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Chemo, fake cars, baseball, tricks and treats — and vote!

10/31/2019

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Charles City Press, 10-31-19

As I write this, tomorrow is Halloween. Tonight is Game Seven of the World Series. I’m about to disconnect my handy-dandy home chemotherapy infusion, as soon as the alarm on my chemo pump goes off.

No one was more surprised than I was when my cancer team told me that I could be trusted to remove my chemotherapy infusion by myself.

There is a process to it. Chemo can be dangerous, but the instructions are relatively simple. Then again, clipping toenails is a relatively simple process, too, and I somehow screw that up every week.

Still, it’s better than having a home nurse come visit every two weeks, although I’ve had home nurses in the past and they’re very kind people. It’s also much better than spending three days in the hospital getting chemo infusions.

As it is, I have to spend a few hours in the hospital getting one big infusion and then spend the next two days carrying around a chemo infusion pump in a fashionable handy-dandy man-purse. It works fine, until the alarm goes off and I have to remember the removal process.

I don’t trust me, but my doctors and nurses trust me, and their faith in me gets me through it.

So I already had a lot on my mind when the phone call came this morning — the fifth call this week telling me it’s my “last chance” to extend the warranty of my car, and if I don’t they’re going to close my account for good. I dialed “2” to speak live with a friendly customer service representative.

SHE: Hello, may I have the make and model of your vehicle?

ME: Yeah, I have a 1976 AMC Spirit.

SHE: CLICK.

​The nice lady never gave me a chance to tell her that my imaginary 1976 AMC Spirit is powder blue. I’ve been discriminated against. Her company had no desire to extend a warranty on a darn fine, all-American, patriotic, 44-year old fake vehicle. It’s Vehicular Ageism. It’s a thing.


Meanwhile, technology is ruining baseball. This is according to me and one other guy I know.

Last night, in Game Six, there was a pretty obvious umpire’s call along the first base line that the umps got right the first time. But for some reason, they had to review the call for about 15 minutes. After further review, the umps determined that the call couldn’t be reviewed. This confused me. I remain perpetually confused.

When I watch a game on television, I don’t mind that they now have a box, created by graphic geniuses, that shows me where the strike zone is. I do mind when the commentators complain that the umpire called a pitch a strike when the ball did not go through that box. Can’t that dumb umpire see that box?

No, Einstein, the umpire can’t see the box, because the box is not real, it’s a television graphic. Also, it’s not exact, because television screens are two-dimensional and the world is three-dimensional. The strike zone is what the umpire says it is, not what that little box says it is.

There are good things about technology that can help the game, but unfortunately it gets sent into overkill, and rather than using it as an occasional guide to enhance coverage, it becomes the basis for the coverage, and overshadows the game itself.

I would add that analytics is also ruining the game, the coverage of the game, and enjoyment of the game, in much the same way. A lot of positive things can come out of crunching baseball numbers, but there is a new wave of baseball computer geeks who insist that things like RBIs, batting average, slugging percentage, ERA, wins and saves are “useless stats,” and if you try to argue with them, they attack you personally.

Instead, they are obsessed with things like “wins against replacement” (WAR) — a meaningless stat that amounts to little more than an arbitrary number — and things like “exit velocity,” “spin rates,” “catch and hit probability,” and they foam at the mouth with pleasure at defensive shifts and “launch angles.”

They push this on us and push out the real stats. Coverage of baseball has become intolerable, especially on television, and they’re starting to go after football and basketball, too.

Anyway, I’ll still watch Game Seven tonight, because I still love the game, and I hope it’s a good one, with no controversial 15-minute reviews that can’t be reviewed. As you read this, you already know who won. Please don’t spoil it for me.

Oops — my chemo pump alarm just went off so I have to go. I don’t have time to tell you what I was going to tell you about Halloween, so I’ll just say that if you want to give me some candy, I’ll take it. I’m going dressed as a general assignment reporter this year.

As a postscript, I remind you to vote next Tuesday. First of all, learn about the issues and candidates — perhaps from your friendly, local newspaper — then vote for whatever you think is best, for yourself and for your community.

It seems almost everyone votes in presidential elections, while almost no one votes in local elections. Seriously, local election results have far more lasting impact on your life than national election results do.

Trust me — my chemo doctors do.

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Taking one last look at our fictional friends

10/24/2019

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Charles City Press, 10-24-19

I was just minding my own business, just watching Monday Night Football this week, when it spiraled out of my TV screen and into my brain like a Tom Brady pass.

It was a commercial — it was the final trailer for the new “Star Wars” movie, coming Dec. 20 to a theater near us. I was riveted. I later found it on YouTube and watched it again, a few times. I made my wife watch it, too.

I’ve been a fan of the “Star Wars” franchise since I was 9 years old and saw the very first movie at my local theater, with my mom. I liked it, so much so that I saw it three or four more times that summer. That was the first movie where people did that — went back to the theater to see it again multiple times.

Mom wasn’t expecting much. She was just going because I was a little kid and there was no one else to take me, but I think she liked it even more than I did. She insisted Dad take her to see it the following weekend for their night out.

Afterward, I asked Dad for his thoughts — when you’re 9, the opinion of your parent is very important — and Dad shrugged and said, “not too bad.” He then said it was like a John Wayne Western, except it was in space. Dad really liked John Wayne Westerns, so that sounded like high praise to me.

So here it is, more than 40 years later, and I was like a little kid again, watching this trailer over and over again. I even switched the football game off — of course, the Patriots were winning by four touchdowns at the time, so that’s not much of a sacrifice.

And speaking of making a sacrifice, there was a moment in the trailer that kind of broke my heart.

At one point, there’s a scene where the android C3PO appears to be getting his robot head rewired. If you’re unsure who C3PO is, he’s the gold-colored robotic character, a “protocol droid” with a British accent who is constantly making suggestions that are helpful but annoying, and constantly calculating odds that no one wants calculated.

Anyway, when another character asks him what’s up in the trailer, C3PO replies, “I’m just taking one last look. At my friends.”

And it occurs to me that this indicates that C3PO is going to be killed off in this movie — the last Star Wars movie centered on the Skywalker Saga.

So now, I’ve learned that I’m a 51-year-old man who’s seen a lot, but still doesn’t have the emotional maturity to handle the death of a fictional android.

By “killed off,” I mean it appears that his memory is about to be erased. So the droid will still be walking around, but he’ll have no memory of any of the adventures that we’ve been watching him plod around in since 1977.

From the trailer, it looks as though C3PO is sacrificing himself for the greater good, so he’ll get a hero’s death.

Keep in mind that I have no idea if that’s what’s really going to happen. I realize that trailers are meant to intrigue us into going to the movie. They put things in there to lure us into dropping our dollars and picking up a ticket, because we want to find out if what we think is really going on is really going on.

But I was all in before I ever saw the trailer. I would go see this movie, even if I thought it was going to be terrible. I need the story to be completed, even if I don’t like the way they’re going to complete it.

I also realize that the line, “I’m just taking one last look at my friends,” is allegorical. We are C3PO. We are urged to take one last look at our friends — the characters we’ve been watching for years.

We are being told this is the last time we’ll ever get to see these guys shoot each other up, buzz around in spaceships and fight with laser swords for our entertainment, so we better get our butts into the seats.

It’s the reason why old rock bands call every tour their “farewell tour.” They lead us to believe it’s the last time we’ll get to see them perform live. Some of them have had six or seven farewell tours. They aren’t fooling us anymore.

“Star Wars” typically kills off a main character in every movie, and part of the fun is guessing which one it’s going to be. I was sad when Han Solo died. I was sad when Luke Skywalker died — although he’ll be back as a “Force Ghost,” just like old Obi-wan Kenobi was, just like Master Yoda was.

There’s money to be made from merchandising, and dead characters don’t sell nearly as well as characters that come back as Force Ghosts.

Somehow, the beautiful and spunky Princess Leia is still alive, although she’s General Leia now. They’ve managed to do that despite the fact that Carrie Fisher, the actress who plays her, passed away after shooting the last movie. It’s amazing what The Force can do. I think they’ll probably have her character die in this one, just like C3PO.

The thing is, I’d always imagined that C3PO was the one telling us the story. There’s a scroll that runs across the screen at the start of every Star Wars movie, giving us a brief update and setting the stage for what’s to come. In my mind, I’ve always heard C3PO’s voice reading those words, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …”

If his memory is erased, that won’t be the case. That upsets me.

I know, I know — it’s just a movie. Real life will go on. I just need to accept what the writers and directors decide is best. If I don’t like it, I should write my own damn movie, and see if I could do better. I probably can’t.

So I’m preparing myself for a fictional world without good old, annoyingly helpful C3PO. It’s the last movie of this particular saga anyway, so I might as well toughen up, go to the theater and take one last look at my friends.

One condition, though — if they kill off R2D2, I’m walking out.

If they destroy the Millennium Falcon, I’ll never forgive them.

And don’t you dare kill off Chewie, you homicidal maniacs. I’ll come after you if you do.

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New local Facebook page accentuates the positive

10/10/2019

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Charles City Press, 10-10-19

The profile photo is a beautiful image of the pedestrian bridge by Victory Park at night, lit up, over the Cedar River.

It only takes a minute or two of scrolling and reading before you come to the realization that the city of Charles City is a wonderful, positive place, and home to at least a few wonderful, positive people.

Believe it or not, the online destination I’m talking about is a Facebook page.

I’m sure you’re familiar with Facebook. It’s the place where we can connect with long lost friends and relatives, and for some reason, show them photographs of what we had for lunch. It’s fantastic.

It’s also awful. It’s a place where we can argue and exchange insults for hours and hours with total strangers — about issues neither of us knows anything about. Look away for a half hour, then come back, and someone has threatened to beat you up because you’re different. 

Insult someone face to face, and it’s eventually forgotten, and hopefully forgiven. Insult someone on Facebook, and it’s there forever, and it forever seems fresh and new and infuriating.

Facebook itself is neither good or bad. It’s just a medium. What Facebook users do with that medium, however, can border on pure evil. 

Or perhaps it can be used for good.

As of Sept. 27, there’s been an active locally-focused Facebook page called “Charles City Good Vibes!” 

“Tired of all the drama?” the page asks us. “Want to go to a place that highlights the good qualities of our great town? Look no further! This site is all about good vibes!”

The site promises “no nay saying, no people telling you you're wrong for liking something.”

And to this point, it’s lived up to its promise. As of Wednesday morning, the page had 150 members.

One recent post talks about how much easier it has been is to drop the kids off and pick them up at Washington Elementary school this school year.

“With the new improvements for drop-off, Washington has been a breeze,” the post reads. “Also — they are always, always so welcoming and wonderful at drop off. Love our school!”

There’s another post that’s surprisingly and uniquely positive about local road construction — something that no one ever says anything positive about.

It says: “The new road at south main is looking pretty sweet!” It includes a photo of the work that’s been done so far.
There’s another photograph of people selling concessions at the local movie theater.

“Love this place,” says the post. “It’s hard when I have to go see a movie out of town because The Charles Theatre is so great and inexpensive.”

It’s enough to make you feel good about living in Charles City, if only for a few minutes.

The site administrator is local — he lives here in town, and apparently, he believes in the power of positive thinking.

“If you want to express concerns, go to the other site,” he says on the page. “If you want to just chat and keep it simple, come on in!”

He doesn’t specifically call out the “other page” by name. There are a few active local Facebook pages, where local residents are encouraged to voice their concerns. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. As I said before, Facebook itself is neither good or bad.

But when people start complaining, it doesn’t take long for them to turn on each other. It can get personal, and it can get ugly.

It’s hard to not get pulled into the vortex of negativity. I will confess, I was personally banned from one of the other pages, for calling the page administrator a name. It was very childish of me to do that, but in my defense, the name I called him was an honest and accurate characterization of his online behavior.

Still, I shouldn’t have done it, and the name I called him could easily have been applied to me at that same moment. I deserved the ban.

The administrator of the “good vibes” site writes that he hopes that kind of thing doesn’t happen there.

“I’m going to try to admin this as best as I can,” he writes. “If I see you being jerks to each other, I'll probably kick you out for a little while, but you'll have to really grind my gears to get ‘perma-banned.’”
The sentiment reminds me of an old Bing Crosby song. Yes, I’m old enough to remember Bing Crosby — barely. My parents had his Christmas album, and I remember watching him on all those great TV variety shows that were popular when I was growing up.

“Accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between.


Spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith, or pandemonium is
Liable to walk upon the scene. …”
The title is actually spells out “accentuate” phonetically, as in “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate” the positive.” Bing sang it with the Andrews Sisters.

The music was written by Harold Arlen and the wonderful lyrics are by Johnny Mercer. Johnny Mercer’s version is sung in the style of a sermon, and explains that accentuating the positive is the key to happiness.

Accentuate the positive, latch on to the affirmative. Spread joy. Have faith. 

It’s good advice — we’re killing ourselves with negativity, in this community, in this country, in this world. The “good vibes” page administrator writes that he’s tired of all the anger he sees on Facebook.

“I just wanted a place to go where we can post things we're excited about without getting shot down with negativity,” he writes on the site. “So if you're gonna complain, go to that other site. Let's be good humans to each other! Peace and carrots everyone!”

Humans. Let’s all be humans to each other, even if it’s just once a day. That’s something worth considering.

Peace and carrots, indeed, you humans.

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