Dave – Page 2 – Everydave Life

February 9, 2025

Golden Memories Of Childhood Books

Keith, over at the Nostalgic Italian website was nice enough to invite me to take part in his periodic series on childhood nostalgia. A fine topic that seems universally loved, no matter how different personal memories or tastes are. for running this interesting feature and inviting me to be a part of it. This time he asked us to remembering something that was as important as the toys to me growing up – books. This is what I came up with.

I feel fortunate I grew up in a household of readers, book-lovers. My Mom was a school teacher (although she pretty much gave that up to be a stay-at-home mom as my brother and I grew up) and loved books, read quite a bit. Even in her old age, she loved romance novels and Diana Galbadon fantasy books. She even read the hefty Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. My dad was more surprising to many. He dropped out of school at 14, more due to his family’s financial reasons than a disdain for education. He grew up speaking German but learned English when he came over here and taught himself a great deal reading. He built nice bookcases in our living room and filled them with books, fiction and non-fiction alike. He read anything from history epics to James Bond thrillers to ones of philosophy to books theorizing about extraterrestrials; probably where I got my fascination for UFOs from. There were series of books on foreign lands and even some novels that were considered on the “racy” side I’d eventually find out. He was walking proof that formal education isn’t necessarily equal to intelligence. Both of them had their flaws (we all do) but both loved reading and would often take me to the library or bookstores and for that I’m grateful.

Not surprisingly then, my parents got me reading pretty young. I can’t remember the exact dates or details, but most definitely I could read some basic things before I was near school age.

Like most kids my age, I would guess, the first books I remember having and learning to read (first having my mom read it and after awhile being able to myself) were various ones from the great, delightful Dr. Seuss. He had to have done more to promote literacy in young people than any other individual in the 1950s through ’70s. We had pretty much all of the “classic” titles in his collection; I’m thrilled when I go to my town supermarket now and see a big display featuring most of them, even in the same format and with the same covers I remember. Green Eggs & Ham was a real fave of mine, and I liked that rascally Cat in the Hat but of course the prize in that set was The Grinch. Of course I loved the TV version of it (still do) but it was amazingly fun to me back then to be able to read the words and see the still pictures Ted Geisel (aka, Dr Seuss) drew for them. I nearly picked those books collectively to feature but decided to go for something a little more unusual perhaps that were hugely important to me later, when I was … maybe eight to ten years old. The little Golden books, and in particular Weather : A Guide to Phenomena and Forecasts, and Birds : A Guide to Familiar American Birds. Both were small, pocket-sized ( just a shade smaller than a Reader’s Digest magazine as a reference point), had 160 pages and were published in the mid-’50s. And both let me develop a couple of interests I already had into real passions.

Ever since I was little, the changes in the weather, and especially storms always fascinated me. When the thunder rolled or snow blizzarded so hard you could barely see across the street, I ran to the window, not for cover. By the time I was about 10, I had a little weather set and kept records of the temperature, the barometer, the amount of rain we got day-by-day. I was quite the nerd apparently! But I loved that stuff and the Golden book was the one that made me understand it all. It described air masses, cold and warm fronts, how storms developed, tornadoes and hurricanes and how professionals measured it all and came up with forecasts. All explained with a lot of pictures and maps and in terms simple enough for a kid my age to understand, but not totally dumbed down. I swear that an average person who read through it twice might well have a better understanding of how weather works than a number of TV “weathermen” or “weatherwomen” I’ve seen on TV. It was a trusty reference book for me for years, probably until my parents split up and my Mom and I moved, when I was a teen. In no small part thanks to it, I even thought about becoming a meteorolgist. The amount of advanced schooling required for the degree and the probability of being sent to work in some remote northern locale ended up deterring me from that but to this day, I note the weather and try to see the weather maps online. I even took a training course a few years back offered by the Weather Service to be an informed weather spotter… basically if I see a wall cloud that’s rotating or nickel-sized hail falling, I can call into the weather office and report it and they won’t think I’m some total bozo without a clue.

The birds book had a similar effect on me, and I probably got it around the same age. I’d always loved nature, and back then our family often watched shows like Wild Kingdom . I was fascinated. When my Mom put out a bird feeder in the birch tree in our front yard, near the living room window, I soon became enthralled by the creatures. The color, the vibrancy, the variety… I’d spend hours at times in winter adoring the tiny, busy chickadees, admiring the occasional neon-red Cardinal that dropped by, seeing the goldfinches and being amazed how the dazzling yellow June ones and the more subdued olive-and-brown January ones were the same birds! All the while, I thought the bold, loud and ultra-colorful Blue Jays were just about the best. How great for me my favorite baseball team chose them as their name and symbol!

Anyway, when something unfamiliar showed up in the yard, I was always wondering what it was. What it ate, where it came from, that sort of thing. The Golden book helped me do that. Now, it was only 160 pages, so it probably only covered about 140 or so species; a small sampling of the over 700 types that inhabit the U.S. and Canada. But most of the ones I saw regularly were in there, or if not, were close to ones that were shown. Soon I knew a Slate-colored Junco was that little blackish sparrow eating seeds on the ground and those green-headed ducks I’d see on every pond and creek were Mallards. Robins – check. Starlings – check. Red-winged Blackbirds – check. The book showed them, told a bit about them in a paragraph or two, and even had a little map to show where you should expect to see them. It also made me see birds that I wanted to see but hadn’t – man, who can look at a Pileated Woodpecker, the one the cartoonist based Woody on, the size of a crow with a flaming red crest on top of its head, and not be in awe? I would venture out to parks and woods to look for some of those magic creatures, and in time saw most of them. Soon of course, I wanted to know more and got a full field guide (as it happens, also a Golden one, but a much more scientific and complete one, over 400 pages with pretty much every bird on the continent shown) that could tell me all those species and how to tell them apart, but it was the little beginners one that got me to that point. I found one in a used store not many years ago, and of course bought it. Why wouldn’t I?

If I wasn’t nostalgic for my childhood, I wouldn’t be writing this for Keith… and if you weren’t for your own childhood, you wouldn’t be reading it.

My brother at those ages liked the Hardy Boys. Nothing wrong with that, but I guess I was always more fascinated by what really was than what could be in a pretend world. Thanks to the creators of that Golden series for helping me understand the basics and become even more fascinated with every bit I learned.

January 17, 2025

A Surprising Super-power

Today I again thank John at The Sound of One Hand Typing for his weekly writing prompts there. One such idea this week was to write a post about the word “surprise”, so let’s go with that.

Color me surprised. The U.S. government thinks I have a “superpower”. Or at least one independent branch of it does. Because the National Archives are in the midst of a growing crisis… they have some 300 million digitized pieces of paperwork that need transcribing and fewer and fewer people are able to decipher them anymore. That, because the old ones, some as recent as the 1950s mind you, are mostly hand-written. Emphasis on “written”. And most of today’s youth can read that as easily as they could decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. In fact, Suzanne Isaacs of the Archives calls reading cursive a “super-power”.! Wow, who knew I was so gifted with such a rare talent? Funny, when people have asked me if I could have one super-power, usually things that come to mind are like being able to become invisible or be able to fly or have a healing touch or perhaps have irresistible, magnetic charm for super-models (or at least was before I got hitched that is!) but I never really picked “be able to read curly handwriting.” But a super-power is a super-power, I guess, so lucky me!

It does point out a real problem though and illustrates another sign of the times. When I was in school, we had to learn how to “write”; we’d be chastised and probably lose grades if we handed in a report or test written in block capitals, at least until high school when some teachers preferred we typewrite our essays or reports. At the time, I was constantly praised for how neat my writing was; that’s now as long gone as the corduroy slacks I was usually sent to school in. Now should I actually “write” something, I have trouble reading my own work an hour later. I still do put down a lot of notes and thoughts on paper with pen, but I scribble them out in block letters. However, the grade school skill hasn’t left my eyes; I still have no trouble reading cursive. Unless it’s penned by someone of my current penmanship levels. And that’s always been a chunk of the population. One of the Archives spokespersons said going through page after page of old government forms, immigration paper, census data and so on was tough because of spelling mistakes, obsolete words or terms and of course, messy writing. “Justices of the Peace, their handwriting is atrocious!”, she exclaimed.

I should also point out back when I was in school, I think we just called that form of communication “writing” or “handwriting.” Presumably “cursive” only became the preferred term recently, since it provokes much cursing in young people who encounter it.

It’s logical that cursive is becoming a rarity in today’s computerized, digitized world… who (besides me I guess) still writes out notes for articles or random thoughts with a pen or puts a note inside a greeting card? Do you ever go to a grocery store and see anyone under-65 who’s not me with a shopping list on a piece of paper rather than their phone? I drive by Walgreens stores and wonder how many of their under-40 customers even actually know their logo says “Walgreens”? Many school boards dropped it from the curriculum by 1990, although recently some 14 states have added it back, including California for the very reason the Archives are describing. Whether its your grandparents’ old correspondence or the nation’s constitution, it’s better if people can actually read it and not have to take mere guesses or rely on someone else’s interpretation.

It makes me wonder just how many other super-powers I have without knowing it. Being able to tie up my shoes? Being able to place a call on a phone that has a dial instead of a touch-tone screen? Being able to find the number to call in a physical phone book? Maybe I will be Captain Codebreaker and Hollywood will make movies starring Ryan Reynolds, or some dude who’s considered a hottie these days, as me!

Yeah, “vivid imagination”, another one of my super-powers!

January 9, 2025

Oh, Brats!

Well I hope your new year is off to a good start and you’re staying warm wherever you might be… seems like “polar vortex” is already a phrase we could do without hearing again in 2025 and we’re only a week in! Anyway, as you know if you stop by here regularly, John over at The Sound of One Hand Typing lists some writing prompts every week and when I can, I take one and come up with something from it. Today I tried to take his suggestion of writing a post in just 13 sentences. Didn’t work. But I mention it because if you’re looking for ideas to write about, you often can find ones over at his site.

Oscar Wilde once said “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.” Oscar was a writer who was at once witty and wise, and as often happened he was probably spot on with that assessment. It came to mind this week when we watched a documentary called Brats . It was made by actor Andrew McCarthy, one of the leaders of the so-called “Brat Pack” in the ’80s.

For those who don’t know the name or aren’t from that era, the Brat Pack was a nickname dumped on a group of young (generally around 20 years old) actors that seemed to show up in all the same films, ones aimed at people around the same age or a bit younger – St. Elmo’s Fire, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Fresh Horses and of course, The Breakfast Club. John Hughes often created them. McCarthy was one of the actors in the group, so too were Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson and Jon Cryer as well as their female counterparts like Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore and Ally Sheedy.

They made popular films, particularly with high school or college kids, and the films made the young actors stars. But once New York magazine wrote about them and dubbed them “the Brat Pack” things began to change. They hated it and felt insulted, as several of them detail in the new film. Some, like Estevez were so annoyed and concerned by their nickname (which had been jumped on and used up far and wide by the media) that he didn’t want to be in movies with any of them anymore. He didn’t want to perpetuate the idea they were some little group onto themselves. To this day, some, like Nelson, seem to refuse to talk about the period or the moniker; of all those he interviewed, only Ally Sheedy seemed to have developed a good attitude about it all.

I kind of get it… to a degree. As one of their target audience back then, I liked the movies, like most teen lads had a bit of a crush on Ringwald and probably wished I could have been McCarthy or Lowe. But hearing them referred to as “the Brat Pack” made me assume they must be a bit spoiled or high maintenance. So what though? Many stars are that, why would they be all that different? I still liked their films.

What’s more, even I, at my age realized the name was a bit of a play on words and a tip of the hat to “the Rat Pack”. They were being compared to a new version of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. etc. And those guys were hugely popular , successful and had long careers. Seems like being compared to them might be a compliment in Hollywood, not a diss.

It put me a bit in mind of the term “yacht rock.” Many of the artists who made great records now referred to as that, like Toto, Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, seem to hate the term. It’s seen as diminshing their work and pigeon-holing them unfairly. All of which might be partly true… but then again, since the term has come into popular usage, any number of radio stations have switched formats to it and compilation records have come out. Artists that had become largely forgotten, like Ambrosia, Seals & Crofts and the Little River Band, have found renewed popularity and interest. Maybe being termed “yacht rock” is in fact a blessing for them. And maybe being part of the “Brat Pack” means we still remember Sheedy, Estevez, McCarthy and others and want to see their old, familiar films again and again. It means one of them can have a widely-viewed hour-and-a-half movie of just him talking to some of the others and reminiscing. So to paraphrase Mr. Wilde, maybe for an actor back then, the only thing worse than being in the Brat Pack would have been not being in the Brat Pack.

December 30, 2024

Reviewing The Library

I just finished reading The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson. Re-reading actually, as I’ll get to later.

Bryson’s one of my favorite authors, an American grumpy old man who’s lived most of his life in Britain and is redeemed by being a keen observer of human behaviour, interesting things to write about and above all, a sharp sense of humor. Anyway, …Little Dribbling is a great travelogue in which he traverses his adopted land from end to end and finds both folly and glory in the landscape and the people. Well worth a read. Here’s what I had to say about it in 2020.

Obviously, I had read the book before but I seemed to lose my copy so when I saw a used copy quite cheaply, I grabbed it and started reading. After only a couple of pages, it seemed entirely familiar to me but it was a fun read, so I had no objection to re-reading it. Now, of course, since I liked reading it, there was no problem but it did occur to me that I could have known in advance. Since 2016, I’ve kept a little database of all the books I read, with short capsule summaries of them and a star-rating. If I pick up a book and think “hmm – have I already read this? And if so, did I like it… is it worth looking at again?” I could refer to that file of books and quickly remember if I had or not, or at least if I had in the past eight years or so. But I seldom remember to look at that database!

Anyway, I am in awe of some of my regular readers who read several books per week – Keith, the Nostalgic Italian for instance who seems to post reviews of ones he finishes weekly if not more often. I just am not that fast or prolific a reader. But the list of books is now well past 100 and hopefully approaching 200 some time soon. Kind family members helped me put together a new set of four or five waiting to be consumed.

So I got thinking, of all those books, which have I enjoyed the most? So I went through and came up with my personal Top 10 for both fiction and non-fiction and will list them here. Obviously, it’s entirely subjective, limited to books I’ve read in that time span (which are outnumbered by ones I haven’t, roughly 50 million to one I imagine) and my own subjective ratings. Not to mention, I graded many the same so it becomes even more complicated to pick the “best”. But I’ll try to do that and merely say if you’re bored and looking for a good read, these might fit the bill. I won’t describe them, but if you’re curious, you can look them up on something like “Goodreads” or else leave a comment and I’ll try to elaborate a bit. Some I’ve linked to reviews I already posted of them.

FICTION :

10 Before We Say Goodbye (Toshikozu Kawaguchi)

9 The Decent Proposal (Kemper Donovan)

8 Shotgun Love Songs (Nickolas Butler)

7 Liberty (Garrison Keiller)

6 How To Stop Time (Matt Haig)

5 The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)

4 Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens)

3 Standing In the Rainbow (Fannie Flagg)

2 To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

1 Peyton Place (Grace Metallious)

NON-FICTION :

10 Life & Times of The Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson)

9 The Big Year (Mark Obmascik)

8 Road to Little Dribbling (Bill Bryson)

7 Imminent (Luis Elizondo)

6 Hillbilly Elegy (JD Vance)

5 The Soundtrack of My Life (Clive Davis)

4 Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)

3 Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner)

2 Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)

1 The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)

So there you go, a few suggestions to pass a dull winter’s day, and I think I may have given myself a few more books to look at again!

*By the way, in case you’re wondering I will say as much as this about #6 on my non-fiction list. I don’t really like Vance’s politics that much and put it there not as a political statement, but rather because I found it an interesting memoir and description of Appalachian America that was well-written. It certainly is an eye-opening account of what it is like in that part of the country or to be from that region.

December 4, 2024

Gas Stations, Texas Style

Time to go back to John at The Sound of One Hand Typing for a weekly writing prompt! As usual, he has several good ideas this time around, and this time I’ll go for the one about writing about “distance”:

It’s been said everything is bigger in Texas. Well, in my experience, there’s some truth to that, but certainly not everything. But pickup trucks, state flags, pride in said state flags, yep, bigger. And one more thing – gas stations! Because some would say only Texas could have come up with a gas station and convenience store big enough, bold enough, that people will drive a long distance to go visit it. And to do so, Buc-ees has to be no ordinary place to fill the car and get a bag of chips on the go. Buc-ees is indeed, no such ordinary place.

Buc-ees was started as a single gas station/convenience store in south Texas back in 1982, by two young businessmen, one of whom had been nicknamed “Beaver” since he was a kid. So, why not have a friendly beaver with buck teeth for the logo and mascot? And, unlike most gas stations, they wanted to make it one which will be “an immaculate place in which to heed the call of nature.” A gas station with a washroom that doesn’t make you gag… that alone is worth going the extra mile for. And that remains one of their core attractions. But Buc-ees is so much more than that. As Forbes put it, “with the brass beaver near the entrance, the big Buc-ees feels less like a convenience store than a Texas-themed amusement park.”

So it does. Starting with the snacks. Sure you can get national brand chips or chocolate bars inside, but the star is their own take-out restaurant featuring things like hot brisket sandwiches, burritos, pulled pork, jerky in a rainbow’s worth of different flavors, and of course, beaver nuggets – something of a caramel-coated popcorn. And once you’ve tamed your appetite, you’re ready to walk around and look at the store which is chockful of all things beaver. Which sounds a bit more suggestive than it is, come to think about it. But if you’re in the market for a new t-shirt, sweatshirt, socks, pair of slippers, baseball cap, lunch bag, kitchen towel, bath towel, Christmas nutcracker , clock, baseball or in all likelihood dog poop-and-scoop bag, why not have one adorned with the cheery beaver?

The Buc-ees beaver has become almost as ubiquitous in the Lone Star State as the silver-and-blue Dallas Cowboys lone star. People really love their Buc-ees, and will bypass many another gas station or store to travel the 60 or more miles between them on the highways. And yes, they really are bigger… the biggest one of the 50 currently in operation is 77 000 square feet, or about 2/3 the size of a typical Walmart superstore. Many have triple-digit numbers of gas pumps.

Buc-ees have a few locations elsewhere now; we’ll see if others have the drive to literally drive an extra hour or so, bypassing any number of Walmarts, Sunocos and Wendys to find a sweatshirt with a seasonal beaver on it and a brisket sandwich.

A clean washroom, good hot food, more cute souvenir stuff than you can shake a beaver-cut stick at. Sounds like a plan for a successful business plan. A Texas-sized one as it turns out.

November 13, 2024

Paging Fox Mulder : The Truth Is In Here, According To Elizondo

I read a lot of books that I enjoy and many that might me stop and think. Few make me stop in places and think “Wow! Mind blown!” but Imminent by Luis Elizondo is one those few.

And why wouldn’t it? The government having a top secret panel of psychics who’ve had their sixth sense enhanced and nurtured, used to the point of finding terrorists? That’s merely a side dish to what he tells of. Science having the ability to teleport things… but right now, only molecular, tiny things like single atoms? Still only a tiny tip of the iceberg. Admissions by highly trained, highly regarded governmental officials admitting that Brian Clarke seems correct? Turn that page!

You might remember that in the last book I reviewed here, But What If We’re Wrong, I noted that it included something of a debate between highly-regarded physicists (and oddly, Big Bang Theory guests) Neil Degrasse Tyson and Brian Clarke over how good our current scientific knowledge is. Tyson seemed to suggest we can understand everything right now, we’re mentally all-knowing. Clarke believes we still don’t understand many things. Even gravity might not exist as we think it does. Well, Imminent says many highly placed scientists are in his court, because we have evidence of our “laws” of physics being “broken” routinely. But not by us earthlings.

Craft that break the laws of physics… or else, a few minds he references suggest ones which conform to theories of physics, but in ways we can’t begin to fathom. Vehicles that would require approximately ten times the capacity of the entire power grid of the U.S. to run. Ones which can find and utilize wormholes to travel in time. Hydrogen fusion for energy. It’s beyond my understanding of science, but maybe I shouldn’t be upset with myself. It seems beyond the understanding of science of our most brilliant scientists.

Imminent is basically two books in one – one, the mind-blowing part, looking at things that we seem to have confirmation of regarding extraterrestrials and UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or what used to be referred to as UFOs) and their extraordinary capabilities here on Earth. The other part, dull in places but informative, details some of the extraordinary bureaucratic red-tape in place trying to prevent the public… and even some U.S. presidents (sorry W, Barack)… from finding out the truth. About things like extraordinary capabilities we know are being demonstrated right here, like craft that can fly five times faster than our fastest fighter jets… and then stop on a dime. Or make a 90-degree turn without slowing at all or banking. Apparently it would take a “blackbird” jet 100 or more miles to arc from due north to due east. These things can do it in 100 feet or less. Or drop right into the ocean from upper levels of the atmosphere, not make any waves and continue “flying” at thousands of MPH under the water. Those types of maneuvers, if even possible, would cause any aircraft we constructed to disintegrate into a myriad of debris and kill any human, or other animal inside. But these aren’t human, are they? Decorated high-ranking military and Pentagon officials have testified before Congress about recovering “beyond next generation” craft and “non-human biologics inside.” Craft that can penetrate “no fly zones” with the greatest of ease, and disappear if confronted. And ones which are seemingly obsessed with our nuclear capabilities, and testing to see if they can activate or deactivate them from above. And yes, if you have the time and patience, Luis even gives you some links to government papers to find online and try to make sense of, but which say exactly that.

Such things sound like science fiction of the cheap pulp variety no less. But the claims are coming from people who should know. Elizondo himself was the head of a Pentagon study looking at the issue of UAPs and highly-placed within the Department of Defense. Those qualifications are verifiable. The Department of Defense verify his credentials. Equally believable, are people like Chris Mellon, a former Deputy Secretary of Defense and the late senator Harry Reid, and others with similar credentials who fully back Elizondo’s claims. Elizondo eventually quit the Pentagon in order to be able to speak more publicly about the issue and has been largely responsible for the military eventually allowing release of the now-famous “Tic Tac” and Gimbal videos the navy took of UAPs that were tailing and at times seemingly menacing their ships and jets off both coasts, verifying them to be authentic.

To say Elizondo is frustrated is an under-statement. He says what he can disclose in the book is only a fraction of what he’s come across in his Pentagon work and he’s scared… not of personal ramifcations to himself, even when UAPS have crashed his BBQ parties. But he is scared as hell of anything, known or unknown that can best us that easily scientifically and can come and go anywhere they please with impunity, including over our weapons facilities, pose a major national threat to security. He likens it to Pearl Harbor, where the Japanese planes were seen on radar, but the technicians thought it was nothing – either a bad “read” or maybe their own friendly planes up and out to see the sunrise that they weren’t aware of. He doesn’t want people to be caught unaware this time.

Not all seem to agree, not surprisingly. Ever since the famous “Roswell Incident” of 1947, the American military and government has done its best to downplay the various sightings and occurrences and discredit those who report them. The tide is slowly turning, but there are many within the walls of Congress and the Pentagon who are doing their best to hold back the tide, according to him. It’s fascinating yet dull at the same time reading about the hoops he and his colleagues have had to jump through to try and retrieve even the scantest of documents and bits of evidence of , as a certain TV show used to say, knowing “the truth is out there”… already. It’s just hidden in camouflage. It’s also a little confusing trying to keep track of so many acronyms and abbreviations. We know “CIA” and “FBI” for instance, but “OUSD”, “AATIP”, “NRO”, “SASC”… the list is endless.

Aliens, black-op style government programs… and Blink 182 to boot (you’ll have to read it to see how they fit in!).If you were a fan of The X-files or are remotely interested in what the chances are there is life – intelligent, advanced life at that – beyond our little blue ball in the galaxy, Imminent is a book you should check out. It’s going to change the way you view the universe and our place in it… imminent-ly.

November 6, 2024

The Great Supermarket Debate

Once again I have a topic suggested via a writing prompt by John, over at The Sound of One Hand Typing. He actually has several good ideas this time out, so if time allows I may get to another in a day or two. But for today, a simple topic that oddly enough, my sweetie and I were just talking about last night : when shopping, do you buy “name” brands or generic/store ones (or a combination of both, John adds)? Luckily, she and I agree… and are in disagreement with most of her family. For us, it’s “go generic, unless there’s a really good reason not to.” I’d say about 80% to 90% of what we buy at grocery stores (that is branded, produce for example, isn’t … lettuce is lettuce!) is one of their own brands or other generic ones. That does leave about 10 or 20% of the time of course where we stick to the instantly-recognizable names. This is in contrast to her sister and brother-in-law, with whom we share a house. Good people, but ones who typically only want the brands seen advertised on national TV.

My reasoning is two-fold, but it boils down to money. We’re far from rich, so savings add up. Looking at our regular supermarket’s website, I see example after example… as I do when I’m picking out items at the store. Store brand frozen French fries, $3.09 for a two pound bag; Ore-ida brand $4.65… with a coupon. A small can of tomato sauce that we seem to end up using in half our menus… store brand, 50 cents, Hunts 70. A glass jar of seasoned pasta sauce, $2.48 for theirs, $3.10 for Classico in an equally nice glass jar. A case of 12 cans of lemon-lime pop, $4.64 for store brand vs $7.13 for it in Sprite. And on and on. Now, thankfully, 62 cents on the pasta sauce, for instance won’t break us. But, we already spend a lot on groceries and household needs; we’d be spending a lot more if we relied on the “names”. Those 62 cents there, 20 cents there, two bucks over there… together they add up. Yet many, like the relatives, insist on Land O’ Lakes butter or Hellman’s mayonnaise. It makes little sense to me. Her mom won’t use any pain killer not specifically named “Tylenol”. She just won’t believe that 500 mg of acetaminophen is the same whether the pill container says “Great Value” or “Tylenol.” Which brings me to point #2 – the Blind Taste Test.

It might be a different can of worms… or at least tomato sauce… if we noticed a difference and the national brands outshone and out-tasted the others. But they rarely do… particularly in things that aren’t the main components of a meal. Is a piece of toast made with store butter discernibly worse-tasting than one using Land O’Lakes? I rather doubt it. In fact, there are a few odd examples where we find we like the cheaper, store brand better. My sweetie, likes her lemon-lime pops (or “sodas” as most Texans call them), thankfully low-sugar ones, and finds she actually prefers the store brand. Likewise, we both find the store-bagged bread fresher and tastier than a couple of the more expensive brands which might be seen advertised in a copy of a food magazine.

Little wonder there aren’t many differences – supermarket chains rarely if ever actually manufacture their own non-perishable foods. They don’t have tomato canneries, or grow their own coffee, so chances are their products are coming off the same lines in factories run by Hunts. Or Ragu. Or Kleenex or Scott for the paper products and so on. When I worked in photography, way back when dinosaurs roamed freely and film was the medium used to record images, I quickly learned there were only really five companies that made color film. Period. End of story. No stores were making their own, but you sure could buy Sears film, or Walmart’s or Woolco or Black’s (in Canada, probably there were American camera store chains doing the same here). I had a collection of over 200 empty film canisters, each different from all the others. Each film in fact had a little identifier code along the edge of the negatives, so we, printing the pictures, could easily tell what film it really was, and adjust the printer correctly. That was important because Fuji for instance, had a different color balance than Agfa, which was different again than 3M, so to get good results, the printer had to be set accordingly film by film. The same was true with the batteries we sold – not too many people out there making AA alkalines beyond Eveready and Duracell for instance, but there sure are a lot of names on batteries sold in different stores.

But all that said, the obvious answer to the question has to be to try them and stick with what you like. For all our penny-pitching, there are exceptions to our rule, as there are any rules. A few things we find it really is worth digging deep for. My sweetie loves her cheap pop, for example but really, really likes Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, so we’ll pay the little extra to get that instead of a store variety. And while I won’t pay for name brand garbage bags – they’re garbage bags after all. They end up in the garbage! – I will happily spring for Dawn dish detergent. It works. We’ve tried lookalike store versions, which I suspect are actually made by Dawn’s manufacturer… but they’re diluted to near water. The store brand of them might be half the price of the name one, but if we use three or four times more to get the dishes clean… you do the math.

I guess the bottom line is a simple philosophy : it pays to be smart with your money. But life is too short to deny yourself a little luxury once every now and again.

October 28, 2024

Let Go Of My Lego!

Last week Keith, from The Nostalgic Italian, was nice enough to invite me to take part of a forum he was running and relive a few fine childhood memories in the process! He asked us to pick “The Toy Of Your Life” and it seemed most of us have at least one that pops into our head and calls up moments of fond reminiscing.

Growing up in the ’70s, I see I had some things in common with people who’ve already contributed. I think most of us grew up in decent homes, but weren’t Richie Rich clones nor spoiled. I had a good number of toys to play with when young, but my closet wasn’t busting at the seams and I sure was taught young that I couldn’t get anything I wanted just by throwing a tantrum. Typically, outside of a few small dollar-store style toys, if I wanted something major, I’d ask for it and if lucky, it might appear on my birthday or under the Christmas tree. That helped teach me patience, and to save up my little allowance to buy things I really wanted months away from those times. For me, that was largely records, but at times it might be a special toy.

Paul’s Soccer (Football) game was new to me, but reminded me of a table hockey game I had for years – about a yard-long hockey “rink” with little players who slid around when you moved the metal pulls they attached to and would “shoot” the little puck, or try to block it. Like Paul’s game, it came with players in two uniforms (Toronto and Montreal I believe) but you could interchange them and there were other sets of players in other team uniforms available. Eventually I think I had 12 teams, which if memory serves, might have been the entire NHL back then. I liked it, and would sometimes play my older brother (who liked to win – a lot) or even my mother, but it wasn’t my favorite by any means nor something I could do by myself to keep me occupied when alone. The same goes for the several board games like “Monopoly” and “Careers” I had… I liked the latter one more, it seemed more creative and interesting and gave your player choices as to what they wanted to do – go to college? Get into environmentalism? Try to become famous? It was upto you.

Christian already wrote about small cars like Hot Wheels and Matchoxes, and I had quite a few of those and really liked them… in fact I wrote about the Hot Wheels once before! They were something that I had a lot of fun with and valued for years, but they still wouldn’t necessarily take my “favorite” title. When I thought about it, there was only one real option for me – Lego.

I imagine nowadays everyone is familiar with Lego. It’s a multi-million dollar industry across varoius ends of commerce, including of course movies. You can now buy Lego kits to build realistic-looking flowers and much of their product line is now branded – Star Wars for example. It actually dates back to 1949, when a Danish carpenter came up with the idea of interlocking blocks (with the little “studs” on top that lock into the “tubes” underneath to make them sturdy when connected. He called it “Leg godt”, or “play good” which got shortened to the familiar brand name when patented in 1958. It was inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame (yes, there is such a thing – part of the Museum of Play in Rochester, which sounds a fun place to visit) – in 1998. But back when I was a kid, it was a rather different kind of thing, and I dare say, better.

That’s because while you could get some actual “kits” to build specific things (I seem to remember having this little firehouse kit, or at least the vehicles shown)

Mostly, it was just sold in big boxes of mixed blocks. There were white ones, red ones, probably some black ones too. Some were rounded so you could build a turret or cylindrical building if you wanted. Plus there were little doors, windows, blue ceiling shingles… all still connected with the blocks, plus a few less 3-d interlocking features like little trees, or wheel sets. Instead of following an Ikea furniture-like instruction sheet to build the kit to specification, we just used our imaginations and build what we felt like. To me that is a much more creative and ultimately satisfying toy, as much as I did like building a few scale models of real trucks in later years and have them look like the picture on the box.

I had a very large box of mixed blocks and house accessories like windows, and a case that had extra ones from smaller kits I’d been given. I mostly loved building little houses with it. The blurry picture at the top shows me (on right) at probably three or four years old, with my older brother and some of our Lego creations. You can vaguely make out a little white house with blue roof I’d built, in front of me. And as an added bonus, don’t miss that early-’70s orange wall color! I had hours of fun building the houses, making each one look a little different. Sometimes I’d even draw a sort of floorplan for a house – bedroom here, living room there, door here – on paper and try to build one with Lego. When done, I’d maybe keep it on my desk or a table for awhile, then carefully take it apart and build something new. Every once in awhile, for a change, I’d take the base board that I usually built the individual house on and would stack up blocks into little skyscrapers and create a sort of city skyline, viewed from afar. And the wheels allowed me to change it up and build little cars or vans from my imagination too.

It was a great way to spend a rainy or snowy afternoon, building houses, or little castles or whatever I fancied, having something to show for it and then, best of all, it was reusable. Of course, I guess any really incredible creations could have been preserved, but the basis of the toy snapping together and coming apart meant you could use the same set endlessly…which perhaps was why they turned to more specialized kits later. From a commercial standpoint, a toy you only have to buy the child once and they keep using perhaps limits the market potential a little.

It’s a cliché but it’s also true – it was a simpler time. And, I say, for a kid growing up, a better time. I look back on those Lego creations, and Hot Wheels and model trucks with a lot of affection. I can hardly imagine today’s six year old in 50 years looking back fondly on playing a video game for hours or texting the kid next door all night. Thanks Keith for reminding us of this!

October 15, 2024

But What If Chuck Is Right?

The first thing you notice about Chuck Klosterman’s But What If We’re Wrong? is that the cover seems to be printed upside down. Which within a few pages, seems to make sense since the book essentially asks if anything we currently assume we “know” is correct, or will be seen as such a few centuries down the road. Maybe gravity isn’t what we think. Maybe Shakespeare wasn’t an especially gifted writer. Maybe octopi are smarter than we are. Maybe many eight-limbed sea creatures are actually called “octopusses”. Why are we so sure?

After all, it wasn’t all that long ago in terms of mankind’s history that people were sure if you went for a long enough sail, you’d sail right off the edge of the world into oblivion. Or, as he points out, that until Newton got banged on the head by an apple about 350 years ago, gravity didn’t “exist”. Or at least, it didn’t exist in our understanding. People had noticed that if you drop a rock off a roof, it would fall, but they assumed that was because the rock simply desired to be on the ground. If it wished to be up, it would just have floated around. Not surprisingly then, one of his first premises is a grabber – maybe we’re wrong about gravity.

Now he doesn’t propose that a rock dropped from above isn’t going to fall, ten times out of ten, but merely that our scientific understanding of the phenomenon may be flawed… and he backs that up with some complicated theories from top-notch scientists who reference things like space-time continuums and alternate universes which reminded me that high school was a long time ago and even then, I only got “C”s in physics! To make matters worse, he admits that when Brian Greene tried to explain it to him, patiently… twice… he didn’t understand it either. He talks to Greene and to Neil Degrasse Tyson in the book, two scientists mostly known to ordinary Joe Six Packs like me through their guest appearances on TV’s Big Bang Theory. Which was one big takeaway of that portion of the book – that the scientific jibber jabber Sheldon spouts on the show are actually based on real things physicists are working on – super symmetry, multiverses operating simultaneously and so on. The other big takeaway is that to simplify, Greene believes we still have a lot to learn and many current scientific “facts” may be proven wrong; Tyson on the other hand suggests that everything can be explained by advanced math and since we have a good grasp on that, we’re now right about everything. At least science-wise. I have to say that while I didn’t understand most of the concepts, it seems to me reasonable to assume we’re still learning and some of our ideas currently may seem laughably dumb in two hundred years, akin to fears of boating off the corner of the globe.

Thankfully he doesn’t spend the whole 200+ pages on physics. He quickly references Moby Dick ,for instance. He points out that when Herman Melville wrote it, he was immensely proud… but soon became distraught because it barely sold and those who did read it tended to attack it in debates and reviews. It was seen as a bad, flop of a book. Fast forward a hundred or so years and as he sees it, any list of the Great American Novel starts and finishes with it. It’s certainly considered one of the finest pieces of literature ever to come from the New World. The book is the same; people’s opinions and evaluations of what makes great literature have shifted. (I might add, though he didn’t point to it, much the same is true of the movie It’s a Wondeful Life, a flop and almost a career-killer for Jimmy Stewart at the time, but since being found by cable TV decades later in the ’80s, now ranked as an essential holiday classic for the ages.) From there he tries to ponder what the future generations will view as the great novels and writers of our time. An interesting idea, and he’s probably right that the opinions of the 23^rd Century will be different than ours now. Salman Rushdie might be viewed as excessively wordy and pompous for all we know, Danielle Steele might be seen as the great voice of our century. Who can say with certainty? He ponders the subject and considers the most likely answer to who will be remembered and revered will be no one we know now, someone with a very limited following writing somewhere like the “dark web.” Of course, his own logic seems to fail him at times. While not specifically mentioning “political correctness”, he points out that until the start of this century, “best of” retrospectives seemed to concentrate mostly on White males, but that’s been changing in the past 20 years or so. Now lists of “bests” seem to be more inclusive of other races, and of females. He thus jumps to conclude that the greatest writers of the here-and-now will necessarily be non-White, visible minorities and probably transgendered, somehow assuming that the current shift in attitudes is permanent despite arguing that most opinions of culture tend to be rather transistory and change from decade to decade.

Chuck was a writer for Spin and something of an expert in pop/rock music, so he also tries to establish what the future will remember of “rock”. It’s a lengthy chapter, which among other things tries to distinguish between “rock & roll”, “rock n roll” and “rock” (deciding that April Wine’s “I like to Rock” is the ultimate “rock” song of all-time, but not the ultimate rock n roll or rock & roll song) He notes that we remember composers like Beethoven and Mozart but have forgotten equally talented contemporaries of theirs and figures that is how the future will remember “rock”. One or two names will live on while most others, often equally-talented, will be long forgotten. He examines the Beatles and even though they have been in all likelihood the most influential and successful purveyors of it, suggests they may not be remembered because we seem to have a bias for remembering great individuals instead of groups or collectives. Canadians art lovers might counter with “Group of Seven” – probably the best-known and loved homegrown visual artists but known by a collective name rather than seven individual ones – but I digress. He comes down to suggesting maybe Chuck Berry will be remembered as an embodiment of the spirit of rock, or maybe Elvis Presley or Bob Dylan will be. There he makes the interesting point that if the future will remember Dylan, it will think of rock as being more political and astute than it really is; if Elvis is, it will be seen as even more about superficiality and performance over musicianship or substance than it is. Of course, he hedges his bets and also suggests maybe Journey will be the one artist remembered. But wait, Steve Perry fans, don’t get too excited… he doesn’t think it would be on their merit but because of that one song used in one TV show.

He expects future anthropologists will study TV most closely of all our forms of entertainment and pop culture (a questionable assumption), and makes the leap to assume that they will anoint The Sopranos as the finest thing ever to appear on that medium, because, it seems he thinks that. Ergo, the song that plays at the end of the series, “Don’t Stop Believing” will be held in special reverence and assumed to be the epitome of music of our lifetimes. Although he also points out in a rare display of humor, that he may be wrong and future university courses may instead obsess over every episode of Three’s Company instead.

He notes that our opinions of presidents keep changing and predicts once everyone old enough to have voted for Ronald Reagan dies, future political scientists will point to him as a terrible leader and wonder how he ever got elected – without that grandfatherly charisma to look back on and remember, they’ll see him being in charge of an economy that was in bad shape and got worse for most Americans, see his deregulation as harming the nation and draw no ties between him in the White House and the collapse of the USSR a year later. He figures that seismic bit of history will be attributed to the Soviet Union being a society built on 19^th Century agrarian cultures not suited to the modern world. Which led into one of the more interesting topics he studies in it – if the USA can survive. And if it falters, will it be because the Constitution is seen as being infallible and eternal even though drafted in a totally different world which had no concept of nuclear weapons, terrorism, or even the polarization of politicians we see today. What if we’re wrong about the Constitution being the answer to keeping the country united and running properly?

It’s a complicated book, and a bit frustrating in places, but thoroughly interesting. It really gets one re-examining our carved-in-stone beliefs and opinions (which are so ingrained we don’t even see them as “opinions” but as “facts” instead) . It made me look backwards a little at all the changes that have taken place in my lifetime and wonder what will lie ahead in the next 50 or so years. I mean, when I was a child, there’s no way I would have believed that here in 2024, most people would carry a little flat playing card-sized thing in their pocket that could play almost any song they want to hear, watch university lectures or Asian porn in high-definition, call up most of the books in the library and let them read from it, let them send a note instantly to someone on a different continent and have in the process made the whole huge “landline” telephone network obsolete. Yet, here we are in 2024 and people complain their tenth generation I-phone only has a 30 megapixel camera and needs rebooting every few months.

To me, it would seem the only constant is change. But then again, …”but what if we’re wrong?”.

October 10, 2024

Of Cynics, Skeptics … And Sasquatches?

Well I think I’m overdue to get back here, and once again dig into the weekly writing prompts delivered by John at The Sound of One Hand Typing. He had several good topics this time around, but one that really caught my eye was to tell something I’m skeptical of. Apparently this is in honor of National Skeptics Day, which he says is Sunday… though I’m skeptical of that! Another was to do a post in just 11 sentences. Let’s see if I can combine the two:

I used to be told – frequently – I was too cynical. I’ve tried to work on that as I get older, and hopefully am a little less so now than say twenty years back. The topic made me actually think “what’s the difference between cynical and skeptical?” ; I must admit I probably have used them fairly interchangeably in the past. But according to the Associated Press, “skeptical” is doubting; “cynical” is disbelieving. A good rule of thumb to remember, and a good rule for me is that often it’s good to be skeptical. It’s usually not productive to be cynical. I like to try to keep an open mind on many topics which can lead to a bit of healthy skepticism… but hopefully not cynicism.

Take Bigfoot or Sasquatch for instance. To be skeptical of a photo or video someone comes up with and says is one, is only prudent – there are a lot of people looking for an easy Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame who happily fake such things, and too many bears in the distance that could actually look like something else. To be cynical and just assume that’s the case and they’re all fake without looking is to fly in the face of science.

Asking a few questions helps one be wise; refusing to believe anything makes one the subject of a documentary about deranged sociopaths.