June 14, 2019

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When I was in South Africa, our hosts were kind enough to take me to an incredible game park where I could see African animals in the wild. And I did! Rhinos, giraffes, ostriches, and baboons - not the kind of animals you usually see wandering around, say, New York. But the highlight was coming around this curve and meeting a great bull elephant in the road. He put on a real show for us for several minutes. I picked up a local newspaper a while later and saw a news article with that game park as the dateline. The article was about the young male elephants there-the ones the rangers call the teenagers. Apparently, in recent months, those teenage male elephants had been on a reign of terror in the park, doing things that elephants don't usually do. They had attacked other animals like rhinos. They had attacked tourists, inflicting death or serious injury. And finally the park officials got it figured out what had gone wrong with these young males. When they were newborn, they were taken from another game park and brought to this one. But their fathers - the bull elephants - were not brought with them. So these teenage elephants grew up without a model of how a grownup male should act - and they were out of control.

May 3, 2019

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When you have three children, only one can be the first, of course. And that one becomes the one that all the others measure by when it comes to what privileges and treatment they should receive. In our case, our daughter is the oldest, followed by her two brothers. Now the kids could be getting along perfectly, and then suddenly the boys would learn about something their big sister got. Then I would hear the march of determined feet to my desk, followed by two boys asking in unison, "How come she...?" Followed by whatever goody she had gotten that they had not. Actually, knowing that kind of question was coming helped me make better decisions.

April 10, 2019

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The military has roll call - reading out the names to see if everybody's there. Family get-together? Well, you know who you've got. You've got Mom, Dad, Grandma, Granddad, and grandchildren. You don't usually have roll call. Now, there was a point where we had one three-year-old grandson who took roll in his own little way. While we're all busy in the usual chatter and bustle of everyone catching up, our grandson was obviously evaluating who's there and who isn't. You could tell. Before very long, he would pipe up, "Where's Grandma?" or "Where's Daddy?" or whoever happens to be MIA at the moment. And he wanted answers about where they were and why they weren't there. He wanted every person in the family to be there!

April 1, 2019

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One lousy moose - that's all our family wanted to see. The moose did not get the memo. Or he did get the memo and he took off. We were on our first trip to Alaska years ago, and all five Hutchcrafts were determined, "We're going to meet a moose." After all, like they're grazing in every backyard in Alaska, right? Well, the February we were there it looked like they'd decided to take the winter in the Bahamas. I was busy speaking at some meetings, so my wife and kids were out driving around, you know, looking for a moose. They even went to the animal sanctuary. We were told there was always a moose there. Not always. Several people told us about hitting a moose that suddenly appeared in the middle of the road. Not any on the road we were on. Someone suggested leaving a Hershey bar on our car - something about a chocolate mousse. Anyway, we weren't that desperate. Well, lots of looking, no finding. Next morning, we drove down the driveway of the house someone had loaned to us and guess what? Yep! Three moose, grazing at the end of the driveway. I guess you don't find moose; they find you.

March 19, 2019

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Our son brought a playful little Shih Tzu puppy into our house. She loved to play with bubbles. Yeah, she would chase those bubbles that we would blow on the floor, and it was crazy to watch. And she also loved bottles. You know, the plastic bottles? She would enjoy a good battle with any two-liter plastic soda pop bottle, and we'd throw it on the floor. She'd attack that thing! You could hear it all through the house! Here's this plastic bottle being thrown into the air, she forces it up against the wall, it thuds along the floor, (Oh, it was great when you're trying to sleep, let me tell you.). Finally she would fight that thing until she was just totally exhausted. And then you'd hear nothing. You'd go in and she was totally flopped on the kitchen floor. There she was, flat out, almost out cold it looked like. She had literally worked herself totally out of energy in combat with a dumb, plastic bottle.

Monday, March 11, 2019

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"Our planes were in the air." That's what the Air Force briefing officer told us as we had the privilege of touring a major American defense command facility. He was talking about a day during the Cold War when, unbeknownst to most Americans, World War III could have almost begun. America's warning systems had indicated clearly that Russian planes were in the air and headed for the United States. In those days when nuclear war was our greatest fear and a real possibility, the orders were given to get our planes in the air. Those planes were headed for the Soviet Union with the capability of starting a nuclear war. Why hadn't you heard about it? Thankfully, the trackers discovered in time that what was sent out was an erroneous message about the Russian planes. You know why? Because of one defective computer chip. That's a close call!

Thursday, March 7, 2019

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Now here's a memory for your summer vacation scrapbook. You got kissed by a dolphin. No thank you. But it happens to people at SeaWorld. At least when I was there they were doing it. You know, it's that park where you can see the fish and the seals, etc. doing these amazing tricks. Those dolphins are really something. I watched them jump through hoops (I wish you could get your kids to do that), they'll dance on their tails, and did I mention jumping out of the water and kissing tourists? Yeah. But if you want to understand why they do all this neat stuff, you have to watch what they do after each trick. They swim around the pool and straight for the guy with the bag. You know what's in that bag. Fish! Yummy fish! If you want a dolphin to do something, give him a fish and he'll do it again! Men are a lot like that.

Thursday, December 6, 2018

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Some of the nasty words in the English language are often described as four-letter words. So it's probably not a coincidence that "boss" is a four-letter word. You sure get a lot of complaining about the boss. Usually the boss writes a Want Ad when an employee is needed. But what if the employee got to write an ad when the boss was needed? What would you put in there? "Boss wanted: fair, consistent, caring, listener, interested in his employees, impartial, approachable." Hey, hold it! You want it? You got it!

Friday, November 30, 2018

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Our sons had them when they were little-action figures of their TV heroes. Every new generation of kids has their action figures: GI Joe, Superman, Star Wars, X-Men. And now they've got a gazillion super heroes you can have as your action figure. Well, a while back I caught a story on TV news about the best action figure idea I've ever heard of. They were talking about a company, the name of which I didn't catch, who are making custom action figures dressed in contemporary combat dress. It's especially for the children of Americans who were serving in a war zone. Guess whose face is on their action figure? Your Dad! Wow!

Thursday, November 22, 2018

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Okay, so they won't deliver mail on Thanksgiving. But it still might be a good day for someone you love to get mail. Possibly hand-delivered by you!

Now, in our world, you know that rare means something is valuable, like antiques, baseball cards, all kinds of collectibles. The less there is of something, the more valuable it is. How about "thank you". Yeah, that's rare.