memories – Life In A Word

Going for a Spin, Spin, Spin

My wife and I enjoy popcorn after dinner, probably because we’re watching more movies at home these days. It’s easy prep thanks to our Presto air popper. Dump in the kernels, plug in the popper, and “presto”; a delicious snack in an instant. Of course, one of these days our air popper will break and we’ll have to buy another one. Unlike our KitchenAid stand mixer, which will spin,spin,spin until the end of time.

If your kitchen is like ours, the cupboards are full of appliances that only make an occasional appearance. Our Breville panini press hasn’t made a “melt” in months. Our Marcato pasta maker last saw action in the early 2000s. And our George Foreman grill is retired for good, because it’s just as easy to fire up the barbecue. But our KitchenAid stand mixer spins to our “Aid” time and again, always ready to make bread dough, cake batter, or cookies.

Stand mixers date to the early 1900s. KitchenAid’s version came along in the 1930s, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn some of the original models are still spinning almost a hundred years later. The appliance is just that good. The KitchenAid was designed to be as simple, efficient, and robust as possible, and with only one task in mind: to spin ingredients in dizzying circles until they’re thoroughly mixed. Sure, you can add dozens of specialized attachments but none change what the stand mixer does at its core. Spin, spin, spin.

When I make a batch of cookies, I stand back in wonder as our KitchenAid does its thing. As I add the ingredients, the paddle blade works harder and harder to blend them together. By the time I get to the last of a dozen ingredients; say, chocolate chips, the mixer is practically bouncing across the counter as it struggles to plow through the dough. You’d expect the mixer to break down at any second in an explosion of flying gears and sizzling smoke. But it never does.

I know a lot of people who own a KitchenAid stand mixer, and I’ve never heard of one that stopped working. Even if it did break, the appliance is designed for easy repair. The parts can be swapped out individually and quickly, eliminating the need for a repair person or a new mixer. It reminds me of the old Maytag washers, and how their repairman was described as “the loneliest guy in town”.

Like most appliances, Maytags aren’t what they used to be. We yearn for the models from the 1980s or earlier, which could wash anything and never break down. Today’s Maytags are a shadow of their former selves. They don’t do as good of a job, and every five years you’re thinking about replacing them. Not so the KitchenAid stand mixer. I have no doubt ours will be a part of our kids’ inheritance someday.

Speaking of kids, our daughter has her own KitchenAid and it sits proudly on her kitchen counter. Counter space in the kitchen is precious so only a few appliances deserve to be full-time residents. A coffeemaker. Some sort of toaster oven. And a KitchenAid stand mixer, which somehow manages to look appliance-elegant with its curves and swoops.

“Mixmasters” (a popular nickname for the KitchenAid) aren’t cheap. Most models run about $300 USD for the basic setup. Consider though, it’s the only stand mixer you’re ever going to need. KitchenAid even admitted they expanded their color selection and limited-edition models in an effort to generate more repeat customers. (This year – and only this year – you can buy one in “iridescent periwinkle blue”.)

Our Colorado kitchen had a very cool below-counter cabinet, designed specifically for a heavy stand mixer. You opened the door, pulled a shelf handle, and your Mixmaster rose effortlessly out of the cabinet on special hinges, snapping into place at counter level. An appliance has to be awfully special to justify a custom cabinet. Or a spot in the Smithsonian Museum, where the KitchenAid stands as a part of the Julia Child exhibit.

I don’t need to go to the Smithsonian to see a stand mixer (nor do you). I have my KitchenAid right here in the kitchen cabinet. I can put down the laptop and whip up a batch of cookies anytime I want. Like, right now. Time for my Mixmaster to spin, spin, spin again, just like it’s done a thousand times before.

Some content sourced from The Atlantic article, “KitchenAid Did it Right 87 Years Ago”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Loco for Cocoa

In the last few weeks a purchase of pure gold reached a record high of over $2,400 an ounce. Thanks to uncertain global markets and a stepped-up demand from China, the precious metal is a more popular investment than ever. I find it amazing you can stroll into your local Costco and add gold bars to your shopping basket. The promo was so popular however, Costco ran out of their allotment in a couple of months. But here’s an even bigger concern. I’m worried Costco’s going to run out of chocolate.

It takes a bold headline to get me to read the article, and here’s a recent example: Chocolate Might Never Be the Same. What I hoped would be several paragraphs about a newer or even healthier spin on my favorite confection was anything but. Instead, I was stopped dead in my reading glasses when I saw the words “global shortage”. It seems the world’s supply of cacao beans, which come primarily from West Africa, has been threatened by climate change.

What I found interesting in the story was not so much the reasons for the shortage (drought, disease, aging cacao trees) but rather the speculation on how chocolate as we know it will change. Right away, of course, the cost of high-end products will increase (chocolate was already up 10% in 2023). Down the road, the powers that be may even relax the definition of “chocolate”, which currently requires (only) 10% of a product’s weight in cocoa. And further down the road you’ll find faux chocolate, which doesn’t contain any cocoa at all. Kind of like an Impossible Burger.

My relationship with chocolate, one that has matured beautifully over sixty-plus years, feels a little threatened. Like most kids growing up in the 1960s, I loved Hershey bars… and a lot of other candies that gifted me a mouthful of cavities. Then as a teenager, most of those candies fell by the wayside in favor of chocolate bars like 3 Musketeers, Milky Way, and Snickers. But technically each of those is a “candy bar”, where the only chocolate to be found is the outside coating.

I credit three products for developing my taste for “just chocolate”. First, Nestle’s Toll House Morsels, a bag of which could always be found in my mother’s pantry. Second, Chunky’s foil-covered blocks, which brought appeal to, literally, consuming chunk chocolate. Finally, Ghirardelli’s “Flicks”, colorful foil-covered tubes of what can only be described as oversized Toll House Morsels, sold alongside the popcorn and boxed candies at the movie theater.

Little did I know at the time, I was nowhere near the best that chocolate had to offer. A college year in Europe introduced me to more exotic brands like Perugina, Lindt, and Toblerone, and my taste for chocolate quickly matured from the milk to the dark varieties. Here’s how far I’ve come since then. The percentage of cocoa in a pure bar of Lindt chocolate starts at 70% (and goes all the way to 100% if you’re so bold). My preference? 78%, a far cry from the minimum 10% definition of chocolate. And a far cry from the chocolate bars of my youth.

We’re fortunate to have an authentic Belgian chocolate shop here in our small town. Its proprietor was trained as a chocolate artisan in Belgium, and her creations start with Callebaut chocolate (also from Belgium). Her truffles, as you can imagine, are exquisite. The pure chocolate nibs she sells by the pound are even better. And yet, as if to underscore today’s topic, her shop’s website now warns in a big, bold font: … at this time we are no longer able to accommodate wholesale prices. Meaning her big buyers are now paying as much as we smaller ones. Meaning chocolate is getting more expensive.

If the quality chocolate I’ve learned to love rises to price points I can’t digest, I might be forced to relive my childhood and settle for the “satisfaction” a milk chocolate Snickers bar claims to provide. It’s a regression I don’t look forward to, but at least it beats faux chocolate. Come to think of it, I should pick up a few of those gold bars at Costco. Maybe my Belgian chocolate shop takes more than cash or credit these days.

Some content sourced from The Atlantic article, “Chocolate Might Never Be the Same”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Curtains for the Big Show?

My daughter and her husband went on a date the other night. They dropped their little one at our place because they wanted an evening to themselves. “A date” meant going right back to their own house and getting a few projects done without the distraction of an active one-year old. Really? That’s a date? I figured they’d do something like go to the movies. After all, the theater’s only five minutes from their front door.

The same theater’s only twenty minutes from our front door. It’s the only show in (our small) town but it still carries the first-run films. So now I’m asking myself, why haven’t we been to the theater either? I mean, we’ve lived here almost two years yet we’ve never even been tempted. Does our own dating routine need a little recharge?

The truth is, like most who don’t go to the movies much anymore, the COVID years played a big part in our change of behavior. Before then we were regular patrons, drawn to the promise of a well-reviewed blockbuster or sappy rom-com. No matter the size of our TV or the quality of our sound at home, it couldn’t hold a candle to the big-screen experience. Plush seats, popcorn, and larger-than-life images were the way to go.

But movie theaters struggle now. We’re already two years past the last U.S. state mask mandate (time flies), yet theaters haven’t been able to bring back audiences in numbers comparable to the years before COVID. The only movie to get my wife and I up off our couch and into the theater was Top Gun: Maverick, which seems forever ago now. Much as I’d like to blame the pandemic for our recent lack of attendance, other forces are at work here:

1) Streaming. Just as we all hunkered down in 2020 to wait out COVID, on-line entertainment options went full-stream ahead. My wife and I cautiously subscribed to something called Netflix back then (knowing we could cancel at any time), and in no time we became the very definition of “binge”. Today we plunk down money for several streaming services, which come and go according to what we choose to watch. In other words, “network television” isn’t the only option to the big screen anymore.

2) The cost. A few weeks ago, my wife and I binged the twelve-episode first season of a Hallmark Channel series, for $10.79. Season 2 cost us $25.37 for the same number of episodes. Season 3? $26.99. Sneaky streamers, huh? They get you hooked on the first season, then charge big-time for the rest. But here’s the thing. Those thirty-six hours of television cost us less than two dollars an hour. A movie in the theater runs four to five times that much.

3) The annoyances. Before online tickets, you could show up at the box office and be reasonably assured of getting a seat, for the face value of the ticket. Now – for the popular movies at least – a “walk-in” is virtually impossible. You’re going to pay fees, whether for the online service itself, the movie’s time of day, or the theater’s better seats. Once you’re in your seat the annoyances bloom, whether the advertisements before the movie, the cell phone going off in the next row, or the couple behind you who simply can’t stop talking throughout the show.

4) The product. IMHO of course, the movies being made today simply aren’t what they used to be. Those mainstream blockbusters and adorable rom-coms of yesteryear have given way to so-so remakes, Marvel characters, and independent films that rarely appeal to the masses. Sure, I could (and probably should) expand my horizons to other film genres, but first you’re gonna have to address items 1), 2), and 3) above.

The summer blockbusters begin Memorial Day weekend but they’ve taken a hit this year because of last fall’s writers/actors strike. Movie theaters may be a little – ahem – breezy as a result. They’ll aim to draw in more patrons with re-releases of films gone by, mini film festivals, and sales of film-related merchandise instead (themed popcorn tub, anybody?)

The sustainability of the movie theater is in question, the same as the drive-in that died before it. Will the product and price attract enough patrons to keep the experience viable? Will a trip to the movies morph into a wholly different kind of experience (like dinner, drinks, and a movie, or a stop at the in-house video game arcade first?) And will the concept of a movie-house subscription ever be more attractive than simply buying a ticket?

All good questions there. Whatever happens, I hope the curtains don’t close on the big screen for good. When a film is worth watching, alongside an audience willing to behave, it’s a great date night. Without the movies, my wife and I might be forced to complete a few more projects around the house.

Some content sourced from the CNN Entertainment article, “Movie theaters are getting creative to appeal to audiences”.

Middling Name

Sixteen years after her debut album Some Hearts, Carrie Underwood released a collection of Christian songs called My Savior, a genre for which her signature was long overdue. My Savior was the perfect companion for the drive to and from Easter church last Sunday. On the other hand, Carrie dabbles in hard-driving, anger-cleansing rants like “Last Name”, which is a convenient segue to today’s topic. What (and why) is your middle name?

Hard to believe, but only 75% of Americans had a middle name in 1970.

Think about it for a sec… when was the last time you used your middle name? When you pulled out your driver’s license? Your Social Security card? When you signed an important document? Most likely it was for your last airplane ticket. After all, the name you enter into the reservation has to match the name on the form of identification you provide.

Middle names originated in the Middle Ages (and boy do I love that coincidence). European countries – and much later America – picked up on Italy’s tradition of “double” first names. Since Italian descendants were often named after parents and grandparents, you had a whole lot of Leonardos and Marcos wandering around. “Secondary first” names helped distinguish Leo III from Leo IV. Kind of like George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

I don’t know anyone – and I mean anyone – who uses their middle name by way of introduction, let alone conversation. Outside of family members you might know the middle name of a friend or two but that’s about it. Whatever practical purpose middle names served seems to have come and gone.

Unless you’re me, of course. “David Wilson” is about as common as “John Smith” (and the reason you readers will never be able to hunt me down… bah-ha-ha!) Just how common is my name? Years ago I joined Hertz’s #1 Club and proudly stated my name at the counter for my first rental. The agent tapped away and then said, “Sorry, but we have over 400 David Wilson’s in our database. Could you be more specific?” Then I gave her my middle name (Scott), to which she said, “Okay, so now I still have five of you”. Sigh…

Scott was a common middle name back when I was born. In fact, Scott ranked in the top ten boys’ middle names of the 1960s. (See if your middle name is/was a top tenner here.) Maybe that’s why my parents chose Scott, because I’m not aware of any ancestors with the name. Then again, Ancestry.com tells me I’m 12% Scottish. Hey, my parents could’ve gone with “Scot” instead!

Early in my career, my colleagues and I decided to use our middle names in a desperate attempt to sound cooler. We started referring to each other by first initial and middle name. Hence I was “D. Scott” around the office (which sounds oh-so pompous in hindsight). Didn’t last very long and my signature never changed. I’ve always been a first-name, middle initial, last-name kind of guy with the pen.

Wouldn’t be as elegant without the “S”, don’t you agree?

Chances are your middle name was given to you because it sounded good alongside your first name. Such was the case with our oldest son Mark. We came up blank with middle names when he was born, so my wife got in touch with a college friend, whose husband was also Mark. Mark Christopher. The middle name sounded great to us so we promptly “adopted” it. Not that our Mark will ever meet his namesake.

Speaking of my wife, her middle name is Marie; the same middle name given to both of her sisters (and later on to our daughter). Marie and Ann are the most popular American female middle names of all time (for the males: Lee, Edward, and Michael). Check those decade lists again – Marie and Ann were tops in 1950 and again for the next forty years. Ann dropped off a little after that but Marie continues to be the most popular to this day.

Here in the South, a lot of people combine first and middle names. Hence, Sarah is better known as Sarah Beth and Billy is better known as Billy Bob. At least they’re using their middle names. Some of today’s parents are choosing names like “Symphony” and “Rembrandt” to go in the middle. As if their kids will actually use those names someday, right? With that in mind, I’d like to thank my parents for (middle) naming me “Scott”. Sounds just fine to me.

Some content sourced from The Atlantic article, “Middle Names Reveal More Than You Think”, and the Fox8.com article, “The most common middle names from the last 12 decades”.

Season Before the Sun

Every now and then I come across a little fact that makes me feel my age. Fifty years ago this month a one-hit wonder named Terry Jacks released the single “Seasons In The Sun”, which parked at #1 on the music charts for three weeks and burned itself into my twelve-year old brain forever. Any teen from back then will never forget the We had joy, We had fun lyrics. Ironically it wasn’t a happy song (as in …goodbye Papa, it’s hard to die…) but not to worry. Today I want to talk about the season before the sun instead.

Whether you celebrate Easter (this Sunday), the vernal equinox (a week ago Tuesday), or college basketball’s March Madness (on-going), the hints are everywhere: spring is beginning to, uh, spring. For my wife and I, the season means strawberries, when the best of the fruit is available for the next sixty days. For others it means the kids are out of school for a week. But surely there’s no better indication of spring than flowers. The bright bursts put winter’s doldrums behind us while the sun shines more often. Flowers signify new beginnings.

Guys don’t talk about flowers much (unless we’re gardeners) but it doesn’t mean we haven’t had our share of close encounters with them. My first was probably with dandelions (yes, they’re flowers) and the childhood fascination of blowing the blooms into countless flying bits. Growing up in Southern California also meant going to the Rose Parade, where the bigger floats average more than 50,000 flowers. Senior prom was probably the one and only time I bought flowers in high school. Call a wrist corsage awkward if you will, but hey, it beats the terror of pinning flowers on a girl’s dress.

Speaking of awkward, when I first met my wife in college I decided to be coy and send flowers, forcing her to make the next move. But fate played a part when the bouquet was delivered to the wrong dorm, the flowers wilting at the front desk for days. I didn’t hear from her for a while and she didn’t hear from me, and that meant we were thinking nasty thoughts about each other. “Ungrateful” (my end). “Loser” (hers). Another girl finally let her know about the flowers and it’s a good thing she found out. A marriage was saved!

If you’re thinking my spend on flowers is below average, I’m confident I made up for it in a single day: at my daughter’s wedding. Her bouquet, her bridesmaids’ bouquets, down the aisle, around the altar, at the centers of the reception tables, and on and on – the blooms were everywhere. Let’s just say the cost of all that color was probably enough to buy a small car.

I’ve brought home several flower bouquets over the years, whether to my wife or to my mother. What used to be an in-shop, DIY experience is now pretty much Amazon, where you click your way through the colorful screens of 1-800 FLOWERS or FTD to create the perfect arrangement. And as you know, you rarely get the exact look you choose from the photos. The fine print protects the companies by stating something like “depending on availability”.

I like to bake (which is not the same as “to cook”), so when someone says “flower” I’m thinking “flour”. After all, flour is to baking as flowers are to spring. Flowers wouldn’t taste good in my chocolate-chip cookies, but you do find them in other foods. Top your soup with a squash blossom, your tea with chamomile flowers, or your salads with calendulas, pansies, or marigolds. Not for me; no thanks. When it comes to flowers as food additives I might be tempted to say, “the bloom is off the rose”.

Okay, so I went through the lyrics of “Seasons In The Sun” again and noticed …now that the spring is in the air, with the flowers everywhere… , so… what do you know? Terry and I are talking about the same season after all. At least this one lyric brings a little joy and fun to an otherwise depressing song. It’s what this kid born in the 1960s might call “flower power”.

Blogger’s note: “Seasons In The Sun” really was #1 on the music charts exactly fifty years ago this month. My wife and I bought strawberries last weekend, which had me thinking about seasons, which had the song bouncing around in my brain. But the fifty-years thing is an eerie coincidence, don’t you agree? Maybe a higher flower power is at work here.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Roof Rats

My granddaughter has a fancy starter piano with eight colorful keys. A flip of the switch and she can play musical notes, animal sounds, or hear the colors of the rainbow. She’s not even a year old so she pounds more than plays, creating a chorus of owls, frogs, birds, and rabbits. Those four I can handle. But every now and then she throws in a squirrel and the hairs on my neck stand at full attention.

Maybe you agree; it’s a little odd to include a rabbit in keyboard animal sounds (does a rabbit even make a sound?) Admittedly, the little piano trill conjures a furry friend with a twitching nose. On the other hand (paw?) the squirrel sound is a toneless gnawing burst, sounding very similar to the real squirrels who sharpen their teeth on my metal gutters. Whoever created this keyboard is having a good laugh at my expense. “Let’s see; I have the entire animal kingdom at my fingertips and I only need to come up with eight sounds. Let’s go with a squirrel!”

You sense my wrath already (and I’ve only logged a couple of paragraphs). But here’s the thing. I’m sitting here at my kitchen table, typing away, and I can’t claim full concentration because I’m expecting the sound of rodent enamel on metal at any moment. Words fail to describe it. Just imagine the grind of a dull hand saw… back and forth, back and forth on the gutter.

It’s not like the squirrels don’t have other nearby options for hanging out. We have fence lines dividing our pastures; convenient raceways when the squirrels dash to their trees and back. And about those trees: dozens of pines and oaks, with broad branches inviting a squirrel nest or ten. So why is one of them always attracted to the heights of my house?

The battle began last spring. The squirrel scampered happily across the peaks and valleys of my roof, pausing occasionally to gnaw a shingle or a gutter. Eventually he discovered one of my vent pipes tasted pretty good too, and realized with just a bit of mouth work he could open up access to the inside. Now we have a problem. I pictured all kinds of mayhem inside my attic: droppings, nests, stolen insulation, chewed electrical wires. It was time to take action.

My initial defense was a complete failure. The former owner left a full-size plastic owl behind – one of those bobble-head figures that looks remarkably lifelike. So I placed the owl close to the house and watched through the windows. Bobble bobble. The squirrels hesitated from a distance, eventually crawled cautiously closer, then pretty much made friends with my plastic predator. I checked Mr. Hoots recently and noticed his ears had been chewed off.

When yet another squirrel called “dibs” on my roof a few months later I knew it was time to get serious. Looked into my options and dropped a few bucks on a Crosman “American Classic” bolt action pellet pistol, a variable-pump long-barrel that looks more intimidating than it shoots. You drop in the ammo, pump a few times, and the compressed air blasts the pellet to kingdom come.

Now then, here’s why my pellet gun was about as effective as the bobble-head owl. One, my shaky hands have the gun pointing everywhere but directly at an annoying squirrel. Two, I’m old enough to need readers to align the sight at the end of the barrel. And three – and here’s the kicker – the impact of the pellet is nothing more than a gentle nudge. Seriously, these squirrels have so much fur and fat they could probably take a dozen pellets while pawing their little noses at me.

It’s a humble exchange – the squirrels and me. The first time I shot anywhere near one of them, I kid you not – he ducked. He was poised on my roof line staring down at me, wondering what the heck I was about to do, when suddenly BLAM! and my little pellet went whistling harmlessly over his head. Then came the ducking move and the amused stare, as if to say, “Missed me!”

So why do I still fire off a pellet every time a squirrel goes gnawing on my gutter? I think it’s one of those false senses of accomplishment. I take the shot, the shot misses, the squirrel relocates to the other side of the roof, and all goes quiet for another hour or two. Yep, I showed him.

So the battle rages on. There will be future chapters to share in this space, and… and… and right on cue, there goes the hand saw again. Gnaw gnaw gnaw. Time to holster my American Classic and take my best shot again. Oh wait, hold the phone – heh – it’s just my granddaughter playing her little animal sounds over in the living room. I think I’ll go teach her a little something about dentistry and extract a piano key.

First-Name Basis

It’s only Tuesday as I type, but I’ve already cleared my calendar for Friday. After all, I have a very important day ahead of me. So important in fact, I need to organize a parade, raise a flag, and prepare unique dishes for the expected throng of adoring fans. But why am I wasting words on the details? You already know we’re celebrating Saint David’s Day in a few days, don’t you?

They’ll be celebrating in Wales, at least, just as they do every first day of March. You’ll find my cathedral there too, way down in the southwest corner of the country. Well, St Davids Cathedral, I mean. And the funny thing is, he’s not the David you’re thinking of, the one from the Bible who took down Goliath as a boy and became king as a man. This David helped to spread Christianity throughout the UK, united the Welsh people against a warring England, and performed several miracles. David’s a big deal in Wales.

St. Patrick’s an even bigger deal, of course. At least Patrick rates a celebration in the U.S. But admit it, you’re not celebrating Patrick’s spread of Christianity throughout Ireland, nor his miracle of removing all snakes from the land. You’re thinking more about what garment of green to wear, four-leaf clovers, beer, and maybe, just maybe, this is the year you participate in your local St. Paddy’s Day 5k.

This business of saints is interesting to me because, well, it’s not as defined as I was led to believe. The rules and processes to put “Saint” in front a first name are a little vague. Suffice it to say, you need to be a model citizen, as well as a teacher, person of influence, and someone who cares little for the material goods and comforts of this world. I know a lot of people who fill this bill, but add in “wonder worker” or “source of benevolent power” and the list drops to zero.

Saints are also on my mind because I grew up in California and, well, they’re all over the place out there. Francisco to the north. Diego to the south. Barbara somewhere in the middle. My childhood home was right down the street from Monica. My brother lives in Fernando’s valley. 99.9% of the state’s residents think of those as “places”, but firstly they were people. You’ll find “San’s” and “Santa’s” all over the Golden State.

Saints get a little watered down when you consider the Catholic Church’s take on them. More than 10,000 have been recognized over time. Even more to the point, Catholics acknowledge anyone making it to heaven to be a saint. I’d hope that count is way more than 10,000 by now. Maybe it’s the reason we have patron saints: the cream of the crop, the ones regarded as “heavenly advocates of particular nations, families, or people”. My patron saint isn’t David by default, but I sure like his name.

Eat Welsh Rarebit when you celebrate on Friday (grilled cheese on toast, zero rabbit)

Admittedly, my mind wanders somewhere other than historical figures when I think of saints. Our dog is a Saint Bernard, one of those gentle giants you picture with a brandy brandy around the neck. A few years ago we went on a cruise, with a stop in the Baltic Sea port of Saint Petersburg. “St. Elmo’s Fire” is a luminous phenomenon caused by an atmospheric electric field. (also a pretty good movie from the 1980s). And so on.

You can read a bit more about Saint David and his cathedral in one of my very first blog posts: unsung. You’ll discover that his town of Pembrokeshire – the smallest ~~kingdom~~ enclave in the UK – is right across St. George’s Channel from the Irish town of Kildare, where you’ll find St. Brigid’s Cathedral, my wife’s namesake. The blog post is really about Brigid but at least David gets a mention towards the end. Even if you don’t “read a little more”, remember, Friday’s the big day. Parades, flags, and fun food, all for a darned decent guy. Makes me blush anytime somebody says, “Dave, you’re a saint.”

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Teeny-Weeny Towns

My daughter forwarded a video about a suburb of Knoxville known as Safety City. In this little town you’ll find roads and traffic signals, businesses and shops, but no cars. Sidewalks are for pedestrians while streets are reserved for bicyclists and other “non-motorized vehicles”. Everything in “SC” is an easy walk, whether to the post office, football stadium, movie theater, or dinner at Applebee’s. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention… everything in Safety City is miniature.

Safety City is a novel concept because it reduces the real-life aspects of a town down to a dimension children can relate to. And relate they do. Entire classes bus over to Safety City to experience vehicular, pedestrian, bicycle, and fire safety at a young age. So much more effective than traffic school on a blackboard!

I’ve always been a fan of miniatures; a feeling hearkening back to my childhood. Anyone who read Gulliver’s Travels knows “miniature”, as in the inhabitants of the (literally) small town of Lilliput. Anyone who ever held a snow globe imagined those little places and figures inside the glass coming to life.

I wonder if grade-school children still make dioramas. What a cool concept for a kid. Within the confines of a shoebox you create a miniature world of your liking: buildings, people, animals, trees, etc. Then you cut a peephole in the center of one end of the box and cover the open top with tissue paper. When you look through the hole you see your little diorama world, with the light filtering through from above. It gives your creation a startling sense of reality.

Model trains certainly fueled my interest in miniatures. I remember several friends who collected the popular “HO”-scale sets (1:87, or about 2″-high trains). They could buy so many accessories (endless tracks, buildings, trees, and figures) they could create an HO-scale world big enough to fill a two-car garage. Go figure, the only train set I ever owned was the “G”-scale, where the train’s a good 8″-10″ in height. Not so miniature.

Speaking of model trains, one of my favorite episodes of the old television series The Twilight Zone was called “Stopover in a Quiet Town”. A couple wakes up in a strange house after a night of partying, can’t get the phone or the lights to work, and find the refrigerator stocked with plastic food. They walk outside, only to discover the surrounding town is utterly still – no people, no sounds, no movement. Then the train whistles and pulls into the station, so they hop aboard, hoping to be taken back to somewhere familiar. But the train merely travels in a wide oval and returns to the same station where it picked them up. As the couple steps off the train, the giant hand of a child reaches down to grab them, while a mother’s voice can be heard saying, “Be careful with your pets, dear…” Twilight Zone indeed.

Replicas of miniature cities can be found everywhere, whether Knoxville’s Safety City, Disneyland’s Storybook Land (viewed from canal boats), or Legoland’s Billund Resort, Denmark’s largest tourist attraction outside of Copenhagen. There’s even a “top ten” of the world’s miniature cities, including “Miniaturk”, 122 famous buildings of Turkey in a park-like setting in Istanbul; “Tobu World Square” in Japan, which showcases the world’s UNESCO world heritage sites in the presence of 140,000 miniature people, and The Museum of Roman Civilization (which I’ve seen myself), a remarkable recreation of ancient Rome’s “Golden Age” thirty-six years in the making.

Maybe all this talk of miniatures has you thinking of the recent trend of tiny homes. Those are an entirely different concept; not at all “miniature”. A tiny home is like a full-scale house with most of the air sucked out of it. The components are still full-scale but the spaces are decidedly smaller than normal. Tiny homes kind of look like shoeboxes to me. Maybe we should add peepholes on the ends so we can watch the inhabitants try to make a living in their cramped quarters.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Renaissance Man

In the second movement of Antonin Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the orchestra settles down as the English horn begins its soft, wailing solo. You’ve heard this famous lullaby in one version or another, but never more powerfully than in the “Largo” movement of Dvořák’s symphony, with the strings and woodwinds providing the sweeping background (~45 seconds into the following video). It’s one of my favorite classical pieces, and my performance is flawless every time I play it. Play it in my head, that is.

I’ve developed a satisfying habit over the years which you might share (or at least, be willing to try). Think about something that interests you, or an activity in which you like to participate. Over time you’ve developed a fair understanding of your subject, though your level of knowledge and skill would never qualify you as a professional. But what if it did? What if you suddenly had the smarts or the talent to find yourself among the world’s best? Wouldn’t your life be wildly different?

My years of piano lessons never propelled me anywhere close to the ranks of “professional” or “best”. I never even advanced beyond the piano’s foundation to pursue an instrument like the English horn. To do so would’ve meant a wholly different direction in life. More practice and lessons instead of time spent with friends or years in the Boy Scouts. A different college or at least a different degree. Competitions. Travel.

Music eventually gave way to an interest in sports and soon I found myself on the basketball court more than in front of the piano keyboard. I’d practice endlessly at our backyard hoop, imagining myself making game-winning shot after shot. I did play a couple of years of JV ball in high school and went to college games at nearby UCLA. But my skills never developed to the varsity-, let alone college-level. Was I infatuated with basketball at the time? Yes, but I also knew early on I’d never be one of the greats.

You’re starting to see a pattern here and it continued in college. I studied architecture (“I’ll be the next Frank Lloyd Wright!”) but only spent the first few years of my career in the field. I had a good run with info technology companies (“Bill Gates!”) but never developed the level of expertise to be labeled a “techy”. I write these weekly blog posts (“John Grisham!”) but have no plans for the next Great American Novel.

Here’s my point, and maybe you never saw it coming. I find all of this dabbling and dreaming incredibly satisfying. My interest in a subject or activity wanes well before it becomes an obsession, and then I simply move on to the next thing vying for my attention. Why do I behave this way? Two reasons. First, I prefer to be a jack of all trades (or a master of none, if you will), not a virtuoso. Second, more importantly, I am far too content with my life as it is to ever be tempted by the sacrifices necessary for the pursuit of singular success.

There’s a complimentary phrase for people like me: Renaissance Men. We hearken back to the great thinkers and artists who came along just after the Middle Ages; Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, for example, with “unquenchable curiosity” and “feverishly inventive imaginations”. Mind you, I can’t paint like da Vinci or sculpt like Michelangelo, but my curiosity and imagination may run just as rampant. The modern Renaissance Man, in a nutshell, has “broad interests” and “superficial talents”. Me to a tee.

The next time I hear Dvořák’s “New World Symphony”, I’ll think about playing the English horn. Maybe I’ll sign up for lessons and eventually get good enough to play the “Largo” movement. Maybe then I’ll join the local orchestra so I get the chance to perform in front of a live audience! Yeah… probably not. Long before my much-anticipated stage debut, some other activity will vie for my attention and off I’ll go.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Calling… Into Question

When I first started piano lessons as a kid, my teacher gave me a little book of scales and keyboard exercises called “Teaching Little Fingers to Play”. I came across that book again recently, and the title made me think about smartphones. Our grandchildren will get their very first phones one of these days, on which they’ll be teaching their little fingers – not their little voices – to play. Maybe the first word they should type is T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Travis Tritt also wrote “T-R-O-U-B-L-E “, one of his country music hits from the 1990s. The song’s chorus starts out with Well hello, T-R-O-U-B-L-E, Tell me what in the world, You doin’ A-L-O-N-E. Kind of describes kids and their smartphones, doesn’t it? They let their fingers do the talking instead of their voices. It’s hardly a personal relationship with whoever’s on the other end, but more like the one you and I’ve developed through our back-and-forth blog comments.

If you’re an adult with kids who have smartphones, you’ve probably had the following conversation at some point in their lives: Daughter: I talked to Jacob today. Dad: Did you actually TALK to Jacob? Daughter: Well no, we were texting but you know what I mean. Sigh…

Telephones in transition

In a sense (or several senses), smartphones weaken our human connections instead of strengthen them. Think about it: before the traditional telephone our default means of communication was face-to-face (sight). Then the telephone comes along and we go ear-to-ear instead (sound). Then the smartphone replaces ear-to-ear with typing (touch). On the one hand it’s technical evolution; on the other, social regression.

Have a conversation with most members of Gen Z and you’ll want to type A-W-K-W-A-R-D. The dialogue (if there actually is a dialogue) doesn’t flow. They’re hesitant to offer insights or ask questions because they can’t back up the cursor and retype to get their words just right. There are moments of uncomfortable silence; lots of them.

Moments of silence used to be a good thing. Flashback to my teens, when a relationship with a girl meant spending a lot of time on the phone, defined as a corded handset held up to the ear (instead of a speakerphone where you multi-task). Those conversations were priceless to a young person. Phone calls helped to overcome shyness, and were practice to express feelings or ask a girl out on a date. Sometimes we’d just stay on the line in silence, enjoying the fact we were the only person in each other’s moment.

The style I grew up with

Phone calls also helped me learn to talk to adults (and credit to my parents for not making them for me). I still remember those first few dials to people or businesses, nervous over the fact it was me initiating the conversation. What do I say? Won’t I sound stupid? I hope my voice doesn’t crack.

Texting absolutely has its merits, as a recent article in The Atlantic argued. When exchanging brief, useful information, texting is dreamily efficient because there’s none of the “water cooler” effect. As they say, get in, get out, and move on. But when it comes to opinions, recommendations, or more detailed information, phone calls are essential, if only to allow the voice to add emphasis and/or emotion. The Atlantic article made several arguments in support of the “gauche” phone call but surprisingly, “developing conversational skills” didn’t show up until the final paragraph.

Budding conversationalist

When I moved away from Colorado after almost thirty years, I left behind a particularly close friendship, one where we’d see each other weekly for an outdoor jog together. But thanks to Zoom, I didn’t really leave it behind. Once I got to South Carolina we looked at our calendars and booked a monthly videocall, where we could have the same conversations we had on the trail, with added ability to share photos, links, and documents in the moment. Our conversations are as spontaneous as they were when we were face-to-face. It’s a great way to keep in touch and maintain a relationship because technically… it’s a phone call.

Maybe Gen Z will figure this out before Gen A takes its rightful place as America’s youth. If you can’t be face-to-face, at least pick up the phone and have a voice call. Keep the topics light and spontaneous. Let the conversation flow, and don’t get distracted by typing, emojis, or multi-tasking. Build the relationship.

Dare I say it, there’s another word to be spelled on this topic: A-I. I can envision a day when you’re talking to a friend, only you really aren’t because he or she has created an avatar who looks, talks, and thinks just like they do. Heck, maybe their avatar is talking to your avatar, and you’re not even around to witness the conversation! I’d call that another way to spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E.