All This for a Three Hour Holiday?

Aging grouch alert: You’ve been warned. Now…what’s with the trend to decorate the front of your house for Halloween with orange lights, huge pumpkins, enormous spider webs,  and ghosts? Can’t these people wait a few short weeks until they can follow the long standing, sensible tradition of decorating the house and yard with red, white and green lights? Not to mention the Macy’s parade-size inflatable Santa and faux snow. Isn’t it tiresome enough to wrap and then unwrap lights around trees, bushes and railings on a day that’s guaranteed to have freezing rain in the forecast?

Who in their right mind willingly shells out hard earned dollars to celebrate a so-called holiday that lasts about three hours?  Last time I checked, Christmas was a whole season. That must be why we cheerfully say, “Seasons Greetings” isn’t it? It’s not as long as a football season, but it is long enough to justify the trouble and expense of lighting up your front porch, lawn and roof.

Listen: Christmas is all about joy to the world, peace on earth, good will toward men. There’s stockings filled with Prell and Gillette Fusion ProGlide Razors, delicious stuffed turkey and pumpkin pie. Halloween is about silly costumes. It’s about candy which leads to cavities and unpleasant visits to the dentist. As my friend Jill put it, “Deck the haunted halls doesn’t have a ring to it.” 

I’m very concerned about what’s trending now with Halloween decorating. Back in the middle of the last century, we just carved a pumpkin. Then we set it out on the front porch so the older kids could kick it off the steps or smash it on the roof of the grouchy old neighbor’s car. Wait……..oh yeah; I keep my car in the garage.

As I was saying, All Hallows Eve is so named because it refers to the night before All Saints Day. That hardly seems to warrant massive decorating, especially the kind that conjures the grave which is a destination not that far off for some of us. (Not me you understand. Regular Observer readers will recall that the Death Clock is giving me until 2043.)     

The Jack-O-Lantern, perhaps the universal symbol of Halloween, was originally used to ward off evil spirits. Looking at some of the Halloween decorations festooning front porches in my neighborhood, one might suspect its role is actually to invite such creatures. I mean what’s with the skeletons and headstones, not to mention the ghastly figures?

When I was a kid the entire point of Halloween was getting neighbors to hand out candy in exchange for saying Trick or Treat. In my neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, we never actually said those words. Instead we said something like, “I’m here for the candy.”  We didn’t need costumes either. We were already dressed like future cast members of the Sopranos.  

It seems to me that if people want to decorate for Halloween they should be placing large posters depicting Snickers and Kit-Kat bars on their lawns to let kids know what to expect. I could get behind such a movement, especially if adults of all ages were as welcome as kids to stop by and grab a package of say, red licorice.

Then, instead of spending all that money on Orange and black decorations, companies like Mars and Hershey and even Brach’s would be competing for space on your property. Imagine a lighted Happy Halloween sign (blinking optional) over your garage door sponsored by Tootsie Roll Industries. Yes, you could grant naming rights for your very own house the same way stadiums do.   

One of the things I find troubling about all this is where will it stop? How long will it be before we have to decorate our homes for St. Patrick’s Day? I don’t know about you, but my attic is already crammed with Christmas stuff. Where am I going to fit a giant Shamrock?    

Cherry Bomb

            I was listening to the radio the other day and happened upon John Mellencamp’s Cherry Bomb . It’s a pretty tune. I hadn’t heard it for a while. I downloaded it and then listened closely to the lyrics. There’s a line in the song that goes, “we were young and we were improving.” I love that line.

Mellencamp is a boomer, just a few years younger than I am. His song took me back to our so-called green years when everything was in front of us. You know, “when dancin’ meant everything.” Looking back on those years, one thing I clearly remember is we were determined to make a better world. Not only were we going to keep improving, we were going to take the whole world with us. Anything seemed possible. Obstacles were made to be removed.  

In many respects we did change the world. If you consider advances in technology, communication, medicine and civil rights for example, we done good. In terms of how we live now, or more to the point, the world we present to our children and grandchildren, I’m not so sure we improved a thing. Yes, I know old men are inclined to say, “The good old days were better.” And I try to allow for that. But I can’t help wondering whether kids growing up today will be able to look back on their adolescence and say with confidence the way John Mellencamp did, that "we were improving,” not to mention feel inspired to write a song about it.

Take the way government is run or more accurately, not run today. When I see our representatives on what passes for television news these days, they look, well…smug to me. What I see on too many faces is, “Look at me! I know how the game is played. Watch me spin!” This is while they are saying things that American people with common sense and no need for the spotlight, recognize as ludicrous.

Listen: It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, a Tea-Party member or a Liberal. The sad truth is too many of the people we’ve elected may not be there to serve our needs. They are serving themselves. In the process they are not setting the example that Mellencamp’s Cherry Bomb references when he says, “One night, me with my big mouth a couple of guys had to put me in my place.” Who puts self serving members of the government in their place?

Adults have always had the responsibility of giving their children a secure environment where they could simply keep on improving. There was never a time in the history of the United States of America when sacrifice wasn’t a requirement. Negotiation, accommodation, consideration are all essential ingredients to getting things done and keeping the country moving ahead and, improving. Having options is one of the benefits of living in a free society. It’s also an obligation. Are we making good choices, the kind that considers the needs of our children? At this time in our history it’s hard to see how our leaders and authority figures are doing much other than improving their place in line in the Capitol’s pecking order.        

The good news, I believe is that it’s never too late to improve. We still have options and we can make better choices than we’ve made in the past. Improving is not strictly the province of the young. Yes, we’ve made plenty of mistakes but to those running our great nation I say, with a bit of contrition, there is still hope. With apologies to John Mellencamp for updating his lyrics a bit, 

Seventeen has turned sixty-five
It’s not too late, we’re still livin’
If we’ve done wrong
I hope that we’re forgiven

            Our kids deserve a better world than the one we’re giving them. Listen to Cherry Bomb, a simple song with a sweet message. While we’re at it, let’s send the song to Senator Reid and Congressman Boehner. Once upon a time dancin’ was everything to them too.             

 

The Inane Sayings Edition

            On the day I got married for the first time, the priest ended the ceremony, saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” It was a popular saying at the time, one that sounds rather profound the first time you hear it. I suppose it means that you can start fresh, erasing, if you will, the mistakes you made on all the other first days of your life.

It turned out that getting married that day was a mistake for both of us. But that’s another story. When it dawns on you that every day happens to be the first day of the rest of your life, you realize just how inane the saying is.

Do you have a “favorite” inane saying? If not, you may not be trying hard enough. I happen to loath, “everything happens for a reason.” This is a short sentence that someone is bound to trot out when you tell them you lost your job, your car died and your significant other dumped you.

            The words are always spoken in a tone suggesting that suddenly, the person saying them is clairvoyant. They have miraculously developed the power to see into the future. The bad things that have just been visited upon you are actually a promise of better times to come. Order your Cadillac Escalade now.  I might accept this pearl of wisdom if the bearer of good news had just returned from say, Lourdes or Fatima the day before. That, of course, is never the case. More likely they just returned from Wal-Mart and not even with a Ouija board.

            When people say, “everything happens for a reason,” does it occur to them that they might be implying that you deserve bad luck? I mean who ever says that useless phrase when you tell them you just got a promotion and won a trip to Kansas City?   

            Here’s one you probably haven’t heard for a long time. Back in the 1970s when a lot of baby boomers were treating divorce like a rite of passage, some who had children were fond of saying, “It’s not the quantity of time you spend with your kids, it’s the quality of time you spend with them.”  In fairness, it wasn’t only the divorced invoking this line. Many households found it necessary for both parents to work.

While there is still some debate over which is more important, many leading authorities on the subject believe that quantity matters a great deal. One of the reasons I mention this particular saying is that it became popular before there was sufficient research to support it.  How many people took the time to access the literature on the topic that may have been available at the time? Don’t forget this was pre World Wide Web. I’m betting not many.

Mostly, I think people took comfort in the saying, perhaps worrying about whether they had done the right thing by their kids.  Sayings that go viral simply because they have a nice ring to them can indeed be harmful.

It’s been a long time since I heard someone argue quality over quantity when discussing childcare, but some sayings withstand the test of time, offering wisdom to all generations. Sayings like, “less is more” continue to resonate because in many situations, the arts in particular, less certainly is apt to be more. The saying dates back to 1855, in Andrea del Sarto, a poem by Robert Browning.

The “early bird catches the worm” may seem tired to some, but its essential truth is undeniable. And, perhaps there’s even more to the saying than meets the eye. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird, and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.”

             Note to the worm: Don’t worry. Everything happens for a reason.

Keep Breathing, An Interview with the Author

Thank you for taking the time to discuss your new novel, Keep Breathing. I suppose we should start with the obvious. Why are you interviewing yourself?

Well Len, Oprah hasn’t called, nor has C-SPAN’s Book TV, and not a peep out of the Nolensville Dispatch. 

You’re surprised? Never mind, what’s this book about?

Two men embark on a road trip, heading south along the I-95 corridor. It’s a last gasp for Miracle Morgan. In his highly compromised physical condition, it is a dangerous, even foolhardy journey. But a letter from a lover he hasn’t heard from in 40 years energizes Miracle. She’s kept a secret from him all these years and now, out of options, she is pleading for Miracle’s help.

Miracle convinces his best friend Ray, an itinerant tennis pro, to help him make the trip. Accompanied by Tara, a beautiful and much younger woman, Ray is more than willing to help…for a price. With each mile and with every harrowing roadblock the trio encounters, Ray’s plan to get his aching bones off the tennis court for good seemingly unravels.   

As they make their way down the east coast, the complexity of Miracle’s and Ray’s lifelong friendship is revealed. Miracle also uncovers Tara’s secrets. She is about to rock the world of two men.

Why did you write this story?

I was inspired by the loss of a very close friend who had pulmonary fibrosis. 

Is your main character based on your friend’s life?

No, but I learned a lot from what I saw and we talked almost every day. He fought courageously until the very end to live his life to the fullest.

 

Is that why you’re donating 20% of the book’s net proceeds to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation?

I’m donating to the Foundation because the vast majority of donations they receive are used to find a cure. It’s considered a rare disease but the prevalence appears to be growing, in some cases due to pollution. A lot of first responders at the World Trade Center on 9/11 have been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. I believe it is a very worthy cause. If you’re interested, go to www.pulmonaryfibrosis.org

Does your story contain a message for people with pulmonary fibrosis?

As a writer, my job is to tell a good story. If someone with pulmonary fibrosis reads the book and finds inspiration to continue the battle, so much the better.

There is also a strong tennis component in your story. Why tennis?

I love the game. And I think Ray, Miracle’s best friend and itinerant tennis pro, gave me a chance to say a little something about the game, although I’m not sure I knew that when I was writing. He is a rogue but not on the tennis court. He was all business on the court. Maybe the game is a metaphor for who Ray wishes he was.    

You worked in the durable medical equipment, homecare industry for a long time. Do you think you were rough on them?

Not at all. One character made a serious mistake and the other was, to put it mildly, a jerk. As I have written previously in a homecare journal, every industry has its scoundrels. They don’t define the industry. On the whole, the thing that I hope comes across, because it’s the truth, is that when it comes to patient care, there is no room for compromise. The vast majority of homecare providers and manufacturers are patient advocates at heart.     

What are your hopes for Keep Breathing?

My hopes are completely separated from reality. That said, I hope it’s a best seller and then a major motion picture. Of course, I was hoping to win the last big Powerball lottery too.

 

Are you working on another project?

Yes, I am.

Care to tell us about it?

It’s too soon but I’ll give you a hint. It will improve your tennis game dramatically.

Last question: How can someone buy Keep Breathing?

It’s available at on line book stores like Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Or, if you prefer, via Kindle. 

Here until Christmas Day 2043!

I was reading a New York Times publication called Booming, a newsletter all about baby boomers. One of the articles referenced a Web site called Deathclock.com

Yes, it’s true. Baby boomers are obsessed with every aspect of our precious lives including the need to know the exact moment when (or should I say if?) we will actually die. Your birth date, outlook on life and body mass index is all the DeathClock needs to tell you the day you will die and how many seconds of your life remain before you meet your maker. 

            I’m a bit confused about my own demise though. I made the mistake of checking the “DeathClock” twice in ten minutes. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with my first prognosis which said I would die on New Year’s Eve in the year 2042, one month shy of my 95^th birthday. Sure, given a choice I would prefer to die early on New Year’s Day after watching New Year’s Rockin’ Eve hosted by a hologram of Dick Clark, a flute of Piper-Heidsieck Rare 2002, at the ready.

            But, in doing a quick fact check for this post, I was surprised and a bit chagrined to discover that the Death Clock may not be completely accurate. My second turn at bat revealed that my departure from earth would be Christmas Day, 2043. Either way it seems I’m destined to go out on a major holiday. Right, I get another whole year, which is wonderful, but what if I go before I have a chance to open my presents?

Note to family: Be sure to save your Christmas gift receipts for any gifts you plan to give me in 2043. Whether I get to open my presents or not, you’ll need them. On the other hand, given what you now know, perhaps a pearl gray suit and a new pair of shoes would be an ideal choice. Make sure you get me pointy black ones.

And don’t plan any big New Year’s Eve celebration for yourself that year. Considering how old I’ll be when I pass, there won’t be any money left for you celebrate. Given my entitled baby boomer status in this world, I expect an elaborate funeral service mourning my passing. I want Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing my favorites, live and in person.     

Naturally, I’m thrilled to know that I am going to be here another 30 years. I suspect a lot of baby boomers will be around to celebrate turning 90 and even 100. Of course the generations following us will have a substantial burden. For one thing they will be stuck in whatever middle management jobs still exist because we boomers will be holding on to our senior staff roles as long as possible…and collecting Social Security to boot.

It’s tempting I’m sure to blame us for refusing to step off center stage. Once you’ve been in the limelight though, even if it’s limited to being one in a group of millions, it’s very hard to let go.

Listen: younger people are just as prone to this disease as we are. That’s why so many reality show contestants continue to grasp at anything they can to extend their time in the spotlight. The bachelor’s Sean comes to mind. He headed for Dancing with the Stars as soon as he proffered the final rose. Then he agreed to marry his true love on the tube. That is until he may have decided to postpone the wedding. Would you be shocked if he gained 150 pounds so he could get on the Biggest Loser?

Not that I envy Sean. But I do wish I could arrange to have a camera follow me around for my 840 million remaining seconds.

Feeling Unforgiving? Try Some Berry Punch

This just in from the Harvard Business Review’s (HBR) Daily Stat: People “who were given 2 teaspoons of a bitter herbal supplement made harsher judgments of such actions as shoplifting and library-book theft, rating these behaviors an average of 78 on a 0-100 scale of "morally wrong," whereas people who had sipped only water rated the scenarios at just 62, says a team led by Kendall J. Eskine of the City University of New York. People who had sipped berry punch were even less harsh in their judgments.”

The report goes on to suggest, “the research underscores that what we think of as purely "moral" reasoning can be strongly influenced by intuition and physical feelings.” I have no quarrel with the study’s findings. What gets me is the low percentages of “harsh judgments” for doing something that is clearly wrong.

Call me naïve, but how can it be that 38% of people in a good mood and 22% of those having a bad day call shoplifting something less than morally wrong? One can only hope that the scenario described for the participants was one where the shoplifter was homeless and picking up a few things to avoid starvation. For the record, according to Business Insurance Quotes, two of the top three most shoplifted items in America are foods. In other words are we talking about absolutes or relativism?

Stealing a library book by the way, is a form of shoplifting but its worse than most shoplifting in at least one way. Its one thing to steal meat, the USA’s number one shoplifted item. There are usually plenty of ground beef packages on the shelf. When you steal a library book you are reducing, if not eliminating, the opportunity for others to learn something new or be entertained.

I realize there is also a potential upside to the far-reaching discovery that being in a good  mood has a tendency to make people more forgiving.  With any luck, entire industries that seem to specialize in hiring surly people (airlines come to mind) might now provide sweet drinks to their employees. Airlines can start with gate agents.

I wonder if defense attorneys will now use this knowledge to get better deals for their clients. “Your honor, if it pleases the court, may I offer members of the jury a spot of tea spiced with Tupelo honey while they deliberate?” Come to think of it, what were the jurors sampling during deliberations for the Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman trials? 

I am frankly troubled by research of this nature. There is a downside. In fact, the potential for mischief is infinite. In no time, news like this will filter down to children of all ages. How long will it take little Kendrick to figure out that it’s a good idea to offer mom a cookie before confessing that he broke the family heirloom vase? When newly licensed driver, Francine, wants the keys to the car, you know she is going to give daddy a sweet, delicious, Cella's Chocolate-Covered Cherry to help her seal the deal. It’s worrisome I tell you.   

It turns out that HBR’s Daily Stat is chock full of interesting studies. A recent experiment performed by Michael J.A. Wohl of Carleton University in Canada suggests that people were more than twice as likely to gamble $10 on slot machines if they first read an article warning of an unstable economic climate, poor job prospects, and higher costs. Periods of hardship can lead people to make risky and detrimental financial decisions, the researchers say.

In effect, these people are treating themselves, or at least their own self-interest, harshly. Would the results have been the same if they sipped berry punch while they read the bad news?

Progress, a Step Backward?

            My friend Paul gave me his copy of Fortune, a leading business magazine. The first thing I read was a column by Stanley Bing, a noted writer. Mr. Bing questioned whether what some call progress is really a step backwards. His leading example was restroom sinks with automatic water dispensers. Sometimes they don’t work. And there’s no alternative.

            Permit me to join Mr. Bing in pointing out a few more examples of improvements that are not progress. Shall we start with computerized cash registers? The old fashioned cash register has been replaced with computerized applications that have turned checking out from a 30 second exercise to something akin to donating blood. It takes about the same amount of time. In fact, the American Red Cross should set up in busy checkout lanes. That would be the end of blood shortages. This is true, by the way, even if you pay cash. I recently visited an appliance store to buy a replacement water filter. I explained I was in a hurry but that didn’t matter.

I had cash in hand but the guy behind the counter had to sign himself in first. Then he asked me for my phone number. He punched a few keys, scanned my purchase and then he waited for the computer to react. The receipt was next, an 8 and ½ by 11 inch piece of paper by the way. I had to sign that before he took my money. Finally the register door opened and he gave me my change. If you happen to be the third or fourth customer in line you can give blood and apply for a mortgage. There’s plenty of time.

Does anybody remember when it was common to argue over whose turn it was to get up and change the channel? That was before the TV remote was introduced. And the remote was a definite improvement over the TV knob, which had a habit of breaking off eventually, mostly because kids took turns seeing who could get from channel 2 to 13 the fastest.

Early remotes were pretty simple. They turned your set on and off. You could change the channel and adjust the volume. Some even had the ever useful mute button.  Check out your TV remote now. Mine has 53 buttons to choose from. And here’s the best part: If you hit the wrong button, now you can argue with your significant other over whose turn it is to call your cable provider.

Let’s face it. There is no way you are going to press the right buttons in the right sequence to turn that static into a picture. After you’ve spent three days waiting for the cable guy, getting up to change the channel sounds suspiciously like progress.      

How about the family car? Some of us can remember a time when anyone who was reasonably handy could change the oil, do a break job or even give the car a tune-up. With the highly advanced, technology driven cars of today, should you break down on the side of the road you don’t open the hood and have a look. No, the first thing you do is reach for your cell phone for roadside assistance. Even fixing a flat tire can be a nightmare. Quick! Tell me where your tire iron and jack are stored. You have no idea right? Maybe that’s why AAA adds 6.5 million new members a year. 

Obviously, technology has played an important role in moving our society along. The sad truth is that many of the old ways of doing things must be updated to accommodate environmental and demographic changes. Still, I wish marketers would stop telling us that all these improvements will make our lives easier. They don’t. Well, it’s time to light my barbecue grill. Now where did I put the instructions?