Our New House Guest - Alexa

In my teens I had to get checks cashed at the Jewel Food Store near my house when I needed money, paying a 25-cent fee for each transaction. And I remember a time when my friend’s parents paid for everything with cash, forgoing the convenience of checks. An ATM would have been unthinkable for them. They dutifully reconciled their water bill in person at Village Hall. What a time consuming ordeal!

I never had a problem with new technology. In fact, I was among the first to do my banking almost exclusively online using a dialup service through Compuserve, then Prodigy and NBD Express in the early 1990s. AOL free trial discs began to pile up on our computer desks soon after that.

As much as I enjoy technology, I’m not sure an Amazon Echo Dot is something I would ever have purchased. But we unexpectedly became the owners (or should I say, proud parents) of an Echo Dot and its virtual assistant Alexa a couple of weeks ago when good friends who had an extra device made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. We paid for the Echo with PayPal on the spot, of course.

But the cloud still makes me nervous at a very deeply paranoid, very old school level. The recent Equifax breach supports the fear of turning important information loose in the ether. And we are frequently being warned by people in the know, like Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, that Artificial Intelligence is a looming and very real future threat. And they should know; they built Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

But Alexa is ADORABLE!

At first we weren’t sure what to do with our new toy. We downloaded the app, plugged in the hockey puck and marveled at its spinning blue lights with an uncertainty that bordered on the dread of having stepped on a land mine.

“Hello,” it said in a pleasant female voice.

Following the included instructions, my wife quickly said, “Alexa, play Bruno Mars.”

Alexa quickly complied. My wife smiled and began to faux dance.

“Alexa, stop,” I said. “Play Gordon Lightfoot.”

Gord’s gold issued forth.

We looked at each other with a “burn the record collection” realization that all of our vinyl and CDs had instantly become obsolete. Apparently we needlessly moved them from Chicago to Florida just a few months ago.

I paired the Echo with our Bose Soundtouch speaker.

“Alexa, play the Beatles,” I commanded. And here I must note that speaking to Alexa strikes an innate chord within the more polite among us. Don’t be mean to her! But there is no need to apologize, even though we at first said “sorry” or “never mind” when it seemed appropriate.

Of course, this leads down a dark path paved by Siri and those who know her. Let’s just say that Amazon was less clever in the implementation of Alexa’s responses to crude or clever commands. She’s above all that.

So it came to pass that I had finished my afternoon laps in the pool, here in retirement land. Relaxing on a couple of air-filled noodles, I realized that our 4:30pm departure for a dinner date might be approaching. I wished I had a clock outside. Then it struck me:

“Alexa, what time is it?”

“It’s 4:03pm”

Perfect, I smiled. Still a few more minutes to relax.

“Alexa, play the Beach Boys.”

In sequence, Wouldn’t it be Nice, God Only Knows and California Girls filled the pool deck with perfect summer tunes.

“Alexa, pair the speaker.”

And now, Bose got involved. The music became richer and louder.

“Alexa, play the Beatles.”

Now, what are the chances that Here Comes the Sun would be Alexa’s first choice? Was she at our daughter’s wedding a few months ago?

I laughed out loud. The world had suddenly become a wonderful, self-indulgent place for less than fifty dollars.

I got out of the pool, but not before thinking, “Alexa, mix me a pina colada, warm my towel and call the restaurant. We need to move our reservations back. Say, about an hour.”

The 51st State (The State of Emergency)

It started like most innocuous atmospheric depressions, swirling westward off the coast of Africa and heading harmlessly out to sea. But as ill-timed blemishes often do, it blossomed into a glaring whitehead in record time, becoming an angry entity seemingly with a mind of its own.

Irma in Good Health

It is said that hurricanes as powerful as Irma can make their own weather. This makes it harder to predict what they’ll do, where they’ll go or how they’ll intensify. But in late August and early September of 2017, computing power used to model and project storm behavior couldn’t seem to keep up with what eventually became a category 5 monster that appeared hell-bent on destroying Florida and everything that came before it.

The “spaghetti” models plotted on a map of the Atlantic and Eastern Caribbean regions factored in data on interacting pressure systems, frontal passages and ocean temperatures. Like a diagram of dozens of possible paths for a bowling ball down a well-oiled alley, the question persisted: will it hook or go for “Brooklyn.” In this case, up the Eastern coast of Florida, or in the pocket to the west.

And that’s when anxiety began to build, inversely proportional to Irma’s barometric pressure, dipping to frightening lows. Meteorologists called it a “healthy” storm with a well-defined eye. And with winds of 185 miles per hour immediately surrounding that eye for 37 hours, it became a record setter.

So it was that four months after we moved to Florida, following a prolonged drought in hurricane landfalls in our chosen retirement destination, we were in the crosshairs of the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.

Spaghetti Models

Within days our new governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for the entire state of Florida. We would much later be issued, and choose to ignore, a mandatory evacuation order due to an anticipated storm surge (we live 13 feet above sea level.)  On the heels of the recent hurricane in Texas, and with memories of Katrina, Wilma, Andrew and others, this storm was being taken very seriously.

We come from the Midwest. We are not strangers to powerful storms. In Illinois they come without warning in the Spring or Summer. The sky blackens with notes of olive green within minutes or hours, spitting iceballs the size of grenades or spawning demonic Cuisinarts with an appetite for high schools and trailer parks. The most you can hope to prepare is a trail of tears to the corner of a basement in hopes that the roof and floor above you get in the way of your being sucked out and thrown like a bean bag in a drunken game of corn-hole.

No, hurricanes grant you days or weeks to prepare for a beating. They broadcast their punches, but carry a toolkit that also includes uppercuts, fakes to the right and left, and a callous disregard for all things human. This leaves us disregarded as we decide to stay or go, putting up storm shutters lost for a decade under piles of crap in garages and sheds, and coming disconcertingly close to the point of competitive near-riots at local stores, seeking water, food and gasoline. The amount of preparatory work and the unpredictable nature of the beast carries with it an almost necessary element of procrastination. Why do all that work if it’s not absolutely necessary?

Steel Hurricane Shutters

We began to button up with a growing sense of dread as the spaghetti shifted in our direction. We sought out water, filled tanks with gas and installed steel window shutters that lay outside our shed in the backyard for nine years. We identified an interior closet where we would hide, with a twin mattress at the ready and bicycle helmets to protect our skulls while our limbs were crushed. This same closet has an attic access panel that seemed loose to me, so I tightened it up with eight screws, because one inch wood screws are known to resist the sucking force of 160 mile per hour wind in the absence of a roof. Yeah, right.

Submerged Kayaks

By the morning the storm hit, Port Charlotte was along a line on the west coast of Florida directly in Irma’s crosshairs. Many of our neighbors had survived hurricane Charlie in 2004 in their current homes. They were gracious beyond belief, offering us lodging, generators, food and last rights. We even went to a hurricane party the afternoon before Irma’s arrival. It was cloudy and a bit cooler than usual, the wind beginning to whip the palm trees along the canal between our house and theirs. I glanced with concern at our screened pool cage, our flimsy looking shed and the umbrella-like canvas covers over many boat-lifts. There were our two 12 foot kayaks, poised like bright red ICBMs on their launch platform, the back wall of our shed. I could only think to sink them in our pool. I wondered if WE could hide in the pool, but quickly dismissed the idea. Shrapnel-like debris is a problem.

Have you ever tried to hit a baseball at Major League speed in a batting cage? The first time I tried I heard a hissing noise and wondered when the ball would come. Now imagine objects becoming projectiles at twice that speed! Eventually we retired for the night with profound apprehension over what the morning would bring.

I was up at 6am. Irma’s predicted path had not changed. In almost total darkness I went out onto the pool deck with a box cutter, took a couple of deep breaths, and began cutting the largest row of screens out of our pool cage in hopes of preventing loss of the entire structure. I can only compare this to what it might feel like to take a sledge hammer to your living room walls in order to save the underlying wooden studs. It was a calculated risk based in part on hearsay, and also on the knowledge that our hurricane insurance covers only $10,000 for the cage on what might be a $20,000 repair. Factor in a $5000 deductible and no coverage for the screens – cut away.

To say it would be unfair for Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda to take another hit like the one Hurricane Charlie delivered in 2004 is a poor choice of word. But it would have been doubly tragic for the area and its long time residents. And there is no “fair” in wishing the tragedy elsewhere. But the unfortunate souls who live in Key West, Marco Island, Naples and Bonita Springs eventually took the brunt of the storm, serving to shred the eye wall in such a way that the storm quickly diminished by the time it reached us. We lost power for a week. In Florida. In the summer. So we were uncomfortable, but suffered little else beyond the loss of our refrigerated food. I compare it to a bad camping trip. But we got to stay in the otherwise familiar comfort of our own home with running water and flush toilets. Not that bad.

Our attention immediately turned from our own survival to that of our daughter and son-in-law, who had moved to Jacksonville two months after our move. Early preparations had us considering evacuating to a hotel near them. We searched hotels in Tallahassee, Gainesville and Valdosta to no avail. Similar to our search for water, we waited a little too long and had fallen behind the tidal wave of other evacuees, seven million of them. We eventually canceled the Jacksonville reservation and subsequently heard that its location on a river prompted evacuation of the hotel as well. We would have been evacuated from our evacuation. That left us anticipating a tidal surge that drained our canal and virtually emptied Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay as the storm approached, pulling the tide away similar to the effect a tsunami has on oceans.

By the time Irma hit Jacksonville, it was downgraded to a tropical storm. The dreaded surge never materialized, though our canal filled almost to the top of seawalls by the next morning. The worst damage had occurred elsewhere. We were among the lucky ones.

The islands that were so badly pounded by Irma prior to her arrival in Florida have been ravaged again. Puerto Rico, the Leeward Islands and the Dominican Republic among others may never fully recover. We are reluctant to consider ourselves veterans of a hurricane at this point, but we did have a really effective drill. We’ll know better next time. If the generator we buy is never used, it will be an effective insurance policy. Hopefully, we will be in the position of offering our home and help to others, as others so kindly did with us.

There are those who asked us why we were moving to Florida just in time for summer and hurricane season. On this first day of Autumn, I just shrug and smile and look out over a sparkling pool at a boat gliding toward the Gulf of Mexico. I take a sip from my drink and realize that, all things considered, I wouldn’t trade this experience for even a single blizzard. After a hurricane, the ground is still warm, the sun shines and the pool is inviting. In a few months it will be cold enough to freeze engine oil back home. We’re good.

Catching

My new friend and neighbor in Florida has been threatening to take me out for a ride on his boat for about three years. Last month we finally headed out twelve miles into the Gulf of Mexico for a day of fishing. The cloudless sky was as blue as the nearly flat water on an ideal February day. As we ventured further into open water we eventually lost sight of land, but it didn’t make me nervous. I was in clearly capable hands.

But I was mistaken. I was informed that we weren’t going fishing. We were going catching. I was about to learn the difference, and I swear that this story is true.

Now, I’ve never caught anything bigger than a Bluegill or Sunfish in a local retention pond. Even on fishing charters, I stand with my empty pole, examining the horizon and enduring some kind of sea-curse while others gleefully pull a variety of fish into the boat.

“You’ll be frustrated with me,” I said, “when you find out how bad at this I am.”

My captain tweaked the settings on his astoundingly sophisticated navigational Garmin and just smiled as he throttled up and headed to a favorite spot, pinpointed on a digital chart full of other such locations.

If any idiot can catch a fish, I was the perfect candidate to test the theory.

A clear plastic baggy full of shrimp emerged from a cooler. I pulled the head and tail off of one slimy, gray creature, it’s cold body chilling my fingers as I embedded a hook from one end of the body to the other.

I was taught to hang my pole over the side of the boat and let the line play out until I felt it stop, at a depth of about 50 feet.

“Jig it up a little,” I was instructed. On the Garmin, a colorful sonar profile of the rocky bottom showed peaks and valleys – perfect for fish. I guess I was moving the bait in order to simulate live food.

I prepared for a long wait, settling back in my chair and trying to just enjoy the sound of the water gently lapping at the hull of our boat, rocking gently with a hypnotic rhythm that….BAM!

My line pulled tight, the slender fiberglass rod bending nearly in half from the weight and struggle of a snagged fish. I reeled like crazy, winding fifty feet of line back onto the pole and lifting skyward until a large red snapper broke the water’s surface.

 

The entire sequence of events had taken only a couple of minutes. We unhooked the fish, tossed it into a live well and repeated the process. And repeated, and repeated. Every time I put a line in the water, another snapper struck. We were both catching, often two at the same time, off of both sides of the boat, in a seemingly choreographed sportsman’s fishing highlights video.

As I lifted a particularly large specimen out of the water, my phone rang. Yes, twelve miles out in the Gulf, I had a signal, and I had to answer. I was on a more difficult fishing expedition back in Chicago. And catching back home was of paramount importance. On land, the bait was a house, and the call was to tell me we had caught a buyer. We had sold!

“This is the best day EVER!” I yelled, as I continued hauling in my fish. And indeed, we continued to load the live well until we’d reached the limit for the day.

So it turns out that there are those who fish, and those who catch. I have joined the ranks of the catching. And I keep in mind the need to be truthful about the adventure I’ve related, because in the words of Mark Twain, "Do not tell fish stories where the people know you. Particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish." And my captain surely knows his fish!

The Collector

Betty watched Kurt Lindstrom roll a large plastic trash barrel around the building’s business office. The barrel was gray and sounded like all four of its wheels needed oil. She’d get Bruno to attend to that later. Kurt emptied wastebaskets and wiped off large wooden desks and table tops with a soiled dust rag. An upright vacuum cleaner was parked strategically near Liz Hayden, the office receptionist, who offered a flirty smile as he went by.

“Mister Morretti wants to see you,” announced Betty.

“Ok,” said Kurt as he nervously approached the corner office with his trash barrel.

“No honey, leave that out here,” she added as Kurt approached the threshold. The door marked a boundary between the resilient carpeting of the outer office and luxurious shag that muffled sound in the executive’s chamber. Kurt stepped gingerly onto the soft expanse.

“Siddown,” said Morretti. He pointed to one of a pair of high-backed leather chairs in front of his massive mahogany desk and waved his secretary away.

To read the rest of this story and more than fifty others, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Never the Twain Shall Meet

Assumption: you have a time machine. You can go back in history and have lunch with one person. Who would it be?

I wager that many people would quickly respond, “Jesus. I’d meet Jesus.”

Well, that might be great if you’re prepared to find out that he looks nothing like Jeffery Hunter. I suppose just being in his presence would be enough for most. But lunch will most likely be bread and fish, and you’ll need to speak Aramaic. At least you won’t need silverware, but the crowds might be a problem.

No, I’d like to have lunch with Mark Twain. He was arguably the most famous man of his era, he speaks English and conversation would never be lacking.

Recently I came as close as I’ll get to meeting the great American writer. My wife, daughter and future son-in-law had second row seats at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts for the legendary Hal Holbrook’s show, “Mark Twain Tonight.”

I’ll be honest. If you had asked me last summer before we bought our tickets I would have said that Holbrook was dead, or was at risk of not lasting until a show eight months later. At age 91, he may not have a lot of time remaining, so it’s truly remarkable that he can still do a one man show supported by nothing but a table, chair and podium for two hours. He carries some notes that he gingerly removes from the inside breast pocket of his white linen jacket, but it’s never clear if he’s using them as prompts or props. He returns them with great care, raises his unlit cigar in a wave of his hand that emphasizes a point in his monologue and then strolls across the stage.

One of his sketches relates the tale of an acquaintance that took forever to get to the point of a story. So long in fact, that “Twain” sits in his chair and drifts in and out of sleep over a period of several minutes. The audience becomes uncomfortably quiet during this sequence. It is a convincing portrayal. So much so that my wife whispered to me with a sense of urgency, “If he dies on stage I’ll never forgive you!”

He didn’t die, or even fall asleep. Eventually he stood and casually commented, “And that’s why we never found out about…”

A woman in our aisle struck up a conversation with us. She has seen this show about twenty times, and labeled me a fellow “Twainiac” when the depth of my interest was revealed.

The evening took me to new heights of my obsession. Upon returning home I downloaded a copy of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” to read again, and dug deeper into volume one of Twain’s huge autobiography.

Holbrook was the second oldest performer we’ve ever seen. At 93, classical guitarist Andres Segovia remains the record holder. And there is a certain sadness that accompanies leaving a show, given the unlikely odds of seeing performers of this age again. I simply recommend, if there is someone you’ve been putting off seeing, don’t delay any longer. Whether it’s Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, The Monkees, Gordon Lightfoot, Brian Wilson or Willie Nelson, you just never know how many shows they have left to perform.

The Chicago Odyssey of Lester Biggs

After decades on the street, Lester Biggs was something of a fixture near Western Avenue. He spent most of each night hunting through north side alleys for discarded treasures, moving like an apparition in faded mismatched sneakers and a stained white lab coat. He was noticed by passersby but aggressively ignored, and his feet shuffled under the weight of their projected guilt and gratitude.

“Hey there doc,” said Gus, propping open the rear door of his diner with cardboard boxes and several black trash bags filled to bursting with kitchen refuse. They began this role-play several months earlier when Lester found the lab coat and showed up at Gus’s door. Prior to that he had worn a broken plastic hard-hat and orange safety vest during his construction worker period. He had been for varying lengths of time, a secret service agent securing the alley, a bible-carrying pastor and an off-duty patrolman, all based on props he discovered in his wanderings. But he took obvious delight at being a doctor. It called to something hidden away inside him.

To read the rest of this story and more than fifty others, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Beach Boys

I know that what I remember happened between 7 and 8pm, because that’s when the Ed Sullivan show aired each Sunday. If I were to guess, I’d say that we were trick-or-treating, or going door-to-door singing Christmas carols. Those were the events that brought kids of varying ages together as a group back then. But the timing is all wrong, because the Beach Boys made their first of two appearances on the iconic show on September 27, 1964. And that’s what I recall seeing on TV through the front door when we stopped to pick up my sister’s friend Lenore. Perhaps we were going on a scavenger hunt. It was dark. I was ten. And in hindsight it feels like I drove by Woodstock and wondered what that music was. I barely paid attention, but the memory stuck with me.

In the intervening years I came to understand Lenore’s obsession with the legendary surf band. She wouldn’t leave the house until they finished playing “Wendy” and “I Get Around.” The broadcast was monochromatic, which perfectly suited the band’s wide-striped black and white shirts. Earlier that year the Beatles made their American debut on the same stage, so we had gotten somewhat used to audiences filled with screaming girls, and curious parents looking puzzled and somewhat horrified.

It is now days before Brian Wilson is scheduled to play at Ravinia in Highland Park Illinois. We have pavilion tickets for the show. I am neither puzzled nor horrified, but I am now the parent of a second generation Beach Boys fan. My daughter shares my love of all things Beach Boys, and her boyfriend is equally obsessed with Brian Wilson. Go figure.

I have lost track of the number of Beach Boys concerts I’ve attended through the years. A double bill with Chicago was a definite highlight in 1975. Changing outfits, hairstyles and band members never distracted from the overriding joyous California dream that pervaded each experience. Dennis and Carl died, but life went on. Brian toured sporadically, but his music carried the band’s legacy forward through the decades.

I have blasted surf music from an 8-track player through the open T-tops of a Corvette on hot summer nights, from cassettes in a mini-van with kids in the back seat, and poolside from an iPod at the house where I plan to retire. For me, the music is timeless, my reaction is visceral and mood-altering. The Beach Boys make the sun shine on the cloudiest of days.

There used to be a concert venue called Poplar Creek in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. I was among the first to subscribe to the “mellow” series – performers like James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Jimmy Buffet and the Beach Boys. My seats were in the third row, renewable each year as long as I wished.

It is now well-documented, in an autobiography and the recently released film, “Love and Mercy” how Brian Wilson struggled with drugs and an emotional breakdown, becoming an obese, bearded recluse while the band played on. Dennis’s death during 1983 shook the Wilson brothers and fans alike. The endless summer was over, for Dennis anyway. Brian quit appearing on stage again.

At a memorable show during Brian’s absence in the early 80s, I smuggled half a dozen small, un-inflated beach balls into the open-air theater. I blew them up, hunched over in my seat, and surreptitiously set them loose. Security tried to snag them over the sound of jeering fans. Eventually, one made it’s way onto the stage to the feet of Mike Love, who never flinched. Holding a microphone in one hand, singing a classic surf tune, he landed a well-place kick on the nearby ball and sent it sailing up and over the head of a man in the front row.

Oh, that man. Motionless, bearded and obese. I wondered how he could be so detached from the action on stage and all around him. He occupied the best seat in the house, alone in the otherwise empty front row. He sat staring at the stage, perhaps experiencing the concert on a level that no one but he could ever understand. There may have been other tunes in his mind, complicated chords or instrumentation that no one else would ever hear.

In yet another Forest Gump moment, I repeated the metaphoric Woodstock drive-by. I barely paid attention, but the visual stuck with me. It wasn’t until years later that I learned what until that time had been only rumored about the health and condition of my musical hero. I turned my attention back to the antics on stage, the music, the magic, the glorious summer sounds on an endless summer night, blissfully unaware that I was sitting twenty feet from the genius who created it all.