Sunday, December 19, 2004
holiday grumpiness
Not even winter yet and tomorrow night my closest reporting station says it's going to be 18. ..which means it's gonna be 13-15 down here in the holler. I want some Global Warming. Besides, if ya'll can get the icecaps to melt for me maybe I can have some beachfront property. ..with my own nude beach. This is the United State of Bauer, get to make my own rules! Been looking at a replacement flag for this country as the old one, "Entropy Estates" has pretty-much disintegrated as it should. USOB has lots of possibilities. Any thoughts?
Got a case of the Christmas blues. Get them every year and I usually just fade out from Thanksgiving until New Years. This part of the year has so many happy times and memories but the folk I used to share them with are no longer available.
Back in 1977, myself and a co-worker were tapped to haul a minor fortune worth of broadcast video gear down to the VA Hospital in St. Pete to videotape a 3 day seminar on aging and the VA system. Even back then our first socialized medical system was kinda screwed up.
Anyway, the set-up, lighting and notes were all arranged the evening before the talking heads were to appear and my bud and I went out for a proper expense account feed and "entertainment" so we would be lookin' and feelin' our finest for what we expected to be a truly dull experience. Once the gear and cues are set, the name of the game with taping talking heads is mostly staying awake, especially since most of the agenda was to be a bunch of administrators with pie charts explaining the huge new load of WW II and Korean War vets retiring to Florida and how to handle them. How wrong we were. One of the speakers was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and what she had to say has stayed with me to this day. Of course I'm no longer a 27 year old newly-wed with nearly all my relatives and friends around, been on the other side of the timeline long enough to get pretty damn tired of folk I love winding up in boxes.
I've decided to reserve the good thing/bad thing that's got me a bit blue, don't know if my friend would appreciate the tellin' even if it is actually a good thing. Maybe next December. Some things just have a "right" time and this is one of them.
Part of that VA seminar was devoted to the reasons why folk tend to move to alledged retirement climates. After 60-70 years of Bronx or Detroit winters, parts are pretty easy. It's nice to think that one can sell the old house and move to "paradise". Leave all those old neighbors and pesty relatives back up in the snow country, get some time where life is easy. Yeah. Where most everything costs a heck of a lot more, predation on one's funds is an art form, and the summers mandate living indoors under the constant flow of Mr. Carrier's breathing fluid. Outside is soup, laced either with 10^18th bloodsuckers, or a regularly refreshed fog of Malathion.
That was the good part. The less than good begins with what seems inevitable after many retirees settle in. First, more often than not they will be living in an abode that has no character; nothing like their old home. Often one or both won't be in the finest health and the new services can be pretty damn impersonal. Things that they used to enjoy are not available or require a lot of time and travel to find even if it was just that Greek restarant they used to get together with their friends once a month or so. The worst is the estrangement of their lifelong friends. They are way back up there in Ohio or Toronto. They can't visit and neither can the retirees like they did for all of their lives. The "natives" are usually not even native to the US and the actual natives are probably so substantially different in outlook that new friendships often won't form. So often the new residents preface much of their communication after finding out paradise isn't what it's cracked-up to be with "we didn't do it like this in ____________". That doesn't engender much love with the locals.
There's lots more of the same ilk. I've been a ham radio operator, present call sign WA6YFP, for ~40 years, greeted many new folk to the Hurricane State, watched and, on occasion, helped some settle in for the "golden years". Many have done just fine and the reasons were always clear. So many others spent most waking hours bitching about how horrible things were down here that I removed my antennas and stowed the gear 6 years ago. Wasn't much fun listening to the bitchin'. Even less when they would endlessly visit to bitch live and in person. Enough of this crap.
If you have family and friends, do what you can to keep them close. Life can get pretty damn empty when there are no more. Best thing to do if you're slap-out of the above is to become a muslim, strap on a bomb, splash yourself and a bunch of folk that love life and others, then collect your "reward" of the 72 raisins (and the supple young boys. Can't forget them).
Yeah. I'm a bit crabby. 22 degrees I'm told for the night so Cookie Monster the Swamp Ho and her granddaughter Rima the Crippler, will be in tonight to shred trash, shed parasites and hair, pee on the floor (Rima), and give me general grief. Bronson has already moved under the tub.
Got a case of the Christmas blues. Get them every year and I usually just fade out from Thanksgiving until New Years. This part of the year has so many happy times and memories but the folk I used to share them with are no longer available.
Back in 1977, myself and a co-worker were tapped to haul a minor fortune worth of broadcast video gear down to the VA Hospital in St. Pete to videotape a 3 day seminar on aging and the VA system. Even back then our first socialized medical system was kinda screwed up.
Anyway, the set-up, lighting and notes were all arranged the evening before the talking heads were to appear and my bud and I went out for a proper expense account feed and "entertainment" so we would be lookin' and feelin' our finest for what we expected to be a truly dull experience. Once the gear and cues are set, the name of the game with taping talking heads is mostly staying awake, especially since most of the agenda was to be a bunch of administrators with pie charts explaining the huge new load of WW II and Korean War vets retiring to Florida and how to handle them. How wrong we were. One of the speakers was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and what she had to say has stayed with me to this day. Of course I'm no longer a 27 year old newly-wed with nearly all my relatives and friends around, been on the other side of the timeline long enough to get pretty damn tired of folk I love winding up in boxes.
I've decided to reserve the good thing/bad thing that's got me a bit blue, don't know if my friend would appreciate the tellin' even if it is actually a good thing. Maybe next December. Some things just have a "right" time and this is one of them.
Part of that VA seminar was devoted to the reasons why folk tend to move to alledged retirement climates. After 60-70 years of Bronx or Detroit winters, parts are pretty easy. It's nice to think that one can sell the old house and move to "paradise". Leave all those old neighbors and pesty relatives back up in the snow country, get some time where life is easy. Yeah. Where most everything costs a heck of a lot more, predation on one's funds is an art form, and the summers mandate living indoors under the constant flow of Mr. Carrier's breathing fluid. Outside is soup, laced either with 10^18th bloodsuckers, or a regularly refreshed fog of Malathion.
That was the good part. The less than good begins with what seems inevitable after many retirees settle in. First, more often than not they will be living in an abode that has no character; nothing like their old home. Often one or both won't be in the finest health and the new services can be pretty damn impersonal. Things that they used to enjoy are not available or require a lot of time and travel to find even if it was just that Greek restarant they used to get together with their friends once a month or so. The worst is the estrangement of their lifelong friends. They are way back up there in Ohio or Toronto. They can't visit and neither can the retirees like they did for all of their lives. The "natives" are usually not even native to the US and the actual natives are probably so substantially different in outlook that new friendships often won't form. So often the new residents preface much of their communication after finding out paradise isn't what it's cracked-up to be with "we didn't do it like this in ____________". That doesn't engender much love with the locals.
There's lots more of the same ilk. I've been a ham radio operator, present call sign WA6YFP, for ~40 years, greeted many new folk to the Hurricane State, watched and, on occasion, helped some settle in for the "golden years". Many have done just fine and the reasons were always clear. So many others spent most waking hours bitching about how horrible things were down here that I removed my antennas and stowed the gear 6 years ago. Wasn't much fun listening to the bitchin'. Even less when they would endlessly visit to bitch live and in person. Enough of this crap.
If you have family and friends, do what you can to keep them close. Life can get pretty damn empty when there are no more. Best thing to do if you're slap-out of the above is to become a muslim, strap on a bomb, splash yourself and a bunch of folk that love life and others, then collect your "reward" of the 72 raisins (and the supple young boys. Can't forget them).
Yeah. I'm a bit crabby. 22 degrees I'm told for the night so Cookie Monster the Swamp Ho and her granddaughter Rima the Crippler, will be in tonight to shred trash, shed parasites and hair, pee on the floor (Rima), and give me general grief. Bronson has already moved under the tub.
