I am heading off the legal path this week to jot down some things I think and some things I think I observe. Some of these things have come up recently, some I have thought about for a long time, and some of the things are just things.
- I think people too readily dismiss the perils of not knowing what they don't know. I think youth sports parents should be required to attend games of older teams in the same sport to see that parents can stay calm and their kids will still perform just great.
- There seems to be an explosion of the phrase "in the family" as in, now that you're employed by Company Y you are "now in the Company Y family." I see every day family members that really, really don't like each other, families that are dysfunctional and family members who don't really want to be in the actual family. The explosion of the phrase seems unjustified and shortsighted. The phrase "it is what it is" seems to have vanished. I sort of miss that phrase, the simplicity was meaningful.
- It is weird that aging (or dead) musicians are capturing crowds of people from my generation when those same musicians enjoyed their prime while I was an elementary school student. Take Bob Seger for example. He was going to do a show in St. Paul. I heard from scores of people both my parents' age and my age that they were excited about the show. Shouldn't those generations have different music interests? Perhaps it is a testament to the quality of my parents' generation of musicians.
- I think the President shouldn't use Twitter. That's neither Republican nor Democratic in nature. It just seems the Presidency is so esteemed an office that such an informal, low-grade communication form such as Twitter should not be in the communications repertoire.
- I still like bread. Apparently, bread used to be really good for us, then there was a shift that it had bad carbs or something like that and should be avoided. I don't really care, I still like bread.
- There are some very good bumper stickers out there. Recently while in White Bear Lake I saw one that read "If the USA can't afford veterans, it shouldn't go to war." -- thought-provoking if nothing else. One that made me chuckle was "What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?" Dumb bumper stickers well outnumber good ones. I think the dumbest bumper sticker I commonly see is the one were someone declares their pet dog or cat or whatever is smarter than the Honor Roll Student.
- I recently had the good fortune of sitting down with the head coach of a prominent Division 1 men's hockey team. His team rule was essentially this: If you think it might be a dumb thing to do, it is; don't do it. If that rule wasn't followed, then more rules would be adopted. But as long as that single rule was followed, then all was good. Following that rule take a lot of zest out of life -- I do things often, commonly multiple times in a day (outside of work of course) that I think are probably dumb, but they seem like so much fun and, if it turns out to not be dumb, then I probably had a really good time.
- Some Federal holidays should be eliminated. Did anybody know Monday was Columbus Day, a Federal holiday before they either went to the bank or wondered why they didn't get mail that day? What about President's Day -- does anybody actually do anything to relive the glorious days of Bill Clinton's days with Monica in the White House or that treaty signed on January 23, 1912 at the International Opium Convention while President Taft was in office (ironic that opioids are a major crisis affecting the USA right now, 105 years later. Apparently the treatise lacked much punch)?
I'm interested to hear what your musings are. Send me your musings, I'll collect them, and in a few weeks, I'll post a collection of my favorites.
