The place where I write may have to change.
A soft couch for a hard chair I must exchange.
Age hardens the bone more than the sight.
Age does not dull the urge to set things right.
Except…
Age questions all sense of reality.
It doubts what right seems to be.
Age moves faster the longer it goes.
It upsets the cart full of all we know.
Age unsettles from head to toe.
We see higher up and deeper below.
Age quickens and shakes our stability.
It makes us question who we will be
in an uncertain future coming so fast
we wonder how much longer we shall last.
Age keeps reminding us we cannot fall;
not our selves, nor our country, no one at all.
So we march for a future, a future unclear and unsure.
Bravely, because we have done this many times before.
Are we wisely foolish, or foolishly wise ?
The fact we don’t know is no surprise.
So, I get up off the soft couch, and drop the pen.
Time to go march, one by one step, together again.
annarino writes 
ESSAY ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
In 1965 my best girlfriends and I (each of us avid readers) took a speed-reading course at the local YMCA. By the end of that course I could read page in seconds, not minutes. And we could not increase speed to a higher level, unless we reached 100% accuracy. This was perhaps the finest educational tool I ever used. Throughout life I have been able to ingest information rapidly and accurately. All because of those weeks of study outside a classroom.
In today’s fast-moving communication era, that skill keeps me informed. Otherwise, it might be overwhelming to even try to stay informed. I might be tempted to turn off the flow of information and just “go about my business.” It can be necessary to emotional health to live in denial. But, it does little good for those in need of our attention, our support, our love. It undermines the concept which is the basis of any democratic republic – the common good. Checking back in is necessary to the common good.
Thus, I suggest, temporary, not permanent inattention. Most of you have discovered this tactic on your own. I guess I am writing this today in response to numerous comments I often hear: She cannot read all this stuff. She cannot find all this information. She must make this stuff up. She could not possibly have read all this. etc. etc. Well, I do read all this stuff! I just speed-read it.
I do not know if such courses are currently being offered. Perhaps it is no longer necessary to those who use A.I. But, as for me, I choose to read directly from the source; or to check the source directly after A.I. tries to tell me what it knows. A.I. is a great speed-reader. But, one must be assured it is reading material based upon real facts and not fiction. A.I. is also good at helping us find proper sources of information. It, however, will never excuse us from the need to be factually accurate. We live in a time when disinformation is deliberate. Propaganda is a tool to undermine our votes, our democratic principles. Judges are beginning to point out lies presented by DOJ attorneys in ways heretofore unseen. A.I. will only give us what it has been fed. And it is fed by factual inputters; but also, by bottom-feeders preying on us with lies.
As Sister Robertine, O.P. taught us in my Catholic high school, “ Be careful what you read. Garbage in…garbage out.”
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