Ponderings and Musings

Early this morning my phone chimed with an alert usually reserved for “Breaking News”. I set this up a while ago. The chime has sounded for earthquakes, tsunami warnings, mass shootings, things that are happening in the world that can be quite concerning. This morning, the Breaking News was that Time Magazine had announced their Person of the Year for 2016.

Abuse of “Breaking News” notifications results in the deletion of that app (name intentionally withheld) and my ignoring of anything further spewed from that “news organization”. It’s almost as bad as talking about the lives of the Kardashians on Twitter. Instant deletion in my book.

Time Magazine has named President-elect (PEOTUS) Trump as their Person of the Year.

The caption under Mr. Trump’s name is “President of the Divided States of America”.

At first I was angry that Time was pandering to PEOTUS. I felt like they were trying to get in good graces for his upcoming dictatorship Presidency. Mr. Trump has mentioned, in a backhanded way, that he doesn’t like the media and his actions have historically indicated that he enjoys punishing journalists. This Breaking News announcement felt like an olive leaf of sorts.

But then I looked closely at the photo.

First of all, this is not a flattering portrait of the President-elect. He looks menacing. The lighting is dark. The shadows are stark. Mr. Trump’s head is placed squarely under the “M” in TIME. The first thing I saw was a pair of horns. All that was missing was a graffiti quality to the lettering. There’s also the “President of the Divided States of America” byline.

This is not a flattering cover. This is a portrait of a man who sees himself as Big Brother. And I’m not talking about Julie Chen.

Upon further study and reading on the Internet, I began to wonder if the chair featured in this photo was a reproduction of a chair used 78 years for a similar Time magazine cover.

It was then that I remained irked by the abuse of a “Breaking News” alert for this announcement but my displeasure about Mr. Trump being named Person of the Year seemed to be not so bad. Time stroked the PEOTUS’s ego, albeit in a backhanded way, but they deftly conveyed the current mood of the nation. We are a divided nation. Many of us do feel that we have entered dark times. Many feel that Trump has no understanding of the role of President and that he has confuses it with a dictator-like role. 

Honestly, if anyone has impacted the United States in this seemingly dismal year of 2016, it would be Trump. So now when I see this cover being, er, trumpeted across the web, newsstands and television, I smirk a little bit. Kind of like when this crazy eyes photo was featured a few years ago.

We are in for some crazy times in these here Divided States of America. We might as well make the best of the situation and smirk while we can.

It’ll keep us from becoming weeping alcoholics.

During our travels today Earl and I wandered around the quaint downtown of Lambertville, New Jersey. I walked through a large antique and such type of store (though the name escapes me at the moment). The owners were out on the front sidewalk having some sort of lover’s/owner’s quarrel/cat fight. It was a bit of a spectacle.

I went inside and looked around and found a couple of items of interest. I didn’t buy anything but I enjoyed the memories.

When I was a teenager, my grandmother used to type up all of the correspondence and the billing statements for the family business on a manual typewriter. In the early 1980s her typewriter was upgraded to an electric Smith-Corona typewriter (though it still had a manual carriage return).  At the time I brought home the RC Allen manual typewriter and in 1986 I typed a couple of term papers on the old manual typewriter. I guess I was hipster several decades before it was fashionable to be hipster.  The RC Allen typewriter in question looked exactly like this.

While walking around the antiques and such store, I found a couple of ceramic Christmas trees that were identical to the one I inherited from Grandma City. I know that my uncle’s first wife painted the tree for my grandmother, so this must have been some sort of ceramic kit. I found one tree the same color as the one I have, another with white paint representing snow on the branches, though it was the same ceramic tree mold. The trees in question are in the photo below are the one in the middle with the blue star  and the one in the lower right hand corner with the red star.

 
I was also excited to see a genuine 50s or early 60s silver tinsel Christmas tree. If our next house is of the proper vintage I plan on picking up one of these trees for the season.

I really like the village area of Lambertville, New Jersey. It doesn’t fit anything that I picture to represent New Jersey, though the accent is the same. It’s always amazing to me that the native accent seems to be considerably different from what’s heard just 30 miles away in Bucks County, Pa.

Earl and I climbed to the top of Bowman’s Hill Tower along the Delaware River today.

The elevator was out of service so we made the climb along the narrow, winding staircase.

The view from the top was quite impressive.  Not a bad jaunt for $6.00 a person.

My Dad passed away five years ago today. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a half decade since he passed during his last flight, the second flight in his second homebuilt airplane. He was test flying his Wittman Tailwind W-10 when he crashed on the left downwind to Runway 33 at KFZY Oswego County. I’ve flown over the spot many times. I think of him more often than that.

I consider myself a very lucky man to have grown up around airplanes. My dad earned his pilot license when I was still in elementary school so I spent many hours with him in the right seat of a Cessna or a Piper Tomahawk and later in the backseat of the Piper J-5A he restored. As an adult I flew with him a few times in his homebuilt Acrosport II. That’s the airplane in the pictures on this blog post. Passengers ride up front in that airplane. My first blog post was about flying with Dad in the Acrosport II.

I once asked my Dad why he was building a second airplane, after having restored the J-5A and later building the Acrosport II from scratch. He told me that he liked the Acrosport but flying it was sometimes like driving a car with the hood open. He wanted more visibility.

I had always wanted to be a pilot but kept putting it off while he was still alive. If I wanted to fly I could just go with him. It was while standing in line at the funeral home, hugging visitors as we exchanged pleasantries, that I realized I would not be able to fly in a small airplane again unless I continued the family tradition and became a private pilot. I could not imagine being earthbound for the rest of my life.

Once I became a private pilot I was able to fully understand what happened five years ago today. Carb icing resulting engine issues at pattern altitude, so he most likely stalled into a spin. Having less than one hour in a brand new experimental airplane his familiarity with how the airplane would handle in a stall would be cursory at best. Knowing my dad he read everything he probably could have on the subject but I don’t think he ever flew another W-10 before flying the one he built. His death probably made me a more conservative pilot but that’s not a bad thing; it’s my goal to be a very old pilot.

My dad was my inspiration. You could always tell what he was thinking when he was gazing skyward. Even though he has passed on, he still inspires me everyday.

Earl and I have been meandering out in the Jeep today. At this time of year I enjoy the challenge of following roads that say “Seasonal Use Only / Road Not Maintained Nov. 1 through April 1”.  These roads are fun to drive in a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.

We found ourselves at Selkirk Shores State Park along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. This state park is about 10 miles or so from the house I grew up in. We drove by the old house. It’s not really that old; my dad built it and we moved in for my first day of Fourth Grade in 1977. The new owners of the property are being very kind to it. I’m happy to see life thriving in what I used to call home.

Having grown up pretty close to the Great Lakes, I find myself longing to hear the crashing of the waves, even when it’s 40ºF. Earl is a good sport; we walked out on the pier and took some photos. In the distance you can see Nine Mile Point, home to three nuclear power plants. Two of those plants have been active for nearly my entire life and I don’t glow in the dark. Nuclear power doesn’t scare me.

We are now meandering around in the outskirts of the city of Syracuse. We have stopped for a Starbucks break, as we don’t have Starbucks at home and we like to indulge once in a while. After this blog entry and the completion of our treat, we shall continue our meandering with a target of getting home some time tonight. We are only 45 miles from home but it might take us several hours to get there.

Meandering is good for the soul.

I love four wheel drive. 

I’ve been using my Facebook account on a regular basis for the past couple of weeks, since shortly before the travesty we amusingly call “Election Day”. I started out by going back to read a couple of geek and flight oriented groups that are housed within the confines of the Facebook platform. I smile every time I see a pilot share photos of their first solo flight. I read about the experiences of other pilots. I talk with folks that also own a Piper Cherokee. I also keep up with family and friends that I haven’t seen in a long while. Unfortunately I fell into the pits of Facebook hell and got caught up in the whirlwind of disinformation, fake news and the like the Facebook is becoming quite famous for.

The truth of the matter is that I know better. As a fairly well-educated tech guy, I know that Facebook tracks every movement I make on the web. Facebook knows every time I search for something and adds that information to my profile. The paranoid side of me believes that Facebook is somehow _hearing_ my conversations because I’ve had a couple of suggestions come up in the FB sidebar after Earl and I have had a conversation about a product, but I’m still trying to figure out if that’s possible or not. Facebook is a very dangerous platform for many reasons, yet I still wade in the acidic waters, clinging onto some shred of hope that it doesn’t rot me away completely.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed that Facebook has significantly pared down the posts that I see from friends and family. The number of people showing up on my timeline has been whittled down considerably. On more than one occasion, while scanning through my Facebook timeline, I’ve thought to myself, “It’s funny I haven’t seen a post from X in the past few days.”  I’ll then search up their name and see that they’ve been posting right along like they always have, Facebook just didn’t feel it was necessary to share that information with me. Instead, I’ve been barraged with posts from people that I’ve shared a hearty banter with (usually about the “election”), as if to magnify that particular person’s point of view in lieu of just presenting me with a timeline.

When a timeline is skewed with algorithms, it’s not a timeline. It’s propaganda.  Instagram, owned by Facebook, is notorious for this. I keep seeing the same photos from the same six people instead of the 300 or so that I follow on Instagram. It makes me crazy. It’s not genuine. There’s nothing genuine about anything owned by Facebook. It’s not information, it’s manipulation.

I keep saying, and blogging, that I’m just going to share more right here on my blog and less in the Facebook arena, but the issue with that approach is that when I want to get an important point across, such as the fallout from the recent “election” (yes, I’m annoying with the rabbit gestures around the word election, which should give you an indication as to how much I believe it was truly an election reflecting the will of the people), the people I want to reach are comfortable inside the Facebook echo chamber and the folks I want to target with my voice aren’t going to hear what I want to share. 

Unfortunately I don’t have an answer for this. I’m concerned that Facebook isn’t going to go the way of MySpace. A reader on Medium suggested that Facebook be treated like a public utility and subject to the same governmental oversight as the other utilities (power, water, telecom) in the United States. While it’s questionable that any utility will still be subjected to any oversight after we somehow survive the next four years as a cohesive country, the idea of Facebook being considered a “utility” is horrifying to me.

It is really my hope that the country will wake up from some drug induced trip and come back to its senses: in the way we think, the way we act, the way we use tech, the way we think our society should be going, all of it. My gut tells me that this is the new normal. I didn’t think it was possible for us to head in the direction of “Idiocracy” but I’ve been a wrong about a lot of things over the years and I’m afraid this is one of them. To mix movie metaphors, (I was going to paste a quote from “Angels in America” here but Apple’s iOS 10 won’t let me do that, so I’ll paraphrase), “Before life becomes merely impossible, it will be, for a long time, completely unbearable.”

I think Facebook is leading the charge into the unbearable realm.

In 1939, as part of the Federal Works Administration projects that were going on at the time, a new school was built in my hometown. The school housed grades Kindergarten through 12, with a student population of under 1,000. The facility was state of the art, built with art deco touches and made use of some amazing architectural decisions, including marble in the lobby, an impressive staircase and gorgeous wood work in common areas such as the library, principal’s office and the like. The building was annexed in 1956 with every effort to maintain the architectural integrity of the original building in the addition. Aside from slight changes in then pattern in the terrazzo floor in the hallways, the annex is a natural extension of the building.

I’ve mentioned before that my interest in synchronized time, which is part of a keen interest in “systems” (roads, airports, power lines, computer networks, telephones, etc.), was started in that art deco building built in 1939 when I discovered that all the clocks were connected together, despite the fact that while most were square and part of a wooden case with a speaker, others were round and some were more modern looking (in the annex). The clock system collection in our home marches on today, despite the fact that all of the clocks were discarded by school districts as being outdated and based on old technology.

Master bathroom clock from 1940

Having these clocks wired through the house, all advancing on the minute with a tick-tick in unison, can be a little odd for folks that visit and aren’t used to the noise. The clocks in the bedroom areas are the quietest ones we own but they are still quite audible. When I mention that I might swap out the clock in the master bedroom with a quieter one Earl talks me out of it, stating the he can’t sleep with the minute impulse sound. When guests visit for an overnight stay I usually disconnect the clock in the spare bedroom.

Master bedroom clock from the early 1920s

The simple but persistent technology in these clocks, technology dating back the 1880s, reminds me of a time when the United States took pride in its manufacturing prowess. “Back in the day” we had a lot of quality goods made right here at home. Solid, well-crafted, reliable things that would last a long time. Shiny and new didn’t matter; sturdy and long-lasting were the goals in the early to mid 20th century. We made things to last. We took pride in our work.

Guest bedroom clock from 1939

In 1969, the student population out grew the school building and its annex and a new high school was built on the other side of town. The new high school was built to modern specifications. There was no marble, no grand staircase. Classroom walls were painted over cinderblocks. Large embossed numerals denoting room number were nowhere to be found; numbers were painted on molding around the door. The clocks, while tick-ticking once a minute, were made by a different company, oddly placed in some rooms and not as reliable. The clocks in the 1969 building failed before the clocks in the 1939 building did. There was no pattern on the hallway floor as there was no terrazzo to be found. The school was adequate and met the expectations of the populace in the 1960s. When I went to that high school 20 years later there were leaks in the ceiling on the second floor. The stage lighting panel in the auditorium caught fire during a production of “South Pacific” but it was quickly extinguished. The auditorium chairs were replaced not long after I graduated in 1986. The whole building just felt more “plastic”.

Jamie’s bedroom clock from 1941

When these clocks wired throughout the house tick-tick to indicate the passage of another minute, I’m occasionally reminded of the days of old when the country seemed to be a little more solid. Admittedly, societal norms were not kind to society as whole but forward progress was inching ahead. Presidents acted presidential, there seemed to be a general sense of local community and our country made things. Solid things. Things that would stand the test of time.

I’ve lain awake at night for the majority of this month, the tick-tick of time moving on in the background, wondering what lies ahead for the country. I’ve tried to muster up a positive outlook. I look for the brightness but my dreams when I sleep are plagued with darkness. The future feels plastic. The foundation feels crumbled. Past changes in presidents have felt like that change in the pattern in the hallway terrazzo. The hallway is still there and the pattern is similar but familiar. I feel like the hallway has come to an end and no one has built a staircase to go to another level.

But time continues to march on.