Open Discussion On Race. Santa’s Perspective.

Posted on by

It’s probably the only blog post being published on the internet today written from the perspective of a professional Santa on the topic of race relations in the United States of America. You will be the judge of its profundity.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits!

The issue of race gives me pause.

The issue of race gives me pause.

Let me just define the issue for a moment: race relations includes anyone who isn’t me. It seems to be the popular definition in the media today, as you’re probably a racist no matter what you say if you are different than the person you’re talking about. Religion has now been thrown in with skin color/ethnic background. Just wanted to be clear on my perspective.

Down to the nuts and bolts: each and every one of you, on all sides of the issue, need to lighten up and follow Santa’s lead on this item. Not me, Santa. You see, I get to portray a great Christian from another era. He was a Turk or a Greek, depending on which side you ask. He was white, or he was dark. None of it mattered. Nicholas was the man on the side of the child. We’re all children of God. (Perhaps you can see where this is going?)

The other night I worked a large party and took hundreds of photos with people. My photographer was a young man from Northeast Minneapolis. Born and raised there, he still self-identified as a Palestinian. Okay, that’s his choice. His partner was a fellow of his same age who was about as Wonder Bread as they get. During the course of the evening we were involved in taking pictures of Christians, Jews, Muslims, men, women, children, white, black, yellow, red, and a few shades that I wasn’t familiar with even at my age. I don’t know if any of them were from Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, because I didn’t ask. I did notice color. You have to set the lights up differently to get the right picture depending on skin tone.

That’s what it came down to: honoring the skin tone so the picture showed up legible. Other than that, our goal was to get great pictures with good smiles. My personal goal was to say a prayer for each of the people who took a picture with me.

I met my goal. And I did something else: I felt that love for each of those people that Jesus feels for all of humanity. We’re not different under the skin. We have the same hopes, loves, phobias, dreams, and concerns. Some of us are hurting in the heart, some have broken limbs, others have money problems. But all of us are simply children of The King. (And, I don’t mean Elvis.)

If each of us would just back away from the television for a few minutes and think like rational beings we’d all be better off. I won’t go through the tired litany of “Not all…” for the millionth time. But I will point out that Martin Luther King Jr. had the thing nailed when he hoped that one day we’d judge based on character not skin color.

Have there been issues in our past? Absolutely. But to blame a 28 year old for something that happened 200 years ago is pretty sad. We don’t visit the sins of the forefathers in my tradition. We start clean when we meet and treat each other with respect until that has been proven to be wrong.

Go forth today and look anew at your coworkers, fellow students, neighbors, and casual acquaintances. Judge them for who they are, not what they are. Because the latter only matters to get the color balance and light levels right when you’re sitting with Santa.

Let’s stop hating because of appearance. Because that lets Satan win the battle. Try it Christ’s way and love your neighbor.

’nuff said.

Here Are The Official Winter Rules (With Observations)

Posted on by

Last year I posted a highly popular list of winter driving rules. I was at the end of my rope after a long winter. This year I’m getting ahead of the curve for my own sanity. You have all had at least two practice snowfalls to get your act together. The official rules take effect with the setting of the sun today. There will be no more practice rounds, penalties will be enforced from here on out.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits!

Portholes are not acceptable window openings. Unless your house is on fire and you’re trying to save the car, you have time to scrape your windows. This includes removing the snow from your head and tail lights as well as the hood and roof. If you used a credit card to clear a hole you are in violation.

Streets are slippery. You need to leave a little extra room between you and the car in front of you. This goes double for turning at intersections: nobody to blame but yourself if you slide out of control because you’re going too fast.

Pedestrians who walk down the middle of the road because the sidewalk is not yet shoveled will be run down at driver’s discretion. This applies particularly to hipsters dressed in all black at night.

Homeowners who do not shovel their sidewalk need to hire someone to do so. Just because you go in and out of the garage in the alley, it does not relieve you of the burden of cleaning the sidewalk in front of your house. Corner lot owners, you knew it was there when you bought the place: quit whining, shovel and salt that thing now.

Bicyclists who insist on riding in the snow and slush need to obey all of the laws. Your slipping in between cars or hogging lanes at 2.5 miles per hour because it’s deep snow, are not acceptable. Move with the flow or take a cab. You endanger everyone around you when you can’t control your vehicle and maintain traffic flow.

You. Yes, the idiot in the bright gray vehicle with your lights off at twilight, during the snow, or at night: turn on your lights. That moving hazard you’re piloting is practically invisible to the rest of us.

If you are driving like an escaped prisoner because everyone else is going too slowly on the slick road, remember that you might go faster, but you’re not going to stop any more quickly. Chill and behave like an adult.

If you’re terrified about driving in the snow, I’d like to remind you that it’s not acceptable to go 8 mph in the left lane because there are snow flurries. I pointed out earlier, practice snows are over. Drive like the rest of us or go to http://www.kayak.com and get a ticket to a warmer climate. Do not return until June.

If you are a municipal leader, this one’s for you: have your crews plow curb-to-curb. Likewise, shovel and salt the sidewalks in front of your municipal buildings. It is only beginning, yet I see that we’ve lost over a foot on Hennepin Avenue thus far. For those of you in Atlanta, that’s a major artery. It is not some twisty little country road that is hard to gauge where the curbing is after a snowfall. Straight as a ruler for miles. So, no excuse for running four lane roads down to 2.3 lane roads over the winter. Plow properly.

Private homeowners: learn space management now. If you shovel/plow your sidewalks and driveways “almost” to the edge, you are as big a loser as the city crews that throw in the towel in November. Go wide now, you’ll appreciate it in February. Push the snow back at least a foot from the edge while you have a chance. It’s easy to keep up with if you try. If you don’ try, you’ll be butted up against the edges in a cruel manner, with a sidewalk 10 inches wide and a parking space so small you can’t open your doors. Use the room you have and keep it. Plan ahead. Etc.

Your dog still poops in winter. Yes, hard to believe. So when you walk past my house, pick up little Fido’s droppings. Because if you don’t, I’ll deliver them via wrist-rocket to your front door. Frozen poo can go at least 300 feet per second when I’m operating the device. And it’s loud. Please be kind and avoid brown marks on your stucco.

Suede boots will look terrible the minute you wear them in real snow. Save them for fall and spring wear. Please do not bemoan the salt on your boots in my presence.

The line at the store/deli/restaurant will occasionally extend out the door. In winter, it is impolite to wedge your carcass in said door and make sure the whole place ventilates to the ambient temperature of Minnesota, -15 degrees. Either in, or out. You can handle it, cupcake. But shut that door.

Try stomping your feet at the door. Do others a favor; do not track snow 50 feet into the lobby. That black thingy on the floor? It’s for wiping your feet. You may enjoy the experience.

Just because the white lines are impossible to see in parking lots, it does not mean that you leave 6 feet between your car and the next car over. Memory skills are crucial to survival. Try using yours. A good rule of thumb is full opening of the driver’s door plus 6 inches. Any more than that and you’re officially a sociopath unless it’s a handicap space. Likewise for angle parking when the rest are perpendicular. There is a special place in Hades for your ilk.

Additional rules may be forthcoming. In the meantime, if you begin to lose control of your vehicle while driving, “Aim for something cheap.”

I Was Pretty Sure It Wasn’t Turkeys This Time.

Posted on by

I saw something today that put me right back into the 1970’s and the television show WKRP in Cincinnati. In one of the best of the series, the station holds a promotion where they … well, here’s the video:

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits!

Images, music, scents, and tastes from our youth often come screaming out of the closet when an appropriate neuron fires in recognition. I had that happen today. Partly it was because of WKRP, partly because I have a twisted mind that operates in it’s own universe.

I’d just been to Walmart to buy dog biscuits, shower curtains, and cold medicine. Sounds like a party, right? Well, as I rounded the curve in the road leaving the big box, I spotted one of those construction platforms at full extension about five stories up. The kind you use to put pallets of sheet rock on the roof of a building site.

Dangling from the platform was a banner. When I got close enough to read the banner I spotted a bunch of little tents from a local radio station adorning the front of the grocery store where the construction crane was located. My brain immediately sent my eyes searching for turkeys plummeting to the earth. It’s kind of cold today, I figured maybe they were just chucking 25 pound Butterball’s from the platform. I have no clue what they were doing, but it did make me laugh.

If anyone was watching, that’s what I was laughing about: a great memory from almost four decades ago.

Tomorrow, most of us will share memories with our families, including a few moments that are on a par with turkey bombing in the world of the surreal. All of us have some memory of Thanksgiving that we bring to the fore when the event rolls around. I certainly do, and it’s not the warm family home with the dog under the table and the pie in the oven.

Nope, I have two of those memories. The first is Monterrey, California, three decades ago. I had my meal at the Naval Post Graduate School. My girlfriend (currently my wife) was back at the barracks in a narcotic fog. She’d elected to get her wisdom teeth pulled the day before Thanksgiving. Gooned out would be too kind a phrase for the impact of the drugs on that blond hottie. I got special permission from the Officer of the Day to have her stay in my barracks room and be in my bed while we watched Bewitched reruns on my $50.00 Gold Star television. Lunch was great, taking care of her even better. One of those bonding things that couples have to go through to know if they’re going to make it in the long run.

The second memory that always runs up is 1987 on the U.S.S. Coral Sea. I wrote about it two years ago (hard to believe this thing is still around, isn’t it?) and refer you to the story to read it in full. A time of my life that has guided me to this day.

I am blessed to be here to write this today. I know that full well. I thank you for your patronage. I’m not focused on statistics, but it is with great joy that I report that this blog has been visited over 1,000,000 times in the past three years. Throw out the robots from the search engines, and it still leaves me with approximately 750,000 visits in that time. Here’s the first blog post ever. I’m putting it up just to show that I have improved somewhat with practice.

It’s time for me to blog. Almost every day I have some useless thing to blather about that somehow eludes me when I sit down later to actually put it to paper. I can now spew nonsense from my phone. And I will do just that as time permits.

I will do one post per week to begin. Maybe more. It all depends on how angry/happy/silly/vociferous I am on any given day.

In the meantime, thanks for dropping by.

I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.

Be well.

For Those Of You Rooting For Rioting…

Posted on by

Shame on you. Same thing for those of you who have taken to social media ranting about “Jesus will judge Darren Wilson, and it won’t be pretty.”

Kudos to those of you posting prayer line numbers in your social media.

Therein lies the difference between stupid and evil versus informed and good.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits!

No matter what the result of the grand jury’s deliberations, the professional instigators were well prepared with pre-printed signs, stored weapons, and microphones for the bull horns. Some thrive on chaos. They profit from it. And, sadly, they drag well-intentioned dupes in their wake.

Others, who understand that not everything in this life will play out the way you want, sat down to pray. I’d personally asked for brutal cold and a freak blizzard at the time of the announcement. Anything to minimize the damage and loss of life in Ferguson.

One of the most telling things I saw this evening was one of Michael Brown’s cousins being interviewed on cable news. He was opposed to the violence and looting. But as the interview went on, I realized that the judgement of many is clouded with personal feelings. In essence, this man said that he could understand it if Michael had died in the police car while beating the officer and trying to get his gun. But he didn’t understand how Wilson could have shot him after he got out of the car, even if Michael was rushing toward the officer.

Second chances. We don’t always get them in this life. Michael did and he blew it. For whatever reason, he returned the presence of the officer and went at it again. Not my conclusion, but that of the grand jury. That’s why there was no indictment. Michael Brown could have walked away and sought help for his wounds but he chose to go back and confront Darren Wilson. It cost him his life.

I wasn’t there, I claim no insight other than reality: charge a man with a gun who just shot you and you’re liable to die. I’ve known that for decades. Michael learned that vital lesson a bit too late. This applies to men with and without badges. In fact, unless you want to put your life on the table and play for keeps, don’t charge anyone. Ever. It’s the best way.

Pray for Ferguson and other big cities. The pre-printed placards are out across the nation. Don’t let them pull you into violence and destruction. This country has a good record with the ballot box. That’s where the effort should be made. Arson just destroys. Reasoned argument wins out in our system. Work the system. And then pray some more.

I’d Like To Chime In On The Caudillo’s Speech.

Posted on by

For those of you who posted things on their twitter feed last night like, “You’re only POTUS once, let them have it.” you can probably skip this blog. If you like this freedom of speech thing, and have any reverence for the Constitution and the rule of law, read on a bit further.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits!

Let’s get this out in the open: He doesn’t care what you think now that the election is over. Our president is doing what he pleases and ruling by fiat. His excuse that every president, Republican or Democrat, has done the same thing is right along the lines of, “But Billy’s a bigger thief than me, why am I being punished.” I’d like for all of them to uphold the law.

Executive orders are designed to handle emergencies. Period. Full stop. They have been corrupted over the years, and Obama has now taken them to their zenith. Today I heard him tell the nation that he was tired of waiting for Congress to pass laws, so he was going to do it on his own and they’d better catch up. He actually said that once they pass a law he can sign he’ll rescind the executive order he is issuing on immigration. Sorry, Barry, not how it works.

In our nation, the Congress is supposed to pass legislation. The president has the option of signing it after it is presented to him. Sometimes there is no legislation to sign. The opposition calls that gridlock. I call it the best thing around. I don’t want government passing more laws, I’d like to see a whole bunch of them repealed. But when the legislative branch chooses not to pass a law, that doesn’t give the executive the power to write his own laws. And, Thursday night, that’s what he effectively did to our nation. He assumed dictatorial power over things that the legislative branch saw fit to leave alone.

For the two remaining fans of Barack Hussein Obama still reading along, let me remind you of this: When your guy does it it’s pretty neat. When the other guy does it it sucks. When it’s done legally there is course to redress. When it’s illegal, it hurts everyone, and sets a terrible precedent for the future.

I don’t like anyone in Washington telling me that they’re going outside the law and the constitution to change policy. Period. None of them. Because when the next group of clowns takes over, and it will happen, they could pull the same stuff.

Many honorable nations have fallen under the spell of leaders who usurp their constitutional powers. It is a tragically bad idea that has led to innumerable wars and despotic situations. Not that a lame-duck president will be in a position to do so, for that is very unlikely given the results of the last election. But it’s a bad idea no matter who is in power to rule by fiat.

Our founders set this nation up with a set of checks and balances. Gridlock sometimes results. As it is supposed to be.

Mr. President, you have held the opinion for years that what you did on Thursday is illegal. Why, now, do you feel that you can violate that legal threshold and rule like a dictator?

I’d like a straight answer. Haven’t heard one yet. If you are of a mind, watch the video and he will tell you, in his own words, just how wrong his actions were on Thursday. Let me know how you square that one in the comments.

Just by the way, it’s still valid even if it’s on Fox.