The First Three Weeks of October

 The middle of September is when I begin scanning the 10-day weather forecasts for Camden, Maine. We will be spending the first three weeks of October at the lake in Searsmont. This morning when I checked, the high temperature for the next 10 days was in the 60’s with lows between the upper 40’s and low 50’s.

Fall in Maine is a completely different world than the summer. For one thing by October many businesses on the coast have shut down. Even though the leaf-peepers crowd comes, the traffic is much less than the summer months. The worst thing about the Fall trip is that most of the ice cream shops have closed. But most of our favorite shops and restaurants are still open and it’s awfully nice not having to fight for a parking space on Main Street.

It’s the leaves that make it special. The lake becomes lined with bright colors of orange, red and yellow.. On clear mornings the colors reflect off the water and it’s often hard to tell what’s real and what is a reflection. When I’m out fishing in the kayak I’ll see a lone red leaf floating past me and no matter how many times I’ve seen them, it still makes me smile.

We spend less time on the lake in the Fall, not because it’s not delightful, but because there are so many festivals to attend, orchards to explore and hikes to take. One year Pam and I decided to make the 6 mile round trip walk from Camden harbor to Rockport, a trek that hugged the coastline almost the entire way. It was in the middle 50’s that day with bright sunshine. It might have been the best single day we have ever spent in Maine—although the hike featured both of us taking a spill along the way. Luckily neither of us were hurt, and each fall prompted the other to laugh out loud! 

Another wonderful difference between summer Maine and fall Maine is that in the fall each night there’s a fire. I can’t count the number of times we have snuggled up on the couch, fire blazing in the fireplace watching October baseball. Nothing in this world is better than that.

So for the first three weeks of October we will spend all of our money in Mid-Coast Maine. We will immerse ourselves in the created beauty all round us. We will drive all the backroads of Waldo, Knox and Lincoln counties marveling at the colors. We will eat like Kings. We will break out our long sleeve shirts and long pants. And, we will be grateful for every day we get to live in such a place.

Grandparent’s Day

 Several weeks ago our daughter told us that there was a Grandparent’s Day planned at Silas’ daycare whereby grandparents were invited to join their grandchild for a special lunch time together. Would we be interested in participating, she asked. Are you kidding? Of course we would. We immediately made plans to make the six hour drive down the night before, then show up at the event, after which we would be allowed to take him home for the weekend. Neither of us has been to St. Andrew’s Daycare. We’ve seen pictures of Silas doing various things there but we don’t know his teachers or any of the other kids in his class. We were thrilled at the prospect.

Yes…we didn’t think twice about making a six hour drive to spend thirty minutes eating lunch with our grandchild. Would it be easier if we lived closer? Yes. But just because something isn’t easy doesn’t mean you don’t do it.

Then, I get sick with whatever the hell it is that I have, and despite our best efforts, Pam now has some form of the same affliction. The result of this unhappy situation is that we will not be able to make it to Grandparent’s Day. Pam waited until yesterday to break the news. She explained the situation via text. I read the text while sitting in the sun of the patio at Hope Church. It was then that the strangest thing happened. All of a sudden I found myself fighting back tears. I mean, I was by myself on the patio, trying to figure out what was wrong. This is new territory for me. I’m not a cryer. I never cried when my kids were born. When my Mom passed away I didn’t shed a tear until six months later while on a treadmill at the Marriott Hotel on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Here’s what happened. As soon as I read Pam’s text a vision popped into my head. I saw a group of toddlers sitting on picnic blankets surrounded by grandparents on the green astroturf of St. Andrew’s play area…and off to the side there was Silas all alone. The image devastated me. What I didn’t know was that at that very moment Pam was having the same vision and was just as heartbroken as I was. Thankfully a few minutes later our daughter replied that she 100% understood and for us not to feel bad because Jon had decided he would meet Silas for lunch on that day so he wouldn't be alone. This news came as a tremendous relief to us both.

It wasn’t until later that I thought of how ridiculous we were being. Silas is only 15 months old. When he grows up he will have absolutely zero memory of a random lunch date in 2026. The fact that his grandparents weren’t there with him won’t even register in his consciousness. So, why did the thought of not being there for him bring such instant and deep despair? Honestly, I don’t know. It feels silly now that a day or so has passed. But as it was happening it was as real an emotion as I have ever felt, something close to a fear of letting him down.

The list of things over which I have no control is long and forbidding. Pam and I will have limited influence in Silas’ life. He’s just beginning, we are closer to the end than the beginning. But there are things over which I do have control. I can make sure that when there’s a special event—we are there. If he’s ever in a play or has a game, if there’s a party, if he is graduating from something—we will be there. You just can’t miss the occasion, the assembly, the celebration.

Or…grandparent’s day.

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.