Hope springs eternal — wisely or not

MIDDLEBURGH — At Lexi’s Country Café in the heart of downtown Middleburgh, we met for the first time, expanding our cycle of Tuesday breakfast venues to seven. Lots of seating at a couple of long tables, accommodating us nicely with coffee and morning nutrition, all good! Thanks, Lexi!

We are seven days into April now, a couple of days after Easter Sunday, a few days before Orthodox Easter, if you are so ecumenically minded, and six days after the spectacular moon rocket launch, which could be viewed last week from a particular swimming pool in Florida, or so it has been told by a couple OMOTM.

The question has been entertained: Has spring finally sprung?  Some evidence seems to indicate yes, namely those early little tiny flowers that pop up miraculously in response to what?

Longer days, warmer air, melting snow, somebody should look into this.

It is true that chickens are laying lots more eggs suddenly than they did just a few weeks ago, so something is afoot. Installing screen doors has been considered, but then a cold day like this one with flurries interrupts our positive thinking.

Now that the coldest days are behind us, we heard good news about energy savings from one of our members after installing a mini-split heat pump. Not only was the savings over the winter, compared to oil heat, calculated at around $1,000, there is great optimism that this device will be able to serve as an efficient air-conditioning unit in the summer months.

Lots of optimism here including that summer is coming. We got this old in part by being hopeful, wisely or not.

Old hands at new tech

New technology of all kinds, once we master it, is usually beneficial, despite our initial spontaneous resistance. Having a 10-year-old (or so) grandchild can bridge the gap for us sometimes when some new concept emerges requiring insights beyond our comprehension.

The kids seem not to belabor the thing like we do. Pushing the right button or icon or finding a selection on a phone is not much like changing brake pads or understanding what that ticking sound is in the engine. That stuff we mostly can do or at least intuit. 

We heard at the table this morning that new watches with SOS features apparently sensing abrupt movement such as falling or crashing are a thing now, just in time for us, potentially sharing location data with emergency services and sending a message to emergency contacts.

If they could give us a hug when we need it, but wait, maybe that will be in the next software update, or with a premium subscription.

Hearing aids seem to offer great promise, but also great prices, and sometimes great disappointment.  One among our number some time ago seemed to invent hearing aids, which were just dixie cups placed over the ears in such a configuration that they focused sound into ears grown lame with time and poor protection.

We, all thinking to profit from our seemingly common discovery, immediately thought we would be rich, but later discovered that ear-glasses were already a thing offered on eBay and maybe other places: little plastic cups that fit over ears, secured possibly by the bows of eye glasses.

Many ear-glasses were secured and distributed, and maybe some worn in other places, but they never made a big showing at OMOTM breakfasts. We have learned to tolerate and strain and project our voices in an acceptable manner, at least on Tuesday mornings, never mind the sometime lack of performance by pricey audiology offerings.

Cultural touchstone

We mourn and wonder at the loss from time to time of once ubiquitous phone books, wondering how something so common, omnipresent, and prolific, so totally depended upon, so part of our cultural milieu, could disappear. Poof.

Remember finding piles of them at your front door or mailbox, white pages, yellow pages, advertisements, the source of so much seemingly vital and necessary information? And yet, gone they are from the landscape, into google-world, smartphone-world.

Are they living in museums? What if you craved a phone book, what recourse exists for the technologically limited or resistant among us in our search for people, places, and services?

Verboten

It seems that we did dare to venture into the politically verboten realm of divisive thought, when we considered that other countries are now said by some to be recruiting our scientists based upon an environment considered unwelcoming. We can only hope that this is either not true or that such a bleak trend will reverse itself.

And, here, in Middleburgh, braving the flurries and the flakes and the grayness of the sky, glad to be amongst us all once again were: Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Ed Goff, Hon. Albert Raymond, Roger Shafer, Robert Schanz, Mark Traver, Glenn Patterson, Joe Rack, Jamey Darrah, Will Lichliter, Warren Willsey, George Washburn,  Frank A. Fuss, Frank Dees, Chuck Batcher, John Jazz, Dick Dexter, Gerry Cross, Jack Norray, Herb Bahrmann, Dave Hodgetts, Bob Donnelly, Allan DeFazio, John Dab, Paul Guiton, and me, a pretty good turnout for our first time at Lexi’s, where she and her two daughters managed us bravely, and very nicely indeed.