1.
A newspaper advice column told the story of a
woman complaining that her children will not ALLOW her to put Grandma in a
nursing home, even though the old woman suffers from advanced dementia and
needs 24-hour-a-day nursing care. And how old are these children? She doesn’t
say, but she does say that Grandma came to live with the family when the
children were just babies, so they have never known life without her in the
home. And how long ago was that? Seven years ago, she says. So the children are
. . . what? Eight or nine, at the most.
What’s worse, the columnist seems to side with the children and suggests
that the parents promise to take the children to visit Grandma every few days.
Whatever happened to a family structure in which parents made the rules and
children obeyed them? 2.
A request for old people who can still read
cursive to volunteer to transcribe historical documents for the sake of people
who can only read printing. I asked why it wouldn’t be better to teach everyone
to read cursive and got no agreement. Yes, I’m old. And I can still remember my
graduate school days when I was reading 12-century hand lettering
that pre-dated cursive. It was difficult to do, but If I wanted to know what
the document said, I had to learn to read it. Is this shrinkage of intellectual
curiosity the measure of what computers have done to the human brain? 3.
Maybe so, because my next discovery this morning
was a posting from a PhD-holding woman whom I have always respected. She had
just played one of those Facebook games that promises to analyze your
personality if you will just give the application the right to use all your
personal information as well as all of your friends’ information. You know the
games—the ones like Cambridge Analytica all over the news right now because they have leaked that
information to anyone willing to pay for it. Has this woman missed every news
source for the last month? 4.
Several other Facebook posts this morning
announced that the posters were no longer going to use Facebook for anything
important. However, they claimed to still need comments about the weather, cat
cartoons, personal comments on their current maladies, birthday wishes, and
tasty recipes. Not believing everything Facebook says is a first step in
reclaiming one’s privacy (or sanity), I suppose. But what makes people assume
that weather reports, cat pictures, and recipes are among the necessities of
their lives? 5.
Yesterday, I went out to my mailbox and
encountered a gentleman walking his dog. That happens most every day around
here, but this little yappy creature was particularly annoying and on a very
long leash. He soon had my feet tangled. I held onto the mailbox post for
balance and asked the gentleman to rein in his dog so that I could walk away. I
think I smiled—maybe even chuckled a bit as Yappy danced around me on two paws.
But his owner reacted with eye-narrowed anger, telling me that if I couldn’t
walk without tripping, I shouldn’t be allowed out of my house. Whatever
happened to civility? 6.
A friend sent me some “Old Age” jokes this
morning, and I chose my favorite: it said something like: There was a time when
my brain would step in and warn me that it might not be a good idea to say what
I was thinking. But now, it says “What the hell? Let’s see what happens!” That’s definitely my
mood today.” (Note for a Monday morning: Sun is out. Flowers did not freeze. Had raspberries for breakfast. All is well again.) |