How different is the modern world to the one you grew up in?

This was a question I was A2A on Quora.  For those who are not in the know, A2A means Asked to Answer, as in someone feels you are an expert in this field.

Here are some things I can think of just off the cuff:

• Banking
• Mail
• Television
• Radio
• Music
• Telephones

Banking:  It wasn’t that long ago that you had to go to a bank to deposit your paycheck and withdraw money from your account. Direct Deposit wasn’t a thing and ATMs were just getting started. You were hard-pressed to find a bank open on Sunday and if you did, it had very limited hours.

Mail:  Before email, instant chat and whatever the kiddos are using this these days, to send a message to a friend in another city or even across town, you had to find a stamp, an envelope, and their snail mail address. If you were lucky and the stars aligned, you might send a letter out on Monday and get a response by Saturday.  But usually, it was longer because we all have other things going on and it took time to find that damn stamp.

Television:  My earliest recollection of TVs is that while most families had at least one, they cost more if you wanted color and or larger size. Remotes were a luxury and you were dependent on the OTA signal and schedule. If you were not home at 3 pm to watch Your Show, you missed it. VCRs didn’t become affordable until the late 80s, early 90s.

Radio:  If you lived in a major metropolitan area, you had the good fortune of having multiple sucky radio stations to choose from. If your taste in music was too nuanced to be captured by the Oldies Station, the Rock Station, The Pop Station, maybe the local college would have some bandwidth at the end of the dial between 10 and 2 am.

Music:  Back in the day, if you wanted a copy of a song, you had two choices.  Wait for your local radio station to play it and hope the DeeJay didn’t talk over the intro or exit of the song because you were going to (illegally) record it on your cassette recorder.  Or you could buy the entire album just for that one song.  There were attempts at releasing mini albums on specific media but those cost almost as much as the entire fucking album so what was the point.

Telephone: Phone calls use to cost a bundle, even local ones. Sure some small towns let you chat with the other townies for free but anyone you wanted to talk to was long distance and it was pricey. I remember calling some people and sort of hoping their answering machine would pick up so they would have to call me back on their dime. Sometimes they did, some times they didn’t. Or they got my machine and it was a game of Hot Potato Phone Bill Tag.

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All I could remember was Goodbye Doesn’t Mean This has to be The End

At the end of the movie Oh Heavenly Dog, this song plays at the end, during the credit roll. I could never figure out what the name of the song was.  I only ever watched it on free OTA TV (because I’ve never paid for cable) and they cut the credits before getting to the song list.  Granted, the last time I watched that movie was before the Internet was a thing.  Over the years I have made halfhearted attempts to figure it out.

All I could really remember were two lines from the song:

Goodbye doesn’t mean this has to be the end
When we return to paradise

Unfortunately, I was looking for a song called “Goodbye doesn’t mean this has to be the end” which is part of the repeating stanza (we’re back to that I don’t know the parts of songs thing again).

When in fact the song is called Return to Paradise.  You’d think I would have found it that way since that was another of the few lines I remembered.  but the internet was young when I first attempted to search for this and I seem to only make the attempt once a decade.

I suspect the last time I tried to google this song, I came across the Elton John video linked here, but didn’t recognize the song.  In the movie the song is much fuller and maybe sped up a bit. So I probably played a few seconds of the song, didn’t recognize it and didn’t stick around to hear the stanza.  Believe it or not, Lyrics to every song out there is more recent than you think.  then got distracted by cat videos.  Luckily IMDB is a little more robust these days.

And let’s talk about those lyrics for a minute.  Man are they Power.  Full.  The song is not just about have to leave a tropical paradise for the cold weather back home.  It is talking about Shagri-la, Xanadu and El Dorado all rolled into one.

I’m heading homeward
Leaving sunshine and heading for rain
But we’ll return to paradise again

I feel like I have just solved another Mystery of Life.

Free Fun Friday is where I like to feature a video that has gone viral or is otherwise interesting. It started as a way to make a quick blog entry so that I wouldn’t go too long between post for my readers. Now it’s sort of evolved as a way to stretch my writing muscles and flex my creativity neural pathways.

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Music is the Ultimate Time Machine: Book of Love’s Witchcraft

It’s really cool listening to an old song and noticing something that you’ve never noticed before. Hat tip to Nina from You Know Neen for the headline idea.

Recently, I added 90s Techno Tunes to my Spotify Playlists and have been listening to some old school synthpop while running. I discovered a reference to Dark Shadows in a Book of Love song called Witchcraft.

In the second what do you call it, stanza? Refrain? I was not a music major. Anyway in the second set of repeating lyrics there’s a couple of lines:

Angelique takes Barnabas
From Josette

Before the Johnny Depp version, there was a soap opera called Dark Shadows in the 70s. As a kid, I just thought it was a pretty cool show about a vampire, but apparently there was a story arc too.

This is the part of the post where I put in a lot of transitional stuff that ties everything together nicely and earns me a Nobel Prize in Blogging.  Okay here goes nothing.

Listening to old songs from my early 20s brings back memories of a simpler time that didn’t seem so simple at the time.  We use to dance to Book of Love, Erasure, Yaz and other pop music alternative bands at places like The Octagon and Artful Dodger.  Usually I was the extra wheel since I was always Terminally Single and the bouncer nicknamed me Macaulay Culkin because I always went home alone. But this is Free Fun Friday so only light thoughts today.

Sometimes going down a rabbit hole is a good thing.

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Facebook Take a Break Feature puts friendships on Life Support

It’s not okay if we agree to disagree on this one

The other night a friend from my College Years posted something on Facebook that could be perceived as racist, if read in a certain light.  Specifically, any light bright enough to read her status post in.

It would be easy to unfriend her and not look back.  In fact, since I am trying to trim down my Facebook friends list, I may one day unfriend her completely.  But for the moment, I decided to use the Take a Break feature instead.

Facebook has a “new” feature called Take a Break.  As far as I can tell this is a more nuanced setting than simply hiding someone and obviously less severe than unfriending or blocking them.  It also appears to be meant for people who were in more intimate relationships that have now cooled but not completely diminished.

In the early years, Facebook had a little known setting called See less of/See More of.   It wasn’t easy to find and I don’t know if many people used it.  The setting has long since been deprecated but I suspect that if you implemented it, the affects are still in use.

The HIDE feature hides the person in question from your feed, but I suspect it also hides you from theirs.  This could be an unintended tell that you hide them when they suddenly stop seeing your cat video posts.

The Take A Break feature lets you chose if you want the “break” to be mutual or one sided.  Apparently you can hide your feed from them, but still see their posts; or vice versa.  I call this last one the narcissistic option.

This is the part where I justify not unfriending my little racist friend.  I really don’t have a good reason other than nostalgia or loyalty for keeping her around.  While I have not talked to this person IRL in decades, I am fond of the time we spent together in a sleepy little backwater college town.  I don’t think she realizes her racism overprivilege and I like to think that by staying connected to her, somehow I may influence her to reevaluate her outlook at social issues and inequality in America.  Now who’s being narcissistic.

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These letters have been in a shoe box for over 25 years. Find out what I’m going to do with them

Back in the day, people wrote one another because phone calls were expensive, especially if they were long distance.  I have this box of old snail mail

Treasure Trove, junk mail, it’s a fine line

letters from my college days and shortly thereafter.  A treasure trove of envelopes of multitudes colors and sizes, stamps of all varieties, and postmarks from exotic places such as Kirksville, Missouri.  Yes, I saved them all, sentimental fool that I am.

I tend to hold on to things too long. Old memories, mementos and more than a few grudges.  I’ve been holding onto these letters for decades, moving them from home to home but never looking at them.  So I figured the time has come to deal with them once and for all.

I thought I could take a quick, first pass through them and cull the less meaningful, superficial ones.  They cannot all be gems.

This proved harder than I thought because often within the contents of a typical boring letter are nuggets of goodness. I see things that I missed, undervalued or outright ignored the first time.

The Case for Getting Rid of It

You should only hang onto old memories, and their physical artifacts, for two reasons. One, they provide some warm fuzzies that elevate your mood. Two, they remind you of what to do or not to do when life throws you in that situation again.

These letters meant something to me decades ago. Leaving NMSU back in my college years was traumatic for me.  I had a good group of friends.  I was doing okay academically and repairing the damage to my GPA that my clueless freshmen self-inflicted.

Alas, I had to leave because of finances and for years I tried to get back to Planet Kirksville and the life I had to leave behind.  I would visit Kirksville and later St Louis, even considering relocating there to be with my college friends.

I spent a lot of my 20s struggling because I didn’t have the support structure here that I had there (or thought I had there).  I spent a lot of time and energy holding onto something that didn’t exist anymore and probably didn’t really exist in the first place.  And had I been able to let go sooner, I probably would have had a better 90s and 2000s.  It wasn’t until I built something solid here that I was finally able to let go.

I saved these letters because I figured I might read them in my old age and enjoy some warm memories. But honestly, if I have to read these to have warm memories when I’m nearly 80, my life didn’t turn out so well.

The Case for Keeping Some of It 

Back then, they only duct tape the important meaningful letters

I googled what do to with old letters and surprisingly half a dozen articles appeared with that title (hence why I’m not using it as the headline for this post).  The best advice was Get rid of all cards and letters that don’t add to your happiness. You know, the letter from someone who promised they’d write and at the tail end of summer you get a postcard saying “hey dude, how’s your summer been? ready to get back to classes,” Signed: Somebody That I Use to Know.

Since I have access to an Enterprise sized scanner I am scanning everything, significant or insignificant.   But this is proving to be a challenge since many of these letters are folded, crumpled odd-sized pages and as such, are a bitch to get into the feeder.

There are a few people I will be able to send the originals back just in case genealogists and family historians want some insight into how their ancestor thought, what made them happy, and what broke their hearts.

Stay tuned.

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Not so fast: Summer Ain’t Over Yet

It’s after Labor Day and my social media feed is filled with first day of school pictures and people saddened by the symbolic end of summer.  Although many people defines Summer as the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the Autumnal Equinox isn’t for another two weeks!  And even after that, the Midwest usually gets its politically incorrect Indian Summer (well we did before climate change — see what I did there, I likely offended conservatives and liberals!)

There’s still plenty of summery things you can do before the cold and snow arrives.  For instance, this weekend in Lincoln Square is German-American Oktoberfest.  If Mayfest signals the start of summer, Oktoberfest ushers in the fall.  This festival is free and is a good place to begin the hunt for that winter body warmer, aka standing date for the holiday parties.

The beach is less crowded and while the water might not be warm enough to swim in, the sun is still good.  You might even get your  friends together for a few sets of beach volleyball.

If this doesn’t scream impromptu Beach Tournament, I don’t know what does

There’s still a few weeks of baseball left.  This year White Sox tickets will be easier and cheaper to come by, but in years past, both teams are usually so out of playoff contention that they might pay you to sit in the stadium.  [I try to write these posts so that they become Everygreen Content.]  And if you are a glutton for punishment with a large bank account, catch a Bears game before the weather and their season gets too ugly.

If you work downtown you can still eat lunch outside.  Brown bag to Millennium Park or maybe even splurge a week’s paycheck to eat lunch on the River Walk.  Or take a day off and hit the museums.  Kids are back in school so they won’t be as crowded.  Combined with the baseball game, you could essentially re-enact Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

All I’m trying to say is that just because the calendar says it’s after Labor Day that does not mean Summer is over.  Not officially and not if you put your mind to it.

Other posts you might like to bookmark for next summer:
This one- Summertime fun for Chicagoans

Or this one-Don’t Let Summer Slip away…

OOOOR this one- 7 ways not to let summer slip away…

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Friday Night Ritual: Ordering Pizza

Tonight if all the stars align, I will pick up my kids from daycare, swing around to catch my wife at the El station, circle back to the pizza parlor to pick up an extra large cheese & sausage from Bacci.   More than likely though, my wife will be running late, or even early, and that will throw the timing off a bit.  Worse case is Nightingale has to take a bus from the train station while I keep Boris and Natasha from eating all the Za.

we alternate between frozen Home Run Inn pizza and ordering from nearby local restaurants.

If everyone’s mood is good and Mother Nature co-operates, we get some playtime in the backyard for the kids to burn off any left over energy. Then bath and bedtime.

If wifey and I have any energy, we’ll watch some TV and plan the weekend shopping: either a Costco Run or a Peapod delivery.  I’m not sure if this is the weekend we attempt to interact with other humans or just stay home.

It doesn’t seem too long ago that my routine was completely so different.  I would likely be training for some marathon which meant Saturday was a Long Run day (double digit mileage).  So a good night’s sleep was paramount to having a good run.  Unfortunately, I was also always working on Project End Singledom with various degrees of success.  That meant giving in to the temptation to go out with friends in hopes of meeting someone.  I wish I could have back most of those wasted Friday Nights.  I might just have had a better marathon training experience and maybe even qualified for Boston.

Those days seem a lifetime ago and I don’t miss them.  Oh and hey, as our kids get older, here is what we have to look forward to.  Of course I’ll take all of that to the alternative.

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There is a world of difference between Being Critical and being Negative

You’ve probably seen those memes that advocate eliminating negativity, or banning negative thoughts from your life, or putting negative people in concentration camps.  Okay I made up that last one until a reader goes to meme generator…

What I don’t like about the concept is that it doesn’t make a distinction between Negativity and simply being critical or challenging.  Conceptually it shouldn’t have to, one should know the difference.

Scenario 1:  your team is trying to solidify the date for a new annual event the company will sponsor.  Someone suggests the 3rd week in April.  Person says “it will probably rain.”

Scenario 2:  same thing except someone suggests the 2nd weekend in May.  Person says “well every few years it will conflict with Mother’s Day.”

I’m all for mitigating and insulating against negative drama.  Unfortunately many weak minded people don’t differentiate between the two.  And sometimes a conniving or Machiavellian-esque person will define negativity so fluidly so as an excuse to kick someone out of their social circle.

I’ve seen this movie before, it goes like this:

Step one:  communicate to world/friends in common OMG did you see what so-and-so did/wrote/said?
response:  No what was it?

step two:  I cannot even repeat it but trust me, it was awful so trust me when I deem it too harsh for human eyes.

Now you have two choices: conform or be cast out.

I’ve never been accused of being overly optimistic.  Or regularly optimistic either.  Or confident.  But I have been accused of making pointlessly derisive remarks.  While one person’s pointlessly derisive remark is another person’s merely challenging comment, whatever I allegedly said got me unfriended.

I don’t recall the comment.  It is possible that I wrote something that just wasn’t bursting with sunshine and kittens but we’ll never know because she went all FoodBabe on me and deleted the comment.

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9 things that annoyed me this week

While I wish I could lead a more easy-going, zen lifestyle, I’m just not wired that way.  I often get annoyed at the most trivial things and even if I ignore them to the best of my ability, they seem to become cumulative.  I miss a turn light  I could totally have made had it not been for the first guy staring at his phone and letting precious seconds of our too short traffic signal waste away.  I miss my train because someone couldn’t walk on the single row escalator at the El platform.  Or I do make the train but had to settle for the crowded last car filled with everyone else who had to walk behind someone who had all the time in the world to catch his train so he watched his phone instead.

Maybe the answer for me is simply blowing off steam and venting my spleen.  Here are 9 things that pissed me off just this last week:

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Want to work at my company? Talk to me BEFORE applying

For the 3rd time since I started my not-so-new job, a friend has reached out to me asking if I could help them get into the company.  (4th if you count a douchebag who is not a friend so much as a raging asshole with no soft skills whatsoever).

I’m always willing to help a friend out with the job hunt if I can.  Unfortunately, these people already applied to my company before talking to me.  This move disqualifies me for receiving any referral bonus that I would get if they were hired.  I know that sounds a little a greedy but hey I have small children to feed.  After taxes the referral bonus could cover a month of daycare if not more.

Here’s the thing.  You’re asking me to help you get a six figure job (or high five figure) and you want me to put in the effort for nothing?  Brownie points and good feelings only go so far.  Compared to liking a stupid Facebook page for instance.

You’re asking me to stick my neck out and vouch for you.  Why wouldn’t you want me to get rewarded for that?  I know, you didn’t realize it worked that way.  Considering this is a fairly standard policy that tells me you haven’t tried to help someone get a position recently.   Ahem…with at least one of these people, I did tell explicitly tell them to talk to me before applying because of the referral bonus policy.

What’s that?  You still want me to see if I can reach out to the hiring manager?  Sure, as soon as you send me the equivalent of the lost referral bonus.  Don’t worry, if you don’t get hired I promise I’ll eturn it.

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