When I was able to do the math I messed it up and
calculated that, having been born in 1944, I would by 66 when the year 2000
hit. I wondered whether I would even
make it to year 2000. At some point,
much later than it should have been, I corrected myself and thought that I
would only be 56, not 66, and that I had a good chance of living at least that
long. When year 2000 finally arrived, I
was only 55. I turned 56 two months
after we reached year 2000. Again, it is
now receding rapidly in the rear view mirror.
In the 18-24 months leading up to the rollover of the calendar to year
2000 we listened to many scary scenarios of what could happen to our older
computers, not only in our homes and workplaces, but those that had been
installed some years earlier in any number of places, like elevators and
emergency systems, even those controlling the massive power grids, nuclear
plants and the like. The basic issue was
that in the older software the year was designated in two digits, e.g. 10/25/85
for October 25, 1985. What would happen when the calendar rolled over? Would 00
be interpreted as year 1900? What problems might that cause?
As the calendar progressed toward year 2000, commonly
dubbed “Y2K,” conventional wisdom held that the large for-profit organizations
had no doubt upgraded their systems and were not in danger of crashing, but
that small businesses, home computers and some governmental units may still be
dependent on older systems that might become confused and just freeze up upon
the rollover of the date to 01/01/00. It
happened that I was working as a contracts manager for a company that needed to
clean up their existing computer services contracts and improve the new ones
they were entering into. Virtually every
customer and potential customer wanted warranty language in the signed
agreements to the affect that their systems would not be negatively impacted by
the transition to year 2000. I remember
so looking forward to getting past the rollover and not having to deal with
that issue again.
On December 31, 1999 I sat nearly glued to the
television, watching year 2000 dawn on the other side of the world and march
inexorably across Asia and Europe toward the U.S. After nothing happened in the major capitals
of Europe and the British Isles, I watched the countdown in Times Square with
confidence that there was nothing to fret about. We probably went to sleep before midnight in
California, as we usually did on New Year’s Eve. We would watch the New Years Eve celebration
in New York on television, the ball touching down at 9:00pm our time, then ask
ourselves, “Why stay up 3 more hours for something that will be anticlimactic
at best?” Some might say it is a
disadvantage being 3 hours behind and not really “in the moment,” so to
speak. But as we watched the mobs of
people telling the reporters how many hours they had been standing on their
feet in the bitter cold, we didn’t have even a twinge of envy.
The Y2K scare reminds me that there was a time when
computers were massive pieces of equipment that could only be owned and
operated by large organizations. I’m
thinking of the Univac and the early Cray machines. This scenario gave rise to the fear of
government intruding into our personal lives and controlling us, in much the
way it was portrayed in George Orwell’s book, 1984, published in
1948. Government was seen to become by
1984 “Big Brother,” always watching the individual and controlling his life by
owning and controlling these massive computers.
When year 1984 finally arrived, some writers tried to make the case that
many of the aspects of society depicted in Orwell’s book had actually come to
pass. But most of us recognized that
this was a weak argument and quite a distortion of reality.
In fact, with the profit motive as the “invisible carrot”
and competition as the “invisible hand”, innovation in the private sector had
by that time led the way to the smaller, faster, more affordable personal
computers (PCs). If anything, the more
bureaucratic, “slow-to-change” public sector had fallen behind. The best software programs were being written
for the PC, and the best engineers were being drawn to the leading edge in the
private sector, away from support of the older programming languages of the
mainframes.
However, a curious reversal in the order of things seems
to have taken place with the advent of the Internet and the most advanced
electronics. In response to the attacks
on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, generally referred to as
“9/11” for the sake of brevity, the U.S. government began to use the latest
technologies and hire the brightest people to enhance electronic surveillance
of foreign and domestic individuals and entities. By 2013 virtually all emails and phone calls
were evidently capable of being tracked and noted. The content of conversations are apparently
available to the government, if needed for security purposes, although they
really have no interest in the vast majority of them, and wouldn’t expend the
time and money it would take to record and monitor all those conversations. The point is that the underlying premise of
George Orwell’s book has come to pass.
Government is now ahead of the private sector as a result of hiring and
funding the “brightest and best” in reaction to 9/11.
Reportedly, the government is able to hack any encryption
technology and break any coding that the private sector has thus far
created. In case that is true, comedian
Dave Barry advises us in our email and voice correspondence to curry favor with
Big Brother by slipping in a positive remark about the NSA (the National
Security Administration). In the middle
of a conversation he says you could slip in something like, “I sure love and
appreciate the NSA.” I get a kick out of
Dave Barry.
…………………………
Birthday coincidences:
Dad was born on July 3, 1921, and he told me that he thought the annual
4th of July parade was for him!
There was no television when he was growing up, so most everybody turned
out to watch the nearest 4th of July parade. Mom was born two days before Christmas, 1922,
so was about a year and a half younger than Dad, which is quite typical for a
husband and wife. But continuing the
coincidences, Donald was born on Mom’s birthday, December 23rd, and
I was born on February 29th, which only comes along once every four
years. Lastly, Mom died on my birthday,
but it was not a leap year, so it was over night between February 28 and March
1. So, Don was born on Mom’s birthday,
and Mom died on my birthday. It’s almost
creepy.
Mom’s parents were both Irish Catholic. I’m not clear on whether they came to America
as children when their families immigrated, or if they were born shortly after
their families arrived from Ireland.
Dad’s mother was of Irish decent, and his father (“Popu”) came with his
family from Greece when he was a teenager, and they settled in and around
Springfield, Massachusetts. Popu was one
of eight children (5 boys and 3 girls).
His parents came to America along with their brothers and sisters (Popu’s aunts and uncles). They were merchants or had trades in Greece
that were transferrable to America, so had a better standard of living than the
typically poverty-stricken immigrant masses that congregated in and around New
York City. Grandma grew up in that same
area, the Irish and Greek clans living sort of across the street from each
other. Grandma had just one brother,
Arthur, and one sister, Eleanor. In
fact, Popu and Arthur both worked at the armory in Springfield, which may be
how Popu and Grandma met.
During a visit to Long Island in 2013, Aunt Dot corrected
a misunderstanding I had. I knew that
Grandma had “become Greek” in the sense that she learned to cook the Greek
recipes and to speak the Greek language passably well. But I thought that she was not accepted by
the clan, more or less forcing her and Popu to move from Massachusetts to New
York. Not so. They moved to New York so
that Popu could get a better job, and Aunt Dot was born in New York in
1920. But they missed family too much,
so moved back to Springfield, where Dad was born in 1921. Aunt Dot said that they moved back to New
York - this time to South Ozone Park on Long Island - when she was about 10-12
years old (early 1930s) so that Popu could take a machinist job at Morey
Machinery Co.
Another misunderstanding she corrected is that Popu
didn’t have a narrow or restricted throat as a genetic trait, but from a
thyroid operation in mid-life that closed part of his throat. I always thought that I had a narrow
swallowing capacity and that I inherited it from Popu. Not so.
My throat is probably perfectly normal.
Maybe I had a tendency to try to gulp down too much food too fast. I
also learned this trip that Popu was actually born in Smyrna, a port city in
western Turkey, although his people were all Greek. This probably stems from the time that Turkey
or the Ottoman Empire ruled Greece, sort of like Israelis living on the Sinai
Peninsula or the Gaza Strip today. Popu was born in 1891 and died in 1979, so
was 88 years old. He was a heavy smoker,
per Aunt Dot (I remember him “rolling his own” as we called it), and he died of
emphysema. Grandma was born in 1896 and
died in 1996, just a few days or weeks before her 100th
birthday. In fact, Aunt Dot says she and
the staff were planning a special birthday celebration for her. To complete the theme here, Aunt Dot was born
in February 1920, so was about 18 months older that Dad.
Something became clear to me that perhaps has always been
obvious to people with common sense: There will come a time in your life
(barring the unforeseen) when you will realize that the older generation is all
gone, and many unasked questions can no longer be answered. As of this writing, all 13 of the Dwyer
siblings (Mom and her 12 siblings) are all gone. So is Dad and so is Uncle Harold. By the way, it never came to my attention
what a nice and important gesture it is to attend people’s funerals. A defense mechanism or coping mechanism may
be why I avoided funerals. I usually
rationalized that we all knew how this was going to end for each of us. Why should we be so surprised or saddened
when it actually happens? That’s what we
expected would happen sooner or later.
I’m not defending that line of reasoning; I’m just explaining how my
mind worked.
I didn’t fly to the east coast for any funerals at all
until Mom died in Florida. At that
funeral cousins Joan and Kathy came down from New York, as did Harold and
Janice, and I realized what a kind and helpful gesture it is, and what an
opportunity to demonstrate love and concern.
I didn’t go to Dad’s funeral, nor Popu’s or Grandma’s before that. At Uncle Harold’s I saw how people came from
all over, even Connecticut, and I saw how much it meant to the family. With my usual tendency to see humor in
everything, I noted that if you don’t go to other people’s funerals, they won’t
come to yours! (That may be a Yogi Berra
“Yogi-ism.”)
I am so glad that Aunt Dot, at age 93, is still very much
with us, including her sharp mind. If
not for Aunt Dot, the door would be closed to any inquiries I might have. I was so glad to have the time with Aunt Dot
during my 2013 visit. She also pointed
out that I could simply pick up the phone and call if other questions come to
mind. I wonder how long it would have
taken me to figure that out! Dad
eventually went to work at Morey’s, too, by the way, and was at work when I was
due to come into the world. Dads were
not allowed in the delivery room in those days, and given the unpredictability
of the timing of delivery, they usually went about their business and awaited
notification. I think women were still
being checked into the hospital in those days before going into labor, and it
was still considered too risky to wait until contractions started before
heading in.
The story is handed down that Dad had asked the
receptionist to come and speak to him personally if Mom delivered during the
day, and not to embarrass him by making an announcement, which would of course
be followed by cheers, applause and probably laughter over some crude jokes,
all at his expense. Well, the
receptionist was not to be denied some fun:
When she got the news she announced over the loudspeaker, “Tom
Zades…your wife’s features and your fixtures!” (No ultrasound in those
days…they didn’t know the gender until delivery). Anyway, Dad was predictably mortified.
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