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Op-Ed Page. A place for opinions, observations, and whatever.

Anything goes here. Feel free to contribute as often as you like. You only get your picture once, however. Email webmaster, or better yet, tell on the Guest Book, and I will move them to here if you let me know you intend to add to op ed.

Dave Klein - The Federal Gov't, around 2003, sent out a safety advisory warning employees of the hazard of falling out of one's chair in the office. I have always enjoyed Dilbert and really get a kick from the rage he can create among certain mid- and upper-level Management. That is, the ones that can understand cartoons.
I can also attest to the Gov't practice of spending everything in the budget so as not to get less next year. Around the end of 1991, I was told my share of budget for supplies was $17, and to spend it! After searching the catalog I ordered a 12" X 36" Cork Bulletin Board for my work area. A REAL useful tool.

Chuck Cooper - (CBC) Government has taken another vital step to protect your privacy. Remember how a year or two ago your doctor visit required several pages of extra paperwork, regarding who could find out how you were? Well now another page is required, giving the nurse permission to call your name when it is your turn. I was told that if you didn't sign the nurse would have to walk around the room whispering to individuals that looked like they might be you. Fortunately nobody had ever refused to sign.

Please, if you have the chutzpah to refuse to sign, please report here what happened!

Circulating - The advantages of aging:
- Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
- People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
- Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.
- Your supply of brain cells is finally down to a manageable number.
- No one expects you to run into a burning building.
- There's nothing left to learn the hard way.
- Your joints are more accurate than the National Weather Service.
- In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.

CBC- Under social security now, the people who had the higher income receive a lot more than those that enjoyed lower lifetime earnings. Bush has proposed something that should be dear to liberal hearts, pay everyone the same (approx, after taxes). People that probably need it the most get more, the more fortunate, less. And it extends the solvency of the SS system for many years. Did the Democrats jump on that? No way. If it is a Bush proposal it is no good, regardless of the merits.

Please note that I express no opinion on the proposal. While not feckless, not stupid either. What is your view?

 

Anonymous entry from a member of the class of 1957. So - the deal about High School is that everyone remembers the class ahead of them (the cool folks you wanted to be) and no one remembers the class behind them (pesky kids). Probably true. I remember a lot of folks from the Class of 56-a lot of tall, great looking people. Babs and Sonny. Dutzie. Marylou McClung. David Anabel. Sassie. Patty Ranft. Frank Wolf. Punky Esping. Lola LeMieux (okay, not tall, but what an amazing name) - Chuck Cooper!
I remember no one from the class of 58, but I ran into one about four years after I graduated and he informed me that I had said something really mean and hurtful to him at Highline. Probably this is why we don't remember those pesky kids.
The Pirates Log pictures have clearly been photo-shopped to give everyone much, much worse hair - nobody had hair like that. But I think everyone did wear those letter sweaters, and white middy blouses, and clearly everyone (I'm gazing at the Pledge of Allegiance shot) was much more pious and demure than kids today. Had our James Dean already been arrested? Dropped out? He wasn't on drugs. We lived in Burien.
Probably Mr. Johnson, Bertie Davis, Miss Gibson and all those folks had quite a different take. One more set of adolescents, know-it-alls, passing through. They can't leave soon enough. (I saw Miss Gibson this summer in Des Moines, and she seems somehow to have become about my age….how did that happen?)
So - the other deal is that people who were out of it in high school show up at reunions if they become successful (popular) eventually. Also, people who were really popular in high school show up because they still think they are popular. (Insight: Popularity is everything is clearly the lesson of high school. Becoming a physicist at a top University-Paul Boynton in my class-cuts no ice in the great cosmic scheme of things.) Nothing erases the high school imprint; you have to move into an alternative universe. (The person in my class who we should all have known was gay moved to the East Coast pronto and got on with it. Smart1)
And just as we change, the school itself, and the neighborhood, also change. For a job I had about five years ago I was checking high school free lunch data ( a pretty good indicator of poverty) and Highline is right up there. The immediate Burien area now has lots of folks whose first language is Spanish. And in addition to not being able to get to the school any more because of confusing new freeways, the building is totally reworked. You will not be able to find your old locker (so your dream about forgetting the combination was useless. Worry about something else). Burien now has giant flower pots hanging from poles-a desperate attempt to turn the place into a 'destination." The planters look good, but one wonders. Our McDonalds is a Taco Bell. Bells of Burien (I think, as I write this, that Diana Bell was in the class of 58 - and went to Stanford) is long gone - nothing is as we left it. It's like a lot of other places.
But then, let's face it -we're old. Sorry folks, but there it is. We've become senior citizens. Each of us makes something different of that good news/bad news term. I think it's a relief that we cannot go to our lockers, walk the old halls, and live the old dream. What do you think?
Highliner 57

CBC - To anonymous. An interesting take, but not mine. My annuals have more notes from the class behind than from the one ahead (and thanks for all the "good luck wishes" people, it sure worked). And what was wrong with the hair? And demure? And who worried about popularity, except maybe with one girl at at time? For the record, Linda Walker refused to date me because she was a class ahead (even if only a few weeks older). She said it had nothing to do with popular, or "me", and I believe her. And I would like to visit my old locker, walk the old halls, and see if things still match the vivid memories. And old? Not yet kid, I'll let you know when!