Grins

I have, until now, neglected to add the little round image that is meant to represent myself on the computer. For some reason I suddenly felt the need to add one. I usually resist such temptation but this time I gave in. I knew instinctively what picture to add. The problem was, I could not remember where in tens of thousands of pictures it resides.

First, I began to search the most obvious place, the MacBook Air. This skinny little computer has been a trusted companion for almost a decade. We have had our ups and downs. It has played me dirt on several occasions, and caused me pain and sleepless nights, but overall it has been a useful tool.

I have written thousands of words, stored thousands of photographs. It has kept me entertained, and it has worked its little processor off navigating Carrie Rose from Chicago to Maine. More importantly, it has allowed me to keep connected with friends and family.

And I suppose I’d be bereft if I did not mention how with a few clicks of the keyboard it has helped me stimulate our consumer economy. That said I was looking for the image that I could see in my minds eye.

This brings me back to one of the “downs” we have experienced. On a rudimentary level I understand how this chuck of aluminum and plastic works but more on the hardware side. When I see computer code my eyes glass over and my mind goes blank. I spent my career dealing with flesh and blood not a digital representation of it.

So, when the computer decides to fail drastically I reach out for help since I cannot drive to Clark and Devon Hardware to search for a part. On several occasions, the hard drive has stopped recognizing my existence, and a dear friend who is wise to the world of bits and bites has rescued the data.

I am grateful for this even if at the time I was intolerable. One of the complications was that the individual files that separate the photos into useable/searchable data were lost. This left more than 80,000 photos with no rhyme or reason other than for dates, the mass of images became an integrated whole with no definition.

As I stated above, I knew the image but where could it be. To make matters worse about 2/3’s of the photos are on an old MacBook Pro. The search on the Air proved fruitless. It was time to turn on the Pro. The Pro has a quiet life. It lives on the bottom shelf of the printer stand perpetually plugged into its power source. In the past, despite the neglect it has always booted up though I live in fear that one day it will not.

The Pro is more than twice the size of the Air. Its screen is cinematic. I push the button that sits flush in the upper right hand corner of the keyboard, and the hard drive began to spin and make odd clucking sounds. The screen lite up displaying a picture of the Amtrak Bridge that blocks the path of the South Branch of the Chicago River.

I clicked on the iPhoto icon and the disc’s RPM immediately increased. This is not the instantaneous process I am used to on the Air. This process requires patience, and a bit of faith that in the end the program, with its treasure trove of 60,000 photos, will open and allow entry.

This time it went well, and before I knew it, I was reliving my life. It is not that I forgot my purpose but that I became immersed in how blessed a life I have had. As I searched the photographs, faces, countries, boats, all the experiences of decades came flooding back. I luxuriated in the images.

Did I find the picture I was looking for, I did. It is of my smiling mother and her cubby boy, hair cropped short in a photo booth. And the cubby boy seems equally as happy to be there, wherever there happened to be.

Like I said, I am not sure why this image called out to me but each time, when I have to enter my password to allow the computer to let me in, I grin and maybe on occasion tear up just a bit with the memories of time gone by.

April 2020

Risk

I am not risk adverse, though I am self protective, sometimes to the point of cowardice. But there is also a trait I have noticed of needing, let’s just say, a bit of calculated risk in my life. Since my eleventh year, I have been on the water. Much of that time was spent on Lake Michigan, a body of water that will provide as much risk, calculated or not, as anyone could want.

These years I am boating on Maine’s North Atlantic coast. This is a different world than the Great Lakes. It is not that it is more dangerous just more complicated. There are tides that average between 10 to 15 feet. These tides, along with the convoluted geography of islands and coves and rivers and rocks nestled along a corrugated mainland, make for strong currents and tidal races. And need I mention the fog.

Maine has the added attraction, which does exsist on the Great Lakes in a diminished state, of manmade hazards. Here I speak of the ever present lobster buoy. Maine’s lobster men and women manage to populate much of the coast with a system of colorful buoys that float within feet of each other if not closer.

A short cruise on a calm sunny day through the legions of buoys leaves the possibility of disaster always open. If one of the thousands of buoys passed managed to wrap around the boat’s propeller, well then, the boat is dead in the water. And as the water’s temperature is in the mid forties or low fifties diving in to untangle the line is not an option.

The purpose of the above several paragraphs is to give myself bona fides, and to make a case that I am not a scaredy-cat. Add to this that I practiced (and I do mean practiced) medicine on the south side of Chicago, and I think this should give me some cred.

On occasion, when confronted by a truly sick patient in the office I would tell them to go to the emergency room ASAP. By which I meant immediately. Most people confronted by such a demand begin a negotiation with themselves and eventually with me.

I understand this. They have responsibilities, which in many cases are deemed more important than their own well being. This lead to the inevitable question/statement, “I’ll go first thing in the morning . . .” To this I would respond that if their condition was making me, an old grisly white haired family practitioner nervous, then it should make them nervous.

This ended the conversation, and over the years my track record was, if I don’t say so myself, admirable. So, when I say that the Corona Virus has me nervous it should make everyone of my beloved readers nervous. Now is the time to error on the side of caution. Trust me, you do not want to be flat on your back with doctors trying to decide if you are worthy of a ventilator!

April 2020