Day 2383

I wrote a letter to my Luddite sister today. There's something oddly satisfying about writing a letter on paper, putting a stamp on the envelope, and taking it to the post office. I used to regularly correspond with dozens of people by mail, but this recalcitrant sister is the only one left. I miss the days when writing a good letter was still a skill that mattered. There is something tactile about putting a message on paper that just isn't there with e-mail. Sometimes I wrote letters in longhand and other times I used my faithful IBM Selectric typewriter. The fact that you often waited weeks for a reply added to the allure. The immediacy of e-mail, digital photography, and Google searches leaves me cold. I put more thought into things when I edited audio tape with a razor blade, developed film in a darkroom, and wrote letters without the help of spellcheck. Sadly, those days are gone forever.

I really think that the slower pace of an analog world was better for everyone. Now, we measure progress by how big and fast we can make something. The inevitable result of this type of thinking is globalization. In a global economy, successful companies get bigger and bigger, gobbling up all their smaller competitors. A few people become enormously rich, and very gradually there are fewer and fewer choices for the rest of us. Instead of hundreds of small airlines and auto manufacturers, there are just a handful of giant global companies, pumping out standardized products and services for the entire world. I would love to see a reversal of this trend. Even though the odds are against it, I would like to see the UK leave the European Union. I would like to see the Euro disappear and see the return of the Deutsche Mark and the French Franc. I wouldn't even mind seeing the United States split into several smaller countries. Small is good. Small problems are self limiting and can't spread to consume the entire world. The world was more interesting when small self-sufficient countries developed their own unique style and culture. Sure there were still lots of wars and conflicts when city states like Venice and Florence flourished at the end of the Middle Ages, but these states were too small to do much permanent damage to the earth. The whole idea of the Internet is based on the idea of thousands of independent nodes that make it impossible to take down the entire system. We like the redundancy that the Internet provides, but can't seem to grasp that the rest of the world should operate the same way. Globalization and instant gratification have made it too easy to destroy everything. I think these things whenever I write a letter. I might have similar thoughts if I were driving around in a Packard or a Studebaker, but I can't do that anymore.

I had my reasons to be disdainful of e-mail today. One of my clients kept saying that they never received anything from me even after I sent them what they requested three different times. The message wasn't even that important, but it ended up wasting a huge amount of time. I was pretty sure that the problem was on their end, but I ended up having to extensively test my own e-mail account just to make sure that I wasn't the source of the problem. Electronic problems are tricky this way. I should have just sent them a letter, but I know they never would have had the patience to wait for it. Patience has become just as much of a lost art as writing letters.

I've been watching the Brexit referendum returns on TV as I write this and it looks like I may get my wish. It's still too early to call, but there are a lot more votes to leave the EU than most people anticipated. The downside to all this is that my stocks will probably take a big tumble tomorrow morning. Oh, well. If it wasn't this, it would probably be something else. If the trend continues, people who shorted stocks will make money, but like me, most traders will wake up very surprised. I still think dissolving the EU and a return to sovereignty is a good thing in the long run, but I never would have predicted that it could actually happen.

Boo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2080

I was expecting to see lots of cute dogs on the Internet today. Hey, it is National Dog Day. Instead I see a disturbing and very graphic POV video of the senseless murder of two journalists on live TV taken by the shooter himself and posted immediately to Twitter. Is this what our world has come to? It's very sad. There will be the usual outrage about guns and gun violence in the weeks to come, but the problem goes far beyond guns. There are simply way too many crazy people and it has become socially unacceptable to lock them up in insane asylums. When I was a kid, every state had a huge network of mental hospitals and it was a fairly easy process to have a loony relative committed. I once knew a man who was the director of one of these state hospitals. He took me on a tour back when I was in college. It scared me. A lot of the people who were locked up seemed no different than I was.

Later, when my own mother was diagnosed as manic depressive, I became somewhat of a mental health advocate. I never dreamed that mental health advocacy would lead to this. We have gone too far. Giving people Prozac and tossing them out on the street again isn't going to stop school shootings and senseless violence perpetrated by crazy people. We have to develop a way to stop these people before they hurt someone. I'm sure that a lot of you saw the film Minority Report. That's exactly where we are headed if we don't get a grip on this situation. We have almost reached a tipping point. You can see it in the rhetoric of politicians. And you can see it in your friends Facebook postings. I don't care what you think about mental health issues. Society needs stability to survive and it will get that stability one way or another. When crazy people threaten the rest of the world's sanity, the lunacy simply has to stop.

The stock market had a good day, but today's gains did little to assuage my uneasiness. This roller coaster ride has already chopped over 8% off the value of my investment portfolio in just a matter of weeks. I used to take these meltdowns in stride. I knew, and still believe, that the market will always bounce back. The problem is that you can never be sure when it will bounce back. It might be months and it might be years. The older you get, the more you start to think that you might not live long enough to see the next boom in this perpetual boom and bust cycle. My Dad lived quite comfortably off his old fashioned university pension. I don't think many of us who depend on an increasingly volatile market and a 401K plan for security will do nearly as well.

I had a long conversation today with a guy who seems destined to become the new brand manager for a company I work with. I don't know if this is good or bad for me. New brand managers often want to get rid of old suppliers. I was asked for my opinions and I gave them. We'll see what happens. I've had a long run with this particular company, but nothing lasts forever. Hey, there's always room for a September surprise. Maybe the guy actually listened to what I had to say.

It seems like I just took Dot to physical therapy yesterday, but it's already time to take her again. This year is going by very quickly. I'm not sure whether to rest Dot tomorrow morning, or take her on her normal walk. She does seem a little bit stronger. Maybe we can do both. I'm not having much luck strengthening Dot's weak rear leg, but I am getting better at anticipating when she is going to poop. For two day in a row I have recognized the telltale signs and gotten her outside in the nick of time. It's too bad I can't do this while I'm sleeping. That's when most of the pooping occurs.

I hope tomorrow is a calm and peaceful day for everyone. With any luck, Dot will be able to go her full 18 minutes in the underwater treadmill. Maybe I'll remember to take out the trash too. That's enough to make Thursday a success for me. I don't set the bar very high these days.

Cammy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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