Category Archives: miscellaneous

family, Genealogy, home improvements, miscellaneous

Grinding

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Dateline: Sunday, 12 Nov 2023

From time to time, life gets so busy that I fall back to a habit that served me well in my engineering career: making a to-do list. Not that my days are really so busy that I miss deadlines, doctor appointments, club meetings, etc. Those are relatively few in number, and easily remembered—at least those happening in the next month are.

But as I look around the house, I see lots of things that need doing. Some are small things, but they pile up. It is a needed task to clean up as much as I can before company comes Thanksgiving week. Here in The Dungeon, if I look over to the left, the worktable with our printer has piles of papers. The biggest pile is scrap paper, being kept for printing drafts of my writing for proofreading or critiques. It’s ugly, but it’s going to stay. Next to it is a notebook of genealogy files that I’m slowly scanning and saving to the cloud so that I can get rid of the paper. Also on that table are a few miscellaneous papers that I need to file. One is a charitable donation receipt I need to put with the 2021 tax returns. So far I haven’t felt like dedicating the two minutes needed to do that.

That work table also has two bank statements to file. That’s another two minute task I just haven’t felt like doing.

A little farther away are bookshelves lining the basement family room walls. At one time these were nice and neat, separated into fiction and nonfiction, and alphabetized. They may still be mostly that way, but years of reading and re-shelving, selling or donating, pulling other books from boxes, have resulted in some loose of organization. Fortunately, correcting that, while a big task, isn’t urgent.

What is urgent? Filing receipts! I suppose that’s number one. Many things I used to file have gone digital. Yet there’s still a big pile of them to file. Most of them are medical, the papers you get with each prescription. Some are medical info, others are receipts. Others are grocery store receipts, travel receipts, a few insurance statements, and a few brokerage papers that we haven’t yet switched over to digital. Once I set my mind to it, I can have these all sorted, ordered by date, and filed in about two hours. Maybe that will be a Monday task.

Then there are all the things involved with home repairs. We are inching forward with gutter and downspout replacement. My water damage restoration contractor bailed on me, so I’m having to go through it all again with a new one. I hope to hear something this week from him. And I still need to get the floor guy out here to figure out if I’ll be able to change out the ancient wall-to-wall carpet with modern flooring after all the other work is done. I guess I need to carve out a little time today to figure out which number I called was him and call to set up an inspection time.

Then there’s flu shots. We normally get them in early October, but couldn’t this year and I haven’t made appointments since then. That might be a today task as I can do that online. Oh, and the Silver Dragon need some routine servicing. I think Wednesday is free, if I can make an appointment on Monday. Oh, year, just remembered: I have some over the counter things to order as part of our Medicare Advantage Plan benefits. Better do that today as well.

Somewhere in there I need to work in some stock trading. The latter is mostly Monday through Friday, only 15 min to a half hour a day, plus an hour wrap-up on Saturday.

See why I need a to-do list? I have to grind through these things, trying to get everything done without letting something fall through the cracks.

I’m going to end this blog post here, and do those on-line things while I can. I hope on Friday I can post that I got lots done, and feel less stressed about everything.

books, miscellaneous, Writing

An Introvert and An Extrovert…

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Where the extrovert goes to talk, and the introvert goes to read.

An introvert and an extrovert walk into…let’s make it a coffee house rather than a bar. They are not together but arrive at the door at the same time. The extrovert pulls open the door and holds it for the introvert, who says thank you. They stand in line together, get their coffee at about the same time. The coffee shop is kind of crowded,  with almost all tables having someone at them, so the extrovert says, “Let’s sit together at that empty table.”

The introvert has a book under his arm, and was obviously hoping for a quiet time of reading and sipping his large house blend, but doesn’t want to be rude, and so says, “Sure.” They sit together and the extrovert keeps up a steady conversation between occasional sips of his latte. The introvert says little. He has placed his book on the table, hoping the extrovert sees it and recognizes what the introvert wants.

Fortunately, before their coffees get cold, the extrovert sees a friend enter the shop, excuses himself, and goes to the newly arrived friend. The introvert heaves a sigh of relief, picks up his book, and begins to read.

Is this a realistic scenario?  To me, who sits well out on the introverted side of the spectrum, it seems about right. I’m obviously not an unbiased observer.

But it seems to me that the introvert sees an extrovert and, rather than say, “Why can’t you be more like me, just keeps to himself and lets the extrovert do his thing.

Coffee, a book, and solitude when you want it or community when you want that. The introvert’s life.

But the extrovert, encountering the introvert, not only says, “Why can’t you be more like me,” and then sets out to convert the introvert to the extrovert’s ways, insisting he join a group of six other extroverts for community.

Am I right on this, or am I being too harsh on the extrovert, or perhaps not understanding the extrovert at all?

At a literary agency blog that I follow, the post this week had to do with ways and means of marketing our books, but slipped in this statement:

A high percentage of writers are introverts, yet even they crave community…just on their own terms.

And I thought ain’t that the truth?

You ask what’s the point of this post? Maybe nothing. Perhaps I’ll print it out on cardstock half-size sheets, carry them with me, and the next time an extrovert tries to draw me out in a coffee shop, hand him or her a copy.

family, memories, miscellaneous, Stars and Stripes

Not Quite A Reunion

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Three posts ago, I wrote about a reunion I helped facilitate between my wife and an old friend, who was also an old friend of mine. Along the same vein, but different, was something that happened over the next few days. Let me set this up.

The man on the left is my dad, Norman Todd, somewhere in Europe during World War 2. Who are the other three?

I found the photo at the right in a box of photos at Dad’s house when he died. Dad is on the left. The other three men were mysteries. The photo was taken someplace in Europe. Once Dad was assigned to the Stars and Stripes, he was in Algiers (briefly), then Anzio beachhead, then up the boot of Italy with the mobile publishing unit, then southern France in three different places. Readers of this blog have heard all this before, at posts at this link.

I wondered who the other three men in the photo were. Most likely they were Stars and Stripes staffers, but who? And was there any way to find out?

Perhaps the most famous part of the S&S staff was cartoonist Bill Mauldin. Dad was at the same location Bill was on V-E Day (May 8, 1945), but how long they served together and in what locations was a mystery. Dad told me that Bill sometimes had him model for some of the Willie & Joe “Up-Front” cartoons.

I wonder if Dad modeled for any of these Bill Mauldin cartoons.

Bill is so famous that from time to time a post about him shows up in my Facebook newsfeed. I always comment on them about Dad’s connection to Bill, hoping someone will respond. Not that I think any of the men in the photo are still alive (unlikely) but hoping that someone would say something to me that might help me either identify the men in the photo or hear something that might bear on Dad’s war service.

One of those posts came up this week. A post by Grand Comics Database, showing a Bill Mauldin cartoon of Willie and Joe, the two sad-sack soldiers featured in his “Up Front” cartoon series. A number of people posted to it, and I added this comment:

My dad was a typesetter for the “Stars and Stripes”, in N. Africa, Italy, and So. France. He knew Bill Mauldin and was friends with him. Dad told me Mauldin often had him pose for the cartoons.

One woman answered with the following comment:

Your dad must have been in the same group as my dad, same countries, same background. Bill Maudlin drew this picture of my Dad on an index card, in pencil.

She added the cartoon.

I then took this to Messenger and sent her four photos of Dad with other men, including the one above. There was a delay of some hours, when she messaged back:

The man on the right third pic…is my Dad! what a shock to see him in your pictures. It is a small world.

later adding:

just could not believe I was looking at my dad’s picture, when you sent that one. I only had a few of him during the service and unfortunately he passed when I was only 13, so not enough years to know too much about the war….

His name is Fred R. Unwin. Born in London, he made his way to America (part of the story I still need to learn) and was indeed with the S&S in Europe. After the war he stayed in printing (as Dad did), as a pressman and later a supervisor, in Chicago and Phoenix. I’ll get some more info about him as our conversations continue.

Robyn sent me some photos of her dad, and I said to Robyn:

So, shall we call ourselves Stars and Stripes cousins?

She, of course, said yes. Thus now we are cousins.

When I made that post, I had hopes but no expectations that anything would come of it. But two men in the photo are now identified, Norman Todd on the left, Fred Unwin on the right. Will the two men in the middle ever be identified? Possibly not, but I feel good about having one more known, against the likely odds.

memories, miscellaneous

47 Years Later…

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Juanelle and Lynda. First time they’ve seen each other in 47 years.

We came to Branson, Missouri for a combination of writer’s conference and time away from home. We’re staying in our timeshare. Internet has been spotty, which is why I didn’t write a post yesterday or today. I may have to find a Dunkin’ and use their internet. Right how, as I’m writing, we seem to have a strong signal. Just as well, because as a result I have a different post to make.

Another part of the trip was a meet up I arranged between my wife, Lynda, and a long-lost friend, Juanelle. They were best friends in Kansas City before I met either of them. Both RNs, they worked together as teachers in the Research Hospital school of nursing. They ate lunch together, hung out, and had much in common. Juanelle attended Kansas City First Church of the Nazarene at the time, Lynda attended Rainbow Blvd. Church of the Nazarene.

Lynda and Juanelle on our wedding day.

It was at First Church that I first met…Juanelle, not Lynda, in a singles Sunday School class. About eight months later, I met Lynda, at a national singles retreat held by our denomination. Image, we lived five miles from each other and we had to go to Glorieta NM to meet.  We hit it off, and were married in January 1976. Lynda asked Juanelle to be her maid of honor. Here’s a photo of them on our wedding day. It was not too long after that that Juanelle moved from KC to California, and we didn’t see her and somehow didn’t get her address.

Fast forward to the 1990s. Through one of Lynda’s cousins visiting Juanelle’s church, we reconnected. Then we moved and she moved and we lost connection. Then I did some internet sleuthing and found out her contact information. Juanelle’s husband had just died. I wrote her a letter on behalf of Lynda and me. Some time went by before we received a letter from Juanelle in the mail. She had just moved from California to Springfield, Missouri to be closer to family. Springfield, I thought. Why, that’s just a two-hour drive from us!

Lynda and Juanelle in deep conversation while the rest of us talked among ourselves.

To shorten this story, I finally arranged a meeting with Juanelle. She came to Branson with her brother and sister-in-law, and we had a long lunch and getting reacquainted time. Three hours went by very quickly. I figure it was just over 47 years since Juanelle moved, after which until today we never saw her.

Here’s to meet ups with long lost friends. May we meet up again at least a few times before the great reunion in heaven.

home improvements, miscellaneous

Turn Into The Storm

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Beneath the master bathroom floor. Significant damage, though it’s old.

Back when I was working at a job outside the house, I used to say life was a whirlwind. It seemed like that most of the time. Now, in my fifth year of retirement, life is still a whirlwind.

Oh, at times all is serene. I have time to do all that I must do, much that I want to do, and even things I hope to do. From that point, life is good. Take this year and yardwork. I was quite diligent with keeping up with yardwork almost daily, a half hour to an hour after breakfast or, during the hottest part of the summer, a half hour to hour first thing in the morning. That got me to the end of September with all routine work done and one huge special project complete. It really felt good.

The non-functioning gutters poured water on the deck, causing the rot on this door frame. Repairs are a few weeks away. Into the storm.

But sometimes it’s a whirlwind. I hit October with only one of the home improvement projects planned for the year done. That was replacing the ancient burner in our propane-fueled fireplace. That was done in early August. Item 2 was to have our old deck flooring/handrail removed and replaced with new, synthetic material. I was finally able to get this underway Oct. 5, and it was completed Oct 14. Good, huh?

The third project was to replace our ancient wall-to-wall carpet in our common areas and bathrooms with some kind of tile or synthetic flooring. I had planned on getting that done close behind the deck.

Well, not so fast. The deck demolition showed some water damage, stuff that needs to be remediated before we go with anything else. Scratch that. Before those repairs we need to replace some defective/worn out guttering, which had caused some of the damage. While we were looking at that, we found other places with water damage. So the priority of projects has become gutter replacement, followed by water damage repair, then finally new flooring.

All of this has been disconcerting, due to 1) I hate spending money, and 2) I hate dealing with contractors. I’d rather do almost anything but those two things. The budget has sure been blown for this year. But, on a 37-year-old house, you can expect to have capital maintenance projects every three or four decades.

But all of this is a whirlwind, having to find and deal with contractors. I just want to put it off and sit and write and do my other favorite things. I needed to overcome inertia.

[Photo by Elijah Pilchard]
An amazing creature, the bison.
Last week, on PBS, we watched a four hour show about the American bison, two hours on two consecutive nights. It was a great program, as all Ken Burns films are. They showed how the slaughter of the bison was as much to control the Indian population as for the sport of killing. The second night was mostly about preserving the bison after they were about wiped out.

As part of that, they showed how bison did in a snowstorm. They turn into the wind and pretty much stand pat. That’s as opposed to our domestic cattle, which turn away from the storm and allow themselves to be driven with the wind, often to disastrous results. The bison can survive even major blizzards by turning into the storm.

The day after that show aired, I was in The Dungeon, at the computer, thinking of what a whirlwind—a storm—I was in with these unexpected repairs. Not wanting to spend money, not wanting to find contractors and deal with their lowball estimates followed by price hikes. Not wanting to think about what repairs would be needed in a couple of water damaged areas. A whirlwind indeed.

Then I thought of the bison and how they dealt with a storm, and decided I needed to do the same. I had to turn into the storm and face it, rather than turn away from it and be driven to disaster by circumstances. I started calling contractors.

Our deck guys also do gutters, and they are tentatively scheduled. I found a recommended remediation contractor and they will come out today to assess the damaged places and prepare an estimate. And I called the flooring contractor I’m hoping to use, one I’ve dealt with in my engineering career. He can’t get out to us for estimating for two weeks due to some time off. I said that was perfect, as his work was likely more than a month out.

So all the major projects, both the planned ones and the unplanned ones, as in the works. I must admit that feels good. My bank balance won’t thank me, but perhaps the house will when it realizes it is back to a sound structural and cosmetic condition.

Turning into the storm, in this case by making the calls and doing the things that needed to be done, has at least had some early benefits. The storm continues. But just like the bison, at least I’m headed in the right direction.

environment, miscellaneous, research, Writing

Nature: The Artwork Of God

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I love being out in nature. Too bad my knees and heart prevent me from going on long, woodland hikes.

I think, a few posts ago, I mentioned I had a new writing idea. Not sure if it will be a book or something else. Right now, it’s just an idea not yet fully developed.

I got this idea from the book I’m currently reading, Darwin’s Century. This is a book that talks about Darwin’s predecessors among naturalists, who came up with a piece of the evolutionary theory. Darwin put them all together. The part I’m at now is about Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, and how this impacted his intellectual journey on his scientific road. Soon it will get into the theory itself, and talk about the people who helped to “sell” Darwin’s theory to the scientific community and the world. Right now, without having looked ahead or checked the Table of Contents, I’m not quite sure where the book is going—other than it’s pro-Darwin and pro-evolution.

This is the seventh book I’ve picked up about evolution. I find the story fascinating. I have only one more I plan to read (if I can find it at a reasonable price) and re-read one other. That should complete what I feel like I need to know to be well informed about the subject.

Oh, make that eight books. I forgot about the novel I read recently that dealt with some of these issues.

These have got me to thinking about the opposition that the theory of evolution has set between science and religion. Many people who believe in God think evolution is bunk. And many people who believe in evolution think God never existed but was a manmade concoction.

The crux of the matter falls into two categories, or maybe it’s three: God’s sovereignty, creation of humans, and old earth vs. young earth. I’ve been trying to put this into succinct, short paragraphs describing what I see as errors on both sides, but I haven’t yet been able to find the phrasing I want. I’m making progress, however.

I’m tempted to put the drafts of two paragraphs in this post, but will hold off. I need to learn to finish things before posting. Suffice to say I like how the two statements are shaping up.

So what about this book, or whatever this writing idea turns into? What’s the premise? It’s that God is seen in nature, that all that we see is His creation—however He set it in motion and however it continues. Also that science is an ever-changing thing, and we need to be careful about ever saying “The science is fixed,” and basing any type of beliefs about what science says at present.

Well, this post is unfocused today. Sorry about that. That tells you where I am with this writing idea: unfocused. Perhaps I’ll get some focus before long, as I put little thoughts on paper.

environment, miscellaneous

The Weather

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No, climate change did not bring down this tree. It grew too big for its root system on the rocky hillside.

What is it they say? When engaging in conversation, avoid politics and stick to the weather and your health? But who wants to hear about my new aches and pains, or how my good knee has started to hurt a lot? So that leaves the weather.

But it seems even the weather is a source of contention these days. This seems to have been a hot summer. Across social media, people are posting memes “Only [so many] days until fall” says a man sweating under a hot sun, holding one of those portable, battery-operated fans as he can barely put one foot in front of the other on the sidewalk. It’s as if people forgot, from last year to this, that it’s hot in July and August.

The problem is that discussing the weather leads on to global warming—or climate change to use the latest term. Look how many hot days we had this July compared to last. It must be global warming. Mankind’s activities must be heating up the planet. Thus, a simple mention of weather in casual conversation become a source of contention, as one believes in climate change and the other doesn’t.

Right now, people can’t wait for cooler weather. What will they be saying in January?

I had occasion to begin studying my utility bills recently, trying to see if a gadget my wife bought is having the advertised effects on our power usage. Our meter reading for July 2023 was indeed significantly below July 2022. Might this gadget be working? For the first time I noticed that our utility bill shows average temperatures for the month. July’s average high was 89°. I checked last year, and the average high was 93°. So this year was cooler, or should I say less-hot. We also have a new air conditioner, put in at the end of August last year.

I’ve heard lots of complaints about the temperature this summer. They tend to come from the same people who complained about the weather last winter. Hot, cold. Doesn’t matter. People need something to complain about.

Right now, remnants of Hurricane Hillary are hitting the western US, the first tropical storm to make landfall in the USA from the Pacific Ocean in over a quarter century. I can’t wait for the pundits to come on TV to say this is obviously an effect of manmade climate change and we must change our ways if we are going to save the planet for future generations. A couple of days ago, a tornado touched-down in my native Rhode Island—a very rare occurrence. It hit the cemetery where my parents and grandparents are buried and did a lot of damage to mature trees. Are people already saying, “See, see! Climate change!”

People, it’s hot in summer and cold in winter, depending on where you live. Some years are hotter than normal, some cooler. Some hotter than normal in the East, some cooler than normal somewhere else. Turning weather into a discussion on climate change, which necessarily morphs into politics, is a waste of time.

One storm, or two storms, or one summer season, are not enough to make a claim that human activities are causing climate change. It may be that they are. In fact, I feel fairly certain that modern society, as we live in the USA, is adding heat to the atmosphere. Whether that’s changing earth’s climate in an irrevocable manner is another question, one I’m not ready to discuss in social settings.

It’s now 6:20 a.m. on Monday morning. Got up earlier than I wanted to when I couldn’t get back to sleep. I’ll now get dressed and go outside for some yardwork, trying to beat the heat on what is predicted to be a 100° day. It’s summer, and heat is expected. I have a small place that is overgrown with weeds and I’d like to get it cleared today. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll tackle deadfall on the woodlot.

By next week it is forecast to be in the 80s for the highs. Happens every August.

C.S. Lewis, miscellaneous, Writing

Writer’s Block

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This week, I’ve been unable to write anything. My work-in-progress, Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, sits more or less where it was on Monday morning. I think I got a few words written on Monday (completing a chapter I left undone on Friday), but no more.

On Tuesday, I sat in The Dungeon as usual, pulled up the next chapter to write, and…nothing came to me. I couldn’t make sense of the source document, already edited to length. So I put that aside and came back to it on Wednesday. And on Thursday. Nothing. I still couldn’t see how to write the chapter.

Part of the problem is my hurting left shoulder. Did I write about that before? It was severely strained when I was walking Nuisance, our daughter’s family’s dog, in early June, and the dog had an encounter with a snake. They saw each other before I saw the snake. They lunged at each other, and in restraining the dog, boom. My shoulder was damaged. It’s not broken or dislocated, but it hurts like the dickens (as Dad used to say). Having my arm in the typing position seems to be where it hurts the most.

So I’ve been doing other things this week. I wrote a couple of long-hand letters. Organized some e-mails. Worked on my correspondence files from 2018 and 2019, deleting duplicates. Digitized some genealogy papers. That still hurts my shoulder, but I have enough breaks from holding my arms in place on the keyboard.

Oh, one other thing that’s been taking up some time and brain power is arranging for repairs to be done on the house. Dealing with contractors, getting estimates, scheduling work. I always find that draining. One item is now under contract and will be done next week. I should get the final estimate on the second one today. The third I’ll deal with next week.

So that’s where I’m at. Writer’s block for the first time in my writing “career.” I’ll try again today and see if the words will come. Maybe Monday I’ll be able to write that second C.S. Lewis/Screwtape post.

Christianity, miscellaneous

When You Wish Someone “Godspeed”

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Gotta love on-line dictionaries. Ah, the Information Age!

Our neighborhood is changing. Our street has four houses on it and 14 undeveloped lots. No, scratch that. Five houses and 13 undeveloped lots. Last fall they started to build a house on the lot down the hill. It’s still not yet finished and occupied. In our larger neighborhood that takes in the next street, we have 15 houses (including our four) and maybe another 20 undeveloped lots, or maybe 30.

Things don’t change much here, except for the building of that house. But things do change because people come and go. All but two of those houses have changed hands since we moved here (ours and the neighbors uphill from us), some of them twice. People have retired, moved here, got too old to keep up their house and lot, downsized and moved away.

One recent move is a woman who is technically not among those 15 houses. She is (was) right across from the end of the next street over. Her name is Mary. I hadn’t seen her husband Pat around recently, so when I was out walking one day and she was working in her yard, I asked her about him. She said he had passed away from pancreatic cancer back in November. Next, we saw a for sale sign in her yard, and almost immediately a “sold” sign.

We rarely see her, but one day in late June she was out one day when I was on my walk, so I stopped and talked with her. She said her house sold in four days and she was moving to Minneapolis to be near kids. She would move on July 20. It would have been sooner but she had surgery scheduled for July 5 (I forget which joint was to be worked on). Since I wasn’t sure I would see her again before she went, I said, “Godspeed to you,” and went on my way.

Later, I thought about what I had said and what it meant. “Godspeed” would seem simple enough, but I don’t like to use words if I don’t fully understand them. So what exactly does “Godspeed” mean? Here’s a dictionary definition:

an expression of good wishes to a person starting a journey

Simple enough, and it appears I used it correctly. But where did the word come from? Apparently, it’s from Middle English, originally the second half of the word is from “spede” or “spied”, meaning to succeed; to reach your goal.

So I was saying to her: may God help you to succeed, particularly in the journey on which you are about to embark. That’s exactly what I meant to say, so I’m glad I used ‘Godspeed’, a word I seldom use, correctly.

This may seem like a minor thing to blog about, but it was important to me. I said it at the time to hopefully let her know I was a believer in God without getting into a religious discussion. I’d like to see God be more mainstream in our society, and so used this minor utterance toward that end.

Genealogy, miscellaneous

The Living or the Dead

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My wife and I had an interesting conversation Saturday night. We were talking about someone we knew in the past, from our church in Kansas City. I wasn’t sure who she meant at first, and I mentioned another couple from the same era and same church. Except I couldn’t remember the wife’s name of the second couple. We talked about it and together were able to remember both couples’ names.

The couple I first brought up was somewhat older than us. When he retired from the railroad, they moved from Kansas City to somewhere in southern Missouri. around Springfield. We had their contact info at one time but have lost it. I wondered, though, since they were at least 10 years older than us, if they were still alive. Was there a way to find out?

I searched for obituaries for them, then searched finagrave.com, a site where I’ve had great success finding dead people there, in my research for genealogy and for the church Centennial book. I looked in those places and…nothing. The couple didn’t show up in any searches. That may mean they are still alive and well and living in southern Missouri. Or it could mean they simply didn’t show up in searches. I then tried searching for them among the living and couldn’t find them there either.

Being unconclusive, Lynda said something about why I searched for them at findagrave, a site she hadn’t heard of before. I replied, “I’ve had more success finding the dead than the living.”

That was a catchy way of saying, perhaps, what my preferences are when searching for people. The dead don’t argue with you. They don’t talk back or insult you. They don’t take political sides or belittle someone you like. They also don’t ignore you when you find them.

Obviously, expectations are different when searching for the living. If you do find someone you’re looking for, it’s likely you try to contact them and, if successful, you hope for an answer. Alas, that answer often is not forthcoming. But, when you search for the dead, if you find them you learn something about them. If they left many footprints, they speak to you through those footprints. It’s not much of a conversation, however.

Maybe that’s why I enjoy looking for the dead so much. You learn a lot without engaging in conversation. The fewer conversations in any given day usually makes it a better day for me. Maybe that’s why I’ve enjoyed genealogy so much over the years. It’s coaxing dead people to talk to you, but without actual conversation—if that makes sense.

This isn’t much of a post, but it’s what’s in my head right now. Perhaps I’ll do better on Friday.