Welcome to the Friday mailbag where you will find some of the comments, questions and ideas sent recently by subscribers of this newsletter or our publications. They are edited for space and clarity.

“I sincerely hope this experiment with self-check-out goes the way of the dinosaur (Self-checkout kiosks, Oct. 23, 2023). But that was said of business casual and the relaxation of business dress codes, and here we are, 25 years later, still suffering with sloppy dress, awkward ensembles and horrible fashion. Next thing we will see is people performing self-checkout in their pajamas… or WORSE. Count me OUT. I will just stay at home and order delivery. Seems to me the happy compromise would be to have self-check-out ONLY for people with less than eight items. The rest of us who actually like human beings and being waited on by capable individuals can stand in line for the check-out clerk.” - Lori

You may not have noticed, but the way the employees dress today seems to directly correlate to the way the shoppers now dress. - Shane

“Shane, your comments today remind me that the timing of my life has been interesting on the new technology front (Generational change, Nov. 8, 2023). My first visit to my grandparents’ retirement farm in northern Iowa was greeted with newly installed electricity, water pumped from a well about 50 feet outside the kitchen door, an outhouse on the other side of the house from the door you used to get to it, and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen for both cooking and heat. Within the first few years, and before I turned 10, the farmhouse got a kitchen with running water and a propane gas stove and a bathroom was added to the house, but the hand crank wall phone on an eight-party line was still there. I think the ring was two longs and a short. Didn’t really matter as everyone listened to their neighbors calls. My aunt in town had a phone still manually connected to the party she was calling by an operator. I was visiting from the big city where we had a dial telephone and only a two-party line. 

"By the time I was in college, radio common carriers were competing with Ma Bell for mobile telephone service and, in a few short years, that gave way to cell phones, which, of course, are now essentially minicomputers. Home and office phones went from dial to push button touch tone to wireless phones and from black to colors and back to gray or black.

"My grandfather’s career path had him driving a school wagon pulled by horses before there were school buses. He drove a gasoline tanker truck before there were gasoline pipelines.

"Manual typewriters gave way to electric typewriters which or course yielded to personal computers, etc. The Encyclopedia Britannica yielded to the Internet and Google. Frozen foods, TV dinners, microwaves, etc. A lot of change in 78 years!” - Chuck

What amazes me the most is the relatively short amount of time that all this change happened in. - Shane

“I'm typing this note on my phone instead of using the speak feature while my wife balances the checkbook (Generational change, Nov. 8, 2023). We prefer paying cash at restaurants especially when tipping. Thanks for thoughtful reading.” - John

Your wife must be paying for all that technology you are spending money on. - Shane

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman 

President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305
www.thedailyumbrella.com

View Shane Goodman's archived columns from past issues here.

Grammy-nominated pianist Joyce Yang returns to Des Moines in a brilliant showcase of Grieg’s famous and distinctly Norwegian Piano Concerto. The program begins with Glinka’s heroic and exuberant Ruslan & Lyudmila Overture followed by Florence Price’s heartfelt Andante moderato. Shostakovich’s tragicomic Symphony No. 9, a cynical critique of the political and artistic oppression he experienced in Stalinist Soviet Russia, closes the concert.

BUY TICKETS