The Wonder of Books

 One of the wonderful women who opened my childhood to a world of stories, Beverly Clearly, recently left this realm at 104 years young.  Apparently I was not alone, as I saw very many touching tributes to her and her beloved characters like Ramona Quimby.  Like many, I also thought of Judy Blume who will always remain my first favorite author.  Both of these remarkable women and storytellers will forever be a piece of my childhood, and I am grateful for both of them.  I am also grateful for the love of reading that these special books had in my childhood.  I remember a lot of things, but I can't remember exactly which was the first Beverly Cleary book I read and in which grade.  What I do remember is in third grade, my wonderful teacher had a big tree along the wall with a cutout of our names.  There were a lot of branches, and the goal was to get to 125 books read by the end of the year, moving up the branches in increments of five.  I quickly jumped out to 15 books, ahead of all of my other classmates.  I moved steady up the tree the whole year, and I was the first student to make it to 125 books. I also had the highest number of books read the whole year.  That year, I wrote my own book, illustrated it, and my teacher helped me laminate the cover.  I sewed the pages together with yarn, took it to our wonderful school librarian, and she put it on display in our library.  I just always loved reading.  I love stories, whether creating them myself or reading others.  

I specifically remember the first time I met Judy Blume.  My fourth grade teacher started reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.  She read chapter one for us, and I was hooked.  It happened to be the weekend, so on a trip to our mall I went to Waldenbooks and purchased it myself.  I read the whole book that weekend.  Then came Superfudge, Iggie's House, Deenie, Blubber, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great and Are You There God, It's Me Margaret.  A few years later, Just As Long As We're Together.  Judy's books reminded me in many ways of my own life, and she had such a keen way of articulating the ups, downs, joys and challenges of childhood.  She never shied away from tackling subjects which were considered taboo, but were nonetheless important for children to think about and discuss.  Thankfully, Judy ventured into writing for adults, so we are never without stories from her at any age in our lives.

The other books in my later childhood and teenage years which defined those years were Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators.  When I was 12, I ventured into the library one summer and found The Mystery of The Moaning Cave.  I read it and couldn't get enough of the books.  I always loved mysteries, and these did not disappoint.  The creator, Robert Arthur, wrote mysteries for radio programs.  He imagined a world of children where they solved crimes without today's luxuries like a computer, GPS, tracking devices, etc.  I was taken back to southern California in the 1960s and 1970s where three intelligent, gutsy boys who tangled with art thieves, jewel thieves, international men of mystery and even royalty.  The books are still very much a part of my adult life.  I collected them around 15 years ago through the gift that is Ebay and still read them every summer.  In around a month or so, I will get them out and enjoy them on hot, sweaty summer evenings.  They are fun to read outside in your yard when it gets dark, or late at night like I used to do on summer nights.  

As an adult, I have read just about everything-biographies/autobiographies, mysteries, fiction, historical fiction, true stories, some crime novels and political memoirs.  I belong to a book club and we have had several hosts over the years.  One thing that they have had in common was that despite their own preferences, they always picked books which spoke to me.  I swear, there have been books which have helped me to answer some of the deeper questions we all have in life.  Some have provided healing for me and helped me to end what seemed like years of not being able to accept some of the events that I had no control over in my childhood and teenage years.  Within the last year, I have had the opportunity to read some excellent books which spoke to me in profound ways.  The first of those was Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano.  The protagonist in the book was the sole survivor of a plane crash.  While this was fictionalized, Ann found inspiration in the 2010 story of a young man who was the sole survivor of a plane crash.  She, like me, enjoys creating the end of stories for people who she finds curious.  The book explored the bigger questions of tragedy, healing afterwards, and about what path you find yourself on in this life because of it.  I recently finished Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey which spoke to me about the importance of knowing yourself, trusting your gut, and understanding which way to go in your life.  I have always considered myself to have a strong gut and understanding of myself, but sometimes life gets in the way.  What I learned from Greenlights is that when we do understand ourselves, it is the right path to follow. At this moment in time, I find myself in a very difficult position with my job. It was a reinforcement for me to know that I know what is best for me and to keep moving forward.  And then there was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  It is a book about a young girl whose mother was not able to properly take care of her in World War II Germany.  It is not a book for the faint of heart.  It is grueling and narrated by death.  But it also dares to go there and tries to give a voice to all of the horror of that time.  Most importantly, the protagonist in the books learned how to survive almost impossible circumstances.  Despite the theme of death, there was a lot of wisdom and hope of survival in this book.  There are many more I could write about, but those in particular really spoke to me in a strong and meaningful way.

I just love books.  When I go to a library or a bookstore, I walk out feeling invigorated.  I am excited and felt like I experienced the whole world.  You can experience the whole world in books.  You can see faraway lands, learn about cultures you never knew about, and still link the common humanity of all of us.  I enjoy biographies and autobiographies because I always love to learn about who people are, the experiences that shaped them, and how they find resilience.  I love fiction because someone had such creativity to birth characters and stories that entertain us or educate us.  I love stories which inspire me or provide me with some kind of wisdom.  Most importantly, I love the authors who have stories in them and need to tell them.  

THANK YOU to all of the wonderful authors who have touched my life.  You have given me so much. I had an author I really respect tell me that I have the soul of a writer.  Where does it go?  To be continued... 

The Good Side of Social Media

 There have always been two things that are true of me: 1. I have always been late to participating in trends and 2. I am a very private person.  Both of those things are not conducive to being a social media type of person.  I always perceived social media as more negative than positive.  I saw lots of fighting, opinions, and downright nastiness towards strangers. That isn't me off of a computer, and it is certainly not me behind screen, either.  Also, if you deal with difficult people in real life (as we all do), you may not want to subject yourself to that on an extended basis.  I did participate in message boards.  (For those young people reading, a message board was a place where you could interact with other Internet users lol.  Just kidding!  You probably know, but they are pretty much a thing of the past)  I enjoyed message boards because you talk about literally anything which interested you with other like-minded people.  Or not.  You might have shared a common hobby or interest, and all kinds of discussions broke out about other topics. Message boards afforded you privacy. If you chose to put pictures up of yourself, it was completely your choice. You could interact with others at your discretion.  I did meet some nice people over the years, but message boards started to die out in lieu of platforms like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.  I resisted for a long time, even though it meant I couldn't keep up with people like others do. It wasn't worth it to me to lose my privacy.  I did start reading some public pages, especially Twitter.  There were sportscasters in particular who provided up-to-date information that I appreciated.  It was nice to quickly find information.  Most of my family encouraged me to just sign up, never post anything, just get some information.

Fast forward to summer 2020.  I was grieving, having a really bad day, and I made a crazy for me decision.  I joined Twitter.  I joked with myself and said that people have done a lot worse.  I never intended to really post anything, just get some more streamlined information. But,  I got the opportunity to meet lots of nice Mets fans there.  I got to follow some of my favorite authors who have Twitter pages, I got much more up-to-the minute astronomy news than I ever did before.  And I started posting!  It was like the world's biggest message board.  Literally anything I could think of I could post about.  I have always enjoyed, even without a social media account, reading up-to-date reactions from people about TV shows, sporting events, and the news. On 9/11, I found myself drawn to the countless thousands of stories that were being posted, pictures of people at the World Trade Center during happier times.  It was like I could experience a collective experience with many others who felt the same way I did.  On January 6, I got on with thousands more, reading their real-time reactions to what was happening.  I really do like to connect with others over shared experiences.  I suspect a lot of other people do as well.  And I had a way to do it.  All of these things are good things for me.  I also decided going into it that anything in life is what you make of it.  If things got too intense, I reserved the right not to participate in discussions, etc.  And even though I am passionate about politics, I limit myself because lord knows I have enough discussions off of the computer.

I am not sure how what thread or who I was reading, but I came across a Twitter user whose goal was to end homelessness.  He had studied the issue over years and was in the process of starting a non-profit to put a program into place.  I have been working with the homeless population as well as those who are living in poverty since I graduated high school.  The first thing I did when I graduated was take a weeklong trip to New York City.  I got to see firsthand the lives of those living on the streets in the largest city in our country. A city with so much wealth, yet there was an out-of-control homeless population for whom little was being done. And we certainly have this problem in every city, including my own. Through my previous employment, I got to work with those living in poverty.  Things have only gotten worse over this past year.  And things will continue unless we have visionaries who really want to tackle this problem. I was not sure of the name of the poster, I knew his Twitter name.  I followed him, and I really looked forward to hearing his proposals. He kept people up-to-date on the progress he was making on his non-profit becoming a reality.  I thought that perhaps in the future he would be a voice that we would hear more from.  Perhaps our paths would even cross in real life.

On Easter morning, I was reading Twitter when a post came in from our advocate friend.  As it turns out, his real name was Scott.  I do not know his last name, just that his name was Scott.  Scott's sister came onto Twitter to tell us that he had passed away overnight.  Even though I never met Scott, I felt quite saddened by the news.  Scott had a real vision, and he was working to make this world a better place.  Nobody really knows much about him, and we all were wondering what might have happened.  What I do know is that Scott indeed was a real person like all of us, and I also know that he was a very dedicated son.  He took care of his mother very well, helping her get a COVID vaccination and took care of her when she recently broke her ribs.  Scott shared all of those experiences with us.  I shared my sadness with Scott's sister and now, there are over 2,000 messages on that thread.  Scott and his life touched many people, even though most of us only knew him via social media.  I ended up gaining a lot of followers that day as well.  They all seemed to be kind, caring people who shared the same values as Scott.  I am sad for Scott's family that they will always associate a holiday with his passing.  

The truth is, every single one of us is a living, breathing person behind a screen.  Whereas many people see a user online maybe as their screen name, or someone living far from them, we are not.  Even though some people see an opportunity to be a prick, most of us are glad to connect with others. We can meet people with common interests, and it can turn into something good.  It did for me.  Social media in a very backwards way helped me navigate a very difficult time in my life.  I had always wanted to start a blog, and now I am doing so.  The world is big, and having the ability to connect with anyone anywhere is nothing short of amazing.  I am so glad that I made that crazy for me decision to join Twitter.  It really has been good.  It helped me connect with wonderful people like Scott.

Godspeed, Scott.  You touched the lives of many people in ways you probably did not understand.  Rest assured, we will continue the work that you started in your life.  May you rest in peace, and your spirit will certainly live on.  

Reflections on a Pandemic Year

 March 12 or so, 2020.

Life was good.  I was doing my everyday thing.  I participate in a several nice groups and organizations locally, enjoying our get togethers.   I have met some wonderful new friends over the last couple years of my life, and every time I saw those great people our friendships deepened.  I shopped at my beloved little market, made my fun trips to my favorite CVS and RiteAid.  And the dollar store-the bane of my shopping existence.  I saw my family on a regular basis, and we always have a lot of fun getting together.  It is loud, noisy, and always entertaining.  Speaking of family, one of my relative's teams was in the thick of state playoffs, and that was very exciting as well.  They were just one of "those teams" that were magic.  The prospect of state championship was very real, and it was a great time.  Things like that just do not happen every day, and I was having a lot of fun being along for the ride.  The last time I was at the grocery store was that Tuesday.  The clerks at the cash register were wearing masks and wiping down the grocery conveyor belt after every customer left and the new one came.  I had the thought at the time that I needed to stock up.  This scary new, unknown disease COVID-19 was starting to spread around the United States, and it was only a matter of time before I knew it would appear in my area.  So, I did stock up and made sure that I had enough of everything because I really did not want to be out and about much.  Just three days later, it was announced that schools were being shut down.  The dominoes started to fall, only essential stores were allowed to remain open, workplaces deemed non-essential were shutting down as well.  The first COVID case hit our county, and life was brought to a screeching halt in our country.  On a national level, we never really experienced any kind of shutdown in my lifetime.  This new disease was being considered a pandemic in other parts of the world, but it did not quite meet that level here in the beginning.  My parents, now both over the age of 65, were being encouraged to stay home.  I did not see anybody during that time.  On a personal level, the idea of staying inside was not that foreign to me.  I went through a period of my health being poor and I was confined to my home during that time.  Yes, it sucks.  Not being able to get out and experience the world can bring depression and isolation.  I had to laugh at the people freaking out over the prospect of (gasp!) being home as some new concept.  I was more fearful than depressed or unable to adjust in the beginning.  I thought that there were going to be millions of people dying and that we were all at such a high risk that even the mere fact of touching something that came into your home was putting you at risk.  I washed down groceries that came in, I put packages outside in my yard before bringing them inside.  (I still do that and remarkably, none have been stolen!)  My luck had run out with groceries by that time, and I had to make a trip to the market.  I was absolutely terrified to go in.  That trip was still before they knew that COVID was a mouth borne disease.  I was impressed that we were all stopped at the front doors with a worker handing out gloves if we did not have them.  No masks, though.  It was surreal.  Some of the workers looked like something out of the movies.  The ones handling fresh food had on full helmets with what looked like pure white body suits.  It felt like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone.  We couldn't have Easter that year as a family, and that wasn't fun.  

As spring rolled into summer, the cases hit a new low here in my county.  This was in part because we were essentially shut down by the state.  As counties became safer, it was safe to start to partially open up again.  We were in single digit cases.  Believe me, there were no lack of complaints about having to postpone life.  My feeling was that I did not like it any more than the next person, but we were dealing with a deadly disease which you did not know who had and not.  I worked really hard to overcome my health issues, and I was unwilling to undo any of that.  I would wait it out.  We saw fighting over toilet paper, protests at state capitols, people becoming irate at cashiers making little over minimum wage and still needing to work.  I saw ugliness and selfishness in its purest forms.  I saw that people were relentless in it.  For them, their way of life was much more important than the health and safety implications.  I never understood it, and I do not to this day.  The first time I was out again with my family was Father's Day.  We all sat apart from each other with masks.  It was very unusual, though I was just glad to be around people.  Sure, I saw my neighbors and we were far away enough from each other that it was safe.  And my groups that I participate in moved onto Zoom.  It was very nice to be able to connect with people and at leas see their faces.  At my job, we got hit hard the first few months.  Among other things, we had contracts with several travel and tourism companies who suspended the work we did for them.  Other companies were furloughing or laying off people.  A co-worker of mine all but quit on the spot, and I was given her responsibilities.  That really saved me.  Things were slow, but not that bad.

And then came July.  Within a matter of 5 days, I lost one of the most significant people in my life.  It was unexpected and tragic.  Having to deal with something like that is bad under non-pandemic circumstances.  It was even worse at the time.  I had planned to spend the summer enjoying what was supposed to be my last summer where I am living now.  I read a lot during the summer and love to sit out under the stars at night.  I never "require" a lot of activities which I am surrounded by people.  I did get to see my family for major events like holidays and birthdays.  Other than that, I was pretty much by myself.  But it was okay, I had everything planned.  Life often does not go as planned.  And the summer was not quite over with its losses.  I had to cope with everything going on confined to four walls.  I was kind of zoned out and grieving, so perhaps I was numb to what was happening with COVID.

As the fall came around, it came into birthday and holiday times.  One of my family needed essential surgery a week after Thanksgiving, so we did not gather.  We did not feel it would be safe.  But a week before, we did have an impromptu Thanksgiving celebration with a full dinner.  We were able to gather safely for Christmas.  I did get to go on some of my favorite activity-light drives.  It seemed like this past year, people decorated their houses even more than usual.  Maybe they felt it was their way of providing holiday cheer.  Perhaps they had more time to devote to it.  At any rate, it was still a nice, regular part of the holiday season.  Nobody gathered for New Year's Eve, but I didn't care.  New Year's Eve is never a significant or meaningful holiday to me.

News of a vaccine got everyone excited. It was like there was light at the end of the tunnel.  As of the time I am writing this, they estimate over 80 million people have been vaccinated.  Unfortunately, cases are going up in my county as well as my state as a whole.  Why?  My guess is because we are still not ready to go into the wholesale life we once knew.  People are getting careless.  I am going to get the vaccine because I want to do everything I can to ensure my health and safety and that I can get back to the non-pandemic life I once new.  Note, I did not say "normal."  We have heard about "the new normal" and what that means.  I have never liked the word normal, anyway.  I want to get back to the life I knew before.

If I am being honest, we did not handle this pandemic well as a country.  I am quite disappointed.  I grew disillusioned at the selfishness I have seen in people.  It is not only selfish not to care about others, but it is also selfish when one believes they are above the rules or above suffering.  And I am quite concerned that the paranoia about some kind of conspiracy has caused the fringe people to become a movement.  I would have never expected us to have these kinds of mainstreamed levels of conspiracy theories in the 80s or even 90s.  This year has taken a toll on all of us in many different ways.  My hope as of this writing is that we continue to move towards our full way of living and that everyone does their part.  I hope this virus is taken seriously by all and that we can have some semblance of order.  I wish that those who lost jobs, businesses, and their economic freedom will have that restored to them sooner than later.  There is one thing I do believe....

Better days are ahead.  Happy Spring!  And here is to a time of growth and moving forward, just like the flowers and trees are growing again.   

I Am an ASMR Person (and we are not as weird as you think!)

 In third grade, one of my best friends "Katrina" ended up in line in front of me when our teacher checked our spelling books.  I have always treated my books like the pristine gods and goddesses they are.  Katrina, on the other hand, had a spelling book that looked like it went through a war.  The top of the pages were bent, but it allowed Katrina to page through her book efficiently.  Our teacher followed the same protocol each time--she brought us up one row at a time, checked our work, and we sat back down.  Katrina would page through that book, and I noticed my body would feel very relaxed when she did so.  It was so relaxing, in fact, that I would start to look forward to spelling check time because of the way I felt.  I felt like I was just going to fall over onto the floor.  My back and head and everything else had this sense of warmth flow over me.  Then, in around fourth grade we started getting our heads checked for lice.  Somehow I ended up in the back of the line.  I could see all of the kids getting their heads checked, and I was glad.  I ended up with that same relaxing feeling again.  Any time we had our heads checked, I deliberately waited until the end of the line so I could watch the other kids.  And then when it came time for me to get my head checked, I didn't want it to end.  I felt this wonderful sense of relaxation and a warm feeling.  Fast forward to my teenage years when half my life revolved around my hair.  I was at the salon every four to six weeks.  When I was a child, I think once someone shampooed my hair at a regular salon sink.  When I got tall enough and went to the adult salon, I was more than ready for a shampoo at the sink.  I couldn't wait.  I felt that same relaxation feeling as I did as a child, only amplified.  I got a sensation of what could best be described as the feeling one would get when you had heat stimulation in physical therapy.  I felt this nice sensation of a pricking feeling, but comfortable and pleasurable.  It was not painful, it came with the waves of relaxation I felt in my neck down into my back.  And then there was another time when we took lifesaving classes in 8th grade.  I was the lucky person who got to be the test crash dummy or what have you for the board you would be tied to if you injured yourself in the water.  Someone had to tie up my legs and my head.  The girl who tied up my head was moving my hair back and forth in the water as well as the gauze or whatever it was needed to tie up my head.  I felt like I had happy died and gone to heaven.  That feeling of water with my hair being brushed out of my face and being treated with very light movement was tremendous.  

Fast forward again to late 2010 when I got my first laptop.  (Yes, I was always behind the times.)  I remember one night relaxing on my sofa when I got the idea to watch some massage therapy videos.  I had occasionally gotten a professional massage and had ones from non-professionals as well.  It was always relaxing to me, and I got that feeling.  Of course, you were supposed to get the feeling of relaxed muscles, that is the goal of a massage.   But as I watched, I felt myself getting so relaxed that I almost fell asleep. My body relaxed, I felt like I was in a hypnosis kind of state.  A few months later, I saw a video that said "ASMR."  I had no idea what that meant, so I looked it up.  There was a name for what I had been experiencing since I was a child.  At that time, there were not too many creators or "artists."  It was a newer phenomenon.  I enjoyed the videos at the time.  I watched a lot of massage videos, and I particularly enjoyed videos devoted to hair play.  There were some people who made medical type videos as well--a nurse taking care of a patient, a spine or back examination.  Way back when, there was a creator named CuteBunny992 who decided to make a video of a relaxing cranial nerve examination.  That turned me onto watching medical videos, and I found myself extremely relaxed once again.  While I did not get the physical sensations of ASMR, I felt extremely and deeply relaxed.  My entire body could release its tension, and my thoughts were very slow, as if I was meditating.  I would say that I could enter a hypnotic state.  Being in a hypnotic state does not mean that you are staring at someone swinging a pendulum across your face and telling you to perform a certain behavior.  It means that you have entered a very deep state of relaxation.  You can be "suggestible" in that state, meaning you could possibly change your thoughts or have someone say something to you that might influence your behavior.  I have never desired that, though I do appreciate the relaxation element of it.  And we are also in a hypnotic state in certain stages of rest, both before and after waking.

I have been now watching ASMR videos, or at least those which cause me to have that deep relaxation state, for ten years now.  Sometimes they help me fall asleep.  Other times, they help me wind down after a busy day.  The most surprising to me is how I respond to medical videos.  Granted, I will not watch an open heart surgery, but it is beyond relaxing to me to watch for instance a physical exam.  Seeing a doctor or nurse examine someone's eyes, take their blood pressure, look at their throat, etc.  And I absolutely love hair play videos, they make me relax even more than a massage video.  I watch a lot of what is now deemed "unintentional" ASMR as opposed to the roleplays, which seemed to have exploded.  My next blog entry will be about those and how the movement has grown since its early days.  One of the reasons I wanted to do this particular topic is that those roleplays have gotten to be the face of what people think ASMR is. It is really not.  I would also like to note that what may be relaxing for me may not be relaxing for someone else.  That is the beauty of ASMR.  For example, I was at a hibachi restaurant with my relatives.  One of them started to stare when the server started to clean off the grill after the food had been cooked.  I could see that glazed look in her eyes that I get.  One of her children also experience the ASMR sensation and is drawn to Bob Ross videos.  I also want for people who do not experience this to know that while I love the ability to relax and the sensation is pleasurable, I do not go seeking it on a daily basis.  It just depends.  I really do not get the prickling sensation or the deep muscle relaxation unless someone is physically touching me.  I cannot watch the videos and get that sensation.  Some people claim that they can, and I have no reason to doubt that.  

What I experienced since my childhood could be now termed as a cultural phenomenon maybe?  Look for my next blog to talk about the movement in general and where it seems to be going.  For now, I hope I helped you understand what it is really about.  It is really not about people slurping soup or pretending to be a relaxing gynecologist (yes, I am sorry to say those ASMR videos do exist.)  We might be strange (ha!) but the natural occurrences of life seem to relax us.  Never a bad thing.  

The Day Racing Lost Its Way

 They say racing is in your blood.  My father and uncle were always racing fans, they grew up going to regional tracks seeing the likes of Ray Evernham come through the ranks.  We had a local dirt track here which my father took me to when I was a mere toddler, but it was bulldozed for a mall.  In a bit of schadenfreude to the fans, the mall is now bulldozed as well, but I digress.  I was concerned with childhood and teenage things and wasn't very fond of racing during those years.  But once I hit college, the things that my father brought to my life came to grow and I started watching all kinds of racing again.  I especially liked NASCAR.  I went to my first race at Dover in the fall of 1995.   I was surprised at how small and local it seemed compared to on television.  It seemed like being at just a big local track.  At the time, Jeff Gordon was exploding into the world of NASCAR.  People did not like him because he was not southern, he looked more like a metrosexual than a good old boy, and he was immediately successful.  The cult hero had always been Dale Earnhardt.  Dale, the man who did not finish high school, who looked like he belonged more on a farm than in a room full of businessman, but was the biggest personality in a group of drivers already filled with them.  Richard Petty was called "The King," but he was not the face of NASCAR.  The Intimidator raced with a lot of grit, didn't care who he pissed off to get there, and was tremendously successful.  Most people either loved or loathed him.  Me, I liked him.  I had a stronger affinity for the Ford drivers at the time, but I did like Dale.  He made things fun.  He was a seven-time champion in the sport, and only Richard Petty had done that before him.  There was a big rivalry brewing between Earnhardt and Gordon.  Earnhardt notoriously sent him a glass of milk at the annual awards show instead of alcohol.  Nobody was going to make Dale fade away into the sunset, especially not this young punk.

Dale continued his success, although he had some injuries.  One of the few things missing from his trophy case was a win at the Daytona 500, which happened in 1998.  He infamously took out Terry Labonte to a chorus of boos in the 1999 Bristol night race.  And Jeremy Mayfield took him on at Pocono in the summer of 2000 and won.  The announcers were saying, "The Intimidator got intimated" and most wondered how Mayfield garnered the courage to do it.  Maybe it was the drugs. (LOL totally other story)  There were signs, though, that the Intimidator was starting to slow down.  The "R" word actually came up.  I just learned earlier this week that he told his owner, Richard Childress, that he was considering it.  Richard dismissed it and encouraged him to continue.  Dale was eventually going to transition to being an owner of his team, DEI, where his son and longtime driver Michael Waltrip were driving for him.  He saw that as his future in the sport.  

February 18, 2001 started out like any normal day.  I always kind of held my breath with restrictor plate races.  They always had the tendency towards spectacular flips, crashes, and pileups.  Although nobody had ever been seriously injured during a restrictor plate track, some of the crashes were just plain awful.  For NASCAR fans, the Daytona 500 is the Super Bowl.  It was still an exciting day.  I picked Ward Burton to win that day.  He had always done well on restrictor plate tracks and was enjoying a lot of success at the time.  Later in the race, he collided with Tony Stewart. Tony Stewart took a nasty flip and I thought there was the possibility that he was injured.  But amazingly, he walked away from it.  In fact, he was in communication with his spotters and said that he was fine.  Obviously, he was not able to finish the race.  As long as he was okay, that was okay.  That particular wreck took out multiple cars, as they always do.  Towards the end of the race, Dale Earnhardt, his two DEI drivers, Sterling Marlin and Ken Schrader were around the top 5.  Michael Waltrip lead the race, and his brother Darrell was in the booth calling his brother to victory.  Darrell, who retired the year before, moved to a position as a Fox analyst.  The whole thing was very touching, actually.  Darrell was in tears in the booth, ecstatic, and so was his brother, who won his first race in spectacular fashion.  It was what this sport was all about-victory, emotion, first wins, families.  Behind him, there was what looked a routine slam into the wall that collected several cars, including the senior Earnhardt.  I didn't think much of it, nobody did.  That was, until I saw the ambulance taking Dale very slowly away from the track.  I am not a medical professional, so I did not understand quite was going on.  I suppose if there was life to save, they would have been speeding.  I thought perhaps it was a broken neck.  Back at the time, I went on AOL to the racing chatrooms.  For those of you kids, there used to be these things called chat rooms, where you could get together with people who shared your interests and just talk.  People in the chat rooms were already speculating about what happened to Dale.  I thought he may have broken his back, some people talked paralysis, and others said the inevitable.  They thought he did not survive the crash.  I just didn't believe it.  It did not look that bad, and Dale Earnhardt was not the type of driver to lose his life.  He was larger than life.  I got off, had supper, and decided I would put on SportsCenter at 7:00.  I missed the first minute but as I turned it on, either Alan Bestwick or Chris Economaki was on.  At the end, whoever it was said, "And that's the kind of man he was."  Was, dammit.  He lost his life.  I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.  I just couldn't believe it.  I told my parents and when I did, I burst into tears.  My father did not believe it, I told him to turn on SportsCenter to look for himself.  Then I called my brother, who was an Earnhardt fan.  He said that he knew when Ken Schrader said, "I don't know, I'm not a doctor" that something was seriously wrong.  I talked to some of my friends who were fans, one of them said, "I am barely alive."  I think that's how we all felt that night.  Even though we had the Internet at that time, news was slow to come out.  The Internet was not the literally 24-hour news leak as it is now with things like Twitter, Instagram, etc.  We would have to wait until the next few days to find out what happened.  It was a big deal.  It was the top story on the local news, the national news, etc.  

I didn't sleep well that night.  As the night went on, I felt haunted, really.  Rarely do you see the star of your sport perish in front of your eyes, millions of people of all ages.  Imagine trying to explain that to your children.  When I did fall asleep, eventually that 3 car crashing into the wall would pop into my dreams and I would wake up startled.  I just think we all collectively experienced that loss that day.  The days following were very somber.  It was said that Dale experienced a basal skull fracture and that with that type of injury, it was impossible to survive.  They talked about the impact, the fact that he had gone so quickly and died upon impact.  In ridiculous American fashion, there were death threats against Sterling Marlin, who tapped Dale's car and sent him sideways.  Dale's grieving son, Dale Earnhardt Junior, had to make a statement to the press telling people that death threats against anyone would not be tolerated.  The following Friday, I believe, was a beautiful memorial service for Dale.  I saw it on TV, somewhere around my house is the tape of it.  The one story that resonated with me was a deeply personal one.  They asked a youth minister to speak.  Dale's daughter Taylor, who was only 11 or 12 at the time she lost her father, was a part of the children's group through MRN.  They were taking a camping trip a year or two before, and they had to get Dale's permission for Taylor to go on the trip.  The minister was nervous to speak with "The Intimidator" as he said.  He was charged with keeping this man's daughter safe, and he had to make a case to Dale to go with him.  But when went into the room to see Dale, Dale was sitting quietly on a rocking chair.  He said we spoke father to father.  He was not the man that was bumping people around on the track, he was just a dad.  

The impact of Dale's loss was tremendous and can still be felt twenty years later.  Rarely if ever do you see the star of your sport lose their life for the world to see.  We just recently saw Tom Brady win a seventh Super Bowl.  Unless there is some kind of truly freak accident, we will not see a football player lose their life.  Michael Jordan may have gotten an injury or two over the years, but nothing like this.  NASCAR was under a lot of fire for the death of their star, their hero.  And there was a tragic precedent going into that year.  There were three drivers who were killed in the various NASCAR divisions in 2000, including the grandson of Richard Petty.  Young, talented Adam with the big Petty smile, died at the age of 19 after a crash at New Hampshire.  Kenny Irwin, another talented driver, was killed at New Hampshire in another instance later that summer.  In the truck series, driver Tony Roper was killed after a bad crash.  This should have been a wakeup call, but these were somewhat ignored.  After the death of Earnhardt, these things could not be ignored anymore.  A safety device was mandatory, and "safer" barriers were put into place so that the impact would be lessened if a driver went head first into the wall as Dale did.  As they stated on the race on Sunday, no drivers have lost their lives after Dale's death in the major divisions of NASCAR.  Last year's Daytona 500 we thought that Ryan Newman did not survive a horrendous crash.  Newman, a graduate of Purdue University with an engineering degree, worked with NASCAR on safer designs for cars.  He likely helped save his own life.  

I still think there is work to be done in safety.  Sunday night's final lap featured a fiery multiple-car crash where once again, you were hoping that everyone was okay.  I cannot honestly look at a crash like that and say that NASCAR has mastered safety.  There still needs to be a higher standard.  Dale would have wanted that.  As for Dale's legacy, there will never be another like him.  I think something was lost that day that never came back to the sport.  When you lose your star, the person who is larger than life, it takes something out of you.  Innocence is lost.  The sport lost its true north that day.  I guess it was a reminder that even the toughest of drivers and people are not above losing their lives. Everyone is invincible.  I will remember Dale fondly for his determination and passion for what he did.  He was driven to be the best, and he was.  He may be gone, but he will never, ever be forgotten.  The spirit of Dale Earnhardt will always be with us.  If I could tell children who never who never saw him race about him I would say, "He gave it everything he had in this life.  You do the same."  

The Impersonalization of Society

 You are reading this.  In my ideal world, you and I would be having this conversation in person.  We might be sitting in a small group, or maybe just face-to-face, but we would most definitely be in person.  Our country is still reeling from last week's attack of the Capitol.  Sadly, a lot of us knew this day was coming.  We started the long and slow descent into what culminated last week.  In 2020, parts of our country were literally set on fire.  There has been a slow burn of incivility, hostility, and anger brewing long before January 6.  Why?  There are no simple explanations as to how we became a split and hostile country.  I believe that there is not one clear reason; it is a number of things.  One of those things has been happening for a long time, and that has been how impersonal our society has become.  

My first job, like many, was at a retail store at the mall.  Believe me, there were times when civility did NOT reign supreme.  People were rude to me, demanding, yelling, treating me with disrespect.  They did the same thing to other shoppers-stealing their place in line, cutting in front of them, fighting over items, etc.  They trashed dressing rooms and did not bother to clean up after themselves, and occasionally they stole things from the store.  But at least we were doing that among each other.  Now, brick and mortal stores are struggling to survive.  As a teenager, I walked the malls on a Friday night with my big hair and shopped at Phar-Mor for my hair spray and at the Deb Shop so I could look good walking down the mall on a Friday night.  I drove by one of our two malls a few months ago, and it is laying in a pile.  It is gone, because people do not go to malls anymore.  They shop online.  Is it easy?  Yes.  Can you shop in your pajamas and not have to fix yourself up?  Yes.  Are you losing the ability to go out and shop because of that?  Yes.  And it is not limited to just retail stores.  You can purchase your groceries online and have them delivered to your house.  Or, you can pay a small charge and someone will shop for you, bring the groceries to your car, and you never have to get out.  You can look like an absolute slob and the only person that will see you up close is the person bringing the groceries to your car.  Now, I hate long lines at grocery stores and I hate big grocery stores.  But I also found a nice little locally owned market where I shopped before the pandemic started.  And when it is safe for all of us to go out again, I will happily shop there.  They know me by name, I know their names, too.  They know what I get when I go to the fresh food counter and do not even have to ask.  I feel happy every time I go there.  

The other part of our society that has changed, and which is more bothersome to me, is the increase of socialization online.  We are meant to be social creatures.  From an evolutionary perspective, our lives depend upon it.  Our survival before electric, shopping, etc. was to rely on each other.  We are still that way, but many groups of people are not gathering in person as they should.  That is especially true of our young people.  When we got together as teenagers, we were loud.  We were giggly teenage girls, or loud boys, sometimes a combination of both.  We liked going to the mall, or to the movies, or wherever.  There are no malls to go to anymore. I see teenagers now in my neighborhood just sitting around maybe on somebody's patio and all of them are on their phones.  They are not talking to each other, just on their phones. If you want a movie, instead of going to the movie theater you can just order it on demand and view it any time of the day or night you decide.  This is going to continue after the pandemic.  It is just not good for anyone's social development, especially those of our young people, to learn how to socialize using online platforms.  The best may be Facetime, where you can actually see people's faces, hear their tone of voice, etc.  But talking by text messages, by Twitter, etc. is not the best way to communicate.  The other concern is that anyone's online presence is as best as they allow themselves to be seen.  Psychologists have voiced their concerns that people can create any persona they want.  Look at me eating at the finest restaurants, on my vacation in the French Riviera, with my new car, etc.  You do not ever have to put pictures up of you and your spouse fighting, how lousy you look in the morning, when your child fell in a pool of mud, when you spilled a gallon of milk on your kitchen floor.  Anyone can create a false self, and social media has exploded that ability.

All of these things combined have created a monster, in my opinion.  The monster is that because we interact less and less with people, we somehow are either forgetting or intentionally treating others as if they are not human.  I talked about retail, and I was on the receiving end of that.  It is nothing new for people to treat someone they do not know without respect.  But you were always going to have "those people."  Now, it is a whole new level of disrespect.  Before platforms like MSN closed their comments, I would see things like "go kill yourself" "you can die now" "go throw yourself into the sea" and all sorts of other wishes.  Would you REALLY speak to someone you know like that?  In all of my days working with the public nobody ever said that to me.  But yet people think it is okay to speak to someone they do not know like that just because they can.  They do not see it as having any consequences.  The truth is, there is always someone on the other side of the screen and that person does have feelings.  A friend of mine used to say to me, "You can't take anything online seriously."  I disagreed, and I still do.  Very sadly, we have seen an increase in the suicides of teenagers in the digital era.  If a student was being bullied in school before the digital age, they could go home at 3:15 and generally not have to deal with it until the next day.  These days, you can literally never get away from it.  And it is with tragic consequences.

So, what can we do?  I enjoy interacting with others online, especially with things like sports.  That does not mean, however, I will not go to events in person.  I am very grateful for platforms like Zoom, because I can still gather with every single group and organization I am involved with until we can get back in person.  But as soon as we can, I will be there in person.  There is still nothing like in person contact.  I would hope that when we can all safely gather in person again that many will make a concentrated effort to socialize and be among people.  Social media is not going away, but we all have a choice about how much we allow into our lives and how much time we devote.  I believe that some people have to understand that social media and online really do not take the place of face-to-face relationship building.  I believe that parents and educators MUST teach our kids that at the end of the day, you need to be out playing with your friends instead of behind a screen sending messages back and forth to them.  I only have one social media platform and this blog.  Since I enjoy writing, I would be doing it anyway.  But that's it, and I generally do not go online at night unless something major is happening and I want to see live reaction.  

The final question is: where did we start losing respect for others, and how do we get that back again?  I am not sure that there are any easy questions to that.  But we all have to make a choice.  The easiest choice, and the easiest solution is that we must realize that unless someone has proven otherwise, everyone is worthy of our respect and fair treatment.  I do not believe we are under any obligation to be pleasant or accommodating to those who would abuse or mistreat us.  But someone having a different opinion does not warrant wishing horrible things upon them or speaking to them without respect.  Someone who does not know you is still deserving of your respect.  You think you can yell and be abusive to the clerk at your local convenience store because you don't know them?  No.  They are there to provide a service to you, and they deserve your respect as long as they are being respectful to you.  When we start to remember these things as a society, I do believe things will start to turn around.  Be a blessing to someone today, not a blowhard.  

The Friends We Never Meet

 Apparently, our country (and the world) started becoming obsessed with celebrities around fifteen to twenty years ago.  I suppose with the advancement of the internet, tabloid TV shows, etc., we were told that people couldn't get enough of their favorite stars-pictures, gossip, news.  I am not one such person.  Like every other human being, I have my favorite actors, actresses, athletes, musicians, etc. and I will pay attention to what they are doing.  I do not "obsess" about them, I expend very little of my time finding out what they are doing.  But apparently many other people do.  We are told that from an evolutionary standpoint, we became more obsessed with celebrities because when we "see" someone, we associate them with our tribe.  That makes a little more sense to me.  While you will never find me picking up an US Weekly magazine, and I would rather be sentence to solitary confinement than to be forced to watch Entertainment Tonight every weeknight, I do have a certain fondness for people I "see" on a regular basis.  And each of those people have made a positive contribution to my life.

Jeopardy in its current form started in the fall of 1984.  I was in elementary school.  My father grew up with the Art Fleming addition, and he was thrilled to see it back.  He and I would watch it every night; sometimes I would be doing my homework, and other times just trying to follow along.  I would learn something new each night, even if I didn't understand everything.  And then there was Alex Trebek-a kind, friendly man who managed to put the players at ease.  He was funny at times, gracious and compassionate when someone blew a Daily Double or bet everything and lost.  Alex was soft-spoken yet wise; never scoffed at stupid answers.  Jeopardy became a staple in the lives of millions of viewers, and it stayed strong well into the 1990s and beyond.  Sitcoms like Mama's Family featured their characters appearing on the show, often to poor results.  But no other sitcom could compare with perhaps one of the most famous Cheers scenes of all time.  Cliff Clavin decided to become a contestant on Jeopardy and was killing with $22,000 going into Final Jeopardy.  None of the other players could catch him unless he did something stupid and bet everything.  Well, Cliff did.  He did not know the answer, so he wrote, "Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen?"  Who doesn't remember that?  I occasionally joke and say this when I don't know the answer to something.  Jeopardy and Alex were one and the same; and they perservered for over thirty years.  Each night coming into our living rooms, Alex entertained us, taught us new things, introduced to many memorable contestants.  One of my all-time favorites was Eddie Timanus, a sportswriter and 5-time champion on the show.  He was born with retinoblastoma, and he was the first blind contestant to appear on the show.  Just recently, contestant Burt Thakur told Alex that he helped him to learn English as an immigrant.  I don't think that the impact that Alex made not only in the world of entertaiment, but in the world in general can be understated.  

In March 2019, Alex Trebek announced that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  I knew from other celebrities such as my favorite television father Michael Landon and Patrick Swayze that the diagnosis was not a good one.  But Alex said that he would fight through this, and he did.  He sought treatment and said that he was in remission a few months later.  Alex went back to hosting Jeopardy and resumed life as normal.  We all admired him because of his determination.  But eventually, the cancer returned.  Alex still continued to host the show, and it meant more to everyone.  We knew that each episode with him was a bonus gift.  And in the ugly year that was 2020, Alex lost the fight with his pancreatic cancer.  I am writing this on the morning of January 8, 2021.  Tonight will be Alex's last show.  It is going to be a goodbye to a longtime friend.  Alex was our friend.  Like most viewers, I never got to meet him.  But he was a friend indeed.  He came into our living rooms every night and helped us learn, made us laugh at times, and was a constant in many of our lives.  Like I said, I started watching in elementary school.  He was around during my teenage years, when I graduated from high school, college, ventured into the world of adulthood.  No matter what was changing, Alex was there every night.  And it wasn't just Alex.  There are many people who we never meet who make our worlds better.  My parents grew up watching the Tonight Show.  I was always a bit young for the Carson era, but I came of age with Jay Leno.  I would watch him every night after he started hosting.  My life got very difficult during my early adult years.  There were days I had absolutely nothing to smile about.  But at the end of the night, Jay made me laugh.  He made us all laugh for over twenty years.  When he announced his retirement, I felt like I was losing a friend.  Someone who makes you laugh and makes your life easier is a special person, and he did that for me.  He tried to help us as a country laugh and make our load a little easier after difficult events such as 9/11.  And there was Tom Brokaw.  Tom was the face and voice of news for me ever since I was young.  I always preferred him to the other broadcasters at the time, although ones like Peter Jennings were equally as talented.  I will never forget the morning of 9/11 when I turned on NBC.  Nobody knew anything at that time; everyone including the reporters were just trying to get information.  I don't thin anyone anticipated both towers falling.  After the North  Tower fell, Tom's words were chilling:  "The World Trade Center is...no more."  Tom brought us news and told us the stories we needed to hear as citizens.  And he was with us on a very dark day in our history, trying to help us navigate what seemed impossible at the time.

So yes, people that we see on our televisions do make an impact in our lives.  They do many things for us, whether it is to entertain, or to inform, they are our a part of our lives.  If someone makes your life better, they can be considered a friend.  Anyone who can help us forget about our troubles for a little bit, or make our complex lives a little easier can be considered a friend.  Soon I am going to say farewell and Godspeed to our friend Alex Trebek.  Goodbye, my friend.