Janet's Blog

Here it is, the middle of February already. Most years, I would be gritting my teeth and wishing for this month to end, because March should certainly bring some signs of spring. At least, I could hope. But this year is different. This year, I haven't been longing for winter's end because it feels like winter has hardly begun. Except for a couple of weeks--one in December, and the other in January--we've had no snow and no sub-freezing daily high temperatures. We've had more cloudy days than usual, and some horrific windy days that we could all do without, but most days have boasted highs in the fifties or sixties. It's been so warm that the squirrels have been skittering around outside for weeks, scurrying across the street in front of my car and scrambling up and down trees and fences. Instead of hibernating, it seems like they've been taking cat naps this year. The weather has been so mild that Millie's puppies have been able to play and poop outside near...

AI--Artificial Intelligence--can be a wonderful aid to research. I no longer have to spend hours at the public library, pawing through card catalogs and searching through the stacks to find the book I need. Instead, I can just type a simple question in the search line of my browser, and the answer will magically and immediately appear. If I need an idea for a recipe that uses the ingredients I have on hand, AI will produce one. If I want to converse with someone who speaks a different language, AI will translate. When I want an answer to some trivia question, I can simply ask Siri, or Google, or Alexa, and a calm voice will respond right away. When I asked Google the simple question, "What is AI?" this is how it responded:  Artificial Intellligence (AI) is a field of computer science dedicated to creating systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as reasoning, learning from past experiences, problem-solving, and understanding language...

When I was in the fourth grade at East Ward School in Fairbury, my teacher's name--by some coincidence that would only become apparent to me decades later--was named Mrs. Bauer. She was a good teacher, patient and kind. Her classroom was invariably calm. My classmates worked hard and generally did everything Mrs. Bauer required. (As I look at the photo below, I can't help but think that the overall class character was heavily influenced by the overwhelming number of girls in the class.) After all these years, I'm surprised that I remember the names of 90% of the kids in this photo. I'm standing in the middle row, second from the left. I was a good student. I loved to read, and arithmetic was always easy for me. I remember how Mrs. Bauer would assign our daily arithmetic assignments, always giving us ample time to complete the work in class. That year, long division was the newest, hardest thing we had to learn, but I caught on quickly. Not everyone did. Mrs. Bauer direc...