MIA and RIP

Mourning Dove. Photo by Doug Alder, 2021.

Anyone who has checked in on this blog may have noticed that I have been MIA for some time now. The impetus for this was the loss of my friend Doug, someone constantly referenced on this blog for his input, advice, and good humor. 

In mid April, Doug went radio silent and before the end of the month I was calling Trail, BC, to request a wellness check. Doug died on April 30th and he is profoundly missed. 

When I started this blog about a decade ago, it became a way for me and Doug to stay in touch regularly despite over a thousand miles between us. As he aged, became a bit more solitary, there were days I posted just for Doug, especially the humorous, political, and environmental items.

He was always the first to view my posts, emailed with ideas, corrections, recipe input, and much commiseration. Doug was there through my 250 mile daily commute, my son's life threatening life-long illness, my sister's tragically stupid and prolonged death, and my husband's numerous accidents, seizures, and illnesses. When Doug's wife Diane died after an extensive illness a decade ago, I had been there everyday as he waited for her medical transport from LA to BC and then the ICU stay at a hospital an hour away from their home. 

But for all the tragedy, we had been there for each in so many other ways, wonderful ways through the years. My kids' graduations from high school and college, their leaps into adulthood and relationships. Doug's take on his personal views of education, an embrace of culinary school, and then mastering the new tech. My change in careers. His example of a man recreating himself. Our gardens. Our bread recipes. Our shared love of the band Oregon and mystery fiction. The myriad of soups, recipes shared and altered. Wisdom from his learned kitchen to my experimental kitchen. Photos exchanged of beautiful scenery and random things we found beauty in. My one and only photography show. His memorial show of Diane's art after her death. My writing, his poetry and observations. The clearing out of so many things that signified life changes. The passing of pets, the adoption of a new kitty by Doug, the death of our wild outdoor cat, my daughter's house cats, including my Grandkitty. Ignoring birthdays, hating birthdays, ignoring holidays, finding a way to deal with holidays. So many things we both valued and both complained about. Two old curmudgeons wondering how much longer we humans have on this planet. But two old farts with an enduring artistic eye for things of beauty, things worth celebrating and sharing, things worth fighting for, or at least grumbling about.

And I would be remiss if I left out our bitch sessions, sometimes a simple exchange of memes, many times an article or humor piece for sanity's sake, and way too much time invested in political gripes and environmental horrors. Like Doug, I have been getting so fed up with politics, humanity's self destructive bent, and the all consuming nonsense the internet dangles.

When Doug died, it hit me hard, harder than I imagined it would. My husband and I had planned a week away in mid May as a reset point. Less than 48 hours into the vacation, we were back home. We were both exhausted and frustrated and I was heart broken. We spent the remainder of the week at a loss but knowing we had to make some major changes. It wasn't down to Doug's death but his loss was part and parcel of something so much larger. Lance and I knew we had to implement some radical changes if our health and sanity were to survive. The internet was chief instigator of high blood pressure, endless doom scrolling, and a link to a world set to self-destruct. The internet had become the manifestation of going to hell in a handbasket. But in this case, the handheld device.

This blog was so tied to Doug and my staying in touch with him that it seemed the blog had to go. At first, I removed all the politics which had been weighing so heavily on me. Then I started to transfer some of the information I wished to save. I thought the blog was headed for the waste bin. Indeed, some things were permanently removed, erased forever, or as much as the internet of things will allow. After several weeks, I decided to back track a bit on the blog shut down. Too much energy was being spent parsing a thousand posts. As I reviewed my decade on the internet, I was also reminded of the things I wanted to set aside, to leave behind. 

Lance and I took some time to reevaluate the way we spent our time. Initially our search for answers led back to the internet where we stumbled upon other people seeking change. It boiled down to too much time online. Disconnecting has become an idea embraced by others like us, people physically and emotionally sick of the same addiction to the internet cycle. The phrase going analog kept reappearing. Being disconnected from mass communication sharing was at the heart of it. FOMO, the fear of missing out, seemed to insure engagement. At the core of every internet search engine was a data system designed to collect and share for the purpose of making money, swaying opinion, and reinforcing an addiction cycle.

I have written about the gleaning of info / data in several articles. Lance and I have  never fully engaged. If this were opium addiction, it might be said that we had never main lined, staying with the OTC pill options. Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses, a salve for the miseries of everyday life, numbing the pain of oppression, keeping its users docile, willing to go along. And that is a starting point for the two of us. We are atheists. We raised our children without religion. Our moral center stems from existentialism and humanism. We decide who we are and what gives meaning to our lives. Adopting an atheistic existentialist dogma meant we had a leg up in rejecting the sheep mentality required of blind faith ideology. 

Another key point was that we have never become tied to our phones like most people. Lance has a phone he takes with him in the event of an emergency. It has his emergency meds, contact numbers, and medical history on it. But the phone is kept powered off and offline. My phone stays on, but not online. It is my daily alarm for rising, meds, and other reminders. I update the calendar every two weeks so it is online for brief updates. I do not download apps, have removed most apps it came with, and clean its memory of calls and messages daily. I have no banking data, credit card info, or personal data outside of my address book and medication list on the 10 year old device. 

So, for us to go analog has been easier in many ways than others who begin the digital disconnect. As collectors of many things, we have never abandoned the cultural items most consumers have digitized. We merely purge and donate as our needs see fit. We own no eBooks, none. Instead, we own the second largest library in our county, ranking behind the only public library. And, yes, our library is larger than the school libraries which have fallen victim to the RWNJ purge of recent years. 

There is no larger collection of CDs outside of music stores and we live adjacent to Athens, GA, a music mecca. Our album collection was pared down years ago because the needles became a nuisance, the collection was converted to CD, and none of the records had a sound quality we appreciated. Several dozen were saved because they were jazz and for the cover art. But we OWN all of these things. It is not a licensed download, vulnerable to disappearing at the whim of some CEO or investor who wishes to monetize a song. No politician or loony moms group will pull a book from our shelves. 

We have kept copies of movies we like on DVD. We still own two DVD players, one for the European market. We own musical instruments: acoustic and electric guitars, an oboe, a uke, numerous types of drums. We own an extensive collection of art: sculptures, reliefs, fabric arts, and numerous paintings, etchings, lithographs, prints, sketches, and photographs. Our home also has a small art book library. 

Without a cell phone umbilicus or digitized collection of music, we have found going analog much easier than many others taking this approach. When our son and his fiancée moved into a townhome, it left Lance and me at another turning point. How would we adjust to even less of a tether to the outside world? I am pleased to say that this peek into retirement has been wonderful. An empty nest at last. A home paid off. Adapting to our strange sleep schedules with middle of the night listening parties. Meandering drives with few time lines. Our bills drastically cut by half or more as the boy's move has left us in need of less electricity, water, and food. The ease with which we pause and stop for a meal out or a reroute within a planned trip for a little library, a caffeine jolt, or just a little more time together.

I still miss sharing with my friend Doug. But I do not miss the constant connectedness that going analog has removed from our lives. I look forward to my time away, time better spent with my best friend and life partner, Lance. I know how much Diane's loss meant to Doug. I don't want to wake up and think if only I could have had more time with the love of my life. So now my blog is rarely visited by me but I will post occasionally: a recipe, a photo, an observation. It just won't be anyone's lifeline or connection when there's plenty of life worth living outside the internet.

If you want to contact me about Doug, email me at my first name dot last name at google's email company. I'll reply when I'm online next time. It just won't be in real time, it'll be in analog time plus a few hours, days, or weeks.