When it really needs to be real

Picking up a prescription at the drug store this evening I overheard the pharmacy tech talking to a coworker about her upcoming graduation. She will receive a college degree but because she took most of her classes online due to her work schedule. she's apparently been told her graduation ceremony will be online as well.

Not good enough, she said. She did real work for that degree, she wants to walk across the real stage, shake somebody's real hand, pick up a real diploma and hear the cheers of her real friends and family.

That got me to thinking. There's plenty of stuff I used to do in the real world that I now accomplish in front of a computer screen. Bill-paying, for one. Research for another -- both on topics I need to learn more about, and products I want to buy. Shopping -- that's a big one, at least for some things. I still want to try on clothes in the store, but I haven't been in a bookstore or a library in ages, because everything I used to find there, I now can get online.

But the morning newspaper? I like hearing it thump on the sidewalk before dawn, and I like holding it, scanning the headlines and sipping my coffee before the workday begins. Yeah, I'm old. I know it makes more environmental sense to read the news online, and I know it doesn't much matter what I like, there aren't enough of me to sustain the newspaper's business model. But I like the real newspaper.

I like real cards and letters. I like email, too, and I love being able to touch base with my family through text messages. But kids, if you're reading this, know that I want a real Mother's Day card, with a real note in your real handwriting. And a real hug.

It's fun watching YouTube videos, but I like being present at real concerts. I like chatting with friends and colleagues on Facebook, and I'm sure if I ever tried Second Life, I'd find it intriguing. but that can't beat an evening in the company of friends in the flesh, with a real burger, chips and beer.

Through blogs I can read about experiences I can barely imagine, like the family friend (and follower of these words) who writes so eloquently about living and working in Haiti. Her words paint poignant, breathtaking images. But I'm pretty sure it's not like the real thing, and I'm thinking her parents back in Kansas agree it's not like having their sweet daughter close by.

Those are things that really need to be real for me.

What about you?

Oh, and to the pharmacy tech at Walgreens -- I agree with you. Make 'em let you walk across that stage. You've earned the real thing.

Aporkalypse

When I was a kid, my mother told me a fairy tale about a boy who cried "wolf!" I don't recall the details, but it seems the boy repeatedly pranked his fellow citizens with false alarms about an impending wolf attack. Eventually people figured out there was no wolf and started to ignore his cries. So when an actual wolf showed up and the boy screamed "No, REALLY this time!!" nobody paid any attention.

I don't remember who the wolf in the story ate (Little Red Riding Hood, maybe?) and I certainly wish no harm to a child. But if the boy is a metaphoric reference to today's community of infotainment tv talking heads and the wolf has swine flu, I kinda hope the wolf enjoys a satisfying meal.

Because I've had it to here with the siege of media-fueled swine -- make that, N1H1 -- flu hysteria. Near as I can tell from the relatively calm updates issued by assorted public health officials, there is a reasonable level of caution being applied to the situation, and if we all were to use the brains we were born with, we'd be appropriately alert but not pandemic-panic-stricken.

Reasonable and appropriate, however, do not garner attention on the endless stream of babble that has become the 24/7 news cycle. So instead we get frantic "developing story" and "breaking news" reports.

As I type the U.S. total is (earnestly concerned brow-furrow) 160 cases. Worldwide total is now - cue the graphics package - 658 cases in 16 countries.

Yes, 658 cases out of a global population of 6.76 billion. My calculator can't even compute what an infintessimal percentage of total that is.

There aren't even 658 people living in my two-square-mile neighborhood. If I tried to convince a journalist that 658 people using my employer's product represented a trend worth reporting about, I wouldn't even get a polite hearing, much less a breathless breaking news spot on the nightly newscast.

And while the 16 deaths reported thus far are no small matter to the families and friends who loved them, according to the Worldometers statistics site (http://www.worldometers.info/) 23,000-some people around the world died today of something we pretty much already know how to prevent - hunger.

No special-report graphics for them. Nor for the 36,000 who die, on average, each year from the regular old non-newsworthy flu.

So let's have a little perspective, people. True, we don't know much about this virus. Yes, we know that in 1918, a new strain of flu had its way with a few people, went dormant for a time, then returned with a rampage that killed millions. Incidentally, one of them was my mother-in-law’s father, so trust me, I don’t take the possibility lightly.

But I think we’ve learned a few things about public health in the past 91 years. So if those who speak with reason and knowledge can be heard over the din of the flapping jaws at the news desk, if the worst happens I think we should be able to minimize the harm.

Unless by then, we’re so over the swine flu story, we don’t believe a word of it.

Meanwhile, I will wash my hands, sneeze into a tissue and ignore cable news. I suggest you do the same.

Lost in cyberspace

It's been a rainy day in my hometown, so after my aerobics class and trip to the grocery store, I settled in to spend the afternoon trying to become better familiar with, perhaps even a functioning member of, the "online community."

Several hours later I emerged with a headache, eyeballs that feel like they're bleeding and a need to experience something, anything, tangible.

I'm an introvert, so I'm okay never actually talking to anybody, and I have a raging case of context-dependency, so I can be pretty happy finding interesting articles and blog postings with links that lead to more. And I really do want to understand this online world that's developing around me, rapidly changing the way people develop, find and consume content and connect with each other.

So I posted tweets on Twitter and updates on Facebook, found several blogs to follow, shared some links with co-workers, read dozens of cyberstories. Thinking about stuff is my primary hobby, and there's plenty to think about on the world wide web.

But after all of this, I'm exhausted. I can feel my brain cells gasping for air after way too strenuous a workout. And I know I didn't even touch a sliver of the breadth and depth of what I might find of interest in cyberspace.

It's too much information, times 1,000. Maybe 1,000,000.

It all leaves me vaguely uneasy. Like I've spent the whole afternoon inside my own head, bumping up against, but not really interacting with, other people who are inside their own heads too, each of us dumping out whatever happens to be in there for all to read. It's easy to see how people can, in this environment, be less than judicious in what emits from their keyboards and get themselves worked up over perceived offenses and ignite tweetstorms. A mob mentality forged from multiple isolated souls.

Well, like I said, my brain cells are tired, and I think they're preparing to mount an insurrection against any more work today. Out there in the real world -- I just looked out the window to check and be sure it was still there -- I see a late afternoon sun peeking through the clouds. My stomach, which continues to exist in the tangible world, is beginning to signal it wants some tangible food, and Mr. James, who gives not one holy hoot about anything virtual, is requesting a walk.

Time to rejoin reality.

Get over it

This week my employer joined the growing ranks of organizations who are being forced to trim their payrolls. No telling whether my job, or those of the smart, creative people I work with, will stay or go. No telling when we'll know. It's not a unique circumstance these days, of course, but just because the list of those hit hard by the lousy economy grows longer every day, doesn't make the uncertainty any easier to deal with.

But then again, what's really different?

I go to bed at night and assume I'll wake up in the morning. I assume my family is safe. I come home and assume my house will be there, not burned down or blown away by a tornado. I drive over a bridge with no fears that it will collapse and I won't crash into something on the highway. That if I grab a hamburger from the drive-through, I'll eventually clog my arteries but I won't be afflicted today with e-coli. That if I turn the faucet, clean water will come out, or if I flip the switch, light will fill the room. That terrorists won't fly planes into my building.

None of that is certain. But if I worried about all of that, I'd spend my days in a quivering heap. And that's my inclination in this situation.

The truth is, my job isn't really any less certain today than it was a week or month or year ago. I just took it for granted, as I do so many things that aren't at all certain, and aren't even expected by many others with whom we share the planet.

So, I just need to get over it. Deliver value today. Do the best I can to help turn things around. Appreciate what we have today (and schedule that doctor appointment while I still have insurance....) Just like Mr. James, enjoy a good belly-scratch now and deal with tomorrow when it gets here.

Because one of these days, I won't wake up in the morning, and I don't want to have wasted all the time between now and then worrying about what I can't be certain about.

Facelift

Any regular visitors to this space will notice a new look today. While there's something (often, a lot) to be said for consistency, I was tired of the brown background. So I've changed it up a bit.

Fortunately for a technophobe like me, Blogger makes it r-e-a-l-l-y easy. Pick a new template, click on "save" and pouff what was old is new. Or rather, what was old still is -- there's not a bit of change in the content -- but gets to wear a new outfit.

So don't look too closely. Aging actresses who've undergone a few too many facial surgeries don't fool anyone (have you seen Joan Rivers lately? Or even the not-that-old Lara Flynn Boyle? eeeks...). Neither should the new colors and arrangements of elements on the page. It's the same old stuff in a new package.

As they say, it is what it is, with or without facelift.

Like minds, me and the Times

Thanks to my friend Patty, who sent me a link to a piece from the New York Times, titled "Life Lessons from the Family Dog" by Dana Jennings. Different dog, different situation, same idea. I've excerpted below. We are blessed by our canine companions.

Our family dog started failing a couple of months ago. Her serious health problems began at about the same time I was coping with my own — finishing my radiation and hormone therapy for prostate cancer.

Her full name is Bijou de Minuit.... She is a 12-year-old black miniature poodle, and she is, literally, on her last legs. Her hind quarters fly out from beneath her, her back creaks and cracks as she walks, she limps, she’s speckled with bright red warts the size of nickels, her snore is loud and labored (like a freight train chugging up some steep grade) and she spends most of the day drowsing on her pillow-bed next to the kitchen radiator.

She is, I realize, “just” a dog. But she has, nonetheless, taught me a few lessons about life, living and illness. Despite all her troubles, Bijou is still game. She still groans to her feet to go outside, still barks at and with the neighborhood dogs, is willing to hobble around the kitchen to carouse with a rubber ball — her shrub of a tail quivering in joy.

Human beings constantly struggle to live in the moment. We’re either obsessing over the past (”Gee, life would’ve been different if I’d only joined the Peace Corps.”), or obsessing over the future (”Gee, I hope my 401K holds up”). We forget that life, real life, is lived right now, in this very moment.

But living in the moment is something that dogs (and cancer patients) do by their very nature. Bijou eats when she’s hungry, drinks when she’s thirsty, sleeps when she’s tired and will still gratefully curl up in whatever swatch of sunlight steals through the windows.

In spending so much time with Bijou, I began to realize that our dogs, in their carefree dogginess, make us more human, force us to shed our narcissistic skins. Even when you have cancer, you can’t be utterly self-involved when you have a floppy-eared mutt who needs to be fed, walked and belly-scratched. And you can’t help but ponder the mysteries of creation as you gaze into the eyes of your dog, or wonder why and how we chose dogs and they chose us.

Good dogs – and most dogs are good dogs – are canine candles that briefly blaze and shine, illuminating our lives. Bijou has been here with us for the past 12 years, reminding us that simple pleasures are the ones to be treasured: a treat, a game of fetch, a nose-to-the-ground stroll in the park.

Simple pleasures. As I lazed and dozed at home last summer after surgery, there was nothing sweeter to me in this world than to hear Bijou drinking from her water dish outside my door. It was if her gentle lap-lapping ferried me to waters of healing. I’ll miss her.

Progress

There's an episode of the early '60s tv show The Twilight Zone that is permanently etched in my brain. I don't actually recall most of the details, but the story concerned a man who loved reading and for some reason never had time, or access to books, or something, to read. The story line set up his annoyance at whatever issues stood between him and his pleasure in reading.

At the end of the program, some awful thing, maybe a nuclear bomb, occurred, leaving him the sole human survivor. Miraculously, the books in the library had emerged unscathed as well. Nirvana!! Nobody to put demands on him, all the books and time to read them he could wish for!!

But then his glasses fell off his face and shattered... glasses he required to be able to see the words on the pages... and all the opticians blown away by the bomb.... What I clearly remember is the look on his face as he realized his fondest wish had come true yet remained beyond his grasp.

Obviously the point my youthful (at the time) brain took away from that story was to be careful what you wish for, and an appreciation for how dependent we become on the progress society makes. For every great step forward - like eyeglasses, or computers, or electricity delivered to our homes - there is a price to be paid in increasing dependence on someone else's skill and resources to give us access to those advances.

I'm thinking about that today because a last blast of winter is coming our way, with rain turning to sleet that's scheduled to become some number of inches of snow. In my 1920s neighborhood with lots of trees and overhead power lines to become coated with ice, rain turning to sleet generally means impending power outage, which past experience tells us means up to a week before crews can make repairs and get the houses on our street back online.

Earlier this week, we installed a new tankless water heater. This technological wonder heats water as it's consumed, so that you don't burn gas for the 23 or so hours a day it's not needed. It also allows a blissfully long shower, which of course negates the gas savings. But that's a function of discipline, not access, and is a story for another time.

So what does any of this have to do with the guy with broken glasses in the Twlight Zone episode?

We know from past experience how to make it through a week-long power outage in relatively good spirits. Life without tv and the computer is survivable, and we've got candles, matches, flashlights, batteries, a fireplace, books, battery-powered radio and alarm clocks.

Our saving grace in past power outages was, no matter how cold and dark it was in the house, we could always cheer ourselves up with a shower. Limited though it might have been by the function of our pathetic little hot water heater, at least it was warm.

Sadly, no more.

So if the power goes out this weekend, I'll be thinking about progress, technology, that guy in the middle of the library with broken glasses... and the luxury of a hot shower, so close, yet unattainable.