The Chit Chat Chit Chat Thread

StarWarsGirl

StarWarsGirl

Well-Known Member
Goofyernmost said:
I'm sure that it has some value in the historic narrative, but if you go to see something that is historically intact then Williamsburg is not the place. I went when my kids were young, and frankly they have never mentioned what they felt about it or what it taught them, so I don't really know. All I saw was a place that was hyped up and almost thought of a relic of the past to be not much more then a "this is what it would have looked like back then, but the original building doesn't exist anymore, we just built this to show you".

I am a history buff to some degree and I was genuinely excited about going there until I got there and found out the it was nothing more then basically a movie set. One that is supposed to give the feel, which it does, but not the reality of authenticity. They were all copies of something that supposedly existed around the time of the revolution. Also, I paid money to get in and half way through found out that I could have parked on the street just adjacent to the themed park and just walked in free of charge. Some of the interiors would have been missed, but to my mind if is wasn't the actual, historically linked interior it wasn't worth the extra money to see it anyway.

To be honest though I wasn't all that impressed with the 80's version of Bush Gardens either. I apparently am very hard to please.
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Well, for the purposes of doing the projects, it was the easiest place to get to from Maryland. It's a few hours away; you can make a long weekend out of it. My parents enjoyed it in the 80s. My dad is very much the type of person who likes to walk around and look at stuff. Epcot...man walks through every shop. During Festival of the Arts...every art tent. Drives me batty, but I'm old enough that I can take B and leave. But I digress. For the purpose of learning something and for it being interactive, it was good. I still remember a conversation with one of the workers there, because like with Disney, they stay in character. It was in a wig shop, and I remember her saying she was horrified at another guest who said she shaved her legs rather than her head. I remember looking at my friend and the two of us giggling. That stuck with me; I always remembered about wigs. I realized it was mostly fake, but I do remember learning something. And of course, with B and his autism, he probably learned more that way with it being interactive then he did any other way. The second time, I also remember that there were some cats I made friends with. That was about the time my mom started nicknaming me "cat magnet"; I can go up to pretty much any cat that isn't completely feral and make friends. 😂

My parents want to go back for a weekend because my dad in his old age has especially gone into the mode of wanting to look at stuff on vacation, and Williamsburg for a weekend is good for that. B and I just want to go on rides, so Bush Gardens is great for that. I hear they have good roller coasters. We'd be good for a weekend.
 
StarWarsGirl

StarWarsGirl

Well-Known Member
Gabe1 said:
Exactly. In my lifetime my son has lived through three stock market crashes including this years. The most disconcerting was while he and my DD were in college. While they both graduated the job market sucked and most of their elders were eating up the enter level job markets, 50 somethings absorbing all the teenage job markets 2 and 3 fold. Many mocking the young as lazy. There just wasn't anything in the recession when they graduated. 50 somethings were selling calendars at malls, something that in the past was a teen job or bagging groceries at local markets. Once being teen jobs. It was a rough time to be a new adult. Both of my kids were fortunate to fall back upon long employment of their youth until better things to come availed. They eventually came out the backside well but it was a long time coming. I don't regret my insistence that they become formally educated. It is as important in today's job market as a high school education was to my parents generation where high school drop outs were prevalent. If you lack the proper certified credentials today you are stuck where you are at with little options in other firms. The HS degree is rarely enough to make yourself marketable forever, a gamble often lost. College was instilled in them from babes cause that is where the world went. Yesteryear only had elementary school education, then HS, now University. The world evolved. Those who didn't....well.
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I was just very fortunate that I didn't graduate in the middle of a recession. I graduated, thankfully, in the middle of a high point. Still, what was frustrating was that everywhere they wanted experience for entry level positions. So...you wanted me to have experience before I could get experience? I had internships, which is how I was eventually able to get hired as a contractor, and that's how I was able to get hired...but then my company wiped out half their IT department, and then I got that unfortunate diagnosis. And I couldn't apply for unemployment, because I couldn't work. And I didn't qualify for disability. And I was on my parents' insurance, which was a high deductible plan, and we hadn't met the deductible. So there went a bunch of my savings. Thankfully, because I had experience, I got hired pretty quickly, and now I'm considered essential, but still, it was not an easy process. And I still can't afford to live on my own in this area yet, though I'm working on it.

My long time friend (I saw long time because she's literally my oldest friend; our moms were pregnant together; we played together as toddlers, and in spite of having some rough patches growing up, we're still friends) is now going through this. She graduated later than I did. She also did everything I did. Now she's temping because again, she needs experience before I can get experience, but she's not living with her parents, so it's harder. She lives with her fiancee, but he has asthma as severe as mine, so she's barred him from leaving their apartment, and he's not working because of it, so now she's supporting both of them. Messy situation.
 
Songbird76

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
dryerlintfan said:
I disagree. Kids who go to trade school can potentially make double what kids who go to college make, with less debt and more upward trajectory.
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I think we need EVERYONE....all kinds of education. We need college educated people like engineers and doctors, but we also need tradesmen like carpenters, plumbers, mechanics. It's an oversight when we take either for granted or when we don't value one as much as the other. Sure, doctors save lives they couldn't save without their education, but they wouldn't have a place to do that if not for carpenters and plumbers, etc, and they couldn't stay running without receptionists and food service and repairmen. And I don't understand the pay discrepency....we couldn't get by without any one of them, yet some of them are paid peanuts and others have an abundance. We take some of them for granted. They are ALL important.
 
DryerLintFan

DryerLintFan

Premium Member
Songbird76 said:
I think we need EVERYONE....all kinds of education. We need college educated people like engineers and doctors, but we also need tradesmen like carpenters, plumbers, mechanics. It's an oversight when we take either for granted or when we don't value one as much as the other. Sure, doctors save lives they couldn't save without their education, but they wouldn't have a place to do that if not for carpenters and plumbers, etc, and they couldn't stay running without receptionists and food service and repairmen. And I don't understand the pay discrepency....we couldn't get by without any one of them, yet some of them are paid peanuts and others have an abundance. We take some of them for granted. They are ALL important.
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Oh I agree!! I was just saying I didn't agree the previous poster that the only way to be successful in life was to go to college 😘
 
Songbird76

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
dryerlintfan said:
Oh I agree!! I was just saying I didn't agree the previous poster that the only way to be successful in life was to go to college 😘
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Oh I know....I was agreeing with you, but kind of adding why I think that's true, I guess? Sorry...I wasn't really clear. I just think it's sad that we don't always appreciate all fields. We get caught up in social status or whatever and we forget that it takes a village. And the current situation is forcing us to look at that, too with what's considered "essential". People need the truck driver to deliver the TP and the grocery store stock people to get it on the shelves, and the cashier to ring it up. But I bet if you asked people 6 months ago who was "more important": a doctor or a truck driver, most people would say doctor. Now we're seeing just how valuable those lower pay grade workers are. And it doesn't make the doctor less important or valuable, but I HOPE we're learning to value MORE people than we did before.
Story time!
So my mother was self-employed. She cleaned people's houses...scrubbing floors and toilets for a living....a luxury for most of her clients who didn't have the time or the will to do it themselves and could afford to pay someone else.
I was working as a sort of camp counselor right after I graduated college for an academic summer program for high schoolers just finishing their sophomore year. It was a really prestigious program for the top 100 students who applied. We had a curfew in place of 10:00 in their rooms, 11:00 lights out. Anyone caught out of their rooms after that would have to wash towels for everyone on their wing. (about 10 people) We told them this in advance, so they knew what the consequence would be if they broke curfew. And one of the girls on my wing decided to take a shower after 10 one night and she was caught. She called her mom who called me to tell me how degrading it was to have to clean up after someone else, and how her daughter shouldn't have to do someone else's dirty work....it was beneath her. I had to explain to a 15/16 year old girl that that's what my mother did every day to make a living and there was NOTHING degrading about doing honest, hard work. But her father was a doctor and she had never had to physically work for anything. She felt that the only work of value was academic work, and that labor was dirty and was only for lesser folk. I'm afraid I was unsuccessful in convincing her that those workers were valuable, but she had to wash the towels anyway, because she had been told about the consequence before, and when you choose to break the rules, you choose the consequence that goes with that. But it also highlighted for me that not everyone is as appreciative of laborers as they should be. I've worked as a custodian, a receptionist, a teacher....I've never had a high paying job, but I've always known what I did was valuable work, and people would miss me if I wasn't there to do it.
 

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