Health is Wealth

 Over a week ago in this space I told you of waking up feeling nasty after a trip to see our grandson. Nine days on, two Patient First trips, and six prescriptions later I’m still feeling nasty. For the past three days I have had no voice. After my first visit to PF produced no improvement I went back four days later where a younger, cockier physician said I had pneumonia and wrote two new remedies for me to try. But then 24 hours later I received a follow up call back from a friendly and upbeat nurse informing me that upon further study of my X-Ray the house radiologist determined that it was not, in fact, pneumonia. In the meantime I continue to be hounded my a relentless cough that has produced enough vile phlegm to fill a large Py-Rex mixing bowl.

The worst part of this ordeal is the memories that have come with it. The cough is exponentially worse at night which does two things. First it makes getting a decent night’s sleep impossible. You wake up every hour on the hour from all the coughing, your entire chest and throat on fire and wracked by soreness—which brings me to the bad memories part. It was 23 years ago when a similar relentless nighttime cough ended up sending me to the hospital for emergency open heart surgery. A guy never forgets something like that. So, when I wake up at 2:15 with a pounding headache coughing my lungs off, I’m right back at St. Mary’s all over again for about two minutes until I snap out of it.

This morning at 4:17 I can report some progress. The volume of coughing is far less than it was two or three days ago. At night I’m sleeping two hours between waking up instead of one. I’m not as sore as I’ve been—maybe because I’ve gotten all my coughing muscles in great shape from the brutal workout load. I’ve been asked to return to PF for a follow up X-Ray either today or tomorrow, I forget which.

Pam and I have kept a safe distance throughout all of this, as safe a distance as is possible when you live in the same house. Nevertheless, she has started to have some symptoms, so far minor. I am told that I am not contagious. 

So, it’s safe to say that I didn’t have “Get a viral lung infection and cough for nine days” on my bingo card for the month of September…but here we are. I am reminded of the very real truth of that corny formulation that I’ve heard older people say over the years. Your health really is your wealth.

My Artificial Intelligence Problem

 I have not yet downloaded Meta AI. I have never once used ChatGPT. This places me very much on the outside looking in at the burgeoning artificial intelligence craze taking over the world. My wife has used this technology many times with great success, once when the cupboard was a bit bare she simply took a picture of several random ingredients she had on hand and asked ChatGPT what kind of meal she could make out of them. The result was delicious! I have also many other friends who have embraced AI, even one of the pastors at my church admitted to using it to clarify a point in a sermon. This technology has the look and feel of something that is inevitable, the sort of thing that in five years people will wonder how we ever got along without. I am not at all blind to the many benefits of AI especially in the area of medical research and high end computing. My problem is basically with the name we have given it—artificial intelligence. There is nothing at all artificial about intelligence. Its creation comes from real intelligence culled from several thousands of years of human discovery, fed into a new shiny machine. But there’s another thing about AI that gives me pause.

I am a writer. Well, not a real writer who does it for a living, but one for whom writing has been my number one hobby and closest friend for over fifty years. I believe that if you have written seven novels, twenty-five short stories and over three thousand blog posts during your life, you’re entitled to call yourself a writer. The question posed by AI for a writer is a simple one—could I submit a difficult chapter of a story I’m trying to write into an artifical intelligence program and ask it to clean up any inconsistencies with grammar or plot construction? From everything I’ve come to understand about this technology the answer is YES. Not only can it be done but it can be done in milliseconds instead of the months it might take me to work the thing out. But at that point, would it still be rightfully considered my work?

Some might say, isn’t this the same thing an editor would do? No, an editor would present problems with plot or sentence formation or dialogue to me and ask me to do a rewrite. 

But, the story would still be mine, even after the AI rewrite, so what’s the big deal?

Well, I think there’s a huge deal. No, a post-AI version of my story is no longer my story in any authentic way. I am not here suggesting that my version would be better, in fact I’m quite sure that AI could produce much smoother prose than I can since it has access to practically every word of fiction every written—and I don’t.

The joy of writing, the thing that makes it so damn fulfilling is the mystery of creating something from nothing. Every story I have ever written began as a random thought, a flash of memory, a burst of inspiration—what if?? I believe this is how it is with the creation of all kinds of art, especially music. Do we really want to turn over this process to machines? I would rather read a flawed book written by a fellow human being than a perfectly crafted one produced by a computer program. I would rather listen to a melody that sprang from the depths of the human soul than one that was crafted by a finely tuned algorithm who never felt pain, loss or joy.

 

What Would YOU Do?

 We had planned to spend a few days with our grandson this past week. It had been over 5 weeks since we last saw him and that was simply unacceptable. Two days before we were to head down to Columbia we got a text from Kaitlin that Silas had come down with big time nasal congestion after a night of coughing and was heading to the doctor’s office where she was told that he had the croup. As a bonus, Kaitlin was in the process of losing her voice. We had to make a decision. After maybe two minutes’ deliberation Pam sent Kaitlin the following text:

Me in the 1980’s: Mom, Kaitlin’s throwing up and Patrick has strep throat and a fever of 104.

Nana: No worries! Grandad and I will be there in an hour.

Of course we went down. This morning I feel like crap. I’ve got a headache, sore throat and runny nose. A crew is about to show up at my house to begin painting the exterior trim work. I’ve got a dentist appointment at 11:00 which I don’t know what to do with considering my present status. 

If I had it to do over would I still have voluntarily spent three days with a sick little boy?

Yes. A thousand times…yes.

Grandparents Vs. Car Seats

 I have long been of the opinion that not every innovation that is thrust upon us represents progress. No where is this more true than in the area of cutting edge children’s safety protocols. Pam and I just got back in town after spending several days taking care of our little grandson. While there our experience with several of these new safety innovations brought to mind that wonderful old Ella Fitzgerald song, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.

First of all there’s the question of car seats.

The business of securing a small child securely in a two ton vehicle as it barrels down the highway at 70 mph is an obviously important task. But the current level of complexity associated with these devices cannot in any cogent way be considered an improvement over the car seats of 30 years ago. For one thing, the human species has not yet evolved the third hand necessary to properly secure a child into the sixteen-point Rube-Goldberg system of engineering on display in current models. 

When I was a young father, the car seats we had were state of the art for that era which meant there was a big V-shaped harness that draped over the child after he had been placed in the seat. There was one big hook on the end of this V-shaped strap that clicked neatly into a metal clip close to the child’s crotch. Once secured the straps fell perfectly down from the kid’s shoulders, across his chest, to said crotch. The entire securing process—assuming the child wasn’t in full meltdown mode because I refused to buy her ice cream—took all of 15 seconds start to finish. 

What Pam and I encountered this weekend was the equivalent of asking a parent (or grandparent in this case) to perform advanced algebra without a calculator, while it was 95 degrees out with 100% humidity and also while your grandchild had the croup. The new regime consists of 6 different straps that must be secured to each other. Unfortunately all six of these straps happen to be located exactly where you just placed your wiggly grandchild after sitting him in the car seat. Job one is to fish all six straps out from behind a sitting child who has no insensitive to help in any way. Once all six are successfully yanked out from his nether regions you can begin the complicated system of attaching all six straps to the multi-point hooks to be found not in or around the crotch area but instead at the child’s belly button. Unfortunately getting all six to meet at this agreed upon location at the same time is next to impossible. When we were experiencing this dilemma I had just started the car and turned the air conditioner on full blast which had the effect of lowering the temperature in the back seat approximately 5 degrees …from 95 to 90…while Pam was reaching exasperation Level DefCom 5. “Its so tight!! I can’t get them to snap into place!! Even if I do, the poor child won’t be able to breathe! This is ridiculous!!!”

I unhooked my seat belt—for no discernible reason because I had no expertise to bring to bear on such a project—but I thought maybe the unclicking sound might demonstrate a heightened level of concern on my part for what she was going through back there. I should point out that during this exasperating ordeal our grandson was as good as gold, although he would have been within his rights to have been throwing the mother of all tantrums. Finally Pam remembered that there was a special button hidden in the seat under the cloth lining which when reached with that third hand I mentioned earlier lived up to its official name in the owners manual of this seat-o-pain—-the magic button. She dug around blindly under the padding of the seat, finally secured the button just about the time that the blood flow was being cut off from her hand and just like that the entire apparatus loosened, allowing her to make the 6 point click. I should point out that instead of 15 seconds, this procedure took ten minutes—if you don’t count the three years it took off of our lives.

Now…it’s true that if we had gotten in an accident, our entire car might have been demolished but that kid, in that seat was going nowhere, my friends. Of course, good luck to the policeman, or fireman responsible for removing him from the car. Would they know how to find the magic button??

Of course, I could also tell you about the lengths parents are being asked to go to secure their little ones in their high chairs—which I feel compelled to add are not hurdling down the highway at 70 mph. But that discussion will have to wait for another day.

Suffice it to say that while the Olympian distortions required to manhandle these safety features might be perfectly suited to young parents with their nimble, arthritis-free joints, it plays hell with us grandparents! But, we’re doing the best we can…and waiting for that third hand.

The Lost Art of Going to the Movies

 When I was an extremely awkward teenager growing up in Hanover County one of the most prominent forms of social cohesion and assimilation was to be found at…the movies. Except for the days when you played ball, Friday and Saturday nights belonged to a collection of movie theaters scattered around Ashland and Richmond. These were the places where dates happened. Two tickets with popcorn and a fountain drink ran you around $6.

We would eagerly await the green section’s arrival in Friday’s News Leader, where all the showtimes and movie reviews were listed. It wasn’t a question of if you were going to the pictures, it was only a question of which one and with whom.

There was the Ashland Theater which had the advantage of being down the street from Mayberry’s Ice cream and close to my home in Elmont. But if you wanted to go where the action was that would mean driving into Richmond. The wider variety of movie joints meant a better selection. There was Broad Street Cinema, Ridge Cinema, Willow Lawn and the Byrd Theater. But my go-to place was the Westhampton which had the even greater advantage of being right next door to Phil’s Continental Lounge, which sounds much more high class than it actually was. However you could get the best club sandwich in Richmond for less than 3 bucks.

What I remember the most about the movie experience back then was the almost complete absence of annoying ads before the movie started. There would normally be maybe three movie previews and if you were lucky a hilarious cartoon. But that was it.

Today, everything has changed. The overwhelming majority of movies Pam and I have seen over the past decade or so have been enjoyed from the privacy and comfort of our sofa. The popcorn is way cheaper and the floor isn’t sticky.

If you put a gun to my head at this moment and asked me to name five movies that have been released in the past year I couldn’t do it. The only one that comes to mind is The Odyssey, and the only reason I know about that one is the fact that it has managed to do something that hardly any film does these days—it has penetrated the zeitgeist, becoming part of the interminable culture wars of our time. Still…you couldn’t pay me enough money to go to one of our cineplexes to watch the thing. Too much goo on the floors, confiscatory concession prices and annoying movie-goers on their cellphones. Besides, in a couple months I can watch it at home.

But we have lost something along the way, the shared experience of the cinematic moment, the magic of the big screen…and I miss it terribly, just not enough to fork over fifty bucks to bring it back.

Although this morning I saw a preview online of a movie due to be released November 2nd…a biopic about somebody other than a pop musician—“Jimmy”, the story of Jimmy Stewart and his rise to stardom and his decision to serve his country in WWII, not as a publicity prop but as a bomber pilot over Nazi Germany. 

For this…I will risk sticky shoes.

Becoming a Helper

 Over the past few months I have become much more aware that I am no longer a young man. I know what some of you are thinking right now—what took you so long? I mean, I know how old I am. I can do the math. But I have always possessed the confidence that I was different, that I had been able to somehow mitigate the normal ravages of getting old through a combination of exercise, determination, superior genetics and several Jedi mind tricks. But I have recently learned that doing a thousand pushups and walking 60 miles every month doesn’t change the fact that you soon will enter your seventh decade. The warranty has long ago expired.

Life is harder now. I can still do almost everything I’ve always done, but now things hurt. Cutting the grass and picking up fallen pine cones in my yard makes me sore for a couple days. It’s annoying. Suddenly it seems like I have an awful lot of doctor’s appointments on my calendar. I own a blood pressure taking machine, for crying out loud.

Then there are the surprising ambushes that life throws your way, little reminders of how fast time rushes by. Like last night, for instance. 

I found myself in a crowd of wonderful people at my niece’s house where we had gathered to celebrate her son’s 16th birthday. My great nephew. I remember when he was born. I remember when he was an annoying toddler. Now he’s mostly no longer annoying. Instead he’s tall, handsome and smart. When did all of this happen? How is it possible that I even have great nephews and nieces, one of which is heading off to college in five days, another of which suddenly has obtained a…boyfriend? I am now the grand uncle of…grown adults. How is this even possible? I watched them all eating ice cream cake. I looked at my grown nieces and tried to remember what it felt like to hold them when they were babies and thought how quickly life races along.

I’m a grandfather now, aging’s fabulous consolation. I’m also retired, finally free from the pressures of earning a living. Waking up each day to a new ache or pain is annoying as hell, but there are benefits to having not yet assumed room temperature. I get to watch my grandson grow up. I get to help my kids however they need me to help them. I get to be generous whenever an opportunity to be so presents itself. I get to be the person Mr. Rogers used to tell my kids to look for.

I get to be a helper.

The Purpose of Life

 Just finished reading a book by one of my favorite writers, Dean Koontz. It wasn’t one of his best, probably wouldn’t crack my top ten of Koontz books. But like all of his work the narrative asked me to ponder an interesting question—what is my life’s purpose? Of course, Koontz isn’t the only novelist to explore this theme. It has been a staple of fiction writing since the first letters were chiseled onto stone tablets. But Dean Koontz is great at it. In this novel, A Friend of the Family, he offers the suggestion that the highest human calling is sacrificial love, spending your life’s energy pursuing the love and care of others. The author has succeeded in making me consider the question.

I am fortunate to have been born into a loving family. My life came fully loaded with people who loved and cared for me and whom I learned to love and care for in return. I did nothing to earn this great good fortune. It was simply the hand I was dealt. I could very easily have been born into chaos, hatred, violence and resentment…or even worse, great wealth, all of which would have doomed the story of my life or at the very least made a normal life nearly impossible to achieve. I was lucky, if you believe in luck, which I do not. There is no such thing as bad luck, only bad decisions. Good luck is a fiction pushed by the envious. It has been my experience in life that the harder I work the luckier I get, but that is a discussion for another day.

What of this business of life’s purpose?

As beautiful and fulfilling as familial love is, and as crucial as it is for human flourishing, there’s something else, equally crucial and fulfilling—finding other human beings in the world to love and care for. I am not here speaking of romantic love, finding your life partner. I’m talking about random people who were once strangers but become dear friends. For many of us these people arrive in our lives in the form of a college roommate, someone we meet at work, a neighbor, someone we meet at church or while standing in line at Starbucks. We never know when it will happen. Sometimes during the loneliest days of life we wonder if it will ever happen. Too often we become so jaded and scarred by life’s cruelties we are unable to even manage toleration, much less love, for our fellow human beings. If this happens to enough people the world can quickly grow dark.

As I read Koontz, his biases began creeping into the text. Soon there was an adorable dog in the middle of the story, then a creepy psychopath that made your skin crawl. Then his deep Catholic faith began to insinuate itself as he pointed out a couple of things that Jesus had to say on the subject of sacrificial love from the 15th chapter of John’s gospel—Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. He didn’t, but he could have added what Jesus said to his disciples two chapters earlier—By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

But there’s the rub. IF. 

He could have said that you love one another, as if it was the assumed outcome. But he said if which suggests to me that this whole loving each other business is our choice. We get to make the decision to be open to finding people to love and taking advantage of the gift.

Something happened to me about a year ago that came to mind while pondering Koontz’s question. I was in the cafe one morning. My daughter was four months pregnant with her first child and our first grandchild. We were all thrilled by this state of affairs but on this morning I was worried about her. I can’t remember why, maybe she had not been feeling well or maybe there had been a strange movement or lack of movement that had troubled her. Whatever the reason, that morning as I drank my coffee there was a pit of worry in my stomach. Then I saw a young woman walk past my table. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and slightly further along than Kaitlin. I had never seen her before, didn’t know her from Adam. 

It is a risky thing to approach a woman and inquire about her pregnant condition. There is the real risk that she will get creeped out by the strange man standing at her table asking how far along she is, trying to explain that his daughter is also pregnant and he just wanted to congratulate her when in fact what he wanted was reassurance that whatever his daughter was going through was completely normal. Without thinking through all the ways approaching her could go wrong, there I was, hoping for the best.

Turned out that this was her first pregnancy too. She was one month further along than Kaitlin. Almost everything Kaitlin was going through, she had also gone through and survived! Her stories comforted me. She started asking all about Kaitlin. I loved having someone to brag to about my daughter. Soon I started noticing that she came into the cafe almost as often as I did. In the weeks and months after that first encounter, we kept each other up to date on the progress of each new life and soon became friends. Now when I see her or she sees me she asks about Kaitlin and Silas and I ask her about little Chip. I see pictures of him on Facebook and smile. She is always eager to see my latest pictures of Silas. We each found someone at the Cafe who was once a stranger, but because of a random and awkward introduction became someone new that each of us could love and care for. It’s a beautiful thing.

There isn’t really a simple answer to Koontz’s question. Life has many purposes, I suppose. But you could do a lot worse than loving and caring for as many people as possible during the short whisper of wind that is our life on this planet