By Line search: By RICHARD MCCARTHY
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
Recently I had an appointment with my primary care provider, and after checking in with the receptionist, I looked to find a seat in the waiting room.One of the only seats available was perpendicular to a young woman with a child about 5 or 6 months...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
In 2023, working with Mathew Berube, head of Information Services at the Jones Library in Amherst, several of my old columns were fed into ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot. AI produced a lengthy analysis of my writing. Then I wrote a new column, which we did not show AI, and Mathew asked AI to write on the same subject as the new column, in my writing style.
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
I was biking in the countryside of Montague one summer day (remember those?), and I pedaled past a house with a substantial side yard furnished only with a small table and two simple chairs. Later, when I was home, I watched the sunset from my back porch, and found myself envisioning two people sitting at that side yard table in the twilight.
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
When I was about 20 years old, I read A.E. Hotchner’s personal memoir of the writer Ernest Hemingway, “Papa Hemingway.” For readers who do not know, the end of Hemingway’s life came when, at the age of 61, he put a loaded gun to his head and pulled...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
Last year I challenged Artificial Intelligence to produce a column in my style of writing, and the results were published in this newspaper. This year I repeated the experiment to see what advances AI had made.Working with Matthew Berube, head of...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
Sometimes life teaches you things you never wanted to know.As I alluded to in a previous column, I broke my femur, or thigh bone, this past March 25th, when I went down on a patch of ice while bicycling. For those of you who do not know, the femur is...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
When I was a teenager, among the last things in the world I thought would render me uncool and out-of-it when I got older was technology. In fact, I don’t remember ever using, or even coming across the word “technology,” except my knowing MIT stood...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
When I was 18 years old, I hitchhiked alone from western Massachusetts to St. Petersburg, Florida and back. Hitchhiking was fairly common among young people then, although not typically for such a long distance. I had some trials along the way, not...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
About a mile from where I live, there is a convenience store and a doughnut shop. For a period of a few years, a woman of perhaps 60 years of age could be found standing outside one of these establishments on most days. She would be shuffling her...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
I suspect a fair number of readers are aware who Timothy Leary was, and more still have heard his name as part of the lexicon of popular culture. For those who do not know, he was one of the more famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective)...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
Recently, I was at an airport and waiting for the same plane was a group of what looked to be about 12-to-14-year-old boys, all wearing the same black sweatsuits, with the same logo on the front of the sweatshirt. You could feel the electricity...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
I spent a few years of my life writing one-act plays in the wee hours of the morning before I went off to my job. Three of those plays were produced at small theaters in New York City (off-off-Broadway), as part of a bill of one-act plays by different...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
I came up with the idea of having ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence-based tool, write a column in my writing style. Not knowing much about AI at that time, I enlisted the help of Matthew Berube, Head of Information Services Reference, Online...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
A friend of mine had a terminal illness, and I went to visit him at a medical facility. Perhaps that is a dark sentence to begin a story, not brimming with enticement, but it’s a real one.On the way over to see him I felt like you do when life serves...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
Once when I was walking on a main drag in Toronto, I turned to the woman I was with and said, “The guys here dress differently than I do.” Without missing a beat, she said, “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. You’re equally out of fashion...
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
This past fall, I was bicycling in Hadley and I came up on a dead squirrel in the road. I got off my bike and used the instep of my foot to move the remains to the edge of a field on the side of the road. Two other cyclists approached me as I was...
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