Hillary Clinton

Yes, I will mark your name on the ballot.

Please, please do not think for a minute that I am voting for you. As has often been the case in my life, I am voting pragmatically rather than hopefully.

You see, I know personally the truth behind only a couple of your claims but in both instances, you vastly overstated your advocacy for the downtrodden and your own achievements on their behalf. So I have to wonder about the rest.

So, I can’t trust you.

But the thing is, I think you’re even more of a pragmatist than am I. And while I’m willing to accept claims that you’re a hard worker, I don’t for a minute believe you will try to do it all yourself. And I view that as a compliment.

It’s important for a leader to realize they can’t know all, do all, adjudicate every argument. It’s important for a leader to rely on staff and advisers and subject matter experts. And from what I know of you, you will likely do that.

I believe you will lead a team that will bring some balance back to the Federal judiciary. And I believe you will listen to people on matters and issues about which you simply can’t ever know enough because no one person can know it all.

I’m glad we’re finally electing a woman. But make no mistake – there are other women I wish had been on the ballot. Still, a woman’s perspective is welcome, so please do remember that constituency.

BTW, you should really send a fruit basket to Donald Trump. He has given you the great gift of being allowed to run against a candidate for whom no thinking and caring person could ever vote. 

Ultimately, it is likely that fact that will land you in the White House.

I believe you’ll be elected. But don’t count on a second term. You have to actually earn that because next time around the Republicans will work very hard not to supply you with such an easy target as The Donald. If you do, if you actually earn this office I will more gladly vote for you next time around.

But you do need to earn it. Get busy.

Because I want so badly to be wrong about you. 

Garage sale

We are holding a garage sale today.

Of course, my use of the first person plural is, shall we say, figurative. The truth is that Mary, One, and Boyfriend Of One are holding a garage sale whilst I sit in my comfortable office chair in my comfortable office, writing about said event. You see…

I don’t do garage sales.

I am happy to help find unused or used-to-near-extinction or ugly or even fugly items to offer for sale. I am willing to help move junk – er, make that fine vendables – out to the driveway. I offer wisdom as to how to set things up and I occasionally saunter outside to nod and make unsolicited comments to those doing the actual, you know, work. But I don’t actually take part in the selling phase of operations.

Why, you might ask? Simple…

I don’t do garage sales.

For one thing, I am uncomfortable with the whole haggling nature of these events. I would be sorely tempted to offer the whole shebang to the first prospective customer to arrive with an empty pickup truck for five dollars cash money on the sole and non-negotiable condition that they take it all, take it now, take it far away, never to return. This, however, is not Mary’s preferred sales technique and I’m fairly certain she would express her dismay in no uncertain terms.

Then there’s the customer who wants to purchase the lightly used Samsung tablet for twenty dollars. Yeah, that’ll happen! I’d sooner donate it to the school – hey, that’s an idea! (More frowns from my beloved.)

And there’s the wanderer who somehow makes it past the hanging tarp to explore my actual garage, which at this point contains nothing with which I’m willing to part. Except maybe the chipper. Yeah, I’d sell the chipper. It’s a pain to start and requires actual work to use. Now THAT you can have for twenty!

Let’s face it: I am neither interested in nor am I competent at the operation of garage sales. And that’s why…

I don’t do garage sales.

Glad my beloved does, though. Lots of junk moving in a satisfactory direction. That would be, out the door. 

Bird's eye view

Flying eastward over the Cascades on a recent morning, the combination of sun angle and my plane’s altitude provided the perfect moving postcard view of the terrain features. I found myself looking down from above the peaks and ridges with just the right shadowing to reveal every feature, nook, and also, cranny of this grand mountain range.

Now, before I start sounding too much like a travelogue, allow me to admit that my words do no justice to the quality of the view. That said, please believe that the view was worthy of a much better notice / describer than I and that I so wish each and all of you could have shared the experience.

I’m always a bit surprised and thrilled to my bones at the number and clarity of mountain-top lakes in this region. Yes, the ones nestled in lower valleys are lovely but the ones that catch my eye are the smaller, usually circular catchments right at the peaks.

One of the lakes I spot this morning is maybe a few hundred yards across, edged by the merest fringe of dirt before the old growth forest begins. The deep blue – not to mention the snow on the peaks around it – offers testimony to the frigidity of the water, even now in mid-July. I’d give anything to be on it in my kayak but fortunately, it is not accessible for such activities, given the density of forest, steepness of the slopes and lack of a road anywhere near. I say fortunately, because given easier access this gem would surely be spoiled by the incursions of the likes of moi with our boats and coolers and campfires.

Gawd, but I love where I live. 

Understanding the inputs

I’ve had an odd combination of inputs of late.

My mother-in-law passed away. She was a good person and an important contributor to the life and lives of our little clan. She was a teacher to our daughters, helping them understand much more than how to crochet or reduce cherries for pie filling or make caplets. She was the center of her family and even in dying did much to pull her children together. We miss her and will continue to miss her.

The horror that is national politics is on all our minds today. And it goes beyond Trump and Clinton, although each of them in their own way represents the worst we have to offer in the realm of leadership. The worst aspect of our political torment is the enforced realization that the evil that inflicted us before the Sixties remains rampant. It would be simple to blame the hateful rhetoric on the likes of Cruz and Ryan and Limbaugh. But rhetoric requires an audience and the rabble standing with Trump are not of Trump’s creation.

A free press - so necessary to the maintenance of an informed electorate - itself depends for its validity on both competence and positive intent. Both attributes seem sadly lacking in the ‘journalists’ of today. I’ve nothing against advocacy but when advocacy is disguised as information we all suffer. So I watch the political falderal and I’m at a loss to determine the proper course. Not because I can’t trust this candidate or that but more because I can’t trust much of the ‘information’ I’m receiving about any of them.

My daughters are both going through changes in their lives that will alter their futures and by extension, Mary’s and mine. No judgment, no good or bad. But the future will diverge from the past.

I’m getting older and while I’ve long since accepted mortality, I can’t as readily accept the end of my ability to contribute. So, do I work harder or faster or both? And can I work harder or faster or both?

The passing of Elie Wiesel has affected me more than I would have imagined. I’m re-reading Night to try to understand exactly why. A wonderful, crucial human being but why is his passing so viscerally important to me? I hope to figure that out because I suspect that in this case, knowledge might bring wisdom.

Friends are going through, well, stuff and I hope for them. So much, so sincerely do I hope for each and all of them.

As our ability to gather data expands exponentially, our ability to absorb and understand what the data mean is steadily diminished. But how do we choose which data to try to understand? How do we conduct the triage?

DO we even know what success would look like? Do any of us truly recall Original Position?

I don’t have answers. But I have inputs and I like to think I’m starting to understand the questions.

For now, that will have to be enough. 

Dodging bullets

I went to the doctor today. To a specialist to find out if the ‘thing’ my GP was worried about was going to turn out to be malignant. 

Good news: Benign

Bad news: Everyone doesn’t get this reprieve.

Right on the heels of the WHEW!!!, I found myself thinking of the many people who received less desirable news from their practitioners.

Don’t get me wrong, no guilt here. I didn’t think why-me-and-not-them although I could have, since I haven’t always done the smart thing when it came to health management. But still, why them?

No answer. What is, is. What is not, is not. Is that it? It is. (With a nod to Daniel Keyes and Flowers for Algernon)

But still.

I was terrified, afraid even to tell Mary how afraid I was. The last two days were mental torture. Surely, one of these times – no, don’t go there.

Not this time.I am thinking tonight of the people who got bad news today.

I’m so sorry.

A disturbance in the Force

Elie Wiesel has died.

He was a hero to me, and the mentor I never met.

After surviving the holocaust, he spent a lifetime trying to convince men and women of goodwill to speak out because silence always favors the oppressor. And he reminded us that to be a bystander is to be part of the problem.

He judged an essay I wrote once and I have to say it was a peak experience to know he'd read my writing. And frightening beyond words.

He taught me as he taught the world. And he has died but he will never be gone.

Please read his trilogy. Do that for me.

But even if not, please read Night, the first of the three. Do that for yourself and for humankind. If you haven't read this book, you might be in danger of believing the Holocaust can't happen again, here.

Browsing 101

I’ve been working on framing content, delivery and medium for a training project at work and it got me to thinking (yes, I know, a miracle – very funny!).  Anyhoo, during the week long drive with Homer (not his actual name) I was reminded that the challenge of providing teaching and training for folks living with certain types of disabilities is really no different from finding ways to effectively communicate with gen X, Y, Z, etc. It’s about directing their attention to things that matter. And that’s not always easily accomplished.

It has become emblematic of folks under 30 – well, now under 40, I suppose – that their lives revolve around information that comes to them through various electronic devices. Of course, through any channel or device from YouTube to one’s personal communicator, there are seemingly infinite applications vying for one’s attention at any given time. And many of these seem to be in the business of truncating communication. (I could get all snarky here about a certain candidate’s penchant for using Twitter but the problem there is not so much about compression as incomprehension, so…  let’s just move on, shall we?)

In order to ‘access the information,’ one must first know it is there and that it is potentially of interest.  Communicators of various stripes have understood this for many generations.  From bills posted on street corners to broadsheets with bold type headlines, we’ve understood the need to draw the audience in. Book dust covers, theatre marquees and billboards all play to this need. The book cover fulfills two functions – announcing content and inviting desire. We walk into the book store, pick up the book we came for and then browse our areas of interest for covers that might pique our interest. And there’s the dust cover, trying its hardest to make us pause and pick up this book.

‘Browsing’ has taken on a whole new meaning for the digitally directed generation. Which books or other content is presented for consideration is defined by algorithms set up to predict your preferences, in order to enhance success of the browsing session. (‘Success’ being a subjective term – for me, it means I find something of interest while for the algorithm setter-upper and the site host it means  that I might purchase the item I find of interest – these being very different but not necessary mutually exclusive definitions.) But there seems to be an inherent limitation in browsing as our children are coming to understand it.

When one’s browsing is directed, even in a well-intentioned way by an algorithm set up to drive sales, it will necessarily tend to lead us toward those ideas or products for which it assumes I’ll feel an affinity. This is why I get so many popups for sexual enhancers and sports crapola. The algorithms have figured out my gender and age and probably a zillion other characteristics and have tailored their marketing to me accordingly. (Joke’s on them if they think I’ll ever voluntarily view a professional sports event and Casanova I‘m not, but they keep trying.)

To be fair, this was already a problem with the traditional book store, since we tend to look for what we already know we like – novels or historical fiction, how-to or new age. Of course, in a book store we have to walk through the stacks to get to our chosen area, whereas computerized shopping takes us as efficiently as possible to an item we might actually, you know, pay for.

Okay, enough with the rant. Where is this going?

I recently spent a week in a car with a younger man who by date of birth could be my grandchild. This is a guy who is very much in sync with the modern digital milieu and I worried about how well we would engage when his attention was taken up with the world as defined within a two-inch-square screen.

Turns out I need not have worried – Homer is a very interested guy, curious about more than what’s trending and willing, even eager to get out and look.  I am delighted to report that he spent more time holding his camera than his cell phone. He did a lot of the driving and when I drove all day, a misplaced charging cord ensured that his cell phone use was foregone for hours at a time. But I sense that even had he been the passenger with a fully functional i-Thing for all seven days, he would not have spent much time texting or trolling.

He wondered about farm fields and crops, animals we saw, geologic formations and towns and all the stuff that you see on a road trip if you just look up. And he found things of interest at every turn, as did I. We joked about our stops at identified oddities such as the UFO Welcome Center, but we actually spent most of our time noticing and discussing more mundane – and infinitely more fascinating – sights. The incredible straightness of a farmer’s rows. Why cattle on a beef farm are counted in pairs.  The architecture of a town, the number of churches, the sense of welcome (or not) we got from the places we stopped...

Stuff. Interesting stuff. Stuff that no algorithm would likely have led us to.

We truly had a wonderful time and I yearn to know that other folks his age would stop texting long enough to understand what they’re seeing.  Windows may be old tech, but they are a vastly underutilized tool, methinks. (That’s windows, lower case w, of course.)

My buddy Sheila frequently posts pics of her world travels and she’s quite adept at capturing a sense of place. I wonder how many people these days ever just turn around and look. Clue: It’s about the place, not about the fact that you’re in front of it. Take a cue from Sheila and think about what you’re seeing.

And I also wonder:  when eyes, ears and the tactile sense are all engaged by an electronic device, how does the world around us compete for our attention? Because to me, it’s far better to be interested than interesting, and I’m not sure the selfie-takers get that.

Anyway, it was a wonderful trip.

And I’m an old Fudd. But then, you knew that.