By Jim Hagarty
2016
The removal of an uncertainty in life can be a very freeing experience. Like bringing a camera into focus. A fact cannot be faced until we have a fact we can face. It doesn’t matter if that fact is one we didn’t want to face. Just the fact that we finally have a fact in front of us that cannot be evaded or wished away, lets us adjust our sails. A fact allows our imagination to go back to sleep. Few things are more frightening than an imagination run wild.
Jim Hagarty
2016
Timidity is a character trait, not a flaw. Bullies are drawn to it and maybe increase it but they didn’t create it. No one did. That was the work of that dreaded wicked witch, Jenn Ettics. Still, it exists, and like everything in nature, could not be a mistake. The trick is for the timid and the bold to share the world we all occupy side by side, in peace.
By Jim Hagarty
2006
A popular TV program in the U.S. called Nightline recently ran a segment on how comfortable people in our modern society are becoming with the practice of lying.
In an earlier age, deceiving others as to the truth of things was considered a pretty classless, immoral thing to do. But apparently, there has been some sort of seismic shift in the way we look at truth and facts, as though they have somehow been disconnected from any concept of honour in our modern world. Appearances now, it seems, trump reality. (Note: I wrote this in 2006, not knowing how “trump reality” would take on a new meaning in another 10 years.)
How easily we shrug our shoulders these days both when we ourselves tell a whopper and when the other guy lies through his teeth. Nightline produced a few examples, such as people padding their resumés when applying for jobs and students cheating in a hundred and one ways rather than doing the work required of them by their teachers. If a bit of b.s. will push us along the path we want to go, it seems a growing number of us are perfectly OK with that.
Or at least it doesn’t bother us as much as it might once have. An amusing example of Nightline’s thesis was a survey that was done on people who can be seen talking on their cellphones in public. Apparently, and I’m not sure how such a figure could be arrived at (hopefully Nightline wasn’t lying about this or lied to by the cellphone users), something like 35 per cent of all the people we see supposedly talking on their cells are speaking to no one on the other end of the line. Those bogus conversations are all for show, so the owners of the phone can look cool, important, etc.
We all have our secrets but withholding those, as far as I’m concerned, is a lot different from lying. Those fall more into the realm of privacy and unless we’re breaking laws by withholding information, we should be allowed to hang onto a few bits without divulging all.
When I was teaching journalism to students in their late teens and early 20s, I encountered the odd bad apple who sometimes chose expediency over honesty and honour if their backs were against the wall. Typically, they’d turn in work they didn’t do themselves and in a couple of celebrated cases, these fledgling reporters went ahead and made up interviews with non-existent people. I used to check out some of these “sources” and it didn’t take long to prove how bogus they were. In one case, I phoned up a real doctor who was quoted all through a story. He told me he’d never heard of the student who had apparently interviewed him.
A bit shocking, at first, to know that some people have that much nerve, but then, I’m probably pretty naive about the ways of the world. When U.S. presidents and Canadian political parties think nothing of playing fast and loose with the facts, it shouldn’t surprise us I guess that the ethical bar keeps getting lowered for the rest of us.
When I was a kid, I didn’t always tell the truth. Maybe that’s a kid thing. It was rare for me, however, to totally make up things. As I often hear others say about themselves, I was not a good liar. My body language would give me away too easily and although I’m a reasonably good storyteller, under pressure I’m not very good at all. Exaggeration, however, was my forte.
These days, I usually can’t be bothered to tell anything but the truth, even though I concede there are times when being totally honest is not in a person’s best interest. Nevertheless, the other day I was shocked to hear myself tell someone something that wasn’t entirely true. Where did that come from, I wondered.
But if you see me on my cellphone, I swear, there’s somebody on the other end of the line. Somebody important, of course. Like me.
By Jim Hagarty
1991
I think one of the simplest and best ways to get a really good idea of just how complicated our world is becoming is to spend a few minutes in the light-bulb section of a building-supplies store.
A half hour spent contemplating what has happened to artificial light can give a person more insight into what’s happening to people than five years in a university sociology course. In the old days, a bulb was a bulb. There were two kinds – incandescent and fluorescent. The incandescent was the most popular and came in a limited range of wattages from seven (Christmas lights) to several hundred. Fluorescents came in long thin tubes and circular tubes.
That was about it. Oh, you had your special-purpose bulbs for fridges and aquariums but you’d be hard-pressed to have a personal crisis trying to decide what kind to buy. Into the shopping cart with the cornflakes and the cookies would go a package or two of 40-watters and 60-watters and when one burned out, it would be promptly replaced with another.
In fact, changing a light bulb was so easy way back when that it became a favourite theme for jokes. “How many cigar-store owners does it take to change a light bulb?” would go the question. Today, that joke is quickly becoming as obsolete as the 100-watt bulb because nothing is simple about lighting any more.
There are compact fluorescent bulbs which screw into the same sockets as their incandescent cousins and use about one quarter of the electricity. But they come in a dozen shapes and sizes and wattages. There are halogen bulbs which use less energy while giving a stronger, whiter light but they have their own special uses and requirements. There are “warm white” fluorescent tubes which soften the perceived coldness of the traditional “neon” tubes. Then there are energy-saving fluorescent tubes which use 34 watts instead of 40 and 18 instead of 20. There are also energy-saving incandescent bulbs that use 52 watts instead of 60, and 90 watts rather than 100.
It is possible now and very easy to rig all lights, both inside and out, to come on when it gets dark and to go off when the sun comes up. Also available are lights that come on when they sense motion. There are also solar lights for the back yard. There are even solar flashlights. Then there are low-wattage “moonray” lights for decks and patios.
We are a nation obsessed with beating back the darkness. How on earth do the Old Order Amish get by?
But then in the old days, there were only a few types of people, too. Specialization had not yet set in. There were men and women. Boys and girls. Old people. And young people. That was about it.
Now we come in so many shapes and sizes and descriptions, it is hard to fit the person to the purpose. Like the light-bulb section of the supermarket, we are grouped into categories according to our special abilities and needs, functions and limitations. We prefer to be known by how we differ from the other bulbs on the shelf.
But through all this energy we’re using and expending, is our light getting brighter? Or burning out?
How many people of the ’90s does it take to change a light bulb?
One.
He just holds the bulb and the whole world revolves around him.
And how many folksingers does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to change the bulb and one to write a song about how great the old bulb was.
In the nineties, I changed almost every bulb in our house from incandescent to fluorescent. Now, in 2017, I am almost done switching all my compact fluorescents to the amazing LED bulbs. They are cheaper to buy and operate and they last as long as one of my sweatshirts which is about 20 years.
By Jim Hagarty
2011
You try to hang onto a little bit of your former coolness as the years fly by, as hard a task as that is, and when a Grade 9 student asks if she can take your hat to school to show the other students, you feel kinda proud of yourself. You aren’t exactly like all the other dads and that makes you smile inside.
“Why do you want to take my hat?” you ask, just to hear her say she wants to impress her friends with her Dad’s cool choice of chapeau. But, alas, that isn’t it at all.
“It’s for history class,” she says. “We’re doing a segment on how people dressed in the forties and fifties and your hat is exactly the kind that paper boys from back then wore.”
Your mid-life crisis is long behind you so this only hurts a little. But when history students are examining your wardrobe like archaeologists sifting through Tut’s tomb, it might be time for an extreme makeover.
By Jim Hagarty
2013
I was in the offices of a bank today and noticed something funny. Behind the smiling tellers at the long counter were a number of big windows, must have been eight or nine feet tall. About four of them. The vertical blinds were drawn on them all so no one could see out – or in. But in front of the windows were three huge flatscreen TVs, all connected so that they sort of operated as one big screen, with images able to appear on all three at the same time. I don’t know how that works but then again, I don’t know how marshmallows are made so I’m easily impressed.
In any case, the photo that appeared across all three screens was a lovely shot of a blue sky with white clouds floating in it. And I thought, “Why not just open the blinds and let everyone see actual sky and clouds.”
But what do I know about banking? (See marshmallow mystery above).
It’s the strangest thing to me, now, how businesses are using expensive flat screen TVs as wallpaper. I guess you don’t have to use as much glue that way.
By Jim Hagarty
2007
Have I mentioned that nothing in life is simple any more?
When I got my first typewriter in 1969, a machine I still own and which is a hit with my kids, I took it out of the box, set it down on the table and started typewriting. Words appeared instantly on paper. There was no printer to hook up to. The typewriter was the printer. There was no word-processing program to learn. Ten fingers, a bunch of keys, and away we go. About as word perfect as you could get.
But times change. And you know what?
I was never so glad when the day came that I could put that stupid typewriter away for good. Being a manual machine, it was a pain in many, many ways and one particular part of the anatomy. Only later, as a daily newspaper at The Beacon Herald in Stratford, was I introduced to the marvels of the IBM Selectrix, which was the Rolls Royce of electric typewriters. If you breathed too heavily on a key, it slammed the paper. Goodbye calloused fingers.
Even better, at weekly Mitchell Advocate, was a huge “Compugraphic” computer with a little black screen the size of an oversized cigarette pack. The letters glowed green, the screen was pitch black. It was love at first sight.
And now, computers rule and I love everything about them. They get simpler all the time and can accomplish amazing tasks. I wonder if those too young to remember when there were no computers, no Internet and no email can fully appreciate the amazing abilities of these little wired boxes. And I know only a little of what they can actually do.
However, computers can also drive a man crazy nuts when they won’t do what they’re supposed to do and when the world seems helpless to save him.
This week I bought an Internet router. Brought it home and hooked it up to the two computers that sit side-by-side in our kitchen. Its light flickered prettily on, but it performed nothing of what was promised on the box. Helpfully, however, there was the 24/7 support line which I immediately called. I feel very sorry for the woman I reached and I’m pretty sure she feels sorry for herself now too.
We faced three big problems. I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t understand her. And I couldn’t follow any of her instructions. Somehow, despite all this, we got Computer A up and running. Computer B was a different story. She earned her paycheque and I earned a few more grey hairs but still no Internet. She gave me a reference number, told me to call back sometime and hung up. Ran from the building, I am sure.
So, I phoned back. Got some poor young man who now wishes he had gotten into veterinary science or hairdressing instead of computers. He tried. He really did. But finally told me to phone my computer company.
I tried my Internet provider. The woman there was sympathetic, but perplexed. But as I was speaking to her, I saw something fishy. An unplugged USB cord.
You know, computers aren’t that complicated alter all!
Technological idiots? Very complex creatures. No connections to plug in. Impervious to helplines.
Almost word imperfect.
