From my buddy JT on the East Coast…

“With all the turmoil in the stock market and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, this might be some good advice.  For any of you with any money left to invest, be aware that another round of corporate mergers and acquisitions will likely change the financial landscape.   Watch for these consolidations later this year, or early 2009…

“Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush and W.R. Grace Co. will merge and become Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.

“Polygram and Warner Records will merge with Keebler to become Poly-Warner Cracker.

“3M will be acquired by Goodyear and become MMMGood.

“FedEx and UPS will become one company, FedUP.”

I had to have a tooth extracted yesterday, “number 31″ in dental lingo–my rear-most lower right molar, in layman’s terms.  Had a BIG cavity in it when I was a teen-ager, and over the years what was left of the tooth held up as best it could but finally broke down and there was no saving it.  The only reason I bring this up is because of the oral surgeon who removed it, Dr. Curry.  If it’s possible to say that a tooth extraction was a pleasant process, then I would say this guy needs to get credit. (And no, I didn’t get a discount for writing this!  In fact, he doesn’t even know I’m on the radio!) 

The point is, no matter what the circumstances, it doesn’t cost anything to be sensitive, caring, upbeat and pleasant.  Trust me, I wasn’t happy to be having a tooth pulled, and I went into that office in a defensive, resentful sort of mood.  A mood not made any better by the various disclaimers and waivers that I had to sign regarding payment and possible medical before-and-after-effects.  But the doctor’s genuine personal warmth encouraged me to let down my defenses, and “roll with the flow.”   I began to feel like, heck, there was no saving that tooth anyway, it had to come out, why not just accept it and make the best of it.

Really, so much of life is centered on Reinhold Niebuhr’s well-known prayer….

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.”

It sure does make it easier, though, to accept what can’t be changed when you’re dealing with people who are sensistive, warm and genuinely care.  Makes ME want to be like that for OTHER people–I’m gonna try to be better at that from now on…

Got this forwarded to me by my east coast pal, JT…I can’t decide if it’s more funny, or SAD…

Dear American:I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

Here’s the text of that e-mail I got a few days ago about an event honoring John Lennon here in Denver on his birthday, October 9th…

“John Lennon’s birthday is coming up Thursday, October 9th, and the Imagine Peace Paint-In is being held that day in Civic Center Park to honor John.  The event features hundreds of artists painting in the park, live bands all day, vendors, activities, and a special appearance by John’s “Lost Weekend” girlfriend, May Pang.  Admission is free, and all donations go to local peace groups in honor of John Lennon.  Details are online, at www.paint-in.org.”

Sounds like a fun event, especially if you consider yourself to be a surviving “hippie” from the ’60s!

I had to refresh my memory about May Pang–the “Lost Weekend” was really about a year and a half long, a time when Yoko Ono decided that she and John should separate.  May Pang was their personal assistant, Yoko suggested that she and John go off together–whaaa!?  Well, they always did have a rather unique relationship, John and Yoko.  So John took off to L.A. with May Pang, spent most of the next year and a half drinking and carousing on the West Coast before returning to New York and ultimately reconciling with Yoko Ono.  Not sure what happened to her after that, I guess I could go to this event and ask her myself, right?

I read with some satisfaction that the Denver cop who shoved the Code Pink protester to the ground will NOT have any charges filed against him.  The DA decided that the protester brought it on herself with her own abusive, defiant behavior.  This has OUTRAGED the protest group–SO WHAT!?  I’m tired of people thinking they are “entitled” to behave badly.  Especially when they imply that there should be compensated when they have to suffer any consequences for their bad behavior.

Same thing with that kid in Aurora, whose dad sent him to school wearing a home-made t-shirt that said “Obama is a terrorist’s best friend.”  Everybody knows that disruption is the LAST thing a school needs these days, so reasonable people understand that some means of expression oneself which might be appropriate at a rock concert, political rally, or street corner, are NOT appropriate at a SCHOOL.  I love the kid’s comment–”yeah, it was disruptive, but not enough to get suspended.”  Um–if it’s disruptive at ALL, it IS enough to get suspended, especially when you’re given the choice of changing shirts, or turning the shirt inside out.

ANOTHER example–a woman in Atlantic City who gambled away about a million dollars in savings.  She then filed a lawsuit against seven different Atlantic City casinos, claiming that they should have KNOWN she had a gambling problem and prevented her from continuing to play.   She wanted $20 million in damages!  The judge quickly tossed the lawsuit. 

Fortunately, in each of these cases, the cause of reason has won out.  The Code Pink protester gets shown the door.  The kid in Aurora gets suspended.  The woman in Atlantic City has hre lawsuit laughed out of the courtroom.  Maybe there IS hope for our society, after all.

Been meaning to post since the weekend, but have just been so busy around the radio station that I haven’t found the time–until now!

Last Friday night, my son’s youth group at church held an all-night “lock-in.”  The event was called “Sleep Is For The Weak,” about 75 boys showed up, for boys aged 11-13, no girls allowed, no SLEEP allowed! 

Wednesday night prior to the event, the church’s youth leader asked me if I might be able to help supervise for a couple hours at the start of the event, I agreed.  Well, I wound up staying the entire night, not just a couple hours.  I guess I felt like they needed the help, although there were maybe a half dozen or so other men there, so it wasn’t like they were under-supervised.

Anyway, some observations that I made from this experience…

I did not realize the popularity of Nerf guns with this demographic, boys age 11-13.  The flyer promoting the event DID invite the boys to bring Nerf guns–but I figured that meant SOME of the boys would have/bring Nerf Guns.  I was amazed to discover that EVERY kid had brought a Nerf gun, some of them brought SEVERAL!  One kid dressed up like a gangster and brought a big zippered suitcase STUFFED with Nerf guns and ammo–he looked like a Mafia HIT man!  Don’t know if you’re up-to-speed on current Nerf gun technology, but it’s pretty impressive.  Weapons of every size and shape, from small hand-held single-shot pistols all the way up to M-60-like machine guns that fire off twenty-five darts in rapid-fire succession! WOW!

Needless to say, we had some COLOSSAL Nerf wars.  One particular battle took place in the gym, where we divided the kids into two groups, and created a “Maginot Line” across the middle with folded cafeteria tables and gym mats serving as barriers.  After about a half hour, the place looked like Gettysburg, with Nerf darts, articles of clothing, shoes, and and knocked-over mats strewn everywhere.

Another thing I learned from this lock-in experience is that carelessly combining multiple variants of junk food can make you feel quite ill.  Every kid was supposed to bring something to share, and we filled SIX, long cafeteria tables with nothing but sugary-salty snacks and drinks!  AUGGH!  Chips, candy, cookies, soda. It was unbelievable–I have a picture of it on my cell phone, I need to see if I can post it here.  It didn’t take long for kids and adults alike to start tearing into those packages.  I started with Lime and Chili Tostitos, Chips Ahoy cookies, and pretzel sticks, and then moved on to the Oreos, Chex Mix and Flaming Hot Habenero Doritos.  At that point I began to feel queasy.  I discovered that drinking water helps.  LOTS of water.

It became clear very early that any attempt at cleanliness with this group would be fruitless.  Within ten minutes, someone had dumped a liter bottle of root beer on the floor.  I watched as one kid grabbed a huge sack of Cheetos and took at with him, scooping handfuls of Cheetos into his mouth as he walked aimlessly about.  Except only about half the Cheetos actually got ingested, the remainder tumbled to the floor, creating a path reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel. 

About 3:00 they started a movie, and I thought I might get away with a couple winks of sleep.  No such luck-several of the boys had formed a “sleep police” squad and were actively patrolling the premises for “sleepers,”  shooting each one relentlessly with Nerf guns.  So each time I would begin to doze off, I’d quickly get awakened with the soft sting of a Nerf Dart–or five!  Actually, I feel fortunate–I learned later that there was another group going around tagging “sleepers” with Sharpie pens!!  Rather get “Nerfed” than “tagged!”

Got home about 6:30 AM and immediately crashed.  When I woke up around noon, I did NOT feel rested!  But, I have to admit, it was a pretty memorable night.  I’ll be ready for the NEXT lock-in…

…maybe in a year or so…

I start every morning with a little quiet time alone with God.  Like a lot of people, I ‘ve been very concerned about the financial meltdown on Wall Street.  This morning, I felt led to turn back to one of my favorite passages for difficult times, in the seldom-thought-of book of Habbakuk.  It’s chapter 3, verses 17 through 19…

“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.”

Over the years, I’ve returned again and again to that passage when things have been difficult or unsettling.  As I think about the words, I like to swap out Habakkuk’s troubles with my OWN problems and anxieties!  “Though the 401k is shrinking and my house is declining in value while my mortgage is NOT–YET I WILL REJOICE IN THE LORD!”

If it weren’t for my faith in God, I think I’d be a lot more unsettled than I am!!  Not that I expect God to step in and save AIG–or my 401k!  It’s just that reading this text and others like it reminds me that there’s a bigger picture that I ought to be looking at.  Whenever I take the time to take a deep breath, and think and PRAY, God really DOES give the footing that helps me climb over those difficult “high places” in my life.  AMEN!

I realized that the last couple of posts have been more cynical in tone that I prefer to be, so I decided this morning to post POSITIVE content on my blog today!

Hey!  I got a rare nickel in my change from the soda machine yesterday! It’s a 1938 P Jefferson nickel, worth about thirty cents!  I know, thirty cents isn’t exactly like winning the lottery, but relatively speaking, it’s a pretty valuable.  That is to say, Jefferson nickels were/are produced in such quantity that few of them are worth much more than face value to a collector.

Incidentally, I always make it a point to check my change for old coins, ESPECIALLY the nickels.  I’ve found that the best chance of finding an old coin is among the Jefferson nickels still in circulation.  Probably because of the production numbers I mentioned before, but also because the coin was essentially unchanged until the last couple of years, so it’s difficult to spot an old one with only a casual glance.  The wheat-back Lincoln cents from before 1960 have been pretty much snapped up and squirrelled away into people’s collections, and the dimes and quarters from 1964 and before were long ago stashed away for their silver value.  But you still do occasionally run across a 1940s or ’50s nickel–or, in my case, one from the 1930s!

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Like most people, my IRA and 401k have been battered badly.  Does anybody else feel “fleeced” besides me? 

The government has been telling us for years we have to provide for our OWN retirement, don’t count on THEM.  Corporate America has stripped the average worker of any pension or retirement benefits, mimicking the government’s line that each person has to provide for themselves.  But when we try to DO that–squirrel some money away for retirement–those same government types and corporate big shots take our hard-earned, hard-saved money and either roll the dice with it like it’s Las Vegas playing with “house money,” or they outright WASTE it.

What particularly grates me are these high-roller CEOs who get the “golden parachutes” after screwing up our IRAs.  What grates me even MORE, though, is that there’s NOTHING we can DO about it, and nobody in any position of power or influence who’s WILLING to do anything about it.  They’re too concerned with preserving their own high standard of living, wearing $5000 suits and owning ten homes.

The average guy like you and me?  We’re caught in a game of political badminton between the Republicans and Democrats. 

The Republicans get in power and give fat tax breaks to the wealthy, with the hope that some of that affluence will “trickle down” to us–eventually.  But it DOESN’T.  Or, if it any of it DOES, it’s so ridiculously tiny so as to be immaterial.  “Ten for me, one for you…a HUNDRED for me, one for you…”  It’s human nature to be greedy, I guess.  These people are notorious for using the government to get rich(think tax breaks, deregulation), and then after they’ve abused the system to their benefit, telling everybody how they did it all themselves, and how isn’t it great that we live in a country where people can work hard and make a lot of money.  The implication is that WE just need to WORK hard, like THEY did–don’t expect any benevolence from THEM.

Then we get fed up, and vote out the Republicans and vote IN the Democrats, who promsie to fix this.  But they don’t.  They raise taxes–but the rich people can afford expensive, creative accountants, and they find loopholes to avoid paying any taxes themselves.  They start programs–but most of the money gets wasted on $100 gallons of paint, $1000 office chairs and people’s friends being paid to do nothing.  So nothing gets better, people get fed up, and the cycle repeats.

Pretty pathetic…

This is from a post by a radio host in Louisiana that was forwarded to me by a friend.  The guy’s name is Paul Marx, and he makes some great points…

“What is going on? Why do some people feel that everyone else, including the 
government, owes them?? It seems that there are some people who think that 
is cases of emergencies they automatically become everyone else’s 
responsibility and have none of their own? That needs to change!!

“For Hurricane Gustav, I saw the vast majority of the people who were 
getting on evacuation buses, knowing there was a few hours of bus ride ahead 
of them, do so EMPTY HANDED! Not even a bottle of water for themselves or 
even their little children! They’ve had days to prepare, but they prepared 
nothing! How about a couple of sandwiches for the trip? No.

“I watched the news and saw people complain about the place they had been 
evacuated to being ‘filthy’ with trash! Many of those complainers are 
sitting or lying on cots furnished to them. Well, I’m sure it’s not the 
volunteer workers who dirtied the place. My advice is get off your asses and 
clean up!!
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