Blog #385                                July 25, 2024

 

After I retired, and before I rearranged my life with volunteering at the Zoo and the County Jail, teaching ESL and writing a blog, I would get up each morning, grab a Diet Coke at McDonald’s and go to the main branch of the County Library.  It was a large, old, red-brick building, quiet and comfortable, crammed with stacks of books, racks of magazines and piles of newspapers from around the world.  I would grab the Wall Street Journal and a plushy chair and relax.  The library was warm in the winter, cool in the summer, quiet and secluded.

 

They tore that old building down last year and replaced it with a new glass and steel mega-brary which opened this past week.  It is a state-of-the-art, hi-tech, child-oriented wonderland of electronics.  There must be 100 computers available, rooms to make videos, every kind of media paraphernalia, sound studios, art studios, craft aids and an entire section dedicated to genealogy.  Carol and I and our 12-year-old California grandson, Parker, visited there the day after it opened.  Parker played the drums in the music studio.  Carol made a weather video just like on TV.  She predicted no humidity and temperatures of 73⁰ for the rest of her life.  There were dozens of other helpful and fun things to try.  I hated it. 

 

Play drums or play PAC-MAN or cook

Make videos, records, and look:

Computers galore

3-D printers and more

They’ve got everything there – but a book.

 

I found the books eventually, but not the quiet spots with the plushy chairs.  Now the chairs are all hard plastic “designed by computers for your ultimate comfort”.  It’s like sitting on a potato chip.  It’s not a place for an old man looking to relax and read in comfort and quiet.  Now it’s Disneyland and I don’t belong.  I’m happy for the youngsters who can experience these technological opportunities.  But I’m sad for the loss of the world that used to be mine, a world that no longer exists anywhere but in an old man’s memory.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and getting older with grace and aplomb.  Aplomb, our Weekly Word means self-confidence or assurance.  When I have to write something or speak, I generally feel self-confident and assured.  But when it comes to technology, I’m like Venus de Milo trying to juggle.  I have often told you that I am technologically challenged, but I have recently discovered a quote by Elbert Hubbard which gives me some spirit:  One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.  So there.  Maybe in my next life, I’ll come back as somebody technically ept.  Is that a word?  Isn’t it the opposite of inept?

 

Our world right now is too full of politics:  we hate Trump, we love Trump, we hate Joe, we love Joe.  Wait a minute – Joe’s gone!  Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh.  That’s from an old song called Jambalaya.  Jambalaya is actually a Creole hash of rice and all kinds of other stuff, kind of like the hash the Democratic Party is in right now.  But they’ll work it out and the game will be on.

 

Until then, let’s not talk about any of that.  Let’s talk about something really important -- the new Bris Festival appearing at your local movie theater.  The festival includes movies about the Jewish circumcision ceremony.  A strange choice to me, but the titles sound intriguing.  First is the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan classic You’ve Got Mohel followed by Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro in Circumcise This.  The festival ends with a new Star Wars spin-off called May the Foreskin Be With You.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  There is throats to be cut and works to be done (Henry V). They cut off my leg and some other parts, but they left me with one foreskin and nine lives.  So I guess I’m coming back more times than acid indigestion.  Or Barbra Streisand.  I think next time I’ll come back as a black cat.  I hear that black cats matter.  Purr.

 

See, wasn’t that more fun than politics?  Now let’s talk about NASA which announced last week it would begin reviewing and, where necessary, changing the names of astronomical bodies that are deemed racially insensitive.   Ok, People, they’ve torn down our statues, changed the names of football teams, military facilities, government buildings and pancake syrup, and now they’re coming after our planets.  And, of course, in today’s jabberwocky world every planet is offensive.

 

Mercury is a poison that corporations dump into the ocean to poison our fish.

Venus rhymes with penis which is gender-specific and sexist.

Mars is named after the God of War.  We should never talk of war – or God.

Jupiter is the King of the Gods and that reeks of royalty and colonialism.

Saturn has rings and rings are where boxing occurs and boxing is violent.

Uranus – I mean, are you serious?

Neptune is the God of the Sea and the seas are polluted with mercury and plastic.

Pluto is no longer a planet except to old people who think libraries should be quiet.

 

You might as well start learning the new planetary names now.  Here they are:  Happy, Sleepy, Dopey, Doc, Grumpy, Bashful, Sneezy – and Earth.

 

Here’s another new subject, and I just know I’m going to get in big trouble here, but what the Hell!  What can they do to me, make me watch that debate again?  I want to know why more and more girls and women have what were traditionally boys’ names.  I have a granddaughter Charley.  And her girlfriends are Ronnie, Sam, Jo, Madison, Morgan, Michael, Sydney and others.  But there are no boys named Phyllis.  Moby Dick does not begin Call Me Edith.

 

And women yearn to wear what traditionally were men’s clothing -- jeans, cowboy hats, boots, vests.  But I have never thought about wearing an off-the-shoulder gown.  Well, there was that one time in Phoenix, but . . . never mind.  I’d better go now before my wife cuts my clothing allowance.

 

But we’ll be back next week – me, Shakespeare and whoever is running for President.  Stay well and count all your blessings.  Me gotta go, me oh, my oh.

 

Edith                              Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com