The 62nd Day

 

On December 1, 2020, two months ago, I began a December Challenge to write a blog post every day of that month.  I am proud to say I met my challenge.  It continued into January and with this post I can say I have posted in this blog 62 days in a row.

It was a great run.  I am happy with several posts and a few of them not so much. 

The most read post was a political one:  Inability to Concede.  This post led to others on election and politics these two months which were eventful in that regard.  In one way or another, I wrote about on this topic ten times.  I usual shy away from politics because when I do write about it, I bump heads with just about everyone.  The last one I wrote was on January 24^th, Satire or Anger? You Tell Me.  It was a bit of a diatribe that got almost no comments on Facebook and only a few reads.  But it felt really good to write it and get some things off of my chest.

I wrote a couple of obituaries: Harry Minassian and Jim Begian.  They were well received.  I like to reflect on people that I like.  It does my soul good to do so.  The obituaries and reflections I have written about people that I know and admired are amongst my favorites.  I read them over now and then when I am remembering those that have passed.  I, sadly, have another to write in the next few days.  I imagine, simply due to my age, I will be doing more and more of these.

There were a few times during these two months when I struggled to find something to write and blog about.  The lowest point was when I wrote about fonts on December 22^nd in a post titled Gotham.  With the approach of the Christmas Holiday, I was feeling the pangs of this pandemic and the isolation that would prevent me from seeing children and grandchildren over the holidays.  On that day, I was at a loss for things to write.  So, I blogged about an idea from another blog.  I knew I was going through the motions.  But, in reading it again today, it wasn’t all that bad.  Maybe these bloggy bits improve with a bit of aging.

Will I continue to post on a daily basis?  I thought I was done at the end of December, but I just kept it going during the month of January.  To be honest, the second month was easier than then the first.  Now, here at the end of this month, I am not sure.  I guess I will have to wait to see what tomorrow brings. 

I started sharing my writing in February 2004.  So, tomorrow begins the 18^th year of this writing project.  It started off back then as a monthly e-letter and then turned into this blog in 2009.  It has been a great hobby and avocation for me. 

I actually started writing in 2002.  I wrote 500 words a day in a notebook.  I never shared the writing.  I was unsure of myself and overly worried about the opinion and reactions of folks that might read my work.  I was insecure and unsure.  My fears were unfounded, I just lacked confidence and faith in my own ability. 

Thank you all.

Errol Flynn Movies

 

It just started to snow.  We are expecting up to ten inches of snow.

I decided to write my daily post.  I had a few idea of what to write about.  But, in surfing about the television for something as background to write to, I noticed one of my favorite movies was on, Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn, probably my favorite actor.  I had to watch it, again, and knew I would be writing about.

My favorite films of Errol Flynn’s was four of them he made in the 1930s and early 1940s.

• Captain Blood (1935)
• The Prince and the Pauper (1937)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
• The Sea Hawk (1940)
• They Died with their Boots On (1941)
• Gentleman Jim (1942)
• The Adventures of Don Juan (1948)

All were in black and white.  Olivia de Havilland co-starred with Flynn in three of them:  Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and They Died with their Boots On.  Basil Rathbone was his foe in The Adventures of Robin Hood and Captain Blood.  Rathbone died at the point of Flynn’s sword in both those movies.  Rafael Sabatini wrote the novels, The Sea Hawk and The Odyssey of Captain Blood, on which two of the films were made.  Alan Hale was a co-star in every movie I have listed expect They Died with their Boots On.  The studio for all these films were Warner.  Michael Curtiz directed four of them and Raoul Walsh directed two. 

I probably could have included The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936 with de Havilland and Curtiz) except I do not recall having seen it.  I have to remedy that situation soon.

 

Robin Hood, Captain Blood, and The Sea Hawk have been my favorites since I first saw them probably in my teens.  I have watched each of them every time I notice that they are on.  I have recorded all three.  I saw The Prince and the Pauper and Gentleman Jim even before the other three and, while I liked them, I liked them a bit less than the first three.  I came to see They Died with their Boots On and The Adventures of Don Juan in the past ten years.  I am watching them every time I notice they are on, though I have not recorded either.  I know the balance of history and Hollywood in They Died with their Boots On might have been a bit too much Hollywood.  But, because of this, his portrayal of General George Armstrong Custer was all the more entertaining and engaging for it.

Why do I like Flynn so much?  He had a great screen presence.  He was handsome, dashing, athletic, swashbuckling, heroic, and romantic.  He was all of this in a charismatic way.  I will admit, I would have loved to have been just like this.  Certainly, the list of people that might call me athletic, swashbuckling, dashing, heroic, and charismatic is probably very close to zero. 

Why do I like these films?  Well, I like them pretty much for the reasons I like Errol Flynn.  The films are swashbuckling and heroic.  They are good stories in which the good guy mostly wins (except of course for They Died with their Boots On). 

I have always wanted read the two seafaring books of Raphael Sabatini.  They are available on Amazon.  He wrote three novels about Captain Blood.  I should read one of them and see they are as engaging as I find the film. 

The book I did read was Errol Flynn’s biography, My Wicked Wicked Ways.  In real life he was flawed in contrast to the characters he played in the movies I like. He was a womanizing, hard drinking, hedonist.  He chain smoked.  He burned out and died at the age of 50 of a heart attack.  An autopsy showed he had severe cirrhosis of the liver as well which might have contributed to the heart attack.   

He was married four times and had four children.  He had numerous affairs with Hollywood stars.  In his mansion, he had peepholes and two-way mirrors where he could voyeuristically spy on his guests.   In 1942, two seventeen-year-old girls accused him of statutory rape.  He was acquitted but his image, as defined in his popular films, was never the same. 

It is good to have both perspectives:  his screen persona and his personal life.

After Captain Blood ended, I saw another channel was showing the first three Rambo movies back-to-back.  I like Sylvester Stallone, but he is no Errol Flynn.

Firearms and Ammunition: Supply and Demand

 

Brookings Institute

As the US entered into the pandemic, gun sales surged at a record pace. 

Historically, gun sales surge traditionally have surged when there is increased talk in the press and Congress about restricting gun sales and ownership.  Gun control buzz increases after the mass shootings for which the US, sadly, has is known for.  The largest spikes, per the Brookings Institute graph, were in January 2013 after the Sandy Hook, CT shootings, January 2016 after the San Bernardino, CA shootings, and a lesser surge after the Parkland, FL shootings in February of 2018. 

These have all been dwarfed by the spikes this year during the pandemic.  The first surge happened in March when the lockdowns first occurred.  The second bigger surge came after the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests and lootings.  In the surge that occurred last year, there was no serious talk of gun control.  There was serious talk of defunding the police.  There was the video of the St. Louis couple brandishing guns and threatening the protesters.  There was the video of the armed protesters in the Michigan State House.

I thought about buying a firearm in 2013.  I had never considered doing so before then.  The only reason I considered it in 2013 was because there was a small probability of legistlation that might have limited gun ownership.  Basically, I was not even thinking about a gun until there was a possibility of being told I could not have one.  I didn’t buy a gun then, but I did apply for and get a State of Illinois Firearms Ownership Identification (FOID) Card.  This would give me allow me to purchase a gun and transport firearms in my car.

This March, it was a different story.  I was part of that surge.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I bought a pistol and a shotgun.

Just after the Illinois lockdown began, I was sitting in my study working.  It was about 7pm and a drizzly, sleety, raw evening in March.  It was more Winter than Spring.  I heard several loud bangs.  At first, I thought they were firecrackers.  But who would be shooting fireworks on such a dismal evening?  Then I thought it might be someone hammering loudly.  But again, who would doing such on this kind of night.  Then, I thought gunfire.  Gunfire?  I went to ask my wife if she heard, but she was on the phone.  I texted one neighbor and he said he was giving his kids a bath and heard nothing.  I texted another neighbor and she said she thought it was fireworks. 

I decided to call the non-emergency number for the Police.  I told them what I just related and said I saw no people running into the streets and no cars peeling away.  They said they would send a patrol car.  Nothing came of it thankfully.

When I was about to fall asleep, I had a mix thoughts about the gravity of the lockdown, the quite gloomy prospects we were fearing from the virus, the fact that people were already hoarding food and other supplies, and then hearing what I thought might be gunfire.  I then questioned, “what if this leads to civil unrest.”  If that happened, all I had were a pellet gun and kitchen knives.

The very next day, I decided to buy a shotgun.   I decided on a pump-action 20 gauge figuring the unique sound of the pump activation would scare off anyone who hears it.  The smaller gauge with the pump-action repeater was more controllable by a novice… namely me.  I went online.  There were practically no local brick and mortar stores.  And for the few that sold shotguns, they were sold out.  I was already too late.  I found online stores and learned what it took to buy a gun from them, and have it delivered to Illinois I did everything I was supposed to do and ordered a low end but highly rated Mossberg shotgun and 48 rounds of ammunition.

The ammunition was delivered to my house the next week, but I got not updates of the gun ever being shipped.  I waited and kept checking their website.  About a month letter I got an email informing me that due to overwhelming demand they were unable to fill my order in the foreseeable future and that they had cancelled the order and refunded my money.  A quick tour of their website showed almost anything I might want was out of stock.

I tried another website and they had inventory.  The gun I wanted was also out of stock so, I ordered something close to what I preferred.  Given the increase in demand, I also ordered a Ruger .22lr pistol and some ammunition, simply because the gun was in stock.  Within a few weeks both guns were in my possession.

Out of curiosity, I continued to monitor sites to learn all but the really expensive firearms were out of stock.  By September, guns were more available but not the full offering models that were available before the surge.  My guess is that the manufacturers produced their best sellers to try to keep up with demand with minimum changeovers.  This is the same thing that the soft drink companies did when confronted by a surge in canned drinks and sodas during the pandemic. 

About the same time guns were back in stock, I noticed that there was essentially no ammunition on the two websites.  This condition lasts to this day.  It is crazy.  Newsweek reported:

Brookings Institute

Survey responses also suggested firearms sales increased by 95 percent during the first half of this year compared to last year. NSSF estimated 5 million people purchased guns for the first time between January and July. The foundation collects ongoing data related to national firearms purchases through the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is used to determine if
an individual is legally able to purchase or own a gun.

Everyone seems to be buying ammunition in greater disproportionally to the surge in gun sales.  The same Newsweek article reports sales in 2020 for firearms was up 72% over the previous year but ammo sales “increased by 139%.”  Who are buying all these guns and ammo?  I sure hope that this run on ammo is from not folks stocking up for nefarious purposes.

I also joined the NRA.  Ever since doing so, I have been blitzed with fundraising requests beyond the basic dues.  The hyperbole in their fundraising communications is downright concerning. 

All this said, I plan to be a responsible gun owner and truly hope the only shooting I do is while enjoying the sport of marksmanship at range near my home.

Craziness in the Stock Market

 

There has sure been a lot of buzz today and yesterday about the run up of a couple of stocks:  GameStop, AMC, and others.  As a prelude, I have to provide the caveat that I am trying to figure this out as write this piece.   

Beyond understanding the basic concepts of how supply and demand push the prices up and down, I have never really understand how options really.  I feel stupid when trying to understand.  The Chicago Board of Trade defines them this way:

An option is a contract giving the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset (a stock or index) at a specific price on or before a certain date (listed options are all for 100 shares of the particular underlying asset). An option is a security, just like a stock or bond, and constitutes a binding contract with strictly defined terms and properties.

This seems easy enough to understand.  The next part complicates it a bit more.  There are two kinds of options:  puts and calls.

The call option is the easier to understand from my perspective (www.stockmarketloss.com):

When you buy a call option, you’re buying the right to purchase from the seller of that option 100 shares of a particular stock at a predetermined price, which is called the “strike price.” You have to exercise your call by a certain date or it expires. To purchase a call option, you pay the seller of the call a fee, known as a “premium.” When you hold a call option, you hope the market price of the stock associated with it will increase in the near future. Why? If the stock price increases enough to exceed the strike price, you can exercise your call and buy that stock from the call’s seller at the strike price, or in other words, at a price below the stock’s market value. Then you can either keep the shares (which you obtained at a bargain price) or sell them for a profit. But what happens if the price of the stock goes down, rather than up? You let the call option expire and your loss is limited to the cost of the premium.

The call option is easier to understand because it is part of corporate compensation for executives.  Let’s say the current stock price of the company you work for is $100.  You are granted options for 1,000 shares at that price but you cannot exercise the options for, say, 5 years.  If the at the end of five years the price increases, to say $150, you net the $50 x 1,000  = $50,000.  These options are given to executives as an incentive to drive the stock price higher. 

The put option is a little harder for me to understand and it always has been.  From the same website as above, here is a good explanation:

When you buy a put option, you’re buying the right to force the person who sells you the put to purchase 100 shares of a particular stock from you at the strike price. When you hold put options, you want the stock price to drop below the strike price. If it does, the seller of the put will have to buy shares from you at the strike price, which will be higher than the market price. Because you can force the seller of the option to buy your shares at a price above market value, the put option is like an insurance policy against your shares losing too much value. If the market price instead goes up rather than down, your shares will have increased in value and you can simply let the option expire because all you’ll lose is the cost of the premium you paid for the put.

More than a few folks have told me that for most individual investors, options were closer to gambling.  Investment firms use them, the put parts in particular, to hedge their bets as outlined above.  Hmmm, hence the term hedge funds?

So, what happened with GameStop?

The hedge funds bet on the price going down.  Perhaps they did this not as a hedge but to make a killing on this company that is probably going out of business. Individual investors using social media to organize decided to take positions in the company to raise the price disrupting the investment strategy of the big boys.

Per the Wall Street Journal:

Once upon a time, short sellers were the hotshot outsiders, energetically assaulting fusty old Wall Street. Now they’re on the ramparts looking down as armies of day traders use options to send the value of heavily-shorted stocks like GameStop Corp. GME surging.

 

Professional investors are worried: How can financial markets function when stock movements are so obviously disconnected from fundamentals, played by both sides like a videogame? After a sharp correction midday Monday, GameStop on Tuesday rose a further 93%, bringing its total gain since Jan. 11 to more than 600%.

In another WSJ article:

In a week on Wall Street that has pitted individual investors against seasoned professionals, the trading restrictions were interpreted by many as the latest sign that financial markets are stacked against individuals. Gathering on social media platforms like Reddit, Discord, Facebook and Twitter, individual investors have piled into stocks like GameStop and AMC that were once left for dead and banded together to intensify losses among professional traders betting against the stocks.

It seems like the individual investors somehow collectively decided to buy and sell to each other driving up the price of a company on the verge of bankruptcy.  The WSJ likened this to playing the market as if it were a video game.  Perhaps they are.  But it is still a zero sum kind of game.  Some people are going to lose big time. 

Today, three brokerage firms, presumably used heavily by the individual investors storming the castle, stopped trading on GameStop and other stocks in the same situation.   Let’s see how this unfolds in the next few days.

It is a crazy world out there politically and also, apparently, in equity markets. 

A January Potpourri

 

Return to the Classroom:  It was good to return to campus this week. I have not been there since mid-November.  It was good to be back in the classroom.  As in the fall term, my two undergraduate classes meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday the first two periods in the morning.   Both classes are large, 43 and 47 students.  The room I was assigned normally holds 50 students but these days it is configured for social distancing and can only accommodate 26.  I polled the student to see who wanted to physically attend class and who preferred or needed to attend online via Microsoft Teams.  Just over 20 students opted to attend class.   I teach in this mixed mode method on Mondays and Wednesdays.  On Fridays, the entire class is online.

I liked being at home during this pandemic.  I am thankful to have a job that allows me to work remotely for most of what I have to do.  I am well aware that others do not have the luxury of working from home.  There are also those who have lost their jobs and struggling to just get by.

This pandemic has made me appreciate that I am still able to do what I do.  I am also thankful for the simple pleasure to leave the house two mornings week and drive to campus to teach.  I listen to NPR’s Morning Edition on the way there and some music on the return trip.  It is good to be able to walk across our beautiful campus.  I am only there for a few hours.  I leave the house between 6 and 6:30 and am home sometime between 11 and 12:30.  I have included wintry photos I took there this morning.

Restaurants Opened in Illinois:  This incident rates have dropped in the state to allow the restaurants to open for limited seating indoor dining.  I am pretty sure I will continue patronize my favorite restaurant by carrying out.  I know others are looking forward to the simple pleasure of dining at a restaurant.  I am not sure how

long the in-house dining will last.  They are expecting the more contagious strains to be the most prevalent by March.  I don’t think the vaccine rollout will be fast enough to stave off the spike in incidents and thus forcing more lockdowns.

The Social Dilemma:  My friend and colleague Brian Vollmert, Associate Director of Marketing, recommending I watch the Netflix documentary:  The Social Dilemma.  In a word, wow!  The documentary makes a case for the way social media has changed our society, and not for the better.  Ex-executives of Google, Twitter, Facebook, and more talk about how the people are not the customers of these companies.  The real customers are the advertisers.  The people who use social media are actually the product.  We, the users, are delivered to the advertisers. The goal of these companies is therefore to keep us online longer and longer.  While we think we are engaging more socially, we are actually feeling lonelier than and more isolated than ever. 

Clearly there are some positives to these platforms.  I know when people share their people, I appreciate the reminder and opportunity to wish my friends happy birthdays, I love to learn has new babies or grandbabies, it is good to see photos of my friends, their families, and what they are up to.  I love the way Armenians use social media to share current events in our communities, the history of our people, and to keep updated with the on the Republic of Armenia.

I strongly recommend this documentary, especially if you feel we are being manipulated by social media.  I will definitely watch it again and most likely comment on it in this blog.

 

 

Contagion: The Vaccination Big Number Challenge

 

Today President Biden raised the goal for administering vaccinations from 1 million to 1.5 million per day.  That is a noble goal.  I hope we can get to it, actually I am hoping we can get it so I can be vaccinated sooner rather than later.

Let’s put some perspective around these numbers.  First, off let’s just consider 1 million dose a day.  If a dose is 1 injection and ever one needs 2, it would take 660 days or a year and ten months to vaccinate everyone.  If by a dose they mean 2 injections, then it would take almost a year.

I am in the 1b classification for vaccinations in Illinois.  The state started with the 1b’s as of yesterday, January 25.  The same day, I heard on the local public radio station that the population of the 1b class is 3 million here in Illinois.  At the current time, Illinois is receiving 150,000 doses a week.  At 150,000 doses a week, it will take the 20 weeks or about 5 months to get all of us vaccinated if a dose means two injections.  If a dose means 1 injection it would take 10 months at the rate we are receiving the vaccine.  That seems too long with the more virulent strains predicted to be the dominant strain by March.

Illinois is 4% of the population of the United States.  Our share of 1 million vaccines a day would be 38,066.  If we bump up the national goal to 1.5 million vaccinations per day, the Illinois share of that would be 57,100.  150,000 doses of week is not enough to meet the old goal let alone the new one.  With the new goal, we would need 285,500 doses per week if we are vaccinating folks 5 days per week.  If we are to vaccinate 6 days a week, we would need 342,600 does per week.  We need more than double of what we are getting today.

Assuming that Illinois is a representative state, we have work to do to meet the President’s objective.  I am not privy to all the information, but I would ask the following questions:

• Can we make that many doses a day?
• Do we have dry ice and refrigeration capacity for warehousing and transporting that higher level of production and distribution?
• Do we have the ability to schedule and the facility and personnel capacity to vaccinate that number of people per day?
• For each of the above, what are the obstacles and how long would it take us to ramp up to the targeted rate.

The previous administration had a snappy name for their plan to develop and roll-out the vaccine.  They did a great job partnering with the pharmaceutical companies to develop the vaccines.  But at the end, they seemed more concerned with overturning the results of the election more than quickly rolling out the vaccine.  The folks in the new administration claim that there was no distribution strategy, and they have to develop one from scratch.  Accounting for the political exaggeration no doubt at play here, it is clear to me that the current distribution strategy is inadequate.

I would imagine this should be joint military and commercial operation.  The military is weel versed in quickly developing and implementing deployment plans.  I would probably put a military general with supply experience in charge.  I would have his #2 be a senior level corporate supply chain or logistics executive.  The goal is to develop a plan quickly, roll it out, and have monitor progress tightly.  They need to adapt and modify tactics and procedures to overcome the obstacles that will arise.  

We can do this.  Every aspect of the plan will be critical, but we can do this.  We have to do this.  We need to show ourselves and the world that we can do this.

Steve Misner

 

In early 1990, I took a job with Colgate-Palmolive and moved from Detroit to work in Manhattan and live in Connecticut.  It was a great career move.  It was a great adventure for me and my family. 

I loved Colgate, my tenure there was seventeen years.  It was the by far, the longest I had worked anywhere.  There was business and professional growth and challenges.  The consumer products culture of this venerable old country was both refreshing and frustrating to navigate at the same time.  As is the case with anyplace I have ever worked, it is the people that make it more meaningful and memorable.  I had the opportunity to meet, work, and become friends with some excellent people.

One of best was Steve Misner.  He was a soap manufacturing engineer.  He dedicated his life to mastering the art of bar soap manufacturing.  He was keenly interested in the reason I moved to Colgate; to join the newly formed Total Quality Group.  I want to say I met Steve the first month I was there.  He was keenly interested in learning more about Quality Management and Assurance.   I was happy to share what I knew.  In turn, he educated me in process of soap making:  raw ingredients, saponification, extrusion, cutting and stamping, packaging, and distribution.  I learned about the grades of tallow and the not so pleasing odors the lower grades had requiring the need to use more fragrance (the most important ingredient) to mask the tallow and get the soap to get the soap to smell as it should.  I learned about the batch and continuous saponification methods. 

 Steve is one of the nicest fellows you could ever want to meet, and we reconnected last week through the magic of LinkedIn.  We had a phone conversation and even though we haven’t spoken in at least fifteen years, it was as if we didn’t miss a beat.  His passion for soap has followed him into retirement.  He and colleague started a boutique soap company, Stone Clean Soap.  They have, between them, seventy years of experience in the business and have developed formulas and processes that are the standards in soap manufacturing. 

     Steve sent me a sample that arrived just today.  The product is really good.  The fragrances are sublime.  The lathering and feel while washing and then upon rinsing are superb.  But I would have not expected any less than this from this excellent and caring engineer.  I am delighted to see that quality is a central to their company.  Steve credits that to my influence way back when we first met.  I might have provided a wee bit of guidance back then, but Steve was a very quick study and ran with it.  I am delighted how he has embodied the philosophy and applied it very nicely in his little company. 

The most amazing thing about Steve, to me, is that he never expressed a desire to do more than what he was doing when I first met him.  He loved to engineer and innovate manufacturing practices.  He was doing what he loved and was dedicated to it his entire career.  Corporate gossip, intrigue, maneuvering, and all that were never for him.  I truly admired this about him.  It took me an entire career to be where I want to be, teaching at a university.  He was doing it from day one.  That makes him a very successful and a very rich man in my book.

Check out their products, you won’t disappointed.

 

 

Satire or Anger? You Tell Me

 

I have been posting a fair amount on this blog, methinks too much, about the political polarization in this country.  I then post them on Facebook, the wonderful, politically unbiased, forum for serious political discourse and discussion designed to foster fellowship and deeper understanding amongst all the peoples of the world.  The result is that I provide an opportunity for my friends to comment, civilly at first, but then quickly spiral into diatribes and attacks on each other supporting one of the two polar views.  This is, of course, their right to do so.

I should know better.  I should only write about reminiscing about the way things were when I was growing up.  Those days of yore weren’t necessarily better or worse.  But, with the accelerating pace of change, people like to remember and reminisce.  They like to see the thread of appreciating the simple things in life with friends, family, school, worship, and work are in some way the parts of life that are most important. I may have to do more of that.

The polarization in this country, however, is an obsessive topic for me.  It has me worried about how all of this plays out.

Politics?  Gas prices?  Taxes?  I love this guy and hate that one?  Yeah, they are important.  Sure, we are all free and completely independent thinkers about these issue that are remarkably like the between 70 and 80 millions of others that have been eating the same pablum. 

Our capitol was stormed. This is not a good sign.  And yes, last year, in the midst of a pandemic stores were looted and property was destroyed.  Also, not a good sign. The fact that we are split about 50-50 on which of these was kind of OK and which was detestable is truly not a good sign.

Sure, everyone will attempt to school me on their perspective and blaming it on those that harbor the opposite perspective.  Isn’t that exactly what polarization is?

The dividing is complete. I fear the conquering. 

But I know what I just typed is wrong. 

People, people I know and am friends with, will explain to me why I am wrong.  Others will tell those folks who explained why I am wrong are right in that I am wrong, but they are wrongly explaining why I am wrong.  (Whew… that was a challenging sentence to construct.)  The only conclusion I can draw is that I am naïve and wrong.  Hell, I have to be, everyone is in agreement with that.

I should take solace in everyone who comments is better informed, have greater insight, are more logical, and thus generally smarter than me.  It is the only hope I have for making sense of this.

Oh, I am being too hard on myself?  Things are not that black and white.  There are shades of gray I should be acknowledging?  Well, that is exactly my point. 

That is exactly my point.

Let’s attribute this post to it being a glass half-full, dreary, gray, middle of winter Sunday in January.  As Mondays are always more uplifting and brighter, I am sure my mood will be much better tomorrow.  I wonder what the Trumpian or Bidenesque perspective is on this.  I am sure I will somehow be schooled on it. 

Passions are running high.  I see that.  I get that.

Do the leaders of the two poles of this abyss have our best interests at heart?  Can you guess how I might actually answer this question?

Let me bring George Carlin into the mix here.

 

 

 

School away dear friends, school away.

Bernie Mitten Memes

A Gig with Bernie and Ara

 

Amid all the back and forth, the accusations, the impeachment, conspiracy theories from every angle and idiology, radical this and reactionary that commentaries, dark money here and there, the inauguration, and Biden’s first days in office, OMG… I lost my train of thought in the dizzying spectacle that American politics has become.  Oh yeah, amid all this Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has given us a respite, a diversion, from all this.

He showed up for the inauguration in a heavy coat and donning colorful mittens.  He was very Vermonty.  I assume they were LL Bean (they weren’t).  A photo was posted, and some brilliantly clever mischievous person commented or photoshopped Bernie into another photo and posted it on social media.  Others liked it, followed suit, and next thing you know, Bernie’s image is everywhere.  Of course, this is my theory of how this whole thing began.

From the Washington Post:

Washington-based photographer Brendan Smialowski snapped the now-iconic shot. It stood in stark contrast with the other visuals of the day: a parade of U.S. politicians and celebrities dressed up in designer monochrome outfits, reaffirming the virtues of U.S. democracy after a tumultuous four years.

Perhaps Sanders’s seemingly grumpy appearance reflected peoples’ own annoyance with politicians and political systems at a time when the world is reeling from a pandemic that has exacerbated economic and social divides. Or maybe the democratic socialist, whose liberal foreign policies

Bernie with John and I

have made him popular abroad, at least in some corners, was the most relatable part of a day meant to display America’s democratic process. Or it could be that people just really needed something to laugh about together.

I think it was the colorful mittens that no one was wearing or dared to wear.  Mittens?  Gloves are more the norm for business attire in colder temperatures.  I also think that people needed something to have some fun with and to cheer them up.  Bernie’s photo was just the ticket.

When I first started seeing these delightful memes, I thought I needed to see Bernie with me at a musical performance.  So, I set out to find out how to do it, hoping it wouldn’t be so complicated.  The first website I found asked for a URL of the photo that you wanted Bernie in.  URL?  My photos are in the photo app on my phone and laptop.  Ugh, it was already too complicated, so I reluctantly gave up.

My Middle Eastern Music Ensemble friend Phaedra posted some hilarious mitten memes on her Facebook story.  I texted her saying how much I enjoyed them.  I told her what I was trying to do, and she asked for a couple of photos.  A day later, voila, my first Bernie with me and my buddies while we were playing music.  I saw that she used a site, sitwithbernie.com, which was not the site I had tried.  So, I checked it out.

At UW Parkside with Bernie and Jim

Wow… much easier.  But the site was so busy the photos wouldn’t download so I just took screen shots and cropped them down and I was in business.  I had a lot of fun making them this morning and sharing with family.   What a great diversion.

There are mitten memes of Bernie everywhere and with almost everybody.  He is sitting on a girder with the workers high above New York City.  He is playing poker with dogs.  He is at the Last Supper.  He is at various restaurants, stores, national monuments… you name it, there is probably a mitten meme for it.

And Bernie?  I guess he is taking it in stride.  From the LA Times:

On Thursday’s episode of “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” Sanders said he was amused by the now-ubiquitous image, which has Twitter hailing the Vermont senator for his commitment to social distancing and utilitarian fashion choices.

But after he palyed with Oum...

Sanders couldn’t help but laugh when Meyers produced one of his favorite takes on the meme, placing Inauguration Bernie on a couch with the women of “Sex and the City,” and asked if Sanders had been tracking his social media fame.

 

“Yeah, I’ve seen ‘em,” the 79-year-old politician said. “What’s been really nice is the woman who made the mittens lives in Essex Junction, Vt. She is a schoolteacher and a very, very nice person, and she has been somewhat overwhelmed by the kind of attention that is being shown to her mittens.”

In politics and social media, we need much more of
this and much less of the abyss.

 

And then Hachig and Richard...
He never want to sit in with us again.