10/4/02015

Weekly Update 10/4/2015

My coffee pot broke this week. A tragedy, really, as I NEED my coffee when I first crawl out of bed. In a stunning turn of events, I put some dishes in the dishwasher (I like to run it occasionally to be sure it still works) and when I took the coffee pot out, there was a hole in the bottom and a small piece of glass near the drain in the dishwasher. So that required a trip to the Walmart. I was undecided about whether to replace just the pot, or buy a whole new coffee maker. Mr Coffee costs only $17 new. A Keurig is expensive, but there was a small off-brand unit that would have worked which was quite a bit less expensive. But when it came right down to it, I just bought a new replacement pot. That's one less perfectly good coffee maker in the landfill.

TLC lecture this week was on the Jews in Savannah, and a little history of Jews in Europe, where they came from. The rabbi at Temple Mickve gave the talk, and he was very informative, and humorous. Next week we will visit the temple, and although I've been to the site a few times, I'm looking for ward to that.

Thursday, I attended a talk given Georgia Historian Stan Deaton in association with the Georgia History Festival. The title was The Birth of the American Dream: How the Real Mad Men Changed the World. I'm rather used to viewing Georgia history from the colonial times, but this focused on the era from the end of WWII to about 1965, when advertisers were influencing Americans to determine their self-worth by what they owned. He pointed out such men as Alfred P Sloan (CEO of GM who promoted the idea of planned obsolescence - that new design in automobiles would create a longing for a new car every few years), Harley Earl (a designer at GM, who thought that what a car LOOKED like was more important than just being a mode of transportation), William Levitt (real estate developer who gave us Levittowns, communities of cookie-cutter affordable homes in the suburbs), the McDonald brothers (we all know what McDonald's is), Rosser Reeves (the model for Don Draper, Reeves remodeled advertising with his USP - Unique Selling Proposition - 30 and 60 soundbites that would sell products with a catchy slogan, not on the merits of the products) . And continuing to the present time, Dr Deaton mentioned that facebook makes each of us our own PR firm - we advertise ourselves in a way to “sell” our best images in quick, frequent “posts”. Interesting.

I met with a few of my friends here at MP at the clubhouse for wine, crackers, and talk one evening this week. Donna Waite was entertaining a friend from California, so a few of got together to meet her and visit. It's nice to do that. 
 

Friday was DH, but since Donna was in Florida for a wedding, I didn't go to The 90; I just went back home after my tours. Lisa and Dave were coming back from UK, but got stuck in NYC because their flight out of JFK was canceled due to bad weather all along the coast. We had planned to meet for coffee Saturday morning, but that didn't work out as they were still in Atlanta. Then we thought we might get together at The Rail or on River Street, but it was raining for most of the day. I didn't get to see them until they walked into Coach's on Sunday afternoon. All the games sucked - every one of them. It was so depressing. Sunday evening was the annual Picnic in the Park that I have enjoyed in other years. I met Kay and her son, Adam, and Anne and Andrew Nedd there. We had some wine and snacks, and listened to the wonderful Savannah Philharmonic orchestra. If it hadn't started to sprinkle, it would have been a wonderful evening. 

 

It has been raining a lot here, but nothing like is hitting Charleston and the rest of SC. We've had a lot of rain, and the ground is saturated. On top of that, the tides are very high because of the full moon and the autumn solstice. Route 80 out to Tybee Island was closed a few times because water was over the road. President Street, my main route into the city, had a lane closed on Thursday because of flooding. I heard that a few other streets were closed, too.