I had three annoying tech issues all in the same day chasing
me like the hounds of Hades which is a bad metaphor to use here. Why? Because
I'm not afraid of those hounds guarding the gate that keeps the walking dead from escaping the underworld. Armed with a couple of good steaks, I could outrun them. Ya, I
know Halloween is over so it’s time to get the gruesome imagery out of my head
and replace it with turkeys and pilgrims and wondering if cranberries will be
safe to eat this year.
I’m quite sure if I had a grandson I would have called him
to come over to rescue me from Tech Hell but since I don’t I had to call
1-800-fix-self, extension Jean. I started with my TV which was having a sound issue. I wasn't getting any. With the help of an online
troubleshooting guide, I walked through three questions that if you answer ‘yes’
to any one of them you are dumpier than a stoner: Is the mute button on? Is the
volume turned down? Are there earphones plugged into the TV? No, no and no. Next
they asked: Did you unplug the cable box and plug it back in? Bingo! That did
the trick, but inquiring minds want to know why that works on electronics and
why can’t I ever remember to do it without reading it in a troubleshooting
guide? And why didn’t I consult the troubleshooting guide before spending a
half day of watching the TV in the kitchen while listening to the TV in living
room with the volume jacked up high enough that it drove the dog out of his favorite
chair?
While the sound issue was going on I was trying to get my cap lock key on
the computer fixed. It was stuck which is a serious matter if you go places
that require cap sensitive passwords. That took me a half hour of digging gunk
out from under my keys using the sticky end of a Post-it Note to capture hair, dead skins
cells and dust. It’s like pealing sunburned skin, once you start cleaning one key you can’t stop until you’d done
them all. But be forewarned, you’ll start wondering if it wouldn't be wise to wear a hairnet when you’re playing on the computer.
While I was digging gunk out from my keyboard I didn’t have
enough common sense in my Technical Service Tool Belt to turn off my computer
and I accidentally did something to my Firefox browser, causing it to lose all my
bookmarks and worse yet, no way to bookmark new pages. Let me tell you, that
was panic time here in the big city. But once again a Google search to find a
way to fit the issue did the trick. But as much as I love Google I wish it would
quit asking me to review the places I go. Ya I know, I can change the settings on my
phone so GPS won't track my every move but it’s really a good safety feature for elderly
people who might get lost and their kids need to find them before they run out
of gas a hundred miles from where they were going.
One of the places I was asked to review was a continuum care
complex where I went to hear a lecture, a fascinating lecture about the Orphan
Trains (1854 to 1929). It was given by a woman who wrote four historical
fiction books based on her research in a planned series of eighteen. I’ve read other authors who have written about
the Orphan Trains but I hesitate to share this lady’s name because she’s self-published
so I don’t know how well-written her books are. Her lecture, however was well
done and covered the seventy-five years the orphan trains were a part of our
history starting with how New York City came to have over 250,000 homeless
children who were put on those trains going out west to find homes, and she ended
her lecture talking about the social programs that were set up to help prevent having kids as young as four and five from living in the streets begging
for pennies or bread and sleeping in doorways. Some of the photographs the
lecturer shared of the street kids were heart breaking and while not all the
kids found good homes in the towns along the train tracks it’s estimated that 87%
of them did.
One man, in particular, can be credited with setting up and financing
the Orphan Trains. They were the brainchild of Charles Loring Brace, an ordained
minister who dedicated his life to helping street kids plus thousands of babies
left off at a Catholic nunnery in the middle of the night. Some people today
are quick to bitch about social programs that help the poor (including Planned Parenthood)---calling them socialism and worst---but all we’ve got to
do is look back at the world before we had those social welfare programs and
ask ourselves if we really could turn a blind’s eye to the suffering that would go on without them.
My very first introduction to Orphan Trains was on a episode of Little House on the Prairie, if memory is serving me correctly. Either way, Orphan Trains are a well-documented part of our history and PBS did a program about them if you're interested in learning more. But there were also trains running to coal country in the same time frame that took foreign-born men and older boys from the over crowded city to work in the mines. My grandfather was on one of those "work recruitment" trains. ©
My very first introduction to Orphan Trains was on a episode of Little House on the Prairie, if memory is serving me correctly. Either way, Orphan Trains are a well-documented part of our history and PBS did a program about them if you're interested in learning more. But there were also trains running to coal country in the same time frame that took foreign-born men and older boys from the over crowded city to work in the mines. My grandfather was on one of those "work recruitment" trains. ©
