Posts Tagged ‘Da Magnificent Seven’

New Year’s resolution: Write your obit before you die

Posted: December 27, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

As people consider resolutions for the coming year, I’d like to make a suggestion: Write down your life story before you die. In other words, do it now!

James R. Hagerty, an obituary writer for The Wall Street Journal, makes a strong case for writing your own obituary.  

“When it comes to money and real estate, most of us make careful arrangements for what will happen after we die. Why not take equal care of our stories, which can’t be retrieved once lost?” Hagerty muses. “Think of the stories you’ve heard your partner or parents tell a thousand times. They are precious. When someone dies, we need those stories—not in a vague, half-remembered, secondhand form but in the original version, with all the plot twists, nuances, and personal storytelling quirks. Your own words and insights are more illuminating than others’ eulogies and tributes.”

I had the opportunity to write a quasi-autobiography about a decade ago, which was a lot of fun. That book, Flyover Country, recounted the tales of my life and those of my fellow high school graduates from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and I even made a few bucks from the publication.

Hagerty makes the following suggestions:

–Preserve your stories now while the memories are vivid.
–The best stories show what you have done, why, and how. Starting points include how you got on a career path; what you are trying to do with your life and how it works out; your biggest triumphs and failures, and what you have learned from them.
–Include the oddest, funniest, most wonderful, and awful things that have happened to you.

Hagerty suggests that people write their obituaries, making it easier for loved ones when the time comes. Writing a letter or an email to a friend or loved one is another way of putting one’s thoughts together. If someone doesn’t like to write, record one’s life stories.

For those needing help, software such as Storyworth or MemLife provides a template with questions and the option to create a book.

Hagerty has some cautionary notes. “Revealing too much about certain topics could hurt or offend loved ones. Life-story writers must consider what to leave out, particularly marital and family issues.

Make sure you organize those hundreds of photos you’ve taken over the years, including as much information as much about the dates, places, and people in the snapshots.

Whatever the case, it’s time to start recording those memories—not only for your family but for yourself.

Christmas musings from an alienated “bah humbug” conservative in a Blue State

Posted: December 25, 2022 by John Ruberry in Blame Trump, blogs, culture, doctor who, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
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Blogger on the right with a friend near Augusta, Georgia in 2021

By John Ruberry

Last week my wife was invited to a party hosted by one of my daughter’s friends. 

Who wasn’t? Me.

There was some-and-forth, but my daughter explained that the host, who has been to my home and whose mother I’ve known for years through an old job, didn’t think I’d be “comfortable” there. After some probing, it became clear that it was my conservative political views that were the problem for them. 

I pressed my daughter, “What kind of ogre do they think I am?” Well, I muscled my way into an invite–after all, I’ve lived all of my life in the Chicago area, so I know all about muscling–and do you know what? I showed up to the party. The guests found me whimsical and charming. In other words–I was lovable myself. 

Over on Facebook I’ve been unfriended by many old friends–now unfriends–and at least one relative over my posts there. 

In addition to my Sunday blog entries on this site I have my own blog, Marathon Pundit. The rollicking comment threads on my Facebook page–or more accurately, argument threads–bring traffic to my blog, and sometimes, here at Da Tech Guy. Friends–in the flesh ones that is–as well as co-workers, look forward to the next tiff on my Facebook page. I’m reminded of that constantly. And as I am now in my sixth decade, my real career, parts of which involve writing, is winding down. Moreso than ever, as William Shakespeare said to the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, “Words are my trade.” Well, maybe not completely, but I do earn money blogging and I hope to earn more. 

Hey, I gotta eat.

And I absolutely do believe in what I write. And I voted for Donald J. Trump four times–twice in the Illinois Republican Primary and twice in the general election. I’m proud of those votes and I’m still 80/20 in regard to the former president. 

About those old friends: Many of them are carrying on without me. Sadly, but I suspect they see me as someone who has transformed himself into an SNL caricature of a conservative, a cross between the Muppets’ Sam Eagle and Archie Bunker, but sans the bigotry on the last one. 

I have long ears–and because of the blog–a long tongue. Oh, I stole that last line from Lawrence of Arabia. 

The invitations to get-togethers have stopped coming from most of them. I’ve been cancelled.

Bah humbug.

Oh, please don’t worry about me. I have a wife a daughter who love me. And many new friends. And I’m still in touch with some of those old friends. During my most recent vacations, in Alaska and Georgia, I re-connected with two of them–and I met a third friend in Texas, who I met through my blogging. That’s me up there on the right last year, with a high school friend who lives near Augusta, Georgia, who I hadn’t seen since we graduated so many years ago. That moment is my favorite of the current decade. 

A new friend–we met through Twitter–invited me for coffee when he visited Illinois this spring.

Even if I was really even partially Sam Eagle/Archie Bunker, your humble blogger is so much more. I work in an industry, automotive, that utterly fascinates people and I have numerous tips in regard to buying a car–without being ripped off. Your Marathon Pundit, currently nursing an injured hip, is really a runner. I’ve run 33 marathons. In addition to the blogging, I have another side hustle, stock photography. On the job, my real one, I’ve showed clients my portfolio, a couple of them are now selling pics online too.

I’m not a one trick eagle. 

Yet it is only Sam Eagle/Archie Bunker the liberals only see. Perhaps that is all they want to see. Such is life as a conservative in Deep Blue Illinois. 

Maybe I am the bad guy. On the flipside, I don’t believe so. According to a couple of polls, one here and another one here, it is the denizens of the left who are more likely to unfriend someone on social media than conservatives over politics. Oh yeah, liberals. The ones who so often have “Coexist” bumper stickers on their cars and “Hate Has No Home Here” signs on their lawn. 

Everyone is welcome in their world. Except for folks who don’t share their political beliefs. As for myself, I’ve never unfriended anyone on social media because of their political views.

Well, this is not the Christmas message you are accustomed to, but please let me reiterate, I am fine–please don’t tell Mrs. Marathon Pundit to hide the sharp objects. 

Christmas is a time for welcoming others. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s nephew always invited the miser to his home for Christmas dinner. 

Next Sunday is New Year’s Day. As Robert Burns wrote, “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon.”

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

And God bless us, everyone.

Never forget.

Now it’s time for me to get dressed in my finest and head over to my sister’s home for a Christmas feast.

A special thanks goes to that friend in Georgia for permission to use the above photograph for this blog entry.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

Pittsburgh: Is downtown at a crossroads?

Posted: December 20, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Pittsburgh, a longtime example of how a city can change from an industrial mess to a tech haven, is running into a variety of problems in places run by Democrats.

As a journalist in the 1970s, I covered organized labor and needed a shower after trips through the blazing heat of the steel mills. On several visits in the 2000s, however, I found a city that had changed from Budweiser to craft beer and from kielbasa to kale.

Downtown Pittsburgh had changed from shuttered stores to bustling restaurants and museums.

Recently, however, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has documented the fraying of the social fabric that brought the city back from the brink.

“Frustration over shootings, fights, panhandling, and open drug dealing boiled over during a recent meeting between Downtown business owners and merchants and top officials within Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration,” the newspaper reported last weekend in a front-page story.

“Some worried about losing commercial or residential tenants if the situation doesn’t change or how they can cajole workers back to the office given anxiety about safety. Another fretted about losing businesses or restaurants.”

Although other cities have experienced far higher crime statistics since the end of the COVID crisis, Pittsburgh businesses, particularly in the downtown area, have grown accustomed to safe streets.

In a recent meeting with the new mayor, business leaders expressed concern that city leadership isn’t doing enough, particularly to address issues like aggressive panhandling, fights, unruly youths, and loitering.

Like many Democrats, the new mayor is taking a hands-off approach to street crime, which has many business leaders worried.

“We’ve got to stop kidding ourselves. We’ve got to stop fighting about it and just say, go outside, smell it, look at it, experience it. It’s bad, and it’s getting worse,” said Kevin Wade, executive vice president of the PNC Financial Services Group. “If you keep up this resistance, it’s going to be beyond repair.”

Ralph Falbo, who owns a condominium building, said tenants get upset over issues like aggressive panhandling. “I got people calling me saying as soon as my lease is up, I’m gone,” he said.

Tom Smith, the managing partner of the Pittsburgh office of K&L Gates, said the law firm had tried everything from pancake and bacon breakfasts to cornhole tournaments to entice people back to the office.

But it turned out that the event that drew the biggest crowd was when Pittsburgh police came to speak about the downtown area. “It was very eye-opening to me. The point someone made about perception is the reality. Certainly, the perception is that things are really bad and that something needs to be done,” he said.

As many visitors to Pittsburgh will attest, the city has rebuilt a vibrant downtown. It would be sad to see it go the way of other major cities!

Hope for the future: Lightfoot badly trails in first poll of 2023 Chicago mayoral race

Posted: December 18, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Lori Lightfoot

 By John Ruberry

A poll with surprising findings was released on Thursday by Fox Chicago about Chicago’s mayoral election on Friday. Yeah, yeah, I know, many political polls about the recently concluded congressional elections were wrong, and there were serious polling errors in 2016 and 2018 as well. But stick with me here.

The mayoral poll, conducted by M3 Strategies, shows that US Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is favored by 28 percent of respondents, followed by former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas at 19 percent, incumbent Lori Lightfoot at 15 percent, and Willie Wilson, a businessman and philanthropist, at 13 percent. 

There are eleven candidates for mayor of America’s third-largest–for now–city, although petition challenges might winnow the field. The first round of voting, along with races for alderpersons in each of Chicago’s 50 wards, as well as for city clerk and treasurer, will be held on February 28, if no candidates achieve a majority in their races, the top two candidates are matched in an April runoff. 

So, if the poll is correct, that means that Lori Lightfoot, who in my opinion is America’s worst big city mayor, she won’t make it to the second round. Lightfoot’s term in mayor has been disastrous on many levels–too many to list here.

On the latest episode Fox Chicago Flannery Fired Up show, host Mike Flannery said about crime, “nearly three-fourths of Chicago voters now say is their number one issue.” Lightfoot, as a candidate said that the crime levels of 2019 were “unacceptable.” Flannery then fact checked Lightfoot’s recent statement that “we are down 15 percent in homicides, 20 percent in shootings.” But those are numbers looking back to last year. Flannery did the right thing, scolding Lightfoot.

“When she took office in 2019,” Flannery said, “she inherited a dramatically declining rate of bloody street violence, but the medical examiner reports that homicides this year are 41 percent higher than in 2019.”

It’s easy to understand why Lightfoot is polling so terribly. M3 Strategy’s Matt Podgorski was a guest on that Flannery Fired Up installment, of the incumbent he said, “You’re looking at a situation where [there is] a negative view of 74 percent of likely voters and about 70 percent of them think she does not deserve another term. Only two percent of Chicago voters haven’t formed an opinion of Mayor Lightfoot.”

“Those are unprecedently bad numbers,” Podgorski concluded.

I can’t see a way out for Lightfoot. Apparently, Chicago voters, up to a point, aren’t completely stupid. 

Besides her inability to stem Chicago’s rise in violence–which her apologists point out is part of a national increase in mayhem while failing to mention that Los Angeles and New York, which are more populous, have lower murder totals–Lightfoot’s petulant and overbearing COVID-19 lockdown policy produced a tragic irony. After she spotted a large group of males congregating on a beach, the next day she ordered Chicago police officers to enforce the closure of that beach. Later that day, cops did next to nothing as rioters tore up and looted Chicago’s North Michigan Avenue shopping district. 

Lightfoot has acted bizarrely, once allegedly told an Italian-American group who supports the return of Chicago’s Christopher Columbus statues to public view, “I have the biggest d*ck in Chicago.” She once went full-Jack Nicholson in The Shining in a repetitive email rant. 

Chicago voters, as I alluded earlier, still have much room for improvement. Chuy Garcia, then a Cook County commissioner, surprisingly forced incumbent Rahm Emanuel into a runoff in the 2015 mayoral race, running to the left of Emanuel. In 2016 Garcia endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. Last year the leftist magazine In These Times, in a collaboration with the Chicago Reader, gushingly wrote of Garcia’s working with the Squad in Washington, “It’s not surprising that García has taken up with Congress’ left rebels.” 

Garcia enjoys a sizeable lead in the Fox Chicago poll. Garcia collected $2,900 from indicted FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Worse, the Protect our Futures PAC spent over $150,000 on glossy mailers to introduce Garcia to new voters in his redrawn congressional district, even though Chuy was running unopposed in the November election.

Buying something, SBF?

What about the other two top contenders to replace Lightfoot? Willie Wilson, a gadfly candidate who somehow has convinced some Chicago conservatives he is one of them, can arguably–because of his regular grocery and gasoline giveaways--be called a vote buyer. Paul Vallas, another perennial candidate, is the only mayoral candidate talking real sense about crime. Unless I missed something, he’s the only mayoral candidate who is explicitly critical of Cook County’s catch-and-release prosecutor, Kim Foxx. 

Whoever is Chicago’s next mayor, the, ahem, winner faces a monumental series of challenges. Besides crime, the mayor will have to cope with a declining tax base, as businesses are fleeing. And Chicago’s pension bomb looms–eventually it will explode. Chicago is the most corrupt city in America. And what about the lead in Chicago’s water pipes?

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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