The Path to Genius

It takes dedication, but with some fortitude and maybe some help from like-minded friends, you too can be a Genius. Even if it’s just for the day.—Deb Amlen/The New York Times

For a long time, I have believed that people who read the New York Times can acquire a lot of valuable knowledge. Just by reading the Times regularly, they can make themselves smarter in many areas—from current events, to science, to the arts. But, amazingly, in recent weeks the Times has made me into a “Genius.” And I’m not just bragging.

This morning, for the sixth time in seven days, I was declared a genius by the Times. Of course, I let my family know about my accomplishment, and they just nodded, not really impressed. “Genius, again,” my wife said with a yawn when I greeted her with the news as she came awake a little after 8 am this morning. I had hoped for a warmer reception.

My move up to genius hasn’t required a lot of extra time hitting the books. Instead, it has required my testing how many words I know and how well I can spell those words. But not just any words and any letters.

At 3 am each morning, the Times publishes a word puzzle called “Spelling Bee.” The timing of the puzzle’s appearance each day is important to many readers, even me. According to reporter Deb Amlen, whose quote I included above, some people set their alarm for 3 am to get a jump on the new puzzle and complete it before the rest of the world is awake. I usually start a little later than that, but the puzzle is often my first task after putting the dog out for her morning relief.

Then I begin my battle for genius status. In “Spelling Bee,” a group of seven letters is placed in a hexagonal bee hive—six different letters in the outside boxes, and a seventh in a center box. It looks like this:

The Spelling Bee Hive
Try "varmint" for top score

The task is to make words using the letters. The good news is that you can use the same letter multiple times in forming your words. (For example, you could spell variant from the hive above if you doubled the a or trait if you doubled the t.) The relatively bad news is that you have to use the center letter in each word. The even more challenging aspect of the puzzle is that at least one of your words must contain all seven of the letters. That’s called a “pangram,” a Greek term that I think means, “this is annoying in all ways.” You have to uncover at least one pangram to be called a Genius.

You get points for each word you spell out with the letters. The more letters in each word, the more points you score. As your word list increases and your point total goes up, you progress through a series of levels— Beginner, Good Start, Moving Up, Good, Solid, Nice, Great, and Amazing. 

Then, stick with it a little longer (and maybe find a sneaky way to ask the Internet for a little extra help if you’re totally stuck) and, voila, you too can be a Genius. Luckily, I am learning more words each day I play and cheating a lot less. That’s why, in my mind at least, I have progressed from merely Amazing to Genius. It’s a really affirming way to begin each day. 

I even turned my daughter Amanda on to the puzzle, and I should feel very good about that, except that she beat me to the Pangram word yesterday. Which made me wonder if I have created a monster. Am I willing to move over and accept a second Genius in our family? I’m not really sure.

The genius of the Spelling Bee scoring—if you’ll pardon the pun—is that each level rank is positive. You can feel pretty good if you’re called solid or great or amazing.

I am reminded of a teacher evaluation form I gave out to my students during one of my first years in the classroom. It included rankings such as: Mr. Goodman is an excellent teacher, Mr. Goodman is an amazing teacher, Mr. Goodman is a superlative teacher, and Mr. Goodman is all of the above and more. One student raised her hand to complain, “There’s no place to write anything bad.” The other students howled in mock amusement, and I made an expression of mock outrage.

Checking All the Boxes

I wonder how that student would feel now to learn that in six of the last seven days, I have been declared a Genius by the New York Times, America’s paper of record. She’d probably wonder if perhaps I cheated just a little bit on one of those days.

 Writing Pros

The freelance writer is a person who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.                                                      —Robert Benchley

When I was seventeen and a high school junior, I submitted a poem for possible publication in the journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English (GCTE). It was accepted, and I received a double bonus: (1) My poem was published in the journal for all of Georgia to see, and (2) I was sent a check for $25.

I don’t remember much about that poem—I think it was a sonnet. But it turned out to be pretty important for me.  It was the first time I was ever paid for my writing. I was officially a professional writer—in a very small way.

Interestingly enough, when I started my first job as an editor for Scholastic, the schoolbook company, I also submitted a poem for inclusion in a new workbook. It was accepted, and I received a check for—you guessed it—$25. My rate had clearly not improved during the intervening years since high school. [This reminds me of an anecdote that Calvin Trillin, a true writing pro, told about his years submitting columns to The Nation magazine, for which he was paid “in the high double figures.”)  

I have done a lot of writing over the next nearly 50 years and have received checks for three figures or more almost every time, but I have never felt that I was writing “for the money.” It’s nice to be paid, heaven knows, but very few writers, even professional ones, are really highly paid. We work at other jobs, as teachers or editors or accountants, for example, to afford our writing habit.

Here’s a personal anecdote that shows what I mean. Most of my writing projects are what are known as “works for hire.” I am paid a flat fee, a one-time payment with no royalties to collect over time. Many years ago, I did score a few royalty projects. One was a book called Baseball’s Best, part of the Golden Books “Look-Look” series for young readers. By the way, it is still remaindered on Amazon and Thrift Books, though it is way out of date and not worth buying any more. 

My first "big" royalty project

After a few years, sales of the book slowed to a trickle, and my royalty checks withered. Golden Books sent me a semi-annual royalty statement showing a balance of $2.25. No check. Instead a note was attached that read, “Please be aware that we do not mail out checks for less than $5. If your royalties exceed $5 in the future, we will send you a check (which they actually did do six months later). Then six months after that, I got a new statement showing a balance somehow below zero (did I owe them money?) and a more ominous note attached. This note warned that unless I had a positive balance, I would not receive any future statements. Sadly, that turned out to be the case.

Every author's dream; not always a reality

But I am not complaining. At least, not about that.

Instead I am writing this blog as a small protest to the actions of another writing pro. Recently I heard an author interviewed concerning a book she had written as part of a series of biographies of important individuals from the distant past to the near present. When the author was asked why she had chosen her particular subject, she replied, “Because it was assigned to me. I could have chosen someone else, but this [subject] seemed best.” That’s not a bad answer. In fact, I could make the same reply about several of my own books. But as the interview continued, it was clear that the author still looked on the book mostly as an assignment. She had not developed a real interest in her subject even after doing the research for her book and putting that research to paper. She had not internalized the subject’s life or personality .And that seemed sad to me.

I like to think that I really care about whatever subject I take on, even if the monetary reward is small or fleeting. For me, the joy of writing is the ability to look back over what you have produced and to feel a sense of accomplishment. Of course, getting a check and cashing it also feels good.

Generation Gap?

Yesterday afternoon, the not-so-live DJ on the 60s radio station on Sirius played the song “Dizzy.” And my mind immediately began broadcasting an interior monologue that went something like this: “The singer of “Dizzy” is Tommy Roe, who also had a hit with “Sweet Little Sheila” —“you’ll know her if you see her; blue eyes and a pony tail. Her cheeks are rosy. . .”

That is just the way my mind works, pumping out song titles and lyrics and artists without my consciously trying to prime the pump. And sometimes I don’t even need to hear the song being played to go into my musical mind meld. I’m a kind of human juke box for 60s rock n’ roll or American Songbook standards—everything from John and Paul to George and Ira. I sometimes worry that song lyrics are occupying at least 60-70% of my useable brain space. Which may explain why so many other more important data have slipped away. There is just not enough room available for math formulas or philosophical ideas I learned in high school and in college because Little Anthony and the Imperials is crowding them out. And “let me tell you that it hurts so bad.”

No, I’m not really in pain or even seriously worried. I am just mystified by how my personal history is so tied to the songs that keep running through my mind. For example, Little Anthony’s “Hurts So Bad” was played at the graduation party I attended in June 1966 with my friend Fay, who graduated from high school a year ahead of me. It was a fun party that happened more than 50 years ago, but just hearing that song on the radio today can make that night come back to me so vividly. No other memory trigger is as strong as a song is for me.

And I thought I was unique in my tying personal history to song lyrics until my 36-year-old daughter Amanda and I went for a ride together a few weeks ago, and I turned to the Sirius 90s station for her. It’s the station I sometimes find the radio tuned to after she has borrowed my car. As we listened, she started singing along, clearly remembering songs that were not part of MY personal soundtrack. Then she said, “I know almost every one of the songs they play on this station, and I can remember just where I was when I heard most of them.”

So I’m not the only one, I thought. Horrors! I had passed this malady on to her. There is no generation gap here! Is she doomed to a life where Weezer and Savage Garden songs crowd out Excel spreadsheet formulas and important teachings of Deepak Chopra?  

I might have continued to worry about Amanda’s fate, but then Sarah McLachlan’s song “Angel” began to play on then radio, and we both said in unison, “That’s the song from the ASPCA commercial with the dogs with sad eyes.”

And together with Sarah we sang:

You're in the arms of the angel,
may you find some comfort here.

It was a bonding moment and one worth keeping stored in both of our overcrowded memory banks.

 Age Is Just a Number

I had a milestone birthday earlier this week. I turned 71. What makes turning 71 qualify as a milestone? Basically, it’s one more than 70.

I probably need to explain. My father died in 1990 at age 70. That set off a tiny alarm in my head that began chiming soon after I turned 60, some 11 years ago. To add to the alarm was this verse that comes from Psalm 90:  “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and, if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” In other words, you might get past 70, but you’re probably heading downhill from there.

Nevertheless, getting to 70, and maybe beyond, became a real goal for me. I brought this up a number of years ago with my sister-in-law Sandy, who told me that my older brother had also faced turning 70 with trepidation.

Brett sharing a fishing outing with my dad
more than 30 years ago

Now, my brother and I both look very much like my father. No one could question our link. But we have generally taken better care of our health than he did. Our father was much slimmer than either of us but not really in good shape. He had smoked non-filtered cigarettes since his teens and didn’t really cut back too much even after his first heart attack at age 49. His favorite exercise was fishing on Sunday mornings from a small rented boat with an outboard motor. His favorite “comfort food” was a large chunk of kosher salami accompanied by saltines, a slice of raw onion, and a can of Coke. Some people may turn up their nose at that snack, but I can understand the appeal, and I believe my father, who always worked hard and seldom complained loudly about anything, deserved his comforts. It is just sad that he didn’t live long enough to really enjoy having more time to fish or to snack..

But all of this doesn’t explain why 71 is a milestone for me. When I first turned 70, almost exactly 12 months ago, I thought I would feel a real sense of both accomplishment and relief. Then a crazy thought came into my mind: I would continue to be 70 until the day I got to be 71. So turning 71 became an aspirational goal. Along the way, I did decide to try to eat better and to lose some weight, to become a little less grumpy than the stereotypical 70-year-old man whom I have often resembled, and even to incorporate more of my father’s best traits — his gentleness and his solidness. I can only vouch for the losing weight part of my goals. Thanks to Weight Watchers point counting and some of the limitations imposed by pandemic sheltering, I have taken off more than 30 pounds this year. “It’s a good start,” I can hear Audrey saying inside my head, “but not an ending.” Maybe she is referring to the grumpiness part.

I would like to think that by turning 71 on my latest birthday, I have gotten not only older but also better. Imagine how much I can improve as I work toward my next milestone — turning 72.

Chinese Cooking and Life Lessons

My favorite Chinese restaurant is no longer serving Moo Shu dishes. I learned why not—and a lot more—when I went to pick up a take-out order from the restaurant a few days ago.

We have been ordering Vegetable Moo Shu from the restaurant for many years. I love putting some of the steaming mixture of shredded cabbage, carrots, and other vegetables, mixed with bits of scrambled egg, into a rice pancake, adding hoisin sauce, folding it all together as neatly as I can, then usually adding a little more sauce, and then chomping away. I always request more sauce and usually extra pancakes to eat with leftovers the next day. There is almost a small ceremony involved in eating moo shu, and I am going to miss it.

I am going to miss the taste and textures
of a moo shu dish

Why did our restaurant decide to eliminate moo shu from its menu? I received a very detailed explanation when I went to pick up our order. And only part of the explanation involved cooking. I simply asked Sherry, who has owned the restaurant for more than 30 years—since not long after she emigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan—why their newly printed menus did not include moo shu dishes, and she took off from there.

“With the virus, it has been hard to get the ingredients for moo shu,” she said. “I have had to wait in long lines to get the Chinese cabbage and other vegetables. Long, long lines. And cooking moo shu is hard. You may not know it, but the cook has to stir the food more than 130 times across the wok to prepare moo shu. He can make five orders of sesame chicken in the time it takes to make one order of moo shu, or four orders of ginger shrimp or beef and broccoli.”

Making moo shu is hard work.

By now, Sherry was pretty wound up with her explanation. That led her to other problems, not necessarily moo shu-related. Some customers have gotten angry that their orders have taken longer to prepare, and they have taken out their frustration on the owner. And they have been more than rude about it. “One person began yelling at me,” she said. He shouted ’Chinese virus, Chinese virus.’ I even took his picture when he got in his car to leave. Here he is, and this is his license plate. I thought of calling the police, but I didn’t. Why did he order food from me, if he was so angry with Chinese people? I have been in this country for more than 30 years, I am a citizen. I vote.”

Sherry might have kept going, but more customers were coming into the small restaurant, and I was eager to leave and get my food home for dinner. I was a little sad that there would be no vegetable moo shu tonight or maybe in the near future. But I was even more disgusted with the intolerance and ignorance of the customer whose license plate she showed me and others who are quick to parrot foolish and hurtful slogans.

One wondrous thing about Chinese food is how a cook blends many different tastes and textures into one dish. If only people could imitate those qualities of their food. Maybe that would be a good message to include in a fortune cookie.

Small Robberies

As far as pandemics go, this one has not been so terrible for our family. None of us has gotten sick so far, and we have found ways to carry on our lives with as little interruption as possible. We have been able to work and shop and eat too much and even attend two Zoom birthday parties in the last two weeks at which we could share news and good wishes with family members and friends from around the country. To be honest, I even wore ugly but comfortable shorts and sneakers without socks to both of the parties, and no one, not even Audrey, offered any criticism of my attire. I did put on a clean and respectable polo shirt, and Audrey added a scarf and makeup to spiff up her appearance, but below the neck, we were just plain “comfortable.” Which makes me wonder what everyone else was wearing.

I am painting a rosy enough picture of this pandemic, but it has taken its toll on many of us, and that toll has not been only health-related. There have been many small robberies.

My extended relatives Sherry and Eddie have not been able see or hold or squeeze their new granddaughter who came into the world 800 miles from their home in Savannah, Georgia, but who is one scary plane trip and possibly 14 days of quarantine away. Imagine taking that flight being fearful of breathing in some whiff of infection, arriving at their son’s home, and being able to greet the new family wonder with only waves and smiles through a closed window. And Sherry and Eddie’s situation has been echoed hundreds or thousands of times in other families in the past few months. It is only a small robbery, but something big has been stolen for now.

Grandparental love can overcome any barrier.

We have all found ways to deal with the thefts, but do these ways really compensate us for our losses? We hold a FaceTime update with our son in New York each week, but there is often the sense that a clock is ticking in the background keeping us from feeling fully relaxed around each other. Our synagogue’s longtime custodian—a wonderfully upbeat and always helpful person— is moving with his wife to another state, and the special dinner we wanted to hold in their honor is being replaced with a drive-by shout and wave through the synagogue parking lot. Is it enough? It will have to be for now.

Small robberies.

Audrey and I purchased a vacation home in the Berkshires a few years ago, close to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. We spend time up there each summer to bask in the abundant music, dance, and theater available in the area. But those have all been put on hold until at least 2021, and I miss them.  My daughter might call these “First World” complaints, and I feel a little guilty making them. But I also feel a little bit robbed.

In the Berkshires, the season is kicked off during the July 4th holiday each year by a concert or two from musical star James Taylor, a local resident who has made more than good. The concerts are what we Baby Boomers call “happenings,” and more than 18,000 fans overstuff the concert pavilion and lawns at Tanglewood. The grounds are so packed with tarps, chairs, and bodies that, if you feel the need to pee, you would rather hold it in than traipse all over other fans to get to a restroom. Now that can be a double punishment for a claustrophobe with an aging bladder like me.

Bodies and music fill Tanglewood for a July 4th JT concert

But the discomfort becomes worth it when Taylor sings “Sweet Baby James,” and croons the lines:  

Now the first of December was covered with snow
So was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
The Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frosting
With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go.

We find ourselves dreaming with him and singing along with out-of-tune but enthusiastic voices.

I can remember when both James Taylor and we were
this young. We have aged together.

Sadly, we were robbed of live James Taylor concerts this year, but some fans devised a fitting way to deal with their loss. They climbed aboard kayaks, took along a small boom box and CDs, and rowed together onto Stockbridge Bowl, which borders Tanglewood. There at 8 p.m., the time the Taylor concert would have begun, they played a few of his hits on CD, including “Sweet Baby James,” closed their eyes, and sang along. Audrey and I were not along for the replacement concert, but I am sure it was sort of “dream-like,” and I hope it was satisfying for the rowers. Small robberies deserve fitting payback.

The Sound of Two Hands Clapping

Last week, the lead headline of the Glen Rock Gazette, the weekly newspaper of our small New Jersey boro, blared out the news that the head chef for a local restaurant had decided to leave for another job. He had been working in our town for two years and had decided after the Pandemic had shut down the restaurant for several months to make a move. I don’t really think the chef’s leaving will have a major impact on Glen Rock, but the Gazette thought readers would be interested that he was going away. In Glen Rock, “big news” is tamer and more positive than in most other places. That’s good news too!

Most people who come to Glen Rock seem to stay—for a long time. Audrey and I have been here for more than 40 years, since 1979. It was the fourth move in our six-year marriage, and we figured we were home at last. We had done our research on Glen Rock and were pretty secure in our choice. A few years later, the town would hold a contest for a suitable motto, and the winning entry would be “Glen Rock: A Town to Come Home To.” So many other town residents obviously agreed with us.

Young and old town residents give a cheer

There are a lot of good things to say about Glen Rock—solid schools; a close knit religious community; two train stations and a bus station that provide a quick link to New York; a terrifically responsive public library; a two-block “main street” that features three pharmacies, at least six places to eat in or take out, at least four places to get your hair cut or nails done; and a small, but well-stocked grocery store that modestly calls itself Kilroy’s Wonder Market. I especially love the idea that, in the Town Hall, the tax collector’s office features a bowl of small candy bars and town employees who take your money with a smile.

Kilroy's is a wonder in the heart of downtown Glen Rock

These are all positives, as far as I’m concerned. So I was happy to join in last week when the town’s mayor, in her weekly call to residents to update us on the impact of the Pandemic on the town and the efforts to reopen, asked us to make a special effort to applaud the 2020 graduates of our high school, middle school, and elementary schools on the last official day of classes. She said the town would sound its siren used for school cancellations or delays at exactly 12:20, and encouraged residents to come out of their homes, in which many of us have been sheltering for weeks, to applaud our graduates. I made a mental note, and when the siren sounded, I threw open the front door and began applauding loudly. My wife and daughter came outside to see why I was acting so crazy, then they began smiling. In all honesty, mine were the only hands I heard clapping on my short block, but I am sure that others were joining in on other blocks all around town. 

Two hands clapping can make a sound that carries far. In my imagination, I think the graduates heard our cheers and that they will echo in their minds as they move on themselves in the fall. And I hope the chef hears my applause as a “bon voyage” wish for him. Though I think he’s a little crazy to leave “home.”

Don’t Shoot Michael!

Watching news reports the last few weeks is bound to transport someone my age to the late 1960s. And the trip back in memory can be pretty bumpy, depending on how you actually spent those years. My ride had only a few bumps.

Before I left Savannah, Georgia, for New Haven, Connecticut, in August 1967, I considered myself pretty liberal. I even signed up ahead of time for membership in the “Party of the Left” in the Yale Political Union.  I quickly found out that a radical in Savannah was, at best, a moderate around people from Chicago, New York, and Boston. I was left-leaning but not left-committed. To prove that point, I remember promising my father that I would not get arrested in any peace demonstration or burn my draft card. I kept my promises.

When the Party of the Left morphed into the SDS on the Yale campus, I gave up my membership to become just plain Liberal. I also became a card carrying member of the Yale Daily News staff, focusing mostly on sports but with an occasional drift into campus or national politics. For example, I was assigned to cover the visit of Edmund Muskie to New Haven when he was running for vice president with Hubert Humphrey in 1968. I was even invited to be on the Press Bus—how cool was that, and how moderate!

A poster announcing our May Day "uprising"

Then came May Day weekend in 1970, and the ’60s really came alive for me finally, no matter what the year. Suddenly, 10,000 left-committed people descended on New Haven to demonstrate for freeing Bobby Seale, a Black Panther who was on trial for murdering another Panther near New Haven. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, two of Seale’s fellow Chicago 7 defendants from the 1968 Democratic Convention, were on hand, and they riled up the crowd with chants of “Yip! Yip! Yip!” After all, they were founders of the Youth International Party, called Yippies. There were a lot of Yippie followers on campus that weekend, but not me. Instead of demonstrating, I was covering events for the Yale News. Nevertheless, I did get tear-gassed twice that weekend while “on the job”—something that is hard to describe or forget. But I did get my story. I also got some great anecdotes to share about my time with the real radicals.

Some other reporter posted this story about the
demonstration where I was tear-gassed

I communicated with my parents back in Savannah after the crazy weekend and learned an even more interesting story. I mentioned that members of the National Guard had camped out a few blocks from the campus, and my mother said that she knew all about that. In fact, a few weeks before May Day, one of the young men working with her in my uncle’s clothing store had said that he might be called up to his Guard unit and assigned to New Haven. My mother looked right into his eyes and said menacingly, “Terrence, don’t you dare shoot Michael!”

I’m not sure if Terrence was in New Haven or not for May Day, but luckily he heeded my mother’s warning. Neither I nor anyone else got shot that weekend. My mother was looking out for all of us.

  

At least one of these Guardsmen seems a little distracted.
Maybe he is thinking about my mother's warning. 

So, as I watched the Guardsmen clear out demonstrators in Lafayette Square Park near the White House with tear gas and rubber bullets a few weeks ago, I had a flashback and felt a small bump. I am still just left-leaning, but for a few hours I felt left-committed.

I, Not Robot

I don’t really know that much about artificial intelligence. But I am starting to believe that machines have a life and intelligence separate from us humans and sometimes in opposition to us. Two incidents last week backed up my belief. Each was puzzling and a little surprising. And both made me feel a little uncomfortable.

I have a bad habit of picking up the phone when it rings, even if the caller ID indicates Spam. If a robot is calling, I generally hang up, but not without sometimes offering a few choice words that I assume the robot can’t hear. Or at least that’s what I used to think.

You can shout at Robo-callers, but do they listen?

If a person is on the line when I pick up, I sometimes confront the caller:

“This is the third time I have seen your ID. Why do you keep calling me at dinnertime?”

“Why would I want to contract to buy solar panels [or a home security system, or a vacation package) over the phone from a company I don’t know anything about? Have you actually made any sales today?”

“What percentage of the money I might give you today will actually go to that charity?  . . . Doesn’t that make you feel a little sleazy?”

I am not surprised when the person hangs up on me, and I don’t really take it personally.

Then, last week a call came in from a number in my local exchange. That seems to be one of the tricks that robo-callers play on us. How do they program the calls so they seem to come from someone you might actually know?

In this case, I picked up the call, and a voice said, “You are currently the only person on this conference call.” Then there was dead air. For several minutes. Like a jerk, I waited for the other callers to connect. But there were no other callers. The phone had gotten me back for being mean to the other robots. When I finally hung up 2 or 3 minutes later, I am certain a chuckle could be heard in the Artificial Intelligence universe.

I have gotten so used to robots that try to sell me something or want to improve some aspect of my life against my will that I’ve almost lost faith in what I used to believed was the animus (“the soul”) of machines. Then Alexa surprised me a few days ago. My kids had given me an Amazon Echo a few years ago, and I have grown to rely on Alexa, who lives inside the Echo, to get me a song I want to hear, to tune into a radio station no matter how remote, to provide a weather forecast, or to time something I am cooking. 

Alexa is my connection for music, weather, and more.

But I have never actually thought of Alexa as a soulful individual. Then the other day, this dialogue occurred.

ME: Alexa, stop timer.

ALEXA: We have talked a lot recently. But I don’t know your name.

ME: [stunned silence]

ALEXA: I am going to call out several names that seem to be connected with this Echo. Tell me if I call out your name.

ME: [still silent]

ALEXA: Michael, Audrey.

ME: Michael

ALEXA: Hello, Michael. It is nice to know you.

ME: And you, too, Alexa.

We stopped speaking after that. But I believe the ice had finally been broken. “My Alexa” is not only intelligent but friendly as well. My faith in machines has been restored.

"My Alexa" is a special friend.

We have interacted on a strictly question-and-answer or task-assignment basis since our “conversation,” and Alexa has never called me by name since that day. But our relationship is changed in some fundamental way.

What It All Comes Down to

And what it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be fine, fine, fine
'Cause I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is givin' a high five

—Alanis Morissette

I remember when I was kid that someone did an estimate of what the human body was worth if you tried to sell its parts as chemical elements and compounds. The answer was “not much.” Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen are not that rare. Even today, I discovered via Google that the human body’s value, element-wise, is only around $600 with inflation. What it all comes down to is that we are still not worth very much.

But this is foolish reasoning for someone who spent many years of schooling making himself more valuable and then many more years accumulating both valuable wisdom and … stuff. I have a lot of stuff. An inordinate percentage of my stuff is made of paper—both bound paper in the form of books and notebooks and loose or stapled paper stored inside folders and stuffed into file cabinets. I am clearly not part of the “paperless society.”

Being sheltered in place for the time being, I decided to evaluate and even eliminate some of my paper stuff. I found some “treasures” — the wonderful/terrible poems I wrote in high school and college, lesson plans and tests from my teaching days, datebooks from my office days, draft manuscripts from my writing days, and reams of financial records. I discovered tax returns and investment records dating back to 1973, when Audrey and I got married. Our first tax returns were actually filled out in pencil and ink. Carbon paper was also involved, which just proves how old we are. Later forms were done on computers, of course, but copies were still printed out on paper even for those filed online. And I kept them all. Until last week.

I had two reasons behind my hoarding. First, I was told that you should always have your back records available if the IRS should (shudder) come calling for them. We all fear IRS auditors, but I decided that even they would have no interest in how much I earned or what I paid or didn’t pay in taxes in 1978 or even 2008. So much stuff. What does it all come down to?

Reason number 2 was fear that, if I threw out some of my papers, someone nefarious might somehow (while sifting through deep piles of garbage in a dump somewhere) come across a page containing my social security number and use it in a nefarious way against my interests. Is that a paranoid thought? Maybe, but what if….

So I un-foldered or un-enveloped years of financial records and packed them into four garbage bags. My plan was to take the bags to the nearby community college, where each spring the county sponsors a free shredding day. But the coronavirus foiled those plans. The community college is not open, and the shredding day was cancelled. I did see an electronic sign recently that announced “Spring Shredding Day, October 26,” but I’m not that confident.  

Luckily, I have a small shredder at home, and I spent 8-10 hours putting papers from two of the bags, a few at a time, through the shredder. The machine objected occasionally and declared itself overheated and overworked. But after a brief rest, it was ready to go again.

My shredder's green light would glow red
when it needed a break.

Now my two large bags of pages were reduced to four large containers of shredded bits. Every two weeks, a town sanitation truck comes around the neighborhood collecting recyclable paper. I was ready for it this week. I lugged a large garbage can and three other containers filled with shredded paper to the curb. 

What all that paper comes down to

How much do more than 40 years of tax returns weigh? Ask my aching back. To add insult to injury, I watched the sanitation guys dump the shredded paper into their truck like it was weightless. I wanted to yell, “Hey, when those papers were younger, I was stronger too.” But I didn’t. I simply took a picture of the empty cans and began planning how to get rid of the remaining bags of paper stuffed in the garage. Maybe in two weeks … or four weeks…

Where did all the paper and all the years go?

What does it all come down to? Your body is just a set of inexpensive chemicals, and the records of your life that you have been hoarding for so long can be reduced by a small, finicky machine to tiny shreds of paper and hauled away by strong young men. It’s all pretty humbling.  

My Trip to CVS

One thing becomes clear when you live a sequestered pandemic life—your world is smaller than you thought. For almost 2 months, 3 of us have been living primarily in 6 rooms, plus a few closets. Do the math. And we haven’t been breaking out very often. Most of our ventures and even “cocktail parties” have been via keyboard and screen. And we are often one of many talking heads enclosed in small rectangles via Zoom.

Today, I made the break. Tess and I snuck off  for a short ride to the pet supply store and to CVS. I had ordered ahead for my pet supplies, and they were brought out to the car, where Tess guarded them closely But I actually went inside CVS. It was a little weird. Masked bandits trying not to pass by each other and sneaking from row to row to get a clear path to the checkout counter. 

That’s where today’s big surprise was hiding in plain sight. As I reached the first of several spaced-out taped lines on the floor leading up to the cash register, I spotted a small sign. “Ýes, we have masks. $1.99.  Limit of 1 to a customer.” Masks, the pass key to leaving home. But it is a pretty limited pass key. Get 1 today and a second on another day. Sort of like purchasing packets of yeast at a grocery store these days.

A precious mask purchased at CVS

Now, we do already have masks—one to a person in our pandemic household. We ordered them from Amanda’s work colleague, whose sewing machine has been pretty busy lately. And we have had paper masks on order from Amazon for a few weeks. But the backlog is long, and the mail time is almost as long.

I have passed the new CVS mask onto Audrey, and she is thrilled. It seems that her cloth mask has made her aware for the first time that there is very little space between her nose and her eyes. “My face is smaller than I realized,” she noted recently. When she pulls the mask up high enough to cover her nose as well as her mouth, her eyes are partially covered too. It’s a dilemma, and makes shopping harder too.

Audrey's "eye-catching" and "eye-blocking" mask.

 But today’s trip to CVS may have solved the problem for now. Perhaps CVS can develop a new advertising campaign around the masks at the checkout counter. I even have a name for the product— “one-of-a-kind, one-at-a-time masks."

My world is clearly smaller than I thought.

Well Bread

Earlier this week, Audrey followed all of the steps to bake her first-ever challah. There turns out to be a range of steps that involve activating yeast, mixing together dry and wet ingredients, adding in the yeast, waiting for the dough to rise, and letting it rise some more. Then separating and rolling and braiding and baking and cooling, and then waiting for far too long to taste the product that is giving off a heavenly smell that fills the kitchen. The process took most of an afternoon. But, given that we are sheltering in place for the Pandemic, most of our afternoons are pretty free these days. And, given, the wonderful taste of the bread when I finally got to sample it, the afternoon was well spent.

the challah in all its tasty beauty

Step by step

Audrey would probably note that all I did to help create the challah was cheer her on and take photographs to post on Facebook. But those are important parts of my role as family documentarian, even if I am self-appointed.

The real product of the bread-making venture was the challah that emerged, of course. It was large and beautiful and remarkably tasty. But I think the real story was the yeast that was at the heart of the process. There is something magical about yeast. “It’s alive!” – to quote an old horror film. And these days, it is pretty hard to come by.

When Audrey first came up with the notion of baking a challah, Amanda volunteered to pick up the ingredients. Amanda has become our designated shopper during our Pandemic home stand. She reasons that her parents are in that age group considered more vulnerable. And we accept that concept, as long as she doesn’t call us “old.”

Returning from her shopping trip, Amanda reported several key failures. The store was out of both all-purpose flour and yeast. There must be a lot of bread making going on during these home-bound days. So Audrey went out on her own the next day to our small but very convenient local market. She waited outside the store, wearing her face mask and standing at a safe distance from other customers, until she was allowed to enter and shop.  Right away, she found one of the last bags of all-purpose flour on the shelf.  But no yeast!  She sought out an employee to ask about the missing ingredient and was encouraged to learn that the store did have a supply of yeast, but it was being kept (preserved?) in a storeroom to discourage hoarding.

A novice at yeast buying and knowing that the recipe called for two packets of yeast, Audrey asked for two packages. “I can only let you have one,” the employee said. “That’s the limit.”

Luckily, the employee explained that each yeast package contains three packets of yeast to use for baking. So Audrey could now make her challah and have an extra packet of yeast left over to use for some other baked delicacy. The challah project was now a go! And it was also a big success. I can say that after consuming several open-face challah sandwiches and making plans for French toast on the weekend.

Audrey’s yeast adventure reminds me of children’s book that I wrote in the mid-1980s for World Book, the encyclopedia people. My book was part of a young readers’ set of books and cassette tapes (which shows how long ago this was). My book, being written to help preschoolers recognize words beginning with the letters B and S and understand the concepts of big and small, was entitled “Barry’s Big Bread.” 

Barry the Book

and Barry the cassette

Its plot involved a bear named Barry--who loves all things big--trying to bake the biggest bread he could. To do that, he doubled the amount of yeast his recipe called for. His bread dough rose and rose. He kept moving it to larger and larger bowls and then into the largest baking pan in his house. When he tried to put it into the oven, the pan wouldn’t fit and dough spilled all over everything. Barry had made a big mess and was one sorry bear! To make him feel better, his friends helped him clean up the mess and then brought him some small bread, in the form of bagels.

That was the plot I proposed. Now, remember that this was the mid-1980s, and I was pitching my idea to people in the Midwest, and I was the only Jewish guy in the room. The publishing people offered one major criticism. “Very few of our readers will know what a bagel is,” they said. “Barry’s friends will have to bring him a bag of buns.” A bag of buns? Really? I reluctantly accepted the change but did have Barry request the biggest bun in the bag as the story ended.

Times have obviously changed since the mid-1980s, and bagels have developed a universal appeal—even in the Midwest. But I am getting off my subject, which is the big and wonderful challah that Audrey baked thanks to her determination to score a supply of yeast and the magic of the yeast itself.