The computer arrived at my desk late in life.

At first, I simply used it as another typewriter and gradually discovered how good it was at fixing typos and editing my thoughts.

When I retired, my new wife insisted we buy a very expensive Apple and we have been wedded to Apples ever since.

For 20 years after retiring as a writing teacher I didn’t write a word . One sleepless night after I had reached 80 I composed an essay in my head and got up and wrote it verbatim on my Apple and I have been writing every day ever since.

I started by writing about my personal experiences in retirement: things like where to move and where to dwell and learning to cook and garden, the need to make new friends, etc. Later I moved to philosophical thoughts about space and time and color and shape and the miracle of language. Then I took up political and environmental issues and history. I studied poetic forms and wrote a sonnet and a bunch of haikus and endless observations of nature outside my back door.

Then came the hard part. What can I do with all this stuff? In the old days I would have bought a big roll of stamps and shipped it out to magazines, book publishers and literary agents and waited for a nibble. But nobody wants hard copy anymore. If they want it at all they want it sent from my computer to their computer.

A 20th century man with virtually no mechanical skill enters the world of cut and paste and the myriad wonders of what my computer can do. It is a great struggle for me to learn how to use this machine and I have only tapped the surface of its capabilities.

I am in awe of the hardware on my desk. If I never publish a word, I will have discovered a miracle of the new century.

Which may explain my recent writing. All the thoughts from 85 years of learning and experience are rushing to get out before I have to leave.