It's a peaceful and uneventful Sunday afternoon and up 'til now, I haven't much felt inspired to write as inspiration from my birthday. Yours truly is 63 today (1/28). Time drifts on. It's nice to have collected Social Security for a year.
Nothing much to command our attention today. Cable TV news drones with attention to the investigation of Trump's people. Trump himself is in the crosshairs eventually. He is the quintessential bully. Can he bully virtually everyone who he thinks is in his way? Will his sycophants in the right wing media keep shaking their pom poms on his behalf? What happened to the model of "conservatives" as being of restrained, respectful temperament? What happened to the conservatives' general idea of wanting a gentle sort of continuity in our society, even if they don't always get their way?
We're told that the stock market gains should cause us to dismiss all questions of taste connected to Trump. A cesspool of behavior involving racist suggestions and porn stars should be neglected. The almighty dollar rules.We can't even be sure that any particular Trump policy, like the "tax cut," is to explain for the rocketing-higher market. What about the central banks?
Don't our community banks exist for the purpose of giving the "common man," to the extent anyone cares about such souls anymore, a safe place to save money? Isn't that why we have the FDIC? Hasn't the Fed been gently nudging up interest rates lately? I cannot figure out why the interest rates paid to savers have been trending down. I was shocked recently to check in with a couple banks. Bank of the West is paying just one percent for a five-year CD? The bank in Hancock pays 1.3 percent? What is the common person to do?
Trump is so proud of the stock market as if that should be our only measuring stick. Are we really supposed to assume that risk is gone from the stock market? With Republicans in control? With an administration that seeks to slash any and all regulations? Don't many of these regulations in fact exist to try to assure the common folk that the bottom won't fall out? We're inundated with stock market news all the time. The message, I guess, is that we'd better get in. In my mind it has been a long and dangerous siren song. But could I be wrong? I doubt it. At some point the dam will start to crack, won't it?
Annuities? I have read screaming warnings about getting into that racket. They are complicated insurance contracts. "Insurance" is not a magic word for me. I remember the pilot Carl Johnson of Morris, RIP, who said "I don't believe in insurance."
Adjusting to economic realities
Maybe our nation will sometime soon have "universal basic income." Even the conservative sociologist Charles Murray believes in this. No panic over whether your basic needs will be met. Murray advises that as automation and globalization continue their inexorable advance, we'll realize we can no longer count on the traditional "job." Indeed, the idea of doing something tedious 40 hours a week seems something now confined to the world of black and white film noir movies. I used to knock myself out working in journalism, thinking that this approach to life would bestow some sort of virtue and win respect.
Our perspective has changed due to the digital age. What matters today isn't how many hours you work in a week, it's whether you have mastered methods to be productive. You can be tremendously "productive" working half the traditional work week. The tech-based systems have almost scary power. Tom Friedman notes this and gives an example where someone types a code or instruction of some type and gets one number wrong. The results can be disastrous.
I was at the Morris Sun Tribune newspaper in its heyday when we put out a big thick product twice a week. All that pulp isn't so necessary now. What would it be like sitting in my old office today, trying to do "my thing" like in the old days? Well, when the paper size is down to as few as ten pages a week, as it was recently, my output would have to be negligible. What's the use?
Cockeyed notions of years ago
A person reflects on his birthday. I remember attending college when avant garde ideas ruled. We were discouraged from just "reporting scores" in sports. We were always supposed to try to see some bigger picture, something profound. Avant garde ideas had real pull which is how we got the UMM science auditorium. There was an irritating "intelligentsia" out there that would browbeat people who tried to just do a simple job.
Case in point: an op-ed that appeared right after the famous episode of Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes punching an opposing (Clemson) player along the sidelines. An op-ed noted the outrage that built up, and observed that "even people who read scores for a living" vented the outrage. As if such people were just supposed to be one-dimensional, i.e. stupid. The suggestion was that we couldn't trust the established sports media - i.e. people who just "read scores" - to make the kind of judgment that was needed re. Hayes.
I remember when Jim Bouton had his foray into television sports. Hey Jim, they only hired you because of your name. Bouton, you might recall, had already gotten famous writing the book "Ball Four" which was iconoclastic as hell. His foray into TV sports saw him become a pain as he had a persecution complex over how his avant garde work was perceived.
Avant garde never got implanted in our culture as well as we thought. Architecture went back to 90-degree angles - actually it never really left - but we still have the UMM science auditorium.
Bouton did short subjects for TV sports that had little to do with reporting the kind of news that TV consumers want. He was a shining ornament for a time and then he moseyed on, bound to make money no matter what he did, thanks to Ball Four. That's his meal ticket today, still.
On my birthday I look back to how the iconoclastic phase of our culture may have affected me too much. I'm too impressionable, maybe too insecure, so I sought the approval of the snarky intelligentsia. It was a mistake. I'm too old now to begin anew, so I can only mull it over and ponder an alternative history.
I'd love to go back to the day after my graduation from high school. I'd wake up in the morning realizing I was the same person as the day before. Only I'd tossed aside the shackles of high school coursework and expectations. I'd look in the mirror and tell myself there was absolutely no need to do anything. Move forward with a grasp of life skills. As far as compensated work is concerned, don't fret about how many hours you "work." Slowly get acclimated to this. If you falter for some reason, find a way to volunteer. "Network" and make friends.
In need of mentorship, I guess
A friend should have grabbed my shoulders, shaken me and said "whatever you do, don't ever go back to school again - don't even enter a classroom - a pox on you if you do." That would have been the best advice. It was a road not taken and I regret it. I needed to sever ties with my silly age peers completely, in that time when us youth were so immersed in debauchery, to an extent that I even hate to try to describe.
You cannot live life over again. A shame. At 63 I'd like to think I still have some sort of interesting future. Let's remember the words of Yogi Berra, RIP: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it!" And let's remember John Wayne in his last movie who went to the saloon and said "today is my birthday, give me the best you've got." Reminds me of the joke about the three-legged dog who jumped up onto a barstool at an Old West saloon. He said "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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