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. ©

Computer Geeks and Rowing Crews

I have a tech guy---young, cute as a ladybug if ladybugs were males that wear black leather pocket vests full of tiny tools. I’ve loved those pocket vests since I first noticed them on gutsy photo-journalists running around dodging bullets to report on some long-ago and far-away war. It’s the one piece of clothing that I’ve lusted after for decades but would never let myself purchase. Maybe if I become a bag lady a pocket vest would be become a necessity but for now I’m too vain to add that much bulk to my already bulky mid-section. But every time Nate makes a house call to fix my computer woes he kick-starts the vest lusting all over again. This time the guy was sporting what I’m guessing was a two-day old beard. Talk about a lethal combination! A black beard with inky dark eyes, dimpled checks and that leather vest. Be still my heart. My days of seeing him might be coming to an end, though. He suggested we set up my two computers so he can do repairs and maintenance remotely from his shop for a fee of seven bucks a month. My computers would send him reports when things need doing or aren’t working and he’d do what needs doing. Every time he walks through the door it costs a hundred dollars so on one hand, his suggestion would save me money, but on the other hand I’m not sure I want to give someone a backdoor into my computers. Even though I know and trust Nate, there are others working in the business. It’s a local chain with five locations.

While he’s here we always have interesting conversations but this time I was struggling with my voice. I’ve just come off from a round of Prednisone (for joints inflammation) and one of the side effects for me is my voice gets very hoarse and soft which is shocking at first because I don’t get Prednisone often enough to remember this happening. I googled the drug and learned that sometimes your voice doesn’t come back! I’ve had the Prednisone medrol dose packs five-six times in the past---a year apart each time---so I know it’s just a matter of time when I will get my voice back but for the two days when I didn’t remember this side effect, I was bummed out thinking, First my eyes, then my ears, now my voice! What’s next?  But I know what’s next. I have to do something about my clicking, painful jaw. In the mornings I’m starting to have trouble opening my mouth wide enough to shovel cereal inside. Google is telling me there isn’t much that can be done except exercises so I’m letting it ride until my next dentist appointment. 

This week was my monthly book club and we had a great book to discuss, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. The cover describes the book in one precise sentence: It’s a true story of “nine Americans and their epic quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.” Almost 400 pages long but, boy, did I learn a lot about rowing crew teams and what it was like to grow up during the Depression, the socioeconomic landscape of the 1930s that molded the characters of these nine young men. The research and details that went into this book is mind boggling and it includes a lot about how Hitler prepared his country for the event. The boys in the boat who won the Gold in Berlin were the sons of loggers and shipyard workers in the Pacific Northeast, college students at the University of Washington in Seattle. If you like Olympic sports history you’d like this book. But it’s also a very human story about overcoming family dysfunction, nearly impossible odds and never giving up. 

George Yeoman Pocock, a designer/builder of racing shells and a mentor to the 1936 Olympic Team was quoted near the end of the book as saying, “Good thoughts have much to do with good rowing. It isn’t enough for the muscles of a crew to work in unison, their hearts and minds must also be as one.” Couldn’t the same be said of families and other groups to succeed? We have to give up our individual desires for personal fame or power in favor of working together, setting one goal to move forward.

Most times when I leave my house I go past a place on the river---a shell house---where rowing crews from the area high schools store and launch their shells. In the fall, when they start practicing again I will have a new appreciation for a sport I erroneously thought was just for yuppies. I look forward to pulling into the riverside park and watching for a while. I’ll know if they’re doing sweep-oar rowing (one oar per rower) or sculls rowing (two oars per rower). I’ll have a label---the coxswain---for the person who sits in the back and coordinating the rhythm and power of the crew, who has to factor in the wind, the weather and the position of the other shells in the race as he/she barks out orders. That’s what good books can do for us, they can make us see our own little world through a new and broader lens. ©

Luncheons and Tech Savvy Guys

This week flew by and one of the reasons why is because I spent six hours spread out over two days volunteering to help with the Mother’s Day luncheon at the senior hall. Since I’m not a mother this event seems like a good place to do my suggested-but-not-required volunteer commitment for the year. It’s kind of fun to see a room get transformed from totally empty to tables set up for 115 people complete with colorful placemats, napkins, condiments and table décor. Some patience person made origami birds and they looked cute “pecking” at chocolate kisses placed on the corner of each placemat. The paper birds brought back a memory of my dad. Every night after reading the newspaper he used to make a paper hat or two to take with him to work the next day---Dad could make several styles. He wasn’t alone in that habit. The factory where he worked was not the cleanest place and the guys of his generation knew how to recycle just about everything. I still have a tiny paper hat made especially for one of my teddy bears.

The day of the luncheon is crazy and I would not want to be the luncheon chairperson. She’s in charge of assigning jobs to the volunteers and she has to make sure everything is done according to a time chart. A couple dozen water pitchers get filled and placed on the tables. Coffee and tea gets made and when it’s ready they are served by township officials or candidates running office. We’ve met judges, mayors, representatives, etc. this way. Then when the food truck arrives we volunteers man our stations on an assembly line. I was the potato salad scooper this year. Ten high school kids doing required public service hours run the plates out to the dining room. After everyone is served we get a break until the entertainment is finished, the door prizes have been given out and we volunteers have been thanked while we stand at the front of the room. The cleanup starts so quickly after that that it’s a wonder the people leaving don’t get trampled. They’ve been doing the luncheons this way for years. Somehow it all works out and I’m happy to say I was not the person who dropped a whole tray of salt and pepper shakers.

The next day Nate, my tech guy who makes house calls came to reinstall my printer that mysteriously quit talking to my computer. Windows keeps sending messages wanting me to schedule an update to Windows 10 so I asked Nate if it was a good idea. He said if I don’t upgrade, I won’t see those messages after July because after that everyone who hasn’t done the free upgrade will have to pay for it. If I have any trouble, he said, I have his phone number and he’ll talk me through it. I wish that guy was my grandson! Have you ever seen the TV commercial where a grandmother greets her grandkids at door with a bunch of electronic stuff in her arms and says, “So great to see you! Here, none of this works. Come on in.” That’s the way I feel when Nate comes only I can’t pay him with a pot roast dinner and cherry pie.

Nate’s house call was not the end of my tech issues. After he left I discovered my laptop wouldn’t let me log off. I needed to log off because it’s time to bring it into Nate’s computer repair shop to get its yearly “clean up” and virus control software update and I decided I’ll have them do the Windows 10 upgrade while it’s there. Ya, I know I could do some of that stuff myself but I have more money than time I’m willing to devote to things that drive me crazy. 

Speaking of tech inspired headaches, I finally got my smart phone issues resolved and the credits came through on my credit card for the company’s screw ups. It’s a wonderful gadget and I’m glad I got it but I was disappointed to discover that OnStar raised the data rates for Wi-Fi in my car. Unless I give up my house and move into my Chevy Trax I wouldn’t be paying $15 a month just so I can play on Google while I’m away from the house. If it were a matter of life or death, I can still buy $5 worth of data for the day and do it with the blue OnStar button in the car. I hope my old brain can keep up with all this stuff! ©

NOTE: The photo above was taken at the Mother’s Day luncheon. The guys are playing harmonicas, one of which is 93 years old.