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Another reader contribution, also to do with aging, sent by Paul B. Thanks Paul.
I am loathe to admit it, but I recall much of what is shown in the photographs below , , ,
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Some Memories For My Older Friends
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
READER CONTRIBUTIONS CONTINUED
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You may have thought that the last few items were the last of reader contributions but, in the last few days, various readers have sent me contributions so I will continue posting their contributions as Readers Week.
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By the way, yesterday I posted a piece called ‘White Bread” and commented that you may not agree with all of it but some parts would strike a chord. You can view that post at:
Byter Tim B sent me an email:
Morning Otto,You said that some of us may not agree with some of the contents of this post. I was just wondering what part someone would not agree with. Just curious, maybe you could ask them to let you know and pass it on to us.Hope the new year is going well for you and your family.Tim B
Reader comments?
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Today’s reader contribution is from Byter Steve M. Thanks, Steve . . .
One or two good ones in amongst those below, Otto.
Steve m
Some thoughts on aging . . .
"It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.”
- Andy Rooney
“The older I get, the better I used to be.”
– Lee Trevino, Professional Golfer.
"Nice to be here? At my age it’s nice to be anywhere."
– George Burns.
"The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.
- Mark Twain.
"First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down."
- Leo Rosenberg.
"Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it."
- Golda Meir.
“Old people shouldn’t eat healthy foods. They need all the preservatives they can get.”
– Robert Orben.
“You spend 90 percent of your adult life hoping for a long rest and the last 10 percent trying to convince the Lord that you’re actually not that tired.”
– Robert Brault.
"At my age, flowers scare me."
- George Burns.
"The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down."
- T.S. Elliot.
"The important thing to remember is that I’m probably going to forget."
– Unknown.
"At age 20, we worry about what others think of us… at age 40, we don’t care what they think of us… at age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all."
-Ann Landers.
"We don’t grow older, we grow riper."
- Pablo Picasso.
"I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam."- George Carlin, Comedian.
"Everything slows down with age, except the time it takes cake and ice cream to reach your hips."
-John Wagner.
"Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old, it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother that does."
- J. Norman Collie.
"When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old."
-Mark Twain.
"You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks."
- Joel Plaskett.
"There’s one advantage to being 102, there’s no peer pressure."
- Dennis Wolfberg.
"There are three stages of man: he believes in Santa Claus, he does not believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus."
- Bob Phillips.
"Looking fifty is great—if you’re sixty."
- Joan Rivers.
"Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician."
–Anonymous.
Monday, January 23, 2023
READER CONTRIBUTION
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I mentioned yesterday that Byter John P had sent me an item which I would post today. It appears below. Thanks, John.
You may not agree with all of the content but there will probably be parts that do strike a chord . . .
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John's email to me:
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White Bread
- Author unknown
I was helping out at a neighbourhood bread shop on Friday and happened to be selling “white” bread. A customer told me I was racist for calling it “white” bread.
My response was: ‘We have rye bread, pumpernickel bread, wholemeal bread, multi-grain bread, raisin bread, lots of different sorts of bread. People want to know what they are buying, so we have to label the loaves. I don’t know what else to call “white” bread – what would you suggest?’
She just walked away.
Things are getting out of hand when you can’t say “white” bread.
I used to think I was pretty much just a regular person, but I was born white, into a two-parent household which now, whether I like it or not, makes me privileged, a racist and responsible for slavery.
I am a fiscal and moral conservative, which by today's standards makes me a fascist because I plan, budget and support myself.
I went to grammar school and have always held a job. But I now find out that I am not here because I earned it, but because I was “advantaged”.
I am heterosexual which, according to gay folks, now makes me a homophobe.
I am not a Muslim, which now labels me as an infidel.
I am older than 70, making me a useless dinosaur who doesn't understand Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat.
I think, and I reason, and I doubt much of what the ‘mainstream’ media tells me, which makes me a right-wing conspiracy nut.
I am proud of my heritage and our inclusive culture, making me a xenophobe.
I believe in hard work, fair play and fair reward according to each individual's merits, which today makes me an anti-socialist.
I believe our system guarantees freedom of effort – not freedom of outcome or subsidies, which must make me a borderline sociopath.
I believe in the defence and protection of my nation for and by all citizens, now making me a militant.
I am proud of our flag, what it stands for and the many who died to let it fly, and I stand during our National Anthem – so I must be a radical.
Please help me come to terms with the new me because I'm just not sure who or what I am anymore!
Funny – this has all taken place during the past decade!
If all this nonsense wasn't enough to deal with, now I don't even know which toilet to use ... and these days I have to go so much more frequently!
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Sunday, January 22, 2023
READER INPUT: CARVING AND SCULPTURE
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I was wondering what to post for the next Bytes when, within minutes of each other, I received two suggestions, a third suggestion coming in a little later. The third contribution is from Byter John P and I will post tomorrow what he sent me.
The first came from Sue P, about an amazing crocodile sculpture, followed by an enquiry from son Thomas on whether I would be posting a Bytes item on the NLK sculpture. Thanks Sue, Thomas and John.
Both Sue's and Thomas's suggestions are covered below.
Caution: risqué content ahead.
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Sue sent me an email:
Hi OttoHere's one that I think you will enjoyRegards, Sue
Thanks Sue
Comments:
- The above link is to the website My Modern Met which, according to the site, celebrates creativity by posting articles and material on art, design, photography, architecture, science, technology, environmental issues, and more. It has over 5 million visitors per month.
- Sue’s link is to an article “Woodworker Spends 100 Hours Carving a Crocodile Emerging from Wood Bar Top” and dates from November 29, 2022.
- Chainsaw artist Scott Dow, from Pennsylvania, decided to carve a bar top of a crocodile emerging from water. Made from local catalpa, he was inspired by seeing a carved fish emerging from water. Small would have been easier but he decided to go big and spent over 100 hours on his creation.
- The following photographs show the piece taking shape and the final result . . .
- Some more of Scott Dow’s work, photos from his facebook page:
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MLK Memorial Statue:
The Martin Luther King memorial statue is the subject of current controversy.
Here are some facts and comments:
- The statue is called The Embrace and depicts two pairs of arms wrapped in a hug. It is taken from a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr and his wife, Coretta Scott King, embracing after he received news of the 1964 announcement that King had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
That statue
Another view of the statue and the photograph from which the detail of the statue has been taken
- It is a bronze sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas, installed on Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts, is 20-foot tall (6.1 m) and 25-foot wide (7.6 m) bronze and weighs 19 tons. It was formally dedicated on January 13, 2023, with dignitaries present, along with the Kings' son and one of their granddaughters.
- It depicts four intertwined arms and hands, details including buttons on the sleeves of his arms, and a bracelet on her wrist. The work was created by welding together nearly 609 smaller pieces.
- The sculpture design is intended to emphasize the Kings' commitment to nonviolence and the importance of love as a motivating factor in their civil rights movement work.
- The sculpture was installed near where King led 22,000 people at a 1965 Freedom Rally – on land that was once part of a black neighborhood, now gone, that had been one of the oldest in the country. The significance wasn’t lost on guests at the unveiling, who included participants in the civil rights movement, some nearly 100 years old. Kings’ son, Martin Luther King III, told CNN that the “artist did a great job”.
- Nonetheless the piece has been widely panned by critics, the public, and at least one member of the extended Scott-King family. According to some, photographs taken from certain angles made one of the civil rights leaders’ arms look like a penis. The comedian Leslie Jones joked that the sculpture looked like the late civil rights leader performing a sex act on his wife.
- If this was just about an optical illusion, the story might have ended there. But the conflict almost immediately took a political turn after the sculpture was blasted by an unexpected source: the Oakland activist Seneca Scott, a former Bay Area labor organizer and a cousin of Coretta Scott King. In a short essay published in Compact magazine the morning after the unveiling, Scott highlighted the phallic comparisons before calling the sculpture an “egregious example of the woke machine’s callousness and vanity” that would bring “few, if any, tangible benefits to struggling black families”. Statues like these, he added, “are part of the same performative altruism and purity pageants that are mainstays of the woke left”.
- In an interview with Tucker Carlson he accused the sculpture of wasting public funds and mocking people struggling to afford groceries. “That’s exactly right,” Carlson replied. “It’s not art, it’s a middle finger.”
- According to the sculptor, Hank Willis Thomas, “It’s a strange thing, the moment that we live in, that we are more inspired to talk about silly things than something as serious as the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King.” He also commented “Conservative and liberal are reductive terms that are divide-and-conquer strategies, and that’s part of the issue this piece is addressing – that is, can we embrace one another?” He declined to respond to Scott: “I don’t feel like it other than sending Seneca love and gratitude for highlighting The Embrace.”
Sculptor Hank Willis Thomas poses under the Martin Luther King Jr memorial statue.
- Imari Paris Jeffries, the director of Embrace Boston, the non-profit formed in 2018 to fund the statue, said the artwork was fully paid for by private donations, not taxpayer money. Their goal was to not only use the sculpture as a visual reminder of justice, but as a catalyst for concrete local change: since 2020, the group has distributed $1m to the Twelfth Baptist church, the historic abolitionist church where the Kings met and a relief center during the pandemic; $370,000 in grants to dozens of community non-profits and social justice efforts; and $25,000 to groups organizing Juneteenth activities – with more giving planned in the future.
- As for the backlash to the statue, “I’m not bothered by it,” he said. “We expected as activists and organizers that there’s always going to be detractors from the movement. I think about Mrs King’s quote, that the beloved community is about not holding bitterness when there’s disagreement.”
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