Hey Baby, It’s the 4th of July

The flag

Today is the 4th of July. It’s a Thursday, normally a work day, but there is no work today for the JBE, mainly by choice. Given that tomorrow is Friday, I imagine many people will extend the holiday and make it the summer’s first long weekend.

Viewed as a day to detach from the 24/7 nature of the 21st century workplace, I’ll enjoy today. I’ll spend it with some family and extended family, near a nice body of water, and there’ll be good food, some drink, and we’ll enjoy one another’s company. Continue reading

The Truth is Stranger than Fiction

David Foster Wallace's final book, "The Pale King."

David Foster Wallace’s final book, “The Pale King.”

My last “big books” post was at the end of March when I covered Richard Russo’s memoir. I intended to do one of these each month, as my reading, even at this year’s slightly less robust pace, has yielded intriguing reads in April and May.

Actually, what I intended for April was a review of David Foster Wallace’s, The Pale King, which I finished reading near the end of the month. This was Wallace’s final book, published posthumously, from the remains of a manuscript he left behind. Continue reading

Balancing Work and Life

Finding balance in this life isn’t easy. Work, family, hobbies; all of these clamor for our time. The first one, work, is happy to eat up all our waking hours. Work is who we are; at least that’s what we’ve been conditioned to believe. Is it possible to break free of that conditioning and find a life of greater substance?

There’s another side to that question. If work fails to deliver meaning, or at least a path towards something greater than ourselves, it’s easy to become disillusioned, cynical, or worse, tuned out. Continue reading

Vox populi

“The Voice” on NBC; American entertainment at its best.

Tee Vee is a strange phenomenon.  Some say what we watch as Americans speaks to something deep and disturbing about us as a people. Or possibly, it’s just a reflection of what entertainment has become in these latter days.

Our Tee Vee watching is Balkanized like just about everything else—how we gather news and information; how we select and listen to music. Everything is just one big personalized smorgasbord, part and parcel of our vapid 21st century lives. Continue reading

Zig zag

Zig Ziglar passed away nearly two weeks ago at the age of 86. I’ve been meaning to get up a post about Ziglar because I first encountered his personal brand of positive thinking at a time of my life when I wasn’t positive about much. In fact, being positive used to be something I never put much stock in. I had no truck with optimism, instead finding it easier traveling the paths of cynicism and negativity. When appraising any situation, I always saw a glass that was half empty.

Ziglar was part of a pantheon of 20th century positive-thinking gurus that included Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, Og Mandino, and W. Clement Stone, to name just a few. All of these men believed that people had the ability to change their circumstances as a result of the power of the mind and their attitudes. Continue reading

Looking for a sign

Signs are ubiquitous. They inform, invite, beckon, and some signs say “stay away.”

From the National Park Services Technical Preservation Services, in Preservation Brief #25, “American sign practices originated largely in Europe. The earliest commercial signs included symbols of the merchant’s goods or tradesman’s craft. Emblems were mounted on poles, suspended from buildings, or painted on hanging wooden boards. Such symbolic signs were necessary in a society where few could read, although verbal signs were not entirely unknown. A sheep signified a tailor, a tankard a tavern.”

Some are familiar and even iconic. They speak of commerce and capital.

Continue reading

Getting the power back on

Linemen in New Jersey repairing damage from Hurricane Sandy and the Election Day Northeaster.

Electricity is a marvel of modern life. An argument could be made that having an available flow of electric current is one of several essential elements sustaining our 21st century lifestyles. It’s also something that you never think about until the availability of and access to the power supply is compromised and no longer available at the flip of a light switch, or the powering on of one of our multitudinous electronic devices.

Since last Tuesday, large swaths of the northeastern population corridor, mainly near New York City and sections of New Jersey, have been suffering without electricity. I use the term “suffering” because absence of electricity removes the ease and convenience of daily  life quicker than almost anything else, and sets those without power back into a time warp reminiscent of the 18th and 19th centuries. Of course, people back then were better prepared to survive without present day “essentials” requiring electricity. Continue reading

Zumba on parade

Too bad Americans are so easily diverted. Right now, it’s “silly season,” the period every four years when people take leave of their senses over a couple of issues and reveal their utter lack of understanding about the state of America, let alone their ignorance about our political system and how there’s so little difference between either candidate. Note the “breadth” of the topics touched on tonight.

Actually, most Americans don’t care at all about what happens in Washington. Politics has been handed over to the wealthiest, who decry current tax rates that are the lowest they’ve been in 70 years. In the land of the free, money talks and when you have money like the Koch Brothers, you can drive almost any debate. If you have been paying attention to the tea leaves, you know the train’s left the station, at least for this four-year cycle. Continue reading

The way of the world in two photos

Sign at Lisbon United Methodist Church, in Lisbon Falls.

I’m not sure exactly what this message is supposed to mean. Well, I have a sense in the context of it being on the church sign of the local Methodist Church in Lisbon Falls that it means something like this; focus on living a life infused with good works and making the world a better place, rather than merely focusing on making a good living—i.e. pursuing wealth accumulation as an endgame. Continue reading