The "Your Life is Your Story" Blog Archives

© Tom Gilbert

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June, 2017

Heaviest Wedding Ever

June 30, 2017

This month a niece of mine married her longtime love in Brooklyn, New York. Like many weddings, it was a great gathering of family and friends. Unlike many weddings, this was very different. It was billed as the Heaviest Wedding Ever, a ceremony performed in the groom's heavy metal bar, Lucky 13, complete with lots of tattoos, motorcycles and loud music. It was fun!

Read more here in the latest Your Life Is Your Story Newsletter.

The iPhone is Ten Years Old

June 29, 2017

Ten years ago a revolutionary new product was introduced. The iPhone from Apple has arguably changed our world. Today we take smartphones for granted. But that wasn't the case in 2007.

I remember that a colleague at the radio stations I worked at was super excited about it and had one right away. I wasn't as convinced. But now I am on my third version of the iPhone and I admit it has become a daily-used gadget.

Some people worry that we are addicted to our devices and spend too much time on them. The techies call it screen time. I also worry about that. We need to spend more time looking up and out and less time looking down. It's important, too, when we get together that we spend time actually talking with each other.We get too distracted with our devices and it is often a safety hazard, especially when people unwisely use their phones while driving. There are times when we need to put the smart phone down!

However, there are many good things that have come from the iPhone technology. It is interesting to review the history of the product through the past decade. The Verge has a series of online articles (link to iPhone 10th anniversary: looking back at how Apple changed the mobile landscape) that explore the impact of the iPhone over the past ten years, with such considerations as how it has changed the way we communicate with our parents, the spreading of emojis, the concern over addiction to technology and how even Steve Jobs didn't fully understand what the iPhone truly was "back in the day".

So, happy birthday to the iPhone. I wonder what the next then years will bring?

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The Way You Draw A Circle Can Reveal Cultural Differences

June 20, 2017

Ok, this is admittedly a little different than what I normally write about. But my eye was captured by an article I received from a recent Digg Editions email that stated "Drawing a Circle Reveals Who You Are, And Other Facts".

The gist of the article (see here) is that different countries and cultures influence how we draw circles. Most Americans and many other countries draw circles in a counter-clockwise direction, but a very high percentage of people in Japan draw their circles in a clockwise direction.

On the page where I read the article I was invited to draw a circle without thinking much about it and then I went on to read what the article was about. I am American. I drew my circle clockwise.  Sounds like I was bucking the odds.

Reading further I discovered that a lot of left-handed people draw their circles in a clockwise direction. That's me, a lefty. Interestingly, though, was that I used the mouse to draw the circle and it was in my right hand when I drew it clockwise. Hmmm.

How we draw shape shapes and how we write script has a lot to do with where we were born, raised and live and what are our cultural backgrounds. Some cultures write from the right to the left, while here in the United States, and many other Western cultures, we write from left to right. Something to think about in the big picture of people, culture and our stories.

50 Years Ago Sgt. Pepper Was the Album We Played

June 5, 2017

Over the past few days I've been reminiscing about the amazing Beatles' album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was first released on June 1, 1967, so this is the golden anniversary of the historic recording. (Note: I've commented on some previous Beatles' 50th anniversaries from 2014 and 2016.)

To give you some context, by 1967 the Beatles had grown weary of touring with the many challenges they endured: screaming crowds, the pressures of their fame and the inability of the technology of the time to project their live sound with the quality they wanted. If you recall, the Beatles were such a phenomenom by the mid-1960's that their live shows were held in stadiums. Nobody had done that and so the sound systems of the day were woefully inadequate.

By 1967 the Beatles had retired from touring and concentrated on making music that pushed the envelope of recording techniques. It was a psychedelic time, fueled by mind altering drugs like LSD and the cultural revolution.

Out of that time came the pioneering Sgt. Pepper's album. Some really great music. One of the most astounding things to me is that two of the songs recorded at that time ended up being released as a two-sided single. The pressure to have new music from the Beatles was such that they put out the Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever single, arguably two of their best songs from that time period. They ended up not being included on Pepper.

The New York Times published an article about the exhaustive 50th anniversary reissue as well as some commentary. I think they are correct that it is hard to fully appreciate the album outside of the times it was  originally released in. In other words, we can't really recapture those days. But for sure we can mark the importance of 1967 and the effect the music was having on those of us who were growing up then.

If you want to hear a balanced and insightful review of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band I recommend a special produced by Paul Ingles ten years ago to mark the 40th anniversary of the album. You can hear "The Two Sides of  Sgt. Pepper: An Honest Appraisal" by going to Paul's website.

The Beatles' music certainly has endured - and I am confident it will continue to do so. Ultimately the message for me is that we all "get by with a little help from our friends."