The day I performed real magic

From a young age, I loved magic. I don't remember the first magic trick I saw but it must have made a big  impression. I'd see magicians on TV variety shows and at live shows at the county fair. Then, a magician named Mark Wilson started a Saturday morning TV show that I never missed. He was very good at encouraging kids to try different magic tricks so in that sense, I knew that there were "tricks" to the magic. Some magic. But I think I still believed in real magic, too. I was never really motivated enough to actually try the tricks that Mr. Wilson showed on his TV program because a lot of his demonstrations were for sleight-of-hand illusions and I wasn't patient enough to practice to get them right.

I don't remember exactly how old I was when this story happened (probably about 9 years old) but I do remember the circumstances vividly. My parents were shopping for furniture and didn't want me to be bored while they looked over items and haggled with salesmen. So, they bought me a small deck of cards for doing magic tricks. I sat down at a couch that had a coffee table in front of it. I remember that this deck had various types of cards for different tricks but I picked the first one that was in the instruction manual. It was a set of cards imprinted with musical notes. I tried the trick as I read the instructions. They were in the form of printing what you would say to the audience (the "patter" in magician-speak) interspersed with instructions on what you were doing while you talked. As every magician knows, the patter has a double purpose. It explains what is happening to the audience and it distracts the audience so they don't see the trick.

The trick involved picking up two of the cards, one in each hand, and laying them down on the table together. As I read the patter and performed the trick, I laid down pairs of the cards on the two stacks until there was only one card left. Then the instructions told me to make a big deal of showing which of the two stacks I put this last card on. Then, I was to tell the audience (I was telling myself) that this last card made the stack I'd put it on have an odd number of cards but my magic was going to move the extra card from that pile to the other pile. I touched the stack with the extra card as I said the magic incantation, amazingly, I remember to this day: "Music, music everywhere. Extra card move from here to there!" as I dramatically pointed to the other stack.

Then the instructions said to count the cards in the stack I'd just pointed to and, sure enough, it was an odd number of cards! I'd done it. I had actually made real magic. I remember being exhilarated and then scared. Such power! Moving cards now but perhaps moving cars later? What would I do with this ability? Was it the magic incantation that did the work or were the cards themselves magic? Or did I just have a gift? What would become of me? I started to pray and to tell God that I would use this new ability only for good things. Could I keep my promise? From all the fairy stories I'd read and Twilight Zone episodes I'd seen, I knew I was in dangerous area. Great power could corrupt people. I tried the trick a couple more times to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke. After the third time, it hit me. It probably occurred to you a while ago but I was probably about 9 years old and it took me a while.

The patter had done what it was supposed to do. It even distracted me. I was fooled into thinking the two stacks of cards had an even number of cards (before I put on the final card) because I'd put down two cards at a time. In reality, there were probably ten cards total so there were five cards in each pile. So, they both had an odd number of cards before I added the extra card and when I added the extra card to one stack, I made that stack have an even number of cards - six cards. The stack I pointed to started out with five cards and it still had five cards. I remember feeling foolish but I saw how a good magician could fool his audience into thinking that magic had happened. If he was able to convince them and distract them.

The misplaced newspaper

Here's another story about how I got myself in trouble (so to speak) when I was only trying to help.

When I was walking my dog, Charlie, every day, I would notice things around the neighborhood. Big things were obvious but I'd notice small things because of seeing the same things every day. So, one day I noticed that my next-door neighbor had two papers in his driveway. From previous walks, I knew he got one of the papers but the other one, a local paper, looked like the one the next neighbor along our street subscribed to. I didn't think much about it until I got to that next neighbor and didn't see his local paper in his driveway. I figured that a new delivery person was on the route and had gotten mixed up. So, when Charlie and I were heading home, I stopped at my next door neighbor's driveway, picked up the local paper, back tracked to the other neighbor's house and tossed it into his driveway. What a nice guy I am!

The next day, the same thing happened and I made my special delivery again. I was really feeling like I was making a difference in the world. But it kept happening and I did this for the next few days. My wife explained to me that this was never going to get fixed if I keep making the deliveries. So, I stopped and hoped that the other neighbor would miss his local paper and call the office to straighten things out. But, as usual, I worried about it. Maybe the second neighbor was too busy or forgetful to call the paper. Maybe I was going to get the delivery person in trouble. I wasn't sure whether to knock on their doors and explain what had been happening or not. In my usual way, though, I just let it go.

It became one more thing to take notice of on our daily walk. A couple of days later, I noticed that the local paper was being delivered to both houses! Now I saw what must have happened. My next-door neighbor had started delivery of both papers at the same time that the other neighbor went on vacation and stopped delivery of the local paper for a week or so. Then they must have returned from vacation and started delivery again. So, I'd been giving my next-door neighbor's paper to the other neighbor. Someone must have been checking on their house and taking the papers away or putting it in their house because the paper was never there the next day. Or maybe the delivery person did get mixed up with a new client and forgot to deliver papers to both houses. Of course, I'll never really know because I'm too embarrassed to ask my neighbors what the story was. I'll just add it to my list of worries and regrets that I drag with me through life.

There may be a little more litter and trash in our neighborhood

I mentioned in my previous post that it has been a hard year. I feel guilty saying that because there are so many people so much worse off than my family and I. Other people are hungry. Other people have terrible diseases. Other people don't have clean water to drink. Other people live under repressive governments. Other people are not allowed to worship God or acknowledge their faith in Jesus Christ. Other people have lost hope. I could go on and on. But we have had a bad year all the same.  

Our dog Charlie died on Tuesday, November 19, 2013. We will miss him forever but it has been especially hard since that day. It was a somber Thanksgiving for us and Christmas was just not the same without him. My son always bought him a huge rawhide bone for Christmas and we always had a wonderful time when Charlie got that bone and immediately decided he needed to go out in his yard to chew on it for a while and then bury it to hide it from us. The bone was so big, it was hard for him to get it out of the house. You could see him figuring out the problem and coming up with solutions. Then, the look on his face as he made sure that we weren't following him so he could hide it in a secret place was priceless.

My title comes from the fact that Charlie insisted on going for a walk every morning. I always took a recycled plastic shopping bag with us to hold his poop because I didn't want to leave it laying around along the sidewalk and I knew that no one else wanted to see it, either. The bag was large enough to hold other things and when Charlie would point out trash along our path, I would put it into the bag to be thrown in the garbage can when we got home. In that way, Charlie did a service to our neighborhood by cleaning up some of the garbage that people throw away as they walk or drive in our town. Now, I haven't walked since the day he left us and when I do finally start walking again, I won't be taking a plastic bag with me so the trash won't be getting picked up like it was before.

Or maybe I should. Charlie started a good thing and why shouldn't I continue it in his name? I should continue to pick up trash along the streets that Charlie walked each day for his sake. He would have wanted his streets to look nice so other dogs can take walks there without the worry of them picking up something to eat that they shouldn't.

Coming to the end of a very tough year

I have not abandoned this blog. It may seem like I have because my posts have been infrequent this year. But I'm always thinking about it. Every day at least one thing happens that I think I should write up and post but often, I only take notes about it and don't finish it. Most of my ideas, though, leave my head as soon as they enter it. One of the best "explanations" of this I know about is in Stephen King's book The Tommyknockers where an alien spaceship is influencing the minds of the people who come near it. The influence involves the people coming up with brilliant ideas or knowing how to do things they couldn't do previously - especially technical things. They start to invent things no one could have imagined before. But people only traveling through the area get fleeting ideas that they lose when they pass out of the influence of the spaceship. They try hard to remember their ideas but can't. That's because the original influence is lost.

That's how I often feel when I walking or driving along and have these incredible, lucid thoughts. But if I don't write them down immediately, I seem to pass out of the area that influenced my mind. It's not an alien spaceship, of course, that caused the idea in the first place. I'm not sure if it's Divine influence or just randomly varying ideas in my mind coming together in a once-in-long-time conjunction that causes the ideas to appear and then disappear. All I know is that if I could remember a tenth of the ideas I have and then lose, I'd have written hundreds of posts a year instead of the 34 I've written so far this year.

If the ideas come while I'm driving the car, I would have to pull over at the side of the road to write them down. Fat chance of that! I'm always late or near to running late. So, if I'm in the car, I never pull over when ideas come along. Usually, though, I'm riding my scooter and I'm used to pulling over to let faster, impatient drivers pass me. So, pulling over to write in a notebook shouldn't be that hard. Honda was even nice enough to have a glove box that is easy to get to without needing to open up the seat or dig through my jacket for a notebook (see the area circled in red in the picture here). But I don't do it because, as with the car, I'm usually running late or close to late.

In an earlier post, "My thoughts on walking", I mention that it's a good idea to write down the ideas that come while you're walking (item 6).

"I find I get some really good ideas while I'm out for my walks. But I also find that these ideas are fleeting. I get so many thoughts and see so many things that the ideas can fly away as fast as they alight. It's great to be able to pull a small notebook and pencil out and jot down the ideas before I forget them."

I don't do that enough, either. And how many times have I gone back through the pages and pages I've filled in that walking notebook? Not as many times as I should. But that is going to change.

This is one of my New Year's Resolutions. I am going to try to get back to my old frequency of writing posts in this blog. My first few may be about what kept me from writing more this year. Other posts may be about projects I've worked on, books I've read and movies I've seen. There have been some wonderful sermons from the pastor of our church I'd like to highlight and the Lord has taught me some important things this year. My son and I sang in our church's Christmas program again this year. That was fun and enlightening. There are so many things to write about! To paraphrase the old hymn, "How can I keep from writing?"

Machines as Best Friends - 2

Fisher Price Rockin' Tunes Giraffe

In my previous post, Machines as Best Friends, I mentioned seeing advertisements for two toys that made me think about whether we are setting ourselves up to prefer machines as friends over real human friends. Of course, I'm not really worried about it but it is something to think about. Well, today, I saw the commercials again and realized I had many of my fact wrong. It wasn't a horse the the child was riding in one ad. It was a giraffe! How could I get that wrong? The picture of the Rockin' Tunes Giraffe is the first image in the upper right. I did get some things right. It makes pleasing sounds when the child does certain things. And when it rocks fast enough, the clopping sounds start. So, we can begin to train our future equestrians (or giraffe riders) to prefer the higher speed gaits of those animals.

Fisher Price Crawl Around Car

The other toy I was thinking about was a small car that the child can crawl around in . As you can see from the second picture, on the lower left, the part that tells the child they have selected the sunny day is showing.So, I was wrong about this one, too. I didn't remember it being a car. That is all after seeing both commercials that day. How many other things do I get wrong? Did the Red Sox really get into the play-offs this year?

As usual, I'm late to the party on this. There was a Twilight Zone episode ("I Sing the Body Electric") back in the 60's about a father who, upon his wife's death, goes out and purchases a robotic grandmother to take care of his three children. She never gets tired. She always encourages. She never dies and is always friendly. The episode didn't show them preferring the robot to other people but it is the robotic grandmother that the children spend most of their time with. And there is a sub-plot in the story about the oldest child being upset with her mother for dying. She's just a child and can't help being selfish. But when she finds that the robotic grandmother won't leave her like her mother did, you can see how happy she is. It's almost as if they are saying the robotic grandmother is better than the child's mother.

We need to concentrate on getting along with our fellow humans, first:

Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Romans 12:17-18 NLT

Machines as best friends

i-Cybie, robotic dog

I was watching an advertisement about some toys for babies at the age when they are just starting to crawl around and walk. The toys, one was a horse the child could ride and the other was a set of smaller toys combined into one set, respond to things that the children do. When certain buttons are hit, a message of encouragement is played. When certain other things are selected, they get a few words of explanation - like when a wheel is flipped over to a picture of a smiling Sun, the happy voice says, "It's a sunny day!" When the child rides the horse faster, clopping sounds like a horse trotting will play. It all sounds fun. I wonder what would happen if we took this to the extreme and older children started to be taught by machines. Would it get to the point where children (and later, as they grow up, adults) would prefer the company of machines because they react more reasonably? You don't have to worry about a machine having a bad day. And, probably, the machine wouldn't say anything bad about what you were doing. It would just always encourage you. Machines could be the perfect companion if they were complex enough.

I already see this happening in my own life. I turned on the Spelling Check for this blog entry and it gently told me which words were probably misspelled and what possible correct spelling might be. It didn't tell me I was stupid. No one had to know that I misspelled "advertisement" the first time (using a 'z' instead the 's'). Is this part of our problem with human relationships? Married folks bristle when their spouse disagrees with them. Workers react poorly when given a bad review by their boss.Friends fall out with friends when they don't agree about something. Have we all gotten a little too sensitive? Are we ready to replace our dogs with cyber dogs because we don't have to take them for walks and they don't need to be house broken? The picture above is from Wikipedia and the article about this particular machine friend is from this article at Wikipedia.

I'm an electronics engineer and I should be happy about all this. I will admit that I'm impressed with what the toy makers have been able to do to produce these things and keep the price reasonable. And their little toys are not going to turn these children into adults who cannot cope with the vagaries of human relationships. But it still worries me. I know people who prefer to text their friends instead of visiting them and having a discussion with. The friends might disagree with them. Better to go home and have a nice discussion with an android friend who will tell you that you're the smartest person they know. I hope and pray this isn't the way we are headed.

Starting up again

Trying to get it started again

It's been too long, of course, since my last post on May 21, 2013. There were reasons for the slowing down of my posts on this blog but as I gradually decreased the frequency I was writing, it fed on itself. Drafts of posts backed up and I found it harder and harder to finish them. As it stands now, I have over 20 posts I started recently but didn't finish. There are those that would say, "None of your posts look like you put much time into them." While they may look like that, I do try to put enough time and effort into writing these blog posts to at least satisfy my own standards.

As I've said before, this blog is not really about writing for others to read. It's about getting things down before I forget them. I want to be able to look back on thee short articles to remind myself of what my family and I were doing and various times in our lives and what we were thinking about. There are also the rare occasions when I comment on current events in our country and the world. Not that I have such great insight into those event but I just want to remind myself about what I was thinking about those events.

So, here I go. I've done the hardest part - I've started again. Let's see how this goes. I hope that now that I've started again, it will be easier to keep it going. At least I haven't gone the whole summer with posting. I got this one in between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

The picture of the guy trying to start a car by hand cranking it is from the  DenLors Tools Autoblog and this article in particular.