Mark Twain's house
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by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

I opened up my medical office in West Hartford, Connecticut, in a house my father owned on Farmington Avenue, "the main drag" going west out of Hartford, which is the way you want to go. The avenue, near in, runs past Mark Twain's and Harriet Beecher Stowe's houses, all the way, as advertised, to the once bucolic farmland, now suburb, of Farmington. On the way, in what was once Hartford's pastoral western expanse, it skirts the slope of the hill whereon once sat the Vanderbilt estate. What was once my father's (and then my) two-family, neo-Victorian house still sits on the western slope of that hill (offering a million-dollar view from its third floor, which once, and for many years, served as my apartment).

The floors on the first storey, which was to be my office, were oak (as they were throughout the house). My father had a couple of French-Canadians refinish them. I remember, still with great admiration, watching the effortless mastery and speed with which they worked. They poured the finish right from the bucket, making a puddle on the bare wood floor of what had been the living room. Then, in less than one minute, with a long squeegee at the end of a long pole, they perfectly spread that puddle of varnish (just as much as was needed) across the whole floor, keeping just enough of a bead along the walls.

Recently, I related this story to a handyman who told me that pouring out the finish in one place on the floor darkens that place. I didn't argue with him, but, obviously, he didn't have the expertise of those French-Canadians.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's house (next door to Mark's)
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Home-improvement videos always show the best-case scenario: all the right tools, all the cuts perfect. Lulled into false confidence, the home-owners watching those videos think, "Hell, I could do that!"

I just returned from a month in New Orleans, where my daughter drafts me into her home improvement projects. Actually, this visit, it was I who suggested that I insulate the attic, a cramped, hot, dark space almost without footing, or space to hold the fiberglass batts I had to cut and maneuver into place. Not my first rodeo, I knew what I was getting into. Still, it was something out of Dante. I never sweat so much in my life. But, unless it is keeping them fed, there is nothing more primal than keeping the kids warm (and, in New Orleans, cool).

Bayou, New Orleans
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The thing about home improvement is that you only get the hang of it after you hang the first half-dozen venetian blinds (as I did on a previous visit with my daughter). By the time that you really know what you are doing, you've already finished the job.

That might be a metaphor for life, at least mine.

My recent restructuring of my workload, and that of my overtaxed assistant, includes using ChatGPT to automate the routine coding that is behind what you see on these pages. Also changed is the way I handle the many photos that Lokkal publishes. Now, instead of handling each image separately while building each page, I gather all those images together and perform the same routine cropping processes on all of them, and then build (or let ChatGPT build) the pages. The repetition, staying focused on one task, makes the job easier, mechanically and psychologically.

Now, if you ask (as does my inner critic), "Where have you been? Henry Ford invented the assembly line 100 years ago, what took you so long to apply the principles of mass production to your publishing?" I have a response.

Ford's assembly line
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The Skeptics, rejecting Plato's innovations, went back to Socrates, ultimately asserting that, really, nothing could be known. Life is like an infinite set of Russian Dolls. Each revelation leads to another experience that must itself be opened and understood.

My inner life has opened and been understood to the point that now I can better take advantage of simpler ways of doing things in my outer life.

Now, let's consider the social implications. Imagine with me all the musicians, business owners, professionals, et al. in San Miguel who are, each one, recreating the wheel every week, trying to publicize whatever it is they have to offer.

Now, imagine (as with me and the bulk processing of my images) that all these publicity-seekers got together and made one publicity platform. With that collective effort, soon the public would know that their platform was the place to go look for all things local. It would be like the Yellow Pages and the local weekly newspaper rolled into one.

Imagine further, that they all paid someone (more than I'm paying my overworked assistant) to handle all that information, arranging it attractively and intuitively on an online platform. Imagine Lokkal.

I'm all for hand-crafted, but when it comes to routine tasks: autos, images, local information, an assembly line saves a lot of time and effort.

What do musicians, business-owners and professionals know about publicity? They are like homeowners trying to accomplish their own plumbing repairs. Drip, drip, drip...

(Don't get me started on publicity "handymen." Many of these "experts" don't know how to spread the varnish. They don't even know to put the day, as well as the date, on the poster announcing the event.)

Most everyone is living in a Sunshine Superman world—"Everybody's hustling just to have a little scene," while I'm advocating a Three Musketeers' solution—"All for one, and one for all."

The best way of preserving what we love about San Miguel (building community and strengthening the local economy) is to create our own digital town square, the People's Internet. To stop Big Tech from extracting our money.

Join (using the top-right Start button) and contribute content (make a page and upload content to it). Click here or use the golden Donate button below to contribute financially to Lokkal, SMA's community meta-platform.

Local press is the sine qua non of a healthy community. It's an information economy; let's take control of ours.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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