Into the Future with Reckless Abandon

After the moon landing in 1969, there were about 25 years of hum-drum wireless phones as big as men's shoes, and DOS computers and dot-matrix printers with none of the charm or convenience of typewriters.

In 1988, as assistant production supervisor, I had a small office, a typewriter, manila file folders, and metal file drawers.

The Production department had two computers that my clever young boss had somehow programmed, through sheer genius, to create profit & loss forms.

The rest of us oafs, for whom programming was as remote as the moon, dutifully labored to learn how to input P&L data.

It was never a smooth process.

The entire production staff became wholly dependent on Colleen, my boss, to trouble-shoot the computers, as though she were the only one who could communicate in their language...which was exactly the case.

The World Wide Web became public in 1991.

In 1994, I was a temp.  I had an office (before me, it was a supply closet) and, though Apple computers and PCs were in relatively wide use, I was given for my use a conventional half-ton typewriter.

By 1995, I was a bona fide employee, my typewriter had been replaced by a computer, and instead of cryptic DOS code, there were tidy folders on my screen.

I knew how to use a mouse to move a cursor.  I could click on files to open them, name them, save them, and move them where I pleased.

And then, one day, deep in the midst of a Stokholm-Syndrome crush that I had on my boss, an instant message popped up on my computer screen.

"Hi! This is Tom. I'm aware that you're totally isolated over there in the supply closet.  How are you surviving?  Do you need anything?  Can we send you a cake with a file in it?"

Tom was funny. Tom is still funny.

Tom was friends with Patrina Hope (not her real name). She was assistant to my boss.

If viewing an organizational chart, Patrina would be my boss's wife.  I would be in the position of side interest.

I should set the record straight by saying, it wasn't what you're thinking, although I can see how I've led you to think that.

What I'm talking about is purely on the level of inward feeling, in no way reflective of outward acts.

There were no outwards acts whatsoever, despite the weird crushes that Patrina and I had on our enigmatic boss.

My crush was a result of being locked up in a utility closet eight hours a day, my only human contact or sense of purpose coming from this one person: Stan Canter (not his real name).

An only child of divorced parents who remarried into second families, I was an inveterate outsider from a young age.

As a temp, I had enjoyed a marginal status;

as a full-time employee who had been brought onboard by Stan without the customary ascent of other editors, I continued to enjoy my marginal status which, coupled with the location in a windowless utility closet in the back of the sales team of a wholly different department...

Well, let's just say, when Stan, in a fit of pique (having little if anything to do with me personally or professionally) indulged in brow-beating over some perceived deficiency on my part, I responded by sobbing loudly (with gasping) for three solid hours, sans break.

It was a mini nervous breakdown.

Flash ahead to 2019, when social justice experts refer to white women crying as a source of privilege.

Instead of taking it on the chin, as we ought, we cry--which is self-indulgent and a singular siren call to the white male, who will do or say anything to make said crying stop.

A white woman cries to harness white male power, to bend it to our will; crying is the ring in the nostril by which we may pull the ox by a thread.

It was a mini nervous breakdown, building up over weeks and months.

But it's also true that deep down inside some small rational focal point in my prefrontal cortex or other, I may have thought to myself,  "Serves him right."

Because yes, those hours of grief-stricken sobs tormented Stan like a bludgeon wrought down repeatedly upon his nervous head.

No sooner would he flee my office, but he would return soon after, wringing his hands, gnashing his teeth, apologizing profusely.

And though part of me may have calculated this effect, I literally could not stop gasping for breath between sobs.

Because it was also true that I was an only child of divorced parents who had long felt like an outsider...An outsider with bright red hair like a beacon--like a solitary lighthouse on the shoals--and Stan, my keeper.

It was all very sick.

And then came Tom's message.  "Can we bring you a cake with a file in it?"

Similar messages from Patrina followed.

She was a poet; and for all its precision and brevity, IM is a great temptation for poets. She was my own personal bard.

We beta testers were among the first to IM in the whole company--perhaps, in the whole industry; perhaps, in the whole country.  (Probably not.)

It was like hearing the voice of another prisoner pass through a vent in the wall.

And, having said that, I remind myself that no, it was absolutely nothing like being in solitary confinement and it is craven and ridiculous to make that comparison.

But now I had two friends, whereas before there had only been Stan, who was neither friend nor lover nor normal boss.

Stan was an enigmatic character who passed through the corridors of publishing like a weather front.  (Part of Patrina's job as his assistant was to advise us of the weather--Stan's mood.)

Instant messaging ended a kind of totalitarian authority that relies on an employee's social isolation.

IM effectively ended my Stockholm Syndrome (and opened up new cans of worms with other office mates...But I won't go into that).

The point is, IM was a big surprise, and one that quickly made a big impact on my life and relationships.

I'm not saying it was the lightbulb, Thomas Edison-like, but it was one of the first new things to come along that really made a big splash.

The next thing was email, the Internet, Yahoo, Google, small cell phones, texting, and smart phones.

It's a brave new world.  Brave, in the sense that we didn't have any idea how these innovations would affect our lives, or impact our society, or our children's lives, or their future.

Facebook. Data points. Election interference. Cyber-stalking.  X-box. Gameboy. Nintendo. First-person shooter games.  YouTubers.  Addiction.  The dark side of the Internet.  Pornography.  Bitcoin.
E-commerce. Amazon.  Algorithms.

For me, each of these words evokes some sense of their ramifications:

    My kid spending too much time in their room, staring at their cellphone.

    My kid being influenced by "influencers."

    Our very selves being quantified, minutely categorized, demographically organized, and       relentlessly marketed to or propagandized.

I just wonder why we should have to be so brave.

Why couldn't we, as a society, have had some sort of process in place for assessing the implications for  each new seismic invention or innovation?

Because capitalism.

Stephen Hawking died believing that artificial intelligence would herald the end of humanity.

Should this not give us pause?

Surely profit is not the sole priority of the republic.

Democracy is in need of immediate rescue, as our own data points suggest fissures and fracture lines in which analytics may pound a wedge and split the whole thing wide apart.

Perhaps, some sort of preemptive body of ethics, some sort of social-welfare regulatory oversight might develop around saving democracy first--and humanity, second.

Maybe we'll look back on this period as a kind of technocratic Wild West--a period of reckless, unchecked, de-civilizing anarchy.

I know one thing: As a parent, I may as well have traveled to Wisconsin via conestoga wagon, for all the insight I bring to my son's generation.

Fade out on an image of a school cafeteria; long formica lunch tables lined with kids, all of them quietly staring down at their individual cellphones....

The Virtue of Complaining

The Midwest is like the national nursery from which most high-achieving and famous people spring--and wherefrom they flee to one or the other coasts, where people of outsized talents and egos go to be wholly welcome and celebrated in a region of the country that doesn't demand an absolutely moderate sense of scale and purpose.

Well, I grew up on the East Coast, but I am spending some quality adult years in the Midwest.

And yes, I do feel out of place with all of my opinions and politics and outsized sense of self and personality, (which is regularly offset by its corollary: an exaggerated sense of  worthlessness).

And while I admire Midwestern stoicism and optimism, particularly in the presence of disaster and catastrophe, I do not think that every single day requires stoicism or optimism.

I don't think that complaining is an act of weakness, or sabotage.

If looking at photos of our friends on their fabulous vacations on Facebook makes us feel worse about our own uneventful lives and relentless Mondays, doesn't it follow that the opposite may also be true?

I'm not talking about the sordid primal screams we occasionally run across on our FB news stream--the overwrought shrill and profane howls of young people scratching an itch, or each other's eyes out in the course of youth's timeless mating ritual.

I'm talking about a faithful record of casual disappointment--tempered by charming photos of an adorable cat or dog.

Everyone experiences disappointment.  And anyone can have an adorable pet.  Anyone can relate to the affection we feel for our pets.

On the other hand, horses.

I have them, and maybe you don't.  But if, by complaining, I can remind you of the great effort I must make every day, in all weather, to keep them fed and tidy, then maybe you won't feel a twinge of envy.

And if I further complain that my clothes smell like horse-shit every day, and the pony bites me sometimes out of spite, then you might feel almost smug, and pity me.

You see how that works?

And it's true, it's a trade-off: All the good stuff, all the good luck, most of the time, comes at a price.

An hour vacuuming instantly undone by a tsunami of mud clumps, dander, and tumbleweed fur.

A minivan like a mudroom on wheels, a sarcophagus of crud crumbles and bio-hazardous dog dust and slime.

The great cat stretched out like a lion on my son's lap, charmingly purring and keeping him warm, comes with three cat litter boxes and four other cats.

One of the four is 18 years old.  She no longer sheds out properly, but knots up in mats too close to ancient thin skin to cut close with a scissors.  Yet she leaves deposits of fur here and there, like crop circles, a porcupine releasing its quills.  And yet we are glad she's alive and still with us, because a dead cat is no fun at all.

The virtue of complaining is that life is rarely easy or perfect.  I envy your front yard because you work hard to make it lovely; but I don't see your labor, I only see your lovely yard.

I see your tropical vacation, but not what came before: the hard work, the long hours, the accumulated depletion that gave rise to a deep screaming imperative to cut out for the cerulean blue sky and turquoise water...I don't see how much you deserved it.

A little complaining is part of the balance.  It allows me to see you as real, like me.  The weather is lousy?  You didn't get much sleep?  Your dog threw up on your bed?  Tell me!  I'll tell you about my own little horrors, and we'll laugh.  Or at least, we'll both feel better.

A Toast to John F. Greenman

This is not a dear-John letter.

Dear John,

I have been told to limit my toast on this occasion (your 70th birthday) to one flat minute, so I have set a timer on my clock; I give myself no more than one hour and fifteen minutes to write this brief homage.

I am tempted to review my earliest memories, but I have no time for that.

Let me just say, my earliest memory of you speaking to me directly was in Youngstown, Ohio.  You were living at home, in what came to be Matthew's room, over the garage and up a steep set of stairs from the kitchen.  Sunny, but set apart from all other rooms by two sets of stairs, yours was the most private, coveted, and secluded room in the house--wherefrom, you descended a few stairs, crossed a breach, and more stairs until arriving, finally, at the door to Marty’s room, where my mother and I were installed over the course of our holiday visit.

Your hair was thick, red, and curly, like mine.  If you were still in college, I was four or five years old--an age at which you and Arlo Guthrie were conflated in my mind.  You were Arlo, and Arlo was you.

At my house, my dad played "Alice's Restaurant," often.  We knew all the words.  On the cover of the album, Arlo sits half naked at a table,  utensils in his fists, impish beneath a halo of wild curly hair.

I felt very fortunate that we had an Arlo of our own.

I was peeling off the green felt vest and blue felt shoes of a big troll doll when you knocked on the door.

"Come in."

"Jessie?"

"Hi, Uncle John."

"How ya doin'?"

"Good."

"Good. Listen, would you mind calling me John from now on, instead of Uncle John?"

"Okay."

"Great. Thanks."

"Okay. Bye."

I know I didn't say, "You're welcome, John," because that was going to take some getting used to.

I wonder why you didn't want to be called Uncle John. Did it sound too...avuncular?

Over the course of my life, I have spent less time with you than with your brothers Greg, Matthew, Mark, and Marty.  (Matthew and Mark would have been 12, and Marty 13 when you asked me to call you John.)

Though Mark passed away at the age of 19, until then, he had been my most devoted uncle.

And now that I am in my 50's and I have some perspective on things, I can look back and recognize that Mark was in fact truly exceptional and extraordinary, even at the age of 12.  He rode me around on his bike.  He took me swimming at the town pool.  He presented me with a bright green pig that he had won at a carnival.  He let me kiss his cheeks and muss his perfect hair as much and as often as I wanted to, which was constantly.  All I had to do to spend the whole afternoon with him was to listen to the Beatles and let him watch football on TV.

I can honestly say that Mark was perhaps the most joyous, compassionate, buoyant spirit I have ever encountered in my lifetime. I have never met the Dalai Lama, but I think that Mark was probably on the same wavelength as the Dalai Lama, broadly speaking.

I stapled his finger, once.  I literally used a stapler to put a staple in Mark's index finger.  I wanted to explore the limits of his goodness. How good could he be when in pain?  Especially, a totally unnecessary pain that he didn't deserve, and which I had caused him, willfully, though I loved him infinitely and would regret hurting him for the rest of my life.

Mark handled it exactly the way you would imagine the Dalai Lama would manage such a thing.  He didn't raise his voice.  He didn't tell on me. He might have asked for an apology, which I would have freely given.

Mark was good, radiantly good, through and through.

But this is not supposed to be a toast to Mark, and I only have ten minutes left.

While contemplating the theme of a toast in your honor, John, it became quite clear to me that you and I have a lot in common.

Not that this is about me, but, we are both Libras.  And while no one else in the family gives any credence to astrology, yet still we are Libras in the true Libran sense of the word.

We concern ourselves with balance and justice.  We consider various sides of any matter--surrounding the subject, as you like to say.  We can view things from different perspectives.

And thus, we are writers and editors, you and I.  We have spent our careers in publishing--yours, in journalism, and the recipient of a Pulitzer; and me, not in journalism.

So, there's that.

I know that you are a talented photographer--that you have an eye.  And I have an eye, too.  We literally see things from various angles, up close and from afar.  We see our world as we think about our world: from all different sides, and at varying degrees of intensity and depth.

A person's priorities are reflected in the choices that they make, and are a product of th process of weighing and measuring and balancing all of the stuff in their lives.

I think, and I have long believed, that your priorities are particularly daring and original.

Your choice to remain for many years in an affordable, unassuming home in wildly unpretentious Youngstown meant continuity with the people and locations that you knew best and cared most about: Alice, Michael and David, and your dad.

You didn't need to leave Youngstown, and you didn't need to go to Harvard.  You didn't need to prove anything to yourself, the way most people do.

You knew what you were made of.

A big fish in a reasonably well-filtered pond, you became the editor of the school paper at YSU.  I think of that photo of you, looking John Greenman and Arlo Guthrie, feet crossed on a big school desk, leaning way back in a tilted chair,  newspaper spread out across your lap.

You didn't need the imprimatur of an institution.  You were an autodidact. (I like to think I'm one of those, too.)

Mom told me you methodically prepared every single recipe in Julia Child's French cookbook.

You made a priority of champagne.

My semi-ascetic mother was stunned by your annual budget for champagne.

But I thought, to spend every evening sipping champagne with Alice?  You must really be in love. And what could be better than that?

There were years when you and Alice had to figure out how to balance your careers with your marriage...Alice's tenure at YSU, her love of teaching, as measured against your desire to be a managing editor for a city newspaper.

You found a way to accommodate both.

You rented a flat in Akron, and spent weekends in Youngstown.

I have always admired the time that you have been willing and able to give each other, whether alone or apart; the distances you can tolerate; the freedom you afford each other to pursue your dreams and civic commitments; and the trust you have in one another when apart.

Marriage, family, work, travel, learning, thinking, writing, and the pursuit of excellence in all its forms... I see these as your priorities.  In many respects, they mirror my own, with one exception.

Animals.

Where you choose champagne, I choose cats, dogs, horses.

Neither champagne nor pets are necessary or practical, but they bring the lightness, the bubbles, the joy...

And to be conscious of creating space, budget, and time for such things suggests excess, bounty, balance, and wisdom, all at once.

We have crazy red hair, you and I.

Happy birthday!

Love,

Jess