E. A. Blair: April 2008 Archives

Editor's note: Tim and I will be switching days this week. So for anyone who signed on today looking for a TJC article be sure to check back on Wednesday.

Editor's note II: Apparently in generations past the word 'spade' was a derogatory word used to refer to blacks. Until this morning I had never heard of such a remark. In light of and in respect for that, the original title of todays article 'calling a spade a spade' has been replaced.

Barack Obama was quoted recently as saying the following; “But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they feel through the Clinton Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Those were the days

First, I should state that I’m not a big hockey fan per se. I don’t watch hockey during the regular season very much and the intricacies of the game certainly escape me. But, in saying that, when I was just a kid (and into my teenage years) I would wait up late during the NHL hockey playoffs and watch the 10 p.m. EST Western Conference games.

Back in early December, Tim wrote about the writers strike and the web's dissolution of television. In it, he mentioned the following:

WebTV exists but, since I don't know anyone who owns it, i can assume that it has failed its purpose so far. The new trend in WebTV sales is Tupperware parties. I don't know if that will work. But knowing that Bill Gates has made it a personal goal of his to integrate TV into the web, I'm sure it will get done soon. So be ready: television is dissolving into the web. Right now it's a mess; it's a tangled takeover.

Missing that which isn’t there

There is an old saying that goes something along the lines of ‘you don’t know what you've got until it’s gone.’ The intended point of that statement is to imply that you will miss someone or something much more then you realize when they or it are gone. Though I guess it could work both ways and you could miss something less then you imagined. As millions can attest both views are probably true. Loved ones, pets, co-workers who have quit or been let go, or possibly even transferred to a different department all can elicit significant emotional feelings of loss. Moving out of a house or an apartment, selling a car or changing cities can also cause real emotional changes. What I’ve discovered recently is that this feeling of loss also bridges the gap into our day to day activities.