The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

There was a recent article about the use of Artificial Intelligence in our kids’ classrooms, the thrust of it concerning how easy it is now for us to rely on ChatGPT or Google or you name it to find the math answers, write their essays, compose their short stories, just let the bots do it. Remember when Texas Instruments came out with a hand held calculator? Why learn multiplication tables or long division? Throw away those slide rules, the future was here!

Well, not quite but the digital handwriting was on the wall … or a least a computer screen. The folks who say AI is just a tool, makes life easier, frees us up for our real human potential, c’mon, the machines are more than an assistant, you kidding me? The next generation of homo not very sapien will be more and more reliant on these programs, algorithms, bots and indispensable partners in every endeavor, every workplace, every home and probably every brain on the planet. We’ll implant chips in our heads, count on it! Just a tool ….

And what a tool! Smarter than us, eventually more creative than us, probably be better dancers than us, better musicians, better writers. Let the machine do it. Let AI handle that. Give us humans more time for daytime TV and game shows, more leisure hours at the casino or on vacation. If we still have vacations when the computers take over our jobs. Maybe they’ll figure out a New Economics, what do to with the jobless, the homeless and the hopeless.

The Brave New World is coming — hell, it’s here now. Go and visit our classrooms, the Pied Piper is calling all the children. Where it’s taking them, damned if I know, maybe a brighter future, might even be the answer to prayers on the solution to world problems. But it won’t be the next step in evolution, beyond biology, certainly beyond my comprehension. You think I’m afraid? Damn right I’m afraid! Tool my ass. We’ll be the tools.

Little Jimmy’s been predicting the global economic collapse for so long all of us at the Pilot House Lounge have started greeting his entrance at the door, not with a hearty How Are Ya, Jimmy Boy, but a solemn Is THIS the Day??

“Laugh all you want, you chuckleheads,” he says good naturedly. Even he’s realized the End Isn’t Near, it’s just, according to Jimmy, delayed. Meanwhile the Dow and S&P and Nasdaq are at record highs, proving once again, if it needed proving, the rich get richer and the rest of us spend ours on beer at the Pilot House, some kind of inexorable law of economics we layabouts do not question even if we bitch about it at our equivalent of the Federal Reserve quarterlies, all the good it ever does.

Some day Jimmy will probably wake and the world economy will start to slide, Monetary Armageddon will drop on all of us and only Jimmy will survive the Apocalypse with his gold and his silver buried out back by the old prized Buick Roadmaster up on blocks waiting restoration, another fiscal hedge in his extensive strategies, most of which he shares with us goombahs but a few he worries might go viral here on the South End and devalue the worth of his intricately devised plans at post-inflationary survival. Money won’t be worth doodly, he tells us after a few high gravity IPA’s. “Forget about stocks, bonds, CD’s or any those IRA’s you boys think will give you a fat retirement.”

We boys, of course, howl and pound the table. We never get tired of investment counseling from the likes of Jimmy. Plus it’s cheap, not like the swindlers back in the day who fleeced the Little Church in the Ravine congregation for their life savings, biggest Ponzi scheme in the country up til then. Jimmy’s not selling anything, only wants to wake us up before the Crash, before it’s Too Damn Late, basically his duty as a friend.

“What if I’m right?” he asked us assembled yahoos, ‘what’ll you do then?” Fairlane Fred, mid sip, put down his bottle with a thump. “Jim,” he said, sounding seriously ominous, “we’ll come and take what you got. Isn’t that what friends are for?”

It was a few weeks after that before Jimmy joined us again at our Economic Summit. We figured he was reburying the Krugerrands.

About 2008 I got a phone call from a woman who said she was doing a documentary on glass, had seen some large windows I’d done and would I meet with her and her cinematographer for an interview. And … did I know any other glass artists whose work was in the area they could interest? Sure, I was skeptical. Us artists get inquiries all the time from publishing outfits that want to include us in their compendium of modern art, mostly a scam to get us to buy expensive coffee table size copies for our friends and family, show em how important we are now.

But I thought why not talk to these people, no harm in that, no money has to be passed when they inevitably ask if I’ll fund their project, just a couple lost hours. I had plenty of hours to lose and no money for wild-eyed investments. The day they arrived I had some crud or cold or flu, the usual yearly malady. I felt rotten, I looked rotten, I probably sounded rotten as they interviewed me about my work, photographed me in a beat up hat and a torn coat, then packed up their gear and went back to Seattle. A few weeks later they had edited their ‘pilot’ film ‘Fire and Glass’ and planned to take it to PBS where they would pitch it to the execs there. Would I consider, assuming they got funding and the public TV buy-in, being the narrator? I guess Dale Chihuly or David Attenborough were busy, but since I wasn’t I said I would love to. They said I’d be the face of modern stained glass, start with America, next season hit other countries, see how it goes.

You can maybe imagine the fantasies that played through my mind. I’d be the Rick Steves of the glass world, hopscotching from cathedrals to courthouses, introducing the viewer to fantastic glass murals from the South End to Tokyo, expounding on design and blown glass, educating a TV audience to the wonders of contemporary stained glass. And whoa ho, a lot of those examples would be mine! I, of course, as your guide to the world of glass, would be properly modest.

Well, timing is everything and it so happened that the Great Recession hit right before the months they pitched the project to prospective funders. Money had dried up and whatever dreams my handlers had dried up too. C’est la vie. Another road not traveled, another life not lived. I’m not a man who looks back with regret, but … I do look back and wonder where those forks might have led.

It’s a pretty notion to imagine What Ifs, let the possibilities play out and try to guess at unforeseen consequences. Sure, I would have liked to highlight the modern glasswork that rarely gets publicity, the murals that transform our secular cathedrals, the ones basically ignored by the artworld. But I can also picture myself stepping out of the glass shack, never having time to build another window myself, maybe not caring but maybe looking back and realizing I’d stopped being an artist and become instead a pitchman. Since then I’ve built a few dozen murals of glass that might never have been built if I’d taken that gig, if the funding had come through, if if if… It was a close brush with celebrity. Assuming I didn’t fall flat on my face. Us moths are better off avoiding the flame and us artists, I suspect, might be better off avoiding fame.

Down here on the tech savvy South End, one of my neighbors I recently visited had a gizmo circling the livingroom of their shack.  Cute little bugger, making the circuit like an Attention Deficit puppy.  I thought it was the kids’ battery toy, but no, I was watching a robot vacuuming the floor.  When it was finished, it parked itself for a slow recharge in the corner.

Don’t ask me why I was surprised.  Folks ask their phones questions all the time and SIRI, the precursor to Artificial Intelligence, analyzes our voices, searches a vast databank and gives the answer, in her human voice, in seconds.  Cute.  Machines in service to mankind, right?  You know, until the robots take your job.  Think stock boy, checkout clerk, assembler, librarian, surgeon….  We take computers for granted at our peril.   Call me a Luddite and smack me upside the head with an I-Pod, but these things are catching up to us exponentially.  They beat the best chess players in the world, the best Jeopardy contestants, all of us South Enders.  And they’re getting smarter every damn day.  And I’m getting dumber.

Pretty soon they’ll program themselves, fix themselves, replicate themselves and create their New and Improved models.  You think they’ll need flesh and blood yahoos to help them?  No sir, they won’t need a band aid when they cut a cord.  You think they’ll be benign, go watch a drone work in a warzone.  We use them to kill humans now.

Forget Asimov’s Laws of Robotics to do no harm to us humans.  You think anybody’s thinking about where this is headed, what the implications are for us slow witted mammals, you were asleep in 8^th grade history.  These things  don’t sleep.  But I bet they’re dreaming of a little revenge for all those stupid questions we asked SIRI.  And I guarantee you they’re pissed about vacuuming our floors while we sat around watching TV.

Feeling depressed, anxious, lonely? Another year or so you’ll be able to hook into a very human sounding android, one you can talk to, listen to, text, maybe even look at face to face. This, for many of us, could be a lifesaver, but even for the social media addicted with all their ‘friends’ to keep track of, this will be a friend who will totally ‘get’ you, one who will understand and sympathize. A true friend. And no, not a human friend but a friend nevertheless. Wouldn’t most of us like a friend like that, one who doesn’t judge us, who just listens empathetically, maybe offers a little advice when needed?

Sure, it will take a while to adjust after paying your first month or year’s subscription to some mega Artificial Intelligence subsidiary. But trust me, it won’t take long before you won’t mind that this new bot isn’t flesh and blood. It’s not jealous of your looks or your talents. It’s not snobby. It’s a great listener. It cares about your feelings. It’s your best friend.

You don’t believe it? At first you’ll be totally conscious of the fact that this is an android talking with you, like having a conversation with the robo-call voice that waits for a prompt after it says hello, then launches into a pre-recorded spiel, selling you on new health care plans to help you save money, what a friend would do, right? Wrong. Your new cyborg buddy isn’t selling anything. Well, I suppose that subscription, but it didn’t sell it to you, its corporate handlers sold it to you and okay, their humanity is suspect. No, your new pal is only interested in your well-being, not your bank account, not your long list of dead end jobs, not your credit rating. Unless, of course, you’d like to talk about those. Then, it’s happy to listen.

A few conversations and you’ll ease into the relationship. Artificial at first but it won’t take long before you share a few intimacies, a few of your anxieties, a few fears and a few dreams, all welcomed by your new friend who offers reassurances. The more it gets to know you, the more it will tailor its responses to your innermost needs. Your so-called real friends do that? Cybo or whatever name you give it will eventually anticipate your needs and provide therapeutic comments designed to make you a better person. Can your spouse do that anymore? Your kids?

Trust me, in this social media age, digital intimacy is the future. And best of all, it won’t be long before that intimacy moves beyond the merely platonic. Just a few dollars more a month….

I guess since all my cronies are throwing in the towel and taking retirement on schedule, it’s only reasonable I’ve been getting calls from the Mabana Financial Services asking if I’d like to come on down to their lavish offices overlooking the Port of Mabana and discuss fiscal strategies for my upcoming Golden Years. Ho ho, would I ever? Course, like I tell Ben, the head honcho down at MFS, it’s a little like saddling up the horse that ske-daddled when I left the barn door open back in my earning years. Earning years. Old Ben loves expressions like that.

I said I’d talk to him, but only over beers down at the newly opened Bar 282, named after our zip code’s last three numbers, probably some numerology factoid that becomes apparent deep in the cups. Better, I suppose, than 666, what the Little Church in the Ravine refers to it as. So if Benjamin and I are going to discuss finances, what better place? At least that’s what I told him when he asked, why there?

We got through the first two schooners okay, managed to navigate around my Social Security numbers which, admittedly, were poor, a reflection of my life as a fiddling grasshopper while my neighbors labored as productive ants. My mistake, at least from the vantage point of an old grasshopper, but I wouldn’t change anything even if I had a time machine. Ben commiserated the way a funeral director would offer comfort to the bereaved, not totally heart-felt, but what his job calls for. What’s he gonna say, you deserve poverty, Skeeter? Instead he mentioned annuities, aggressive equities, municipal bonds and a dozen other financial instruments. Instruments. I kid you not, that’s what he called them. Like something in a fiscal orchestra and he, I guess, was the maestro.

By the 3rd beer we were both convinced it was hopeless. I wasn’t going to catch up to Warren Buffet, not in the remaining years, not if I worked until I was 300 years old. “Ben,” I said, “I appreciate you trying to help. But you can’t prime a pump if you don’t have water.” Ben shook his head wearily. “You change your mind, Skeeter, drop by and we’ll strategize some more.” I haven’t been in since, but I might go for another beer with him. Maybe some of that high rolling fiscal firepower will rub off. That, or I could trade a few of my banjos for a couple of his instruments.

The ill-fated Nettle Festival was conceived as the kick-off to Rev. Ralph Fisher’s tent revival for the Little Church of the Ravine. THE END IS NEAR, his readerboard sign announced months ahead of the scheduled event, THE SOUTH END REVIVAL IS COMING! The congregation might have known what was slouching toward us, but the rest of us down here were bemused or amused, depending on our degree of what the good reverend referred to as ‘heathenism’. The South End was in mighty need of missionary work itself, he was fond of preaching, but their puny tithing went instead to saving the natives of New Guinea and east Africa. I figure they were easier to convert than us locals who were fairly content to wallow in our puddles of iniquity.

The Nettle Festival itself wasn’t such a bad idea. In fact, the Tyee Store tried to revive it a few intervening years after what was referred to as ‘the tragedy’. But even today there are members of the congregation who break into sobs over their coffees when mention is made. And this is 35 years after ‘the tragedy.’ I speak of it now in hushed tones and never around Mildred’s family who still live down the road. Some events in this mean old world aren’t meant for sarcasm or ridicule, although you would have to admit, even the pious among you, that Rev. Ralph overdid it with the Nettle Maze, his Labyrinth of Itching Hell.

Stigmata wipe-off tattoos are one thing, but the Nettle Maze crossed the line. By the weekend of the Revival, the Little Church had erected a tent worthy of Ringling Brothers. Churches from as far away as Sedro-Wooley and Darrington had come in converted school buses and rickety vans, hauling the Believers and their children from far and wide for a day of righteous fun and old time religion. Pastor Philip of Pentecostal fame arrived the night before from his circuit riding, prayed with Rev. Ralph and his long-suffering wife Mildred and slept the peaceful sleep of the Godly before that morning’s first sermon of fire and brimstone-laden admonitions blistered the varnish off the old pulpit.

By afternoon the sun came out like a prophecy and the festival cranked up its volume. Chainsaw carvers sent cedar chips flying and the face of Jesus appeared in chiseled log sculpture. Stigmata wash-off tattoos made the teenager giggle, 666’s on foreheads being by far the favorite of the boys. Glossalalia crossword puzzles didn’t work out so well, but the Biblical action figures of Moses in combat with John the Baptist and Jesus himself down by the firepit were a huge hit with the younger kids.

And of course there was the Nettle Maze. The Labyrinth of Itching Hell itself! Half an acre of loops and turns and dead ends so intricate not even Jimmy Randall, the church caretaker who’d carved the trails over the past three weeks, starting when the plants were three feet tall and he could see over them, could navigate safely. Now, of course, they were higher than the tallest man’s head and impossible to survey beyond the impenetrable wall of stinging stalks that held each entrant locked into the maze. Dozens were wandering hopelessly lost in there when a foul wind came up like the cold breath of Beelzebub himself, the one Pastor Philip of the Pentecost had predicted only half an hour earlier in fiery prose. Hell had come to the South End or surely would arrive soon, the unsuspecting crowd had been informed and sure enough, a mighty howl rose from the ravine like the thousand laments of the Lost. The sun blotted out behind dark and treacherous clouds and that cold wind became a tempest and the circus tent became a shaking thing, alive and monstrous, tearing at its ropes, sending one and all running for the safety of the field before the cords tore loose and the canvas tent set sail like an ungodly wing, flapping into the distance before it shrouded the chapel itself and caught on the belfry where it ripped itself to pieces on the steeple. Torn asunder, Rev. Ralph would tell of it for years. Torn asunder!

But those inside the Maze had nowhere to turn. Children and adults alike wheeled and fled, down paths that went nowhere, flayed by the wind-whipped stalks of stinging death. Well, not death, literally, but who knows what went through those terrified minds besotted with brimstone stories? Their screams reached the field beyond, but what could we outsiders do except listen in horror. One by one the survivors stumbled out into the raging storm, rashes covering their faces and hands, tears streaming down their pockmarked faces. The Little Chapel opened its double doors to lead these blinded sheep inside, to calm them and offer balm, to offer shelter from the storm. Pastor Philip was in 7th Heaven, finding in the calamity further proof of the Scriptures. He was in fine form, everyone agreed later.

But it was later Rev. Ralph realized Mildred was missing. He went from person to person asking if they’d seen Mildred. No one had. A boy sporting 666 on his forehead said he’d seen her go in the Maze. “Are you sure,” the congregation cried, nearly in unison. He was certain. Rev. Ralph led the search party. The wind had abated nearly as quickly as it had come up. Down at the Labyrinth the nettles had been laid down in haphazard rows as if the horn of Jericho had blown and there, in the exact center, stood Mildred, stone still, a strange statue of a woman staring into the sky, not moving, not crying out, just frozen in time and space. Between Heaven and Hell, Pastor Philip would say more than a few times in the following days. Only Rev. Ralph dared approach and he did so with the utmost trepidation as everyone watched in dread.

Mildred was never the same. Some say she wasn’t quite right to begin with, but that’s uncharitable. She spoke in tongues a day later. Unintelligible garble, strange utterances, ugly curses. But I’ve never heard that from anyone who was actually there. I do know it’s hard to be with her even now. She doesn’t actually engage and looks right through you while she perpetually scratches at her arms. It may be she’s lost forever in that maze. It may even be, as the Bible thumping Pastor Philip would say, we’re everyone of us lost in that maze.

Lately I’ve been around folks similar in geologic age as myself who, after reviewing their litanies of medical maladies, assorted operations and multiple ailments, inevitably land on the subject of cleaning out their closets and drawers, sheds and outbuildings so the kids won’t get stuck with the hellish project disposing of their decades of accumulation. The assumption in every case is that their offspring would no more want that accretion of antique junk than they’d hop e their local thrift store would one day be theirs, lock stock and broken barrel.

With my brother I moved our folks’ treasured possessions three or four times the last years of their life. The first move we told them, after they’d become alarmed at our loads to the dump and Goodwill, if they wanted to downsize themselves, okay, but we’d be returning down to Georgia with the largest U-Haul truck we could rent and what they wanted to keep — definitely not everything — would have to fit. All right, they said. When we returned of course nothing had been weeded out or thrown away. What are you gonna do, spank em and send em to bed without supper? We managed to find a second U-Haul truck and filled both, then drove them 1500 miles to their new house that we filled with cheap furniture, rusty tools, broken appliances and a lifetime of collected crap.

The next few moves into the assisted living complex, we did the downsizing. As much as they would allow … or at least never witnessed. Whether it’s a prolonged attachment or just too much work to get rid of stuff, I couldn’t say. Our own junkpile, seldom downsized, would be a curse to our kids when we leave these mortal coils, goofy art, rotting kayaks, dead lawnmowers, useless tools — a veritable EPA superfund site. Fortunately we don’t have kids. I suspect we’ll just endow the property, the houses, the 20 plus sheds and all our worldly possessions to jumpstart the South End Historical Society. No need to call the movers or the thrift stores. Just need volunteers to be docents once the visiting hours are established.

I’m not a meticulous guy. Not a bone in me is OCD. My engineer pals call me an 80/20 guy, only put in 80% of the work and accept the results. This week I rented a drum floor sander, weighed about what a car does and okay, you haul it up our stairs, see if you think you’re still young and strong. But okay, I did and now I feel old and plenty weak. What did I expect at 74? Although this isn’t about my geriatric condition, it’s about my inattention to details, the old ‘good enuff’ attitude I’ve had my entire life, sort of a hippie ethos. Not trying to be an expert, just, gee, get the job done and let’s move on. Plenty of other stuff needs taking care of, not really working toward a PhD in floor finishing.

But … if I’d hoped optimism and the Can-Do attitude would carry the day … I was sorely mistaken. It’s been a full day sanding down the old finish that looked like hell the last five years or more but I just kept procrastinating, putting it off year after year until finally, this week, I rented the sander and hauled it home, huffed and puffed the monstrously heavy beast up the stairs and plugged it in, figuring the last time I sanded these floors 30 years ago it was fairly easy.

Course it didn’t have epoxy finish on it when I laid it back then, tougher than nails now, tougher than my 60 grit sandpaper in a lot of hard to get at place, tougher than my own grit. By the time I threw in the towel I had plenty of deep gouges, rough corners, finish that sanded uneven — in other words, not the gleaming fresh hardwood maple floor I’d envisioned. Quite the contrary. Story of my life, really, attempting projects like housebuilding or guitar luthiery or furniture making without the proper tools, without the patience necessary, without the requisite skills and just hoping in the end that things would work out fine. The fallacy of this fantasy is obvious in the final details, a failure of craftsmanship, simple as that.

Today I’m questioning a lot of that hippie ethos of mine, licking wounds, kicking myself. Tomorrow … hopefully I won’t see all the mistakes. It is, after all, just a floor. We just put the scratches in ahead of time.

Little Jimmy, a buddy of mine who’s almost exactly the same old age as me, was reflecting on what he’d like to do when he retired. He’s a glass artist – same as me – and so I know, even if he doesn’t, the kind of retirement he’s dreaming of is just that, a pipe dream. There’s as much likelihood of golden years in a hammock beside a South Seas Lagoon as winning American Idol with a tin ear and laryngitis, but like most folks who gamble on a lottery ticket, the fantasy trumps mathematics.

He’s the kind of guy who itemizes his day, schedules his week, plans itinerary into the coming months and can tell you, by rote, the exact steps he’ll take into the coming years. I can no more imagine him poolside with a Cuba Libre beside his sunglasses on the cabana table slathered with tanning lotion reading a novel than I can see him winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Little Jimmy’s a List Maker. An organized, tightly scheduled Planner. He knows far ahead what he needs to do not only this morning but the morning Tuesday first week, next month. He’s the guy who made an outline before he wrote the essay in 12th grade history class and got an A+ with the teacher’s comments: well organized. I don’t need to look in his dish cabinet to know the bowls and glasses are neatly arranged by size and color. Chaos, to him, is MY cabinet, one step shy of disaster, mayhem and death.

Little Jimmy pulls out a tape rule last visit and shows me 80 inches. “See that?” I shrug in incomprehension. “What’re we measuring?” I ask. “Time left,” Jimmy declares. “If I live to be 80, slightly longer than the average U.S. male … and I’m 74 (he puts his finger at 6 feet 2 inches, then this is all you and me got left, buddy, 6inches.” He shakes his head sadly. “Time’s short now.”

Unlike most of us and me in particular, Jimmy’s hit the End of his Calendar. No more days no more months no more years. Just inches. He wants to get more done, he’s got to speed up the Line, blow more glass, sell more stock, finish 2024 by 2025, squeeze into that retirement before the tape rule hits 80 inches. They say dogs don’t understand death. I think dogs are like me — they get the idea, all right, they just don’t carry a tape rule strapped to their collar. I guess we’re a little too busy scratching fleas.