MADNESS...

 

MADNESS….     It sems to me that the more ‘inventive’ we get with the gadgets we develop…the more we complicate our lives. Bear with me here. Twenty years ago, you had to memorize phone numbers if you wanted to call someone. You had a ‘phone’ book where you stored all of the numbers you used the most. From time to time, you had to update this book and more than likely you called old friends to check up on them as you went through the updating process. This was especially noticeable during the holiday season when you were making out your Christmas card list as well. Not only would you get someone’s current address, but you’d play catch up on their lives over the past year. You also found out which one of your friends had died since your last call. All of that has gone by the wayside. Now you store all of your numbers on your cell phone or whatever you happen to use, and you scroll down to choose a name to be called, or you simply say … ‘home’ and your phone makes the call for you. In most cases you don’t even recall the numbers of your kids or best friends. If you lose your cell phone it becomes the equivalent of being stranded on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific. In fact, when we are out of ‘cell tower coverage areas’ we often feel like we are on some desert island or remote part of the earth. We cannot seem to be without some form of communication device at all times. I know people who get so paranoid if their phone doesn’t ring that they call themselves to see if the thing is working or not. Recently a friend of mine misplaced his phone and couldn’t retrieve it until the following Monday. You would think his world was over simply because he could not get calls in or out for about 72 hours. Madness. All this new technology over the past 50 or so years is great and all that, but what happens when we leave out the human element? What’s going to happen if we stop socializing in person and only communicate via some form of electronic media? Look around you when you pull up to a stop sign or a red light, everyone in the cars around you has their cell phones out and are totally concentrated upon getting their message of the moment out before the light changes and they must start moving again. Sometimes they are actually texting someone who is riding in the car with them. I’ve been in restaurants and observed 2 people ignoring each other and perhaps texting to each other across a space at arm’s length away. It’s almost as if our society has become afraid to talk to someone in person. Back in the early fifties everyone thought television would be the death of all of us. We were warned not to watch too many hours a week or sit too close to the set. Then we were cautioned about going blind unless we had a television lamp sitting on top of the set itself. I can’t recall hearing about anyone ever being a victim of too much television or being blinded because they didn’t have a television lamp. I will say everyone had one. There was no need to take a chance. Today we have children in our society who never venture outside of their rooms. They only come out at night and avoid direct sunlight. Nearly every new television show has something to do with vampires or zombies. I suppose it must be some sort of cultural thing, not my generation. The youth of today can live entirely online without any need for actual verbal conversation or human contact. Besides texting, you can throw in Facebook, Instagram, ‘X’, Snapchat and you are good to go. Unlock the bedroom door, drop in a pizza every so many hours and you might not see your child until they need a car or money for college. They will surface when these events occur, trust me. Then again, perhaps not. I’ve got friends who haven’t seen their kids for years. They know they are alive since the food tray sitting outside their room is always empty.    When I was a kid, we could not wait to get our driver’s license. Having our own car was a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want to have their own car. It was freedom. Today, these kids seem to choose to use Uber everywhere.   There seems to be this mad rush to collect as many ‘online’ friends as humanly possible. So, you see folks with thousands of ‘friends’ on their web pages, most of these people do not know, or will ever meet but they seem perfectly happy to share every detail of their lives with perfect strangers. Personally, I could not care less about someone I don’t know telling me about what kind of bagel they are eating. Much less their medical history or why they hate their fathers. Who cares? No one, much less me, can deny the fact that computers have enhanced our lives in so many positive ways. It’s just that I think we should slow down and turn the things off at some point in our day and sit on the porch or in the living room with a cold beer or cup of coffee and actually converse with someone, face to face before we lose the ability to do so. So, stop reading this, turn off your computer, turn off that cell phone and walk into your kid’s room or next door and start talking about the weather or politics. You can always get a conversation started if you just try. Face to face conversations are the ones you will remember.     Hit the ‘subscribe’ button….see you next week…Peary Perry

BEAR WITH ME ...

 

BEAR WITH ME…

Bear with me on this theory..but I believe daily newspapers kept us as a society from completely going insane…

Now, here is where I got this idea.

First off, most of the readers (thank you) of my pithy remarks probably remember newspapers that were delivered to our homes in the mornings or in the afternoons. These covered yesterday’s news, not hourly news since the internet did not exist.

Secondly, they were limited in size and content by the number of pages and the amount of advertisements they could print on a daily basis. Advertisements were sold to support the cost of the newspaper itself. There was only so much room to print all of the daily events, the sports, weather and the ads for the Labor Day sale at Sears.

Today of course all of that has changed and we are bombarded by events and opinions moments or seconds after they occur. Each and every hour of each and every day. We get opinions, viewpoints, lectures, pleas, guilt statements without stop. Whether we want them or not.

Some of these are real, some are not, some are deliberate misinformation, some are clickbait and now we have some that are Ai generated. No one knows what to believe any longer. There is simply too much thrown at us each 24 hours. We cannot begin to filter everything, absorb everything and get a simple answer to any given situation.

We are subjected to the opinions, viewpoints, hates, and biases of the persons giving their opinion. For example, the news de jure would have us believing that most children want to have their sex changed, or that all white folks hate black folks and vice versa. The same would have you believe that every person owning a firearm is actively looking for someone to shoot. I have owned firearms ever since I was about 14 years old and not once have, I felt compelled to go out into a crowd of people and just hurt someone.

Folks, I hate to tell you this, but there are lots of looney people on both sides of the spectrum. All republicans don’t hate all the democrats and all of the democrats don’t hate all of the republicans. But what do we see and hear from these so called ‘experts’ and ‘influencers’ that flood us with snippets of our country devolving into utter chaos and despair?

I question these reports as either being generated for profit (clicks?) or for significance. Do so called ‘influencers’ really think that people are 100% moved by what they discuss or recommend? Or are people following them just out of curiosity? I can never think of any advertisement I have seen in my life that prompted me to get dressed, get in the car or go on line and buy something because Kim what’s her name suggested it.

 

 

Look folks, we are all trying to stay alive in an ever-changing world. Trying to keep a job, raise kids, be a good husband or wife, pay bills, staying healthy…. is definitely not easy.

Our information comes at us fast and furious and from too many unsubstantiated sources.

Is coffee really bad or good for you?

Is it ok to take aspirin?

Carbs or no carbs?

Democrat or Republican?

Gas or electric?

Vaccine or no vaccine?

There is not enough time in the day or the ability to sift through what is the real story behind each and every fact that is tossed to us by the hour. Once you find out (or think you have found out) the truth behind every news item, it is time to start all over again.

Our parents and certainly our grandparents lived at a much slower pace. The news came to them via 1 or maybe 3 television stations, maybe a couple of decent AM radio stations and printed on perhaps 50 or more newspaper pages. There was zero ‘on the spot’ reporting to view time and time again. You found out about it the next day or hours later.

I once asked my favorite aunt what happened to her on December 7^th, 1941. I knew she was in nurses’ school, but I wanted her rendition of that day.

She told me… “I went to church”

I thought the poor old girls mind was beginning to lose it and I tried to jog her memory without being snarky or cruel.

“Now Aunt Margaret, think back …. something really, really big happened in our history on that day…try to remember, if you can.”

She stared at me with a like I was an idiot and said…

“Of course, I knew it was the attack on Pearl Harbor, but we didn’t hear about it until Monday…we didn’t have a radio.”

It is said that ‘what we don’t know ….won’t hurt you’.

Perhaps we could all do with a little less information each and every day.

See you next week…Peary Perry

 

 

 

 

LABOR DAY AND POLITICS...TODAY'S SOUP

 

 

LABOR DAY AND POLITICS…TODAYS SOUP…

If you can read this, then it means the world has not ended and we are all still here. So, where to start? Having nothing better to discuss, I can always turn to politics, which seems to be on everyone’s mind and will certainly occupy our thoughts and lives for at least another couple of months. The country seems to be evenly divided between the two major parties. It certainly will be interesting to see how all of this turns out and who might emerge as the ultimate winner. What we can expect to see in the coming weeks is a veritable avalanche of mudslinging.

 

The term originated as follows: MUDSLINGING - "wild, unsubstantiated charges; a word, like 'smear,' used to turn an attack back on the attacker. 'Calumniate! Calumniate!' Some of it will always stick,' advised Beaumarchais in 'The Barber of Seville' in 1775. This was based on ancient Latin advice, 'Fortiter calumniari, aliquia adhaerebit,' or 'Throw plenty of dirt and some of it will be sure to stick.' Sometime after the Civil War, 'dirt throwing' picked up some water to become 'mud-throwing,' mud-gunning' and the word that gain pre-eminence, "mud-slinging.' The New York Tribune of April 13, 1876, disagreed with the Latin dictum: 'Mud doesn't stick to Mr. Blaine any better than it does to Bristow. The slander peddlers are having a bad season.'." "Safire's New Political Dictionary" by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993). Page 471.

 

In our modern society, we’re besieged with news from all points. The radio, newspapers, television, internet, cell phones are all clamoring for content to fill up their otherwise vacant spaces. This political season seems to be taking on the vestige of ‘publish first, verify later’. I’m surprised that one of the parties doesn’t accuse one of the other candidates of being an alien. Perhaps they have and I missed it. And I’m not talking about someone from a foreign country. It seems as if new allegations about all of the major players are being dished out to us on an hour-by-hour basis. No topic is sacred. Family and friends are fair game in the tough world of politics. I‘m reading a book on how politics started when this country was first founded. Little has changed since then. Aaron Burr will always be remembered for having killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel over something Hamilton said about Burr during one of the elections. Mudslinging in those days could be fatal. One had to be careful of the words they spoke. They could indeed cause you death or injury. Duels were quite common in those days and were required in order to restore and maintain one’s honor. If the same standard were in effect today, I suspect that not many people would live long enough to be elected to national office. However, in some cases this might well be a good thing. Wave your hand if you agree with me. Mine is raised, can you see it? No, today it seems that the wildest accusation and rumor are thrown out to us to either believe or disbelieve without any source of substantiation for us to review. One candidate can get away with comments having no basis on Monday and then issue a retraction on Tuesday saying that ‘someone in my staff misspoke’. Of course, that ‘someone’ is never really identified or required to explain where they obtained their daily mud ration. Ai only makes it worse, what is real or unreal anymore? It’s somewhat tiring to sit through all of these and try to sort out what is the real truth. What I’d like to see is a clear explanation from all persons trying to get elected about just HOW they intend to get their reforms put into effect. Having a plan and then making that plan actually become implemented are two different things. One can speak of great things all day long but without the wherewithal to have them become real, they are just so many empty words. I want to see a description of just how these grand solutions can be converted to reality and the timeframe for these to happen. “If elected I promise to turn the Sahara Desert into a jungle” … oh yeah? And just how would you propose to get that accomplished?  Words are cheap, actions are costly. Calling someone names is part of the political process but does little to tell me how we can improve our economy or fix the societal problems that we are faced with in today’s world. And we have plenty of those to go around, don’t we? For my part, I’d like a little more rock and a little less mud.   On a happier note, this is Labor Day weekend, so take a moment to say thanks to the bus driver, mail person, clerk at the grocery, trash guys, nurses, police, military, firemen, road repair crews, gas station employees….all of these most likely have families and kids who put in their solid 8-10-12 hours each day and put up with the lot of us. Then they go home and try to make sense of it all. Not easy to do, and often they are the forgotten people who make our country run each and every day…just tell someone ‘thanks’…won’t hurt and you will feel better for it…. I guarantee you that...    SUBSCRIBE TODAY ..IT’S FREE AND IT MAKES ME HAPPY.   SEE YOU NEXT WEEK…PEARY PERRY