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Experiencing a Solar Eclipse in Minneapolis

April 6, 2024 By Tom Mungavan Leave a Comment

It was June 1954 when our family climbed out of bed in the dark. We drove to an open field filled with many spectators to view the Total Solar Eclipse in Minneapolis.

At that time seventy years ago, photographs used film to take pictures.

When the film was developed, there was always a strip of black, unexposed photo space. Those dark film strips were ideal for viewing the eclipse safely.

There was no Daylight Savings Time in 1954, so the sun rose around 5:45 AM, and the total eclipse was at 6:08 AM. The sun was about 15 degrees above the horizon, so it seemed larger than it was during the day. The sky was clear.

The top photograph shows what I remember seeing during the total eclipse. For that minute, it could be viewed with the naked eye.

Seventy years later, the pictures in my mind are clear and enjoyable. It was only later that I realized what a special experience it was.

Total Solar Eclipse 1954 map of Minneapolis St. Paul — Total Solar Eclipse 1954

50 Years Ago

August 1, 2019 By Tom Mungavan Leave a Comment

Man landed on the moon 50 years ago. It was an amazing feat. It was an aspirational and inspirational accomplishment that was watched by 20% of the world population. That was probably close to everyone who had a television.

What made the accomplishment even more amazing at the time was the rudimentary tools available. The computers had very little capacity compared to even our Fitbit or iWatch. The interfaces from the computer to the physical world were very unreliable. NASA would have loved the gyro or the ability to monitor your heart rate in your watch today.

I may be the only person you know who was programing computers 50 years ago. (There were not many of us.) I was a systems engineer for IBM in 1969. I was not putting people on the moon at that time. I was helping companies run their entire business on computers with as little as 8K processors and 5 meg of disk memory. IBM was revolutionizing companies and processes. The fears at that time were that computers would obsolete workers … much like the fears today about robotics in the workplace.

President John F. Kennedy showed the vision and executive presence to inspire an entire nation to get behind an audacious goal of going to the moon.

You probably have seen movies that show computers with blinking lights and levers. Fifty years ago, those lights and levers allowed a programmer to stop the computer program at a certain point and change the program and data using the levers to replace the “0” and “1” (that instructed the computer and represented the data). Much more rudimentary capability than your Fitbit or watch.

There was so little computer memory that programmers recorded years in two digits rather than four (1969 = 69) to save space. It was always assumed that the programs being written at that time would be replaced before the year 2000. Many old programs were not replaced and thus there was the “Y2K” crisis at the turn of the century. Another way to look at the capacity in 1969, capturing one average photograph today would have exceeded all the computer capacity for an entire medium sized company.

In 1969, people wrote letters by hand or typewriter and mailed them. Delivery was measured in days and weeks.

In today’s dollars, long distance phone calls (on landlines) cost $5 to $50 per minute with the help of a phone operator. There were no answering machines or VCR’s. People used cash and checks. Most stores were not air conditioned. Most stores were closed on Sundays and evenings. In addition, Vietnam protesters were setting off bombs in restrooms. It was a very different time.

We have many technological things that we now take for granted. It is difficult to imagine how major the accomplishment was to land on the moon and return. A number of people (including my 85-year-old grandfather) found the accomplishment so hard to believe that a they were convinced it was done in a movie studio and we actually did not land on the moon.

Fortunately, the national news was more trusted than it is today so most people accepted the truth of the accomplishment. Landing on the moon 50 years ago is certainly a tribute to what a nation working together for a worthy vision can accomplish. It is worthy of celebration.

How Old Are You?

March 10, 2017 By Tom Mungavan Leave a Comment

When my father was 60, he referred to himself as being “middle-aged”. His friend asked him, “How many people do you know who are 120?”

A Life Well Lived

Minnesota Orchestra Conductor Laureate Stanislaw Skrowaczewski was born in Poland 93 years ago. He started playing piano at age 4. He loved playing music until he was injured by a bomb during World War II. He became a conductor in Warsaw and Cleveland before he took over the Minneapolis Symphony in 1960. A few months ago we heard him conduct the Minnesota Orchestra with such gusto that it was hard to believe he was 93 years-old. His love for the music was clear. One non-stop performance was 80 minutes long without using the written score. Last year he conducted in over a dozen countries. So how old was Skrowaczewski? Sadly, he died last month. He fully lived all of his 93 years.

Being Engaged in Life

There are numerous studies that all point to being engaged in something you find worthwhile (for pay or not) significantly improves our happiness and our health. I feel blessed to feel that way about what I do. Most of my “work” gives me energy, even though I am well past what many think is retirement age. See my blog Build your Return on Life (ROL) from 2014 about Mitch Anthony’s book “The New Retirementality” that challenges the concept of a retirement age as a leftover concept from the Industrial Revolution.

How Old Should I Feel?

I do not advocate that people should not retire because I have not done so. There are many people who have sacrificed enormously to build their career and feed their families. They have traveled extensively, or in other ways, sacrificed family time to do work that is not all that satisfying any more. Finding a way to remove from your life what is draining and add things that are nourishing is a wonderful endeavor. I know many who have focused on their grandchildren to recapture what they lost with their own children’s growing years. That is a fabulous opportunity to recover. Others have found the artist inside them during their retirement, like President George W. Bush.

My misconception of how a grandfather should feel is very apparent to me. Looking at the photo of the man looking in the mirror pretty well captures the gap. I feel like the younger man, and the mirror reflects an older man. I expected to feel like the older man in my 70’s, but I don’t… most of the time.

I know many who think their 60’s and 70’s are the best years of their lives. Maybe the 80’s too …. I just have not asked enough people in their 80’s. That was not my expectation when I was in my 30’s. That was not how I saw my grandfather in his 70’s.

Should We Allow More People to Work Longer?

Many would say, “Not on your life!” and others would find community, contribution and maybe purpose, if they were able to continue to work. Warren Buffet continues to make good investments in his 80’s. The Supreme Court is filled with senior citizens. Many cultures honor the wisdom of age more than the US culture.

There are definitely limitations brought on by aging. There are also strengths that build with continued age. I was blessed with a grandmother who was young at heart and willing to share honest wisdom such as, “Those who talk about the ‘good old days’ have bad memories. It was not all good.”

The companies who can overcome unfounded age discrimination and also make adjustments, where appropriate, to work rules will have a competitive advantage in many industries.