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Post Office Boxes
If you have a dead person in your life and have been appointed executor of their estate, there's a tip I want to offer that predates this blog and hasn't occurred to me for almost 25 years. It is this: Open a post office box for the decedent's estate. Bonus: If you are not an executor but you have made a contribution to a charity in which you are otherwise uninterested in honor of the deceased, the PO Box—if still extant—is also valuable. Why? Charities and governments are relentless. They will send you postal mail not for months or years, but for over a decade. Ignoring exhortations to renew your box lease frees you from constant reminders and imparts a measure of finality.
Why do I mention this now? Why did I just call an old friend from whom I hadn't heard despite sending him a couple of emails? I could start to explain by pointing to the obituaries I have written in the last year. Almost all are for people I had known for most of a lifetime*. I'm concerned that The System is working overtime and my words and suggestions are a small, futile, and pointless exercise in resistance.
From the End of Life to the Beginning
We had occasion to visit a nearby Social Security office a few weeks ago to commit acts of bureaucracy, and there was a signboard on the wall annunciating one's appointment number and which window to attend. The remainder of the display listed popular baby names, male and female, in festive alternation. Not having occasion to review this information even once per generation, I was surprised to see how it failed to comport with my memory. Almost 20 years ago the radio was constantly playing a song called 27 Jennifers by Mike Doughty. The ubiquity of Jennifers was obvious without the song; fortunately they were all swept up by the Jasons and Aydins, but it did call attention to the naming trend. Jennifer was the most popular female baby name in 1984; it took Doughty a while to notice and even longer to write the hit song.
In the social security office, I was surprised to see Jennifer had not only dropped out of the top 10 but wasn't to be found in the top 100. According to my "research" it didn't even make the top 1000 in 2024. What has replaced it? Olivia! On the male side, now that the Aydins and Zachs have supplanted the Jenniferically ubiquitous Michaels, I have found to my surprise a surfeit of biblical names. From Zebadiah to Abraham, with Ezras and Ezekiels in between. (This isn't official; it's my own observation that they seem particularly popular with contractor employees!)
Here's an Old AND New
| Fifty years ago I designed a product called the Omnipressor®, which arrived in the world with no special acclaim and sold modestly. My buddy Jon Paul redesigned it a few years later and improved it greatly. It also sold modestly. Eventide has re-released this project with modern hardware and a number of improvements. My contribution to the redesign was tacking on a *Au to the model number to signify its 50th anniversary. If you're in the audio recording or production business, you might find it interesting. It still modifies audio in a unique manner despite the intervening years of invention and progress. |
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* Theirs and mine |
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