The context is important

With the pandemic still restricting our lives, we haven't driven out of town a lot. But we did go out today to do some shopping. On the road, I saw one of those flashing road signs that said, "Others wear a mask." Well, that sounded like a bad thing to tell people. Especially on an official state highway sign. It seems like they are saying we don't need to worry about wearing a face mask because other people will be wearing their masks and that will protect us.

Of course, I jumped the gun. There is only so much space on those signs and it takes more than one screen full to get the entire message across. So, they split the message up into phrases that will fit on one screen and then show another screen of text after a few seconds.

As we drove by the sign, it switched to the other screen which read, "PROTECT YOURSELF AND" It's important to realize that all the characters on the sign are upper case and there is no punctuation. But in my head, I saw the first phrase, "OTHERS WEAR A MASK," as "Others" with this capitalization and the first word in the sentence. When the second screen appeared, "PROTECT YOURSELF AND", I realized the entire sentences was supposed to be, "Protect yourself and others. Wear a mask."

It would be nice if highway signs could display mixed case and punctuation. It would also be nice if the entire message could be displayed at once. How many accidents are caused as drivers divert their attention from the road to watch the sign until all the pieces of a message are displayed? Then again, I could leave the reading and interpretation of flashing highway signs to my passengers. I will also hold off judging highway sign messages until I know the whole story.

"Time Enough at Last"

 

Time Enough at Last

My title refers to one of the great The Twilight Zone episodes staring Burgess Meredith. It's the episode about a man who has a bunch of books that we wants to read but never has the time. He fits in as much reading time as he can but he has a job and other responsibilities and just can't seem to fit in enough reading time. I don't want to ruin the story for you if you are one of the ten people in the world who doesn't know the story. Let me just say that during the story, he does finally have enough time to do all the reading he wants.

I can empathize with this character. I love to read but with my job, and responsibilities at home, I never seemed to have enough time to read all the books I have bought over the years. I told my family and friends that I was saving the books for when I retired. There are shelves of them waiting for eyes to read them. Well, today was my last day at work!

I have retired and I am looking forward to reading all my books. I will also have time to write about what I have read and I plan to do that on this blog, too. And I will now have more time to write about other things in this blog. I have over 300 draft posts I haven't had the time to prepare for publishing.

I am also looking forward to playing the piano more. I have a copy of a piano transcription of Rhapsody in Blue that I have never been able to play all the way through. I am going to be working on that as well as other music I used to be able to play but is now out of practice. Maybe I'll even have enough time to memorize the music.

I am going to miss work, especially the work I was doing, and I am going to miss the people I worked with. But it is time to go. I worked at this job for 33 years and I worked 13 years at a previous job. I was slowing down and not keeping up with all the younger people at work. I gave the company over a year of warning so they could hire someone else to take over my responsibilities. They found a very capable person to replace me. He will keep things going and expand the product with new ideas and energy.

I am 70 years old and in good health and it would be a shame to miss this time with my wife and my children. We can do more things together and that is going to be great. Once we have more control over the pandemic, we will also be able to travel together. I can write about that, too. And there is a lot of work to do around the house and now I have time to do those jobs. I can write about that, too!

I'm looking forward to this next part of my life. There is now, truly, time enough at last.

"Our flag was still there"

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, was a dark day for the United States of America. It was a day you might see in a third-world country. Or a dictatorship. It was a day I never thought I would see in our country. It was a day that made me sad but also made me angry. It made me wonder if I was seeing things. How could this be happening in our country.

 

It started with a gathering of his supporters and a speech he made to them. Near the beginning of the speech, he repeated an idea he's been using for more than four years. This is his first step in destroying our Democracy. He wants us to not know the truth about what is going on:

"The media is the biggest problem we have as far as I’m concerned, single biggest problem, the fake news and the big tech."

Once we don't believe the newspapers and the major networks, he can feed us any lies he wants and there is no way to check them. Then he incited a mob into, first, marching down to the US Capitol:

"After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women."

and, second, forcefully taking over the Capitol in order to pressure Congress and the Vice President into overturning the election - which he lost:

"...you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."

"And we fight. We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore."

"We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing..."

 The title of this post is one of the lines from our National Anthem. I had to get up early this morning to take my wife to the hospital for an operation. She needed to be there at 6 AM so we needed to leave around 5 AM. So, I turned the news on around 4:30 just as the days news was starting and they started off with the National Anthem. It was a beautiful rendition and when the singer got to the line, "Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there," it made me realize that we have been through trials before and our flag continues to fly. In spite of the worst dealings of the man who is our president, our country will continue. We will thrive after he is gone. It was very moving.

In the end, the vice president the the Congress did do the right thing and confirmed that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the 2020 election and would be the next President and Vice President of the United States of America. That means, we don't have to live with the current president much longer.

You can read the full transcript of his speech at this site.

Welcome 2021

 

We made it! It seemed to take forever. But, as my son points out, "What is really different?" The number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths keep growing. The inoculations are not nearly as far along as planned. Many businesses are in big trouble. There are still millions of people unemployed and most are in bad financial health. People are way behind in rent and mortgage payments. While there are protections for now, how much longer can those last? Yes, we've turned a page on the calendar and we can say we made it through 2020 (at least most of us can say that) but what are we facing in 2021?

This is NOT going to be easy. There is a ton of work to do. We still need to help our neighbors and watch that we don't take things for granted. It is easier than ever to get infected with Covid-19. It is more critical now than ever for us to be vigilant to the needs in our community.

I am a Christian and I believe that Jesus loves us and will help us. But that does not mean that life is easy. It does not mean that we are not in danger. I have something to say to my fellow Christians. It is very important that we help our neighbors out. Who is our neighbor? The people who like us and the people who hate us. The people next door and the people around the world.Other Christians and people who are not Christians. I cannot believe that my fellow Christians are downplaying these problems just so a lying con-man won't be made to look bad. Understand this - he already looks bad and he is making the Church look bad in its support of him.

Yes we are to forgive him. Yes we are to pray for him. Yes, we wish he succeeds - at least we hope that he succeeds in being the President. We should not wish that he builds his own ego and power at the expense of the poor and rejected in our country and the world.

We can only stop this pandemic and get our lives back by ignoring the direction set out by that lying con-man who is our President for about 20 more days. After that, we need to turn this country away from the ignorance he projected. Please join me in fighting the battle that Jesus wants us to fight.