Password Lunacy

It's only Tuesday, and already this week I've had so much blatantly false security, I'm ready to reserve a room in the nearest psych ward for refuge from this crazy world. Everything one does nowadays requires a password. And I'm on it. I follow professional suggestions for secure passwords. I rarely use the same password for different accounts. I ~ a senior citizen with a simple life ~ have 95 passwords. How do people with truly complex lives manage all these passwords? Not to mention user names.

 

Okay, a fun new one was generated so that I could attend certain concerts. But then Google decided to not accept my established password, so I made up a new one. My homeowners' listserv changed providers this week, so hey, new password. Even though Medicare and Social Security are related agencies, their websites require separate passwords. Now security is a two-step process, so confirmation codes valid for only 30 minutes now clutter my text list.

 

Suddenly one e-mail account gets too much weird spam, so I'm trying to change that password, but can I? No. Clicking every icon on the home page, I cannot find a way to do this. After waiting on-hold forever, my provider told me a different department handles passwords. Maybe tomorrow I'll muster the patience to call back. When I look online for Christmas gifts and a merchant requires a password, I go elsewhere. I'm fed up. And I can't keep up.

 

Precautions, it turns out, don't eliminate fraud, only reduce the odds. Yesterday my luck ran out. I received a letter showing someone had filed for unemployment benefits in my name. Yep, you guessed it ~ To report this fraud, I had to generate three new passwords, for the Department of Employment Services, the government's identity theft website, and a credit bureau. Sigh.

 

Where can I go if the psych ward doesn't have free beds at the moment? A monastery? Cave? Oh, wait ... Maybe my therapy can be holding my neighbor's new puppy. No password or user name required, only a mask. I can handle that. 

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins ~ my review

Mystery novel, The Woman in White, gripped me from its first few pages to its conclusion on page 647. When the novel began with “This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure and what a Man’s resolution can achieve” and commentary about different witnesses in a court of law, I could not have imagined the story to follow.

 

The first narrator, or witness, Walter Hartright, is a decent fellow, aptly named “heart right,” for wrongs committed render him chief detective, and he acts with honorable motives, even when it would be easier to bow to man’s baser instincts. One night early on, walking on a London road, Hartright briefly encounters a mysterious woman wearing all white, who becomes central to the plot. Soon Hartright accepts a job as a drawing instructor at a family estate in Cumberland, England, where he teaches art to half-sisters Marian Halcombe and Laura Fairlie. He falls in love with Fairlie but she is betrothed to a baronet chosen for her by her late father. The mysterious woman in white appears up in Cumberland to warn the Fairlie family about the evil character of the baronet. She seems to have a childhood connection with the family. Oh, and she just happens to resemble Laura Fairlie.

 

Next witness-narrator is the Fairlie family’s solicitor. After his account, the story continues with entries from Marian Halcombe’s diary, observations by the housekeeper, the cook, the woman in white’s caregiver, her mother, Laura Fairlie’s aunt’s husband, Count Fosco; finally, Walter Hartright wraps up the adventure. The slimy baronet turns out to be very evil; plus, he has a Secret to be covered at all costs. And his partner in crime, Count Fosco, is even more chillingly charming. Each narrator adds more clues to solve the multi-layered mystery, as well as additional rabbit trails to be followed.

 

Although this story takes place in 1850, it has hallmarks of modern murder mysteries—innocent people being followed, watched, and sometimes harassed, and innocent people doing their own spying. Add assaults on country roads, chase scenes, bogus charges and trials, victims drugged, double-crossing, secret identities. The Woman in White does not lack action. Its being 1850, conversation is civilized, often clever verbal sparring over tea.

 

Walter Hartright and Marian Halcombe are the brains combining all the puzzle pieces, and Hartright is the person traveling about England to pursue clues. At times his prodigious abilities in this sleuthing endeavor seem unlikely attributes of an art teacher, who as far as we know, has never solved crimes before, but I just roll with the author’s having blessed him with those gifts. Hartright and Halcombe both have sharp minds and a powerful motivation in their love for Laura Fairlie.

 

Of all Wilkie Collins’ characters in The Woman in White, I most enjoyed Marian Halcombe’s bright mind and street smarts, Count Fosco’s larger-than-life persona, and Walter Hartright’s single-minded devotion to the cause. Mr. Fairlie’s sniveling selfishness provides comic relief. I enjoyed Professor Pesca’s unique quirks, too. Collins paints colorful characters, and this is a thoroughly absorbing mystery.

My review of Beryl Markham's memoir, West with the Night

 

Memoir West with the Night collects twenty-four vivid stories by the remarkably fearless bush pilot, horse trainer, and aviation pioneer, Beryl Markham (1902–1986). Although British-born, Markham passed her childhood on her father’s farm in Njoro, Kenya. Her first language was Swahili. Her first playmates were Nandi and Murani boys. In this memoir she tells of informal hunts in which she ran barefoot with her Masai spear in search of warthog. In another story, her child-self skips gaily past a lion living on a neighboring farm, with near-tragic results. By the time she is eighteen, she knows enough about training race horses to get a job doing it. And then she learns to pilot airplanes. As a bush pilot, she flies missions of mercy as well as more mercenary safari scoutings. The penultimate story in West with the Night describes her setting a record in 1936 as the first pilot to fly nonstop from England to North America. This memoir’s title is derived from that westerly nighttime flight.

 

Not to diminish Markham’s world record, but I feel the title chosen for her memoir does not reflect its most compelling stories. Markham’s visceral imagery took me to pristine East Africa in the nineteen-teens and nineteen-twenties. I was hunting that warthog. I was worried it had gored my dog Buller. I was all alone with the warthog until the Murani warrior fortuitously appeared. Later, I tamed a proud stallion, and later cheered on Wild Child at a Nairobi race track. A little later, searching for downed fellow bush pilot Woody, I glimpsed a flash of silver as I flew above jungles and plains. I cannot imagine a more engrossing memoir. For me, the decades leading up to Markham’s trans-Atlantic flight hold the most interest.

 

Also, I love the wit and wisdom of her writing. Her flights with Baron von Blixen are hilarious. And at times she asks thoughtful questions like these: “What can be said of Buller—a dog like any other, except only to me?” [page 136]; and of Paddy the lion, “Who thinks it just to be judged by a single error?” [page 66]

 

Markham’s descriptions include personification, such as “arrogant little engines of the Uganda Railway.” [page 70] She uses imagery that really takes me there: “Often a herd of giraffe found it expedient to cross the railroad tracks, but would not condescend to bow to the elevated metal strands that proclaimed the White Man’s mandate over their feeding grounds. As a result, many telegrams en route from Mombasa to Kisumu, or the other way around, were intercepted, their cryptic dots and dashes frozen in a festoon of golden wire dangling from one or another of the longest necks in Africa.” [page 69]

 

I have high praise for many aspects of West with the Night. But what fascinates me most is how young Beryl absorbs the Nandi, Murani, Masai, Kikuyu, and Kavirondo understanding of and appreciation for Africa’s wild animals. Their and her love and respect for animals is palpable. Markham brilliantly writes her Chapter Nine, “Royal Exile,” in the emotional voice of a thoroughbred stallion, Camciscan, purchased by her father for her to tame and train. I don’t doubt that the intuition and instinct Markham needs to become a fearless, accomplished pilot, were born in the primal lessons she absorbs from her native African companions.

First foray

Coronavirus chronicle continued ...

 

A friend and I met at our usual favorite restaurant for lunch. It was my first foray into group dining since February. We were happy to see a large tent and widely spaced tables outside, but sad to learn this restaurant now is open only for dinner. We stood in the parking lot to Google every nearby restaurant to learn their hours. Much to our surprise, most of them are also now closed during lunchtime.

 

Fortunately, a Walker Brothers Pancake House was nearby. They not only serve pancakes and other breakfast items, but they also offer some lunch plates. We loved it! 

 

In July, a friend came over for lunch on my front porch. Last weekend, my sister and I got deli food and made our own pop-up cafe on a grassy knoll in a parking lot. Not the best ambiance, but oh, the person-to-person conversation was grand.

 

This week's first actual restaurant dining was, I hope, just the beginning. Time will tell if we successfully dodged droplets, but I did feel reasonably safe. Restaurants seem to be taking wise anti-COVID precautions with their outdoor seating.