Recycling?

Scene: Waiting at a bus stop on a late spring afternoon. Action: A young woman comes to wait for the bus. She begins to eat pistachio nuts, tossing the empty shells onto the grass. One final unopened nut falls into to the roadbed and, unbelievably, she stoops to retrieve it, dodging traffic in the process. She then removes the pistachio nut and makes a final toss of the empty shell halves onto the grass. My first reaction was that this was littering, but as I looked down, I saw several cigarette butts and that tempered my reaction somewhat. After all, the nut shells were at least biodegradable, weren’t they? Still, the wonton act of tossing what amounted to garbage onto the beautiful green grass upset my sensibilities. Is there ever an excuse for tossing things you no longer want or need? Who raises people to do this? Certainly not my parents. I hold onto trash until I find a proper receptacle. I suppose that makes me a rebel by today’s standards.

References

It occurred to me that there are a number of references in my last post that a younger audience may not understand. Terms like “Amway,” “God’s waiting room,” “grammar school,” “baby-boomers,” and even “jumping the shark.” One of the sad things about getting older is that many people you speak with do not understand the references you make. I’ll continue to make them in the hopes that someone will understand them. Even if it’s only me. For the rest of you, there’s always Google. --

Jumping the shark

I’ve been on Facebook since January 8, 2009, originally joining so I could “friend” my younger daughter in order to see the pictures she posted. Neither my wife nor older daughter are on Facebook, but almost everyone else I know is. As a result of the recent 50th anniversary of my graduation from grammar school (yes, I am an older American), several of my classmates from those early days have connected with me on Facebook. Some post pictures of food, their travels, the games they play or their hobbies. We ‘baby boomers” don’t all retire to “God’s waiting room.” Indeed, one of my female former classmates moved back from Florida to New Jersey to be closer to her grandchildren. It’s that woman who has convinced me that Facebook has jumped the shark. She recently started a business selling jewelry and now her Facebook posts are nothing more than ads for her business. It’s one thing for advertisers to bombard you with requests to buy their products; it’s quite another when your friends do so, too. A number of years ago, when one of my daughters became friendly with one of her grade school classmates, we invited that child’s parents to our home for a summer barbecue. To my dismay, those parents used the occasion to push an Amway agenda on us. That was the last time we socialized with that family. Now it may be time to “de-friend” my grammar school classmate who is using Facebook to sell jewelry. And I probably won’t wait until Jimmy Kimmel’s National De-Friend Day in November to do it.

The pursuit was trivial

It finally happened. Notwithstanding the vast amount of knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years, albeit mostly trivial in nature, I’ve hit the wall I saw coming. I predicted that soon many quiz show questions would be about Harry Potter or those Lord of the Ring/Hobbit characters. Since I know absolutely nothing about these fictional people, and do not care enough to learn about them, I knew I would be at a disadvantage. I thought they would show up on Jeopardy first, and maybe a few questions have. But, to my dismay, these topics have made it into my local crossword puzzle. Recently, two of the first three “across” clues were: Head of Slytherin House, in Potter books (five letters) and “The Hobbit” dragon (also five letters). If this trend continues, I will be reduced to a trivia relic.

Back to the Blog

By accident, I came across a blog someone wrote with only four entries, all on the same date in 2009. I started a blog on October 25, 2007 and have 86 entries to date, but none since February 7, 2012. Lest any reader think something happened to me, I thought it was time to blog again. In truth, I never stopped writing, just publishing. Now I will do both. I’ll start with an observation about the shrinking size of products. I remember when a Hershey bar cost five cents. Then, instead of raising the price, they reduced the size of the bar. I don’t know if that was the first instance of shrinkage, but the trend seems to have accelerated in recent years. I bought a box of Kleenex tissues the other day. The price was right – just a dollar. But the number of tissues in the box seemed low – just 100 (no, I did no count them). It occurred to me that every time I used a tissue, whether to blow my nose or squash a bug, it cost me one cent. By the way, I refrain from using the word “penny” because as a numismatist, I know that the penny used to be a coin in England, whereas the coin we commonly refer to as a penny is actually a one cent piece. The government says it costs more than one cent to make one cent, even though they haven’t used copper since 1982. Anyway, this got me to thinking about how much these shrunken items really cost per unit. Four chicken McNuggets for a dollar comes to about 12 ½ cents a bite. A $3.00 slice of pizza is about fifty cents a bite. Rising costs and shrinking products, coupled with the state of the economy, makes one wonder how close we are to making even the dollar bill worth hardly anything. Newspapers have recently gone from 50 cents to a dollar, while at the same time, cutting content. Even the Sunday comics, a staple of my youth, have been cut down to fewer than a dozen. It was easy to purchase a 50 cent newspaper when you received two quarters back. It’s more difficult to say goodbye to a whole dollar bill. They say as you age, you shrink. So I guess I’m right in tune with what’s happening.

Now this is interesting

When the classic song, “American Pie,” recently had its 40th anniversary, New York Daily News critic, David Hinckley, suggested that the “value of the song as a catchy tune and cultural mile marker may outstrip the profundity of its lyrics.”

Nevertheless, people have been fascinated by those lyrics for decades and have attributed various interpretations to them. But Don McLean, the man who wrote and sang the song, had this to say: “I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas.” He then added: “You will find many ‘interpretations’ of my lyrics but none of them by me.”

On Sunday, February 5, 2012, Hinckley printed some interesting interpretations he received from readers as a result of his article on the 40th anniversary of the song. Whether they are true doesn’t matter. But they sure are interesting.

Concerning the lyrics, “Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry and them good old boys were drinkin’ whisky and rye,” one reader wrote that in the 1960s there was a bar in New Rochelle, New York, across from Iona Prep, where McLean went to high school. The bar was called the Levee and was a popular hangout for local high school students. However, although the drinking age at the time was 18, the bar was “dry” for the high school students.

Another reader added that one day, when the Levee bar was closed, McLean supposedly drove to the Mug Ale House in Rye, New York, where he drank whisky “in Rye.”

Okay, now I understand.

What's wrong with America

Like millions of Americans, I sat in front of my television set prepared to enjoy Super Bowl 46 (I refuse to use Roman Numerals since I’m not in Rome) on Sunday, February 5, 2012.

I watched the singing of the National Anthem. Then, just before the kickoff, NBC played a clip from an upcoming movie, the Dictator, staring Sasha Baron Cohen. The final scene of the clip showed the actor at a track meet, preparing to race what appeared to be a 100 yard dash. He fires off a pistol and begins to run. As the other runners follow suit, he turns the pistol on them and shoots them down.

At first, I thought this was funny. But then it dawned on me that millions of young people had just watched our National Anthem being sung and were waiting for the football game to begin. And this movie clip was the image that someone thought was appropriate to show them? An “athlete” shooting his fellow runners? Worse yet, this commercial was soon followed by one for the 2012 Summer Olympics. I started to wonder what a young child would make of this.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not if favor of censorship. But there is a time and place for everything. This was neither the time nor the place for this movie clip.

Simply put, what’s wrong with America is that common sense no longer prevails.