It’s The 4th Of July…
And a signature moment
John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration of Independence is nearly five times larger than those of the other 55 signatories. Legend has it that as he put quill pen to parchment he exclaimed, “I want King George III to be able to read it without his spectacles!” That’s almost certainly apocryphal but it’s a good line.
Hancock’s signing first was appropriate. He was President of the Continental Congress and at the time as prominent as any of the others who affixed their signatures to the document after his. That group included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and two others known more today for having their names associated with…
1. Gerrymandering— a corruption of representative democracy named after Elbridge Gerry who as governor of Massachusetts signed a bill to create a partisan election district map in 1812 despite the fact that he didn’t approve of it.
2. Samuel Adams— a beer brand named after Samuel Adams, a founding father, who led resistance to British taxation and promoted drinking beer as a patriotic act in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Adams advocated boycotting all British imports and especially urged Americans to buy local brew. Why beer before tea? Adams’ father was a malt producer and he had taken over the business.
It’s not unfair to say that John Hancock’s own mark on history is primarily his signature. Although he was a nine term governor of Massachusetts (terms in the commonwealth were only for one year in the late 1700’s), Hancock has had many things named after him from towns and counties to American naval vessels and an insurance company.
But of course what’s most enduring is that a “John Hancock” today refers to anyone’s signature.
Hancock was one of the richest men in the American colonies by virtue of an inheritance from an uncle who made a fortune in trade and shipping. He was generous with his wealth and used it to finance the American revolutionary cause by funding militias, paying for their supplies and covering their debts.
By backing independence he put himself at both great financial and personal risk but Hancock didn’t get the thing he most coveted. He felt he deserved to be made commander of the Continental Army but that position went to George Washington.
John Hancock was as flamboyant as his signature. He was also vain as well as status conscious. Although not mean nor dishonest, by all accounts he had an enormous ego and a desire always to be the center of attention.
A showman, Hancock reveled in pageantry as well as ostentation from his mansions to his wardrobe. His relationships were strained with Washington and John Adams, who found his perceived self importance insufferable.
To sum things up Hancock had some of the same personal traits as the current president of the United States but with a most significant difference. John Hancock may have been a bit of a Donald Trump but he also happened to be a patriot.
For me and millions of others our country’s 250th birthday will be a day to honor our history, not desecrate it. Trump will hold a rally on America’s birthday and pay homage to himself. He more than likely will say ugly and profane things about others and brag dishonestly about whatever crosses his addled mind. He might also possibly squeeze in a round of golf. That, as they say, is par for the course for him.
Trump has put his likeness on our money and in our passports but his coin of the realm is a currency of lies and his eternal photographic image for posterity will be a mugshot. Trump’s place in our country’s history as the worst person to ever be the president of our country is secure even if he and his appointees have made the rest of us feel less so…
Those who admire Trump are misguided.
Those who enable him are cowardly.
Those who exhibit fealty to him to advance their position or increase their wealth are craven.
Those who support his administration’s policies aimed at oppressing others are cruel.
Those who take advantage of his depravity to feel permitted to project their own prejudice toward others’ race, religion and sexual orientation are hateful.
I hereby rest my case!
And may the words of Franklin and Washington inspire and guide us forward…
Graham, We Hardly Knew You But That’s B.S.!
Sung to the tune of “Just One of Those Things” written by Cole Porter for the 1935 musical Jubilee.
It was just one of those flings, just one on your list of bad things.
You’re one of the guys who now and then lies, just one of those things.
It was just one of those flights, lifted off from the ground and soared to great heights.
A trip to the sun on Icarus wings, just one of those things.
If we’d thought a bit about the end of it when you inked over that tattoo,
We’d have been aware that the rot was there and too much not to be true.
So goodbye Graham and amen. Here’s hoping this won’t happen again.
Your redemption tale is undone. The past you cannot outrun.
Just one of those things!
The link below takes you to the original recording in 1935…
As Time Rolls By…
Hunting in my garage for a roll of kitchen garbage bags made me think of my mortality. Strange? Morbid? Not really when you consider how large the roll of bags is that I’m talking about. It has taken years to use this one up.
I’m not sure when I bought the 400 bags on two separate rolls and now have the other 200 left. I figure we average a bag a week and factoring in the time we’re away from home, I estimate we need fewer than 50 a year. If I calculate the first 200 garbage bags have lasted more than four years, then how likely will I ever need to buy more kitchen garbage bags?
Hey, the Social Security Administration says I will but not for that much longer. I know I’m slowing down and the world is moving faster than I am. I may be in trouble.
Actually, Jo made a point about life expectancy more definitively when we bought a new car in 2023. I call our Prius a car but the salesperson at the dealership where we bought it called it a computer on wheels. Anyway, before we left the lot, he told us that we needed to have a password— a password for the car. Before I could stop laughing my wife had one.
Jo: “LastCar1”
As we drove the Prius home I discovered I needed more than a password for programming our new computer on wheels. Subsequently, I went back to the dealership for a couple tutorials. How do I connect my phone? How can I listen to the radio? How do I turn on the rear window windshield wiper? Turned out if I had looked, I’d have known there wasn’t one.
The salesperson diagnosed me with tech overload and I bet I still wouldn’t pass a Prius proficiency test without a Toyota tutor. The owner’s manual is 600 pages and not at the top of my reading list.
But there’s a bigger issue here than learning where the switch is to heat the steering wheel— that’s a major thing in Maine winter. I want my life to be simpler but of course that’s a good deal more aspirational than realistic. We boomers are living longer at a time when change is accelerating at the speed of a Formula One race car.
When I was a kid I only had to know my parents’ phone number and open the phone book or dial 411 if I wanted to know someone else’s. I used a Webster’s dictionary and a Roget’s Thesaurus and never asked questions of anyone named Siri or Alexa or Claude.
So far I believe I’m doing Ok keeping up. As Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling used to say “Presented for your consideration”, I submit as evidence my Substack. I’ve taught myself what I’ve needed to learn to create and publish it.
Of course there are things I can’t do. Amazingly, I found an electrician who came here yesterday and fixed (I hope permanently) an outlet in the garage with a circuit breaker that wouldn’t unbreak. And we just got our refrigerator ice maker repaired after I couldn’t get it to stop making ice and every time we opened the refrigerator door we had an ice rink on the kitchen floor.
Yes, I know these are so called first world problems and what the hell am I complaining about? But there are frustrations we all encounter— annoying ones —and I’ve noticed fewer and fewer of them now involve other people. That’s an issue for someone raised in a time when personal interaction was the norm and not increasingly the exception.
For instance when I call any company with a question or for help these days, a voice pretending to sound human tries very hard to get me to deal with it for whatever I need and if I had a mantra, I think it would be “Let me speak to a real person.”
Actually, I’ve worked hard at staying agitated on the inside and acting like I’m sedated on the phone. Sure, I can let things get to me but not as often as I used to so I guess I’m coping or is it submitting? As we age the difference can get blurry.
This is a long way round to studies I’ve come across recently that have found that as we get older, we get happier. Hey, I can enthusiastically say that I have. I was 63 when ABC News offered me a buyout and I sprinted out the door. Since then the past 16 years here in Maine have been the best ones of my life.
Oh, sure I can’t do some of those things I loved to when I was younger— play pickup basketball, eat a burger with fries and a milkshake, and stay awake until midnight on New Year’s Eve. But I’m happy and I say sometimes to others “Hey, I’m the luckiest person you’ll meet all day.”
How do I know that? I don’t, but here’s what I do know. At 79, and still believing that I’m thinking clearly and acting logically, I’m grateful that my energy isn’t gone even though it’s clearly depleted. And I’m thankful that my brain isn’t shot although I’m aware that the hard drive is pretty full up.
Hey, where’s that USB device to insert into a slot in my skull that will give me back my RAM (Recently Absconded Memory)? I’m not kidding.
Of course there’s another solution that might just take care of both my failing memory and the predicted upheaval that AI is going to create for almost anyone getting a job in the future. Forget college or high school. Let’s put our elementary school age children to work to help us boomers keep keeping up.
Think about it. How much does my generation know about phishing, cyber bullying or deep fakes? Can we distinguish a chatbot from a crackpot? I’m sure I don’t know as much as I think I do. Someone has compared Congressional hearings where a Mark Zuckerberg or a Sam Altman is questioned by an octogenarian akin to a grandparent asking a grandchild for help on their computer.
Change has accelerated into a hyper gear. What was new not so long ago can become old overnight. I went to a concert a few days ago and bought a compact disc—CD —with music of the string quartet that performed. A friend with me asked, “Do you have a way to play that?”
The time from invention to obsolescence has become a hell of a lot faster than the half life of radioactive isotopes and that includes job skill sets as well as products. In the 1950s there were some— Craftsman hand tools, Tupperware, Zippo lighters —that their manufacturers believed would last forever and were “guaranteed for life.”
I don’t know if any of them or anything else still has that kind of warranty today but a few years ago I changed an incandescent light bulb in the most inaccessible socket in our house with an LED. The new bulb was supposed to last for 15 years. As I screwed it in I thought, “This bulb will outlive me!” It burned out a year later.
Things may not be guaranteed for life anymore but there are projections, predictions and “Use-By” dates that now warn me that nothing lasts forever.
I risk sounding like a recovering journalist who has become a philosopher of the obvious but I think an important part in achieving happiness is accepting that life will outrun you and at some point you will begin to feel that you are being lapped.
Sure, I want to have even more than 200 kitchen garbage bags left before I leave the track and I just realized I have another item in our house that I want to outlive. It’s also in the kitchen and after using one for at least several years I just opened another.
Yes, it’s a bottle of Tabasco sauce so let’s call my race with it one to the bottom. Who will get there first? Well, a Bloody Mary a night and I’m sure I’ll win!
Oh, and since acquiring the Prius, we bought a second new car and maybe you can guess it’s password…
You can’t? It’s LastCar2.
I’m hanging in! That’s what my father said in his late 80s when someone asked him how he was. Hmm… if there is to be a LastCar3, will I even have to drive it myself?
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