September 7 – The American Dream

The American Dream
of House, Cars, College, Career
American Burden

It happened before my very eyes.

My oldest brother got a job right out of college and worked for that company for the next 40 years.

Now retired, owns his home and works in his garden.

The American Dream.

I have worked for the same company for 20 years but never a day passes that I don’t worry about the job being eliminated and I find myself having been made redundant.

I look forward to a future funded by my Social Security benefits and a plan to cook at the nearest Waffle House 3 days a week.

For my kids? Welllllll . . .

Over the last 40 years wages have stagnated in real terms while the price of college has risen eight times as fast and the price of health insurance has also outpaced earnings.

If I want to worry I think about the future.

If I really want to worry I think about my kids future.

I understand that the American Dream couldn’t last.

That it had to change.

Did it have to become a nightmare?

September 6 – OHHH Friday

Weekend starts tonight
I leave work at 5PM
My mind left last night

I worked three days this week and somehow it has been a long, long week.

Somewhere, Jim Harrison has a passage about how we have yet to equate the energy drain of mental work with the impact of physical labor on a human being.

I quit worrying about ‘job satisfaction’ a long time ago.

Sad that rather than the job well done, I want the job done

Just done.

Done and without a long tail that comes back to me.

I also cannot understand how I came to embrace the TGIF philosophy.

I felt I could enjoy each and every day.

I thought I had that much faith in each day.

Narratives within narratives.

Not sure what that means in this context.

But I liked the phrase and it is too difficult to hammer into a haiku.

The story not yet told.

Anyway, it is Friday!

September 4 – super highway

super highway
of information, don’t go
without a helmet

I was off during the long Labor Day Weekend but I was also on call.

That means that if there are immediate problems or issues with the TV Station websites that I work with, I am the person to contact.

There were stations on Friday that remembered that High School football had started and they needed assistance.

There were stations dealing with their coverage of the Hurricane Dorien.

(Luckily for me, my company, TEGNA, does not own a TV station in Alabama.)

And there was a mass shooting in Odessa, Texas.

Wednesday finally and eager to be back at work so I can relax.

August 29 – civil conversation

civil conversation
choosing fairness over fear
expression to hope

Hammered out from the Manchester Guardian, online as, The Guardian.

The newspaper states, “A civil conversation has never been more important in American public life. Guardian journalism, driven by fact-based reporting, offers an independent voice of reason at a time when the national conversation is divisive and embittered. At a time of acrimony, America is in need of public civility. For 200 years Guardian journalism has been committed to giving expression to hope, not hate, and choosing fairness over fear.”

I have always liked The Guardian.

Maybe because part of my family emigrated from Manchester.

Maybe because Alistair Cooke (America, Masterpiece Theater) was for many years, the USA Correspondent for the Guardian.

It is a newspaperpaper with an interesting history.

Started in 1821, in 1936, ownership was transferred to a trust that was created in 1936 to “secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference”.

I like a newspaper that claims to be, “committed to giving expression to hope, not hate, and choosing fairness over fear.”

Of course, this is a newspaper in Britain, not the United States.

August 28 – Thousands of reasons

Thousands of reasons
community of commuting
a single purpose

Roadway is filled with cars and trucks.

Everybody is heading in the same general direction.

Roads and paths that converge into one.

The road into or around Atlanta.

Same purpose.

The road more traveled.

The path taken.

It is the reasons that are less traveled.

The reason not taken.

That makes all the difference.

The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.