There once was a blogger named Jamie...

 

My niece Becca sent me (and her mom, my sister Laurie) a beautiful poem the other day and like my revelation about fashion below, has me rethinking my relationship with poetry. Like so many, I’d even say most, people, I never consider myself as “getting” poetry. It just didn’t speak to me. Too contrived, affected, pretentious, Look at me – I use words and sentence breaks cleverly!

That said, I think I’ve actually probably written 3 poems in my life. The first was in 10^th grade as an assignment in which I think I wrote something about a dead squished frog on the side of the road. Actually, I don’t think it, I know it. Yup. Second was a poem called “God?” that I wrote on my cross-country bike trip that was published in our Friends’ Meeting Fall Festival booklet in 1982 or 1983. (Yeah, that’s right. I’m a published poet.) And I think I wrote Cheryl a poem once after watching a recent version of Romeo and Juliet with Leo DiCaprio. Or maybe that was just a flowery email in the manner of Shakespearese.

And I’d been wondering lately, and still am to some extent, why music is so important to us. I “get” the appeal of books and sports and movies and television. But what is it about music that we love. Well surely some of it is The Beat. Probably something related to an intersection with our heartbeat. But there are also the lyrics. And what are lyrics but poetry set to music. And there are a lot of lyrics I like, in the increasingly rare occasions I can understand them.

So yeah, if you have a poem you want me to read and absorb, send it along, please. Jamiemcvickar gmail com. Just one at a time though, please. Bonus points if you wrote it yourself.

And let me just say - you look great today!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our personal interactions with my fellow humans, particularly in relation to my philosophy of life that everything is about validation and connections. And I never realized before, that when I refer to “connections”, I’m not entirely thinking in terms of say, who you know to get a job. I’m talking about, as I mentioned above, personal interactions with each other.

Seems weird to have to qualify the word interaction above with the with word personal. One can interact with humans electronically, and although those count to some degree, I’m talking about face-to-face-type stuff. In Jamie World, even a smile to a passerby means more than a business phone call, no matter how cheery. (I admit that I dread the phone though, so I’m not impartial.)

Anyway, rambling on here…I read an article (seen here) in which the author encourages us to share a kind word as often as possible with strangers regarding their fashion choices. My favorite quotes from the story are these:

“My Kentucky grandmother used to say that the easiest way to make yourself happy is to make someone else happy. The stress of the world is made easier by ‘stirring some kindness into the pot.’ And it makes us feel better to have friendly interactions with strangers.”

I certainly agree with that, particularly the last sentence.  I’m sure I’m not the first to observe that the decline of human interactions and neighborly connections began with the introduction and widespread use of air conditioners that drove neighbors off their front porches where they could more easily interact and connect with neighbors, and into their cool living rooms.

And it’s only gotten worse, way worse, as we spend more and more time on our phones, televisions & laptops, gaming, streaming, reading, scanning, youtubing and absorbing all manner of what I’ll call electronitrash.

But the reason I find all this blogworthy goes back to the article that encourages us to comment positively on each other’s physical presentations.  I’ve made it a point to no longer do that and this article has me rethinking that. I’d stopped doing it, somewhat successfully, because I didn’t want to perpetuate the idea that physical appearance is in anyway of primary significance.

I especially use that approach when teaching middle schoolers, as I’ve been doing for two years now. I don’t want them to think that being judged in their appearance is so important.

But now I’m thinking I have that all wrong. Validation really is what we all seek and at no age more than in our early teens. An emphasis on our sartorial expressions has likely been important ever since the first fur was draped over a shivering cavewoman’s body or loincloth affixed over a man’s pelvic region.

And nothing I do is going to change that.

So henceforth, I resolve to go back to putting Fashion Falidation in my human connection repertoire.

History, written by the (Mc)Victors

 

For some reason, I recently started for the first time really appreciating history. Until now, but mostly long ago, History had been yet another class where I had to pretend I was learning things.

Recently I found myself walking through a nearby town, really trying to picture people 100-200 years ago walking the very same streets I now was, all of them caught up in their lives and the lives of their friends and family, trying to make a living, maybe making plans for an upcoming holiday. All the same things people have been doing on those same streets right up through today.

Maybe it isn’t a coincidence that I am appreciating history so much more now, considering I've been around for so much of it. After all, it recently hit me that I’ve been around for more than a quarter of this country’s existence.

 

Was it something I said?

So...a few months ago, I posted this list showing the locations of where the most people viewing this blog live. The leader by far was Sweden. 

Well, apparently I may have done something to upset my Swedish reading contingent. Maybe it was the crack about their meatballs. (Maybe that's their version of sportswriters and sports commentators in this country unable to reference Philadelphia without mentioning a certain misunderstood event involving snowballs and Santa Claus...OVER 60 YEARS AGO!)

Anyway, where was I...oh yeah, so where about 1/3 of the readers back then were located in Sweden, well, now there aren't any! But they sure are loving me in Singapore!

(And to be clear, I don't actually believe a single person in any of those top three countries - Singapore, Hong Kong or Brazil have ever been here...or any of the others either outside of the USA. I figure it's all bot-searching-type non-persona. But PLEASE, again - if you are outside the country and see this, please leave me a comment. I'd love to be in touch.)

Singapore

439

Hong Kong

205

Brazil

49

United States

16

United Kingdom

3

Russia

3

Indonesia

2

Poland

2

Romania

2

Argentina

1

Bangladesh

1

Switzerland

1

China

1

Colombia

1

Egypt

1

France

1

Iraq

1

South Korea

1

Morocco

1

Other

16