Tag Archives: idle thoughts

Alone with Our Thoughts

In what now seems the distant past — the late 1990s or early 2000s — as I walked to my car after work each evening, I noticed a common behavior in others also walking to their cars. A lot of them were talking on their cellphones.

This was before smartphones became a thing and long before apps on phones. To the extent there was texting, one had to laboriously use the dialing keypad. Those devices were just cellphones.

Watching so many walk-and-chat struck me as odd — I valued the quiet moments of transition from work to personal life.

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More Notes

notesThere are some notes that laid on the top of my possible next posts pile for a long time. Like the notes I posted recently, these clearly migrated from the same old boxes that I’m now excavating more seriously.

The ink is faded, and I can identify a fountain pen I used decades ago. I apparently thought they had potential. But as little statements on life — being from a younger me — they now seem trite and bumper sticker simplistic. Yet they’ve had just enough flavor to keep them out of the wastebasket.

I’m tired of looking at them. Here they are.

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BB #30: Not Exactly South

SouthAmHave you ever really thought about the fact that South America isn’t?

Isn’t all that South, I mean. Nearly all of it is actually east of nearly all of North America. Most of it is east of Florida, although residents of Maine can safely refer to “south” America (especially if they mean Peru, Chile or Ecuador). And people on the USA west coast? The closest shores of Hawaii are just about as far west as the closest shores of South America are east.

And it’s nearly as far east from New York City (at 73 degrees west) to Rio de Janeiro (at 43 degrees west) as it is from Rio to Lisbon, Portugal (at 9 degrees west, so only four degrees further).

Perhaps we should rename it South-South-East America!

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