couldn’t be tempted …
he’s into computer stuff
like all good young men

Adapted from the paragraph: His son couldn’t be tempted to take up the family business – “he’s into computer stuff, like all good young men are” – and so Friday also marked the end of the Harper legacy inside the Sydney Opera House.

In the article, For 50 years, Sydney Opera House has had one man on speed dial by Tiffanie Turnbull for the BBC News, Sydney.

In the midst of the headlines today, ICE Raids, Heat Domes, Iron Domes and Bombings, my brain was attracted by the headline on the BBC News Website that stated, For 50 years, Sydney Opera House has had one man on speed dial along with the tease, Terry Harper has been tuning pianos in the iconic venue since he was a teen – a family legacy started by his dad.

My first thought was of that college age REO record album, You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can’t Tuna Fish.

My 2nd thought was about the Sydney Opera House as I had just been rereading Bill Bryon’s 2000 book, In a Sunburned Country about Australia.

Anyway, I thought the story worth the click and the few minutes of my time it would take to read.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story of the a singular man in the right place at the right time and happy to be the peg that filled that particular hole of tuning the pianos in the Opera House in Sydney, Australia.

Sometimes when the Man and the Hour meet, the meeting is about tuning pianos.

For myself, it sounded like THE job.

There is a word sinecure that is defined as a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit.

As I understand it, this usually meant political jobs assigned by political leaders or Kings as rewards to faithful servants.

The point is, that once I read about such jobs, sinecure or without cure, in the Latin, or as I defined it, without care, or without A care, it was the job I wanted.

I wanted to show up, do my time, leave and shut the door on the rest of the world when I got home.

As I got older and learned about the working world, I realized that sinecure’s rarely opened up and the list of applicants was vast.

I examined my skills, my likes, my dislikes and I searched out what for me would be the next best thing and decided I wanted to be a history teacher.

A United States History teacher.

This led to a course of study and a college degree and entering the job field at a time when history teachers weren’t much in demand.

So I took what I get which was two part time jobs working for both the Grand Rapids Public Library and the Kent Country Library systems at the same time.

At that moment, both Library systems had joined together to create their first online cataloging and registration system for managing the books in the library as well all the patron accounts for check out and check in and reservations.

While the two systems shared the computers, they maintained different access accounts and user policies.

And I had logins to both GRPL and KDL access.

Often, standing at the Reference Desk at the GRPL, I would hear a patron ask another staffer if they could check for a book at a KDL Library and put it on hold.

I would hear the staffer reply, “I can’t … but he can.”

And point at me.

I would smile (very smugly), access a terminal, login with my KDL credentials and put the book on hold.

While the goal was still to teach history, that logging into another account was the thin end of the wedge and another job field started to creep into my life through my fingertips.

I got to goofying around on the computer in my spare time at the reference desk.

Understand personal computers were just coming out and internet access, as it was then understood, was impossibly limited, and I had access to a multi million dollar system to … goof off.

Someone told me I could access the library at the University of Michigan through the GRPL terminal so I had to do it.

Then I figured out how I could access almost any library in the world.

This was the INTERNET.

The network of computers and cables and hardware that inter connected all the computers in the world.

This had been around since the dawn of computers pretty much.

In the early 90’s, the World Wide Web of INFORMATION that lived on the Internet was created and using my newly learned skill to access libraries, I could access the WWW.

Very limited at the time, and nothing but text, the WWW took up more and more of my time working at the library.

Almost overnight, I had a new job skill, a new line on my resume and a new job.

I was a webmaster.

And I was in demand, making more money than I could in the Libraries or as a teacher.

And I landed in online news and teaching history became a might-have-been in a long line of might-have-beens in my life.

I exchanged the hoped for life of academia for the world of news with its demand for immediacy in the online world of total adaptability.

Changes demanding change.

A million miles away from the world of the sinecure.

Today, I read with a shaking head that line, he’s into computer stuff, like all good young men are.

Was it fate?

Who was I to think I was good young man, but was it all a predetermined course of events, unavoidable and influenced by a higher power or a force beyond my control?

I think back.

Had I seen it coming, would I have made the same decisions?

Well, to be honest …

What a long strange trip it’s been.

And it led to being the ‘webmaster’ for a small resort on a resort island on the Atlantic Coast of South Carolina.

Been doing web stuff since 1995, I can make a website stand up and sing the Star Spangled Banner if I have too.

I am a dinosaur but one with skills that cannot be taught in any other way than by doing this for 30 years.

And I keep busy.

When I started this job, I promised the owner I would figure out a way to get the smell of the salt air and the feel of your toes in the sand into an online experience.

I work in an office 5 blocks from the coast and I spend my lunch hour walking the beach.

Not goofing off, mind you.

It’s research.

It just looks like I haven’t a care in the world.

More Thurber Drawings – click here