Misadventures

AI Hype is boring and I wonder how long it will be before the bubble bursts. It may be as much due to shortages of water to run the huge servers, rather than the crazy stuff it creates. Good bye help desks; we are on our own now and reading Q&A feels like those scam calls pretending to be Microsoft. The best response to them was a small granddaughter pretending to cry when they called saying she was so happy for their help - imitating her father who loved to keep them on the line to see how long it would take for the caller to go off script. - and the poor scammer even left his to ask if she was all right.

Then there is a world of devastation both in the Middle East where last minute bombing has to precede a cease fire -and other kinds of fires on the west coast. Is this our new normal? Devastation that takes decades to remedy?

And then there is politics - such fawning questions by the senators who want to support questionable leaders. We might call These guys - and they definitely are guys -oligarchs if we didn’t want to annoy a couple of them as Canadians. I’ll join Michelle Obama as a no-show for the inauguration. It’s hard to imagine how much three or four miliion of bad taste might be on display. A bright note in our Canadian election of a new part y leader is that we have a couple of promising contenders coming to the top; maybe it will all be settled quickly and we can focus on avoiding tariffs.

And last of all social media. I’m close to leaving Meta, having already abandoned Instagram and X. LinkenIn tells me how many people are searching on profile even though I am retired and am not contemplating starting a new job or an MBA. My Facebook feed is pretty vapid for a reason. I lurk and comment as little as possible, The algorithms are very frustrated because they don’t know what to send me and keep asking if I would like more or less of the real messages that are sent through. More than half of the posts are ads re something I searched on sometime. Detergent sheets liked by a couple of friends have bombarded me now for about five years. I don’t think I need influencers in my life even if 20,000 other people like them. Thankfully I have never been subjected to the worst of social media’s trolling and hate, but I do wonder how often I am to admire endless updates of selfies and dining out of people I know rather casually. These are not media that encourage collective humility.

And so the year starts What’s always worth remembering is that as much as we applaud or fear, what we are really faced with is unpredictability. After so many awful surprises, who knows - there just might be a couple of good ones.

Decency

Last evening I happened on a pastiche of interviews that Charlie Rose did with the late past president over several decades. It came up as the first choice of YouTube and I stayed with it until the end. It showed an impressive human being that has been enforced by all the tributes in the morning papers. I found David Shribman’s in the Globe and Mail less impressive that that of Samantha Power in the the NY Times.

When one despairs of the world today, as I have done over the past few days, I like the simple fact that Jimmy Carter and his wife lived simply - exercised and ate property because they thought their lives mattered - not for fame or glory, but to be able to do good things - build houses for Habitat for Humanity, visit and support the African poor, teach Sunday School. “Stayin Alive” for these things is an inspiration.

Spoiler alert - I came up with the heading before I saw that Joe Biden used it!

Coping

A long hiatus between posts. Lots of us around the world are channeling Elizabeth Kubler Ross and her grief stages since the American election and we don’t even live there. Like others I pretended to say “Whatever” and never watched CNN and turned to favourite neurotic writers like Anne Lamott who could be counted on for despair on Face Book - and of course she delivered. It helped.

I could still scan headlines of the New York Times as long as I didn’t read the articles about cabinet picks. Our prime minister was off to dinner at the Mar-A-Logo- Verseilles Headquarters to see if he could charm the incoming president out of 25% tariffs. I read Jaret Lanier’s little book on why we should all leave social media and put leaving on my task list for consideration. Since I had paid to remove advertisements from YouTube and I could watch it on a big screen, this provided additional diversion.

But I did come across an interview from the 92nd street Y - that gave me hope. It featured two public figures that I like - Tom Friedman and Van Jones - (despite the abandoned CNN connection). Jones told an interesting story to Tom. After writing a scathing column about Jared Kushner after the 2016 election, he was surprised to get a call from him - asking for help. Kushner reminded Jones that when his father was in prison, it gave him insight into how bad the prison system really was. He knew Jones had written about it with real conviction. He invited him to work quietly on some legislation and Jones agreed. It was one of the few successful pieces of legislation in the first Trump presidency. Helping out, Jones said, has cost him several friendships because of working with '“the other side”. But it felt like the right thing to do and gave him considerable satisfaction. Working for good with people we don’t necessarily agree with has to be part of the answer. And even Anne Lamott, now happily married at last has a new book out that says, when it comes right down to it, in the end it’s all about Love.

Hey America

Tomorrow is your day. Sitting here in Toronto, I’ve done everything I possibly can to help. I’ve read every New Yorker article and watched The Political Scene and Washington Week. I’ve cancelled my Washington Post subscription - confession - it runs until March so I still get to read everything on my Kindle, but it sends a message along with the 249,999 others to Mr Bezos. I cancelled Twitter almost as soon as it was X. I read all the NY Times articles before turning to Wordle, Strands etc. I’ve watched Robert Reich’s Coffee Klatch and David Remick’s interview with Rachel Maddow. I watched part of an endless production about the American by our own national network. I tried a week of no screens about two weeks ago, but of course I came back.

Have I missed anything? I did read Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom. and absorbed the five things that are important - in contrast to much of the above. We need sovereignty - a sense of being our own person, brought about by a careful and caring upbringing. We need unpredictablity - to move beyond the framework of our birth to seek something better. We need mobility - to be able to move physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. We need factuality - to be able to distinguish what is real from fantasy. We need solidarity - because individually we can never do what we can do collectively.

It’s your turn now. I did live in New York in the sixties and produce a dual Canadian/American citizen, that I urged to vote. I can’t. What you do has implications for my country and countless others. The choice is stark - “Again” or “Not Going Back”.

Memes, Muses and More

When I see that I haven’t written in more than a month, I start by feeling guilty and apt to make excuses, but probably to my most regular reader, myself.  The truth is I also set up some equipment for drawing and painting and that didn’t go very far either.  Like most people, I think I can accomplish more than I actually can, and it’s not because of age or willpower. I just have made other things take a higher priority - and they are worthwhile.

They have been good results. I spent August preparing for twice-monthly piano selections for coming lessons in the fall and enjoyed them. I was inspired by online instruction from Seymour Bernstein as well as his book on practising piano. I came upon a handbook which helps even an amateur learning to play any instrument. The Practice Handbook is designed for those who it describes as “seriously enthusiastic”, musicians, but it is a model for any serious endeavor. You can find out more at Muse & Mate. Serious confession. The first lesson happened and I played really badly - but different studio, no listener for too long, too much self confidence. It’s good to come back to earth.

Like many others, I have laughed at all the memes that resulted from some of the crazy comments about pet cuisine at the debate - and I was right that it was AI that produced a great page that looks like it comes straight from Dr. Suess with those famous lines. There have been good memes as well as well - until I stopped smiling when I read about their effects on legal immigrants - bomb, threats, closed schools, distrust. Racism isn’t funny. Political vitriol anywhere should make us ashamed. We are very eager consumers of just about anything set before us. I won’t share the meme.

And then there are two related invitations today. One is from a faith body inviting me to a special service celebrating a Season of Creation. The other is inviting me to a Green Drinks Party, “Saving the world one Sip at a Time” - meeting in a local pub with an invitation to people already interested in the environment or looking to find such a group. It is an Irish pub of course. I’m already booked with a group discussing the important book, The Wall Between, tomorrow night, or I might have been drawn to the second. The first group may have to deal with the the reality that climate change and its impact isn’t restricted to a season!