Day: December 12, 2017

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I allow myself one curmudgeonly post a month, I think I’ll go for it today.

I have to say that Facebook, with which I have a long and bittersweet relationship, has come up with the absolute best way to make me crazy and send my head spinning. The Wave.

About a dozen times each morning, I get a message announcing that somebody is saying “hello” to me, with a friendly yellow hand wave, and a blue bar I can use to wave them back.

This, says Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, will get me all of the friends I have been unable to make in my material life.

Of all the obnoxious things Facebook has done, this may be the worst. “Cindy says hello to you,” said a waving hand yesterday, and a blue bar appeared so I could  wave right back to Cindy.

The new button has proven a much hated and embarrassing problem for Facebook, they don’t seem to care much.

I suspect all of us have a love-hate relationship with technology, sometimes we choose it, sometimes we are forced into it, sometimes we need it. It helps us and hurts us, invading our privacy, connecting us with people who care about our work, offering broken and hateful people a free and cheap outlet to spread poison and argue.

The tragedy of technology is that it gives us things and takes things away – every single time. It has taken away our privacy and sense of boundaries in this case, and in many others. In exchange, I get to widen my audience, sell more books, thus earn more money.

A hellish trap of my own making. Facebook helps me be a writer, and then sometimes makes me wish I was something else. I tip toe to the edge of hypocrisy, I hate the intrusions, unwanted advice, unchecked hostility. I love the lovely people who support and encourage me, I love having an audience of many people, I appreciate the way social media helps me be a writer.

Perhaps I’m no longer on the edge. I can’t live with Facebook, and I can’t live without it.

I always fantasized about the life of Nobel Laureate Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who sat alone on his Vermont mountaintop for seventeen years, eating black bread and strong coffee, playing tennis with himself, typing furious well into the night,  cranking out book after book, no phone, cell phone, no one waving to him on Facebook.

Or Thoreau on Walden Pond, scribbling his notes for his beautiful book, Walden. I’d love to have a video of someone sending him a wave as he sat down to work.

Don’t other people work in the mornings? In the Orwellian world, nothing is more important than the message on the screen.

Are our lives so empty we have nothing to do but wave to people we don’t know and will never see?

I have this horrific image of tens of millions of people one day staring at their computers waving to complete strangers day and night? I can’t imagine “waving” to a complete stranger on Facebook, nor can I imagine why anyone I don’t know – or do know – would want to wave to me online, especially while I am working.

Perhaps one day Facebook would use its awesome influence to address some of the issues that divide and concern people, and bring people together in a positive and civil way. Perhaps they will one day take responsibility for the hurtful and hateful words that spew all over Facebook every day. Silly yellow waves will not get us there.

For me, grappling with social media demands boundaries. People have no right to tell me what to do, or what to write. I have lots of meaningful and valuable discussions on Facebook from thoughtful people with manner and respect for the dignity of other people.

They never wave.

I fight fiercely for my work time, just as John Updike always preached. We all have only so many creative hours in us, and we must protect them like a tiger protecting her cubs.

I am keenly aware of protecting my writing time, roughly from dawn to the early afternoon. No one who is my friend would bother me, then and anyone who bothers me then is not my friend.

Am I really supposed to spend all morning waving back at people? I need my messaging system, it is part of the control center that runs my life, I do much work there, for publishing, for the Mansion, for the refugees.

It’s not good for me to turn it off. I love new technology – I am wild about the Iphone X – and I try to keep the curmudgeon in me in check. I think the people running Facebook spend too much time in their youth watching Mr. Rogers and the Muppets. Let’s all lover another by looking out the window and waving at everyone.

The idea that everyone who messages me or is on  Facebook is my “friend” is quite astonishing to begin with. Facebook seems to think we will resolve all of our differences by waving to each other

I am reading a wonderful new novel by Margaret Drabble about death and dying in England, and I was wondering how she would take if it if sent a “wave” to her one morning? Would she “wave” back to me? Oh, she might say to me, let’s have high tea when you’re next in England.

When the “waves” started pouring in, I was at first stunned, and then indignant, I replied to the first dozen or so, saying I was not interested in waving to strangers on Facebook all day, I had work to do, and didn’t care to be interrupted in so pointless a way.

People will say well just ignore them, but am I the only one online who knows it takes just as much energy – sometimes more -to ignore things as it does to respond?

The wavers were nice about it, despite my snobbery and avoidance.

They apologized, and said they wouldn’t do it again. Now I just ignore them, keeping my pride and dignity intact if not my privacy and free choice. You don’t make friends by waving to people.

What a bizarre simple-minded idea, that we can learn to love one another by waving back and forth on line. Maybe I should start waving to the broken people who send hateful messages to people while hiding behind their computers. That would probably rattle them.

Facebook makes itself unreachable of course, I learned this when I was mistakenly charged $700 for ads i did not authorize, and could not find a soul to communicate with about it.

If I could reach them, I would tell them the same thing I told my mother when she tried to fix me up with nice Jewish girls who could cook and clean. Mom, I said, let me choose my own friends and make my own choices please.

That was well before I realized that one day, that would no longer be possible.

If you like what I write, do me a favor, please don’t wave to me. It won’t make me love you, and you sure won’t end up loving me.

I supposed the President might get the message if I waved, he is online all morning. Perhaps he will go after me on Twitter,and make me a star.

That would make the wave worthwhile.

Yesterday, we put up this Boston Terrier decal on the back door. Our local volunteer fire department always asks dog owners to put up stickers or decals so they will know a dog is inside if there’s a fire, and that makes good sense.

But mostly, we loved the colors of the decal, we love bright colors around here, especially in the Dark Days.

I have never been much into dog decals, as with so many dog things, they seem to be about the people, not the dogs.

A few months ago, I saw a decal on the back of an SUV that read: “Caution: Therapy Dog On Board,” and I wondered about it. Was the driver saying people should be careful about plowing into a therapy dog, but it was okay to crash into any other kind of dog?

I also see many decals on bumper stickers that read “Caution: Rescue Dog On Board.” Since the dog doesn’t really care what bumper stickers say on his car, the decal must be about the person driving, and about what he or she wants you to know: that they have rescued a dog.

We exploit our dogs in all kinds of ways, I exploit mine by taking a lot of photos of them and putting them up on my blog. I justify it in all kinds of ways, and it works and I love them and I’m glad to do it, but I don’t delude myself as to my motives.

Nor do I fool anyone.

I would put a decal on my car that says “Caution: Windbag On Board,” but then it would be almost certain someone would run me off the road.

Sometimes, I see therapy dogs gussed up with vests, signs and scarves and medals and badges that usually signify decorated veterans marching in a parade.

Sometimes I put the certified therapy plastic ID on Red, if we are going into a hospital or a new institution. I don’t get the vests and sweaters and stenciled declarations, they have never been required in any place I’ve been.

It’s sometimes required to put vests and labels on therapy dogs, but I sometimes get the feeling people just like the accessories and want everyone to know the dog is a therapy dog, just like every other dog I meet is abused, and their owners can’t wait to tell me.

Red and I go into hospitals all the time, and no one has ever even asked to see the plastic ID.

It’s like people telling me their dogs are abused. Lots of people, all the time. There is a lot of evidence showing that American dogs, like New York Carriage Horses, are among the best treated animals in the world.

But if you believe all of the people walking around saying their dogs are abused, you would think most people in this country acquire dogs to torture and starve them.

There isn’t all that much reliable research on the number of abused dogs in the United States, if you believe some of the animal rights people we all abuse our dogs just by owning them, let alone working with them. What research there is (see Domestic Dogs by James Serpell) suggests dogs are sometimes abused, but not nearly to the degree most people think.

No animal rights group ever got a dollar sent to them by arguing that dogs are unbelievably  well cared for in our country.

I sometimes brag about Red being a therapy dog, but mostly, I try to keep that in check. Red doesn’t care what he is called, and strangers don’t really need to know what kind of work Red does. I find most people just want to talk about their dogs anyway once I mention mine.

I was thinking of all this when we got this very colorful Boston Terrier decal in the mail the other day from our friend Kathleen Nohe. I will be honest, the first thing I thought was “wow, this will make a great photograph”, I am ruthless in that way.

I have never put up a dog decal on a window or a car, and if I put one up for Gus, then what about the two border collies here, Fate and Red, two wonderful dogs I love very much?

I think the aesthetic impulse won.

This is a cool decal, with wonderful colors. And it will please the volunteer fire department. And it is a bright new way to enter the house.

Boston Terriers make me smile. Border Collies make me proud. That’s not a good decal for me.

I could put up a decal on the car that says “Caution: Boston Terrier On Board: Border Collies Take Their Chances.”

Maybe I’ll just keep the Boston Terrier one.