Donald Gave Me A Digital Camera

Donald came over Thursday afternoon bringing me a Nikon Coolpix 4300 Digital Camera — but don’t expect to see pictures on this blog anytime soon.

It has dials.

It has icons.

It has buttons.

It has advanced features — Lot’s of ‘em.

And Donald actually handed this delicate instrument to a man who has yet to learn how to operate a Scotch Tape Dispenser without getting gummy!

But not to worry; the camera comes with an instruction manual.

One of the projects Donald is working on is a software program that converts the English of the King James Bible into modern speech. Thus “thee” and “thous” become “youse guys” or whatever. Donald says he’s doing this because 17^th Century English is so hard to read… yet he expects me to understand a camera manual which contains sentences like:

“Manual and auto focus-area selection can be used in combination with spot AFarea metering to meter exposure only in selected focus area”.

Give me Ezekiel any day.

One instruction in the book I do understand – but I wonder why it is needed???

“When operating the mode dial and the zoom button with your eye to the viewfinder, care should be taken not to put your finger in your eye accidentally”!

I’m not kidding.

It actually says that.

However, I plan to master this contraption and produce beautiful photos someday soon. Watch this spot.

Donald’s friend, the graphic artist, came over with him to bring this lavish camera to me. She tells me that she earns $50 an hour for her graphic designs. I am so out of touch with the times. The most I ever earned in my life was in a job that only paid $10 an hour (No, that’s not true. A law firm paid me $150 an hour to testify as an expert witness for six hours in court once. But my highest normal earnings were $10 per hour).

In other news, the mayor on tv said we can expect broken tree limbs on the wires to cause power outages as Hurricane Ophelia approaches Jacksonville. I’m trying to do as much computer work as I can before the electricity goes off. Looks like, after this happening year after year, the electric company would figure out how to bury the wires underground like they do in real cities.

But hurricanes are not the only disasters. I learned second-hand today that our youngest daughter lost her job and had to drop out of college recently. She has struggled so hard and, although this is a major set back for her, I believe she will land on her feet. Her sister is driving downstate to help her this afternoon.

With all the hurricane news compelling our attention, it’s easy to forget that normal, everyday calamities go on all around us. Marriages break up. Cars break down. Hearts attack. Cancer creeps. Lives crumble.

And no helicopter drops in for the rescue.

So, we can’t all rush off to New Orleans and pluck some poor soul off a roof, but we can look for folks trapped in everyday, normal pain. Today, lets look around us for someone who is hurting and do some little something to make life easier for them.

And, Donald, thank you for this nice camera. I appreciate your gift and I’ll try not to poke my eye out with it.