Over the weekend I heard a statistic on the radio that one study indicated that the average American spends seven hours and four minutes a day on their smart phone! This is seven hours we aren’t doing something else, such as doing chores around the house, reading books, and more importantly communicating with the next person in the room.

I saw an example of screen addiction firsthand on Saturday at a tire shop. A family of six rolled in with a large van that needed a tire repair. All of them walked into the waiting area without speaking. For the next 30 minutes I watched as every one of the six remained glued to their phones and didn’t communicate with anybody else in their party.

I saw the same thing last week inside a Denny’s in Pleasant Hill where a large table of about seven folks were into their phone – except for one older lady who was not on her phone and sitting silently because there was nobody to speak to for they were phone zombied.

Just a sad commentary on what we become.

And we wonder why depression and feelings of being alone are commonly reported in surveys!

As the smart phone gives us all the answers these days, we’ve collectively become a people who are becoming ignorant in the art of conversation.

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We certainly live in a different generation when you’d retire in your 50s or 60s and kick back a while before you die.

It used to be that people could afford to retire.

A survey conducted by Axios and Ipsos in July showed that 29 percent of workers under the age of 55 said they don’t think they will ever retire. Of that group, three-quarters said they don’t think they can afford to do so. Others apparently find purpose in work and don’t want to quit working.

Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found that 40 percent of Generation X workers and nearly half of boomers expect to retire after they hit 70 or not at all. Given how the life expectancy in the US is now 77 years, that’s not a lot of downtime.

I will be 62 in one week so technically I can retire and collect Social Security. The problem is, of course, that retiring at age 62 means I’d only be able to collect 70 percent of my full Social Security, as opposed to collecting 100 percent at age 67, which is full retirement age. For every year I wait, I get an 8 percent increase in benefits.

My dad was able to retire at 50 as a union member working for Pacific Bell. But what I saw was one restless individual who didn’t truly retire. He still wanted or needed to work. After he moved to Hawaii for a while, he helped manage a condominium complex. He moved from the islands (because cost of living was high and because my stepmom was feeling captive in the middle of the Pacific and cut off from her family). When he lived in Kingman, Arizona, he tried has hand at being a prison guard, which proved a task a bit too much physically so he quit.

Now at age 83, he spends all day doing little bit sitting in a recliner in front of a TV. No thank you.

I confess to feeling a bit cheated that by my age my dad already enjoyed 12 years of retirement. But I also mostly enjoy my job while I contemplate an exit strategy. So I have looming decisions to make but don’t expect me to quit anytime soon.

A lot of folks are pessimistic about their future because of inflation, and rightly so. Let’s remember that there is a great cost to Congress and presidents spending money like drunken sailors in port. It’s called inflation and your dollar’s purchasing power is at stake.

Until the voters get that and vote according for only fiscal conservatives expect that things will only get worse.

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Modesto City Councilman Chris Ricci created a small stir on Facebook recently by suggesting that a rainbow crossing on a Modesto street would “help show everyone is welcome in our city.”

A total of 289 comments were posted in six days, with folks predictably engaging in a war of words with one another.

David Anthony Barrera posted: “You don’t need rainbow flag crosswalks to let folks know that everyone is welcome here.” That prompted Ricci to answer: “Read the comments on this post and see if you were LGBTQ if you would feel welcome.”

I definitely have my opinions which I’d like to share.

The sole purpose of a street is to carry people, not political messages that might cause some to get excited either way. Streets should be apolitical. Since all people use streets, a city should not be in the business of signaling to anyone the political bent of its leaders.

I try to be polite and kind to everyone I meet. I don’t first ask, “Hey tell me your sexual orientation before I figure out if I want to be nice to you.” 

There is a huge difference, however, in being civil to people whose lifestyle is counter to your religious constructs and having your city signal that it’s okay to be gay or pretend that you’re a woman when you are a man. There is still a vast majority of folks who do not agree with the LGBTQ agenda, and not necessarily all conservative church goers.

Ricci’s fans include an Emerson Drake who attempted to drag other public officials into the shaming. Drake wrote: “Councilman David Wright wouldn’t even allow his picture to be taken with the pride group for pride month. When people tell you who they are, believe them. And we have some screaming out their beliefs.”

Ricci replied: “Exactly why we need it (rainbow crossing).”

Ricci and Drake apparently have no tolerance for the views of folks like Wright in the matter.

I continue to bristle at how the LGBTQ community is celebrated as something full of pride. The Bible is pretty clear that man’s pride is problematic, specifically when man seats himself as being the Authority instead of God himself. For example, Proverbs 11:2 condemns human pride: “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.” So count me out celebrating any group’s “pride” based on a sexual orientation that the Bible spells out as wrong.

And seeing how there’s been an all-out assault to attack and marginalize Christians would Chris Ricci ever propose that the city of Modesto welcome people of faith by painting crosses along intersection crosswalks? Of course he wouldn’t.

And who exactly is doing the “welcoming” to a city with the painting of a rainbow design on a public street? The city organization itself? The council? All residents? The city cannot speak for every resident’s view on LGBTQ matters.

It’s best to let this idea go by because he’s opening a whole can of worms I doubt he intends to open.

Linda Davis called it out for what it is – more political pandering to the Left.

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The liberals keep thinking they will be able to solve the problem of defective people using guns.

First, resist the term “gun violence.” The appropriate term is “violent people using guns.” After all, we didn’t start coining the phrase “bomb violence” with the two clowns who used pressure cookers to blown up the Boston Marathon.

So when people like Santa Clara DA Jeff Rosen come at you with the term “gun violence” as he seeks to start taxing ammunition on the ballot just know it’s an attack on law-abiding gun owners that won’t do anything to curb violent people.

They just don’t stop with their laws. They always insist we aren’t trying enough, they enact another law, people keep getting killed, so enact more laws and the killing never stops and so on and so on. Yet, Rosen promises this: “The Gun Violence Prevention Act (GVPA) will heal victims, solve shootings, and raise awareness of the devastating cost of California gun violence. Each year, more than 10,000 Californians are shot, and there is a mass shooting on average almost every week. The financial cost of this preventable carnage is staggering–estimated at more than $18 billion a year.”

His is the great lie. The ballot proposition will “solve shootings” but it will make it more expensive to own guns and ammo. Great. So if you’re a law abiding family wanting to be able to protect everyone in the house, tough, even though you aren’t the problem!  

His statement is also rather telling. Despite California having some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, Rosen admits the failure of laws when he states on his webpage “there is still a mass shooting in California every 8.3 days.” But I thought all the laws you’ve passed were going to stop this. Please be honest to yourself and realize that we live in a fallen and depraved world where killings will never end – especially with the liberals offering soft-on-crime measures that don’t deliver consequences to evil doers.

His website also states: “The truth is gun violence is an epidemic.” Wrong. Guns don’t go around firing themselves. The epidemic is of a bumper crop of the godless whose hearts are spiritually so dark and unloving that they would just as soon kill as they would give you the time of day. People who love themselves and others and God don’t go around shooting people. Trying to keep guns out of the hands of bad people is a futile exercise.

No politician ever talks about real solutions like making people healthy, strengthening families, teaching values in school and uplifting churches and faith instead of attacking them. Dispense with God (Big G) with your children and teach them hate and this is what you get – a generation who could care less about others.

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Ceres Walmart, get your act together! More than one person has told me how horrible the landscaping strip along Mitchell Road at the store has become weed infested and neglected. I was skeptical and drove by. It is as bad as everyone told me!

These are not good optics for a company that promised to be engaged in the community.

This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation.  How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com