Kind Friends

You have been admonished in the most colorful way. “Do more of what makes you happy” is phrase enough to make me happy.

Kindness and friendship are not activities but I am grateful for both.

The person who wrapped these lovely flowers in that lovely tote offers me both kindness and friendship.

I am a very lucky person. She is one of many kind friends that have gathered around me.

My heart swells with gratitude to all of them. You know who you are!

I have also been fortunate in having strangers come to my assistance. I may not know who you are but I am very appreciative of your aid. And, of course, your kindness in all those unexpected acts of friendship.

Freedom Fight

Mari S. Gold with the hat that inspired this post
This was the location at which our morning meeting took place. In simpler parlance, we had breakfast at Innocent Yesterday.

How far off-track can I take this blog today? Yes, breakfast was great. Company was better. But back to the fight for freedom and democracy.

Defending democracy is a battle that right-minded folks like Mari cannot abandon. She headed to mid-town to join a rally in defense of American freedoms. It’s fitting that this rally was held on the second anniversary of the insurrection.

World cup

Years ago I saw Pele play at the Polo Grounds. It was a privilege to witness his electric performance.

Today, December 29, 2022, the soccer great died at 82.

When Pele was on the field, America was attracted to the charisma he brought.

My assessment that Americans would not embrace soccer’s big moment this year proved wrong as well.

Team U.S.A. made a decent showing. The World Cup was a fever that caught all of us in its embrace.

Ice cream again

It can be a poem or we can play it straight like we do here.

I lament the Ben-and-Jerryification of the creamy flavorful cold dessert most all of us love for its texture and its taste.

Ice cream should be smooth.


Ice cream should be velvety.

Lumps of candy bars and cookies complicate a straightforward treat.

I don’t want my tongue to encounter popcorn when I look for the excitement of a neutral flavor, simple chocolate.

Uninvited caramel candy bars or hard peppermint mar my experience. I turn to gelato for what I crave.

“You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream.” What’s your favorite flavor? A clever pun or a single origin like plain old vanilla or coffee?

Fruity

I missed National Fruitcake Day. It started earlier today, December 27th but I feel I should have been there to commemorate it from the beginning.

Too late now at 6:15pm to show true appreciation. I jest. I cannot in any fairness celebrate. Fruitcakes- and this includes the pannetone- lack any emotional or tangy connection for me.

As Sam-I-am would have it “I do not like it” anyway it’s sliced. Heavy cakes that can double as doorstops or the Italian lightweight versions have no appeal.

The culinary imagination that decided to throw all manner of dried fruits and some nuts into a batter is foreign to me. It does not matter from which continental provenance, this cake ain’t to my liking.

In a flash

It’s astounding to think that a person’s life often spans nearly a century. Even more so when I realize mine has already covered three-quarters of one.

In some ways, the experience of all those years has been futuristic.

As an aside in the midst of this ramble, I wonder if the cave dwellers in our distant past didn’t have that same intimation. When fire was discovered or the wheel, didn’t they feel they were encountering the future?

In my lifetime so far, it’s the digital information that I appreciate as new and fresh. Computers have evolved to help orchestrate my life from the smallest of screens.

AI, like Hal in the Star Trek film, is a real thing. My experience of it has a robot scheduled to assist with my upcoming mammogram (for an add-on fee of $59.) Many other examples of artificial intelligence abound. One, of the many I am only vaguely aware of, is the rather alarming driverless or self-driving car.

At the beginning of my time on earth, there were no such gadgets or doodads. They would soon become a reality but not an everyday presence. When they crept further into our consciousness, computing devices loomed large but seemed vaguely improbable.

Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy contended with one behemoth of a machine and a budding romance in Desk Set.

In 1957, there was room for some skepticism about just how useful such mechanical interventions would be. Not so anymore.

We carry a whole lot of computing power in our pockets now. Who woulda thunk? I mean back in the 1940s?

Ethical considerations about how much data we share and how much of our identities we give up or over to the machine are somewhere lost in the shuffle of convenience and notoriety. Look at all I am sharing here with strangers.

Without the devices we use to post these thoughts there would be no online forii.

The public square would be a sheep meadow in the middle of town. Those of us so inclined would argue our propositions from soap boxes. Others so inclined would be entertained by the spectacle.

There would be no data breach just a lot of shouting.