He Said WHAT?

There is only one thing I will miss about our soon-to-be-former President: his mangling of the American English language.

Admittedly, American English is a difficult language, filled with contradictions and odd colloquialisms. I have trouble with it myself, even though it is the only language I speak. But I expect a Yale-educated former business executive who was elected President of the United States for two terms to have better mastery of the language than I do.

People who have worked closely with him claim that in private, he is disciplined, inquisitive and forceful in his leadership style. His public persona contradicts that claim.

Here are a few examples from a story on the AOL site:

"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." | Location: White House Rose Garden, Washington, D.C. | Date: June 26, 2008

"These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved." | Location: Sofia, Bulgaria | Date: June 11, 2007

"We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job." | Location: Meeting with Mississippi leaders, Gulfport, MS. | Date: Sept. 20, 2005

"Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." | Location: Campaign rally, Poplar Bluff, MO. | Date: Sept. 6, 2004

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." | Location: The White House, Washington, D.C. | Date: Aug. 5, 2004

"They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too." | Location: Langley, Va. | Date: Sept. 26, 2001

I say again that I am no literary giant, but I expect more from a President. However, if people close to him believe he is smarter than he seems, I might have misunderestimated him too.

Space: the Final Frontier … and Suburb

Many of us who grew up in the 1960s were/are fascinated by space travel. The ‘race to the moon’ dominated the news and our culture then. Americans have always been obsessed with exploration and it seemed only natural that the moon, and eventually Mars and other planets, would be the next frontier. After all, we ran out of continent at California and stopped colonizing after Alaska and Hawaii.

Colonizing the moon was supposed to be the next step. A working environment there would serve as a place for scientific research and a jumping off point for further space exploration and, of course, real estate development.

Those dreams seemed inevitable then, impossible now.

Fortunately there are still some dreamers among us, including Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society. Come to think of it, if there is a Mars Society, there must be plenty of dreamers. Zubrin just published a book called "HOW TO LIVE ON MARS: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet."

I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to. The author has a background in nuclear engineering, aeronautics and astronautics and seems to have a great sense of humor, too. Some of the chapter titles are How to Get There, How To Choose Your First Ground Rover (don’t buy the usual rover, buy a Honda), How To Get Rich (there is plenty of beachfront property available).

Here’s a quote from the press release:
With the housing market in a slump, isn’t it time to break away
from these earthly boundaries? Let’s face it: Mars is where the
future is. Its wide-open (and affordable!) spaces are waiting for
folks like you with guts and gumption to go out and make your
mark. It’s a new world, ready for a young civilization to be born,
and rife with history raring to be made.

That’s my kind of humor; and in a way, my kind of dreaming.

The fiftysomething Bowl

Remember when there were just a few bowl games? Cotton Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl and a handful of others.

Now there are 35 or more, most with advertising naming rights. Many of the traditional bowl games retain their original name along with the sponsor, like the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the FedEx Orange Bowl and the AT&T Cotton Bowl.

Some, however, are just named for the sponsor. The season started right here in my area with the EagleBank Bowl in Washington DC. Others include the Papajohns.com Bowl, the Capital One Bowl, the Meineke Car Care Bowl (at the Bank Of America Stadium in Charlotte – yes, stadiums are also often named for sponsors), the magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl (played at Tropicana Field), the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl (at Qualcomm Stadium).

One of the more ridiculous names: the Chick-fil-A Bowl. Puh-leeze! And it turns out this one, played in Atlanta since 1968, dropped its original name: the Peach Bowl.

Do these games count for anything anymore? Is there still a football game in the middle of the hype and commercialism?

Please don’t misunderstand my point; this is not a rant against advertising. I love commercials. I make my living making commercials. The company I work for exists by connecting advertisers to consumers. But shouldn’t there be some limits? Does everything have to have a sponsor?

Auto racing is my favorite sport but sometimes I laugh out loud while watching a NASCAR race. The cars are sponsored, of course, and some of the sponsor connections make sense. Jimmie Johnson in the Lowes #48 car was the points champ for the past three seasons. Building supplies and auto racing – I get that. Contenders for the championship include Tony Stewart in the Home Depot #20 and Carl Edwards, who is takin’ care of business in the Office Depot #99. Mark Martin now drives the US Army #8 but a few years ago his sponsor was Viagra; he is one of the older drivers so there is a bit of synergy there. But how does Juan Montoya feel when he climbs into the Juicy Fruit Slim Pack #42 car?

My favorite driver ever is the late Alan Kulwicki; one year his sponsor was Hooters.

Every aspect of the race coverage on TV has a sponsor. Drivers stop on pit road to top off with Sonoco racing fuel. Last year, Kasey Kahne in the Budweiser #9 Dodge won the Coca Cola 500 at Lowes Motor Speedway. In at least one race, Kahne avoided a serious collision on the track and was designated the Allstate Good Hands Driver of the day. (I’m not making this up).

Back to Bowl Games … how ridiculous can naming rights get? The Wii Bowl? The Kellogg’s Cereal Bowl? The Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner Bowl? Toilet Bowl, for short. The Edy’s Ice Cream Bowl?

What if Victoria’s Secret wanted to buy the naming rights to a Bowl game? Maybe a World Cup, Davis Cup or Ryder Cup event would be a better fit for them.

Just a Second

As I write this, less than ninety minutes remain in 2008. At the stroke of midnight, a new year begins.

Isn’t it amazing how much difference one second makes?

The time between 11:59:00 and 12:00:00 is only one second, yet in that instant we move from 2008 to 2009, from a year of campaigns to a year of a new President, from a year of economic difficulties to a year of potential recovery, from twelve months during which most of us did not stick to last year’s New Year’s resolutions to a year in which we try again.

Nothing physically changes when the clock strikes twelve.

Here in Maryland tonight, the wind is gusting to 40 miles per hour; at 12:00, the wind will continue to blow at 40 miles per hour. At one second before midnight, the sky will be dark; as the clock reads 12:00:00, the sky will still be dark. If your heart rate is 72 beats per minute, your heart will beat 1.2 times between 11:13:59 and 11:14:00 and it will also beat 1.2 times between 11:59:59 and 12:00:00.

Yet as 11:59:59 becomes 12:00:00 tonight, a whole new year begins.

Jokesters among us will blink during that second then say, “hey, I haven’t seen you since last year.”

In that one second, many of the negatives we experienced during the last twelve months are erased and the door opens to a whole new world of positive possibilities. Even if we have never lost the weight we said we would in New Year’s resolutions in the past, it is possible we will lose the weight in the next year, so we make that resolution again.

Any dream we have could become reality: zero balance credit card debt, a clutter-free house, a new job, a new lover, world peace.

In just over one hour, that one second will flash across the Eastern Standard Time Zone in the United States. Millions of people will engage In a shared collective countdown: 10, 9, we watch our clocks or the readout on a TV screen, 8, 7, fiftysomethings see Dick Clark on TV and remark on how young he still looks despite the slurred speech pattern resulting from a stroke a few years ago, 6, 5, partygoers ready their champagne glasses as one brave soul prepares to pop the cork, 4, 3, some people are already asleep, viewing this as just another Wednesday night, 2, 1, but sentimentalists like me take a deep breath in that remaining second and shout …

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

More Merry Than I Expected

A few posts ago, I talked about holiday depression. I was having a particularly down day but speculated (hoped, actually) that it might be the only really depressing day of the season for me this year.

Fortunately, it was.

I won’t go so far as to say I’ve been joyous this holiday season, but I’ve been happier than usual. I followed some of the advice I’ve been given over the years – don’t over schedule, try to accept whatever comes, work on establishing new rituals to replace the ones form youth that we might miss – and it actually worked.

My wife and I have a few rituals of our own, including a making a big deal out of opening presents with the dogs and taking pictures of the proceedings. We went through this whole season without arguing about which lights to put where and which corner of which room to place the tree. We had a nice meal on Christmas day. I caught myself singing along with Christmas songs on the radio while driving home from work one day. And this past Saturday we spent the afternoon with some old friends of mine who were visiting the area.

So the season has been relatively jolly. Hope yours was too.

And New Year’s Day, my favorite holiday, is just two days away.

A Kidless Christmas

We don't have kids, but my wife and I treat Christmas as if we did. See all of these presents? Most are for our three dogs.


Here is one of our dogs thanking my wife for all the great presents.



Here I am showing off a Christmas present from my wife, a 'coffee table' book of photographs by one of my favorite photographers.


Hope you have a great holiday, and if you don't happen to celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a great December.

Me Me Me

I think I discovered a reason for my temporary writer’s block. Basically, I don’t really like to talk about myself.

OK, people who know me in real life would laugh at that statement; I talk about myself way too much. But those conversations are held among a small circle of people I know. Blogs, by their very nature, are public forums in which people write about themselves. Subject matter can range from daily mundane activities to personal opinions about the meaning of life. Readership can range from dozens to millions.

Much of what I’ve written in this blog has been through the “life in our fifties” filter with the goal of sharing common experiences and offering explanations of our attitudes to other generations, using my life and observations as examples.

But my parents said we shouldn’t talk about ourselves. That presents an annoying inner conflict. I also recall being taught to keep my opinions to myself.

All of that adds up to a lot of second-guessing on my part.

Do I say my opinion or not? Does anyone really want to hear my opinion? Do I really want to hear anyone else’s opinion, especially if it’s a comment post in which someone disagrees with me?

On the other hand, engaging conversation based on disagreements in point of view is a very engaging form of communication. We learn and grow through that type of discourse. We discover that ours isn’t the only valid opinion. We learn how to bond and maintain friendships in spite of philosophical differences.

Back to my writer’s block. I could write about myself daily … endlessly. Most writing I do in my life is work-related and for other people. The writing I do here is for me. I even said something like that in my very first post: This blog might turn into a place where I express my opinion, for no particular reason other than that I can.

By the way, this is my 281st post.

So, to borrow from a Toby Keith song from a couple of years ago … “I want to talk about me, me, me, me, me.” Maybe this will cure my writer’s block.

Opinionated Journalist and Quick Reflexes

The White House Press Room can be quite contentious at times, but it's nothing compared to this scene in Iraq today.



I bet no American journalist ever threw shoes at a U.S. President.

Of course a few questions and observations come to mind:

- It was an Iraqi reporter who threw the shoes at President Bush. If he had thrown shoes at his country's leader six years ago, he probably would have been shot.

- A majority of American citizens dislike President Bush but most of them (us) would never consider throwing something at him. Like him or not, he IS the President and deserves respect.

- Some people have probably dreamed about throwing something at him.

- What will most people remember about the press conference - the message or the shoes?

- Bush has some damn good reflexes.

- What did the person sitting on either side of the Iraqi reporter think when they saw him remove his shoes?

Snow in New Orleans

THIS doesn't happen very often:



I grew up in New Orleans, and I only saw snow three times during the 27 years I lived there. One of those snowfalls set a record ... 5 inches. I've since lived in places where that would be called a dusting.

It snowed there yesterday.

Temporary Writer's Block

I've been busier than usual at work and at home and paying more attention to my photo blogs than this one. Basically, my brain is a little tapped out this month, so I have had little to say.

But I'm still here, still alive and well. Thanks for asking.

Check back again soon. I know my creative spark is around here somewhere.

Calories and Tears

I’m holding back tears as I watch a TV documentary. I’ll tell you the subject matter in a moment.

Even my closest friends would be surprised to learn how emotional I really am. In most public settings, including work and family gatherings, I have a fairly steady, even temperament. I show emotion but not in an extreme way. My laugh isn’t hearty and I rarely cry in public.

But I experience holiday depression. From Thanksgiving Day through New Year’s Day, that bundle of pent up emotion that a surprisingly large number of people deal with lives just below the surface of my exterior personality. It doesn’t take much to open the window and let it out.

I’m revealing this part of me in this somewhat public setting just in case you have similar feelings during the holiday season and need a little validation to prove you’re not alone or crazy.

I got through Thanksgiving week in a great mood this year. My sister and some of my cousins emailed greetings and a few old photographs to each other. These are the cousins who I spent nearly every Thanksgiving of my youth with. The photos and messages felt good. No tears, many smiles.

But this afternoon is another story. It is three days after Thanksgiving, cloudy, rainy and cold, much colder than it ever was in late November in my southern youth. I’m eating the last of the holiday leftovers, thinking about how my original plan to spend Thanksgiving with my sister in New Orleans didn’t work out, and watching the beginning of a documentary on television. It is a whimsical but fact-based look at the history of donuts.

Yes, donuts are making me cry.

The lead example this documentary uses to explain the world’s fascination with fried dough is the beignet, the only food item served at Café du Monde in New Orleans. I have probably been to that that famous outdoor café more than a hundred times in my life and often during significant, emotional moments. My earliest memory of eating beignets there was after a grandmother’s funeral. Dad took us there after at least three funerals during my youth. I spilled the powdered sugar beignet topping on a tuxedo after at least two proms in high school. In the years since leaving New Orleans, I have shared their café au lait and beignets with at least two girlfriends and a wife. I’ve dropped in solo. The strong coffee and calorie-laden beignets are major part of my life and viewing those sights and sounds have opened the emotion window.


This kind of reaction is a normal component of holiday depression. As adults we often try to recreate family rituals from our youth and the disparity between that attempt and current reality often leads to sadness rather than joy. There is nothing wrong with it and it is perfectly normal. Knowing that doesn’t necessarily make it easier to cope with, however, but it is a good first step. Making your own rituals and traditions is another positive step toward reducing the sadness. Letting it just happen rather than kicking yourself in the butt is another good technique.

I used to feel sad for the whole six or seven weeks of the fall/winter holidays. My favorite two words were “bah humbug.” Scrooge had some serious holiday depression going on. Changing his current behavior and attitude after connecting with his happier childhood helped him feel better. A story like that could help me and you. A tasty beignet from Café du Monde would help too.

Fortunately my holiday depression doesn’t last long any more. This one afternoon incident might be it for this year.

It’s Crazy

A stampede of people trampled him to death just inside of the entrance.

Does that sentence refer to a political demonstration gone bad? Restaurant patrons as they flee a burning hotel? A prison riot?

No.

That sentence describes what happened this morning at a Wal-Mart in Long Island, New York as the doors opened at 5:00 A.M. for the beginning of the post-Thanksgiving Day sale. The investigation is not yet complete, but early indications are that a crowd of shoppers rushed the entrance, broke the glass doors, destroyed the metal door frame and crushed a young store employee.

That is just f-ing crazy!

I do understand why hordes of people would arrive for a 5:00 A.M. store opening to get bargains like a 50-inch plasma TV for $798 or popular DVDs for $9 each. Holiday shopping on “Black Friday” is a ritual that has been going on for decades; the prices are great and it’s nice to finish Christmas gift buying in one day, a month ahead of the big day.

But what bargain price justifies the kind of pushing and shoving that damages property and endangers lives? Did the first ten people through the doors take advantage of the $69 sale price on those 10.2 megapixel digital cameras?

Picture from a different store

The young employee who was crushed died at a local hospital an hour after the incident. He was a 34-year-old maintenance worker from a temp agency. A 28-year old woman who is 8 months pregnant was also injured, but she and the baby are doing fine. Early reports indicate that five other shoppers were also injured.

The day after Thanksgiving Day is called Black Friday because that day is typically when retailers reach profitability for the year … the day they ‘go into the black.’ For family and friends of the dead Wal-Mart worker, that term will forever mean something else.

Happy Holidays!

Honey, Have You Seen My Hammer?

My Dad was quite the handy man and his workshop contained enough tools to supply a Home Depot. Those tools were his. Mom never touched them, nor did she have much interest in them. He had a specific plan for storing his tools and he always knew where each one was.

I have many of those tools myself now, his wish before he died, and I’d like to think those tools and others I acquired myself over the years are mine. I also have a plan for tool storage, but my wife is fairly handy with tools herself and she uses “my” tools all the time. Her plan differs from my plan and I often have to ask for the whereabouts of “my” tools.

So I was quite amused to learn that astronauts lost a bag of tools last week … in space! The bag floated away and is now orbiting the Earth on a path just ahead of the space station the astronauts were working on. In fact, if you look in the right place at the right time, you can see the tool bag’s trek across the night sky.



The contents of the orbiting tool bag? A couple of grease guns, a scraper tool and some large trash bags. The cost? $100,000. For a grease gun and trash bags?! Don’t they know there’s a sale at Home Depot?

By the way, the astronaut who accidentally let go of the bag of tools is somebody’s wife. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper is the lead space walker on this mission and her job is to clean and lubricate a jammed solar panel on the space station. Her husband is a NASA engineer in charge of the equipment used for her training. That means he is in charge of the tools. I guess their tool storage plans aren’t exactly in sync either.



Click for more:

The bag streaks by in the night sky.

The story on Space.com

Track the bag.

Forty Five Years Ago

For those of who remember that day, it’s hard to believe it was forty-five years ago today. A young, vibrant, inspiring President who promised change (sound familiar) was gunned down in Dallas (hope that never happens to a President again).

Even though I was very young, I remember that Friday like it was yesterday. Today it took a Google search to find any media stories noting this sad anniversary. From my perspective as a fifty-something I can't believe it doesn’t get major coverage, especially on an anniversary ending in five (a number that usually garners memorial almost as much as zero-year anniversaries).



Maybe it is time to forget about John F. Kennedy’s assassination or to just relegate it to the history books and the Jeopardy home edition. If you’re at the leading edge of the baby boom, you were 17 years old that day and remember it well. If you’re a young Boomer, you were a baby and not even old enough to know there was something unusual about your parents crying in front of the television all weekend.

If you are Gen X or younger, the whole thing is something your parents talked about, sort of like my parents talked about the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. You know it is important, but it doesn’t really mean anything to you.

For me, November 22nd is right up there with September 11th as a significant day to remember.



-------

If you’re interested, here are some of today’s stories, memories or commentary:

- Dallas television station report

- Boston Herald column

- Newseum

Here’s an excerpt from the Newseum story which shows how different news coverage was in 1963:

Journalists didn’t have laptops, digital cameras or cell phones four decades ago. But using typewriters, film and land-line telephones, they reported every breaking development — from Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead, to Love Field, where Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president, to the Texas Theatre, where suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was captured.

Television networks carried nonstop, commercial-free coverage for nearly four days. Two days after the assassination, TV viewers who were tuned to NBC, the only network that carried live coverage of Oswald’s jail transfer, witnessed the first live murder on television when nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot the accused assassin at point-blank range. The following day, more than 93 percent of U.S. TV households watched Kennedy’s funeral.

- The Zapruder film of the actual assassination

And if you’re a TV news geek, watch these two videos. They are part of a series of videos showing uncut CBS television coverage that day as the story was developing. You’ll hear numerous references to “our CBS news correspondent Dan Rather” who was at the hospital but without live TV cameras.

- CBS News coverage segment part 6

- CBS News coverage segment part 7 (the famous scene where Walter Cronkite holds back tears as he reads the ‘official’ announcement of Kennedy’s death is near the end of this clip)

Veteran’s Day

November 11th is an important day for anyone who has ever served in the military as well as for families of those veterans. We salute all who have worn the uniform, everyone from heroes on the battlefield to the soldiers who provided the most routine of services back home; those who are alive today and those who gave all for their country.

One veteran who holds a special place in my heart is my Dad. Although his enlistment in the Navy near the end of World War II was somewhat reluctant, he proudly served his country. He never saw combat but he certainly saw danger. The ship on which he was a radar tech nearly capsized in a typhoon in the Pacific, and the base where he was stationed in China was surrounded by people who weren’t always convinced that the war had really ended.

November 11th is also significant to my family because Dad died on this date a few years ago.

I don’t talk about this much, but I am also a veteran.


I was in the Army near the end of the Viet Nam war, but my service was totally unremarkable. Most of my time was spent safely in Louisiana and Texas, where I typed letters, moved furniture and swept floors. One enduring memory was the sad look on the faces of soldiers returning from that war; not the sadness of what they had endured but rather the ridicule they faced when they got home from fighting that unpopular war.

Regardless of anyone’s opinion of our current unpopular war, the men and women in uniform deserve respect for their service and fortunately, they usually get it. Those soldiers will be veterans one day and November 11th is their day. And ours.