Category: America Collection

America Collection
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AI on the Literary Scene? 👎

by Fran Johns

NOT READY FOR CUTESY AI BLOGGERS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash

I just received a link to a fellow Substack “writer.” It has a name which I will not repeat. It even says it speaks for a human, though the named human cannot be found with extensive searching. An actual human posts the clever “thoughts” of the artificial, unintelligent bot.

You may be picking up my distaste here.

Up front I want to acknowledge the fact that AI has immense, far-ranging benefits to humanity, primarily in health, science & technology. If our ethical controls were not light years behind the technology we could all just sit back and celebrate.

But AI in the writing business? Please. Pity the English teachers in high schools and colleges everywhere— not to mention those in just about every other academic field — currently having to spend endless extra hours just trying to separate out what the student wrote from what the bot wrote.

Chalk this up not just to the gaping lag between moral-ethical codes and AI capabilities but to an entire generation born into the digital age. They, and generations to come, are led to assume that anything one can click on one can claim. Think about that for a while.

My rage, however, is with AI takng over the adults in the literary room. Where does it get off, barging in as if it owns the world, a scary but likely scenario? AI is announcing that anything we can write it can write better. Faster, cleaner and thoroughly spell-checked.

Here’s what AI does not have: a brain. It has only a composite of a zillion human brains that pour themselves into an artificial universe where data collection and algorithms now take over in lieu of human thought.

Here’s what else AI does not have: a soul. It cannot feel compassion, act in kindness, respond with love.

Great writers since the stone age have labored to record human truth, to create stories that help us understand ourselves and our world. Their words engage our thoughts and emotions to help us make sense of this life.

AI now presumes to grab, by the billions and trillions, those words put forth by human brains. By human beings who put their human blood, sweat and tears into the work of creation. AI then professes to reorganize the words we humans created into its “perfect,” soulless algorithms .

Sorry, I will not be subscribing to a bot.

+. +. +

This essay also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye, which (despite today’s pessimistic note) seeks optimistic observations on all things political and otherwise. C’mon over any time, it’s free. (https://franmorelandjohns.substack.com/)

America Collection
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Immigrant Prayers & Thanksgiving

by Fran Johns
crowd of people holding up pocket-size copies of US Constitution

THIS YEAR’S INTERFAITH BREAKFAST MESSAGE: WE’RE ALL CHILDREN OF THE SAME GOD

Hoisting our new copies of the Constitution (Author photo)

The Interfaith Prayer Breakfast is pretty much my favorite morning of every year. You get prayed over in every known religion and a few you probably never heard of; it’ll just about carry you through the next 364 days. It is sponsored annually by the San Francisco Interfaith Council.

This was the 25th annual such event. The first one — in 1998 — I remember well; we had four or five tables. It’s grown ever since (excepting the two pandemic years) into today’s over-capacity crowd; but who’s counting? The Fire Chief was among the dignitaries. Others ranged from Lt Gov Eleni Kounalakis to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (we’re her people, after all) to local committee chairs and union officials and everyone in between.

These events have themes — generally falling within the faith/hope/love spectrum. This year it was Sanctuary: A San Francisco Value. “San Francisco Values” is not a pejorative term around here.

In accordance with the theme, every speaker or participant at the prayer breakfast led off with his or her immigrant ancestry. I lost track after a while. But almost every one cited immigrant parents, grandparents &/or recent kinfolk who had arrived on these shores as refugees from the Holocaust or from genocide or persecutions beyond imagination. Seeking sanctuary.

The parallel prayers — Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim and other — then used their various languages to point out that we’re all children of the same god, by whatever name. In other words, brothers and sisters, immigrants all.

Said one speaker, “Sanctuary means a place of refuge, a sacred space.”

“The protection of others is a divine trust,” said a Muslim speaker.

“The Buddhist call to compassion results in gratitude,” noted another.

The morning swag was a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. Early on we were invited to hoist our Constitutions high, just to make a point. It’s actually pretty good reading. I leafed through my new copy before starting this report, impressed once again by some of the niceties like co-equal branches of government, powers of the Congress, guarantees of individual freedoms etc that have not been brightly evident this year.

Brightly evident at the 25th Annual SFIC Prayer Breakfast: Good food, good vibes, good will to all. Immigrants included.

America Collection/General interest
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What Is It With Housecleaning?

by Fran Johns
Man holding vacuum cleaner in a dance pose

CAN SOMEONE FIND INNER PEACE, BETWEEN SQUEAKY-CLEAN AND CLUTTERED?

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Editorial warning: This is a first world problem story.

The housekeeping people just left my apartment. Happy as I am to see them arrive, I am sixteen times happier to see them go.

It’s an every other week ritual. The hyper-efficient housekeepers trained and provided by my senior living building appear with their cart-load of sweepers, dusters, mops and vacuum cleaners and swarm my otherwise happy home. The exorbitant fees I pay to live in this place (where DO old people in the U.S. go if they don’t have a zillion dollars? — that’s another story) actually cover housekeeping once a week. But I find the experience so traumatizing I elect to have them only every other week. I am still waiting for the small rebate I feel due for all the $$ I save them.

Why the trauma? It’s because I have to zoom around before they arrive, making sure there’s nothing in the way of their Marie-Kondoing the place. Never mind that I do a lot of cleaning, arranging and tidying up every day; I have a lot of company. But whereas my visitors would overlook a small pile of stuff on the table or even the occasional toothbrush on the sink, our housekeepers may whoosh it away forever in the frenzy to maintain their standards of spit-and-polish. The housekeepers here are, I believe, recruited from the military. 

Well, anyway. After they finish sweeping, mopping, dusting, wiping down, vacuuming and generally disturbing the peace, my work begins.

Bottles at the backs of counters, invariably left just a few degrees askew, must be rearranged in proper alignment. Pictures must be rescued from their descent into lopsidedness. Books and treasures must be restored to their rightful places. And — here is the real bi-weekly challenge — everything I shoved into cabinets or drawers just so it wouldn’t wind up in the recycling bin must be recovered from its hiding place. This last is not always successful. After I die it is likely someone will be heard to exclaim, “Why in the world did Mom put this basket of popcorn behind the stack of sweaters in her closet?”

Here is my question: What law of the universe ordains that the square bottle of hand lotion be positioned squarely against the back counter ledge?

For that matter, will the earth quit turning if pillows meant to be placed at angles on the sofa are left in improper poses? Will climate change be accelerated even faster if glass vases are left to refract the suns rays rather than being restored to positions of predestined alignment?

Marie Kondo I am not. I am just still in recovery from the loss of an otherwise spectacularly beloved husband who never saw a flat space he did not feel would be improved by a few piles of books, magazines and papers. I maintain a few perpetual piles of papers on at least two or three surfaces at all times in his memory. But of course, then I have to remember that I stuck them behind the laundry detergent when the cleaners came.

And the popcorn? Yeah, did that once. Bulky sweaters are rarely called for in San Francisco. I am not admitting in public print how long the popcorn remained undiscovered. (It was soggy. We don’t have mice in this building.)

There is probably a moral to this tale. All suggestions will be welcome. 

* * *

This essay also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye (franmorelandjohns.substack.com) where I also write weekly about things political. C’mon over any time; it’s free

America Collection/General interest
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A Tale of Love and the Moon

by Fran Johns
Moon and clouds

EARTHLINGS’ TURMOIL COMES AND GOES, MOON AND MOUNTAINS ARE FOREVER

Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash

These are Blue Moon times. Still trying to get used to the early dark, still trying to readjust to the time-change jolt, I for one have been looking for some relief — any relief please — from the chaos of life.

Enter the moon. Its waxing and waning in spectacular beauty have brought the best kind of balm.

A few nights ago San Francisco City Hall even pitched in to help, turning itself blue to create this photo op as captured (below) from Fulton Street at the San Francisco Ballet building. I mean. Who could ask for anything more? And then came more!

(Author photo)

The November 9 Cloud Appreciation Society’s Cloud of the Day brought a Blue Moon tale. As follows:

According to the folklore of the Ladin people, inhabitants of villages scattered across the Dolomite valleys of northern Italy, a young prince of long ago married a woman from the Moon, and the two lived together happily on the Dolomites. Happily, but not forever after.

Over time, the pale peaks of the mountains made the princess pine for the Moon, and she left her bridegroom to go back home.

The prince, lonely and desolate, went for a walk in the woods, where he met a gnome. The two came up with a Plan: the gnome would paint the sides of the mountains in beautiful colors — colors shiny and blue enough to change the mind of the missing maiden.

Dave Wood, friend of Charles McDonald (Cloud Appreciation Society Member 55,390), visited the Dolomites in northern Italy, the cool blue peaks echoed the tones of the Altocumulus stratiformis undulatus sky.

And it worked!

Possibly comforted by the blues reminiscent of her home, the Moon princess returned, and the two lived happily ever after.

Only a tale, you say? Maybe you’ve not been to the Dolomites lately. (I surely have not.) But thanks to Members and friends of the Cloud Appreciation Society — which keeps one eye on the Moon — the photo above might change your mind.

At the very least, it offers this assurance: Whatever passing chaos we earthlings might create, the Moon and the mountains are here for the everlasting.

I heard it from a gnome.

America Collection/General interest
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The Secret Weapon for Preventing Falls

by Fran Johns

AN OCCASIONAL UNAUTHORIZED UNSUPPORTED (BUT HEARTFELT) HEALTH TIP

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Look better . . . fall less . . . what’s not to love about good posture?

I had the great good fortune, a few eons ago, to study modern dance in college with a woman named Eleanor Struppa. “Struppa,” as she was universally addressed, had herself danced with the famed Martha Graham. You could spot her in any crowd — she’d be the person standing, or more often moving, with such fluid grace and effortlessly perfect posture that she commanded a space of her own.

Struppa’s students did not slouch. This was because we might be walking droopy-shouldered along some hall or pathway when a hand from behind would quietly grab a small chunk of hair on the top of our head and, as it was tugged upward, a voice would sing out, “A string! A string! Imagine a string is pulling you upward . . .” End of slouch.

The string trick alone doesn’t do it; there’s a lot of chin-tucking, muscle-strengthening, spine-aligning and proper exercise involved. Good genes are a bonus. 

Bone loss, physical afflictions and gravity have their way with the aging body, but concentrating on balance and posture can help us all stay upright. And here’s the pay-off: staying upright is the best way not to break bones.

In addition to a ridiculous obsession with posture, I am even more ridiculously obsessed with balance. I have a collection of balance exercises in my head that come into play in any given spare three minutes. You can sneak in a balance exercise anywhere, as long as you ignore the curious glances from everybody else in the wait lines. Extra points for executing rock-the-boats in a moving elevator —  near the railing, please, just in case. Fellow residents in my senior living building are all by now used to this. More than a few join in (though seldom in the elevator.)

So far, it’s working. The last bone I broke was about 50 years ago, playing doubles tennis with my then-70-something-year-old father. That time, I made a graceful leap at the net and wound up with a broken foot. I was in a walking cast for the next six weeks. What I remember best about that time was repeatedly having to tell the story, only to hear the listener ask, “Well, how’s your father?” He was, of course, just fine. His posture was impeccable until his death, at 90.

My posture has now outlived his by a couple of years, thanks in large measure to the lilting voice in my head:

“A string! A string! Imagine a string is pulling you upward!”

This post also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye. C’mon over any time, it’s free

America Collection/General interest
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Flight 678 and the Physics Lesson

by Fran Johns

A NUCLEAR PHYSICIST AND A WRITER WITH AN ART DEGREE MEET ON A FOUR-HOUR FLIGHT . . . WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN?

Luke Jones on Unsplash

“Well two people are working on this flight,” he says. (He is in 22-B)

“Yeah,” she says. “Always.” She is in 22-C, grouchy because she really likes the window and after 10 years as a loyal customer could the travel agent not remember it’s window,not aisle?

As everyone else starts scrolling through movies or settling back with eye-shades on, 22-B and 22-C lower their tray tables and open their laptops.

“David,” he says, offering a hand. “Fran,” she says. “You’re editing something? Everybody needs a good editor. What’s it about?”

“Well . . . you see. . . I’m a physicist.” Much later in the flight he will explain: Ask a physicist a question, you’re going to get a very long answer. Even if the question is posed by a writer with an Art degree who is congenitally lacking in left-brain material.

Pretty soon they are joined by 22-A (the coveted window) who had started out behind the eyeshades. It turns out 22-A (I didn’t get his name over the engine noise) is a computer science student and recognizes a good thing when he finds himself seated next to it.

David is on the first leg of a trip from one top U.S. nuclear physics research and development lab to another. I’m just going to a family reunion; not sure about 22-A. What I do know for sure is that most casual airline conversations are about the weather, or legroom. Does this interest David the physicist? Hardly.

“Inertial confinement fusion. . .” he is saying. (Introduce yourself to a physicist, don’t expect to talk about legroom.) Something about shooting lasers at pellets’ exterior to turn stuff into plasma. Finally. A word I know: plasma. Part of the blood, right? Wrong. On row 22, A-C, we’re talking about a state of matter resulting from a gaseous state that’s been ionized. Or something like that.

Actually, at one point in our impromptu post-doctoral-level lecture there occurs a new concept I totally understand. David explains something about magnetized particles by performing a visual demo of grabbing one particle and stretching it to its limit. When you let go it may zap back past where it was and into space, and now you’ve got interesting stuff going on.

You can try this at home.

There’s one down-to-earth interruption when the mother-in-law sends a photo of the physicist’s lab (as in dog) whom she’s baby-sitting. But after a while, 22-C retreats into less esoteric endeavors on the aisle-side laptop, while B and A continue. There are ongoing snippets of “the algorithms just needed…” or “fun stuff…” or “nuclear fusion reactions…” or “you run the code…” and “once you get it…” But there is only so much brain elasticity available on the aisle at 34,000 feet.

Perhaps anticipating a time when all R&D labs get shut down and a podcast host is put in charge of science, David explains that “you need physicists for national security, for medicine, for the advancement of society. Even if we’re a little weird.”

Weird is good.

America Collection/General interest
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Light Keeps Overcoming the Darkness

by Fran Johns

WE THE PEOPLE ARE HAPPILY BRIGHTENING THE COUNTRY, WITH CANDLES AND DANCE, SONGS AND JOY. AND A LITTLE LAUGHTER

Artwork by Laura Borealis (Used with permission)

Bring your neighbors. Bring your children. Bring your love for this country and let it shine.


This is my kind of an invitation. It was, actually, an invitation to join a recent event in Atlanta titled Unite in Light. Atlanta chooses light in these dark times for our democracy


Neighbors brought their children, and other neighbors. Children hoisted signs. Ordinary people came out for an extraordinary celebration, a ribbon of light stretching miles across the city from midtown to Stone Mountain.


“With our lights, signs and waves and the supportive honks of passing cars,” wrote one participant, Jane Branscomb, “Atlanta showed up for unity and democracy over division and tyranny.”

Jane Branscomb photo

Across the country in Seattle another group circled Green Lake, holding hands “in a giant embrace of our democracy and community.”


Melinda Branscomb (yes, they’re sisters) has a ukelele protest group, Ukes Uprising, which didn’t play at that one, but I’m told there was a “Dance for Democracy” group who brought music and danced for those encircling the lake. The whole encircling idea was simply to “celebrate the values we stand for with signs, song, and dance.”

Photo courtesy of Melinda Branscomb (far left)

The Ukes Uprising (above) musicians are not a marching band — though who knows? — so they station themselves, instead, at strategic points along protest routes. At the last No Kings Day, for example, they stationed themselves at the light rail station exit nearest to the march starting point. “Literally tens of thousands of arriving protesters walked past us,” Melinda recalls, “and folks smiled and sang along as they passed.” An estimated 70,000 singing, dancing Seattleites took part in that event.


It’ll happen again all across the country on October 18: No Kings Day #2. On the last No Kings Day in San Francisco — where people singing and dancing on the streets can usually be found somewhere if you just look — my new friend Tylor (“with an O, people always get that wrong”) was skipping along with his rainbow cape flowing behind and his Human Rights sign waving on high.

Author photo

Tylor (above) mainly laughs a lot — and it’s hard not to laugh along.


This is what I wish our Narcissist-in-Chief could figure out: laughing and loving, singing and dancing, holding hands — those are the ties that bind. And they will bind this country together again.


Officially, No Kings Day (there’s one near you!) is a peaceful national day of action in support of reproductive freedom, democracy, and accountability. A rally against authoritarianism. Unofficially it’s just a chance to get together with friends and strangers to raise candles, hoist signs, sing and dance and laugh a little. In support of a life-or-death movement.


Unfortunately, N-i-C Trump does not laugh. Oh, he makes unfunny jokes if there’s a barb in them, but his mama apparently never taught him the difference between humor and cruelty.


Cruelty never inspired people to line the streets with candles and song. Laughter overcomes humorlessness. Peaceful protest wins out over masked militias. Sometimes, in these dark days, phrases like these only sound like platitudes. But then the candles come out in Atlanta and the ukeleles tune up in Seattle and laughter ripples across San Francisco.


And democracy wins again.

America Collection/General interest
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Hope is the Thing With Heart

by Fran Johns

STRANGERS AT A DEMONSTRATION SHARE THEIR HOPEFULNESS

(Politics alert: Though I usually try to stay apolitical on this site, a Substack follower actually emailed that he, a Republican who also checks out this site from time to time, thought I should share it on WordPress. What can I say? An actual Reader Request. Thanks, Al, and enjoy, anyone else.)

“Not much,” said one young man when asked what gave him hope. “I mean, I don’t have much hope for today, or next week. But I have a lot of hope for the future. We just have to get things back on track.”

An indomitable group of strangers gathers regularly at the corner of Van Ness and Geary Blvd in San Francisco to hoist signs, wave at passing cars and cheer for democracy. It’s always a different group but with occasional familiar faces. At a recent “Trump Takedown” protest I asked a dozen or so of those gathered what gives them hope. They had a lot to say.

“People like you and me,” said one tall, grizzled Black man with whom I would appear to share little in common except, perhaps, old age. “We’re here, and not giving up.” 

A lovely woman named Nacha (“like Nachos”) answered my question with a smile as she rested her sign to reach for something in her pocket. It was a small plastic envelope containing her U.S. passport and a copy of the Constitution. “I’m an American by choice,” she said. “I came here years ago because I had to leave Peru; I love this country. But I carry my passport with me always now, just in case.”  I did not share with Nacha the brief feeling of hopelessness that spread through me on hearing this last sentence. Still, she smiled broadly and how could that not give everyone hope?

The demonstrators come partly just for the shared community fun. There’s a constant honking of horns, there are waves from passing cars and trucks, shouts of encouragement. One participant said to me, “I know this is San Francisco — but I also know these demonstrations are happening all over the country and won’t stop until we get our democracy back.” That gave me another shot of hope.

A young man named Tylor (“With an ‘O’ — nobody gets that right”) said he has a meditation practice that keeps him “hopeful, and on track.” Tylor also had a rainbow cape, an inclination to dance in the median strip and a Cheshire Cat smile. “Evolution,” he said while dancing (on the sidewalk,) “is a path. It may be bumpy, but the universe is taking us forward toward love and peace.” It is possible to pick up gems of philosophical wisdom at sidewalk protests.

A teenaged couple who are classmates at Washington High School gave my question serious thought before responding. “Trump’s approval ratings keep going down,” he said; “that gives me hope.” She gave a broader assessment: “When I see all sorts of people coming together with positive values . . .” she said, before turning away to smile at a white SUV with passengers waving from every window.

I came home with Tylor’s words in my head. “I’m really just paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr here,” he said after going on for a while about the evolutionary path toward love. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

May hope continue to be the thing with feathers, and heart.

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