It’s National Beer Day!

Don’t say I never post anything useful.  Here’s an article with tips on how to do laundry.

The last square root day was 4-4-16.  The next one will be 5-5-25.  There are nine in each century.  Now you know.

I remember where I was when I heard that Dr. King passed away.  The events that I recall that way are:

The Kennedy assassination was a lot more shocking then than it would be today when there is so much gun violence.  We were sent home from school.  Maybe they thought Oswald was going to come to New York and shoot us.

Dr. King’s assassination was in the evening.  Our junior high school had an annual event called spaghetti night where the parents came to school in the evening.  That’s where we found out.

I remember going into my parents’ bedroom to watch the astronauts walking on the moon – they had a black and white TV that was probably 15 inches, certainly no more than 19 inches.

This is a fascinating chart by the Pew Research Center showing what each generation thinks were the most memorable events in their lifetime.  Notice that everyone agrees on 9/11 no matter how old they were.  Now we have almost a generation of people who weren’t alive for it.

I have found that there is nothing like living through an event.  I can’t explain how these major events felt in a way that would really make you understand them if you didn’t live them.  On the other hand, they provide a common experience for all of us who did live through them.  Just as I can’t really convey the Kennedy assassination to young people, I now realize that my parents thought that we didn’t understand the Depression and World War II.  They were right.

On a lighter note:

I was in a class at work about working in a multi-generational workforce.  You had to write down three events important to your generation and pass your paper to someone else at your table to read.

A young black woman had included the assassination of Biggie and Tupac (which she spelled as 2Pac).  An older white guy read it aloud as the assassination of ZPac.  Lol.  I don’t know any of Tupac’s songs but I know who he was and would recognize his picture.  We should all know who important people were.

The controversy over Trump’s “shithole” comments has revived interest in cursing by prior presidents.

My favorite story concerns Andrew Jackson’s parrot.  It attended his funeral but was removed because it was cursing.  You can find lots of articles online with the basic story but none that show what the parrot said.  I guess we’ll never know. The story has not been authenticated.

The only commercials you see people my age in are ones for people with medical problems.   I’m not too old to have fun like young people.

You know all those skinny young people you see in beer commercials?  They can’t be beer drinkers.  You cannot drink beer and stay that thin.  This is based on personal experience.

In the 1970s, Iron City Beer had commercials featuring a middle-aged guy, Al Luccioni.     Al looks like he drinks beer.

I have a proposal to change the NFL rule for determining who gets the ball to start overtime in NFL games.  Instead of a random selection by coin flip, the ball should go to the team that had the ball at the end of the fourth quarter.  They should also get the ball at the spot where it was at the end of the fourth quarter.  The team with the ball has earned the right to keep the ball and field position.