Happy days

Yes, good news today, Quadaffi is frozen in a shopping mall, we are leaving Iraq, and the stock market is up. If they don't cancel Pan Am, I'll be a happy man. 

The human microphone

One of the things that 2011 will be remembered for is that it was the year the human microphone was invented. Since amplified sound is not permitted in Zucotti park, the speaker talks briefly then his words are repeated by the crowd. It reminds me a little of Catholic Mass when the priest says "et cum spirito too"  and the congregation repeats it.

Farmer's markets

The end of farmer's markets for this year is at hand. The end of browsing through the stands. Last week I bought white sweet potatoes or banana squash. The apples are usually good too. 

Dial a Demonstration

During my idealistic youth I remember calling "Dial a Demonstration", a telephone service where you could hear a recorded message describing the demonstrations going on in New York that day. If you wanted to protest the war, fight for women's rights or even march for the International Lady's Garment Workers Union, you could for the cost of  bus and subway fare.

Twenty years later I was sitting in a bar and a young man walked in with hair past his shoulders. The woman next to me smiled and said, "he could use a haircut". I laughed with the other middle aged people at the bar.

Now I was now part of the establishment. Instead of fighting "the man", I now was "the man". I've noticed the change. Now when I hear a car on the street that is playing loud music I get aggravated while as a youth I would have been thrilled to hear  loud rock music booming from a car at a red light.  The last time I demonstrated was for my pensions, a pale echo of the idealism of the young, hip, WBAI listener of a happier time.

Which brings us to the current Wall Street protests. Oh what is it that they want to do? Put another thorn in Obama's side? Oh what do they hope to accomplish? Will these demonstrations bring them jobs? Will they make us all happier and make us willing  to give up buying cheap shirts made in China? The aging baby boomer is full of dilemma. I wonder for a moment, what it is like at the demonstration. I suppose they communicate using social media instead of telephone loops.  I wonder if there are LJG's like the old days.

Algebra

The road block to most people in their education, the thing that separates the sheep from the goats, is algebra. This was announced to my seventh grade glass by my first male math teacher, Mr. Goldberg. He had a beard and being in his class definitely made you feel grown up, if terrified. I struggled through the class, got a D at one point, but went on to redeem myself in the end with a  B. After seventh grade algebra I went on to eighth grade algebra, a breeze. I followed that with geometry and trig. When I graduated from school and was selling hot dogs at Two Guys, I had the satisfaction of knowing I had passed algebra.

To the unsuspecting seventh grader who is given the class schedule in September lies that nasty word, "algebra".  It is the one hurdle that will stand between happiness and misery, success and failure in school. Algebra. It re-emerges in community college, like a bad penny. There it is, the requirement to taking statistics. It isn't just the science majors. You must complete algebra first to be a social worker.

Why is there a shortage of nurses in the United States? Nurses have to show that they've passed algebra. Why does America have a shortage of high tech manufacturing workers? Algebra. Why does your doctor have a weird accent? Americans are limited with their algebra so we have to import doctors from overseas.

Jury duty

You come home from work and notice you have an envelope from the county. It's a jury notice. Yikes. For some people it's a major catastrophe, for some a minor inconvenience, for some an invitation to goof off from work for a while. Most of us have been called, but few get the chance to serve.

After a long wait in the jury assembly  room, I got a chance to be chosen to go to a court room for jury selection. I couldn't believe the questions they asked. What do you do for a living. How about the other people in your house. What TV shows do you watch. Where do you get your news. What magazines do you read. If you could talk to any one, living or dead, who would it be. What bumper stickers are on your car. It was fun watching everyone try to weasel out of serving on a panel. The judge left most of them off.

Being selected, I got to actually serve on jury duty. It wasn't too bad. We even got to watch a surveillance video. Things have changed since the days when jurors were all male and smoke filled the room. Oh Henry Fonda, where are you when we need you?

Hotel radios

Just finished seeing "Don't bother to knock" with Marilyn Monroe. In old Hollywood movies, it seems de riguer, that the hotel room in a swanky hotel always has a radio where you can flip a switch and hear the goings on in the nightclub downstairs. Of course there usually is a band playing with a sultry singer. I wonder how common it really was to be able to eaves drop on the bar downstairs in hotels in the good olde days.

As a kid I remember a hotel radio with that feature when the family stayed in Atlantic City. It seems like such a nice touch.  "There's nothing on tv, let's see if there's any action in the bar downstairs". And you could find out by turning on the radio.