Energetically Speaking

The mysteries of energy – what it is and how it works – are largely beyond me.

Personally, I know when I have an abundance of it. And I really know when I don’t.

I accept that energy is all around us and supports us and all other living things. Naturalists might interpret that universal energetic flow as god at work.

But beyond that superficial understanding and my reliance on electrical outlets to power up whatever device I need to use, my understanding of energy is scant.

Eastern religions have a deep and complex understanding of energy. They understand how the energy in us is connected to a larger energetic system.

Some Westerners have clued in and try to apply the knowledge of those belief systems to our own philosophical frameworks.

From this, many Westerners have adopted and follow the dictates of balancing their chakras and pursuing a yoga practice. In Far Eastern culture, internal energetic pathways in the body are called meridians which are the channels through which chi (life energy) flows.

This belief system attributes a lot of suffering and illness to blockages in energy flow. Acupressure and acupuncture evolved as methods to unblock the meridians. By doing so, the body’s own healing energy can take over and bring it back into balance, or a state of wellness.

It all seems like delicate balancing act to me to achieve and maintain a state of wellness in ourselves and on our planet. Many capitalists don’t think this way. Nature is seen strictly as a resource to exploit.

We are all paying a high price for that attitude with climate change and increasingly extreme weather events around the world.

Likely, we have all heard the analogy of how the butterfly flapping its wings can impact events on the other side of the world.

I will rely on this quote by Catherine McKenzie to better explain where that philosophy comes from:

“They say that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian rain forest, it can change the weather half a world away.

Chaos theory.

What it means is that everything that happens in this moment is an accumulation of everything that’s come before it. Every breath. Every thought. There is no innocent action.

Some actions end up having the force of a tempest. Their impact cannot be missed. Others are the blink of an eye. Passing by unnoticed. Perhaps only God knows which is which.

All I know today is that you can think that what you’ve done is only the flap of a butterfly wing, when it’s really a thunderclap. And both can result in a hurricane.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10523011-they-say-that-if-a-butterfly-flaps-its-wings-in

That would appear to put an enormous amount of responsibility upon individuals to consider and monitor how their actions could affect outside events.

I believe there were great cultures that did do that as part of their inherent belief system. First Nation tribes believed spirit was in every living thing. They treated the Earth they lived on and the animals that were sacrificed for their survival accordingly.

I think it is a fair comment to say that sensibility was eradicated at the end of the nineteenth century as effectively as First Nations people and the buffalo were.

All to say, I superficially understand the dictates of maintaining my own energy supplies. I pursue practices and activities that I believe support that effort.

Mostly I have taken up certain practices through a zig zag process of traia and error over the years.

Yoga helps unblock parts of my body that are tight and tied into knots, essentially by tying itself into knots. No wonder so many Westerners think yoga is weird.

I have had acupuncture when no other modality seemed to improve that nagging bursitis in my right scapula. I don’t well understand how acupuncture works, only that it has and does. That is sufficient to my purposes when I am in chronic pain.

They say that the more you know, the less you know. Or as more accurately expressed by Aristotle: “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”

Regarding life energy, flow, Spirit and interconnectedness among all living things, that is precisely my experience. I know a little bit about a lot of things.

I am in a chronic state of tension as a result. I realize I will never reach that carrot of fully understanding the fundamental mysteries of life: where life started, what life is and what keeps us and life constantly moving forward.

I do know I appreciate the unrelenting quest and happily sacrifice a fair amount of my life energy to seek answers to those multitude of things I do not understand.

I pray for the sustained energy to keep me pursuing that quest for as long as Nature/Spirit/god permits.

Bud Jet

The subtitle of this post should be: How I have successfully managed to avoid incorporating any money management systems in my adult life to date.

That’s an uncomfortable revelation.

I am triggered by the word “budget” in the same way I was triggered by the word “maths” in my adolescence.

Misshapen demons of indeterminate shape and size would arise in a mist in my head when I heard either of these words. There was something vaguely threatening and out of control to me about money and maths.

Or worse, to an aspiring “artiste,” such as myself, something constraining and restrictive. I was a far too much of a free spirit to be held in the traces by such trifling things as mathematical logic or the spending restrictions of a budget.

I loathed and disdained such restrictions. I devised pictures in my head of small, weak muscled little men, sitting in dark rooms under a hanging light with arm bands holding up their shirt sleeves and half caps on their head. Wearing thick glasses with gold wire rims.

In my head, they exuded an air of punitiveness and judgment and were decidedly “unfun.” Who would want to consort with such lowly people or follow their dictates? Phooey.

Well, since those days of conjuring visions of money banshees and numbers demons in my head, I have matured. Somewhat.

I get the inherent logic of income and outflow. I understand living within your means and why it has stress and financial management benefits.

But my relationship with money is still conflicted. I was scanted – mostly emotionally – as a young child. When my parents’ marriage imploded, I was only 11 and on the brink of adolescence.

Before the implosion, we enjoyed all the perks of a professional middle class upbringing in our small East Coast Canadian town: swimming and piano and ballet lessons. Summer camp. Pony Club. Birthday parties galore both hosted and attended.

Those pre-teen years and until the age of majority was reached should have been a stage of life when I had a cocoon to develop in. Needs fully taken care of. Some wishes met. A warm and safe bed to sleep in every night.

It didn’t go that way for long after the marriage broke down. Eviscerated by business and financial loss, my father doubled down on his miserliness. He did keep a roof over our heads. We were fed and clothed – if parsimoniously. We had the basics. Just.

And only until I was 16. When I started earning money outside the home, the cocoon imploded. Dad moved to another town and left me in the big city to survive on my temporary salary and whatever survival skills I had and would pick up along the way.

Looking back, that was probably too young to be abandoned by parental supervision. Something I only realized in retrospect.

So my internal relationship with money is a bit out of whack. I have the standards and expectations of someone raised in upper middle class affluence. At the same time, I carry the fear and neurosis of a child who had all of her security – including financial – ripped away. And much too soon.

As another tax deadline rises on the horizon, familiar old neuroses are emerging, too. But I have changed my approach over the years.

In prior years, I would stall and upend the tax preparation process for the absence of a single receipt or maybe two worth only a few dollars. I have learned now that ballparking is a reasonable target.

The tax people don’t care if your calculations are off by a few dollars. They care immensely if you decide to avoid filing taxes at all or grossly misrepresent your finances. I have taken extraordinary care over the years to ensure I do neither. With mixed results.

So after what can only be described in my universe of a flagrant spending spree in recent months to get the home I’ve always dreamed of, I am changing gears. I am preparing a “bud jet.” I am addressing the debt that has accumulated and how to best bring it in check.

My husband is of the view – as am I – that paying interest to credit card companies is akin to throwing money away. We are in synch in that regard. What he has – and has always had – is an easy relationship and confidence about money that I never had.

But I’m learning. After a healthy relationship with oneself, with one’s spouse and family and friends, a healthy relationship with money is an essential part of one’s overall well-being. I have learned that lesson about money.

With maths, I have at least learned to tally numbers pretty accurately in my head. That is progress, too. Maths doesn’t so much terrify me these days as confuse me. But I manage the basics. I could likely conquer it if I were so inclined.

So off I go to reopen the Excel spreadsheet I have been working on. I can’t say I love the budgeting process. But I don’t hate and fear it any more as I once did.

I have finally learned money management is my dominion to control.

Not the other way around.

Musical Back and Forth

Ever heard of Belle Chen? Neither had I until recently.

A pianist. She creates complex engaging sounds at the keyboard. She interweaves nature sounds with her recordings.

I’m listening to whale sounds in the rendition of her current composition at the moment. Earlier she used synthesizers in a piece.

I read that Chen’s piano training took place under a number of teachers in a number of different locations as her family moved around quite a lot. First to New Zealand from Taiwan. Later to Australia.

Those various musical learning teachings shaped her unique piano playing style. I imagine her inherent musical talent and inclinations shaped her musical expression as well.

She is Taiwanese-Australian. She was a first generation immigrant in Australia and the first pianist in her family. She is now based in London.

She is 35 years old.

When we are growing up, we look up to and are influenced by the established talent out there in the world. My musical tastes were initially influenced by the big band sounds of the 40s. Glenn Miller. Artie Shaw. Duke Ellington.

And the superstar solo artists of the time. Frank Sinatra. Peggy Lee. Andy Williams. And the great Ella Fitzgerald. My parents were a little older than the norm. It showed in the music that shaped them and ultimately us, too

I watched both of them suffer culture shock as cultural musical tastes shifted from the big band vibe of the 40s to Elvis Presley in the 50s, then Beatlemania and the onslaught of rock bands in the 60s and 70s.

Even my father became an avid viewer of the Sonny and Cher Show in the 60s. Mainly, I think he liked how Cher looked and dressed.

For a while, it was our time in the music world. Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Fleetwood Mac were claimed collectively as our own personal minstrels. Or so it felt at the time.

For years, we were masters of and awash in the soundtrack of our generation. It was the music we played on our phonographs. Yes, our record players. It was the music we rocked our heads to when it came on the radio.

Joni Mitchell and Carole King were my personal musical heroines. I spent hours listening to their evocative tunes with others in university lunch rooms. I would listen to them through headphones all alone in my room with silent appreciation and gratitude.

These were my ladies and cheering section. They sang what I was feeling and comforted me.

This morning I met Belle Chen on Apple Music. I was searching the classical music section for a soundtrack to accompany my day. After looking her up online, and seeing her eclectic musical background, I opened up her musical offering. I am now a devoted, if emerging, fan.

Belle Chen is my daughter’s age. I note that I am now looking backwards at emerging musical talent out there.

The mainstream musical stage has shifted beyond recognition to my ears. Its artists are often multi-talented and have to create elaborate music videos to accompany their sound.

Today’s young artists are taking hold in my psyche. I am already a fan of rappers Bad Bunny and Doja Cat. Meghan Thee Stallion has caught my eye with her flashy television ads as much as she has with her music.

Ed Sheeran is a longtime favorite. And even he is likely getting too old to count as “fresh talent”. any longer.

The musical guard has definitely changed. The great musicians of my generation are being installed in musical halls of fame. Or they are already dead. Or dying.

Or they are enjoying a great revival as Joni Mitchell is. She is currently enjoying her first number one hit on the Billboard charts. She has been “rediscovered” after a mature and moving rendition of Both Sides Now at the Grammy Awards recently. She composed that song in her twenties.

I sit and watch the passing musical parade. I take pleasure and comfort from what I hear and what I can choose to listen to. I was never a head-banger back in the day, like many of my peers. If I wish to revisit the music of my or any other generation, I just have to hit up the internet.

Seeing my girl Joni’s star rise again in a new generation is a wistful and delightful development. “Ye shall know them by their works.” It was a Bible verse meant to apply to distinguish good people from bad.

Joni is certainly known by her works. Her lyrics sit in my head like prayers. She used her talent prodigiously on this Earth. I, for one, am mighty glad she did.

Now I don’t only have to look back to revisit her genius. I just have to turn on the radio.

Today’s young people, years from now, will be able to do as I do now with my 70s favorites. They can call up any of their favorite music and musicians at any time they want. Spice Girls, anyone?

Enriching Rituals

I woke up this morning and turned up the heat a notch on the thermostat.

Chilly morning.

I gathered the contents of several random garbage bins and put their contents into a bigger kitchen garbage bag.

Then, I took the bigger bag outside to the curb and heaved it into the big green garbage bin that will be collected shortly by municipal workers.

I came back in the house. I fed the cat. Made a cup of coffee. Loaded and started the dishwasher. Returned to my “writing” chair to take my daily meds and write this post.

Almost all tasks were accomplished on auto-pilot.

I am big on “to-do” and checklists generally. They impose order and a sense of achievement.

At the same time, I am struck by how so many of our daily chores are done on rote. Automatically without much thinking.

This is desirable as my neurons are not firing a mile a minute until quite some time after I have woken from sleep and suffused my body in caffeine. If I had to think consciously about what to do to get the day started, there could be an unseemly delay in getting anything done at all.

The daily rituals we follow and patterns we establish in our lives can be both a help and a hindrance. Unexamined, they can find us stuck in unsatisfying ruts. But they also help. Because of daily habits and rituals, getting through the mundanities of our lives does not require a lot of thinking.

Imagine waking up every morning and having to write a “to-do” list just to get your day started. Profoundly inefficient. And memory issues are bound to arise up the road. That could lead to awkwardness if, say, we forgot to put on pants before leaving the house because it wasn’t on “the list.”

So with company visiting, I am struck by the existing taken-for-granted-ness in my own daily rituals and patterns. Company does not know where everything (anything?) is. Company does not know where anything (everything?) goes. Not yet anyway.

They are learning my environment as I have had to create it. When I arrived in this new house a few months ago, I didn’t know where anything went either. I had to figure out where to put things. I’m still figuring that out.

I had to organize the things about me and create systems in an unfamiliar environment. That may sound straightforward to people who grew up in stable, well-organized homes.

I didn’t grow up in such a home so every efficient organizational decision is a small and very personal victory. 

I have frequently enjoyed (too many times to count) the hospitality of our company on their home turf. Watching dinner preparation unfold between them was always akin to watching the operation of a well-oiled machine.

There is a choreography and unspoken layers of foundational understanding between them. This foundation makes the whole process unfold seamlessly with unfailingly delicious results at the dinner table.

In matters of hospitality and meal creation, I am a clunky awkward adolescent. I have some tools to contribute to meal-making and a few tricks up my sleeve. I’ve never starved or inflicted food poisoning on my kids or anyone else I care about. That’s a good track record and starting point.

But I was a single person for much of my adult life. Most of the hospitality I longed to offer was lived in a dream state. Or in my role as an Airbnb hostess.

There were several satisfying social events in that hosting context, if infrequent. A while ago, I decided I want more social outings with friends in my life. I want to be more hospitable more often and have people over for visits and meals.

Yesterday, the nub of that dream was realized. He commandeered the bar-b-q and grilled the steaks to perfection (as he always does). She took over the prep and set the table perfectly (as she always does).

I chipped in with necessary elements of the meal I was pleased to have at hand: dishes, and, glassware, and cutlery, and serving dishes, and my own special vegetable contribution.

This elaboration may seem flaky and a little foolish to those who have enjoyed the easy patterns of long marriage and hospitality every day for decades.

To actually actualize these commonplace rituals at a later stage in my life is both a wistful and deeply appreciated development.

My husband and I moved into our new house several months ago. Our visiting company and falling into routines and sharing a perfect and delicious meal together christened the space.

Our house has officially become a home.

I am grateful to these old friends who, by their presence, have proven the inherent value of hospitality and sharing our space I secretly longed for.

Their presence has diminished the anxiety I felt about my ability to pull it off. To be fair, they are also very forgiving of my shortcomings

More sharing and socializing is a ritual and pattern I am eager to establish in my life. It means more to me, I figure, as it has been absent and a distant goal in my life until only recently.

Beyond grateful for the opportunity. Time to get those housewarming party invitations out – stat.

A Month to Go(al)

In my personal calendar, this is an important milestone. One month until I hit the one year mark in publishing a daily blog post. A normal year is 365 days. I get to wrap up this accomplishment in 366 days being a leap year and all.

That’s just like me. Always taking off a little bit more than I can chew. And full confession, I will have hit my goal on March 13th. March 14th, 2023 is when I published my first post on this journey. So 367 days.

Like any destination I aim for, I certainly hope to get there. I wasn’t sure when I set out if I would. (I’m still not if I’m honest. A lot can change or go sideways in 30 days.) Like I said, I hope to get there.

I expect my posts over the next thirty days to be more reflective. More filled with figuring out what this exercise was all about. More filled with stock-taking. More winding up for the BIG FINISH. The false construct of a false deadline that is important to me and me alone.

What have I learned? The secret to life and living? Some aspects of what matters most in a lifetime are clearer to me.

The greatest learning may be that living life is much simpler than we conceive it to be in our heads. The basis are the basics. We deviate too far from them at our peril. The basics are essential to our survival.

I found this quote from Richard Feynman and it sums up an aspect of what I’ve learned and how I’ll shape my life moving forward. To keep moving forward seems to be the most consistent advice I’ve heard and read out of some of the world’s greatest minds.

For all of the deliberate obfuscation and mental gymnastics some people engage in to inflate their sense of importance, this advice is stupefying in its’ simplicity

Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.

Richard Feynman

By the way and by way of bringing up a non sequitur, speaking of love, today is Valentine’s Day.

A celebration of love they say.

From where I sit, it seems more like a celebration of chocolates and flowers and ballooning the bottom line of the companies that sell them

Not that I’m cynical.

I like chocolates and flowers as much as the next person.

Punctuating my looming period of deeper self-reflection, a sampling of chocolates can only assist the effort.

Critical Thinking

Writer/journalist Joan Didion said:

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” 

Me, too. I am coming to understand the value of writing in this way. Life and life events unfold around us willy-nilly every day that we wake up and engage with the planet. Every day is the herald of new experiences, events and, inevitably, change.

Writing gives me a platform from which to analyze what is happening in the world and corral events within logical boundaries. It is a form of intellectual sheepherding if thoughts were sheep.

It also keeps me honest. I often ask, “Is what I am writing today consistent with what I’ve written before? Is it a shift or alteration in my perception or belief system? Am I growing or regressing or stagnating?”

If we’re lucky, our daily analysis of what is going on in the world draws from multiple disciplines and experiences gathered during our own life stages. The fundamentals of a liberal arts education that includes economics, history, medicine, engineering, political science can enrich that analysis.

We don’t need to be experts or steeped in a particular discipline to apply its principles. It can be enough to simply be aware of the discipline and that certain principles may apply.

Take the recent Super Bowl, for example. That was a sociological and psychological phenomenon. It had the largest TV viewing audience since the 1969 moon landing.

Why? Okay, let’s apply those education principles.

The Super Bowl is a massive and increasingly worldwide cultural event. Attendance (in person or via TV screen) means belonging which is a widely acknowledged social and psychological need.

The Super Bowl spectacle demonstrates tribalism. “My team’s better than your team!” That is a higher level of “belonging” and reinforces the twin conceits of superiority and dominance over another group.

Whether that inflated sense of superiority is an actual need or not is debatable, of course. What isn’t debatable is that many people seek out and sign up for a cause they can get behind and take pride in. Whether that is a sports team or a charity or a church or a cause.

When “the cause” (or team or country or chess player) we support excels, we can feel vicariously excellent, too. We can congratulate ourselves on our good judgment and shrewd sense of discernment.

I have heard guys talk about sports (hockey or football come to mind) where you’d think that they were actually playing on the team and had something to do with its victory.

If we stand back and look at the phenomenon of sports hysteria and fandom critically, we can appreciate what a complete and complex construct these sports events are.

Much like religion, these events have been wholly invented by humans to serve as a distraction and opiate for the masses. I am not including money-motivated in here though that bears closer economic analysis.

You really have to admire humans for their ability to elevate humble sports competitions into the histrionic mega-events that they are today.

By comparison, humans had nothing to do with the creation and fundamental dictates of nature. Sure, humans dabble extensively to intervene and alter natural processes, but humans didn’t “invent” trees.

They didn’t build mountains. They discovered how to use them to their advantage. Science taught us that.

Nature also has inherent concrete laws. Try as we might to do otherwise, we are going to die. It is an inherent process in each human that science has not yet managed to stave off indefinitely.

Each day, I am aware I observe and explore events and issues through my own personal filters. I have biases and values that influence what I write. I have formal education which further influences what I think. I have professional training where objective facts are essential.

I suppose this mixed background bag is what makes my writing different and maybe distinct from other voices “out there.” I am learning where my thoughts are likely to take me, what issues grab my interest and, most important to me, why they do.

I have frequently said in this blog that I write for myself. Like Joan Didion said. It is as much an exercise in self-exploration as any kind of pontification that should be seen as gospel or objective truth. It is an expression of my truth as I see it in this mind and body at this particular juncture in world history and my personal history. Absolutely nothing more than that. A single voice.

And yet, if individual raindrops didn’t fall, rivers would not run, plants would not grow and the ocean would eventually dry up. Sure, other raindrops would step in to keep the water flowing and countless writers could easily take my place.

But in the daily doing of this writing thing, I learn more about myself and the world I live in. My life then becomes an example of living authentically in concert with my own motives and beliefs, if I but follow those internal dictates.

I don’t know about you, but for me that state of being is “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Getting to know one’s own heart and mind sufficiently to travel through life with maximum joy and minimum chaos is well worth it to me.

The lessons of history – globally and personally – have taught me that pursuing that approach works. It may not seem like much when compared to the great men and women and the course-altering achievements of history. But I’ll take it.

Peace is the prize.

Beautiful Hubbub

I have lived a quiet life in the main.

Living single and celibate during my extended healing phase, I came to love solitude. I loved being on my own. I loved the peace and quiet. I still do.

And yet, a visit with friends is expanding my perspective and experience.

There is a general hubbub afoot. It was really evident while watching the Super Bowl last night.

No riotous reaction to goals scored or lost. No jumping up to dance with Usher during his mesmerizing performance. Even the Kansas City Chiefs last minute overtime win generated only a muted reaction (full disclosure, they were mostly 49ers fans in the room).

But there was hubbub. Comments here and there. A living room full of people. Pizza coming out of the oven and into appreciative bellies. The sound of ice tumbling into glasses and darting out to the washroom.

Hubbub.

Unfamiliar in recollections of my recent adult experience. Pleasant in the extreme. A life goal and wish, in fact, that came with my dreams for the new house.

I pride myself on a certain disdain for televised sports. It is the last resort of armchair ex-athletes reliving their high school glory days. Or so I believed.

I’ll be darned if I didn’t get fully engaged int eh Super Bowl yesterday. Where my intention was to hit the hay after the halftime show, I ended up hanging in there.

I was becoming acquainted with some players and their strongest moves. I watched Taylor Swift and her friends cheering on Swift’s boyfriend Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

It didn’t take long before I was cheering him on, too. Even if I wasn’t fully sure of what moves it was that I was cheering for. Such is the contagion of passion and enthusiasm.

And all the while, the low-key hubbub of friends in the living room percolating quietly around me. Steady. Lovely.

I have a strong suspicion I will neither be so derogatory nor disinterested when Super Bowl comes around next year.

Not if friends are with me and Taylor Swift is involved.

I thoroughly enjoyed my reintroduction to the low-key hubbub of socializing with friends. 

It is now not outside the realm of consideration that I might entertain creating such low-key hubbub again in the near future. Even without the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl 2024

A high proportion of North Americans are glued to their TV sets tonight.

They have gathered to watch the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs battle it out for the highest honor doled out in the National Football League.

Tonight, the Super Bowl Champions will be crowned.

I am not saying I am not a red-blooded sports fan, like countless millions out there.

I’m just saying I don’t care how many baskets anyone gets.

Whither Writering

Where a frog flung into hot water will immediately fight to get itself out, a frog sitting in cold water that slowly gets hotter and hotter will not.

As the heat incrementally increases, the frog sits and the causation of its demise is its refusal (or sensory oblivion) to recognize the need to move and save itself.

I observe this phenomenon in myself and my peers as we evolve chronologically. Our conversations have changed. We talk more about physical irritations and limitations. We observe the younger generation with a mixture of confusion and awe.

Why are they doing what they are doing that way? Or, more frequently, why are they doing what they are doing?

There is a delightfully delusional phase of life we all go through that my friend Diane calls the “Masters of the Universe” phase. It is that prime of life period which can last for a decade or two when you feel the world is your oyster.

You and your peers are in charge of running the world. You are the decision-makers now. Your word IS the law (carefully backed up by precedent and legislation). Your priorities win out over the priorities of the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the malingerers, the elderly.

In short, you win out over any group that is not like you and yours.

I once harbored a belief that politicians were self-preserving and self-interested enough to work toward the public good. To make decisions that would benefit all of society and not just thin stripes of it or the members of their old fraternity.

I suppose that belief was painfully naive in hindsight. Although to be fair, Mr. Smith did go to Washington. So it turns out to be a funny thing about following the rules and acting in aid of the common good; it does actually benefit more people.

But combine that general sense of well-being with outrageous ambition and greed and pettiness and vengefulness and enough people start acting out that reality than that of Mr. Smith in Washington, well, the picture changes quite dramatically.

In fact, the picture begins to look a great deal like the times we are living in now. Like the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 20th century, change is apace. Or the dot.com boom of the late 20th century.

I was a career journalist. There were rules we followed to ensure our integrity was never opened to question. To ensure that the truth we shared was based on facts and not personal opinion. This reality has been badly shaken and altered in the past twenty years.

Journalist Clare Malone recently wrote a compelling New Yorker article about the seismic shift that mass media is, has and likely will continue to go through in the foreseeable future.

Malone reports on the high number of recent layoffs in the journalism game, how many publications and websites have folded in spite of storied and accomplished histories, (Buzzfeed News online and Sports Illustrated in print as examples) and speculates about the way forward in the mass media industry.

“Last April (2023), Jonah Peretti, one of BuzzFeed’s co-founders, shuttered BuzzFeed News, and published a memo about the way forward for his company and others like it. “The vast majority of people will increasingly want social media platforms to provide an escape where they can find entertainment, joy, and fun,” Peretti wrote. “This will drive a return to the editorially curated news homepage like HuffPost, Drudge, and CNN.com.” Direct traffic to sites with strong audiences and reputations would be the future.

As a former journalist, this is a cautiously optimistic possibility. I well remember the gold rush like fever that accompanied the dot.com economic boom.

That was based – as far as I could tell – on an elaborate game of smoke and mirrors played by tech savvy entrepreneurs with the able assistance of financially supportive businessmen fueled by FOMO (fear of missing out).

The dot.com boom was inevitable as far as I was concerned. The tsunami of websites and “online portals” being created were so much space litter as far as I was concerned.

Who was going to manage their content? Who was going to pay people to manage their content? What is the business model that was going to generate the income that would be needed to pay the content managers and run the site’s operations?

There was a whole lot of “Well, ya. I hadn’t fully thought that through,” coming back from the tech-savvy visionaries who weren’t grounded in the basics of business economics.

Maybe in journalism we might see the same thing. After a decade or two or more of histrionic, puerile, hair pulling and hate mongering on the internet, consumers will get thoroughly fed up with the negativity and “fake news.” I, for one, already am.

We should hope for a great culling of the vast weak and insubstantial players on the internet that disguise themselves as “authorities.” (Truth Social come to mind, anyone?)

It is high time to get rid of the self-interested who have used the internet as a playing field to pursue their own personal agendas and bend the facts to strictly suit their own narrative and bottom line.

What the guys trying to throw everyone into the boiling water don’t seem to realize is two things: a lot of people aren’t going to put themselves in a position to be boiled alive and 2) these visionaries with the lofty schemes actually NEED others to buy into and ultimately execute those lofty visions.

As aging actress Margo Channing announces in the face of a sea change she intends to create in the movie All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

And as a bit of gratuitous advice in the coming era of mass media upheaval, avoid sitting in any cold water filled pots – no matter how cool and inviting they might seem at first.

Friendship Revival

Friends happen.

So after months of disconnection from dear friends from away, I had a whole day of renewed friending. With old friends who are really more like family.

So restorative.

I learned again today it is vital to spend time with friends who have known you since you were little and who still love you.

These friends have seen me at my worst and have celebrated with me during my best times. And I with them when the tables were reversed.

Today I got to hear my dear friend Gerry regale me with stories of our wild and misspent youth on the rocky outcropping into the Atlantic Ocean known as the province of Newfoundland.

He reminded me of places we used to investigate as adolescent adventurers: Fort Amherst, Signal Hill, Fort Pepperell, Quidi Vidi Lake, The Battery and the Gut. Even the names sound reminiscent of another time and place, which, indeed, they were.

Newfoundland is celebrated for its hospitality and the warmth of its people and the general bonhomie that prevails there. Though not born among them, I am proud to be of them by a form of adoption they extend to tolerable “mainlanders.”

In Gerry’s now-muted Newfoundland accent and the laughs that emerged from the depths of his belly on our futile drive around today, we made more memories. I fully expect to be the butt of Gerry’s jokes in the retelling of Gerry’s stories up the road.

Back at home, best friend Diane and hubby Hank got to bond over their mutual concern for our whereabouts. We had texted that we were alive and well. But the new-fangled SIM card that was just installed in her phone wouldn’t play ball.

I miss these days for their infrequency. As we have gotten older and separated by time and distance, it is harder to stay connected.

Which is why refresher visits like this one are absolutely essential.

Friends – especially longterm friends – carry pieces of us around with them. We remember things together. We laugh at the same old jokes. We bathe in the comfort of old stories and updates on other old friends.

It is a profound comfort to have such friends in my life. Still.

With that, I am going to continue to enjoy them for the rest of the evening and for every day that they are here.

I feel very lucky and honored to have known both of them for so well and for so long. Definitely a family of choice.

This is the kind of friendship that money absolutely can’t buy.

And yet, I feel very rich.