When I was about 6 or 7, I had one of those days when I didn’t want to go to school for some reason. I wasn’t really sick, but I said I was so I could stay home. Worried, my mother insisted on taking my temperature. I resisted, knowing it would turn out normal, but she was adamant. She brought out the glass thermometer, shook it down with quick snaps of the wrist to be sure the setting was well under the normal range, inserted it between my lips and left the room for a minute.

I had a pretty clever idea, or so I thought. I took the device out of my mouth, turned on the reading light above my bed and held the thermometer up to the light bulb, just for a second, long enough, I hoped, to register a slight fever. But, back then, light bulbs got very hot. Too hot. I heard an explosive bang, followed by a crackling sound as shattered glass and mercury spewed out onto my bed.

My mother returned. “What was that sound?” Chagrined and deeply embarrassed, I could think of no possible explanation other than the truth. She was upset, but let me stay home, “Just this once,” while, with a peevish expression on her face, she made me get out of the bed so she could sweep up the scattered glass shards and little balls of mercury (we didn’t know it then, but those can be lethal!)

Today, some 75 years later, my throat feels as if I tried to swallow half-ground peppercorns that are now lodged down there between mouth and esophagus. My arms and legs seem weighted down by heavy gym equipment designed to build muscle, though I have no such intention. I fall asleep while sitting in my chair, waking up when my chin suddenly drops down to my chest, jarring me awake. And there’s a curious compulsion to check my temperature every hour, alternately hoping it’ll be normal, and hoping it’ll be high enough to warrant feeling so utterly lousy.

We recently purchased a fancy ear thermometer, after a series of the oral, digital versions quit working. So we no longer have to wait, lips puckered and pressed into a firm line, to hold the glass tube firmly in place for the requisite three minutes minimum. Now I just turn on the ear device, stick it firmly in my ear, wait for the beep (it registers in under 2 seconds) and the screen shows me that yes, I have a low-grade fever.

I’m suffering from one of those unnamed, intrusive viruses that interrupt life every now and then. We go along making plans, then wham! —we’re laid flat by fever, body aches, sore throat, sneezing. And we oldsters know where it came from: that adorable little runny-nosed grandchild, who was playing more quietly, then crying more loudly, than usual during his recent visit. The ear thermometer confirmed it—he had a temperature of 100.3.

No wonder. My two-year-old great-grandson Luca’s older half-brother has just started preschool. Luca spends half the week with his mom and brother, half the week with us. When he arrived last weekend he brought with him not only his beloved blanket, sippy cup and favorite toys, but a whole variety of newly introduced microorganisms happily invading his as yet unprepared bloodstream. Luca recovered quickly, but not before infecting two entire households. Now I and his great-aunt and cousins have all taken to our beds with fevers, headaches, chills, runny noses. As have his mom and big brother.

Little kids’ immune systems, though strong, aren’t yet capable of fighting off the hundreds of varieties of germs present in a typical daycare or nursery school environment. Toddlers play close together, share toys, touch the same surfaces, put things in their mouths, cough and sneeze without covering their mouths, and have a lot of hand-to-face contact. They can be contagious before symptoms anyone knows they’re sick. They often shed viruses for days after they seem better. Thus, one child can introduce a virus into a classroom, infecting nearly everyone else. Luca and his brother will probably, if they’re average, come down with something or other 8-12 times a year until their immune systems develop immunity to many of these bugs.

I’ll recover. It could be worse. Maybe I’ll have a few weeks of good health before Luca comes home with another generous gift of the sniffles. In the meantime, I think I’ll check my temperature one more time…

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

How I yearn for that kind of stability! I realize that my fear that Luca might fall is actually my own fear of falling. At 86, I walk with terrified trepidation whenever I’m on uneven ground. Even on a well-paved street, sidewalk, or the floors of my house, I’m constantly looking down, verifying that no objects or bumps or pitfalls or holes are in my path.

Years ago, I could walk on an unpaved trail in the woods without a thought to the ground under my feet. I could look up at the trees, hoping to spot an unusual bird, without losing my balance. If a small depression, stone, tree root or fallen branch were on path where my foot came down, I’d catch my balance without a thought, probably without even noticing the obstacle. Now, the rare times I venture onto an unpaved trail, I use a cane—and often insist upon clinging to the arm of a sturdier family member.

There’s a word for it: basophobia. Fear of falling. It differs, but is related to acrophobia, the fear of heights. I have that, too.

I’ve always had a mild case of acrophobia. It began with a horrendous experience when I was about four. My step-grandfather Boppy, basically a kind, gentle man who loved me dearly, took me on a huge Ferris wheel ride at Oaks Park in Portland. I was scared from the moment our car began to lift off the ground, going backward as it curled upward toward the top. When we reached the highest point, we stopped while people down below were getting on and off. Thinking I’d get a laugh out of it, dear old Boppy began rocking our car vigorously back and forth. I was terrified. I screamed. I’d never been so far off the ground. I’d never been so scared. We finally began our descent. When we reached ground level I begged to be let out before the start of another rotation. I’ve not been on a Ferris wheel since, except in Vienna where the cars are totally enclosed, like small streetcars, mounted on a giant wheel. No possibility of falling. So, for me, no fear.

Growing into adulthood, I experienced mild queasiness and a bit of unease—let’s call it fear—when in a high place without some sort of barrier. Edges of cliffs? No thanks. Very high buildings without heavy glass or plastic shielding? No thanks. I’ll stay on firm ground.

Basophobia, however, came for me much later in life. As a child, I fell a lot—more than most kids, my parents told me. There were some years when it seemed that my knees were skinned and scabby more often than not. I don’t think I was particularly clumsy; I just fell down frequently during normal play. My jeans wore through at the knees long before I outgrew them.

But I had no fear of falling. It didn’t bother me a bit, except for the itchiness when the scabs began to heal.

2022. The real basophobia settled in right after I suffered a very serious fall while walking quickly along on the tile hallway of my house, a mug of coffee in my right hand. Our elderly dog, in renal failure, had barfed in the hallway—clear water, invisible but slimy—I stepped in it, slipped, and went down hard. Both my left tibia and fibula snapped. A compound fracture; bones sticking out, blood all over the place.

Fortunately, I was not alone. My grandson, Luca’s dad, was nearby, called 911, helped load me onto the gurney, and followed the ambulance to our local hospital. (This was a couple of years before Luca came into our lives.) I was wheeled immediately into emergency surgery where a maybe-not-so-competent orthopedic surgeon put my leg back together, but—in his rush—reset my left foot at a slight outward angle. After ten days in the hospital, two months in rehab, and another couple of months recovering at home, I was back on my feet. More or less. My balance was off, due to the odd, slightly splayed-out angle of my left foot.

Basophobia. Now, four years later, I can proudly say I have not fallen again. But I’m so very deeply afraid I might, that it affects almost every move I make. Oh, I’ve tried to overcome it. Physical therapy, balance classes taught through our hospital, exercises I do at home every day (attempting to stand on one foot while brushing my teeth), Tai Chi, Chi Gong. These all help. I tell myself you’re fine now, you’re not going to fall again, you’re strong….but another voice, deep inside, warns: Be careful where you step! Oops, watch out! No, no, don’t walk too fast. Look out, there might be a curb ahead.

Luca will probably love Ferris wheels, as my son (his grandfather) and his dad always have. The higher the better. I’ll stay with my feet firmly planted on the ground and watch them as the carriage backs swiftly into the air, closer and closer to the sky, and to the summit where, if his dad or granddad rocks the little car back and forth, he’ll giggle with delight.

Leave a comment

Three generations of our family sprinted into Famous Footwear in Grass Valley a few days ago to purchase a new pair of shoes for my great-grandson Luca. I, the fourth generation, followed behind, at more of a shuffle than a sprint. We all emerged an hour later, Luca sporting a pair of blue sneakers with bright green, LED lights flashing on and off with each step.

New shoes! Great excitement for a two-year-old. Some 35+ years ago, when he was around Luca’s age, his dad came into the front door of our house in Berkeley wearing a similar pair of new shoes. These had flashing red lights. His granddad, my husband Hank, had recently suffered a scary bout of retinal detachment—an eye condition which manifests with flashing red lights. Hank glanced down at his grandson’s feet and exclaimed, “Oh my God! I thought my retina was detaching again!”

Hank grew up in Manhattan, the son of a single mother who supported them both as a live-in au pair for wealthy families. Money was tight, and new shoes were a rare, precious event. Hank took his new shoes to bed with him in the first few days after purchase—to keep them close and safe.

As they get bigger, children often outgrow their shoes long before they’re worn out. We parents, grandparents, great-grandparents feel for the toes—are they too close to the end of the shoe? It’s hard to tell sometimes; the thicker the shoe, the less feelable are those little toes hiding inside.

When I was a small child, and that toe-pinching led to the need for a new pair of shoes, my mother and I took the streetcar downtown to Nordstrom’s shoe store, a small, narrow shop sandwiched between other, larger stores. Nordstrom’s started out in Seattle in the early 20^th century (first appearance—1901!) but expanded into Oregon a few decades later. No clothing, jewelry, make-up or any other merchandise back then. Just shoes.

A surprising feature of shoe stores in that era was the shoe-fitting fluoroscope, commonly called X-ray shoe fitters, Pedoscopes, or Foot-o-scopes.

A school teacher demonstrates a pedoscope to her students during a field trip to the shoe store.

I’d put my feet inside the contraption and peer in the top part to see the bones of my little feet encased in my shoe. I could wiggle my toes and watch the bones move! There were three viewing ports; one for me, one for my mother, and one for the salesman (shoe salespersons were nearly always men.) It was all amazingly new-fangled and spectacularly “scientific.” Now parents could see for sure if their child’s shoe fit properly. None of us knew how dangerous this machine actually was.

How did these fluoroscopes work? An X-ray tube was located directly beneath the feet. X-rays passed through the shoes and feet and struck a fluorescent screen, producing a real-time image of the bones of the feet inside the shoes.

These were X-rays. Radiation! By the mid-1940s people were beginning to worry. Then a 1949 study in the New England Journal of Medicine specifically examined radiation exposures to both customers and employees, discovering that children were probably not at severe risk if they only went shoe-shopping a couple of times a year. But shoe store employees, who peered down into the machines, or repeatedly demonstrated them to customers hundreds of times a month, were a great cause of concern. One study reported cases of radiation dermatitis among shoe salespersons including an extraordinary case in which a woman modeling shoes suffered such a severe radiation burn that her leg eventually had to be amputated. And a survey in 1950 found that more than 80% of the machines tested were defective! In 1958, Oregon was the first state to ban shoe-fitting fluoroscopes. Soon, the entire country followed.

So we all returned to toe-pinching for babies and toddlers. Older kids could usually complain about it if their shoes were too tight.

Anyone remember jelly shoes? They were all the rage when my daughter was very young. Made of PVC plastic, often infused with glitter, all the little girls yearned for them.

How and where did jelly shoes originate? As the story goes, in 1980 two young Frenchmen were visiting Spain. They observed shrimp fishermen’s cheap, ugly, but transparent shoes, and decided to transform them into a fun and fashionable shoe. They bought a bunch of those fishermen’s shoes, dyed them in their kitchen with a special concoction they created, dried them in the bathroom, and packaged them up in their living room. Such colorful footwear hadn’t been around much—sales took off! Some jelly shoes were even perfumed!

My daughter desperately yearned for a pair. She whined and pleaded (the usual, “…but all my friends have them!”) but I did not give in. I stubbornly resisted. I felt strongly that children’s feet need to breathe; that encasing them in plastic wasn’t healthy. Rubber (or plastic) boots on rainy days were OK because they usually came off once indoors. But all day in a plastic shoe? Nope. My daughter has never forgiven me. (And I noticed as I researched this article that jelly shoes are still a thing, and are available for purchase.)

Luca trots around proudly in his new shoes. Not only colorful, but with flashing lights!

Once again, I’m inviting you to become a paid subscriber. I’m desperately attempting to keep afloat, supporting five family members on a very small retirement income. Please help! Just click the button below.

Leave a comment

Still, it’s a shock. Zillow shows me the renovated, repainted, remodeled rooms—these I’ve seen before. But today I want to look at the yard, the space full of trees and soft green lawn surrounding a verdant, fertile area where we grew vegetables during the war, and where in later years my mother devoted much of her time and energy in planting, nourishing and enhancing an incredible flower garden luxuriously full of roses, dahlias, zinnias, pansies, violets, iris, in a riotous blend of colors all spring and summer long.

I was told that when my parents first moved in, a few months before I came into their world, the soil there was barren, rocky, infertile. But my father had a foolproof remedy for that. We buried all our garbage. Every week, he selected an area of that then-neglected patch of so-called soil, dug a hole, and buried our coffee grounds, eggshells, stale bread, wilted lettuce, moldy fruit where it would nourish the earth. Year after year, the soil grew richer, more fertile, more fecund. We grew tomatoes, onions, potatoes, eggplants, squash, carrots, green beans climbing up our white picket fence, rhubarb, even gooseberries. The more garbage we buried, the richer the soil became, and the more prolific the fruits and vegetables we grew.

In the center of the garden area was a large metal barrel in which we burned our trash every week. Newspapers (my father was a journalist, so we had a lot of newspaper in the house), paper bags, butcher paper, empty toilet paper rolls—anything flammable—went into the barrel, a match was lit, and whoosh! Into smoke it all vanished. Every few weeks we’d go off to the dump to get rid of those glass jars and tin cans that didn’t get reused as containers for sorting nails on my dad’s garage workbench, or spools of thread in my mom’s sewing room. Amazingly, we had no garbage or trash pickup. Maybe some people did—folks living in apartment buildings, perhaps. But no one I knew. No noisy garbage trucks rumbled through our neighborhood. Not ever.

What did we do with plastic containers? Plastic wrap? Styrofoam packing material and take-out food boxes? Actually, nothing. There was no plastic. Containers were glass or paper. We only got take-out on Christmas Eve (from a Chinese restaurant.) And it came in paper boxes. Packing material? Scrunched-up newspaper.

We rarely, if ever, used paper towels. Kleenex hadn’t come along yet; we wiped and blew our noses into handkerchiefs. We left a much lighter footprint on our earth than we do nowadays. And it wasn’t just my family. We weren’t super eco-conscious oddballs. We were an average, pretty normal family, even if my dad did go around from room to room after us, grumbling, as he turned off lights we’d inadvertently left burning.

Today I look at Zillow’s most recent pictures of that dear little house on Oregon Street. From the street view it doesn’t look so different from when my mother took her final breath in 2004 after sixty-five years of life there. But when I select the outdoor view and click on what was once our beautiful vegetable and garden-filled back yard, my heart drops heavily into the area somewhere around my pelvis. That whole once-green and magically fruitful space has been bulldozed and covered with some sort of wood bark or shavings. Plain. Bleak. Dry. Barren. Parched. Sterile. Desiccated. Where are the flowers? The vegetable garden? The decades of fertile soil nourished by our leftovers? Plowed under, are they still there somewhere?

And then I feel the tears forming…tears that I wish would flow long enough and hard enough to water that dry patch of land 565 miles away from where I live now, in a summer-parched town in the lower Sierra foothills of California.

I prepare Luca’s morning oatmeal. I open a new container, peeling off the plastic lid. Where will it go when the container is empty? Into the trash, of course. I mix it with the last of the milk I pour from a carton. That container, too, will go into the trash, carted off to a dump somewhere. I sprinkle the oatmeal with blueberries that arrived in a plastic box, and bananas whose peels will never find their way into a patch of land supportive of new life.

That Zillow photograph was taken a few years ago, when our little house was last on the market. Perhaps the new owners have hauled away all those wood chips and transformed the space into another lovely flower and vegetable garden. Imagining that as a possibility transforms the space of my day from depression into something resembling hope.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Please, oh please, help me out by becoming a paid subscriber! Just click on the button below. Thank you.

Leave a comment

My great-grandson Luca is crying uncontrollably. He’s just two, and non-verbal. His dad, my grandson, is at his wits’ end. I begin to sing, “There was an old man and he lived in the west / bow down, bow down…) and Luca stops. He listens intently.

According to my mother, I was singing before I could talk. She and I took the Glisan Street trolley car to shop in downtown Portland; I knelt on the bench, peering out the window, singing songs I’d learned from the old 78rpm records stored in a cabinet in our living room, under the old Victrola—a mishmash of vaguely remembered songs of the Scottish singer Harry Lauder and opera arias by coloratura soprano Amelita Galli-Curci. Other passengers were, my mother said, enthralled by my singing. I wasn’t yet mature enough to be self-conscious. That sensation came later, of course, as it does to all of us.

I sang throughout childhood. I sang to myself, acting out a few operatic roles as I sang along with the recordings. I resonated deeply with the Irish/English folk songs rendered beautifully by American singer and harpist Susan Reed, memorizing all her songs. I sing them still, to my great-grandson Luca. (Just two, Luca particularly loves “There was an old woman in our town…” despite its grizzly conclusion.)

Victrola 78rpm record player, ca. 1948

Mt. Tabor elementary school had a daily music class. We sang songs from a book called We Sing, with Miss Grey accompanying us on the upright piano. Most of the kids had a tough time learning the notes and staying on pitch, while four of us brilliant, musically talented little girls sang the songs with confidence, leading the rest. By then, we were all but one of us taking violin lessons. (Ann, whose parents were recent immigrants from Sweden, played the accordion.)

No possibility of our singing in high school. Chorus was scheduled at the same hour as Orchestra. The instrumental conductor emphatically declared that he needed violinists more than the chorus needed sopranos or altos. So we all joined the children’s choir at the neighborhood Presbyterian church, where we learned to sing by imagining “…that the sound is coming out of the top of your head!” as Mrs. Huckba described the sensation of correct vocal placement. I sang my first solo in the Christmas song “The Friendly Beasts.” I was the cow, “all white and red…” I was deeply jealous of my best friend Erika, who was chosen to be the dove.

As an adult, I began to study voice seriously, taking lessons from a series of teachers, each with different methods. After a brief, ridiculously fanciful and unrealistic period in which I imagined myself as potentially the world’s greatest (still undiscovered) operatic coloratura soprano (during this era I studied and memorized all the great coloratura arias and roles—from La Sonnambula, Lucia di Lammermoor, The Magic Flute, and more,) I at last settled on choral singing.

There, in my first classical chorus (Baroque Choral Guild, in Berkeley CA,) I learned the joys of singing in a group—the magic of blending with other voices, the beauty of the combined sound of people singing together. I understood the lines of the late 19^th, early 20^th century Russian poet Konstantin Balmont, whose poem “I came into the world to see the sun” was so beautifully translated by my dear friend Minnie Elmer.

In her version: “No power on earth can equal that of singing; that power have I.”

Why singing? Is it the beauty of the sustained tone? Singing, unlike most speech, depends on the breath. It’s an act of converting the air we take in into musical sound, in a very real, deliberate way. The sounds we make when singing can be soft and gentle, or loudly forceful without conveying anger. Songs express emotion, feelings; they tell stories or playfully engage the singer’s or songwriter’s wit. It’s magical.

For fifty years, I’ve sung in classical choruses, in the San Francisco Bay Area and, more recently, here in Nevada County in northern California. Always a first soprano able to sing the very highest notes written for choral singing, I was frequently section leader, helping others learn the parts when needed (amateur choral singers are often not as musically literate as their orchestral counterparts—sightreading is, for many, a challenge.) I’ve sung many or most of the great choral works—the Requiems of Mozart, Verdi, Brahms, the Vespers of Monteverdi, Masses of J.S Bach, Haydn, Zelenka, and more.

“No power on earth can equal that of singing; that power have I.” Now I must change those last two words: “That power had I.” Alas, I can sing no more. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of aging is the loss of abilities we once cherished. At 86, I can do many of the things I’ve always done—I can write, play the violin, take walks, cook, clean the house (more or less), enjoy my family. But I can no longer sing. After a bout of COVID in early 2020, I have gradually lost the reliability of the voice I cherished and trusted for all those decades. It’s now astonishingly unreliable. Notes I used to produce with ease come out as silence.

I continue to sing to Luca. He doesn’t mind when my voice crackles or I miss a note altogether. I sing, “The fox went out on a chilly night,” “Down by the station early in the morning,” “Tit-Willow,” “Molly Malone,” and he listens with delight.

In the words of African American poet James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938): “With glad defiance in my throat, / I pierce the darkness with a note, / And sing, and sing.”

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

I know—times are tough. But if you’re enjoying these postings, and if you have the ability to do so, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Just click below. And thank you!

Leave a comment

He’s determined. He struggles with all his might, my little two-year-old grandson Luca, as he tries to climb up on my bed. One foot goes up on the bed. He grabs the bedspread, yanks himself up. But he can’t quite make it. So his dad lifts him up (at 86, I certainly can’t) where he enjoys the activity all little kids love: jumping on the bed

My bed is higher off the ground than the average bed. After I suffered a badly broken leg in 2022, my son bought me a queen-sized bed to replace the California King my late husband and I had shared for years. To make it easier for me to transfer in and out of it via wheelchair in those first few months, he selected a more elevated model. For Luca, it’s a huge challenge.

…..And all of a sudden, today, he does it! All by himself! He’s on the bed! He jumps up, then lands cross-legged, over and over, hugely pleased with himself, while I chant the little rhyme I recited when my children and grandchildren were young:

One little monkey, jumping on the bed.
He fell off and bumped his head.
Daddy called the doctor and the doctor said,
“That’s whatcha get for jumping on the bed!”

We altered it, depending on circumstances. When my son’s friend Christopher came over, it was “Colin and Christopher, jumping on the bed.” And one of them “fell off,” and the other “called the doctor.”

A poor choice of physician, I’ve always thought—one who blames the kid for misbehaving instead of addressing the possibility of a head injury.

Misbehaving? Really?

When I was growing up, jumping on the bed was strictly forbidden because, we were told, it could cause the mattress to get saggy and lumpy or the springs to wear out. In those days, most mattresses were traditional innerspring mattresses with steel coil springs connected to one another and featured cotton, horsehair, or other natural fiber padding, and less edge support. Excessive jumping could bend or weaken the springs or compress the padding unevenly. Modern mattresses are more durable because each spring moves independently. One hard landing is less likely to damage the entire system.

The old parental rule of “Don’t jump on the bed!” was probably as much about protecting the box spring and bed frame as the mattress itself. In those days, box springs contained actual springs that could be damaged by rough play. Today’s foundations are often rigid platforms or slatted bases, which eliminate that particular weak point, although the bed frame can still be stressed.

The original ditty, as far as we know, began with “Five little monkeys...” As nursery rhymes go, this one is relatively recent. It first appeared sometime in the 1950s or ‘60s—it was well established by 1967, when, in Seattle, my son Colin and his bestie Christopher engaged in the activity while we moms recited the verses, changing the lyrics to include our two kids. In the earliest versions, the doctor responds with, “No more jumping on the bed.” (Still, a disciplinary rather than a medical response.) Folklorists who research these kinds of songs and rhymes see a connection between “Five little monkeys” other children’s poems about monkeys, such as “Five little monkeys swinging in a tree...”, and “Five little monkeys teasing Mr. Alligator...” which seem to have pre-dated the bed-jumping version.

As the rhyme moved into the twenty-first century, some families began changing the lyrics, preferring “One little puppy…” to avoid unintended racial slurs (unfortunately, the terms “monkey” and “ape” have been used pejoratively by some when referring to Black people.) But the ditty lives on, evolving to reflect the changes in our culture, our families, and even in the ways in which our beds are constructed.

Worn out, Luca has fallen asleep with his beloved special blanket. On my bed.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Leave a comment

I saw a science fiction movie back in the 1950s that terrified me: The Incredible Shrinking Man. It told the story of a man and his wife cruising on a boat in the ocean; she goes below deck for a few minutes to grab him a beer. While she’s down there, a strange radioactive mist envelopes the boat, then dissipates. A few months later, the husband has an accidental encounter with insecticide spray. He notices that his clothes no longer fit. He’s getting shorter. The doctors are mystified; tests reveal that the combination of radiation and the insect spray have caused a weird change in his molecular structure. He shrinks further. And further. His wife finds a dollhouse for him to live in, but the family cat—not recognizing him—attacks. He escapes to the basement where he’s preyed upon by a giant (to him) spider. As I recall the ending of the film, he disappears entirely, reduced to invisibility and, presumably, death.

When I looked up the date this film was released, I was shocked to find that it came out in 1957. I was seventeen years old! My memory had suggested I must have been ten or eleven, because I found the movie so deeply disturbing. It even gave me nightmares for a time!

Now I understand. When I was seventeen, and much too young, I was engaged to marry my first husband. Back then, if a couple were discovered sleeping together, marriage was the only option. Some part of me, as I watched that film, understood that getting married was a form of shrinking. I would lose significant parts of myself, aspects of my personality that were only beginning to emerge. I would become subservient to my husband (that’s how things usually went in those days.) I’d become smaller. On some deep level, my reaction as I watched the film was one of fear of disappearing into nothingness.

Surprisingly, the marriage lasted eleven years. I did not disappear into nothingness. There were some happy times, many adventures and explorations. And our son Colin, Luca’s grandpa, was a joyful gift worth it all. My spiritual and physical growth weren’t much hampered by that marriage; life brings its ups and downs, of course, and I survived. Flourished, even. Finally wisdom prevailed, and I left that relationship.

Now, though, I really am shrinking! Lately I’ve noticed that pants I’ve worn for years are not only loose around the waist, but some of them seem to be longer in the legs. There’s danger of tripping over the hems! Are the trousers growing bigger as they hang in the dark of my closet? No. I’m growing smaller.

When I was in high school, I was the tallest girl in my class. During my dating years (in between my two marriages) I used to say there were three sexes: men, women, and men who were shorter than me. That always got a laugh; and, indeed, I was never interested in pursuing a relationship with a man shorter than me. Now, weirdly, I tilt my chin upward to talk to most men—including my son and grandsons. Even my daughter, who was always a little shorter, now looks down at me. When I get into the car, it’s a real stretch to reach the door to close it. Items on the top shelf in the kitchen? Nope, can’t reach them. I have to ask for help.

Luca is a climber. He yearns to augment his growth spurts by climbing on rocks, furniture, scaling stairs, in a huge desire to grow taller and taller. While I grow shorter and shorter.

I’m resigned to my gradual diminution as my bones compress. Luca will fill the space I’m vacating. I’m OK with that.

Do I have any desire to look up that old movie and watch it again? Absolutely not. It might creep into my psyche again and incite nightmares. For all of us, dissolution of our bodies is, eventually, inevitable.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Leave a comment

In the bed next to mine—not really a bed; way too high and narrow, so let’s call it a treatment table—lay an elderly gentleman. His wife, whose session had just ended, stood beside him as the therapist massaged his legs. She helped him adjust the oxygen contraption –the canula had slipped off his nose. He complained—didn’t need it, he said. “Yes, you do,” she insisted, and looked over at me for affirmation.

She smiled at me, I smiled back. “He’s 102,” she explained. “Doing pretty well, considering.” And indeed, he was; perfectly coherent, able to swing his legs deftly off the treatment table. His wife proudly told me she was 96. Still upright, still moving. “Did you get your sweater?” he asked her. She nodded. Together they maneuvered slowly out the door, helping each other.

My husband, Hank, died nine years ago. He was 93. Were he still with us, he too would be 102. I’ve got ten more years before I’m 96. Watching that gentle, loving couple brought sadness that I’m no longer part of a twosome, along with delight that these folks are continuing to move along with their lives, together, supporting one another as my husband and I once did.

My therapist came along and removed the icepack. The session was over. I climbed down from the table, a bit unsteady as my feet touched the ground. Not as spry as I once was. Not by far.

Readers might remember: I’ve promised my great-grandson Luca that I’ll live to be 100 so I can get some idea of how he’s turning out. He’ll be fifteen by then.

One way to achieve that goal is to remain as active as possible. I do forty-five minutes of stretching exercises every morning. I’m still able to walk, most days, down our steep driveway, then up the steady incline to the end of our street, back down, then back up that steep driveway. About a half hour, including a few minutes rest while communicating with a special oak tree I’ve adopted (knowing that trees interact with one another, underground through their roots, I feel that my friendship with that special tree spreads its energy to the many oaks that line our street.)

I play the violin in a couple of chamber music groups consisting of other old folks like myself, all of us reasonably competent musicians in our day. Our fingers may not be as nimble as they once were, our eyes not as sharp (the notes on the page may blur a bit), our shoulders ache (thus the physical therapy), but we move along, regardless, through Mozart, Beethoven, Boccherini, in utter bliss. When we reach the end of a movement or a piece, we stop and tell stories, gossip, giggle, complain about our aches and pains (“organ recitals,” we call them.) Stay alert! Stay alive! Keep moving! Physical Therapy when something starts to ache!

I want to be there for Luca as a teenager. I want to be as full of love and vitality as that couple I witnessed during my shoulder-icing treatment. I swear, I will be.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Leave a comment

I awoke this morning to the news that the person who, pathetically, is attempting to lead our country, plans to strike another country with brutal force by day’s end.

Again, I felt the stirring of the blood through my veins—in fear? Anger? Both.

When I was nine months old, the Empire of Japan bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing over two thousand civilians and military personnel. The United States declared war on Japan the next day. Four days later, the U.S. joined the Allied Forces to declare war on Germany, plunging us into World War II.

I was too young, of course, to have any understanding of all this. But fear and confusion were inescapable. We lived in Portland, Oregon, about a hundred miles from the coast—one of the four metropolitan areas considered most vulnerable to air attack from the Japanese. Blackout curtains were drawn at night. Streetlights were dark. The upper half of vehicle headlights were painted with black paint, and the headlights themselves tilted downward. Few cars on the road; what traffic there was crept slowly.

For the next four years, everyone was permeated, preoccupied, utterly consumed by war fears.

My parents listened nightly to the latest news on the radio, including occasional clips of recordings of Hitler’s rants. I absorbed their fears—hearing German, with its guttural tones, terrified me even at that early age.

An occasional airplane would fly overhead. Everyone rushed indoors, fearful of an enemy attack. Some part of me, over eighty years later, still tenses up when I hear an airplane.

For the next four years, I—and the rest of the country—lived in fear and confusion. But soon a sense of purpose developed for those old enough to comprehend what was happening. There was general agreement that the cause was worth fighting for. I knelt in our back yard and dug clumsy little holes for the planting of seeds for our “victory garden;” families were urged to grow fruits and vegetables so there would be more food for the soldiers. Times were tough. We kids couldn’t have bicycles or tricycles; that metal was needed for the “war effort.” But although most Americans disliked the idea of going to war, they felt the cause was just.

Remembering those days continues to disturb me. I was a child of war; my earliest memories were of concern for my family, my neighborhood, my country. But, for us, those bombs never fell. Japanese planes randomly shelled a few locations on the Oregon coast now and then, but not nearly as far inland as Portland.

But bombs did fall—in Germany, in France, in Italy, and, most horrifyingly, in Japan. Millions of children all over the world were much more deeply traumatized by that war than I was. A great many were killed or horribly injured. And bombs have been falling somewhere, pretty consistently, ever since.

A major difference between World War II and now: the vast majority of the population in the United States trusted the President and the government to protect us, to do what was right. Of course there were dissenters, and I as a small child was certainly unaware of the nuances and political complexity that were undoubtedly taking place, but the atmosphere was generally one of respect, of confidence, of cooperation with our leaders during one of the most challenging periods in American history. We listened to President Roosevelt’s fireside chats on the radio, putting our (possibly naïve) faith in his warm, often frightening but somehow comforting words. Contrast this with the general feeling of skepticism, disbelief most of us experience when hearing what our current president is telling us.

I was in elementary school during the Cold War, hiding-under-the-desks with coats over our heads in drills for potential nuclear attacks.

In 1961, as a newlywed, I fearfully stocked up on canned food during the frightening Bay of Pigs event. For three days in April of that year, we believed nuclear disaster was imminent.

My son—Luca’s grandfather—was born in 1965. We marched in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations during his early childhood, including a ten-thousand-person march in Rome, Italy, when he was an infant. A year later, I stood holding him in my arms at an anti-war vigil on the campus of the University of Washington, in Seattle, while pro-war students pelted us with rotten tomatoes, and a raw egg which splashed onto his little cheek.

Saigon fell, and the Vietnam War officially ended in 1975 when my daughter was two months old.

What horrors will Luca and his contemporaries face as they grow into adulthood? Or, by then, will we at last have found a way to live without war?

Today, late afternoon: our deeply unreliable, confused, and incompetent president called off the threat of strikes. Another crisis averted. For now. And Luca runs happily from room to room, a toy car clutched in each hand, a wide, innocent grin spreading from cheek to cheek.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Leave a comment

1940. My mother, very unsure of herself as a brand-new mother, found the most progressive pediatrician in town, and adhered tightly to his every word. His were the latest in theories for feeding an infant: breastfeed (a new trend!) but stick to a tight schedule. Once every four hours, day and night. No more, no less, no matter how loud and long the baby screams. Put her in her crib and leave her alone. For four hours. My mother recalled being driven to tears herself by the sound of my wailing, so desperate was she to console me, while remaining unwaveringly committed to following doctor’s orders.

Time for solid food. This state-of-the-art pediatrician now recommended mixing all the pureed foods together in a bowl, a sort of mix-and-mash mush. Prunes, cereal, green beans, applesauce, potatoes, chicken, all stirred up into a kind of thick soup. According to my mother, the idea was to prevent me from developing aversion to certain foods. Maybe it worked. I was never a very picky eater; I’ve always had a less than highly developed sense of taste. I suspect I inherited that from my father, whom we lovingly referred to as a “human garbage can.” He’d happily eat food my mother and I didn’t much like. or food that was slightly burned or a little undercooked.

When I got older, and was finally offered food in normal, separated portions, I was taught to clean my plate. This wasn’t an absolute (I had a problem early on with peas and lima beans) but I was strongly encouraged to take at least one bite of whatever was served.

Contrast this with the recommendations of doctors in the 1960s and ‘70s, when I was raising my kids. Nursing on demand! Baby cries? Feed it. Every 15 minutes if necessary. Hold it. Snuggle it. Carry it around. Transition carefully to solid foods, one at a time, to avoid possible allergic reactions. Don’t insist on foods the child doesn’t like.

Early on, my son discovered his absolutely favorite food: pasta. Especially with alfredo sauce. Or just buttered. Around the age of two, he decided he would eat nothing but pasta, and perhaps the occasional banana slice or maybe breakfast cereal. I worried myself sick with concern that he’d become severely malnourished on a diet that consisted almost entirely of carbs. No vegetables. Not much fruit. No meat, fish or chicken. But he thrived! Gradually he began to try out a few other options.

In the late 1960s, many parents were experimenting with alternative styles of parenting. (Not me, so much—I was a bit intimidated by innovation.) One day we visited the home of friends-of-friends, who had several small children. They explained to me that they did not believe in serving meals. They set up a low table upon which they placed a vast array of nonperishable finger foods for the children to “graze” on all day. The kids would run around, grab a cracker or a chunk of banana, and run off for more play. I often wonder how these toddlers, now in their sixties, have turned out.

Throughout his childhood, my son—like me--couldn’t handle spicy foods. I think this is true of a lot of children. When he was a teenager, his girlfriend took him to an Indian restaurant. He came home red in the face, and glowing with joy! “I love spicy food!” he announced and has liberally doused his food with hot sauce ever since. (Ah, the powers of a persuasive girlfriend!)

At two, my great-grandson Luca eats a reasonably healthy breakfast. He loves fruit—gobbles up blueberries, pears and mandarin oranges enthusiastically. And oatmeal, which he eats with his fingers. (I make it pretty thick, so it sticks together.) When his cousin makes pancakes, Luca wolfs them down. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and, yes, pasta, along with crackers, milk and juice, occasionally pizza or French fries, make up the remainder of his diet. Whatever I cook for the rest of the family remains untouched or is gently nudged (or casually tossed) off the highchair tray and onto the floor, where Jupiter—our family dog—is waiting to scarf it all up. (I highly recommend dog ownership when there’s a toddler around--as long as the dog is kid-safe, of course. It makes clean-up so much easier.)

Does Luca eat a balanced diet? Not really. It’ll happen eventually. Perhaps little ones need all those carbs to maintain the huge amount of energy they burn as they run, climb, jump, wiggle, hop, dance, and cavort constantly throughout the day.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Leave a comment

Today, May 22, is his birthday—my adorable little Luca has officially become a two-year-old. Now begin what we used to call “the terrible twos,” the year or two of tantrums, defiance, resistance, rebelliousness that supposedly resolve around three, but slowly. No signs of that just yet with Luca, whose generally sunny disposition, seemingly endless energy, curiosity and concentration keep him cheerfully in motion until he experiences a feeling or need that he cannot express. No words yet, only screams and tears.

He lives half of the week with his mom, half here with us—his dad, his great-aunt, his cousins, and me—his great-grandma. He’ll arrive here in an hour or so, for yet another birthday party (he’s enjoyed two already.) His great-aunt and cousin are in the kitchen constructing a cake; his dad has cleaned the house within an inch of its life. But he’ll be coming directly from another birthday party with his mom, his half-brother, and various friends and relatives from that side of the family. My hunch is he’ll be exhausted; his dad will carry him in and lay him gently in his bed, where he’ll nap until dinnertime (I’m making spaghetti—his favorite.)

Much of the cleaning and straightening of a house lived in by a little person consists of sorting the multiple parts of toys. I remember those years—a well-meaning friend or family member brings a gift of a toy grocery truck nicely fitted out with little slots for oranges, bananas, apples, pears. Someone else has gifted a set of oversized Legos. Maybe a doll that came with several outfits. Numerous toy cars and tracks for them to run on. Soon the floor is littered with a plastic apple, a piece of racecar track, little knitted doll sweaters, several Hot Wheels cars, a couple of shiny oranges waiting to trip up anyone walking through. I confess that I grew to dislike intensely any toy that consisted of many assorted pieces.

It’s been over six decades since my two children were babies and toddlers, and two decades since my grandchildren were little. When Luca was a newborn, it all seemed familiar, comfortable. We’d lie together on my bed and snuggle. I read to him. I sang him all the many folk songs I’ve sung to my kids and grandkids over the years. His favorite, “Down by the station early in the morning…” was always assured to stop his crying, with its final “Puff puff, toot toot!” sung a a high pitch he found hilarious. “Our magic song,” I called it.

Today, I’m oddly nostalgic for those early days. Now he’s so active, so boisterous and full of energy that I—at 86—can’t keep up. A few months ago, he climbed into his highchair and couldn’t turn around. Instinctively, I grabbed him and attempted to settle him in the chair but nearly dropped him as my back went into a vicious spasm. I was laid up for several days, soothed only by Advil and Tylenol. Now I chase him around with as much agility as I can muster, which isn’t much. When his dad needs a break, I—who once provided most of the assistance—have left nearly all of the childcaring relief to his cousins.

Breakfasts are our time together. By the time he’s awake I’ve already prepared his fruit and oatmeal. When his dad has settled him firmly I’m in my recliner reflecting on the last two years. in his highchair and goes out on the deck for coffee and a smoke, I sit with Luca and we talk. We make funny faces. I say, “oatmeal,” “blueberry,” over and over. When, in response, he babbles in his own mysterious language, I duplicate it as precisely as possible to encourage him. He laughs.

Great-grandparenting gives us a third chance at passing along our legacy—our quirks, our ideas, our ways of speaking, our gifts, our love, all portions of the person we truly are. With any luck—if we and the world survive the mess we’re making of it—he’ll one day be a great-grandparent himself. May it be so.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Leave a comment

In the opera Tales of Hoffman by Jacques Offenbach, Hoffman’s first love is a mechanical doll named Olympia who sings the famous “Doll Song.” Her aria is interrupted when the mechanism winds down; her voice scoops downward and she flops over at the waist. Her inventor steps in, cranks her up again and she resumes her aria. I first saw this opera in an English translation performed by Theatre Arts Opera in Portland, Oregon (I played violin in the orchestra.) I remember Olympia’s words as she ran out of “breath.” They were, “…and that is the end of my story.”

At this point in Pinking and Pulling, I feel like Olympia; out of breath and needing to be wound up again. But the inventor has left the room!

I look back on the seven decades of my career in academic libraries and marvel at the progression of information-gathering and processing during my lifetime. Seventy years ago, research was a straightforward, though complex and time-consuming process. The student had a goal to learn everything about a topic being studied, or at least as much as was necessary to compose a term paper, project or thesis that would get a good grade. So…off the student would go to the library.

Suppose a music or theater student in the early 1960s, having seen a performance of Tales of Hoffman, was intrigued by the character of Olympia and decided to write her thesis on the use and development of mechanical creatures and people (automatons) throughout history. Were there earlier examples of mechanized characters or special effects prior to Offenbach’s time (late 19^th century)? She would need to locate books on the topic. What subject headings should she use to look it up in the card catalog? How could she find academic journal articles?

First stop: the card catalog. Drawer after drawer after drawer of 3x5” cards describing books in the collection. Overwhelmed, wondering where to start, she’d wander over to the reference desk where the librarian would help her identify appropriate headings, explain how to identify call numbers, then go to the book stacks to find the books on the shelves, in much the same way a person back then looked up a street address in the phone book, then drove to that location.

Finding journal articles was a little trickier. The student would proceed to the periodical indexes that covered music, theater and dance, maybe history, and leaf through volume after volume, year by year, finding references to appropriate articles, writing down the exact citations, searching for the bound journals on the shelves, reading the articles there in the library (those volumes couldn’t be checked out) and taking notes. A relevant passage had to be carefully copied by hand; there were no photocopiers or printers.

Many hours—perhaps days—later, she’d have compiled information about the emergence of mechanized fire-breathing dragons, sea monsters, and galloping horses in operas and stage plays dating back to the seventeenth century and earlier. She would learn that in Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, moving trees, mechanized gates into the underworld, singing birds operated with clockwork technology, and more, frequently appeared. She’d then explore the development of these creatures, the mechanics involved in their inventions, the socioeconomic implications, maybe the psychological effects of these devices, and how they eventually evolved into characters like Olympia, and even early plays about Pygmalion, the statue that comes to life.

Our student would compile all this, reflect on it, and write her paper. Her slow, laborious process would allow time for careful consideration of all the elements; her thoughts would move into words, new ideas, possible inspiration for future research.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Today, April of 2026. Seven decades later. On a search engine on my laptop computer, I bring up ChatGPT. I type, “Can you give me some examples of the appearance of mechanical dolls or animals (automatons) in plays, operas, or other performances, and when they occurred?” In a matter of seconds up comes a detailed listing, with comments. If I were doing serious academic research, I’d ask for citations, wanting to know where the information came from. I would also, of course, proceed to look for books and scholarly articles. But the instantaneous AI response has provided me with a quick-and-possibly-dirty overview.

From pinking-and-pulling in the old card catalogs, to the first Xerox machine (the size of a golf cart) on the UC campus, to retrospective conversion from card catalogs to microfiche and the online catalog, from bound volumes of periodical indexes to databases, from the reference desk, encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauri to AI.

Terrifying. What’s next?

I’ve reached the end of my journey of reflections on academic librarianship. But not the end of my Substack journey! I will start a new Substack venture shortly, bringing all of you faithful subscribers and follower with me. See you next week. Stay tuned!

Leave a comment

When TV first arrived in my hometown, I had a hard time grasping the reality of a fuzzy image of a real person that somehow appeared on the glass screen of a big wooden box in our living room. And then--computers! And then-- a man walking on the moon! And we could push some buttons on a keyboard at our bank in the middle of the night, and cash would spew out.

I do not understand any of this. I don’t pretend to. But it’s there. It’s happening. As a librarian—an information specialist, supposedly—I need to interact with this mysterious world of technology, to try to grasp its values and its limitations. I mastered this capability with the online catalog, databases, Zoom interactions.

And here we are. Something new. AI.

When ChatGPT first emerged in 2022, I approached it in the same way I’d learned over the years to evaluate any information source: ask it about something with which you’re familiar, something that you know a lot about, then see what’s there. You’re the expert. See if this reference tool knows as much about it as you do. Or maybe it knows more.

Many years ago, I was deeply involved in the Cat Fancy—the world of purebred cat owners, breeders, and exhibitors. I was, briefly, even a cat show judge, believe it or not. One of the cat breeds with which I was most familiar is a very rare, old breed called the Korat, originating in Thailand. I was there when a close friend imported the first pair of Korats to the U.S. and showed them to us at a meeting in 1958 of the Willamette Valley Cat Club in Portland, Oregon.

My first query to ChatGPT: “Who imported the first Korat cats to the U.S., and when?” The answer came back immediately: “No one knows when the first Korat cats appeared in the U.S.” But I knew! I was there! Furiously, I typed back with the answer, including the name of my friend, and the whole backstory. The bot cheerfully thanked me for the information, which, by the way, was at that time readily available on a number of cat-related websites. But AI had missed it. A month or so later, I asked the same question. This time, I got an informed, accurate answer. ChatGPT was capable of learning from me, in much the same way that Wikipedia incorporates input from its readers and editors into their articles.

Now, four years later, AI is everywhere and expanding at an ever more rapid rate. I do not understand how it works. I’m not sure I want to understand it. When I attempt to read an explanation of the technology, my brain starts to fog over, much as it does when my daughter tries to explain how to toast an English muffin in our spiffy new toaster oven. I don’t understand AI. It fascinates and terrifies me.

I use AI now for a quick overview of a topic, with the understanding that the results of my query may not be accurate or even helpful. I’ve asked it about the most effective ways to interact with a non-verbal, mildly autistic toddler (my great-grandson.) I’ve explored possible diagnoses of physical ailments based on symptoms. I’ve asked for advice on fixing a leaky faucet, on recommendations for clipping the nails of a nervous dog, for a summary of recent innovations in the field of information literacy. All with varying degrees of success. Would I use it if I were writing an academic research paper or thesis? Absolutely not.

I tell my students to experiment with it. Use it for preliminary research, to get a general idea about a topic. Ask it questions, analyze the responses with informed care. Do not EVER let it do your thinking for you. Or, God forbid, your writing!

Leave a comment

Lake Wildwood, Penn Valley, California

The caller was a close friend of many decades, a married Catholic priest (as was my husband) who served as President of Global Ministries University (GMU), an interfaith, international online graduate school offering courses, certificates, and graduate degrees in ministry, theology, interreligious studies, ethics, and peace studies. I’d followed the progress of this small but vibrant institution for years. Back in the early 2000s when he first told us about the project, I said, partly in jest, “Oh, I think you’re going to need a librarian!” The years went by, and apparently, they didn’t. But now they had decided to explore the possibility of full accreditation with the Association of Theological Schools; one of the requirements for membership was the presence of a librarian on staff. That would be me.

And so, at 81, I began a whole new career. I soon found out that this would be a professional experience unlike any of my previous positions. Entirely online. No such thing here as a brick-and-mortar library. No books! No reference desk! No classrooms. Yikes. And my background as a theological librarian, though impressive on my resume, was fully thirty years out of date. How to catch up?

I visited the website of the American Theological Library Association, of which—years earlier-- I’d been a member, and found that they’d changed their name to, simply, Atla. They had broadened their scope and were now international. Their membership included museums, archives and other institutions, not just libraries. The term “theological” carries a Judeo-Christian implication; Atla had grown to include institutions in the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and other religious traditions and beliefs. For retired folks like me, emeritus membership was free. I quickly rejoined and began to explore the many developments and changes that had come about since I left the Graduate Theological Union Library in 1990.

We were in the height of the COVID pandemic, and Zoom meetings were de rigueur. That technology was already familiar to me; other groups, including music groups, had been using Zoom for meetings, and even rehearsals, for several months. But the concept of assisting students in their research without face-to-face interaction seemed scary. How could I find sources for graduate-level research totally online? For free?

There was no budget for expensive subscriptions to services like EBSCO, which provides (for a hefty fee) access to scholarly journal article databases in every academic field imaginable, including religion and theology. One of the first things I did was to explore the possibility of subscribing to the Atla Religion Database through EBSCO. No, too expensive. But there were several free options—not as extensive—so I asked the GMU tech person to set up a “library” section on our web page, and listed those resources, with links.

How could I provide instruction in research skills? I decided to write a column in the monthly GMU Newsletter, calling it “Librarian’s Corner.” It still appears every month. There I describe techniques for doing college-level research, for using the databases we subscribe to, highlighting specific tools for learning more about various religious and spiritual traditions, and more.

GMU students are located all over the world, including Canada, Kenya, India as well as the U.S.

They reach out via email asking for assistance. I guide them in finding books on their topic (available through Google, Amazon, etc. or their local academic or public libraries), journal articles that appear full text in WorldCat, Google Scholar, Digital Theological Library, Directory of Open Access Journals, and others. I’ve helped them refine their thesis statements, create bibliographies, and edit their final papers, all through email or Zoom. Sometimes, even that old-fashioned communication device called the telephone.

Exciting, of course. But there’s a strange kind of disconnect in this remote work. I sit cozily in a recliner in the hills of Northern California, looking out at the oak trees, the crows flying overhead, the wild turkeys strutting around in the underbrush and explore research techniques and the gathering of information with someone halfway around the world.

It feels almost surreal when I compare my present role with my early days, over sixty years ago, in the UC Berkeley library pulling 3x5 cards out of the card catalog for revision and replacing them with temporary pink slips. “Pinking and Pulling.”

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Leave a comment