16 Dec So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu
December 16, 2019
I just got finished binge-watching Season 3 of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and, as with the first two seasons, it was excellent. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, I’m not going to give you the entire plot synopsis here — you should watch from the beginning – but I’m going to give the shortest summary I can: In late 1950s Manhattan, Mrs. Miriam “Midge” Maisel has realized her calling as a stand-up comedian after being cheated on by her husband and, ultimately, divorcing him as she pursues her career. This major life change impacts her parents – her mother, Rose Weissman, and father, Abe Weissman, go through mid-life crises in response, resulting in her father leaving his long-time job as a renowned math professor at Columbia University, and her mother becoming a matchmaker. Many characters are involved, and the acting and writing are superb. One of the things I especially liked about Season 3 was the soundtrack. The music used in each scene perfectly captured both the era and the specific drama being played out.
In one such scene, toward the end of Season 3, Abe Weissman goes back to Columbia to visit his old students for his final goodbye. He waltzes into the lecture hall in the middle of class while students are at the front working through extremely complicated equations on the blackboard. He proceeds to interrupt and give a hilarious soliloquy on how he realized he hated teaching, admitted he had terrorized his students (who had suffered various nervous ailments while under his tutelage), and praised their abilities – all but six of them, who “shouldn’t be in the program.” All the while, the Sound of Music song “So Long, Farewell” is playing in the background. The piece-de-resistance is when Abe grabs a piece of chalk from one of the students and begins marking up the student’s equation while continuing to lecture the entire class on the specifics of his exit from Columbia. Ha!
Lest you draw the conclusion that I’m correlating my departure from UTC to that of Abe’s from Columbia, I am not – at least, not entirely. I’ve loved my time at UTC and am leaving with every confidence in UTC’s future and its unique perspective on the information and communications technology needs of electric, gas and water utilities of all ownership types. Where I do relate to Abe is his inability to stop editing – as the UTC staff knows well, my editing “pen” is in constant motion, no matter where I am. I’m sure the APPA team is looking forward to that quirk (NOT!).
[Editor’s note: It’s also not lost on me that “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was produced by, and is streamed via, one of the companies urging the FCC to open up the 6 GHz band to mobile operations – a move UTC adamantly opposes without proven field-tested interference mitigation technology in place. As this blog shows, I like video streaming as much as anyone else – and am willing to pay top dollar for it – but not at the expense of my electric reliability. Let’s keep our eye on the ball, people.]
The bottom line is that I’ll miss all the folks I’ve met through UTC and hope to keep in touch once I start my new role. I’ll especially miss the hard-working UTC staff and Board of Directors, as well as our members in the U.S. and across the globe… So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu, ciao, adios…until we meet again.
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