Five topics

Hayter for June 4, 2023

                                    “Something for everyone”

 The most intuitive reader of my articles was Ruby Parker, Virginia Pliler’s mom. That woman was like a mother to me… a mother who could tell from the first sentence of an article whether or not she would read the rest of it. That woman’s keen foresight saved her a few minutes each week.

I don’t know how many Ruby clones may be out there, so I’ve decided to cover several topics in one article. If you don’t like the first one or two, maybe you’ll go for the third one. With that in mind, reposition your reading glasses, and let’s do this thing.

          Topic 1, DMV: There comes a time in your life when you’re forced to do something dreadful. It might relate to a visit to a doctor or dentist, a need to borrow money from someone, or, in my case, the need to have my driver’s license renewed IN PERSON! It took me six years to get past my last experience.

          But once again, I was faced with the DMV dread. I arrived with a large envelope containing my birth certificate, passport, and a 1099 tax form which was to be used in place of my hidden Social Security Card. I also included a two-page completed form that explained my life history.

Last week when I arrived, I thought I was in the wrong place. There were only about 10 autos in the parking lot. I walked inside at 10 a.m. to find only 12 people in a room with 50 foldout chairs. In the words of AC\DC, I was Thunderstruck!

          A gentleman at the entrance asked me some questions and then helped me key in some info on a screen. I then sat down and waited for someone to call out 0046. I then went around the corner and handed over my documents. The passport was unnecessary due to the birth certificate.

          I realize you’re curious about how all of this magically took place. It had to do with the public being forced to make appointments. My appointment time was 10:15. I entered the room at 10 and walked out at 10:27.  The greatest innovation in the history of in-person driver’s license renewals is the APPOINTMENT! To add to my joy, was a form I received that said my next in-person visit would be in 2031.

          Topic 2: “Jericho”, the biblical city located on the West Bank in Palestine, is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world.” Apparently, after the city’s walls came tumbling down during the time of Joshua, someone managed to put ‘em back up.

          One other thing about Jericho is that it has the lowest elevation of any city in the world.  It’s been around for at least 11,000 years, has a population of about 20,000, and has an elevation of 800 feet below sea level. Share that with someone at church and you’ll likely hear, “I knew that.”

          Topic 3: Gordon Lightfoot is among the greatest singer-songwriters there has ever been. A few days ago I listened to at least 20 of his songs on YouTube. Practically every song was a ballad of some kind. The man had so many stories to tell.

          During some performances, he would explain the story behind certain songs. But, there was one that he didn’t take the time to explain. He simply started a tune on his guitar and the audience immediately caught on and cheered. Then he sang:

“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call 'Gitche Gumee'

The lake it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy”

          Yep, the “Edmond Fitzgerald”. The lyrics to each one of his songs have dozens of lines. I can’t imagine how he was able to remember all the words, much less the notes. – Take some time to catch some of his songs on YouTube.

          Topic 4: I recently came across the word “Wednesday” in an email. Immediately it struck me how weird the word is. I think the Brits pronounce it -- Wed-nez-day. We, being Americans, prefer Wenz-day. You ask me, that’s a slap in the face of the Vikings whose god was named Wodan. The Germans spell it Woden. The Romans, spell it “Mercury”.

The Romans called the fourth day of the week “Mercuri Day”. That’s not nearly as good as we Americans who know it as “Wenzday”.

Topic 5: We know more about the surface of Mars than we do about our own ocean floor. That indicates that it’s easier to send a satellite with a camera 200 million miles into the vacuum of space and take pictures of an entire planet than it is to come up with a few massively thick-skinned submersibles to scope out the bottom of our oceans.

          Thus far, we have mapped out only 20 % of Earth’s ocean floors, and have identified 240,000 underwater species. Scientists calculate that 91% of the animal life in our oceans is yet to be detected. How do we know that Godzilla’s not down there? How about Aquaman? Books have been written and movies made of the stuff that might be swimming around at the bottom of the sea.

          I say, wake up world. Smell the toast! It’s too late for me, but somebody has got to search the floor of our oceans and travel outside our solar system to visit, uh—I don’t know. Outside the solar system may be a bit of a reach, even for your grandchildren. Of course, mankind did learn how to curtail the horror behind driver's license renewal.

          That being said, I appreciate those of you who have hung in there with me, during this read. – To you I say, “Onward and upward!” – I think it was Underdog who came up with that. I’ll save him for another time.

 

hayter.mark@gmail.com                         end

 

Dictation by computer

Hayter for May 28, 2023

“An attempt at speaking my article”

          Typing was among the most valuable courses I ever took in high school. At the start of the class, I was fairly sure that a manual typewriter would be too mentally challenging for me. That I would forever be a hunt-and-peck typist.

My first day with the manual-typing hunk of steel proved me right. The amount of pressure needed to type the word “the” almost brought me to tears. The next day in class, the typing teacher moved two girls and me to another typing class that had electric typewriters! I never knew why. Nor did I care to question it.

The electric typewriter was friendly as all get out. By the end of the semester, I was a fairly decent typist. Today, you might say that I’m great. – I repeat, “You might say that—” Oh, forget it.

Right now I’m a worn-out mess. This evening Kay walked into my study, looked over my shoulder, and said, “Did you ever think about dictating your articles to your laptop?” I thought it was a joke, so I said, “No. Nor did I think to order a pizza with my shoe phone.”   

Kay didn’t even smile, but she did point to the symbol of a microphone hidden at the top of the screen. Below the symbol was the tiny word “dictate”.  I was flabbergasted. So much so, that I dictated the first two and a half paragraphs of this article in only a couple of hours.

My computer dictation machine is fairly smart when it comes to keying spoken words. But when it comes to capitalization, semicolons, quotation marks, tabs, paragraphs… you’re going to have to memorize a book of codes.

Say I want to type the symbol “&”.  I’d have to say “ampersand”. I might get it on the fourth try, but if I wanted to include quotation marks, I would have to learn French.

I thought it sweet of Kay to suggest I try the grueling, microphone-dictating program, but it’s not happening. My manual-typewriter teacher could’ve told Kay that. -- “Mrs. Hayter, your husband is a bit slow at catching on to things.” Kay would reply, “Duh.”

          Well, at least I can still type fairly fast. Of course, I’m sure it’s not called “typing” anymore. Keying? Keyboarding? I haven’t taken any high school or college courses in a good while, so I don’t know what has replaced the word “typing”. Regardless, I am fairly certain that I’ll not live to see an effective computerized dictating program that requires no instructions.

          And, yes, I know what you’re thinking. (Work with me here.) You’re wondering what I intended to write about before I got into the dictating debacle. Well, it was something deep. Way down there. It involved Eternity/Infinity. I’ll wait for another time. You’ll love it.

But, rather than delve into everlastingness, I’ve decided to talk about the slew of school buses and inflatable bounce houses that I saw last week as I drove past McDade Park in Conroe. Do you have any idea how talented the bus drivers with CISD are? The parking lot at McDade doesn’t have enough room for a single school bus to turn around, yet there was a line of about 10 buses each with their front bumper practically touching the rear bumper of the bus in front of them. I wanted to take a picture, but the blaring horn coming from the pickup behind me was recommending I not. And, no, I don’t blame the driver.

Bounce houses! They had a giant clown head, ship, castle, and several other bounce themes. There must’ve been eight of those things. I’ve never actually been inside a bounce house. They weren’t invented when I was a kid. They probably had one at Disneyland, but Dad never saw fit to drive his family of nine to California during his two-week vacation. He could only manage our summer trips to Bristow, Oklahoma. We really enjoyed them because, at the time, we didn’t know enough not to.

When I was in elementary school, it was the sixth graders who got to go to Champion Park for their end-of-school picnic. The school district wouldn’t supply the buses so several parents volunteered to haul our buns there. I remember Elsie Hayter drove me and four other kids to the park. The park had a large swimming pool and a super picnic area. We must’ve had a great time because I still remember some of it.

I wonder if the kiddos at McDade will remember their experiences when they get to be my age. Possibly only the ones whose Mom or Dad was one of the bus drivers.

Of all those at the picnic, I thought most about the teachers. You know, the ones who had to plan and supervise the whole thing. A fun time for the kiddos, but a lot of work and responsibility for the teachers. Some of them had a blast. Others developed a new twitch or two. 

I would’ve told you more about my end-of-school days, had my computer-dictating experience not held me captive. I would’ve missed my deadline by a week, had I dictated this entire article.

Yep, the computer microphone can pick up words but requires codes for all other rudiments of grammar.  – Hey, this has been an experience for both of us. We’ll get over it in time. Obviously, it will take me a bit longer than you.

 

hayter.mark@gmail.com                         end