Andrew's View of the Week

In my life I’ve owned exactly four cell phones. In 1997 I purchased a cell phone when my father was hospitalized with a major stroke and I wanted to stay in touch with his doctors. In 2002, Heather and I purchased the then trendy flip phones just after we were married. In 2013 we purchased our first smart phone, iPhone 5s – partly because Heather ran into the ocean with hers in her pocket and partly because I needed one for work.

Last summer tragedy struck again when, in rapid succession: Apple announced no more iOS updates for iPhone 5s and Starbucks announced that its app would no longer be supported on iPhone 5. It was very sad as I had only just started using the Starbucks app to order our drinks so we didn’t have to wait in line for our Saturday fancy drinks.

Sigh …

That was August and at that moment I decided that I wanted an iPhone 11. So I researched, discussed with Heather and generally procrastinated because I was afraid I’d lose all my contacts if I upgraded.

In January I finally called Verizon and told the nice lady on the phone, “Send me two new iPhone 11s. Here’s my credit card number … no don’t tell me the price or I’ll hang up on you.”

It’s great! I love the thing – big screen, face recognition, still plays my favorite solitaire game and Starbucks works again!!! Now I wonder why I waited so long to buy one and I’m still apologizing to Heather for that.

When it comes to cars – I do the same thing, rarely buy one. The last car I bought was in 2006. Heather’s was purchased in 2003 and in 2012 I finally scrapped the truck I purchased in 1991 …

Recently we became aware that our younger grandkids were learning to drive and could use a car to drive to college. When did that happen? I swear we were just buying them Lego for Christmas a couple of years ago.

Then I started to hear something about Apple CarPlay. I looked it up on the internet, cool stuff – I can download music from my computer and play it in the car, use the Siri to send text messages and tell the map system to find the nearest Starbucks.

Well, that sold me and we decided to give both our old cars to the grandkids and buy new cars for ourselves. We did our research and annoyed car salesmen all across town in our search. My first question was always, “Does this support Apple CarPlay?”

Of course there were the boring questions like, “What are the safety features? Milage? Why do you need heated seats in California?” Last time I went shopping for a car I annoyed sales staff by counting cup holders. This time I counted USB connections.

Last weekend we walked onto a Subaru lot and met a salesman who’s first name was, “Ford.” At that moment I knew he’d just sold two cars. Come on — a guy named “Ford,” selling Subarus? It was a moral imperative to buy cars from this guy.

They had my car on the lot and Heather’s had to be driven over from a different dealer. By Tuesday we had four cars on the driveway and I had a stack of manuals to figure out how to drive these things.

I have to say, these new cars are a bit like driving a computer – apps on the dashboard?!? I just hope they never update while I’m driving. Anyway, I got the iPhones paired with the right cars and was able to ask my car for directions to Starbucks, stock prices, play music, etc …

So this week has been car paperwork, cleaning out old cars, trying to figure out why my new car was beeping at me and why is the speedometer telling me to check the back seat when I turn the engine off. I do have to say it’s a very polite car – the dashboard says hello when I start it and goodbye when I get out. Plus it leaves the headlights on long enough from me to get the key in the front door.

Next weekend we’re delivering old cars to grandkids and I’ll be driving around asking the new car questions.

I’m going to see what happens if I say to Siri, “Order me a grande raspberry latte from Starbucks and then give me directions to it.”

It’s the inevitable outcome of submitting your work to magazines. Way back in November I sent five of my poems out in to the world to see what might happen. This last week the last magazine I sent them to rejected them and was also the best rejection note I received.

Most rejection notes are a version of, “No reflection on your or the quality of your poems, but we don’t want them.” One publication went on to quote how many poems they receive per year – like that’s suppose to make me feel better that I didn’t make the cut or perhaps it’s a hint to stop sending them stuff. I haven’t decided yet.

I did get one rejection that was encouraging. The editor wrote: “While these poems do not meet our current needs, we did find much to admire in them and would consider future work.”

Well, thank you – I’ll get started on some new stuff right away.

I mean, I am working on new things, but life has been busy and time for writing has been limited to these Sunday afternoon blog posts. I’d like to do more creative work, but at the moment – life, work, tax session, bought a new cell phone and thinking about driving across the country to start a new life all have had me so busy there isn’t much time for just writing.

Time, that’s one thing we never have enough of.

I do have other places I can send the poems to and as soon as the taxes are done, I’ll send them out. I’ve asked a few poets how they got published and most said, “persistence.” A few answered, “luck.”

So there it is lucky persistence.

I’ll keep you updated on the next batch of rejections.