Boreal B[l]og

In my moves to Oregon, I  travelled through California, staying overnight, since I drove alone.  Going up, I stopped in Fresno; on the way back, at Bakersfield.  Hauling a trailer, it was a difficult two days, and I was tired, not always in the best mood when I arrived.  I had awakened early, driven well over 700 miles, and had the same ahead of me the following day.

At one hotel, the lobby was full of friends of the night clerk, who was wearing a Fresno State sweatshirt.  That was fine, I thought; maybe she is going to school there and working nights.  The room, however, was not so fine.  As a matter of fact, it hadn’t been made up, something I have encountered before.  It’s very disconcerting. Once, I was told that wasn’t possible. That’s not smart to say to a customer.

I returned to the lobby and asked for another room, explaining the problem.  There was a look of disbelief, but I bit my tongue and stated the facts.  I was given another room, actually more convenient, on the ground floor, but the key didn’t work in the door.  Problem 2.  Now, I was getting annoyed.  I had been on the road about 13 hours, and I just wanted a room.  Finally, I got a key to work, but the handle was stuck.  I returned yet again, and finally got in the room.

There were no apologies, no sense of embarrassment, and no sense of realizing I was a stranger in their town.  That happens too often, even when–or perhaps because–a person is old, like I am.

The next day, I checked out, and nobody asked me anything.  I didn’t say anything, either.  In a way, I understand the lack of interest.  Many who work the night shift, and I have, aren’t paid well, chronically poor, and are trying to get by.  They aren’t in any better mood than I am.  In a sense, their whole life is full of 750 mile daily drives with a trailer, except they are going nowhere.  I try to keep that in mind when I eat at Denny’s, leaving a larger than usual tip, even for poor service, because these people need the money, and I can afford the extra $2 that might just make their day.  Dear Prudence, a Slate columnist, taught me that, when some stockbroker wrote her and said people didn’t deserve great tips.  She ripped him a new one as only Dear Prudence can.

Fast forward a few months, and I am back in Fresno, now at a different motel, because I vote with my wallet. I had the sense to stop early at a Denny’s in Bakersfield for dinner.  The manager had a problem customer at the cash register, who couldn’t figure out his discount and answered “none” for tip. Yes, he was rude, but she should have asked somebody to seat me sooner.  I waited a long time, but the waitress was good and quick.  When I wanted to pay, I could have done without the customer ahead of me using a $100 bill, so the waitress had to find the manager to get change.  Still, I gave the waitress a good tip and arrived in Fresno more rested, but still tired.  I parked the car and trailer where I could, and as I walked to the reception, a woman ran up to me, asking me if I were checking in.  I said I was, and she opened the door for me.  She had checked on another room.  She might have even made it up.

The young woman asked me whether I wanted upstairs or downstairs. That I appreciated, as was the chance to move the car-trailer closer to the room.  I noted her pleasant accent, thought she was South Asian, and asked where she was from: India.  We started talking about India and her life.

Her father wanted her to marry some rich man who would care for her.  She didn’t like that idea and came here in 2007.  She has earned a BSN, now working on her MSN.  Because of regulations, she is not allowed to teach English, although hers is impeccable.  I can understand keeping jobs for locals, but we need many more good English teachers.  I had the same drive, the same stress, but I spent 15 unnecessary, but interesting minutes with the check in clerk. She felt her job was important, because it was a job, and jobs mattered.  She was going to be successful, and if she stayed here, America will do well by her.

The only problem with my stay was a stuck flapper valve in the toilet the next morning, which I adjusted.  Had the same woman been on duty, I would have told her when I checked out.  Alas, somebody took my key and only said good by.

Thoughts to the American hotel industry:  Talk to your customers. Show some interest in them using body language and tone of speech.  I taught myself to watch body language, and I can spot interest or disinterest in me in a moment.  I also can effectively use my body language to say things I wouldn’t dare say verbally. Tell your employees to learn to read and to use body language; it is far more important than “Have a nice day.”

Thoughts to American business:  Stop your “3-4 minute” surveys. I’m not interested, and I doubt most are. They are statistically invalid and poorly written. You want to make the customer happy?  Fix broken systems.  Every time a customer complains, you have a broken system. Fix the system, and listen to your employees, too, for they likely know a lot more about your customers and systems than you might think. You ought to ask every customer one question, only one absolutely essential question:

“How could we have helped you better?”  Trust me, people will speak.

In 1953, I first picked up a telephone receiver, hearing, “Number, please” (notice the please, now an endangered word).  Our telephone number (we called it a telephone) was Hillside 2765.  It didn’t matter on the dial, because we didn’t have dials. We neither made nor received calls during dinner, and answering a telephone call was a priority.

Twenty years later, James Garner had an answering machine on The Rockford Files, and his car phone was then high tech.  I called my wife from the Philippines, when the USS ST. LOUIS was in port; it was a big deal.  Fifteen years later, we didn’t believe that long distance phone calls some day would not incur additional charges. My first cell phone was in 1990, the “brick era”.  Today, we need an answering machine to screen 95% of our telephone calls, which ask for money, call during dinner, and even late into the evening.

When I see people talking to themselves, it is not psychosis, which it used to be, or discussing one’s problems with oneself, but talking on the phone. Hello is more difficult to say in public, when many are listening to music or using their phone. Formerly, when we called a store, we spoke to a human. Today, we get a menu beginning with “unusually high call volume,” and ending with “your call is important to us,“ which it is not. Things used to be stock, before “just in time” inventory was invented.  Now, items must be ordered.

Smart phones allow us to access the world from just about anywhere in the world, although there are places where it is impossible to do so. Such places are interestingly the most beautiful I have ever seen:  Alaska’s Brooks Range, Arctic Canada, the Quetico-Superior, Isle Royale, and Great Basin National Park.

I turn my smart phone off at night, because I may get calls from those who aren’t aware of time zones or my sleep patterns.  Through Whatsapp, I have been asked–from Brazil– the difference between a scouring pad and a scouring towel, which may be found quickly on Google.  I listen to conversations in public about people and things I would just as soon not hear, and for the first time wonder whether my family history of deafness in late life might yet be a blessing.

On the bright side, headphones made boom boxes obsolete, so people can destroy their hearing silently, without bothering others.  Headphones do have a disadvantage, however.  While looking for a building on the University of Oregon campus; half the students didn’t know where it was, and the other half were wearing headphones.

Mail used to require pen, paper, an envelope, stamp, and going to the post office.  The stamp cost 3 cents. One corresponded with friends by mail; writing back was polite.  We wrote thank you and sympathy notes, saying specific things about the gift or the person who died.  More than one has commented my sympathy note was the best note they had received. I still have thank you notes from former patients; somehow, a CD containing them isn’t the same and may be unreadable in a decade.

Thank you notes for wedding presents were a necessity, not only for politeness, but to ensure the sender the gift arrived.  My wife and I wrote ours all before our wedding.  It was easy, and we personalized each one, for it was expected.  My parents used to have a large tray of Christmas cards, all personalized.  This year, I got four, two in mid-January. Back then, typed notes saying how stellar everybody in their family was were frowned upon.

We didn’t use calculators but slide rules, which got us to the Moon.  Calculators have  produced a generation of teachers who believe memorization of the multiplication tables is wrong, students who can’t subtract 8 from 10 without a calculator and can’t divide 3 into 12 by hand. I am not exaggerating.  Clerks counted change accurately.  Yesterday, a clerk at Dutch Brothers gave me an extra dollar in change. I gave it back, because I like the company.  Once, a clerk argued with me, so I kept the money.  Not knowing math is a tax on those who don’t.  Don’t expect Republicans to complain about that tax. They count on ignorance.

We taught writing: the act and the result. I can’t remember when I last saw a young person hold a pen properly.  Handwriting today is sloppy, and I say that as a physician.  Grammar is often not taught, because “people pick it up.”  No, they don’t.  “Whom,” one of my favorite words, is disappearing, and “gonna” and “wanna”  were considered by one language Website as correct, until I made a stink about it.  Nominative case is considered formal, rather than….nominative, and “these kind”  and “these ones” abound.  I find it ironic that many of the “English only” folks can’t write English properly.  If you don’t know English rules, please feel free to contact me.  I love teaching the most dynamic, beautiful language on Earth.

We can talk world-wide on Skype, making language instruction with a native speaker possible, once unheard of.  We may e-mail instantaneously and access information that used to be stored in large volumes of books called encyclopedias, which were once sold door to door.  On a German professor’s advice, I recently ordered a grammar book from Germany before I left his building.  Twenty minutes later, I sent my wife a picture of my standing on Autzen Bridge over the Willamette. This is great.

However, most of my e-mails go unanswered, ostensibly because “people are busy,” although “Dear Mr. Smith, We regret to inform you that we have no need for your skills to teach 6 subjects at our school.  Sincerely yours, xxxx” takes 24 seconds.  I timed it.  Much on the Internet is worthless, inaccurate, porn, and a forum for nasty people who formerly had no world-wide public voice.  I consider the routine daily emails from West Africa a price I pay for e-mail.

Tonight, an Asian woman, whom I had often helped, wanted to chat, proudly announcing she was currently chatting with a woman in Brazil.  I told her to continue; I felt it was time for dinner, I did not feel like being second in her priorities. Language websites are great for non-English speakers to learn English.  I have found them disappointing to learn German, French, or Spanish. These three languages are not nearly as tolerant of accents as we are; corrections are seldom explained. I explain mine. I am optimistic some day the Websites will improve. They are still new.

I have lived through changes in technology and the world that will continue in ways I can’t even dream of.  The winners will be those who adapt.  I hope that politeness, curiosity, willingness to change views in the face of new evidence, respect, friendship, and the ability to embrace diversity will thrive. The record suggests the opposite.  I hope I am wrong.

CRASH!  At 4 a.m., I am up to feed the cats and to listen to German videos.  As I opened the refrigerator, a beer bottle fell out and shattered on the kitchen floor.  The cats scattered; I cleaned up the mess.  Now the kitchen smelled like a fraternity house on Sunday morning.  And I wasn’t sure I had gotten all the glass.

I listened to a long video, understood more of an Austrian accent than I ever had before, but I still missed a lot.  I have seen close to 1000 German videos, and I’ve understood both the plot and German in 9.  Nine.  I received feedback about a post I made on a language site about the verb “umgehen,” which was completely demoralizing.  I did more work and realized that the verb, which I had been told had 3 meanings, really had two:  One was the separable form, which means to go around; the other, inseparable, where the um and gehen always stay together, and  pronounced differently, means to manage or to care for or to bypass, out of fear or concern.  The third meaning was prepositional, one of the most common expressions in German. This meaning, howevert was gehen um, which is very different from umgehen.  Trust me.

I replied politely to the comment in German, ending with that it was perhaps time to leave and study something else.

I have worked  3-6 hours a day for 3 1/2 years to learn the language.  I know many language Websites; I’ve read many grammar books, I have three dictionaries and a lot of books.  Lately, however, I have made little progress.  I am self-taught, because my trainer wasn’t, despite my living in a large city where a trainer was “guaranteed” by a company to whom I paid a good deal of money.  She had lived in the US 27 years and had never taught German. I didn’t know this fact immediately.

I am moving to a smaller town with a university, and my upcoming interview with the department head will likely decide whether I continue or just keep alive what I have done.  Something had become wrong; the language, once fun, had become work, and I wasn’t seeing results.  English students I have taught have not put in nearly the work I have, and yet they expect to become fully fluent. My expectations are far lower.

That afternoon, after correcting some English submissions, which I find relaxing, I received a note from a German reviewer.  He was honest, admitting that he and other reviewers often could not explain their grammar:  they just “knew” what was right and wrong.  While it didn’t help me learn, I appreciated his honesty. The writer continued, telling me to put the grammar book away.  I had done that a long time ago, but he said something else very important.  While I had put the grammar book away, I still was in prison: I was forcing myself daily to learn lists of words.  I suddenly realized that I didn’t have to do this.  Nobody was forcing me, and memorization was part of the day I did not look forward to.

It was a breakthrough.  Some people I talk to, in Iran, can’t change their lives, because others forbid it.  Some people here, like me, don’t change their lives, because of themselves.  Nobody was forcing me to learn these words.  I could stop and do what I wanted.

It was liberating.  A weight came off my shoulders.  Suddenly, I realized I was freer than I had felt for a long time.  It’s worth letting oneself out of prison periodically.  Life becomes a lot more fun.  Some never do; some never put themselves in prison.  I did, but I process slowly.  It took a verb called umgehen, frustration, thinking, and the right letter at the right time to open the lock.

I wrote the reviewer, thanking him for what really helped me.  What he advised I didn’t do; what he did advise, however, gave me the piece I needed to unlock the door.

I watched another video, then took a walk in a nearby playground.  I really want to run again, and my knee, which was bothering me, is cleared to do so.  I enjoy the walks, however, and the thinking I do on them.  Before leaving, I checked my email and logged on to Facebook.  I had a note from a young woman from whom I had not heard in 2 years.  Three years ago, she asked to befriend me on the advice of a mutual friend.  We had lost touch.

For whatever reason, on the last day of 2013, I wrote her and told her I had been in her neck of the woods last summer, while I was traveling.  I was too far away to visit, but I was at least in her general region.  I said nothing more of note, and forgot about it.  Yesterday came the response:

“I cannot tell you how much it meant to receive your message. I was so grateful, it came at the perfect moment when I needed a light in the dark.”

I hadn’t thought I had done much. I was obviously wrong.

I don’t know this woman well.  We’ve never met, and we may never will.  That doesn’t matter.  What does and did matter, is that something I said deeply resonated with her at a critical time and place in her life.  Maybe I gave her a key to something she needed, in order to unlock something that was holding her back.  I don’t know.

What I do know was I did exactly for her what hours earlier a young man, whom I will also never meet, did for me.

What goes around can come around.  While the connotation is usually used in a retaliatory sense, it need not be. Often, simple words from others have helped me greatly.  I hope that I have done the same often. I know now I have done it at least once.