Vignettes On A Stormy Saturday Night -- December 10, 2022

Note: this will be posted and left up for an hour or so before it's taken down and placed in draft. I want Bakken posts to lead the blog overnight. 

Thomas Mallon.

Wiki entry.

If stranded on a desert island I would want to take Mallon's books. 

All of them. 

I was hooked when I learned he was the ghostwriter of former Vice President Dan Quayle's memoir, Standing Firm. 

He and I are exact contemporaries; he was born on November 2, 1951. I was born just twopointfive months or ten weeks before he was born.

Thomas Mallon has a seven-page "contribution" in the latest issue of The New Yorker. The contribution is an extract of his journals that he had begun writing in the early seventies. The extracts date from 1985 to 1988.

The Library of Congress acquired a hundred and forty-six volumes of his diaries, which, as noted, he had been keeping since the early nineteen-seventies. Before he handed over his notebooks in which he had chronicled his life, he scanned and downloaded the pages onto a thumb drive. I can only imagine how long that took.

Like Thomas Mallon I've keep journals throughout my life. I doubt the US Library of Congress would be interested.

Nineteeneightyfive was a huge year for me. We were stationed in Germany at the time; I was the chief of hospital services of the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing hospital serving the premier USAF fighter base in Europe. [Wow, we had a great group of physicians, surgeons, nurses, commanders. Probably second to none. Great memories, but I digress.]

I no longer remember the circumstances, but I took it upon myself to organize and host a USAF European medical conference. Long story, short: it was an incredible success. Somehow I got a top US Army infectious disease researcher to be the keynote speaker. He was doing his research at Walter Reed and flew over to Germany to update military personnel on what they knew up to that point. I have no recollection how I orchestrated that, but looking back, it was a big, big deal. 

The US Army physician brought to us the latest on research of that strange disease that affected the 4-H club: homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs and heroin users. 

I had not really thought about it until now, but the parallels between that disease in the early 1980s and the global pandemic in the early years of the third decade of the 21st century are uncanny. 

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Alexa

Tonight I asked Alexa to play "Taxi" by Harry Chapin. When the song was over, it was quiet. I waited a minute and then Alexa spoke up. She asked if I wanted to listen to any more music. I said, "yes," assuming she would ask what I might like to hear. Another moment of quiet. Alexa spoke again, "what do you want to hear?"

I had no idea. I was completely out of ideas. I didn't want to listen to anything on any of my playlists, real or imaginary; past, present or future.

She asked again what I wanted to hear.

I managed a barely audible "music." It is amazing how good Alexa's hearing is. She hears everything. She may mis-hear some things I say, but she hears everything. 

She replied: "Here's something you might like." [Perhaps her most over-used suggestion.]

I was floored. Non-stop music of some of the best classic rock and roll ever. I "knew" most of the songs but with a few minor exceptions, "none" of them were on any of my playlists.

We've had Alexa now for several years; we've never turned her off. As noted, she hears everything. She obviously knows me very, very well and came up with a playlist better than any I could have done myself. Amazing. And not a bit frightening. 

Alexa and I have a good relationship.

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Elf On A Shelf

Sophia has an elf on a shelf at her house, and we have an elf on a shelf in our apartment. We have a really, really unique German, wooden, music-box, advent calendar, and every year the advent calendar is reserved for Sophia, age eight this year. Generally there is a piece of chocolate in the advent calendar for Sophia but this year we've started putting a more consequential gift out for her (in addition to the chocolate). 

We move the elf every night and place the gift for Sophia under the watchful eyes of the elf. Sophia has learned to look for the elf when she comes home from school, knowing there will be a gift for her within a few inches of the elf.

Sophia knows that our elf is not the "real thing." She knows it's a fake elf I got from Walmart and she suspects it is I who moves the elf every night.

On the other hand, the elf at her house is the "real deal." She knows that elf is real and that the elf in her house moves on her own. That elf has "real magic" according to Sophia, unlike the fake Walmart elf in our apartment.

My wife asked Sophia why she thinks our elf is a fake.

Sophia says because the price tag is still on that elf.