I had to fly on an airplane this week. I don’t like to fly … I like to BE places and GO places… but I hate to fly. Airplanes are not made for “wide bodies” like me. Airplanes are made for people under 5’5” and less than 150 pounds. At that size you can sit in comfort and easily chat with those around you. My 6’1” 250 pound body just doesn’t work in an airplane. I have to fold in my shoulders like they are wings in front of my chest, somehow find a way to fit my knees in even though they are crushed into the chair in front of me and if he reclines … yow! I cannot sleep, I try to read but if I get bumped in my aisle seat by every Tom, Dick and Harriet on their way to the restroom and bashed by every metal drink and food cart going by. I spend most of my free time, the time you are allowed to be without your seat belt, standing in the back by the restrooms reading my magazine or book. That is the only time I can stretch and unfold my wings.
This time I had the added bonus of a screaming baby a few rows back along with a frantic mother trying to comfort her. I also had the added bonus of a man on his way to Las Vegas who seemed to have an endless thirst for whiskey in those cute little bottles. He and a woman who sat next to him kept ordering them at $5 each, you must have to pay for the cuteness. They got louder and louder in their speech and mannerisms. Yet the flight attendants kept bringing them more, and more, and more. He stood to go to the restroom and nearly fell into my lap then drunkenly apologized his way down the aisle to the restroom and back.
While standing in the back by the restrooms I had the opportunity to observe my fellow travelers. There was a group heading to Vegas for a wedding, each wearing a lei and the future bride wearing a little crown tiara. They were having fun and nothing was going to stop them, not a crying baby or a drunken fat man. Others simply closed up into a shell surrounded by their music from an iPod or CD player and tried to ignore everything. Some tried to help the frantic mother even offering “drugs” to help quiet the baby, they would joke about it and try to make the mother feel better even though she was disrupting an entire airplane. A few were getting pretty angry, you could easily tell as they tried to sleep yet muttered to each other something cruel they wished would happen to the mother and the baby, they would curse the drunk as he bumped into them and he slurred an apology.
Life on an airplane. People who avoid. People who just get angry. People who just get drunk. People who determine to have a good time no matter the situation. And people who try to help. That’s life. Oh yea, and people that sit back and observe that life. I smile as the captain tells us we are approaching Las Vegas and we need to be strapped in for the rest of this microcosm.
www.themoralbusiness.com
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Making it Obsolete
Technology has improved exponentially over the last 40 years and more. I have been a part of that and seen it first hand. Not as much as my grandparents who came from horse and buggies to jets and space shuttles but I have seen a lot in my 46 years. I remember driving the tractor out under the blue sky controlling it with nothing more than a throttle, stick shift, steering wheel and two foot brakes. Now I would climb up into an air conditioned cab of some four-wheel-drive monstrosity, sit down in the air-ride arm-chaired seat, look at the LCD display and wonder what in the world to do next. I started out playing my brother’s 8-track tapes, then bought my own LP’s, then on to cassette tapes, on to CD’s and now have an MP3 player.
But sometimes I wonder what improvements we REALLY have made. After a while my CD’s started skipping and scratching just like my old LP’s did. The airplanes we fly are the same ones from 30 years ago. Our cars still use the same gas as 70 years ago. Our speed in getting from one place to another is the same as it was for a long time now. Even though I am typing this on a computer my keyboard is the same QWERTY it has been since the turn of the century. You would think we would be able to type with speaking, listen to music without skipping, fly in something other than metal tubes, fuel with something other than petroleum products and be able to go faster than 70 mph on new radio controlled expressways. But we don’t …
My next vehicle will be ethanol compatible; I would rather support my farmer brother in Indiana than gas companies and other countries. But it will take millions of us to change the norm. Video Cassettes didn’t back off until DVD’s sales took over. The government cannot tell you to buy DVD’s instead of VHS or ethanol instead of gasoline even with incentives if you don’t want to. We have to WANT to change the world and WANT to do things different. CD’s are just about done, you only find VHS and cassettes in garage sales and I REALLY hope fossil fuel is not far behind. Let’s make it obsolete.
www.themoralbusiness.com
But sometimes I wonder what improvements we REALLY have made. After a while my CD’s started skipping and scratching just like my old LP’s did. The airplanes we fly are the same ones from 30 years ago. Our cars still use the same gas as 70 years ago. Our speed in getting from one place to another is the same as it was for a long time now. Even though I am typing this on a computer my keyboard is the same QWERTY it has been since the turn of the century. You would think we would be able to type with speaking, listen to music without skipping, fly in something other than metal tubes, fuel with something other than petroleum products and be able to go faster than 70 mph on new radio controlled expressways. But we don’t …
My next vehicle will be ethanol compatible; I would rather support my farmer brother in Indiana than gas companies and other countries. But it will take millions of us to change the norm. Video Cassettes didn’t back off until DVD’s sales took over. The government cannot tell you to buy DVD’s instead of VHS or ethanol instead of gasoline even with incentives if you don’t want to. We have to WANT to change the world and WANT to do things different. CD’s are just about done, you only find VHS and cassettes in garage sales and I REALLY hope fossil fuel is not far behind. Let’s make it obsolete.
www.themoralbusiness.com
Monday, May 22, 2006
The Mind
I was on the bottom bunk and with the bunkbeds pushed up tight to the wall I smashed myself as close as I could into the corner formed by the wall and my bed. I have always loved sleeping in tight spaces and have never been claustrophobic. Next to my head was my small radio playing the hits on WLS in Chicago. I would fall asleep listening to music and wake up singing the song that was currently playing. Even today I find songs running through my mind that I learned way back when. We have all seen those advertisements for CD’s that you are to play while you sleep to quit smoking or lose weight or even learn another language. After you cut through all the hype and marketing you find that there is some truth in all that stuff.
Now I understand that my mind has a “bent” towards music and memorizing songs but listening to music all night while I slept only enhanced that. I can still sing for you most of the popular songs of the 60’s and 70, and even many of them into the 80’s. I still remember the solo parts that I had for musicals 30 years ago in high school; I even remember the parts of the people I didn’t play because I heard them so many times in practices and performances. My wife gets upset with me when we go to Broadway shows because I sing all the songs with the people on stage. When I would buy LP’s I would memorize them and then put them away.
So why is it that I cannot find my car keys or my cell phone? Why is it that, by the time my wife finishes her second paragraph of explanation I have forgotten the first paragraph? Why is it I can meet a person, have a good conversation with them, shake hands and then promptly forget their names … after I have met them for the third time! Why?
I think at the fall, when Adam and Eve blew it for all of us, God took that perfect mind he had created and rewired it a little. Not a lot, just a little. Kind of like a practical joker who will rewire switched in a person’s home so that when you flip a light switch the TV turns on, or press your TV remote and find your blender spinning out of control. Everything still works but you just have some annoying and humorous cross-wiring to deal with. At least that is my excuse when I am talking to someone and try to introduce my wife of 26 years and find I can’t remember her name.
www.themoralbusiness.com
Now I understand that my mind has a “bent” towards music and memorizing songs but listening to music all night while I slept only enhanced that. I can still sing for you most of the popular songs of the 60’s and 70, and even many of them into the 80’s. I still remember the solo parts that I had for musicals 30 years ago in high school; I even remember the parts of the people I didn’t play because I heard them so many times in practices and performances. My wife gets upset with me when we go to Broadway shows because I sing all the songs with the people on stage. When I would buy LP’s I would memorize them and then put them away.
So why is it that I cannot find my car keys or my cell phone? Why is it that, by the time my wife finishes her second paragraph of explanation I have forgotten the first paragraph? Why is it I can meet a person, have a good conversation with them, shake hands and then promptly forget their names … after I have met them for the third time! Why?
I think at the fall, when Adam and Eve blew it for all of us, God took that perfect mind he had created and rewired it a little. Not a lot, just a little. Kind of like a practical joker who will rewire switched in a person’s home so that when you flip a light switch the TV turns on, or press your TV remote and find your blender spinning out of control. Everything still works but you just have some annoying and humorous cross-wiring to deal with. At least that is my excuse when I am talking to someone and try to introduce my wife of 26 years and find I can’t remember her name.
www.themoralbusiness.com
Making it Obsolete
Technology has improved exponentially over the last 40 years and more. I have been a part of that and seen it first hand. Not as much as my grandparents who came from horse and buggies to jets and space shuttles but I have seen a lot in my 46 years. I remember driving the tractor out under the blue sky controlling it with nothing more than a throttle, stick shift, steering wheel and two foot brakes. Now I would climb up into an air conditioned cab of some four-wheel-drive monstrosity, sit down in the air-ride arm-chaired seat, look at the LCD display and wonder what in the world to do next. I started out playing my brother’s 8-track tapes, then bought my own LP’s, then on to cassette tapes, on to CD’s and now have an MP3 player.
But sometimes I wonder what improvements we REALLY have made. After a while my CD’s started skipping and scratching just like my old LP’s did. The airplanes we fly are the same ones from 30 years ago. Our cars still use the same gas as 70 years ago. Our speed in getting from one place to another is the same as it was for a long time now. Even though I am typing this on a computer my keyboard is the same QWERTY it has been since the turn of the century. You would think we would be able to type with speaking, listen to music without skipping, fly in something other than metal tubes, fuel with something other than petroleum products and be able to go faster than 70 mph on new radio controlled expressways. But we don’t …
My next vehicle will be ethanol compatible; I would rather support my farmer brother in Indiana than gas companies and other countries. But it will take millions of us to change the norm. Video Cassettes didn’t back off until DVD’s sales took over. The government cannot tell you to buy DVD’s instead of VHS or ethanol instead of gasoline even with incentives if you don’t want to. We have to WANT to change the world and WANT to do things different. CD’s are just about done, you only find VHS and cassettes in garage sales and I REALLY hope fossil fuel is not far behind. Let’s make it obsolete.
www.themoralbusiness.com
But sometimes I wonder what improvements we REALLY have made. After a while my CD’s started skipping and scratching just like my old LP’s did. The airplanes we fly are the same ones from 30 years ago. Our cars still use the same gas as 70 years ago. Our speed in getting from one place to another is the same as it was for a long time now. Even though I am typing this on a computer my keyboard is the same QWERTY it has been since the turn of the century. You would think we would be able to type with speaking, listen to music without skipping, fly in something other than metal tubes, fuel with something other than petroleum products and be able to go faster than 70 mph on new radio controlled expressways. But we don’t …
My next vehicle will be ethanol compatible; I would rather support my farmer brother in Indiana than gas companies and other countries. But it will take millions of us to change the norm. Video Cassettes didn’t back off until DVD’s sales took over. The government cannot tell you to buy DVD’s instead of VHS or ethanol instead of gasoline even with incentives if you don’t want to. We have to WANT to change the world and WANT to do things different. CD’s are just about done, you only find VHS and cassettes in garage sales and I REALLY hope fossil fuel is not far behind. Let’s make it obsolete.
www.themoralbusiness.com
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