# 713 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday July 25)
Good morning,
Today, a brief potpourri of mostly light stuff, but beginning with a profound quotation that I love (courtesy of Adam Torson):
“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” —Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (1982)
I think about this quotation when I see toddlers out with their parents. Most of these children will live into the twenty-second century (average life expectancy of newborns in developed nations is over 80! Think about that for a moment. My grandfather was born in 1901, at the dawn of the 20th century. Children a mere four generations away will live well into the 22nd century. What will the world be like and what will these children we send off into the future be like?
SAVING FOR SAVING’S SAKE
It is no secret that I love baseball, USC and live theatre. It also is no secret that I’m something of a packrat. It would come as no surprise to learn that I used to save the program from every single game and theatrical event I attended. With boxes taking more and more space, it got to the point that something had to be done. So, I pared the collection down to playoff and world series programs and USC bowl games. The rest were surrendered (literally) to the dust bin of history.
Oddly (well, perhaps not so oddly), I don’t at all miss these and other items I’ve disposed of. The fact is that I would never go back and read them. They just took up space. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I just enjoyed collecting them and, once I had amassed the collection, it was time to clean up (or grow up, depending upon your perspective). That said, I still enjoy rifling through the old baseball programs, only in part for the articles about the players but more for the quaint advertisements that highlight times gone by.
In the meantime, we’re moving our office and I have been going through boxes from prior jobs—dating back 40+ years. There’s some great memorabilia and some truly useless stuff. I easily reduced the number of retained items by over 80%, with more to come! It’s refreshing.
Perhaps it’s time for some more Spring cleaning, just in time for mid-Summer…
And just to be clear, much as I may show signs of being a packrat, I’m not a hoarder, I don’t save things that don’t belong to me, and I certainly don’t store files that aren’t mine in bathrooms.
BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS
I have written before about those of us who love physical, old-fashioned, books. I love the smell of a new book, the way in which the pages fall, the tactile pleasure of turning pages, measuring progress by the turn of pages, and its weight (or its weightiness?!). While I appreciate the easy transport of the ethereal e-book, I find them less satisfying and not evincing the same feeling of value.
When I was a kid, my parents instilled in Gale and me a love of books. This included admonishments never to write in books because they ought not be defaced for the next reader. I kept this up through college, opting for keeping copious notes, versus underlining in textbooks. By the time I hit law school, I relented to the yellow underliner, as these were hardly works of great literature, intended to be passed on for generations.
One day, a box came to the house via what was then quaintly called “Parcel Post.” There was no name—only an address. My father suggested I open it and see what it was. Inside was a beautiful set of “Children’s Classics,” in faux-leather bindings with faux-gold embossed titles. I loved them. “Daddy, they’re great. Are they for us?” My father, the jokester that he was, couldn’t miss the opportunity to mess with me. He responded, I’m not sure whose they are, so just keep them in perfect condition until we find out whose they are.” For several days I flipped through these books, handling them like they were in the rare books section of the Library of Congress. I felt I was somehow cheating. I repeatedly asked and my father repeatedly refused to “come clean” that he ordered these books. When my mother asked why I was being so overly careful with the books, I explained to her that these might not be ours and that I was keeping them in pristine condition until we learned to whom they belonged. Needless to say, she was not amused by my father’s practical joke and remedied the situation post haste. Regardless of how the lesson was conveyed, to this day I still treat books like the treasures they are and that they will have a life beyond my reading them.
NEPOTISM—HELP OR HINDRANCE?
I think we most can agree that being the scion of a famous person can have its plusses and a few minuses. It seems a disproportionate number of people in entertainment have a lineage in the business. We probably can agree that being the child of an alumnus or a big donor offers its advantages getting into a university (although perhaps a bit less advantage these post-Varsity Blues days). And sometimes being the child of someone in business can open the door to a job.
After these and other recent observations about nepotism, Harvey Englander pointed out advice he’s given his sons about his name, which is well-known in local government, policy and politics: “I’ve always told my sons that their last name may open a door for them but their first name is who is walking through the door.” He goes on to observe wryly that, “Sometimes, sharing the last name was a detriment…!”
Have a great day,
Glenn