Category: General interest

America Collection/General interest
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Is Your Husband In? Could You Get Him to Help You?

by Fran Johns

ULTIMATE INSULT HURLED BY THE TECH SUPPORT GUY

Photo by SEO Galaxy on Unsplash

It started with the Earthlink support person issuing instructions — you know the drill: scroll down to this, click that, from the dropown box select this, type in the other. We were trying to get the Sent function of my email out of a snit; it had begun greeting any attempt to send messages with one of those dreaded “Cannot Send Mail. SMS Error something or other” boxes.

I had finally connected with a tech support guy on a phone help line.

Patiently I followed instructions. After an hour or so we came painfully to the end, hit Refresh, no luck. Smile, repeat. Another hour and my default pleasant demeanor was tested, but still in place. Problem not solved. 

On background: I do have a brain. Though hardly a tech nerd, I am able to follow instructions. The support person, however, was convinced I was not following instructions properly. This is where things started downhill.

“Do you have someone there to help you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I replied. “I thought you were helping me.”

“Is your husband there,” he asked? 

So, here we are. Still living in a world wherein it is assumed that “the little woman” — especially if she’s as old as I am — really doesn’t know much beyond how to bake a pie, so if you’re a tech support guy of course you need to speak with the man of the house.

“He’s been dead for six years,” I said. “When he was alive I had to help him with the computer. Do you have any other questions?”

“Oh, I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. I found this unhelpful.

Because I live in a building with an Activities staff, just for fun I called that department and asked if someone had a few minutes to stop by. My friend Oli immediately walked in.

“Here’s my friend Oli,” I said to the tech guy on speaker phone.

“Hello,” she said in her most authoritative young voice. “I graduated in computer science; what can I do for you?”

The tech support guy thereupon put Oli through the drill while she checked exactly all the same boxes etc etc etc until they came to the end. Hit refresh, no luck. “You are not solving the problem,” Oli said before leaving. (She gave me a two-thumbs-up sign.)

Update: My emails are now merrily sending. This morning, following the instructions of a third tech support guy, I managed to change that one elusive number or letter or whatever needed changing. The one the first two had never managed to identify. But with someone, finally, who knew what steps needed to be taken I was able to get my Send function out of its snit.

With no one else at home.

America Collection/General interest
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Diwali: Ancient Festival We Need Today

by Fran Johns

CELEBRATING LIGHT, PEACE AND LOVE

I was invited to join some friends for the San Francisco Brahma Kumaris’ Diwali celebration, and to light a candle for peace.

It strikes me we can use a dose of Diwali in the USA today. The ancient Hindu festival of lights is celebrated by many religions — and my lovely Brahma Kumaris friends always welcome this Presbyterian.

So we listened to songs and soft music on the harp (Sr Kyoko is a spectacular harpist) and we exchanged Om’s and Om Shanti’s (gentle expressions of peace) and shared delicious vegetarian food and a great deal of friendship and hope.

The graceful Victorian home of Brahma Kumaris SF was ablaze in light for the season and the celebration. 

Briefly, Diwali is a reminder that peace is possible, that love wins, and that light will always overcome darkness. Sometimes, notably in times of political upheaval, it’s easy to forget these truths.

Om shanti.

America Collection/General interest
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Citizenship Can Be Hard to Do

by Fran Johns

ARE ALL BALLOTS AS EXHAUSTING AS MY BALLOT?

(All photos by kind Passerby)

Whew, it’s done. Dropped in the box at my local library.

But it took forever. In California we have, for instance, ranked choice (probably a good thing) and school board choices (tough for those of us long aged out of public education) etc, etc, etc. And Propositions. Propositions test the limits of fortitude. 

Propositions work like this:

Allow krill fishing off of Pier 72. (Yes or No.) 

If you really want krill fishing you must carefully also vote the right way on the next Proposition:

Ban krill fishing off Pier 71. (Yes or No.) This might keep krill away from Pier 72; you have to figure it out. Tricky, elaborate explanations run to multiple pages. It’s also wise to read who’s funding what. 

Still, we persevere. We rank, we choose, we study, we fill in the circles.

Democracy will survive.

America Collection/General interest
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On Getting Too Old for Artificial Intelligence

by Fran Johns

SOME DAYS ONE JUST HAS TO COME RAGING OUT OF THE CLOSET

Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

OK, I tried. 

I didn’t want to embarrass my generation by opposing Progress. Or to expose my geezerhood by questioning the unqualified wonderfulness of Artificial Intelligence.

Even when “generative AI” started getting exuberantly talked about as the newest wonderful potential of this wonderful new thing — I smiled and listened to the limitless lists of tasks opening up. Even while knowing that “generative” is defined in my old-fashioned Merriam-Webster dictionary as “having the power or function of generating, originating, producing, or reproducing” something. 

Such as writing a far better blog titled “On Getting Too Old for Artificial Intelligence” than the one you’re reading.

All these years I have kept — well, mostly — quiet about my reflexive antipathy to the whole AI business.

I have repeatedly told my grandchildren: I know how much great good AI is doing. Medical miracles. Scientific advances. Industrial shortcuts. The tool — which was, we try to remember, invented by human beings — is working wonders. Plus, it’s here to stay.

But this is about words. Once AI takes over the writing of PhD theses, college application essays, SATs, term papers and elementary school homework assignments — it’s happening — whose words are going to be used for it all?

Yours and mine and Tolstoy’s and everybody on the New York Times bestseller list. Tolstoy doesn’t care any more, but on his behalf I do.

I’m sorry to admit this, as I am generally pro-LinkedIn, but it was LinkedIn that did me in. LinkedIn sent me a note headlined “Data for Generative AI Improvement.” A headline guaranteed to get my attention, if not my enthusiasm. Beneath the headline was this question:

Can LinkedIn and its affiliates use your personal data and content you create on LinkedIn to train generative AI models that create content?

Excuse me?

I said no. But do you think the AI-generated bots that are already creating enough generative AI content to destroy six democratic nations tomorrow need my extraordinary “content” anyway?

I mean. They’ve already got Tolstoy. 

America Collection/General interest
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Richard Mayhew, Beloved Centenarian

by Fran Johns

HE AND HIS ART MADE THE WORLD, ESPECIALLY MY WORLD, BETTER

Richard Mayhew’s “Spiritual Transitions”, book cover courtesy of the artist and ACA Galleries, NYC (Author photo)

Richard Mayhew cast a benevolent smile my way when my husband introduced me, then his new bride, at a San Francisco gallery show in the early 1990s. Before the evening ended Mayhew had accepted a dinner invitation for the next night, and within another 24 hours I became a confirmed fan.

Reading of his death, at 100, in the New York Times, saddens me — but brings back a flood of shiny memories.

Mayhew loved to talk jazz, or art, or about his work with Romare Bearden and fellow Black artists from many disciplines in the tumultuous 1960s. Or about his heritage, which included Black and Native American ancestry. I loved hearing it all, but I loved his gorgeous paintings the most.

The Times (which twice erroneously refers to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as the “San Francisco Museum of Art,” but we try to be forgiving) quotes Mayhew in an earlier interview as saying his landscapes “internalize my emotional interpretations of desire, hope, fear and love. So instead of a landscape, it’s a mindscape.” They are stunningly lovely, colorful, mystical works you can find in many great museums.

All of which made this personal encounter rather magical in itself:

My book Dying Unafraid, the first I’d ever published that was straight from my heart, was in its final pre-publication stages when an invitation arrived at our house for a 1998 Mayhew show at ACA Galleries in New York. A reproduction of one of the paintings in the show, “Spiritual Transitions,” was featured on the invitation cover. 

“That’s it!” said my husband. “That’s the cover for your book.” 

(Author photo)

Well, good luck with that, I remember thinking. Mayhew had been to dinner one time a half-dozen years earlier, but that hardly qualified us as great friends. We had not crossed paths or corresponded since then, and weren’t going to make it to New York for the show. The painting — minor detail — was listed for sale at $40,000.

My husband, not one to let minor details interrupt a good idea, picked up the phone and called Mayhew at his studio. 

“Oh, sure,” he said. “I’ll have the gallery send a slide to the designer today.” Whereupon, Debra Turner Design created one of what I consider the two great book covers of all time (the other being remarkable artist Ward Schumaker’s cover design for my Perilous Times.) 

A few years later, when I was invited to participate in the 2001 Hospice Mask Project, I decided to collage my mask with torn bits of the beautiful Dying Unafraid book jacket. But would this be disrespectful? A misuse of something which, in my humble opinion, bordered on the sacred?

Not brave enough to pick up the phone, I sent Mayhew a note, mentioning my plan. On receipt, he picked up the phone himself and called my husband — the traditional intermediary, more broadly known among our friends as The Great Encourager.

“Tell Fran that’s an excellent idea,” he said. “It’s all about inspiration.”

Richard Mayhew was an inspiration for the ages. May he rest in gratitude and well-earned peace.

(The mask – Author photo)

_______________ . . . _______________

Share a thought! While I always love to write, and hope you enjoy the read, it’s often the conversation that’s the best. I hope you’ll scroll down a ways and leave a comment. 

America Collection/General interest
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Remembering Dianne Feinstein

by Fran Johns

SOME OF THE LATE SENATOR’S FAVORITE THINGS GO UP FOR AUCTION

“You really need to come see this,” texted a friend. She was right.

Dianne Feinstein’s jewelry — presumably just a selection of it — and a few paintings, sculptures and pieces of memorabilia will be auctioned on October 8 by Bonham’s in Los Angeles. You might want to bid on something.

I met the late senator several times around town, but we didn’t exactly move in the same circles. When I arrived in San Francisco in 1992, though, some of the earliest tales I was told were of the horrific day in 1978 when Mayor George Moscone was assassinated at City Hall, along with Supervisor Harvey Milk. Feinstein, then President of the Board of Supervisors, made the announcement to the world.

She quickly became San Francisco’s first female Mayor, and was reportedly a very popular one. Despite losing a race for governor in 1990, she soon afterwards (in 1992) became California’s first female senator — and kept that spot, through five re-elections, until her death last year.

Feinstein had an eye for art, and a particular fondness for scenes of the American west. You can pick up one or two on October 8:

(The Hetch Hetchy Valley by Frank Henry Shapleigh; this & all other photos by the Author)

There are also some pretty spectacular jewels in this auction. In 2003, according to her Wikipedia page, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of $26 million. The daughter of a prominent surgeon, she was married to neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein until his death in 1978; two years later she married investment banker Richard Blum.

So I suspect it wasn’t hard for her to afford a few baubles.

Personally, I lean more toward lighter-weight accessorizing, which is probably just as well. I checked out a few prices in the auction catalog; not for the flea market shopper (which I am.) It’s fascinating, though, to see the assortment of jewels the always impeccably dressed senator had at her disposal.

Or to wonder how and where the very rich keep their jewelry. Diamonds in one vault, rubies in another? Pearl earrings in drawer A, necklaces in drawers B and C according to length or number of strands? Emeralds and sapphires below the color-coordination chart perhaps. Turquoise in a separate cabinet set aside for western-wear occasions. Jaw-dropping values aside, it would take the organizational know-how of a true stateswoman — which Feinstein unquestionably was — to keep a collection this vast at the ready for the week ahead.

If I were going to be bidding, however (don’t worry) the bit of memorabilia I might want to take home is this one:

A calligraphic manuscript by Mark Alynn Kokott (#717, hand-lettered) dated October 5, 1984. Est $200-$300.

__________ … __________

Share a thought! While I always love to write, and hope you enjoy the read, it’s often the conversation that’s the best. I hope you’ll scroll down a ways and leave a comment.

America Collection/General interest
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Warning: May Cause Cardiac Arrest

by Fran Johns
Medical worker looking through microscope

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO READ THAT ECHOCARDIOGRAM REPORT?

Photo by Lucas Vasques on Unsplash

Not for the faint-hearted: Echocardiogram Test Results Reports

Perhaps they are also not for the laity — you and me, the dummies whose hearts get echocardiogrammed and reported on, but what do we know? 

I should’ve quit with the ‘sigmoid septum’ thing. The report said it was ‘normal variant with aging . . . and no evidence of outflow obstruction.’ Wouldn’t that be enough?

But no. Something in these official Reports hypnotizes you. You plunge ahead.

‘Mild diastolic dysfunction!’ Can one live with dysfunction in the diastol? I don’t know. I mean, I know dysfunction just about everywhere else . . .

It is, in all probability, dysfunctional by definition to read the report of one’s recent echocardiogram. So why in the heck do they send you the thing? To raise your blood pressure, perhaps. I read on.

Oh, lord, ‘Mild tricuspid regurgitation.’ That’s got to make you sick.

Plus, a lot of the report has to do with Teichholz formulas. Did I miss something in Human Biology 101? Dr. Teichholz had to have been there somewhere, unless he wasn’t born until after I passed Human Biology with a D minus/minus/minus. Still . . .

For now I just need to get finished with the particulars. It’s my heart they’re reporting about, after all. And if my excellent medical team didn’t want me to know these details, surely they would not have sent the Test Results Report for my edification and enlightenment?

We embark upon a ‘Tricuspid annular plane excursion, systole,’ followed by a ‘Lv ejection fraction.’ Does this sound like any fun to you? Personally, I read it as someone being on an excursion barely long enough (fractionally, that is) to eject. It’s enough to make your heart race.

Which mine did, until I got to the very bottom. At the very bottom of the Test Results Report is a message from my primary care doc, who just finished reading the same report. Could he have put this message in bold, and kept the rest to himself? He wrote:

“Fran, the echocardiogram is quite reassuring. Really nice to see. No concerns that need intervention at all.”

Oh. Okay.

America Collection/General interest
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Peeking Wistfully Into the Past

by Fran Johns

CONSIDERING THE ANCESTRAL STORY — AND WISHING FOR TIME TO TELL THOSE TALES

(Author Photo – or more correctly, author copy of ancestral photo)

Hooked on the gnarly family tree? Personally, I never dared. 

In the first place, I figured I’d find more skeletons than aristocrats. One family story involved my maternal great uncle Samuel having died in prison where he’d gone for some offense that got more grisly with each retelling. And in the second place, once you start down that ancestral rabbit hole will there ever be a spare moment for anything else in your life?

I do however love the photo above, handed down to me from somewhere, showing my paternal grandparents or great-somethings, the woman looking so much like my father as to be spooky.

Take any photo such as the above. If you’re a writer you can write forever from it. I mean. What’s with the faux window signifying a Moorish villa the photographer felt appropriate to my forebears? (They were reportedly from Scotland.) Or those delicate hands of the young presumed groom about to topple the faux column? Did he never do a lick of work in his life? I’m going with the story (this is how I’d start making it up, at least) that he became a traveling musician and wound up a famous pianist. But meanwhile she was writing travel pieces for the penny papers, overshadowed his fame and ran off with a circus performer. She does look writerly, doesn’t she?

There are at least a hundred stories that could evolve from the photo of that pensive twosome. But here I am, MFA in Short Fiction, with my fingers getting tongue-tied — or whatever recalcitrant fingers do — just thinking about what direction such stories might go. 

(Johns family circa 1920)

Or take my in-laws — whom I would never give away and wish I’d known. These folks knew about work. All seven brothers joined their father in the the iron mines of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by the time they were 9 or 10. Grandpa came from Cornwall for the opportunity — Cornwall is where the robber barons went to get hardy folks good at deep underground mining. I’ve no idea how Grandma Johns found the energy to raise all those notoriously rambunctious boys, but at least she had the one daughter to help starch all those collars. The collars were reportedly worn only on Sunday —  and for occasions such as this historic family photo. A picture worth a thousand made-up words.

All of the Johns boys (that’s the father-in-law I never met standing just behind his mom) worked their ways out of the mines and into a wild variety of subsequent paths. One became a mining company executive, and liked to say he was the only man around who had worked his way up from below ground. 

If only I were a novelist. 

But say you DO go down that Ancestry.com rabbit hole. My niece, it seems, recently did that, and discovered this fine lady:

(Author photo of text from niece)

. . .who seems to be my great-great-great-great-grandma. C’mon, really? Satin and lace, and powdered face?

If only I were a poet.

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