A friend of mine posted this on Facebook, and I just had to steal it and share it. I can't help but laugh at it as I watch. If news reporters talked like this today, they'd be off the air the next day!
More than just being funny, though, this video clip is an AMAZING testimony to how far we've come. This was just 17 years ago! I was an adult in 1994, but the clip seems like it was from ages ago.
Enjoy...
(I can't see the video.)
Monday, January 31, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Wal-Mart
It's been two months since my father died. After making several posts in a row about his death, I announced that I was finished talking about him for a while. I decided that for several reasons. First, I was emotionally spent, and I needed a chance to think about something else. So with the exception of a post saying I wasn't in the Christmas spirit, and a year end review in which I mentioned my father, I intentionally avoided the subject. In fact, if you go back and look at my posts for December and January, you'll notice that the vast majority were about pretty trite subjects. This was intentional. I'd sit at the computer to write, and I'd think to myself, "What's the most bland, unemotional thing I can write about?" I needed the break from crying, and frankly, I didn't trust my own emotions. They were too raw, and too easily stirred. I'd find myself getting overly emotional about things that didn't warrant it (see the story below), and I'd find myself sharing too much with people I didn't know well enough. So I determined to turn it off until I had perspective.
That's wasn't the only reason, though. I also understood that--in telling my story--I would also be telling the stories of the people around me. It's an unavoidable side effect of writing personal essays and then sticking them on the web for anyone to read, and it's important to strike a balance between my desire to share and the privacy of family and friends. As my wife will tell you, I don't always get that balance right. Thus, though I had a desire to write down everything about my father's dying--seeing him the night before his death, finding out about his death in the waiting room of the hospital, the scene in the intensive care unit after that, phoning relatives and telling them about it, the mass of people who came and visited our house, the planning of the funeral, the visitation, the funeral and burial, and any number of other topics that I felt pushed to write about--I didn't do so because I wasn't sure how much I could trust myself to share the right amount. So I wrote about grammar hang-ups and how I figured out the phone system at my work. Safe subjects.
Now, two months later, I feel like I DO have some perspective, and I'm ready to write again about the subject I've been avoiding. I still don't trust myself to not share too much, though. So I've decided that the first story I'll tell will be something that happened when I was alone. That way, if I share too much, no one else will get hurt. Here goes...
My father had died in the early morning on the Monday following Thanksgiving. I had seen him the night before, having rushed to Frankfort Sunday night when I'd heard he'd gotten worse and that his heart surgery might get moved from the scheduled Tuesday to Monday. When I came down, I had packed enough clothes for Monday, and an additional set of clothes in case his surgery didn't get moved from Tuesday. I had no idea when I was packing that it would be much longer than that before I ever made it back home.
Thus, by Tuesday evening, I was out of clean clothes. The only clothes I had were the ones I was wearing. They were still fairly presentable, though, and I figured I could wear them again the next day until my wife came back to Frankfort with reinforcements (She'd gone home to Cincinnati a short time before to be with our kids).
I went into the kitchen, and there was a kettle of vegetable soup that my aunt had brought by hours before sitting on the stove. She'd brought the soup for the family to eat, but it hadn't been touched. There was just WAY too much other food in the house, and much of the rest of it easier to pick up and eat. The stove wasn't on, and I had no idea how long the soup had been sitting there, so I got two or three Tupperware dishes and put the soup in the refrigerator. I felt pretty smart after doing so. After all, I was protecting everyone from food poisoning and sickness. But then I looked down. Somehow, in the process of moving the soup around, I had gotten it all over my jeans and sweatshirt. All over them. This wasn't something that could be sponged off with a wet paper towel. They were probably ruined.
I didn't get upset, though. I guess I had too much that was really upsetting going on. Instead, I hopped into the car and took off for Wal-Mart. I needed to go there anyway because we'd ordered a bunch of prints of photos of my father that we were going to frame and take to the funeral home for the visitation. We'd uploaded them to Walmart.com and they were supposed to be ready at the One Hour Photo pickup in the back of the store. I'd pick up the photos, and while I was there I'd just grab some cheap clothes that would hold me over until the next day.
I got to the store, and I decided I'd go get the photos first. The pickup location is in the back of the store, by the electronics department. As I walked by the electronics department, I saw all of the HDTV's on sale. After my father's heart surgery had been scheduled, I decided that for Christmas I was going to buy him a big screen TV. He already HAD a big television, but it was an old, non-HD model. More importantly, it was downstairs, and his bedroom and the kitchen were upstairs. I figured there'd be a lot of recuperation after the heart surgery, and he wouldn't want to go up and down a bunch of stairs. So I wanted to buy a TV that could be placed on top of the piano while he was recuperating, and that I could then put into the TV cabinet he had downstairs once he had gotten better (I don't know what I thought he was going to do with his old TV. I figured that--after seeing an HD picture, he'd want to junk it.).
Since I'd decided to make that my Christmas present, I'd looked at TV's anytime I'd gone into any store that sold them. I found myself doing the same thing at Wal-Mart, checking prices, reading dimensions to make sure the TV would fit into the TV cabinet. Examining picture quality. Then it struck me. He was dead. There wasn't going to be a period of recuperation where a big TV would be needed upstairs. My father wasn't alive to see how much clearer the HD picture would have been. He was gone. I turned and walked to the photo pickup location, and I got in line.
A wave of grief came over me. This wasn't the first wave of grief I'd ever had. In fact, these waves had been a regular occurrence for the last day and a half. But this time it was different. This time I was alone. Every other time I'd been overcome, there was a shoulder to cry on, someone to tell me it was okay, someone to hug. But here I was, in a store full of people, and I was alone. It struck me that this was the first time I'd been alone since my father had died. I felt like a child lost in public.
I stood there for a long time, lost in my grief, and then it occurred to me somehow that I had been standing in the line A LOT longer than I should have been. I focused my attention on the outer world rather than on my grief, and I realized that there was one customer in front of me, and both he and the worker behind the counter were upset. In my fragile state, I couldn't handle this anger. I walked towards them. "What's going on?" I asked. "I've been in line a long time!"
The man shouted, "They've lost my package! Tonight's my granddaughter's birthday, and I bought AND PAID FOR a doll house, and they can't find it!" (Apparently, the photo pickup place was also where people picked up stuff they had shipped "Site to Store".)
My father is dead. My father is dead, I thought to myself, and I don't have time for this! I turned to the cashier. "He's already paid for it? And he has his paperwork?"
She gave me a look that said, "Who IS this man with soup all over his jeans and sweatshirt?" But she answered. "Yes, we just can't find it."
Both of them stared at me, waiting for me to say something. I must have had a wild look in my eyes for them to treat me the way that they did. Or maybe it was the soup stains. I don't know. But after a moment I said, "That is so...That is so..." Tears came to my eyes. "That is so SAD!"
Both of them looked very concerned, and the man began shaking his head. "No. No! It's not sad at all. It's just--"
I interrupted him, tears pouring down my face. "No, it IS sad! You wanted a dollhouse for your granddaughter. You PAID for a doll house for your granddaughter. And these guys LOST it! That's terrible!" I was openly sobbing now.
"No, no it's not terrible. It's just a doll house!" the man said, the anger drained from his voice. He turned to the cashier. "I'll just take my money back. It'll be all right."
"Are you sure?" the cashier asked.
"I'm sure," the man said hurriedly. "In fact, why don't you let him go first!"
So I did. I got my photos and I went to the clothing section, and immediately I had another crisis. I have no fashion sense whatsoever. I swear, without my wife accompanying me to clothing stores, I'd probably come home with a tank top and bicycle shorts. If fashion were music, I'd be tone deaf.
I stood in the men's section looking at clothes, but EVERYTHING looked wrong to me. I just couldn't make a decision. I think I was overwhelmed. In the last two days I had decided to come to Frankfort on a moment's notice, had decided at 11:30 PM that my brother and I needed to take my mother to see my father at the hospital (for what--it would turn out--would be the last time), had decided how to tell relatives about my father's death, what readings should be read at the funeral, how to fix a broken shutter, and a host of other decisions that needed to be made in an instant. But I stood in Wal-Mart, alone, unable to decide which crummy sweatshirt I should get. And my father was dead.
I could feel myself about to break down. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and called my wife. She answered hello, and I said, "Hey." My voice trailed off (she later told me that I'd sounded like a six year old).
"What's up?" she asked me.
"I don't know," I said. "I'm at Wal-Mart because I spilled soup on me, and I can't find any clothes that look right, and I was shopping for TV's and I just realized that my father is dead and he's never coming back."
"Okay," she said. "Who's with you?"
"Nobody," I said. "I came out to get my dad's pictures and to get some clothes."
"You went out ALONE?" my wife asked, concern in her voice.
"Yes," I said, "and now I don't know what to buy and I'm all alone and I don't know what to do and--."
She could hear me ramping up into a frenzy, so she sternly said to me, "Stop!" I did. She went on. "What's in your hand?"
"I don't know," I said.
"LOOK at your hands!" she said to me.
"There's a pair of jeans and a sweater and a thing that might be a sweater or might be a sweatshirt--I don't know. Sort of both."
"Good!" she said. "Go to the front of the store and buy those things."
"Yeah, but I'm not sure if I need both of--"
"GO to the front of the store," she said, "and buy those things! And then go home where everyone else is. Don't stop on the way. And don't go out alone again!" So I did.
Right at the start of January the mother of a co-worker of mine died. Though there are 300 employees in my school district, there are only nine of us that work in the Board of Education building, and we're a fairly close knit bunch, so I went to both the visitation and funeral. It was a Catholic family, like mine, so a lot of the visitation and funeral were just like my father's, and I started to get emotional about the whole thing, so I responded the way I usually do when I feel myself getting too emotional--I disconnect and become overly analytical. And what I analyzed at that visitation and funeral was the way the family was handled, especially by the funeral director. He came and spoke directly to them, in a kind, low voice, but also firmly. "It's time to place the cloak on the casket," he'd say to them. "It's time to go to the back of the church." He'd put his arm on the widower and guide him. And if one of the family members wandered off alone and started to look distraught, he'd come over to them and give them something to do. "I think your grandfather is thirsty," he'd say. "Can you go get him some water?"
Mourning people need direction. And they need to be with other people.
That's wasn't the only reason, though. I also understood that--in telling my story--I would also be telling the stories of the people around me. It's an unavoidable side effect of writing personal essays and then sticking them on the web for anyone to read, and it's important to strike a balance between my desire to share and the privacy of family and friends. As my wife will tell you, I don't always get that balance right. Thus, though I had a desire to write down everything about my father's dying--seeing him the night before his death, finding out about his death in the waiting room of the hospital, the scene in the intensive care unit after that, phoning relatives and telling them about it, the mass of people who came and visited our house, the planning of the funeral, the visitation, the funeral and burial, and any number of other topics that I felt pushed to write about--I didn't do so because I wasn't sure how much I could trust myself to share the right amount. So I wrote about grammar hang-ups and how I figured out the phone system at my work. Safe subjects.
Now, two months later, I feel like I DO have some perspective, and I'm ready to write again about the subject I've been avoiding. I still don't trust myself to not share too much, though. So I've decided that the first story I'll tell will be something that happened when I was alone. That way, if I share too much, no one else will get hurt. Here goes...
My father had died in the early morning on the Monday following Thanksgiving. I had seen him the night before, having rushed to Frankfort Sunday night when I'd heard he'd gotten worse and that his heart surgery might get moved from the scheduled Tuesday to Monday. When I came down, I had packed enough clothes for Monday, and an additional set of clothes in case his surgery didn't get moved from Tuesday. I had no idea when I was packing that it would be much longer than that before I ever made it back home.
Thus, by Tuesday evening, I was out of clean clothes. The only clothes I had were the ones I was wearing. They were still fairly presentable, though, and I figured I could wear them again the next day until my wife came back to Frankfort with reinforcements (She'd gone home to Cincinnati a short time before to be with our kids).
I went into the kitchen, and there was a kettle of vegetable soup that my aunt had brought by hours before sitting on the stove. She'd brought the soup for the family to eat, but it hadn't been touched. There was just WAY too much other food in the house, and much of the rest of it easier to pick up and eat. The stove wasn't on, and I had no idea how long the soup had been sitting there, so I got two or three Tupperware dishes and put the soup in the refrigerator. I felt pretty smart after doing so. After all, I was protecting everyone from food poisoning and sickness. But then I looked down. Somehow, in the process of moving the soup around, I had gotten it all over my jeans and sweatshirt. All over them. This wasn't something that could be sponged off with a wet paper towel. They were probably ruined.
I didn't get upset, though. I guess I had too much that was really upsetting going on. Instead, I hopped into the car and took off for Wal-Mart. I needed to go there anyway because we'd ordered a bunch of prints of photos of my father that we were going to frame and take to the funeral home for the visitation. We'd uploaded them to Walmart.com and they were supposed to be ready at the One Hour Photo pickup in the back of the store. I'd pick up the photos, and while I was there I'd just grab some cheap clothes that would hold me over until the next day.
I got to the store, and I decided I'd go get the photos first. The pickup location is in the back of the store, by the electronics department. As I walked by the electronics department, I saw all of the HDTV's on sale. After my father's heart surgery had been scheduled, I decided that for Christmas I was going to buy him a big screen TV. He already HAD a big television, but it was an old, non-HD model. More importantly, it was downstairs, and his bedroom and the kitchen were upstairs. I figured there'd be a lot of recuperation after the heart surgery, and he wouldn't want to go up and down a bunch of stairs. So I wanted to buy a TV that could be placed on top of the piano while he was recuperating, and that I could then put into the TV cabinet he had downstairs once he had gotten better (I don't know what I thought he was going to do with his old TV. I figured that--after seeing an HD picture, he'd want to junk it.).
Since I'd decided to make that my Christmas present, I'd looked at TV's anytime I'd gone into any store that sold them. I found myself doing the same thing at Wal-Mart, checking prices, reading dimensions to make sure the TV would fit into the TV cabinet. Examining picture quality. Then it struck me. He was dead. There wasn't going to be a period of recuperation where a big TV would be needed upstairs. My father wasn't alive to see how much clearer the HD picture would have been. He was gone. I turned and walked to the photo pickup location, and I got in line.
A wave of grief came over me. This wasn't the first wave of grief I'd ever had. In fact, these waves had been a regular occurrence for the last day and a half. But this time it was different. This time I was alone. Every other time I'd been overcome, there was a shoulder to cry on, someone to tell me it was okay, someone to hug. But here I was, in a store full of people, and I was alone. It struck me that this was the first time I'd been alone since my father had died. I felt like a child lost in public.
I stood there for a long time, lost in my grief, and then it occurred to me somehow that I had been standing in the line A LOT longer than I should have been. I focused my attention on the outer world rather than on my grief, and I realized that there was one customer in front of me, and both he and the worker behind the counter were upset. In my fragile state, I couldn't handle this anger. I walked towards them. "What's going on?" I asked. "I've been in line a long time!"
The man shouted, "They've lost my package! Tonight's my granddaughter's birthday, and I bought AND PAID FOR a doll house, and they can't find it!" (Apparently, the photo pickup place was also where people picked up stuff they had shipped "Site to Store".)
My father is dead. My father is dead, I thought to myself, and I don't have time for this! I turned to the cashier. "He's already paid for it? And he has his paperwork?"
She gave me a look that said, "Who IS this man with soup all over his jeans and sweatshirt?" But she answered. "Yes, we just can't find it."
Both of them stared at me, waiting for me to say something. I must have had a wild look in my eyes for them to treat me the way that they did. Or maybe it was the soup stains. I don't know. But after a moment I said, "That is so...That is so..." Tears came to my eyes. "That is so SAD!"
Both of them looked very concerned, and the man began shaking his head. "No. No! It's not sad at all. It's just--"
I interrupted him, tears pouring down my face. "No, it IS sad! You wanted a dollhouse for your granddaughter. You PAID for a doll house for your granddaughter. And these guys LOST it! That's terrible!" I was openly sobbing now.
"No, no it's not terrible. It's just a doll house!" the man said, the anger drained from his voice. He turned to the cashier. "I'll just take my money back. It'll be all right."
"Are you sure?" the cashier asked.
"I'm sure," the man said hurriedly. "In fact, why don't you let him go first!"
So I did. I got my photos and I went to the clothing section, and immediately I had another crisis. I have no fashion sense whatsoever. I swear, without my wife accompanying me to clothing stores, I'd probably come home with a tank top and bicycle shorts. If fashion were music, I'd be tone deaf.
I stood in the men's section looking at clothes, but EVERYTHING looked wrong to me. I just couldn't make a decision. I think I was overwhelmed. In the last two days I had decided to come to Frankfort on a moment's notice, had decided at 11:30 PM that my brother and I needed to take my mother to see my father at the hospital (for what--it would turn out--would be the last time), had decided how to tell relatives about my father's death, what readings should be read at the funeral, how to fix a broken shutter, and a host of other decisions that needed to be made in an instant. But I stood in Wal-Mart, alone, unable to decide which crummy sweatshirt I should get. And my father was dead.
I could feel myself about to break down. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and called my wife. She answered hello, and I said, "Hey." My voice trailed off (she later told me that I'd sounded like a six year old).
"What's up?" she asked me.
"I don't know," I said. "I'm at Wal-Mart because I spilled soup on me, and I can't find any clothes that look right, and I was shopping for TV's and I just realized that my father is dead and he's never coming back."
"Okay," she said. "Who's with you?"
"Nobody," I said. "I came out to get my dad's pictures and to get some clothes."
"You went out ALONE?" my wife asked, concern in her voice.
"Yes," I said, "and now I don't know what to buy and I'm all alone and I don't know what to do and--."
She could hear me ramping up into a frenzy, so she sternly said to me, "Stop!" I did. She went on. "What's in your hand?"
"I don't know," I said.
"LOOK at your hands!" she said to me.
"There's a pair of jeans and a sweater and a thing that might be a sweater or might be a sweatshirt--I don't know. Sort of both."
"Good!" she said. "Go to the front of the store and buy those things."
"Yeah, but I'm not sure if I need both of--"
"GO to the front of the store," she said, "and buy those things! And then go home where everyone else is. Don't stop on the way. And don't go out alone again!" So I did.
Right at the start of January the mother of a co-worker of mine died. Though there are 300 employees in my school district, there are only nine of us that work in the Board of Education building, and we're a fairly close knit bunch, so I went to both the visitation and funeral. It was a Catholic family, like mine, so a lot of the visitation and funeral were just like my father's, and I started to get emotional about the whole thing, so I responded the way I usually do when I feel myself getting too emotional--I disconnect and become overly analytical. And what I analyzed at that visitation and funeral was the way the family was handled, especially by the funeral director. He came and spoke directly to them, in a kind, low voice, but also firmly. "It's time to place the cloak on the casket," he'd say to them. "It's time to go to the back of the church." He'd put his arm on the widower and guide him. And if one of the family members wandered off alone and started to look distraught, he'd come over to them and give them something to do. "I think your grandfather is thirsty," he'd say. "Can you go get him some water?"
Mourning people need direction. And they need to be with other people.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Quote of the Day
"We believe that we are entering a technological age in which we will be able to interact with the richness of living information—not merely in the passive way that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving something from it by our connection to it."
J.C.R. Licklider
"The Computer as a Communication Device" (April, 1968)
J.C.R. Licklider
"The Computer as a Communication Device" (April, 1968)
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