Ponderings and Musings

A couple of weeks ago I received a summons for jury duty in the mail. “Check the website after 3:30 PM the day before to see if your number comes up!”

Today is the day, my group number came up, and I am not pleased.

First of all, the letter’s composition, design, and general aesthetic makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong. I haven’t done anything wrong and I’m certainly not ready to be herded through some public building with a bunch of people I don’t know at the tail end of a worldwide pandemic. Especially in these uncertain times where people like blowing up public buildings and the like.

Second of all, with all the crap going on in the world, I really don’t want to hear a bunch of bloviating from lawyers as to why person X is guilty or not guilty. I don’t need any more bad news, I certainly don’t need to hear about something criminal, and I’m really doing my best to be a good member of society by not getting involved with the law. Why are you dragging me in?

I know, the American court system is amazing because of juries of my peers that can dole out of a fair sentence and I should feel honored to do my civic duty. Blah blah blah.

Honestly, I’d rather be drafted. At least then I’d get to shoot at something.

The folks at work occasionally share motivational tidbits to keep the workforce, erm, motivated. I found this mental health calendar interesting and I’ve decided to take a glance at it every day in the month of October. Perhaps it’ll keep the whirlwind going on in my brain a bit more shiny and a little less chaotic.

Unfortunately the links in the document were not shared. I’ll have to scout around for the original source material.

Many years ago Grandpa Country told me I should marry a rich, old broad or someone that can cook.

I went with someone that can cook. The finances are a private matter.

I don’t know this person. His slicked hair, mustache, and glasses caught my eye one night while I was watching a 1956 presentation on the wonders of Western Electric. He was the only one in the film with facial hair. Here he’s just a guy that’s working hard at one of Western Electric’s facilities. Yes, I find him attractive. Yes, my husband knows this.

It must have been hot in the facility because it appears he’s wearing a t-shirt while working. Many of the folks in the 1956 Western Electric film are dressed quite nice, especially when compared to 2022 standards, and this man is working in his t-shirt. He’s not the only one in his t-shirt, so perhaps it was part of a trend.

One of the takeaways from my upbringing was the importance of a good work ethic. At work today we had an all-hands call for our division. The presenter brought up an image of a bunch of animals drawn on top of each other; the first animal you saw indicated your personality. I saw a cat and that meant I was determined. I feel that’s accurate, I like getting things done and having a purpose. These traits are a strong contributor to my framework for a work ethic. I believe we should contribute more than we take from society. Working hard is important to me. I’ll have time to relax when I retire in a few years, and even though I probably won’t stop working completely.

I wonder about the backstory of the gentleman in the screenshot. Was he married? Did he have kids? Did he work for Western Electric his whole life?

It appears he had a very strong work ethic. I hope he was happy with what he achieved.

Youtube recommended this video to me. I don’t know why, but I can tell you that I could never live in a space this small. It’s not because I have a lot of stuff (though I do), it’s because I could never live in a space the size of a freight elevator. It’s way too close quarters for my liking.

I try to walk every day (when the weather cooperates). I’m not walking nearly as much as I did when we lived in Chicago, and during the desert summer it’s best to walk late in the evening around sunset, but I still try to get at least three miles in a day. As the weather cools down I’ll start riding my bike again.

I’m not pleased with my weight at the moment and walking does not seem to be helping the situation. I think I live with too many good cooks. I need to start eating in “Leave It To Beaver” portions. I also need to know when to ask to be excused from the table.

I was looking at myself in the mirror, getting ready for the day. The sun was coming in the large bathroom window and causing the gray hair in its typical male pattern baldness to glisten just a bit. After shaving my head for over two decades I’ve started just keeping it close cropped to a very, very short buzz. No comb over for me, but I’ve earned the gray and I should just let it do it’s thing. Subtly.

We cancelled our Sirius/XM radio subscription a couple of weeks ago and I’ve started listening to the local radio stations here in Tucson. They’re not bad, but they’re pretty cookie cutter, like most contemporary radio stations across the United States. The programming is bland, boring, and predictable. As a guy that used to work in radio I know there’s a lot more to the history of pop music in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s than what’s played on commercial radio stations today. And since we don’t have Yacht Rock Radio from Sirius/XM anymore, I was happy to find I Heart Radio’s equivalent available in Apple Music.

So to go with the gray buzzed hair on the sides and back of my head, I’m listening to Yacht Rock Radio again. To complete the look I’ve been wearing my dock siders in casual situations.

Middle age rocks.

Back in the mid 1990s I was working for a small company. The younger son of the owner of the company had just joined the workforce and during a lunch break mentioned that he was happy our Kmart was open, since it was the only Kmart left in the nation.

Never mind there was a Kmart having a grand re-opening about 15 miles away because it had been dubbed a “Big K” during that phase of idiocy the Kmart Corporation engaged in during that era.

Since the son didn’t really travel outside of the small city, he was operating on limited information, but because of his overwhelming confidence, we spoke with such authority that he’d probably try to sell a surf board to an Eskimo.

It comes as little surprise that I recently ran across one of his comments to a post from a mutual acquaintance on Facebook back in the early days of the pandemic and he was using that confidence to push the whole “this is a plot from China” dialog. I made sure to sever ties with anyone that was part of that conversation.

I got to thinking about this today because there’s so. many. experts. now on the internet that are experts about everything. Twitter is especially notorious for this; tech guru Xeni Jardin often tweets things like, “hello to our newly minted experts on FBI masters” or “hello to our newly minted experts on solar panels in the dark” and she’s absolutely right. Everyone gets a little Google going and they think they know it all.

By the way, there’s a handful of Kmart stores still open across the country, and it’s been well over 20 years since this conversation about our local store back in the mid 1990s.

There seems to be a trend of taboo vulnerability if you begin an Internet conversation with “I think…” or “Maybe,…”. Everyone speaks with such authority when they don’t really know what they think they know. Look, when I was young, I might have done this on hundreds of situations, but by my early 20s I had figured out I was not an authority on everything and quite frankly I was humbled by the experience. It’s helped me keep my perspective on the chaos that we call the 21st century.

I have a few Twitter accounts over there in the land of chaotic dialog. I’ve pretty much abandoned the account I consider my “generic account” where I’ll talk about anything and everything, because I don’t really have much to contribute and all the screaming and shouting and use of the caps lock key and the exclamation points and the pearl clutching quite frankly gives me gas and a migraine. I am venturing into my “professional account” again, which focuses on my aviation and day job topics. If I want to shout into the ether about the idiocy of politics or whatever, BevMo! is just down the street and I can drink a beer or something to calm down.

No one is an expert in everything. Not everyone is an expert in something. As I mention in my active Twitter profile, “tweet gently”.

Speak gently. Be humble. Listen. You might live to be an old guy like me.

One of my favorite scenes in the later seasons of “Bewitched” takes place at the beginning of season seven.

During the hiatus between seasons six and seven, much of the “Bewitched” had burned down in a fire. Most everything had to be rebuilt, and to keep production moving, six or so shows were filmed on location in Salem, Mass. When the sets were rebuilt, a couple of teaser episodes were filmed on the new set, and these episodes centered around whether Darrin should accompany Samantha to Salem for the Witches’ Convention. Samantha?s decision enrages High Priestess Hepzibah, who pops in to create chaos for the Stephens.

Hepzibah was played by Jane Connell, a Broadway actress who had played a few other parts on the series over the years and also appeared here and there in television shows of the time. She also played Gooch in the 1974 film version of “Mame” starring Lucille Ball. I’ve always enjoyed the intensity Mrs. Connell uses to portray Hepzibah, and I was surprised to learn that she was only in her mid 40s when she played the role.

I found an interview with Jane Connell from 1985 on YouTube, and she’s definitely a character actress, looking and sounding like none of the roles she played on “Bewitched”. I enjoy these old interviews, and I enjoyed her look into Broadway and her role at the time in the mid 1980s.