Resolution Ramble

johnhartstudios

      It is January 9th.  I am really starting my new year today.  
     I am not sure what exactly happened to the “official” first eight days of this year, but rumor has it I spent it sleeping, watching sports, watching more movies than sports, and even binge watching a few series.  Eating badly may have also been a part of it.  The most productive thing I did was to blog each and every day.  
     So, how will I return to the work of the productive segment of society?
     First, another blog, and it may as well be this one.  (It’s OK to groan… out loud preferably).
     Second, I should deal with the whole, annually recurring, resolution thing.  But methinks, I should not deal with it seriously.  I need to face the reality that very few actually hold to the resolutions they so easily and forthrightly make for themselves.  My cousin Brenda, who has an amazing sense of humor, understands this fully and has posted an amazing insight on facebook:

I can’t believe it has been another year since I didn’t become a better person.

      Another friend posted:  "Today, I am multi-slacking."  Yes, I have multi-slacked.  I may better at multi-slacking than I have ever been at multi-tasking.
      Well this about sums it up.  
      For most of us, the return to work, and demands and deadlines posed in that milieu, prioritize our attention and activities.  We immediately return to our work obligations and our modus operandi for dealing with such.  Some may call it a rut rather than use Latin words to make it sound more sophisticated and more important than the random and haphazard thing it is.  
      I don’t mean to sound so defeatist or to paint such a dreary picture of how we live.  Thoreau wrote “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”  I am not sure how true that is anymore.  There are so many entertaining diversions and an abundance of cheap junk food to shield our minds from desperation these days.  They all become part of that normal routine as well.  I am not sure if Thoreau’s condemnation even applies in our current manifestation of civilization.  
     Does it really matter?  
     Probably not, if you are content or even simply accepting of your lot.  Certainly not, if you have friends and family about you that you love and care about and who love and care about you.  
      There is a post that folks my age from Detroit are reposting that begins with, “I grew up in Detroit.”  it goes for a several decently written paragraphs extolling what life was like coming of age in the 1960s and 70s.  It covered the old TV shows we used to watch and the Norman Rockwell community and family life we all experienced.  It ends with:

Re-post if you're thankful for your childhood and will never forget where you came from & the time you came from! Wouldn't it be nice if it were possible to get back to this way of life? I really liked that life!!!!!!!!

     I am not about to repost it.  When it comes to nostalgia, we remember the great warm memories that may have even become greater and warmer with the passing years.  We forget the negatives.  And there are positives and negatives to each and every era.  We forget that all of these memories were from the mostly innocent, glass is always half-full, perspective of us as children.  If only we could post or resolve our way back to the pleasant memories of those bygone years.  
     Remembering, however, is a very good thing.  It helps to recall the joys and pleasant times of the past.  It is tempting to want to recreate them but that is really hard, if not impossible, to do.  We can work on our mindset and perspective and maybe recreate some of the nostalgic past that way in that most important space…. between our ears.
     So, what am I resolving?  I am resolving to return to work tomorrow and to try to be a better person.  The first part is quite doable as I have stuff to get done.  The second… we shall see.

Peter Bogdanovich (1939 - 2022)

thehollywoodinerview

     Yesterday, I followed my morning routine of reading the Wall Street Journal with my morning coffee.  On page A2, at the bottom of the page, was a very short article with the heading Obituary and the title Director Bogdanovich, Auteur From Start, 82.  It was a short article that packed as good a summary in three short paragraphs as one might expect.  Bogdanovich passed away on January 6^th.

In college, I took a film class.  It was an elective and perhaps the best elective I ever took.  I learned a little about the history of motion pictures, how films are crafted, some of the basic terminology, and gained a greater appreciation for a genre that I really liked anyway.  It was in that class that I learned what an auteur was.  The professor in that class loved Francois Truffaut who in his mind was the ultimate, the definitive, auteur.

An auteur is an artist with a distinctive approach, yet usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded but personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, which thus manifests the director's unique style or thematic focus. ~ Wikipedia

I am not by any means a Bogdanovich scholar, but I remember how promising he was around the time I graduated from high school.  He was the toast of Hollywood and there were great expectations for him for future cinematic works.  I didn’t buy into the hype though I came to really like his 1972 What’s Up Doc? and 1973 Paper Moon.   It was not until many years later that I saw his best film, The Last Picture Show (1971).  It was his second and most acclaimed film.  I was blown away by the quality of this film based on a novel by Larry McMurtry.  Bogdanovich and McMurtry penned the screenplay.  Based on this film, Bogdanovich is a gifted auteur in my view.

As luck would have it, The Last Picture is featured on Showcase this month, I tuned in and watched it again.  It really and truly is a great film.  It was filmed in black and white and captured, beautifully, a backwater and dying Texas town in the early 1950s.  It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two.  Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson both won for Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor.  Cloris Leachman was absolutely amazing in her role.  William Friedkin won the Best Director Oscar that year for the French Connection.

While the Wall Street Journal obituary was brief, there was a more complete one in the New York Times by Margarlit Fox:  Peter Bogdanovich, 82, Director Whose Career Was a Hollywood Drama, Dies.

This obituary definitely focused on the drama in the director’s life.  After his initial success with the three films listed above, Bogdanovich had a long spell of poor critical and commercial success.  His love life was also the subject of Hollywood gossip and tragedy.  He married a production designer Polly Platt, also mother of his two daughters, who worked with him on his three major hits.  After The Last Picture Show, he left her and took up with Cybil Shepard who starred in the movie.  That relationship lasted for eight years.  After his relationship with Shepard ended, he met and fell in love with Playboy model Dorothy Stratten.  She left her husband to live with Bogdanovich.  Her husband later murdered her and then killed himself. 

Such a series of events would test anyone and impact their behavior and decisions.  Bogdanovich went on to marry Stratten’s younger sister, Louise, a marriage which lasted until 2001. 

In 1985, with “$21.37 in the bank and $25.79 in his pocket,” according to court papers, he declared bankruptcy, a move that further marginalized him in Hollywood. In the years that followed, he became, by his own account, addicted to prescription drugs.

“I made an enormous number of mistakes,” Mr. Bogdanovich said in a 2004 interview. “You don’t do rational things when somebody blows up an atom bomb at your feet.” ~ New York Times

After such an impressive start, his career basically wallowed.  He declared bankruptcy again in the 90s.  He sued Universal Pictures about their changing the soundtrack of one of the movies he directed.  He fought with Hugh Hefner.  He wrote a book about Stratten and directed some of the blame for her death at Hefner.  Hefner responded by accusing Bogdanovich of seducing Louise when she was 13 and later paying for facial surgery to make her look more like her sister.

A few of Bogdanovich’s later films had some critical success namely The Mask (1985) starring Cher and The Cat’s Meow (2001).  In his later years, he did more work directing television movies.  He was also an actor.  His credits in this regard include portraying a therapist, Elliot Kupferberg, in fifteen episodes of The Sopranos.  I learned also that in the 20s, he penned monographs for the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Ford.

A month ago, I stumbled across a documentary on Buster Keaton, The Great Buster (2018).  I watched it.  It was really good.  I remember being glad that it was written and directed by Peter Bogdanovich probably because I had not heard of the director in so long.  This was his last major work and a perfect cap for his career.  It was an homage to a flawed great of early Hollywood created by a flawed film maker of our time who was devoted to the history of film. 

Bogdanovich will be remembered for The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, and What’s Up Doc? long after people forget about his shortcomings and troubles dealing with too much success and acclaim too early in life.  The Last Picture Show is an absolute gem and an amazing piece of work.

I close with another passage from the New York Times obituary:

Mr. Bogdanovich’s film career had seemed almost foreordained, for he was nothing short of a cinematic prodigy. “I was born,” he liked to say. “And then I liked movies.”

Another Negative Milesstone for GM

Yahoo

     Having started my career in the auto industry, my fascination for that industry has never waned.  Admittedly, I have written about Ford more than GM or Toyota mostly because it was my first corporate job and my grandfather had worked there.  Our church, St. Sarkis, was in Dearborn built on land that once belonged to Ford and my undergraduate school was on land that was once part of Henry Ford’s Fairlane Estate.  Ford loomed large in the life of Detroit, Dearborn, my own formative years, and my career.  Even when I left Ford, I worked at automotive suppliers before moving to New York and the consumer packaged goods industry in 1990. 

Here are a selection of my pieces on the auto industry.

• January 2006: The Retirement of Pensions 

• March 2010: Toyota, Ford & GM – Where to from here?

• Turning 100K

• Answering Debbie: Why I am Driving a Toyota

• Ford Motor Company: Another Turnaround?

• Ford Drives Sedans Out of their Showrooms 

• Et tu General Motors?

• Lee Iacocca

• Ford v Ferrari

Just this week, we learned that Toyota sold more cars that GM in the US for the very first time.  It was a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal.  I imagine it was huge news in Detroit. 

I thought I would be more shocked by this news but really did not impact me that much.  It was more of a whimper than a bang. The General Motors share of the market has been eroding since the Japanese invasion and fuel crisis of the 1970s. 

General Motor became the largest auto manufacturer in the world in 1931.  They held that position for 77 years until 2008 when Toyota took that mantle from them.  GM still led in the US until 2021, when Toyota outsold them here by about 100,000 cars.

At one point, I thought General Motors held close to 80% of the US market share.  I am not sure where I got that figure.  I believed it was from the internet which now insists that the peak share for GM was 50% in 1962.  Given they are now about 17-18%, it is still a large loss of market share and now leadership in their home country.  Globally, GM is third behind Toyota and Volkswagen.  Ford is sixth behind Hyundai Kia and Honda.

GM was founded in 1908 in Flint, MI by William C. Durant (1861-1947).  It was a holding company of automobile manufacturers.  Durant even borrowed the General part of the name and the holding company business model from General Electric.  The company began with Buick and acquired of Cadillac and other brands which have faded away over time.  He had backing from Charles Stewart Mott in the early days of the company.  They were going to by Ford in 1909 but for an economic panic in the country at the time and his bankers thinking he was over leveraged.  Durant was removed from office board who were heavily influenced by the bankers.

Durant went on to found Chevrolet in 1915 and grew it to the point where Durant with the backing of Samuel McLaughlin and Pierre S. DuPont took over GM in 1918.  A few years later DuPont severed ties with Durant and brought in Alfred P. Sloan (1875-1966).  Sloan is credited with bringing modern management to GM making them able to be fiscally sound and economically better managed than Ford whom the surpassed in US market share in 1931.   He is credited with bring in the annual model changed, the brand architecture (from entry/value to luxury), a reliance on industrial engineering, styling, and even planned obsolescence.  He led the company from 1923 – 1946.

In my years in the automotive industry and living in Detroit, I found the culture of GM to be arrogant.  The engineers and managers I would interface with were absurdly self-assured as their market share slowly eroded.  Along with Ford, GM struggled in the 70s and 80s to adapt to and fight the superior quality and reliability of the Japanese, primarily Toyota and Honda, vehicles.  By the 2000s, they were making competitive cars, but their reputation and image lagged and continued to erode. I last bought an American car in 1999.  It was a GM.  I do not see me buying another any time soon.

There was a true culmination point on June 8, 2009 when GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the depths of the Great Recession.  Today GM is run by Mary Barra, the first woman ever to run an automotive company.  Under her leadership, which includes experience in running manufacturing engineering worldwide and the global supply chain, she has assembled a diverse team including a female CFO to guide General Motors to the future of whatever the mix of electric vs. internal combustion and sedans vs SUVs/pickup trucks will be.  A year ago on January 29, 2021, GM announced their intention to only offer electric powered vehicles by 2035.

Will GM regain the market share lead in the US?  It is certainly possible as the gap this year was only 100,000 vehicles.  It could happen this year.  But GMs trend does not me want to bet on them.  Globally, I do not see GM regaining that market share lead any time soon.

I tried to find a comment from Mary Barra on this news but could not.  From Reuters:

GM spokesman Jim Cain said the Detroit automaker had a very strong sales year in the United States in full-size SUVs and pickup trucks as it has focused on profitability, and as the supply of semiconductors improves, so will sales.

"I wouldn't rush out if I were (Toyota), and get a 'We're No. 1' tattoo," he said.

Atta boy Jim!  It is good to see that old GM arrogance alive and well.

 

* Global market share numbers from factorywarrantylist.com *

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Writer I Never Heard Of?

      It is amazing what I don’t know.  Maybe it is also amazing what I do know.  
     What may be interesting is what I think I know but have no clue about.  For this is the stuff of metaphysics and the mysteries of life, the realm of faith, which no one can really know for sure.  As metaphysics and mysteries are too deep for one lowly blog post, I will stick simply with being amazed by what I don’t know.
     In mid December, I was having lunch with my dean and our former provost.  We decided to meet at Lady Gregory’s in the trendy Andersonville neighborhood of Northwest Chicago.  I was the first to arrive and the maitre d’ asked where I would like to sit.  I told her we would prefer a table rather than a booth.  She said, “How about in the library?”  Being a library and bookish kind of guy, I said, “Sounds good to me.”  We went to the back of the restaurant to an alcove like section.  It did look like a library.  There were two walls with bookcases laden with antique books, a beautiful tiffanyesque chandelier, an array of framed photos of famous writers.  I immediately recognized William Butler Yeats.  I liked the restaurant and really liked the library section.
      I had time to peruse the shelves and take a few photos before my friends arrived.  I saw the framed photo of a quote pictured above:  “Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves?”  This quote was unfamiliar to me, but intriguing in a way because this is pretty much how I envisioned heaven all my life.  I never realized that fact, however, until I saw this quote.
     For some reason, and it might have been something the Mormons believe, I see everyone creating their own heaven, or hell, by their behavior, experiences, and relationships during our lifetimes.  Is this the case?  I have not clue.  But, it appealed to me.  Simultaneously, it scares me almost as much as it appeals to me.  
     I was also totally blank on who this quote might be attributed to.  This was only a mystery until I queried the internet just now.  This quote is from a 1915 book, The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford.  I was blissfully unaware of Ford Madox Ford and his book.  See what I mean, it is amazing what I don’t know.  

Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound

     So, who was Ford Madox Ford?  He was born in 1873 in England and died in 1939 in France.  Ford Madox Ford was his nom de plume.  His name at birth was Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer.  He was novelist, poet, and critic.  His novel, The Good Soldier, is considered his best novel.  Antwerp was his most famous poem.  Both of these works were considered amongst the first and well regarded examples of the modern fiction and poetry styles of the 20th Century.  Ford founded and edited two important and influential literary journals in the UK and then in Latin Quarter of Paris.  He had a bought of agoraphobia that ended his first marriage which was followed by series of female partners.  A surprising fact I learned was that he taught at Olivet College in Michigan during the last decade of his life.  In sum, he might be the best writer I never heard of.
     I will certainly read some of his poetry.  Will I seek out and read The Good Soldier?  Well, it took me over fifty years to get to The Good Earth.   Perhaps contemplating his quote on heaven and writing this bloggy bit is all the Ford Madox Ford I may ever get or, for that matter, need.

===

Here is the first section of Antwerp.  Read the entire poem on PoemHunter.com

I
Gloom!
An October like November;
August a hundred thousand hours,
And all September,
A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days,
And half October like a thousand years . . .
And doom!
That then was Antwerp . . .
In the name of God,
How could they do it?
Those souls that usually dived
Into the dirty caverns of mines;
Who usually hived
In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars;
Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud,
Lumbering to work over the greasy sods . . .
Those men there, with the appearance of clods
Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God
Ever shrived . . .
And it is not for us to make them an anthem.
If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them
To a tune that the trumpets might blow it,
Shrill through the heaven that's ours or yet Allah's,
Or the wide halls of any Valhallas.
We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours
For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays
Is this:
'In the name of God, how could they do it?'

A Cold Day

 

The Prairie/Tundra of my Backyard

It is the coldest day of this winter season.  It is 15 degrees Fahrenheit at 10 am but only expected to rise to 18.  It will be even colder the next few days with negative lows by the weekend.  Many will complain about this blast of cold, either wanting it to go away or talking about escaping to Florida to get away from it.  Not me.  I love a good spell of cold like this.  I actually look forward to them and like them more than the hottest humid days of summer.  I have reveled about this in previous posts.

• January 2005: Winter Survival

• January 2014: Brutalmente Frio!

• For the Love of a Good Winter Blast

• The Vortex Cometh

• A Walk in the Frigid Cold

I like the seasons.  I like them all.  I don’t like that the average temperature of each season is rising and contributing to wild swings in the weather and redefining what the seasons are and are not.  I can see where I may someday live in more temperate maybe even tropical climes.  Maybe the fact that such cold spells are becoming less frequent and that I may someday move away from where they happen is leading me to celebrate and appreciate each one a bit more.

Why do I like these cold spells so much?  It is not one thing.  It is certainly about venturing out into and braving the cold.  Being properly layered and bundled, the crunch of snow under boot or tire, the frosty breath, and the kind of solitude and introspection that can only come with the cold are what I love.  It is the short days and long nights.  It is the cloudy cold days with flurries or cold bright sunlight with an all blue cloudless sky cold.  It is the cold of still air and, even more, a howling wind kind of cold that makes you bundle up even more.

I also love being at home, sweatered or sweatshirted, having hearty meals and enjoying modern comfort and wonders gas forced air heat!  I love to curl up, I actually lounge more than curl if truth be told, with a good book, a mediocre movie, or my laptop writing a blog… just like this one.  I love the scenes of Zhivago and Lara holed up in the snow and ice encased dacha in both the novel and the film.   Those images are a mélange of eerie, beautiful, romantic, and timeless escapes. 

With tonight being Armenian Christmas Eve, the house is still decorated.  The glow of lights inside and out and all the decorations will only add to this experience.  This sense, this state of mind, would be very hard to duplicate in the places others go to escape exactly this kind of cold.

Beyond writing this post, I plan to handwrite a few letters, perhaps at one of our secretary desks.  Then I will bundle up and walk to the mailbox at the train station down the street.  I will also work on the courses I that I will be teaching in the semester that begins in two weeks.

Clearly, this is kind of weather is something that fascinates me and stirs my soul.  I am wondering how much of this is genetic.  I may be channeling the winters of my ancestors in the Armenian Highlands.  Ah… this is a poetic interpretation worthy of Yuri himself.

Thank you Dennis!

 

Christmas cards are still trickling in.  That is not a real issue given Armenian Christmas is in two days.  Yesterday, we got only one card.  It was from Dennis and Mary Papazian.  They are an amazing couple.  She just stepped down from her position as President of San Jose State University at the end of 2021.  He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan Dearborn where he founded and was the first director of the Armenian Research Center. 

Per his well-written and informative Christmas letter, I learned that Dennis just penned his autobiography, From My Life and Thought:  Reflections on an Armenian American Journey.   It is being printed and released soon by The Press at Fresno State University as part of their Armenian Studies Series.  I certainly will get and read this book. 

Just hearing about this book made me think of my favorite memory of Dennis. 

I have known of Dennis since the 1960s.  He is a generation older than me, and I was aware he was a professor of history at the University of Michigan – Dearborn and involved in St. John’s Armenian Church.  But I never really knew him nor ever interacted with him.

Back in those days in Detroit, the two churches, St. John’s and St. Sarkis where my family attended, did not interact a lot.  They were divided by Cold War and Armenian Politics to the point of having less than cordial relations… way less than cordial at times.  It involved Ramgavar and Dashak political parties politics, the recognition and support of the Armenian SSR, and control of the Armenian Churches in the United States.  It all dated back to the murder of Archbishop Levon Tourian on December 25, 1933, in New York City.  Armenians have a horrible history of polarizing ourselves when we should be focusing on those who wish to do us real harm. 

In 1971, I started my university education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  I attempted to go to school there as a commuter rather than live on campus.  That combined with a level of immaturity, made for an unpleasant and unsuccessful second semester of my freshman year as manifested in my GPA.

I was not sure what to do the following academic year and felt a bit defeated.  So, I took a job in factory owned and run by Armenians.  I think with great insight, they gave me some of the toughest and dirtiest jobs in the factory help me get my head straight.  Whether that was their plan or not, it worked wonderfully in getting my goals clear.  I was bound and determined to return to school, do well, and do something more white collar than blue with my career.

Where to go to school was the next question. 

Returning to Ann Arbor was certainly an option.  But my less than stellar experience there made that someplace I did not want to return to so soon.  Community college and Wayne State were certainly options but were nothing that resonated with me.

Then I thought, why not the Dearborn campus of the University of Michigan?  I returned some books to the library there rather than to drive out to Ann Arbor.  I remember thinking it was a cozy little campus which was probably more of what I needed than the larger more overwhelming central campus.  I asked a few students I ran into there, if they liked the place. They were friendlier than I expected and spoke positively about it.  So, I decided to go the Dearborn campus as it was still in the University of Michigan system.

I do not recall exactly what I did, or didn’t do, but I was certain I did something or talked to someone in either Ann Arbor or Dearborn and was told that I was cleared to enroll on the Dearborn campus in the Fall of 1972.  I was looking forward to a fresh start. 

During this same time frame, I was playing a lot of music on the weekends.  We played for dances, weddings, parties, and picnics.  We played for events at both churches, and I quickly realized how absurd the divide was.  We were the same people.  Our political differences didn’t make us different species and certainly shouldn’t make us enemies. 

During the summer of 1972, I was playing at a backyard party for a St. John’s family.  I remember talking to someone my parents’ age during a break.  The asked if I was going to college.  I answered yes and told them of my move to the University of Michigan – Dearborn.  They said, “Oh you have to meet Dennis Papazian, he is a dean there.”  They took me over and introduced me to Dennis who was cordial and told me to look him up if I ever needed any assistance or advice.

About a month later as the fall semester was about to begin, I ventured to campus to enroll in classes.  I believe it was a day or two before classes were supposed to begin.  Back then enrollment was done in person going from table to table, department by department, with a paper schedule in hand.  I was told they had no information about me being a student there and that I couldn’t enroll.  I was told I had to go through some paperwork or review process and it was sounding like I might miss a whole semester.

I felt stupid, dejected, and basically horrible.  Then, I thought let me find out if Dennis was on campus and if he might be of any assistance.  I learned he was the Chairman of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and where his office was.  I walked over and found him in his office.  I knocked on the open door.  I reminded him who I was and where we met.  He remembered and was happy to see me.  I told him my enrollment conundrum.  He called someone and, in short order, everything was straightened out.  He had me meet with Professor Fran Cousins who advised and approved my schedule.  I returned back to the registration room, got all my classes, and was good to go.

I am not sure if Dennis even remembers the event as it was a minor routine activity for an administrator and it took him like fifteen minutes to make it all happen.  But I will never forget it.  It was for me a wonderful act of kindness and assistance at a pivotal moment for me.  I felt compelled to do well and not let my Armenian mentor/benefactor down.

Dennis turned 90 last year per his Christmas letter.  This is my belated birthday card to him and thank you for his kindness and guidance back in 1972.  I think of him whenever I help my students in like situations. 

I look forward to getting and reading his book as soon as it is published.

Our Secretary Desks

 

In our house, there are several locations where I can write.  First and foremost, there is the desk in my study.  Certainly, there is the kitchen table and island counter.  I have a lap desk which is mainly used to hold my laptop while sitting in my favorite easy chair.  There is a desk in our bedroom, but mostly it is there as a TV stand.  We have my son’s grade school desk and hutch in the basement that I have used sparingly.  Lastly, we have two secretary desks which I almost never use.

We bought the first secretary desk when we were newlyweds.  It is a brand new Queen Anne cherrywood piece with a lovely curio cabinet above the fold-down writing desk.  We have used it exclusively as a curio cabinet in our three homes.  It was in the living foyer or living room in our first two homes but has been relegated to a bedroom suite in our current abode.  Our second secretary desk is something we inherited from my Great Uncle Rouben and Aunt Rose Marie.  It has only been with us in our current home.  This Gavoor desk is more of an antique and I am not sure what style this one might be.  While the first is a curio cabinet and writing desk, this second one is a chest of drawers and a writing desk.

Given that I like to handwrite, have personalized stationary, and a collection of fine pens, you would think I would take advantage of these two beauties, especially the antique, to write letters and cards, and even my drafts of my bloggy bits.  I have often thought of doing just that but never have… until today.

Why did I never use these desks? 

There are a few reasons for this.  First, I tend to be a creature of habit.  I have had a desk in our home since we got married.  I did my homework at my desk when I was in school.  When we got our first PC, it went on the desk, further solidifying the desk as a place to work.  Second, the idea of actually using the secretary desks for writing didn’t come to my mind until we move to our current house in Lake Forest.  But our secretary desks were on the second floor, and I did all work and writing on the first floor.  My idea to use these desks became a passing notion.

We toured Abraham Lincolns home in Springfield in 2011 or 2012.  In his house, the great barrister and future president had a most modest writing desk.  It was really just a table and maybe six square feet in surface space.  I was impressed with the output and content of Lincoln’s efforts his desk which was nothing more than a little table.  The notion of big ideas, deep thoughts, eloquently written on a small desk somehow appealed to me.  And dang if we didn’t have two very nice small writing desks waiting to be used at home.

Another good intention became a passing notion.

Today, I was going to do the last of our Christmas cards.  These were the cards that for which I wanted to include a handwritten letter.  Where better to accomplish this task than the second-floor secretary desks.  I fired up a fountain pen.  By fire up, I ran some warm water through the nib of a beautiful Waterman Carene to clear out the dried ink and put in a cartridge.  I gathered some stationery and Christmas cards, made a cup of coffee, and headed upstairs. 

I wrote half of the letters at one desk and the remaining half at the other desk.  It felt good sitting and writing at both.  I liked the Gavoor antique desk a bit more, simply because I knew that Uncle Rouben and Aunt Rose Marie used it to as Uncle Rouben used to say “keep up with my correspondence” which is something that he took great pride in.  I will have to do this more often. 

Life on the Cutting Edge of Retail

 

I was running errands in that “taking it easy week” between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  I grossly overestimated the travel time to get to my last stop.  So, I had time to kill.  I figured I would get a cup of coffee someplace and focus a bit on the “taking it easy” part of the holiday season.

When I think about getting a cuppa when I am out and about, it means that I am looking for a Starbucks that conveniently dot the landscapes in my stomping grounds.  On my route to that last stop, I came upon a Dunkin’ that I used by every morning in 2013 on my way to a small manufacturing client I worked with during brief consulting career. 

For nostalgia’s sake, I thought I would stop there.  Of course, being a Dunkin’, I knew the experience would not be much on the nostalgic side.  Dunkin’s have a certain lame sameness to their design.  Proletariat sameness seems to be more a part of their corporate mission than nostalgia.  There is nothing wrong with that.

As I approached the door of the shop, I noticed a big poster in the window.  It offered a medium size of their DD Holiday Blend for $2.  It included some blah-blah about their holiday blend having “sweet notes of molasses and dried fruit.”  The fact that in emphasized the flavor of the holiday blend in Spanish and in the process teaching me that melaza is Spanish for molasses, sold me on this special offer.

I ordered a medium holiday blend.  The pleasant young lady, who I was certain knew what melaza meant well before the aforementioned poster was placed in the window, punched a few keys on a modern flatscreen evolution of a cash register.  She said, “$3.69.”  Even though Illinois and Cook County are amongst the highest sales tax locales in the country, my razor sharp economic mind surmised that $1.69 was a bit excess for tax on a $2 item.  So, I said something clever like, “Wow, how much tax is there on a $2 item.”  No doubt because of the KN95 mask I was wearing, the young Dunkin’ista missed my playful sarcasm and concisely replied with “What?”

I told her about the giant poster in their window which clearly offered a medium holiday blend with sweet notes of molasses and dried fruit for $2.  Again, her response was, “What? Which poster?”  I pointed to the window where the poster was.  But from the inside of the store, the poster was just blank white.  From the equally blank look on her face, I offered to wait while she walked outside to look at the important side of the poster.  She did not take me up on that offer but rather stared at her flat screen panel cash register.  I could see from her eyes, as she was masked as well, that the staring did nothing to provide any more insight to our wee pricing conundrum.

She walked away to consult with two of her senior associates.  They were young men that were probably 3 to 6 months older than her 19 or 20 years on the planet.  They whispered in Spanish to each other.  One of the men asked me “Which sign?” and I dutifully pointed at the same poster and made him the same offering of my willingness to wait while he went outside to take a gander at the offer that was seemingly quite confusing to all of us. 

While they were deliberating further, I told them, “I am not upset, but simply reacting to a sign in your window.”  One of the fellows said, “We don’t put the signs in the window.  And, that special is done.”  Not wanting to cause more confusion, I said, “No worries.  Just give me a small holiday blend.”  After a short but awkward period of blank looks, the young lady took 3 $1 bills from me, returned $.47 in change to me.  I put the $.47 into their tip jar along with another dollar for all the trouble I inadvertently caused.  She then proceeded to the coffee urns where instead of just pouring me a small cup, she started the process of making a new batch… of what I presumed was the holiday blend.  Before she got very far, “No need to make a new batch.  Just give me whatever is ready to go.”  She said, “Yeah, we don’t really sell the holiday blend anymore,” and poured me a small cup of their original blend.

As I left, I thanked and three of them for their help, re-emphasized that I was not upset (since I knew this would become a blog post), and wished them and families a happy New Year.  I got back to my car, I put the coffee in the cup holder, and walked back to the store to take a photo of the poster for this very blog.  I was now smiling, unmasked, as I walked back toward to poster and saw that the two fellows had pulled the poster back to see if I was telling the truth.  At my urging, they lowered the poster so I could get a photo.

I got my bloggy bit out of the experience but will have to wait until next year to see if the holiday blend has the “sweet notes of molasses and dried fruit,” assuming they don’t change the blend.

Happy 2022

It is New Year’s Day.

It is grayish still morning right at the freezing point.  Things have the feel of a quiet before the storm which is set to start anytime now.  The forecast is for 5 to 9 inches of snow in the next 18 hours. 

Before settling in to write this first piece of the New Year, I stumbled upon and watched a Robert DeNiro movie, Everyone’s Fine.  This 2009 film also stars Kate Beckinsdale, Sam Rockwell, and Drew Barrymore.  This film, made in the depths of the Great Recession and watched this morning in the depths of the pandemic, was a bittersweet tale of a father reconnecting, actually connecting for the first time, with his adult children in a meaningful way.  I had avoided watching the film because I thought I wouldn’t like it.  I was wrong.  It was a perfect film to watch on this New Year’s Day morning.  It reminded me to love and accept one’s children for what they are and not what I may have wanted them to be.  Another message was to communicate as honestly as possible.  The same applies to grandkids, friend, family, acquaintances, and co-workers to some degree.

I am glad I watched that film before jumping in and writing this New Year’s Day blog.  Before watching the film, I was not sure what exactly to write about.  I thought, perhaps, to outline what my goals and resolutions for the new year might be.  But upon rising this morning and appreciating the gloomy calm before the storm, I had a different thought. 

Today looks pretty much like yesterday.  Sure, yesterday was the end of 2021 and today is the first day of 2022.  But that is an artificial demarcation created by us and that we have come to make a big deal out of.  Nothing really changed from yesterday to today.  The weather is the same.  I am the same person.  I have the same strengths, faults, desires, and worries.  The same is true of most others I know. 

In thinking about this, I went back in history before there were calendars and clocks.  In those times, things were presumably measured by moons, seasons, and day and night.  Everything was done on the agrarian cycle of planting, tending, and harvesting.  Spring was a time for renewal and planting, from the Persian perspective it signaled the start of the new year.  Their Nowruz is on the day of the spring equinox.  The New Year’s Day we are celebrating today is most likely based on the winter solstice which is the shortest day of the year.  It signals, as does Nowruz, the start of the next planting, tending, and harvesting cycle. 

It is good, for me at least, to remember this perspective.

So, should I make resolutions?  Sure. I do every year.

But it would be much better to create a mindset and strategy to create the lifestyle change to change my habits and behaviors to ensure the resolutions are actually and finally realized.

This is the real trick.  The setting of resolutions can be done in minutes.  It is the keeping the resolutions and realizing the goals that is the real challenge.  I have been trying to figure this one out for many years.  I know I am not alone in this frustrating challenge.

In the meantime, I am with everyone else hoping that 2022 is the year we can put the pandemic behind us. 

Happy New Year to one and all.