Catching Up
Kleis and I are back living in the seventies again. Not by choice; by circumstance. Except that we’re in much nicer digs and the fact that we have cell phones, it’s pretty much the same as when we were first married: no internet and no DirecTV.
You see, our house-sitting time has come to an end and we were going to leave this past Monday for Arizona. But we are staying here in Utah a few extra days. Because termination of the internet and satellite TV were already scheduled, we find ourselves doing things like…well…reading again.
Actually, Kleis reads a lot anyway, but now I’ve taken it up again. There’s some John Grisham, Daniel Silva and David Baldacci stuff to catch up on.
Strangely, it’s rather peaceful around here without “having to” watch this or that, or make sure the DVR is set to record whatever.
Strangely, all the cool stuff in our lives is no longer running our lives. Although it is a pain to run down to the library to check my e-mail (which is where I am right now posting this), there seems to be time for catching up.
That reminds me of a story my high school French teacher told us. What was her name? Il est exact sur le bout de ma langue. (Don’t be impressed. I used an online translator. My second language is Brazilian Portuguese.)
The story: One day a young man is walking along the Seine River in Paris, when he sees this old guy fishing in that fishless river. The brash younger man says to the elderly gentleman, “Why are you sitting here wasting your time fishing in the Seine? Don’t you know there are no fish in this river?” To which the old man replies, “Yes, I know. I’m just letting my soul catch up with my body.”
With everything packed up, that feels exactly like what’s happening with us right now. It’s oddly serene. Time has returned to our lives.
-LB
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Small Moments Are The Best
As we often say in our Rhino Writes advertising blog, simple is good. Hence, a simple Roaming Rhino post for Valentine’s Day.
-LB
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Now, It’s Toast!
Sometimes I wonder why I write this silly little blog. But, then, I look at some of the stuff out there and I realize this is at least on par with much of the inane fare offered by the gazillion channels on satellite TV and online.
So, using that as an excuse to continue this drivel, we leap into the topic of today’s post: toast.
I love crunchy toast. In fact, I turn that little timer knob right up to just this side of burnt.
Perfect toast I made while writing this.
Kleis, on the other hand, prefers it with just the very slightest hint of brown. Problem is that’s not toast. That’s warm bread.
Think about it. In today’s nomenclature, do we refer to a team or concept that’s on the brink of disaster as being lightly browned? Heck, no! They’re toast! Finished! Done!
Being from the south, I like to eat things that the grossly gastronomically uninformed out here refer to as strange. For example, peanuts in a Doctor Pepper … or banana sandwiches, made not with peanut butter, bananas and sugar, but with mayo, bananas and sugar … or tomato sandwiches with just tomato, mayo, salt and pepper…with cold fried chicken. Yes! Nirvana just got another name.
Okay, back to my toast penchant. When making toast, I usually drop in two pieces at a time. Once what was mere bread has magically been elevated to toast status, comes the weird part: I remove one piece of toast and leave the other in the toaster.
After the first piece has been carefully slathered (possible oxymoron) with butter and/or whatever, then immediately scarfed, the clock starts ticking on the other slice, as air and room temperature do their job.
In about an hour, the other piece will be perfect.
Yes, my predilection for all things toast includes delightfully crunchy (now much more so) hour-old toast.
Hey, this homemade melba isn’t for everyone, but for us toast coinsurers, it’s just another level of what the humble, oft disregarded toaster can do for what could only be described as epicureanism extraordinaire.
-LB
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The Man in the Arena
Short post this time, just to pass on something very powerful, a portion of which was quoted recently on the TV show Blue Bloods.
On April 23, 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt (president 1901-1909) delivered a speech in Paris, France, titled Citizenship in a Republic. Here is an excerpt from that speech. Pay particular attention to the last words, beginning with “if he fails….”
The Man in the Arena
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
–Theodore Roosevelt
Do we even make leaders like this anymore?
-LB
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Now What?
Here they are – the Winter Doldrums. Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went in a blur. College football is over, having ended with a whimper, at least for Notre Dame.
How did this happen … again? I was determined to make every day of this holiday season count as I enjoyed the increasingly crisp days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and beyond here in Eagle Mountain, Utah. But, alas, my efforts to celebrate small but often and remember each day were an exercise in consummate futility.
The problem is we celebrate Christmas all wrong. We focus on the lead-up to the one big day, then, bam, it’s over. I call this the Big Bang Theory of Christmas. You know it’s true. Everything accelerates almost exponentially as the whirl spirals up to warp drive, moving ever faster to a tight spiral of shopping, wrapping, singing, baking, eating, partying, then more of that, then more, then more…then a final flying frenzy of shredded wrapping paper, bows and yippees all consumed into the vortex as it climbs toward its apogee … higher, tighter, more frenetic than ever … then … then … accompanied by fading music and nodding heads, it’s gone from sight and sound, moving on out there … somewhere.
As if they never existed, no more bows; no more sparkling trees; no more lights; no more songs.
What happened?!
Symmetric Celebration
We need to add more symmetry to the celebration. For this reason, I hereby propose the Bell Curve Theory of Christmas Celebration.
I figure we can begin to get into it when Costco puts out its Christmas offerings sometime in October. You know, just a little.
Immediately after Thanksgiving dinner, we put on … say … an Andy Williams Christmas CD, maybe a little Mannheim Steamroller. You know, just a little.
Then, on Cyber Monday, it’s double-down, pretensions-aside, all out-Christmas mode. You know, a lot.
Then on December 26th, things begin to taper off. You know, just a little.
On New Year’s Eve, the lights and the tree are still up to add to the celebration.
Then by the 10th day of the New Year, things have tapered off and we’ve had a satisfying, easy and gradual slide down the back side of the celebration bell curve.
Seriously, doesn’t that symmetry just simply make more sense than the Big Bang? Well, doesn’t it?!
May I please see a show of hands?
I’m not feeling a lot of love on this.
Fine. Bunch of stuffy Big-Bangers. (Hmmmm? That didn’t sound quite right.)
-LB
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So…Here We Go Again
Exactly one year ago (1/1/2012) we started this little blog with this first post, and began to reveal to family and friends the ramblings of a possibly unbalanced, questionably stable mind. When you start writing your thoughts down for public view, people begin to give you furtive, askance glances.
Mercifully, most of you have overlooked all of that and have been very kind in your comments. Thanks.
We’ve tried to keep this blog on the light side, but events have at times made that difficult …no, impossible. December, usually filled with all the good things we associate with it, brought inexplicable horror, absolute dismay and the shadow of evil into our lives, with events in Newtown, Connecticut.
For members of my extended family, that doubled down close to home just three days ago when a cousin and her husband back in North Carolina were viciously attacked in a home invasion. Sadly, her husband did not survive the brutal attack from a former employee, and she, at this moment, is in critical care, where, blessedly, she is improving.
But – as we always do with the unknown – we look to the New Year beginning this very day with a mixture of trepidation, hope, giddiness, and resolve. May we live joyously and fearlessly in Him whose name many of us profess, embracing both uncertainty and wonderful possibilities with equal measures of abandon.
-LB
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And It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping
Before I get to a little Christmas message I will attach to this post, I want to offer something in the way of an apology.
Back on the 14th of this month, I wrote a rather angry post (here) as a result of the tragedy earlier that day in Newtown, Connecticut. Like so many, I, too, was searching my feelings to find reason in this horrific event. I used this blog to vent in a most unforgiving way.
Since then, two events have caused me to rethink my initial reaction as expressed in that post. One was how the father of one of the little victims responded. Please view that here. The second occurred yesterday when this scripture came up during a discussion of that event at church: “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.”
That post back on the 14th did not reflect the love and message of Him whose gracious gift we now celebrate.
Christmas is filled with stories of redemption. From the first and most important – the very reason for our celebration – to others we love to read each year. Two come to mind: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and a much shorter one I’ve shared before. Please read it by clicking here.
Merry Christmas from the Bennetts, currently enjoying a white Christmas Eve day in Eagle Mountain.
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Unintended Consequences
Before you go any further in this post, please read this article written by Roy H. Williams about Unintended Consequences. When you come back, we’ll have some comments about the article and a couple of other things.
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Of particular interest to me in Williams’ article was the discussion of how parents over the last several years have taught their kids they must go to college. Many of us have instilled in our children that not to do so would tattoo a big “L” right in the middle of their foreheads. But, I know many so-called blue-collar professionals who are much ahead of people with college degrees, financially and otherwise. They’re anything but losers.
This, of course, is not to denigrate higher education; it’s more of an issue of balance and giving credit where credit is due. This Roaming Rhino post from a few months ago speaks somewhat to that issue.
As to the unintended consequences of China’s one-child policy, I’m reminded of something my son Scott told me about an article he recently read. Because most Chinese households have just one child with two doting parents and four fawning grandparents, they are raising a nation of spoiled, self-entitled brats…as antithetical as that seems to communism.
These children will be miserable always because whatever they get, it will never be enough. This portends both unhappiness and peril. Clearly, we want our children to strive for success –- however they define it — but we hope that quest will be tempered with awareness of others and an understanding of the power of service.
As Roy said, “The key to happiness is an ability to celebrate the ordinary. Family. Friends. Food. Fun.”
I’m reminded about the contrast between the issues in the Roy Williams article and what Tom Brokaw calls The Greatest Generation, the generation of Americans who knew how to do things for themselves…and others.
-LB
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Special Post
This blog generally does not deal with current events. However, for me, this post is cathartic.
Christmas cheer will come grudgingly to Newtown, Connecticut this year. If fact, it will struggle to find its way through the cracks of a barricade thrown up instantly in all of us parents and grandparents by the acts of a darkened mind and soul today.
Unfathomable, unbelievable, unimaginable and lots of other uns will fill the airwaves and our conversations as we grapple with a tragedy so beyond our grasp of what’s real that we can barely form the words to contend with it in our minds, much less vocalize them.
In a few minutes of unspeakable (add that to the list of uns) insanity, ineradicable emotional scar tissue began forming on hearts young and old, the lasting results of which we can only be utterly clueless.
Countless are the ripples, no, waves, no, tsunamis that now rush through families, extended families and friends and friends of families. Anguished hearts that a few short hours ago were filled with thoughts of the season and surprises under the tree, which, for some, will not fill small hands and hearts with their intended glee in just eleven days.
Whatever the deepest hole in hell is, we can guess that its outer darkness is only almost equal to the blackness of the selfish soul who destroyed so many lives today, those who passed by his hand and those who live to cope.
There is no revenge to be exacted. No blame to be asserted, not yet anyway. Both of which would bring some degree of logic to this meaninglessness.
After a time, this too will find its place in the national lexicon of monstrous acts perpetuated on the innocent, along with Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Tucson and too many more. But, for now, we grieve with and for the people of Newtown, Connecticut, a grief made all the deeper by the true and absolute innocence of little ones who knew nothing of evil, yet were victims at its uncaring, malevolent hand.
-LB
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” -FDR
Day of the Bogeyman
Sunday of last week I found myself in a quandary. Generally, being my own worst enemy, I create my own quandaries, which run the gamut from mere mud puddles along life’s road on one end, to deep, near-inextricable quagmires on the other. You can relate, right?
But, this was not a quandary of my own making. This time it was society’s fault.
What???!!! Hold on. I’m not one who tends to blame everyone else — from the president to my dog Toby — for my woes. I’m pretty good at the personal responsibility thing; however, the dilemma I was facing that Sunday definitely could only be laid at the door of an increasingly crazy-litigious society in which the most basic act of human kindness can be misinterpreted…and worse.
After church, my wife stayed for choir practice (if you ever heard me sing, you’d know why I didn’t join the choir). Living only a few blocks from church, I headed home to await her call.
As I was about to back out of my parking space, I noticed a young lady who suffers from Down syndrome walking up the road from church in the direction I was going. She wasn’t wearing a coat and it was a chilly December midday. My wife and I have stopped on occasion and given her a ride to or from church.
And those, dear reader, were the operative words in my quandary: “My wife and I.” Which is to say, I felt very comfortable giving the young lady a ride when Kleis and I were together.
Suddenly, bizarre stories related by my son Scott — a deputy district attorney in Arizona — began to play in my head. What to do?
So…now, everybody’s a victim or potential victim: the person in need of help and the person who’s concerned his otherwise kind act might be misinterpreted. How absolutely ridiculous things have become!
Fortuitously, as I hesitated before backing out of my parking space, a van with a family passed behind me and started up the road ahead of me in the direction the young lady was walking.
Please pick her up. Please pick up. Yes! Thank you. No more quandary.
However, thoughts of my dilemma linger.
When I was a kid growing up in North Carolina in the ’50s and ’60s, none of the reasons I was afraid (yes, it’s fear) to give the young lady a lift seemed to exist. Back then, there would have been no question. There’s a young girl without a coat on a December day. My dad, although alone, would have stopped and given her a lift. Not even a second thought.
But, it would have been more than that back then. “Do you live around here, sugar.” Seriously?! Yes, adults called girls “sugar” back then where I grew up. It was a word of kindness, gentleness, respect. Then, he would have taken her home. To do that today would represent something approaching insanity.
Indeed, we’re crazy upside down these days.
Why have we become a culture of fear? Heightened awareness? The endless news cycles that need to be filled, so every local story becomes a national story that is repeated ad nauseam?
Now, our lives are all about fear. We fear our food, the people next door who look a little different, 12/21/12, air, global warming, doorknobs, mad cow, Republicans, Democrats, guns, dirt, shopping cart handles, science, religion, the UN, the NRA, helping a child who’s walking home without a coat, scoutmasters, Catholic Priests, Mormons who might be president, evangelicals, yes, even Christmas. Name a group, person of thing and somebody has been worked into a maniacal, scared-out-of-his/her-wits frenzy against it.
Truly, the bogeyman lives. And he lives in a most scary place…within us.
A final thought: when I was a kid, my parents taught me this is a kind and God-fearing nation. Now, it seems, we’re just fearing.
Hey, it’s Christmas. We can do better.
-LB
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That Which Defines Us
A bit of a serious post this time.
You might have seen this commercial that shows quite dramatically the regrettable position of US students when compared to other countries in the area of science.
I would like to suggest, however, that there’s and equally important — if not more important — area in which we are lagging scarily behind these days.
Writer/historian David McCullough recently appeared on 60 Minutes. Commenting on the dearth of knowledge of US history among students today, he related the story of a college student who didn’t know that the 13 original colonies were located along the east coast.
Two quotes seem appropriate here:
“A country without a memory is a country of madmen.” –George Santayana, Spanish Philosopher, Essayist, and Novelist
“A people without the knowledge of this past history, origin and culture are like a tree without roots.” –Marcus Garvey, Jamaican Political Leader
An article in the education section of the New York Times from June of last year was reflective of McCullough’s 60-Minutes comment: “American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released on Tuesday, with most fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War.” Read the entire article here.
If you sometimes get the feeling that our country and some of our youth (and adults, for that matter) appear to be rudderless, maybe we’re getting a hint here as to why.
When early American pioneers were moving westward across great expanses of land, it was, over time and distance, easy for them to stray off course, instead of moving in a relatively straight line.
Early on, someone came up with the idea of attaching a stick to a wagon that would drag in the dirt. They could look back and see if they were going in a straight line. However, this worked only for a short distance. Once the wagons crested a hill and went down the other side, the line was no longer visible.
The best method was to find a mountain, a hill or something solid they could move towards. As they looked back to the last visual standard, then forward to the next, they could see where they had been and where they were going. The last landmark behind them was as important as the next one ahead of them.
Clearly, knowledge of what this country is all about is vital to our course into the future. Failing to teach at all levels about our amazing history and the inspired and gifted people who founded it is not only seriously neglectful, it is filled with foreboding.
Our very national identity is based on knowledge of who and why we are.
-LB
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‘Tis the Season…Almost.
Well, the election is over and as the dust settles, we all know that almost nothing has changed in Washington. Same president, same party controls the Senate and the same party controls the House. You’re either elated or just now getting over a small case of the blues.
So…now we’re looking to the holidays to bring us all — Democrats and Republicans alike — a good heaping portion of cheer and, hopefully, goodwill.
Soon, at least one radio station in every market will be playing non-stop Christmas music, which will be accompanied with my desperate, yet futile, perennial wish that Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, Burl Ive’s Holly Jolly Christmas, The Hippopotamus Song, and the Chipmunks be eternally banned from all holiday play lists.
Fine, at least balance those dreaded hot-rotation annoyances with the Royal Guardsmen’s Snoopy’s Christmas, Bruce Springsteen’s Santa Claus is Coming to Town (that sax is killer), even the Singing Dogs…and definitely Mannheim Steamroller, or any version of O Holy Night.
Costco and Home Depot have been displaying decorations for weeks. Seriously? Who in creation would spoil Christmas by being so smart (and so insipidly efficient) as to buy anything now? What’s wrong with them?! Holiday shopping is not about choosing from a great selection. It’s about frenzied, frenetic activity and finding that perfect sweater gift only in size small on December 20th. See, now that’s exciting!
Although buying online is a great part of Christmas shopping in the Bennett household, there is something indescribable about the wonderful craziness of bouncing off other package-ladened shoppers in the mall or at Target at least a couple of time during the season. Seriously, it’s part of it not to be missed. No, I really mean it. As crazy as it can get, nobody seems to be angry. That’s the cool part of brick-and-mortar Christmas shopping.
Speaking of cool customers, what’s with the people behind the counter at the post office? The crazier it gets, the calmer, cooler and more composed those men and women are. They’re absolutely imperturbable. I’m not sure if Valium is part of their holiday job prep or not, but, in my opinion, they personify unflappable. When you’re mailing your last-minute packages this year, take notice and you’ll probably walk out feeling good about that interminably long line in which you just waited.
Let’s see, we’ve talked about the election, Christmas music, early shopping, crazy late shopping and the post office. Oh, one other thing in this hodgepodge pre-Christmas post.
And this comes somewhat in the way of a confession: I like those sappy (some say) Christmas stories on the Hallmark channel. Yeah, I even well up when formerly star-crossed sweethearts, by the slightest of chances, get together after years of separation.
My only excuse: it’s Christmas, people…give or take a few weeks.
-LB
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Sorry, I’ve Got to Deal With This
I’m seriously trying to get this blog back to topics of little or no import. Seriously, I am. I mean, un-seriously, I am. But, a topic of some gravity has been gnawing at the edges of my conscience. Something that I must deal with here. The ubiquity of this issue is so complete that you too have no doubt pondered it in your deepest moments of reflection, but have hesitated to vocalize your thoughts. So…into the breach we leap.
Why do sandwiches taste so much better when they’re made by someone else…especially women?
Bam! There it is. Freshly broached. Out in the open. A question that is no longer a verbal denizen of dark underpasses and backrooms, whispered with equal parts of trepidation and marvel.
No matter how hard I try. No matter how carefully I attempt to apply and evenly spread just the right amount of mayo and mustard. No matter how cautiously I slice the tomatoes. No matter how vigilant I am at selecting the crispest lettuce from the head. No matter how delicately I place the cold cuts. No matter how perfectly I sprinkle the salt and pepper. No matter. No matter. No matter.
Sandwiches made by my wife or one of my daughters — using the same bread as I, the same mayo and mustard, the same tomatoes, the same lettuce, the same cold cuts, the same salt and pepper — always taste better than mine by an order of magnitude…several magnitudes.
What’s the deal with that? Are they slipping something into the sandwiches. Something the existence of which we guys are totally unaware? Is there some secret sandwich component known only to females? Some furtive slight of hand they are sworn to keep gender specific…always?
Are there coded messages they spread to each other by applying lemon juice to mayonnaise labels? Maybe a horseradish handshake? A chipotle clasp? A garnish gesture? A (condiment that starts with “w” that doesn’t come to mind) wink?
Nah. Couldn’t happen. My wife would tell her sister in Arizona, who would tell her husband, who would tell me. Right? No. Apparently, this is beyond even that usually dependable conduit.
Well…we’ve solved nothing. Have come no closer to the answer. But I feel better. Sometimes, as with this, you have to hit the vent button and let it out. Otherwise, there’s an unsightly explosion with pieces of ball cap, sweatshirt, kakis, and tennis shoes all over the room.
By the way, people are generally amazed to learn that the sandwich, as a category, is my favorite food. Well…maybe right there with fried chicken, which goes great with a tomato sandwich. You might have to be from the south to understand that one.
-LB
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Looking for Neutral? Sorry.
My son Daniel and I were having a conversation the other day — inconsequential stuff like … oh… the meaning of life and why we are here — when a thought bubbled up that I expressed. It went something like this: “There is no neutral. We are either a force for good in this life or not.”
I suppose that’s analogous to on or off, in or out, up or down…or any number of other immutable prepositions that live in a place with no in-between.
The aphorism you’re either part of the solution or you’re part of — you know the rest — wants to surface here.
We’d (I’d) like to believe that there’s an idling neutral position in life. We all tend to hate it to pieces when things are described as black or white, with no shades mixed in there. Sorry, Charlie, I didn’t make the rules.
You see, that’s the thing (my son Chris likes to say that — you see, that’s the thing)…how we live our individual lives in relation to others matters. Actually, it’s both a beautiful and scary thing…the power of the individual. Polar-opposites Gandhi and Hitler immediately come to mind.
One of the canons of advertising and marketing is that every great idea (in life generally, extend that to mean that every great movement) starts with a single individual who is inspired with a big idea. (Where inspiration comes from is a topic for another blog.) One of the fathers of Madison Avenue advertising was David Ogilvy. He said, “You’ll find no statues to committees in the park.”
But back to our obdurate prepositions. I’ve been known to sometimes slide from on to off, in to out, with it to without it. During those times, I’ve often desperately searched for neutral, but couldn’t find it. Ever. Life would so much more simple and comfortable if I could.
I’m thinking neutral would be a guilt-free zone of sorts, a room with thick walls, a soft leather recliner and a remote that accesses 798 channels. Problem is, the way things are set up, you’re got to totally switch to off to go there, which, I understand, is pretty much a forlorn place of abject narcissism. Whoa!
As for me, I can take solace in the fact that my general inclination is mostly toward drive…with more than a frequent helpful tug on the gear shift from my wife, who knows nothing of neutral, never wanted to.
In or out, on or off, on board or overboard…pick one. It seems to me there’s clearly no in-between place called neutral.
-LB
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Wrap Your Mind Around This
I recently read a fascinating Monday Morning Memo blog by Roy Williams. I’ll pass along a link to it later in this post.
At one point, the post discusses dumping massive amounts of “unstructured data” into very fast computers in a search for patterns that might emerge. This “big data” was a result of gathering information from such disparate sources as “…climate sensors, digital photos and videos, purchase transaction records, Tweets and other social media posts, GPS signals from cell phones…” and such.
This is the sentence from the post that really caught my attention: “… big data [is] just another practical application of chaos theory….Chaos, in science, is not randomness, but precisely the opposite. Chaos is a pattern so vast that it won’t fit into the human mind.”
So…if our finite minds could grasp and process the seemingly chaotic, unrelated events going on at once in the world (or just around us, for that matter) we would see a pattern or patterns? Is that what we can infer from that sentence? Wow!
What to us appears to be utter chaos, to a super computer or, more especially, to an omniscient mind, is beautifully clear. What to us appears to be a series of unrelated happenings, to a super computer or an omniscient mind is totally interrelated. What appears to us to be mass confusion, to a super computer or an omniscient mind is a pattern at play.
I think I’m beginning to get it.
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In a Roaming Rhino post back earlier this year (here), we rambled about chaos.
Oh, and as promised, here’s the link to Roy Williams’ blog, Miraculous Insights from Unstructured Data.
-LB
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Addressing the Gorilla
This is somewhat a continuation of last week’s post.
Before we go any farther, please take a few minutes to view this video, which I’ve already shared with some of you. It will give context to the remainder of this blog.
So…how do we solve this mess?
Well…I’m sure everybody and his cat has a solution. So…I, too, will unabashedly leap into the breach and share my three-part solution.
The first two points of this solution currently represent the 800-pound — no, make it the 8,000-pound — gorilla in the political room. Whichever of the two presidential candidates addresses that gorilla in the clearest, most honest terms will be considered by me as being the most right for this country. The issue? Pain.
1. Cutbacks across the board. Painful.
2. Increase income (taxes) for almost everyone. Painful.
3. Start making and selling more stuff in the USA.
Let’s talk about the first two for a moment here.
From around 1930 ’til about 1947 or so, our parents, grandparents and great grandparents knew the meaning of belt tightening. First, with the depression, then with WWII rationing. People sucked it up, gave it up and put up to make it happen.
Tom Brokaw called them The Greatest Generation.
Now, we’re most likely facing a situation in which it’s time for this generation to step up and show its mettle. Maybe not to the same degree, but we can no longer be pantywaists waiting for someone else to do it.
Some programs will have to go. And, based on how much we make, the introduction of a graduated income tax that’s fair, firm and foolproof. (I love alliteration.)
I understand the importance of the wealthy continuing to invest in businesses, which is part three of the solution. But, we’re talking about individual income tax here. Now, admittedly, I’m clueless about how the really wealthy pay taxes. It just seems to me it could be made simpler.
I was stunned when I learned recently that less than 50-percent of Americans pay any income tax. Heck, I’m in no way a high-income guy (far from it), yet I pay income tax.
In terms of points of pain one and two, I think it’s no longer going to be up to the other guy; the other guy is US.
Okay, point number three – making and selling more stuff in the USA.
Donald Trump is bit of a goofy guy in some respects, the hair and all. However, it seems to me he’s spot on when he says China is kicking our keisters and we’re paying them to do it.
Why are so many American products actually being made overseas? That’s easy. Cheap labor. However, that cheap labor over there is costing us over here. Regrettably, that “cost” is not just the loss of jobs, which is bad enough, but it’s costing us our national stability.
Well…we’re never going to pay people the sweat-shop wages the unfortunate workers are paid in China, Mexico, India, etc., etc. But maybe we need to extend the invitation of conciliation to both ownership and unions. It seems to me there’s enough greed already… on both sides.
Just as owners and management need to back way off the greedometer, the rank and file and their union bosses need to be more concession minded, a lot more. Yeah, yeah, I know how unions were important in saving American workers from our own versions of sweat shops back when. That was then; this is now.
However, now it’s more about a struggle for power between management and unions, and the loser in this power grab is the country. Knock that crap off!
Let’s start building stuff in this country again. Traditionally, American workers were the best in the world. They need to be again. Heck, when I was a kid, the most disparaging thing you could say about an item was that it was made in Japan. Well, we all know how that worm has turned.
Another thing: building stuff is not always perfectly clean. We can maintain a healthful environment without taking it to absurdity. We can find a way to use coal — which we have lots and lots and lots of — without the blatant disregard China has for — oh, I don’t know — breathing!
Finally, this thought about achieving a balance in trade. I want an imbalance in trade, with us making the best stuff in the world and shipping it like crazy all over creation because it’s the best there is…anywhere.
And if China undercuts us in price elsewhere, let’s at least slap em silly with tariffs on stuff they try to unload over here.
And for all you one-world-ers, we’ll get back to you when we get the ship righted.
Well…as I always say at the end of my advertising blog…anyway, that’s how it looks from here.
-LB
Note: we’ll probably get this blog back to its usual senseless froth and frivolity next week.
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We Need to Start Making Stuff Again
When I was a kid, video games didn’t exist; hadn’t been dreamed of yet. Heck, when I was a mere young-un, I listened to the Lone Ranger on the radio at the table in the back of my folk’s grocery store. Caught up in the high drama with anxious fingers, I must have broken thousands of toothpicks to bits as Lone and Tonto were forced to daringly extricate themselves from another dangerous entanglement or rescue a helpless farmer from some villainous character with bad intentions. One of my biggest thrills came in 1957, when we got our first television and I was able to actually watch the Lone Ranger.
But, I digress. Back to video games. I’m wondering if all the video games kids (okay, and adults) are playing today are giving them (the kids) the rounded experiences we enjoyed in “the thrilling days of yesteryear.” Those last words still ring clearly in my mind as intoned to the cadence of the William Tell Overture by announcer Fred Foy at the beginning of each new adventure of the masked man and his faithful friend. Okay, seriously. Back to the topic.
Beyond playing football, baseball and basketball in somebody’s yard or lot, we were constantly doing other stuff. If we weren’t rewiring old military headphones and running wires between our houses to make our own little private telephones, we were building tree houses or hacking out hideouts and forts in the woods.
Every kid knew how to patch a bicycle tire or properly nail together two boards. Who can count the number of slingshots (we called them bean-shooters) or rabbit boxes we made? Like this, but with strips of rubber cut from old inner tubes, not surgical tubing. One of our biggest accomplishments was building a boat we actually paddled on the Black River. It leaked some and the tar never quite dried, so we always were a mess when we got out.
The point is that all that fun taught us some basic skills in problem solving that I’m not sure video games of today teach. My wife relates something she heard once about how back during WWII, the military liked having farm boys around because they could figure out how to repair equipment in the battlefield because of all the experience they had in making things work with what whatever was at hand back on the farm.
This video with John “Cliff” Ratzenberger really brings the intent of this post into focus.
Ratzenberger’s point is well taken by me. We have beautiful buildings of glass and steel that house amazing technology. But somebody has to build those buildings.
Now it seems as if China is making almost everything we use and increasingly fewer people know how to work any device that doesn’t have buttons and a screen that lights up.
A bother-in-law down in Arizona and I have often discussed how history has taught us that our industrial know-how, which was based on individual know-how, is what made victory in WWII possible in two separate theaters of major conflict on opposite sides of the world. The country was able to ramp up, as car plants became tank plants and commercial aircraft manufacturers started rolling out B-17s in huge numbers.
Hey, this is not to generally bad-mouth video games. Maybe it’s a call for balance. Some kids seem to be playing them to the exclusion of everything else. Perhaps video games do teach something, but I sure learned a lot about how to solve problems just by making and building things as a kid.
My main thought here is that the country needs to start making stuff again and getting more people involved in doing it, drawing on know-how learned early on.
Although I still love working with power tools in the garage, my career is quite removed from being a professional craftsman. But the fun I had making stuff as a kid did teach me something invaluable about creativity, which has definitely been part of what I do.
-LB
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I’m Just Sayin’
Generally, I make this little blog light, fun, and sometimes mushy. Today’s an exception.
With all the potentially wonderful things the internet has offered, including social media (for better or worse), it has also provided an instant forum for idiots.
This week provides us with two cases in point:
First, some British journalist(?) had his Twitter account shut down for a day because he got his knickers in a big-time knot over the fact that NBC was tape delaying many events of the Olympics here in the US. Twitter later apologized to the guy.
Hello! Most people on this side of the pond don’t get up at 4 o’clock in the morning and many have to work during the day. Already knowing the score or results of an event notwithstanding, millions of people over here want to see the US Olympians in action.
So why should this guy go bonkers over NBC’s tape delaying big events for prime-time viewing? Because he has an instant forum in which he can exercise free speech, even if it proved him to be a tweeting twit.
Speaking of free speech, here’s case in point number two.
You’ve no doubt heard about Chick-fil-A’s latest issues with the press. Because of all the negative publicity that fast-food chicken sandwich chain is getting, a headline in Advertising Age’s online service caught my eye: Three Cheers for Chick-fil-A. However, that was followed in parenthesis with (And Why I’ll Never Eat There Again). The article was written by Jonathan Salem Baskin. It praises the company’s sticking to its guns, but with somewhat of a major BUT. Read the entire article here.
What, for the love of Pete, is wrong with people? At what point did things get turned so totally upside down? In what universe of thought is it bad for Chick-fil-A to hold its beliefs, tenets and standards inviolate?
Companies support causes all the time. So what if Chick-fil-A chooses to give to pro-traditional-marriage groups. This company chooses to put who they are and what they stand for out there. When considered in the light (or absence thereof) of much that is hidden in today’s business world, that’s pretty darn refreshing.
I frequent businesses because they have a superior product, provide superb service, and offer great value. I don’t really care what their owners believe, published or not.
That brings up another issue: prejudice. Isn’t it a demonstration of prejudice in its most unfettered form to not shop somewhere simply because the business is owned by someone who follows a religious dogma different than yours? If all non-Jewish people took that attitude, they’d be denying themselves of some terrific shopping experiences at a multitude of outstanding businesses.
What chaps me off is that for some people free speech is great…IF it’s in agreement with what they think. But I’m becoming weary of those who want to shut up and shut down businesses who support ideals with which they disagree, simply because they disagree with them. Yes, including people who have a bone to pick with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream because of their very vocal left political leanings.
But perhaps there’s a larger issue at work here.
I found this quote from Mr. Baskin’s above mentioned article to be very interesting: “While Chick-fil-A’s commitment to Christian values was never a secret, I doubt many people thought about how those values affected its business decisions. Being reminded that it relies on a 2,000-year-old text that was never intended to be a business how-to book makes one wonder what else the company is doing that’s similarly detached from the requirements of the marketplace.”
Really? In what way was that 2,000-year-old text “never intended to be a business how-to book”? It worked pretty darn well for that little company started by James Cash Penney.
I’m thinking anything to do with religion, especially when it’s tied to political issues, drives some people just plain nuts. Perhaps those are they who, for reasons I can’t totally understand, would love to utterly exorcise religion from American life.
Miraculously, some other business traditions with religious overtones fearlessly remain. For example, Hebrew National’s (hot dogs) We Answer to a Higher Authority.
Well…Chick-fil-A sandwiches are delicious, so is Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Shouldn’t that be what counts?
-LB
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It’s a Game Changer
There are certain sports I cannot bring myself to find any interest in whatsoever.
In fact, to get me to watch these sports on television, you’d have to tie me in a sturdy chair with nylon cable ties, immobilize my head in a vice and secure my eyes in the open position by running duct (Duck) tape from my eyelids over the top of my head to the back of my neck. Ouch! (Disclaimer: If that sentence excites any scarily weird proclivities in anyone out there, I accept no responsibility.)
That’s how much I don’t care about watching certain sporting events. Among those are, in this order, the WNBA, soccer, hockey (soccer on ice) and cage fighting, whatever that’s officially called.
Hey, but that’s just me. I know millions of people find the accomplishments of the talented athletes who participate in these sports to be incredibly amazing and spellbindingly interesting. On the other hand, how much talent does it take for two guys in a cage to pummel the h-e-double-toothpicks out of each other?
Probably, many of you find one of my favorite sports to be mind-numbingly boring: tennis. Come on. Seriously? Even if it’s Roger Federer v. Novak Djokovic in the finals at Wimbledon? Okay, but I’m sure you love American football like I do, right?
No? Fine. Go find a soccer match between two British teams to watch. Maybe a riot won’t break out. Hey, but call me if it does. (Hockey on grass.)
I would also say that sports such as beach volleyball, swimming, gymnastics and rowing generally wiggle my interest meter only very passively.
But…all of that begs a contradictorily huge question: WHY in creation did I watch and enjoy literally hours of sports television Saturday that included lady’s basketball and soccer, swimming, volleyball, gymnastics and rowing? (Thankfully, no cage fighting.)
It’s the Olympics, man/ma’am! That changes everything.
As I watched and the hours rolled by, I had to ask myself why I was so enthralled by sports I normally click right past.
My first answer to myself was, of course, as above… It’s the Olympics, man! (Frighteningly, I do have conversations with myself.)
But why are the Olympics so fascinating that a billion people, including me, watch them with such transfixed absorption? Can you think of another time when you sit and watch skeet shooting? (Actually, that’s fairly interesting stuff.)
Here are some answers I came up with that work for me.
First, it’s our guys and girls against everyone else in the whole world. It’s pretty darn cool when the Stars and Stripes are raised in the middle position and our national anthem echoes throughout the venue. There are few more button-popping, glint-in-the-eye, patriotic moments in life than that that.
But, I think it goes deeper than the patriotic, we-just-beat-the Chinese thing, although pride in hearth, home and country is no doubt an extremely big-time part of it for most of us.
When an American athlete wins gold, it’s as if we win it, you and I. He or she won it not just for himself and herself, but for us and with us. It’s not just some vicarious experience. Not at all. We ARE de facto members of Team USA. I think that’s how deeply it runs.
The really powerful thing about this is that the Olympics represent an entire country, amplifying by an order of magnitude how we feel, for example, about our favorite college football team.
You know, I think the really captivating thing about the Olympics is actually its most common denominator: the individual athlete.
Hundreds of compelling personal stories are being played out in high drama across every field, pool, court, track and arena.
It usually starts early on: nine, seven, or even younger. Perhaps unknowingly, a youngster sets foot on a painfully long road. Mom, dad or other offers encouragement, support, delivering him/her to the gym, court, pool or field at six o’clock in the morning, grinding out the days and years. Falling, getting up, missing, doing it again; the relentless monotony of the process repeating itself thousands and thousands of times, all that effort exuded in abject anonymity. Muscles are trained, strengthened; patterns are encoded on the brain. Sometimes less sure, but ultimately more sure, s/he participates in the games of youth. Winning, losing, winning, losing, winning, winning, winning. Someone sees something unusual, a mentor or coach sees potential. Then it’s really serious; the sacrifice total. The strain, the pain more intense. Now the goal is more focused, more consuming.
Or change that story totally. The dusty roads of Africa where people train by running for their lives, literally. The kid of humble means in Brazil who starts by kicking a rock or can down the street, stories of Pele and Renaldo in his head. Or those from countries where participation (or failure) is — how shall we say — less optional.
Whatever the case, the compelling drama of the Olympics is seeded in the hundreds of individual stories of incredible personal sacrifice and accomplishment. Something made all the more poignant by the fact that each participant knows that only three in each event will ultimately stand in glory.
All those hours reaching for just that half inch higher, shaving that other hundredth of a second, refining that move again and again, pushing the personal envelope beyond a personal best…then pushing it some more. Perfection. Even after all that, for many, it’s an outside shot…at best. But perhaps that’s okay, at least later on, because those not on the podium have a place to stand too.
Just being there! Just participating. Just being one of the very few who can ever say, “I’m an Olympian.”
-LB
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I, Two
There’s a dude who lives inside me who’s awesomely cool. He’s gregarious, moves in all social circles with grace and ease; he’s funny, amazingly creative, and handles even the most difficult situations with consummate coolness and aplomb. He’s a superb tennis player and a svelte 30-pounds lighter than I. If panache has a name, it is he, Me 2.0.
I think I’ve come to realize why I get out of the shower and hope the mirror’s fogged. The image I see there is not me, at least not the other me, Me 2.0, the persona I carry around in my mind.
Perhaps all of us live in our 2.0 worlds. Maybe we have to, at least to some degree.
I’m thinking it’s how we maintain even a modicum of confidence in the face of all the empirical evidence to the contrary.
For example, the ubiquity of digital photography, the omnipresent, omni-irritating sworn enemy of us denizens of 2.0-dom. Even so, Me 2.0 is incredibly powerful and persuasive in fighting this hard, full-color testament to reality. The revisionist ability of Me 2.0 is like a soothing, healing balm that has the power to induce short-term memory loss.
Just last week – how can I put this – a rather Photoshop-revision-worthy view of my profile appeared in one of many shots at a family member’s birthday party. The usual sequence followed: I was, in order, aghast, in denial, then, after time, mollified, as Me 2.0 kicked in.
As I consider this repeated pattern of behavior, I’m beginning to wonder if Me 2.0 is really a friend (just a safe place to go), or like some kind of highly addictive emotional opioid.
Although he makes my life much more pleasant and has some good things to offer in the way of confidence, I’m thinking that Me 2.0 is actually a shameless sycophant. Yeah, an insidious suck-up who’s all about the easy life, the easy way out in all situations.
Yep. It’s time for an upgrade from 2.0, although installing new software is almost always a painful process.
-LB
Note: If anyone takes this with any degree of seriousness, almost none was intended. Psshaw, I’m just a gregarious, funny, amazingly creative guy who handles even the most difficult situations with consummate coolness and aplomb. (Hmmmm?)
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