Saturday, March 31, 2012

Trayvon Martin

I first read about the shooting of Trayvon Martin on Huffington Post about a week and a half before it really hit the national news, and I've thought about it a lot. Of course I can't make any statements of fact about the case, only two people really know what happened that night, Trayvon, and George Zimmerman. But my gut feeling from the beginning was that the police department seemed to be taking Zimmerman's account of events at face value, and not conducting a thorough investigation.

One of the questions I have to ask is if George Zimmerman didn't own a gun, or didn't intend to use the one he owned, would he have followed Trayvon if he felt threatened? I don't think so. I don't put myself in situations where I think I could come to harm, because I know I would have no way of defending myself.

I'll never forget a statement I heard before, that once that bullet leaves the chamber, there's nothing to stop it. I think too many of the people that own guns that should think long and hard about that, probably don't think about it at all.

I hope the truth does come out in this case, because it makes no sense to me that a teenage boy carrying Skittles, a can of iced-tea and talking on his cell phone should lose his life like this.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

I'm Still Here

So I have been busy, and know that three weeks is too long to go without posting! I have been thinking about it though. Things are picking up at work and I never get as much accomplished on the weekends as I should.
I've been enjoying the new show 'Awake' on NBC, and of course 'Republic of Doyle' on CBC Wednesday nights. I'm still spending so much time playing catch up on the weekends, mostly on my sleep on Saturday morning...

  
 
Munchkin really cracked me up on Sunday, because he figured out the sound the dryer makes right before it stops, and was right there in front of it, ready to jump in as soon as I opened the door...
I keep telling them to be patient, that the weather will eventually get better for them to be outside more. This week has been encouraging despite the frost this morning. I took this picture of the plum tree in front of the apartments next door on Wednesday evening. I was hoping to get a close up of some of the birds in the tree, but they flew away.
The squirrels are active again, after being out of sight for a little while.  Sunday afternoon right before I let the cats out, I saw one hopping over from Dave's next door. And then within a minute it had run away and was all the way on top of the roof of his house...   



Well I'm yawning pretty heavily and need to head to bed, hopefully the next post will be more timely!

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Awake

After a behavioral incident at work, the LAPD mandates that he begin seeing a psychiatrist.
A new show premiered on NBC this past Thursday night called "Awake' starring Jason Isaacs. It was very good, and is a mind bender concept of a L.A. police detective living in two alternate realities after a car crash. In one reality his wife died, in the other his wife survived but their son died.
It was excellent, and you can catch it online - if more intelligent TV that makes you think is your cup of tea, I highly recommend it.

Jeff Zaslow

Jounalist and author Jeff Zaslow, who died in a car crash last month, brought admirable integrity to his work, says Bob Greene.

I had first heard about Jeff Zaslow in a NBC Nightly News segment about his last book 'The Magic Room', and it sounded like something that was definitely worth reading. It is about Becker's Bridal shop in the small town of Fowler Michigan.
Sadly he was killed in a car accident near Petoskey Michigan in early February, he was 53. His friend, author Bob Greene wrote a very meaningful article that appears today on CNN.com that is a wonderful tribute; but for me, was also inspirational about a person who was really living his values without making a fuss about it.

The article appears here in it's entirety:

(CNN) -- "What # are you at?"
The brief e-mail arrived late on the morning of January 24. I keep looking at it.
It was from Jeff Zaslow. We first became friends more than 25 years ago. We got together as often as we could when we found ourselves in the same town, usually for long, laughter-filled dinners; Jeff, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, in recent years became the author of multiple big bestselling books, most of them on inspirational themes.
"What # are you at?"
He was going to be making appearances for his latest book, "The Magic Room," and he had looked at his schedule and saw that he had a few days between speeches in the South. He knew that I'd been holed up in a hotel on the west coast of Florida, trying to get some writing done. He was going to take those two days between speeches to join me and just hang out.
So we talked on the phone, and arranged the days. Today -- Sunday, March 4 -- is the day he was to arrive.
On February 10, on his way back to his home in suburban Detroit from a book signing in Petoskey, Michigan, the night before, Jeff was killed instantly when, according to police, his car skidded on a snowy road and was hit head-on by an oncoming semitrailer truck. He was 53.
Jeff's wife, Sherry, his three daughters, Jordan, Alex and Eden, and his parents, Harry and Naomi, have suffered an unfathomable loss. The obituaries and tributes written by his friends and colleagues have all centered on Jeff's never-ending thoughtfulness and compassion. The tributes have been entirely accurate; the constancy of Jeff's kindness was one of life's rarities.
Today, when Jeff should have been arriving for our time together, I'd like to pass on a lesson from him that I believe can be used to great effect by anyone, regardless of his or her line of work.
It has to do with the book that first made him a bestselling author, "The Last Lecture," written with Professor Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University. The book was a publishing phenomenon: 5 million copies sold in the English language alone, translations into 48 languages around the world.
Some people thought that Jeff got lucky with that book.
But luck had nothing to do with it.
In early September 2007, Jeff was working on a Wall Street Journal column about a trend he was hearing about at U.S. universities. Professors were thinking what they might say if they had to deliver one last lecture, and were in fact giving those lectures, summing up what had been meaningful in their lives.
As he was reporting the piece, Jeff learned that a professor at Carnegie Mellon -- Pausch -- was going to give what might literally be his last lecture. Pausch was dying from pancreatic cancer.
It was going to be inconvenient for Jeff to go from Detroit to Pittsburgh for the speech; there was a problem with the price of the flight, and the schedule, and he also had obligations to attend to in Michigan that day. It would have been much easier just to call the professor and get a quote, or have the university send him an audio or video recording of the lecture. Remember: Jeff didn't even know, at that point, whether Pausch's lecture would warrant a whole column.
But he got up that morning in Detroit and -- Jeff being Jeff -- decided that he really ought to see for himself.
He was an established and respected Wall Street Journal staff member; no one at the paper would have faulted him for doing a quick interview with Pausch on the phone.
Jeff got in his car and drove more than 300 miles from Detroit to Pittsburgh to sit in the audience and listen to the speech. A five-hour drive there, and then a five-hour, 300-mile drive back.
It paid off spectacularly, of course. The column -- moving, tender, insightful -- was a sensation, and the book that he ended up writing with Pausch gave Jeff a new career in the top echelon of American authors, and provided financial security for his family.
But -- and this is what is important -- it was nothing he didn't do all the time. In his work, he always went the extra step -- the extra hundred steps. He never took the easy way.
I remember, seven or eight years ago, well before "The Last Lecture," Jeff had come to Chicago to interview an old-time vaudeville performer. To the best of my recollection, the newspaper story was going to have something to do with audiences, or audience reactions. The old performer was going to be one sliver of a longer piece. An easy phone-call interview.
But Jeff didn't do things that way. He flew to Chicago and, suitcase in hand (he hadn't checked into his hotel yet), met me at the restaurant where we had arranged to have dinner. At one point we talked about why, at this stage in his career, he still pushed himself so hard. He said he just wanted to look into the man's eyes when he interviewed him the next day. He felt the story would be a little better that way.
At the end of the meal we went to the coat-check window; they had taken Jeff's suitcase down a long flight of stairs to store it on a basement level. Jeff didn't want the young woman to have to carry it up the stairs, so he went down to get it. I stood there and watched as he came up the steep flight of stairs, visibly weary, huffing, sweating, lugging the heavy bag; we looked at each other and both of us burst out laughing.
"Look at you," I said. "You look like 'Death of a [cuss-word-adjective] Salesman.'"
"I know," he said. "Why do I do this?"
We both knew the answer. He did it because it was the right way to do a job. And it doesn't matter what a person does for a living. It can be the lawyer who stays late to look up a few more citations of case law, to give his client the best possible chance. It can be the teacher who goes over the lesson plan one more time, adding something vital to it at midnight, even though the students or the school administrators will never be aware of the effort she has put in. It can be the factory worker who takes it upon himself to check the specifications a third and fourth time, wanting to be absolutely certain that the product will be as close to perfect as humanly possible.
Does it always pay off, as Jeff's 10 hours on the road paid off with "The Last Lecture"? Of course not. It hardly ever pays off that big. Most times, your boss, your colleagues, your own family will never know that you put in the extra effort when you didn't have to.
But you'll know. That's what counts. And when the day finally comes when you have your big success, when you get your big break, it won't be because you made the extra effort once. It will be because you made the extra effort every time.
Jeff did. And that's the lesson I'd like to pass on for him. Especially today. The silence at the dinner hour tonight is going to be awfully loud.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

RIP Davy Jones

When I heard that Davy Jones died this week, apart from my sadness that his life was over, it was that realization that listening to their music now will be bittersweet. It sounds so corny to say it, but it is like the end of a part of your own life.
It also made me think about my brother Mark, who also was a Monkees fan. And if he was still alive, I would have gotten a random email from him announcing the news.
That's how it was for the last three years of his life. He wasn't talking to me, but he would send emails out of the blue about something that he knew I would find interesting, because he still knew what mattered to me. And I know he would have been sad at this news too.

It was like how if Mom was still alive when 'Prairie Home Companion' had gone off the air she would have been devastated. But then she would have also been thrilled when it came back. I'm assuming it's natural for us to still think of how someone that's gone would have reacted to a current event. I'm guessing that is why I feel even sadder than I should this week; that I'm thinking about more than just Davy Jones passing.

The Jon Stewart Show


In a previous post I was referring to some comments by Rick Santorum that scared the crap out of me. The first clip contains those comments, and Jon Stewart dives in and exposes the insanity. But don't worry, Mitt Romney gets to show who he is at heart too. (The second clip is a continuation of the first).

Mitt Romney strangely referred to himself as 'severely' conservative; and I think Rick Santorum is 'scary' conservative. My concern is not that both of them are men of strong faith, but that they only really care about people of the same faith as themselves. They aren't concerned about humanity in general. Along with Newt Gingrich, they have basically demonized anyone that isn't conservative, and then somehow expect that everyone they've insulted along the way is going to vote for them in the general election. They are all trying to 'out-conservative' each other, clamoring to appeal to Republican voters as if that is the only group that will be voting in November. I guess they are counting on independent voters to not be paying attention.
There have been some outrageous comments from everyone but Ron Paul for the most part. And either they will stand by them 100%, or they will backtrack in damage control mode. But the reality is that the first thing that comes out of their mouth is really how they think, and that's the scary part.