You Have Mail

 I stopped looking at email months ago - maybe over a year. I probably missed a few things but nothing of any social or poltical importance and when people understood that sending me an email is like sending something into a black hole, they started texting me. But while we were on vacation I was struck by the desire to start using email again. 

But in order to make it usable, I needed to clean it up. When we got back from our cruise last week, I had upwards of 135,000 unread emails. Mind you, they didn't all come in that week. They have been accumulating over the years. I'm not sure how many years exactly, but since before 2013, which is nine years ago. 

It just got to be too much to keep up with it. All it took was one week away on vacation and I couldn't catch up. Spam coming in from everybody. When I place an order for anything online, I look for those boxes that default to a check mark so that I do not accidentally opt-in to their marketing emails. I resent having to unsubscribe from stuff I never subscribed to in the first place. Last week I wanted to place an order on etsy. In the end, I didn't buy it because shipping it to the US would have cost three times the price of the item. So I asked the seller how much it would be to ship it to a UK address. And even though "James" usually responds to inquiries within 2 business days, as far as I know he never responded to my question. But I did start getting email from etsy. And I had to unsubscribe. Back when we were running the inspection business, I would get a system-generated email everytime a client paid by credit card. I rarely opened those because I didn't need to. But 10 or more clients per day - most of them paying by credit card. And to make matters worse, I'd get one email when the card was authorized and another when the payment was processed. This is how I ended up with 135K unread emails and if we count the ones that were read but not deleted, I think we're in the neighborhood of 150K

My plan was to "select all" and hit the delete button - well maybe the archive button. What I found was that gmail will only do this in blocks of 50. I'd  have to do it 3,000 times. 

And so here we are. It's Friday and I've been doing this all day every day for a week. No gym, no pool, no reading - just deleting and archiving emails. I'm now down to 44,000 and I'm back to 2013. So I am making progress.   

Pancakes and Waffles

 I'm not sure how old I was when I first went to spend a couple of weeks with my grandparents. Not very old, maybe 5 or 6. The first week was spent with Grandma Ash and the second week with Grandma Mohr. (Notice that I haven't mentioned either Grandpa because they were here, there, and busy most days and I spent most of my time hanging out with the Grandmas.) 

My Grandma Ash made the best pancakes. No Aunt Jemima mix for her. She made them from Robin Hood flour, eggs and whatever else you needed to make a perfect pancake. They were amazing! A beautiful golden color, piping hot and topped with plenty of butter and lots of maple syrup. My breakfast of choice. I had them every day I was there. 

And then I was delivered to Grandma Mohr. My first morning there she asked what I'd like for breakfast. I said I'd like a pancake. I sat down at the table and waited while she prepared my breakfast. The plate was placed before me and I'm sure I just looked at it for a bit. The pancake was not a beautiful golden color. It was mostly white with a few brown streaks in it. The syrup wasn't honey-colored either, it was clear. This was the most anemic looking pancake I'd ever seen and I didn't even know what anemic meant. It looked nothing like the pancakes I'd grown to love the week before. Not only did it not look right, it didn't taste right, either. I had no idea what she made it with. It wouldn't have mattered if I did. At that tender age, I assumed all pancakes were made the same way and I knew it wasn't "right". And that was when I announced to my Grandma Mohr that I wanted a pancake like my Grandma Ash made. 

I don't really remember what happened after that. I probably stopped asking Granny Mohr for pancakes. And that is undoubtedly why I was not named in her will. 

My own grandchildren were fairly easy when it came to breakfast. When they were 4 or 5 they mostly wanted toaster waffles. Without butter and without syrup. Dry. But okay, it's easy and it doesn't make much of a mess. But shortly after they'd moved from Texas to Oklahoma, they came back to Texas for a visit and while I was toasting their waffles, they announced that they no longer liked Texas waffles; they only liked Oklahoma waffles. 

Indeed. I explained to them that a Leggo waffle is the same no matter what state you buy it in. I'm not sure they believed me but these are the same kids who didn't like the fresh orange juice I made in my Breville juicer because it "tasted like oranges". It seemed they preferred Sunny Delite, but I could never bring myself to buy that. My best compromise was Tropicana. 

Revolutionary Ideas

Back in the early 70s there was a "special speaker" at church. I don't remember his name, and I don't remember much what he looked like, but I remember why he was there. I also remember the gist of what he said and at least one very specific thing he said. 

He was there to drum up support, mostly financial, for a private Christian academy. This was necessary because public schools were godless places that would corrupt children. He even asked the very attentive audience "Do you know what they are teaching your children in public school?? (He repeated the question for effect before answering it himself.) Your kids are being taught that our nation's founding fathers were a bunch of rebel-rousing revolutionaries!!" Well, I was probably the only person sitting in that congregation who didn't gasp and clutch my pearls. 

Why did he think it was called the American "Revolution"? Revolutionary wars typically involve revolutionaries. In my world, the word revolutionary has never had negative connotations. But just for the record, I wanted my child to be taught that the founding fathers were revolutionaries. Because they were. Regardless of their motivations, the American form of democracy was revolutionary in the 18th century. 

But apparently enough people were appalled at the idea of the truth being taught to their kids that they threw their support behind the idea and the Elyria Christian Academy opened around 1974, with the support of a number of churches. It operated for a couple of years before the Baptists and a large non-denominational church fell out and started their own schools. I wasn't privy to the source of the discord, probably something political or perhaps a finer point of theology, but I also wasn't surprised. I've known a lot of people who are "my way or the highway" kind of folks - we won't name names. 

At the time, the idea was to reject all state funds because the school would be exempt from state rules if they didn't take the money. I don't know if that worked out. My assumption is that the state could still impose some minimum standards on education, even if they didn't control the curriculum. I'm going to throw out a wild pitch here, but there are some faith-based schools in the UK where the students learn to read the Quran. That would be okay if they learned some other basics, too. But they don't. Needless to say, once they "graduate" they are not qualified to do anything but read the Quran. So I'm inclined to favor some minimum standards in education. 

But let's fast forward fifty years. They no longer want their own schools where they can teach their own world view. They want the the rest of us to pay for it. (And by "they" I'm not talking about these schools in particular but by Christian schools in general.) They want that government money, in the form of vouchers, to support their schools without losing their autonomy. They also want public schools to teach their world view. Because if they're paying tax, they should be able to dictate how things go. Fifty years ago I objected to the school because I found the idea of painting the founding fathers as something they were not objectionable. I also objected to placing a child in an environment where they would only be exposed to one viewpoint. But the fact that other people did not want their children exposed to ideas that might be different from their own didn't really bother me. But now they're trying to impose their own views on everyone, and that does bother me. 

Just a note before someone calls me out for sending my child to this school: It was never my idea and it's not something I would have paid for. My parents wanted to pay for it and the child wanted to go. I allowed it because I was in the process of moving from Ohio to Texas and knew that he would not be in that school longer than one semester. Turns out it was about 2 and 1/2 months in the fifth grade. We've never really had an in depth discussion about his time there. I do know that he had a wonderful, caring teacher, but then he had some of those in public schools, as well. 

The Original Fake News?

I joined a Facebook group that was supposed to be about growing up in the 50s and 60s. Nostalgia. How wonderful it was to grow up in that time. And then someone had the nerve to point out that it wasn't all as fine and dandy as we liked to remember. It made me think. In truth, I spent a year or so  living in fear. And I felt like I had to hide it. 

So what was I afraid of? In a word, Russia. I saw Nikita Krushchev pounding his shoe on the podium at the United Nations and threatening to bury us. As a nine year old, I didn't understand that a Russian plane could not get to Ohio without being intercepted or shot down. So every time a plane flew over, I was ready to run into the house if I saw bombs falling, which of course never happened. I prayed every night that Krushchev would find Jesus and stop being mean. 

I wanted to probe a little deeper into why I had what now seems an irrational fear. I wanted to explore whether I picked it up from my dad, or whether it was just being in the room when the news was on. Had I overheard adults discussing world affairs? I wanted to find the image of Krushchev pounding his shoe, because there are pictures or video of everything that ever happened. 

I googled it and to my shock, the Internet now says that it didn't happen. I was only nine years old but I believe it happened. I have talked to others my age and they believe it happened. But Google says it didn't happen, that the photos were "doctored" because that was before the days of Photoshop. 

So now I am torn between what I believe I saw with my own nine year old eyes or what Google says is true. If indeed it didn't happen and someone went to all that trouble to make us think it did - good job! You frightened the life out of nine year old kids. But in this case, I think I'll stay with what I know to be true, even though Google says it's not so. 

Driving Me Crazy

It seems the older I get, the easier it is to drive me crazy. And all this time I thought I was mellowing out. I was wrong. For example, I joined a Facebook Group that's supposed to be about growing up in the 50s and 60s. There are thousands of members - from around the world. Why should this drive me crazy? For starters I expected most members to be boomers, like me. What's known as a cohort. But there are people in the group who claim they got married in 1951 or 1952. I'm going to assume that if you got married in the early 50s, you probably grew up in the 30s and 40s. I'm okay with that, but if you grew up a decade or two before me, our collective memories are not the same. We didn't listen to the same music and our school experience would have been different. The point of the website is to share those common memories and experiences, but when you have a wide age group you don't have the shared experiences and that is the point of the website. 

Then you have a member asking other group members to name a song with the word "moon" in the title, That's Amore is not an appropriate response. Title and lyrics are not the same. Never have been. 

When asked to name our favorite school lunch, one woman replied that she attended an all girl business high school. What on earth does that have to do with any lunch, much less her favorite lunch?? Didn't girls in business high schools eat?

When asked whether your family used the word "supper" or "dinner" for the evening meal, one person responded with "I don't know". How important is it that the rest of us know that you "don't know"? 

Then there are what I call the scammers and the lonely hearts. The scammers are typically people with unfamiliar foreign names - I don't know whether they are male or female - who want you to click a link and collect $1000. Right. Get a life. I'm not stupid enough to click that link. The lonely hearts are typically men who have a canned message - "Hello. You are a beautiful woman. I enjoy your posts. I tried to send you a friend request but it didn't go through. Can you send me a friend request?" These people will send this to a dozen or more women on the same thread. Most ignore it, but one replied "How do I do that?" I just wanted to jump through the screen and say "Why would you do that??"

Then there are the self-promoters. These are the people who feel compelled to post a photo showing how wonderful they look at whatever age they are. Sometimes it's their birthday. How lonely are these people that they need thousands of people to tell them how good they look or wish them a happy birthday?

And then there are people like me who are wondering what's up with all the people driving us crazy. But unlike me, they are being rude on the forum. Just because you feel like saying something snarky doesn't mean you should. They are also announcing that they are leaving the group, which brings on a barrage of "oh, please stay" messages. Kind of like a girl I knew in high school who would always make a negative remark about her hair/makeup/dress so that everyone around her would respond with "oh no, your hair/makeup/dress looks great! That's such a great style/color/etc. on you!" Well, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to slip out the back door. 

The Biltmore Estate

The Biltmore Estate is gorgeous.  I could live there easily, as long as I have a full contingent of servants to bring me whatever I left in the other room. The views are fantastic. The amenities are perfect - well except for the pool. It's a must see. Only problem was the stairs. The elevators are only for family. It killed me. 

But see for yourself how beautiful it is. 

And the views and the grounds! The view below is from a verandah/balcony on the second floor looking out over what I assume is the estate. 

The grounds are immaculate. 

We also learned a few things about the Vanderbilts while we were there. Apparently they paid New York City wages to the people who worked in the house and on the grounds. To me, this is double-edged. Obviously they had no shortage of people who wanted to work there. Employees were treated and paid well. For many, it was the first time they had a bed of their own without having to share with one or more siblings. But the other side of that is that the people who worked there were paid extravagantly by local standards which may have messed with the local economy. It wasn't a question I wanted to ask. 

But the thing that impressed me is that during the war, the Vanderbilts took many of the art treasures from the White House and hid/stored them on their estate at no charge to the government. They looked on it as an honor and a privilege. How many billionaires do we have today that would be willing to do that? 

I've visited a number of "stately homes" in the UK and this one  definitely meets and in many instances exceeds that standard.