Very pertinent observations early in 2017
by Robert LaFrance
The first thing I
heard in 2017: my son said Happy New Year and followed that with: “By the way,
Papa, did you know that the word ‘oops’ is the plural of ‘oop’?”
The holiday
season of Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year is now over. I have not known what
day of the week it is since about Friday the 23rd of December. The
worst thing is, this had nothing to do with drugs or strong drink; it was just
the old brain seizing up every time someone mentioned the day of the week.
“Wednesday? No, I think it’s Sunday, isn’t it? Oh…it’s Friday.”
Speaking of brain
seizing and freezing, over the holidays a British singer named George Michael
died and I had to admit I had never heard of him. Seriously. This guy was a
music icon – pardon the overused word – in the 1980s and 1990s and everybody in
the world but me knew exactly who he was, even from the days when he was part
of the group called ‘Wham’.
And then I
remembered: I kept kids in those days and the only music I listened to was that
of Fred Penner and Sharon, Lois and Bram because that’s what my kids listened
to and sang. “It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood…” was my idea of music.
That was Mister Rogers’s theme song.
Even though I
look back on the holidays just passed as a pretty good time – we here got to
January 1st without mishap – there was a downside. Some may not
think this serious, but in previous years I used to enjoy watching and
listening to the Fireplace Channel on my TV. On my current satellite setup, it
is channel 285.
I used to turn
off the lights in the living room and have the Fireplace Channel going. It was
just like having a real fireplace with the wood flames flickering and cracking.
Very relaxing.
What changed?
Some genius decided it would be much better to have the background be Christmas
music and no crackling. If I wanted to listen to that I could go sit by the
radio that is tuned to the Holiday Network. I just wish people would go by the adage: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
*************************
Come to think of
it, maybe I will make a New Year’s resolution or two.
One thing I would
like to see and will work toward (or at least wish for, and that ain’t easy) is
the making of the visible and audible world a little less impersonal. Someone
just told me that they work as an HR person with a large company and I was
taken aback, mainly because I had forgotten that HR means ‘Human Resources’.
Back in the GOD
(Good Old Days), we would call this guy a ‘personnel manager’ but somewhere
along the way that title became less personal even as it sounded more personal.
A human resources manager sounds as if it might have something to do with
humans, but that soon changed and became HR. It remains there today.
**************************
Also back in the
GOD, the old pioneers and their horses, oxen and whatever animal they could
find worked all day every day, often before daybreak and well after the sun
went down, to clear the land for their crops and pastures.
Our ancestors
worked like dogs to feed themselves and other people and now people go out and
plant trees on that same land while buying kiwi from New Zealand and
California. In more recent memory, people cleared an entire acre so they could
build a house and plant trees where trees had already been growing. Three weeks
ago, I watched a front-end loader carry a 2-tonne boulder onto one of those
front lawns. Very stylish.
There is soon to
be a new president to the south of us, and I don’t mean Gagetown, and the world
will be stuck with a man who exhibits every sign of psychotic behaviour. (There
goes my chance for a Green Card.) Everyone who has two elbows also has an
opinion as to why Donald Trump won the big prize and the bigger curse.
I have a few
theories as to why he won which, by the way, surprised him more than anyone. I
am thinking that the folks on the lower end of the U.S. income scale just got
fed up looking at billionaires everywhere but at their house, and thought they would
teach the ‘establishment’ a lesson, but they NEVER expected so many other
people had the same idea.
Everybody is scrambling to say that
they had predicted he would win and it’s pathetic. Unwillingly, I tune in to
American TV networks like CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC as well as the quasi-Fascist
Fox New Network just to hear these big sillies swear on two bibles that they
had known from the start that Trump would win. Of course I knew it, but I have
too much class to mention it.-end-
No comments:
Post a Comment