What Will They Think of Next?

Sometimes I'm struck by the fact that, though I am not old by any stretch of the imagination - I SAID ANY STRETCH DAMMIT - I clearly remember being around for the introduction of every modern amenity that separates us from savages.

Remember your family's first microwave? Remember how crazy it was to be able to heat up food in a matter of seconds??

Remember when there were three TV stations (well, four, counting PBS, but that one never came in as well and was on the weird little auxiliary dial) and they went off the air after the National Anthem and sat there happily broadcasting static until morning, content in the knowledge that everything anyone could possibly want to see had been seen?

Remember when you got cable? Cable was awesome. Not only did you suddenly have a lot more channels, but because you paid a monthly fee for it, there weren't any commercials.

Around the same time you began to be able to record TV shows on a Betamax cassette (some less visionary people preferred the big clunky VHS tapes) and squiggle right on forward through commercials, too. It became clear that advertising on television was a thing of the past.

Then there were laser discs, big shiny silver phonograph records with movies on them, and then CDs, and then my dad's computer could talk to his coworker's computer across town, and then all hell broke loose.

Today I could ride my bike almost all the way to work in freezing drizzle, miserably cold, teeth chattering, soaked right down to the base layers, realize I'd forgotten my phone at home, and I would turn right around and go back and get it.

Not that it would do me much good. One of the hazards of biking to work in arctic temperatures is that, by the time you get there, you are unable to operate your smartphone because the touchscreen thinks your icy finger is an inanimate object.

All these innovations, though, pale by comparison to the greatest invention ever known to man. They've gone and invented - get this - a cat pill that tastes like a kitty treat.

I mean, I'm assuming it tastes like a kitty treat. I just know I have to be careful the fat young one doesn't steal the skinny old one's medicine. This invention alone, unsung though it is (I mean, I just stumbled across the bottle of brewer's yeast pills at the grocery store, read the description, snorted "Yeah, right" and then bought them anyway, because I don't always make smart buying decisions) must have saved countless human lives already.

And really I should go back and spend some more time in the pet aisle at the store. It's entirely possible they've come up with a cat shampoo that makes your cat think it's sprawled out on a sunny patio peaceably licking what's left of its harbles.

So forget flying cars, which were a terrible idea anyway, when you consider how incompetent most people are to handle earthbound ones. Your grandchildren won't even remember a day when you unquestionably paid a blood tribute for the privilege of caring for your furry friends. The future is now.

Will Wonders Never Cease

About two weeks ago, my state agency received an email through our website inquiring when the best time to see Texas wildflowers is.

Emails from the public are a mixed bag, of course. Human nature being what it is, people don't usually write to a faceless bureaucratic entity unless they're het up about something. A not-insignificant portion of my job involves answering hate mail.

I love it. Not the hate mail itself, but the whole process of coming to understand the other person's point of view; of moving through commingled frustration, annoyance, and compassion; of trying to figure out what can be done either to help the person, or at least to help him or her understand. Forging connections is amazing. The best thing in the world is when you write back to someone who's very angry - with or without good cause - and feel that you've made sense, that you've cleared things up, that the person received at least some sort of satisfaction from your answer. You've made a change in the world, and in someone else, and in yourself - just the littlest tiniest bit, but it's such a good thing.

Usually that's the end of it, but every so often someone writes back to me. Often they thank me. Many times they're surprised to have received a thoughtful response from a faceless, monolithic government entity at which they were, after all, only venting a little spleen. Sometimes they want to continue the discussion further. Obviously I can't answer everything - I mean, I personally sure as heck don't agree 100% with everything my employer does - but on balance, I love the process, and the contact and the interaction with these strangers seeking any acknowledgement whatsoever of their point of view, and get it. It's tremendously rewarding, really.

But this wildflower question just made me completely happy. Of course the inquirer wasn't upset; she wanted to know when the peak of wildflower season is, and where the best part of the state to visit is, and whether we're going to have a good wildflower season this year.

Well, on the last one, who knows. It's looking a heck of a lot better than last year. We had some good rain in the fall, and only one hard freeze so far this winter (till tomorrow and Saturday night, anyway), and it looks like we'll get some nice fields of bluebonnets, come late March to mid-April. Somewhere. You can generally count on east Texas, anyway.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote back to this nice British nature photographer and said that, while it's too early to determine how colorful the show of wildflowers will be this year, there is a fair prospect of a good season; I sent a few links, and had a shipment of Texas travel literature sent off to her, along with last year's wildflower driving tour issue of the travel magazine, whose editor is a friend of mine. She wrote back and thanked me right away.

And today she wrote the friendliest note to say that she'd received all the literature in the mail, thanked me again for being helpful, and promised to send me photographs after her trip.

Do you remember before there was an internet? Can you imagine life without it? I do, and I can't. At this point I'm kind of wishing she'd look me up when she's in town. People are quite lovely, you know. Aren't I lucky to have a job where I get to be friends with so many of them?

Why Yes, I Do Call Myself a Geographer

And suddenly I'm eight years old all over again.

I remember the name of the elementary school in Ann Arbor where I went to the first half of third grade. I used to walk there every day, it was just at the end of my street, whatever that was. But Google-Map the name of the elementary school, and look at the surrounding street names until one sounds sort of familiar, and drag the little street-view guy to about where you sort of maybe remember starting off from, 32 years ago, and... bam.

I didn't remember what the house looked like, but I do remember the railed-in patio above the family room, which is what that sunroom on the right is. My parents rented this house; the owner was a gourmet chef, and had a locally-produced cooking show that was filmed in the kitchen. It was a nice kitchen. Mom loved it.

I remember a little powder room directly off the kitchen, wallpapered in New Yorker covers. It had a laundry chute to the basement. So did all the upstairs bedrooms. My room was blue...

The house was furnished; I thought the grand old wooden hall tree in the entryway was a throne. It didn't suit my stepfather's taste, which runs to Hobbit Post-Modern. (Or perhaps Post-Apocalyptic.) Our regular coffee table was a slice of a knot from a redwood tree, wild and beautiful and (from the perspective of a small child in close quarters) perhaps needlessly jagged. The Coopers had antiques. I think this is about the cutest house I have ever seen. When we left it, my parents bought an A-frame on two acres of land in Ypsilanti, where all the furniture fit right in - though Mom always complained the exterior doors didn't fit quite right, and it used to give her nightmares.

The washer and dryer here were in the basement, where all the laundry chutes led. Oooh, but the basement was scary. It had a looming shadowy cistern, and was dark and dank and stone-walled, as required by Federal law. Wooden treads led down from the kitchen, just behind the powder room.

And I remember the detached garage, and that it had a clubhouse built up near the ceiling in the back of it, accessible by a ladder. (The family we were renting from had boys just a little older than me.) And I made best friends with a girl named Jenny who went to my school and lived a couple of blocks away, because we were exactly alike: we both lived in rented houses, both had clubhouses in the garage, and both of us had stepfathers who used to joke about selling us to gypsies. (Does anybody say that anymore?) Our parents were friends. Later, when we moved to Ypsilanti, and Jenny's family moved somewhere or other on the shores of Lake Huron, we'd still get together every couple of months. Jenny's mom had a baby girl - Whitney - and thus ruined our perfect symmetry, until my own mom got pregnant a couple of years later, and my sister Jessica was born. But by then we were in San Antonio, and I don't know where Jenny's family went.

One morning on our way to school together, I remember, we got distracted by a full-sized igloo in a neighbor's yard. (This was Ann Arbor, remember - you think school was called on account of a couple measly feet of snow?!) We were entranced, and stopped to play, just for a minute, and lost ourselves in fun. The igloo was just packed snow, but the architects had made windows by pressing and steaming up part with their breath until it turned to clear ice. I have no idea how long had passed before Jenny and I suddenly looked at each other and said "Oh shit!" (or the eight-year-old equivalent thereof). We had completely forgotten about school!

It really blows my mind how I could see something like that, on my computer screen at work - I only took an idle look, in a slow moment - and so much comes rushing back. All the changes and losses of the intervening years gone - Mom making chicken marengo or boeuf bourguignon in that kitchen - she was a great fan of Julia Child and used to watch her program religiously. Looking at that picture I can almost smell her cooking.

It's been a rough spring, this year. Funny to stumble across a simple image like that and feel it all blur away.