When Life Was Simple

That seemed like a great title until I thought more about whether it was ever simple. The more you allow maturity and reality to creep up on you, the more complicated it looks.

In 1910, my parents lived on a farm. They had no major utilities to pay, no income tax, no insurances, and if you became ill you more likely to die than not. Did that really make it simple? The work to survive was incredible. No income tax=little income for the majority, even then. The really rich benefited with ability for excesses, many of which have become today's museums. No insurances, simple; without insurance people suffered with every catastrophe. However, there were more children and extended family to take up the slack, so more people managed to make it through crises. The rest starved, or became ill and died. More kids were due to no birth control. Nutrition was less an issue because there were more farms, fewer urban areas without access to fresh products, better absorption of vitamins and minerals from foods because those weren't all killed waiting in warehouses to be brought to stores.

I could go on with comparisons but haven't really thought too much about everything in detail. What it has shown me is that everything is relative. We had the rich and the poor, even then, but it seemed to be less visible than today with the media we currently have. Buying a $100,000 diamond studded dog collar...if anyone even made one then, wasn't shown to all the hungry people in society.

I'd welcome some feedback on this subject since I am shocked by all the "Wasn't life great back when..." emails circulating on the Internet.

Long time friends and acquaintances

The advantage to knowing people for a long time is what, in the past, you have shared with them and can relive by talking with them. I think that is a main reason that one seems to connect with sibs in later life. They are, after all, the only people who shared your parents and grew up with you. However, make no mistake, the growing up was also a very different experience for each sib, depending on age, sex, cultural factors, health, social and intellectual factors.

We hold onto memories, souvenirs, pictures, and various other ways of reminding us of the happy times earlier in life. My friends and contacts seem to be in many parts of the world which makes hearing from them always fun, not only for the old, but for the new, as well. It is gratifying to find out the things people are doing that are so different than when you last saw them, or that you are doing.. There are new people in their lives, too. When all experiences get shared, horizons are made broader for everyone.

Easier access to long distance calling, cell phones, email, IMs, websites and blogs make all this easier for us all to stay in touch. However, staying in touch with old friends is not without its down side, as well. Hearing that old friends have died, are ill, have had other tragedies in their lives, or worse yet…have moved and left no forwarding address. Sometimes they have split up from the family configuration with which you were familiar.

The biggest shocker for me are older men, with second and younger wives, starting new families in their mid-fifties. Talk about cutting yourself off from having things in common with your age group! Another shocker is older couples who are adopting children. Their life style change also shuts out everything but an occasional reminiscence as they often spend great time learning the cultural origin of the children so the children are not totally cut off from their cultural or ethnic heritage. I have found that sometimes, influenced by a spouse over the years, old friends have changed in political and religious values to the point that they want to shut out their past. We no longer have anything in common to share.

Those are the exceptions. Most of my friends are wonderful, loving and close. I care about their lives and they care about mine. We think about subjects and talk about them, past and present. We talk about how we have grown and changed over the years and give each other the benefit of lessons learned, resources, new ideas, good books to read, movies to watch and, above all, share jokes and laughter.

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Men Who Help with the Housework Have Better Sex Lives

I can't believe this should come as a surprise to any women...and shouldn't to men.

Consideration

Be mine a philosophers’ life in the quiet woodland ways, where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot. –Alfred Lord Tennyson

One thing I have to work on is to be less annoyed at rude and inconsiderate people. So far it has been extremely difficult for me to tolerate. Netiquette seems not to have ever reached the ears of many. Spammers are bad enough; hackers worse, but we can chalk it up to ‘they are bad people’. But what about our friends who are too lazy to cut and paste, and send things along with FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD? They expose our emails publicly for spammers to harvest. When pointed out to them the response is apt to be, “Oh, I have barely enough time to send them, I haven’t got time to do that, too” or, “I don’t know how to do that”. My response is, “Well learn like the rest of us!” or, “Well, I don’t have time to scroll through your several pages to find out that the message was not worth reading in the first place!”

A second rudeness is from people who have call waiting (callus interruptus as some of my family has labeled it) but don’t bother to find out who is trying to reach them. How hard is it to be courteous (unless it is an emergency call you are on, or you have been waiting for a long time to speak to a service representative) and say “Let me just check to see if this call is important“. To the second caller who says hello and identifies self, it only takes a few seconds to say, “I am on another call; if this is not an emergency I will call you back. Or, if you know the person is hard to reach, you can come back to the first caller and say, “It is important to take this call, may I call you back?”

There are still some people who don’t have phone answering machines. I have been told by one such, “Let them call back”, to which I replied, “How inconsiderate you are of the other’s person’s time! What makes you think they have the time to keep trying you?” Some, who could well afford them, do not have computers. Knowing I am within easy reach of a computer I am phoned and asked, “Is your computer on.” Since they are 'friends', I answer, yes, you know my computer is always on. It is no matter that I might have been in the middle of something else and am being interrupted, the question then is, “Oh would you mind looking up xxxxx? I’m sure it won’t take you long.” That it should take me ANY time is an annoyance. I want to scream, “And you are not the only one in my life who takes up my time because you are lazy!”

My last comment is about people who see my car in the drive, no others, and assume they can just “drop in”. If I am home I am always doing something and often not dressed to ‘receive’. Most people have cell phones today. If they can afford them, they should. Is it too much to ask that they call and ask if it is okay to drop in, thus giving a head’s up so that I can, at least, not be in the bathroom or I can be fully dressed?

Have people who consider themselves to be good, kind, religious and moral people forgotten the Golden Rule? Perhaps, they value their time less than I value my own.
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A sociological view on email humor

Now, checking unread humor email folders, I have 3985 waiting for me to read. People should not stop sending them, because I eventually get to them all, especially when I need them the most.

If I were a sociology researcher, I would study trends in email humor. When times are good, wonderful new and very creative material is written and seems to transmit over the world in no time. When financial and security times are rough, there seem to be more ’inspirational/religious/moral story’ emails that circulate, as well as newly revised 50 year old jokes.

An example of the moral story follows:

There once was a woman who woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and noticed she had only three hairs on her head. " Well," she said, "I think I'll braid my hair today." So she did and she had a wonderful day.
The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and saw that she had only two hairs on her head.
"H-M-M," she said,
"I think I'll part my hair down the middle today."
So she did and she had a grand day.
The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that she had only one hair on her head.
"Well," she said, "today I'm going to wear my hair in a pony tail."
So she did and she had a fun, fun day.
The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that there wasn't a single hair on her head.
"YEA!" she exclaimed,
"I don't have to fix my hair today!" Attitude is everything.

Comedian, Andy Borowitz, writes: “ In an attempt to break the nagging logjam over immigration, congressional leaders announced today that they were hiring illegal immigrants to write the nation’s new immigration bill.” Currently political humor seems to be the most creative around. Check out funny stuff here: http://www.borowitzreport.com/

The Internet saves humor so that it is available in the sparse humor down times. See humor on computer help requests.
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/6271/user_jok.html I found the Stubborn User particularly funny!

Perhaps others have noticed the same findings as my unofficial research and conclusions about current email humor. Times are really tough for the majority of us.

Lose some;win some

When we feel like whining a bit about our lot in life, watch this rather an inspiring story.

When you have little to say

I'm wondering when new thoughts and ideas stop flowing rapidly, "Am I finally succumbing to a senior lapse, is my S.A.D. turning itself on now that we have fall coming on, or what kind of kick in my creative butt do I need?"

The day is another beautiful sunny day...no rain for a few weeks now.

Sony has managed to find a new way to drop eavesdropping material on our computers.

It once was that after Labor Day, vacations were over. Alas, that was true of students and teachers, not for all summer only,. because they get many others during the school year as well. Others take vacations throughout the year and travel further, but this doesn't seem true for many any more.

Labor Day

On Holidays the morning work traffic is very slow and the commuter bus does purr and rev its engine outside my window. An uninterrupted night’s sleep definitely starts the day on the right foot.

The news of the day is that Bush is making a surprise visit to Iraq. How sad that the man has no idea what a mess he has made. More evidence of his bad choices is reported in a new book on the White House Insiders. The next president will be handed the worst mess to straighten out in modern history. Our country is in peril in so many ways from terrorists, people around the world hate us so, our reputation as a country of integrity is down the toilet, our citizens of all ages as well as newborns are dying at high rates than anywhere else in progressive countries.

Meanwhile, people are trying to enjoy this last great holiday of the Northeast before the start of the Fall season, children back to school, leaves to be raked, gutters to be cleaned, preparations to be made to heat their homes and shovel winter snow. Utility and gasoline prices are higher than ever, More politicians than ever are unusually entrenched in self-service, not in representing ‘the people’.

Is Sunday really a day of rest?

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest according to the Bible. What a strange concept. In the Utopian communities of more than a century ago, it meant that the men had a total day of rest while the women served them. For large families, even getting children several up, dressed, fed, and off to church is hardly restful! Since Blue laws allowed people to shop, someone has to work to make that possible. Lots of people, who work out of the home all week, use Sunday to catch up on household chores and repairs, mow lawns, get themselves ready for the next work week.

We also have the myth of the weekend warrior. I'm in the majority of people most commonly called a slug. I love staying at home and watching the morning political shows and doing the rest of the things I love to do. By the time I am up, abluted, fed, bed made, kitchen cleaned...quite a bit of the day is used up. I plant only perennials in the garden which, in its mish-mash, looks like an English garden and hides the weeds at a distance, as long there is always some flower in bloom, showing color. I pick up after myself and wash pots and pans after I have used them as I cook, hang up my clothes at the end of the day or put them in the hamper, and am a multi-tasker. I rarely do one thing at a time and rarely watch TV without another task in hand like knitting, or cleaning out a drawer, or going through catalogs. I would welcome a 25 hour day because my days are always too full. Sunday is no different. With all that, I still can't get everything done I wish to do. Monday starts a new work week and I wonder where all the time has gone. I think I follow a very efficient way of life, to little avail. I know that I am not alone.

Life has been enriched by media but, more frustrating, with snail mail spam, email spam, phone solicitations now coming from non-profits, phone calls and telephone recordings from people with whom you have done business, politicians, and all the others you swear you will not use, buy from, or for whom you will never vote. They are bothering me, interrupting whatever I am doing...or awaken me during a rare nap, or just distracting my thoughts.

There is NO day of rest. Only Melina Mercouri found one in the movie Never on Sunday. Would that we could all turn the world off for a day.