My parents, and my career choices

Did we HAVE scheduled meetings with guidance counselors?

les-trudyMy good friend Carol, who I’ve only known since kindergarten, has some follow-up questions about the Lydster’s career choices, which were really about My career choices.

Two questions based on this… why did you not go into law?

Because I did very poorly in a pre-law course at New Paltz. I loved the subject, but Bill Dunn didn’t love my answers. Or maybe it was because it was an 8 a.m. course and I was late sometimes. This failure threw me into a tizzy, because that was my intended life path, and then I had NO idea what I wanted to pursue.

Do you wish your parents had made more suggestions, not along the lines of pushing as much as of possibilities?

Not really, because it just wasn’t in their skill sets. My mother was not one to push us, because that was not her nature in much of anything. She was a “go along to get along” type.

She was very good with numbers and was a bookkeeper or teller for most of her adult life. But she didn’t really think of it as a skill much as, say, her husband arranging flowers or playing guitar or painting or doing all sorts of things. I dare say that he could be a bit intimidating.

For his part, my father, according to his military record, had only three years of high school. I think that part of the friction that I had with him was that I was not very good at working with my hands, the things he excelled in. But I was book smart – would you accept that analysis, Carol? – and he was not as adept, but figured things out as he went along. He was outwardly gregarious, and that wasn’t me.

We did have some areas in common: watching sports together, especially the minor league baseball Triplets and the NY football Giants; playing cards, particularly pinochle and bid whist; and most especially, thank goodness, music.

So he was not likely to offer me career advice because, and I say this without a lot of remorse, he wasn’t always understanding me very much at that time. He certainly didn’t grok what motivated me, and this became even more acutely true in my early twenties when we didn’t talk, at all, for nearly six months, before I relented. This is odd in some ways because my antiwar, and other, activism was molded in no small part by his civil rights activism.

I said two but here’s a third – do you think as I do that our HS counselors were useless?

I actually have no recollection of ANY HS guidance counseling whatsoever, except one passing conversation with Allan Cave, who was the assistant principal at the time, and that only because I knew him from church. Did we HAVE scheduled meetings with guidance counselors, because if we did, I never received the memo?

Just as an aside you wrote about a few math/science awards Lydia received but there’s no mention of any options related to those. Is she just not interested?

Actually, it has determined what level courses she has in 7th grade, and that could lead to courses she could take in 8th grade that could get her high school credit. So it puts her on a more rigorous academic track in several subjects than she might be otherwise.

 

What have I learned in 2016?

The cost/benefit analysis of singing in the choir mitigates in its favor

Melanie, who got married recently – congratulations, you’ve made an honest man out of your honey! – asks:

What was the most important thing you learned this past year?

That I REALLY have to be more selfish. I find this, at some level, to be an anathema to me. There’s all this service that needs to be done, people to be helped, tasks to be fulfilled.

And I get this message not from my church, though it emphasizes it, but from deep within me. It was modeled by my father and I understand its import.

But if I’M not happy, then I’ve got nothing to give. It’s like when you put your air mask on first if it should drop from the airplane ceiling. If I tend to the other first, without getting my oxygen, I’m likely to suffocate.

Not sure I can pull it off. But emotionally, 2016 was emotionally battering, and it wasn’t just Agent Orange and those who supported him.

Another thing I learned is that some folks just are not fact-driven. A person mentioned, on FB naturally, that “Under God” wasn’t always in the Pledge of Allegiance. In reply, someone wrote: “I’m too lazy to research it at the moment, but, actually, I think ‘under God’ was always in the pledge.” This person had IN HIS HANDS a device that would allow him to access the answer.

What is something you are hoping to learn this coming one?

I want to know if I really can write in long-form. Blogs are, relatively, easy for me, but I suspect a book, on one subject, would be hard. Yet I’m about 75% sure I want to write one, which will mean clearing the deck of other things.

But I’m not giving up the blog, because the blog is what keeps me sane. Looking for a graphic for something else, I came across the item pictured. I’ve known it a while, but it’s no less true for that. And sometimes I forget.

I don’t know ANYTHING, in terms of many opinions, until I’ve written it down, which may require looking up facts – REAL facts, not GMO facts. Until then, I’m in flux. This is why I always do those Ask Roger Anything things in the first place, to find out my truth, as it were.

I also need to keep singing in the choir. The cost/benefit analysis mitigates in its favor.

I’ve tired of half-read books, and old newspapers and magazines piling up. I want to read more, NEED to exercise more. But time is not fungible, it’s finite, at least on the three dimensions I understand.

Facebook will be a casualty; no big loss, though items will continue to be automatically posted there, since it is an effective tool.

Oh, I have a book on learning how to play bridge, the card game. Always wanted to learn that. To be continued…

Z is for words that start with Z

The only four letter word that I did not know but that had a definition was zarf

zigzagBereft of an appropriate topic for the week, I went to the Wordfinder Words that Start with Z, which “can help you score big playing Words With Friends® and Scrabble®.”

I started with the one two-letter word, za: Shortening and alteration of pizza.
Our Living Language: When people speak casually of ordering a za, “pizza,” they are unwittingly producing an expression that language historians find interesting. Za derives from the full form pizza by a process known as clipping.

OK, I get it, but can’t say I really like it.

Moving on to the three-letter words:

zin: (informal) Zinfandel wine
I’ve used that, actually. And have drunk it.

zag: any of the short, sharp angles or turns of a zigzag pattern, as alternating with a zig; any sharp turn away from a straight course
No surprise that zig has a similar definition, both deriving from zigzag, which is shown above. I’ve only used the shorter words in variation, such as “I zigged when I should have zagged.”

zep: Chiefly New Jersey (See submarine sandwich)
Origin of zep – Possibly short for zeppelin (from its shape).

zek – An inmate of a Soviet labor camp.
From the Russian

zax -A tool similar to a hatchet, used for cutting and dressing roofing slates.
Origin of zax: Variant of sax, from Middle English, knife, from Old English seax; see sek- in Indo-European roots.
Which looks a lot like a variation of ax.

The only four-letter word that I did not know but that had a definition was zarf
-a small, metal holder, used in the Levant to hold a cup of hot coffee
-a chalicelike holder for a hot coffee cup, typically made of ornamented metal, used in the Middle East.
-an ornamental container designed to hold a coffee cup and insulate it from the hand of the imbiber
Origin of zarf: Arabic for receptacle, vessel, container

Interestingly, none of the Z words appear in my spellcheck. This is not to say that they are illegitimate, only uncommon. Check out the longer words that start with Z for yourself, see which ones you know, and improve your Scrabble® prowess.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Random 2016 posts, a New Year’s tradition

Continuing my theological journey, and why 1977 sucked.

This is a thing I continue to do at the beginning of the year: pick a post for each month of the previous year, using a random number generator, which may not actually be random, but is sufficient for this exercise. See how well it reflected that year just passed, or did not. Pretty sure I got this from Gordon, who lives in Chicago, who remains the only non-local blogger I ever met.

I think I enjoy this a lot because it’s so…numerical. And random, or randomish.
random-cwt_wfm
The graphic is random. I went to Google, limited to .mil sites, and typed in the word random, and this was the first one to come out that didn’t seem to represent a random check of one’s belongings. This is, as you well know, “Final review and comparison of Figure 1 shows that overall the noise characteristic of the CWT TFR is similar to the synthetic white FM integrated to time …”

Yer random 2016 posts:

January: Z is for Ze (or zie)
In September 2015, “Harvard University made a buzz after allowing students to select gender-neutral options like ‘ze,’ ‘e,’ and ‘they’ on registration forms.
(An ABC Wednesday post; I often write about words and the language)

February: Winter 2015-2016
(The one thing I hate about the metric system is that one gets to below zero WAY too easily.)
(Landed on a parenthetical aside! A still true sentiment.)

March: March rambling #1: wipe out cancer in a decade
Kintsugi: The Art of Embracing Damage.
(It is inevitable that, with two dozen link posts during the year, I’d hit upon one!)

April: Haunted computers
My current Amazon Fire is operable so far, knock my forehead.
(STILL working, though there’s a mysterious crack on the screen.)

May: Not getting to Facebook
(Oh, and why, you may ask, are all the graphics below?)
(More proof that I’m technologically impaired.)

June:Polly ticks, again
I have been told to my face, “Racism will go away, if we would only stop talking about race!”
(Didn’t believe it then; sure don’t believe it now.)

July: George Takei
I vaguely remember that George Takei was politically active.
(This was in response to an Ask Roger Anything question.)

August: The First Ward of Binghamton
Though I spent 18 years there, none of the interior structure looks familiar, though the back yard does.
(A specific reference to the house I grew up in. Arthur helped me with the map, because, as established, I’m technologically impaired.)

September: The 21st century’s 100 greatest films, part 1
97. White Material (Claire Denis, 2009) -DK (don’t know)
(I am doing fewer lists these days than I used to. I don’t even see ones I WANT to do much anymore, though 1971 music MAY be on the horizon.)

October: Baptized again
I hadn’t gone out with ANYONE from mid-1975 through the end of 1977.
(Continuing my theological journey, and why 1977 sucked.)

November: November rambling #2: Book two of the trilogy
“Who thought we’d have to deal with this in our lifetimes?”
(Quoting the Weekly Sift guy, after the unfortunate election of Donald TRump.)

December: A Yuletide tradition: Ask Roger Anything
So I guess I’m NOT so pure of heart as to be happy writing a daily blog that no one reads.
(My quarterly entreat, in which I get as close to baring my soul online as I’m likely to do.)

2016 in review

The progenitor of much of it, Agent Orange

2016-happy-new-year
This is that thing that Jaquandor does on December 31, but I do on January 1.

Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Not only did I not keep them – to do less -I did more until a point in the last quarter, when I lost most any desire to do anything but to cocoon. Circumstances didn’t really allow for that, though.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Anna, the daughter of friends of mine, who is partially named for me, had a baby on November 13.

Did you attend any weddings?

Don’t think so. But I was pleased that my online friend Melanie got hitched.

Did anyone close to you die?

Well, yes. My cousin Donald Yates, whose brother Robert was on the list LAST year. Margaret Hannay, a woman from church who I was mighty fond of. And my good friend Norm Nissen, who I think to call now and then before I realize, yet again, that I cannot.

What countries did you visit?

None, but my passport is in order, just in case.

What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016?

I guess, at this point, I’d settle for civility in the world.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Helping the Daughter survive the transition to middle school.

What was your biggest failure?

Not going to a shrink.

What was the best thing you bought?

House of Blues: Essential Women in Blues. But it was the circumstances. A friend of mine had to go into physical rehab, and her clumsy caretaker knocked over her portable CD player, smashing the CD therein. I found it used, burned me a copy, then gave it to my friend.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Anyone who faced bigotry with grace. Anyone who stood up to bigotry directed against others.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, Eric Trump, Paul Ryan. The bigots who threaten people because their side “won.” And, of course, the progenitor of much of it, Agent Orange.

Where did most of your money go?

The house, though we had no big projects.

What did you get really excited about?

I think I could get excited about contributing to Quora, if I had TIME to actually do it.

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Sadder by a very large degree.

Thinner or fatter?

Yo-yo much of the year, heavier of late.

Richer or poorer?

Richer, marginally.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Reading books; I’ve started several. Donate blood. Maybe drinking (Nah…although…)
setthealarmfor2020
What do you wish you’d done less of?

Reading Facebook.

How did you spend Christmas?

Christmas Eve means singing at church, so that. Eventually, we go to the in-laws.

Did you fall in love in 2016?

Absolutely.

How many one-night stands?

Jaquandor: “Now, that’s not the kind of question a gentleman answers! (Another stock answer!)”

What was your favorite TV program?

CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley, JEOPARDY!

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I’m on the precipice…

What was the best book you read?

That I FINISHED? Apocrypha Now.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

See below. Also, I do like the rediscovery of some of the items Jaquandor has posted.

What did you want and get?

A different place to sit in my office.

What did you want and not get?

Sanity.

What were your favorite films of this year?

Spotlight; La La Land; Zootopia; Sully; Hail, Caesar!; Cafe Society

What did you do on your birthday?

I took off the day from work and…oh, who knows?

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016?

“We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town, Beep-beep”

What kept you sane?

May I argue the premise of the question? That said, my dads’ group in church, especially with Norm gone. My best male friend is out of town; I should call him more often.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Bernie Sanders, George Takei.

What political issue stirred you the most?

The sheer terror a lot of Americans already feel in the age of Trump.

Who did you miss?

Norm. My old friend Tom Hoffman, who died in 2004 – I wonder what he would have made of this political year?

Who was the best new person you met?

Some new choir members.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2016:

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I looked at the Billboard singles charts in the middle of the year, and the only song I could identify by both song and artist, AND knew audibly for sure, was The Sound of Silence by Disturbed, which you can listen to HERE

And in the naked light, I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

 

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