(g)Old and Obsolete

    It happened again, my laptop somehow crashing in the middle of an update (you know those warnings from Windows to "not turn off your computer" while it updates, which is great unless your computer decides to shut itself down); anyway a lot disappeared once again.  And yes, I did have backups from several sites so photos and documents and such were all "saved" but enough was lost to have Google print out an entire 12-pt., single-space sheet of paper of those "apps" and programs that had vanished: Visual C, Chrome, Acrobat, Acronis, Mozilla, Norton, Western Digital, Sticky Notes, bookmarks, and on it went.  But as I reloaded what I could, I realized that trying to recapture what I had lost was a bit like mentally rebuilding an inventory of your possessions after a house fire...what books were on the shelves, what papers where in the desk, what was in those file cabinets, what hung on the walls, what clothes were there?  Soon I took it a step farther and tried to summarize the books, both print and audio, I had just finished.  What did I remember from them?  Ask me about a book from last month and my high points would drop to just a few things; but go back even further and I'd likely give you a one-sentence summary minus all the details.  And as I grow ever older it seems a bit like that in life; such grand memories of many things but tally them up on a few sheets of paper and stack them  alongside all the days that I've been lucky enough to be alive, and well...let's just say that those empty pieces of paper would tower skyscraper high above the few written sheets in my hand.

    As such, I have only praise for writers who can capture such "memories" so vividly; and there are a lot of terrific writers out there no matter your taste.  As in most fields, from athletes to artists, the terrific, talented, and sometimes lucky ones jump out at you.  Here's how Rick Bragg captured his aunt in his recent book, Where I Come From: Like most Southerners in old age, she was perhaps most comfortable in the past, but not in a search for some doomed ideal.  She opened her photo albums and drifted back in time, touching on the people she loved like a child tapping a picket fence with a stick.  She talked to my momma every night at nine, and over the years it became the official end of the day; everything after that was leaning toward tomorrow.  She and my uncle never had children of their own, and never had a day without them.  You probably had one just like her.  She was that woman you see in the grocery store or the Walmart or restaurants, the one that people of my age say of, as they go by: "You know, she helped raise me."  And they all but bow their heads when they say it.  It might be a grandmother, or a godmother, or just the old woman down the road, who watched over them, one eye on As the World Turns as they pushed a toy truck across her linoleum floor, one shoe off, apple sauce on their jumper, and crackers in their hair.  Their names became shorthand for an unsecured loan on date night, or a last-minute haircut in the kitchen, so we would not so out into the world looking like a Philistine.  Blood was everything.  She forgave us, my brothers and me, almost every stupid thing we ever did, yet would not have cable TV in her house, because of the wickedness therein.  She died with me owing her about two thousand dollars, in hamburger money alone.

    Here's another, the best selling author Karen Joy Fowler introducing some musings by Ursula Le Guin: ...Le Guin is not predictable.  She might say instead that "old age is for anyone who gets there."  Or that "fear is seldom wise and never kind." ...For the seeker, the answer is less important than what the seeker does with the answer.  I don't know what the important part is for the sage.  Le Guin suggests that it might just be breakfast.  Today the trip to the Le Guin cave is less arduous but no less dangerous than the archetypal climb to the mountaintop.  You must cross the Wikipedian swamp, with its uncertain footing.  Tiptoe by any and all comments sections so as not to wake the trolls.  Remember, if you can see them, they can see you!  Avoid the monster You Tube, that great eater of hours.  Make your way instead to the wormhole known as Google and slide on through.  Land at Ursula Le Guin's website and go directly to the blog to see her most recent postings.

    And Le Guin's opening?  I never wanted to blog before.  I've never like the word blog -- I suppose it is meant to stand for bio-log or something like that, but it sounds like a sodden tree trunk in a bog, or maybe an obstruction in the nasal passage (Oh, she talks that way because she has such terrible blogs in her nose).  I was also put off by the idea that a blog ought to be "interactive," that the blogger is expected to read people's comments in order to reply to them and carry on a limitless conversation with strangers.  I am much too introverted to want to do that at all.  I am happy with strangers only if I can write a story or a poem and hide from them behind it, letting it speak for me.  So though I have contributed a few bloglike objects to Book View Cafe, I never enjoyed them.  After all, despite the new name, they were just opinion pieces or essays, and writing essays has always neem tough work for me and only occasionally rewarding.

    Many of my friends continually remind me to get rid of my "old" things and ways: get rid of my heavy laptop (okay I did order a newer, lighter version which is about 1/3 the weight of my existing one although I did so reluctantly since my "old" one was and is working fine, other than crashing every now and then, AND has an optical drive); toss out my CDs and DVDs and my "record" albums (not happening, although my library is doing exactly that as their audio books --on CDs-- are filling their sale shelves); get into Bitcoin or Coinbase or the even riskier Dogecoin (also not happening although since our dollar has no gold backing, it's basically the same imaginary thing); get a new 5G phone so you can do everything on it (okay, my carrier gave me a free one so I'll give it a try although unlike "everyone else," I'll still avoid banking and stock trades and sending important documents on it); and the most common advice I hear, why keep writing because "nobody reads blogs anymore."  Brutal.  

    I would often tell and then send my friends some of those sale audio books, only to realize that for the most part they couldn't play CDs (my friend had to buy a "new" CD player for $19, a closeout item and apparently purchased in the nick of time).  Forget about cassettes or those VHS tapes (long gone unless you explore what a thrift store has to offer).  My "burned" copies of lectures and songs and books now must head onto a flash drive or a SSD microchip (dang, where did that tiny thing go as it disappears down a crack in the desk drawer).  The photos and songs and music that once cluttered up my shelves and storage drawers were at least visible.  But when they are now represented only as a "folder," and only sometimes with a date or a subject (under that "rename" category), they become even more of a stranger.  Almost better when they disappear because like a robbery in the night, I soon don't realize what's missing.

    By now you're likely dividing into your respective camps, either joining my other friends in advising me to "get with the times," or scratching your head and saying to yourself "what the heck is he talking about?"  No matter, my desk remains cluttered, my backups of backups seeming to highlight my efforts to preserve memories.  But in the end, it (and me) will be all gone anyway, my body joining the estimated 100 billion others who have already done their time on this planet.  And the surprising thing is that I'm re-evaluating how to offset my stay here.  James Hamblin wrote that a single teaspoon of formaldehyde would be enough to finish me off; and yet we throw 2 liters of it into every body we embalm and thus into the earth (the chemical is banned in much of the world but not in the U.S.).*  Added Sue Black in her book, in this instance talking about the burial process in the U.S.: The 30 million feet of wood, 1.6 millions tons of concrete, 750,000 gallons of embalming fluid and 90,000 tons of steel that are buried underground in the United States alone are a stark illustration of its polluting effects...Every cremation uses the equivalent of about 16 gallons of fuel and increases the global emission of mercury, dioxins and furans (a toxic compound).  A broad estimate suggests that if you accumulated the amount of energy expended on cremations in one year in the USA alone, you could fuel a rocket for eighty-three return trips to the moon.  

     Yikes!  Why is this so fascinating to me at this point in my life, besides the fact that I am indeed much closer to my clock striknig midnight?  Hamblin wrote that CPR, despite being so heroically displayed on television, is only 3-16% effective in saving lives (in the hospital that survival/revival rate only jumps up another 2%; he also noted that nearly 20% of our U.S. spending goes to healthcare --the highest in the world-- and most of that in the final six months of a person's life).  Sue Black chimed in and noted that despite television displaying the many ways crooks and murderers try to dispose of bodies, nearly all of their efforts are quite inept (just reading that section alone makes one realize how efficiently the body hides both its structure and identity).  

    One of my discoveries at my library sale proved to be a soundtrack of the film Quartet; it dealt with opera, a genre I don't understand, but something which also caught Dustin Hoffman's eye: I never had any great knowledge or experience of Opera.  I studied classical piano from the age of five until I was a teenager whereupon I switched to jazz.  I remain a novice in both.  It was not until I moved to New york City to study acting that I had roommates who were opera singers.  I learned early on that these people were not only musicians, but extraordinary athletes who were in highly competitive and extremely difficult art form that took years to perfect.  When I agreed to direct QUARTET, I did it under the condition that I could cast actual retired opera singers and musicians, most of whom are on this soundtrack.  They have not lost their talent or passion for their craft.  Throughout filming, these individuals brought a dimension that none of us expected and it was truly a gift for all of us working on the film.  They are in their 70's, 80's, 90's and yet they came in every day and worked long hours with great dedication and stamina.  Their careers spanned many years across The Metropolitan Oprera, English National Opera, London Symphony Orchestra, D'Oyly Carte Opera Co., Royal Opera House Covent Garden & Frank Sinatra Orchestra.

    All of this brings me to Michael Bublé (what??).  The Canadian/Italian singer was rumored to have been "discovered" at a wedding where mega-producer David Foster was present; but as Bublé told Desert Island Discs, that story, while popular, is completely inaccurate.  To hear Bublé tell it, Foster was indeed present but said that he would never sign or produce him (but mentioning that he felt Bublé had talent); Bublé persisted and Foster said that if he raised $100,000 he would consider it (Bublé scrambled but did arrive on Foster's door with the money).  Foster arranged an "audition" in front of Paul Anka, who also turned him down (but also telling him that he had talent).  Bublé again persisted and asked for one last favor, to present his case before the president of the Warner Bros. label.  He sang and the president basically said that Bublé had talent but that the label already had Sinatra so why should they bother adding another similar singer to the label?  Bublé humbly replied, "With all due respect sir, Sinatra is dead.  We shouldn't let the music die as well."  Bublé was signed and his album went on to break the charts for a new singer.

     Bublé had this to say from his website when he invited his band mates over to his house, not with the intention of making music, but simply to enjoy each other’s company and drink, eat pizza and play video games: “Once we got bored with that, we started jamming and there was this wonderful click, this moment where I went, ‘Oh, yeah! I forgot how much I loved this’,” Bublé recalls.  “I think I just needed a little helpful reminder...I know it sounds so artsy-fartsy, but I think the songs chose me.  It’s strange how the universe will just drop things into your lap.”  The site added this about his recent album, Love: Bublé hopes the music reaches those who might need to hear it the most and provide comfort to those in distress. “There are people that are gonna hear these songs and they're gonna be inspired to fall in love and there are people who are gonna hear these songs and they're gonna be hurting,” he says. “They're gonna be, in many ways going through tough stuff.  And if one of these songs lifts them out of that, if it can carry them to another day, I think then I'm doing my job and I think I'm being responsible for the gifts I've been given.”

   Leanne Lauricella gave up her high-paying Manhattan job to move to the country and open a sanctuary to save...goats.  Her book about her organization, Goats of Anarchy, is surprisingly heart warming: Hope is a feeling of future success that's built on a strong foundation.  Hope also grows from pride in your accomplishments and recognizing the unique path you've paved to get where you are today.  Goats of Anarchy is my foundation, and you have yours, too.  My goats, family, colleagues, and followers are my support network.  What is yours?  Look inside to find your strength and all around you to find your support, and you will also find hope.  

    "Thar's gold in them thar hills," used to be a rallying cry, even for those "over the hill."  Whether it's listening to Michael Bublé on a CD, or rescuing goats, or singing opera into your 90's, it's never too late to find and explore your passion.  Who knows where it will take you...maybe you might decide to (gasp) write a blog!

*Hamblin also notes that because the use of formaldehyde requires such precautions as using a full-body protective suit, the rate of lung disease and cancerous tumors is still exceedingly high among morticians.  Here's what Science Direct had to say about the liquid gas (still used in cosmetics, shampoos, and disinfectants): Formaldehyde cannot be applied safely to the skin or the mucous membranes in the concentration necessary to rapidly kill microbes, and formaldehyde solutions have to be diluted before use to a 2–8% solution to disinfect inanimate objects and to a 1–2% solution for disinfection by scrubbing...Humans are exposed to formaldehyde through a variety of sources.  Combustion processes, specifically auto emissions and photooxidation of hydrocarbons in auto emissions, are the major sources of atmospheric discharge.  Additional exposure to formaldehyde emissions comes from its use as a fumigant and sterilant and its use as an embalming fluid in anatomy labs, morgues, and so on.  Cigarette smoke is another important source of formaldehyde in human exposure.