1: Is it a:
A: Scientist
B: Bartender
C: Pharmacist
D: Chemist
2: Why is it on the sidewalk in Alexandria? (have fun and be creative)
3: Have you met a mad scientist?
4: Should we have more public art?
5: When they do a sculpture of you, what will be in your hands?
My Answers:
1: Is it a: I know the answer, if I answered it would spoil it for you.
2: Why is it on the sidewalk in Alexandria? (have fun and be creative) Someone had money to burn
3: Have you met a mad scientist? A couple of them, only one of them was suspected of poisining the neighbor.
4: Should we have more public art? Yes
5: When they do a sculpture of you, what will be in your hands? A Camera
Please share your answers in the comments.
It has been a challenging time. I have been dealing with some difficult and delicate budget and personnel issues, and we are reorganizing our workspace, moving people around. One challenge was a pure surprise - something I thought I had resolved for this year- and things changed that were beyond my influence or control. One is a personal issue for a colleague that I can't do what would be best for the person and comply with "policy," and while I am flexible I keep being reminded that I need to comply with policy. One is a long term issue that has been put off for years, that I thought I was going to be able to pass off to my replacement when I retire, but the "surprise" is forcing painful decisions. There will be tears.
I thought about retiring early, walking away and making it someone else's problem. Or deciding now is the time to claim my health is to fragile to handle this.
I agreed to take on this responsibility, leadership trusted me to do the job, it is time suck it up and do it. The tough parts of the job, come along with the rewarding parts of the job. There are few jobs that only bring the pleasure and rewarding parts, without the hard parts. I can't think of one. The only jobs I have ever had that had no hard parts, also had no rewarding parts unless you count $9 an hour as a reward. If it was only about the money, I'd stop tomorrow.
I have been working for others for something over 40 years. I don't remember when, or for sure who it was that told me this, I was moaning about how difficult something was, and my boss simply said,
"If it was easy, I could hire anyone to do it.
It isn't, and that is why I hired you."
They trusted me to be able to do this, it is time to honor that trust.
Growing up we drove through the edge of the "state land" on the only paved road that passes through it. But never ventured into it. I never understood why, never questioned it. On my recent trip I decided to take a drive. On a Friday. And it was Fabulous.
The rental car I ended up with was not what I had reserved. I really didn't care. I ended up in a butch-mobile, and Toyota Four Runner off road edition. If I knew how to drive all of the four wheel drive, and locking this and thats, it would be nearly unstoppable. For me it was ideal for rough unpaved roads. It was a great camera platform, sitting so high that it had a step on the side to help me in and out. Oh, and it got about 21 miles to gallon of gas.
That leads my brain into the following conversation with myself. I wonder if all dogs speak the same language? Does language structure the thought process? (probably not.) What if we could codify dog, create a system of notation, and publish books in dog? Could we read to dogs? Could we teach dogs to read? Maybe we should teach dogs to record their thoughts, so they could be played to other dogs. Imagine a world where dogs have phone conversations with other dogs. Certainly dogs have great stories to tell, maybe they can tell each other where the great smells are at, who has the best treats. Scientists have tried to decode bees communicating by "dance" or movement to other bees what direction and how far to good sources of nectar. Certainly dogs must be able to help one another find pleasure or avoid danger. Dogs seem to know who loves them, who to trust, and who to avoid. Maybe dogs are a better judge of character than humans.
Eons of companionship with canines and we don't have a clue. Maybe dogs understand us and are baffled that we don't understand them. Poodles undoubtedly think we are the clueless, and that they are superior us.
Yes, sometimes that is what happens in my brain. So many questions to explore the answers to.
In many ways I am like an old dog, I will respond to almost anything said in a kind tone of voice. Treats are always appreciated.
We never really thought much about it. There was a back and forth with the builder and the people who did the final finish, but when that yielded no key, nothing was ever done.
The house was locked when we were away, we had keys to the kitchen door, but a copy of that key was hidden in a vent pipe in the garage wall. Friends knew where the key was. That is just way it was. The garage was seldom locked.
Was there a door to your childhood home that no one had a key to? Did you come and go through the front door?
I wonder, what does this represent? Is it a real person? Or someone's desired person, or feared person? Is it a space alien, or a hallucination from good or bad dreams?
I wonder what does it mean to the person who painted it? Is it an expression of fear, or love, or longing? Is it merely a way of leaving a trace that the person who created it was in a forgiven place?
Was it planned, or did it just flow out of the brain of the person who painted it.
Does it appear the way the person hoped it would?
A guy standing near me on the subway recently had an interesting tattoo, it got me to thinking, what does it represent? What does it mean to him? What message does he hope others find in it? These are all complicated layers of meaning. Meaning is not one dimensional.
Something immediately struck me and that was the prices. The DC area is expensive, a quick lunch at the Deli in the building my office is in can easily cost $20. I know where you can get a really great cheeseburger for $30, fries are extra. Hence this weeks Sunday five.
1: Do you consider it to be expensive to eat out where you live?
2: Is price important in deciding where to eat?
3: How often do you eat out?
4: What percentage do you tip (if at all?)
5: Is there a place your parents went to, that you would like to revisit?
My Answers:
1: Do you consider it to be expensive to eat out where you live? Yes, it really is.
2: Is price important in deciding where to eat? We tend to do what we want to do and not be guided by price.
3: How often do you eat out? Probably three times a week, I go out to lunch when I am in the office, and we order takeaway or delivery about once a week (we have room service where we live.)
4: What percentage do you tip (if at all?) 20% has become my norm, when dinner was $10.59, more like 50%,
5: Is there a place your parents went to, that you would like to revisit? The troll restaurant in Titusville Florida (that is not it's name, but it is literally under the bridge,) most of the others in Michigan from my childhood are gone.
Please share your answers in the comments.
When I was kindergarden or the first grade, the school made arrangements for the entire class to ride the passenger train from Lapeer to the next stop east Imlay City. Probably 10-12 miles. I don't recall if we went to the train by bus, or parents driving. I do remember that my mother put me on the train, and left, meeting me at the other end of the ride. I don't remember anything of the ride, other than getting on and being picked up at the other end. It was 20+ years later the next time I rode a passenger train, from Winter Park Florida to Tampa and back, because you could. We went shopping and had lunch in Tampa.
My other memory of the train station in Lapeer involves live bees. By federal law at that time the post office had to transport live honey bees. The bees were in cages, with screen mesh sides, and are rather terrifying. Back in the 1960 there was still postal rail express. If more than a crate was coming in, they usually came in by train. For some reason my mother went to meet the train in Lapeer and pick up the shipment one time and I remember going with her. The bees make a frightening noise. The train crew was happy to offload them, and proud that they had arrived alive and well. I understand the postal service still delivers live chicks.
Only two trains a day, but there is still passenger rail service in Lapeer. I should ride it one day - just because I can. I will need to remember to be fast getting on or off.
I often snap photos of fabulous hair. I have enjoyed the trend of "top knots" on mens hair. Many people thought they looked funny, I thought if you have it, why not. Most men settle for terrible haircuts. Work with what you have, and have fun and be fabulous. There was shop on King Street that would fit me with hair like hers, I wonder if they are still in business?
Farming has changed. 50 years ago every section* had at least one dairy herd, in my recent visit I saw one dairy farm in the entire township. Farmers are growing more beans - mostly soy. I was pleased to see a fair amount of wheat. Corn is the dominant crop. There are few beef herds around. Many of the old farmhouses are gone, or have undergone massive renovations. There are more and much more modern grain elevators around. The railroad tracks are gone, the station is gone.
There are still a lot of vegetable gardens, some of them massive. That was always a summer joy when I was growing up. Goodies fresh from the gardens.
There are a few more paved road, though the house I grew up is still a mile and half from the nearest paved road. The house I grew up in has long had new owners, who have made some changes, but also allowed the forest to engulf the property. Where I spent summers digging out the underbrush in the ditch line across the front, they have let it grow to the point that you almost can't see the house from the road.
The old farmhouse that my grandparents lived in, has been remodeled and a second story added. A couple of new barns have been added. And again nature has reclaimed the front lawn, obscuring the house from the road. My grandfather would not be pleased.
The Bar and Grill moved down the street a few doors, to much larger and much nicer space. And the menu has expanded from hot dogs and burgers, to a wide variety of very good food. There are only a couple of restaurants in town, my sister assures me it is the best.
So what took me back there? My sister is living there. Her husband has terminal cancer. I had not been there for a couple of years. His condition is much worse. They needed someone to talk with, someone to listen. It was a hard trip, I am glad I made it.
Everytime we say goodbye to someone, there is a risk it may be the last time. At times that risk is greater, and harder to take.
* A section is one mile, by one mile. There are 640 acres in a section, divided into quarters and the quarters divided into half, an 80 acre farm is 1/8th of a section, if it is square it is 1/4 mile by 1/2 miles. There are 43,560 sq. ft. in an acre.
In my father's wallet there were two photos for decades. The one above was his favorite picture of his four kids. The original was a Kodachrome slide* (thankfully the colors are still very true.) He had an early dye transfer print** made and carried it the rest of his life. The other photo was of the last airplane he owned in the mid-1960's. He and a friend bought a basket case, stripped it down to the metal frame and rebuilt it from the wheels up. One of my earliest memories as a child are the wings being recovered in our garage. That dog eared black and white wallet size print, is now in a silver frame in my case of memories.
I don't carry any photos in my wallet.
* Kodachrome - the dyes for the color were added in processing and were very stable and long lasting. The processing required complicated and expensive machines. Later color transparency or slide films, the dyes were in the film, and didn't have the same resilience. ** In dye transfer printing, each layer of color is created and applied to the paper in the printing process, unlike later photographic papers where the color layers were embedded in the emulsion layer on the paper from the factory. Dye transfer printing is technically much more complex. When I was using film in the 1970's there were still a few labs that did dye transfer printing, but the cost was ten times what a standard print would be. But the prints last 100 times longer. Modern ink jet printing, if the dyes are stable, is more like dye transfer printing.
A ripe wheat field is a difficult thing to photograph using a camera with autofocus. There are so many sharp edges, that the focus is on a linear band, leaving the foreground and distance in a blur. I like this. Even if it was an accident. There is a YouTuber that urges photographers to not delete the mistakes, there is gold in them sometimes.
From a sensory perspective there is the field before harvest, something you should never walk in, trampled wheat is lost wheat, then there is the fresh cut stubble field. The stalks are left 6-10 inches high, they snap when you walk over them. The smell stays with you for a lifetime. The last time I saw a fresh stubble field, was in Normandy one summer. Probably 100 acres, freshly harvested, the combine was still in the corner of the field. It was after dinner, but still daylight in mid summer. And over dinner I had encountered my first bottle of Norman Cider. I went for a walk in the field, crunch, crunch, crunch, then collapsed in bed for the sleep of delightfully drunk. The experience stays in sharp focus, the joys of travel.
My first thought is those fail to learn from history, are destined to repeat the mistakes and sins of the past. And some of the history is well within my parents or grandparents lifetimes, things that I heard about first hand, like the Holocaust, internment camps for Americans of Japanese ancestry, the inhumane medical experiments at Tuskegee. I was talking with one of our student interns recently, and she asked why do state guardianship laws require specific permission from the Court for amputations unless there is a life threatening emergency. The reason is simple, until the law changed state guardians would sometimes decide that a person who couldn't walk would be easier to care for without their legs, people who couldn't feed themselves would be better off without hands or arms that didn't function in the usual way. She was horrified, as she should be. (She is a sensitive soul, with a strong sense of outage.)
Tragedies that mankind is destined to repeat if we don't learn from the mistakes of those who came before us who allowed evil to happen, and those who committed acts of evil. It is also important to learn about the brave people who spoke out, or stood up against it.
As a nation we are still deeply flawed. Isms, racism, sexism, ableism, the list goes on are still flourishing - and there are those who wish to enable behaviour that makes these acceptable. Because addressing them makes someone feel uncomfortable. I weep for the country when I learn of this.
In the past couple of years I have learned that parts of my family history from the first half of the 1800's were altered, concealed, or overlooked to make a scoundel look like a hero. I am horrified to think of the actions of those who came before me. Pirates, privateers, ship captains in the early 1800's*, people who did business with criminals knowing they were doing so, and made a lot of money, are not heroes, they are an embarrassment. I am glad that the sons and grandsons of the scoundrel were a couple of generations of lazy drunks who squandered the ill gotten gain, that by time of grandfather's generation they started off penniless. I don't know if they never knew the truth, or if they covered it up, but the version I was told, was not the whole truth. Even the captain acknowledged late in his life, that nothing he could do or say, would make up for the sins of his early years.
Being woke, knowing, reinforces my drive to be a better human being. It does not injure me, it makes me stronger. I am truly sorry for the actions of my ancestors, please help me be a better person, so we can build a better future for all. Let's not repeat the tragedies of the past.
* Thank you to Lloyds of London for keeping detailed ship wreck histories.
** The photo at the top, was taken by my father in the early 1950's.
Three or four years ago, the son of one of Jay's college classmates had an opera premiere at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of a young artists series. We went, and I think we will be forever in favor with the artist and his parents for having done so. (We have met him in New York for dinner a couple of times since then.) The show was good, the one after his with the dog stole the show (never work with children or animals.)
After that Jay started buying tickets for the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. Six to eight shows a season. He looks at what they are playing, and any guest artists or conductors and carefully selects. I really don't care, I enjoy the show, and for the most part I don't care who is playing what. When we first returned after Covid shut them down for a year, my thought was what a fabulous noise.
Our favorite seats are up a couple of balconies, and right over the end of the stage. You can see, you can hear. It is simply fab.
Well that was weird, I responded to a comment that was posted, then blogger removed the comment as spam, and I retrieved it out of comment jail. I do check comments a couple of times a day. If your comment disappears I will try to get it back (unless you are a spammer, and we know where they can all go.)
It is a predictable routine, but I don't think of it as boring. More like settled, serene. I read a lot, I almost always have music playing in the background. I find joy the daily cycle.
*I have a 60 inch Television in my bedroom, and a bed computer, a laptop that 99% of the time is used only when I am in bed.
This was taken with a Kodak Instamatic, the square format from the 126 film cartridge is the telltale sign of that. I had received an Instamatic as a Christmas gift that year or the year before. For a couple of years I carried two of them, often with color film in one and black and white in the other. We had a makeshift darkroom in the garage and I could process and print the black and white at home.
I remember the ticket books, with different values for different rides, you had to decide what you wanted to see. But just walking in this world of wonders was amazing for a farm boy from nowhere.
My middle brother worked for Disney for 43 years. I visited the parks many-many times. I had a couple of opportunities to get behind the scenes, I have been down the length of the tunnel under Main Street. The last few years I lived in Orlando, I was buying annual passes. It was fun to run out and have lunch, or just ride the train around the outside and go home. I read that the train recently went back in service, it had been closed for several years for construction around Space Mountain.
