Truman always likes to be nearby, but not on you or snuggled up to you. It’s just his way.
J.P.
Lessons.
Last night we watched the the season two finale of “The Morning Show” on Apple TV+. If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s available on Apple TV+, stars Jennifer Anniston and Reese Witherspoon, and chronicles what happens behind the scenes of a television network, and its flagship morning show, when one of the hosts are accused of sexual allegations, a la Matt Lauer.
We both found season one quite engaging and were excited when season two came out a couple of months ago. Apple TV+ has released the episodes on a weekly basis and last night the finale was released to the masses.
I’ll try to avoid spoilers best I can and will most likely speak in generalizations. However, you have been warned.
This is your last warning. (My read more widget isn’t working so this is the best I can do).
Season two takes place in the six or so weeks leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. We relive the “what is social distancing?” comments and “I don’t even know what contract tracing means!” exclamations all over again. This really bothered me through the entire season, not because I didn’t find it engaging, but because I really didn’t feel the need to relive the entire COVID experience again. I don’t know if I share this feeling with my fellow citizens, but the pandemic has been a terrible time for everyone I know and reliving the experience again for “entertainment purposes” was very hard for me. Maybe it didn’t bother others. I don’t know.
Season two also leans pretty heavily on “cancel culture” and I found the way the show tackles the subject to be spot on. Society, and American society in general, seems over obsessed with a lot of things that lead to “cancel culture” and of course it’s all fueled by social media. All the bad things that happen and are reported by social media have been happening for a very long time. All the fringe lunatics and the social justice warriors, and all of that have always been there. Social media has emboldened these groups and there’s a scene early in the season where one of the “villains” is approached and loudly humiliated in public for their past transgressions even though they were just sitting there drinking a cup of coffee. The aggression depicted as a result of social media anonymity and the desire to become Tik-Tok famous is very accurately portrayed, and it made me sad. I still enjoyed the way the show depicted the fallout of this type of behavior.
The one thing that really stuck out to me didn’t actually happen on the show, but as a result of watching the show. As we relived the pandemic through entertainment, it really struck me how much society did not learn from going through this pandemic together. By the way, I know we like to act like the pandemic is over, but it’s not. It’s under control but it’s far from being over. Too many folks are dying from COVID-19 on a daily basis, whether through circumstance or willful ignorance or a combination of both.
The thing we didn’t learn from the pandemic is that we need to adapt to a changing world to survive. We had the opportunity to come together, calm down on the vapid aggressiveness to one another, and take stock in what’s important and what is frivolous. As a whole, the world, and American society in particular, completely missed this point and continues to do anything they can to be loud, be aggressive, be tribal, and “be normal”. Normal before the pandemic wasn’t great. It wasn’t even that good. We had the opportunity to hit the reset button and we blew it. “The Morning Show” kind of portrays that in the season two finale, but it’ll go over the heads of most.
While this season was uneven and felt scattered (it was filmed during the pandemic so I’m sure that contributed to the effort) I still recommend it. B+
Meditation.
Mike and Chris have built some Alexa automation routines to turn the pool room into a meditative space. We simply tell Alexa we’d like to meditate, and the colors go to a calming blue/green, the heat comes on to keep the space warm, and nature sounds play from the speakers sprinkled about the room.
I’m still not jumping in the pool until my swimming “allergy” is figured out, plus I’m still feeling under the weather, but it was beautiful to spend time with the family in the calmness after the work week came to an end.
Nope.
How can I sit here and type about the wonders of the latest ABBA album or the corporate greed around the latest season of “Star Trek: Discovery” and its distribution or any other trivial thing in my life when a Wisconsin jury decides a man killing another man is not guilty of all charges?
I don’t recognize the United States of America anymore. I really don’t.
Time Passes.
In fourth grade I was the only student in Room 202 to be selected for the new “Enrichment” program at our elementary school. Funded by the local BOCES*, “Enrichment” gave select students considered “gifted” the opportunity for educational pursuits outside the traditional classroom paradigm. As described in a newspaper article from back in the day…
“… this program is aimed at meeting some of the special education needs of the school’s more gifted students. One of the more pressing of these needs is that of providing stimulation for the “gifted” child to pursue his or her school learning experiences beyond the limits of the regular classroom curriculum. … Placement is made on the basis of scores achieved on a (locally developed battery of tests. Exceptional social, intellectual, psycho-motor and creative development are among the personal attributes which the tests are designed to identify”.
The Pulaski Democrat, May 2, 1979.
I remember my mom going to the school for a parents’ meeting to discuss the new program, having concerns of me being the only one in Room 202 that was eligible, and ultimately telling me I would be participating in this new program. I can vividly remember my participation in grades four and five, by grade six the funding disappeared and we no longer attended “Enrichment”. The program kept me sane as a student, especially in fifth grade. It was that year that a normally second grade teacher taught fifth grade for the first time and the school decided to mix things up when it came to deciding who would be in what classes. This fifth grade class contained many of that year’s instigators, and it was decided to put five or six of the smarter kids in the class to provide balance for the classroom experience. The experiment was ultimately a failure, I learned what it was like to be bullied for being somewhat intelligent and very different, professional psychologists were brought in to help get the class under control, and it was the very first time I had seen a teacher walk into a closet and shut the door behind her. That was in Room 209, and luckily, the “Enrichment” room was across the hall in Room 210 and the teacher would encourage those of us in the program to go across the hall when things were getting crazy.
This was also the time when it was starting to click even more that I liked boys in the way that I was suppose to like girls and there was one teacher that really piqued my interest, and that was the Enrichment teacher. He was in the building only a few days a week, as he also conducted the BOCES-funded program at neighboring schools. I remember him being a super-nice guy, with a big, red, bushy beard, a very pleasant demeanor, and to a fifth grade boy that was starting to like other boys, super cute. One day he came in clean shaven and I still found him super cute, it didn’t change his demeanor at all, he just looked different, and then he grew a mustache within a month. I last saw him when I was in high school, he was attending a gathering of some sort with the special education teacher and other teachers from the county. He had the big beard again, gave me a hearty hello, and shook my hand. Honestly, my heart melted again, I felt my teenage hormones kick in, and I entertained that memory of him later that night.
I was bored the other night and decided to Google the teacher’s name to see what he was up to. I don’t know why he crossed my mind, but I had remembered him being a couple years younger than my folks and that he was originally from the western part of the state.
He passed away this past December. No photo, no family mentioned, and very little other than his birth date and where that happened, the date he passed, and the funeral director handling the arrangements. No mention of spouse or children, what he was doing, where he was doing it, just that he passed and handled by a funeral parlor.
This made me a little sad.
As I grow older I sometimes wonder if we’re suppose to thank people in our past for the joy they brought to our life or apologize for something we did when we were stupid and then realized it was stupid when we were smarter. Is this suppose to be part of this thing we call life? I’m sure my Enrichment teacher was very private about his life, obviously his obituary points to this, so I share these thoughts here.
Thank you, Mr. Rayburn, for being a steadying force in a tumultuous fifth grade experience by just being there in Room 210. Thanks for being my first crush. Rest In Peace.
*BOCES stands for Board Of Cooperative Educational Services. This is a New York State Educational program providing shared educational services for a region. When I was in school it was generally by county, since then the regions have become larger and the services more centralized.
Uneven.
The unevenness of the week continues. I’m feeling the effects of a head cold, undoubtedly contracted during a visit back east, and I feel the need to sleep. I was scheduled to fly tonight and I felt well enough to accomplish the flight, though I wasn’t at the top of my game. I seriously considered calling off the flight, but I kept myself together long enough to practice a few approaches to the airport under instrument simulation.
I plan on feeling better for next week’s lesson.
I have a goal of completing a couple of the ratings in my aviation plan by the end of 2022. And I plan on doing it safely and confidently. My most conservative decisions are around my thoughts as a pilot, and it took some self inventory to decide to fly tonight. I’m glad I did.
Now I just want to go to bed.
Reset.
My mood has been a little uneven this week. The weight of the world, the chaos of work, the approaching holiday season; all these things can have an impact on my mental state and I should work to not let things bother me. Plus, the rash from my sudden “pool allergy” is subsiding but is still a little itchy. So much to scratch.
In the grand scheme of things I am most fortunate. I must remember this. But all of these concerns melt away when Mother Nature shares her beauty, desert style, with us. Tonight’s sunset was most rewarding, comforting, and centering.
My mood is now much better.
Allergy.
So my body has decided it’s allergic to the pool. A month ago or so I went swimming and developed a rash all over the swimmy parts the next day. I had showered after swimming, I don’t have particularly dry skin, but I was itchy and it quickly subsided. I went swimming again and the rash came back. I waited a week, tried again, rash returned. I waited 15 days, went swimming for 30 minutes, showering before and after swimming, and I’m covered in a rash again. I woke up in the middle of the night on Saturday and it felt like my skin was on fire.
We’ve made no change whatsoever to the way the pool is maintained. Chris and Mike do an impeccable job of keeping chemicals in balance, bacteria at bay, and the water clear. Our pool looks gorgeous. Everything tests beautifully.
I just break out in a rash after swimming. I spent many summers swimming in the Great Lakes 10 or so miles from a nuclear power plant. No issues. I swam in seaweed, dead fish, and god knows what else. I swim in the cleanest pool I’ve seen in a years and I develop an allergy.
And that’s how life works.
November.
It’s hard for me to understand that it’s less than two weeks to Thanksgiving here in the states. We passed a house with Christmas lights hanging from its edges. It looked festive.
We are having record heat here in Tucson. High temperatures have been in the mid to high 80s for the past couple of days. It’s suppose to cool down by next weekend. The average temperature is in the upper 70s.
That’s still quite warm for this relocated northern boy.
We haven’t figured out how we’re going to decorate for the holidays yet. I’ve been joking that our neighborhood is probably an all white Christmas lights kind of place, so we’re going to wait to see what the neighbors do before we string up the Merry Midget lights.
I’m still looking forward to turkey dinner. Even if we eat it outside.
