Steve Jobs, Cary, Alan, Mac and me

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Steve Jobs, Cary, Alan, Mac and me.

Steve Jobs, Cary, Alan, Mac and me.

            I went to BSU in the ‘80s. Graduated in ’87.  My first experience with a computer was a required science class. Computers were being introduced into the college body elect as a science class.

            It was like a foreign language to dyslectic me. I spent my life from elementary school on glued to an Underwood typewriter. (For you youngsters under 35) Underwood is to typewriters like Apple is to computers. That is if in some ancient history class you learned the word typewriter, which had a keyboard. Which facilitated putting words on a sheet of paper pushing them out much as the screen of a computer. Talk to your grandmother. People in the Secret Service use them because you can’t hack into them. Type messages and mail them. Neat concept.

            Which bring us to Steve Jobs. My learning computer was IBM. My midterm was to type this paper in class and do things that forced me to push buttons that did other things.

            What things I did caused all my beautiful words to go into columns. When I tried to push a button to reverse this process, the columns began to march. The computer assistants were women in business school learning to be office assistants. They were called secretaries in my time. Which is how I learned to type by typing all the time on my secretary mothers typewriter.  Anyhow what ever their present title they learned a great deal of new words as I vocally expressed my opinions of computers.

            However I received a good grade, passed the classes and before the class was over I was typing all my papers on a computer in the computer lab. That’s what all the rooms that housed computers that Ball State students used under guard and lock and key were called.

            In another blog I will describe the wonderful adventures I had in that lab. That is, after losing my IBM virginity to the new monster in my life, the computer.

            During this time in addition to my husband’s help in paying the university bills I supplemented my money by writing for the newspaper as I always had on my Underwood and doing tarot, as I always had. I had no home computer. Way too expensive.

            I did the tarot in a little shop called Quarter Moon, which was owned by Cary and Alan Hayes. I also taught classes there. Once of which was past life regressions. The payment for this was a Mac. Now I was ready for this change in computers because I had just read IBM and The Third Reich and was no longer sure I wanted to write on an IBM. Which was good. Because...

            I fell in love with the all in one unit Mac. Only the keyboard and printer were separate. And Cary guided me though all the new procedures that Apple had invented. Plus she jacked that baby up so I got an Apple program of 7.0, email and could even go to the Library of Congress on it.  And every week or everyday I got a personal letter from Steve Jobs. All right, maybe his assistant. I choose to think it was he. And it explained all aspects of the Mac. Other subscribers wrote in their problems, and he helped work it out including me.

            Alone in my new office on that Mac, I wrote my stories for the newspapers, my novels, never published, and they are great ones, and I learned computers. When Jobs’ failed, I called Cary. When I needed to learn to do things, Cary came over, with her magic statement of  “all you do is this.”

I learned when she said that to write it down, before I forgot. I kept a file of everything I wrote down of her precious words. I printed out some of Jobs words. (I wished I had printed them all out. Those words lost forever in those beginning days of Macs.) The cover on the file is called “Cary’s and Steve’s Little Red book of Computers.”  I could look up something at 3 in the morning when I was in trouble. I also found out if I got on the computer at any time someone would answer my question. My idea of heaven.

            Then the hard drive went out, a very bad person said they could fix it. Cary was out of town. So I let them and they kept it and brought me another one. It looked like it but my stuff was gone, even through they tried to bring a lot it of back, they said. It was just like my old Mac stuff. It wasn’t. They kept the hard drive and the Mac, gave me a substitute. In all fairness one of the young men came back and did a great number of things that replaced all that I needed. But my old Mac kept telling me something was missing, maybe valuable.

This new one looked just like my old Mac baby, and I still have it. One just like it is in the Smithsonian. I have the printer, the hard discs, everything. It is a reminder of Steve Jobs, Cary, Alan and me and my learning experience into the modern world of computers at 50 something.

            I was reminded of this when his death was announced. I heard the speech he made at a graduation about “do what you love, follow your heart and dreams.”

            I want to tell him I have. I followed my dream. I learned that it doesn’t matter if you become rich like Steve. It only matters that you are content, you do what you love, learn computers, have fun, find joy in everything that you do. Most of all you love your Mac.

            Now I have an Apple Computer, an Iphone and am saving for an Ipad. I am still on email; Facebook, Live Streaming and my daughter put me on Twitter today so I could keep up more with Global Revolution. I have a whole host of apps. I still write, had poems, several mysteries published, still do past lives and tarots, try to manage the farm with kids and my assistant since my husband died. But, Steve I am doing what I love. I will never run a big company, own stock, be rich with money, but your computer with the email, Cary, and Alan have opened up the world to a 73 year old women who knows that it is possible to confront every challenge that comes my way. Thank you.PS now I have aps, Itunes and a camera. You are wonderful

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Sherita Saffer Campbell

I am me. I spend time with my children, grandchildren and great grand children. Love to attend my reading, writing groups. They are my people.

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Book review:The Black Count. By Jeff Reiss

                                                   BOOK REVIEW



I started blogging again. I am now committing one blog a week in each category.




      I have just finished reading The Black Count. By Jeff Reiss. Reiss wrote The Orientalist, which I shall review later.
      The Black Count is about the man who was The Count of Monte Crisco and had the adventures of The Three Musketeers, by Alexander Dumas. It was Alex's father who had these wonderful adventures.  He used his father's stories and history to write his exciting works of fiction.
       I grew up listening to The Count of Monte Crisco on the radio when I was a kid. Gives my age, doesn't? I also saw every old movie, or radio show, or new movie on the Three Musketeers.
       If you are a Musketeer fan, a Count of Monte Crisco fan, history buff. If you are infacuated with the French Revolution. Or if you wonder at the link between us, the French and the world in our struggle for freedom. If you ever wondered why our Constitution said all men are .....and didn't mention slaves, women or people of color or why the French got mad at us. Even wondered what the rest of the world was doing, why they waited or how the rest of the world was struggling with the same ideas we were trying to implement, you have to read this book.
      It is non-fiction. Reads like the best most exciting fiction and mystery you have ever read.
      The front book jacket says: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, The Real Count of Monte Crisco.
      The biography is 73 pages of small type. The Excitement,  the thrill like a roller coaster ride,
 that leaves you spellbound, wondering and full of wonder with a brand new take on The French Revolution and our own struggle to be free and all of our failures and success. Library has a copy, I
had to buy my own. I have to underline take notes and read it again and again.




 

Thunderstorm

                                                                 Thunderstorm

Last night it stormed; and stormed and stormed. Now I am not afraid of storms, rain, hail sleet and snow. I pick my storms. I am scared of the wind. That’s because I live in an old tippie-toe grandmother type house that something blows off or in: during wimd storms. These are usually windows and tree limbs on something.

            So I lie in bed and listen as the wind blows. Mediate so that the shear force of my brilliant mind will cause a protective crystal to wrap und the house and protect it. Not just the house, but every tree limb and tree on the place. The dogs and my cat, Buck LaSabre hate storms, dogs hate the thunder and lightening and the wind. The cat starts with the change in atmosphere pressure. So they all come loping through the house, not the cat, she’s already in bed with me, but the dogs sleep on their own smelly little pads, but at the first hint of a storm at night they jump in bed with me. If the wind, lightening, rain, thunder has not driven me into “storm batten down the hatches” alert situation, already, this, of course, prepares me.

            My daughter came to lunch. I fixed gourmet meals like waffles, eggs and turkey sausage, or sometimes, steak. Or boiled eggs, depending on my mood.

            Anyway we were discussing storms, fear and our passions on these things. She sleeps through rain, hail, sleet, snow, wind and tornadoes. I do not. I am in preparation mood, listening and willing the damn thing to go away.

            Or, as I was telling her about my early childhood development, I used to stay all night, all summer, all weekend if possible with my grandma. She was crippled from childbed fever. She had nine children and four grandchildren.  Staying with her was a history lesson; she was part Native American. Born right after the civil war ended. So we had good stories. She was a beautiful woman with a sense of humor, who knew everything. She was well read, played the piano and sang. Her only problem in life was a ghastly fear of storms and house fires. Notice that having 9 children did not produce fear. Nor did being crippled, from having child bed fever. At least not that she openly expressed. Fear of storms and fires were her outlet. I guess. My father said to his knowledge she never was involved in a super storm or house fire.

When I stayed there I slept with her in her bedroom, except when she rented out all the available rooms to boarders in hard, she slept on the couch. I am on the floor.

            In both cases we had this routine. She slept always in her slip and underwear. Her shoes by the bed, her hose rolled down ready to put on instantly. We placed a candlestick with a candle, matches, flashlight, on the bed stand. “In case of a storm.” Even when she slept on the couch, we arranged these things.

            If a storm appeared in the daytime we also were prepared. We would jump up, drag the heavy kitchen table to the East side of the house, I think it was east, gather all the candles and paraphernalia and get ready to ump under it. Two or three times the wind blew hard enough that my cousin and I were pushing under while grandma kept guard at the door to see if the storm was going to hit. The other job we had was to open the basement door which operated on a pulley system, so if it got really bad we would descend to the basement, where there was always at the ready, candles, flashlights, matches, blankets and food, in case. This was before the bomb.

            When we went to visit her daughter, my aunt, in Ft. Wayne the same preparations were always done. My aunt, grandmas third in line daughter, was equally scared, having lived with grandma through enough storms to be every prepared.

            My aunt and uncle always let us fix a tent to sleep in at night. We put the ends of a blanket in the desk drawers, stretched out the blanket, put soft blankets on the floor and we slept like logs. Uncle Gene slept in the bedroom on one side of the blanket, the living room on the other side. Grandma and Aunt Marie bedroom off the living room. Gene always help us put up the tent. He had to step over the tent bed to get to his room, (He snored. I mean HE SNORED.) That was why he slept in another bedroom. Anyway, there was a huge tornado alert, swished through downtown Ft. Wayne, scared the heck out of everyone. They were up and running. Except my aunt and grandma.

We were listening to the radio the next morning at breakfast, looking out the window at the tree limbs, everything sprayed all over the yard. Gene was explaining what happened Grandma, daintily stirring her oats said, “Why Gene, why didn’t you wake me up. You know I’m afraid of storms.”

            My dad later said when hearing of this; “The only storm she was ever in and she slept through it.”

            However he did regale us with a childhood storm tale. Grandma, it seemed, had always been afraid of storms. And had storm preparedness alerts that her children and her grandchildren, three of us, always went through when we stayed with her, were just like when he was a kid. One big exception was they had had storm shelters in addition to basements where ever they lived.  Mostly farms, after all they had 9 kids. One storm came up suddenly and they were still getting prepared, grabbing kids, assembling everyone, calling neighbors, when dad said, he looked out the window when grandpa shouted. “Here comes Mrs. Smith. A neighbor. They looked out the window, here she came, running across two large corn fields as fast as she could, through lighting and thunder, the rain pouring down in the preverbal buckets. She was hopping over rocks, or corn stalks and running just as fast as she could. She made it to the door. All the kids were watching this whole scene with mouths open. They let her in. She was wet from head to foot, water dripping off her arms, dress, all over the floor.

            Grandpa told grandma to get her some clothes.

            Mrs. Smith said, “don’t bother, I brought a change of clothes.” Whereupon she raised her arms to expose dripping wads of cloth that was a dry dress now just a bob of wet. Dad said grandpa and then the rest of them laughed so hard he didn’t remember if they ever made it to the storm cellar. When I asked grandma, she said they did.

            But my uncles and aunts said all of this was necessary because storms were worst back then.  According to the weather experts were are beginning another bad cycle.

            I don’t know. But having these stories in my background when I moved to the country with my husband and two little babies we moved into an area called tornado ally. So I again made preparations. Candles, batteries, food supplies, etc both for tornadoes and winter. You couldn’t get on a road in winter to go anywhere.

            One day in the spring, storm time.  The sky darkened a bit, the wind blew a bit.   And I heard this horrible sound like a freight train. My dad and the neighbors told me, a tornado sounded just like a train. I grabbled kids, watched the windows, and then looked out the window to see which way it was coming. It was a big train on the track by our house.   Making a freight train noise. After that I stayed prepared, well trained by childhood. But wasn’t afraid. Just sometimes got ready to go to the basement.

            When I moved to another house. There were more thunderstorms, tornado threats, and lots of rain. Once we gathered up stuff to head for basement, opened the door and the water was at the top of the stairs. I said I’d rather die in the s storm.

The thing about old houses built way back when is: they are usually made out of oak. They are built with the knowledge of storms, not too tight and with a give that makes the house sway and move with the wind. Scary sounding, but it helps keep the house intact because it bends wit the wind. Sways to and fro, makes noises and scares the hell out you. Those noises my carpenter uncles and dad said means the house will stand.

So I need a new sump pump and to shore up the basement and it might last another 20 years before a tornado hits it. But I still am a good mediator and I shall keep all options open.