Hello America 2012... where ya' headed?

  It’s election day… get out and vote.  We may not agree on the issues and some of the candidates, but… get out and vote.  

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I feel that the direction we are headed is the better way to go.  Based on where we started at 4 years ago we have come a very long way, and we’re headed in the right direction, in my opinion.  

I feel that if I had to count on someone to be on the side of the “man (or woman) on the street” and if I wanted someone who could identify more with people than with corporations, I firmly believe that Barack Obama is that person.  I don’t share the same skin color with the President, but I share many of the same values; that people should be given a fair shot to make it, that rules and taxes should apply equally to everyone, that women deserve to control their own healthcare and that they deserve equal pay for equal work, and... that government was created to provide for the common good.  - - -  Government shouldn’t be big and unwieldy and unresponsive and impersonal, it should be just the opposite.   It’s our job to make sure that it’s there when we need it, AND...  that it’s not in our way when we don’t.  

Finally, Medicare and Social Security are important issues and they deserve solutions that keep them solvent far into the future.   They affect you, your children, your parents and your grandparents.  Putting both of these earned benefit institutions into the private market is not a good move, it’s just asking for trouble, more trouble than they currently are in.  Vouchers and Wall Street are not good “people” solutions, they are temporarily good, and only temporarily good for the private market.  Let’s find a better solution that will guarantee that both programs survive and thrive long into the future.  

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It’s election day… get out and vote.  We may not agree on the issues and some of the candidates, but… get out and vote.

October 29th - end of the World Series?

So here we are... smack dab on the precipice of another agonizing(?) Minnesota winter, with little or no diversion, save sorting out scorebooks and traveling duffels.
Well I suppose there's the added element of keeping up with the #OWS movement in all its forms, which should prove interesting. Prediction 1: By May of 2012 we will have seen movement/change that we had not thought possible within our current system of conducting business; both privately AND publicly. Prediction 2: Personal lives will be changed dramatically during that same time frame - perspectives will change along with behaviors and situations.

T

p.s. likely to be more within the next 7-10 days....

This isn't a void, it's just intermission

When the sound of your own breathing becomes an irritation you might think that something was wrong. Or you might think that your focus was misdirected - instead of hearing your breath you should have been seeing the ice and water droplets cascading rhythmically off the cupola. Perhaps you should have smelled the aroma of warm, comforting sandalwood wafting up the open staircase from the bedroom below. Maybe instead you should have paid heed to the feel of the cat's cold nose on the back of your neck. Our earthly senses deceive us... pay them no mind. Live with your heart...

Life IS a funny old dog... and loyal to a fault

Time has flown,
And with it
The nurture of the past,
And its necessity.

Pain ebbs and flows,
With pleasure, in equal measure,
When life serves up,
All that it has to offer.

Sorting these day cares
Often proves confusing,
As friendships take on
Unrecognizable form.

This much I know
As concerns the us,
We are as solid
As concrete long cast.

The past is a given
The present at hand,
The distant horizon
A warm, hazy outline…

T

Ever Have One of THOSE Days?

They pop up when you least expect them. They either send you into an emotional high orbit or send you crashing nose first into the pavement. There are even those occasions, maybe when we're on auto pilot, when they are barely even noticeable and they affect us not one whit.
I'm referring to those first thing in the morning, right out of the chute, pieces of unexpected information, or critical updates... or sensory inputs. The effect they have on us is tied closely to what your current state of mind is. If you are riding high, feeling good about yourself, your friends and life in general, you can handle darn near any news without suffering adverse effects. When you are in this state, this zone if you will, a sledgehammer to the cerebellum will slow you down, but only a bit. Life can't wrestle you to the ground, let alone pin you, as long as there's breath in your body. Immovable object... I'd like you to meet irresistible force. There are people out there who are in this state, and seem to be able to remain in this state perpetually. It's probably not a significant portion of the population, but it does register on the Lecter scale (Hannibal).
I throw Lecter's name into the mix just to draw your attention to how we as humans, seem to consume ourselves with things we have no control over. Things in our daily lives sometimes fall into that category - out of our control - but are not the norm. We control a lot of our daily lives, we make conscious decisions to choose a course of action. These actions all come with their own set of likely outcomes, which our brains process and then tell us in advance which course to choose. Plastic or paper, stay or go, regular or unleaded, polite or annoying, left or right, red or black, formal or casual, early or late, walk or ride, cry or laugh, matte or glossy, regular or super-size, soup or salad, text or voice, today or tomorrow, love or hate, fresh or frozen, coffee or tea, street or freeway, happy or sad, selfish or helpful, crabby or friendly... I think you get the picture. Literally hundreds of decisions that we make every day are processed, for the most part, automatically.

The choices I listed above (and hundreds more) are always right in front of us, and if we're not happy about the direction we're headed, we have the steering wheel in our hand. Take yourself out of "automatic" for a day and alter your course just a bit, choose a bit differently, and be amazed at the results within a day or two. De-rutify in street slang.

I've heard it said that our lives are what they are because of: the people we meet, the books we read and the places we go. A bit of an oversimplification, but I think pretty accurate. Chew on that for a few minutes... a quick review of some of those connections is worth a minute or two of your time. We know it, we just don't think about it.

This brings us to the Question of the day; How do you handle those first thing in the morning... day starters? How's your life experience factor treating or guiding you? Is it guiding you, or are you in control of it? You can't change the past, but you can change how you deal with it. You can box it up and put it on a shelf and ignore it, or you can trot it out, pin it up on the corkboard and re-live it endlessly. If you choose to continually put it up on the corkboard, at least bring in an interior mental decorator to help you decide what to keep and what to just throw away. We all have more control than we realize and in my experience, cruise control is best left in the car.

So what's it gonna' be? Bath or shower, coffee or juice, white or wheat, news or music, blog or read, friend or enemy, leather or canvas, silk or satin, run or walk, frown or smile, cat or dog, think or act, change or...

Adrian? Ambrose... are you there?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I cannot resist the urge anymore... there's just too much here to ignore.

Three years before my dad died I dropped in for a visit to his home in Minneapolis. He didn't hear me knock so I let myself in through the kitchen door. The TV was on and very loud as dad's hearing had deteriorated a bit over the years, probably the after effects of raising 5 kids.

Background - Dad & Mom were married for a little over 40 years before cancer claimed Mom in 1988. Dad grieved inconsolably for about 2 years and then miraculously snapped out of it. He started keeping company with "a new gal." WE, the kids, were flabbergasted but unbelievably happy for Dad as he didn't hide his depressive stretches very well and we were starting to worry. His life had done a total 180 and he was back to his old self, laughing and making loving, pointedly funny comments about all his kid folk. In June of 1991 he announced that he was getting married... you could have heard a pin drop when the news came out. In a family gathering we just all kind of stared at each other and tried to drink it all in and then, almost unanimously, came to the conclusion that this was a good thing, no check that, a GREAT thing for Dad. Who deserved happiness more than him? And, you could tell he was happy. My concern, my only concern was the age differences between Dad and his new bride to be - they were 25 years apart. His betrothed was my sister's age. This took a little thought on my part to get some kind of perspective on how this all fit together and was this person just kind of a gold-digger looking to capture my father's pension and take him for a ride? My fears were groundless as this woman turned out to be the epitome of nicety and wholesomeness, well mostly. In addition, she was the church secretary, an accomplished musician (plays 3 instruments) and directed all 3 choirs at a very large Catholic Church. As we later found out, after they had been married for a couple of year, we discovered that she also had a wickedly funny sense of humor and could freely ask hard questions of the church she loved to death. As my Dad would say (he wouldn't say this about her because it would be inappropriate) "She is a real pistol!" They lived happily ever after until my Dad died in 2003. { Beginning of another post (Dad died of a broken heart) }
I feel like my "step-Mom"needs more depth and you need to know a bit more about her, but she deserves her own space, so I'll put that on the back burner for now. ~


I walked into the living room amid snickers from my Dad. They weren't directed at me but rather at the TV. I startled him as he still hadn't heard all the commotion i made coming in. He said "hi" and then said "you've gotta' watch this." It was Monk, in my book a so-so detective dramedy set in San Francisco (if you don't know the premise of the show go and Google it and come back later). I had no context for what scene I was watching but I obediently sat down and didn't say a word until commercial. At commercial Dad began to extol to me the wonders of this show and relate all these funny anecdotes, which meant absolutely nothing to me at the time.
Nearly every time after that when I would come for a visit, there was always something Monk related, either the show itself or a funny Monk story that would be part of our conversation. Maybe not a lot but it a held a permanent spot in his life. Dad was always a cop show kind of guy and gravitated towards the real action type shows (Mannix, Yancy Derringer, Rockford Files (fav), Magnum PI, Hawaii 5-0, the Untouchables... you get the picture). I could tell he fancied himself as one of those detectives in the shoot 'em up solve the crime, capture the bad guys kind of way. Monk on the other hand, wasn't the same cup of detective tea. Monk is cerebral, quirky, efficient, endlessly OC and devoted to his deceased wife Trudy who was murdered(?) by a member of the criminal element (a recurrent and underlying theme to most of the episodes). I really don't know if the Trudy thing was the "hook" for my Dad but he loved that show with a passion. I can't picture him as Monk, though.
After Dad died, within a few months actually, I was sitting home alone one night channel surfing and came across Monk on cable. I buzzed by it and then, for some reason, something told me to go back and give it a look. Remember it like it was yesterday - I could hear my Dad chuckling and snickering in front of the TV as real as if I were back in his living room. Thinking about it now the hair stands up on the back of my neck and a trace of goosebumps is roaming nearby. I obediently went back to Monk and finished watching the current episode, totally unfulfilled as there was only a few minutes left in the show, which made me slightly irritated for wasting valuable surfing time for just a snippet. As is often the norm with cable, there were back to back episodes, much to my surprise, so I decided to get the full picture. Randy Newman's Monk (It's A Jungle Out There) theme song started to play, which is always a good thing (Short People, I Love L.A. are primo), so I sat back with a diet-pepsi and took it in. I thought to myself: "Damn, that wasn't bad at all and that Monk guy has something about him that makes you laugh and squirm at the same time." And he was so eerily right all the time (I give the credit to Trudy) it made you want to give the show a second bite. I'm not ashamed to say that I developed a love for the show that may have even exceeded my Dad's. It has a inexplicable magnetism to a very select group of people, and I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones that "gets" Monk.
The best part of it, and maybe one of the most frustrating too, is that I share time with my Dad every time I happen to pull up in front of the TV with a Monk episode. He's there and I know which parts would make him smile and smirk and it makes me smile just to think about it. Sadly for Monk fans, they stopped making new episodes but the old ones have not as yet worn out their welcome with me. I love spending time with Monk, and Sharona and Natalie, and Ambrose, and dip shit Randy and Leland... and Trudy, when she would visit Adrian (in dream state), usually in his bedroom. Their relationship was breathtaking - they shared, they laughed, they loved.

I don't watch much TV... baseball, college hoops some, Law & Order (maybe over the top) and Monk.
Monk provides me with one of two rock solid connections to my Dad. The other requires a whole different story, so if interested... come visit again.

Life is, indeed, a funny old dog and there are no coincidences. I believe that.

The long and winding road

For the thousands of you (read one or two) avid readers of this blorg (yes) and any of my in-line Twit friends you'll notice one thing about me. My "style" is not original it is borrowed, rather stolen, from dozens of writers that live in my front hemisphere. Strange because there's barely enough room in there for me, but there they are nonetheless. It's hard to get back into the practice of writing more than 17.5 words per message, so your indulgence with this and any of the other wayward missives that may hatch is requested and/or appreciated.

There was a time when I thought I had the great American novel inside of me. It was a time when I lived with the likes of Zig Ziglar and Tom Peters, Jim Rohn and Wayne Dyer, Norman Vincent Peale and Roger Dawson. August company to say the least, but they were living on the shelf in my office and I was their promoter (pimp). It was fun to pretend that the business I created put me in direct contact with these luminaries of the motivational business scene, when in reality I was helping them become comfortably wealthy while I struggled to pay the bills. For the time when "the office" was actually up and running (2 years?) I did have the opportunity to work with some large and medium sized businesses, either by doing sales trainings or by filling in a motivational chasm that needed bridging. I saw people and their businesses and their lives running on cruise-control, even when, in some instances, the road had ended and they never bothered to look up from the wheel to notice. Many had the good sense to slam on the brakes or make an exaggerated turn in order to avoid being crash-test dummies. Some didn't. My job was to help them and, hopefully, their staff put their eyes back on the road. If they didn't I would agonize over ways to customize a more cogent message for them. It took a while before I realized that some businesses and people had their radar turned off, or had failed to hook it up in the first place. Loud crashes would sometimes follow.

Those aforementioned messengers and their messages, for good or bad, grabbed hold of me for more than the briefest of moments and took me places where I thought I wanted to go. Granted, I do revisit those places every now and then to this day, but it's for a cup of mental coffee and a "hi, how are 'ya" kind of stopover. I could never live there again, not because there weren't valid and inspirational messages, but because much of it just wasn't real, even to the people that were collecting the jing. An indictment of all the people therein? No, just another comment from an observer of the human condition (I just dropped in, to see what...). Whoops, I guess that would have to include me then too, with that old guilt by association thing. Your honor, at this time I would like to submit an Alford plea.

Let me just put away that broad brush for a split second and state, for the record, that I HAVE learned that there is no perfect message or perfect messenger. There are some damn good ones, but almost (N)obody is perfect. In my experience, perfect messages are corrupted. Perfect (M)essengers are corrupted or compromised. This is the human touch. It's unavoidable. Humanity touches it and there just has to be a fatal flaw; the birthmark that exists on a nearly unblemished skin. Oh so smooth to the touch, but there's more to messengers/messages than single sense feedback. We all want depth and substance and continuity, and dozens of other personal spices folded into the batter in order to make it a nourishing and appealing cake. Reality is biting into that cake and finding out that after the first swallow you really need to either wash it down quickly, or spit it out. There are, however, some cakes that look "okay" and, once tasted, become sensory delights; you just can't stop devouring them. It's a special bakery that can produce such delicacies. Experience teaches you to recognize a mistake when you make it a second time (love that one). So too with cakes.