Allyson Johnson

A Piece of my Mind: Brain Transplant

I drowned it!  It’s dead!

Stupid. Plain stupid.

If it hadn’t been   Christmas, I wouldn’t have moved my “office” from the corner of the living room to the kitchen table.   That corner is where the Christmas tree always goes, so I did this every year. 

If our housekeeper hadn’t been ill, I wouldn’t have vacuumed the living room carpet and noticed how dirty it had become.

If we hadn’t decided to have the dining room carpet cleaned too, I would have eaten my lunch at the dining room table as usual.

But it was, and she was, and we did, and so I had my sandwich and a glass of water on the kitchen table next to my computer, and when I reached for a napkin I bumped the glass and…

Drowned my laptop. The screen flickered bravely for a moment as I froze in horror. I reached to turn the computer off, too late. The screen went black, and it was dead.  Not even a snap, crackle, or pop. I took the battery out and turned the corpse upside down on a towel in the bathroom. It streamed water as though I had cut an artery.  I aimed my small space heater at the keyboard.  The next day there were still no signs of life, so I was off to the Geek Squad. 

The Geek on duty managed to look doubtful, even behind the face mask.  Eyebrows are amazingly expressive.

“We don’t handle water damage here.  We send it out, and it will be 3-4 weeks before we get it back, IF they can repair it.  But it’s long odds.”

Armed with a list of laptop ratings from Consumer Reports, I browsed past dozens of glowing screens and stopped at the sleek silver entity CR liked best – “Special Sale 30% off!” How seductive! I picked it up – so light! A sales Geek materialized at my elbow.  “Do you have any questions?”

“Where are the USB ports?”

“You mean, USB-A ports? Oh, almost no one uses USB-A ports anymore.  They’ve all gone to C.”  She showed me the tiny slit on the side of the computer.

“But my external hard drive!  My multiple thumb drives! My mouse!  How do they attach?”

The sales Geek managed to look amused and condescending, even behind the face mask.  Eyebrows are so expressive.

“It’s all in the cloud.  Backup to the cloud.  Access anywhere through the cloud.  You still use a mouse? You’ve got a touchpad and touchscreen. But you can buy an adapter that lets you use your USB-A stuff.”

Back to the Geek Squad station.  The Head Geek offered to check to see whether my hard drive had survived, if I would allow him to open the case.  I felt as though I was ok’ing an autopsy on the corpse.  OK.  Fifteen minutes later, he came back, smiling.  Eyebrows are amazingly expressive.

Next steps: Buy the silver sylph of a computer, give it to the Head Geek, along with the rescued hard drive, and in a few days I reclaim my old computer’s brain transplanted to a slimmer, more powerful, more flexible chassis.

The new computer takes some getting used to.  That cloud thing – I don’t trust it, but that’s where the Sylph wants to put all my files.  On the entry screen and in the cloud I am “Allyson”, but to access files on the hard drive the Sylph only answers to “Owner.” Worse, it keeps offering to complete my sentences for me (even more irritating from a computer than it is from a friend or spouse.)

I will wrestle it into submission.  After all, I am the live person in control.  But I remember that Dr. Frankenstein had some trouble with his brain transplant project also.

A Piece of My Mind: How Much Do You Need?

I recently spent time with several different friends who have “downsized”.

One couple is selling their four-bedroom, three bath house with the aim of cashing out the equity, buying a smaller home in a less expensive location, and using the extra cash to follow some lifelong dreams. 

Twenty five years of accumulation now fills the two car garage from floor to ceiling, except for a narrow aisle to allow access to the building inspector. It includes furniture inherited from grandparents, portraits of ancestors, and many beloved books.   They plan to consign the dining-room furniture and donate the sofa, the piano and half the book cases to an NGO, but still worry about how they will fit the things they really love or need into a mere two-bedroom, one bath house with a one-car garage.

A second friend has moved into a two-bedroom one-bath house with a one-car garage after a divorce.  His home is filled with art and artifacts related to his life and interests, and he does have bonus space: a basement stairway leads to a fully equipped wood shop and foundry where he can hone his woodworking and brass-casting skills.  Every corner, every bookcase, every picture (and there are a lot of them) holds a story relating to his life.  It is the perfect home— for one person.  Yes, he has downsized, and wrapped his life around him.

My third set of friends have left a home that  accommodated a family of nine, including two natural and five adopted children, now all grown and gone.  They moved to a three-bedroom 2 bath house. The new house is smaller, but it feels big, as it is perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean with  270 degree views from the living room, study and kitchen. Every wall, every nook, every cupboard is filled with items salvaged, discovered, given, or retrieved – a thousand stories.  It is the home of two people but it feels as though it also comprises a small art gallery and museum.

I also visited a younger friend whose business is taking properties that scream “Scrape me!” and turning them into attractive AirBnB one-month rentals for young professionals.  His prospective renters need an attractive and functional bathroom; a kitchen with a stove, oven, sink and microwave, and the minimal necessary pots, pans, and utensils;  a bedroom with good reading lights and a comfortable bed for two people;and a sitting/eating space near the kitchen with a large screen TV and internet access.

I made these visits with my sister who owns a small teardrop-shaped trailer which includes a king-sized bed, lots of storage nooks under the mattress and above the bed space, a small TV screen and DVD player, heat and AC, and a kitchen with a two-burner stove, a microwave, and a battery-powered chest refrigerator.  We traveled comfortably for 11 days. I had enough clothing to keep comfortable from the cold foggy shores of Washington state to the searing summer heat of California’s Central Valley.

A one-bedroom Air BnB or a traile, give you a simplified life, but a life with no sentiment, no memories, no past. 

So how much of your past do you want to bring along when you “downsize”?  How many memories do you think you will need?

A Piece of my Mind: 100 Years of Expectations

A century ago the 19^th amendment was ratified by a margin of one vote in the legislature of the 36th of 36 states which were needed for approval.  It’s hard to believe now that the decades-long struggle of women to gain political equality with men was ended by such a narrow margin.  At the time, there were many worries and hopes tied to the prospect of women voting.  Let’s see how it worked out.

An early  argument against giving women the vote was that they would simply vote as directed by their husbands or fathers.  Having grown up in a politically divided house I can personally testify that this is not true.  My mother idolized Franklin Roosevelt;  my father said that “I always vote for the best man, but he always happens to be a Republican.” Our dining room discussions were lively.

Many expected that women would vote in a bloc, with a focus on “women’s issues”, including education, health, religion, and other domestic matters.  But it turns out that women, like men, have differing ideas about what should be done regarding these “women’s issues”, and the bloc melts away in the face of such divisive proposals as unrestricted abortion access,  school busing,  and federal vouchers for private schools.

Some felt that the “gentle sex” was unsuited to the rough-and-tumble world of politics, while others hoped that the feminine influence would calm that world down and make it less hard-edged.  It’s true, as an immediate effect of the addition of women to the voting rolls, polling stations moved out of bars and into churches and schools, making the whole process cleaner and quieter.

But anyone who believes that women politicians are  gentler in negotiation, or more willing to find common ground with the opposition, is invited to sit in on some of our  City Council meetings, with our five women council members as frequently and vocally at odds as any group of men could be.

The long-term consequences of the 19^th Amendment are still making themselves known. In the past 100 years women have become more and more visible in public, commercial, and political areas, but there are still many issues which are considered “women’s natural interests” and others where women are viewed as interlopers.

Even in education,traditionally a “woman’s area”, progress for women has been slow. When my mother worked at the local high school in the early 70’s, her appointment as Vice Principal of Curriculum was headlined in the local paper as “First Woman becomes Senior Administrator at LAHS”.  Whenmy sons attended the same high school 20 years later, the school finally appointed its first woman principal.  Twenty-eight years later, the district hired its first woman as superintendent.

The early suffragists recognized that the 19^th Amendment fell short in many ways.  It states that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” but it said nothing about giving women equal protection of the laws in other ways.  The Equal Rights Amendment first proposed by early US suffragist Alice Paul in 1923, was finally ratified by Congress in 1972, but has yet to be approved by the required ¾ of state legislatures.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if in three years we could celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment by actually enacting it?