That Fall Feeling

Our boys are well into their thirties with lives of their own, and so it's been many a year since we had to gather backpacks and books and binders and push them out the door and towards the classroom. It's been even longer since my parents did the same for me, with the only real difference from our children's experience being that we had brown bags instead of insulated paks. As for kids today, I have no idea what those waiting at the top of their driveways and on neighborhood corners do for lunch, but if there's any food in their backpacks I bet it's nestled next to something electronic that we never even dreamed of.

While there may be a few weeks differential depending on where you live and what level cohort we're talking about, it's that time of year when students young and old return to school. They wrap up their summer activities, be it work or play, travel or staycation, and reorient their minds from leisure to study. For some it's an easy transition, for others it's more of a forced march. The hope is that they make the pivot with a minimum of anxiety and fuss, and fall back into the good habits that they need for academics (reading, studying, going to bed early) as opposed to the bad ones they enjoyed all summer (binge watching, playing games, staying up late).

For sure it's a physical adaptation that is driven by a different and regimented schedule. But it's also a mental adjustment, with the need to plan and focus and cope with demands and assignments in new (and hopefully interesting) topics. It has caused kids of every age to lay awake at night and stress out about the challenges and how to cope with them. 

Speaking for myself, it's been well over 40 years since I was in that position. Even if you count the not dissimilar transition to a new job, it's been several decades since I had that experience. To be clear, the psychological impulses that accompany those events are hardly a learned physical skill. They are not the same as riding a bike or tying your shoes or driving a car, procedural memories we rarely forget. And yet that unconscious manufacturing of anxiety come Labor Day is engrained in me as a muscle memory I can't seem to shake.

I don't know if it's the shift in the weather from hot days to cool nights. Maybe it's the change in the calendar from August to September. Perhaps it's the explosion of back-to-school ads, or the startup of football, or the darker mornings. Whatever it is, there is something in the air this time of year that causes me to start to tense up as if I am  walking into Miss Maranchick's third grade class for the first time. 

It's not like I have anything seasonal to be worried about at this juncture in my life. Quite the opposite: knock wood, my health and the general health of my family members is good. We have been reasonable stewards of our finances, and whether by luck or skill or a combination of both have gotten to the point where that seems well in hand. I'm not bucking for a promotion this year, or hoping I made the team, or worried I won't get the grades I need to make Honor Society. I know who I am, what I can do, and am granted a fair amount of deference from those around me based on my years and accumulated experience and knowledge. Nothing should be making me anxious. And yet at this time of year I still often go to bed with the same feeling I had when I wasn't sure I answered homework problem #5 correctly as to whether the train going to Cleveland from Goshen at 70mph would beat the one going to Chicago traveling at 60mph.

The philosopher George Santayana famously said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. My problem is exactly the opposite: I remember those back-to-school feelings so well that I shall never forget them, even when there is no school to go back to. Luckily the feeling fades fast, even if I don't have the consolation of knowing that my mom put a Ring Ding in my lunch bag next to my bologna sandwich.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford still has a part of his brain that is eight years old. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Hometown Tourist

The request came to meet on site in New York City on an August afternoon. As it turned out the meeting and the trains didn't quite line up. It was well past rush hour, and they were running on a more leisurely schedule. As such, it made sense to take one an hour or so earlier than the next, as that one would have me rushing to get to the location just in time. It wasn't like I had any shopping or other business to take care of in the vicinity where I'd be. But the weather was nice and there was nothing else pressing on my book, so off I went. 

I've been to the city on countless occasions, usually enroute to a specific destination at a specific time. But it's easy to forget that people come here the way we go elsewhere. Regardless of the neighborhood, it's an amazing place to just walk around and soak in what is happening. We so rarely play tourists where we live, it's easy to forget that people plan their entire vacation just to do what we do daily.

So with an extra hour or so to kill I took on that persona, zigzag-ing my way across town. In one little vest-pocket park I stopped to hear an opera singer doing a lunch-time aria. A few blocks further was a field with a spirited soccer game in progress (the blue team was much better than the red). I stopped to look at an art exhibition that popped-up in an unused storefront. All things that existed before, but which I would have just hustled by or missed if I was enroute to an appointment.

It being lunchtime I ducked into a little deli to get a sandwich and a drink. I walked out with the intention of strolling to a bench in the shade. Wandering a little further I realized that I was by a stairway to the High Line. Now fifteen years old, this mile and a half long elevated park is built on the abandoned tracks of the New York Central Railroad. It winds up from the meatpacking district to 34th Street, and has become a model for urban restoration around the world, justifiable so. So up I went and strolled along until I found an open bench to sit and eat and watch the parade.

The linear park's notoriety means that it is listed in every NYC guidebook in every language. Just as Broadway and the Empire State Building are on many a tourist's wish list, so too is the High Line. Being an outdoor attraction, in good weather it is a magnet, and after a week of rain it was a spectacular day indeed. The mid-summer sun was shining and the humidity was relatively low. For sure lots of people were at the Metropolitan Museum or down at the 9/11 Memorial, but if your bingo card had "take a walk in an urban oasis in the middle of the Big Apple on a brilliant day" and you were where I was, you were a winner.

If you are a local and its route runs from where you are to where you have to be, it might actually be faster than coping with the city streets. But it was obvious that the majority of traffic was from out-of-towners. The tells were plentiful: guidebooks for sure, but also backpacks worn in front and a leisurely pace. Not talking or thumbing a message on their phones with heads down, but rather holding them at the ready to snap a picture. As the bench I found in the shade just happened to be by an architecturally interesting building, at least 40% of the people stopped and clicked away. It's not that New Yorkers don't take pictures. They just don't take pictures like that.

I was also struck by the dynamics of the different groups. Young couples strolling and stopping to take selfies with the building in the background. Lots of kids, little ones ranging in front of their parents, older ones hanging behind. The parents uniformly had a delighted look mixed with vigilance, the kids not always. Smaller ones seemed to be enjoying it, being allowed to walk ahead and be the first to see plants and people and buildings. Many of the mature ones trailing behind their guardians just looked bored as though they had been sentenced to take a walk with their parents. I wondered if our family looked the same back in the day with our kids in Rome or Paris.

Glancing at my watch, I realized I had to get going. Just then a larger group of people happened by, with one kid limping and some blood on his shin. A woman in the group told him to sit on my bench so she could take a look and clean it up. I hopped up to give them some space, and offered some clean napkins I had leftover from my lunch. The woman smiled, and thanked me, then took a first aid kit from her purse that would have done any EMT proud. You're definitely not from around here.

I tossed my trash (including the clean napkins) and walked back down into the workaday world. I quickly slipped back into my usual roll, slaloming quickly down the sidewalk to my destination. But a little of the other "me" rubbed off as well. I got to my location a few minutes early, and rather than go inside I walked past the entrance, and leaned against a storefront to watch the people walk by. As that consummate New Yorker Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot just by watching."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford takes random walks whenever he can. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Bugged

One of the joys of living where we do is the abundance of wildlife of all types. Nothing too dramatic: we're not talking African safari or Alaskan cruise level menageries. Rather, there's a seemingly endless supply of squirrels and chipmunks, a constant stream of deer, and a wide variety of birds that frequent our neighborhood. It's not uncommon to find wild turkeys walking around the yard along with the occasional fox, and bats flitting above. There have also been numerous sightings of wandering bears in the area, though not in our backyard. And I was startled when a tree frog popped out of our deck umbrella and settled in as a guest at an outdoor dinner party. 

But by sheer numbers nothing compares to the range of insects that buzz, crawl, fly and hover whenever we walk about, and that's hardly surprising. Most authorities agree that there are more insect species that have not been described than those that have been previously named. According to scientists at the Smithsonian, the number of living species of insects has been estimated to be 30 million, and cumulatively they have the largest biomass of any land-based animals. At any time, it is estimated that there are some 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive. 

This in spite of the fact that there is widespread concern about the decline in specific insect populations (bees, butterflies and dragonflies to name a few). As a critical part of our food chain, specifically agricultural production, the decline has broad implications. Beyond pollinating the plants we eat, they also break down waste in forest soil and form the base of a diet for other animals. You can blame habitat loss, pesticides and climate change, but the fact is that being bugged less is not necessarily a good thing. 

Like almost everything else however, unless you are an entomologist, the macro trends are hard to follow and seem distant. Meanwhile, if you are a civilian, that wonder and worry is more likely replaced by annoyance. I understand that mosquitoes provide a valuable food source for bats, frogs and fish, but do they have to spend their off hours on my deck? Recent figures indicate that there are more than 200 million insects for each human on the planet, and at least some of them seem to have been given my direct number. 

Especially in the summer months I routinely take walks, usually at the end of the day. These are hardly in the deeply forested Green or Blue Ridge mountain ranges, nor even in nature preserves around me. Rather they are on neighborhood roads and streets, though admittedly abutting the plentiful green spaces that are in our area. And more often than not, whether I go solo or with my wife or a friend, I am also accompanied by a bug.

I say "a bug" though sometimes he or she brings a friend. It's almost as if they are waiting for me at the top of our driveway or as I exit my car, and fall into step next to me. I rarely get a really good look other than to note that they are tiny gnat-esque creatures who seem to enjoy buzzing about. They don't sting, they don't threaten, they don't land, they just... buzz. I wave them off, but they circle around and come right back as if they are afraid they might miss a minute with me. 

As with attracting or repelling all insects, opinions are divided on the best course of action. Some say light clothing draws them in, others say dark. Some say they are attracted by the heat our bodies give off, some say it's the sweat we produce or other bodily odors. Most likely these fellows are Liohippelates, very small "true" flies with just two wings vs. four, and are attracted to fluids secreted by the eyes, nose and ears. That explains their propensity to hover around my head.

With a life cycle as short as 11 days, it is unlikely that the same bug has singled me out and is just waiting to join me on my constitutional. More likely I am playing host to an extended family: brothers, parents, cousins-once-removed who are in the area and are invited along for the ride. Or as put eloquently by writer Rusty Foster, who is current working his way down the Appalachian Trail, "I became a moving ecosystem, with entire generations of black flies meeting, falling in love, mating, raising their young and dying within a three-inch radius of my eyeballs, which apparently weep the sweetest nectar imaginable judging by how many of them gave their lives to taste it just once." 

We may be the top of the food chain, but based on their ubiquity and the fact they were here first, the bugs do deserve some deference. I am happy to let them buzz about our flowers, have a field day in our gardens and spend as much time as they like in the lawn. But can we at least come to an arrangement? You let me walk and listen to my podcast without waving my arms like I'm guiding a plane to a jetway, and I promise to leave the bug spray at home.  Deal?

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes just sitting on the deck without having to swat. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Apologies

From the time we are little, the adults in our lives teach us the basics of civil interaction and discourse by word and example. Say "hello" when you first meet someone, "goodbye" when you leave. Look at someone when you are speaking to them, and do the same when they talk to you. Say "please" when you want something, "thank you" when you get it. Listen quietly to others if they are talking, and if you have to interrupt, start with "excuse me." Ask permission before touching stuff that's not yours. And if you are wrong, accept the blame, apologize, and try to remedy the situation without making it worse.

But what about a company? If we accept Mitt Romney's famous comeback that "Corporations are people," should they not try and follow these same golden rules? Many do, teaching their people to greet customers warmly and listen empathetically, acknowledge problems, and do all they can to remedy issues. You see it with Amazon, with Verizon, with American Express, with almost any major company that wants to have better relations with their clientele. And you saw it with CrowdStrike a few weeks ago. 

That company is a leader in cybersecurity, and its products are used by major players to protect their systems. Big companies use its suite of Falcon products to provide detection, antivirus and firewall capabilities. As they have done countless times before, CrowdStrike rolled out an update to its software, a process that was routine in the past. Except this time it didn't go so smoothly. Instead of seamlessly happening in the background, it caused any computer it touched to go into an endless reboot loop, producing the so called "blue screen of death." Healthcare, airlines, financial services, public transportation, even Starbucks: all were shut down as their computers went from being indispensable tools that ran the minutia of business to bricks that just winked.

The company released a fix, but because the affected computers were effectively lobotomized, it fell to IT staff to fix them manually one at a time, by some estimates 8.5 million machines. Hundreds of engineers worked around the clock to pull each PC from its death spiral. Eventually the problem was remediated, but not before flight delays, rescheduled surgeries and McDonald's in Japan closing some of its stores due to a "cash register malfunction." Estimates are that it cost Fortune 500 companies $5.4 billion in damages with only 10% to 20% covered by insurance.

OK, mistakes happen. This was not cyberterrorism, nor a nefarious plot by some state actor looking to limit the consumption of Big Macs in Osaka. Rather, it was an error in a line of code that looked OK when they tested it, but obviously didn't play nicely in the real world. The only real surprise is that it doesn't happen more often.

Going back to the "people" playbook, the company correctly mea culpa'd. A statement attributed to Founder and CEO George Kurtz read in part, "I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for today's outage. All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation." He went on to reassure users that it was just an error, and that a fix was in place. And he promised to take steps to prevent it from happening in the future. By the book. If only they had left it there. 

Shortly after that a number of professionals at affected companies received an email saying that the company recognizes "the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused. And for that, we send our heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience. To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!" Attached was an UberEats credit code for $10 for each to use. You can argue it was a very personal gesture, even if one poster on X said "I literally wanted to drive my car off a bridge this weekend and they bought me coffee. Nice."

Snarky comments aside, it was a humanizing move, one that tried in a small way to lessen the wrong. Unfortunately, it seems it had its own glitch. Either because people started sharing the credit online or for other reasons, the code was quickly discontinued and rendered invalid. The apology was good, the remedy not so much. Or as another poster put it, "ClownStrike. Nuff said."

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. And it's all made harder as technology has changed everything, especially how we communicate and interact. You can't look a text in the eye, discussions on Zoom are rife with overlaps and awkward pauses, and fixes can backfire if the tech fails further. CrowdStrike did try, and that's worth something. And a blown free cup of coffee hardly rises to the level of the Hippocratic oath's "Do No Harm." But remedies only work if they make things better, not worse. Perhaps they should have left it at "We're really sorry."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford takes the blame when he screws up. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Danger, Will Robinson!

You can blame politics. You can blame Twitter. You can blame the changing nature of families or texting or the internet in general, and whatever you picked wouldn't be wrong. But what we take as "coarse" in culture and language and dress has shifted over time. Clothing that was considered scandalous when it first came out is now not just worn but considered everyday wear (bikinis, crop tops, see-thru). Words and phrases that would have would gotten your mouth washed out with soap are now not only accepted but part of mainstream conversation ("that sucks," "it pisses me off," "pain in the ass"). Depictions of violence or sex in the arts that used to be been merely hinted at are shown in iMax and 4D splendor and feted as art of the highest order ("Game of Thrones," "Aliens," "Basic Instinct").

That sliding scale has made the purveyors of mass communication and entertainment uneasy gatekeepers as they struggle to use and show possible offensive items without running afoul of their intended audiences. As the AP style guide says one approach is to "try to find a way to give the reader a sense of what was said without using the specific word or phrase." But sometimes you are left with no option. When the president says "shithole countries" in a cabinet meeting do you censor it, soften it or report it as is? In that case, you gotta go with it. The AP again: "If a profanity, obscenity, or vulgarity must be used, flag the story at the top with the following, ‘Eds: Story includes vulgarity (or graphic content, etc.).' And confine the offending language, in quotation marks, to a separate paragraph that can be deleted easily by editors who do not want to use it." The problem is increasingly one man's vulgarity is another man's figure of speech. Or as the Bible says in Jeremiah 8:12: "Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not ashamed; they did not know how to blush." 

You see this notably in in movie ratings. The original code created in 1927 by president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Will Hays was a set of rules which studios were advised to heed, or their picture wouldn't be released. The so called "Hays Code" include a long list of do's and don'ts including "No pointed profanity—by either title or lip—this includes the words God, Lord, Jesus, Christ (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd, and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled." It took a similar approach to sex: "No licentious or suggestive nudity—in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture." 

In 1968 Motion Picture Association of America chairman Jack Valenti replaced it with a new parent-focused rating system that is still in use in use today. The current Classification & Ratings Administration (CARA) system has been tweaked over the years to account for a changing world. The original G (General), M (Mature), R (Restricted) and X (No one under 17 admitted) were modified with M becoming PG and X became NC-17, as well as adding a fifth classification with PG-13. 

Even within each of those groups the actual criteria has changed as society has changed around it. For instance, you would think that dropping an f-bomb would be cause for an automatic bump up the scale. Not anymore. Now it can be used once in a PG-13 film with no detrimental effect. Use it twice, and now you're really swearing, and up you go to R. Likewise with a single use of the word mother------. One OK, two not so much. And either expression used not as an expletive but in the context of sex is an automatic ticket to the next level.

CARA actually includes their rationale in the graphic that showcases the rating itself for each film. It might say it is rated R for "sexual content, and language and graphic nudity" or "images of terror and Intense situations of peril." But you also see explanations such as "strong violence and pervasive language" which begs the questions what is violence that is not strong, and what is language that is not spoken a lot? Or the warning that preceded "Team America: World Police," which was rated R for "graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images, and strong language — all involving puppets." You also get some editorializing by critics, such as the review for the new "Deadpool & Wolverine" which noted "Rated R for more or less everything that gets you an R rating," or the Hindi-language action thriller "Kill" which had appended to the printed review "Rated R for 52 varieties of knife wound, one weaponized bathroom fixture and several ugly sweater vests."

The thing about movies, TV shows and videogames is that you can choose to consume or not. AP style guide aside, it would seem that public discourse needs to come with a warning as well. It's not that you can't push the envelope for shock and effect, it's that the envelope needs to stay an envelope. Perhaps a new rating is in order, one that can be applied to our everyday world: call it C for civil.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to keep his world family friendly. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.