Monday morning was slow. It was chilly and gray outside. I had laundry to do which kept me indoors anyway. Because of all that, I spent a lot of time reading and thinking. And that led to this.
I used to take an unwarranted amount of pride in being smart. Even as I write that, I cringe. I suppose I was well versed in a lot of trivia*. I used to impress my opponents when playing Trivial Pursuit back in the day. At the urging of others, I even tried out for Jeopardy once. I didn't get selected. I like to attribute my (probably pompous and unbearable) attitude to simple youthful hubris that I eventually outgrew. At least I think I have. As I've grown older, I've come to realize more and more how little I know about anything. But I enjoy acquiring knowledge. I like knowing how things work. Why things are the way they are. I'm always up for a new bit of information, a fresh way of looking at things, an idea I've never encountered before.
*Trivia is a word that has traveled an interesting path. In ancient Rome triviae (tri = three + viae = roads) meant the place where a road forked into two branches. The place where three roads came together was a meeting place so the meaning evolved into "a public place" which then took on the meaning of "commonplace" or "vulgar," which originally just meant "common" as in vulgar Latin, the common language of the people. In the Middle Ages, trivia referred to the three parts of the lower division of education – grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The higher division was the quadrivia – arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. By the 15th century, trivia had taken on another meaning of "trite or unimportant." In the 1960's when college question and answer contests became popular, it came to mean "information that is of little value." The game Trivial Pursuit was released in 1981. There are over a hundred special editions of the game to date. We own four of them, Original, Original Volume 2, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings editions. I find that I increasingly have no interest in storing such esoteric trivia in my crowded brain and I don't really enjoy playing those games anymore. Who cares "how many half-buried disks the Rebel shield generator on Hoth consisted of "or "what the date is by 'Shire-reckoning' that Bilbo begins writing his book?"
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| Our Trivial Pursuit games. |
Anyway, back to my original train of thought (my train gets easily derailed, as you can see). Monday morning I read an article about AI and the impact it's having on education and the human mind in general. It seems that since so many people have immediate access to information via their devices now, most people don't bother to remember things anymore, things that were considered common knowledge, even generally useful information. Why remember it when you can just google it, or ask Siri, or Alexa, or Grok, or any of the other thinking machines? You don't have to memorize how many pints are in a gallon or the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence or your mother's telephone number. You can just look it up in a second. We're to the point now where you don't even need to do the research to write a paper for a school assignment or college degree or even bother to write the paper. Just tell AI the subject and parameters you need and it will do it for you and probably use better grammar and punctuation than you would have. But what happens if the power goes off, or the sun fries the satellite systems, or you drop your phone in the toilet? Suddenly you don't know much of anything – and that's scary. And who wants to hire a "professional" who had AI do all the work on their degree?
I have serious reservations about AI. It has some fun applications. I've seen some very funny and clever faked photos of famous people doing improbable things. But AI can very easily be abused. The fakes are getting so good you don't recognize them for what they are. For example, a video came up on one of my social media accounts of two people, Kenji and Sayuri, who were Hiroshima survivors who hadn't seen each other since that day in August 1945 and were reunited again a few years ago. They were writing a piano/violin duet together when the bomb went off and now they were playing it after all these years. It was very moving. The video showed the astounded panel of America's Got Talent and the audience weeping. I shed a tear or two. But, it turns out on investigation, that it was a fake generated by AI. Harmless? Yes, but I felt manipulated. It didn't tell me at the start of the clip that it was fake. My reaction to it would have been different if I had known that. It's getting harder and harder to tell what is real and what isn't and that's a precarious situation for the world to be in. Wars and riots are easily started by credulous lies and believable misinformation.
As a lifelong reader of science fiction, I've seen projections and warnings about what can happen, albeit fictional, when machines get too smart and we trust them too much. You might get a benevolent artificial sentient creature like Jane in the Ender series by Orson Scott Card, or a robot coup à la I, Robot in the The Complete Robot by Isaac Azimov, or a malfunctioning homicidal HAL 9000 from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the terrible Thinking Machines in the Herberts' Dune books. Or you might just end up with a lot of dumb people who don't know anything about anything except how to look it up. Science fiction writers have been pretty good at extrapolating current trends into future scenarios that actually come about. We are frighteningly close to the societies described in Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, and even Azimov's I, Robot now. Brave new world indeed.
All of that was stewing in my brain as I waited for the washer and dryer to do their thing and the sun to come out and warm things up a little.
Finally, around 10:30 it warmed to 50° and I ventured outside. Knowing the grim forecast for Monday night, I started preparing for frost. I moved all the plants on the back porch stairs inside the porch and into the woodshed. I cut a large length of landscape cloth to pull over the kiwi vines. I set up props so I could cover the lilies with a sheet. I set out buckets and large pots and tubs to cover what plants I could in the flowerbeds. I had it all ready so that at sundown I could put it all in place. I was heartsick as I did all of that. The thought of my thriving garden blighted by frost made me very sad.
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| Plants on the back porch once again. |
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| More plants in the woodshed. |
The weather began to clear in the afternoon – a mixed blessing. It allowed me to mow the lawn. The grass is growing fast. We're in the need-to-mow-twice-a-week phase now. With rain expected every day for at least another week, I was glad to get it cut. If I had to wait until the next dry day, it would be a foot high. But the clearing weather also had a less desirable effect. It makes frost more likely. Frost forms on clear, cold, windless nights, and that's what was coming.
It's not unusual for us get frost this time of year. The Old Farmer's Almanac puts our average last frost date at May 29th. According to The National Gardening Association, we have a 50/50 chance of getting frost all the way to June 5th. NOAA puts our final frost date at May 14th – yeah, right. Gold is notorious for being colder than the rest of the world thinks we should be. Looking back through journal entries, I see that we've had frosts as late as June 15th. I know all of that. I've gardened here for twenty-five years now. And yet, I still get tricked by a spell of unseasonably warm weather, a few days above 70°, into thinking, hoping, praying that this year things will be different. They seldom are. I remember one glorious year when our last frost came on the last day of April. That has only happened once in my time here. But being so caught up in growing things, what else do I have to fume and fuss about? Well, plenty if you ask my family, but mostly the weather.
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| The lily bed covered. |
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| The kiwi vines covered. |
I set an alarm for 2:00 a.m., Tuesday morning, planning to go out and water the garden. I had the hose already unwound and ready. Spraying plants with water can prevent frost damage. I once read why that is so. It involves the chemistry of hydrogen molecules bonding when water changes to ice or something like that. I don't remember the details, just that it sometimes works. But things didn't go as planned.
Unbeknownst to me, my body decided to pass a kidney stone that night. I won't go into all the gory details. Suffice it to say there was a lot of pain, uncontrollable shivering, and blood. I'd never experienced anything like that before. At midnight, Stacey texted Tosh and he came over and gave me a blessing. I took a hot Epsom salt bath. I went back to bed, bundled up, stared at the dark ceiling, and began contemplating my mortality. In my condition, there was no way I was going outside to water, so Tosh did it for me. It was 31° and he stood out there and watered the flowerbeds. And he even wrapped the hose back up when he was done. He finally went back home at 2:00. I really appreciate his help. He's a good son-in-law. I was finally able to fall asleep at around 3:00. Poor Stacey was up most of the night tending to me. I slept until 10:00. Before she left for work, Stacey went out and removed the covers from the lilies and the kiwi vines. She reported that she saw no frost or any damage, except maybe a little on the kiwi vines. That was a great blessing.
I did nothing much on Tuesday. After I woke finally woke up, I lazed around all day, drinking lots of water. I watched a bunch of videos about kidney stones. What a grim subject. I read my book – actually there was more dozing than reading. I went out at noon to do my own inspection of the garden. Everything looked good. But Stacey was right, there was a bit of frost damage on the tips of the kiwi vines. I took a short walk along the long border. The first oriental poppy of the season was open. It was sunny and I regretted not working all afternoon, but I thought it best to take it easy. When Stacey got home, I had her help me load all the seed trays and potted plants back onto the back porch stairs. Miriam and Hannah arrived home from Arizona later that evening. I'm glad they are home again.
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| The first oriental poppy. |
Wednesday was rainy. It was another do nothing day for me. I still didn't feel completely over my incident. I couldn't work outdoors and I had no ambition to do anything indoors. I just sat around and listened to music. If my body can't be engaged, at least my brain can be. I was in a Chopin mood. He's near the top in my Top Ten List of Composers. I made my way through the Etudes, Ballades, Impromptus, Mazurkas, Polonaises, Waltzes, and Nocturnes. I saved his two Piano Concertos for last because I love them the most. It was invigorating to immerse myself in his music, a perfect antidote to an otherwise wasted, rainy, boring day. Here is my favorite pianist, Sviatoslav Richter, playing my favorite Etude, Opus 10, No. 12 'Revolutionary.'
Thursday morning was taken up by a doctor's appointment. Miriam drove me over to Port Allegany as I didn't feel up to driving myself, plus I enjoy her company. My appointment was the usual, check this, ask that, give some urine, take some blood. They confirmed that I have a UTI. As for my cancer treatment, I told them I need to see some proof of progress, that all these things I'm doing are actually accomplishing something positive. I was assured that I'll have some answers when the doctor gets the results of my tests. In the meantime, more pills, new pills, and I go on doing what I'm doing.
Thursday was yet another rainy day. When we got home, I checked the forecast again, hoping it had changed. I needed some sunshine. But it looks like it's going to be cool and rainy for the rest of the month, except maybe, briefly, tomorrow. This has been the wettest May I can remember. It's both good and bad for the gardens. The plants and the weeds are growing rampantly. But it's too wet to work, to mow, to pull weeds, and do other needed projects. If it was warm and rainy, I'd go out and do whatever work I could, but cool and rainy sounds like pneumonia weather to me.
Thursday, after Stacey got home, we went on errands. We had to go to the pharmacy in Wellsville to pick up a new prescription for me. We dropped by the chapel. The Facilities Maintenance people had been there doing a deep cleaning and we wanted to see how it looked. They shampooed the carpets and polished the floors. It looks nice. Our little building is in pretty good shape. It's almost forty years old.
Friday rain again. Drat the weather service. I resented them being so right for once. The morning was very quiet. Stacey and Hannah were at work. Miriam was in school. I moped around a while feeling useless and frustrated. I stood at the window and looked at the garden sitting out there in the rain. I could see a hundred things I needed to, but could not do. The Thayns were set to arrive sometime during the day, so I did a bit of tidying. There wasn't really much to do, just fussy stuff in the kitchen. It made me feel like I accomplished something.
The peacock discovered that I have a tray of broccoli starts on the back porch stairs waiting to be planted. He loves broccoli. After several attacks, I ended up putting a motion detector by the tray to alert me of his approach. He's determined, but I'm smarter.
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| When the peacock discovers the broccoli. |
Finally, at 10:00, I couldn't stand being indoors anymore. I went out and planted sweet peas. The seeds I'd started all the way back in March were getting rootbound in their pots and needed to go in the ground. It was drizzling, but not enough to dissuade me. I planted them in the bed I'd prepared last week with bamboo trellising for them to climb on. The rain will actually be good for them, and they don't mind cool weather. They don't look like much now, but by the end of June they will be towers of green with fragrant, frilly flowers.
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| Sweet peas needing to be planted out. |
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| Sweet peas in their new bed. |
I came back inside, a bit damp, but feeling satisfied that I had done something in the garden. At noon, the rains stopped, the clouds cleared, and the sun came out. I rushed outside to welcome it. I took a walk out to the big garden for the first time this week. I could see that Monday night's frost has damaged the grape vines, but they'll recover. The lilacs, which are nearing their time anyway, also got nipped. I got my pruners and cut two bouquets to bring into the house. As I was doing that, the wind picked up, the clouds rolled in, and it began to rain again. My hour in the sunshine was just a tease, but welcome nonetheless.
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| The last of the lilacs. |
The Thayns arrived at 2:30 and the house jumped into life. There's always a happy rumble of talking, playing, footsteps going up and down stairs, doors opening and closing. We took advantage of a brief pause in the rain to accomplish two tasks. We finally finished planting the strawberries. They were not in good shape and I hope they revive and grow. And we put up the flags on the veterans' graves in the Raymond Cemetery.
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| Florence and Russell making pizza with Aunt Hannah. |
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| The children's table. |
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| The adult table. |
My doctor called during dinner. He'd got test results back and was concerned. Things were not as he expected. He called to make adjustments to the dosages of some of the medications I'm taking. He's hoping the infection I'm fighting has skewed the results. We'll see if these adjustments change things when I go back to see him in two weeks. I get a little anxious with all of this at times, especially when I get news like this. I always try to calm any anxiety because I understand that it has a negative effect on healing. That night, it felt comforting to be in a house full of family with all the happy noise and the love.
Saturday was the usual busy day in high gear. It began quietly, at least from 6:00, when I got up, to 8:00 when the first of the grandchildren, Russell, woke up. After that the day took off. The first event was driving down to Galeton for donuts. Every Saturday an Amish family has a donut wagon where they make and sell fresh donuts. Everyone got to pick one and we brought a bunch home. That was a happy start to the day.
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| The Amish Donut Wagon. |
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| Picking donuts. |
It was a cold and drizzly day, which made it hard to do anything outdoors, but we managed to keep ourselves entertained. At noon we went to the Foster's house for lunch. Sarah prepared egg salad sandwiches and turkey avocado rollups. We ate and then went into town to the matinee. We met up with the Shillig faction at the theater. We saw the new Lilo and Stitch live action remake. The kids enjoyed it. I've always been fond of the original cartoon, so I wasn't as impressed. I don't know if they think these remakes will do a better job than the originals, but if they do, they're wrong. This one lacked the charm and style of the cartoon. But it was a good way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon.
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| At the matinee. |
Dinner was tacos at our house. The Fosters joined us and stayed for games afterward. Then it was pre-Sabbath bath time for the youngest children and the evening slowly wound down to bedtime.
This morning, contrary to the forecast, was a bright, sunny morning. Very welcome after so many dreary, rainy mornings. I went out for a walk. It was chilly, but the sun felt good. Slowly the house stirred to life, starting with Russell. Breakfast was rolled out. Preparations for church got underway. The happy bustle of a Sunday morning.
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| Sabbath morning walk: across the front yard. |
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| Sabbath morning walk: the house from the edge of the meadow. |
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| Sabbath morning walk: bluebells and woodland azaleas. |
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| Sabbath morning walk: heading back towards the house. |
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| Sabbath morning walk: alliums and forget-me-nots. |
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| Sabbath morning walk: heading back to get ready for church. |
Church was good. We had forty-two people there, more than we've had in a while. But the difference was all the visitors. We children in Primary. The meeting went well. We're home now. Lunch is underway, a sort of chaotic feeding frenzy in waves. In a bit we are going out to visit cemeteries to see the graves of our ancestors. I love doing that.
Today is our wedding anniversary. Forty-one years ago, on May 25, 1984 at 5:25 p.m., Stacey and I were married and sealed for time and all eternity in the Los Angeles Temple. It was the beginning of our family. The last forty-one years have been an amazing journey together, some of it happy, some of it sad, fun, hectic, noisy, tiring, exhilarating, and most of all, full of love and joy. We've pretty much covered it all. And we're still going. We didn't know forty-one years ago that from that little beginning of just the two of us, there would be eight children, two son-in-laws, three daughter-in-laws, and nine grandchildren (so far). Of course it never really was "just the two of us" because we were already a part of two vast families that now were connected through us. It hardly seems possible that time has flown so quickly.
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| May 25, 1984 and May 25, 2025. |
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| Our family wedding dinner, May 25, 1984, Sylmar, California. |
Tomorrow will be a fun and busy day as we celebrate Memorial Day together. We're getting new chickens in the morning, going to a livestock auction at noon, and having a cookout in the afternoon. I think this nice weather will hold until then. The rest of the week will also be busy. And rainy. And time will rush on.
