Posted by Ted Hopton on June 19, 2008
This article, “Lights, Camera, Inaction,” is not really about the tiny, new Flip Video Mino camera, as I thought it was when I chose to read it. Instead, it’s a funny riff by Michelle Slatalla on the urge so many of us feel to archive our lives with photography, and the guilt we thereby create for ourselves when we fail to do it well.
Years went by without pictures. It became too hard to be the family archivist in an age of ever-changing technology, especially for someone like me who fears any gadget more complicated than a cocktail shaker. Every time I tried, a battery died or a memory card went missing or I pushed the wrong button or accidentally taped over someone’s piano recital.
I liked this comment after her oldest daughter complains because there is only one viewable family video left: “She got good at guilt at college,” Slatalla observes. And she demonstrates Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Human Interest, Nostalgia, Technology | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on May 24, 2008
Remember when you were young and thought you got to decide what you would do when you grew up?
My earliest memory of a career ambition was my wish to be a milkman. Yes, we still had milkmen when I was very little, driving around in their trucks before dawn and leaving glass bottles with the foil top in an insulated box outside the door. I wasn’t so fond of school at that age, and I found out that college (more school) was not required for a career as a milkman, so that sounded good to me.
Even when I was in college, I was under the impression that I got to make a choice about my career. I simply had to decide what it was I wanted to do and then go about making it happen. In fact, that is what happened, and I embarked on my first career, as a teacher. And when I wanted to try something else, I went to grad school, thinking I would get to choose once again.
And perhaps I could have chosen, if I had been truly determined to do so. But that’s when things really began to shift. Since that point, what I have done, the jobs that I have held, have been much more determined by circumstances than by my careful planning.
I’ll date myself again: remember the video game, Frogger? A frog attempts to cross a busy highway by jumping from one moving car to another. If you fail to land him on a car he gets flattened, instead. Well, since graduate school my career path feels like a game of Frogger. And I suspect for many other people that is the case, too. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Career, Nostalgia | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 19, 2008
William F. Buckley Jr.’s greatest talent was friendship. He showered affection on his friends, and he had an endless stream of them, old and young. His second great talent was leadership.
read more | digg story
Posted in Nostalgia, Politics | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 6, 2008
I just read an article in the NYT about the increased popularity of philosophy as an undergraduate major: In a “New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined.” It’s interesting to see the reasons for this trend, and it reminded me of my own time as an undergraduate (nostalgia alert).
When I began as an undergraduate, I was ravenous for learning. I got the course catalogue before my freshman year and devoured it, fascinated by all that I could learn. I couldn’t wait to try all kinds of courses of study. Neuroscience, I still recall, sounded amazing.
And then there was philosophy. I read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in high school and found it to be a thought-provoking glimpse into philosophy. I had a small inkling that maybe philosophy was what I was meant for, and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in College, Education, Nostalgia | Tagged: College, college major, philosophy, undergraduate | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on February 4, 2008
I’m not a skier, but I liked reading this NYT story about Vermont (and other states’) documented lost ski areas, relics from the postwar surge of skiing in America.
read more | digg story
Posted in Nostalgia, Outdoors | Tagged: Nostalgia, Outdoors, ski, ski areas | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 29, 2008
Have you ever gone through that career exercise where you write out success stories from your life, and then look back through them for clues about the kind of work you would enjoy and/or be good at? I did that when I decided to leave teaching, my first career. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but while I prepped for the LSATs I worked through all the exercises in “The New Quick Job-Hunting Map,” by Richard Nelson Bolles. It’s a companion workbook to his famous What Color Is Your Parachute? book. 
I recently ran across those stories, written when I was about 30, as I was searching through old files for something else. (Yes, I keep *everything* I have written.) The earliest success story was from pre-kindergarten, my first year of fourteen years at Moorestown Friends School (that’s Pre-K + Kindergarten + 12 grades, in case you thought I took too long to graduate).
In pre-kindergarten, I was not big enough or strong enough to get on top of the monkey bars, and I was envious of the kids who could. They got to sit on their perch above the rest of us, on top of what was essentially a horizontal ladder high above the ground (it seemed high at the time, anyway). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Nostalgia | Tagged: Nostalgia, success | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 27, 2008
My friend, Steve, told me a sad little story today. Seems he asked a young woman who was leaving a gathering early if she was giving up the ghost, and her response was, “Huh? What’s that mean?”
In case you don’t know, either, it’s a phrase that originates in the Bible and means to die. In more casual parlance, it means to pack it in or give up. I knew this, of course, as did the other 40+ year-olds he told the story to. But the second young woman he tried the phrase on had the same reaction: “What are you talking about?”
This was one of those rueful moments we all will experience at some point in our lives, and which some of us seem to be experiencing more than before. (Reminds me of the comedian’s line about how he seems to be hanging out with an older crowd than he used to.) Apparently people in their mid-twenties are not familiar with “give up the ghost,” so it must have passed out of frequent usage some time ago, leaving those of us who know what it means feeling like old fogies.
Oh, and the first young woman handled the situation very smoothly, as she reassured Steve that she works with lots of “older people.” Has anyone seen my cane?
Posted in Human Interest, Humor, Nostalgia | Tagged: Human Interest, Humor | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 19, 2008
I was very fortunate in my early 20’s to get to travel all over the world. I wish I had a digital camera back then (meaning if they had been invented, of course), so I could enjoy my photos more easily. I don’t even know anyone who has a carousel slide projector anymore, so I guess someday I will have to invest in a slide scanner. Of course, it has been so long since I took those photos, I don’t recall how good they were, and I have no idea how well they may have held up over all this time. Better pull them out and inspect them one of these day.
One day I found the 43 Places website, and I racked my memory to recall all of the different countries I have been to, entering each of them there. It’s fun to look at the long list (and to note how the map of Europe in particular has changed, with some countries splitting into parts and Germany joining into one — no more Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall).
Posted in Nostalgia, Travel | Tagged: Travel, websites | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 18, 2008
Bobby Fischer, the most powerful American chess player in history, died on Thursday in a hospital in Iceland. No cause of death was given.
I heard the news before I saw the headline: “Bobby Fischer, Chess Master, Dies at 64.” I admired Bobby Fischer when I was a boy. His accomplishments seemed legendary, and since he was so young when he burst onto the chess world stage, it gave me a feeling that anything was possible. If he could do those things . . . it was not unlike imagining oneself as a pro athlete, except no specific body type was required.
I became aware of Bobby Fischer from reading his step-by-step guide to chess. It must have been a Christmas present, I suppose, but I read that book over and over. It was programmed learning (remember those things?) so you were presented with a situation, asked how to respond to it, and then when you turned the page you saw his answer. I grew quite fond of chess, and played many games, primarily against my father, who would always win. Until one day when I got good enough to win, and then I don’t recall that we played so much after that — I’m not sure exactly why, but for some reason I just didn’t want to play chess that much anymore.
Of course, later in his life, Fischer became quite an oddity. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Human Interest, Nostalgia | Tagged: Human Interest, Nostalgia | No Comments »
I have not commented on the Super Bowl in this blog. Trust me, if my Philadelphia Eagles were in it, I would have had plenty to say. But, I don’t even want to talk about their lousy season.
But part of me loves underdogs and upsets, and this would be an upset all right. It would be right up there with my very first Super Bowl memory, when Joe Namath and the Jets beat the Colts. My dad assured me before the game that the Colts would win, and I was rooting for them (why, I don’t know — maybe I liked the logo on their helmets?).
I was baffled when the Colts lost, not really grasping at that age that those everyone agreed were “the best” could be beaten — that conventional wisdom could be wrong. Maybe I have liked underdogs since then, having seen how much more fun it would have been to have pulled for the Jets when they won. And after all, if they lost, that was what everyone expected, anyway.
