Category: family

Theme Thursday: Television

Ah but she was a beauty. With a light gray case, she sat upon a wobbly stand, gold tone painted spindly legs that ended in little plastic wheels. The early definition of “portable.”

The dial to change the channels was made of actual metal. It had saw tooth ridges on it. All the better for gripping and turning, I suppose.

The on-off button was also the volume knob. Tug that knob, and give ‘er a few minutes while the tube warmed up.

Soon a clear bright black and white picture emerged from a small dot in the middle of the screen. All three channels plus PBS!

“Karen! Change the channel!” Click, click, click. Turning the channel knob was a tactile experience.

That black and white Zenith was a purchase from the early years of my parent’s marriage. We’re talking 1950’s here. As a child in the seventies, it became a fixture in our living room.

One of my very, very early memories is from being toddler age. I would stand right in front of that television and grip its gray plastic bezel for balance. I didn’t grip too hard, because it would slide off, but just tight enough to keep gravity from winning.

I remember Walter Cronkite. He was giving a news update and showed a fairly clear film clip of soldiers carrying guns. This wasn’t a movie, it was the news.

I didn’t know what it was then, but it seemed bad. Walter’s face was serious. I stared at those men with guns rather intently. This image is still fresh in my memory. It took until adulthood to think back on it, on the timeframe that this must have occurred, to realize it was a news update on the war in Vietnam. I would have been three or so.

That Zenith with the stylized logo, the Z like a lightening flash, electricity zooming through the letters bring pictures to my screen, was where I stood too close to the screen and watched Dick Knipfing present the news of Albuquerque and New Mexico.

It was where I watched Sesame Street and soap operas and the Not Ready For Primetime Players on the first seasons of Saturday Night Live.

In the early 1980’s, my mom made a bold decision. It was time to invest in a color TV. This was long after most of our friends and neighbors had long since brought color screens into their lives.

Mom shopped and compared and finally she and Dad decided on a model from Sears. It had this fancy way of changing channels, you simply touched this little metal nub by the number of the channel you wanted! No turning a knob, simply a quick touch.

It was splendiferous!

And with the incoming color TV, the old Zenith black and white had to find a new home. So we carted it to our “Lake House,” really a single-wide trailer on a permanent concrete pad on a patch of land in Logan, New Mexico.

Logan is on the east side of the state, so the antenna on top of that trailer picked up the stations out of Amarillo. The Zenith black and white now reported ranch stock futures and the market price for pork and sides of beef. It entertained us after a day out swimming in the lake.

In fact, when my folks sold the place in Logan, that Zenith TV went with it. It still worked, by the way, though it took a heck of a long time for that tube to warm up.

They sure don’t make ’em like they used to.





Today’s Theme Thursday is: Television

What the World Sees

Through the course of my life, I look back and with the clarity of hindsight and find those moments that formed my foundation. Lessons with impact that linger in my memory and shape my days.

Today, when I navigated over to my once a week Theme Thursday site, I saw that the word this week is: Face.

Well, this left me stumped. I tucked the word into one of the creases in my brain and thought about it for a while. This is when some of the best ideas hit me, when I’ve planted a seed then forget about it. Something worthwhile often blooms.

What happened is that I had a memory. Just a flash, but enough to remind me.

I was eight, maybe? Perhaps actually younger. I was wearing a black leotard and pink tights. I had ballet class to attend in an hour or two, and so I was ready to go.

While waiting, I was doing what kids do…fiddling around with stuff. I’d somehow acquired a rubber band and that had captured my interest. *sproing, sproing*

I played it like a guitar, stretching and loosening it to get better notes.

I used it like a slingshot to send balls of paper zipping through the sky.

I wrapped it around my thumb, took it off, wrapped it around again.

Then, for some reason I can’t quite explain, I wrapped the rubber band around the end of my nose. Unwrapped it. Wrapped it again, tighter this time. It didn’t hurt and felt sort of weird so I went and looked in the mirror. Laughed, then left it on my nose and walked around.

After a while, I heard my mom calling, it was time to get in the car. I took the rubber band off my nose, left it on my desk, got my stuff and headed out to the car and climbed in.

My mom, with an eagle eye for such things, asked “what happened to your nose?”

I was like, “what?” and touched my nose. All seemed well.

Mom made me look in the visor mirror. Seems that rubber band had left a bruise on the end of my nose. A dark blue bruise in a perfect circle.

Yay!

So needless to say, the gig was up. I had to explain what I’d done. (confession is good for the soul….or so the parish priest used to tell me.)

My mom gave me one of those looks a parent gives a child when they confess to something like wrapping a rubber band around their nose. Then she gave me a stern lecture. She wasn’t mad. But she had something very firm to impress upon me.

I don’t remember the exact text of what she said, but the gist was….don’t mess with your face. If you are going to monkey around like that with a rubber band, use your elbow or your toe , but not your face. Your face is the first thing people see when they meet you. That’s where people form their first impression. And do you really want the first impression to be a big dark blotch on the end of your nose?

She also warned me that the girls at dance class would likely tease me. I thought “no way, they won’t care.” Well, they cared. They cared a lot. Those snotty girls made comments. And pointed and laughed. And made fun of me mercilessly.

They made fun of me a lot anyway because they were all thin and lithe and had visions of ballet careers in their minds. I was the opposite of thin and lithe and had visions of grilled cheese sandwiches in my mind.

You picking up what I’m putting down?

So I thought about what my mom had said. I initially resisted what she said when the “talking to” came down, but later on, I knew she was right.

Damnit.

The advice stuck with me, and I’ve stuck with it.

So don’t monkey around with your face. For me, that extends to lip tucks and eye brow lifts and injections of all kinds. My face is my calling card, and as it ages, it tells my story.





I Got To Thinking Today

My dad was an engineer by trade, and had a life long interest in the power of nuclear energy. He worked at Sandia Labs during the Cold War, and was quite familiar with the devastation that could be wrought in the path of nuclear power. He was also well aware of the power that could be harnessed from one small nuclear reaction.

As the Cold War ended and Sandia turned away from creating weapons, much of their immense talent base was put toward finding alternate sources of energy. My dad had a chance to study wind, solar, and yes, nuclear energy.

He used to rant endlessly about how he felt people were missing the boat on the use of nuclear power to create clean energy with, generally speaking, less damaging effects. He was a huge advocate for nuclear energy as a sustainable resource.

As a kid, I often thought my dad was a wackadoodle for these relentless, passionate lectures on this topic (and others).

It’s funny how time really does make fools of us all. Now that I’m pretty close to the age my dad was when we was raising me, I find that what was once wackadoodleism becomes, “hey, he might have actually had a point.”

Earlier today, I was going through the videos, photos and new coverage of the truly horrifying aftermath of the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. I got to thinking about my old man when I saw this quote from a Japanese spokesman for the government:

“The nuclear plants have been shut down but the cooling process for the reactor is not going as planned.”

I thought to myself, “If they are able to keep that reactor from melting down, that is a huge boost to the argument that my pops made for decades.”

However, if that reactor does melt down, then all the anti-nuclear energy people will have a strong case study on their side.

I’m not sure which side of the nuclear energy debate I come down on. Honestly, I can argue both sides, and it’s a very sticky topic.

One thing I will say is that the existing nuclear plants in the U.S. are of such old technology that it’s truly frightening. The anti-nuclear power lobbies won’t allow these existing facilities to be upgraded. They want them closed, not improved.

So they stay open and get older and more outdated by the year.

And thus, the standoff rages on. That’s where my pops would start snorting, and steam would begin rolling out of his ears.

All of this is some scary news. I think that if Japan can contain and control their nuclear plants in the face of one of the worst natural disasters of recent history, then it highly recommends at least considering the latest available technology for maintaining nuclear facilities.

Maybe we don’t build any more, but we fix what we’ve got?

Oh, and while I was thinking about all of this, even discussing it with my mom via email, I glanced at the calendar.

My dad passed away six years ago last month. Perhaps worrying about the nuclear energy facilities in the midst of tragedy in Japan is an odd way to honor He Who Brought Me Forth. I suspect for him, it would do just fine.




Image is 1954 era Union Carbide ad, found several places on the web.


Alls Well That Ends Well

Update on the sitch with the cranky pants coworker, since so many have asked:

Once more proving the old adage that the best way to stop a bully is to stand up to them…

Yesterday evening I picked up the phone and called my tormentor directly.

He ran down his list of grievances. I listened to his tale of woe. I umm’d and ahh’d at his drama, and made appropriate sympathetic clucking sounds.

This listening thing seemed to work.

We ended up having a rather lovely conversation and by the time we were done, he was speaking platitudes about how much he was looking forward to working with me.

So I think we’re done with the animosity, for now at least.

Thanks to all who volunteered to help back me up, I won’t soon forget. It’s always good to know who will throw down for you.

The list includes a supportive email from my big brother who will have to wait another day to beat down some random dude in his office building.

Sorry bruddah. We’ll get ’em next time.



And Yo Mama Too!

Last week I was presented with a large amount of challenges in my young and budding career with The New Employer.

Things have gone pretty well so far, and I’ve been able to tuck a few successes under my belt. My boss seems reasonably happy with my work. I’ve even gotten a few kudos from other teams.

I’d say I’ve been doing a decent job, still learning, still growing. All in all, I’d give my performance over the past eight months a solid B. Maybe even as much as a B+

Enter the events of last week. I’ll spare you the details, but I came up against a very volatile and angry person at one of our offices in an undisclosed Asian country. I’ll be a bit dodgy about details as that seems to make best sense in this public forum.

I have to admit, honestly, I have now encountered one of the biggest bullies I’ve ever run across in my little life.

And by “biggest” I don’t mean in physical stature.

I can remember only once during my schooldays where I was bullied. A girl who was my friend in elementary school fell in with a bad crowd in mid-school. She started making threatening calls to the house. She promised to beat me up if I didn’t stop looking at her funny. (has she met me? I always look funny! I was born that way, waka-waka…thanks folks I’ll be here all week…tip your waitress…)

On one of these awful calls with me crying and my former friend acting hateful, my mom pulled the phone out of my hand and had a good solid conversation with the girl. As soon as my mom interceded, the bullying ceased.

Honestly, that’s about the worst I’ve ever had to deal with. Until now.

Who could imagine that my worst bully would arise when I’m in my forties? I sure didn’t. I thought I was past all of that B.S. once I hit adulthood.

Nope.

This gent is an angry, unreasonable man. I try to be open and work with him, and he says really awful things in return. Long hateful emails in which he calls into question me, my management abilities, the capabilities of my team, and perhaps whether I’m best suited for the role in which my employer hired me.

And every time he sends a vitriol filled note, he copies a higher level of my management team in on the action. By way of the dreaded cc field, he’s making a case to those who control my destiny that I’m a complete idiot.

Karen bashing! Yay!……. /sarcasm

Today I was looking in the company directory to get this guy’s contact information. I agreed with my boss earlier today that I’m going to call him directly to try to sort this out. The best way to deal with a bully is to face them head on, and I’m gonna do so.

I happened to notice that not only does this fine fellow live in the same country as my hardworking ex-pat big brother, he even works in the same large office towers.

So here’s the question: Am I too old to ask my big brother go beat someone up?





C’mon, how great was that movie “My Bodyguard“? Loved that movie. Just noticed on IMDB that it came out in 1980. Damn I’m old.


In case you were wondering, my boss is awesome and has been very supportive through all of this. I know that the real bodyguard lies within my boss and my amazing management team. I’ve watched my VP smack someone down before. It was brutal and final, so I’m certain she won’t let this mess go on much further.