The Boss is Tracking Carefully

Across the U.S., more employers are handing out activity trackers and rolling out high-tech wellness programs that aim to keep closer tabs on workers’ exercise, sleep and nutrition, and ultimately cut ballooning health-care costs.

WSJ

The boss is tracking carefully

how much you eat and sleep and pee.

He wants to know how much you drink,

are you too fat, or see a shrink.

He's keeping tabs on your heartbeat,

and if upon your spouse you cheat.

He'll know of your religious views

and where you get your online news.

Recording all your tweets and likes,

he's tracking all your sick day spikes.

An algorithm of his choice

is following your thought and voice.

His files are bulging with reports

about your hobbies and your sports.

He even keeps a detailed chart

of how and when and where you fart.

Anonymous you'll never be

in office, warehouse, factory.

He's got it all on some mainframe --

and yet he can't recall your name.

Postcards to the President

Postcards to the President

Postcards to the President

I told you I was sick

There is an old church graveyard in England where a parishioner’s ancient tombstone has only one sentence on it:  “I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK.”

As detailed elsewhere, last Sunday Marilyn fell onto her nightstand -- hitting the back of her head. I went up to comfort her and sit with her awhile. She wanted to go to the ER, but I figured she was overreacting, as usual. So I sat with her for an hour and asked her questions to see if her mental facilities were functioning normally, like the doctors do in the movies. I held my finger in front of her eyes and told her to follow it back and forth, which she did. Then held up three fingers and asked her how many fingers I was holding up. She said three. My medical diagnosis complete, I got her an ice pack and a glass of chocolate milk, made her comfortable on her couch, chatted with her awhile, turned on the TV for her, and left. My good deed for the day.

Yesterday, after lunch with the Skipper, Marilyn was over to my place for a bit, then went up to her place. I figured she’d be down for dinner, but never came. I went to bed around 10, thinking ‘that crazy woman is probably passed out on her bed.’ She had just started a new pain medication and had already taken 2 pills in a row while she was at my place.

This morning she texted me that she had broken her neck, and would I go buy her some Ding Dongs?

When I went up to her place, with the Ding Dongs, at 8:30. she had on a neck brace. Her purse had just been stolen while she was doing laundry (but had been found abandoned in the elevator -- the thief had only taken her cash, nothing else) and was folding laundry on her couch, with a carefree grin on her face.

Turns out that last night, while I was wallowing in lethargy and Netflix, the pain in her neck got so bad she called a neighbor who has a car to take her into the ER. And there the doctors found a hairline fracture on her neck, from the fall she took last Sunday. They gave her a morphine drip and kept her for observation for several hours, then sent her home with, in her words, “the best (expletive deleted) pain pills I’ve ever ever EVER had!”

In all the ruckus she had forgotten to text me that she’d gone to the ER. So I treated her texts this morning as typical Marilyn pill-fueled bombast.

And it turns out I was wrong. Dead wrong. The poor woman may be medicated out of her mind sometimes, but she had experienced a real medical trauma which I had cavalierly ignored, smoothed over, and then made fun of.

I’m not feeling very good about myself right now . . .

Postcards to President Trump

Get Holly

I didn’t see Marilyn or hear from her all day Wednesday. I expected her down to eat sometime during the day, so I made a pot of slow simmered marinara sauce with turkey sausage and a can of rolled anchovies with capers. The anchovies meld with the sauce after an hour or so into a pungent slurry that would taste good over cardboard. But, as I say, of Marilyn there was none. So I had a plate of pasta and sauce by myself, with a small green salad smothered in croutons, and spent a restful day writing bad poetry and reading good books on Kindle. I also made a date with my old pal Phil Hinckley, who I call ‘Skipper,’ for senior lunch today at the Rec Center -- since I had a 12:30 appointment down there to have AARP volunteers do my taxes as well. To be on the safe side I put Marilyn down as my guest for lunch. The Skipper would pick us up at 11:30.

This morning Marilyn taps on my door at ten, dressed to kill with a sexy twinkle in her eye. No explanation of where she was yesterday. When I asked “Wadjado yesterday?” she shrugged and replied “I dunno; stayed in bed I guess.”

Then she was off and running about her daughter Ashley.

“She called me a witch when I texted her happy birthday today” she said. “I wish she’d stop being so retarded. That’s no way to treat me, her mother!”

I clucked my tongue and shook my head in sympathetic disbelief, then offered her some milk and a Hostess cupcake. Which she proceeded to demolish by picking it apart bit by bit, dropping gooey crumbs all over my one good chair. Because of her bad dentures she picks most of her food apart with her fingers. She then wiped her fingers on the embroidered satin pillow that goes with my one good chair and launched into her main theme of the day: the traitor Holly must die.

“That (expletive deleted) thinks I don’t know what she’s up to? Selling pills and smoking pot with her boyfriend until she can’t see straight. She says she tried to call me all day Tuesday and I didn’t answer. (Expletive deleted), that girl never tried to call -- I was with you and you know my phone never rang, did it?”

Not giving me time to reply she continued “I’m gonna call her right now, right now, and have you get on and tell her you were with me the whole time and she never called. I can’t stand a liar. I’m gonna do it, call her and expose her lying pill popping lie!” She fumbled her phone out of her purse, then changed her mind and instead texted her son Michael in Arizona to wish him a beautiful day.

Having dodged that bullet, I sat serenely by as she dilated on the sins and omissions of Holly, wishing on her incarceration or death by narc gunfire. So what if she shared her store of miracle pills once in a while? Did that justify her abominations? Did that excuse her from being a lying (a string of powerful Anglo-Saxon descriptions ensued.) Holly’s mind was gone; she was snorting pain pills -- snorting them, not swallowing them. Sick, just sick. Marilyn predicted her death within a year, which would be a shame for her 12 year boy -- he deserves a mother better than that monster . . .

Her language and tone were getting to be a bit much for me -- and I’ve spent a lifetime listening to the ripe musings of hungover circus clowns -- so I asked her mildly to take it down a notch. I phrased it diplomatically as “You’ll get yourself too upset and won’t be able to charm the Skipper like you did last time.” That settled her hash. For she would dearly like to wed Phil as soon as his invalid wife passes away. The Skipper is a substantial property owner in and around Provo.  

I also gave her another cupcake to dissect, against my better judgement. I should have gotten the two-year care and cleaning warranty on my one good chair.

Then the Skipper pulled up in his powerful diesel truck and we were at the Rec Center five minutes later. Marilyn tried to simper on the way over, but her overriding thirst for retribution got the better of her; she told the Skipper over and over again that she had no friends, no friends at all, since moving to Utah. She tried to make friends, but they were all a sad disappointment -- drug fiends and drunks, the lot of them. With me sitting right next to her.

She was a stunning sight as she walked into the Senior Lunch Center this afternoon, in her fawn colored leather hip boots. Sadly, being a Thursday, when the dinner crowd is thin and notably anemic, there were very few functioning males to startle and dazzle with her Helen of Troy act -- and that did not improve her temper in the least.

Inevitably, she lost her yellow lunch ticket before we even sat down at a table. A look of wild panic crossed her face and I prepared myself for some powerful emoting, but the Skipper, always the gentleman, gave her his ticket and went out to buy another one.

Today’s repast consisted of chicken with thick gravy over biscuits and some blue jello with fruit cocktail wavering in it. Adequate fodder, if you had skipped breakfast -- which I had. These meals are prepared at a central kitchen and then distributed to local senior centers and lockups.  

During the meal Marilyn decided that everyone at our table had to know, in detail, how much she needed a car. Without one she was a prisoner to the whims and inquisitions of others. Those who gave her a ride were forever changing their schedules to accommodate such paltry issues as work or family emergencies. And they were so nosy -- asking her impertinent questions such as why she wanted to go to the store or needed to pickup up earrings at Nordstrom’s Rack. And taking the bus? It didn’t go anywhere except in circles around industrial parks and half deserted and seedy shopping malls.

Since the other occupants of our table, outside of the Skipper and myself, were from a local nursing home, having been bussed in for a meal and Bingo, she did not receive a sympathetic hearing -- in fact, I don’t believe anyone paid attention to her but me and the Skipper. And this time I noticed that the Skipper did not bother to put in his hearing aid.

I then excused myself to go have my taxes done, telling the Skipper I would walk home in the bracing fresh air. Which I did. The Skipper squired Marilyn around on some shopping errands, so I was home, half asleep in my recliner, before she knocked on my door later on.

Setting her shopping bag down on the floor, she plumped into my one good chair and declared she would kill for a white russian.

“Wazzat?” I asked drowsily, trying to fully wake up.

She explained the alcoholic content and blissful results of a white russian. Then asked me to walk over to the liquor store to get the fixin’s.

Now I was wide awake.

“No” was all I said.

“Aw, c’mon, sweetie. It’ll be fun -- I can get really loose after a couple of those.” Her eyes were alight with the promise of sin and debauchery.

I decided against a temperance lecture and instead played Mr. Cheapskate.

“I’m not buyin’ all that stuff for you. Go get it yourself.”

As I had hoped, this rubbed her the wrong way.

“You’re such a meanie. You’re no fun anymore. Why can’t you be fun? You’re just another one of these damn Mormon hypocrites. I’m going up to my place. Who needs you? Maybe I’ll walk down there myself!”

“Be my guest” I replied frostily.

She arose, grabbed her shopping bag, and majestically sailed out the door -- a battle cruiser ready for combat. If she actually does walk that far, it’ll be the most exercise she’s had in several years. Might do her some good, out in the fresh air. But I’m not holding my breath.

I expect her back around six, for some marinara sauce over noodles, with a side salad. I told her I had a can of black olives for the salad. She loves black olives.

Down on the Farm

A wave of bankruptcies is sweeping the U.S. Farm Belt as trade disputes add pain to the low commodity prices that have been grinding down American farmers for years.

WSJ

The times have not been kind to all our farmers in the dell;

with tariffs and low prices they are going through some hell.

Mortgages are falling due and payment can't be met;

Trump has given farmers nothing but a load of debt.

All across the country fields are fallow, as the bank

makes the tillers of the soil begin to walk the plank.

Houses stand abandoned and proud barns begin to sag;

We've got a situation, with a "Grapes of Wrath" price tag.

The farmer always gets it in the neck before the rest

of Uncle Sam's poor children find an asp inside their nest.

Perhaps if we razed Congress and put in a soybean field

we'd help the farmers to increase their agriculture yield.

The Pentagon a hothouse for the growing of fresh fruit

would serve a better purpose and then peace just might take root.

The White House lawn could use some cows to keep our larders full;

of course, the place is already just loaded up with bull.

But then with walls and barriers erected by the cops

there won't be any one at all to harvest any crops.

Seems to me that famine has a chance to reappear

in a land where bounty once prevented such a fear.

But I am pessimistic, just a howler in the wind.

There's no need yet to panic or get very much chagrined.

No doubt a kindly government will soon be interceding

to help the farmers out with all the stuff that they are needing.

There's no need for the 'yellow vests' to start a looting spree.

There's no need for the jackboot in this land of liberty.

We all agree that laissez faire is still the policy

that voters want to keep in place for their posterity.

So tell your sons and daughters that our fructifying soil

is worthy of their labor (and they just might strike some oil.)

Just now there's lots of vacant land available to till;

just get a bank loan to begin -- about a half a mill.

Yes, what we need are blinders to screen adverse cogitation.

THAT will bring the farmer back unto a grateful nation.

This is all the message that we need to say or tweet.

In no time whatsoever grass will grow in every street!

Postcards to President Trump

Tale of a Typewriter

Unlike the pager, the PDA, the floppy disk and the VCR, the typewriter has escaped the heap of gadgets defunct and disused. The reason, according to Steve Soboroff, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission and typewriter collector: Its slow pace is meditative, not frustrating, an exercise in deliberateness closer to engraving than typing on a computer.

WSJ

I remember, I remember, that Underwood sublime

I had upon my wooden desk at home upon a time.

A second-hand appliance that would often drop the 'i',

scuffed and very dingy -- twas the apple of my eye.

The platen was of rubber, and quite often in the heat

it melted just a little, kept my work from being neat.

The type guide had gone missing and the type bars weren't aligned;

typing fast upon it got 'em very much entwined.

But though it jammed up frequently, with ribbon never tight,

that old machine-companion was a source of pure delight.

 It coughed up papers for reports, so very long ago.

I liked the easy pacing; I could think both long and slow.   

I used up carbon paper by the reams, in vanity;

my work would be immortal, going down in history.

 I typed up letters on it to my pals at summer camp.

I typed so many ballads that my fingers got a cramp.

And once, oh once, when I was young I gave my heart away

on that discrete contrivance to a girl I met in May.

I sent her notes of romance and I sent her mercy pleas.

She sent me nothing in return; love faded on the breeze.

And when I was ambitious and typed up my resume

it netted me a mail room job with modest weekly pay.

For years that timid little bell did ring when I returned

the carriage to begin new lines as fancy brightly burned.

For I was much determined that a novel I would write.

An epic tale that Hemingway would gladly want to cite. 

(Hardly need I say it; the whole thing was dull and trite.)

No matter where I traveled and no matter what I did

that Underwood stayed with me as around the world I slid.

Then computers came along, and the word processor bulky.

I looked down on my Underwood, and got a little sulky.

Why be mired in the past? Technology's the thing!

I parted ways with Underwood, despite its charming ding.

I remember, I remember, promises I kept,

and others that I so ignored eventually I wept.

And now my faithful Underwood is gone beyond recall

as my memories grow larger while my heart remains too small.