Tag: change

Unchanged

She’d thought about using a computer but decided that she didn’t want to. That would have been cumbersome to learn, as would changing her phone. The green wall phone with its rotary dial and long cord was sufficient.

She kept her old color console television, bought from Sears in 1969, because it still worked, so why buy a new one? She had to buy new furniture in 1969 because the old stuff fell apart, but once the gold and green brocade stuff she bought started falling apart, she kept it, even though the fabric was torn and worn, stuffing was coming out, and the frames were coming apart.

Her hair-style was unchanged from 1968, which is also when she started dying her hair brown, so she looked much the same in this century as she did the last. She loved Campbell’s tomato soup and had it almost every day for lunch with a grilled cheese sandwich using Kraft American Cheese Singles, along with a Heinz dill pickle. Her breakfast was Quaker Oats followed by two cups of Maxwell House coffee that she made in her old percolator.

Days were spent reading Dick Francis, Nancy Drew mysteries, or Agatha Christie while watching Fox News. In the evenings, she watched The Family Feud and The Price is Right followed by Murder, She Wrote, The Andy Griffith Show, The Big Valley, and Perry Mason. Once in a while, she watched a movie, like The Sound of Music. For treats, she ate Little Debbie Cakes.

Not much had changed in her life, and that made her happy. Being happy, she saw no reason to change.

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Change

“Keep the change,” he said, turning away from the cashier.

“You always say that,” his friend said as they walked away as the cashier put the coins into the tip jar and said, “Thank you, sir, your order will be right up.”

“Habit.” The other shrugged. “I don’t want change.”

“But it adds up.”

He was about to reply when his friend said, “Hey.”

As he turned, his friend flipped a silver coin at him. He caught it without thinking, mostly as protection to keep it from hitting his face. Within a second, he raised the coin and looked at it. Seeing it was a nineteen seventy-eight quarter, he said, “Fu — ”

Then he was gone.

Puzzled, his friend blinked at the empty space. He’d lost the thread on what he’d been doing. He’d  had a quarter and he’d been thinking…something…

Rubbing his head, he tried to remember. There’d been something there, but where that something had been, it seemed like there was now a hole.

Sighing, he told himself, it’ll come back to him. He was getting old and forgetful, like his parents. Turning, he hunted for a table, sure that he’d forgotten something important, growing less certain that it would ever come back.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

As I’ve thought about what was happening and where I’ve decided to go, Peter Gabriel’s song, “Solsbury Hill” (1977) came to me. The song is about making decisions, taking risks, and changing, coming about when he left Genesis, the group he’d helped begin almost a decade before, to begin a solo career.

Many of the versus reflected his uncertainty about the decision.

To keep in silence I resigned
My friends would think I was a nut
Turning water into wine
Open doors would soon be shut
So I went from day to day
Though my life was in a rut
‘Til I thought of what I’d say
Which connection I should cut

Enjoy.

 

2

Changing Tastes

Perhaps, if you’re old enough, you remember having thirty-three and forty-five RPM records that you played on your phonograph.

Maybe you had eight-track or cassette tapes. Perhaps you had a VCR later, playing VHS tapes. Maybe you went with Beta.

Then you switched to Laser Discs, Blue Ray, CDs and DVDs before you started streaming.

You may have used a Walkman a couple decades ago, before changing to an iPod Shuffle. Maybe you use your phone now, downloading your songs from the Cloud.

It’s fun living through these changes. Now we’re embracing more changes. Ford and GM have both announced moves to curtail selling cars in the United States this year. The profit margins on manufacturing cars is small, and sales are down. People are buying more SUVs and pick-ups, if they’re buying a motor vehicle at all, because motor vehicles overall have declined. Young people aren’t buying cars as often.

Just curious, but do you remember talking about SUVs in your youth? I didn’t; we had utility vehicles then. The sports came later.

Do you remember the mini-van craze, or are you too young to remember that?

Young people are marrying less these days. The median age for a man in America to marry was twenty-nine point five years old, up from twenty-three in the early 1970s.

Young people are also dating less. They struggle with interpersonal relationships of romantic and sexual natures if they’re engaged face to face. It’s easier for them if there’s a cell phone involved.

Did you know what a Tinderella is?

Fun fact. My friend the professor struggles initiating class discussions in her class of twenty-somethings. Then she started posting texts, and the discourse began.

Ah, cell phones. Remember princess phones and wall phones, cordless phones? Remember pagers? Remember car phones?

Do you remember Instamatic cameras?

Meanwhile, NASCAR paid attendance is declining. Less people are watching the races on television, as well. That’s parallel to a trend of declining NFL paid attendance and television ratings.

Remember playing video games? Are you old enough to recall Pong? Did you ever think about playing a game on your phone? Did you ever believe that you would enjoy playing games on phones so much that you needed data plans to enable your habit?

Beer sales in America are declining. More people are drinking wine.

Over in the Olympics, snowboarding was a big draw in 2018 while the slalom was dropped. Word came out last week that the IOC is not planning to have boxing in the 2020 Olympics.

Went to the movies the other day. When I was young, over fifty years ago, we had a cartoon or short film before the feature. That’s been replaced with ads, trailers, and previews.

The movies cost thirteen dollars for two of us the other day, cheaper than many places, but do you remember paying less than a dollar for the movies? Mom remembers paying a nickel, but she’s over twenty years older than me.

A nickel to get into the movies was a long time ago, wasn’t it?

Shall we talk about the price of gasoline? How ’bout a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, or a cup of coffee?

Say, do you remember when you first thought about buying organic?

These times, they are a’changin’.

9

New WordPress Editor

  1. Is anyone else using the new WordPress Editor?
  2. Does anyone have any particular issue with it?
  3. Is anyone starting to hate it as much as I am?

Well, to elaborate on the last first, you probably read that and thought, I don’t know. How much are you starting to hate it?

I expect a learning curve with any change. But when I follow the process and it doesn’t come out as expected, forcing me to begin trouble-shooting, only to discover there isn’t any trouble-shooting to do, leaving me unable to post what I want when I want to post it, then I begin to hate the application. 

Like, that whole thing with blocking a paragraph to work on it is irritating. So is the inability to use MS Word commands that I’m used to having.

Yes, I’m getting old and cranky. So what’s your point.

All this leads me to my real question: how do I return to the previous editor? That’ll be this weekend’s project. 

19

Wednesday’s Theme Music

A week out from election day, 2018, I find myself streaming an old Stevie Wonder song from 1973.

His hair is long, his feet are hard and gritty
He spends his life walking the streets of New York City
He’s almost dead from breathing in air pollution
He tried to vote but to him there’s no solution
Living just enough, just enough for the city…yeah, yeah, yeah!

h/t to AZLyrics.com

We’re at a crossroads in America, where the divisions are strong and stark. We have white supremacists insisting that things need to change, and they’re willing to change it by lying, cheating, intimidating, and killing. Their hate knows few boundaries, becoming directed at liberals, minorities, women, science, education, and just about every other nation in the world.

At the head of this monster is a clueless POTUS consumed with self-adoration, an empty vessel that mouths calls for unity as he leads chants for violence and threatens everyone who doesn’t  support his claims. Instead of seeking a brave new world of social justice and equality, he promotes greater divisions of wealth, opportunity, and hope. He builds more borders with words and threats, and builds walls with his mindless rhetoric. He places his optimism in a time that’s passed him by, but bolstered by people living in a hopeless fantasy existence, he remains empowered.

We end up, again, with people barely hanging on, coping, as Stevie Wonder wrote and sang, with just enough for the city.

0

Future Me

I read a recent article about how we see ourselves. The article’s essence was that a study showed that people could readily see how they’d changed, but didn’t think they would change in the future.

That’s an odd conclusion. Looking back on how and why I change, I can appreciate how the world changed, forcing me to change. Mentors, friends, and family members have died. Their influence remains, but it’s faded.

Sometimes, I think of it like dominoes. I’m in a long row that’s been set up to fall over when tapped, part of a pretty design. Matters that tap me over include my changing body. My hearing is damaged and my vision has lost its acuity. My metabolism has slowed, as has my physical energy, and my muscles are weaker. My joints are stiffer, and my athleticism and coordination have diminished. My sleeping patterns have changed. I endured illnesses and injuries which changed my trajectory. I’ve gained weight and developed gluten and dairy reactions.  I mostly bloat. Before I bloated, I didn’t understand what people meant when they said, “I feel bloated today.” Now I understand.

Our food chain has changed. What impact that has on me, I probably won’t ever know. I was introduced to new foods, and dishes from other cultures, and I was introduced to better quality food, increasing my awareness of what quality means, and how it influences me.

Technology has advanced, enabling me to hear more music, inviting me in as a witness to more amazing events and moments. I usually have a laptop or tablet nearby to keep me connected to others. I’ve never met many of the people who are in my circle of friendship. Science has advanced, giving me more to think about. Researchers, psychologists and sociologists have gained insights into how our bodies, societies, and civilizations function. Engaging TED Talks and blogs help socialize new information. Big data analytics keep expanding on what we know, or what might be going on.

Our society and government have changed. Events like 9/11 changed us. I make more effort to understand the world than I used to make. After traveling and living outside of the United States, I became more watchful about politics, equality, justice, and our environment. As our politics have changed, and groups like white supremacists and Nazis have grown, I’ve been forced to question what I know. Likewise, revelations of sexual assault, news of murders, and lies by politicians and others sharpen my desire to know the truth and understand.

I’ve read many more books since I was young. I’ve written books. Both activities encouraged thinking, and from the thinking has come change in my views, approaches, appreciation, and understanding.

My brain has changed, apparently from triggers built in at some genetic level. I’ve become more impatient. Lessons learned through betrayal, resentment, success, and failure have fostered changes to my behavior. I work on improving myself more than I used to, when improving myself meant working out or taking classes.

I’ve lost hair on my head. My hairline recedes and my baldness expands. My hair thins and grays. Meanwhile, the rest of me becomes hairier. With my aging and changes, I became more invisible to a larger segment of population.

Or maybe that’s just me and my perceptions. They can change.

I can extrapolate some ways that I’ll probably change. I think I’ll be more withdrawn, speaking less, and enjoying small talk less. I hope to be writing and publishing more, but that’s a hope that I’ve been nurturing for over twenty years. My future diet will probably be more limited, I’ll be less active, and pop culture will seem more alien. I’ve always disliked talking on the telephone, and avoid it when I can. I suspect it’ll be hard to get future me on the phone.

I’ve been fortunate that I’ve escaped being caught in disasters. That luck can change. It feels, sometimes, like the hazardous air from the wildfires of the last few years have changed me. Certainly, that smoke, combined with the blazing heat, increased my depression, depleted my energy, and sapped my will. It certainly changed my summer and expectations.

Then, there are the other people in my life. Their changes, illnesses, success and failure will change me, too. That’s one constant that’s not likely to change.

All these variables will cause changes in me. I don’t know what I’ll be like in the future, but I don’t think that who I am now is who I will be.

2

Shocking Moment

It was sort of a shocking moment, but it’s only a moment, a single incident with a single person, but —

Well, that’s the prelude.

I was buying a coffee drink. It’d been rung up. I was paying for the $4.75 drink with a ten.

The cashier said, “Oh, hang on. I put in that you were paying with a five. I need to figure out how much I owe you.”

I know from previous conversations that the cashier is nineteen years old and that she’s enrolled in our local college.

After a few seconds of allowing her to puzzle through it, I said, “I think it would be $5.25 back.”

She looked at me.

I said, “If I’d paid with a five, you would have given me a quarter back, right? But I paid with a ten, which is five dollars more, so you just give me five dollars more back. Does that make sense?”

She looked relieved. “Yes,” she said. “It does.”

6

The Era Dream

It was another military dream. Multitudes of military members were there. Almost all were Air Force members, as I had been. I knew many of them, but not all.

Some Army personnel and people from the other armed forces were in the group. They were very few. We were all attired in service-dress uniforms. My wife was with me, and my friends had their wives and children present. I realized it was a mass celebration.

It was in a huge, haphazard building with multiple levels. Some levels were connected by ladders. Others used stairs or elevators. Some of it was outside, or had rooms that were open to the outside.

Some people shunned me or were antagonistic, but others acknowledged and defended me. The first group disappointed me, and was the larger group, but the second group pleased me.

I didn’t stay with either group, though. With my wife holding my hand, I went up and down the ladders and stairs, passing between levels on my own. I said hello to friends, and some returned the greeting. As I did this movement and talked to others, I began understanding, this was a gigantic retirement gathering. With that, I saw a setting sun and realized, an era was ending.

Then I awoke and thought of the dream with sadness. A part of me reflected, the past is gone.

We’re going forward.

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Each Day

Each day, I realize that I don’t know much. I can’t even say that I know much about a particular subject. I tend to know a very little bit about very few things.

Each day, I re-discover things that I’d learned and forgotten. I discover things that I learned when we thought we knew better, but have to learn again because more has been learned. Really, I’m just learning to keep up.

Each day, I learn how much things change between each day and person. I’ve learned that we’re very inconsistent about what we think we know. We like to have what we think we learned validated to verify that we learned what we think we learned.

Each day, I realize how much there is to learn, not just about complicated or esoteric subjects or unfolding scandals, but about myself and the small area of existence that is my world.

Each day, I realize how much I enjoy learning. Sometimes — hell, many times — it wears me out. But with each day, I realize how fragile learning and knowledge really are, and how knowledge can be tortured and twisted.

Each day, I set out, one more time, with a cup of coffee and try to learn just a little bit more.

And some days, I remember it.

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