Tag: Humor

America Collection/General interest
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How to Sleep Tight, All Night 

by Fran Johns

WHY IS EVERYONE (ELSE) HAVING INSOMINIA PROBLEMS?

Photo by DON RANASINGHE on Unsplash

What’s with all these stories about insomnia? I feel as if every time I open up my laptop there’s another piece about someone having trouble sleeping.

I went looking for what’s keeping us up nights.

Maybe it’s the total chaos we wake up to? Snowstorms and firestorms and windstorms? Maybe we’re all getting older? Nahh, couldn’t be.

In any event, I sleep like a baby. So I decided to go public with the answers to insomnia. Herewith:

Weighted blanket. Just take my word for it. Or read one of those surveys about how they relieve anxieties and calm your aches and pains. (As long as you’re older than two; don’t weight down your two-year-old please.)

Forewarning: The rest of these solutions should be read in light of the fact that I lost my sleeping partner seven years ago; the following might require partner buy-in. Since I still have the California King-size bed, though, that leaves room to strew books and magazines all over the duvet and still allow for the following: 

Food and drink. Cozy camomile tea is good for bedtime. But what if you feel hungry during one of those bathroom wake-up moments? (Taking bathroom breaks without really waking up is a learned skill. Work on it.) Still . . . I keep a glass of ginger beer on the bedside table just in case.

More food and drink. If a swig of ginger beer as you slide under the weighted blanket doesn’t do it, a few minutes of a good book and in-bed snack time generally work for me. To that end, along with the reading matter atop the duvet I keep a ziplok bag of peanut butter filled pretzels. Unfortunately I shared this information once with my dentist, Dr. Suezaki, who shook his head sadly from side to side and said, “No bueno.” Don’t discuss this with your dentist. No bueno will stick in your head and try to wake you up. We do what we have to do.

Dealing with the cares of the world. Even if you studiously avoid thinking about the news after three in the afternoon, the brain sometimes still kicks in. How to save democracy — a problem that can rarely be solved at three in the morning, can nevertheless be sublimated to worrying about problems closer at hand: a deadline looming on a job not even started, a leaky faucet you meant to fix, a letter un-written or email un-sent. Once you’ve reduced wakefulness to a personal level — 

Turn on the light. Did I warn you about partner buy-in? I think so. Once the anxiety bots are awake in your brain you go on counter-offensive. To this end I keep a pen and notepad handy so without rummaging around I can make a list. The list will include, item-by-item, everything I will get done first thing in the morning. This does not mean it ever really gets done; but the anxiety bots don’t know that because they’ve all been moved from your brain to that notepad. Five minutes later — 

Back to the blanket. Slide underneath, gently weighted back to sleep for the rest of your requisite eight hours. Possibly even sated with a few pretzels and a swig of ginger beer.

Please don’t tell Dr. Suezaki I wrote this.

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
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Long Live the Daily Newspaper

by Fran Johns

NEW YORK TIMES PRINT EDITION, THAT IS. A RECIPE FOR THE GOOD (LONG) LIFE

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

(A Medium publication I regularly write for — with the ungainly if apt name of “Crow’s Feet” — issued a writing-prompt challenge about doing things the old-fashioned way and my brain was starting this piece before I even turned the digital page. Enjoy.)

Impeccable digestive system. We’ll get this issue out of the way first.

Coffee, toast and the New York Times to start the day = longevity and the bloom of health. I’m staring at 93 next June, feeling just fine, thank you, and — more to the point here — thanks, NYT print edition. 

Before I entered upon what would be a joyful, 26-year late-life marriage there was one delicate issue to be settled. We both required the print edition (in 1992 you weren’t yet a weirdo if you read newspapers) of the New York Times with our morning coffee. As if an augury of that future bliss: he needed the sports section first; I begin with page one and go straight through every section as it comes. Deal.

You cannot digest breakfast while scrolling; it is against the natural order of the universe. (News on TV? God help you.)

There’s more to my read-the-news-the-old-fashioned-way fixation than maintenance of my digestive system, however. Or perhaps the two are related. It’s the angst factor. Watch the faces of two people getting today’s news. The one scrolling through will react with widening eyes and clenched teeth. It’s the way the body handles impending disaster. But the newsprint reader? She gets the disaster one slowly and carefully printed word at a time, just the way God intended. Emotionally digestible.

OK, it’s yesterday’s news by the time it gets to your doorstep. That’s the whole point. You’ve already heard the headlines blaring from everywhere in the world including all of your state-of-the-art devices. You’ve survived the headlines, now you sit down and read what actually happened.

Not to be blunt about it, furthermore, we print subscribers are quietly subsidizing your scrollings. We don’t mind, really. We try not to talk to you about it when your nose is glued to your screen all day. 

My obsession may have a tiny bit to do with having had a lifelong career as a freelance writer that spanned decades of working for old-fashioned newspapers. The newspaper world was, in the olden days, one of equal parts grit and glamour. It was also never-ending fun with dashes of enlightenment, watching the business of courthouses and penthouses, trying to communicate the truth of it all.

This ingrained obsession crept up on me slowly. When I was first beginning to read my sister Mimi and I would grab the morning paper and spread the comics on the floor before breakfast. My father, an educator to the bone, soon discovered a tool. “Girls,” he remarked, “if you’re going to read like that, at least start with the front page; then you can skip to the comics.” We actually cheated a lot, doing the comics first; but knowing we’d get a headline question with our orange juice we also spread the front page on the floor.

All these decades later, there may be a symbolism and a further lesson here: Perhaps we should all start the day reading the news on our knees.

Whatever. The like-clockwork digestive system, the mild-mannered demeanor, the frugality in every area of life except print media subscriptions — I credit it all to the foundational daily print newspaper.

Here’s to your health, New York Times print edition. May you live long and prosper. 

# # #

This essay also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye (@franjohns,) where I post, once a week, something positive on the political front. It’s almost always possible to find something, I promise. Feel free to visit any time; subscriptions are free.

America Collection/General interest
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How to Get a New Toe in Twenty Minutes

by Fran Johns

THE WONDERS OF MODERN SURGERY, REPORTED IN REAL TIME

(TODAY’S DIVERSION FROM OTHER WORLD NEWS)

You’ve got to love modern medicine.

I arrive at the Kaiser Musculoskeletal Medicine Department a few minutes early for my 9:30 appointment. After all the ominous worst-case scenario documents are signed and promises made (in writing) not to sue if they happen, enter the surgeon. She confirms which of my knobbly toes it is that we plan to un-knobble a little, whips out a magic marker and writes herself a note: “Yes!” . . . with arrow just in case.

Re-enter the assistant.

The assistant has more to do than the surgeon it seems to me. She was responsible for getting my signatures on all the right pages, and now she’s busy making my foot look ready for the barbecue pit.

Enter the surgeon again, suiting up in blue paper and whipping blue paper over and under the scene of the action. After that she starts erasing her messages to self and playing around with Q-tips, while the assistant is discussing cataract surgery she (the assistant) has scheduled for tomorrow. “Eww,” says my toe surgeon, “shot in the eye! That sounds awful!” I’m hoping we don’t start mixing up eyes and toes here, but having had cataract surgery myself I join in with the assistant to assure the toe surgeon that cataracts are no big deal. Just to be clear, my own eyes are closed by now; I did not choose to watch. But couldn’t resist holding my phone up to record what was underway.

The surgeon has gone for the X-acto knife. Is there a desk drawer in America without an X-acto knife? Surely not. But I’ve been watching the assistant pour Betadyne over my foot and everything else around including the instrument tray, so I’m assuming this isn’t just any old X-acto knife. My guess is that the X-acto people have a surgery division which churns out knives for toes exactly the same as the ones for crafting that are in every desk drawer, but the ones for toes cost some 500 times more. God only knows how much the ones for hearts cost.

Approximately 10 minutes later, the deed is done, the surgeon has congratulated us all and departed, the assistant pulls a sock over my bulkily bandaged foot, finishes up with a stylish new boot and voilà! I am into a Lyft and back home for coffee at 10.

Next week: resumption of the 3 or 4 mile daily walk, all ten toes in synch.

America Collection/General interest
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On Wiping Egg(dirt) Off of My Face

by Fran Johns

WHEREUPON THE MYSTERY OF THE 7th FLOOR WINDOW IS, MEANWHILE, SOLVED

Shiny new view from balcony window – facing south (Author photo)

Once a year we get shiny-clean windows.

It used to be twice a year, as my original contract decreed — but this is a senior living building, and senior living is, unfortunately, Very Big Business in the U.S. Which means investors want steadily rising returns, and this only happens by increasing rents (constantly) or by cutting costs (regularly, as in less frequent window-washing.)

OK, now that’s off my chest.

I love shiny-clean windows. The south-facing ones (above) stay reasonably clean all year. But my apartment has one large west-facing window, a view of reflected sunrises and shimmering sunsets. I really love my west-facing window. Its view succumbs to the grime of Post Street traffic below, but that takes a while to accumulate and Mother Nature sometimes pitches in with winter gales to clean things up.

Sunset view from west window (Author photo, long ago)

So it was with great dismay that I discovered, after the window-washers had finished the western wall and moved around the corner, that half of my west window remained smudgy.

In the grand scheme of things, a smudgy window would seem to rank fairly low among what one needs to complain about. But this is my waking view of the world, my closing view of the starlit night. Must it be gloomy, even before the San Francisco fog and embers from Canadian wildfires turn the window into a metaphor for a darkening world? (Until rays of hope return with the window-washers next August, just before the mid-terms?)

The prospect was too terrible. I complained. I complained vociferously to management, to housekeeping, to the maintenance department; for good measure. I fired off an email to the Executive Director of this establishment. One should not have to suffer a grungy half-view of the world for an entire year, I argued. Send those window washers up here to witness my distress. (I knew better than to insist on a re-do; I know costs and investor returns. I wanted, at the very least, sympathy — and at best a wash from within. These windows can be popped out for such chores.)

The offending window, west view (Author photo)

The next day a charming window-washer appeared at my door. “I actually washed that window,” he smiled. “I take pride in my work, so I’m always careful that it’s well done. Do you mind if I take a look?”

I felt heard. I sensed recompense. I led the charming window-washer to the offending window. “Do you mind?” he asked again, as he leaned across the three-foot shelf that sets the window back from the room, between built-in bookcases.

That small smudge you see on the right window (between the edges of the two sliding panes?) That is where the exonerated window-washer rubbed his two fingers. I seemed to have a very dirty window — on the inside.

Next week maintenance is sending someone to perch on the three-foot shelf and wash the inside of my window — something I’m perfectly capable of doing myself, but then, all this never occurred to me before raising such a ruckus so they may not think I have enough sense to wash a window.

May your sunrises shimmer and your sunsets glow. And may your outlook never be grungy.

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.

America Collection/General interest
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Naming Rights: A Proposal

by Fran Johns

YOU NAME IT, YOU TAKE OWNERSHIP, RIGHT? RIGHT.

Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash

(This article may or may not appear on my new Substack page, where I’ve started posting mildly political observations every Friday. You are invited to subscribe (for free) to The Optimistic Eye and join the fun.)

. . .

From time to time I pause to visit my name, etched in brass on the entry wall of my favorite museum, San Francisco’s de Young — part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (which also include my second favorite, the Legion of Honor Museum.)

Actually, I have too many favorite museums to fit into one blog space: the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, New York’s Whitney, Atlanta’s High . . . but my name is on permanent display only at the de Young.

This is because, in the long years after salt air ate into the aging facade of a former building and the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 pretty much settled the issue, it became necessary to build an entirely new structure where several previous structures had held an ever-increasing collection of wonderful fine art. A lot of fund-raising went on.

And how better to raise the last chunk of necessary funds than a naming project? I don’t remember the exact amount — this was in the late 1990s during the long campaign to preserve and restructure and rebuild — but it was enough for mid-list donors to stop and think. Probably $5,000 or $10,000. My husband and I stopped and thought and opted in.

As you can see, there were several others.

I bring this up today, having had one more of such occasional photos taken on one of my frequent visits to the de Young, because of the sense of ownership one gets from naming rights. I mean, aside from the fact that I love its collections and its visiting exhibitions and its gift shop and the Andy Goldsworthy sculpture I was lucky enough to watch him create just before the opening of the new building in 2005 — I have a proprietary interest in the institution which I ferociously defend. You drop an orange peel within my sight at your peril, unless you immediately pick it up.

So.

Why don’t we find a stretch of space on the U.S. Capitol grounds for naming rights? For a $1 fee you simply sign a pledge to defend the three co-equal branches of government against all autocrats — and while you’re at it you might defend the free press against tyrants and bullies and spreaders of misinformation intent on desecrating this place you now own.

Think about that. I already regularly take selfies on Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington (which I will resist posting here) because, among other things, that indelibly named space declares a truth. Truth is getting to be iffy; a free press ferrets it out.

Think how many millions of Americans of all patriotic stripes would sign such a monument. Take selfies every time they visit our nation’s capitol, reflect on this imperfect union they now own and defend. I’ll bet I could find a few artists willing to donate their time and skills to etch names into something.

Meanwhile, we could pay off the national debt.

America Collection/General interest
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Moving Day, Millionaire Style

by Fran Johns
Crane hauling loading box to 5th floor apartment

PUTTING THE NEW PLACE IN ORDER, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

Home delivery underway on the fifth floor (Author photo)

Oh well, folks have got to get settled in somehow.

Newcomers in my neighborhood are slowly getting their Stuff in place. (When I say ‘my neighborhood’ I mean six blocks and quite a few million dollars uphill from my place; but still . . .) As is demonstrated by the silhouetted dog-walker, everything is downhill, and steeply so, from here; sweeping views of Alcatraz, San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge etc come with the pricey territory of this apartment. 

When you buy a fifth floor residence in a posh, historic building on Washington Street you then face the issue of how to get everything settled into its new surroundings. For a century or so, hefty moving guys presumably hauled stuff up the freight elevator. Today, though, the solution is to hire a giant truck with a crane, several other giant trucks and (by my count) upwards of a dozen workers to load, supervise and direct traffic.

For openers you take out the fair-sized corner window. Three sturdy guys could be seen stationed in its gaping hole to guide stuff inwards — a job I would not find wonderful. But then, watching the whole work crew for 15 or 20 minutes made me grateful for this desk job.

The mystery object rises to its destination (Author photo)

Once the new load is wrestled (cautiously, I might add) into the traveling container, it swings slowly upward. Crane operators, I guess, factor for things like the wind that was swirling around the park across the street, but if they were as nervous as I about the thing crashing into the wrong window it did not show.

On-time delivery (Author photo)

I watched as the loading box descended from one delivery to pick up the next item (rising above.) It was just one giant, bulky something wrapped in layers of felted cloth. When I inquired of the workers about the cargo, I got a deadpanned reply, “They have a lot of statues.” 

Presumably, if you can afford a home-with-a-view in San Francisco, your art collection might as well include a few works by Rodin or Ai Weiwei for the family room. That, at least, was my imagined package being hauled aloft. It helped to look up at another noise and spot a helicopter hovering above which I further imagined to be a few private eyes keeping an eye on the transaction below.

(I am only reporting what I see here. Details have not been verified.)

Seen overhead (Author photo)

Back on planet earth, there was more than a little irony in finding, parked in the small courtyard of my building, a couple of trucks ushering in one of my actual neighbors. The old-fashioned way, with hand-propelled dollies moving from truck to garage entry to elevators hung with padded cloths.

Not a single helicopter could be spotted overhead.

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