The Cosmic Privacy Issue

 Remember how we used to watch TV shows and for every half-hour show there was 23 minutes of actual show and 7 minutes of commercials? And how we'd moan and groan about it? 

So, this morning, I was surfing the 'net and glimpsed a large-font headline about a "possible meteor" seen in the Texas sky. I clicked into the article. There were videos. I clicked on one to start it, watched ads for several seconds before realizing it was ALL ads and not "content," so I scrolled down and found the real video. I clicked on the "go" triangle and watched a 30 second commercial. Finally the footage of what was apparently the Texas night sky appeared and I got to watch a tiny dot of white light streak across this black backdrop--it lasted maybe three seconds. 

That's it. Three seconds. I've been duped, I thought. I watched maybe 40 seconds of commercials to see three seconds of a very anti-climactic shooting star. Shame on me. 

The good news: I watched about five videos of a meteor over Norway--this was a doozy, and worth the price of admission, but the real striking thing about all the coverage was . . . all the coverage.  Somehow, the spectacle of a streaking meteor and fireball that lasted less than a second got recorded on several devices--some of a fairly high quality. This means that if there really are UFOs, we are finally going to get to see a picture of one, and not one taken with some Kodak Brownie camera with a lens from a Cracker Jack's box. 

I can't wait. 

July 22, 2121

When I was in high school, a friend of mine used to say this thing whenever he did something stupid that he might have regretted, or was considering doing something like that. He asked the question, "What'll it all mean a hundred years from now?" Of course it was hypothetical, and being young and immortal, we could afford to laugh at it. No one at the time ever had the presence of mind to ask what it might mean two or three days hence. That would have been helpful. 

Recently, I ran across this saying: "Remember, a hundred years from now--all new people" which I'm taking a little more seriously.  In fact, it's kind of been haunting me. All new people . . . a simple, irrefutable fact that sums up all of existence, finally answering the question, what will it all mean a hundred years from now?  

It means whatever you think it means. The future exists only in our minds, and only right now. 

Time Travel

 I met Archie one summer when we were both enjoying the break between the second and third grades. My family and I had just moved into a house in Palo Alto and as I explored the field behind our back yard I found him and his little sister in a tree. Now, just 63 years later, we are still friends, even though we communicate only by email, mostly, and neither of us climbs trees. Or, I should say, could climb a tree if we had to. 

Because of the prolonged time span of our friendship, the subject of time travel sometimes comes up in our correspondence. Stuff like, I bet we would have appreciated it if one of us could use a time machine to get our 1958 selves a couple of 21st Century skate boards. All we had were boards. With skates nailed to them. I'm saying what we did was use our then current mastery of technology to take perfectly good skate and make them worse, as well as more dangerous. 

But I digress. At some point we lusted after the brand new 1959 Chevy with the really cool tail fins, and hoped (in vain) that someone would make a wrong turn and drive one down our cul-de-sac.  Never happened, by the way. Recently in an email one of us wondered what our child selves would think of the decidedly spacecraft-like configuration of most cars today. I think we would have dug them. 

The 1959 Chevrolet Impala

And on and on. Point is, we dreamed up some good uses for a time machine. I still wonder. I think it would be great to actually witness some so-called historical events.  Would it not be fun to worm your way toward the front row and listen to President Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg address? Or, more practically, visit a musical instrument store in 1957 and buy up some new and used Fender electric guitars, or the odd pre-war Martin acoustic, maybe a couple of Guilds? One rather elaborate fantasy has me purchasing a stable of now-rare cars from a Fifties car dealer, preserve and store them in a warehouse with a long term lease made out in my name; it would be fun to have them now, not to mention quite lucrative to sell them off to collectors. 

I would ask anybody reading, what would you do? 

But the thought I had that stimulated this post was it never occurred to me to travel to the future. It's always the past I want to visit, or re-visit, if you will. And the idea that, for the most part, Archie and my childhood selves would actually find little use for 21st Century stuff. Except maybe the skateboards. 

The Courthouse Exchange

 The Courthouse Exchange is a restaurant. It's in the basement of an old building across the street from the Eastern Jackson County courthouse in the center of the Independence (Missouri) square. Jackson County, Missouri has two courthouses--one in Independence, the first one, and one in downtown Kansas City. That one was built as part of a county "Ten Year Plan" initiated by then Presiding Judge of Jackson County Harry S Truman. Because Harry is from Independence, of course, the courthouse in Independence is known as the Truman Courthouse. 

I installed a few telephone lines, here and there, inside that courthouse. In a building that old, all the wiring sort of "evolves" and so finding lines, or places to run new lines, is a bit of a challenge. When President Clinton and Vice-President Gore and their wives made an appearance in Independence in 1994, Clinton gave a speech from the Truman Courthouse steps. In the week prior, I installed dozens of phone lines for the teams that support such visits, including scrambled telephone lines for the Secret Service. These were temporary, meant to serve their purpose for only a part of one day, and so duct tape was involved. The primary goal was to get all the lines and phone jacks in place and on time. I did. 

So the Courthouse Exchange is across the street, in the basement, as I said, serving mostly government workers and lawyers during the lunch rush. Being retired, when I go to lunch, I usually go late to avoid such rushes--its a perk of being an old fart. In fact, that's what I'm going to do today, as soon as I finish this, only I'm going downtown to Johnny C's deli for some spaghetti. 

Below is a picture I took of the inside of the Courthouse Exchange. I actually didn't mean for the two ladies to be in the shot because I'm sort of opposed to so-called "street photography" where sneaky pictures of people seem just a little creepy, but in this case I liked the red dress, and since we can't tell who they are, I left them in.

So now I'm going to lunch.  Have a good one.  -Roy

The Smoke Clears

Just re-read the last two posts. Kind of a downer. July 4 has never been my favorite holiday, even as a kid. I mentioned cat tranquilizers--I really don't like loud, unexpected noises. And I know this is a cheap shot, but I'm willing to bet that of all the people setting off the fireworks I heard around the neighborhood last night, exactly zero percent of them were thinking about our country or about the (white) (men) people who engineered our government those many years ago. We live in an almost unique, historical bubble in which, for the most part, we have an enormous amount of freedom and prosperity, and we have those people to thank for it, and today's the day. 

I know. We have a long way to go, and I'm not writing this to outline the many problems our country, our culture, faces right now. But, so far, at least, the platform on which we stand, our country and our government, our body of laws, will allow us to solve them if we only have the political will. 

Anyway, not to wax annoying. This is also a four-day weekend and anything that gets people home and enables the gatherings of family and friends is a good thing, despite the noise. 

7/04/21

 Happy Fourth!  Truths once "self-evident," in our Declaration of Independence, and later reduced to "the proposition that all men are created equal," as Abraham Lincoln pointed out, and then said to be merely a dream, when Martin Luther King, Jr. said he had one--those truths remain the same even though the language gets watered down over the decades. We seem to be going in the wrong direction--but maybe not. It could be the expectations are higher now. I think maybe that's it. Otherwise we might fear the descending spiral of adjectives and descriptions that seem to be punctuated finally by a president saying "Stand back and stand by" to a bunch of so-called patriots yearning for a white world that actually never quite existed. 

I thank and credit Heather Cox Richardson for her idea which I co-opted for the first two examples, above. Her newsletter is quite good, although if you are a Republican, you probably couldn't stomach it. You can find it here by following this link. 

It's a hot day here in the Midwest, but not unseasonably so. Just a hot July day with a dew point hovering benignly somewhere just between OMG and WTF. We recently were deluged with lots and lots of rain, so that's a plus as the pace and rhythm of the fireworks picks up. Meanwhile, I'm trying to decide if I can trick a veterinarian into giving me some cat tranquilizers even if I don't have one. 

Nationalistic Waffle

 A couple of days ago I learned something about myself. A friend invited me to attend a Rotary Club meeting in which he was going to be installed as the new President for the coming year. I knew it was very important to him, and I've known this guy for many, many years (since 1972) so of course I attended. Also, free meal. But, anyhow . . . 

As an aside, really, the first thing I noticed is that Rotary is mostly for old people. I assume everyone there was some sort of Important Citizen or Business Owner, but it struck me that, in general, it was a bunch of old people and that I was not the oldest person there--something that happens less and less nowadays. 

A couple of women collared me and trapped me in a conversation about dogs, I think, or something. Pretty sure they were both hitting on me. One of them was 93 years old. The other one I think had reached that ageless plateau for women  somewhere between 60 and 80 years. That's an age bracket into which I fit squarely, but, what can I say? I don't want to talk about it. 

Retelling this reminds me that I was the only person there wearing a shirt and tie but no jacket. I thought it appropriate since the relative humidity was just north of 105%. The standard uniform for the men who were Important Citizens and/or Business Owners was slacks, shirt with open collar, sport jacket of some kind, no tie. What do I know?  I never pay attention to what other men are wearing, so when it matters, I never know what to wear. Truth be known, I doubt anyone gave a shit. 

The point of this post is coming around the bend. There was an opening prayer. I'm used to this. I stand with the others and don't move or look around while everyone listens to the head prayer guy up front say his prayer, and then I sit down when everyone else does. It's much like being a guest at a Catholic service. When in Rome, and just don't get caught standing when everyone else is sitting. Admittedly, it can get confusing. 

Then came the Pledge of Allegiance. This is what got me. I honestly cannot remember the last time that it was expected of me to join with the group in the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe school? I don't really know. But, as in the prayer, I stand when everyone else stands, but it felt so alien, I didn't raise my hand to my chest and I didn't recite the words that no product of American public schools could ever forget. I just stood there avoiding eye contact, and sat when everyone else sat. 

I was caught off guard. I could not now, if pressed, make a case for pledging allegiance to the American Flag or, for that matter, to the Republic for which it stands. What does "allegiance" mean, in this case? And what does it mean to pledge it? I just stood there thinking, fuck it, I pay my taxes and try not to break too many laws and I got my driver's license and freely acknowledge that driving is a privilege, not a right, and so on. I was going to say next that I know some secrets but nothing that would interest the Chinese, but if I did, I wouldn't sell them. But actually I don't think I know any secrets of any kind--that's just how boring my life is--BUT IF I DID, I certainly wouldn't sell them to the Chinese. 

That's all.  Mike drop.  Squeal. Slow exit stage left.