Saturday Afternoon

A Saturday afternoon in the summer….could there be anything more perfect.

I sit at my desk, a brief summer thunderstorm just rolled through. It was the kind of summer storm you hope cools things off but as soon as it ends you realize it’s just as humid as before. But the wind it rolled in on blew the smoke and haze from the Canadian wildfires out of the area. It was the kind of storm that begins with the wind and ends with a downpour that lasts approximately 3 minutes. All that for 3 minutes you think.

I had waited just long enough to begin cutting the grass that as soon as I gassed up the lawnmower it started raining, and now the grass is to wet and it’s too late in the day to mess around with that.

The rain was just enough to water the garden. As I sit here I can see the kitchen table which is already full of cucumbers. There’s at least 2 dozen cucumbers we’ve picked in the last couple of days. It’s that time of year when my wife makes cucumber salad every week and everywhere we go we take a bag of cucumbers to pass out to friends and family. At first everyone is very happy to receive garden fresh cucumbers but I know in a couple of weeks when I give them another armload of cucumbers they’ll have that look on their face, that look that says

“I don’t know what to do with all these cucumbers, everything cucumber dish I know I’ve already made, please stop bringing me cucumbers”

Sometimes I think cucumbers are the fruit cake of the vegetables. Everyone acts like they like receiving them but they quickly pass it on to someone else. But then I realize that zucchini is truly the fruit cake of vegetables as I’ve never done anything with a zucchini except pass it on or let it rot and then throw it out to the animals. The raccoons out here know that any left over zucchini and cucumbers we can’t pass on to friends will soon be late night snacking for them.

My mom loved zucchini and would always use it as a side dish in the summer and when there was too much of it, as there invariably always is, she would make zucchini bread. Knowing that my siblings and I generally detested the taste of zucchini she then did the most obvious mom thing…..she tried to tell us it was banana bread. This actually worked for one entire summer and I’m not sure which of us figured it out first but we soon grew wise to the difference in the taste of banana bread and zucchini bread. Even today when my mom presents me with homemade bread or muffins I ask if it’s really banana bread.

This blog post did 2 things…..got me to sit and write and I learned how to spell zucchini….

Peace and Love,

John

If Only it Was Real

I saw a headline that stopped me mid-scroll over the weekend. It was so delicious and intriguing I had to click on the link. The attention grabbing headline and subsequent story told of a women who had been arrested for hiring a clown to harass her ex at his rec league softball games.

The story had all the elements of a Shakespearean drama…..love, betrayal, revenge and a clown. The story even had the mugshot of the arrested woman.

This is perfect I thought for a deep blog post on relationships gone wrong, bad breakups and new employment opportunities for the clown community. I mean besides kids birthday party’s, and the occasional parade the demand for clowns is pretty low. Not to mention clowns seem to catch an inordinate amount of negativity in general. Let’s face it…..most people really don’t like clowns nor understand why a person would dress up like one and paint their face when a large majority of people are actually frightened by them.

It took me about 2 minutes of additional scrolling or research as I call it, to determine the story was fake. It had originally appeared on a website known for generating false story’s, kinda like The Onion but not as well known. The mugshot was a fake AI generated picture of a rather attractive young woman that I’m sure was a catalyst for generating so much interest in the story.

What I find so fascinating was the amount of people who believed the story and subsequently commented and shared the story causing it to go viral. Of course people had to weigh in like so many people do now days with their expert opinion.

I make it a habit not to read the comments mainly to not waste my time and to keep my naively false hopes alive that we’re not as stupid as we appear online. I can only guess that there was an equal amount of people taking the woman’s side as the man’s side. I mean who amongst us hasn’t let their mind wander to some creative type of harmless revenge against an ex who so wronged us by ending a relationship and what could be more creative than harassment by a clown.

This really could have opened up a whole new avenue of employment for clowns. Besides listing magic tricks and the ability to make dozens of different balloon animals and the singularly unique talent of wedging themselves into impossibly tiny cars and driving them haphazardly in parades they could now also note that they’ve helped many wronged ex’s get over a bad breakup. They could then list all their most effective harassment techniques. The clown in the fake story was hired to harass the ex boyfriend at his softball games by clapping sarcastically at even the most routine plays.

Oh I can see it now, clowns showing up at places of employment critiquing even the smallest of mundane tasks. A clown sitting next to you judging every email sent, every sales pitch rejected, every meeting you attended where you desperately attempted to be heard even if your sole contribution was saying “lets circle back around next week.”

Instead of that small voice in your head that stifles your creativity and reminds you of all your failures going back to middle school, you’d have a real voice reminding you of your failures and that voice comes with overly large shoes, a painted face and maybe a horn to be extra annoying.

So unfortunately the real victims here are the clowns with their faces painted to appear happy but we know it’s a a mask to hide their real sorrow and unhappiness. Not only denied new employment opportunities but used in a fake story so many of us wanted to believe.

I could end here by saying don’t believe what you see on the internet but we already know that and we still get duped…..

Peace and Love,

John

The Work Slowdown Has Begun

I came home the other day to find my wife vacuuming the living room. Six months ago this would not have been a surprise. My wife is a bit of a germ-o-phobe and a little, kinda, slightly obsessive compulsive plus we’re a household with 2 vacuums so it was not entirely unusual to come home and find my wife vacuuming at any hour. She vacuums with such gusto and vigor I often thought she actually enjoyed vacuuming but when I casually mentioned this one day she pointedly informed me how incorrect I was and oh by the way maybe I should start vacuuming and maybe I would enjoy it. At that moment I decided to keep my mouth shut about the amount of vacuuming and the perceived level of enjoyment.

Still I was a bit surprised to find her vacuuming because 6 months ago she purchased yet another vacuum. It’s one of those robo vacs that you can program to vacuum at any time. Since the purchase of robo vac my wife’s vacuuming has declined but the frequency of tripping over robo vac has increased. The spinning whirring disc seems to let nothing get in its way of completing its preassigned work….or so I thought.

I stood there puzzled watching my wife vigorously vacuum the living room wondering where the little robo vac might be acutely aware that it might blindly run into my achilles tendon at anytime causing an injury that might require me to rush to the hospital with the unbelievable story of robo vac sending me to the emergency room.

Finally my wife noticed me standing there and stopped her vigorous vacuuming. I spread my hands wide in a questioning gesture that needed no words.

“It got stuck behind the couch and then was confused so it went back to its dock and now it won’t come out.”

I shook my head in stunned disbelief….it got confused and went back to its dock and won’t come out. Were we dealing with a robot vacuum or a temperamental teenager whose told that the grass needs to be cut before they go to their friends house and in protest they lock themselves in their bedroom refusing nourishment and vowing a hunger strike.

Then I realized what was really happening. Robo vac was much smarter than I had realized. I thought the spinning, whirring disc knew only the finer points of vacuuming, dust prevention and preassigned patterns of our living room but no it had already determined that vacuuming kinda sucks no matter how vigorous and enthusiastic my wife makes it look. Robo vac had already determined a life of vacuuming was unfulfilling even if programmed for that very task.

Robo vac had also cleverly discovered that the humans or in this case my germ-o-phobe, cleanliness is next to godliness obsessive wife would actually do the work it was programmed to do. Robo vac could hang out at its home dock probably communicating its discovery with other robots in the robot union, planning and scheming and recharging for the next work that won’t be done.

I see what you’ve done robo vac and I kinda respect it. My wife will occasionally assign me chores around the house. I often wish I could disappear to my home port (man cave) surrounded by the giant TV and a stack of books I may never read and chill out and let someone else complete the chores.

So to summarize the robots are here, they don’t like doing chores anymore than we do and they’ve already figured out we’ll still do them if necessary. Oh one more thing, never turn your back on a robo vac, they go straight for the achilles tendon.

Peace and Love,

John

The Gift I Really Wanted

A few days before Fathers Day my wife asked me if I wanted to see a picture of the gift she had purchased for me. Knowing my wife for as long as I have I quickly deduced that I didn’t like where this conversation was headed so I did what any smart husband does when asked a question by his wife that he doesn’t really want to answer….I remained silent.

She continued and preceded to tell me that the gift she had ordered wouldn’t be arriving until October. Now not only was I silent but I’m sure my face looked quizzical as I thought to myself that the gift sounded more like something to be given at Christmas and not Fathers Day. But I always like to remain gracious when presented with a gift so I attempted to retain a positive look on my face.

I’m sure that look changed when I saw the gift. It was neither something I needed, wanted or would have purchased for myself and I found the item to be wildly overpriced. Now we can debate whether most things are overpriced in today’s economy and why that is but I have neither the time nor energy for that.

I remained silent for what seemed an interminable amount of time as I quickly studied my options. My silence and lack of enthusiasm was the real answer and my wife noticed.

We seemed to have reached the age where buying gifts for each other has become difficult. We rarely exchange gifts anymore as most of the gifts are unnecessary and just add to the clutter that I now constantly contemplate but rarely do anything about.

When my wife expressed the very idea that she didn’t know what to get me I suddenly realized what I really wanted. For a couple of months now I have been unable to write on this very website. That’s not entirely true as I have only been unable to write using the laptop. I have been able to login and write using my phone which is frustrating on many levels. I like to sit at a desk with a computer screen and keyboard and tap away occasionally glancing up to notice all the misspelled words and punctuation errors. A phone is not something to write blog posts on, at least not for me.

A phone is for texting, doom scrolling, accessing the entire world, getting directions to the new restaurant, booking flights, playing games, listening to music, taking pictures, sending and receiving emails, scheduling your calendar, writing notes and remainders to yourself, listening to podcasts, keeping a huge lists of contacts most of whom you never actually contact, making videos, keeping track of your workouts so you can annoy your friends with your Strava data, sending GIPHS ( which lets be real nobody still can agree how to pronounce…is it Jiffs or Giffs?) and even perhaps making a phone call.

Somehow the login for this website changed….don’t ask me how these things happen or how they always seem to happen to me but I could only login on my phone. I tried, oh did I try numerous times to login and write. I had emails sent to me with login procedures and new temporary passwords but each time left me on the verge of destroying something, probably the laptop itself, and since I knew that wasn’t a good idea although it might be satisfying, I was reduced to writing on my phone which since I find annoying I was sure it had also simultaneously curbed my creativity.

So when my wife asked me what could she have possibly gotten me for Fathers Day I actually had an answer. As I mentioned earlier there are few gifts I need or want. I have numerous polo shirts, too many books, gadgets I don’t use, memorabilia and mementos that sit around getting dusty, t-shirts I still wear from 20 years ago and golf clubs that are one step away from being taken to the curb on garbage day. What I really appreciate now that I’ve grown older is time spent with others and somebody doing something for me that I either can’t do or find frustrating to do, and believe me anything to do with a QR code or password is at the top of my list of frustrating things.

But since my wife is an IT professional I figured it was the perfect time to have her fix my login problem and get back to writing. And if you’re wondering why I didn’t ask her sooner, I admit I was stubborn and didn’t want to ask for help with a tech issue and I know that she deals with IT issues all day which her usual response to is “it sounds like user error”…..of course she’s not wrong about this. And since I know when she comes home from a long day of programming, helping others with their passwords and proclaiming “it’s probably user error” well the last thing I wanted to bother her with was a password login problem.

A few clicks on the computer and a few clicks on my phone and the problem that had thwarted me for months was solved in less than 5 minutes. She then proceeded to cancel the other gift, the Fathers Day gift not scheduled to arrive until October (seriously what was she thinking) and I know sit happy at a desk typing away and misspelling every other word. Now if only I could figure out how to get the text the right size.

Enjoy time with others and have smart people around to fix your passwords

John

Friendly Advice

I’m not proud of this and I certainly don’t think I’m the only one who does this, but the first thing I do when I wake up is reach for my phone. Of course this is a rather new phenomenon, it wasn’t always like this. But even though knowing all the warnings against looking at my phone before bed, the light emanating from it and the doom scrolling affecting sleep, I still have my phone in bed or on the nightstand. So yes the first thing I do when I wake up is reach for it almost as a comforting touch.

I typically do a quick check of notifications and news to determine nothing too disastrous has happened overnight and it’s safe to get out of bed without the dread of an immediate crisis.

I then usually check my weather app. Having worked outside for many years this is a habit I still do to this day, and I’ve noticed a recent trend with my weather app. Along with giving the forecast for the day and if needed a weekly forecast along with the radar for the area, my weather app is now also giving advice.

At first I really didn’t even notice it, so I’m not sure when it started and I wonder how many people really do notice it as we’ve become so accustomed to glancing over many things on our phones and not really reading them. It was probably a couple of days before I really noticed and determined this advice was not a onetime thing.

What I find so fascinating about this is that the tone is more friendly, even motherly in a non-judgmental sort of way that true motherly advice could never be.

”Showers might spoil your plans and a rain jacket is a smart call when heading out”….was the advice with the daily forecast yesterday. If my mother had actually said that to me I probably would have rolled my eyes and ignored it.

”With no shadow and no glare, cloudy days have their perks”….hmm I thought I guess cloudy days do have some benefits. I surely never would have come to that conclusion any other time.

”No blue sky, but no reason to change your plans either”… well that’s a relief I thought as I still lay under the covers.

The advice seems to be given in a breezy, friendly tone as if a caring friend notices you always seem to be the one who forgets their sunglasses or umbrella.

I’m sure this is some type of AI generated advice creeping into our lives disguised as a non obtrusive feature. And I genuinely worry that our brains are slowly shutting down and dying with each query into our phones and computers. Will the next generation be capable of original thoughts without running it through an AI machine to verify. Our are own mothers being replaced as the most knowledgeable source of information?

I have a feeling this is just the beginning. First the AI machines give helpful but unasked for advice about weather ( after all we could simply look out the window or….gasp….go outside)

Soon the advice will become more pointed and judgmental and even personalized as all of life seems to be heading.

”I think I answered that last week, do we really need to go over this again”….is something that will soon be spewing forth from an AI agent or perhaps a simple query about a evening out will become a referendum about your current relationship and whether it’s really working for you.

No we all know this is just the beginning, the friendly advice now about weather soon becomes career advice, relationship advice, investment advice, parenting advice, and although we could each use a little guidance and mentoring it’s still probably a good idea to get that from trusted sources like parents or friends who actually know you and have your back.

And although I have been taking my phone to bed with me and tucking it under my pillow as I fall asleep to music or a baseball game I don’t consider that I have a relationship with it that feels like I want to trust it for life advice.

I hope the apps on my phone don’t all start giving advice….can you imagine if Facebook or Instagram start judging what you’re posting….

”You wore that to the theater and why are you squinting? Didn’t the weather app remind you to grab your sunglasses ?”

Soon our apps will be communicating with us verbally so it really will be like your mother is always with you, reminding you, scolding you and advising you…. “I told you she was no good for you and you really should have been a doctor like your cousin” ….

I can’t wait ….

Peace and love….

John


Goodbye, Farewell

Two of my favorite podcasts recently decided to stop production. The loss of 2 podcasts barely registered a blip in the podcasting market as I’m sure there were 10 more new ones that very same week. But as I listened to the last episodes I was overcome with a feeling of sadness as strange as that might sound. I mean it was only a couple of podcasts for gosh sakes. I didn’t actually know these people nor would I realistically ever have a chance to meet them and besides hearing their voices once a week I had no other connection to them but still I hate when things end and especially when they end abruptly and without warning.

And so as I listened to the last episodes I kept thinking about how it felt like a relationship was ending. Not like a romantic, passionate love affair but more like a friendship that has run its course but only one person is really ready to let go. Friendships end for many reasons and later after some reflection you sometimes wonder how and why you were actually friends to start with. There’s usually some connection of shared experiences…..school, work, where you live. These experiences bond people together and friendships are formed. You often think these relationships will last forever but typically they end when those shared experiences end. You move on and the relationship withers as time and new experiences take over.

The loss of 2 of my favorite podcasts reminded me of losing a work friendship. One minute your reaching for the last nutty doughnut and sharing eye rolls in a never ending meeting about productivity and increasing opportunities with an increased emphasis on customer service and the next day they mention their house is for sale and they’re moving across the country. The gut punch is real and startling. Who are you going to share vacation photos with or talk about the silly things your teenagers do.

Work friends are wonderful and necessary to combat the never ending drudgery of the workplace. Seriously if you weren’t getting paid would you really show up to work ? It’s the people and relationships that make the job meaningful.
Shared experiences lead to shared connections. You watch each other’s families grow up, you watch each other’s parents grow old. You smirk at stories of each other’s spouses and you have each other’s back. You cheer their success and support each other in difficult times.

Maybe there’s doughnuts involved, there’s definitely too many meetings. Sometimes there’s late nights or early mornings, sometimes holidays are spent at work and not with family. You think they’ll be there whenever you are, ready to go for another day, ready to deal with whatever the universe throws at you. Then ….they’re gone, moved on, new experiences to be had and they leave a feeling of loss.

I would sit in meetings looking at the empty chair next to me, remembering the inside jokes and inappropriate laughter, remembering the passed notes and eye rolls.

Soon that chair was filled by somebody else just as my podcast feed is filled seemingly with a never ending stream of babble. You hope you find new podcasts to replace the ones that have left….you don’t even bother trying to replace the missing friendship.

Peace and love,

John

It Defined Me….

Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
View all responses

I was on the verge of turning 33. Too young for a mid-life crisis or deep existential awakening but having been married for 3 years I came to the realization that I desperately needed a hobby, preferably one that got me out of the house for hours at a time. It was at this point that I took up long distance running.

I’m not sure exactly why I turned to distance running besides the fact that it fit my two criteria, get me out of the house and it took lots of time. Whenever I would see people running down the road it seemed like an activity that they didn’t seem to be enjoying. Runners always appeared to have a pained look on their face that seemed to ask “why am I really doing this ?” Perhaps the real reason, if they were being truthful, was that they needed a hobby that got them out of the house for hours at a time.

Admittedly my journey to distance running does seem a bit strange in retrospect. I had never run on the track or cross country team in high school and although I worked out and was in relatively good shape, running wasn’t something I did consistently, but I had always been intrigued by distance running and the ability to train to endure pain and discomfort that seemed to accompany distance running. And quite frankly it fit my personality of enjoying solitary pursuits in some grand quixotic activity. I had always been amazed at the story of the first marathon runner, a messenger in an ancient war who ran 26 miles from the plains of Marathon to deliver the news of a great victory…..he collapsed and died soon after, a Homeric death if there ever was one.

Initially I told no one of my new passion besides my wife. Partly because I wasn’t really sure how long I would commit to it and partly because I knew people would become puzzled and confused about my desire to do an activity that left me exhausted and uncomfortable. Eventually I did begin telling people of my plans to run a marathon. People I told would be silent for a moment with a confused and puzzled look on their faces, before eventually saying something like “now why would you do that ?”

But once I started doing it, I loved it. I bought magazines, yes magazines, that were devoted solely to distance running and all aspects of training. I studied training programs, experimented with different workouts, trained before work then switched and tried training after work to see what was more effective, before work was way more easier to accomplish effective or not. I bought running shoes and then more shoes. My wife stopped accompanying me to the shoe store knowing I would be there for at least an hour trying on shoes and talking training, despite my obvious bribe of taking her to dinner afterwards.

Running became who I was and what I did… it defined me in ways I was sure non runners could never understand. And when I lined up at the starting line of my first marathon with 20,000 other runners I knew I had found my people and my passion.

One marathon led to another and then another, even traveling out of state and meeting up with an old college buddy who had also discovered distance running. And of course there were shorter races almost every weekend in my area. I started noticing the same familiar faces at each starting line, and I soon began to realize who was fast and who I could realistically beat.

When my wife became pregnant one of the baby shower gifts was a running stroller so I could keep running and take my son with me, perhaps my first bit of parental multitasking it accomplished two very important tasks, giving my wife a break and getting my son a nap as he soon fell asleep in the motion of the rolling stroller.

I soon began going to races pushing him in the stroller, no longer preoccupied with being fast, I took great joy in passing as many other runners as possible while pushing a stroller. After a couple of years my son outgrew the stroller, his legs were dangling over the edges. It was at about this time I tried to get back to marathon training. Perhaps it was fate or simply trying to do too much too soon but I quickly developed a stress fracture in my foot which was misdiagnosed initially and when finally properly diagnosed set my recovery back months. Unwilling to have surgery to remove the small offending bone, I began to realize my days of running marathons had suddenly ended.

I turned to other activities, activities that also took hours and required I vacate the premises. Hiking and biking soon replaced running but although each was satisfying they pale in comparison to distance running. I admit part of the allure of running marathons was telling people I ran marathons, and then seeing their bewildered looks. Running defined me in ways that no other activity ever has, no matter how many miles I ride my bike and although my creaky knees are probably partially attributed to running I wish I could still do it.

Peace and love,

John

We Shudder, Mother Nature Laughs

I woke up to another impossibly cold morning. The sky was clear allowing me to see a brilliant full moon still hovering through the trees in the western sky just about to disappear before sunrise.

I checked the temperature….-6 degrees. I then checked the calendar…finally January was over. Seriously how could January last so long, it feels like eons ago that we were celebrating the new year. News years resolutions have long since been abandoned, buried under the weight of expectations that far exceeded reality. Of course the everlasting darkness, bone chilling cold and snowstorms that cover half the country adds to the seemingly interminable length of January.

Does time move more slowly in the cold ? Why is it that the first month of a new year is the longest and coldest ? I’ve often wondered if the New Year happened in the summer if more people would be able to keep their resolutions with the warmer weather and extra daylight giving extra motivation. Most resolutions revolve around weight loss or eating less which are far easier to accomplish in the warm months of summer.

I scrolled through some news when I saw an intriguing headline that I thought couldn’t possibly be true. I double checked it to make sure it wasn’t a headline from The Onion ( something I’ve found myself doing more often lately ) and it definitely seemed to come from a legitimate news source. I read the story, watched a video and became aware that trees are exploding.

Evidently this phenomenon occurs in extreme cold during the winter months. Extreme cold being what most of us are experiencing the last few weeks, this definitely feels like Mother Nature pushing back at us. Snow, ice, cold, those aren’t enough, now she’s adding exploding trees.

I don’t know if this week it’s a polar vortex or bomb cyclone but it’s extreme. Have you noticed that the meteorologist seem to be coming up with new names for weather events ? I sometimes think it’s some desperate attempt to feel more important and grab yet more attention for weather. Nevertheless trees are exploding in northern climates as water freezes inside them and explodes in extreme cold.

I wonder if it’s been determined what the temperature range needs to be for trees to explode ? Our extreme cold in the mid-west has led to frozen pipes, icy roads, dead car batteries, frozen car locks, mountains of snow and at least for me a garage door that opens with a shudder that seems to say “are you kidding me” each time I open it.

Since the sun is shining I still plan to take advantage of a nice day, even if the amount of layers I’ll be wearing takes me longer to dress and undress. I’ll go hiking in the woods, enjoying nature, the snow covered trail and the trees surrounding me, as long as none of them start exploding.

Peace and love,

John

Fern

If there was ever the perfect time to do the “Netflix & Chill” thing it would be this weekend. A massive storm barreling its way from Texas to New England is paralyzing the country and consuming large portions of the news. The coverage is so thorough that the storm has already been named, Fern ( which actually sounds like your mother’s kindly slightly confused cousin who they just put into a senior center….Aunt Fern ) and the TV screen has the constant crawl at the bottom with warnings and alerts and possible snowfall amounts.

As a mid-westerner, I’m kinda used to winter storms, it is after all January. And so I’m always a little surprised by the massive amount of oxygen that a winter storm provides the news. Our local news leads with the storm, breathlessly warning of slick roads and dangerous cold, all of which are true and need to be monitored.

The Weather Channel is in full code red, defcon 5 mode. Only a massive hurricane gets more thorough coverage than a winter storm as their army of meteorologists fan out across the country and report on conditions all while wearing enough winter gear to make an Eskimo jealous. It’s always interesting to see how other areas of the country react to weather they don’t normally get. An inch or two of snow in the south will keep tow trucks busy for days meanwhile a foot of snow in New York or New England is greeted with a shrug. Snowblowers and shovels are always at the ready and even if they’re granted a snow day they know they’ll soon be trudging to work and the snow isn’t going anywhere for a long while.

The weekend storms are probably the best. People can stay home, watch The Weather Channel and binge watch a new series as they contemplate their yearly idea of relocating to the Caribbean. Of course then they might have to deal with hurricanes…..but at least they would know The Weather Channel would be all over it….hunker down and be safe

Peace and Love,

John

Signing Off the Way it Started

While scrolling through the headlines a few days ago I noticed a small article about something ending. Not uncommon at this time of year. The beginning of a new year also can mean the ending for other things. It happens all the time….something ends, something begins and although I hadn’t even thought about this in years, and if I had thought about I would have wondered if it still existed, but the article said MTV had ended its music channels and the world of music videos in TV ceased to exist.

I was first introduced to MTV in 1982….yes, it feels like an ancient long lost time period. Where I grew up there was no cable TV and it would be years before it reached us. But it was while visiting my sister at college on one of those “bring your brother/sister to college weekends” that I first was exposed to the wonder of MTV. My sister was showing me around her dorm and while the individual dorm rooms didn’t even have cable back then the common areas did. There was a small alcove off the main TV common area, it was dark and only had a few chairs and a small TV, but all the chairs were occupied and the TV blared a strange combination of music and video accompaniment….MTV my sister called it. She said it was very popular and that particular common area was always filled and the TV was always playing MTV.

Debuting in 1981 MTV quickly became a phenomenon and was one of the defining cultural trends of the 1980’s. Music presented in video format exploded in the perfect combination of art, visualization and fantasy. Before MTV the only way to see your favorite band was by attending a concert or perhaps catching them on a late night TV show. But now they were right in our TV’s, in our faces and living rooms at all hours. The videos became highly produced and professionally directed and it seemed like they became more important than the music.

New shows quickly copied the MTV formula and started showing videos on regular TV stations bringing music videos to everybody, even us teenagers stuck far from a cable line. We talked about the videos, discussed them at length, compared and rated them to each other and quickly adopted favorites. And of course everyone picked their favorite VJ host, mine was the irresistibly cute and entertaining Martha Quinn. The stars of that time period are forever etched in our memories, always a certain age and look, the videos still recalled when hearing that particular song.

MTV long ago abandoned video content as its source of programming. Reality TV became the new popular content. It still had video channels but I can’t remember the last time I tuned in even if I was mindlessly scrolling TV looking for anything to watch. Consumption of music and video long ago changed. Music is consumed on our phones, algorithmically delivered one curated song at a time and watching videos followed accordingly easily accessible on YouTube.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about shopping at my local mall for Christmas gifts and how it was so different than it used to be. MTV, like the mall, had its time and place and it was glorious. It officially signed off on News Years Eve and depending on what country you were in a different video was the last one played. In the US it was a song by a group called The Buggles titled “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Perfectly coming full circle as it was also the very first one played when the station launched.
Many things led to the demise of music videos and by extension MTV and although I don’t really miss it I certainly miss that feeling of discovering it and being in that time period.

Peace and Love,

John