, for one thing it’s still hot. Not three digit temperatures hot, and not the oppressive humidity, so we can sometimes sit outside in the shade and visit with neighbors. But I knew my days of ballet in the pool were numbered, what I didn’t know was that we’d lose our wi-fi!

Goggle Fiber has been replacing cables in our neighborhood all summer long. They’ve been digging and splicing along with the constant cacophony of new construction crews.

It happened like this: Bob harvested his sweet potatoes, carrots and leeks so I started to make potato leek soup for dinner; there was a knock on the door, and it was the modern day cable guy aka the Google guy; he asked Bob something about checking the box on the side of the house and warned us that we may lose our internet for a few minutes while they switch over to 8 gig…

That was 48 hours ago. I know.

We’ve been living in an analog world. We ate dinner at the dining room table. We had an actual conversation. We played Boggle. I cleaned up the kitchen. Then I called Aunt Kay for the after-action report on our MN trip. Then I texted Les next door and she has AT&T so they were watching the TN vs Oklahoma game. She offered me words of encouragement and jigsaw puzzles.

It’s funny really. I’m surprised when I switch on a light because I expect that nothing else will work. Last night the Bride was making pasta with her new Kitchen Aid mixer, well she made the dough and the Grands fed the dough through the special attachment. Voila fettuccine! She also picked my basil and made a scrumptious pesto but most importantly, she asked us over for dinner so that was sweet. We practiced our French and the house was filled with laughter.

But no Masterpiece Theatre for me last night. And the new season has started on PBS, hopefully I’ll catch up on their streaming service. So I picked up my knitting. Dr Jim told me to pretend it’s the 1960s, but I don’t want to go back… like ever.

Losing your internet is a little like losing your mind. We don’t realize how tethered we are to technology. When Bob can’t sleep because he’s worried about losing our internet service, he can’t turn on the TV and doze on the couch. I can’t play music while I’m doing household chores because it’s streaming on Sonos. We don’t have a turntable and my vintage vinyl records are the Rocker’s hanging up on the wall! Do you even own a radio?

Right now I’m writing on my iPad offline. In fact, “Working Offline” is loud and clear on the banner at the top of my ‘page.’ Like I didn’t know. I’ll be walking over to the Bride and Groom’s porch to publish this later.

I have to admit that Bob is getting a little twitchy. We finally have a Google Fiber technician sitting in my closet! He’s been running back and forth to his truck and waiting for word from a supervisor. If I could type and cross my fingers at the same time we’d be golden. But don’t feel sorry for me, a new Parnassus First Edition Club book was delivered just in the nick of time. And all my favorite characters are back:

Elizabeth Strout’s “Tell Me Everything.” Olive is in assisted-living and that’s all I’m going to say. Cause I always tell you everything. Here we were at the Farmers Market on Saturday, before our virtual world collapsed.

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Disconnected

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on June 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »

As we approached the medieval city of Pietrasanta last week, I was surprised to see a giant sculpture of a teddy bear laying down outside of a church with a knife through his heart. Marco and Claudio had told us this place has long been a haven for artists – from Paul Klee and Joan Miro to Henry Moore and Fernando Botero. But I had no idea the exhibit we were about to see, including large busts of cherubic angels with their mouths taped shut inside the deconsecrated church , was by a sculptor connected to the Jersey Shore, Rachel Lee Hovnanian!

“Hovnanian’s “Poor Teddy in Repose” sculpture shares a powerful message. “Poor Teddy is a reflection on the ways in which childhood playtime has changed in the contemporary era,” Hovnanian shares about her work. “Children are no longer interested in teddy bears and other tangible toys – the smartphone seems to have eclipsed all other toys as the ultimate pass-time for children, a knife to the heart for Teddy.”…Hovnanian goes on to share that her choice of raw material – bronze – was deliberate. “It emphasizes the industrialization and commercialization of childhood,” she explains.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/janehanson/2024/05/28/how-one-artist-is-using-teddy-bears-and-angels-to-redefine-the-way-we-communicate/

It was a July day in 2002 when Hovnanian’s 15 year old son, Alton, drowned in his jet ski-type watercraft in the Navesink River. Word spread quickly in our Rumson-Fair Haven community, Hovnanian Enterprises was the number one building firm in the state. Alton was taken to my husband Bob’s ER in Red Bank, NJ. I had friends who were good friends with the boy’s grandmother. His grandfather, Kevork, was an Armenian immigrant from Iraq when he started his company.

Now the silent angels stared down at me, more menacing. I felt a chill inside the dark vestibule of the Complesso di Sant Agostino, maybe it was my fever? We turned a corner only to find another gigantic, lonely teddy bear surrounded by floating, electric plugs that looked like the tentacles of an octopus. The Love Bug said it made her feel sad, and we talked about the meaning of art. The Rocker told me the artist herself was in the next room.

It was an accident that night when Alton plowed into a moored sailboat. The Rocker was 17 and had just graduated high school, we were packing him up for college; while Rachel was burying her son instead of sending him off to high school. Luckily, I had stopped writing for the local newspaper the year before. And here we were, in Tuscany, in a room with another Poor Teddy having a solo tea party.

When we arrived home, I handed over my iPad to the Bug for her Design Camp. She is an artist like her Aunt Kiki! You see, I thought I would be the Nana with a basket for devices by the door; that Grands would be required to drop their screens and connect IRL. This was my fantasy. But instead, I am the wild Nana who says “Anything Goes” when the kids come to our house. My daughter and her Groom said “NO” to screens until thirteen!

At first, we went along with their Luddite ways. I hated to see a toddler in a stroller clutching an iPad while sucking a pacifier! But lately, social media seems to have creeped into the Grands’ lives nonetheless. After all, mostly all of her friends have either a cell phone, a tablet or a smart watch. While we were walking through the ancient streets of Pietrasanta, I noticed the Love Bug, who will turn 12 this summer, doing a little dance move of her own here and there. I asked her where she learned it.

“Oh, it’s on TikTok,” she said. “All my friends are doing it.”

Poor Teddy

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Techno Turkey

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on November 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Good Morning everyone. I wish you well if you’re traveling this week. We’ll be cooking up a storm here in Nashville with all the usual sides – my butternut squash casserole and the Bride’s baked sweet potato marshmallow confection. In fact I’ll have to make this short because it’s time to make the corn bread for my traditional corn bread stuffing; no jalapenos, or sausage, because I’m keeping it classic.

But before I head into the kitchen, I feel I’ve finally been vindicated! For a long time now I’ve been suspicious of my devices. Not to the point of roaming around Times Square with a poster, but I think that they are listening to us. Even when they’re not turned on… Why? Because almost every night I climb into bed and Bob starts getting ads on his iPad, like ads about cordless Dyson vacuums, or bras. And I understand, I really do.

But every now and then we’ll get targeted ads about stuff we’ve only discussed in the privacy of our home. It’s one thing to search the internet for a small bathroom vanity, followed by Wayfair vanity ads, and it’s quite another to have a conversation about “natural pools/ponds” and start seeing them show up everywhere. What I didn’t know is that Alexa was actually caught listening, recording and selling private conversations a few years ago, and they even archived the data. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-alexa-spying-scandal-creates-trust-problem-with-customers-2018-5

Oh and in this season of giving, guess how a reporter tracked the money trail from lawyers who had business before the SCOTUS to Clarence Thomas? For a Christmas party no less. They sent the cash via Venmo to one of his aides! “J’ACCUSE”, Mr Thomas.

“Just as surprising was the way the publication learned about it: from the aide’s public Venmo records. Brian X. Chen, the consumer technology writer for The Times, wrote that even he was surprised that such records of money transfers could be public.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/opinion/apple-google-privacy.html

I draw the line with technology and not cause I’m too old to understand it. I’ve never used Venmo. I refuse to talk to Alexa, I will only thumb-text. I’m off Twitter thank goodness, and I’m not going near Tiktok. Can’t quite quit the Gram, but using Facebook/Meta sparingly and only on my laptop. And anytime an App want’s me to sign in for some AI, I say, “No thank you!” That was way before today’s big news about the chaos at OpenAI since Sam Altman was sacked and promptly scooped up by Microsoft.

In a bit of good news, California and Colorado have enacted laws to allow for one single opt-out request to have ALL data brokers delete ALL your personal information. Guess every state will have to clunk along to catch up for us to expect any semblance of privacy. And I’ll just have keep the Flapper’s secret ingredients for her stellar banana cream pie to myself!

Here are the Grands baking (apple cider donut muffins) and making (a guitar) this past week.

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For the Love of Language

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 28, 2022| 3 Comments »

Coming home to a cold and rainy Nashville has been hard. But our daffodils are in bloom, the tulip magnolia has tiny pink buds, and today the sun has returned. The promise of spring is in the air, along with all the construction noise of living downtown. It’s time for a rebirth; for us to start sorting, cleaning and organizing. After all, next month we move into our cozy, quiet, new/old bungalow!

Then the non-stop news from Ukraine disrupted my Pollyanna tendencies. How could a war like this happen in the 21st Century?

If we could flip a switch back to the last century, I would be heading toward the local library to read up on the history of Ukraine and Russia. After all, I have a vivid memory of my foster mother Nell (a first generation Slovak) crying in front of our black and white TV when Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. My generation came of age during the Cold War, we are primed to distrust Vladimir Putin. My children OTOH, can barely remember the Berlin Wall.

Instead of visiting the free public library, I Googled the conflict. Did you know that Stalin actually killed 4 Million Ukrainians? FOUR MILLION.

Maybe the reason this earlier genocide didn’t catch the attention of the international press was because Germany was bigger news? Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, but in 1932 Stalin ordered his soldiers to confiscate all Ukrainian grain and farm animals – he deliberately tried to starve the Ukrainian people to death. Children were eating acorns.

Still earlier, Russian Czars knew that to extinguish a culture, you start with their language.

“And, very early, the Russian Empire recognized the threat posed by a separate and particularly literary Ukrainian language to the unity of the empire. So, starting in the eighteen-sixties, there was a more than forty-year period of prohibition on the publication of Ukrainian, basically arresting the development of the literary language… and in the middle of World War One and revolution, with other nationalities trying and in some cases gaining independence, Ukrainians tried to do that but were ultimately defeated.“

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/vladimir-putins-revisionist-history-of-russia-and-ukraine

Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine finally won its freedom. “On 21 January 1990, over 300,000 Ukrainians organized a human chain for Ukrainian independence between Kyiv and Lviv.“

Once an authoritarian state begins to flex its muscles – to demolish a free press and ban books, including those written in a certain language – we must all pay attention. With the election of Mr T, our country came very close to the edge of democracy; our school board members were threatened with violence, and his followers are still trying to ban books! Why would the GOP continue to flirt with our twice-impeached, retired golfer at Mar-a-Lago? The craziest Florida Man I know has been praising Putin. He even fantasized aloud about being president forever like Xi Jinping!

And just like Mr T, Putin is stuck in the past. He probably wishes he’d thought of a “Make Russia Great Again” slogan. Only young Russians aren’t buying it. They live in a wired world, where truth confronts fiction. Only the elderly watch state-sponsored Russian TV. Only the old venture into libraries; young Russians and Ukrainians alike have the world at their fingertips, in their smart phones. This is becoming an intergenerational war, one Putin didn’t predict. Ukrainian civilians aren’t throwing flowers at Russian troops, they are making molotov cocktails!

My Irish ancestors taught the Irish language in schools, even though it was not allowed at the time. What can we do here to help Ukraine? The Flapper always said, “Charity starts at home!” First, I’d work to make sure our own elections are safe and secure, and that ALL Americans who are eligible to vote actually have the chance to cast their ballots. Let’s make election day a national holiday! I’d fight the misinformation and propaganda machine that is FOX news, and I’d contribute to the cause of independent journalism. Subscribe to a newspaper online that isn’t owned by a venture capitalist.

The Washington Post has an excellent article on how we can donate directly to help Ukraine. “Journalists with the Kyiv Independent have done tremendous work covering the war, offering the world constant updates as they fear for themselves, their families and their homes. The Independent has started a GoFundMe asking for support, but they’ve also promoted a separate GoFundMe — “Keep Ukraine’s media going” — for journalists around the country who have received less international attention.” 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/27/how-to-help-ukraine/

We need a virtual human chain today to fend off the Russian bear.

The next generation

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Bacon and Attachment

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 3, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Is there some food you seem to be craving more during this pandemic lockdown? For me it’s bacon. I never used to buy bacon – even in the old days I’d buy turkey bacon, which wasn’t fooling my family at all. Now you will always find maple flavored or honey smoked bourbon bacon or just plain ole bacon bacon in my refrigerator.

In fact, we just had BLTs for lunch.

We celebrated the Rocker’s Leo birthday by sending him a Postmates gift card. Guess what he’s craving? Sushi! Then while he and Aunt Kiki were on a Left Coast dog beach, we Zoomed with the whole family, from Nashville to LA via a quarantined garage apartment. Remind me to buy the Groom a plant for his real Zoom background, or maybe he could find a good virtual background?

Celebrations can be strange in the Time of Coronavirus. Appropriately enough, I posted a picture to the Rocker’s Facebook timeline for his birthday that shows him sitting on top of Chicago. Literally. He and KiKi are seemingly floating on the Ledge of Willis Tower. I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly how I’m feeling… like I’m floating in time and space..

Like that time we went up over Charlottesville in a hot air ballon and I found out the pilot had no idea where we would land! Drifting up towards the treetops was exhilarating at first, then it quickly turned terrifying. No one had bothered to tell me that this was normal, that our landing was dependent on the wind and the nearest farmer’s field.

So I thought I would listen to another Martha Beck Insta-something this morning. She reeled me in with this topic: “The Secret to Feeling Better;” who doesn’t want to feel better??

Beck tells us that, “What we resist, persists.” Maybe this is why I can’t stop buying bacon? She is talking about emotional trauma, or the muscle pain of some new exercise. Go with the flow y’all. Now anybody who ever dropped into a yoga class has heard that one, but did you know the opposite is true?

When good things happen, and we try to grasp and hold onto them for dear life, they slip away. But more and more good things will happen if we can just detach from that overwhelming feeling of joy. We are supposed to simply meditate and find that calm center, between the extremes, because good and bad things happen all the time.

So when we resist the bad things they stay, and when we embrace the good things they leave? Beck is insisting that we get stuck when we hold on too tight. Well sorry Martha, but I’m holding onto the good things right now.

Tomorrow the Bride and the Grands will be tested for the virus, and I’m sure they will test negative. After all, they have excellent immune systems! I’m baking banana bread with chocolate chips, because I can’t let Bob win the bread-baking championship. And yesterday I did some online shopping for Great Grandma Ada, and I accept my addiction to Amazon.

While I’m grasping for good news, I’m proud to call myself a RESISTER. The Flapper always described herself as a REBEL, so it must be in my genes. I resist our plodding towards autocracy, and I resist the Trumpers who feel as if WE are the tyrants for wanting them to wear masks. The sheer audacity of their selfish, insipid belief system is staggering.

Yes, I’m supremely attached to my children and grandchildren, I admit it! Why try to detach or deny my overwhelming love for these people? I know they don’t really need me anymore; they are all tax-paying adults, who know how to order by InstaCart and cook. But do they put bacon on their turkey meatloaf?

This is me holding onto the Rocker’s Cleo for his work on Dunkirk a few years ago.

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Reigning In

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Memoir, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2020| 3 Comments »

The rain has started, now the beach is just a memory.

All last week, I sounded like a stereotypical old person: “We didn’t have sunscreen when we were young;” or “We only had black and white TV, no Internet!” I could have told the Grands that I had to walk 10 miles uphill to school, but that would be a lie. I did have to get dressed up in a snowsuit, hat and gloves to wait for the school bus…with other kids … because parents hadn’t heard about random kidnappings yet. Before Climate Change.

No helicopter parents back in the day, I would just stand outside in my playpen watching the activity on our street in Victory Gardens, while Nell did her daily cleaning inside. Once I started school, I’d be shooed out the door after tearing off my Sacred Heart uniform, and hanging it up, to ride my bike renegade around the neighborhood. School was a dull, dreary day full of sitting at my desk with my hands crossed into a ball, gazing at the brick building across the street through the window.

Today Metro Nashville schools have decided to reopen in the Fall. But in true Trumpian fashion, they are passing the buck to the parents in this Time of Coronavirus. It’s up to each and every family, you have a choice – 1) send your child to school, or 2) continue learning online with a remote curriculum. The American Academy of Pediatrics has weighed in – they want every child to get back to school!

“…the AAP argues that based on the nation’s experience this spring, remote learning is likely to result in severe learning loss and increased social isolation. Social isolation, in turn, can breed serious social, emotional and health issues: “child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation.” Furthermore, these impacts will be visited more severely on Black and brown children, as well as low-income children and those with learning disabilities.”  https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/29/884638999/u-s-pediatricians-call-for-in-person-school-this-fall

Would you send your child to school if he had an auto-immune disease? Would you send your child to school if she had a grandparent living at home? Will the poor go back to school, while the wealthy buy their kids iPads and tutors?

We’ve all been socially isolated these last few months – 16 weeks to be exact. Bars and beaches are starting to close, again, because our infection rate is going up. For anyone paying attention this is not a surprise given our glorious lack of leadership. The rate of infection and hospital admissions and ultimately deaths are directly related to the rate of noncompliance with SOCIAL DISTANCING, MASKS and HAND WASHING.

Yesterday, the Bride went back to the ER, the Groom returned to his ICU, and we had our last day of unlimited hugs with the Grands. We brought yellow, Rainier cherries over to Great Grandma Ada and Hudson. The Love Bug put her hand on Ada’s through the glass – Hudson showed the L’il Pumpkin he had the same Star Wars pattern on the inside of his mask! We all made heart signs through the vestibule window. Our eyes were tearing up as we left.

We are back in the Land of Breaking News – grieving our collective losses, reigning in our emotions after hearing Mr T did nothing, absolutely nothing when he learned our soldiers had a Russian bounty on their heads. If SCOTUS allows us to see Mr T’s taxes, his adoration of Putin will become obvious. SCOTUS is on a roll!

We desperately need something to look forward to, baseball or ballet? Today at least will be a good day. T’ai Chi Tuesday has become Pilates Zoom Tuesday and I have a loaf of Bob’s sourdough sitting on the counter! And at least the rain is dampening the Saharan dust cloud.

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The Tragedy of the Commons

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Public Policy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I started off in 1966 at a college in Beacon Hill. Our children were born in the Berkshires. We spent every Spring on Martha’s Vineyard. I’ve always loved the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and I remember fondly strolling around the Boston Commons watching the gorgeous swan boats in the pond. So I was a tad surprised when Bob mentioned, “the tragedy of the commons” while we were listening to President Cuomo. Our lives in New England were the opposite of tragic!

Turns out this is the perfect term to describe where we find ourselves today – starting to reopen the country amid a cultural war over masks.

“The tragedy of the commons is an economic problem in which every individual has an incentive to consume a resource at the expense of every other individual with no way to exclude anyone from consuming. It results in overconsumption, under investment, and ultimately depletion of the resource. As the demand for the resource overwhelms the supply, every individual who consumes an additional unit directly harms others who can no longer enjoy the benefits. Generally, the resource of interest is easily available to all individuals; the tragedy of the commons occurs when individuals neglect the well-being of society in the pursuit of personal gain.”  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tragedy-of-the-commons.asp

Bob usually has no luck trying to interest me in economics, but this was different, it’s behavioral economics. The tragedy (sometimes called “paradox”) of the commons refers to selfish individuals going after a “common” resource, like toilet paper, only to undermine its infrastructure causing the total collapse of the resource. And supposedly its origin is from the Old English – 18th Century settlers who would let their animals out to graze in the park at the center of town, the commons. This would result in very little park left for the people, or the animals for that matter.

Remember, in Europe only the wealthiest landowners had beautiful parks and gardens behind high, closed walls to enjoy. Designing parks in the center of our colonial cities represented America’s wish to avoid another class/caste system. And so we had a paradox. Over time, the “tragedy of the commons” came to represent not just landscape destruction, but road and bridge decay as well. It became a metaphor for power and authority trampling over the common good.

Whenever the ME became more important than the WE.

Last night I tuned into Netflix to watch The Great Hack. It is a stunning documentary that helps to explain how we actually got here in the first place! I’ve become accustomed to seeing ads for something I was looking up on one site appear on another, but I had no idea how incredibly my data, and yours, have been harvested, tracked and targeted – in particular by governments and political parties. The film delves into Cambridge Analytica, and how they weaponized our data to influence our 2016 election.

Maybe you’re not one to watch horror movies during a pandemic, but this shows you how, without a drop of blood, Mr T the first ME president, was elected by 0.23% in Michigan!

“…this data trail is being leveraged against us, every day: to sell us things, get us to vote or to stay home from the polls, to divide or unite us according to the whims of whoever has paid enough to take our digital threads and weave them into a web of their own desires….

It uses the scandal as a framework to illustrate the data mining structures and algorithms that are undermining individual liberty and democratic society, one Facebook like and meme at a time.”  https://www.wired.com/story/the-great-hack-documentary/

It’s strange isn’t it? The Boston Tea Party of 1773 kicked off our liberation from colonialism, and Mark Zuckerberg turned a dating site for Harvard’s elite students into a data capturing monolith. From his dorm room, long after I was walking through the Commons to Filene’s Basement. Could it be that this great technological connection we are all needing more and more, isn’t at all about the WE?

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Passing the Time

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 23, 2020| 2 Comments »

Passing time isn’t quite like passing the salt. It’s a phrase that invokes prison, “doing time,” except in this case the whole world is on “house arrest.” We’ve all felt this way at one time or another. For Bob it was a prolonged period of treatment with interferon. For me, it was a year of trying to get pregnant again when the Bride was 3 years old, having 3 miscarriages back to back.

It’s the uncertainty, the randomness, the sheer terror of knowing we are actually NOT in control.

If you are one of those people with a strong faith, lucky you. I’ve been reading a lot on social media about God’s plan, the joy of this pandemic, and I honestly don’t get it. I mean did God really want to take out that whole young family with a tornado, then a week later come back and say: “Guess what everybody else, you need to stay right where you are because a plague is coming?” It can make even the devout have questions.

We’ve weathered our first week in isolation, and I’ve found that I’m built for something like this. I encouraged Bob to help me bake muffins. One night a friend dropped off a warm loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, it was like getting a hug! I swapped books with a friend on my porch. We listen to classical radio and play Scrabble. We walk Ms Bean when it’s not raining and wave to all the exceedingly happy dogs in the neighborhood. There will come a day, mark my words, when our fur babies will be giving us all the side-eye, as if to say;

“Aren’t you guys ever going somewhere so I can take a rest from guarding you?”

Techno-wise we’ve signed up with Marco Polo and can now send video texts. We’ve Facetimed with the Rocker and Aunt KiKi AND the Bride’s family split-screen, all at the same time. We call and Facetime Great Grandma Ada who is taking this whole thing better than any of us! Bob can visit with them through a vestibule window.

Cooking-wise, I’m sticking with comfort food. I can order from Whole Foods online and they deliver via Amazon Prime… it’s a 2 day wait but that’s fine. We order take-out from a local restaurant – 3 meals a week – and they deliver. We feel like it’s a small way to help their staff stay afloat. And I was running out of my Charlottesville granola, so Hudson Henry delivered in no time! https://www.hudsonhenrybakingco.com/

I keep having to remind Bob, “We’re in no rush.” We are all being asked to slow down – He is out there weeding, and I’m putting some pearls together to start stringing again. One of our local boutiques started carrying my necklaces; it was open for a few days after the tornado. But I feel no obligation to produce something during the quarantine, to knit a sweater say, or write a sonnet. “A Sonnet of Isolation.” Maybe next week I’ll clean out a closet? Be kind to yourself first, and the kindness is conveyed to others.

I’m the original slow-walker, slow-cooker. Bob is the original let’s jump right in and get this done NOW kinda guy.

That’s why he’s volunteered to help Vanderbilt when the tsunami hits us; he is being credentialed by the hospital to help with emergency medical care by telemedicine. This actually scares me, not because of possible exposure – he may do this from home – but because he might have to confront, serious life-and-death, ethical decisions. That’s what wartime triage is all about, who lives and who dies, and that’s a heavy burden.

I feel bad for hourly wage earners with rent checks coming due – if you know someone, why not Venmo them some cash? Every little bit helps. Know any musicians whose tours are cancelled? Pre-order Nicole Atkin’s next album “Italian Ice.” She’s an amazing singer and old friend of the Rocker and the Parlor Mob. https://www.nicoleatkins.com/  I just ordered the vinyl bundle with a tee shirt!

We were never binge TV watchers, but I’m seeing lots of requests from friends about “what to watch.” With streaming, the sky’s the limit but this is our list, and believe me we only occasionally watch ONE episode before heading to bed! Mrs. Maisel, Little Fires Everywhere, and Valhalla Murders. The whole Love is Blind thing is beyond ridiculous to me!

The other day I read a story to the Grands on Facetime….”Before They Were Authors, Famous Writers as Kids,” by Elizabeth Haidle. It was about Dr Seuss, did you know he wanted to become a professor? Here are our banana bran muffins!

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Being a Kid

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Memoir, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Sure, I was bullied as a kid. But that one boy who tripped me up on my bike, when I fell and broke my arm, I got back at him. I pushed an ice cream cone right in his face, and I don’t remember being bullied ever again. Well, except by a teacher.

Over sushi I was telling the Grands about Catholic school. How we had to sit still with our hands folded in front of us all the time. One teacher made me stand in the corner for half a day, luckily she didn’t have a dunce hat. “Why,” they wanted to know.

“Because I was talking to a boy!”

And I swear, we all broke out in belly laughs. One of the worst moments in my young life seemed pretty comical now. I mean shaming a child, it just doesn’t compute or translate well in today’s world, or maybe it does?

I’ve been having an ‘on and off’ conversation with the Love Bug and the L’il Pumpkin about “bad people” ever since someone stole my wallet while we were having lunch at Panera. What should we do if we have to confront a bad person. Their parents have been telling them that everybody is good, that you turn and walk away from a confrontation, and I get that. You don’t want to color their young minds with horror stories – and yet, they already hate Mr T cause, well, we ALL do.

I was thinking about this after the Democratic debates in Atlanta. I was surprised at how much I like Andrew Yang. He seemed to be the only authentic person up on that stage, like he was talking to me. When he spoke about looking our kids and Grands in the eye, and leaving them a better future, when he shared that he had an autistic child, when he talked about keeping America safe:

While it was well into the debate before Yang spoke, his answers about some of the threats to American society once again, brought new ideas to the debate stage. Artificial intelligence, which he’s mentioned in previous debates, is a future threat that must be taken seriously. And setting up something like a WTO (World Trade Organization) for data? His ingenuity was astounding. Bold ideas suit Yang well — and, when well thought out and pragmatic, they get high points in a debate.  https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/21/opinions/buttigieg-yang-stole-the-show-debate-opinion-graham/index.html

A WTO for Data?!?! I mean, AI is coming, along with the Russians and China, and will we be ready for it? Then the Rocker sent me an article about Yang;  “As President, I will establish a Department of the ATTENTION Economy,” https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/18/perspectives/andrew-yang-technology/index.html

He wants to study what social media is doing to our kids. It’s like “Back to the Future,” will they become (expletive) or something? My kids didn’t have smart phones growing up, tech was in its infancy, email was a new thing. And the Grands don’t have a tablet or phone or anything YET; but they DO use tablets in school and see everyone else around them staring down into their hands. The Love Bug recently asked her Dad if they could have a “Device-Free” day because she’d heard about this from her teachers.

A young mind can become addicted faster than our old brains want to believe. And social media is simply another method for bullies to do what they do best – shame and humiliate. A 12 year old girl in Nashville just committed suicide after being bullied mercilessly. How many “followers” do you have? Did you see that picture of so-and-so on Insta?

Remember how inadequate you felt your Freshman year in high school?  Well, add a few years of comparing yourself to others on top of that. I walked straight outta Catholic school into a public high school, and was lucky to find a bunch of nerdy, pre-college kids to welcome me.

Running around the neighborhood on my bike was pretty care-free in comparison to today, even if a bully thought he could hurt me, I didn’t let him define me. I got even. My not-so-polite message is not to run away from a fight, not to make excuses for someone’s bad behavior. My Grands will eventually meet up with a real “bad person,” they will eventually have a smart phone in their hands or maybe a piece of Borg machinery hard-wired directly into their skulls.

Should we employ algorithms to cap a child’s screen time per day, or just boot them out the door to play? We are experiencing a “GLOBAL epidemic” of childhood inactivity, what do you think? https://www.bbc.com/news/health-50466061

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“Unmatched Wisdom”

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Does wisdom really come with age?

Or is it just another word, in a cacophony of Tweets by this President, meant to deflect our slow but steady march to impeachment? Bob has been saying for days that starting a war would win him the next election. But after trying to tarnish his front-runner, Joe Biden, and watching Bernie Sanders succumb to an MI, maybe Mr T thinks abandoning our allies in Syria will turn the tide.

After all, we’re not talking Ukraine today.

Today, my 92 year old neighbor and friend, Berdelle, will be meeting up with 95 year old President Jimmy Carter to jockey a nail gun with Habitat for Humanity. Sporting a black eye and 14 stitches from a recent fall, this ex-President has more wisdom in his little finger than the current inhabitant of the West Wing. He arrived in Nashville yesterday with the much-needed rain:

“Country music singer Eric Paslay performed “Deep as it is Wide,” a song he penned about the hope for something bigger and better than us.

“In a land full of songwriters and singers, we’re always trying to say I love you in a different way,” he (Carter) told the Habitat volunteers huddled under a white tent and sheltered from the morning’s storms. 

“… It’s amazing how Habitat shows love to the world. You can say I love you, but when you go out with your hands and your feet, that’s the strongest way. You don’t even have to say anything.'”  https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2019/10/08/president-jimmy-carter-nashville-habitat/2432826001/

Actions do speak louder than words. And my way of showing love to my family has always been with my cooking. Ever since the temperatures have started to fall, I’ve been making soup. There’s just something about a pot of homemade soup simmering on the stove that says comfort food. Since I had a couple of sweet potatoes in the refrigerator, yesterday I made the Bride’s special Peanut Soup! Mostly it’s carrots, onions and sweet potatoes, with a kick of ginger and peanut butter.

Bob delivered said soup to Ms Berdelle while they were planning a Fall garden. I had never heard of a “Fall garden,” planting vegetables like kale in October. My past Yankee experience was limited to planting bulbs in the Fall. Wisdom comes with so many lessons; love is in the details. Like spreading seeds and plants throughout your urban neighborhood. Like getting up when you fall, and fulfilling a promise to build homes in Nashville.

This is what true leadership and wisdom looks like.

Hands building homes instead of typing off Twitter tirades. I mean, if the Lords of Twitter can block you for hate speech, or trolling a celebrity, or showing your breasts, then why can’t our Golfer-in-Chief be blocked for spreading lies? He’s threatened to “totally destroy and obliterate” the Turkish economy, while polling for impeachment climbs to 58%. I was wondering what might convince his Republican comrades he’s run amuck.

The chaos Mr T’s Twitter feed has created is unmatched in history. I prefer to chop up the holy trinity of onions, celery and carrots for a soup base, and maybe add fresh sage for wisdom.

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