Thursday, September 22, 2005

Jerry and I were best friends in high school, and then we didn't see each other for several years. But we were able to get together again when we found out that he and his wife had moved to an apartment in New York City. He was training to become a 747 pilot for a major airline. My wife and I went in to have dinner at their apartment, and we realized that Jerry and Gail were making the big bucks. They had an exclusive apartment, expensive furniture and a brand new Cadillac. Jerry took us down to the high-security garage to show the Caddy to us with a lot of pride. A couple months later, they drove out to our little apartment in a New Jersey suburb. We didn't live in a fancy neighborhood, but you know, it wasn't a bad neighborhood. Jerry had to park his Cadillac where we parked our un-Cadillac - on the street. We prepared a nice dinner, but Jerry couldn't enjoy it. He couldn't enjoy the conversation we tried to have after dinner. The whole time he was really nervous. Every five minutes or so he would leave the conversation, go over to the window, and check on his Cadillac! I assured him it would be OK, but no, no. He spent the whole night worrying about losing his expensive car. At first, I though Jerry owned a Cadillac. It turned out that a Cadillac owned Jerry!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

People in the real estate business will tell you that three things really matter when it comes to the value of any property: location, location, and location. Apparently, the President's White House team believes that, too. After Bill Clinton's re-election, "Newsweek" described the efforts of various officials to get the best office spaces at the White House. It happens with every administration. The article was named, interestingly enough, "The Geography of Power." What makes an office at the White House a good office? Well, if you had a choice about your office, you'd probably want the one with windows and plenty of space. But that's not what matters most in the White House office scramble. It's how close are you to the Oval Office! You must be near the President! The way they put it is this: "proximity is power." Yes, it is.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Boxing. Now, some people like it and some people don't. But those ever-present "Rocky" movies seemed to give us boxing as a mythical battlefield between the nice guy underdog and the not-so-nice favorite. A lot of boxing fans thought it was sort of a Rocky matchup when several years ago Evander Holyfield went against Mike Tyson for the WBA heavyweight championship. Holyfield was a 25-1 underdog when the fight was booked. Tyson was the almost invincible "Iron Mike" then - called by some commentators "the baddest man on the planet." Well, much to everyone's surprise including Las Vegas, where a lot of money was lost, the underdog Holyfield soundly defeated Mike Tyson. USA Today's lead sports story carried this headline, "Holyfield puts faith in more than his fists." It went on to tell about the boxer's strong emphasis on prayer before and during the fight. In fact, let me quote an amazing perspective from that article that goes way beyond boxing. "Holyfield sang along to a gospel tune on his CD player before leaving his dressing room, leading his camp in a joyous, revival-style celebration. One fighter said, "It was as if the fight was a preliminary. He had already won the main event in the dressing room!"

Thursday, May 5, 2005

They just had the battle of the Little Big Horn again, and Custer lost this time too. Actually it was part of a movie on the life of the great Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse. My Lakota friend, Jerry, was asked to be one of Crazy Horse's warriors in the movie. Now, one challenge was riding bareback. They had to do that full speed in the battle scenes, and of course, the big scene was the portrayal of Custer's last stand. Now, interestingly enough, Jerry can't even find himself in those scenes because the warriors were going by so fast in a cloud of dust. Someone asked him how many warriors they needed to reenact a battle that involved so many Indians. He said, "Oh, about 80." Hollywood of course is all about illusion, so they just had these 80 guys charge up to the soldiers, turn their horses sharply and circle around again and again and again. There weren't nearly as many warriors on the other side as it looked like in the movie. Custer might have wished that the real odds might have been that even.

Thursday, April 7, 2005

It was one of those unrehearsed Presidential moments that capture America's Chief Executive in situations you might never otherwise see. After George W. Bush's Second Inauguration, there was a prayer service at the National Cathedral, and an offering was taken for which the President was apparently unprepared. What the camera captured was his Father, Former President Bush, reaching over his son's shoulder from the pew behind him. He was slipping the President of the United States some money to put in the offering plate. It all happened pretty quickly and pretty skillfully, but the camera got it, and you just had to smile.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Our sons both played linemen positions on their high school football team - which means they had to take their share of jokes about being big and dumb. Linemen's numbers are usually like 70-something, and they were number 75 and 76. So the word was that linemen wore their I.Q. on their jerseys. It's probably a good thing most of us were never told what our Intelligence Quotient is and really a good thing it wasn't advertised on our jersey! But after all is said and done, there's a measurement of your capabilities that's far more important anyway.

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Frankly, I've never understood how a biologist could be an atheist. The human body is just too amazing to explain without a brilliant designer being behind it. There are thousands of examples of the Creator's skill. Just take the human kidney for example. Literally, I mean, if they had to take one of your kidneys, something amazing happens. The one that is left - suddenly burdened with doing the work of two kidneys - starts to grow until its capacity enlarges to the point where one kidney is now miraculously able to do what it used to take two kidneys to do!

Friday, November 5, 2004

Driving is never more exciting than it is during a major snowstorm. In fact, it is so exciting you ought to avoid it. Sometimes you just can't. I was scheduled to speak at a retreat in the Pocono Mountains one January weekend and a major snowstorm moved in right on the Friday when everyone is supposed to be traveling to Pennsylvania from New Jersey. I waited all day for the call, "Sorry, it's been cancelled." I got the call. They were still going, and by that time it was dark. It was snowing very impressively, so I traveled at a very reduced speed and it looked almost impossible to make it until I spotted my friend up ahead - my friend the snow plow. He was clearing a lane as he went. I just fell in right behind Mr. Snow Plow and followed him through the storm all the way to the state line.

Monday, October 25, 2004

I've never been in a storm at sea and that's just fine! I've heard the stories, and that's enough. Like the ship some years ago that was making a transatlantic voyage from Liverpool, England, to New York. One night, at a time when most of the passengers were sleeping, the ship was hit by this mega Atlantic storm. The wind and the waves were so violent, that at one point they tipped the ship almost on its side, and down below passengers were thrown out of their bunks! That is what you call a rude awakening!

In one cabin, a little girl was thrown out of her bed, like everyone else, and her mother had already been awakened by the intensity of the storm. There was one thing different, though, about this particular passenger - her Daddy was the captain! Bleary eyed, she asked her Mom the only thing she really wanted to know about the situation, "Is Daddy on deck?" Her Mom said, "Well, yes he is, honey." The little girl's response was right to the point, "Then I'm going back to bed."

Friday, October 8, 2004

When you are in a hurry, there are words you just don't want to see on the highway, like "reduce speed," "construction ahead." Sometimes that slowdown occurs long before you see the sign, and then you wonder why you're in a two-mile traffic jam. Usually, everything has to slow to a crawl around a construction area.

Once when I was on a major road in a metropolitan area, we had to slow down for this big construction area. They were obviously doing major work, so that meant the expressway was going to be slowed down for a while. My cab driver had a good attitude toward it all. He said, "Well, it's an inconvenience, but it will be so much better when they're done."