We saw Star Wars Episode 7

My son and I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens the week after it opened. We had hoped the crowds would have died down by then but they hadn't. We purchased our tickets online but got to the theater just before the previews started and had trouble finding seats together. One person was reserving an entire row of seats by placing their coats over some of the empty seats and simply waving their hands over the other seats saying, "These are reserved, too." Does that seem fair? Some nice folks in the last row offered to move over so that we could sit together - without our even asking!

My son and I enjoyed the movie. The time passed too quickly. I liked the new characters a lot and thought the dialog was much better than in the previous six episodes. And the special effects, not surprisingly, were much better than previous episodes. It's been 10 years, after all, so if they hadn't been better, it would be a shock. But it wasn't just the effects themselves that were better. They were used better, too. The dogfights between the Rebel ships and the ships of the new Empire (called the First Order) were incredible. They looked so real and drew you in. We really liked the fact that they brought in the old characters from the earlier episode. I liked the fact that the new bad guy (Kylo Ren) is not seemingly invincible and is really very immature. I also liked the fact that the most powerful good "guy" in this episode is a woman. It adds a whole different feel to the movie. And she is still discovering the power she has so we get to be surprised along with her as she learns. There were a few sticking points to us but they didn't ruin he movie. I won't go into them here because they really are not that important.

One thing I do want to address, though, is the complaint I've heard by some reviewers about how similar the plot of this episode is to the original Episode 4 plot. Yes, there are many things you could add to a checklist of things that are superficially similar between the two movies kind of like you can make a list of similarities between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Like the assassination list, there is a much longer list of big differences. Also, I found it ironic that this past week the news was about how the new movie passed Titanic and Jurassic World in the list of most profitable movies of all time. The fact that these two movies had so much in common with previous versions doesn't seem to have registered with those reviewers.

It's a very entertaining movie with a deep story and it makes me very excited about the upcoming movies because there are a lot of questions that still need answers. We can't wait.

Looking at the future

On this New Year's Day, it's interesting to think about the life insurance commercial where they asked 2,400 people to put magnets of different colors on a big time-line. The magnets were labeled with positive and negative events in our lives (marriage, birth of a child, loss of a loved one, job success, losing a job). The positive events were colored yellow and the negative events were colored blue. After everyone had placed the events on the board, they pulled the camera back to look at the whole board and you could see by the colors that the past was a fairly even mix of blue (negative) and yellow (positive). Actually, it was 60% positive and 40% negative. The future, though, was overwhelmingly yellow or positive (84% positive and 16% negative). It seems like most people think the future will be better. After all, isn't that why we get up every morning and do what we do?

The message of the commercial was that people don't tend to think that bad things might happen to them and they don't plan for the worst. Of course, the life insurance company wants you to use their product to help you plan for the future.

But then you ask yourself if you can really divide events into positive and negative. For instance,  I got what I thought was the dream job only to find myself working for a jerk. What color would that be? And would people really show their true thoughts out on a plaza in front of other people and cameras? I'm not sure. But it is important to realize that even though we are mostly optimistic about the future, it's important to keep an open mind that bad things could happen. As the company says, it's good to be optimistic but it's also good to plan realistically.

Happy New Year to you all. It will be a better year this year. If you don't remember the ad or never saw it, you can find a copy here. I'm not advocating this company or even life insurance. But,

A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.
    The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. Proverbs 22:3 NLT

"These kids today"

Every generation seems to have its time to complain about the younger generation. They have too many things. They don't have to deal with the problems the older generation had to deal with. They don't respect the older generation. They don't work as hard as the older generation. And on and on. I guess this is only natural. But it can also be unsettling to the younger generation and allows the older generation to miss things they aren't paying attention to. The latest one I've been hearing is that the kids starting to work now don't take correction well. They get too upset when they are told they are wrong. If they are reprimanded, they just shut down or quit. Or worse, they go to their parents to get them to "make it all right."

Let me tell you - this has been going on forever. No one likes to be told they are wrong. No one likes to be humiliated in front of other people. No one likes to be made a fool of. It is always (and has always been) a matter of how the correction is communicated.

If I walk up to someone and yell in their face that they are doing it wrong, they react negatively. If I walk up to someone and explain the problem and how the way they are doing it could be changed for the better, I get a better reaction. Even better, if I listen to their explanation of why they are doing it the way they are doing it, I may learn something. Maybe they are seeing a circumstance I hadn't considered. Maybe I am looking at the "result" in the wrong way and it isn't the result I thought. If you are a supervisor and you think your job is to toughen up your workers, then you are wrong. Your job is to make the company more productive and to help your workers do a better job. Leave the toughening up to the Marines.

If we really are seeing more young people shut down or quit, maybe it's because the older generation has forgotten how to give guidance. Perhaps the older generation has forgotten the good training they received when they were first starting out. I had both good and bad supervision as I was growing up and learning to work. I chose to emulate the good supervisors and not behave like the bad supervisors. You are doing wrong when you say, "I had to deal with bad bosses when I started out and these kids need to learn to deal with that, too." No they don't. They need to be shown the right way to do things. Period.

A bribe in Paris

I read the blog of Earl Pomerantz just about every day. Well, he only publishes on week-days so I read his blog, Just Thinking..., every week-day. Over the last three days, he has written a story about trying to set up an arrangement at a resort in Hawaii to get the folks who set out the chairs and towels for the guests to set his family's chairs and towel out every morning without his needing to wait in line. It involved an arrangement where he "took care of" the attendants at the beginning of his stay. The "taking care of" was a kind of bribe, I guess. Reading his story reminded me of something that happened to me back in 1987 when I was working for the US Geological Survey. We had been working on a research vessel off the coast of Africa. To get back home, we had to fly from Abidjan, Ivory Coast to Paris and spend the night (no one complained) to get the connecting flight the next morning. The whole group of us, about six or seven people, were traveling together.

We all went to a restaurant that was packed. We waited and waited for a table and there was no place to sit. I was trying to get one of the women of our group to notice me and thought I'd be a big shot and get us a table. I was shaking and nervous because I'd never done it before but my desire for this woman to notice me was greater than my fear. My French was horrible and the Maitre D' didn't speak English very well. I handed him a large Franc note and tried to explain why I was giving him money. I thought he'd been through this before but the look on his face made me even more afraid. It was a mixture of shock and anger. Maybe I insulted him or maybe I had been too obvious and he was afraid the owner had seen it. He looked like he was going to pass out. I didn't know what to do and tried to explain some more but I think I was just making it worse. And I wasn't sure that maybe, in my broken French, I was asking him to give my dog a bath or something.

He kept holding the money in his hand so I just grabbed it back and slunk back to my friends. I remember that the woman I was trying to impress had seen the whole thing and thought it was funny. So, in the end end, she did notice me and we talked a good bit that evening but mostly about how inept I was. Nothing much ever came of our conversation that evening and I never tried to bribe anyone again.

I suggest reading Earl Pomerantz's posts. They can be found in three parts, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. They are better written, more insightful and funnier (he is a comedy writer after all). They are just better, OK?

A little thing that happened that didn't get bigger

I was out shopping by myself this week-end and heading home. There is a place on the road where you have to get in the left lane to make a left-hand turn and I was in the right lane. Of course, on a four-lane highway, you are supposed to travel in the right lane and only use the left lane to pass or, in this case, make a left-hand turn. So, I checked the other traffic. There were people traveling in the left lane but that's expected anymore. Fewer and fewer people follow the rules but we are all used to that. The important thing is to watch the traffic and drive safely in the circumstances whether the other people are driving correctly or not.

I checked ahead and behind. There was a gap in the left lane with the car in front and the car behind leaving a gap of at least four or five car lengths. So, I put on my left turn signal (or as it's called in Massachusetts, my blinkah) before I started moving left and then, after a few seconds, started to move left. As I watched my mirrors, I saw that the car in front was keeping steady but the car behind (a big Cadillac) was moving up. It was closing up the gap a little but it looked like there was still enough room to make it. When I was half-way into the left lane, I could see the Cadillac was accelerating! This guy was trying to keep me out of the left lane for some reason. He had been going along at a steady pace for a long time but my needing to get into the lane ahead of him had caused him to act. His Cadillac didn't have the acceleration to close the gap enough to make it dangerous for me to continue and I ended up in the left lane. But as I kept my eye on the rear-view mirror, I saw him continue to close the gap until he was right on my tail. I saw him gesture at me (guess which finger he showed me) and his mouth was moving a lot and I assume he wasn't complimenting me.

If I hadn't checked that he was going at a steady pace before I started moving or if there hadn't been enough room, I could see his anger. If the guy in front in that lane had been moving along so that the rest of the people in the left lane could be passing I would understand his anger. But no. It seemed he wanted to get upset. It seemed he thought I was wrong for pulling into his lane. I don't know why he was so ready to cause a problem that wasn't there but I'm glad I kept my head and didn't do anything to make it worse. You never know what kind of a day someone else has had. I won't lie and say I wasn't mad at him for being mad at me - for no reason (I think). It's just a reminder to me to try to keep things from escalating. Maybe he had a gun. Maybe he had just stolen the car and didn't care about whether he got in a wreck. Maybe he had a mental problem and it looked like I had done something I didn't. I'm just glad it didn't go farther.

A minute later, I turned to the left to get off the road. He zoomed past me but had to slow down again when he got closer to the guy who had been in front of me in the left lane. Now, that guy shouldn't have been staying in the left lane if he wasn't passing or turning left. I'm so mad!

20,000 miles

On August 7, 2015, the odometer of my scooter turned over 20,000 miles. That's a pretty reliable vehicle. Even with the harsh winter we had this year, I've averaged a little under 4,000 miles a year just going back and forth to work. I do ride it around town for small errands but that's only if I'm going alone and don't need to carry much. The picture on the top-right was taken just as the odometer started to turn over from 19,999.9. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to pull off the road to get a picture at exactly 20,000. But, less than a tenth of a mile later, I found myself at the entrance of the new town water supply filtering plant and was safely able to pull over again and snap the picture of exactly 20,000.0 miles you see below.

So, after 20,000 miles, I've saved a lot of money on gas. The scooter gets between 85 and 90 miles to the gallon. Our van (which I'd probably have to use otherwise) gets about 17 miles to the gallon. Now, the price of gas has fluctuated greatly over the last five years but I figure it averaged out to about $3.00 a gallon. With those numbers, it means I've saved about $2826.54. That's more than the scooter cost originally. Even if you use the current price of gasoline, $2.65 in our area, it comes to about $2496.78 in savings. That almost exactly the price we paid for the scooter ( it was on sale, it was marked as $3,000 but we got there when they were only charging $2,500). So, besides all the fun I've had with it and besides all the wear and tear it has saved on our van (where some repairs cost as much as the scooter cost to buy), I'd say it was a very good purchase. When I get to 50,000 miles, I'll post another picture.

I'm post dating this to show up on August 7 so I'll remember this event better. I'm really posting this on August 15. Yes, I'm still having trouble finding the time to write in my blog.

Where do the poor, the needy and the powerless turn for help?

I've got to start just writing quick posts to my blog. I sit around and agonize over what I'm going to say, how I'm going to say it and which pictures to use to illustrate my point. That takes too long.

Today, I was reading the Humans of New York site that I've mentioned before. The Facebook page is here and includes comments. The photographer, writer and owner of the site (Brandon) is traveling in Pakistan this month. It is not a place I am interested in at all but when the ordinary people get a chance to talk, I find myself being very interested. One of the people interviewed is a young woman who is a member of the local worker's party. I don't like Communism but in this case the young woman and the other members of her party are working to help the poor people in their area to resist evictions. I know you also see terrorist groups helping the poor to get a foothold and even drug cartels and mobsters will make a big show of being helpful to their neighbors. Is this benevolence given freely or is there an ulterior motive? Only time can tell but in most of these cases, it is meant to get popular support and to mask other activities they would rather not be known. This has gone on for ages. But when no one else will help desperate people, who do they turn to? If the government has turned its back on you and the people with power are taking advantage of you, what choices do you have? If no one else will listen to you, where do you turn for help?

It's easy to complain about the in-roads made by groups that ultimately want to destroy. But if a young person is rejected by their friends and family and someone on the street offers to listen and help, you have to acknowledge that it is the fault of the people they first knew. We can prevent these groups from getting new recruits and we can keep the drug pushers and pimps from taking away our young but it's not easy. It means loving your neighbor. It means not worrying so much about our own situation and how we can get even more than we already have. It means sharing what we have and what we know with people who may not deserve it. Out neighbor may not be a very nice person and may not appreciate what we're doing. But if we don't do it, there are despicable groups waiting for the chance to pick up the pieces.

If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person? Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. 1 John 3:17-18 NLT

There is nothing new here. You and I know all this stuff. It's just that today, I was reminded of it and, I hope, I have also reminded you, too.