And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that one of the adages I have found helpful in life is the one that says to always expect the worst, because that way you will never be disappointed.

So a week ago today, just after my printer turned out a rather unsatisfactory print of my column, my attempt at ordering a reprint was rejected, with a rather puzzling message which I did not understand at all. But then, I don’t speak computerese.

When I turned in that messy column to the editor, I said not to be surprised if I did not have a column the next week, because I did not know where to go to seek professional help, which appears to be very scarce if it exists at all in Waukon.

My call for help to a cousin who is sort of my unofficial techie for the laptop brought the suggestion that maybe all I needed was to replace the color toner unit.

The message I was getting did not seem to make that simple suggestion, but I decided to try it for lack of a better idea. Late in the week therefore, I bought a replacement cartridge, with no hope that would solve the problem. Accordingly, when football games and Sunday church and chores took up a lot of weekend time, I did not get to installing the unit until Monday morning.

And wouldn’t you know? It worked!

Reminded me of the time I bought my flat screen TV. A couple days after it was set up, it did not work when turned on. I called the dealer, who said to just unplug it, then plug it back in again. I hung up the phone, thinking, yeah, like that’s going to work.
It did!

Guess I was bom a generation too soon to understand modern things!

My weekend procrastination caused another problem.

I use the weekends to do research and make notes about ideas for Monday’s column. Since I had no hope, I did neither, so arrived at Monday with no idea what I was going to write about.

As you can tell by now.

One thing I do remember from the weekend was watching about an hour and half of a two-hour show on the National Geographic channel about “America before Columbus.” Didn’t stay until the end, because a football game interfered, but I saw enough to get the gist of the show.

Even from the days well before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, human beings were messing things up.

Where there were trees, the natives cut them down or burned them off, for use as wood to burn or build, or to make hunting game easier. They hunted game to near extinction, and then fished the streams and seas to the same effect.

All before Columbus.

And presumably when others crossed to the Americas, they only speeded that up. It’s all their fault for living.