2024 — NOW, EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT THE LOVE OF MONEY I S THE VERY R O O T OF ALL EVIL . BUT, A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, MONEY WAS YOUR BEAUTIFUL FRIEND, AS THERE WASN’T MUCH AROUND, NOR, AVAILABLE, ESPECIALLY, TO YOUNG FOLK .
WE SAVED PENNIES, WHICH TO US, COULD BUY A WHOLE LOT : TWO COULD BUY A COLD COKA COLA. BUT, IT COULD TAKE WEEKS TO FIND TWO PENNIES. WE HAD PENNY BANKS.
WAIT LONG ENOUGH, AND, YOU COULD BUY AN ICE CREAM FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD ICE CREAM TRUCK - .04 CENTS…!!! MOMMA MIGHT HELP ONCE IN A WHILE.
EVENTUALLY, WORKING AT TWELVE, I SLOWLY FILLED UP MY MEXICAN HAND-PAINTED PIGGY BANK ! I TOOK IT TO THE BANK, AND, DEPOSITED $5 IN THE BANK! THEY SENT ME STATEMENTS IN THE MAIL, IN MY NAME, FROM THEN ON. IT SLOWLY GREW!!! MY EVERY PENNY WAS SAVED, AND, WENT INTO “THE BANK “.
AT HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION, BY SELLING MAGAZINES DOOR TO DOOR EVERY YEAR, AND, WORKING AT THE LOCAL CLOTHING STORE FROM AGE TWELVE, I WAS ABLE TO GO ON OUR HIGH SCHOOL DRILL SQUAD GROUP BUS TRIP TO WASHINGTON, D.C. !!! THEN I EVENTUALLY BECAME AN AIRLINE STEWARDESS . “EVERYBODY HAS TO DO THEIR PART “!!! GENERAL PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
I LOVED YOUR EISENHOWER PIECE — I WAS BORN IN 1945 . IT WAS A PERSONALLY DEEPLY EMPOWERING LIFE, BEGINNING WITH THE RADIO EVERY DAY. WHAT A TRULY MAGNIFICENT FATHERLY HERO, .. GENERAL EISENHOWER,
WAS TO EVERY ONE - A PATTERN WE ALL WANTED TO COPY, AND, ASSUMED THAT EVERYONE ELSE WOULD TOO . AS I WAS A GIRL, MY FATHER FLATLY REFUSED TO ALLOW ME TO FOLLOW MY HIGH SCHOOL APTITUDE TESTS TO GO INTO THE MILITARY . I REALLY WOULD HAVE - “ EVERYBODY SHOULD ALWAYS B E L I K E I K E !!! ”
SMOOTH AS SILK . FULLY TRUTHFUL , AMERICAN, … RELIABLE … !!! HE ALWAYS KNEW EVERYTHING.
I LOVED IKE - LIKE I LOVED
M Y OWN FATHER … !!!!!!!!
EVERY PENNY AFTER THE WAR WENT TO “THE WORKING MAN “; WHAT A TRANSITION !!
I HAD AN UNCLE THAT WAS NOT LOCATED FOR FOUR YEARS AFTER THE WAR , TOTALLY D-DAY “SHELL-SHOCKED” IN A HOSPITAL IN FRANCE. HE REMAINED LIKE THAT UNTIL HIS DEATH, CONTINUALLY, STILL FIGHTING ON THE BEACHES AT NORMANDY WHERE WE WERE SHORT OF MEN. ! ! ! EIGHTEEN - YEAR - OLDS ARE KIDS, ESPECIALLY, BACK THEN, REALLY KIDS ..…!!!!!!
I loved this, Sam. And anything that comes from a Deleuzean frame tends to connect with me. You've thought about the way practical stuff impacts culture and vice versa here, although I think you're right to talk about the arbitrary nature. Even if some of this comes from religious practices originally.
2 thoughts --
Living in Vienna was interesting. At noon on Saturdays, all the church bells rang and one was mean to cease all work until Monday. Of course, this has religious origins but was applicable to all. At first, I hated the idea of somebody telling me when I wasn't allowed to use my washing machine (no joke, someone will come knock on your door). But then, there was something nice about a communal weekly rest. However, this of course, can not apply to all people in all jobs or life situations.
Other thought - once at a school I was working at in Hong Kong, we decided to move to a 7 day rotation schedule (within the M-F, so also awkward like the French example). It lasted one school year, only because it would have been more difficult to stop mid year. People couldn't take the dissonance of Day 3 - Monday for example, and the idea that it was always changing. I'll admit, I was most often confused. But I liked that! I enjoyed that every Friday didn't look the same. I thought it kept my students sharp (if sometimes with an excuse to be late to class). I like routines, but I also think we need to step out of that running through time in organized ways if we ever want to really think about the world we live in. Of course, this is metaphor. But it might work in the way we use time.
Undulatory sounds in my body like a burrowing necke'd mole rat. In both events, you are allowed to be suspicious of a day gifted by the nationstate that sends you semaphores only arbitrary...One thing that I see that keeps people thinking is the bravery to think you know your friends' hours of the day. Rather than align with Nietzche in his bitterness abt Sundays, I feel sure you ommitted to mention because following him into that rave that he does is just to rage...it is such a challenge to stop hustling for an hour and a half, for instance either because you feel your health requires it, or it suits your idea of your self, that I maintain we can stop the world with a knowledge adequate to its subject. It points to that old idea abt getting lost in a project. Plenty of drama there if C. Woodard was complete enough in his maps of the U.S. there are Yankees who object viciously to every work stoppage.
Two things. One, Monday looks much better sober. So does Sunday. I can't overstate this. I always feel the need to add that I never had a classic drinking "problem," just a happy hour habit, but even giving that up has radically changed my view of certain days of the week. Every day, every time of day, is potentially an opportunity for fitness, for a hike, for playing tag with my daughter at the park.
Finally, I like the idea of a slow simmer rather than the burnout cycle that defines the week. The academic calendar is another completely arbitrary burnout cycle like that. Summer break is an extended version of a hungover Sunday -- unnecessarily wasted time because the culture has decided to stop thinking. I'm all in on the low simmer.
I had a taste of the 10-day week as a wilderness ranger. I guess anything with work days and days off will have some of that burnout mindset built into it, but it was a practical necessity. We had to maintain 40-60 miles of trail in a loop, and the only way to do it was to work continuously for 10 days, bumping our camp along the route. Then we'd get 4 days off. I filled those days with writing time, and I really loved the cycle. It's one of the few times in my life when I had no cell phone, no screen, for four solid months. It was unsustainable, of course -- I can't do that work now as a father of three -- but it was delightful in my late 20s and early 30s. There was nothing urgent about trail work. It was not all enjoyable, but the low simmer of clipping brush or cutting fallen trees with a crosscut was its own pleasure. And the imagination roamed free until those four golden days when I could write it all down longhand.
For all our apparent preferences for big fat round numbers such as decades, centuries, millennia, 300 batting averages, our first million dollars, etc., the physical world has other ideas: 365.25 rotations of the planet per revolution about the sun, thereabouts, corresponding to roughly 13 lunar cycles, etc. So it’s proper, I think, that we maintained that sense of arbitrariness in our 7 days per week, 12 months of varying length per year, and so on. February is the weird one: adding an extra day now and then to absorb those accumulated fractional days makes perfect sense, but why start with a base of 28, why not take a day from January and March and start with 30?
While in English we’ve lost our connection to Thor on Thursday, in German the word is Donnerstag, or Thunder Day, which still has it. And the literal Mittwoch (Midweek) for Wednesday sounds like a Hump Day before there was a Hump Day.
You sound more like a “Monday, Monday” person: “Monday, Monday, so good to me.”
2024 — NOW, EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT THE LOVE OF MONEY I S THE VERY R O O T OF ALL EVIL . BUT, A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, MONEY WAS YOUR BEAUTIFUL FRIEND, AS THERE WASN’T MUCH AROUND, NOR, AVAILABLE, ESPECIALLY, TO YOUNG FOLK .
WE SAVED PENNIES, WHICH TO US, COULD BUY A WHOLE LOT : TWO COULD BUY A COLD COKA COLA. BUT, IT COULD TAKE WEEKS TO FIND TWO PENNIES. WE HAD PENNY BANKS.
WAIT LONG ENOUGH, AND, YOU COULD BUY AN ICE CREAM FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD ICE CREAM TRUCK - .04 CENTS…!!! MOMMA MIGHT HELP ONCE IN A WHILE.
EVENTUALLY, WORKING AT TWELVE, I SLOWLY FILLED UP MY MEXICAN HAND-PAINTED PIGGY BANK ! I TOOK IT TO THE BANK, AND, DEPOSITED $5 IN THE BANK! THEY SENT ME STATEMENTS IN THE MAIL, IN MY NAME, FROM THEN ON. IT SLOWLY GREW!!! MY EVERY PENNY WAS SAVED, AND, WENT INTO “THE BANK “.
AT HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION, BY SELLING MAGAZINES DOOR TO DOOR EVERY YEAR, AND, WORKING AT THE LOCAL CLOTHING STORE FROM AGE TWELVE, I WAS ABLE TO GO ON OUR HIGH SCHOOL DRILL SQUAD GROUP BUS TRIP TO WASHINGTON, D.C. !!! THEN I EVENTUALLY BECAME AN AIRLINE STEWARDESS . “EVERYBODY HAS TO DO THEIR PART “!!! GENERAL PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
I LOVED YOUR EISENHOWER PIECE — I WAS BORN IN 1945 . IT WAS A PERSONALLY DEEPLY EMPOWERING LIFE, BEGINNING WITH THE RADIO EVERY DAY. WHAT A TRULY MAGNIFICENT FATHERLY HERO, .. GENERAL EISENHOWER,
WAS TO EVERY ONE - A PATTERN WE ALL WANTED TO COPY, AND, ASSUMED THAT EVERYONE ELSE WOULD TOO . AS I WAS A GIRL, MY FATHER FLATLY REFUSED TO ALLOW ME TO FOLLOW MY HIGH SCHOOL APTITUDE TESTS TO GO INTO THE MILITARY . I REALLY WOULD HAVE - “ EVERYBODY SHOULD ALWAYS B E L I K E I K E !!! ”
SMOOTH AS SILK . FULLY TRUTHFUL , AMERICAN, … RELIABLE … !!! HE ALWAYS KNEW EVERYTHING.
I LOVED IKE - LIKE I LOVED
M Y OWN FATHER … !!!!!!!!
EVERY PENNY AFTER THE WAR WENT TO “THE WORKING MAN “; WHAT A TRANSITION !!
I HAD AN UNCLE THAT WAS NOT LOCATED FOR FOUR YEARS AFTER THE WAR , TOTALLY D-DAY “SHELL-SHOCKED” IN A HOSPITAL IN FRANCE. HE REMAINED LIKE THAT UNTIL HIS DEATH, CONTINUALLY, STILL FIGHTING ON THE BEACHES AT NORMANDY WHERE WE WERE SHORT OF MEN. ! ! ! EIGHTEEN - YEAR - OLDS ARE KIDS, ESPECIALLY, BACK THEN, REALLY KIDS ..…!!!!!!
I loved this, Sam. And anything that comes from a Deleuzean frame tends to connect with me. You've thought about the way practical stuff impacts culture and vice versa here, although I think you're right to talk about the arbitrary nature. Even if some of this comes from religious practices originally.
2 thoughts --
Living in Vienna was interesting. At noon on Saturdays, all the church bells rang and one was mean to cease all work until Monday. Of course, this has religious origins but was applicable to all. At first, I hated the idea of somebody telling me when I wasn't allowed to use my washing machine (no joke, someone will come knock on your door). But then, there was something nice about a communal weekly rest. However, this of course, can not apply to all people in all jobs or life situations.
Other thought - once at a school I was working at in Hong Kong, we decided to move to a 7 day rotation schedule (within the M-F, so also awkward like the French example). It lasted one school year, only because it would have been more difficult to stop mid year. People couldn't take the dissonance of Day 3 - Monday for example, and the idea that it was always changing. I'll admit, I was most often confused. But I liked that! I enjoyed that every Friday didn't look the same. I thought it kept my students sharp (if sometimes with an excuse to be late to class). I like routines, but I also think we need to step out of that running through time in organized ways if we ever want to really think about the world we live in. Of course, this is metaphor. But it might work in the way we use time.
Undulatory sounds in my body like a burrowing necke'd mole rat. In both events, you are allowed to be suspicious of a day gifted by the nationstate that sends you semaphores only arbitrary...One thing that I see that keeps people thinking is the bravery to think you know your friends' hours of the day. Rather than align with Nietzche in his bitterness abt Sundays, I feel sure you ommitted to mention because following him into that rave that he does is just to rage...it is such a challenge to stop hustling for an hour and a half, for instance either because you feel your health requires it, or it suits your idea of your self, that I maintain we can stop the world with a knowledge adequate to its subject. It points to that old idea abt getting lost in a project. Plenty of drama there if C. Woodard was complete enough in his maps of the U.S. there are Yankees who object viciously to every work stoppage.
Two things. One, Monday looks much better sober. So does Sunday. I can't overstate this. I always feel the need to add that I never had a classic drinking "problem," just a happy hour habit, but even giving that up has radically changed my view of certain days of the week. Every day, every time of day, is potentially an opportunity for fitness, for a hike, for playing tag with my daughter at the park.
Finally, I like the idea of a slow simmer rather than the burnout cycle that defines the week. The academic calendar is another completely arbitrary burnout cycle like that. Summer break is an extended version of a hungover Sunday -- unnecessarily wasted time because the culture has decided to stop thinking. I'm all in on the low simmer.
I had a taste of the 10-day week as a wilderness ranger. I guess anything with work days and days off will have some of that burnout mindset built into it, but it was a practical necessity. We had to maintain 40-60 miles of trail in a loop, and the only way to do it was to work continuously for 10 days, bumping our camp along the route. Then we'd get 4 days off. I filled those days with writing time, and I really loved the cycle. It's one of the few times in my life when I had no cell phone, no screen, for four solid months. It was unsustainable, of course -- I can't do that work now as a father of three -- but it was delightful in my late 20s and early 30s. There was nothing urgent about trail work. It was not all enjoyable, but the low simmer of clipping brush or cutting fallen trees with a crosscut was its own pleasure. And the imagination roamed free until those four golden days when I could write it all down longhand.
Love it Sam. Thanks
I enjoyed this very much. But especially, the anthropomorphic days of the week! Well done.
For all our apparent preferences for big fat round numbers such as decades, centuries, millennia, 300 batting averages, our first million dollars, etc., the physical world has other ideas: 365.25 rotations of the planet per revolution about the sun, thereabouts, corresponding to roughly 13 lunar cycles, etc. So it’s proper, I think, that we maintained that sense of arbitrariness in our 7 days per week, 12 months of varying length per year, and so on. February is the weird one: adding an extra day now and then to absorb those accumulated fractional days makes perfect sense, but why start with a base of 28, why not take a day from January and March and start with 30?
While in English we’ve lost our connection to Thor on Thursday, in German the word is Donnerstag, or Thunder Day, which still has it. And the literal Mittwoch (Midweek) for Wednesday sounds like a Hump Day before there was a Hump Day.
You sound more like a “Monday, Monday” person: “Monday, Monday, so good to me.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6JJrtHRDwk