Monthly Archives: November 2020

Waiting For Some Friends

Yes, I know. We went to Lowes in Plattsburg and purchased a fire-engine red snowblower. It has all the ‘stuff’ a person would want in one of these babies. It drives itself and controls the direction the snow is blown (away from your face for example).

We waited for the Big One. After all it was getting toward mid-November and by now we would have been slammed by at least three Arctic blasts.

Instead, we got about 4″ to 5″ inches. Hardly a Canadian blitz.

So, except for some hidden bits along the plowed road, there is small patch of snow in our yard about the size of a medium waffle that would come with eggs and coffee at Friendly’s on a day that advertised BREAKFAST SPECIAL!

Knowledge is information, they say. I needed knowledge about the expected and upcoming Big One. I bought a copy of Harris Farmer’s Almanac for 2121. I have nothing against the Old Farmer’s Almanac except I couldn’t locate one and the impulse buying rack carried only copies of rip-off headlines of British scandals and the latest break-up between the Kardashians.

I dove into Harris’ Almanac looking for the Next Big Prediction of Severe Weather. Instead I got caught up in an article about President Taft who became chief justice, Miss America turning 100, President Harding’s First Dog, Laddle Boy and a History of the first drive-in pig stand. What caught most of my interest was a piece on the vanishing song birds.

Finally I found the page about January 2121. Reading this, I now know all the moon’s phases when to plant a root crop and the major holiday’s (National Maritime Day is May 22.)

But, I failed to track down the major snow events for January. It may just as well have stated: The Big One Is Coming. Well, we all know that, (those of us who live in Zone 8), The North Country. Does our little patch of snow in our front yard know that? Can it be assured that it won’t spend the winter alone? You know that loneliness makes me sad.

I must say that I rely on forecasts as we’ve seen and patience. No matter how insignificant one thinks one is, you’re partly right. A tiny bit of snow, when The Big One comes, won’t be alone.

Sometime the wait is worth it. There will be plenty of friends.

[Source: Both photos are mine.]

ITSY BITSY MACHINES

The mega international company, IBM, was born in 1911. It was first called Computing-Tabulation-Record Co. Someone, most likely Thomas Watson, after some corporate maneuvers, changed the name to IBM.

My father was hired at the flagship company in Endicott, NY in 1936. He always told his sons that if he took the offer of employee stock options back in the day, our family would have been worth millions by the 1990’s.

The joke was on us.

His kids used to joke with dad.

“Where do you work, dad?” “IBM”, he’d answer.

“You mean ‘Itsy Bitsy Machines.’

Here is a very brief history of how objects that were so big got to be so small (and then big again).

The first attempt to store information was done on an ‘IBM’ card:

[SOURCE: Google Search.]

Information storage then went to the great invention, the Transistor:

[Typical Transistor. Source: Google Search]

Today, computers are now ‘Main Frame’, like a lot of little units working together.

[Typical Main Frames: Source: Google Search.]

I wouldn’t be typing on my laptop, and in 1969 we never would have landed on the moon if big, bulky electronics hadn’t gotten so small (and this is just the beginning.

Split Personalities

[Source: Instagram Search.]

Don’t worry, this is not going to be a symposium on Multiple Personalities or a detailed peer-reviewed paper on Schizophrenia.

Maybe it will.

Many of you know that after I retired, I chose several ways to keep my sanity and be assured that boredom didn’t become an aspect of my life. I tried Literacy Volunteers and teaching the incarcerated. Both were quite satisfying but getting myself to a library or prison in the middle of a typical North Country winter was a challenge you don’t want to even contemplate.

I tried guitar lessons, watercolor, banjo and recently purchased a fine concert ukulele complete with a one-hundred song book that uses only 3 chords: C–F-and G. None of this matters, of course. I comprehend nothing at all about music. So, it’s merely a way to hang up cool looking instruments and talk about them.

My seven-year-old grandson, Elias can even play Wild Horses, in his own sweet way.

I always had a desire to write so I began by blogging. I have no theme or special topic so I write whatever interests me. The topics are serious, funny, satiric but usually profound in some small way.

I tend to be nostalgic in my choice of subjects as I grow older. So many memories to recall. Recently, I posted my five-hundredth blog. It’s hard work to keep coming up with original and thoughtful ideas.

It’s the same with writing (a large leap for a blogger.) I always felt the need to be a writer. (I ended up spending over thirty years as a science teacher.) I’m no Stephen King but I have my own style. Y/A horror and the supernatural seems to be the genre I’ve fallen into, for now.

All this sets up a serious problem. For the better part of a day, I’m a twelve-year-old boy. The rest of the time, I’m Boris Karloff.

So, who am I really? I try to amuse and I try to frighten with only a few hours to be the real me. Sometimes, the wires get switched

Being a clown at times conflicts with creating profound sadness.

I don a mask and moments later I cover my face with tragedy.

My parents would have been better off naming me JANUS.

[Source: Instagram Search]