Pope Francis is at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital. Statue of Pope St. John Paul II in foreground.
Pope Francis has been popping up in my news feed this week.
More accurately, I’ve been seeing the headlines of news items and op-eds inspired by the pope’s current illness — and by culturally-normative assumptions about what popes are and what their job is.
I’ve also been following what Vatican News has been saying.
Which, basically, is that Pope Francis is sick. Doctors don’t expect him to drop dead at the moment. And he’ll most likely stay in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for another week: at least.
I’m concerned about his health, of course. Which is part of why I’m including him in my daily prayers: along with our community’s priests, and my family.
Don’t, by the way, be too impressed by my daily routine including prayer. It’s part of my daily routine. Like flossing my teeth and eating. It’s an important part: really important. In the long run, more important than flossing my teeth. And that’s another topic.
I’ve talked about popes, perceptions, and my native culture’s quirks before:
That dark blue patch in the center is an Extreme Cold Warning (February 17, 2025)
It’s a cold night, here in central Minnesota.
We’re living with an “Extreme Cold Warning in effect from February 17, 09:00 PM CST until February 18, 10:00 AM CST” and “Extreme Cold Warning in effect from February 17, 09:00 PM CST until February 18, 10:00 AM CST”
I checked the National Weather Service’s website: it’s -17°F, -27°C, at Sauk Centre Municipal Airport. It’s a few minutes before 10:00 p.m., I don’t know how often those numbers get updated.
We’re headed for an overnight low of -30°F, with a windchill of -48°F.
I’ll be very glad to stay inside for the rest of the week —
— and glad that the household’s van started this afternoon. I had a prescription to pick up, and a slightly-routine medical check at the clinic. The latter had already been postponed once, when the van flat-out refused to leave the garage.
The weather is colder than usual for this time of year. But I doubt that we’re setting any records.
One of the things I like about living in Minnesota is that our weather isn’t boring. It does, however, encourage a certain degree of situational awareness.
That’s it: nothing profound, just talking about the weather, mostly. Which is part of the culture up here. It’s partly small talk, partly sharing information about what to be aware of.
Saint Anthony Park Branch Library on Como Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota. (Google Street View (2023))
Saint Anthony Park public library looks about the way I remember it, back in the early 1960s: from this angle, at any rate. It was on the other side of a small ‘downtown’, between Carter and Doswell Avenues on Como.
I visited that shopping area recently, using Google Street View. I’d hoped to spot the grocery my mother sent me to, but the library’s the only thing that looked familiar: hardly surprising, after upwards of six decades.
Learning Something Important
Paved shortcut between Doswell Avenue and Keston Street. (Google Street View (2022))
The grocery would have been a walk of three or four blocks from where my folks and I lived, depending on exactly where it was.
Going there and back, I had at least two choices. I could walk along Como Avenue most of the way, or take Doswell Avenue down — literally — to Keston Street.
The Doswell-Keston option had the advantage of being mostly downhill from the little ‘downtown’. It was about the same distance both ways, if I took a short paved pedestrian path that made for some wedge-shaped yards.
That way was also quieter, although there was a wheezing bulldog with a habit of following me when I crossed his territory. I think he was just being interested and friendly. But at age 12, I had to keep reminding myself that his personality didn’t match his appearance.
One day my mother gave me some money and sent me to get groceries. She probably gave me a list, too, but I don’t remember that part.
I do remember walking home from the store, with the groceries in a bag. A paper bag.
I learned something important that day. Supporting the bottom of a paper grocery bag is vital, if the goal is getting groceries from the store to the kitchen.
A Glass Bottle and Sparkly Shards
My errand was going fine.
The store had each item, and enough of each item. I had enough money to pay for everything, and there’d been no problems at the checkout.
It was a good day.
Then, I’m not sure exactly when, but I think it was not long after I’d left the store, the grocery bag lost weight.
Abruptly.
A glance down confirmed my fears.
The sharp, complicated, sound I’d heard came from a bottle of ketchup hitting concrete.
Glass is an excellent material for ketchup bottles. It won’t affect the taste — neither will today’s multi-layered plastic bottles. Improvements in materials technology since my youth have been spectacular, and that’s another topic.
But glass ketchup bottles do have one drawback. When they hit concrete, they tend to become sparkly glass shards.
That’s what happened to the bottle of ketchup I’d been carrying home.
The other items were on the sidewalk, too. I don’t remember what they were, probably routine baking and cooking supplies.
They had one thing in common: their containers were still intact.
That was the good news.
The bad news was — I WAS FAILING TO BRING THE KETCHUP HOME.
I don’t remember how I re-packed the undamaged supplies, or how I dealt with what was left of the ketchup and its container.
I do remember being upset. Extremely upset.
Legacies
“Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish’d face, “Many a planet by many a sun may roll with a dust of a vanish’d race….” (“Vastness” , Tennyson (ca. 1889) via Bartleby.com)
In the great scheme of things, a broken bottle of ketchup barely qualifies as ‘trivial’.
So how come I was upset?
For one thing, I was around 12 at the time. Things like bottles of ketchup tend, I think, to seem less important as the years pass.
For another; I sincerely, emphatically, and profoundly do not like bungling a task. Particularly when the task is simple, and I could have sidestepped failure.
And I’m pretty sure that how I feel about waste was in the mix.
Back then, my mother sent me to school with lunch in a brown paper bag: which included a sandwich in a waxed paper bag. Being careful about how I removed the sandwich and replaced the waxed paper bag in the other one, I could make both bags last at least a week.
To this day, seeing my wife discard a plastic bag after a single use makes something in my mind twitch. I have to remind myself that the benefit/cost/risk balance favors her habit. It’s one of many things we discussed during the early years of our marriage.
My cheeseparing, penny-pinching — I’ll call it frugality — approach to disposable packaging almost certainly comes from my parents.
My father experienced the Great Depression as a youth, my mother’s a few years older than he is. The families of both were not having a good time in the 1930s.
Some folks in their position decided that banks couldn’t be trusted. I don’t know how many actually stuffed their mattresses with money, my parents didn’t, but that’s where the stories started.
Even without the Great Depression, my folks probably would have been careful about not wasting food or anything else. But experiencing a decade that encouraged careful living arguably helped them retain their heritage of peasant common sense.
Remembering What Matters
Some results from a Google search: child carrying grocery bag life lesson.
I re-packed the non-ketchup grocery items and headed for home.
We were living on Buford Avenue then. My father was taking classes at the University of Minnesota, which is why we were renting a house in the Twin Cities. It was the last time he tried finishing his PhD. A lot happened that year, which is yet another topic. Topics.
Anyway, I got home and told my mother why I wasn’t bringing the ketchup.
Knowing me, she probably had to stop an overly-detailed and despondent exposition. I’m a very emotional man, and was a very emotional boy.
Among my cherished memories is her assurance that failing to get the ketchup, and wasting what we’d paid for that item in the process, was not a major issue.
It wasn’t “okay”, of course.
We were one bottle of ketchup short, and would remain that way until we could get caught up on that particular inventory item. Which isn’t how she put it, but that’s the gist.
On the other hand, our relationship was still okay.
So was the family.
That was what mattered.
And I’d learned: specifically, about carrying grocery bags; and generally, about paying attention to how materials were likely to respond when being moved.
I was also learning how a family works. I still am, for that matter.
One of the takeaways from the ketchup experience was that we learn by doing. And that we we make mistakes as we learn.
“Anger Born of Worry”
I was chatting about grocery bags, ketchup bottles, and life lessons with my oldest daughter the other day.
If I’d been an old-school sitcom father — well, I wasn’t, so she remembered that I’d been very loud when she and her siblings made mistakes.
[oldest daughter] “…I remember putting some eggs away (don’t remember why they were loose instead of in a carton) and dropped a couple. They broke all over the floor in front of the fridge. I was panic-apologizing as Mom approached.
“Mom took one look at egg splatter and said, ‘YES! I have an excuse to get ride of this carpet!'”
[me] “Your mother is a good and wise woman!!!! – – — and that carpet did have to go!!!!!”
[oldest daughter] “Yeah. My memory of us breaking things often involves a lot of yelling. Though I got the impression that at least half of it was ‘anger born of worry.'” (Discord chat (February 12, 2025))
About the carpet: we bought this house from folks who entertained. Often. Which may explain the fancy touches — including the kitchen’s low pile carpeting, and the ground floor bathroom’s brown plush carpeting. I am not making that up.
About my yelling: was that ‘okay’? No, I don’t think so. Ideally, I’d have been much calmer. But my daughter somehow realized that I was more concerned over what might be happening, than angry at her. The others probably do, too, although I haven’t asked.
These days, every day I thank God that I’m part of this family.
San Francisco’s BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system wasn’t the world’s first automated transit system, or even the first in this country. But it was among the first all-new American rapid transit systems designed in the 20th century.
BART was also, I gather, among the first with trains that didn’t need drivers. Or, rather, didn’t need a human at the controls. An Automatic Train Control (ATC) system ran each train, and the network as a whole.1
Today I’ll be taking a quick look at how news media covered a BART accident that wasn’t particularly serious, and talk about what happened when a train and its driver didn’t communicate — plus whatever else comes to mind.
The “Fremont Flyer” landed in a parking lot. (October 2, 1972)
BART opened on September 11, 1972. Five days later, about 100,000 folks had used the system: and kept riding the trains.
October 2, 1972, 10:15 a.m. or so, a two-car BART train started speeding up as it approached Fremont station and the end of that line.
The (human) driver took over, but the train was still going around 30 miles an hour when it reached the end of the tracks.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that only four folks were hurt, none of them seriously.2
Even so, the accident shouldn’t have happened.
But I didn’t see it as proof that Automatic Train Control systems were a menace to life, liberty, and paid vacations. That’s partly because I remembered what can happen with humans at the controls.
A recurring news item during my salad days involved a slightly injured truck driver and one or more dead families.
That SNAFU got sorted out when shipping company bosses realized that letting their drivers sleep while they weren’t driving saved money.
Another recurring news item was the train operator who kept out of sight until he could pass a drug test. That got sorted out, too: eventually. These days, it’s only discussed in the context of what my country’s self-defined best and brightest feel is important.3
Basically, I didn’t have a problem with trusting a driver that can’t fall asleep at the wheel, or decide that this is a good day to get stoned.
ROBOT TRAIN RUNS AMOK! CHAOS RIDES THE RAILS!
Anyway, back in October of 1972, a two-car BART train overshot its last station, rolled into national headlines, and hung around.
I didn’t keep clippings, and don’t remember the all the details.
But I do remember the message: a computer-operated train had imperiled the lives of hapless passengers — who had been on a computer-operated train — which was run by computers, not regular human drivers the way trains should be run.
Then, as the news was turning our attention to other matters — in the last paragraph of one of the last articles covering the Fremont Flyer — I read a single sentence: stating that a human had been at the controls when the train rolled into a parking lot.
I was impressed: not favorably, but I was impressed. Particularly since news coverage had been focusing on fears of the newfangled technology.
It wasn’t until I started researching this post that I learned why the accident happened.
“…On October 2, failure of a tiny crystal in a train’s on-board control circuitry caused a two-car train to enter the Fremont Station too fast. Failing to stop completely, one of the cars passed through a safety sand barrier at the end of the platform, coming to rest on a soft dirt incline. A few passengers were bruised, but none was seriously injured. Engineers judged recurrence of the accident to be extremely remote; however, circuitry was designed in all control cars (A-cars) to eliminate any possibility of a repeat failure….” (“BART HISTORY” , as written by Justin Roberts of the Contra Costa Times, compiled anonymously (ca. 1972))
Okay: discussing “a tiny crystal” wouldn’t have been as dramatic as presenting the potential perils of a runaway robot train.
But I think journalists can write clear, coherent, and accurate reports of events.
When they haven’t been tasked with inflaming the proletariat, raising consciousness, calling patriots to action, or otherwise snookering their readers.
What I see in “BART HISTORY”, as compiled from articles in the Contra Costa Times, is useful knowledge: not dramatic, but useful.
And, in a way, reassuring.
The odds of that crystal glitch happening again were “extremely remote”. But, even though it might never happen again, the circuits were redesigned: changing the odds from barely nonzero to zero.
Whether that glitch could have been spotted before October 2, 1972: that’s another topic.
The Train That Left Its Human Behind
BART Powell Street Station. (1973)
As I said last month, I liked San Francisco’s public transportation system, and used BART fairly often. That was in 1978 and 1979, when the self-driving trains were still fairly new.
Besides the passengers, each train had a token human up front.
That’s how I saw it, at least.
I was in my late 20s, and saw the driver/operator as essentially window dressing: someone whose job was mainly reassuring the passengers. Or maybe humoring BART’s executives, or the city’s lawyers.
That’s why a news item I saw in July of 1979 struck me as funny. It still does, although now I take the tale of the train that left its human behind a bit more seriously.
“…[BART General Manager Keith] Bernard said that in terms of safety there are cases, where an employee may take an action, or fail to take an action that could have direct catastrophic affect to BART passengers, other employees, or the system at large such as the Concord shop takeover.
“He said a recent example is an incident that occurred on July 20 [1979] in which a train operator left the cab of his train without authorization or proper precautions, to address a problem on the platform. While on the platform the train was automatically dispatched, with passengers, and proceeded to the next station unattended. The operator was given a hearing and immediately suspended for 30 days.
“‘Luckily nothing happened, but such an action on the part of an employee could have had serious consequences and BART’s ability to impose discipline in an expedient manner becomes paramount to effective management,’ Bernard said….” (1979 News Releases, “V-104 BART To Appeal Court Order”; Mike Healy, Public Affairs Director, BART (August 6, 1979)) (emphasis mine)
Good news, nobody got hurt. Except for the driver. Whether or not being suspended for 30 days meant losing a month’s pay, it wouldn’t have looked good on his record.
Which reminds me: that “Concord shop takeover” involved disagreements between folks working in a BART maintenance shop and others who were higher up in the system.
A BART press release called the disagreements “an outrage”, and said that complaining about working conditions revealed “a public-be-damned attitude”.5
Maybe so. But I’ve spent my life in the lower half of the pay scale. Some of my bosses — and associates — were reasonable, considerate, and not clueless. Some weren’t.
I’d need far more information than I’ve got, before I’d try deciding how “outrageous” those workers and/or bosses were.
Daft Kids and Open Doors
Folks in a BART station, a microphone measuring the sounds of trains coming and going. (1981 or earlier)
I’ll let train operator Bob ‘Captain Jack’ Malito and shop superintendent Harold Engle explain what can happen when daft kids or cranky commuters run into a high-tech transit system:
“…What is most disconcerting is when people play with the train. I’ve had people come and act like they’re going to jump in front of my train and they jump up and down and laugh and think it’s really funny. They don’t realize what it does to me. The idea of running over people doesn’t sit well. A lot of people have never had that experience, I have and it doesn’t make you feel very good at all and it ruins the rest of your day. I’d really like people to respect trains because they’re nothing to play with.‘ …” (“BART train operator brings a sense of humor to the afternoon commute” , interview with train operator Bob Malito / ‘Captain Jack’; News Article, BART (May 8, 2017)) (emphasis mine)
“…’…Someone holding a door open, and it’s not malicious though some of the problems are obviously malicious, but a patron trying to get through, going to the airport and having his bag caught in the doors because the door was closing. So they pull it, that might misalign a seal, which all of a sudden then makes the ‘no doors closed’ indication so the operator can’t move the train without having all the doors closed.…’ ….” (“The details on doors: How forcing your way into a BART car can harm service for thousands” , interview with shop superintendent Harold Engle; News Article, BART (September 28, 2017)) (emphasis mine)
So there you have it: folks riding BART depend on the trains, the drivers, the folks in maintenance, and others, to get them where they’re going. And they depend on their fellow-passengers to not mess with the system.
Now, finally: the story of a train and its human.
WAIT FOR ME!
Watching the doors in BART’s 24th Street Mission Station. (ca. 1978)
I want it clearly understood that I don’t blame the train.
BART trains assumed that their human drivers were in the cab, unless their human told the train otherwise.
I sympathize with the driver, too, and I’m getting ahead of the story.
It was just another day on the job.
The train had pulled into a station, opened its doors to let folks on or off, and would have closed its doors. If some kids hadn’t decided that blocking doorways was fun.
BART trains run on strict schedules.
I gather that these schedules allow for short delays at any given station. But keeping folks waiting while a few kids play with the doors isn’t a good idea.
So the train’s human left the cab and got on the station platform. He talked with the kids, who let the doors close.
Just one problem. The driver hadn’t told the train that he was leaving the cab.
So, as soon as the train noticed that the doorways were clear, it shut its doors.
And rolled off to its next stop.
Leaving its human: who was running down the platform after it.
My guess is that most of the train’s passengers didn’t know that their human driver had left the train. And maybe still don’t, unless they happened to read about it in the paper.
Seriously?
Since I like technology, particularly new tech, the new consumer robots don’t terrify me.
And since I’ve worked with information technology for decades, I sincerely do not fear a Coming Robot Apocalypse.
On the other hand, someone could weave a yarn about the rise of the Roombas.
Or the insidious threat of LOOI Robots.
And how Eilik robots are even now conspiring with one another when we’re away from our desks.
I could also, more reasonably, think that someone might get overly-attached to a desktop robot, a steam iron, or a doorstop.
Scrambling our priorities, putting something other than love of God and neighbor in top place, is a bad idea and we shouldn’t do it. It’s also profoundly not a new problem. (Catechism of the Catholic church, 1849) And that’s another topic.
A moral of “The Train That Left Its Human Behind”, if it has one, is that paying attention to what we’re doing matters. That includes paying attention to details that may not feel important. Like telling the train when you won’t be in the cab.
Ideally, the train could have noticed that its human wasn’t in place.
But give the BART system a break: this was 1979, and artificial intelligence was still far more artificial than intelligent.
About the train operator being a “token human”: decades later, I don’t think that’s the way it was, or is.
Humans: A Brief Meditation on Kids, Commuters, and Molten Ice Cream
Meet Eilik, Energize Lab’s desktop robot: complete with personality!
Computers, robots, AI, whatever, are good at some things. Like running a train exactly on schedule.
But I think humans are, and will remain, better at handling situations that aren’t quite so cut and dried. Like dealing with daft kids, cranky commuters, or restaurant owners who find molten goo where a ton of ice cream had been.
The Saga of the Soggy Store is a customer service call I took while in San Francisco: and yet another story, for another day.
How I see kids, computers, crosswords; and why I don’t think we’re doomed:
Citrus fruit crate labels: California dreaming and oranges, early to mid-20th century.
Number-three daughter asked me to see if I could get a pomegranate. This was a week or so back, in mid-January.
There weren’t any in the produce section. Or, rather, I didn’t see any. So I asked when, or if, they’d be there.
Turns out that I’ll have to wait for the right season: early winter.
I wasn’t surprised.
I’m impressed that we can get any out-of season fruit. And that so much of what’s in the produce section won’t grow here in the Upper Midwest. Being as old as I am, with a pretty good memory, helps.
The pomegranates that weren’t there brought to mind a cluster of memories involving a wooden crate, sincerely awful oranges, and a posthumous sense of gratitude.
Out of Season Oranges, Remembered
Somewhere during my preteens, my father got a crate of oranges. How or where he got it, I didn’t know then, and still don’t.
We were in the basement of 818, in the unfinished part near the furnace, probably during winter. The crate was, as I recall, on a table; or maybe on a storage chest.
At any rate, it was a wooden crate: a bit like the one in that “California Giant Brand Lettuce” crate label. Only wider, nowhere near as finished-looking — and, of course, it held oranges: not lettuce.
I think the ends were solid wood, without a label, but with lettering stamped on them. But I’m not sure about that. It’s been a long time. This would have been in the 1950s.
The crate’s slats — this I do remember — were intact, but splintery. And the crate held a good number of oranges.
My father was excited about opening the crate and giving me an orange. I shared his excitement, until I tried eating it.
I knew what oranges tasted like, and recognized a faint echo of that taste. But mostly, I was aware that I had a mouthful of something fibrous, tough, and — being tasteless would have been an improvement.
I have acquired a degree of thoughtfulness and reserve over the intervening decades. But I was a preteen then, and told my father exactly what it tasted like.
It wasn’t until much later that my father mentioned bits and pieces of his childhood memories related to oranges. Long after that, I put the pieces together.
I think I know what my father had in mind when he got that crate of oranges.
A Cherished Memory and a Belated ‘Thank You’
Oranges and Truth (Brand), Ramona and a black roadster. Citrus fruit crate labels.
His father had, when possible, gotten a crate of out-of-season oranges for his family. It was a high point of their year.
How a blue-collar Irishman in northern Illinois during the Roaring Twenties (or thereabouts) managed it, I don’t know.
But my father’s not unlike his father, and I inherited at least part of my father’s knack for getting things done. Or, rather, mentally gnawing at a process until I made it happen.
Whatever it is that puts us off the 50th percentile, it’s almost certainly genetic, and that’s another topic.1
The point is that getting a crate of off-season oranges was a bright spot in my father’s family memories: one that he wanted to share with me, both as one of his memories, and as part of my experience.
I had responded with an accurate, but unappreciative, description of the crate’s contents.
That was the first and the last crate of oranges he got.
Decades passed before I put the pieces together, and realized what he had intended.
So I’m saying now what I should have said then.
Thank you, Dad. I really appreciate those oranges. Thank you very much.
More Memories
There’s a cryptic reference up there: “…in the basement of 818”. It’s the house I grew up in, one of them.
I mentioned it in the November 23, 2024 post, under ‘Getting Started: Cats, Homes, and an Incendiary Stove’. You’ll see it in the usual link list, below.
I started sharing ‘family stories’ last November, and don’t see running out of them any time soon.
One, involving something I don’t remember, will wait until the days are longer and I’m feeling a lot more chipper.
I touched on it in the December 28, 2024, post, under ‘Desolation, Dissatisfaction, Depression, and a Prayer’. Anyway, I’ve talked about my father before.
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
I live in Minnesota, in America's Central Time Zone. This blog is on UTC/Greenwich time.
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Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
![News photo from BARTchivees on Weebly.com: 'Fremont Flyer (10/2/1972) / ... [a train] overshot Fremont station and plowed into the parking lot, injuring four passengers and the train attendant. Fortunately, Washington Hospital is next door to Fremont station so the response was timely....](https://i0.wp.com/brendans-island.com/blogsource/20241028ff/20250204-fremont-flyer-orig_orig-658.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
