The Safety Dance – Part 2

photog My Fiction, photog's Corner ,

The Safety Dance – Part 1

Jim Locke was on the 10:30 commuter train headed into Manhattan.  Of course, at that hour it was a local and stopping at every empty platform on the line.  Which suited Jim to a tee.  He was trying to make up his mind whether he should apologize for even setting up this meeting or hear them out.  Last night when he broke the bad news to Judy, she had looked truly scared.  And when he told her about the possible job offer in Missouri she had cried.  It was all happening too fast for her.  Too many things changing at once.  Of course, nothing had been mentioned to the kids but somehow, they seemed nervous, as if they sensed something was wrong.  Or was it his imagination?

By the time they rolled into Penn Station he had made up his mind.  He would listen to the spiel and then “decide” that the job wasn’t for him.  Maybe if he could impress the hiring manager that he was a strong candidate they might remember him for another opening closer to home.  Entering the office building lobby, he found the elevator bank for his floor and headed up to the fortieth floor.

When he got off, he was in a reception area and he announced himself and asked for Dave.  Five minutes later he saw his two hosts walking toward him.  “Jim, how the hell are you?  You look like you haven’t aged a day.  In fact, I think that’s the same suit you were wearing the last time I saw you five years ago.  This is Milo Faber.  He’s the hiring manager for that job I mentioned.  Milo, this is Jim Locke, the guy I told you about who called me out of nowhere yesterday.”  Jim and Milo shook hands and waited for Dave to subside before exchanging a few words of greeting.  “Well, Mr. Locke why don’t we head out for lunch.  I know Dave only has an hour before a meeting but I have a good long opening in my schedule and I’d like to talk with you a good bit about the position I’m looking to fill.  If you’re hungry there’s a very good new restaurant that’s opened up on Park Avenue that everyone says is pretty great.”  Jim was actually pretty hungry because he had missed breakfast while trying to calm his wife’s nerves that morning.  All he’d had was coffee.

During lunch Dave did most of the talking, filling up the silence with somewhat embarrassing stories from his time working with Jim.  In fact, Jim was beginning to think that Dave was somehow intent on sabotaging his chances with Milo.  But there was nothing he could do to end the babbling short of physical violence so he concentrated on the very good plate of food in front of him and chalked up the whole interview as a mistake.  Eventually the lunch hour expired and Dave excused himself to head off to his meeting and told Jim he’d talk to him later and then left.

Milo waited a few minutes while they finished their entrees, then asked if Jim wanted dessert or coffee.  “Milo I’m stuffed but I’ll take a coffee.  He signaled the waiter and gave him their orders and then looked at Jim carefully and said, “Were you and Dave close friends?”  The question caught Jim off balance but he decided for some reason to answer it candidly.  “No, we were casually friendly but Dave and I have somewhat different personalities.  I was somewhat surprised when he recommended me for this interview.”

Milo continued to peer into Jim’s face and said, “So were we.  Dave’s responsibilities with the company are decidedly unrelated to the kind of work involved in the position we have in Missouri.  I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand the scope of work involved.  And that’s mostly because he isn’t the right fit for that kind of work.  So, if your temperament aligns with Dave’s, the job we’re discussing probably wouldn’t be for you either.”

Now Jim was becoming both confused and intrigued.  This was the strangest interview he’d ever sat for.  What was next?  A scavenger hunt?

“Well Milo, I haven’t a clue as to what kind of job we’re discussing but you’ve got my attention anyway.  What would you like to know?”

During the interval, their coffees had arrived.  Milo took a sip from his coffee and sat back and shifted his gaze back at his guest and asked, “What do you want out of life?  What is most important to you?”

“Alright,” said Jim, “I’ll play along.  First of all, I’ll tell you that “the good of the company” is not my highest priority.  So, if that’s what you want to hear then it’s game over.  My highest priority is keeping my little family in groceries and school tuitions.  My wife and kids are the reason I work.  So, moving them down to Springfield Missouri would require it to be the best environment I can afford to give them which seems kind of unlikely to me.

Faber nodded slightly and displayed the faintest hint of a smile.  “Do you have family connections that would preclude relocating permanently away from the Northeast?”  Jim shook his head.  “No, neither my wife nor I have any close family left.  Our ties to New York are at this point just our personal history.  We’ve been thinking of moving out of the metropolitan area for some time but I haven’t found the right job and location to make it worthwhile yet.”

Faber pushed his coffee away and leaned slightly across the table toward Jim and speaking in a low voice asked, “What do you think is the biggest threat to you family’s long-term well-being?”  Locke tilted his head to one side, opened his mouth slightly and blinked, “Mr. Faber you ask the strangest questions I’ve ever heard from an interviewer.  You sure you’re not recruiting for the CIA?”

Milo looked down at the table and said, “Of that I’m very sure.  But it’s an interesting analogy.  Let’s say secrecy is involved.  But humor me.  What’s the biggest threat to your family’s long-term well-being?”  Jim thought about it for a few seconds and said, “Our own government.”

Unjustified

photog Current Events

So, the Democrat Convention is in full swing and Obamas and Clintons and other non-human lifeforms have been paraded onto the stage and allowed to jabber on about this and that.  Now I’m not crazy enough to actually listen to even ten seconds of this kind of thing.  But I have seen some headlines and it’s as expected.  Everyone loves Joe Biden and respects the hell out of his completely voluntary decision to step down from the presidential race.  And the ones who love him the most are the ones who shoved him off the cliff.  Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.

And then they let Joe himself speak and it was apparently a very long and incoherent tribute to himself and his struggles.  Well, hopefully that’s the last time he’ll have the chance to do that.

I guess tomorrow they’ll let Kammy talk.  Of course, it’ll be scripted and tele-prompted so even an idiot like her will be able to bumble her way through it with all kinds of inappropriate pauses and cackles along the way.  It will be about all the free stuff she’ll be giving us that somehow won’t make inflation even worse somehow.  And then she’ll stand there grimacing while the non-player characters applaud thunderously for whole quarters of an hour at a time.  And of course, the whole process is an abomination against actual democracy because none of the Democrat voters voted for Harris.  They voted for that other brain-dead idiot Biden.  But because he already revealed to the world at large that his cerebral cortex has rotted away something had to be done.  And because the only other person who could use the money that the donors have given to Biden is Harris it had to be her.

So here we are.  For the second time in four years a candidate who is dumber than dirt is likely to be installed in the White House and given control of the United States nuclear arsenal.  If that doesn’t give you pause when considering what kind of world we are living in, I don’t know what will.

We have a little less than three months until the result will be announced to us.  That even takes into account the now obligatory extra week for Philadelphia to print up an extra million ballots for the Democrat.  In less than three months we will know for sure if we are living in a banana republic like Venezuela.  Either that or the majority of American voters are criminally insane.  Either way we will have to recalibrate our lives to take into consideration that assumptions based on this being the old American republic are completely unjustified.

In a banana republic it is completely unjustified to assume that the money in your bank account won’t be stolen by the government.  Likewise, assuming that you will receive justice in a court of law is equally unwarranted.  And believing any statement made by any of the organs of the federal government is equally foolish.  What is needed is a new set of rules.  Probably “1984” would be a good primer for reeducating yourself into the dos and don’ts of living in a banana republic.

So that’s what the publicity around the Democratic convention got me thinking.  What I haven’t figured out is how to react if somehow Trump is declared the winner.  Somehow, I have to believe that something really sinister would be waiting for us in that unlikely eventuality.  My guess is COVID 2.0.  Only this time they’ll use the real bioweapon.  I guess I’m just an optimist.

Tom’s World – 21AUG2024 – Statues – 3

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

Jake, a monument to military divers. This statue is located on base at The US Navy Diver Training & Explosive Ordnance Training Center Panama City.

 

Coming home after a long deployment, located on base at NAS Pensacola, National Naval Air Museum.

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This monument is from the turn of the 19th-20th century and is located at Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery. I’ve seen lots of cemetery monuments and statues and think that this one is absolutely beautifully done.

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This one is a composite. The statue is behind St. Michael’s Episcopal in Milton, FL. I didn’t like the background in the original, it was too busy, towers, other decorations, phone poles, other buildings made a jarring and competing background and destroyed the impact of the statue. So, using Photoshop, I popped it into a photo taken from my house side door as a big storm approached. Much more effective.

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Unknown Infant. Every picture should tell a story, this one I think is poignant. I wonder who put the cat there? City Cemetery, Milton, FL.

 

A Sense of Wonder

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family, Science , , ,

My recent foray into Dunwichian power politics may have struck some of my readers as morose and unnecessarily pessimistic.  Possibly so, but I was trying to capture the essence of our current reality where an honest and transparent analysis of how our society works reveals enormous hypocrisy.  And the nature of our “democracy” reveals itself to be a process manipulated by the powerful who have no regard for the people.  But just to show you I haven’t despaired of life I was reminded today of what good can be achieved by getting involved with the young.

I remembered as a youngster being intrigued by astronomy.  Maybe it was because of the space program that was getting off the ground about the time I became aware of current events.  Maybe it was because my parents gave me access to books and other resources concerning science.  But however it happened, I was fascinated by the details of the solar system.  I was always reading statistics about the size, location and physical attributes of Saturn and Jupiter, Mercury and Mars.  And once I began reading science fiction, I became all the more absorbed by this extension of my world into the solar system.  And I suppose that my early interest in science is responsible for much of my orientation in school and afterwards.  Engineering was the logical conclusion for someone interested in the practical application of science to life.  I suppose that if NASA’s space program hadn’t petered out after the moon landings, I would have tried to get involved in an engineering program that had the potential of involving space travel but that was just a childhood fantasy.

But remembering how exciting and interesting it was to discover the larger universe, I decided to give Princess Sack of Potatoes her first astronomy lesson.  We looked at photos of the planets and I tried to explain some of the physical characteristics of the various worlds that circle our sun.  Mercury and Venus are too close to the Sun and therefore too hot.  Mars is too small and too far from the Sun and therefore lacking a useful atmosphere and too cold.  And I tried to explain why the gas giant worlds weren’t places where terrestrial life could exist because of their nightmarish temperatures and pressures and poisonous atmospheres.

So was my lesson successful.  I don’t really know.  She seemed interested enough and she enjoyed the colorful photos and pictures of the planets.  But will it inspire a deep curiosity about the universe.  Well, it’s much too soon to tell.  Maybe after we begin to discuss interstellar and intergalactic space I’ll see if she becomes bored with the subject.  But there was definitely one moment of planetary solidarity.  When we had finished with Neptune, she wanted to know what had happened to Pluto.  Full disclosure, I was very angry when the international astronomical societies stripped Pluto of its status as a planet.  I felt it to be an arbitrary and probably anti-American gesture.  So, this sympathy for Pluto by my granddaughter was a very welcome occurrence.  When I found out that this emotion was fostered because the planet has the same name as Mickey Mouse’s dog, I was a little less enthusiastic.  But still, when dealing with small children you take your victories where they come.

So, teaching children and inspiring curiosity about the wonders of science is something that we can do even in the world of Joe Biden and the American Security State.  One small step for a grandfather, one giant leap for mankind.