Book Review, Now With Bonus Puzzle

I just finished a book, The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything by Michael Saylor. It was a fun read, with a number of intriguing ideas by someone who ought to know, although it suffers from the boosterism of every title involved in the subject of "how X will change everything!".

One thing that has change in publishing, and not for the better, is the lack of serious editing and proofreading, a decision made, undoubtedly for financial reasons, by virtually all publishers. And very few authors value the services enough to pay out of their own pockets. The results are noticeable, often distracting, and do not do credit to either authors or publishers.

In this case, the book is well written but poorly proofed and, especially in the second half, an increasingly distracting number of extraneous words pop up in the text. Mostly they are conjunctions, articles and prepositions and do not change the meaning or clarity of the author's arguments but occasionally where the author selected a better choice for an existing word the old one was never deleted. Noun/pronoun mismatches and noun/verb disagreements also grate.

The best part, however, is: the author used staff from his own company to work on the book and at least some of them took advantage of the lack of adult supervision to hide their own names throughout the Reference section. (Yes, authors, there are people who will look at your notes, appendices and references.)
I had noticed what appeared to be randomly bolded letters throughout the section which, on closer inspection and connecting the dots as it were, formed the names of several employees whom the author credited with helping. (I've mentioned before that I like puzzles.)

So now I confess: I sent a somewhat snarky e-mail to the VP of Communication (who is also credited with working on the book put did not participate in the prank) sort-of ratting them out.

Mom, A Life: Part Nine

Mom, A Life: Part Eight

The Final Years

Dad was in a serious car accident just as they were building the new house. That, and the fact their contractor absconded with several thousand dollars necessary for the finishing work, meant the move was delayed, drawn-out and a little traumatic. They stayed with first one son and then the other (both of whom were living in town at the time) and eventually the place was completed.

In late 1997 Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent cryogenic surgery. During follow-up another tumor was discovered and he began chemotherapy. As Mom described it from the x-rays, "It looked like a loaf of French bread wrapped around the back of his stomach." At first he responded well and they could see the tumor shrinking almost daily but suddenly something the doctors called a "wildfire" took over. In less than a month, on March 22, 1998, Dad died.

Mom continued to teach ceramics at the Senior Center and occasionally took on jobs either when she wanted extra money or just because she was bored. (She did a short stint as a dispatcher for a rental car company out at the airport one time.) She gave up driving and my brother, who had sold his house and moved in after his girlfriend died, chauffeured her around. In 2000, my brother managed to pull off a surprise 80th birthday party at the country club that included her children, grandchildren, most of her nephews and nieces, surviving sister and brother-in-law and a host of friends.

The remaining dozen years passed quietly. Mom's back had been giving her problems for decades. What with slipped and disintegrating discs and severe scoliosis she became hunched over at the waist and barely four feet tall. (She was 5' 6" most of her adult life.) As her mobility decreased she stopped going anywhere except ceramics class and doctors' appointments. We had always planned for Mom to live to at least 100, both because she thought that was a nice round number and also in hope she'd passed on longevity genes to the rest of us, but in 2008 I received a letter from her hinting at imminent problems. I moved in with Mom and my brother to help him look after her. The letter turned out to be a touch melodramatic.

Mom talked about moving to an assisted living facility but, although we got brochures and made some visits, her heart wasn't really in it and she stayed home. Her mobility became worse and she was plagued by occasional incontinence and so stopped going to ceramics out of what might best be called anticipatory embarrassment. She most definitely did not want her friends to see her deteriorating.

Mom was diagnosed with moderate Alzheimer's in 2010. She never discussed the diagnosis and I often wondered if one of the effects of the disease was that the implications never really sank in with her. She was put on a drug that noticeably slowed its progress, and for the six months immediately after the diagnosis she showed real improvement both physically and mentally. We even made one last visit to the ceramics class at the Senior Center.

Eventually, though she spent her days mostly on the couch reading and watching TV, although she no longer enjoyed watching sports as she found she didn't understand the rules or the point of the games any more and had no patience for anything lasting longer than a half hour or so. She read continuously, both magazines and large print books from the library.


She still dressed herself (with an increasingly eccentric creativity), made her own bed and did her own laundry (or tried to. We took that last chore away from her after she washed some disposables and filled the dryer with cubic feet of fluff). She had a great appetite and ate everything we made for her enjoying the occasional glass of wine with dinner. Although she had more and more trouble finding the right word, she never lost verbal capability and always recognized people. Her biggest problem was insomnia which could keep her bouncing up and down all night long and exhaustedly napping all the following day.

In February 2012, I noticed a decline in Mom's cognitive abilities. Despite the doctor's warnings about the inevitability of Alzheimer's, Mom had been so stable for so long that it came as something of a shock. During an appointment in early March, her GP noted a spike in her blood pressure and asked if she had a living will and DNR order on file. He recommended we post it on the refrigerator. Mom's insomnia was worse and she was a little more agitated than usual over the following weekend and then, sometime over night or, more likely, early Monday morning, her heart just gave out.

Mom died at home, in her room, Monday March 12, 2012, fourteen years after Dad. She was three months shy of 92.


Post Script

This sketch of Mom's life turned out to be a lot longer than I'd originally planned, yet it is still far, far too short to do her any kind of justice. I haven't mentioned her sense of adventure and willingness to try anything at least once. She'd go out in the woods with us kids to explore the "cave" we found. She had us all grilling Japanese food on hibachis and eating with chopsticks back in the '60s. She taught tolerance (no excuses) and encouraged intellectual curiosity. She's why I was listening to Stravinsky and Berlioz at age eleven and owned the complete Yale edition Shakespeare at thirteen (best junior high school graduation present ever!) and why I can cook for myself well enough to entertain in several different styles. ("You're either going to get married or stay single. If single, you're not rich enough to eat out every night so you'll starve if you don't know how to cook. And if you get married I'm not going to have some other woman complain I gave her a helpless son.")

Thanks, Mom. I love you, too.

One Hand and the Other

April, it seems, is Travel Month at the town library.

April is also RMS Titanic, 100th anniversary of the sinking of, month.

The many and various posters put up around the library seem to be working at cross-purposes.

Mom-Sequiturs: Promise Kept

Mom has a tendency to nod off frequently during the day, usually when reading. Partially this is due to her bad sleeping habits and predilection for getting up several times during the night thinking it's morning already. Partially it's just due to being almost 92 years old. Usually, her head slowly sinks to her chest until the book falls from her hands which wakes her to start the cycle over again.

This morning, after breakfast, she was reading her latest large-print book from the library. Suddenly, she closed the book put her head all the way back on the couch cushion and declared, "I think I'll snore a little for a while." Which she did.

Night and Day

I think we've lost the Persian Garden Effect for the rest of the year, now. Until a couple of weeks ago it was possible to sit out at night under crystal clear onyx skies, losing count of the myriad stars, while the warm breeze, heavy with night-blooming jasmine brought crickets chirps and basso bullfrog calls. It's still dry and Cassiopeia, accompanied by Jupiter still reigns at the zenith but the temperature is dropping and the jasmine is through for the season.

Yesterday was another perfect Florida sunshiny, no-humidity, fluffy clouds kind of day so I suggested to Mom that she should go outside and enjoy it. Her usual response is, "O.K. Maybe I will," after which she doesn't. Yesterday she said, "That's a good idea!" and jumped* right up.

*Mom's "jump" is considerably slower than most people's and is heavily assisted by pushing off of the couch and coffee table and anything else within reach. Nevertheless, for her it was quite the move.

She moseyed, with her walker, out front where we set up a padded lawn chair just off the walkway under the not-jacaranda. She took her sweater and a book. Inside, where it's generally 80F, she wears the sweater constantly, outside, where it's 78F at best, she doesn't. I fixed lunch for her and brought it out and then sat with her and read for a while also. She was out there for almost two hours.

The Continuing Accelerating Slide

Generally Mom has been holding her own lately but occasionally some things in her brain just don't connect or don't connect properly.

Yesterday I made pancakes for breakfast. Mom recognized that it wasn't Sunday and enjoyed them immensely. When she was done she proceeded to mop her plate with a facial tissue from which she then tried to suck the extra syrup. When I took it away from her she said, "Just because it's called a Kleenex doesn't make it wrong." No. And that's not why I took it away.

A couple of days ago I gave her a fresh load of cleaned laundry of hers direct from the dryer for her to fold and put away. She took everything to her room and while there decided it would be a good idea, for some reason, to change clothes. She came back out wearing a pullover shirt as a kind of skirt. She had managed to stretch the neck enough to pull it over her hips. The arms hung limp and empty at her waist. When I pointed this out to her, she stopped for a moment, looked down, and said, "Well, so I am." She refused to change again since she was planning on going to bed soon so I made her promise not to do it again. We'll see.

She's been very good at remembering which day it is recently and she's been reading a lot.

One step forward, two steps back. http://thatblognobodyreads.blogspot.com/2011/09/accelerating-slide.html

. . .and Things That Go Bump In the Night

Mom's insomnia is getting worse. It started a while ago with her getting up around 11:30 or so and sitting for 10-15 minutes and then going back to bed and has progressed to where she now gets up almost every night, like clockwork, an hour and a half after going to bed, then another hour after returning to bed and then again sometime in the middle of the night to sit on the couch and read for an hour or so. As a result, she's been getting up later and later in the morning. Yesterday she didn't rise 'til after noon.

Last night was the worst. She promised, as she was heading off to bed, to stay there and not come out. An hour later, there she was comin' 'roun' the corner. When I informed her she had just set a new record, she turned around and went right back. Half an hour later she was out again. This time she stayed and read her book. An hour and a half later, when she had to go to the bathroom, I said "You really should be in bed. Don't come back just to keep me company." She said, "Yeah, that's probably a good idea." And went.

Until. . .

Three o'clock in the morning. I hear noises outside my door. Lights go on. Lights go off. Bump. Bumpity-bump. I crack my door just enough to peer out. Bedroom lights on. Bedroom lights off. Bump. Bump. Hall lights on. Hall lights off. Bumpity-bump. Kitchen lights on. Kitchen lights off. She's apparently trying to fix herself a snack. In the dark. Using the lights just to get her bearings and then turning them off again and navigating by feel as her walker hits the walls.

And then silence. And darkness. I think she's gone back to her room. In the morning I find parts of the kitchen rearranged. By ten she's up, dressed and her bed is made.

She remembers nothing of her little walkabout.

Whodunnit

So I got Mom an Agatha Christie (the only one in the library's entire large print section! Maybe there are others already out?) and she seemed to like it although this morning she told me I could return it because she was finished which I thought was awfully quick of her but it's not a large book and she insisted she had read the first half years ago and therefor had skipped ahead to the finish.

She did say I could pick up something else for her "if [I] want to."

No Fairy Tales, Either

Mom had requested that I not get any more books for her and for the last week or so she has limited herself to magazines (Smithsonian and National Geographic) and catalogs. Yesterday she went and picked a book out of the bookshelf. It was the Arabian Nights, a condensed version of the Thousand Nights and a Night. It's not a large type book but neither was the other one she'd picked up recently.

When I went to give her her eye drops that evening she put the book down and exclaimed, "This is the worst story ever. If it doesn't get better soon I just may not finish it." I asked what was wrong with it.

She said, "They promised to kill this man if he doesn't get married in time." I'm not at all sure which story that is.

This morning she was reading it again and, again, when I went for the eye drops she said, "This is awful." Then she looked up at me and said, "Would you get me a book from the library?"

I'll stay away from Alexander McCall Smith this time.

Mom-Sequiturs

This morning Mom was reading a book she picked out of the living room bookshelf. It was a large hardcover. With standard type. I had been getting large type and, preferably, softcover books from the library for her because she can't read normal size printing and regular books are too heavy and tiring for her to hold for any length of time.

When I mentioned to her she was reading a standard book she looked at it and said with a note of surprise, "Well, so I am."

When I went to give her her morning eye drops I apologized for interrupting her. She put the book down and said, "That's O.K. I've read it before. I just don't know if they'll ever complete that contract. Although they do in the end."

Reading Redux

I got a little ambitious, apparently, in my choices for Mom's reading. The last book I took out from the library for her was McCall Smith's Double Comfort Safari Club. She didn't like that at all. She claimed it was because she'd read it several years before and didn't like it then but the copyright is 2010 so that's not the case. I think she just couldn't cope with the foreign names.

Mom has developed a kind of faux deja vu. She frequently thinks she's seen or read things before that are just not possible: live sporting events, newly published books, etc. When I point out the temporal paradoxes, she accuses me of not believing her. Which is true.

While I try to let a lot of things slide, for some reason this one gets to me. Forgetting words, mixing up names, even an increasingly random sense of time are all OK. For some reason this deja vu thing seems a more ominous indicator of the path she is on. Since it's not going to change for the better, I just need to learn to let it go, too.

I'll get her a new mystery set in England or the US.

Reading Habits

Mom has started reading again. I attribute this almost entirely to her Exelon patch.

Before, she would read and re-read and re-read the same magazine article or catalog page. It looked like OCD but it was really just her inability to absorb anything she read. At one point she asked for a book and I got a large-print mystery from the library for her but she quit it half way through saying she'd read it already and that it was all familiar. It was a new release so I know she hadn't seen it before. She's done the same thing with sports on TV, claiming to have seen the game before and either "knowing" how it comes out or wondering why "they" changed things this time.

But, lately, things seem to have changed. She is now on her third book in six weeks (another mystery) and is not only completing them but enjoying them as well. She's using a bookmark to keep place and I do not see her starting over, going back, repeating pages or otherwise betraying any indication she is not getting the full experience.

She also seems to be forgetting fewer words and she even remembers what day it is--sometimes (usually on weekends ever since I instituted French toast Sunday breakfasts).*

*It's a question the docs always ask and it's not really fair IMHO since all her days are pretty much the same and tend to run together.