Each Man Stood at His Post

Each man stood at his post,

while all the weaker ones went by,

and showed once more to all the world,

how Englishmen should die.

 The above is the inscription on the grave marker of Everett Edward Elliot, Titanic crew member, who died in the line of duty during the ship’s sinking.  In a way it speaks to something far bigger, something related to what it means to be human, to do one’s duty, to serve others even when it means sacrificing oneself.

 

(Victorian Gardens, Halifax)

Among the things we did on Thursday, August 13^th was visiting the public cemetery where 150 victims of the Titanic sinking were buried.  Note that many of the grave markers do not list the name of the person buried, as many of the victims remained unidentified.  The fact that these graves exist is a remarkable testimony to the character of Canadians in general, and residents of Halifax in particular, as these graves have been cared for by the community for over 114 years (well before a certain famous movie). 

Our all-day Halifax tour was guided by a wonderful lady who is a retired schoolteacher.  She was funny, well organized, and presented history in the most human of ways.  She was, by far, the best guide we had all week.  If I can find her name, I’ll add it into the post at the end.  One of the things that she told us was how she is a cancer survivor, who received immediate treatment once diagnosed, and paid the grand sum of nothing to become cancer-free. 

This is a reminder that medical debt in the United States is…

1) Real…I have personal experience with it…and…

2) A national disgrace.

This topic crosses party lines, in that there are many politicians that would prefer that you not really spend all that much time thinking about medical debt, thank you very much. 

Back to Halifax, which was in some way a continuation, at a significantly larger scale, of what we experienced in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.  By this I mean it was impeccably clean (for Halifax, a city of more than 500,000, that’s something of a feat), the few locals we encountered were very friendly, and there was this sense of community responsibility.  Another example, in addition to the public cemetery that we visited, was a beautiful public Victorian Gardens, which the community helps tend to during the growing season.  The place looked like it would never exist in that form if it were anywhere else in the world.

Another location visited in Nova Scotia was Peggy’s Cove, which is one of the more well-known tourist attractions in Nova Scotia.  Worth a visit, but it’s important to wear good shoes while there.  Speaking of there, Ms. Rivers and I are absolutely certain that we will return to Halifax at some point in the future, maybe post-retirement.  There’s a lot to do and see in that you get the combination of a large city and, after about a 30-minute drive, you end up in a picturesque place that would be just like rural Maine. 

As I write this (Thursday evening…posting it will likely be some time tomorrow, which would be Friday the 14^th), we are out to sea, in route to our final stop on the cruise, Portland, Maine.  We’ve driven through Portland on other Maine trips, but never really stopped there.  This leg of the trip will take us back to the U.S. and Eastern Standard Time all in one fell swoop.  Unlike other stops, we aren’t doing any tours/excursions, as we can always come back to Portland at some point in the future anyway.  Instead, Ms. Rivers and I just identified a few things we wanted to see in town.  Post Portland, it’s off to the end of the cruise at Boston and a flight back to Philadelphia. 

Will it be good to be back in the United States?  Well, at least for me, I would phrase it as “it will be good to get home”.  Unless you’ve traveled outside the United States lately, you probably haven’t experienced an environment where you are not bombarded constantly by the negativity that comes with the current climate of the U.S. I know that some folks have different strategies for dealing with this…some, for example, just pretend that nothing bad is happening in the country…others simply don’t care unless it creates something bad that directly impacts them…but both strategies are deeply flawed at a most human, moral level.  The fact is that we should care about others, even those others who look and sound differently than we do.  Why?  This is what separates us from other animals, this is what makes us fully human.  This is what Everett Edward Elliot understood.

On a related note, yes, vacationing is nice, and taking a cruise is certainly full of pleasantries, but cruising is just not something I think I’d like to do all that frequently.  Part of it is just the sheer logistics of it all…a lot of planning, passports, etc.  Another part is that I’m not overly comfortable with being waited on to the degree that cruise ship staff excel.  I get it…it’s their job…but being constantly served for me is awkward and I dislike the feeling of entitlement that goes with it.  Bottom line?  If I were on a cruise every few years that would be just fine. 

On that note, I think I’ve cleared my mental deck, so it’s time to wrap this up. 

Lido Shuffle

Interesting event on Tuesday: As we docked, a small brown critter decided to come up to the ship, hoping for asylum or something like that; a chase involving port and ship staff, along with hilarity, ensued.

My initial thought was that the critter was a weasel of some sort or maybe Rob Ford, former mayor of Toronto.  Further investigation identified the Canadian resident more specifically as a mink.  Which is a type of weasel, of the non-politician breed.  Anyway, we don’t know what happened to him/her, although the consensus was that it eventually stopped trying to get on the Voldemort and headed back into the woods.  Or to Toronto.  To do more mink-esque things.

On an unrelated note, Ms. Rivers sometimes has trouble pronouncing non-Anglo-Saxon words/names.  Case in point:  She was pronouncing “Goombah”, the Italian-American slang word for friend, as sounding like “Gum-ba”.  A more recent example was the pronunciation of “Lido” (as in the Lido deck of this ship) as “Lie-Dough”.  As a service, I played the Boz Scaggs song Lido Shuffle for her in order to make the point about proper pronunciation.  Now it’s important to note that she is SIGNIFICANTLY more cultured than I am…to the point of me sometimes being Beavis to her Daria…so in totality, this is about all she can ever hope to learn from me.  But at least it’s something.

Getting back to cruise notes, Wednesday, August 12^th was spent in Syndey, Cape Brenton Island, Nova Scotia.  Prior to this trip I had never heard of the place.  It strikes me as being kind of like the lessor achieving brother of Prince Edward Island.  Some of the views were very scenic…

…reminding me of what one would see in Maine.  We also visited a museum dedicated to Alexander Graham Bell.  Honestly, I didn’t know he was Canadian.  That previous sentence is probably the most American phrase I will utter during the entire trip.  The museum was small, but informative, and like most things Canadian, impeccably clean and the staff was very friendly.

Speaking of Canadians being kind and friendly, on Tuesday we stopped at a kind of tourist-y store where I proceeded to look for AA batteries (needed for the mouse I am using on this trip).  They only had AAA.  However, the store owner insisted on going back to her storeroom and scrounging up two slightly used AAs for me.  She would not take any money for them, but we settled on my making a 5 Canadian dollar donation to her cat fund (she told me she had 4 cats).  Reason #458 why I love Canada.

Special note about Canadian tour-guides in these here parts:  They seem almost genetically compelled to sing while guiding groups on a bus.  I am not joking.  I am also not complaining, as so far, I’ve heard far worse coming out of my own mouth, but it does seem kind of strange.  I wonder if they take request?  Maybe next time I can ask for “Fly By Night” by Rush (after all, we are in Canada…), although based on experience to date, they would likely insist on singing it in Gaelic. 

All things considered, Wednesday was a lighter day activity wise.  While on Tuesday we walked over 16,000 steps, Wednesday was half that total.  It’s all good though, as none of those steps on either day were for purposes of earning a living.    

Speaking of earning a living, part of what I want to do on the trip, inside of my head, is ponder my working future.  Do I want to retire sooner or wait longer?  The head and the heart aren’t all that misaligned on this topic, yet there is something in the larger equation of it all that I don’t understand.  A kind of “dark matter” that is influencing how I feel (just as dark matter in the universe influences other things), but yet I can’t quite understand it.  Understanding is a big deal to me.  How big of a deal?  Well let’s put it this way:  I greatly admire folks who possess true faith, as in the ability to believe in the absence of empirical evidence (which is why I find Anne Lamott’s books so compelling).  This is a gift I mostly lack.  At some point though, I will need to make a leap of faith when it comes to my working life.  It’s more a question of when than why or how.

Next stop? Halifax, Nova Scotia.  

 

Important Places

 I told Ms. Rivers this morning that, if I had to name the two places in the world that I would most like to visit, the answer would be Stockholm, Sweden & Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Having visited Stockholm in 2018, and Prince Edward Island (henceforth PEI) on this trip*, that life goal has been completed.  No celebration is needed. Instead, I can rest with the satisfaction, unusual for this day and age, of experiencing something positive that actually was everything that you expected.  That was PEI. 

Just what did I imagine?  A place of green rolling hills, a city (in this case, Charlottetown) that is impeccably clean, a place filled with friendly people.  It was all those things.  Now I get it: I am firmly wearing rose-colored tourist-y glasses.  But with all the nasty business going on in the world today, I think having a bit of PEI is due.

Side note: I am still thinking about the significant anxiety that I felt on Sunday as we navigated the whole flight thing (see my last posting).  I need to give myself a bit of grace in the fact that…

…I was running with not nearly enough sleep

…I have a mind that is wired for control

…I have an almost fanatical attachment to always being on time

Being exhausted, out of control and missing every single departure and arrival time wasn’t a good thing for me.  As noted above, maybe I was due for a bit of PEI.

There is also a kind of sensory overload thing at work for me as well.  Ms. Rivers and I were walking somewhere in Charlottetown and I pointed out some obscure thing, which surprised her.  “How did you notice that?” she asked.  “I notice everything”, was my response.  Now that last point needs both a bit of a clarification and an explanation.

Clarification: I noticed everything that I can actually see.  One simple fact of my life is that my vision has been getting worse over the past few years.  What seems to happen is that it gets bad, I get new glasses, it gets better for a while, then it gets worse again.  This is a combination of age and the “walleye vision” that I possess (there is actually a long, detailed posting about this somewhere in the blog archives).

Explanation: As I told Ms. Rivers, I grew up in an environment where, at any given moment, my mother could erupt at something that went wrong or something we (my brothers and I) did wrong.  Similar to my vision issues, I’ve written about that before.  The net lifetime impact of that kind of environment on a child is that, as an adult, I am hyper-vigilant when it comes to my physical environment.  Well, to the extent I can actually see my environment.  Anyway, this also is part of the whole travel anxiety thing (see above).  Lastly on this point, the whole anxiety thing is something that has been a feature of both my life and that of my brothers.  How each of us has chosen to deal with that seems, in retrospect, quite different.  For me, it’s been a combination of internalizing/ignoring and intellectualizing how I process life’s issues that produce anxiety.

Anyway, clarification and explanation provided, sometimes there is a positive side to all of this, namely being in a wonderful place can feel, well, extra wonderful.  See PEI.

I'd like to end the posting with a few pictures, but the internet access situation here is not great, so it looks like I'll only manage to get 3 added.   

(the Voldemort, in port at Charlottetown, PEI)

(Confederation Bridge, PEI)

(Inside St. Dunstan's Basilica, Charlottetown)

(*) Writing this on the evening of August 11^th and 12^th, 2026

The Good, the Bad and the American Airlines Shuffle

A follow up to my last posting:  It is pleasing to report that the cruise Ms. Rivers and I planned finally came to fruition.  How we get to this point is a somewhat longer-than-it-should-be story.  More on that in a moment.

As a side note, I don’t know when this will end up getting published, as we are a bit internet impaired while on the SS Volendam (which shall, henceforth, be referred to as the “Voldemort”...no particular reason why, other than “Voldemort” sounds way cooler than Volendam.  Sorry Dutchmen.).  Eventually I will be able to get this posted, but until then, well, it’s strictly offline city for me at the moment.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Not to add yet another cultural reference, but I think our captain, when he makes his announcements, sounds like Goldmember from Austin Powers.

I wonder if I gave him $20 he would say “it’s goooolllllddd!” for me?  And yes, I have muttered the phrase “freaky-teaky Dutchman” under my breath more than once.  So far.

My admittedly weird sense of humor documented, it’s time to talk about how we got here.  Literally.  A chronology of events is in order.  Please skip ahead if you don’t want to read that part.  Better yet just skip the whole posting.  Or the whole blog for that matter.  It’s all good-n-the-hood for me.  Onward.

Friday

Thunderstorms filled drive down to Philadelphia. 

During dinner we get the notice that our flight to Montreal for Saturday has been cancelled.

After two phone calls and about 45 minutes of hold-time we are re-booked on a different flight that will take us to Quebec City instead of Montreal on Saturday, but we will still be able to board the Voldemort, all be it one day into the cruise.

 Saturday

Re-booked flight to Quebec City is cancelled by the airline.

One hour of the phone (mostly hold time) with the cruise line.

New flights booked…this time going to Chicago and then connecting to Quebec City on Sunday.  Two hour layover in Chicago, and there will be about two hours from when we are scheduled to arrive in Quebec City and when we need to be on the Voldemort (which is 3pm Eastern).

Oh, and the flight from Philadelphia to Chicago leaves at 5:45am.

 Sunday

Woke up the super-early requisite time, and Uber to the airport.  Security and check-in are uneventful.  The plane leaves more or less on time.

The Plane arrives in Chicago but seems to taxi around the airport for 45 minutes or so before it gets to the gate.

I have a few bites of disgusting quasi-warm Chicago deep dish pizza for breakfast.  It was the only place I could get food without waiting in an ungodly line.  After that I realized why.

Got to the gate for the flight from Chicago to Quebec City and it is delayed.  By almost an hour.  Suddenly our two hour turnaround time on the ground in Quebec City has been cut in half.

Flight arrives in Quebec City at about 1:45pm.  Thank God for Canadian efficiency, as we get through the whole passport control thing in record time.

Uber ordered from the airport to the cruise ship port.  Feeling that special kind of disgusting that comes from sitting on airplanes for hours, I order us an uber-Uber.  The electric Mercedes Benz SUV arrives, and Andre takes us to the airport.  We played a musical trivia game in-route.  I impress Andre and Ms. Rivers with my skills.  Too bad music trivia isn’t all that marketable an ability.

The uber-Uber, as driven by Andre, arrives at the airport at 2:35pm.  And we get on board the ship with about 20 minutes to spare.  I throw Andre an extra 20 Loonies just out of relief (and yes, I also tipped through the app and rated him 5 stars).

 

There you go, that was the saga of getting here.  We did have a minor wrinkle in that the ships X-ray found something that looked like a knife in my backpack and something similar in Ms. Rivers suitcase.  My backpack?  It turned out to be my belt.  Ms. Rivers’ suitcase?  It was a pair of tweezers.  The security staff apologized…I thanked them for doing their job.  Honestly, after what it took to get to the ship, they could have done whatever the hell they wanted, and I would have been good with it.

Post Script:  It's Tuesday morning and I barely have a thread of a mobile signal, so I'm getting this one loaded.  Well, that's the plan at least.  Onward to the day's festivities.                                                                                                           

Of Man-no-grams and Flight Delays

Yeah, it's been a while in the blog-posting department and while no one other than me may care, I am not one for loose ends, so a bit of catching up is in order.

This is an "interesting" time for me, and, I think, others.  Note that I used the word "interesting" and not "good", although there is plenty of good to go around.  But before anything else, I'm going to deal with the crappy stuff first.

As a country we are lost, but there are signs of hope.  Now I understand that many of us can and do differ when it comes to issues of politics and such, but there is a kind of line in the sand that separates mere differences of opinion about policy and basic, functioning human decency.  The current president is not a decent human being, by any functional definition, and his leadership of this country screams of the worst of our collective instincts and history.  Don't take my word for it; see HERE, HERE, and HERE.  Just to pick three.  I would be lying if I said that I could pass off the daily insanity of Washington DC as being just background noise in my life, but I can't.  It impacts us all, and not in a good way.  Instead, I'll just say that, like many, I just try to deal with it, knowing that nothing lasts forever.

Also in the "less than ideal" department, I will note that my professional life has its share of ups and downs.  I try to be...and to do...good, and I think I make a positive impact on those I work with most days.  Or so they tell me.  But on many occasions I am doing it in an environment that is not always well suited to who I am.  That's not a criticism of who I work with, both directly above and around, but more so an acknowledgement that my personal values aren't always in sync with my working world.  I know, "circumspect much?" as I try to thread the needle here.  In the end, I try to balance who I am with what I do to earn a living.  See above though..."knowing that nothing lasts forever".

One recent and noteworthy event, at least for me, was the first of a now-annual mammogram (or, as I told Ms. Rivers, a "Mannogram").  This comes courtesy of genetic testing and a resulting BRCA2 mutation.  In a more perfect universe I would have a cool genetic mutation, like tail that could pick things up from the floor, but alas, I did not get to vote on the issue.  The actual experience for me was fine/uneventful, but I can appreciate how that's not necessarily true for women.  What helped was the wonderful technician at Geisinger Mt. Pleasant, who told me she typically has a about 1 male patient a week.  I will also note that I have two other related health screenings scheduled for later this year.  

On a final note, I am writing this from a hotel near the Philadelphia International Airport.  I am not supposed to be here, by the way.  Ms. Rivers and I are supposed to be on a cruise ship at this very moment on the St. Lawrence River, leaving Montreal and heading to Quebec City.  Two flight cancellations for today later, and we are going to meet our ship in Quebec City tomorrow.  This will be a flight west to Chicago to then go east to get into Quebec City, hopefully in time to meet the ship at port.  It has been a bumpy ride so far, and we haven't yet gotten onto a plane.  However we are nothing if not resilient, and Ms. Rivers (and I) have some traveling skills, so we are going to make an honest effort to catch up to our ship.    Some good luck might be helpful too.

On that note...

Listed by Age

I had my annual business trip a few weeks ago, which by my prior travel standards is pretty lightweight stuff.  I specifically mean that, over the course of about 39 or so years in the workforce, only having to travel once a year is actually a bit of a refreshing change.  To digress for a moment, it's important to note the following from my personal perspective:

There is nothing good about business travel.  It involves a lot of running around, sometimes last-minute changes to arrangements, being "on" almost all the time, navigating different (and too much) food and having to be the buzzkill that doesn't drink alcohol.  

And I don't sleep well.  

I could go on, but the point is made.  Now I am exceptionally grateful for all of the opportunities I have had to travel on business.  In fact, the very first time I was ever on an airplane was a work trip for Prudential back in 1989. Over the years I got to see places as diverse as San Diego CA, Salt Lake City UT, Jackson MS, Minneapolis MN, etc.  I got to see a lot.  And at this stage, that's enough.

This particular business trip was something of an annual review meeting and planning session for the next year, held in Fort Worth, Texas.  I like Fort Worth, by the way, as it has a fairly laid-back feeling about it and the people have proven themselves to be exceptionally nice over the decades.  Why they elect folks like Rafael "I don't want to seem Hispanic" Cruz to the U.S. Senate is beyond me.  Side note, he doesn't need to learn Spanish for the Bad Bunny Superbowl halftime show because he already speaks it (just don't tell anyone, as it's a secret...I am kidding...he once got into a Spanish argument with Marco Rubio, which was very entertaining).

The meetings went well.  In attendance was the leadership team for my work group, and I was glad to be a mere participant, although I ran a part of the meeting that focused on talent.  My co-workers are good folks from across the country (coming into Fort Worth from Chicago, San Diego, Grand Rapids MI, Houston, and of course Northeastern PA).  Things moved along rather nicely.  Among my jobs during the meeting was to be what I'll call the "Slide Monkey", a.k.a. the person who got to show and navigate PowerPoint presentations for others.  

Now to the "Listed by Age" part.

Between presentations, for whatever reason, we had a brief discussion about how old everyone was, as in "Who here thinks they are the oldest in the room?".  Honestly, it was no contest.  I was the oldest, by about 10 years.  Thankfully, either by honest reaction or mere pity, one of my peers was surprised at my age.  Now I get the fact that such things may make HR folks* cringe, but as I noted before, my co-workers are good folks, so I wasn't too bothered by it.  Key word there being "too".

It was later that day when the whole age discussion became part of a nexus of things happening in my life related to career, next steps, purpose, etc.  It was a kind of cosmic breadcrumb leading me down a path.  

As the week continued, I felt even more aware of my age, in a way that has never really occurred to me before. And this isn't because of health challenges that I (and others who are getting up in years) face, but rather it really was more of an attitude/awareness kind of thing.  For one of the first times in my life, I actually felt old.

I own the above, for the record.  It doesn't make me sad.  I have no thoughts of dirt napping.  I don't feel washed-up, out of touch or some kind of technological Luddite.  I felt differentiated in a way, and it was okay.

Finally, and only quasi-related to the above, during the offsite the team had a rather brisk discussion about the use of AI tools such as Chat GPT.  Surprisingly, it was not the old people (*cough* me) that were the most adverse to it.  I respected the opinions shared, although it's very, very clear that, at this juncture, if you are in the business world, you need to be comfortable using these kinds of tools.  To end this post, I will share a few thoughts about AI...

• It's just another tool
• Unfortunately, it can be an excuse for people to effectively outsource sincerity when it comes to written interactions with others
• In creative endeavors, it is effectively intellectual property theft (see the "No AI Training" disclaimer of this site)

I don't worry about the businesspeople out there when it comes to AI...they will learn to use it.  Instead I worry about grade school kids not learning how to string original thoughts together using the written word.  This will not serve anyone's interest.

(*) By way of disclosure, I have a Master of Science degree in Human Resources from Villanova University and I am a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Senior Certified Professional.

An Unusual Summer

It feels like summer has just begun.  This could be for a few different reasons…
 
…the weather has been decidedly un-summer-esque, with tons of rain
…because of the above, I haven’t been able to do much outside
…my brother’s passing in late April
 
…plus, the usual suspects of being tired from earn-a-living work stuff and just generally not always feeling all that well.
 
I fully realize that some of the above I can impact, while others, well, not so much. 
 
In any event, I have started to get some of my summer mojo back, having mostly cleaned out the garage, temporarily fixing the garage door, putting together a bench (that was sitting in my shed for over a year) and organizing some tools.  There was also the incident yesterday when I was using my miter saw and it nearly cut the tip of my thumb open (thank God for thumbnails), but we shall not discuss that any further.
 
I’ve also been starting to get some more important things done, such as getting a new pair of glasses.  My old pair, which I had for about a year, were simply horrible, as they were too large, kept sliding down my nose, and a few other things.  Having been wearing glasses since I was 5 years old, one would think that I would be able to always pick out good frames, but there was a lesson learned in last year’s selection: Don’t allow yourself to be sold something you don’t really want.  I remember getting the glasses last year at a time when the opticians’ office was very crowded, they didn’t have the kind of frames I wanted, I felt rushed and pushed to accept something that I didn’t think would work.  In any event, and as noted, lessons learned, and new glasses should be ready this week.
 
As a side note, I am currently wearing a pair from a few years ago that are working well.  See above (thumb…) as to why I really need to be wearing my glasses.  All of the time.
 
Hanging over all of that over the last few months has been the news, particularly that of what has come out of Washington D.C.  This continues to be something of a dark time, for many reasons I have already explained in the past.  This cannot end soon enough.
 
While summer from a “doing summery stuff” perspective has been lagging, what hasn’t lagged has been the actual calendar.  It feels like summer is going by too quickly.  Part of this I readily acknowledge is the fact that time in general seems to pass by more quickly the older I get.  That’s a kind of cruel joke. 
 
What won’t be a part of this summer is any kind of multi-day trip.  With Ms. Rivers starting a new job and the 6 weeks of new hire training for me at work (as in my conducting…), the timing hasn’t been good.  We will probably go on some kind of trip in October though, after time off has accumulated (Ms. Rivers) and (hopefully) I won’t be in perpetual new hire training.  We shall see.
 
Speaking of trips, over dinner yesterday, Ms. Rivers and I brainstormed all the trips we would like to take in the years to come, before we get too old and decrepit.  While we still have to prioritize these things, here’s the list… 

Ireland

 

Hawaii 

 

Caribbean

 

Puerto Rico 

 

Oregon/Seattle 

 

Southwest/Arizona/New Mexico

 

Las Vegas

 

Michigan/Mackinaw Island

 

Mississippi River Cruise

 

Savannah GA

 

Toronto 

 

Canadian Train Trip

 

Norway/Sweden 

 

England - London

 

England - Liverpool, Wales

 

Germany - Rhine River Cruise

 

France - Paris

 

Mediterranean Cruise

 

Italy - Rome, Florence 

 
…given the math associated with getting older, I think we should get started.
 
Finally, and speaking of summer, while visiting my sister-in-law on the 4^th, I spent a few quality minutes with her beehive.  It’s a good reminder of what is important in life, and I am not talking about honey, which I don’t particularly like anyway.  No, this is more about order, simplicity and purpose…
 
 

 

…all of which the world could use a bit more of these days.

Storyworth & Other Assorted Bits-O-News

It's been a while since I've posted, but not since I've done any similar writing.  That statement makes sense through the lens of Storyworth, a kind of project that will take most of this year to complete.  You can learn more about Storyworth HERE.  This was part of a Christmas gift from my youngest daughter, and I have to confess, I am enjoying it.  The premise is this:

• Family members ask a weekly question
• I write a response
• At the end of the year the whole thing is turned into a book

This week's question, which I haven't started answering, is...

My answers to these questions generally run in the 600-900 word range.  Anyway, if you have someone in your life that enjoys writing, this makes a memorable gift...for both the writer and the people that get a copy of the book.

In other news:

• Eclipse/Rapture...I was not raptured on Monday.  Hell, I didn't even get light-headed.  Thankfully, no one else did either (the rapture part, that is).  On a more serious note, maybe, just maybe, the idiots that spout this stuff should be publicly humiliated.  That would make a great website...tracking the stupid stuff public figures predict that never come true.  
• Earthquake...I was working from home on Tuesday when we had an earthquake.  Details HERE.  I didn't feel a thing.  Ms. Rivers did, but then again I was in the work-zone, a not-so-magical place where I probably miss a lot of things happening around me.
• Florida...Ms. Rivers and I spent a few days in St. Augustine, Florida, a week or two ago.  I enjoyed having time off in a warmer place, and going to Buc-ees is always a blast.  The place is definitely a bucket-list kind of thing, which sounds like an almost comically American stereotype (think "I aspire one day to visit the world's largest gas station").  Also on the docket was a trip to the self-identified Fountain of Youth.  I did drink water from the actual fountain, but I don't think that is going to stop my 60th birthday from coming in a few weeks.  As for the fountain water, the taste could best be described as being liquid scrambled eggs.  Finally on the Florida side of things, you can mark that as being one of the places I have no plans to ever live in, now or in retirement.  The winter weather is nice, but the one advantage we have up north is the exhilaration felt when Spring finally arrives.  It's as close to a legal high as I have ever experienced.
• Scranton Times Death Spiral...The Scranton Times, a local newspaper, shut down reader comments a few days ago.  There was no article written about the change, just an email sent to those who partook of the seeming privilege.  I did, with some regularity, comment on articles, but only under my own name.  That was a rarity for the comments section, which was dominated by anonymous dog whistling keyboard komandos, spewing not-so-subtle racism and sports team politics.  Not the best presentation of Northeastern Pennsylvania residents, but then again this is what you get when you don't hold folks accountable for what they write.  A better solution would have been to require anyone commenting on an article to actually post using their real name.  This would make sense if the function was killed for reasons of common decency, but then again the actual reason was far more cost-cutting than anything else.  Yet another victim of the Scranton Times sale.  
  
  
  

As Billy Joel once noted, "and so it goes".  

More to come.
        

If We Only Had Time...

"If we only had time, only had time for you" - Gone Hollywood (Supertramp)

Sometimes it seems like time isn't this fixed thing that we seem to think it is.  Maybe that's the "relative" part of "relativity" in action.  Such things may be a bit above my paygrade, and while they are sometimes fun to ponder, in the end, it's a bit like shoveling water:  A lot of effort but little practical result.

It's been a bit since I've written, but things have been busy.  On the professional side of things, I have been working harder than ever before:  Not exactly for more money, but it's now at the part of my life when my desire to do good work sometimes exceeds any sensible reasons (to be working this hard).  On the non-work side of things, well, I have plenty of other work to do, including helping out with my older stepson's new home.  One has not experienced sweat until you are steaming wallpaper off in a house that is in the 85+ degree range.  That work is mostly done, and things have now moved to the wall prep for paint phase.  Mind you, there is a bathroom that still has wallpaper in it, but I'm waiting for those marching orders.  My work at the house extends beyond wallpaper removal, although I draw the line, as usual, at plumbing*.

Anyway, this summer has been something of a blur.  And now it's October, a month that has provided more than a few challenges for me over the years (many, many related postings here over the years).  I won't tempt fate...or October...with any further commentary, other than to say, "let's just be friends October, okay?".

These past few days have provided a kind of late punctuation to the summer of 2023 in that Ms. Rivers and I have been spending time with her parents in Cape May, NJ.  In fact, tomorrow we head home, with Ms. Rivers stopping in The Philadelphia on the way back (we took two cars).  I'll note that I've never really spent much time in Cape May, but I would come back in the future, as long as it was either before or after the summer season.  

Speaking of Cape May, it is an old place, saved in so many ways from the kitsch of the 1950's/1960's motor inn phase that became something of a statement for New Jersey shore points.  Many of those motor inns have gone the way of the early 1970's land yacht cars, but certainly a few of them still remain.  Just not in Cape May.  Here, well, it seems that efforts have been made to keep something more distinct, at least from an architectural (and possibly larger cultural) basis.  While I didn't bring any camera gear with me, my Google Pixel is more than capable of taking some wonderful pictures.

There's a real kind of beauty to be found in older places that have been well maintained and remained purposeful over the years.  In a way, that's something (well maintained & purposeful) that we should all be striving for in our own existence.  Being here with Ms. River's parents puts an exclamation point on this overall sentiment, as how they are now, we will all be, more or less, if we are blessed.

The above noted, this has proven to be a very difficult posting to write.  I find it more and more difficult to take the step back required to actually think about these kinds of things in a way which can translate to rational thoughts that make some written sense.  In other words, writing is hard sometimes, and my lack of it speaks more to my own life priorities than anything else.  I'm not just failing to make time for writing, by the way...there are several other (non-work) things I am not doing these days that don't seem to be making the cut.  That needs to change.  

Here's to cool Fall evenings and better life priorities to come.

(*) Reasons why I despise plumbing work, in no specific order:  A) I have big hands that don't fit well in small spaces.  B) It's dirty work.  C) It always leaks after round one of the repair.  D) You often need specialized tools that make no sense for non-plumbers to actually buy.

Reach the Beach

“Don’t waste the time. Time is the final currency, man. Not money, not power - it’s time.”

- David Crosby

I say, with no disrespect to the memory of the late David Crosby, that the whole money/power thing is an interesting sentiment when you have had money and power to begin with.  This noted, he was right, and  the older I get, the more I understand the point.  This is a good way to being today's travel post.

So it's thinking about time that I'm here outside of Ocean City, NJ for an extended weekend mini-vacation.  We spent yesterday on the Ocean City boardwalk in the morning, and then later in the day at Longport and Margate City for the late afternoon/evening.  About 12,500 steps into the day, and it seems like it was a long day.  But yet, in the true spirit of David Crosby, it also seemed to pass by quickly.  And I have been thinking a lot about time lately.  

One of the traits that Ms. Rivers and I share is a tendency towards being planful.  We try to think things through and do what's right for the longer term, the bigger picture if you will.  I think that a point of commonality between our very different upbringings is the fact that neither of us grew up in households where there was a lot of money, which probably play a role in the whole security/planful thing.  Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to retirement planning.  

As I've likely (I am not 100% sure, and I'm too lazy to check...) said before, this is the part of our life when we can see retirement on the horizon.  Not imminent, but not far away either.  The good news is that the whole planful stuff means that we will be financially ready.  So says our financial advisor.  For most folks that would be a relief...and for me it mostly is.  However...and you knew a "however" was coming...I often wonder if I'm ready in other ways.

I will note that physically, I am something of a wreck.  A "hot mess" and the younger folks would say.  While I have a good job that makes use of my skills, it's pretty demanding on my time, and while in years past I could make time for exercise, that hasn't been happening for years now.  Between the extra weight and a very actively lived 58 years behind me, the parts are starting to show some wear.  The point of discernment for me is trying to understand just how much of this just comes with the territory (i.e., something like my arthritic right big toe), and how much of it is actually self-inflicted.  The former I can't do all that much about, but the latter?  I'm feeling some guilt about that part.  The trick, if you want to call it that, is turning a fairly useless feeling like guilt into some concrete actions.  So far, I'm not doing so well.  But I have time...or do I?

One of the reasons why I enjoy the beach, in addition to the childhood memories associate with Atlantic City vacations, is the fact that the ocean is this hunkering big-a$$ed reminder of how large the world truly is, and how small the machinations in my head probably are.  Someone with the gift of brevity would says that it provides perspective.  I personally think it's actually more than that, although I can't come with reasons to exactly say why.  The saltwater smell hitting my nostrils is a kind of gentle reminder to me of a world that surpasses my dismay at physically aging and fears of forgetting, at some point, how to tie my shoes.  

I try to think about things like this from a 95/5 perspective.  This means that if I can take away some deeper sense from this (or other) experiences, even if it's just a small thing, then it's a good thing.  On the other side of the coin, as a wise person I know would say "why can't you just have a good time Steve?".  Maybe that's the 5% this time around.  Suffice to say, the jury is still out in the enlightenment department.

As for Ocean City NJ, well I was here once a long time ago.  In addition to being a typical Jersey beach town, it's simply and impeccably clean.  I also appreciate the whole "no smoking anything" policy that keeps the boardwalk not smelling like much of Atlantic City these days (see THIS posting) i.e., what I image to be the odor of Snoop Dog's limo. 

Today brings a trek to the beach in Brigantine, a spot we enjoyed when we were last in Atlantic City.  There's also this hotdog/ice cream joint we found that calls our names.  Loudly, and robustly, I will add.  I'm hoping to also finish one of the books I brought with me.  Yes, this is what passes for fun.  And this is okay, by the way.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I wanted to come up with an interesting and engaging title for this posting, but I more or less failed.  The result is noted above.  If you don't get the reference, well then that's okay.  It probably means you have something of a life (reference HERE).  On to the real business of this posting stuff.

We've now been back from Scotland for going on three weeks, so I'm thinking an update is due.

The traveling back was hell.

Yes, thanks to something of a British Airways meltdown (HERE), our initial flight from Edinburgh to London was canceled.  Luckily, we got a very competent agent, who was able to book us on a later flight.  That's the good news.  The bad news?  We had to spend 8 hours at Edinburgh airport.  Many of the gate seating areas at the Edinburg airport look like this...

The benches scream, in a loud Scottish accent, "Laddy, don't even try to get comfortable".  I suspect that Edward Longshanks probably used something like these benches to torture William Wallace.

The really bad news?  The new flight was leaving at 3pm local time, meaning that we would not get back to the U.S. until 10-10:30pm.  Note there is a 6-hour time difference to figure into all of this.  True to form, that happened, and the net result was Ms. Rivers and I took turns with the drive from Newark back home.  Honestly, we are lucky that there wasn't a lot of traffic.  Put another way, had we still been in the U.K., we would have been up for something like 20+ hours by the time we got home.  

Oh, and British Airways lost one of our bags, which we got back...a week and a half later.  Given the reach of British Airways, there's no way of knowing what happened to our bag during that time. I told my younger stepson to smell the suitcase to see if it had an odor of "curry and despair".

All well and good, and certainly first-world problems, for sure.

It took me days to fall back into a regular sleeping schedule.  And I was absolutely buried with stuff at work.  Ms. Rivers and I both agree that there won't be any Atlantic crossings for a few years to come.  Come to think of it, I'm pretty good not flying for a while, truth be told.

It's important, or at least it seems like it should be important, to separate the travel from the destination.  In that case, the destination is wonderful.  British Airways is not.  Enough said.

So here I am back to more life as usual.  A bit wiser and more worldly for the wear.  Now I feel somewhat compelled to pay more attention to my flowers, especially my burgeoning honeysuckle forest.  Pictures to come at some point.

Scotland - Day 8: Mar sin leat

The above is my feeble attempt at saying goodbye in Scottish Gaelic.  Given that my language skills are somewhat lacking, even in English, the title is about as correct as Google can make it.  Anyway, today is our last day in Scotland, and tomorrow, bright and early, we return home.  

As for today's activities, well, things were intentionally kept on the light side.  The first stop this morning was to the Edinburgh farmer's market, where a few things were purchased.  From there, it was off to the National Museum of Scotland, which we barely made a dent in before deciding to call it a day.  Our plan from there was to head off to Arthur's Seat and do some hiking, but two things got in the way:  1) It was a bit chillier than expected and 2) We were just tired.  To that second point, I'm glad we stayed here as long as we did, but by now, the hiking miles upon miles a day is wearing a bit thin for all of us (myself especially included).  If there is ever a return trip, Arthur's Seat (and one or two other places) will be first on the list.

Back to the National Museum of Scotland...this is a must-see.  The fact that it's completely free only adds to the coolness of the place.  The museum itself has a bit of everything, from fossils to religious artifacts to weapons of a thousand years ago.  

The interior of the museum.

A copy of Mary, Queen of Scots's casket.

A precursor to the French guillotine.

Ms. Rivers and I also had a final stroll in the city before things get too dark, and we get too tired.  Of course, this somehow ended up involving a cemetery.

Here's to Catherine, being remembered again.  May she be resting in peace.

View of St. Cuthbert's cemetery and steeple.

On that note, that brings "the big Scotland vacation" to an end.  I suspect that we will be back, at some unknown point in the future.  As for me, I confess that it will be nice to sleep in my own bed, not walk up quite so many hills, and having the time to plant flowers on Monday.  There is a certain serenity in routine, but yet in leaving, I'm hoping that some of those routines are forever changed.  We shall see.

I'll end this with my favorite song about Scotland.

Scotland - Days 6 & 7: Winding Down

We're on the back end of our Scotland vacation, so I'm going to combine activities from Thursday (May 25th) and Friday (May 26th).  This is mostly because, at least for me, things are dialing down a bit.  No big tours, and no tight schedules.  I am good with this, by the way.  While I have thoroughly enjoyed what we've done so far, I'm starting to feel as if my vacation insights cup is almost full.  This is less of a writing thing and more of a mental/physically tired kind of thing.  

Homesick?  Not really.  It's probably more of a function of my incredibly short attention span.  I've seen wonderful things here, and I've learned a thing or two.  And not just about Scotland.  Big things like this...and traveling to a different country is a big thing...create a tremendous opportunity for growth, I think if we're open to it.  As I'm looking at one full day left, I'm still trying to sort out some of what I've learned.  This is a wonderful thing by the way, namely, the fact that, at age 59, I readily confess to learning new things about myself and the world.

Something I will note is that the night before we flew out here, I had something of an incredibly troubling dream.  I wouldn't use the word nightmare, but one of those sleeping cerebral movies that just sticks in your head like old gum on the bottom of a movie theater seat.  The kind of thing where the emotion of it all makes you think there must be some deeper meaning to it all, even though there probably isn't.  Flying out here that quickly evaporated.  Indeed, there was no deeper meaning.  It was just a dream.  This is, however, one of the examples of how travel can impact us:  It takes us outside of our own heads for a period of time.  The sheer difference of it all reminds us that there is much more to the world than what we think (or dream) or see in front of us every "normal" day.  

In the end, seeing the "bigness" of the world is both humbling and incredibly insightful.

I wish there was some way to expose younger folks of all economic conditions to overseas travel.  I think the world would be a far, far better place.  As it stands, this kind of travel is an example of a kind of privilege in action, which, growing on the lower socio-economic side of status, I fully appreciate as an adult.  I also appreciate the fact that Ms. Rivers is far more keen to undertake these kinds of things than I naturally am.  Granted that I do enjoy this kind of travel, but left to my own druthers, I'm not sure I would do it.

As for the last two days' worth of travels, well, as I noted above, it was a bit less scheduled.  On Thursday, we did an hour-long tour of some of the vaults that are found under the King's Mile (in Edinburgh).  It was interesting, and the guide did a good job of conjuring up some spooky mojo with her stories, in addition to talking about the real hardship of living at a time when 1) There wasn't enough housing for everyone, and 2) Actually being homeless was a criminal offense.  

The vaults we visited were off of Cow Gate, which just so happens to have the backside of a cow displayed in one of the nearby buildings.

One of the vaults was used by a local religious group for many, many years.  After their leader passed away, the group broke up, up but allowed the owner of the vault they used to be maintained, provided that no one could enter.  By the way, the vaults in this area are owned by different folks and are used for everything from nothing to storage to a bar.  

You can read more about the Edinburgh vaults HERE.

After the vaults, we had a rather uneventful dinner at what we think was a chain restaurant of sorts.  Ms. Rivers tried the beet sauce.  I didn't.  

Today (Friday) we did some more walking (surprising!) and found the beginning of a canal, complete with canal boats.

We also found a very neglected cemetery in of all places, Coffin Lane.  We would have gone down the explore, but the encampment of folks who looked like they may be been using some illegal substances was there already.  Discretion was the better part of valor.

Ms. Rivers and I went for a walk further down King's Mile later in the day.  A few things caught my eye:

Note for those with agoraphobia:  Edinburgh is a very crowded place.

Yes, I could not help myself:  Another picture of the turd building.

I'm not sure about the significance behind the locks, other than I am sure there is some significance.  

At this point, I am pretty damn tired.  Tomorrow we will be seeing a few more things that we don't want to miss before flying out bright and early on Sunday morning.

I'm thinking I have one more post in me. 

More to come.

Scotland - Day 5: There's Something In The Air

I mentioned fairly early on that there is a certain smell to this place.  Since that initial olfactory observation, I've been able to fine-tune things a bit.  Specifically:

• There is a distinct Edinburgh smell.
• I also got a whiff of it in a smaller town we visited (see below).
• It reminds me of when I used to live in York, PA, and was downwind of a paper plant.
• Said smell goes away when you leave the city; in fact, the countryside here smells wonderful.

I'm reasonably sure I'm smelling some Scottish version of sewer gases.  Now that this mystery is solved, it's time to move on to bigger and better things.

How about a few random facts?

Sheep outnumber humans in Scotland by over a million.  Reference HERE.  That's easy to see, literally.  Some of today's sheep...

(Those white things towards the left horizon?  Sheep.)

There's a lot of smoking here.  Interestingly enough though, according to Scottish government statistics, it's the tourists, not the locals.  In fact, the smoking rate in Scotland as a whole is 11% as of 2021.  Reference HERE.  In Pennsylvania, the most current rate I could find was 17.9% (reference HERE).  Why bring this up?  Well, today's trip was the Hadrian's Wall, which I'll get into in a moment.  The tie to smoking is that Ms. Rivers and I sat at the back of our tour bus today, behind a group of folks speaking Italian (Ms. Rivers seems to think they said they were from Switzerland, but I'm not so sure...).  These folks were lighting up constantly every time they left the bus, leaving us to deal with the smell when they returned.  I know, first-world problems, for sure, but it does remind me of how much things have changed for the better in this area since I was a kid.  For the record, if you smoke, please try to stop...it's simply a horrible thing to do to your body, and you deserve better.

What we haven't smelled much of is marijuana.  That could be because it's illegal in Scotland (reference HERE).  I'm not complaining.

On to the business end of today.  As noted above, we visited Hadrian's Wall*, and it was wonderful.  Well worth a day in Scotland.  Prior to arriving at the wall, we stopped at a town named Jedburgh, where there can be found the ruins of a large abbey.  It was actually really interesting.  

This is also a place where Mary, Queen of Scotts stayed at one point.  From here, we visited 4 different sites related to Hadrian's Wall.  Here are some of the better pictures:

None of this, by the way, does the wall...and its related ruins...justice.  This is just something you need to experience.  It felt kind of unique to sit on a section of the wall, knowing that over 1900 years ago soldiers from the Roman Empire were doing the exact same thing.  It's also rather marvelous to experience something so old yet created by humans, particularly in an age where it seems like everything is disposable.

I'll post more pictures on the Facebooks.

Finally, I saw this stone at the border between Scotland and England (Hadrian's Wall is in England).  It tells its own story.

I (obviously) have skin in the Scottish Independence game, but it seems to me that this is a culturally distinct place.  

(*) You can learn more about Hadrian's Wall by linking to:  https://hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/

More to come.