“It has been a strange week here in Lake Wobegon.”

This is how Garrison Keillor began his long-running humorous show, A Prairie Home Companion on Public Radio about the goings on in this fictional rural Minnesota town, “where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

There were always funny mishap stories about everything going wrong at the worst possible moment. And everything always did work out well in the end because those strong, good-looking, above average Minnesotans controlled their reactions to events and were resilient.

I thought seriously about not writing a post this week. Yesterday I successfully avoided it by deleting thousands of old emails from my Outlook inbox and sent mail folders.

There have been some minor mishaps around here recently, the top dishwasher basket came loose breaking five glasses and a cup. It’s been loose for a while, something “I’ve been meaning to look at.” I bent the tabs holding it in place, which seemed to work. Then we called a repair man who said, “Oh you shouldn’t have done that; you need to replace the basket or the track or the whole assembly.” He made calls, but still hasn’t come up with the parts for the ten year old appliance, but offered to comeback with heat-resistant zip ties.

We’ve had a go-round with the water-heater, tripping the breaker, then running out of hot water in the middle of my long morning shower.

“My shower takes six minutes. How long do you take in there? “

“I dunno. But we never used to run out of hot water.” I called the plumber. He came out and said,  “Looks fine to me.” It tripped again. We called the plumber and he said “Call an electrician,”  who came out and said, “Looks fine to me.”

We called the plumber again who sent an older guy, who listened to our story and hypothesis that it “might be something inside the water heater,” which is two years old and under a six year warranty. He poked around, and said “This water heater has two elements and you have hard water, probably calcium build-up on one element that has created an arc and blown out an element.” We turned out to be right, “something inside the water heater,” which the plumber confirmed making us feel like superior beings, until we learned the grand and a half price, of course, not covered by the warranty. “That’s for the tank; electronics are just one year.”

Then we got a virus, which kept us from our granddaughter’s debut in Select Chorus. My daughter has a very important conference and her husband is in London so we agreed to help with the kids. Virus in the way again. Then my son-in-law flew home needing emergency eye surgery. All of this on top of some family medical issues, my sister-in-law in rehab after a hospital stay.  We think everyone is OK and will be fine.

I just heard Billie yell an expletive, not her usual style.

“What?”

“My closet lightbulb just blew out. Never mind I’ll just use the flashlight on my phone.”

Funny, how under stress, the small annoyances take on the same gravity as the bigger issues.

Last week’s post, “Lost Knowledge,” drew a lot of comments from people confirming that new technology drives out old capability, and supporting my worries about what’s coming with AI.

Then, I read a Substack post by Andee Scarantino about how AI feels like it is deadening the joy of life, filing down sharp edges.

Then I read a Matt Schumer post about AI, “Something Big Is Happening,” which likens this period with AI to January 2020 with Covid, right before everything changed, and predicts that fifty percent of entry level office jobs will be gone in two to five years.

Schumer suggests some great strategies for now, become and early AI adopter, and for the medium to long term, nurture resilience and adaptability.

Then there are wars, hantavirus, famine, and politics….

So I figured before I crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head, I’d change the light bulb, and share this koan:

Shit happens. Don’t track it in the house.

Focus on what’s important, and act on what’s within your control. The resilient survive.