The other morning I found a chocolate in my shoe. A nice, big piece of chocolate in a Mr. Willy’s bag tucked into the toe of my shoe. There’d been some talk, the day before among my upstairs family, about St. Nicholas Day. I’d only half listened, but understood that my grandchildren, Spindlewood alumni (the Waldorf-inspired pre-school that Susan Silverio ran for many years in Lincolnville) knew all about the custom of St. Nicholas (who morphed into Santa Claus somewhere along the way) and who filled children’s shoes with treats on his feast day, December 6.

It was 5 a.m., and I could hear my son moving around upstairs. So I texted him.

“When did St. Nick sneak in?” I asked. “He’s a clever old elf,” was the reply.

There we were, my son and I, a mere 20 feet apart in the same house, texting about St. Nicholas, an ancient legendary figure from European folklore, on our 21st Century smart phones. It felt weird and modern at the same time.

I’m relatively new to this phone, though it goes everywhere with me these days, just as a friend, wiser about such things, predicted. After years of resisting I finally got the phone last winter, and now know how to text, take photos, and ask Siri (whoever she is) what the temperature is before I get out of bed in the morning. My favorite feature is the timer, reminding me to stir the stew and to check that the fire has caught in the woodstove. What did I do without it?

Computers. Smart phones. Google. Email. Texts. The web.

Has it only been 30 years? We got our email address – ragrugs@midcoast.com – in about 1990, I think. Wally and I shared the one address and have held onto it even though GWI bought out Rockland’s Midcoast Internet Solutions, the little company on Oak Street where you could walk in with a problem and talk to a human being. Remember being able to talk to a real, live person?

So computers entered my life smack in the middle of it. Everything changed, or was about to, if only we could see into the future. Wally brought home a TRS 80 from the Adams School in Castine, set it up in the front room, and began teaching himself how to use it. His sons remember it having a three-word name, something that started with “mother” and ended with “computer”. Those weren’t happy times.

And now, decades later, I can’t say that it’s much better. Oh, Wally made peace with our Mac after he retired, bonding with Google as he unraveled his ancestry one name at a time. Descended from an old New England family whose progenitor was shipwrecked off Pemaquid in 1607, he tracked down all his lines pre-Ancestry.com, that is, before that site corralled all the information and made you pay to see it.

I embraced the whole shebang more fully, once I realized I could email my weekly column in to the Camden Herald after years of painstakingly typing it out and driving into Camden to deliver the pages to whomever was the editor at the time.

A lifetime of writing long hand on ruled notebook paper or typing on my pink Royal portable, fell away as I learned to cut and paste, moving sentences and whole paragraphs around effortlessly. My little bottle of whiteout dried up. The folder of carbon paper, carefully used and reused, was obsolete.

Next went the dictionary, then the thesaurus as I discovered those handy little tools were only a click away. Reference books, encyclopedias – they were history. Google became my friend, fast fact-checking as I wrote.

My transition from analog to digital (have I got my terms right?) was deceptively smooth. For a long time I was rather smug, even a bit disdainful of my elders who refused to move into this new world; yes, in those days there were people older than me.

In the early 2000s I had a huge, unwieldy file stored on my computer, the makings of Staying Put in Lincolnville, Maine, nine years of interviews and research along with dozens of old photos from family albums all over town, graphs and maps waiting to be assembled into a book.

“You can do this yourself,” said my eldest son when I asked his advice. He installed Quark on both our computers – his happened to be in Australia at the time – and proceeded to teach me, via Skype, how to use it. We met onscreen almost daily for months, he checking the file of the book installed at his end against mine, a world away. “You’ve got a double space on page 82, paragraph 3,” he’d say and I’d dutifully hunt it down and correct. “Move the photo on page 128 a bit to the right to line up with the caption,” and I’d do that.

I took a photo of the peeling paint on our porch screen door and blew it up big enough to cover the front, back and spine of the book-to-be, making a nice, mottled green background, scanned drawings and maps, jiggered faded, tiny photos until they were presentable, learned how to index, all on the computer.

When the cartons of Staying Put were delivered I remember tearing one open to hold the actual book in my hands, amazed how those bits and bytes had been transformed into this flesh and blood book.

But all the while I was playing with photos, emailing old friends, sending jokes back and forth, exploring Google, marveling at YouTube – and I bet you were too – something sinister was happening. Our world was being transformed, or at any rate our world as we’d always engaged with it.

The monthly bill paying, for instance, the hour when you sit down with checkbook and calculator, with the stack of bills that have come in, and settle your debts. Nobody likes doing it, but we all must. For some reason my mother is always by my side, as I try to emulate the effortless little flourishes she made on her checks.

Why is this the mundane task that brings her back? I’m little, standing close to her sitting at her desk, smell her unique scent, see her fingers on the pen, wishing I could write like her, be like her.

I rarely write checks anymore. Or even keep a check register. It’s all online, easily accessible: go to the site, type in an impossibly long number, then the equally impenetrable password, click on “Secure Access Code” and wait for the phone to ring, say hello to the mechanical voice (she won’t respond unless you speak to her), press 1, type in the five-digit code she will repeat until you get it, and bingo, you’re in.

My bank helpfully shows my balance as $1,000 more than I actually have, because that’s how much I can overdraw (and of course, pay back with interest) if I need to. I pay my bills with a click or two, and I’ve even just learned how to deposit checks via my phone.

I don’t think I’ll do that though. I’m not ready to give up standing in line at the bank, exchanging pleasantries with the teller, admiring the tchotchkes she’s arranged at her window as she processes my deposit.

Because here’s where our world is getting really weird. Increasingly, there seem to be no humans behind the screen. Have you tried finding a number to call when you’re floundering in the middle of some computer task? Trying to track down an automatic payment for instance, one of those where they take money out of your account or tack it onto your credit card every month. You set it up that way because it seemed easy, because “they” encourage you to do it. “Go paperless!” they say, the electric company, the oil dealer. Have your car payment, mortgage, what-have-you automatically deducted.

And then something goes wrong. You’d better hope your credit card is never “compromised.” It happened to me a couple of months ago; one day I was happily paying for almost everything with the card, rarely using cash, when bang. The card was refused.

I have no idea how the card company knew, but somebody or something had made a $1600 charge on it, not me, and Visa cancelled my card. They immediately issued a new one, though it took a couple of weeks to arrive, then credited my account the $1,600, and life went on….except for all those automatic payments which were up to me. I was expected to contact each one with my new card number.

Trying to unscramble an unexplained glitch in your finances can take hours and hours on the phone. Trying to reach a real human being takes finesse. Bypassing the ghastly menu options sometimes works: pressing “O” might get you a “customer service representative”, but often it doesn’t. And if it does you may be talking to India or the Philippines or somewhere else where it isn’t even today, but tomorrow. These elderly ears don’t always hear that well anyway, but when the voice on the other end is not a native English speaker, well, we’ve all been there.

If your issue is complicated enough you can get transferred two and three times, having to repeat your account number, date of birth, SS number to each CSR, and then suddenly, when you’re deep into it and you’ve finally reached the person who can handle your problem, that dreaded whiny, automatic voice comes on “….if you’d like to make a call…” ­– you’ve been disconnected.

It’s only in recent years that I’ve come to recognize the gap, a widening gulf really, between the generations, the one between the native speakers and those of us navigating the new world in a second language. The digital world of information, social media, access to music, to movies, photos that move, videos, drones, phone calls across oceans and continents.

The native speakers are the ones born after the 1990s into a world already organizing itself around bits and bytes. They’ve never known a world where a friendly voice – the telephone operator – answered your call and asked whom you wanted to speak with, where letters and very expensive, “long distance” phone calls were the only way to stay in touch when the family dispersed. A world where correspondence stayed private, silent letters tucked inside dark envelopes, where you counted out cash to pay for groceries or wrote a check. Where students spent long hours in the library tracking down information for the report due in English class, taking notes with paper and pen.

Sometimes the two worlds seem to collide, like texting my son about St. Nicholas. They collided at church yesterday when guest musician Kat Logan took a seat at the 1822 pump organ and played I Wonder as I Wander. As its breathy sound filled the pews, we sat holding our collective breath to catch every note, our smart phones silenced in our pockets and purses. Kat pumped the bellows that blew air over the reeds of the ancient organ, the analog version of the Smart Rogers Masterpiece Trillium Customized 788 organ across the room. That one can be programmed to sound like zimbelstern (tinkling bells), like chimes, like trumpets, like strings. It transposes (changes key automatically) and at the turn of a knob it changes pitch, amplitude, or tone quality, sounding gospel or romantic or whatever you want.

Meanwhile, the ancient Small & Knight organ, the instrument that was lovingly restored several years ago by Theodore Dorr, a Lincolnville Band member, knows how to play only the one way. It’s lovely.

Town

The Giving Tree gift tags have all been taken, the gifts bought, and being wrapped at the Town Office. Thank you to all who participated!

Don’t forget to license your dog before the end of the year, either online or at the Town Office.

Library

Tuesday, December 11 the Knitting and Needlework Group meets from 4 until 6.  Get out of the house and come to the library where you can be engaged and entertained by the talented fiber-loving enthusiasts.   Bring a project – knitting, crochet, felting, embroidery – all needle crafts are welcomed. 

Then Wednesday at 7 p.m. Walter Simmons of Duck Trap Decoys will talk about his Seabird Restoration Decoys.  In the late 1980's Simmons signed on to carve Atlantic Puffins for Dr. Stephen Kress' nesting restoration work with the Audubon Puffin Project on Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge.  More recently he has been carving various species of terns for projects around the world. Simmons, known for his Lincolnvillel wherries, began carving decoys as a young boy and has authored a number of books on both boatbuilding and bird decoy carving. For more information call 706-3896 or email.

The Library’s annual Holiday Show will be on Wednesday, Dec. 19, 7p.m. sharp. This year’s program will feature local storytellers from around the community , a sing-along, poems, an array of local musicians, ,The Off Beats, The Harbor Belles , and—best of all—Christmas cookies! No reservations required: first come, first seated!

Rosey Gerry says, “Bringing cookies to share would be nice. Someone special will remember that!”

Advent Taize Service

The public is invited to participate in a Taize Service on Sunday, December 16, 4 p.m. at the United Christian Church (UCC) in Lincolnville Center.  This is the final offering of the series “Music and Reflection for Advent."

A Taize service includes singing meditation, selected readings, and silent prayer.  Singing is an important element of the service. The service will be led by Revered Elizabeth Barnum with Peter Yanz as cantor and accompaniment by pianist Peter Saladino and flutist Mary Schulien.

The United Christian Church, built in 1821, is the perfect venue for this twilight service. The church is located at 18 Searsmont Road, Rt. 173, in Lincolnville Center.  All are welcome.  Donations will benefit the UCC Music Ministry.  Find more information here or call 763-3800.

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Spending a day wrestling with a balking websire