It Is Still A Beautiful World
I have been trying to put my thoughts into words for a blog post tomorrow — which then became today as I crested 8 hours of writing and rewriting in a day when I had way too many other, more urgent things to do. And, just as I thought I was getting close to what I wanted to say, I realized that Max Ehrmann had already said it far better than I ever could. So, as we each face this day, I share his words instead of my own.
Desiderata
by Max Ehrmann
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
Go Ahead, Make Fun of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
Some people sniff out enthusiasm like a dog looking for a place to poop. You knew it was only a matter of time until the Negative Nancies started in on the Ice Bucket Challenge for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Well, go ahead and make fun of me. I’m not embarrassed that I did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Amazingly, I’m not even embarrassed that I displayed my fat body sopping wet on facebook.
I was challenged by a good friend, so there was peer pressure. I am also a silly-leaning human who has worked in both marketing and fund-raising, so the campaign itself caught my interest.
But the reason I made extra ice and charged up my video camera last week was for my Uncle Tom.
He was a wonderful human being. He was kind, funny, generous, and very active. One of those people who always had something going on, places to go, things to do, pranks to set up. He was my Dad’s best friend. He was my cousins’ loving father. He was one of the good guys.
I should note that the doctors never specifically diagnosed what he was going through. The only explanation they were ever able to give was that it was “like ALS.” And, like ALS, the connections from brain to spine to muscles were being disconnected one by one. Click, your feet don’t work. Click, your eyelids won’t stay open even when you’re awake. Click, you’re not allowed to drive anymore. Click, people can’t understand what you’re trying to say. Click, you can’t climb stairs. Click, you’re not allowed to live in your home anymore. Click, you can no longer swallow food. Click. You were gone much too soon.
I did the challenge for a guy who, even in his toughest moments, would have gotten a good laugh from seeing people pour a bucket of ice water over their heads. He would have liked the creativity. He would have understood the math of how word spread. He would have gotten a kick out of the fact that silliness can be a power for good.
I did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Feel free to make fun of me. Make fun of everyone who took a moment out of their day to honor a friend or help raise funds. Go ahead, because even your sarcasm will help raise awareness.
Links:
To donate: http://www.alsa.org/donate
Here’s a great blog post about the challenge: What an ALS Family Really Thinks about the Ice Bucket Challenge
The best challenge video I’ve seen: Bill Rudy
Kiss Me, Baby!
Every August, from when I was 6 months old until I was 18, my family and my cousins’ family rented a cottage together at a place called Sandy Lake. It would take a gazillion hours to tell you all about it, longer still for me to stop talking. But, in honor of the time of year, let me share a glimpse.
One day during our 1975 vacation, my Dad went in to shave. When he was all lathered up, he dashed out into the cottage and yelled, “Kiss me, baby!” The rest, I think you can figure out for yourself.
Here’s to surprises and revenge and tradition. Here’s to the funniest people I know. And, here’s to Sandy Lake, still my favorite place on Earth.
Note: Yes, it was the first place I ever wore a life preserver, and, yes, it’s the inspiration for this blog.
Happy Birthday America
Soon as I got up today, I went out on the side porch to hang the flag. Realized that the once-a-puppy dogwood tree growing next to the porch had grown so much that the flag would drape over the leaves and branches.
Went down to the garage and got clippers. Hacked away for a while and realized that, without a chain saw, I probably wasn’t going to be able to make enough room for the flag to fly properly.
Went down to the garage and got my sonic screw driver. Unscrewed the screws that hold the brace to the porch railing and moved the brace a foot or so to the right. Attempted to reattached the screws.
Went down the porch stairs to retrieve the brace and screw; then, went down to the garage to get a hammer and nail to make starter holes. Voila! Two of three screws are back in perfectly snug and the third is halfway in and stripped. But it holds the flag just fine.
Might seem like a lot of effort . . . but, of course, relatively, that was nothing — less than nothing — less than 1/1,000,000th of nothing — compared to the brilliant and brave who gave us our land of the free and those who have kept it that way for more than two centuries. To the U.S. soldier who sent me this flag and all our founding father and military life preservers, I say:
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Happy Birthday America.
Good-night, Flo McCluskey
“Blink the lights when you get there.”
That’s what I put on the card. For the flowers. For the funeral home. For my friend Florence (Flo), who passed away last week.
She used to stand at her door to watch me home safe, until I blinked my porch lights. This was not so much a safety precaution as a gesture of friendship, an affectionate tradition, one last good-night. I only had to cross the street.
It was of course the same street that Flo crossed — arm in arm with her husband Win — to welcome me to the neighborhood 16 years, 10 months, and 1 day ago.
Despite a 40-year difference in our ages (and the loudness and lateness of my move-in party the night before), they seemed genuinely pleased to meet me. And, it is not sugar-coated hindsight to tell you, I adored them immediately.
It’s rare, but liking some people is like that: Easy and quick. And, rarer still, unchanging. I crossed that street many times over the years, to chat, to give out Halloween candy, to enjoy a home-cooked meal or a glass of lemonade. I crossed that street to borrow a cup of sugar. (I swear it’s true.) I crossed that street to borrow a magic snow shovel. (I swear that’s true, too.)
When I crossed that street, more often than not, I came home with more than I’d arrived with, be it fresh-picked tomatoes, a cute scented candle, or a new wish to have such a bright mind, such mischievous eyes, such a smile, such a positive attitude — or such a well-kept house! — when I am in my 90s.
I crossed that street to say good-bye to Win before he passed, four years ago. And I crossed that street on Monday, after Flo’s funeral, to spend time with her family.
For the past few nights, as I’ve turned out the lights and walked through my house on the way to bed, I’ve lingered a moment at my dining room window (half hopeful, half cynical, and wholly embarrassed to admit it) to see if any lights blinked on and off across the street.
No. They didn’t.
Last night again, I was standing at the window. It was midnight. There were no blinking lights inside the house across the street.
But, above that house? Well.
I saw a flash. And another. And another. It took me a moment to realize I was seeing lightning from a distant storm.
There wasn’t a sound. No thunder, no rain, no wind. The lightning wasn’t in jagged streaks and electric, sparking forks. It was within the clouds, lighting things up from the inside out.
This was not a typical storm. I’ve never seen anything like it. Like fluffy, monotone fireworks. Like fireflies in a jar of cotton balls. Like flickering streetlamps lost in a swirling fog. Like flash bulbs going off underwater, snapping black and white photos of a wild and fantastical sea. Bright-as-day clouds billowing behind pitch-black silhouetted clouds. Appearing. Disappearing. Reappearing. On and off, again and again. And, just when you’d think it was over, again and again and again.
I stood there for an hour — jaw-dropped, teary-eyed, goofy-grinned, and goose-bumped.
This was not lightning striking. This was lightning laughing. This was lightning dancing. This was a midnight party.
This was a celebration in the heavens.
Good-night, Flo. And thanks for everything.
I Got a Charge Out of It
When iPods first came out, I did want one. However, as the current or former owner of two portable record players, three transistor radios, approximately seven different clock radios, two boom boxes, a stereo (with tuner, turntable, cassette player, CD player, then dual cassette player, then five-disc CD player), a Walkman, three different portable cassette players, a portable CD player, a CD player-radio that hangs on the wall, a TV cable package with stations that play uninterrupted music, and two computers able to operate iTunes — not to mention a piano, a harmonica, an accordion, and a decent singing voice — I wasn’t exactly camping out or breaking open the piggy bank to be among the first to own one.
In fact, I only got an iPod Shuffle about five years ago. Thanks to Apple’s annoying habit of updating iTunes so often that sorting out which computers had which music and which version to sync with, it was actually 2013 before I had an iPod — with music on it.
I used it exactly once. And forgot to turn it off.
So, the next time I went to use it, a couple of months back, it would not play. I read the instruction booklet and realized I needed to charge it using the USB cable that it came with. Hmmm. I checked the box it came in. I searched the drawer where the box was stored. I searched the rest of my home office. I searched other rooms and other drawers and even dragged from the living room closet the big, bad basket of tangled, writhing, Indiana-Jones-awaiting, possibly-useful-but-unlabeled gadget cables.
I did not find it. I could not think of where else it might be.
To be fair, my thinking is done with a brain old enough to have bounced in my skull as I danced in the backyard with my little sister and a transistor radio playing that cool, new hit single, Benny and the Jets. My memory being what it is, I couldn’t be sure enough to call Apple and say it hadn’t come with one; I couldn’t be sure enough that it had come with one to justify additional searching. Feeling a bit despondent about the charger — and my mental faculties — I gave up.
After stumbling over the big basket of miscellaneous cables for a couple of months, I decided to sort out all of The Things that creep and crowd into the living room closet when I’m not looking. (And the things I cram in there when company is coming.)
As any one who has owned a home for more than two years knows, efficient, effective clean up is all about moving your stuff from one place to another. And, so, I decided to move all board games from the closet onto some living room book shelves. (Think of it as a game of Blockhead and Jenga and Old Maid cussing.) Among the stacking and fitting of various (why the hell can’t the board game people decide on a standard size?) boxes, there was a card box. Just a little wooden box, decoupaged by my Mom back in the Elton John days, to hold a deck of playing cards. The last time I recall opening the box was when I placed an un-used, souvenir deck into it and closed the lid, probably eight years ago or so.
I truly do not know what compelled me to open the box. Sentimentality? A Pandoric curiosity? Some not-dead-only-sleeping brain cell? Who knows. But, I opened it, and, lo and behold, it held: a deck of cards. And the iPod Shuffle charger!
How in the heck did it get there? I’ve had no Eureka moment, no recollection, no memory. Nor can I think of one reason why, on any given day, in any situation, I would have considered a deck of cards as the right spot for part of my Shuffle.
Today’s life preserver is: The giggle-inducing discovery of an unintended pun.
Heartbleed Brainbleed
Call me old. Call me a curmudgeon. Call me old-fashioned. But I don’t believe technology can replace human assistance. I also don’t believe we will ever be a paperless society. Here’s one reason why.
1. Heard about heartbleed virus.
If you haven’t, check out this link. You can type in a website address to see if it’s at risk. If there’s a risk, change your password for that site — and for any site where you have used the same password. And, yes, Last Pass is trying to sell you their service, but the website checker is free and easy to use.
2. Used the site mentioned above to start checking the websites that I use.
3. Discovered that lifelock.com was a “possibly” infected site. Yikes!
4. Went to lifelock.com to change my password.
5. Could not remember the password (because I made it a really complex one, of course).
6. Used the site’s “forgot your password” feature. Got a pop-up saying an email had been sent and that I should contact customer service if I did not receive the email.
7. Checked email, including spam folder, etc.
8. Waited. Checked email again.
9. Waited. Checked email again.
10. Called customer service. Explained. She gave me a temporary password.
11. Tried to log in with the temporary password. It didn’t work.
12. Called customer service again. Different rep gave me a temporary username — which was the exact same series of letters and numbers as the temporary password the other rep had given me (so, yeah, perhaps technology could replace a few people, but . . .) — and a new, different temporary password. The second rep also emailed the information to me.
13. I got logged in and changed my password to something that included lower case letters, capital letters, and numbers. It didn’t work — because I didn’t include a symbol. (The symbol I want to use does not exist on a keyboard.)
Whew. That was for ONE website. I’ve spent most of the morning navigating websites in search of the “change password” button. My brain is spinning like a Mac rainbow dot trying to recall every site I’ve ever used. And I’ve grown a tumor or two on the right side of my cerebral cortex trying to come up with complex passwords. If I now need a unique password for every site I use, you know and I know, I won’t be able to remember half of them by this evening.
So, I need to write them all down on a piece of paper.
The Scoop – in Today’s Post-Gazette
If you’re in Pittsburgh, check out today’s Post-Gazette. Gary Rotstein shared one my of my Life Preserver tales, The Scoop, in his column this morning.
Life Preservers 
Have a Nice Day
Used to be, you needed something, you went to a human being. Bank teller, gas station attendant, store clerk. The list of jobs that have dwindled or disappeared because of technological improvements is long and getting longer.
Let me say it up front: I’m not against technology. I love some bits of it. For one example, I think the option to renew vehicle registration online is a modern-day miracle. (I have this friend; she’s a bit of a procrastinator.)
I really do appreciate many aspects of speed, convenience, and independence that have come into being because of technology. But it has begun: Companies are no longer offering convenience as a competitive differentiator; they are selling it. The easy-breezy options we have grown accustomed to are now a potential trap.
Gas pumps are up-selling — Would you like a car wash? — and researching — What is your ZIP code? Some pumps are now programmed to ask so many dang questions, it’s easier to get away from a Jehovah’s Witness.
Banking machine charges keep going up, and they too are being programmed for sales — Are you interested in a loan? (How long did you stand there waiting, and how many people were behind you in line, the first time a bank inserted an advertisement on its ATM?)
What do we actually gain by ringing up our own groceries? Especially when, nine times out of ten, the person who used to do that job is forced to stand there and watch you fumble about while politely asking if you’d like any help doing his/her job.
Today, I was trying to order some concert tickets on a website. There was a problem, so I ended up calling and getting the tickets by phone. Nice surprise: It was cheaper by $6/ticket because there was no processing fee.
So . . . getting rid of human beings doesn’t increase profits enough? Now, you want to charge a fee for an interaction with something incapable of problem-solving? And, so . . . if not for there being a processing glitch, I would never have known I could avoid the processing fee?
Boing!
Let me say it again near the end: I’m not against technology. I could hardly write a blog without it. And I’m not suggesting it would be better to be some sort of crazy hermit (even if there are days when I think I’d be really good at that). But perhaps we should do a little something to stem the tide?
How about this: How about, once a week, skip the touch pad and do something the human-being way. See what happens. Maybe you’ll save some money. Maybe you’ll save some time. Maybe you’ll hear a joke or meet someone interesting. Maybe you’ll get a free mint.
Give it a try. Maybe you’ll have a nice day.
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August 19, 2014 at 2:41 pm Leave a comment