Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Category: Commentary

• The Week Before

  Posted at 3:27 am by kayewer, on November 25, 2013

  Everything seems to be in chaos the week before Thanksgiving. I was in New York City yesterday, where the decorations are going up and some stores are playing the usual holiday songs, but nobody seems ready to accept the fact that the most hectic shopping season is about to descend. It certainly was cold enough to be late November.

  Along with the mass of humanity in Times Square (among whom I also count the dozens of costumed characters struggling to stay warm to get their pictures taken with their throngs of fans), I was freezing in spite of my outerwear choices. What warmed the spirit were the lights on Broadway, the heat emanating from the big box attractions, and passing by the occasional chestnut cart.

  I didn’t see Rockefeller Center this trip; I intend to wait until I go back later on for that. I’m sure they’re putting the tree together and priming the various performers and support teams for the upcoming holiday hoopla. The spirit hasn’t taken hold of everybody yet; I had a disinterested associate on my visit to McDonald’s for dinner, who didn’t even crack a grin when I made a light joke about an extra dollar bill which got stuck to its wallet mates. What saved the encounter was the fact that, after years of not making shakes a part of my meals, I got a chocolate shake and found they offer whipped cream and a cherry on top. That’s a new one for me. Wendy’s doesn’t do that, and I haven’t had one of their beverages for a while either.

  Maybe it’s because of the difficulties associated with wishing people a good holiday that makes it hard to get into the mood for the rest of the year. Over the past decade or so, lots of information has come out about what our holidays mean: the truths, the lies and the controversy about all of it. I won’t go there this time, but I don’t think that all the despressing factoids about the holiday season should get in the way of people being nice to each other. We still have a few days until the start of the shopping and general mayhem of the season gets started. Let’s decompress now and gird our loins, as it were, and not forget that, good or bad, time will tick on and we will look behind this time of year all to soon in the future. Enjoy what is good about it now.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments

• NaNoWriMo Hooks Me Again

  Posted at 1:26 am by kayewer, on November 3, 2013

  Every year I have tried to participate in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Every year something has blocked my efforts. Not this year.

  The object is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, using the month of November as the time clock. Writing begins on the first and ends on the last day of the month at 11:59 PM. Somebody wrote a column noting in error that the event required only 30,000 words. Some veterans would probably consider that child’s play, but for writers like me who work on the fly with no home computer (it’s a long story: longer than 50,000 words), writing at all is a privilege fought for and agonized over at the same time. It does force a writer to focus on getting time to write, though the tradeoff can be pages of garbled snippets of mis-matched ideas. Fortunately participants are encouraged to edit the results in the spring.

  So far I have managed to nearly get the required 1,666 words per day down in my difficult Microsoft Word Windows 8 environment, with few typos but lots of dangling idea threads. If I had to pause to structure, nothing would go on the page. I have about 200 left to do today, and I will get them done after I tell you I’m doing so. Bye for now.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged NaNoWriMo, Windows 8

• The Pen is Mightier Than the IPad?

  Posted at 2:31 am by kayewer, on March 18, 2012

  eBay has a new commericial in which execs at a board meeting pick on a fellow who breaks out a paper pad and pen while they all have electronic devices.  The others make references to his being in some sort of pre-IPad stone age and, therefore, not hip.  He proceeds to log onto eBay during their chatter, and he quickly buys a device while his pen then leaks an inky deposit in his shirt pocket.  My opinion is that the pen was crying.

  I, too, had a few words said to me for using pad and pen at a meeting at work recently.  I’m a writer, though, and they work better for me than using a laptop.  Besides, most of the people at the meeting had e-pads and Blackberrys, none of which I had either.  Thirdly, I used a pad in a portfolio which was a present from one of my superiors.  I certainly wasn’t going to pitch it just because we’re in the portable gizmo age.

  How superficial and wasteful we are in this electronic age.  With all due respect to the industry and eBay, who are all out to keep their own families eating three square meals a day after all, it seems there is no end to one-upmanship.  Folks buy an Apple product in November for $500, $600 or more, then chuck it for the next one in March.  The waste products from these things, such as mercury,  go to chemical cesspools in places like India after poor wretches canibalize and rip apart the workings of discarded electronic products (if the article on “60 Minutes” rings true).  We don’t seem to care that we discard so much cyber junk just because a new fair weather friend has come along.

  What is wrong with pen and paper?  Why is the art of penmanship condemned to die?  Is it because we want to be lazy, or because we’re so worried that other people will think less of us if we don’t follow the trend?  It reminds me of stories of products which were useless but everybody had to have, like the Pet Rock.  Remember those?  Think about it:  we paid money for a rock in a box!

  This “cost of WOW” really disturbs me, because we Americans tend to spend a lot of money for little reward.  Is the cost of some stranger’s approval an annual replenishment of a $700 device?  Is social standing valued by jacked up prices on materialistic junk?  No, and I’ll say that to the end.

  In the “Dune” series of books by Frank Herbert, mankind became apathetic with the advantages of electronics, and a few smart people formed alliances with machines to subjugate the dumb public until they rebelled and took back their ability to think beyond the “Wow” factor of convenient devices.  I hope that doesn’t happen in our or our children’s lifetimes.  I’d rather be able to write in cursive with my own hand on something that can be recycled, like paper from a non-electronic tree.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments

• Theatre Woes

  Posted at 3:17 am by kayewer, on November 20, 2011

  Why are movie theatres becoming auditorium versions of our own cable dominated living rooms?

  Yesterday I went to see Breaking Dawn Part 1, the first half of the split Twilight fourth book movie adaptation (don’t worry:  no spoilers herein).  The movie was fifteen minutes late in starting:  the rest of the time was taken up by an onslaught of features that amounted to nothing.

  First we were subjected to cinematic-centralized programming that was designed to hold the interest of patrons who arrived early for good seats.  The portion I saw was a behind-the-scenes look into an upcoming movie, the title of which eludes me.  A quick segment mentioned the latest stuff available on eBay.  I don’t shop on eBay, so I busied myself with the theatre’s free literature, which I wisely picked up before entering the coliseum that is the latest movie house layout.

  After the usual warnings to leave our stockpile of toted-in devices turned off for the feature, an advertisement for Coke and a polar bear saving campaign came next, even though a blurb assured us that our feature presentation would begin momentarily (it turned out to be a very long moment).  Since I do indulge in Coke products, I’ll probably save a polar bear now that I know about the program.  Score one for the marketers.

  Next came the fire department mandated blurb about how to locate exits in the theatre.  Each is marked with a red “Exit” sign, and we learned where to find three of them, one by one.

  Next came some quick logo time for the people who bring high-definition theatre experiences into our lives.  One was called Cinedigm, which is apparently a digital camera system company.  I don’t know why we need to know that, but at least the name stuck with me.

  As to the ten or so (maybe 20) movie trailers, none of them caught my eye except for, maybe, the new Muppets movie (who couldn’t like them?)  Sure, call me strange, but I didn’t feel compelled to see any of the other movies plugged while I was held captive in my seat.  There was sci-fi and adventure and horror, all rated for “appropriate audiences” by the ever-vigilant MPAA.  By the way, the color of the screen on any MPAA rated trailer means the content has been planned and edited for the viewing audience.  If you’re a curious movie fan, you can find more at  http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/the-color-of-the-background-preceding-movie-trailers-actually-means-something/, so nothing was shown that would freak out Twilight fans or their parents.  Unfortunately they also didn’t impress anybody.

  Maybe I was bound to have issues about this movie-going experience because, having read the Twilight books, I knew, in terms of the film’s content, what I was going to see.  I didn’t know how complicated it would be just to get to the point where I would actually see the 117 minute movie.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary, Theatre/Movies/Entertainment | 0 Comments | Tagged breaking dawn part 1, movie previews, trailers, twilight

• Off the Hook

  Posted at 3:04 am by kayewer, on October 23, 2011

  Sometimes people have hobbies just because they like them, no matter how they perform at them.  If you ever knew somebody who played lousy golf or burned their way through the best-selling cookbook, they are folks who have those kinds of hobbies.  I’m one, too.

  I like to crochet, but I’m not very good at it.

  Back in my younger years, I did manage to produce a tote bag, a white Easter bunny and a hat.  They are the only things I was able to make to size and that I could use.  I tried knitting, but it’s much less forgiving (ask anybody who has dropped a stitch, but wait until the headache medicine has kicked in).  At least with crocheting, when you make a mistake, you can reverse the work by undoing all the stitches and try again.  Once in a while I have to go back two rows to fix a mistake, but at least it can be done.

  Crocheting anything to size depends on gauge (pronounced “gayj”), in which you are usually instructed to do a test square using the yarn and stitches in the instructions; once you have completed a square, you must count the stitches per inch and make sure they match the guidelines in your pattern.  If your square is too small or large, you should use a larger or smaller crochet hook to fix the problem.  This means that if your stitches are chronically off, you must have a complete set of hooks to make sure you have one which will produce the desired result.

  My problem is that I am often using a large hook to begin with, so if I have to go up a size with my hook, I sometimes have to give up on the project unless I want to invent a bigger hook by carving it out of redwood with a chainsaw.

  So I usually stick with things like throws and afghans.  Sure the patterns call for gauge, but who is going to measure the number of stitches in an inch when they’re freezing cold and just want something to warm them up?

  Besides, afghans don’t tend to rely on complicated stitches–with names  like the double-loopy-half-twist popcorn stitch–which involve directions similar to square dance calls.  If you can master one stitch and repeat it in a row 60 or 70 times for about five hours, you’ve got a completed project.

  That’s how you nip some of these frustrating hobbies in the skein.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged crochet, guage

• A Few Kudos for Andy Rooney

  Posted at 2:01 am by kayewer, on October 2, 2011

  That curmudgeonly champion of commentary, Andy Rooney, gives his last regular segment on the CBS network news program 60 Minutes on October 2nd.  But old commentators never really retire, do they?  The right to voice an opinion is as old as the soapbox on which one stands to do it, and older.

  It seems that people like to hear commentary from other people because, whether it’s the same as or different from our own, their ideas may have something unique that will expand our own knowledge.  If not, it may confirm something we already know (like the other person’s idea isn’t good at all).  Either way, the experience can be enlightening.

  Shows like 60 Minutes entertain and inform, much like newspapers, electronic media and protest gatherings (but the latter isn’t always as safe, as they are prone to getting a bit out of hand).  The closing segment has become a staple of news programs, and nobody did it better:  Andy Rooney made it enjoyable to laugh at ourselves and occasionally get mad about things that just don’t seem right.  He took the time to examine everyday things like kitchen tools (in a kitchen drawer cleaning, he found he owned more than one nutcracker and couldn’t figure out why, since nobody in his family tends to crack nuts), abnormal things like wars, the complexity of our language (if he ever reads this, I hope I got it right) and the simplicity of life in its stripped-down essence.

  Like most of us, he has made a blooper or two, getting himself sidelined from the show on one infamous occasion because he referred to something that CBS feared would inflame emotions among some viewers.  Luckily God forgives our human flaws, and CBS did as well (that and sagging ratings in protest).

  I didn’t know that Mr. Rooney’s original segment on 60 Minutes was a bi-weekly time slot shared with another called “Point/Counterpoint.”  I didn’t watch the show as much back in the 1970s (it just didn’t seem like a show for me).  Now I finally get the full thrust of the NBC  Saturday Night Live joke about CBS’s “dueling commentator” concept that was ultimately taken off the air so that Rooney could chime in every week all by himself.  He became a part of the ritual of the show; folks who would skip an entire program if they were too late to tune it in would jump aboard in the last minutes to hear what Andy had to say.  He never disappointed.

  Of course, blogs like mine are an offshoot of news commentary and that simple little soapbox.  I try to be interesting and hope readers are fulfilled with what I have to say.  Sure I’ve watched and taken mental notes on how Andy Rooney does it.  Thank goodness he has books on the market as well, now that he is semi-retired, so his words will always be around.  CBS says the door is always open if he wants to add his two cents sometime in the future.  I hope he has a few good two-centers left in him and that we haven’t seen the last of him.  He is a gem of a guy.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged 60 minutes, Andy Rooney

• Motivate-Shun

  Posted at 2:08 am by kayewer, on September 25, 2011

  Some people diet successfully with a goal in mind.  I guess I’m not one of them.

  I have an event coming up in November, for which I figured I could possibly lose a few pounds.  It should be simple; when you eat a lot, you gain, so eat less and lose.  40 days into my motivational dieting and not a pound has come off.

  This means that, in an office full of bad foods, I avoided them and didn’t lose.  Extra trips to stores to have a reason to walk more didn’t help.  Filling myself with salads and no dressing didn’t help.  Switching from 2% to 1% milk didn’t help.

  Taking sodas (with their baggage of high fructose corn syrup and strange portion size issues) completely out of my diet didn’t help, either.  In fact, I tried to come up with a drink of my own, consisting of club soda with a splash of lemon and lime juices which I called Urp Number 7 (because it slightly resembles its real-life counterpart, it does bubble, and it took seven tries to get the recipe right).  This concoction was designed to be an accessory to the nearly 40 ounces of water and hot tea I drink daily at the office to stay hydrated.  All it did was send me on more bathroom breaks.

  The cafeteria at work has nice salads, so I tried a plate of greens with just spinach, lettuce, green pepper, mushrooms and about a tablespoon of fat-free vinaigrette.  The bottomless stomach didn’t even register a hint of satisfaction.

  In fact, I’ve gotten hungrier because of the deprivation.  The other day I treated myself to a plain donut at the office; it tasted heavenly.  When the office has had donuts six times since I started this program, I think I scored a B for only succumbing once.

  During the program, I took the time to look at portion sizes of everything, and it doesn’t seem right that food labels aren’t true to packaging.  Why can’t I have eight ounces of a beverage like iced tea for 100 calories, instead of wasting the other 150 on a larger bottle that I don’t intend to drink?  Needless to say, bottled tea did not go on my diet shopping list.

  Ice cream is off the list, too, but if one were to try portion control it is a son of a gun.  A portion size is really little more than a mouthful, so most of us are having a dish or cone which is at least ten times what one should eat.  And some folks eat ice cream every day.  I don’t.  Still, the pounds stubbornly cling and mock my attempts at success.

  So I’ll go to the event weighing the same, but packed into a nice, strangling control garment.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged dieting, weight loss goal

• Bullying Pulpit Part II

  Posted at 2:17 am by kayewer, on September 18, 2011

  October is National Bullying Awareness Month.  I don’t know why it wasn’t pushed up to September, when school starts, but it’s good to have a month each year devoted to a perpetual and misunderstood problem.

  I have noticed a trend among televised anti-bullying media.  The articles start with a profile of how much bullying is going on in schools (estimates are that 15-25% of students are bullied), then a parent of a victim (living or dead by suicide) speaks up about stopping the madness, then the piece closes with a blurb about a forum or other event trying to target local bullying.

  It’s a step in the right direction.  Back in pre-segregation times, or in some current religious cultures, nobody has held a forum to stop racial violence or stood up against religious-based spousal abuse with the same degree of dedication.  Nobody seems to look at film footage of crowds being pummelled by spray from fire hoses and call it bullying, but it was.  And it was perpetrated by adults, openly, while other adults watched.  In many cultures open forum bullying isn’t even blinked at.  Maybe that’s why we can’t stop it in schools:  we expect our children to grow into the adult culture we insist upon.

  Deep inside us, there is an iota of brain matter that says it is okay to forcibly discomfort other people mentally or physically to align them with our own ideals.  It starts in school when all students–regardless of problems such as income, family values or learning roadblocks like dyslexia or ADD–are held to a conformity that dictates every aspect of life.  For instance, most schools claim they have no dress code, yet bullying targets visual perceptions of fashion conformity (just try talking your did into not buying those overpriced jeans). When lesson time comes, teachers who rely on lecture-based lessons may lose the attention of students who process visual aids more effectively.

  Maybe instead of charter schools concentrating solely on subject specific learning goals, they should concentrate on the education of a population based on their ability to learn.  A school that allows visual aid based learning for students who don’t process lectures well might help.  Schools might also consider a dress code that may not require uniforms, but would focus on specific clothing items which could be afforded by all students and would not cause distractions like the student who comes to class in big-money fashion while another wears more cost-conscious garb.

  We should also continue the trend toward tolerance.  Once we have united our human race, we can start dealing with other problems more effectively without concentrating on differences that really don’t matter, such as religion, color, choice of pizza toppings or what cell phone upgrade you’re using.

  And no, this topic is not exhausted yet.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 1 Comment | Tagged bullies, bullying

• From Pillar to Post Office

  Posted at 2:42 am by kayewer, on September 11, 2011

  The post offices are in trouble because people aren’t writing letters as much as they used to.  I’m guilty of that crime just by posting this online.  The senior management as the postal service is talking about discontinuing Saturday mail delivery and cutting jobs to stave off default on their financial obligations.

  Sure, the computer age is partially to blame, because email is easy to type, quick to deliver and doesn’t require paper, a writing implement or a 44 cent stamp.  On the other hand, these virtues are in themselves sins that are negatively affecting our proper use of the English language.

  I do have issues with the electronic age that I don’t have with so-called “snail mail.”  For example, typing gives you many more opportunities to make mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar.  I pity those who rely heavily on “spell check” or other online grammar devices.  I groan and right-click my way through many a warning that my computer offers, accusing me of writing “run-on” sentences.  I plow through those squiggly lines at about 65 words per minute (without my first cup of tea).

  With handwriting, one must sit and take time to craft characters and periods and commas, so one must also stop to think about sentence structure.  I don’t think many people hand scribe “LOL” on a piece of stationery.

  I can’t say that any script font in all Microsoft Land can beat good penmanship, with a real pen and blue or black ink.  In fact, after suffering the ignorance of elementary school teachers who bowed out of the responsibility of teaching good penmanship, I took the time to hone my script myself and I’ll be darned if I’ll let that skill go just because I use a keyboard every work day.  I still write in journals, hand write greeting cards and envelopes and enjoy using those little sticky notes to jot down notes to myself.  Even the little one-inch variety can be fun to use.

  We could ask some of our elders about the good old days when mail delivery was twice daily during the holidays, or when one could take a discount on stamps if they inserted the flap on the envelope without sealing it (don’t ask me why that made a difference, but it did).

  Letters have always been the tangible evidence of life lived.  Years ago I had the privilege of seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s notes in New York, up close.  He wrote copiously, sometimes in backwards mirror code, sometimes in circular print and always in Italian.  I took the time to look at the ancient writing set to parchment so long ago, and marvelled at how fresh it looked under glass, just inches from my eyes.  The ages between us didn’t seem to matter.  When will that be said of an email?  In fact, which of these electronic blips in a machine’s memory will outlive us?

  There is something about sitting down and writing a letter that slows down time, relieves stress and grounds us in the world that is really simple but for our own machinations that surge us forward with time-saving on the mind.  The pen is really mightier than Microsoft Word when it comes to reminding ourselves that some old things like the post office are still relevant and need to be preserved.

  (P.S.  Back on 9/11 I was the first person on a message board to post about the events in New York and Washington.  The post disappeared with the message board.  If it had been a piece of mail, it would still be around today.)

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged post office trouble, snail mail, us postal service, usps

• Bullying Pulpit

  Posted at 2:30 am by kayewer, on September 4, 2011

  Every time the subject of bullying comes up, in my mind come two questions.  First, do bullies remember being bullies?  Second, do they remember who they bullied?

  In New Jersey, a Bill of Rights focused on bullying was signed by Governor Christie.  It is designed to make school students and faculty aware of their responsibilities to prevent harassment, intimidation and bullying.  It aims to form committees, involve law enforcement, and encourage active participation to stop negative behaviors before they get out of control.

  Though I’m a bullying survivor, nobody ever asks me for my opinion, because it’s been awhile since I dreaded the possibility that I would set foot inside my school and find myself on the receiving end of an attack.  Once school is out, nobody remembers or cares.  The end of school is like the end of war:  whatever happened, folks would rather forget about it and move on.  But servicemen come back from war with horrors etched into their souls, and emotional scars, regardless of origin, don’t just go away.

  I can tell you from experience that, somewhere in the list of causes of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), there should be a section devoted to being a victim of bullying and the lingering emotional pain it can cause.

  Harassment, intimidation and bullying are all steps on the ladder of racism, ethnic cleansing and outright war, in that they attack the existence of humanity on an individual as well as a group level.  Even though we are moving toward a global understanding and tolerance model, we still have not gained enough common sense to realize that no single-minded population exists without some outliers on either side of what is considered the norm.  We tend to think of the differences between our own social groups with such stubborn prejudice that it would be just as easy to wage a war between coffee and tea drinkers as it would be to put a religion against another just because one does this and the other that.

  Once I saw a news story on television about the symmetry of the human face.  There actually isn’t any.  If one were to take one side of their face and duplicate it for the other side, the resulting face would be astonishingly different.  That’s because life itself has no set of features, no symmetry or perfection.  Groups form because they share common bonds, but not all of the bonds are the same.  Sadly, if somebody has a flaw that the others don’t like, they will reject that individual in spite of all they have in common.  Bullying is just a part of that sad journey toward rejection rather than acceptance.

  Besides, after school has ended and we have all gone off to live our lives, I don’t think anybody has had somebody say to them, “Congratulations on telling So-and-so how (insert putdown here) they were.  That shows you really are a person of character.”

  I hear the Bullying Bill of Rights is some 16 pages long.  I don’t think it will help, either.  Words and threats are the bully’s weapons in the first place.  It is an appeal to the soul that is needed.  Bullying damages souls on both sides.  That is an argument for another time, but it does need examining before bullying can truly be stopped.

  —To Be Continued.

  Share this:

  • Facebook

  Like Loading...
  Posted in Commentary | 1 Comment | Tagged bullies, bully, bullying, nj bullying bill of rights

• Past Posts

  December 2025

  S	M	T	W	T	F	S
  	1	2	3	4	5	6
  7	8	9	10	11	12	13
  14	15	16	17	18	19	20
  21	22	23	24	25	26	27
  28	29	30	31

• Feedback

  	Eden on Getting the Message
  	Eden on The Unasked Questions
  	Eden on And Her Shoes Were #9
  	Eden on The Poison Field
  	Eden on Final Tally