Captain Obvious

Released in 1964, Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” is one of the most culturally important songs to emerge out of the 20th century. It’s Paul Simon lamenting his fellow man’s inability to communicate on an emotional level, fostering a generation that doesn’t know how to love, and came hot on the heels of both the Civil Rights Movement and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.   The simplicity of   “The Sound of Silence” – just the voices of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel with Paul’s acoustic guitar accompanying them – is what makes this classic so incredibly powerful, standing the test of time nearly half a century after its release.

Only the most callous person can fail to be moved by the song’s simple truth. We all need each other … well, if we were really honest with ourselves, we would admit that. The waters are troubled these days. The information age has covered us with things that can give us sleepless nights. The one thing the information age has not given us is “true connectedness” … we are more disconnected emotionally than ever before … distracted by the sense that we are somehow connected digitally.
As someone on Facebook posted the final performance of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by these two iconic professionals, it struck me how prophetic the lyrics were.

Please enjoy this final performance: Click Here
I was attending Rennselaer when they performed on campus. I can still remember how powerful their music was. However, I must admit today that I didn’t realize how accurate their poetry was. They were, and still are, modern day prophets. Their lyrics could be some of the best reflection of the New Testament story for today.
The short segment below is from “The Sound of Silence.” While each and every word is profound, it struck me that this short passage says it all about where we are:

“And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared, and no one dared
To stir the sound of silence”

We should all just take a deep breath and ponder this just a bit more deeply. It is time to build those bridges … no … it is long overdue that we all work harder at building bridges. There is plenty of troubled water. There is much to do.

Groundhog Day is a traditional holiday celebrated each year on February 2.

According to folklore, if it is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day, the spring season will come early. However, if it is sunny, the groundhog will supposedly see its shadow and retreat back into its den and winter weather will persist for six more weeks. If you saw the news this year, you know that an early spring is predicted. We will see.

 
Groundhog Day was adopted in the U.S. in 1887. Clymer H. Freas was the editor of the local paper Punxsutawney Spirit at the time, and he began promoting the town’s groundhog as the official “Groundhog Day meteorologist.” The largest Groundhog Day celebration is held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, starring Punxsutawney Phil.

 
Perhaps we need a mascot to give people a fun, folksy way of passing the time, talking about the future, and not simply staying in our burros? There is something cathartic about silly exercises like this, especially when you can associate it with cute animals.

 
Where is Reddy Kilowatt when you really need him? Can we locate Willie Wiredhand? Oh … that’s right … at least we now have, unafraid to predict the future, and way more reliable than Phil, Captain Obvious!

There are almost no times that I really want to be or to act like a tourist, but recently I found myself in an area that caters to them. My hotel featured a “kitchen tour.” So, given I love to cook, I thought this might be a good diversion given I was there over the weekend. And, since they have to serve so many people with such varied tastes, I thought I might get some ideas for serving my friends when they visit and have the same characteristics.

 
The chief chef commented that the variations in the daily tasks were enormous given the natural freedoms of their guests to choose dining venues in the area and of course have many points of view about food choice. The day we visited, he knew rather accurately what the evening numbers would be, and based upon past similar evenings, he felt he had a good bead on the amount of fish and other highly perishable ingredients he needed to be sure he pleased all the diners.

 
As he led the tour group around the kitchen, he commented on how each area was organized and how the teams communicated. Obviously, there was nothing left to chance. Everyone knew their job and how their jobs interrelated. He showed how complex dishes were prepared and how even one unnecessary walking step was eliminated to reduce time.

 
What stunned me was his role in the evening meal. Every single dish that went out of the kitchen was inspected and he said he might add a garnish, decoration, or “flair” to the presentation that would make it memorable. No dish was allowed to leave the kitchen without him reviewing it … every single dish.

 
In this way, he could best coach anyone who had not been doing their jobs. He did not rely on supervisors to tell him what was going on.

 
Interesting model. And, it may be the reason that their revenues and profitability have improved year-on-year, and why this hotel is one of the most attractive and popular destinations for travelers with options for where they stay.

My recent blog about the tenacity and creativity of a squirrel in our backyard has evidently prompted others to post things about these critters. I have to thank Louise Mormon for posting this on her Facebook page. As she points out, many utility key account representatives kept dead squirrels in the trunk to use when managing customer outage complaints.

Read the Washington Post article regarding squirrels

This reminds me of a true story I was told by a key account rep with a New York State utility who attempted to stop these critters by building a fence around the transformer and then plating it with stainless steel so that the squirrels could not climb the sides. That part of the plan worked well, but as the key account rep was proclaiming success with his client, they all watched a family of squirrels come in via the high side electrical wires.
I can almost imagine the squirrel to squirrel conversation, which probably went a bit like this:

“Boy am I glad those utility dudes built this fine fence to keep snakes and other varmints out of here!”

I was cruising through my Facebook page to see if there was anything interesting and this picture of a squirrel caught my eye. Perhaps you have had the same experiences we have with these incredibly clever creatures.

 
When we first built our house 20 years ago, we thought it would be nice to attract more birds to our back yard with a bird feeder. Since squirrels are so numerous here, we also looked for a bird feeder that was “squirrel proof.” Back then, we couldn’t go online and read what others had experienced here so we used our own intuition.

 
The one we bought had all kinds of features that would ostensibly make it squirrel-proof, but apparently, no one told the squirrels who gleefully scampered up the pole. So, given the pole was metal, I applied to my chemical engineering and scientific background: grease the pole. That would certainly do it.

 
To our delight, we watched two squirrels try to climb the pole and fail for over an hour that day. Then, as we were sitting there on the deck, I noticed one of the squirrels had climbed the nearby tree, walked out on a very thin branch … and was hanging, triangulating directly above the bird feeder.

 
Perhaps also waiting for no breeze to ruin the attempt, the squirrel dropped a full 20 feet from that branch squarely on the top of the feeder … which rocked back and forth for almost a minute. Then, as if the character Rambo from an old Silvester Stallone movie, proceeded to empty the entire feeder onto the ground so that all the family and friends could enjoy the fruit of his labors.

 
So, what should we all learn here beyond the simple fact that there really is no such thing as a squirrel proof feeder? When you really want something, you have to think beyond the obvious and then take some real risks.

 

Squirrels seem especially good at this.

 
Hope your New Year is full of new ideas and the determination to put them into action.