A (BELATED) 10TH ANNIVERSARY

AGG!! IT SLIPPED MY MIND back in mid-August, but this celebrated the tenth anniversary of SimanaitisSays—count them 10! And they said I’d run out of things to say. Ha.

Here, belatedly, are high points from the website’s past year. They range from political to cultural, personal to scientific, and even downright philosophical. 

Politics. My Republican icon seems destined to require continued use, given “Legitimate Political Discourse??” February 8, 2022, and On the Advising of Ethics,” June 18, 2022.

Given the famous image of our poor-loser/buffoon-in-chief getting on Air Force One, it’s no surprise to learn that he has been flushing God knows what down the toilet. 

Culture. “Johann Sebastian Bach—Comedic Barista,” February 21, 2022, displayed my love of Bach’s music, if not particularly of his celebrated beverage.

And, with album covers in mind, how can we forget those described in “Life-Changing Liner Notes/Album Covers, Parts 1 and 2? August 6, 2022.

Special merit to the Westminster Gold Series for taking the stuffy implications out of the word “classical.”

On a Personal Note. Dear Wife Dottie died on September 21, 2021, after living courageously with COPD for ten years. I noted her passing here at SimanaitisSays, November 23, 2021.

Covid precluded holding any memorial services back then. And though a Celebration of Life was planned for July 23, 2022, Covid Omicron transformed that get-together into an “Around the World in Eighty Years” here at SimanaitisSays that day. This is one of the five montages assembled from her most adventurous life. 

Science/Medicine. By late last year, cataracts were interfering with my vision to the point that surgery was called for. Reporting of its quite amazing success came in “My New Eyes., January 18, 2022.

My new eyes continue to test out as 20/15; that is, my distance vision is considerably better than average. And, by choice of “basic lenses,” I still get to wear my round-frame glasses for reading and computing. 

Philosophy. From time to time, I have encounters with philosophy. Often, the latter wins because deep down, I’m told, I’m shallow.

No matter, though. Occasionally I find encouragement in the oddest of places, like my AAAS Science magazine: “Deism—Through a Computer Hard Drive?” February 17, 2022, addressed virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy. It also taught me the difference between Deism (as practiced by our Founding Fathers) and Theism (the belief that God directly intervenes in human affairs). That is, one can believe in God without being God-fearing.

And then there’s Existentialism. In my formative philosophical years, Jean-Paul Sartre was all the rage. I was studying French, alors….

Recently I found significant overlap with a book I’ve been savoring, The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler’s classic edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto. Out of this came “Existentialism, Noir, and The Big Sleep” here at SimanaitisSays, August 29, 2022. 

By the way, Turner Classic Movies has recently broadcast the Bogart/Bacall classic. And, on an utterly irrelevant note, TCM also recently ran Pandora’s Box, a 1929 silent film that eventually evolved into Alban Berg’s opera Lulu.

Who said I’d ever run out of topics for SimanaitisSays? Stick around for the 11th anniversary to see. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2022