Success from Life Stages

I continue to plug along in setting up my SUUSI workshops - I came up with a plan for giving this year's Stories of the Sky. Yesterday I completed a similar presentation for SUUSImatics, which will consist of seven "vignettes", some of which will be highly interactive. I also reviewed over my Toastmastersaccomplishments and found that I have given 100 speeches to or for Toastmasters clubs since I joined Toastmasters in 1986. I need 4 speeches for another Competent Toastmaster and two speeches about clubs for a Competent Leader award. I need two speeches for Advanced Toastmaster Bronze, but they could be two important ones. One calls for me to sell something (myself?), and the other calls for me to give a motivational success speech, like Zig Ziglar or Dr. Phil.

To me most success seminars sound alike, so I don't care to hear them. There are a few good ones around, such as Steven Covey, Steve Andreas, and Charles Faulkner (the last two are authors of "Neurolinguistic Programming"). But if I were to give one, how would it go? It would contain bits of wisdom from the most successful moments of my life. I divide my life into eight "acts", so I found a success principle from each. The list I got was:

Toddlerhood, Investigate it - it might be interesting
Childhood, Seek rewards
Adolescence, Consider all possibilities
Young adult, Take all possible actions
Settling down, Blaze your own path
Getting a promotion, Find a good group of people
Freedom Forties, Do what you like doing the best
Middle Age, Do it!

and the slogan I came up with just this past year: Just add one. I now need to make this into a 15-20 minute speech, which I will do sometime later this year.

True Patriotism on April 15

We have just passed July 4, the most patriotic holiday of the year, with flags, bands, fireworks, and holiday travel. All of this was enjoyable, while we preached the virtues of duties and blessings of this country. I feel, however, that if you want a real test of patriotism among Americans, which will force us not just to talk the talk but to also walk the walk, I think Independence Day should be celebrated on April 15. That would be the real test. The real test would also occur if the tax year were moved a quarter and July 4 made the day our 1040's had to go into the IRS.

Fourth of July Run

One of the most characteristic icons of Independence Day is the firework. This holiday, and New Year's Day are the two holidays in the year when we launch fireworks displays. My father would take us all to places to see fireworks, but usually I saw them in the distance from the car. I found this a little disappointing. He did take us down to Conesus Lake once to see fireworks, and I could see them closer then. Since then, I have tended to shun fireworks displays on Independence Day because of the huge traffic jams that result afterwards.

I had thought of bicycling to fireworks displays, but I found that running and walking are just as good. I run and swim for exercise, and last year for the first time, I ran after dark to hunt for all the fireworks displays in the neighborhood. Now I know that maybe these displays, created by people that live in the neighborhood, may be both illegal and dangerous (indeed, I did see one firework intended to go up in the air tonight instead go sideways), but still they are there and if I go out and run and walk at night I will find them. Last year I saw an impressive display that included rockets that exploded high in the air like public fireworks shows do.

I ran this year but it was not as productive, but I still found a crowd of people around a cul-de-sac in my neighborhood. They were launching firecrackers, Roman candles, and an occasional rocket. Further, I saw people walking back and forth. Evidently others want to go out to see these neighborhood displays. After these displays petered out, I ran around the neighborhood trying to find more displays but when I approached some cracking it would go quiet, only to pick up again as I run away from the place. It was an enjoyable run, good for keeping in shape and losing weight, and I get to see real fireworks (instead of the television variety) without having to drive into a traffic jam.

My next night run in the neighborhood will be what I call the "Yuletide fantasy run", when I run around to see all the displays of colored lights in the neighborhood.

Fourth of July

This is the first Fourth after 9/11, so in a sense one can describe this day as (0-)1-4-9-11. As it turns out, these integers have an interesting property. If you put these measurements on a ruler and only these, you can still draw or measure a line of any integer length up to 11 except 6. For example, 7 is 11 - 4, and 3 is 4 - 1. Such a ruler is called a Golomb ruler, and it is an interesting problem to find the minimum Golumb rulers of given lengths.

Wasp Nest

Today we called out the insect specialist and had them remove an enormous wasp nest in our yard. We discovered it a number of weeks ago and knew it was huge. When the experts came to take it away, they said it was the largest wasp nest they had found this year. It was about 10 inches across, about the size of a soccer ball (or football, for non-US readers). They let us keep some of it and we may want to give it to the local zoo so they can display it or use it for classes for children. If it's that large, could it have made the news? I am glad no one fell in it.

Trust

This has become an important topic for me. I feel that I have been let down by people and society all my life. When I was a child, I was promised a future of endless energy because of the discovery of nuclear power. Later on, I was betrayed over and over again by auto repair places who said they repaired my vehicle and then something goes wrong with it again. This built up such a lack of trust in me for car repair places and dealerships that I never voted for anyone who was associated with a car dealership. Nowadays, cellular phone companies are the same way. The promise of being able to call from anywhere is broken; half the time on trips I get cut off, because of lack of a tower. Cellular phones are complicated to use and there is no uniformity in them. You can't trust your phone.

There is also a lack of trust in society, in our corporations, our political leaders, and in our religious leaders. See The Corrosion of Public Trust by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post for a good article on trust. It may be one of the reasons why the stock market is not rising like it should upon recovery from a recession. Who's going to be the next Worldcom? According to Strauss and Howe, authors of "The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy", a lack of trust in public institutions characterizes an Unraveling (Third Turning) and leads ultimately to a Crisis (Fourth Turning). According to them a Fourth Turning will come soon, around 2005. They seem to be on the mark.

A Cat is always a Cat

I thought of a mind experiment today. I imagine that one of my cats is sitting nearby, in its usual cat pose. I pick up one of his feet and move it a bit. The cat moves the foot back. It looks the same as before. I push the cat over. It gets up, and sits up facing another direction. The cat is now in a different situation, and it sees much different things, because of my actions. But it is the same cat as before. This shows that if we go through a lot of changes in our lives, then we may wind up in a different lifestyle or scene, but we will be the same person.

I continued to prepare for SUUSI by doing some work on part of SUUSImatics. I went to church and heard an inspiring talk by an ACLU lawyer on the separation of church and state. It is amazing. The people of my congregation are almost unanimous, spiritual and humanist both, in deleting "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, but other people are almost unanimous in wanting to keep it in. It's a sharp divide, and it is not the only sharp divide in our nation now.