[New blogs posted every Sunday. For previous blogs please visit “blog archive” to the lower left of this screen. Click on the small black arrows for a drop down list.]
[Note: apologies to my mom] Babies today are born with keyboards in their little hands and everyone knows that if we have a computer problem all we have to do is ask our 10-year-old to fix it. Yet, the one group who misses out on the advantages of owning a computer is our senior population.
People in their 60s today (and will retire at 65) have already worked with computers for a number of years and are all going into retirement with a high comfort level. They are typically retirees who will keep up with the technology as they age because they have been doing that already for years in the work place. Most of these people also have computers at home and have for many years. They will find aging so much easier having a comfortable relationship with a computer.
Those in their 70s (and retired at 65 around) are similar to the group above with very few exceptions. Some people in the work world for this group performed their jobs without specific daily use of a computer and may or may not have purchased a home computer. Of the people I know in that age group, and I sure know a lot, many decided not to have a computer once they retired. The closer they are to 80 in that group the more likely they hadn’t developed an interest and perhaps only their supervisor had a computer. This is not the case in large cities but in small cities, towns, and rural areas where many people worked around computers, not with them.
Seniors in their 80s who retired in 1995 at 65 are less likely to have a computer for home use, again, depending on how close they are to the end of their 80s. If someone is 80 today and retired at 65 in 1995 they will have had some experience, usually a terminal with large floppies. Though some had computers somewhere in the building running things, desktop computers were not assigned to everyone. Again it depends on what part of the 80s age range a person is currently in and how close to 90 they are. (Geography and urban vs. rural employment plays a part as well. When I moved from southern California to northern California in 1986 I felt like I had gone back in time about ten years. The skills I had developed with technology in southern California were not to be found anywhere in this area. In most of the offices clerical staff were starting to get computers but no managers or non-clerical.)
People in their 90s (retiring in 1985 at 65) may never have had a computer on the job, certainly not on their desks at work unless it was a large clunker terminal or some kind of keypunch machine on another floor in the building, and in fact even when I started my last job in 1986 our office only had one PC and we all had to use a sign up sheet to use it. It was kept in a corner by old file cabinets. We had computer terminals but not PCs. Of the older group that were near retirement when I started at age 42 almost none of them ever signed up for the PC nor did they believe they would benefit from doing so in anyway. No one had a PC on their desk.
In all the groups whether or not they have a computer at home is also based on their interest in embracing change as they age. Some people stop learning and changing very early in life. Even people in the work place in their later years before retirement often kick and scream when new technology comes their way. They just want to get to retirement without more changes. And to add more frustration to that group is the fact that technology changes more quickly than a stoplight. For those who don't like change, at any age, of any kind, it is a daunting undertaking to learn new methods and technology.
As we age many of us lose the use of our mobility due to infirmities, can’t visit family and friends as much, may not feel well enough to shop even if we can get there, may not have enough money for entertainment, and generally, many seniors experience a sad reduction in lifestyle choices. Those with computers and a comfortable knowledge in how they work, not so much.
Around the time my mom turned 80, having retired at 65, she also developed a serious health condition. The condition limits her ability to go out and about and do the things she likes to do. Sometimes when this happens people become shut-ins. Often other things of a psychological nature affect the senior who has lost mobility and contact with the world. I didn’t think that would happen to my mom but I decided she needed a computer and she needed the Internet. Mom worked with a computer during her last years of office work but it was a dedicated accounting computer, which processed accounting and payroll and was a receiver of input and then pushed out checks and statements. No Internet, no email, no calendaring, no word processing, nothing.
But since she had a comfort level with a keyboard after years of typing I felt she could at least get to email with a few steps. Many of her friends were learning about the computer as well, also being pushed by their well-intentioned children and grandchildren. Many of mom’s friends were quite a bit younger and were still working. She was slowly being edged out of daily life. The computer I set her up with a few years ago was one of my old ones. I had just purchased a new laptop. It was adequate for her needs so we decided that would work great.
As everyone knows who has tried to set someone up with a computer who doesn’t have one or never has worked on one the big challenge is convincing them where their workstation needs to be. Many people without computer knowledge think it’s like an iron and we can just put it in the closet and bring it out when we need it. And certainly we wouldn’t need it every day. I explained the computer was more like the telephone and that she would use it every day, many times a day perhaps, her link to the world.
So one weekend we found a tiny space in her guest bedroom and next I went to Home Depot and bought a desk. The desk was unassembled of course so that weekend was shot preparing the space, assembling the desk, and moving crap around in her spare bedroom. I actually hit my thumb with the hammer (what a cliché) and was not happy with the start of our project.
If the computer isn’t accessible to someone learning how to use it they won’t learn how to use it. It can’t be a daily cumbersome pain in the butt to use and get to and I wanted it “sit down” ready. Also, when learning something new it’s best to use the new skill often to have it stick.
The next weekend I brought the computer to her house (she lives an hour north of me in another town) and installed it and moved everything around on her desk and ran a few simple tests and played with it. I told her she didn’t need to stay with me for this portion of the project since never in her life would she ever be installing a computer.
After I finished we had a nice meal then began. We needed nourishment. I had it set up with power surgers and a printer and a modem and a nice lamp and Norton and so she had to turn on only the power surger and everything buzzed into operation except for the on button on the computer. I wanted to get her in the habit shutting it down before flipping the power surger off. She began a note pad of how to do things. After we turned it on and arrived at the desktop I explained some of the icons I had placed there and gave her just a general overview of what she could learn over time. I limited the information and hid things I didn’t want her to see. Kept it clean and simple. We both were more interested in getting her online and in particular setting her up with email. I had already set up her email prior to our first lesson because I didn’t see the need for her to do that.
I enlarged the print and icons to help her out a bit and frankly it didn’t hurt me either. My current computer now has enlarged everything. Yes, I wear glasses. It still helps to have my icons large. After our first peek at the desktop and a basic explanation of how computers work (very basic) I told her what to click on to get to her email. She had never used a mouse so it wasn’t as easy as one would think. She didn’t know what “click” meant.
Finally she manipulated the mouse to the icon and bingo, her email appeared. The email screen to a novice looks daunting and a bit busy. She didn’t understand a single thing about the concept except that she knew she could eventually write little letters to family and friends somehow by typing somewhere on the screen. But where? How?
We take things for granted in life. I remember teaching my kids how to drive. We went up to the empty high school each night and drove around the parking lot. I was never so terrified in my entire life. Though both kids had been in cars since birth neither of them could remember the function of the brakes.
So though mom was not having a difficult time with the keyboard, the mouse was frustrating and the screen was gibberish to her. I decided to not delve into all the features of email and streamlined her training to sending and receiving. I had a Blackberry at the time so I sat next to her and sent her a test email and we waited for it to appear. She stared intently at the screen but didn’t see it when it came. I explained where to look and how to distinguish a new email from an old one and kept sending her emails until she finally found the new ones.
Next I showed her how to reply and she found that quite easy since she found the word “reply.” Next I showed her how to compose a “new” email and that was a bit more problematic. She found the word “new” and then didn’t know how to put my name in the field but I had already set up her family and friends in her contacts so I showed her how to just type a few letters and the name would pop up. Teaching her when, where, and how to click was big. I told her later on in her training I would explain other concepts like the address book and how to delete and so forth but this lesson had been tremendous and she did not like the mouse so we stopped. (We purchased a new mouse.)
I went home and expected emails but instead I got phone calls because everything that could go wrong was going wrong. Mostly it was because she was very nervous and worried about doing something wrong and hurting the computer or having it explode in her office. I’ve known so many people over the years who were “afraid” of their computers.
Computer phobia was tremendous in the work place in the beginning. I remember some people crying because they couldn’t grasp a concept. Mom wasn’t at this stage but she was too frustrated to enjoy it. After several phone calls we finally started exchanging emails but only between the two of us. I asked the kids to send her test emails but that sent her into a tailspin.
The next week when I went up I taught her how to look up her contacts and delete emails or save them and various other very simple email tasks. Over the week that followed I sent her challenges to accomplish with what she learned the previous weekend. Soon the phone calls stopped and she was emailing not only me but also the kids. Not only was she replying but also she was originating. And forwarding.
The following week I decided to show her how the Internet worked. I had already bookmarked a few stores she liked and my website and the Netflix website and a few other sites I thought she would enjoy then I showed her how to find them via her bookmarks. I didn’t teach her how to bookmark a website because she wasn’t seeking out new websites at this point.
The concept and terminology of the Internet proved to be more daunting than emailing. And we all know that some websites are way too busy in appearance and some are confusing for the average user let along a beginner. Still, we looked at lots of fun things and though she enjoyed looking she knew she would never be able to figure out how to do any of it. But again, we took small steps. I’m not sure the overview was helpful because I think it may have added another degree of fear.
Of all the websites I thought she would enjoy the most was her Netflix website. She had been a Netflix customer for a long time but I managed it for her from my home. She would tell me what movies to add to her queue and I would. I sat her down and told her how Netflix manages movies and she knew she would like that. She clicked on her bookmark icon and found Netflix. I had it set for auto log in. (Over the course of training that disappeared for some reason and she had to do that herself via a phone call to me, but she did it!) She was very confused by the screen and the choices but I narrowed it down to how to find a movie she heard about and how to add it to her queue. I told her not to look at anything else until she was comfortable with finding movies and adding them. Today she goes to Netflix routinely and adds and re-orders her queue like pro.
Movies for seniors who are not able to get around well are fantastic. TV is so boring (and passive) unless you pay for a huge package of choices. She had stopped making trips to the video store a few years ago so having Netflix in her life has been fantastic. I may figure out a way for her to stream them to her giant beautiful TV but we have some technology to work out. I don't see her buying a Wii and though I have my home set up to stream from my computer to my TV her system is different. I’ll figure it out. I rarely watch TV anymore since streaming Netflix.
After email and Netflix got under her belt I decided I wanted her to read my blog each week and showed her how to do that. She could either click on the link I provide in my signature block in my emails or she could go directly to my blog which I bookmarked. She could also click on my website and click on the link I provide there. The website is for my book(s) and she likes to take a look at it from time to time.
So in a just a few short weeks, at the age of 80 never having used a PC, she emailed, looked at websites, and managed her computer with infrequent phone calls to me. Next she asked if she had the ability to prepare mailing labels for her Christmas list and indeed she did. Her computer came with all the things I had used so I showed her how to get into Word and though she had typed all her life she was immediately frozen with the choices available to her to simply prepare a list of labels.
We attacked the problem in the same way we worked the emailing and Internet issues---one step at a time.
I didn’t tell her how to get the label sheet on the screen. Instead I set it up and saved it to the desktop so that all she had to do was click on “Christmas labels.” However, she had to type them in herself. I explained how important it was to save changes and she never had a problem with that. I explained how to change information should someone move and she didn’t have a problem with that. I explained how to load the labels into her printer and she didn’t have a problem with that. Astounding!
I next set up a simple document for her correspondence (to friends and family who did not have computers and relied on U.S. Mail) and saved it to her desktop and I think I called it “stationery.” She didn’t have a problem with that.
Now she was really rocking. Next she needed to order some books, which I usually did for her from home or I’d go to a bookstore so our next lesson was Amazon. Prior to showing her how to use it I set up her user name and password and from that point forward Amazon has remembered her. She clicks on her bookmark and selects Amazon, searches for her book or item then checks out. I was happy she understood this procedure though Amazon is super easy to use. Some of the other online shopping we have done has not been as easy and she has been very confused. If she shopped online all the time she would figure it out but infrequent use of some tasks means we don’t remember as well.
Some grocery stores now deliver to our homes. All we do is go to their website and fill out our grocery list and a delivery time and seniors never have to worry about running out of groceries or asking someone to take them shopping. Unfortunately, my mom lives in a community where that service isn’t provided yet but I have contacted her favorite grocery store and they are working it. In fact I haven’t checked for a while I’d better do that when I finish this.
With the limited things I taught my mom she has many services and interests at her fingertips she had learned to live without. She can read the news on line, she can visit the Louvre, she can watch YouTube videos (yes she does), and she can keep in touch with all her family and friends. If she needs towels she can go to any store of her choosing and order them and I even encourage her to look for discounts and free shipping. She can do anything the rest of us do to maintain our lives and never leave her house. She likes to leave her house but it’s difficult for her. There’s no reason for her to do without and not be connected to an active life because it’s hard to get around.
And let’s not forget the value of learning new things as we age. It’s so important to keep our brains active as we age. I taught her how to play Sudoku a couple of years ago and for months we were both addicted and every time I went up there we played for hours. I made a grid for her with an icon on her desktop so she could print out sheets with larger boxes to write in than the books provide.
I finished my second novel and I’m giving it to her to proofread for me with a red pen. It’s very important to me to keep her mind occupied in non-passive activities. TV is a fairly nice companion for seniors but it doesn’t promote the brainpower that computers and puzzles and books do. We have to strain and struggle a bit to keep our brains moving properly. (Coming soon: Facebook)
She can also send emails to her political representatives. She can research ballot items. She can research ancestry. She can research maintenance issues for her home and make decisions about what service she might need. If she needs a new appliance she can shop around online. She can buy stamps. She can do everything a 20-year-old can do except go out dancing. And that’s too bad because she loves to dance. She is connected to the rest of us. And the more connected she can be the more a member of our society she can be. She can see how things change and not be afraid of changes. (If any of you need an office temp, she’s available.)
After a couple of years with that computer my daughter bought a new computer so we gave mom my daughter’s fancy old laptop. It still has a few good years left and is much newer than the one I started her on. It fits the desk area so much better and she finds it quite snappy to use. She noticed immediately that it’s speedy. I offered to set her up with a router but she doesn’t have a desire to take her computer anywhere in the house. She just wants to use it on the desk. I’m working on that. She might enjoy bringing it to the sofa and working on it while she sits under her comfy TV blanket. Small steps though. For now, she has power that many seniors don't have. She’s keeping up with the rest of us at 84 years old.
And all she has to do is sit down and click.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business that knows how to treat customers at least some of the time if not always.
This week I received excellent customer service from:
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage: Erik Oquist, Santa Rosa
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Voting for Dollars
[New blogs posted every Sunday. For previous blogs please visit “blog archive” to the lower left of this screen. Click on the small black arrows for a drop down list.] Original blog launched March 2009
Ah, it’s that happiest time of the year. Cookies in the oven, our homes are decorated with bright holiday colors, happy smiles of expectation are on the faces of small children, the stockings are hung . . .oh, wait a minute. That’s wrong. It’s the phoniest time of the year, not the happiest time of the year. Silly me. And it’s only the primary. The hardcore phony stuff will be in November, then later in the month we’ll have something to give thanks for. Well, some of us will.
I don't think any of us are fooled (anymore) about how voting works in this country. If a group or person has gobs of money they can buy their measure, proposition, or political office. Just a few minutes ago I heard that two California governor primary hopefuls (Poizner and Whitman) are willing (and able) to pump up their coffers from their own personal wealth by (hold on) millions of dollars—each. This will primarily be devoted to advertising.
I don't like politics and do not spend much time listening to politicians. Too many scandals, too many lies, too much money going into thin air—or worse. It’s all a mess and our forefathers must be rolling over in their graves. Of course, they made many horrible decisions and kept secrets from the citizenry too. They were not all about milk and cookies and apple pie. But even though they were mostly a bunch of powerful rich land baron white men with slaves they tried very hard to make us a free society with laws and justice. We had to be protected from ourselves.
And let’s not forget past politicians who developed the electoral college (a concept charmingly known as an indirect election) to keep the ignorant from understanding how voting was/is rigged. District apportionment my foot. It was formed in 1787. Does anyone think that something that worked for our quaint form of government then works for our massive out of control system now? 1787 to 2010? Really? [Fun fact: Abraham Lincoln’s winning total in the 1860 election included four electors who were pledged to Stephen Douglas. Oops! Electors who don't keep their promise are referred to as faithless electors. Apropos.] And it’s always been about the ruling class providing government for us simple folk.
That said, I do however pay attention when it’s time to vote and I always do a little research. Independent research, not watching TV ads. The TV ads are horrifically successful however which is why millions of dollars are spent on them. No, instead, I do my own research and usually find someone, or some thing, I can vote for without puking. But not always.
Over the years family and friends learned about my little peculiarity for researching election people and issues and often asked my opinion, one or two days prior to elections. That’s fine because I’m usually prepared at that point. However, I strive to not influence their vote and I attempt to express a few pertinent unbiased facts and hope that helps (truly). Sometimes I’m asked who or what I’m going to vote for and sometimes that’s helpful if they follow my political policy views, you know, like I said, slightly to the left of Jesus. Others when hearing what I’ve decided to vote for will vote the opposite because of their political views. This is fine with me because they are correct to vote opposite my position (if they are Godless and fascists and don't like Jesus).
All kidding aside, sort of, an alarming number of citizens vote the TV ads. In polls and surveys the reason is “time.” Our lives are busier than ever today and the issues are overwhelming and not trustworthy. There are so many information resources pulling at us every day all day it’s hard to stop and take the time to study anything. Those of us who do make the effort end up with major headaches and are more confused than when we began. (I actually voted “no” on something once that I wanted to vote “yes” on meaning the opposite vote was necessary for my point of view but the proposition or measure was written in such a convoluted manner that I selected the wrong response. I didn’t realize it for a few days and was heartsick.) However, the fact that we do continue to dig through the muck has trained us to spot a deceptive ad the moment we see it.
Proposition 16 is an excellent example. On the screen we see a sincere (attractive) woman imploring us to make sure we the voters get our “right to vote” (patriotic buzz words) for our muni governments’ decisions to go into the utility business. It seems reasonable. We should have our vote on many issues so at the outset of this proposition it simply sounds like it’s attempting to secure our voting rights on big decisions. I don't really have a feeling for that either way but it doesn’t, on the surface, sound bad.
The very first time I saw the ad however my Spidey sense tingled, “I bet PG&E is funding this ad.” Toward the end of the commercial I tried, in vain, to ascertain who was supporting this prop and of course the required printing at the bottom of the screen was out of my senior vision range and also sped by like a speeding bullet. The lettering was also extremely faint. So I ran to my trusty crime fighter—my little MacBook. Sure enough, “major funding by PG&E.” Don't just take my word for it. Look it up. Still, I’m not saying this is bad in itself but the ad is dishonest and disingenuous and the pretty citizen is an actress and the script is weighted without clarity. So whether or not Prop 16 is worthy or not I’m voting against it because of the dishonest advertising. [And I just got my new Smart Meter installed a couple of weeks ago, under protest, and I’m trembling at the thought of opening my next bill so I’m a tad unhappy with PG&E. I told the installer I didn’t want it until the kinks were worked out and he said I didn’t have a choice. I don't own a weapon.]
Next, Meg Whitman’s ad campaign was obnoxious but has improved. I wrote an email to her campaign when the first series of blaring ads appeared, multiple times per evening. I had to stop watching TV during the early period of her ad campaign. I then devoted my leisure TV time to Netflix in the evenings (which I stream to my TV). I encouraged her to fire her campaign manager and start using ads that are simple and direct perhaps with a nice desk with her sitting behind it explaining her platform. By God, she did! I know my humble email didn’t change her ad campaign but I know many people like myself wrote to her about her choice of TV ads. By the way, not that it matters, but I’m not voting for her or any of the other candidates in November—so far. Those boxes could be left blank. Just the way it is sometimes. I used to vote for the lesser of two evils (or three or four) but I can’t do that anymore. I have gone through my primary absentee ballot and voted and mailed it off and left quite a few boxes unchecked. It will be likewise in November. Some people have stopped voting all together. With all the voting problems we’ve had I can understand the frustration.
I have never missed a vote in my entire life. Never. Over the last few years I’ve voted absentee, which is glorious. I prepare my ritual voting coffee, sit in my cute little breakfast nook, watch the birds, sip, set all of my collected voting materials next to my MacBook, which follows me wherever I go like a devoted Golden Retriever, place my “Star Spangled Banner” CD on the Bose and go for it. Though it’s often depressing to me I still enjoy and appreciate that I have a vote. (I really do have a “Star Spangled Banner” CD. Bleeding heart liberals are intense patriots. Just ask Michael Moore who fights corporation criminals, crooked politicians, environmental polluters, and our sick health care system [pun intended] and everyone hates him for it. If he looked like Brad Pitt there’d be parades in his honor.)
I’m often disappointed when the results come out because I would love to have tons of school money and all of our roads fixed and assistance for poor families and real medical care that’s affordable for all and true bail out for people losing their homes and most of our nation’s CEOs in prison, and electric cars (thank you Tesla), and assistance for immigrants (there’s a rumor in my family that a grandfather jumped ship in California and I am therefore from illegal alien stock and proud of it) and prison reform and eternal damnation for pedophiles (that last one is just a special wish and probably will never appear on a ballot) and every other left wing bleeding heart socialist cause that comes down the pike, but I still vote and I still study, and I still feel good about it.
But even though we all have divergent views the one thing we should and must agree on is dumping these obnoxious, lying, over-the-top, stupendously outrageous media ads. Way too many people are voting the ads and not the people or issues. It only takes a few minutes to ferret out the information online. Even the voter information pamphlet is somewhat helpful though hardly anyone reads it.
Advertising has controlled our country for years and we all understand that because we are a capitalistic society. Countless groups try to control advertising directed at children because children are wildly influenced by the ads and we have dumped cigarette advertising entirely (but not alcohol—go figure) and some advertisers have tried to promote their products more honestly. (I like the cranberry ads, corny and simple.) But political advertising is out of control. Why can’t they simply present their platforms and policies and not rake their opponents over the coals? And what about those ads where two attractive “caring” actors are discussing the issue/person and one actor portrays an unenlightened voter and the enlightened actor feeds the unenlightened actor a line of mush and the ad ends with the unenlightened actor so happy to now be well informed. The ads are designed to “enlighten” the viewer/listener and provide an imprint with a voting choice that will save their home, send their kids to college, end crime forever, eliminate our national debt, groom their pets, and shower the country with fairy dust so that all of our dreams come true.
Remember, the people who appear on Jerry Springer are eligible to vote. Guess who political ads are aimed at? Not me.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Because it's rare, each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business or an entity that knows how to treat customers. This week I received excellent customer service from:
United States Postal Service-Coddingtown Branch, Santa Rosa;
AT&T Customer Service-Calvin;
Best Wishes—Lad’s Shopping Center, Santa Rosa
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
Ah, it’s that happiest time of the year. Cookies in the oven, our homes are decorated with bright holiday colors, happy smiles of expectation are on the faces of small children, the stockings are hung . . .oh, wait a minute. That’s wrong. It’s the phoniest time of the year, not the happiest time of the year. Silly me. And it’s only the primary. The hardcore phony stuff will be in November, then later in the month we’ll have something to give thanks for. Well, some of us will.
I don't think any of us are fooled (anymore) about how voting works in this country. If a group or person has gobs of money they can buy their measure, proposition, or political office. Just a few minutes ago I heard that two California governor primary hopefuls (Poizner and Whitman) are willing (and able) to pump up their coffers from their own personal wealth by (hold on) millions of dollars—each. This will primarily be devoted to advertising.
I don't like politics and do not spend much time listening to politicians. Too many scandals, too many lies, too much money going into thin air—or worse. It’s all a mess and our forefathers must be rolling over in their graves. Of course, they made many horrible decisions and kept secrets from the citizenry too. They were not all about milk and cookies and apple pie. But even though they were mostly a bunch of powerful rich land baron white men with slaves they tried very hard to make us a free society with laws and justice. We had to be protected from ourselves.
And let’s not forget past politicians who developed the electoral college (a concept charmingly known as an indirect election) to keep the ignorant from understanding how voting was/is rigged. District apportionment my foot. It was formed in 1787. Does anyone think that something that worked for our quaint form of government then works for our massive out of control system now? 1787 to 2010? Really? [Fun fact: Abraham Lincoln’s winning total in the 1860 election included four electors who were pledged to Stephen Douglas. Oops! Electors who don't keep their promise are referred to as faithless electors. Apropos.] And it’s always been about the ruling class providing government for us simple folk.
That said, I do however pay attention when it’s time to vote and I always do a little research. Independent research, not watching TV ads. The TV ads are horrifically successful however which is why millions of dollars are spent on them. No, instead, I do my own research and usually find someone, or some thing, I can vote for without puking. But not always.
Over the years family and friends learned about my little peculiarity for researching election people and issues and often asked my opinion, one or two days prior to elections. That’s fine because I’m usually prepared at that point. However, I strive to not influence their vote and I attempt to express a few pertinent unbiased facts and hope that helps (truly). Sometimes I’m asked who or what I’m going to vote for and sometimes that’s helpful if they follow my political policy views, you know, like I said, slightly to the left of Jesus. Others when hearing what I’ve decided to vote for will vote the opposite because of their political views. This is fine with me because they are correct to vote opposite my position (if they are Godless and fascists and don't like Jesus).
All kidding aside, sort of, an alarming number of citizens vote the TV ads. In polls and surveys the reason is “time.” Our lives are busier than ever today and the issues are overwhelming and not trustworthy. There are so many information resources pulling at us every day all day it’s hard to stop and take the time to study anything. Those of us who do make the effort end up with major headaches and are more confused than when we began. (I actually voted “no” on something once that I wanted to vote “yes” on meaning the opposite vote was necessary for my point of view but the proposition or measure was written in such a convoluted manner that I selected the wrong response. I didn’t realize it for a few days and was heartsick.) However, the fact that we do continue to dig through the muck has trained us to spot a deceptive ad the moment we see it.
Proposition 16 is an excellent example. On the screen we see a sincere (attractive) woman imploring us to make sure we the voters get our “right to vote” (patriotic buzz words) for our muni governments’ decisions to go into the utility business. It seems reasonable. We should have our vote on many issues so at the outset of this proposition it simply sounds like it’s attempting to secure our voting rights on big decisions. I don't really have a feeling for that either way but it doesn’t, on the surface, sound bad.
The very first time I saw the ad however my Spidey sense tingled, “I bet PG&E is funding this ad.” Toward the end of the commercial I tried, in vain, to ascertain who was supporting this prop and of course the required printing at the bottom of the screen was out of my senior vision range and also sped by like a speeding bullet. The lettering was also extremely faint. So I ran to my trusty crime fighter—my little MacBook. Sure enough, “major funding by PG&E.” Don't just take my word for it. Look it up. Still, I’m not saying this is bad in itself but the ad is dishonest and disingenuous and the pretty citizen is an actress and the script is weighted without clarity. So whether or not Prop 16 is worthy or not I’m voting against it because of the dishonest advertising. [And I just got my new Smart Meter installed a couple of weeks ago, under protest, and I’m trembling at the thought of opening my next bill so I’m a tad unhappy with PG&E. I told the installer I didn’t want it until the kinks were worked out and he said I didn’t have a choice. I don't own a weapon.]
Next, Meg Whitman’s ad campaign was obnoxious but has improved. I wrote an email to her campaign when the first series of blaring ads appeared, multiple times per evening. I had to stop watching TV during the early period of her ad campaign. I then devoted my leisure TV time to Netflix in the evenings (which I stream to my TV). I encouraged her to fire her campaign manager and start using ads that are simple and direct perhaps with a nice desk with her sitting behind it explaining her platform. By God, she did! I know my humble email didn’t change her ad campaign but I know many people like myself wrote to her about her choice of TV ads. By the way, not that it matters, but I’m not voting for her or any of the other candidates in November—so far. Those boxes could be left blank. Just the way it is sometimes. I used to vote for the lesser of two evils (or three or four) but I can’t do that anymore. I have gone through my primary absentee ballot and voted and mailed it off and left quite a few boxes unchecked. It will be likewise in November. Some people have stopped voting all together. With all the voting problems we’ve had I can understand the frustration.
I have never missed a vote in my entire life. Never. Over the last few years I’ve voted absentee, which is glorious. I prepare my ritual voting coffee, sit in my cute little breakfast nook, watch the birds, sip, set all of my collected voting materials next to my MacBook, which follows me wherever I go like a devoted Golden Retriever, place my “Star Spangled Banner” CD on the Bose and go for it. Though it’s often depressing to me I still enjoy and appreciate that I have a vote. (I really do have a “Star Spangled Banner” CD. Bleeding heart liberals are intense patriots. Just ask Michael Moore who fights corporation criminals, crooked politicians, environmental polluters, and our sick health care system [pun intended] and everyone hates him for it. If he looked like Brad Pitt there’d be parades in his honor.)
I’m often disappointed when the results come out because I would love to have tons of school money and all of our roads fixed and assistance for poor families and real medical care that’s affordable for all and true bail out for people losing their homes and most of our nation’s CEOs in prison, and electric cars (thank you Tesla), and assistance for immigrants (there’s a rumor in my family that a grandfather jumped ship in California and I am therefore from illegal alien stock and proud of it) and prison reform and eternal damnation for pedophiles (that last one is just a special wish and probably will never appear on a ballot) and every other left wing bleeding heart socialist cause that comes down the pike, but I still vote and I still study, and I still feel good about it.
But even though we all have divergent views the one thing we should and must agree on is dumping these obnoxious, lying, over-the-top, stupendously outrageous media ads. Way too many people are voting the ads and not the people or issues. It only takes a few minutes to ferret out the information online. Even the voter information pamphlet is somewhat helpful though hardly anyone reads it.
Advertising has controlled our country for years and we all understand that because we are a capitalistic society. Countless groups try to control advertising directed at children because children are wildly influenced by the ads and we have dumped cigarette advertising entirely (but not alcohol—go figure) and some advertisers have tried to promote their products more honestly. (I like the cranberry ads, corny and simple.) But political advertising is out of control. Why can’t they simply present their platforms and policies and not rake their opponents over the coals? And what about those ads where two attractive “caring” actors are discussing the issue/person and one actor portrays an unenlightened voter and the enlightened actor feeds the unenlightened actor a line of mush and the ad ends with the unenlightened actor so happy to now be well informed. The ads are designed to “enlighten” the viewer/listener and provide an imprint with a voting choice that will save their home, send their kids to college, end crime forever, eliminate our national debt, groom their pets, and shower the country with fairy dust so that all of our dreams come true.
Remember, the people who appear on Jerry Springer are eligible to vote. Guess who political ads are aimed at? Not me.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Because it's rare, each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business or an entity that knows how to treat customers. This week I received excellent customer service from:
United States Postal Service-Coddingtown Branch, Santa Rosa;
AT&T Customer Service-Calvin;
Best Wishes—Lad’s Shopping Center, Santa Rosa
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Happy Anniversary to The Pill! (Part 1/1)
[For previous blogs please visit “blog archive” to the lower left of this screen. Click on the small black arrows for a drop down list of earlier blogs.]
Recently, it was the 50th anniversary of “The Pill.” Countless reports popped up on TV and the radio and the Internet chronicling the history of The Pill and mostly it was positive. We all know that for some women the pill doesn’t work well and those women develop health issues. A doctor must closely monitor them and sometimes by changing brands they can find a brand without side effects but not always. One report stated that at one time or another 80% of all American women have been on The Pill.
Of all the reports I heard or read, the one that was the most significant to me was that if nothing else The Pill forced women to see their doctor once a year. It is the only way to obtain The Pill, through a doctor’s prescription. Women’s health clinics have “used” the pill to bring patients to them for health care, women who typically would not spend meager dollars for health care but who do want The Pill. By getting them into the clinics the providers are able to check the women thoroughly for a variety of health care issues. Though The Pill possibly could be found through illegal channels it isn’t necessary. Most clinics provide The Pill on request and often free but only after a health evaluation.
The distribution of The Pill has not been without controversy. Some believe it promotes promiscuity by removing the fear of pregnancy. And, of course, The Pill does not protect women against STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). Many people are worried about the long-term use of The Pill and others worry about immediate use issues. However, doctors have always been open and direct about the possible problems with The Pill and everyone takes it feeling that the risk of an unplanned pregnancy by not taking it outweighs the risk of a “possible” problem with taking it. There are also religious objections over its use. The debates over The Pill and abortion are endless and not for discussion in this posting. I have another egg to hatch today. (Pun intended.)
I have never heard objections, religious or otherwise, over the huge numbers of men taking Viagra (sildenafil citrate) or similar erectile dysfunction drugs. I have heard and read hilarious jokes and have viewed countless cartoons. Some cartoonists are very talented! In fact, famous men have been known to promote male enhancement drugs on TV. While preparing this blog I read about a number of well-known celebrities who take the drug recreationally, not because there’s a genuine need. One celebrity takes it though he is still able to perform normally. His problem is that he must wait for a period of time before performing after his previous performance. Poor guy. He has to WAIT. (Try to write something like this without using the words that would be fun to use. eBlogger would not like it. It’s very difficult.) If we think about it for a minute it’s odd. The Pill prevents pregnancy; Viagra does everything in its power to promote pregnancy. No objections? Have we forgotten how the egg gets fertilized?
Let’s take a look at this scientifically. If a male injects a female with sperm, the little swimmer works its way to the female’s egg and if it’s a lucky little swimmer it pokes itself into the egg and a pregnancy could develop. In the days before male enhancement drugs, men sometimes were not able to impregnate the objects of their affection eliminating the fear of pregnancy at least some of the time. Often inebriated males at parties, bars, and clubs ceased to function and though they made efforts to have sex with the girls they often were not able to. Instead a form of romantic mauling took place without the act reaching a conclusion. No longer a problem. Now no matter how drunk or stoned they are they can still perform. Some men with erectile dysfunction can (theoretically) take it well into their hundreds. Sperm in very old men has been known to produce babies. These drugs have turned normal healthy men with normal healthy sex drives into out of control baby machines. But if women take The Pill the fear is that they are going to be promiscuous. Really?
The original purpose (I hope) of the development of these male enhancement drugs was genuine. To help men who through illness or age or anxiety problems were no longer able to have normal sex lives. A normal sex life—not a 16 year old at a party popping enhancement drugs like candy to have an all night orgy. But that’s what has happened. Viagra and other drugs like it have gone wild and are now sold like party drugs. When Suddam Hussein was captured everyone came out of the woodwork to tell the world about his odd behaviors and one of his behaviors was his addiction to taking huge quantities of these drugs so that he could stay “ready” for hours and hours and “party” his brains out with many women.
And we’ve all seen the eye-popping TV commercials with the horrifying disclaimer at the end (I looked up safety issues with Viagra and the list is huge. Of course, not all men will have the side effects listed in the huge list. It wouldn’t matter anyway. They would take it if their eyes popped out of their sockets and their arms fell off. Who needs arms?)
These enhancement drugs are widely available to any adult or teen legally or illegally. It’s a party drug. It’s often taken with ecstasy/XTC (Methylenedioxymetamphetamine/MDMA). Almost any male can request a prescription for one of these drugs by making up excuses about performance issues and they get it. It’s so easy to obtain that it’s taken to parties and passed around—often with XTC. The commercials for male enhancement drugs on TV outnumber The Pill commercials. With all these men and boys running around with perpetual “readiness” we should be shoveling The Pill to our girls at birth.
The gay community doesn’t have the pregnancy concerns but they do have health concerns. In fact, whether straight or gay, all men running around having even more sex than ever before in history (if that’s even possible) puts our entire society at risk for spreading STDs and worse.
For every mother with a teen daughter who attends parties and is worried that if her daughter takes The Pill she may dance on table tops and fall into the arms of drooling boys, remember: the drooling boys are now fortified. Boys and men who are “ready” can be very persuasive.
Start buying baby clothes.
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business or an entity that knows how to treat customers.
This week I received excellent customer service from:
CalTrans-(in response to a complaint)
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written consent of the author.]
Recently, it was the 50th anniversary of “The Pill.” Countless reports popped up on TV and the radio and the Internet chronicling the history of The Pill and mostly it was positive. We all know that for some women the pill doesn’t work well and those women develop health issues. A doctor must closely monitor them and sometimes by changing brands they can find a brand without side effects but not always. One report stated that at one time or another 80% of all American women have been on The Pill.
Of all the reports I heard or read, the one that was the most significant to me was that if nothing else The Pill forced women to see their doctor once a year. It is the only way to obtain The Pill, through a doctor’s prescription. Women’s health clinics have “used” the pill to bring patients to them for health care, women who typically would not spend meager dollars for health care but who do want The Pill. By getting them into the clinics the providers are able to check the women thoroughly for a variety of health care issues. Though The Pill possibly could be found through illegal channels it isn’t necessary. Most clinics provide The Pill on request and often free but only after a health evaluation.
The distribution of The Pill has not been without controversy. Some believe it promotes promiscuity by removing the fear of pregnancy. And, of course, The Pill does not protect women against STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). Many people are worried about the long-term use of The Pill and others worry about immediate use issues. However, doctors have always been open and direct about the possible problems with The Pill and everyone takes it feeling that the risk of an unplanned pregnancy by not taking it outweighs the risk of a “possible” problem with taking it. There are also religious objections over its use. The debates over The Pill and abortion are endless and not for discussion in this posting. I have another egg to hatch today. (Pun intended.)
I have never heard objections, religious or otherwise, over the huge numbers of men taking Viagra (sildenafil citrate) or similar erectile dysfunction drugs. I have heard and read hilarious jokes and have viewed countless cartoons. Some cartoonists are very talented! In fact, famous men have been known to promote male enhancement drugs on TV. While preparing this blog I read about a number of well-known celebrities who take the drug recreationally, not because there’s a genuine need. One celebrity takes it though he is still able to perform normally. His problem is that he must wait for a period of time before performing after his previous performance. Poor guy. He has to WAIT. (Try to write something like this without using the words that would be fun to use. eBlogger would not like it. It’s very difficult.) If we think about it for a minute it’s odd. The Pill prevents pregnancy; Viagra does everything in its power to promote pregnancy. No objections? Have we forgotten how the egg gets fertilized?
Let’s take a look at this scientifically. If a male injects a female with sperm, the little swimmer works its way to the female’s egg and if it’s a lucky little swimmer it pokes itself into the egg and a pregnancy could develop. In the days before male enhancement drugs, men sometimes were not able to impregnate the objects of their affection eliminating the fear of pregnancy at least some of the time. Often inebriated males at parties, bars, and clubs ceased to function and though they made efforts to have sex with the girls they often were not able to. Instead a form of romantic mauling took place without the act reaching a conclusion. No longer a problem. Now no matter how drunk or stoned they are they can still perform. Some men with erectile dysfunction can (theoretically) take it well into their hundreds. Sperm in very old men has been known to produce babies. These drugs have turned normal healthy men with normal healthy sex drives into out of control baby machines. But if women take The Pill the fear is that they are going to be promiscuous. Really?
The original purpose (I hope) of the development of these male enhancement drugs was genuine. To help men who through illness or age or anxiety problems were no longer able to have normal sex lives. A normal sex life—not a 16 year old at a party popping enhancement drugs like candy to have an all night orgy. But that’s what has happened. Viagra and other drugs like it have gone wild and are now sold like party drugs. When Suddam Hussein was captured everyone came out of the woodwork to tell the world about his odd behaviors and one of his behaviors was his addiction to taking huge quantities of these drugs so that he could stay “ready” for hours and hours and “party” his brains out with many women.
And we’ve all seen the eye-popping TV commercials with the horrifying disclaimer at the end (I looked up safety issues with Viagra and the list is huge. Of course, not all men will have the side effects listed in the huge list. It wouldn’t matter anyway. They would take it if their eyes popped out of their sockets and their arms fell off. Who needs arms?)
These enhancement drugs are widely available to any adult or teen legally or illegally. It’s a party drug. It’s often taken with ecstasy/XTC (Methylenedioxymetamphetamine/MDMA). Almost any male can request a prescription for one of these drugs by making up excuses about performance issues and they get it. It’s so easy to obtain that it’s taken to parties and passed around—often with XTC. The commercials for male enhancement drugs on TV outnumber The Pill commercials. With all these men and boys running around with perpetual “readiness” we should be shoveling The Pill to our girls at birth.
The gay community doesn’t have the pregnancy concerns but they do have health concerns. In fact, whether straight or gay, all men running around having even more sex than ever before in history (if that’s even possible) puts our entire society at risk for spreading STDs and worse.
For every mother with a teen daughter who attends parties and is worried that if her daughter takes The Pill she may dance on table tops and fall into the arms of drooling boys, remember: the drooling boys are now fortified. Boys and men who are “ready” can be very persuasive.
Start buying baby clothes.
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business or an entity that knows how to treat customers.
This week I received excellent customer service from:
CalTrans-(in response to a complaint)
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written consent of the author.]
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Photographic Memory (Part 1/1)
[For previous blogs please visit “blog archive” to the lower left of this screen. Click on the small black arrows for a drop down list of earlier blogs.]
Two unrelated and dissimilar events took place recently. First, I received word from friends that a sixties high school classmate passed away. Way back then he was an adorable teen and a member of a popular boys’ group. When I heard of his passing I ran to my yearbook and found his photo. To me he will always look the way he did in that photo: young, vibrant, and smiling. I’ll explain the second event later in this posting.
On January 1st of this year I began the huge task of organizing family photos. Most of us have been guilty of shoebox storage, stacks of banded photos with no dates, and photo losses due to damage from water leaks and even infestations. Everyone I’ve talked to over the years pines for the day they are going to organize their photos. Most of us do not do that until we retire which is why I was finally able to tackle this seemingly insurmountable task.
In my collection I have over 100 years worth of photos. I am fortunate that my maternal grandmother and her family maintained a photo history of those early years and carefully passed them down to my mom. They are fantastic pictures with great old hats and dresses and wonderful cars with dapper family members standing next to them dressed to the nines. My father’s sisters also shared many great old photos with us from my east coast family. That part of the family stretches all the way to before the revolution and I have some very early photos that are precious. [See photo on the left with the group of theatrically dressed kids. My dad is in the middle of the back row.]
When I began my own photo collection I was quite young. I took photos of my grammar school friends and have them all. Over the course of my 65 years, along with my family’s contributions to my collection, I ended up with 20,000 or so photos. Some were fuzzy and the processing chemicals didn’t hold up and had to be tossed but most survived. In my entire life I only have one regret: that I didn’t purchase better quality cameras. Part B of the regret is that I didn’t have a movie camera or video camera until just a few years ago.
My daughter knew the “great photo project” was on my retirement project list so for Christmas of 2009 she gave me Photoshop software. She knew many of the photos would need work. I hadn’t made a commitment to start the project at that time because I had so many other projects on my list but with that gift I decided it was time.
Because I’ve always been a prolific camera bug I did a fair job of organizing my photos over the years but still ended up with a giant old TV box filled with thousands of photos. Within the box I had the presence of mind, fortunately, to keep the photos in paper bags organized by towns I’ve lived in since birth. I had organized them this way early on and it was a sensible system. I always lugged this box from home to home and worried about its storage and possible loss with so many moves. It was never stored in a garage but always in an indoor closet. The top of the box was always closed and a plastic trash bag was placed over it. On the rare occasions when I forgot to lock it down one of my cats would make it a home base and the top layer of photos would be full of fur and little bits of food and God knows what else. My wonderful box is now in box heaven.
During the years of TV box storage I would often take a bag out of the box and put the photos in albums declaring I was going to finally complete this project. I’d spend a few weekends on it and then realize what a huge job it would be to complete the entire box so I would shove it back in the closet. I did this several times over the years so that the photos were in fairly reasonable order and I had a few albums completed. When the kids were born my photo record keeping evolved into nightmarish proportions. And because I was a busy mom I didn’t touch the photos for years but still kept photos in paper bags labeled with the town/city I lived in and stuffed it all in the TV box. Whenever I moved to another place, the box always rode in the car with me to our new home, never in a truck. If we had to stay in a hotel prior to our final moving destination the box came inside the room with us.
Now I’m retired and my kids are grown and before there are grandchildren I decided to start in earnest and to not stop until I finished. As of this writing I only have one album left. I’ll explain why it’s the last at the end. When it’s done I will have 26 albums (all the cities and towns I’ve lived in plus special albums with themes) containing the more than 20,000 photos. Originally I had 13,000 but then found more and borrowed my mom’s so it grew. Some of the albums are quite large because I lived in certain towns longer than others.
I started the project on January 1 and have worked on it every single day since then. On days when I had normal activities to accomplish I still squeezed in a few hours of the project so that not a single day has gone by without at least a little work. During some parts of the project I spent many 15- and 16-hour days. This explains why so many of us wait till retirement to tackle such a project.
The first part of the project was to pull the TV box out of the closet (not easy) and line up all the photo bags on my sofas. I started with my birth city, San Jose, and concluded with my current city, Santa Rosa. Some of the cities had more than one bag. There were additional bags of vacation albums, office albums, special occasions, etc. More than half of the bags contained regular photos but somewhere in the ‘90s digital photos became popular and I had many disks without photos in later bags. They saved me from more work than I could possibly imagine.
After organizing all the bags and collecting photos from my mom, I started scanning them all into the computer. I filled the scanner glass with as many photos as I could squeeze on it and later separated them by duplicating and cropping on my computer rather than scanning individual photos which would have taken way too long and may have worn out my scanner. Even with the multiple photo method of scanning I was on my feet for hours and hours and I only scanned an hour at a time to avoid overheating my scanner. Scanning took weeks but when I got to later bags I found the disks and then things moved a lot more quickly. Carpal tunnel is expected any day.
After all the scanning, I arranged the photos of a particular bag on the computer in chronological order or if I couldn’t do that then by event or in some cases I’d group all the photos into categories such as holidays, school days, etc. This is when the procedure slowed down because I had to use Photoshop on many of the older poor quality photos. Photoshop is wonderful but the procedure is laborious and I found I spent way too much time fixing individual photos. I could tell that if I continued trying to make perfect photos I’d be completing this project in a rest home. So as I organized the photos on my computer I would only “fix” the photos that were very special. Way too many were special.
After most of the photos were on the computer I developed major computer problems--too many photos (plus I already have a huge music collection on my computer). So I took all the photos off the computer and put them all on disks and ended up working on one album at a time on the computer. A rather time consuming task taking them all off and putting them on disks because, again, I had 20,000 photos.
Once a particular city was completed I then took the jpegs and turned them into slideshows with music that fit the era or events depicted in the grouping. Early on I included graphics and clip art but that was bogging me down so I stopped that. After the slideshows were complete I turned them into DVDs then made two copies of the show, one for me and one for storage at my mom’s in the event something happens to them here. After the slideshows I made two copies of the jpegs, many with improved quality, again, a copy for me and a set for storage at mom’s. In a few months I plan on making sets for each of the kids.
I then went to Snapfish.com and made beautiful photo books with the jpegs. Though they have a wonderful system it is still labor intensive to organize them all in book format and I made quite a few mistakes at first. I’m now an expert so later books have gone more smoothly. I have decided to do these beautiful books rather than the traditional bulky photo albums because they are slim and easier to store than binders and albums and if anything happens to them they remain on Snapfish forever and can be reprinted. I ordered one immediately after completion of one of my first albums and it’s fantastic. My plan is to order one a month until I have them all because they aren’t cheap and I’m making a set for me and a set for each of my kids. For the math impaired that will be a total of 78 albums. In each book they will also get a copy of the DVD slideshow and a separate jpeg disk so that they can print out copies of any photo they might like to have out of that particular book. Whew!
So that’s the nuts and bolts of the project with many assorted side stories I could share but suffice to say that with any project of this magnitude there will always be hair pulling and I had my share. I purchased this computer with that project in mind and told the sales associate what I had planned and he didn’t suggest the right computer for the magnitude of the job. Some young tech types see the older woman standing before them and assume they are one step up from a typewriter. That is so not me. I’ve been a computer geek from the beginning.
I had one trip to the Apple Store when over night I lost most of the albums but a great tech found them on my backup external drive—--all but one. I couldn’t find them myself on the external drive because I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown and my backup system is a little strange. I had most of the shows on disk but had run out of disks and stupidly kept working without copying them once completed.
The true grit of the project, however, is that I became intimately acquainted with every single photo in the collection. Many that I had previously placed in photo albums were familiar to me but I had some incredible surprises in store for me from photos I hadn’t seen since the day they were placed in their bag and put in the TV box. In fact, when I heard of the passing of my high school classmate mentioned in the first paragraph I ran to my yearbooks and discovered more photographic emotions, which filled four books and I spent more than a couple of hours reviewing my teens.
I’ve spent many days in a glazed melancholy as I’ve watched the aging and health deterioration of family and friends then no more photos of that beloved person in following albums. All the Christmases to follow got smaller and smaller over the years as people moved away or sadly, were gone forever. Fewer and smaller family events, no more picnics on my dad’s wonderful picnic table that he made where we all gathered to have his wonderful food and visit, smaller Christmas trees with fewer presents underneath. I spent many days so sad to realize I had lost touch with friends and neighbors since I had moved around so much.
To my horror I saw photos of people whose names I no longer remembered. To my even greater horror I saw photos of people I had no recognition of whatsoever. It isn’t senility. It’s living all over the place during my 65 years and taking photos of anyone and everyone.
One early rule of photography I adhered to was never to take a picture of a “thing.” It had to have a human or a pet in it. When looking at the Grand Canyon I perched my kids at the ledge and told them to move here and there so as to not obscure the view and thereby not only did I preserve the beauty of the canyon but also the memory of the time I almost killed my kids on vacation. Ah, memories. [See aforementioned photo at left.]
Seeing old photos of good times and times that eventually went sour were poignant to say the least. Sometimes I laughed and cried at the same time. Of the photos that had serious quality issues I spent way too much time with Photoshop bringing them back to life because I so desperately wanted certain photos to survive. The physical operation of this project was tremendous but I had no idea what it was going to do to me emotionally. Some memories were joyful and some were painful but all were emotional beyond belief. When I got to the point where I was adding music to the slideshows I often broke down. The combination of the music and the photos just grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.
And so this brings me to the second unrelated but similar event that occurred which was the passing of a very special cat. This cat was a stray that came to my daughter’s college apartment one day. She was the sweetest cat I’ve ever known. My daughter fed her emaciated little body and took her to the vet and had her examined and vaccinated and spayed and she came to live with my daughter and her roommate. Not long after Simba (though she was a female my daughter loved “The Lion King” and named her Simba) they received word from the apartment manager that they were not able to keep a cat-—no pets allowed. So her roommate drove from Chico to Santa Rosa with the little cat and brought her to my house. The intention was that when my daughter found a place where she could have a cat she would take her back. That was fourteen years ago and the cat never went back to Chico. [Photo at left.]
Of all the albums I have completed I saved the “pet” album for last. Though all the albums have photos of our pets most of the pet photos I put aside to assemble into one large collection. Simba has fourteen years of photos in that album. I’m not sure why I saved the pet album for last, but I found that while working on the various bags of photos I was often moved to tears when I saw a pet I loved so much and only knew a short time, comparatively. It’s going to take me a while to finish that album because it has over 1000 photos. Not all are salvageable but I know I’ll be working on some of them very diligently with Photoshop.
I’ve already started a new album for current photos of events beginning in 2010 (the year I turned 65) but it’s all on the computer. No more bags, no more scanning, no giant TV box. And I do have a better camera now. I’m glad I launched this project but it turned into a significant life event. Sort of like a multi-month family and class reunion all rolled in to one. One very long reunion.
[Update: After I completed this blog my stepsiblings’ mom passed away peacefully at 93. I have included a wonderful photo of her to the left of this screen and have added it to my collection. 93--fantastic!]
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business that knows how to treat customers.
This week I received excellent customer service from (all on Saturday!):
Bank of America, Coddingtown Branch, Santa Rosa---Ana & Crystal
Apple Store, Santa Rosa Plaza---Ryan
Kaiser Pharmacy, Santa Rosa---Michael
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
Two unrelated and dissimilar events took place recently. First, I received word from friends that a sixties high school classmate passed away. Way back then he was an adorable teen and a member of a popular boys’ group. When I heard of his passing I ran to my yearbook and found his photo. To me he will always look the way he did in that photo: young, vibrant, and smiling. I’ll explain the second event later in this posting.
On January 1st of this year I began the huge task of organizing family photos. Most of us have been guilty of shoebox storage, stacks of banded photos with no dates, and photo losses due to damage from water leaks and even infestations. Everyone I’ve talked to over the years pines for the day they are going to organize their photos. Most of us do not do that until we retire which is why I was finally able to tackle this seemingly insurmountable task.
In my collection I have over 100 years worth of photos. I am fortunate that my maternal grandmother and her family maintained a photo history of those early years and carefully passed them down to my mom. They are fantastic pictures with great old hats and dresses and wonderful cars with dapper family members standing next to them dressed to the nines. My father’s sisters also shared many great old photos with us from my east coast family. That part of the family stretches all the way to before the revolution and I have some very early photos that are precious. [See photo on the left with the group of theatrically dressed kids. My dad is in the middle of the back row.]
When I began my own photo collection I was quite young. I took photos of my grammar school friends and have them all. Over the course of my 65 years, along with my family’s contributions to my collection, I ended up with 20,000 or so photos. Some were fuzzy and the processing chemicals didn’t hold up and had to be tossed but most survived. In my entire life I only have one regret: that I didn’t purchase better quality cameras. Part B of the regret is that I didn’t have a movie camera or video camera until just a few years ago.
My daughter knew the “great photo project” was on my retirement project list so for Christmas of 2009 she gave me Photoshop software. She knew many of the photos would need work. I hadn’t made a commitment to start the project at that time because I had so many other projects on my list but with that gift I decided it was time.
Because I’ve always been a prolific camera bug I did a fair job of organizing my photos over the years but still ended up with a giant old TV box filled with thousands of photos. Within the box I had the presence of mind, fortunately, to keep the photos in paper bags organized by towns I’ve lived in since birth. I had organized them this way early on and it was a sensible system. I always lugged this box from home to home and worried about its storage and possible loss with so many moves. It was never stored in a garage but always in an indoor closet. The top of the box was always closed and a plastic trash bag was placed over it. On the rare occasions when I forgot to lock it down one of my cats would make it a home base and the top layer of photos would be full of fur and little bits of food and God knows what else. My wonderful box is now in box heaven.
During the years of TV box storage I would often take a bag out of the box and put the photos in albums declaring I was going to finally complete this project. I’d spend a few weekends on it and then realize what a huge job it would be to complete the entire box so I would shove it back in the closet. I did this several times over the years so that the photos were in fairly reasonable order and I had a few albums completed. When the kids were born my photo record keeping evolved into nightmarish proportions. And because I was a busy mom I didn’t touch the photos for years but still kept photos in paper bags labeled with the town/city I lived in and stuffed it all in the TV box. Whenever I moved to another place, the box always rode in the car with me to our new home, never in a truck. If we had to stay in a hotel prior to our final moving destination the box came inside the room with us.
Now I’m retired and my kids are grown and before there are grandchildren I decided to start in earnest and to not stop until I finished. As of this writing I only have one album left. I’ll explain why it’s the last at the end. When it’s done I will have 26 albums (all the cities and towns I’ve lived in plus special albums with themes) containing the more than 20,000 photos. Originally I had 13,000 but then found more and borrowed my mom’s so it grew. Some of the albums are quite large because I lived in certain towns longer than others.
I started the project on January 1 and have worked on it every single day since then. On days when I had normal activities to accomplish I still squeezed in a few hours of the project so that not a single day has gone by without at least a little work. During some parts of the project I spent many 15- and 16-hour days. This explains why so many of us wait till retirement to tackle such a project.
The first part of the project was to pull the TV box out of the closet (not easy) and line up all the photo bags on my sofas. I started with my birth city, San Jose, and concluded with my current city, Santa Rosa. Some of the cities had more than one bag. There were additional bags of vacation albums, office albums, special occasions, etc. More than half of the bags contained regular photos but somewhere in the ‘90s digital photos became popular and I had many disks without photos in later bags. They saved me from more work than I could possibly imagine.
After organizing all the bags and collecting photos from my mom, I started scanning them all into the computer. I filled the scanner glass with as many photos as I could squeeze on it and later separated them by duplicating and cropping on my computer rather than scanning individual photos which would have taken way too long and may have worn out my scanner. Even with the multiple photo method of scanning I was on my feet for hours and hours and I only scanned an hour at a time to avoid overheating my scanner. Scanning took weeks but when I got to later bags I found the disks and then things moved a lot more quickly. Carpal tunnel is expected any day.
After all the scanning, I arranged the photos of a particular bag on the computer in chronological order or if I couldn’t do that then by event or in some cases I’d group all the photos into categories such as holidays, school days, etc. This is when the procedure slowed down because I had to use Photoshop on many of the older poor quality photos. Photoshop is wonderful but the procedure is laborious and I found I spent way too much time fixing individual photos. I could tell that if I continued trying to make perfect photos I’d be completing this project in a rest home. So as I organized the photos on my computer I would only “fix” the photos that were very special. Way too many were special.
After most of the photos were on the computer I developed major computer problems--too many photos (plus I already have a huge music collection on my computer). So I took all the photos off the computer and put them all on disks and ended up working on one album at a time on the computer. A rather time consuming task taking them all off and putting them on disks because, again, I had 20,000 photos.
Once a particular city was completed I then took the jpegs and turned them into slideshows with music that fit the era or events depicted in the grouping. Early on I included graphics and clip art but that was bogging me down so I stopped that. After the slideshows were complete I turned them into DVDs then made two copies of the show, one for me and one for storage at my mom’s in the event something happens to them here. After the slideshows I made two copies of the jpegs, many with improved quality, again, a copy for me and a set for storage at mom’s. In a few months I plan on making sets for each of the kids.
I then went to Snapfish.com and made beautiful photo books with the jpegs. Though they have a wonderful system it is still labor intensive to organize them all in book format and I made quite a few mistakes at first. I’m now an expert so later books have gone more smoothly. I have decided to do these beautiful books rather than the traditional bulky photo albums because they are slim and easier to store than binders and albums and if anything happens to them they remain on Snapfish forever and can be reprinted. I ordered one immediately after completion of one of my first albums and it’s fantastic. My plan is to order one a month until I have them all because they aren’t cheap and I’m making a set for me and a set for each of my kids. For the math impaired that will be a total of 78 albums. In each book they will also get a copy of the DVD slideshow and a separate jpeg disk so that they can print out copies of any photo they might like to have out of that particular book. Whew!
So that’s the nuts and bolts of the project with many assorted side stories I could share but suffice to say that with any project of this magnitude there will always be hair pulling and I had my share. I purchased this computer with that project in mind and told the sales associate what I had planned and he didn’t suggest the right computer for the magnitude of the job. Some young tech types see the older woman standing before them and assume they are one step up from a typewriter. That is so not me. I’ve been a computer geek from the beginning.
I had one trip to the Apple Store when over night I lost most of the albums but a great tech found them on my backup external drive—--all but one. I couldn’t find them myself on the external drive because I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown and my backup system is a little strange. I had most of the shows on disk but had run out of disks and stupidly kept working without copying them once completed.
The true grit of the project, however, is that I became intimately acquainted with every single photo in the collection. Many that I had previously placed in photo albums were familiar to me but I had some incredible surprises in store for me from photos I hadn’t seen since the day they were placed in their bag and put in the TV box. In fact, when I heard of the passing of my high school classmate mentioned in the first paragraph I ran to my yearbooks and discovered more photographic emotions, which filled four books and I spent more than a couple of hours reviewing my teens.
I’ve spent many days in a glazed melancholy as I’ve watched the aging and health deterioration of family and friends then no more photos of that beloved person in following albums. All the Christmases to follow got smaller and smaller over the years as people moved away or sadly, were gone forever. Fewer and smaller family events, no more picnics on my dad’s wonderful picnic table that he made where we all gathered to have his wonderful food and visit, smaller Christmas trees with fewer presents underneath. I spent many days so sad to realize I had lost touch with friends and neighbors since I had moved around so much.
To my horror I saw photos of people whose names I no longer remembered. To my even greater horror I saw photos of people I had no recognition of whatsoever. It isn’t senility. It’s living all over the place during my 65 years and taking photos of anyone and everyone.
One early rule of photography I adhered to was never to take a picture of a “thing.” It had to have a human or a pet in it. When looking at the Grand Canyon I perched my kids at the ledge and told them to move here and there so as to not obscure the view and thereby not only did I preserve the beauty of the canyon but also the memory of the time I almost killed my kids on vacation. Ah, memories. [See aforementioned photo at left.]
Seeing old photos of good times and times that eventually went sour were poignant to say the least. Sometimes I laughed and cried at the same time. Of the photos that had serious quality issues I spent way too much time with Photoshop bringing them back to life because I so desperately wanted certain photos to survive. The physical operation of this project was tremendous but I had no idea what it was going to do to me emotionally. Some memories were joyful and some were painful but all were emotional beyond belief. When I got to the point where I was adding music to the slideshows I often broke down. The combination of the music and the photos just grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.
And so this brings me to the second unrelated but similar event that occurred which was the passing of a very special cat. This cat was a stray that came to my daughter’s college apartment one day. She was the sweetest cat I’ve ever known. My daughter fed her emaciated little body and took her to the vet and had her examined and vaccinated and spayed and she came to live with my daughter and her roommate. Not long after Simba (though she was a female my daughter loved “The Lion King” and named her Simba) they received word from the apartment manager that they were not able to keep a cat-—no pets allowed. So her roommate drove from Chico to Santa Rosa with the little cat and brought her to my house. The intention was that when my daughter found a place where she could have a cat she would take her back. That was fourteen years ago and the cat never went back to Chico. [Photo at left.]
Of all the albums I have completed I saved the “pet” album for last. Though all the albums have photos of our pets most of the pet photos I put aside to assemble into one large collection. Simba has fourteen years of photos in that album. I’m not sure why I saved the pet album for last, but I found that while working on the various bags of photos I was often moved to tears when I saw a pet I loved so much and only knew a short time, comparatively. It’s going to take me a while to finish that album because it has over 1000 photos. Not all are salvageable but I know I’ll be working on some of them very diligently with Photoshop.
I’ve already started a new album for current photos of events beginning in 2010 (the year I turned 65) but it’s all on the computer. No more bags, no more scanning, no giant TV box. And I do have a better camera now. I’m glad I launched this project but it turned into a significant life event. Sort of like a multi-month family and class reunion all rolled in to one. One very long reunion.
[Update: After I completed this blog my stepsiblings’ mom passed away peacefully at 93. I have included a wonderful photo of her to the left of this screen and have added it to my collection. 93--fantastic!]
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business that knows how to treat customers.
This week I received excellent customer service from (all on Saturday!):
Bank of America, Coddingtown Branch, Santa Rosa---Ana & Crystal
Apple Store, Santa Rosa Plaza---Ryan
Kaiser Pharmacy, Santa Rosa---Michael
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Just Heard A Funny Joke (Part 1/1)
[For previous blogs please visit “blog archive” to the lower left of this screen. Click on the small black arrows for a drop down list of earlier blogs.]
I just heard a very funny joke. Here goes. (So bad at telling jokes. Bear with me.)
Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa walked into a bar. Oh, wait. Heh heh heh. That can’t be right. Let me start over. I’m so terrible at telling jokes.
Okay. Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa walked into a¬––uh––let’s see. Oh, I know, a park. Okay.
Jesus, Gandhi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa walked into a park. They saw a multitude of colorful people enjoying themselves at the bar––I mean park. By “colorful” I don't mean they wore fun brightly colored garments. No, I mean they were people from diverse races. Suddenly, men in black karate style clothing and black hoods entered the bar––damn it, I mean park––and started rounding up all the people. Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa were rounded up along with the others. When they asked why they were being arrested they were told to show their citizenship documentation. Jesus wasn’t a citizen nor was Ghandi or Mother Teresa (she claimed she was actually Albanian with Indian citizenship). Dr. King was a citizen but wasn’t in the habit of carrying his documentation around because, well, you know, he was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
All the people were taken to jail, processed, placed on buses--and sent back to Mexico where they came from. Funny, because I didn't know Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa were originally from Mexico but they were suspiciously brown so I guess they must have been. Off they went. Whatever. When The Buddha heard of their plight, he formed a posse and found the four friends somewhere in Baja California. They are now all residing peacefully in an undisclosed location.
Gee, I guess this wasn’t as funny as I thought it was. Like I said, I’m terrible at telling jokes. Did I mention the bar—damn—park was in Arizona? Does that make it funnier? No, I guess not.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business that knows how to treat customers.
This week I received excellent customer service from:
N/A
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
I just heard a very funny joke. Here goes. (So bad at telling jokes. Bear with me.)
Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa walked into a bar. Oh, wait. Heh heh heh. That can’t be right. Let me start over. I’m so terrible at telling jokes.
Okay. Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa walked into a¬––uh––let’s see. Oh, I know, a park. Okay.
Jesus, Gandhi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa walked into a park. They saw a multitude of colorful people enjoying themselves at the bar––I mean park. By “colorful” I don't mean they wore fun brightly colored garments. No, I mean they were people from diverse races. Suddenly, men in black karate style clothing and black hoods entered the bar––damn it, I mean park––and started rounding up all the people. Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa were rounded up along with the others. When they asked why they were being arrested they were told to show their citizenship documentation. Jesus wasn’t a citizen nor was Ghandi or Mother Teresa (she claimed she was actually Albanian with Indian citizenship). Dr. King was a citizen but wasn’t in the habit of carrying his documentation around because, well, you know, he was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
All the people were taken to jail, processed, placed on buses--and sent back to Mexico where they came from. Funny, because I didn't know Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. King, and Mother Teresa were originally from Mexico but they were suspiciously brown so I guess they must have been. Off they went. Whatever. When The Buddha heard of their plight, he formed a posse and found the four friends somewhere in Baja California. They are now all residing peacefully in an undisclosed location.
Gee, I guess this wasn’t as funny as I thought it was. Like I said, I’m terrible at telling jokes. Did I mention the bar—damn—park was in Arizona? Does that make it funnier? No, I guess not.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business that knows how to treat customers.
This week I received excellent customer service from:
N/A
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
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