Things I Learned in 2022

 The first thing I learned in 2022 was that, like many of us, I felt depleted from 2021 and subsequently did not post a "Things I Learned" at the year's end. My tank is a little more full and I am grateful, so here we go:

- As long as your musical North Star is alive, keep hoping that you will see her perform in concert again. Thanks, Newport Folk Festival, Brandi Carlile, and Joni Mitchell for the surprise of a lifetime this summer! Folk on! 

- Leaving a job you enjoy is bittersweet but it has its perks like not rushing out the door every dang morning. 

- There has always been an emoji search bar on my phone. 🙄

- Austrians who live in Salzburg love Mozart, meat, and pastry and I love them for it! They care little for The Sound of Music movie filmed in and around their gorgeous city in 1964.

- Visiting those famed movie locations ignited my giddy delight (and perhaps some singing!)

- Bombas socks & slippers are the bomb.

- Midterm elections can be satisfying. The wave I always want to see is a sane, thoughtful one where facts matter. 

- The TV show Yellowstone has elements of Breaking Bad: cinematic location shots, ruthless main characters, and lots of secrets.     

- The NYTimes Spelling Bee is an addiction that I feed daily. 

- Banning books instead of informing children is misguided parenting. 

- Sunrise and sunset are two shows a day I continue to love attending at the beach.

- Upgrading my 2012 car to a 2020 version opened up the world of Apple CarPlay for me. I gleefully told anyone who would listen, "My car has CarPlay!" to which they answered, "Diane, e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e has CarPlay!"  Oh.

- Travel expands the spirit. 

- Guns are the #1 cause of death in children ages 1-19 in the United States. Repeat aloud. https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/

- Author Amor Towles and Actress/Author/Activist Jenifer Lewis are the newest invitees to my fantasy dinner table. 

- Being both an officiant and a guest at a wedding is double the fun! 

- I really like Bavarian beer! 

- German schoolchildren must visit the Dachau labor camp once during their 12 years of schooling. Education is valued even when history includes loathsome periods. 

- There is a lesson in there for us in the US re: teaching the truth about one of our loathsome periods - slavery.

- Stanley Tucci's series Searching for Italy and his book Taste ignite my primal Italian. (My 2023 hope is that some smart media outlet picks up Searching...)

- There is no shame in watching three seasons of Derry Girls more than four times. It's grand!

- I secretly love when my family enumerates the kinds of seafood prepared for Christmas Eve's Festa dei Sette Pesci (there were 10 this year!)              

- Everyone should read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

- "Expectations are resentments under construction." Anne Lamott

- Human rights activist and Holocaust survivor 97-year-old Gerda Weissmann Klein died in April. Please read my 2011 post about her incredible life as a protest to rising antisemitism   http://asubjectforconsideration.blogspot.com/2011/07/noble-be-man-merciful-and-good.html

- South Korea seems less distant while my firstborn visits my youngest in Seoul. 그것은 나를 행복하게 만든다

- SEPTA has a senior fare card that allows you to ride all routes for free and is funded by the PA Lottery. Buy those lottery tickets folks. 

- A new term - "angertainment" - accurately describes parts of social media, political rhetoric, and the attraction to outrage. It's dangerous. 

- Officiating at a wedding in a 17th-century castle in Ireland sets the bar pretty high for destination weddings. Maith-thú Meg and Ronan. 

- My first visit to see a concert at Johnny Brenda's is not my last. 

- Airbags and seatbelts are amazing life-saving devices in our cars, especially when tested by your spouse, who miraculously walked away after veering into a telephone pole to avoid hitting a deer.

- Mauritius is an island nation off the coast of east Africa. I now know this b/c my nephew-in-law is working there.

- Lesotho is a landlocked kingdom encircled by South Africa.  I now know this b/c my niece will be working there in 2023.

- The furthest I've ever worked from my home was a 27-mile train commute to Center City Philadelphia.

- The inevitable wax and wane of friendships is both a challenge and a gift.  

- It is reasonable to hold the seemingly opposing thoughts of being equally freaked out and grateful to be my age.

- We are definitely not alone.  https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/11/17/interactive-universe-map/

- Seeing Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell each perform in person, albeit separately, in the same year is sweet symmetry. "Part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time" Sigh.

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Thanks, dear Reader for your time and indulgence to view this somewhat annual vanity project. Here's to 2023 and whatever she has in store. 

As we round out 2022, let's sit with singer Nina Simone's thoughtful meditation before her 1969 performance of "Who Knows Where The Time Goes" at NYC's Philharmonic Hall:

"Sometime in your life, you will have occasion to say, "What is this thing called time? What is that, the clock? 

"You go to work by the clock, you get your martini in the afternoon by the clock and your coffee by the clock, and you have to get on the plane at a certain time, and arrive at a certain time.

"It goes on and on and on.

"And time is a dictator, as we know it.  Where does it go? What does it do? Most of all, is it alive? It is a thing that we cannot touch and is it alive?

"And then, one day, you look in the mirror - you're old - and you say,

 'Where does the time go?'"

Lastly, 2022 was all about Joni for me.  

Here is a taste of her playing the melody to "Just Like This Train" at the Newport Folk Festival.  She's still got it. 

 As the seasons go round and round, Joni gets the last word from "Circle Game" 

...'til you drag your feet to slow the circles down...

                        Here is the audio link to Nina Simone's soulful live performance of  Who Knows Where The Time Goes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlJfrpuhlPI

Happy Anniversary - to Texting!

      

I know I have lived through a time when there was no such thing as texting, but to see this handy form of communicating hit the 30-year-old mark has me SMH and LOL.

According to businesswire.com, "Infobip, a global leader in omnichannel communications, today, announced new data from its 2022 '30th Anniversary of the SMS" survey, which sheds light on how, where, and when Americans are communicating with each other."

First things first: I had to look up the meaning of SMS. And I hear you, 'c'mon, it is obvious!' Alas, I never thought about what it meant for all these years and feel no shame for it.  To those of you still reading this, it means short message service. 

Some of the texting survey highlights include:

-Americans of a certain age prefer texting to calling - SOSO. 

-Texting and driving are deadly and still sadly very popular.

-Sexting is a popular element of romance used primarily by millennials, then GenZ and GenXers, and lastly by boomers. Again, no surprise. Men (52%) send sexts while 38% of women partake. 

-Texting while drunk continues to include the element of regret. ROTFL

-Businesses incessantly hungry for our eyeballs use texting as much as possible to communicate brand info with us. 

While my email has transformed into a repository for shopping confirmations and sales reminders, texts are a sacred space.  I try to keep my text world protected by using it to chat solely with my people (and for the occasional hair appointment reminder/confirmation - I did say sacred, right?) 

One mistake I made when I began to text was including abbreviations like "u" "cu" and "k" for a while. Texts took on a hieroglyphic feel which displeased me so I happily returned to mostly using the English language. 

Emojis are a kind of hieroglyphics in the text world and I try to use them judiciously partly due to trouble in locating a specific one - let's say a horn-blowing confetti that can be found in the middle of mailboxes and bed emojis. 

Sadly, this year is the one where I "discovered" the emoji search box that has been there ALL THE TIME! Sad face emoji. 

My beef with texting is the l-e-n-g-t-h-y practice of the text chain. The ability to reach many folks at once is tainted with so many replies/comments/blah blah blah. And yet, this week I was the leader of a text chain pack to nail down a December meeting with eight of my fellow book club members. 

Do as I say, not as I do.

Another beef I have (that is ironically also a plus) is the three texting bubbles. They percolate during a text exchange relaying that a reply is imminent - until it isn't. My soft sensibilities cannot take seeing those bubbles of hope only to result in no reply text. Sigh. I'm just a girl waiting for a friend to reply.

    

And to be fair, I've accidentally left my cursor in the text box, potentially giving false hope to the recipient. Apologies to my dearest friends. 

Morning Brew Newsletter's musings today include a tidbit about what if texting had been around throughout human history. It prompted the idea for this blog post and offered a few ideas:

Cleopatra to Mark Antony: "u up?"

Francis Scott Key to his buddy: "Does 'rockets red glare' sound dumb?"

This activity delighted me and I offer these:

Aaron Burr to Alexander Hamilton: "STFU!"

Israelites to Moses: "Where are u?"

 Harry S. Truman:  "Venmo me" 

Neil Armstrong and Apollo Mission Control: 

   

As a kid, meeting friends locally or walking to school with them required a phone call the night before to set a time to meet the next day.

I walked to school for 12 years (uphill both ways as my kids like to tease) and met up with my cohort along the way. 

As I roamed the neighborhoods toward school, my friends would be ready and waiting (or not, which meant we'd wait a minute or two and move along.) A very simple plan.

Today, texting would improve this dated process with real-time info, hands down. We have however lost our ability to just wait - to pause and give people time. (heck, I am antsy sitting at a stoplight anymore!) 

I appreciate that a "see you in 10" or "go ahead w/o me" text removes ambiguity and frustration which is the best of texting, but I do have a soft spot for the frills-free days of "be there at the appointed time."

I'm sure I am romanticizing something that texting has clearly made better. There is, however, an irresistible patina of simplicity in the long-ago days of no texting. 

Happy 30th to texting! You've been a real part of my life for almost half of it. I hope this post wasn't TLDR.

UR the bomb. 

Link to the businesswire.com article:    https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221202005008/en/Infobip-releases-30th-Anniversary-of-the-SMS-Report#:~:text=The%20report%20was%20commissioned%20to,said%2C%20%E2%80%9CMerry%20Christmas.%E2%80%9D

Link to top 100 text abbreviations:      https://messente.com/blog/text-abbreviations

Link to Morning Brew Newsletter: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/issues/latest

We Practice

Monthly fire drills 

Lockdown drills 

Shelter-in-place drills 

Like most schools in the US, the staff and students at the elementary school where I work practice all of these drills. 

We diligently, quietly, and respectfully practice. 

We are 600+ students and over 100 staff members. 

We range in age from 5 years to 70+ years old and represent a spectrum of abilities. 

We practice where to go in an emergency; where the 'safest’ part of the classroom or other gathering areas is located. 

We huddle together, in silence, when sheltering in place. 

We report via laptop if anyone is missing. We report via laptop where we are. 

We deal with blocked exits so we know what to do if that happens during a fire. 

We stand outside in silence as teacher-by-teacher reports their class status via walkies. 

We must pass a series of clearances on a regular basis: an FBI clearance, a state police background check, a child abuse history clearance, and an arrest/conviction certification report. 

We know that anyone entering the building must first ring a doorbell at the school entrance where a camera sees who is there. 

We ask the visitor questions and for legal identification before granting entry. 

We practice lining up by class all the time. This keeps things organized but the subtext is safety where we can quickly account for every child if we are anywhere else but the classroom in an emergency 

We practice, practice, practice for all of this. 

We comply with these safety procedures because we value the safety of our children and those who care for them.

We teach and reinforce safety every day.

Yet we fail these same people because the world of guns and danger is real and woven in a hideous relationship with elected officials and money compromising the best intentions of a safe school environment. 

When are we going to turn the tables and make access to assault weapons difficult? 

Our country is horrifically unique in the world when it comes to our fetish for assault weapons and unfettered access to them. 

When you turn 18, an assault weapon can be yours. Just like that. Why? This is not sportsmanship.  This is a weapon for mass murder. 

These very assault weapons make a 4th-grade victim unrecognizable and require parents to supply DNA samples on the worst day of their lives. 

We watch as the collectors of ‘donations’ from the gun lobby/NRA/various political action committees for gun rights in Texas send their soulless 'thoughts and prayers' to the elementary school families.

 

We watch as a Texas senator, Texas governor, and a former president plan to speak at an NRA convention on Friday. 

The Robb Elementary School shooting was the 30th such mass shootings in 2022. 

We are 145 days into 2022.  

In nearly a quarter of those days, a mass shooting took place. 

Brady United lists the elected officials who accept NRA money to support their elections. 

https://elections.bradyunited.org/take-action/nra-donations-116th-congress-senators

It is a non-profit gun control group created after then-President Reagan’s press secretary, Jim Brady, was among those shot in an attempt on the president’s life in 1981. He was permanently disabled and his death in 2012 was correctly ruled a homicide due to those injuries. 

We are strangled by wildly distorted views of gun control instead of liberated and united by sensible limits to what firearm access should be. Step one: ban the sale of assault weapons. 

The answer is NOT more guns. Too many guns have placed us right here. 

Meanwhile, the smallest, most vulnerable of us practice. 

The smallest, most vulnerable of us look to the adults and we fail them. 

Until this country deals with the unchallenged access to assault rifles, mass shootings are not a matter of if, but when.

https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/

https://www.everytown.org/