SATURDAY MORNING RAMBLINGS

 

It is nineteen below zero outside, thankfully no wind.   My furnace is running constantly using fuel, but our house is warm.   Central Maine Power just doubled their rate for power consumption and my light bill jumped from $100 to $140 for the same amount of energy consumption last month.   The cats are in bed with my wife.  They always dive in as soon as I get up to feed them.  They are big cats so they take up my side of the bed.  

 

I have been nursing a cup of tea and thinking how comforting it would be to light up my pipe, which has a prominent place on my bookcase.     We quit smoking in 1986, but I have always missed my pipe.   A pipe is more than smoking, it is a familiar friend.  Only someone from my generation could understand that.

 

Our Cuisinart pressure cooker is twenty-nine years old.  The gasket has become brittle and needs replacement.   The pressure cooker is stainless steal and otherwise fine, but Cuisinart no longer produces this model or supports it.   I did an extensive internet search and the only pressure cooker gasket that would fit our unit is available in England and cost 28 pounds plus shipping to the U.S.   Therefore, I have retired a perfectly good pressure cooker and replaced it with an electronic model that is computer controlled and does everything automatically – except it will, in no way, last three decades.   There will probably be a new-improved model out within the next five years. 

 

I am on the extinction list.   I have come from a different time and don’t actually fit this era.   My values are different.   I don’t do text messaging and only carry a cell phone when I am traveling – and then don’t turn it on.  My favorite handknitted wool sweater is forty-six years old.  My L.L. Bean coat and Moose River hat are over twenty years old.   When I was growing up men carried pocket knives – I do.    I don’t like impermanence; I don’t like things that are designed to be replaceable.    I still use an analog wrist watch, and have, and sometimes use, the pocket watch of my grandfather.

People of my generation are mostly gone, but some how I hang on. 

 

Don’t get me wrong.  Life is worth living: sex is great, good food is great, Scotch whiskey is great, fresh tomatoes are great, cats are great companions…

 

Did I run and am I tired?

the Ol’Buzzard

CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Not only are we experiencing unprecedented rapid climate change as the result of human pollution of the environment; but we are also experiencing an unprecedented rapid societal change in values and accepted norms, brought about by a technological revolution. 

 

Climates have changed in the past; but without a catastrophic event, these changes took place over thousands of years.   Today we can document a climate change over a single lifetime. 

Mirroring climate change, societal  changes, in the past, have required centuries to establish themselves.  A societal evolution is now taking place, with a genesis of about fifty years.  

    

Having lived through the majority of a century in time, I am probably more aware of the changes in attitudes and values then younger people.

I think the following photograph best demonstrates the point.

The pocket watch is in a gold case.   It was made in 1939.   When you remove the back, the working mechanism is beautiful to behold: intricate gears and wheels and a pendulum moving in a precision that is amazing.   The non-moving parts are scrolled and crosshatched and present an artistic beauty that only watch repairman would ever see.   The name of the watch maker is etched onto a frame member.    This watch must be wound daily, and reset each month as it gains about a minute a week. 

Someone took pride in the construction of this pocket watch, and the owner, my grandfather, surely appreciated and cared for this watch for the last twenty-five years of his life.

In contrast, the wrist watch is plastic.   It cost nine dollars.  It is a precision time piece and is always accurate.   It requires no daily maintenance.   Some machine in a Chinese factory stamped out the printed circuit board and some poorly paid worker in another sweat shop in China assembled the unit.  The replacement battery would cost seven dollars, so when the watch stops, I will throw it away and buy another.  I don’t give a damn about this watch, and wear it regardless of the activity or the weather.

These two watches pretty much represent two distinctly different cultures; one that existed for hundreds of years, and one that has evolved over the last half century.  

Technology is marvelous and changes rapidly.  The change in cultural values of society are keeping pace with the technological changes.     In the not to distant future we may be a different species.  

the Ol'Buzzard

My grandfather died in 1965, his second wife died in 1994 - that is when I came into possession of the pocket watch.

A THROWAWAY SOCIETY

I recently posted a blog reminiscing about changes I have seen in my almost eight decades.  Yesterday I posted about a pole saw from Harbor freight, and Rob ( Observations on the road ) commented about the poor quality of Craftsman tools.    This brought to mind how the quality of almost everything we buy has deteriorated over the last fifty years.

When I was a child my grandmother (who raised me) had a toaster that was steel: it was heavy to lift.  After years one of the heating elements burned out and she had me take it to an appliance repairman in the town and he replaced the heating element.  We had that toaster for my entire young life.   Today I have a Cuisinart toaster that is so light I am sure I could cave in the sides if I smashed it with my fist.  I can’t count the number of toasters I have owned over the past sixty years. 

Remember when the bumpers on cars were so substantial you could actually push another car without damaging either vehicle, and the dashes were steel?

Craftsman tools use to be the standard in durability; but now they have gone the way of everything else – produced as cheaply as possible.

Back sixty and more years ago people purchased things for a lifetime; now, nothing is expected to last more than a few years.

This generation has a different mindset; they don’t want to keep old things because ‘Wayfair has just what you need.’

the Ol'Buzzard