I did the math. I will be one hundred years old in 2062. Okay, so it wasn't a really difficult equation and required no regrouping or scratch paper. But as an added bonus I should like to point out that this birthday will occur forty-two years from now. I know. That wasn't terrifically challenging either, but the gift of this nice round number 2020 allows a good deal of easy reflection.
I bring this up because it was on my forty-fifth birthday that I moaned to my wife, who was asking me a polite "how you doin'?" with "I'm halfway to ninety."
That was thirteen years ago. At that time, I had a ten year old son. Not even out of elementary school. Now I am the proud owner of one college graduate. Road tested and time honored. My own father died when he was sixty-one. I plan on hanging around substantially longer than that, since I want to live at least thirty-nine years longer than my old man.
See what I did there? It's like a puzzle, and all the pieces add up. Like I was thirty-three years old when dad passed. At the time, I really couldn't imagine what the next twenty-five years might hold. Like the way that I found my way into a career in teaching. It was dad's life insurance that put a big bump in our finances allowing us to buy the house into which my son was born. Twenty-three years ago. It pains me to think about all the things I might have shared with my father, not the least of which is his namesake, his grandson. He would have been eighty-six, taking in all the hoopla, and probably getting all misty at the thought of how time flies.
It doesn't really. Fly, that is. It's just that we go for long periods of time without noticing the steady churning of the days and weeks until years pass by. Which is precisely why I have decided to go ahead and just plan on sticking around until I see a century. George Burns famously made a date with his agent to have him scheduled to play Caesar's Palace on his hundredth birthday. "I can't die," he would insist, "I'm booked."
I want to be around to see my son's wedding. To see his children go about their paces. I want to attend their commencements and promotions. I want to see how things turn out. I do not think this is too much to ask. For now it's another year in the can, and I'm headed in the right direction. In two more years, I'll be sixty. But I guess you might have already put that one together.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Stereophonic Sound
I expect that I spent around ten hours installing the new stereo in my mother-in-law's car. I say this not because it took and extraordinarily long time, or that I was extremely efficient with my time. I don't expect either one is the truth. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The fact that I spent chunks of those hours in front of a computer screen asking for help from YouTube, and Googling wires and connections and support form various sources.
I didn't do it like in the olden days. Way back when, I would take the wires in the box and connect them to other wires that I was pretty sure would give me the result I was after. I had heard stories of diagrams that would produce understanding that might lead to and expeditious installation, but I had also heard that only wussies used wiring diagrams. After all, how hard could it be?
Plus is positive. Minus is negative. I was even pretty hip to the ideal that a straight copper wire would be the positive and zinc was the negative. That and a pair of wire cutters would keep me busy for at least a few hours. Getting that tape deck to sit just so in the cavity where there had once been nothing but an AM radio was an exercise in patience more than it was electrical engineering. When I put three-way speakers in the back of my Volkswagen bug, I used cardboard boxes filled with rags to hold them up to the deck behind the passenger seat. Not exactly elegant, but loud. Real loud.
Because that's what it took, way back then, to get me to hang upside down on the floor of my car, looking for the fuse that wouldn't blow if I ran an equalizer out of it. I would like to say that all that additional equipment and attention made me some sort of authority on sound systems, but mostly it just meant I managed to stuff more noise into the small cars I owned.
And then there was the Vega incident. The one where I purchased speakers that were far too large for the polite holes put there by the Chevrolet designers. No matter. I had a couple of friends who were more than happy to climb into the back seat with a jigsaw with a metal blade and when that tapped out, a pair of tin snips that my buddy the wrestler hacked and gashed until those Jensen Triaxials fit just fine.
More or less.
Because in my youth car stereo was a transitory state. There was always something to switch out or update. There was always one more thing that would make interior of my vehicle the place to be. Or so I believed. Eventually, I started to accept the stereos that came installed in the vehicles I bought. I was the market for those cassette adapters for external CD players. Why couldn't my mobile sound compete with that inside my home?
Fast forward to this weeks challenge. I learned about wiring harnesses and fuse taps. I surrendered to calling my son for more help than I care to admit, but he talked me through it. When it was all over, I had the faintest urge to try doing something similar to our family car.
That passed.
For now.
I didn't do it like in the olden days. Way back when, I would take the wires in the box and connect them to other wires that I was pretty sure would give me the result I was after. I had heard stories of diagrams that would produce understanding that might lead to and expeditious installation, but I had also heard that only wussies used wiring diagrams. After all, how hard could it be?
Plus is positive. Minus is negative. I was even pretty hip to the ideal that a straight copper wire would be the positive and zinc was the negative. That and a pair of wire cutters would keep me busy for at least a few hours. Getting that tape deck to sit just so in the cavity where there had once been nothing but an AM radio was an exercise in patience more than it was electrical engineering. When I put three-way speakers in the back of my Volkswagen bug, I used cardboard boxes filled with rags to hold them up to the deck behind the passenger seat. Not exactly elegant, but loud. Real loud.
Because that's what it took, way back then, to get me to hang upside down on the floor of my car, looking for the fuse that wouldn't blow if I ran an equalizer out of it. I would like to say that all that additional equipment and attention made me some sort of authority on sound systems, but mostly it just meant I managed to stuff more noise into the small cars I owned.
And then there was the Vega incident. The one where I purchased speakers that were far too large for the polite holes put there by the Chevrolet designers. No matter. I had a couple of friends who were more than happy to climb into the back seat with a jigsaw with a metal blade and when that tapped out, a pair of tin snips that my buddy the wrestler hacked and gashed until those Jensen Triaxials fit just fine.
More or less.
Because in my youth car stereo was a transitory state. There was always something to switch out or update. There was always one more thing that would make interior of my vehicle the place to be. Or so I believed. Eventually, I started to accept the stereos that came installed in the vehicles I bought. I was the market for those cassette adapters for external CD players. Why couldn't my mobile sound compete with that inside my home?
Fast forward to this weeks challenge. I learned about wiring harnesses and fuse taps. I surrendered to calling my son for more help than I care to admit, but he talked me through it. When it was all over, I had the faintest urge to try doing something similar to our family car.
That passed.
For now.
Friday, June 19, 2020
It's Only A Model
I watched a documentary last week about flat-earthers. The title, cleverly, was Behind The Curve. The focus of the film is flat earth celebrity Mark Sargent. Mark is the host of a YouTube channel devoted to Flat Earth Clues. Each revelation of the vast conspiracies that drive this whole "the world is a ball flying through space" is a charge for him to move forward in spite of all the so-called "scientists" who might try and convince him of their absurd notions. Mark is, at first glance, one of those nuts that think the earth is flat and the moon landing was faked. But his enthusiasm is engaging, and it's a fun ride to watch him take on NASA and the powers that be. The conviction with which he speaks about the giant wall of ice that encircles the flat disc we are shown in models he happily displays is disarming.
I confess that prior to watching this documentary, I had little patience for this kind of wobbly conspiracy theorists. I'm a big fan of science, and NASA, and how these schools of thought have come together over decades, centuries, history. Skeptics that want to poke at things like gravity tend to wear on me. I understand that it involves math, and that the fact that Mark lives with his mother doesn't do much to dissipate the stereotype of this type of individual. Then I moved on to the acceptance of Mark and his flat earth friends. Who are they hurting, really?
That's when the psychologist shows up and tries to explain how folks might have fallen into this particular hole, and though their beliefs may be theirs and private by their nature it is possible that it begins to link up with other more dangerous ideas like denying climate change. And just when I was ready to push them all back into a that neatly designed corral for which I have designated such people, along comes another scientist. Physicist Lamar Glover encourages us all not to shun flat earthers and other minds that have taken different paths. They should be listened to and encouraged to question, which is the very basis of science. "When we leave people behind, we leave bright minds to mutate and stagnate. These folks are potential scientists going completely wrong." Finding ways to bring that excitement and enthusiasm back from the fringe could benefit everyone in the long run. It also forces us who carry around duffel bags of dogma to connect with and reaffirm our own beliefs. Turns out we have a big enough world, no matter what the shape, for everyone to question and learn. It might take some more convincing, but wouldn't that be worth it?
Now please feel free to apply this to any and all conversations you have with people you had recently decided were confused and close-minded.
It's only a model.
I confess that prior to watching this documentary, I had little patience for this kind of wobbly conspiracy theorists. I'm a big fan of science, and NASA, and how these schools of thought have come together over decades, centuries, history. Skeptics that want to poke at things like gravity tend to wear on me. I understand that it involves math, and that the fact that Mark lives with his mother doesn't do much to dissipate the stereotype of this type of individual. Then I moved on to the acceptance of Mark and his flat earth friends. Who are they hurting, really?
That's when the psychologist shows up and tries to explain how folks might have fallen into this particular hole, and though their beliefs may be theirs and private by their nature it is possible that it begins to link up with other more dangerous ideas like denying climate change. And just when I was ready to push them all back into a that neatly designed corral for which I have designated such people, along comes another scientist. Physicist Lamar Glover encourages us all not to shun flat earthers and other minds that have taken different paths. They should be listened to and encouraged to question, which is the very basis of science. "When we leave people behind, we leave bright minds to mutate and stagnate. These folks are potential scientists going completely wrong." Finding ways to bring that excitement and enthusiasm back from the fringe could benefit everyone in the long run. It also forces us who carry around duffel bags of dogma to connect with and reaffirm our own beliefs. Turns out we have a big enough world, no matter what the shape, for everyone to question and learn. It might take some more convincing, but wouldn't that be worth it?
Now please feel free to apply this to any and all conversations you have with people you had recently decided were confused and close-minded.
It's only a model.
Thursday, June 18, 2020
That Was Then
Okay, here's the thing: My mother, the social justice warrior, has seen Gone With The Wind more times than she can count. She has a poster for that movie hanging in her house. Her sons got if for her. I am one of those sons. So, if there is a reckoning to be had here, then it is multi-generational. It should be pointed out that my mother was born in the 1930's, and she lived a life of dreams fueled by the movie magazines she read behind the counter at her parents' drugstore in Granby, Colorado. It was some fifty years into her life that her sons chose to join in her fondness for Margaret Mitchell's tale of the Antebellum south and how "This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring."
Except it is a monument to another time. Not even the Civil War. Or the Confederacy. It is a sweeping four hour epic about the burning of the sets from King Kong. 1939 was a watershed for Hollywood, a year in which armloads of films that have become classics by most definitions: The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Stagecoach, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Women, Of Mice and Men, Charles Laughton's Hunchback of Notre Dame. This list does not include Tarzan Finds A Son. This particular feature does not appear on HBO Max, but you can stream it on Amazon and Apple TV. Or you might wait around for Turner Classic Movies to dip into their vault and enjoy all that Tarzan has to bring to the discussion of racial equality and justice.
1939 was not a time in America when things were better than they are now. While it is true that the Great Depression was in the rear-view mirror for most, there were still huge gaps between the haves and have nots. Blacks and whites. This was the year that John Steinbeck published Grapes of Wrath. The film version didn't come out until the following year. Shortly after that, the world was at war. This time America was fighting fascists. Nazis. It should be noted here that Hollywood like so much of the rest of the country spent a good deal of time before Pearl Harbor was bombed ignoring or making excuses for what was happening in Germany. For many, there was money to be made.
At the end of the day, that's really the business part of it. HBO makes money by pulling a film from its streaming lineup as an exhibit of their understanding, only to return it a week later. Except now there is a lecture preceding the feature that will explain its historical context and significance. Meanwhile, Amazon reported that Gone With The Wind had vaulted to the number one position on their movies and TV bestseller list. 1939 continues to make money in 2020.
And my mom could not be less interested, beyond a certain amount of chagrin for having introducing it to us all way back when. She has seen a lot of movies since 1939. She has new favorites now.
Except it is a monument to another time. Not even the Civil War. Or the Confederacy. It is a sweeping four hour epic about the burning of the sets from King Kong. 1939 was a watershed for Hollywood, a year in which armloads of films that have become classics by most definitions: The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Stagecoach, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Women, Of Mice and Men, Charles Laughton's Hunchback of Notre Dame. This list does not include Tarzan Finds A Son. This particular feature does not appear on HBO Max, but you can stream it on Amazon and Apple TV. Or you might wait around for Turner Classic Movies to dip into their vault and enjoy all that Tarzan has to bring to the discussion of racial equality and justice.
1939 was not a time in America when things were better than they are now. While it is true that the Great Depression was in the rear-view mirror for most, there were still huge gaps between the haves and have nots. Blacks and whites. This was the year that John Steinbeck published Grapes of Wrath. The film version didn't come out until the following year. Shortly after that, the world was at war. This time America was fighting fascists. Nazis. It should be noted here that Hollywood like so much of the rest of the country spent a good deal of time before Pearl Harbor was bombed ignoring or making excuses for what was happening in Germany. For many, there was money to be made.
At the end of the day, that's really the business part of it. HBO makes money by pulling a film from its streaming lineup as an exhibit of their understanding, only to return it a week later. Except now there is a lecture preceding the feature that will explain its historical context and significance. Meanwhile, Amazon reported that Gone With The Wind had vaulted to the number one position on their movies and TV bestseller list. 1939 continues to make money in 2020.
And my mom could not be less interested, beyond a certain amount of chagrin for having introducing it to us all way back when. She has seen a lot of movies since 1939. She has new favorites now.
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Wishing
I was whining the other day to my wife. Keeping in mind that I am not traditionally much of a whiner, but when I do whine, I do it full force. I was whining about normal. I was whining about how tired I was of the way things are and how I wish that I could return to that once upon a time when things were slow and oh so mellow.
It has been three full months of shelter-in-place, and for the most part I have been a good egg about following the recommended distances and masks and social bubbles and World Health Organization's stipulations. I never rinse my hands off anymore. Each time I turn on the water it is as if I were preparing to scrub in for extensive and delicate neurosurgery. I resist the temptation each time I stand in the little taped off box at the grocery store to pull down my mask and yell "What?" through the plastic shield as the cashier asks me some mumbled question.
At the same time, I am boiling over with anger and frustration with the way police across this country are brutalizing black lives. Each day brings a new outrage and while I feel compelled to speak out here and wherever I can make my voice heard, a new day dawns and I am delivered another fresh insult to our collective humanity. This war would be impossible to wage in the best of circumstances, but the fact that it is taking place during a global pandemic makes it all the more terrifying. It is a certainty that even more lives will be lost because we are trying to stand together as one when we would be safer at home.
Somewhere in the middle of this wild indignation came that weak voice inside my head that cried out for comfort. Something that felt safe and familiar. The trip to Best Buy with my son. A baseball game. A trip to the bathroom without worrying about the number of squares of toilet paper used or the song I would sing as I washed my hands. Having people over to my house without carefully screening their health records and cordoning off a holding area in which they could stand free of infection or infecting.
Whine, whine, whine.
We've got bigger fish to fry, metaphorically. We are currently being called upon to raise the stakes on how we live our lives. This too shall not just pass but create a lasting change in how we treat one another and how we demand to be treated. And into all this turmoil came the notice for jury duty. So I guess I should be careful about what I wish.
It has been three full months of shelter-in-place, and for the most part I have been a good egg about following the recommended distances and masks and social bubbles and World Health Organization's stipulations. I never rinse my hands off anymore. Each time I turn on the water it is as if I were preparing to scrub in for extensive and delicate neurosurgery. I resist the temptation each time I stand in the little taped off box at the grocery store to pull down my mask and yell "What?" through the plastic shield as the cashier asks me some mumbled question.
At the same time, I am boiling over with anger and frustration with the way police across this country are brutalizing black lives. Each day brings a new outrage and while I feel compelled to speak out here and wherever I can make my voice heard, a new day dawns and I am delivered another fresh insult to our collective humanity. This war would be impossible to wage in the best of circumstances, but the fact that it is taking place during a global pandemic makes it all the more terrifying. It is a certainty that even more lives will be lost because we are trying to stand together as one when we would be safer at home.
Somewhere in the middle of this wild indignation came that weak voice inside my head that cried out for comfort. Something that felt safe and familiar. The trip to Best Buy with my son. A baseball game. A trip to the bathroom without worrying about the number of squares of toilet paper used or the song I would sing as I washed my hands. Having people over to my house without carefully screening their health records and cordoning off a holding area in which they could stand free of infection or infecting.
Whine, whine, whine.
We've got bigger fish to fry, metaphorically. We are currently being called upon to raise the stakes on how we live our lives. This too shall not just pass but create a lasting change in how we treat one another and how we demand to be treated. And into all this turmoil came the notice for jury duty. So I guess I should be careful about what I wish.
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Let Us Breathe
As most sentient beings in the United States know, there were three additional Minneapolis police officers on the scene when Derek Chauvin put his knee on George Floyd's neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao have been fired from their jobs and arrested. They are now charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. These men stood by and watched Chauvin kill another human being in what must be the most ugly and blatant opposition to the phrase "protect and serve" imaginable.
Meanwhile, from the relative safety of his recently inspected bunker, the "president" continues to blast out inflammatory tweet after inflammatory tweet. Sure, he was censored once, when he decided to quote former Miami police chief Walter E. Headley, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter added a disclaimer, reminding users that the post went against their rule of not glorifying violence. Additionally, a few of the "president's" recent outbursts about voting by mail have been fact checked by the folks at Twitter.
So here's what I am attempting to tie together here: No one is telling the "president" to get off America's neck. Okay, to be fair, Twitter seems to be doing their passive version of the job by pointing out to anyone watching, "Hey! He's got his knee of America's neck!" Maybe without the exclamation marks. Certainly no one standing next to the big orange clown is doing much to stop him. Ivanka was too busy carrying her daddy's bible across a park that had been freshly tear-gassed and rid of rubber bullet-ridden protesters to speak up. Her husband is far too busy mismanaging the Middle East and ventilators to be of much use. Mike Veepence wasn't allowed to take the walk much less get a seat in the bunker, so he can't do much to monitor the "president's" hate speech. And even though Fox News seems to be losing patience with their favorite impeached Cheeto, no one is actually calling on him to just stop.
Stop making things up. Stop retweeting lies. Stop amplifying voices of hate and fear. Stop dividing. At this point, I would not even suggest that he do anything so brazen as to try and unite the country he so anxiously wants to make "great" again. Just get off our necks. Let us breathe. We can get around to arresting the lot of you come November. Let us breathe.
Meanwhile, from the relative safety of his recently inspected bunker, the "president" continues to blast out inflammatory tweet after inflammatory tweet. Sure, he was censored once, when he decided to quote former Miami police chief Walter E. Headley, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter added a disclaimer, reminding users that the post went against their rule of not glorifying violence. Additionally, a few of the "president's" recent outbursts about voting by mail have been fact checked by the folks at Twitter.
So here's what I am attempting to tie together here: No one is telling the "president" to get off America's neck. Okay, to be fair, Twitter seems to be doing their passive version of the job by pointing out to anyone watching, "Hey! He's got his knee of America's neck!" Maybe without the exclamation marks. Certainly no one standing next to the big orange clown is doing much to stop him. Ivanka was too busy carrying her daddy's bible across a park that had been freshly tear-gassed and rid of rubber bullet-ridden protesters to speak up. Her husband is far too busy mismanaging the Middle East and ventilators to be of much use. Mike Veepence wasn't allowed to take the walk much less get a seat in the bunker, so he can't do much to monitor the "president's" hate speech. And even though Fox News seems to be losing patience with their favorite impeached Cheeto, no one is actually calling on him to just stop.
Stop making things up. Stop retweeting lies. Stop amplifying voices of hate and fear. Stop dividing. At this point, I would not even suggest that he do anything so brazen as to try and unite the country he so anxiously wants to make "great" again. Just get off our necks. Let us breathe. We can get around to arresting the lot of you come November. Let us breathe.
Monday, June 15, 2020
Tree Fall
It was me, the Yard Ape, versus the plum tree. Initial returns suggest that the Yard Ape won.
I know better.
This was the little twig that was battling a stand of bamboo in the corner of our front yard when we moved in. One of the first battles I endured with the flora and fauna of our property was to eliminate the bamboo. Little did I know that this would serve to be my undoing.
A little background: I am not a "plum guy." There is an apocryphal tale about plum jelly that describes my antipathy for this fruit. Rather than repeat it here, I will simply state that I prefer apples and grapes. Plums somehow seemed to have attempted to insinuate themselves somewhere between these two favorites.
I don't care for plums, but somehow I still have to.
That tree has grown some twenty-five feet since it was initially allowed to breathe free. If grapes or apples were falling from its branches, I might welcome such tenacity. Instead, we are inundated each year in June with a yard, sidewalk and neighbor's driveway full of yellow plums. Mirabelle plums if you're keen to know even more. My wife likes them. Not enough to consume them by the bushel. Our dear departed dog Maddie was known to eat a few from the ground, but not enough to come back from the dead to help us clean up.
This year it was all about the beefy limb that had found its way into the phone and electrical cables coming into the neighboring apartment building. This was exacerbated by the sheer weight of the fruit dangling from the branches. The initial harvesting shake of the tree gave us our usual ridiculous amount of of produce, shared somewhat effectively via an email alert my wife sent out.
But there was still the matter of the wires. Once again, my wife's ability to mobilize the community came in handy, as she invited a neighbor down the street to share his thirty foot ladder to help us tame the beast. He came and set his ladder in such a way that I could scamper up and begin trimming with a reciprocating saw. At no time during all these arbor acrobatics did I consider all the ways things could have gone wrong. I just went about my business, disciplining the tree as plums continued to drop as tiny insults to all my endeavors. Cutting into a cable full of electricity. Dropping a branch on me or an passersby, especially the gentleman kind enough to hold his ladder while I hung in the air. Maiming anyone or anything with the power tool I used with one hand while clinging desperately with the other.
And none of those things happened. Instead, I filled a green bin with plum lumber and leaves to be hauled away. And I know that all I am doing is encouraging the beast. Like the anecdote about the cockroaches who will be outliving us in the event of a nuclear war, I hope they like Mirabelle plums.
I know better.
This was the little twig that was battling a stand of bamboo in the corner of our front yard when we moved in. One of the first battles I endured with the flora and fauna of our property was to eliminate the bamboo. Little did I know that this would serve to be my undoing.
A little background: I am not a "plum guy." There is an apocryphal tale about plum jelly that describes my antipathy for this fruit. Rather than repeat it here, I will simply state that I prefer apples and grapes. Plums somehow seemed to have attempted to insinuate themselves somewhere between these two favorites.
I don't care for plums, but somehow I still have to.
That tree has grown some twenty-five feet since it was initially allowed to breathe free. If grapes or apples were falling from its branches, I might welcome such tenacity. Instead, we are inundated each year in June with a yard, sidewalk and neighbor's driveway full of yellow plums. Mirabelle plums if you're keen to know even more. My wife likes them. Not enough to consume them by the bushel. Our dear departed dog Maddie was known to eat a few from the ground, but not enough to come back from the dead to help us clean up.
This year it was all about the beefy limb that had found its way into the phone and electrical cables coming into the neighboring apartment building. This was exacerbated by the sheer weight of the fruit dangling from the branches. The initial harvesting shake of the tree gave us our usual ridiculous amount of of produce, shared somewhat effectively via an email alert my wife sent out.
But there was still the matter of the wires. Once again, my wife's ability to mobilize the community came in handy, as she invited a neighbor down the street to share his thirty foot ladder to help us tame the beast. He came and set his ladder in such a way that I could scamper up and begin trimming with a reciprocating saw. At no time during all these arbor acrobatics did I consider all the ways things could have gone wrong. I just went about my business, disciplining the tree as plums continued to drop as tiny insults to all my endeavors. Cutting into a cable full of electricity. Dropping a branch on me or an passersby, especially the gentleman kind enough to hold his ladder while I hung in the air. Maiming anyone or anything with the power tool I used with one hand while clinging desperately with the other.
And none of those things happened. Instead, I filled a green bin with plum lumber and leaves to be hauled away. And I know that all I am doing is encouraging the beast. Like the anecdote about the cockroaches who will be outliving us in the event of a nuclear war, I hope they like Mirabelle plums.
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