Chris

 

With time on my hands and trying to get back to the memoir in the days of groundhog and grey skies with mortality hanging by, I ponder…. ‘What’s next?’

Awake in the morning to check the aging rock star obits (those who made it this fair) then listen the sounds of artillery and riots with cheers for the winners and cries for the losers. Scrolling through the ever-expanding Internet with stories of sand or evidential doom of patriotism or what are we going to do with Africa. In a quiet neighborhood police don’t search for black guys to make the nightly news. The neighbor always park in their designated spots and stay inside with their electronic toys taking up the broadband space avoiding the climatic change or migration issues of the day.

There are those who till make the weapons to kill (thoughts and prayers placed here) and fossil fuel trucks still pour off the conveyer belts while the old ones rust in vacant property. Children and children’s children keep popping out for cut selfies and necessarily plastic toys soon broken and forgotten.

So what’s on my mind?

Health, Money, Security, Relationships are a constant, even though not looking for some and happy with other (for now).

What to do with the vacant time?

Travel? Where to? Why? To see some old buildings built by ancient contractors with hand tools and slave labor? Can see pictures and read history with slides and boring instructions like in college that put me asleep. Been to Europe, Asia and highlights of the U.S.A. but for the most part stayed in hotels. A hotel in a foreign land you can’t read the menu or understand the language and hope the water is drinkable.

Music? I like music. I’ve attended (and participated) my share of shows. I’ve heard lots of style and variations yet with age few now catch my ear.

News? Liking to be up-to-date with the news yet trying to tell the difference from fact or fiction. I’ve turned off visual media due to news shows becoming entertainment and opinions shows being kitchen chatter rather than informative. Journalist interviews are merely promotions for a book or a movie or a streaming show. News has become advertising promotion products and celebrates get awards to prove it.

Health? Even the best of us survivors will be breaking down. Except for those who are rushing in the vacant lots, we use people in white coats to tell us how we feel and possibility of extending time here (don’t ask the cost). Mortality is eventuality so it is where you want to spend your money. That sore or ache or pain or gas or… (Check the web- they have all the answers). Then there are those pesky viruses that if you get a shot in the arm will not infect you. Or not? What did you eat today?

Relationships? Our species interact with each other. We talk, walk, and make babies in every form of interaction. Some last a bit of time while other fade. Everyday we have a relationship with those who share our space. We may never speak or acknowledge the other, but they are there. Breathing the same air at the same time. To entertain another requires work. Taking someone out to a dining establish or local pub for a conversation and watch each other chew. If you invite someone into your personal living space requires cleaning the house (cleanliness is next to Godliness, but you haven’t seen my God), buying groceries (cannot get together with eating) and then there is the clean up later. For recreation with another requires a large flat screen, a pool or boat, or a mass amount of alcohol. When all that runs out, there is sex. Games are always an option. Athletic toss the ball or run to board games there are rules that must be followed and there is always a winner and a loser just like school. You may be given a grade or a place in the standings but is this data objective or subjective?

Alone with my thoughts I remember going to Scotland with my mother to see her bother and family. We would we suddenly fly away? Why didn’t the whole family go? Was there a problem at home? I was basically too young to be left alone but not alone with my father and older brother? I’d be shipped off to camp and left alone so that might have created my independence?

So the time comes to turn over again on the mattress or stand up and move on. The routine of pulling on pants and socks and shoes awakes the muscles. Breathe the air outside and meet the world. Why?

The yard stores need to be replenished. They won’t be my relationships if I don’t provide for them.

A few yards of pavement get the exhausted pumping and the aches forgotten due to the mobility. All systems are working.

Dementia hasn’t lost my way yet and pay my bill at the blue postage box can still be remembered like the guy that was a waste of money and testing out the ever weakening breaks remind me of bad possibilities (but no Russian missiles are falling yet)?

Noticing the weather map, the rest of the week appears to be a washout (as it should be this time of year but there are green sprouts poking up through the brown leaves).

Strap on the mask to keep from breathing all those germ cooties flying around and enter the Tummy Temple.

The usual route has been pretty clear but there seems to be a clean up on the alcohol beverage aisle. The clone of the cheese monger has the yellow cones blocking off the area and is slowly sweeping what is wet. I decide it is better to take another lap around to visit the pasta, dairy products and questionable starches before returning to the disaster area. A mop is being retreated but I find a way to retrieve six bullets before the next disaster happens. (Note to distributers: Put the second six-pack sideways because two one-on-another do not fit on the shelf). Those said, the second batch of bullets dropped from the shelf and bounced upon the floor. How embarrassing?

As I picked up the rolling cans a nice lady came up to offer assistance. Perhaps the pity of an aged geezer gathering up clumsy behavior or just kindness, she said “I just spilled some wine” (which could have been the reason for the mopping necessarily or not) but she smiled sweetly for an old man and my ‘Thank you’ was not enough (no phone numbers were shared).

That event usual is enough for a Tummy Temple adventure until a black man walked up to my cart. His face was familiar but I couldn’t remember why. He was attached to this place and I put out my hand but we gave correct elbow bumps. I remembered he was the ‘red vest’ at the checkout but couldn’t remember his name. I’d probably spoken to him for years but couldn’t remember his name. We parted with him calling me ‘Sir’ and I wished him a good life.

“Chris”!!!

I have a bad time with remembering names (thus not in sales or politics) but I try to talk to someone who is wearing a name badge. For those I converse with everyday, I try to remember names.

Names are our titles and should identify us.

Glad Chris stopped and talked. Some of our brief conversations were revealing. When the Covid-19 hit and ‘essential’ workers had to decide to stay or go; he left.

Viewing The Body

 

If you read this blog long enough, you, the reader, knows I’m not fond of funerals. Actually many of our cultural events I am not fond of.

Many are excuses to party and act silly and dress up and tell stories about it the next year. These events cover everything from a New Year celebration to a costume holiday with an excuse to give children candy to the birth of the savior with gifts under a fur tree. We, as a culture, look forward to gather and dance and consume massive amounts of alcohol for an Irish saint and a Easter bunny.

Yet there are personal ceremonies that don’t require fireworks but are occasions to show affection for those who attend. Birth showers are like this (if they follow weddings). There are no ceremonies for imprisonment or divorce but maybe there should be?

Then there is the end-of-life ceremony.

Like birth, we ALL will attend this ceremony. There are a plethora of varieties on the remembrance of the deceased. Some are quiet while some involve religious directions to the afterlife while others just evolve ranting and raving around flames.

I’ve attended and participated in most of these ceremonies. I’ve given fondue pots to all my friends (as they did for me) at their first wedding, but no gifts for the second (or third…). We don’t have ceremonies when we buy a car or get a job or move into your neighborhood (except by your real estate agent going to the bank). We don’t have ceremonies when we change our hair color or find a mistress (unless we post videos on Porn Hub) or when we get Covid-19.

Funerals, on the other hand, have certain requirements. Everyone must dress in black. Keep the small children at home. Drive your car slowly with your lights on.

If it is a good funeral, you can sign in the attendance book in a darkened room where everyone talks in whispers (like the corpse will listen) and some fella you would avoid on the subway comes up and holds your hand given you are pre-recorded condolences while checking your credit.

At this parlor of death, the family gets to choose a designer box to put the remains in for eternity at prices that range from IKEA DIY to a humanity sealed glass sarcophagus enclosure for viewing at anytime.  Since most of us do not die in how we would like to present ourselves for family and friends, the creepy guy holding your hand through this gruesome procedure will offer to dress the dead during the embalming process. You can choose an Amazon outfit on your iPad or can just let the professional select an outfit to match your Botox skin tone. If the beloved had a special jersey or some jewelry that they had indicated they want to wear into the get beyond or you can just close the box.

Which gets us back to the title: “Viewing The Body”.

Part of our saying farewell to a friend or family member or if you just like to sit in on depression, the deceased is rolled out for all to view. I don’t know how many go up to touch or kiss or check the wallet for they will not respond (unless you heard the tune Jack-in-the-Box). It is uncouth to eat around the body, participants bring food to be served in the next room with the open bar while they can reminisce over old photos and if they get loose enough will rely stories of sexual encounters that maybe exaggerated unless the open coffin inhabitant is buck naked.  

After all the praying and praising and hallelujahs, the lid is closed, slid out into a black station wagon and driven out to a quiet plot of land where it is dumped in a hole and covered with dirt. This process is hastened when there is a disaster because the piles of decomposing bodies stink quickly. Funeral identification may be difficult when that’s little Johnnies shoe with his foot still in it or Aunt Mary’s apron is missing something.

If we really wanted to view the body, why not just put a glass cover over the hole so when you come by every so often to lay flowers or a wreath, you can look down into the hole and watch how the decay process is going, like we do to mummies in museums.

So as more of my age checks the obituaries to see if their name is listed, the grime weeper will continue to fill the ground with our carcasses. The headstone will only identify a name, date of birth and a date of death.

How is that for long life lived?

What are you looking at?

Care Taking/Giving

 

Call to Action • All Hands on Deck • Boots on the Ground • Rally • Conscription • Join • Draft • Conscription • Volunteer • Movement • Cause • Ideal • Revolution

 

Luckily for the rest of us there are those people who run toward disasters than run away. These are the folks who pick up the pieces so the rest of us can go on with life. They are the caregivers.

If they weren’t there we’d all be left with the blood, vomit and poop. Who will pick up the body parts and count the numbers for the daily news?

Some will say these are the Good Souls who care for their humanity, yet others wonder those others that cause all this destruction and mayhem?    

When we arrive our birth mother and whoever is assumed to be the father are given the reasonability of caring for their offspring. They are given the responsibility to feed, cloth, find a place to sleep and educate enough to speak and poop. You have no choice in the matter.

If the authorities find you are not getting cared for, you can be taken away and given to the Fosters who will care for you. At a certain predestinated age you are let free to care for yourself.

The ideal of ‘growing up’ is to be able to make your own decisions. Then you find someone you want to care about for sexual favors. With that you become a caregiver instead of a caretaker.

As time goes by, you get to care for your pets and then you’re aging parents and as long as the money holds out your immediate family. You may even donate to food banks or non-profit organizations that take up the baton of assistance to those less fortunate. You can even volunteer your time to spend doing what most try to avoid.

When you past the age of no return, one must learn to care for them in task that was a throw off easy before the hair turned white. The simple chores of getting out of your nightshirt and into a pair of pantaloons will become challenging. It only goes down here from here.

If you have been privileged enough to have sired little ones, you can relax in the realization that they will care for you in your declining years. Don’t worry they will surround you on your dying bed while they check your wallet.

I’m now at an age where I contemplate what the next day will bring. If the routine is blocked, what are my options? There is no one else there to ask or advise. Did I do the laundry this week? What should I eat today? Should I put that picture up on the wall or wash the dishes?

When the caregiver is also the caretaker.

Take care.

Classified

 

Investigation • Study • Examination • Research • Hypothesize • Compare • Data • Survey • Theory • Question • Evaluation • Diagnose • Explore • Views • Opinions • Results • Prognosis • Judgment • Search • Calculation • Inspection • Observe

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY!

There are lots of things that are kept secret. You parents didn’t tell you how much your dinner cost or why you had to attend church every Sunday or how to do homework?

Think about your school report card? Some woman stood at the end of the room talking to dozens of kids staring at her while she presents knowledge that will be tested and your wisdom will be evaluated on your answers. If you were handed back your answers with a grade, you were suppose to take it home and show your parents. If your grade was at the top of the alphabet your parents were overjoyed at your ability to regurgitate what the teacher had spoken. If you grade was further down the alphabet, you, as a student, were to get your parents to sign the test and bring it back to teacher to prove you were shamed at home. To make a forgery of a parents signature is easy.

At the end of the year the letters of the alphabet gave you permission to move up to the next grade or not.

All through the academic years, you, the student, are not allowed to see these secret files. There are guidance counselors along the way who can view the teacher’s comments and occasionally there is parent/teacher conference to recommend a path for your child according to the alphabet. Some may show promise to apply to higher learning and possibility of advancement and monetary gains, while others may be more suitable to hands on trades?

Then there is the process to apply for gainful employment. You, the applicant, gets to fill out a form that inquires into your history as a requirement to evaluate the possibility that you are worthy of working at this establishment. This document and the following comments are then noticed as your “Personnel File”.

Your reviews, raises, complaints are filed in a manila folder and locked in a file cabinet out of your sight. Some papers needed to be shown to you for a signature that the accusation was acknowledged.

Once elevated to management, I got the secret handshake and a key to the ‘classified’ files.

I could not see ‘my’ personnel files, but I could view all the subjects I was assigned to supervise. Most files read as employees came in on time, did their assignments and left without causing chaos or disturbance. No knew what the average pay scale was or why some were promoted. Unions were established in an attempt to equalize job descriptions that were subjective until then.

Written files were sketchy at best. Digital files were no better. The ‘personnel file’ required a sheet of paper stuffed in a file cabinet under lock and keep for it was ‘classified’.

Even in offices, files could not be left unattended and ‘classified’ materials should not leave the building.

During one of the re-organizing of departments, the Human Resources department (formerly “Personnel Department”) requested me to re-file my original employment application.

It seems my Top Secret Personnel files had gone missing?

With more actuations and the introduction of digital computers, all sorts and variations of files were being established. New hires were filing in databases from paper files while others were maintaining the ole-established forms.

With little secrecy in a cubicle, personnel files had to be removed and filed at home to be later printed on a weekend and then lock away for security.

So the day I left employment, I had a file cabinet full of notebooks and hard drives full of “Top Secret Classified” files. Memos, e-mails, salaries, hiring/firing, budgets….

I don’t know why I kept them? I had nothing to do with that organization anymore. Like the President keeping a copy of the secret nuclear codes, they change everyday.

Maybe I thought that something I had might be evidence if a conflict with the former employer?

A few years ago I emptied out the file cabinet and shredded the paper and destroyed the digital disk. It was a theoretic experience.

Like most ‘Classified’ files, the next day they are history.

Hotels

 

A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a refrigerator and other kitchen facilities, upholstered chairs, a flat screen television, and en-suite bathrooms. Small, lower-priced hotels may offer only the most basic guest services and facilities. Larger, higher-priced hotels may provide additional guest facilities such as a swimming pool, business centre (with computers, printers, and other office equipment), childcare, conference and event facilities, tennis or basketball courts, gymnasium, restaurants, day spa, and social function services. Hotel rooms are usually numbered (or named in some smaller hotels and B&Bs) to allow guests to identify their room. Some boutique, high-end hotels have custom decorated rooms. Some hotels offer meals as part of a room and board arrangement. In Japan, capsule hotels provide a tiny room suitable only for sleeping and shared bathroom facilities.

The precursor to the modern hotel was the inn of medieval Europe. For a period of about 200 years from the mid-17th century, coaching inns served as a place for lodging for coach travelers. Inns began to cater to richer clients in the mid-18th century. One of the first hotels in a modern sense was opened in Exeter in 1768. Hotels proliferated throughout Western Europe and North America in the early 19th century, and luxury hotels began to spring up in the later part of the 19th century.

Hotel operations vary in size, function, complexity, and cost. Most hotels and major hospitality companies have set industry standards to classify hotel types. An upscale full-service hotel facility offers luxury amenities, full-service accommodations, an on-site restaurant, and the highest level of personalized service, such as a concierge, room service, and clothes pressing staff. Full-service hotels often contain upscale full-service facilities with many full-service accommodations, an on-site full-service restaurant, and a variety of on-site amenities. Boutique hotels are smaller independent, non-branded hotels that often contain upscale facilities. Small to medium-sized hotel establishments offer a limited amount of on-site amenities. Economy hotels are small to medium-sized hotel establishments that offer basic accommodations with little to no services. Extended stay hotels are small to medium-sized hotels that offer longer-term full-service accommodations compared to a traditional hotel.

Timeshare and destination clubs are a form of property ownership involving ownership of an individual unit of accommodation for seasonal usage. A motel is a small-sized low-rise lodging with direct access to individual rooms from the car park. Boutique hotels are typically hotels with a unique environment or intimate setting. A number of hotels have entered the public consciousness through popular culture, such as the Ritz Hotel in London. Some hotels are built specifically as destinations in themselves, for example casinos and holiday resorts.

Most hotel establishments are run by a general manager who serves as the head executive (often referred to as the "hotel manager"), department heads who oversee various departments within a hotel (e.g., food service), middle managers, administrative staff, and line-level supervisors. The organizational chart and volume of job positions and hierarchy varies by hotel size, function and class, and is often determined by hotel ownership and managing companies.

As we travel, as we all do, our migration from one place to another must stop somewhere due to exhaustion (and take a pee). We can ever go so far without stopping for a bite to eat, a potty break and a nap.

Our first travels required sleeping in the dirt with no shelter. As more trails began to follow a way station would appear for stagecoaches to deliver mail and carry passengers.

To entertain and refresh the traveler’s taverns offered food and drink and a room for a night. These inns would offer a room with a bed and a table. Some had windows. Some had privy pots. Some offered meals. Some became brothels.

The highway system was created to assist travels using the modern automobile to venture through the areas that were foreign before. Along the line of concrete and asphalt, mobile filling stations popped up fueling the travelers. The most popular stops also offered food and a room to park the car and sleep for a night. The motels were popular for families and as ‘no-tell’ motels.

The boarding houses in cities became swanky hotels with doormen, reservations, concierge service, room cleaning, restaurants, pools, gyms, parking and bars. To attend a hotel became a pampering experience.

A hotel room is just that. A room provided a bed, a chair, and table with a lamp, a telephone, a Gideon bible, a television (bolted to the floor), and a dresser. There may be a window with a view of the ocean or the parking lot. The bathroom had stiff towels and the warm bath depended what floor you were on. The walls had some sort of manufactured artwork and hopefully some fire alarm.

The hotel room was mostly abandoned during the stay but it was a place to store your stuff while you travel. Now they have safes available to store your valuables that state it’s own story. The phones and cameras and wallets will probably lost along the travels rather than in the room. Don’t know if there is hotel insurance?

Now if one room is not enough, there are suites available with a living room separate from the bedroom. This is like a two-room apartment. With enough cash, an entire floor can be rented for your stay.

Checking in and opening the door with a key or a punch card, everything looks pristine and welcoming (just like when you return home). Your room appears that no one stayed here the night before and don’t forget to tip. In the 5-star hotels the expectations of quality are assumed while the roadside motels hope for a night sleep without getting a rat bite.

They all have ice machines in the hallways and a vending machine for a coke or a dr. pepper. They all have entertainment from their roommates because the walls are very thin.

I’ve stayed in a few hotels. Some were very nice. Some were not. I never worked at a hotel but my father did manage some. Like many of the hospitality service industry, the room should be clean and neat, the room service polite and convenient, and a smile at the desk for whatever problem arise.

When you return home with all the stuff you hauled around and settle back into your routine, why do you need more than one room?

Sorry room service won’t answer.

Over-think it

 

 

Anticipation • Regulation • Justification • Adjudication • Contemplation • Rationalization • Incarceration • Allegation •

Motivation • Restoration • Retaliation • Procrastination • Intimidation • Proclamation • Assimilation • Frustration •

 

• Lying politician sworn in to Congress (?) • Astronauts stranded in space • 1^st grader shooting his teacher in class • Classified documents in your Corvette • Web telescope finds Heaven

 

So we begin another year.

Three hundred and sixty five days to rotate around the big glowing ball. There will be births (8,000,000,000+ so far) and deaths (67,000,000+). Maybe we need more wars or plagues to balance the environment?

Should I start a family? Should I buy an electric car?  Gas or electric stove? Does this school teach what I want my kids to learn? Should I eat more vegetables? Where is the umbrella? Is there enough money? Should I get new shoes? What is that bump on my back? Did she smile at me? What is that noise upstairs? When should I cut the grass? What should I have for dinner? Should I hire someone to paint the shed or do it myself? When should I do my taxes?

As I lay in bed trying to clear my mind to sleep, all these and more thoughts race through me are forming dreams that will wake me up in three hours.

The dreams don’t answer the questions. The to-do list doesn’t solve the over thinking of the reality we don’t want accomplish in the same day.

See you tomorrow.