Submit
I’ve seen these hundreds, nay, thousands of times on websites, but only recently did the truly ominous implication strike me so bluntly. It’s like the ultimate personal surrender, the terminal consignment of self, the final relinquishment of free will. You either SUBMIT or you don’t, there are no options, there’s no in-between. There’s often small print at the bottom that says something similar to this one. As is well known, understood, and expected, nobody clicks off to some other page to read whatever it is before they SUBMIT. Maybe you should think about it. I’m going to. Even so, there’s still no guarantee that what one is about to SUBMIT to will have anything to do with one’s expectations. Just remember, once you SUBMIT, THAT’S IT. Have you ever seen an UN-SUBMIT button afterwards? I didn’t think so.
Signs of the Apocalypse
(1) First there was the election on Tuesday. Or, perhaps I should say, the attempted election. Because nobody got elected and, two days later, still nobody is elected. In itself that wouldn’t be especially significant. What’s scary is that each side has shown little to no respect for the proportion of the electorate represented by the other side, both showing unprecedented motivation to get out and vote according to their conscience. One side still refers to the other as thieves, one side still refers to the other as rubes. They may use different words, but the attitude and, more importantly, the lack of respect, for the other side has not changed despite each side’s showing of the intensity and importance of their beliefs and philosophies. In particular, half the country, most of the media, and all of those schooled in “fine arts” and it’s lesser school, “entertainment”, appears set to persist in treating the other half as misguided misogynistic racist red-necked un-enlightened un-sophisticated rubes. A small percentage may fit that description, the vast majority do not but are, rather, driven by perhaps old-fashioned but nevertheless fundamental and legitimate principles of conscience and morality. Their candidate may have been an unfortunate champion, but their principles are due equal respect to those espoused by the other side. Until such respect is manifested, on both sides, the Apocalypse can be seen poised on the horizon.
(2) Second, when we woke up this morning there was no electricity. They got it restored in about three hours. Not a major inconvenience. It happens two or three times a year.
(3) This afternoon the water stopped without warning. After calling the city and negotiating through the automated switchboard, we were informed there had been a water main break in the neighborhood. This was a relief, inasmuch as it didn’t fall upon us to call a plumber for repairs at our expense. But the anticipated restoration will be near bedtime tonight. So, all activities requiring water in the home will be on hold for several hours. Not a major inconvenience, except maybe with respect to toilets. In contrast to loss of electricity, loss of water hasn’t happened in years. In fact, we can’t remember it ever happening before.
None of the above by itself would necessarily signal calamity, except maybe #1 though I tended to be mostly entertained by the situation despite the survival of the country being at stake. I figure we all lose whichever way it goes. But, to then suffer loss of both electricity and water the same day, I think the coincidence of signs makes it quite evident. The Apocalypse is more than poised, it is nigh.
Wasted Effort
December 28, 2020
Family Matters, Memory Lane, Rants
Comments Off on Wasted Effort
John
The Chappell Family Website was created circa. 2002. The domain was set up to utilize what was at the time a new Google feature that’s now called Workspaces. Everybody in the family was assigned their own “@chappells.us” account which they could log into for email (on the Gmail platform) and other features, as well as logins to this blog so they could post and share information, stories, pictures, and whatever with the family. I was interested in what the others were doing, for one thing, and also thought it would help to bond familial relationships which were, at the time, strained in certain respects. This was before the advent of Facebook. As time went by, the website’s creator was essentially the only contributor or visitor. When Facebook came along family members hopped onto it with their own pages. The Chappell Family Website creator briefly considered creating a family Facebook page to complement the family website, but the notion was easily dispatched as having no more potential for interest than the website.
One of these days I’ll be gone. Within a year after that happens the website’s hosting account will expire for want of anybody interested in renewing it, the domain registration will likewise expire, and the Chappell Family Website will be history. I suppose it may be preserved to some extent on the Internet Wayback Machine, should anybody ever care to look for it. So, one might ask, has it been a wasted effort? Nah. I’ll save it on a CD or something before I die and give it to the kids, along with the old-fashioned family photo albums. Then I’ll die and it will all be of no further interest to me. Maybe it was never anything more than a personal project of interest only to me. If so, I found the effort, and the product of it, to be personally very satisfying. Especially gratifying have been those occasions when “distant” relatives found the website and contacted me, especially since they nearly all reached out from the United Kingdom, whence my grandfather emigrated to the USA in 1895. He kept virtually all knowledge of his British roots and family to himself and, with the exception of a few letters, photos and clippings that I found more than 50 years after his death, took it to the grave with him.
As I find myself approaching the end of life, I take a kind of comfort in having learned what I could about the family and its history, and in having attempted to preserve and share it on this website, however futile the effort may have been. It occurs to me that the way the internet, technology, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) are developing, anything that has been on the web will, unless humanity destroys itself, remain there and probably become more accessible, rather than less. Descendants of my grandfather’s ancestors who might be curious about such things may well find find this website in the Internet Archives and enjoy, as much as I have, learning about the Chappell Family. I do regret, though, that I never visited England, never hiked about Hillesley, never met any of the U.K. relatives in person, never shared tea with anyone there. Well, who knows? Perhaps the next time ’round.