Good way to sell Magazines

I haven't read the article yet, but this months The Atlantic provides us with a list of The 100 Most Influential Americans. Magazines have gotten into this habit of hipping sales with their notorious top ten lists. The ten best restaurants in your city. The ten best places to have a romantic weekend. The idea's go on and on, but one of the reason they cause so much attention is that no one agrees with the rankings except the people that publish them.

Readers will deluge the publication with the kind of letter that starts out."How could you leave (My favorite candidate) off of your list? Or, anybody that would rank so and so ahead of what's his name on a list of the ten best whatever has got to be nuts. This controversy helps circulation and I would bet that magazine covers that announce an article ranking almost anything of topical interest sells better than most.

We Americans are enthralled with the ranking of number one. We agonize over ways to define and prove who is the number one, basketball team, football team, Chinese restaurant, vacation destination, airline, make of car ... . Why we care I do not know for sure, but part of it might be validation. If we own, can identify with or have used the services of the number one ranked entity, does it makes us part of it's success and somehow more worthy?

That is why the other kind of letter that the publications get after they have published their "best" list is the how could you have left off my selection plea. The concern that my favorite restaurant is not even on list, much less not number one, is too much to bear. How can these people be so stupid? Or is it the internal feeling that somehow I am not hip and up on what is happening now?

Than there are the conspiracy theory's. Aren't there always conspiracy theory's? The people that make up the list are only dealing with the possibilities that advertise in the magazine. Or in the case where they poll the readership, that the ballot box was stuffed by the staff and employees of the winner. Or in the case of important personages, the ten most influential people of the 1990's, that political belief's or other prejudice exists.

All of this means little in our everyday lives. It's like reading the box score of the ball game. For a moment you feel good or bad depending on how your team did the night before, but it doesn't ruin your day. It merely gives you something to talk about with your friends. If the list of the top ten places to purchase bar snacks gets you any more excited than that, you either own a bar that's not on the list or you need to get a life.

City Life

Maria and I went to a fund raiser for our alderman last night. Mike is a hard working and strangely humble man considering his chosen profession. His success in this area is evident in the rebirth and re-gentrification of the neighborhoods in his ward. Yet he defers the success of this rebirth to the developers and citizens of the area. This is only right in that it is true they take the risks while Mike's job is to see that "the city stays out of the way." He is right in the idea that buildings and business don't make a community, people do. On the other hand without the business that provide the jobs and services, the community is hallow and stale, just ask people who have realized the sterility and sameness of the suburbs. In and attempt to provide a comfortable and secure environment many "new" communities have become Disneyfied and boring. What many people find they really need to stimulate them are the choices and a diversity of a cosmopolitan life.

City life is different from living in even a midsized city like Appleton. There is much more diversity. And I mean that in the sense of life styles and viewpoints as well as the obvious racial and ethnic diversity. We need to respect each other and allow for these differences in our everyday lives. We have to wear the talisman of our diversity with the idea that not everyone wants the differences shoved in their face. We learn to understand what is real and what is some ones use of diversity to get an advantage they neither deserve or need. We have to think more about the actions we take and the decisions we make.

This allows for a much more stimulating environment. To witness the different life styles and to understand that they are no threat to you or your standing in the community is to become a broader thinker and more tolerant human. The experience widens your world view and might, I say might, change your mind about people you previously didn't understand. Mostly, it debunks the myth and mystery surrounding people and practices that you previously had little exposure. It strengthens the idea that while we are all somewhat different, we have much more in common than we might realize.

This type of thinking allows for a higher density of population to live shoulder to shoulder and develop a sense of community and belonging for all of the people living within the city. Dose Milwaukee have a long way to go? You'd have to be a rabid Pollyanna not to see the gap between our poorer black citizens and the broader community, but I prefer the optimistic view that as long as we address the problems and they are being worked on there is hope. Moving to the suburbs to get away from them does not work.

Passing note

My entry will be short today. A friend of mine passed away yesterday. We always have good things to say about people who die. The reason is simple, the things they may have done wrong become less important than what they did once there is no chance to change things.

Jack's family and we will never now why, suffered it seemed crisis after crisis. Kids with drug problems. Marriages that didn't work out. He and his wife had significant career setbacks. And than there were problems in the immediate family that many of us don't have to deal with including the early deaths of siblings

Pat and Jack ended up in Orlando Florida, which when you consider they started out in Upper Michigan, they really couldn't have gotten any further from home. While it seemed like a fitting reward after a life of dealing with midwestern winters, the last few years of his life he fought cancer and of course the cancer finally won.

To me Jack was a rock in the river. He was the guy that you turned to when you thought that life proffered you a problem you couldn't handle. Jack handled problems with a quiet dignity and ferocious loyalty to those he loved. He will be missed and remembered for his friendship and his strength

It's what they do that counts.

It doesn't make any difference if it's your parents, your boss or a public official, they all say things that they might even mean at the time they say it, but it's what they do that counts.

How many times have you heard the old story of the father telling his kids not to smoke as he puffs away on his ever present cigarette. Parents are aware of their own short comings. Nicotine habits, over eating, not getting enough education are all regrets that many parents have about their own lives. They try to impress on their kids that own choices were wrong. They should have put off having sex. They wish they hadn't married so young. The problem is the family is the reality and the kids don't really visualize the alternative. What would life be like without Dad standing in the garage puffing on his weed? How would life be if mom had received her degree and we belonged to the country club?

My favorite corporate fantasy is the tried and true mission statement with the mandatory part that states, "the company recognizes that it's most important assets are its employees." Of course, and that is exactly why the first quarter that the company isn't going to make its numbers (the expectations of the board of directors for profits), the managers lay-off or terminate large numbers of those very important assets so that the company looks successful.

Politicians! Oh this is an area that is so ripe for cynicism that it's hardly fair, but let me just mention a few. I want to be a uniter not a divider. Compassionate conservatism. I represent the average guy. We need to investigate this matter more closely.

No one is perfect and few people are knowingly dishonest. The situation of being the parent, corporate boss or elected official is not an easy thing. We who are effected have a tendency to lower our expectations of these people. Parents do the best job they can. The boss has to worry about his job. The politician has to get reelected. What we should do is learn that it's not what they say that counts but what they do.

My good wife

I don't want to come off as being patronizing or mushy. Neither of those adjectives is fitting when talking about my relationship with my wife. I love her dearly and she kind of likes me every other day or so depending on how clean the house is and did I do my share of the chores.

(My chores being closely defined as anything that needs doing that she doesn't want to do. By the way, she reserves the right to judge the value of my efforts at any time.)

But there is one thing she knows in her heart and that as a man I have that basic instinct to care for my mate. For instance, she will let me hold doors for her. I can hold the car door for her, but she drives. Evidently my skills as a motorist are insufficient as to engender a feeling of safety.

She allows me to carry heavy things for her, take for instance paint and decorating supplies. She will, of course, select everything we buy because my taste in colors and styles is considered below the standard.

She accepts, grudginly my compliments on her looks and clothing selections. My compliments mean nothing, because of the aforementioned problem of a lack of taste and judgement in such matters, but the effort can get me a pat on the head, not unlike the one the dog gets when it behaves.

She recognizes and permits me the feeling that I am protecting and caring for my mate, by making sure that I don't drive, pick out paint colors and buy her clothing.

I can protect her from me.

Is education the hope of the future?

If we believe, as I so often hear said by politicians, public official and social critic's, that education is the hope of the future, than why are we so loath to provide it. I see three things wrong with our education system. It's underfunded, over managed and expected outcomes are not clear.

Take a look at many school districts and you will find schools that are not providing the basic tools that their students need to learn the skills they need to compete. Hopefully we're past the stage where we feel that if we throw enough computers at a school somehow we've done the job. In almost all of the schools were we did that in the early eighties and nineties, the teachers didn't know what to do with them. Currently the kids in the medium to higher income school have better computers at home than the schools do, but at least in the area of technology the schools are catching up as far as teaching the skills needed. But just like most of the infrastructure in the United States physical plants, the school buildings themselves are falling short of the needs and requirements. A book could be written on the era where we built cheap disposable buildings and put in temporary class rooms that we are paying for today.

If you look at the budget for your local school separate, if you can, the money spent for actually teaching the children vs. the money spent for managing the schools. It is true that a lot of the management time is spent on mandated programs that have little to do with reading, writing and arithmetic, but the sad fact it can be up to 40-45% of the school budget. The value of these programs and this over management is doubtful. It may surprise you how many educators will agree.

Outcomes in public education are all over the place. The public school is not a simple place were children go to learn anymore and maybe it never was. We learn to socialize in school. We learn how to work together in school. We learn how to identify our strengths and weakness's in school. Now we learn diversity, safe sex, anger management and any number of other things that we may have learned at home in the past, but today mom and dad are both working, so we expect that the school will fill that void.

The problem today is if the school fills that void with something we don't like, if it goes against our personal beliefs, religious practice or morals, we reserve the right to complain about it. This is good except when the alternative is to teach our personal beliefs, religious practices or morals at the expense of someone else's interpretation of these matters.

The school today seems to me to be a microcosm of a community. All of the problems and all of the strengths are reflected there. Schools are a mythical place in the minds of parents. They are the place of either fond or painful memories. But most assuredly they are not the reality that their kids face on a day to day basis

Losing the War

I think that we have to face facts. We are losing the war. It isn't the Bush Administration's fault. In fact there is so much blame to go around. We will not know when we've won this war. The rules of engagement have changed constantly. There is graft and corruption in the enforcement component. We hear a lot of rhetoric about the need to continue the fight (think stay the course), yet the latest strategy is not showing any more success than efforts of the past. Most of all, there is no plan for disengagement.

I've written in the past about my distaste for attempting to rally the public to a problem by calling it a war. The war I am talking about above could be the war on poverty, drugs or terrorism. Make no mistake, the "War in Iraq" is not a strategy or good choice for a field of engagement for the war on terrorism. Bush's folly has neither made the US safer from terrorist nor has it made terrorists any less effective in their ability to attack innocent people all over the world. What they haven't done and what has played into the sense of false hope, is to attack again the United States directly.

We fling about the macho word war as if we can rally a consensus on the righteousness of an issue such as the eradication of poverty or the use of illegal drugs. The problem is there is no consensus as to how to eliminate these problems. The latest effort to affect poverty is to redefine the problem to make is seem as if it has been affected. But the truth is that the throngs of working poor, people with part-time or full employment that rise above the federally designated poverty income threshold, has grown. The insecurity of living from paycheck to paycheck and the fear of being one serious illness away from bankruptcy has spread in the face of government inaction to this population and their needs.

The War on Drugs has effectively been a boon to the prison's both public and private across the nation. We incarcerate low level dealers and users while the real captains of this government created industry drive are driving the streets in Escalades. We have not impacted the use of drugs in our society, despite the best efforts of a lot of dedicated and well meaning law enforcement efforts. We could impact this problem immediately if we would face the fact that drug use is a problem, but it is not a law enforcement problem. We made it a law enforcement problem by making drug use illegal and, to make matters worse, required mandatory sentencing. A policy of treatment and decriminalisation of drug use would collapse the illegal drug trade and focus the society on the real problem, people who can not use drugs without abusing them.

If we are going to war, we owe to ourselves omething more than chest thumping rightousness. We need to have sober dialog in order to define the problem. To look without compassion instead of pure passion at problems that delve deep into our society and our conduct as humans. After all, drug problems cross all boundaries of class, race and income in our society and poverty can be inflicted on any one of us, given the right conditions. Many of these problems have no obvious solution, but they all involve our fellow human beings. If we want to be something other than another footnote in history, we must quit fighting wars and start addressing our problems rationally.

Two Ingrediants for Geat Thanksgiving

For me, Thanksgiving was family, food and football in that order. ( I saw the Flutie to Phalen miracle pass on instant replay. I was in the kitchen when it happened.)

But things have changed over the years. It isn't a matter of what we do now is so much different as much as the emphasis and practice. When you commit to a blended family you have to be open to new traditions. We now go to a movie instead of watching football all day. The football we do watch is decidedly professional instead of BC versus the Caine's or Cornhusker's versus Sooner's. Somehow this seems more Rockwellian than The Boys versus The Lions.

And the food has changed a little. I have to make my dressing without meat. We cook more recipes with sweet potato's. I cook the turkey upside down for the first two thirds of the cycle. Brad and I found out that this makes the breast meat more moist and tender.

The things that never seem to change are we never have enough leftovers to satisfy everyone and the green beans in mushroom soup with canned french onion topping has been there forever. Talk about tradition, I slipped some toasted almonds in one year and I will never hear the end of it.

Two things you must have for Thanksgiving are family and food. You can even serve bad food, lumpy potato's, dry turkey and soupy pumpkin pie and get by, but you have to have family. There are so many jokes and horror stories about family holiday gatherings that you might think that I am wrong about that, but you have to have one holiday without your family to know how important it is.

Comedy or Tradgedy?

Great Actors can play any role that is given them. Kevin Kline, Robbin Williams and William Hurt come to mind, as I contemplate men who have played hero's and villains in comedic or tragic circumstances. Than there is the feeble attempts of those who try hard and often for moments are successful at breaking out of the strait jackets we, the viewing public, have placed them in and they ... well, let's just say come up short. In this category Adam Sandler and Chevey Chase are memorable in their failure to connect.

Will Ferrel's recent attempt at black comedy is a film called "Stranger than Fiction". In it he plays Harold Crick a dull IRS agent, who lives his life by counting the brushstrokes as he cleans his teeth each morning and counting the steps he takes to the bus stop on his way to work. When he starts hearing a voice in his head he naturally becomes upset.

The voice is the that of Kay Eiffel, played fantastically by Emma Thompson, who is an author. Kay's books, we discover are considered literary fiction of the highest order and feature ordinary people who die. Harold is her next protagonist. Kay is in deep depression over the fact that while she knows the story of Harold's life, she is blocked on how she wants to kill him.

When the voice tells Harold that he is going to die, Harold becomes upset and goes on a mission to find the voice before it kills him. After consulting with doctors and friends about his condition, Harold winds up on the doorstep of Jules Hilbert, Doctor of Literature, wonderfully played by Dustin Hoffman. Hilbert sets out to figure out who belongs to the voice in Harold's head by analyzing the style and voice of the writer.

While the script is fascinating in it's structure and the supporting roles played by Thompson and Hoffman are done well, Ferrel has trouble breaking out of his slap stick "I can't believe that just happened to me" persona that has made him a star in so many of those junior high school fart joke movies he's made.

I will give him and A for effort. In some of the scenes he shows promise, but over all I not convinced this guy can carry the load of a fully dramatic role. He either has to work harder on his acting skills or go back to falling on his ass and getting the girl in the kind of comedy's he's been so successful at making.

The Value of Learning

I'm often struck by the predominance of belief the education should further us financially. I don't dispute the value of technical or professional education. Practitioners of accounting, law and medicine do need directed training and a background of knowledge and skills. But that isn't all they need.

Many Doctors, for instance, are accused of having a poor bedside manner, which is just another way of saying they don't relate well with people. This can be a personality trait, but it can also be that the training of doctors dose not allow for a widening of their knowledge base or understanding of the world around them. The same can be said for many professions were the participant tends to be focused in to a tunnel vision world view and that would include without any doubt college professors.

A broad, interdisciplinary education may not produce scientists, mathematicians and legal experts as quickly as we might like, but it might produce citizens with a expanded vision of the world around them and a mind set that allows for solutions outside of their narrow view.

I recognize that some people gravitate to professions that might suit their personality and that the stereotype absent minded professor or cold calculating accountant may be over done, but when you talk to some of these people your realize that the life experiences, training and professional environment often leave them incapable of comprehending the reality in the world around them.

The successful business man that thinks that the only thing wrong with government services is that they don't think more like business maybe correct in some facets of operations and attitude, but what he fails to realize is that the thing that is wrong with his business is that it doesn't think like a well run government program. (Take my previous example of private medicine versus the Veterans Administration.) The reason he fails is an inability to think broadly and creatively in any situation that isn't commercial or profit driven.

Education should teach a broad array of things to people particularly in the early years. I believe that the first two years of college should be Major declaration free. How do you know what you want to eat at the buffet table until you've sampled a little bit of many things. If you sample in moderation you will soon know and have room for the things you enjoy and that motivate you.

We are in such a hurry to get going with life. Parents complain that their sons and daughters can't finish their degrees in four years. A four year college degree has been a standard for how many years? How much more knowledge and specialization has occurred since the four year college degree became a benchmark? What is the student leaving behind in educational opportunities and knowledge acquisition by trying to accomplish this unrealistic standard.

(Don't talk to me about the cost, because that illogical way we finance education is a joke that no one is laughing at. The solution is too far outside the cliched "box" that business grads are always talking about.)

We know now that we are going to be involved in a life time of learning of not only informal life experience or street smarts as we used to say, but also formal learning in order to keep or information fresh and our knowledge base evolving.

If we don't establish a base of broad knowledge, creative thinking outlets and critical thinking skills, we are handicapping the people we expect to lead us. Education isn't just about making money. It's about equipping human beings to live in their own world.

The Holiday Season is Upon Us Already?

Forget that Thanksgiving isn't until next week, the Seasonal lights in the downtown city parks were lite in Milwaukee last night. Wal-Mart has announced the kind of sale prices usually seen in the last week of the shopping season, when they are desperate to make their numbers. But excuse me, we haven't seen the first real snow fall and most people aren't even thinking about Holiday Shopping yet. What is going on here?

Obviously, the merchandisers think they can get us in the mood to shop if they create the holiday atmosphere. It is a little tough, as my wife commented last night, to look at all of the lights and decorations and not think they would look better with even a light covering of snow on the ground. With day time high temperatures in the forties and nighttime lows barely in the lower thirties, that isn't going to happen soon.

I realize, having worked in retail, how important this season is to most retailers, but like the basketball, baseball and hockey season only the die-hard "Christmas is my favorite time of the year" kind of people enjoy this artificial extension. As it is companies and organizations are forced to hold their holiday parties for their members and employees in January because they have a tough time booking parties. The busiest shopping day might be the day after Christmas because people are returning unwanted gifts and there are those famous sales of seasonal items like decorations and gift wrap. How long can the season get?

I guess it's up to retailers and how they feel about Halloween, because if they want to they can start it anytime they choose to start displaying and promoting the theme. It's seems like an arms race. If one retailer starts the others feel as if they could also and if they get people to shop than who do we blame?

To go or not to go

Yesterday, I had a conversation with one of my younger co-workers about travel. He was conflicted about his girlfriends desire to stick close to home, family and friends versus his wanting to travel and see the world.

I didn't tell him to drop the girl friend, who may have good reason to want to stick close to home, but I suspect her timidity may have more to do with a lack of a sense of adventure than common sense and a need to settle down. I did tell him to go. You will never regret going to Europe, the far East or where ever your wanderlust takes you.

He mentioned that some one told him he could always travel after he retired. I told him that there was no guarantee that he would have the time, health or the money to travel after he retired. Besides there is one important element to travel that he would miss and that is the education about other people and the way they live. I know from first hand experience that he will see more easily that while we live in the greatest society in the world, others do have good idea's about how to live and we can learn from them. If he waits until he retires, he may learn those things, but he won't be able to apply that knowledge to his entire life.

Damn the cost man. Wait for that cheap airfare, buy your rail pass and go. You will always have time for work and you'll be a better person for the experience.

Short and Sweet

Boys and girls, I have an assignment for you today. If you like to read, as I know many of you do. You have to pick up a copy of the New Yorker Magazine (November 13, 2006 ). Turn to page 52 and read the tongue-in-cheek article on how and why to save money by controlling your desire to buy books.
The new issue is out, so if you can't find this at your dentists office or laying in a pile on your own coffee table try the library. If none of that works I will e-mail you a copy. I know it sounds like a lot of trouble, but it is great satire.

Best Health Care In the World

You often hear that the United States has the best health care system in the world. Anyone that uses the system realizes that claim is pretty shaky at best. With the exception of the Veterans Administration, which is very efficient and has an enviable record of cost containment, the US health care delivery system is costly and comparatively unsuccessful when you look at mortality rates and other measures of success.

Some critics blame the high cost of insurance because of the litigious nature of the society in general. Others say that Americans have too much access to health care and over use the system. Some will blame the Insurance Companies for elevating transaction costs by bouncing back claims in the hope that the providers will quit trying to collect. In addition, there are claims that delivery is uneven, with some areas having plenty of doctors nurses, hospitals and clinics and others having none.

I suspect that these claims and others are true. This morning I heard a doctor commenting on NPR that ER clinics all over the country are overburdened and unable to handle any kind of a terrorist attack. Terrorists being the "new bad guys" about whom we can justify anything, may draw attention to this weakness in our health delivery system. However the real problem with the overload in the ER is that the ER has become the regional triage center for hospitals. If you don't have health insurance, if the doctor doesn't want to come to your home or see you in his office, if you are victim of an accident or if you are a visitor to a community, there is no option other than the ER. ER care is some of the most expensive care we can provide and yet there it is, the only option for millions of potential patients.

This I know first hand about health care. It isn't the best in the world. We don't have too many doctors, nurses and medical practitioners. Transaction costs and middle man insertion into the system is not improving health care delivery nor is it lowering the cost.

The big question of building a national consensus invloves a basic question. As a society, do we believe that heath care is business that should function in the free market system, in other words, available to those who can afford it? Or, is health care a human right that society should provide to everyone that needs it?

You may notice

If this is your first visit to my blog, you will see that there are a number of articles. It's not as if you missed something that you might have known about. I have been writing to the blog for a couple of weeks, but I have not promoted the address. so no one has visited the site, unless for some reason beyond belief, google guided a surfer to the site.
I wanted to start a blog as an alternative to posting my rants on my writing site www.nclover.com. I wanted that site to feature my fiction. The work I place on that site work I want to eventually publish or I think is good enough to share with broader audience.
My blog is going to work as a place for me to do what it seems everyone does with these things. It serves as journal and a venue to let people know what is on my mind on an almost daily basis. Who cares? I don't know, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Bringing the War Home

Yesterday, one of my co-workers told us that, as Member of the US Marine corp, he will be deployed to Iraq in December of 2007. Tom is a thoughtful man and in view of the changing tide opinion on the reasons and justification for our involvement, he is wondering if he should be asked to put his life on the line.

Excellent question, I'd say. I have never served, so my comments are those of a civilian and a person who generally opposes violence as a solution to any problem.

Yes, Tom you have received pay and training to follow orders and do what your commanding officers feel is the right thing to do to defend the American People and it's borders. It may be, as some feel, that you should keep your concerns to yourself and do as your told, but than again, we only get one life to live and what we give it up for has to mean something.

I don't know how to answer Tom when he asks me, "What are we doing in Iraq?" My opinion is a highly cynical politically motivated conclusion about the corruption of ideals perpetrated by the Bush Administration. I certainly don't believe that America is safer because we are occupying Iraq and it's pretty obvious that the people of Iraq are not a lot better off because of our sacrifice. I know a lot of people made a lot of money. I know that a lot of people feel that they are building a base for democracy in Iraq. I also know that we have not stopped the terrorists in any significant way by fighting in Iraq. Any work we have done in stopping terrorists has occured by working with our allies on a country by country basis. These are often times the same allies who told us not to invade Iraq.

And what about Tom's original question? If Tom does go to Iraq and is killed or permanently disabled, how do we justify that loss. I need help here. I can't think of one good reason to lose Tom like that, but than it might be because I know him and like him. Most Americans don't actually know anyone who is putting their life on the line for us. It's a lot easier to be cavalier when not only the enemy has no face, but also the people who defend are and abstraction.

In the Aftermath

Joy runs through the streets like children on a new playground. It's hard to focus on the accomplishment of retaining the Statehouse in Madison and the gains in the state legislature, when we look at the national implications of the control of the House and Senate falling into the hands of the Democrats.

The expressions of relief and hope is well founded, but caution is also appropriate. We have no assurance that the Democrats have any better sense of solution to the number one problem, an end to the conflict in Iraq. Make no mistake, this election was a plebiscite on the war and the electorate voted for change, but we were not offered specific solutions. What we were promised is change in the approach to "winning" the war in Iraq by a Democratic Leadership that has not showed a particular ability for leadership.

We need to have some patience. This new leadership has to get their feet underneath them. They have the right to some honeymoon time, but they blew a lot of smoke about the need to change and one would hope they have a plan to back that up.

I should be happy, but..

Today, November 8, 2006, candidates that support positions I support have won in our national election. From my old Wisconsin Eighth Congressional District to the Governorship of Wisconsin, we witness victory for people who have pledged to turn the business of government in a direction that favors the people and forces special interests to the background.

Nationally the people have said no to the backward looking politics of the far right and will force national politics to look to the future. Health care, the economy and the "War"* on terrorism will be looked at differently and hopefully more creatively.

But in Wisconsin, the state I have come to dearly love, we have voted for the gay bashing marriage amendment and the death penalty. Wisconsin law does not even allow Gay marriage and we've had constitutional Prohibition against the death penalty for over 150 years. Today, this day of the dawn of the rebirth of progressive thinking in our country my state chooses to move backwards. It saddens me.

*(I've am suspicious of efforts that get classified as war. We are losing the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty.)

Aging Parents

I visited my mom on Sunday. Mary Jane is a resident of the Franciscan Care & Rehabilitation in Appleton Wisconsin. She lives with extreme dementia. Mom knows who I am. She recognizes other relatives, however it depends how often she sees them and when she knew them.
Mom's world is a foggy one. In it she can be in the past so far that I look more like my dad to her because I'm too old to be her son in the time she imagines she is living in. To her, she is in the hospital and trying to get better so she can move back to her apartment in St Louis Park, Minnesota. The reality is that there is no apartment and she is not ill. In fact she may be in better health than she has been in years. Her weight is good because her diet is controlled. She can't experience more than sniffle without getting excellent attention. Her care is necessitated by her immobility, mental confusion and lack of control of her body functions.
She enjoys socializing with her fellow residents and loves to read. While I am happy that she is well taken care of and she is as happy as she can be, I live with fear for the day when she dosen't know who I am.

New Opprtunities.

When I start a new job, there are a number of things that go through my mind. There is the concern for the unknown. Will the friendly, outgoing person that interviewed me turn out to be something completely different once I punch the time clock? Will the job keep me challenged and interested? Will my efforts make a difference to those around me?
The last thing I want to do is spend a large part of my waking hours with a jerk. A jerk that is in a position to make my life miserable. Following that, I bore easily, but I am creative and I can find challenge in almost anything. That requires an environment that permits the exercise of creativity. I don't need to get a lot of credit for my accomplishments, but I have to feel that my efforts are making an impact. A pat on the back or an atta boy goes as far anything to make me feel welcome and needed.
With regard to my new job at Discovery World @ Pier Wisconsin, so far so good.

Political Information Ads

Okay! Enough is enough. I have heard all of the dirt on the candidate you don't want me to vote for. I have heard all of the dirt on the candidate you do want me to vote for and you know what? I don't like any of it. I know who I'm going vote for and nothing you say about my candidate will change my mind. My candidate might say something that will change my vote, but I doubt he/she would be so stupid.
They,the experts in these matters, that negative political ads work no matter how much people protest. I would hate to despute the experts, but I am extremely confident that the vast majority of the American voting public is as stupid as to believe the message these commercials convey. Maybe I have more confidence in the intelligence of the electorate than it deserves.

Is there any hope?

It was my privilege to see and hear an address by Berak Obama yesterday. He was making an appearance to promote sales of his book, The Audacity to Hope.
Senator Obama's appeal is easy enough to understand when you listen to the jest of his remarks and analyse his thinking process. He is clearly what so many main street Americans are looking for in their leaders. He is a pragmatic, fiscally conservative, and a champion of the vast majority of people, who until recently thought they were middle class only to find that status was preempted by stagnant income and increasing cost of basic things such as fuel, health care, and food.
Obama is able to define the problems of American life in ways that the guy on the street can undersand and identify with. It doesn't hurt Obama's cause that all of a sudden, the press and the people of the United States have suddenly seen what our friends and allies all over the world have known for some time. George Bush and friends are not in step with the world and the way it operates today.
Like the the conservatives they represent, they want very much to roll back social change and progress to a time that may have not ever existed except on TV programs such as Mayberry RFD and Happy Days. While for many people that may be nostalgic and comfortable, for most of us it is a vague memory of the way we might want to remember the past, but a poor representation of reality.
If you think there is racism now you should have lived in the fifties. If women think there is a glass ceiling they should remember that their mothers were not often even let into the building.
Our American society is an evolving thing. Some one is always working at the edges. But there are some core values of fairness, mutual respect and the chance for opportunity that has characterized us. Those values, not the ones the politicians keep claiming are the ones that most of us aspire to keep alive. Obama may be the right man for a troubled time or it may be that if Obama hadn't come along we would have to go looking for him.