April 09, 2008
If The World Had 100 People
If the world had only 100 people:
57 would be Asian.
21 would be European.
14 would be from the Western Hemisphere.
8 would be African.
52 would be female.
48 would be male.
70 would be nonwhite.
30 would be white.
70 would be non-Christian.
30 would be Christian.
89 would be heterosexual.
11 would be homosexual.
6 people would possess 59 percent of the entire world's wealth, and all
6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing.
70 would be unable to read.
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
1 would be near death.
1 would be pregnant.
1 would have a college education.
1 would own a computer
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April 08, 2008
How Much Is Your Husband/Boyfriend Worth?
My friend Sally was driving home from one of her business trips in Northern Arizona
when she saw an elderly Navajo woman walking on the side of the road. As the
trip was a long and quiet one, she stopped the car and asked the Navajo
woman if she would like a ride. With a silent nod of thanks, the woman got
into the car.
Resuming the journey, Sally tried in vain to make a bit of small talk with
the woman. The old woman just sat silently, looking intently at everything
she saw, studying every little detail, until she noticed a brown bag on the
seat next to Sally.
"What in bag?" asked the old woman.
Sally looked down at the brown bag and said, "It's a bottle of wine. I got
it for my husband."
The Navajo woman was silent for another moment or two.
Then speaking with the quiet wisdom of an elder, she said:
"Good trade....."
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A (male) friend of mine read the above story and sent me an email with the question: "Then, how much is your wife/girlfriend worth?"
I replied: "Depends on how horny you are."
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An online archive of Jim Richmond’s newspaper columns is available at: http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/news/extra/bciq.html
Many of his columns are in the publication: Against The Grain, profiles of people who dared to make a difference.
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April 07, 2008
Scientology, The Hart Hotel, and Bombing for Ron
Fake bombs were found outside the Church of Scientology's small, storefront office on E. Michigan Avenue recently in downtown Battle Creek. Some surmised, placed there by a disgruntled former Scientology Church member, and to coincide with L. Ron Hubbard's (Scientology's founder) birthday.....
Others suggested Church members might have placed the wrapped batteries in a next door Hair Shed (barber shop) trash can as a way to get a bit of news media attention......
Word on the Battle Creek street is that the old Hart Hotel on Washington Avenue -- purchased by the Scientologists nearly a decade ago as a new " Church Training Center" similar to their Clearwater, Fla complex, but never renovated -- is now up for sale.....
We might hope someone buys the Hart Hotel from the Scientologists.
W. K. Kellogg (who originally built the Hotel) would be a bit more at ease in his Oak Hill Cemetery grave.
And Battle Creek might be better off with the Hotel building purchased and put to other uses.
Read the following, true account.
----
A friend believes in Scientology. She's moving to Clearwater, Florida to earn “a master’s degree in counseling.”
The degree will cost $30,000 and be issued by the Church of Scientology.
At her current rate of Dianetical matriculation, she’ll finish the 12 Scientology Training Classifications when Americans land on Mars.
None of this may be too important, when the Catholic Church is forking out $2 billion to settle child abuse charges against its clergy.
But from what I’ve read, the Church of Scientology isn’t much of a church, nor have much to do with science.
In church founder *L. Ron Hubbard’s words: “SCIENTOLOGY means only ‘knowing how to know.’
Scientology printed material describes a dystopia nearly as confused and chilling as George Orwell in the novel 1984.
The Scientology Handbook urges apostles to throw away definitions for everyday words and experiences. Reality is replaced with BigBrotherish group-think-talk:
“Word Clearing, ARC Triangles, Tone Scale, Locational Processing Assist, Clearing, Cal-Mag, Overt-Motivator Sequence, Conditions Formulas, PTS Handling, “How to Handle Rumors and Whispering Campaigns,” and (yes) “Battle Plans.”
Excerpt from a randomly selected page of The Handbook: “A workman is not just a workman. A laborer is not just a laborer. An office worker is not just an office worker. They are living, breathing important pillars on which the entire structure of our civilization is erected. They are not cogs in a mighty machine. They are the machine.”
Creepy enough 'newspeak' to have come right out of the TV monitor in Winston Smith's apartment.
As we packed, my friend talked about the next adventure in Scientology – the two-year Florida stint at a **Scientology training center: “We’ll go to classes from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. All I’ll need is a bed and lamp.”
I think to myself: “And lots of checks made payable to The Church of Scientology.”
From out the bedroom, she brings a large, aluminum traveling case secure enough to carry the Queen’s Jewels or Holy Grail.
The case is lined with rich, red velvet. Nestled securely in the middle is the E-Meter – short for electropsychometer, which according to The Scientology Handbook is “a specially designed instrument used by a trained Scientology practitioner for (“auditing”) helping someone locate long-hidden sources of travail. It does not diagnose or cure anything; it simply measures the mental state or change of state of an individual.”
I could use help with “long hidden sources of (personal) travail.”
Just not sure about this E-Meter-thing.
With its several, primitive buttons, the E-Meter resembles an expensive prop from a 1940s science fiction movie. (Ron Hubbard began writing pulp science fiction novels about then.)
“Mine’s a $10,000 E-Meter!” my house-cleaner-for-a-living friend says proudly. “But you can get a cheaper one.”
I praise the sturdiness of the case and the shiny lacquer on the E-Meter’s dials.
“OK if I take a digital photo of your E-Meter?” I ask.
She looks like I’d suggested stripping and a naked pose for Playboy.
Quietly closes the case. Changes subject.
Several days pass, and the E-Meter disappears from the apartment.
I ask again about the E-Meter photo.
“Oh, no, you might use that picture…write up one of your stories for that newspaper,” she says, trying hard to stay conversational in tone.
I respond: “Right. Everything about me is fodder for an article or book chapter.”
She then half points to the book under my arm: “What are you reading?”
“Nothing special. One of Michael Connelly’s detective novels. You like his stuff?” I ask.
My 51-year-old friend smiles: “You know, I’ve never read a novel.”
I wonder if she ever will…as a Scientologist.
* L. Ron Hubbard allegedly defrauded the Church of Scientology of $200 million, The 'faithful' remained true to their Founder. His wife and close associates reportedly led efforts to infiltrate the IRS and destroy records about the Church's finances. Hubbard died in 1986, after years of seclusion at a California ranch.
** The Fort Harrison Hotel/Scientology Training Center is now part of a new $160 million, four-square block Scientology Center, that has taken over the core area of downtown Clearwater. A number of mysterious and gruesome murders and suicides have taken place in the Hotel complex since it was purchased by the the Scientologists, and used as a "dormitory" for Church apostles and students, according to published newspaper stories.
------------------
An online archive of Jim Richmond’s newspaper columns is available at: http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/news/extra/bciq.html
Many of his columns are in the publication: Against The Grain, profiles of people who dared to make a difference.
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April 04, 2008
Hillary's 'Dark Side'
NPR (radio) had a long piece this morning from Pittsburg, where Hillary Clinton is campaigning and trying to keep her lead against Barack Obama in the Democratic primary race.
The NPR correspondent reported Hillary's "remarkable ability to connect with working class people. Especially in small audience settings."
But don't think I'll run to jump on the Hillary campaign bus.
I remind myself about the other HIllary.
The Hillary who was overheard by a reporter, when campaigning for the U.S. Senate a few years go.
Her campaign stopped at a farm house in upstate New York.
The farm family and neighbors were in the yard to greet her.
Hillary was caught screaming to an aide "Why are we stopping here!!! These f-u-*-k-ing people don't have any money!"
Next stop Philadelphia, Scranton......
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'Kill Chicken , Frighten Monkey'
As we look at recent developments in Africa, Tibet and around the Pacific Rim, it's helpful to remember the Chinese can be oblique (and sometimes brutal) in their approaches to achieving political, military, economic and social goals. See the (true) story, below. Happened while I was living in China a few years ago. -- Jim Richmond
The Chinese love fish head soup. With the head left floating in the broth.
The cheeks of the fish head are considered the most delicate and desirable.
The guest of honor at the typical Chinese dinner is offered opportunity to eat the fish's cheeks.
Nibble. Nibble.
Which I did one evening .
Dinner with my Chinese wife LiLi and her family in Dalian, northern China, just across the Yalu River from N. Korea .
A typically crowded, noisy, smoky Chinese restaurant -- families having dinner, business/communist party officials soaking up free food and drink.
About 20 of our extended family members sit around a large dinner table.. rotating food platter in the middle -- stacked with perhaps 30 different food dishes.
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April 02, 2008
Soup Nazi Revisited
Soup Nazi
Seinfeld fans – like me – will never forget the Soup Nazi episode. Where Jerry, Elaine and George get ‘dissed’ and then get revenge on “The Soup Nazi”, the owner of the best soup place in Manhattan, who banishes customers for anything and everything: asking for bread to go with the soup; talking too loud in line, leaning on the counter while ordering.
Today, it might be good to apply some of those ‘good behavior principles’ when you check in for that family vacation flight to Forida, or the quick flight to that business meeting in Baltimore.
With no fanfare, the Department of Homeland Security is quietly applying long-tested, successful El Al Airlines security screening at major U.S. airports across the nation. One of those is to hire and place Federal “Human Behavior Specialists” behind ticket counters and in front of passenger check-in lines.
So you think that United or US Air customer rep with steely eyes is so friendly, concerned and helpful. As he/she asks you casual questions about the weather, or the kids back home. While he seems to be looking at whether your tie is straight, your slip is showing, or there’s a slight line of nervous sweat on your upper lip.
He may not be a airlines customer rep at all.
And if you don’t look right and act right, you may end up stripping in the search room instead of boarding that flight to Baltimore.
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Computers: 94. Human Mind: 6
Computer: 94. Human Mind: 6
Who does best in predicting the future and in making complicated decisions
The human mind or the computer.
Whether that new product line will play in Peoria, capture Kalamazoo, or tank in Taipei?
Will your name help or hinder getting that job you want so dearly?
How to best motivate poor mothers to provide better health care for their children?
Which French wines will be most tasty five years from now?
How the U.S. Supreme Court will vote on already scheduled cases on its docket?
How to most successfully teach reading to low achieving students?
Learn how 'freakeconomics," supercrunching, direct instruction, and related applications of computer-based statistics are turning decisionmaking into (for some) an Orwellian reality. For others, a bonanza, and a beautiful day.
Go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/the_intervie...
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March 29, 2008
'Pretty Soon It's A Movement'
‘Pretty Soon It’s A Movement’:
The-People-Against –Combustion-Engine-Cars-and-18-Wheel-Trucks' Economic Rebirth and Peace Movement
I’m thinkin about starting a new organization. A coalition. A Movement. Right here in Midwest, USA. Buckle of the rust belt. First notch on the Bible belt. Reverse gear on the transmission belt
The Movement’s goal would be to phase out combustion-engine cars and most 18-wheel trucks,
And do it in 20 years.
No, not another Jimmy Carter-esque ‘turn down the lights and don’t flush the toilet so much in the White House effort.’
A homeland version of the Marshall Plan.
Or the kind of focused, sustained effort that saw the United States in just five years during WWII produce 296,429 airplanes, 102,351 tanks, 372,431 artillery pieces, 47 million tons of artillery ammunitions and 87,620 warships.
Think about it. We could do it.
Might not be so bad. The pain would ease. The wounds heal. We'd adapt.
And be better off.
Huge savings that could be redirected to public education, health care, and other needs.
Less waste of resources like oil, steel and other metals.
We might tear up, and plant wheat and corn on, on some of the estimated 30 million miles of concrete highways and parking lots that cover our landscape like a shroud.
The US could adequately feed all its own people, plus feed the one- half of today’s total world population that's been born into poverty and hunger just since JFK was President.
Get us off the Arab nations’ oil/gravy train.
Make the dollar and the Treasury T-Bill worth something again.
Retrain and employ the 550,000 auto related workers, many who are already losing their jobs, into professions that have a future for themselves and their children.
Build up world class public transportation in all our communities and link major population centers through high speed, cheap rail.
Strengthen short truck transport.
Lower smog and air pollution by 55 percent.
Sounds impossible.
A peace symbol from the past. Like a hippie. Flower in his hair.
On second thought, maybe we could get Arlo Gutherie’s help.
Remember Arlo, don’t you?
What he suggested in his funny, antiwar song “Alice’s Restaurant,” 41 years ago, that describes, over 18-minutes, how he got arrested by Officer Obie for garbage littering, and as a result, was turned down for the Vietnam draft when he went to the military induction center?
And if two people, two people do it (go to the Vietnam War draft induction center and sing ("Alice's Restaurant") in harmony,
And three people do it, three, can you imagine,
three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,
I said fifty people a day
walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement”
*Lyrics from Alice’s Restaurant, 1967
They’d think it was a movement:
The-People-Against –Combustion-Engine-Cars-and-18-Wheel-Trucks' Economic Rebirth and Peace Movement
Now, if we can just get the Chinese to go along.
Neehow, Beijing?
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Interested in joinin or sharing diatribes? Go ahead. Give me ur best shot. Write: fleasondog@yahoo.com
* r.e. Song Alice's Restaurant. In the mid 80s, my two sons were about 6 and 9. We'd travel by car from Michigan to Missouri to visit their grandparents. We would'nt be in the car for 30 minutes before one of them said: "Dad, put on Alice's Restaurant!." So in would go the audio tape; and we'd listen to Guthrie's wacky, wonderfully amusing and irreverent musical monologue, which has just enough bathroom humor in it, too, to get my kids rolling on the car floor in the back seat.
To both watch and listen to Guthrie recently performing a slightly didacted and more politically correct 'Alice's Restaurant,' click on:
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March 28, 2008
Bus Stop Blues
Bus Stop Blues
Super Bowl Monday, early a.m.
The young woman sat huddled alone in a corner of the clear plastic, doorless hut, a sharp wind blowing under the cigarette butt and trash hewn benches, chilling the feet of those waiting for the public buses.
She wore dark glasses, dressed in a bulky brown jacket, winter scarf, sock cap pulled down below her ears to eye level. She appeared withdrawn, tiny, confused and afraid.
Her grimy, off-white tennis shoes and thin, summer weight, brown cotton pants dripped melting snow when she moved. Wet stains crept up her pant legs to the knees.
One hand and arm clung tightly to a small bag, stuffed with a blanket.
The bag suddenly moved on its own, and she quickly adjusted the blanket, and slide to the end of the bench, to avoid two old men who’d joined us.
“You OK?” I asked, wondering if the bag protected an infant.
She sensed the object of my concern, gently pulling back the blanket from the top of the bag.
Out popped the homely head of a small pug dog.
“You know my cat died this morning. My dog is sick, too. I’m taking him to the vet in Athens,” she said to me and to no one.
“PLEASE don’t tell the bus driver,” she implored.
“OK.
Goin to Athens?” I said. “That’s 12-miles beyond Beckley and the end of your bus route. A 24-mile trip. How’re you getting there?”
“I’m gonna walk. My vet is cheap. I don’t mind,” she said, removing the dark glasses for the first time.
The two elderly men had been watching, listening.
“F*ck her, anyway,” one suddenly commented. “ She’s nothing special. I walked to Marshall when the county jail was there.”
He took a swig from the 40-ouncer of Red Bull, partly wrapped in a brown sack, and then passed it to his friend.
“Ya, f*ck her,” his companion added, perking up as he took a hit off the bottle. “We’re still celebrating the Super Bowl.”
The Capital NE bus arrived and the girl was gone.
And on my own ride, I wondered.
If the girl and her dog made it to Athens and back. In the winter air and wet clothes.
And what I could have, but did not, do for them.
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Don't Die In Michigan
Don’t Die In Michigan
You’ve decided.
A typical, rather modest funeral in Michigan costs between $8,000 and $10,000 when you add up funeral home charges, embalming, casket, burial plot, etc.
So you say: ‘Hey, Gertrude, honey, just cremate my remains. Have a simple memorial service later at home or church.’
Not so fast. Not so easy.
Whether you die at home, in the hospital, at the nursing home or in a car accident, if your body goes to a funeral home, you’re gonna pay for a casket.
Burial or no burial. Cremation or no cremation.
It’s Michigan law, thanks to the power of the funeral home lobby.
There are other options. But you won’t hear about them from the funeral home director.
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August 17, 2007
Show me the money... the AK-47s...and the Orange Juice
There was barely a ripple in the national newspapers, and Internet sources, a few weeks ago when we learned the United States "lost" $3 billion of the money doled out to the Iraqi Provisional Government.
Gone. No Record.
Not even a doggie diner receipt: "$3 billion. In exchange for four scrambled eggs, toast and orange juice. No bacon. (Pig meat no good in Bagdad)."
A US spokesman tried to explain the missing cash: "We were in a hurry to get the money to the Iraqi people."
Yesterday, newspaper articles reported the US also "lost" some 145,000 AK-47 assault rifles and Glock hand guns, intended to arm the Iraqi Security Forces.
No record of where the arms went or who received them.
One shipment of about 30,000 weapons reportedly left a US Army base in Germany, loaded aboard a hugh transport by charted air, scheduled to land in Bagdad.
The plane never arrived -- disappeared without a trace.
Some might see an upside.
Those assault rifles and hand guns never reached our 'allies' in the Iraqi Security Forces.
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July 16, 2007
Dirty Little Secrets
The Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese announced yesterday it’s paying about $650 million to settle 500 cases of alleged child abuse and incest by its diocesan priests. Similar cases in other states, as well as England, Germany, France and Ireland , will cost The Church some $2 billion.
How many of us ‘fallen away Catholics’ – perhaps thousands of boomer adults – read about these cases with a heavy heart…and secret, personal memories?
I wasn’t sexually abused as a youngster by a Catholic priest – yet, might have been by “Father X."
A rather shy teenager when graduating from high school in 1962, I enrolled at a public college – and sought out The Newman Club (a club for Catholic youth attending public colleges and universities) – as a sanctuary and way to meet friends.
The Newman "Club" is a bit like a fraternity/sorority, except with an emphasis on the Catholic liturgy and Mass, student cook-outs, plus a lot of beer drinking. It even had a fraternity-type ‘house’ on the university campus, with meeting space, chapel for Sunday Mass, plus two resident priests, and office secretaries.
One of the secretaries was an attractive, middle aged widow.
It was the heady, hopeful era of Pope John XXIII, the Vatican Council: the nuns threw off their heavy woolen habits; the Church threw out the Latin Mass and turned the Altar around.
The middle-aged, ‘senior’ priest at the campus Newman Club had graduated from a Vatican university; talked about being a Monsignor, a Bishop, even a Cardinal one day; and considered himself a bon vivant, New Ager, on both sides of the Communion Rail.
The attractive widow-office secretary was blindly in love with this sophisticated “Father,” who seemed in turn to use her as friend and foil, a “cover” for his alcoholism, meanderings and Sunday morning "no shows."
I was soon invited to a few of their dinners, social events and around-the-table beer bashes; flattered these two “important,” polished adults considered me good company.
Turned out good company had little to do with it. My presence helped keep others from asking questions, or calling the Bishop’s office
“Father X” was alcoholic and evidently partial to young men.(In later years, I learned from past college-years/Newman club buddies that Father X's exploits were well known around campus.)
Within a year, his escapades at the Newman Club got him reassigned by the Bishop to a backbench, rural parish – where difficult for him to gather friends for the gourmet dinners, to sample his cabinet wines, and laugh at his jokes and the world’s foibles.
After banishment to the Catholic outback, Father X could still rely on his loyal widow-friend. She would occasionally invite me along, when she drove some 75 miles to meet her paramour at the parish rectory on Saturday afternoons and evenings.
They would cook thick steaks; smoke, drink a fifth of Chivas Scotch, and then cap the evening with tumbler glasses of iced Drambuie. I recall a lot of the conversation was poking fun at the "old" Catholic Church and its ways.
After many drinks, “Father” would slur his speech, laugh loudly at his own puns and commentary, and pressure me to “lose my shyness, inhibitions” by going to bed with him upstairs at the Rectory.
His apparent paramour would sit quietly, amused and bemused by it all; and my discomfort.
For some reason – shyness, fear, distaste – I never went up those stairs with Father X.
Through mid life, I remained distant friends with both – long after Father X was defrocked and living in New York City and later Arizona . (Father and his widow paramour never became an official pair. He left town and her life. She would later tell me: "What a strange man. When we had sex he refused to kiss me.")
And he was strange.
"It's him," my wife would say, when Ex-Father-X called in the middle of the night, rambling on incoherently about the ‘book’ he was always "just finishing" and could I possibly lend him some money until it was published.
Which I did on several occasions.
I remember the last time I talked with him. A late Thursday night, the phone rang. This distraught, drunken, angry, disbelieving voice screamed out with shock and outrage: "I have cancer! I have cancer."
He was dead by the following Tuesday.
A sad, unpleasant, even ugly, story.
I’ve never talked about it -- until now.
Yesterday, I asked a friend to read a draft of this blog. "We all have our dirty little secrets," she observed matter of factly.
Perhaps.
Some secrets are harder to forget or ignore than others.
The Catholic Church is learning that today.
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February 19, 2007
In A Pig's Eye
The New Year has arrived in China.
And from Shenzhen to Dalian, and all points in-between, the Chinese are taking a couple of weeks off; many journeying by train and bus to their home towns, pockets filled with Yuan from their construction jobs in Shanghai or Beijing, and their arms, backs and pull carts burdened down with everything from bottles of antibiotics (not available in rural areas) to flat screen TVs and packages of mooncakes.
This is the year of “The Pig.”
But during these two weeks of New Year celebration, the Big Shots in Beijing have banned pig photos or illustrations on the national CCT-TV network, newspapers, and displays by Starbucks, McDonalds and Wal-Mart.
Seems the Chinese – rather suddenly – have become politically correct and sensitive to religious diversity.
There are about 20 million Muslim Chinese – about 3 percent of China’s population. And – here’s the punch line – Muslims consider pigs unclean. They're not alone in that religious view; but much more -- shall I use the operative word -- f-a-n-a-t-i-cal -- about it.
They detest pigs. They don’t eat pigs. The only good pig is no pig.
Of course, don’t tell that to most Chinese. 800 million or so rural Chinese consider pigs part of the family – they live right outside the front door of the family home. The smell and sounds of pig life are an everpresent and reassuring part of the family dinner menu and atmosphere. China slaughters more than 400 million pigs a year --it's the biggest pork producer in the world. (Pigs represent honesty and virility to most Chinese. To bear a child in The Year of the Pig is considered good fortune.)
What’s a bit perplexing about all this is that the Beijing bureaucrats right up through the 1990s, persecuted Chinese Muslims – fearing their religious and separatist tendencies.
While living in China for three years, I also heard stories about how Chinese would kill their sick pigs and then stuff them down the water wells of their Muslim Chinese neighbors. And how Chinese restaurants would be sure to put pork in Muslim Chinese’s food.
All of this, of course, has nothing to do with China’s voracious appetite for another staple – OIL.
Believe that?
In a pig’s eye.
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February 14, 2007
"Dissin' The Dixie Chicks"
I was sure glad to see The Dixie Chicks get five Grammys the other evening.
Just wish we could’a moved the Oscars so the Dixies might've gotten five of them too.
The Oscars could've been presented to The Chicks by George Clooney, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover and maybe Barbara Streisland.
The Chicks, you see, are righteous, as well as middlin singers.
Too bad they don't understand the concept of 'family.' Which is surprisin, bein where their from.
They are more a reflection of modern day Nashville and Tinseltown. Or Washington, DC.
(You know what Washington, DC is anymore? Tinseltown for ugly people.)
Anyway, the Dixie Chicks got up on a concert stage in England a year or so ago. And bein from Texas, felt it necessary, to much applause from the British audience, to scream out: “We’re embarrassed George Bush is from Texas!!!!!”
I may be all wet, Dixie Chicks, but George is F-A-M-I-L-Y.
We may not like him.
We may hate Iraq..
But, Southerners don't air dirty laundry or publicly criticize family members to strangers.
After that concert across the pond, the Dixie Chicks' songs weren’t played as much on Country stations; and their record sales tanked.
But all that’s changed with their new, self described "thematic" album that won the five Grammies.
I listened to it last night.
And wish them well.
Truly.
Just feel a bit sorry for Texas and the real Dixie.
But then the last memoriable song about Dixie was 32 years ago.
Written by a member of the band who is half Indian and half Jewish. And from Canada.
Not a dixie chick in the bunch.
Anyone out there name the group? Title of the song? The person who wrote it?
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February 02, 2007
Dinner For Two
*Sarah had energy, style, intellect, beauty and assertiveness.
So I asked her out on a date. We were adults; middle age. Liberal, well read professionals.
We went to a movie the first night.
And then on the second date, I had tickets for a Michigan State University home football game.
In retrospect, I should have known something when she used the men’s ‘john’ at half-time because the lady’s line was ‘too long.’
Driving home from East Lansing, she invited me over the following weekend “for a casual, home cooked meal.”
So I arrived the appointed evening and hour, with a nice bottle of California Sauvignon.
And rang her door bell.
Sarah opened the door, wearing a skirt and a kitchen apron.
And nothing else. From the waist up.
She smiled and welcomed me. And we went up the stairs to her lovely apartment as if there was nothing unusual or needed to be explained, commented on.
I sat in her living room and read the paper; occasionally looking in the kitchen as she made the salad and removed a cheese casserole from the oven.
I remember she also heated the dinner plates in the oven. Impressive. How many people outside Manhattan or Malibu heat their dinner plates?
Dinner was in candle light. We sat across from each other. Talked politics. Favorite books. Job stuff.
And I thought, 'If she's not going to say anything, I'm not."
We laughed knowlingly over the fruit with rum sauce dessert, as if there was a third person at the table who didn't know the secret code or hand shake.
I left about 9 p.m with a peck on the cheek from her at the door. All very proper and chaste.
Some time later, by accident, I learned the evening and Sarah’s ensemble had nothing to do with romance or sex.
She'd recently had breast implants.
And evidently this was opening night. Like a Broadway Show.
Guess if I looked that good, I'd want the right people to see The Show.
On second thought......
------
*name and minor details changed
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January 09, 2007
Love and Grace In The Walmart Checkout Line
I’d never been in the food section of our local Walmart. Until noontime yesterday.
Using one of those person-less, scan, pay and bag your own groceries checkouts, I was confused over where to put the credit card; where to scan the groceries, and needed help from a marginally friendly Walmart ‘Associate.’
Focused on task, I suddenly felt the presence of someone behind me in the checkout line.
Almost a premonition.
I turned.
A beautiful young woman, about 30, with crystal blue eyes, was standing there.
Dressed in a modish hat and long skirt – like Mia Farrow or Diane Keaton in a Woody Allen movie.
She smiled.
I thought: ‘If I’m dead and gone to heaven, Lord, let her be my guardian angel.’
My eyes traveled from her eyes to an oversized badge on her green and white-tinged, herringbone coat.
The badge read:
SISTER PAVOLA
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
I turned back to scan the cat food, bread and peanut butter.
And ran a free hand thru the balding spot on the back of my head.
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January 07, 2007
Kellogg's Cereal City USA Museum
So, the downtown Battle Creek museum that was supposed to replace cereal plant tours, and 250,000 plant visitors, has closed its doors. With few visitors and a big deficit after ten years.
But lets not start throwing bricks and bats at the good folks and funders who supported startup of Kellogg's Cereal City USA at a time when Battle Creek and its downtown was going down the tank....or the toilet.
They TRIED to make the museum cereal-industry wide (including Post and Ralston), rather than just Kellogg's.
AND they at least tried a new idea to attract tourists when the cereal plant tours died.
There were two additional factors not covered in the recent Battle Creek Enquirer newspaper editorial on this topic:
1) the cereal city musem was in the wrong building and the wrong location -- should have been near highway Interstate-94 and
2) the museum relied on all us pre and near boomer babies to bring their kids and grandkids to Cereal City USA. WE remember the cereal plant tours, the inbox and boxtop collectables with love and nostaliga (that bathtub submarine that operated with soda powder...etc.) and equated breakfast cereal and collectables with good times and our childhood at the breakfast table and the mail box.
Today's kids -- 'rather have coke and a donut for breakfast.'
Cereal collectables? Kids rather have a new cell phone.
"Grand pa?, Can we leave now?," my grand daughter said to me a few months ago as we went through Kellogg's Cereal City USA.
But no bricks or brickbats, please.
Thanks BC leaders for trying out the museum idea.
Lots of good things still in this small town!
And bet there will be a new, better use for the building.
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December 28, 2006
30 Minutes With Gerry
I hadn’t lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan long before I met former U.S. President Gerald Ford for the first, and last, time.
An afternoon meeting concluded in my office, and one of the participants mentioned he was going down to “visit with Gerry Ford” at the Ford Presidential Museum. And he asked if I wanted to come along.
So we walked down Pearl Street, across the Grand River bridge to the Museum.
Inside, I noticed several men with the telltale lapel pins and ear plugs associated with the Secret Service.
But we were rather casually ushered into President Ford’s office at the Museum.
He got up and greeted us – particularly my colleague, who was an old friend.
And the three of us sat chatting about University of Michigan football, Bill Clinton’s reelection prospects, and local politics for about 30 minutes.
I was surprised at how ‘easy’ the conversation was; and that Ford seemed in no hurry to end the chat. There was no glancing at his watch; no shifting of his eyes in anticipation of the next meeting on his schedule.
Walking back across the Grand River bridge, my colleague told several endearing stories from his friend “Gerry” Ford’s some 25 years representing Grand Rapids and Michigan’s 5th Congressional District.
I was thinking about the President Gerald Ford who helped bring a close to Watergate, the Vietnam War, and dealt with Soviet expansionism and domestic inflation in the mid-1970s.
“He's a very common man,” my associate commented to me about Ford.
And much more, I thought to myself.
--------
President Ford will be buried near the Museum in Grand Rapids next Wednesday.
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December 13, 2006
The Whale
The following was shared by a friend -- Jim Richmond
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The front page of the SF Chronicle recently told the story of a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.
She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth.
A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate ) and radioed an environmental group for help.
Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her ...
a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.
When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed gently around --- she thanked them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.
The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.
May you, and all those you love,
be so blessed and fortunate ...
to be surrounded by people
who will help you get untangled
from the things that are binding you.
And, may you always know the joy
of giving and receiving gratitude.
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December 10, 2006
Robert McNamara Revisited
The old man next to me at the dinner table in New York City was still recognizable. But barely.
Gone was the black hair; replaced by a few white strands combed to hide his scalp.
Brown, age spots dotted his now pencil-thin face.
Only the eyeglasses were familar from TV news clips in the mid 1960s.
It was Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under LBJ, who with his “Whiz Kids” from the auto industry, carried out LBJ’s dictums in Vietnam; while trying to apply business 
management systems to the Defense Department.
McNamara served longer than anyone else in American history as DOD Secretary.
But when he retired, many believed McNamara had failed in Vietnam. And had setbacks in modernizing the U.S. military.
So, here it was, in the early 1990s, as I sat next to him at this black tie, charitable fundraising dinner in New York
I was nearly tongued-tied.
Not that I didn't know what to say to or ask McNamara. As a Vietman vet, I had questions.
But the evening, the timing seemed inappropriate, wrong.
Some of my questions would be too pointed, I convinced myself that evening.
So I let the chance go by. Confined my comments to small talk about economics and the World Bank, which McNamara headed after leaving government service.
Not a word about Vietnam. It still seemed like the big, silent elephant at our table.
I recalled this unsatisying experience yesterday, as I watched Donald Rumsfield on C-Span and his last visit to troops in Iraq several days ago.
Rumsfield fielded deferential questions from troops and gave reasons for why the war is still important. Why we should stay in Iraq. He was impressive in his logic, persuasive with his passion.
Rumsfield leaves the Bush Cabinet this week, having served almost as long as McNamara as Secretary of Defense.
Like McNamara, Rumsfield has not been totally successful conducting a War -- the Iraq War.
Like McNamara, pushed from office and expected to take blame for someone else's decisions and a fickle, often impatient, body-count oriented American public.
And, also like McNamara, Rumsfield experienced setbacks in efforts to reinvent and downsize the Defense Department -- some simply reflecting a new reality after 9/11.