Not There Yet

Some say you spend your entire life preparing for the inevitable moment when you have to speak at your father’s memorial service. Today is that day and now is that time. Given that lifetime of preparation, I hope you’ll indulge me — grant me the luxury of a little of your time — as I take you on a ride through Dad’s life as seen from the perspective of his younger son.

The first really concrete, vivid, fully-articulated memory of my father was in 1969 when he came home and announced that instead of doing the sensible thing, and flying to a conference to present some of his medical research findings, we were going to drive there. He pitched it as a fun, family adventure. The catch? It wasn’t going to be a few hours to Ottawa or Toronto, and even an international junket to New York or Boston. No, all those destinations were strictly for dilettantes. The five of us, Mum and Dad and the three kids, were going to shoehorn ourselves into our brand new Dodge Dart — thankfully equipped with the relatively rare luxury, for the time, of air conditioning — and we were going to drive to...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: author)

I had breakfast with a friend of mine not too long ago and our conversation turned to, as it often does with those hovering around the 60 year mark, to the subject of retirement. That started with a passing comment about my father who had recently entered his 90th year, as he fondly and often tells us. “I sometimes wonder,” I said, “if my parents had known they were going to live this long if they would have organized their lives any differently.”

My grandparents were...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: “On The Beach at Newport, Looking West” by Michelle Klement)

The science fiction staple of abandoning a less desirable place for another, more desirable one has been around almost since the beginning of science fiction itself. After all, who can deny the appeal of a fresh start in a brighter, better place? It’s often a cautionary tale, the result of not having entirely thought through the consequences of environmental neglect or outright abuse. Lacking the ability, or will, to put that right it’s just easier to start over again in low earth orbit or better yet, another planet either real or imagined. This notion of the future was truly brought to life in Ridley Scott’s original Bladerunner in 1982...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: The CORE of the Plus 15 in Calgary, Canada, taken by the author.)

I had a part time job at the ComputerLand store on West Broadway in Vancouver, British Columbia in the early 1980s. Mostly it was to teach an introductory programming course in the BASIC computer language on Saturday mornings. Ironically, it was one of the few things for which you bought a computer back then — to learn how to program them. The store manager didn’t see any point in sending me home after the morning class ended and had me stooge around on the sales floor instead. I was typically assigned the enthusiasts who would, without fail, walk in and want to bend the ear of a so-called expert. Lacking any real experts, I was provided in their stead...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on TerenceCGannon.com where it was published contemporaneously. (image: IBM Canada’s King Street Datacentre circa 1964. Photograph by George Dunbar, courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation, ©International Business Machines Corporation.)

“Why don’t you just go there and see for yourself?” my boss asked me, back in the Spring of 1998. I was working for an international petroleum well service company at the time.

“What…go there?” I asked, first thinking it sounded like an incredible adventure. Then, I was filled almost instantly with an empty, black dread. “Sure, that sounds great,” I said bravely, “I’ll get right on that.” The IT guy isn’t offered that kind of trip very often. The branch office in Orange County to pull network cabling or training courses in Seattle, maybe. Lightweight stuff with predictable food, accommodation and television. Western Siberia to help decode the turbid electronic missives of the company’s staff over there? Nearly never....

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (image: Nizhnevartovsk, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Western Siberia in December of 2007. credit: Evgeny Fedorov under CC BY 3.0)

My family first visited the Oregon Coast in the early 1970s. My mother picked Rockaway, seemingly at random, from the motor club guide and we stayed at the Silver Sands, an old-fashioned drive-up motel on the beach. All five of us squeezed into a single suite, the most memorable thing about which was the mysterious Magic Fingers Relaxation Service. This was a box on the night table which if you put in a quarter made the bed vibrate in a way that made absolutely no sense to a 12 year old. “How on earth would you ever get to sleep?” I thought, obviously not yet fully able to understand that sleeping may not have been the point. Back then, it just seemed odd...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (image: "Naval Air Station Tillamook during World War II" credit: Tillamook Air Museum)

Memories are like roadside scenery glimpsed from a car hurtling down the freeway at 78 miles-an-hour. The driver sees the least, preoccupied by the task at hand. The passenger in the front seat sees a little more but not enough given she spends time looking at the driver, searching for signs of distraction or weariness. The passengers in the back have the opportunity to see the most because they are — literally — along for the ride, blissfully out of control and with nothing but time on their hands. The idle backseat passengers can best see what’s really close up, or really far off, and only then like freeze frame glimpses of washed out Kodacolor photos rescued from a dumpster bound shoebox...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (image: "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park" by Diego Rivera, 1947.)

It seems to happen every time. The affable Kevin McCloud, host of British television’s Grand Designs, describes the house project he will cover in the upcoming episode, and fairly predictably I find myself thinking:

They have got to be out of their minds.

Whether it’s the extreme locale the owners have chosen, the seeming folly of restoring and subsequently inhabiting a derelict theatre, for example, or the absurd expectations of time, budget or a combination thereof, the viewer is always left with a sense that — this time — it’s all going to hell...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published in July of 2016. (photo: The Northern Echo)

I have a smoky old eighties sports car which I drive, usually too fast, for a few weeks during the shoulder seasons. Any other time of year I park it lavishly, luxuriously in a heated and cooled garage. Yet, I also lust after a brand new Tesla Model S and the solar panels with which to charge it. Weird, eh?

We recycle everything we can in our household. I was annoyed, though, when our nanny state, local government rammed through blue bins city-wide at taxpayer cost. It was as if I was being forced to take money for a blood donation which I had, for years, happily given for free simply because it was the right thing to do. Except in reverse...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published in May of 2016. (photo: ©Stocksnapper via iStockphoto)

The metaphorical rosetta stone is better known than the real Rosetta Stone. In any explanation of how one critical document deciphers and unlocks the meaning of all others, that document instantly becomes the rosetta stone of particle physics or computer code or kaizen or astronomy or golf. With the irreplaceable information the metaphorical rosetta stone provides, that which we seek to understand is enlightened and flourishes in our imagination. It’s the single match struck in the stygian void. The light it casts instantly defines the dimensions and nature of our new world...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published concurrently. (photo: ©Hans Hillewaert via Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 4.0)