Not my best day—and a bit of history

Go cook dinner, Juju! The sum total of my accomplishments today: I made pickles and emptied the garbage. That shouldn’t take me all day and it didn’t, but the rest of the day was wasted mostly with computer woes. 

McAfee, the security company, notified me this morning, that the email address I use for business and the one I generally give to people, was found on the Dark Web. Now I wasn’t sure what that is, but it sounded ominous, worse than all that Dark Money trump used to whine about. I was never sure if dark money came from good guys or bad—come to find out it comes from non-profit organizations, which are not required to list their donors. The Dark Web, I found out, is the unregulated area of the web—no sponsors, no rules, nobody in charge. And no surprise, it is usually associated with illegal activities.

The notice suggested that I change my password on accounts where that email address was the username—and I did that. Changing passwords has long been my nemesis—the university makes me change every six months, and it’s always an ordeal. My password is too long, too short, too weak; the new password and the confirmation don’t match; I am holding my mouth wrong and thinking evil thoughts. It always takes me several tries. So this morning that process was repeated too many times. With some big sites, finding out how and where to make the change is a challenge in itself. Most offer a solution if you forgot your password but not if you just want to change it. Along the way I got at least two people who spoke English with an accent which made it hard for my old ears. No kidding—the morning was almost gone by the time I got this done. And of course, there’s the problem of thinking up new “strong” passwords. Sophie’s name just won’t do.

A second problem popped up last night when I was doing some Amazon work on my book titles. One of my Kelly O’Connell mysteries, Desperate for Death, doesn’t show me as author but cites the woman who edited it along with Calliope Designs, which I’m not sure I ever heard of. So I had to figure out how to email Ingram—they have not yet responded. 

I did have a nostalgic moment today, but even that wasn’t pleasant, though it’s a bit of history. My friend Katie Sherrod posted something about “sundown” towns, and my mind went plummeting back to the Sixties when I was in graduate school at Truman State University in northeast Missouri. The next town over, where I often went to catch the Santa Fe (pre-Amtrak days) for Chicago, was a sundown town. I never actually saw the sign, but I heard about it: “The sun never sets on a n****r in LaPlata.” In other words, Black citizens were welcome to come for day work, but they better leave by sundown. Then this morning, reading a bookish online newsletter, I came across the obituary for historian and author James Loewen who, as the piece said, did not teach American history sedately but charged through it, destroying myths left and right. His best-known book? Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong. 

One of the particular objects of his wrath was ongoing racism in this country, and he zeroed in on sundown towns, writing a book titled Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. In one of his final messages to his followers, Loewen wrote, "I hope ALL of you will use my new website at justice.tougaloo.edu to cause social and intellectual change. With your help, we can all use the energy freed by BLM and George Floyd's death to create a new America in which accurate history prompts positive social change in the present, and such efforts lead to a nation willing to face its past with both eyes open wide." I wish I had known Mr. Loewen. I guess I wish Governor Abbott had too. 

Time to cook supper. With my track record today, I’m almost afraid. Don’t even ask what can go wrong!