2 November 2026

I’ve just come inside on this sunny Indian summer’s day, having planted a few more daffodils under the evergreen Norway spruce where since my dad’s passing in 2002 I’ve scattered the ashes of all my Dear Departed, already looking forward to their transmogrified resurrection next spring.  My birth month now passed, I’ve been spending more time than usual taking stock, balancing moments of serendipity with annoyance, often surprised by vivid remembrance of times past, sometimes jumbled in an early morning dream or just suddenly flashing “upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude.”  Even distorted by not always reliable memory, the past can seem more real to me than the so weird present.

Of course anxiety is general with Election Day tomorrow; whither our Un-tied States?  As if the dystopian present is not enough, arriving on an almost daily basis are occurrences so alien to this 74-year-old that I disassociate.  Take for example the emailed petition protesting the imminent removal of 300,000 books from the UNH library, a move intended to address the “evolving information landscape” and “better suit the campus and our students.”  What about the cognitive surrender of those students to AI agents?  And what happens when we are totally dependent on data centers for access to information?  Our home is already a storehouse of dead technology–reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, 35 mm home movies–memories no longer available because the means to access them are no longer manufactured.  Books last.  And you, not the tech overlords, can own them.  Don’t dump the books!

And don’t even get me started on how I feel about touch screens.  I find them a real hazard in my 2025 VW GTI:  you have to take your eyes off the road to hit the right place on the screen to change the radio station, not easily done on a bumpy road.  Give me knobs to turn and buttons to press, all accessible to the touch sans eye contact.  Stationary touch screens are a problem, too.  Here’s a tip for anyone similarly discommoded by person-less ordering at McDonald’s or checking out at Target:  just TAP the touch screen ever so briefly.  If you linger or press a touch screen key or icon too hard or too long, nothing will happen.  It’s bad enough that you aren’t engaging with a person; the machine will punish you by freezing if you offer it too much contact. I think there’s a lesson there.

Consider the value of human exchange in this scenario from earlier last month:  I was checking out at Market Basket; both the cashier and the bagger were women who looked to be about my age.  The cashier picked up my parsley (in my reusable net drawstring bag, not the grocery-supplied plastic), and peering through the net pronounced it, out loud, not Italian but “curly.”  To which I, with no hesitation, replied “Larry and Moe.”  Time stopped for a moment, and then the two women burst out laughing.  This moment of mutual recognition and senior solidarity lightened the existential load for all three of us:  we are old enough to remember the Three Stooges, and we’re still here!  When I left the grocery, we were all smiling.

Although I reckon my granddaughter Isabel would not have gotten that reference, she writes that she, too, seeks out despair-dodging strategies these days, and recommended to me a book she recently enjoyed.  A book, mind you.  And it was seeing that my most recent grocery cashier’s name tag read “Isabelle” that reminded me I needed to reply to my Isabel’s thoughtful birthday letter.  I came home, did so, and got my letter into my mailbox just moments before our post carrier Gwynne arrived to pick it up.  Serendipity times two, enough to soothe the worried mind and even suggest some order in the universe.

May order, books, and humans prevail.  Here’s to the Dear Departed on this Day of the Dead, and to all with whom we share this temporal dimension.

Dear Readers: only connect.