It was introvert heaven! For a couple of months.
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Just a few weeks ago, a good friend put a warning on his Facebook page: “Do not accept any friend requests from me; I’ve been hacked!” This is unfortunate but routine these days. The Messenger app of Facebook is notorious for this (and many people no longer use it because once it is corrupted, your entire friend list has also been hacked). I know to not open any link from a friend that reads, “look who died”, or “is this you in the photo?” Always a scam and once the link is open, you are cooked.

I can’t begin to tell you how many emails or texts I get like the Featured photo. The only problem is I never use PayPal, so I know it is fraud.

I had to ask my husband about this one. I get it all the time (of course, I’ve never given out my credit card, so I don’t know how they are going to charge us). My husband points out that we only have Apple computers which do NOT use Norton anti-virus products – another scam! These now go into the spam folder immediately.

A few years ago, I lost my Instagram account. There was a message that I had violated their terms and gave me specific things I could do to recover the account. This made NO sense to me at all, since I only post family photos. I was given a 5 digit code and instructed to write on a piece of paper the name I use on Facebook (interesting that there was an assumption that I HAD a FB account), that 5 digit code, and my Instagram account name, then take a selfie holding this paper with part of my hand showing and post it to the account I was given. I did all of this, assuming that whomever I was communicating with already knew all this information through Instagram and Facebook. I was told I would hear back within 24 hours. After a few days, I gave up and opened a new Instagram account with a new name, then texted or emailed people to please accept me as their “friend” since my account had been shut down and please follow me back (though I suspect it had actually been hacked).

Last winter I had a weird credit card scam situation, which I was able to resolve (and got a new credit card). It is a convoluted story regarding making a service appointment for my car through a phone number ON MY cell phone, but at least it was all eventually resolved with no lasting damage. One has to be very alert and wary these days.

Anyone else NOT buying Bitcoin through PayPal? I got this email on July 5…right into the spam folder after taking a screenshot to include in this story. I have gotten it at least three more times since then.

 

How annoying is this? And scary that so many scammers have my email address. Am I right?

Seeing on the news that former senator and basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley turned 80 yesterday reminded me of a time when I almost fell for that old “Nigerian prince” scam. The great Carl Belz, Director of the Rose Art Museum for 24 years, my friend and mentor then and for years after his retirement, had been a championship basketball legend in his days at Princeton. He was just a bit older than Bradley, but was working on his PhD there, playing semi-pro ball and practicing at Princeton, so got to know Bradley well; they became lifelong friends. Bradley and his wife donated a valuable painting in Carl’s honor to the Rose (it is on view now) and sent a letter to be read at his retirement party (which I had the honor of reading).

We remained close friends for the remainder of his life despite various challenges he faced. Carl had health problems at the end of life and had his left leg amputated below the knee. So it surprised me when I awoke one morning to a desperate email, saying he had suddenly traveled to Spain but his wallet was stolen and he had no money, could I please send money quickly. My first impulse was of course to come to the aid of my good friend. But I hesitated for a moment and thought logically. Getting around was not easy for Carl. It seemed unlikely. I called him. His world was topsy-turvy. Of course he was not in Spain! His email had been hacked, but some people HAD sent money in response to that email, including Senator Bradley’s office (the Senator was actually traveling and had not verified with Carl the veracity of the claim).

Scams are too easy to pull off. Verify first and be wary!

 

 

Doctors and patients: the body politic.
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Still, I wonder if I had a bit more solitude, would I be more productive?
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...And there she was, encamped in the front reading room, chatting and smoking.  My heart did a little dance. My eyes blinked from surprise and relief, to see her again. She seemed spot-lit and radiant as I slow-walked past her, urging myself to stop, but not stopping. 
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Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can’t Go Home Again. What are the frustrations if you try?
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Solitude liberated me from isolation and mediocrity.

For me, isolation results from a feeling of imprisonment.  I have felt physically isolated in a crowd, at a bar, in a faculty meeting or even in the exercise gym where I am the weakest and slowest.

For me, solitude is self-chosen: a personal path to exploring myself and recognizing the values of others.  My cherished experiences are entering a secluded national forest in the fall. Sitting crossed legged, I listen to the birds, treasure the many colors of the fall trees, watch an occasional snake taking its last bask in the warm sun before gracefully weaving into its winter asylum, and feeling the cool atmosphere change from warm to chill…  

Complementing my physical satisfaction, I reach into my backpack for a collection of reading.  Dominant are the writings of Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, and Saul Bellow.  I read them not necessarily for their meaning—Buber’s I and Thou, Kafka’s The Great Wall of China, and Langston Hughes’ autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander.  Their themes and significance have been explained too many times.

Rather, in solitude their writings inspire me to achieve a meaningful life despite challenges and disappointment. Buber chose his own path to religious studies, pacifism, and cosmopolitanism despite the Nazis.  He left the usual academic world to study Chinese, argued in correspondence with Gandhi about the application of non-violence for the German Jews, initially refused to exit Palestinian Jerusalem during the War of Independence, and suffered rejection from an appointment in Jewish studies at Hebrew University for an inappropriate position in Sociology.

Kafka, though not an observant Jew, was the quintessential Jewish writer.  His fecundity of Jewish stories such as the Golem, the Kabbalah, and Jacob’s ladder, were reflected in his writings—such as The Trial, and The Metamorphosis.

 The Burrow, left unfinished before he died, introduced a cryptic unnerving story about a being that burrows through a system of tunnels that it has built over its lifetime. The creature is constantly afraid of something happening to his burrow or being attacked from an enemy. It is thought that the story was supposed to have concluded with the invasion of a beast that disrupts the system.

For Kafka, his writings could not possibly communicate what he wanted. In his will he ordered that they, like him, be extinguished. Although he avoided the coming Nazi genocide, his wife disappeared, also, into the abyss of the concentration camps.

 

                           

Reading in solitude invests me with a spiritual companionship

I cannot obtain from crowds.

 

 

 

The UFW had some simple housing available in a local apartment building in Calexico, where I had stayed the first time.  It was pretty bleak, and soon one of my union contacts offered that I could stay at his place on the other side of the border, in Mexicali.
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