America Collection/General interest/Humor

April 2, 2022April 2, 2022

Modern Laundry 101

Do I really want to start the laundry back home, in the middle of a lobster dinner at the Ritz? Perhaps.

Or maybe it can wait.

My new Bash automatic washer (names are being changed to protect the innocent) arrived recently, along with an instruction book designed for someone with an advanced degree from MIT. But I got through it (I do have an MFA in Short Fiction,) followed all the instructions, ran the Drum Clean cycle and am now happily doing the laundry that has piled up since my former Bash died of natural causes. In hindsight, I feel it was morally wrong – or improper at best – to have let my old Bash be carted off with hardly a notice.

Here’s what my new Bash can do – I’m still reading the instruction book, but I think I’ve got it. If I scan the QR code, and program everything else – i.e., I’m also going to need to go buy a Voice Assistant – I will be able to call home and start the laundry in the middle of the main course. Do I wish to receive Push Notification when the cycle is done? That would be, say, during dessert. I may pass on the Push Notification.

No offense to the high tech Bash designers, but what’s wrong with getting off the sofa the old-fashioned way and doing the laundry myself?

I have a long history with laundry. Before we got the fancy new washer with wringer attachment that was rolled over to the sink to run the water in – I was about 10 years old at the time – my mother had a washboard* forheavenssakes. Google it.

At the end of the Instruction Book are several pages of Problem/ Possible Cause(s)/ Solution for one’s further entertainment. My favorite is (Problem) Water does not appear to be filling in; (Possible Cause) Water taps not turned on; (Solution) Turn on water taps. I mean, really. They think I’m smart enough to scan QR codes and call the Voice Assistant in the middle of my dinner party, and I don’t know to turn on the water tap? Following the P/PC/S pages are another few pages of further information about the little emojis, symbols and dotted numbers that may light up. I think this is for the protection of the Bash people against claims of mental collapse caused by mysterious emojis blinking all over the laundry room.

Speaking of which. The final pages of the Book are all about Limited Product Warranty and “effectuated warranty coverage,” because of course there are warranties for all these technological wonders. With limits. After a time, “Bash is under no obligation, at law or otherwise, to provide you with any concessions, including repairs, prorates or Product replacement . . .”

I may go find a washboard.

# # #

*there’s even a story inspired by the 1940s Maytag washer in forthcoming Marshallville Stories! Publication date: April 19th. Hope you’ll pick up a copy.

General interest/Humor/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes

January 25, 2020January 25, 2020

Is There An App For The Inept?

by Fran Johns

Apps In-appt: /i’ napt – having or showing no patience with technology.

There are, as far as I can determine, something over two million apps one can download onto one’s phone. Google says one thing, Apple says another – but there are a LOT of apps out there. I know people who seem to have most of them. I have sixteen. Most of the ones I have were installed by the Apple people and thus may not be un-installed (so I just let them sit there and entertain each other.)

I actually use a couple of apps. My Routesy app, for example, can magically, immediately determine exactly where I am standing in downtown San Francisco, and tell me how soon the #2 Clement or the #3 Jackson outbound will be arriving. Or where’s the closest Apps1 BART station and when the next train to El Cerrito will be departing. I love the Routesy people. Because I choose to believe that somewhere, somehow, there are real people who sit around programming my Routesy app to the most intimate degrees. I also occasionally use my Maps app. But the time it was telling me to turn left onto Laguna in 400 feet, and my Apple Watch buzzed my wrist when I got to Laguna – that was a bit much. I mean, who told my watch? I find this almost as spooky as the occasional Dick Tracy-type conversations I have with my wrist because I can’t reach my cellphone.

My question is: who is the App Director of the Universe? And with more than two million of them out there, why hasn’t she created any app for me?

Here are the only apps I would ever need, please:

Apps2 The Find-It App. It wouldn’t actually have to find stuff. It would just cause the designated item to beep until I got there. The item which has vanished: book, keys, wallet, checkbook – all those things I would like to find. I don’t need that Find-My-Phone thing; I’m sitting here holding the phone, for heaven’s sake, with all these superfluous apps staring at me.

The Cancel-It App. It would quietly reach out to everyone scheduled to attend that meeting, webinar, Zoom conference or other tedious event on my calendar and inform everyone of its cancellation. If something were really important it could be re-scheduled for next week, but my guess is 90% of the time nobody would notice.

The Stifle App (named in honor of Archie Bunker. If you’re too young to know who Archie Bunker is you don’t need this app anyway; you are inured to excess ambient noise. This app would infiltrate all news channels and stifle every politician who adversely affects my blood pressure. Fake news Thus I could still check what’s going on – I balance my PBS/MSNBC intake with occasional Fox News programs in a generally vain attempt to understand my country and my fellow citizens – without putting my health at risk.

This is all I’m asking. You can keep the whole two million apps (minus Routesy and Maps) if I could just have those three. Is this asking too much?

America Collection/General interest/Gun control

November 11, 2019October 7, 2021

These Scary Times We Live In

by Fran Johns

Handgun “We are happy to let you know your order #6589207 has shipped . . .” read the email from some company I’d never heard of. This is an instant alarm for me. My alarm level rose when I read what it was that I had not ordered, something called Z-Ammo. Oh wonderful. Now I’m on somebody’s gun list. I had an immediate flashback to the time, about six years ago, when I wrote a mildly pro-gun control article for True/Slant.com. It went viral. I immediately began getting vitriolic emails by the dozens from unknown non-admirers including one that ended, “We know exactly where you live in San Francisco ..” Some gun people you do not want to mess with.

My alarm level dropped back to normal when a little research uncovered the fact that Z-Ammo is a game. When in the world people find time to play all these games is utterly baffling to me, since I’ve never played the first one and I still never have enough time to finish what needs finishing in any given 24 hours. But this essay is not about the shortness of time; it’s about the scariness of these times. So my email address found its way to a toy game company and somebody affixed it to somebody else’s order? That should not result in a panic attack; but sadly the tenor of our times is such that panic is a reflex reaction.

I am still in recovery from having left my wallet in the women’s restroom at the San Francisco airport late one recent Saturday night. Not an ideal time or place to lose one’s wallet (if indeed there is an ideal time or place for wallet-losing.) Never mind the scary horror of needing a quick replacement driver’s license (Hint: Get to the DMV before 7 AM opening time on a Monday morning. Piece of cake.) Or the endless hassle of cancelling credit cards, getting new library, Kaiser, museums, transportation, you-name-it other cards, tracking down the automatic withdrawals before their withdrawal is automatically rejected. That’s the fun part.

But here is the creepy part: the knowledge that somebody out there is walking around with your photo-ID driver’s license (cancelled though it quickly became,) your business card with all contact information, and your life-at-a-glance thanks to the multiplicity of cards, credit and otherwise, we are inclined to carry. As if random strangers don’t already know the most intimate details of our life, should they choose to search. You pick up a pair of shoes at Zappo’s? Suddenly your shoe interest is accosting you on Facebook, email and wherever in cyberspace you may wish to roam. Ordering via internet being so much handier than going on an all-day shopping trip, faceless (heartless, soulless) data collectors also by now have my lingerie sizes, including the fact I order mastectomy bras and thus have cancer in my history, protective eye wear and thus have macular degeneration – I don’t even want to consider what else Big Brother has on me. Facts + Truth

I think this all would be less scary if we were not now in a national place where facts matter little and distortion of truth is accepted on a daily basis. A little paranoia is probably advisable. I am just holding my breath, though, that somebody doesn’t send me an AK-47. Charged to my VISA account.

God - sunrise

General interest/Lifestyle

January 4, 2019

All in the Digital Family

by Fran Johns

stick family “Welcome to the family!” chirped my new Inbox message. It was filled with so many little hearts and emojis I initially felt I must have been adopted into some friendly group sharing my religious or philosophical leanings. Its presentation, which would have been entirely fitting for such an invitation, was overwhelming in its warm-fuzziness.

Actually, all I had done was order a watchband.

Unwilling to pay the highway robbery prices that the digital watch people wanted for a replacement band at their store, and tired of my cute young manicurist wearing herself out with futile efforts to clean my old watchband, I had gone on an online search. There are more watchband choices out there than lipstick shades. But I persevered. On about page 43 I found a band identical to the highway-robbery-priced one, clicked off my $12.99 and hit Send. That, apparently, granted me entrance into the family.

Actually, this is not exactly a one-time thing. It appears that every online purchase I have made, plus just about every cause I have supported, has brought me into the circle of extended-family items (Watchband? You’re going to love these earphones!) or communications. “Thank you for your support” tends to be followed by daily updates and hourly pleas for further support, not to mention invitations to support like-minded causes. And if you’d like to keep your watchband selection private? Forget it. digital marketing Facebook now knows. Every company related to watchbands now knows. You will be so bombarded with watchband-related ads in between posts from your real life Facebook friends you may find yourself saying, one day, “What the heck, maybe I should order that power cord; my power cord is frayed . . .” Resist that urge. Go to Walgreen’s and buy it; they already know everything about you from all those Club Card purchases anyway.

Here’s the thing. Who among us has not purchased something online, Liked something on Facebook or Instagram, or sent off a contribution to a worthy cause? In truth (unless you subscribe to Rudy Giuliani’s assessment that truth is not truth) each of those transactions immediately welcomed us into some extended, digitally-connected family, and 99% of the universe is, by similar fates, right there with us. It is a downright incestuous situation.

international-peace-dove But we should at least have world peace.

Death and Dying/End-of-Life/General interest

April 22, 2018October 7, 2021

Appearances from Beyond the Grave

by Fran Johns

The End of Life Experience: Lisbon conference #2

Say you have a daughter or granddaughter who flunked out of her expensive school and caused severe friction between you. Now imagine you’ve been dead for a few years – OK, this page is all about imagination just now – and that errant offspring just finished a PhD program, with honors. She creates a hologram of you, calls it into being and holds up the graduation photos. “What do you think!,” she asks? “Oh,” you say, in your formerly mortal voice, “I’m so terribly proud of you. Congratulations!” You smile broadly, and your offspring smiles back.

holographic dove Welcome to the 2030s. Or probably early 2020s. Holograms are here, and the potential for use in after-death encounters is just one element of this technological wonder. That vision of the end-of-life/afterlife was offered by Sierra College professor Kim Bateman, at the recent conference I was privileged to attend, in a fascinating presentation titled “Dialogues with the Digital Dead.” Bateman suggested useful possibilities such as “allowing the dying to finish unfinished business and the bereaved to more vividly imagine their loved ones without a physical body.” But her intent was also to look at “ethical concerns about consent, privacy, and the emotional safety of those participating” in what today seems more science fiction than potentially useful technology. Conference participants had a lot to say.

If you watched the halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl (I did not, so this is hearsay) you saw a performance by the wildly popular artist Prince. Since he has been dead for some time now, it was not really possible to book him – but it was possible to create a hologram, and that was what you saw. Someone at our conference said Prince had actually been opposed to holograms – which raises ethical issues he is no longer able to discuss.

But here we are. These incredibly realistic holograms can be digitally, posthumously, created by, say, your children or grandchildren, Bateman explained. The computer digs through your electronic history: every email, voice mail, text, Facebook post, Instagram picture, etc, etc, etc. What emerges is the pre-death you. Holograph dancer

Should this bring about a posthumous reconciliation between you and your formerly deadbeat offspring, that seems a clear benefit of the technology. But as with most questions surrounding end-of-life issues today, a lot is not so clear. Your surviving friends and relations will continue to grow and change after you die. Not so the holographic you. It has you frozen in time as the pre-death you. What if you had lived a little longer and decided a college education wasn’t all that important? Here’s your hologram being pleasant, but reconfirming the mortal you as a judgmental grandma.

As with other contemporary end-of-life issues covered at the Lisbon conference, this one raised a long list of questions. Would you want to be recreated in a hologram after you die? For how long after you’ve been gone? To whom should you leave instructions pro or con – or should you stay out of it and hope for the best? If a holograph of you is created, with whom would you want it to interact? Or are there those with whom you would specifically not want to interact, holographically speaking? Should you have the right to make these decisions yourself, while you’re still in the flesh?

If these questions seem all too spooky and futuristic, I apologize – but the spooky future is upon us.

General interest/Politics & Causes/USA

September 16, 2017September 16, 2017

Take a Minute to Breathe

by Fran Johns

Breathe “Take a minute to breathe,” my watch said. How did it know? This message arrived, unbidden, in the late afternoon of a day full of unpleasant chores, contentious meetings, unexpected crises and the usual daily events. It made me laugh. And breathe. Or at the very least, sigh.

I don’t know about this breathing business. If we aren’t doing it we’re definitely dead, or about to be, but the conscious breathing business – there may be something to it. So it is certainly worth a reminder or two.

(Anyone who knows me knows I would never spend actual money for a gadget that tells me to breathe; I helped with a study at the request of a friend, and we got to keep the watch. But I have to admit to a growing affection. This gadget knows stuff. After I finished working out in the park on the first day of San Francisco’s recent, obscene heat wave, it told me how far I’d walked, how much energy I’d expended, how high my heart rate had gone – and then it said, “It’s 96 degrees, dummy, what are you doing exercising in 96-degree heat? At your age??” Or something like that; I don’t remember its exact words. Of course, it doesn’t know everything. Such as, if I want to take a nap, shouldn’t it know I don’t want to be nudged to Stand after 15 minutes? I take it off for naps.)

But back to breathing.

Calm, measured, thoughtful breathing may be the only answer to finding peace in these days. North Korea firing nuclear missiles? Breathe. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, record-breaking heat waves and climate change deniers? Breathe. Air and water pollution, thanks to relaxed environmental regulations, threatening the very lives of your grandchildren? Breathe. And that latest tweet, post or whatever startling message from cyberspace? Breathe, breathe.

Perhaps someone who understands social media better than I could institute a new policy: No tweet, post or instant-photo can be fired off until the person behind it has taken three slow, deep breaths. Think about it. Breathe.2 Such an action would require engaging the brain, and how much personal and national angst might be avoided if brains were required to be engaged in advance? A small reduction in lies, vulgarities and scary messages . . .?

Sigh.

Authors/California/General interest/Media/Politicians/Politics & Causes/San Francisco/USA

June 2, 2017June 2, 2017

Facts, Truth & Being Nice to One Another

by Fran Johns

Truth sign “Critical thinking,” says author Tom Nichols, “is that thing that says ‘Start asking questions. Don’t be afraid of where they go.’ It is okay to change your mind.”

Nichols, who has changed his mind more than once but has never not been a critical thinker, was in San Francisco recently promoting his latest book, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. He is more than a little concerned that the acceptance of untruths and outright lies, and the increasing willingness to ignore experts on all subjects, is going to get our democracy into deep trouble.

“There’s been a change,” he says, “from ‘I doubt you; explain.’ to ‘I know more than you do.’”

Tom Nichols & Melissa Caen 5.24.17 — Tom Nichols & interviewer Melissa Caen

Nichols is unquestionably an expert himself – a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, at the Harvard Extension School, a Sovietologist, and a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion (among a long list of other credentials on his Wikipedia page) – and sees many reasons for the death of expertise. A virtual epidemic of narcissism, for one; technology in many of its uses and abuses for another. But the danger of the “collapse of expertise,” he says, is that it can easily lead to mob rule. And poof, there goes democracy. Nichols is concerned, as he writes in The Death of Expertise, that “Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue.”

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi was also in town recently, talking a good bit about facts and truth herself. Unsurprisingly, Pelosi feels there is not much respect for either in the present administration. She opened her remarks with a report on President Trump’s first meeting with congressional leaders. “The first thing the president said was, ‘Do you know I won the popular vote?’ Now first, that wasn’t relevant to what we were there for. And it wasn’t true.”

Nancy Pelosi & Scott Shafer 5.30.17 — Pelosi with interviewer Scott Shafer of KQED

Pelosi repeatedly said she felt things could get done, including on many issues that would require cooperation between Democrats and Republicans. “But we have to start with facts. Data. Truth.”

Nichols says the best way to get the facts – “the real story” – is to read multiple sources. (“I read the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.”) And to those who would say, “I don’t have time,” Nichols has one answer: “Yes. You. Do.”

If the issues and the problems are complex, Nichols suggests that part of the answer is sublimely simple: “We have to be nicer,” he says. “We have to believe we want the best for each other.”

That has, in a not-so-distant past still fondly recalled by more than a few Americans, been true.

America Collection/economics/General interest/San Francisco/seniors

May 10, 2017October 7, 2021

Throw-Away Culture v The Planet

by Fran Johns

The very lovely, 12-story building in which I have lived for four+ years – along with 90 other condo-owning geezers, sometimes more delicately referred to as “retirees” or “seniors” but let’s face it – is about to embark upon an exterior repair job that will run upwards of $3 million. Repair. Not build, or upgrade, or renovate. Repair. This building is slightly over 25 years of age. (Its owners average generally at least three times that; are WE getting $3+ million repair jobs? We wish.)

Our building exterior is a material known as EIFS, which stands for Exterior Insulation Finishing System. According to its Wikipedia page, EIFS is “a general class of non-load bearing building cladding systems that provides exterior walls with an insulated, water-resistant, finished surface in an integrated composite material system,” in case you care. I am on the Homeowners Association board of directors. For a writer whose undergraduate degree was in Art and who was born essentially without a left brain, I know more about EIFS than I ever wanted to know; I can absolutely promise you that.

EIFS is still quite commonly in use. But I think they have figured out something that early EIFS people overlooked: using paper in an exterior building material is a very bad idea. Guess what happens when the sealant shrinks and water gets in and there’s paper involved. Our EIFS people hadn’t figured that out yet.

3965 Sacramento April '17 — *Built in 1905*

Oh, well. What’s $3 or $4 million to fix a 25-year-old building? I do have to mention that the 4-story house we sold in order to move into this lovely building was itself built in 1905. Throughout a century or so of earthquakes and California rainy seasons (about half of which time it belonged to my husband and/or the two of us) our exterior repair ran to a few thousand dollars in repainting every six or eight years. It is hard not to mention that I grew up in Virginia, where 18^th century buildings (still doing fine) dot the landscape.

No offense to the building industry, but what’s wrong with building buildings to last more than 25 years without 4’ by 8’ panels falling off (yes, two of them did, in a bad storm earlier this year) in the middle of the night?

This essay started out to be all about planned obsolescence. EIFS buildings perhaps are not deliberately designed to become obsolete in a decade or two; ours just happened to fall into that category. And the above just came to mind as I was starting to write. But about planned obsolescence. It has its own Wikipedia page. According to that page, it “tends to work best when a producer has at least an oligopoly” (which also has its own Wikipedia page.) It was inspired not by the building nightmare but by my recent experience with my beloved Epson printer/copier machine.

My beloved Epson WF 3520, age four years, took to printing in weird colors. After extensive cleaning of the print heads and performing other bewildering actions in the Systems menu, I persuaded it to resume printing photos (for instance) in absolutely true colors. But now it’s inserting disconcerting lines across peoples’ faces and stuff. Not good. I made a trip to the local Office Max where it was purchased four years ago to ask what else I might do to make the lines go away. The following conversation ensued:

Me: “Is there another Systems thing I can try?”

Office Max clerk (age 20-something): “Did you clean the print heads?”

Me (proudly): “Yes.”

OM: “And the nozzle?”

Me (hesitantly): “I think so.”

OM: “How long have you had it?”

Me: “About four years. I bought it here.”

OM: “Oh! That’s a pretty good run.”

Me (an aside that was totally lost on OM): “Clearly you weren’t born in 1933.”

But come on now, folks. Four years is a “pretty good run” for a $400+ machine used by a little old lady who doesn’t print out much beyond an occasional letter or a short story every now and then? God help us.

Old-time sales & service shop — The DiMele Bros repair shop in NYC

In the olden days, which are getting more olden by the day, there were places called Repair Shops. There was often one titled Mr. Fix-It. Alas, one does not repair anything much in this brave new day – one simply tosses it away and buys the latest new model. In San Francisco we do have a spot beloved by many, Phil’s Electric. (This is an unpaid plug.) If you have something electric that Phil’s can’t fix, you’ve probably worn it out over too many decades.

Things electronic, however, are another matter. You don’t wear out an iPhone 4, you discard it for the 5 and then the 6 and then the 7 and now maybe the 7S. Can you wear out a FitBit? Or an Apple Watch? Or any item gently referred to as a “device?” Nahh. Funky cellphone lady You can, without undue effort, lose them to theft, ineptitude or malfunction. In the latter case – see above re my lovely Epson – the good news is that function can actually be restored in some cases.

Having just done an internet search I find there are more than a few electronic repair places in San Francisco, so perhaps all is not lost. There’s even one near Phil’s Electric.

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