One of those perfect days that never happen, that would be this one. The crossword at the bakery, a mid-day callout, a cool afternoon shower, and two hours in the bookstore. That, and recently having been mistaken for being 25 years younger, I haven’t had this great a week in that many years. Now, hold on, let me reconsider that. No, the best time was New Year’s 2000 on the
That’s why you get a picture of springtime near my front yard. I never learned, so I have no idea what these flowers are. They’re wild and full of bees and wasps. I’ve been informed these are “probably buttercups”. I know a rose, a tulip, a violet, and a tiger lily. Beyond that, I’m no botanist.
Ray-B called and he’s right on schedule for the career crisis years, which you can only avoid if you truly love your job. You get off work each week knowing that it is already too late to change jobs and succeed (you can easily change jobs and fail), but if you stay with the same employer another five years, you can’t change at all. You’re too old, nobody will hire you, and you don’t have the required years of experience to start elsewhere except at rock bottom.
Did mid-life career shock happen to me? Not really, I saw it coming and retired a few years ahead of my time. I redirected my energies into that which advanced my own wealth and happiness. Only to get betrayed by a heart attack eleven years later. But it did not affect my music. So Ray-B and I talked guitars. There is another box pattern by the near-homonymous name of Albert King. This King seems to focus on double-stops, which is too advanced for me. I still cannot do pinky and ring finger notes, or triplets at any real speed.
This book, “Fifty Year Wound”, has become a keeper. It is so impressive, I will maintain it as a reference. For example, it spells out the permanent east coast bad attitude toward anything west of the Mississippi . In a 1950 preview of today, it shows how DC conducted a smut campaign against California movie-makers as members of a fictitious Communist party, while New York and Chicago were wholesale importing members of the Nazi party to build atomic bombs to protect themselves.
“Fifty” as I now call this unique volume, is a goldmine of energetic terms, items like “insouciance”, “wrong-headedness” and “war-sobered Europeans”. And I adore any author who can skillfully include a word I’ve never encountered before. The clarity of perception is a quantum level ahead of most historians, and I am inclined to say he out-writes Churchill, last century’s freaky word-monger extraordinaire.
I’m only beginning the book and covering the 1950s. The warnings to society were there, but even much later in grade school, I don’t recall ever being taught this material. For example, it was predicted that Washington would increasingly become run more like a military headquarters than a bastion of democratic good will. It states this would cause Americans to “neglect at lot of the more interesting and worthwhile ways to make money”.
And today’s trivia springs from the same paragraphs. What ever became of the largest component of graduates from West Point ? Was it admirals or generals? Nope. Did they at least make lieutenant? Nope. You’ll never guess. Industry CEOs, that’s correct, the foremost occupation of brains from our premier military academy now control the companies that control the politicians of America . Nobody is getting this book out of me.
Oh, and blogspot—thanks for changing the posting procedure and composition screen. There was nothing wrong with the last one. And your douch-head programmers forgot to include a “use classic view” button. Keep it up, eventually you’ll make one change too many. Haven’t you heard blog readership is down? Well why do you change something that works fine. Oh, and that blog readership, not the readership of my blog. I’m okay, Jack.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++