NO PURSE, NO POCKETS

     One of the first days of our trip to the then USSR we were taken to a church, converted to an art gallery with its displays of French Impression painters. We were required to check our purses at the door. I was very uncomfortable being ordered to surrender my purse, and all its contents. Hastily I tried to stuff everything into one of my coat pockets.

    The next day, not to be caught unprepared again, I arranged everything I wanted to keep safe on my body in my coat pockets. Left my almost-empty purse in the hotel room. Another church converted to an art gallery with -- you guessed -- French Impression painters. (I hadn't known there were so many of them.)

    But at this gallery we were asked to check our coats at the door, not our purses. So I emptied my pockets into my hands, trying to keep everything clutched together in my fingers. Spent the afternoon picking my belongings up off the floor.

    It was at a later stage of my life that I learned about a furoshiki. Now I seldom go anywhere without a handy furoshiki.

THIS CONVERSATION WILL BE RECORDED . . . .

    That's the warning, but does anyone ever listen?

    We had an hour-long power outage last week. Afterwards I got a text message that Xfinity had restored everyone's internet. Not mine.

    There was a link I could go to. Several screen changes later I was having a "chat" with what I suspect was a series of algorithms. Why the conversation went on as long as it did I have no clue, because I never was able to provide the answer my conversation partner wanted. The conversation was ended abruptly. Still with no internet, I tried again. I think this "chat" was with a real person, but again, I was not able to supply the right answers and the conversation came to an unexpected end. Next morning I was at the Xfinity office. I was offered an appointment with a tech to come to the house on that day, but other commitments required me to take an appointment for the next day.

    The tech ended up installing a new router, so we had the internet again. I do have to wonder -- does a real, live human being ever listen to those recorded, failed conversations?

    I hate to destroy anyone's illusions, but human behavior will never fit into a bunch of algorithms.

FOGGY PUDDING

     How many Christmases have I been singing the song We Wish You A Merry Christmas, second verse, Oh, bring us some figgy pudding, third verse, We won't go until we get some? Without ever having been brought some figgy pudding I got to wondering what figgy pudding might actually taste like.

    So I set about wandering the internet looking for recipes for figgy pudding. I venture there are at least twenty dozen recipes for figgy pudding. Some give directions for steaming -- you know, using the heat from the steam of boiling water to do the cooking -- a process that seemed cumbersome and time-consuming. Other recipes called for baking in a bundt pan. I chose the latter.

     Recipe called for buttermilk, and, strangely, baking powder. My mother cooked a lot with buttermilk, in those days cheaper than fresh milk, and buttermilk usually requires baking soda, not baking powder. The dough was extremely stiff and I wished I had thinned it with a bit more liquid, i., e., more buttermilk.

    The result was a dense fruit bread, which I took to church for fellowship time. I wanted to make a sign to let everyone know they were eating figgy pudding. Alas, the word 'figgy' does not appear to be in the spelchek dictionary -- it always came out 'foggy'.

    Rather than argue with spelchek I think we should change the lyrics . . . oh, bring me some foggy pudding . . . 

YOU CALLED?

     Is it a friend request?

    You get a notice on social media suggesting that someone wants to be your friend.

    Can you trust it? Does that person really want to be your friend, or has a social media algorithm merely found that the two of you have in common your passion for kumquats?

    You don't want to offend someone by rejecting a genuine friend request, but is it a true request or only a social media suggestion?

    Reminds me of the brief time I worked as a telephone operator. On rare occasions I would be taken off the local connections board and assigned to a long distance board, you know, with those long cords which had a plug at the unattached end.

    In the early evening supervision would be light, and the lack of activity boring. Well, I had a way to amuse myself, which was never discovered and for which I was never fired. I could cause the telephones to ring, in two houses at the same time. Both parties would pick up the phone, thinking that the other party had called. There would follow some quite amusing conversations, many of them concluding with "why did you call me if you have nothing to say?" and a slamming of the phone back in the cradle.

    Are some of these friend requests from real people, or just algorithms with too much time on their hands?