Category: memoir

CARBON PAPER, FLOPPY DISKS, AND THE CLOUD

by Steve Harsh, posted in Communication, memoir

My son and his wife gave me a cool birthday present last year.  It’s a subscription to a memoir writing company, and it sends me a new question to respond to each week.  One of them recently stumped me for a couple weeks.  The question was: “What are your favorite possessions?  Why?”

I’m not a big possessions guy; so I had to think about that quite a while. What I finally decided is that my favorite things are my computer, iPad, and phone. That will sound very quaint to future generations I’m sure, and I know there are lots of negatives that come with too much screen time. I spend too much time on Facebook and trying to figure out Wordle, but at least for me the positives outweigh the negatives. 

I can’t imagine what amazing technological gadgets will be in use 20 or 30 years from now. We certainly had no idea in the year 2000 that we would have a pretty good camera in our pockets at all times and all the information in the world at our fingertips that we have in 2025.

When I was a kid we had a World Book encyclopedia at our house. It was probably 15 or 20 volumes of maybe 200-300 pages each, and if what we wanted to know wasn’t in those very limited number of pages we had to take a trip to the local library to do more research.  Remember card catalogs?

I have always been a book lover and a few years ago books would have been my answer to this question about favorite possessions. But today I have a whole library of books on my iPad and access through the internet to almost any information I want. Sure, some of it isn’t accurate, but that is true in books too.

And what my computer and iPad also let me do is write my own blog, sermons, prayers, letters to the editor and to my congressional reps. I can journal or write anywhere in the world I happen to be with those devices. I can stay in touch with family and friends, read books, listen to audio books, watch sporting events, movies, play games, and get news and sports scores wherever I am.

Ok, that sounds too much like an Apple commercial I know. (And for future generations, if any read this, Apple is a tech company, not to be confused with the fruit of the same name. If you want to know how it got that name you can research it on whatever devices you are using now.)

I will finish this entry with a somewhat related story. In the early 1990’s I was writing my doctoral dissertation on the very first computer I ever owned. I was so grateful for that machine because it was so much easier to write, revise, edit, and correct what I had written than in the previous generation that included typewriters, carbon paper, correction fluid, and a lot of cutting and pasting pages together to write school papers or a 200 page dissertation.

But the computer was such a new thing then I didn’t fully trust it not to lose what I had worked so hard to create; so backed up my work at the end of every day on two square plastic things we called floppy disks, even though they weren’t floppy. And for safe keeping I left one of those disks at my university office, and carried the other with me home in my brief case.

Yes, I was a little compulsive, but you need to understand that I was working three part-time jobs while working on the dissertation whenever I could. So it took me 3 years to finish the darn thing, and I sure didn’t want to lose it or have the computer eat it. So here’s the punch line to this too-long story — I was at home alone one day in our parsonage in Sparta, Ohio when a really scary storm blew in. I don’t always head for shelter when it storms, but that day the wind sounded very serious; so I decided to go to the basement. I only took two things with me – our dog Cinnamon, and the floppy disk that contained my dissertation.

Today, because electronic devices have gotten so much smaller and are easily portable I could simply take my laptop, iPad, and phone with me, and instead of floppy disks that weren’t floppy today we can save things on the “cloud,” which isn’t really a cloud either.

No wonder we can’t communicate?

June 25, 2025

A Long Overdue Apology

by Steve Harsh, posted in memoir, Women's Rights

Is there a statute of limitations on dumb stuff one did way back in high school? I bet the vast majority of us would vote for an amendment to that effect if we had the chance. I am going to a high school reunion this weekend – one with a ridiculously big number attached to it. One of the great things about growing up in the 1960’s is that we didn’t have cell phones and social media to record our dumb stuff for posterity. But that doesn’t mean those embarrassing incidents aren’t tucked away somewhere in the recesses of our memories.

As I was thinking about our upcoming reunion a long-forgotten memory from the spring of my sophomore year popped into my consciousness and has been lurking around in there for several weeks now. And what’s more troubling than the memory is the fact that it never dawned on me for over 60 years how badly I behaved on a spring night in 1962.

I’m talking almost Donald Trump badly. No, I didn’t grab my date by any body part, and I didn’t assault her; but I did treat her very disrespectfully. It is painful even now to relive that night, but here’s the abridged version. I had a date with one of the smartest and nicest girls in my high school class. It was our first date, and you will soon see why it was the last.

I was still not even old enough to drive; so we double-dated with a friend of mine who was a senior. He had been going steady with a freshman girl for some time, and the four of us went to a party together. I’ll call him Bill to protect the innocent. Bill and I were both in a local Boy Scout troop, and I think the party we went to may have been one held by our troop to celebrate something which I do not recall.

So here’s the short and dirty – Bill’s date at some point, for reasons I will never understand, started flirting with me, and I fell for her charms like a ton of bricks. I proceeded to ignore my date for the rest of the evening to talk and flirt with my good friend’s steady girl. I don’t know how many points of the Scout Law I broke that night, but trustworthy, loyal, courteous, and kind certainly went out the window.

I have no memory of how that disastrous date ended. I don’t know why my date or Bill didn’t smack me silly. My only consolation is that my date and Bill ended up dating each other for a long time, much longer than my “relationship” lasted with the flirt. They got a much better deal from that double date than I did. The flirt dropped me a few weeks later in a much more unceremonious way than she did Bill. So, I got my just desserts.

But the most painful part of the memory is that I realized that I repeated similar kinds of disrespectful behavior in several other relationships with women throughout much of my adult life. I’m grateful that I learned to do better in mid-life; just wish it had been sooner rather than later.

But here’s my immediate dilemma. I will likely see the woman who was my date that night at our upcoming reunion. Should I apologize to her after all these years? I hope she has long since forgotten what a jerk I was, but I know I may feel more at peace if I unburden my conscience. What I wonder is if my apologizing is also the right thing to do for her? I welcome advice, especially from my female readers.

First Night

by Steve Harsh, posted in memoir

December 31, 1998 was one of those magical nights that fairy tales could be made of. It was exactly 25 years ago this past New Year’s Eve. The city of Columbus, Ohio held it’s very first “First Night” that year to mark the beginning of the New Year 1999. I have kept the little souvenir of that night on my desk for a quarter of a century because that event was like no other of the 78 first nights of a new year of my life.

I was single then, having ended a 30 year marriage 18 months earlier. I was also a new grandfather following the joyous birth of Olivia to my daughter and her husband in July of that year. Olivia’s dad, Drew Thomas, was and is a very good magician, and that played an important role in the real magic that occurred that First Night for me. Drew had been hired to perform one of his illusions at the stroke of midnight at the First Night celebration in downtown Columbus. The illusion was to make Columbus Mayor Greg Lashutka magically appear in an empty room. My son and I had been enlisted to help prepare the stage for that illusion in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve. Since the Mayor was not available to rehearse the illusion the day before the event I was actually his stand-in for rehearsal.

To my surprise, she not only had no plans, but was interested in joining me. It was an unusual first date in several ways. Because of my connection with Drew, we were invited to come back stage in the Ohio State house where food was available for the cast and crew. Because this was a family affair, both of my children and my young granddaughter, who was then six months old, were there.  I don’t believe I have ever had a first date that involved all of my family.

At that point I had no plans to actually attend the celebration since to do so as a single didn’t sound very exciting.  But as the big night drew closer my curiosity grew, and I decided I did want to see the fruits of our labor preparing for the illusion.  In 1998 the phenomenon of on-line dating was in its infancy.  Match.com was one of the pioneers in that industry, and I had dabbled with it a few times that year.  So I decided to get back on that website and see if by chance I might find a last-minute date for New Year’s Eve. I noticed right away that one woman I had talked with the previous summer was still listed. Doubting that she would be available at the last minute I gave her a call anyway.

So after meeting the whole clan and enjoying some dinner, Diana and I spent several hours, taking in the various sites and entertainment around downtown Columbus. It was a very cold New Year’s Eve with temperatures well below freezing. So I didn’t know at the time if my date was holding my arm and snuggling close to me as we walked around because of attraction or just a desire to keep warm.  In either case it felt really good.  About 11:30 that evening we made our way back to the State House so we could take in Drew‘s performance.

As it turned out, we didn’t actually see what happened on stage. My daughter asked me if I would be willing to keep Olivia inside where it was warm so she could go outside and see the show. As midnight approached I was holding my precious granddaughter and standing next to my date, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had never been on a first date on New Year’s before. My dilemma was wondering if the tradition of kissing one’s date at the stroke of midnight was appropriate on a first date. Because the evening had gone so well, I decided it was worth the chance, and as it turned out, it was the first kiss of many more to come.

You see that date on our special first night was the woman who has become my best friend, companion, lover, and fellow adventurer for the past quarter century.  Together Diana and I have celebrated the birth of six more grandchildren.  We have each buried a parent.  We have been there for each other in sickness and health.  It has not been all happily ever after, of course, but the highs have far outnumbered the lows.  Before I met Diana I had never been more than 1200 miles from Ohio, but thanks to here adventurous spirit together we have traveled all over North America.  We have skied breathtaking mountains in 4 Western states and British Columbia.  We have cruised the Caribbean and Mediterranean multiple times, climbed the Great Wall of China, toured the Colosseum in Rome, snorkeled with Sea Turtles and Manta Rays on the Great Barrier Reef, and created several lifetimes of memories all over the world that I could never have dreamed of on that First Night. 

And we’re not done yet.  Who knows what the future holds, but whatever it is I’m so glad I made that last-minute phone call 25 years ago that was the beginning of it all.