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August 19th, 2022

When The People Pictures Stopped

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, – a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, – I act – and I never know what I’m going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun. –Stephen Fry

Wise words that helped clarify something within me. I have always resisted the prison of being a thing, despite wanting to be a thing. There were times in my life I wanted to be a cartoonist, a painter, a photographer. Somehow it never worked. I became a computer programmer, a software systems engineer. It made me a very good living, and I am retiring comfortably on what I made, proud to look back on my time with the teams that worked on Hubble, James Webb, and for a brief period, Roman. But I was always bouncing back to one or more of those other things, telling myself that they were what I really wanted to be.

Eventually, as I grew older, I accepted that I just could not focus on any one of them for very long. I began to think of it as seasonal. Now is the season of drawing, now the season of cameras…the season of computers was when I was as preoccupied with computer work at home as I was at work. There was also a season of writing. There was a season of the open road, which often coexisted with the season of cameras. I came to see myself as hopelessly unfocused, unable to bring to any one of my creative arts the kind of fanatical single minded pursuit that would have got me a career in it. I blamed my cluttered mind. I would never have the large body of works other successful artists did. Randomly wandering between my arts and accomplishing very little would forever be my fate. But maybe it was that cluttered mind that was telling me something all along, that I never listened to: I am not a noun.

And now I’m old and retired, and looking back on all of it, I can see that I actually have accomplished a lot, if I take it all together instead of just looking at the nouns. My artwork has continued to improve, my photographic voice is purer, surer. I understand what I’m doing better. I’m happy with the life I had, random and bewildering though it often was. And lonely…so very lonely. But that’s another story for another time. Or not. Let me leave a small piece of that here, because it’s something I’m still wondering about.

He wasn’t the last guy I took a fancy to. I guess that would be the cute 30-something bartender at a place near The Avenue. It was hopeless of course, but not any more hopeless than all the others really. People who look like that… His name was Eddie. I met him on the gay BBS we both frequented back in the day. He was beautiful and for a time I was all about him. But he was not about me. So I played my trump card. He said he hated pictures of himself. I’m a photographer I told him. I can make you see how beautiful you are. Years later I was primed to play that card one more time, but people far wiser than I in matters of the heart decided not to allow it. People who look like that want people who look like that…

So Eddie and I went on trips into the country, and into the city, and he let my camera give him some love. The more I showed him how beautiful I saw him, the more comfortable he became with my camera. I did some of my best beautiful guy photography with him. And it was the last I ever did.

Eventually he started dating someone else and we went our separate ways.

Time passes, the universe expands, and a day came when I began revisiting the photography I did back in those gay BBS days. I posted a bunch of it on Facebook for the friends I made on that BBS, who I have stayed in touch with. Eddie wasn’t one of them…he simply disappeared, but for one time I saw him managing a booth at one of the gay marches on Washington. I asked him if he was seeing anyone, and he just sighed and told me relationships are So much work. I guess it all gets tiresome when you are so beautiful. I’ve never seen him since. That was before Facebook. So I when I posted a bunch of my gay BBS photography on Facebook, I probably only included one or two of Eddie.

But those tweaked my geek side because they were so damn hard to scan, being Kodachrome slides. Kodachrome slides are notorious for having a blue-ish tint in scans that’s very difficult to get rid of. I ended up buying a highly expensive scanning software for its ability to neutralize that tint. It was still a lot of work, and fiddling with those shots, I became re-acquainted with how beautiful Eddie was. And at some point I began to realize that I hadn’t done anything like it since.

Those shots of Eddie are the last shoots I ever did with anyone posing for me. Much, Much later I’d do some enjoyable work for Baltimore OUTloud, photographing some really beautiful guys wearing barely nothing at all (swim suit fashion shows). But those were all taken at public events and I was simply recording what was happening in front of me. But back in the day, when I was a much younger man, I actually did a lot of one-on-one shoots with a few beautiful guys who I could regularly ask out from time to time. We’d go somewhere, maybe to Great Falls, maybe somewhere in the city, and I’d snap away at them. After Eddie, that all just suddenly stopped.

I’ve been trying to understand this. I’ve been told a bunch…laughingly at times…that my photography is noticeable for it’s nearly complete absence of people. But I have the archive of it all right here in the house with me, and that absolutely wasn’t always true. I look back in time in my archives and I see most of what I did back in the day was people photography. Then the people seem to just vanish. The obvious answer is after Eddie I began to despair of ever finding love, and I didn’t want to keep looking into that abyss. 

Sometimes the pat answers are the correct ones after all. There’s a big gap in my photography right after those sessions with Eddie, where I stopped doing art altogether, along with painting and drawing. That was when I took up computer programming as a creative outlet, which led to the life I have now. In writing computer programs I was immersed in a world of pure logic that didn’t have to touch my emotions, my deepest feelings, where there was only despair. I managed to pull myself out of it the year after I got the job at Space Telescope, and found myself one day wandering among the carnival rides being set up for the student spring fair at Hopkins where STScI was located. That awakened something inside of me, and I began creating art again. But something had changed.

So I think of my artwork as having before the dead zone/after the dead zone periods. My catalogue of negatives and slides reflects that break in the numbering. But here’s the thing: There is almost zero creative people photography in the After period. And revisiting that time, I can see that the photo shoots of beautiful guys ended before the dead zone, when I stopped seeing Eddie.

The pat answer is now I’m too old to be asking beautiful young guys to pose for me. I came close to it that one time I was once more ready to throw down my trump card. But instead I was escorted from the table and shown the door, and now it’s all just despair there, in that one dark empty corner.

No more beautiful guys. You can say my art photography is purer now. I accept it. 

 

 

by Bruce | Link | React!

August 14th, 2022

I Spend All This Money On You And This Is The Thanks I Get??

I’m trying Universal this next Florida trip, since Chapek seems not to want us middle class retirees at Disney World anymore.

Universal is smaller and its tickets are about where Disney’s are in terms of price. But they aren’t doing park reservations, they have a bunch of interesting stuff in there, and an actual Margaritaville restaurant on the premises. I’ve been to the original Margaritaville in Key West, and the food and drink were very good. Love the atmosphere, love the Cheeseburger In Paradise!

And…if I like it enough, they have annual passes that cost and work almost exactly like the old Disney annual passes did. There is also an interesting 1950s themed hotel on premises that I might use for stays when I’m not doing DVC.

And this trip it all fits together, almost as if by destiny, as if pixie dust and magic! I had to truncate the end of my initial birthday week stay in my DVC room to be back in time for my class reunion. So I added some days at the beginning at a hotel on hotel row near Disney Springs. My two days of Disney park tickets don’t start until I check into my DVC room, so there were several days I was expecting to do nothing except Disney Springs and maybe the miniature golf spots, which are fun. Now I can do a couple days at Universal instead.

I bought two park hopping days at Universal (they only have two parks, three if you count the new water park), and downloaded their app to manage it all, just like I do with the Disney app. Supposedly there are busses that will shuttle you from hotels on hotel row to Universal.

I paid for them using my Disney Card. Hahahahaha… They offer me a Universal card I might just get it.

And you know, I don’t think Chapek and the current Disney board of directors even care if most or all of us former annual pass holders migrate over to Universal. Let them have the hoi polloi. We want the rich big money spenders…

by Bruce | Link | React!

August 12th, 2022

Birthday Wishes For A Lost Friend

So my calendar is telling me that today is your birthday. How I wish we had stayed in touch. Maybe I could have helped keep you steady when the sickness started taking you. Maybe I could have got you the help you needed. Maybe I could have just been there to be someone you could trust and rely on. To listen. To be a friend. I should have been there. But we were so young, and you at least were beautiful, and the world will have its way with us. And now we’re both old men. And I will always regret not being there.

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how

Peace. Take care.

by Bruce | Link | React!

August 1st, 2022

A Life In Blog Posts

I’ve had my website for just over two decades now, originally to showcase my cartoons and photography, but it also included a blog, which back in the day were simple online diaries. I keep telling people that mine is a life blog, because most of what you find in the blogosphere are topical blogs, most of them political, and I get political lots on mine. But it’s a life blog. You might find me writing about “Adventures in home ownership” in my “department of random complaining” as much as pulpit thumping about prejudice toward gay folk.

I was looking at my server logs this morning and saw that someone, via a Google search (Google doesn’t let you see the search strings anymore) hit on a series of blog posts that I tagged with the keyword “Prejudice”. So I decided to see what they saw and followed the link back to my blog.

Is it unforgivably vain of me to look at the old stuff an be impressed with the quality of my writing? There’s a lot of good stuff in there going back years. But also, browsing a lot of old blog posts on the topic of homophobia really drives home how the current torrent of hate mongering toward us isn’t all that much different from previous waves of it. It’s like nothing ever changes in the American sewer. But at least I could get a few things off my chest. Beats yelling at the TV.

I don’t know how much longer I have, hopefully enough to finish A Coming Out Story. I’ll be 69 in just a few weeks and the way I’m feeling lately I’m finally at the point of admitting to myself that I’m actually old now. I’m tired all the time now. But I could hope that something of my art, something of my photography, and maybe my blog have a life after mine. On the blog, which is after all just a life blog, I’ve said things I felt needed to be said whether I had an audience for it or not, and my blog has never had a lot of traffic. But at least I got it out there and I’m happy with what I wrote.

by Bruce | Link | React!

June 4th, 2022

Retirement Feels…Weird…

I guess it was supposed to feel wonderful. And in some ways it does. I’m very lucky. It’s not a fabulous retirement but I can afford to pay my bills and still have some left over for a little discretionary spending. Being mostly debt free (save for the mortgage and DVC points) helps out a lot. Paying off the credit cards took a big chunk off my monthly expenses, and I’m in a situation now where I really don’t need to be using them anymore. So money wise, it’s pretty good. I can relax. What I didn’t expect was that being a problem.

My time now is all mine. And it just feels strange. Almost immediately after my last day at work I skedaddled for my brother’s place in California…a land where I’d always planned to retire to eventually. I spent a lovely three months there…the longest I’ve ever been away from home in my life…but I kept stressing about the house, and the cute little street cat I left behind. My neighbors on both sides are cat lovers and they took good care of her, but I still stressed about it. She’s a small little lady, fierce though she is, and getting very old for a street cat. And the house. I stressed a lot about how the house was doing.

I’m back home now and slowly waking the house up from the coma I put it into before leaving. Water turned back on okay…furnace/AC back on…power restored to this and that…everything looking good. The cat is fine, and I think has mostly forgiven me for going away. Now I have all the time in the world for art projects and Harry Homeowner things I’ve wanted to do. And that feels…weird.

It is more disorienting than I expected to not have work days anymore. I reckon I’ll get over it eventually, but it just feels so strange. Even during COVID lockdowns I still had office hours to keep, albeit at my home office. But still, it was a clock I had to keep, and deadlines I had to meet. And that’s all over now and even with all the stuff I have to do around the house and in the art room I feel adrift, plus feeling like I shouldn’t feel like that because I have so much to do. It’s not like there isn’t anything to do. And I’m doing stuff. I’m busy all day long. But there is no clock anymore. Things get done when they get done. Then I move on to the next thing. There is no clock tapping me on the shoulder all the time and it feels weird. 

I spent an entire adult life tied to the clock. And even when I was a kid, there was school. This isn’t summer vacation. This is something else. Something really strange.

I just had a thought that I’d buy one of those old school bells and have it ring, like at lunchtime and the end of the school day. And then I thought…NO! This is fine…I’ll get acclimatized to it. A little strangeness in your life is helpful. It keeps you thinking.

by Bruce | Link | React!

May 18th, 2022

Yeah…I Should Probably Take All That Off My Calendar. . .

Those little tasks that remind you of the life you left behind to start a new one. The other day I deleted a bunch of reminders off my Google calendar…things like paycheck days, and logging in to certain lab and MOC machines to keep my accounts active. I suppose I could have just hidden my work calendar from view and just kept the personal calendar active, but the work calendar was as much a work diary as a reminder and I want it to be accurate. There are no more work days. At least not in the past sense.

It may seem like I waited months to do this, since I retired in February, but the fact is since I took the vacation day rollout it wasn’t official as far as Social Security or either of the retirement plans until the day of my last paycheck which was the beginning of this month. I probably could have deleted the login reminders sooner, but…well…I knew it was going to be difficult. I loved that job. But it was time to move on.

That said, I did delete the meeting reminders the day after I left the building.

 

 

by Bruce | Link | React!

February 16th, 2022

Stepping From One Life Into Another

Step by step…

Got my first Social Security payment today, and it’s a tad better than expected because of the cost of living adjustment they made in January.

I applied back in September, two years after my official full retirement year, so the payment is bigger. The plan was to wait it out until 70 when you have to take it. My work isn’t physically strenuous and I love my job so I figured that would be a piece of cake. The heart attack two years ago (a month after I’d reached my full Social Security age) convinced me otherwise, and I adjusted the plan to retiring after James Webb launch. I’m getting Social Security at the same time I’m still drawing a paycheck because they kept moving the launch date back.

I was afraid some bureaucratic screw up would happen and I’d not see a payment today and have to wade through the bureaucracy to get it fixed. I’m still struggling to get Medicare plan B going. But I checked just now and there it is.

They say Social Security should not be more than a small part of your retirement income, but I did not have the wherewithal to save for retirement until late in life. That factoid you may have heard about gay men having so much discretionary income…? It’s total bullshit! A lifestyle magazine did a survey and got that result which they then pitched to advertisers. But all it meant is having lots of money in the 1990s made it easier for some gay guys to be out of the closet. Most of us had to struggle and it was even worse for lesbians. I had first hand experience with that doing volunteer work for a local gay BBS run by a non-profit, those times of year when we sent out letters asking for donations. I have a string of jobs in my past I got fired or laid off of the instant they figured out what a lavender boy I am…usually because I refused to make up stories about girlfriends I didn’t have.

Something I’ve said often enough is that a militant homosexual is a homosexual who doesn’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual, and a militant homosexual activist is a homosexual who acts like there isn’t anything wrong with being a homosexual. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. You don’t have to march in Pride Day parades, you don’t have to do Gay Days every year at Walt Disney World, you don’t have to festoon your car with Pride decals. All it takes is you are fine with being gay, and unwilling to hide that fact whenever those unplanned, unexpected out of the closet moments suddenly tap you on the shoulder. Eventually life teaches you that being truthful is better in the long run, even if it stings at the moment. You get one chance in this life to keep your good name, and the trust of your neighbors. But for us gay folk, maintaining that is a constant struggle against the pressure from every direction to duck the question, to hide. to lie, to put on a mask for the comfort of others, and never mind that it will slowly strangle the person you could have been. 

They tell us to just not “flaunt it” and we’ll be fine, but that’s a lie. You had to bury yourself deep and fake it and lie and lie and lie and lie about every part of your life and just let it corrode your soul and and drive you deeper into self hatred. I refused. I’d fallen in love when I was 17 and it made me stubborn. I saw what the closet did, And Still Does, to so many, and apart from knowing that I had to be careful (I read stories about gay bashings nearly every week, even these days) I wasn’t going there, I was not going to act like I thought there was anything wrong with me when I damn well knew there wasn’t. All I had to do was remember how seeing him smile made me feel back when we were teenagers, and the world was new.

But I was never of the fabulous peacock tribe. I was, and to some degree still am, a kind of scrawny geeky kind of guy, without very much of a fashion sense, and thus I made it past a lot of job interviews, only to later be shown the door for being insufficiently low on the Kinsey scale. I never had a boyfriend, was always single, and thus had no love life to brag about like everyone else in the office. Lots of people mistook that for my being discrete but if challenged on it I would dig in my heels and tell the truth. Yes I am…what of it? And that’s what usually got me fired. I never really saw myself as being brave or having courage, just stubborn. 

So I didn’t have much to save for retirement, until I got the job I have now, with an employer that actually took pains to make me feel safe and valued there, and matched ten percent of my salary and put it right into a 403b (they’re for non-profits). Twenty-two years of that, plus my own contributions now that I had a good income for it, gave me enough of a nest egg that I can retire comfortably, if not fabulously. But Social Security is going to have to be a big part of that, which is why I waited to apply. That, and buying my little Baltimore rowhouse when I did, makes it possible. Oh…and the car is paid for. In ten years so is the house.

I’ll do okay. But for the life of me I just don’t get why so many old people vote republican. They’ve been trying to kill Social Security since FDR created it.

by Bruce | Link | React!

February 14th, 2022

The Day After Valentine’s Day Should Be Ours

Those of us who are single. Those of us who have never found that intimate other. Those of us who crashed and burned on the alter of Love. It’s the day after that is ours. The day when the flowers start to wilt and the candy goes stale. There you will find us. The books holding stories of love that never was, waiting forever on the remainders shelves as a last desperate hope for a buyer. The closest thing I ever had to a boyfriend told me we were but merely friends with benefits. Swell if that sort of thing suits you. Too bad I was in love. Strike Three!

Today is the most miserable of days for those of us who have been single our entire adult lives. This year I have my pending retirement to distract me from it, so there’s that. That, and the fact that I’ve reached an age now where the need is beginning to wane. Let’s hear it for getting old. I tell myself I survived the heart attack because my heart has a lot of experience living with damage.  

But…since I’m seeing so many others sharing their favorite Valentine’s Day poems on Facebook today, let me share a couple of mine. Not really Valentine’s Day poems you say? Oh my goodness…yes…yes they are!

Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.
To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
‘Good-bye,’ said you, `forget me.’
‘I will, no fear’, said I.
If here, where clover whitens
The dead man’s knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,
Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.
-A. E. Housman

I’ll just quote a couple lines from The Man On The Bed by Debora Greger…

If the heart is a house, he thought,
it is rented to strangers
who leave it empty.

That’s a hard one to find to read since it’s not been published widely, but it’s there in the November 24, 1974 issue of The New Yorker. If you have a subscription you can read it online. I bought a copy from a place that sells back issues just so I could have the entire thing. I think it’s a perfect Day After Valentine’s Day poem, but that’s probably not what the poet had in mind.

Many years ago I did a series of charcoal and ink drawings on a theme of first love, which I’m still really proud of…


The Old Gate

I was still so sure that I’d find my other half eventually. But that was then, and this is now. Crush #1 and I are not speaking to each other anymore, and crush #3 is living happily with the guy he dumped me for, except you can’t really say you were dumped when all you ever were was a friend who provided benefits when called upon. Age brings wisdom. And…heart attacks. Of the physical sort no less. If I’m still alive next year I might restart this blog’s annual Valentine’s Day Poster Contest.

 

But by then I might be fully across the threshold of old enough not to care anymore. Think of it as being nature’s way of saving the quest for love for younger folks who can take a beating. Or culling the herd of the ones that can’t. Some nights I have no idea why I’m still alive.

by Bruce | Link | React!

February 13th, 2022

That Magic Feeling

Yesterday I entered the two week period prior to retirement, where everything is happening according to a set number of steps. You can no longer take any time off, because payroll wants a clean slate to do the final payouts on. There are steps for turning in equipment, and various key cards. Also I have to make sure the people who will be taking on my rolls (I had many) are fully trained and my system accounts are migrated over to them.

It actually began a few days ago, when I had to enter this in the IT support system…

I had finished up a pre-departure interview with HR and was instructed to start this process in the system. There are still things to tidy up, mostly equipment related things and documents to sign and pass around. But…here goes. As of now I am on the two week glide path.

When I leave the building as a retiree, I know what I’ll be thinking…

Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go, nowhere to go…

Those lines from the Beatles You Never Give Me Your Money always played in my mind whenever I was laid off, fired (hair too long, incorrect sexual orientation) or quit (I hate this job I can do better somewhere else). It’s that initially disorienting sensation of suddenly not being on the clock anymore…which you are even on your time off because then the back to work clock is ticking. The clock is always ticking. And then suddenly it isn’t, and you feel a bit weightless. It’s a thrilling, scary, mysterious feeling. This will be the first time I experience it and I’m leaving on a high note.

I loved this job, absolutely loved it. But I can feel my time on this earth winding down now, and it’s time to move on.

by Bruce | Link | React!

February 5th, 2022

The Eternal Fog Bank Of The Cluttered Mind

What worries me is I’m becoming more and more dependent on post-it notes to remember things. I keep telling myself it’s not that my brain is dying but that it has way too much stuff in it.

I have half a dozen or so threads going on in my mind at any given time. So I’m told, and I hold on to this tightly, that’s typical of artist types. Am I a bit crazy? Possibly. But how would I know? David Gerrold once said it was like being a browser with several dozen tabs open all at once. Best description of it I’ve ever heard. But things fall on the floor…important things if you’re not careful.

I am working on updating/fixing my political cartoons page. Right now it’s a mess and I want to get it better organized because one of my many plans in retirement is diving back into it because I’ll have more time for it. But I have the files and menus scattered hither and yon up on the server, an artifact of my having started my website 21 years ago without a clear plan of its content. I need to fix that because it’s becoming unmaintainable.

I keep a local copy of my website on the art room computer and a safety backup on the household network NAS (stands for Network Attached Storage…basically a unit with one or more hard drives that sits on your network where you can store files that everyone on the network can access. They come in handy when you have a bunch of machines scattered around the house.), plus the NAS backups. I use GoodSync to keep the local, NAS and server copies in sync. This morning I started working on it again and noticed that all the timestamps were too old and I got confused.

Then I realized that I hadn’t been working on the NAS copy but the local one. I’d got mixed up as to which was which working copy.
So…I got a post-it note…

by Bruce | Link | React!


And Just What Did You Think Retirement Was Going To Be Like…?

The struggle today of setting up…actually fixing up and making it workable again…a local apache web server on the art room computer, so I can test fixes to my website before pushing them up to my host, is basically telling me that I will never escape what I know about IT, not even in retirement. 

I need to do this because I’m going to make a bunch of fixes to the file structure of the website that I’ve been putting off for years. Mostly because I want to get back into the political cartoons, and maybe work my way back up to doing a weekly one again once I have the time for it. But No Kidding, it was like putting in a full day at work in deep focus on a problem, actually a series of problems, that I knew once I made a breakthrough the rest of it would be simple to fix. And it was. But lord have mercy my brain hurts now, and my heart has been telling me for months I can’t drink like I used to, or take a cigar walk and claw my way out of that deep focus.

But I got it working, so there’s that. Not the WordPress part…that would require setting up a MySQL server, and getting php running. Both things I can do and have done at work. But…you know…work. I’m supposed to be retiring. And anyway that’s not what I need to test here. I’m just going to be moving around a bunch of files, mostly cartoon files, and I need to make sure I’m not breaking any links. Currently those files scattered hither and yon because I started my website twenty years ago without a good idea of what I wanted it to be, and I need to get it better organized.

by Bruce | Link | React!

January 28th, 2022

“It’s a gift!”

I’m outside fixing up the bird feeders for the upcoming snowfall. The calico is outside too, sitting on the top of my nextdoor neighbors steps. I see an elderly lady walking up the sidewalk toss something at the calico and I look over at the cat alarmed. But the cat takes no notice.

The lady sees me and approaches smiling. She looks to be very old Asian lady, and her english is a tad broken, but she smiles earnestly at me and hands me something. “A gift” she says. From its size and shape I know instantly what it is: a Jack Chick tract. Oh great, thinks I, another questionnaire.

I take it and smile back gamely. She seems nice enough and I have a soft spot for old women…probably out of some regret that my own maternal grandmother was such a cold mean hearted so and so. And given this lady’s english I’m pretty sure I’m not getting an incoming proselytize. She’s going to let the tract do her talking for her. I notice she is carrying two small bricks of Chick tracts, all probably that same one. So it’ll do me no good to ask for another for my collection. But this is one I don’t have so it’s all good.

“It’s a gift!” she says brightly. “You are forgiven!” I refrain from asking For what? Being born? Accepting my sexual orientation? Using a Keurig machine?

And she walks on down the street. The tract she handed me was “The Word Became Flesh”, and it’s drawn by one of Chick’s skilled cartoonists, which disappoints me. I consider the authentic Chick drawn tracts to be the best collectibles. And this one doesn’t have the usual questionnaire at the end. It does give you Step By Step instructions on how to be saved, including the Specific words to pray. Chick was actually a very controlling personality, and his tracts are his way of manipulating people and excusing it as a religious duty.

The pulpit thumpers I grew up with would not approve. They believed acceptance of the Faith had to be wholehearted and entirely voluntary. No manipulating people into it. No such thing as blind faith. You walked down the aisle with your eyes wide open. That poor lady’s happy little utterly empty smile is going to haunt me all day long now.

 

by Bruce | Link | React!

January 9th, 2022

You’re Old, I Need To Rest Every Now And Then

From our Do You Really Want To Know department…

This came in the mail yesterday evening. I bought it because I have trouble finding my pulse points to do a direct measure of my heart rate. Turns out it isn’t easy with one of these either…maybe because this is a cheap one (15 bucks versus 90 and up). But there’s a spot just below my left breast that works very well. I found it shortly after this was delivered.

I think I could actually hear the blood flow as well as the beats, which was a tad creepy sounding. But not as creepy as the sound of my heart skipping a beat randomly.

beat beat beat beat beat beat beat … beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat … beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat … beat beat beat beat … beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat … beat beat beat beat beat beat beat beat

And so on… Somehow I don’t think it’s supposed to do that. As usual I felt nothing odd. The beat itself was regular. No faster and then slower and then faster. Nope. Just moving right along. Except for that random unsettling pause. I would never have known about this had I not bought this device. But a need to find out is wired into me…and if that means also becoming familiar with a new tool then just take my money.

So I’m told, the stethoscope was invented by a male doctor who was uncomfortable having to put his ear on women’s chests to listen to their heartbeats. I suspect he was a Baptist.

I listened again just now and this morning the heart isn’t doing that skipping beats thing at all. In fact, it sounds perfectly normal to my untrained ears. It’s waiting for me to stop watching it, I just know it.

by Bruce | Link | React!

December 12th, 2021

Not Walt Disney World, But Disney World

…as in Disney the big media conglomerate.  I discovered an Epcot parody account on Twitter the other day that’s pretty brutal…

There was a time I would have absolutely hated this. But with all the changes to the parks that have happened in the last few years, and the blatant disrespect I keep seeing for the theming, and for Walt Disney’s vision, I’m kinda enjoying it. There’s the big screen TV they put on the wall in the Belle Vue Lounge, so people could watch their sports broadcasts there? Have I mentioned how much I despise that? The theming is it’s a turn of the 19th century Coney Island boardwalk hotel, and the Belle Vue Lounge was a small out of the way spot where you could relax, enjoy a drink in one of the old fashioned leather chairs, and listen to one of the old radios playing The Green Hornet, Jack Benny, or Studio One. It’s supposed to be from a time before television. But no…some complete moron decided it needed a big screen TV. I suppose because there isn’t a sports bar anywhere nearby…

I think that was when I began to question management’s commitment to the theming of the parks. I forget whether that was before or after they replaced The Writer’s Stop with a Beer Taproom, because Starbucks couldn’t abide the competition for coffee and pastries, and selling alcohol to adults is more important than selling books to kids. And then they replaced the Great Movie Ride with Mickey’s Runaway Railroad. Get me started on the new look of Walt Disney’s cartoon characters…

But I’m been slowly coming to a place of acceptance. It isn’t Walt Disney’s World anymore, it’s Disney World, and Disney isn’t a keeper of the vision. It’s keeper of the media properties.

Yeah, they still do a lot of good things, especially when it comes to treating their LGBT customers like everyone else. Yeah I’ll keep coming back. There is still just enough of Walt in there, and enough fun, to keep me coming back. But not nearly as often. I’m giving up my annual pass. In part it’s because if I only go once a year it isn’t buying me anything my DVC membership isn’t already. But mostly it’s the park reservation system, which completely kills any reason I might otherwise have for having an annual pass, even one of the lesser ones with blackout dates.

Basically it’s too much money and not enough Walt Disney. And it’s mostly a hassle, where before it was mostly fun. I feel like I got in just in time to enjoy the last of what was Walt Disney’s World.

Now I’m kinda enjoying this parody account. It sticks the knife in right where I think it belongs.

And it almost reads like it’s being done by someone who either worked there once, or still is and hates the new management…

 

Oh…They have one at the Belle Vue Lounge! Turn the volume up if the noise coming from all those old radios is bothering you.

by Bruce | Link | React!

November 4th, 2021

Life Happens…

Facebook helpfully provides a daily Things That You Posted On This Date Through The Years link…

This is about the premiere of Morgan Jon Fox’s documentary This Is What Love In Action Looks Like. It’s about the protests over teenagers being forced into ex-gay conversion therapy at a place in Memphis Tennessee. I contributed both photography for it and some money, so I got screen credits for Photography and as an Associate Producer.

I’m sixty-eight years old now, and on the cusp of retirement, and I see this and I’m thinking, wow…it’s been a life hasn’t it Bruce Garrett…

Cartoonist, photographer, software engineer, woodworker, roadie for a local blues band, architectural model maker, burger flipper, stock clerk in a psychiatric hospital, JWST ground systems test conductor, associate producer…

I can remember looking out across the Washington DC rail yards and seeing steam engines. I remember when most of the passenger airplanes I saw overhead were propeller driven. I saw the beginnings of the jet age, then the space age. I listened to short wave radio so I could get the news from abroad. I remember the weird sounds of the Soviet Union jammers trying to keep Radio Free Europe out. I remember the transition to color TV. I watched the first satellite TV broadcast from overseas. I watched live as Neil Armstrong put his foot on the moon. I remember the transition to wireless telephones, then to cell phones. I was among the first generation of 18 year olds to cast a vote in a presidential election. I registered for the draft when I turned 18, went for my pre-induction physical when I got the notice, stood in a line with a bunch of other 18 year olds in our underwear as we were poked and prodded by military doctors for suitability as Vietnam war canon fodder. I did my own maintenance on my first car, changing spark plugs, adjusting the distributor points, and checking the timing with a timing light. I remember the first gasoline drought and why it mattered if your license tag ended in an even or odd number. I built my first computer from parts I got at a HAM fest and taught myself how to program it. I walked in the first national Gay Rights march. I walked grieving and terrified among the Names Project quilt panels. I have stood in a protest line across from a camp that forced gay teenagers into ex-gay therapy, talked with the survivors young and old. I have spoken test instructions across the NASA deep space network, talked to astronauts that serviced the Hubble Space Telescope. I have a piece of it they brought back on my den wall.

It’s a small thing I suppose, but my handwritten signature has been into space three times, carried on an Institute banner during Hubble servicing missions. A little piece of me made it into space.

Yeah. It’s been a life.

Someone who joined a Zoom happy hour I hit every now and then said I should write a memoir, but it would be exhausting to do and probably very confusing for anyone to read. What is your point Mr. Garrett?? I dunno…shit happens I guess…

by Bruce | Link | React!

Visit The Woodward Class of '72 Reunion Website For Fun And Memories, WoodwardClassOf72.com


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