Susan's Scribblings the Blog

2011 was a year that had its standout moments.  Some of the most noteworthy events in 2011 involved people dying, like Kim Jong Il or Elizabeth Taylor.  Whether people are considered good or bad, the media takes time to reflect on who they were and why their lives mattered.  Of course all lives matter, but it’s only after death that one can be measured by what attention their passing receives.

While despots and icons of the golden age of movies passed on, countries suffered economic crisis, war, and natural disaster.  It happens every year.  In 2012 we will likely see more of the same.  We survived blizzards, floods, extreme heat and nuclear power plant meltdowns.  We can survive more of the same, as long as we remember that history goes on, from one crisis to another, and we are just witnesses that pass on what we see before we, too, stand up to the tape measure of why our lives mattered.

Today I bought a can of Plantation brand chocolate straws.  In the good old days they were long, sweet sticks of candy wrapped around a filling of chocolate.  They’ve shrunken a bit since then, and are now more bite-size and melt faster on the tongue.  Still good, but not like it used to be.

As the years go by, Christmas doesn’t seem to be the same.  Everything becomes new and improved, which usually means cheaper.  With the economy looking bad for awhile longer, maybe the best thing to do is remember what used to be, because maybe it could be that way again.

I seem to remember that Cherry Hill Mall used to have a walk-through exhibit featuring an Eskimo boy.  I can’t remember his name or anything else about it, but it was fun when I was a kid, to walk along and watch the scenery unfold.  I think the kid went to Hawaii in one of the exhibits.

I remember the year when the gas company Sinclair brought a dinosaur exhibit to Cherry Hill Mall’s parking lot.  They had a vending machine which produced models of dinosaurs out of molten plastic.  That was cool back in the good old days.

I recall the annual television program from Hess’ Department Store in Allentown, PA.  They featured animatronic displays.  Today, kids probably wouldn’t appreciate animatronics:  video or holographic avatars catch their eyes these days.  Then again, the movie Hugo seems to be packing in audiences at the box office, and that movie features an animatronic figure.  Maybe all is not lost.

I remember that the holiday season didn’t start until Santa entered the toy department on Thanksgiving Day.  Now, we start seeing processed holiday foods being sold in September, and the first holiday ornaments arrive in July.

Back in the good old days, we had real ice cream parlors like the local hangout Green Valley.  I first discovered jukeboxes there.  The whipped topping was real, and the portions were massive.  Every table had a free basket of pretzel sticks.  The atmosphere was warm and the ice cream cold (and made from scratch).

Also, back in the good old days, it was possible to say Merry Christmas to anybody without having to stop and think to oneself if anybody would take offense.  Greeting people meant good will to all men, whether they celebrated Christmas, Channukah, Kwanzaa or nothing at all.

If we wanted it, we could get it back again.

I’ll make this short, not just to avoid being boring but to avoid any of the hassles that might follow my choice of topic.

When you look at what religion each of our presidents has affiliated, we haven’t had much of a mixture.  George Washington was an Episcopalian, and Barack Obama is considered Christian but of no particular church affiliation after the congregation he had visited for a long time had some issues.  So we’ve come full circle in terms of racial profile by having a Black president, and in terms of religion we’ve had some “no comment” presidents who did not practice anything, and even a renowned Catholic president (JFK).  Are we ready for the possibility of having a Mormon in the White House?

Mitt Romney belongs to a faith that stresses family and community service, and even the concept of “one for all” taxes (Mormons traditionally pay a tithe to the church).  There are some things that might need clarification for the uninitiated, such as the big question of why some practitioners in some sects have multiple wives, or why they have the Book of Mormon (the real text, not the musical).  The fact that he is still running indicates that he is still a possible candidate.

It’s good to keep the mind open, and we will continue to see how the whole candidate dissection plays out in the weeks to come.

On the first Sunday in November (which used to be the last Sunday in October), the country went back to standard time, one hour earlier than we had observed it for the past seven months.  It appears we also added an extra month to the holiday shopping season.

Sure, some places like Hallmark start putting ornaments on display in July to lure desirous collectors and send shivers down the trunks of nascent fir trees in forests everywhere.  Christmas in July offers us that early taste of the winter experience at a time when the summer sun is toasting us.  Somebody apparently felt that we needed more than the usual allotment, and the media and malls happily obliged.  They erect banners with festive words like “Joy” and “Merry” scrolled on gilt with blue or red and green.  Seasonal stores spring up, like Hickory Farms and Brookstone.  Fake snow fills store windows.  On television the commercials are already touting holiday sales.  In Pennsylvania Lottery ads, snow is a foot deep and scratch-and-win tickets have gone elf and snowman themed.

The malls already have Santa Claus on duty, for goodness sake.  Sure it gives men jobs in a troubled economy, and they stay warm all day in that velour and fur, but the poor fellow I saw at the mall the other day evoked pity.  My friend and I were almost ready to drop our facades of adulthood and help him out of his funk by discussing whether he could listen to our lists.

Other than the poor folks who man merchandise carts in the middle of the walkways (and they get to walk away and leave “Back at 8:30” cards on their seats), Santa was hurting for business.  The gilt throne where the jolly old elf would normally sit and field want lists from scores of little ones was vacant, and he was standing at the entrance to the magical world erected around the carefully placed queue ropes, simply and interminably waiting.  There were kids in the mall, because Friday was a day off from school, but nobody had their list ready for the man in the red suit in the early days of November.

Then there was the music.  Make no mistake:  I’m a music lover, but there is something about holiday music that gets very old very fast, and if it’s starting to assault us right after October, imagine the damage it will have done before we even pop the turkey in the oven for Thanksgiving.

Let’s face it:  the old standards are so entrenched in our musical culture that every song artist in the world and their old maid aunts sing them, re-do them annually, and we simply nod our heads resignedly and prepare for the onslaught.  Once the songs start up, it’s a plodding race to December 26 when every shopping facility with a sound system throws their collection of holiday tunes in a box and unceremoniously locks it away until next year.

I prefer to choose my tortures.

Last week I had the misfortune of being trapped in a line at New York City’s well-traveled Port Authority bus station, waiting for one sure to be over-packed bus out of town.  The staff at the terminal has added a three-part safety message which plays on a loop at the escalators to heighten the senses of harried users, and which I can recite by rote in my sleep because I heard it about 10,000 times during my wait in the queue.  Sure I’m complaining about the holidays, but I would rather hear one bad Christmas song the rest of the season than that safety recording ever again in my life.  Just not this early.

Now that virtually everybody has been indoctrinated into the computer age, it appears we are dealing with a major problem:  the shrinking keyboard.  The smaller the keyboard, the harder it is to navigate.

I don’t normally like to text while on public transportation, but the other day I was seated next to a fellow who had me pinned by my elbows while I was trying to type 1,700 words in a window seat with a keyboard the size of a candy bar.

So why was I so frantically trying to text under such conditions?  I decided to sign up for the writing challenge of National Writing Month (NoNoWriMo for short), which tasks intrepid writers with producing 50,000 words in the month of November.  This requires about 1,700 words a day.  Unless I wanted to cheat and just freely type a bunch of words into the computer to get the required word count, some planning and time to create was required.  The time I had on this particular day, I found on public transportation.

Which brings us back to the shrinking keyboards.  Even our best cell phones have teeny little keypads.  Some are QUERTY (typewriter style), while some simpler (and some might say dorkier) versions use the telephonic letters on the number pad to text.  Netbooks also have small keyboards, which is how the manufacturer gets the computer to be as small as a novel.  Which is what I’m trying to write.

There is nothing more infuriating than trying to use human fingers on inhuman sized buttons.  The error rate is ridiculous, especially for folks like me who learned to type 65 words per minute in high school on a regular size keyboard.

Touch pads and screens and thumbs don’t get along very well, either.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally hit a touch pad with a stray thumb that is just hanging on my hand waiting for a summons to use the space bar.  After considerable time spent on the road trying to defeat the restrictions imposed by my seat partner, my thumbs are now cramped and sore.  I don’t know if there are carpal tunnels in my thumbs, but they hurt as I’m typing this.

I hear that there is voice recognition software out there.  Maybe that’s the answer to my situation.  Heck, I can speak 1,700 words into a mouthpiece and the folks around me will just think I’m on my cellphone (which I can’t text on).

Facebook is a strange place.  Some people have elaborate pages and countless friends.  Frankly, though, I’m not sure if all of the names on anybody’s list count, because some people become friends because another friend has “mutual friends,” whatever that means.  It’s that old “I know somebody who knows somebody from somewhere” syndrome.

Other folks use Facebook and keep the door open for old friends to connect with them, but sometimes folks are hard to find.  My high school class had 220 students, but I wonder sometimes if 75 percent of them moved out of the country, since they can’t be found for school reunions and none of them apparently use Facebook.

When I started my Facebook page, I wondered who I would find, and there have been some pleasant surprises.  Whether a Facebook user gets ten or ten thousand friends, it’s always good to connect with somebody new or find somebody who got lost in the shuffle of life.

Sure, a few folks out there abuse Facebook, like recently when a post regarding some students at a local high school made some uncalled for, cruel remarks.  The post was removed, of course, but it’s a shame that something which should be used to cause positive things in our lives can be ruined by one or two people who should think twice before hitting that button.

I don’t know if I’ll continue to use Facebook, but I’m onboard for now and glad I’ve tried it.  It’s a great way to learn from, and about, each other.  Let’s hope it remains a positive outlet.