The trouble with having all your music on your mobile is that you tend to create playlists.

Of course, the technology at our fingertips enables and promotes the freewheeling creation of a collection of songs that we wish to hear. We had to rely on the long-playing record or LP in the past.

An LP required us to listen to, say, side A all the way through, and then we would flip it over and listen to side B. 

There are no sides on a playlist, although you can shuffle the order just to add a little surprise to your listening pleasure.

But in listening to disjointed songs rather than Sides A and B, we sacrifice the one thing our playlists can provide.

Context.

Listening to With A Little Help From My Friends loses some of its power when listened to outside the continuity of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. A Day In A Life would merely be interesting outside the world view of Sgt. Pepper’s.

Imagine listening to Nights Of White Satin without reference to Days Of Future Passed?

The other thing that playlists and digital music in general also have taken from us is album art.

Their Satanic Majesties Request remains a great album even squeezed by the digitization of its songs, but what good is a picture of this album shrunken to unrecognizability without that little plastic plate that was inserted over the picture on the album that changes the images depending on how you hold the album,

Sadly, this no longer had been included on later distributions of the LP, but I have the original safely ensconced in a frame in my den.

The point is creating playlists, while enjoyable, is like taking your favorite verses from a poem or scenes from a movie and leaving the rest behind. 

So, this summer, I am once again going to create my summer playlist, but it will consist of albums that one day provided my summertime listening pleasure. (I will still listen to my old summer playlist consisting of singles as I never had albums for most of the entries.). 

Some of my selections may actually have been released before the summer in which I savored them, but that happens when you finally have the money to buy an album rather than a 45.

Of course, there will be many that were new releases the particular summer they caught my attention, but I never could be accused of being timely or ahead of the curve when it came to the arts. I did tend to catch up, though.

Here’s hoping you may think about your own summer album playlist.

In the fall of 1971, I took a course at St. John’s entitled Technology and Culture.

I never took a better course, either in grad school or law school.

It was a colloquium, which meant the class members took turns leading the discussion of the readings for that day.

There were a series of scholarly articles and books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Everything we read had to do with technology and the impact it has had on our culture.

Our professor began the class by stating that Americans’ response to technology has been both ambivalent and ambiguous. At the time, I don’t think I was alone in wondering what he meant and whether he was going to tell us.

He never did tell us but left it to us to discover.

One of the first books we read was Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.

This was published in 1964 and contained the hook phrase, “The medium is the message.”

Not wishing to explore McLuhan’s theory in total, I only want to point out one concept he popularised. That is the notion of the Global Village.

Basically, the world’s shrinking due to our technology in communications and travel would create a village atmosphere where we would know more about each other, thereby creating a world view for Earth’s inhabitants.

After an exhaustive discussion of this concept and the book in general, our professor summed up the thoughts expressed and asked, “Does it follow that because we can learn more about each other that we’ll actually like each other?”

Ambivalent and ambiguous indeed.

In 1971 (and indeed 1964), there was no internet, no personal computer, and no smartphone. The IBM 360 computer occupied an entire room in our data processing center in Lorrilard Corp, where I worked as a mail clerk.

The notion of a handheld computer was as futuristic a notion as a Dick Tracy wrist radio which later in the early 60s morphed into a wrist TV.

The only technology that was a daily experience for us was television and radio. Of course, there were movies which we frequented less often than these. In terms of the information, we relied on TV and radio news and the newspapers.

Despite political preferences for what newspaper you read, there was little concern with fake news either in print or electronic broadcast.

So, fast forward to the third decade of the twenty-first century ( almost typed “of the Rosary”), and it’s hard to rely on any of our technology.

Between spam emails and phone calls, and even texts, I spend as much time deleting and blocking as I do utilize my phone for its intended purpose.

Ambiguous and ambivalent still/

But of course, there is Wordle!

Before I joined Facebook, I was on Ning.

Like Facebook, I could share stories and pictures with the people I invited to my page; it never took off for me. I still have a Ning presence and sign in about as much as I now sign into Facebook. Which is to say, rarely.

I soon realized that many of my family and friends were already on Facebook, so I joined the club.

It was great. I communicated with family all over the country and even connected with cousins and friends in Ireland, England, and Germany.

When I posted an entry from my blog, I had readers in Asia, Europe, Australia, and Canada. In fact, one of my blogs was titled, They Read Me In Ukraine.

I wasn’t concerned with getting hacked or being sent fake news articles back then.

Facebook was still a friendly environment.

Then hatred and racism led me to limit who and what I allowed on my page.

Eventually, I would just give up, and while I still have a technical presence on Facebook, I rarely visit my page anymore.

The few times I go on Facebook, I visit a couple of family groups that we started a few years ago.

But the truth is I miss it.

Instead of being a benign form of global communication Facebook and the internet itself have become dangerous highways supporting hackers and those who would steal our identity and money. It seems every week a new scam appears on our screens.

When I was at universities that were implementing new information systems, I used to say that this would be known as the dark days of information technology. Back in the late 90s, as we struggled to prepare against Y2K, these cumbersome new systems were a challenge to set up and nearly impossible to retrieve valuable data once they were online.

Now we no longer just worry about the complexity of systems but more so about their vulnerability. They represent a portal not only to legitimate users but to scammers and cheaters, and thieves, not to mention terrorists.

I wish I could just go back to when I was gleefully checking Facebook on my phone twenty or so times a day to see if any of my FB friends were out there. It was an instantaneous and cheap form of global communication.

Facebook did, in fact, create the Global Village envisioned by Marshall McLuhan.

Unfortunately, many creeps were inhabiting our village.

True Seinfeld fanatics are well familiar with the foibles of the Mohel.

Perhaps eccentricities would be a more accurate description than foibles? In any event, one of my favorite Seinfeld scenes is when Elaine has the temerity to place her wine glass precipitously close to the edge of a coffee table.

This prompts the Mohel to go into a rant about broken glass burrowing deep into the pile of the carpet only to rise up and kill someone months later.

I confess that I possess this same paranoia and frequently lecture any of my family members who dare to test gravity and my patience by placing any object, a glass, a phone an iPad. It doesn’t matter but I react by getting out of my chair (which often isn’t easy and, in truth, may. be more dangerous to me than a misplaced glass.) to rescue the phone, iPad or whatever before it crashes down to Earth.

When things are on the edge, so am I.

Of course, I am often guilty of playing free and loose with phones, iPads and the occasional glass of beer and have even gone over the edge at times. Nothing has crashed down but there have been times when my phone has pierced the seal of the coffee table edge and a portion of it was hanging freely in space with no visible means of support save the remaining part of the phone safely ensconced on the table.

Though no harm occurred to my phone, my psyche was frazzled for a moment and for the rest of the day, I was indeed…

Living On The Edge.

So far, 2022 has not inspired me to write.

So far, 2022 is indistinguishable from 2021, which was, in turn, indistinguishable from 2020.

I am tempted, therefore, to recycle some of my gems from the two preceding years. Ok, so you might say I didn’t really have too many gems worthy of recycling from the recent past.

That never stopped me before.

Throwing caution to the wind, I will try to be original this morning and write something new.

The NFL’s regular season ended last week, though if you are a New York fan, as I am, the season ended shortly after Labor Day.

Today begins Wild Card Weekend, which holds absolutely no interest for me. By now, I am usually so engrossed in counting the days to Pitchers and Catchers reporting to Spring Training. This year offers no such release from the grab of the NFL as millionaires and billionaires are pissing each other off rather than coming to an agreement as to cut the pie and divvy out the slices consisting of billions of fan-paid dollars.

So, I will be watching football today.

I will also be ranting (to myself in the loneliness of my Florida den while my children watch elsewhere.) about how gamblers have infiltrated the NFL (and every professional sport), which, ironically, makes me think that the MLB Players Association is correct. They should get every dollar they can from the money-grubbing owners who profit from the players’ bodies. There’s a word for that that I just can’t call to mind.

And so the rant begins.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Founding Fathers.

We used to refer to the Constitution as a Bundle Of Compromises.

The most notable (and despicable) was the three-fifths compromise.

You see, the slave states wanted to count the slaves as residents to increase their representation in the House of Representatives. The free states didn’t want to count the slaves towards determining the number of representatives. Therefore, only three-fifths of a state’s slave population was factored into the representation formula.

But there was an even more critical compromise that has screwed us over for years. Small states, or states with a limited population, didn’t want to get dictated to by the bigger states. Therefore, the upper house AKA, the Senate, has equal representation consisting of two Senators from every state.

That is why Kentucky, West Virginia, and other states that have opted to buy into disinformation, anti-intellectualism, anti-Science can muck up the works preventing any serious progress.

Still, compromise is often the only remedy to stagnation.

But we may need help in the form of inspiration from Kentucky’s famous son, Henry Clay, AKA, The Great Compromiser.

Clay showed that compromise was not rocket science and that taking two steps forward and one step back is better than standing still.

Ah well, that was another century and another country.

Today is January 6th.

As Catholic kids growing up in the Broxn and attending Blessed Sacrament Catholic School, it was always referred to as the Feast of The Epiphany. It was sometimes called Little Christmas as a recognition of the Three Wisemen bringing gifts to the infant Jesus.

I never understood what that had to do with an Epiphany.

Later, I understood it to mean that on this day Magi or Three Kins recognised the manifestatation of Jesus being God and the Messiah.

The ultimate AHA moment.

We now speak of epiphanies as revelations of another sort.

I had an epiphany when I was finishing my second year in college that I had to read books and attend class. Epiphanies aren’t always timely.

My second epiphany just occurred as I was typing this post.

I was about to write about the insurection of last year and the threat to American Democracy but I deleted everything I wrote.

You don’t need me to remind you what happened.

You don’t need me to suggest a viewpoint that might differ with yours.

I had another AHA moment and simly deleted my polemic as a fruitless endeavor to prove a point.

The point is already there for the viewing so do with it as you will.

We are at the peak of the nostalgia season.

We had our rendezvous with The Ghosts Of Christmas Past and will soon embark on our year-end Auld Lang Syne, reviewing where we’ve been and wondering where the new year will take us.

It’s incredible to think that 2021 is ending much as 2020 began.

Here we were not long before Thanksgiving, thinking that this holiday season would be a joyous return to a more familiar Christmas where our biggest challenge was deciding what to give the kids, what to give your spouse, and how many other gifts will you need.

Even then, when Covid was still in our rearview mirrors, we all knew Amazon was going to make our decisions easier than traipsing through a mall.

But then, all of a sudden, as the night before Christmas drew near, who should appear but another Greek variant to spread fear in lieu of cheer.

Vaccinated and boosted, we, nonetheless, altered our plans as friends and family members developed symptoms and when a positive attitude had to be avoided at all costs.

Oh Holy Night surrendered to Omicron.

This is where I wax nostalgic.

I want to go back.

I want to go back to Christmas 1960.

We didn’t have Amazon, but we did have Macy’s in Parkchester.

We didn’t have a color TV or YouTube, but we saw all the Christmas Specials that one day would be classics.

I got a set of Lionel Trains.

I got a Kodak Fiesta camera with a built-in flash and a roll of black and white film.

Bing sang White Christmas.

Johnny Mathis sang Sleigh Ride.

Nat sang The Christmas Song.

They were all played on our HiFi (Who had a stereo in 1960?)

Yeah, I was ten, and I remember what I want to remember, which means I probably am filtering out many unpleasant things. But, there is one thing to be sure, it was a simpler time where our only threat was dealt with by putting our head under our desk when the siren wailed as we practiced for H Bombs hitting The Bronx.

It’s easy wanting to turn the clock back to a simpler time, but the reality is we really don’t want to.

Reality is only a state of mind that we choose to ignore. We let other people tell us how bad things are even when they don’t know we exist. We were all inconvenienced by this new variant, and I pray that it remains only an inconvenience for us all.

When I think about Going Back, I always try to remember that the medicine of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries has enabled me to remain to ponder the joys and mysteries of life and that my successful remission should not be wasted by any negativity that gets flung my way.

So, when the ball falls ushering in 2022, I will remain optimistic about the future even while I honor the past.

I’ll be watching the Honeymooners!

I love Fridays.

I always had.

Never have I ever wished that the work week or school week had even one more day to it.
I always felt that by Friday, I had had enough.

Thank God it’s Friday, indeed!

But now that I have been retired a few years, you would think that the mystique and aura of Friday would have long dissipated. In fact, the allure of Friday remains as strong as when I was a student or employee.

I still love Fridays.

When I first worked in the mailroom, Fridays (at least every other Friday) were also a payday. The guys in the mailroom would celebrate our good if not large fortune by going out to eat in a nearby Blarney Stone. To the uninitiated, Blarney Stones were bars that also served lunch, primarily consisting of roast beef or corned beef sandwiches served with a pickle and a pint.

Then, years later, when I was a teacher at St Vito’s, the faculty would celebrate Fridays by going out for an early dinner or just an afternoon cocktail at the nearby Ground Round, which was like an Applebees. Hamburgers, beer, and free peanuts. It also had one of the early big-screen TVs where we watched General Hospital and The Edge Of Night.

Soaps always went better with beer and peanuts.

It wasn’t the alcohol that provided our joy; it was the elation of Fridays on its own.
You would think we were prisoners of war getting released for the weekend.

As time went on, Fridays made up for the angst of Sundays.

If you have to go to work on Monday, you know what I am writing about.
Fridays are great. Saturdays are even better because you can sleep in, or even if you get up early, you can lounge about and have a second or third cup of coffee without worrying about traffic or a late train.

But then Sunday comes, and you can still sleep in and maybe even watch a game or two depending on the season, but there is a cloud on the horizon.

It is the Ed Sullivan factor.

For those of you old enough to remember, you may have experienced the sudden realization while watching Ed talk to Topo Gigio that you had homework due tomorrow yet to be completed.

I still get a chill just thinking about it.

I guess being retired has taken this Sunday malaise and has left me only with another New York Jet loss to lament.

Still, Happy Friday Everyone!

I left New York nearly five years ago. The experience of leaving New York has taught me one thing. You can leave New York, but New York never, ever really leaves you.

It was like that for The Bronx as well.

I left The Bronx for Flushing when Eileen and I were first married. Then we moved to New Rochelle and on to East Quogue on the east end of Long Island.

All through the last forty-five years, when I have lived elsewhere, I considered myself a Bronx Boy. The Bronx was where I grew up, and I think many people share the sentiment regarding the home of their formative years.

I continue to feel that way, and I may live in Florida but remain a New Yorker and a Bronx Boy.

Every year I reconstruct and reconfigure my Lionel train layout.

Back in East Quogue, it was easier to decide how to do this. I would have three 4×8 sheets of plywood on each of which a different diorama would be erected.

One would be dedicated to classical Lionel postwar accessories. A log loader; several types of coal loaders; operating bridges; and other Lionel operating switches and lights. The trains operated on this layout would be classic postwar items, including Santafe and New York Central diesels from 1950.

A second would consist of more recent Lionel creations, including a nuclear power plant, and would have trains produced in this century.

The third layout was my favorite.

It was my Ode To New York.

From Yankee Stadium to the South Ferry with stops at the Automat and Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center and the Times Building for New Year’s Eve, as well as the Empire State Building and the Flat Iron Building, this layout was a sight to behold.

The only thing missing was the Subway.

Oh, wait! We had two subways represented/

The IRT 6 train and the BMT Coney Island Train.

On this layout, The Bronx was up, and the Battery Down and the people did ride in a hole in the ground.

It was glorious.

So, here I am in Florida with only one board, a 5×9, on which to create my Lionel universe. In recent iterations, I have built layouts utilizing bridges and accessories. It has been a long time since NYC was represented.

Well, this year is going to be different.

Yankee Stadium will have a subway encircling it, albeit the 6 train and not the 4.

The rest of my New York Skyline will be south of the Stadium, and the trains servicing the city will be the traditional New York Central and New Haven Lines.

I have even created an appropriate playlist.

Of course, Sinatra will be singing New York, New York

Billy Joel will be enchanting us with A New York State Of Mind.

And last but not least, Sinatra and Gene Kelly will be singing New York New York’s a Helluva Town.

I may be living in Florida, but my toys tell me I am still a New Yorker.

I have a daily subscription to the New York Times.

It’s the print version, but I also have digital access.

Newspapers aren’t cheap today, and Reading All The News That’s Fit To Print is pretty expensive, especially when I remember getting it for a buck not too long ago, and I thought that was expensive.

I get the print version because I do the crossword every day, and doing it on a computer is just not the same as doing it on page three of the Arts section and making a colossal mess of it all because I do it in ink.

Hubris.

My daily routine had been to read the main section first. The first page and then the oped depending on who is featured and then follow up on some of the lead stories. I would peruse the special daily section, sports on Monday, science on Tuesday, etc., etc., etc. Then I would turn to the Arts, read what I thought was interesting, and then start the puzzle.

However, I no longer follow this routine.

I go right for the puzzle.

It’s gotten so that reading the newspaper offers the same dread and angst as provided by cable news. The guy or gal (can I still use gal, or am I showing my misogyny?) who coined the phrase, “No news is good news,” really hit the nail on the head if I can resort to an idiom.

I read no news.

I watch no news.

I listen to no news.

The mantra of a happy and healthy mind.

I do resort to Twitter but only to learn about what is going on with the Yankees.

I have all but given up on Facebook, which is a shame because it was so nice to keep in touch with friends and family and to re-connect with friends long lost but not forgotten. I still check in once a week or so, but I don’t LIKE anything and never read anything other than a note from family or friends.

There has been much talk about getting off the grid and giving your phone a rest from the internet and social media. I have added newspapers and news shows to the list.

Try it for a while. Maybe even a day. I confess that I will check in on the odd morning or late night only to learn that nothing new has transpired since my last visit. Stories are churned up and subject to intense scrutiny and review, and after a week’s absence,  there was nothing more to be learned.

Speculation and opinion have replaced news.

If I want to get myself worked up and filled with angst, all I have to do is spend a few more seconds in front of the mirror as I shave and brush my teeth. The state of my hair has become a metaphor for the state of the union.

It’s unruly.

It’s a reminder of the devolution of my physical being.

It’s just another reason to wear a mask.

Well, have a great weekend and watch Ted Lasso instead of the news.
Ted Lasso is another story coming soon.