Since this is our Fifth Issue of the Month of January – and right on the verge of being February -- I’m going to give you a few random thoughts in today’s column.
First of all, I’m wondering why newspaper columns came to be known as “columns”, and their authors came to be as columnists. I suppose it’s because, in the days before computers, all newspapers were designed column-by-column and writers of little literary gems like this were regulated to a single column… but I’m not sure.
I really should know, having been in this business for nearly 20 years… but I DON’T know. Regardless, journalistic masterpieces such as this are no longer designed in a strict column format. Now, they’re designed more as “blurbs”. I should probably consider myself a “blurbist”, not a columnist.
Okay, back to this weeks blurb.
Ground Hog Day is coming up next week, February 2nd. Let me repeat my annual advice: Be sure to dress comfortably in case this happens to be the year that the movie comes true!!!
Speaking of movies, television and entertainment…
The Super Bowl is this Sunday. It’s time for an all new slew of Big-Time High-Priced TV advertising. The economy may be in a downward slide, but I’m betting you won’t be able to tell it from the television commercials during the Super Bowl.
Normally, I would be rooting for Pittsburgh I’ve been somewhat partial to the Steelers ever since the days of Mean Joe Green, who I liked, mainly because of his TV ads for Coke.
But this year, I find myself leaning toward the Arizona Cardinals, mainly because I’m a big fan of their standout receiver, Rod Tidwell.
In my world, there’s a very thin line between make-believe and real life.
Segue to “Is it real, or is it make believe?”
Sharp-eyed viewers who watched last weeks Presidential Inauguration on CNN caught a glimpse of a UFO sliding through the sky behind the Washington Monument. You can go online and see a clip of it for yourself.
Is it real, or is it make believe? Decide for yourself. I personally don’t think this was a real UFO – even though I AM a believer in them – because it did not appear to have the same shape and movement characteristics as the UFO’s in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
A very thin line, I tell you.
Now let’s switch gears to a very, very real – and stark – reality.
I’m Fat Again.
Way fat!!! A big, fat, giant hippo-pig-whale!!!
It came to my attention this weekend when I attended a formal gala and tried to fit into my tux… and couldn’t.
(Okay, as soon as you stop rolling on the floor laughing at the dual absurdities of Rod-Boy a) in a tuxedo, and b) having been invited to a formal gala… we’ll continue with this week’s blurb.)
Anywho, it didn’t fit, because I am HUGE! Gargantuan! Ginormous! BIG, with a capital B-I-G!!! We’re talking Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Balloon big! I could have my own zip code! I’m beside myself… literally!!!
Regular readers will recall what happens when I find myself in this condition each year soon after the holidays: I organize my almost-annual Fifteen Fat Guys Weight Loss Contest! And that’s what I’m going to do.
This is my open invitation for any and all takers to join us. We’ll start the contest on Monday, February 9th, and end on Monday, April 6th… exactly eight weeks later. Each participant will put $100 in the pot. We’ll weigh in at the beginning and the end, and the biggest losers split the pot (half to the most pounds lost, and half to the biggest percentage loser.) If you want in this years contest, send me an email: RodShealy@aol.com, and we’ll give you the details.
Some of the same folks who have been in the contest in the past will be in it again because – guess what – they’re fat again, too!!!! But we always welcome newcomers. (There’s something particularly satisfying about taking their money.)
Two words of warning to those who dare join us: First, I WILL be writing about you in future editions of my weekly blurb. And, second, when it’s all over, I plan to have YOUR money!!!
Okay, on to other business…
Last week, I wrote here about Australia Day, January 26th. But I failed to mention that Jan. 26 is also Indian Independence Day, which was pointed out to me by my new friend Desiia. Thanks for letting me know. Happy Indo-Inde Day! (A few days late.)
Hey! How about that big snow last week?!!!! I’m still digging myself out!!!
As promised in my New Years resolution, I am trying to include bigger and better words in my blurb each week. This week’s Big Word: Obfuscate.
Advice to Young Guys from an Old Guy: Start planning now for Valentine’s Day. (To us, it’s just a day in the middle of February. But to them, it’s a Special Occasion you’d better not forget!!!)
Nostalgic Mention of the Week: I picked up the Sunday Daily Paper (The State) this weekend, and for the first time in many, many years, happened to glance at the comics (or the “funnies”, as I called them in my youth). There were mostly strips I had never heard of before, but fortunately still a few that I remembered: Peanuts, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Dennis The Menace. So I started wondering who else might remember the comics I remember from a half-century ago: Li’l Abner, Dick Tracy, Pogo, Mutt & Jeff, Dondi, The Phantom, Steve Crane, Mary Worth, Mandrake The Magician. I’d be interesting in hearing the comics YOU remember from the Good Ole Days.
Okay, that’s it for this week. We will now return to a regular schedule of only four editions per month…until the fifth week of April!!!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Australia Day! G’day, mate!
I want to be the first to wish you a Happy Australia Day! (It’s coming up this week, you know.)
I think Australia Day is one of our most overlooked holidays here in the Good Ole USA… which is a shame, because we Americans universally like Australia.
Most years, we just simply forget to celebrate the day. We always remember St. Patty’s Day, a tribute to Ireland. We remember Cinco de Mayo, the holiday celebrated by our neighbors to the south. And we usually note the occurrence of Chinese New Year.
So why not Australia Day?
Many of us, if we were forced to relocate to any other country to live, would choose Australia. After all, they speak the same language as us, albeit with a bit of an accent. They practice Democracy, albeit spiced-up, with a little more name-calling than we’re accustomed to. And the country was first colonized by the cast-offs from other places…. just like us!
The native animals there are the stuff kids books are made of: kangaroo, koala, duckbill platypus. And they seem to be very likeable folks, the ones we know: Olivia Newton John, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Elle Macpherson… these are all people I’d like to hang out with. (Not to mention Crocodile Dundee!)
And, to top it off, they have their own continent! The whole thing!!! Crikey!!!
Probably the reason I’m remembering the Australian holiday THIS year is because our little newspaper organization – the over-worked and under-paid people who provide you with the newspaper you’re reading each week – gained a new Australian-born General Sales Manager LAST year… and none of us have been able to get Australia our of our minds ever since!!!
Our GSM’s name is Jacqueline Kleynenberg, and she joined us one year ago this month. She came to us from Down Under, via Michigan, where she picked up hubby Michael, along with his last name. We have come to think of it as our own little cultural exchange program.
Anyway, now realizing the error of our ways in not celebrating this important holiday each year – after all, the Aussies are and have always been great allies of the USA, even during those times when some of our allies (we won’t mention any names, but “parlez vous Francais?”) seem to get amnesia about who their friends are – we’ve decided to commence our own Australia Day celebration. But before we start wolfing down Bloomin’ Onions and singing “Tie Me Kangaroo Down”, we thought a little edu-ma-cation might be in order.
So we asked our Jacqueline’s Pop, who is still down under, to give us a crash course on what this Australia Day is really all about. So, this week, as a part of my weekly word-offering to you, I’m proud to present, live and direct from the Land Down Under: Jacqueline’s Dad, The Most Honourable Eddie Edstein, retired from the Australian Military and Diplomatic Service. G’day, mate!
------------------------------------------
Austalia Day – January 26th
By Eddie Edstein
Australia Day is the National Anniversary of the founding of Australia by Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788. It is a Public holiday and is generally celebrated with major fireworks displays in major cities, small town parades or just lazing on the beach or a friendly BBQ at home with the neighbors. Usually organizers have a major tennis or cricket event at this time. It is celebrated on the day it falls but if on a week-end the following Monday is given as a public holiday.
Australia had been visited by many nations before the arrival of Captain James Cook in the Barque ‘Endeavour’ in 1770 when he claimed it for England. The Chinese had visited here back in 1421 and made some long forays into the hinterland after becoming shipwrecked. There is some evidence that DNA shows some aboriginals have Chinese blood. Many other countries, particularly the Dutch, had landed and even chartered the coastline from what is now Western Australia right around Southern Australia and up to the top of Queensland on the East Coast in the 15/16 centuries. They, had even named the land mass as ‘New Holland’ but somehow never got around to making the necessary claim.
Captain Arthur Phillip arrived with the First fleet but passed the magnificent Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) sailing some 20 miles further South to Botany Bay where he landed at Kurnell and raised the Flag of and for England and there began the first white settlement of Australia. Re-enactments of this event takes place every year on 26 January.
It was also the beginning of an unfortunate conflict with the Aboriginal people who inhabited this area resulting in many fatal outcomes. On 26 January each year, the Aboriginal people make their peaceful protest at the re-enactment site.
The first fleet arrived with a military contingent, supplies, and animals and fowl for the beginning of their new country. Also, there were many convicts accompanying the fleet.
The settlement moved back to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) where the settlement grew quickly with the arrival of more convict ships. Australia was now a penal colony. Convicts were sent to Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania (Port Arthur). They were sent to many other places too.
Australia, like America has been built largely on its immigrants from all parts of the world. Initially most came from England and after the WWII many came from Europe. Many Italians, Greeks and folk from the Baltics, and Eastern Europe arrived in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Now we have immigrants from China, Vietnam and the Middle East and many other countries.
We welcome them all and we now have some magnificent restaurants of many different cuisines. We also benefit from the cultures they bring with them. We only ask that they leave their prejudices behind.
Now we all share in the benefits of living in a free country made by many who have laid down their lives to make it so.
We ask only that they respect the country they have chosen, its Flag and the values it stands for.
Although we still are part of the British Commonwealth and share some of the British traditions, we are fiercely independent, especially in our sporting achievements but we always try to abide by the sporting code. We are well known for our egalitarian attitude of the “Fair Go” for all and generally dislike people who flaunt their wealth or position.
We take our share of the load in world conflicts and usually pay more heavily per capita for doing so. And we do it entirely at our own expense!
We are presently 21 million strong but have room for a few more. Why not come down and have a look? Or stay even?
-----------------------------------------------
About the author: Eddie Edstein retired as an Officer in the Australian Military with 23 years service, then served in the Australian Government’s Foreign Diplomatic Service for 12 years. He is a husband (with 48 years service) and the father of three daughters, with eight grandchildren. He currently resides on Bribie Island, Qld., which is in Northeastern Australia.
I think Australia Day is one of our most overlooked holidays here in the Good Ole USA… which is a shame, because we Americans universally like Australia.
Most years, we just simply forget to celebrate the day. We always remember St. Patty’s Day, a tribute to Ireland. We remember Cinco de Mayo, the holiday celebrated by our neighbors to the south. And we usually note the occurrence of Chinese New Year.
So why not Australia Day?
Many of us, if we were forced to relocate to any other country to live, would choose Australia. After all, they speak the same language as us, albeit with a bit of an accent. They practice Democracy, albeit spiced-up, with a little more name-calling than we’re accustomed to. And the country was first colonized by the cast-offs from other places…. just like us!
The native animals there are the stuff kids books are made of: kangaroo, koala, duckbill platypus. And they seem to be very likeable folks, the ones we know: Olivia Newton John, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Elle Macpherson… these are all people I’d like to hang out with. (Not to mention Crocodile Dundee!)
And, to top it off, they have their own continent! The whole thing!!! Crikey!!!
Probably the reason I’m remembering the Australian holiday THIS year is because our little newspaper organization – the over-worked and under-paid people who provide you with the newspaper you’re reading each week – gained a new Australian-born General Sales Manager LAST year… and none of us have been able to get Australia our of our minds ever since!!!
Our GSM’s name is Jacqueline Kleynenberg, and she joined us one year ago this month. She came to us from Down Under, via Michigan, where she picked up hubby Michael, along with his last name. We have come to think of it as our own little cultural exchange program.
Anyway, now realizing the error of our ways in not celebrating this important holiday each year – after all, the Aussies are and have always been great allies of the USA, even during those times when some of our allies (we won’t mention any names, but “parlez vous Francais?”) seem to get amnesia about who their friends are – we’ve decided to commence our own Australia Day celebration. But before we start wolfing down Bloomin’ Onions and singing “Tie Me Kangaroo Down”, we thought a little edu-ma-cation might be in order.
So we asked our Jacqueline’s Pop, who is still down under, to give us a crash course on what this Australia Day is really all about. So, this week, as a part of my weekly word-offering to you, I’m proud to present, live and direct from the Land Down Under: Jacqueline’s Dad, The Most Honourable Eddie Edstein, retired from the Australian Military and Diplomatic Service. G’day, mate!
------------------------------------------
Austalia Day – January 26th
By Eddie Edstein
Australia Day is the National Anniversary of the founding of Australia by Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788. It is a Public holiday and is generally celebrated with major fireworks displays in major cities, small town parades or just lazing on the beach or a friendly BBQ at home with the neighbors. Usually organizers have a major tennis or cricket event at this time. It is celebrated on the day it falls but if on a week-end the following Monday is given as a public holiday.
Australia had been visited by many nations before the arrival of Captain James Cook in the Barque ‘Endeavour’ in 1770 when he claimed it for England. The Chinese had visited here back in 1421 and made some long forays into the hinterland after becoming shipwrecked. There is some evidence that DNA shows some aboriginals have Chinese blood. Many other countries, particularly the Dutch, had landed and even chartered the coastline from what is now Western Australia right around Southern Australia and up to the top of Queensland on the East Coast in the 15/16 centuries. They, had even named the land mass as ‘New Holland’ but somehow never got around to making the necessary claim.
Captain Arthur Phillip arrived with the First fleet but passed the magnificent Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) sailing some 20 miles further South to Botany Bay where he landed at Kurnell and raised the Flag of and for England and there began the first white settlement of Australia. Re-enactments of this event takes place every year on 26 January.
It was also the beginning of an unfortunate conflict with the Aboriginal people who inhabited this area resulting in many fatal outcomes. On 26 January each year, the Aboriginal people make their peaceful protest at the re-enactment site.
The first fleet arrived with a military contingent, supplies, and animals and fowl for the beginning of their new country. Also, there were many convicts accompanying the fleet.
The settlement moved back to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) where the settlement grew quickly with the arrival of more convict ships. Australia was now a penal colony. Convicts were sent to Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania (Port Arthur). They were sent to many other places too.
Australia, like America has been built largely on its immigrants from all parts of the world. Initially most came from England and after the WWII many came from Europe. Many Italians, Greeks and folk from the Baltics, and Eastern Europe arrived in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Now we have immigrants from China, Vietnam and the Middle East and many other countries.
We welcome them all and we now have some magnificent restaurants of many different cuisines. We also benefit from the cultures they bring with them. We only ask that they leave their prejudices behind.
Now we all share in the benefits of living in a free country made by many who have laid down their lives to make it so.
We ask only that they respect the country they have chosen, its Flag and the values it stands for.
Although we still are part of the British Commonwealth and share some of the British traditions, we are fiercely independent, especially in our sporting achievements but we always try to abide by the sporting code. We are well known for our egalitarian attitude of the “Fair Go” for all and generally dislike people who flaunt their wealth or position.
We take our share of the load in world conflicts and usually pay more heavily per capita for doing so. And we do it entirely at our own expense!
We are presently 21 million strong but have room for a few more. Why not come down and have a look? Or stay even?
-----------------------------------------------
About the author: Eddie Edstein retired as an Officer in the Australian Military with 23 years service, then served in the Australian Government’s Foreign Diplomatic Service for 12 years. He is a husband (with 48 years service) and the father of three daughters, with eight grandchildren. He currently resides on Bribie Island, Qld., which is in Northeastern Australia.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Black Like Me
Next week, America will witness back-to-back celebrations. On Monday, we’ll pause to honor a pioneer of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King. And then, on Tuesday, we’ll witness the inauguration of Barack Obama, our first African-American president... if not the culmination of the struggle for equality for all Americans, certainly a major benchmark.
Reflecting on the importance of the coming week, I couldn’t help but think back over the last half century – my lifetime – and the issue which largely defined that time period: race relations in America.
It was, in fact, a half century ago in 1959 that a journalist, John Howard Griffin, embarked on his six-week journey to help white Americans better understand black Americans. As research for his book, “Black Like Me” (which later became a James Whitmore movie by the same name), author Griffin, who was white, had a medical doctor inject him with a drug which changed the pigmentation of his skin to make him appear to be an African-American. He then spent six weeks traveling through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia in an attempt to better understand what it really meant to be a black American. His 1961 book, along with the movie in 1964, helped white Americans gain a slightly better understanding of black Americans at a time when racial tensions were at an all-time high.
Now, far be it from me -- or any other white American -- to claim to actually understand the plight of African-Americans. We don’t and we can’t… anymore than we can truly understand poverty, hunger, cancer, depression, space travel, mountain climbing, skydiving, love, drug-addiction, prison, death, or childbirth… until we’ve actually done it.
But that does not stop us from sharing in the excitement, enthusiasm, and euphoria next week during this momentous occasion.
I, for one, have always believed that our nation is truly the land of opportunity in which all things are possible, and any person can achieve anything he can believe.
I’m guessing the inauguration of Obama will help many more people share that belief in the greatness of the American opportunity. And that is a good thing. I’m guessing that, a year or two ago, there were millions of young Americans who did NOT believe they had an equal opportunity to achieve greatness… but that will change next week.
To be sure, there has been a struggle to reach this point… and the struggle is certainly not over. MLK was just one of many, many individuals who fought to overcome the great obstacles which the black race faced since coming to this land as slaves.
In this modern day and age, none of us condone or understand many of the practices of our forefathers, whether it be building a slave nation, or burning innocent women as witches, or beheading the ousted rulers of the nations from which we came. Nor, in this modern age, do we understand the recent regime which would attempt to exterminate an entire race, or the current culture which celebrates the flying of jet airliners into sky-scrapers to kill as many innocent people as possible. We wonder how human nature can invent such atrocities.
But the obstacles to African-Americans -- which began with the slavery we don’t understand or condone -- have continued far beyond that practice. Just five generations ago, it was illegal in many states to teach a black person to read! Just two generations ago, most black youngsters were relegated to sub-standard educational facilities. And in this generation, that same human nature -- which allowed for practices we now find reprehensible -- is still erecting barriers every day through both attitudes and actions.
But next week, the entire world will receive the clearest signal ever that Americans, working together, are now overcoming those obstacles. We will prove to the world that we are “one Nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice for All.”
Over the last few weeks, as many of us enjoyed the college football bowl games which always accompany the holiday season, we often found ourselves watching games in which we had no real favorite. And since we had no favorite, we did what Americans do: we rooted for the underdog!
Last November, I did not vote for Obama, because his positions on most issues did not parallel my personal positions. Still, there was a part of me throughout the electoral process which was rooting for the underdog. And now that the nation has made its choice, I will embrace his Presidency. He is our Commander-In-Chief, and I will support his leadership as we all do under our system of democracy.
But next week’s celebration is about far more than issues, or partisan politics, or the change in administration. It is about opening the doors of opportunity to EVERY single American, and taking a giant step forward on the issue of race relations.
All black Americans will be enthusiastically celebrating two important days next week.
So will I.
Reflecting on the importance of the coming week, I couldn’t help but think back over the last half century – my lifetime – and the issue which largely defined that time period: race relations in America.
It was, in fact, a half century ago in 1959 that a journalist, John Howard Griffin, embarked on his six-week journey to help white Americans better understand black Americans. As research for his book, “Black Like Me” (which later became a James Whitmore movie by the same name), author Griffin, who was white, had a medical doctor inject him with a drug which changed the pigmentation of his skin to make him appear to be an African-American. He then spent six weeks traveling through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia in an attempt to better understand what it really meant to be a black American. His 1961 book, along with the movie in 1964, helped white Americans gain a slightly better understanding of black Americans at a time when racial tensions were at an all-time high.
Now, far be it from me -- or any other white American -- to claim to actually understand the plight of African-Americans. We don’t and we can’t… anymore than we can truly understand poverty, hunger, cancer, depression, space travel, mountain climbing, skydiving, love, drug-addiction, prison, death, or childbirth… until we’ve actually done it.
But that does not stop us from sharing in the excitement, enthusiasm, and euphoria next week during this momentous occasion.
I, for one, have always believed that our nation is truly the land of opportunity in which all things are possible, and any person can achieve anything he can believe.
I’m guessing the inauguration of Obama will help many more people share that belief in the greatness of the American opportunity. And that is a good thing. I’m guessing that, a year or two ago, there were millions of young Americans who did NOT believe they had an equal opportunity to achieve greatness… but that will change next week.
To be sure, there has been a struggle to reach this point… and the struggle is certainly not over. MLK was just one of many, many individuals who fought to overcome the great obstacles which the black race faced since coming to this land as slaves.
In this modern day and age, none of us condone or understand many of the practices of our forefathers, whether it be building a slave nation, or burning innocent women as witches, or beheading the ousted rulers of the nations from which we came. Nor, in this modern age, do we understand the recent regime which would attempt to exterminate an entire race, or the current culture which celebrates the flying of jet airliners into sky-scrapers to kill as many innocent people as possible. We wonder how human nature can invent such atrocities.
But the obstacles to African-Americans -- which began with the slavery we don’t understand or condone -- have continued far beyond that practice. Just five generations ago, it was illegal in many states to teach a black person to read! Just two generations ago, most black youngsters were relegated to sub-standard educational facilities. And in this generation, that same human nature -- which allowed for practices we now find reprehensible -- is still erecting barriers every day through both attitudes and actions.
But next week, the entire world will receive the clearest signal ever that Americans, working together, are now overcoming those obstacles. We will prove to the world that we are “one Nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice for All.”
Over the last few weeks, as many of us enjoyed the college football bowl games which always accompany the holiday season, we often found ourselves watching games in which we had no real favorite. And since we had no favorite, we did what Americans do: we rooted for the underdog!
Last November, I did not vote for Obama, because his positions on most issues did not parallel my personal positions. Still, there was a part of me throughout the electoral process which was rooting for the underdog. And now that the nation has made its choice, I will embrace his Presidency. He is our Commander-In-Chief, and I will support his leadership as we all do under our system of democracy.
But next week’s celebration is about far more than issues, or partisan politics, or the change in administration. It is about opening the doors of opportunity to EVERY single American, and taking a giant step forward on the issue of race relations.
All black Americans will be enthusiastically celebrating two important days next week.
So will I.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
NY Resolutions: Version 2.009
Now that the New Year is getting a little age on it – we’re ONE WEEK into it already – I’m ready to discuss my New Years Resolutions.
I long ago gave up on the standard practice of trying to begin a healthy new habit on the day after New Year’s Eve. On paper, turning over a new leaf with the New Year is a great idea. But, to make it work for me, I usually just postpone starting until I’m really in the mood to improve myself (as opposed to the day after New Year’s Eve, when I’m generally only in the mood for a nap!)
Most New Years Resolutions deal with self-improvement. With the year now roughly 2% expired, I’ve had sufficient time to carefully examine myself to determine which areas of my life need improving.
This year, instead of devoting my resolution to improving MYSELF -- which, after all, seems like sort of a selfish and self-centered thing to do -- I’ve decided to devote myself to improving THIS WEEKLY COLUMN.
Turns out, after contemplating it for a whole, entire week, I can’t think of a single thing about myself than needs improving!!!! (Unless, of course, you include trite and unimportant things, like my weight. Or my physical condition. Or my financial condition. Or my perpetual laziness, carelessness, inattentiveness, forgetfulness, irresponsibility, unreliability and immaturity. Or my looks. Or my personality. Or my driving. Or my fashion-sense.)
Okay, maybe I CAN think of a few things about myself I could change. But none of ‘em really jumped up, slapped me in the face, and shouted “fix me, fix me… I’m broken”!!!
So, instead, for 2009, I’m resolving to present Rod-Boy’s New & Improved Weekly Newspaper Column. And I’ve already made a list of the improvements I’m planning:
--- A more EXCITING column!!!!! I seriously doubt if the content of the articles will actually be any more exciting… but the writing style WILL BE!!!!!!!! I plan accomplish this by including more EXCLAMATION POINTS than EVER!!!!!!!!!! Also, a STRONG dose of underlined words, ALL CAPS, italicized words and even bolded words… sometimes ENTIRE PHRASES or sentences!!!!!!! And sometimes, I’ll use more than one of these ultra-exciting writing devices, combining several to increase YOUR column-reading enjoyment!!!!!!!!-- A shorter column!!!! Again, this improvement is for YOU!!!! Time is money, and in these tough economic times, none of us can afford to be wasting either. So if I can reduce your reading time by, say 25%, those are precious extra minutes you can use on more profitable pursuits!!!! (This also argues for skipping this column altogether, which, frankly, I couldn’t argue with if you did.)
-- Better words!!!!! This is an area where I hope you will see a MAJOR improvement. In looking back over previous columns, I realized that there are a number of perfectly good words which I rarely, if ever, use in my column!!!!
Words like
“balderdash”.
“Jabberwocky”.
“Paraphernalia”.
“Unequivocally”.
“Persnicketty.”
“Willy-nilly”.
And “Minnesota.”
(I realize Minnesota is not a word… it’s the name of a state. But if they let that Saturday Night Live guy be their U.S. Senator, I suspect it will also soon take on a dual-meaning and become a word used by residents of the other 49 states!!!!!)
And not just better words...BIGGER words, too!!!! Just like the New York Times!!!
-- Prufereeding!!!! Beginnning immeediatlee, wee will prufereed this columm vary carfully eech weak befour allouwing it to bee printed!!!!!
-- Clearly identifying the humor as humor. I’m a bit chagrinned (Note: Big Word) to recognize that some readers apparently fail to see the humor in some of my humor. Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, I just casually made reference to the number of Northerners who had migrated to the Pimento State, observing that the Midwesterners (Ohio, Michigan, et al) seem to blend in better than the True Yankees (New York, Massachusetts, etc.) Turns out, the Yankees also don’t recognize tongue-in-cheek satire or hilarious, slapstick frivolity when they read it. I received not one, not two, but THREE angry emails from transplanted-New Yorkers after that column. Apparently, they didn’t recognize it as attempted humor. (You would think they might have picked up on it later in the column when I claimed to have been the original author of “Jingle Bells”, “Joy to the World”, “The Night Before Christmas”, and “Feliz Navidad”.)
-- A point!!! This year, I’m planning on having an actual “point” to each of my columns…. something that has been sadly lacking for the last two years, I’ve been told!!!! Most of the time, it’s just “a column about nothing”… just the non-sensical
weekly ramblings of a mildly disturbed, middle-aged but immature jokester curmudgeon. (Another new word!!!)
Since I don’t want to fall into that Seinfeld trap of “a column about nothing”, I’ve decided that each and every column I write during 2009 will contain a clearly discernable reason for having written it… an actual POINT!!!
Beginning NEXT WEEK!!!!!!!
I long ago gave up on the standard practice of trying to begin a healthy new habit on the day after New Year’s Eve. On paper, turning over a new leaf with the New Year is a great idea. But, to make it work for me, I usually just postpone starting until I’m really in the mood to improve myself (as opposed to the day after New Year’s Eve, when I’m generally only in the mood for a nap!)
Most New Years Resolutions deal with self-improvement. With the year now roughly 2% expired, I’ve had sufficient time to carefully examine myself to determine which areas of my life need improving.
This year, instead of devoting my resolution to improving MYSELF -- which, after all, seems like sort of a selfish and self-centered thing to do -- I’ve decided to devote myself to improving THIS WEEKLY COLUMN.
Turns out, after contemplating it for a whole, entire week, I can’t think of a single thing about myself than needs improving!!!! (Unless, of course, you include trite and unimportant things, like my weight. Or my physical condition. Or my financial condition. Or my perpetual laziness, carelessness, inattentiveness, forgetfulness, irresponsibility, unreliability and immaturity. Or my looks. Or my personality. Or my driving. Or my fashion-sense.)
Okay, maybe I CAN think of a few things about myself I could change. But none of ‘em really jumped up, slapped me in the face, and shouted “fix me, fix me… I’m broken”!!!
So, instead, for 2009, I’m resolving to present Rod-Boy’s New & Improved Weekly Newspaper Column. And I’ve already made a list of the improvements I’m planning:
--- A more EXCITING column!!!!! I seriously doubt if the content of the articles will actually be any more exciting… but the writing style WILL BE!!!!!!!! I plan accomplish this by including more EXCLAMATION POINTS than EVER!!!!!!!!!! Also, a STRONG dose of underlined words, ALL CAPS, italicized words and even bolded words… sometimes ENTIRE PHRASES or sentences!!!!!!! And sometimes, I’ll use more than one of these ultra-exciting writing devices, combining several to increase YOUR column-reading enjoyment!!!!!!!!-- A shorter column!!!! Again, this improvement is for YOU!!!! Time is money, and in these tough economic times, none of us can afford to be wasting either. So if I can reduce your reading time by, say 25%, those are precious extra minutes you can use on more profitable pursuits!!!! (This also argues for skipping this column altogether, which, frankly, I couldn’t argue with if you did.)
-- Better words!!!!! This is an area where I hope you will see a MAJOR improvement. In looking back over previous columns, I realized that there are a number of perfectly good words which I rarely, if ever, use in my column!!!!
Words like
“balderdash”.
“Jabberwocky”.
“Paraphernalia”.
“Unequivocally”.
“Persnicketty.”
“Willy-nilly”.
And “Minnesota.”
(I realize Minnesota is not a word… it’s the name of a state. But if they let that Saturday Night Live guy be their U.S. Senator, I suspect it will also soon take on a dual-meaning and become a word used by residents of the other 49 states!!!!!)
And not just better words...BIGGER words, too!!!! Just like the New York Times!!!
-- Prufereeding!!!! Beginnning immeediatlee, wee will prufereed this columm vary carfully eech weak befour allouwing it to bee printed!!!!!
-- Clearly identifying the humor as humor. I’m a bit chagrinned (Note: Big Word) to recognize that some readers apparently fail to see the humor in some of my humor. Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, I just casually made reference to the number of Northerners who had migrated to the Pimento State, observing that the Midwesterners (Ohio, Michigan, et al) seem to blend in better than the True Yankees (New York, Massachusetts, etc.) Turns out, the Yankees also don’t recognize tongue-in-cheek satire or hilarious, slapstick frivolity when they read it. I received not one, not two, but THREE angry emails from transplanted-New Yorkers after that column. Apparently, they didn’t recognize it as attempted humor. (You would think they might have picked up on it later in the column when I claimed to have been the original author of “Jingle Bells”, “Joy to the World”, “The Night Before Christmas”, and “Feliz Navidad”.)
-- A point!!! This year, I’m planning on having an actual “point” to each of my columns…. something that has been sadly lacking for the last two years, I’ve been told!!!! Most of the time, it’s just “a column about nothing”… just the non-sensical
weekly ramblings of a mildly disturbed, middle-aged but immature jokester curmudgeon. (Another new word!!!)
Since I don’t want to fall into that Seinfeld trap of “a column about nothing”, I’ve decided that each and every column I write during 2009 will contain a clearly discernable reason for having written it… an actual POINT!!!
Beginning NEXT WEEK!!!!!!!
Monday, January 5, 2009
An optimistic look back at 2008
Looking back at 2008, I’m gushing with enthusiasm that it was such a wonderful year… and I’m confident 2009 is going to be even better!!!
Of course, I’m an optimist.
And not just the starry-eyed, dreamer kind of optimist. I’m an actual member of the club: It’s official.
(Before I was recruited to become a Charter Member of the Chapin Optimist Club back in 1993, I had always thought Optimist Clubs were organizations for eye doctors… but then I read closer and realized that the clubs were just groups of local folks who all had positive outlooks on life, and got together to do good things for their communities.)
Turns out, I’m the unofficial “glass-half-full” kind of optimist, too… which has probably helped me make it this far. (If I were not an optimist, I might get depressed when I looked in the mirror every morning; but, as it is, I catch a glimpse of myself getting out of the shower and think, “Great news! I’m not going hungry!!!”)
The beginning of each New Year is a time of great optimism for many people, as they resolve to improve themselves in various ways.
The end of the Old Year, however, is too often dominated by less-than-positive reflections of the year just past. A lot of the blame for that goes to the news media, I think. Invariably, the news media ends the year with their own compilations of the “biggest news stories” of the year… and, of course, if it was a “big” news story to start with, it probably had a negative slant. After all, the major media doesn’t make its money from writing positive news. (“If it bleeds, it leads”, as the old newspaper saying goes.)
So, optimist that I am, I decided to take my own look back at the year just ended -- 2008 -- and what I discovered was a wonderfully, fantastic year!!!
There are those who would take issue with my optimistic assessment. They would point to the national economy which required an historic “bailout”. They would remind me that my choice for President lost. They would remind me that I personally underwent brain surgery for cancer, and ended the year by turning 55, making me officially old. In short, they see the glass half-empty.
But that’s not the way I see it.
I see an economy which is correcting itself to match the numerous changes in last few decades – especially technology – which have altered the world as we know it. While many of us saw short-term losses in our long-term investments, virtually no one went hungry this year as a result, and the “new” market which emerges will be stronger and more stable, with greater earning potential for the future.
When I see unemployment at 7%, that means an astounding 93% of the people have jobs… and the entire notion of “jobs” is changing as more and more people are using new technologies to create their own livelihoods.
While my preferred candidate didn’t win the Presidency, many good results will come from the election of Barak Obama, most notably the easing of race problems which have long plagued our nation.
Would I have preferred a Republican president? Sure. But the really good news is this: Our nation changed governments without riots or unrest or bloodshed, something which is rare in the annals of history. And we did so because the largest voter participation in history occurred this November. And because we changed government in an orderly way proscribed by our Constitution, we will have the opportunity to change back again if four years if we choose! A guaranteed opportunity!
Then there were the Olympics, where China managed to take 15 more Gold Medals than we did, while also showing off its new super-superpower status to the world. (We, of course, won more medals overall… a small consolation.)
But the far bigger story than which superpower prevailed in the medal count was that more than one hundred nations again came together is a peaceful display of global harmony and brotherhood. Are there still trouble-spots in the world? Of course there are. But there is also a prevailing goodwill among nations that has been more of the exception than the rule through recorded history. The greater openness which technology has only recently afforded is already bearing the fruit of global progress and acceptance.
As for me personally during 2008, yes, I did face a health challenge when I was diagnosed with brain cancer and had a tumor removed in August. But, to me, this incident represents the best news of all… because I’m still here!!! There’s probably nobody on earth who has ever been happier to turn 55, as I did last week. Somewhere between the neuro-surgeons at MUSC and the prayers of many hundreds of friends and supporters, it worked out well… and has increased my optimism to an all new level!!
So, I guess you can see why I’m gushing with enthusiasm about 2008!
And if you’re still not convinced that 2008 was a banner year…
Clemson and South Carolina are BOTH playing on New Year’s Day Bowl Games… and how often does THAT happen?
Hope your 2008 was as great as mine was, and your New Year is better than ever!!!
Of course, I’m an optimist.
And not just the starry-eyed, dreamer kind of optimist. I’m an actual member of the club: It’s official.
(Before I was recruited to become a Charter Member of the Chapin Optimist Club back in 1993, I had always thought Optimist Clubs were organizations for eye doctors… but then I read closer and realized that the clubs were just groups of local folks who all had positive outlooks on life, and got together to do good things for their communities.)
Turns out, I’m the unofficial “glass-half-full” kind of optimist, too… which has probably helped me make it this far. (If I were not an optimist, I might get depressed when I looked in the mirror every morning; but, as it is, I catch a glimpse of myself getting out of the shower and think, “Great news! I’m not going hungry!!!”)
The beginning of each New Year is a time of great optimism for many people, as they resolve to improve themselves in various ways.
The end of the Old Year, however, is too often dominated by less-than-positive reflections of the year just past. A lot of the blame for that goes to the news media, I think. Invariably, the news media ends the year with their own compilations of the “biggest news stories” of the year… and, of course, if it was a “big” news story to start with, it probably had a negative slant. After all, the major media doesn’t make its money from writing positive news. (“If it bleeds, it leads”, as the old newspaper saying goes.)
So, optimist that I am, I decided to take my own look back at the year just ended -- 2008 -- and what I discovered was a wonderfully, fantastic year!!!
There are those who would take issue with my optimistic assessment. They would point to the national economy which required an historic “bailout”. They would remind me that my choice for President lost. They would remind me that I personally underwent brain surgery for cancer, and ended the year by turning 55, making me officially old. In short, they see the glass half-empty.
But that’s not the way I see it.
I see an economy which is correcting itself to match the numerous changes in last few decades – especially technology – which have altered the world as we know it. While many of us saw short-term losses in our long-term investments, virtually no one went hungry this year as a result, and the “new” market which emerges will be stronger and more stable, with greater earning potential for the future.
When I see unemployment at 7%, that means an astounding 93% of the people have jobs… and the entire notion of “jobs” is changing as more and more people are using new technologies to create their own livelihoods.
While my preferred candidate didn’t win the Presidency, many good results will come from the election of Barak Obama, most notably the easing of race problems which have long plagued our nation.
Would I have preferred a Republican president? Sure. But the really good news is this: Our nation changed governments without riots or unrest or bloodshed, something which is rare in the annals of history. And we did so because the largest voter participation in history occurred this November. And because we changed government in an orderly way proscribed by our Constitution, we will have the opportunity to change back again if four years if we choose! A guaranteed opportunity!
Then there were the Olympics, where China managed to take 15 more Gold Medals than we did, while also showing off its new super-superpower status to the world. (We, of course, won more medals overall… a small consolation.)
But the far bigger story than which superpower prevailed in the medal count was that more than one hundred nations again came together is a peaceful display of global harmony and brotherhood. Are there still trouble-spots in the world? Of course there are. But there is also a prevailing goodwill among nations that has been more of the exception than the rule through recorded history. The greater openness which technology has only recently afforded is already bearing the fruit of global progress and acceptance.
As for me personally during 2008, yes, I did face a health challenge when I was diagnosed with brain cancer and had a tumor removed in August. But, to me, this incident represents the best news of all… because I’m still here!!! There’s probably nobody on earth who has ever been happier to turn 55, as I did last week. Somewhere between the neuro-surgeons at MUSC and the prayers of many hundreds of friends and supporters, it worked out well… and has increased my optimism to an all new level!!
So, I guess you can see why I’m gushing with enthusiasm about 2008!
And if you’re still not convinced that 2008 was a banner year…
Clemson and South Carolina are BOTH playing on New Year’s Day Bowl Games… and how often does THAT happen?
Hope your 2008 was as great as mine was, and your New Year is better than ever!!!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Things I forgot to write this year
As I was preparing to write this, my final column of 2008, I pulled out my notes from the year and realized there were a few things I had intended to write about, but simply forgot.
Actually, I didn’t totally forget, because I’m thinking of them now. Let’s just say I didn’t forget… I simply ran out of weeks. There are only 52 weeks in a year, and if I have more than 52 topics, I’m out of luck. (Probably even fewer, because I use about half of the weeks dribbling about some nonsense that just happened to cross my mind, or reminiscing about the way things were when I was a kid.)
Anyway, I thought – this being the Christmas season and all, as my special Christmas gift to you – I would quickly run through some of the points I intended to write about, but didn’t get around to.
-- Absent-mindedness is not such a bad thing, I have learned. True, you occasionally forget something important… but you also forget a LOT of stuff that you’re better off not remembering!
-- Don’t you hate it when you call customer service, and you get a recording telling you that you’ll be on “hold” for five minutes until the next representative is available? Know what I do? After they answer, I always make a point to put THEM on hold a few times… you know, maybe to go warm up my coffee, or just to stretch my legs which have gotten stiff from sitting there waiting for them to answer!!!
-- There are an awful lot of people originally from Up North who have moved to the Pimento State. I think my favorite transplants are the ones from places like Michigan and Ohio in the Mid-West. They seem to blend in rather nicely. But, you can’t really say that about the ones from New York and Massachusetts. Seems like they’re always trying to change things to “the way we did it Up North.” (They can complain about us all they want to, but you don’t hear about anybody retiring and moving North!)
-- At my house, I have three different kinds of exercise machines in various rooms. I have found that no matter what part of the house they’re in, they all make excellent clothes racks.
-- The older I become, the more I forget the names of people… but the less embarrassed I am about it. When acquaintances challenge me on forgetting their names, I have a great comeback:
“I’m old!”
-- I have recently learned that there’s nothing less romantic than flossing in bed.
-- Paying for TV and buying water. These are concepts which I scoffed at when I first heard them predicted many years ago. Now I freely fork over hard-earned cash for both. What has happened to me?
-- And speaking of TV, the conversion from analog to digital is now only weeks away. I haven’t given it much thought until recently. I’m not an engineer or computer expert, so I really don’t fully understand the technological reasons for the required changeover. However, a couple of questions have arisen in my mind, which I’m hopeful have already been raised and answered before Congress mandated the change-over.
Here’s the most concerning question: If all of our TV communications are now digital – and analog no longer exists – wouldn’t our entire nationwide communications network be at risk of being “hacked”? Couldn’t technology-savvy enemies of our nation easily disrupt, or even hijack, our broadcasts via the Internet, which they cannot do with analog signals? Probably not. Probably I’m just wondering out loud, and the great minds in Washington have figured that problem out a long time ago. Anyway, I hope so.
-- Did I ever tell you that I keep one contact lens in, and one out, so I can see far away or close up? Of course, near or far, everything’s a little fuzzy this way. So, if you see me on the street, and I seem not to recognize you… you’ll know why!!!
“I’m old!”
-- Technology is taking over my life. There was a time when – if I had a question – I would look it up in the encyclopedia or almanac. Nowadays, I usually just google it. I’m now officially a Facebook user. (For the un-enlightened, that’s a “social network” website on the Internet.) And I currently have over 500 emails waiting to be read. (Actually, most of them have already been glanced at, but I’m waiting on some “spare time” to go back and read them thoroughly.)
-- Do you realize that – when the clock strikes midnight on New Years Eve – we will officially be in the 10th year of the New Century and the New Millennium? Could it have been that long already? (I guess time flies when you’re fighting terrorism and heading into a global recession.)
I can tell it’s been a long time since we heralded in Y2K on January 1, 2000, because back then, I had learned how to spell “millennium”, and today, as I’m writing this column… I had to look it up!
On Dictionary.com, of course.
Suddenly, its coming back to me. I didn’t FORGET to write about these things… I skipped them on purpose! Oh well, too late now.
I am, however, currently forgetting to write my special 2008 Christmas Week Holiday Greetings column!
So let me just quickly leave you with a few of my original Christmas thoughts:
“Have a holly, jolly Christmas. May all your Christmases be bright. Santa Claus is coming to town. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. We wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Although it’s been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you. Jump in bed and cover your head ‘cause Santa Claus comes tonight. Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Feliz Navidad. Fa la la la la, la la la la!”
--------------------------
You’re always welcome to let me know you agree, disagree, can’t make sense of, or simply don’t care about anything I’ve written here… or about any other topic that happens to be on your mind. You can email me directly at: RodShealy@aol.com.
And, if reading it once just wasn’t enough for you, read it again online – along with previous columns -- at my modern-technology Electronic Internet blog: www.doingthefirst.blogspot.com (And, if you’d like to look at me while you’re reading… you can look me up on Facebook!)
Actually, I didn’t totally forget, because I’m thinking of them now. Let’s just say I didn’t forget… I simply ran out of weeks. There are only 52 weeks in a year, and if I have more than 52 topics, I’m out of luck. (Probably even fewer, because I use about half of the weeks dribbling about some nonsense that just happened to cross my mind, or reminiscing about the way things were when I was a kid.)
Anyway, I thought – this being the Christmas season and all, as my special Christmas gift to you – I would quickly run through some of the points I intended to write about, but didn’t get around to.
-- Absent-mindedness is not such a bad thing, I have learned. True, you occasionally forget something important… but you also forget a LOT of stuff that you’re better off not remembering!
-- Don’t you hate it when you call customer service, and you get a recording telling you that you’ll be on “hold” for five minutes until the next representative is available? Know what I do? After they answer, I always make a point to put THEM on hold a few times… you know, maybe to go warm up my coffee, or just to stretch my legs which have gotten stiff from sitting there waiting for them to answer!!!
-- There are an awful lot of people originally from Up North who have moved to the Pimento State. I think my favorite transplants are the ones from places like Michigan and Ohio in the Mid-West. They seem to blend in rather nicely. But, you can’t really say that about the ones from New York and Massachusetts. Seems like they’re always trying to change things to “the way we did it Up North.” (They can complain about us all they want to, but you don’t hear about anybody retiring and moving North!)
-- At my house, I have three different kinds of exercise machines in various rooms. I have found that no matter what part of the house they’re in, they all make excellent clothes racks.
-- The older I become, the more I forget the names of people… but the less embarrassed I am about it. When acquaintances challenge me on forgetting their names, I have a great comeback:
“I’m old!”
-- I have recently learned that there’s nothing less romantic than flossing in bed.
-- Paying for TV and buying water. These are concepts which I scoffed at when I first heard them predicted many years ago. Now I freely fork over hard-earned cash for both. What has happened to me?
-- And speaking of TV, the conversion from analog to digital is now only weeks away. I haven’t given it much thought until recently. I’m not an engineer or computer expert, so I really don’t fully understand the technological reasons for the required changeover. However, a couple of questions have arisen in my mind, which I’m hopeful have already been raised and answered before Congress mandated the change-over.
Here’s the most concerning question: If all of our TV communications are now digital – and analog no longer exists – wouldn’t our entire nationwide communications network be at risk of being “hacked”? Couldn’t technology-savvy enemies of our nation easily disrupt, or even hijack, our broadcasts via the Internet, which they cannot do with analog signals? Probably not. Probably I’m just wondering out loud, and the great minds in Washington have figured that problem out a long time ago. Anyway, I hope so.
-- Did I ever tell you that I keep one contact lens in, and one out, so I can see far away or close up? Of course, near or far, everything’s a little fuzzy this way. So, if you see me on the street, and I seem not to recognize you… you’ll know why!!!
“I’m old!”
-- Technology is taking over my life. There was a time when – if I had a question – I would look it up in the encyclopedia or almanac. Nowadays, I usually just google it. I’m now officially a Facebook user. (For the un-enlightened, that’s a “social network” website on the Internet.) And I currently have over 500 emails waiting to be read. (Actually, most of them have already been glanced at, but I’m waiting on some “spare time” to go back and read them thoroughly.)
-- Do you realize that – when the clock strikes midnight on New Years Eve – we will officially be in the 10th year of the New Century and the New Millennium? Could it have been that long already? (I guess time flies when you’re fighting terrorism and heading into a global recession.)
I can tell it’s been a long time since we heralded in Y2K on January 1, 2000, because back then, I had learned how to spell “millennium”, and today, as I’m writing this column… I had to look it up!
On Dictionary.com, of course.
Suddenly, its coming back to me. I didn’t FORGET to write about these things… I skipped them on purpose! Oh well, too late now.
I am, however, currently forgetting to write my special 2008 Christmas Week Holiday Greetings column!
So let me just quickly leave you with a few of my original Christmas thoughts:
“Have a holly, jolly Christmas. May all your Christmases be bright. Santa Claus is coming to town. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. We wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Although it’s been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you. Jump in bed and cover your head ‘cause Santa Claus comes tonight. Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Feliz Navidad. Fa la la la la, la la la la!”
--------------------------
You’re always welcome to let me know you agree, disagree, can’t make sense of, or simply don’t care about anything I’ve written here… or about any other topic that happens to be on your mind. You can email me directly at: RodShealy@aol.com.
And, if reading it once just wasn’t enough for you, read it again online – along with previous columns -- at my modern-technology Electronic Internet blog: www.doingthefirst.blogspot.com (And, if you’d like to look at me while you’re reading… you can look me up on Facebook!)
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The Gifts of Christmas Past
Every time I hear the opening line of Silver Bells – “City sidewalks, busy sidewalks” – my mind goes back to a time when there actually were busy sidewalks at Christmastime… back to The Time Before Malls!
I have vivid memories of family shopping excursions on the streets of Downtown Columbia during the holiday season. Looking back, it’s likely that they were not “family shopping excursions” at all… just the kids tagging along because the adults didn’t have anywhere else to park the kids.
Main Street in Columbia was dressed in holiday style every December. There were decorations strung across the streets, the giant State House tree shimmering at the end of the street, and, of course, the window displays in the stores. My favorite was always Belk. They had massive Christmas displays that still linger in my mind… like the manger scene up on the catwalk… or the actual working model trains in the window displays.
These days, it doesn’t seem possible that a 9 year-old kid could be left alone on Main Street of a major city, darting back and forth from store to store and block to block, with only the instructions to “meet at the Eckerd’s lunch counter in two hours”. If, after nearly 50 years, my memory is correct, there was Belk, Eckerd, J.C. Penny, Tapps, Berry on Main, Woolworth, Kresse, McCory, J.B. White, and about a hundred other shops and stores. (The official names were “Belk”, “J.C. Penny”, “J. B. White”, and “Eckerd”… but we for some reason always pluralized the names to “Belks, Pennys, Whites and Eckards”.)
Off we’d go, in various directions, into a sea of Christmas shoppers from throughout the Midlands who had all converged on the same six-block hub.
Of course, I usually wasn’t actually doing any SHOPPING on Main Street in Columbia. Mainly, I was just looking and wishing and dreaming. It was wonderful!
My personal holiday gift shopping would come later on Main Street in Lexington, my hometown, just 13 miles away from Columbia. Lexington’s Main Street was also quite a festive place, with Session’s and Harman’s Drugs and Taylors Hardware and the Western Auto all on the same block!!! Most of my actual purchases came from what I considered to be the epicenter of the Lexington shopping district: Dodd’s Dime Store! (And, usually, at a more appropriate time for Christmas shopping: Christmas Eve -- or maybe the day before -- a fine holiday tradition I continue to this day!!!)
I still recall what was likely the first time I went shopping at Dodd’s by myself with my own money. (It was bicycling distance from my home, only about a mile further down Main Street.)
At the age of probably eight years old, with my own money earned from chores during the Christmas vacation, I located what I was certain to be the perfect Christmas gift for my Mom: a 25-cent arrangement of plastic flowers which I was absolutely certain she would adore!
And, sure enough, I was right! When she opened my gift on Christmas morning, she couldn’t stop oohing and ahhing! She was thrilled with my gift! Completely overwhelmed, based on her reaction!
My gift-giving prowess continued through the years. By the time my kid brother Shawn came along, Mom and Dad were in the habit of showering us with goodies on Christmas. And since he was about a dozen years younger than the three older kids, he really racked up on the Santa loot. At about age three, he got a ton of gifts: Hot Wheels, Big Wheels, a drum-set, games and toys galore.
From his older brother, his gift was a roll of Scotch tape… which he proceeded to play with for the rest of the day while virtually ignoring all of his big Santa Claus gifts!!!
I recall that, when I was age 11 or 12, my older sister Sherry -- who was already old enough to have a real, part-time job -- gave my sister Cric and me each a transistor radio! Now THAT was a major gift! As far as I was concerned, it might as well have been a car or a yacht or a house. They all cost the same amount to me: LOTS! It was at that moment when I first began to really understand the value of having a job, and to develop the work ethic that would stick with me until… well, I guess last weekend!
Of course, the most unusual gift any of us received came on Christmas, 1967, when each of us three older kids received a note in the toe of our stockings announcing the Shealy family would soon be adding a fifth and final child: Lorri, the youngest, who sure enough came along a few months later! (I also recall getting new shoelaces in the stocking, which I badly needed. And, every year since I can recall, everybody’s stocking had a flashlight. At our house, Santa had a very practical side!)
At the Shealy home, Christmas was a happy time. We were blessed, and we knew it.
That’s why Dad, every Christmas, took it upon himself to try to make Christmas a little brighter for some other family. Long before there were Toy Drives or Adopt-a-Family programs, he would quietly find a family each year that was not financially able to provide gifts, and deliver a couple of packages for each of the kids. He did it without fanfare or acknowledgement. He never really even told us kids what he was doing. He was simply trying to share our blessings.
One year, though, on Christmas morning, he invited me to go along with him to deliver those gifts… and I suppose that is when I learned what Christmas is truly about. It’s one Christmas memory that I’ll never forget… and a gift that will stay with me forever.
Great parents and caring families, it turns out, are the very best gifts of all!
Here’s hoping your Christmas is filled with wonderful gifts for you and yours.
I have vivid memories of family shopping excursions on the streets of Downtown Columbia during the holiday season. Looking back, it’s likely that they were not “family shopping excursions” at all… just the kids tagging along because the adults didn’t have anywhere else to park the kids.
Main Street in Columbia was dressed in holiday style every December. There were decorations strung across the streets, the giant State House tree shimmering at the end of the street, and, of course, the window displays in the stores. My favorite was always Belk. They had massive Christmas displays that still linger in my mind… like the manger scene up on the catwalk… or the actual working model trains in the window displays.
These days, it doesn’t seem possible that a 9 year-old kid could be left alone on Main Street of a major city, darting back and forth from store to store and block to block, with only the instructions to “meet at the Eckerd’s lunch counter in two hours”. If, after nearly 50 years, my memory is correct, there was Belk, Eckerd, J.C. Penny, Tapps, Berry on Main, Woolworth, Kresse, McCory, J.B. White, and about a hundred other shops and stores. (The official names were “Belk”, “J.C. Penny”, “J. B. White”, and “Eckerd”… but we for some reason always pluralized the names to “Belks, Pennys, Whites and Eckards”.)
Off we’d go, in various directions, into a sea of Christmas shoppers from throughout the Midlands who had all converged on the same six-block hub.
Of course, I usually wasn’t actually doing any SHOPPING on Main Street in Columbia. Mainly, I was just looking and wishing and dreaming. It was wonderful!
My personal holiday gift shopping would come later on Main Street in Lexington, my hometown, just 13 miles away from Columbia. Lexington’s Main Street was also quite a festive place, with Session’s and Harman’s Drugs and Taylors Hardware and the Western Auto all on the same block!!! Most of my actual purchases came from what I considered to be the epicenter of the Lexington shopping district: Dodd’s Dime Store! (And, usually, at a more appropriate time for Christmas shopping: Christmas Eve -- or maybe the day before -- a fine holiday tradition I continue to this day!!!)
I still recall what was likely the first time I went shopping at Dodd’s by myself with my own money. (It was bicycling distance from my home, only about a mile further down Main Street.)
At the age of probably eight years old, with my own money earned from chores during the Christmas vacation, I located what I was certain to be the perfect Christmas gift for my Mom: a 25-cent arrangement of plastic flowers which I was absolutely certain she would adore!
And, sure enough, I was right! When she opened my gift on Christmas morning, she couldn’t stop oohing and ahhing! She was thrilled with my gift! Completely overwhelmed, based on her reaction!
My gift-giving prowess continued through the years. By the time my kid brother Shawn came along, Mom and Dad were in the habit of showering us with goodies on Christmas. And since he was about a dozen years younger than the three older kids, he really racked up on the Santa loot. At about age three, he got a ton of gifts: Hot Wheels, Big Wheels, a drum-set, games and toys galore.
From his older brother, his gift was a roll of Scotch tape… which he proceeded to play with for the rest of the day while virtually ignoring all of his big Santa Claus gifts!!!
I recall that, when I was age 11 or 12, my older sister Sherry -- who was already old enough to have a real, part-time job -- gave my sister Cric and me each a transistor radio! Now THAT was a major gift! As far as I was concerned, it might as well have been a car or a yacht or a house. They all cost the same amount to me: LOTS! It was at that moment when I first began to really understand the value of having a job, and to develop the work ethic that would stick with me until… well, I guess last weekend!
Of course, the most unusual gift any of us received came on Christmas, 1967, when each of us three older kids received a note in the toe of our stockings announcing the Shealy family would soon be adding a fifth and final child: Lorri, the youngest, who sure enough came along a few months later! (I also recall getting new shoelaces in the stocking, which I badly needed. And, every year since I can recall, everybody’s stocking had a flashlight. At our house, Santa had a very practical side!)
At the Shealy home, Christmas was a happy time. We were blessed, and we knew it.
That’s why Dad, every Christmas, took it upon himself to try to make Christmas a little brighter for some other family. Long before there were Toy Drives or Adopt-a-Family programs, he would quietly find a family each year that was not financially able to provide gifts, and deliver a couple of packages for each of the kids. He did it without fanfare or acknowledgement. He never really even told us kids what he was doing. He was simply trying to share our blessings.
One year, though, on Christmas morning, he invited me to go along with him to deliver those gifts… and I suppose that is when I learned what Christmas is truly about. It’s one Christmas memory that I’ll never forget… and a gift that will stay with me forever.
Great parents and caring families, it turns out, are the very best gifts of all!
Here’s hoping your Christmas is filled with wonderful gifts for you and yours.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Christmas in a simpler time
Invariably during the holiday season, my mind skitters back to Christmas celebrations from a much simpler time. (Everything seemed simpler when we were kids!)
Even before children are old enough to understand the hoopla, I suspect they are drawn to Christmas by the excitement in the air. I don’t really remember any Christmases from my pre-school years, although I THINK I remember them because of the home movies I saw over and over again.
My early school years are when the memories actually kick in. Back then, I liked Christmas mainly because there was no school for two whole weeks. They could have parked Ground Hog Day in the middle of two weeks vacation from school, and it would have been a big hit with me. I would have gladly decorated a tree and sung Ground Hog Carols if it resulted 14 in consecutive days with no school in the middle of winter.
Of course, getting TOYS was pretty cool, too.
As a lad of four, five, six, seven, or eight, during the late 50’s or early 60’s, my Christmas wants were pretty simple: anything in cowboy. A cap gun. A holster. A cowboy hat. Cowboy boots. Or a hobby horse, which, as you may recall, was a stick with an imitation horse-head on the end.
It’s not that we were so easy to please back then… It’s just that we didn’t know much else except Cowboys and Indians! There were no Transformers or action figures. There were no Ataris or X-Boxes. Just a back yard, and enough vivid imagination keep us occupied for hours playing Cowboys and Indians, sometimes all alone!
During the 60’s, the advertising industry teamed up with the Saturday Morning Cartoon industry to start TELLING kids what toys they wanted for Christmas: Mr. Potato Head, GI Joe, Easy Bake Oven, Rock’em Sock’em Robot, Etch-A-Sketch… they all looked better than simple plastics on TV. It never occurred to us that Super-ball, Twister, and Slinky were nothing more than a hard rubber ball, a printed piece of plastic, and a coil of wire.
And the games!!!! Candyland. Chutes and Ladders. Operation. Parchesi. Sorry. Mystery Date Game. And that old standard… Monopoly.
Another thing different about Christmas these days are the Holiday movies. Back then, there were only three: Rudolf, Frosty, and Charlie Brown, as I recall. That’s because we didn’t have cable TV, nor the multitude of channel selections that we have today. There was no such thing as a “movie channel”. So each of those movies was aired ONCE ONLY during the holiday season, along with the annual Bing Crosby show and a handful of other specials.
For some reason, the smells of the holidays during my childhood seem to linger in my memory banks. There was something special about coming in out of the cool, crisp winter air into a toasty den, with the smells of a cedar Christmas tree and firewood crackling blending with freshly baked cookies and pies. The grand finale for the olfactory senses was the Christmas dinner… all kinds of good things to eat at Grandmama’s house.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: At my house, we never once left milk and cookies for Santa, as tradition called for us to do. Even while maintaining the existence of Santa, Mom and Dad told us that the “cookies and milk” bit was a myth. (In truth, they were far too frugal in those days to let perfectly good milk and cookies sit out half the night and go to waste!)
The Shealy Family Christmas Tree was always something to behold. Shiny, shimmering ornaments that showed up year after year. Never-mind that they were mostly just painted plastic…. to us they were valuable antique heirlooms! (One I specifically remember was stuffed with Angel Hair!) Strands of garland. Silver and gold tinsel hanging from every branch. And string after string of colored lights.
There were only two kinds of Christmas lights to choose from: indoor and outdoor. Both consisted bright, multi-colored bulbs, but the outdoor variety was larger to withstand the elements.
I don’t recall ever going to a “Christmas tree lot” as a child. Why bother when there were acres and acres of woods all around? We simply walked into the woods and found a little cedar tree. (Sometimes they even grew in the highway right-of-ways!)
And if the tree was a little skimpy to start with, you would never know it after the decorating process was complete, with 4 strands of garland, 59 ornaments, 144 multi-colored lights, 2,918 individual pieces of tinsel… and one star splendidly adorning the top of the tree! By the time the Big Day arrived, the tree would be finished off with a mountain of colorfully wrapped gifts underneath – about a gazillion in all.
Then came the mid 60’s, and the carefully-decorated cedar tree was replaced by a silver, aluminum “tree”, with a spotlight and color-wheel which revolved to give the appearance of a different color tree every few seconds!
Some of my childhood Christmas memories are actual memories, but others have been propped up by the photographs which captured those moments. I’m sure I don’t remember Christmas morning when I was two years old… but I know about it because there were a few pictures. Not a lot of pictures, mind you. Back then, we were very selective about our picture-taking because film cost a lot of money, and developing the film cost even more.
Nowadays, with digital cameras and VCR recorders, we can capture image after image… but in those days, picture-taking was reserved for special occasions like Christmas, family-vacations, and the occasional dance or piano recital.
Of course, the most vivid of the Christmas almost-memories were the ones captured on home movies… 8mm filmstrips.
The lighting was bad, and the movies were usually just a collage of 15-second clips… the average length of time of a movie scene, due to the afore-mentioned costs of film and developing. But it only takes a few seconds of these old home movies to capture the simpler times of Christmases past. The freckle-faced two-year old with a blonde crewcut -- and the other people in those movies -- are long gone…. But the memories come back year after year during the holiday season.
Here’s hoping you create your own armload of happy memories this Christmas.
Even before children are old enough to understand the hoopla, I suspect they are drawn to Christmas by the excitement in the air. I don’t really remember any Christmases from my pre-school years, although I THINK I remember them because of the home movies I saw over and over again.
My early school years are when the memories actually kick in. Back then, I liked Christmas mainly because there was no school for two whole weeks. They could have parked Ground Hog Day in the middle of two weeks vacation from school, and it would have been a big hit with me. I would have gladly decorated a tree and sung Ground Hog Carols if it resulted 14 in consecutive days with no school in the middle of winter.
Of course, getting TOYS was pretty cool, too.
As a lad of four, five, six, seven, or eight, during the late 50’s or early 60’s, my Christmas wants were pretty simple: anything in cowboy. A cap gun. A holster. A cowboy hat. Cowboy boots. Or a hobby horse, which, as you may recall, was a stick with an imitation horse-head on the end.
It’s not that we were so easy to please back then… It’s just that we didn’t know much else except Cowboys and Indians! There were no Transformers or action figures. There were no Ataris or X-Boxes. Just a back yard, and enough vivid imagination keep us occupied for hours playing Cowboys and Indians, sometimes all alone!
During the 60’s, the advertising industry teamed up with the Saturday Morning Cartoon industry to start TELLING kids what toys they wanted for Christmas: Mr. Potato Head, GI Joe, Easy Bake Oven, Rock’em Sock’em Robot, Etch-A-Sketch… they all looked better than simple plastics on TV. It never occurred to us that Super-ball, Twister, and Slinky were nothing more than a hard rubber ball, a printed piece of plastic, and a coil of wire.
And the games!!!! Candyland. Chutes and Ladders. Operation. Parchesi. Sorry. Mystery Date Game. And that old standard… Monopoly.
Another thing different about Christmas these days are the Holiday movies. Back then, there were only three: Rudolf, Frosty, and Charlie Brown, as I recall. That’s because we didn’t have cable TV, nor the multitude of channel selections that we have today. There was no such thing as a “movie channel”. So each of those movies was aired ONCE ONLY during the holiday season, along with the annual Bing Crosby show and a handful of other specials.
For some reason, the smells of the holidays during my childhood seem to linger in my memory banks. There was something special about coming in out of the cool, crisp winter air into a toasty den, with the smells of a cedar Christmas tree and firewood crackling blending with freshly baked cookies and pies. The grand finale for the olfactory senses was the Christmas dinner… all kinds of good things to eat at Grandmama’s house.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: At my house, we never once left milk and cookies for Santa, as tradition called for us to do. Even while maintaining the existence of Santa, Mom and Dad told us that the “cookies and milk” bit was a myth. (In truth, they were far too frugal in those days to let perfectly good milk and cookies sit out half the night and go to waste!)
The Shealy Family Christmas Tree was always something to behold. Shiny, shimmering ornaments that showed up year after year. Never-mind that they were mostly just painted plastic…. to us they were valuable antique heirlooms! (One I specifically remember was stuffed with Angel Hair!) Strands of garland. Silver and gold tinsel hanging from every branch. And string after string of colored lights.
There were only two kinds of Christmas lights to choose from: indoor and outdoor. Both consisted bright, multi-colored bulbs, but the outdoor variety was larger to withstand the elements.
I don’t recall ever going to a “Christmas tree lot” as a child. Why bother when there were acres and acres of woods all around? We simply walked into the woods and found a little cedar tree. (Sometimes they even grew in the highway right-of-ways!)
And if the tree was a little skimpy to start with, you would never know it after the decorating process was complete, with 4 strands of garland, 59 ornaments, 144 multi-colored lights, 2,918 individual pieces of tinsel… and one star splendidly adorning the top of the tree! By the time the Big Day arrived, the tree would be finished off with a mountain of colorfully wrapped gifts underneath – about a gazillion in all.
Then came the mid 60’s, and the carefully-decorated cedar tree was replaced by a silver, aluminum “tree”, with a spotlight and color-wheel which revolved to give the appearance of a different color tree every few seconds!
Some of my childhood Christmas memories are actual memories, but others have been propped up by the photographs which captured those moments. I’m sure I don’t remember Christmas morning when I was two years old… but I know about it because there were a few pictures. Not a lot of pictures, mind you. Back then, we were very selective about our picture-taking because film cost a lot of money, and developing the film cost even more.
Nowadays, with digital cameras and VCR recorders, we can capture image after image… but in those days, picture-taking was reserved for special occasions like Christmas, family-vacations, and the occasional dance or piano recital.
Of course, the most vivid of the Christmas almost-memories were the ones captured on home movies… 8mm filmstrips.
The lighting was bad, and the movies were usually just a collage of 15-second clips… the average length of time of a movie scene, due to the afore-mentioned costs of film and developing. But it only takes a few seconds of these old home movies to capture the simpler times of Christmases past. The freckle-faced two-year old with a blonde crewcut -- and the other people in those movies -- are long gone…. But the memories come back year after year during the holiday season.
Here’s hoping you create your own armload of happy memories this Christmas.
Friday, December 12, 2008
White Christmas
Let me say from the outset that I am not a Scrooge, or a Grinch. I like Christmas. At my office, in fact, I start playing Christmas music earlier than anyone else I know… usually September, occasionally even August.
But there is one traditional Holiday wish with which I disagree. (Try saying that three times real fast: “wish with which, wish with which, wish with which”!)
While the entire rest of the universe appears to be hoping in unison for a “White Christmas”… my preference is, as it always has been, a balmy, sunshiny, warm Palmetto State December day in the 70’s.
This was all brought painfully to my attention last weekend – Thanksgiving weekend to be exact – when we had a couple of days of cold, dreary, rainy almost winter weather… probably made drearier by my favorite team’s drubbing at the hands of arch-rival Clemson (which I am spelling correctly today out of respect for their victory).
Anywho, the cold wet weather during the first serious weekend of the Christmas shopping season made we stop and wonder what to expect weatherwise for the rest of the season, and I got to guessing whether we’ll have a White Christmas this year.
I guesses “No”… and I hope I’m right.
I’ve never actually seen a White Christmas, and probably never will. It’s one of those things like a total eclipse or Haley’s Comet. They only happen every so often, and even then, you have to be at the right place at the right time to see it.
Maybe in parts of Canada, Alaska, and Wisconsin it’s a regular occurrence. But I’ve never been any of those places on Christmas Day, and don’t expect I ever will be.
Growing up in the sunny south, I’m used to a different regular occurrence in December: wearing Bermuda shorts and flip-flops! And if it’s a truly special Christmas, I might even need to add sunglasses to keep the bright sun out of my eyes!!!
I know this puts me at odds with the rest of the world, but I’d rather have a Bright Christmas than a White Christmas!!!
Stop and think for a minute. Ask yourself this question: It’s the busiest travel day of the year, so what can we do to improve the holiday travelling experience? I know!!! Let’s cover all the roads and airports with a foot of snow!!! That’s a great idea!
Even as a kid, I was never in favor of a White Christmas. We didn’t get many snow days, and I didn’t want to use one up on a day when we were already out of school.
As a kid, a snow day was that rarest of special occasions when I could skip school without pretending to be sick! AND… unlike those “fake sick” days, it was perfectly okay to go out and play all day long!
Of course, snow days in the South were a lot different than snow days in the North. First of all, most of the time, it wasn’t really snow, but instead, was snow’s evil twin – “ice”.
And either way, we weren’t equipped for it. We didn’t have the right mittens and boots. Instead, I wore socks on my hands, which kept them warm for about three minutes, and sopping, soaking cold and wet for the rest of the hour until I went back in the house to change “mittens”.
In the South, we also never had the primary piece of snow-recreation equipment: a sled! So we improvised. My favorite improvisation was an old automobile hood turned upside down… which allowed about eleven kids to take a ride down a nice steep hill.
I also tried cross-country skiing once with a pair of waterskis instead of snowskis and a pair of old crutches instead of ski poles.
Yes, snow days are designed for interrupting the education of our children, not for disrupting my favorite holiday.
So let me go on record: I’m NOT dreaming of a White Christmas.
I like the song (although I sing it without the deep, heartfelt meaning that others give it.) I even tolerate the movie. (Though clearly, it’s a second tier holiday movie, not on the same level as Miracle on 34th Street or It’s a Wonderful Life… or even, in my opinion, Christmas Vacation, Elf, or Scrooged.)
But let’s save the actual snowfall for a more convenient time when there’s not so much going on. For no particular reason, I’m voting for January 15th.
But there is one traditional Holiday wish with which I disagree. (Try saying that three times real fast: “wish with which, wish with which, wish with which”!)
While the entire rest of the universe appears to be hoping in unison for a “White Christmas”… my preference is, as it always has been, a balmy, sunshiny, warm Palmetto State December day in the 70’s.
This was all brought painfully to my attention last weekend – Thanksgiving weekend to be exact – when we had a couple of days of cold, dreary, rainy almost winter weather… probably made drearier by my favorite team’s drubbing at the hands of arch-rival Clemson (which I am spelling correctly today out of respect for their victory).
Anywho, the cold wet weather during the first serious weekend of the Christmas shopping season made we stop and wonder what to expect weatherwise for the rest of the season, and I got to guessing whether we’ll have a White Christmas this year.
I guesses “No”… and I hope I’m right.
I’ve never actually seen a White Christmas, and probably never will. It’s one of those things like a total eclipse or Haley’s Comet. They only happen every so often, and even then, you have to be at the right place at the right time to see it.
Maybe in parts of Canada, Alaska, and Wisconsin it’s a regular occurrence. But I’ve never been any of those places on Christmas Day, and don’t expect I ever will be.
Growing up in the sunny south, I’m used to a different regular occurrence in December: wearing Bermuda shorts and flip-flops! And if it’s a truly special Christmas, I might even need to add sunglasses to keep the bright sun out of my eyes!!!
I know this puts me at odds with the rest of the world, but I’d rather have a Bright Christmas than a White Christmas!!!
Stop and think for a minute. Ask yourself this question: It’s the busiest travel day of the year, so what can we do to improve the holiday travelling experience? I know!!! Let’s cover all the roads and airports with a foot of snow!!! That’s a great idea!
Even as a kid, I was never in favor of a White Christmas. We didn’t get many snow days, and I didn’t want to use one up on a day when we were already out of school.
As a kid, a snow day was that rarest of special occasions when I could skip school without pretending to be sick! AND… unlike those “fake sick” days, it was perfectly okay to go out and play all day long!
Of course, snow days in the South were a lot different than snow days in the North. First of all, most of the time, it wasn’t really snow, but instead, was snow’s evil twin – “ice”.
And either way, we weren’t equipped for it. We didn’t have the right mittens and boots. Instead, I wore socks on my hands, which kept them warm for about three minutes, and sopping, soaking cold and wet for the rest of the hour until I went back in the house to change “mittens”.
In the South, we also never had the primary piece of snow-recreation equipment: a sled! So we improvised. My favorite improvisation was an old automobile hood turned upside down… which allowed about eleven kids to take a ride down a nice steep hill.
I also tried cross-country skiing once with a pair of waterskis instead of snowskis and a pair of old crutches instead of ski poles.
Yes, snow days are designed for interrupting the education of our children, not for disrupting my favorite holiday.
So let me go on record: I’m NOT dreaming of a White Christmas.
I like the song (although I sing it without the deep, heartfelt meaning that others give it.) I even tolerate the movie. (Though clearly, it’s a second tier holiday movie, not on the same level as Miracle on 34th Street or It’s a Wonderful Life… or even, in my opinion, Christmas Vacation, Elf, or Scrooged.)
But let’s save the actual snowfall for a more convenient time when there’s not so much going on. For no particular reason, I’m voting for January 15th.
Monday, November 24, 2008
A Time for Thanksgiving 2008
This year, Thanksgiving has a deeper meaning for me… not only because I’m still here, but also because my many blessings seem richer and fuller. Regular readers know that, a few months ago, I survived brain surgery to remove a malignant tumor which had begun to affect my communication skills. For the time being, I’ve been given a clean bill of health.
While certainly I’m thankful for many of the same things as most other Americans – the price of gas is finally coming down; though the economy is struggling, we’ve still got plenty to eat; and we have just witnessed one of the greatest changes of regimes in American history, but its happening without bloodshed or violence, in an orderly way that would not be possible in most nations – I’m also thankful every day that somehow, I seem to have beaten the odds on cancer, not once, but twice.
As I was preparing to write my weekly column, I glanced back to my Thanksgiving message from a year ago, and I realized that I’m still thankful for the very same things… except perhaps more so. And those words from a year ago – before I had any idea of the challenges I would face this year – suddenly appeared more meaningful and poignant.
So I decided to dust off my Thanksgiving column for 2007 and make it my Thanksgiving column for 2008… with a little touching up.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Let me tell you about a few of the things for which I am personally thankful:
First, I’m thankful that – this holiday season – I’m not in the middle of one of my months-long Weight Loss Contests. True, I’m currently a big fat giant hippo-pig-whale, but Thanksgiving is just a really inconvenient time for a diet.
I’m thankful for my Mom & Dad. I was blessed with good ones. To paraphrase Lincoln, all that I am, I owe to my mom and dad. Dad’s no longer with us, and that leaves Mom to shoulder the blame alone. But she never complains.
I’m thankful for my wife and kids. Again, I’m blessed with good ones. Two sons and a daughter who make me proud, and a wonderful wife who puts up with me… which surprises me! And I’m thankful for the rest of my family. Altogether, they not only provide me with comfort and joy, but also with a high degree of entertainment value. (It’s actually better than TV – somewhere between Reality TV, Day of Our Lives, Dr. Phil, and The Beverly Hillbillies.)
I’m thankful for our Democracy. Even though my personal choice didn’t win, I’m thankful that the process of electing our president worked. And I’m really, really thankful that politics is over for the year, and for another few months or so before it cranks up again.
I’m thankful for my friends. I have a lot of ‘em, and I know they’re true friends. Sometimes, you’re not sure if a person is a true friend… or just interested in your money. Fortunately for me, I never have to question whether my friends or genuine or not.
Which reminds me…
I’m thankful to be free of the burdens and responsibilities of great financial wealth. (That’s what is sometimes referred to as “taking lemons and making lemonade”.)
I’m thankful to be 54 years old. There are those who didn’t think I’d last this long. By all rights, I probably shouldn’t have.
I’m thankful to live in South Carolina. It’s a great place to live. Now, I know we’re ranked last in the nation in education, health care, income, and lots of other things… and I suppose that should make me less happy to live here. But, somehow, it’s still a great place to live. Statistics or not… I wouldn’t live anywhere else!
I’m thankful for the people I work with: co-workers, associates, clients, employees, suppliers. Lots of good people -- better than I deserve -- hard workers who care about their performance, and generally try to do the right things. They make me look good… at least for a while, until I come along and do something to mess things up.
I’m thankful for my health. Looking at me from a distance, you wouldn’t think I’d be that thankful, given the condition I’m in (and from up close, you’d be even more surprised.) But, in the big picture, as old and out-of-shape as I might be, I’m healthy. I can see and hear, I can walk and talk… and there are lots of people in the world who can’t do those things. So, yes, I’m thankful for my health, as feeble as that may be.
I’m thankful Steve Spurrier is our Head Ball Coach. He’s a great coach. It really gives me hope for next year, even while our Gamecocks are tumbling like drunken sailor down a flight of stairs in a snowstorm. I believe in Steve. Things will get better.
I’m thankful for my readers… especially those of you who have made it this far into my column. You’ve probably already had to jump from the front page to a page somewhere near the back of the newspaper, and it may have taken a lot of time and effort to find the right page. To top that off, if you’re a regular reader, you probably know that my columns tend to run a little long, and sometimes start to fade near the end. Plus, you undoubtedly know that they are usually just random thoughts hastily strung together a few minutes before weekly my deadline, typically with not much rhyme or reason, and very little literary, entertainment, or informational value… and yet, YOU are still here reading…. and for that, I am thankful… and surprised.
I’m thankful for electricity. I think electricity is a good thing, and it’s taken for granted. I take it for granted, too. And I’m not really that passionate about being thankful for it, but I was thinking… there will be thousands of columns like this written this week about “Things I’m Thankful For” … and nobody else will mention electricity. So I thought I would.
I’m thankful for Random Thought Patterns. Without them, I would not have been able to write this column every week for almost a year.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving, and a Joyous Holiday Season.
While certainly I’m thankful for many of the same things as most other Americans – the price of gas is finally coming down; though the economy is struggling, we’ve still got plenty to eat; and we have just witnessed one of the greatest changes of regimes in American history, but its happening without bloodshed or violence, in an orderly way that would not be possible in most nations – I’m also thankful every day that somehow, I seem to have beaten the odds on cancer, not once, but twice.
As I was preparing to write my weekly column, I glanced back to my Thanksgiving message from a year ago, and I realized that I’m still thankful for the very same things… except perhaps more so. And those words from a year ago – before I had any idea of the challenges I would face this year – suddenly appeared more meaningful and poignant.
So I decided to dust off my Thanksgiving column for 2007 and make it my Thanksgiving column for 2008… with a little touching up.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Let me tell you about a few of the things for which I am personally thankful:
First, I’m thankful that – this holiday season – I’m not in the middle of one of my months-long Weight Loss Contests. True, I’m currently a big fat giant hippo-pig-whale, but Thanksgiving is just a really inconvenient time for a diet.
I’m thankful for my Mom & Dad. I was blessed with good ones. To paraphrase Lincoln, all that I am, I owe to my mom and dad. Dad’s no longer with us, and that leaves Mom to shoulder the blame alone. But she never complains.
I’m thankful for my wife and kids. Again, I’m blessed with good ones. Two sons and a daughter who make me proud, and a wonderful wife who puts up with me… which surprises me! And I’m thankful for the rest of my family. Altogether, they not only provide me with comfort and joy, but also with a high degree of entertainment value. (It’s actually better than TV – somewhere between Reality TV, Day of Our Lives, Dr. Phil, and The Beverly Hillbillies.)
I’m thankful for our Democracy. Even though my personal choice didn’t win, I’m thankful that the process of electing our president worked. And I’m really, really thankful that politics is over for the year, and for another few months or so before it cranks up again.
I’m thankful for my friends. I have a lot of ‘em, and I know they’re true friends. Sometimes, you’re not sure if a person is a true friend… or just interested in your money. Fortunately for me, I never have to question whether my friends or genuine or not.
Which reminds me…
I’m thankful to be free of the burdens and responsibilities of great financial wealth. (That’s what is sometimes referred to as “taking lemons and making lemonade”.)
I’m thankful to be 54 years old. There are those who didn’t think I’d last this long. By all rights, I probably shouldn’t have.
I’m thankful to live in South Carolina. It’s a great place to live. Now, I know we’re ranked last in the nation in education, health care, income, and lots of other things… and I suppose that should make me less happy to live here. But, somehow, it’s still a great place to live. Statistics or not… I wouldn’t live anywhere else!
I’m thankful for the people I work with: co-workers, associates, clients, employees, suppliers. Lots of good people -- better than I deserve -- hard workers who care about their performance, and generally try to do the right things. They make me look good… at least for a while, until I come along and do something to mess things up.
I’m thankful for my health. Looking at me from a distance, you wouldn’t think I’d be that thankful, given the condition I’m in (and from up close, you’d be even more surprised.) But, in the big picture, as old and out-of-shape as I might be, I’m healthy. I can see and hear, I can walk and talk… and there are lots of people in the world who can’t do those things. So, yes, I’m thankful for my health, as feeble as that may be.
I’m thankful Steve Spurrier is our Head Ball Coach. He’s a great coach. It really gives me hope for next year, even while our Gamecocks are tumbling like drunken sailor down a flight of stairs in a snowstorm. I believe in Steve. Things will get better.
I’m thankful for my readers… especially those of you who have made it this far into my column. You’ve probably already had to jump from the front page to a page somewhere near the back of the newspaper, and it may have taken a lot of time and effort to find the right page. To top that off, if you’re a regular reader, you probably know that my columns tend to run a little long, and sometimes start to fade near the end. Plus, you undoubtedly know that they are usually just random thoughts hastily strung together a few minutes before weekly my deadline, typically with not much rhyme or reason, and very little literary, entertainment, or informational value… and yet, YOU are still here reading…. and for that, I am thankful… and surprised.
I’m thankful for electricity. I think electricity is a good thing, and it’s taken for granted. I take it for granted, too. And I’m not really that passionate about being thankful for it, but I was thinking… there will be thousands of columns like this written this week about “Things I’m Thankful For” … and nobody else will mention electricity. So I thought I would.
I’m thankful for Random Thought Patterns. Without them, I would not have been able to write this column every week for almost a year.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving, and a Joyous Holiday Season.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Thankful for Clemson
It’s that time of year again: late November… that time we set aside each year for counting our many blessings, and wishing utter disaster and despair upon our instate college football rival, Clemson (or Carolina, depending on which way your bread is buttered).
This year -- as a Carolina fan -- I am especially thankful that we only have to play Clemson next week, instead of facing the likes of the Florida Gators again, after they were so inhospitable as to hang half-a-hundred on us last week.
During this time of year, one of the favorite pastimes in the Pimento State becomes the telling of Carolina and Clemson jokes. We love ‘em.
I actually consider myself somewhat of an expert in the art of telling Clemson jokes, since I once published a special newspaper – Gamecock Fever – which was pretty-much dedicated to printing good-natured Clemson jokes. To be fair, we also printed an occasional Carolina joke – which all too often was the score of the previous week’s game… sorta like this week!
Needless to say, we collected a lot of Clemson jokes – and originated a good many, too – during the 15 years we published Gamecock Fever (except for one year when we forgot).
I figure it’s time to dust off some of those jokes this week because, frankly, we USC fans would like to quickly change the subject from the drubbing we took in The Swamp last Saturday.
Thank goodness for Clempson jokes!
---------------------------------
Q: How do you get a Clempson graduate off your front porch?
A: Pay him for the pizza.
---------------------------------
Q: What is a Clempson P.H.D.?
A: A Post Hole Digger.
---------------------------------
Q: What's a Clempson CPA?
A: Cow Pasture Alumni
---------------------------------
Q: How does a Clempson girl break up with her boyfriend?
A: She sends him a John Deere letter?
---------------------------------
Q: Why did the Lowcountry end up with Hurricane Hugo, and the Upstate end up with Clempson?
A: Because the Lowcountry got first choice.
---------------------------------
Q: What's the best thing ever to come out of Clempson?
A: I-85.
---------------------------------
Q: What do you call a Clempson girl hitch-hiking?
A: Stranded!
---------------------------------
Q: What's the National Pastime of Poland?
A: Telling Clempson jokes!
---------------------------------
Q: Did you hear about the Clempson javelin thrower?
A: He elected to receive!
---------------------------------
Q: Where can you find most Clempson fans between 8 and 11?
A: The third grade!
---------------------------------
Q: What is the best birth control for a Clempson girl?
A: Her looks.
---------------------------------
Q: Why do Clempson fans stare at containers of orange juice?
A: Because the label says "concentrate".
---------------------------------
Q: Did you hear about the Clempson fans carpool?
A: They meet at the game.
---------------------------------
Q: What does an average Clempson football player get on his S.A.T. test?
A: Drool.
---------------------------------
Q: What do you call a Clempson graduate who lives in a $450,000 house?
A: A butler.
---------------------------------
Q: How do you address a Clempson student wearing a three-piece suit?
A: "Will the defendant please rise."
---------------------------------
Q: How many Clempson fans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Ten. One to screw in the bulb, & nine to stand around talking about how good the old bulb was.
---------------------------------
Q: How many Clempson residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Seven. One to screw in the bulb, and six to wire the house for electricity.
---------------------------------
Q: What do you get for the Clempson girl who has everything?
A: Penicillin
---------------------------------
Clempson is Expected To Win 6 Games Next Year...
Two in Football, and Four in Basketball!
---------------------------------
Q: Where was the toothbrush invented?
A: Clempson. If it was invented anywhere else it would have been called a teethbrush.
(Note: Also a perfectly good Tennessee joke. We used it here a month ago!)
If this collection of jokes seem a little one-sided… that’s because it is! All Clempson and no Carolina.
But here’s the good news: They’ll never know it, unless somebody reads it to ‘em!!!
However, if you ARE a Clempson fan, and you DO find somebody to read this to you, we’ll try to be fair about it. You can send your Carolina jokes to our website, and we’ll post’em for the world to see. Just to be fair. (If, of course, you can find somebody else to WRITE them for you.)
Send them to me via electric email: RodShealy@aol.com.
Or, for the Internet savvy, just post’em to my internet blog: www.doingthefirst.blogspot.com
Go Cocks! (We’re thankful for Clempson!)
This year -- as a Carolina fan -- I am especially thankful that we only have to play Clemson next week, instead of facing the likes of the Florida Gators again, after they were so inhospitable as to hang half-a-hundred on us last week.
During this time of year, one of the favorite pastimes in the Pimento State becomes the telling of Carolina and Clemson jokes. We love ‘em.
I actually consider myself somewhat of an expert in the art of telling Clemson jokes, since I once published a special newspaper – Gamecock Fever – which was pretty-much dedicated to printing good-natured Clemson jokes. To be fair, we also printed an occasional Carolina joke – which all too often was the score of the previous week’s game… sorta like this week!
Needless to say, we collected a lot of Clemson jokes – and originated a good many, too – during the 15 years we published Gamecock Fever (except for one year when we forgot).
I figure it’s time to dust off some of those jokes this week because, frankly, we USC fans would like to quickly change the subject from the drubbing we took in The Swamp last Saturday.
Thank goodness for Clempson jokes!
---------------------------------
Q: How do you get a Clempson graduate off your front porch?
A: Pay him for the pizza.
---------------------------------
Q: What is a Clempson P.H.D.?
A: A Post Hole Digger.
---------------------------------
Q: What's a Clempson CPA?
A: Cow Pasture Alumni
---------------------------------
Q: How does a Clempson girl break up with her boyfriend?
A: She sends him a John Deere letter?
---------------------------------
Q: Why did the Lowcountry end up with Hurricane Hugo, and the Upstate end up with Clempson?
A: Because the Lowcountry got first choice.
---------------------------------
Q: What's the best thing ever to come out of Clempson?
A: I-85.
---------------------------------
Q: What do you call a Clempson girl hitch-hiking?
A: Stranded!
---------------------------------
Q: What's the National Pastime of Poland?
A: Telling Clempson jokes!
---------------------------------
Q: Did you hear about the Clempson javelin thrower?
A: He elected to receive!
---------------------------------
Q: Where can you find most Clempson fans between 8 and 11?
A: The third grade!
---------------------------------
Q: What is the best birth control for a Clempson girl?
A: Her looks.
---------------------------------
Q: Why do Clempson fans stare at containers of orange juice?
A: Because the label says "concentrate".
---------------------------------
Q: Did you hear about the Clempson fans carpool?
A: They meet at the game.
---------------------------------
Q: What does an average Clempson football player get on his S.A.T. test?
A: Drool.
---------------------------------
Q: What do you call a Clempson graduate who lives in a $450,000 house?
A: A butler.
---------------------------------
Q: How do you address a Clempson student wearing a three-piece suit?
A: "Will the defendant please rise."
---------------------------------
Q: How many Clempson fans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Ten. One to screw in the bulb, & nine to stand around talking about how good the old bulb was.
---------------------------------
Q: How many Clempson residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Seven. One to screw in the bulb, and six to wire the house for electricity.
---------------------------------
Q: What do you get for the Clempson girl who has everything?
A: Penicillin
---------------------------------
Clempson is Expected To Win 6 Games Next Year...
Two in Football, and Four in Basketball!
---------------------------------
Q: Where was the toothbrush invented?
A: Clempson. If it was invented anywhere else it would have been called a teethbrush.
(Note: Also a perfectly good Tennessee joke. We used it here a month ago!)
If this collection of jokes seem a little one-sided… that’s because it is! All Clempson and no Carolina.
But here’s the good news: They’ll never know it, unless somebody reads it to ‘em!!!
However, if you ARE a Clempson fan, and you DO find somebody to read this to you, we’ll try to be fair about it. You can send your Carolina jokes to our website, and we’ll post’em for the world to see. Just to be fair. (If, of course, you can find somebody else to WRITE them for you.)
Send them to me via electric email: RodShealy@aol.com.
Or, for the Internet savvy, just post’em to my internet blog: www.doingthefirst.blogspot.com
Go Cocks! (We’re thankful for Clempson!)
Monday, November 17, 2008
Halfway through Autumn
In addition to being the week of Veterans Day, the week after Election Day, and two weeks til Turkey Day, this week also marks the Half-way Point of Autumn (HPA), an occasion very often overlooked. Frankly, it’s an occasion which has been universally, completely, entirely overlooked… until now! As far as I can tell, this is the very first time anybody has actually tried to pinpoint the halfway mark of any of the four seasons as an “occasion”. It just seemed to me like a pretty good idea… to pause and review… to examine how it’s going so far, in case we need to make any mid-autumn adjustments.
First, let’s take a look at the big election that captivated our attention for nearly two years.
It’s over!
Lots of times, in a presidential election year, there’s an October Surprise which occurs very late in the process, right before the election, and alters the outcome.
This year’s October Surprise was that there wasn’t any surprise!
We have a new Commander in Chief. GWB 43 is being replaced by BHO 44.
At first, I was thinking the gas prices dropping was a device by “Big Oil” to influence the election, but then they kept dropping AFTER the election, so I guess that was just my delusional paranoid conspiracy-theory imagination at work. Unless, of course, “they” kept dropping the prices after the election on purpose, just to throw us off!!! Wow! Visions of black helicopters!
Now let’s talk about the weather.
So far, so good.
In Minnesota, Montana and the Dakota’s, they’re probably having snow storms on a regular basis. But here in sunny South Carolina, I’m still wearing short sleeves most days. Knock on wood.
We’re well into the new TV season – and I have seen enough of the current prime time line-up to know that I’m going to be spending most of my R&R surfing the net instead of watching the tube. (How could they let Cloris Leachman get voted off the island?)
Speaking of TV, Monday marks the three month countdown until television becomes “digital only” on February 17th, just in case you really DO live in a cave and haven’t heard the news. (I’ll reiterate here my concern for the advertising decision-making geniuses who thought it would be a good idea to run those ads urging viewers to switch to cable TV… on cable TV channels.)
We’re also well into the other annual highlight of autumn – the 2008 Football Season. This year’s regular football season is a) over; b) at the end; c) winding down; or, d) who cares; depending on whether you’re referring to a) high school; b) college; c) professional; or d) soccer, rugby, European, arena, or any of those other foreign versions of so-called football.
Back to TV for a minute: The Christmas ads have already started, earlier than ever, continuing the trend of the last few decades. This year, I think they slid right in to take the place of the political ads.
But, seeing the Christmas ads, and hearing the news of continuing economic downturn, brings to mind the local shops and retailers who are counting on the coming holiday season for their businesses to survive. So, let me again urge you to SHOP LOCAL.
The internet is gaining an ever-increasing share of shopping business, and the corporate-giant chain stores always manage to find a way to prosper. But the handful of mom-and-pop shops and stores which still exist NEED our support… and we should give it to them.
After all, the smaller, locally-owned businesses are the ones who sponsor our local Little League teams. They are the ones who support our festivals and community events. They are the businesses who make up our Chamber of Commerce, and give generously to the Band Boosters, the cheerleaders, the high school yearbooks, the scouts, and our schools.
And, more importantly, they are the businesses who keep our dollars here in our own community, providing local jobs, and spending their profits with other local businesses, instead of shipping our dollars to some corporate headquarters a gazillion miles away.
So, this year, let’s try our best to support those local businesses with our shopping dollars, to help keep our own local economy strong.
Okay, what else do we have for our Mid-Autumn Check-Up?
Daylight Savings time: We fell back a week ago with no major injuries, other than bruised egos of those who missed it and showed up an hour early.
Holiday Weight Loss Contest: Who are we kidding? Not gonna happen.
State Fair and Halloween: Long-gone, ancient history, and I missed them both.
So there’s one last item: Veterans Day.
If you haven’t already done so, thank a veteran this week. They are they ones who make all this possible. (Including allowing me to write whatever is on my mind, and allowing you to read whatever you choose.)
And in case nobody else does, I’m offering a giant Thank You to each and every man and woman who donned a uniform and fought to keep America free and to allow all of us to enjoy our lives full of football weekends, hundreds of cable TV channels, Christmas shopping, State Fairs and Halloweens, and a food supply so plentiful that most of us need to LOSE weight. Thank you for protecting the light of the world… a homeland so blessed that truly there are no limits to what any man, woman or child in America can accomplish. To every veteran, we thank you.
See you next week.
First, let’s take a look at the big election that captivated our attention for nearly two years.
It’s over!
Lots of times, in a presidential election year, there’s an October Surprise which occurs very late in the process, right before the election, and alters the outcome.
This year’s October Surprise was that there wasn’t any surprise!
We have a new Commander in Chief. GWB 43 is being replaced by BHO 44.
At first, I was thinking the gas prices dropping was a device by “Big Oil” to influence the election, but then they kept dropping AFTER the election, so I guess that was just my delusional paranoid conspiracy-theory imagination at work. Unless, of course, “they” kept dropping the prices after the election on purpose, just to throw us off!!! Wow! Visions of black helicopters!
Now let’s talk about the weather.
So far, so good.
In Minnesota, Montana and the Dakota’s, they’re probably having snow storms on a regular basis. But here in sunny South Carolina, I’m still wearing short sleeves most days. Knock on wood.
We’re well into the new TV season – and I have seen enough of the current prime time line-up to know that I’m going to be spending most of my R&R surfing the net instead of watching the tube. (How could they let Cloris Leachman get voted off the island?)
Speaking of TV, Monday marks the three month countdown until television becomes “digital only” on February 17th, just in case you really DO live in a cave and haven’t heard the news. (I’ll reiterate here my concern for the advertising decision-making geniuses who thought it would be a good idea to run those ads urging viewers to switch to cable TV… on cable TV channels.)
We’re also well into the other annual highlight of autumn – the 2008 Football Season. This year’s regular football season is a) over; b) at the end; c) winding down; or, d) who cares; depending on whether you’re referring to a) high school; b) college; c) professional; or d) soccer, rugby, European, arena, or any of those other foreign versions of so-called football.
Back to TV for a minute: The Christmas ads have already started, earlier than ever, continuing the trend of the last few decades. This year, I think they slid right in to take the place of the political ads.
But, seeing the Christmas ads, and hearing the news of continuing economic downturn, brings to mind the local shops and retailers who are counting on the coming holiday season for their businesses to survive. So, let me again urge you to SHOP LOCAL.
The internet is gaining an ever-increasing share of shopping business, and the corporate-giant chain stores always manage to find a way to prosper. But the handful of mom-and-pop shops and stores which still exist NEED our support… and we should give it to them.
After all, the smaller, locally-owned businesses are the ones who sponsor our local Little League teams. They are the ones who support our festivals and community events. They are the businesses who make up our Chamber of Commerce, and give generously to the Band Boosters, the cheerleaders, the high school yearbooks, the scouts, and our schools.
And, more importantly, they are the businesses who keep our dollars here in our own community, providing local jobs, and spending their profits with other local businesses, instead of shipping our dollars to some corporate headquarters a gazillion miles away.
So, this year, let’s try our best to support those local businesses with our shopping dollars, to help keep our own local economy strong.
Okay, what else do we have for our Mid-Autumn Check-Up?
Daylight Savings time: We fell back a week ago with no major injuries, other than bruised egos of those who missed it and showed up an hour early.
Holiday Weight Loss Contest: Who are we kidding? Not gonna happen.
State Fair and Halloween: Long-gone, ancient history, and I missed them both.
So there’s one last item: Veterans Day.
If you haven’t already done so, thank a veteran this week. They are they ones who make all this possible. (Including allowing me to write whatever is on my mind, and allowing you to read whatever you choose.)
And in case nobody else does, I’m offering a giant Thank You to each and every man and woman who donned a uniform and fought to keep America free and to allow all of us to enjoy our lives full of football weekends, hundreds of cable TV channels, Christmas shopping, State Fairs and Halloweens, and a food supply so plentiful that most of us need to LOSE weight. Thank you for protecting the light of the world… a homeland so blessed that truly there are no limits to what any man, woman or child in America can accomplish. To every veteran, we thank you.
See you next week.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Time for a Change
As I sit down at my keyboard to write this, I still don’t know who has won the election. There’s still a day-and-a-half until it’s all over.
By the time you read this, however, the contest will already have been decided, history will have been made – one way or the other – and you will know the identity of the next leader of the free world.
Unless, of course, Obama happened to have won the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, and McCain coincidentally prevailed in the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and both of the Carolinas– in which case, we have a tie on our hands, 269 to 269, and we won’t know for sure until the U.S. House of Representatives breaks the tie.
But I’m going out on a limb and predicting that didn’t happen. I’m guessing we have chosen a new president, and things are going to change.
Note: As a consolation prize, the loser still gets to be in the United States Senate.
The Presidential election isn’t the only Big Change to come along recently. This weekend was also time for a visit from my old pal: Daylight Savings Time (DST) – The World’s Longest Running April Fools Gag!
I heard something interesting about Daylight Savings Time recently. Did you know that the Sunday after we “fall-back” and get an extra hour of sleep each year holds the record as the day with the fewest heart attacks? Apparently, Ms. Carter wasn’t kidding in my third grade health class when she told us it’s good for us to get enough sleep each night. “Fall Back” Sunday is the one day that most of us get extra sleep, and, as a result, we’re healthier that day!
Here’s another observation I made about DST this weekend: An increasing number of gadgets change the time for you! My cell phone and my computer automatically adjusted the time overnight, so that when I woke up, I was more confused than ever.
The alarm clock said 9am, but the computer said 8! The watch said 9, but the phone said 8. The wall clock said 9, but the Weather Channel said 8.
It was confusing. (And I really felt sorry for those folks who may have spent Saturday evening imbibing after the ball game.)
There’s another big change that’s needs to happen soon: I’ve got to seriously lose some poundage. I really hafta drop a few lbs. (Can anyone tell me how “lb.” can be the abbreviation for “pound”?) Pounds, lbs… whatever… I’ve got WAYYYY too many of them these days.
The last time I tried dieting, back in July, I got distracted in the middle of my weight loss competition, and ended up not losing much at all. Now I’m a big fat giant hippo-pig-whale again, and that’s definitely got to change!
Coincidentally, the winner of that Summertime Weight Loss Challenge – Big Don Gawrys – seems to still be keeping the 40 pounds he lost off, and is apparently ready to go for another round. He issued a challenge last week to our gang of 17 – suggesting another weight loss competition, this time right smack dab through the middle of the Holiday Season! Wow! He’s gutsy… and so are the other sixteen of us, but not in a good way.
Anywho, it appears that about half of the guys have accepted the challenge, so I guess “The Largest Loser Holiday Edition” will be cranking up soon. As always, we’re issuing an open invitation for anyone who would like to participate. In the past, we’ve each kicked in $100 smackeroos, with the winner taking it all after a six or eight week contest period. Since we’re just pulling it together, I can’t say for sure when we’ll start… but I would guess it will be in a couple more weeks.
So, if you think you might want to be a part of this contest – and apparently make the rules for us, since we’re all to fat and lazy to do it ourselves – shoot me an email via your Electronic Internet Email Machine, to: RodShealy@aol.com
One last change I want to suggest: It’s time to change your socks! You know who you are… Don’t make me call you out! Just go change them. NOW!
That’s all for this time. See you next week… unless I change my mind.
By the time you read this, however, the contest will already have been decided, history will have been made – one way or the other – and you will know the identity of the next leader of the free world.
Unless, of course, Obama happened to have won the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, and McCain coincidentally prevailed in the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and both of the Carolinas– in which case, we have a tie on our hands, 269 to 269, and we won’t know for sure until the U.S. House of Representatives breaks the tie.
But I’m going out on a limb and predicting that didn’t happen. I’m guessing we have chosen a new president, and things are going to change.
Note: As a consolation prize, the loser still gets to be in the United States Senate.
The Presidential election isn’t the only Big Change to come along recently. This weekend was also time for a visit from my old pal: Daylight Savings Time (DST) – The World’s Longest Running April Fools Gag!
I heard something interesting about Daylight Savings Time recently. Did you know that the Sunday after we “fall-back” and get an extra hour of sleep each year holds the record as the day with the fewest heart attacks? Apparently, Ms. Carter wasn’t kidding in my third grade health class when she told us it’s good for us to get enough sleep each night. “Fall Back” Sunday is the one day that most of us get extra sleep, and, as a result, we’re healthier that day!
Here’s another observation I made about DST this weekend: An increasing number of gadgets change the time for you! My cell phone and my computer automatically adjusted the time overnight, so that when I woke up, I was more confused than ever.
The alarm clock said 9am, but the computer said 8! The watch said 9, but the phone said 8. The wall clock said 9, but the Weather Channel said 8.
It was confusing. (And I really felt sorry for those folks who may have spent Saturday evening imbibing after the ball game.)
There’s another big change that’s needs to happen soon: I’ve got to seriously lose some poundage. I really hafta drop a few lbs. (Can anyone tell me how “lb.” can be the abbreviation for “pound”?) Pounds, lbs… whatever… I’ve got WAYYYY too many of them these days.
The last time I tried dieting, back in July, I got distracted in the middle of my weight loss competition, and ended up not losing much at all. Now I’m a big fat giant hippo-pig-whale again, and that’s definitely got to change!
Coincidentally, the winner of that Summertime Weight Loss Challenge – Big Don Gawrys – seems to still be keeping the 40 pounds he lost off, and is apparently ready to go for another round. He issued a challenge last week to our gang of 17 – suggesting another weight loss competition, this time right smack dab through the middle of the Holiday Season! Wow! He’s gutsy… and so are the other sixteen of us, but not in a good way.
Anywho, it appears that about half of the guys have accepted the challenge, so I guess “The Largest Loser Holiday Edition” will be cranking up soon. As always, we’re issuing an open invitation for anyone who would like to participate. In the past, we’ve each kicked in $100 smackeroos, with the winner taking it all after a six or eight week contest period. Since we’re just pulling it together, I can’t say for sure when we’ll start… but I would guess it will be in a couple more weeks.
So, if you think you might want to be a part of this contest – and apparently make the rules for us, since we’re all to fat and lazy to do it ourselves – shoot me an email via your Electronic Internet Email Machine, to: RodShealy@aol.com
One last change I want to suggest: It’s time to change your socks! You know who you are… Don’t make me call you out! Just go change them. NOW!
That’s all for this time. See you next week… unless I change my mind.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
A Prayer for our Nation
This year, 2008, I’ve gotten closer to the Lord. A lot closer, it turns out.
It probably started during my friend Jerry Fowler’s year-long battle with cancer, which he shared each week with readers of this newspaper. In the final stages of that battle, when the doctors knew the end was near, I used this column to offer a prayer for Jerry.
I had never really seen a prayer like that in a newspaper column, but it was something I felt strongly about, so I did it.
A few months later, as it turned out, I was saying much the same prayer for myself as I discovered a cancerous brain tumor and underwent surgery to remove it. A lot of other people, including countless people I didn’t really even know, helped me out with prayers of their own, for which I am deeply appreciative.
That was nearly three months ago, and the prayers seemed to have worked. Just a week or so ago, I went to Charleston for my first regular MRI to check for any recurrence, and the doctors at MUSC announced that I’m still 100% A-OK. (Of course, they’re only referring to my medical condition… not my personality, my looks, or my sense of humor!)
Through these two events, I have learned that, yes, it is ALWAYS okay to turn to the Lord in prayer, especially in a time of need or crisis. And that includes right here in my weekly newspaper column, if I so choose.
Which brings me to the coming election: I am deeply concerned for our nation, and -- just like being faced with cancer -- believe we might do well to pray about it.
I am truly concerned that our nation seems prepared to enter into an election – maybe the biggest in history, probably an election that will change our world forever, while the messages of 9/11 should still be weighing heavy upon us every minute of every day – without truly seeking the guidance of our Lord.
The next four years will see many changes in our world, and the leader we elect will help determine the world we will all live in for the rest of our lives, and the world we will leave to our children and grandchildren.
So, today, I am offering a prayer of guidance for the coming election, in hopes that, perhaps, we as Americans will look to a higher power to make these important decisions.
This is not a Republican prayer or a Democrat prayer. It is simply a short prayer to seek the Lord’s will before we cast our ballots.
Of course, you may well have your own words, which is even better, because, as I’ve mentioned here before, this is not really my strong suit.
But, one way or they other, I hope you’ll join me in praying about it before you vote… and maybe even encourage others to join you.
A Prayer for Our Nation
November 4th, 2008
“Lord,
As we go into this most important day of decision for Your world, grant us the understanding to know your will, and the courage to act upon it.
Place your spirit within our hearts to guide us in this decision, and in every decision for our nation, and for Your world.
Make each of us an instrument of Your will, and our nation a tribute to Your goodness, that we might be ever in your grace and protection to fulfill your Divine Purpose on this earth.
Make us ever mindful that with God, we cannot fail; without Him, we cannot succeed. Guide us to once again be a nation which proudly declares, "In God We Trust."
Bless these candidates with the faith and wisdom to ask that You might use them according to Your will and purpose, and to restore and protect our nation as Your light for the world. May our new President be graced with the power, wisdom, discernment and enlightenment that can come only from You.
And bless this election that it might strengthen our nation to prosper and endure in the service of Your Holy Name.
Amen.”
It probably started during my friend Jerry Fowler’s year-long battle with cancer, which he shared each week with readers of this newspaper. In the final stages of that battle, when the doctors knew the end was near, I used this column to offer a prayer for Jerry.
I had never really seen a prayer like that in a newspaper column, but it was something I felt strongly about, so I did it.
A few months later, as it turned out, I was saying much the same prayer for myself as I discovered a cancerous brain tumor and underwent surgery to remove it. A lot of other people, including countless people I didn’t really even know, helped me out with prayers of their own, for which I am deeply appreciative.
That was nearly three months ago, and the prayers seemed to have worked. Just a week or so ago, I went to Charleston for my first regular MRI to check for any recurrence, and the doctors at MUSC announced that I’m still 100% A-OK. (Of course, they’re only referring to my medical condition… not my personality, my looks, or my sense of humor!)
Through these two events, I have learned that, yes, it is ALWAYS okay to turn to the Lord in prayer, especially in a time of need or crisis. And that includes right here in my weekly newspaper column, if I so choose.
Which brings me to the coming election: I am deeply concerned for our nation, and -- just like being faced with cancer -- believe we might do well to pray about it.
I am truly concerned that our nation seems prepared to enter into an election – maybe the biggest in history, probably an election that will change our world forever, while the messages of 9/11 should still be weighing heavy upon us every minute of every day – without truly seeking the guidance of our Lord.
The next four years will see many changes in our world, and the leader we elect will help determine the world we will all live in for the rest of our lives, and the world we will leave to our children and grandchildren.
So, today, I am offering a prayer of guidance for the coming election, in hopes that, perhaps, we as Americans will look to a higher power to make these important decisions.
This is not a Republican prayer or a Democrat prayer. It is simply a short prayer to seek the Lord’s will before we cast our ballots.
Of course, you may well have your own words, which is even better, because, as I’ve mentioned here before, this is not really my strong suit.
But, one way or they other, I hope you’ll join me in praying about it before you vote… and maybe even encourage others to join you.
A Prayer for Our Nation
November 4th, 2008
“Lord,
As we go into this most important day of decision for Your world, grant us the understanding to know your will, and the courage to act upon it.
Place your spirit within our hearts to guide us in this decision, and in every decision for our nation, and for Your world.
Make each of us an instrument of Your will, and our nation a tribute to Your goodness, that we might be ever in your grace and protection to fulfill your Divine Purpose on this earth.
Make us ever mindful that with God, we cannot fail; without Him, we cannot succeed. Guide us to once again be a nation which proudly declares, "In God We Trust."
Bless these candidates with the faith and wisdom to ask that You might use them according to Your will and purpose, and to restore and protect our nation as Your light for the world. May our new President be graced with the power, wisdom, discernment and enlightenment that can come only from You.
And bless this election that it might strengthen our nation to prosper and endure in the service of Your Holy Name.
Amen.”
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The Electronic Internet
As much as I resist change, I have now come to terms with the fact that the new-fangled electronic Internet is a useful invention.
The Internet has changed history, and improved the lives of millions – maybe billions – of people around the globe. It has created a wealth of knowledge and information never before thought possible. It has fueled economies, transformed cultures, and fostered globalization to a degree not heretofore seen. It has caused international borders to change. The Internet has created advantages for humankind in the fields of healthcare, finance, commerce, government and education. In short, the Internet has altered the world we live in.
I personally like it for the jokes.
Almost every day, friends and acquaintances send me jokes via email. I don’t even have to go looking for them. I just open my email account, and there they are.
They’re usually good for a few giggles during my workday, unless I’m too busy, in which case I save them ‘til night or the weekend to read.
Most of the time, these “E-Jokes” – a word I just made up – are forwarded by a friend who received it from a friend who received it from a friend, etcetera, and on and on and on. I figure, the more people who have forwarded it, the funnier it must be.
I hardly ever forward E-Jokes. Instead, I save them in a “special place” so that, someday, I can share them with the readers of this column. Sooner or later, I figure, there will come a week when I have just enough time to WRITE a column, but not enough time to include anything CLEVER or WITTY… unless, of course, I have a stash of E-Jokes just waiting in the “special place” to be transformed into a newspaper column.
That week is now! So you’re in luck. Instead of me trying to dream up something clever or witty – which usually has about a 2% success rate – this week, I have some E-Jokes which are 100% guaranteed, because they were forwarded over and over and over!
So, without further delay, I am pleased to present, direct from the Electronic Internet:
----------
You can say what you want about the South,
but you never hear of anyone retiring and moving North...
----------
TEN GREAT TRUTHS THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:
1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2) When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a dust-buster and a cat at the same time.
8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10) The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.
----------
IN HONOR OF USC’S NEXT OPPONENT:
The young man from Tennessee came running into the store and said to his buddy, "Bubba, somebody just stole your pickup truck from the parking lot!"
Bubba replied, "Did you see who it was?
"The young man answered, "I couldn't tell, but I got the license number."
----------
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:
1 -- You believe in Santa Claus.
2 -- You don't believe in Santa Claus.
3 -- You are Santa Claus.
4 -- You look like Santa Claus.
---------
MORE TENNESSEE JOKES
Did you hear about the Tennessee man who passed away and left his entire estate in trust for his beloved widow?
She can't touch it til she's fourteen.
Where was the toothbrush invented?
Tennessee. If it was invented anywhere else it would have been called a teethbrush.
A new law recently passed in Tennessee:
When a couple gets divorced, they're still brother and sister.
----------
SUCCESS:
At age 4 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 17 success is . . having a driver's license.
At age 35 success is . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 70 success is . .. . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.
---------
GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD
1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.
----------
While working at a pizza parlor I observed a man ordering a small pizza
to go. He appeared to be alone and the cook asked him if he would like
it cut into 4 pieces or 6. He thought about it for some time before
responding. “Just cut it into 4 pieces; I don't think I'm hungry enough
to eat 6.”
And he gets to vote!
The Internet has changed history, and improved the lives of millions – maybe billions – of people around the globe. It has created a wealth of knowledge and information never before thought possible. It has fueled economies, transformed cultures, and fostered globalization to a degree not heretofore seen. It has caused international borders to change. The Internet has created advantages for humankind in the fields of healthcare, finance, commerce, government and education. In short, the Internet has altered the world we live in.
I personally like it for the jokes.
Almost every day, friends and acquaintances send me jokes via email. I don’t even have to go looking for them. I just open my email account, and there they are.
They’re usually good for a few giggles during my workday, unless I’m too busy, in which case I save them ‘til night or the weekend to read.
Most of the time, these “E-Jokes” – a word I just made up – are forwarded by a friend who received it from a friend who received it from a friend, etcetera, and on and on and on. I figure, the more people who have forwarded it, the funnier it must be.
I hardly ever forward E-Jokes. Instead, I save them in a “special place” so that, someday, I can share them with the readers of this column. Sooner or later, I figure, there will come a week when I have just enough time to WRITE a column, but not enough time to include anything CLEVER or WITTY… unless, of course, I have a stash of E-Jokes just waiting in the “special place” to be transformed into a newspaper column.
That week is now! So you’re in luck. Instead of me trying to dream up something clever or witty – which usually has about a 2% success rate – this week, I have some E-Jokes which are 100% guaranteed, because they were forwarded over and over and over!
So, without further delay, I am pleased to present, direct from the Electronic Internet:
----------
You can say what you want about the South,
but you never hear of anyone retiring and moving North...
----------
TEN GREAT TRUTHS THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:
1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2) When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a dust-buster and a cat at the same time.
8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10) The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.
----------
IN HONOR OF USC’S NEXT OPPONENT:
The young man from Tennessee came running into the store and said to his buddy, "Bubba, somebody just stole your pickup truck from the parking lot!"
Bubba replied, "Did you see who it was?
"The young man answered, "I couldn't tell, but I got the license number."
----------
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:
1 -- You believe in Santa Claus.
2 -- You don't believe in Santa Claus.
3 -- You are Santa Claus.
4 -- You look like Santa Claus.
---------
MORE TENNESSEE JOKES
Did you hear about the Tennessee man who passed away and left his entire estate in trust for his beloved widow?
She can't touch it til she's fourteen.
Where was the toothbrush invented?
Tennessee. If it was invented anywhere else it would have been called a teethbrush.
A new law recently passed in Tennessee:
When a couple gets divorced, they're still brother and sister.
----------
SUCCESS:
At age 4 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 17 success is . . having a driver's license.
At age 35 success is . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 70 success is . .. . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.
---------
GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD
1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.
----------
While working at a pizza parlor I observed a man ordering a small pizza
to go. He appeared to be alone and the cook asked him if he would like
it cut into 4 pieces or 6. He thought about it for some time before
responding. “Just cut it into 4 pieces; I don't think I'm hungry enough
to eat 6.”
And he gets to vote!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
