This is the anniversary of the opening of the Disneyland Monorail System in 1959.

I’m old enough to remember when monorails were the future of transportation. Back when I was nine I knew that by the time I became the age I am now, I would be zipping to and fro in a sleek bullet shaped train that glides on a single rail between gleaming skyscrapers that were all monuments to my greatness.

I never paused to wonder why such a great personage as myself would be traveling with the unwashed masses on the monorail.

Today, monorails seem to be doing all right in Asia and Las Vegas, but elsewhere, like at the Minnesota Zoo and in Sydney, Australia, they are on the way out.

Too bad, since I have a working HO scale model of Sydney’s Darling Harbor Monorail boxed up in my basement.

Most things, (the weather, the stock market, the Kentucky Derby, our transit choices in the next century) are hard to predict.

How will we travel 100 years from today?

I was intrigued by this article about the ongoing effort to document theater productions in New York by making archival videos. For many reasons this is a superb idea, and it would be great fun to have this as your job – capturing timeless performances to inform the work of artists of today and tomorrow.

Of course it’s one thing to do this as a line of paid work and quite another to attempt to make a video and photographic record of your own life and the lives of your loved ones. That can turn out to be time consuming and more than a little wonky. I am guilty of the Cam Dad Syndrome. I spent too much time watching my son growing up through a viewfinder rather than just watching him grow up. And now I’m left with many hours of videotape that must be transferred to digital memory and organized for posterity, though as a 23 year old man with important work to do and lots of obligations, I’m fairly certain he does not want to spend much time in front of the TV, watching himself cavort around the yard as a carefree 7 year old.

Not right now, anyway.

But there is a basic watcher/doer conflict there. You can record your activities for posterity, or you can do things worth remembering.

But you can’t do both at the same time.

What kind of visual record will you leave behind?

Today’s post comes from living and loving expert and relationships thought leader B. Marty Barry.

Dear Readers,

I want to assure you that although I’ve never met you, I deeply care about each and every one of you very, very much! This simple act of caring is so powerful and life-changing, I’ve always been surprised it doesn’t get more attention at the highest levels of society – particularly among our governmental leadership.

But now I’m encouraged to see this changing with the latest news out of Washington that some national agencies are collecting data from our phone calls, Facebook posts and Google searches. I see it as a welcome sign that government has finally realized there is something crucial missing from so many lives – an expression of interest!

So many of us simply want to be acknowledged.

Oh, some presidents have said “I feel your pain”. Well, at least one said it. Critics poo-poo that kind of sentiment, trying to minimize the significance as a cheap gesture by saying it’s “just words”. But words are powerful! And it matters when we know someone is paying attention to us! Every day I see heartbroken, invisible people who want their voices to be heard, their posts to be read and their slideshows viewed! They’re desperate for someone to care.

In the coming days, as details continue to leak out about what was information was collected and by whom, I hope we discover that it went beyond the simple stockpiling of metadata and that someone, anyone, in the Intelligence Community or the Justice Department or the White House had the courage to simply reach out and “friend” someone. Or anyone. Or everyone!

In fact, with unemployment still so high, why don’t the NSA and the FBI hire young people to “friend” ordinary overlooked Americans, suspicious gun lovers, rowdy foreign nationals and even suspected terrorists? It needn’t be dangerous, since no one has to ever be in the same room together anymore.

And a simple “Whassup?” can uncover worlds of information.

You can spy on people and learn a few things, but I’ve discovered they will tell you absolutely everything you want to know (and then some) if you simply put an arm around their shoulder and ask!

Your for-always friend,
B. Marty Barry

Would you make a good spy?

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I attend a lot of political fundraisers because I love getting some proximity to powerful people. But once I’m there, I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut and I do have a tendency to heckle them a little bit.

Congressmen, Senator, Presidents, First Ladies. I hector them all!

I figure if I pay 500 dollars for a plate of dry chicken, cold green beans and lumpy mashed potatoes, I should get to shout my opinions at someone famous while they’re giving a speech. What they’re saying is totally predictable anyway, and the fact that I contributed an outburst is the one thing most people will remember from what is otherwise a completely packaged event.

I consider my spontaneous eruptions a form of art.

Experienced public people know how to handle it. They make a little joke or they pretend to listen and then offer some kind of First Amendment-y comment to argue that I should shut up and pay attention to them.

I decide on a case-by-case basis how far I will push it. About half the time I get escorted out, and on a good day I’ll get a little bit of ink for my cause.

I decided long ago that it’s a win-win-win proposition to be a loud boor. It’s all in a day’s work.

But at a recent fundraiser I started shouting at a Very Famous Person and she refused to follow the script. She left the podium and got in my face and in front of the whole group she made like it was a choice – the people at the meeting were going to have to listen to her, or to me. And if it turned out to be me, then she was going to leave, which I thought was rude and totally selfish. After all, they all came to the event to hear her in the first place. Unfair advantage!

Dr. Babooner, I was minding my own business simply trying to shout her down when she made the whole thing about me and left me feeling belittled and humiliated. I wound up leaving with my self-esteem badly damaged, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to heckle again.

Sincerely,
Will You Confess Your Sins Or Are You Ready To Admit Your Guilt?

I told W.Y.C.Y.S.O.A.Y.R.T.A.Y.G. it’s certainly a change in the status quo when a principled person can’t hijack a public event to promote their cause without being subjected to the indignity of criticism. Public attitudes in cases like these do seem to be swinging towards support for the event holders rather than the event disrupters. Perhaps the thing to do is stage your own dog-and-pony show and then arrange for someone else to heckle you. If you can plan a stylish response that resonates as well as the one that silenced you, you might be able to get the attention you seek AND some sympathy at the same time.

But that’s just one opinion.
What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?