Bit Of A New Look and A Walk In The Woods

      Okay, if you hadn't noticed, the blog looks a little different today! Did a little work on the header (the part where the title of the blog is) in an attempt to spruce things up a touch. You can still see me standing on the same rocky outcrop but I've added a couple of extra images. The red "B" is a letter which was carved onto that same outcrop some time in the late thirties by my Grandfather, Ernest Baker. His cottage stood at the top of the hill overlooking the beach and he carved that "B" into the rock to mark his boundary line. A few years ago, when we at that beach to scatter my Dad's ashes we actually managed to find it, and marked with red, just to see it better. I imagine it's back to its natural colour by now. The second image is of that same beach and was taken from a postcard back in the forties. The rocky outcrop can be seen at the far end of the beach. My grandparents lived in Gibsons, B.C. back in those days and this was where I spent my summer vacations. It was a magical place for any and all who visited!
   On top of the new look, "Neanderings" passed 25,000 page views today! Not a huge number in the blogging world but it was kind of a nice round one so I thought I'd mention it! I've also added a couple of extra countries to the list of where my page views come from and I'm now up to 104---kinda cool.

Kind of a random pic but our plan is
to go back to this same spot every week
and take another pic, just to show the
change in foliage as Spring progresses.
We'll see if that actually happens......

   Okay, it's Easter weekend and the weather's been gorgeous so Doralyn and I decided to head out for a walk through nearby Warbler Woods. We kind of overdressed for the weather and were already quite warm by the time we got there.
   With no leaves on the trees you can see quite deep into the forest and it's actually pretty cool---you get a much better sense of the topography. What we hadn't counted on was all the mud! There were quite a few spots where we had to go around instead of through and it made the many hills just that much more treacherous. Ran into quite a few other people but for the most part it seemed to be single guys, occasionally with dogs.

A pretty dead tree, but still good for the wildlife!

   A couple of the iffier-looking trees had special signage on them, indicating they were wildlife habitats, so not to cut them down or disturb them. We did neither!
   The farther we walked the muddier it got, it seemed, so I think we were actually happy to eventually make it out the other side of the woods and head for home. It's not an easy stroll through them, to say the least and we were both pretty winded, what with all the hills we traversed. As part of my extremely irregular running routine, I use the hills when I think it's time for hill repeats. What I do is run up them and then walk down the other side. Then I walk to the next one and run up it. Yesterday I was exhausted after walking up them so I guess there's more work to do!

Did I say it was muddy? Thank
goodness for the occasional
wooden walkway!

   

Things I've Seen Other People Doing That I Would Really Like To Do

   
   I occasionally come across other people absorbed in whatever they happen to be doing at the time, whether it's maybe work-related or not, and I find myself thinking   "Hmm...that looks like something I might enjoy!" Generally, this is a pretty wide variety of things and probably not even the types of things that other people might find cool or interesting, but I'm gonna list them for you anyway....

1. Talking through a headset with a microphone
     I always think this looks sorta cool and fun! I'm talking about phone receptionists, air traffic controllers, gamers, big box store employees, police, and those kinds of people. I want to be free to use my hands and still talk to people at the same time. They also kind of look like they're in charge, you know what I mean?

2. Using that electronic inventory gun
     

I want to be the person walking around the store, shooting that little gun at things!

3. Using a hydration vest

      I think it's cool when I see runners and athletes wearing hydration vests---it means they're not just out for a run, they're out for a long run...

4. Wearing a hard hat
      Along with this, you could also include construction boots and a reflective safety vest. Hard hats are cool, I think, because they symbolize pretty well everything that I'm not.

5. Coaching goalies

     I've played a lot of goal over the years and have a pretty analytical mind. I've also had to handle a lot of my own playing "demons", so I have this strong feeling I could help other goalies.

6.

Do a "one man show" 
     Okay, I have no idea what kind of a"one man show" I'm talking about, but I want to walk around on a stage somewhere talking to and interacting with a group of people. I don't want a script or anything, I just want to get up there! And if I could wear a hard hat and a headset at the same time, that would be awesome!

7. Head to the mountains on a writing retreat

     What is it about the mountains?! There's a place in Banff which offers retreats for writers and artists and I kinda lust after that! Now, I've never actually seen anyone doing this, so maybe it shouldn't be part of the list...

8.

Being the "slow" and "stop" traffic signal person
     Okay, kind of a no-brainer here, you get to wear a hard hat, reflective vest and maybe even carry a walkie-talkie---all pretty cool things!

9. Ballet

     Or quite a lot of other types of dance, there's just something about the athleticism of it all which intrigues me. Some of my friends will say, "I knew it all along!"

10.

Someone ending a list at #10 
       I've seen many people end a list at #10 and I think this is awesome!

This Is For Eric Buckley, So That He Might Actually Read It

   Yesterday morning, at work, and as we do just about every single Friday morning, Eric Buckley and I changed shifts.
   Eric and I tend to spend five to ten minutes just chatting about life in general after we're done exchanging more work-specific details.
   

This morning Eric was telling me how he quite often will houseclean his list of Facebook friends, depending on the nature of the things they post. I laughed and asked him whether I should check my list of friends to see if he and I were actually still friends on Facebook. He smiled at this and told me not to worry too much and that he had even noticed my most recent "Neanderings" post on Facebook.
   "It was something about Idiot Men, wasn't it?" he said. He then added, "I didn't actually read it, what was that all about?"
   I was quite happy to go on from there and give him a brief synopsis of what that post was all about. It did, however, once again raise the issue of why I blog and who I blog for.
   I can't tell you how many times people I know who are also Facebook or Twitter friends will ask me about specific things that have happened in my life the same day that I  just blogged about that specific thing and then posted it on social media. In my mind I'm thinking well, if you'd read that post then you'd already know about that race I ran, darn it all!
   In retrospect, though, I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to actually digesting the vast amounts of different types of information appearing on social media. I'm good for looking at a picture and following the caption but sometimes that's about it. If there's actually an article which needs reading then it pretty damn well be about something I'm keenly interested in. And it better be pretty short.
   I think, then, that this may have been a trap I've fallen into from time to time. Whereas a lot of other blogs are quite often topic-specific and therefore might have their own audience, my blog is all over the place as to subject matter and is written more like a freelance newspaper column than a blog, really. I imagine that if I posted three or four times a week with lots of pics and kept things brief, people might actually read my blog posts.
   All of which begs the question why do I actually blog? 
   Well, I certainly don't do it for the money. Many bloggers out there use the process as a means of financial gain, large or small. This generally entails posting ads and occasionally doing sponsored posts. I've never really been interested in doing that and the more of it I see in another person's blog, the less likely I am to read that blog.
   The principal reason I write a blog is that I have ideas in my head and I enjoy getting them out. I enjoy that there is any kind of an audience and appreciate the occasional positive response. Blogging is quite often cathartic, as well. This was especially true when my Dad was ill and eventually passed. Not suspecting the outcome from the beginning, I started writing simply to update friends and family on how he was doing. As things changed, I really couldn't stop blogging about it. It truly helped me come to grips with what I saw happening before my very eyes.
   

So, if all else fails, I'm betting that Eric Buckley will read this blog post. And if he never reads another one, well, that's okay too because I really like Eric and that has nothing to do with whether he actually reads my blog posts or not! Next, I may need to work on Kathy, Deb, Bill, Bob, Chris, Sarah, Ginny, Nathan, Tara............
   And in the meantime, Eric, thanks for giving me something to write about!

Ken

   Round about 1971 or so, my (kind of) high school girlfriend at the time and I were linked strongly because of our mutual love for the music of Simon and Garfunkel.
   I remember one day her calling me up (rotary phone) and she could hardly contain herself, she was so excited. She'd been on a shopping trip in downtown London and was passing through the menswear department at Simpson's when she spotted a clerk working there who she thought could have been Art Garfunkel's double. She was so adamant that this young man could pass for Garfunkel that she begged me to go downtown and take a look for myself.
   We went there together the next day and loitered around menswear till we spotted him. Amazingly, she was right---the lad looked just like a young Art Garfunkel, the version with the non-receding hairline. I think I might have seen him a time or two after this, on my own shopping trips, but soon my trips downtown became more and more sporadic. Not only that, but Simpson's was bought out by the Bay and ceased to exist at that same location. For the longest time, I never even thought about the young Garfunkel lookalike.
   Many years later, possibly more than thirty, I happened to be in the menswear department at the Bay in White Oaks Mall, looking for a pair of pants. Who appears to serve me but the same young sales clerk!  Except that he is now a grown man, of course.
   I want to tell him the Garfunkel story, of course, but I am not at that period in my life when I tell complete strangers intimate stories from my past, so I keep my silence. He is quite amicable and helpful with my pants purchase and we go our separate ways. In the intervening years, I see him from a distance a handful of times but that is that.
   Then, just this past year, I am in the Bay and I run into him again. My only amazement with this is that I've done the math, figured he was a few years older than myself and should have quite rightly retired by now. I am now even more strongly wanting to tell him the Garfunkel story but I'm working and can't really take the time. I've also noted that his name is Ken, from the employee tag he wore. My father's name was Ken, and this struck a bit of a sympathetic chord with me, as well.

Kenneth Gordon Gregory 1945-2015

   I was, however, at an age when I am more than happy to talk to strangers about stuff I never would have talked to them about as a young person. I also write a blog about pretty random things and it occurs to me that this story about Ken would be an interesting one to do.
   In my head, my plan would be to go to the Bay some day when I had the time, find Ken, ascertain that he is the same guy from 1971, and tell him the whole Garfunkel story. If, at this point, he hasn't called security, I then plan on asking him if I can buy him a coffee or something on his break and do a little interview for my blog. Even take a pic.
   This plan had been rattling around in my head for a few months when the unthinkable happened.
   I was on Facebook the other day and someone had posted Ken's obituary, along with a picture of him.
   The obit talked about his long career at Simpson's and the Bay so I knew it was the same man.
   This saddened me, more than it otherwise might have, given the non-relationship we had. His obit was self-written and obviously he was aware that his days were short as he was writing. It was also one of the more beautiful pieces of writing you'd want to come across---full of family love, advice on not taking things for granted and suggestions for enjoying the simple things in life. Ken was obviously an insightful man and many nice things were said about him through online condolences.
   Part of my sadness was the missed opportunity. There was something about Ken which made me want to sit down with him and just have a chat. I wanted to talk to him about the years on the job---I understand he held the same job for over fifty years, a remarkable achievement. Along with longevity like that comes a comforting sense of constancy---the few times I saw or ran into Ken always provided me with an instant link to my past. When I saw him the first time as that young man, working in the menswear department at Simpson's, I assumed that it was likely a temporary kind of job. That he then held that job and both enjoyed it and did well at it for all those years speaks volumes. 
   Ken was a dapper man who, as he aged, morphed from the Art Garfunkel appearance into someone closer akin to Tom Hanks, at least to my eye. I managed to find a couple of Facebook pics of him at a Simpson's reunion a couple of years ago and, amidst a group of casual, leather- and windbreaker-clad gents he stood out as...well...nattily-attired, I guess. I suppose this is another topic the two of us might have chatted about over coffee.
   This is, of course, a bit of a cautionary type of tale. It is an example of putting off something you really want to do until it is too late and the opportunity has slipped through your fingers. The people around you, people who have always been there and that you can count on, will someday be gone. They may be gone without warning or they may simply slip out of your life while you were looking in the other direction. Ken, I think, would be in total agreement---do not take those people for granted! 
   So, rest in peace, Ken, and I'm sorry that we never met more formally. I never really knew you, but I kind of wanted to.

Porno Here! (uh....just kidding)

   In my last blog post, I attempted to share with you my experience with new guidelines being introduced by Blogger, regarding explicit sexual material on our blogs. I did so in what I hoped was a reasonably light-hearted manner and, if you didn't read that post or aren't able to remember it clearly, you can read about it here.
   Well, just recently, it seems, Blogger decided to change its mind. This is the message we bloggers are now seeing:

An update on the Blogger porn content policy

This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy stating that blogs that distributed sexually explicit images or graphic nudity would be made private.

We’ve received lots of feedback about making a policy change that impacts longstanding blogs, and about the negative impact this could have on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities.

We appreciate the feedback. Instead of making this change, we will be maintaining our existing policies.

   Apparently the feedback they received from their bloggers convinced them not to implement the changes they'd planned and life can go on as usual for us here in Blogger world.
   For me, this really doesn't mean a lot---I don't personally produce porn (although I think, in most of its forms, it's quite awesome) and my blogging efforts would have continued on unabated, regardless of any potential policy changes.

   But now I can do porn! Hurray! Lots of posts with boobies, butts and protracted penises! Or, then again, maybe I WON'T!! Because, really, that's not what I do. It's way too easy to find explicit material  all over the place without needing to come here for it. Instead, you can visit "Neanderings" for near-neanderthal musings on totally random and meandering topical generalities.
   Because that is what I do!  

   

   

No Porno Here! Sorry!

   For the last couple of days, I have been seeing the following message whenever I log on to Blogger, the website offered through Google which enables (allows?) me to produce both "Neanderings" and "Strides":

Adult content policy on Blogger

Starting March 23, 2015, you won't be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger.

Note: We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.

   Well, my first thought was that I didn't really have too much to worry about, neither of my blogs are rife with nudity or sexually explicit material. I'm quite happy and comfortable talking about sex but I don't remember any of my posts containing what I think Blogger might find objectionable.
   To be on the safe side, though, I went on my list of blog posts and perused the titles. The only one which really jumped out at me was a post I wrote a little over three years ago, titled "Sex". If you want, you can read it here.
   I used the word "Sex" more as a social experiment than anything. I was curious as to whether or not a mildly suggestive title would generate a larger amount of pageviews. Well, it generated a hugely larger amount of pageviews over a relatively short matter of time. I can't say as it surprised me! In this post, there were several pics of scantily clad men and women in different poses, embracing. A quick look at these to refresh my memory and I was pretty sure Blogger was not going to have a problem, especially within that context.
   Now whether or not this post offered a "substantial public benefit" in any of those categories or not is up for debate. I like to think my random blog posts would substantially benefit the whole world if I could just get that kind of readership but, according to my stats for that particular post, only 68 people have viewed it. Or one person viewed it 68 times, who the hell really knows? I guess the point is that neither of my blogs are going to rock the world regardless of the filth I might end up infusing them with!
   I also wonder if Blogger, along with perusing the pics, is also reading the posts. Could there not be actually more offensive stuff in the written part than on the pictorial side...? What if, in a post, I have nothing but pics of cute little bunnies and kitty cats but in text all I write about is how much I hate fucking goddamn bunnies and kitty cats? (sorry for the language, just trying to make a point...and, by the way, I love bunnies and kitty cats)

   I guess the real point in all of this is that someone is paying attention to what we blog about and is quite prepared to curtail our (and your ) experience based on pretty subjective criteria. I also don't know who, ultimately, makes the decision---I can't imagine one person being able to keep track of all of Blogger's writers. Which means that groups of people must be applying what their interpretation of someone else's interpretation of "explicit" actually is. Unless everyone is sitting around a table, passing nude pics back and forth, hoping for a consensus (and would this make for a long meeting or a short one?)
   Is this censorship? Yep. So am I pissed off about this? Nope. If I was paying good money to a website so that I could use all its resources for my blogging and then that website turned around and tried to arbitrarily restrict what I could put into my blog then I would be more than pissed off. Blogger, however, lets me blog for free and beggars can't be choosers, can they? Can they....?
   So I'm glad I don't have the job of trying to figure out what stays and what goes on Blogger these days. On the other hand, if I did have that job, likely just about everything would stay---it takes a lot for me to find something offensive about nudity. We are not born with clothes on, after all.
   Ironically, these new guidelines come to us through Google, an entity I would suggest has led more people to images of nudity than any other in the history of the world. And not only has it directed us to sexually provocative images, it has also pointed the way to things I would suggest are truly obscene. When, with a single click, you can watch a man being burned alive in a cage, it's a little hard to handle Blogger trying to restrict what might be only brief views of naked body parts.
   So I will continue to do what I do here on "Neanderings", regardless of what happens after (magical) March 23, 2015. I would really rather offend people with words than pictures anyway, it takes a little more craft!
   
   
   

    

My Apologies

   Last week, as you may be aware, I experimented a touch with the look and feel of Neanderings. At the time, I also asked for feedback as to how people felt about the changes.
   Well, more or less resoundingly, people hated the difference it made to the blog. It apparently caused much confusion and made navigating the site quite difficult.
   Now, from my end of things, it created a whole new blogging experience. It didn't particularly change the creative process but it did make a huge difference in the amount of page views the blog received. 
   The first day of the change, the blog racked up over three hundred page views. Generally, if I get thirty page views a day I'm pretty happy. Three hundred made me ecstatic.
   Here is a pic of what the blog looked like, on my laptop, when I made the change:

    
   Each of those pics represented a blog post and if you clicked on the pic then you automatically opened up the post. Scrolling down gave you access to any post I'd ever written, right back to Neanderings' inception. For me, it was almost hypnotic, jumping about from post to post so easily!
   I can only imagine that some readers out there were seeing more or less the same thing I was and were gallivanting all over the place, investigating. This, then, might account for all the extra page views. Sadly though, not everyone had this experience.
   The "nays" have accumulated over the past week, unanimously, and I have found myself torn between becoming a "page view whore" and wanting to stay true to readers who have always been faithful.
   What it boils down to is this---I started this blog simply because I had the urge to write. At some point, I realized that there were people out there who, for the most part, enjoyed and looked forward to new blog posts. For about a week, a lot of those same people were no longer enjoying the process. As much as I was amazed and enjoying the sudden increased viewership, the idea that those people were suddenly less enchanted slowly became intolerable. For this reason, I have gone back to the old Neanderings. And it kind of feels a little bit like coming home... 
 

Changes?

   Welcome to the new "Neanderings"!
   Well...it  might only be new for a short time, depending on the reaction I get from people. Or don't get.
   The change is a pretty striking one---readers are suddenly faced with a page full of a rather mind-boggling display of pics from past posts which, when clicked on, will take you to that post. A quick and easy scroll down gets you right back to the very beginning of things.
   So let me know what you think! Is it too distracting? Does anyone miss me standing on a rock by the ocean??
   Let me know!

"Neanderings" Turns Three!

    Earlier on in December, "Neanderings" turned three.
   This kind of blew me away, as some anniversaries are prone to do, simply because you tend to lose track of time and then forget that you have been doing one thing or another for as long as you actually have been.

   At the same time, there have been a couple of other blogging anniversaries to celebrate--Year One for "Strides", my running blog, and 10,000 page views for "Neanderings"--so I've kind of lost track a little of the "housekeeping" end of things.
   So, Year Three is in the books.
    As I usually do, I went back and took a bit of a look at what I'd been up to in "Neanderings" in the past year.
   There were no trends. Apart from a series of blog posts devoted to a brief Efudex treatment I found myself undergoing at one point, I was all over the place with my randomness.
   I wrote a little bit about crime (The Last Thing I Wanted To Write About, Dead building, and Boston), a little bit about the blogging experience itself (Be Careful What You Say, Where The Heck Have I Been, and I Am A Blasphemer) and a little bit about the aging process (Turning Sixty, Cranky Old Man).
   A couple of times I got into a bit of a silly mood (Apple, Halves and Important Stuff You Need To Know) and occasionally I wanted to touch on relationships (Carving, This Christmas, I Am Woman, Reunion and Autistic Boy Meets Damaged Woman).
   Apart from these, there were a whole host of totally random topics touched on, with titles like "Jesus, God and Facebook", "Coffee", "Hypocrisy", "Kika In The Bar", "I Am Unfriended" and "Would anyone like to sit on the purple couch?" I love random!
   Toward the latter part of the year, I also extended my blog audience to include Google+ and Twitter along with the ever-trustworthy Facebook. What this meant was that all of the sudden much of the "Neanderings" audience started coming from the States, whereas before it was primarily Canadian people reading. A larger audience also meant that I received my first little bit of anonymous criticism--another blogger described a blog post from last year as "pure blasphemy" and indicated that I would surely be punished. It was a small blip, however, and still good to know that people were reading!
   It's been a pretty good year and I intend to keep writing as much as I possibly can, regardless of who and how many might be stopping by from time to time.
   If you are a faithful reader, I thank you greatly! Some of you are new and some of you have been visiting since the beginning. Here's hoping we can get together many more times in the future!
   Cheers!

I Am A Blasphemer (Apparently)

   In my most recent post, I talk about the idea that you need to consider who is going to be reading or listening to the things you write and say. You then need to understand that the things you say and do may bear some consequence.
   In an extremely ironic twist, just a couple of days after I wrote this, a comment popped up which was attached to a post I wrote last year called "Christians in the park". There is a link to that post here, if you weren't one of the ones that read it the first time around. Essentially, the post described my distrust of groups or individuals who seem to have used Christianity as a cornerstone for either their own gain or as part of a political agenda. I then cited examples, as quickly as they popped into my head, of some of history's worst offenders.
   The person's two-line comment appeared at the end of the post but I have since deleted it, thinking that readers might attempt to link back to its author's blog and give the person a sense of audience he or she might not deserve. The comment described the post as "pure blasphemy" and then added that "God will surely repay" me. In my brief reply to this person, I quoted one or two nice things I did say about Christianity and then left it at that.
   The person who commented did so anonymously. You were able to follow a link back to his or her own blog but it was a blog in title only, had no content of its own and did nothing to actually identify its author. I also have no idea if its author read my follow-up comment, which has since been deleted as well.
   In my three years of writing "Neanderings", this is actually the first truly negative comment I have encountered. Because of this, I was initially taken aback. I then had to remind myself of my own warning to others---be prepared for the consequences of what you say and do.
   I have personal friends and acquaintances who are Christians and who demonstrate this and espouse it on a regular basis. I have never received a negative comment or even an inquiry from them as to things I've said about Christianity in the past. It could well be that they simply have not followed the blog (not everyone I know actually reads it) and therefore have never questioned me about it. Apart from this particular post, I have written on the subject several times in "Neanderings". I think this is because I often find myself wondering about, for lack of a better term, the "meaning of life". I wonder what, if anything, lies beyond. Because this is an underlying current, I write about it. I attempt to be fair when I do this and I attempt to explain myself clearly.
   If you go back and read "Christians in the park" very carefully, you hopefully will get the point I attempted to make. I can see where it's possible that someone might consider it to be "blasphemy" if you only were to consider some of the associations I make in it and if you only read the accompanying pictures I culled from the internet. It could be that the post is viewed as tainted simply because of those things.
   If anything, this episode has reminded me that there is an audience out there and that they may have strong opinions of their own. My biggest discomfort here is that the person who left me the comment chose to do so anonymously. I, on the other hand, do not have an issue with identifying myself. My best guess is that the person leaving that comment considers themselves to be a Christian. If he or she is a Christian who feels it's appropriate to anonymously attack (at least it felt like a bit of an attack) another total stranger's beliefs then I feel as though they might somewhat easily fall into the category of yet another person or group with an agenda of their own who props it up under the guise of "Christianity". Which is to say, under what I understand a Christian to be, that they are probably not one at all. In trying to take a truly Christian approach to anything, I understand that one of the best things to do is ask yourself what would Jesus do?
   I have a bit of a hard time imagining Jesus attacking me over a blog post.

Be Careful What You Say

   Sometimes, you need to be careful what you say and to whom you say it. Sometimes, you also need to be careful what you do and who might view it. 

 

   Someone I know has a little blurby at the bottom of all the e-mails she sends out which goes something like this: "Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."
   I believe this is true; as much as we might be caught up in our own little turmoil, we need to remember that every other person we run into is in the midst of a turmoil of their own. How they are dealing with that turmoil may not be the same as how we are. We also need to remember that their ability to handle that turmoil might be on thin ice. It could be that they have completely lost that ability. Just at the moment that they may have totally lost the ability to handle the stressors of daily living, your path may cross theirs and what you say and what you do may have much more impact on the situation than you ever could possibly have imagined.

   You might save their life with a simple, random word or two. You might somehow or other ensure that their life ends, possibly right in front of you. It is not beyond the realm of reason that something you say or do might cause your life to end. I don't think there is a moment too innocent for this to happen.
   In light of all this, I pretty well constantly attempt to assess situations as they occur.
   I sometimes run afoul of other drivers out there. There is occasionally the temptation to lay on the horn or make some less than complimentary hand gesture and then I stop myself. I stop myself because in the grand scheme of things I don't know what effect this might have on that other person. Maybe there was a reason for why they were driving like that. Maybe it was just a brief moment of inattention, something we are all guilty of from time to time. Perhaps that person is speeding to the hospital because a loved one's been hurt. You just never know what a person's story might be.
   In this age of social media, you have the opportunity to interact in a variety of ways with hundreds of people all at once. Depending on the nature of that interaction, it might then be shared with hundreds of thousands of people.
  

This past Halloween, a young girl in Michigan made the mistake of dressing up for the occasion (as many people did) and then posting pics of herself on Facebook and Twitter (as many people did). Her mistake, though, was dressing up as a Boston Marathon bombing victim.
   She was immediately deluged with hate mail--some directed at her and much of it swirling around her. She had also previously made the mistake of posting nude pictures and her driver's licence on another social media outlet. This gave a whole bunch of extremely angry people access to some of her personal information. Soon, she and her family were receiving death threats. All of this because of a (terribly) misguided costume choice and then the ill-fated decision to make it so public.
   I occasionally find myself wrestling with what to put out there on social media. Most of it revolves around my quirky sense of humour and trying not to offend anybody with some of the stuff which comes out of my mouth. You have no idea how many times I've re-written a blog post or agonized over a Facebook comment so that no feelings would be hurt. This is all because you just never know how something you say might be interpreted or how an action might be seen.
   There is a world out there that is listening. More people than you might think are paying attention to what you say and do. As much as it might be enjoyable to say whatever comes to your mind whenever it gets there, it's essential to remember that this is not a consequence-less exercise. For the most part, we are all guilty of wanting to say or do things that will only get a positive response. Unfortunately, this is not the way the world works.
   This is not to say don't be outspoken or brave. Just be prepared for (but not scared of) what your bravery brings you in return.    

It's A Good Age To Be!

   In just a little over three weeks from now, the world will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.


JFK, moments before his assassination and one of many
similar images you will see in the coming weeks.

   The date is November 22 and, coincidentally, it is also a Friday, as it was back in 1963. There have already been ads on T.V. for planned specials to commemorate the event and you can be certain that the media will be inundated with Kennedy images.
   I am one of the older of my peer group and because of this I am one of the few who can actually remember that day, with clarity.
   At the time, I was in Grade Five and was attending Braemar Public School in North Vancouver. We were all sitting at our desks when the intercom came on and the principal informed us the Kennedy had been killed. We were stunned but we were stunned in a ten-year-old kid sort of a way---it was more of a holy cow kind of a moment for us and the true solemnity of the situation was, I think, lost on us. One of the girls in the class broke into tears, however, and was excused. Why this had happened rather perplexed us until our teacher told us that the student was actually an American and that the awful news had much more import to her.
   As the weekend went on and we found ourselves glued to the black and white images on our T.V. screens, the holy cow feeling I'd had in my classroom totally disappeared as the gravity of the times sunk in.
   I am pretty well able to remember every little image from that weekend. Many of them became iconic and I can only imagine that in the lead up to the fiftieth anniversary they will be everywhere you look. I, however, feel privileged to have seen them as they happened.
   This is one of the things I treasure the most about being the age I am. I am able to say that I was witness to much of the history we now have venerated, analyzed, distilled and

Armstrong steps on the moon.

fashioned idols around. Occasionally I was witness to it as it happened---I watched as man first set foot on the moon and I watched as Paul Henderson scored the winning goal against the Russians in '72. If I didn't happen to be watching when the event actually occurred then I was immediately afterwards immersed in its wake and denouement.

Henderson in '72

   As much as history books and T.V. can attempt to recreate an historic moment what they generally cannot accurately recreate is the emotion of the time--the looks that might have been passed back and forth by total strangers, the utter joy or the total dejection. At some point in the next few weeks there will likely be a replay of Walter Cronkite, the famous CBS newscaster, announcing to the world President Kennedy's death. The words he used were straightforward. It was the look on his face that was harder to describe. It was the same look that many people had those days and if you weren't there to experience it then you cannot know it accurately.
   I like being able to say "I was there", even if only as viewer and from far away. As terrible or as joyous as a world event might be, when you are my age you are able to place it within the context of all that has gone on before. When you have lived through as many monumental events as I have, the monumental events of today are somehow greatly lessened and I envy the clear-minded eighty-year-olds who are able to remember back even farther than I am.
   This, then, is my little window--I am at that age where there is much to remember but I am edging closer to the time when there will be much to forget. For now, though, it is a good age to be! 
    

10,000 Page Views!

   Today, "Neanderings" registered its 10,000th page view! This is something that kind of snuck up on me, actually, Blogger does keep a running stat of page views but it's probably the stat I pay the least attention to.
   But then---presto---ten thousand page views!
   "Neanderings" has been in existence for almost three years now and this is something which kind of blows me away, frankly, it seems as though I've only been doing it for a couple of months. In that three years, there have been views from seventy-four different countries around the world. This is not to say that I have much of a world-wide audience, however, the vast majority of visitors are from dear-old Canada. The U.S. has been catching up lately as I've managed to expand my audience just a touch.


I had Doralyn take a pic of me while I was blogging away one day.
Obviously I need to upgrade my phone...

   The past year or so I've found myself spending a little more time over on my other blog, "Strides", which you can see here, as the whole running thing caught my interest and "Neanderings" has been somewhat neglected, sad to say. Fairly recently, Doralyn mentioned that she kind of missed seeing "Neanderings" show up as often as it had been so I have resolved to blog here a little more faithfully in the future!
   Some of you have popped in here by accident from strange and far away places but many of you are faithful readers and I wanted to thank you all for occasionally stopping by over the last three years and making me feel as though the time and energy expended here is more than worth it.
   Hope to hear from you again soon and many, many thanks!!
  
  
  

Where The Heck Have I Been?

   I have been strangely absent from "Neanderings" for the better part of two months now.
   I found this rather astonishing when I actually checked. It's not like I haven't been busy blogging but it's all been over on "Strides" as the whole running thing seems to have pre-occupied me.
   Part of the problem, though, is that I just haven't found a topic which inspired me. I actually started a few posts which might have been "Neanderings"-appropriate but then they died on the drawing board. Here are a few of them.

Jolie

   One concerned Angelina Jolie. It was difficult to hear about her decision to undergo a double mastectomy and not want to write about not only her bravery but also how this decision would ultimately affect her physical desirability. It is clear from seeing pictures of her, post-surgery, that she is still an extremely beautiful woman. How many of us, though, and more particularly men, look at her now and wonder what is underneath. From here, it's not a huge leap to go right straight to the superficiality of beauty. For years, Jolie has been near the top of the list of the most physically attractive women in the world. Does her ranking now drop, simply because of reconstructive surgery? I've made the point before that once you take many of the most beautiful women in the world and strip away the make-up, the hair styling, the expensive clothes, the cosmetic surgery and the airbrushing what you have left are pretty ordinary women. You take those same ordinary women and apply all of the aforementioned techniques and procedures and what you get is beauty. But how do we value that? And should we? So that was one idea for a blog post.
  

Wallenda crossing.

I'd already written a blog post last year about Nik Wallenda's crossing of Niagara Falls. The post was called "Tether" and centred on the use of a harness as a safety precaution. Wallenda was against its use at the time but the network televising the stunt insisted and so it was used. Just recently, Wallenda walked across a portion of the Grand Canyon without the offending tether. In the televised buildup to the event, much was made of the obvious life-threatening danger involved. Wallenda didn't seem nearly as concerned as I suspect some of the rest of us were. We watched the whole thing and I actually found it rather nerve-wracking as my fear of heights kicked in almost constantly. As I watched, it was hard to wonder what if? What if he does fall? How will the Discovery Network handle this? Knowing that this was a possibility, there had to have been a plan for dealing with it. I also couldn't help but wonder how many viewers wanted him to fall. As disturbing as that is, millions of people watched and you just know that some percentage of them wanted it to end badly. Yet again another topic for a post.


Fairly representative.

   Grade Eight graduation. For one reason or another, we and many of our friends and acquaintances had kids graduate from Grade Eight this year. Facebook was awash with pics from almost all of these. Of course, one of the amazing things you see are kids who seem to have grown up, almost literally, overnight. It always seems that, at this stage in their lives, the girls have grown up just a little faster than the boys, however. The boys, in spite of their suits and tuxes, could not hide their underlying goofiness/gawkiness. The girls, suddenly, were awash with beauty. What I found disconcerting more than once, though, was that the beauty often was infused with sexuality. The trappings of sexuality were all there--make-up, high heels, cleavage, stockings, you name it. I'm sure that for many of the girls this was a first-time experience (as much of the teeter-tottering on heels indicated) and you wondered just how much of it might actually be embraced as they continue on into womanhood. As a man, however, it was discomforting to be sitting there in a public school auditorium or browsing through Facebook and coming to grips with how you were actually supposed to be looking at girls who were only kids last week. I'm glad we had boys!

   Aging. I turned sixty recently. Numbers are really only just numbers but this particular number has led me to consider a little more pointedly just where I stand in the aging process. Don't get me wrong---I think it's pretty cool that I'm sixty and I think many of the next years of my life are going to be simply awesome. It's hard not to notice the changes though. As a blog topic, several things have popped up which seem to be appropriate things to offer discourse on but I am at the point where there seem to be so many things to talk about that a whole new blog appears to be the way to go. So, at some point in the not-too-distant future, there may be yet another blog for your perusal. Once I think of a name for it...
   Nazi time travel. Okay, I can't even remember just how

this popped up, but somewhere on the internet I found a story about the possible existence of a bell-shaped device  the Nazis were working on during the war which, in turn, might have made time travel possible. There seemed to be credible documentation which suggested that at least they were working on this if, indeed, they hadn't actually manufactured one. Einstein himself had a theory that time travel was possible so it's not difficult to see why the Nazis might have been intrigued by this and willing to commit the resources to it. One of the theories I ran across suggested the possibility that Nazis were able to use this machine to travel into a different dimension, a dimension in which they were (and are) the world leaders. Google it, actually. Pretty intriguing stuff and probably worthy of a blog post.

   Okay, that's about it, those were some of the things I was thinking of making posts about the last couple of months  but didn't. Ironically, as I was sitting here working on this post, Doralyn mentioned that I didn't seem to be posting on "Neanderings" anymore. I kind of laughed and re-assured her that I was doing so at that very moment! Hopefully, I can get back into posting here (as opposed to there) a little more regularly now. Running is kind of cool but it is just running...