This idea popped into my head as I was reading about a new robot delivery system for snack foods being tested on a California campus. Sitting on a park bench, you suddenly have a yen for a potato chip and a sugar drink. Cue up smartphone, hit the app, and a vending machine on wheels that looks a bit like R2-D2 (no doubt on purpose) will trundle to wherever you are and deliver the goods.

Without a doubt, humanity will continue to invent things. Anyone on Facebook knows how their feeds are littered with advertising for clever gadgets—especially pet products–that make you think, for a millisecond or two, Wow! I could really use that! Most of the time, we move right along. If we didn’t, before very long, we’d have to call in a consultant (see previous blog, Tidying Up) to help us get out from under the debris. And the debt. Most of the time, I manage to monitor my decisions.

Taking charge of our own brains, let alone our own behavior, presents a lifelong challenge. For one thing, it’s hard to see what our own persuasions and prejudices actually are. Being female, I am surely in thrall to genes, hormones, parental admonitions, and past experiences in ways I don’t even recognize. I’ve been working on it for, well, 72 years. However, I take just a little pride in not letting what’s “out there” steer me away from what I discern to be right and good “in here”—that is, in my brain and in my heart.

That process of discernment involves revelations and mistakes, risks and failures, dazzling hopes and profound disappointments. Me? I like having something to look forward to more than I like remembering what I did or was or had yesterday. As a consequence, it’s possible that I have had to learn the same lessons over and over again. But I’m keeping my mind on alert. For one thing, I want to be aware of how artificial intelligence might help humanity evolve in a good way. And I don’t want the artificial stupidity of “media” to suck up too many of my precious brain cells. That said, thank you for visiting my blog. On our marvelous internet.

Speaking of tidying up, yesterday, I made Refrigerator Soup. You know what that is: you check the fridge and freezer for whatever might be a likely ingredient, put it all together, and simmer for the day. In this case, the ingredients included a packet of curry powder I got in Cambodia a few years ago, and leftover turkey gravy from Thanksgiving. (Yes, it had been frozen!) Bill is still alive, so the soup was a success. There’s a lot of it. But in case this isn’t alarming enough, I’ll post a poem I wrote years ago that captures both my thoughts about discernment and the fridge experience.
 

REFRIGERATOR POEM
  
Today is the day I must open the crisper,
Where something organic has gone into goo.
Today I must answer the visitor’s whisper,
“There’s death in this kitchen. I smell it. Don’t you?”
 
Today is the day when my conscience must answer
For loss so expensive, and messy, and sad.
Today I must have out the vegetable cancer
Of careless indifference to things going bad.
  
Barbara Loots