Saturday, January 31, 2004
WHY?
Small children, as they grow, ask "Why" and the wise parent, guardian or teacher has a reply ready.
`
It has always been that way. The infant, seeking. Even before it can speak, the child tries to ascertain its place in this world. Before it learns to communicate with speech, the very sense of having been touched, held, loved or moved about is an adventure in exploration of some of the potential wonders of the new and open world. The child expresses an understanding of what is being said or done to them by relaxing and drifting into its known security of sleep. Yes, even at that early age, the child has questioned to find out more about his conditions as they seem to be set or cried out. and the adult replies with touching, loving care and movement.
Later on, when the child forms some sort of communiction with older folks, even if it be only in gestures, eye movment and attmpts to grasp hings beyond its reach , the child asking why things are as they seem to be. The concept of "why" is essential to human growth and maturity. We are not content to simply be told that something exists; we want to know for what purpose it came to exist and how it can be of value to us in a personal sense.
None of us remembers the time when we, as infants, begged for reaons why things were as they seemed to be but we all remember becoming a bit older, of acquiring speech capabilities and of asking "Why, Daddy?" and " Why, Mamma?" without end it seems. Those years are vital ones. The age level, let's say from four to fourteeen , is a time of success or failure in many ways for both child and parent. When that growing child asks "why?" the mother or father had best have a much more accurate reply ready ...one which is based on fact. The playful, evasive and often ludicrous answers used up to that age of four no longer suffices. Parents, at that four-ish time of change, stop being baby sitters and become governess or tutor types.
If you can think back over those years, try to do a re-run on how you fared as a child or as a parent/. You will find many instances of how well you answered the child's questions as to why things were as they seeme to be, or how often you failed. In those year an inquiring offspring is going to seek for such answers and they very often find them, or think they do, in peer intellects or from sources which are nbt he best for child upbringing.
And the "why" thing does not end there. The kids are gowing up and having their own experiences with their own children. But wait.
In old age, I think we can safely say at about eighty or ninety years of age or so, you begin to notide that your peers are droppingf off one by one. Many of them die when they are still twenty years your junior.. Questions of "why?" enter your mind, naturally. You are now eighty or ninety years of age seeking answers to "why?" all over again. Why is it, you wonder, that so-and-so, younger than you by several years is dead and gone, yet you continue to live. Do you have any purpose for continuing to live, you wonder? ? Why have familes you have known divided and scatter and scattered?
What, if anything, you ask is the purpose of my being here? Why>
To whom do I address such questions?
,
That depends so much, does it not. on how your parents answered our childhood question: "Who made me?"
a.l.m. January 30, 2004 [C560wds]
Friday, January 30, 2004
NEXT!
Plan for tomorrow.
Do that, and things will go better. Try it yourself. There is no reason to take my word for it.
Actually, what you are doing is a “dry run” of the project you have in mind. Plan it so you have the exact tools you will need;, the proper materials and correct means of joining one accurately with the other for assured results. You will save valuable time, too by eliminating second-guessing,, go-get-it side trips and trial and error tangents.
Planning is work. Get over any ideas that you are merely playing with an idea you intend to work on later. Planning is jump-starting. It telescopes starting times into now.
Be aware, too, that it – like many good things - can be overdone.
I witnessed such an all out planning effort years ago when worked as a Technical writer and PR person with a major manufacturing firm. Management had become enamored with i motivational whiz kid from the academic sector and gave him complete freedom to set up a modernized system of planned management which would teach people well. Within two weeks he had the entire staff so busy preparing his beloved “perk charts”that they couldn't find time to do their jobs. We poked perks at each other detailing plans for routine steps until all movement came to a halt.
Planning usually involves due consideration for other people at their tasks as well. To isolate oneself from humanity is not the most pleasant or effective ways to go. Learn to appreciate the input from other than your own little brain and the concept will remain more secure. Being a lonely isolationist avoiding all human contact may fit the make-believe world of stage and screen, but it is not essential in the real world. In a very practical sense, good planning can be said to be like sensible housekeeping . It is not necessary to do a complete Spring Cleaning routine every time you see something amiss. Learn to feel at ease kicking the trash our of the way so you can plainly see the path you must travel.
An old maxim fits the needs of many:. “ A place for everything and everything in its place.”
Don't make it that way. Keep it that way.
A.L M. January 29, 2004 [c394wds]
Thursday, January 29, 2004
YES OR NO
Quite often we chance upon stories related to product, procedures, places and personages. Some of them are true. Some are not.
Some such tales in circulation, however, which are not founded in facts, can, if allowed to continue unchecked, can bring real harm, to the stars of radio, stage, big screen, small screens {getting larger all the time}, cell phones and Internet pages.
It is true, for instance, that our nation's favorite beverage for many years Coca-Cola,(R) did, indeed, in it's early days, have at touch of cocaine, but - and this is the part of the story which so often remains untold - in l909, I think it was, the owner of the celebrated Coke(R) formula insisted that that element be entirely eliminated.
So often stories about foods and medications make gross misuse of terms "poisonous” and “toxic”.One can make you even unto death while the other can make you so sick you sometimes wish you could die - well, not really, but close enough. There must be entire shelves of tales out there about what harm can come from certain food combinations. When I was a kid it was forbidden to eat cucumbers in the same twenty-four hour period with ice cream. I don’t remember what was supposed to happen, but we were careful to pass up cucumbers if ice cream was thought to be somewhere in the future.
The “Statler Brothers” Quartet - now retired - will, themselves, tell you they are not Statlers at all. In their early days of travel, they stayed at Statler Hotels so often they came to feel they were part of the family.
There is another rich lode available to those seeking such information: the “used-to-be.”That pert , little red-haired girl growing up in Jamestown,N.Y. named,MacGillicuddy, I’ve heard, became the western world’s prime commedienne - Lucille Ball. And, there are scores of others in that group.
There is one story which keeps coming up to which I have not found a straight answer.
Some of you see signs of it every day. The next time you drive past a "Day's Inn " take a good look that sign. The art work. Does it remind you of a sunrise or a sunset? If you chose the setting sun you are right in tune with the original owners plan for the motel chain. When his first inn was completed and ready for opening day, the big sign for out front on high poles was not completed. Artists and glass-tube benders worked overtime to get it finished. The day before the opening the poles were well set and that night the giant sign was raised to the top and secured,
Everything seemed fine until someone realized that our wonderful English language - as heard and spoken in the Deep South - had dealt artist or tube-benders.,or both, a dirty blow. The sign read "Day's Inn" but their instructions had been to build a sign showing a sunset and the words "Day's End."
Done in by a dialect! Someone had mis-heard the words. There's a happy ending,. however. The name stood. It stayed and has served very well.
Was there a Mr. Day? I wonder.
A.L.M. January 28, 2004 [C520wds]
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
CONFUSED CONFUSION
Do all voters realize what is taking place in the various Democratic Party Primaries?
I have listened to people talking about what they have been seeing on TV, and I have come to realize that some of those who watch are sometimes of the opinion that this is the real thing. I actually have heard two such voters complaining that "them folks out there in Iowa and up in New Hampshire get to vote fer President afore we do and that ain’t right!” They seemed to be in agreement on that, and one asked of other which one of them "are you gonna vote for when we get our turn?"
Those two discussed the negative aspects of the men running for the nomination .The dwelt almost entirely on the negative aspects of the candidates and told each other and anyone else in the group in which we were all waiting for a delayed bus why they could not vote for so-and-so. They seemed resigned to wait until our section of the county got to vote. Our bus came along and I did not find out which candidate displeased them the most.
We sometimes forget that we are now taking much of what we used to term "news" to be "ëntertaiment".The major talk radio personalities speak of themselves now as being members of the entertainment species rather than being designated as "reporters" or "commentators". Their adherence to factual information wavers at times in order to be more alluring as they seek to expand their audience into new areas. We, the listeners do not always make such a selective designation.
Candidates, too, in keeping with the latest changes will do and say certain things which satify this novelety liking among viewers at home, Extended shots showing Kerry on the ice with genuine hockey players, is a good example. It has very little to do with the political issues at hand, but it is of vital imporatance in connecting with thousand of sport fans all across the spectrum - young and old, men and women, who see Kerry is a more, acceptable light than before. The various networks can, and do, make selections and highlight points of special interest to their specific viewers likings.
And, we need to be aware of the fact that a great many people who say they "watch" TV are rather addicted to watching cable and other such topical channels rather than the network outlets. Take time to wander up the channels from twelve to whatever extremes your system might go, and - except for
some of C-Span, Fox, CNN and MS-NBC the viewpoint one gets concerning current poltiicial affairs is that of forty-year old reruns in many cases.
Notice, too, how often some people start off with crediting their political statements to a Delphic authority of their own making ...someone ,or something, called "they”. If a political view follows "They say..."or "They tell me..."you can be sure you are in wisdom's wasteland at its worst. The show elements disapper as we then head into a series of seven such primaries which become more serious and deliberate with several favorites running and with less need of being different.
By this time, too, opposition is firming up and some real issues are brought forth. There wil be a grand show at each of the National Conventions, then four years before we do it all over again.
A.L.M. January 28, 2004 [c490wds]
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
THINGS I WONDER ABOUT
How we can think and devise all sorts of wonderful gadgets and procedures to allow us to do so many fantastic things; to travel to glamorous places; to converse with each other while many miles apart; even to repair our own ailing bodies, but continued to fail to find a way to make wheels - cars, carts, chariots, wagons and others - stop appearing to go in the wrong direction when being filmed in straight-on, passport , nostril shots in movies?
Why we continue to manufacture cars or have them made for us in a foreign country in many versions, styles, types and all designed and equipped to travel at hundreds of miles per hour with instruments on the dash to prove it, but still remain unable to build roads and to fashion traffic flow patterns which might enable us to drive at such speeds with relative safety?
Why we have devised a way of determining which movies are favorites by adding up the steadily advancing prices we pay to see them, rather than by counting the number of people of people who paid to see the film?
Why we continue to gluttonize and are fast becoming the fattest folks on the planet - if we are not already at such a shameful point?
Why we are such ready prey of con-men and con-women in our daily lives, ready and even eager, to bite at the same old bait when dangled before us again and again?
I worry at times, too, for the reason that you can sit down and and write a list of such as this faulting just about anything we do on a basis of either paucity or excess. More and more we find people who seem to think a benevolent government authority should be charged with seeing that we stay happy and content.
A.L.M. January 26, 2004 [c-319wds]
Monday, January 26, 2004
OPENING PRAYER
Most of us have made wishes. We have thought it would be nice if we could have such-and-such a thing or that some event would take place which would make living a paradise.
Few, if any such wishes “come true” and we ought to be especially grateful they fail because most of them are without merit.
To have some chance of success with changes we see in our lifestyle which would be an improvement can be acquired only by our working toward such objectives. Wishing, in spite of the popular song we sing to the contrary, will not not “make it so.”
Take this recurrent problem of world peace, for instance. So much of what we say about the need for a peaceful world is wishful thinking , at best. Too often, in even our prayers, we elicit the help of God and ask Him to bring it about a world in which all of mankind, in his many variations might dwell, someday soon , in a perfect situation without animosities toward any others.
There is one place and time when this occurs ritually without any hope of success. I cringe quite often, and I'll wager you feel a little edgy as well, when you hear some of the elongated prayers being said at government gatherings such as party conclaves. Either a paid Chaplain or a Guest Minister is assigned the task and the Janus-ed petitions are complex and twisted as they flow forth.
When restrictions are to be set in place to prevent the placement or posting of religious texts in public places; when school children are denied the use of prayer - even during exam time - or when statues, placards, banners, badges, and monuments to religious leaders - when all of that any more is to be forbidden
An opening prayer such as those we hear spoken at such meetings as are called to order is often misplaced/ I have never known a minister who has refused to provide such a religious opening even though he find himself opposed to the decisions the group will make. It is an honor just to be asked; a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a young minister or a token of appreciation for an older man of the cloth.
I have often wondered, as I see ministers praying over the Senate, how many of those ministers keep their fingers crossed under the manuscript page from which they are so carefully reading.
A.L.M. January 24, 2004 [c419wds]
Sunday, January 25, 2004
AND THEN, THERE WERE NONE..'.
We are daily witnessing the Democrats of the state of New Hampshire go though their system of choosing a candidate who will run against incumbent George W. Bush in November of this year.
I have yet to see one who would seem to me to be worthy and who has the political power by which to make it possible. Each is lacking in one factor or the other.
At the moment, Senator John Kerry seems to be the popular choice of those in attendance, but the people of New Hampshire are individualists moreso than any other group in the country. There we find a sufficient number of independent voters to give that classification genuine meaning and kick. Voters in the Granite State stand as firm as their natural resource one they have decided how they wish things to be. They are not so easily moved as are the voters in many sections of the nation. Their independent nature makes them rather more difficult to convince, but, once they have decided, they will stand by their choice firmly. At this moment, just several days into the week-long action of choice, everything seems to be up for grabs.
It appears that John Kerry leads the field, He is a fellow New Englander and responds well to the native criteria. In many ways he thinks and acts as ety do, and that is a tremendous plus factor without effort. He has less he muist overcome.
Howard Dean , also a naive son as former Governor of the State of Vermont, has that advantage as well, but he blurred the image somewhat in Iowa with a few arrogant words delivered in an uncharacteristic tones and with violent gestures unbecoming to his usual stance of seeming stability. I can see Kerry besting him in this primary largely because of that unfortunate incident. How deeply it has hurt his overall campaign is yet to be seen, He has , it appears, accepted good advice which enables him to make fun of himself concerning the event. That treatment can win over many American voters who like that trait . They saw it for many year in comedians such as Jack Benny and who created huge evils which seemed to fall upon him so that he merited special sympathy and understanding.
I think Lieberman stands little chance in the area. People seem to know what he stands for and they do not particularly care for such package programs.
Wesley Clark will make firm inroads on the Kerry-Dean but John Edwards from the southland, will not be as readily accepted as the “chance for change” In New Hampshire that he proved to be in the mid west.
Al Sharpton and others may just as well have stayed at home. Move over Richard Gephart! Company's comin'.
A.L.M. January 24, 2004 [c479wds]
|
