I recommend the following article to everyone:
“Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think,” by Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, June 19, 2019.
https://link.medium.com/Vd3BjZHhzY
Nothing I can say at this moment would do it justice. Please go and read it.
— John
“However the illegal immigration crisis is resolved, or not, there are tens of millions already here. Who helps make them Americans? . . .
“They need instruction on the meaning and history of America. Here it should be noted that we have some of the best immigrants in the world, who work hard and have no hostility to American religious culture. In fact, they’re part of that culture. Help Americanize them in other ways.”
— PEGGY NOONAN, speechwriter and special advisor to President Ronald Reagan
WALL STREET JOURNAL, May 4-5, 2019, p. A13
EDITOR’S NOTE: There’s a lot to unpack in the above brief quote. Upon first reading, the thought that came to my mind was: Well, this is NOT President Donald Trump’s view of immigration. No it isn’t, but look further.
Ms. Noonan was careful about what she said, and what she did not say. Let me suggest that you may need to read between the lines a little in order to discern the subtle observations she is making about immigration in present-day America.
Here’s a hint. Obviously, the subject is “immigration.” However, the key words may be “religion” and “culture.”
If you comment below, please try to be as circumspect as Ms. Noonan was. Any disrespectful or inflammatory comments will be deleted at the discretion of the blogger-in-chief.
— John Hayden
Hello friends. I’ve been in a funk. Haven’t published a blog post since April 30. Probably my longest hiatus since I started blogging in 2007, or since I began this blog in 2009. I’ve continued to read bloggers I follow (but irregularly) and to post comments (rarely).
I’ve been trying to adjust to retirement. Not as easy as I thought. Also, I’ve been all over the place in the past year regarding the purpose and audience of this blog. I began my first blog in 2007 with a focus on Maryland. That blog became more local when I moved to Ocean City.
I started this blog in 2009 to write about “life after sixty,” but I soon wandered into politics and economics. After retiring in 2013, I returned to my hometown, Montgomery County, and focused on local stuff for a while. I started several experimental blogs, but none of them clicked. The experimental blogs have been abandoned. Over the years, I’ve written a lot about politics, and I tend to get the most hits in the runup to elections. After the 2014 election, I was a blogger wandering in the desert.
Unable to find my bearings in retirement, I tried part-time work. Lifestyle and financial issues came to the fore. I made a conscious effort to cut back on blogging. Even though I wasn’t a very productive blogger, it seemed to consume a disproportionate amount of my time. Instead of blogging, I researched affordable places to live. Took a two-week fact-finding trip to Florida. At this point, I’m confused and undecided.
The truth is, my lifelong struggle with depression has worsened since retirement.
The cover story in this month’s Atlantic magazine, “A World Without Work,” helps explain my retirement funk. The story, by Derek Thompson, is not about retirement. It warns about the continuing loss of jobs due to computerization and robotization.
“For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing?”
I’ve found that retirement has a lot in common with unemployment. Thompson points out that although leisure time offers wide opportunities, many unemployed men tend to spend most of their hours sleeping or watching TV.
I can go days without turning on the television, but I spend way too much time sleeping. Some days, I can hardly pull myself out of bed. That’s a sure sign of depression.
Any thoughts, fellow bloggers and/or retirees?
— John Hayden
“Don’t give authority to those hungry for authority. Give authority to those hungry to serve.”
I’ve survived another season working in the hospitality trade in Ocean City, MD, and lived to see another Labor Day! Thank God! Wish I could say this was the best season yet in Ocean City, but that would not be true. Not planning to do it again next summer.
The beach motel will close for the winter in a few weeks, and after that, I will be Retired! Looking forward to whatever comes next. — John
After one day of the work week at the beach motel, I’m ready for a day off. I’m too easily irritated. My reservoir of patience — never great — is about used up.
“I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.”
— Piscine Molitor Patel in “LIFE of PI,” by Yann Martel
Life of Pi (Photo credit: GBPublic_PR)
Economic and political difficulties — especially issues of justice — are on my mind, as always. Guess I’ve been reading too many scary books about economics and the jobs outlook.
What is the outlook? In developing countries, manufacturing that’s always on the move, stalking the cheapest labor. In Western countries, an abundance of jobs for machines, robots and computers; for human beings, not so much. Continue reading
Today, the beach motel opens. Another summer begins, even as the cool spring lingers. I work the evening shift, and I’m happy to have the job.
It’s my 65th summer on Spaceship Earth. I’m fully aware that the seasons are numbered, like the fastballs in a pitcher’s arm. You don’t know how many you have left.
“No matter how long you live, it goes by fast.” My favorite great-grandmother — the only great-grandmother I knew — said that. Most people don’t get to know a great-grandmother.
(Cora Hayden was my great-grandmother’s name. Her maiden name was Cora Cash. She was indeed a grand lady, matriarch of a great family. I was a child and she was a very old woman, so it’s not as if we had any deep conversations. Or any conversations at all, of more than a few words. Adults talked; children listened. Still, my life would have been much smaller except for her.)
I take each season as it comes now. “It’s a long season, and you’ve gotta trust it.” On Opening Day, all things seem possible, no matter the number of seasons. Is it the home runs you remember, or the strikeouts?
Yes, I’m not writing well right now. But some days and nights are like that.
— John Hayden
Living Simply And Still On The Grid 