Tannishblog

Yeah, I know…

I’ve been away from the blog for a while. I haven’t abandoned it. In the middle of coping with a new job and resulting shift in schedules and energies, the family and I took off this past week for Quebec City for a vacation committed to before I was laid off last month. We’ll be back tomorrow, as I am currently in a hotel in Windsor, Canada that provides free wireless.

It’s been a great week, and I’ll post a picture for your hungry eyes. It will probably take the remainder of August for me to find my way back into a regular posting schedule. That is IF I can tear myself away from EVE online

A view of the St. Lawrence River Eastward toward the Isle of Orleans.

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks in Tannishburg. On July 9, I was laid off from a struggling company I worked for over the past three years. Too bad; I liked that job. Next came a week of ambiguous Internet job ads and digital red tape, as I emailed strangers and applied to a dwindling list of might-be-interesting positions. This activity netted three interviews.

To my surprise, I was offered a position Tuesday afternoon to start the next morning. This job will apply my skills in a new way, doing something I’ve never tried in an industry I never heard of until now. There’s a lot to learn.

That’s why my blogging has been sparse of late. In readjusting my energies, I’ve had less time to parse a whine out of the newsreels. I’ll get back into it as a routine develops. So please be patient, my three readers; the Tannishness will continue soon.

Chicago’s Edens Expressway was closed yesterday for seven hours. A Semi trailer tipped over and spilt it’s load on the northbound lanes near my house. Thankfully, no injuries were reported.

The northbound lanes of the Edens Expressway were shut down after the spilled pig ears, pig feet and grease created slippery road conditions. The affected lanes were reopened at about 3 p.m.

A sudden shift in the truck’s load caused it to tip onto its side near the Dempster Street entrance ramp in Skokie, according to Illinois Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey. The Edens Expressway connects downtown Chicago to its northern suburbs.

[…]

The mess took hours to clean up.

IDOT workers used sand to absorb the grease, Claffey said. They also sprayed a foam usually used in hazardous materials situations, and dispensed rock salt to provide more traction.

"This is obviously something that’s really hard to clean up," Claffey said.

For those unfamiliar with Chicago area demographics, the Village of Skokie, where the accident happened, hosts one of the most prominent Jewish communities in the state. (So well-known that a Neo-Nazi group petitioned to stage a rally and parade in downtown Skokie in the late Seventies. They were denied.) Indeed, as one travels north on the Edens into Lake county, most of the suburbs serviced by the road are heavily populated by the Jewish community.

So, my twisted mind finds this incident ironic. C’mon - pig grease? Will the local Rabbis try to cleanse the tarmac?

NOTE: Before you start calling me names, I confess to being a happily married Jewish husband-by-proxy. My soulmate and I are busy raising an outstanding young Jewish woman who happens to have a Scandinavian surname. I’m no stranger to irony…

To honor the anniversary of the blog moving to it’s own domain, I present to all three of my readers an honest-to-goodness 100% Tannish Design-ed blog template. Maybe this one will stay around for a while. I’ve build quite a few templates in the past few months, when I feel they’re as perfect as this, I’ll share them with the Wordpress community. Not this one, though; it’s my favorite.

The image is by the same people who did the the last one (the guy looking out over the foggy city.) and there’s a few variations out there by them of melted people. This image is so true to my personality: the music, the jeans, the leather chair and the black guitar - perfect.

And can’t we all relate to the emotional content in the image? We’ve all had days like that. Haven’t we, at one time or another, slumped into a favorite chair at the end of the day and *felt* like we were melting… Hence the name: Meltdown.

Yeah. You know the feeling.

I offer my heartfelt sympathy for the families affected by the Virginia Tech tragedy. It isn’t much - in fact it’s nothing at all. But I give it all the same, as well as my guilt for abetting a society that produces people who do such things.

If ever there are opportunities to ponder what needs fixing in our poor excuse for a civilization, this is one. But laying blame is as easy as it is pointless. Too many factors converge to produce such heinous actions. If one was to lay blame with any attempt at accuracy, then all factors should be accounted for. If all factors are accounted for, then by the grace of all things and all people being interconnected, every American is partially guilty of this crime.

I feel guilty. For ignoring the cracks in the fragile construct of polite society, for going about my life with blinders on to better focus on my own needs and wants. I feel guilty for not taking to the streets in righteous rage at the prevalence of violence and the absence of compassion in America. My heart is sickened by my own selfish inaction. For this and much more, I am as guilty of this slaughter as anyone. Although there are no excuses for my inaction, please forgive me.

I hang my head, not in mock mourning as our president will surely do, but in sorrow at the loss of future potential these young people had, and the further loss of innocence the campus, the town of Blacksburg, the State of Virginia and the whole nation must endure. I hang my head because I did nothing to correct the broken priorities of a nation that proclaims the sanctity of life while engaging in war, prides itself in equality while not allocating enough resources to help troubled kids in need.

Cho’s classmates knew he was disturbed. They read some of his plays in class and were troubled by the graphic and obscene imagery. His teacher was worried enough to hire a security guard for a time. A local counselor had seen Cho, and knew he was troubled, but for a variety of reasons, he received no help. Last December, a magistrate ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. The next day, a report concluded that he may be a danger to himself due to mental illness.

Was he treated? The hospital has yet to comment. Hospitals are businesses, and decisions are too often influenced by a patient’s ability to pay for services. Since recent societal trends don’t allow for the caring of its members through governmental assistance, the needy are often left without services, or are cut short.

For that, too, I am at fault. Guilty by living in America and not helping her to better herself, I have neglected my civic duty and my fellows. And for that neglect, 32 people died.

…or “What I’ve Been Doing Lately Instead of Playing Computer Games.”

Blog themes never seem to hit the right spot. A consummate geek must modify. Blogger made the tweaking relatively simple, so I was able to create a new masthead in Paint Shop Pro (Photoshop is too pricey), and modify the blog’s colors accordingly. Playing with the structure was off limits, lest the aspiring geek noob break their site.

It wasn’t enough. Partly that longing to get “under the hood” led me to switch to Wordpress last June. The price was right too. Gotta love the free software groupies. My first peek seemed daunting, so I altered a couple color settings and left the template alone. All Wordpress templates are of high quality, so I was happy - for a while.

Working with the same site presentation over time gets weary on the eyes, and incessant curiosity and an attenuated slow season at work compelled me to dive into the CSS sites and read the Wordpress Codex (a lot of it, anyway.) Production themes, as they are called, involved a healthy dose of CSS, a smattering of PHP, a refreshening of my web standards knowledge, Paint Shop Pro skills, and installations of MySQL and Apache web server. Color schemes were limited because I felt obliged to use tan as a base - something about the name…

Ten weeks later I emerge wondering where all the snow went, proud of my finished fourth-attempt of a blog template (the other three will be done soon.) At least I think it’s finished… as much as anything like this can ever be complete.

I hope you like it. Feel free to comment.

Okay - not really; I quit that stuff years ago. But I did space out on this blog’s two-year anniversary. It was Wednesday. On May 7th, 2005, I began an experiment in writing, hosted on Blogger, which is surprisingly still ongoing.

I don’t have many readers, but I would like to thank you all for your silent encouragement, your occasional commentary and especially your patience. Having a hundred or so visits a week is enough to fool myself into believing I’m not wasting energy here. Blogging is often akin to screaming into a vacuum, but any kind of writing is like that. Thanks to the miracle of web site tracking, I can rest assured some few visit every day. That’s good enough for me. Besides, I have no vision of being the next Kos…

Thanks, all.

Chicago got it’s yearly Big Snow last night. For over 30 house a powdery snow fell sideways in a gusty breeze. Parts of my driveway was bare, parts were 18" deep. My snow blower barely chugged through the deeper parts, and as it did the wind gleefully redistributed the blast right back at me.

Not only do I care for my own 70+ feet of driveway, I look after that of my neighbor lady. So, for an hour after dark, as the wind and snowfall lessened, I pushed a growling perambulator and spat snow into the breeze.

I came in afterward, stamped my feet in the hall and shouted, "Look! I’m a Bumble." The Abominable Snowman had arrived, black clothing caked as well as eyebrows and beard.

I like snow. Shoveling is only a chore these days because of decaying spinal discs, but I’d still rather wield a shovel than the snow-eater. This morning as I set out before dawn, I managed to clean the inch-or-so tag-end accumulation off my drive in twenty minutes. I’ll do the neighbor’s when I get home.

I get my horoscope every day in an email, perhaps a residual habit from the seventies. I don’t take is too seriously, yet I sometimes get a kick our of it. Today’s message, however is weirdly prescient.

You need to dare to invite kindred spirits into your life, T[annish]. While your Scorpio nature makes you hesitant to participate in group activities, your interest in politics and philosophy would make you an ideal member of organizations devoted to these causes. What is holding you back? Are you afraid of being absorbed by the group? Only by taking a risk will you be able to fully participate in life.

For years I’ve build up a cocoon, armor against the harsh world. Only in the last few years have I opened up. Still, I’m very much the hermit. I keep very few people in my life. Anyone who frequents here will agree with the assertion of my interest in philosophy and politics (call the latter a morbid curiosity.) Finally, for the past year or so, I’ve entertained occasional thoughts of the previously unponderable: Joining a political grass roots campaign.

If I took horoscopes seriously, I would march out right now and do just that. But I don’t. This will make me ponder the issue further today, that’s all. Is it serendipity, or coincidence?

Written May 1, 2005 for my deceased blog IdiotSyncharcies. Resurrected here because I just read it again as copied on my daughter's blog , and I was (pardon me for saying so) impressed with my own writing. Somehow, it never got transfered here. Makes me wonder how much other stuff got lost in the move…

My mental tides are ebbing, and I’m feeling wonky about this blogging stuff - again. I wonder if Andrew Sullivan and his ilk ever had doubts.

This thought sets off my inner dialogue. One voice says “Of course they do. They’re just as human as you are.” The other voice just snickers. Damn him. The snickers are getting louder in my mind today. My Inner Brat is on the ascendancy:

“Here you go again,” he sneers, “parading your ignorance for the masses. Or should I say for the four people a day who stumble on your weblog. Nobody is so masochistic as to read your drivel more than once. Anyone with any sense would sprain their carpels trying to click back as fast as possible.”

“Of course,” he adds, “sensible people would not waste their time reading blogs.”

I haven’t introduced my voices yet. Inner Brat speaks my fears and insecurities, as is obvious, what isn’t apparent is he like to use the tone and the cadence of my father’s voice. My other inner voice, whom I’ve never bothered to name, is fairly young. He likes to emulate the calm reasoning tone of the Buddhist books I like to read. His voice is soft, flowing like a breeze, and is all-too-easily overcome by the Brat’s brash delivery of scorn.

The young voice speaks: “One cannot speak for the value others will find in the most mundane things…”

“Yeah, and your voice is the most mundane…”

“…like the cherry blossoms you saw today on your walk. Although it was hailing, the trees were ripe with countless perfect blossoms.”

“Oh, shut up!” Brat starts to squirm; He hates stupid trees. And flowers…sheesh!

Continuing unperturbed, Voice holds my gaze. “You felt the beauty of the blossoms to be more striking because of the hail and the dark clouds, didn’t you? It was the juxtaposition of springtime elements - the blooms and the storms - that spoke to you.”

Brat mutters something about “talking trees,” which I try to ignore. “Yeah,” I say, “I wished I had a camera.”

Voice smiles his older-than-all-of-us smile. “The value of the moment is intrinsic in the knowledge that it cannot be captured. What worth has a flower if it remains always in bloom?”

Brat, having heard enough, shouts. “We were talking about Tannish’s crappy blogging, about his pathetic attempt at journalism.” Fists on hips, he strikes a defiant stance, awaiting my response.

“Your right,” I relent. “I’m fooling myself.” Already I begin to rehearse my official exit from the blogging world. Should I write an entry for each of my two blogs, or should I just write one and a quick link from the other? 

“Make it short, nobody loves long, pitiful good-byes,” Brat snarled as if he can read my mind - which, as a figment of my imagination, he can. Then, so can Voice. 

“Every single artist is just as human as you,” Voice gently states. “Humans doubt themselves from time to time. This is natural. Every artist has a side of them that needs to be appreciated. Your work has merit.” 

“So does toilet paper…” 

“Stick with it and you will make new friends,” Voice finishes. My scepticism showed, while Voice smiles his warmest smile and pats my hand. 

As Brat storms off, muttering in the distance, Voice fades like a Cheshire cat, and I’m left to the ebb and flow of my mental tides alone. “Patience,” I can hear as I attempt to row my metaphorical self to the safety of self-assuredness, bolstered for another week of blogging.