Reunions

 

They start with family reunions. These are occasional gatherings so parents can converse with their children and mingle with their grandchildren. It could be an annual event like a holiday or a vacation. It is a time to meet your parents’ siblings as aunts and uncles and their offspring as cousins. As families move apart, these reunions are the only time to see the evolution of your ancestral family tree until these reunions become funerals.

School mates have reunions. It is usually connected with the graduation class anniversary. Some may have connections with friendships kept up through the years and others are just strangers with nametags. Yearbook photos show how much we’ve aged. The cliques that separated and declared our status in high school, still reform to the remembrance. Like most reunions, there is eating and drinking, but no children. There may be a current partner, but no one wants to meet an old x from high school.  The letter sweaters don’t fit and the words to the fight songs have faded. Through the years, fewer class reunions attendees show up due to illness, wars, distance or interest.

The other day there was a reunion with old work mates. Someone tried to contact people who worked at the same company and have a gathering for conversation and lunch. These are people you would not recognize passing on the street. These are people who worked in different departments and long since stopped working there and may only want to have a meal with these associates to gossip.

Using social media, text, phone, messenger and probably AI, a half dozen showed up to a nice sports bar with lots and lots of TV screens in Short Pump (a place I’d never attended but looked very Richmond). As each one appeared I had to figure out who they were when I knew them. After a few remembrances faces started connecting the dots. Some of these people I’d had no contact in decades, so there was a lot of catching up. There were no updating resumes, but names of memorable characters and the stories that made them that way. There was not enough time to delve into personal lives and adventures since we left employment. There was a list of those who have gone on to permanent retirement.

Any of these reunions, as time marches on, are cherished moments of fuzzy memories of survivors.

They are all flashbacks.

Cheep Laboure

 

It seems as we crawled out of the pond, we need to be carnivores to supplement our dietary requirements for protein. Instead of just eating whatever floated by or being eaten by a larger pond neighbor, we stepped out onto the ground only to find there were others who viewed us as a meal, so we learned to hide or climb trees. We may find a few small creatures who we could catch and dine on, but we needed more. Even with the inventions of sticks and stones, we could not bring down giant beast alone.

Our families started gathering with others to become tribes. Numbers outweighed strength. All could partake of the rewards, but we decided to become jealous of the portions with a power struggle.

Soon the families would intermingle and become society, with levels of wealth and power and servitude. The powerful expanded their desires for more and conquered other lands and cultures using the captured people as servants. This was free labor to build roads, bridges, arenas, pyramids, castles, cathedrals, palaces.

As the peasants escaped the persecution, they discovered new fertile lands to build cottages, work the land for farming and procreate. Large families could tend the herd, till the soil and prepare meals for free. If the numbers of hearty males didn’t appear in the ancestry, additional help needed to be found. Daughters could be offered in hopes as they breed, their offspring would supplement the bodies needed to keep the land profitable.

Generations moved to their own plots of land, neighbors were too busy with their own projects to assist, so another solution for manual labor had to be found. Some automation using animals help haul goods but they could not pick crops. A ready source of bodies was the conquered.

People with opposing thumbs could be bought as chattel and boarded on the land to pick the crops, shuck and bind, bale and roll the product of the land for no wages. The lack of education kept the enslaved unaware and tolerant. If an animal could not achieve the task, it was euthanized. The same with chattel and it was sociably acceptable.

 

The industrial revolution brought mechanical automation and people with little education or skills grouped together in cities to work in factories… for wages. There were no restrictions on age of workers or safety environments. Children worked the mines, women worked in garment sweatshops, immigrants built the railroads, picked the crop, forged the steels and constructed skyscrapers.

Early in the administration of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), it became apparent that application of the statutory minimum wage was likely to produce undesirable effects upon the economies of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands if applied to all of their covered industries. Consequently, on June 26, 1940, an amendment was enacted prescribing the establishment of special industry committees to determine, and issue through wage orders, the minimum wage levels applicable in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The rates established by industry committees could be less than the statutory rates applicable elsewhere in the United States.

On May 14, 1947, the FLSA was amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act. This legislation was significant because it resolved some issues as to what constitutes compensable hours worked under FLSA. Matters involving underground travel in coal mines and make-ready practices in factories had been decided earlier in a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Subsequent amendments to the FLSA have extended the law's coverage to additional employees and raised the level of the minimum wage. In 1949, the minimum wage was raised from 40 cents an hour to 75 cents an hour for all workers and minimum wage coverage was expanded to include workers in the air transport industry. The 1949 amendments also eliminated industry committees except in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. A specific section was added granting the Wage and Hour Administrator in the U.S. Department of Labor authorization to control the incidence of exploitative industrial homework. A 1955 amendment increased the minimum wage to $1.00 an hour with no changes in coverage.

The 1961 amendments greatly expanded the FLSA's scope in the retail trade sector and increased the minimum for previously covered workers to $1.15 an hour effective September 1961 and to $1.25 an hour in September 1963. The minimum for workers newly subject to the Act was set at $1.00 an hour effective September 1961, $1.15 an hour in September 1964, and $1.25 an hour in September 1965. Retail and service establishments were allowed to employ fulltime students at wages of no more than 15 percent below the minimum with proper certification from the Department of Labor. The amendments extended coverage to employees of retail trade enterprises with sales exceeding $1 million annually, although individual establishments within those covered enterprises were exempt if their annual sales fell below $250,000. The concept of enterprise coverage was introduced by the 1961 amendments. Those amendments extended coverage in the retail trade industry from an established 250,000 workers to 2.2 million.

Congress further broadened coverage with amendments in 1966 by lowering the enterprise sales volume test to $500,000, effective February 1967, with a further cut to $250,000 effective February 1969. The 1966 amendments also extended coverage to public schools, nursing homes, laundries, and the entire construction industry. Farms were subject to coverage for the first time if their employment reached 500 or more-man days of labor in the previous year's peak quarter. The minimum wage went to $1.00 an hour effective February 1967 for newly covered nonfarm workers, $1.15 in February 1968, $1.30 in February 1969, $1.45 in February 1970, and $1.60 in February 1971. Increases for newly subject farm workers stopped at $1.30. The 1966 amendments extended the fulltime student certification program to covered agricultural employers and to institutions of higher learning.

In 1974, Congress included under the FLSA all no supervisory employees of Federal, State, and local governments and many domestic workers. (Subsequently, in 1976, in National League of Cities v. Usery, the Supreme Court held that the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the FLSA could not constitutionally apply to State and local government employees engaged in traditional government functions.) The minimum wage increased to $2.00 an hour in 1974, $2.10 in 1975, and $2.30 in 1976 for all except farm workers, whose minimum initially rose to $1.60. Parity with nonfarm workers was reached at $2.30 with the 1977 amendments.

The 1977 amendments, by eliminating the separate lower minimum for large agricultural employers (although retaining the overtime exemption), set a new uniform wage schedule for all covered workers. The minimum went to $2.65 an hour in January 1978, $2.90 in January 1979, $3.10 in January 1980, and $3.35 in January 1981. The amendments eased the provisions for establishments permitted to employ students at the lower wage rate and allowed special waivers for children 10to11 years old to work in agriculture. The overtime exemption for employees in hotels, motels, and restaurants was eliminated. To allow for the effects of inflation, the $250,000 dollar volume of sales coverage test for retail trade and service enterprises was increased in stages to $362,500 after December 31, 1981.

As a result of the Supreme Court's 1985 decision in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority et.al., Congress passed amendments changing the application of FLSA to public sector employees. Specifically, these amendments permit State and local governments to compensate their employees for overtime hours worked with compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay, at a rate of 1 1/2 hours for each hour of overtime worked.

The 1989 amendments established a single annual dollar volume test of $500,000 for enterprise coverage of both retail and no retail businesses. At the same time, the amendments eliminated the minimum wage and overtime pay exemption for small retail firms. Thus, employees of small retail businesses became subject to minimum wage and overtime pay in any workweek in which they engage in commerce or the production of goods for commerce. The minimum wage was raised to $3.80 an hour beginning April 1, 1990, and to $4.25 an hour beginning April 1, 1991. The amendments also established a training wage provision (at 85% of the minimum wage, but not less than $3.35 an hour) for employees under the age of twenty, a provision that expired in 1993. Finally, the amendments established an overtime exception for time spent by employees in remedial education and civil money penalties for willful or repeated violations of the minimum wage or overtime pay requirements of the law.

In 1990, Congress enacted legislation requiring regulations to be issued providing a special overtime exemption for certain highly skilled professionals in the computer field who receive not less than 6 and one-half times the applicable minimum wage.

The 1996 amendments increased the minimum wage to $4.75 an hour on October 1, 1996, and to $5.15 an hour on September 1, 1997. The amendments also established a youth sub minimum wage of $4.25 an hour for newly hired employees under age 20 during their first 90 consecutive calendar days after being hired by their employer; revised the tip credit provisions to allow employers to pay qualifying tipped employees no less than $2.13 per hour if they received the remainder of the statutory minimum wage in tips; set the hourly compensation test for qualifying computer related professional employees at $27.63 an hour; and amended the Portal-to-Portal Act to allow employers and employees to agree on the use of employer provided vehicles for commuting to and from work, at the beginning and end of the work day, without counting the commuting time as compensable working time if certain conditions are met.

The 2007 amendments increased the minimum wage to $5.85 per hour effective July 24, 2007; $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008; and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. A separate provision of the bill brings about phased increases to the minimum wages in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and in American Samoa, with the goal of bringing the minimum wages in those locations up to the general federal minimum wage over a number of years.

"Think global, buy local" is an adage promoting a balance between global awareness and local action. It encourages individuals to consider the wider implications of their choices, particularly in consumption, while prioritizing support for their immediate community. This approach fosters both sustainable development and a stronger sense of place.

To the point, with the emergence of container cargo, shipping from anywhere in the world became available. Factories moved to foreign third world countries where labor was incentivized by governments and abundantly cheap. Manufacturing poured back into the states at lower prices than could be compared to ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ brand. Big box stores popped up to populate their selves with the abundance of selections and prices. Local mom and pop’s became niche market who could not compete.

Today our computers think for us. They present the news (true or false) we want, present us with the best purchases in clothing, entertainment, food and transportation, persuade us to follow a certain governmental official and follow a certain policy and tell us what movie to watch.

Yet, we need to work to earn a sawbuck. There has to be some  sort of mental and physical effort to earn gainful employment to pay for child care, gas, mortgage, groceries, pills, divorces, lawyers, therapist, funerals and other necessaries of life.

Ask for a raise.

Father’s Day

A "father" is a male parent of a child. This term can also refer to a male ancestor, a man who has originated or established something, or a term of respect for an elderly man or priest

Traits traditionally viewed as masculine in Western society include strength, courage, independence, leadership, dominance, and assertiveness.

There is Father Time, Father Christmas, Reverend Father and Lord thy father of us all (we’ll get to that in a bit)

 A father is the biological male gender who produced you. In the beginning, there was Adam. The almighty God created man in his likeness and it was good. He could have stopped there and there would have been no sin. He (notice the gender) could have just cloned Adam into a team full of Bruce, Hank, Dirk, Freddy and they could have entertained him with their manly comradery. He could have invented bars for them to hang out and boost about scores while drinking hops (instead of Apple juice). God could have reveled in their locker room humor, but there were no pin-ups?

Man, when used in singular (which is almost always) means a male. When it's used as a plural (eg. Man came from apes), it means people, regardless of gender. Interestingly, the word men never work this way, it can only ever mean males.

Misogynistic behavior refers to attitudes, actions, and beliefs that show hatred, contempt, or prejudice against women. It's a form of sexism that can manifest in various ways, including belittling, objectifying, and controlling women. Misogyny can also involve promoting harmful stereotypes and maintaining traditional gender roles that limit women's opportunities and agency. 

A father is a male parent, a man who has begotten a child. The term can also refer to a male ancestor, a man who originates or establishes something, or a term of respectful address for an elderly man or a priest. In a broader sense, ‘father’ can also denote someone who acts in a fatherly role, providing care, guidance, and support. 

There is also ‘Mother’s’ Day (the other participant in procreation). You only get 1 mother, but there may be a variety of fathers, depending on your mother’s breeding process. Your X and Y chromosomes are all simmered as the bun in the oven cooks for 9-months and you arrive as you.

The father hands out cigars to celebrated impregnating. The step-father takes over if the biological father splits. The grand-father can reap the rewards of his ancestry continuing.

The Lord's Prayer, also known as the ‘Our Father’, is a central Christian prayer. It's a model prayer taught by Jesus, used in almost every Christian tradition. While variations exist, the core prayer is generally understood to be: 

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours forever. Amen. “

The prayer is structured around addressing God the Father, asking for the sanctification of His name, the establishment of His kingdom, and His will being done. It also includes petitions for daily needs, forgiveness, protection from temptation, and acknowledging God's authority.

Happy Daddy’s Day to all who qualify. A title for a squirt.

Data Centers

 There is plenty of news about a data center coming to your town. What are these data centers and why is everyone so concerned?

Some think this is the invasion of ‘Alternative Information’ centers that are coming to take our jobs. Some think they are cold storage warehouses for walls of computers. Some wonder if the expense, use of water and electricity are worth it while others know they are the necessity of our digital world.

Computers have been around longer than I have. They were mostly math calculators crunching numbers faster than the mind could calculate. My first connection with computers were in college (they were probably in high school, but I never noticed). Registration for classes was like a market fare. Some classes were required to get a degree in a certain category while others were optional. College was a four-year chance to add enough credits to get a diploma in the field of your future employment. As a class was chosen, a punch card was placed with your name to save you a seat in that classroom at a certain day and time. At the end of the year, a computer would calculate your yearly score for a Grade Point Average. When your GPA equaled the requirement for graduation, the school printed a piece of paper that proved you’d been edubacated and you were off to work.

My work office was manual records. Attendance, payroll, vacations and discipline records were written by hand and sent to corporate. In secret secured rooms with low lights, no windows and blast of air conditioning, there were machines the size of refrigerators with spinning reels of paper tape. The written logs were keyboarded in code to the computer to store and print out reports. As long as the checks were delivered every two weeks, life was fine.

Once there was a conflict of records about who or when vacations were used or cancelled. The office manager and secretary couldn’t figure it out, so an office at corporate was contacted for they held the approved final records. A giant ledger, the size of something in Harry Potter, was opened and searched for the time accumulated and used. I was surprised.

The ‘production’ department had the state-of-the-art computer system that cause linotype operators strike and lose their jobs. Operators sat at darkened room with dos green monitors keying in code that would print to a punch tape and then processed through another machine to print out on slick paper type that could be cut apart with box cutters, waxed and pasted into position for a camera the size of a bus could take a large photo to be converted to plastic impression to be placed on the press. The mainframe that ran the show was keep in a cold room that only the engineers (former IT) had access to.

In the early 80’s, I was sent to a presentation of desktop computing. I saw the potential that one little grey box could do illustration, photography, text and layout. While corporate was focused on Microsoft Office (as they should be) with spreadsheets and words for reports and memos, I was following another platform named ‘Apple’. All the software (and hardware) were new and experimental and constantly changing and reinventing the processes. Since there were no classes or training other than the bibles that came with the software, I’d go into the office on weekends and experiment with each program.

Once the internet appeared linking the world to e-mail, I could continually ask software companies about flaws in the applications and a wish list for the next upgrade. I got to test beta versions of digital cameras, cell phones, new high speed processing chips and a new invention, the laptop. The drawing tables, T-squares, triangles and press type went away.

What does all that have to do with these ‘Data Centers’?

In your hand you have a cell phone with more computer power than what put man on the moon. It saves contacts, calendar alerts, videos, photos, music, e-mails, internet connections, podcast and telephone calls and text.

Where does all that stuff get saved?

Even with the latest greatest technology there is no chip large enough to hold all your stuff on the phone. There is no floppy disc slot or thumb drive that can hold all your selfies, so they go to the ‘cloud’.

These ‘Data Centers’ ARE the ‘cloud’. Interconnected by satellites they are the ‘library’ for immediate access. All the search engines use it. Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, X (Y & Z), Spotify…. etc. It is the massive cross-reference used to bring you your kitten pictures and your vacation shots and your music playlist and your current up-to-date memes and reels.

If there is a problem, when you click on a connection and get a message of 404: Page Not Found or your airplane captain gets a report from the air traffic control tower that they are not sure about landing instructions, time to upgrade the cloud with a newer improved ‘Data Center’.

What happens if you lose contact with your family? Remote working and learning will be unavailable? Shopping online will not be accessible and even your health care will faulter to life threatening measures. How will you fight your way out of a paper bag without GPS?

So like gas stations and mail boxes and telephone booths and fire hydrants and convenience stores, there will a ‘Data Center’ on every corner.  

Infrastructure

 

Recently, there have been some problems with the city’s infrastructure. This is expected for a city incorporated in 1742. The pipes and pumps and electronics are old and need constant maintenance or replacement.

My little part of the neighborhood was constructed just after WWII. Plumbing and sewer pipes were laid down and connect to equally spaced plots of land to newly constructed brick cookie cutter houses. Paths were widened and paved and poles were installed carrying telephone cables, electricity cables and street lights. Schools, churches and corner delis and markets found their spots as sidewalks linked the neighborhoods. Cars parked on the streets.

My family moved here in the early 50’s and settled into the comfortable early suburbia. Walking and riding bikes were suitable transportation for kids to get to schools and neighbors. Buses took us downtown for shopping at department stores or movies. The automobile was only used for groceries at shopping centers, Sunday church attendance and the long ride to the country club. Everything seemed to work for there were no new drains on the infrastructure.

In college I moved downtown where the infrastructure was a bit older, but never had any problems. I bought a house in an area that was developed in the 1920’s but the previous owner had updated much of the electrical and plumbing to accommodate two people (and a cat).

In the late 70’s, I moved into this house. It was the same neighborhood as my family’s original move. The electrical plugs had two sockets, the power was four screw-in fuses and there were no water shut-offs. Typical post war construction.

Through the years, I’ve paid for upgrades to the plumbing and electrical along with roof and windows and that world wide web thing. Meanwhile, my neighbors have done reconstructions requiring more energy and water putting a drain on the available infrastructure.

Occasional power outage due to stores become more frequent. I see it as an opportunity to rock on the porch until all the batteries to the digital gadgets run out. Then it is back to pencil and paper until the sun goes down.

Recently the city requested we not turn the tap for there was a problem with incoming water. Being a river city, there have been floods that fouled the water and what came out didn’t look appealing, but that was an emergency. This explanation was some sort of pump problem at the water plant and backup failure. Signs of an ancient infrastructure breaking down.

At a certain age, we contemplate our own infrastructure. That elastic sack that carries all our skeletal scaffolding protecting our tubes and pumps and nerves that make us human is breaking down. The years of abusing our bodies with unknown substances or acts of insanity takes their toll. The food we declare as ‘junk’ has conditioned us to consume large quantities and wear stretch pants. The bones become brittle and the joints need lubrication. Our tubes are clogged making the pumps work harder. Our sight deems and our hearing fades. Sleep is not a reboot for our memory banks.

As the end nears, there are no excuses. We did this to ourselves. Life’s longevity is how well the infrastructure holds out.

Risk

 

In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environment), often focusing on negative, undesirable consequences.

I try to avoid risk.

With that said, life is full of risk.

Everyday we take risk. We risk falling out of bed in the morning. We slipping on the kitchen floor making coffee. We risk getting into a metal mobile machine and getting t-boned at an intersection. We risk the food we eat has not been properly inspected or prepared. We risk someone else coughing on us and giving us the plague.

Reading is a risk. We learn and are presented with history, science, poetry, mystery, horror, fantasy, philosophy and other’s opinions and thoughts. If there is a problem, we risk not solving it without knowledge of math or psychology. The risk of knowledge might also bring power.

Going to school is a risk. If you are not smart enough or unaccepted, you risk failure. Relationships risk rejection. Intimate relations risk unintended results. Applying for employment risk not having the proper education or skills required for the job description. Once employed, there is the constant risk of not meeting the changing requirements of the job, technically or complying with the corporate mission causing firing and lose of salary.  

Buying expensive purchases are risky. A house, car, refrigerator can depreciate in value, break, or be destroyed in a fire or natural disaster. Insurance supposedly reduces lost but it too is a risk.

Health care is always a risk because we enjoy not taking care of ourselves and rely on the medical profession to give us a shot or a pill or a potion to prolong our lives.

For whatever reason, you decide to disallow the rules, there is a risk of detention, judaification, fines, loss of accesses, imprisonment or death.

Risk is stressful.

I try not to cross bridges or go down steep slopes. I avoid heights. I do risk traveling on streets but avoid as much traffic as possible.

Tonight, will be rocking on the porch with a cold drink watching a storm blow by with the risk that tomorrow may not come.

Pardon Me

 

You are charged of a crime for not obeying an established law and investigated and detained by the authorities and called before the court with details of your case presented by a prosecutor before a judge and jury of your peers and you can defend your actions with an attorney before the judge declares your innocence or guilt. You can throw yourself on the mercy of the court and appeal the judgement decision or try to abstain yourself of the potential punishment or beg to be pardoned.

Will the acknowledgement of the wrongful action or an apology get you off the hook?

A pardon is an expression of the president's forgiveness and ordinarily is granted in recognition of the applicant's acceptance of responsibility for the crime and established good conduct for a significant period of time after conviction or completion of sentence. It does not signify innocence.

Over the past few days, our President, who was himself convicted for multiple felonies, pardoned a former Virginia sheriff who was convicted of trying to sell deputy’s badges, a Las Vegas politician who stole money intended for a memorial dedicated to fallen police officers, a tax cheat whose mother raised millions of dollars for Republican political campaigns, and a pair of Georgia reality television stars who were convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion.

Among his first officials acts as president was to pardon virtually all of the nearly 1,600 defendants convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters and to commute the sentences of the remaining 14. Weeks earlier, the former President had issued preemptive pardons to his siblings and their spouses, saying he feared they would be targeted for political reasons by the new administration.

If you perform an etiquette faux pas, such as a loud belch or passing gas, may acknowledge with a “Pardon me” hoping anyone within range will forgive the audacious behavior?