SOLSC March 31: Scary

            It feels like I skirted death today.

            I was about to cross Riverside Drive, the walk sign had just flashed on, and I took a step forward. Looking to my left, I saw a car coming up the hill. But it was not slowing down. From the sound of its engine it was speeding up. Indeed, it sped right through the red light, right through where I might well have been walking if I had assumed it would stop at the light.

            Forty years ago in May my daughter, then 10, was hit by a car on Riverside Drive, four blocks further up. That broke into my mind after the car had passed, after I crossed the Drive safely, after I sat on a bench to post to FB what had not happened. She’s recovered from her injuries, but it was a long haul. When she mentions the accident now, no one understands what she went through because she seems normal now.

            I kept seeing that silver car speed past me, past the red light, and wondered what that story was. 

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 31 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC March 30: Baseball’s Opening Day

            I know, it’s March, too cold for baseball, in the 40s. But the Yankees played San Francisco (interleague already?) in the Bronx this afternoon and won 5–0. Aaron Judge hit a home run, what else is new?

            It’s 77, in Miami where the Mets are playing the Marlins. After four innings, the Mets lead 1–0 on a sacrifice fly. (And I have to leave now to go to a storytelling event in Brooklyn, How to Build a Fire.)

            I love baseball. But I hate the TV ads for gambling apps. I really really really hate them. Their disclaimers about “gambling responsibly” are pure sugar coating. These companies make their profits on irresponsible gambling, on hooking in even smart people. For a book only partially on this topic, I recommend Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir. You barely notice the hints at gambling until near the end.

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 30 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC March 29: What Do You Do When Your Computer Lies to You?

            This is not the way I intended to spend the day. As soon as I opened my MacBook Air and restarted it, I knew there was something wrong. (I had turned it off last night to give it a rest. Computers need their sleep, just as humans do.) Computers also lie.

            When I tried to open any app, they just danced on the dock for several minutes before opening — and doing nothing. If I tried to go to my mail, I got a “Server not found” message. When I tried the browser I use for my freelance work, that gave me a “network response error.” With my home browser I got this message: Adobe Creative Cloud is needed to resolve this problem. However, it is missing or damaged.” I was directed to download and install a new copy, which I was leery of doing, since others in that company had gotten pop-up messages to download some software, which was a scam. It was time to call the HelpDesk at the company I do the freelance work for.

            The HelpDesk, however, is reachable only by e-mail, and I couldn’t access my e-mail. So I called my contact at that company, and he sent on the e-mail request. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I got the call. We then spent an hour trying various things, during which I time I learned that I could use my phone as a hotspot with cellular data on. Useful to know. The IT guy determined the problem was with my internet connection, and I had to call the company that provides my internet. I add here that throughout this ordeal, the internet icon at the top of the screen was saying I was connected — and I never was. Computers do lie.

            This call, rather, two calls, only took up half an hour. The first call reached a recording, which sent a signal to my modem to reset, and apparently never noticed that my modem was offline. That took a human to determine, on my second call. The human was a very helpful woman with noticeable Queens, or was it Long Island, accent, who told me the modem went offline at 2:30 this morning. “It went on vacation,” I said, and she laughed. Later she shared that she still has an old TV with reception from an antenna.

            The reset button solved the problem. I will try to remember that the next time this happens. 

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 29 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLSC March 28: How Technology Takes Over Our Time

1. My pharmacy sends me a text through an app.

2. I have to log in to the app.

3. I don’t remember my password, and it's not in my current list of passwords.

4a. I could go look for last year’s list of passwords in my desk

or

4b. I could press “Forgot Password”

5. I choose 4b because I don’t want to get out of my chair.

6. I have to fill out a form with my name EXACTLY as the pharmacy has it, and I’m prompted to get a pill bottle for that info, so...

7. I have to get out of my chair.

8. After I fill in my  name and birth date, I have to wait for a verification code.

9. I type in the verification code and am provided with my user name (not what I thought it was).

10. Now I have to choose a password of at least nine characters including upper and lower case letters, numbers, and other characters.

11. Once that is done, I can see the text my pharmacy sent me.

12. I have prescriptions to pick up? Now I have to call to find out what those prescriptions are.

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 28 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC March 27: Is it two words, hyphenated, or oneword?

            I’m a semiretired copy editor, and it sometimes seems that I spend half my time looking up whether a term is two (or more) words, hyphenated, or one word. There are some rules (e.g., the third word in this post has a prefix—“semi”—and most style guides say that “semi” is always closed up, creating one word). But often, all we have to do is go to the dictionary.

            Today I looked up the following words and terms:

bandleader: yes, one word

heavy-handed: yes, hyphenated

dancefloor: no, two words (dance floor)

longsuffering: no, needs a hyphen (long-suffering)

anti-poverty: no, see above about prefixes (antipoverty)

out of reach recipes: okay, “out of reach” is not in the dictionary

behind-the-scenes look: okay, “behind-the-scenes” is in the dictionary

            There’s also the issue of adverbs and adjectives, and judgment calls. For instance, “bookstore” is one word in the dictionary. But what is a “used bookstore”? A bookstore that’s been used? or a bookstore for used books? Perhaps “used-book store” makes the meaning clear.

            But is the hyphen needed here? much-needed help? I don’t think so.

            And any adverb ending in –ly never needs to be connected to an adjective. Today I removed the hyphen from “overly-conversational.”

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 27 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC March 26: Too Busy a Day

1. I wanted to go to the outdoor exercise/dance class in my neighborhood this morning — I haven’t been since the fall because it’s too cold. But during the eight-block walk, it was windy, too windy, and while it got over 60 degrees later in the day, it wasn’t there yet. I had to give up.

2. On to the farmers market, where I got my weekly supply of apples, as well as carrots and brussels sprouts — and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.

3. Next, supplies for lunch at the Lebanese supermarket. Can of chickpeas for making beet hummus. Pitas. Eggplant and chickpea salad. Tomato and cucumber salad.

4. Home to make the beet hummus. But I can’t find the recipe. I had a printout from when I first made it, but it wasn’t among my recipes. I searched through twice, until I realized I was wasting time.

5. To the computer to search for the recipe. Had to look at three or four before I found the one I wanted, at theforkedspoon.com. (Do try this, it is delicious.)

6. But when I first opened up the computer, I saw an e-mail from a friend who’d invited me to go to the theater with her. She’d already bought her ticket online, and now she was letting me know what her seat was so I could get one near her. But I was halfway through the ordering process when the website said “Error page not found.” I had no time to call the box office for help.

7. Start the hummus, then my daughter arrived. Christie was coming for lunch and the continuation of a sewing lesson.

8. But first we were attending a Zoom session of Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a writing community I’ve been part of for 10 years, and Christie also came to occasionally. Because of Zoom, today’s group had women from Los Angeles, Georgia, Alabama, and Trinidad and Tobago. We talked about our plans for National Poetry Month, and I mentioned the Golden Shovel poem form<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/at-home/golden-shovel-poetry.html> using New York Times headlines as source. One of the women on the Zoom said that based on my description of this form, she’d written a Golden Shovel poem, and it was published!

9. After the featured poet reading at the Poetry Salon, we left to get on with the sewing. Christie is making a dress from a 1950s pattern that fits her body type, but she needs guidance. She’s about 75% done, and today’s sewing created a problem that required a bit of ripping out and redoing.

10. As we moved on to the next step, I began to feel the third of what might be Covid symptoms. (I’ve still not had Covid.) The home test I was about to take had expired last November. I had to get to the nearest urgent care center, and it was going to close in 45 minutes. Christie said she’d clean up. I reminded her to take half of the beet hummus. Walked to the urgent care. They gave me both a Covid and a flu test. Both negative! Whew.

11. Walked over to Riverside Park and sat on a bench, watching the sun. Now it was much warmer than it had been in the morning.

12. After dinner, it was time to do the laundry. And write this slice. End of day.

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 26 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLSC March 24: Dancing, ’70s Style

            I’ve been reading my journals from 1975 and 1976, when I had just started working at the Village Voice. One of the things I wrote about in those journals were the Christmas parties, which later on were often held at whatever the hot club of the season was. In my mid-30s by then, I knew the only time I’d ever get into those clubs was at the Voice Christmas parties. The Limelight, the Tunnel, Heat were among them. Did we go to Studio 54? I can’t remember. The Tunnel, as I recall, was dark, so dark that a friend I’d invited and I never found each other. The music was loud, so loud you couldn’t have a conversation.

            But I didn’t go to these parties to have conversations. I was there to dance, dance, DANCE, with anyone, everyone, and if no one was available, I’d dance by myself.

            So today I went to Spotify and found a mix giving me every song that takes me back to those nights. So much so that I’ve gotten up to dance myself around my living room. Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September,” Donna Summer’s “On the Radio,” Fred Wesley’s “House Party,” Kool and the Gang’s “Fresh” (okay, that’s the ’80s), A Taste of Honey’s “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” Leo Sayer’s “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing,” CHIC’s “Everybody Dance,” Sister Sledge's "He's the Greatest Dancer," so many more.

            Maybe you have to be of a certain age for these songs to conjure memories and make you move. But if you like to dance, track these down on Spotify or YouTube, and maybe you’ll be up and dancing too. 

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 24 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC March 23: U.S. Medical System Sucks, part 1,234,567

            I had a colonoscopy and endoscopy done on February 14, by a doctor in a different hospital system than my primary doctor. (I’m fine.) I asked the center where the test was done to fax the reports to my primary doctor. 

            A few days ago, my doctor e-mailed me that she had not yet gotten the reports. I just spent almost 20 minutes on the phone with the hospital system trying to speak to someone who could fax the reports to my doctor. Here’s how it went.

            1. I call the center where the procedures were done. A recording offers me several options, one of which is “prescription refills and test results.” I’m not sure that’s who I should talk to, perhaps I should have pressed “all other requests.” This offers me one of the two options, so here I press “test results.” The human who answers the phone asks who the doctor was who did the procedure and directs me to call that doctor’s office and ask for Veronica. However, the phone number she gives me answers with a recording saying it is the Men’s Health Clinic — clearly not for me.

            2. I get the phone number for the doctor who did my procedure from my phone contacts. The human who answers says this is not the right office and transfers me to...

            3. Some other office, where the human who answers says she is not the right person and transfers me to...

            4. Some other office, where the human who answers says she is not the right person and transfers me to...

            5. What I think may be the hospital’s main switchboard because it rings for a whole minute until a very harried voice answers with the name of the hospital and “please hold,” where I hold for three minutes, then hang up in disgust.

            6. I go back to Step 1, calling the center where the procedures were done. This time, a human answers immediately. After I explain my request she starts to speak and I assume she is about to transfer me, so I interrupt, perhaps rudely, to say, “Before you transfer me, I’ve already been transferred five times...” and she says, “I’m not about to transfer you.” She then asks my name and birthdate (the phone ID for all medical calls) and says she will send my request to Medical Records, but “he”doesn’t have a direct line. “He”? Medical Records is one person?

            She then asks if I have MyChart, which of course I do. What person seeing a doctor connected to a hospital system these days doesn’t have MyChart? If I have MyChart, I can go in, print the report, and fax it myself.

            Of course I can do that. And remove one more task from the provider and give one more task to the patient/client. I suppose some people might find this more convenient, but I find it more burdonsome.

            That’s it for the day.

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SOLSC March 22: Unusual Art

            Paper dresses? Satiric ceramics? Art or craft? All of these are on display at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design — and I went to see them this afternoon with a couple of friends.

            The paper dresses were the oddest. These were a fad in the late 1960s; I vaguely remember them and thinking this was a ridiculous waste. The idea was here was fashionable clothing that saved money because you didn’t clean them, but you’d wear them a few times, a couple of times, and then you could throw them away. This was the original “fast fashion.” And they weren’t actually made of paper, but of fabric made from a combination of fibers, mostly artificial like rayon, that might include fibers used in paper.

            The simple A-line dress of the mid-’60s was easily and quickly made and perfect for this new fabric. The museum has several examples of these, some of them quite lovely, others rather kitschy.

            The ceramics on exhibit are part of the Funk Movement, an art movement of the 1960s and ’70s, mostly in Northern California. The works here are often quite witty, though the humor can also be sexist. But this exhibit includes pieces by women that are clearly feminist. Here are some examples. 

            The “Craft Front & Center offers pieces from the museum’s permanent collection. I loved the denim vest covered with buttons, not least because it gave me an idea what to do with the many political buttons I have. This amazing sculpture looks like marble, but it’s actually horse chestnut wood, and beautiful, and you may forget to wonder where on the tree the piece came from.

(Blogger won't let me put these images next to each other. Bad Blogger.)

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 22 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC March 21: An Irish Literary, Artistic, and Musical Salon

            This evening I attended the biweekly Irish American Writers and Artists salon. A couple of writers in my writers’ group are members, and there’s always at least one good reading, if not more.

            Tonight there were readings of novel excerpts, a couple of poets (one very funny), a singer-songwriter with possibly autobiographical songs, and haunting photographs of dancers in their 80s and 90s. The salon was held at an event space in a local restaurant, with quite good bar food. When the waiter or busboy didn’t fully close the sliding door, one or another attendee had to close them to block the hum of diners' conversations in the rest of the restaurant.

            The Irish American Writers and Artists was cofounded in New York City in 2008 by Malachy McCourt, Frank McCourt’s brother. (You may have learned much about Malachy’s early life if you’ve read Frank’s Pulitzer-winning book, Angela’s Ashes.) Malachy has had a varied career: part owner of a couple of bars in Manhattan, a stint on a TV soap opera playing a bartender, and co-hosting a radio show on publicly funded WBAI. The New York Times recently ran a profile, possibly to publicize that while he had entered hospice care in summer 2022, a few months later he was removed from hospice; he did not behave like a dying man. Malachy usually attends the salon and closes out each session. Tonight he noted that he was now 91, and fully intended to live to 100. And then, he said, “I will hand in my notice.”

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 21 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLSC March 20: Balancing Expenses

            Do you balance your credit card statement?

            I do. I am obsessive about it. Until the pandemic, my credit card was used mostly for expensive items. If I had dinner with a friend, I paid cash. If I went to the movies, I bought my ticket with cash. Books, groceries, dry cleaning, all paid with cash.

            But at the beginning of the pandemic, we didn’t know how it spread, so we didn’t know whether going to the bank to get cash was healthy. And so much that we needed was now ordered online and delivered, thus paid for by credit card. My credit card became my prime method of payment for pretty much everything.

            Today I spent almost an hour going over my credit card statement. First, I checked each of the receipts I have against the amounts on the statement. Then I looked at the remaining amounts to make sure I knew what they were: automatic monthly payments for subscriptions, farmers’ market payments (they don’t give paper receipts), online donations.

            Every now and then, there’s a charge I can’t remember. This month it was something called Jewish World Watch. The amount looked like it might be a donation, but for what? I don’t remember this organization. However, the statement contained a phone number, so I called it. And without much of a wait, I reached a woman named Jan. She had a record of my online donation, and it was for medical supplies to Syria. Of course — this was a Jewish organization providing support to Syrians affected by the earthquake that hit along the border of Syria and Turkey back in February. Jan e-mailed me a copy of the receipt, and everything was cool. 

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 20 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC March 19: Yet Another Movie

            One of the many groups I belong to is a movie discussion group. We all agree on a movie, see it on our own time, then meet once a month to discuss it. The people in the group are a very mixed bag: a retired philosophy profession, a retired social worker, a retired art history professor, a former theater journalist, the French wife of a political science professor. Some are so sure of their own opinions that it’s hard to have a discussion with them.

            Today we met via Zoom to discuss Women Talking. I was the one who suggested this film, and I really liked it. The basic story is based on a novel drawn from true events: women in a fundamentalist religious community in Bolivia are raped by men in the community. When the men are caught and arrested, the women must decide what to do when the men are bailed out and return to the community: do nothing, stay and fight against these men, or leave. Representatives of three families meet in a hayloft and over the course of a day discuss and argue over what to do. Because women in this community are never taught to read or write, they ask the man who teaches the boys to take the minutes of their discussion, which offers one possible male figure who sees the women as whole human beings.

            One family (led by the character played by Frances McDormand) leaves the discussion right away because they want to “do nothing,” forgive the men and stay without any criticism of what the men have done. The remaining women have varying personalities and varying thoughts about what to do. One woman is so angry she is afraid that if she stays she will murder one of the men. One woman proposes that they stay and start a new religion created by women and focused on love; the angry woman can’t take her seriously because she’s too idealistic.

            The film has a voiceover narrator who is one of the children listening in on the discussion and sometimes taking part. In her voiceover she points out how the women never talked about their bodies; with no language to describe what’s happened to them, there can be only silence, which explains why the attacks haven’t been revealed before.

            Over the course of the day, the women offer different opinions; argue with each other, sometimes heatedly; change their minds; use their faith to support varying points of view. I am not a person of faith, and this film reinforced my impression that people can make religious language — prayers, quotes from the Bible, as here — mean whatever they want it to mean. The women have been trained to believe that the rules of the community are God-given. The women now feel that their faith is stronger than the rules.

            The film led to some heated discussion among our group as well. One woman considered the religious community a “cult,” which us to an extended conversation about the meaning of “cult” and how widely the term could be extended. Obviously, there’s not a lot of action in this film, but I will say that watching women talk and think can be action itself, whether or not it leads to more conventional action.

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 19 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC March 18: Baseball Season Looms

(if you are not a baseball geek, this may not be for you)

            ... and my Mets fever is rising. It has been tempered somewhat by the recent season-ending injury to Edwin Diaz, Mets closer extraordinaire — injury suffered while he was celebrating (!) his Puerto Rican team’s victory in a World Baseball Classic game last week. He may have been personally responsible for the Mets winning 20 to 25 of their 101 wins.

            I was thinking of all this today as I took the train to Norwalk, Connecticut, to meet a group of other Mets fans who have been gathering annually for at least 35 years, just before the season starts. Our organizer is Dave G., the head back in the late 1980s of a group of Mets fans who kept score according to a scoresheet designed by baseball historian and sabrmetrician Bill James. In the beginning, each fan committed to score 10 to 15 games a season, fax them to a central location where the marks on the scoresheet were converted to computer data, and got paid $10 per game.

            I got involved around 1990, mostly because I loved the scoresheet. (While the standard scoresheet made it easy to see who had scored a run, this new one made it easy to see who got the RBI. Moreover, this new sheet provided space to keep track of balls and strikes, something I had done in my own invented scoring system before I knew a standard one existed.) A year or so later, the central location and payment disappeared (this particular business model that intended to sell this data to teams or sports media didn’t work out), but Dave continued to convene us and a varying number of Mets fans every March. We usually met at microbreweries in New York or southern Connecticut, though for a few years we met at Bobby Valentine’s bar in Stamford, even inviting Valentine himself to regale us with tales of his career as a player and manager.

            Essential elements of every gathering were postmortems of the previous season, guesses for how many games the Mets would win in the upcoming season, and Dave’s devilish trivia in a Jeopardy format. Questions might include “what player hit more than 30 doubles every year between 1900 and 1907?” or “what pitcher had 175 strikeouts in 1931 at age 31?” Questions were not always this esoteric, but they did require more than a casual knowledge of baseball history. I have a more erratic knowledge and usually score at or near the bottom of this trivia contest.

            Today’s meeting was at an Irish bar, and as it happened, Ireland was playing England in a Six Nations Grand Slam competition in Dublin. That game was on three large screens suspended from the ceiling, and the bar was packed. At every good move or goal or point scored by Ireland, the place broke into cheers; when the game was over, music was piped in, very loud, and voices of patrons continued very loud. While the 14 of us ate platters of bar food and drank pints of beer, we were able to talk to the person next to us or across the table. But the trivia contest required Dave to repeat his question numerous times, and if one person didn’t get the right answer, the rest of us couldn’t hear the wrong answer and maybe repeated it. However, it was fun to see old friends and meet new ones. And baseball season, with a host of new rules, opens in less than two weeks.

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 18 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!