I guess I've always been more conservative than most folks I know. I'm a devout, practicing Catholic now - after being raised but not really practicing the faith. And so politically, theologically, even practically, I'm usually out of step.
And yet I get along with most everyone, from all walks of life. I've been in a room full of Nobel winners and made small talk, have hung out at more biker bars than I can count, been the only white person in a club - whether Hispanic, black or Asian - and never felt out of place in any of them.
And I think it gets to what you allude to here: See folks as folks. Treat folks as folks.
We are all more alike than dissimilar: We're all struggling with life, we're all watching parents grow older, kids grow up, dealing with our changing dreams for life as we ourselves age. Everyone's got family that drives them nuts yet sustains them, everyone's got at least one coworker who make them bonkers, a longtime friend or family member from whom they're estranged and unsure how to reconnect, everyone's got memories great and ordinary, and at least one side-splittingly hilarious story.
The secret to fitting in wherever you are is to simply learn to listen to one another. See God's image in everyone around you.
Those who prefer to live by alternate rules tend to struggle to find peace.
They also tend to be the coworker nobody wants to hang out with ...
I just found you yesterday and shared the article with my husband. Excellent!
I agree with Jim below - just treat people like people. It’s only been recently (and not everywhere fortunately) where it all came down to politics. I grew up in the “don’t talk politics or religion” except to people you know well era, and it served us well. Those things didn’t divide back when everything was about politics. Now that it IS, the country is a sad sad place.
One anecdote about the Obama years. I have had a nonprofit in Uganda for 13+ years. (There are less then 3% mzungus/whites people in Uganda, for context here.) I’ve spent a LOT of time there and other than little kids doing the mzungu dance (which is a positive thing), skin color has not been an issue on either side. (Well, they do think all Americans are rich so I get the mzungu price for things.)
When Obamacare was in the works I was opposed, as well as to some other policies of the time. POLICIES. I didn’t like Obama because he was a Politician, capital P, and not one interested in uniting the country in any way.
I posted a link to an article on my FB and a high school friend sent me a LONG message about how racist I was. Not in a nice - or short - way. When I responded about a) POLICIES not skin color, and b) I work with 100% black people and literally none of us care, she got even more mad and vitriolic. I finally unfriended her - there was clearly no communication or thinking happening. That was my first taste of the educated white woman progressive crazy person. Not my last sadly.
I told my husband years ago that the country was lost as long as we have the internet. It has both exposed and caused severe mental illness, and let people live in tribes of fantasy induced mania. People don’t have to get along anymore, like in the pre-AOL days. I’m a right leaning libertarian - what I *want* is for people just to leave me alone. Unfortunately, you can’t do that anymore!
We all suffer from the irony of using the internet for too many of our decisions, ranging from buying too much stuff from Amazon, or becoming addicted to "likes" and "up votes" on the news and social sites we visit.
I'm two years away from my 80s. But I too am part of the process that has led to us all using on-line dictionaries and never being without our "smart" phone.
I grew up in a small farming community. I did not see a black rotary dial telephone until I entered high school. Many of the people who call me send me angry text messages because I often leave my phone turned off. It is the one thing I do that makes me at times an outcast 😕
We are ALL part of the process, Dennis. I was trained in printing press operation and the graphic arts/printing business was my first occupation.
First, photographic typesetting incorporated punchtapes and digital readers to produce layout-ready type. Then, the simple mechanical sheet counters on presses were replaced with digital counters and displays. Computerized cutter automation followed, and you probably know the rest.
What struck me most about the transition you and I have witnessed, was the opportunistic deceptions about economic fundamentals. Until the deceptively-enforced closure of a majority of neighborhood printing facilities resulted in a mass export of small presses from the developed countries, it was always more economical on an aggregate per-sheet basis to use an offset press for anything more than a 50-sheet run.
Having watched those deceptions be deployed in real-time, I've applied the same investigative methods in analyzing other paradigm shifts, the totality of which have led to where we now are. A pattern of dissimulation is a thread woven through this tapestry, running the entire length of the roll of analytical fabric.
This dissimulation proceeds apace.
The world is in desperate need of its "outcasts" as a "control group" if for nothing else.
Such a welcome and accurate analysis, Ted, and thank you for responding to my off key musings.
I know quite a bit about your profession, having moved from the newsroom into the basement at the then largest circulation news paper north of Boston in the later half of the 70s.
I'd always straddled the barbed wire fence between technology and the humanities. I was the kind of kid who learned how to accurately make things go boom using home made black powder stuffed into pill bottles and using a JetEx fuses from the local hobby store, all while loving history, English and shop classes in high school.
By the mid to late 70s, the Bangor Daily News was loosing a lot of money, which led to me telling the publisher I could automate much of the work if he gave me $10,000 for the first phase.
While I held a extra class HAM license, I was taking a large leap from the frying pan into the fires of ignorance.
Just one example: I had mastered programming early 8 bit chips from Zilog and Intel and thought sending data into a Universal Video Setter would be a weekend job. Fortunately we had a well stocked Radio Shack store in Bangor, because I had to design and build a circuit that fooled the video setter into believing it was reading a paper tape.
A week did not go by where I thought I'd be fired. But what a great horse I'd climbed onto.
Probably the most cost effective bit of coding was done to bypass early systems such as fax and teletype to get stories from each of the paper's various bureaus spread through Maine and in Boston and Washington, DC
The telecommunication costs dropped to the point where all the hardware costs of supplying each of the 10 bureaus with early computers plus "high speed" 1200 baud modems was paid for within the first two months.
Back in the 70's telephone charges within the state were so high that a single page story sent by a slow fax machine could cost as much as $10 to $15 dollars.
So yes, Ted, it seems we followed similar paths into our old age. Life can be so grand if only we let it 😄
I just listened to the Megyn Kelly interview. You said you were from Burbank and you were making a lot of sense. I live in Burbank. This made me venture into Substack which I never knew what that even meant before so thank you for your refreshing outlook on these crazy times.
I guess I've always been more conservative than most folks I know. I'm a devout, practicing Catholic now - after being raised but not really practicing the faith. And so politically, theologically, even practically, I'm usually out of step.
And yet I get along with most everyone, from all walks of life. I've been in a room full of Nobel winners and made small talk, have hung out at more biker bars than I can count, been the only white person in a club - whether Hispanic, black or Asian - and never felt out of place in any of them.
And I think it gets to what you allude to here: See folks as folks. Treat folks as folks.
We are all more alike than dissimilar: We're all struggling with life, we're all watching parents grow older, kids grow up, dealing with our changing dreams for life as we ourselves age. Everyone's got family that drives them nuts yet sustains them, everyone's got at least one coworker who make them bonkers, a longtime friend or family member from whom they're estranged and unsure how to reconnect, everyone's got memories great and ordinary, and at least one side-splittingly hilarious story.
The secret to fitting in wherever you are is to simply learn to listen to one another. See God's image in everyone around you.
Those who prefer to live by alternate rules tend to struggle to find peace.
They also tend to be the coworker nobody wants to hang out with ...
I love everything you just said; thank you for your insight.
I just found you yesterday and shared the article with my husband. Excellent!
I agree with Jim below - just treat people like people. It’s only been recently (and not everywhere fortunately) where it all came down to politics. I grew up in the “don’t talk politics or religion” except to people you know well era, and it served us well. Those things didn’t divide back when everything was about politics. Now that it IS, the country is a sad sad place.
One anecdote about the Obama years. I have had a nonprofit in Uganda for 13+ years. (There are less then 3% mzungus/whites people in Uganda, for context here.) I’ve spent a LOT of time there and other than little kids doing the mzungu dance (which is a positive thing), skin color has not been an issue on either side. (Well, they do think all Americans are rich so I get the mzungu price for things.)
When Obamacare was in the works I was opposed, as well as to some other policies of the time. POLICIES. I didn’t like Obama because he was a Politician, capital P, and not one interested in uniting the country in any way.
I posted a link to an article on my FB and a high school friend sent me a LONG message about how racist I was. Not in a nice - or short - way. When I responded about a) POLICIES not skin color, and b) I work with 100% black people and literally none of us care, she got even more mad and vitriolic. I finally unfriended her - there was clearly no communication or thinking happening. That was my first taste of the educated white woman progressive crazy person. Not my last sadly.
I told my husband years ago that the country was lost as long as we have the internet. It has both exposed and caused severe mental illness, and let people live in tribes of fantasy induced mania. People don’t have to get along anymore, like in the pre-AOL days. I’m a right leaning libertarian - what I *want* is for people just to leave me alone. Unfortunately, you can’t do that anymore!
I enjoyed reading your comment, Jennings.
We all suffer from the irony of using the internet for too many of our decisions, ranging from buying too much stuff from Amazon, or becoming addicted to "likes" and "up votes" on the news and social sites we visit.
I'm two years away from my 80s. But I too am part of the process that has led to us all using on-line dictionaries and never being without our "smart" phone.
I grew up in a small farming community. I did not see a black rotary dial telephone until I entered high school. Many of the people who call me send me angry text messages because I often leave my phone turned off. It is the one thing I do that makes me at times an outcast 😕
We are ALL part of the process, Dennis. I was trained in printing press operation and the graphic arts/printing business was my first occupation.
First, photographic typesetting incorporated punchtapes and digital readers to produce layout-ready type. Then, the simple mechanical sheet counters on presses were replaced with digital counters and displays. Computerized cutter automation followed, and you probably know the rest.
What struck me most about the transition you and I have witnessed, was the opportunistic deceptions about economic fundamentals. Until the deceptively-enforced closure of a majority of neighborhood printing facilities resulted in a mass export of small presses from the developed countries, it was always more economical on an aggregate per-sheet basis to use an offset press for anything more than a 50-sheet run.
Having watched those deceptions be deployed in real-time, I've applied the same investigative methods in analyzing other paradigm shifts, the totality of which have led to where we now are. A pattern of dissimulation is a thread woven through this tapestry, running the entire length of the roll of analytical fabric.
This dissimulation proceeds apace.
The world is in desperate need of its "outcasts" as a "control group" if for nothing else.
Don't ever change.
Such a welcome and accurate analysis, Ted, and thank you for responding to my off key musings.
I know quite a bit about your profession, having moved from the newsroom into the basement at the then largest circulation news paper north of Boston in the later half of the 70s.
I'd always straddled the barbed wire fence between technology and the humanities. I was the kind of kid who learned how to accurately make things go boom using home made black powder stuffed into pill bottles and using a JetEx fuses from the local hobby store, all while loving history, English and shop classes in high school.
By the mid to late 70s, the Bangor Daily News was loosing a lot of money, which led to me telling the publisher I could automate much of the work if he gave me $10,000 for the first phase.
While I held a extra class HAM license, I was taking a large leap from the frying pan into the fires of ignorance.
Just one example: I had mastered programming early 8 bit chips from Zilog and Intel and thought sending data into a Universal Video Setter would be a weekend job. Fortunately we had a well stocked Radio Shack store in Bangor, because I had to design and build a circuit that fooled the video setter into believing it was reading a paper tape.
A week did not go by where I thought I'd be fired. But what a great horse I'd climbed onto.
Probably the most cost effective bit of coding was done to bypass early systems such as fax and teletype to get stories from each of the paper's various bureaus spread through Maine and in Boston and Washington, DC
The telecommunication costs dropped to the point where all the hardware costs of supplying each of the 10 bureaus with early computers plus "high speed" 1200 baud modems was paid for within the first two months.
Back in the 70's telephone charges within the state were so high that a single page story sent by a slow fax machine could cost as much as $10 to $15 dollars.
So yes, Ted, it seems we followed similar paths into our old age. Life can be so grand if only we let it 😄
It's a great thing when a little mistake (staying on the road later than planned) turns into a beautiful, memorable moment that is preserved forever.
I just listened to the Megyn Kelly interview. You said you were from Burbank and you were making a lot of sense. I live in Burbank. This made me venture into Substack which I never knew what that even meant before so thank you for your refreshing outlook on these crazy times.
I enjoy reading your column & appreciate you bringing people together
Oh wow! Such a refreshingly sane, truthful voice. Thank you, Sasha!!