Posted on November 9, 2004
When I was in grade school, Spam® was bone fide mystery meat my Mother served regularly. It came packaged in a rectangular tin, which she opened at both ends with a can opener. She then pushed out the contents and baked it, who knows for how long. Then we ate to the middle of the “brisket” and saved the rest for tomorrow night’s meal.
I suspect my Mother would be confused by today’s definition of Spam. At the same time, the content is still the equivalent of “mystery meat.” Here are recent examples of email Spam that have hit my virtual in-box.
There’s the email about my member becoming larger and thicker, and there is no doubt as to what part of my anatomy we’re referring to. It’s just that my name is Anne and my plumbing is on the inside. Then, there’s the email about how I can order medications online at great savings. I haven’t checked into any of these, but I suspect there is a catch. And what about the email telling me I’ve been approved for a mortgage of $400,000 at an incredibly low rate? Huh? What’s the deal here?
The most odious of email Spams, however, are those hucksters who invite me to obtain an advanced degree through one of their online “universities.”
As someone who went through four years of undergraduate schooling, followed by the required years of graduate schooling, I am offended by the idea that someone can get a degree on line without doing the work. I’m sure my son, the Ph.D. who went even farther than I, feels the same way. I’m also sure that my other academic friends with advanced degrees agree.
Online academic credentials are bogus for the most part; and those of us who have the real thing need to complain. It’s because these Spammers are different from those who offer body enhancements, mortgage enhancements, or prescription enhancements. To obtain the latter doesn’t require years of schooling, but to graduate with a college degree of any kind does.
See more 10 Minutes in category Annoyances, Changing Scene
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Posted on November 8, 2004
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is as beauty does. Beauty is only skin-deep. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. There are so many clichйs about beauty that the concept is almost a clichй in itself.
On the other hand, my Webster’s, that icon of information, parses beauty as “the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations, a meaningful design or pattern, or something else.”
This puts Mr. Webster at the sublime, rather than the mundane, end of the bell curve.
I’m not sure anyone else cares, but my definition for beauty is that quality in things that stirs our souls. Makes us smile. Or makes us remember. For a romantic, it can be a sunset in mid-September that reminds the person how wonderful nature is. For a financial analyst, it can be an up day in the market that erases the previous week’s losses. There’s a sense of relationship between the beholder, if you will, and the beheld.
Specifically, what passes as beauty for me? It’s that occasion where the universe offers something special and I only have to enjoy. I don’t have to create it or justify it or pay for it. It just happens, usually unexpected. It could be a bird’s song, a letter saying one of my essays has been accepted for publication, or a note from a friend. What is constant is the element of positive surprise.
Clichйs and definitions notwithstanding, beauty should be an integral part of one’s life, no matter how it occurs.
See more 10 Minutes in category Things to Ponder
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Posted on November 7, 2004
The John vs. George Show absorbed a couple hours of my time each day. Now that it’s over, I’m following my own recent advice to talk show hosts and am looking around for new topics to write about. I’m also planning on filling those two hours with activities that went by the wayside to make room for conventions and campaigns.
The election moved into my life almost insidiously. I didn’t really notice how much time and energy it consumed until I realized I hadn’t read a good book or weeded in my garden or relaxed in my hammock in ages. Instead, I studied online sites, listened to debates, read the newspaper and other periodicals, and always had a dialogue with myself inside my head about the choice of candidates.
Now I’m turning off the lights. Leaving the building. Not looking back.
I’ll still opine about our leaders and losers from time to time, but I’m looking forward to that next great fictional read, an extra hour of piano practice, and maybe even cooking a meal that flops. I’m on sabbatical regarding politics until further notice.
See more 10 Minutes in category 2004 Election
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Posted on November 6, 2004
Maybe I’m just a sore loser, but I’ve grown weary of talk show hosts who have used the recent election as grist for their conversation mills. Granted, during the spring primaries, the summer conventions, and the fall race to the finish, the topic was relevant. I understood and accepted that.
But the contest is over. We know about red and blue states. We know who the winner is. Those of us who followed the campaigns probably also know the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate and what appealed to the voters about them. Rehashing more of the same won’t change any outcome.
I have a theory that the World Series and the election, with its accompanying diatribes about the war in Iraq and the economy, grasped our collective attention to the point where we haven’t followed other developments very well. Consequently, we’re not up to speed on them.
It’s all right for the rest of us to have election withdrawal symptoms in private; but it can be dangerous if you are a talk show host and haven’t found other issues with which to pique audience interest. Listeners are fickle. Maybe I’m not the only one who has already tuned out. Maybe there are enough of us to cause some hosts to be dumped.
So, Larry, Dr. Bennett, Rush, Bill O’Reilly, and the rest of you . . . get a life!
See more 10 Minutes in category 2004 Election, Personal Pleas
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Posted on November 5, 2004
The hardest thing I do every day is sit down and begin. And since this activity occurs several times throughout the day, it is always a challenge.
Sit down and begin means to focus on the task at hand and move all other issues to the side. Whether it’s getting out of bed at a certain time or spending an hour practicing piano, I’m not good at it. Never have been.
Take waking up each morning. My mind, which is on full alert, wanders around its universe while my body stays snuggly in place, resisting anything resembling a vertical position. Finally, I arise, but it is with great difficulty and two jolts of caffeine.
Then, if I’m not careful, I can spend an entire day puttering, rearranging this book and that, rereading the newspaper, and checking email. I can play with my hairstyle, redo my nails, and plump the pillows that huddle on my bed. But this isn’t really productive.
What I need to do instead is focus on something I want to achieve, something I want to have finished by day’s end. To do this requires constant guard. If I’m getting up, I can’t rationalize reasons why I shouldn’t. If I’m settling in to write, I can’t answer the telephone. If I’m analyzing data, I can’t be distracted by music in the background.
I don’t know if others have this dysfunctional problem; so if there is anyone else out there, then please let me know how you cope. I could be so much more productive if I didn’t have to force myself to sit down and begin.
See more 10 Minutes in category Me/Family, Personal Pleas
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Posted on November 4, 2004
I spent part of the morning practicing Christmas carols on the piano. Given that some department stores around here have their holiday decorations in place, it wasn’t rushing the season. In fact, I probably need as much lead time as those shops to get everything in place, since piano is a relatively new interest of mine.
Next February, I will have taken lessons for three years. To say the least it has been an educational experience . . . as well as a humbling one. The educational aspect long ago crossed the lines from what I knew didn’t know to what I didn’t know I didn’t know.
I knew I didn’t know how to read music. I knew I couldn’t learn without taking lessons. I knew I was not particularly musically inclined.
What I didn’t know that I didn’t know is that the piano is an amazingly difficult instrument. I had assumed because many families had pianos in their homes that they were relatively easy to play. But there are times you can be doing six, eight, ten different things at one time. For someone like me, who doesn’t multitask well, that’s a challenge.
Another thing I didn’t know that I didn’t know is that when you start lessons for the first time in middle age, your fingers don’t learn as quickly even if your mind is still sharp.
I usually get more than passing grades in any course I take. From the weekly test of the grade school spelling list to graduate school entrance exams, I have been close friends with the letter A. But if piano were a course I was taking for credit, I would be struggling for the gift of a C. That’s where the humbling part has come in.
And that’s also why I’m already practicing for Christmas.
See more 10 Minutes in category Me/Family
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Posted on November 3, 2004
The election is finally over, and about the only thing I am really happy about is that Ohio didn’t become another Florida. We knew inside 24 hours who the next President of the United States would be, and there will be no contesting the outcome. No injunctions, no courts, no hanging chads.
No joy in Mudville either.
Mudville is the setting for one of my Mother’s favorite poems, “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest L. Thayer. It’s about the ninth inning in a baseball game, when the home team is trailing four to two. With two outs, and two men on base, the last man at bat is Casey, who has been known to field miracles, and the spectators clearly hope he does it now.
Casey gives his all. Tension mounts as the umpire calls the count. Soon it’s three and two. Hearts beat loudly. Voices raise the cry. And the final lines of the poem tell the tale:
“Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright.
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.
And, somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout,
but there is no joy in Mudville —
mighty Casey has struck out.”
I feel the same way about the election.
See more 10 Minutes in category 2004 Election, Me/Family
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Posted on November 2, 2004
I voted today, along with most of the other three thousand registered voters in my precinct. I stood in a line that trailed outside the door in weather that was less than inviting. Once inside the polling place, I waited some more as my signature and address were verified and a ballot was handed to me.
Where I live, there are no electronic voting machines. Instead, you receive a large paper ballot that you mark with a No. 2 pencil. Did a pencil ever before assume such an important role?
There are no curtained voter booths either, so you lean over a temporary podium-like structure with your pencil and color in circles that are similar to those you probably colored on a computer-generated, multiple-choice quiz in school. Was there ever before a more important civics quiz?
Then you take your filled out ballot to a precinct volunteer who helps you put it into a scanning machine. He offers you a sticker that says, “I voted.” All in all, it was an orderly procedure with neighbors and friends recognizing each other in the various lines and slapping each other on the back as they exited the polling place. Was there ever a process more important?
See more 10 Minutes in category 2004 Election
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Posted on November 1, 2004
Tonight is Election Eve, where everyone in our country will go to sleep under the current administration and wake up tomorrow ready to vote. Even the undecideds must climb down from the fence. Tomorrow night’s sleep may not be as restful, regardless of which candidate one voted for. There is too much in the balance.
Over the course of tomorrow night, I see a long siege of popular votes vs. electoral votes. I see another long siege of battleground states vs. the rest of us. I see anger and challenges and votes of the recorded and nonrecorded kind. What I don’t see is a country exercising its right to vote in the spirit in which democracy is intended. Things are too bitter.
When I was in school, I was taught that democracy was about respecting each person’s point of view; in the end, the candidate who received the most electoral votes won. We elected our officials by ballot and not by battleground. But what’s happened in recent years is that elections have been fraught with claims of chicanery, and the winner has not had a clear-cut mandate. As a country, we are so evenly divided that, regardless of who wins on Tuesday, it will be difficult to come together. If we don’t try, however, our definition of democracy will eventually become synonymous with chaos.
See more 10 Minutes in category 2004 Election, Things to Ponder
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Posted on October 31, 2004
Yesterday we ran away to Shipshewana for one last look at trees in fall bloom and fields where horses roam. It isn’t even two hours away by road, but it is a lifetime away in culture.
Shipshewana, Indiana, is the third largest Amish community in the United States, and it has become a tourist destination for people like us who are curious about this particular way of life. It’s probably a mixed blessing. The thousands of people who visit the area every year are eager to purchase handmade Amish crafts, enjoy homestyle cooking, and possibly learn a little about the religion’s history. Hopefully, this makes for greater cross-cultural understanding.
You can tell Amish farms because there are no electricity poles and wires leading to their homes or barns. They have no curtains on the windows. And the women we saw, who were hanging their clothes on lines, all wore the same white cap. The men wore beards.
The Amish prefer to live like many rural people of the 1800s. Theirs is an agriculturally-based way of life; but, in addition, they deliberately choose to remain isolated from the modern world. They drive buggies, not cars. They dress plainly, not trendily. They do not have cellphones and satellite dishes. They are sensitive about being photographed and stared at.
We had a wonderful day, the details of which would make several other mini-essays. But as we headed home, I wondered if the Amish themselves like what’s happening in Shipshewana. The loss of privacy is a large price to pay for greater understanding by the world at large.
See more 10 Minutes in category Changing Scene, Things to Ponder
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