Ladies and gentlemen, you may start your lives.

I have always wanted to be invited to speak at a high school graduation ceremony.  On only one occasion was an invitation extended, but unfortunately a scheduling conflict prevented me from doing it.   However, I have been thinking about what I would have said and I am going to share it with you now.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to be here.  

I want to congratulate you on the completion of your first major life project.  The twelve or more years you spent getting to this day were aimed at this result and the skills you learned during those years brought you to this day.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that this project is probably the shortest one you will do in your lifetime.  Other projects may include: marriage, parenting, career, taking care of your own parents and siblings, hobbies, religion, community involvement,  friendship and some things you will take upon yourself that I haven't mentioned because I can't think of all of them.  All of these things are part of the fabric of life and require time and skill.  As I said, these last twelve or so years will seem easy compared to the other life events I mentioned. However, in addition to the training you received here in this institution and at home from your family, I have prepared a list of things that I think will serve you well.

1.  Enjoy your family, your life and your job in that order.  Be defined by the former; not the latter.

2.  Mentor and be mentored.  Alway try to work for someone who is smarter than you are.

3.  Remember that voicemail, email, Twitter, Face Book, et al will be the undoing of us all because they are poor substitutes for human contact.

4. Never shop at Sears or allow Steven Segal to become more than a punch line.

5.  The environment that you create must contain the essentials sought by the characters in the Wizard of OZ; heart, brain and courage.  And don't forget that Dorothy was looking for a home.

6.  If you choose management as a career, remember to manage people's weaknesses.  That's what management is all about.  Their strengths will take care of themselves.  You can be most effective shoring up weaknesses.

7.  Use consultants, counsellors and other distributors of advice sparingly.  Frequently, they serve merely as coroners.  You will recognize terminal or dead when you see them.

8.  Always believe and trust in a higher power.

9.  Do something for other humans,  the animals and the planet on a regular basis.  The ecology is the issue of forever.

10.  There doesn't always have to be a number 10.  But, if you really need one, it would be to learn to edit yourself.

Well, that wasn't too hard.  Only took me 65 years and a few months to put them together.  You'll do it faster and better.

May whatever force you choose, be with you always.

Thank you.

Try a Little Churlishness

I am overwhelmed with Face Book, My Space, Twitter, Plaxo et al.  It started simply enough.  I received one of those e-mails saying, "Joe Blitzelplik has added your name to his list of friends and we need your confirmation that he is a friend of yours."  I haven't seen Joe since high school which was a long time ago, I didn't particularly like him then although I don't remember why, so I thought "why not, it might be interesting to see what Joe has been up to for the last 40 years."  I cut and pasted the requisite web info and ok'd Joe as a friend.  

It was like one of those aliens opened its mouth and swallowed my computer.  Suddenly I am confronted with more information about Joe than I'd bargained for and I was dumbstruck with the knowledge that this hockey puck has 610 friends.  610!  Impossible!  Well, then I started getting requests from people that I've never heard of who are friends of Joe and would like to possibly be friends with me.  

Hold on!

Or, as they say at the Jewish Chronicle, "Hold the back page."

I am one of those guys who believes that if you can count your friends on the fingers of one hand, you are indeed fortunate.  I don't think anyone could legitimately be interested in acquiring 610 "friends." other than Joe and the many others I see on these sites.   It's pathetic!  These web bandits are exhibiting behavior much like bird watchers who have been accumulating an ever expanding list of birds they have seen and the bigger the number the more impressed are their friends and fellow birders.  It's like asking someone how many baseball cards they have or how many tunes they have on their i pod.  It's insane and unnecessary information.

Having said all of that, the marketing guy inside me has to recognize that the sheer number of these sites indicates a desire for them by a large number of people.  This is something that cannot be ignored.  But, it does point out an apparent isolation and subsequent need that people who spend too much time in front the computer must be feeling.  Why else would these sites be proliferating?

My young college friend Sally Amanda Balustrade  (not her real name)  thinks that these sites are causing young people to "squander their social capital."  In other words, one doesn't have to work at developing relationships with people face to face.  All you have to do is keep your personal site up to date and comment on the inane things people write in the "What are you doing right now" space on their page.  Soon, they are going to tell us what they are really doing and it's either going to be great reading or nauseating.  It will probably be both.

However, to every point there is a counter point.  And here is mine.

I propose a site for people you don't like.  They could include people from work, school, your family, your childhood and your fantasy life.  After all the years of therapy, wouldn't you like to tell your imaginary friend that you have come to the conclusion that he/she stifled your childhood.  And that you never understood that "special" language you two invented.  We could call it FUB.   FUB of course stands for F U Buddy.  We could encourage the people we don't like and don't like us to join and we could spend the respite from sugar and spice land bashing these people and vice versa.  We could post the absolute worst picture of our least favorite person and they could do the same.  It could be a real competition.  The friend business is not a challenge.  Instead of sending winks, nudges and giggles, we could send piles of fecal matter and balloons containing noxious gases to these hose heads. 

Who knows, FUB may surface one of these days from the dregs of the Internet, but in the meantime, I suspect that those nudges and winks and, yes, gooses, that you fling every day are never going to be quite the same after you've read this piece.

FUB, Brute!

Elmo 1997-2009

As some of you know, my wife Ellen is in the cat rescue business.  It would follow that we would have a few felines of our own and that it is true.  In fact, 11 cats share our home along with a myriad of stray, homeless and abandoned cats every year.  The visitors are housed in guest quarters in the basement.

In 1997, when we lived in Columbus, Ohio, a young male stray was brought to us who had been found by some truckers by the side of a highway.  He had been burned with cigarettes and was generally in bad shape.  Ellen restored him to health and we spent six months holding him on our laps as we watched television so that he would learn to trust humans again. The strategy paid off because he relaxed and became part of the gang. We named him Elmo.   

In 1998, When we retired to the North Fork,  Elmo began to gain weight.  We really don't know why as he didn't eat any more than his 11 brothers and sisters, but he ultimately weighed in at 23 pounds.  He was a big but gentle guy. Because of his girth, there were places on his body where he could not reach in order to clean himself, so the others took over that task for him.  Suffice it to say that the others must have really loved him.

Over the years, Elmo became the official greeter at our house.  When visitors arrived, he would jump onto the kitchen table and roll over on his back exposing his belly to all the petting and scratching our friends, workmen and any other category of visitor were willing to provide.

On one occasion, we had a chimney fire requiring us to call the fire department.  The firefighters arrived quickly and marched into our kitchen where the first thing they encountered was Elmo flat on his back awaiting their undying attention and affection. The fire, which had pretty much gone out, was almost ignored by Riverhead's bravest as they attended to Elmo's inviting belly and purr.  He was like that with almost anyone who came to visit.

The short of this is that about two weeks ago Elmo died.  If this appeared in an obituary in a newspaper it would have said, Elmo, age 12 died after a brief but valiant bout with cancer.   He is survived by his 11 brothers and sisters.  Cremation was private at the Mattituck/Laurel Veterinary Hospital.  Friends are asked to plant a bulb or flowering shrub in their yard in his memory.

Goodbye, Elmo.  We will be interviewing greeters for a long time before we can find anyone who can fill the job as well as you did.

Paul Harvey.....Good BYE

As many of you know, Paul Harvey died yesterday at age 90.  I met Paul a few times both during my career at ABC and other broadcasting companies.  What you heard on the radio was what you got when you met him in person.  The voice was his and not an on-air affectation and he was as down to earth as you would expect this personification of a midwesterner to be.

To my knowledge, he was the only ABC personality who had final say over which commercial products were advertised on his program because he felt that since he was reading the commercial, he had to approve of the product.  Not much of a problem you might think, but one day he turned down the American Dairy Council.  He just had a feeling that milk was not good for us.  This was before the cholesterol days. The sponsors said, "Ok, how about skim milk?"  It was still milk as far as Paul was concerned and it did not get on the air on his program.

Dr. Scholl's products didn't get on the air either because although Paul didn't have a problem with the products, he had never used any of them because he had no foot maladies and had no way of assuring the listeners from personal experience that the products were any good.

ABC built his own studio for him in Chicago.  It was used about an hour a day.  He didn't  like the one he had originally because it had turntables  in it and "people who use turntables," he said, "smoke and I don't want that smell in my workspace."  He was ahead of his time.  It is no wonder that he lived to be 90.

In my early days as a disc jockey, I worked the 10 AM to 3 PM shift.  At 12 Noon, we carried the 15 minute Paul Harvey news and commentary program.  And I, at age 15, got to sit in the studio with my feet up on the audio console and eat my lunch while listening to one of the best radio entertainers ever.  One day as I sat there sprawled in my teenage revery with a mouth full of a 10 cent McDonald's (Remember it was a long time ago),  Paul Harvey gave his famous signoff, "Paul Harvey, Good Day."  I looked up at the clock and it was only 10 minutes after twelve.   He was supposed to be on until 12:15.  I had a mouth full of food and was fighting with the ancient swivel chair to get up to the microphone with the dread of every young performer running through my head that there's nothing on the air and it's your fault.  They'll fire you for this.  Me against Paul Harvey, who were they gonna believe?  As the chair slipped into place and I swallowed a giant chunk of hamburger rendering me unable to speak, Paul Harvey said, "Oops, forgot page 4."  He then read page 4 and ended exactly on time.  Many years later I told him about this event when we shared the dais at an industry function.  He apologized profusely, because he knew what "dead air" meant to a young announcer.

Paul Harvey was important to the moral fiber of our country.  When speaking of the Vietnam War on the air one day, he intoned (to Richard Nixon) "I love you, Mr. President, but you are wrong about this war."  Years later, Nixon said that when he lost Paul Harvey and Walter Cronkite, he lost the war.

And so we end this remembrance with what I remember Paul Harvey saying when Gracie Allen died.  "Good-bye, dear Gracie.  A lot more people left less of a legacy of happiness than you did.  

And Paul, a lot less people left less of a legacy of integrity than you did.  

And, of course, I am sure you have all of your pages with you for the big show.

An Experiment in Enhanced Performance

At the risk of being accused of over blogging, I felt it incumbent upon me to offer the following: 

With all of this talk of performance enhancing drugs and the controversy over whether or not they make a difference, I propose that we administer massive doses of these drugs free of charge to all bankers, investment portfolio managers and auto manufacturers.

Will these drugs work?  Historically, they haven't worked in October during the baseball playoffs, but, historically, the financial markets tend to suffer in October anyway.  However, we could use the other eleven months of the year to test this theory.

Can it help?

It couldn't hurt.

And these drugs should be offered (at the players option) free of charge to all athletes, regardless of sport, so "leveling the playing field" will no longer be considered a cliche.

And besides, some of these guys could use smaller testicles.

Retirement - It's Not a Job. It's the Last Great Adventure

It's been almost 11 years since I retired from my job.  It hadn't seemed that long until last weekend when I received a phone call from one of the guys I used to work with.   We had a nice chat about what retirement's been like and I thought I would share some of my feelings about it with you.

In August of 1998, I officially left my position as a corporate officer.  This wasn’t a resignation, a firing, downsizing, or retirement.  The parent company just decided to sell the division for which I was responsible and I joined the rolls of people enjoying early retirement.  

This exit from the work force came about a year earlier than my wife and I had planned. For eight years, we had been renovating our retirement home to fit our exact needs. The “adjustment” to our plan worked to our advantage as we were able to leave a year earlier with no financial penalty.

Although my official title was president, what I really did for a living was observe the human condition as it applied to the work place and the world as the company was in the radio broadcasting business.  I tried to spot trends in human behavior both inside and outside so  that we could capitalize upon these trends and have a happy work force inside  and a larger listening audience outside.  I’m not paid to do this anymore, but I still do it for my own enjoyment, to keep my brain functioning and to have fodder to feed  the blog.  What follows are observations from outside of the workforce.  It’s a primer, if you will, for those who are about to step out from under the safety of the company tree.   If this is not your plan for the near term, stash this away until the appropriate time.   I hope it helps.

1.  Although there is plenty of money, I have suddenly begun to focus on telephone calling plans, restaurant early bird specials, and various combinations of cable and satellite services that will give us the most channels for the least amount of money.  I think I do this because for the first time in fifty years I do not have a regular paycheck coming in.  I took back the bill paying duties from my wife Ellen (which she surrendered gladly) so that I could see just how much was going out each month.    I still don’t know for sure.  However, I did learn that Ellen no longer believes  that her late father owns the electric company, she thinks he willed it to me.

2.  I have developed routines for myself.  We live in a rural place so I must go to the post office each morning to retrieve our mail.  This is an excellent opportunity to snag any needed tradesman as they are there retrieving their mail as well.  I also get to meet and greet some of our friends and acquaintances.  While I am there, I go through all of our mail and throw away all of the junk mail as the postmaster is kind enough to provide large waste containers for this purpose.  I hope she is recycling this stuff.  So, in short, this is a half hour task that allows me to return home ready to retreat to my den to pay the bills (Our credit rating is outstanding as I turn the bills in 24 hours.  So much for cash management.) and deal with anything else that is generated by the mail.

3.  I spend a lot of time with e-mail.  I have appointed myself the official propagator of humor to a select group of about 125 friends and acquaintances.  This keeps me in touch with them and in tune with the humor of the day which has always reflected the mood and attitudes of the world at large.  Blogging has also become a passion and a way to stave off mental deterioration.  Crossword puzzles help as well. 

4.  I bought a larger Swiss Army knife.  For years I carried the Executive model with its orange peeler and tiny toothpick and scissors.  That little gem retired as well.  It is living in a nice wooden box on my bookshelf that is almost full of things I think I’ll need someday.  (I’m going to need some  more nice wooden boxes soon.) When you are retired, you need a major toothpick, larger scissors and a greater selection of screw drivers as I have noticed that every day  there are a far greater number of occasions to: (1) pick my teeth, (2) clip things out of newspapers or magazines and (3) tighten screws of various sizes, types and head shapes.

5.  A friend of mine related a story about a mutual acquaintance who  turned down a gazillion dollars for his company.  When asked why and how he was able to resist such a tempting offer he said, “I don’t want to be another one of those rich guys with nothing to do.”  To me, this is very sad because obviously this fellow has not developed an inner life.  He thinks he is defined by the company he owns.  He needs to find some other interest other than the work.   Many people have this same need.  I can’t count the number of retired executives I used to see in the building lobby of my former employer.  They were there more often than when they were on the payroll. They had developed no inner life so they had to come back to the mother building to regain their sense of self.  Many of them had business cards printed using the company logo (an illegal thing I think).  This card had their former title on it, their current home address and phone number and, somewhere, in small print,  the word “retired.”  Forget that “get a hobby” is a cliche and get one.  Find something that you will know as much about as you knew about your work.  Unless you truly hated your job, I suspect you will find this activity most rewarding.  I chose photography.  It has all the glitz and creativity that the work had.  It’s has equipment, varying techniques, changing technology and several publications dedicated to it that discuss the equipment, the varying techniques and the changing technology.  There are even contests in case you need the competitive buzz.

6.  If you retire to a place other than the one in which you worked, be prepared for the luxury of being no one special.  In the beginning, people here only knew us casually. They had no idea of who we were, who we are or what we did.  They had no social expectations of us.  They did not know anything about us.  Therefore, we could be who we actually think and know we are.  If we tend to expose our former social styles it is our choice and not one that is expected.  (No more “Wait till you meet this guy...he’s a joke teller, a jerk, a drunk, a bore, a fugitive, a fraud, a soothsayer, a pirate, a nay sayer, a prayer sayer, a dud, a big corporate guy.) If you ever really wanted to be accepted for who you are or think you are this is probably the last chance you’ll get.

7.  This is also a good time to check through your stuff.  At this point in our lives, the stuff we have is more or less permanent.  As you review your stuff you will find things you haven’t touched in years.   Chances are you are never going to touch them again.  Give them to a charity or the nice men with the big truck who come early in the morning.  On the other hand, if you have lusted after something like  new golf clubs, new boat, room addition, new furniture or any other thing you and/or your spouse think is essential to your well being, buy it now.  It will be almost impossible to talk yourself into it later. 

    

8.  This is also a time to give back to the community.  After all the community provided us with many luxuries.  So if you were ever going to do volunteer work, now is the time because for the first time in a long while you are truly in charge of your time.  Volunteer work can be anything you want it to be.  Lots of charitable organizations can use your skills.  Just remember that charity management is not about money (because there isn’t any for the administrators or anyone else for that matter) it is about power.  Let them deal with when the mailer goes out, how it will be folded and what color it will be even if what they have decided is, in your view, ridiculous.  It’s their payment and ego reenforcement.  Many of you may have been like this in your work and now you can see up close and personal just how stupid, time consuming and wasteful  micro management really is.  You should concern yourself with doing the real work for which  the charity was founded.   I know, it’s hard to be an Indian after you’ve been a chief.  However, you must remember you had to start out as a pretty good Indian to become the chief you became.  There is nothing wrong with Indiandom. 

9.   Think long and hard about that second home.  I’ve done the numbers and it does not  appear to be worth the worry of having the alarm company call you from hundreds of miles away in the middle of the night to tell you the smoke alarm has gone off, the fire department can’t get in and they want permission to break down the door.  Besides, for what you will spend annually on a second home, you can go to the finest resorts in the world for a month or two every year.  And if you don’t like the one you picked, return the keys and go somewhere else next year. 

10.  Make a daily date with your spouse.  Ellen and I try to sit down with a glass of something every day and just touch on what happened that day.  It’s easy to inadvertently live separate lives once you are retired.  You and/or your spouse are no longer road warriors with tales of the hunt to tell.  The job of retirement comes with its own set of tales and it is very easy to forget to share since we  think that because we are spending more time  together we are communicating more.  This will not be true unless you make it so.

What you have read is all I know about this part of the life adventure even after having lived it for almost 11 years.  However, I am keeping copious mental notes which I will share with you when I know more.

A Lighter Tone

I read my last few blogger posts and found them to be a bit ponderous.  So, I thought I would give you and excerpt from a piece I wrote a few years ago that is essentially some free association stuff.  Here it is:

Please read the following letter to Dear Abby carefully.  It is  representative of a society that depends on curing its ills easily.  Abby and her evil twin sister, Ann Landers, were "over the counter" before we ever identified or coined the term "generic."

Dear Abby:   

A few years ago, you printed a letter from a woman in Scottsbluff, Nebraska in which she described, step by step, the procedure by which her husband, an electrician's apprentice, removed her ovaries and uterus.  The operation, using commonly found household implements, was performed in their kitchen and seemed quite simple.  Unfortunately, I can't find the clipping.  Would you mind reprinting it?  Thanks, Abby.

Hoping to be Barren in Bangor

Dear Hoping:

Here it is, but speak with your clergyman before you proceed.

P.S. Be sure your husband washes his hands first.

Some quickies:

Television invariably projects those trends that were passe two years ago.  This includes television news.

My friend Gary's mother insisted that he wash his hands as soon as he got out of bed in the morning.  "You never know what you might have touched during the night," she offered in explanation.

My mother never opened the door without first asking who was there through the closed door.  (No peepholes then)  On one occasion, when told it was "New telephone book," she replied, "Go away, I haven't finished reading last year's yet."  

Some people save phone books for years but throw out instruction manuals.  They also save today's newspapers and magazines containing articles that seem urgent and relevant to their lives.  At the time they say, "I'll read this later."   Some people tear things out of magazines only to throw them away when, months later, they can no longer remember why they cut the piece out in the first place.  I am one of those people.  Except I keep the whole newspaper and/or magazine.

Some people, like sheep, often bleat when they are annoyed.  Andy Rooney bleats every week on "60 Minutes."

An Andy Rooney like bleat goes like this:  (As you read the following, imagine it sounding an octave higher than your normal speaking voice even if you are a woman.)

There are too many postage paid subscription cards in magazines.  One would do it.  It is a great waste of trees.  We should encourage people to tear them out and write in large letters, "YOU MUST STOP DOING THIS!" and mail them, unsigned, back to the magazine.  After paying 28 cents for these cards, maybe the publishers will cut down on the number of these insertions and save some trees.

Well, I feel better.

Happy Valentine's Day!