Tech Issue and Orphan Trains

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. ©

Snow, Golf and Growing up Near the Klan

Monday was one of those cold Michigan days where nothing was moving in the neighborhood because the snowplows hadn’t been down the side streets yet. We got eight inches of snow over the weekend and I managed to shovel my sidewalk from the driveway to the front door because Amazon was due to delivery that day and few things keeps them from their appointed rounds---or is that the U.S. Postal Service? I have to admit I’m loving their two day delivery service with Prime. When I got the free introductory month with my new Kindle Fire I didn’t think I would keep the plan but now I’m on the fence about it. If you could see the stack of Amazon boxes in the garage waiting to go to recycling, you’d know I’ve been making good use of the service. 

Can you believe it, I played a game of golf this week! Well, not exactly. It was a game of miniature golf at a new indoor place that uses glow-in-dark balls and probably saves themselves a ton of money on electricity by not having to light up the place. It was fun but the psychedelic colors outlining the course, the busy wall murals that glowed in the dark and the god-awful black carpeting with patches that looked like neon barf gave me a headache and reminded me of bad parties in the ‘70s. It was a senior hall event and I tied for second place in my foursome plus I got to brush up on my billiards geometry doing it. Prior to the game, five of us Gathering Girls had lunch together at a popular café near-by that’s known for their good food. We were laughing so much it’s a wonder we didn’t get kicked out. 

I hate regular golf and, trust me, I tried hard to like the game. My dad was a life-long golfer, started out as a caddie before he hit his teens, even taught the game to high schoolers at one point in time and in retirement he played nearly every day, sometimes twice. My brother, niece and various others in the family play and a guy I dated back in my 20's golfed. I was highly motivated to learn. The boyfriend and I even took lessons offered at a golf course and all I learned was that I REALLY hated golf. If I want to take a nice walk I don't need to chase a little ball I can barely see as it flies down the fairway, assuming I’m lucky enough to hit it straight. 

Still, some of my best memories of my father revolve around the game. I don’t remember if we ever golfed together but my best ever movie experience was taking my dad to see Tin Cup with Kevin Costner and Don Johnson playing the lead characters. There was a scene in the film where Costner's character was in the woods and had an opportunity to cheat, but he didn’t do it even though his caddie was encouraging him to shave some shots off his score. According to Dad no real golfer would ever do that. “It’s a game of honor,” he said. “But wouldn’t the temptation be overpowering,” I asked, “when he could have won the tournament?” “He would know,” my dad answered, “he would know in his heart that he didn’t win fair and square and a hollow victory is no victory at all.” He saw the game of golf as a metaphor for life, a game you play against yourself for self-improvement---facing the challenges, knowing how you handled them are the true lessons and pay-off in a game where there's always room for improvement.

Fast forward to a time when Dad was dying of cancer and Tiger Woods had broken the color barrier in professional golf to go on to win the 1999 PGA Championship. Dad loved Tiger. In his last months, I read him every single magazine article I could find about the young golfer. My father was so proud that he had lived long enough to see America’s race relations change that much over his lifetime and we had many deep conversations about what is now labeled ‘White Privilege.’ Dad grew up in a town in Southern Illinois where grown black men would step off the sidewalk whenever a white adult or child like him passed by. He once hid in the woods watching the KKK hang a black guy and when a storekeeper in town died Dad saw him all decked out in his Klan outfit while lying in his coffin which, according to dad, was the only time Klan members revealed themselves.

My dad saw both sides of prejudism growing up. His father, an immigrant from Italy who worked in the coal mines, was paid less than whites but more than blacks and Irishmen even though they all worked side-by-side doing the same thing. In a museum of racial memorabilia I actually saw a sign like the one my dad described seeing at a coal miners' office. It listed the step-down wages paid to six different nationalities and "Niggers." The push-back against immigrants in this country is nothing new.

It might not seem like it when we’re knee-deep in our struggles to make the world a better place for our descendants but when we view the progress made by the generations that came before us it's easier to see that we are creeping closer and closer to a par game in racial equality. And that game is a game of honor, one where we know in our hearts when we’re not playing fair. ©