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America Collection/General interest
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Saying Goodbye to the Landline

by Fran Johns

SOME LIFESTYLE CHANGES ARE MORE DIFFICULT THAN OTHERS

Telephone of olden days (Author photo)

We go way back, the beloved landline and I. Maybe not really as far back as the above instrument, which was actually rescued from my friend Cynthia who wanted to toss it. But I have loved my landline and it loved me back.

For my part, I listed its number on my business cards, letterhead and with countless agencies which will now have to be alerted about its demise. In return it faithfully showed me who was calling, played a pleasant little message to friends if I were out or (most often) to foes who sought money —  either legitimately, for causes I support, or (most often) illegitimately. 

Good old landline would also tell me, if I happened to be nearby and paying attention, exactly who was calling — giving me the option of answering before the friendly machine did. And most delightfully, it took messages from friends while almost never recording anything from the scammers, who tend not to leave their evil messages on answering machines.

It was also boldly proactive. If you left a message while I was out, it would blink at me ferociously on return until I played things back. Unlike the cellphone, which disappears messages with abandon and is still mildly bewildering after all these years, the landline saved me untold embarrassment from friends who sought to connect.

“You left a message on my cellphone?” Oh dear. “Two weeks ago?” 

In short, my trusty landline has been, over the twelve years since I moved and had to change from the old trusty landline number, far more than just a relic of bygone days. But time came to hang it up.

(Another Author photo, after hanging up the phone)

AT&T finally pushed me over the edge. They’ve been trying to push friends of landlines over the edge for years by any means they can think of. Resistance has been fierce. Generally not for fleeting affections such as listed above but for truly valid reasons.

For one: not everbody in the world owns a mobile phone. I know that’s hard for anyone under 70 to imagine, but once there was life before cellphone towers. Also, cellphones can cost big bucks.

The main argument pro-landline, though, comes from people in remote areas where cellphone coverage is spotty to nonexistent. The telephone is both a friendline and a lifeline. I have friends in this category, as well as friends in cities like my San Francisco hometown, who are concerned about safety when the power is out.

“My mama,” says my friend Brian, “will shoot me if I give up my landline. When the earthquake hit? She was a hot mess until I got to my landline to assure her we were all okay.”

But apparently landline profit margins are thinner than the AT&T people prefer. They came up with a solution.

Several months ago, without so much as a heads-up — let alone an apology — my landline bill quietly rose from $60/month to something over $100. Because I have it on auto-pay, along with the confusing bills for cellphone and internet service I have had with AT&T for lo these many years, I managed not to notice the first month of astronomical charges. But not even right-brained I can overlook, for long, a bill that almost doubles without warning. 

For $60/month I could gulp, but in light of the blessings above which I have long enjoyed, just pay up. A hundred simoleons? Nahh.

So off I went to the Verizon place. Josh the store manager, who was quickly called in because some little old lady was asking ridiculous questions, came up with the answers. I may be in love with Josh.

My trusty landline number will now go to a new iPhone 16e — like I needed another iPhone 16e — which the Verizon people threw in for free. It’s blue. Unlike my white phone, which I generally keep nearby and on which I actually take calls from the few who have its number, the blue phone will sit in the corner formerly occupied by the landline phone. Eventually I’ll come up with an explanatory message for it to offer. Then I’ll try to train myself to check for messages left by friends and the occasional scammer.

Meanwhile, because I may not be techonologically smart enough to unplug the old router and plug in the new without messing up my internet service, the Verizon people will send a technician over to do it. And rather than the three confusing bills AT&T somehow never let me combine into one, the Verizon people are combining all three services into one fathomable bill for me to auto-pay. Take that, AT&T.

All of the above might seem like much ado about nothing to you, but that’s because I’m older than you are. 

Your messages will be welcome on the blue phone. Just please remember that it doesn’t blink at me.

America Collection/General interest
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Finding Calm Amidst the Chaos

by Fran Johns

TERROR. DISTRESS. EXUBERANCE. STRENGTH. HOPE. HOW TO DEAL WITH THE RELENTLESS EMOTIONAL TURMOIL OF THESE DAYS

Scene at edge of Lafayette Park (Author photo)

Anxiety? Through the roof.

For anyone who’s been paying attention, recent days and weeks have been more discouraging, and borderline frightening, than the days and weeks preceding. Those of us who hoisted protest signs got a little temporary relief.

I was out with my KAKISTOCRACY sign (It’s in the dictionary: Government by the worst. The least efficient. The most corrupt.) But I feel almost as strongly about the message on its flip side:

With my second-favorite marching-sign message (Author photo)

Because sometimes kindness seems the only response to the firehose of brutally bad news: political violence, discouraging court decisions, indiscriminate ICE raids, the cruelty and inhumanity a majority of the country wants to see end. The pressure is already beginning to build again. That may be a good thing for the country, since it seems nothing but public outcry will save our democracy. But what about us cogs in the juddering wheel of justice? We, the little people who need to gather strength?

Many recover with the help of music and art, visits with friends, immersion in a good book. I use all of the above. But I find solace, plus instantaneous comfort and joy, in the urban landscape. Mother Nature busies herself in the midst of the busiest built environments, the American city.

Most U.S. cities, with the help of local conservation groups or non-profits like the excellent Trust for Public Land, have pockets of open space where Mother Nature does her tranquilizing thing. In San Francisco, our cup of wonder overflows, including hilltops for viewing the world:

View of the Bay on a foggy day, seen from a hilltop porch garden. (Author photo)

Whether it’s outdoor walks in the country, where green fields or sparkling lakes serve as gateways to the calmer soul, small-town gardens or city parks, Mother Nature has a way of saying, “Breathe. Look around. Look up.”

Sometimes, she even throws in a hummingbird.

Keep the faith.

America Collection/General interest
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Two Lessons from One Good Dad

by Fran Johns

DO GOOD. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR. MANTRAS FOR YESTERDAY AND TODAY

His four daughters at Earl Moreland statue (on R-MC campus) dedication, 2002. (L to r, Oldest sister Jane, yours truly, closest sister & bff Mimi, second oldest Helen.

“Do good, and love thy neighbor,” my father would say. “That just about sums it up.”

Not that he didn’t have plenty of other lessons and admonitions. My father, J. Earl Moreland 1897–1987, was a fierce believer in books & education (the more the better,) in interfaith relations, music and the arts, justice and equality, God and country. But when pressed for something like the secret to long life or prosperity he was prone to rely on that two-pronged moral motto: Do good and love thy neighbor.

My father didn’t set out to raise four daughters. The second of five sons himself, he grew up poor but proud — at least, that was how he told it — in a sturdy, God-fearing home. Left in charge at age 10 when his mother died, his tale was all about rough and rugged Texas, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that sort of thing.

But stuff, and daughters, happened.

My dad left Texas, but kept his Texas soul. After SMU, Class of 1917, he set out for Brazil where, as an educational missionary for the Methodist Church he helped start a college that’s still there and happily met my mother. Then came the daughters. Not long after we came back to the U.S. for good in 1935 he wound up heading another college this one in Virginia.

Aboard ship to Brazil, c 1925 (He was back & forth a half-dozen times in twelve years)

For the record, keeping a family & a college afloat through the Great Depression and World War II was a full time job — (twice that for my mother) — so my father worked 18-hour days and spent a lot of them on the road. But there were always hand-written daily cards and letters, and paternal wisdom wasm freely dispensed.

The only moment of deep disappointment I recall creating was the night my date and I won a jitterbugging contest at a dance chaperoned by my parents. Their love of music and dance did not extend to be-bop and jitterbugging. But episodes of that sort magically disappeared by morning, as if they’d never happened.

My father was, by design and necessity, a feminist ahead of his time. He firmly believed and regularly proclaimed (sometimes to our extreme embarrassment) that his daughters could do anything, be anything, accomplish or inspire anything — as long as it was within the parameters of doing good and loving neighbors. The same applied to his flawless granddaughters — he had 10 of those, though he did finally acquire two flawless grandsons.

In the haphazard one-room schools of his upbringing my father memorized countless speeches and parables — I think the way those 19th century teachers kept order was by setting their charges to memorize entire books of wisdom. One poem that stuck with him forever, and was forever repeated, bore the wisdom of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night’s repose.

Wasting time was not an option, though creative daydreaming, especially if you had a book in your hand, was respected and that was my usual excuse.

Because he loved the country chosen by his immigrant grandparents, loved justice and democracy and his fellow humans, my father would be appalled at the U.S. today. I am sincerely grateful that he and my genteel mother never had to hear the words, especially the lies (Thou shalt not) and vulgarities that spew from our narcissist in chief. But while his three-piece-suit persona didn’t lend itself to protest marches I am absolutely certain he’d be cheering on this daughter, along with her pro-democracy rantings and KAKISTOCRACY sign. He’d also be writing letters and making speeches and admonishing ordinary citizens and government leaders alike:

DO GOOD. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR.

America Collection/General interest
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Children, Try to Get Along, OK?

by Fran Johns

SECOND GRADE TEACHER TO DONNIE AND LITTLE ELON: IF YOU CAN’T BE KIND, BE QUIET. AND A FEW OTHER APPROPRIATE ADMONITIONS

Photo by Austin Pacheco on Unsplash

No offense to Mrs. Trump and Mrs. Musk, but some things just didn’t get through to your little boys.

Having raised three children who survived into adulthood without causing bodily harm to one another, or humankind in general, I know what’s possible. One of mine is actually retired now, and he still hasn’t shouted obscenities at former friends (or caused the deaths of thousands of poor children for that matter.)

In the interest of world peace, I’d like to remind Little Donnie and Little Elon about a few things that surely their mamas tried to teach them.

Such as: You never look good trying to make someone else look bad. We grown-ups are getting really tired of you trying to out-badmouth each other. Most of us had second grade teachers — didn’t you? — who taught us that insults are only used by small people.

My second grade teacher Miss Fretwell (I’m not making this up, that was her name) had a list of adages always at the ready. One offense and you’d be copying the appropriate sentence fifty times. So, Donald and Elon, if you didn’t get these messages from your moms, I would like to pass along a few lines from Miss Fretwell:

People with dirty hands point fingers.

A narrow mind usually goes along with a wide mouth.

None are so empty as those full of themselves.

And emphatically:

It’s okay to be angry; it’s never okay to be cruel.

Finally, to get back to that name-calling and finger-pointing, National No-Name-Calling Week was celebrated the third week of January; maybe you weren’t paying attention. Miss Fretwell would have loved No-Name-Calling Week.

Miss Fretwell would have had Donald and Elon at the blackboard, writing a few of the above. Or perhaps, Be Kind. Or even yet,

If you can’t be kind, be quiet.

On a personal note, as if this entire ramble weren’t personal notes, my birthday is June 8, which a friend just texted is National Loving Day this year. Actually, he was a few days off, but I’ll take it. (Bob Liner says he has moved the celebration four days over from the 12th.) It’s also Pentecost, the day we Christians celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit, which has seemed in short supply lately. Let’s take love and the spirit of peace wherever they can be found.

Be kind

This essay also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye, where I regularly post observations on the political scene (which I try to limit here on dear old WordPress. C’mon over any time; it’s free.

America Collection/General interest
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The Stranger in the Lyft Zone

by Fran Johns

AN ACT OF KINDNESS CIRCUMVENTS A VACATION-ENDING CALAMITY

Photo by Jacob Narkiewicz on Unsplash

The trip had been close to perfect. A granddaughter’s graduation, a few rainy days at the lake with time for good books and long naps, a weekend with friends in their new home after years abroad.

But somewhere between farewell brunch and Reagan National Airport I had caught a soul-killing bug. Or a bug I’d picked up hugging school-age kids caught me. Whichever, by the time I got through security I was feeling feverish and wishing more for a bed than a window seat.

I bought a test kit to make sure it wasn’t covid, put on double-masks and scrunched against my window for one of the most uncomfortable flights I can remember. I ached, I sniffled, I tried not to cough. Six hours felt more like six days.

Finally on the ground in San Francisco I hooked my backpack onto my carry-on —at least I travel light! — and sped toward the Uber/Lyft pick-up zone. It’s on the top level of the parking garage so these rides can be kept separate from vans, buses and other pick-ups. I’ve done this often enough to know exactly where, once off the jetway, to stop and book my ride so that (hopefully) it will arrive not long after I get to the pick-up zone.

No such luck.

On reaching the garage top floor I was greeted by a mob scene of distraught Lyft and Uber riders trying to negotiate phones and luggage while struggling to find their cars or figure out what was going on. The next day I’d learn there had been a communication breakdown; at the time there were no explanations, just a log-jam of palpable anger and frustration.

I backed away from the crowd, still wearing my uncomfortable double mask, and saw on my app that my car had suddenly switched from showing right at the door to 17 minutes away. I wasn’t sure I’d live another 17 minutes in my debilitated state. It was getting close to midnight — long past midnight Eastern Time, which my body was still on.

“Excuse me,” said a calm voice. I looked up to see a pleasant, slightly gray-haired man carrying a small bag, a computer case slung over his shoulder.

“This is a zoo,” he said. “Do you want to come with me to find a cab?” I would have followed him anywhere.

“I don’t know what level the cabs are on,” I said. “It’s been a really long time since I took one.”

“Not a problem,” he said, grabbing my stacked bag. “I’ve done this before.”

Within minutes we had made our way back into the terminal and down to the proper level where signs pointed to the taxi line. There was a steadily moving line of cabs; a half-dozen passengers were moving calmly into one after another. It had taken us less than five minutes to get from the Lyft/Uber Zone to the front cab. I had said nothing except that I wasn’t feeling well and thus the masks.

“You take this one,” my rescuer said, handing my luggage to the driver at the head of the line.

“I cannot thank you enough,” I said as I shook his hand.

“You needn’t,” he said. “Just feel better soon.”

I gave my address to the driver, settling gratefully into the back seat. And felt better already.

As we pulled away from the curb I turned to see my benefactor climbing into the next cab. I don’t think he heard what I said.

It was “I love you.”

General interest
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“Play Ball!” and the World Plays With You

by Fran Johns

A HAPHAZARD GEEZER FAN GETS A REMINDER ABOUUT BASEBALL MAGIC

Next generation Giants fan (Authorized photo by Fran Johns)

The crowds! The organ music! The peanuts! The chants, the cheers! The excitement!

Oh, and the ballgame!

It’s all in an afternoon — or evening — for millions of American sports fans, so I don’t pretend to be saying anything new. But plunging into it after a decade’s absence amounted to a sight for new eyes — and what a view.

In an earlier life I was drenched in ballgames. My late beloved husband, Bud Johns, covered sports for the Flint (MI) Journal when he was still in high school, worked his way through college officiating games of all sorts (when he wasn’t playing one) and throughout his life covered and/or followed every sport known to TV. I once came home to find a curling match on. I draw the line at curling.

Baseball, though, was number one. Beginning with several 1940s Negro League players who became lifelong friends, he kept a mental file of players, games, batting averages and obscure trivia that boggled more sports-oriented minds than my own. For decades I was a San Francisco Giants fan with the ultimate personal game guide.

Then life intervened.

A combination of Bud’s decline and death, the pandemic and a few other of life’s little surprises sent the remembrance of our national pastime back to the level of my undistinguished third baseman career with the Ashland (VA) High School girls’ softball team.

Until now.

Gifted with four great seats for a recent game between the Giants and the Texas Rangers I rounded up three geezer friends, happily including one confirmed fan who knows stuff, a key bonus. It all came back in a rush, you could say nine innings’ worth of rush.

AND! Bottom of the 9th: Heliot Ramos sends a blooper softball into no-man’s land, the Rangers make a couple of throwing errors and Ramos steals his way clear around the bases and into a walk-off dive across home plate. It doesn’t get any better than that.

San Francisco Chronicle story the following day (Author photo)

Here’s my comprehensive report on the day:

Arrive early. Of the 41,000+ people who showed up at Oracle Park for our game, some 20,000 were simultaneously funneling into the same entrance chosen by my three companions and me. (This will be the only quasi-negative element of this report. I apologize for it.) Deference, to little old ladies or anyone else, is not shown by baseball fans intent upon reaching their seats before the opening pitch and picking up garlic fries en route. Of the fast-moving sea of 20,000 in which we swam, all but four of us knew exactly where they were going. We four were saved by the guidance of our one stadium-familiar fan. We arrived unscathed.

The scent of the game: deep fry. Nowhere but in a ballpark can recirculating hot oil smell good. Sensibly limited or outright banned in most home kitchens, it miraculously morphs into attar of ballgame. Irresistably aromatic. You may have just finished Sunday dinner, but suddenly you absolutely have to have that corndog.

Fans are wired to be friends. Despite the jostling to get seated before game time, about 40,000 of those 41,000+ (our game was sold out, I’m not making this up) seemed to be my new best friends. Folks approaching our seats after we were comfortably settled politely explained we were in the right seats but the wrong section, and guided us one section (with way better view) over. Folks behind expertly leaned over to take our picture when they saw we didn’t know how to take a foursome selfie. The mom of one of countless adorable toddlers in game-day couture (he was high among the most adorable) obligingly said, Sure! I could post his photo online. And scattered everywhere else were smiling fans happy to give directions, make running commentaries on the play, offer opinions or sing along.

Ballgame music is the All-American heartsong. From the three-note thrum to get the home crowd going to the intermittent rousing organ notes (why did somebody have to tell me it’s all just digital?) to the seventh inning ‘God Bless America,’ music in the ballgame air is bound to the joy. Even mangled renditions of the Star Spangled Banner can be goosebump-inducing. (To the extent that our less-than-melodic anthem can induce goosebumps.)

News of the day? Forget it. There is no world outside the stadium once the ballgame starts.

There is also just no need to hurry. A few innings in, though I had successfully bypassed the corndogs and garlic fries, I was in desperate need of a latte. Thanks to my confirmed inner coffee snob I did not think any of the umpteen dozen fast-food kiosks could serve drinkable coffee. So I set out for the Peet’s place behind the scoreboard, hardly a few hundred yards as the crow flies. On foot, though, Peet’s is a good quarter mile or so. Speed-walking is out; at one point the crowd simply, mysteriously stopped for a while. Going for coffee, as it turns out, is a two-inning endeavor. But never mind — everyone’s friendly, the music is good and there are ever-changing views of the action along the way.

And one more note about the music: Observing the sights and sounds of the ‘God Bless America’ episode was a monumental nostalgia moment. I was, at that moment, behind the scoreboard in the outer, outer outfield surrounded by a sizable portion of the 41,000 — I never did figure out who was actually in the seats, since they all seemed to be swimming in the sea of kiosk-shoppers. But then, as one, the shuffling crowd — which seemed to include every size, shape, race and tattoo preference — shuffled to a stop. Hats came off, hands went to hearts (this being national anthem junior, I guess,) and every other fan seemed to be singing along.

For a brief interlude there was world peace. And God, whoever and wherever She is, surely blessed America’s pastime.

🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

This essay appeared earlier on my Substack page, The Optimistic Eye. C’mon over any time, it’s free.

America Collection/General interest
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Truth Demands Our Attention

by Fran Johns

MURDER, INTRIGUE, CORPORATE GREED, CLIMATE CRISIS — THEY’RE ALL IN THIS REMARKABLE NEW BOOK. YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK IT OUT

Author Reyes onstage at Climate event (Fran Johns photo)

Your young partner is found murdered, his bullet-riddled body abandoned in a Venezuelan cow-field? You could be forgiven for falling apart, clamoring for answers and possibly seeking revenge . . . But after a few years, somehow putting your life back together and moving forward, the terrible darkness eventually receding into the past.

Not so Abby Reyes.

Abby was in her early 20s, just before the turn of the last century, when she met Terence Unity Freitas; both were deeply committed to environmental justice and to addressing the critical global crises that existed then and continue today. Terence was making a serious, complicated presentation on the day they met when he stopped, mid-sentence, and asked her for a date that night. Their love story underlies the larger story told in her new book, Truth Demands, and manages to make its unspeakable tragedies somehow more bearable to anyone who has ever loved.

In 1999 Terence was working in the Indigenous U’wa territory in Colombia, listening to U’wa community needs and trying to help preserve the centuries-old ways of life that were being imperiled by multinational oil interests. As he and two companions, Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa (Menominee), and Lahe’ena’e Gay (Hawaiian) were on their way to the airport they were kidnapped and subsequently murdered.

For decades there were no answers.

Reyes recounts her journey through the grief that was made more terrible over the next two decades for lack of justice. A still-youthful woman who is closer to the earth than most, she found healing through its trees and grasses and waters, and through spiritual practices of meditation and self-care. Moving back and forth in time throughout the book, she tells the story in a lyrical language that also keeps hopelessness, for the reader (as the pathway did for Reyes herself), at bay.

Twenty years after the murders, Reyes, alongside Terence’s mother, with whom she has remained close, became a central part of Case 001 of Colombia’s truth and recognition process. Now there were others who sought some sort of justice, who wanted to hear her stories and promised to seek answers for her questions.

Johns & Reyes (who had to be nudged to show the book) at the Climate One event (Fran Johns photo)

Truth Demands is newly released. It gives no linear pathway from tragedy to solution, and it would be a disservice to readers to share here what it does (and does not) reveal. It’s simply a story for our time.

Actually, a two-part story for our time. One part is the journey through grief that will resonate with — and offer gentle assistance to — anyone who has suffered loss. If sometimes similar, all such journeys are unique; Reyes’ is unlike any this writer has encountered in many years of working with end-of-life issues and people in pain.

The second, and clearly atop the author’s lists of concerns, is the work that needs to be done if the planet itself is to survive. Currently Director of UC Irvine Community Resilience Projects, Reyes has a unique understanding of the state of the planet and particular insight into the effects of multinational oil corporations on today’s politics and tomorrow’s health.

Reyes spoke of it all at a recent Climate One event at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club World Affairs building, interviewed by Climate One Co-host and Producer Kousha Navidar.

These issues — overwhelming grief, overstressed earth, and all the complex peripheral problems accompanying them — are not going to be solved tomorrow. Regularly, they get distorted by twists and turns and lies.

Truth Demands is on the side of truth.

America Collection/General interest
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Will I Outlive My New iPhone?

by Fran Johns

CONTEMPLATING LONGTERM PAYMENT PLANS CAN BE GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH. BECAUSE WE NEED TO HAVE THESE LITTLE VICTORIES

This (above) is a selfie with my new iPhone 16e. I was going for an Edvard Munch ‘The Scream’ effect, which is how I feel about the thing.

I was actually very happy with my elderly iPhone 11, but oh, the horror of having a device that’s several models out of date. Plus, like all else in the Age of Technology it was created to reach obsolescence, one way or another, in short order. My 11’s battery died and went to heaven. No resurrection for iPhone batteries, just go buy a new phone.

I picked the 16e as opposed to the 16-with-no-letter mainly because it was $200 cheaper, even if it didn’t have a wide-angle camera (everybody needs a wide-angle camera?) or some Mag stuff — I am WAYYyy too old to get into Mag stuff.

As I prepared to pay, the nice, green-jacketed Apple person said, “Oh, you needn’t pay it all now! There’s no interest if you space out the payments.” No Apple employee is old enough to remember outright paying for stuff, though most are old enough to have heard a grandparent preach against credit card interest. Life before credit cards? — nobody remembers that.

But here is the revenge of the geezer class: Maybe I will expire before my payment plan does! Ever looking for a bargain, I scheduled the iPhone 16e payments for the maximum length of time and we have both now begun the race toward expiration. Where does Apple think it’ll find me if I exit the planet owing $200 on one of their devices?

It reminded me of the time, not long ago, when I picked up some new light bulbs. In not-so-small print they advertised themselves as Guaranteed to Last for Twenty Years.

“I’m going to have to put these things in my will?” I asked the check-out clerk. He just went on ringing me up.

But speaking of dead iPhone batteries, which I was a few paragraphs ago. Lately I’ve been joining the locals in friendly gatherings at the Tesla showroom, protesting against their unfriendly, chainsaw-wielding founder. Tesla is big on advertising its long-life batteries. I have some empathy for those batteries. “It’s important to understand,” writes one expert on the subject, “that very few EV batteries suddenly stop working.” (In other words, some of them do.” 

To continue that report: “Instead, they degrade slowly over time, gradually storing less and less energy . . .” I know exactly how they feel. But unlike a Tesla battery, which will probably degrade the planet for a few eons despite everything they tell us about elaborate recycling, my ashes will at least be dessert for some marine creature in the Chesapeake Bay, so take that, Elon. 

These are the sorts of reflections one has upon reaching a certain marker along life’s journey. Should I trade these comfy old sneakers for a new pair of Hokas designed to travel hundreds of miles? Is buying this large, economy size container of lemon pepper an overly optimistic strategy? These sorts of decisions eat up a lot of brain space.

Which brings me back to the iPhone. However much the Apple people get out of me, it’s a $600 thing. I use it as a communication device — and OK, picture-taking is fun and phones that don’t take pictures are so last century. Still, the transaction included a one-hour class just to discover how it can track your exertions related to sneaker use and your dietary relation to lemon pepper. I took the class, and since nobody else did I turned out to get a one-hour personal tutorial.

I learned all about the health app and the action button and the plant identifier and the text translation capability, but the instructor seemed a little baffled when I asked if there were an On/Off button. (No, there’s not.)

There are more bewildering things about my nifty little device than it is possible to learn within my anticipated lifetime.

But at least we’re both on the same pay-as-you-age plan.

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